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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:33:47 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:33:47 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/10041-0.txt b/10041-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4972e16 --- /dev/null +++ b/10041-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8713 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10041 *** + +THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK + + +A Comedy of Limitations + +BY + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +"_To this new South, who values her high past in chief, as fit +foundation of that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with +augmenting strokes_." + +1915 + + + + +TO + +PRISCILLA BRADLEY CABELL + + "Nightly I mark and praise, or great or small, + Such stars as proudly struggle one by one + To heaven's highest place, as Procyon, + Antarês, Naös, Tejat and Nibal + Attain supremacy, and proudly fall, + Still glorious, and glitter, and are gone + So very soon;--whilst steadfast and alone + Polaris gleams, and is not changed at all. + + "Daily I find some gallant dream that ranges + The heights of heaven; and as others do, + I serve my dream until my dream estranges + Its errant bondage, and I note anew + That nothing dims, nor shakes, nor mars, nor changes, + Fond faith in you and in my love of you." + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART ONE - PROPINQUITY + +PART TWO - RENASCENCE + +PART THREE - TERTIUS + +PART FOUR - APPRECIATION + +PART FIVE - SOUVENIR + +PART SIX - BYWAYS + +PART SEVEN - YOKED + +PART EIGHT - HARVEST + +PART NINE - RELICS + +PART TEN - IMPRIMIS + + + + +In the middle of the cupboard door was the carved figure of a man.... +He had goat's legs, little horns on his head, and a long beard; the +children in the room called him, "Major-General-field-sergeant +-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" ... He was always looking at the +table under the looking-glass where stood a very pretty little +shepherdess made of china.... Close by her side stood a little +chimney-sweep, as black as coal and also made of china.... Near +to them stood another figure.... He was an old Chinaman who could nod +his head, and used to pretend he was the grandfather of the shepherdess, +although he could not prove it. He, however, assumed authority over her, +and therefore when "Major-general-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's +-legs" asked for the little shepherdess to be his wife, he nodded his head +to show that he consented. + +Then the little shepherdess cried, and looked at her sweetheart, the +chimney-sweep. "I must entreat you," said she, "to go out with me into +the wide world, for we cannot stay here." ... When the chimney-sweep saw +that she was quite firm, he said, "My way is through the stove up the +chimney." ... So at last they reached the top of the chimney.... The sky +with all its stars was over their heads.... They could see for a very +long distance out into the wide world, and the poor little shepherdess +leaned her head on her chimney-sweep's shoulder and wept. "This is too +much," she said, "the world is too large." ... And so with a great deal +of trouble they climbed down the chimney and peeped out.... There lay +the old Chinaman on the floor ... broken into three pieces.... "This is +terrible," said the shepherdess. "He can be riveted," said the +chimney-sweep.... The family had the Chinaman's back mended and a strong +rivet put through his neck; he looked as good as new, but when +"Major-General-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" again asked +for the shepherdess to be his wife, the old Chinaman could no longer nod +his head. + +And so the little china people remained together and were thankful for +the rivet in grandfather's neck, and continued to love each other until +they were broken to pieces. + + + + +PART ONE - PROPINQUITY + + _"A singer, eh?... Well, well! but when he sings + Take jealous heed lest idiosyncrasies + Entinge and taint too deep his melodies; + See that his lute has no discordant strings + To harrow us; and let his vaporings + Be all of virtue and its victories, + And of man's best and noblest qualities, + And scenery, and flowers, and similar things_. + + "Thus bid our paymasters whose mutterings + Some few deride, and blithely link their rhymes + At random; and, as ever, on frail wings + Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes + Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs + From hell's midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes." + +PAUL VERVILLE. _Nascitur_. + + + + +I + + +At a very remote period, when editorials were mostly devoted to +discussion as to whether the Democratic Convention (shortly to be held +in Chicago) would or would not declare in favor of bi-metallism; when +golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed how +to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an +automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "the godet skirts and +huge sleeves of the present modes" were already doomed to extinction; +when the baseball season had just begun, and some of our people were +discussing the national game, and others the spectacular burning of the +old Pennsylvania Railway depot at Thirty-third and Market Street in +Philadelphia, and yet others the significance of General Fitzhugh Lee's +recent appointment as consul-general to Habana:--at this remote time, +Lichfield talked of nothing except the Pendomer divorce case. + +And Colonel Rudolph Musgrave had very narrowly escaped being named as +the co-respondent. This much, at least, all Lichfield knew when George +Pendomer--evincing unsuspected funds of generosity--permitted his wife +to secure a divorce on the euphemistic grounds of "desertion." John +Charteris, acting as Rudolph Musgrave's friend, had patched up this +arrangement; and the colonel and Mrs. Pendomer, so rumor ran, were to be +married very quietly after a decent interval. + +Remained only to deliberate whether this sop to the conventions should +be accepted as sufficient. + +"At least," as Mrs. Ashmeade sagely observed, "we can combine +vituperation with common-sense, and remember it is not the first time a +Musgrave has figured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race! +proverbial flutterers of petticoats! His surname convicts the man +unheard and almost excuses him. All of us feel that. And, moreover, it +is not as if the idiots had committed any unpardonable sin, for they +have kept out of the newspapers." + +Her friend seemed dubious, and hazarded something concerning "the merest +sense of decency." + +"In the name of the Prophet, figs! People--I mean the people who count +in Lichfield--are charitable enough to ignore almost any crime which is +just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It +gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in +the morning paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion +of being illiterate and virtueless. That's Lichfield." + +"But, Polly--" + +"Sophist, don't I know my Lichfield? I know it almost as well as I know +Rudolph Musgrave. And so I prophesy that he will not marry Clarice +Pendomer, because he is inevitably tired of her by this. He will marry +money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will +gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone +throwing, and be just as friendly with the participants to their faces +as we ever were. So don't let me hear any idiotic talk about whether or +no _I_ am going to receive her--" + +"Well, after all, she was born a Bellingham. We must remember that." + +"Wasn't I saying I knew my Lichfield?" Mrs. Ashmeade placidly observed. + + * * * * * + +And time, indeed, attested her to be right in every particular. + +Yet it must be recorded that at this critical juncture chance rather +remarkably favored Colonel Musgrave and Mrs. Pendomer, by giving +Lichfield something of greater interest to talk about; since now, just +in the nick of occasion, occurred the notorious Scott Musgrave murder. +Scott Musgrave--a fourth cousin once removed of the colonel's, to be +quite accurate--had in the preceding year seduced the daughter of a +village doctor, a negligible "half-strainer" up country at Warren; and +her two brothers, being irritated, picked this particular season to +waylay him in the street, as he reeled homeward one night from the +Commodores' Club, and forthwith to abolish Scott Musgrave after the +primitive methods of their lower station in society. + +These details, indeed, were never officially made public, since a +discreet police force "found no clues"; for Fred Musgrave (of King's +Garden), as befitted the dead man's well-to-do brother, had been at no +little pains to insure constabulary shortsightedness, in preference to +having the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically +aired. Fred Musgrave thereby afforded Lichfield a delectable opportunity +(conversationally and abetted by innumerable "they _do_ say's") to +accredit the murder, turn by turn, to every able-bodied person residing +within stone's throw of its commission. So that few had time, now, to +talk of Rudolph Musgrave and Clarice Pendomer; for it was not in +Lichfieldian human nature to discuss a mere domestic imbroglio when +here, also in the Musgrave family, was a picturesque and gory +assassination to lay tongue to. + +So Colonel Musgrave was duly reëlected that spring to the librarianship +of the Lichfield Historical Association, and the name of Mrs. George +Pendomer was not stricken from the list of patronesses of the Lichfield +German Club, but was merely altered to "Mrs. Clarice Pendomer." + + * * * * * + +At the bottom of his heart Colonel Musgrave was a trifle irritated that +his self-sacrifice should be thus unrewarded by martyrdom. Circumstances +had enabled him to assume, and he had gladly accepted, the blame for +John Charteris's iniquity, rather than let Anne Charteris know the truth +about her husband and Clarice Pendomer. The truth would have killed +Anne, the colonel believed; and besides, the colonel had enjoyed the +performance of a picturesque action. + +And having acted as a hero in permitting himself to be pilloried as a +libertine, it was preferable of course not to have incurred ostracism +thereby. His common-sense conceded this; and yet, to Colonel Musgrave, +it could not but be evident that Destiny was hardly rising to the +possibilities of the situation. + + + + +II + + +Concerning Colonel Musgrave one finds the ensuing account in a +publication of the period devoted to biographies of more or less +prominent Americans. It is reproduced unchanged, because these memoirs +were--in the old days--compiled by the person whom they commemorated. +The custom was a worthy one, since the value of an autobiography is +determined by the nature of its superfluities and falsehoods. + +"MUSGRAVE, RUDOLPH VARTREY, editor; _b_. Lichfield, Sill., Mar. 14, +1856; _s_. William Sebastian and Martha (Allardyce) M; _g. s_. +Theodorick Q.M., gov. of Sill. 1805-8, judge of the General Ct., +1808-11, judge Supreme Ct. of Appeals, 1811-50 and pres. Supreme Ct. of +Appeals, 1841-50; grad. King's Coll. and U. of Sill. Corr. sec. +Lichfield Hist. Soc., and editor Sill. Mag. of Biog. since 1890; dir. +Traders Nat. Bank, Sill.; mem. Soc. of the Sons of Col. Govs., pres. +Sill. Soc. of Protestant Martyrs, comdr. Sill. Mil. Order of Lost +Battles, mem. exec. bd. Sill. Hist. Assn. for the Preservation of Ruins. +Democrat, Episcopalian, unmarried. _Author_: Colonial Lichfield, 1892; +Right on the Scaffold, 1893; Secession and the South, 1894; Chart of the +Descendants of Zenophon Perkins, 1894; Recollections of a Gracious Era, +1895; Notes as to the Vartreys of Westphalia, 1896. Has also written +numerous pamphlets on hist., biog. and geneal. subjects. _Address_: +Lichfield, Sill." + +For Colonel Musgrave was by birth the lineal head of all the Musgraves +of Matocton, which is in Lichfield, as degrees are counted there, +equivalent to what being born a marquis would mean in England. Handsome +and trim and affable, he defied chronology by looking ten years younger +than he was known to be. For at least a decade he had been invaluable to +Lichfield matrons alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town +girl," the management of a cotillion and the prevention of unpleasant +pauses among incongruous dinner companies. + +In short, he was by all accounts the social triumph of his generation; +and his military title, won by four years of arduous service at +receptions and parades while on the staff of a former Governor of the +State, this seasoned bachelor carried off with plausibility and +distinction. + +The story finds him "Librarian and Corresponding Secretary" of the +Lichfield Historical Association, which office he had held for some six +years. The salary was small, and the colonel had inherited little; but +his sister, Miss Agatha Musgrave, who lived with him, was a notable +housekeeper. He increased his resources in a gentlemanly fashion by +genealogical research, directed mostly toward the rehabilitation of +ambiguous pedigrees; and for the rest, no other man could have fulfilled +more gracefully the main duty of the Librarian, which was to exhibit the +Association's collection of relics to hurried tourists "doing" +Lichfield. + +His "Library manner" was modeled upon that which an eighteenth century +portrait would conceivably possess, should witchcraft set the canvas +breathing. + + + + +III + + +Also the story finds Colonel Musgrave in the company of his sister on a +warm April day, whilst these two sat upon the porch of the Musgrave home +in Lichfield, and Colonel Musgrave waited until it should be time to +open the Library for the afternoon. And about them birds twittered +cheerily, and the formal garden flourished as gardens thrive nowhere +except in Lichfield, and overhead the sky was a turkis-blue, save for a +few irrelevant clouds which dappled it here and there like splashes of +whipped cream. + +Yet, for all this, the colonel was ill-at-ease; and care was on his +brow, and venom in his speech. + +"And one thing," Colonel Musgrave concluded, with decision, "I wish +distinctly understood, and that is, if she insists on having young men +loafing about her--as, of course, she will--she will have to entertain +them in the garden. I won't have them in the house, Agatha. You remember +that Langham girl you had here last Easter?" he added, disconsolately +--"the one who positively littered up the house with young men, +and sang idiotic jingles to them at all hours of the night about +the Bailey family and the correct way to spell chicken? She drove me to +the verge of insanity, and I haven't a doubt that this Patricia person +will be quite as obstreperous. So, please mention it to her, +Agatha--casually, of course--that, in Lichfield, when one is partial to +either vocal exercise or amorous daliance, the proper scene of action is +the garden. I really cannot be annoyed by her." + +"But, Rudolph," his sister protested, "you forget she is engaged to the +Earl of Pevensey. An engaged girl naturally wouldn't care about meeting +any young men." + +"H'm!" said the colonel, drily. + +Ensued a pause, during which the colonel lighted yet another cigarette. + +Then, "I have frequently observed," he spoke, in absent wise, "that all +young women having that peculiarly vacuous expression about the eyes--I +believe there are misguided persons who describe such eyes as being +'dreamy,'--are invariably possessed of a fickle, unstable and coquettish +temperament. Oh, no! You may depend upon it, Agatha, the fact that she +contemplates purchasing the right to support a peculiarly disreputable +member of the British peerage will not hinder her in the least from +making advances to all the young men in the neighborhood." + +Miss Musgrave was somewhat ruffled. She was a homely little woman with +nothing of the ordinary Musgrave comeliness. Candor even compels the +statement that in her pudgy swarthy face there was a droll suggestion +of the pug-dog. + +"I am sure," Miss Musgrave remonstrated, with placid dignity, "that you +know nothing whatever about her, and that the reports about the earl +have probably been greatly exaggerated, and that her picture shows her +to be an unusually attractive girl. Though it is true," Miss Musgrave +conceded after reflection, "that there are any number of persons in the +House of Lords that I wouldn't in the least care to have in my own +house, even with the front parlor all in linen as it unfortunately is. +So awkward when you have company! And the Bible does bid us not to put +our trust in princes, and, for my part, I never thought that photographs +could be trusted, either." + +"Scorn not the nobly born, Agatha," her brother admonished her, "nor +treat with lofty scorn the well-connected. The very best people are +sometimes respectable. And yet," he pursued, with a slight hiatus of +thought, "I should not describe her as precisely an attractive-looking +girl. She seems to have a lot of hair,--if it is all her own, which it +probably isn't,--and her nose is apparently straight enough, and I +gather she is not absolutely deformed anywhere; but that is all I can +conscientiously say in her favor. She is artificial. Her hair, now! It +has a--well, you would not call it exactly a crinkle or precisely a +wave, but rather somewhere between the two. Yes, I think I should +describe it as a ripple. I fancy it must be rather like the reflection +of a sunset in--a duck-pond, say, with a faint wind ruffling the water. +For I gather that her hair is of some light shade,--induced, I haven't a +doubt, by the liberal use of peroxides. And this ripple, too, Agatha, it +stands to reason, must be the result of coercing nature, for I have +never seen it in any other woman's hair. Moreover," Colonel Musgrave +continued, warming somewhat to his subject, "there is a dimple--on the +right side of her mouth, immediately above it,--which speaks of the most +frivolous tendencies. I dare say it comes and goes when she +talks,--winks at you, so to speak, in a manner that must be simply +idiotic. That foolish little cleft in her chin, too--" + +But at this point, his sister interrupted him. + +"I hadn't a notion," said she, "that you had even looked at the +photograph. And you seem to have it quite by heart, Rudolph,--and some +people admire dimples, you know, and, at any rate, her mother had red +hair, so Patricia isn't really responsible. I decided that it would be +foolish to use the best mats to-night. We can save them for Sunday +supper, because I am only going to have eggs and a little cold meat, and +not make company of her." + +For no apparent reason, Rudolph Musgrave flushed. + +"I inspected it--quite casually--last night. Please don't be absurd, +Agatha! If we were threatened with any other direful visitation +--influenza, say, or the seventeen-year locust,--I should +naturally read up on the subject in order to know what to expect. And +since Providence has seen fit to send us a visitor rather than a +visitation--though, personally, I should infinitely prefer the +influenza, as interfering in less degree with my comfort,--I have, of +course, neglected no opportunity of finding out what we may reasonably +look forward to. I fear the worst, Agatha. For I repeat, the girl's face +is, to me, absolutely unattractive!" + +The colonel spoke with emphasis, and flung away his cigarette, and took +up his hat to go. + +And then, "I suppose," said Miss Musgrave, absently, "you will be +falling in love with her, just as you did with Anne Charteris and Aline +Van Orden and all those other minxes. I _would_ like to see you married, +Rudolph, only I couldn't stand your having a wife." + +"I! I!" sputtered the colonel. "I think you must be out of your head! I +fall in love with that chit! Good Lord, Agatha, you are positively +idiotic!" + +And the colonel turned on his heel, and walked stiffly through the +garden. But, when half-way down the path, he wheeled about and came +back. + +"I beg your pardon, Agatha," he said, contritely, "it was not my +intention to be discourteous. But somehow--somehow, dear, I don't quite +see the necessity for my falling in love with anybody, so long as I have +you." + +And Miss Musgrave, you may be sure, forgave him promptly; and +afterward--with a bit of pride and an infinity of love in her kind, +homely face,--her eyes followed him out of the garden on his way to open +the Library. And she decided in her heart that she had the dearest and +best and handsomest brother in the universe, and that she must remember +to tell him, accidentally, how becoming his new hat was. And then, at +some unspoken thought, she smiled, wistfully. + +"She would be a very lucky girl if he did," said Miss Musgrave, apropos +of nothing in particular; and tossed her grizzly head. + +"An earl, indeed!" said Miss Musgrave + + + + +IV + + +And this is how it came about: + +Patricia Vartrey (a second cousin once removed of Colonel Rudolph +Musgrave's), as the older inhabitants of Lichfield will volubly attest, +was always a person who did peculiar things. The list of her +eccentricities is far too lengthy here to be enumerated; but she began +it by being born with red hair--Titian reds and auburns were +undiscovered euphemisms in those days--and, in Lichfield, this is not +regarded as precisely a lady-like thing to do; and she ended it, as far +as Lichfield was concerned, by eloping with what Lichfield in its horror +could only describe, with conscious inadequacy, as "a quite unheard-of +person." + +Indisputably the man was well-to-do already; and from this nightmarish +topsy-turvidom of Reconstruction the fellow visibly was plucking wealth. +Also young Stapylton was well enough to look at, too, as Lichfield +flurriedly conceded. + +But it was equally undeniable that he had made his money through a +series of commercial speculations distinguished both by shiftiness and +daring, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly +negligible "poor white" person,--an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will" +Musgrave, Colonel Musgrave's father, who was of course the same +Lieutenant-Colonel William Sebastian Musgrave, C.S.A., that met his +death at Gettysburg. + +This upstart married Patricia Vartrey, for all the chatter and +whispering, and carried her away from Lichfield, as yet a little dubious +as to what recognition, if any, should be accorded the existence of the +Stapyltons. And afterward (from a notoriously untruthful North, indeed) +came rumors that he was rapidly becoming wealthy; and of Patricia +Vartrey's death at her daughter's birth; and of the infant's health and +strength and beauty, and of her lavish upbringing,--a Frenchwoman, +Lichfield whispered, with absolutely nothing to do but attend upon the +child. + +And then, little by little, a new generation sprang up, and, little by +little, the interest these rumors waked became more lax; and it was +brought about, at last, by the insidious transitions of time, that +Patricia Vartrey was forgotten in Lichfield. Only a few among the older +men remembered her; some of them yet treasured, as these fogies so often +do, a stray fan or an odd glove; and in bycorners of sundry +time-toughened hearts there lurked the memory of a laughing word or of a +glance or of some such casual bounty, that Patricia Vartrey had accorded +these hearts' owners when the world was young. + +But Agatha Musgrave, likewise, remembered the orphan cousin who had +been reared with her. She had loved Patricia Vartrey; and, in due time, +she wrote to Patricia's daughter,--in stately, antiquated phrases that +astonished the recipient not a little,--and the girl had answered. The +correspondence flourished. And it was not long before Miss Musgrave had +induced her young cousin to visit Lichfield. + +Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, be it understood, knew nothing of all this +until the girl was actually on her way. And now, she was to arrive that +afternoon, to domicile herself in his quiet house for two long +weeks--this utter stranger, look you!--and upset his comfort, ask him +silly questions, expect him to talk to her, and at the end of her visit, +possibly, present him with some outlandish gimcrack made of cardboard +and pink ribbons, in which she would expect him to keep his papers. The +Langham girl did that. + + * * * * * + +It is honesty's part to give you the man no better than he was. +Lichfield at large had pampered him; many women had loved him; and above +all, Miss Agatha had spoiled him. After fifteen years of being the pivot +about which the economy of a household revolves, after fifteen years of +being the inevitable person whose approval must be secured before any +domestic alteration, however trivial, may be considered, no mortal man +may hope to remain a paragon of unselfishness. + +Colonel Musgrave joyed in the society of women. But he classed +them--say, with the croquettes adorned with pink paper frills which were +then invariably served at the suppers of the Lichfield German Club,--as +acceptable enough, upon a conscious holiday, but wholly incongruous with +the slippered ease of home. When you had an inclination for feminine +society, you shaved and changed your clothes and thought up an impromptu +or so against emergency, and went forth to seek it. That was natural; +but to have a petticoated young person infesting your house, hourly, was +as preposterous as ice-cream soda at breakfast. + +The metaphor set him off at a tangent. He wondered if this Patricia +person could not (tactfully) be induced to take her bath after +breakfast, as Agatha did? after he had his? Why, confound the girl, he +was not responsible for there being only one bathroom in the house! It +was necessary for him to have his bath and be at the Library by nine +o'clock. This interloper must be made to understand as much. + +The colonel reached the Library undecided as to whether Miss Stapylton +had better breakfast in her room, or if it would be entirely proper for +her to come to the table in one of those fluffy lace-trimmed garments +such as Agatha affected at the day's beginning? + +The question was a nice one. It was not as though servants were willing +to be bothered with carrying trays to people's rooms; he knew what +Agatha had to say upon that subject. It was not as though he were the +chit's first cousin, either. He almost wished himself in the decline of +life, and free to treat the girl paternally. + +And so he fretted all that afternoon. + + * * * * * + +Then, too, he reflected that it would be very awkward if Agatha should +be unwell while this Patricia person was in the house. Agatha in her +normal state was of course the kindliest and cheeriest gentlewoman in +the universe, but any physical illness appeared to transform her nature +disastrously. She had her "attacks," she "felt badly" very often +nowadays, poor dear; and how was a Patricia person to be expected to +make allowances for the fact that at such times poor Agatha was +unavoidably a little cross and pessimistic? + + + + +V + + +Yet Colonel Musgrave strolled into his garden, later, with a tolerable +affectation of unconcern. Women, after all, he assured himself, were +necessary for the perpetuation of the species; and, resolving for the +future to view these weakly, big-hipped and slope-shouldered makeshifts +of Nature's with larger tolerance, he cocked his hat at a +devil-may-carish angle, and strode up the walk, whistling jauntily and +having, it must be confessed, to the unprejudiced observer very much the +air of a sheep in wolf's clothing. + +"At worst," he was reflecting, "I can make love to her. They, as a rule, +take kindlily enough to that; and in the exercise of hospitality a host +must go to all lengths to divert his guests. Failure is not +permitted...." + +Then She came to him. + +She came to him across the trim, cool lawn, leisurely, yet with a +resilient tread that attested the vigor of her slim young body. She was +all in white, diaphanous, ethereal, quite incredibly incredible; but as +she passed through the long shadows of the garden--fire-new, from the +heart of the sunset, Rudolph Musgrave would have sworn to you,--the lacy +folds and furbelows and semi-transparencies that clothed her were now +tinged with gold, and now, as a hedge or flower-bed screened her from +the horizontal rays, were softened into multitudinous graduations of +grays and mauves and violets. + +"Failure is not permitted," he was repeating in his soul.... + +"You're Cousin Rudolph, aren't you?" she asked. "How perfectly +entrancing! You see until to-day I always thought that if I had been +offered the choice between having cousins or appendicitis I would have +preferred to be operated on." + +And Rudolph Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about +his heart, that her hair was really like the reflection of a sunset in +rippling waters,--only many times more beautiful, of course,--and that +her mouth was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and +that her eyes were purple glimpses of infinity. + +Then he observed that his own mouth was giving utterance to divers +irrelevant and foolish sounds, which eventually resolved themselves into +the statement he was glad to see her. And immediately afterward the +banality of this remark brought the hot blood to his face and, for the +rest of the day, stung him and teased him, somewhere in the background +of his mind, like an incessant insect. + +Glad, indeed! + +Before he had finished shaking hands with Patricia Stapylton, it was +all over with the poor man. + +"Er--h'm!" quoth he. + +"Only," Miss Stapylton was meditating, with puckered brow, "it would be +unseemly for me to call you Rudolph--" + +"You impertinent minx!" cried he, in his soul; "I should rather think it +would be!" + +"--and Cousin Rudolph sounds exactly like a dried-up little man with +eyeglasses and crows' feet and a gentle nature. I rather thought you +were going to be like that, and I regard it as extremely hospitable of +you not to be. You are more like--like what now?" Miss Stapylton put her +head to one side and considered the contents of her vocabulary,--"you +are like a viking. I shall call you Olaf," she announced, when she had +reached a decision. + +This, look you, to the most dignified man in Lichfield,--a person who +had never borne a nickname in his life. You must picture for yourself +how the colonel stood before her, big, sturdy and blond, and glared down +at her, and assured himself that he was very indignant; like Timanthes, +the colonel's biographer prefers to draw a veil before the countenance +to which art is unable to do justice. + +Then, "I have no admiration for the Northmen," Rudolph Musgrave +declared, stiffly. "They were a rude and barbarous nation, proverbially +addicted to piracy and intemperance." + +"My goodness gracious!" Miss Stapylton observed,--and now, for the +first time, he saw the teeth that were like grains of rice upon a pink +rose petal. Also, he saw dimples. "And does one mean all that by a +viking?" + +"The vikings," he informed her--and his Library manner had settled upon +him now to the very tips of his fingers--"were pirates. The word is of +Icelandic origin, from _vik_, the name applied to the small inlets along +the coast in which they concealed their galleys. I may mention that Olaf +was not a viking, but a Norwegian king, being the first Christian +monarch to reign in Norway." + +"Dear me!" said Miss Stapylton; "how interesting!" + +Then she yawned with deliberate cruelty. + +"However," she concluded, "I shall call you Olaf, just the same." + +"Er--h'm!" said the colonel. + + * * * * * + +And this stuttering boor (he reflected) was Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, +confessedly the social triumph of his generation! This imbecile, without +a syllable to say for himself, without a solitary adroit word within +tongue's reach, wherewith to annihilate the hussy, was a Musgrave of +Matocton! + + * * * * * + +And she did. To her he was "Olaf" from that day forth. + +Rudolph Musgrave called her, "You." He was nettled, of course, by her +forwardness--"Olaf," indeed!--yet he found it, somehow, difficult to +bear this fact in mind continuously. + +For while it is true our heroes and heroines in fiction no longer fall +in love at first sight, Nature, you must remember, is too busily +employed with other matters to have much time to profit by current +literature. Then, too, she is not especially anxious to be realistic. +She prefers to jog along in the old rut, contentedly turning out +chromolithographic sunrises such as they give away at the tea stores, +contentedly staging the most violent and improbable melodramas; +and--sturdy old Philistine that she is--she even now permits her +children to fall in love in the most primitive fashion. + +She is not particularly interested in subtleties and soul analyses; she +merely chuckles rather complacently when a pair of eyes are drawn, +somehow, to another pair of eyes, and an indescribable something is +altered somewhere in some untellable fashion, and the world, suddenly, +becomes the most delightful place of residence in all the universe. +Indeed, it is her favorite miracle, this. For at work of this sort the +old Philistine knows that she is an adept; and she has rejoiced in the +skill of her hands, with a sober workmanly joy, since Cain first went +a-wooing in the Land of Nod. + +So Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, without understanding what had happened to +him, on a sudden was strangely content with life. + +It was at supper--dinner, in Lichfield, when not a formal +entertainment, is eaten at two in the afternoon--that he fell +a-speculating as to whether Her eyes, after all, could be fitly +described as purple. + +Wasn't there a grayer luminosity about them than he had at first +suspected?--wasn't the cool glow of them, in a word, rather that of +sunlight falling upon a wet slate roof? + +It was a delicate question, an affair of nuances, of almost +imperceptible graduations; and in debating a matter of such nicety, a +man must necessarily lay aside all petty irritation, such as being +nettled by an irrational nickname, and approach the question with +unbiased mind. + +He did. And when, at last, he had come warily to the verge of decision, +Miss Musgrave in all innocence announced that they would excuse him if +he wished to get back to his work. + +He discovered that, somehow, the three had finished supper; and, +somehow, he presently discovered himself in his study, where eight +o'clock had found him every evening for the last ten years, when he was +not about his social diversions. An old custom, you will observe, is not +lightly broken. + + + + +VI + + +Subsequently: "I have never approved of these international marriages," +said Colonel Musgrave, with heat. "It stands to reason, she is simply +marrying the fellow for his title. _(The will of Jeremiah Brown, dated +29 November, 1690, recorded 2 February, 1690-1, mentions his wife Eliza +Brown and appoints her his executrix.)_ She can't possibly care for him. +_(This, then, was the second wife of Edward Osborne of Henrico, who, +marrying him 15 June, 1694, died before January, 1696-7.)_ But they are +all flibbertigibbets, every one of them. _(She had apparently no +children by either marriage--)_ And I dare say she is no better than the +rest." + +Came a tap on the door. Followed a vision of soft white folds and +furbelows and semi-transparencies and purple eyes and a pouting mouth. + +"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, Olaf," the owner of these +vanities complained. "Are you very busy? Cousin Agatha is about her +housekeeping, and I have read the afternoon paper all through,--even the +list of undelivered letters and the woman's page,--and I just want to +see the Gilbert Stuart picture," she concluded,--exercising, one is +afraid, a certain economy in regard to the truth. + +This was a little too much. If a man's working-hours are not to be +respected--if his privacy is to be thus invaded on the flimsiest of +pretexts,--why, then, one may very reasonably look for chaos to come +again. This, Rudolph Musgrave decided, was a case demanding firm and +instant action. Here was a young person who needed taking down a peg or +two, and that at once. + +But he made the mistake of looking at her first. And after that, he lied +glibly. "Good Lord, no! I am not in the least busy now. In fact, I was +just about to look you two up." + +"I was rather afraid of disturbing you." She hesitated; and a lucent +mischief woke in her eyes. "You are so patriarchal, Olaf," she lamented. +"I felt like a lion venturing into a den of Daniels. But if you cross +your heart you aren't really busy--why, then, you can show me the +Stuart, Olaf." + +It is widely conceded that Gilbert Stuart never in his after work +surpassed the painting which hung then in Rudolph Musgrave's study,--the +portrait of the young Gerald Musgrave, afterward the friend of Jefferson +and Henry, and, still later, the author of divers bulky tomes, +pertaining for the most part to ethnology. The boy smiles at you from +the canvas, smiles ambiguously,--smiles with a woman's mouth, set above +a resolute chin, however,--and with a sort of humorous sadness in his +eyes. These latter are of a dark shade of blue--purple, if you +will,--and his hair is tinged with red. + +"Why, he took after me!" said Miss Stapylton. "How thoughtful of him, +Olaf!" + +And Rudolph Musgrave saw the undeniable resemblance. It gave him a queer +sort of shock, too, as he comprehended, for the first time, that the +faint blue vein on that lifted arm held Musgrave blood,--the same blood +which at this thought quickened. For any person guided by appearances, +Rudolph Musgrave considered, would have surmised that the vein in +question contained celestial ichor or some yet diviner fluid. + +"It is true," he conceded, "that there is a certain likeness." + +"And he is a very beautiful boy," said Miss Stapylton, demurely. "Thank +you, Olaf; I begin to think you are a dangerous flatterer. But he is +only a boy, Olaf! And I had always thought of Gerald Musgrave as a +learned person with a fringe of whiskers all around his face--like a +centerpiece, you know." + +The colonel smiled. "This portrait was painted early in life. Our +kinsman was at that time, I believe, a person of rather frivolous +tendencies. Yet he was not quite thirty when he first established his +reputation by his monograph upon _The Evolution of Marriage_. And +afterwards, just prior to his first meeting with Goethe, you will +remember--" + +"Oh, yes!" Miss Stapylton assented, hastily; "I remember perfectly. I +know all about him, thank you. And it was that beautiful boy, Olaf, that +young-eyed cherub, who developed into a musty old man who wrote musty +old books, and lived a musty, dusty life all by himself, and never +married or had any fun at all! How _horrid_, Olaf!" she cried, with a +queer shrug of distaste. + +"I fail," said Colonel Musgrave, "to perceive anything--ah--horrid in a +life devoted to the study of anthropology. His reputation when he died +was international." + +"But he never had any fun, you jay-bird! And, oh, Olaf! Olaf! that boy +could have had so much fun! The world held so much for him! Why, Fortune +is only a woman, you know, and what woman could have refused him +anything if he had smiled at her like that when he asked for it?" + +Miss Stapylton gazed up at the portrait for a long time now, her hands +clasped under her chin. Her face was gently reproachful. + +"Oh, boy dear, boy dear!" she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her +voice, "how _could_ you be _so_ foolish? _Didn't_ you know there was +something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and +customs and folk-songs? Oh, precious child, how could you?" + +Gerald Musgrave smiled back at her, ambiguously; and Rudolph Musgrave +laughed. "I perceive," said he, "you are a follower of Epicurus. For my +part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of the Stoic. I can +conceive of no nobler life than one devoted to furthering the cause of +science." + +She looked up at him, with a wan smile. "A barren life!" she said: "ah, +yes, his was a wasted life! His books are all out-of-date now, and +nobody reads them, and it is just as if he had never been. A barren +life, Olaf! And that beautiful boy might have had so much fun--Life is +queer, isn't it, Olaf?" + +Again he laughed, "The criticism," he suggested, "is not altogether +original. And Science, no less than War, must have her unsung heroes. +You must remember," he continued, more seriously, "that any great work +must have as its foundation the achievements of unknown men. I fancy +that Cheops did not lay every brick in his pyramid with his own hand; +and I dare say Nebuchadnezzar employed a few helpers when he was laying +out his hanging gardens. But time cannot chronicle these lesser men. +Their sole reward must be the knowledge that they have aided somewhat in +the unending work of the world." + +Her face had altered into a pink and white penitence which was flavored +with awe. + +"I--I forgot," she murmured, contritely; "I--forgot you were--like +him--about your genealogies, you know. Oh, Olaf, I'm very silly! Of +course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, I dare say, if you like +it,--to devote your life to learning, as you and he have done. I forgot, +Olaf. Still, I am sorry, somehow, for that beautiful boy," she ended, +with a disconsolate glance at the portrait. + + + + +VII + + +Long after Miss Stapylton had left him, the colonel sat alone in his +study, idle now, and musing vaguely. There were no more addenda +concerning the descendants of Captain Thomas Osborne that night. + +At last, the colonel rose and threw open a window, and stood looking +into the moonlit garden. The world bathed in a mist of blue and silver. +There was a breeze that brought him sweet, warm odors from the garden, +together with a blurred shrilling of crickets and the conspiratorial +conference of young leaves. + +"Of course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, if you like it," he +said, with a faint chuckle. "I wonder, now, if I do like it?" + +He was strangely moved. He seemed, somehow, to survey Rudolph Musgrave +and all his doings with complete and unconcerned aloofness. The man's +life, seen in its true proportions, dwindled into the merest flicker of +a match; he had such a little while to live, this Rudolph Musgrave! And +he spent the serious hours of this brief time writing notes and charts +and pamphlets that perhaps some hundred men in all the universe might +care to read--pamphlets no better and no more accurate than hundreds of +other men were writing at that very moment. + +No, the capacity for originative and enduring work was not in him; and +this incessant compilation of dreary footnotes, this incessant rummaging +among the bones of the dead--did it, after all, mean more to this +Rudolph Musgrave than one full, vivid hour of life in that militant +world yonder, where men fought for other and more tangible prizes than +the mention of one's name in a genealogical journal? + +He could not have told you. In his heart, he knew that a thorough digest +of the Wills and Orders of the Orphans' Court of any county must always +rank as a useful and creditable performance; but, from without, the +sounds and odors of Spring were calling to him, luring him, wringing his +very heart, bidding him come forth into the open and crack a jest or two +before he died, and stare at the girls a little before the match had +flickered out. + + * * * * * + +At this time he heard a moaning noise. The colonel gave a shrug, sighed, +and ascended to his sister's bedroom. He knew that Agatha must be ill; +and that there is no more efficient quietus to wildish meditations than +the heating of hot-water bottles and the administration of hypnotics he +had long ago discovered. + + + + +PART TWO - RENASCENCE + + "As one imprisoned that hath lain alone + And dreamed of sunlight where no vagrant gleam + Of sunlight pierces, being freed, must deem + This too but dreaming, and must dread the sun + Whose glory dazzles,--even as such-an-one + Am I whose longing was but now supreme + For this high hour, and, now it strikes, esteem + I do but dream long dreamed-of goals are won. + + "Phyllis, I am not worthy of thy love. + I pray thee let no kindly word be said + Of me at all, for in the train thereof, + Whenas yet-parted lips, sigh-visited, + End speech and wait, mine when I will to move, + Such joy awakens that I grow afraid." +THOMAS ROWLAND. _Triumphs of Phyllis_. + + + + +I + + +They passed with incredible celerity, those next ten days--those +strange, delicious, topsy-turvy days. To Rudolph Musgrave it seemed +afterward that he had dreamed them away in some vague Lotus Land--in a +delectable country where, he remembered, there were always purple eyes +that mocked you, and red lips that coaxed you now, and now cast gibes at +you. + +You felt, for the most part of your stay in this country, flushed and +hot and uncomfortable and unbelievably awkward, and you were mercilessly +bedeviled there; but not for all the accumulated wealth of Samarkand and +Ind and Ophir would you have had it otherwise. Ah, no, not otherwise in +the least trifle. For now uplifted to a rosy zone of acquiescence, you +partook incuriously at table of nectar and ambrosia, and noted abroad, +without any surprise, that you trod upon a more verdant grass than +usual, and that someone had polished up the sun a bit; and, in fine, you +snatched a fearful joy from the performance of the most trivial +functions of life. + +Yet always he remembered that it could not last; always he remembered +that in the autumn Patricia was to marry Lord Pevensey. She sometimes +gave him letters to mail which were addressed to that nobleman. He +wondered savagely what was in them; he posted them with a vicious shove; +and, for the time, they caused him acute twinges of misery. But not for +long; no, for, in sober earnest, if some fantastic sequence of events +had made his one chance of winning Patricia Stapylton dependent on his +spending a miserable half-hour in her company, Rudolph Musgrave could +not have done it. + +As for Miss Stapylton, she appeared to delight in the cloistered, +easy-going life of Lichfield. The quaint and beautiful old town fell +short in nothing of her expectations, in spite of the fact that she had +previously read John Charteris's tales of Lichfield,--"those effusions +which" (if the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_ is to be trusted) "have +builded, by the strength and witchery of record and rhyme, romance and +poem, a myriad-windowed temple in Lichfield's honor--exquisite, +luminous, and enduring--for all the world to see." + +Miss Stapylton appeared to delight in the cloistered easy-going life of +Lichfield,--that town which was once, as the outside world has +half-forgotten now, the center of America's wealth, politics and +culture, the town to which Europeans compiling "impressions" of America +devoted one of their longest chapters in the heyday of Elijah Pogram and +Jefferson Brick. But the War between the States has changed all that, +and Lichfield endures to-day only as a pleasant backwater. + +Very pleasant, too, it was in the days of Patricia's advent. There were +strikingly few young men about, to be sure; most of them on reaching +maturity had settled in more bustling regions. But many maidens remained +whom memory delights to catalogue,--tall, brilliant Lizzie Allardyce, +the lovely and cattish Marian Winwood, to whom Felix Kennaston wrote +those wonderful love-letters which she published when he married +Kathleen Saumarez, the rich Baugh heiresses from Georgia, the Pride +twins, and Mattie Ferneyhaugh, whom even rival beauties loved, they say, +and other damsels by the score,--all in due time to be wooed and won, +and then to pass out of the old town's life. + +Among the men of Rudolph Musgrave's generation--those gallant oldsters +who were born and bred, and meant to die, in Lichfield,--Patricia did +not lack for admirers. Tom May was one of them, of course; rarely a +pretty face escaped the tribute of at least one proposal from Tom May. +Then there was Roderick Taunton, he with the leonine mane, who spared +her none of his forensic eloquence, but found Patricia less tractable +than the most stubborn of juries. Bluff Walter Thurman, too, who was +said to know more of Dickens, whist and criminal law than any other man +living, came to worship at her shrine, as likewise did huge red-faced +Ashby Bland, famed for that cavalry charge which history-books tell you +that he led, and at which he actually was not present, for reasons all +Lichfield knew and chuckled over. And Courtney Thorpe and Charles +Maupin, doctors of the flesh and the spirit severally, were others among +the rivals who gathered about Patricia at decorous festivals when, +candles lighted, the butler and his underlings came with trays of +delectable things to eat, and the "nests" of tables were set out, and +pleasant chatter abounded. + +And among Patricia's attendants Colonel Musgrave, it is needless to +relate, was preëminently pertinacious. The two found a deal to talk +about, somehow, though it is doubtful if many of their comments were of +sufficient importance or novelty to merit record. Then, also, he often +read aloud to her from lovely books, for the colonel read admirably and +did not scruple to give emotional passages their value. _Trilby_, +published the preceding spring in book form, was one of these books, for +all this was at a very remote period; and the _Rubaiyat_ was another, +for that poem was as yet unhackneyed and hardly wellknown enough to be +parodied in those happy days. + +Once he read to her that wonderful sad tale of Hans Christian Andersen's +which treats of the china chimney-sweep and the shepherdess, who eloped +from their bedizened tiny parlor-table, and were frightened by the +vastness of the world outside, and crept ignominiously back to their fit +home. "And so," the colonel ended, "the little china people remained +together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and +continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces." + +"It was really a very lucky thing," Patricia estimated, "that the +grandfather had a rivet in his neck and couldn't nod to the +billy-goat-legged person to take the shepherdess away into his cupboard. +I don't doubt the little china people were glad of it. But after +climbing so far--and seeing the stars,--I think they ought to have had +more to be glad for." Her voice was quaintly wistful. + +"I will let you into a secret--er--Patricia. That rivet was made out of +the strongest material in the whole universe. And the old grandfather +was glad, at bottom, he had it in his neck so that he couldn't nod and +separate the shepherdess from the chimney-sweep." + +"Yes,--I guess he had been rather a rip among the bric-à -brac in his day +and sympathized with them?" + +"No, it wasn't just that. You see these little china people had forsaken +their orderly comfortable world on the parlor table to climb very high. +It was a brave thing to do, even though they faltered and came back +after a while. It is what we all want to do, Patricia--to climb toward +the stars,--even those of us who are too lazy or too cowardly to attempt +it. And when others try it, we are envious and a little uncomfortable, +and we probably scoff; but we can't help admiring, and there is a rivet +in the neck of all of us which prevents us from interfering. Oh, yes, +we little china people have a variety of rivets, thank God, to prevent +too frequent nodding and too cowardly a compromise with +baseness,--rivets that are a part of us and force us into flashes of +upright living, almost in spite of ourselves, when duty and inclination +grapple. There is always the thing one cannot do for the reason that one +is constituted as one is. That, I take it, is the real rivet in +grandfather's neck and everybody else's." + +He spoke disjointedly, vaguely, but the girl nodded. "I think I +understand, Olaf. Only, it is a two-edged rivet--to mix metaphors--and +keeps us stiffnecked against all sorts of calls. No, I am not sure that +the thing one cannot do because one is what one is, proves to be always +a cause for international jubilations and fireworks on the lawn." + + + + +II + + +Thus Lichfield, as to its staid trousered citizenry, fell prostrate at +Miss Stapylton's feet, and as to the remainder of its adults, +vociferously failed to see anything in the least remarkable in her +appearance, and avidly took and compared notes as to her personal +apparel. + +"You have brought Asmodeus into Lichfield," Colonel Musgrave one day +rebuked Miss Stapylton, as they sat in the garden. "The demon of pride +and dress is rampant everywhere--er--Patricia. Even Agatha does her hair +differently now; and in church last Sunday I counted no less than seven +duplicates of that blue hat of yours." + +Miss Stapylton was moved to mirth. "Fancy your noticing a thing like +that!" said she. "I didn't know you were even aware I had a blue hat." + +"I am no judge," he conceded, gravely, "of such fripperies. I don't +pretend to be. But, on the other hand, I must plead guilty to deriving +considerable harmless amusement from your efforts to dress as an example +and an irritant to all Lichfield." + +"You wouldn't have me a dowd, Olaf?" said she, demurely. "I have to be +neat and tidy, you know. You wouldn't have me going about in a +continuous state of unbuttonedness and black bombazine like Mrs. Rabbet, +would you?" + +Rudolph Musgrave debated as to this. "I dare say," he at last conceded, +cautiously, "that to the casual eye your appearance is somewhat +--er--more pleasing than that of our rector's wife. But, on the +other hand----" + +"Olaf, I am embarrassed by such fulsome eulogy. Mrs. Rabbet isn't a day +under forty-nine. And you consider me _somewhat_ better-looking than she +is!" + +He inspected her critically, and was confirmed in his opinion. + +"Olaf"--coaxingly--"do you really think I am as ugly as that?" + +"Pouf!" said the colonel airily; "I dare say you are well enough." + +"Olaf"--and this was even more cajoling--"do you know you've never told +me what sort of a woman you most admire?" + +"I don't admire any of them," said Colonel Musgrave, stoutly. "They are +too vain and frivolous--especially the pink-and-white ones," he added, +unkindlily. + +"Cousin Agatha has told me all about your multifarious affairs of +course. She depicts you as a sort of cardiacal buccaneer and visibly +gloats over the tale of your enormities. She is perfectly dear about +it. But have you never--_cared_--for any woman, Olaf?" + +Precarious ground, this! His eyes were fixed upon her now. And hers, for +doubtless sufficient reasons, were curiously intent upon anything in the +universe rather than Rudolph Musgrave. + +"Yes," said he, with a little intake of the breath; "yes, I cared once." + +"And--she cared?" asked Miss Stapylton. + +She happened, even now, not to be looking at him. + +"She!" Rudolph Musgrave cried, in real surprise. "Why, God bless my +soul, of course she didn't! She didn't know anything about it." + +"You never told her, Olaf?"--and this was reproachful. Then Patricia +said: "Well! and did she go down in the cellar and get the wood-ax or +was she satisfied just to throw the bric-à -brac at you?" + +And Colonel Musgrave laughed aloud. + +"Ah!" said he; "it would have been a brave jest if I had told her, +wouldn't it? She was young, you see, and wealthy, and--ah, well, I won't +deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I will serve up to +you no praises of her sauced with lies. And I scorn to fall back on the +stock-in-trade of the poets,--all their silly metaphors and similes and +suchlike nonsense. I won't tell you that her complexion reminded me of +roses swimming in milk, for it did nothing of the sort. Nor am I going +to insist that her eyes had a fire like that of stars, or proclaim that +Cupid was in the habit of lighting his torch from them. I don't think +he was. I would like to have caught the brat taking any such liberties +with those innocent, humorous, unfathomable eyes of hers! And they +didn't remind me of violets, either," he pursued, belligerently, "nor +did her mouth look to me in the least like a rosebud, nor did I have the +slightest difficulty in distinguishing between her hands and lilies. I +consider these hyperbolical figures of speech to be idiotic. Ah, no!" +cried Colonel Musgrave, warming to his subject--and regarding it, too, +very intently; "ah, no, a face that could be patched together at the +nearest florist's would not haunt a man's dreams o'nights, as hers does! +I haven't any need for praises sauced with lies! I spurn hyperbole. I +scorn exaggeration. I merely state calmly and judicially that she was +God's masterpiece,--the most beautiful and adorable and indescribable +creature that He ever made." + +She smiled at this. "You should have told her, Olaf," said Miss +Stapylton. "You should have told her that you cared." + +He gave a gesture of dissent. "She had everything," he pointed out, +"everything the world could afford her. And, doubtless, she would have +been very glad to give it all up for me, wouldn't she?--for me, who +haven't youth or wealth or fame or anything? Ah, I dare say she would +have been delighted to give up the world she knew and loved,--the world +that loved her,--for the privilege of helping me digest old county +records!" + +And Rudolph Musgrave laughed again, though not mirthfully. + +But the girl was staring at him, with a vague trouble in her eyes. "You +should have told her, Olaf," she repeated. + +And at this point he noted that the arbutus-flush in her cheeks began to +widen slowly, until, at last, it had burned back to the little pink +ears, and had merged into the coppery glory of her hair, and had made +her, if such a thing were possible--which a minute ago it manifestly was +not,--more beautiful and adorable and indescribable than ever before. + +"Ah, yes!" he scoffed, "Lichfield would have made a fitting home for +her. She would have been very happy here, shut off from the world with +us,--with us, whose forefathers have married and intermarried with one +another until the stock is worthless, and impotent for any further +achievement. For here, you know, we have the best blood in America, and +--for utilitarian purposes--that means the worst blood. Ah, we may prate +of our superiority to the rest of the world,--and God knows, we +do!--but, at bottom, we are worthless. We are worn out, I tell you! we +are effete and stunted in brain and will-power, and the very desire of +life is gone out of us! We are contented simply to exist in Lichfield. +And she--" + +He paused, and a new, fierce light came into his eyes. "She was so +beautiful!" he said, half-angrily, between clenched teeth. + +"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf," she lamented, with a hint +of real sadness. "You imagine you are in love with a girl because you +happen to like the color of her eyes, or because there is a curve about +her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, Olaf, as we women +understand it. Ah, no, a girl's love for a man doesn't depend altogether +upon his fitness to be used as an advertisement for somebody's +ready-made clothing." + +"You fancy you know what you are talking about," said Rudolph Musgrave, +"but you don't. You don't realize, you see, how beautiful she--was." + +And this time, he nearly tripped upon the tense, for her hand was on his +arm, and, in consequence, a series of warm, delicious little shivers was +running about his body in a fashion highly favorable to extreme +perturbation of mind. + +"You should have told her, Olaf," she said, wistfully. "Oh, Olaf, Olaf, +why didn't you tell her?" + +She did not know, of course, how she was tempting him; she did not know, +of course, how her least touch seemed to waken every pulse in his body +to an aching throb, and set hope and fear a-drumming in his breast. +Obviously, she did not know; and it angered him that she did not. + +"She would have laughed at me," he said, with a snarl; "how she would +have laughed!" + +"She wouldn't have laughed, Olaf." And, indeed, she did not look as if +she would. + +"But much you know of her!" said Rudolph Musgrave, morosely. "She was +just like the rest of them, I tell you! She knew how to stare a man out +of countenance with big purple eyes that were like violets with the dew +on them, and keep her paltry pink-and-white baby face all pensive and +sober, till the poor devil went stark, staring mad, and would have +pawned his very soul to tell her that he loved her! She knew! She did it +on purpose. She would look pensive just to make an ass of you! She--" + +And here the colonel set his teeth for a moment, and resolutely drew +back from the abyss. + +"She would not have cared for me," he said, with a shrug. "I was not +exactly the sort of fool she cared for. What she really cared for was a +young fool who could dance with her in this silly new-fangled gliding +style, and send her flowers and sweet-meats, and make love to her +glibly--and a petticoated fool who would envy her fine feathers,--and, +at last, a knavish fool who would barter his title for her money. She +preferred fools, you see, but she would never have cared for a +middle-aged penniless fool like me. And so," he ended, with a vicious +outburst of mendacity, "I never told her, and she married a title and +lived unhappily in gilded splendor ever afterwards." + +"You should have told her, Olaf," Miss Stapylton persisted; and then she +asked, in a voice that came very near being inaudible: "Is it too late +to tell her now, Olaf?" + +The stupid man opened his lips a little, and stood staring at her with +hungry eyes, wondering if it were really possible that she did not hear +the pounding of his heart; and then his teeth clicked, and he gave a +despondent gesture. + +"Yes," he said, wearily, "it is too late now." + +Thereupon Miss Stapylton tossed her head. "Oh, very well!" said she; +"only, for my part, I think you acted very foolishly, and I don't see +that you have the least right to complain. I quite fail to see how you +could have expected her to marry you--or, in fact, how you can expect +any woman to marry you,--if you won't, at least, go to the trouble of +asking her to do so!" + +Then Miss Stapylton went into the house, and slammed the door after her. + + + + +III + + +Nor was that the worst of it. For when Rudolph Musgrave followed her--as +he presently did, in a state of considerable amaze,--his sister +informed him that Miss Stapylton had retired to her room with an +unaccountable headache. + +And there she remained for the rest of the evening. It was an unusually +long evening. + +Yet, somehow, in spite of its notable length--affording, as it did, an +excellent opportunity for undisturbed work,--Colonel Musgrave found, +with a pricking conscience, that he made astonishingly slight progress +in an exhaustive monograph upon the fragmentary Orderly Book of an +obscure captain in a long-forgotten regiment, which if it had not +actually served in the Revolution, had at least been demonstrably +granted money "for services," and so entitled hundreds of aspirants to +become the Sons (or Daughters) of various international disagreements. + +Nor did he see her at breakfast--nor at dinner. + + + + +IV + + +A curious little heartache accompanied Colonel Musgrave on his way home +that afternoon. He had not seen Patricia Stapylton for twenty-four +hours, and he was just beginning to comprehend what life would be like +without her. He did not find the prospect exhilarating. + +Then, as he came up the orderly graveled walk, he heard, issuing from +the little vine-covered summer-house, a loud voice. It was a man's +voice, and its tones were angry. + +"No! no!" the man was saying; "I'll agree to no such nonsense, I tell +you! What do you think I am?" + +"I think you are a jackass-fool," Miss Stapylton said, crisply, "and a +fortune-hunter, and a sot, and a travesty, and a whole heap of other +things I haven't, as yet had time to look up in the dictionary. And I +think--I think you call yourself an English gentleman? Well, all I have +to say is God pity England if her gentlemen are of your stamp! There +isn't a costermonger in all Whitechapel who would dare talk to me as +you've done! I would like to snatch you bald-headed, I would like to +kill you--And do you think, now, if you were the very last man left in +all the _world_ that I would--No, don't you try to answer me, for I +don't wish to hear a single word you have to say. Oh, oh! how _dare_ +you!" + +"Well, I've had provocation enough," the man's voice retorted, sullenly. +"Perhaps, I have cut up a bit rough, Patricia, but, then, you've been +talkin' like a fool, you know. But what's the odds? Let's kiss and make +up, old girl." + +"Don't touch me!" she panted; "ah, don't you _dare!_" + +"You little devil! you infernal little vixen? You'll jilt me, will you?" + +"Let me go!" the girl cried, sharply. Rudolph Musgrave went into the +summer-house. + +The man Colonel Musgrave found there was big and loose-jointed, with +traces of puffiness about his face. He had wheat-colored hair and +weakish-looking, pale blue eyes. One of his arms was about Miss +Stapylton, but he released her now, and blinked at Rudolph Musgrave. + +"And who are you, pray?" he demanded, querulously. "What do you want, +anyhow? What do you mean by sneakin' in here and tappin' on a fellow's +shoulder--like a damn' woodpecker, by Jove! I don't know you." + +There was in Colonel Musgrave's voice a curious tremor, when he spoke; +but to the eye he was unruffled, even faintly amused. + +"I am the owner of this garden," he enunciated, with leisurely +distinctness, "and it is not my custom to permit gentlewomen to be +insulted in it. So I am afraid I must ask you to leave it." + +"Now, see here," the man blustered, weakly, "we don't want any heroics, +you know. See here, you're her cousin, ain't you? By God, I'll leave it +to you, you know! She's treated me badly, don't you understand. She's a +jilt, you know. She's playin' fast and loose----" + +He never got any further, for at this point Rudolph Musgrave took him by +the coat-collar and half-dragged, half-pushed him through the garden, +shaking him occasionally with a quiet emphasis. The colonel was angry, +and it was a matter of utter indifference to him that they were +trampling over flower-beds, and leaving havoc in their rear. + +But when they had reached the side-entrance, he paused and opened it, +and then shoved his companion into an open field, where a number of +cows, fresh from the evening milking, regarded them with incurious eyes. +It was very quiet here, save for the occasional jangle of the cow-bells +and the far-off fifing of frogs in the marsh below. + +"It would have been impossible, of course," said Colonel Musgrave, "for +me to have offered you any personal violence as long as you were, in a +manner, a guest of mine. This field, however, is the property of Judge +Willoughby, and here I feel at liberty to thrash you." + +Then he thrashed the man who had annoyed Patricia Stapylton. + +That thrashing was, in its way, a masterpiece. There was a certain +conscientiousness about it, a certain thoroughness of execution--a +certain plodding and painstaking carefulness, in a word, such as is +possible only to those who have spent years in guiding fat-witted +tourists among the antiquities of the Lichfield Historical Association. + +"You ought to exercise more," Rudolph Musgrave admonished his victim, +when he had ended. "You are entirely too flabby now, you know. That path +yonder will take you to the hotel, where, I imagine, you are staying. +There is a train leaving Lichfield at six-fifteen, and if I were you, I +would be very careful not to miss that train. Good-evening. I am sorry +to have been compelled to thrash you, but I must admit I have enjoyed it +exceedingly." + +Then he went back into the garden. + + + + +V + + +In the shadow of a white lilac-bush, Colonel Musgrave paused with an +awed face. + +"Good Lord!" said he, aghast at the notion; "what would Agatha say if +she knew I had been fighting like a drunken truck-driver! Or, rather, +what would she refrain from saying! Only, she wouldn't believe it of me. +And, for the matter of that," Rudolph Musgrave continued, after a +moment's reflection, "I wouldn't have believed it of myself a week ago. +I think I am changing, somehow. A week ago I would have fetched in the +police and sworn out a warrant; and, if the weather had been as damp as +it is, I would have waited to put on my rubbers before I would have done +that much." + + + + +VI + + +He found her still in the summer-house, expectant of him, it seemed, her +lips parted, her eyes glowing. Rudolph Musgrave, looking down into twin +vivid depths, for a breathing-space, found time to rejoice that he had +refused to liken them to stars. Stars, forsooth!--and, pray, what paltry +sun, what irresponsible comet, what pallid, clinkered satellite, might +boast a purple splendor such as this? For all asterial scintillations, +at best, had but a clap-trap glitter; whereas the glow of Patricia's +eyes was a matter worthy of really serious attention. + +"What have you done with him, Olaf?" the girl breathed, quickly. + +"I reasoned with him," said Colonel Musgrave. "Oh, I found him quite +amenable to logic. He is leaving Lichfield this evening, I think." + +Thereupon Miss Stapylton began to laugh. "Yes," said she, "you must have +remonstrated very feelingly. Your tie's all crooked, Olaf dear, and your +hair's all rumpled, and there's dust all over your coat. You would +disgrace a rag-bag. Oh, I'm glad you reasoned--that way! It wasn't +dignified, but it was dear of you, Olaf. Pevensey's a beast." + +He caught his breath at this. "Pevensey!" he stammered; "the Earl of +Pevensey!--the man you are going to marry!" + +"Dear me, no!" Miss Stapylton answered, with utmost unconcern; "I would +sooner marry a toad. Why, didn't you know, Olaf? I thought, of course, +you knew you had been introducing athletics and better manners among the +peerage! That sounds like a bill in the House of Commons, doesn't it?" +Then Miss Stapylton laughed again, and appeared to be in a state of +agreeable, though somewhat nervous, elation. "I wrote to him two days +ago," she afterward explained, "breaking off the engagement. So he came +down at once and was very nasty about it." + +"You--you have broken your engagement," he echoed, dully; and continued, +with a certain deficiency of finesse, "But I thought you wanted to be a +countess?" + +"Oh, you boor, you vulgarian!" the girl cried, "Oh, you do put things so +crudely, Olaf! You are hopeless." + +She shook an admonitory forefinger in his direction, and pouted in the +most dangerous fashion. + +"But he always seemed so nice," she reflected, with puckered brows, +"until to-day, you know. I thought he would be eminently suitable. I +liked him tremendously until--" and here, a wonderful, tender change +came into her face, a wistful quaver woke in her voice--"until I found +there was some one else I liked better." + +"Ah!" said Rudolph Musgrave. + +So, that was it--yes, that was it! Her head was bowed now--her glorious, +proud little head,--and she sat silent, an abashed heap of fluffy frills +and ruffles, a tiny bundle of vaporous ruchings and filmy tucks and +suchlike vanities, in the green dusk of the summer-house. + +But he knew. He had seen her face grave and tender in the twilight, and +he knew. + +She loved some man--some lucky devil! Ah, yes, that was it! And he knew +the love he had unwittingly spied upon to be august; the shamed +exultance of her face and her illumined eyes, the crimson banners her +cheeks had flaunted,--these were to Colonel Musgrave as a piece of +sacred pageantry; and before it his misery was awed, his envy went +posting to extinction. + +Thus the stupid man reflected, and made himself very unhappy over it. + +Then, after a little, the girl threw back her head and drew a deep +breath, and flashed a tremulous smile at him. + +"Ah, yes," said she; "there are better things in life than coronets, +aren't there, Olaf?" + +You should have seen how he caught up the word! + +"Life!" he cried, with a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of +life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of +life from the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I +have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off +from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider its +trifles as of supreme importance. I have affected to scorn that brave +world yonder where a man is proven. And, all the while, I was afraid of +it, I think. I was afraid of you before you came." + +At the thought of this Rudolph Musgrave laughed as he fell to pacing up +and down before her. + +"Life!" he cried, again, with a helpless gesture; and then smiled at +her, very sadly. "'Didn't I know there was something better in life than +grubbing after musty tribes and customs and folk-songs?'" he quoted. +"Why, what a question to ask of a professional genealogist! Don't you +realize, Patricia, that the very bread I eat is, actually, earned by the +achievements of people who have been dead for centuries? and in part, of +course, by tickling the vanity of living snobs? That constitutes a nice +trade for an able-bodied person as long as men are paid for emptying +garbage-barrels--now, doesn't it? And yet it is not altogether for the +pay's sake I do it," he added, haltingly. "There really is a fascination +about the work. You are really working out a puzzle,--like a fellow +solving a chess-problem. It isn't really work, it is amusement. And when +you are establishing a royal descent, and tracing back to czars and +Plantagenets and Merovingians, and making it all seem perfectly +plausible, the thing is sheer impudent, flagrant art, and _you_ are the +artist--" He broke off here and shrugged. "No, I could hardly make you +understand. It doesn't matter. It is enough that I have bartered youth +and happiness and the very power of living for the privilege of grubbing +in old county records." + +He paused. It is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even +in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving +grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his +heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little and +childlike, as she looked up at him with troubled eyes. + +"I--I don't quite understand," she murmured. "It isn't as if you were an +old man, Olaf. It isn't as if--" + +But he had scarcely heard her. "Ah, child, child!" he cried, "why did +you come to waken me? I was content in my smug vanities. I was content +in my ignorance. I could have gone on contentedly grubbing through my +musty, sleepy life here, till death had taken me, if only you had not +shown me what life might mean! Ah, child, child, why did you waken me?" + +"I?" she breathed; and now the flush of her cheeks had widened, +wondrously. + +"You! you!" he cried, and gave a wringing motion of his hands, for the +self-esteem of a complacent man is not torn away without agony. "Who +else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still +I must play the coward's part! That woman I told you of--that woman I +loved--was you! Yes, you, you!" he cried, again and again, in a sort of +frenzy. + +And then, on a sudden, Colonel Musgrave began to laugh. + +"It is very ridiculous, isn't it?" he demanded of her. "Yes, it is +very--very funny. Now comes the time to laugh at me! Now comes the time +to lift your brows, and to make keen arrows of your eyes, and of your +tongue a little red dagger! I have dreamed of this moment many and many +a time. So laugh, I say! Laugh, for I have told you that I love you. You +are rich, and I am a pauper--you are young, and I am old, remember,--and +I love you, who love another man! For the love of God, laugh at me and +have done--laugh! for, as God lives, it is the bravest jest I have ever +known!" + +But she came to him, with a wonderful gesture of compassion, and caught +his great, shapely hands in hers. + +"I--I knew you cared," she breathed. "I have always known you cared. I +would have been an idiot if I hadn't. But, oh, Olaf, I didn't know you +cared so much. You frighten me, Olaf," she pleaded, and raised a tearful +face to his. "I am very fond of you, Olaf dear. Oh, don't think I am not +fond of you." And the girl paused for a breathless moment. "I think I +might have married you, Olaf," she said, half-wistfully, "if--if it +hadn't been for one thing." + +Rudolph Musgrave smiled now, though he found it a difficult business. +"Yes," he assented, gravely, "I know, dear. If it were not for the other +man--that lucky devil! Yes, he is a very, very lucky devil, child, and +he constitutes rather a big 'if,' doesn't he?" + +Miss Stapylton, too, smiled a little. "No," said she, "that isn't quite +the reason. The real reason is, as I told you yesterday, that I quite +fail to see how you can expect any woman to marry you, you jay-bird, if +you won't go to the trouble of asking her to do so." + +And, this time, Miss Stapylton did not go into the house. + + + + +VII + + +When they went in to supper, they had planned to tell Miss Agatha of +their earth-staggering secret at once. But the colonel comprehended, at +the first glimpse of his sister, that the opportunity would be +ill-chosen. + +The meal was an awkward half-hour. Miss Agatha, from the head of the +table, did very little talking, save occasionally to evince views of +life that were both lachrymose and pugnacious. And the lovers talked +with desperate cheerfulness, so that there might be no outbreak so long +as Pilkins--preëminently ceremonious among butlers, and as yet inclined +to scoff at the notion that the Musgraves of Matocton were not divinely +entrusted to his guardianship,--was in the room. + +Coming so close upon the heels of his high hour, this contretemps of +Agatha's having one of her "attacks," seemed more to Rudolph Musgrave +than a man need rationally bear with equanimity. Perhaps it was a trifle +stiffly that he said he did not care for any raspberries. + +His sister burst into tears. + +"That's all the thanks I get. I slave my life out, and what thanks do I +get for it? I never have any pleasure, I never put my foot out of the +house except to go to market,--and what thanks do I get for it? That's +what I want you to tell me with the first raspberries of the season. +That's what I want! Oh, I don't wonder you can't look me in the eye. And +I wish I was dead! that's what I wish!" + +Colonel Musgrave did not turn at once toward Patricia, when his sister +had stumbled, weeping, from the dining-room. + +"I--I am so sorry, Olaf," said a remote and tiny voice. + +Then he touched her hand with his finger-tips, ever so lightly. "You +must not worry about it, dear. I daresay I was unpardonably brusque. And +Agatha's health is not good, so that she is a trifle irritable at times. +Why, good Lord, we have these little set-to's ever so often, and never +give them a thought afterwards. That is one of the many things the +future Mrs. Musgrave will have to get accustomed to, eh? Or does that +appalling prospect frighten you too much?" + +And Patricia brazenly confessed that it did not. She also made a face at +him, and accused Rudolph Musgrave of trying to crawl out of marrying +her, which proceeding led to frivolities unnecessary to record, but +found delectable by the participants. + + + + +VIII + + +Colonel Musgrave was alone. He had lifted his emptied coffee-cup and he +swished the lees gently to and fro. He was curiously intent upon these +lees, considered them in the light of a symbol.... + +Then a comfortable, pleasant-faced mulattress came to clear the +supper-table. Virginia they called her. Virginia had been nurse in turn +to all the children of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her +life she appeared to regard the emancipation of the South's negroes as +an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yankees +--as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" proceeding which very +certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the +Musgrave household. + +"Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave, "don't forget to make up a fire in +the kitchen-stove before you go to bed. And please fill the kettle +before you go upstairs, and leave it on the stove. Miss Agatha is not +well to-night." + +"Yaas, suh. I unnerstan', suh," Virginia said, sedately. + +Virginia filled her tray, and went away quietly, her pleasant yellow +face as imperturbable as an idol's. + + + + +PART THREE - TERTIUS + + "It is in many ways made plain to us + That love must grow like any common thing, + Root, bud, and leaf, ere ripe for garnering + The mellow fruitage front us; even thus + Must Helena encounter Theseus + Ere Paris come, and every century + Spawn divers queens who die with Antony + But live a great while first with Julius. + + "Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play + Wherein I have no part, and laugh, and sit + Contented in the wings, whilst you portray + An amorous maid with gestures that befit + This lovely rôle,--as who knows better, pray, + Than I that helped you in rehearsing it?" + +Horace Symonds. _Civic Voluntaries_. + + + + +I + + +When the Presidential campaign was at its height; when in various +sections of the United States "the boy orator of La Platte" was making +invidious remarks concerning the Republican Party, and in Canton (Ohio) +Mr. M.A. Hanna was cheerfully expressing his confidence as to the +outcome of it all; when the Czar and the Czarina were visiting President +Faure in Paris "amid unparalleled enthusiasm"; and when semi-educated +people were appraising, with a glibness possible to ignorance only, the +literary achievements of William Morris and George du Maurier, who had +just died:--at this remote time, Roger Stapylton returned to Lichfield. + +For in that particular October Patricia's father, an accommodating +physician having declared old Roger Stapylton's health to necessitate a +Southern sojourn, leased the Bellingham mansion in Lichfield. It +happened that, by rare good luck, Tom Bellingham--of the Bellinghams of +Assequin, not the Bellinghams of Bellemeade, who indeed immigrated after +the War of 1812 and have never been regarded as securely established +from a social standpoint,--was at this time in pecuniary difficulties on +account of having signed another person's name to a cheque. + +Roger Stapylton refurnished the house in the extreme degree of +Lichfieldian elegance. Colonel Musgrave was his mentor throughout the +process; and the oldest families of Lichfield very shortly sat at table +with the former overseer, and not at all unwillingly, since his dinners +were excellent and an infatuated Rudolph Musgrave--an axiom now in +planning any list of guests,--was very shortly to marry the man's +daughter. + +In fact, the matter had been settled; and Colonel Musgrave had received +from Roger Stapylton an exuberantly granted charter of courtship. + +This befell, indeed, upon a red letter day in Roger Stapylton's life. +The banker was in business matters wonderfully shrewd, as divers +transactions, since the signing of that half-forgotten contract whereby +he was to furnish a certain number of mules for the Confederate service, +strikingly attested: but he had rarely been out of the country wherein +his mother bore him; and where another nabob might have dreamed of an +earl, or even have soared aspiringly in imagination toward a +marchioness-ship for his only child, old Stapylton retained unshaken +faith in the dust-gathering creed of his youth. + +He had tolerated Pevensey, had indeed been prepared to purchase him much +as he would have ordered any other expensive trinket or knickknack which +Patricia desired. But he had never viewed the match with enthusiasm. + +Now, though, old Stapylton exulted. His daughter--half a Vartrey +already--would become by marriage a Musgrave of Matocton, no less. Pat's +carriage would roll up and down the oak-shaded avenue from which he had +so often stepped aside with an uncovered head, while gentlemen and +ladies cantered by; and it would be Pat's children that would play about +the corridors of the old house at whose doors he had lived so +long,--those awe-inspiring corridors, which he had very rarely entered, +except on Christmas Day and other recognized festivities, when, dressed +to the nines, the overseer and his uneasy mother were by immemorial +custom made free of the mansion, with every slave upon the big +plantation. + +"They were good days, sir," he chuckled. "Heh, we'll stick to the old +customs. We'll give a dinner and announce it at dessert, just as your +honored grandfather did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal--" + +For about the Musgraves of Matocton there could be no question. It was +the old man's delight to induce Rudolph Musgrave to talk concerning his +ancestors; and Stapylton soon had their history at his finger-tips. He +could have correctly blazoned every tincture in their armorial bearings +and have explained the origin of every rampant, counter-changed or +couchant beast upon the shield. + +He knew it was the _Bona Nova_ in the November of 1619,--for the first +Musgrave had settled in Virginia, prior to his removal to +Lichfield,--which had the honor of transporting the forebear of this +family into America. Stapylton could have told you offhand which scions +of the race had represented this or that particular county in the House +of Burgesses, and even for what years; which three of them were +Governors, and which of them had served as officers of the State Line in +the Revolution; and, in fine, was more than satisfied to have his +daughter play Penelophon to Colonel Musgrave's debonair mature Cophetua. + +In a word, Roger Stapylton had acquiesced to the transferal of his +daughter's affections with the peculiar equanimity of a properly reared +American parent. He merely stipulated that, since his business affairs +prevented an indefinite stay in Lichfield, Colonel Musgrave should +presently remove to New York City, where the older man held ready for +him a purely ornamental and remunerative position with the Insurance +Company of which Roger Stapylton was president. + +But upon this point Rudolph Musgrave was obdurate. + +He had voiced, and with sincerity, as you may remember, his desire to be +proven upon a larger stage than Lichfield afforded. Yet the sincerity +was bred of an emotion it did not survive. To-day, unconsciously, +Rudolph Musgrave was reflecting that he was used to living in Lichfield, +and would appear to disadvantage in a new surrounding, and very probably +would not be half so comfortable. + +Aloud he said, in firm belief that he spoke truthfully: "I cannot +conscientiously give up the Library, sir. I realize the work may not +seem important in your eyes. Indeed, in anybody's eyes it must seem an +inadequate outcome of a man's whole life. But it unfortunately happens +to be the only kind of work I am capable of doing. And--if you will +pardon me, sir,--I do not think it would be honest for me to accept this +generous salary and give nothing in return." + +But here Patricia broke in. + +Patricia agreed with Colonel Musgrave in every particular. Indeed, had +Colonel Musgrave proclaimed his intention of setting up in life as an +assassin, Patricia would readily have asserted homicide to be the most +praiseworthy of vocations. As it was, she devoted no little volubility +and emphasis and eulogy to the importance of a genealogist in the +eternal scheme of things; and gave her father candidly to understand +that an inability to appreciate this fact was necessarily indicative of +a deplorably low order of intelligence. + +Musgrave was to remember--long afterward--how glorious and dear this +brightly-colored, mettlesome and tiny woman had seemed to him in the +second display of temper he witnessed in Patricia. It was a revelation +of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability. + +Her father, though, said: "Pat, I've suspected for a long time it was +foolish of me to have a red-haired daughter." Thus he capitulated,--and +with an ineffable air of routine. + +Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living +persons. + + + + +II + + +Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living +persons.... + +As a token of this he devoted what little ready money he possessed to +renovating Matocton, where he had not lived for twenty years. He rarely +thought of money, not esteeming it an altogether suitable subject for a +gentleman's meditations. And to do him justice, the reflection that old +Stapylton's wealth would some day be at Rudolph Musgrave's disposal was +never more than an agreeable minor feature of Patricia's entourage +whenever, as was very often, Colonel Musgrave fell to thinking of how +adorable Patricia was in every particular. + +Yet there were times when he thought of Anne Charteris as well. He had +not seen her for a whole year now, for the Charterises had left +Lichfield shortly after the Pendomer divorce case had been settled, and +were still in Europe. + +This was the evening during which Roger Stapylton had favorably received +his declaration; and Colonel Musgrave was remembering the time that he +and Anne had last spoken with a semblance of intimacy--that caustic +time when Anne Charteris had interrupted him in high words with her +husband, and circumstances had afforded to Rudolph Musgrave no choice +save to confess, to this too-perfect woman, of all created beings, his +"true relations" with Clarice Pendomer. + +Even as yet the bitterness of that humiliation was not savorless.... + +It seemed to him that he could never bear to think of the night when +Anne had heard his stammerings through, and had merely listened, and in +listening had been unreasonably beautiful. So Godiva might have looked +on Peeping Tom, with more of wonder than of loathing, just at first.... + +It had been very hard to bear. But it seemed necessary. The truth would +have hurt Anne too much.... + +He noted with the gusto of a connoisseur how neatly the dénouement of +this piteous farce had been prepared. His rage with Charteris; Anne's +overhearing, and misinterpretation of, a dozen angry words; that old +affair with Clarice--immediately before her marriage (one of how many +pleasurable gallantries? the colonel idly wondered, and regretted that +he had no Leporello to keep them catalogued for consultation)--and +George Pendomer's long-smoldering jealousy of Rudolph Musgrave: all +fitted in as neatly as the bits of a puzzle. + +It had been the simplest matter in the world to shield John Charteris. +Yet, the colonel wished he could be sure it was an unadulterated desire +of protecting Anne which had moved him. There had been very certainly an +enjoyment all the while in reflecting how nobly Rudolph Musgrave was +behaving for the sake of "the only woman he had ever loved." Yes, one +had undoubtedly phrased it thus--then, and until the time one met +Patricia. + +But Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a +little different, from all other people--even Patricia Stapylton. + +Always in reverie the colonel would come back to this,--that Anne could +not be thought of, quite, in the same frame of mind wherein one +appraised other persons. Especially must he concede this curious +circumstance whenever, as to-night, he considered divers matters that +had taken place quite long enough ago to have been forgotten. + +It was a foolish sort of a reverie, and scarcely worth the setting down. +It was a reverie of the kind that everyone, and especially everyone's +wife, admits to be mawkish and unprofitable; and yet, somehow, the next +still summer night, or long sleepy Sunday afternoon, or, perhaps, some +cheap, jigging and heartbreaking melody, will set a carnival of old +loves and old faces awhirl in the brain. One grows very sad over it, of +course, and it becomes apparent that one has always been ill-treated by +the world; but the sadness is not unpleasant, and one is quite willing +to forgive. + +Yes,--it was a long, long time ago. It must have been a great number of +centuries. Matocton was decked in its spring fripperies of burgeoning, +and the sky was a great, pale turquoise, and the buttercups left a +golden dust high up on one's trousers. One had not become entirely +accustomed to long trousers then, and one was rather proud of them. One +was lying on one's back in the woods, where the birds were astir and +eager to begin their house-building, and twittered hysterically over the +potentialities of straws and broken twigs. + +Overhead, the swelling buds of trees were visible against the sky, and +the branches were like grotesque designs on a Japanese plate. There was +a little clump of moss, very cool and soft, that just brushed one's +cheek. + +One was thinking--really thinking--for the first time in one's life; +and, curiously enough, one was thinking about a girl, although girls +were manifestly of no earthly importance. + +But Anne Willoughby was different. Even at the age when girls seemed +feckless creatures, whose aimings were inexplicable, both as concerned +existence in general, and, more concretely, as touched gravel-shooters +and snowballs, and whose reasons for bursting into tears were recondite, +one had perceived the difference. One wondered about it from time to +time. + +Gradually, there awoke an uneasy self-conscious interest as to all +matters that concerned her, a mental pricking up of the ears when her +name was mentioned. + +One lay awake o' nights, wondering why her hair curled so curiously +about her temples, and held such queer glowing tints in its depths when +sunlight fell upon it. One was uncomfortable and embarrassed and +Briarean-handed in her presence, but with her absence came the +overwhelming desire of seeing her again. + +After a little, it was quite understood that one was in love with Anne +Willoughby.... + +It was a matter of minor importance that her father was the wealthiest +man in Fairhaven, and that one's mother was poor. One would go away into +foreign lands after a while, and come back with a great deal of +money,--lakes of rupees and pieces of eight, probably. It was very +simple. + +But Anne's father had taken an unreasonable view of the matter, and +carried Anne off to a terrible aunt, who returned one's letters +unopened. That was the end of Anne Willoughby. + +Then, after an interval--during which one fell in and out of love +assiduously, and had upon the whole a pleasant time,--Anne Charteris had +come to Lichfield. One had found that time had merely added poise and +self-possession and a certain opulence to the beauty which had caused +one's voice to play fantastic tricks in conference with Anne +Willoughby,--ancient, unforgotten conferences, wherein one had pointed +out the many respects in which she differed from all other women, and +the perfect feasibility of marrying on nothing a year. + +Much as one loved Patricia, and great as was one's happiness, men did +not love as boys did, after all.... + +"'Ah, Boy, it is a dream for life too high,'" said Colonel Musgrave, in +his soul. "And now let's think of something sensible. Let's think about +the present political crisis, and what to give the groomsmen, and how +much six times seven is. Meanwhile, you are not the fellow in _Aux +Italiens_, you know; you are not bothered by the faint, sweet smell of +any foolish jasmine-flower, you understand, or by any equally foolish +hankerings after your lost youth. You are simply a commonplace, +every-day sort of man, not thoroughly hardened as yet to being engaged, +and you are feeling a bit pulled down to-night, because your liver or +something is out of sorts." + +Upon reflection, Colonel Musgrave was quite sure that he was happy; and +that it was only his liver or something which was upset. But, at all +events, the colonel's besetting infirmity was always to shrink from +making changes; instinctively he balked against commission of any action +which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or +persons. It was very like Rudolph Musgrave that even now, for all the +glow of the future's bright allure, his heart should hark back to the +past and its absurd dear memories, with wistfulness. + +And he found it, as many others have done, but cheerless sexton's work, +this digging up of boyish recollections. One by one, they come to +light--the brave hopes and dreams and aspirations of youth; the ruddy +life has gone out of them; they have shriveled into an alien, pathetic +dignity. They might have been one's great-grandfather's or Hannibal's or +Adam's; the boy whose life was swayed by them is quite as dead as these. + +Amaryllis is dead, too. Perhaps, you drop in of an afternoon to talk +over old happenings. She is perfectly affable. She thinks it is time you +were married. She thinks it very becoming, the way you have stoutened. +And, no, they weren't at the Robinsons'; that was the night little +Amaryllis was threatened with croup. + +Then, after a little, the lamps of welcome are lighted in her eyes, her +breath quickens, her cheeks mount crimson flags in honor of her lord, +her hero, her conqueror. + +It is Mr. Grundy, who is happy to meet you, and hopes you will stay to +dinner. He patronizes you a trifle; his wife, you see, has told him all +about that boy who is as dead as Hannibal. You don't mind in the least; +you dine with Mr. and Mrs. Grundy, and pass a very pleasant evening. + +Colonel Musgrave had dined often with the Charterises. + + + + +III + + +And then some frolic god, _en route_ from homicide by means of an +unloaded pistol in Chicago for the demolishment of a likely ship off +Palos, with the coöperancy of a defective pistonrod, stayed in his +flight to bring Joe Parkinson to Lichfield. + +It was Roger Stapylton who told the colonel of this advent, as the very +apex of jocularity. + +"For you remember the Parkinsons, I suppose?" + +"The ones that had a cabin near Matocton? Very deserving people, I +believe." + +"And _their_ son, sir, wants to marry my daughter," said Mr. +Stapylton,--"_my_ daughter, who is shortly to be connected by marriage +with the Musgraves of Matocton! I don't know what this world will come +to next." + +It was a treat to see him shake his head in deprecation of such anarchy. + +Then Roger Stapylton said, more truculently: "Yes, sir! on account of a +boy-and-girl affair five years ago, this half-strainer, this poor-white +trash, has actually had the presumption, sir,--but I don't doubt that +Pat has told you all about it?" + +"Why, no," said Colonel Musgrave. "She did not mention it this +afternoon. She was not feeling very well. A slight headache. I noticed +she was not inclined to conversation." + +It had just occurred to him, as mildly remarkable, that Patricia had +never at any time alluded to any one of those countless men who must +have inevitably made love to her. + +"Though, mind you, I don't say anything against Joe. He's a fine young +fellow. Paid his own way through college. Done good work in Panama and +in Alaska too. But--confound it, sir, the boy's a fool! Now I put it to +you fairly, ain't he a fool?" said Mr. Stapylton. + +"Upon my word, sir, if his folly has no other proof than an adoration of +your daughter," the colonel protested, "I must in self-defense beg leave +to differ with you." + +Yes, that was it undoubtedly. Patricia had too high a sense of honor to +exhibit these defeated rivals in a ridiculous light, even to him. It was +a revelation of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability. + +Then after a little further talk they separated. Colonel Musgrave left +that night for Matocton in order to inspect the improvements which were +being made there. He was to return to Lichfield on the ensuing +Wednesday, when his engagement to Patricia was to be announced--"just +as your honored grandfather did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal." + +Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much enamored, who fought the world +by ordinary like Hal o' the Wynd, "for his own hand," was seeing +Patricia every day. + + + + +IV + + +Colonel Musgrave remained five days at Matocton, that he might put his +house in order against his nearing marriage. It was a pleasant sight to +see the colonel stroll about the paneled corridors and pause to chat +with divers deferential workmen who were putting the last touches there, +or to observe him mid-course in affable consultation with gardeners +anent the rolling of a lawn or the retrimming of a rosebush, and to mark +the bearing of the man so optimistically colored by goodwill toward the +solar system. + +He joyed in his old home,--in the hipped roof of it, the mullioned +casements, the wide window-seats, the high and spacious rooms, the +geometrical gardens and broad lawns, in all that was quaint and +beautiful at Matocton,--because it would be Patricia's so very soon, the +lovely frame of a yet lovelier picture, as the colonel phrased it with a +flight of imagery. + +Gravely he inspected all the portraits of his feminine ancestors that he +might decide, as one without bias, whether Matocton had ever boasted a +more delectable mistress. Equity--or in his fond eyes at +least,--demanded a negative. Only in one of these canvases, a +counterfeit of Miss Evelyn Ramsay, born a Ramsay of Blenheim, that had +married the common great-great-grandfather of both the colonel and +Patricia--Major Orlando Musgrave, an aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee +in the Revolution,--Rudolph Musgrave found, or seemed to find, dear +likenesses to that demented seraph who was about to stoop to his +unworthiness. + +He spent much time before this portrait. Yes, yes! this woman had been +lovely in her day. And this bright, roguish shadow of her was lovely, +too, eternally postured in white patnet, trimmed with a vine of +rose-colored satin leaves, a pink rose in her powdered hair and a huge +ostrich plume as well. + +Yet it was an adamantean colonel that remarked: + +"My dear, perhaps it is just as fortunate as not that you have quitted +Matocton. For I have heard tales of you, Miss Ramsay. Oh, no! I honestly +do not believe that you would have taken kindlily to any young +person--not even in the guise of a great-great-grand-daughter,--to whom +you cannot hold a candle, madam. A fico for you, madam," said the most +undutiful of great-great-grandsons. + +Let us leave him to his roseate meditations. Questionless, in the woman +he loved there was much of his own invention: but the circumstance is +not unhackneyed; and Colonel Musgrave was in a decorous fashion the +happiest of living persons. + +Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much enamored, who fought the +world by ordinary, like Hal o' the Wynd "for his own hand," was seeing +Patricia every day. + + + + +V + + +Joe Parkinson--tall and broad-shouldered, tanned, resolute, chary of +speech, decisive in gesture, having close-cropped yellow hair and frank, +keen eyes like amethysts,--was the one alien present when Colonel +Musgrave came again into Roger Stapylton's fine and choicely-furnished +mansion. + +This was on the evening Roger Stapylton gave the long-anticipated dinner +at which he was to announce his daughter's engagement. As much indeed +was suspected by most of his dinner-company, so carefully selected from +the aristocracy of Lichfield; and the heart of the former overseer, as +these handsome, courtly and sweet voiced people settled according to +their rank about his sumptuous table, was aglow with pride. + +Then Rudolph Musgrave turned to his companion and said softly: "My dear, +you are like a wraith. What is it?" + +"I have a headache," said Patricia. "It is nothing." + +"You reassure me," the colonel gaily declared, "for I had feared it was +a heartache--" + +She faced him. Desperation looked out of her purple eyes. "It is," the +girl said swiftly. + +"Ah--?" Only it was an intake of the breath, rather than an +interjection. Colonel Musgrave ate his fish with deliberation. "Young +Parkinson?" he presently suggested. + +"I thought I had forgotten him. I didn't know I cared--I didn't know I +_could_ care so much--" And there was a note in her voice which thrust +the poor colonel into an abyss of consternation. + +"Remember that these people are your guests," he said, in perfect +earnest. + +"--and I refused him this afternoon for the last time, and he is going +away to-morrow--" + +But here Judge Allardyce broke in, to tell Miss Stapylton of the +pleasure with which he had _nolle prosequied_ the case against Tom +Bellingham. + +"A son of my old schoolmate, ma'am," the judge explained. "A Bellingham +of Assequin. Oh, indiscreet of course--but, God bless my soul! when were +the Bellinghams anything else? The boy regretted it as much as anybody." + +And she listened with almost morbid curiosity concerning the finer +details of legal intricacy. + +Colonel Musgrave was mid-course in an anecdote which the lady upon the +other side of him found wickedly amusing. + +He was very gay. He had presently secured the attention of the company +at large, and held it through a good half-hour; for by common consent +Rudolph Musgrave was at his best to-night, and Lichfield found his best +worth listening to. + +"Grinning old popinjay!" thought Mr. Parkinson; and envied him and +internally noted, and with an unholy fervor cursed, the adroitness of +intonation and the discreetly modulated gesture with which the colonel +gave to every point of his merry-Andrewing its precise value. + +The colonel's mind was working busily on matters oddly apart from those +of which he talked. He wanted this girl next to him--at whom he did not +look. He loved her as that whippersnapper yonder was not capable of +loving anyone. Young people had these fancies; and they outlived them, +as the colonel knew of his own experience. Let matters take their course +unhindered, at all events by him. For it was less his part than that of +any other man alive to interfere when Rudolph Musgrave stood within a +finger's reach of, at worst, his own prosperity and happiness. + +He would convey no note to Roger Stapylton. Let the banker announce the +engagement. Let the young fellow go to the devil. Colonel Musgrave would +marry the girl and make Patricia, at worst, content. To do otherwise, +even to hesitate, would be the emptiest quixotism.... + +Then came the fatal thought, "But what a gesture!" To fling away his +happiness--yes, even his worldly fortune,--and to do it smilingly! +Patricia must, perforce, admire him all her life. + +Then as old Stapylton stirred in his chair and broke into a wide +premonitory smile, Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. And of that +company Clarice Pendomer at least thought of how like he was to the boy +who had fought the famous duel with George Pendomer some fifteen years +ago. + +Ensued a felicitous speech. Rudolph Musgrave was familiar with his +audience. And therefore: + +Colonel Musgrave alluded briefly to the pleasure he took in addressing +such a gathering. He believed no other State in the 'Union could have +afforded an assembly of more distinguished men and fairer women. But the +fact was not unnatural; they might recall the venerable saying that +blood will tell? Well, it was their peculiar privilege to represent +to-day that sturdy stock which, when this great republic was in the +pangs of birth, had with sword and pen and oratory discomfited the +hirelings of England and given to history the undying names of several +Revolutionary patriots,--all of whom he enumerated with the customary +pause after each cognomen to allow for the customary applause. + +And theirs, too, was the blood of those heroic men who fought more +recently beneath the stars and bars, as bravely, he would make bold to +say, as Leonidas at Thermopylae, in defense of their loved Southland. +Right, he conceded, had not triumphed here. For hordes of brutal +soldiery had invaded the fertile soil, the tempest of war had swept the +land and left it desolate. The South lay battered and bruised, and pros +trate in blood, the "Niobe of nations," as sad a victim of ingratitude +as King Lear. + +The colonel touched upon the time when buzzards, in the guise of +carpet-baggers, had battened upon the recumbent form; and spoke +slightingly of divers persons of antiquity as compared with various +Confederate leaders, whose names were greeted with approving nods and +ripples of polite enthusiasm. + +But the South, and in particular the grand old Commonwealth which they +inhabited, he stated, had not long sat among the ruins of her temples, +like a sorrowing priestess with veiled eyes and a depressed soul, +mourning for that which had been. Like the fabled Phoenix, she had risen +from the ashes of her past. To-day she was once more to be seen in her +hereditary position, the brightest gem in all that glorious galaxy of +States which made America the envy of every other nation. Her +battlefields converted into building lots, tall factories smoked where +once a holocaust had flamed, and where cannon had roared you heard +to-day the tinkle of the school bell. Such progress was without a +parallel. + +Nor was there any need for him, he was assured, to mention the +imperishable names of their dear homeland's poets and statesmen of +to-day, the orators and philanthropists and prominent business-men who +jostled one another in her splendid, new asphalted streets, since all +were quite familiar to his audience,--as familiar, he would venture to +predict, as they would eventually be to the most cherished recollections +of Macaulay's prophesied New Zealander, when this notorious antipodean +should pay his long expected visit to the ruins of St. Paul's. + +In fine, by a natural series of transitions, Colonel Musgrave thus +worked around to "the very pleasing duty with which our host, in view of +the long and intimate connection between our families, has seen fit to +honor me"--which was, it developed, to announce the imminent marriage of +Miss Patricia Stapylton and Mr. Joseph Parkinson. + +It may conservatively be stated that everyone was surprised. + +Old Stapylton had half risen, with a purple face. + +The colonel viewed him with a look of bland interrogation. + +There was silence for a heart-beat. + +Then Stapylton lowered his eyes, if just because the laws of caste had +triumphed, and in consequence his glance crossed that of his daughter, +who sat motionless regarding him. She was an unusually pretty girl, he +thought, and he had always been inordinately proud of her. It was not +pride she seemed to beg him muster now. Patricia through that moment was +not the fine daughter the old man was sometimes half afraid of. She was, +too, like a certain defiant person--oh, of an incredible beauty, such +as women had not any longer!--who had hastily put aside her bonnet and +had looked at a young Roger Stapylton in much this fashion very long +ago, because the minister was coming downstairs, and they would +presently be man and wife,--provided always her pursuing brothers did +not arrive in time.... + +Old Roger Stapylton cleared his throat. + +Old Roger Stapylton said, half sheepishly: "My foot's asleep, that's +all. I beg everybody's pardon, I'm sure. Please go on"--he had come +within an ace of saying "Mr. Rudolph," and only in the nick of time did +he continue, "Colonel Musgrave." + +So the colonel continued in time-hallowed form, with happy allusions to +Mr. Parkinson's anterior success as an engineer before he came "like a +young Lochinvar to wrest away his beautiful and popular fiancée from us +fainthearted fellows of Lichfield"; touched of course upon the colonel's +personal comminglement of envy and rage, and so on, as an old bachelor +who saw too late what he had missed in life; and concluded by proposing +the health of the young couple. + +This was drunk with all the honors. + + + + +VI + + +Upon what Patricia said to the colonel in the drawing-room, what Joe +Parkinson blurted out in the hall, and chief of all, what Roger +Stapylton asseverated to Rudolph Musgrave in the library, after the +other guests had gone, it is unnecessary to dwell in this place. To each +of these in various fashions did Colonel Musgrave explain such reasons +as, he variously explained, must seem to any gentleman sufficient cause +for acting as he had done; but most candidly, and even with a touch of +eloquence, to Roger Stapylton. + +"You are like your grandfather, sir, at times," the latter said, +inconsequently enough, when the colonel had finished. + +And Rudolph Musgrave gave a little bowing gesture, with an entire +gravity. He knew it was the highest tribute that Stapylton could pay to +any man. + +"She's a daughter any father might be proud of," said the banker, also. +He removed his cigar from his mouth and looked at it critically. "She's +rather like her mother sometimes," he said carelessly. "Her mother made +a runaway match, you may remember--Damn' poor cigar, this. But no, you +wouldn't, I reckon. I had branched out into cotton then and had a little +place just outside of Chiswick--" + +So that, all in all, Colonel Musgrave returned homeward not entirely +dissatisfied. + + + + +VII + + +The colonel sat for a long while before his fire that night. The room +seemed less comfortable than he had ever known it. So many of his books +and pictures and other furnishings had been already carried to Matocton +that the walls were a little bare. Also there was a formidable pile of +bills upon the table by him,--from contractors and upholsterers and +furniture-houses, and so on, who had been concerned in the late +renovation of Matocton,--the heralds of a host he hardly saw his way to +dealing with. + +He had flung away a deal of money that evening, with something which to +him was dearer. Had you attempted to condole with him he would not have +understood you. + +"But what would you have had a gentleman do, sir?" Colonel Musgrave +would have said, in real perplexity. + +Besides, it was, in fact, not sorrow that he felt, rather it was +contentment, when he remembered the girl's present happiness; and what +alone depressed the colonel's courtly affability toward the universe at +large was the queer, horrible new sense of being somehow out of touch +with yesterday's so comfortable world, of being out-moded, of being +almost old. + +"Eh, well!" he said; "I am of a certain age undoubtedly." + +By an odd turn the colonel thought of how his friends of his own class +and generation had honestly admired the after-dinner speech which he had +made that evening. And he smiled, but very tenderly, because they were +all men and women whom he loved. + +"The most of us have known each other for a long while. The most of us, +in fact, are of a certain age.... I think no people ever met the sorry +problem that we faced. For we were born the masters of a leisured, +ordered world; and by a tragic quirk of destiny were thrust into a quite +new planet, where we were for a while the inferiors, and after that just +the competitors of yesterday's slaves. + +"We couldn't meet the new conditions. Oh, for the love of heaven, let us +be frank, and confess that we have not met them as things practical go. +We hadn't the training for it. A man who has not been taught to swim may +rationally be excused for preferring to sit upon the bank; and should he +elect to ornament his idleness with protestations that he is +self-evidently an excellent swimmer, because once upon a time his +progenitors were the only people in the world who had the slightest +conception of how to perform a natatorial masterpiece, the thing is +simply human nature. Talking chokes nobody, worse luck. + +"And yet we haven't done so badly. For the most part we have sat upon +the bank our whole lives long. We have produced nothing--after +all--which was absolutely earth-staggering; and we have talked a deal of +clap-trap. But meanwhile we have at least enhanced the comeliness of our +particular sand-bar. We have lived a courteous and tranquil and +independent life thereon, just as our fathers taught us. It may be--in +the final outcome of things--that will be found an even finer pursuit +than the old one of producing Presidents. + +"Besides, we have produced ourselves. We have been gentlefolk in spite +of all, we have been true even in our iniquities to the traditions of +our race. No, I cannot assert that these traditions always square with +ethics or even with the Decalogue, for we have added a very complex +Eleventh Commandment concerning honor. And for the rest, we have +defiantly embroidered life, and indomitably we have converted the +commonest happening of life into a comely thing. We have been artists if +not artizans." + +There was upon the table a large photograph in sepia of Patricia +Stapylton. He studied this now. She was very beautiful, he thought. + +"'Nor thou detain her vesture's hem'--" said the colonel aloud. "Oh, +that infernal Yankee understood, even though he was born in Boston!" And +this as coming from a Musgrave of Matocton, may fairly be considered as +a sweeping tribute to the author of _Give All to Love_. + +Colonel Musgrave was intent upon the portrait.... So! she had chosen at +last between himself and this young fellow, a workman born of workmen, +who went about the world building bridges and canals and tunnels and +such, in those far countries which were to Colonel Musgrave just so many +gray or pink or fawn-colored splotches on the map. It seemed to Colonel +Musgrave almost an allegory. + +So Colonel Musgrave filled a glass with the famed Lafayette madeira of +Matocton, and solemnly drank yet another toast. He loved to do, as you +already know, that which was colorful. + +"To this new South," he said. "To this new South that has not any longer +need of me or of my kind. + +"To this new South! She does not gaze unwillingly, nor too complacently, +upon old years, and dares concede that but with loss of manliness may +any man encroach upon the heritage of a dog or of a trotting-horse, and +consider the exploits of an ancestor to guarantee an innate and personal +excellence. + +"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with +her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain +speech. And her high past she values now, in chief, as fit foundation of +that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with augmenting +strokes." + + * * * * * + +And yet--"It may be he will serve you better. But, oh, it isn't +possible that he should love you more than I," said Colonel Musgrave of +Matocton. + +The man was destined to remember that utterance--and, with the +recollection, to laugh not altogether in either scorn or merriment. + + + + +PART FOUR - APPRECIATION + + "You have chosen; and I cry content thereto, + And cry your pardon also, and am reproved + In that I took you for a woman I loved + Odd centuries ago, and would undo + That curious error. Nay, your eyes are blue, + Your speech is gracious, but you are not she, + And I am older--and changed how utterly!-- + I am no longer I, you are not you. + + "Time, destined as we thought but to befriend + And guerdon love like ours, finds you beset + With joys and griefs I neither share nor mend + Who am a stranger; and we two are met + Nor wholly glad nor sorry; and the end + Of too much laughter is a faint regret." + +R.E. TOWNSEND. _Sonnets for Elena._ + + + + +I + + +Next morning Rudolph Musgrave found the world no longer an impassioned +place, but simply a familiar habitation,--no longer the wrestling-ground +of big emotions, indeed, but undoubtedly a spot, whatever were its other +pretensions to praise, wherein one was at home. He breakfasted on ham +and eggs, in a state of tolerable equanimity; and mildly wondered at +himself for doing it. + +The colonel was deep in a heraldic design and was whistling through his +teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the +outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rubber of +professional courtesy,--for he was denoting _or_ at the moment, which is +fussy work, as it consists exclusively of dots. + +Then his chair scraped audibly upon the floor as he pushed it from him. +It occurred to Rudolph Musgrave after an interval that he was still +half-way between sitting and standing, and that his mouth was open.... + +He could hear a huckster outside on Regis Avenue. The colonel never +forgot the man was crying "Fresh oranges!" + +"He kissed me, Olaf. Yes, I let him kiss me, even after he had asked me +if he could. No sensible girl would ever do that, of course. And then I +knew--" + +Patricia was horribly frightened. + +"And afterwards the jackass-fool made matters worse by calling me 'his +darling.' There is no more hateful word in the English language than +'darling.' It sounds like castor-oil tastes, or a snail looks after you +have put salt on him." + +The colonel deliberated this information; and he appeared to understand. + +"So Parkinson has gone the way of Pevensey,--. and of I wonder how many +others? Well, may Heaven be very gracious to us both!" he said. "For I +am going to do it." + +Then composedly he took up the telephone upon his desk and called Roger +Stapylton. + +"I want you to come at once to Dr. Rabbet's,--yes, the rectory, next +door to St. Luke's. Patricia and I are to be married there in half an +hour. We are on our way to the City Hall to get the license now.... No, +she might change her mind again, you see.... I have not the least notion +how it happened. I don't care.... Then you will have to be rude to him +or else not see your only daughter married.... Kindly permit me to +repeat, sir, that I don't care about that or anything else. And for the +rest, Patricia was twenty-one last December." + +The colonel hung up the receiver. "And now," he said, "we are going to +the City Hall." + +"Are you?" said Patricia, with courteous interest. "Well, my way lies +uptown. I have to stop in at Greenberg's and get a mustard plaster for +the parrot." + +He had his hat by this. "It isn't cool enough for me to need an +overcoat, is it?" + +"I think you must be crazy," she said, sharply. + +"Of course I am. So I am going to marry you." + +"Let me go--! Oh, and I had thought you were a gentleman--." + +"I fear that at present I am simply masculine." He became aware that his +hands, in gripping both her shoulders, were hurting the girl. + +"Come now," he continued, "will you go quietly or will I have to carry +you?" + +She said, "And you would, too--." She spoke in wonder, for Patricia had +glimpsed an unguessed Rudolph Musgrave. + +His hands went under her arm-pits and he lifted her like a feather. He +held her thus at arm's length. + +"You--you adorable whirligig!" he laughed. "I am a stronger animal than +you. It would be as easy for me to murder you as it would be for you to +kill one of those flies on the window-pane. Do you quite understand that +fact, Patricia?" + +"Oh, but you are an idiot--." + +"In wanting you, my dear?" + +"Please put me down." + +She thoroughly enjoyed her helplessness. He saw it, long before he +lowered her. + +"Why, not so much in that," said Miss Stapylton, "because inasmuch as I +am a woman of superlative charm, of course you can't help yourself. But +how do you know that Dr. Rabbet may not be somewhere else, harrying a +defenseless barkeeper, or superintending the making of dress-shirt +protectors for the Hottentots, or doing something else clerical, when we +get to the rectory?" + +After an irrelevant interlude she stamped her foot. + +"I don't care what you say, I won't marry an atheist. If you had the +least respect for his cloth, Olaf, you would call him up and +arrange--Oh, well! whatever you want to arrange--and permit me to powder +my nose without being bothered, because I don't want people to think you +are marrying a second helping to butter, and I never did like that +Baptist man on the block above, anyhow. And besides," said Patricia, as +with the occurrence of a new view-point, "think what a delicious scandal +it will create!" + + + + +II + + +Patricia spoke the truth. By supper-time Lichfield had so industriously +embroidered the Stapylton dinner and the ensuing marriage with +hypotheses and explanations and unparented rumors that none of the +participants in the affair but could advantageously have exchanged +reputations with Benedict Arnold or Lucretia Borgia, had Lichfield +believed a tithe of what Lichfield was repeating. + +A duel was of course anticipated between Mr. Parkinson and Colonel +Musgrave, and the colonel indeed offered, through Major Wadleigh, any +satisfaction which Mr. Parkinson might desire. + +The engineer, with garnishments of profanity, considered dueling to be a +painstakingly-described absurdity and wished "the old popinjay" joy of +his bargain. + +Lichfield felt that only showed what came of treating poor-white trash +as your equals, and gloried in the salutary moral. + + + + +III + + +Meanwhile the two originators of so much Lichfieldian diversion were not +unhappy. + +But indeed it were irreverent even to try to express the happiness of +their earlier married life ... + +They were an ill-matched couple in so many ways that no long-headed +person could conceivably have anticipated--in the outcome--more than +decorous tolerance of each other. For apart from the disparity in age +and tastes and rearing, there was always the fact to be weighed that in +marrying the only child of a wealthy man Rudolph Musgrave was making +what Lichfield called "an eminently sensible match"--than which, as +Lichfield knew, there is no more infallible recipe for discord. + +In this case the axiom seemed, after the manner of all general rules, to +bulwark itself with an exception. Colonel Musgrave continued to emanate +an air of contentment which fell perilously short of fatuity; and that +Patricia was honestly fond of him was evident to the most impecunious of +Lichfield's bachelors. + +True, curtains had been lifted, a little by a little. Patricia could +hardly have told you at what exact moment it was that she discovered +Miss Agatha--who continued of course to live with them--was a +dipsomaniac. Very certainly Rudolph Musgrave was not Patricia's +informant; it is doubtful if the colonel ever conceded his sister's +infirmity in his most private meditations; so that Patricia found the +cause of Miss Agatha's "attacks" to be an open secret of which everyone +in the house seemed aware and of which by tacit agreement nobody ever +spoke. It bewildered Patricia, at first, to find that as concerned +Lichfield at large any over-indulgence in alcohol by a member of the +Musgrave family was satisfactorily accounted for by the matter-of-course +statement that the Musgraves usually "drank,"--just as the Allardyces +notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were +proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were +deplorably prone to dabble in literature. These things had been for a +long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield estimated) +they must be reasonable. + +Then, too, Patricia would have preferred to have been rid of the old +mulatto woman Virginia, because it was through Virginia that Miss Agatha +furtively procured intoxicants. But Rudolph Musgrave would not consider +Virginia's leaving. "Virginia's faithfulness has been proven by too many +years of faithful service" was the formula with which he dismissed the +suggestion ... Afterward Patricia learned from Miss Agatha of the wrong +that had been done Virginia by Olaf's uncle, Senator Edward Musgrave, +the noted ante-bellum orator, and understood that Olaf--without, of +course, conceding it to himself, because that was Olaf's way--was trying +to make reparation. Patricia respected the sentiment, and continued to +fret under its manifestation. + +Miss Agatha also told Patricia of how the son of Virginia and Senator +Musgrave had come to a disastrous end--"lynched in Texas, I believe, +only it may not have been Texas. And indeed when I come to think of it, +I don't believe it was, because I know we first heard of it on a Monday, +and Virginia couldn't do the washing that week and I had to send it out. +And for the usual crime, of course. It simply shows you how much better +off the darkies were before the War," Miss Agatha said. + +Patricia refrained from comment, not being willing to consider the +deduction strained. For love is a contagious infection; and loving +Rudolph Musgrave so much, Patricia must perforce love any person whom he +loved as conscientiously as she would have strangled any person with +whom he had flirted. + +And yet, to Patricia, it was beginning to seem that Patricia Musgrave +was not living, altogether, in that Lichfield which John Charteris has +made immortal--"that nursery of Free Principles" (according to the +_Lichfield Courier-Herald_) "wherein so many statesmen, +lieutenants-general and orators were trained to further the faith of +their fathers, to thrill the listening senates, draft constitutions, and +bruise the paws of the British lion." + + + + +IV + + +It may be remembered that Lichfield had asked long ago, "But who, pray, +are the Stapyltons?" It was characteristic of Colonel Musgrave that he +went about answering the question without delay. The Stapletons--for +"Stapylton" was a happy innovation of Roger Stapylton's dead wife--the +colonel knew to have been farmers in Brummell County, and Brummell +Courthouse is within an hour's ride, by rail, of Lichfield. + +So he set about his labor of love. + +And in it he excelled himself. The records of Brummell date back to 1750 +and are voluminous; but Rudolph Musgrave did not overlook an item in any +Will Book, or in any Orders of the Court, that pertained, however +remotely, to the Stapletons. Then he renewed his labors at the +courthouse of the older county from which Brummell was formed in 1750, +and through many fragmentary, evil-odored and unindexed volumes +indefatigably pursued the family's fortune back to the immigration of +its American progenitor in 1619,--and, by the happiest fatality, upon +the same _Bona Nova_ which enabled the first American Musgrave to grace +the Colony of Virginia with his presence. It could no longer be said +that the wife of a Musgrave of Matocton lacked an authentic and +tolerably ancient pedigree. + +The colonel made a book of his Stapyltonian researches which he +vaingloriously proclaimed to be the stupidest reading within the ample +field of uninteresting printed English. Patricia was allowed to see no +word of it until the first ten copies had come from the printer's, very +splendid in green "art-vellum" and stamped with the Stapylton +coat-of-arms in gold. + +She read the book. "It is perfectly superb," was her verdict. "It is as +dear as remembered kisses after death and as sweet as a plaintiff in a +breach-of-promise suit. Only I would have preferred it served with a few +kings and dukes for parsley. The Stapletons don't seem to have been +anything but perfectly respectable mediocrities." + +The colonel smiled. At the bottom of his heart he shared Patricia's +regret that the Stapylton pedigree was unadorned by a potentate, because +nobody can stay unimpressed by a popular superstition, however crass the +thing may be. But for all this, an appraisal of himself and his own +achievements profusely showed high lineage is not invariably a guarantee +of excellence; and so he smiled and said: + +"There are two ends to every stick. It was the Stapletons and others of +their sort, rather than any soft-handed Musgraves, who converted a +wilderness, a little by a little, into the America of to-day. The task +was tediously achieved, and without ostentation; and always the ship had +its resplendent figure-head, as always it had its hidden, nay! grimy, +engines, which propelled the ship. And, however direfully America may +differ from Utopia, to have assisted in the making of America is no mean +distinction. We Musgraves and our peers, I sometimes think, may possibly +have been just gaudy autumn leaves which happened to lie in the path of +a high wind. And to cut a gallant figure in such circumstances does not +necessarily prove the performer to be a _rara avis_, even though he +rides the whirlwind quite as splendidly as any bird existent." + +Patricia fluttered, and as lightly and irresponsibly as a wren might +have done, perched on his knee. + +"No! there is really something in heredity, after all. Now, you are a +Musgrave in every vein of you. It always seems like a sort of flippancy +for you to appear in public without a stock and a tarnished gilt frame +with most of the gilt knocked off and a catalogue-number tucked in the +corner." Patricia spoke without any regard for punctuation. "And I am so +unlike you. I am only a Stapylton. I do hope you don't mind my being +merely a Stapylton, Olaf, because if only I wasn't too modest to even +think of alluding to the circumstance, I would try to tell you about the +tiniest fraction of how much a certain ravishingly beautiful +half-strainer loves you, Olaf, and the consequences would be +deplorable." + +"My dear----" he began. + +"Ouch!" said Patricia; "you are tickling me. You don't shave half as +often as you used to, do you? No, nowadays you think you have me safe +and don't have to bother about being attractive. If I had a music-box I +could put your face into it and play all sorts of tunes, only I prefer +to look at it. You are a slattern and a jay-bird and a joy forever. And +besides, the first Stapleton seems to have blundered somehow into the +House of Burgesses, so that entitles me to be a Colonial Dame on my +father's side, too, doesn't it, Olaf?" + +The colonel laughed. "Madam Vanity!" said he, "I repeat that to be +descended of a line of czars or from a house of emperors is, at the +worst, an empty braggartism, or, at best--upon the plea of heredity--a +handy palliation for iniquity; and to be descended of sturdy and honest +and clean-blooded folk is beyond doubt preferable, since upon quite +similar grounds it entitles one to hope that even now, 'when their +generation is gone, when their play is over, when their panorama is +withdrawn in tatters from the stage of the world,' there may yet survive +of them 'some few actions worth remembering, and a few children who have +retained some happy stamp from the disposition of their parents.'" + +Patricia--with eyes widened in admiration at his rhetoric,--had turned +an enticing shade of pink. + +"I am glad of that," she said. + +She snuggled so close he could not see her face now. She was to all +appearances attempting to twist the top-button from his coat. + +"I am very glad that it entitles one to hope--about the +children--Because--" + +The colonel lifted her a little from him. He did not say anything. But +he was regarding her half in wonder and one-half in worship. + +She, too, was silent. Presently she nodded. + +He kissed her as one does a very holy relic. + +It was a moment to look back upon always. There was no period in Rudolph +Musgrave's life when he could not look back upon this instant and exult +because it had been his. + + * * * * * + +Only, Patricia found out afterward, with an inexplicable disappointment, +that her husband had not been talking extempore, but was freely quoting +his "Compiler's Foreword" just as it figured in the printed book. + +One judges this posturing, so inevitable of detection, to have been as +significant of much in Rudolph Musgrave as was the fact of its belated +discovery characteristic of Patricia. + +Yet she had read this book about her family from purely normal motives: +first, to make certain how old her various cousins were; secondly, to +gloat over any traces of distinction such as her ancestry afforded; +thirdly, to note with what exaggerated importance the text seemed to +accredit those relatives she did not esteem, and mentally to annotate +each page with unprintable events "which _everybody_ knew about"; and +fourthly, to reflect, as with a gush of steadily augmenting love, how +dear and how unpractical it was of Olaf to have concocted these +date-bristling pages--so staunch and blind in his misguided gratitude +toward those otherwise uninteresting people who had rendered possible +the existence of a Patricia. + + + + +V + + +Matters went badly with Patricia in the ensuing months. Her mother's +blood told here, as Colonel Musgrave saw with disquietude. He knew the +women of his race had by ordinary been unfit for childbearing; indeed, +the daughters of this famous house had long, in a grim routine, +perished, just as Patricia's mother had done, in their first maternal +essay. There were many hideous histories the colonel could have told you +of, unmeet to be set down, and he was familiar with this talk of pelvic +anomalies which were congenital. But he had never thought of Patricia, +till this, as being his kinswoman, and in part a Musgrave. + +And even now the Stapylton blood that was in her pulled Patricia through +long weeks of anguish. Surgeons dealt with her very horribly in a famed +Northern hospital, whither she had been removed. By her obdurate +request--and secretly, to his own preference, since it was never in his +power to meet discomfort willingly--Colonel Musgrave had remained in +Lichfield. Patricia knew that officious people would tell him her life +could be saved only by the destruction of an unborn boy. + +She never questioned her child would be a boy. She knew that Olaf wanted +a boy. + +"Oh, even more than he does me, daddy. And so he mustn't know, you see, +until it is all over. Because Olaf is such an ill-informed person that +he really believes he prefers me." + +"Pat," her father inconsequently said, "I'm proud of you! And--and, by +God, if I _want_ to cry, I guess I am old enough to know my own mind! +And I'll help you in this if you'll only promise not to die in spite of +what these damn' doctors say, because you're _mine_, Pat, and so you +realize a bargain is a bargain." + +"Yes--I am really yours, daddy. It is just my crazy body that is a +Musgrave," Patricia explained. "The real me is an unfortunate Stapylton +who has somehow got locked up in the wrong house. It is not a desirable +residence, you know, daddy. No modern improvements, for instance. But I +have to live in it!... Still, I have not the least intention of dying, +and I solemnly promise that I won't." + +So these two hoodwinked Rudolph Musgrave, and brought it about by +subterfuge that his child was born. At most he vaguely understood that +Patricia was having rather a hard time of it, and steadfastly drugged +this knowledge by the performance of trivialities. He was eating a +cucumber sandwich at the moment young Roger Musgrave came into the +world, and by that action very nearly accomplished Patricia's death. + + + + +VI + + +And the gods cursed Roger Stapylton with such a pride in, and so great a +love for, his only grandson that the old man could hardly bear to be out +of the infant's presence. He was frequently in Lichfield nowadays; and +he renewed his demands that Rudolph Musgrave give up the +exhaustively-particularized librarianship, so that "the little coot" +would be removed to New York and all three of them be with Roger +Stapylton always. + +Patricia had not been well since little Roger's birth. + +It was a peaked and shrewish Patricia, rather than Rudolph Musgrave, who +fought out the long and obstinate battle with Roger Stapylton. + +She was jealous at the bottom of her heart. She would not have anyone, +not even her father, be too fond of what was preëminently hers; the +world at large, including Rudolph Musgrave, was at liberty to adore her +boy, as was perfectly natural, but not to meddle: and in fine, Patricia +was both hysterical and vixenish whenever a giving up of the Library +work was suggested. + +The old man did not quarrel with her. And with Roger Stapylton's +loneliness in these days, and the long thoughts it bred, we have nothing +here to do. But when he died, stricken without warning, some five years +after Patricia's marriage, his will was discovered to bequeath +practically his entire fortune to little Roger Musgrave when the child +should come of age; and to Rudolph Musgrave, as Patricia's husband, what +was a reasonable income when judged by Lichfield's unexacting standards +rather than by Patricia's anticipations. In a word, Patricia found that +she and the colonel could for the future count upon a little more than +half of the income she had previously been allowed by Roger Stapylton. + +"It isn't fair!" she said. "It's monstrous! And all because you were so +obstinate about your picayune Library!" + +"Patricia--" he began. + +"Oh, I tell you it's absurd, Olaf! The money logically ought to have +been left to me. And here I will have to come to you for every penny of +_my_ money. And Heaven knows I have had to scrimp enough to support us +all on what I used to have--Olaf," Patricia said, in another voice, +"Olaf! why, what is it, dear?" + +"I was reflecting," said Colonel Musgrave, "that, as you justly observe, +both Agatha and I have been practically indebted to you for our support +these past five years--" + + + + +VII + + +It must be enregistered, not to the man's credit, but rather as a simple +fact, that it was never within Colonel Musgrave's power to forget the +incident immediately recorded. + +He forgave; when Patricia wept, seeing how leaden-colored his handsome +face had turned, he forgave as promptly and as freely as he was learning +to pardon the telling of a serviceable lie, or the perpetration of an +occasional barbarism in speech, by Patricia. For he, a Musgrave of +Matocton, had married a Stapylton; he had begun to comprehend that their +standards were different, and that some daily conflict between these +standards was inevitable. + +And besides, as it has been veraciously observed, the truth of an insult +is the barb which prevents its retraction. Patricia spoke the truth: +Rudolph Musgrave and all those rationally reliant upon Rudolph Musgrave +for support, had lived for some five years upon the money which they +owed to Patricia. He saw about him other scions of old families who +accepted such circumstances blithely: but, he said, he was a Musgrave +of Matocton; and, he reflected, in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed +is necessarily very unhappy. + +He did not mean to touch a penny of such moneys as Roger Stapylton had +bequeathed to him; for the colonel considered--now--it was a man's duty +personally to support his wife and child and sister. And he vigorously +attempted to discharge this obligation, alike by virtue of his salary at +the Library, and by spasmodic raids upon his tiny capital, and--chief of +all--by speculation in the Stock Market. + +Oddly enough, his ventures were through a long while--for the most +part--successful. Here he builded a desperate edifice whose foundations +were his social talents; and it was with quaint self-abhorrence he often +noted how the telling of a smutty jest or the insistence upon a +manifestly superfluous glass of wine had purchased from some properly +tickled magnate a much desiderated "tip." + +And presently these tips misled him. So the colonel borrowed from +"Patricia's account." + +And on this occasion he guessed correctly. + +And then he stumbled upon such a chance for reinvestment as does not +often arrive. And so he borrowed a trifle more in common justice to +Patricia.... + + + + +VIII + + +When those then famous warriors, Colonel Gaynor and Captain Green, were +obstinately fighting extradition in Quebec; when in Washington the +Senate was wording a suitable resolution wherewith to congratulate Cuba +upon that island's brand-new independence; and when Messieurs +Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were making amicable arrangements in San +Francisco to fight for the world's championship:--at this remote time, +in Chicago (on the same day, indeed, that in this very city Mr. S.E. +Gross was legally declared the author of a play called Cyrano de +Bergerac), the Sons of the Colonial Governors opened their tenth +biennial convention. You may depend upon it that Colonel Rudolph +Musgrave represented the Lichfield chapter. + +It was two days later the telegram arrived. It read: + + _Agatha very ill come to me roger in perfect health._ + PATRICIA. + +He noted how with Stapyltonian thrift Patricia telegraphed ten words +precisely.... + +And when he had reached home, late in the evening, the colonel, not +having taken his bunch of keys with him, laid down his dress-suit case +on the dark porch, and reached out one hand to the door-bell. He found +it muffled with some flimsy, gritty fabric. He did not ring. + +Upon the porch was a rustic bench. He sat upon it for a quarter of an +hour--precisely where he had first talked with Agatha about Patricia's +first coming to Lichfield.... Once the door of a house across the street +was opened, with a widening gush of amber light wherein he saw three +women fitting wraps about them. One of them was adjusting a lace scarf +above her hair. + +"No, we're not a _bit_ afraid--Just around the corner, you know--_Such_ +a pleasant evening----" Their voices carried far in the still night. + +Rudolph Musgrave was not thinking of anything. Presently he went around +through the side entrance, and thus came into the kitchen, where the old +mulattress, Virginia, was sitting alone. The room was very hot.... In +Agatha's time supper would have been cooked upon the gas-range in the +cellar, he reflected.... Virginia had risen and made as though to take +his dress-suit case, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an +idol's. + +"No--don't bother, Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave. + +He met Patricia in the dining-room, on her way to the kitchen. She had +not chosen--as even the most sensible of us will instinctively decline +to do--to vex the quiet of a house wherein death was by ringing a bell. + +Holding his hand in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how +three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper. +Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's +Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss +Agatha. And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to bed before Patricia left +the house, and _anybody_ would have thought she was going to sleep all +night. And, in fine, Patricia's return at a drizzling half-past eleven +had found Miss Agatha sitting in the garden, in her night-dress only, +weeping over fancied grievances--and Virginia asleep in the kitchen. And +Agatha had died that afternoon of pneumonia. + +Even in the last half-stupor she was asking always when would Rudolph +come? Patricia told him.... + +Rudolph Musgrave did not say anything. Without any apparent emotion he +put Patricia aside, much as he did the dress-suit case which he had +forgotten to lay down until Patricia had ended her recital. + +He went upstairs--to the front room, Patricia's bedroom. Patricia +followed him. + +Agatha's body lay upon the bed, with a sheet over all. The undertaker's +skill had arranged everything with smug and horrible tranquillity. + +Rudolph Musgrave remembered he was forty-six years old; and when in all +these years had there been a moment when Agatha--the real Agatha--had +not known that what he had done was self-evidently correct, because +otherwise Rudolph would not have done it? + +"I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia." + +"Well, I couldn't help it. I'm not running a sanitarium. I wasn't +responsible for her eternal drinking." + +The words skipped out of either mouth like gleeful little devils. + +Then both were afraid, and both were as icily tranquil as the thing upon +the bed. You could not hear anything except the clock upon the mantel. +Colonel Musgrave went to the mantel, opened the clock, and with an odd +deliberation removed the pendulum from its hook. Followed one metallic +gasp, as of indignation, and then silence. + +He spoke, still staring at the clock, his back turned to Patricia. "You +must be utterly worn out. You had better go to bed." + +He shifted by the fraction of an inch the old-fashioned "hand-colored" +daguerreotype of his father in Confederate uniform. "Please don't wear +that black dress again. It is no cause for mourning that we are rid of +an encumbrance." + +Behind him, very far away, it seemed, he heard Patricia wailing, +"Olaf----!" + +Colonel Musgrave turned without any haste. "Please go," he said, and +appeared to plead with her. "You must be frightfully tired. I am sorry +that I was not here. I seem always to evade my responsibilities, +somehow--" + +Then he began to laugh. "It _is_ rather amusing, after all. Agatha was +the most noble person I have ever known. The--this habit of hers to +which you have alluded was not a part of her. And I loved Agatha. And I +suppose loving is not altogether dependent upon logic. In any event, I +loved Agatha. And when I came back to her I had come home, +somehow--wherever she might be at the time. That has been true, oh, ever +since I can remember--" + +He touched the dead hand now. "Please go!" he said, and he did not look +toward Patricia. "For Agatha loved me better than she did God, you know. +The curse was born in her. She had to pay for what those dead, +soft-handed Musgraves did. That is why her hands are so cold now. She +had to pay for the privilege of being a Musgrave, you see. But then we +cannot always pick and choose as to what we prefer to be." + +"Oh, yes, of course, it is all my fault. Everything is my fault. But God +knows what would have become of you and your Agatha if it hadn't been +for me. Oh! oh!" Patricia wailed. "I was a child and I hadn't any better +sense, and I married you, and you've been living off my money ever +since! There hasn't been a Christmas present or a funeral wreath bought +in this house since I came into it I didn't pick out and pay for out of +my own pocket. And all the thanks I get for it is this perpetual +fault-finding, and I wish I was dead like this poor saint here. She +spent her life slaving for you. And what thanks did she get for it? Oh, +you ought to go down on your knees, Rudolph Musgrave--!" + +"Please leave," he said. + +"I will leave when I feel like it, and not a single minute before, and +you might just as well understand as much. You _have_ been living off my +money. Oh, you needn't go to the trouble of lying. And she did too. And +she hated me, she always hated me, because I had been fool enough to +marry you, and she carried on like a lunatic more than half the time, +and I always pretended not to notice it, and this is my reward for +trying to behave like a lady." + +Patricia tossed her head. "Yes, and you needn't look at me as if I were +some sort of a bug you hadn't ever seen before and didn't approve of, +because I've seen you try that high-and-mighty trick too often for it to +work with me." + +Patricia stood now beneath the Stuart portrait of young Gerald Musgrave. +She had insisted, long ago, that it be hung in her own bedroom--"because +it was through that beautiful boy we first got really acquainted, Olaf." +The boy smiles at you from the canvas, smiles ambiguously, as the +colonel now noted. + +"I think you had better go," said Colonel Musgrave. "Please go, +Patricia, before I murder you." + +She saw that he was speaking in perfect earnest. + + + + +IX + + +Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had declined to speak +with innumerable sympathetic cousins--Vartreys and Fentons and +Allardyces and Musgraves, to the fifth and sixth remove--who had come +from all quarters, with visiting-cards and low-voiced requests to be +informed "if there is anything we can possibly do." + +Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had not any strength +for anger now, and hardly for grief, Agatha had been his charge; and the +fact that he had never plucked up courage to allude to her practises was +now an enormity in which he could not quite believe. His cowardice and +its fruitage confronted him, and frightened him into a panic frenzy of +remorse. + +Agatha had been his charge; and he had entrusted the stewardship to +Patricia. Between them--that Patricia might have her card-game, that he +might sit upon a platform for an hour or two with a half-dozen other +pompous fools--they had let Agatha die. There was no mercy in him for +Patricia or for himself. He wished Patricia had been a man. Had any man +--an emperor or a coal-heaver, it would not have mattered--spoken as +Patricia had done within the moment, here, within arm's reach of the +poor flesh that had been Agatha's, Rudolph Musgrave would have known his +duty. But, according to his code, it was not permitted to be +discourteous to a woman.... + +He caught himself with grotesque meanness wishing that Agatha had been +there,--privileged by her sex where he was fettered,--she who was so +generous of heart and so fiery of tongue at need; and comprehension that +Agatha would never abet or adore him any more smote him anew. + + * * * * * + +And chance reserved for him more poignant torture. Next day, while +Rudolph Musgrave was making out the list of honorary pall-bearers, the +postman brought a letter which had been forwarded from Chicago. It was +from Agatha, written upon the morning of that day wherein later she had +been, as Patricia phrased it, "queer, you know." + +He found it wildly droll to puzzle out those "crossed" four sheets of +trivialities written in an Italian hand so minute and orderly that the +finished page suggested a fly-screen. He had so often remonstrated with +Agatha about her penuriousness as concerned stationery. + +"Selina Brice & the Rev'd Henry Anstruther, who now has a church in +Seattle, have announced their engagement. Stanley Haggage has gone to +Alabama to marry Leonora Bright, who moved from here a year ago. They +are both as poor as church mice, & I think marriage in such a case an +unwise step for anyone. It brings cares & anxieties enough any way, +without starting out with poverty to increase and render deeper every +trouble...." + +Such was the tenor of Agatha's last letter, of the last self-expression +of that effigy upstairs who (you could see) knew everything and was not +discontent. + +Here the dead spoke, omniscient; and told you that Stanley Haggage had +gone to Alabama, and that marriage brought new cares and anxieties. + +"I cannot laugh," said Rudolph Musgrave, aloud. "I know the jest +deserves it. But I cannot laugh, because my upper lip seems to be made +of leather and I can't move it. And, besides, I loved Agatha to a degree +which only You and I have ever known of. She never understood quite how +I loved her. Oh, won't You make her understand just how I loved her? For +Agatha is dead, because You wanted her to be dead, and I have never told +her how much I loved her, and now I cannot ever tell her how much I +loved her. Oh, won't You please show me that You have made her +understand? or else have me struck by lightning? or do _anything_....?" + +Nothing was done. + + + + +X + + +And afterward Rudolph Musgrave and his wife met amicably, and without +reference to their last talk. Patricia wore black-and-white for some six +months, and Colonel Musgrave accepted the compromise tacitly. All passed +with perfect smoothness between them; and anyone in Lichfield would have +told you that the Musgraves were a model couple. + +She called him "Rudolph" now. + +"Olaf is such a silly-sounding nickname for two old married people, you +know," Patricia estimated. + +The colonel negligently said that he supposed it did sound odd. + +"Only I don't think Clarice Pendomer would care about coming," he +resumed,--for the two were discussing an uncompleted list of the people +Patricia was to invite to their first house-party. + +"And for heaven's sake, why not? We always have her to everything." + +He could not tell her it was because the Charterises were to be among +their guests. So he said: "Oh, well--!" + +"Mrs. C.B. Pendomer, then"--Patricia wrote the name with a flourish. +"Oh, you jay-bird, I'm not jealous. Everybody knows you never had any +more morals than a tom-cat on the back fence. It's a lucky thing the boy +didn't take after you, isn't it? He doesn't, not a bit. No, Harry +Pendomer is the puniest black-haired little wretch, whereas your other +son, sir, resembles his mother and is in consequence a ravishingly +beautiful person of superlative charm--" + +He was staring at her so oddly that she paused. So Patricia was familiar +with that old scandal which linked his name with Clarice Pendomer's! He +was wondering if Patricia had married him in the belief that she was +marrying a man who, appraised by any standards, had acted infamously. + +"I was only thinking you had better ask Judge Allardyce, Patricia. You +see, he is absolutely certain not to come--" + + * * * * * + +This year the Musgraves had decided not to spend the spring alone +together at Matocton, as they had done the four preceding years. + +"It looks so silly," as Patricia pointed out. + +And, besides, a house-party is the most economical method,--as she also +pointed out, being born a Stapylton--of paying off your social +obligations, because you can always ask so many people who, you know, +have made other plans, and cannot accept. + + * * * * * + +"So we will invite Judge Allardyce, of course," said Patricia. "I had +forgotten his court met in June. Oh, and Peter Blagden too. It had +slipped my mind his uncle was dead...." + +"I learned this morning Mrs. Haggage was to lecture in Louisville on the +sixteenth. She was reading up in the Library, you see--" + +"Rudolph, you are the lodestar of my existence. I will ask her to come +on the fourteenth and spend a week. I never could abide the hag, but she +has such a--There! I've made a big blot right in the middle of +'darling,' and spoiled a perfectly good sheet of paper!... You'd better +mail it at once, though, because the evening-paper may have something in +it about her lecture." + + + + +XI + + +Rudolph--" + +"Why--er--yes, dear?" + +This was after supper, and Patricia was playing solitaire. Her husband +was reading the paper. + +"Agatha told me all about Virginia, you know--" + +Here Colonel Musgrave frowned. "It is not a pleasant topic." + +"You jay-bird, you behave entirely too much as if you were my +grandfather. As I was saying, Agatha told me all about your uncle and +Virginia," Patricia hurried on. "And how she ran away afterwards, and +hid in the woods for three days, and came to your father's plantation, +and how your father bought her, and how her son was born, and how her +son was lynched--" + +"Now, really, Patricia! Surely there are other matters which may be more +profitably discussed." + +"Of course. Now, for instance, why is the King of Hearts the only one +that hasn't a moustache?" Patricia peeped to see what cards lay beneath +that monarch, and upon reflection moved the King of Spades into the +vacant space. She was a devotee of solitaire and invariably cheated at +it. + +She went on, absently: "But don't you see? That colored boy was your own +first cousin, and he was killed for doing exactly what his father had +done. Only they sent the father to the Senate and gave him columns of +flubdub and laid him out in state when he died--and they poured kerosene +upon the son and burned him alive. And I believe Virginia thinks that +wasn't fair." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I honestly believe Virginia hates the Musgraves. She is only a negro, +of course, but then she was a mother once--Oh, yes! all I need is a +black eight--" Patricia demanded, "Now look at your brother Hector--the +awfully dissipated one that died of an overdose of opiates. When it +happened wasn't Virginia taking care of him?" + +"Of course. She is an invaluable nurse." + +"And nobody else was here when Agatha went out into the rain. Now, what +if she had just let Agatha go, without trying to stop her? It would have +been perfectly simple. So is this. All I have to do is to take them off +now." + +Colonel Musgrave negligently returned to his perusal of the afternoon +paper. "You are suggesting--if you will overlook my frankness--the most +deplorable sort of nonsense, Patricia." + +"I know exactly how Balaam felt," she said, irrelevantly, and fell to +shuffling the cards. "You don't, and you won't, understand that Virginia +is a human being. In any event, I wish you would get rid of her." + +"I couldn't decently do that," said Rudolph Musgrave, with careful +patience. "Virginia's faithfulness has been proven by too many years of +faithful service. Nothing more strikingly attests the folly of freeing +the negro than the unwillingness of the better class of slaves to leave +their former owners--" + +"Now you are going to quote a paragraph or so from your Gracious Era. As +if I hadn't read everything you ever wrote! You are a fearful humbug in +some ways, Rudolph." + +"And you are a red-headed rattlepate, madam. But seriously, Patricia, +you who were reared in the North are strangely unwilling to concede that +we of the South are after all best qualified to deal with the Negro +Problem. We know the negro as you cannot ever know him." + +"You! Oh, God ha' mercy on us!" mocked Patricia. "There wasn't any Negro +Problem hereabouts, you beautiful idiot, so long as there were any +negroes. Why, to-day there is hardly one full-blooded negro in +Lichfield. There are only a thousand or so of mulattoes who share the +blood of people like your Uncle Edward. And for the most part they take +after their white kin, unfortunately. And there you have the Lichfield +Negro Problem in a nutshell. It is a venerable one and fully set forth +in the Bible. You needn't attempt to argue with me, because you are a +ninnyhammer, and I am a second Nestor. The Holy Scriptures are perfectly +explicit as to what happens to the heads of the children and their teeth +too." + +"I wish you wouldn't jest about such matters--" + +"Because it isn't lady-like? But, Rudolph, you know perfectly well that +I am not a lady." + +"My dear!" he cried, in horror that was real, "and what on earth have I +said even to suggest--" + +"Oh, not a syllable; it isn't at all the sort of thing that your sort +_says_ ... And I am not your sort. I don't know that I altogether wish I +were. But _if_ I were, it would certainly make things easier," Patricia +added sharply. + +"My dear--!" he again protested. + +"Now, candidly, Rudolph"--relinquishing the game, she fell to shuffling +the cards--"just count up the number of times this month that my--oh, +well! I really don't know what to call it except my deplorable omission +in failing to be born a lady--has seemed to you to yank the very last +rag off the gooseberry-bush?" + +He scoffed. "What nonsense! Although, of course, Patricia--" + +She nodded, mischief in her brightly-colored tiny face. "Yes, that is +just your attitude, you beautiful idiot." + +"--although, of course--now, quite honestly, Patricia, I have +occasionally wished that you would not speak of sacred and--er, +physical and sociological matters in exactly the tone in which--well! in +which you sometimes do speak of them. It may sound old-fashioned, but I +have always believed that decency is quite as important in mental +affairs as it is in physical ones, and that as a consequence, a +gentlewoman should always clothe her thoughts with at least the same +care she accords her body. Oh, don't misunderstand me! Of course it +doesn't do any harm, my dear, between us. But outside--you see, for +people to know that you think about such things must necessarily give +them a false opinion of you." + +Patricia meditated. + +She said, with utter solemnity, "Anathema maranatha! oh, hell to damn! +may the noses of all respectable people be turned upside down and +jackasses dance eternally upon their grandmothers' graves!" + +"Patricia--!" cried a shocked colonel. + +"I mean every syllable of it. No, Rudolph; _I_ can't help it if the +vinaigretted beauties of your boyhood were unabridged dictionaries of +prudery. You see, I know almost all the swearwords there are. And I read +the newspapers, and medical books, and even the things that boys chalk +up on fences. In consequence I am not a bit whiteminded, because if you +use your mind at all it gets more or less dingy, just like using +anything else." + +He could not help but laugh, much as he disapproved. Patricia fluttered +and, as a wren might have done, perched presently upon his knee. + +"Rudolph, can't you laugh more often, and not devote so much time to +tracing out the genealogies of those silly people, and being so +tediously beautiful and good?" she asked, and with a hint of +seriousness. "Rudolph, you don't know how I would adore you if you would +rob a church or cut somebody's throat in an alley, and tell me all about +it because you knew I wouldn't betray you. You are so infernally +respectable in everything you do! How did you come to bully me that day +at the Library? It seems almost as if those two were different people... +doesn't it, Rudolph?" + +"My dear," the colonel said whimsically, "I am afraid we are rather like +the shepherdess and the chimney-sweep of the fable I read you very long +ago. We climbed up so far that we could see the stars, once, very long +ago, Patricia, and we have come back to live upon the parlor table. I +suppose it happens to all the little china people." + +She took his meaning. Each was aware of an odd sense of intimacy. +"Everything we have to be glad for now, Rudolph, is the rivet in +grandfather's neck. It is rather a fiasco, isn't it?" + +"Eh, there are all sorts of rivets, Patricia. And the thing one cannot +do because one is what one is, need not be necessarily a cause for +grief." + + + + +XII + + +It was excellent to see Jack Charteris again, as Colonel Musgrave did +within a few days of this. Musgrave was unreasonably fond of the +novelist and frankly confessed it would be as preposterous to connect +Charteris with any of the accepted standards of morality as it would be +to judge an artesian-well from the standpoint of ethics. + +Anne was not yet in Lichfield. She had broken the journey to visit a +maternal grand-aunt and some Virginia cousins, in Richmond, Charteris +explained, and was to come thence to Matocton. + +"And so you have acquired a boy and, by my soul, a very handsome wife, +Rudolph?" + +"It is sufficiently notorious," said Colonel Musgrave. "Yes, we are +quite absurdly happy." He laughed and added: "Patricia--but you don't +know her droll way of putting things--says that the only rational +complaint I can advance against her is her habit of rushing into a +hospital every month or so and having a section or two of her person +removed by surgeons. It worries me,--only, of course, it is not the +sort of thing you can talk about. And, as Patricia says, it _is_ an +unpleasant thing to realize that your wife is not leaving you through +the ordinary channels of death or of type-written decrees of the court, +but only in vulgar fractions, as it were--" + +"Please don't be quite so brutal, Rudolph. It is not becoming in a +Musgrave of Matocton to speak of women in any tone other than the most +honeyed accents of chivalry." + +"Oh, I was only quoting Patricia," the colonel largely said, +"and--er--Jack," he continued. "By the way, Jack, Clarice Pendomer will +be at Matocton--" + +"I rejoice in her good luck," said Charteris, equably. + +"--and--well! I was wondering--?" + +"I can assure you that there will be no--trouble. That skeleton is +safely locked in its closet, and the key to that closet is missing--more +thanks to you. You acted very nobly in the whole affair, Rudolph. I wish +I could do things like that. As it is, of course, I shall always detest +you for having been able to do it." + +Charteris said, thereafter: "I shall always envy you, though, Rudolph. +No other man I know has ever attained the good old troubadourish ideal +of _domnei_--that love which rather abhors than otherwise the notion of +possessing its object. I still believe it was a distinct relief to a +certain military officer, whose name we need not mention, when Anne +decided not to marry you." + +The colonel grinned, a trifle consciously. "Well, Anne meant youth, you +comprehend, and all the things we then believed in, Jack. It would have +been decidedly difficult to live up to such a contract, and--as it +were--to fulfil every one of the implied specifications!" + +"And yet"--here Charteris flicked his cigarette--"Anne ruled in the +stead of Aline Van Orden. And Aline, in turn, had followed Clarice +Pendomer. And before the coming of Clarice had Pauline Romeyne, whom +time has converted into Polly Ashmeade, reigned in the land--" + +"Don't be an ass!" the colonel pleaded; and then observed, +inconsequently: "I can't somehow quite realize Aline is dead. Lord, +Lord, the letters that I wrote to her! She sent them all back, you know, +in genuine romantic fashion, after we had quarreled. I found those +boyish ravings only the other day in my father's desk at Matocton, and +skimmed them over. I shall read them through some day and appropriately +meditate over life's mysteries that are too sad for tears." + +He meditated now. + +"It wouldn't be quite equitable, Jack," the colonel summed it up, "if +the Aline I loved--no, I don't mean the real woman, the one you and all +the other people knew, the one that married the enterprising brewer and +died five years ago--were not waiting for me somewhere. I can't express +just what I mean, but you will understand, I know--?" + +"That heaven is necessarily run on a Mohammedan basis? Why, of course," +said Mr. Charteris. "Heaven, as I apprehend it, is a place where we +shall live eternally among those ladies of old years who never +condescended actually to inhabit any realm more tangible than that of +our boyish fancies. It is the obvious definition; and I defy you to +evolve a more enticing allurement toward becoming a deacon." + +"You romancers are privileged to talk nonsense anywhere," the colonel +estimated, "and I suppose that in the Lichfield you have made famous, +Jack, you have a double right." + +"Ah, but I never wrote a line concerning Lichfield. I only wrote about +the Lichfield whose existence you continue to believe in, in spite of +the fact that you are actually living in the real Lichfield," Charteris +returned. "The vitality of the legend is wonderful." + +He cocked his head to one side--an habitual gesture with Charteris--and +the colonel noted, as he had often done before, how extraordinarily +reminiscent Jack was of a dried-up, quizzical black parrot. Said +Charteris: + +"I love to serve that legend. I love to prattle of 'ole Marster' and +'ole Miss,' and throw in a sprinkling of 'mockin'-buds' and 'hants' and +'horg-killing time,' and of sweeping animadversions as to all 'free +niggers'; and to narrate how 'de quality use ter cum'--you spell it +c-u-m because that looks so convincingly like dialect--'ter de gret +hous.' Those are the main ingredients. And, as for the unavoidable +love-interest--" Charteris paused, grinned, and pleasantly resumed: +"Why, jes arter dat, suh, a hut Yankee cap'en, whar some uv our folks +done shoot in de laig, wuz lef on de road fer daid--a quite notorious +custom on the part of all Northern armies--un Young Miss had him fotch +up ter de gret hous, un nuss im same's he one uv de fambly, un dem two +jes fit un argufy scanlous un never spicion huccum dey's in love wid +each othuh till de War's ovuh. And there you are! I need not mention +that during the tale's progress it is necessary to introduce at least +one favorable mention of Lincoln, arrange a duel 'in de low grouns' +immediately after day-break, and have the family silver interred in the +back garden, because these points will naturally suggest themselves." + +"Jack, Jack!" the colonel cried, "it is an ill bird that fouls its own +nest." + +"But, believe me, I don't at heart," said Charteris, in a queer earnest +voice. "There is a sardonic imp inside me that makes me jeer at the +commoner tricks of the trade--and yet when I am practising that trade, +when I am writing of those tender-hearted, brave and gracious men and +women, and of those dear old darkies, I very often write with tears in +my eyes. I tell you this with careful airiness because it is true and +because it would embarrass me so horribly if you believed it." + +Then he was off upon another tack. "And wherein, pray, have I harmed +Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis +and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons--and by having called +this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it +flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that, +I take it, is the true secret of romance--to induce the momentary +delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and +prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a +matter of fact, all human passions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I +find. Were it not for the police court records, I would pessimistically +insist that all of us elect to love one person and to hate another with +very much the same enthusiasm that we display in expressing a preference +for rare roast beef as compared with the outside slice. Oh, really, +Rudolph, you have no notion how salutary it is to the self-esteem of us +romanticists to run across, even nowadays, an occasional breach of the +peace. For then sometimes--when the coachman obligingly cuts the +butler's throat in the back-alley, say--we actually presume to think for +a moment that our profession is almost as honest as that of making +counterfeit money...." + +The colonel did not interrupt his brief pause of meditation. Then the +novelist said: + +"Why, no; if I were ever really to attempt a tale of Lichfield, I would +not write a romance but a tragedy. I think that I would call my tragedy +_Futility_, for it would mirror the life of Lichfield with unengaging +candor; and, as a consequence, people would complain that my tragedy +lacked sustained interest, and that its participants were inconsistent; +that it had no ordered plot, no startling incidents, no high endeavors, +and no especial aim; and that it was equally deficient in all +time-hallowed provocatives of either laughter or tears. For very few +people would understand that a life such as this, when rightly viewed, +is the most pathetic tragedy conceivable." + +"Oh, come, now, Jack! come, recollect that your reasoning powers are +almost as worthy of employment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not +quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in +Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty +much as they come; but we meddle with nobody, and, after all, we don't +do any especial harm." + +"We don't do anything whatever in especial, Rudolph. That would be +precisely the theme of my story of the real Lichfield if I were ever +bold enough to write it. There seems to be a sort of blight upon +Lichfield. Oh, yes! it would be unfair, perhaps, to contrast it with the +bigger Southern cities, like Richmond and Atlanta and New Orleans; but +even the inhabitants of smaller Southern towns are beginning to buy +excursion tickets, and thereby ascertain that the twentieth century has +really begun. Yes, it is only in Lichfield I can detect the raw stuff of +a genuine tragedy; for, depend upon it, Rudolph, the most pathetic +tragedy in life is to get nothing in particular out of it." + +"But, for my part, I don't see what you are driving at," the colonel +stoutly said. + +And Charteris only laughed. "And I hardly expected you to do so, +Rudolph--or not yet, at least." + + + + +PART FIVE - SOUVENIR + + "I am contented by remembrances-- + Dreams of dead passions, wraiths of vanished times, + Fragments of vows, and by-ends of old rhymes-- + Flotsam and jetsam tumbling in the seas + Whereon, long since, put forth our argosies + Which, bent on traffic in the Isles of Love, + Lie foundered somewhere in some firth thereof, + Encradled by eternal silences." + + "Thus, having come to naked bankruptcy, + Let us part friends, as thrifty tradesmen do + When common ventures fail, for it may be + These battered oaths and rhymes may yet ring true + To some fair woman's hearing, so that she + Will listen and think of love, and I of you." + +F. Ashcroft Wheeler. _Revisions_. + + + + +I + + +When the _Reliance_, the _Constitution_ and the _Columbia_ were holding +trial races off Newport to decide which one of these yachts should +defend the _America's_ cup; when the tone of the Japanese press as to +Russia's actions in Manchuria was beginning to grow ominous; when the +Jews of America were drafting a petition to the Czar; and when it was +rumored that the health of Pope Leo XIII was commencing to fail:--at +this remote time, the Musgraves gave their first house-party. + +And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted and admired the apparent +unconcern with which John Charteris and Clarice Pendomer encountered at +Matocton. And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted with approval the +intimacy which was, obviously, flourishing between the little novelist +and Patricia. + +Also Colonel Musgrave had presently good reason to lament a contretemps, +over which he was sulking when Mrs. Pendomer rustled to her seat at the +breakfast-table, with a shortness of breath that was partly due to the +stairs, and in part attributable to her youthful dress, which fitted a +trifle too perfectly. + +"Waffles?" said Mrs. Pendomer. "At my age and weight the first is an +experiment and the fifth an amiable indiscretion of which I am +invariably guilty. Sugar, please." She yawned, and reached a +generously-proportioned arm toward the sugar-bowl. "Yes, that will do, +Pilkins." + +Colonel Musgrave--since the remainder of his house-party had already +breakfasted--raised his fine eyes toward the chandelier, and sighed, as +Pilkins demurely closed the dining-room door. + +Leander Pilkins--butler for a long while now to the Musgraves of +Matocton--would here, if space permitted, be the subject of an encomium. +Leander Pilkins was in Lichfield considered to be, upon the whole, the +handsomest man whom Lichfield had produced; for this quadroon's skin was +like old ivory, and his profile would have done credit to an emperor. +His terrapin is still spoken of in Lichfield as people in less favored +localities speak of the Golden Age, and his mayonnaise (boasts +Lichfield) would have compelled an Olympian to plead for a second +helping. For the rest, his deportment in all functions of butlership is +best described as super-Chesterfieldian; and, indeed, he was generally +known to be a byblow of Captain Beverley Musgrave's, who in his day was +Lichfield's arbiter as touched the social graces. And so, no more of +Pilkins. + +Mrs. Pendomer partook of chops. "Is this remorse," she queried, "or a +convivially induced requirement for bromides? At this unearthly hour of +the morning it is very often difficult to disentangle the two." + +"It is neither," said Colonel Musgrave, and almost snappishly. + +Followed an interval of silence. "Really," said Mrs. Pendomer, and as +with sympathy, "one would think you had at last been confronted with one +of your thirty-seven pasts--or is it thirty-eight, Rudolph?" + +Colonel Musgrave frowned disapprovingly at her frivolity; he swallowed +his coffee, and buttered a superfluous potato. "H'm!" said he; "then you +know?" + +"I know," sighed she, "that a sleeping past frequently suffers from +insomnia." + +"And in that case," said he, darkly, "it is not the only sufferer." + +Mrs. Pendomer considered the attractions of a third waffle--a mellow +blending of autumnal yellows, fringed with a crisp and irresistible +brown, that, for the moment, put to flight all dreams and visions of +slenderness. + +"And Patricia?" she queried, with a mental hiatus. + +Colonel Musgrave flushed. + +"Patricia," he conceded, with mingled dignity and sadness, "is, after +all, still in her twenties----" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pendomer, with a dryness which might mean anything or +nothing; "she _was_ only twenty-one when she married you." + +"I mean," he explained, with obvious patience, "that at her age she--not +unnaturally--takes an immature view of things. Her unspoiled purity," +he added, meditatively, "and innocence and general unsophistication are, +of course, adorable, but I can admit to thinking that for a journey +through life they impress me as excess baggage." + +"Patricia," said Mrs. Pendomer, soothingly, "has ideals. And ideals, +like a hare-lip or a mission in life, should be pitied rather than +condemned, when our friends possess them; especially," she continued, +buttering her waffle, "as so many women have them sandwiched between +their last attack of measles and their first imported complexion. No one +of the three is lasting, Rudolph." + +"H'm!" said he. + +There was another silence. The colonel desperately felt that matters +were not advancing. + +"H'm!" said she, with something of interrogation in her voice. + +"See here, Clarice, I have known you----" + +"You have not!" cried she, very earnestly; "not by five years!" + +"Well, say for some time. You are a sensible woman----" + +"A man," Mrs. Pendomer lamented, parenthetically, "never suspects a +woman of discretion, until she begins to lose her waist." + +"--and I am sure that I can rely upon your womanly tact, and finer +instincts,--and that sort of thing, you know--to help me out of a deuce +of a mess." + +Mrs. Pendomer ate on, in an exceedingly noncommittal fashion, as he +paused, inquiringly. + +"She has been reading some letters," said he, at length; "some letters +that I wrote a long time ago." + +"In the case of so young a girl," observed Mrs. Pendomer, with perfect +comprehension, "I should have undoubtedly recommended a judicious +supervision of her reading-matter." + +"She was looking through an old escritoire," he explained; "Jack +Charteris had suggested that some of my father's letters--during the +War, you know--. might be of value--" + +He paused, for Mrs. Pendomer appeared on the verge of a question. + +But she only said, "So it was Mr. Charteris who suggested Patricia's +searching the desk. Ah, yes! And then--?" + +"And it was years ago--and just the usual sort of thing, though it may +have seemed from the letters--Why, I hadn't given the girl a thought," +he cried, in virtuous indignation, "until Patricia found the +letters--and read them!" + +"Naturally," she assented--"yes,--just as I read George's." + +The smile with which she accompanied this remark, suggested that both +Mr. Pendomer's correspondence and home life were at times of an +interesting nature. + +"I had destroyed the envelopes when she returned them," continued +Colonel Musgrave, with morose confusion of persons. "Patricia doesn't +even know who the girl was--her name, somehow, was not mentioned." + +"'Woman of my heart'--'Dearest girl in all the world,'" quoted Mrs. +Pendomer, reminiscently, "and suchlike tender phrases, scattered in with +a pepper-cruet, after the rough copy was made in pencil, and dated just +'Wednesday,' or 'Thursday,' of course. Ah, you were always very careful, +Rudolph," she sighed; "and now that makes it all the worse, because--as +far as all the evidence goes--these letters may have been returned +yesterday." + +"Why--!" Colonel Musgrave pulled up short, hardly seeing his way clear +through the indignant periods on which he had entered. "I declined," +said he, somewhat lamely, "to discuss the matter with her, in her +present excited and perfectly unreasonable condition." + +Mrs. Pendomer's penciled eyebrows rose, and her lips--which were quite +as red as there was any necessity for their being--twitched. + +"Hysterics?" she asked. + +"Worse!" groaned Colonel Musgrave; "patient resignation under unmerited +affliction!" + +He had picked up a teaspoon, and he carefully balanced it upon his +forefinger. + +"There were certain phrases in these letters which were, somehow, +repeated in certain letters I wrote to Patricia the summer we were +engaged, and--not to put too fine a point upon it--she doesn't like it." + +Mrs. Pendomer smiled, as though she considered this not improbable; and +he continued, with growing embarrassment and indignation: + +"She says there must have been others"--Mrs. Pendomer's smile grew +reminiscent--"any number of others; that she is only an incident in my +life. Er--as you have mentioned, Patricia has certain notions--Northern +idiocies about the awfulness of a young fellow's sowing his wild oats, +which you and I know perfectly well he is going to do, anyhow, if he is +worth his salt. But she doesn't know it, poor little girl. So she won't +listen to reason, and she won't come downstairs--which," lamented +Rudolph Musgrave, plaintively, "is particularly awkward in a +house-party." + +He drummed his fingers, for a moment, on the table. + +"It is," he summed up, "a combination of Ibsen and hysterics, and +of--er, rather declamatory observations concerning there being one law +for the man and another for the woman, and Patricia's realization of the +mistake we both made--and all that sort of nonsense, you know, exactly +as if, I give you my word, she were one of those women who want to +vote." The colonel, patently, considered that feminine outrageousness +could go no farther. "And she is taking menthol and green tea and +mustard plasters and I don't know what all, in bed, prior to--to----" + +"Taking leave?" Mrs. Pendomer suggested. + +"Er--that was mentioned, I believe," said Colonel Musgrave. "But of +course she was only talking." + +Mrs. Pendomer looked about her; and, without, the clean-shaven lawns +and trim box-hedges were very beautiful in the morning sunlight; within, +the same sunlight sparkled over the heavy breakfast service, and gleamed +in the high walnut panels of the breakfast-room. She viewed the +comfortable appointments about her a little wistfully, for Mrs. +Pendomer's purse was not over-full. + +"Of course," said she, as in meditation, "there was the money." + +"Yes," said Rudolph Musgrave, slowly; "there was the money." + +He sprang to his feet, and drew himself erect. Here was a moment he must +give its full dramatic value. + +"Oh, no, Clarice, my marriage may have been an eminently sensible one, +but I love my wife. Oh, believe me, I love her very tenderly, poor +little Patricia! I have weathered some forty-seven birthdays; and I have +done much as other men do, and all that--there have been flirtations and +suchlike, and--er--some women have been kinder to me than I deserved. +But I love her; and there has not been a moment since she came into my +life I haven't loved her, and been--" he waved his hands now impotently, +almost theatrically--"sickened at the thought of the others." + +Mrs. Pendomer's foot tapped the floor whilst he spoke. When he had made +an ending, she inclined her head toward him. + +"Thank you!" said Mrs. Pendomer. + +Colonel Musgrave bit his lip; and he flushed. + +"That," said he, hastily, "was different." + +But the difference, whatever may have been its nature, was seemingly a +matter of unimportance to Mrs. Pendomer, who was in meditation. She +rested her ample chin on a much-bejeweled hand for a moment; and, when +Mrs. Pendomer raised her face, her voice was free from affectation. + +"You will probably never understand that this particular July day is a +crucial point in your life. You will probably remember it, if you +remember it at all, simply as that morning when Patricia found some +girl-or-another's old letters, and behaved rather unreasonably about +them. It was the merest trifle, you will think.... John Charteris +understands women better than you do, Rudolph." + +"I need not pretend at this late day to be as clever as Jack," the +colonel said, in some bewilderment. "But why not more succinctly state +that the Escurial is not a dromedary, although there are many flies in +France? For what on earth has Jack to do with crucial points and July +mornings?" + +"Why, I suppose, I only made bold to introduce his name for the sake of +an illustration, Rudolph. For the last person in the world to realize, +precisely, why any woman did anything is invariably the woman who did +it.... Yet there comes in every married woman's existence that time when +she realizes, suddenly, that her husband has a past which might be +taken as, in itself, a complete and rounded life--as a life which had +run the gamut of all ordinary human passions, and had become familiar +with all ordinary human passions a dishearteningly long while before she +ever came into that life. A woman never realizes that of her lover, +somehow. But to know that your husband, the father of your child, has +lived for other women a life in which you had no part, and never can +have part!--she realizes that, at one time or another, and--and it +sickens her." Mrs. Pendomer smiled as she echoed his phrase, but her +eyes were not mirthful. + +"Ah, she hungers for those dead years, Rudolph, and, though you devote +your whole remaining life to her, nothing can ever make up for them; and +she always hates those shadowy women who have stolen them from her. A +woman never, at heart, forgives the other women who have loved her +husband, even though she cease to care for him herself. For she +remembers--ah, you men forget so easily, Rudolph! God had not invented +memory when he created Adam; it was kept for the woman." + +Then ensued a pause, during which Rudolph Musgrave smiled down upon her, +irresolutely; for he abhorred "a scene," as his vernacular phrased it, +and to him Clarice's present manner bordered upon both the scenic and +the incomprehensible. + +"Ah!--you women!" he temporized. + +There was a glance from eyes whose luster time and irregular living had +conspired to dim. + +"Ah!--you men!" Mrs. Pendomer retorted. "And there we have the tragedy +of life in a nutshell!" + +Silence lasted for a while. The colonel was finding this matutinal talk +discomfortably opulent in pauses. + +"Rudolph, and has it never occurred to you that in marrying Patricia you +swindled her?" + +And naturally his eyebrows lifted. + +"Because a woman wants love." + +"Well, well! and don't I love Patricia?" + +"I dare say that you think you do. Only you have played at loving so +long you are really unable to love anybody as a girl has every right to +be loved in her twenties. Yes, Rudolph, you are being rather subtly +punished for the good times you have had. And, after all, the saddest +punishment is something that happens in us, not something which happens +to us." + +"I wish you wouldn't laugh, Clarice----" + +"I wish I didn't have to. For I would get far more comfort out of +crying, and I don't dare to, because of my complexion. It comes in a +round pasteboard box nowadays, you know, Rudolph, with French +mendacities all over the top--and my eyebrows come in a fat crayon, and +the healthful glow of my lips comes in a little porcelain tub." + +Mrs. Pendomer was playing with a teaspoon now, and a smile hovered about +the aforementioned lips. + +"And yet, do you remember, Rudolph," said she, "that evening at +Assequin, when I wore a blue gown, and they were playing _Fleurs +d'Amour_, and--you said--?" + +"Yes"--there was an effective little catch in his voice--"you were a +wonderful girl, Clarice--'my sunshine girl,' I used to call you. And +blue was always your color; it went with your eyes so exactly. And those +big sleeves they wore then--those tell-tale, crushable sleeves!--they +suited your slender youthfulness so perfectly! Ah, I remember it as +though it were yesterday!" + +Mrs. Pendomer majestically rose to her feet. + +"It was pink! And it was at the Whitebrier you said--what you said! +And--and you don't deserve anything but what you are getting," she +concluded, grimly. + +"I--it was so long ago," Rudolph Musgrave apologized, with mingled +discomfort and vagueness. + +"Yes," she conceded, rather sadly; "it was so long--oh, very long ago! +For we were young then, and we believed in things, and--and Jack +Charteris had not taken a fancy to me--" She sighed and drummed her +fingers on the table. "But women have always helped and shielded you, +haven't they, Rudolph? And now I am going to help you too, for you have +shown me the way. You don't deserve it in the least, but I'll do it." + + + + +II + + +Thus it shortly came about that Mrs. Pendomer mounted, in meditative +mood, to Mrs. Musgrave's rooms; and that Mrs. Pendomer, recovering her +breath, entered, without knocking, into a gloom where cologne and +menthol and the odor of warm rubber contended for mastery. For Patricia +had decided that she was very ill indeed, and was sobbing softly in bed. + +Very calmly, Mrs. Pendomer opened a window, letting in a flood of fresh +air and sunshine; very calmly, she drew a chair--a substantial +arm-chair--to the bedside, and, very calmly, she began: + +"My dear, Rudolph has told me of this ridiculous affair, and--oh, you +equally ridiculous girl!" + +She removed, with deft fingers, a damp and clinging bandage from about +Patricia's head, and patted the back of Patricia's hand, placidly. +Patricia was by this time sitting erect in bed, and her coppery hair was +thick about her face, which was colorless; and, altogether, she was very +rigid and very indignant and very pretty, and very, very young. + +"How dare he tell you--or anybody else!" she cried. + +"We are such old friends, remember," Mrs. Pendomer pleaded, and +rearranged the pillows, soothingly, about her hostess; "and I want to +talk to you quietly and sensibly." + +Patricia sank back among the pillows, and inhaled the fresh air, which, +in spite of herself, she found agreeable. "I--somehow, I don't feel very +sensible," she murmured, half sulky and half shame-faced. + +Mrs. Pendomer hesitated for a moment, and then plunged into the heart of +things. "You are a woman, dear," she said, gently, "though heaven knows +it must have been only yesterday you were playing about the nursery--and +one of the facts we women must face, eventually, is that man is a +polygamous animal. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is true. +Civilization may veneer the fact, but nothing will ever override it, not +even in these new horseless carriages. A man may give his wife the best +that is in him--his love, his trust, his life's work--but it is only the +best there is left. We give our hearts; men dole out theirs, as people +feed bread to birds, with a crumb for everyone. His wife has the +remnant. And the best we women can do is to remember we are credibly +informed that half a loaf is preferable to no bread at all." + +Her face sobered, and she added, pensively: "We might contrive a better +universe, we sister women, but this is not permitted us. So we must take +it as it is." + +Patricia stirred, as talking died away. "I don't believe it," said she; +and she added, with emphasis: "And, anyhow, I hate that nasty trollop!" + +"Ah, but you do believe it." Mrs. Pendomer's voice was insistent. "You +knew it years before you went into long frocks. That knowledge is, I +suppose, a legacy from our mothers." + +Patricia frowned, petulantly, and then burst into choking sobs. "Oh!" +she cried, "it's damnable! Some other woman has had what I can never +have. And I wanted it so!--that first love that means everything--the +love he gave her when I was only a messy little girl, with pig-tails and +too many hands and feet! Oh, that--that hell-cat! She's had everything!" + +There was an interval, during which Mrs. Pendomer smiled crookedly, and +Patricia continued to sob, although at lengthening intervals. Then, Mrs. +Pendomer lifted the packet of letters lying on the bed, and cleared her +throat. + +"H'm!" said she; "so this is what caused all the trouble? You don't +mind?" + +And, considering silence as equivalent to acquiescence, she drew out a +letter at hazard, and read aloud: + +"'Just a line, woman of all the world, to tell you ... but what have I +to tell you, after all? Only the old, old message, so often told that it +seems scarcely worth while to bother the postman about it. Just three +words that innumerable dead lips have whispered, while life was yet good +and old people were unreasonable and skies were blue--three words that +our unborn children's children will whisper to one another when we too +have gone to help the grasses in their growing or to nourish the +victorious, swaying hosts of some field of daffodils. Just three +words--that is my message to you, my lady.... Ah, it is weary waiting +for a sight of your dear face through these long days that are so much +alike and all so empty and colorless! My heart grows hungry as I think +of your great, green eyes and of the mouth that is like a little wound. +I want you so, O dearest girl in all the world! I want you.... Ah, time +travels very slowly that brings you back to me, and, meanwhile, I can +but dream of you and send you impotent scrawls that only vex me with +their futility. For my desire of you--' + +"The remainder," said Mrs. Pendomer, clearing her throat once more, +"appears to consist of insanity and heretical sentiments, in about equal +proportions, all written at the top of a boy's breaking voice. It isn't +Colonel Musgrave's voice--quite--is it?" + +During the reading, Patricia, leaning on one elbow, had regarded her +companion with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. "Now, you see!" she cried +indignantly; "he loved her! He was simply crazy about her." + +"Why, yes." Mrs. Pendomer replaced the letter, carefully, almost +caressingly, among its companions. "My dear, it was years ago. I think +time has by this wreaked a vengeance far more bitter than you could ever +plan on the woman who, after all, never thought to wrong you. For the +bitterest of all bitter things to a woman--to some women, at least--is +to grow old." + +She sighed, and her well-manicured fingers fretted for a moment with the +counterpane. + +"Ah, who will write the tragedy of us women who were 'famous Southern +beauties' once? We were queens of men while our youth lasted, and +diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us. But nothing was +expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much +of, and that is our tragedy. For very few things, my dear, are more +pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind +cannot--cannot, because of its very nature--reach to anything higher! +Middle-age strips her of everything--the admiration, the flattery, the +shallow merriment--all the little things that her little mind longs +for--and other women take her place, in spite of her futile, pitiful +efforts to remain young. And the world goes on as before, and there is a +whispering in the moonlit garden, and young people steal off for wholly +superfluous glasses of water, and the men give her duty dances, and she +is old--ah, so old!--under the rouge and inane smiles and dainty +fripperies that caricature her lost youth! No, my dear, you needn't envy +this woman! Pity her, my dear!" pleaded Clarice Pendomer, and with a +note of earnestness in her voice. + +"Such a woman," said Patricia, with distinctness, "deserves no pity." + +"Well," Mrs. Pendomer conceded, drily, "she doesn't get it. Probably, +because she always grows fat, from sheer lack of will-power to resist +sloth and gluttony--the only agreeable vices left her; and by no stretch +of the imagination can a fat woman be converted into either a pleasing +or heroic figure." + +Mrs. Pendomer paused for a breathing-space, and smiled, though not very +pleasantly. + +"It is, doubtless," said she, "a sight for gods--and quite certainly for +men--to laugh at, this silly woman striving to regain a vanished +frugality of waist. Yes, I suppose it is amusing--but it is also +pitiful. And it is more pitiful still if she has ever loved a man in the +unreasoning way these shallow women sometimes do. Men age so slowly; the +men a girl first knows are young long after she has reached +middle-age--yes, they go on dancing cotillions and talking nonsense in +the garden, long after she has taken to common-sense shoes. And the man +is still young--and he cares for some other woman, who is young and has +all that she has lost--and it seems so unfair!" said Mrs. Pendomer. + +Patricia regarded her for a moment. The purple eyes were alert, their +glance was hard. "You seem to know all about this woman," Patricia +began, in a level voice. "I have heard, of course, what everyone in +Lichfield whispers about you and Rudolph. I have even teased Rudolph +about it, but until to-day I had believed it was a lie." + +"It is often a mistake to indulge in uncommon opinions," said Mrs. +Pendomer. "You get more fun and interest out of it, I don't deny, but +the bill, my dear, is unconscionable." + +"So! you confess it!" + +"My dear, and who am I to stand aside like a coward and see you make a +mountain of this boy-and-girl affair--an affair which Rudolph and I had +practically forgotten--oh, years ago!--until to-day? Why--why, you +_can't_ be jealous of me!" Mrs. Pendomer concluded, half-mockingly. + +Patricia regarded her with deliberation. + +In the windy sunlight, Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but, +unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and +her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which +there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had +dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her +husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped +into the imbroglio--a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate love of +attention, which was, indeed, tolerably notorious; and Patricia's anger +against Rudolph Musgrave gave way to a rather contemptuous pity and a +half-maternal remorse for not having taken better care of him. + +"No," answered Mrs. Pendomer, to her unspoken thought; "no woman could +be seriously jealous of me. Yes, I dare say, I am _passée_ and vain and +frivolous and--harmless. But," she added, meditatively, "you hate me, +just the same." + +"My dear Mrs. Pendomer----" Patricia began, with cool courtesy; then +hesitated. "Yes," she conceded; "I dare say, it is unreasonable--but I +do hate you like the very old Nick." + +"Why, then," spoke Mrs. Pendomer, with cheerfulness, "everything is as +it should be." She rose and smiled. "I am sorry to say I must be leaving +Matocton to-day; the Ullwethers are very pressing, and I really don't +know how to get out of paying them a visit----" + +"So sorry to lose you," cooed Patricia; "but, of course, you know best. +I believe some very good people are visiting the Ullwethers nowadays?" +She extended the letters, blandly. "May I restore your property?" she +queried, with utmost gentleness. + +"Thanks!" Clarice Pendomer took them, and kissed her hostess, not +without tenderness, on the brow. "My dear, be kind to Rudolph. He--he is +rather an attractive man, you know,--and other women are kind to him. We +of Lichfield have always said that he and Jack Charteris were the most +dangerous men that even Lichfield has ever produced----" + +"Why, do people really find Mr. Charteris particularly attractive?" +Patricia demanded, so quickly and so innocently that Mrs. Pendomer could +not deny herself the glance of a charlatan who applauds his fellow's +legerdemain. + +And Patricia colored. + +"Oh, well--! You know how Lichfield gossips," said Mrs. Pendomer. + + + + +III + + +Colonel Musgrave had smoked a preposterous number of unsatisfying +cigarettes on the big front porch of Matocton whilst Mrs. Pendomer was +absent on her mission; and on her return, flushed and triumphant, he +rose in eloquent silence. + +"I've done it, Rudolph," said Mrs. Pendomer. + +"Done what?" he queried, blankly. + +"Restored what my incomprehensible lawyers call the _status quo_; +achieved peace with honor; carried off the spoils of war; and--in +short--arranged everything," answered Mrs. Pendomer, and sank into a +rustic chair, which creaked admonishingly. "And all," she added, +bringing a fan into play, "without a single falsehood. _I_ am not to +blame if Patricia has jumped at the conclusion that these letters were +written to me." + +"My word!" said Rudolph Musgrave, "your methods of restoring domestic +peace to a distracted household are, to say the least, original!" He +seated himself, and lighted another cigarette. + +"Oh, well, Patricia is not deaf, you know, and she has lived in +Lichfield quite a while." Mrs. Pendomer said abruptly, "I have half a +mind to tell you some of the things I know about Aline Van Orden." + +"Please don't," said Colonel Musgrave, "for I would inevitably beard you +on my own porch and smite you to the door-mat. And I am hardly young +enough for such adventures." + +"And poor Aline is dead! And the rest of us are middle-aged now, +Rudolph, and we go in to dinner with the veterans who call us 'Madam,' +and we are prominent in charitable enterprises.... But there was a time +when we were not exactly hideous in appearance, and men did many mad +things for our sakes, and we never lose the memory of that time. +Pleasant memories are among the many privileges of women. Yes," added +Mrs. Pendomer, meditatively, "we derive much the same pleasure from them +a cripple does from rearranging the athletic medals he once won, or a +starving man from thinking of the many excellent dinners he has eaten; +but we can't and we wouldn't part with them, nevertheless." + +Rudolph Musgrave, however, had not honored her with much attention, and +was puzzling over the more or less incomprehensible situation; and, +perceiving this, she ran on, after a little: + +"Oh, it worked--it worked beautifully! You see, she would always have +been very jealous of that other woman; but with me it is different. She +has always known that scandalous story about you and me. And she has +always known me as I am--a frivolous and--say, corpulent, for it is a +more dignified word--and generally unattractive chaperon; and she can't +think of me as ever having been anything else. Young people never really +believe in their elders' youth, Rudolph; at heart, they think we came +into the world with crow's-feet and pepper-and-salt hair, all complete. +So, she is only sorry for you now--rather as a mother would be for a +naughty child; as for me, she isn't jealous--but," sighed Mrs. Pendomer, +"she isn't over-fond of me." + +Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. "It isn't fair," said he; "the +letters were distinctly compromising. It isn't fair you should shoulder +the blame for a woman who was nothing to you. It isn't fair you should +be placed in such a false position." + +"What matter?" pleaded Mrs. Pendomer. "The letters are mine to burn, if +I choose. I have read one of them, by the way, and it is almost word for +word a letter you wrote me a good twenty years ago. And you re-hashed it +for Patricia's benefit too, it seems! You ought to get a mimeograph. Oh, +very well! It doesn't matter now, for Patricia will say nothing--or not +at least to you," she added. + +"Still----" he began. + +"Ah, Rudolph, if I want to do a foolish thing, why won't you let me? +What else is a woman for? They are always doing foolish things. I have +known a woman to throw a man over, because she had seen him without a +collar; and I have known another actually to marry a man, because she +happened to be in love with him. I have known a woman to go on wearing +pink organdie after she has passed forty, and I have known a woman to go +on caring for a man who, she knew, wasn't worth caring for, long after +he had forgotten. We are not brave and sensible, like you men. So why +not let me be foolish, if I want to be?" + +"If," said Colonel Musgrave in some perplexity, "I understand one word +of this farrago, I will be--qualified in various ways." + +"But you don't have to understand," she pleaded. + +"You mean--?" he asked. + +"I mean that I was always fond of Aline, anyhow." + +"Nonsense!" And he was conscious, with vexation, that he had undeniably +flushed. + +"I mean, then, I am a woman, and _I_ understand. Everything is as near +what it should be as is possible while Patricia is seeing so much of--we +will call it the artistic temperament." Mrs. Pendomer shrugged. "But if +I went on in that line you would believe I was jealous. And heaven knows +I am not the least bit so--with the unavoidable qualification that, +being a woman, I can't help rising superior to common-sense." + +He said, "You mean Jack Charteris--? But what on earth has he to do with +these letters?" + +"I don't mean any proper names at all. I simply mean you are not to undo +my work. It would only signify trouble and dissatisfaction and giving up +all this"--she waved her hand lightly toward the lawns of +Matocton,--"and it would mean our giving you up, for, you know, you +haven't any money of your own, Rudolph. Ah, Rudolph, we can't give you +up! We need you to lead our Lichfield germans, and to tell us naughty +little stories, and keep us amused. So _please_ be sensible, Rudolph." + +"Permit me to point out I firmly believe that silence is the perfectest +herald of joy," observed Colonel Musgrave. "Only I do _not_ understand +why you should have dragged John Charteris's name into this ludicrous +affair----" + +"You really do not understand----?" + +But Colonel Musgrave's handsome face declared very plainly that he did +not. + +"Well," Mrs. Pendomer reflected, "I dare say it is best, upon the whole, +you shouldn't. And now you must excuse me, for I am leaving for the +Ullwethers' to-day, and I shan't ever be invited to Matocton again, and +I must tell my maid to pack up. She is a little fool and it will break +her heart to be leaving Pilkins. All human beings are tediously alike. +But, allowing ample time for her to dispose of my best lingerie and of +her unavoidable lamentations, I ought to make the six-forty-five. I have +noticed that one usually does--somehow," said Mrs. Pendomer, and seemed +to smack of allegories. + +And yet it may have been because she knew--as who knew +better?--something of that mischief's nature which was now afoot. + + + + +IV + + +The colonel burned the malefic letters that afternoon. Indeed, the +episode set him to ransacking the desk in which Patricia had found +them--a desk which, as you have heard, was heaped with the miscellaneous +correspondence of the colonel's father dating back a half-century and +more. Much curious matter the colonel discovered there, for "Wild Will" +Musgrave's had been a full-blooded career. And over one packet of +letters, in particular, the colonel sat for a long while with an +unwontedly troubled face. + + + + +PART SIX - BYWAYS + + "Cry _Kismet!_ and take heart. Eros is gone, + Nor may we follow to that loftier air + Olympians breathe. Take heart, and enter where + A lighter Love, vine-crowned, laughs i' the sun, + Oblivious of tangled webs ill-spun + By ancient wearied weavers, for it may be + His guidance leads to lovers of such as we + And hearts so credulous as to be won. + + "Cry _Kismet!_ Put away vain memories + Of all old sorrows and of all old joys, + And learn that life is never quite amiss + So long as unreflective girls and boys + Remember that young lips were meant to kiss, + And hold that laughter is a seemly noise." + +PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._ + + + + +I + + +Patricia sat in the great maple-grove that stands behind Matocton, and +pondered over a note from her husband, who was in Lichfield +superintending the appearance of the July number of the _Lichfield +Historical Association's Quarterly Magazine_. Mr. Charteris lay at +her feet, glancing rapidly over a lengthy letter, which was from his +wife, in Richmond. + +The morning mail was just in, and Patricia had despatched Charteris for +her letters, on the plea that the woods were too beautiful to leave, and +that Matocton, in the unsettled state which marks the end of the week in +a house-party, was intolerable. + +She, undoubtedly, was partial to the grove, having spent the last ten +mornings there. Mr. Charteris had overrated her modest literary +abilities so far as to ask her advice in certain details of his new +book, which was to appear in the autumn, and they had found a vernal +solitude, besides being extremely picturesque, to be conducive to the +forming of really matured opinions. Moreover, she was assured that none +of the members of the house-party would misunderstand her motives; +people were so much less censorious in the country; there was something +in the pastoral purity of Nature, seen face to face, which brought out +one's noblest instincts, and put an end to all horrid gossip and +scandal-mongering. + +Didn't Mrs. Barry-Smith think so? And what was her real opinion of that +rumor about the Hardresses, and was the woman as bad as people said she +was? Thus had Patricia spoken in the privacy of her chamber, at that +hour when ladies do up their hair for the night, and discourse of +mysteries. It is at this time they are said to babble out their hearts +to one another; and so, beyond doubt, this must have been the real state +of the case. + +As Patricia admitted, she had given up bridge and taken to literature +only during the past year. She might more honestly have said within the +last two weeks. In any event, she now conversed of authors with a fitful +persistence like that of an ill-regulated machine. Her comments were +delightfully frank and original, as she had an unusually good memory. Of +two books she was apt to prefer the one with the wider margin, and she +was becoming sufficiently familiar with a number of poets to quote them +inaccurately. + +We have all seen John Charteris's portraits, and most of us have read +his books--or at least, the volume entitled _In Old Lichfield_, which +caused the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_ to apostrophize its author as a +"Child of Genius! whose ardent soul has sounded the mysteries of life, +whose inner vision sweeps over ever widening fields of thought, and +whose chiseled phrases continue patriotically to perpetuate the beauty +of Lichfield's past." But for present purposes it is sufficient to say +that this jewelsmith of words was slight and dark and hook-nosed, and +that his hair was thin, and that he was not ill-favored. It may be of +interest to his admirers--a growing cult--to add that his reason for +wearing a mustache in a period of clean-shaven faces was that, without +it, his mouth was not pleasant to look upon. + +"Heigho!" Patricia said, at length, with a little laugh; "it is very +strange that both of our encumbrances should arrive on the same day!" + +"It is unfortunate," Mr. Charteris admitted, lazily; "but the blessed +state of matrimony is liable to these mishaps. Let us be thankful that +my wife's whim to visit her aunt has given us, at least, two perfect, +golden weeks. Husbands are like bad pennies; and wives resemble the cat +whose adventures have been commemorated by one of our really popular +poets. They always come back." + +Patricia communed with herself, and to Charteris seemed, as she sat in +the chequered sunlight, far more desirable than a married woman has any +right to be. + +"I wish--" she began, slowly. "Oh, but, you know, it was positively +criminal negligence not to have included a dozen fairies among my +sponsors." + +"I too have desiderated this sensible precaution," said Charteris, and +laughed his utter comprehension. "But, after all," he said, and snapped +his fingers gaily, "we still have twenty-four hours, Patricia! Let us +forget the crudities of life, and say foolish things to each other. For +I am pastorally inclined this morning, Patricia; I wish to lie at your +feet and pipe amorous ditties upon an oaten reed. Have you such an +article about you, Patricia?" + +He drew a key-ring from his pocket, and pondered over it. + +"Or would you prefer that I whistle into the opening of this door-key, +to the effect that we must gather our rose-buds while we may, for Time +is still a-flying, fa-la, and that a drear old age, not to mention our +spouses, will soon descend upon us, fa-la-di-leero? A door-key is not +Arcadian, Patricia, but it makes a very creditable noise." + +"Don't be foolish, _mon ami_!" she protested, with an indulgent smile. +"I am unhappy." + +"Unhappy that I have chanced to fall in love with you, Patricia? It is +an accident which might befall any really intelligent person." + +She shrugged her shoulders, ruefully. + +"I have done wrong to let you talk to me as you have done of late. +I--oh, Jack, I am afraid!" + +Mr. Charteris meditated. Somewhere in a neighboring thicket a bird +trilled out his song--a contented, half-hushed song that called his mate +to witness how infinitely blest above all other birds was he. Mr. +Charteris heard him to the end, and languidly made as to applaud; then +Mr. Charteris raised his eyebrows. + +"Of your husband, Patricia?" he queried. + +"I--Rudolph doesn't bother about me nowadays sufficiently to--notice +anything." + +Mr. Charteris smiled. "Of my wife, Patricia?" + +"Good gracious, no! I have not the least doubt you will explain matters +satisfactorily to your wife, for I have always heard that practise makes +perfect." + +Mr. Charteris laughed--a low and very musical laugh. + +"Of me, then, Patricia?" + +"I--I think it is rather of myself I am afraid. Oh, I hate you when you +smile like that! You have evil eyes, Jack! Stop it! Quit hounding me +with your illicit fascinations." The hand she had raised in threatening +fashion fell back into her lap, and she shrugged her shoulders once +more. "My nerves are somewhat upset by the approaching prospect of +connubial felicity, I suppose. Really, though, _mon ami_, your conceit +is appalling." + +Charteris gave vent to a chuckle, and raised the door-key to his lips. + +"When you are quite through your histrionic efforts," he suggested, +apologetically, "I will proceed with my amorous pipings. Really, +Patricia, one might fancy you the heroine of a society drama, working up +the sympathies of the audience before taking to evil ways. Surely, you +are not about to leave your dear, good, patient husband, Patricia? +Heroines only do that on dark and stormy nights, and in an opera +toilette; wearing her best gown seems always to affect a heroine in that +way." + +Mr. Charteris, at this point, dropped the key-ring, and drew nearer to +her; his voice sank to a pleading cadence. + +"We are in Arcadia, Patricia; virtue and vice are contraband in this +charming country, and must be left at the frontier. Let us be adorably +foolish and happy, my lady, and forget for a little the evil days that +approach. Can you not fancy this to be Arcadia, Patricia?--it requires +the merest trifle of imagination. Listen very carefully, and you will +hear the hoofs of fauns rustling among the fallen leaves; they are +watching us, Patricia, from behind every tree-bole. They think you a +dryad--the queen of all the dryads, with the most glorious eyes and hair +and the most tempting lips in all the forest. After a little, shaggy, +big-thewed ventripotent Pan will grow jealous, and ravish you away from +me, as he stole Syrinx from her lover. You are very beautiful, Patricia; +you are quite incredibly beautiful. I adore you, Patricia. Would you +mind if I held your hand? It is a foolish thing to do, but it is +preëminently Arcadian." + +She heard him with downcast eyes; and her cheeks flushed a pink color +that was agreeable to contemplation. + +"Do--do you really care for me, Jack?" she asked, softly; then cried, +"No, no, you needn't answer--because, of course, you worship me madly, +unboundedly, distractedly. They all do, but you do it more convincingly. +You have been taking lessons at night-school, I dare say, at all sorts +of murky institutions. And, Jack, really, cross my heart, I always +stopped the others when they talked this way. I tried to stop you, too. +You know I did?" + +She raised her lashes, a trifle uncertainly, and withdrew her hand from +his, a trifle slowly. "It is wrong--all horribly wrong. I wonder at +myself, I can't understand how in the world I can be such a fool about +you. I must not be alone with you again. I must tell my +husband--everything," she concluded, and manifestly not meaning a word +of what she said. + +"By all means," assented Mr. Charteris, readily. "Let's tell my wife, +too. It will make things so very interesting." + +"Rudolph would be terribly unhappy," she reflected. + +"He would probably never smile again," said Mr. Charteris. "And my +wife--oh, it would upset Anne, quite frightfully! It is our altruistic, +nay, our bounden duty to save them from such misery." + +"I--I don't know what to do!" she wailed. + +"The obvious course," said he, after reflection, "is to shake off the +bonds of matrimony, without further delay. So let's elope, Patricia." + +Patricia, who was really unhappy, took refuge in flippancy, and laughed. + +"I make it a rule," said she, "never to elope on Fridays. Besides, now +I think of it, there is, Rudolph--Ah, Rudolph doesn't care a button's +worth about me, I know. The funny part is that he doesn't know it. He +has simply assumed he is devoted to me, because all respectable people +are devoted to their wives. I can assure you, _mon ami_, he would be a +veritable Othello, if there were any scandal, and would infinitely +prefer the bolster to the divorce-court. He would have us followed and +torn apart by wild policemen." + +Mr. Charteris meditated for a moment. + +"Rudolph, as you are perfectly aware, would simply deplore the terribly +lax modern notions in regard to marriage and talk to newspaper reporters +about this much--" he measured it between thumb and forefinger +--"concerning the beauty and chivalry of the South. He would +do nothing more. I question if Rudolph Musgrave would ever in any +circumstances be capable of decisive action." + +"Ah, don't make fun of Rudolph!" she cried, quickly. "Rudolph can't help +it if he is conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live +with. And for all that he so often plays the jackass-fool about women, +like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack--a well-meaning, clean and +dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer +too much, and you are making a fool of me, and--and that's why I like +you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good, +and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes a halo +sit comfortably. Now, Jack, you know I've tried to be good! I've never +let you kiss me, and I've never let you hold my hand--until to-day-- +and--and----" + +Patricia paused, and laughed. + +"But we were talking of Rudolph," she said, with a touch of weariness. +"Rudolph has all the virtues that a woman most admires until she +attempts to live in the same house with them." + +"I thank you," said Mr. Charteris, "for the high opinion you entertain +of my moral character." He bestowed a reproachful sigh upon her, and +continued: "At any rate, Rudolph Musgrave has been an unusually lucky +man--the luckiest that I know of." + +Patricia had risen as if to go. She turned her big purple eyes on him +for a moment. + +"You--you think so?" she queried, hesitatingly. + +Afterward she spread out her hands in a helpless gesture, and laughed +for no apparent reason, and sat down again. + +"Why?" said Patricia. + +It took Charteris fully an hour to point out all the reasons. + +Patricia told him very frankly that she considered him to be talking +nonsense, but she seemed quite willing to listen. + + + + +II + + +Sunset was approaching on the following afternoon when Rudolph Musgrave, +fresh from Lichfield,--whither, as has been recorded, the bringing out +of the July number of the _Lichfield Historical Associations Quarterly +Magazine_ had called him,--came out on the front porch at Matocton. He +had arrived on the afternoon train, about an hour previously, in time to +superintend little Roger's customary evening transactions with an +astounding quantity of bread and milk; and, Roger abed, his father, +having dressed at once for supper, found himself ready for that meal +somewhat in advance of the rest of the house-party. + +Indeed, only one of them was visible at this moment--a woman, who was +reading on a rustic bench some distance from the house, and whose back +was turned to him. The poise of her head, however, was not unfamiliar; +also, it is not everyone who has hair that is like a nimbus of +thrice-polished gold. + +Colonel Musgrave threw back his shoulders, and drew a deep breath. +Subsequently, with a fine air of unconcern, he inspected the view from +the porch, which was, in fact, quite worthy of his attention. +Interesting things have happened at Matocton--many events that have been +preserved in the local mythology, not always to the credit of the old +Musgraves, and a few which have slipped into a modest niche in history. +It was, perhaps, on these that Colonel Musgrave pondered so intently. + +Once the farthingaled and red-heeled gentry came in sluggish barges to +Matocton, and the broad river on which the estate faces was thick with +bellying sails; since the days of railroads, one approaches the mansion +through the maple-grove in the rear, and enters ignominiously by the +back-door. + +The house stands on a considerable elevation. The main portion, with its +hipped roof and mullioned windows, is very old, but the two wings that +stretch to the east and west are comparatively modern, and date back +little over a century. Time has mellowed them into harmony with the +major part of the house, and the kindly Virginia creeper has done its +utmost to conceal the fact that they are constructed of plebeian bricks +which were baked in this country; but Matocton was Matocton long before +these wings were built, and a mere affair of yesterday, such as the +Revolution, antedates them. They were not standing when Tarleton paid +his famous visit to Matocton. + +In the main hall, you may still see the stairs up which he rode on +horseback, and the slashes which his saber hacked upon the hand-rail. + +To the front of the mansion lies a close-shaven lawn, dotted with +sundry oaks and maples; and thence, the formal gardens descend in six +broad terraces. There is when summer reigns no lovelier spot than this +bright medley of squares and stars and triangles and circles--all Euclid +in flowerage--which glow with multitudinous colors where the sun +strikes. You will find no new flowers at Matocton, though. Here are +verbenas, poppies, lavender and marigolds, sweet-william, hollyhocks and +columbine, phlox, and larkspur, and meadowsweet, and heart's-ease, just +as they were when Thomasine Musgrave, Matocton's first châtelaine, was +wont to tend them; and of all floral parvenus the gardens are innocent. +Box-hedges mark the walkways. + +The seventh terrace was, until lately, uncultivated, the trees having +been cleared away to afford pasturage. It is now closely planted with +beeches, none of great size, and extends to a tangled thicket of +fieldpines and cedar and sassafras and blackberry bushes, which again +masks a drop of some ten feet to the river. + +The beach here is narrow; at high tide, it is rarely more than fifteen +feet in breadth, and is in many places completely submerged. Past this, +the river lapses into the horizon line without a break, save on an +extraordinarily clear day when Bigelow's Island may be seen as a dim +smudge upon the west. + +All these things, Rudolph Musgrave regarded with curiously deep interest +for one who had seen them so many times before. Then, with a shrug of +the shoulders, he sauntered forward across the lawn. He had planned +several appropriate speeches, but, when it came to the point of giving +them utterance, he merely held out his hand in an awkward fashion, and +said: + +"Anne!" + +She looked up from her reading. + +She did this with two red-brown eyes that had no apparent limits to +their depth. Her hand was soft; it seemed quite lost in the broad palm +of a man's hand. + +"Dear Rudolph," she said, as simply as though they had parted yesterday, +"it's awfully good to see you again." + +Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat, and sat down beside her. + +A moment later Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat once more. + +Then Mrs. Charteris laughed. It was a pleasant laugh--a clear, rippling +carol of clean mirth that sparkled in her eyes, and dimpled in her +wholesome cheeks. + +"So! do you find it very, very awkward?" + +"Awkward!" he cried. Their glances met in a flash of comprehension which +seemed to purge the air. Musgrave was not in the least self-conscious +now. He laughed, and lifted an admonitory forefinger. + +"Oh, good Cynara," he said, "I am not what I was. And so I cannot do it, +my dear--I really cannot possibly live up to the requirements of being a +Buried Past. In a proper story-book or play, I would have to come back +from New Zealand or the Transvaal, all covered with glory and epaulets, +and have found you in the last throes of consumption: instead, you have +fattened, Anne, which a Buried Past never does, and which shows a sad +lack of appreciation for my feelings. And I--ah, my dear, I must confess +that my hair is growing gray, and that my life has not been entirely +empty without you, and that I ate and enjoyed two mutton-chops at +luncheon, though I knew I should see you to-day. I am afraid we are +neither of us up to heroics, Anne. So let's be sensible and comfy, my +dear." + +"You brute!" she cried--not looking irreparably angry, yet not without a +real touch of vexation; "don't you know that every woman cherishes the +picture of her former lovers sitting alone in the twilight, and growing +lackadaisical over undying memories and faded letters? And you--you +approach me, after I don't dare to think how many years, as calmly as if +I were an old schoolmate of your mother's, and attempt to talk to me +about mutton-chops! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Rudolph +Musgrave. You might, at least, have started a little at seeing me, and +have clasped your hand to your heart, and have said, 'You, you!' or +something of the sort. I had every right to expect it." + +Mrs. Charteris pouted, and then trifled for a moment with the pages of +her book. + +"And--and I want to tell you that I am sorry for the way I spoke to +you--that night," she swiftly said. Anne did not look at him. "Women +don't understand things that are perfectly simple to men, I suppose--I +mean--that is, Jack said--" + +"That you ought to apologize? It was very like him"--and Colonel +Musgrave smiled to think how like John Charteris it was. "Jack is quite +wonderful," he observed. + +She looked up, saying impulsively, "Rudolph, you don't know how happy he +makes me." + +"Heartless woman, and would you tempt me to end the tragedy of my life +with a Shakesperian fifth act of poisonings and assassination? I spurn +you, temptress. For, after all, it was an unpleasantly long while ago we +went mad for each other," Musgrave announced, and he smiled. "I fancy +that the boy and girl we knew of are as dead now as Nebuchadnezzar. +'Marian's married, and I sit here alive and merry at'--well, not at +forty year, unluckily--" + +"If you continue in that heartless strain, I shall go into the house," +Mrs. Charteris protested. + +Her indignation was exaggerated, but it was not altogether feigned; +women cannot quite pardon a rejected suitor who marries and is content. +They wish him all imaginable happiness and prosperity, of course; and +they are honestly interested in his welfare; but it seems unexpectedly +callous in him. And besides his wife is so perfectly commonplace. + +Mrs. Charteris, therefore, added, with emphasis: "I am really +disgracefully happy." + +"Glad to hear it," said Musgrave, placidly. "So am I." + +"Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph, you are hopeless!" she sighed. "And you used to +make such a nice lover!" + +Mrs. Charteris looked out over the river, which was like melting gold, +and for a moment was silent. + +"I was frightfully in love with you, Rudolph," she said, as half in +wonder. "After--after that horrible time when my parents forced us to +behave rationally, I wept--oh, I must have wept deluges! I firmly +intended to pine away to an early grave. And that second time I liked +you too, but then--there was Jack, you see." + +"H'm!" said Colonel Musgrave; "yes, I see." + +"I want you to continue to be friends with Jack," she went on, and her +face lighted up, and her voice grew tender. "He has the artistic +temperament, and naturally that makes him sensitive, and a trifle +irritable at times. It takes so little to upset him, you see, for he +feels so acutely what he calls the discords of life. I think most men +are jealous of his talents; so they call him selfish and finicky and +conceited. He isn't really, you know. Only, he can't help feeling a +little superior to the majority of men, and his artistic temperament +leads him to magnify the lesser mishaps of life--such as the steak being +overdone, or missing a train. Oh, really, a thing like that worries him +as much as the loss of a fortune, or a death in the family, would upset +anyone else. Jack says there are no such things as trifles in a +harmonious and well-proportioned life, and I suppose that's true to men +of genius. Of course, I am rather a Philistine, and I grate on him at +times--that is, I used to, but he says I have improved wonderfully. And +so we are ridiculously happy, Jack and I." + +Musgrave cast about vainly for an appropriate speech. Then he +compromised with his conscience, and said: "Your husband is a very +clever man." + +"Isn't he?" She had flushed for pleasure at hearing him praised. Oh, +yes, Anne loved Jack Charteris! There was no questioning that; it was +written in her face, was vibrant in her voice as she spoke of him. + +"Now, really, Rudolph, aren't his books wonderful? I don't appreciate +them, of course, for I'm not clever, but I know you do. I don't see why +men think him selfish. I know better. You have to live with Jack to +really appreciate him. And every day I discover some new side of his +character that makes him dearer to me. He's so clever--and so noble. +Why, I remember--Well, before Jack made his first hit with _Astaroth's +Lackey_, he lived with his sister. They hadn't any money, and, of +course, Jack couldn't be expected to take a clerkship or anything like +that, because business details make his head ache, poor boy. So, his +sister taught school, and he lived with her. They were very happy--his +sister simply adores him, and I am positively jealous of her +sometimes--but, unfortunately, the bank in which she kept her money +failed one day. I remember it was just before he asked me to marry him, +and told me, in his dear, laughing manner, that he hadn't a penny in +the world, and that we would have to live on bread and cheese and +kisses. Of course, I had a plenty for us both, though, so we weren't +really in danger of being reduced to that. Well, I wanted to make his +sister an allowance. But Jack pointed out, with considerable reason, +that one person could live very comfortably on an income that had +formerly supported two. He said it wasn't right I should be burdened +with the support of his family. Jack was so sensitive, you see, lest +people might think he was making a mercenary marriage, and that his +sister was profiting by it. Now, I call that one of the noblest things I +ever heard of, for he is devotedly attached to his sister, and, +naturally, it is a great grief to him to see her compelled to work for a +living. His last book was dedicated to her, and the dedication is one of +the most tender and pathetic things I ever read." + +Musgrave was hardly conscious of what she was saying. She was not +particularly intelligent, this handsome, cheery woman, but her voice, +and the richness and sweetness of it, and the vitality of her laugh, +contented his soul. + +Anne was different; the knowledge came again to him quite simply that +Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a little +different from all other people--even Patricia Musgrave. He had no +desire to tell Anne Charteris of this, no idea that it would affect in +any way the tenor of his life. He merely accepted the fact that she was, +after all, Anne Willoughby, and that her dear presence seemed, somehow, +to strengthen and cheer and comfort and content beyond the reach of +expression. + +Yet Musgrave recognized her lack of cleverness, and liked and admired +her none the less. A vision of Patricia arose--a vision of a dainty, +shallow, Dresden-china face with a surprising quantity of vivid hair +about it. Patricia was beautiful; and Patricia was clever, in her +pinchbeck way. But Rudolph Musgrave doubted very much if her mocking +eyes now ever softened into that brooding, sacred tenderness he had seen +in Anne's eyes; and he likewise questioned if a hurried, happy thrill +ran through Patricia's voice when Patricia spoke of her husband. + +"You have unquestionably married an unusual man," Musgrave said. "I--by +Jove, you know, I fancy my wife finds him almost as attractive as you +do." + +"Ah, Rudolph, I can't fancy anyone whom--whom you loved caring for +anyone else. Don't I remember, sir, how irresistible you can be when you +choose?" + +Anne laughed, and raised plump hands to heaven. + +"Really, though, women pursue him to a perfectly indecent extent. I have +to watch over him carefully; not that I distrust him, of course, +for--dear Jack!--he is so devoted to me, and cares so little for other +women, that Joseph would seem in comparison only a depraved _roué_. But +the _women_--why, Rudolph, there was an Italian countess at Rome--the +impudent minx!--who actually made me believe--However, Jack +explained all that, after I had made both a spectacle and a nuisance of +myself, and he had behaved so nobly in the entire affair that for days +afterwards I was positively limp with repentance. Then in Paris that +flighty Mrs. Hardress--but he explained that, too. Some women are +shameless, Rudolph," Mrs. Charteris concluded, and sighed her pity for +them. + +"Utterly so," Musgrave assented, gravely. + +He was feeling a thought uncomfortable. To him the place had grown +portentous. The sun was low, and the long shadows of the trees were +black on the dim lawn. People were assembling for supper, and passing to +and fro under low-hanging branches; and the gaily-colored gowns of the +women glimmered through a faint blue haze like that with which Boucher +and Watteau and Fragonard loved to veil, and thereby to make wistful, +somehow, the antics of those fine parroquet-like manikins who figure in +their _fêtes galantes._ + +Inside the house, someone was playing an unpleasant sort of air on the +piano--an air which was quite needlessly creepy and haunting and +insistent. It all seemed like a grim bit out of a play. The tenderness +and pride that shone in Anne's eyes as she boasted of her happiness +troubled Rudolph Musgrave. He had a perfectly unreasonable desire to +carry her away, by force, if necessary, and to protect her from clever +people, and to buy things for her. + +"So, I am an old, old married woman now, and--and I think in some ways +I suit Jack better than a more brilliant person might. I am glad your +wife has taken a fancy to him. And I want you to profit by her example. +Jack says she is one of the most attractive women he ever met. He asked +me to-day why I didn't do my hair like hers. She must make you very +happy, Rudolph?" + +"My wife," Colonel Musgrave said, "is in my partial opinion, a very +clever and very beautiful woman." + +"Yes; cleverness and beauty are sufficient to make any man happy, I +suppose," Anne hazarded. "Jack says, though--_Are_ cleverness and beauty +the main things in life, Rudolph?" + +"Undoubtedly," he protested. + +"Now, that," she said, judicially, "shows the difference in men. Jack +says a man loves a woman, not for her beauty or any other quality she +possesses, but just because she is the woman he loves and can't help +loving." + +"Ah! I dare say that is the usual reason. Yes," said Colonel +Musgrave,--"because she is the woman he loves and cannot help loving!" + +Anne clapped her hands. "Ah, so I have penetrated your indifference at +last, sir!" + +Impulsively, she laid her hand upon his arm, and spoke with earnestness. +"Dear Rudolph, I am so glad you've found the woman you can really love. +Jack says there is only one possible woman in the world for each man, +and that only in a month of Sundays does he find her." + +"Yes." said Musgrave. He had risen, and was looking down in friendly +fashion into her honest, lovely eyes. "Yes, there is only one possible +woman. And--yes, I think I found her, Anne, some years ago." + + + + +III + + +Thus it befell that all passed smoothly with Rudolph Musgrave and Anne +Charteris, with whom he was not in the least in love any longer (he +reflected), although in the nature of things she must always seem to him +a little different from all other people. + +And it befell, too, that the following noon--this day being a Sunday, +warm, clear, and somnolent--Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon +the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In +fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot +to serve against an enemy then harassing his majesty's equanimity and by +him, revilingly, designated as Nothing-to-do. + +And so Anne made for Roger--as she had learned to do for her dead +son--in addition to a respectable navy of paper boats, a vast number of +"boxes" and "Nantucket sinks" and "picture frames" and "footballs." She +had used up the greater part of a magazine before the imp grew tired of +her novel accomplishments. + +For as he invidiously observed, "I can make them for myself now, most +as good as you, only I always tear the bottom of the boat when you pull +it out, and my sinks are kind of wobbly. And besides, I've made up a +story just like your husband gets money for doing. And if I had a +quarter I would buy that green and yellow snake in the toy-store window +and wiggle it at people and scare them into fits." + +"Sonnikins," said Colonel Musgrave, "suppose you tell us the story, and +then we will see if it is really worth a quarter, and try to save you +from this unblushing mendicancy." + +"Well, God bless Father and Mother and little cousins--Oh, no, that's +what I say at night." Roger's voice now altered, assuming shrill +singsong cadences. His pensive gravity would have appeared excessive if +manifested by the Great Sphinx. "What I meant to say was that once upon +a time when the Battle of Gettysburg was going on and houses were being +robbed and burned, and my dear grandfather was being shot through the +heart, a certain house, where the richest man in town lived, was having +feast and merriment, never dreaming of any harm, or thinking of their +little child Rachel, who was on the front porch watching the battle and +screaming with joy at every man that fell dead. One dark-faced man was +struck with a bullet and was hurt. He saw the child laughing at him and +his heart was full of revenge. So that night, when all had gone to bed, +the old dark-faced man went softly in the house and got the little girl +and set the house on fire. And he carried her out in the mountains, and +is that worth a quarter?" + +"Good heavens, no!" said Anne. "How dare you leave us in such harrowing +suspense?" + +"Well, a whole lot more happened, because all the while Rachel was +asleep. When she woke up, she did not know where under the sun she was. +So she walked along for about an hour and came to a little village, and +after a few minutes she came to a large rock, and guess who she met? She +met her father, and when he saw her he hugged her so hard that when he +got through she did not have any breath left in her. And they walked +along, and after a while they came to the wood, and it was now about six +o'clock, and it was very dark, and just then nine robbers jumped out +from behind the trees, and they took a pistol and shot Rachel's father, +and the child fainted. Her papa was dead, so she dug a hole and buried +him, and went right back home. And of course that was all, and if I had +that snake, I wouldn't try to scare you with it, father, anyhow." + +So Colonel Musgrave gave his son a well-earned coin, as the colonel +considered, and it having been decreed, "Now, father, _you_ tell a +story," obediently read aloud from a fat red-covered book. The tale was +of the colonel's selecting, and it dealt with a shepherdess and a +chimney-sweep. + +"And so," the colonel perorated, "the little china people remained +together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and +continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces--And +the tale is a parable, my son. You will find that out some day. I wish +you didn't have to." + +"But is that all, father?" + +"You will find it rather more than enough, sonnikins, when you begin to +interpret. Yes, that is all. Only you are to remember always that they +climbed to the very top of the chimney, where they could see the stars, +before they decided to go back and live upon the parlor table under the +brand-new looking-glass. For the stars are disconcertingly unconcerned +when you have climbed to them, and so altogether unimpressed by your +achievement that it is the nature of all china people to slink home +again, precisely as your Rachel did--and as Mrs. Charteris will assure +you." + +"I?" said Anne. "Now, honestly, Rudolph, I was thinking you ought not to +let him sit upon the grass, because he really has a cold. And if I were +you, I would give him a good dose of castor-oil to-night. Some people +give it in lemon-juice, I know, but I found with my boy that peppermint +is rather less disagreeable. And you could easily send somebody over to +the store at the station----" + +Anne broke off short. "Was I being inadequate again? I am sorry, but +with children you never know what a cold may lead to, and I really do +not believe it good for him to sit in this damp grass." + +"Sonnikins," said Rudolph Musgrave, "you had better climb up into my +lap, before you and I are Podsnapped from the universe by the only +embodiment of common-sense just now within our reach." + +He patted the boy's head and latterly resumed: "I am afraid of you, +Anne. Whenever I am imagining vain things or stitching romantic +possibilities, like embroideries, about the fabric of my past, I always +find the real you in my path, as undeniable as a gas-bill. I don't +believe you ever dare to think, because there is no telling what it +might lead to. You are simply unassailably armored by the courage of +other people's convictions." + +Her candid eyes met his over the boy's bright head. "And what in the +world are you talking about?" + +"I am lamenting. I am rending the air and beating my breast on account +of your obstinate preference for being always in the right. I do wish +you would endeavor to impersonate a human being a trifle more +convincingly----" + +But the great gong, booming out for luncheon, interrupted him at this +point, and Colonel Musgrave was never permitted to finish his complaint +against Anne's unimaginativeness. + + + + +IV + + +On that same Sunday morning, while Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave +contended with little Roger's boredom on the lawn before Matocton, +Patricia and Charteris met by accident on the seventh terrace of the +gardens. Patricia had mentioned casually at the breakfast-table that she +intended to spend the forenoon on this terrace unsabbatically making +notes for a paper on "The Symbolism of Dante," which she was to read +before the Lichfield Woman's Club in October; but Mr. Charteris had not +overheard her. + +He was seated on the front porch, working out a somewhat difficult point +in his new book, when it had first occurred to him that this particular +terrace would be an inspiring and appropriate place in which to think +the matter over, undisturbed, he said. And it was impossible he should +have known that anyone was there, as the seventh terrace happens to be +the only one that, being planted with beech-trees, is completely +screened from observation. From the house, you cannot see anything that +happens there. + +It was a curious accident, though. It really seemed, now that Patricia +had put an ending to their meetings in the maple-grove, Fate was +conspiring to bring them together. + +However, as Mr. Charteris pointed out, there could be no possible +objection to this conspiracy, since they had decided that their +friendship was to be of a purely platonic nature. It was a severe trial +to him, he confessed, to be forced to put aside certain dreams he had +had of the future--mad dreams, perhaps, but such as had seemed very dear +and very plausible to his impractical artistic temperament. + +Still, it heartened him to hope that their friendship--since it was to +be no more--might prove a survival, or rather a veritable renaissance, +of the beautiful old Greek spirit in such matters. And, though the blind +chance that mismanaged the world had chained them to uncongenial, though +certainly well-meaning, persons, this was no logical reason why he and +Patricia should be deprived of the pleasures of intellectual +intercourse. Their souls were too closely akin. + +For Mr. Charteris admitted that his soul was Grecian to the core, and +out of place and puzzled and very lonely in a sordid, bustling world; +and he assured Patricia--she did not object if he called her +Patricia?--that her own soul possessed all the beauty and purity and +calm of an Aphrodite sculptured by Phidias. It was such a soul as Horace +might have loved, as Theocritus might have hymned in glad Greek song. +Patricia flushed, and dissented somewhat. + +"Frankly, _mon ami_," she said, "you are far too attractive for your +company to be quite safe. You are such an adept in the nameless little +attentions that women love--so profuse with lesser sugar-plums of speech +and action--that after two weeks one's husband is really necessary as an +antidote. Sugar-plums are good, but, like all palatable things, +unwholesome. So I shall prescribe Rudolph's company for myself, to ward +off an attack of moral indigestion. I am very glad he has come +back--really glad," she added, conscientiously. "Poor old Rudolph! what +between his interminable antiquities and those demented sections of the +alphabet--What are those things, _mon ami_, that are always going up and +down in Wall Street?" + +"Elevators?" Mr. Charteris suggested. + +"Oh, you jay-bird! I mean those N.P.'s and N.Y.C.'s and those other +letters that are always having flurries and panics and passed dividends. +They keep him incredibly busy." + +And she sighed, tolerantly. Patricia had come within the last two weeks +to believe that she was neglected, if not positively ill-treated, by her +husband; and she had no earthly objection to Mr. Charteris thinking +likewise. Her face expressed patient resignation now, as they walked +under the close-matted foliage of the beech-trees, which made a +pleasant, sun-flecked gloom about them. + +Patricia removed her hat--the morning really was rather close--and +paused where a sunbeam fell upon her copper-colored hair, and glorified +her wistful countenance. She sighed once more, and added a finishing +touch to the portrait of a _femme incomprise_. + +"Pray, don't think, _mon ami_," she said very earnestly, "that I am +blaming Rudolph! I suppose no wife can ever hope to have any part in her +husband's inner life." + +"Not in her own husband's, of course," said Charteris, cryptically. + +"No, for while a woman gives her heart all at once, men crumble theirs +away, as one feeds bread to birds--a crumb to this woman, a crumb to +that--and such a little crumb, sometimes! And his wife gets what is left +over." + +"Pray, where did you read that?" said Charteris. + +"I didn't read it anywhere. It was simply a thought that came to me," +Patricia lied, gently. "But don't let's try to be clever. Cleverness is +always a tax, but before luncheon it is an extortion. Personally, it +makes me feel as if I had attended a welsh-rabbit supper the night +before. Your wife must be very patient." + +"My wife," cried Charteris, in turn resolved to screen an unappreciative +mate, "is the most dear and most kind-hearted among the Philistines. And +yet, at times, I grant you--" + +"Oh, but, of course!" Patricia said impatiently. "I don't for a moment +question that your wife is an angel." + +"And why?" His eyebrows lifted, and he smiled. + +"Why, wasn't it an angel," Patricia queried, all impishness now, "who +kept the first man and woman out of paradise?" + +"If--if I thought you meant that----!" he cried; and then he shrugged +his shoulders. "My wife's virtues merit a better husband than Fate has +accorded her. Anne is the best woman I have ever known." + +Patricia was not unnaturally irritated. After all, one does not take the +trouble to meet a man accidentally in a plantation of young beech-trees +in order to hear him discourse of his wife's good qualities; and +besides, Mr. Charteris was speaking in a disagreeably solemn manner, +rather as if he fancied himself in a cathedral. + +Therefore Patricia cast down her eyes again, and said: + +"Men of genius are so rarely understood by their wives." + +"We will waive the question of genius." Mr. Charteris laughed heartily, +but he had flushed with pleasure. + +"I suppose," he continued, pacing up and down with cat-like fervor, +"that matrimony is always more or less of a compromise--like two +convicts chained together trying to catch each other's gait. After a +while, they succeed to a certain extent; the chain is still heavy, of +course, but it does not gall them as poignantly as it used to do. And I +fear the artistic temperament is not suited to marriage; its capacity +for suffering is too great." + +Mr. Charteris caught his breath in shuddering fashion, and he paused +before Patricia. After a moment he grasped her by both wrists. + +"We are chained fast enough, my lady," he cried, bitterly, "and our +sentence is for life! There are green fields yonder, but our allotted +place is here in the prison-yard. There is laughter yonder in the +fields, and the scent of wild flowers floats in to us at times when we +are weary, and the whispering trees sway their branches over the +prison-wall, and their fruit is good to look on, and they hang within +reach--ah, we might reach them very easily! But this is forbidden fruit, +my lady; and it is not included in our wholesome prison-fare. And so +don't think of it! We have been happy, you and I, for a little. We +might--don't think of it! Don't dare think of it! Go back and help your +husband drag his chain; it galls him as sorely as it does you. It galls +us all. It is the heaviest chain was ever forged; but we do not dare +shake it off!" + +"I--oh, Jack, Jack, don't you dare to talk to me like that! We must be +brave. We must be sensible." Patricia, regardless of her skirts, sat +down upon the ground, and produced a pocket-handkerchief. "I--oh, what +do you mean by making me so unhappy?" she demanded, indignantly. + +"Ah, Patricia," he murmured, as he knelt beside her, "how can you hope +to have a man ever talk to you in a sane fashion? You shouldn't have +such eyes, Patricia! They are purple and fathomless like the ocean, and +when a man looks into them too long his sanity grows weak, and sinks +and drowns in their cool depths, and the man must babble out his foolish +heart to you. Oh, but indeed, you shouldn't have such eyes, Patricia! +They are dangerous, and to ask anybody to believe in their splendor is +an insult to his intelligence, and besides, they are much too bright to +wear in the morning. They are bad form, Patricia." + +"We must be sensible," she babbled. "Your wife is here; my husband is +here. And we--we aren't children or madmen, Jack dear. So we really must +be sensible, I suppose. Oh, Jack," she cried, upon a sudden; "this isn't +honorable!" + +"Why, no! Poor little Anne!" + +Mr. Charteris's eyes grew tender for a moment, because his wife, in a +fashion, was dear to him. Then he laughed, very musically. + +"And how can a man remember honor, Patricia, when the choice lies +between honor and you? You shouldn't have such hair, Patricia! It is a +net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous +sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever +boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia. It is dishonorable to love +you, but I cannot think of that when I am with you and hear you speak. +And when I am not with you, just to remember that dear voice is enough +to set my pulses beating faster. Oh, Patricia, you shouldn't have such a +voice!" + +Charteris broke off in speech. "'Scuse me for interruptin'," the old +mulattress Virginia was saying, "but Mis' Pilkins sen' me say lunch +raydy, Miss Patrisy." + +Virginia seemed to notice nothing out-of-the-way. Having delivered her +message, she went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as +imperturbable as an idol's. But Patricia shivered. + +"She frightens me, _mon ami_. Yes, that old woman always gives me +gooseflesh, and I don't know why--because she is as deaf as a post--and +I simply can't get rid of her. She is a sort of symbol--she, and how +many others, I wonder!... Oh, well, let's hurry." + +So Mr. Charteris was never permitted to finish his complaint against +Patricia's voice. + +It was absolutely imperative they should be on time for luncheon; for, +as Patricia pointed out, the majority of people are censorious and lose +no opportunity for saying nasty things. They are even capable of +sneering at a purely platonic friendship which is attempting to preserve +the beautiful old Greek spirit. + + * * * * * + +She was chattering either of her plans for the autumn, or of Dante and +the discovery of his missing cantos, or else of how abominably Bob +Townsend had treated Rosalind Jemmett, and they had almost reached the +upper terrace--little Roger, indeed, his red head blazing in the +sunlight, was already sidling by shy instalments toward them--when +Patricia moaned inconsequently and for no ascertainable cause fainted. + +It was the first time for four years she had been guilty of such an +indiscretion, she was shortly afterward explaining to various members of +the Musgraves' house-party. It was the heat, no doubt. But since +everybody insisted upon it, she would very willingly toast them in +another bumper of aromatic spirits of ammonia. + +"Just look at that, Rudolph! you've spilt it all over your coat sleeve. +I do wish you would try to be a little less clumsy. Oh, well, I'm spruce +as a new penny now. So let's all go to luncheon." + + + + +V + + +Patricia had not been in perfect health for a long while. It seemed to +her, in retrospect, that ever since the agonies of little Roger's birth +she had been the victim of what she described as "a sort of +all-overishness." Then, too, as has been previously recorded, Patricia +had been operated upon by surgeons, and more than once.... + +"Good Lord!" as she herself declared, "it has reached the point that +when I see a turkey coming to the dinner-table to be carved I can't help +treating it as an ingénue." + +Yet for the last four years she had never fainted, until this. It +disquieted her. Then, too, awoke faint pricking memories of certain +symptoms ... which she had not talked about ... + +Now they alarmed her; and in consequence she took the next morning's +train to Lichfield. + + + + +VI + + +Mrs. Ashmeade, who has been previously quoted, now comes into the story. +She is only an episode. Still, her intervention led to peculiar +results--results, curiously enough, in which she was not in the least +concerned. She simply comes into the story for a moment, and then goes +out of it; but her part is an important one. + +She is like the watchman who announces the coming of Agamemnon; +Clytemnestra sharpens her ax at the news, and the fatal bath is prepared +for the _anax andron_. The tragedy moves on; the house of Atreus falls, +and the wrath of implacable gods bellows across the heavens; meanwhile, +the watchman has gone home to have tea with his family, and we hear no +more of him. There are any number of morals to this. + +Mrs. Ashmeade comes into the story on the day Patricia went to +Lichfield, and some weeks after John Charteris's arrival at Matocton. +Since then, affairs had progressed in a not unnatural sequence. Mr. +Charteris, as we have seen, attributed it to Fate; and, assuredly, there +must be a special providence of some kind that presides over country +houses--a freakish and whimsical providence, which hugely rejoices in +confounding one's sense of time and direction. + +Through its agency, people unaccountably lose their way in the simplest +walks, and turn up late and embarrassed for luncheon. At the end of the +evening, it brings any number of couples blinking out of the dark, with +no idea the clock was striking more than half-past nine. + +And it delights in sending one into the garden--in search of roses or +dahlias or upas-trees or something of the sort, of course--and thereby +causing one to encounter the most unlikely people, and really, quite the +last person one would have thought of meeting, as all frequenters of +house-party junketings will assure you. And thus is this special +house-party providence responsible for a great number of marriages, and, +it may be, for a large percentage of the divorce cases; for, if you +desire very heartily to see anything of another member of a house-party, +this lax-minded and easy-going providence will somehow always bring the +event about in a specious manner, and without any apparent thought of +the consequences. + +And the Musgraves' house-party was no exception. + +Mrs. Ashmeade, for reasons of her own, took daily note of this. The +others were largely engrossed by their own affairs; they did not +seriously concern themselves about the doings of their fellow-guests. +And, besides, if John Charteris manifestly sought the company of +Patricia Musgrave, her husband did not appear to be exorbitantly +dissatisfied or angry or even lonely; and, be this as it might, the fact +remained that Celia Reindan was at this time more than a little +interested in Teddy Anstruther; and Felix Kennaston was undeniably very +attentive to Kathleen Saumarez; and Tom Gelwix was quite certainly +devoting the major part of his existence to sitting upon the beach with +Rosalind Jemmett. + +For, in Lichfield at all events, everyone's house has at least a pane or +so of glass in it; and, if indiscriminate stone-throwing were ever to +become the fashion, there is really no telling what damage might ensue. +And so had Mrs. Ashmeade been a younger woman--had time and an adoring +husband not rendered her as immune to an insanity _à deux_ as any of us +may hope to be upon this side of saintship or senility--why, Mrs. +Ashmeade would most probably have remained passive, and Mrs. Ashmeade +would never have come into this story at all. + +As it was, she approached Rudolph Musgrave with a fixed purpose this +morning as he smoked an after-breakfast cigarette on the front porch of +Matocton. And, + +"Rudolph," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "are you blind?" + +"You mean--?" he asked, and he broke off, for he had really no +conception of what she meant. + +And Mrs. Ashmeade said, "I mean Patricia and Charteris. Did you think I +was by any chance referring to the man in the moon and the Queen of +Sheba?" + +If ever amazement showed in a man's eyes, it shone now in Rudolph +Musgrave's. After a little, the pupils widened in a sort of terror. So +this was what Clarice Pendomer had been hinting at. + +"Nonsense!" he cried. "Why--why, it is utter, preposterous, Bedlamite +nonsense!" He caught his breath in wonder at the notion of such a jest, +remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. "It--oh, no, +Fate hasn't quite so fine a sense of humor as that. The thing is +incredible!" Musgrave laughed, and flushed. "I mean----" + +"I don't think you need tell me what you mean," said Mrs. Ashmeade. She +sat down in a large rocking-chair, and fanned herself, for the day was +warm. "Of course, it is officious and presumptuous and disagreeable of +me to meddle. I don't mind your thinking that. But Rudolph, don't make +the mistake of thinking that Fate ever misses a chance of humiliating us +by showing how poor are our imaginations. The gipsy never does. She is a +posturing mountebank, who thrives by astounding humanity." + +Mrs. Ashmeade paused, and her eyes were full of memories, and very wise. + +"I am only a looker-on at the tragic farce that is being played here," +she continued, after a little, "but lookers-on, you know, see most of +the game. They are not playing fairly with you, Rudolph. When people set +about an infringement of the Decalogue they owe it to their self-respect +to treat with Heaven as a formidable antagonist. To mark the cards is +not enough. They are not playing fairly, my dear, and you ought to know +it." + +He walked up and down the porch once or twice, with his hands behind +him; then he stopped before Mrs. Ashmeade, and smiled down at her. +Without, many locusts shrilled monotonously. + +"No, I do not think you are officious or meddling or anything of the +sort, I think you are one of the best and kindest-hearted women in the +world. But--bless your motherly soul, Polly! the thing is utterly +preposterous. Of course, Patricia is young, and likes attention, and it +pleases her to have men admire her. That, Polly, is perfectly natural. +Why, you wouldn't expect her to sit around under the trees, and read +poetry with her own husband, would you? We have been married far too +long for that, Patricia and I. She thinks me rather prosy and stupid at +times, poor girl, because--well, because, in point of fact, I am. But, +at the bottom of her heart--Oh, it's preposterous! We are the best +friends in the world, I tell you! It is simply that she and Jack have a +great deal in common--" + +"You don't understand John Charteris. I do," said Mrs. Ashmeade, +placidly. "Charteris is simply a baby with a vocabulary. His moral +standpoint is entirely that of infancy. It would be ludicrous to +describe him as selfish, because he is selfishness incarnate. I +sometimes believe it is the only characteristic the man possesses. He +reaches out his hand and takes whatever he wants, just as a baby would, +quite simply, and as a matter of course. He wants your wife now, and he +is reaching out his hand to take her. He probably isn't conscious of +doing anything especially wrong; he is always so plausible in whatever +he does that he ends by deceiving himself, I suppose. For he is always +plausible. It is worse than useless to argue any matter with him, +because he invariably ends by making you feel as if you had been caught +stealing a hat. The only argument that would get the better of John +Charteris is knocking him down, just as spanking is the only argument +which ever gets the better of a baby. Yes, he is very like a +baby--thoroughly selfish and thoroughly dependent on other people; only, +he is a clever baby who exaggerates his own helplessness in order to +appeal to women. He has a taste for women. And women naturally like him, +for he impresses them as an irresponsible child astray in an artful and +designing world. They want to protect him. Even I do, at times. It is +really maternal, you know; we would infinitely prefer for him to be soft +and little, so that we could pick him up, and cuddle him. But as it is, +he is dangerous. He believes whatever he tells himself, you see." + +Her voice died away, and Mrs. Ashmeade fanned herself in the fashion +addicted by perturbed women who, nevertheless, mean to have their say +out--slowly and impersonally, and quite as if she was fanning some one +else through motives of charity. + +"I don't question," Musgrave said, at length, "that Jack is the highly +estimable character you describe. But--oh, it is all nonsense, Polly!" +he cried, with petulance, and with a tinge--if but the merest nuance +--of conviction lacking in his voice. + +The fan continued its majestic sweep from the shade into the sunlight, +and back again into the shadow. Without, many locusts shrilled +monotonously. + +"Rudolph, I know what you meant by saying that Fate hadn't such a fine +sense of humor." + +"My dear madam, it was simply thrown out, in the heat of +conversation--as an axiom----" + +For a moment the fan paused; then went on as before. It was never +charged against Pauline Ashmeade, whatever her shortcomings, that she +was given to unnecessary verbiage. + +Colonel Musgrave was striding up and down, divided between a disposition +to swear at the universe at large and a desire to laugh at it. Somehow, +it did not occur to him to doubt what she had told him. He comprehended +now that, chafing under his indebtedness in the affair of Mrs. Pendomer, +Charteris would most naturally retaliate by making love to his +benefactor's wife, because the colonel also knew John Charteris. And for +the rest, it was useless to struggle against a Fate that planned such +preposterous and elaborate jokes; one might more rationally depend on +Fate to work out some both ludicrous and horrible solution, he +reflected, remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. + +Nevertheless, he paused after a while, and laughed, with a tolerable +affectation of mirth. + +"I say--I--and what in heaven's name, Polly, prompted you to bring me +this choice specimen of a mare's-nest?" + +"Because I am fond of you, I suppose. Isn't one always privileged to be +disagreeable to one's friends? We have been friends a long while, you +know." + +Mrs. Ashmeade was looking out over the river now, but she seemed to see +a great way, a very great way, beyond its glaring waters, and to be +rather uncertain as to whether what she beheld there was of a humorous +or pathetic nature. + +"Rudolph, do you remember that evening--the first summer that I knew +you--at Fortress Monroe, when we sat upon the pier so frightfully late, +and the moon rose out of the bay, and made a great, solid-looking, +silver path that led straight over the rim of the world, and you talked +to me about--about what, now?" + +"Oh, yes, yes!--I remember perfectly! One of the most beautiful evenings +I ever saw. I remember it quite distinctly. I talked--I--and what, in +the Lord's name, did I talk about, Polly?" + +"Ah, men forget! A woman never forgets when she is really friends with a +man. I know now you were telling me about Anne Charteris, for you have +been in love with her all your life, Rudolph, in your own particular +half-hearted and dawdling fashion. Perhaps that is why you have had so +many affairs. You plainly found the run of women so unimportant that it +put every woman on her pride to prove she was different. Yes, I +remember. But that night I thought you were trying to make love to me, +and I was disappointed in you, and--yes, rather pleased. Women are all +vain and perfectly inconsistent. But then, girl-children always take +after their fathers." + +Mrs. Ashmeade rose from her chair. Her fan shut with a snap. + +"You were a dear boy, Rudolph, when I first knew you--and what I liked +was that you never made love to me. Of all the boys I have known and +helped to form, you were the only sensible one--the only one who never +presumed. That was rather clever of you, Rudolph. It would have been +ridiculous, for even arithmetically I am older than you. + +"Wouldn't it have been ridiculous, Rudolph?" she demanded, suddenly. + +"Not in the least," Musgrave protested, in courteous wise. "You--why, +Polly, you were a wonderfully handsome woman. Any boy----" + +"Oh, yes!--I was. I'm not now, am I, Rudolph?" Mrs. Ashmeade threw back +her head and laughed naturally. "Ah, dear boy that was, it is unfair, +isn't it, for an old woman to seize upon you in this fashion, and insist +on your making love to her? But I will let you off. You don't have to do +it." + +She caught her skirts in her left hand, preparatory to going, and her +right hand rested lightly on his arm. She spoke in a rather peculiar +voice. + +"Yes," she said, "the boy was a very, very dear boy, and I want the man +to be equally brave and--sensible." + +Musgrave stared after her. "I wonder--I wonder--? Oh, no, that +couldn't be," he said, and wearily. + +"There must be some preposterous situations that don't come about." + + * * * * * + +And afterward he strolled across the lawn, where the locusts were +shrilling, as if in a stubborn prediction of something which was +inevitable, and he meditated upon a great number of things. There were a +host of fleecy little clouds in the sky. He looked up at them, +interrogatively. + +And then he smiled and shook his head. + +"Yet I don't know," said he; "for I am coming to the conclusion that the +world is run on an extremely humorous basis." + +And oddly enough, it was at the same moment that Patricia--in +Lichfield--reached the same conclusion. + + + + +PART SEVEN - YOKED + + "We are as time moulds us, lacking wherewithal + To shape out nobler fortunes or contend + Against all-patient Fates, who may not mend + The allotted pattern of things temporal + Or alter it a jot or e'er let fall + A single stitch thereof, until at last + The web and its drear weavers be overcast + And predetermined darkness swallow all. + + "They have ordained for us a time to sing, + A time to love, a time wherein to tire + Of all spent songs and kisses; caroling + Such elegies as buried dreams require, + Love now departs, and leaves us shivering + Beside the embers of a burned-out fire." + +PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._ + + + + +I + + +The doctor's waiting-room smelt strongly of antiseptics. That was +Patricia's predominating thought as she wandered aimlessly about the +apartment. She fingered its dusty furniture. She remembered afterward +the steel-engraving of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, with General Lee +explaining some evidently important matter to those attentive and +unhumanly stiff politicians; and she remembered, too, how in depicting +one statesman, who unavoidably sat with his back to the spectator, the +artist had exceeded anatomical possibilities in order to obtain a +recognizable full-faced portrait. Yet at the time this picture had not +roused her conscious attention. + +She went presently to the long table austerely decorated with two rows +of magazines, each partly covered by its neighbor, just as shingles are +placed. The arrangement irritated her unreasonably. She wanted to +disarrange these dog-eared pamphlets, to throw them on the floor, to +destroy them. She wondered how many other miserable people had tried to +read these hateful books while they waited in this abominable room. + +She started when the door of the consultation-room opened. The doctor +was patting the silk glove of a harassed-looking woman in black as he +escorted her to the outer door, and was assuring her that everything was +going very well indeed, and that she was not to worry, and so on. + +And presently he spoke with Patricia, for a long while, quite levelly, +of matters which it is not suitable to record. Discreet man that he was, +Wendell Pemberton could not entirely conceal his wonder that Patricia +should have remained so long in ignorance of her condition. He spoke +concerning malformation and functional weaknesses and, although +obscurely because of the bugbear of professional courtesy, voiced his +opinion that Patricia had not received the most adroit medical treatment +at the time of little Roger's birth. + +She was dividedly conscious of a desire to laugh and of the notion that +she must remain outwardly serious, because though this horrible +Pemberton man was talking abject nonsense, she would presently be having +him as a dinner-guest. + +But what if he were not talking nonsense? The possibility, considered, +roused a sensation of falling through infinity. + +"Yes, yes," Patricia civilly assented. "These young doctors have taken +this out of me, and that out of me, as you might take the works out of a +watch. And it has done no good; and they were mistaken in their first +diagnoses, because what they took for true osteomalacia was only---- +Would you mind telling me again? Oh, yes; I had only a +pseudo-osteomalacic rhachitic pelvis, to begin with. To think of +anybody's being mistaken about a simple little trouble like that! And I +suppose I was just born with it, like my mother and all those other +luckless women with Musgrave blood in them?" + +"Fehling and Schliephake at least consider this variety of pelvic +anomaly to be congenital in the majority of cases. But, without going +into the question of heredity at all, I think it only, fair to tell you, +Mrs. Musgrave----" And Pemberton went on talking. + +Neither of the two showed any emotion. + +The doctor went on talking. Patricia did not listen. The man was +talking, she comprehended, but to her his words seemed blurred and +indistinguishable. "Like a talking-machine when it isn't wound up +enough," she decided. + +Subconsciously Patricia was thinking, "You have two big beads of +perspiration on your nose, and if I were to allude to the fact you would +very probably die of embarrassment." + +Aloud Patricia said: "You mean, then, that, to cap it all, a functional +disorder of my heart has become organic, so that I would inevitably die +under another operation? or even at a sudden shock? And that particular +operation is now the solitary chance of saving my life! The dilemma is +neat, isn't it? How God must laugh at the jokes He contrives," said +Patricia. "I wish that I could laugh. And I will. I don't care whether +you think me a reprobate or not, Dr. Pemberton, I want a good stiff +drink of whiskey--the Musgrave size." + +He gave it to her. + + + + +II + + +Patricia had as yet an hour to spend in Lichfield before her train left. +She passed it in the garden of her own home, where she had first seen +Rudolph Musgrave and he had fought with Pevensey. All that seemed very +long ago. + +The dahlia leaves, she noticed, were edged with yellow. She must look to +it that the place was more frequently watered; and that the bulbs were +dug up in September. Next year she meant to set the dahlias thinly, like +a hedge.... + +"Oh, yes, I meant to. Only I won't be alive next year," she recollected. + +She went about the garden to see if Ned had weeded out the wild-pea +vines--a pest which had invaded the trim place lately. Only a few of the +intruders remained, burnt-out and withered as they are annually by the +mid-summer sun. There would be no more fight until next April. + +"Oh, and I have prayed to You, I have always tried to do what You +wanted, and I never asked You to let me be born locked up in a +good-for-nothing Musgrave body! And You won't even let me see a +wild-pea vine again! That isn't much to ask, I think. But You won't let +me do it. You really do have rather funny notions about Your jokes." + +She began to laugh. + +"Oh, very well!" Patricia said aloud. "It is none of my affair that You +elect to run Your world on an extremely humorous basis." + +She was at Matocton in good time for luncheon. + + + + +III + + +Colonel Musgrave had a brief interview with his wife after luncheon. He +began with quiet remonstrance, and ended with an unheard extenuation of +his presumption. Patricia's speech on this occasion was of an unfettered +and heady nature. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said, when she had finally +paused for breath, and had wiped away her tears, and had powdered her +nose, viciously, "to bully a weak and defenseless woman in this way. I +dare say everybody in the house has heard us--brawling and squabbling +just like a hod-carrier and his wife. What's that? You haven't said a +word for fifteen minutes? Oh, la, la, la! well, I don't care. Anyhow, I +have, and I am perfectly sure they heard me, and I am sure I don't care +in the least, and it's all your fault, anyway. Oh, but you have an +abominable nature, Rudolph--a mean and cruel and suspicious nature. Your +bald-headed little Charteris is nothing whatever to me; and I would have +been quite willing to give him up if you had spoken to me in a decent +manner about it. You only _said_----? I don't care what you said; and +besides, if you did speak to me in a decent manner, it simply shows that +your thoughts were so horrid and vulgar that even you weren't so +abandoned as to dare to put them into words. Very well, then, I won't be +seen so much with him in future. I realize you are quite capable of +beating me if I don't give way to your absurd prejudices. Yes, you are, +Rudolph; you're just the sort of man to take pleasure in beating a +woman. After the exhibition of temper you've given this afternoon, I +believe you are capable of anything. Hand me that parasol! Don't keep on +talking to me; for I don't wish to hear anything you have to say. You're +simply driving me to my grave with your continual nagging and abuse and +fault-finding. I'm sure I wish I were dead as much as you do. Is my hat +on straight? How do you expect me to see into that mirror if you stand +directly in front of it? There! not content with robbing me of every +pleasure in life, I verily believe you were going to let me go +downstairs with my hat cocked over one ear. And don't you snort and look +at me like that. I'm not going to meet Mr. Charteris. I'm going driving +with Felix Kennaston; he asked me at luncheon. I suppose you'll object +to him next; you object to all my friends. Very well! Now you've made me +utterly miserable for the entire afternoon, and I'm sure I hope you are +satisfied." + +There was a rustle of skirts, and the door slammed. + + + + +IV + + +Colonel Musgrave went to his own room, where he spent an interval in +meditation. He opened his desk and took out a small packet of papers, +some of which he read listlessly. How curiously life re-echoed itself! +he reflected, for here, again, were castby love-letters potent to breed +mischief; and his talk with Polly Ashmeade had been peculiarly +reminiscent of his more ancient talk with Clarice Pendomer. Everything +that happened seemed to have happened before. + +But presently he shook his head, sighing. Chance had put into his hands +a weapon, and a formidable weapon, it seemed to him, but the colonel did +not care to use it. He preferred to strike with some less grimy cudgel. + +Then he rang for one of the servants, questioned him, and was informed +that Mr. Charteris had gone down to the beach just after luncheon. A +moment later, Colonel Musgrave was walking through the gardens in this +direction. + +As he came to the thicket which screens the beach, he called +Charteris's name loudly, in order to ascertain his whereabouts. And the +novelist's voice answered--yet not at once, but after a brief silence. +It chanced that, at this moment, Musgrave had come to a thin place in +the thicket, and could plainly see Mr. Charteris; he was concealing some +white object in the hollow of a log that lay by the river. A little +later, Musgrave came out upon the beach, and found Charteris seated upon +the same log, an open book upon his knees, and looking back over his +shoulder wonderingly. + +"Oh," said John Charteris, "so it was you, Rudolph? I could not imagine +who it was that called." + +"Yes--I wanted a word with you, Jack." + +Now, there are five little red-and-white bath-houses upon the beach at +Matocton; the nearest of them was some thirty feet from Mr. Charteris. +It might have been either imagination or the prevalent breeze, but +Musgrave certainly thought he heard a door closing. Moreover, as he +walked around the end of the log, he glanced downward as in a casual +manner, and perceived a protrusion which bore an undeniable resemblance +to the handle of a parasol. Musgrave whistled, though, at the bottom of +his heart, he was not surprised; and then, he sat down upon the log, and +for a moment was silent. + +"A beautiful evening," said Mr. Charteris. + +Musgrave lighted a cigarette. + +"Jack, I have something rather difficult to say to you--yes, it is +deuced difficult, and the sooner it is over the better. I--why, +confound it all, man! I want you to stop making love to my wife." + +Mr. Charteris's eyebrows rose. "Really, Colonel Musgrave----." he began, +coolly. + +"Now, you are about to make a scene, you know," said Musgrave, raising +his hand in protest, "and we are not here for that. We are not going to +tear any passions to tatters; we are not going to rant; we are simply +going to have a quiet and sensible talk. We don't happen to be +characters in a romance; for you aren't Lancelot, you know, and I am not +up to the part of Arthur by a great deal. I am not angry, I am not +jealous, nor do I put the matter on any high moral grounds. I simply say +it won't do--no, hang it, it won't do!" + +"I dare not question you are an authority in such matters," said John +Charteris, sweetly--"since among many others, Clarice Pendomer is near +enough to be an obtainable witness." + +Colonel Musgrave grimaced. "But what a gesture!" he thought, +half-enviously. Jack Charteris, quite certainly, meant to make the most +of the immunity Musgrave had purchased for him. None the less, Musgrave +had now his cue. Patricia must be listening. + +And so what Colonel Musgrave said was: "Put it that a burnt child dreads +the fire--is that a reason he should not warn his friends against it?" + +"At least," said Charteris at length, "you are commendably frank. I +appreciate that, Rudolph. I honestly appreciate the fact you have come +to me, not as the husband of that fiction in which kitchen-maids +delight, breathing fire and speaking balderdash, but as one sensible man +to another. Let us be frank, then; let us play with the cards upon the +table. You have charged me with loving your wife; and I answer you +frankly--I do. She does me the honor to return this affection. What, +then, Rudolph?" + +Musgrave blew out a puff of smoke. "I don't especially mind," he said, +slowly. "According to tradition, of course, I ought to spring at your +throat with a smothered curse. But, as a matter of fact, I don't see why +I should be irritated. No, in common reason," he added, upon +consideration, "I am only rather sorry for you both." + +Mr. Charteris sprang to his feet, and walked up and down the beach. "Ah, +you hide your feelings well," he cried, and his laughter was a trifle +unconvincing and a bit angry. "But it is unavailing with me. I know! I +know the sick and impotent hatred of me that is seething in your heart; +and I feel for you the pity you pretend to entertain toward me. Yes, I +pity you. But what would you have? Frankly, while in many ways an +estimable man, you are no fit mate for Patricia. She has the sensitive, +artistic temperament, poor girl; and only we who are cursed with it can +tell you what its possession implies. And you--since frankness is the +order of the day, you know--well, you impress me as being a trifle +inadequate. It is not your fault, perhaps, but the fact remains that you +have never amounted to anything personally. You have simply traded upon +the accident of being born a Musgrave of Matocton. In consequence you +were enabled to marry Patricia's money, just as the Musgraves of +Matocton always marry some woman who is able to support them. Ah, but it +was her money you married, and not Patricia! Any community of interest +between you was impossible, and is radically impossible. Your marriage +was a hideous mistake, just as mine was. For you are starving her soul, +Rudolph, just as Anne has starved mine. And now, at last, when Patricia +and I have seen our single chance of happiness, we cannot--no! we cannot +and we will not--defer to any outworn tradition or to fear of Mrs. +Grundy's narrow-minded prattle!" + +Charteris swept aside the dogmas of the world with an indignant gesture +of somewhat conscious nobility; and he turned to his companion in an +attitude of defiance. + +Musgrave was smiling. He smoked and seemed to enjoy his cigarette. + +The day was approaching sunset. The sun, a glowing ball of copper, hung +low in the west over a rampart of purple clouds, whose heights were +smeared with red. A slight, almost imperceptible, mist rose from the +river, and, where the horizon should have been, a dubious cloudland +prevailed. Far to the west were orange-colored quiverings upon the +stream's surface, but, nearer, the river dimpled with silver-tipped +waves; and, at their feet, the water grew transparent, and splashed over +the sleek, brown sand, and sucked back, leaving a curved line of +bubbles which, one by one, winked, gaped and burst. There was a drowsy +peacefulness in the air; behind them, among the beeches, were many +stealthy wood-sounds; and, at long intervals, a sleepy, peevish +twittering went about the nested trees. + +In Colonel Musgrave's face, the primal peace was mirrored. + +"May I ask," said he at length, "what you propose doing?" + +Mr. Charteris answered promptly. "I, of course, propose," said he, "to +ask Patricia to share the remainder of my life." + +"A euphemism, as I take it, for an elopement. I hardly thought you +intended going so far." + +"Rudolph!" cried Charteris, drawing himself to his full height--and he +was not to blame for the fact that it was but five-feet-six--"I am, I +hope, an honorable man! I cannot eat your salt and steal your honor. So +I loot openly, or not at all." + +The colonel shrugged his shoulders. + +"I presuppose you have counted the cost--and estimated the necessary +breakage?" + +"True love," the novelist declared, in a hushed, sweet voice, "is above +such considerations." + +"I think," said Musgrave slowly, "that any love worthy of the name will +always appraise the cost--to the woman. It is of Patricia I am +thinking." + +"She loves me," Charteris murmured. He glanced up and laughed. "Upon my +soul, you know, I cannot help thinking the situation a bit +farcical--you and I talking over matters in this fashion. But I honestly +believe the one chance of happiness for any of us hinges on Patricia and +me chucking the whole affair, and bolting." + +"No! it won't do--no, hang it, Jack, it will not do!" Musgrave glanced +toward the bath-house, and he lifted his voice. "I am not considering +you in the least--and under the circumstances, you could hardly expect +me to. It is of Patricia I am thinking. I haven't made her altogether +happy. Our marriage was a mating of incongruities--and possibly you are +justified in calling it a mistake. Yet, day in and day out, I think we +get along as well together as do most couples; and it is wasting time to +cry over spilt milk. Instead, it rests with us, the two men who love +her, to decide what is best for Patricia. It is she and only she we must +consider." + +"Ah, you are right!" said Charteris, and his eyes grew tender. "She must +have what she most desires; and all must be sacrificed to that." He +turned and spoke as simply as a child. "Of course, you know, I shall be +giving up a great deal for love of her, but--I am willing." + +Musgrave looked at him for a moment. "H'm doubtless," he assented. "Why, +then, we won't consider the others. We will not consider your wife, +who--who worships you. We won't consider the boy. I, for my part, think +it is a mother's duty to leave an unsullied name to her child, but, +probably, my ideas are bourgeois. We won't consider Patricia's +relatives, who, perhaps, will find it rather unpleasant. In short, we +must consider no one save Patricia." + +"Of course, one cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." + +"No; the question is whether it is absolutely necessary to make the +omelet. I say no." + +"And I," quoth Charteris smiling gently, "say yes." + +"For Patricia," Musgrave went on, as in meditation, but speaking very +clearly, "it means giving up--everything. It means giving up her friends +and the life to which she is accustomed; it means being ashamed to face +those who were formerly her friends. We, the world, our world of +Lichfield, I mean--are lax enough as to the divorce question, heaven +knows, but we can't pardon immorality when coupled with poverty. And you +would be poor, you know. Your books are tremendously clever, Jack, +but--as I happen to know--the proceeds from them would not support two +people in luxury; and Patricia has nothing. That is a sordid detail, of +course, but it is worth considering. Patricia would never be happy in a +three-pair back." + +Mr. Charteris was frankly surprised. "Patricia has--nothing?" + +"Bless your soul, of course not! Her father left the greater part of his +money to our boy, you know. Most of it is still held in trust for our +boy, who is named after him. Not a penny of it belongs to Patricia, and +even I cannot touch anything but a certain amount of interest." + +Mr. Charteris looked at the colonel with eyes that were sad and hurt +and wistful. "I am perfectly aware of your reason for telling me this," +he said, candidly. "I know I have always been thought a mercenary man +since my marriage. At that time I fancied myself too much in love with +Anne to permit any sordid considerations of fortune to stand in the way +of our union. Poor Anne! she little knows what sacrifices I have made +for her! She, too, would be dreadfully unhappy if I permitted her to +realize that our marriage was a mistake." + +"God help her--yes!" groaned Musgrave. + +"And as concerns Patricia, you are entirely right. It would be hideously +unfair to condemn her to a life of comparative poverty. My books sell +better than you think, Rudolph, but still an author cannot hope to +attain affluence so long as he is handicapped by any reverence for the +English language. Yes, I was about to do Patricia a great wrong. I +rejoice that you have pointed out my selfishness. For I have been +abominably selfish. I confess it." + +"I think so," assented Musgrave, calmly. "But, then, my opinion is, +naturally, rather prejudiced." + +"Yes, I can understand what Patricia must mean to you"--Mr. Charteris +sighed, and passed his hand over his forehead in a graceful +fashion,--"and I, also, love her far too dearly to imperil her +happiness. I think that heaven never made a woman more worthy to be +loved. And I had hoped--ah, well, after all, we cannot utterly defy +society! Its prejudices, however unfounded, must be respected. What +would you have? This dunderheaded giantess of a Mrs. Grundy condemns me +to be miserable, and I am powerless. The utmost I can do is to refrain +from whining over the unavoidable. And, Rudolph, you have my word of +honor that henceforth I shall bear in mind more constantly my duty +toward one of my best and oldest friends. I have not dealt with you +quite honestly. I confess it, and I ask your pardon." Mr. Charteris held +out his hand to seal the compact. + +"Word of honor?" queried Colonel Musgrave, with an odd quizzing sort of +fondness for the little novelist, as the colonel took the proffered +hand. "Why, then, that is settled, and I am glad of it. I told you, you +know, it wouldn't do. See you at supper, I suppose?" + +And Rudolph Musgrave glanced at the bath-house, turned on his heel, and +presently plunged into the beech plantation, whistling cheerfully. The +effect of the melody was somewhat impaired by the apparent necessity of +breaking off, at intervals, in order to smile. + +The comedy had been admirably enacted, he considered, on both sides; and +he did not object to Jack Charteris's retiring with all the honors of +war. + + + + +V + + +The colonel had not gone far, however, before he paused, thrust both +hands into his trousers' pockets, and stared down at the ground for a +matter of five minutes. + +Musgrave shook his head. "After all," said he, "I can't trust them. +Patricia is too erratic and too used to having her own way. Jack will +try to break off with her now, of course; but Jack, where women are +concerned, is as weak as water. It is not a nice thing to do, but--well! +one must fight fire with fire." + +Thereupon, he retraced his steps. When he had come to the thin spot in +the thicket, Rudolph Musgrave left the path, and entered the shrubbery. +There he composedly sat down in the shadow of a small cedar. The sight +of his wife upon the beach in converse with Mr. Charteris did not appear +to surprise Colonel Musgrave. + +Patricia was speaking quickly. She held a bedraggled parasol in one +hand. Her husband noted, with a faint thrill of wonder, that, at times, +and in a rather unwholesome, elfish way, Patricia was actually +beautiful. Her big eyes glowed; they flashed with changing lights as +deep waters glitter in the sun; her copper-colored hair seemed luminous, +and her cheeks flushed, arbutus-like. The soft, white stuff that gowned +her had the look of foam; against the gray sky she seemed a freakish +spirit in the act of vanishing. For sky and water were all one lambent +gray by this. In the west was a thin smear of orange; but, for the rest, +the world was of a uniform and gleaming gray. She and Charteris stood in +the heart of a great pearl. + +"Ah, believe me," she was saying, "Rudolph isn't an ophthalmic bat. But +God keep us all respectable! is Rudolph's notion of a sensible +morning-prayer. So he just preferred to see nothing and bleat out +edifying axioms. That is one of his favorite tricks. No, it was a comedy +for my benefit, I tell you. He will allow a deal for the artistic +temperament, no doubt, but he doesn't suppose you fetch along a +white-lace parasol when you go to watch a sunset--especially a parasol +he gave me last month." + +"Indeed," protested Mr. Charteris, "he saw nothing. I was too quick for +him." + +She shrugged her shoulders. "I saw him looking at it. Accordingly, I +paid no attention to what he said. But you--ah, Jack, you were splendid! +I suppose we shall have to elope at once now, though?" + +Charteris gave her no immediate answer. "I am not quite sure, Patricia, +that your husband is not--to a certain extent--in the right. Believe me, +he did not know you were about. He approached me in a perfectly +sensible manner, and exhibited commendable self-restraint; he has played +a difficult part to admiration. I could not have done it better myself. +And it is not for us who have been endowed with gifts denied to Rudolph, +to reproach him for lacking the finer perceptions and sensibilities of +life. Yet, I must admit that, for the time, I was a little hurt by his +evident belief that we would allow our feeling for each other--which is +rather beyond his comprehension, isn't it, dear?--to be coerced by +mercenary considerations." + +"Oh, Rudolph is just a jackass-fool, anyway." She was not particularly +interested in the subject. + +"He can't help that, you know," Charteris reminded her, gently; then, he +asked, after a little: "I suppose it is all true?" + +"That what is true?" + +"About your having no money of your own?" He laughed, but she could see +how deeply he had been pained by Musgrave's suspicions. "I ask, because, +as your husband has discovered, I am utterly sordid, my lady, and care +only for your wealth." + +"Ah, how can you expect a man like that to understand--you? Why, Jack, +how ridiculous in you to be hurt by what the brute thinks! You're as +solemn as an owl, my dear. Yes, it's true enough. My father was not very +well pleased with us--and that horrid will--Ah, Jack, Jack, how +grotesque, how characteristic it was, his thinking such things would +influence you--you, of all men, who scarcely know what money is!" + +"It was even more grotesque I should have been pained by his thinking +it," Charteris said, sadly. "But what would you have? I am so abominably +in love with you that it seemed a sort of desecration when the man +lugged your name into a discussion of money-matters. It really did. And +then, besides--ah, my lady, you know that I would glory in the thought +that I had given up all for you. You know, I think, that I would +willingly work my fingers to the bone just that I might possess you +always. So I had dreamed of love in a cottage--an idyl of blissful +poverty, where Cupid contents himself with crusts and kisses, and mocks +at the proverbial wolf on the doorstep. And I give you my word that +until to-day I had not suspected how blindly selfish I have been! For +poor old prosaic Rudolph is in the right, after all. Your delicate, +tender beauty must not be dragged down to face the unlovely realities +and petty deprivations and squalid makeshifts of such an existence as +ours would be. True, I would glory in them--ah, luxury and riches mean +little to me, my dear, and I can conceive of no greater happiness than +to starve with you. But true love knows how to sacrifice itself. Your +husband was right; it would not be fair to you, Patricia." + +"You--you are going to leave me?" + +"Yes; and I pray that I may be strong enough to relinquish you forever, +because your welfare is more dear to me than my own happiness. No, I do +not pretend that this is easy to do. But when my misery is earned by +serving you I prize my misery." Charteris tried to smile. "What would +you have? I love you," he said, simply. + +"Ah, my dear!" she cried. + +Musgrave's heart was sick within him as he heard the same notes in her +voice that echoed in Anne's voice when she spoke of her husband. This +was a new Patricia; her speech was low and gentle now, and her eyes held +a light Rudolph Musgrave had not seen there for a long while. + +"Ah, my dear, you are the noblest man I have ever known; I wish we women +could be like men. But, oh, Jack, Jack, don't be quixotic! I can't give +you up, my dear--that would never be for my good. Think how unhappy I +have been all these years; think how Rudolph is starving my soul! I want +to be free, Jack; I want to live my own life,--for at least a month or +so--" + +Patricia shivered here. "But none of us is sure of living for a month. +You've shown me a glimpse of what life might be; don't let me sink back +into the old, humdrum existence from a foolish sense of honor! I tell +you, I should go mad! I mean to have my fling while I can get it. And I +mean to have it with you, Jack--just you! I don't fear poverty. You +could write some more wonderful books. I could work, too, Jack dear. +I--I could teach music--or take in washing--or something, anyway. Lots +of women support themselves, you know. Oh, Jack, we would be so happy! +Don't be honorable and brave and disagreeable, Jack dear!" + +For a moment Charteris was silent. The nostrils of his beak-like nose +widened a little, and a curious look came into his face. He discovered +something in the sand that interested him. + +"After all," he demanded, slowly, "is it necessary--to go away--to be +happy?" + +"I don't understand." Her hand lifted from his arm; then quick remorse +smote her, and it fluttered back, confidingly. + +Charteris rose to his feet. "It is, doubtless, a very spectacular and +very stirring performance to cast your cap over the wind-mill in the +face of the world; but, after all, is it not a bit foolish, Patricia? +Lots of people manage these things--more quietly." + +"Oh, Jack!" Patricia's face turned red, then white, and stiffened in a +sort of sick terror. She was a frightened Columbine in stone. "I thought +you cared for me--really, not--that way." + +Patricia rose and spoke with composure. "I think I'll go back to the +house, Mr. Charteris. It's a bit chilly here. You needn't bother to +come." + +Then Mr. Charteris laughed--a choking, sobbing laugh. He raised his +hands impotently toward heaven. "And to think," he cried, "to think that +a man may love a woman with his whole heart--with all that is best and +noblest in him--and she understand him so little!" + +"I do not think I have misunderstood you," Patricia said, in a crisp +voice. "Your proposition was very explicit. I--am sorry. I thought I had +found one thing in the world which I would regret to leave--" + +"And you really believed that I could sully the great love I bear you by +stooping to--that! You really believed that I would sacrifice to you my +home life, my honor, my prospects--all that a man can give--without +testing the quality of your love! You did not know that I spoke to try +you--you actually did not know! Eh, but yours is a light nature, +Patricia! I do not reproach you, for you are only as your narrow +Philistine life has made you. Yet I had hoped better things of you, +Patricia. But you, who pretend to care for me, have leaped at your first +opportunity to pain me--and, if it be any comfort to you, I confess you +have pained me beyond words." And he sank down on the log, and buried +his face in his hands. + +She came to him--it was pitiable to see how she came to him, laughing +and sobbing all in one breath--and knelt humbly by his side, and raised +a grieved, shamed, penitent face to his. + +"Forgive me!" she wailed; "oh, forgive me!" + +"You have pained me beyond words, Patricia," he repeated. He was not +angry--only sorrowful and very much hurt. + +"Ah, Jack! dear Jack, forgive me!" + +Mr. Charteris sighed. "But, of course, I forgive you, Patricia," he +said. "I cannot help it, though, that I am foolishly sensitive where you +are concerned. And I had hoped you knew as much." + +She was happy now. "Dear boy," she murmured, "don't you see it's just +these constant proofs of the greatness and the wonderfulness of your +love--Really, though, Jack, wasn't it too horrid of me to misunderstand +you so? Are you quite sure you're forgiven me entirely--without any +nasty little reservations?" + +Mr. Charteris was quite sure. His face was still sad, but it was +benevolent. + +"Don't you see," she went on, "that it's just these things that make me +care for you so much, and feel sure as eggs is eggs we will be happy? +Ah, Jack, we will be so utterly happy that I am almost afraid to think +of it!" Patricia wiped away the last tear, and laughed, and added, in a +matter-of-fact fashion: "There's a train at six-five in the morning; we +can leave by that, before anyone is up." + +Charteris started. "Your husband loves you," he said, in gentle reproof. +"And quite candidly, you know, Rudolph is worth ten of me." + +"Bah, I tell you, that was a comedy for my benefit," she protested, and +began to laugh. Patricia was unutterably happy now, because she, and not +John Charteris, had been in the wrong. "Poor Rudolph!--he has such a +smug horror of the divorce-court that he would even go so far as to +pretend to be in love with his own wife in order to keep out of it. +Really, Jack, both our better-halves are horribly commonplace and they +will be much better off without us." + +"You forget that Rudolph has my word of honor," said Mr. Charteris, in +indignation. + +And that instant, with one of his baffling changes of mood, he began to +laugh. "Really, though, Patricia, you are very pretty. You are April +embodied in sweet flesh; your soul is just a wisp of April cloud, and +your life an April day, half sun that only seems to warm, and half +tempest that only plays at ferocity; but you are very pretty. That is +why I am thinking, light-headedly, it would be a fine and past doubt an +agreeable exploit to give up everything for such a woman, and am +complacently comparing myself to Antony at Actium. I am thinking it +would be an interesting episode in one's _Life and Letters_. You see, my +dear, I honestly believe the world revolves around John +Charteris--although of course I would never admit that to you if I +thought for a moment you would take me seriously." + +Then presently, sighing, he was grave again. "But, no! Rudolph has my +word of honor," Mr. Charteris repeated, and with unconcealed regret. + +"Ah, does that matter?" she cried. "Does anything matter, except that we +love each other? I tell you I have given the best part of my life to +that man, but I mean to make the most of what is left. He has had my +youth, my love--there was a time, you know, when I actually fancied I +cared for him--and he has only made me unhappy. I hate him, I loathe +him, I detest him, I despise him! I never intend to speak to him +again--oh, yes, I shall have to at supper, I suppose, but that doesn't +count. And I tell you I mean to be happy in the only way that's +possible. Everyone has a right to do that. A woman has an especial +right to take her share of happiness in any way she can, because her +hour of it is so short. Sometimes--sometimes the woman knows how short +it is and it almost frightens her.... But at best, a woman can be really +happy through love alone, Jack dear, and it's only when we are young and +good to look at that men care for us; after that, there is nothing left +but to take to either religion or hand-embroidery, so what does it +matter, after all? Yes, they all grow tired after a while. Jack, I am +only a vain and frivolous person of superlative charm, but I love you +very much, my dear, and I solemnly swear to commit suicide the moment my +first wrinkle arrives. You shall never grow tired of me, my dear." + +She laughed to think how true this was. + +She hurried on: "Jack, kneel down at once, and swear that you are +perfectly sore with loving me, as that ridiculous person says in +Dickens, and whose name I never could remember. Oh, I forgot--Dickens +caricatures nature, doesn't he, and isn't read by really cultured +people? You will have to educate me up to your level, Jack, and I warn +you in advance you will not have time to do it. Yes, I am quite aware +that I am talking nonsense, and am on the verge of hysterics, thank you, +but I rather like it. It is because I am going to have you all to myself +for whatever future there is, and the thought makes me quite drunk. Will +you kindly ring for the patrol-wagon, Jack? Jack, are you quite sure you +love me? Are you perfectly certain you never loved any one else half so +much? No, don't answer me, for I intend to do all the talking for both +of us for the future! I shall tyrannize over you frightfully, and you +will like it. All I ask in return is that you will be a good boy--by +which I mean a naughty boy--and do solemnly swear, promise and affirm +that you will meet me at the side-door at half-past five in the morning, +with a portmanteau and the intention of never going back to your wife. +You swear it? Thank you so much! Now, I think I would like to cry for a +few minutes, and, after that, we will go back to the house, before +supper is over and my eyes are perfectly crimson." + +In fact, Mr. Charteris had consented. Patricia was irresistible as she +pleaded and mocked and scolded and coaxed and laughed and cried, all in +one bewildering breath. Her plan was simple; it was to slip out of +Matocton at dawn, and walk to the near-by station. There they would take +the train, and snap their fingers at convention. The scheme sounded +preposterous in outline, but she demonstrated its practicability in +performance. And Mr. Charteris consented. + +Rudolph Musgrave sat in the shadow of the cedar with fierce and confused +emotions whirling in his soul. He certainly had never thought of this +contingency. + + + + +PART EIGHT - HARVEST + + "Time was I coveted the woes they rued + Whose love commemorates them,--I that meant + To get like grace of love then!--and intent + To win as they had done love's plenitude, + Rapture and havoc, vauntingly I sued + That love like theirs might make a toy of me, + At will caressed, at will (if publicly) + Demolished, as Love found or found not good. + + "To-day I am no longer overbrave. + I have a fever,--I that always knew + This hour was certain!--and am too weak to rave, + Too tired to seek (as later I must do) + Tried remedies--time, manhood and the grave-- + To drug, abate and banish love of you." +ALLEN ROSSITER. _A Fragment_. + + + + +I + + +When Patricia and Charteris had left the beach, Colonel Musgrave parted +the underbrush and stepped down upon the sand He must have air--air and +an open place wherein to fight this out. + +Night had risen about him in bland emptiness. There were no stars +overhead, but a patient, wearied, ancient moon pushed through the +clouds. The trees and the river conferred with one another doubtfully. + +He paced up and down the beach.... + +Musgrave laughed in the darkness. His heart was racing, racing in him, +and his thoughts were blown foam. He raised his hat and bowed +fantastically in the darkness, because the colonel loved his gesture. + +"Signor Lucifer, I present my compliments. You have discoursed with me +very plausibly. I honor your cunning, signor, but if you are indeed a +gentleman, as I have always heard, you will now withdraw and permit me +to regard the matter from a standpoint other than my own. For the others +are weak, signor; as you have doubtless discovered, good women and bad +men are the weakest of their sex. I am the strongest among them, for all +that I am no Hercules; and the outcome of this matter must rest with +me." + +So he sat presently upon the log, where Charteris had sat when Musgrave +came to this beach at sunset. Very long ago that seemed now. For now the +colonel was tired--physically outworn, it seemed to him, as if after +prolonged exertion--and now the moon looked down upon him, passionless, +cold, inexorable, and seemed to await the colonel's decision. + +And it was woefully hard to come to any decision. For, as you know by +this, it was the colonel's besetting infirmity to shrink from making +changes; instinctively he balked--under shelter of whatever +grandiloquent excuse--against commission of any action which would alter +his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. To guide events +was never his forte, as he forlornly knew; and here he was condemned +perforce to play that uncongenial rôle, with slender chances of reward. + +Yet always Anne's face floated in the darkness. Always Anne's voice +whispered through the lisping of the beeches, through the murmur of the +water.... + +He sat thus for a long while. + + + + +II + + +Musgrave was, not unnaturally, late for supper. It is not to be supposed +that at this meal the colonel faltered in his duties as a host, for, to +the contrary, he narrated several anecdotes in his neatest style. It was +with him a point of honor always to be in company the social triumph of +his generation. He observed with idle interest that Charteris and +Patricia avoided each other in a rather marked manner. Both seemed a +trifle more serious than they were wont to be. + +After supper, Tom Gelwix brought forth a mandolin, and most of the +house-party sang songs, sentimental and otherwise, upon the front porch +of Matocton. Anne had disappeared somewhere. Musgrave subsequently +discovered her in one of the drawing-rooms, puzzling over a number of +papers which her maid had evidently just brought to her. + +Mrs. Charteris looked up with a puckered brow. "Rudolph," said she, +"haven't you an account at the Occidental Bank?" + +"Hardly an account, dear lady,--merely a deposit large enough to +entitle me to receive monthly notices that I have overdrawn it." + +"Why, then, of course, you have a cheque-book. Horrible things, aren't +they?--such a nuisance remembering to fill out those little stubs. Of +course, I forgot to bring mine with me--I always do; and equally, of +course, a vexatious debt turns up and finds me without an Occidental +Bank cheque to my name." + +Musgrave was amused. "That," said he, "is easily remedied. I will get +you one; though even if--Ah, well, what is the good of trying to teach +you adorable women anything about business! You shall have your +indispensable blank form in three minutes." + +He returned in rather less than that time, with the cheque. Anne was +alone now. She was gowned in some dull, soft, yellow stuff, and sat by a +small, marble-topped table, twiddling a fountain-pen. + +"You mustn't sneer at my business methods, Rudolph," she said, pouting a +little as she filled out the cheque. "It isn't polite, sir, in the first +place, and, in the second, I am really very methodical. Of course, I am +always losing my cheque-book, and drawing cheques and forgetting to +enter them, and I usually put down the same deposit two or three +times--all women do that; but, otherwise, I am really very careful. I +manage all the accounts; I can't expect Jack to do that, you know." Mrs. +Charteris signed her name with a flourish, and nodded at the colonel +wisely. "Dear infant, but he is quite too horribly unpractical. Do you +know this bill has been due--oh, for months--and he forgot it entirely +until this evening. Fortunately, he can settle it to-morrow; those +disagreeable publishers of his have telegraphed for him to come to New +York at once, you know. Otherwise--dear, dear! but marrying a genius is +absolutely ruinous to one's credit, isn't it, Rudolph? The tradespeople +will refuse to trust us soon." + +Involuntarily, Musgrave had seen the cheque. It was for a considerable +amount, and it was made out to John Charteris. + +"Beyond doubt," said Musgrave, in his soul, "Jack is colossal! He is +actually drawing on his wife for the necessary expenses for running away +with another woman!" + +The colonel sat down abruptly before the great, open fireplace, and +stared hard at the pine-boughs which were heaped up in it. + +"A penny," said she, at length. + +He glanced up with a smile. "My dear madam, it would be robbery! For a +penny, you may read of the subject of my thoughts in any of the yellow +journals, only far more vividly set forth, and obtain a variety of more +or less savory additions, to boot. I was thinking of the Lethbury case, +and wondering how we could have been so long deceived by the man." + +"Ah, poor Mrs. Lethbury!" Anne sighed, "I am very sorry for her, +Rudolph; she was a good woman, and was always interested in charitable +work." + +"Do you know," said Colonel Musgrave, with deliberation, "it is she I +cannot understand. To discover that he had been systematically +hoodwinking her for some ten years; that, after making away with as much +of her fortune as he was able to lay hands on, he has betrayed business +trust after business trust in order to--to maintain another +establishment; that he has never cared for her, and has made her his +dupe time after time, in order to obtain money for his gambling debts +and other even less reputable obligations--she must realize all these +things now, you know, and one would have thought no woman's love could +possibly survive such a test. Yet, she is standing by him through thick +and thin. Yes, I confess, Amelia Lethbury puzzles me. I don't understand +her mental attitude." + +Musgrave was looking at Anne very intently as he ended. + +"Why, but of course," said Anne, "she realizes that it was all the fault +of that--that other woman; and, besides, the--the entanglement has been +going on only a little over eight years--not ten, Rudolph." + +She was entirely in earnest; Colonel Musgrave could see it plainly. + +"I admit I hadn't looked on it in that light," said he, at length, and +was silent for a moment Then, "Upon my soul, Anne," he cried, "I believe +you think the woman is only doing the natural thing, only doing the +thing one has a right to expect of her, in sticking to that blackguard +after she has found him out!" + +Mrs. Charteris raised her eyebrows; she was really surprised. +"Naturally, she must stand by her husband when he is in trouble; why, +if his own wife didn't, who would, Rudolph? It is just now that he needs +her most. It would be abominable to desert him now." + +Anne paused and thought. "Depend upon it, she knows a better side of his +nature than we can see; she knows him, possibly, to have been misled, or +to have acted thoughtlessly; because otherwise, she would not stand by +him so firmly." Having reached this satisfactory conclusion, Anne began +to laugh--at Musgrave's lack of penetration, probably. "So, you see, +Rudolph, in either case, her conduct is perfectly natural." + +"And this," he cried, "this is how women reason!" + +"Am I very stupid? Jack says I am a bit illogical at times. But, +Rudolph, you mustn't expect a woman to judge the man she loves; if you +call on her to do that, she doesn't reason about it; she just goes on +loving him, and thinking how horrid you are. Women love men as they do +children; they punish them sometimes, but only in deference to public +opinion. A woman will always find an excuse for the man she loves. If he +deserts her, she is miserable until she succeeds in demonstrating to +herself it was entirely her own fault; after that, she is properly +repentant, but far less unhappy; and, anyhow, she goes on loving him +just the same." + +The colonel pondered over this. "Women are different," he said. + +"I don't know. I think that, if all women could be thrown with good +men, they would all be good. Women want to be good; but there comes a +time to each one of them when she wants to make a certain man happy, and +wants that more than anything else in the world; and then, of course, if +he wants--very much--for her to be bad, she will be bad. A bad woman is +always to be explained by a bad man." + +Anne nodded, very wisely; then, she began to laugh, but this time at +herself. "I am talking quite like a book," she said. "Really, I had no +idea I was so clever. But I have thought of this before, Rudolph, and +been sorry for those poor women who--who haven't found the right sort of +man to care for." + +"Yes." Musgrave's face was alert. "You have been luckier than most, +Anne," he said. + +"Lucky!" she cried, and that queer little thrill of happiness woke again +in her rich voice. "Ah, you don't know how lucky I have been, Rudolph! I +have never cared for any one except--well, yes, you, a great while +ago--and Jack. And you are both good men. Ah, Rudolph, it was very dear +and sweet and foolish, the way we loved each other, but you don't +mind--very, very much--do you, if I think Jack is the best man in the +world, and by far the best man in the world for me? He is so good to me; +he is so good and kind and considerate to me, and, even after all these +years of matrimony, he is always the lover. A woman appreciates that, +Rudolph; she wants her husband to be always her lover, just as Jack is, +and never to give in when she coaxes--because she only coaxes when she +knows she is in the wrong--and never, never, to let her see him shaving +himself. If a husband observes these simple rules, Rudolph, his wife +will be a happy woman; and Jack does. In consequence, every day I live I +grow fonder of him, and appreciate him more and more; he grows upon me +just as a taste for strong drink might. Without him--without him--" +Anne's voice died away; then she faced Musgrave, indignantly. "Oh, +Rudolph!" she cried, "how horrid of you, how mean of you, to come here +and suggest the possibility of Jack's dying or running away from me, or +doing anything dreadful like that!" + +Colonel Musgrave was smiling, "I?" said he, equably. "My dear madam! if +you will reconsider,--" + +"No," she conceded, after deliberation, "it wasn't exactly your fault. I +got started on the subject of Jack, and imagined all sorts of horrible +and impossible things. But there is a sort of a something in the air +to-night; probably a storm is coming down the river. So I feel very +morbid and very foolish, Rudolph; but, then, I am in love, you see. +Isn't it funny, after all these years?" Anne asked with a smile;--"and +so you are not to be angry, Rudolph." + +"My dear," he said, "I assure you, the emotion you raise in me is very +far from resembling that of anger." Musgrave rose and laughed. "I fear, +you know, we will create a scandal if we sit here any longer. Let's see +what the others are doing." + + + + +III + + +That night, after his guests had retired, Colonel Musgrave smoked a +cigarette on the front porch of Matocton. The moon, now in the zenith, +was bright and chill. After a while, Musgrave raised his face toward it, +and laughed. + +"Isn't it--isn't it funny?" he demanded, echoing Anne's query ruefully. + +"Eh, well! perhaps I still retained some lingering hope; in a season of +discomfort, most of us look vaguely for a miracle. And, at times, it +comes, but, more often, not; life isn't always a pantomime, with a fairy +god-mother waiting to break through the darkness in a burst of glory and +reunite the severed lovers, and transform their enemies into pantaloons. +In this case, it is certain that the fairy will not come. I am condemned +to be my own god in the machine." + +Having demonstrated this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and +drugged his mind correcting proofsheets--for the _Lichfield Historical +Association's Quarterly Magazine_--and brought down to the year 1805 his +"List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County." + + + + +IV + + +The night was well advanced when Charteris stepped noiselessly into the +room. The colonel was then sedately writing amid a host of motionless +mute watchers, for at Matocton most of the portraits hang in the East +Drawing-room. + +Thus, above the great marble mantel,--carved with thyrsi, and supported +by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,--you will find burly Sebastian +Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas. "Paint +me among dukes and earls with my hat on, to show I am in all things a +Republican, and the finest diamond in the Colony shall be yours," he had +directed the painter, and this was done. Then there is frail Wilhelmina +Musgrave--that famed beauty whose two-hundred-year-old story all +Lichfield knows, and no genealogist has ever cared to detail--eternally +weaving flowers about her shepherd hat. There, too, is Evelyn Ramsay, +before whose roguish loveliness, as you may remember, the colonel had +snapped his fingers in those roseate days when he so joyously considered +his profound unworthiness to be Patricia's husband. There is also the +colonial governor of Albemarle--a Van Dyck this--two Knellers, and +Lely's portrait of Thomas Musgrave, "the poet," with serious blue eyes +and flaxen hair. The painting of Captain George Musgrave, who +distinguished himself at the siege of Cartagena, is admittedly an +inferior piece of work, but it has vigor, none the less; and below it +hangs the sword which was presented to him by the Lord High Admiral. + +So quietly did Charteris come that the colonel was not aware of his +entrance until the novelist had coughed gently. He was in a +dressing-gown, and looked unusually wizened. + +"I saw your light," he said. "I don't seem to be able to sleep, somehow. +It is so infernally hot and still. I suppose there is going to be a +thunderstorm. I hate thunderstorms. They frighten me." The little man +was speaking like a peevish child. + +"Oh, well--! it will at least clear the air," said Rudolph Musgrave. +"Sit down and have a smoke, won't you?" + +"No, thanks." Charteris had gone to the bookshelves and was gently +pushing and pulling at the books so as to arrange their backs in a +mathematically straight line. "I thought I would borrow something to +read--Why, this is the Tennyson you had at college, isn't it? Yes, I +remember it perfectly." + +These two had roomed together through their college days. + +"Yes; it is the old Tennyson. And yonder is the identical Swinburne you +used to spout from, too. Lord, Jack, it seems a century since I used to +listen by the hour to _The Triumph of Time and Dolores!_" + +"Ah, but you didn't really care for them--not even then." Charteris +reached up, his back still turned, and moved a candlestick the fraction +of an inch. "There is something so disgustingly wholesome about you, +Rudolph. And it appears to be ineradicable. I can't imagine how I ever +came to be fond of you." + +The colonel was twirling his pen, his eyes intent upon it. "And yet--we +_were_ fond of each other, weren't we, Jack?" + +"Why, I positively adored you. You were such a strong and healthy +animal. Upon my word, I don't believe I ever missed a single football +game you played in. In fact, I almost learned to understand the game on +your account. You see--it was so good to watch you raging about with +touzled hair, like the only original bull of Bashan, and the others +tumbling like ninepins. It used to make me quite inordinately proud." + +The colonel smoked. "But, Lord! how proud _I_ was when you got medals!" + +"Yes--I remember." + +"Even if I did bully you sometimes. Remember how I used to twist your +arm to make you write my Latin exercises, Jack?" + +"I liked to have you do that," Charteris said, simply. "It hurt a great +deal, but I liked it." + +He had come up behind the colonel, who was still seated. "Yes, that was +a long while ago," said Charteris. "It is rather terrible--isn't it?--to +reflect precisely how long ago it was. Why, I shall be bald in a year or +two from now. But you have kept almost all your beautiful hair, +Rudolph." + +Charteris touched the colonel's head, stroking his hair ever so lightly +once or twice. It was in effect a caress. + +The colonel was aware of the odor of myrrh which always accompanied +Charteris and felt that the little man was trembling. + +"Isn't there--anything you want to tell me, Jack?" the colonel said. He +sat quite still. + +There was the tiniest pause. The caressing finger-tips lifted from +Musgrave's head, but presently gave it one more brief and half-timid +touch. + +"Why, only _au revoir_, I believe. I am leaving at a rather ungodly hour +to-morrow and won't see you, but I hope to return within the week." + +"I hope so, Jack." + +"And, after all, it is too late to be reading. I shall go back to bed +and take more trional. And then, I dare say, I shall sleep. So good-by, +Rudolph." + +"Good-night, Jack." + +"Oh, yes--! I meant good-night, of course." + +The colonel sighed; then he spoke abruptly: + +"No, just a moment, Jack. I didn't ask you to come here to-night; but +since you have come, by chance, I am going to follow the promptings of +that chance, and strike a blow for righteousness with soiled weapons. +Jack, do you remember suggesting that my father's correspondence during +the War might be of value, and that his desk ought to be overhauled?" + +"Why, yes, of course. Mrs. Musgrave was telling me she began the task," +said Charteris, and smiled a little. + +"Unluckily; yes--but--well! in any event, it suggested to me that old +letters are dangerous. I really had no idea what that desk contained. My +father had preserved great stacks of letters. I have been going through +them. They were most of them from women--letters which should never have +been written in the first place, and which he certainly had no right to +keep." + +"What! and is 'Wild Will's' love-correspondence still extant? I fancy it +made interesting reading, Rudolph." + +"There were some letters which in a measure concern you, Jack." The +colonel handed him a small packet of letters. "If you will read the top +one it will explain. I will just go on with my writing." + +He wrote steadily for a moment or two.... Then Charteris laughed +musically. + +"I have always known there was a love-affair between my mother and 'Wild +Will.' But I never suspected until to-night that I had the honor to be +your half-brother, Rudolph--one of 'Wild Will's' innumerable bastards." +Charteris was pallid, and though he seemed perfectly composed, his eyes +glittered as with gusty brilliancies. "I understand now why my reputed +father always made such a difference between my sister and myself. I +never liked old Alvin Charteris, you know. It is a distinct relief to be +informed I have no share in his blood, although of course the knowledge +comes a trifle suddenly." + +"Perhaps I should have kept that knowledge to myself. I know it would +have been kinder. I had meant to be kind. I loathe myself for dabbling +in this mess. But, in view of all things, it seemed necessary to let you +know I am your own brother in the flesh, and that Patricia is your +brother's wife." + +"I see," said Charteris. "According to your standards that would make a +great difference. I don't know, speaking frankly, that it makes much +difference with me." He turned again to the bookshelves, so that +Musgrave could no longer see his face. Charteris ran his fingers +caressingly over the backs of a row of volumes. "I loved my mother, +Rudolph. I never loved anyone else. That makes a difference." Then he +said, "We Musgraves--how patly I catalogue myself already!--we Musgraves +have a deal to answer for, Rudolph." + +"And doesn't that make it all the more our duty to live clean and honest +lives? to make the debt no greater than it is?" Both men were oddly +quiet. + +"Eh, I am not so sure." John Charteris waved airily toward Sebastian +Musgrave's counterfeit, then toward the other portraits. "It was they +who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph--all that we were to have in +this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their +histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous +race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the +dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under +any obligation. In fact, I rather think God owes us an apology, +Rudolph." + +He spoke with quaint wistfulness. The colonel sat regarding him in +silence, with shocked, disapproving eyes. Then Charteris cocked his head +to one side and grinned like a hobgoblin. + +"What wouldn't you give," he demanded, "to know what I am really +thinking of at this very moment while I talk so calmly? Well, you will +never know. And for the rest, you are at liberty to use your +all-important documents as you may elect. I am John Charteris; whatever +man begot my body, he is rotten bones to-day, and it is as such I value +him. I was never anybody's son--or friend or brother or lover,--but just +a pen that someone far bigger and far nobler than John Charteris writes +with occasionally. Whereas you--but, oh, you are funny, Rudolph!" And +then, "Good-night, dear brother," Charteris added, sweetly, as he left +the room. + + * * * * * + +And Rudolph Musgrave could not quite believe in the actuality of what +had just happened. In common with most of us, he got his general notions +concerning the laws of life from reading fiction; and here was the +material for a Renaissance tragedy wasted so far as any dénouement went. +Destiny, once more, was hardly rising to the possibilities of the +situation. The weapon chance had forged had failed Rudolph Musgrave +utterly; and, indeed, he wondered now how he could ever have esteemed it +formidable. Jack was his half-brother. In noveldom or in a melodrama +this discovery would have transformed their mutual dealings; but as a +workaday world's fact, Musgrave would not honestly say that it had in +any way affected his feelings toward Jack, and it appeared to have left +Charteris equally unaltered. + +"I am not sure, though. We can only guess where Jack is concerned. He +goes his own way always, tricky and furtive and lonelier than any other +human being I have ever known. It is loneliness that looks out of his +eyes, really, even when he is mocking and sneering," the colonel +meditated. + +Then he sighed and went back to the tabulation of his lists of wills. + + + + +V + + +The day was growing strong in the maple-grove behind Matocton. As yet, +the climbing sun fired only the topmost branches, and flooded them with +a tempered radiance through which birds plunged and shrilled vague +rumors to one another. Beneath, a green twilight lingered--twilight +which held a gem-like glow, chill and lucent and steady as that of an +emerald. Vagrant little puffs of wind bustled among the leaves, with a +thin pretense of purpose, and then lapsed, and merged in the large, +ambiguous whispering which went stealthily about the grove. + +Rudolph Musgrave sat on a stone beside the road that winds through the +woods toward the railway station, and smoked, nervously. He was +disheartened of the business of living, and, absurdly enough, as it +seemed to him, he was hungry. + +"It has to be done quietly and without the remotest chance of Anne's +ever hearing of it, and without the remotest chance of its ever having +to be done again. I have about fifteen minutes in which to convince +Patricia both of her own folly and of the fact that Jack is an +unmitigated cad, and to get him off the place quietly, so that Anne will +suspect nothing. And I never knew any reasonable argument to appeal to +Patricia, and Jack will be a cornered rat! Yes, it is a large contract, +and I would give a great deal--a very great deal--to know how I am going +to fulfil it." + +At this moment his wife and Mr. Charteris, carrying two portmanteaux, +came around a bend in the road not twenty feet from Musgrave. They were +both rather cross. In the clean and more prosaic light of morning an +elopement seemed almost silly; moreover, Patricia had had no breakfast, +and Charteris had been much annoyed by his wife, who had breakfasted +with him, and had insisted on driving to the station with him. It was a +trivial-seeming fact, but, perhaps, not unworthy of notice, that +Patricia was carrying her own portmanteau, as well as an umbrella. + +The three faced one another in the cool twilight. The woods stirred +lazily about them. The birds were singing on a wager now. + +"Ah," said Colonel Musgrave, "so you have come at last. I have been +expecting you for some time." + +Patricia dropped her portmanteau, sullenly. Mr. Charteris placed his +with care to the side of the road, and said, "Oh!" It was perhaps the +only observation that occurred to him. + +"Patricia," Musgrave began, very kindly and very gravely, "you are +about to do a foolish thing. At the bottom of your heart, even now, you +know you are about to do a foolish thing--a thing you will regret +bitterly and unavailingly for the rest of time. You are turning your +back on the world--our world--on the one possible world you could ever +be happy in. You can't be happy in the half-world, Patricia; you aren't +that sort. But you can never come back to us then, Patricia; it doesn't +matter what the motive was, what the temptation was, or how great the +repentance is--you cannot ever return. That is the law, Patricia; +perhaps, it isn't always a just law. We didn't make it, you and I, but +it is the law, and we must obey it. Our world merely says that, leaving +it once, you cannot ever return: such is the only punishment it awards +you, for it knows, this wise old world of ours, that such is the +bitterest punishment which could ever be devised for you. Our world has +made you what you are; in every thought and ideal and emotion you +possess, you are a product of our world. You couldn't live in the +half-world, Patricia; you are a product of our world that can never take +root in that alien soil. Come back to us before it is too late, +Patricia!" + +Musgrave shook himself all over, rather like a Newfoundland dog coming +out of the water, and the grave note died from his voice. He smiled, and +rubbed his hands together. + +"And now," said he, "I will stop talking like a problem play, and we +will say no more about it. Give me your portmanteau, my dear, and upon +my word of honor, you will never hear a word further from me in the +matter. Jack, here, can take the train, just as he intended. And--and +you and I will go back to the house, and have a good, hot breakfast +together. Eh, Patricia?" + +She was thinking, unreasonably enough, how big and strong and clean her +husband looked in the growing light. It was a pity Jack was so small. +However, she faced Musgrave coldly, and thought how ludicrously wide of +the mark were all these threats of ostracism. She shudderingly wished he +would not talk of soil and taking root and hideous things like that, but +otherwise the colonel left her unmoved. He was certainly good-looking, +though. + +Charteris was lighting a cigarette, with a queer, contented look. He +knew the value of Patricia's stubbornness now; still, he appeared to be +using an unnecessary number of matches. + +"I should have thought you would have perceived the lack of dignity, as +well as the utter uselessness, in making such a scene," Patricia said. +"We aren't suited for each other, Rudolph; and it is better--far better +for both of us--to have done with the farce of pretending to be. I am +sorry that you still care for me. I didn't know that. But, for the +future, I intend to live my own life." + +Patricia's voice faltered, and she stretched out her hands a little +toward her husband in an odd gust of friendliness. He looked so kind; +and he was not smiling in that way she never liked. "Surely that isn't +so unpardonable a crime, Rudolph?" she asked, almost humbly. + +"No, my dear," he answered, "it is not unpardonable--it is impossible. +You can't lead your own life, Patricia; none of us can. Each life is +bound up with many others, and every rash act of yours, every hasty word +of yours, must affect to some extent the lives of those who are nearest +and most dear to you. But, oh, it is not argument that I would be at! +Patricia, there was a woman once--She was young, and wealthy, and--ah, +well, I won't deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I +will serve up to you no praises of her sauced with lies. But fate and +nature had combined to give her everything a woman can desire, and all +this that woman freely gave to me--to me who hadn't youth or wealth or +fame or anything! And I can't stand by, for that dear dead girl's sake, +and watch your life go wrong, Patricia!" + +"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf"--and when had she used that +half-forgotten nickname last, he wondered. "You imagine you are in love +with a girl because you happen to like the color of her eyes, or because +there is a curve about her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, +Olaf, as we women understand it." + +And wildly hideous and sad, it seemed to Colonel Musgrave--this dreary +parody of their old love-talk. Only, he dimly knew that she had +forgotten John Charteris existed, and that to her this moment seemed no +less sardonic. + +Charteris inhaled, lazily; yet, he did not like the trembling about +Patricia's mouth. Her hands, too, opened and shut tight before she +spoke. + +"It is too late now," she said, dully. "I gave you all there was to +give. You gave me just what Grandma Pendomer and all the others had left +you able to give. That remnant isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand +it. And, anyhow, it is too late now." + +Yet Patricia was remembering a time when Rudolph's voice held always +that grave, tender note in speaking to her; it seemed a great while ago. +And he was big and manly, just like his voice, Rudolph was; and he +looked very kind. Desperately, Patricia began to count over the times +her husband had offended her. Hadn't he talked to her in the most +unwarrantable manner only yesterday afternoon? + +"Too late!--oh, not a bit of it!" Musgrave cried. His voice sank +persuasively. "Why, Patricia, you are only thinking the matter over for +the first time. You have only begun to think of it. Why, there is the +boy--our boy, Patricia! Surely, you hadn't thought of Roger?" + +He had found the right chord at last. It quivered and thrilled under his +touch; and the sense of mastery leaped in his blood. Of a sudden, he +knew himself dominant. Her face was red, then white, and her eyes +wavered before the blaze of his, that held her, compellingly. + +"Now, honestly, just between you and me," the colonel said, +confidentially, "was there ever a better and braver and quainter and +handsomer boy in the world? Why, Patricia, surely, you wouldn't +willingly--of your own accord--go away from him, and never see him +again? Oh, you haven't thought, I tell you! Think, Patricia! Don't you +remember that first day, when I came into your room at the hospital and +he--ah, how wrinkled and red and old-looking he was then, wasn't he, +little wife? Don't you remember how he was lying on your breast, and how +I took you both in my arms, and held you close for a moment, and how for +a long, long while there wasn't anything left of the whole wide world +except just us three and God smiling down upon us? Don't you remember, +Patricia? Don't you remember his first tooth--why, we were as proud of +him, you and I, as if there had never been a tooth before in all the +history of the world! Don't you remember the first day he walked? Why, +he staggered a great distance--oh, nearly two yards!--and caught hold of +my hand, and laughed and turned back--to you. You didn't run away from +him then, Patricia. Are you going to do it now?" + +She struggled under his look. She had an absurd desire to cry, just that +he might console her. She knew he would. Why was it so hard to remember +that she hated Rudolph! Of course, she hated him; she loved that other +man yonder. His name was Jack. She turned toward Charteris, and the +reassuring smile with which he greeted her, impressed Patricia as being +singularly nasty. She hated both of them; she wanted--in that brief time +which remained for having anything--only her boy, her soft, warm little +Roger who had eyes like Rudolph's. + +"I--I--it's too late, Rudolph," she stammered, parrot-like. "If you had +only taken better care of me, Rudolph! If--No, it's too late, I tell +you! You will be kind to Roger. I am only weak and frivolous and +heartlesss. I am not fit to be his mother. I'm not fit, Rudolph! +Rudolph, I tell you I'm not fit! Ah, let me go, my dear!--in mercy, let +me go! For I haven't loved the boy as I ought to, and I am afraid to +look you in the face, and you won't let me take my eyes away--you won't +let me! Ah, Rudolph, let me go!" + +"Not fit?" His voice thrilled with strength, and pulsed with tender +cadences. "Ah, Patricia, I am not fit to be his father! But, between +us--between us, mightn't we do much for him? Come back to us, +Patricia--to me and the boy! We need you, my dear. Ah, I am only a +stolid, unattractive fogy, I know; but you loved me once, and--I am the +father of your child. My standards are out-of-date, perhaps, and in any +event they are not your standards, and that difference has broken many +ties between us; but I am the father of your child. You must--you _must_ +come back to me and the boy!" Musgrave caught her face between his +hands, and lifted it toward his. "Patricia, don't make any mistake! +There is nothing you care for so much as that boy. You can't give him +up! If you had to walk over red-hot ploughshares to come to him, you +would do it; if you could win him a moment's happiness by a lifetime of +poverty and misery and degradation, you would do it. And so would I, +little wife. That is the tie which still unites us; that is the tie +which is too strong ever to break. Come back to us, Patricia--to me and +the boy." + +"I--Jack, Jack, take me away!" she wailed helplessly. + +Charteris came forward with a smile. He was quite sure of Patricia now. + +"Colonel Musgrave," he said, with a faint drawl, "if you have entirely +finished your edifying and, I assure you, highly entertaining monologue, +I will ask you to excuse us. I--oh, man, man!" Charteris cried, not +unkindly, "don't you see it is the only possible outcome?" + +Musgrave faced him. The glow of hard-earned victory was pulsing in the +colonel's blood, but his eyes were chill stars. "Now, Jack," he said, +equably, "I am going to talk to you. In fact, I am going to discharge an +agreeable duty toward you." + +Musgrave drew close to him. Charteris shrugged his shoulders; his smile, +however, was not entirely satisfactory. It did not suggest enjoyment. + +"I don't blame you for being what you are," Musgrave went on, curtly. +"You were born so, doubtless. I don't blame a snake for being what it +is. But, when I see a snake, I claim the right to set my foot on its +head; when I see a man like you--well, this is the right I claim." + +Thereupon Rudolph Musgrave struck his half-brother in the face with his +open hand. The colonel was a strong man, physically, and, on this +occasion, he made no effort to curb his strength. + +"Now," Musgrave concluded, "you are going away from this place very +quickly, and you are going alone. You will do this because I tell you to +do so, and because you are afraid of me. Understand, also--if you will +be so good--that the only reason I don't give you a thorough thrashing +is that I don't think you are worth the trouble. I only want Patricia to +perceive exactly what sort of man you are." + +The blow staggered Charteris. He seemed to grow smaller. His clothes +seemed to hang more loosely about him. His face was paper-white, and the +red mark showed plainly upon it. + +"There would be no earthly sense in my hitting you back," he said +equably. "It would only necessitate my getting the thrashing which, I +can assure you, we are equally anxious to avoid. Of course you are able +to knock me down and so on, because you are nearly twice as big as I am. +I fail to see that proves anything in particular. Come, Patricia!" And +he turned to her, and reached out his hand. + +She shrank from him. She drew away from him, without any vehemence, as +if he had been some slimy, harmless reptile. A woman does not like to +see fear in a man's eyes; and there was fear in Mr. Charteris's eyes, +for all that he smiled. Patricia's heart sickened. She loathed him, and +she was a little sorry for him. + +"Oh, you cur, you cur!" she gasped, in a wondering whisper. Patricia +went to her husband, and held out her hands. She was afraid of him. She +was proud of him, the strong animal. "Take me away, Rudolph," she said, +simply; "take me away from that--that coward. Take me away, my dear. You +may beat me, too, if you like, Rudolph. I dare say I have deserved it. +But I want you to deal brutally with me, to carry me away by force, just +as you threatened to do the day we were married--at the Library, you +remember, when the man was crying 'Fresh oranges!' and you smelt so +deliciously of soap and leather and cigarette smoke." + +Musgrave took both her hands in his. He smiled at Charteris. + +The novelist returned the smile, intensifying its sweetness. "I fancy, +Rudolph," he said, "that, after all, I shall have to take that train +alone." + +Mr. Charteris continued, with a grimace: "You have no notion, though, +how annoying it is not to possess an iota of what is vulgarly considered +manliness. But what am I to do? I was not born with the knack of +enduring physical pain. Oh, yes, I am a coward, if you like to put it +nakedly; but I was born so, willy-nilly. Personally, if I had been +consulted in the matter, I would have preferred the usual portion of +valor. However! the sanctity of the hearth has been most edifyingly +preserved--and, after all, the woman is not worth squabbling about." + +There was exceedingly little of the mountebank in him now; he kicked +Patricia's portmanteau, frankly and viciously, as he stepped over it to +lift his own. Holding this in one hand, John Charteris spoke, honestly: + +"Rudolph, I had a trifle underrated your resources. For you are a brave +man--we physical cowards, you know, admire that above all things--and a +strong man and a clever man, in that you have adroitly played upon the +purely brutal traits of women. Any she-animal clings to its young and +looks for protection in its mate. Upon a higher ground I would have +beaten you, but as an animal you are my superior. Still, a thing done +has an end. You have won back your wife in open fight. I fancy, by the +way, that you have rather laid up future trouble for yourself in doing +so, but I honor the skill you have shown. Colonel Musgrave, it is to you +that, as the vulgar phrase it, I take off my hat." + +Thereupon, Mr. Charteris uncovered his head with perfect gravity, and +turned on his heel, and went down the road, whistling melodiously. + +Musgrave stared after him, for a while. The lust of victory died; the +tumult and passion and fervor were gone from Musgrave's soul. He could +very easily imagine the things Jack Charteris would say to Anne +concerning him; and the colonel knew that she would believe them all. He +had won the game; he had played it, heartily and skilfully and +successfully; and his reward was that the old bickerings with Patricia +should continue, and that Anne should be taught to loathe him. He +foresaw it all very plainly as he stood, hand in hand with his wife. + +But Anne would be happy. It was for that he had played. + + + + +VI + + +They came back to Matocton almost silently. The spell of the dawn was +broken; it was honest, garish day now, and they were both hungry. + +Patricia's spirits were rising, as a butterfly's might after a +thunderstorm. Since she had only a few months to live, she would at +least not waste them in squabbling. She would be conscientiously +agreeable to everybody. + +"Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph!" she cooed, "if I had only known all along that +you loved me!" + +"My dear," he protested, fondly, "it seemed such a matter of course." He +was a little tired, perhaps; the portmanteau seemed very heavy. + +"A woman likes to be told--a woman likes to be told every day. +Otherwise, she forgets," Patricia murmured. Then her face grew tenderly +reproachful. "Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph, see what your carelessness and +neglect has nearly led to! It nearly led to my running away with a man +like--like that! It would have been all your fault, Rudolph, if I had. +You know it would have been, Rudolph." + +And Patricia sighed once more, and then laughed and became magnanimous. + +"Yes--yes, after all, you are the boy's father." She smiled up at him +kindly and indulgently. "I forgive you, Rudolph," said Patricia. + +He must have shown that pardon from Patricia just now was not unflavored +with irony, for she continued, in another voice: "Who, after all, is the +one human being you love? You know that it's the boy, and just the boy +alone. I gave you that boy. You should remember that, I think--" + +"I do remember it, Patricia--" + +"I bore the child. I paid the price, not you," Patricia said, very +quiet. "No, I don't mean the price all women have to pay--" She paused +in their leisurely progress, and drew vague outlines in the roadway with +the ferrule of her umbrella before she looked up into Rudolph Musgrave's +face. She appraised it for a long while and quite as if her husband were +a stranger. + +"Yes, I could make you very sorry for me, if I wanted to." Her thoughts +ran thus. "But what's the use? You could only become an interminable +nuisance in trying to soothe my dying hours. You have just obstinately +squatted around in Lichfield and devoted all your time to being +beautiful and good and mooning around women for I don't know how many +years. You make me tired, and I have half a mind to tell you so right +now. And there really is no earthly sense in attempting to explain +things to you. You have so got into the habit of being beautiful and +good that you are capable of quoting Scripture after I have finished. +Then I would assuredly box your jaws, because I don't yearn to be a poor +stricken dear and weep on anybody's bosom. And I don't particularly care +about your opinion of me, anyway." + +Aloud she said: "Oh, well! let's go and get some breakfast." + + + + +VII + + +And thus the situation stayed. Patricia told him nothing. And Rudolph +Musgrave, knowing that according to his lights he had behaved not +unhandsomely, was the merest trifle patronizing and rather like a person +speaking from a superior plane in his future dealings with Patricia. +Moreover, he was engrossed at this time by his scholarly compilation of +Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to 1800, which was printed the +following February. + +She told him nothing. She was a devoted mother for two days' space, and +then candidly decided that Roger was developing into the most +insufferable of little prigs. + +"And, besides, if he had never been born I would quite probably have +lived to keep my teeth in a glass of water at night. And I can't help +thinking of that privilege being denied me whenever I look at him." + +She told Rudolph Musgrave nothing. She was finding it mildly amusing to +note how people came and went at Matocton, and to appraise these people +disinterestedly, because she would never see them again. + +Patricia was drawing her own conclusions as to Lichfield's aristocracy. +These people--for the most part a preposterously handsome race--were the +pleasantest of companions and their manners were perfection; but there +was enough of old Roger Stapylton's blood in Patricia's veins to make +her feel, however obscurely, that nobody is justified in living without +even an attempt at any personal achievement. The younger men evinced a +marked tendency to leave Lichfield, to make their homes elsewhere, she +noted, and they very often attained prominence; there was Joe Parkinson, +for instance, who had lunched at Oyster Bay only last Thursday, +according to the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_. And, meanwhile, the men of +her husband's generation clung to their old mansions, and were +ornamental, certainly, and were, very certainly, profoundly +self-satisfied; for they adhered to the customs of yesterday under the +comfortable delusion that this was the only way to uphold yesterday's +ideals. But what, in heaven's name, had any of these men of Rudolph +Musgrave's circle ever done beyond enough perfunctory desk-work, say, to +furnish him food and clothes? + +"A hamlet of Hamlets," was Patricia's verdict as to Lichfield--"whose +actual tragedy isn't that their fathers were badly treated, but that +they themselves are constitutionally unable to do anything except talk +about how badly their fathers were treated." + +No, it was not altogether that these men were indolent. Rudolph and +Rudolph's peers had been reared in the belief that when any manual labor +became inevitable, you as a matter of course entrusted its execution to +a negro; and, forced themselves to labor, they not unnaturally complied +with an ever-present sense of unfair treatment, and, in consequence, +performed the work inefficiently. Lichfield had no doubt preserved a +comely manner of living; but it had produced in the last half-century +nothing of real importance except John Charteris. + + + + +VIII + + +For Charteris was important. Patricia was rereading all the books that +Charteris had published, and they engrossed her with an augmenting +admiration. + +But it is unnecessary to dilate upon the marvelous and winning pictures +of life in Lichfield before the War between the States which Charteris +has painted in his novels. "Even as the king of birds that with +unwearied wing soars nearest to the sun, yet wears upon his breast the +softest down,"--as we learn from no less eminent authority than that of +the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_--"so Mr. Charteris is equally expert in +depicting the derring-do and tenderness of those glorious days of +chivalry, of fair women and brave men, of gentle breeding, of splendid +culture and wholesome living." + +Patricia was not a little puzzled by these books. The traditional +Lichfield, she decided in the outcome, may very possibly have been just +the trick-work of a charlatan's cleverness; but, even in that event, +here were the tales of life in Lichfield--ardent, sumptuous and +fragrant throughout with the fragrance of love and roses, of rhyme and +of youth's lovely fallacies; and for the pot-pourri, if it deserved no +higher name, all who believed that living ought to be a uniformly noble +transaction could not fail to be grateful eternally. + +Esthetic values apart--and, indeed, to all such values Patricia accorded +a provisional respect--what most impressed her Stapyltonian mind was the +fact that these books represented, in a perfectly tangible way, success. +Patricia very heartily admired success when it was brevetted as such by +the applause of others. And while to be a noted stylist, and even to be +reasonably sure of annotated reissuement for the plaguing of unborn +schoolchildren, was all well enough, in an unimportant, high-minded way, +Patricia was far more vividly impressed by the blunt figures which told +how many of John Charteris's books had been bought and paid for. She +accepted these figures as his publishers gave them forth, implicitly; +and she marveled over and took odd joy in these figures. They enabled +her to admire Charteris's books without reservation. + +By this time Mrs. Ashmeade had managed, in the most natural manner, to +tell Patricia a deal concerning Charteris. No halo graced the portrait +Mrs. Ashmeade painted.... But, indeed, Patricia now viewed John +Charteris, considered as a person, without any particular bias. She did +not especially care--now--what the man had done or had omitted to do. + +But the venerable incongruity of the writer and his work confronted her +intriguingly. A Charteris writes _In Old Lichfield;_ a Cockney +drug-clerk writes _The Eve of St. Agnes;_ a genteel printer evolves a +Lovelace; and a cutpurse pens the _Ballad of Dead Ladies_ in a brothel. +It is manifestly impossible; and it happens. + +So here, then, was a knave who held, somehow, the keys to a courtlier +and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for +all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing? +Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous +maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And, +anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle put +the best of himself into these books, had somehow clarified the +abhorrent mixture of ability and evil which was John Charteris; and the +best in him she found, on this hypothesis, to be a deal more admirable +than the best in Rudolph Musgrave. + +"It _is_ a part of Jack," she fiercely said. "It is, because I know it +is. All this is part of him--as much a part of him as the cowardice and +the trickery. So I don't really care if he is a liar and a coward. I +ought to, I suppose. But at the bottom of my heart I admire him. He has +made something; he has created these beautiful books, and they will be +here when we are all dead. He doesn't leave the world just as he found +it. That is the only real cowardice, I think--especially as I am going +to do it----" + +And later she said, belligerently: "If I had been a man I could have at +least assassinated somebody who was prominent. I do wish Rudolph was +not such a stick-in-the-mud. And I wish I liked Rudolph better. But on +the whole I prefer the physical coward to the moral one. Rudolph simply +bores me stiff with his benevolent airs. He just walks around the place +forgiving me sixty times to the hour, and if he doesn't stop it I am +going to slap him." + +Thus Patricia. + + + + +IX + + +The world knows how Charteris was killed in Fairhaven by Jasper +Hardress--the husband of "that flighty Mrs. Hardress" Anne had spoken +of. + +"And I hardly know," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "whether more to admire the +justice or the sardonic humor of the performance. Here after hundreds of +entanglements with women, John Charteris manages to be shot by a jealous +maniac on account of a woman with whom--for a wonder--his relations were +proven to be innocent. The man needed killing, but it is asking too much +of human nature to put up with his being made a martyr of." + +She cried a little, though. "It--it's because I remember him when he was +turning out his first mustache," she explained, lucidly. + + * * * * * + +But with the horror and irony of John Charteris's assassination the +biographer of Rudolph Musgrave has really nothing to do save in so far +as this event influenced the life of Rudolph Musgrave. + +It was on the day of Charteris's death--a fine, clear afternoon in late +September--that Rudolph Musgrave went bass-fishing with some eight of +his masculine guests. Luncheon was brought to them in a boat about two +o'clock, along with the day's mail. + +"I say--! But listen, everybody!" cried Alfred Chayter, whose mail +included a morning paper--the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_, in fact. + +He read aloud. + +"I wish I could be with Anne," thought Colonel Musgrave. "It may be I +could make things easier." + +But Anne was in Lichfield now.... + +He had just finished dressing for supper when it occurred to him that +since their return from the river he had not seen Patricia. He was +afraid that Patricia, also, would be upset by this deplorable news. + +As he crossed the hall Virginia came out of Patricia's rooms. The +colonel raised his voice in speaking to her, for with age Virginia was +growing very deaf. + +"Yaas, suh," she said, "I'm doin' middlin' well, suh, thank yeh, suh. +Jus' took the evenin' mail to Miss Patricy, like I always do, suh." She +went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an +idol's. + +He went into Patricia's bedroom. Patricia had been taking an afternoon +nap, and had not risen from the couch, where she lay with three or four +unopened letters upon her breast. Two she had opened and dropped upon +the floor. She seemed not to hear him when he spoke her name, and yet +she was not asleep, because her eyes were partly unclosed. + +There was no purple glint in them, as once there had been always. Her +countenance, indeed, showed everywhere less brightly tinted than +normally it should be. Her heavy copper-colored hair, alone undimmed, +seemed, like some parasitic growth (he thought), to sustain its beauty +by virtue of having drained Patricia's body of color and vitality. + +There was a newspaper in her right hand, with flamboyant headlines, +because to Lichfield the death of John Charteris was an event of +importance. + +Patricia seemed very young. You saw that she had suffered. You knew it +was not fair to hurt a child like that. + +But, indeed, Rudolph Musgrave hardly realized as yet that Patricia was +dead. For Colonel Musgrave was thinking of that time when this same +Patricia had first come to him, fire-new from the heart of an ancient +sunset, and he had noted, for the first time, that her hair was like the +reflection of a sunset in rippling waters, and that her mouth was an +inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her eyes +were purple glimpses of infinity. + +"This same Patricia!" he said, aloud. + + + + +PART NINE - RELICS + + "You have chosen the love 'that lives sans murmurings, + Sans passion,' and incuriously endures + The gradual lapse of time. You have chosen as yours + A level life of little happenings; + And through the long autumnal evenings + Lord Love, no doubt, is of the company, + And hugs your ingleside contentedly, + Smiles at old griefs, and rustles needless wings. + + "And yet I think that sometimes memories + Of divers trysts, of blood that urged like wine + On moonlit nights, and of that first long kiss + Whereby your lips were first made one with mine, + Awake and trouble you, and loving is + Once more important and perhaps divine." + + ALLEN ROSSITER. _Two in October._ + + + + +I + + +To those who knew John Charteris only through the medium of the printed +page it must have appeared that the novelist was stayed in mid-career by +an accident of unrelieved and singular brutality. And truly, thus +extinguished by the unfounded jealousy of a madman, the force of +Charteris's genius seemed, and seems to-day, as emphasized by that +sinister caprice of chance which annihilated it. + +But people in Lichfield, after the manner of each prophet's countrymen, +had their own point of view. The artist always stood between these +people and the artist's handiwork, in part obscuring it. + +In any event, it was generally agreed in Lichfield that Anne Charteris's +conduct after her husband's death was not all which could be desired. To +begin with, she attended the funeral, in black, it was true, but wearing +only the lightest of net veils pinned under her chin--"more as if she +were going somewhere on the train, you know, than as if she were in +genuine bereavement." + +"Jack didn't approve of mourning. He said it was a heathen survival." +That was the only explanation she offered. + +It seemed inadequate to Lichfield. It was preferable, as good taste +went, for a widow to be too overcome to attend her husband's funeral at +all. And Mrs. Charteris had not wept once during the church ceremony, +and had not even had hysterics during the interment at Cedarwood; and +she had capped a scandalous morning's work by remaining with the +undertaker and the bricklayers to supervise the closing of John +Charteris's grave. + +"Why, but of course. It is the last thing I will ever be allowed to do +for him," she had said, in innocent surprise. "Why shouldn't I?" + +Her air was such that you were both to talk to her about appearances. + +"Because she isn't a bit like a widow," as Mrs. Ashmeade pointed out. +"Anybody can condole with a widow, and devote two outer sheets to +explaining that you realize nothing you can say will be of any comfort +to her, and begin at the top of the inside page by telling her how much +better off he is to-day--which I have always thought a double-edged +assertion when advanced to a man's widow. But you cannot condole with a +lantern whose light has been blown out. That is what Anne is." + +Mrs. Ashmeade meditated and appeared dissatisfied. "And John Charteris +of all people!" + +Anne was presently about the Memorial Edition of her husband's +collected writings. It was magnificently printed and when marketed +achieved a flattering success. Robert Etheridge Townsend was +commissioned to write the authorized _Life of John Charteris_ and to +arrange the two volumes of _Letters_. + +Anne was considered an authority on literature and art in general, +through virtue of reflected glory. And in the interviews she granted +various journalists it was noticeable that she no longer referred to +"Jack" or to "Mr. Charteris," but to "my husband." To have been his wife +was her one claim on estimation. And, for the rest, it is inadequate to +love the memory of a martyr. Worship is demanded; and so the wife became +the priestess. + + + + +II + + +Into Colonel Musgrave's mental processes during this period it will not +do to pry too closely. The man had his white nights and his battles, in +part with real grief and regret, and in part with sundry emotions which +he took on faith as the emotions he ought to have, and, therefore, +manifestly, suffered under.... "Patricia was my wife, Jack was my +brother," ran his verdict in the outcome; and beyond that he did not +care to go. + +For death cowed his thoughts. In the colonel's explicit theology dead +people were straightway conveyed to either one or the other of two +places. He had very certainly never known anybody who in his opinion +merited the torments of his orthodox Gehenna; so that in imagination he +vaguely populated its blazing corridors with Nero and Judas and Caesar +Borgia and Henry VIII, and Spanish Inquisitors and the aboriginal +American Indians--excepting of course his ancestress Pocahontas--and +with Benedict Arnold and all the "carpet-baggers" and suchlike other +eminent practitioners of depravity. For no one whom Rudolph Musgrave +had ever encountered in the flesh had been really and profoundly wicked, +Rudolph Musgrave considered; and so, he always gravely estimated +this-or-that acquaintance, after death, to be "better off, poor +fellow"--as the colonel phrased it, with a tinge of +self-contradiction--even if he actually refrained in fancy from endowing +the deceased with aureate harps and crowns and footgear. In fine, death +cowed the colonel's thoughts; beyond the grave they did not care to +venture, and when confronted with that abyss they decorously balked. + +Patricia and Jack were as a matter of course "better off," then--and, +miraculously purged of faults, with all their defects somehow remedied, +the colonel's wife and brother, with Agatha and the colonel's other +interred relatives, were partaking of dignified joys in bright supernal +iridescent realms, which the colonel resignedly looked forward to +entering, on some comfortably remote day or another, and thus rejoining +his transfigured kindred.... Such was the colonel's charitable decision, +in the forming whereof logic was in no way implicated. For religion, as +the colonel would have told you sedately, was not a thing to be reasoned +about. Attempting to do that, you became in Rudolph Musgrave's honest +eyes regrettably flippant. + +Meanwhile Cousin Lucy Fentnor was taking care of the colonel and little +Roger. And Lichfield, long before the lettering on Patricia's tombstone +had time to lose its first light dusty gray, had accredited Cousin Lucy +Fentnor with illimitable willingness to become Mrs. Rudolph Musgrave, +upon proper solicitation, although such tittle-tattle is neither here +nor there; for at worst, a widowed, childless and impoverished +second-cousin, discreetly advanced in her forties, was entitled to keep +house for the colonel in his bereavement, as a jointly beneficial +arrangement, without provoking scandal's tongue to more than a jocose +innuendo or two when people met for "auction"--that new-fangled +perplexing variant of bridge, just introduced, wherein you bid on the +suits.... And, besides, Cousin Lucy Fentnor (as befitted any one born an +Allardyce) was to all accounts a notable housekeeper, famed alike for +the perilous glassiness of her hardwood floors, her dexterous management +of servants, her Honiton-braid fancy-work (familiar to every patron of +Lichfield charity bazaars), and her unparalleled calves-foot jelly. +Under Cousin Lucy Fentnor's systematized coddling little Roger grew like +the proverbial ill weed, and the colonel likewise waxed perceptibly in +girth. + +Thus it was that accident and a woman's intervention seemed once more to +combine in shielding Rudolph Musgrave from discomfort. And in +consequence it was considered improbable that at this late day the +colonel would do the proper thing by Clarice Pendomer, as, at the first +tidings of Patricia's death, had been authentically rumored among the +imaginative; and, in fact, Lichfield no longer considered that +necessary. The claim of outraged morality against these two had been +thrown out of court, through some unworded social statute of +limitation, as far as Lichfield went. Of course it was interesting to +note that the colonel called at Mrs. Pendomer's rather frequently +nowadays; but, then, Clarice Pendomer had all sorts of callers +now--though not many in skirts--and she played poker with men for money +until unregenerate hours of the night, and was reputed with a wealth of +corroborative detail to have even less discussable sources of income: so +that, indeed, Clarice Pendomer was now rather precariously retained +within the social pale through her initial precaution of having been +born a Bellingham.... But all such tittle-tattle, as has been said, is +quite beside the mark, since with the decadence of Clarice Pendomer this +chronicle has, in the outcome, as scant concern as with the marital +aspirations of Cousin Lucy Fentnor. + +And, moreover, the colonel--in colloquial phrase at least--went +everywhere. After the six months of comparative seclusion which decency +exacted of his widowerhood--and thereby afforded him ample leisure to +complete and publish his _Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to +1800_--the colonel, be it repeated, went everywhere; and people found +him no whit the worse company for his black gloves and the somber band +stitched to his coatsleeve. So Lichfield again received him gladly, as +the social triumph of his generation. Handsome and trim and affable, no +imaginable tourist could possibly have divined--for everybody in +Lichfield knew, of course--that Rudolph Musgrave had rounded his +half-century; and he stayed, as ever, invaluable to Lichfield matrons +alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town" girl, the management +of a cotillon, and the prevention of unpleasant pauses among incongruous +dinner-companies. + +But of Anne Charteris he saw very little nowadays. And, indeed, it was +of her own choice that Anne lived apart from Lichfieldian junketings, +contented with her dreams and her pride therein, and her remorseful +tender memories of the things she might have done for Jack and had not +done--lived upon exalted levels nowadays, to which the colonel's more +urbane bereavement did not aspire. + + + + +III + + +"Charteris" was engraved in large, raised letters upon the granite +coping over which Anne stepped to enter the trim burial-plot wherein her +dead lay. + +The place to-day is one of the "points of interest" in Cedarwood. +Tourists, passing through Lichfield, visit it as inevitably as they do +the graves of the Presidents, the Southern generals and the many other +famous people which the old cemetery contains; and the negro hackmen of +Lichfield are already profuse in inaccurate information concerning its +occupant. In a phrase, the post card which pictures "E 9436--Grave of +John Charteris" is among the seven similar misinterpretations of +localities most frequently demanded in Lichfieldian drugstores and +news-stands. + +Her victoria had paused a trifle farther up the hill, where two big +sycamores overhung the roadway. She came into the place alone, walking +quickly, for she was unwarrantably flustered by her late encounter. And +when she found, of all people, Rudolph Musgrave standing by her +husband's grave, as in a sort of puzzled and yet reverent meditation, +she was, and somehow as half-guiltily, assuring herself there was no +possible reason for the repugnance--nay, the rage,--which a mere +glimpse of trudging, painted and flamboyant Clarice Pendomer had +kindled. Yet it must be recorded that Anne had always detested Clarice. + +Now Anne spoke, as the phrase runs, before she thought. "She came with +you!" + +And he answered, as from the depths of an uncalled-for comprehension +which was distinctly irritating: + +"Yes. And Harry, too, for that matter. Only our talk got somehow to be +not quite the sort it would be salutary for him to take an interest in. +So we told Harry to walk on slowly to the gate, and be sure not to do +any number of things he would never have thought of if we hadn't +suggested them. You know how people are with children----" + +"Harry is--her boy?" Anne, being vexed, had almost added--"and yours?" + +"Oh----! Say the _fons et origo_ of the Pendomer divorce case, poor +little chap. Yes, Harry is her boy." + +Anne said, and again, as she perceived within the moment, a thought too +expeditiously: "I wish you wouldn't bring them here, Colonel Musgrave." + +Indeed, it seemed to her flat desecration that Musgrave should have +brought his former mistress into this hallowed plot of ground. She did +not mind--illogically, perhaps--his bringing the child. + +"Eh----? Oh, yes," said Colonel Musgrave. He was sensibly nettled. "You +wish 'Colonel Musgrave' wouldn't bring them here. But then, you see, we +had been to Patricia's grave. And we remembered how Jack stood by us +both when--when things bade fair to be even more unpleasant for Clarice +and myself than they actually were. You shouldn't, I think, grudge even +such moral reprobates the privilege of being properly appreciative of +what he did for both of us. Besides, you always come on Saturdays, you +know. We couldn't very well anticipate that you would be here this +afternoon." + +So he had been at pains to spy upon her! Anne phrased it thus in her +soul, being irritated, and crisply answered: + +"I am leaving Lichfield to-morrow. I had meant this to be my farewell to +them until October." + +Colonel Musgrave had glanced toward the little headstone, with its +rather lengthy epitaph, which marked the resting-place of this woman's +only child; and then to the tall shaft whereon was engraved just "John +Charteris." The latter inscription was very characteristic of her +view-point, he reflected; and yet reasonable, too; as one might mention +a Hector or a Goethe, say, without being at pains to disclaim allusion +to the minor sharers of either name. + +"Yes," he said. "Well, I shall not intrude." + +"No--wait," she dissented. + +Her voice was altered now, for there had come into it a marvelous +gentleness. + +And Colonel Musgrave remained motionless. The whole world was +motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him. + +Sunset was at hand. On one side was the high wooden fence which showed +the boundary of Cedarwood, and through its palings and above it, was +visible the broad, shallow river, comfortably colored, for the most +part, like _café au lait_, but flecked with many patches of foam and +flat iron-colored rocks and innumerable islets, some no bigger than a +billiard-table, but with even the tiniest boasting a tree or two. On the +other--westward--was a mounting vista of close-shaven turf, and many +copings, like magnified geometrical problems, and a host of stunted +growing things--with the staid verdancy of evergreens predominant--and a +multitude of candid shafts and slabs and crosses and dwarfed lambs and +meditant angels. + +Some of these thronged memorials were tinged with violet, and others +were a-glitter like silver, just as the ordered trees shaded them or no +from the low sun. The disposition of all worldly affairs, the man dimly +knew, was very anciently prearranged by an illimitable and, upon the +whole, a kindly wisdom. + +She was considering the change in him. Anne was recollecting that +Colonel Musgrave had somewhat pointedly avoided her since her widowhood. +He seemed almost a stranger nowadays. + +And she could not recognize in the man any resemblance to the boy whom +she remembered--so long ago--excepting just his womanish mouth, which +was as in the old time very full and red and sensitive. And, +illogically enough, both this great change in him and this one feature +that had never changed annoyed her equally. + +She was also worried by his odd tone of flippancy. It jarred, it +vaguely--for the phrase has no equivalent--"rubbed her the wrong way." +Here at a martyr's tomb it was hideously out-of-place, and yet she did +not see her way clear to rebuke. So she remained silent. + +But Rudolph Musgrave was uncanny in some respects. For he said within +the moment, "I am not a bit like John Charteris, am I?" + +"No," she answered, quietly. It had been her actual thought. + +Anne stayed a tiny while quite motionless. Her eyes saw nothing +physical. It was the attitude, Colonel Musgrave reflected, of one who +listens to a far-off music and, incommunicably, you knew that the music +was of a martial sort. She was all in black, of course, very slim and +pure and beautiful. The great cluster of red roses, loosely held, was +like blood against the somber gown. + +The widow of John Charteris, in fine, was a very different person from +that Anne Willoughby whom Rudolph Musgrave had loved so long and long +ago. This woman had tasted of tonic sorrows unknown to Rudolph Musgrave, +and had got consolation too, somehow, in far half-credible uplands +unvisited by him. But, he knew, she lived, and was so exquisite, mainly +by virtue of that delusion which he, of all men, had preserved; Anne +Charteris was of his creation, his masterpiece; and viewing her, he was +aware of great reverence and joy. + +Anne was happy. It was for that he had played. + +But aloud, "I am envious," Rudolph Musgrave declared. "He is the single +solitary man I ever knew whose widow was contented to be simply his +relict for ever and ever, amen. For you will always be just the woman +John Charteris loved, won't you? Yes, if you lived to be thirty-seven +years older than Methuselah, and every genius and potentate in the world +should come a-wooing in the meantime, it never would occur to you that +you could possibly be anything, even to an insane person, except his +relict. And he has been dead now all of three whole years! So I am +envious, just as we ordinary mortals can't help being of you both; +and--may I say it?--I am glad." + + + + +IV + + +They were standing thus when a boy of ten or eleven came unhurriedly +into the "section." He assumed possession of Colonel Musgrave's hand as +though the action were a matter of course. + +"I got lost, Colonel Musgrave," the child composedly announced. "I +walked ever so far, and the gate wasn't where we left it. And the roads +kept turning and twisting so, it seemed I'd never get anywhere. I don't +like being lost when it's getting dark and there's so many dead people +'round, do you?" + +The colonel was moved to disapproval. "Young man, I suppose your poor +deserted mother is looking for you everywhere, and has probably torn out +every solitary strand of hair she possesses by this time." + +"I reckon she is," the boy assented. The topic did not appear to be in +his eyes of preëminent importance. + +Then Anne Charteris said, "Harry," and her voice was such that Rudolph +Musgrave wheeled with amazement in his face. + +The boy had gone to her complaisantly, and she stood now with one hand +on either of his shoulders, regarding him. Her lips were parted, but +they did not move at all. + +"You are Mrs. Pendomer's boy, aren't you?" said Anne Charteris, in a +while. She had some difficulty in articulation. + +"Yes'm," Harry assented, "and we come here 'most every Wednesday, and, +please, ma'am, you're hurtin' me." + +"I didn't mean to--dear," the woman added, painfully. "Don't interfere +with me, Rudolph Musgrave! Your mother must be very fond of you, Harry. +I had a little boy once. I was fond of him. He would have been eleven +years old last February." + +"Please, ma'am, I wasn't eleven till April, and I ain't tall for my age, +but Tubby Parsons says----" + +The woman gave an odd, unhuman sound. "Not until April!" + +"Harry," said Colonel Musgrave then, "an enormous whale is coming down +the river in precisely two minutes. Perhaps if you were to look through +the palings of that fence you might see him. I don't suppose you would +care to, though?" + +And Harry strolled resignedly toward the fence. Harry Pendomer did not +like this funny lady who had hurt, frightened eyes. He did not believe +in the whale, of course, any more than he did in Santa Claus. But like +most children, he patiently accepted the fact that grown people are +unaccountable overlords appointed by some vast _bêtise_, whom, if only +through prudential motives, it is preferable to humor. + + + + +V + + +Colonel Musgrave stood now upon the other side of John Charteris's +grave--just in the spot that was reserved for her own occupancy some +day. + +"You are ill, Anne. You are not fit to be out. Go home." + +"I had a little boy once," she said. "'But that's all past and gone, and +good times and bad times and all times pass over.' There's an odd simple +music in the sentence, isn't there? Yet I remember it chiefly because I +used to read that book to him and he loved it. And it was my child that +died. Why is this other child so like him?" + +"Oh, then, that's it, is it?" said Rudolph Musgrave, as in relief. +"Bless me, I suppose all these little shavers are pretty much alike. I +can only tell Roger from the other boys by his red head. Humanity in the +raw, you know. Still, it is no wonder it gave you a turn. You had much +better go home, however, and not take any foolish risks, and put your +feet in hot water, and rub cologne on your temples, and do all the other +suitable things----" + +"I remember now," she continued, without any apparent emotion, and as +though he had not spoken. "When I came into the room you were saying +that the child must be considered. You were both very angry, and I was +alarmed--foolishly alarmed, perhaps. And my--and John Charteris said, +'Let him tell, then'--and you told me--" + +"The truth, Anne." + +"And he sat quietly by. Oh, if he'd had the grace, the common +manliness--!" She shivered here. "But he never interrupted you. I--I was +not looking at him. I was thinking how vile you were. And when you had +ended, he said, 'My dear, I am sorry you should have been involved in +this. But since you are, I think we can assure Rudolph that both of us +will regard his confidence as sacred.' Then I remembered him, and +thought how noble he was! And all those years that were so happy, hour +by hour, he was letting you--meet his bills!" She seemed to wrench out +the inadequate metaphor. + +You could hear the far-off river, now, faint as the sound of boiling +water. + +After a few pacings Colonel Musgrave turned upon her. He spoke with a +curious simplicity. + +"There isn't any use in lying to you. You wouldn't believe. You would +only go to some one else--some woman probably,--who would jump at the +chance of telling you everything and a deal more. Yes, there are a great +many 'they _do_ say's' floating about. This was the only one that came +near being--serious. The man was very clever.--Oh, he wasn't vulgarly +lecherous. He was simply--Jack Charteris. He always irritated Lichfield, +though, by not taking Lichfield very seriously. You would hear every +by-end of retaliative and sniggered-over mythology, and in your present +state of mind you would believe all of them. I happen to know that a +great many of these stories are not true." + +"A great many of these stories," Anne repeated, "aren't true! A great +many aren't! That ought to be consoling, oughtn't it?" She spoke without +a trace of bitterness. + +"I express myself very badly. What I really mean, what I am aiming at, +is that I wish you would let me answer any questions you might like to +ask, because I will answer them truthfully. Very few people would. You +see, you go about the world so like a gray-stone saint who has just +stepped down from her niche for the fraction of a second," he added, as +with venom, "that it is only human nature to dislike you." + +Anne was not angry. It had come to her, quite as though she were +considering some other woman, that what the man said was, in a fashion, +true. + +"There is sunlight and fresh air in the street," John Charteris had been +wont to declare, "and there is a culvert at the corner. I think it is a +mistake for us to emphasize the culvert." + +So he had trained her to disbelieve in its existence. She saw this now. +It did not matter. It seemed to her that nothing mattered any more. + +"I've only one question, I think. Why did you do it?" She spoke with +bright amazement in her eyes. + +"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he seriocomically deplored. "Why, because it was +such a noble thing to do. It was so like the estimable young man in a +play, you know, who acknowledges the crime he never committed and takes +a curtain-call immediately afterwards. In fine, I simply observed to +myself, with the late Monsieur de Bergerac, 'But what a gesture!'" And +he parodied an actor's motion in this rôle. + +She stayed unsmiling and patiently awaiting veracity. Anne did not +understand that Colonel Musgrave was telling the absolute truth. And so, + +"You haven't _any_ sense of humor," he lamented. "You used to have a +deal, too, before you took to being conscientiously cheerful, and +diffusing sweetness and light among your cowering associates. Well, it +was because it helped him a little. Oh, I am being truthful now. I had +some reason to dislike Jack Charteris, but odd as it is, I know to-day I +never did. I ought to have, perhaps. But I didn't." + +"My friend, you are being almost truthful. But I want the truth entire." + +"It isn't polite to disbelieve people," he reproved her; "or at the very +least, according to the best books on etiquette, you ought not to do it +audibly. Would you mind if I smoked? I could be more veracious then. +There is something in tobacco that makes frankness a matter of course. I +thank you." + +He produced an amber holder, fitted a cigarette into it, and presently +inhaled twice. He said, with a curt voice: + +"The reason, naturally, was you. You may remember certain things that +happened just before John Charteris came and took you. Oh, that is +precisely what he did! You are rather a narrow-minded woman now, in +consequence--or in my humble opinion, at least--and deplorably superior. +It pleased the man to have in his house--if you will overlook my +venturing into metaphor,--one cool room very sparsely furnished where he +could come when the mood seized him. He took the raw material from me, +wherewith to build that room, because he wanted that room. I acquiesced, +because I had not the skill wherewith to fight him." + +Anne understood him now, as with a great drench of surprise. And fear +was what she felt in chief when she saw for just this moment as though +it had lightened, the man's face transfigured, and tender, and strange +to her. + +"I tried to buy your happiness, to--yes, just to keep you blind +indefinitely. Had the price been heavier, I would have paid it the more +gladly. Fate has played a sorry trick. _You_ would never have seen +through him. My dear, I have wanted very often to shake you," he said. + +And she knew, in a glorious terror, that she desired him to shake her, +and as she had never desired anything else in life. + +"Oh, well, I am just a common, ordinary, garden-sort of fool. The +Musgraves always are, in one fashion or another," he sulkily concluded. +And now the demigod was merely Rudolph Musgrave again, and she was not +afraid any longer, but only inexpressibly fordone. + +"Isn't that like a woman?" he presently demanded of the June heavens. +"To drag something out of a man with inflexibility, monomania and moral +grappling-irons, and _then_ not like it! Oh, very well! I am disgusted +by your sex's axiomatic variability. I shall take Harry to his fond +mamma at once." + +She did not say anything. A certain new discovery obsessed her like a +piece of piercing music. + +Then Rudolph Musgrave gave the tiniest of gestures downward. "And I have +told you this, in chief, because we two remember him. He wanted you. He +took you. You are his. You will always be. He gave you just a fragment +of himself. That fragment was worth more than everything I had to +offer." + +Anne very carefully arranged her roses on the ivy-covered grave. "I do +not know--meanwhile, I give these to our master. And my real widowhood +begins to-day." + +And as she rose he looked at her across the colorful mound, and smiled, +half as with embarrassment. A lie, he thought, might ameliorate the +situation, and he bravely hazarded a prodigious one. "Is it necessary to +tell you that Jack loved you? And that the others never really counted?" + +He rejoiced to see that Anne believed him. "No," she assented, "no, not +with him. Oddly enough, I am proud of that, even now. But--don't you +see?--I never loved him. I was just his priestess--the priestess of a +stucco god! Otherwise, I would know it wasn't his fault, but altogether +that of--the others." + +He grimaced and gave a bantering flirt of his head. He said, with +quizzing eyes: + +"Would it do any good to quote Lombroso, and Maudsley, and Gall, and +Krafft-Ebing, and Flechsig, and so on? and to tell you that the +excessive use of one brain faculty must necessarily cause a lack of +nutriment to all the other brain-cells? It would be rather up-to-date. +There is a deal I could tell you also as to what poisonous blood he +inherited; but to do this I have not the right." And then Rudolph +Musgrave said in all sincerity: "'A wild, impetuous whirlwind of passion +and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly _melody_ dwelling in +the heart of it.'" + +She had put aside alike the drolling and the palliative suggestion, like +flimsy veils. "I think it wouldn't do any good whatever. When growing +things are broken by the whirlwind, they don't, as a rule, discuss the +theory of air-currents as a consolation. Men such as he was take what +they desire. It isn't fair--to us others. But it's true, for all that--" + +Their eyes met warily; and for no reason which they shared in common +they smiled together. + +"Poor little Lady of Shalott," said Rudolph Musgrave, "the mirror is +cracked from side to side, isn't it? I am sorry. For life is not so +easily disposed of. And there is only life to look at now, and life is a +bewilderingly complex business, you will find, because the laws of it +are so childishly simple--and implacable. And one of these laws seems to +be that in our little planet, might makes right--" + +He stayed to puff his cigarette. + +"Oh, Rudolph dear, don't--don't be just a merry-Andrew!" she cried +impulsively, before he had time to continue, which she perceived he +meant to do, as if it did not matter. + +And he took her full meaning, quite as he had been used in the old times +to discourse upon a half-sentence. "I am afraid I am that, rather," he +said, reflectively. "But then Clarice and I could hardly have weathered +scandal except by making ourselves particularly agreeable to everybody. +And somehow I got into the habit of making people laugh. It isn't very +difficult. I am rather an adept at telling stories which just graze +impropriety, for instance. You know, they call me the social triumph of +my generation. And people are glad to see me because I am 'so awfully +funny' and 'simply killing' and so on. And I suppose it tells in the +long run--like the dyer's hand, you know." + +"It does tell." Anne was thinking it would always tell. And that, too, +would be John Charteris's handiwork. + +Ensued a silence. Rudolph Musgrave was painstakingly intent upon his +cigarette. A nestward-plunging bird called to his mate impatiently. +Then Anne shook her head impatiently. + +"Come, while I'm thinking, I will drive you back to Lichfield." + +"Oh, no; that wouldn't do at all," he said, with absolute decision. "No, +you see I have to return the boy. And I can't quite imagine your +carriage waiting at the doors of 'that Mrs. Pendomer.'" + +"Oh," Anne fleetingly thought, "_he_ would have understood." But aloud +she only said: "And do you think I hate her any longer? Yes, it is true +I hated her until to-day, and now I'm just sincerely sorry for her. For +she and I--and you and even the child yonder--and all that any of us is +to-day--are just so many relics of John Charteris. Yet he has done with +us--at last!" + +She said this with an inhalation of the breath; but she did not look at +him. + +"Take care!" he said, with an unreasonable harshness. "For I forewarn +you I am imagining vain things." + +"I'm not afraid, somehow." But Anne did not look at him. + +He saw as with a rending shock how like the widow of John Charteris was +to Anne Willoughby; and unforgotten pulses, very strange and irrational +and dear, perplexed him sorely. He debated, and flung aside the +cigarette as an out-moded detail of his hobbling part. + +"You say I did a noble thing for you. I tried to. But quixotism has its +price. To-day I am not quite the man who did that thing. John Charteris +has set his imprint too deep upon us. We served his pleasure. We are not +any longer the boy and girl who loved each other." + +She waited in the rising twilight with a yet averted face. The world was +motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him. And the +disposition of all worldly affairs, the man dimly knew, was very +anciently prearranged by an illimitable and, upon the whole, a kindly +wisdom. + +So that, "My dear, my dear!" he swiftly said: "I don't think I can word +just what my feeling is for you. Always my view of the world has been +that you existed, and that some other people existed--as accessories--" + +Then he was silent for a heart-beat, appraising her. His hands lifted +toward her and fell within the moment, as if it were in impotence. + +Anne spoke at last, and the sweet voice of her was very glad and proud +and confident. + +"My friend, remember that I have not thanked you. You have done the most +foolish and--the manliest thing I ever knew a man to do, just for my +sake. And I have accepted it as if it were a matter of course. And I +shall always do so. Because it was your right to do this very brave and +foolish thing for me. I know you joyed in doing it. Rudolph ... you +cannot understand how glad I am you joyed in doing it." + +Their eyes met. It is not possible to tell you all they were aware of +through that moment, because it is a knowledge so rarely apprehended, +and even then for such a little while, that no man who has sensed it can +remember afterward aught save the splendor and perfection of it. + + * * * * * + +And yet Anne looked back once. There was just the tall, stark shaft, and +on it "John Charteris." The thing was ominous and vast, all colored like +wet gravel, save where the sunlight tipped it with clean silver very +high above their reach. + +"Come," she quickly said to Rudolph Musgrave; "come, for I am afraid." + + + + +VI + + +And are we then to leave them with glad faces turned to that new day +wherein, above the ashes of old errors and follies and mischances and +miseries, they were to raise the structure of such a happiness as earth +rarely witnesses? Would it not be, instead, a grateful task more fully +to depicture how Rudolph Musgrave's love of Anne won finally to its +reward, and these two shared the evening of their lives in tranquil +service of unswerving love come to its own at last? + +Undoubtedly, since the espousal of one's first love--by oneself--is a +phenomenon rarely encountered outside of popular fiction, it would be a +very gratifying task to record that Anne and Rudolph Musgrave were +married that autumn; that subsequently Lichfield was astounded by the +fervor of their life-long bliss; that Colonel and (the second) Mrs. +Musgrave were universally respected, in a word, and their dinner-parties +were always prominently chronicled by the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_; +and that Anne took excellent care of little Roger, and that she and her +second husband proved eminently suited to each other. + +But, as a matter of fact, not one of these things ever happened.... + +"I have been thinking it over," Anne deplored. "Oh, Rudolph dear, I +perfectly realize you are the best and noblest man I ever knew. And I +have always loved you very much, my dear; that is why I could never +abide poor Mrs. Pendomer. And yet--it is a feeling I simply can't +explain----" + +"That you belong to Jack in spite of everything?" the colonel said. +"Why, but of course! I might have known that Jack would never have +allowed any simple incidental happening such as his death to cause his +missing a possible trick." + +Anne would have comforted Rudolph Musgrave; but, to her discomfiture, +the colonel was grinning, however ruefully. + +"I was thinking," he stated, "of the only time that I ever, to my +knowledge, talked face to face with the devil. It is rather odd how +obstinately life clings to the most hackneyed trick of ballad-makers; +and still naively pretends to enrich her productions by the stale device +of introducing a refrain--so that the idlest remarks of as much as three +years ago keep cropping up as the actual gist of the present!... +However, were it within my power, I would evoke Amaimon straightway now +to come up yonder, through your hearthrug, and to answer me quite +honestly if I did not tell him on the beach at Matocton that this, +precisely this, would be the outcome of your knowing everything!" + +"I told you that I couldn't, quite, _explain_----" Anne said. + +"Eh, but I can, my dear," he informed her. "The explanation is that +Lichfield bore us, shaped us, and made us what we are. We may not enjoy +a monopoly of the virtues here in Lichfield, but there is one trait at +least which the children of Lichfield share in common. We are loyal. We +give but once; and when we give, we give all that we have; and when we +have once given it, neither common-sense, nor a concourse of +expostulating seraphim, nor anything else in the universe, can induce us +to believe that a retraction, or even a qualification, of the gift would +be quite worthy of us." + +"But that--that's foolish. Why, it's unreasonable," Anne pointed out. + +"Of course it is. And that is why I am proud of Lichfield. And that is +why you are to-day Jack's wife and always will be just Jack's wife--and +why to-day I am Patricia's husband--and why Lichfield to-day is +Lichfield. There is something braver in life than to be just reasonable, +thank God! And so, we keep the faith, my dear, however obsolete we find +fidelity to be. We keep to the old faith--we of Lichfield, who have +given hostages to the past. We remember even now that we gave freely in +an old time, and did not haggle.... And so, we are proud--yes! we are +consumedly proud, and we know that we have earned the right to be +proud." + +A little later Colonel Musgrave said: + +"And yet--it takes a monstrous while to dispose of our universe's +subtleties. I have loved you my whole life long, as accurately as we +can phrase these matters. There is no--no _reasonable_ reason why you +should not marry me now; and you would marry me if I pressed it. And I +do not press it. Perhaps it all comes of our both having been reared in +Lichfield. Perhaps that is why I, too, have been 'thinking it over.' You +see," he added, with a smile, "the rivet in grandfather's neck is not +lightly to be ignored, after all. No, you do not know what I am talking +about, my dear. And--well, anyhow, I belong to Patricia. Upon the whole, +I am glad that I belong to Patricia; for Patricia and what Patricia +meant to me was the one vital thing in a certain person's rather +hand-to-mouth existence--oh, yes, in spite of everything! I know it now. +Anne Charteris," the colonel cried, "I wouldn't marry you or any other +woman breathing, even though you were to kneel and implore me upon the +knees of a centipede. For I belong to Patricia; and the rivet stays +unbroken, after all." + +"Oh, and am I being very foolish again?" Anne asked. "For I have been +remembering that when--when Jack was not quite truthful about some +things, you know,--the truth he hid was always one which would have hurt +me. And I like to believe that was, at least in part, the reason he hid +it, Rudolph. So he purchased my happiness--well, at ugly prices perhaps. +But he purchased it, none the less; and I had it through all those +years. So why shouldn't I--after all--be very grateful to him? And, +besides"--her voice broke--"besides, he was Jack, you know. He belonged +to me. What does it matter what he did? He belonged to me, and I loved +him." + +And to the colonel's discomfort Anne began to cry. + +"There, there!" he said, "so the real truth is out at last. And tears +don't help very much. It does seem a bit unfair, my dear, I know. But +that is simply because you and I are living in a universe which has +never actually committed itself, under any penalizing bond, to be +entirely candid as to the laws by which it is conducted." + + * * * * * + +But it may be that Rudolph Musgrave voiced quite obsolete views. For he +said this at a very remote period--when the Beef Trust was being +"investigated" in Washington; when an excited Iberian constabulary was +still hunting the anarchists who had attempted to assassinate the young +King and Queen of Spain upon their wedding-day; when the rebuilding of +an earthquake-shattered San Francisco was just beginning to be talked of +as a possibility; and when editorials were mostly devoted to discussion +of what Mr. Bryan would have to say about bi-metallism when he returned +from his foreign tour. + +And, besides, it was Rudolph Musgrave's besetting infirmity always to +shrink--under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse--from making +changes. One may permissibly estimate this foible to have weighed with +him a little, even now, just as in all things it had always weighed in +Lichfield with all his generation. An old custom is not lightly broken. + + + + +PART TEN - IMPRIMIS + + "So let us laugh, lest vain rememberings + Breed, as of old, some rude bucolic cry + Of awkward anguishes, of dreams that die + Without decorum, of Love lacking wings + Yet striving you-ward in his flounderings + Eternally,--as now, even when I lie + As I lie now, who know that you and I + Exist and heed not lesser happenings. + + "I was. I am. I will be. Eh, no doubt + For some sufficient cause, I drift, defer, + Equivocate, dream, hazard, grow more stout, + Age, am no longer Love's idolater,-- + And yet I could and would not live without + Your faith that heartens and your doubts which spur." + + +LIONEL CROCHARD. _Palinodia_. + + + + +I + + +So weeks and months, and presently irrevocable years, passed tranquilly; +and nothing very important seemed to happen nowadays, either for good or +ill; and Rudolph Musgrave was content enough. + +True, there befell, and with increasing frequency, periods when one must +lie abed, and be coaxed into taking interminable medicines, and be +ministered unto generally, because one was of a certain age nowadays, +and must be prudent. But even such necessities, these underhanded +indignities of time, had their alleviations. Trained nurses, for +example, were uncommonly well-informed and agreeable young women, when +you came to know them--and quite lady-like, too, for all that in our +topsy-turvy days these girls had to work for their living. Unthinkable +as it seemed, the colonel found that his night-nurse, a Miss Ramsay, was +actually by birth a Ramsay of Blenheim; and for a little the discovery +depressed him. But to be made much of, upon whatever terms, was always +treatment to which the colonel submitted only too docilely. And, +besides, in this queer, comfortable, just half-waking state, the +colonel found one had the drollest dreams, evolving fancies such as were +really a credit to one's imagination.... + +For instance, one very often imagined that Patricia was more close at +hand nowadays.... No, she was not here in the room, of course, but +outside, in the street, at the corner below, where the letterbox stood. +Yes, she was undoubtedly there, the colonel reflected drowsily. And they +had been so certain her return could only result in unhappiness, and +they were so wise, that whilst she waited for her opportunity Patricia +herself began to be a little uneasy. She had patrolled the block six +times before the chance came. + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, drowsily pleased by his own +inventiveness, that Patricia was glad this afternoon was so hot that no +one was abroad except the small boy at the corner house, who sat upon +the bottom porch-step, and, as children so often do, appeared intently +to appraise the world at large with an inexplicable air of +disappointment. + +"Now think how Rudolph would feel,"--the colonel whimsically played at +reading Patricia's reflection--"if I were to be arrested as a suspicious +character--that's what the newspapers always call them, I think--on his +very doorstep! And he must have been home a half-hour ago at least, +because I know it's after five. But the side-gate's latched, and I can't +ring the door-bell--if only because it would be too ridiculous to have +to ask the maid to tell Colonel Musgrave his wife wanted to see him. +Besides, I don't know the new house-girl. I wish now we hadn't let old +Mary go, even though she was so undependable about thorough-cleaning." + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia was tired of pacing +before the row of houses, each so like the other, and compared herself +to Gulliver astray upon a Brobdingnagian bookshelf which held a "library +set" of some huge author. She had lost interest, too, in the new house +upon the other side. + +"If things were different I would have to call on them. But as it is, I +am spared that bother at least," said Patricia, just as if being dead +did not change people at all. + +Then a colored woman, trim and frillily-capped, came out of the watched +house. She bore some eight or nine letters in one hand, and fanned +herself with them in a leisurely flat-footed progress to the mailbox at +the lower corner. + +"She looks capable," was Patricia's grudging commentary, in slipping +through the doorway into the twilight of the hall. "But it isn't safe to +leave the front-door open like this. One never knows--No, I can tell by +the look of her she's the sort that can't be induced to sleep on the +lot, and takes mysterious bundles home at night." + + + + +II + + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, now in the full flow of this droll +dream, that Patricia resentfully noted her front-hall had been "meddled +with." This much alone might Patricia observe in a swift transit to the +parlor. + +She waited there until the maid returned; and registered to the woman's +credit the discreet soft closing of the front-door and afterward the +well-nigh inaudible swish of the rear door of the dining-room as the +maid went back into the kitchen. + +"In any event," Patricia largely conceded, "she probably doesn't clash +the knives and forks in the pantry after supper, like she was hostile +armaments with any number of cutlasses apiece. I remember Rudolph simply +couldn't stand it when we had Ethel." + +So much was satisfactory. Only--her parlor was so altered! + +There was--to give you just her instantaneous first impression--so +little in it. Broad spaces of plain color showed everywhere; and +Patricia's ideal of what a parlor should be, as befitted the châtelaine +of a fine home in Lichfield, had always been the tangled elegancies of +the front show-window of a Woman's Exchange for Fancy Work. The room had +even been repapered--odiously, as she considered; and the shiny floor of +it boasted just three inefficient rugs, like dingy rafts upon a sea of +very strong coffee. + +Patricia looked in vain for her grandiose plush-covered chairs, her +immaculate "tidies," and the proud yellow lambrequin, embroidered in +high relief with white gardenias, which had formerly adorned the +mantelpiece. The heart of her hungered for her unforgotten and +unforgettable "watered-silk" papering wherein white roses bloomed +exuberantly against a yellow background--which deplorably faded if you +did not keep the window-shades down, she remembered--and she wanted back +her white thick comfortable carpet which hid the floor completely, so +that everywhere you trod upon the buxomest of stalwart yellow roses, +each bunch of which was lavishly tied with wind-blown ribbons. + +Then, too, her cherished spinning-wheel, at least two hundred and fifty +years old, which had looked so pretty after she had gilded it and added +a knot of pink sarsenet, was departed; and gone as well was the +mirror-topped table, with its array of china swan and frogs and +water-lilies artistically grouped about its speckless surface. Even her +prized engraving of "Michael Angelo Buonarotti"--contentedly regarding +his just finished Moses, while a pope tiptoed into the room through a +side-door--had been removed, with all its splendors of red-plush and +intricate gilt-framing. + +Just here and there, in fine, like a familiar face in a crowd, she could +discover some one of her more sedately-colored "parlor ornaments"; and +the whole history of it--its donor or else its price, the gestures of +the shopman, even what sort of weather it was when she and Rudolph found +"exactly what I've been looking for" in the shop-window, and the +Stapyltonian, haggling over the price with which Patricia had +bargained--such unimportant details as these now vividly awakened in +recollection.... In fine, this room was not her parlor at all, and in it +Patricia was lonely.... Yes, yes, she would be nowadays, the colonel +reflected, for he himself had never been in thorough sympathy with all +the changes made by Roger's self-assured young wife. + +Thus it was with the first floor of the house, through which Patricia +strayed with uniform discomfort. This place was home no longer. + +Thus it was with the first floor of the house. Everywhere the equipments +were strange, or at best arranged not quite as Patricia would have +placed them. Yet they had not any look of being recently purchased. Even +that hideous stair-carpet was a little worn, she noted, as noiselessly +she mounted to the second story. + +The house was perfectly quiet, save for a tiny shrill continuance of +melody that somehow seemed only to pierce the silence, not to dispel it. +Rudolph--of all things!--had in her absence acquired a canary. And +everybody knew what an interminable nuisance a canary was. + +She entered the front room. It had been her bedroom ever since her +marriage. She remembered this as with a gush of defiant joy. + + + + +III + + +So it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia came actually into the +room that had been hers.... + +A canary was singing there, very sweet and shrill and as in defiant joy. +Its trilling seemed to fill the room. In the brief pauses of his song +the old clock, from which Rudolph had removed the pendulum on the night +of Agatha's death would interpose an obstinate slow ticking; and +immediately the clock-noise would be drowned in melody. Otherwise the +room was silent. + +In the alcove stood the bed which had been Patricia's. Intent upon its +occupant were three persons, with their backs turned to her. One +Patricia could easily divine to be a doctor; he was twiddling a +hypodermic syringe between his fingers, and the set of his shoulders was +that of acquiescence. Profiles of the others she saw: one a passive +nurse in uniform, who was patiently chafing the right hand of the bed's +occupant; the other a lean-featured red-haired stranger, who sat +crouched in his chair and held the dying man's left hand. + +For in the bed, supported by many pillows, and facing Patricia, was a +dying man. He was very old, having thick tumbled hair which, like his +two-weeks' beard, was uniformly white. His eyelids drooped a trifle, so +that he seemed to meditate concerning something ineffably remote and +serious, yet not, upon the whole, unsatisfactory. You saw and heard the +intake of each breath, so painfully drawn, and expelled with manifest +relief, as if the man were very tired of breathing. Yet the bedclothes +heaved with his vain efforts just to keep on breathing. And sometimes +his parted lips would twitch curiously.... Rudolph Musgrave, too, could +see all this quite plainly, in the mirror over the mantel. + +The doctor spoke. "Yes--it's the end, Professor Musgrave," he said. For +this lean-featured red-haired stranger to whom the doctor spoke, a +pedagogue to his finger-tips, had once been Patricia's dearly-purchased, +chubby baby Roger. + +And Rudolph Musgrave stayed motionless. He knew Patricia was there; but +that fact no longer seemed either very strange or even unnatural; and +besides, it was against some law for him to look at her until Patricia +had called him.... Meanwhile, just opposite, above the mirror, and +facing him, was the Stuart portrait of young Gerald Musgrave. This +picture had now hung there for a great many years. The boy still smiled +at you in undiminished raillery, even though he smiled ambiguously, and +with a sort of humorous sadness in his eyes. Once, very long ago--when +the picture hung downstairs--some one had said that Gerald Musgrave's +life was barren. The dying man could not now recollect, quite, who that +person was. + +Rudolph Musgrave stayed motionless. He comprehended that he was dying. +The greatest of all changes was at hand; and he, who had always shrunk +from making changes, was now content enough.... Indeed, with Rudolph +Musgrave living had always been a vaguely dissatisfactory business, a +hand-to-mouth proceeding which he had scrambled through, as he saw now, +without any worthy aim or even any intelligible purpose. He had nothing +very heinous with which to reproach himself; but upon the other side, he +had most certainly nothing of which to be particularly proud. + +So this was all that living came to! You heard of other people being +rapt by splendid sins and splendid virtues, and you anticipated that +to-morrow some such majestic energy would transfigure your own living, +and change everything: but the great adventure never arrived, somehow; +and the days were frittered away piecemeal, what with eating your +dinner, and taking a wholesome walk, and checking up your bank account, +and dovetailing scraps of parish registers and land-patents and county +records into an irrefutable pedigree, and seeing that your clothes were +pressed, and looking over the newspapers--and what with other +infinitesimal avocations, each one innocent, none of any particular +importance, and each consuming an irrevocable moment of the allotted +time--until at last you found that living had not, necessarily, any +climax at all.... And Patricia would call him presently. + +Once, very long ago, some one had said that the most pathetic tragedy in +life was to get nothing in particular out of it. The dying man could not +now recollect, quite, who that person was. + +He wondered, vaguely, what might have been the outcome if Rudolph +Musgrave had whole-heartedly sought, not waited for, the great +adventure; if Rudolph Musgrave had put--however irrationally--more +energy and less second-thought into living; if Rudolph Musgrave had not +been contented to be just a Musgrave of Matocton.... Well, it was too +late now. He viewed his whole life now, in epitome, and much as you may +see at night the hackneyed vista from your window leap to incisiveness +under the lash of lightning. No, the life of Rudolph Musgrave had never +risen to the plane of dignity, not even to that of seeming to Rudolph +Musgrave a connected and really important transaction on Rudolph +Musgrave's part. Yet Lichfield, none the better for Rudolph Musgrave's +having lived, was none the worse, thank heaven! And there were younger +men in Lichfield--men who did not mean to fail as Rudolph Musgrave and +his fellows all had failed.... Eh, yes, what was the toast that Rudolph +Musgrave drank, so long ago, to the new Lichfield which these younger +men were making? + +"To this new South, that has not any longer need of me or of my kind. + +"To this new South! She does not gaze unwillingly, nor too complacently, +upon old years, and dares concede that but with loss of manliness may +any man encroach upon the heritage of a dog or of a trotting-horse, and +consider the exploits of an ancestor to guarantee an innate and personal +excellence. + +"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with +her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain +speech. And her high past she values now, in chief, as fit foundation of +that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with augmenting +strokes." + +Yes, that was it. And it was true. Yet Rudolph Musgrave's life on earth +was ending now--the only life that he would ever have on earth--and it +had never risen to the plane of seeming even to Rudolph Musgrave a +really important transaction on Rudolph Musgrave's part.... + +Then Patricia spoke. Low and very low she called to Olaf, and the dim, +wistful eyes of Rudolph Musgrave lifted, and gazed full upon her +standing there, and were no longer wistful. And the man made as though +to rise, and could not, and his face was very glad. + +For in the dying man had awakened the pulses of an old, strange, +half-forgotten magic, and all his old delight in the girl who had shared +in and had provoked this ancient wonder-working, together with a quite +new consciousness of the inseparability of Patricia's foibles from his +existence; so that he was incuriously aware of his imbecility in not +having known always that Patricia must come back some day, not as a +glorious, unfamiliar angel, but unaltered. + +"I am glad you haven't changed.... Why, but of course! Nothing would +have counted if you had changed--not even for the better, Patricia. For +you and what you meant to me were real. That only was real--that we, not +being demigods, but being just what we were, once climbed together very +high, where we could glimpse the stars--and nothing else can ever be of +any importance. What we inherited was too much for us, was it not, my +dear? And now it is not formidable any longer. Oh, but I loved you very +greatly, Patricia! And now at last, my dear, I seem to understand--as in +that old, old time when you and I were glad together----" + +But he did not say this aloud, for it seemed to him that he stood in a +cool, pleasant garden, and that Patricia came toward him through the +long shadows of sunset. The lacy folds and furbelows and +semi-transparencies that clothed her were now tinged with gold and now, +as a hedge or a flower bed screened her from the level rays, were +softened into multitudinous graduations of grays and mauves and violets. + +They did not speak. But in her eyes he found compassion and such +tenderness as awed him; and then, as a light is puffed out, they were +the eyes of a friendly stranger. He understood, for an instant, that of +necessity it was decreed time must turn back and everything, even +Rudolph Musgrave, be just as it had been when he first saw Patricia. For +they had made nothing of their lives; and so, they must begin all over +again. + +"_Failure is not permitted_" he was saying.... + +"_You're Cousin Rudolph, aren't you?_" she asked.... + +And Rudolph Musgrave knew he had forgotten something of vast import, but +what this knowledge had pertained to he no longer knew. Then Rudolph +Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about his heart, +that her hair was like the reflection of a sunset in rippling +waters--only many times more beautiful, of course--and that her mouth +was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her +eyes were purple glimpses of infinity. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck +by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10041 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d46f4b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #10041 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10041) diff --git a/old/10041-8.txt b/old/10041-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..564d3c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10041-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9132 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck, by James Branch Cabell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck + A Comedy of Limitations + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: November 11, 2003 [EBook #10041] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK + + +A Comedy of Limitations + +BY + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +"_To this new South, who values her high past in chief, as fit +foundation of that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with +augmenting strokes_." + +1915 + + + + +TO + +PRISCILLA BRADLEY CABELL + + "Nightly I mark and praise, or great or small, + Such stars as proudly struggle one by one + To heaven's highest place, as Procyon, + Antarês, Naös, Tejat and Nibal + Attain supremacy, and proudly fall, + Still glorious, and glitter, and are gone + So very soon;--whilst steadfast and alone + Polaris gleams, and is not changed at all. + + "Daily I find some gallant dream that ranges + The heights of heaven; and as others do, + I serve my dream until my dream estranges + Its errant bondage, and I note anew + That nothing dims, nor shakes, nor mars, nor changes, + Fond faith in you and in my love of you." + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART ONE - PROPINQUITY + +PART TWO - RENASCENCE + +PART THREE - TERTIUS + +PART FOUR - APPRECIATION + +PART FIVE - SOUVENIR + +PART SIX - BYWAYS + +PART SEVEN - YOKED + +PART EIGHT - HARVEST + +PART NINE - RELICS + +PART TEN - IMPRIMIS + + + + +In the middle of the cupboard door was the carved figure of a man.... +He had goat's legs, little horns on his head, and a long beard; the +children in the room called him, "Major-General-field-sergeant +-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" ... He was always looking at the +table under the looking-glass where stood a very pretty little +shepherdess made of china.... Close by her side stood a little +chimney-sweep, as black as coal and also made of china.... Near +to them stood another figure.... He was an old Chinaman who could nod +his head, and used to pretend he was the grandfather of the shepherdess, +although he could not prove it. He, however, assumed authority over her, +and therefore when "Major-general-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's +-legs" asked for the little shepherdess to be his wife, he nodded his head +to show that he consented. + +Then the little shepherdess cried, and looked at her sweetheart, the +chimney-sweep. "I must entreat you," said she, "to go out with me into +the wide world, for we cannot stay here." ... When the chimney-sweep saw +that she was quite firm, he said, "My way is through the stove up the +chimney." ... So at last they reached the top of the chimney.... The sky +with all its stars was over their heads.... They could see for a very +long distance out into the wide world, and the poor little shepherdess +leaned her head on her chimney-sweep's shoulder and wept. "This is too +much," she said, "the world is too large." ... And so with a great deal +of trouble they climbed down the chimney and peeped out.... There lay +the old Chinaman on the floor ... broken into three pieces.... "This is +terrible," said the shepherdess. "He can be riveted," said the +chimney-sweep.... The family had the Chinaman's back mended and a strong +rivet put through his neck; he looked as good as new, but when +"Major-General-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" again asked +for the shepherdess to be his wife, the old Chinaman could no longer nod +his head. + +And so the little china people remained together and were thankful for +the rivet in grandfather's neck, and continued to love each other until +they were broken to pieces. + + + + +PART ONE - PROPINQUITY + + _"A singer, eh?... Well, well! but when he sings + Take jealous heed lest idiosyncrasies + Entinge and taint too deep his melodies; + See that his lute has no discordant strings + To harrow us; and let his vaporings + Be all of virtue and its victories, + And of man's best and noblest qualities, + And scenery, and flowers, and similar things_. + + "Thus bid our paymasters whose mutterings + Some few deride, and blithely link their rhymes + At random; and, as ever, on frail wings + Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes + Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs + From hell's midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes." + +PAUL VERVILLE. _Nascitur_. + + + + +I + + +At a very remote period, when editorials were mostly devoted to +discussion as to whether the Democratic Convention (shortly to be held +in Chicago) would or would not declare in favor of bi-metallism; when +golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed how +to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an +automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "the godet skirts and +huge sleeves of the present modes" were already doomed to extinction; +when the baseball season had just begun, and some of our people were +discussing the national game, and others the spectacular burning of the +old Pennsylvania Railway depot at Thirty-third and Market Street in +Philadelphia, and yet others the significance of General Fitzhugh Lee's +recent appointment as consul-general to Habana:--at this remote time, +Lichfield talked of nothing except the Pendomer divorce case. + +And Colonel Rudolph Musgrave had very narrowly escaped being named as +the co-respondent. This much, at least, all Lichfield knew when George +Pendomer--evincing unsuspected funds of generosity--permitted his wife +to secure a divorce on the euphemistic grounds of "desertion." John +Charteris, acting as Rudolph Musgrave's friend, had patched up this +arrangement; and the colonel and Mrs. Pendomer, so rumor ran, were to be +married very quietly after a decent interval. + +Remained only to deliberate whether this sop to the conventions should +be accepted as sufficient. + +"At least," as Mrs. Ashmeade sagely observed, "we can combine +vituperation with common-sense, and remember it is not the first time a +Musgrave has figured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race! +proverbial flutterers of petticoats! His surname convicts the man +unheard and almost excuses him. All of us feel that. And, moreover, it +is not as if the idiots had committed any unpardonable sin, for they +have kept out of the newspapers." + +Her friend seemed dubious, and hazarded something concerning "the merest +sense of decency." + +"In the name of the Prophet, figs! People--I mean the people who count +in Lichfield--are charitable enough to ignore almost any crime which is +just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It +gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in +the morning paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion +of being illiterate and virtueless. That's Lichfield." + +"But, Polly--" + +"Sophist, don't I know my Lichfield? I know it almost as well as I know +Rudolph Musgrave. And so I prophesy that he will not marry Clarice +Pendomer, because he is inevitably tired of her by this. He will marry +money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will +gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone +throwing, and be just as friendly with the participants to their faces +as we ever were. So don't let me hear any idiotic talk about whether or +no _I_ am going to receive her--" + +"Well, after all, she was born a Bellingham. We must remember that." + +"Wasn't I saying I knew my Lichfield?" Mrs. Ashmeade placidly observed. + + * * * * * + +And time, indeed, attested her to be right in every particular. + +Yet it must be recorded that at this critical juncture chance rather +remarkably favored Colonel Musgrave and Mrs. Pendomer, by giving +Lichfield something of greater interest to talk about; since now, just +in the nick of occasion, occurred the notorious Scott Musgrave murder. +Scott Musgrave--a fourth cousin once removed of the colonel's, to be +quite accurate--had in the preceding year seduced the daughter of a +village doctor, a negligible "half-strainer" up country at Warren; and +her two brothers, being irritated, picked this particular season to +waylay him in the street, as he reeled homeward one night from the +Commodores' Club, and forthwith to abolish Scott Musgrave after the +primitive methods of their lower station in society. + +These details, indeed, were never officially made public, since a +discreet police force "found no clues"; for Fred Musgrave (of King's +Garden), as befitted the dead man's well-to-do brother, had been at no +little pains to insure constabulary shortsightedness, in preference to +having the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically +aired. Fred Musgrave thereby afforded Lichfield a delectable opportunity +(conversationally and abetted by innumerable "they _do_ say's") to +accredit the murder, turn by turn, to every able-bodied person residing +within stone's throw of its commission. So that few had time, now, to +talk of Rudolph Musgrave and Clarice Pendomer; for it was not in +Lichfieldian human nature to discuss a mere domestic imbroglio when +here, also in the Musgrave family, was a picturesque and gory +assassination to lay tongue to. + +So Colonel Musgrave was duly reëlected that spring to the librarianship +of the Lichfield Historical Association, and the name of Mrs. George +Pendomer was not stricken from the list of patronesses of the Lichfield +German Club, but was merely altered to "Mrs. Clarice Pendomer." + + * * * * * + +At the bottom of his heart Colonel Musgrave was a trifle irritated that +his self-sacrifice should be thus unrewarded by martyrdom. Circumstances +had enabled him to assume, and he had gladly accepted, the blame for +John Charteris's iniquity, rather than let Anne Charteris know the truth +about her husband and Clarice Pendomer. The truth would have killed +Anne, the colonel believed; and besides, the colonel had enjoyed the +performance of a picturesque action. + +And having acted as a hero in permitting himself to be pilloried as a +libertine, it was preferable of course not to have incurred ostracism +thereby. His common-sense conceded this; and yet, to Colonel Musgrave, +it could not but be evident that Destiny was hardly rising to the +possibilities of the situation. + + + + +II + + +Concerning Colonel Musgrave one finds the ensuing account in a +publication of the period devoted to biographies of more or less +prominent Americans. It is reproduced unchanged, because these memoirs +were--in the old days--compiled by the person whom they commemorated. +The custom was a worthy one, since the value of an autobiography is +determined by the nature of its superfluities and falsehoods. + +"MUSGRAVE, RUDOLPH VARTREY, editor; _b_. Lichfield, Sill., Mar. 14, +1856; _s_. William Sebastian and Martha (Allardyce) M; _g. s_. +Theodorick Q.M., gov. of Sill. 1805-8, judge of the General Ct., +1808-11, judge Supreme Ct. of Appeals, 1811-50 and pres. Supreme Ct. of +Appeals, 1841-50; grad. King's Coll. and U. of Sill. Corr. sec. +Lichfield Hist. Soc., and editor Sill. Mag. of Biog. since 1890; dir. +Traders Nat. Bank, Sill.; mem. Soc. of the Sons of Col. Govs., pres. +Sill. Soc. of Protestant Martyrs, comdr. Sill. Mil. Order of Lost +Battles, mem. exec. bd. Sill. Hist. Assn. for the Preservation of Ruins. +Democrat, Episcopalian, unmarried. _Author_: Colonial Lichfield, 1892; +Right on the Scaffold, 1893; Secession and the South, 1894; Chart of the +Descendants of Zenophon Perkins, 1894; Recollections of a Gracious Era, +1895; Notes as to the Vartreys of Westphalia, 1896. Has also written +numerous pamphlets on hist., biog. and geneal. subjects. _Address_: +Lichfield, Sill." + +For Colonel Musgrave was by birth the lineal head of all the Musgraves +of Matocton, which is in Lichfield, as degrees are counted there, +equivalent to what being born a marquis would mean in England. Handsome +and trim and affable, he defied chronology by looking ten years younger +than he was known to be. For at least a decade he had been invaluable to +Lichfield matrons alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town +girl," the management of a cotillion and the prevention of unpleasant +pauses among incongruous dinner companies. + +In short, he was by all accounts the social triumph of his generation; +and his military title, won by four years of arduous service at +receptions and parades while on the staff of a former Governor of the +State, this seasoned bachelor carried off with plausibility and +distinction. + +The story finds him "Librarian and Corresponding Secretary" of the +Lichfield Historical Association, which office he had held for some six +years. The salary was small, and the colonel had inherited little; but +his sister, Miss Agatha Musgrave, who lived with him, was a notable +housekeeper. He increased his resources in a gentlemanly fashion by +genealogical research, directed mostly toward the rehabilitation of +ambiguous pedigrees; and for the rest, no other man could have fulfilled +more gracefully the main duty of the Librarian, which was to exhibit the +Association's collection of relics to hurried tourists "doing" +Lichfield. + +His "Library manner" was modeled upon that which an eighteenth century +portrait would conceivably possess, should witchcraft set the canvas +breathing. + + + + +III + + +Also the story finds Colonel Musgrave in the company of his sister on a +warm April day, whilst these two sat upon the porch of the Musgrave home +in Lichfield, and Colonel Musgrave waited until it should be time to +open the Library for the afternoon. And about them birds twittered +cheerily, and the formal garden flourished as gardens thrive nowhere +except in Lichfield, and overhead the sky was a turkis-blue, save for a +few irrelevant clouds which dappled it here and there like splashes of +whipped cream. + +Yet, for all this, the colonel was ill-at-ease; and care was on his +brow, and venom in his speech. + +"And one thing," Colonel Musgrave concluded, with decision, "I wish +distinctly understood, and that is, if she insists on having young men +loafing about her--as, of course, she will--she will have to entertain +them in the garden. I won't have them in the house, Agatha. You remember +that Langham girl you had here last Easter?" he added, disconsolately +--"the one who positively littered up the house with young men, +and sang idiotic jingles to them at all hours of the night about +the Bailey family and the correct way to spell chicken? She drove me to +the verge of insanity, and I haven't a doubt that this Patricia person +will be quite as obstreperous. So, please mention it to her, +Agatha--casually, of course--that, in Lichfield, when one is partial to +either vocal exercise or amorous daliance, the proper scene of action is +the garden. I really cannot be annoyed by her." + +"But, Rudolph," his sister protested, "you forget she is engaged to the +Earl of Pevensey. An engaged girl naturally wouldn't care about meeting +any young men." + +"H'm!" said the colonel, drily. + +Ensued a pause, during which the colonel lighted yet another cigarette. + +Then, "I have frequently observed," he spoke, in absent wise, "that all +young women having that peculiarly vacuous expression about the eyes--I +believe there are misguided persons who describe such eyes as being +'dreamy,'--are invariably possessed of a fickle, unstable and coquettish +temperament. Oh, no! You may depend upon it, Agatha, the fact that she +contemplates purchasing the right to support a peculiarly disreputable +member of the British peerage will not hinder her in the least from +making advances to all the young men in the neighborhood." + +Miss Musgrave was somewhat ruffled. She was a homely little woman with +nothing of the ordinary Musgrave comeliness. Candor even compels the +statement that in her pudgy swarthy face there was a droll suggestion +of the pug-dog. + +"I am sure," Miss Musgrave remonstrated, with placid dignity, "that you +know nothing whatever about her, and that the reports about the earl +have probably been greatly exaggerated, and that her picture shows her +to be an unusually attractive girl. Though it is true," Miss Musgrave +conceded after reflection, "that there are any number of persons in the +House of Lords that I wouldn't in the least care to have in my own +house, even with the front parlor all in linen as it unfortunately is. +So awkward when you have company! And the Bible does bid us not to put +our trust in princes, and, for my part, I never thought that photographs +could be trusted, either." + +"Scorn not the nobly born, Agatha," her brother admonished her, "nor +treat with lofty scorn the well-connected. The very best people are +sometimes respectable. And yet," he pursued, with a slight hiatus of +thought, "I should not describe her as precisely an attractive-looking +girl. She seems to have a lot of hair,--if it is all her own, which it +probably isn't,--and her nose is apparently straight enough, and I +gather she is not absolutely deformed anywhere; but that is all I can +conscientiously say in her favor. She is artificial. Her hair, now! It +has a--well, you would not call it exactly a crinkle or precisely a +wave, but rather somewhere between the two. Yes, I think I should +describe it as a ripple. I fancy it must be rather like the reflection +of a sunset in--a duck-pond, say, with a faint wind ruffling the water. +For I gather that her hair is of some light shade,--induced, I haven't a +doubt, by the liberal use of peroxides. And this ripple, too, Agatha, it +stands to reason, must be the result of coercing nature, for I have +never seen it in any other woman's hair. Moreover," Colonel Musgrave +continued, warming somewhat to his subject, "there is a dimple--on the +right side of her mouth, immediately above it,--which speaks of the most +frivolous tendencies. I dare say it comes and goes when she +talks,--winks at you, so to speak, in a manner that must be simply +idiotic. That foolish little cleft in her chin, too--" + +But at this point, his sister interrupted him. + +"I hadn't a notion," said she, "that you had even looked at the +photograph. And you seem to have it quite by heart, Rudolph,--and some +people admire dimples, you know, and, at any rate, her mother had red +hair, so Patricia isn't really responsible. I decided that it would be +foolish to use the best mats to-night. We can save them for Sunday +supper, because I am only going to have eggs and a little cold meat, and +not make company of her." + +For no apparent reason, Rudolph Musgrave flushed. + +"I inspected it--quite casually--last night. Please don't be absurd, +Agatha! If we were threatened with any other direful visitation +--influenza, say, or the seventeen-year locust,--I should +naturally read up on the subject in order to know what to expect. And +since Providence has seen fit to send us a visitor rather than a +visitation--though, personally, I should infinitely prefer the +influenza, as interfering in less degree with my comfort,--I have, of +course, neglected no opportunity of finding out what we may reasonably +look forward to. I fear the worst, Agatha. For I repeat, the girl's face +is, to me, absolutely unattractive!" + +The colonel spoke with emphasis, and flung away his cigarette, and took +up his hat to go. + +And then, "I suppose," said Miss Musgrave, absently, "you will be +falling in love with her, just as you did with Anne Charteris and Aline +Van Orden and all those other minxes. I _would_ like to see you married, +Rudolph, only I couldn't stand your having a wife." + +"I! I!" sputtered the colonel. "I think you must be out of your head! I +fall in love with that chit! Good Lord, Agatha, you are positively +idiotic!" + +And the colonel turned on his heel, and walked stiffly through the +garden. But, when half-way down the path, he wheeled about and came +back. + +"I beg your pardon, Agatha," he said, contritely, "it was not my +intention to be discourteous. But somehow--somehow, dear, I don't quite +see the necessity for my falling in love with anybody, so long as I have +you." + +And Miss Musgrave, you may be sure, forgave him promptly; and +afterward--with a bit of pride and an infinity of love in her kind, +homely face,--her eyes followed him out of the garden on his way to open +the Library. And she decided in her heart that she had the dearest and +best and handsomest brother in the universe, and that she must remember +to tell him, accidentally, how becoming his new hat was. And then, at +some unspoken thought, she smiled, wistfully. + +"She would be a very lucky girl if he did," said Miss Musgrave, apropos +of nothing in particular; and tossed her grizzly head. + +"An earl, indeed!" said Miss Musgrave + + + + +IV + + +And this is how it came about: + +Patricia Vartrey (a second cousin once removed of Colonel Rudolph +Musgrave's), as the older inhabitants of Lichfield will volubly attest, +was always a person who did peculiar things. The list of her +eccentricities is far too lengthy here to be enumerated; but she began +it by being born with red hair--Titian reds and auburns were +undiscovered euphemisms in those days--and, in Lichfield, this is not +regarded as precisely a lady-like thing to do; and she ended it, as far +as Lichfield was concerned, by eloping with what Lichfield in its horror +could only describe, with conscious inadequacy, as "a quite unheard-of +person." + +Indisputably the man was well-to-do already; and from this nightmarish +topsy-turvidom of Reconstruction the fellow visibly was plucking wealth. +Also young Stapylton was well enough to look at, too, as Lichfield +flurriedly conceded. + +But it was equally undeniable that he had made his money through a +series of commercial speculations distinguished both by shiftiness and +daring, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly +negligible "poor white" person,--an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will" +Musgrave, Colonel Musgrave's father, who was of course the same +Lieutenant-Colonel William Sebastian Musgrave, C.S.A., that met his +death at Gettysburg. + +This upstart married Patricia Vartrey, for all the chatter and +whispering, and carried her away from Lichfield, as yet a little dubious +as to what recognition, if any, should be accorded the existence of the +Stapyltons. And afterward (from a notoriously untruthful North, indeed) +came rumors that he was rapidly becoming wealthy; and of Patricia +Vartrey's death at her daughter's birth; and of the infant's health and +strength and beauty, and of her lavish upbringing,--a Frenchwoman, +Lichfield whispered, with absolutely nothing to do but attend upon the +child. + +And then, little by little, a new generation sprang up, and, little by +little, the interest these rumors waked became more lax; and it was +brought about, at last, by the insidious transitions of time, that +Patricia Vartrey was forgotten in Lichfield. Only a few among the older +men remembered her; some of them yet treasured, as these fogies so often +do, a stray fan or an odd glove; and in bycorners of sundry +time-toughened hearts there lurked the memory of a laughing word or of a +glance or of some such casual bounty, that Patricia Vartrey had accorded +these hearts' owners when the world was young. + +But Agatha Musgrave, likewise, remembered the orphan cousin who had +been reared with her. She had loved Patricia Vartrey; and, in due time, +she wrote to Patricia's daughter,--in stately, antiquated phrases that +astonished the recipient not a little,--and the girl had answered. The +correspondence flourished. And it was not long before Miss Musgrave had +induced her young cousin to visit Lichfield. + +Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, be it understood, knew nothing of all this +until the girl was actually on her way. And now, she was to arrive that +afternoon, to domicile herself in his quiet house for two long +weeks--this utter stranger, look you!--and upset his comfort, ask him +silly questions, expect him to talk to her, and at the end of her visit, +possibly, present him with some outlandish gimcrack made of cardboard +and pink ribbons, in which she would expect him to keep his papers. The +Langham girl did that. + + * * * * * + +It is honesty's part to give you the man no better than he was. +Lichfield at large had pampered him; many women had loved him; and above +all, Miss Agatha had spoiled him. After fifteen years of being the pivot +about which the economy of a household revolves, after fifteen years of +being the inevitable person whose approval must be secured before any +domestic alteration, however trivial, may be considered, no mortal man +may hope to remain a paragon of unselfishness. + +Colonel Musgrave joyed in the society of women. But he classed +them--say, with the croquettes adorned with pink paper frills which were +then invariably served at the suppers of the Lichfield German Club,--as +acceptable enough, upon a conscious holiday, but wholly incongruous with +the slippered ease of home. When you had an inclination for feminine +society, you shaved and changed your clothes and thought up an impromptu +or so against emergency, and went forth to seek it. That was natural; +but to have a petticoated young person infesting your house, hourly, was +as preposterous as ice-cream soda at breakfast. + +The metaphor set him off at a tangent. He wondered if this Patricia +person could not (tactfully) be induced to take her bath after +breakfast, as Agatha did? after he had his? Why, confound the girl, he +was not responsible for there being only one bathroom in the house! It +was necessary for him to have his bath and be at the Library by nine +o'clock. This interloper must be made to understand as much. + +The colonel reached the Library undecided as to whether Miss Stapylton +had better breakfast in her room, or if it would be entirely proper for +her to come to the table in one of those fluffy lace-trimmed garments +such as Agatha affected at the day's beginning? + +The question was a nice one. It was not as though servants were willing +to be bothered with carrying trays to people's rooms; he knew what +Agatha had to say upon that subject. It was not as though he were the +chit's first cousin, either. He almost wished himself in the decline of +life, and free to treat the girl paternally. + +And so he fretted all that afternoon. + + * * * * * + +Then, too, he reflected that it would be very awkward if Agatha should +be unwell while this Patricia person was in the house. Agatha in her +normal state was of course the kindliest and cheeriest gentlewoman in +the universe, but any physical illness appeared to transform her nature +disastrously. She had her "attacks," she "felt badly" very often +nowadays, poor dear; and how was a Patricia person to be expected to +make allowances for the fact that at such times poor Agatha was +unavoidably a little cross and pessimistic? + + + + +V + + +Yet Colonel Musgrave strolled into his garden, later, with a tolerable +affectation of unconcern. Women, after all, he assured himself, were +necessary for the perpetuation of the species; and, resolving for the +future to view these weakly, big-hipped and slope-shouldered makeshifts +of Nature's with larger tolerance, he cocked his hat at a +devil-may-carish angle, and strode up the walk, whistling jauntily and +having, it must be confessed, to the unprejudiced observer very much the +air of a sheep in wolf's clothing. + +"At worst," he was reflecting, "I can make love to her. They, as a rule, +take kindlily enough to that; and in the exercise of hospitality a host +must go to all lengths to divert his guests. Failure is not +permitted...." + +Then She came to him. + +She came to him across the trim, cool lawn, leisurely, yet with a +resilient tread that attested the vigor of her slim young body. She was +all in white, diaphanous, ethereal, quite incredibly incredible; but as +she passed through the long shadows of the garden--fire-new, from the +heart of the sunset, Rudolph Musgrave would have sworn to you,--the lacy +folds and furbelows and semi-transparencies that clothed her were now +tinged with gold, and now, as a hedge or flower-bed screened her from +the horizontal rays, were softened into multitudinous graduations of +grays and mauves and violets. + +"Failure is not permitted," he was repeating in his soul.... + +"You're Cousin Rudolph, aren't you?" she asked. "How perfectly +entrancing! You see until to-day I always thought that if I had been +offered the choice between having cousins or appendicitis I would have +preferred to be operated on." + +And Rudolph Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about +his heart, that her hair was really like the reflection of a sunset in +rippling waters,--only many times more beautiful, of course,--and that +her mouth was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and +that her eyes were purple glimpses of infinity. + +Then he observed that his own mouth was giving utterance to divers +irrelevant and foolish sounds, which eventually resolved themselves into +the statement he was glad to see her. And immediately afterward the +banality of this remark brought the hot blood to his face and, for the +rest of the day, stung him and teased him, somewhere in the background +of his mind, like an incessant insect. + +Glad, indeed! + +Before he had finished shaking hands with Patricia Stapylton, it was +all over with the poor man. + +"Er--h'm!" quoth he. + +"Only," Miss Stapylton was meditating, with puckered brow, "it would be +unseemly for me to call you Rudolph--" + +"You impertinent minx!" cried he, in his soul; "I should rather think it +would be!" + +"--and Cousin Rudolph sounds exactly like a dried-up little man with +eyeglasses and crows' feet and a gentle nature. I rather thought you +were going to be like that, and I regard it as extremely hospitable of +you not to be. You are more like--like what now?" Miss Stapylton put her +head to one side and considered the contents of her vocabulary,--"you +are like a viking. I shall call you Olaf," she announced, when she had +reached a decision. + +This, look you, to the most dignified man in Lichfield,--a person who +had never borne a nickname in his life. You must picture for yourself +how the colonel stood before her, big, sturdy and blond, and glared down +at her, and assured himself that he was very indignant; like Timanthes, +the colonel's biographer prefers to draw a veil before the countenance +to which art is unable to do justice. + +Then, "I have no admiration for the Northmen," Rudolph Musgrave +declared, stiffly. "They were a rude and barbarous nation, proverbially +addicted to piracy and intemperance." + +"My goodness gracious!" Miss Stapylton observed,--and now, for the +first time, he saw the teeth that were like grains of rice upon a pink +rose petal. Also, he saw dimples. "And does one mean all that by a +viking?" + +"The vikings," he informed her--and his Library manner had settled upon +him now to the very tips of his fingers--"were pirates. The word is of +Icelandic origin, from _vik_, the name applied to the small inlets along +the coast in which they concealed their galleys. I may mention that Olaf +was not a viking, but a Norwegian king, being the first Christian +monarch to reign in Norway." + +"Dear me!" said Miss Stapylton; "how interesting!" + +Then she yawned with deliberate cruelty. + +"However," she concluded, "I shall call you Olaf, just the same." + +"Er--h'm!" said the colonel. + + * * * * * + +And this stuttering boor (he reflected) was Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, +confessedly the social triumph of his generation! This imbecile, without +a syllable to say for himself, without a solitary adroit word within +tongue's reach, wherewith to annihilate the hussy, was a Musgrave of +Matocton! + + * * * * * + +And she did. To her he was "Olaf" from that day forth. + +Rudolph Musgrave called her, "You." He was nettled, of course, by her +forwardness--"Olaf," indeed!--yet he found it, somehow, difficult to +bear this fact in mind continuously. + +For while it is true our heroes and heroines in fiction no longer fall +in love at first sight, Nature, you must remember, is too busily +employed with other matters to have much time to profit by current +literature. Then, too, she is not especially anxious to be realistic. +She prefers to jog along in the old rut, contentedly turning out +chromolithographic sunrises such as they give away at the tea stores, +contentedly staging the most violent and improbable melodramas; +and--sturdy old Philistine that she is--she even now permits her +children to fall in love in the most primitive fashion. + +She is not particularly interested in subtleties and soul analyses; she +merely chuckles rather complacently when a pair of eyes are drawn, +somehow, to another pair of eyes, and an indescribable something is +altered somewhere in some untellable fashion, and the world, suddenly, +becomes the most delightful place of residence in all the universe. +Indeed, it is her favorite miracle, this. For at work of this sort the +old Philistine knows that she is an adept; and she has rejoiced in the +skill of her hands, with a sober workmanly joy, since Cain first went +a-wooing in the Land of Nod. + +So Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, without understanding what had happened to +him, on a sudden was strangely content with life. + +It was at supper--dinner, in Lichfield, when not a formal +entertainment, is eaten at two in the afternoon--that he fell +a-speculating as to whether Her eyes, after all, could be fitly +described as purple. + +Wasn't there a grayer luminosity about them than he had at first +suspected?--wasn't the cool glow of them, in a word, rather that of +sunlight falling upon a wet slate roof? + +It was a delicate question, an affair of nuances, of almost +imperceptible graduations; and in debating a matter of such nicety, a +man must necessarily lay aside all petty irritation, such as being +nettled by an irrational nickname, and approach the question with +unbiased mind. + +He did. And when, at last, he had come warily to the verge of decision, +Miss Musgrave in all innocence announced that they would excuse him if +he wished to get back to his work. + +He discovered that, somehow, the three had finished supper; and, +somehow, he presently discovered himself in his study, where eight +o'clock had found him every evening for the last ten years, when he was +not about his social diversions. An old custom, you will observe, is not +lightly broken. + + + + +VI + + +Subsequently: "I have never approved of these international marriages," +said Colonel Musgrave, with heat. "It stands to reason, she is simply +marrying the fellow for his title. _(The will of Jeremiah Brown, dated +29 November, 1690, recorded 2 February, 1690-1, mentions his wife Eliza +Brown and appoints her his executrix.)_ She can't possibly care for him. +_(This, then, was the second wife of Edward Osborne of Henrico, who, +marrying him 15 June, 1694, died before January, 1696-7.)_ But they are +all flibbertigibbets, every one of them. _(She had apparently no +children by either marriage--)_ And I dare say she is no better than the +rest." + +Came a tap on the door. Followed a vision of soft white folds and +furbelows and semi-transparencies and purple eyes and a pouting mouth. + +"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, Olaf," the owner of these +vanities complained. "Are you very busy? Cousin Agatha is about her +housekeeping, and I have read the afternoon paper all through,--even the +list of undelivered letters and the woman's page,--and I just want to +see the Gilbert Stuart picture," she concluded,--exercising, one is +afraid, a certain economy in regard to the truth. + +This was a little too much. If a man's working-hours are not to be +respected--if his privacy is to be thus invaded on the flimsiest of +pretexts,--why, then, one may very reasonably look for chaos to come +again. This, Rudolph Musgrave decided, was a case demanding firm and +instant action. Here was a young person who needed taking down a peg or +two, and that at once. + +But he made the mistake of looking at her first. And after that, he lied +glibly. "Good Lord, no! I am not in the least busy now. In fact, I was +just about to look you two up." + +"I was rather afraid of disturbing you." She hesitated; and a lucent +mischief woke in her eyes. "You are so patriarchal, Olaf," she lamented. +"I felt like a lion venturing into a den of Daniels. But if you cross +your heart you aren't really busy--why, then, you can show me the +Stuart, Olaf." + +It is widely conceded that Gilbert Stuart never in his after work +surpassed the painting which hung then in Rudolph Musgrave's study,--the +portrait of the young Gerald Musgrave, afterward the friend of Jefferson +and Henry, and, still later, the author of divers bulky tomes, +pertaining for the most part to ethnology. The boy smiles at you from +the canvas, smiles ambiguously,--smiles with a woman's mouth, set above +a resolute chin, however,--and with a sort of humorous sadness in his +eyes. These latter are of a dark shade of blue--purple, if you +will,--and his hair is tinged with red. + +"Why, he took after me!" said Miss Stapylton. "How thoughtful of him, +Olaf!" + +And Rudolph Musgrave saw the undeniable resemblance. It gave him a queer +sort of shock, too, as he comprehended, for the first time, that the +faint blue vein on that lifted arm held Musgrave blood,--the same blood +which at this thought quickened. For any person guided by appearances, +Rudolph Musgrave considered, would have surmised that the vein in +question contained celestial ichor or some yet diviner fluid. + +"It is true," he conceded, "that there is a certain likeness." + +"And he is a very beautiful boy," said Miss Stapylton, demurely. "Thank +you, Olaf; I begin to think you are a dangerous flatterer. But he is +only a boy, Olaf! And I had always thought of Gerald Musgrave as a +learned person with a fringe of whiskers all around his face--like a +centerpiece, you know." + +The colonel smiled. "This portrait was painted early in life. Our +kinsman was at that time, I believe, a person of rather frivolous +tendencies. Yet he was not quite thirty when he first established his +reputation by his monograph upon _The Evolution of Marriage_. And +afterwards, just prior to his first meeting with Goethe, you will +remember--" + +"Oh, yes!" Miss Stapylton assented, hastily; "I remember perfectly. I +know all about him, thank you. And it was that beautiful boy, Olaf, that +young-eyed cherub, who developed into a musty old man who wrote musty +old books, and lived a musty, dusty life all by himself, and never +married or had any fun at all! How _horrid_, Olaf!" she cried, with a +queer shrug of distaste. + +"I fail," said Colonel Musgrave, "to perceive anything--ah--horrid in a +life devoted to the study of anthropology. His reputation when he died +was international." + +"But he never had any fun, you jay-bird! And, oh, Olaf! Olaf! that boy +could have had so much fun! The world held so much for him! Why, Fortune +is only a woman, you know, and what woman could have refused him +anything if he had smiled at her like that when he asked for it?" + +Miss Stapylton gazed up at the portrait for a long time now, her hands +clasped under her chin. Her face was gently reproachful. + +"Oh, boy dear, boy dear!" she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her +voice, "how _could_ you be _so_ foolish? _Didn't_ you know there was +something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and +customs and folk-songs? Oh, precious child, how could you?" + +Gerald Musgrave smiled back at her, ambiguously; and Rudolph Musgrave +laughed. "I perceive," said he, "you are a follower of Epicurus. For my +part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of the Stoic. I can +conceive of no nobler life than one devoted to furthering the cause of +science." + +She looked up at him, with a wan smile. "A barren life!" she said: "ah, +yes, his was a wasted life! His books are all out-of-date now, and +nobody reads them, and it is just as if he had never been. A barren +life, Olaf! And that beautiful boy might have had so much fun--Life is +queer, isn't it, Olaf?" + +Again he laughed, "The criticism," he suggested, "is not altogether +original. And Science, no less than War, must have her unsung heroes. +You must remember," he continued, more seriously, "that any great work +must have as its foundation the achievements of unknown men. I fancy +that Cheops did not lay every brick in his pyramid with his own hand; +and I dare say Nebuchadnezzar employed a few helpers when he was laying +out his hanging gardens. But time cannot chronicle these lesser men. +Their sole reward must be the knowledge that they have aided somewhat in +the unending work of the world." + +Her face had altered into a pink and white penitence which was flavored +with awe. + +"I--I forgot," she murmured, contritely; "I--forgot you were--like +him--about your genealogies, you know. Oh, Olaf, I'm very silly! Of +course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, I dare say, if you like +it,--to devote your life to learning, as you and he have done. I forgot, +Olaf. Still, I am sorry, somehow, for that beautiful boy," she ended, +with a disconsolate glance at the portrait. + + + + +VII + + +Long after Miss Stapylton had left him, the colonel sat alone in his +study, idle now, and musing vaguely. There were no more addenda +concerning the descendants of Captain Thomas Osborne that night. + +At last, the colonel rose and threw open a window, and stood looking +into the moonlit garden. The world bathed in a mist of blue and silver. +There was a breeze that brought him sweet, warm odors from the garden, +together with a blurred shrilling of crickets and the conspiratorial +conference of young leaves. + +"Of course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, if you like it," he +said, with a faint chuckle. "I wonder, now, if I do like it?" + +He was strangely moved. He seemed, somehow, to survey Rudolph Musgrave +and all his doings with complete and unconcerned aloofness. The man's +life, seen in its true proportions, dwindled into the merest flicker of +a match; he had such a little while to live, this Rudolph Musgrave! And +he spent the serious hours of this brief time writing notes and charts +and pamphlets that perhaps some hundred men in all the universe might +care to read--pamphlets no better and no more accurate than hundreds of +other men were writing at that very moment. + +No, the capacity for originative and enduring work was not in him; and +this incessant compilation of dreary footnotes, this incessant rummaging +among the bones of the dead--did it, after all, mean more to this +Rudolph Musgrave than one full, vivid hour of life in that militant +world yonder, where men fought for other and more tangible prizes than +the mention of one's name in a genealogical journal? + +He could not have told you. In his heart, he knew that a thorough digest +of the Wills and Orders of the Orphans' Court of any county must always +rank as a useful and creditable performance; but, from without, the +sounds and odors of Spring were calling to him, luring him, wringing his +very heart, bidding him come forth into the open and crack a jest or two +before he died, and stare at the girls a little before the match had +flickered out. + + * * * * * + +At this time he heard a moaning noise. The colonel gave a shrug, sighed, +and ascended to his sister's bedroom. He knew that Agatha must be ill; +and that there is no more efficient quietus to wildish meditations than +the heating of hot-water bottles and the administration of hypnotics he +had long ago discovered. + + + + +PART TWO - RENASCENCE + + "As one imprisoned that hath lain alone + And dreamed of sunlight where no vagrant gleam + Of sunlight pierces, being freed, must deem + This too but dreaming, and must dread the sun + Whose glory dazzles,--even as such-an-one + Am I whose longing was but now supreme + For this high hour, and, now it strikes, esteem + I do but dream long dreamed-of goals are won. + + "Phyllis, I am not worthy of thy love. + I pray thee let no kindly word be said + Of me at all, for in the train thereof, + Whenas yet-parted lips, sigh-visited, + End speech and wait, mine when I will to move, + Such joy awakens that I grow afraid." +THOMAS ROWLAND. _Triumphs of Phyllis_. + + + + +I + + +They passed with incredible celerity, those next ten days--those +strange, delicious, topsy-turvy days. To Rudolph Musgrave it seemed +afterward that he had dreamed them away in some vague Lotus Land--in a +delectable country where, he remembered, there were always purple eyes +that mocked you, and red lips that coaxed you now, and now cast gibes at +you. + +You felt, for the most part of your stay in this country, flushed and +hot and uncomfortable and unbelievably awkward, and you were mercilessly +bedeviled there; but not for all the accumulated wealth of Samarkand and +Ind and Ophir would you have had it otherwise. Ah, no, not otherwise in +the least trifle. For now uplifted to a rosy zone of acquiescence, you +partook incuriously at table of nectar and ambrosia, and noted abroad, +without any surprise, that you trod upon a more verdant grass than +usual, and that someone had polished up the sun a bit; and, in fine, you +snatched a fearful joy from the performance of the most trivial +functions of life. + +Yet always he remembered that it could not last; always he remembered +that in the autumn Patricia was to marry Lord Pevensey. She sometimes +gave him letters to mail which were addressed to that nobleman. He +wondered savagely what was in them; he posted them with a vicious shove; +and, for the time, they caused him acute twinges of misery. But not for +long; no, for, in sober earnest, if some fantastic sequence of events +had made his one chance of winning Patricia Stapylton dependent on his +spending a miserable half-hour in her company, Rudolph Musgrave could +not have done it. + +As for Miss Stapylton, she appeared to delight in the cloistered, +easy-going life of Lichfield. The quaint and beautiful old town fell +short in nothing of her expectations, in spite of the fact that she had +previously read John Charteris's tales of Lichfield,--"those effusions +which" (if the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_ is to be trusted) "have +builded, by the strength and witchery of record and rhyme, romance and +poem, a myriad-windowed temple in Lichfield's honor--exquisite, +luminous, and enduring--for all the world to see." + +Miss Stapylton appeared to delight in the cloistered easy-going life of +Lichfield,--that town which was once, as the outside world has +half-forgotten now, the center of America's wealth, politics and +culture, the town to which Europeans compiling "impressions" of America +devoted one of their longest chapters in the heyday of Elijah Pogram and +Jefferson Brick. But the War between the States has changed all that, +and Lichfield endures to-day only as a pleasant backwater. + +Very pleasant, too, it was in the days of Patricia's advent. There were +strikingly few young men about, to be sure; most of them on reaching +maturity had settled in more bustling regions. But many maidens remained +whom memory delights to catalogue,--tall, brilliant Lizzie Allardyce, +the lovely and cattish Marian Winwood, to whom Felix Kennaston wrote +those wonderful love-letters which she published when he married +Kathleen Saumarez, the rich Baugh heiresses from Georgia, the Pride +twins, and Mattie Ferneyhaugh, whom even rival beauties loved, they say, +and other damsels by the score,--all in due time to be wooed and won, +and then to pass out of the old town's life. + +Among the men of Rudolph Musgrave's generation--those gallant oldsters +who were born and bred, and meant to die, in Lichfield,--Patricia did +not lack for admirers. Tom May was one of them, of course; rarely a +pretty face escaped the tribute of at least one proposal from Tom May. +Then there was Roderick Taunton, he with the leonine mane, who spared +her none of his forensic eloquence, but found Patricia less tractable +than the most stubborn of juries. Bluff Walter Thurman, too, who was +said to know more of Dickens, whist and criminal law than any other man +living, came to worship at her shrine, as likewise did huge red-faced +Ashby Bland, famed for that cavalry charge which history-books tell you +that he led, and at which he actually was not present, for reasons all +Lichfield knew and chuckled over. And Courtney Thorpe and Charles +Maupin, doctors of the flesh and the spirit severally, were others among +the rivals who gathered about Patricia at decorous festivals when, +candles lighted, the butler and his underlings came with trays of +delectable things to eat, and the "nests" of tables were set out, and +pleasant chatter abounded. + +And among Patricia's attendants Colonel Musgrave, it is needless to +relate, was preëminently pertinacious. The two found a deal to talk +about, somehow, though it is doubtful if many of their comments were of +sufficient importance or novelty to merit record. Then, also, he often +read aloud to her from lovely books, for the colonel read admirably and +did not scruple to give emotional passages their value. _Trilby_, +published the preceding spring in book form, was one of these books, for +all this was at a very remote period; and the _Rubaiyat_ was another, +for that poem was as yet unhackneyed and hardly wellknown enough to be +parodied in those happy days. + +Once he read to her that wonderful sad tale of Hans Christian Andersen's +which treats of the china chimney-sweep and the shepherdess, who eloped +from their bedizened tiny parlor-table, and were frightened by the +vastness of the world outside, and crept ignominiously back to their fit +home. "And so," the colonel ended, "the little china people remained +together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and +continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces." + +"It was really a very lucky thing," Patricia estimated, "that the +grandfather had a rivet in his neck and couldn't nod to the +billy-goat-legged person to take the shepherdess away into his cupboard. +I don't doubt the little china people were glad of it. But after +climbing so far--and seeing the stars,--I think they ought to have had +more to be glad for." Her voice was quaintly wistful. + +"I will let you into a secret--er--Patricia. That rivet was made out of +the strongest material in the whole universe. And the old grandfather +was glad, at bottom, he had it in his neck so that he couldn't nod and +separate the shepherdess from the chimney-sweep." + +"Yes,--I guess he had been rather a rip among the bric-à-brac in his day +and sympathized with them?" + +"No, it wasn't just that. You see these little china people had forsaken +their orderly comfortable world on the parlor table to climb very high. +It was a brave thing to do, even though they faltered and came back +after a while. It is what we all want to do, Patricia--to climb toward +the stars,--even those of us who are too lazy or too cowardly to attempt +it. And when others try it, we are envious and a little uncomfortable, +and we probably scoff; but we can't help admiring, and there is a rivet +in the neck of all of us which prevents us from interfering. Oh, yes, +we little china people have a variety of rivets, thank God, to prevent +too frequent nodding and too cowardly a compromise with +baseness,--rivets that are a part of us and force us into flashes of +upright living, almost in spite of ourselves, when duty and inclination +grapple. There is always the thing one cannot do for the reason that one +is constituted as one is. That, I take it, is the real rivet in +grandfather's neck and everybody else's." + +He spoke disjointedly, vaguely, but the girl nodded. "I think I +understand, Olaf. Only, it is a two-edged rivet--to mix metaphors--and +keeps us stiffnecked against all sorts of calls. No, I am not sure that +the thing one cannot do because one is what one is, proves to be always +a cause for international jubilations and fireworks on the lawn." + + + + +II + + +Thus Lichfield, as to its staid trousered citizenry, fell prostrate at +Miss Stapylton's feet, and as to the remainder of its adults, +vociferously failed to see anything in the least remarkable in her +appearance, and avidly took and compared notes as to her personal +apparel. + +"You have brought Asmodeus into Lichfield," Colonel Musgrave one day +rebuked Miss Stapylton, as they sat in the garden. "The demon of pride +and dress is rampant everywhere--er--Patricia. Even Agatha does her hair +differently now; and in church last Sunday I counted no less than seven +duplicates of that blue hat of yours." + +Miss Stapylton was moved to mirth. "Fancy your noticing a thing like +that!" said she. "I didn't know you were even aware I had a blue hat." + +"I am no judge," he conceded, gravely, "of such fripperies. I don't +pretend to be. But, on the other hand, I must plead guilty to deriving +considerable harmless amusement from your efforts to dress as an example +and an irritant to all Lichfield." + +"You wouldn't have me a dowd, Olaf?" said she, demurely. "I have to be +neat and tidy, you know. You wouldn't have me going about in a +continuous state of unbuttonedness and black bombazine like Mrs. Rabbet, +would you?" + +Rudolph Musgrave debated as to this. "I dare say," he at last conceded, +cautiously, "that to the casual eye your appearance is somewhat +--er--more pleasing than that of our rector's wife. But, on the +other hand----" + +"Olaf, I am embarrassed by such fulsome eulogy. Mrs. Rabbet isn't a day +under forty-nine. And you consider me _somewhat_ better-looking than she +is!" + +He inspected her critically, and was confirmed in his opinion. + +"Olaf"--coaxingly--"do you really think I am as ugly as that?" + +"Pouf!" said the colonel airily; "I dare say you are well enough." + +"Olaf"--and this was even more cajoling--"do you know you've never told +me what sort of a woman you most admire?" + +"I don't admire any of them," said Colonel Musgrave, stoutly. "They are +too vain and frivolous--especially the pink-and-white ones," he added, +unkindlily. + +"Cousin Agatha has told me all about your multifarious affairs of +course. She depicts you as a sort of cardiacal buccaneer and visibly +gloats over the tale of your enormities. She is perfectly dear about +it. But have you never--_cared_--for any woman, Olaf?" + +Precarious ground, this! His eyes were fixed upon her now. And hers, for +doubtless sufficient reasons, were curiously intent upon anything in the +universe rather than Rudolph Musgrave. + +"Yes," said he, with a little intake of the breath; "yes, I cared once." + +"And--she cared?" asked Miss Stapylton. + +She happened, even now, not to be looking at him. + +"She!" Rudolph Musgrave cried, in real surprise. "Why, God bless my +soul, of course she didn't! She didn't know anything about it." + +"You never told her, Olaf?"--and this was reproachful. Then Patricia +said: "Well! and did she go down in the cellar and get the wood-ax or +was she satisfied just to throw the bric-à-brac at you?" + +And Colonel Musgrave laughed aloud. + +"Ah!" said he; "it would have been a brave jest if I had told her, +wouldn't it? She was young, you see, and wealthy, and--ah, well, I won't +deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I will serve up to +you no praises of her sauced with lies. And I scorn to fall back on the +stock-in-trade of the poets,--all their silly metaphors and similes and +suchlike nonsense. I won't tell you that her complexion reminded me of +roses swimming in milk, for it did nothing of the sort. Nor am I going +to insist that her eyes had a fire like that of stars, or proclaim that +Cupid was in the habit of lighting his torch from them. I don't think +he was. I would like to have caught the brat taking any such liberties +with those innocent, humorous, unfathomable eyes of hers! And they +didn't remind me of violets, either," he pursued, belligerently, "nor +did her mouth look to me in the least like a rosebud, nor did I have the +slightest difficulty in distinguishing between her hands and lilies. I +consider these hyperbolical figures of speech to be idiotic. Ah, no!" +cried Colonel Musgrave, warming to his subject--and regarding it, too, +very intently; "ah, no, a face that could be patched together at the +nearest florist's would not haunt a man's dreams o'nights, as hers does! +I haven't any need for praises sauced with lies! I spurn hyperbole. I +scorn exaggeration. I merely state calmly and judicially that she was +God's masterpiece,--the most beautiful and adorable and indescribable +creature that He ever made." + +She smiled at this. "You should have told her, Olaf," said Miss +Stapylton. "You should have told her that you cared." + +He gave a gesture of dissent. "She had everything," he pointed out, +"everything the world could afford her. And, doubtless, she would have +been very glad to give it all up for me, wouldn't she?--for me, who +haven't youth or wealth or fame or anything? Ah, I dare say she would +have been delighted to give up the world she knew and loved,--the world +that loved her,--for the privilege of helping me digest old county +records!" + +And Rudolph Musgrave laughed again, though not mirthfully. + +But the girl was staring at him, with a vague trouble in her eyes. "You +should have told her, Olaf," she repeated. + +And at this point he noted that the arbutus-flush in her cheeks began to +widen slowly, until, at last, it had burned back to the little pink +ears, and had merged into the coppery glory of her hair, and had made +her, if such a thing were possible--which a minute ago it manifestly was +not,--more beautiful and adorable and indescribable than ever before. + +"Ah, yes!" he scoffed, "Lichfield would have made a fitting home for +her. She would have been very happy here, shut off from the world with +us,--with us, whose forefathers have married and intermarried with one +another until the stock is worthless, and impotent for any further +achievement. For here, you know, we have the best blood in America, and +--for utilitarian purposes--that means the worst blood. Ah, we may prate +of our superiority to the rest of the world,--and God knows, we +do!--but, at bottom, we are worthless. We are worn out, I tell you! we +are effete and stunted in brain and will-power, and the very desire of +life is gone out of us! We are contented simply to exist in Lichfield. +And she--" + +He paused, and a new, fierce light came into his eyes. "She was so +beautiful!" he said, half-angrily, between clenched teeth. + +"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf," she lamented, with a hint +of real sadness. "You imagine you are in love with a girl because you +happen to like the color of her eyes, or because there is a curve about +her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, Olaf, as we women +understand it. Ah, no, a girl's love for a man doesn't depend altogether +upon his fitness to be used as an advertisement for somebody's +ready-made clothing." + +"You fancy you know what you are talking about," said Rudolph Musgrave, +"but you don't. You don't realize, you see, how beautiful she--was." + +And this time, he nearly tripped upon the tense, for her hand was on his +arm, and, in consequence, a series of warm, delicious little shivers was +running about his body in a fashion highly favorable to extreme +perturbation of mind. + +"You should have told her, Olaf," she said, wistfully. "Oh, Olaf, Olaf, +why didn't you tell her?" + +She did not know, of course, how she was tempting him; she did not know, +of course, how her least touch seemed to waken every pulse in his body +to an aching throb, and set hope and fear a-drumming in his breast. +Obviously, she did not know; and it angered him that she did not. + +"She would have laughed at me," he said, with a snarl; "how she would +have laughed!" + +"She wouldn't have laughed, Olaf." And, indeed, she did not look as if +she would. + +"But much you know of her!" said Rudolph Musgrave, morosely. "She was +just like the rest of them, I tell you! She knew how to stare a man out +of countenance with big purple eyes that were like violets with the dew +on them, and keep her paltry pink-and-white baby face all pensive and +sober, till the poor devil went stark, staring mad, and would have +pawned his very soul to tell her that he loved her! She knew! She did it +on purpose. She would look pensive just to make an ass of you! She--" + +And here the colonel set his teeth for a moment, and resolutely drew +back from the abyss. + +"She would not have cared for me," he said, with a shrug. "I was not +exactly the sort of fool she cared for. What she really cared for was a +young fool who could dance with her in this silly new-fangled gliding +style, and send her flowers and sweet-meats, and make love to her +glibly--and a petticoated fool who would envy her fine feathers,--and, +at last, a knavish fool who would barter his title for her money. She +preferred fools, you see, but she would never have cared for a +middle-aged penniless fool like me. And so," he ended, with a vicious +outburst of mendacity, "I never told her, and she married a title and +lived unhappily in gilded splendor ever afterwards." + +"You should have told her, Olaf," Miss Stapylton persisted; and then she +asked, in a voice that came very near being inaudible: "Is it too late +to tell her now, Olaf?" + +The stupid man opened his lips a little, and stood staring at her with +hungry eyes, wondering if it were really possible that she did not hear +the pounding of his heart; and then his teeth clicked, and he gave a +despondent gesture. + +"Yes," he said, wearily, "it is too late now." + +Thereupon Miss Stapylton tossed her head. "Oh, very well!" said she; +"only, for my part, I think you acted very foolishly, and I don't see +that you have the least right to complain. I quite fail to see how you +could have expected her to marry you--or, in fact, how you can expect +any woman to marry you,--if you won't, at least, go to the trouble of +asking her to do so!" + +Then Miss Stapylton went into the house, and slammed the door after her. + + + + +III + + +Nor was that the worst of it. For when Rudolph Musgrave followed her--as +he presently did, in a state of considerable amaze,--his sister +informed him that Miss Stapylton had retired to her room with an +unaccountable headache. + +And there she remained for the rest of the evening. It was an unusually +long evening. + +Yet, somehow, in spite of its notable length--affording, as it did, an +excellent opportunity for undisturbed work,--Colonel Musgrave found, +with a pricking conscience, that he made astonishingly slight progress +in an exhaustive monograph upon the fragmentary Orderly Book of an +obscure captain in a long-forgotten regiment, which if it had not +actually served in the Revolution, had at least been demonstrably +granted money "for services," and so entitled hundreds of aspirants to +become the Sons (or Daughters) of various international disagreements. + +Nor did he see her at breakfast--nor at dinner. + + + + +IV + + +A curious little heartache accompanied Colonel Musgrave on his way home +that afternoon. He had not seen Patricia Stapylton for twenty-four +hours, and he was just beginning to comprehend what life would be like +without her. He did not find the prospect exhilarating. + +Then, as he came up the orderly graveled walk, he heard, issuing from +the little vine-covered summer-house, a loud voice. It was a man's +voice, and its tones were angry. + +"No! no!" the man was saying; "I'll agree to no such nonsense, I tell +you! What do you think I am?" + +"I think you are a jackass-fool," Miss Stapylton said, crisply, "and a +fortune-hunter, and a sot, and a travesty, and a whole heap of other +things I haven't, as yet had time to look up in the dictionary. And I +think--I think you call yourself an English gentleman? Well, all I have +to say is God pity England if her gentlemen are of your stamp! There +isn't a costermonger in all Whitechapel who would dare talk to me as +you've done! I would like to snatch you bald-headed, I would like to +kill you--And do you think, now, if you were the very last man left in +all the _world_ that I would--No, don't you try to answer me, for I +don't wish to hear a single word you have to say. Oh, oh! how _dare_ +you!" + +"Well, I've had provocation enough," the man's voice retorted, sullenly. +"Perhaps, I have cut up a bit rough, Patricia, but, then, you've been +talkin' like a fool, you know. But what's the odds? Let's kiss and make +up, old girl." + +"Don't touch me!" she panted; "ah, don't you _dare!_" + +"You little devil! you infernal little vixen? You'll jilt me, will you?" + +"Let me go!" the girl cried, sharply. Rudolph Musgrave went into the +summer-house. + +The man Colonel Musgrave found there was big and loose-jointed, with +traces of puffiness about his face. He had wheat-colored hair and +weakish-looking, pale blue eyes. One of his arms was about Miss +Stapylton, but he released her now, and blinked at Rudolph Musgrave. + +"And who are you, pray?" he demanded, querulously. "What do you want, +anyhow? What do you mean by sneakin' in here and tappin' on a fellow's +shoulder--like a damn' woodpecker, by Jove! I don't know you." + +There was in Colonel Musgrave's voice a curious tremor, when he spoke; +but to the eye he was unruffled, even faintly amused. + +"I am the owner of this garden," he enunciated, with leisurely +distinctness, "and it is not my custom to permit gentlewomen to be +insulted in it. So I am afraid I must ask you to leave it." + +"Now, see here," the man blustered, weakly, "we don't want any heroics, +you know. See here, you're her cousin, ain't you? By God, I'll leave it +to you, you know! She's treated me badly, don't you understand. She's a +jilt, you know. She's playin' fast and loose----" + +He never got any further, for at this point Rudolph Musgrave took him by +the coat-collar and half-dragged, half-pushed him through the garden, +shaking him occasionally with a quiet emphasis. The colonel was angry, +and it was a matter of utter indifference to him that they were +trampling over flower-beds, and leaving havoc in their rear. + +But when they had reached the side-entrance, he paused and opened it, +and then shoved his companion into an open field, where a number of +cows, fresh from the evening milking, regarded them with incurious eyes. +It was very quiet here, save for the occasional jangle of the cow-bells +and the far-off fifing of frogs in the marsh below. + +"It would have been impossible, of course," said Colonel Musgrave, "for +me to have offered you any personal violence as long as you were, in a +manner, a guest of mine. This field, however, is the property of Judge +Willoughby, and here I feel at liberty to thrash you." + +Then he thrashed the man who had annoyed Patricia Stapylton. + +That thrashing was, in its way, a masterpiece. There was a certain +conscientiousness about it, a certain thoroughness of execution--a +certain plodding and painstaking carefulness, in a word, such as is +possible only to those who have spent years in guiding fat-witted +tourists among the antiquities of the Lichfield Historical Association. + +"You ought to exercise more," Rudolph Musgrave admonished his victim, +when he had ended. "You are entirely too flabby now, you know. That path +yonder will take you to the hotel, where, I imagine, you are staying. +There is a train leaving Lichfield at six-fifteen, and if I were you, I +would be very careful not to miss that train. Good-evening. I am sorry +to have been compelled to thrash you, but I must admit I have enjoyed it +exceedingly." + +Then he went back into the garden. + + + + +V + + +In the shadow of a white lilac-bush, Colonel Musgrave paused with an +awed face. + +"Good Lord!" said he, aghast at the notion; "what would Agatha say if +she knew I had been fighting like a drunken truck-driver! Or, rather, +what would she refrain from saying! Only, she wouldn't believe it of me. +And, for the matter of that," Rudolph Musgrave continued, after a +moment's reflection, "I wouldn't have believed it of myself a week ago. +I think I am changing, somehow. A week ago I would have fetched in the +police and sworn out a warrant; and, if the weather had been as damp as +it is, I would have waited to put on my rubbers before I would have done +that much." + + + + +VI + + +He found her still in the summer-house, expectant of him, it seemed, her +lips parted, her eyes glowing. Rudolph Musgrave, looking down into twin +vivid depths, for a breathing-space, found time to rejoice that he had +refused to liken them to stars. Stars, forsooth!--and, pray, what paltry +sun, what irresponsible comet, what pallid, clinkered satellite, might +boast a purple splendor such as this? For all asterial scintillations, +at best, had but a clap-trap glitter; whereas the glow of Patricia's +eyes was a matter worthy of really serious attention. + +"What have you done with him, Olaf?" the girl breathed, quickly. + +"I reasoned with him," said Colonel Musgrave. "Oh, I found him quite +amenable to logic. He is leaving Lichfield this evening, I think." + +Thereupon Miss Stapylton began to laugh. "Yes," said she, "you must have +remonstrated very feelingly. Your tie's all crooked, Olaf dear, and your +hair's all rumpled, and there's dust all over your coat. You would +disgrace a rag-bag. Oh, I'm glad you reasoned--that way! It wasn't +dignified, but it was dear of you, Olaf. Pevensey's a beast." + +He caught his breath at this. "Pevensey!" he stammered; "the Earl of +Pevensey!--the man you are going to marry!" + +"Dear me, no!" Miss Stapylton answered, with utmost unconcern; "I would +sooner marry a toad. Why, didn't you know, Olaf? I thought, of course, +you knew you had been introducing athletics and better manners among the +peerage! That sounds like a bill in the House of Commons, doesn't it?" +Then Miss Stapylton laughed again, and appeared to be in a state of +agreeable, though somewhat nervous, elation. "I wrote to him two days +ago," she afterward explained, "breaking off the engagement. So he came +down at once and was very nasty about it." + +"You--you have broken your engagement," he echoed, dully; and continued, +with a certain deficiency of finesse, "But I thought you wanted to be a +countess?" + +"Oh, you boor, you vulgarian!" the girl cried, "Oh, you do put things so +crudely, Olaf! You are hopeless." + +She shook an admonitory forefinger in his direction, and pouted in the +most dangerous fashion. + +"But he always seemed so nice," she reflected, with puckered brows, +"until to-day, you know. I thought he would be eminently suitable. I +liked him tremendously until--" and here, a wonderful, tender change +came into her face, a wistful quaver woke in her voice--"until I found +there was some one else I liked better." + +"Ah!" said Rudolph Musgrave. + +So, that was it--yes, that was it! Her head was bowed now--her glorious, +proud little head,--and she sat silent, an abashed heap of fluffy frills +and ruffles, a tiny bundle of vaporous ruchings and filmy tucks and +suchlike vanities, in the green dusk of the summer-house. + +But he knew. He had seen her face grave and tender in the twilight, and +he knew. + +She loved some man--some lucky devil! Ah, yes, that was it! And he knew +the love he had unwittingly spied upon to be august; the shamed +exultance of her face and her illumined eyes, the crimson banners her +cheeks had flaunted,--these were to Colonel Musgrave as a piece of +sacred pageantry; and before it his misery was awed, his envy went +posting to extinction. + +Thus the stupid man reflected, and made himself very unhappy over it. + +Then, after a little, the girl threw back her head and drew a deep +breath, and flashed a tremulous smile at him. + +"Ah, yes," said she; "there are better things in life than coronets, +aren't there, Olaf?" + +You should have seen how he caught up the word! + +"Life!" he cried, with a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of +life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of +life from the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I +have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off +from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider its +trifles as of supreme importance. I have affected to scorn that brave +world yonder where a man is proven. And, all the while, I was afraid of +it, I think. I was afraid of you before you came." + +At the thought of this Rudolph Musgrave laughed as he fell to pacing up +and down before her. + +"Life!" he cried, again, with a helpless gesture; and then smiled at +her, very sadly. "'Didn't I know there was something better in life than +grubbing after musty tribes and customs and folk-songs?'" he quoted. +"Why, what a question to ask of a professional genealogist! Don't you +realize, Patricia, that the very bread I eat is, actually, earned by the +achievements of people who have been dead for centuries? and in part, of +course, by tickling the vanity of living snobs? That constitutes a nice +trade for an able-bodied person as long as men are paid for emptying +garbage-barrels--now, doesn't it? And yet it is not altogether for the +pay's sake I do it," he added, haltingly. "There really is a fascination +about the work. You are really working out a puzzle,--like a fellow +solving a chess-problem. It isn't really work, it is amusement. And when +you are establishing a royal descent, and tracing back to czars and +Plantagenets and Merovingians, and making it all seem perfectly +plausible, the thing is sheer impudent, flagrant art, and _you_ are the +artist--" He broke off here and shrugged. "No, I could hardly make you +understand. It doesn't matter. It is enough that I have bartered youth +and happiness and the very power of living for the privilege of grubbing +in old county records." + +He paused. It is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even +in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving +grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his +heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little and +childlike, as she looked up at him with troubled eyes. + +"I--I don't quite understand," she murmured. "It isn't as if you were an +old man, Olaf. It isn't as if--" + +But he had scarcely heard her. "Ah, child, child!" he cried, "why did +you come to waken me? I was content in my smug vanities. I was content +in my ignorance. I could have gone on contentedly grubbing through my +musty, sleepy life here, till death had taken me, if only you had not +shown me what life might mean! Ah, child, child, why did you waken me?" + +"I?" she breathed; and now the flush of her cheeks had widened, +wondrously. + +"You! you!" he cried, and gave a wringing motion of his hands, for the +self-esteem of a complacent man is not torn away without agony. "Who +else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still +I must play the coward's part! That woman I told you of--that woman I +loved--was you! Yes, you, you!" he cried, again and again, in a sort of +frenzy. + +And then, on a sudden, Colonel Musgrave began to laugh. + +"It is very ridiculous, isn't it?" he demanded of her. "Yes, it is +very--very funny. Now comes the time to laugh at me! Now comes the time +to lift your brows, and to make keen arrows of your eyes, and of your +tongue a little red dagger! I have dreamed of this moment many and many +a time. So laugh, I say! Laugh, for I have told you that I love you. You +are rich, and I am a pauper--you are young, and I am old, remember,--and +I love you, who love another man! For the love of God, laugh at me and +have done--laugh! for, as God lives, it is the bravest jest I have ever +known!" + +But she came to him, with a wonderful gesture of compassion, and caught +his great, shapely hands in hers. + +"I--I knew you cared," she breathed. "I have always known you cared. I +would have been an idiot if I hadn't. But, oh, Olaf, I didn't know you +cared so much. You frighten me, Olaf," she pleaded, and raised a tearful +face to his. "I am very fond of you, Olaf dear. Oh, don't think I am not +fond of you." And the girl paused for a breathless moment. "I think I +might have married you, Olaf," she said, half-wistfully, "if--if it +hadn't been for one thing." + +Rudolph Musgrave smiled now, though he found it a difficult business. +"Yes," he assented, gravely, "I know, dear. If it were not for the other +man--that lucky devil! Yes, he is a very, very lucky devil, child, and +he constitutes rather a big 'if,' doesn't he?" + +Miss Stapylton, too, smiled a little. "No," said she, "that isn't quite +the reason. The real reason is, as I told you yesterday, that I quite +fail to see how you can expect any woman to marry you, you jay-bird, if +you won't go to the trouble of asking her to do so." + +And, this time, Miss Stapylton did not go into the house. + + + + +VII + + +When they went in to supper, they had planned to tell Miss Agatha of +their earth-staggering secret at once. But the colonel comprehended, at +the first glimpse of his sister, that the opportunity would be +ill-chosen. + +The meal was an awkward half-hour. Miss Agatha, from the head of the +table, did very little talking, save occasionally to evince views of +life that were both lachrymose and pugnacious. And the lovers talked +with desperate cheerfulness, so that there might be no outbreak so long +as Pilkins--preëminently ceremonious among butlers, and as yet inclined +to scoff at the notion that the Musgraves of Matocton were not divinely +entrusted to his guardianship,--was in the room. + +Coming so close upon the heels of his high hour, this contretemps of +Agatha's having one of her "attacks," seemed more to Rudolph Musgrave +than a man need rationally bear with equanimity. Perhaps it was a trifle +stiffly that he said he did not care for any raspberries. + +His sister burst into tears. + +"That's all the thanks I get. I slave my life out, and what thanks do I +get for it? I never have any pleasure, I never put my foot out of the +house except to go to market,--and what thanks do I get for it? That's +what I want you to tell me with the first raspberries of the season. +That's what I want! Oh, I don't wonder you can't look me in the eye. And +I wish I was dead! that's what I wish!" + +Colonel Musgrave did not turn at once toward Patricia, when his sister +had stumbled, weeping, from the dining-room. + +"I--I am so sorry, Olaf," said a remote and tiny voice. + +Then he touched her hand with his finger-tips, ever so lightly. "You +must not worry about it, dear. I daresay I was unpardonably brusque. And +Agatha's health is not good, so that she is a trifle irritable at times. +Why, good Lord, we have these little set-to's ever so often, and never +give them a thought afterwards. That is one of the many things the +future Mrs. Musgrave will have to get accustomed to, eh? Or does that +appalling prospect frighten you too much?" + +And Patricia brazenly confessed that it did not. She also made a face at +him, and accused Rudolph Musgrave of trying to crawl out of marrying +her, which proceeding led to frivolities unnecessary to record, but +found delectable by the participants. + + + + +VIII + + +Colonel Musgrave was alone. He had lifted his emptied coffee-cup and he +swished the lees gently to and fro. He was curiously intent upon these +lees, considered them in the light of a symbol.... + +Then a comfortable, pleasant-faced mulattress came to clear the +supper-table. Virginia they called her. Virginia had been nurse in turn +to all the children of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her +life she appeared to regard the emancipation of the South's negroes as +an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yankees +--as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" proceeding which very +certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the +Musgrave household. + +"Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave, "don't forget to make up a fire in +the kitchen-stove before you go to bed. And please fill the kettle +before you go upstairs, and leave it on the stove. Miss Agatha is not +well to-night." + +"Yaas, suh. I unnerstan', suh," Virginia said, sedately. + +Virginia filled her tray, and went away quietly, her pleasant yellow +face as imperturbable as an idol's. + + + + +PART THREE - TERTIUS + + "It is in many ways made plain to us + That love must grow like any common thing, + Root, bud, and leaf, ere ripe for garnering + The mellow fruitage front us; even thus + Must Helena encounter Theseus + Ere Paris come, and every century + Spawn divers queens who die with Antony + But live a great while first with Julius. + + "Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play + Wherein I have no part, and laugh, and sit + Contented in the wings, whilst you portray + An amorous maid with gestures that befit + This lovely rôle,--as who knows better, pray, + Than I that helped you in rehearsing it?" + +Horace Symonds. _Civic Voluntaries_. + + + + +I + + +When the Presidential campaign was at its height; when in various +sections of the United States "the boy orator of La Platte" was making +invidious remarks concerning the Republican Party, and in Canton (Ohio) +Mr. M.A. Hanna was cheerfully expressing his confidence as to the +outcome of it all; when the Czar and the Czarina were visiting President +Faure in Paris "amid unparalleled enthusiasm"; and when semi-educated +people were appraising, with a glibness possible to ignorance only, the +literary achievements of William Morris and George du Maurier, who had +just died:--at this remote time, Roger Stapylton returned to Lichfield. + +For in that particular October Patricia's father, an accommodating +physician having declared old Roger Stapylton's health to necessitate a +Southern sojourn, leased the Bellingham mansion in Lichfield. It +happened that, by rare good luck, Tom Bellingham--of the Bellinghams of +Assequin, not the Bellinghams of Bellemeade, who indeed immigrated after +the War of 1812 and have never been regarded as securely established +from a social standpoint,--was at this time in pecuniary difficulties on +account of having signed another person's name to a cheque. + +Roger Stapylton refurnished the house in the extreme degree of +Lichfieldian elegance. Colonel Musgrave was his mentor throughout the +process; and the oldest families of Lichfield very shortly sat at table +with the former overseer, and not at all unwillingly, since his dinners +were excellent and an infatuated Rudolph Musgrave--an axiom now in +planning any list of guests,--was very shortly to marry the man's +daughter. + +In fact, the matter had been settled; and Colonel Musgrave had received +from Roger Stapylton an exuberantly granted charter of courtship. + +This befell, indeed, upon a red letter day in Roger Stapylton's life. +The banker was in business matters wonderfully shrewd, as divers +transactions, since the signing of that half-forgotten contract whereby +he was to furnish a certain number of mules for the Confederate service, +strikingly attested: but he had rarely been out of the country wherein +his mother bore him; and where another nabob might have dreamed of an +earl, or even have soared aspiringly in imagination toward a +marchioness-ship for his only child, old Stapylton retained unshaken +faith in the dust-gathering creed of his youth. + +He had tolerated Pevensey, had indeed been prepared to purchase him much +as he would have ordered any other expensive trinket or knickknack which +Patricia desired. But he had never viewed the match with enthusiasm. + +Now, though, old Stapylton exulted. His daughter--half a Vartrey +already--would become by marriage a Musgrave of Matocton, no less. Pat's +carriage would roll up and down the oak-shaded avenue from which he had +so often stepped aside with an uncovered head, while gentlemen and +ladies cantered by; and it would be Pat's children that would play about +the corridors of the old house at whose doors he had lived so +long,--those awe-inspiring corridors, which he had very rarely entered, +except on Christmas Day and other recognized festivities, when, dressed +to the nines, the overseer and his uneasy mother were by immemorial +custom made free of the mansion, with every slave upon the big +plantation. + +"They were good days, sir," he chuckled. "Heh, we'll stick to the old +customs. We'll give a dinner and announce it at dessert, just as your +honored grandfather did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal--" + +For about the Musgraves of Matocton there could be no question. It was +the old man's delight to induce Rudolph Musgrave to talk concerning his +ancestors; and Stapylton soon had their history at his finger-tips. He +could have correctly blazoned every tincture in their armorial bearings +and have explained the origin of every rampant, counter-changed or +couchant beast upon the shield. + +He knew it was the _Bona Nova_ in the November of 1619,--for the first +Musgrave had settled in Virginia, prior to his removal to +Lichfield,--which had the honor of transporting the forebear of this +family into America. Stapylton could have told you offhand which scions +of the race had represented this or that particular county in the House +of Burgesses, and even for what years; which three of them were +Governors, and which of them had served as officers of the State Line in +the Revolution; and, in fine, was more than satisfied to have his +daughter play Penelophon to Colonel Musgrave's debonair mature Cophetua. + +In a word, Roger Stapylton had acquiesced to the transferal of his +daughter's affections with the peculiar equanimity of a properly reared +American parent. He merely stipulated that, since his business affairs +prevented an indefinite stay in Lichfield, Colonel Musgrave should +presently remove to New York City, where the older man held ready for +him a purely ornamental and remunerative position with the Insurance +Company of which Roger Stapylton was president. + +But upon this point Rudolph Musgrave was obdurate. + +He had voiced, and with sincerity, as you may remember, his desire to be +proven upon a larger stage than Lichfield afforded. Yet the sincerity +was bred of an emotion it did not survive. To-day, unconsciously, +Rudolph Musgrave was reflecting that he was used to living in Lichfield, +and would appear to disadvantage in a new surrounding, and very probably +would not be half so comfortable. + +Aloud he said, in firm belief that he spoke truthfully: "I cannot +conscientiously give up the Library, sir. I realize the work may not +seem important in your eyes. Indeed, in anybody's eyes it must seem an +inadequate outcome of a man's whole life. But it unfortunately happens +to be the only kind of work I am capable of doing. And--if you will +pardon me, sir,--I do not think it would be honest for me to accept this +generous salary and give nothing in return." + +But here Patricia broke in. + +Patricia agreed with Colonel Musgrave in every particular. Indeed, had +Colonel Musgrave proclaimed his intention of setting up in life as an +assassin, Patricia would readily have asserted homicide to be the most +praiseworthy of vocations. As it was, she devoted no little volubility +and emphasis and eulogy to the importance of a genealogist in the +eternal scheme of things; and gave her father candidly to understand +that an inability to appreciate this fact was necessarily indicative of +a deplorably low order of intelligence. + +Musgrave was to remember--long afterward--how glorious and dear this +brightly-colored, mettlesome and tiny woman had seemed to him in the +second display of temper he witnessed in Patricia. It was a revelation +of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability. + +Her father, though, said: "Pat, I've suspected for a long time it was +foolish of me to have a red-haired daughter." Thus he capitulated,--and +with an ineffable air of routine. + +Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living +persons. + + + + +II + + +Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living +persons.... + +As a token of this he devoted what little ready money he possessed to +renovating Matocton, where he had not lived for twenty years. He rarely +thought of money, not esteeming it an altogether suitable subject for a +gentleman's meditations. And to do him justice, the reflection that old +Stapylton's wealth would some day be at Rudolph Musgrave's disposal was +never more than an agreeable minor feature of Patricia's entourage +whenever, as was very often, Colonel Musgrave fell to thinking of how +adorable Patricia was in every particular. + +Yet there were times when he thought of Anne Charteris as well. He had +not seen her for a whole year now, for the Charterises had left +Lichfield shortly after the Pendomer divorce case had been settled, and +were still in Europe. + +This was the evening during which Roger Stapylton had favorably received +his declaration; and Colonel Musgrave was remembering the time that he +and Anne had last spoken with a semblance of intimacy--that caustic +time when Anne Charteris had interrupted him in high words with her +husband, and circumstances had afforded to Rudolph Musgrave no choice +save to confess, to this too-perfect woman, of all created beings, his +"true relations" with Clarice Pendomer. + +Even as yet the bitterness of that humiliation was not savorless.... + +It seemed to him that he could never bear to think of the night when +Anne had heard his stammerings through, and had merely listened, and in +listening had been unreasonably beautiful. So Godiva might have looked +on Peeping Tom, with more of wonder than of loathing, just at first.... + +It had been very hard to bear. But it seemed necessary. The truth would +have hurt Anne too much.... + +He noted with the gusto of a connoisseur how neatly the dénouement of +this piteous farce had been prepared. His rage with Charteris; Anne's +overhearing, and misinterpretation of, a dozen angry words; that old +affair with Clarice--immediately before her marriage (one of how many +pleasurable gallantries? the colonel idly wondered, and regretted that +he had no Leporello to keep them catalogued for consultation)--and +George Pendomer's long-smoldering jealousy of Rudolph Musgrave: all +fitted in as neatly as the bits of a puzzle. + +It had been the simplest matter in the world to shield John Charteris. +Yet, the colonel wished he could be sure it was an unadulterated desire +of protecting Anne which had moved him. There had been very certainly an +enjoyment all the while in reflecting how nobly Rudolph Musgrave was +behaving for the sake of "the only woman he had ever loved." Yes, one +had undoubtedly phrased it thus--then, and until the time one met +Patricia. + +But Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a +little different, from all other people--even Patricia Stapylton. + +Always in reverie the colonel would come back to this,--that Anne could +not be thought of, quite, in the same frame of mind wherein one +appraised other persons. Especially must he concede this curious +circumstance whenever, as to-night, he considered divers matters that +had taken place quite long enough ago to have been forgotten. + +It was a foolish sort of a reverie, and scarcely worth the setting down. +It was a reverie of the kind that everyone, and especially everyone's +wife, admits to be mawkish and unprofitable; and yet, somehow, the next +still summer night, or long sleepy Sunday afternoon, or, perhaps, some +cheap, jigging and heartbreaking melody, will set a carnival of old +loves and old faces awhirl in the brain. One grows very sad over it, of +course, and it becomes apparent that one has always been ill-treated by +the world; but the sadness is not unpleasant, and one is quite willing +to forgive. + +Yes,--it was a long, long time ago. It must have been a great number of +centuries. Matocton was decked in its spring fripperies of burgeoning, +and the sky was a great, pale turquoise, and the buttercups left a +golden dust high up on one's trousers. One had not become entirely +accustomed to long trousers then, and one was rather proud of them. One +was lying on one's back in the woods, where the birds were astir and +eager to begin their house-building, and twittered hysterically over the +potentialities of straws and broken twigs. + +Overhead, the swelling buds of trees were visible against the sky, and +the branches were like grotesque designs on a Japanese plate. There was +a little clump of moss, very cool and soft, that just brushed one's +cheek. + +One was thinking--really thinking--for the first time in one's life; +and, curiously enough, one was thinking about a girl, although girls +were manifestly of no earthly importance. + +But Anne Willoughby was different. Even at the age when girls seemed +feckless creatures, whose aimings were inexplicable, both as concerned +existence in general, and, more concretely, as touched gravel-shooters +and snowballs, and whose reasons for bursting into tears were recondite, +one had perceived the difference. One wondered about it from time to +time. + +Gradually, there awoke an uneasy self-conscious interest as to all +matters that concerned her, a mental pricking up of the ears when her +name was mentioned. + +One lay awake o' nights, wondering why her hair curled so curiously +about her temples, and held such queer glowing tints in its depths when +sunlight fell upon it. One was uncomfortable and embarrassed and +Briarean-handed in her presence, but with her absence came the +overwhelming desire of seeing her again. + +After a little, it was quite understood that one was in love with Anne +Willoughby.... + +It was a matter of minor importance that her father was the wealthiest +man in Fairhaven, and that one's mother was poor. One would go away into +foreign lands after a while, and come back with a great deal of +money,--lakes of rupees and pieces of eight, probably. It was very +simple. + +But Anne's father had taken an unreasonable view of the matter, and +carried Anne off to a terrible aunt, who returned one's letters +unopened. That was the end of Anne Willoughby. + +Then, after an interval--during which one fell in and out of love +assiduously, and had upon the whole a pleasant time,--Anne Charteris had +come to Lichfield. One had found that time had merely added poise and +self-possession and a certain opulence to the beauty which had caused +one's voice to play fantastic tricks in conference with Anne +Willoughby,--ancient, unforgotten conferences, wherein one had pointed +out the many respects in which she differed from all other women, and +the perfect feasibility of marrying on nothing a year. + +Much as one loved Patricia, and great as was one's happiness, men did +not love as boys did, after all.... + +"'Ah, Boy, it is a dream for life too high,'" said Colonel Musgrave, in +his soul. "And now let's think of something sensible. Let's think about +the present political crisis, and what to give the groomsmen, and how +much six times seven is. Meanwhile, you are not the fellow in _Aux +Italiens_, you know; you are not bothered by the faint, sweet smell of +any foolish jasmine-flower, you understand, or by any equally foolish +hankerings after your lost youth. You are simply a commonplace, +every-day sort of man, not thoroughly hardened as yet to being engaged, +and you are feeling a bit pulled down to-night, because your liver or +something is out of sorts." + +Upon reflection, Colonel Musgrave was quite sure that he was happy; and +that it was only his liver or something which was upset. But, at all +events, the colonel's besetting infirmity was always to shrink from +making changes; instinctively he balked against commission of any action +which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or +persons. It was very like Rudolph Musgrave that even now, for all the +glow of the future's bright allure, his heart should hark back to the +past and its absurd dear memories, with wistfulness. + +And he found it, as many others have done, but cheerless sexton's work, +this digging up of boyish recollections. One by one, they come to +light--the brave hopes and dreams and aspirations of youth; the ruddy +life has gone out of them; they have shriveled into an alien, pathetic +dignity. They might have been one's great-grandfather's or Hannibal's or +Adam's; the boy whose life was swayed by them is quite as dead as these. + +Amaryllis is dead, too. Perhaps, you drop in of an afternoon to talk +over old happenings. She is perfectly affable. She thinks it is time you +were married. She thinks it very becoming, the way you have stoutened. +And, no, they weren't at the Robinsons'; that was the night little +Amaryllis was threatened with croup. + +Then, after a little, the lamps of welcome are lighted in her eyes, her +breath quickens, her cheeks mount crimson flags in honor of her lord, +her hero, her conqueror. + +It is Mr. Grundy, who is happy to meet you, and hopes you will stay to +dinner. He patronizes you a trifle; his wife, you see, has told him all +about that boy who is as dead as Hannibal. You don't mind in the least; +you dine with Mr. and Mrs. Grundy, and pass a very pleasant evening. + +Colonel Musgrave had dined often with the Charterises. + + + + +III + + +And then some frolic god, _en route_ from homicide by means of an +unloaded pistol in Chicago for the demolishment of a likely ship off +Palos, with the coöperancy of a defective pistonrod, stayed in his +flight to bring Joe Parkinson to Lichfield. + +It was Roger Stapylton who told the colonel of this advent, as the very +apex of jocularity. + +"For you remember the Parkinsons, I suppose?" + +"The ones that had a cabin near Matocton? Very deserving people, I +believe." + +"And _their_ son, sir, wants to marry my daughter," said Mr. +Stapylton,--"_my_ daughter, who is shortly to be connected by marriage +with the Musgraves of Matocton! I don't know what this world will come +to next." + +It was a treat to see him shake his head in deprecation of such anarchy. + +Then Roger Stapylton said, more truculently: "Yes, sir! on account of a +boy-and-girl affair five years ago, this half-strainer, this poor-white +trash, has actually had the presumption, sir,--but I don't doubt that +Pat has told you all about it?" + +"Why, no," said Colonel Musgrave. "She did not mention it this +afternoon. She was not feeling very well. A slight headache. I noticed +she was not inclined to conversation." + +It had just occurred to him, as mildly remarkable, that Patricia had +never at any time alluded to any one of those countless men who must +have inevitably made love to her. + +"Though, mind you, I don't say anything against Joe. He's a fine young +fellow. Paid his own way through college. Done good work in Panama and +in Alaska too. But--confound it, sir, the boy's a fool! Now I put it to +you fairly, ain't he a fool?" said Mr. Stapylton. + +"Upon my word, sir, if his folly has no other proof than an adoration of +your daughter," the colonel protested, "I must in self-defense beg leave +to differ with you." + +Yes, that was it undoubtedly. Patricia had too high a sense of honor to +exhibit these defeated rivals in a ridiculous light, even to him. It was +a revelation of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability. + +Then after a little further talk they separated. Colonel Musgrave left +that night for Matocton in order to inspect the improvements which were +being made there. He was to return to Lichfield on the ensuing +Wednesday, when his engagement to Patricia was to be announced--"just +as your honored grandfather did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal." + +Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much enamored, who fought the world +by ordinary like Hal o' the Wynd, "for his own hand," was seeing +Patricia every day. + + + + +IV + + +Colonel Musgrave remained five days at Matocton, that he might put his +house in order against his nearing marriage. It was a pleasant sight to +see the colonel stroll about the paneled corridors and pause to chat +with divers deferential workmen who were putting the last touches there, +or to observe him mid-course in affable consultation with gardeners +anent the rolling of a lawn or the retrimming of a rosebush, and to mark +the bearing of the man so optimistically colored by goodwill toward the +solar system. + +He joyed in his old home,--in the hipped roof of it, the mullioned +casements, the wide window-seats, the high and spacious rooms, the +geometrical gardens and broad lawns, in all that was quaint and +beautiful at Matocton,--because it would be Patricia's so very soon, the +lovely frame of a yet lovelier picture, as the colonel phrased it with a +flight of imagery. + +Gravely he inspected all the portraits of his feminine ancestors that he +might decide, as one without bias, whether Matocton had ever boasted a +more delectable mistress. Equity--or in his fond eyes at +least,--demanded a negative. Only in one of these canvases, a +counterfeit of Miss Evelyn Ramsay, born a Ramsay of Blenheim, that had +married the common great-great-grandfather of both the colonel and +Patricia--Major Orlando Musgrave, an aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee +in the Revolution,--Rudolph Musgrave found, or seemed to find, dear +likenesses to that demented seraph who was about to stoop to his +unworthiness. + +He spent much time before this portrait. Yes, yes! this woman had been +lovely in her day. And this bright, roguish shadow of her was lovely, +too, eternally postured in white patnet, trimmed with a vine of +rose-colored satin leaves, a pink rose in her powdered hair and a huge +ostrich plume as well. + +Yet it was an adamantean colonel that remarked: + +"My dear, perhaps it is just as fortunate as not that you have quitted +Matocton. For I have heard tales of you, Miss Ramsay. Oh, no! I honestly +do not believe that you would have taken kindlily to any young +person--not even in the guise of a great-great-grand-daughter,--to whom +you cannot hold a candle, madam. A fico for you, madam," said the most +undutiful of great-great-grandsons. + +Let us leave him to his roseate meditations. Questionless, in the woman +he loved there was much of his own invention: but the circumstance is +not unhackneyed; and Colonel Musgrave was in a decorous fashion the +happiest of living persons. + +Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much enamored, who fought the +world by ordinary, like Hal o' the Wynd "for his own hand," was seeing +Patricia every day. + + + + +V + + +Joe Parkinson--tall and broad-shouldered, tanned, resolute, chary of +speech, decisive in gesture, having close-cropped yellow hair and frank, +keen eyes like amethysts,--was the one alien present when Colonel +Musgrave came again into Roger Stapylton's fine and choicely-furnished +mansion. + +This was on the evening Roger Stapylton gave the long-anticipated dinner +at which he was to announce his daughter's engagement. As much indeed +was suspected by most of his dinner-company, so carefully selected from +the aristocracy of Lichfield; and the heart of the former overseer, as +these handsome, courtly and sweet voiced people settled according to +their rank about his sumptuous table, was aglow with pride. + +Then Rudolph Musgrave turned to his companion and said softly: "My dear, +you are like a wraith. What is it?" + +"I have a headache," said Patricia. "It is nothing." + +"You reassure me," the colonel gaily declared, "for I had feared it was +a heartache--" + +She faced him. Desperation looked out of her purple eyes. "It is," the +girl said swiftly. + +"Ah--?" Only it was an intake of the breath, rather than an +interjection. Colonel Musgrave ate his fish with deliberation. "Young +Parkinson?" he presently suggested. + +"I thought I had forgotten him. I didn't know I cared--I didn't know I +_could_ care so much--" And there was a note in her voice which thrust +the poor colonel into an abyss of consternation. + +"Remember that these people are your guests," he said, in perfect +earnest. + +"--and I refused him this afternoon for the last time, and he is going +away to-morrow--" + +But here Judge Allardyce broke in, to tell Miss Stapylton of the +pleasure with which he had _nolle prosequied_ the case against Tom +Bellingham. + +"A son of my old schoolmate, ma'am," the judge explained. "A Bellingham +of Assequin. Oh, indiscreet of course--but, God bless my soul! when were +the Bellinghams anything else? The boy regretted it as much as anybody." + +And she listened with almost morbid curiosity concerning the finer +details of legal intricacy. + +Colonel Musgrave was mid-course in an anecdote which the lady upon the +other side of him found wickedly amusing. + +He was very gay. He had presently secured the attention of the company +at large, and held it through a good half-hour; for by common consent +Rudolph Musgrave was at his best to-night, and Lichfield found his best +worth listening to. + +"Grinning old popinjay!" thought Mr. Parkinson; and envied him and +internally noted, and with an unholy fervor cursed, the adroitness of +intonation and the discreetly modulated gesture with which the colonel +gave to every point of his merry-Andrewing its precise value. + +The colonel's mind was working busily on matters oddly apart from those +of which he talked. He wanted this girl next to him--at whom he did not +look. He loved her as that whippersnapper yonder was not capable of +loving anyone. Young people had these fancies; and they outlived them, +as the colonel knew of his own experience. Let matters take their course +unhindered, at all events by him. For it was less his part than that of +any other man alive to interfere when Rudolph Musgrave stood within a +finger's reach of, at worst, his own prosperity and happiness. + +He would convey no note to Roger Stapylton. Let the banker announce the +engagement. Let the young fellow go to the devil. Colonel Musgrave would +marry the girl and make Patricia, at worst, content. To do otherwise, +even to hesitate, would be the emptiest quixotism.... + +Then came the fatal thought, "But what a gesture!" To fling away his +happiness--yes, even his worldly fortune,--and to do it smilingly! +Patricia must, perforce, admire him all her life. + +Then as old Stapylton stirred in his chair and broke into a wide +premonitory smile, Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. And of that +company Clarice Pendomer at least thought of how like he was to the boy +who had fought the famous duel with George Pendomer some fifteen years +ago. + +Ensued a felicitous speech. Rudolph Musgrave was familiar with his +audience. And therefore: + +Colonel Musgrave alluded briefly to the pleasure he took in addressing +such a gathering. He believed no other State in the 'Union could have +afforded an assembly of more distinguished men and fairer women. But the +fact was not unnatural; they might recall the venerable saying that +blood will tell? Well, it was their peculiar privilege to represent +to-day that sturdy stock which, when this great republic was in the +pangs of birth, had with sword and pen and oratory discomfited the +hirelings of England and given to history the undying names of several +Revolutionary patriots,--all of whom he enumerated with the customary +pause after each cognomen to allow for the customary applause. + +And theirs, too, was the blood of those heroic men who fought more +recently beneath the stars and bars, as bravely, he would make bold to +say, as Leonidas at Thermopylae, in defense of their loved Southland. +Right, he conceded, had not triumphed here. For hordes of brutal +soldiery had invaded the fertile soil, the tempest of war had swept the +land and left it desolate. The South lay battered and bruised, and pros +trate in blood, the "Niobe of nations," as sad a victim of ingratitude +as King Lear. + +The colonel touched upon the time when buzzards, in the guise of +carpet-baggers, had battened upon the recumbent form; and spoke +slightingly of divers persons of antiquity as compared with various +Confederate leaders, whose names were greeted with approving nods and +ripples of polite enthusiasm. + +But the South, and in particular the grand old Commonwealth which they +inhabited, he stated, had not long sat among the ruins of her temples, +like a sorrowing priestess with veiled eyes and a depressed soul, +mourning for that which had been. Like the fabled Phoenix, she had risen +from the ashes of her past. To-day she was once more to be seen in her +hereditary position, the brightest gem in all that glorious galaxy of +States which made America the envy of every other nation. Her +battlefields converted into building lots, tall factories smoked where +once a holocaust had flamed, and where cannon had roared you heard +to-day the tinkle of the school bell. Such progress was without a +parallel. + +Nor was there any need for him, he was assured, to mention the +imperishable names of their dear homeland's poets and statesmen of +to-day, the orators and philanthropists and prominent business-men who +jostled one another in her splendid, new asphalted streets, since all +were quite familiar to his audience,--as familiar, he would venture to +predict, as they would eventually be to the most cherished recollections +of Macaulay's prophesied New Zealander, when this notorious antipodean +should pay his long expected visit to the ruins of St. Paul's. + +In fine, by a natural series of transitions, Colonel Musgrave thus +worked around to "the very pleasing duty with which our host, in view of +the long and intimate connection between our families, has seen fit to +honor me"--which was, it developed, to announce the imminent marriage of +Miss Patricia Stapylton and Mr. Joseph Parkinson. + +It may conservatively be stated that everyone was surprised. + +Old Stapylton had half risen, with a purple face. + +The colonel viewed him with a look of bland interrogation. + +There was silence for a heart-beat. + +Then Stapylton lowered his eyes, if just because the laws of caste had +triumphed, and in consequence his glance crossed that of his daughter, +who sat motionless regarding him. She was an unusually pretty girl, he +thought, and he had always been inordinately proud of her. It was not +pride she seemed to beg him muster now. Patricia through that moment was +not the fine daughter the old man was sometimes half afraid of. She was, +too, like a certain defiant person--oh, of an incredible beauty, such +as women had not any longer!--who had hastily put aside her bonnet and +had looked at a young Roger Stapylton in much this fashion very long +ago, because the minister was coming downstairs, and they would +presently be man and wife,--provided always her pursuing brothers did +not arrive in time.... + +Old Roger Stapylton cleared his throat. + +Old Roger Stapylton said, half sheepishly: "My foot's asleep, that's +all. I beg everybody's pardon, I'm sure. Please go on"--he had come +within an ace of saying "Mr. Rudolph," and only in the nick of time did +he continue, "Colonel Musgrave." + +So the colonel continued in time-hallowed form, with happy allusions to +Mr. Parkinson's anterior success as an engineer before he came "like a +young Lochinvar to wrest away his beautiful and popular fiancée from us +fainthearted fellows of Lichfield"; touched of course upon the colonel's +personal comminglement of envy and rage, and so on, as an old bachelor +who saw too late what he had missed in life; and concluded by proposing +the health of the young couple. + +This was drunk with all the honors. + + + + +VI + + +Upon what Patricia said to the colonel in the drawing-room, what Joe +Parkinson blurted out in the hall, and chief of all, what Roger +Stapylton asseverated to Rudolph Musgrave in the library, after the +other guests had gone, it is unnecessary to dwell in this place. To each +of these in various fashions did Colonel Musgrave explain such reasons +as, he variously explained, must seem to any gentleman sufficient cause +for acting as he had done; but most candidly, and even with a touch of +eloquence, to Roger Stapylton. + +"You are like your grandfather, sir, at times," the latter said, +inconsequently enough, when the colonel had finished. + +And Rudolph Musgrave gave a little bowing gesture, with an entire +gravity. He knew it was the highest tribute that Stapylton could pay to +any man. + +"She's a daughter any father might be proud of," said the banker, also. +He removed his cigar from his mouth and looked at it critically. "She's +rather like her mother sometimes," he said carelessly. "Her mother made +a runaway match, you may remember--Damn' poor cigar, this. But no, you +wouldn't, I reckon. I had branched out into cotton then and had a little +place just outside of Chiswick--" + +So that, all in all, Colonel Musgrave returned homeward not entirely +dissatisfied. + + + + +VII + + +The colonel sat for a long while before his fire that night. The room +seemed less comfortable than he had ever known it. So many of his books +and pictures and other furnishings had been already carried to Matocton +that the walls were a little bare. Also there was a formidable pile of +bills upon the table by him,--from contractors and upholsterers and +furniture-houses, and so on, who had been concerned in the late +renovation of Matocton,--the heralds of a host he hardly saw his way to +dealing with. + +He had flung away a deal of money that evening, with something which to +him was dearer. Had you attempted to condole with him he would not have +understood you. + +"But what would you have had a gentleman do, sir?" Colonel Musgrave +would have said, in real perplexity. + +Besides, it was, in fact, not sorrow that he felt, rather it was +contentment, when he remembered the girl's present happiness; and what +alone depressed the colonel's courtly affability toward the universe at +large was the queer, horrible new sense of being somehow out of touch +with yesterday's so comfortable world, of being out-moded, of being +almost old. + +"Eh, well!" he said; "I am of a certain age undoubtedly." + +By an odd turn the colonel thought of how his friends of his own class +and generation had honestly admired the after-dinner speech which he had +made that evening. And he smiled, but very tenderly, because they were +all men and women whom he loved. + +"The most of us have known each other for a long while. The most of us, +in fact, are of a certain age.... I think no people ever met the sorry +problem that we faced. For we were born the masters of a leisured, +ordered world; and by a tragic quirk of destiny were thrust into a quite +new planet, where we were for a while the inferiors, and after that just +the competitors of yesterday's slaves. + +"We couldn't meet the new conditions. Oh, for the love of heaven, let us +be frank, and confess that we have not met them as things practical go. +We hadn't the training for it. A man who has not been taught to swim may +rationally be excused for preferring to sit upon the bank; and should he +elect to ornament his idleness with protestations that he is +self-evidently an excellent swimmer, because once upon a time his +progenitors were the only people in the world who had the slightest +conception of how to perform a natatorial masterpiece, the thing is +simply human nature. Talking chokes nobody, worse luck. + +"And yet we haven't done so badly. For the most part we have sat upon +the bank our whole lives long. We have produced nothing--after +all--which was absolutely earth-staggering; and we have talked a deal of +clap-trap. But meanwhile we have at least enhanced the comeliness of our +particular sand-bar. We have lived a courteous and tranquil and +independent life thereon, just as our fathers taught us. It may be--in +the final outcome of things--that will be found an even finer pursuit +than the old one of producing Presidents. + +"Besides, we have produced ourselves. We have been gentlefolk in spite +of all, we have been true even in our iniquities to the traditions of +our race. No, I cannot assert that these traditions always square with +ethics or even with the Decalogue, for we have added a very complex +Eleventh Commandment concerning honor. And for the rest, we have +defiantly embroidered life, and indomitably we have converted the +commonest happening of life into a comely thing. We have been artists if +not artizans." + +There was upon the table a large photograph in sepia of Patricia +Stapylton. He studied this now. She was very beautiful, he thought. + +"'Nor thou detain her vesture's hem'--" said the colonel aloud. "Oh, +that infernal Yankee understood, even though he was born in Boston!" And +this as coming from a Musgrave of Matocton, may fairly be considered as +a sweeping tribute to the author of _Give All to Love_. + +Colonel Musgrave was intent upon the portrait.... So! she had chosen at +last between himself and this young fellow, a workman born of workmen, +who went about the world building bridges and canals and tunnels and +such, in those far countries which were to Colonel Musgrave just so many +gray or pink or fawn-colored splotches on the map. It seemed to Colonel +Musgrave almost an allegory. + +So Colonel Musgrave filled a glass with the famed Lafayette madeira of +Matocton, and solemnly drank yet another toast. He loved to do, as you +already know, that which was colorful. + +"To this new South," he said. "To this new South that has not any longer +need of me or of my kind. + +"To this new South! She does not gaze unwillingly, nor too complacently, +upon old years, and dares concede that but with loss of manliness may +any man encroach upon the heritage of a dog or of a trotting-horse, and +consider the exploits of an ancestor to guarantee an innate and personal +excellence. + +"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with +her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain +speech. And her high past she values now, in chief, as fit foundation of +that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with augmenting +strokes." + + * * * * * + +And yet--"It may be he will serve you better. But, oh, it isn't +possible that he should love you more than I," said Colonel Musgrave of +Matocton. + +The man was destined to remember that utterance--and, with the +recollection, to laugh not altogether in either scorn or merriment. + + + + +PART FOUR - APPRECIATION + + "You have chosen; and I cry content thereto, + And cry your pardon also, and am reproved + In that I took you for a woman I loved + Odd centuries ago, and would undo + That curious error. Nay, your eyes are blue, + Your speech is gracious, but you are not she, + And I am older--and changed how utterly!-- + I am no longer I, you are not you. + + "Time, destined as we thought but to befriend + And guerdon love like ours, finds you beset + With joys and griefs I neither share nor mend + Who am a stranger; and we two are met + Nor wholly glad nor sorry; and the end + Of too much laughter is a faint regret." + +R.E. TOWNSEND. _Sonnets for Elena._ + + + + +I + + +Next morning Rudolph Musgrave found the world no longer an impassioned +place, but simply a familiar habitation,--no longer the wrestling-ground +of big emotions, indeed, but undoubtedly a spot, whatever were its other +pretensions to praise, wherein one was at home. He breakfasted on ham +and eggs, in a state of tolerable equanimity; and mildly wondered at +himself for doing it. + +The colonel was deep in a heraldic design and was whistling through his +teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the +outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rubber of +professional courtesy,--for he was denoting _or_ at the moment, which is +fussy work, as it consists exclusively of dots. + +Then his chair scraped audibly upon the floor as he pushed it from him. +It occurred to Rudolph Musgrave after an interval that he was still +half-way between sitting and standing, and that his mouth was open.... + +He could hear a huckster outside on Regis Avenue. The colonel never +forgot the man was crying "Fresh oranges!" + +"He kissed me, Olaf. Yes, I let him kiss me, even after he had asked me +if he could. No sensible girl would ever do that, of course. And then I +knew--" + +Patricia was horribly frightened. + +"And afterwards the jackass-fool made matters worse by calling me 'his +darling.' There is no more hateful word in the English language than +'darling.' It sounds like castor-oil tastes, or a snail looks after you +have put salt on him." + +The colonel deliberated this information; and he appeared to understand. + +"So Parkinson has gone the way of Pevensey,--. and of I wonder how many +others? Well, may Heaven be very gracious to us both!" he said. "For I +am going to do it." + +Then composedly he took up the telephone upon his desk and called Roger +Stapylton. + +"I want you to come at once to Dr. Rabbet's,--yes, the rectory, next +door to St. Luke's. Patricia and I are to be married there in half an +hour. We are on our way to the City Hall to get the license now.... No, +she might change her mind again, you see.... I have not the least notion +how it happened. I don't care.... Then you will have to be rude to him +or else not see your only daughter married.... Kindly permit me to +repeat, sir, that I don't care about that or anything else. And for the +rest, Patricia was twenty-one last December." + +The colonel hung up the receiver. "And now," he said, "we are going to +the City Hall." + +"Are you?" said Patricia, with courteous interest. "Well, my way lies +uptown. I have to stop in at Greenberg's and get a mustard plaster for +the parrot." + +He had his hat by this. "It isn't cool enough for me to need an +overcoat, is it?" + +"I think you must be crazy," she said, sharply. + +"Of course I am. So I am going to marry you." + +"Let me go--! Oh, and I had thought you were a gentleman--." + +"I fear that at present I am simply masculine." He became aware that his +hands, in gripping both her shoulders, were hurting the girl. + +"Come now," he continued, "will you go quietly or will I have to carry +you?" + +She said, "And you would, too--." She spoke in wonder, for Patricia had +glimpsed an unguessed Rudolph Musgrave. + +His hands went under her arm-pits and he lifted her like a feather. He +held her thus at arm's length. + +"You--you adorable whirligig!" he laughed. "I am a stronger animal than +you. It would be as easy for me to murder you as it would be for you to +kill one of those flies on the window-pane. Do you quite understand that +fact, Patricia?" + +"Oh, but you are an idiot--." + +"In wanting you, my dear?" + +"Please put me down." + +She thoroughly enjoyed her helplessness. He saw it, long before he +lowered her. + +"Why, not so much in that," said Miss Stapylton, "because inasmuch as I +am a woman of superlative charm, of course you can't help yourself. But +how do you know that Dr. Rabbet may not be somewhere else, harrying a +defenseless barkeeper, or superintending the making of dress-shirt +protectors for the Hottentots, or doing something else clerical, when we +get to the rectory?" + +After an irrelevant interlude she stamped her foot. + +"I don't care what you say, I won't marry an atheist. If you had the +least respect for his cloth, Olaf, you would call him up and +arrange--Oh, well! whatever you want to arrange--and permit me to powder +my nose without being bothered, because I don't want people to think you +are marrying a second helping to butter, and I never did like that +Baptist man on the block above, anyhow. And besides," said Patricia, as +with the occurrence of a new view-point, "think what a delicious scandal +it will create!" + + + + +II + + +Patricia spoke the truth. By supper-time Lichfield had so industriously +embroidered the Stapylton dinner and the ensuing marriage with +hypotheses and explanations and unparented rumors that none of the +participants in the affair but could advantageously have exchanged +reputations with Benedict Arnold or Lucretia Borgia, had Lichfield +believed a tithe of what Lichfield was repeating. + +A duel was of course anticipated between Mr. Parkinson and Colonel +Musgrave, and the colonel indeed offered, through Major Wadleigh, any +satisfaction which Mr. Parkinson might desire. + +The engineer, with garnishments of profanity, considered dueling to be a +painstakingly-described absurdity and wished "the old popinjay" joy of +his bargain. + +Lichfield felt that only showed what came of treating poor-white trash +as your equals, and gloried in the salutary moral. + + + + +III + + +Meanwhile the two originators of so much Lichfieldian diversion were not +unhappy. + +But indeed it were irreverent even to try to express the happiness of +their earlier married life ... + +They were an ill-matched couple in so many ways that no long-headed +person could conceivably have anticipated--in the outcome--more than +decorous tolerance of each other. For apart from the disparity in age +and tastes and rearing, there was always the fact to be weighed that in +marrying the only child of a wealthy man Rudolph Musgrave was making +what Lichfield called "an eminently sensible match"--than which, as +Lichfield knew, there is no more infallible recipe for discord. + +In this case the axiom seemed, after the manner of all general rules, to +bulwark itself with an exception. Colonel Musgrave continued to emanate +an air of contentment which fell perilously short of fatuity; and that +Patricia was honestly fond of him was evident to the most impecunious of +Lichfield's bachelors. + +True, curtains had been lifted, a little by a little. Patricia could +hardly have told you at what exact moment it was that she discovered +Miss Agatha--who continued of course to live with them--was a +dipsomaniac. Very certainly Rudolph Musgrave was not Patricia's +informant; it is doubtful if the colonel ever conceded his sister's +infirmity in his most private meditations; so that Patricia found the +cause of Miss Agatha's "attacks" to be an open secret of which everyone +in the house seemed aware and of which by tacit agreement nobody ever +spoke. It bewildered Patricia, at first, to find that as concerned +Lichfield at large any over-indulgence in alcohol by a member of the +Musgrave family was satisfactorily accounted for by the matter-of-course +statement that the Musgraves usually "drank,"--just as the Allardyces +notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were +proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were +deplorably prone to dabble in literature. These things had been for a +long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield estimated) +they must be reasonable. + +Then, too, Patricia would have preferred to have been rid of the old +mulatto woman Virginia, because it was through Virginia that Miss Agatha +furtively procured intoxicants. But Rudolph Musgrave would not consider +Virginia's leaving. "Virginia's faithfulness has been proven by too many +years of faithful service" was the formula with which he dismissed the +suggestion ... Afterward Patricia learned from Miss Agatha of the wrong +that had been done Virginia by Olaf's uncle, Senator Edward Musgrave, +the noted ante-bellum orator, and understood that Olaf--without, of +course, conceding it to himself, because that was Olaf's way--was trying +to make reparation. Patricia respected the sentiment, and continued to +fret under its manifestation. + +Miss Agatha also told Patricia of how the son of Virginia and Senator +Musgrave had come to a disastrous end--"lynched in Texas, I believe, +only it may not have been Texas. And indeed when I come to think of it, +I don't believe it was, because I know we first heard of it on a Monday, +and Virginia couldn't do the washing that week and I had to send it out. +And for the usual crime, of course. It simply shows you how much better +off the darkies were before the War," Miss Agatha said. + +Patricia refrained from comment, not being willing to consider the +deduction strained. For love is a contagious infection; and loving +Rudolph Musgrave so much, Patricia must perforce love any person whom he +loved as conscientiously as she would have strangled any person with +whom he had flirted. + +And yet, to Patricia, it was beginning to seem that Patricia Musgrave +was not living, altogether, in that Lichfield which John Charteris has +made immortal--"that nursery of Free Principles" (according to the +_Lichfield Courier-Herald_) "wherein so many statesmen, +lieutenants-general and orators were trained to further the faith of +their fathers, to thrill the listening senates, draft constitutions, and +bruise the paws of the British lion." + + + + +IV + + +It may be remembered that Lichfield had asked long ago, "But who, pray, +are the Stapyltons?" It was characteristic of Colonel Musgrave that he +went about answering the question without delay. The Stapletons--for +"Stapylton" was a happy innovation of Roger Stapylton's dead wife--the +colonel knew to have been farmers in Brummell County, and Brummell +Courthouse is within an hour's ride, by rail, of Lichfield. + +So he set about his labor of love. + +And in it he excelled himself. The records of Brummell date back to 1750 +and are voluminous; but Rudolph Musgrave did not overlook an item in any +Will Book, or in any Orders of the Court, that pertained, however +remotely, to the Stapletons. Then he renewed his labors at the +courthouse of the older county from which Brummell was formed in 1750, +and through many fragmentary, evil-odored and unindexed volumes +indefatigably pursued the family's fortune back to the immigration of +its American progenitor in 1619,--and, by the happiest fatality, upon +the same _Bona Nova_ which enabled the first American Musgrave to grace +the Colony of Virginia with his presence. It could no longer be said +that the wife of a Musgrave of Matocton lacked an authentic and +tolerably ancient pedigree. + +The colonel made a book of his Stapyltonian researches which he +vaingloriously proclaimed to be the stupidest reading within the ample +field of uninteresting printed English. Patricia was allowed to see no +word of it until the first ten copies had come from the printer's, very +splendid in green "art-vellum" and stamped with the Stapylton +coat-of-arms in gold. + +She read the book. "It is perfectly superb," was her verdict. "It is as +dear as remembered kisses after death and as sweet as a plaintiff in a +breach-of-promise suit. Only I would have preferred it served with a few +kings and dukes for parsley. The Stapletons don't seem to have been +anything but perfectly respectable mediocrities." + +The colonel smiled. At the bottom of his heart he shared Patricia's +regret that the Stapylton pedigree was unadorned by a potentate, because +nobody can stay unimpressed by a popular superstition, however crass the +thing may be. But for all this, an appraisal of himself and his own +achievements profusely showed high lineage is not invariably a guarantee +of excellence; and so he smiled and said: + +"There are two ends to every stick. It was the Stapletons and others of +their sort, rather than any soft-handed Musgraves, who converted a +wilderness, a little by a little, into the America of to-day. The task +was tediously achieved, and without ostentation; and always the ship had +its resplendent figure-head, as always it had its hidden, nay! grimy, +engines, which propelled the ship. And, however direfully America may +differ from Utopia, to have assisted in the making of America is no mean +distinction. We Musgraves and our peers, I sometimes think, may possibly +have been just gaudy autumn leaves which happened to lie in the path of +a high wind. And to cut a gallant figure in such circumstances does not +necessarily prove the performer to be a _rara avis_, even though he +rides the whirlwind quite as splendidly as any bird existent." + +Patricia fluttered, and as lightly and irresponsibly as a wren might +have done, perched on his knee. + +"No! there is really something in heredity, after all. Now, you are a +Musgrave in every vein of you. It always seems like a sort of flippancy +for you to appear in public without a stock and a tarnished gilt frame +with most of the gilt knocked off and a catalogue-number tucked in the +corner." Patricia spoke without any regard for punctuation. "And I am so +unlike you. I am only a Stapylton. I do hope you don't mind my being +merely a Stapylton, Olaf, because if only I wasn't too modest to even +think of alluding to the circumstance, I would try to tell you about the +tiniest fraction of how much a certain ravishingly beautiful +half-strainer loves you, Olaf, and the consequences would be +deplorable." + +"My dear----" he began. + +"Ouch!" said Patricia; "you are tickling me. You don't shave half as +often as you used to, do you? No, nowadays you think you have me safe +and don't have to bother about being attractive. If I had a music-box I +could put your face into it and play all sorts of tunes, only I prefer +to look at it. You are a slattern and a jay-bird and a joy forever. And +besides, the first Stapleton seems to have blundered somehow into the +House of Burgesses, so that entitles me to be a Colonial Dame on my +father's side, too, doesn't it, Olaf?" + +The colonel laughed. "Madam Vanity!" said he, "I repeat that to be +descended of a line of czars or from a house of emperors is, at the +worst, an empty braggartism, or, at best--upon the plea of heredity--a +handy palliation for iniquity; and to be descended of sturdy and honest +and clean-blooded folk is beyond doubt preferable, since upon quite +similar grounds it entitles one to hope that even now, 'when their +generation is gone, when their play is over, when their panorama is +withdrawn in tatters from the stage of the world,' there may yet survive +of them 'some few actions worth remembering, and a few children who have +retained some happy stamp from the disposition of their parents.'" + +Patricia--with eyes widened in admiration at his rhetoric,--had turned +an enticing shade of pink. + +"I am glad of that," she said. + +She snuggled so close he could not see her face now. She was to all +appearances attempting to twist the top-button from his coat. + +"I am very glad that it entitles one to hope--about the +children--Because--" + +The colonel lifted her a little from him. He did not say anything. But +he was regarding her half in wonder and one-half in worship. + +She, too, was silent. Presently she nodded. + +He kissed her as one does a very holy relic. + +It was a moment to look back upon always. There was no period in Rudolph +Musgrave's life when he could not look back upon this instant and exult +because it had been his. + + * * * * * + +Only, Patricia found out afterward, with an inexplicable disappointment, +that her husband had not been talking extempore, but was freely quoting +his "Compiler's Foreword" just as it figured in the printed book. + +One judges this posturing, so inevitable of detection, to have been as +significant of much in Rudolph Musgrave as was the fact of its belated +discovery characteristic of Patricia. + +Yet she had read this book about her family from purely normal motives: +first, to make certain how old her various cousins were; secondly, to +gloat over any traces of distinction such as her ancestry afforded; +thirdly, to note with what exaggerated importance the text seemed to +accredit those relatives she did not esteem, and mentally to annotate +each page with unprintable events "which _everybody_ knew about"; and +fourthly, to reflect, as with a gush of steadily augmenting love, how +dear and how unpractical it was of Olaf to have concocted these +date-bristling pages--so staunch and blind in his misguided gratitude +toward those otherwise uninteresting people who had rendered possible +the existence of a Patricia. + + + + +V + + +Matters went badly with Patricia in the ensuing months. Her mother's +blood told here, as Colonel Musgrave saw with disquietude. He knew the +women of his race had by ordinary been unfit for childbearing; indeed, +the daughters of this famous house had long, in a grim routine, +perished, just as Patricia's mother had done, in their first maternal +essay. There were many hideous histories the colonel could have told you +of, unmeet to be set down, and he was familiar with this talk of pelvic +anomalies which were congenital. But he had never thought of Patricia, +till this, as being his kinswoman, and in part a Musgrave. + +And even now the Stapylton blood that was in her pulled Patricia through +long weeks of anguish. Surgeons dealt with her very horribly in a famed +Northern hospital, whither she had been removed. By her obdurate +request--and secretly, to his own preference, since it was never in his +power to meet discomfort willingly--Colonel Musgrave had remained in +Lichfield. Patricia knew that officious people would tell him her life +could be saved only by the destruction of an unborn boy. + +She never questioned her child would be a boy. She knew that Olaf wanted +a boy. + +"Oh, even more than he does me, daddy. And so he mustn't know, you see, +until it is all over. Because Olaf is such an ill-informed person that +he really believes he prefers me." + +"Pat," her father inconsequently said, "I'm proud of you! And--and, by +God, if I _want_ to cry, I guess I am old enough to know my own mind! +And I'll help you in this if you'll only promise not to die in spite of +what these damn' doctors say, because you're _mine_, Pat, and so you +realize a bargain is a bargain." + +"Yes--I am really yours, daddy. It is just my crazy body that is a +Musgrave," Patricia explained. "The real me is an unfortunate Stapylton +who has somehow got locked up in the wrong house. It is not a desirable +residence, you know, daddy. No modern improvements, for instance. But I +have to live in it!... Still, I have not the least intention of dying, +and I solemnly promise that I won't." + +So these two hoodwinked Rudolph Musgrave, and brought it about by +subterfuge that his child was born. At most he vaguely understood that +Patricia was having rather a hard time of it, and steadfastly drugged +this knowledge by the performance of trivialities. He was eating a +cucumber sandwich at the moment young Roger Musgrave came into the +world, and by that action very nearly accomplished Patricia's death. + + + + +VI + + +And the gods cursed Roger Stapylton with such a pride in, and so great a +love for, his only grandson that the old man could hardly bear to be out +of the infant's presence. He was frequently in Lichfield nowadays; and +he renewed his demands that Rudolph Musgrave give up the +exhaustively-particularized librarianship, so that "the little coot" +would be removed to New York and all three of them be with Roger +Stapylton always. + +Patricia had not been well since little Roger's birth. + +It was a peaked and shrewish Patricia, rather than Rudolph Musgrave, who +fought out the long and obstinate battle with Roger Stapylton. + +She was jealous at the bottom of her heart. She would not have anyone, +not even her father, be too fond of what was preëminently hers; the +world at large, including Rudolph Musgrave, was at liberty to adore her +boy, as was perfectly natural, but not to meddle: and in fine, Patricia +was both hysterical and vixenish whenever a giving up of the Library +work was suggested. + +The old man did not quarrel with her. And with Roger Stapylton's +loneliness in these days, and the long thoughts it bred, we have nothing +here to do. But when he died, stricken without warning, some five years +after Patricia's marriage, his will was discovered to bequeath +practically his entire fortune to little Roger Musgrave when the child +should come of age; and to Rudolph Musgrave, as Patricia's husband, what +was a reasonable income when judged by Lichfield's unexacting standards +rather than by Patricia's anticipations. In a word, Patricia found that +she and the colonel could for the future count upon a little more than +half of the income she had previously been allowed by Roger Stapylton. + +"It isn't fair!" she said. "It's monstrous! And all because you were so +obstinate about your picayune Library!" + +"Patricia--" he began. + +"Oh, I tell you it's absurd, Olaf! The money logically ought to have +been left to me. And here I will have to come to you for every penny of +_my_ money. And Heaven knows I have had to scrimp enough to support us +all on what I used to have--Olaf," Patricia said, in another voice, +"Olaf! why, what is it, dear?" + +"I was reflecting," said Colonel Musgrave, "that, as you justly observe, +both Agatha and I have been practically indebted to you for our support +these past five years--" + + + + +VII + + +It must be enregistered, not to the man's credit, but rather as a simple +fact, that it was never within Colonel Musgrave's power to forget the +incident immediately recorded. + +He forgave; when Patricia wept, seeing how leaden-colored his handsome +face had turned, he forgave as promptly and as freely as he was learning +to pardon the telling of a serviceable lie, or the perpetration of an +occasional barbarism in speech, by Patricia. For he, a Musgrave of +Matocton, had married a Stapylton; he had begun to comprehend that their +standards were different, and that some daily conflict between these +standards was inevitable. + +And besides, as it has been veraciously observed, the truth of an insult +is the barb which prevents its retraction. Patricia spoke the truth: +Rudolph Musgrave and all those rationally reliant upon Rudolph Musgrave +for support, had lived for some five years upon the money which they +owed to Patricia. He saw about him other scions of old families who +accepted such circumstances blithely: but, he said, he was a Musgrave +of Matocton; and, he reflected, in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed +is necessarily very unhappy. + +He did not mean to touch a penny of such moneys as Roger Stapylton had +bequeathed to him; for the colonel considered--now--it was a man's duty +personally to support his wife and child and sister. And he vigorously +attempted to discharge this obligation, alike by virtue of his salary at +the Library, and by spasmodic raids upon his tiny capital, and--chief of +all--by speculation in the Stock Market. + +Oddly enough, his ventures were through a long while--for the most +part--successful. Here he builded a desperate edifice whose foundations +were his social talents; and it was with quaint self-abhorrence he often +noted how the telling of a smutty jest or the insistence upon a +manifestly superfluous glass of wine had purchased from some properly +tickled magnate a much desiderated "tip." + +And presently these tips misled him. So the colonel borrowed from +"Patricia's account." + +And on this occasion he guessed correctly. + +And then he stumbled upon such a chance for reinvestment as does not +often arrive. And so he borrowed a trifle more in common justice to +Patricia.... + + + + +VIII + + +When those then famous warriors, Colonel Gaynor and Captain Green, were +obstinately fighting extradition in Quebec; when in Washington the +Senate was wording a suitable resolution wherewith to congratulate Cuba +upon that island's brand-new independence; and when Messieurs +Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were making amicable arrangements in San +Francisco to fight for the world's championship:--at this remote time, +in Chicago (on the same day, indeed, that in this very city Mr. S.E. +Gross was legally declared the author of a play called Cyrano de +Bergerac), the Sons of the Colonial Governors opened their tenth +biennial convention. You may depend upon it that Colonel Rudolph +Musgrave represented the Lichfield chapter. + +It was two days later the telegram arrived. It read: + + _Agatha very ill come to me roger in perfect health._ + PATRICIA. + +He noted how with Stapyltonian thrift Patricia telegraphed ten words +precisely.... + +And when he had reached home, late in the evening, the colonel, not +having taken his bunch of keys with him, laid down his dress-suit case +on the dark porch, and reached out one hand to the door-bell. He found +it muffled with some flimsy, gritty fabric. He did not ring. + +Upon the porch was a rustic bench. He sat upon it for a quarter of an +hour--precisely where he had first talked with Agatha about Patricia's +first coming to Lichfield.... Once the door of a house across the street +was opened, with a widening gush of amber light wherein he saw three +women fitting wraps about them. One of them was adjusting a lace scarf +above her hair. + +"No, we're not a _bit_ afraid--Just around the corner, you know--_Such_ +a pleasant evening----" Their voices carried far in the still night. + +Rudolph Musgrave was not thinking of anything. Presently he went around +through the side entrance, and thus came into the kitchen, where the old +mulattress, Virginia, was sitting alone. The room was very hot.... In +Agatha's time supper would have been cooked upon the gas-range in the +cellar, he reflected.... Virginia had risen and made as though to take +his dress-suit case, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an +idol's. + +"No--don't bother, Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave. + +He met Patricia in the dining-room, on her way to the kitchen. She had +not chosen--as even the most sensible of us will instinctively decline +to do--to vex the quiet of a house wherein death was by ringing a bell. + +Holding his hand in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how +three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper. +Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's +Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss +Agatha. And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to bed before Patricia left +the house, and _anybody_ would have thought she was going to sleep all +night. And, in fine, Patricia's return at a drizzling half-past eleven +had found Miss Agatha sitting in the garden, in her night-dress only, +weeping over fancied grievances--and Virginia asleep in the kitchen. And +Agatha had died that afternoon of pneumonia. + +Even in the last half-stupor she was asking always when would Rudolph +come? Patricia told him.... + +Rudolph Musgrave did not say anything. Without any apparent emotion he +put Patricia aside, much as he did the dress-suit case which he had +forgotten to lay down until Patricia had ended her recital. + +He went upstairs--to the front room, Patricia's bedroom. Patricia +followed him. + +Agatha's body lay upon the bed, with a sheet over all. The undertaker's +skill had arranged everything with smug and horrible tranquillity. + +Rudolph Musgrave remembered he was forty-six years old; and when in all +these years had there been a moment when Agatha--the real Agatha--had +not known that what he had done was self-evidently correct, because +otherwise Rudolph would not have done it? + +"I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia." + +"Well, I couldn't help it. I'm not running a sanitarium. I wasn't +responsible for her eternal drinking." + +The words skipped out of either mouth like gleeful little devils. + +Then both were afraid, and both were as icily tranquil as the thing upon +the bed. You could not hear anything except the clock upon the mantel. +Colonel Musgrave went to the mantel, opened the clock, and with an odd +deliberation removed the pendulum from its hook. Followed one metallic +gasp, as of indignation, and then silence. + +He spoke, still staring at the clock, his back turned to Patricia. "You +must be utterly worn out. You had better go to bed." + +He shifted by the fraction of an inch the old-fashioned "hand-colored" +daguerreotype of his father in Confederate uniform. "Please don't wear +that black dress again. It is no cause for mourning that we are rid of +an encumbrance." + +Behind him, very far away, it seemed, he heard Patricia wailing, +"Olaf----!" + +Colonel Musgrave turned without any haste. "Please go," he said, and +appeared to plead with her. "You must be frightfully tired. I am sorry +that I was not here. I seem always to evade my responsibilities, +somehow--" + +Then he began to laugh. "It _is_ rather amusing, after all. Agatha was +the most noble person I have ever known. The--this habit of hers to +which you have alluded was not a part of her. And I loved Agatha. And I +suppose loving is not altogether dependent upon logic. In any event, I +loved Agatha. And when I came back to her I had come home, +somehow--wherever she might be at the time. That has been true, oh, ever +since I can remember--" + +He touched the dead hand now. "Please go!" he said, and he did not look +toward Patricia. "For Agatha loved me better than she did God, you know. +The curse was born in her. She had to pay for what those dead, +soft-handed Musgraves did. That is why her hands are so cold now. She +had to pay for the privilege of being a Musgrave, you see. But then we +cannot always pick and choose as to what we prefer to be." + +"Oh, yes, of course, it is all my fault. Everything is my fault. But God +knows what would have become of you and your Agatha if it hadn't been +for me. Oh! oh!" Patricia wailed. "I was a child and I hadn't any better +sense, and I married you, and you've been living off my money ever +since! There hasn't been a Christmas present or a funeral wreath bought +in this house since I came into it I didn't pick out and pay for out of +my own pocket. And all the thanks I get for it is this perpetual +fault-finding, and I wish I was dead like this poor saint here. She +spent her life slaving for you. And what thanks did she get for it? Oh, +you ought to go down on your knees, Rudolph Musgrave--!" + +"Please leave," he said. + +"I will leave when I feel like it, and not a single minute before, and +you might just as well understand as much. You _have_ been living off my +money. Oh, you needn't go to the trouble of lying. And she did too. And +she hated me, she always hated me, because I had been fool enough to +marry you, and she carried on like a lunatic more than half the time, +and I always pretended not to notice it, and this is my reward for +trying to behave like a lady." + +Patricia tossed her head. "Yes, and you needn't look at me as if I were +some sort of a bug you hadn't ever seen before and didn't approve of, +because I've seen you try that high-and-mighty trick too often for it to +work with me." + +Patricia stood now beneath the Stuart portrait of young Gerald Musgrave. +She had insisted, long ago, that it be hung in her own bedroom--"because +it was through that beautiful boy we first got really acquainted, Olaf." +The boy smiles at you from the canvas, smiles ambiguously, as the +colonel now noted. + +"I think you had better go," said Colonel Musgrave. "Please go, +Patricia, before I murder you." + +She saw that he was speaking in perfect earnest. + + + + +IX + + +Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had declined to speak +with innumerable sympathetic cousins--Vartreys and Fentons and +Allardyces and Musgraves, to the fifth and sixth remove--who had come +from all quarters, with visiting-cards and low-voiced requests to be +informed "if there is anything we can possibly do." + +Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had not any strength +for anger now, and hardly for grief, Agatha had been his charge; and the +fact that he had never plucked up courage to allude to her practises was +now an enormity in which he could not quite believe. His cowardice and +its fruitage confronted him, and frightened him into a panic frenzy of +remorse. + +Agatha had been his charge; and he had entrusted the stewardship to +Patricia. Between them--that Patricia might have her card-game, that he +might sit upon a platform for an hour or two with a half-dozen other +pompous fools--they had let Agatha die. There was no mercy in him for +Patricia or for himself. He wished Patricia had been a man. Had any man +--an emperor or a coal-heaver, it would not have mattered--spoken as +Patricia had done within the moment, here, within arm's reach of the +poor flesh that had been Agatha's, Rudolph Musgrave would have known his +duty. But, according to his code, it was not permitted to be +discourteous to a woman.... + +He caught himself with grotesque meanness wishing that Agatha had been +there,--privileged by her sex where he was fettered,--she who was so +generous of heart and so fiery of tongue at need; and comprehension that +Agatha would never abet or adore him any more smote him anew. + + * * * * * + +And chance reserved for him more poignant torture. Next day, while +Rudolph Musgrave was making out the list of honorary pall-bearers, the +postman brought a letter which had been forwarded from Chicago. It was +from Agatha, written upon the morning of that day wherein later she had +been, as Patricia phrased it, "queer, you know." + +He found it wildly droll to puzzle out those "crossed" four sheets of +trivialities written in an Italian hand so minute and orderly that the +finished page suggested a fly-screen. He had so often remonstrated with +Agatha about her penuriousness as concerned stationery. + +"Selina Brice & the Rev'd Henry Anstruther, who now has a church in +Seattle, have announced their engagement. Stanley Haggage has gone to +Alabama to marry Leonora Bright, who moved from here a year ago. They +are both as poor as church mice, & I think marriage in such a case an +unwise step for anyone. It brings cares & anxieties enough any way, +without starting out with poverty to increase and render deeper every +trouble...." + +Such was the tenor of Agatha's last letter, of the last self-expression +of that effigy upstairs who (you could see) knew everything and was not +discontent. + +Here the dead spoke, omniscient; and told you that Stanley Haggage had +gone to Alabama, and that marriage brought new cares and anxieties. + +"I cannot laugh," said Rudolph Musgrave, aloud. "I know the jest +deserves it. But I cannot laugh, because my upper lip seems to be made +of leather and I can't move it. And, besides, I loved Agatha to a degree +which only You and I have ever known of. She never understood quite how +I loved her. Oh, won't You make her understand just how I loved her? For +Agatha is dead, because You wanted her to be dead, and I have never told +her how much I loved her, and now I cannot ever tell her how much I +loved her. Oh, won't You please show me that You have made her +understand? or else have me struck by lightning? or do _anything_....?" + +Nothing was done. + + + + +X + + +And afterward Rudolph Musgrave and his wife met amicably, and without +reference to their last talk. Patricia wore black-and-white for some six +months, and Colonel Musgrave accepted the compromise tacitly. All passed +with perfect smoothness between them; and anyone in Lichfield would have +told you that the Musgraves were a model couple. + +She called him "Rudolph" now. + +"Olaf is such a silly-sounding nickname for two old married people, you +know," Patricia estimated. + +The colonel negligently said that he supposed it did sound odd. + +"Only I don't think Clarice Pendomer would care about coming," he +resumed,--for the two were discussing an uncompleted list of the people +Patricia was to invite to their first house-party. + +"And for heaven's sake, why not? We always have her to everything." + +He could not tell her it was because the Charterises were to be among +their guests. So he said: "Oh, well--!" + +"Mrs. C.B. Pendomer, then"--Patricia wrote the name with a flourish. +"Oh, you jay-bird, I'm not jealous. Everybody knows you never had any +more morals than a tom-cat on the back fence. It's a lucky thing the boy +didn't take after you, isn't it? He doesn't, not a bit. No, Harry +Pendomer is the puniest black-haired little wretch, whereas your other +son, sir, resembles his mother and is in consequence a ravishingly +beautiful person of superlative charm--" + +He was staring at her so oddly that she paused. So Patricia was familiar +with that old scandal which linked his name with Clarice Pendomer's! He +was wondering if Patricia had married him in the belief that she was +marrying a man who, appraised by any standards, had acted infamously. + +"I was only thinking you had better ask Judge Allardyce, Patricia. You +see, he is absolutely certain not to come--" + + * * * * * + +This year the Musgraves had decided not to spend the spring alone +together at Matocton, as they had done the four preceding years. + +"It looks so silly," as Patricia pointed out. + +And, besides, a house-party is the most economical method,--as she also +pointed out, being born a Stapylton--of paying off your social +obligations, because you can always ask so many people who, you know, +have made other plans, and cannot accept. + + * * * * * + +"So we will invite Judge Allardyce, of course," said Patricia. "I had +forgotten his court met in June. Oh, and Peter Blagden too. It had +slipped my mind his uncle was dead...." + +"I learned this morning Mrs. Haggage was to lecture in Louisville on the +sixteenth. She was reading up in the Library, you see--" + +"Rudolph, you are the lodestar of my existence. I will ask her to come +on the fourteenth and spend a week. I never could abide the hag, but she +has such a--There! I've made a big blot right in the middle of +'darling,' and spoiled a perfectly good sheet of paper!... You'd better +mail it at once, though, because the evening-paper may have something in +it about her lecture." + + + + +XI + + +Rudolph--" + +"Why--er--yes, dear?" + +This was after supper, and Patricia was playing solitaire. Her husband +was reading the paper. + +"Agatha told me all about Virginia, you know--" + +Here Colonel Musgrave frowned. "It is not a pleasant topic." + +"You jay-bird, you behave entirely too much as if you were my +grandfather. As I was saying, Agatha told me all about your uncle and +Virginia," Patricia hurried on. "And how she ran away afterwards, and +hid in the woods for three days, and came to your father's plantation, +and how your father bought her, and how her son was born, and how her +son was lynched--" + +"Now, really, Patricia! Surely there are other matters which may be more +profitably discussed." + +"Of course. Now, for instance, why is the King of Hearts the only one +that hasn't a moustache?" Patricia peeped to see what cards lay beneath +that monarch, and upon reflection moved the King of Spades into the +vacant space. She was a devotee of solitaire and invariably cheated at +it. + +She went on, absently: "But don't you see? That colored boy was your own +first cousin, and he was killed for doing exactly what his father had +done. Only they sent the father to the Senate and gave him columns of +flubdub and laid him out in state when he died--and they poured kerosene +upon the son and burned him alive. And I believe Virginia thinks that +wasn't fair." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I honestly believe Virginia hates the Musgraves. She is only a negro, +of course, but then she was a mother once--Oh, yes! all I need is a +black eight--" Patricia demanded, "Now look at your brother Hector--the +awfully dissipated one that died of an overdose of opiates. When it +happened wasn't Virginia taking care of him?" + +"Of course. She is an invaluable nurse." + +"And nobody else was here when Agatha went out into the rain. Now, what +if she had just let Agatha go, without trying to stop her? It would have +been perfectly simple. So is this. All I have to do is to take them off +now." + +Colonel Musgrave negligently returned to his perusal of the afternoon +paper. "You are suggesting--if you will overlook my frankness--the most +deplorable sort of nonsense, Patricia." + +"I know exactly how Balaam felt," she said, irrelevantly, and fell to +shuffling the cards. "You don't, and you won't, understand that Virginia +is a human being. In any event, I wish you would get rid of her." + +"I couldn't decently do that," said Rudolph Musgrave, with careful +patience. "Virginia's faithfulness has been proven by too many years of +faithful service. Nothing more strikingly attests the folly of freeing +the negro than the unwillingness of the better class of slaves to leave +their former owners--" + +"Now you are going to quote a paragraph or so from your Gracious Era. As +if I hadn't read everything you ever wrote! You are a fearful humbug in +some ways, Rudolph." + +"And you are a red-headed rattlepate, madam. But seriously, Patricia, +you who were reared in the North are strangely unwilling to concede that +we of the South are after all best qualified to deal with the Negro +Problem. We know the negro as you cannot ever know him." + +"You! Oh, God ha' mercy on us!" mocked Patricia. "There wasn't any Negro +Problem hereabouts, you beautiful idiot, so long as there were any +negroes. Why, to-day there is hardly one full-blooded negro in +Lichfield. There are only a thousand or so of mulattoes who share the +blood of people like your Uncle Edward. And for the most part they take +after their white kin, unfortunately. And there you have the Lichfield +Negro Problem in a nutshell. It is a venerable one and fully set forth +in the Bible. You needn't attempt to argue with me, because you are a +ninnyhammer, and I am a second Nestor. The Holy Scriptures are perfectly +explicit as to what happens to the heads of the children and their teeth +too." + +"I wish you wouldn't jest about such matters--" + +"Because it isn't lady-like? But, Rudolph, you know perfectly well that +I am not a lady." + +"My dear!" he cried, in horror that was real, "and what on earth have I +said even to suggest--" + +"Oh, not a syllable; it isn't at all the sort of thing that your sort +_says_ ... And I am not your sort. I don't know that I altogether wish I +were. But _if_ I were, it would certainly make things easier," Patricia +added sharply. + +"My dear--!" he again protested. + +"Now, candidly, Rudolph"--relinquishing the game, she fell to shuffling +the cards--"just count up the number of times this month that my--oh, +well! I really don't know what to call it except my deplorable omission +in failing to be born a lady--has seemed to you to yank the very last +rag off the gooseberry-bush?" + +He scoffed. "What nonsense! Although, of course, Patricia--" + +She nodded, mischief in her brightly-colored tiny face. "Yes, that is +just your attitude, you beautiful idiot." + +"--although, of course--now, quite honestly, Patricia, I have +occasionally wished that you would not speak of sacred and--er, +physical and sociological matters in exactly the tone in which--well! in +which you sometimes do speak of them. It may sound old-fashioned, but I +have always believed that decency is quite as important in mental +affairs as it is in physical ones, and that as a consequence, a +gentlewoman should always clothe her thoughts with at least the same +care she accords her body. Oh, don't misunderstand me! Of course it +doesn't do any harm, my dear, between us. But outside--you see, for +people to know that you think about such things must necessarily give +them a false opinion of you." + +Patricia meditated. + +She said, with utter solemnity, "Anathema maranatha! oh, hell to damn! +may the noses of all respectable people be turned upside down and +jackasses dance eternally upon their grandmothers' graves!" + +"Patricia--!" cried a shocked colonel. + +"I mean every syllable of it. No, Rudolph; _I_ can't help it if the +vinaigretted beauties of your boyhood were unabridged dictionaries of +prudery. You see, I know almost all the swearwords there are. And I read +the newspapers, and medical books, and even the things that boys chalk +up on fences. In consequence I am not a bit whiteminded, because if you +use your mind at all it gets more or less dingy, just like using +anything else." + +He could not help but laugh, much as he disapproved. Patricia fluttered +and, as a wren might have done, perched presently upon his knee. + +"Rudolph, can't you laugh more often, and not devote so much time to +tracing out the genealogies of those silly people, and being so +tediously beautiful and good?" she asked, and with a hint of +seriousness. "Rudolph, you don't know how I would adore you if you would +rob a church or cut somebody's throat in an alley, and tell me all about +it because you knew I wouldn't betray you. You are so infernally +respectable in everything you do! How did you come to bully me that day +at the Library? It seems almost as if those two were different people... +doesn't it, Rudolph?" + +"My dear," the colonel said whimsically, "I am afraid we are rather like +the shepherdess and the chimney-sweep of the fable I read you very long +ago. We climbed up so far that we could see the stars, once, very long +ago, Patricia, and we have come back to live upon the parlor table. I +suppose it happens to all the little china people." + +She took his meaning. Each was aware of an odd sense of intimacy. +"Everything we have to be glad for now, Rudolph, is the rivet in +grandfather's neck. It is rather a fiasco, isn't it?" + +"Eh, there are all sorts of rivets, Patricia. And the thing one cannot +do because one is what one is, need not be necessarily a cause for +grief." + + + + +XII + + +It was excellent to see Jack Charteris again, as Colonel Musgrave did +within a few days of this. Musgrave was unreasonably fond of the +novelist and frankly confessed it would be as preposterous to connect +Charteris with any of the accepted standards of morality as it would be +to judge an artesian-well from the standpoint of ethics. + +Anne was not yet in Lichfield. She had broken the journey to visit a +maternal grand-aunt and some Virginia cousins, in Richmond, Charteris +explained, and was to come thence to Matocton. + +"And so you have acquired a boy and, by my soul, a very handsome wife, +Rudolph?" + +"It is sufficiently notorious," said Colonel Musgrave. "Yes, we are +quite absurdly happy." He laughed and added: "Patricia--but you don't +know her droll way of putting things--says that the only rational +complaint I can advance against her is her habit of rushing into a +hospital every month or so and having a section or two of her person +removed by surgeons. It worries me,--only, of course, it is not the +sort of thing you can talk about. And, as Patricia says, it _is_ an +unpleasant thing to realize that your wife is not leaving you through +the ordinary channels of death or of type-written decrees of the court, +but only in vulgar fractions, as it were--" + +"Please don't be quite so brutal, Rudolph. It is not becoming in a +Musgrave of Matocton to speak of women in any tone other than the most +honeyed accents of chivalry." + +"Oh, I was only quoting Patricia," the colonel largely said, +"and--er--Jack," he continued. "By the way, Jack, Clarice Pendomer will +be at Matocton--" + +"I rejoice in her good luck," said Charteris, equably. + +"--and--well! I was wondering--?" + +"I can assure you that there will be no--trouble. That skeleton is +safely locked in its closet, and the key to that closet is missing--more +thanks to you. You acted very nobly in the whole affair, Rudolph. I wish +I could do things like that. As it is, of course, I shall always detest +you for having been able to do it." + +Charteris said, thereafter: "I shall always envy you, though, Rudolph. +No other man I know has ever attained the good old troubadourish ideal +of _domnei_--that love which rather abhors than otherwise the notion of +possessing its object. I still believe it was a distinct relief to a +certain military officer, whose name we need not mention, when Anne +decided not to marry you." + +The colonel grinned, a trifle consciously. "Well, Anne meant youth, you +comprehend, and all the things we then believed in, Jack. It would have +been decidedly difficult to live up to such a contract, and--as it +were--to fulfil every one of the implied specifications!" + +"And yet"--here Charteris flicked his cigarette--"Anne ruled in the +stead of Aline Van Orden. And Aline, in turn, had followed Clarice +Pendomer. And before the coming of Clarice had Pauline Romeyne, whom +time has converted into Polly Ashmeade, reigned in the land--" + +"Don't be an ass!" the colonel pleaded; and then observed, +inconsequently: "I can't somehow quite realize Aline is dead. Lord, +Lord, the letters that I wrote to her! She sent them all back, you know, +in genuine romantic fashion, after we had quarreled. I found those +boyish ravings only the other day in my father's desk at Matocton, and +skimmed them over. I shall read them through some day and appropriately +meditate over life's mysteries that are too sad for tears." + +He meditated now. + +"It wouldn't be quite equitable, Jack," the colonel summed it up, "if +the Aline I loved--no, I don't mean the real woman, the one you and all +the other people knew, the one that married the enterprising brewer and +died five years ago--were not waiting for me somewhere. I can't express +just what I mean, but you will understand, I know--?" + +"That heaven is necessarily run on a Mohammedan basis? Why, of course," +said Mr. Charteris. "Heaven, as I apprehend it, is a place where we +shall live eternally among those ladies of old years who never +condescended actually to inhabit any realm more tangible than that of +our boyish fancies. It is the obvious definition; and I defy you to +evolve a more enticing allurement toward becoming a deacon." + +"You romancers are privileged to talk nonsense anywhere," the colonel +estimated, "and I suppose that in the Lichfield you have made famous, +Jack, you have a double right." + +"Ah, but I never wrote a line concerning Lichfield. I only wrote about +the Lichfield whose existence you continue to believe in, in spite of +the fact that you are actually living in the real Lichfield," Charteris +returned. "The vitality of the legend is wonderful." + +He cocked his head to one side--an habitual gesture with Charteris--and +the colonel noted, as he had often done before, how extraordinarily +reminiscent Jack was of a dried-up, quizzical black parrot. Said +Charteris: + +"I love to serve that legend. I love to prattle of 'ole Marster' and +'ole Miss,' and throw in a sprinkling of 'mockin'-buds' and 'hants' and +'horg-killing time,' and of sweeping animadversions as to all 'free +niggers'; and to narrate how 'de quality use ter cum'--you spell it +c-u-m because that looks so convincingly like dialect--'ter de gret +hous.' Those are the main ingredients. And, as for the unavoidable +love-interest--" Charteris paused, grinned, and pleasantly resumed: +"Why, jes arter dat, suh, a hut Yankee cap'en, whar some uv our folks +done shoot in de laig, wuz lef on de road fer daid--a quite notorious +custom on the part of all Northern armies--un Young Miss had him fotch +up ter de gret hous, un nuss im same's he one uv de fambly, un dem two +jes fit un argufy scanlous un never spicion huccum dey's in love wid +each othuh till de War's ovuh. And there you are! I need not mention +that during the tale's progress it is necessary to introduce at least +one favorable mention of Lincoln, arrange a duel 'in de low grouns' +immediately after day-break, and have the family silver interred in the +back garden, because these points will naturally suggest themselves." + +"Jack, Jack!" the colonel cried, "it is an ill bird that fouls its own +nest." + +"But, believe me, I don't at heart," said Charteris, in a queer earnest +voice. "There is a sardonic imp inside me that makes me jeer at the +commoner tricks of the trade--and yet when I am practising that trade, +when I am writing of those tender-hearted, brave and gracious men and +women, and of those dear old darkies, I very often write with tears in +my eyes. I tell you this with careful airiness because it is true and +because it would embarrass me so horribly if you believed it." + +Then he was off upon another tack. "And wherein, pray, have I harmed +Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis +and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons--and by having called +this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it +flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that, +I take it, is the true secret of romance--to induce the momentary +delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and +prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a +matter of fact, all human passions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I +find. Were it not for the police court records, I would pessimistically +insist that all of us elect to love one person and to hate another with +very much the same enthusiasm that we display in expressing a preference +for rare roast beef as compared with the outside slice. Oh, really, +Rudolph, you have no notion how salutary it is to the self-esteem of us +romanticists to run across, even nowadays, an occasional breach of the +peace. For then sometimes--when the coachman obligingly cuts the +butler's throat in the back-alley, say--we actually presume to think for +a moment that our profession is almost as honest as that of making +counterfeit money...." + +The colonel did not interrupt his brief pause of meditation. Then the +novelist said: + +"Why, no; if I were ever really to attempt a tale of Lichfield, I would +not write a romance but a tragedy. I think that I would call my tragedy +_Futility_, for it would mirror the life of Lichfield with unengaging +candor; and, as a consequence, people would complain that my tragedy +lacked sustained interest, and that its participants were inconsistent; +that it had no ordered plot, no startling incidents, no high endeavors, +and no especial aim; and that it was equally deficient in all +time-hallowed provocatives of either laughter or tears. For very few +people would understand that a life such as this, when rightly viewed, +is the most pathetic tragedy conceivable." + +"Oh, come, now, Jack! come, recollect that your reasoning powers are +almost as worthy of employment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not +quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in +Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty +much as they come; but we meddle with nobody, and, after all, we don't +do any especial harm." + +"We don't do anything whatever in especial, Rudolph. That would be +precisely the theme of my story of the real Lichfield if I were ever +bold enough to write it. There seems to be a sort of blight upon +Lichfield. Oh, yes! it would be unfair, perhaps, to contrast it with the +bigger Southern cities, like Richmond and Atlanta and New Orleans; but +even the inhabitants of smaller Southern towns are beginning to buy +excursion tickets, and thereby ascertain that the twentieth century has +really begun. Yes, it is only in Lichfield I can detect the raw stuff of +a genuine tragedy; for, depend upon it, Rudolph, the most pathetic +tragedy in life is to get nothing in particular out of it." + +"But, for my part, I don't see what you are driving at," the colonel +stoutly said. + +And Charteris only laughed. "And I hardly expected you to do so, +Rudolph--or not yet, at least." + + + + +PART FIVE - SOUVENIR + + "I am contented by remembrances-- + Dreams of dead passions, wraiths of vanished times, + Fragments of vows, and by-ends of old rhymes-- + Flotsam and jetsam tumbling in the seas + Whereon, long since, put forth our argosies + Which, bent on traffic in the Isles of Love, + Lie foundered somewhere in some firth thereof, + Encradled by eternal silences." + + "Thus, having come to naked bankruptcy, + Let us part friends, as thrifty tradesmen do + When common ventures fail, for it may be + These battered oaths and rhymes may yet ring true + To some fair woman's hearing, so that she + Will listen and think of love, and I of you." + +F. Ashcroft Wheeler. _Revisions_. + + + + +I + + +When the _Reliance_, the _Constitution_ and the _Columbia_ were holding +trial races off Newport to decide which one of these yachts should +defend the _America's_ cup; when the tone of the Japanese press as to +Russia's actions in Manchuria was beginning to grow ominous; when the +Jews of America were drafting a petition to the Czar; and when it was +rumored that the health of Pope Leo XIII was commencing to fail:--at +this remote time, the Musgraves gave their first house-party. + +And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted and admired the apparent +unconcern with which John Charteris and Clarice Pendomer encountered at +Matocton. And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted with approval the +intimacy which was, obviously, flourishing between the little novelist +and Patricia. + +Also Colonel Musgrave had presently good reason to lament a contretemps, +over which he was sulking when Mrs. Pendomer rustled to her seat at the +breakfast-table, with a shortness of breath that was partly due to the +stairs, and in part attributable to her youthful dress, which fitted a +trifle too perfectly. + +"Waffles?" said Mrs. Pendomer. "At my age and weight the first is an +experiment and the fifth an amiable indiscretion of which I am +invariably guilty. Sugar, please." She yawned, and reached a +generously-proportioned arm toward the sugar-bowl. "Yes, that will do, +Pilkins." + +Colonel Musgrave--since the remainder of his house-party had already +breakfasted--raised his fine eyes toward the chandelier, and sighed, as +Pilkins demurely closed the dining-room door. + +Leander Pilkins--butler for a long while now to the Musgraves of +Matocton--would here, if space permitted, be the subject of an encomium. +Leander Pilkins was in Lichfield considered to be, upon the whole, the +handsomest man whom Lichfield had produced; for this quadroon's skin was +like old ivory, and his profile would have done credit to an emperor. +His terrapin is still spoken of in Lichfield as people in less favored +localities speak of the Golden Age, and his mayonnaise (boasts +Lichfield) would have compelled an Olympian to plead for a second +helping. For the rest, his deportment in all functions of butlership is +best described as super-Chesterfieldian; and, indeed, he was generally +known to be a byblow of Captain Beverley Musgrave's, who in his day was +Lichfield's arbiter as touched the social graces. And so, no more of +Pilkins. + +Mrs. Pendomer partook of chops. "Is this remorse," she queried, "or a +convivially induced requirement for bromides? At this unearthly hour of +the morning it is very often difficult to disentangle the two." + +"It is neither," said Colonel Musgrave, and almost snappishly. + +Followed an interval of silence. "Really," said Mrs. Pendomer, and as +with sympathy, "one would think you had at last been confronted with one +of your thirty-seven pasts--or is it thirty-eight, Rudolph?" + +Colonel Musgrave frowned disapprovingly at her frivolity; he swallowed +his coffee, and buttered a superfluous potato. "H'm!" said he; "then you +know?" + +"I know," sighed she, "that a sleeping past frequently suffers from +insomnia." + +"And in that case," said he, darkly, "it is not the only sufferer." + +Mrs. Pendomer considered the attractions of a third waffle--a mellow +blending of autumnal yellows, fringed with a crisp and irresistible +brown, that, for the moment, put to flight all dreams and visions of +slenderness. + +"And Patricia?" she queried, with a mental hiatus. + +Colonel Musgrave flushed. + +"Patricia," he conceded, with mingled dignity and sadness, "is, after +all, still in her twenties----" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pendomer, with a dryness which might mean anything or +nothing; "she _was_ only twenty-one when she married you." + +"I mean," he explained, with obvious patience, "that at her age she--not +unnaturally--takes an immature view of things. Her unspoiled purity," +he added, meditatively, "and innocence and general unsophistication are, +of course, adorable, but I can admit to thinking that for a journey +through life they impress me as excess baggage." + +"Patricia," said Mrs. Pendomer, soothingly, "has ideals. And ideals, +like a hare-lip or a mission in life, should be pitied rather than +condemned, when our friends possess them; especially," she continued, +buttering her waffle, "as so many women have them sandwiched between +their last attack of measles and their first imported complexion. No one +of the three is lasting, Rudolph." + +"H'm!" said he. + +There was another silence. The colonel desperately felt that matters +were not advancing. + +"H'm!" said she, with something of interrogation in her voice. + +"See here, Clarice, I have known you----" + +"You have not!" cried she, very earnestly; "not by five years!" + +"Well, say for some time. You are a sensible woman----" + +"A man," Mrs. Pendomer lamented, parenthetically, "never suspects a +woman of discretion, until she begins to lose her waist." + +"--and I am sure that I can rely upon your womanly tact, and finer +instincts,--and that sort of thing, you know--to help me out of a deuce +of a mess." + +Mrs. Pendomer ate on, in an exceedingly noncommittal fashion, as he +paused, inquiringly. + +"She has been reading some letters," said he, at length; "some letters +that I wrote a long time ago." + +"In the case of so young a girl," observed Mrs. Pendomer, with perfect +comprehension, "I should have undoubtedly recommended a judicious +supervision of her reading-matter." + +"She was looking through an old escritoire," he explained; "Jack +Charteris had suggested that some of my father's letters--during the +War, you know--. might be of value--" + +He paused, for Mrs. Pendomer appeared on the verge of a question. + +But she only said, "So it was Mr. Charteris who suggested Patricia's +searching the desk. Ah, yes! And then--?" + +"And it was years ago--and just the usual sort of thing, though it may +have seemed from the letters--Why, I hadn't given the girl a thought," +he cried, in virtuous indignation, "until Patricia found the +letters--and read them!" + +"Naturally," she assented--"yes,--just as I read George's." + +The smile with which she accompanied this remark, suggested that both +Mr. Pendomer's correspondence and home life were at times of an +interesting nature. + +"I had destroyed the envelopes when she returned them," continued +Colonel Musgrave, with morose confusion of persons. "Patricia doesn't +even know who the girl was--her name, somehow, was not mentioned." + +"'Woman of my heart'--'Dearest girl in all the world,'" quoted Mrs. +Pendomer, reminiscently, "and suchlike tender phrases, scattered in with +a pepper-cruet, after the rough copy was made in pencil, and dated just +'Wednesday,' or 'Thursday,' of course. Ah, you were always very careful, +Rudolph," she sighed; "and now that makes it all the worse, because--as +far as all the evidence goes--these letters may have been returned +yesterday." + +"Why--!" Colonel Musgrave pulled up short, hardly seeing his way clear +through the indignant periods on which he had entered. "I declined," +said he, somewhat lamely, "to discuss the matter with her, in her +present excited and perfectly unreasonable condition." + +Mrs. Pendomer's penciled eyebrows rose, and her lips--which were quite +as red as there was any necessity for their being--twitched. + +"Hysterics?" she asked. + +"Worse!" groaned Colonel Musgrave; "patient resignation under unmerited +affliction!" + +He had picked up a teaspoon, and he carefully balanced it upon his +forefinger. + +"There were certain phrases in these letters which were, somehow, +repeated in certain letters I wrote to Patricia the summer we were +engaged, and--not to put too fine a point upon it--she doesn't like it." + +Mrs. Pendomer smiled, as though she considered this not improbable; and +he continued, with growing embarrassment and indignation: + +"She says there must have been others"--Mrs. Pendomer's smile grew +reminiscent--"any number of others; that she is only an incident in my +life. Er--as you have mentioned, Patricia has certain notions--Northern +idiocies about the awfulness of a young fellow's sowing his wild oats, +which you and I know perfectly well he is going to do, anyhow, if he is +worth his salt. But she doesn't know it, poor little girl. So she won't +listen to reason, and she won't come downstairs--which," lamented +Rudolph Musgrave, plaintively, "is particularly awkward in a +house-party." + +He drummed his fingers, for a moment, on the table. + +"It is," he summed up, "a combination of Ibsen and hysterics, and +of--er, rather declamatory observations concerning there being one law +for the man and another for the woman, and Patricia's realization of the +mistake we both made--and all that sort of nonsense, you know, exactly +as if, I give you my word, she were one of those women who want to +vote." The colonel, patently, considered that feminine outrageousness +could go no farther. "And she is taking menthol and green tea and +mustard plasters and I don't know what all, in bed, prior to--to----" + +"Taking leave?" Mrs. Pendomer suggested. + +"Er--that was mentioned, I believe," said Colonel Musgrave. "But of +course she was only talking." + +Mrs. Pendomer looked about her; and, without, the clean-shaven lawns +and trim box-hedges were very beautiful in the morning sunlight; within, +the same sunlight sparkled over the heavy breakfast service, and gleamed +in the high walnut panels of the breakfast-room. She viewed the +comfortable appointments about her a little wistfully, for Mrs. +Pendomer's purse was not over-full. + +"Of course," said she, as in meditation, "there was the money." + +"Yes," said Rudolph Musgrave, slowly; "there was the money." + +He sprang to his feet, and drew himself erect. Here was a moment he must +give its full dramatic value. + +"Oh, no, Clarice, my marriage may have been an eminently sensible one, +but I love my wife. Oh, believe me, I love her very tenderly, poor +little Patricia! I have weathered some forty-seven birthdays; and I have +done much as other men do, and all that--there have been flirtations and +suchlike, and--er--some women have been kinder to me than I deserved. +But I love her; and there has not been a moment since she came into my +life I haven't loved her, and been--" he waved his hands now impotently, +almost theatrically--"sickened at the thought of the others." + +Mrs. Pendomer's foot tapped the floor whilst he spoke. When he had made +an ending, she inclined her head toward him. + +"Thank you!" said Mrs. Pendomer. + +Colonel Musgrave bit his lip; and he flushed. + +"That," said he, hastily, "was different." + +But the difference, whatever may have been its nature, was seemingly a +matter of unimportance to Mrs. Pendomer, who was in meditation. She +rested her ample chin on a much-bejeweled hand for a moment; and, when +Mrs. Pendomer raised her face, her voice was free from affectation. + +"You will probably never understand that this particular July day is a +crucial point in your life. You will probably remember it, if you +remember it at all, simply as that morning when Patricia found some +girl-or-another's old letters, and behaved rather unreasonably about +them. It was the merest trifle, you will think.... John Charteris +understands women better than you do, Rudolph." + +"I need not pretend at this late day to be as clever as Jack," the +colonel said, in some bewilderment. "But why not more succinctly state +that the Escurial is not a dromedary, although there are many flies in +France? For what on earth has Jack to do with crucial points and July +mornings?" + +"Why, I suppose, I only made bold to introduce his name for the sake of +an illustration, Rudolph. For the last person in the world to realize, +precisely, why any woman did anything is invariably the woman who did +it.... Yet there comes in every married woman's existence that time when +she realizes, suddenly, that her husband has a past which might be +taken as, in itself, a complete and rounded life--as a life which had +run the gamut of all ordinary human passions, and had become familiar +with all ordinary human passions a dishearteningly long while before she +ever came into that life. A woman never realizes that of her lover, +somehow. But to know that your husband, the father of your child, has +lived for other women a life in which you had no part, and never can +have part!--she realizes that, at one time or another, and--and it +sickens her." Mrs. Pendomer smiled as she echoed his phrase, but her +eyes were not mirthful. + +"Ah, she hungers for those dead years, Rudolph, and, though you devote +your whole remaining life to her, nothing can ever make up for them; and +she always hates those shadowy women who have stolen them from her. A +woman never, at heart, forgives the other women who have loved her +husband, even though she cease to care for him herself. For she +remembers--ah, you men forget so easily, Rudolph! God had not invented +memory when he created Adam; it was kept for the woman." + +Then ensued a pause, during which Rudolph Musgrave smiled down upon her, +irresolutely; for he abhorred "a scene," as his vernacular phrased it, +and to him Clarice's present manner bordered upon both the scenic and +the incomprehensible. + +"Ah!--you women!" he temporized. + +There was a glance from eyes whose luster time and irregular living had +conspired to dim. + +"Ah!--you men!" Mrs. Pendomer retorted. "And there we have the tragedy +of life in a nutshell!" + +Silence lasted for a while. The colonel was finding this matutinal talk +discomfortably opulent in pauses. + +"Rudolph, and has it never occurred to you that in marrying Patricia you +swindled her?" + +And naturally his eyebrows lifted. + +"Because a woman wants love." + +"Well, well! and don't I love Patricia?" + +"I dare say that you think you do. Only you have played at loving so +long you are really unable to love anybody as a girl has every right to +be loved in her twenties. Yes, Rudolph, you are being rather subtly +punished for the good times you have had. And, after all, the saddest +punishment is something that happens in us, not something which happens +to us." + +"I wish you wouldn't laugh, Clarice----" + +"I wish I didn't have to. For I would get far more comfort out of +crying, and I don't dare to, because of my complexion. It comes in a +round pasteboard box nowadays, you know, Rudolph, with French +mendacities all over the top--and my eyebrows come in a fat crayon, and +the healthful glow of my lips comes in a little porcelain tub." + +Mrs. Pendomer was playing with a teaspoon now, and a smile hovered about +the aforementioned lips. + +"And yet, do you remember, Rudolph," said she, "that evening at +Assequin, when I wore a blue gown, and they were playing _Fleurs +d'Amour_, and--you said--?" + +"Yes"--there was an effective little catch in his voice--"you were a +wonderful girl, Clarice--'my sunshine girl,' I used to call you. And +blue was always your color; it went with your eyes so exactly. And those +big sleeves they wore then--those tell-tale, crushable sleeves!--they +suited your slender youthfulness so perfectly! Ah, I remember it as +though it were yesterday!" + +Mrs. Pendomer majestically rose to her feet. + +"It was pink! And it was at the Whitebrier you said--what you said! +And--and you don't deserve anything but what you are getting," she +concluded, grimly. + +"I--it was so long ago," Rudolph Musgrave apologized, with mingled +discomfort and vagueness. + +"Yes," she conceded, rather sadly; "it was so long--oh, very long ago! +For we were young then, and we believed in things, and--and Jack +Charteris had not taken a fancy to me--" She sighed and drummed her +fingers on the table. "But women have always helped and shielded you, +haven't they, Rudolph? And now I am going to help you too, for you have +shown me the way. You don't deserve it in the least, but I'll do it." + + + + +II + + +Thus it shortly came about that Mrs. Pendomer mounted, in meditative +mood, to Mrs. Musgrave's rooms; and that Mrs. Pendomer, recovering her +breath, entered, without knocking, into a gloom where cologne and +menthol and the odor of warm rubber contended for mastery. For Patricia +had decided that she was very ill indeed, and was sobbing softly in bed. + +Very calmly, Mrs. Pendomer opened a window, letting in a flood of fresh +air and sunshine; very calmly, she drew a chair--a substantial +arm-chair--to the bedside, and, very calmly, she began: + +"My dear, Rudolph has told me of this ridiculous affair, and--oh, you +equally ridiculous girl!" + +She removed, with deft fingers, a damp and clinging bandage from about +Patricia's head, and patted the back of Patricia's hand, placidly. +Patricia was by this time sitting erect in bed, and her coppery hair was +thick about her face, which was colorless; and, altogether, she was very +rigid and very indignant and very pretty, and very, very young. + +"How dare he tell you--or anybody else!" she cried. + +"We are such old friends, remember," Mrs. Pendomer pleaded, and +rearranged the pillows, soothingly, about her hostess; "and I want to +talk to you quietly and sensibly." + +Patricia sank back among the pillows, and inhaled the fresh air, which, +in spite of herself, she found agreeable. "I--somehow, I don't feel very +sensible," she murmured, half sulky and half shame-faced. + +Mrs. Pendomer hesitated for a moment, and then plunged into the heart of +things. "You are a woman, dear," she said, gently, "though heaven knows +it must have been only yesterday you were playing about the nursery--and +one of the facts we women must face, eventually, is that man is a +polygamous animal. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is true. +Civilization may veneer the fact, but nothing will ever override it, not +even in these new horseless carriages. A man may give his wife the best +that is in him--his love, his trust, his life's work--but it is only the +best there is left. We give our hearts; men dole out theirs, as people +feed bread to birds, with a crumb for everyone. His wife has the +remnant. And the best we women can do is to remember we are credibly +informed that half a loaf is preferable to no bread at all." + +Her face sobered, and she added, pensively: "We might contrive a better +universe, we sister women, but this is not permitted us. So we must take +it as it is." + +Patricia stirred, as talking died away. "I don't believe it," said she; +and she added, with emphasis: "And, anyhow, I hate that nasty trollop!" + +"Ah, but you do believe it." Mrs. Pendomer's voice was insistent. "You +knew it years before you went into long frocks. That knowledge is, I +suppose, a legacy from our mothers." + +Patricia frowned, petulantly, and then burst into choking sobs. "Oh!" +she cried, "it's damnable! Some other woman has had what I can never +have. And I wanted it so!--that first love that means everything--the +love he gave her when I was only a messy little girl, with pig-tails and +too many hands and feet! Oh, that--that hell-cat! She's had everything!" + +There was an interval, during which Mrs. Pendomer smiled crookedly, and +Patricia continued to sob, although at lengthening intervals. Then, Mrs. +Pendomer lifted the packet of letters lying on the bed, and cleared her +throat. + +"H'm!" said she; "so this is what caused all the trouble? You don't +mind?" + +And, considering silence as equivalent to acquiescence, she drew out a +letter at hazard, and read aloud: + +"'Just a line, woman of all the world, to tell you ... but what have I +to tell you, after all? Only the old, old message, so often told that it +seems scarcely worth while to bother the postman about it. Just three +words that innumerable dead lips have whispered, while life was yet good +and old people were unreasonable and skies were blue--three words that +our unborn children's children will whisper to one another when we too +have gone to help the grasses in their growing or to nourish the +victorious, swaying hosts of some field of daffodils. Just three +words--that is my message to you, my lady.... Ah, it is weary waiting +for a sight of your dear face through these long days that are so much +alike and all so empty and colorless! My heart grows hungry as I think +of your great, green eyes and of the mouth that is like a little wound. +I want you so, O dearest girl in all the world! I want you.... Ah, time +travels very slowly that brings you back to me, and, meanwhile, I can +but dream of you and send you impotent scrawls that only vex me with +their futility. For my desire of you--' + +"The remainder," said Mrs. Pendomer, clearing her throat once more, +"appears to consist of insanity and heretical sentiments, in about equal +proportions, all written at the top of a boy's breaking voice. It isn't +Colonel Musgrave's voice--quite--is it?" + +During the reading, Patricia, leaning on one elbow, had regarded her +companion with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. "Now, you see!" she cried +indignantly; "he loved her! He was simply crazy about her." + +"Why, yes." Mrs. Pendomer replaced the letter, carefully, almost +caressingly, among its companions. "My dear, it was years ago. I think +time has by this wreaked a vengeance far more bitter than you could ever +plan on the woman who, after all, never thought to wrong you. For the +bitterest of all bitter things to a woman--to some women, at least--is +to grow old." + +She sighed, and her well-manicured fingers fretted for a moment with the +counterpane. + +"Ah, who will write the tragedy of us women who were 'famous Southern +beauties' once? We were queens of men while our youth lasted, and +diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us. But nothing was +expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much +of, and that is our tragedy. For very few things, my dear, are more +pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind +cannot--cannot, because of its very nature--reach to anything higher! +Middle-age strips her of everything--the admiration, the flattery, the +shallow merriment--all the little things that her little mind longs +for--and other women take her place, in spite of her futile, pitiful +efforts to remain young. And the world goes on as before, and there is a +whispering in the moonlit garden, and young people steal off for wholly +superfluous glasses of water, and the men give her duty dances, and she +is old--ah, so old!--under the rouge and inane smiles and dainty +fripperies that caricature her lost youth! No, my dear, you needn't envy +this woman! Pity her, my dear!" pleaded Clarice Pendomer, and with a +note of earnestness in her voice. + +"Such a woman," said Patricia, with distinctness, "deserves no pity." + +"Well," Mrs. Pendomer conceded, drily, "she doesn't get it. Probably, +because she always grows fat, from sheer lack of will-power to resist +sloth and gluttony--the only agreeable vices left her; and by no stretch +of the imagination can a fat woman be converted into either a pleasing +or heroic figure." + +Mrs. Pendomer paused for a breathing-space, and smiled, though not very +pleasantly. + +"It is, doubtless," said she, "a sight for gods--and quite certainly for +men--to laugh at, this silly woman striving to regain a vanished +frugality of waist. Yes, I suppose it is amusing--but it is also +pitiful. And it is more pitiful still if she has ever loved a man in the +unreasoning way these shallow women sometimes do. Men age so slowly; the +men a girl first knows are young long after she has reached +middle-age--yes, they go on dancing cotillions and talking nonsense in +the garden, long after she has taken to common-sense shoes. And the man +is still young--and he cares for some other woman, who is young and has +all that she has lost--and it seems so unfair!" said Mrs. Pendomer. + +Patricia regarded her for a moment. The purple eyes were alert, their +glance was hard. "You seem to know all about this woman," Patricia +began, in a level voice. "I have heard, of course, what everyone in +Lichfield whispers about you and Rudolph. I have even teased Rudolph +about it, but until to-day I had believed it was a lie." + +"It is often a mistake to indulge in uncommon opinions," said Mrs. +Pendomer. "You get more fun and interest out of it, I don't deny, but +the bill, my dear, is unconscionable." + +"So! you confess it!" + +"My dear, and who am I to stand aside like a coward and see you make a +mountain of this boy-and-girl affair--an affair which Rudolph and I had +practically forgotten--oh, years ago!--until to-day? Why--why, you +_can't_ be jealous of me!" Mrs. Pendomer concluded, half-mockingly. + +Patricia regarded her with deliberation. + +In the windy sunlight, Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but, +unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and +her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which +there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had +dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her +husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped +into the imbroglio--a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate love of +attention, which was, indeed, tolerably notorious; and Patricia's anger +against Rudolph Musgrave gave way to a rather contemptuous pity and a +half-maternal remorse for not having taken better care of him. + +"No," answered Mrs. Pendomer, to her unspoken thought; "no woman could +be seriously jealous of me. Yes, I dare say, I am _passée_ and vain and +frivolous and--harmless. But," she added, meditatively, "you hate me, +just the same." + +"My dear Mrs. Pendomer----" Patricia began, with cool courtesy; then +hesitated. "Yes," she conceded; "I dare say, it is unreasonable--but I +do hate you like the very old Nick." + +"Why, then," spoke Mrs. Pendomer, with cheerfulness, "everything is as +it should be." She rose and smiled. "I am sorry to say I must be leaving +Matocton to-day; the Ullwethers are very pressing, and I really don't +know how to get out of paying them a visit----" + +"So sorry to lose you," cooed Patricia; "but, of course, you know best. +I believe some very good people are visiting the Ullwethers nowadays?" +She extended the letters, blandly. "May I restore your property?" she +queried, with utmost gentleness. + +"Thanks!" Clarice Pendomer took them, and kissed her hostess, not +without tenderness, on the brow. "My dear, be kind to Rudolph. He--he is +rather an attractive man, you know,--and other women are kind to him. We +of Lichfield have always said that he and Jack Charteris were the most +dangerous men that even Lichfield has ever produced----" + +"Why, do people really find Mr. Charteris particularly attractive?" +Patricia demanded, so quickly and so innocently that Mrs. Pendomer could +not deny herself the glance of a charlatan who applauds his fellow's +legerdemain. + +And Patricia colored. + +"Oh, well--! You know how Lichfield gossips," said Mrs. Pendomer. + + + + +III + + +Colonel Musgrave had smoked a preposterous number of unsatisfying +cigarettes on the big front porch of Matocton whilst Mrs. Pendomer was +absent on her mission; and on her return, flushed and triumphant, he +rose in eloquent silence. + +"I've done it, Rudolph," said Mrs. Pendomer. + +"Done what?" he queried, blankly. + +"Restored what my incomprehensible lawyers call the _status quo_; +achieved peace with honor; carried off the spoils of war; and--in +short--arranged everything," answered Mrs. Pendomer, and sank into a +rustic chair, which creaked admonishingly. "And all," she added, +bringing a fan into play, "without a single falsehood. _I_ am not to +blame if Patricia has jumped at the conclusion that these letters were +written to me." + +"My word!" said Rudolph Musgrave, "your methods of restoring domestic +peace to a distracted household are, to say the least, original!" He +seated himself, and lighted another cigarette. + +"Oh, well, Patricia is not deaf, you know, and she has lived in +Lichfield quite a while." Mrs. Pendomer said abruptly, "I have half a +mind to tell you some of the things I know about Aline Van Orden." + +"Please don't," said Colonel Musgrave, "for I would inevitably beard you +on my own porch and smite you to the door-mat. And I am hardly young +enough for such adventures." + +"And poor Aline is dead! And the rest of us are middle-aged now, +Rudolph, and we go in to dinner with the veterans who call us 'Madam,' +and we are prominent in charitable enterprises.... But there was a time +when we were not exactly hideous in appearance, and men did many mad +things for our sakes, and we never lose the memory of that time. +Pleasant memories are among the many privileges of women. Yes," added +Mrs. Pendomer, meditatively, "we derive much the same pleasure from them +a cripple does from rearranging the athletic medals he once won, or a +starving man from thinking of the many excellent dinners he has eaten; +but we can't and we wouldn't part with them, nevertheless." + +Rudolph Musgrave, however, had not honored her with much attention, and +was puzzling over the more or less incomprehensible situation; and, +perceiving this, she ran on, after a little: + +"Oh, it worked--it worked beautifully! You see, she would always have +been very jealous of that other woman; but with me it is different. She +has always known that scandalous story about you and me. And she has +always known me as I am--a frivolous and--say, corpulent, for it is a +more dignified word--and generally unattractive chaperon; and she can't +think of me as ever having been anything else. Young people never really +believe in their elders' youth, Rudolph; at heart, they think we came +into the world with crow's-feet and pepper-and-salt hair, all complete. +So, she is only sorry for you now--rather as a mother would be for a +naughty child; as for me, she isn't jealous--but," sighed Mrs. Pendomer, +"she isn't over-fond of me." + +Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. "It isn't fair," said he; "the +letters were distinctly compromising. It isn't fair you should shoulder +the blame for a woman who was nothing to you. It isn't fair you should +be placed in such a false position." + +"What matter?" pleaded Mrs. Pendomer. "The letters are mine to burn, if +I choose. I have read one of them, by the way, and it is almost word for +word a letter you wrote me a good twenty years ago. And you re-hashed it +for Patricia's benefit too, it seems! You ought to get a mimeograph. Oh, +very well! It doesn't matter now, for Patricia will say nothing--or not +at least to you," she added. + +"Still----" he began. + +"Ah, Rudolph, if I want to do a foolish thing, why won't you let me? +What else is a woman for? They are always doing foolish things. I have +known a woman to throw a man over, because she had seen him without a +collar; and I have known another actually to marry a man, because she +happened to be in love with him. I have known a woman to go on wearing +pink organdie after she has passed forty, and I have known a woman to go +on caring for a man who, she knew, wasn't worth caring for, long after +he had forgotten. We are not brave and sensible, like you men. So why +not let me be foolish, if I want to be?" + +"If," said Colonel Musgrave in some perplexity, "I understand one word +of this farrago, I will be--qualified in various ways." + +"But you don't have to understand," she pleaded. + +"You mean--?" he asked. + +"I mean that I was always fond of Aline, anyhow." + +"Nonsense!" And he was conscious, with vexation, that he had undeniably +flushed. + +"I mean, then, I am a woman, and _I_ understand. Everything is as near +what it should be as is possible while Patricia is seeing so much of--we +will call it the artistic temperament." Mrs. Pendomer shrugged. "But if +I went on in that line you would believe I was jealous. And heaven knows +I am not the least bit so--with the unavoidable qualification that, +being a woman, I can't help rising superior to common-sense." + +He said, "You mean Jack Charteris--? But what on earth has he to do with +these letters?" + +"I don't mean any proper names at all. I simply mean you are not to undo +my work. It would only signify trouble and dissatisfaction and giving up +all this"--she waved her hand lightly toward the lawns of +Matocton,--"and it would mean our giving you up, for, you know, you +haven't any money of your own, Rudolph. Ah, Rudolph, we can't give you +up! We need you to lead our Lichfield germans, and to tell us naughty +little stories, and keep us amused. So _please_ be sensible, Rudolph." + +"Permit me to point out I firmly believe that silence is the perfectest +herald of joy," observed Colonel Musgrave. "Only I do _not_ understand +why you should have dragged John Charteris's name into this ludicrous +affair----" + +"You really do not understand----?" + +But Colonel Musgrave's handsome face declared very plainly that he did +not. + +"Well," Mrs. Pendomer reflected, "I dare say it is best, upon the whole, +you shouldn't. And now you must excuse me, for I am leaving for the +Ullwethers' to-day, and I shan't ever be invited to Matocton again, and +I must tell my maid to pack up. She is a little fool and it will break +her heart to be leaving Pilkins. All human beings are tediously alike. +But, allowing ample time for her to dispose of my best lingerie and of +her unavoidable lamentations, I ought to make the six-forty-five. I have +noticed that one usually does--somehow," said Mrs. Pendomer, and seemed +to smack of allegories. + +And yet it may have been because she knew--as who knew +better?--something of that mischief's nature which was now afoot. + + + + +IV + + +The colonel burned the malefic letters that afternoon. Indeed, the +episode set him to ransacking the desk in which Patricia had found +them--a desk which, as you have heard, was heaped with the miscellaneous +correspondence of the colonel's father dating back a half-century and +more. Much curious matter the colonel discovered there, for "Wild Will" +Musgrave's had been a full-blooded career. And over one packet of +letters, in particular, the colonel sat for a long while with an +unwontedly troubled face. + + + + +PART SIX - BYWAYS + + "Cry _Kismet!_ and take heart. Eros is gone, + Nor may we follow to that loftier air + Olympians breathe. Take heart, and enter where + A lighter Love, vine-crowned, laughs i' the sun, + Oblivious of tangled webs ill-spun + By ancient wearied weavers, for it may be + His guidance leads to lovers of such as we + And hearts so credulous as to be won. + + "Cry _Kismet!_ Put away vain memories + Of all old sorrows and of all old joys, + And learn that life is never quite amiss + So long as unreflective girls and boys + Remember that young lips were meant to kiss, + And hold that laughter is a seemly noise." + +PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._ + + + + +I + + +Patricia sat in the great maple-grove that stands behind Matocton, and +pondered over a note from her husband, who was in Lichfield +superintending the appearance of the July number of the _Lichfield +Historical Association's Quarterly Magazine_. Mr. Charteris lay at +her feet, glancing rapidly over a lengthy letter, which was from his +wife, in Richmond. + +The morning mail was just in, and Patricia had despatched Charteris for +her letters, on the plea that the woods were too beautiful to leave, and +that Matocton, in the unsettled state which marks the end of the week in +a house-party, was intolerable. + +She, undoubtedly, was partial to the grove, having spent the last ten +mornings there. Mr. Charteris had overrated her modest literary +abilities so far as to ask her advice in certain details of his new +book, which was to appear in the autumn, and they had found a vernal +solitude, besides being extremely picturesque, to be conducive to the +forming of really matured opinions. Moreover, she was assured that none +of the members of the house-party would misunderstand her motives; +people were so much less censorious in the country; there was something +in the pastoral purity of Nature, seen face to face, which brought out +one's noblest instincts, and put an end to all horrid gossip and +scandal-mongering. + +Didn't Mrs. Barry-Smith think so? And what was her real opinion of that +rumor about the Hardresses, and was the woman as bad as people said she +was? Thus had Patricia spoken in the privacy of her chamber, at that +hour when ladies do up their hair for the night, and discourse of +mysteries. It is at this time they are said to babble out their hearts +to one another; and so, beyond doubt, this must have been the real state +of the case. + +As Patricia admitted, she had given up bridge and taken to literature +only during the past year. She might more honestly have said within the +last two weeks. In any event, she now conversed of authors with a fitful +persistence like that of an ill-regulated machine. Her comments were +delightfully frank and original, as she had an unusually good memory. Of +two books she was apt to prefer the one with the wider margin, and she +was becoming sufficiently familiar with a number of poets to quote them +inaccurately. + +We have all seen John Charteris's portraits, and most of us have read +his books--or at least, the volume entitled _In Old Lichfield_, which +caused the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_ to apostrophize its author as a +"Child of Genius! whose ardent soul has sounded the mysteries of life, +whose inner vision sweeps over ever widening fields of thought, and +whose chiseled phrases continue patriotically to perpetuate the beauty +of Lichfield's past." But for present purposes it is sufficient to say +that this jewelsmith of words was slight and dark and hook-nosed, and +that his hair was thin, and that he was not ill-favored. It may be of +interest to his admirers--a growing cult--to add that his reason for +wearing a mustache in a period of clean-shaven faces was that, without +it, his mouth was not pleasant to look upon. + +"Heigho!" Patricia said, at length, with a little laugh; "it is very +strange that both of our encumbrances should arrive on the same day!" + +"It is unfortunate," Mr. Charteris admitted, lazily; "but the blessed +state of matrimony is liable to these mishaps. Let us be thankful that +my wife's whim to visit her aunt has given us, at least, two perfect, +golden weeks. Husbands are like bad pennies; and wives resemble the cat +whose adventures have been commemorated by one of our really popular +poets. They always come back." + +Patricia communed with herself, and to Charteris seemed, as she sat in +the chequered sunlight, far more desirable than a married woman has any +right to be. + +"I wish--" she began, slowly. "Oh, but, you know, it was positively +criminal negligence not to have included a dozen fairies among my +sponsors." + +"I too have desiderated this sensible precaution," said Charteris, and +laughed his utter comprehension. "But, after all," he said, and snapped +his fingers gaily, "we still have twenty-four hours, Patricia! Let us +forget the crudities of life, and say foolish things to each other. For +I am pastorally inclined this morning, Patricia; I wish to lie at your +feet and pipe amorous ditties upon an oaten reed. Have you such an +article about you, Patricia?" + +He drew a key-ring from his pocket, and pondered over it. + +"Or would you prefer that I whistle into the opening of this door-key, +to the effect that we must gather our rose-buds while we may, for Time +is still a-flying, fa-la, and that a drear old age, not to mention our +spouses, will soon descend upon us, fa-la-di-leero? A door-key is not +Arcadian, Patricia, but it makes a very creditable noise." + +"Don't be foolish, _mon ami_!" she protested, with an indulgent smile. +"I am unhappy." + +"Unhappy that I have chanced to fall in love with you, Patricia? It is +an accident which might befall any really intelligent person." + +She shrugged her shoulders, ruefully. + +"I have done wrong to let you talk to me as you have done of late. +I--oh, Jack, I am afraid!" + +Mr. Charteris meditated. Somewhere in a neighboring thicket a bird +trilled out his song--a contented, half-hushed song that called his mate +to witness how infinitely blest above all other birds was he. Mr. +Charteris heard him to the end, and languidly made as to applaud; then +Mr. Charteris raised his eyebrows. + +"Of your husband, Patricia?" he queried. + +"I--Rudolph doesn't bother about me nowadays sufficiently to--notice +anything." + +Mr. Charteris smiled. "Of my wife, Patricia?" + +"Good gracious, no! I have not the least doubt you will explain matters +satisfactorily to your wife, for I have always heard that practise makes +perfect." + +Mr. Charteris laughed--a low and very musical laugh. + +"Of me, then, Patricia?" + +"I--I think it is rather of myself I am afraid. Oh, I hate you when you +smile like that! You have evil eyes, Jack! Stop it! Quit hounding me +with your illicit fascinations." The hand she had raised in threatening +fashion fell back into her lap, and she shrugged her shoulders once +more. "My nerves are somewhat upset by the approaching prospect of +connubial felicity, I suppose. Really, though, _mon ami_, your conceit +is appalling." + +Charteris gave vent to a chuckle, and raised the door-key to his lips. + +"When you are quite through your histrionic efforts," he suggested, +apologetically, "I will proceed with my amorous pipings. Really, +Patricia, one might fancy you the heroine of a society drama, working up +the sympathies of the audience before taking to evil ways. Surely, you +are not about to leave your dear, good, patient husband, Patricia? +Heroines only do that on dark and stormy nights, and in an opera +toilette; wearing her best gown seems always to affect a heroine in that +way." + +Mr. Charteris, at this point, dropped the key-ring, and drew nearer to +her; his voice sank to a pleading cadence. + +"We are in Arcadia, Patricia; virtue and vice are contraband in this +charming country, and must be left at the frontier. Let us be adorably +foolish and happy, my lady, and forget for a little the evil days that +approach. Can you not fancy this to be Arcadia, Patricia?--it requires +the merest trifle of imagination. Listen very carefully, and you will +hear the hoofs of fauns rustling among the fallen leaves; they are +watching us, Patricia, from behind every tree-bole. They think you a +dryad--the queen of all the dryads, with the most glorious eyes and hair +and the most tempting lips in all the forest. After a little, shaggy, +big-thewed ventripotent Pan will grow jealous, and ravish you away from +me, as he stole Syrinx from her lover. You are very beautiful, Patricia; +you are quite incredibly beautiful. I adore you, Patricia. Would you +mind if I held your hand? It is a foolish thing to do, but it is +preëminently Arcadian." + +She heard him with downcast eyes; and her cheeks flushed a pink color +that was agreeable to contemplation. + +"Do--do you really care for me, Jack?" she asked, softly; then cried, +"No, no, you needn't answer--because, of course, you worship me madly, +unboundedly, distractedly. They all do, but you do it more convincingly. +You have been taking lessons at night-school, I dare say, at all sorts +of murky institutions. And, Jack, really, cross my heart, I always +stopped the others when they talked this way. I tried to stop you, too. +You know I did?" + +She raised her lashes, a trifle uncertainly, and withdrew her hand from +his, a trifle slowly. "It is wrong--all horribly wrong. I wonder at +myself, I can't understand how in the world I can be such a fool about +you. I must not be alone with you again. I must tell my +husband--everything," she concluded, and manifestly not meaning a word +of what she said. + +"By all means," assented Mr. Charteris, readily. "Let's tell my wife, +too. It will make things so very interesting." + +"Rudolph would be terribly unhappy," she reflected. + +"He would probably never smile again," said Mr. Charteris. "And my +wife--oh, it would upset Anne, quite frightfully! It is our altruistic, +nay, our bounden duty to save them from such misery." + +"I--I don't know what to do!" she wailed. + +"The obvious course," said he, after reflection, "is to shake off the +bonds of matrimony, without further delay. So let's elope, Patricia." + +Patricia, who was really unhappy, took refuge in flippancy, and laughed. + +"I make it a rule," said she, "never to elope on Fridays. Besides, now +I think of it, there is, Rudolph--Ah, Rudolph doesn't care a button's +worth about me, I know. The funny part is that he doesn't know it. He +has simply assumed he is devoted to me, because all respectable people +are devoted to their wives. I can assure you, _mon ami_, he would be a +veritable Othello, if there were any scandal, and would infinitely +prefer the bolster to the divorce-court. He would have us followed and +torn apart by wild policemen." + +Mr. Charteris meditated for a moment. + +"Rudolph, as you are perfectly aware, would simply deplore the terribly +lax modern notions in regard to marriage and talk to newspaper reporters +about this much--" he measured it between thumb and forefinger +--"concerning the beauty and chivalry of the South. He would +do nothing more. I question if Rudolph Musgrave would ever in any +circumstances be capable of decisive action." + +"Ah, don't make fun of Rudolph!" she cried, quickly. "Rudolph can't help +it if he is conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live +with. And for all that he so often plays the jackass-fool about women, +like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack--a well-meaning, clean and +dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer +too much, and you are making a fool of me, and--and that's why I like +you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good, +and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes a halo +sit comfortably. Now, Jack, you know I've tried to be good! I've never +let you kiss me, and I've never let you hold my hand--until to-day-- +and--and----" + +Patricia paused, and laughed. + +"But we were talking of Rudolph," she said, with a touch of weariness. +"Rudolph has all the virtues that a woman most admires until she +attempts to live in the same house with them." + +"I thank you," said Mr. Charteris, "for the high opinion you entertain +of my moral character." He bestowed a reproachful sigh upon her, and +continued: "At any rate, Rudolph Musgrave has been an unusually lucky +man--the luckiest that I know of." + +Patricia had risen as if to go. She turned her big purple eyes on him +for a moment. + +"You--you think so?" she queried, hesitatingly. + +Afterward she spread out her hands in a helpless gesture, and laughed +for no apparent reason, and sat down again. + +"Why?" said Patricia. + +It took Charteris fully an hour to point out all the reasons. + +Patricia told him very frankly that she considered him to be talking +nonsense, but she seemed quite willing to listen. + + + + +II + + +Sunset was approaching on the following afternoon when Rudolph Musgrave, +fresh from Lichfield,--whither, as has been recorded, the bringing out +of the July number of the _Lichfield Historical Associations Quarterly +Magazine_ had called him,--came out on the front porch at Matocton. He +had arrived on the afternoon train, about an hour previously, in time to +superintend little Roger's customary evening transactions with an +astounding quantity of bread and milk; and, Roger abed, his father, +having dressed at once for supper, found himself ready for that meal +somewhat in advance of the rest of the house-party. + +Indeed, only one of them was visible at this moment--a woman, who was +reading on a rustic bench some distance from the house, and whose back +was turned to him. The poise of her head, however, was not unfamiliar; +also, it is not everyone who has hair that is like a nimbus of +thrice-polished gold. + +Colonel Musgrave threw back his shoulders, and drew a deep breath. +Subsequently, with a fine air of unconcern, he inspected the view from +the porch, which was, in fact, quite worthy of his attention. +Interesting things have happened at Matocton--many events that have been +preserved in the local mythology, not always to the credit of the old +Musgraves, and a few which have slipped into a modest niche in history. +It was, perhaps, on these that Colonel Musgrave pondered so intently. + +Once the farthingaled and red-heeled gentry came in sluggish barges to +Matocton, and the broad river on which the estate faces was thick with +bellying sails; since the days of railroads, one approaches the mansion +through the maple-grove in the rear, and enters ignominiously by the +back-door. + +The house stands on a considerable elevation. The main portion, with its +hipped roof and mullioned windows, is very old, but the two wings that +stretch to the east and west are comparatively modern, and date back +little over a century. Time has mellowed them into harmony with the +major part of the house, and the kindly Virginia creeper has done its +utmost to conceal the fact that they are constructed of plebeian bricks +which were baked in this country; but Matocton was Matocton long before +these wings were built, and a mere affair of yesterday, such as the +Revolution, antedates them. They were not standing when Tarleton paid +his famous visit to Matocton. + +In the main hall, you may still see the stairs up which he rode on +horseback, and the slashes which his saber hacked upon the hand-rail. + +To the front of the mansion lies a close-shaven lawn, dotted with +sundry oaks and maples; and thence, the formal gardens descend in six +broad terraces. There is when summer reigns no lovelier spot than this +bright medley of squares and stars and triangles and circles--all Euclid +in flowerage--which glow with multitudinous colors where the sun +strikes. You will find no new flowers at Matocton, though. Here are +verbenas, poppies, lavender and marigolds, sweet-william, hollyhocks and +columbine, phlox, and larkspur, and meadowsweet, and heart's-ease, just +as they were when Thomasine Musgrave, Matocton's first châtelaine, was +wont to tend them; and of all floral parvenus the gardens are innocent. +Box-hedges mark the walkways. + +The seventh terrace was, until lately, uncultivated, the trees having +been cleared away to afford pasturage. It is now closely planted with +beeches, none of great size, and extends to a tangled thicket of +fieldpines and cedar and sassafras and blackberry bushes, which again +masks a drop of some ten feet to the river. + +The beach here is narrow; at high tide, it is rarely more than fifteen +feet in breadth, and is in many places completely submerged. Past this, +the river lapses into the horizon line without a break, save on an +extraordinarily clear day when Bigelow's Island may be seen as a dim +smudge upon the west. + +All these things, Rudolph Musgrave regarded with curiously deep interest +for one who had seen them so many times before. Then, with a shrug of +the shoulders, he sauntered forward across the lawn. He had planned +several appropriate speeches, but, when it came to the point of giving +them utterance, he merely held out his hand in an awkward fashion, and +said: + +"Anne!" + +She looked up from her reading. + +She did this with two red-brown eyes that had no apparent limits to +their depth. Her hand was soft; it seemed quite lost in the broad palm +of a man's hand. + +"Dear Rudolph," she said, as simply as though they had parted yesterday, +"it's awfully good to see you again." + +Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat, and sat down beside her. + +A moment later Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat once more. + +Then Mrs. Charteris laughed. It was a pleasant laugh--a clear, rippling +carol of clean mirth that sparkled in her eyes, and dimpled in her +wholesome cheeks. + +"So! do you find it very, very awkward?" + +"Awkward!" he cried. Their glances met in a flash of comprehension which +seemed to purge the air. Musgrave was not in the least self-conscious +now. He laughed, and lifted an admonitory forefinger. + +"Oh, good Cynara," he said, "I am not what I was. And so I cannot do it, +my dear--I really cannot possibly live up to the requirements of being a +Buried Past. In a proper story-book or play, I would have to come back +from New Zealand or the Transvaal, all covered with glory and epaulets, +and have found you in the last throes of consumption: instead, you have +fattened, Anne, which a Buried Past never does, and which shows a sad +lack of appreciation for my feelings. And I--ah, my dear, I must confess +that my hair is growing gray, and that my life has not been entirely +empty without you, and that I ate and enjoyed two mutton-chops at +luncheon, though I knew I should see you to-day. I am afraid we are +neither of us up to heroics, Anne. So let's be sensible and comfy, my +dear." + +"You brute!" she cried--not looking irreparably angry, yet not without a +real touch of vexation; "don't you know that every woman cherishes the +picture of her former lovers sitting alone in the twilight, and growing +lackadaisical over undying memories and faded letters? And you--you +approach me, after I don't dare to think how many years, as calmly as if +I were an old schoolmate of your mother's, and attempt to talk to me +about mutton-chops! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Rudolph +Musgrave. You might, at least, have started a little at seeing me, and +have clasped your hand to your heart, and have said, 'You, you!' or +something of the sort. I had every right to expect it." + +Mrs. Charteris pouted, and then trifled for a moment with the pages of +her book. + +"And--and I want to tell you that I am sorry for the way I spoke to +you--that night," she swiftly said. Anne did not look at him. "Women +don't understand things that are perfectly simple to men, I suppose--I +mean--that is, Jack said--" + +"That you ought to apologize? It was very like him"--and Colonel +Musgrave smiled to think how like John Charteris it was. "Jack is quite +wonderful," he observed. + +She looked up, saying impulsively, "Rudolph, you don't know how happy he +makes me." + +"Heartless woman, and would you tempt me to end the tragedy of my life +with a Shakesperian fifth act of poisonings and assassination? I spurn +you, temptress. For, after all, it was an unpleasantly long while ago we +went mad for each other," Musgrave announced, and he smiled. "I fancy +that the boy and girl we knew of are as dead now as Nebuchadnezzar. +'Marian's married, and I sit here alive and merry at'--well, not at +forty year, unluckily--" + +"If you continue in that heartless strain, I shall go into the house," +Mrs. Charteris protested. + +Her indignation was exaggerated, but it was not altogether feigned; +women cannot quite pardon a rejected suitor who marries and is content. +They wish him all imaginable happiness and prosperity, of course; and +they are honestly interested in his welfare; but it seems unexpectedly +callous in him. And besides his wife is so perfectly commonplace. + +Mrs. Charteris, therefore, added, with emphasis: "I am really +disgracefully happy." + +"Glad to hear it," said Musgrave, placidly. "So am I." + +"Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph, you are hopeless!" she sighed. "And you used to +make such a nice lover!" + +Mrs. Charteris looked out over the river, which was like melting gold, +and for a moment was silent. + +"I was frightfully in love with you, Rudolph," she said, as half in +wonder. "After--after that horrible time when my parents forced us to +behave rationally, I wept--oh, I must have wept deluges! I firmly +intended to pine away to an early grave. And that second time I liked +you too, but then--there was Jack, you see." + +"H'm!" said Colonel Musgrave; "yes, I see." + +"I want you to continue to be friends with Jack," she went on, and her +face lighted up, and her voice grew tender. "He has the artistic +temperament, and naturally that makes him sensitive, and a trifle +irritable at times. It takes so little to upset him, you see, for he +feels so acutely what he calls the discords of life. I think most men +are jealous of his talents; so they call him selfish and finicky and +conceited. He isn't really, you know. Only, he can't help feeling a +little superior to the majority of men, and his artistic temperament +leads him to magnify the lesser mishaps of life--such as the steak being +overdone, or missing a train. Oh, really, a thing like that worries him +as much as the loss of a fortune, or a death in the family, would upset +anyone else. Jack says there are no such things as trifles in a +harmonious and well-proportioned life, and I suppose that's true to men +of genius. Of course, I am rather a Philistine, and I grate on him at +times--that is, I used to, but he says I have improved wonderfully. And +so we are ridiculously happy, Jack and I." + +Musgrave cast about vainly for an appropriate speech. Then he +compromised with his conscience, and said: "Your husband is a very +clever man." + +"Isn't he?" She had flushed for pleasure at hearing him praised. Oh, +yes, Anne loved Jack Charteris! There was no questioning that; it was +written in her face, was vibrant in her voice as she spoke of him. + +"Now, really, Rudolph, aren't his books wonderful? I don't appreciate +them, of course, for I'm not clever, but I know you do. I don't see why +men think him selfish. I know better. You have to live with Jack to +really appreciate him. And every day I discover some new side of his +character that makes him dearer to me. He's so clever--and so noble. +Why, I remember--Well, before Jack made his first hit with _Astaroth's +Lackey_, he lived with his sister. They hadn't any money, and, of +course, Jack couldn't be expected to take a clerkship or anything like +that, because business details make his head ache, poor boy. So, his +sister taught school, and he lived with her. They were very happy--his +sister simply adores him, and I am positively jealous of her +sometimes--but, unfortunately, the bank in which she kept her money +failed one day. I remember it was just before he asked me to marry him, +and told me, in his dear, laughing manner, that he hadn't a penny in +the world, and that we would have to live on bread and cheese and +kisses. Of course, I had a plenty for us both, though, so we weren't +really in danger of being reduced to that. Well, I wanted to make his +sister an allowance. But Jack pointed out, with considerable reason, +that one person could live very comfortably on an income that had +formerly supported two. He said it wasn't right I should be burdened +with the support of his family. Jack was so sensitive, you see, lest +people might think he was making a mercenary marriage, and that his +sister was profiting by it. Now, I call that one of the noblest things I +ever heard of, for he is devotedly attached to his sister, and, +naturally, it is a great grief to him to see her compelled to work for a +living. His last book was dedicated to her, and the dedication is one of +the most tender and pathetic things I ever read." + +Musgrave was hardly conscious of what she was saying. She was not +particularly intelligent, this handsome, cheery woman, but her voice, +and the richness and sweetness of it, and the vitality of her laugh, +contented his soul. + +Anne was different; the knowledge came again to him quite simply that +Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a little +different from all other people--even Patricia Musgrave. He had no +desire to tell Anne Charteris of this, no idea that it would affect in +any way the tenor of his life. He merely accepted the fact that she was, +after all, Anne Willoughby, and that her dear presence seemed, somehow, +to strengthen and cheer and comfort and content beyond the reach of +expression. + +Yet Musgrave recognized her lack of cleverness, and liked and admired +her none the less. A vision of Patricia arose--a vision of a dainty, +shallow, Dresden-china face with a surprising quantity of vivid hair +about it. Patricia was beautiful; and Patricia was clever, in her +pinchbeck way. But Rudolph Musgrave doubted very much if her mocking +eyes now ever softened into that brooding, sacred tenderness he had seen +in Anne's eyes; and he likewise questioned if a hurried, happy thrill +ran through Patricia's voice when Patricia spoke of her husband. + +"You have unquestionably married an unusual man," Musgrave said. "I--by +Jove, you know, I fancy my wife finds him almost as attractive as you +do." + +"Ah, Rudolph, I can't fancy anyone whom--whom you loved caring for +anyone else. Don't I remember, sir, how irresistible you can be when you +choose?" + +Anne laughed, and raised plump hands to heaven. + +"Really, though, women pursue him to a perfectly indecent extent. I have +to watch over him carefully; not that I distrust him, of course, +for--dear Jack!--he is so devoted to me, and cares so little for other +women, that Joseph would seem in comparison only a depraved _roué_. But +the _women_--why, Rudolph, there was an Italian countess at Rome--the +impudent minx!--who actually made me believe--However, Jack +explained all that, after I had made both a spectacle and a nuisance of +myself, and he had behaved so nobly in the entire affair that for days +afterwards I was positively limp with repentance. Then in Paris that +flighty Mrs. Hardress--but he explained that, too. Some women are +shameless, Rudolph," Mrs. Charteris concluded, and sighed her pity for +them. + +"Utterly so," Musgrave assented, gravely. + +He was feeling a thought uncomfortable. To him the place had grown +portentous. The sun was low, and the long shadows of the trees were +black on the dim lawn. People were assembling for supper, and passing to +and fro under low-hanging branches; and the gaily-colored gowns of the +women glimmered through a faint blue haze like that with which Boucher +and Watteau and Fragonard loved to veil, and thereby to make wistful, +somehow, the antics of those fine parroquet-like manikins who figure in +their _fêtes galantes._ + +Inside the house, someone was playing an unpleasant sort of air on the +piano--an air which was quite needlessly creepy and haunting and +insistent. It all seemed like a grim bit out of a play. The tenderness +and pride that shone in Anne's eyes as she boasted of her happiness +troubled Rudolph Musgrave. He had a perfectly unreasonable desire to +carry her away, by force, if necessary, and to protect her from clever +people, and to buy things for her. + +"So, I am an old, old married woman now, and--and I think in some ways +I suit Jack better than a more brilliant person might. I am glad your +wife has taken a fancy to him. And I want you to profit by her example. +Jack says she is one of the most attractive women he ever met. He asked +me to-day why I didn't do my hair like hers. She must make you very +happy, Rudolph?" + +"My wife," Colonel Musgrave said, "is in my partial opinion, a very +clever and very beautiful woman." + +"Yes; cleverness and beauty are sufficient to make any man happy, I +suppose," Anne hazarded. "Jack says, though--_Are_ cleverness and beauty +the main things in life, Rudolph?" + +"Undoubtedly," he protested. + +"Now, that," she said, judicially, "shows the difference in men. Jack +says a man loves a woman, not for her beauty or any other quality she +possesses, but just because she is the woman he loves and can't help +loving." + +"Ah! I dare say that is the usual reason. Yes," said Colonel +Musgrave,--"because she is the woman he loves and cannot help loving!" + +Anne clapped her hands. "Ah, so I have penetrated your indifference at +last, sir!" + +Impulsively, she laid her hand upon his arm, and spoke with earnestness. +"Dear Rudolph, I am so glad you've found the woman you can really love. +Jack says there is only one possible woman in the world for each man, +and that only in a month of Sundays does he find her." + +"Yes." said Musgrave. He had risen, and was looking down in friendly +fashion into her honest, lovely eyes. "Yes, there is only one possible +woman. And--yes, I think I found her, Anne, some years ago." + + + + +III + + +Thus it befell that all passed smoothly with Rudolph Musgrave and Anne +Charteris, with whom he was not in the least in love any longer (he +reflected), although in the nature of things she must always seem to him +a little different from all other people. + +And it befell, too, that the following noon--this day being a Sunday, +warm, clear, and somnolent--Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon +the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In +fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot +to serve against an enemy then harassing his majesty's equanimity and by +him, revilingly, designated as Nothing-to-do. + +And so Anne made for Roger--as she had learned to do for her dead +son--in addition to a respectable navy of paper boats, a vast number of +"boxes" and "Nantucket sinks" and "picture frames" and "footballs." She +had used up the greater part of a magazine before the imp grew tired of +her novel accomplishments. + +For as he invidiously observed, "I can make them for myself now, most +as good as you, only I always tear the bottom of the boat when you pull +it out, and my sinks are kind of wobbly. And besides, I've made up a +story just like your husband gets money for doing. And if I had a +quarter I would buy that green and yellow snake in the toy-store window +and wiggle it at people and scare them into fits." + +"Sonnikins," said Colonel Musgrave, "suppose you tell us the story, and +then we will see if it is really worth a quarter, and try to save you +from this unblushing mendicancy." + +"Well, God bless Father and Mother and little cousins--Oh, no, that's +what I say at night." Roger's voice now altered, assuming shrill +singsong cadences. His pensive gravity would have appeared excessive if +manifested by the Great Sphinx. "What I meant to say was that once upon +a time when the Battle of Gettysburg was going on and houses were being +robbed and burned, and my dear grandfather was being shot through the +heart, a certain house, where the richest man in town lived, was having +feast and merriment, never dreaming of any harm, or thinking of their +little child Rachel, who was on the front porch watching the battle and +screaming with joy at every man that fell dead. One dark-faced man was +struck with a bullet and was hurt. He saw the child laughing at him and +his heart was full of revenge. So that night, when all had gone to bed, +the old dark-faced man went softly in the house and got the little girl +and set the house on fire. And he carried her out in the mountains, and +is that worth a quarter?" + +"Good heavens, no!" said Anne. "How dare you leave us in such harrowing +suspense?" + +"Well, a whole lot more happened, because all the while Rachel was +asleep. When she woke up, she did not know where under the sun she was. +So she walked along for about an hour and came to a little village, and +after a few minutes she came to a large rock, and guess who she met? She +met her father, and when he saw her he hugged her so hard that when he +got through she did not have any breath left in her. And they walked +along, and after a while they came to the wood, and it was now about six +o'clock, and it was very dark, and just then nine robbers jumped out +from behind the trees, and they took a pistol and shot Rachel's father, +and the child fainted. Her papa was dead, so she dug a hole and buried +him, and went right back home. And of course that was all, and if I had +that snake, I wouldn't try to scare you with it, father, anyhow." + +So Colonel Musgrave gave his son a well-earned coin, as the colonel +considered, and it having been decreed, "Now, father, _you_ tell a +story," obediently read aloud from a fat red-covered book. The tale was +of the colonel's selecting, and it dealt with a shepherdess and a +chimney-sweep. + +"And so," the colonel perorated, "the little china people remained +together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and +continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces--And +the tale is a parable, my son. You will find that out some day. I wish +you didn't have to." + +"But is that all, father?" + +"You will find it rather more than enough, sonnikins, when you begin to +interpret. Yes, that is all. Only you are to remember always that they +climbed to the very top of the chimney, where they could see the stars, +before they decided to go back and live upon the parlor table under the +brand-new looking-glass. For the stars are disconcertingly unconcerned +when you have climbed to them, and so altogether unimpressed by your +achievement that it is the nature of all china people to slink home +again, precisely as your Rachel did--and as Mrs. Charteris will assure +you." + +"I?" said Anne. "Now, honestly, Rudolph, I was thinking you ought not to +let him sit upon the grass, because he really has a cold. And if I were +you, I would give him a good dose of castor-oil to-night. Some people +give it in lemon-juice, I know, but I found with my boy that peppermint +is rather less disagreeable. And you could easily send somebody over to +the store at the station----" + +Anne broke off short. "Was I being inadequate again? I am sorry, but +with children you never know what a cold may lead to, and I really do +not believe it good for him to sit in this damp grass." + +"Sonnikins," said Rudolph Musgrave, "you had better climb up into my +lap, before you and I are Podsnapped from the universe by the only +embodiment of common-sense just now within our reach." + +He patted the boy's head and latterly resumed: "I am afraid of you, +Anne. Whenever I am imagining vain things or stitching romantic +possibilities, like embroideries, about the fabric of my past, I always +find the real you in my path, as undeniable as a gas-bill. I don't +believe you ever dare to think, because there is no telling what it +might lead to. You are simply unassailably armored by the courage of +other people's convictions." + +Her candid eyes met his over the boy's bright head. "And what in the +world are you talking about?" + +"I am lamenting. I am rending the air and beating my breast on account +of your obstinate preference for being always in the right. I do wish +you would endeavor to impersonate a human being a trifle more +convincingly----" + +But the great gong, booming out for luncheon, interrupted him at this +point, and Colonel Musgrave was never permitted to finish his complaint +against Anne's unimaginativeness. + + + + +IV + + +On that same Sunday morning, while Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave +contended with little Roger's boredom on the lawn before Matocton, +Patricia and Charteris met by accident on the seventh terrace of the +gardens. Patricia had mentioned casually at the breakfast-table that she +intended to spend the forenoon on this terrace unsabbatically making +notes for a paper on "The Symbolism of Dante," which she was to read +before the Lichfield Woman's Club in October; but Mr. Charteris had not +overheard her. + +He was seated on the front porch, working out a somewhat difficult point +in his new book, when it had first occurred to him that this particular +terrace would be an inspiring and appropriate place in which to think +the matter over, undisturbed, he said. And it was impossible he should +have known that anyone was there, as the seventh terrace happens to be +the only one that, being planted with beech-trees, is completely +screened from observation. From the house, you cannot see anything that +happens there. + +It was a curious accident, though. It really seemed, now that Patricia +had put an ending to their meetings in the maple-grove, Fate was +conspiring to bring them together. + +However, as Mr. Charteris pointed out, there could be no possible +objection to this conspiracy, since they had decided that their +friendship was to be of a purely platonic nature. It was a severe trial +to him, he confessed, to be forced to put aside certain dreams he had +had of the future--mad dreams, perhaps, but such as had seemed very dear +and very plausible to his impractical artistic temperament. + +Still, it heartened him to hope that their friendship--since it was to +be no more--might prove a survival, or rather a veritable renaissance, +of the beautiful old Greek spirit in such matters. And, though the blind +chance that mismanaged the world had chained them to uncongenial, though +certainly well-meaning, persons, this was no logical reason why he and +Patricia should be deprived of the pleasures of intellectual +intercourse. Their souls were too closely akin. + +For Mr. Charteris admitted that his soul was Grecian to the core, and +out of place and puzzled and very lonely in a sordid, bustling world; +and he assured Patricia--she did not object if he called her +Patricia?--that her own soul possessed all the beauty and purity and +calm of an Aphrodite sculptured by Phidias. It was such a soul as Horace +might have loved, as Theocritus might have hymned in glad Greek song. +Patricia flushed, and dissented somewhat. + +"Frankly, _mon ami_," she said, "you are far too attractive for your +company to be quite safe. You are such an adept in the nameless little +attentions that women love--so profuse with lesser sugar-plums of speech +and action--that after two weeks one's husband is really necessary as an +antidote. Sugar-plums are good, but, like all palatable things, +unwholesome. So I shall prescribe Rudolph's company for myself, to ward +off an attack of moral indigestion. I am very glad he has come +back--really glad," she added, conscientiously. "Poor old Rudolph! what +between his interminable antiquities and those demented sections of the +alphabet--What are those things, _mon ami_, that are always going up and +down in Wall Street?" + +"Elevators?" Mr. Charteris suggested. + +"Oh, you jay-bird! I mean those N.P.'s and N.Y.C.'s and those other +letters that are always having flurries and panics and passed dividends. +They keep him incredibly busy." + +And she sighed, tolerantly. Patricia had come within the last two weeks +to believe that she was neglected, if not positively ill-treated, by her +husband; and she had no earthly objection to Mr. Charteris thinking +likewise. Her face expressed patient resignation now, as they walked +under the close-matted foliage of the beech-trees, which made a +pleasant, sun-flecked gloom about them. + +Patricia removed her hat--the morning really was rather close--and +paused where a sunbeam fell upon her copper-colored hair, and glorified +her wistful countenance. She sighed once more, and added a finishing +touch to the portrait of a _femme incomprise_. + +"Pray, don't think, _mon ami_," she said very earnestly, "that I am +blaming Rudolph! I suppose no wife can ever hope to have any part in her +husband's inner life." + +"Not in her own husband's, of course," said Charteris, cryptically. + +"No, for while a woman gives her heart all at once, men crumble theirs +away, as one feeds bread to birds--a crumb to this woman, a crumb to +that--and such a little crumb, sometimes! And his wife gets what is left +over." + +"Pray, where did you read that?" said Charteris. + +"I didn't read it anywhere. It was simply a thought that came to me," +Patricia lied, gently. "But don't let's try to be clever. Cleverness is +always a tax, but before luncheon it is an extortion. Personally, it +makes me feel as if I had attended a welsh-rabbit supper the night +before. Your wife must be very patient." + +"My wife," cried Charteris, in turn resolved to screen an unappreciative +mate, "is the most dear and most kind-hearted among the Philistines. And +yet, at times, I grant you--" + +"Oh, but, of course!" Patricia said impatiently. "I don't for a moment +question that your wife is an angel." + +"And why?" His eyebrows lifted, and he smiled. + +"Why, wasn't it an angel," Patricia queried, all impishness now, "who +kept the first man and woman out of paradise?" + +"If--if I thought you meant that----!" he cried; and then he shrugged +his shoulders. "My wife's virtues merit a better husband than Fate has +accorded her. Anne is the best woman I have ever known." + +Patricia was not unnaturally irritated. After all, one does not take the +trouble to meet a man accidentally in a plantation of young beech-trees +in order to hear him discourse of his wife's good qualities; and +besides, Mr. Charteris was speaking in a disagreeably solemn manner, +rather as if he fancied himself in a cathedral. + +Therefore Patricia cast down her eyes again, and said: + +"Men of genius are so rarely understood by their wives." + +"We will waive the question of genius." Mr. Charteris laughed heartily, +but he had flushed with pleasure. + +"I suppose," he continued, pacing up and down with cat-like fervor, +"that matrimony is always more or less of a compromise--like two +convicts chained together trying to catch each other's gait. After a +while, they succeed to a certain extent; the chain is still heavy, of +course, but it does not gall them as poignantly as it used to do. And I +fear the artistic temperament is not suited to marriage; its capacity +for suffering is too great." + +Mr. Charteris caught his breath in shuddering fashion, and he paused +before Patricia. After a moment he grasped her by both wrists. + +"We are chained fast enough, my lady," he cried, bitterly, "and our +sentence is for life! There are green fields yonder, but our allotted +place is here in the prison-yard. There is laughter yonder in the +fields, and the scent of wild flowers floats in to us at times when we +are weary, and the whispering trees sway their branches over the +prison-wall, and their fruit is good to look on, and they hang within +reach--ah, we might reach them very easily! But this is forbidden fruit, +my lady; and it is not included in our wholesome prison-fare. And so +don't think of it! We have been happy, you and I, for a little. We +might--don't think of it! Don't dare think of it! Go back and help your +husband drag his chain; it galls him as sorely as it does you. It galls +us all. It is the heaviest chain was ever forged; but we do not dare +shake it off!" + +"I--oh, Jack, Jack, don't you dare to talk to me like that! We must be +brave. We must be sensible." Patricia, regardless of her skirts, sat +down upon the ground, and produced a pocket-handkerchief. "I--oh, what +do you mean by making me so unhappy?" she demanded, indignantly. + +"Ah, Patricia," he murmured, as he knelt beside her, "how can you hope +to have a man ever talk to you in a sane fashion? You shouldn't have +such eyes, Patricia! They are purple and fathomless like the ocean, and +when a man looks into them too long his sanity grows weak, and sinks +and drowns in their cool depths, and the man must babble out his foolish +heart to you. Oh, but indeed, you shouldn't have such eyes, Patricia! +They are dangerous, and to ask anybody to believe in their splendor is +an insult to his intelligence, and besides, they are much too bright to +wear in the morning. They are bad form, Patricia." + +"We must be sensible," she babbled. "Your wife is here; my husband is +here. And we--we aren't children or madmen, Jack dear. So we really must +be sensible, I suppose. Oh, Jack," she cried, upon a sudden; "this isn't +honorable!" + +"Why, no! Poor little Anne!" + +Mr. Charteris's eyes grew tender for a moment, because his wife, in a +fashion, was dear to him. Then he laughed, very musically. + +"And how can a man remember honor, Patricia, when the choice lies +between honor and you? You shouldn't have such hair, Patricia! It is a +net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous +sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever +boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia. It is dishonorable to love +you, but I cannot think of that when I am with you and hear you speak. +And when I am not with you, just to remember that dear voice is enough +to set my pulses beating faster. Oh, Patricia, you shouldn't have such a +voice!" + +Charteris broke off in speech. "'Scuse me for interruptin'," the old +mulattress Virginia was saying, "but Mis' Pilkins sen' me say lunch +raydy, Miss Patrisy." + +Virginia seemed to notice nothing out-of-the-way. Having delivered her +message, she went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as +imperturbable as an idol's. But Patricia shivered. + +"She frightens me, _mon ami_. Yes, that old woman always gives me +gooseflesh, and I don't know why--because she is as deaf as a post--and +I simply can't get rid of her. She is a sort of symbol--she, and how +many others, I wonder!... Oh, well, let's hurry." + +So Mr. Charteris was never permitted to finish his complaint against +Patricia's voice. + +It was absolutely imperative they should be on time for luncheon; for, +as Patricia pointed out, the majority of people are censorious and lose +no opportunity for saying nasty things. They are even capable of +sneering at a purely platonic friendship which is attempting to preserve +the beautiful old Greek spirit. + + * * * * * + +She was chattering either of her plans for the autumn, or of Dante and +the discovery of his missing cantos, or else of how abominably Bob +Townsend had treated Rosalind Jemmett, and they had almost reached the +upper terrace--little Roger, indeed, his red head blazing in the +sunlight, was already sidling by shy instalments toward them--when +Patricia moaned inconsequently and for no ascertainable cause fainted. + +It was the first time for four years she had been guilty of such an +indiscretion, she was shortly afterward explaining to various members of +the Musgraves' house-party. It was the heat, no doubt. But since +everybody insisted upon it, she would very willingly toast them in +another bumper of aromatic spirits of ammonia. + +"Just look at that, Rudolph! you've spilt it all over your coat sleeve. +I do wish you would try to be a little less clumsy. Oh, well, I'm spruce +as a new penny now. So let's all go to luncheon." + + + + +V + + +Patricia had not been in perfect health for a long while. It seemed to +her, in retrospect, that ever since the agonies of little Roger's birth +she had been the victim of what she described as "a sort of +all-overishness." Then, too, as has been previously recorded, Patricia +had been operated upon by surgeons, and more than once.... + +"Good Lord!" as she herself declared, "it has reached the point that +when I see a turkey coming to the dinner-table to be carved I can't help +treating it as an ingénue." + +Yet for the last four years she had never fainted, until this. It +disquieted her. Then, too, awoke faint pricking memories of certain +symptoms ... which she had not talked about ... + +Now they alarmed her; and in consequence she took the next morning's +train to Lichfield. + + + + +VI + + +Mrs. Ashmeade, who has been previously quoted, now comes into the story. +She is only an episode. Still, her intervention led to peculiar +results--results, curiously enough, in which she was not in the least +concerned. She simply comes into the story for a moment, and then goes +out of it; but her part is an important one. + +She is like the watchman who announces the coming of Agamemnon; +Clytemnestra sharpens her ax at the news, and the fatal bath is prepared +for the _anax andron_. The tragedy moves on; the house of Atreus falls, +and the wrath of implacable gods bellows across the heavens; meanwhile, +the watchman has gone home to have tea with his family, and we hear no +more of him. There are any number of morals to this. + +Mrs. Ashmeade comes into the story on the day Patricia went to +Lichfield, and some weeks after John Charteris's arrival at Matocton. +Since then, affairs had progressed in a not unnatural sequence. Mr. +Charteris, as we have seen, attributed it to Fate; and, assuredly, there +must be a special providence of some kind that presides over country +houses--a freakish and whimsical providence, which hugely rejoices in +confounding one's sense of time and direction. + +Through its agency, people unaccountably lose their way in the simplest +walks, and turn up late and embarrassed for luncheon. At the end of the +evening, it brings any number of couples blinking out of the dark, with +no idea the clock was striking more than half-past nine. + +And it delights in sending one into the garden--in search of roses or +dahlias or upas-trees or something of the sort, of course--and thereby +causing one to encounter the most unlikely people, and really, quite the +last person one would have thought of meeting, as all frequenters of +house-party junketings will assure you. And thus is this special +house-party providence responsible for a great number of marriages, and, +it may be, for a large percentage of the divorce cases; for, if you +desire very heartily to see anything of another member of a house-party, +this lax-minded and easy-going providence will somehow always bring the +event about in a specious manner, and without any apparent thought of +the consequences. + +And the Musgraves' house-party was no exception. + +Mrs. Ashmeade, for reasons of her own, took daily note of this. The +others were largely engrossed by their own affairs; they did not +seriously concern themselves about the doings of their fellow-guests. +And, besides, if John Charteris manifestly sought the company of +Patricia Musgrave, her husband did not appear to be exorbitantly +dissatisfied or angry or even lonely; and, be this as it might, the fact +remained that Celia Reindan was at this time more than a little +interested in Teddy Anstruther; and Felix Kennaston was undeniably very +attentive to Kathleen Saumarez; and Tom Gelwix was quite certainly +devoting the major part of his existence to sitting upon the beach with +Rosalind Jemmett. + +For, in Lichfield at all events, everyone's house has at least a pane or +so of glass in it; and, if indiscriminate stone-throwing were ever to +become the fashion, there is really no telling what damage might ensue. +And so had Mrs. Ashmeade been a younger woman--had time and an adoring +husband not rendered her as immune to an insanity _à deux_ as any of us +may hope to be upon this side of saintship or senility--why, Mrs. +Ashmeade would most probably have remained passive, and Mrs. Ashmeade +would never have come into this story at all. + +As it was, she approached Rudolph Musgrave with a fixed purpose this +morning as he smoked an after-breakfast cigarette on the front porch of +Matocton. And, + +"Rudolph," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "are you blind?" + +"You mean--?" he asked, and he broke off, for he had really no +conception of what she meant. + +And Mrs. Ashmeade said, "I mean Patricia and Charteris. Did you think I +was by any chance referring to the man in the moon and the Queen of +Sheba?" + +If ever amazement showed in a man's eyes, it shone now in Rudolph +Musgrave's. After a little, the pupils widened in a sort of terror. So +this was what Clarice Pendomer had been hinting at. + +"Nonsense!" he cried. "Why--why, it is utter, preposterous, Bedlamite +nonsense!" He caught his breath in wonder at the notion of such a jest, +remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. "It--oh, no, +Fate hasn't quite so fine a sense of humor as that. The thing is +incredible!" Musgrave laughed, and flushed. "I mean----" + +"I don't think you need tell me what you mean," said Mrs. Ashmeade. She +sat down in a large rocking-chair, and fanned herself, for the day was +warm. "Of course, it is officious and presumptuous and disagreeable of +me to meddle. I don't mind your thinking that. But Rudolph, don't make +the mistake of thinking that Fate ever misses a chance of humiliating us +by showing how poor are our imaginations. The gipsy never does. She is a +posturing mountebank, who thrives by astounding humanity." + +Mrs. Ashmeade paused, and her eyes were full of memories, and very wise. + +"I am only a looker-on at the tragic farce that is being played here," +she continued, after a little, "but lookers-on, you know, see most of +the game. They are not playing fairly with you, Rudolph. When people set +about an infringement of the Decalogue they owe it to their self-respect +to treat with Heaven as a formidable antagonist. To mark the cards is +not enough. They are not playing fairly, my dear, and you ought to know +it." + +He walked up and down the porch once or twice, with his hands behind +him; then he stopped before Mrs. Ashmeade, and smiled down at her. +Without, many locusts shrilled monotonously. + +"No, I do not think you are officious or meddling or anything of the +sort, I think you are one of the best and kindest-hearted women in the +world. But--bless your motherly soul, Polly! the thing is utterly +preposterous. Of course, Patricia is young, and likes attention, and it +pleases her to have men admire her. That, Polly, is perfectly natural. +Why, you wouldn't expect her to sit around under the trees, and read +poetry with her own husband, would you? We have been married far too +long for that, Patricia and I. She thinks me rather prosy and stupid at +times, poor girl, because--well, because, in point of fact, I am. But, +at the bottom of her heart--Oh, it's preposterous! We are the best +friends in the world, I tell you! It is simply that she and Jack have a +great deal in common--" + +"You don't understand John Charteris. I do," said Mrs. Ashmeade, +placidly. "Charteris is simply a baby with a vocabulary. His moral +standpoint is entirely that of infancy. It would be ludicrous to +describe him as selfish, because he is selfishness incarnate. I +sometimes believe it is the only characteristic the man possesses. He +reaches out his hand and takes whatever he wants, just as a baby would, +quite simply, and as a matter of course. He wants your wife now, and he +is reaching out his hand to take her. He probably isn't conscious of +doing anything especially wrong; he is always so plausible in whatever +he does that he ends by deceiving himself, I suppose. For he is always +plausible. It is worse than useless to argue any matter with him, +because he invariably ends by making you feel as if you had been caught +stealing a hat. The only argument that would get the better of John +Charteris is knocking him down, just as spanking is the only argument +which ever gets the better of a baby. Yes, he is very like a +baby--thoroughly selfish and thoroughly dependent on other people; only, +he is a clever baby who exaggerates his own helplessness in order to +appeal to women. He has a taste for women. And women naturally like him, +for he impresses them as an irresponsible child astray in an artful and +designing world. They want to protect him. Even I do, at times. It is +really maternal, you know; we would infinitely prefer for him to be soft +and little, so that we could pick him up, and cuddle him. But as it is, +he is dangerous. He believes whatever he tells himself, you see." + +Her voice died away, and Mrs. Ashmeade fanned herself in the fashion +addicted by perturbed women who, nevertheless, mean to have their say +out--slowly and impersonally, and quite as if she was fanning some one +else through motives of charity. + +"I don't question," Musgrave said, at length, "that Jack is the highly +estimable character you describe. But--oh, it is all nonsense, Polly!" +he cried, with petulance, and with a tinge--if but the merest nuance +--of conviction lacking in his voice. + +The fan continued its majestic sweep from the shade into the sunlight, +and back again into the shadow. Without, many locusts shrilled +monotonously. + +"Rudolph, I know what you meant by saying that Fate hadn't such a fine +sense of humor." + +"My dear madam, it was simply thrown out, in the heat of +conversation--as an axiom----" + +For a moment the fan paused; then went on as before. It was never +charged against Pauline Ashmeade, whatever her shortcomings, that she +was given to unnecessary verbiage. + +Colonel Musgrave was striding up and down, divided between a disposition +to swear at the universe at large and a desire to laugh at it. Somehow, +it did not occur to him to doubt what she had told him. He comprehended +now that, chafing under his indebtedness in the affair of Mrs. Pendomer, +Charteris would most naturally retaliate by making love to his +benefactor's wife, because the colonel also knew John Charteris. And for +the rest, it was useless to struggle against a Fate that planned such +preposterous and elaborate jokes; one might more rationally depend on +Fate to work out some both ludicrous and horrible solution, he +reflected, remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. + +Nevertheless, he paused after a while, and laughed, with a tolerable +affectation of mirth. + +"I say--I--and what in heaven's name, Polly, prompted you to bring me +this choice specimen of a mare's-nest?" + +"Because I am fond of you, I suppose. Isn't one always privileged to be +disagreeable to one's friends? We have been friends a long while, you +know." + +Mrs. Ashmeade was looking out over the river now, but she seemed to see +a great way, a very great way, beyond its glaring waters, and to be +rather uncertain as to whether what she beheld there was of a humorous +or pathetic nature. + +"Rudolph, do you remember that evening--the first summer that I knew +you--at Fortress Monroe, when we sat upon the pier so frightfully late, +and the moon rose out of the bay, and made a great, solid-looking, +silver path that led straight over the rim of the world, and you talked +to me about--about what, now?" + +"Oh, yes, yes!--I remember perfectly! One of the most beautiful evenings +I ever saw. I remember it quite distinctly. I talked--I--and what, in +the Lord's name, did I talk about, Polly?" + +"Ah, men forget! A woman never forgets when she is really friends with a +man. I know now you were telling me about Anne Charteris, for you have +been in love with her all your life, Rudolph, in your own particular +half-hearted and dawdling fashion. Perhaps that is why you have had so +many affairs. You plainly found the run of women so unimportant that it +put every woman on her pride to prove she was different. Yes, I +remember. But that night I thought you were trying to make love to me, +and I was disappointed in you, and--yes, rather pleased. Women are all +vain and perfectly inconsistent. But then, girl-children always take +after their fathers." + +Mrs. Ashmeade rose from her chair. Her fan shut with a snap. + +"You were a dear boy, Rudolph, when I first knew you--and what I liked +was that you never made love to me. Of all the boys I have known and +helped to form, you were the only sensible one--the only one who never +presumed. That was rather clever of you, Rudolph. It would have been +ridiculous, for even arithmetically I am older than you. + +"Wouldn't it have been ridiculous, Rudolph?" she demanded, suddenly. + +"Not in the least," Musgrave protested, in courteous wise. "You--why, +Polly, you were a wonderfully handsome woman. Any boy----" + +"Oh, yes!--I was. I'm not now, am I, Rudolph?" Mrs. Ashmeade threw back +her head and laughed naturally. "Ah, dear boy that was, it is unfair, +isn't it, for an old woman to seize upon you in this fashion, and insist +on your making love to her? But I will let you off. You don't have to do +it." + +She caught her skirts in her left hand, preparatory to going, and her +right hand rested lightly on his arm. She spoke in a rather peculiar +voice. + +"Yes," she said, "the boy was a very, very dear boy, and I want the man +to be equally brave and--sensible." + +Musgrave stared after her. "I wonder--I wonder--? Oh, no, that +couldn't be," he said, and wearily. + +"There must be some preposterous situations that don't come about." + + * * * * * + +And afterward he strolled across the lawn, where the locusts were +shrilling, as if in a stubborn prediction of something which was +inevitable, and he meditated upon a great number of things. There were a +host of fleecy little clouds in the sky. He looked up at them, +interrogatively. + +And then he smiled and shook his head. + +"Yet I don't know," said he; "for I am coming to the conclusion that the +world is run on an extremely humorous basis." + +And oddly enough, it was at the same moment that Patricia--in +Lichfield--reached the same conclusion. + + + + +PART SEVEN - YOKED + + "We are as time moulds us, lacking wherewithal + To shape out nobler fortunes or contend + Against all-patient Fates, who may not mend + The allotted pattern of things temporal + Or alter it a jot or e'er let fall + A single stitch thereof, until at last + The web and its drear weavers be overcast + And predetermined darkness swallow all. + + "They have ordained for us a time to sing, + A time to love, a time wherein to tire + Of all spent songs and kisses; caroling + Such elegies as buried dreams require, + Love now departs, and leaves us shivering + Beside the embers of a burned-out fire." + +PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._ + + + + +I + + +The doctor's waiting-room smelt strongly of antiseptics. That was +Patricia's predominating thought as she wandered aimlessly about the +apartment. She fingered its dusty furniture. She remembered afterward +the steel-engraving of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, with General Lee +explaining some evidently important matter to those attentive and +unhumanly stiff politicians; and she remembered, too, how in depicting +one statesman, who unavoidably sat with his back to the spectator, the +artist had exceeded anatomical possibilities in order to obtain a +recognizable full-faced portrait. Yet at the time this picture had not +roused her conscious attention. + +She went presently to the long table austerely decorated with two rows +of magazines, each partly covered by its neighbor, just as shingles are +placed. The arrangement irritated her unreasonably. She wanted to +disarrange these dog-eared pamphlets, to throw them on the floor, to +destroy them. She wondered how many other miserable people had tried to +read these hateful books while they waited in this abominable room. + +She started when the door of the consultation-room opened. The doctor +was patting the silk glove of a harassed-looking woman in black as he +escorted her to the outer door, and was assuring her that everything was +going very well indeed, and that she was not to worry, and so on. + +And presently he spoke with Patricia, for a long while, quite levelly, +of matters which it is not suitable to record. Discreet man that he was, +Wendell Pemberton could not entirely conceal his wonder that Patricia +should have remained so long in ignorance of her condition. He spoke +concerning malformation and functional weaknesses and, although +obscurely because of the bugbear of professional courtesy, voiced his +opinion that Patricia had not received the most adroit medical treatment +at the time of little Roger's birth. + +She was dividedly conscious of a desire to laugh and of the notion that +she must remain outwardly serious, because though this horrible +Pemberton man was talking abject nonsense, she would presently be having +him as a dinner-guest. + +But what if he were not talking nonsense? The possibility, considered, +roused a sensation of falling through infinity. + +"Yes, yes," Patricia civilly assented. "These young doctors have taken +this out of me, and that out of me, as you might take the works out of a +watch. And it has done no good; and they were mistaken in their first +diagnoses, because what they took for true osteomalacia was only---- +Would you mind telling me again? Oh, yes; I had only a +pseudo-osteomalacic rhachitic pelvis, to begin with. To think of +anybody's being mistaken about a simple little trouble like that! And I +suppose I was just born with it, like my mother and all those other +luckless women with Musgrave blood in them?" + +"Fehling and Schliephake at least consider this variety of pelvic +anomaly to be congenital in the majority of cases. But, without going +into the question of heredity at all, I think it only, fair to tell you, +Mrs. Musgrave----" And Pemberton went on talking. + +Neither of the two showed any emotion. + +The doctor went on talking. Patricia did not listen. The man was +talking, she comprehended, but to her his words seemed blurred and +indistinguishable. "Like a talking-machine when it isn't wound up +enough," she decided. + +Subconsciously Patricia was thinking, "You have two big beads of +perspiration on your nose, and if I were to allude to the fact you would +very probably die of embarrassment." + +Aloud Patricia said: "You mean, then, that, to cap it all, a functional +disorder of my heart has become organic, so that I would inevitably die +under another operation? or even at a sudden shock? And that particular +operation is now the solitary chance of saving my life! The dilemma is +neat, isn't it? How God must laugh at the jokes He contrives," said +Patricia. "I wish that I could laugh. And I will. I don't care whether +you think me a reprobate or not, Dr. Pemberton, I want a good stiff +drink of whiskey--the Musgrave size." + +He gave it to her. + + + + +II + + +Patricia had as yet an hour to spend in Lichfield before her train left. +She passed it in the garden of her own home, where she had first seen +Rudolph Musgrave and he had fought with Pevensey. All that seemed very +long ago. + +The dahlia leaves, she noticed, were edged with yellow. She must look to +it that the place was more frequently watered; and that the bulbs were +dug up in September. Next year she meant to set the dahlias thinly, like +a hedge.... + +"Oh, yes, I meant to. Only I won't be alive next year," she recollected. + +She went about the garden to see if Ned had weeded out the wild-pea +vines--a pest which had invaded the trim place lately. Only a few of the +intruders remained, burnt-out and withered as they are annually by the +mid-summer sun. There would be no more fight until next April. + +"Oh, and I have prayed to You, I have always tried to do what You +wanted, and I never asked You to let me be born locked up in a +good-for-nothing Musgrave body! And You won't even let me see a +wild-pea vine again! That isn't much to ask, I think. But You won't let +me do it. You really do have rather funny notions about Your jokes." + +She began to laugh. + +"Oh, very well!" Patricia said aloud. "It is none of my affair that You +elect to run Your world on an extremely humorous basis." + +She was at Matocton in good time for luncheon. + + + + +III + + +Colonel Musgrave had a brief interview with his wife after luncheon. He +began with quiet remonstrance, and ended with an unheard extenuation of +his presumption. Patricia's speech on this occasion was of an unfettered +and heady nature. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said, when she had finally +paused for breath, and had wiped away her tears, and had powdered her +nose, viciously, "to bully a weak and defenseless woman in this way. I +dare say everybody in the house has heard us--brawling and squabbling +just like a hod-carrier and his wife. What's that? You haven't said a +word for fifteen minutes? Oh, la, la, la! well, I don't care. Anyhow, I +have, and I am perfectly sure they heard me, and I am sure I don't care +in the least, and it's all your fault, anyway. Oh, but you have an +abominable nature, Rudolph--a mean and cruel and suspicious nature. Your +bald-headed little Charteris is nothing whatever to me; and I would have +been quite willing to give him up if you had spoken to me in a decent +manner about it. You only _said_----? I don't care what you said; and +besides, if you did speak to me in a decent manner, it simply shows that +your thoughts were so horrid and vulgar that even you weren't so +abandoned as to dare to put them into words. Very well, then, I won't be +seen so much with him in future. I realize you are quite capable of +beating me if I don't give way to your absurd prejudices. Yes, you are, +Rudolph; you're just the sort of man to take pleasure in beating a +woman. After the exhibition of temper you've given this afternoon, I +believe you are capable of anything. Hand me that parasol! Don't keep on +talking to me; for I don't wish to hear anything you have to say. You're +simply driving me to my grave with your continual nagging and abuse and +fault-finding. I'm sure I wish I were dead as much as you do. Is my hat +on straight? How do you expect me to see into that mirror if you stand +directly in front of it? There! not content with robbing me of every +pleasure in life, I verily believe you were going to let me go +downstairs with my hat cocked over one ear. And don't you snort and look +at me like that. I'm not going to meet Mr. Charteris. I'm going driving +with Felix Kennaston; he asked me at luncheon. I suppose you'll object +to him next; you object to all my friends. Very well! Now you've made me +utterly miserable for the entire afternoon, and I'm sure I hope you are +satisfied." + +There was a rustle of skirts, and the door slammed. + + + + +IV + + +Colonel Musgrave went to his own room, where he spent an interval in +meditation. He opened his desk and took out a small packet of papers, +some of which he read listlessly. How curiously life re-echoed itself! +he reflected, for here, again, were castby love-letters potent to breed +mischief; and his talk with Polly Ashmeade had been peculiarly +reminiscent of his more ancient talk with Clarice Pendomer. Everything +that happened seemed to have happened before. + +But presently he shook his head, sighing. Chance had put into his hands +a weapon, and a formidable weapon, it seemed to him, but the colonel did +not care to use it. He preferred to strike with some less grimy cudgel. + +Then he rang for one of the servants, questioned him, and was informed +that Mr. Charteris had gone down to the beach just after luncheon. A +moment later, Colonel Musgrave was walking through the gardens in this +direction. + +As he came to the thicket which screens the beach, he called +Charteris's name loudly, in order to ascertain his whereabouts. And the +novelist's voice answered--yet not at once, but after a brief silence. +It chanced that, at this moment, Musgrave had come to a thin place in +the thicket, and could plainly see Mr. Charteris; he was concealing some +white object in the hollow of a log that lay by the river. A little +later, Musgrave came out upon the beach, and found Charteris seated upon +the same log, an open book upon his knees, and looking back over his +shoulder wonderingly. + +"Oh," said John Charteris, "so it was you, Rudolph? I could not imagine +who it was that called." + +"Yes--I wanted a word with you, Jack." + +Now, there are five little red-and-white bath-houses upon the beach at +Matocton; the nearest of them was some thirty feet from Mr. Charteris. +It might have been either imagination or the prevalent breeze, but +Musgrave certainly thought he heard a door closing. Moreover, as he +walked around the end of the log, he glanced downward as in a casual +manner, and perceived a protrusion which bore an undeniable resemblance +to the handle of a parasol. Musgrave whistled, though, at the bottom of +his heart, he was not surprised; and then, he sat down upon the log, and +for a moment was silent. + +"A beautiful evening," said Mr. Charteris. + +Musgrave lighted a cigarette. + +"Jack, I have something rather difficult to say to you--yes, it is +deuced difficult, and the sooner it is over the better. I--why, +confound it all, man! I want you to stop making love to my wife." + +Mr. Charteris's eyebrows rose. "Really, Colonel Musgrave----." he began, +coolly. + +"Now, you are about to make a scene, you know," said Musgrave, raising +his hand in protest, "and we are not here for that. We are not going to +tear any passions to tatters; we are not going to rant; we are simply +going to have a quiet and sensible talk. We don't happen to be +characters in a romance; for you aren't Lancelot, you know, and I am not +up to the part of Arthur by a great deal. I am not angry, I am not +jealous, nor do I put the matter on any high moral grounds. I simply say +it won't do--no, hang it, it won't do!" + +"I dare not question you are an authority in such matters," said John +Charteris, sweetly--"since among many others, Clarice Pendomer is near +enough to be an obtainable witness." + +Colonel Musgrave grimaced. "But what a gesture!" he thought, +half-enviously. Jack Charteris, quite certainly, meant to make the most +of the immunity Musgrave had purchased for him. None the less, Musgrave +had now his cue. Patricia must be listening. + +And so what Colonel Musgrave said was: "Put it that a burnt child dreads +the fire--is that a reason he should not warn his friends against it?" + +"At least," said Charteris at length, "you are commendably frank. I +appreciate that, Rudolph. I honestly appreciate the fact you have come +to me, not as the husband of that fiction in which kitchen-maids +delight, breathing fire and speaking balderdash, but as one sensible man +to another. Let us be frank, then; let us play with the cards upon the +table. You have charged me with loving your wife; and I answer you +frankly--I do. She does me the honor to return this affection. What, +then, Rudolph?" + +Musgrave blew out a puff of smoke. "I don't especially mind," he said, +slowly. "According to tradition, of course, I ought to spring at your +throat with a smothered curse. But, as a matter of fact, I don't see why +I should be irritated. No, in common reason," he added, upon +consideration, "I am only rather sorry for you both." + +Mr. Charteris sprang to his feet, and walked up and down the beach. "Ah, +you hide your feelings well," he cried, and his laughter was a trifle +unconvincing and a bit angry. "But it is unavailing with me. I know! I +know the sick and impotent hatred of me that is seething in your heart; +and I feel for you the pity you pretend to entertain toward me. Yes, I +pity you. But what would you have? Frankly, while in many ways an +estimable man, you are no fit mate for Patricia. She has the sensitive, +artistic temperament, poor girl; and only we who are cursed with it can +tell you what its possession implies. And you--since frankness is the +order of the day, you know--well, you impress me as being a trifle +inadequate. It is not your fault, perhaps, but the fact remains that you +have never amounted to anything personally. You have simply traded upon +the accident of being born a Musgrave of Matocton. In consequence you +were enabled to marry Patricia's money, just as the Musgraves of +Matocton always marry some woman who is able to support them. Ah, but it +was her money you married, and not Patricia! Any community of interest +between you was impossible, and is radically impossible. Your marriage +was a hideous mistake, just as mine was. For you are starving her soul, +Rudolph, just as Anne has starved mine. And now, at last, when Patricia +and I have seen our single chance of happiness, we cannot--no! we cannot +and we will not--defer to any outworn tradition or to fear of Mrs. +Grundy's narrow-minded prattle!" + +Charteris swept aside the dogmas of the world with an indignant gesture +of somewhat conscious nobility; and he turned to his companion in an +attitude of defiance. + +Musgrave was smiling. He smoked and seemed to enjoy his cigarette. + +The day was approaching sunset. The sun, a glowing ball of copper, hung +low in the west over a rampart of purple clouds, whose heights were +smeared with red. A slight, almost imperceptible, mist rose from the +river, and, where the horizon should have been, a dubious cloudland +prevailed. Far to the west were orange-colored quiverings upon the +stream's surface, but, nearer, the river dimpled with silver-tipped +waves; and, at their feet, the water grew transparent, and splashed over +the sleek, brown sand, and sucked back, leaving a curved line of +bubbles which, one by one, winked, gaped and burst. There was a drowsy +peacefulness in the air; behind them, among the beeches, were many +stealthy wood-sounds; and, at long intervals, a sleepy, peevish +twittering went about the nested trees. + +In Colonel Musgrave's face, the primal peace was mirrored. + +"May I ask," said he at length, "what you propose doing?" + +Mr. Charteris answered promptly. "I, of course, propose," said he, "to +ask Patricia to share the remainder of my life." + +"A euphemism, as I take it, for an elopement. I hardly thought you +intended going so far." + +"Rudolph!" cried Charteris, drawing himself to his full height--and he +was not to blame for the fact that it was but five-feet-six--"I am, I +hope, an honorable man! I cannot eat your salt and steal your honor. So +I loot openly, or not at all." + +The colonel shrugged his shoulders. + +"I presuppose you have counted the cost--and estimated the necessary +breakage?" + +"True love," the novelist declared, in a hushed, sweet voice, "is above +such considerations." + +"I think," said Musgrave slowly, "that any love worthy of the name will +always appraise the cost--to the woman. It is of Patricia I am +thinking." + +"She loves me," Charteris murmured. He glanced up and laughed. "Upon my +soul, you know, I cannot help thinking the situation a bit +farcical--you and I talking over matters in this fashion. But I honestly +believe the one chance of happiness for any of us hinges on Patricia and +me chucking the whole affair, and bolting." + +"No! it won't do--no, hang it, Jack, it will not do!" Musgrave glanced +toward the bath-house, and he lifted his voice. "I am not considering +you in the least--and under the circumstances, you could hardly expect +me to. It is of Patricia I am thinking. I haven't made her altogether +happy. Our marriage was a mating of incongruities--and possibly you are +justified in calling it a mistake. Yet, day in and day out, I think we +get along as well together as do most couples; and it is wasting time to +cry over spilt milk. Instead, it rests with us, the two men who love +her, to decide what is best for Patricia. It is she and only she we must +consider." + +"Ah, you are right!" said Charteris, and his eyes grew tender. "She must +have what she most desires; and all must be sacrificed to that." He +turned and spoke as simply as a child. "Of course, you know, I shall be +giving up a great deal for love of her, but--I am willing." + +Musgrave looked at him for a moment. "H'm doubtless," he assented. "Why, +then, we won't consider the others. We will not consider your wife, +who--who worships you. We won't consider the boy. I, for my part, think +it is a mother's duty to leave an unsullied name to her child, but, +probably, my ideas are bourgeois. We won't consider Patricia's +relatives, who, perhaps, will find it rather unpleasant. In short, we +must consider no one save Patricia." + +"Of course, one cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." + +"No; the question is whether it is absolutely necessary to make the +omelet. I say no." + +"And I," quoth Charteris smiling gently, "say yes." + +"For Patricia," Musgrave went on, as in meditation, but speaking very +clearly, "it means giving up--everything. It means giving up her friends +and the life to which she is accustomed; it means being ashamed to face +those who were formerly her friends. We, the world, our world of +Lichfield, I mean--are lax enough as to the divorce question, heaven +knows, but we can't pardon immorality when coupled with poverty. And you +would be poor, you know. Your books are tremendously clever, Jack, +but--as I happen to know--the proceeds from them would not support two +people in luxury; and Patricia has nothing. That is a sordid detail, of +course, but it is worth considering. Patricia would never be happy in a +three-pair back." + +Mr. Charteris was frankly surprised. "Patricia has--nothing?" + +"Bless your soul, of course not! Her father left the greater part of his +money to our boy, you know. Most of it is still held in trust for our +boy, who is named after him. Not a penny of it belongs to Patricia, and +even I cannot touch anything but a certain amount of interest." + +Mr. Charteris looked at the colonel with eyes that were sad and hurt +and wistful. "I am perfectly aware of your reason for telling me this," +he said, candidly. "I know I have always been thought a mercenary man +since my marriage. At that time I fancied myself too much in love with +Anne to permit any sordid considerations of fortune to stand in the way +of our union. Poor Anne! she little knows what sacrifices I have made +for her! She, too, would be dreadfully unhappy if I permitted her to +realize that our marriage was a mistake." + +"God help her--yes!" groaned Musgrave. + +"And as concerns Patricia, you are entirely right. It would be hideously +unfair to condemn her to a life of comparative poverty. My books sell +better than you think, Rudolph, but still an author cannot hope to +attain affluence so long as he is handicapped by any reverence for the +English language. Yes, I was about to do Patricia a great wrong. I +rejoice that you have pointed out my selfishness. For I have been +abominably selfish. I confess it." + +"I think so," assented Musgrave, calmly. "But, then, my opinion is, +naturally, rather prejudiced." + +"Yes, I can understand what Patricia must mean to you"--Mr. Charteris +sighed, and passed his hand over his forehead in a graceful +fashion,--"and I, also, love her far too dearly to imperil her +happiness. I think that heaven never made a woman more worthy to be +loved. And I had hoped--ah, well, after all, we cannot utterly defy +society! Its prejudices, however unfounded, must be respected. What +would you have? This dunderheaded giantess of a Mrs. Grundy condemns me +to be miserable, and I am powerless. The utmost I can do is to refrain +from whining over the unavoidable. And, Rudolph, you have my word of +honor that henceforth I shall bear in mind more constantly my duty +toward one of my best and oldest friends. I have not dealt with you +quite honestly. I confess it, and I ask your pardon." Mr. Charteris held +out his hand to seal the compact. + +"Word of honor?" queried Colonel Musgrave, with an odd quizzing sort of +fondness for the little novelist, as the colonel took the proffered +hand. "Why, then, that is settled, and I am glad of it. I told you, you +know, it wouldn't do. See you at supper, I suppose?" + +And Rudolph Musgrave glanced at the bath-house, turned on his heel, and +presently plunged into the beech plantation, whistling cheerfully. The +effect of the melody was somewhat impaired by the apparent necessity of +breaking off, at intervals, in order to smile. + +The comedy had been admirably enacted, he considered, on both sides; and +he did not object to Jack Charteris's retiring with all the honors of +war. + + + + +V + + +The colonel had not gone far, however, before he paused, thrust both +hands into his trousers' pockets, and stared down at the ground for a +matter of five minutes. + +Musgrave shook his head. "After all," said he, "I can't trust them. +Patricia is too erratic and too used to having her own way. Jack will +try to break off with her now, of course; but Jack, where women are +concerned, is as weak as water. It is not a nice thing to do, but--well! +one must fight fire with fire." + +Thereupon, he retraced his steps. When he had come to the thin spot in +the thicket, Rudolph Musgrave left the path, and entered the shrubbery. +There he composedly sat down in the shadow of a small cedar. The sight +of his wife upon the beach in converse with Mr. Charteris did not appear +to surprise Colonel Musgrave. + +Patricia was speaking quickly. She held a bedraggled parasol in one +hand. Her husband noted, with a faint thrill of wonder, that, at times, +and in a rather unwholesome, elfish way, Patricia was actually +beautiful. Her big eyes glowed; they flashed with changing lights as +deep waters glitter in the sun; her copper-colored hair seemed luminous, +and her cheeks flushed, arbutus-like. The soft, white stuff that gowned +her had the look of foam; against the gray sky she seemed a freakish +spirit in the act of vanishing. For sky and water were all one lambent +gray by this. In the west was a thin smear of orange; but, for the rest, +the world was of a uniform and gleaming gray. She and Charteris stood in +the heart of a great pearl. + +"Ah, believe me," she was saying, "Rudolph isn't an ophthalmic bat. But +God keep us all respectable! is Rudolph's notion of a sensible +morning-prayer. So he just preferred to see nothing and bleat out +edifying axioms. That is one of his favorite tricks. No, it was a comedy +for my benefit, I tell you. He will allow a deal for the artistic +temperament, no doubt, but he doesn't suppose you fetch along a +white-lace parasol when you go to watch a sunset--especially a parasol +he gave me last month." + +"Indeed," protested Mr. Charteris, "he saw nothing. I was too quick for +him." + +She shrugged her shoulders. "I saw him looking at it. Accordingly, I +paid no attention to what he said. But you--ah, Jack, you were splendid! +I suppose we shall have to elope at once now, though?" + +Charteris gave her no immediate answer. "I am not quite sure, Patricia, +that your husband is not--to a certain extent--in the right. Believe me, +he did not know you were about. He approached me in a perfectly +sensible manner, and exhibited commendable self-restraint; he has played +a difficult part to admiration. I could not have done it better myself. +And it is not for us who have been endowed with gifts denied to Rudolph, +to reproach him for lacking the finer perceptions and sensibilities of +life. Yet, I must admit that, for the time, I was a little hurt by his +evident belief that we would allow our feeling for each other--which is +rather beyond his comprehension, isn't it, dear?--to be coerced by +mercenary considerations." + +"Oh, Rudolph is just a jackass-fool, anyway." She was not particularly +interested in the subject. + +"He can't help that, you know," Charteris reminded her, gently; then, he +asked, after a little: "I suppose it is all true?" + +"That what is true?" + +"About your having no money of your own?" He laughed, but she could see +how deeply he had been pained by Musgrave's suspicions. "I ask, because, +as your husband has discovered, I am utterly sordid, my lady, and care +only for your wealth." + +"Ah, how can you expect a man like that to understand--you? Why, Jack, +how ridiculous in you to be hurt by what the brute thinks! You're as +solemn as an owl, my dear. Yes, it's true enough. My father was not very +well pleased with us--and that horrid will--Ah, Jack, Jack, how +grotesque, how characteristic it was, his thinking such things would +influence you--you, of all men, who scarcely know what money is!" + +"It was even more grotesque I should have been pained by his thinking +it," Charteris said, sadly. "But what would you have? I am so abominably +in love with you that it seemed a sort of desecration when the man +lugged your name into a discussion of money-matters. It really did. And +then, besides--ah, my lady, you know that I would glory in the thought +that I had given up all for you. You know, I think, that I would +willingly work my fingers to the bone just that I might possess you +always. So I had dreamed of love in a cottage--an idyl of blissful +poverty, where Cupid contents himself with crusts and kisses, and mocks +at the proverbial wolf on the doorstep. And I give you my word that +until to-day I had not suspected how blindly selfish I have been! For +poor old prosaic Rudolph is in the right, after all. Your delicate, +tender beauty must not be dragged down to face the unlovely realities +and petty deprivations and squalid makeshifts of such an existence as +ours would be. True, I would glory in them--ah, luxury and riches mean +little to me, my dear, and I can conceive of no greater happiness than +to starve with you. But true love knows how to sacrifice itself. Your +husband was right; it would not be fair to you, Patricia." + +"You--you are going to leave me?" + +"Yes; and I pray that I may be strong enough to relinquish you forever, +because your welfare is more dear to me than my own happiness. No, I do +not pretend that this is easy to do. But when my misery is earned by +serving you I prize my misery." Charteris tried to smile. "What would +you have? I love you," he said, simply. + +"Ah, my dear!" she cried. + +Musgrave's heart was sick within him as he heard the same notes in her +voice that echoed in Anne's voice when she spoke of her husband. This +was a new Patricia; her speech was low and gentle now, and her eyes held +a light Rudolph Musgrave had not seen there for a long while. + +"Ah, my dear, you are the noblest man I have ever known; I wish we women +could be like men. But, oh, Jack, Jack, don't be quixotic! I can't give +you up, my dear--that would never be for my good. Think how unhappy I +have been all these years; think how Rudolph is starving my soul! I want +to be free, Jack; I want to live my own life,--for at least a month or +so--" + +Patricia shivered here. "But none of us is sure of living for a month. +You've shown me a glimpse of what life might be; don't let me sink back +into the old, humdrum existence from a foolish sense of honor! I tell +you, I should go mad! I mean to have my fling while I can get it. And I +mean to have it with you, Jack--just you! I don't fear poverty. You +could write some more wonderful books. I could work, too, Jack dear. +I--I could teach music--or take in washing--or something, anyway. Lots +of women support themselves, you know. Oh, Jack, we would be so happy! +Don't be honorable and brave and disagreeable, Jack dear!" + +For a moment Charteris was silent. The nostrils of his beak-like nose +widened a little, and a curious look came into his face. He discovered +something in the sand that interested him. + +"After all," he demanded, slowly, "is it necessary--to go away--to be +happy?" + +"I don't understand." Her hand lifted from his arm; then quick remorse +smote her, and it fluttered back, confidingly. + +Charteris rose to his feet. "It is, doubtless, a very spectacular and +very stirring performance to cast your cap over the wind-mill in the +face of the world; but, after all, is it not a bit foolish, Patricia? +Lots of people manage these things--more quietly." + +"Oh, Jack!" Patricia's face turned red, then white, and stiffened in a +sort of sick terror. She was a frightened Columbine in stone. "I thought +you cared for me--really, not--that way." + +Patricia rose and spoke with composure. "I think I'll go back to the +house, Mr. Charteris. It's a bit chilly here. You needn't bother to +come." + +Then Mr. Charteris laughed--a choking, sobbing laugh. He raised his +hands impotently toward heaven. "And to think," he cried, "to think that +a man may love a woman with his whole heart--with all that is best and +noblest in him--and she understand him so little!" + +"I do not think I have misunderstood you," Patricia said, in a crisp +voice. "Your proposition was very explicit. I--am sorry. I thought I had +found one thing in the world which I would regret to leave--" + +"And you really believed that I could sully the great love I bear you by +stooping to--that! You really believed that I would sacrifice to you my +home life, my honor, my prospects--all that a man can give--without +testing the quality of your love! You did not know that I spoke to try +you--you actually did not know! Eh, but yours is a light nature, +Patricia! I do not reproach you, for you are only as your narrow +Philistine life has made you. Yet I had hoped better things of you, +Patricia. But you, who pretend to care for me, have leaped at your first +opportunity to pain me--and, if it be any comfort to you, I confess you +have pained me beyond words." And he sank down on the log, and buried +his face in his hands. + +She came to him--it was pitiable to see how she came to him, laughing +and sobbing all in one breath--and knelt humbly by his side, and raised +a grieved, shamed, penitent face to his. + +"Forgive me!" she wailed; "oh, forgive me!" + +"You have pained me beyond words, Patricia," he repeated. He was not +angry--only sorrowful and very much hurt. + +"Ah, Jack! dear Jack, forgive me!" + +Mr. Charteris sighed. "But, of course, I forgive you, Patricia," he +said. "I cannot help it, though, that I am foolishly sensitive where you +are concerned. And I had hoped you knew as much." + +She was happy now. "Dear boy," she murmured, "don't you see it's just +these constant proofs of the greatness and the wonderfulness of your +love--Really, though, Jack, wasn't it too horrid of me to misunderstand +you so? Are you quite sure you're forgiven me entirely--without any +nasty little reservations?" + +Mr. Charteris was quite sure. His face was still sad, but it was +benevolent. + +"Don't you see," she went on, "that it's just these things that make me +care for you so much, and feel sure as eggs is eggs we will be happy? +Ah, Jack, we will be so utterly happy that I am almost afraid to think +of it!" Patricia wiped away the last tear, and laughed, and added, in a +matter-of-fact fashion: "There's a train at six-five in the morning; we +can leave by that, before anyone is up." + +Charteris started. "Your husband loves you," he said, in gentle reproof. +"And quite candidly, you know, Rudolph is worth ten of me." + +"Bah, I tell you, that was a comedy for my benefit," she protested, and +began to laugh. Patricia was unutterably happy now, because she, and not +John Charteris, had been in the wrong. "Poor Rudolph!--he has such a +smug horror of the divorce-court that he would even go so far as to +pretend to be in love with his own wife in order to keep out of it. +Really, Jack, both our better-halves are horribly commonplace and they +will be much better off without us." + +"You forget that Rudolph has my word of honor," said Mr. Charteris, in +indignation. + +And that instant, with one of his baffling changes of mood, he began to +laugh. "Really, though, Patricia, you are very pretty. You are April +embodied in sweet flesh; your soul is just a wisp of April cloud, and +your life an April day, half sun that only seems to warm, and half +tempest that only plays at ferocity; but you are very pretty. That is +why I am thinking, light-headedly, it would be a fine and past doubt an +agreeable exploit to give up everything for such a woman, and am +complacently comparing myself to Antony at Actium. I am thinking it +would be an interesting episode in one's _Life and Letters_. You see, my +dear, I honestly believe the world revolves around John +Charteris--although of course I would never admit that to you if I +thought for a moment you would take me seriously." + +Then presently, sighing, he was grave again. "But, no! Rudolph has my +word of honor," Mr. Charteris repeated, and with unconcealed regret. + +"Ah, does that matter?" she cried. "Does anything matter, except that we +love each other? I tell you I have given the best part of my life to +that man, but I mean to make the most of what is left. He has had my +youth, my love--there was a time, you know, when I actually fancied I +cared for him--and he has only made me unhappy. I hate him, I loathe +him, I detest him, I despise him! I never intend to speak to him +again--oh, yes, I shall have to at supper, I suppose, but that doesn't +count. And I tell you I mean to be happy in the only way that's +possible. Everyone has a right to do that. A woman has an especial +right to take her share of happiness in any way she can, because her +hour of it is so short. Sometimes--sometimes the woman knows how short +it is and it almost frightens her.... But at best, a woman can be really +happy through love alone, Jack dear, and it's only when we are young and +good to look at that men care for us; after that, there is nothing left +but to take to either religion or hand-embroidery, so what does it +matter, after all? Yes, they all grow tired after a while. Jack, I am +only a vain and frivolous person of superlative charm, but I love you +very much, my dear, and I solemnly swear to commit suicide the moment my +first wrinkle arrives. You shall never grow tired of me, my dear." + +She laughed to think how true this was. + +She hurried on: "Jack, kneel down at once, and swear that you are +perfectly sore with loving me, as that ridiculous person says in +Dickens, and whose name I never could remember. Oh, I forgot--Dickens +caricatures nature, doesn't he, and isn't read by really cultured +people? You will have to educate me up to your level, Jack, and I warn +you in advance you will not have time to do it. Yes, I am quite aware +that I am talking nonsense, and am on the verge of hysterics, thank you, +but I rather like it. It is because I am going to have you all to myself +for whatever future there is, and the thought makes me quite drunk. Will +you kindly ring for the patrol-wagon, Jack? Jack, are you quite sure you +love me? Are you perfectly certain you never loved any one else half so +much? No, don't answer me, for I intend to do all the talking for both +of us for the future! I shall tyrannize over you frightfully, and you +will like it. All I ask in return is that you will be a good boy--by +which I mean a naughty boy--and do solemnly swear, promise and affirm +that you will meet me at the side-door at half-past five in the morning, +with a portmanteau and the intention of never going back to your wife. +You swear it? Thank you so much! Now, I think I would like to cry for a +few minutes, and, after that, we will go back to the house, before +supper is over and my eyes are perfectly crimson." + +In fact, Mr. Charteris had consented. Patricia was irresistible as she +pleaded and mocked and scolded and coaxed and laughed and cried, all in +one bewildering breath. Her plan was simple; it was to slip out of +Matocton at dawn, and walk to the near-by station. There they would take +the train, and snap their fingers at convention. The scheme sounded +preposterous in outline, but she demonstrated its practicability in +performance. And Mr. Charteris consented. + +Rudolph Musgrave sat in the shadow of the cedar with fierce and confused +emotions whirling in his soul. He certainly had never thought of this +contingency. + + + + +PART EIGHT - HARVEST + + "Time was I coveted the woes they rued + Whose love commemorates them,--I that meant + To get like grace of love then!--and intent + To win as they had done love's plenitude, + Rapture and havoc, vauntingly I sued + That love like theirs might make a toy of me, + At will caressed, at will (if publicly) + Demolished, as Love found or found not good. + + "To-day I am no longer overbrave. + I have a fever,--I that always knew + This hour was certain!--and am too weak to rave, + Too tired to seek (as later I must do) + Tried remedies--time, manhood and the grave-- + To drug, abate and banish love of you." +ALLEN ROSSITER. _A Fragment_. + + + + +I + + +When Patricia and Charteris had left the beach, Colonel Musgrave parted +the underbrush and stepped down upon the sand He must have air--air and +an open place wherein to fight this out. + +Night had risen about him in bland emptiness. There were no stars +overhead, but a patient, wearied, ancient moon pushed through the +clouds. The trees and the river conferred with one another doubtfully. + +He paced up and down the beach.... + +Musgrave laughed in the darkness. His heart was racing, racing in him, +and his thoughts were blown foam. He raised his hat and bowed +fantastically in the darkness, because the colonel loved his gesture. + +"Signor Lucifer, I present my compliments. You have discoursed with me +very plausibly. I honor your cunning, signor, but if you are indeed a +gentleman, as I have always heard, you will now withdraw and permit me +to regard the matter from a standpoint other than my own. For the others +are weak, signor; as you have doubtless discovered, good women and bad +men are the weakest of their sex. I am the strongest among them, for all +that I am no Hercules; and the outcome of this matter must rest with +me." + +So he sat presently upon the log, where Charteris had sat when Musgrave +came to this beach at sunset. Very long ago that seemed now. For now the +colonel was tired--physically outworn, it seemed to him, as if after +prolonged exertion--and now the moon looked down upon him, passionless, +cold, inexorable, and seemed to await the colonel's decision. + +And it was woefully hard to come to any decision. For, as you know by +this, it was the colonel's besetting infirmity to shrink from making +changes; instinctively he balked--under shelter of whatever +grandiloquent excuse--against commission of any action which would alter +his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. To guide events +was never his forte, as he forlornly knew; and here he was condemned +perforce to play that uncongenial rôle, with slender chances of reward. + +Yet always Anne's face floated in the darkness. Always Anne's voice +whispered through the lisping of the beeches, through the murmur of the +water.... + +He sat thus for a long while. + + + + +II + + +Musgrave was, not unnaturally, late for supper. It is not to be supposed +that at this meal the colonel faltered in his duties as a host, for, to +the contrary, he narrated several anecdotes in his neatest style. It was +with him a point of honor always to be in company the social triumph of +his generation. He observed with idle interest that Charteris and +Patricia avoided each other in a rather marked manner. Both seemed a +trifle more serious than they were wont to be. + +After supper, Tom Gelwix brought forth a mandolin, and most of the +house-party sang songs, sentimental and otherwise, upon the front porch +of Matocton. Anne had disappeared somewhere. Musgrave subsequently +discovered her in one of the drawing-rooms, puzzling over a number of +papers which her maid had evidently just brought to her. + +Mrs. Charteris looked up with a puckered brow. "Rudolph," said she, +"haven't you an account at the Occidental Bank?" + +"Hardly an account, dear lady,--merely a deposit large enough to +entitle me to receive monthly notices that I have overdrawn it." + +"Why, then, of course, you have a cheque-book. Horrible things, aren't +they?--such a nuisance remembering to fill out those little stubs. Of +course, I forgot to bring mine with me--I always do; and equally, of +course, a vexatious debt turns up and finds me without an Occidental +Bank cheque to my name." + +Musgrave was amused. "That," said he, "is easily remedied. I will get +you one; though even if--Ah, well, what is the good of trying to teach +you adorable women anything about business! You shall have your +indispensable blank form in three minutes." + +He returned in rather less than that time, with the cheque. Anne was +alone now. She was gowned in some dull, soft, yellow stuff, and sat by a +small, marble-topped table, twiddling a fountain-pen. + +"You mustn't sneer at my business methods, Rudolph," she said, pouting a +little as she filled out the cheque. "It isn't polite, sir, in the first +place, and, in the second, I am really very methodical. Of course, I am +always losing my cheque-book, and drawing cheques and forgetting to +enter them, and I usually put down the same deposit two or three +times--all women do that; but, otherwise, I am really very careful. I +manage all the accounts; I can't expect Jack to do that, you know." Mrs. +Charteris signed her name with a flourish, and nodded at the colonel +wisely. "Dear infant, but he is quite too horribly unpractical. Do you +know this bill has been due--oh, for months--and he forgot it entirely +until this evening. Fortunately, he can settle it to-morrow; those +disagreeable publishers of his have telegraphed for him to come to New +York at once, you know. Otherwise--dear, dear! but marrying a genius is +absolutely ruinous to one's credit, isn't it, Rudolph? The tradespeople +will refuse to trust us soon." + +Involuntarily, Musgrave had seen the cheque. It was for a considerable +amount, and it was made out to John Charteris. + +"Beyond doubt," said Musgrave, in his soul, "Jack is colossal! He is +actually drawing on his wife for the necessary expenses for running away +with another woman!" + +The colonel sat down abruptly before the great, open fireplace, and +stared hard at the pine-boughs which were heaped up in it. + +"A penny," said she, at length. + +He glanced up with a smile. "My dear madam, it would be robbery! For a +penny, you may read of the subject of my thoughts in any of the yellow +journals, only far more vividly set forth, and obtain a variety of more +or less savory additions, to boot. I was thinking of the Lethbury case, +and wondering how we could have been so long deceived by the man." + +"Ah, poor Mrs. Lethbury!" Anne sighed, "I am very sorry for her, +Rudolph; she was a good woman, and was always interested in charitable +work." + +"Do you know," said Colonel Musgrave, with deliberation, "it is she I +cannot understand. To discover that he had been systematically +hoodwinking her for some ten years; that, after making away with as much +of her fortune as he was able to lay hands on, he has betrayed business +trust after business trust in order to--to maintain another +establishment; that he has never cared for her, and has made her his +dupe time after time, in order to obtain money for his gambling debts +and other even less reputable obligations--she must realize all these +things now, you know, and one would have thought no woman's love could +possibly survive such a test. Yet, she is standing by him through thick +and thin. Yes, I confess, Amelia Lethbury puzzles me. I don't understand +her mental attitude." + +Musgrave was looking at Anne very intently as he ended. + +"Why, but of course," said Anne, "she realizes that it was all the fault +of that--that other woman; and, besides, the--the entanglement has been +going on only a little over eight years--not ten, Rudolph." + +She was entirely in earnest; Colonel Musgrave could see it plainly. + +"I admit I hadn't looked on it in that light," said he, at length, and +was silent for a moment Then, "Upon my soul, Anne," he cried, "I believe +you think the woman is only doing the natural thing, only doing the +thing one has a right to expect of her, in sticking to that blackguard +after she has found him out!" + +Mrs. Charteris raised her eyebrows; she was really surprised. +"Naturally, she must stand by her husband when he is in trouble; why, +if his own wife didn't, who would, Rudolph? It is just now that he needs +her most. It would be abominable to desert him now." + +Anne paused and thought. "Depend upon it, she knows a better side of his +nature than we can see; she knows him, possibly, to have been misled, or +to have acted thoughtlessly; because otherwise, she would not stand by +him so firmly." Having reached this satisfactory conclusion, Anne began +to laugh--at Musgrave's lack of penetration, probably. "So, you see, +Rudolph, in either case, her conduct is perfectly natural." + +"And this," he cried, "this is how women reason!" + +"Am I very stupid? Jack says I am a bit illogical at times. But, +Rudolph, you mustn't expect a woman to judge the man she loves; if you +call on her to do that, she doesn't reason about it; she just goes on +loving him, and thinking how horrid you are. Women love men as they do +children; they punish them sometimes, but only in deference to public +opinion. A woman will always find an excuse for the man she loves. If he +deserts her, she is miserable until she succeeds in demonstrating to +herself it was entirely her own fault; after that, she is properly +repentant, but far less unhappy; and, anyhow, she goes on loving him +just the same." + +The colonel pondered over this. "Women are different," he said. + +"I don't know. I think that, if all women could be thrown with good +men, they would all be good. Women want to be good; but there comes a +time to each one of them when she wants to make a certain man happy, and +wants that more than anything else in the world; and then, of course, if +he wants--very much--for her to be bad, she will be bad. A bad woman is +always to be explained by a bad man." + +Anne nodded, very wisely; then, she began to laugh, but this time at +herself. "I am talking quite like a book," she said. "Really, I had no +idea I was so clever. But I have thought of this before, Rudolph, and +been sorry for those poor women who--who haven't found the right sort of +man to care for." + +"Yes." Musgrave's face was alert. "You have been luckier than most, +Anne," he said. + +"Lucky!" she cried, and that queer little thrill of happiness woke again +in her rich voice. "Ah, you don't know how lucky I have been, Rudolph! I +have never cared for any one except--well, yes, you, a great while +ago--and Jack. And you are both good men. Ah, Rudolph, it was very dear +and sweet and foolish, the way we loved each other, but you don't +mind--very, very much--do you, if I think Jack is the best man in the +world, and by far the best man in the world for me? He is so good to me; +he is so good and kind and considerate to me, and, even after all these +years of matrimony, he is always the lover. A woman appreciates that, +Rudolph; she wants her husband to be always her lover, just as Jack is, +and never to give in when she coaxes--because she only coaxes when she +knows she is in the wrong--and never, never, to let her see him shaving +himself. If a husband observes these simple rules, Rudolph, his wife +will be a happy woman; and Jack does. In consequence, every day I live I +grow fonder of him, and appreciate him more and more; he grows upon me +just as a taste for strong drink might. Without him--without him--" +Anne's voice died away; then she faced Musgrave, indignantly. "Oh, +Rudolph!" she cried, "how horrid of you, how mean of you, to come here +and suggest the possibility of Jack's dying or running away from me, or +doing anything dreadful like that!" + +Colonel Musgrave was smiling, "I?" said he, equably. "My dear madam! if +you will reconsider,--" + +"No," she conceded, after deliberation, "it wasn't exactly your fault. I +got started on the subject of Jack, and imagined all sorts of horrible +and impossible things. But there is a sort of a something in the air +to-night; probably a storm is coming down the river. So I feel very +morbid and very foolish, Rudolph; but, then, I am in love, you see. +Isn't it funny, after all these years?" Anne asked with a smile;--"and +so you are not to be angry, Rudolph." + +"My dear," he said, "I assure you, the emotion you raise in me is very +far from resembling that of anger." Musgrave rose and laughed. "I fear, +you know, we will create a scandal if we sit here any longer. Let's see +what the others are doing." + + + + +III + + +That night, after his guests had retired, Colonel Musgrave smoked a +cigarette on the front porch of Matocton. The moon, now in the zenith, +was bright and chill. After a while, Musgrave raised his face toward it, +and laughed. + +"Isn't it--isn't it funny?" he demanded, echoing Anne's query ruefully. + +"Eh, well! perhaps I still retained some lingering hope; in a season of +discomfort, most of us look vaguely for a miracle. And, at times, it +comes, but, more often, not; life isn't always a pantomime, with a fairy +god-mother waiting to break through the darkness in a burst of glory and +reunite the severed lovers, and transform their enemies into pantaloons. +In this case, it is certain that the fairy will not come. I am condemned +to be my own god in the machine." + +Having demonstrated this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and +drugged his mind correcting proofsheets--for the _Lichfield Historical +Association's Quarterly Magazine_--and brought down to the year 1805 his +"List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County." + + + + +IV + + +The night was well advanced when Charteris stepped noiselessly into the +room. The colonel was then sedately writing amid a host of motionless +mute watchers, for at Matocton most of the portraits hang in the East +Drawing-room. + +Thus, above the great marble mantel,--carved with thyrsi, and supported +by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,--you will find burly Sebastian +Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas. "Paint +me among dukes and earls with my hat on, to show I am in all things a +Republican, and the finest diamond in the Colony shall be yours," he had +directed the painter, and this was done. Then there is frail Wilhelmina +Musgrave--that famed beauty whose two-hundred-year-old story all +Lichfield knows, and no genealogist has ever cared to detail--eternally +weaving flowers about her shepherd hat. There, too, is Evelyn Ramsay, +before whose roguish loveliness, as you may remember, the colonel had +snapped his fingers in those roseate days when he so joyously considered +his profound unworthiness to be Patricia's husband. There is also the +colonial governor of Albemarle--a Van Dyck this--two Knellers, and +Lely's portrait of Thomas Musgrave, "the poet," with serious blue eyes +and flaxen hair. The painting of Captain George Musgrave, who +distinguished himself at the siege of Cartagena, is admittedly an +inferior piece of work, but it has vigor, none the less; and below it +hangs the sword which was presented to him by the Lord High Admiral. + +So quietly did Charteris come that the colonel was not aware of his +entrance until the novelist had coughed gently. He was in a +dressing-gown, and looked unusually wizened. + +"I saw your light," he said. "I don't seem to be able to sleep, somehow. +It is so infernally hot and still. I suppose there is going to be a +thunderstorm. I hate thunderstorms. They frighten me." The little man +was speaking like a peevish child. + +"Oh, well--! it will at least clear the air," said Rudolph Musgrave. +"Sit down and have a smoke, won't you?" + +"No, thanks." Charteris had gone to the bookshelves and was gently +pushing and pulling at the books so as to arrange their backs in a +mathematically straight line. "I thought I would borrow something to +read--Why, this is the Tennyson you had at college, isn't it? Yes, I +remember it perfectly." + +These two had roomed together through their college days. + +"Yes; it is the old Tennyson. And yonder is the identical Swinburne you +used to spout from, too. Lord, Jack, it seems a century since I used to +listen by the hour to _The Triumph of Time and Dolores!_" + +"Ah, but you didn't really care for them--not even then." Charteris +reached up, his back still turned, and moved a candlestick the fraction +of an inch. "There is something so disgustingly wholesome about you, +Rudolph. And it appears to be ineradicable. I can't imagine how I ever +came to be fond of you." + +The colonel was twirling his pen, his eyes intent upon it. "And yet--we +_were_ fond of each other, weren't we, Jack?" + +"Why, I positively adored you. You were such a strong and healthy +animal. Upon my word, I don't believe I ever missed a single football +game you played in. In fact, I almost learned to understand the game on +your account. You see--it was so good to watch you raging about with +touzled hair, like the only original bull of Bashan, and the others +tumbling like ninepins. It used to make me quite inordinately proud." + +The colonel smoked. "But, Lord! how proud _I_ was when you got medals!" + +"Yes--I remember." + +"Even if I did bully you sometimes. Remember how I used to twist your +arm to make you write my Latin exercises, Jack?" + +"I liked to have you do that," Charteris said, simply. "It hurt a great +deal, but I liked it." + +He had come up behind the colonel, who was still seated. "Yes, that was +a long while ago," said Charteris. "It is rather terrible--isn't it?--to +reflect precisely how long ago it was. Why, I shall be bald in a year or +two from now. But you have kept almost all your beautiful hair, +Rudolph." + +Charteris touched the colonel's head, stroking his hair ever so lightly +once or twice. It was in effect a caress. + +The colonel was aware of the odor of myrrh which always accompanied +Charteris and felt that the little man was trembling. + +"Isn't there--anything you want to tell me, Jack?" the colonel said. He +sat quite still. + +There was the tiniest pause. The caressing finger-tips lifted from +Musgrave's head, but presently gave it one more brief and half-timid +touch. + +"Why, only _au revoir_, I believe. I am leaving at a rather ungodly hour +to-morrow and won't see you, but I hope to return within the week." + +"I hope so, Jack." + +"And, after all, it is too late to be reading. I shall go back to bed +and take more trional. And then, I dare say, I shall sleep. So good-by, +Rudolph." + +"Good-night, Jack." + +"Oh, yes--! I meant good-night, of course." + +The colonel sighed; then he spoke abruptly: + +"No, just a moment, Jack. I didn't ask you to come here to-night; but +since you have come, by chance, I am going to follow the promptings of +that chance, and strike a blow for righteousness with soiled weapons. +Jack, do you remember suggesting that my father's correspondence during +the War might be of value, and that his desk ought to be overhauled?" + +"Why, yes, of course. Mrs. Musgrave was telling me she began the task," +said Charteris, and smiled a little. + +"Unluckily; yes--but--well! in any event, it suggested to me that old +letters are dangerous. I really had no idea what that desk contained. My +father had preserved great stacks of letters. I have been going through +them. They were most of them from women--letters which should never have +been written in the first place, and which he certainly had no right to +keep." + +"What! and is 'Wild Will's' love-correspondence still extant? I fancy it +made interesting reading, Rudolph." + +"There were some letters which in a measure concern you, Jack." The +colonel handed him a small packet of letters. "If you will read the top +one it will explain. I will just go on with my writing." + +He wrote steadily for a moment or two.... Then Charteris laughed +musically. + +"I have always known there was a love-affair between my mother and 'Wild +Will.' But I never suspected until to-night that I had the honor to be +your half-brother, Rudolph--one of 'Wild Will's' innumerable bastards." +Charteris was pallid, and though he seemed perfectly composed, his eyes +glittered as with gusty brilliancies. "I understand now why my reputed +father always made such a difference between my sister and myself. I +never liked old Alvin Charteris, you know. It is a distinct relief to be +informed I have no share in his blood, although of course the knowledge +comes a trifle suddenly." + +"Perhaps I should have kept that knowledge to myself. I know it would +have been kinder. I had meant to be kind. I loathe myself for dabbling +in this mess. But, in view of all things, it seemed necessary to let you +know I am your own brother in the flesh, and that Patricia is your +brother's wife." + +"I see," said Charteris. "According to your standards that would make a +great difference. I don't know, speaking frankly, that it makes much +difference with me." He turned again to the bookshelves, so that +Musgrave could no longer see his face. Charteris ran his fingers +caressingly over the backs of a row of volumes. "I loved my mother, +Rudolph. I never loved anyone else. That makes a difference." Then he +said, "We Musgraves--how patly I catalogue myself already!--we Musgraves +have a deal to answer for, Rudolph." + +"And doesn't that make it all the more our duty to live clean and honest +lives? to make the debt no greater than it is?" Both men were oddly +quiet. + +"Eh, I am not so sure." John Charteris waved airily toward Sebastian +Musgrave's counterfeit, then toward the other portraits. "It was they +who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph--all that we were to have in +this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their +histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous +race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the +dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under +any obligation. In fact, I rather think God owes us an apology, +Rudolph." + +He spoke with quaint wistfulness. The colonel sat regarding him in +silence, with shocked, disapproving eyes. Then Charteris cocked his head +to one side and grinned like a hobgoblin. + +"What wouldn't you give," he demanded, "to know what I am really +thinking of at this very moment while I talk so calmly? Well, you will +never know. And for the rest, you are at liberty to use your +all-important documents as you may elect. I am John Charteris; whatever +man begot my body, he is rotten bones to-day, and it is as such I value +him. I was never anybody's son--or friend or brother or lover,--but just +a pen that someone far bigger and far nobler than John Charteris writes +with occasionally. Whereas you--but, oh, you are funny, Rudolph!" And +then, "Good-night, dear brother," Charteris added, sweetly, as he left +the room. + + * * * * * + +And Rudolph Musgrave could not quite believe in the actuality of what +had just happened. In common with most of us, he got his general notions +concerning the laws of life from reading fiction; and here was the +material for a Renaissance tragedy wasted so far as any dénouement went. +Destiny, once more, was hardly rising to the possibilities of the +situation. The weapon chance had forged had failed Rudolph Musgrave +utterly; and, indeed, he wondered now how he could ever have esteemed it +formidable. Jack was his half-brother. In noveldom or in a melodrama +this discovery would have transformed their mutual dealings; but as a +workaday world's fact, Musgrave would not honestly say that it had in +any way affected his feelings toward Jack, and it appeared to have left +Charteris equally unaltered. + +"I am not sure, though. We can only guess where Jack is concerned. He +goes his own way always, tricky and furtive and lonelier than any other +human being I have ever known. It is loneliness that looks out of his +eyes, really, even when he is mocking and sneering," the colonel +meditated. + +Then he sighed and went back to the tabulation of his lists of wills. + + + + +V + + +The day was growing strong in the maple-grove behind Matocton. As yet, +the climbing sun fired only the topmost branches, and flooded them with +a tempered radiance through which birds plunged and shrilled vague +rumors to one another. Beneath, a green twilight lingered--twilight +which held a gem-like glow, chill and lucent and steady as that of an +emerald. Vagrant little puffs of wind bustled among the leaves, with a +thin pretense of purpose, and then lapsed, and merged in the large, +ambiguous whispering which went stealthily about the grove. + +Rudolph Musgrave sat on a stone beside the road that winds through the +woods toward the railway station, and smoked, nervously. He was +disheartened of the business of living, and, absurdly enough, as it +seemed to him, he was hungry. + +"It has to be done quietly and without the remotest chance of Anne's +ever hearing of it, and without the remotest chance of its ever having +to be done again. I have about fifteen minutes in which to convince +Patricia both of her own folly and of the fact that Jack is an +unmitigated cad, and to get him off the place quietly, so that Anne will +suspect nothing. And I never knew any reasonable argument to appeal to +Patricia, and Jack will be a cornered rat! Yes, it is a large contract, +and I would give a great deal--a very great deal--to know how I am going +to fulfil it." + +At this moment his wife and Mr. Charteris, carrying two portmanteaux, +came around a bend in the road not twenty feet from Musgrave. They were +both rather cross. In the clean and more prosaic light of morning an +elopement seemed almost silly; moreover, Patricia had had no breakfast, +and Charteris had been much annoyed by his wife, who had breakfasted +with him, and had insisted on driving to the station with him. It was a +trivial-seeming fact, but, perhaps, not unworthy of notice, that +Patricia was carrying her own portmanteau, as well as an umbrella. + +The three faced one another in the cool twilight. The woods stirred +lazily about them. The birds were singing on a wager now. + +"Ah," said Colonel Musgrave, "so you have come at last. I have been +expecting you for some time." + +Patricia dropped her portmanteau, sullenly. Mr. Charteris placed his +with care to the side of the road, and said, "Oh!" It was perhaps the +only observation that occurred to him. + +"Patricia," Musgrave began, very kindly and very gravely, "you are +about to do a foolish thing. At the bottom of your heart, even now, you +know you are about to do a foolish thing--a thing you will regret +bitterly and unavailingly for the rest of time. You are turning your +back on the world--our world--on the one possible world you could ever +be happy in. You can't be happy in the half-world, Patricia; you aren't +that sort. But you can never come back to us then, Patricia; it doesn't +matter what the motive was, what the temptation was, or how great the +repentance is--you cannot ever return. That is the law, Patricia; +perhaps, it isn't always a just law. We didn't make it, you and I, but +it is the law, and we must obey it. Our world merely says that, leaving +it once, you cannot ever return: such is the only punishment it awards +you, for it knows, this wise old world of ours, that such is the +bitterest punishment which could ever be devised for you. Our world has +made you what you are; in every thought and ideal and emotion you +possess, you are a product of our world. You couldn't live in the +half-world, Patricia; you are a product of our world that can never take +root in that alien soil. Come back to us before it is too late, +Patricia!" + +Musgrave shook himself all over, rather like a Newfoundland dog coming +out of the water, and the grave note died from his voice. He smiled, and +rubbed his hands together. + +"And now," said he, "I will stop talking like a problem play, and we +will say no more about it. Give me your portmanteau, my dear, and upon +my word of honor, you will never hear a word further from me in the +matter. Jack, here, can take the train, just as he intended. And--and +you and I will go back to the house, and have a good, hot breakfast +together. Eh, Patricia?" + +She was thinking, unreasonably enough, how big and strong and clean her +husband looked in the growing light. It was a pity Jack was so small. +However, she faced Musgrave coldly, and thought how ludicrously wide of +the mark were all these threats of ostracism. She shudderingly wished he +would not talk of soil and taking root and hideous things like that, but +otherwise the colonel left her unmoved. He was certainly good-looking, +though. + +Charteris was lighting a cigarette, with a queer, contented look. He +knew the value of Patricia's stubbornness now; still, he appeared to be +using an unnecessary number of matches. + +"I should have thought you would have perceived the lack of dignity, as +well as the utter uselessness, in making such a scene," Patricia said. +"We aren't suited for each other, Rudolph; and it is better--far better +for both of us--to have done with the farce of pretending to be. I am +sorry that you still care for me. I didn't know that. But, for the +future, I intend to live my own life." + +Patricia's voice faltered, and she stretched out her hands a little +toward her husband in an odd gust of friendliness. He looked so kind; +and he was not smiling in that way she never liked. "Surely that isn't +so unpardonable a crime, Rudolph?" she asked, almost humbly. + +"No, my dear," he answered, "it is not unpardonable--it is impossible. +You can't lead your own life, Patricia; none of us can. Each life is +bound up with many others, and every rash act of yours, every hasty word +of yours, must affect to some extent the lives of those who are nearest +and most dear to you. But, oh, it is not argument that I would be at! +Patricia, there was a woman once--She was young, and wealthy, and--ah, +well, I won't deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I +will serve up to you no praises of her sauced with lies. But fate and +nature had combined to give her everything a woman can desire, and all +this that woman freely gave to me--to me who hadn't youth or wealth or +fame or anything! And I can't stand by, for that dear dead girl's sake, +and watch your life go wrong, Patricia!" + +"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf"--and when had she used that +half-forgotten nickname last, he wondered. "You imagine you are in love +with a girl because you happen to like the color of her eyes, or because +there is a curve about her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, +Olaf, as we women understand it." + +And wildly hideous and sad, it seemed to Colonel Musgrave--this dreary +parody of their old love-talk. Only, he dimly knew that she had +forgotten John Charteris existed, and that to her this moment seemed no +less sardonic. + +Charteris inhaled, lazily; yet, he did not like the trembling about +Patricia's mouth. Her hands, too, opened and shut tight before she +spoke. + +"It is too late now," she said, dully. "I gave you all there was to +give. You gave me just what Grandma Pendomer and all the others had left +you able to give. That remnant isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand +it. And, anyhow, it is too late now." + +Yet Patricia was remembering a time when Rudolph's voice held always +that grave, tender note in speaking to her; it seemed a great while ago. +And he was big and manly, just like his voice, Rudolph was; and he +looked very kind. Desperately, Patricia began to count over the times +her husband had offended her. Hadn't he talked to her in the most +unwarrantable manner only yesterday afternoon? + +"Too late!--oh, not a bit of it!" Musgrave cried. His voice sank +persuasively. "Why, Patricia, you are only thinking the matter over for +the first time. You have only begun to think of it. Why, there is the +boy--our boy, Patricia! Surely, you hadn't thought of Roger?" + +He had found the right chord at last. It quivered and thrilled under his +touch; and the sense of mastery leaped in his blood. Of a sudden, he +knew himself dominant. Her face was red, then white, and her eyes +wavered before the blaze of his, that held her, compellingly. + +"Now, honestly, just between you and me," the colonel said, +confidentially, "was there ever a better and braver and quainter and +handsomer boy in the world? Why, Patricia, surely, you wouldn't +willingly--of your own accord--go away from him, and never see him +again? Oh, you haven't thought, I tell you! Think, Patricia! Don't you +remember that first day, when I came into your room at the hospital and +he--ah, how wrinkled and red and old-looking he was then, wasn't he, +little wife? Don't you remember how he was lying on your breast, and how +I took you both in my arms, and held you close for a moment, and how for +a long, long while there wasn't anything left of the whole wide world +except just us three and God smiling down upon us? Don't you remember, +Patricia? Don't you remember his first tooth--why, we were as proud of +him, you and I, as if there had never been a tooth before in all the +history of the world! Don't you remember the first day he walked? Why, +he staggered a great distance--oh, nearly two yards!--and caught hold of +my hand, and laughed and turned back--to you. You didn't run away from +him then, Patricia. Are you going to do it now?" + +She struggled under his look. She had an absurd desire to cry, just that +he might console her. She knew he would. Why was it so hard to remember +that she hated Rudolph! Of course, she hated him; she loved that other +man yonder. His name was Jack. She turned toward Charteris, and the +reassuring smile with which he greeted her, impressed Patricia as being +singularly nasty. She hated both of them; she wanted--in that brief time +which remained for having anything--only her boy, her soft, warm little +Roger who had eyes like Rudolph's. + +"I--I--it's too late, Rudolph," she stammered, parrot-like. "If you had +only taken better care of me, Rudolph! If--No, it's too late, I tell +you! You will be kind to Roger. I am only weak and frivolous and +heartlesss. I am not fit to be his mother. I'm not fit, Rudolph! +Rudolph, I tell you I'm not fit! Ah, let me go, my dear!--in mercy, let +me go! For I haven't loved the boy as I ought to, and I am afraid to +look you in the face, and you won't let me take my eyes away--you won't +let me! Ah, Rudolph, let me go!" + +"Not fit?" His voice thrilled with strength, and pulsed with tender +cadences. "Ah, Patricia, I am not fit to be his father! But, between +us--between us, mightn't we do much for him? Come back to us, +Patricia--to me and the boy! We need you, my dear. Ah, I am only a +stolid, unattractive fogy, I know; but you loved me once, and--I am the +father of your child. My standards are out-of-date, perhaps, and in any +event they are not your standards, and that difference has broken many +ties between us; but I am the father of your child. You must--you _must_ +come back to me and the boy!" Musgrave caught her face between his +hands, and lifted it toward his. "Patricia, don't make any mistake! +There is nothing you care for so much as that boy. You can't give him +up! If you had to walk over red-hot ploughshares to come to him, you +would do it; if you could win him a moment's happiness by a lifetime of +poverty and misery and degradation, you would do it. And so would I, +little wife. That is the tie which still unites us; that is the tie +which is too strong ever to break. Come back to us, Patricia--to me and +the boy." + +"I--Jack, Jack, take me away!" she wailed helplessly. + +Charteris came forward with a smile. He was quite sure of Patricia now. + +"Colonel Musgrave," he said, with a faint drawl, "if you have entirely +finished your edifying and, I assure you, highly entertaining monologue, +I will ask you to excuse us. I--oh, man, man!" Charteris cried, not +unkindly, "don't you see it is the only possible outcome?" + +Musgrave faced him. The glow of hard-earned victory was pulsing in the +colonel's blood, but his eyes were chill stars. "Now, Jack," he said, +equably, "I am going to talk to you. In fact, I am going to discharge an +agreeable duty toward you." + +Musgrave drew close to him. Charteris shrugged his shoulders; his smile, +however, was not entirely satisfactory. It did not suggest enjoyment. + +"I don't blame you for being what you are," Musgrave went on, curtly. +"You were born so, doubtless. I don't blame a snake for being what it +is. But, when I see a snake, I claim the right to set my foot on its +head; when I see a man like you--well, this is the right I claim." + +Thereupon Rudolph Musgrave struck his half-brother in the face with his +open hand. The colonel was a strong man, physically, and, on this +occasion, he made no effort to curb his strength. + +"Now," Musgrave concluded, "you are going away from this place very +quickly, and you are going alone. You will do this because I tell you to +do so, and because you are afraid of me. Understand, also--if you will +be so good--that the only reason I don't give you a thorough thrashing +is that I don't think you are worth the trouble. I only want Patricia to +perceive exactly what sort of man you are." + +The blow staggered Charteris. He seemed to grow smaller. His clothes +seemed to hang more loosely about him. His face was paper-white, and the +red mark showed plainly upon it. + +"There would be no earthly sense in my hitting you back," he said +equably. "It would only necessitate my getting the thrashing which, I +can assure you, we are equally anxious to avoid. Of course you are able +to knock me down and so on, because you are nearly twice as big as I am. +I fail to see that proves anything in particular. Come, Patricia!" And +he turned to her, and reached out his hand. + +She shrank from him. She drew away from him, without any vehemence, as +if he had been some slimy, harmless reptile. A woman does not like to +see fear in a man's eyes; and there was fear in Mr. Charteris's eyes, +for all that he smiled. Patricia's heart sickened. She loathed him, and +she was a little sorry for him. + +"Oh, you cur, you cur!" she gasped, in a wondering whisper. Patricia +went to her husband, and held out her hands. She was afraid of him. She +was proud of him, the strong animal. "Take me away, Rudolph," she said, +simply; "take me away from that--that coward. Take me away, my dear. You +may beat me, too, if you like, Rudolph. I dare say I have deserved it. +But I want you to deal brutally with me, to carry me away by force, just +as you threatened to do the day we were married--at the Library, you +remember, when the man was crying 'Fresh oranges!' and you smelt so +deliciously of soap and leather and cigarette smoke." + +Musgrave took both her hands in his. He smiled at Charteris. + +The novelist returned the smile, intensifying its sweetness. "I fancy, +Rudolph," he said, "that, after all, I shall have to take that train +alone." + +Mr. Charteris continued, with a grimace: "You have no notion, though, +how annoying it is not to possess an iota of what is vulgarly considered +manliness. But what am I to do? I was not born with the knack of +enduring physical pain. Oh, yes, I am a coward, if you like to put it +nakedly; but I was born so, willy-nilly. Personally, if I had been +consulted in the matter, I would have preferred the usual portion of +valor. However! the sanctity of the hearth has been most edifyingly +preserved--and, after all, the woman is not worth squabbling about." + +There was exceedingly little of the mountebank in him now; he kicked +Patricia's portmanteau, frankly and viciously, as he stepped over it to +lift his own. Holding this in one hand, John Charteris spoke, honestly: + +"Rudolph, I had a trifle underrated your resources. For you are a brave +man--we physical cowards, you know, admire that above all things--and a +strong man and a clever man, in that you have adroitly played upon the +purely brutal traits of women. Any she-animal clings to its young and +looks for protection in its mate. Upon a higher ground I would have +beaten you, but as an animal you are my superior. Still, a thing done +has an end. You have won back your wife in open fight. I fancy, by the +way, that you have rather laid up future trouble for yourself in doing +so, but I honor the skill you have shown. Colonel Musgrave, it is to you +that, as the vulgar phrase it, I take off my hat." + +Thereupon, Mr. Charteris uncovered his head with perfect gravity, and +turned on his heel, and went down the road, whistling melodiously. + +Musgrave stared after him, for a while. The lust of victory died; the +tumult and passion and fervor were gone from Musgrave's soul. He could +very easily imagine the things Jack Charteris would say to Anne +concerning him; and the colonel knew that she would believe them all. He +had won the game; he had played it, heartily and skilfully and +successfully; and his reward was that the old bickerings with Patricia +should continue, and that Anne should be taught to loathe him. He +foresaw it all very plainly as he stood, hand in hand with his wife. + +But Anne would be happy. It was for that he had played. + + + + +VI + + +They came back to Matocton almost silently. The spell of the dawn was +broken; it was honest, garish day now, and they were both hungry. + +Patricia's spirits were rising, as a butterfly's might after a +thunderstorm. Since she had only a few months to live, she would at +least not waste them in squabbling. She would be conscientiously +agreeable to everybody. + +"Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph!" she cooed, "if I had only known all along that +you loved me!" + +"My dear," he protested, fondly, "it seemed such a matter of course." He +was a little tired, perhaps; the portmanteau seemed very heavy. + +"A woman likes to be told--a woman likes to be told every day. +Otherwise, she forgets," Patricia murmured. Then her face grew tenderly +reproachful. "Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph, see what your carelessness and +neglect has nearly led to! It nearly led to my running away with a man +like--like that! It would have been all your fault, Rudolph, if I had. +You know it would have been, Rudolph." + +And Patricia sighed once more, and then laughed and became magnanimous. + +"Yes--yes, after all, you are the boy's father." She smiled up at him +kindly and indulgently. "I forgive you, Rudolph," said Patricia. + +He must have shown that pardon from Patricia just now was not unflavored +with irony, for she continued, in another voice: "Who, after all, is the +one human being you love? You know that it's the boy, and just the boy +alone. I gave you that boy. You should remember that, I think--" + +"I do remember it, Patricia--" + +"I bore the child. I paid the price, not you," Patricia said, very +quiet. "No, I don't mean the price all women have to pay--" She paused +in their leisurely progress, and drew vague outlines in the roadway with +the ferrule of her umbrella before she looked up into Rudolph Musgrave's +face. She appraised it for a long while and quite as if her husband were +a stranger. + +"Yes, I could make you very sorry for me, if I wanted to." Her thoughts +ran thus. "But what's the use? You could only become an interminable +nuisance in trying to soothe my dying hours. You have just obstinately +squatted around in Lichfield and devoted all your time to being +beautiful and good and mooning around women for I don't know how many +years. You make me tired, and I have half a mind to tell you so right +now. And there really is no earthly sense in attempting to explain +things to you. You have so got into the habit of being beautiful and +good that you are capable of quoting Scripture after I have finished. +Then I would assuredly box your jaws, because I don't yearn to be a poor +stricken dear and weep on anybody's bosom. And I don't particularly care +about your opinion of me, anyway." + +Aloud she said: "Oh, well! let's go and get some breakfast." + + + + +VII + + +And thus the situation stayed. Patricia told him nothing. And Rudolph +Musgrave, knowing that according to his lights he had behaved not +unhandsomely, was the merest trifle patronizing and rather like a person +speaking from a superior plane in his future dealings with Patricia. +Moreover, he was engrossed at this time by his scholarly compilation of +Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to 1800, which was printed the +following February. + +She told him nothing. She was a devoted mother for two days' space, and +then candidly decided that Roger was developing into the most +insufferable of little prigs. + +"And, besides, if he had never been born I would quite probably have +lived to keep my teeth in a glass of water at night. And I can't help +thinking of that privilege being denied me whenever I look at him." + +She told Rudolph Musgrave nothing. She was finding it mildly amusing to +note how people came and went at Matocton, and to appraise these people +disinterestedly, because she would never see them again. + +Patricia was drawing her own conclusions as to Lichfield's aristocracy. +These people--for the most part a preposterously handsome race--were the +pleasantest of companions and their manners were perfection; but there +was enough of old Roger Stapylton's blood in Patricia's veins to make +her feel, however obscurely, that nobody is justified in living without +even an attempt at any personal achievement. The younger men evinced a +marked tendency to leave Lichfield, to make their homes elsewhere, she +noted, and they very often attained prominence; there was Joe Parkinson, +for instance, who had lunched at Oyster Bay only last Thursday, +according to the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_. And, meanwhile, the men of +her husband's generation clung to their old mansions, and were +ornamental, certainly, and were, very certainly, profoundly +self-satisfied; for they adhered to the customs of yesterday under the +comfortable delusion that this was the only way to uphold yesterday's +ideals. But what, in heaven's name, had any of these men of Rudolph +Musgrave's circle ever done beyond enough perfunctory desk-work, say, to +furnish him food and clothes? + +"A hamlet of Hamlets," was Patricia's verdict as to Lichfield--"whose +actual tragedy isn't that their fathers were badly treated, but that +they themselves are constitutionally unable to do anything except talk +about how badly their fathers were treated." + +No, it was not altogether that these men were indolent. Rudolph and +Rudolph's peers had been reared in the belief that when any manual labor +became inevitable, you as a matter of course entrusted its execution to +a negro; and, forced themselves to labor, they not unnaturally complied +with an ever-present sense of unfair treatment, and, in consequence, +performed the work inefficiently. Lichfield had no doubt preserved a +comely manner of living; but it had produced in the last half-century +nothing of real importance except John Charteris. + + + + +VIII + + +For Charteris was important. Patricia was rereading all the books that +Charteris had published, and they engrossed her with an augmenting +admiration. + +But it is unnecessary to dilate upon the marvelous and winning pictures +of life in Lichfield before the War between the States which Charteris +has painted in his novels. "Even as the king of birds that with +unwearied wing soars nearest to the sun, yet wears upon his breast the +softest down,"--as we learn from no less eminent authority than that of +the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_--"so Mr. Charteris is equally expert in +depicting the derring-do and tenderness of those glorious days of +chivalry, of fair women and brave men, of gentle breeding, of splendid +culture and wholesome living." + +Patricia was not a little puzzled by these books. The traditional +Lichfield, she decided in the outcome, may very possibly have been just +the trick-work of a charlatan's cleverness; but, even in that event, +here were the tales of life in Lichfield--ardent, sumptuous and +fragrant throughout with the fragrance of love and roses, of rhyme and +of youth's lovely fallacies; and for the pot-pourri, if it deserved no +higher name, all who believed that living ought to be a uniformly noble +transaction could not fail to be grateful eternally. + +Esthetic values apart--and, indeed, to all such values Patricia accorded +a provisional respect--what most impressed her Stapyltonian mind was the +fact that these books represented, in a perfectly tangible way, success. +Patricia very heartily admired success when it was brevetted as such by +the applause of others. And while to be a noted stylist, and even to be +reasonably sure of annotated reissuement for the plaguing of unborn +schoolchildren, was all well enough, in an unimportant, high-minded way, +Patricia was far more vividly impressed by the blunt figures which told +how many of John Charteris's books had been bought and paid for. She +accepted these figures as his publishers gave them forth, implicitly; +and she marveled over and took odd joy in these figures. They enabled +her to admire Charteris's books without reservation. + +By this time Mrs. Ashmeade had managed, in the most natural manner, to +tell Patricia a deal concerning Charteris. No halo graced the portrait +Mrs. Ashmeade painted.... But, indeed, Patricia now viewed John +Charteris, considered as a person, without any particular bias. She did +not especially care--now--what the man had done or had omitted to do. + +But the venerable incongruity of the writer and his work confronted her +intriguingly. A Charteris writes _In Old Lichfield;_ a Cockney +drug-clerk writes _The Eve of St. Agnes;_ a genteel printer evolves a +Lovelace; and a cutpurse pens the _Ballad of Dead Ladies_ in a brothel. +It is manifestly impossible; and it happens. + +So here, then, was a knave who held, somehow, the keys to a courtlier +and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for +all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing? +Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous +maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And, +anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle put +the best of himself into these books, had somehow clarified the +abhorrent mixture of ability and evil which was John Charteris; and the +best in him she found, on this hypothesis, to be a deal more admirable +than the best in Rudolph Musgrave. + +"It _is_ a part of Jack," she fiercely said. "It is, because I know it +is. All this is part of him--as much a part of him as the cowardice and +the trickery. So I don't really care if he is a liar and a coward. I +ought to, I suppose. But at the bottom of my heart I admire him. He has +made something; he has created these beautiful books, and they will be +here when we are all dead. He doesn't leave the world just as he found +it. That is the only real cowardice, I think--especially as I am going +to do it----" + +And later she said, belligerently: "If I had been a man I could have at +least assassinated somebody who was prominent. I do wish Rudolph was +not such a stick-in-the-mud. And I wish I liked Rudolph better. But on +the whole I prefer the physical coward to the moral one. Rudolph simply +bores me stiff with his benevolent airs. He just walks around the place +forgiving me sixty times to the hour, and if he doesn't stop it I am +going to slap him." + +Thus Patricia. + + + + +IX + + +The world knows how Charteris was killed in Fairhaven by Jasper +Hardress--the husband of "that flighty Mrs. Hardress" Anne had spoken +of. + +"And I hardly know," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "whether more to admire the +justice or the sardonic humor of the performance. Here after hundreds of +entanglements with women, John Charteris manages to be shot by a jealous +maniac on account of a woman with whom--for a wonder--his relations were +proven to be innocent. The man needed killing, but it is asking too much +of human nature to put up with his being made a martyr of." + +She cried a little, though. "It--it's because I remember him when he was +turning out his first mustache," she explained, lucidly. + + * * * * * + +But with the horror and irony of John Charteris's assassination the +biographer of Rudolph Musgrave has really nothing to do save in so far +as this event influenced the life of Rudolph Musgrave. + +It was on the day of Charteris's death--a fine, clear afternoon in late +September--that Rudolph Musgrave went bass-fishing with some eight of +his masculine guests. Luncheon was brought to them in a boat about two +o'clock, along with the day's mail. + +"I say--! But listen, everybody!" cried Alfred Chayter, whose mail +included a morning paper--the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_, in fact. + +He read aloud. + +"I wish I could be with Anne," thought Colonel Musgrave. "It may be I +could make things easier." + +But Anne was in Lichfield now.... + +He had just finished dressing for supper when it occurred to him that +since their return from the river he had not seen Patricia. He was +afraid that Patricia, also, would be upset by this deplorable news. + +As he crossed the hall Virginia came out of Patricia's rooms. The +colonel raised his voice in speaking to her, for with age Virginia was +growing very deaf. + +"Yaas, suh," she said, "I'm doin' middlin' well, suh, thank yeh, suh. +Jus' took the evenin' mail to Miss Patricy, like I always do, suh." She +went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an +idol's. + +He went into Patricia's bedroom. Patricia had been taking an afternoon +nap, and had not risen from the couch, where she lay with three or four +unopened letters upon her breast. Two she had opened and dropped upon +the floor. She seemed not to hear him when he spoke her name, and yet +she was not asleep, because her eyes were partly unclosed. + +There was no purple glint in them, as once there had been always. Her +countenance, indeed, showed everywhere less brightly tinted than +normally it should be. Her heavy copper-colored hair, alone undimmed, +seemed, like some parasitic growth (he thought), to sustain its beauty +by virtue of having drained Patricia's body of color and vitality. + +There was a newspaper in her right hand, with flamboyant headlines, +because to Lichfield the death of John Charteris was an event of +importance. + +Patricia seemed very young. You saw that she had suffered. You knew it +was not fair to hurt a child like that. + +But, indeed, Rudolph Musgrave hardly realized as yet that Patricia was +dead. For Colonel Musgrave was thinking of that time when this same +Patricia had first come to him, fire-new from the heart of an ancient +sunset, and he had noted, for the first time, that her hair was like the +reflection of a sunset in rippling waters, and that her mouth was an +inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her eyes +were purple glimpses of infinity. + +"This same Patricia!" he said, aloud. + + + + +PART NINE - RELICS + + "You have chosen the love 'that lives sans murmurings, + Sans passion,' and incuriously endures + The gradual lapse of time. You have chosen as yours + A level life of little happenings; + And through the long autumnal evenings + Lord Love, no doubt, is of the company, + And hugs your ingleside contentedly, + Smiles at old griefs, and rustles needless wings. + + "And yet I think that sometimes memories + Of divers trysts, of blood that urged like wine + On moonlit nights, and of that first long kiss + Whereby your lips were first made one with mine, + Awake and trouble you, and loving is + Once more important and perhaps divine." + + ALLEN ROSSITER. _Two in October._ + + + + +I + + +To those who knew John Charteris only through the medium of the printed +page it must have appeared that the novelist was stayed in mid-career by +an accident of unrelieved and singular brutality. And truly, thus +extinguished by the unfounded jealousy of a madman, the force of +Charteris's genius seemed, and seems to-day, as emphasized by that +sinister caprice of chance which annihilated it. + +But people in Lichfield, after the manner of each prophet's countrymen, +had their own point of view. The artist always stood between these +people and the artist's handiwork, in part obscuring it. + +In any event, it was generally agreed in Lichfield that Anne Charteris's +conduct after her husband's death was not all which could be desired. To +begin with, she attended the funeral, in black, it was true, but wearing +only the lightest of net veils pinned under her chin--"more as if she +were going somewhere on the train, you know, than as if she were in +genuine bereavement." + +"Jack didn't approve of mourning. He said it was a heathen survival." +That was the only explanation she offered. + +It seemed inadequate to Lichfield. It was preferable, as good taste +went, for a widow to be too overcome to attend her husband's funeral at +all. And Mrs. Charteris had not wept once during the church ceremony, +and had not even had hysterics during the interment at Cedarwood; and +she had capped a scandalous morning's work by remaining with the +undertaker and the bricklayers to supervise the closing of John +Charteris's grave. + +"Why, but of course. It is the last thing I will ever be allowed to do +for him," she had said, in innocent surprise. "Why shouldn't I?" + +Her air was such that you were both to talk to her about appearances. + +"Because she isn't a bit like a widow," as Mrs. Ashmeade pointed out. +"Anybody can condole with a widow, and devote two outer sheets to +explaining that you realize nothing you can say will be of any comfort +to her, and begin at the top of the inside page by telling her how much +better off he is to-day--which I have always thought a double-edged +assertion when advanced to a man's widow. But you cannot condole with a +lantern whose light has been blown out. That is what Anne is." + +Mrs. Ashmeade meditated and appeared dissatisfied. "And John Charteris +of all people!" + +Anne was presently about the Memorial Edition of her husband's +collected writings. It was magnificently printed and when marketed +achieved a flattering success. Robert Etheridge Townsend was +commissioned to write the authorized _Life of John Charteris_ and to +arrange the two volumes of _Letters_. + +Anne was considered an authority on literature and art in general, +through virtue of reflected glory. And in the interviews she granted +various journalists it was noticeable that she no longer referred to +"Jack" or to "Mr. Charteris," but to "my husband." To have been his wife +was her one claim on estimation. And, for the rest, it is inadequate to +love the memory of a martyr. Worship is demanded; and so the wife became +the priestess. + + + + +II + + +Into Colonel Musgrave's mental processes during this period it will not +do to pry too closely. The man had his white nights and his battles, in +part with real grief and regret, and in part with sundry emotions which +he took on faith as the emotions he ought to have, and, therefore, +manifestly, suffered under.... "Patricia was my wife, Jack was my +brother," ran his verdict in the outcome; and beyond that he did not +care to go. + +For death cowed his thoughts. In the colonel's explicit theology dead +people were straightway conveyed to either one or the other of two +places. He had very certainly never known anybody who in his opinion +merited the torments of his orthodox Gehenna; so that in imagination he +vaguely populated its blazing corridors with Nero and Judas and Caesar +Borgia and Henry VIII, and Spanish Inquisitors and the aboriginal +American Indians--excepting of course his ancestress Pocahontas--and +with Benedict Arnold and all the "carpet-baggers" and suchlike other +eminent practitioners of depravity. For no one whom Rudolph Musgrave +had ever encountered in the flesh had been really and profoundly wicked, +Rudolph Musgrave considered; and so, he always gravely estimated +this-or-that acquaintance, after death, to be "better off, poor +fellow"--as the colonel phrased it, with a tinge of +self-contradiction--even if he actually refrained in fancy from endowing +the deceased with aureate harps and crowns and footgear. In fine, death +cowed the colonel's thoughts; beyond the grave they did not care to +venture, and when confronted with that abyss they decorously balked. + +Patricia and Jack were as a matter of course "better off," then--and, +miraculously purged of faults, with all their defects somehow remedied, +the colonel's wife and brother, with Agatha and the colonel's other +interred relatives, were partaking of dignified joys in bright supernal +iridescent realms, which the colonel resignedly looked forward to +entering, on some comfortably remote day or another, and thus rejoining +his transfigured kindred.... Such was the colonel's charitable decision, +in the forming whereof logic was in no way implicated. For religion, as +the colonel would have told you sedately, was not a thing to be reasoned +about. Attempting to do that, you became in Rudolph Musgrave's honest +eyes regrettably flippant. + +Meanwhile Cousin Lucy Fentnor was taking care of the colonel and little +Roger. And Lichfield, long before the lettering on Patricia's tombstone +had time to lose its first light dusty gray, had accredited Cousin Lucy +Fentnor with illimitable willingness to become Mrs. Rudolph Musgrave, +upon proper solicitation, although such tittle-tattle is neither here +nor there; for at worst, a widowed, childless and impoverished +second-cousin, discreetly advanced in her forties, was entitled to keep +house for the colonel in his bereavement, as a jointly beneficial +arrangement, without provoking scandal's tongue to more than a jocose +innuendo or two when people met for "auction"--that new-fangled +perplexing variant of bridge, just introduced, wherein you bid on the +suits.... And, besides, Cousin Lucy Fentnor (as befitted any one born an +Allardyce) was to all accounts a notable housekeeper, famed alike for +the perilous glassiness of her hardwood floors, her dexterous management +of servants, her Honiton-braid fancy-work (familiar to every patron of +Lichfield charity bazaars), and her unparalleled calves-foot jelly. +Under Cousin Lucy Fentnor's systematized coddling little Roger grew like +the proverbial ill weed, and the colonel likewise waxed perceptibly in +girth. + +Thus it was that accident and a woman's intervention seemed once more to +combine in shielding Rudolph Musgrave from discomfort. And in +consequence it was considered improbable that at this late day the +colonel would do the proper thing by Clarice Pendomer, as, at the first +tidings of Patricia's death, had been authentically rumored among the +imaginative; and, in fact, Lichfield no longer considered that +necessary. The claim of outraged morality against these two had been +thrown out of court, through some unworded social statute of +limitation, as far as Lichfield went. Of course it was interesting to +note that the colonel called at Mrs. Pendomer's rather frequently +nowadays; but, then, Clarice Pendomer had all sorts of callers +now--though not many in skirts--and she played poker with men for money +until unregenerate hours of the night, and was reputed with a wealth of +corroborative detail to have even less discussable sources of income: so +that, indeed, Clarice Pendomer was now rather precariously retained +within the social pale through her initial precaution of having been +born a Bellingham.... But all such tittle-tattle, as has been said, is +quite beside the mark, since with the decadence of Clarice Pendomer this +chronicle has, in the outcome, as scant concern as with the marital +aspirations of Cousin Lucy Fentnor. + +And, moreover, the colonel--in colloquial phrase at least--went +everywhere. After the six months of comparative seclusion which decency +exacted of his widowerhood--and thereby afforded him ample leisure to +complete and publish his _Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to +1800_--the colonel, be it repeated, went everywhere; and people found +him no whit the worse company for his black gloves and the somber band +stitched to his coatsleeve. So Lichfield again received him gladly, as +the social triumph of his generation. Handsome and trim and affable, no +imaginable tourist could possibly have divined--for everybody in +Lichfield knew, of course--that Rudolph Musgrave had rounded his +half-century; and he stayed, as ever, invaluable to Lichfield matrons +alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town" girl, the management +of a cotillon, and the prevention of unpleasant pauses among incongruous +dinner-companies. + +But of Anne Charteris he saw very little nowadays. And, indeed, it was +of her own choice that Anne lived apart from Lichfieldian junketings, +contented with her dreams and her pride therein, and her remorseful +tender memories of the things she might have done for Jack and had not +done--lived upon exalted levels nowadays, to which the colonel's more +urbane bereavement did not aspire. + + + + +III + + +"Charteris" was engraved in large, raised letters upon the granite +coping over which Anne stepped to enter the trim burial-plot wherein her +dead lay. + +The place to-day is one of the "points of interest" in Cedarwood. +Tourists, passing through Lichfield, visit it as inevitably as they do +the graves of the Presidents, the Southern generals and the many other +famous people which the old cemetery contains; and the negro hackmen of +Lichfield are already profuse in inaccurate information concerning its +occupant. In a phrase, the post card which pictures "E 9436--Grave of +John Charteris" is among the seven similar misinterpretations of +localities most frequently demanded in Lichfieldian drugstores and +news-stands. + +Her victoria had paused a trifle farther up the hill, where two big +sycamores overhung the roadway. She came into the place alone, walking +quickly, for she was unwarrantably flustered by her late encounter. And +when she found, of all people, Rudolph Musgrave standing by her +husband's grave, as in a sort of puzzled and yet reverent meditation, +she was, and somehow as half-guiltily, assuring herself there was no +possible reason for the repugnance--nay, the rage,--which a mere +glimpse of trudging, painted and flamboyant Clarice Pendomer had +kindled. Yet it must be recorded that Anne had always detested Clarice. + +Now Anne spoke, as the phrase runs, before she thought. "She came with +you!" + +And he answered, as from the depths of an uncalled-for comprehension +which was distinctly irritating: + +"Yes. And Harry, too, for that matter. Only our talk got somehow to be +not quite the sort it would be salutary for him to take an interest in. +So we told Harry to walk on slowly to the gate, and be sure not to do +any number of things he would never have thought of if we hadn't +suggested them. You know how people are with children----" + +"Harry is--her boy?" Anne, being vexed, had almost added--"and yours?" + +"Oh----! Say the _fons et origo_ of the Pendomer divorce case, poor +little chap. Yes, Harry is her boy." + +Anne said, and again, as she perceived within the moment, a thought too +expeditiously: "I wish you wouldn't bring them here, Colonel Musgrave." + +Indeed, it seemed to her flat desecration that Musgrave should have +brought his former mistress into this hallowed plot of ground. She did +not mind--illogically, perhaps--his bringing the child. + +"Eh----? Oh, yes," said Colonel Musgrave. He was sensibly nettled. "You +wish 'Colonel Musgrave' wouldn't bring them here. But then, you see, we +had been to Patricia's grave. And we remembered how Jack stood by us +both when--when things bade fair to be even more unpleasant for Clarice +and myself than they actually were. You shouldn't, I think, grudge even +such moral reprobates the privilege of being properly appreciative of +what he did for both of us. Besides, you always come on Saturdays, you +know. We couldn't very well anticipate that you would be here this +afternoon." + +So he had been at pains to spy upon her! Anne phrased it thus in her +soul, being irritated, and crisply answered: + +"I am leaving Lichfield to-morrow. I had meant this to be my farewell to +them until October." + +Colonel Musgrave had glanced toward the little headstone, with its +rather lengthy epitaph, which marked the resting-place of this woman's +only child; and then to the tall shaft whereon was engraved just "John +Charteris." The latter inscription was very characteristic of her +view-point, he reflected; and yet reasonable, too; as one might mention +a Hector or a Goethe, say, without being at pains to disclaim allusion +to the minor sharers of either name. + +"Yes," he said. "Well, I shall not intrude." + +"No--wait," she dissented. + +Her voice was altered now, for there had come into it a marvelous +gentleness. + +And Colonel Musgrave remained motionless. The whole world was +motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him. + +Sunset was at hand. On one side was the high wooden fence which showed +the boundary of Cedarwood, and through its palings and above it, was +visible the broad, shallow river, comfortably colored, for the most +part, like _café au lait_, but flecked with many patches of foam and +flat iron-colored rocks and innumerable islets, some no bigger than a +billiard-table, but with even the tiniest boasting a tree or two. On the +other--westward--was a mounting vista of close-shaven turf, and many +copings, like magnified geometrical problems, and a host of stunted +growing things--with the staid verdancy of evergreens predominant--and a +multitude of candid shafts and slabs and crosses and dwarfed lambs and +meditant angels. + +Some of these thronged memorials were tinged with violet, and others +were a-glitter like silver, just as the ordered trees shaded them or no +from the low sun. The disposition of all worldly affairs, the man dimly +knew, was very anciently prearranged by an illimitable and, upon the +whole, a kindly wisdom. + +She was considering the change in him. Anne was recollecting that +Colonel Musgrave had somewhat pointedly avoided her since her widowhood. +He seemed almost a stranger nowadays. + +And she could not recognize in the man any resemblance to the boy whom +she remembered--so long ago--excepting just his womanish mouth, which +was as in the old time very full and red and sensitive. And, +illogically enough, both this great change in him and this one feature +that had never changed annoyed her equally. + +She was also worried by his odd tone of flippancy. It jarred, it +vaguely--for the phrase has no equivalent--"rubbed her the wrong way." +Here at a martyr's tomb it was hideously out-of-place, and yet she did +not see her way clear to rebuke. So she remained silent. + +But Rudolph Musgrave was uncanny in some respects. For he said within +the moment, "I am not a bit like John Charteris, am I?" + +"No," she answered, quietly. It had been her actual thought. + +Anne stayed a tiny while quite motionless. Her eyes saw nothing +physical. It was the attitude, Colonel Musgrave reflected, of one who +listens to a far-off music and, incommunicably, you knew that the music +was of a martial sort. She was all in black, of course, very slim and +pure and beautiful. The great cluster of red roses, loosely held, was +like blood against the somber gown. + +The widow of John Charteris, in fine, was a very different person from +that Anne Willoughby whom Rudolph Musgrave had loved so long and long +ago. This woman had tasted of tonic sorrows unknown to Rudolph Musgrave, +and had got consolation too, somehow, in far half-credible uplands +unvisited by him. But, he knew, she lived, and was so exquisite, mainly +by virtue of that delusion which he, of all men, had preserved; Anne +Charteris was of his creation, his masterpiece; and viewing her, he was +aware of great reverence and joy. + +Anne was happy. It was for that he had played. + +But aloud, "I am envious," Rudolph Musgrave declared. "He is the single +solitary man I ever knew whose widow was contented to be simply his +relict for ever and ever, amen. For you will always be just the woman +John Charteris loved, won't you? Yes, if you lived to be thirty-seven +years older than Methuselah, and every genius and potentate in the world +should come a-wooing in the meantime, it never would occur to you that +you could possibly be anything, even to an insane person, except his +relict. And he has been dead now all of three whole years! So I am +envious, just as we ordinary mortals can't help being of you both; +and--may I say it?--I am glad." + + + + +IV + + +They were standing thus when a boy of ten or eleven came unhurriedly +into the "section." He assumed possession of Colonel Musgrave's hand as +though the action were a matter of course. + +"I got lost, Colonel Musgrave," the child composedly announced. "I +walked ever so far, and the gate wasn't where we left it. And the roads +kept turning and twisting so, it seemed I'd never get anywhere. I don't +like being lost when it's getting dark and there's so many dead people +'round, do you?" + +The colonel was moved to disapproval. "Young man, I suppose your poor +deserted mother is looking for you everywhere, and has probably torn out +every solitary strand of hair she possesses by this time." + +"I reckon she is," the boy assented. The topic did not appear to be in +his eyes of preëminent importance. + +Then Anne Charteris said, "Harry," and her voice was such that Rudolph +Musgrave wheeled with amazement in his face. + +The boy had gone to her complaisantly, and she stood now with one hand +on either of his shoulders, regarding him. Her lips were parted, but +they did not move at all. + +"You are Mrs. Pendomer's boy, aren't you?" said Anne Charteris, in a +while. She had some difficulty in articulation. + +"Yes'm," Harry assented, "and we come here 'most every Wednesday, and, +please, ma'am, you're hurtin' me." + +"I didn't mean to--dear," the woman added, painfully. "Don't interfere +with me, Rudolph Musgrave! Your mother must be very fond of you, Harry. +I had a little boy once. I was fond of him. He would have been eleven +years old last February." + +"Please, ma'am, I wasn't eleven till April, and I ain't tall for my age, +but Tubby Parsons says----" + +The woman gave an odd, unhuman sound. "Not until April!" + +"Harry," said Colonel Musgrave then, "an enormous whale is coming down +the river in precisely two minutes. Perhaps if you were to look through +the palings of that fence you might see him. I don't suppose you would +care to, though?" + +And Harry strolled resignedly toward the fence. Harry Pendomer did not +like this funny lady who had hurt, frightened eyes. He did not believe +in the whale, of course, any more than he did in Santa Claus. But like +most children, he patiently accepted the fact that grown people are +unaccountable overlords appointed by some vast _bêtise_, whom, if only +through prudential motives, it is preferable to humor. + + + + +V + + +Colonel Musgrave stood now upon the other side of John Charteris's +grave--just in the spot that was reserved for her own occupancy some +day. + +"You are ill, Anne. You are not fit to be out. Go home." + +"I had a little boy once," she said. "'But that's all past and gone, and +good times and bad times and all times pass over.' There's an odd simple +music in the sentence, isn't there? Yet I remember it chiefly because I +used to read that book to him and he loved it. And it was my child that +died. Why is this other child so like him?" + +"Oh, then, that's it, is it?" said Rudolph Musgrave, as in relief. +"Bless me, I suppose all these little shavers are pretty much alike. I +can only tell Roger from the other boys by his red head. Humanity in the +raw, you know. Still, it is no wonder it gave you a turn. You had much +better go home, however, and not take any foolish risks, and put your +feet in hot water, and rub cologne on your temples, and do all the other +suitable things----" + +"I remember now," she continued, without any apparent emotion, and as +though he had not spoken. "When I came into the room you were saying +that the child must be considered. You were both very angry, and I was +alarmed--foolishly alarmed, perhaps. And my--and John Charteris said, +'Let him tell, then'--and you told me--" + +"The truth, Anne." + +"And he sat quietly by. Oh, if he'd had the grace, the common +manliness--!" She shivered here. "But he never interrupted you. I--I was +not looking at him. I was thinking how vile you were. And when you had +ended, he said, 'My dear, I am sorry you should have been involved in +this. But since you are, I think we can assure Rudolph that both of us +will regard his confidence as sacred.' Then I remembered him, and +thought how noble he was! And all those years that were so happy, hour +by hour, he was letting you--meet his bills!" She seemed to wrench out +the inadequate metaphor. + +You could hear the far-off river, now, faint as the sound of boiling +water. + +After a few pacings Colonel Musgrave turned upon her. He spoke with a +curious simplicity. + +"There isn't any use in lying to you. You wouldn't believe. You would +only go to some one else--some woman probably,--who would jump at the +chance of telling you everything and a deal more. Yes, there are a great +many 'they _do_ say's' floating about. This was the only one that came +near being--serious. The man was very clever.--Oh, he wasn't vulgarly +lecherous. He was simply--Jack Charteris. He always irritated Lichfield, +though, by not taking Lichfield very seriously. You would hear every +by-end of retaliative and sniggered-over mythology, and in your present +state of mind you would believe all of them. I happen to know that a +great many of these stories are not true." + +"A great many of these stories," Anne repeated, "aren't true! A great +many aren't! That ought to be consoling, oughtn't it?" She spoke without +a trace of bitterness. + +"I express myself very badly. What I really mean, what I am aiming at, +is that I wish you would let me answer any questions you might like to +ask, because I will answer them truthfully. Very few people would. You +see, you go about the world so like a gray-stone saint who has just +stepped down from her niche for the fraction of a second," he added, as +with venom, "that it is only human nature to dislike you." + +Anne was not angry. It had come to her, quite as though she were +considering some other woman, that what the man said was, in a fashion, +true. + +"There is sunlight and fresh air in the street," John Charteris had been +wont to declare, "and there is a culvert at the corner. I think it is a +mistake for us to emphasize the culvert." + +So he had trained her to disbelieve in its existence. She saw this now. +It did not matter. It seemed to her that nothing mattered any more. + +"I've only one question, I think. Why did you do it?" She spoke with +bright amazement in her eyes. + +"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he seriocomically deplored. "Why, because it was +such a noble thing to do. It was so like the estimable young man in a +play, you know, who acknowledges the crime he never committed and takes +a curtain-call immediately afterwards. In fine, I simply observed to +myself, with the late Monsieur de Bergerac, 'But what a gesture!'" And +he parodied an actor's motion in this rôle. + +She stayed unsmiling and patiently awaiting veracity. Anne did not +understand that Colonel Musgrave was telling the absolute truth. And so, + +"You haven't _any_ sense of humor," he lamented. "You used to have a +deal, too, before you took to being conscientiously cheerful, and +diffusing sweetness and light among your cowering associates. Well, it +was because it helped him a little. Oh, I am being truthful now. I had +some reason to dislike Jack Charteris, but odd as it is, I know to-day I +never did. I ought to have, perhaps. But I didn't." + +"My friend, you are being almost truthful. But I want the truth entire." + +"It isn't polite to disbelieve people," he reproved her; "or at the very +least, according to the best books on etiquette, you ought not to do it +audibly. Would you mind if I smoked? I could be more veracious then. +There is something in tobacco that makes frankness a matter of course. I +thank you." + +He produced an amber holder, fitted a cigarette into it, and presently +inhaled twice. He said, with a curt voice: + +"The reason, naturally, was you. You may remember certain things that +happened just before John Charteris came and took you. Oh, that is +precisely what he did! You are rather a narrow-minded woman now, in +consequence--or in my humble opinion, at least--and deplorably superior. +It pleased the man to have in his house--if you will overlook my +venturing into metaphor,--one cool room very sparsely furnished where he +could come when the mood seized him. He took the raw material from me, +wherewith to build that room, because he wanted that room. I acquiesced, +because I had not the skill wherewith to fight him." + +Anne understood him now, as with a great drench of surprise. And fear +was what she felt in chief when she saw for just this moment as though +it had lightened, the man's face transfigured, and tender, and strange +to her. + +"I tried to buy your happiness, to--yes, just to keep you blind +indefinitely. Had the price been heavier, I would have paid it the more +gladly. Fate has played a sorry trick. _You_ would never have seen +through him. My dear, I have wanted very often to shake you," he said. + +And she knew, in a glorious terror, that she desired him to shake her, +and as she had never desired anything else in life. + +"Oh, well, I am just a common, ordinary, garden-sort of fool. The +Musgraves always are, in one fashion or another," he sulkily concluded. +And now the demigod was merely Rudolph Musgrave again, and she was not +afraid any longer, but only inexpressibly fordone. + +"Isn't that like a woman?" he presently demanded of the June heavens. +"To drag something out of a man with inflexibility, monomania and moral +grappling-irons, and _then_ not like it! Oh, very well! I am disgusted +by your sex's axiomatic variability. I shall take Harry to his fond +mamma at once." + +She did not say anything. A certain new discovery obsessed her like a +piece of piercing music. + +Then Rudolph Musgrave gave the tiniest of gestures downward. "And I have +told you this, in chief, because we two remember him. He wanted you. He +took you. You are his. You will always be. He gave you just a fragment +of himself. That fragment was worth more than everything I had to +offer." + +Anne very carefully arranged her roses on the ivy-covered grave. "I do +not know--meanwhile, I give these to our master. And my real widowhood +begins to-day." + +And as she rose he looked at her across the colorful mound, and smiled, +half as with embarrassment. A lie, he thought, might ameliorate the +situation, and he bravely hazarded a prodigious one. "Is it necessary to +tell you that Jack loved you? And that the others never really counted?" + +He rejoiced to see that Anne believed him. "No," she assented, "no, not +with him. Oddly enough, I am proud of that, even now. But--don't you +see?--I never loved him. I was just his priestess--the priestess of a +stucco god! Otherwise, I would know it wasn't his fault, but altogether +that of--the others." + +He grimaced and gave a bantering flirt of his head. He said, with +quizzing eyes: + +"Would it do any good to quote Lombroso, and Maudsley, and Gall, and +Krafft-Ebing, and Flechsig, and so on? and to tell you that the +excessive use of one brain faculty must necessarily cause a lack of +nutriment to all the other brain-cells? It would be rather up-to-date. +There is a deal I could tell you also as to what poisonous blood he +inherited; but to do this I have not the right." And then Rudolph +Musgrave said in all sincerity: "'A wild, impetuous whirlwind of passion +and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly _melody_ dwelling in +the heart of it.'" + +She had put aside alike the drolling and the palliative suggestion, like +flimsy veils. "I think it wouldn't do any good whatever. When growing +things are broken by the whirlwind, they don't, as a rule, discuss the +theory of air-currents as a consolation. Men such as he was take what +they desire. It isn't fair--to us others. But it's true, for all that--" + +Their eyes met warily; and for no reason which they shared in common +they smiled together. + +"Poor little Lady of Shalott," said Rudolph Musgrave, "the mirror is +cracked from side to side, isn't it? I am sorry. For life is not so +easily disposed of. And there is only life to look at now, and life is a +bewilderingly complex business, you will find, because the laws of it +are so childishly simple--and implacable. And one of these laws seems to +be that in our little planet, might makes right--" + +He stayed to puff his cigarette. + +"Oh, Rudolph dear, don't--don't be just a merry-Andrew!" she cried +impulsively, before he had time to continue, which she perceived he +meant to do, as if it did not matter. + +And he took her full meaning, quite as he had been used in the old times +to discourse upon a half-sentence. "I am afraid I am that, rather," he +said, reflectively. "But then Clarice and I could hardly have weathered +scandal except by making ourselves particularly agreeable to everybody. +And somehow I got into the habit of making people laugh. It isn't very +difficult. I am rather an adept at telling stories which just graze +impropriety, for instance. You know, they call me the social triumph of +my generation. And people are glad to see me because I am 'so awfully +funny' and 'simply killing' and so on. And I suppose it tells in the +long run--like the dyer's hand, you know." + +"It does tell." Anne was thinking it would always tell. And that, too, +would be John Charteris's handiwork. + +Ensued a silence. Rudolph Musgrave was painstakingly intent upon his +cigarette. A nestward-plunging bird called to his mate impatiently. +Then Anne shook her head impatiently. + +"Come, while I'm thinking, I will drive you back to Lichfield." + +"Oh, no; that wouldn't do at all," he said, with absolute decision. "No, +you see I have to return the boy. And I can't quite imagine your +carriage waiting at the doors of 'that Mrs. Pendomer.'" + +"Oh," Anne fleetingly thought, "_he_ would have understood." But aloud +she only said: "And do you think I hate her any longer? Yes, it is true +I hated her until to-day, and now I'm just sincerely sorry for her. For +she and I--and you and even the child yonder--and all that any of us is +to-day--are just so many relics of John Charteris. Yet he has done with +us--at last!" + +She said this with an inhalation of the breath; but she did not look at +him. + +"Take care!" he said, with an unreasonable harshness. "For I forewarn +you I am imagining vain things." + +"I'm not afraid, somehow." But Anne did not look at him. + +He saw as with a rending shock how like the widow of John Charteris was +to Anne Willoughby; and unforgotten pulses, very strange and irrational +and dear, perplexed him sorely. He debated, and flung aside the +cigarette as an out-moded detail of his hobbling part. + +"You say I did a noble thing for you. I tried to. But quixotism has its +price. To-day I am not quite the man who did that thing. John Charteris +has set his imprint too deep upon us. We served his pleasure. We are not +any longer the boy and girl who loved each other." + +She waited in the rising twilight with a yet averted face. The world was +motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him. And the +disposition of all worldly affairs, the man dimly knew, was very +anciently prearranged by an illimitable and, upon the whole, a kindly +wisdom. + +So that, "My dear, my dear!" he swiftly said: "I don't think I can word +just what my feeling is for you. Always my view of the world has been +that you existed, and that some other people existed--as accessories--" + +Then he was silent for a heart-beat, appraising her. His hands lifted +toward her and fell within the moment, as if it were in impotence. + +Anne spoke at last, and the sweet voice of her was very glad and proud +and confident. + +"My friend, remember that I have not thanked you. You have done the most +foolish and--the manliest thing I ever knew a man to do, just for my +sake. And I have accepted it as if it were a matter of course. And I +shall always do so. Because it was your right to do this very brave and +foolish thing for me. I know you joyed in doing it. Rudolph ... you +cannot understand how glad I am you joyed in doing it." + +Their eyes met. It is not possible to tell you all they were aware of +through that moment, because it is a knowledge so rarely apprehended, +and even then for such a little while, that no man who has sensed it can +remember afterward aught save the splendor and perfection of it. + + * * * * * + +And yet Anne looked back once. There was just the tall, stark shaft, and +on it "John Charteris." The thing was ominous and vast, all colored like +wet gravel, save where the sunlight tipped it with clean silver very +high above their reach. + +"Come," she quickly said to Rudolph Musgrave; "come, for I am afraid." + + + + +VI + + +And are we then to leave them with glad faces turned to that new day +wherein, above the ashes of old errors and follies and mischances and +miseries, they were to raise the structure of such a happiness as earth +rarely witnesses? Would it not be, instead, a grateful task more fully +to depicture how Rudolph Musgrave's love of Anne won finally to its +reward, and these two shared the evening of their lives in tranquil +service of unswerving love come to its own at last? + +Undoubtedly, since the espousal of one's first love--by oneself--is a +phenomenon rarely encountered outside of popular fiction, it would be a +very gratifying task to record that Anne and Rudolph Musgrave were +married that autumn; that subsequently Lichfield was astounded by the +fervor of their life-long bliss; that Colonel and (the second) Mrs. +Musgrave were universally respected, in a word, and their dinner-parties +were always prominently chronicled by the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_; +and that Anne took excellent care of little Roger, and that she and her +second husband proved eminently suited to each other. + +But, as a matter of fact, not one of these things ever happened.... + +"I have been thinking it over," Anne deplored. "Oh, Rudolph dear, I +perfectly realize you are the best and noblest man I ever knew. And I +have always loved you very much, my dear; that is why I could never +abide poor Mrs. Pendomer. And yet--it is a feeling I simply can't +explain----" + +"That you belong to Jack in spite of everything?" the colonel said. +"Why, but of course! I might have known that Jack would never have +allowed any simple incidental happening such as his death to cause his +missing a possible trick." + +Anne would have comforted Rudolph Musgrave; but, to her discomfiture, +the colonel was grinning, however ruefully. + +"I was thinking," he stated, "of the only time that I ever, to my +knowledge, talked face to face with the devil. It is rather odd how +obstinately life clings to the most hackneyed trick of ballad-makers; +and still naively pretends to enrich her productions by the stale device +of introducing a refrain--so that the idlest remarks of as much as three +years ago keep cropping up as the actual gist of the present!... +However, were it within my power, I would evoke Amaimon straightway now +to come up yonder, through your hearthrug, and to answer me quite +honestly if I did not tell him on the beach at Matocton that this, +precisely this, would be the outcome of your knowing everything!" + +"I told you that I couldn't, quite, _explain_----" Anne said. + +"Eh, but I can, my dear," he informed her. "The explanation is that +Lichfield bore us, shaped us, and made us what we are. We may not enjoy +a monopoly of the virtues here in Lichfield, but there is one trait at +least which the children of Lichfield share in common. We are loyal. We +give but once; and when we give, we give all that we have; and when we +have once given it, neither common-sense, nor a concourse of +expostulating seraphim, nor anything else in the universe, can induce us +to believe that a retraction, or even a qualification, of the gift would +be quite worthy of us." + +"But that--that's foolish. Why, it's unreasonable," Anne pointed out. + +"Of course it is. And that is why I am proud of Lichfield. And that is +why you are to-day Jack's wife and always will be just Jack's wife--and +why to-day I am Patricia's husband--and why Lichfield to-day is +Lichfield. There is something braver in life than to be just reasonable, +thank God! And so, we keep the faith, my dear, however obsolete we find +fidelity to be. We keep to the old faith--we of Lichfield, who have +given hostages to the past. We remember even now that we gave freely in +an old time, and did not haggle.... And so, we are proud--yes! we are +consumedly proud, and we know that we have earned the right to be +proud." + +A little later Colonel Musgrave said: + +"And yet--it takes a monstrous while to dispose of our universe's +subtleties. I have loved you my whole life long, as accurately as we +can phrase these matters. There is no--no _reasonable_ reason why you +should not marry me now; and you would marry me if I pressed it. And I +do not press it. Perhaps it all comes of our both having been reared in +Lichfield. Perhaps that is why I, too, have been 'thinking it over.' You +see," he added, with a smile, "the rivet in grandfather's neck is not +lightly to be ignored, after all. No, you do not know what I am talking +about, my dear. And--well, anyhow, I belong to Patricia. Upon the whole, +I am glad that I belong to Patricia; for Patricia and what Patricia +meant to me was the one vital thing in a certain person's rather +hand-to-mouth existence--oh, yes, in spite of everything! I know it now. +Anne Charteris," the colonel cried, "I wouldn't marry you or any other +woman breathing, even though you were to kneel and implore me upon the +knees of a centipede. For I belong to Patricia; and the rivet stays +unbroken, after all." + +"Oh, and am I being very foolish again?" Anne asked. "For I have been +remembering that when--when Jack was not quite truthful about some +things, you know,--the truth he hid was always one which would have hurt +me. And I like to believe that was, at least in part, the reason he hid +it, Rudolph. So he purchased my happiness--well, at ugly prices perhaps. +But he purchased it, none the less; and I had it through all those +years. So why shouldn't I--after all--be very grateful to him? And, +besides"--her voice broke--"besides, he was Jack, you know. He belonged +to me. What does it matter what he did? He belonged to me, and I loved +him." + +And to the colonel's discomfort Anne began to cry. + +"There, there!" he said, "so the real truth is out at last. And tears +don't help very much. It does seem a bit unfair, my dear, I know. But +that is simply because you and I are living in a universe which has +never actually committed itself, under any penalizing bond, to be +entirely candid as to the laws by which it is conducted." + + * * * * * + +But it may be that Rudolph Musgrave voiced quite obsolete views. For he +said this at a very remote period--when the Beef Trust was being +"investigated" in Washington; when an excited Iberian constabulary was +still hunting the anarchists who had attempted to assassinate the young +King and Queen of Spain upon their wedding-day; when the rebuilding of +an earthquake-shattered San Francisco was just beginning to be talked of +as a possibility; and when editorials were mostly devoted to discussion +of what Mr. Bryan would have to say about bi-metallism when he returned +from his foreign tour. + +And, besides, it was Rudolph Musgrave's besetting infirmity always to +shrink--under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse--from making +changes. One may permissibly estimate this foible to have weighed with +him a little, even now, just as in all things it had always weighed in +Lichfield with all his generation. An old custom is not lightly broken. + + + + +PART TEN - IMPRIMIS + + "So let us laugh, lest vain rememberings + Breed, as of old, some rude bucolic cry + Of awkward anguishes, of dreams that die + Without decorum, of Love lacking wings + Yet striving you-ward in his flounderings + Eternally,--as now, even when I lie + As I lie now, who know that you and I + Exist and heed not lesser happenings. + + "I was. I am. I will be. Eh, no doubt + For some sufficient cause, I drift, defer, + Equivocate, dream, hazard, grow more stout, + Age, am no longer Love's idolater,-- + And yet I could and would not live without + Your faith that heartens and your doubts which spur." + + +LIONEL CROCHARD. _Palinodia_. + + + + +I + + +So weeks and months, and presently irrevocable years, passed tranquilly; +and nothing very important seemed to happen nowadays, either for good or +ill; and Rudolph Musgrave was content enough. + +True, there befell, and with increasing frequency, periods when one must +lie abed, and be coaxed into taking interminable medicines, and be +ministered unto generally, because one was of a certain age nowadays, +and must be prudent. But even such necessities, these underhanded +indignities of time, had their alleviations. Trained nurses, for +example, were uncommonly well-informed and agreeable young women, when +you came to know them--and quite lady-like, too, for all that in our +topsy-turvy days these girls had to work for their living. Unthinkable +as it seemed, the colonel found that his night-nurse, a Miss Ramsay, was +actually by birth a Ramsay of Blenheim; and for a little the discovery +depressed him. But to be made much of, upon whatever terms, was always +treatment to which the colonel submitted only too docilely. And, +besides, in this queer, comfortable, just half-waking state, the +colonel found one had the drollest dreams, evolving fancies such as were +really a credit to one's imagination.... + +For instance, one very often imagined that Patricia was more close at +hand nowadays.... No, she was not here in the room, of course, but +outside, in the street, at the corner below, where the letterbox stood. +Yes, she was undoubtedly there, the colonel reflected drowsily. And they +had been so certain her return could only result in unhappiness, and +they were so wise, that whilst she waited for her opportunity Patricia +herself began to be a little uneasy. She had patrolled the block six +times before the chance came. + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, drowsily pleased by his own +inventiveness, that Patricia was glad this afternoon was so hot that no +one was abroad except the small boy at the corner house, who sat upon +the bottom porch-step, and, as children so often do, appeared intently +to appraise the world at large with an inexplicable air of +disappointment. + +"Now think how Rudolph would feel,"--the colonel whimsically played at +reading Patricia's reflection--"if I were to be arrested as a suspicious +character--that's what the newspapers always call them, I think--on his +very doorstep! And he must have been home a half-hour ago at least, +because I know it's after five. But the side-gate's latched, and I can't +ring the door-bell--if only because it would be too ridiculous to have +to ask the maid to tell Colonel Musgrave his wife wanted to see him. +Besides, I don't know the new house-girl. I wish now we hadn't let old +Mary go, even though she was so undependable about thorough-cleaning." + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia was tired of pacing +before the row of houses, each so like the other, and compared herself +to Gulliver astray upon a Brobdingnagian bookshelf which held a "library +set" of some huge author. She had lost interest, too, in the new house +upon the other side. + +"If things were different I would have to call on them. But as it is, I +am spared that bother at least," said Patricia, just as if being dead +did not change people at all. + +Then a colored woman, trim and frillily-capped, came out of the watched +house. She bore some eight or nine letters in one hand, and fanned +herself with them in a leisurely flat-footed progress to the mailbox at +the lower corner. + +"She looks capable," was Patricia's grudging commentary, in slipping +through the doorway into the twilight of the hall. "But it isn't safe to +leave the front-door open like this. One never knows--No, I can tell by +the look of her she's the sort that can't be induced to sleep on the +lot, and takes mysterious bundles home at night." + + + + +II + + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, now in the full flow of this droll +dream, that Patricia resentfully noted her front-hall had been "meddled +with." This much alone might Patricia observe in a swift transit to the +parlor. + +She waited there until the maid returned; and registered to the woman's +credit the discreet soft closing of the front-door and afterward the +well-nigh inaudible swish of the rear door of the dining-room as the +maid went back into the kitchen. + +"In any event," Patricia largely conceded, "she probably doesn't clash +the knives and forks in the pantry after supper, like she was hostile +armaments with any number of cutlasses apiece. I remember Rudolph simply +couldn't stand it when we had Ethel." + +So much was satisfactory. Only--her parlor was so altered! + +There was--to give you just her instantaneous first impression--so +little in it. Broad spaces of plain color showed everywhere; and +Patricia's ideal of what a parlor should be, as befitted the châtelaine +of a fine home in Lichfield, had always been the tangled elegancies of +the front show-window of a Woman's Exchange for Fancy Work. The room had +even been repapered--odiously, as she considered; and the shiny floor of +it boasted just three inefficient rugs, like dingy rafts upon a sea of +very strong coffee. + +Patricia looked in vain for her grandiose plush-covered chairs, her +immaculate "tidies," and the proud yellow lambrequin, embroidered in +high relief with white gardenias, which had formerly adorned the +mantelpiece. The heart of her hungered for her unforgotten and +unforgettable "watered-silk" papering wherein white roses bloomed +exuberantly against a yellow background--which deplorably faded if you +did not keep the window-shades down, she remembered--and she wanted back +her white thick comfortable carpet which hid the floor completely, so +that everywhere you trod upon the buxomest of stalwart yellow roses, +each bunch of which was lavishly tied with wind-blown ribbons. + +Then, too, her cherished spinning-wheel, at least two hundred and fifty +years old, which had looked so pretty after she had gilded it and added +a knot of pink sarsenet, was departed; and gone as well was the +mirror-topped table, with its array of china swan and frogs and +water-lilies artistically grouped about its speckless surface. Even her +prized engraving of "Michael Angelo Buonarotti"--contentedly regarding +his just finished Moses, while a pope tiptoed into the room through a +side-door--had been removed, with all its splendors of red-plush and +intricate gilt-framing. + +Just here and there, in fine, like a familiar face in a crowd, she could +discover some one of her more sedately-colored "parlor ornaments"; and +the whole history of it--its donor or else its price, the gestures of +the shopman, even what sort of weather it was when she and Rudolph found +"exactly what I've been looking for" in the shop-window, and the +Stapyltonian, haggling over the price with which Patricia had +bargained--such unimportant details as these now vividly awakened in +recollection.... In fine, this room was not her parlor at all, and in it +Patricia was lonely.... Yes, yes, she would be nowadays, the colonel +reflected, for he himself had never been in thorough sympathy with all +the changes made by Roger's self-assured young wife. + +Thus it was with the first floor of the house, through which Patricia +strayed with uniform discomfort. This place was home no longer. + +Thus it was with the first floor of the house. Everywhere the equipments +were strange, or at best arranged not quite as Patricia would have +placed them. Yet they had not any look of being recently purchased. Even +that hideous stair-carpet was a little worn, she noted, as noiselessly +she mounted to the second story. + +The house was perfectly quiet, save for a tiny shrill continuance of +melody that somehow seemed only to pierce the silence, not to dispel it. +Rudolph--of all things!--had in her absence acquired a canary. And +everybody knew what an interminable nuisance a canary was. + +She entered the front room. It had been her bedroom ever since her +marriage. She remembered this as with a gush of defiant joy. + + + + +III + + +So it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia came actually into the +room that had been hers.... + +A canary was singing there, very sweet and shrill and as in defiant joy. +Its trilling seemed to fill the room. In the brief pauses of his song +the old clock, from which Rudolph had removed the pendulum on the night +of Agatha's death would interpose an obstinate slow ticking; and +immediately the clock-noise would be drowned in melody. Otherwise the +room was silent. + +In the alcove stood the bed which had been Patricia's. Intent upon its +occupant were three persons, with their backs turned to her. One +Patricia could easily divine to be a doctor; he was twiddling a +hypodermic syringe between his fingers, and the set of his shoulders was +that of acquiescence. Profiles of the others she saw: one a passive +nurse in uniform, who was patiently chafing the right hand of the bed's +occupant; the other a lean-featured red-haired stranger, who sat +crouched in his chair and held the dying man's left hand. + +For in the bed, supported by many pillows, and facing Patricia, was a +dying man. He was very old, having thick tumbled hair which, like his +two-weeks' beard, was uniformly white. His eyelids drooped a trifle, so +that he seemed to meditate concerning something ineffably remote and +serious, yet not, upon the whole, unsatisfactory. You saw and heard the +intake of each breath, so painfully drawn, and expelled with manifest +relief, as if the man were very tired of breathing. Yet the bedclothes +heaved with his vain efforts just to keep on breathing. And sometimes +his parted lips would twitch curiously.... Rudolph Musgrave, too, could +see all this quite plainly, in the mirror over the mantel. + +The doctor spoke. "Yes--it's the end, Professor Musgrave," he said. For +this lean-featured red-haired stranger to whom the doctor spoke, a +pedagogue to his finger-tips, had once been Patricia's dearly-purchased, +chubby baby Roger. + +And Rudolph Musgrave stayed motionless. He knew Patricia was there; but +that fact no longer seemed either very strange or even unnatural; and +besides, it was against some law for him to look at her until Patricia +had called him.... Meanwhile, just opposite, above the mirror, and +facing him, was the Stuart portrait of young Gerald Musgrave. This +picture had now hung there for a great many years. The boy still smiled +at you in undiminished raillery, even though he smiled ambiguously, and +with a sort of humorous sadness in his eyes. Once, very long ago--when +the picture hung downstairs--some one had said that Gerald Musgrave's +life was barren. The dying man could not now recollect, quite, who that +person was. + +Rudolph Musgrave stayed motionless. He comprehended that he was dying. +The greatest of all changes was at hand; and he, who had always shrunk +from making changes, was now content enough.... Indeed, with Rudolph +Musgrave living had always been a vaguely dissatisfactory business, a +hand-to-mouth proceeding which he had scrambled through, as he saw now, +without any worthy aim or even any intelligible purpose. He had nothing +very heinous with which to reproach himself; but upon the other side, he +had most certainly nothing of which to be particularly proud. + +So this was all that living came to! You heard of other people being +rapt by splendid sins and splendid virtues, and you anticipated that +to-morrow some such majestic energy would transfigure your own living, +and change everything: but the great adventure never arrived, somehow; +and the days were frittered away piecemeal, what with eating your +dinner, and taking a wholesome walk, and checking up your bank account, +and dovetailing scraps of parish registers and land-patents and county +records into an irrefutable pedigree, and seeing that your clothes were +pressed, and looking over the newspapers--and what with other +infinitesimal avocations, each one innocent, none of any particular +importance, and each consuming an irrevocable moment of the allotted +time--until at last you found that living had not, necessarily, any +climax at all.... And Patricia would call him presently. + +Once, very long ago, some one had said that the most pathetic tragedy in +life was to get nothing in particular out of it. The dying man could not +now recollect, quite, who that person was. + +He wondered, vaguely, what might have been the outcome if Rudolph +Musgrave had whole-heartedly sought, not waited for, the great +adventure; if Rudolph Musgrave had put--however irrationally--more +energy and less second-thought into living; if Rudolph Musgrave had not +been contented to be just a Musgrave of Matocton.... Well, it was too +late now. He viewed his whole life now, in epitome, and much as you may +see at night the hackneyed vista from your window leap to incisiveness +under the lash of lightning. No, the life of Rudolph Musgrave had never +risen to the plane of dignity, not even to that of seeming to Rudolph +Musgrave a connected and really important transaction on Rudolph +Musgrave's part. Yet Lichfield, none the better for Rudolph Musgrave's +having lived, was none the worse, thank heaven! And there were younger +men in Lichfield--men who did not mean to fail as Rudolph Musgrave and +his fellows all had failed.... Eh, yes, what was the toast that Rudolph +Musgrave drank, so long ago, to the new Lichfield which these younger +men were making? + +"To this new South, that has not any longer need of me or of my kind. + +"To this new South! She does not gaze unwillingly, nor too complacently, +upon old years, and dares concede that but with loss of manliness may +any man encroach upon the heritage of a dog or of a trotting-horse, and +consider the exploits of an ancestor to guarantee an innate and personal +excellence. + +"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with +her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain +speech. And her high past she values now, in chief, as fit foundation of +that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with augmenting +strokes." + +Yes, that was it. And it was true. Yet Rudolph Musgrave's life on earth +was ending now--the only life that he would ever have on earth--and it +had never risen to the plane of seeming even to Rudolph Musgrave a +really important transaction on Rudolph Musgrave's part.... + +Then Patricia spoke. Low and very low she called to Olaf, and the dim, +wistful eyes of Rudolph Musgrave lifted, and gazed full upon her +standing there, and were no longer wistful. And the man made as though +to rise, and could not, and his face was very glad. + +For in the dying man had awakened the pulses of an old, strange, +half-forgotten magic, and all his old delight in the girl who had shared +in and had provoked this ancient wonder-working, together with a quite +new consciousness of the inseparability of Patricia's foibles from his +existence; so that he was incuriously aware of his imbecility in not +having known always that Patricia must come back some day, not as a +glorious, unfamiliar angel, but unaltered. + +"I am glad you haven't changed.... Why, but of course! Nothing would +have counted if you had changed--not even for the better, Patricia. For +you and what you meant to me were real. That only was real--that we, not +being demigods, but being just what we were, once climbed together very +high, where we could glimpse the stars--and nothing else can ever be of +any importance. What we inherited was too much for us, was it not, my +dear? And now it is not formidable any longer. Oh, but I loved you very +greatly, Patricia! And now at last, my dear, I seem to understand--as in +that old, old time when you and I were glad together----" + +But he did not say this aloud, for it seemed to him that he stood in a +cool, pleasant garden, and that Patricia came toward him through the +long shadows of sunset. The lacy folds and furbelows and +semi-transparencies that clothed her were now tinged with gold and now, +as a hedge or a flower bed screened her from the level rays, were +softened into multitudinous graduations of grays and mauves and violets. + +They did not speak. But in her eyes he found compassion and such +tenderness as awed him; and then, as a light is puffed out, they were +the eyes of a friendly stranger. He understood, for an instant, that of +necessity it was decreed time must turn back and everything, even +Rudolph Musgrave, be just as it had been when he first saw Patricia. For +they had made nothing of their lives; and so, they must begin all over +again. + +"_Failure is not permitted_" he was saying.... + +"_You're Cousin Rudolph, aren't you?_" she asked.... + +And Rudolph Musgrave knew he had forgotten something of vast import, but +what this knowledge had pertained to he no longer knew. Then Rudolph +Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about his heart, +that her hair was like the reflection of a sunset in rippling +waters--only many times more beautiful, of course--and that her mouth +was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her +eyes were purple glimpses of infinity. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck +by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK *** + +***** This file should be named 10041-8.txt or 10041-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/4/10041/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/10041-8.zip b/old/10041-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa7dc3e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10041-8.zip diff --git a/old/10041.txt b/old/10041.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..601f701 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10041.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9132 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck, by James Branch Cabell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck + A Comedy of Limitations + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: November 11, 2003 [EBook #10041] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK + + +A Comedy of Limitations + +BY + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +"_To this new South, who values her high past in chief, as fit +foundation of that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with +augmenting strokes_." + +1915 + + + + +TO + +PRISCILLA BRADLEY CABELL + + "Nightly I mark and praise, or great or small, + Such stars as proudly struggle one by one + To heaven's highest place, as Procyon, + Antares, Naoes, Tejat and Nibal + Attain supremacy, and proudly fall, + Still glorious, and glitter, and are gone + So very soon;--whilst steadfast and alone + Polaris gleams, and is not changed at all. + + "Daily I find some gallant dream that ranges + The heights of heaven; and as others do, + I serve my dream until my dream estranges + Its errant bondage, and I note anew + That nothing dims, nor shakes, nor mars, nor changes, + Fond faith in you and in my love of you." + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART ONE - PROPINQUITY + +PART TWO - RENASCENCE + +PART THREE - TERTIUS + +PART FOUR - APPRECIATION + +PART FIVE - SOUVENIR + +PART SIX - BYWAYS + +PART SEVEN - YOKED + +PART EIGHT - HARVEST + +PART NINE - RELICS + +PART TEN - IMPRIMIS + + + + +In the middle of the cupboard door was the carved figure of a man.... +He had goat's legs, little horns on his head, and a long beard; the +children in the room called him, "Major-General-field-sergeant +-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" ... He was always looking at the +table under the looking-glass where stood a very pretty little +shepherdess made of china.... Close by her side stood a little +chimney-sweep, as black as coal and also made of china.... Near +to them stood another figure.... He was an old Chinaman who could nod +his head, and used to pretend he was the grandfather of the shepherdess, +although he could not prove it. He, however, assumed authority over her, +and therefore when "Major-general-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's +-legs" asked for the little shepherdess to be his wife, he nodded his head +to show that he consented. + +Then the little shepherdess cried, and looked at her sweetheart, the +chimney-sweep. "I must entreat you," said she, "to go out with me into +the wide world, for we cannot stay here." ... When the chimney-sweep saw +that she was quite firm, he said, "My way is through the stove up the +chimney." ... So at last they reached the top of the chimney.... The sky +with all its stars was over their heads.... They could see for a very +long distance out into the wide world, and the poor little shepherdess +leaned her head on her chimney-sweep's shoulder and wept. "This is too +much," she said, "the world is too large." ... And so with a great deal +of trouble they climbed down the chimney and peeped out.... There lay +the old Chinaman on the floor ... broken into three pieces.... "This is +terrible," said the shepherdess. "He can be riveted," said the +chimney-sweep.... The family had the Chinaman's back mended and a strong +rivet put through his neck; he looked as good as new, but when +"Major-General-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" again asked +for the shepherdess to be his wife, the old Chinaman could no longer nod +his head. + +And so the little china people remained together and were thankful for +the rivet in grandfather's neck, and continued to love each other until +they were broken to pieces. + + + + +PART ONE - PROPINQUITY + + _"A singer, eh?... Well, well! but when he sings + Take jealous heed lest idiosyncrasies + Entinge and taint too deep his melodies; + See that his lute has no discordant strings + To harrow us; and let his vaporings + Be all of virtue and its victories, + And of man's best and noblest qualities, + And scenery, and flowers, and similar things_. + + "Thus bid our paymasters whose mutterings + Some few deride, and blithely link their rhymes + At random; and, as ever, on frail wings + Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes + Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs + From hell's midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes." + +PAUL VERVILLE. _Nascitur_. + + + + +I + + +At a very remote period, when editorials were mostly devoted to +discussion as to whether the Democratic Convention (shortly to be held +in Chicago) would or would not declare in favor of bi-metallism; when +golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed how +to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an +automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "the godet skirts and +huge sleeves of the present modes" were already doomed to extinction; +when the baseball season had just begun, and some of our people were +discussing the national game, and others the spectacular burning of the +old Pennsylvania Railway depot at Thirty-third and Market Street in +Philadelphia, and yet others the significance of General Fitzhugh Lee's +recent appointment as consul-general to Habana:--at this remote time, +Lichfield talked of nothing except the Pendomer divorce case. + +And Colonel Rudolph Musgrave had very narrowly escaped being named as +the co-respondent. This much, at least, all Lichfield knew when George +Pendomer--evincing unsuspected funds of generosity--permitted his wife +to secure a divorce on the euphemistic grounds of "desertion." John +Charteris, acting as Rudolph Musgrave's friend, had patched up this +arrangement; and the colonel and Mrs. Pendomer, so rumor ran, were to be +married very quietly after a decent interval. + +Remained only to deliberate whether this sop to the conventions should +be accepted as sufficient. + +"At least," as Mrs. Ashmeade sagely observed, "we can combine +vituperation with common-sense, and remember it is not the first time a +Musgrave has figured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race! +proverbial flutterers of petticoats! His surname convicts the man +unheard and almost excuses him. All of us feel that. And, moreover, it +is not as if the idiots had committed any unpardonable sin, for they +have kept out of the newspapers." + +Her friend seemed dubious, and hazarded something concerning "the merest +sense of decency." + +"In the name of the Prophet, figs! People--I mean the people who count +in Lichfield--are charitable enough to ignore almost any crime which is +just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It +gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in +the morning paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion +of being illiterate and virtueless. That's Lichfield." + +"But, Polly--" + +"Sophist, don't I know my Lichfield? I know it almost as well as I know +Rudolph Musgrave. And so I prophesy that he will not marry Clarice +Pendomer, because he is inevitably tired of her by this. He will marry +money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will +gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone +throwing, and be just as friendly with the participants to their faces +as we ever were. So don't let me hear any idiotic talk about whether or +no _I_ am going to receive her--" + +"Well, after all, she was born a Bellingham. We must remember that." + +"Wasn't I saying I knew my Lichfield?" Mrs. Ashmeade placidly observed. + + * * * * * + +And time, indeed, attested her to be right in every particular. + +Yet it must be recorded that at this critical juncture chance rather +remarkably favored Colonel Musgrave and Mrs. Pendomer, by giving +Lichfield something of greater interest to talk about; since now, just +in the nick of occasion, occurred the notorious Scott Musgrave murder. +Scott Musgrave--a fourth cousin once removed of the colonel's, to be +quite accurate--had in the preceding year seduced the daughter of a +village doctor, a negligible "half-strainer" up country at Warren; and +her two brothers, being irritated, picked this particular season to +waylay him in the street, as he reeled homeward one night from the +Commodores' Club, and forthwith to abolish Scott Musgrave after the +primitive methods of their lower station in society. + +These details, indeed, were never officially made public, since a +discreet police force "found no clues"; for Fred Musgrave (of King's +Garden), as befitted the dead man's well-to-do brother, had been at no +little pains to insure constabulary shortsightedness, in preference to +having the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically +aired. Fred Musgrave thereby afforded Lichfield a delectable opportunity +(conversationally and abetted by innumerable "they _do_ say's") to +accredit the murder, turn by turn, to every able-bodied person residing +within stone's throw of its commission. So that few had time, now, to +talk of Rudolph Musgrave and Clarice Pendomer; for it was not in +Lichfieldian human nature to discuss a mere domestic imbroglio when +here, also in the Musgrave family, was a picturesque and gory +assassination to lay tongue to. + +So Colonel Musgrave was duly reelected that spring to the librarianship +of the Lichfield Historical Association, and the name of Mrs. George +Pendomer was not stricken from the list of patronesses of the Lichfield +German Club, but was merely altered to "Mrs. Clarice Pendomer." + + * * * * * + +At the bottom of his heart Colonel Musgrave was a trifle irritated that +his self-sacrifice should be thus unrewarded by martyrdom. Circumstances +had enabled him to assume, and he had gladly accepted, the blame for +John Charteris's iniquity, rather than let Anne Charteris know the truth +about her husband and Clarice Pendomer. The truth would have killed +Anne, the colonel believed; and besides, the colonel had enjoyed the +performance of a picturesque action. + +And having acted as a hero in permitting himself to be pilloried as a +libertine, it was preferable of course not to have incurred ostracism +thereby. His common-sense conceded this; and yet, to Colonel Musgrave, +it could not but be evident that Destiny was hardly rising to the +possibilities of the situation. + + + + +II + + +Concerning Colonel Musgrave one finds the ensuing account in a +publication of the period devoted to biographies of more or less +prominent Americans. It is reproduced unchanged, because these memoirs +were--in the old days--compiled by the person whom they commemorated. +The custom was a worthy one, since the value of an autobiography is +determined by the nature of its superfluities and falsehoods. + +"MUSGRAVE, RUDOLPH VARTREY, editor; _b_. Lichfield, Sill., Mar. 14, +1856; _s_. William Sebastian and Martha (Allardyce) M; _g. s_. +Theodorick Q.M., gov. of Sill. 1805-8, judge of the General Ct., +1808-11, judge Supreme Ct. of Appeals, 1811-50 and pres. Supreme Ct. of +Appeals, 1841-50; grad. King's Coll. and U. of Sill. Corr. sec. +Lichfield Hist. Soc., and editor Sill. Mag. of Biog. since 1890; dir. +Traders Nat. Bank, Sill.; mem. Soc. of the Sons of Col. Govs., pres. +Sill. Soc. of Protestant Martyrs, comdr. Sill. Mil. Order of Lost +Battles, mem. exec. bd. Sill. Hist. Assn. for the Preservation of Ruins. +Democrat, Episcopalian, unmarried. _Author_: Colonial Lichfield, 1892; +Right on the Scaffold, 1893; Secession and the South, 1894; Chart of the +Descendants of Zenophon Perkins, 1894; Recollections of a Gracious Era, +1895; Notes as to the Vartreys of Westphalia, 1896. Has also written +numerous pamphlets on hist., biog. and geneal. subjects. _Address_: +Lichfield, Sill." + +For Colonel Musgrave was by birth the lineal head of all the Musgraves +of Matocton, which is in Lichfield, as degrees are counted there, +equivalent to what being born a marquis would mean in England. Handsome +and trim and affable, he defied chronology by looking ten years younger +than he was known to be. For at least a decade he had been invaluable to +Lichfield matrons alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town +girl," the management of a cotillion and the prevention of unpleasant +pauses among incongruous dinner companies. + +In short, he was by all accounts the social triumph of his generation; +and his military title, won by four years of arduous service at +receptions and parades while on the staff of a former Governor of the +State, this seasoned bachelor carried off with plausibility and +distinction. + +The story finds him "Librarian and Corresponding Secretary" of the +Lichfield Historical Association, which office he had held for some six +years. The salary was small, and the colonel had inherited little; but +his sister, Miss Agatha Musgrave, who lived with him, was a notable +housekeeper. He increased his resources in a gentlemanly fashion by +genealogical research, directed mostly toward the rehabilitation of +ambiguous pedigrees; and for the rest, no other man could have fulfilled +more gracefully the main duty of the Librarian, which was to exhibit the +Association's collection of relics to hurried tourists "doing" +Lichfield. + +His "Library manner" was modeled upon that which an eighteenth century +portrait would conceivably possess, should witchcraft set the canvas +breathing. + + + + +III + + +Also the story finds Colonel Musgrave in the company of his sister on a +warm April day, whilst these two sat upon the porch of the Musgrave home +in Lichfield, and Colonel Musgrave waited until it should be time to +open the Library for the afternoon. And about them birds twittered +cheerily, and the formal garden flourished as gardens thrive nowhere +except in Lichfield, and overhead the sky was a turkis-blue, save for a +few irrelevant clouds which dappled it here and there like splashes of +whipped cream. + +Yet, for all this, the colonel was ill-at-ease; and care was on his +brow, and venom in his speech. + +"And one thing," Colonel Musgrave concluded, with decision, "I wish +distinctly understood, and that is, if she insists on having young men +loafing about her--as, of course, she will--she will have to entertain +them in the garden. I won't have them in the house, Agatha. You remember +that Langham girl you had here last Easter?" he added, disconsolately +--"the one who positively littered up the house with young men, +and sang idiotic jingles to them at all hours of the night about +the Bailey family and the correct way to spell chicken? She drove me to +the verge of insanity, and I haven't a doubt that this Patricia person +will be quite as obstreperous. So, please mention it to her, +Agatha--casually, of course--that, in Lichfield, when one is partial to +either vocal exercise or amorous daliance, the proper scene of action is +the garden. I really cannot be annoyed by her." + +"But, Rudolph," his sister protested, "you forget she is engaged to the +Earl of Pevensey. An engaged girl naturally wouldn't care about meeting +any young men." + +"H'm!" said the colonel, drily. + +Ensued a pause, during which the colonel lighted yet another cigarette. + +Then, "I have frequently observed," he spoke, in absent wise, "that all +young women having that peculiarly vacuous expression about the eyes--I +believe there are misguided persons who describe such eyes as being +'dreamy,'--are invariably possessed of a fickle, unstable and coquettish +temperament. Oh, no! You may depend upon it, Agatha, the fact that she +contemplates purchasing the right to support a peculiarly disreputable +member of the British peerage will not hinder her in the least from +making advances to all the young men in the neighborhood." + +Miss Musgrave was somewhat ruffled. She was a homely little woman with +nothing of the ordinary Musgrave comeliness. Candor even compels the +statement that in her pudgy swarthy face there was a droll suggestion +of the pug-dog. + +"I am sure," Miss Musgrave remonstrated, with placid dignity, "that you +know nothing whatever about her, and that the reports about the earl +have probably been greatly exaggerated, and that her picture shows her +to be an unusually attractive girl. Though it is true," Miss Musgrave +conceded after reflection, "that there are any number of persons in the +House of Lords that I wouldn't in the least care to have in my own +house, even with the front parlor all in linen as it unfortunately is. +So awkward when you have company! And the Bible does bid us not to put +our trust in princes, and, for my part, I never thought that photographs +could be trusted, either." + +"Scorn not the nobly born, Agatha," her brother admonished her, "nor +treat with lofty scorn the well-connected. The very best people are +sometimes respectable. And yet," he pursued, with a slight hiatus of +thought, "I should not describe her as precisely an attractive-looking +girl. She seems to have a lot of hair,--if it is all her own, which it +probably isn't,--and her nose is apparently straight enough, and I +gather she is not absolutely deformed anywhere; but that is all I can +conscientiously say in her favor. She is artificial. Her hair, now! It +has a--well, you would not call it exactly a crinkle or precisely a +wave, but rather somewhere between the two. Yes, I think I should +describe it as a ripple. I fancy it must be rather like the reflection +of a sunset in--a duck-pond, say, with a faint wind ruffling the water. +For I gather that her hair is of some light shade,--induced, I haven't a +doubt, by the liberal use of peroxides. And this ripple, too, Agatha, it +stands to reason, must be the result of coercing nature, for I have +never seen it in any other woman's hair. Moreover," Colonel Musgrave +continued, warming somewhat to his subject, "there is a dimple--on the +right side of her mouth, immediately above it,--which speaks of the most +frivolous tendencies. I dare say it comes and goes when she +talks,--winks at you, so to speak, in a manner that must be simply +idiotic. That foolish little cleft in her chin, too--" + +But at this point, his sister interrupted him. + +"I hadn't a notion," said she, "that you had even looked at the +photograph. And you seem to have it quite by heart, Rudolph,--and some +people admire dimples, you know, and, at any rate, her mother had red +hair, so Patricia isn't really responsible. I decided that it would be +foolish to use the best mats to-night. We can save them for Sunday +supper, because I am only going to have eggs and a little cold meat, and +not make company of her." + +For no apparent reason, Rudolph Musgrave flushed. + +"I inspected it--quite casually--last night. Please don't be absurd, +Agatha! If we were threatened with any other direful visitation +--influenza, say, or the seventeen-year locust,--I should +naturally read up on the subject in order to know what to expect. And +since Providence has seen fit to send us a visitor rather than a +visitation--though, personally, I should infinitely prefer the +influenza, as interfering in less degree with my comfort,--I have, of +course, neglected no opportunity of finding out what we may reasonably +look forward to. I fear the worst, Agatha. For I repeat, the girl's face +is, to me, absolutely unattractive!" + +The colonel spoke with emphasis, and flung away his cigarette, and took +up his hat to go. + +And then, "I suppose," said Miss Musgrave, absently, "you will be +falling in love with her, just as you did with Anne Charteris and Aline +Van Orden and all those other minxes. I _would_ like to see you married, +Rudolph, only I couldn't stand your having a wife." + +"I! I!" sputtered the colonel. "I think you must be out of your head! I +fall in love with that chit! Good Lord, Agatha, you are positively +idiotic!" + +And the colonel turned on his heel, and walked stiffly through the +garden. But, when half-way down the path, he wheeled about and came +back. + +"I beg your pardon, Agatha," he said, contritely, "it was not my +intention to be discourteous. But somehow--somehow, dear, I don't quite +see the necessity for my falling in love with anybody, so long as I have +you." + +And Miss Musgrave, you may be sure, forgave him promptly; and +afterward--with a bit of pride and an infinity of love in her kind, +homely face,--her eyes followed him out of the garden on his way to open +the Library. And she decided in her heart that she had the dearest and +best and handsomest brother in the universe, and that she must remember +to tell him, accidentally, how becoming his new hat was. And then, at +some unspoken thought, she smiled, wistfully. + +"She would be a very lucky girl if he did," said Miss Musgrave, apropos +of nothing in particular; and tossed her grizzly head. + +"An earl, indeed!" said Miss Musgrave + + + + +IV + + +And this is how it came about: + +Patricia Vartrey (a second cousin once removed of Colonel Rudolph +Musgrave's), as the older inhabitants of Lichfield will volubly attest, +was always a person who did peculiar things. The list of her +eccentricities is far too lengthy here to be enumerated; but she began +it by being born with red hair--Titian reds and auburns were +undiscovered euphemisms in those days--and, in Lichfield, this is not +regarded as precisely a lady-like thing to do; and she ended it, as far +as Lichfield was concerned, by eloping with what Lichfield in its horror +could only describe, with conscious inadequacy, as "a quite unheard-of +person." + +Indisputably the man was well-to-do already; and from this nightmarish +topsy-turvidom of Reconstruction the fellow visibly was plucking wealth. +Also young Stapylton was well enough to look at, too, as Lichfield +flurriedly conceded. + +But it was equally undeniable that he had made his money through a +series of commercial speculations distinguished both by shiftiness and +daring, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly +negligible "poor white" person,--an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will" +Musgrave, Colonel Musgrave's father, who was of course the same +Lieutenant-Colonel William Sebastian Musgrave, C.S.A., that met his +death at Gettysburg. + +This upstart married Patricia Vartrey, for all the chatter and +whispering, and carried her away from Lichfield, as yet a little dubious +as to what recognition, if any, should be accorded the existence of the +Stapyltons. And afterward (from a notoriously untruthful North, indeed) +came rumors that he was rapidly becoming wealthy; and of Patricia +Vartrey's death at her daughter's birth; and of the infant's health and +strength and beauty, and of her lavish upbringing,--a Frenchwoman, +Lichfield whispered, with absolutely nothing to do but attend upon the +child. + +And then, little by little, a new generation sprang up, and, little by +little, the interest these rumors waked became more lax; and it was +brought about, at last, by the insidious transitions of time, that +Patricia Vartrey was forgotten in Lichfield. Only a few among the older +men remembered her; some of them yet treasured, as these fogies so often +do, a stray fan or an odd glove; and in bycorners of sundry +time-toughened hearts there lurked the memory of a laughing word or of a +glance or of some such casual bounty, that Patricia Vartrey had accorded +these hearts' owners when the world was young. + +But Agatha Musgrave, likewise, remembered the orphan cousin who had +been reared with her. She had loved Patricia Vartrey; and, in due time, +she wrote to Patricia's daughter,--in stately, antiquated phrases that +astonished the recipient not a little,--and the girl had answered. The +correspondence flourished. And it was not long before Miss Musgrave had +induced her young cousin to visit Lichfield. + +Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, be it understood, knew nothing of all this +until the girl was actually on her way. And now, she was to arrive that +afternoon, to domicile herself in his quiet house for two long +weeks--this utter stranger, look you!--and upset his comfort, ask him +silly questions, expect him to talk to her, and at the end of her visit, +possibly, present him with some outlandish gimcrack made of cardboard +and pink ribbons, in which she would expect him to keep his papers. The +Langham girl did that. + + * * * * * + +It is honesty's part to give you the man no better than he was. +Lichfield at large had pampered him; many women had loved him; and above +all, Miss Agatha had spoiled him. After fifteen years of being the pivot +about which the economy of a household revolves, after fifteen years of +being the inevitable person whose approval must be secured before any +domestic alteration, however trivial, may be considered, no mortal man +may hope to remain a paragon of unselfishness. + +Colonel Musgrave joyed in the society of women. But he classed +them--say, with the croquettes adorned with pink paper frills which were +then invariably served at the suppers of the Lichfield German Club,--as +acceptable enough, upon a conscious holiday, but wholly incongruous with +the slippered ease of home. When you had an inclination for feminine +society, you shaved and changed your clothes and thought up an impromptu +or so against emergency, and went forth to seek it. That was natural; +but to have a petticoated young person infesting your house, hourly, was +as preposterous as ice-cream soda at breakfast. + +The metaphor set him off at a tangent. He wondered if this Patricia +person could not (tactfully) be induced to take her bath after +breakfast, as Agatha did? after he had his? Why, confound the girl, he +was not responsible for there being only one bathroom in the house! It +was necessary for him to have his bath and be at the Library by nine +o'clock. This interloper must be made to understand as much. + +The colonel reached the Library undecided as to whether Miss Stapylton +had better breakfast in her room, or if it would be entirely proper for +her to come to the table in one of those fluffy lace-trimmed garments +such as Agatha affected at the day's beginning? + +The question was a nice one. It was not as though servants were willing +to be bothered with carrying trays to people's rooms; he knew what +Agatha had to say upon that subject. It was not as though he were the +chit's first cousin, either. He almost wished himself in the decline of +life, and free to treat the girl paternally. + +And so he fretted all that afternoon. + + * * * * * + +Then, too, he reflected that it would be very awkward if Agatha should +be unwell while this Patricia person was in the house. Agatha in her +normal state was of course the kindliest and cheeriest gentlewoman in +the universe, but any physical illness appeared to transform her nature +disastrously. She had her "attacks," she "felt badly" very often +nowadays, poor dear; and how was a Patricia person to be expected to +make allowances for the fact that at such times poor Agatha was +unavoidably a little cross and pessimistic? + + + + +V + + +Yet Colonel Musgrave strolled into his garden, later, with a tolerable +affectation of unconcern. Women, after all, he assured himself, were +necessary for the perpetuation of the species; and, resolving for the +future to view these weakly, big-hipped and slope-shouldered makeshifts +of Nature's with larger tolerance, he cocked his hat at a +devil-may-carish angle, and strode up the walk, whistling jauntily and +having, it must be confessed, to the unprejudiced observer very much the +air of a sheep in wolf's clothing. + +"At worst," he was reflecting, "I can make love to her. They, as a rule, +take kindlily enough to that; and in the exercise of hospitality a host +must go to all lengths to divert his guests. Failure is not +permitted...." + +Then She came to him. + +She came to him across the trim, cool lawn, leisurely, yet with a +resilient tread that attested the vigor of her slim young body. She was +all in white, diaphanous, ethereal, quite incredibly incredible; but as +she passed through the long shadows of the garden--fire-new, from the +heart of the sunset, Rudolph Musgrave would have sworn to you,--the lacy +folds and furbelows and semi-transparencies that clothed her were now +tinged with gold, and now, as a hedge or flower-bed screened her from +the horizontal rays, were softened into multitudinous graduations of +grays and mauves and violets. + +"Failure is not permitted," he was repeating in his soul.... + +"You're Cousin Rudolph, aren't you?" she asked. "How perfectly +entrancing! You see until to-day I always thought that if I had been +offered the choice between having cousins or appendicitis I would have +preferred to be operated on." + +And Rudolph Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about +his heart, that her hair was really like the reflection of a sunset in +rippling waters,--only many times more beautiful, of course,--and that +her mouth was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and +that her eyes were purple glimpses of infinity. + +Then he observed that his own mouth was giving utterance to divers +irrelevant and foolish sounds, which eventually resolved themselves into +the statement he was glad to see her. And immediately afterward the +banality of this remark brought the hot blood to his face and, for the +rest of the day, stung him and teased him, somewhere in the background +of his mind, like an incessant insect. + +Glad, indeed! + +Before he had finished shaking hands with Patricia Stapylton, it was +all over with the poor man. + +"Er--h'm!" quoth he. + +"Only," Miss Stapylton was meditating, with puckered brow, "it would be +unseemly for me to call you Rudolph--" + +"You impertinent minx!" cried he, in his soul; "I should rather think it +would be!" + +"--and Cousin Rudolph sounds exactly like a dried-up little man with +eyeglasses and crows' feet and a gentle nature. I rather thought you +were going to be like that, and I regard it as extremely hospitable of +you not to be. You are more like--like what now?" Miss Stapylton put her +head to one side and considered the contents of her vocabulary,--"you +are like a viking. I shall call you Olaf," she announced, when she had +reached a decision. + +This, look you, to the most dignified man in Lichfield,--a person who +had never borne a nickname in his life. You must picture for yourself +how the colonel stood before her, big, sturdy and blond, and glared down +at her, and assured himself that he was very indignant; like Timanthes, +the colonel's biographer prefers to draw a veil before the countenance +to which art is unable to do justice. + +Then, "I have no admiration for the Northmen," Rudolph Musgrave +declared, stiffly. "They were a rude and barbarous nation, proverbially +addicted to piracy and intemperance." + +"My goodness gracious!" Miss Stapylton observed,--and now, for the +first time, he saw the teeth that were like grains of rice upon a pink +rose petal. Also, he saw dimples. "And does one mean all that by a +viking?" + +"The vikings," he informed her--and his Library manner had settled upon +him now to the very tips of his fingers--"were pirates. The word is of +Icelandic origin, from _vik_, the name applied to the small inlets along +the coast in which they concealed their galleys. I may mention that Olaf +was not a viking, but a Norwegian king, being the first Christian +monarch to reign in Norway." + +"Dear me!" said Miss Stapylton; "how interesting!" + +Then she yawned with deliberate cruelty. + +"However," she concluded, "I shall call you Olaf, just the same." + +"Er--h'm!" said the colonel. + + * * * * * + +And this stuttering boor (he reflected) was Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, +confessedly the social triumph of his generation! This imbecile, without +a syllable to say for himself, without a solitary adroit word within +tongue's reach, wherewith to annihilate the hussy, was a Musgrave of +Matocton! + + * * * * * + +And she did. To her he was "Olaf" from that day forth. + +Rudolph Musgrave called her, "You." He was nettled, of course, by her +forwardness--"Olaf," indeed!--yet he found it, somehow, difficult to +bear this fact in mind continuously. + +For while it is true our heroes and heroines in fiction no longer fall +in love at first sight, Nature, you must remember, is too busily +employed with other matters to have much time to profit by current +literature. Then, too, she is not especially anxious to be realistic. +She prefers to jog along in the old rut, contentedly turning out +chromolithographic sunrises such as they give away at the tea stores, +contentedly staging the most violent and improbable melodramas; +and--sturdy old Philistine that she is--she even now permits her +children to fall in love in the most primitive fashion. + +She is not particularly interested in subtleties and soul analyses; she +merely chuckles rather complacently when a pair of eyes are drawn, +somehow, to another pair of eyes, and an indescribable something is +altered somewhere in some untellable fashion, and the world, suddenly, +becomes the most delightful place of residence in all the universe. +Indeed, it is her favorite miracle, this. For at work of this sort the +old Philistine knows that she is an adept; and she has rejoiced in the +skill of her hands, with a sober workmanly joy, since Cain first went +a-wooing in the Land of Nod. + +So Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, without understanding what had happened to +him, on a sudden was strangely content with life. + +It was at supper--dinner, in Lichfield, when not a formal +entertainment, is eaten at two in the afternoon--that he fell +a-speculating as to whether Her eyes, after all, could be fitly +described as purple. + +Wasn't there a grayer luminosity about them than he had at first +suspected?--wasn't the cool glow of them, in a word, rather that of +sunlight falling upon a wet slate roof? + +It was a delicate question, an affair of nuances, of almost +imperceptible graduations; and in debating a matter of such nicety, a +man must necessarily lay aside all petty irritation, such as being +nettled by an irrational nickname, and approach the question with +unbiased mind. + +He did. And when, at last, he had come warily to the verge of decision, +Miss Musgrave in all innocence announced that they would excuse him if +he wished to get back to his work. + +He discovered that, somehow, the three had finished supper; and, +somehow, he presently discovered himself in his study, where eight +o'clock had found him every evening for the last ten years, when he was +not about his social diversions. An old custom, you will observe, is not +lightly broken. + + + + +VI + + +Subsequently: "I have never approved of these international marriages," +said Colonel Musgrave, with heat. "It stands to reason, she is simply +marrying the fellow for his title. _(The will of Jeremiah Brown, dated +29 November, 1690, recorded 2 February, 1690-1, mentions his wife Eliza +Brown and appoints her his executrix.)_ She can't possibly care for him. +_(This, then, was the second wife of Edward Osborne of Henrico, who, +marrying him 15 June, 1694, died before January, 1696-7.)_ But they are +all flibbertigibbets, every one of them. _(She had apparently no +children by either marriage--)_ And I dare say she is no better than the +rest." + +Came a tap on the door. Followed a vision of soft white folds and +furbelows and semi-transparencies and purple eyes and a pouting mouth. + +"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, Olaf," the owner of these +vanities complained. "Are you very busy? Cousin Agatha is about her +housekeeping, and I have read the afternoon paper all through,--even the +list of undelivered letters and the woman's page,--and I just want to +see the Gilbert Stuart picture," she concluded,--exercising, one is +afraid, a certain economy in regard to the truth. + +This was a little too much. If a man's working-hours are not to be +respected--if his privacy is to be thus invaded on the flimsiest of +pretexts,--why, then, one may very reasonably look for chaos to come +again. This, Rudolph Musgrave decided, was a case demanding firm and +instant action. Here was a young person who needed taking down a peg or +two, and that at once. + +But he made the mistake of looking at her first. And after that, he lied +glibly. "Good Lord, no! I am not in the least busy now. In fact, I was +just about to look you two up." + +"I was rather afraid of disturbing you." She hesitated; and a lucent +mischief woke in her eyes. "You are so patriarchal, Olaf," she lamented. +"I felt like a lion venturing into a den of Daniels. But if you cross +your heart you aren't really busy--why, then, you can show me the +Stuart, Olaf." + +It is widely conceded that Gilbert Stuart never in his after work +surpassed the painting which hung then in Rudolph Musgrave's study,--the +portrait of the young Gerald Musgrave, afterward the friend of Jefferson +and Henry, and, still later, the author of divers bulky tomes, +pertaining for the most part to ethnology. The boy smiles at you from +the canvas, smiles ambiguously,--smiles with a woman's mouth, set above +a resolute chin, however,--and with a sort of humorous sadness in his +eyes. These latter are of a dark shade of blue--purple, if you +will,--and his hair is tinged with red. + +"Why, he took after me!" said Miss Stapylton. "How thoughtful of him, +Olaf!" + +And Rudolph Musgrave saw the undeniable resemblance. It gave him a queer +sort of shock, too, as he comprehended, for the first time, that the +faint blue vein on that lifted arm held Musgrave blood,--the same blood +which at this thought quickened. For any person guided by appearances, +Rudolph Musgrave considered, would have surmised that the vein in +question contained celestial ichor or some yet diviner fluid. + +"It is true," he conceded, "that there is a certain likeness." + +"And he is a very beautiful boy," said Miss Stapylton, demurely. "Thank +you, Olaf; I begin to think you are a dangerous flatterer. But he is +only a boy, Olaf! And I had always thought of Gerald Musgrave as a +learned person with a fringe of whiskers all around his face--like a +centerpiece, you know." + +The colonel smiled. "This portrait was painted early in life. Our +kinsman was at that time, I believe, a person of rather frivolous +tendencies. Yet he was not quite thirty when he first established his +reputation by his monograph upon _The Evolution of Marriage_. And +afterwards, just prior to his first meeting with Goethe, you will +remember--" + +"Oh, yes!" Miss Stapylton assented, hastily; "I remember perfectly. I +know all about him, thank you. And it was that beautiful boy, Olaf, that +young-eyed cherub, who developed into a musty old man who wrote musty +old books, and lived a musty, dusty life all by himself, and never +married or had any fun at all! How _horrid_, Olaf!" she cried, with a +queer shrug of distaste. + +"I fail," said Colonel Musgrave, "to perceive anything--ah--horrid in a +life devoted to the study of anthropology. His reputation when he died +was international." + +"But he never had any fun, you jay-bird! And, oh, Olaf! Olaf! that boy +could have had so much fun! The world held so much for him! Why, Fortune +is only a woman, you know, and what woman could have refused him +anything if he had smiled at her like that when he asked for it?" + +Miss Stapylton gazed up at the portrait for a long time now, her hands +clasped under her chin. Her face was gently reproachful. + +"Oh, boy dear, boy dear!" she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her +voice, "how _could_ you be _so_ foolish? _Didn't_ you know there was +something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and +customs and folk-songs? Oh, precious child, how could you?" + +Gerald Musgrave smiled back at her, ambiguously; and Rudolph Musgrave +laughed. "I perceive," said he, "you are a follower of Epicurus. For my +part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of the Stoic. I can +conceive of no nobler life than one devoted to furthering the cause of +science." + +She looked up at him, with a wan smile. "A barren life!" she said: "ah, +yes, his was a wasted life! His books are all out-of-date now, and +nobody reads them, and it is just as if he had never been. A barren +life, Olaf! And that beautiful boy might have had so much fun--Life is +queer, isn't it, Olaf?" + +Again he laughed, "The criticism," he suggested, "is not altogether +original. And Science, no less than War, must have her unsung heroes. +You must remember," he continued, more seriously, "that any great work +must have as its foundation the achievements of unknown men. I fancy +that Cheops did not lay every brick in his pyramid with his own hand; +and I dare say Nebuchadnezzar employed a few helpers when he was laying +out his hanging gardens. But time cannot chronicle these lesser men. +Their sole reward must be the knowledge that they have aided somewhat in +the unending work of the world." + +Her face had altered into a pink and white penitence which was flavored +with awe. + +"I--I forgot," she murmured, contritely; "I--forgot you were--like +him--about your genealogies, you know. Oh, Olaf, I'm very silly! Of +course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, I dare say, if you like +it,--to devote your life to learning, as you and he have done. I forgot, +Olaf. Still, I am sorry, somehow, for that beautiful boy," she ended, +with a disconsolate glance at the portrait. + + + + +VII + + +Long after Miss Stapylton had left him, the colonel sat alone in his +study, idle now, and musing vaguely. There were no more addenda +concerning the descendants of Captain Thomas Osborne that night. + +At last, the colonel rose and threw open a window, and stood looking +into the moonlit garden. The world bathed in a mist of blue and silver. +There was a breeze that brought him sweet, warm odors from the garden, +together with a blurred shrilling of crickets and the conspiratorial +conference of young leaves. + +"Of course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, if you like it," he +said, with a faint chuckle. "I wonder, now, if I do like it?" + +He was strangely moved. He seemed, somehow, to survey Rudolph Musgrave +and all his doings with complete and unconcerned aloofness. The man's +life, seen in its true proportions, dwindled into the merest flicker of +a match; he had such a little while to live, this Rudolph Musgrave! And +he spent the serious hours of this brief time writing notes and charts +and pamphlets that perhaps some hundred men in all the universe might +care to read--pamphlets no better and no more accurate than hundreds of +other men were writing at that very moment. + +No, the capacity for originative and enduring work was not in him; and +this incessant compilation of dreary footnotes, this incessant rummaging +among the bones of the dead--did it, after all, mean more to this +Rudolph Musgrave than one full, vivid hour of life in that militant +world yonder, where men fought for other and more tangible prizes than +the mention of one's name in a genealogical journal? + +He could not have told you. In his heart, he knew that a thorough digest +of the Wills and Orders of the Orphans' Court of any county must always +rank as a useful and creditable performance; but, from without, the +sounds and odors of Spring were calling to him, luring him, wringing his +very heart, bidding him come forth into the open and crack a jest or two +before he died, and stare at the girls a little before the match had +flickered out. + + * * * * * + +At this time he heard a moaning noise. The colonel gave a shrug, sighed, +and ascended to his sister's bedroom. He knew that Agatha must be ill; +and that there is no more efficient quietus to wildish meditations than +the heating of hot-water bottles and the administration of hypnotics he +had long ago discovered. + + + + +PART TWO - RENASCENCE + + "As one imprisoned that hath lain alone + And dreamed of sunlight where no vagrant gleam + Of sunlight pierces, being freed, must deem + This too but dreaming, and must dread the sun + Whose glory dazzles,--even as such-an-one + Am I whose longing was but now supreme + For this high hour, and, now it strikes, esteem + I do but dream long dreamed-of goals are won. + + "Phyllis, I am not worthy of thy love. + I pray thee let no kindly word be said + Of me at all, for in the train thereof, + Whenas yet-parted lips, sigh-visited, + End speech and wait, mine when I will to move, + Such joy awakens that I grow afraid." +THOMAS ROWLAND. _Triumphs of Phyllis_. + + + + +I + + +They passed with incredible celerity, those next ten days--those +strange, delicious, topsy-turvy days. To Rudolph Musgrave it seemed +afterward that he had dreamed them away in some vague Lotus Land--in a +delectable country where, he remembered, there were always purple eyes +that mocked you, and red lips that coaxed you now, and now cast gibes at +you. + +You felt, for the most part of your stay in this country, flushed and +hot and uncomfortable and unbelievably awkward, and you were mercilessly +bedeviled there; but not for all the accumulated wealth of Samarkand and +Ind and Ophir would you have had it otherwise. Ah, no, not otherwise in +the least trifle. For now uplifted to a rosy zone of acquiescence, you +partook incuriously at table of nectar and ambrosia, and noted abroad, +without any surprise, that you trod upon a more verdant grass than +usual, and that someone had polished up the sun a bit; and, in fine, you +snatched a fearful joy from the performance of the most trivial +functions of life. + +Yet always he remembered that it could not last; always he remembered +that in the autumn Patricia was to marry Lord Pevensey. She sometimes +gave him letters to mail which were addressed to that nobleman. He +wondered savagely what was in them; he posted them with a vicious shove; +and, for the time, they caused him acute twinges of misery. But not for +long; no, for, in sober earnest, if some fantastic sequence of events +had made his one chance of winning Patricia Stapylton dependent on his +spending a miserable half-hour in her company, Rudolph Musgrave could +not have done it. + +As for Miss Stapylton, she appeared to delight in the cloistered, +easy-going life of Lichfield. The quaint and beautiful old town fell +short in nothing of her expectations, in spite of the fact that she had +previously read John Charteris's tales of Lichfield,--"those effusions +which" (if the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_ is to be trusted) "have +builded, by the strength and witchery of record and rhyme, romance and +poem, a myriad-windowed temple in Lichfield's honor--exquisite, +luminous, and enduring--for all the world to see." + +Miss Stapylton appeared to delight in the cloistered easy-going life of +Lichfield,--that town which was once, as the outside world has +half-forgotten now, the center of America's wealth, politics and +culture, the town to which Europeans compiling "impressions" of America +devoted one of their longest chapters in the heyday of Elijah Pogram and +Jefferson Brick. But the War between the States has changed all that, +and Lichfield endures to-day only as a pleasant backwater. + +Very pleasant, too, it was in the days of Patricia's advent. There were +strikingly few young men about, to be sure; most of them on reaching +maturity had settled in more bustling regions. But many maidens remained +whom memory delights to catalogue,--tall, brilliant Lizzie Allardyce, +the lovely and cattish Marian Winwood, to whom Felix Kennaston wrote +those wonderful love-letters which she published when he married +Kathleen Saumarez, the rich Baugh heiresses from Georgia, the Pride +twins, and Mattie Ferneyhaugh, whom even rival beauties loved, they say, +and other damsels by the score,--all in due time to be wooed and won, +and then to pass out of the old town's life. + +Among the men of Rudolph Musgrave's generation--those gallant oldsters +who were born and bred, and meant to die, in Lichfield,--Patricia did +not lack for admirers. Tom May was one of them, of course; rarely a +pretty face escaped the tribute of at least one proposal from Tom May. +Then there was Roderick Taunton, he with the leonine mane, who spared +her none of his forensic eloquence, but found Patricia less tractable +than the most stubborn of juries. Bluff Walter Thurman, too, who was +said to know more of Dickens, whist and criminal law than any other man +living, came to worship at her shrine, as likewise did huge red-faced +Ashby Bland, famed for that cavalry charge which history-books tell you +that he led, and at which he actually was not present, for reasons all +Lichfield knew and chuckled over. And Courtney Thorpe and Charles +Maupin, doctors of the flesh and the spirit severally, were others among +the rivals who gathered about Patricia at decorous festivals when, +candles lighted, the butler and his underlings came with trays of +delectable things to eat, and the "nests" of tables were set out, and +pleasant chatter abounded. + +And among Patricia's attendants Colonel Musgrave, it is needless to +relate, was preeminently pertinacious. The two found a deal to talk +about, somehow, though it is doubtful if many of their comments were of +sufficient importance or novelty to merit record. Then, also, he often +read aloud to her from lovely books, for the colonel read admirably and +did not scruple to give emotional passages their value. _Trilby_, +published the preceding spring in book form, was one of these books, for +all this was at a very remote period; and the _Rubaiyat_ was another, +for that poem was as yet unhackneyed and hardly wellknown enough to be +parodied in those happy days. + +Once he read to her that wonderful sad tale of Hans Christian Andersen's +which treats of the china chimney-sweep and the shepherdess, who eloped +from their bedizened tiny parlor-table, and were frightened by the +vastness of the world outside, and crept ignominiously back to their fit +home. "And so," the colonel ended, "the little china people remained +together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and +continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces." + +"It was really a very lucky thing," Patricia estimated, "that the +grandfather had a rivet in his neck and couldn't nod to the +billy-goat-legged person to take the shepherdess away into his cupboard. +I don't doubt the little china people were glad of it. But after +climbing so far--and seeing the stars,--I think they ought to have had +more to be glad for." Her voice was quaintly wistful. + +"I will let you into a secret--er--Patricia. That rivet was made out of +the strongest material in the whole universe. And the old grandfather +was glad, at bottom, he had it in his neck so that he couldn't nod and +separate the shepherdess from the chimney-sweep." + +"Yes,--I guess he had been rather a rip among the bric-a-brac in his day +and sympathized with them?" + +"No, it wasn't just that. You see these little china people had forsaken +their orderly comfortable world on the parlor table to climb very high. +It was a brave thing to do, even though they faltered and came back +after a while. It is what we all want to do, Patricia--to climb toward +the stars,--even those of us who are too lazy or too cowardly to attempt +it. And when others try it, we are envious and a little uncomfortable, +and we probably scoff; but we can't help admiring, and there is a rivet +in the neck of all of us which prevents us from interfering. Oh, yes, +we little china people have a variety of rivets, thank God, to prevent +too frequent nodding and too cowardly a compromise with +baseness,--rivets that are a part of us and force us into flashes of +upright living, almost in spite of ourselves, when duty and inclination +grapple. There is always the thing one cannot do for the reason that one +is constituted as one is. That, I take it, is the real rivet in +grandfather's neck and everybody else's." + +He spoke disjointedly, vaguely, but the girl nodded. "I think I +understand, Olaf. Only, it is a two-edged rivet--to mix metaphors--and +keeps us stiffnecked against all sorts of calls. No, I am not sure that +the thing one cannot do because one is what one is, proves to be always +a cause for international jubilations and fireworks on the lawn." + + + + +II + + +Thus Lichfield, as to its staid trousered citizenry, fell prostrate at +Miss Stapylton's feet, and as to the remainder of its adults, +vociferously failed to see anything in the least remarkable in her +appearance, and avidly took and compared notes as to her personal +apparel. + +"You have brought Asmodeus into Lichfield," Colonel Musgrave one day +rebuked Miss Stapylton, as they sat in the garden. "The demon of pride +and dress is rampant everywhere--er--Patricia. Even Agatha does her hair +differently now; and in church last Sunday I counted no less than seven +duplicates of that blue hat of yours." + +Miss Stapylton was moved to mirth. "Fancy your noticing a thing like +that!" said she. "I didn't know you were even aware I had a blue hat." + +"I am no judge," he conceded, gravely, "of such fripperies. I don't +pretend to be. But, on the other hand, I must plead guilty to deriving +considerable harmless amusement from your efforts to dress as an example +and an irritant to all Lichfield." + +"You wouldn't have me a dowd, Olaf?" said she, demurely. "I have to be +neat and tidy, you know. You wouldn't have me going about in a +continuous state of unbuttonedness and black bombazine like Mrs. Rabbet, +would you?" + +Rudolph Musgrave debated as to this. "I dare say," he at last conceded, +cautiously, "that to the casual eye your appearance is somewhat +--er--more pleasing than that of our rector's wife. But, on the +other hand----" + +"Olaf, I am embarrassed by such fulsome eulogy. Mrs. Rabbet isn't a day +under forty-nine. And you consider me _somewhat_ better-looking than she +is!" + +He inspected her critically, and was confirmed in his opinion. + +"Olaf"--coaxingly--"do you really think I am as ugly as that?" + +"Pouf!" said the colonel airily; "I dare say you are well enough." + +"Olaf"--and this was even more cajoling--"do you know you've never told +me what sort of a woman you most admire?" + +"I don't admire any of them," said Colonel Musgrave, stoutly. "They are +too vain and frivolous--especially the pink-and-white ones," he added, +unkindlily. + +"Cousin Agatha has told me all about your multifarious affairs of +course. She depicts you as a sort of cardiacal buccaneer and visibly +gloats over the tale of your enormities. She is perfectly dear about +it. But have you never--_cared_--for any woman, Olaf?" + +Precarious ground, this! His eyes were fixed upon her now. And hers, for +doubtless sufficient reasons, were curiously intent upon anything in the +universe rather than Rudolph Musgrave. + +"Yes," said he, with a little intake of the breath; "yes, I cared once." + +"And--she cared?" asked Miss Stapylton. + +She happened, even now, not to be looking at him. + +"She!" Rudolph Musgrave cried, in real surprise. "Why, God bless my +soul, of course she didn't! She didn't know anything about it." + +"You never told her, Olaf?"--and this was reproachful. Then Patricia +said: "Well! and did she go down in the cellar and get the wood-ax or +was she satisfied just to throw the bric-a-brac at you?" + +And Colonel Musgrave laughed aloud. + +"Ah!" said he; "it would have been a brave jest if I had told her, +wouldn't it? She was young, you see, and wealthy, and--ah, well, I won't +deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I will serve up to +you no praises of her sauced with lies. And I scorn to fall back on the +stock-in-trade of the poets,--all their silly metaphors and similes and +suchlike nonsense. I won't tell you that her complexion reminded me of +roses swimming in milk, for it did nothing of the sort. Nor am I going +to insist that her eyes had a fire like that of stars, or proclaim that +Cupid was in the habit of lighting his torch from them. I don't think +he was. I would like to have caught the brat taking any such liberties +with those innocent, humorous, unfathomable eyes of hers! And they +didn't remind me of violets, either," he pursued, belligerently, "nor +did her mouth look to me in the least like a rosebud, nor did I have the +slightest difficulty in distinguishing between her hands and lilies. I +consider these hyperbolical figures of speech to be idiotic. Ah, no!" +cried Colonel Musgrave, warming to his subject--and regarding it, too, +very intently; "ah, no, a face that could be patched together at the +nearest florist's would not haunt a man's dreams o'nights, as hers does! +I haven't any need for praises sauced with lies! I spurn hyperbole. I +scorn exaggeration. I merely state calmly and judicially that she was +God's masterpiece,--the most beautiful and adorable and indescribable +creature that He ever made." + +She smiled at this. "You should have told her, Olaf," said Miss +Stapylton. "You should have told her that you cared." + +He gave a gesture of dissent. "She had everything," he pointed out, +"everything the world could afford her. And, doubtless, she would have +been very glad to give it all up for me, wouldn't she?--for me, who +haven't youth or wealth or fame or anything? Ah, I dare say she would +have been delighted to give up the world she knew and loved,--the world +that loved her,--for the privilege of helping me digest old county +records!" + +And Rudolph Musgrave laughed again, though not mirthfully. + +But the girl was staring at him, with a vague trouble in her eyes. "You +should have told her, Olaf," she repeated. + +And at this point he noted that the arbutus-flush in her cheeks began to +widen slowly, until, at last, it had burned back to the little pink +ears, and had merged into the coppery glory of her hair, and had made +her, if such a thing were possible--which a minute ago it manifestly was +not,--more beautiful and adorable and indescribable than ever before. + +"Ah, yes!" he scoffed, "Lichfield would have made a fitting home for +her. She would have been very happy here, shut off from the world with +us,--with us, whose forefathers have married and intermarried with one +another until the stock is worthless, and impotent for any further +achievement. For here, you know, we have the best blood in America, and +--for utilitarian purposes--that means the worst blood. Ah, we may prate +of our superiority to the rest of the world,--and God knows, we +do!--but, at bottom, we are worthless. We are worn out, I tell you! we +are effete and stunted in brain and will-power, and the very desire of +life is gone out of us! We are contented simply to exist in Lichfield. +And she--" + +He paused, and a new, fierce light came into his eyes. "She was so +beautiful!" he said, half-angrily, between clenched teeth. + +"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf," she lamented, with a hint +of real sadness. "You imagine you are in love with a girl because you +happen to like the color of her eyes, or because there is a curve about +her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, Olaf, as we women +understand it. Ah, no, a girl's love for a man doesn't depend altogether +upon his fitness to be used as an advertisement for somebody's +ready-made clothing." + +"You fancy you know what you are talking about," said Rudolph Musgrave, +"but you don't. You don't realize, you see, how beautiful she--was." + +And this time, he nearly tripped upon the tense, for her hand was on his +arm, and, in consequence, a series of warm, delicious little shivers was +running about his body in a fashion highly favorable to extreme +perturbation of mind. + +"You should have told her, Olaf," she said, wistfully. "Oh, Olaf, Olaf, +why didn't you tell her?" + +She did not know, of course, how she was tempting him; she did not know, +of course, how her least touch seemed to waken every pulse in his body +to an aching throb, and set hope and fear a-drumming in his breast. +Obviously, she did not know; and it angered him that she did not. + +"She would have laughed at me," he said, with a snarl; "how she would +have laughed!" + +"She wouldn't have laughed, Olaf." And, indeed, she did not look as if +she would. + +"But much you know of her!" said Rudolph Musgrave, morosely. "She was +just like the rest of them, I tell you! She knew how to stare a man out +of countenance with big purple eyes that were like violets with the dew +on them, and keep her paltry pink-and-white baby face all pensive and +sober, till the poor devil went stark, staring mad, and would have +pawned his very soul to tell her that he loved her! She knew! She did it +on purpose. She would look pensive just to make an ass of you! She--" + +And here the colonel set his teeth for a moment, and resolutely drew +back from the abyss. + +"She would not have cared for me," he said, with a shrug. "I was not +exactly the sort of fool she cared for. What she really cared for was a +young fool who could dance with her in this silly new-fangled gliding +style, and send her flowers and sweet-meats, and make love to her +glibly--and a petticoated fool who would envy her fine feathers,--and, +at last, a knavish fool who would barter his title for her money. She +preferred fools, you see, but she would never have cared for a +middle-aged penniless fool like me. And so," he ended, with a vicious +outburst of mendacity, "I never told her, and she married a title and +lived unhappily in gilded splendor ever afterwards." + +"You should have told her, Olaf," Miss Stapylton persisted; and then she +asked, in a voice that came very near being inaudible: "Is it too late +to tell her now, Olaf?" + +The stupid man opened his lips a little, and stood staring at her with +hungry eyes, wondering if it were really possible that she did not hear +the pounding of his heart; and then his teeth clicked, and he gave a +despondent gesture. + +"Yes," he said, wearily, "it is too late now." + +Thereupon Miss Stapylton tossed her head. "Oh, very well!" said she; +"only, for my part, I think you acted very foolishly, and I don't see +that you have the least right to complain. I quite fail to see how you +could have expected her to marry you--or, in fact, how you can expect +any woman to marry you,--if you won't, at least, go to the trouble of +asking her to do so!" + +Then Miss Stapylton went into the house, and slammed the door after her. + + + + +III + + +Nor was that the worst of it. For when Rudolph Musgrave followed her--as +he presently did, in a state of considerable amaze,--his sister +informed him that Miss Stapylton had retired to her room with an +unaccountable headache. + +And there she remained for the rest of the evening. It was an unusually +long evening. + +Yet, somehow, in spite of its notable length--affording, as it did, an +excellent opportunity for undisturbed work,--Colonel Musgrave found, +with a pricking conscience, that he made astonishingly slight progress +in an exhaustive monograph upon the fragmentary Orderly Book of an +obscure captain in a long-forgotten regiment, which if it had not +actually served in the Revolution, had at least been demonstrably +granted money "for services," and so entitled hundreds of aspirants to +become the Sons (or Daughters) of various international disagreements. + +Nor did he see her at breakfast--nor at dinner. + + + + +IV + + +A curious little heartache accompanied Colonel Musgrave on his way home +that afternoon. He had not seen Patricia Stapylton for twenty-four +hours, and he was just beginning to comprehend what life would be like +without her. He did not find the prospect exhilarating. + +Then, as he came up the orderly graveled walk, he heard, issuing from +the little vine-covered summer-house, a loud voice. It was a man's +voice, and its tones were angry. + +"No! no!" the man was saying; "I'll agree to no such nonsense, I tell +you! What do you think I am?" + +"I think you are a jackass-fool," Miss Stapylton said, crisply, "and a +fortune-hunter, and a sot, and a travesty, and a whole heap of other +things I haven't, as yet had time to look up in the dictionary. And I +think--I think you call yourself an English gentleman? Well, all I have +to say is God pity England if her gentlemen are of your stamp! There +isn't a costermonger in all Whitechapel who would dare talk to me as +you've done! I would like to snatch you bald-headed, I would like to +kill you--And do you think, now, if you were the very last man left in +all the _world_ that I would--No, don't you try to answer me, for I +don't wish to hear a single word you have to say. Oh, oh! how _dare_ +you!" + +"Well, I've had provocation enough," the man's voice retorted, sullenly. +"Perhaps, I have cut up a bit rough, Patricia, but, then, you've been +talkin' like a fool, you know. But what's the odds? Let's kiss and make +up, old girl." + +"Don't touch me!" she panted; "ah, don't you _dare!_" + +"You little devil! you infernal little vixen? You'll jilt me, will you?" + +"Let me go!" the girl cried, sharply. Rudolph Musgrave went into the +summer-house. + +The man Colonel Musgrave found there was big and loose-jointed, with +traces of puffiness about his face. He had wheat-colored hair and +weakish-looking, pale blue eyes. One of his arms was about Miss +Stapylton, but he released her now, and blinked at Rudolph Musgrave. + +"And who are you, pray?" he demanded, querulously. "What do you want, +anyhow? What do you mean by sneakin' in here and tappin' on a fellow's +shoulder--like a damn' woodpecker, by Jove! I don't know you." + +There was in Colonel Musgrave's voice a curious tremor, when he spoke; +but to the eye he was unruffled, even faintly amused. + +"I am the owner of this garden," he enunciated, with leisurely +distinctness, "and it is not my custom to permit gentlewomen to be +insulted in it. So I am afraid I must ask you to leave it." + +"Now, see here," the man blustered, weakly, "we don't want any heroics, +you know. See here, you're her cousin, ain't you? By God, I'll leave it +to you, you know! She's treated me badly, don't you understand. She's a +jilt, you know. She's playin' fast and loose----" + +He never got any further, for at this point Rudolph Musgrave took him by +the coat-collar and half-dragged, half-pushed him through the garden, +shaking him occasionally with a quiet emphasis. The colonel was angry, +and it was a matter of utter indifference to him that they were +trampling over flower-beds, and leaving havoc in their rear. + +But when they had reached the side-entrance, he paused and opened it, +and then shoved his companion into an open field, where a number of +cows, fresh from the evening milking, regarded them with incurious eyes. +It was very quiet here, save for the occasional jangle of the cow-bells +and the far-off fifing of frogs in the marsh below. + +"It would have been impossible, of course," said Colonel Musgrave, "for +me to have offered you any personal violence as long as you were, in a +manner, a guest of mine. This field, however, is the property of Judge +Willoughby, and here I feel at liberty to thrash you." + +Then he thrashed the man who had annoyed Patricia Stapylton. + +That thrashing was, in its way, a masterpiece. There was a certain +conscientiousness about it, a certain thoroughness of execution--a +certain plodding and painstaking carefulness, in a word, such as is +possible only to those who have spent years in guiding fat-witted +tourists among the antiquities of the Lichfield Historical Association. + +"You ought to exercise more," Rudolph Musgrave admonished his victim, +when he had ended. "You are entirely too flabby now, you know. That path +yonder will take you to the hotel, where, I imagine, you are staying. +There is a train leaving Lichfield at six-fifteen, and if I were you, I +would be very careful not to miss that train. Good-evening. I am sorry +to have been compelled to thrash you, but I must admit I have enjoyed it +exceedingly." + +Then he went back into the garden. + + + + +V + + +In the shadow of a white lilac-bush, Colonel Musgrave paused with an +awed face. + +"Good Lord!" said he, aghast at the notion; "what would Agatha say if +she knew I had been fighting like a drunken truck-driver! Or, rather, +what would she refrain from saying! Only, she wouldn't believe it of me. +And, for the matter of that," Rudolph Musgrave continued, after a +moment's reflection, "I wouldn't have believed it of myself a week ago. +I think I am changing, somehow. A week ago I would have fetched in the +police and sworn out a warrant; and, if the weather had been as damp as +it is, I would have waited to put on my rubbers before I would have done +that much." + + + + +VI + + +He found her still in the summer-house, expectant of him, it seemed, her +lips parted, her eyes glowing. Rudolph Musgrave, looking down into twin +vivid depths, for a breathing-space, found time to rejoice that he had +refused to liken them to stars. Stars, forsooth!--and, pray, what paltry +sun, what irresponsible comet, what pallid, clinkered satellite, might +boast a purple splendor such as this? For all asterial scintillations, +at best, had but a clap-trap glitter; whereas the glow of Patricia's +eyes was a matter worthy of really serious attention. + +"What have you done with him, Olaf?" the girl breathed, quickly. + +"I reasoned with him," said Colonel Musgrave. "Oh, I found him quite +amenable to logic. He is leaving Lichfield this evening, I think." + +Thereupon Miss Stapylton began to laugh. "Yes," said she, "you must have +remonstrated very feelingly. Your tie's all crooked, Olaf dear, and your +hair's all rumpled, and there's dust all over your coat. You would +disgrace a rag-bag. Oh, I'm glad you reasoned--that way! It wasn't +dignified, but it was dear of you, Olaf. Pevensey's a beast." + +He caught his breath at this. "Pevensey!" he stammered; "the Earl of +Pevensey!--the man you are going to marry!" + +"Dear me, no!" Miss Stapylton answered, with utmost unconcern; "I would +sooner marry a toad. Why, didn't you know, Olaf? I thought, of course, +you knew you had been introducing athletics and better manners among the +peerage! That sounds like a bill in the House of Commons, doesn't it?" +Then Miss Stapylton laughed again, and appeared to be in a state of +agreeable, though somewhat nervous, elation. "I wrote to him two days +ago," she afterward explained, "breaking off the engagement. So he came +down at once and was very nasty about it." + +"You--you have broken your engagement," he echoed, dully; and continued, +with a certain deficiency of finesse, "But I thought you wanted to be a +countess?" + +"Oh, you boor, you vulgarian!" the girl cried, "Oh, you do put things so +crudely, Olaf! You are hopeless." + +She shook an admonitory forefinger in his direction, and pouted in the +most dangerous fashion. + +"But he always seemed so nice," she reflected, with puckered brows, +"until to-day, you know. I thought he would be eminently suitable. I +liked him tremendously until--" and here, a wonderful, tender change +came into her face, a wistful quaver woke in her voice--"until I found +there was some one else I liked better." + +"Ah!" said Rudolph Musgrave. + +So, that was it--yes, that was it! Her head was bowed now--her glorious, +proud little head,--and she sat silent, an abashed heap of fluffy frills +and ruffles, a tiny bundle of vaporous ruchings and filmy tucks and +suchlike vanities, in the green dusk of the summer-house. + +But he knew. He had seen her face grave and tender in the twilight, and +he knew. + +She loved some man--some lucky devil! Ah, yes, that was it! And he knew +the love he had unwittingly spied upon to be august; the shamed +exultance of her face and her illumined eyes, the crimson banners her +cheeks had flaunted,--these were to Colonel Musgrave as a piece of +sacred pageantry; and before it his misery was awed, his envy went +posting to extinction. + +Thus the stupid man reflected, and made himself very unhappy over it. + +Then, after a little, the girl threw back her head and drew a deep +breath, and flashed a tremulous smile at him. + +"Ah, yes," said she; "there are better things in life than coronets, +aren't there, Olaf?" + +You should have seen how he caught up the word! + +"Life!" he cried, with a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of +life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of +life from the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I +have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off +from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider its +trifles as of supreme importance. I have affected to scorn that brave +world yonder where a man is proven. And, all the while, I was afraid of +it, I think. I was afraid of you before you came." + +At the thought of this Rudolph Musgrave laughed as he fell to pacing up +and down before her. + +"Life!" he cried, again, with a helpless gesture; and then smiled at +her, very sadly. "'Didn't I know there was something better in life than +grubbing after musty tribes and customs and folk-songs?'" he quoted. +"Why, what a question to ask of a professional genealogist! Don't you +realize, Patricia, that the very bread I eat is, actually, earned by the +achievements of people who have been dead for centuries? and in part, of +course, by tickling the vanity of living snobs? That constitutes a nice +trade for an able-bodied person as long as men are paid for emptying +garbage-barrels--now, doesn't it? And yet it is not altogether for the +pay's sake I do it," he added, haltingly. "There really is a fascination +about the work. You are really working out a puzzle,--like a fellow +solving a chess-problem. It isn't really work, it is amusement. And when +you are establishing a royal descent, and tracing back to czars and +Plantagenets and Merovingians, and making it all seem perfectly +plausible, the thing is sheer impudent, flagrant art, and _you_ are the +artist--" He broke off here and shrugged. "No, I could hardly make you +understand. It doesn't matter. It is enough that I have bartered youth +and happiness and the very power of living for the privilege of grubbing +in old county records." + +He paused. It is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even +in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving +grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his +heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little and +childlike, as she looked up at him with troubled eyes. + +"I--I don't quite understand," she murmured. "It isn't as if you were an +old man, Olaf. It isn't as if--" + +But he had scarcely heard her. "Ah, child, child!" he cried, "why did +you come to waken me? I was content in my smug vanities. I was content +in my ignorance. I could have gone on contentedly grubbing through my +musty, sleepy life here, till death had taken me, if only you had not +shown me what life might mean! Ah, child, child, why did you waken me?" + +"I?" she breathed; and now the flush of her cheeks had widened, +wondrously. + +"You! you!" he cried, and gave a wringing motion of his hands, for the +self-esteem of a complacent man is not torn away without agony. "Who +else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still +I must play the coward's part! That woman I told you of--that woman I +loved--was you! Yes, you, you!" he cried, again and again, in a sort of +frenzy. + +And then, on a sudden, Colonel Musgrave began to laugh. + +"It is very ridiculous, isn't it?" he demanded of her. "Yes, it is +very--very funny. Now comes the time to laugh at me! Now comes the time +to lift your brows, and to make keen arrows of your eyes, and of your +tongue a little red dagger! I have dreamed of this moment many and many +a time. So laugh, I say! Laugh, for I have told you that I love you. You +are rich, and I am a pauper--you are young, and I am old, remember,--and +I love you, who love another man! For the love of God, laugh at me and +have done--laugh! for, as God lives, it is the bravest jest I have ever +known!" + +But she came to him, with a wonderful gesture of compassion, and caught +his great, shapely hands in hers. + +"I--I knew you cared," she breathed. "I have always known you cared. I +would have been an idiot if I hadn't. But, oh, Olaf, I didn't know you +cared so much. You frighten me, Olaf," she pleaded, and raised a tearful +face to his. "I am very fond of you, Olaf dear. Oh, don't think I am not +fond of you." And the girl paused for a breathless moment. "I think I +might have married you, Olaf," she said, half-wistfully, "if--if it +hadn't been for one thing." + +Rudolph Musgrave smiled now, though he found it a difficult business. +"Yes," he assented, gravely, "I know, dear. If it were not for the other +man--that lucky devil! Yes, he is a very, very lucky devil, child, and +he constitutes rather a big 'if,' doesn't he?" + +Miss Stapylton, too, smiled a little. "No," said she, "that isn't quite +the reason. The real reason is, as I told you yesterday, that I quite +fail to see how you can expect any woman to marry you, you jay-bird, if +you won't go to the trouble of asking her to do so." + +And, this time, Miss Stapylton did not go into the house. + + + + +VII + + +When they went in to supper, they had planned to tell Miss Agatha of +their earth-staggering secret at once. But the colonel comprehended, at +the first glimpse of his sister, that the opportunity would be +ill-chosen. + +The meal was an awkward half-hour. Miss Agatha, from the head of the +table, did very little talking, save occasionally to evince views of +life that were both lachrymose and pugnacious. And the lovers talked +with desperate cheerfulness, so that there might be no outbreak so long +as Pilkins--preeminently ceremonious among butlers, and as yet inclined +to scoff at the notion that the Musgraves of Matocton were not divinely +entrusted to his guardianship,--was in the room. + +Coming so close upon the heels of his high hour, this contretemps of +Agatha's having one of her "attacks," seemed more to Rudolph Musgrave +than a man need rationally bear with equanimity. Perhaps it was a trifle +stiffly that he said he did not care for any raspberries. + +His sister burst into tears. + +"That's all the thanks I get. I slave my life out, and what thanks do I +get for it? I never have any pleasure, I never put my foot out of the +house except to go to market,--and what thanks do I get for it? That's +what I want you to tell me with the first raspberries of the season. +That's what I want! Oh, I don't wonder you can't look me in the eye. And +I wish I was dead! that's what I wish!" + +Colonel Musgrave did not turn at once toward Patricia, when his sister +had stumbled, weeping, from the dining-room. + +"I--I am so sorry, Olaf," said a remote and tiny voice. + +Then he touched her hand with his finger-tips, ever so lightly. "You +must not worry about it, dear. I daresay I was unpardonably brusque. And +Agatha's health is not good, so that she is a trifle irritable at times. +Why, good Lord, we have these little set-to's ever so often, and never +give them a thought afterwards. That is one of the many things the +future Mrs. Musgrave will have to get accustomed to, eh? Or does that +appalling prospect frighten you too much?" + +And Patricia brazenly confessed that it did not. She also made a face at +him, and accused Rudolph Musgrave of trying to crawl out of marrying +her, which proceeding led to frivolities unnecessary to record, but +found delectable by the participants. + + + + +VIII + + +Colonel Musgrave was alone. He had lifted his emptied coffee-cup and he +swished the lees gently to and fro. He was curiously intent upon these +lees, considered them in the light of a symbol.... + +Then a comfortable, pleasant-faced mulattress came to clear the +supper-table. Virginia they called her. Virginia had been nurse in turn +to all the children of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her +life she appeared to regard the emancipation of the South's negroes as +an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yankees +--as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" proceeding which very +certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the +Musgrave household. + +"Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave, "don't forget to make up a fire in +the kitchen-stove before you go to bed. And please fill the kettle +before you go upstairs, and leave it on the stove. Miss Agatha is not +well to-night." + +"Yaas, suh. I unnerstan', suh," Virginia said, sedately. + +Virginia filled her tray, and went away quietly, her pleasant yellow +face as imperturbable as an idol's. + + + + +PART THREE - TERTIUS + + "It is in many ways made plain to us + That love must grow like any common thing, + Root, bud, and leaf, ere ripe for garnering + The mellow fruitage front us; even thus + Must Helena encounter Theseus + Ere Paris come, and every century + Spawn divers queens who die with Antony + But live a great while first with Julius. + + "Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play + Wherein I have no part, and laugh, and sit + Contented in the wings, whilst you portray + An amorous maid with gestures that befit + This lovely role,--as who knows better, pray, + Than I that helped you in rehearsing it?" + +Horace Symonds. _Civic Voluntaries_. + + + + +I + + +When the Presidential campaign was at its height; when in various +sections of the United States "the boy orator of La Platte" was making +invidious remarks concerning the Republican Party, and in Canton (Ohio) +Mr. M.A. Hanna was cheerfully expressing his confidence as to the +outcome of it all; when the Czar and the Czarina were visiting President +Faure in Paris "amid unparalleled enthusiasm"; and when semi-educated +people were appraising, with a glibness possible to ignorance only, the +literary achievements of William Morris and George du Maurier, who had +just died:--at this remote time, Roger Stapylton returned to Lichfield. + +For in that particular October Patricia's father, an accommodating +physician having declared old Roger Stapylton's health to necessitate a +Southern sojourn, leased the Bellingham mansion in Lichfield. It +happened that, by rare good luck, Tom Bellingham--of the Bellinghams of +Assequin, not the Bellinghams of Bellemeade, who indeed immigrated after +the War of 1812 and have never been regarded as securely established +from a social standpoint,--was at this time in pecuniary difficulties on +account of having signed another person's name to a cheque. + +Roger Stapylton refurnished the house in the extreme degree of +Lichfieldian elegance. Colonel Musgrave was his mentor throughout the +process; and the oldest families of Lichfield very shortly sat at table +with the former overseer, and not at all unwillingly, since his dinners +were excellent and an infatuated Rudolph Musgrave--an axiom now in +planning any list of guests,--was very shortly to marry the man's +daughter. + +In fact, the matter had been settled; and Colonel Musgrave had received +from Roger Stapylton an exuberantly granted charter of courtship. + +This befell, indeed, upon a red letter day in Roger Stapylton's life. +The banker was in business matters wonderfully shrewd, as divers +transactions, since the signing of that half-forgotten contract whereby +he was to furnish a certain number of mules for the Confederate service, +strikingly attested: but he had rarely been out of the country wherein +his mother bore him; and where another nabob might have dreamed of an +earl, or even have soared aspiringly in imagination toward a +marchioness-ship for his only child, old Stapylton retained unshaken +faith in the dust-gathering creed of his youth. + +He had tolerated Pevensey, had indeed been prepared to purchase him much +as he would have ordered any other expensive trinket or knickknack which +Patricia desired. But he had never viewed the match with enthusiasm. + +Now, though, old Stapylton exulted. His daughter--half a Vartrey +already--would become by marriage a Musgrave of Matocton, no less. Pat's +carriage would roll up and down the oak-shaded avenue from which he had +so often stepped aside with an uncovered head, while gentlemen and +ladies cantered by; and it would be Pat's children that would play about +the corridors of the old house at whose doors he had lived so +long,--those awe-inspiring corridors, which he had very rarely entered, +except on Christmas Day and other recognized festivities, when, dressed +to the nines, the overseer and his uneasy mother were by immemorial +custom made free of the mansion, with every slave upon the big +plantation. + +"They were good days, sir," he chuckled. "Heh, we'll stick to the old +customs. We'll give a dinner and announce it at dessert, just as your +honored grandfather did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal--" + +For about the Musgraves of Matocton there could be no question. It was +the old man's delight to induce Rudolph Musgrave to talk concerning his +ancestors; and Stapylton soon had their history at his finger-tips. He +could have correctly blazoned every tincture in their armorial bearings +and have explained the origin of every rampant, counter-changed or +couchant beast upon the shield. + +He knew it was the _Bona Nova_ in the November of 1619,--for the first +Musgrave had settled in Virginia, prior to his removal to +Lichfield,--which had the honor of transporting the forebear of this +family into America. Stapylton could have told you offhand which scions +of the race had represented this or that particular county in the House +of Burgesses, and even for what years; which three of them were +Governors, and which of them had served as officers of the State Line in +the Revolution; and, in fine, was more than satisfied to have his +daughter play Penelophon to Colonel Musgrave's debonair mature Cophetua. + +In a word, Roger Stapylton had acquiesced to the transferal of his +daughter's affections with the peculiar equanimity of a properly reared +American parent. He merely stipulated that, since his business affairs +prevented an indefinite stay in Lichfield, Colonel Musgrave should +presently remove to New York City, where the older man held ready for +him a purely ornamental and remunerative position with the Insurance +Company of which Roger Stapylton was president. + +But upon this point Rudolph Musgrave was obdurate. + +He had voiced, and with sincerity, as you may remember, his desire to be +proven upon a larger stage than Lichfield afforded. Yet the sincerity +was bred of an emotion it did not survive. To-day, unconsciously, +Rudolph Musgrave was reflecting that he was used to living in Lichfield, +and would appear to disadvantage in a new surrounding, and very probably +would not be half so comfortable. + +Aloud he said, in firm belief that he spoke truthfully: "I cannot +conscientiously give up the Library, sir. I realize the work may not +seem important in your eyes. Indeed, in anybody's eyes it must seem an +inadequate outcome of a man's whole life. But it unfortunately happens +to be the only kind of work I am capable of doing. And--if you will +pardon me, sir,--I do not think it would be honest for me to accept this +generous salary and give nothing in return." + +But here Patricia broke in. + +Patricia agreed with Colonel Musgrave in every particular. Indeed, had +Colonel Musgrave proclaimed his intention of setting up in life as an +assassin, Patricia would readily have asserted homicide to be the most +praiseworthy of vocations. As it was, she devoted no little volubility +and emphasis and eulogy to the importance of a genealogist in the +eternal scheme of things; and gave her father candidly to understand +that an inability to appreciate this fact was necessarily indicative of +a deplorably low order of intelligence. + +Musgrave was to remember--long afterward--how glorious and dear this +brightly-colored, mettlesome and tiny woman had seemed to him in the +second display of temper he witnessed in Patricia. It was a revelation +of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability. + +Her father, though, said: "Pat, I've suspected for a long time it was +foolish of me to have a red-haired daughter." Thus he capitulated,--and +with an ineffable air of routine. + +Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living +persons. + + + + +II + + +Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living +persons.... + +As a token of this he devoted what little ready money he possessed to +renovating Matocton, where he had not lived for twenty years. He rarely +thought of money, not esteeming it an altogether suitable subject for a +gentleman's meditations. And to do him justice, the reflection that old +Stapylton's wealth would some day be at Rudolph Musgrave's disposal was +never more than an agreeable minor feature of Patricia's entourage +whenever, as was very often, Colonel Musgrave fell to thinking of how +adorable Patricia was in every particular. + +Yet there were times when he thought of Anne Charteris as well. He had +not seen her for a whole year now, for the Charterises had left +Lichfield shortly after the Pendomer divorce case had been settled, and +were still in Europe. + +This was the evening during which Roger Stapylton had favorably received +his declaration; and Colonel Musgrave was remembering the time that he +and Anne had last spoken with a semblance of intimacy--that caustic +time when Anne Charteris had interrupted him in high words with her +husband, and circumstances had afforded to Rudolph Musgrave no choice +save to confess, to this too-perfect woman, of all created beings, his +"true relations" with Clarice Pendomer. + +Even as yet the bitterness of that humiliation was not savorless.... + +It seemed to him that he could never bear to think of the night when +Anne had heard his stammerings through, and had merely listened, and in +listening had been unreasonably beautiful. So Godiva might have looked +on Peeping Tom, with more of wonder than of loathing, just at first.... + +It had been very hard to bear. But it seemed necessary. The truth would +have hurt Anne too much.... + +He noted with the gusto of a connoisseur how neatly the denouement of +this piteous farce had been prepared. His rage with Charteris; Anne's +overhearing, and misinterpretation of, a dozen angry words; that old +affair with Clarice--immediately before her marriage (one of how many +pleasurable gallantries? the colonel idly wondered, and regretted that +he had no Leporello to keep them catalogued for consultation)--and +George Pendomer's long-smoldering jealousy of Rudolph Musgrave: all +fitted in as neatly as the bits of a puzzle. + +It had been the simplest matter in the world to shield John Charteris. +Yet, the colonel wished he could be sure it was an unadulterated desire +of protecting Anne which had moved him. There had been very certainly an +enjoyment all the while in reflecting how nobly Rudolph Musgrave was +behaving for the sake of "the only woman he had ever loved." Yes, one +had undoubtedly phrased it thus--then, and until the time one met +Patricia. + +But Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a +little different, from all other people--even Patricia Stapylton. + +Always in reverie the colonel would come back to this,--that Anne could +not be thought of, quite, in the same frame of mind wherein one +appraised other persons. Especially must he concede this curious +circumstance whenever, as to-night, he considered divers matters that +had taken place quite long enough ago to have been forgotten. + +It was a foolish sort of a reverie, and scarcely worth the setting down. +It was a reverie of the kind that everyone, and especially everyone's +wife, admits to be mawkish and unprofitable; and yet, somehow, the next +still summer night, or long sleepy Sunday afternoon, or, perhaps, some +cheap, jigging and heartbreaking melody, will set a carnival of old +loves and old faces awhirl in the brain. One grows very sad over it, of +course, and it becomes apparent that one has always been ill-treated by +the world; but the sadness is not unpleasant, and one is quite willing +to forgive. + +Yes,--it was a long, long time ago. It must have been a great number of +centuries. Matocton was decked in its spring fripperies of burgeoning, +and the sky was a great, pale turquoise, and the buttercups left a +golden dust high up on one's trousers. One had not become entirely +accustomed to long trousers then, and one was rather proud of them. One +was lying on one's back in the woods, where the birds were astir and +eager to begin their house-building, and twittered hysterically over the +potentialities of straws and broken twigs. + +Overhead, the swelling buds of trees were visible against the sky, and +the branches were like grotesque designs on a Japanese plate. There was +a little clump of moss, very cool and soft, that just brushed one's +cheek. + +One was thinking--really thinking--for the first time in one's life; +and, curiously enough, one was thinking about a girl, although girls +were manifestly of no earthly importance. + +But Anne Willoughby was different. Even at the age when girls seemed +feckless creatures, whose aimings were inexplicable, both as concerned +existence in general, and, more concretely, as touched gravel-shooters +and snowballs, and whose reasons for bursting into tears were recondite, +one had perceived the difference. One wondered about it from time to +time. + +Gradually, there awoke an uneasy self-conscious interest as to all +matters that concerned her, a mental pricking up of the ears when her +name was mentioned. + +One lay awake o' nights, wondering why her hair curled so curiously +about her temples, and held such queer glowing tints in its depths when +sunlight fell upon it. One was uncomfortable and embarrassed and +Briarean-handed in her presence, but with her absence came the +overwhelming desire of seeing her again. + +After a little, it was quite understood that one was in love with Anne +Willoughby.... + +It was a matter of minor importance that her father was the wealthiest +man in Fairhaven, and that one's mother was poor. One would go away into +foreign lands after a while, and come back with a great deal of +money,--lakes of rupees and pieces of eight, probably. It was very +simple. + +But Anne's father had taken an unreasonable view of the matter, and +carried Anne off to a terrible aunt, who returned one's letters +unopened. That was the end of Anne Willoughby. + +Then, after an interval--during which one fell in and out of love +assiduously, and had upon the whole a pleasant time,--Anne Charteris had +come to Lichfield. One had found that time had merely added poise and +self-possession and a certain opulence to the beauty which had caused +one's voice to play fantastic tricks in conference with Anne +Willoughby,--ancient, unforgotten conferences, wherein one had pointed +out the many respects in which she differed from all other women, and +the perfect feasibility of marrying on nothing a year. + +Much as one loved Patricia, and great as was one's happiness, men did +not love as boys did, after all.... + +"'Ah, Boy, it is a dream for life too high,'" said Colonel Musgrave, in +his soul. "And now let's think of something sensible. Let's think about +the present political crisis, and what to give the groomsmen, and how +much six times seven is. Meanwhile, you are not the fellow in _Aux +Italiens_, you know; you are not bothered by the faint, sweet smell of +any foolish jasmine-flower, you understand, or by any equally foolish +hankerings after your lost youth. You are simply a commonplace, +every-day sort of man, not thoroughly hardened as yet to being engaged, +and you are feeling a bit pulled down to-night, because your liver or +something is out of sorts." + +Upon reflection, Colonel Musgrave was quite sure that he was happy; and +that it was only his liver or something which was upset. But, at all +events, the colonel's besetting infirmity was always to shrink from +making changes; instinctively he balked against commission of any action +which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or +persons. It was very like Rudolph Musgrave that even now, for all the +glow of the future's bright allure, his heart should hark back to the +past and its absurd dear memories, with wistfulness. + +And he found it, as many others have done, but cheerless sexton's work, +this digging up of boyish recollections. One by one, they come to +light--the brave hopes and dreams and aspirations of youth; the ruddy +life has gone out of them; they have shriveled into an alien, pathetic +dignity. They might have been one's great-grandfather's or Hannibal's or +Adam's; the boy whose life was swayed by them is quite as dead as these. + +Amaryllis is dead, too. Perhaps, you drop in of an afternoon to talk +over old happenings. She is perfectly affable. She thinks it is time you +were married. She thinks it very becoming, the way you have stoutened. +And, no, they weren't at the Robinsons'; that was the night little +Amaryllis was threatened with croup. + +Then, after a little, the lamps of welcome are lighted in her eyes, her +breath quickens, her cheeks mount crimson flags in honor of her lord, +her hero, her conqueror. + +It is Mr. Grundy, who is happy to meet you, and hopes you will stay to +dinner. He patronizes you a trifle; his wife, you see, has told him all +about that boy who is as dead as Hannibal. You don't mind in the least; +you dine with Mr. and Mrs. Grundy, and pass a very pleasant evening. + +Colonel Musgrave had dined often with the Charterises. + + + + +III + + +And then some frolic god, _en route_ from homicide by means of an +unloaded pistol in Chicago for the demolishment of a likely ship off +Palos, with the cooeperancy of a defective pistonrod, stayed in his +flight to bring Joe Parkinson to Lichfield. + +It was Roger Stapylton who told the colonel of this advent, as the very +apex of jocularity. + +"For you remember the Parkinsons, I suppose?" + +"The ones that had a cabin near Matocton? Very deserving people, I +believe." + +"And _their_ son, sir, wants to marry my daughter," said Mr. +Stapylton,--"_my_ daughter, who is shortly to be connected by marriage +with the Musgraves of Matocton! I don't know what this world will come +to next." + +It was a treat to see him shake his head in deprecation of such anarchy. + +Then Roger Stapylton said, more truculently: "Yes, sir! on account of a +boy-and-girl affair five years ago, this half-strainer, this poor-white +trash, has actually had the presumption, sir,--but I don't doubt that +Pat has told you all about it?" + +"Why, no," said Colonel Musgrave. "She did not mention it this +afternoon. She was not feeling very well. A slight headache. I noticed +she was not inclined to conversation." + +It had just occurred to him, as mildly remarkable, that Patricia had +never at any time alluded to any one of those countless men who must +have inevitably made love to her. + +"Though, mind you, I don't say anything against Joe. He's a fine young +fellow. Paid his own way through college. Done good work in Panama and +in Alaska too. But--confound it, sir, the boy's a fool! Now I put it to +you fairly, ain't he a fool?" said Mr. Stapylton. + +"Upon my word, sir, if his folly has no other proof than an adoration of +your daughter," the colonel protested, "I must in self-defense beg leave +to differ with you." + +Yes, that was it undoubtedly. Patricia had too high a sense of honor to +exhibit these defeated rivals in a ridiculous light, even to him. It was +a revelation of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability. + +Then after a little further talk they separated. Colonel Musgrave left +that night for Matocton in order to inspect the improvements which were +being made there. He was to return to Lichfield on the ensuing +Wednesday, when his engagement to Patricia was to be announced--"just +as your honored grandfather did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal." + +Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much enamored, who fought the world +by ordinary like Hal o' the Wynd, "for his own hand," was seeing +Patricia every day. + + + + +IV + + +Colonel Musgrave remained five days at Matocton, that he might put his +house in order against his nearing marriage. It was a pleasant sight to +see the colonel stroll about the paneled corridors and pause to chat +with divers deferential workmen who were putting the last touches there, +or to observe him mid-course in affable consultation with gardeners +anent the rolling of a lawn or the retrimming of a rosebush, and to mark +the bearing of the man so optimistically colored by goodwill toward the +solar system. + +He joyed in his old home,--in the hipped roof of it, the mullioned +casements, the wide window-seats, the high and spacious rooms, the +geometrical gardens and broad lawns, in all that was quaint and +beautiful at Matocton,--because it would be Patricia's so very soon, the +lovely frame of a yet lovelier picture, as the colonel phrased it with a +flight of imagery. + +Gravely he inspected all the portraits of his feminine ancestors that he +might decide, as one without bias, whether Matocton had ever boasted a +more delectable mistress. Equity--or in his fond eyes at +least,--demanded a negative. Only in one of these canvases, a +counterfeit of Miss Evelyn Ramsay, born a Ramsay of Blenheim, that had +married the common great-great-grandfather of both the colonel and +Patricia--Major Orlando Musgrave, an aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee +in the Revolution,--Rudolph Musgrave found, or seemed to find, dear +likenesses to that demented seraph who was about to stoop to his +unworthiness. + +He spent much time before this portrait. Yes, yes! this woman had been +lovely in her day. And this bright, roguish shadow of her was lovely, +too, eternally postured in white patnet, trimmed with a vine of +rose-colored satin leaves, a pink rose in her powdered hair and a huge +ostrich plume as well. + +Yet it was an adamantean colonel that remarked: + +"My dear, perhaps it is just as fortunate as not that you have quitted +Matocton. For I have heard tales of you, Miss Ramsay. Oh, no! I honestly +do not believe that you would have taken kindlily to any young +person--not even in the guise of a great-great-grand-daughter,--to whom +you cannot hold a candle, madam. A fico for you, madam," said the most +undutiful of great-great-grandsons. + +Let us leave him to his roseate meditations. Questionless, in the woman +he loved there was much of his own invention: but the circumstance is +not unhackneyed; and Colonel Musgrave was in a decorous fashion the +happiest of living persons. + +Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much enamored, who fought the +world by ordinary, like Hal o' the Wynd "for his own hand," was seeing +Patricia every day. + + + + +V + + +Joe Parkinson--tall and broad-shouldered, tanned, resolute, chary of +speech, decisive in gesture, having close-cropped yellow hair and frank, +keen eyes like amethysts,--was the one alien present when Colonel +Musgrave came again into Roger Stapylton's fine and choicely-furnished +mansion. + +This was on the evening Roger Stapylton gave the long-anticipated dinner +at which he was to announce his daughter's engagement. As much indeed +was suspected by most of his dinner-company, so carefully selected from +the aristocracy of Lichfield; and the heart of the former overseer, as +these handsome, courtly and sweet voiced people settled according to +their rank about his sumptuous table, was aglow with pride. + +Then Rudolph Musgrave turned to his companion and said softly: "My dear, +you are like a wraith. What is it?" + +"I have a headache," said Patricia. "It is nothing." + +"You reassure me," the colonel gaily declared, "for I had feared it was +a heartache--" + +She faced him. Desperation looked out of her purple eyes. "It is," the +girl said swiftly. + +"Ah--?" Only it was an intake of the breath, rather than an +interjection. Colonel Musgrave ate his fish with deliberation. "Young +Parkinson?" he presently suggested. + +"I thought I had forgotten him. I didn't know I cared--I didn't know I +_could_ care so much--" And there was a note in her voice which thrust +the poor colonel into an abyss of consternation. + +"Remember that these people are your guests," he said, in perfect +earnest. + +"--and I refused him this afternoon for the last time, and he is going +away to-morrow--" + +But here Judge Allardyce broke in, to tell Miss Stapylton of the +pleasure with which he had _nolle prosequied_ the case against Tom +Bellingham. + +"A son of my old schoolmate, ma'am," the judge explained. "A Bellingham +of Assequin. Oh, indiscreet of course--but, God bless my soul! when were +the Bellinghams anything else? The boy regretted it as much as anybody." + +And she listened with almost morbid curiosity concerning the finer +details of legal intricacy. + +Colonel Musgrave was mid-course in an anecdote which the lady upon the +other side of him found wickedly amusing. + +He was very gay. He had presently secured the attention of the company +at large, and held it through a good half-hour; for by common consent +Rudolph Musgrave was at his best to-night, and Lichfield found his best +worth listening to. + +"Grinning old popinjay!" thought Mr. Parkinson; and envied him and +internally noted, and with an unholy fervor cursed, the adroitness of +intonation and the discreetly modulated gesture with which the colonel +gave to every point of his merry-Andrewing its precise value. + +The colonel's mind was working busily on matters oddly apart from those +of which he talked. He wanted this girl next to him--at whom he did not +look. He loved her as that whippersnapper yonder was not capable of +loving anyone. Young people had these fancies; and they outlived them, +as the colonel knew of his own experience. Let matters take their course +unhindered, at all events by him. For it was less his part than that of +any other man alive to interfere when Rudolph Musgrave stood within a +finger's reach of, at worst, his own prosperity and happiness. + +He would convey no note to Roger Stapylton. Let the banker announce the +engagement. Let the young fellow go to the devil. Colonel Musgrave would +marry the girl and make Patricia, at worst, content. To do otherwise, +even to hesitate, would be the emptiest quixotism.... + +Then came the fatal thought, "But what a gesture!" To fling away his +happiness--yes, even his worldly fortune,--and to do it smilingly! +Patricia must, perforce, admire him all her life. + +Then as old Stapylton stirred in his chair and broke into a wide +premonitory smile, Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. And of that +company Clarice Pendomer at least thought of how like he was to the boy +who had fought the famous duel with George Pendomer some fifteen years +ago. + +Ensued a felicitous speech. Rudolph Musgrave was familiar with his +audience. And therefore: + +Colonel Musgrave alluded briefly to the pleasure he took in addressing +such a gathering. He believed no other State in the 'Union could have +afforded an assembly of more distinguished men and fairer women. But the +fact was not unnatural; they might recall the venerable saying that +blood will tell? Well, it was their peculiar privilege to represent +to-day that sturdy stock which, when this great republic was in the +pangs of birth, had with sword and pen and oratory discomfited the +hirelings of England and given to history the undying names of several +Revolutionary patriots,--all of whom he enumerated with the customary +pause after each cognomen to allow for the customary applause. + +And theirs, too, was the blood of those heroic men who fought more +recently beneath the stars and bars, as bravely, he would make bold to +say, as Leonidas at Thermopylae, in defense of their loved Southland. +Right, he conceded, had not triumphed here. For hordes of brutal +soldiery had invaded the fertile soil, the tempest of war had swept the +land and left it desolate. The South lay battered and bruised, and pros +trate in blood, the "Niobe of nations," as sad a victim of ingratitude +as King Lear. + +The colonel touched upon the time when buzzards, in the guise of +carpet-baggers, had battened upon the recumbent form; and spoke +slightingly of divers persons of antiquity as compared with various +Confederate leaders, whose names were greeted with approving nods and +ripples of polite enthusiasm. + +But the South, and in particular the grand old Commonwealth which they +inhabited, he stated, had not long sat among the ruins of her temples, +like a sorrowing priestess with veiled eyes and a depressed soul, +mourning for that which had been. Like the fabled Phoenix, she had risen +from the ashes of her past. To-day she was once more to be seen in her +hereditary position, the brightest gem in all that glorious galaxy of +States which made America the envy of every other nation. Her +battlefields converted into building lots, tall factories smoked where +once a holocaust had flamed, and where cannon had roared you heard +to-day the tinkle of the school bell. Such progress was without a +parallel. + +Nor was there any need for him, he was assured, to mention the +imperishable names of their dear homeland's poets and statesmen of +to-day, the orators and philanthropists and prominent business-men who +jostled one another in her splendid, new asphalted streets, since all +were quite familiar to his audience,--as familiar, he would venture to +predict, as they would eventually be to the most cherished recollections +of Macaulay's prophesied New Zealander, when this notorious antipodean +should pay his long expected visit to the ruins of St. Paul's. + +In fine, by a natural series of transitions, Colonel Musgrave thus +worked around to "the very pleasing duty with which our host, in view of +the long and intimate connection between our families, has seen fit to +honor me"--which was, it developed, to announce the imminent marriage of +Miss Patricia Stapylton and Mr. Joseph Parkinson. + +It may conservatively be stated that everyone was surprised. + +Old Stapylton had half risen, with a purple face. + +The colonel viewed him with a look of bland interrogation. + +There was silence for a heart-beat. + +Then Stapylton lowered his eyes, if just because the laws of caste had +triumphed, and in consequence his glance crossed that of his daughter, +who sat motionless regarding him. She was an unusually pretty girl, he +thought, and he had always been inordinately proud of her. It was not +pride she seemed to beg him muster now. Patricia through that moment was +not the fine daughter the old man was sometimes half afraid of. She was, +too, like a certain defiant person--oh, of an incredible beauty, such +as women had not any longer!--who had hastily put aside her bonnet and +had looked at a young Roger Stapylton in much this fashion very long +ago, because the minister was coming downstairs, and they would +presently be man and wife,--provided always her pursuing brothers did +not arrive in time.... + +Old Roger Stapylton cleared his throat. + +Old Roger Stapylton said, half sheepishly: "My foot's asleep, that's +all. I beg everybody's pardon, I'm sure. Please go on"--he had come +within an ace of saying "Mr. Rudolph," and only in the nick of time did +he continue, "Colonel Musgrave." + +So the colonel continued in time-hallowed form, with happy allusions to +Mr. Parkinson's anterior success as an engineer before he came "like a +young Lochinvar to wrest away his beautiful and popular fiancee from us +fainthearted fellows of Lichfield"; touched of course upon the colonel's +personal comminglement of envy and rage, and so on, as an old bachelor +who saw too late what he had missed in life; and concluded by proposing +the health of the young couple. + +This was drunk with all the honors. + + + + +VI + + +Upon what Patricia said to the colonel in the drawing-room, what Joe +Parkinson blurted out in the hall, and chief of all, what Roger +Stapylton asseverated to Rudolph Musgrave in the library, after the +other guests had gone, it is unnecessary to dwell in this place. To each +of these in various fashions did Colonel Musgrave explain such reasons +as, he variously explained, must seem to any gentleman sufficient cause +for acting as he had done; but most candidly, and even with a touch of +eloquence, to Roger Stapylton. + +"You are like your grandfather, sir, at times," the latter said, +inconsequently enough, when the colonel had finished. + +And Rudolph Musgrave gave a little bowing gesture, with an entire +gravity. He knew it was the highest tribute that Stapylton could pay to +any man. + +"She's a daughter any father might be proud of," said the banker, also. +He removed his cigar from his mouth and looked at it critically. "She's +rather like her mother sometimes," he said carelessly. "Her mother made +a runaway match, you may remember--Damn' poor cigar, this. But no, you +wouldn't, I reckon. I had branched out into cotton then and had a little +place just outside of Chiswick--" + +So that, all in all, Colonel Musgrave returned homeward not entirely +dissatisfied. + + + + +VII + + +The colonel sat for a long while before his fire that night. The room +seemed less comfortable than he had ever known it. So many of his books +and pictures and other furnishings had been already carried to Matocton +that the walls were a little bare. Also there was a formidable pile of +bills upon the table by him,--from contractors and upholsterers and +furniture-houses, and so on, who had been concerned in the late +renovation of Matocton,--the heralds of a host he hardly saw his way to +dealing with. + +He had flung away a deal of money that evening, with something which to +him was dearer. Had you attempted to condole with him he would not have +understood you. + +"But what would you have had a gentleman do, sir?" Colonel Musgrave +would have said, in real perplexity. + +Besides, it was, in fact, not sorrow that he felt, rather it was +contentment, when he remembered the girl's present happiness; and what +alone depressed the colonel's courtly affability toward the universe at +large was the queer, horrible new sense of being somehow out of touch +with yesterday's so comfortable world, of being out-moded, of being +almost old. + +"Eh, well!" he said; "I am of a certain age undoubtedly." + +By an odd turn the colonel thought of how his friends of his own class +and generation had honestly admired the after-dinner speech which he had +made that evening. And he smiled, but very tenderly, because they were +all men and women whom he loved. + +"The most of us have known each other for a long while. The most of us, +in fact, are of a certain age.... I think no people ever met the sorry +problem that we faced. For we were born the masters of a leisured, +ordered world; and by a tragic quirk of destiny were thrust into a quite +new planet, where we were for a while the inferiors, and after that just +the competitors of yesterday's slaves. + +"We couldn't meet the new conditions. Oh, for the love of heaven, let us +be frank, and confess that we have not met them as things practical go. +We hadn't the training for it. A man who has not been taught to swim may +rationally be excused for preferring to sit upon the bank; and should he +elect to ornament his idleness with protestations that he is +self-evidently an excellent swimmer, because once upon a time his +progenitors were the only people in the world who had the slightest +conception of how to perform a natatorial masterpiece, the thing is +simply human nature. Talking chokes nobody, worse luck. + +"And yet we haven't done so badly. For the most part we have sat upon +the bank our whole lives long. We have produced nothing--after +all--which was absolutely earth-staggering; and we have talked a deal of +clap-trap. But meanwhile we have at least enhanced the comeliness of our +particular sand-bar. We have lived a courteous and tranquil and +independent life thereon, just as our fathers taught us. It may be--in +the final outcome of things--that will be found an even finer pursuit +than the old one of producing Presidents. + +"Besides, we have produced ourselves. We have been gentlefolk in spite +of all, we have been true even in our iniquities to the traditions of +our race. No, I cannot assert that these traditions always square with +ethics or even with the Decalogue, for we have added a very complex +Eleventh Commandment concerning honor. And for the rest, we have +defiantly embroidered life, and indomitably we have converted the +commonest happening of life into a comely thing. We have been artists if +not artizans." + +There was upon the table a large photograph in sepia of Patricia +Stapylton. He studied this now. She was very beautiful, he thought. + +"'Nor thou detain her vesture's hem'--" said the colonel aloud. "Oh, +that infernal Yankee understood, even though he was born in Boston!" And +this as coming from a Musgrave of Matocton, may fairly be considered as +a sweeping tribute to the author of _Give All to Love_. + +Colonel Musgrave was intent upon the portrait.... So! she had chosen at +last between himself and this young fellow, a workman born of workmen, +who went about the world building bridges and canals and tunnels and +such, in those far countries which were to Colonel Musgrave just so many +gray or pink or fawn-colored splotches on the map. It seemed to Colonel +Musgrave almost an allegory. + +So Colonel Musgrave filled a glass with the famed Lafayette madeira of +Matocton, and solemnly drank yet another toast. He loved to do, as you +already know, that which was colorful. + +"To this new South," he said. "To this new South that has not any longer +need of me or of my kind. + +"To this new South! She does not gaze unwillingly, nor too complacently, +upon old years, and dares concede that but with loss of manliness may +any man encroach upon the heritage of a dog or of a trotting-horse, and +consider the exploits of an ancestor to guarantee an innate and personal +excellence. + +"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with +her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain +speech. And her high past she values now, in chief, as fit foundation of +that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with augmenting +strokes." + + * * * * * + +And yet--"It may be he will serve you better. But, oh, it isn't +possible that he should love you more than I," said Colonel Musgrave of +Matocton. + +The man was destined to remember that utterance--and, with the +recollection, to laugh not altogether in either scorn or merriment. + + + + +PART FOUR - APPRECIATION + + "You have chosen; and I cry content thereto, + And cry your pardon also, and am reproved + In that I took you for a woman I loved + Odd centuries ago, and would undo + That curious error. Nay, your eyes are blue, + Your speech is gracious, but you are not she, + And I am older--and changed how utterly!-- + I am no longer I, you are not you. + + "Time, destined as we thought but to befriend + And guerdon love like ours, finds you beset + With joys and griefs I neither share nor mend + Who am a stranger; and we two are met + Nor wholly glad nor sorry; and the end + Of too much laughter is a faint regret." + +R.E. TOWNSEND. _Sonnets for Elena._ + + + + +I + + +Next morning Rudolph Musgrave found the world no longer an impassioned +place, but simply a familiar habitation,--no longer the wrestling-ground +of big emotions, indeed, but undoubtedly a spot, whatever were its other +pretensions to praise, wherein one was at home. He breakfasted on ham +and eggs, in a state of tolerable equanimity; and mildly wondered at +himself for doing it. + +The colonel was deep in a heraldic design and was whistling through his +teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the +outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rubber of +professional courtesy,--for he was denoting _or_ at the moment, which is +fussy work, as it consists exclusively of dots. + +Then his chair scraped audibly upon the floor as he pushed it from him. +It occurred to Rudolph Musgrave after an interval that he was still +half-way between sitting and standing, and that his mouth was open.... + +He could hear a huckster outside on Regis Avenue. The colonel never +forgot the man was crying "Fresh oranges!" + +"He kissed me, Olaf. Yes, I let him kiss me, even after he had asked me +if he could. No sensible girl would ever do that, of course. And then I +knew--" + +Patricia was horribly frightened. + +"And afterwards the jackass-fool made matters worse by calling me 'his +darling.' There is no more hateful word in the English language than +'darling.' It sounds like castor-oil tastes, or a snail looks after you +have put salt on him." + +The colonel deliberated this information; and he appeared to understand. + +"So Parkinson has gone the way of Pevensey,--. and of I wonder how many +others? Well, may Heaven be very gracious to us both!" he said. "For I +am going to do it." + +Then composedly he took up the telephone upon his desk and called Roger +Stapylton. + +"I want you to come at once to Dr. Rabbet's,--yes, the rectory, next +door to St. Luke's. Patricia and I are to be married there in half an +hour. We are on our way to the City Hall to get the license now.... No, +she might change her mind again, you see.... I have not the least notion +how it happened. I don't care.... Then you will have to be rude to him +or else not see your only daughter married.... Kindly permit me to +repeat, sir, that I don't care about that or anything else. And for the +rest, Patricia was twenty-one last December." + +The colonel hung up the receiver. "And now," he said, "we are going to +the City Hall." + +"Are you?" said Patricia, with courteous interest. "Well, my way lies +uptown. I have to stop in at Greenberg's and get a mustard plaster for +the parrot." + +He had his hat by this. "It isn't cool enough for me to need an +overcoat, is it?" + +"I think you must be crazy," she said, sharply. + +"Of course I am. So I am going to marry you." + +"Let me go--! Oh, and I had thought you were a gentleman--." + +"I fear that at present I am simply masculine." He became aware that his +hands, in gripping both her shoulders, were hurting the girl. + +"Come now," he continued, "will you go quietly or will I have to carry +you?" + +She said, "And you would, too--." She spoke in wonder, for Patricia had +glimpsed an unguessed Rudolph Musgrave. + +His hands went under her arm-pits and he lifted her like a feather. He +held her thus at arm's length. + +"You--you adorable whirligig!" he laughed. "I am a stronger animal than +you. It would be as easy for me to murder you as it would be for you to +kill one of those flies on the window-pane. Do you quite understand that +fact, Patricia?" + +"Oh, but you are an idiot--." + +"In wanting you, my dear?" + +"Please put me down." + +She thoroughly enjoyed her helplessness. He saw it, long before he +lowered her. + +"Why, not so much in that," said Miss Stapylton, "because inasmuch as I +am a woman of superlative charm, of course you can't help yourself. But +how do you know that Dr. Rabbet may not be somewhere else, harrying a +defenseless barkeeper, or superintending the making of dress-shirt +protectors for the Hottentots, or doing something else clerical, when we +get to the rectory?" + +After an irrelevant interlude she stamped her foot. + +"I don't care what you say, I won't marry an atheist. If you had the +least respect for his cloth, Olaf, you would call him up and +arrange--Oh, well! whatever you want to arrange--and permit me to powder +my nose without being bothered, because I don't want people to think you +are marrying a second helping to butter, and I never did like that +Baptist man on the block above, anyhow. And besides," said Patricia, as +with the occurrence of a new view-point, "think what a delicious scandal +it will create!" + + + + +II + + +Patricia spoke the truth. By supper-time Lichfield had so industriously +embroidered the Stapylton dinner and the ensuing marriage with +hypotheses and explanations and unparented rumors that none of the +participants in the affair but could advantageously have exchanged +reputations with Benedict Arnold or Lucretia Borgia, had Lichfield +believed a tithe of what Lichfield was repeating. + +A duel was of course anticipated between Mr. Parkinson and Colonel +Musgrave, and the colonel indeed offered, through Major Wadleigh, any +satisfaction which Mr. Parkinson might desire. + +The engineer, with garnishments of profanity, considered dueling to be a +painstakingly-described absurdity and wished "the old popinjay" joy of +his bargain. + +Lichfield felt that only showed what came of treating poor-white trash +as your equals, and gloried in the salutary moral. + + + + +III + + +Meanwhile the two originators of so much Lichfieldian diversion were not +unhappy. + +But indeed it were irreverent even to try to express the happiness of +their earlier married life ... + +They were an ill-matched couple in so many ways that no long-headed +person could conceivably have anticipated--in the outcome--more than +decorous tolerance of each other. For apart from the disparity in age +and tastes and rearing, there was always the fact to be weighed that in +marrying the only child of a wealthy man Rudolph Musgrave was making +what Lichfield called "an eminently sensible match"--than which, as +Lichfield knew, there is no more infallible recipe for discord. + +In this case the axiom seemed, after the manner of all general rules, to +bulwark itself with an exception. Colonel Musgrave continued to emanate +an air of contentment which fell perilously short of fatuity; and that +Patricia was honestly fond of him was evident to the most impecunious of +Lichfield's bachelors. + +True, curtains had been lifted, a little by a little. Patricia could +hardly have told you at what exact moment it was that she discovered +Miss Agatha--who continued of course to live with them--was a +dipsomaniac. Very certainly Rudolph Musgrave was not Patricia's +informant; it is doubtful if the colonel ever conceded his sister's +infirmity in his most private meditations; so that Patricia found the +cause of Miss Agatha's "attacks" to be an open secret of which everyone +in the house seemed aware and of which by tacit agreement nobody ever +spoke. It bewildered Patricia, at first, to find that as concerned +Lichfield at large any over-indulgence in alcohol by a member of the +Musgrave family was satisfactorily accounted for by the matter-of-course +statement that the Musgraves usually "drank,"--just as the Allardyces +notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were +proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were +deplorably prone to dabble in literature. These things had been for a +long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield estimated) +they must be reasonable. + +Then, too, Patricia would have preferred to have been rid of the old +mulatto woman Virginia, because it was through Virginia that Miss Agatha +furtively procured intoxicants. But Rudolph Musgrave would not consider +Virginia's leaving. "Virginia's faithfulness has been proven by too many +years of faithful service" was the formula with which he dismissed the +suggestion ... Afterward Patricia learned from Miss Agatha of the wrong +that had been done Virginia by Olaf's uncle, Senator Edward Musgrave, +the noted ante-bellum orator, and understood that Olaf--without, of +course, conceding it to himself, because that was Olaf's way--was trying +to make reparation. Patricia respected the sentiment, and continued to +fret under its manifestation. + +Miss Agatha also told Patricia of how the son of Virginia and Senator +Musgrave had come to a disastrous end--"lynched in Texas, I believe, +only it may not have been Texas. And indeed when I come to think of it, +I don't believe it was, because I know we first heard of it on a Monday, +and Virginia couldn't do the washing that week and I had to send it out. +And for the usual crime, of course. It simply shows you how much better +off the darkies were before the War," Miss Agatha said. + +Patricia refrained from comment, not being willing to consider the +deduction strained. For love is a contagious infection; and loving +Rudolph Musgrave so much, Patricia must perforce love any person whom he +loved as conscientiously as she would have strangled any person with +whom he had flirted. + +And yet, to Patricia, it was beginning to seem that Patricia Musgrave +was not living, altogether, in that Lichfield which John Charteris has +made immortal--"that nursery of Free Principles" (according to the +_Lichfield Courier-Herald_) "wherein so many statesmen, +lieutenants-general and orators were trained to further the faith of +their fathers, to thrill the listening senates, draft constitutions, and +bruise the paws of the British lion." + + + + +IV + + +It may be remembered that Lichfield had asked long ago, "But who, pray, +are the Stapyltons?" It was characteristic of Colonel Musgrave that he +went about answering the question without delay. The Stapletons--for +"Stapylton" was a happy innovation of Roger Stapylton's dead wife--the +colonel knew to have been farmers in Brummell County, and Brummell +Courthouse is within an hour's ride, by rail, of Lichfield. + +So he set about his labor of love. + +And in it he excelled himself. The records of Brummell date back to 1750 +and are voluminous; but Rudolph Musgrave did not overlook an item in any +Will Book, or in any Orders of the Court, that pertained, however +remotely, to the Stapletons. Then he renewed his labors at the +courthouse of the older county from which Brummell was formed in 1750, +and through many fragmentary, evil-odored and unindexed volumes +indefatigably pursued the family's fortune back to the immigration of +its American progenitor in 1619,--and, by the happiest fatality, upon +the same _Bona Nova_ which enabled the first American Musgrave to grace +the Colony of Virginia with his presence. It could no longer be said +that the wife of a Musgrave of Matocton lacked an authentic and +tolerably ancient pedigree. + +The colonel made a book of his Stapyltonian researches which he +vaingloriously proclaimed to be the stupidest reading within the ample +field of uninteresting printed English. Patricia was allowed to see no +word of it until the first ten copies had come from the printer's, very +splendid in green "art-vellum" and stamped with the Stapylton +coat-of-arms in gold. + +She read the book. "It is perfectly superb," was her verdict. "It is as +dear as remembered kisses after death and as sweet as a plaintiff in a +breach-of-promise suit. Only I would have preferred it served with a few +kings and dukes for parsley. The Stapletons don't seem to have been +anything but perfectly respectable mediocrities." + +The colonel smiled. At the bottom of his heart he shared Patricia's +regret that the Stapylton pedigree was unadorned by a potentate, because +nobody can stay unimpressed by a popular superstition, however crass the +thing may be. But for all this, an appraisal of himself and his own +achievements profusely showed high lineage is not invariably a guarantee +of excellence; and so he smiled and said: + +"There are two ends to every stick. It was the Stapletons and others of +their sort, rather than any soft-handed Musgraves, who converted a +wilderness, a little by a little, into the America of to-day. The task +was tediously achieved, and without ostentation; and always the ship had +its resplendent figure-head, as always it had its hidden, nay! grimy, +engines, which propelled the ship. And, however direfully America may +differ from Utopia, to have assisted in the making of America is no mean +distinction. We Musgraves and our peers, I sometimes think, may possibly +have been just gaudy autumn leaves which happened to lie in the path of +a high wind. And to cut a gallant figure in such circumstances does not +necessarily prove the performer to be a _rara avis_, even though he +rides the whirlwind quite as splendidly as any bird existent." + +Patricia fluttered, and as lightly and irresponsibly as a wren might +have done, perched on his knee. + +"No! there is really something in heredity, after all. Now, you are a +Musgrave in every vein of you. It always seems like a sort of flippancy +for you to appear in public without a stock and a tarnished gilt frame +with most of the gilt knocked off and a catalogue-number tucked in the +corner." Patricia spoke without any regard for punctuation. "And I am so +unlike you. I am only a Stapylton. I do hope you don't mind my being +merely a Stapylton, Olaf, because if only I wasn't too modest to even +think of alluding to the circumstance, I would try to tell you about the +tiniest fraction of how much a certain ravishingly beautiful +half-strainer loves you, Olaf, and the consequences would be +deplorable." + +"My dear----" he began. + +"Ouch!" said Patricia; "you are tickling me. You don't shave half as +often as you used to, do you? No, nowadays you think you have me safe +and don't have to bother about being attractive. If I had a music-box I +could put your face into it and play all sorts of tunes, only I prefer +to look at it. You are a slattern and a jay-bird and a joy forever. And +besides, the first Stapleton seems to have blundered somehow into the +House of Burgesses, so that entitles me to be a Colonial Dame on my +father's side, too, doesn't it, Olaf?" + +The colonel laughed. "Madam Vanity!" said he, "I repeat that to be +descended of a line of czars or from a house of emperors is, at the +worst, an empty braggartism, or, at best--upon the plea of heredity--a +handy palliation for iniquity; and to be descended of sturdy and honest +and clean-blooded folk is beyond doubt preferable, since upon quite +similar grounds it entitles one to hope that even now, 'when their +generation is gone, when their play is over, when their panorama is +withdrawn in tatters from the stage of the world,' there may yet survive +of them 'some few actions worth remembering, and a few children who have +retained some happy stamp from the disposition of their parents.'" + +Patricia--with eyes widened in admiration at his rhetoric,--had turned +an enticing shade of pink. + +"I am glad of that," she said. + +She snuggled so close he could not see her face now. She was to all +appearances attempting to twist the top-button from his coat. + +"I am very glad that it entitles one to hope--about the +children--Because--" + +The colonel lifted her a little from him. He did not say anything. But +he was regarding her half in wonder and one-half in worship. + +She, too, was silent. Presently she nodded. + +He kissed her as one does a very holy relic. + +It was a moment to look back upon always. There was no period in Rudolph +Musgrave's life when he could not look back upon this instant and exult +because it had been his. + + * * * * * + +Only, Patricia found out afterward, with an inexplicable disappointment, +that her husband had not been talking extempore, but was freely quoting +his "Compiler's Foreword" just as it figured in the printed book. + +One judges this posturing, so inevitable of detection, to have been as +significant of much in Rudolph Musgrave as was the fact of its belated +discovery characteristic of Patricia. + +Yet she had read this book about her family from purely normal motives: +first, to make certain how old her various cousins were; secondly, to +gloat over any traces of distinction such as her ancestry afforded; +thirdly, to note with what exaggerated importance the text seemed to +accredit those relatives she did not esteem, and mentally to annotate +each page with unprintable events "which _everybody_ knew about"; and +fourthly, to reflect, as with a gush of steadily augmenting love, how +dear and how unpractical it was of Olaf to have concocted these +date-bristling pages--so staunch and blind in his misguided gratitude +toward those otherwise uninteresting people who had rendered possible +the existence of a Patricia. + + + + +V + + +Matters went badly with Patricia in the ensuing months. Her mother's +blood told here, as Colonel Musgrave saw with disquietude. He knew the +women of his race had by ordinary been unfit for childbearing; indeed, +the daughters of this famous house had long, in a grim routine, +perished, just as Patricia's mother had done, in their first maternal +essay. There were many hideous histories the colonel could have told you +of, unmeet to be set down, and he was familiar with this talk of pelvic +anomalies which were congenital. But he had never thought of Patricia, +till this, as being his kinswoman, and in part a Musgrave. + +And even now the Stapylton blood that was in her pulled Patricia through +long weeks of anguish. Surgeons dealt with her very horribly in a famed +Northern hospital, whither she had been removed. By her obdurate +request--and secretly, to his own preference, since it was never in his +power to meet discomfort willingly--Colonel Musgrave had remained in +Lichfield. Patricia knew that officious people would tell him her life +could be saved only by the destruction of an unborn boy. + +She never questioned her child would be a boy. She knew that Olaf wanted +a boy. + +"Oh, even more than he does me, daddy. And so he mustn't know, you see, +until it is all over. Because Olaf is such an ill-informed person that +he really believes he prefers me." + +"Pat," her father inconsequently said, "I'm proud of you! And--and, by +God, if I _want_ to cry, I guess I am old enough to know my own mind! +And I'll help you in this if you'll only promise not to die in spite of +what these damn' doctors say, because you're _mine_, Pat, and so you +realize a bargain is a bargain." + +"Yes--I am really yours, daddy. It is just my crazy body that is a +Musgrave," Patricia explained. "The real me is an unfortunate Stapylton +who has somehow got locked up in the wrong house. It is not a desirable +residence, you know, daddy. No modern improvements, for instance. But I +have to live in it!... Still, I have not the least intention of dying, +and I solemnly promise that I won't." + +So these two hoodwinked Rudolph Musgrave, and brought it about by +subterfuge that his child was born. At most he vaguely understood that +Patricia was having rather a hard time of it, and steadfastly drugged +this knowledge by the performance of trivialities. He was eating a +cucumber sandwich at the moment young Roger Musgrave came into the +world, and by that action very nearly accomplished Patricia's death. + + + + +VI + + +And the gods cursed Roger Stapylton with such a pride in, and so great a +love for, his only grandson that the old man could hardly bear to be out +of the infant's presence. He was frequently in Lichfield nowadays; and +he renewed his demands that Rudolph Musgrave give up the +exhaustively-particularized librarianship, so that "the little coot" +would be removed to New York and all three of them be with Roger +Stapylton always. + +Patricia had not been well since little Roger's birth. + +It was a peaked and shrewish Patricia, rather than Rudolph Musgrave, who +fought out the long and obstinate battle with Roger Stapylton. + +She was jealous at the bottom of her heart. She would not have anyone, +not even her father, be too fond of what was preeminently hers; the +world at large, including Rudolph Musgrave, was at liberty to adore her +boy, as was perfectly natural, but not to meddle: and in fine, Patricia +was both hysterical and vixenish whenever a giving up of the Library +work was suggested. + +The old man did not quarrel with her. And with Roger Stapylton's +loneliness in these days, and the long thoughts it bred, we have nothing +here to do. But when he died, stricken without warning, some five years +after Patricia's marriage, his will was discovered to bequeath +practically his entire fortune to little Roger Musgrave when the child +should come of age; and to Rudolph Musgrave, as Patricia's husband, what +was a reasonable income when judged by Lichfield's unexacting standards +rather than by Patricia's anticipations. In a word, Patricia found that +she and the colonel could for the future count upon a little more than +half of the income she had previously been allowed by Roger Stapylton. + +"It isn't fair!" she said. "It's monstrous! And all because you were so +obstinate about your picayune Library!" + +"Patricia--" he began. + +"Oh, I tell you it's absurd, Olaf! The money logically ought to have +been left to me. And here I will have to come to you for every penny of +_my_ money. And Heaven knows I have had to scrimp enough to support us +all on what I used to have--Olaf," Patricia said, in another voice, +"Olaf! why, what is it, dear?" + +"I was reflecting," said Colonel Musgrave, "that, as you justly observe, +both Agatha and I have been practically indebted to you for our support +these past five years--" + + + + +VII + + +It must be enregistered, not to the man's credit, but rather as a simple +fact, that it was never within Colonel Musgrave's power to forget the +incident immediately recorded. + +He forgave; when Patricia wept, seeing how leaden-colored his handsome +face had turned, he forgave as promptly and as freely as he was learning +to pardon the telling of a serviceable lie, or the perpetration of an +occasional barbarism in speech, by Patricia. For he, a Musgrave of +Matocton, had married a Stapylton; he had begun to comprehend that their +standards were different, and that some daily conflict between these +standards was inevitable. + +And besides, as it has been veraciously observed, the truth of an insult +is the barb which prevents its retraction. Patricia spoke the truth: +Rudolph Musgrave and all those rationally reliant upon Rudolph Musgrave +for support, had lived for some five years upon the money which they +owed to Patricia. He saw about him other scions of old families who +accepted such circumstances blithely: but, he said, he was a Musgrave +of Matocton; and, he reflected, in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed +is necessarily very unhappy. + +He did not mean to touch a penny of such moneys as Roger Stapylton had +bequeathed to him; for the colonel considered--now--it was a man's duty +personally to support his wife and child and sister. And he vigorously +attempted to discharge this obligation, alike by virtue of his salary at +the Library, and by spasmodic raids upon his tiny capital, and--chief of +all--by speculation in the Stock Market. + +Oddly enough, his ventures were through a long while--for the most +part--successful. Here he builded a desperate edifice whose foundations +were his social talents; and it was with quaint self-abhorrence he often +noted how the telling of a smutty jest or the insistence upon a +manifestly superfluous glass of wine had purchased from some properly +tickled magnate a much desiderated "tip." + +And presently these tips misled him. So the colonel borrowed from +"Patricia's account." + +And on this occasion he guessed correctly. + +And then he stumbled upon such a chance for reinvestment as does not +often arrive. And so he borrowed a trifle more in common justice to +Patricia.... + + + + +VIII + + +When those then famous warriors, Colonel Gaynor and Captain Green, were +obstinately fighting extradition in Quebec; when in Washington the +Senate was wording a suitable resolution wherewith to congratulate Cuba +upon that island's brand-new independence; and when Messieurs +Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were making amicable arrangements in San +Francisco to fight for the world's championship:--at this remote time, +in Chicago (on the same day, indeed, that in this very city Mr. S.E. +Gross was legally declared the author of a play called Cyrano de +Bergerac), the Sons of the Colonial Governors opened their tenth +biennial convention. You may depend upon it that Colonel Rudolph +Musgrave represented the Lichfield chapter. + +It was two days later the telegram arrived. It read: + + _Agatha very ill come to me roger in perfect health._ + PATRICIA. + +He noted how with Stapyltonian thrift Patricia telegraphed ten words +precisely.... + +And when he had reached home, late in the evening, the colonel, not +having taken his bunch of keys with him, laid down his dress-suit case +on the dark porch, and reached out one hand to the door-bell. He found +it muffled with some flimsy, gritty fabric. He did not ring. + +Upon the porch was a rustic bench. He sat upon it for a quarter of an +hour--precisely where he had first talked with Agatha about Patricia's +first coming to Lichfield.... Once the door of a house across the street +was opened, with a widening gush of amber light wherein he saw three +women fitting wraps about them. One of them was adjusting a lace scarf +above her hair. + +"No, we're not a _bit_ afraid--Just around the corner, you know--_Such_ +a pleasant evening----" Their voices carried far in the still night. + +Rudolph Musgrave was not thinking of anything. Presently he went around +through the side entrance, and thus came into the kitchen, where the old +mulattress, Virginia, was sitting alone. The room was very hot.... In +Agatha's time supper would have been cooked upon the gas-range in the +cellar, he reflected.... Virginia had risen and made as though to take +his dress-suit case, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an +idol's. + +"No--don't bother, Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave. + +He met Patricia in the dining-room, on her way to the kitchen. She had +not chosen--as even the most sensible of us will instinctively decline +to do--to vex the quiet of a house wherein death was by ringing a bell. + +Holding his hand in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how +three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper. +Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's +Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss +Agatha. And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to bed before Patricia left +the house, and _anybody_ would have thought she was going to sleep all +night. And, in fine, Patricia's return at a drizzling half-past eleven +had found Miss Agatha sitting in the garden, in her night-dress only, +weeping over fancied grievances--and Virginia asleep in the kitchen. And +Agatha had died that afternoon of pneumonia. + +Even in the last half-stupor she was asking always when would Rudolph +come? Patricia told him.... + +Rudolph Musgrave did not say anything. Without any apparent emotion he +put Patricia aside, much as he did the dress-suit case which he had +forgotten to lay down until Patricia had ended her recital. + +He went upstairs--to the front room, Patricia's bedroom. Patricia +followed him. + +Agatha's body lay upon the bed, with a sheet over all. The undertaker's +skill had arranged everything with smug and horrible tranquillity. + +Rudolph Musgrave remembered he was forty-six years old; and when in all +these years had there been a moment when Agatha--the real Agatha--had +not known that what he had done was self-evidently correct, because +otherwise Rudolph would not have done it? + +"I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia." + +"Well, I couldn't help it. I'm not running a sanitarium. I wasn't +responsible for her eternal drinking." + +The words skipped out of either mouth like gleeful little devils. + +Then both were afraid, and both were as icily tranquil as the thing upon +the bed. You could not hear anything except the clock upon the mantel. +Colonel Musgrave went to the mantel, opened the clock, and with an odd +deliberation removed the pendulum from its hook. Followed one metallic +gasp, as of indignation, and then silence. + +He spoke, still staring at the clock, his back turned to Patricia. "You +must be utterly worn out. You had better go to bed." + +He shifted by the fraction of an inch the old-fashioned "hand-colored" +daguerreotype of his father in Confederate uniform. "Please don't wear +that black dress again. It is no cause for mourning that we are rid of +an encumbrance." + +Behind him, very far away, it seemed, he heard Patricia wailing, +"Olaf----!" + +Colonel Musgrave turned without any haste. "Please go," he said, and +appeared to plead with her. "You must be frightfully tired. I am sorry +that I was not here. I seem always to evade my responsibilities, +somehow--" + +Then he began to laugh. "It _is_ rather amusing, after all. Agatha was +the most noble person I have ever known. The--this habit of hers to +which you have alluded was not a part of her. And I loved Agatha. And I +suppose loving is not altogether dependent upon logic. In any event, I +loved Agatha. And when I came back to her I had come home, +somehow--wherever she might be at the time. That has been true, oh, ever +since I can remember--" + +He touched the dead hand now. "Please go!" he said, and he did not look +toward Patricia. "For Agatha loved me better than she did God, you know. +The curse was born in her. She had to pay for what those dead, +soft-handed Musgraves did. That is why her hands are so cold now. She +had to pay for the privilege of being a Musgrave, you see. But then we +cannot always pick and choose as to what we prefer to be." + +"Oh, yes, of course, it is all my fault. Everything is my fault. But God +knows what would have become of you and your Agatha if it hadn't been +for me. Oh! oh!" Patricia wailed. "I was a child and I hadn't any better +sense, and I married you, and you've been living off my money ever +since! There hasn't been a Christmas present or a funeral wreath bought +in this house since I came into it I didn't pick out and pay for out of +my own pocket. And all the thanks I get for it is this perpetual +fault-finding, and I wish I was dead like this poor saint here. She +spent her life slaving for you. And what thanks did she get for it? Oh, +you ought to go down on your knees, Rudolph Musgrave--!" + +"Please leave," he said. + +"I will leave when I feel like it, and not a single minute before, and +you might just as well understand as much. You _have_ been living off my +money. Oh, you needn't go to the trouble of lying. And she did too. And +she hated me, she always hated me, because I had been fool enough to +marry you, and she carried on like a lunatic more than half the time, +and I always pretended not to notice it, and this is my reward for +trying to behave like a lady." + +Patricia tossed her head. "Yes, and you needn't look at me as if I were +some sort of a bug you hadn't ever seen before and didn't approve of, +because I've seen you try that high-and-mighty trick too often for it to +work with me." + +Patricia stood now beneath the Stuart portrait of young Gerald Musgrave. +She had insisted, long ago, that it be hung in her own bedroom--"because +it was through that beautiful boy we first got really acquainted, Olaf." +The boy smiles at you from the canvas, smiles ambiguously, as the +colonel now noted. + +"I think you had better go," said Colonel Musgrave. "Please go, +Patricia, before I murder you." + +She saw that he was speaking in perfect earnest. + + + + +IX + + +Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had declined to speak +with innumerable sympathetic cousins--Vartreys and Fentons and +Allardyces and Musgraves, to the fifth and sixth remove--who had come +from all quarters, with visiting-cards and low-voiced requests to be +informed "if there is anything we can possibly do." + +Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had not any strength +for anger now, and hardly for grief, Agatha had been his charge; and the +fact that he had never plucked up courage to allude to her practises was +now an enormity in which he could not quite believe. His cowardice and +its fruitage confronted him, and frightened him into a panic frenzy of +remorse. + +Agatha had been his charge; and he had entrusted the stewardship to +Patricia. Between them--that Patricia might have her card-game, that he +might sit upon a platform for an hour or two with a half-dozen other +pompous fools--they had let Agatha die. There was no mercy in him for +Patricia or for himself. He wished Patricia had been a man. Had any man +--an emperor or a coal-heaver, it would not have mattered--spoken as +Patricia had done within the moment, here, within arm's reach of the +poor flesh that had been Agatha's, Rudolph Musgrave would have known his +duty. But, according to his code, it was not permitted to be +discourteous to a woman.... + +He caught himself with grotesque meanness wishing that Agatha had been +there,--privileged by her sex where he was fettered,--she who was so +generous of heart and so fiery of tongue at need; and comprehension that +Agatha would never abet or adore him any more smote him anew. + + * * * * * + +And chance reserved for him more poignant torture. Next day, while +Rudolph Musgrave was making out the list of honorary pall-bearers, the +postman brought a letter which had been forwarded from Chicago. It was +from Agatha, written upon the morning of that day wherein later she had +been, as Patricia phrased it, "queer, you know." + +He found it wildly droll to puzzle out those "crossed" four sheets of +trivialities written in an Italian hand so minute and orderly that the +finished page suggested a fly-screen. He had so often remonstrated with +Agatha about her penuriousness as concerned stationery. + +"Selina Brice & the Rev'd Henry Anstruther, who now has a church in +Seattle, have announced their engagement. Stanley Haggage has gone to +Alabama to marry Leonora Bright, who moved from here a year ago. They +are both as poor as church mice, & I think marriage in such a case an +unwise step for anyone. It brings cares & anxieties enough any way, +without starting out with poverty to increase and render deeper every +trouble...." + +Such was the tenor of Agatha's last letter, of the last self-expression +of that effigy upstairs who (you could see) knew everything and was not +discontent. + +Here the dead spoke, omniscient; and told you that Stanley Haggage had +gone to Alabama, and that marriage brought new cares and anxieties. + +"I cannot laugh," said Rudolph Musgrave, aloud. "I know the jest +deserves it. But I cannot laugh, because my upper lip seems to be made +of leather and I can't move it. And, besides, I loved Agatha to a degree +which only You and I have ever known of. She never understood quite how +I loved her. Oh, won't You make her understand just how I loved her? For +Agatha is dead, because You wanted her to be dead, and I have never told +her how much I loved her, and now I cannot ever tell her how much I +loved her. Oh, won't You please show me that You have made her +understand? or else have me struck by lightning? or do _anything_....?" + +Nothing was done. + + + + +X + + +And afterward Rudolph Musgrave and his wife met amicably, and without +reference to their last talk. Patricia wore black-and-white for some six +months, and Colonel Musgrave accepted the compromise tacitly. All passed +with perfect smoothness between them; and anyone in Lichfield would have +told you that the Musgraves were a model couple. + +She called him "Rudolph" now. + +"Olaf is such a silly-sounding nickname for two old married people, you +know," Patricia estimated. + +The colonel negligently said that he supposed it did sound odd. + +"Only I don't think Clarice Pendomer would care about coming," he +resumed,--for the two were discussing an uncompleted list of the people +Patricia was to invite to their first house-party. + +"And for heaven's sake, why not? We always have her to everything." + +He could not tell her it was because the Charterises were to be among +their guests. So he said: "Oh, well--!" + +"Mrs. C.B. Pendomer, then"--Patricia wrote the name with a flourish. +"Oh, you jay-bird, I'm not jealous. Everybody knows you never had any +more morals than a tom-cat on the back fence. It's a lucky thing the boy +didn't take after you, isn't it? He doesn't, not a bit. No, Harry +Pendomer is the puniest black-haired little wretch, whereas your other +son, sir, resembles his mother and is in consequence a ravishingly +beautiful person of superlative charm--" + +He was staring at her so oddly that she paused. So Patricia was familiar +with that old scandal which linked his name with Clarice Pendomer's! He +was wondering if Patricia had married him in the belief that she was +marrying a man who, appraised by any standards, had acted infamously. + +"I was only thinking you had better ask Judge Allardyce, Patricia. You +see, he is absolutely certain not to come--" + + * * * * * + +This year the Musgraves had decided not to spend the spring alone +together at Matocton, as they had done the four preceding years. + +"It looks so silly," as Patricia pointed out. + +And, besides, a house-party is the most economical method,--as she also +pointed out, being born a Stapylton--of paying off your social +obligations, because you can always ask so many people who, you know, +have made other plans, and cannot accept. + + * * * * * + +"So we will invite Judge Allardyce, of course," said Patricia. "I had +forgotten his court met in June. Oh, and Peter Blagden too. It had +slipped my mind his uncle was dead...." + +"I learned this morning Mrs. Haggage was to lecture in Louisville on the +sixteenth. She was reading up in the Library, you see--" + +"Rudolph, you are the lodestar of my existence. I will ask her to come +on the fourteenth and spend a week. I never could abide the hag, but she +has such a--There! I've made a big blot right in the middle of +'darling,' and spoiled a perfectly good sheet of paper!... You'd better +mail it at once, though, because the evening-paper may have something in +it about her lecture." + + + + +XI + + +Rudolph--" + +"Why--er--yes, dear?" + +This was after supper, and Patricia was playing solitaire. Her husband +was reading the paper. + +"Agatha told me all about Virginia, you know--" + +Here Colonel Musgrave frowned. "It is not a pleasant topic." + +"You jay-bird, you behave entirely too much as if you were my +grandfather. As I was saying, Agatha told me all about your uncle and +Virginia," Patricia hurried on. "And how she ran away afterwards, and +hid in the woods for three days, and came to your father's plantation, +and how your father bought her, and how her son was born, and how her +son was lynched--" + +"Now, really, Patricia! Surely there are other matters which may be more +profitably discussed." + +"Of course. Now, for instance, why is the King of Hearts the only one +that hasn't a moustache?" Patricia peeped to see what cards lay beneath +that monarch, and upon reflection moved the King of Spades into the +vacant space. She was a devotee of solitaire and invariably cheated at +it. + +She went on, absently: "But don't you see? That colored boy was your own +first cousin, and he was killed for doing exactly what his father had +done. Only they sent the father to the Senate and gave him columns of +flubdub and laid him out in state when he died--and they poured kerosene +upon the son and burned him alive. And I believe Virginia thinks that +wasn't fair." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I honestly believe Virginia hates the Musgraves. She is only a negro, +of course, but then she was a mother once--Oh, yes! all I need is a +black eight--" Patricia demanded, "Now look at your brother Hector--the +awfully dissipated one that died of an overdose of opiates. When it +happened wasn't Virginia taking care of him?" + +"Of course. She is an invaluable nurse." + +"And nobody else was here when Agatha went out into the rain. Now, what +if she had just let Agatha go, without trying to stop her? It would have +been perfectly simple. So is this. All I have to do is to take them off +now." + +Colonel Musgrave negligently returned to his perusal of the afternoon +paper. "You are suggesting--if you will overlook my frankness--the most +deplorable sort of nonsense, Patricia." + +"I know exactly how Balaam felt," she said, irrelevantly, and fell to +shuffling the cards. "You don't, and you won't, understand that Virginia +is a human being. In any event, I wish you would get rid of her." + +"I couldn't decently do that," said Rudolph Musgrave, with careful +patience. "Virginia's faithfulness has been proven by too many years of +faithful service. Nothing more strikingly attests the folly of freeing +the negro than the unwillingness of the better class of slaves to leave +their former owners--" + +"Now you are going to quote a paragraph or so from your Gracious Era. As +if I hadn't read everything you ever wrote! You are a fearful humbug in +some ways, Rudolph." + +"And you are a red-headed rattlepate, madam. But seriously, Patricia, +you who were reared in the North are strangely unwilling to concede that +we of the South are after all best qualified to deal with the Negro +Problem. We know the negro as you cannot ever know him." + +"You! Oh, God ha' mercy on us!" mocked Patricia. "There wasn't any Negro +Problem hereabouts, you beautiful idiot, so long as there were any +negroes. Why, to-day there is hardly one full-blooded negro in +Lichfield. There are only a thousand or so of mulattoes who share the +blood of people like your Uncle Edward. And for the most part they take +after their white kin, unfortunately. And there you have the Lichfield +Negro Problem in a nutshell. It is a venerable one and fully set forth +in the Bible. You needn't attempt to argue with me, because you are a +ninnyhammer, and I am a second Nestor. The Holy Scriptures are perfectly +explicit as to what happens to the heads of the children and their teeth +too." + +"I wish you wouldn't jest about such matters--" + +"Because it isn't lady-like? But, Rudolph, you know perfectly well that +I am not a lady." + +"My dear!" he cried, in horror that was real, "and what on earth have I +said even to suggest--" + +"Oh, not a syllable; it isn't at all the sort of thing that your sort +_says_ ... And I am not your sort. I don't know that I altogether wish I +were. But _if_ I were, it would certainly make things easier," Patricia +added sharply. + +"My dear--!" he again protested. + +"Now, candidly, Rudolph"--relinquishing the game, she fell to shuffling +the cards--"just count up the number of times this month that my--oh, +well! I really don't know what to call it except my deplorable omission +in failing to be born a lady--has seemed to you to yank the very last +rag off the gooseberry-bush?" + +He scoffed. "What nonsense! Although, of course, Patricia--" + +She nodded, mischief in her brightly-colored tiny face. "Yes, that is +just your attitude, you beautiful idiot." + +"--although, of course--now, quite honestly, Patricia, I have +occasionally wished that you would not speak of sacred and--er, +physical and sociological matters in exactly the tone in which--well! in +which you sometimes do speak of them. It may sound old-fashioned, but I +have always believed that decency is quite as important in mental +affairs as it is in physical ones, and that as a consequence, a +gentlewoman should always clothe her thoughts with at least the same +care she accords her body. Oh, don't misunderstand me! Of course it +doesn't do any harm, my dear, between us. But outside--you see, for +people to know that you think about such things must necessarily give +them a false opinion of you." + +Patricia meditated. + +She said, with utter solemnity, "Anathema maranatha! oh, hell to damn! +may the noses of all respectable people be turned upside down and +jackasses dance eternally upon their grandmothers' graves!" + +"Patricia--!" cried a shocked colonel. + +"I mean every syllable of it. No, Rudolph; _I_ can't help it if the +vinaigretted beauties of your boyhood were unabridged dictionaries of +prudery. You see, I know almost all the swearwords there are. And I read +the newspapers, and medical books, and even the things that boys chalk +up on fences. In consequence I am not a bit whiteminded, because if you +use your mind at all it gets more or less dingy, just like using +anything else." + +He could not help but laugh, much as he disapproved. Patricia fluttered +and, as a wren might have done, perched presently upon his knee. + +"Rudolph, can't you laugh more often, and not devote so much time to +tracing out the genealogies of those silly people, and being so +tediously beautiful and good?" she asked, and with a hint of +seriousness. "Rudolph, you don't know how I would adore you if you would +rob a church or cut somebody's throat in an alley, and tell me all about +it because you knew I wouldn't betray you. You are so infernally +respectable in everything you do! How did you come to bully me that day +at the Library? It seems almost as if those two were different people... +doesn't it, Rudolph?" + +"My dear," the colonel said whimsically, "I am afraid we are rather like +the shepherdess and the chimney-sweep of the fable I read you very long +ago. We climbed up so far that we could see the stars, once, very long +ago, Patricia, and we have come back to live upon the parlor table. I +suppose it happens to all the little china people." + +She took his meaning. Each was aware of an odd sense of intimacy. +"Everything we have to be glad for now, Rudolph, is the rivet in +grandfather's neck. It is rather a fiasco, isn't it?" + +"Eh, there are all sorts of rivets, Patricia. And the thing one cannot +do because one is what one is, need not be necessarily a cause for +grief." + + + + +XII + + +It was excellent to see Jack Charteris again, as Colonel Musgrave did +within a few days of this. Musgrave was unreasonably fond of the +novelist and frankly confessed it would be as preposterous to connect +Charteris with any of the accepted standards of morality as it would be +to judge an artesian-well from the standpoint of ethics. + +Anne was not yet in Lichfield. She had broken the journey to visit a +maternal grand-aunt and some Virginia cousins, in Richmond, Charteris +explained, and was to come thence to Matocton. + +"And so you have acquired a boy and, by my soul, a very handsome wife, +Rudolph?" + +"It is sufficiently notorious," said Colonel Musgrave. "Yes, we are +quite absurdly happy." He laughed and added: "Patricia--but you don't +know her droll way of putting things--says that the only rational +complaint I can advance against her is her habit of rushing into a +hospital every month or so and having a section or two of her person +removed by surgeons. It worries me,--only, of course, it is not the +sort of thing you can talk about. And, as Patricia says, it _is_ an +unpleasant thing to realize that your wife is not leaving you through +the ordinary channels of death or of type-written decrees of the court, +but only in vulgar fractions, as it were--" + +"Please don't be quite so brutal, Rudolph. It is not becoming in a +Musgrave of Matocton to speak of women in any tone other than the most +honeyed accents of chivalry." + +"Oh, I was only quoting Patricia," the colonel largely said, +"and--er--Jack," he continued. "By the way, Jack, Clarice Pendomer will +be at Matocton--" + +"I rejoice in her good luck," said Charteris, equably. + +"--and--well! I was wondering--?" + +"I can assure you that there will be no--trouble. That skeleton is +safely locked in its closet, and the key to that closet is missing--more +thanks to you. You acted very nobly in the whole affair, Rudolph. I wish +I could do things like that. As it is, of course, I shall always detest +you for having been able to do it." + +Charteris said, thereafter: "I shall always envy you, though, Rudolph. +No other man I know has ever attained the good old troubadourish ideal +of _domnei_--that love which rather abhors than otherwise the notion of +possessing its object. I still believe it was a distinct relief to a +certain military officer, whose name we need not mention, when Anne +decided not to marry you." + +The colonel grinned, a trifle consciously. "Well, Anne meant youth, you +comprehend, and all the things we then believed in, Jack. It would have +been decidedly difficult to live up to such a contract, and--as it +were--to fulfil every one of the implied specifications!" + +"And yet"--here Charteris flicked his cigarette--"Anne ruled in the +stead of Aline Van Orden. And Aline, in turn, had followed Clarice +Pendomer. And before the coming of Clarice had Pauline Romeyne, whom +time has converted into Polly Ashmeade, reigned in the land--" + +"Don't be an ass!" the colonel pleaded; and then observed, +inconsequently: "I can't somehow quite realize Aline is dead. Lord, +Lord, the letters that I wrote to her! She sent them all back, you know, +in genuine romantic fashion, after we had quarreled. I found those +boyish ravings only the other day in my father's desk at Matocton, and +skimmed them over. I shall read them through some day and appropriately +meditate over life's mysteries that are too sad for tears." + +He meditated now. + +"It wouldn't be quite equitable, Jack," the colonel summed it up, "if +the Aline I loved--no, I don't mean the real woman, the one you and all +the other people knew, the one that married the enterprising brewer and +died five years ago--were not waiting for me somewhere. I can't express +just what I mean, but you will understand, I know--?" + +"That heaven is necessarily run on a Mohammedan basis? Why, of course," +said Mr. Charteris. "Heaven, as I apprehend it, is a place where we +shall live eternally among those ladies of old years who never +condescended actually to inhabit any realm more tangible than that of +our boyish fancies. It is the obvious definition; and I defy you to +evolve a more enticing allurement toward becoming a deacon." + +"You romancers are privileged to talk nonsense anywhere," the colonel +estimated, "and I suppose that in the Lichfield you have made famous, +Jack, you have a double right." + +"Ah, but I never wrote a line concerning Lichfield. I only wrote about +the Lichfield whose existence you continue to believe in, in spite of +the fact that you are actually living in the real Lichfield," Charteris +returned. "The vitality of the legend is wonderful." + +He cocked his head to one side--an habitual gesture with Charteris--and +the colonel noted, as he had often done before, how extraordinarily +reminiscent Jack was of a dried-up, quizzical black parrot. Said +Charteris: + +"I love to serve that legend. I love to prattle of 'ole Marster' and +'ole Miss,' and throw in a sprinkling of 'mockin'-buds' and 'hants' and +'horg-killing time,' and of sweeping animadversions as to all 'free +niggers'; and to narrate how 'de quality use ter cum'--you spell it +c-u-m because that looks so convincingly like dialect--'ter de gret +hous.' Those are the main ingredients. And, as for the unavoidable +love-interest--" Charteris paused, grinned, and pleasantly resumed: +"Why, jes arter dat, suh, a hut Yankee cap'en, whar some uv our folks +done shoot in de laig, wuz lef on de road fer daid--a quite notorious +custom on the part of all Northern armies--un Young Miss had him fotch +up ter de gret hous, un nuss im same's he one uv de fambly, un dem two +jes fit un argufy scanlous un never spicion huccum dey's in love wid +each othuh till de War's ovuh. And there you are! I need not mention +that during the tale's progress it is necessary to introduce at least +one favorable mention of Lincoln, arrange a duel 'in de low grouns' +immediately after day-break, and have the family silver interred in the +back garden, because these points will naturally suggest themselves." + +"Jack, Jack!" the colonel cried, "it is an ill bird that fouls its own +nest." + +"But, believe me, I don't at heart," said Charteris, in a queer earnest +voice. "There is a sardonic imp inside me that makes me jeer at the +commoner tricks of the trade--and yet when I am practising that trade, +when I am writing of those tender-hearted, brave and gracious men and +women, and of those dear old darkies, I very often write with tears in +my eyes. I tell you this with careful airiness because it is true and +because it would embarrass me so horribly if you believed it." + +Then he was off upon another tack. "And wherein, pray, have I harmed +Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis +and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons--and by having called +this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it +flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that, +I take it, is the true secret of romance--to induce the momentary +delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and +prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a +matter of fact, all human passions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I +find. Were it not for the police court records, I would pessimistically +insist that all of us elect to love one person and to hate another with +very much the same enthusiasm that we display in expressing a preference +for rare roast beef as compared with the outside slice. Oh, really, +Rudolph, you have no notion how salutary it is to the self-esteem of us +romanticists to run across, even nowadays, an occasional breach of the +peace. For then sometimes--when the coachman obligingly cuts the +butler's throat in the back-alley, say--we actually presume to think for +a moment that our profession is almost as honest as that of making +counterfeit money...." + +The colonel did not interrupt his brief pause of meditation. Then the +novelist said: + +"Why, no; if I were ever really to attempt a tale of Lichfield, I would +not write a romance but a tragedy. I think that I would call my tragedy +_Futility_, for it would mirror the life of Lichfield with unengaging +candor; and, as a consequence, people would complain that my tragedy +lacked sustained interest, and that its participants were inconsistent; +that it had no ordered plot, no startling incidents, no high endeavors, +and no especial aim; and that it was equally deficient in all +time-hallowed provocatives of either laughter or tears. For very few +people would understand that a life such as this, when rightly viewed, +is the most pathetic tragedy conceivable." + +"Oh, come, now, Jack! come, recollect that your reasoning powers are +almost as worthy of employment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not +quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in +Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty +much as they come; but we meddle with nobody, and, after all, we don't +do any especial harm." + +"We don't do anything whatever in especial, Rudolph. That would be +precisely the theme of my story of the real Lichfield if I were ever +bold enough to write it. There seems to be a sort of blight upon +Lichfield. Oh, yes! it would be unfair, perhaps, to contrast it with the +bigger Southern cities, like Richmond and Atlanta and New Orleans; but +even the inhabitants of smaller Southern towns are beginning to buy +excursion tickets, and thereby ascertain that the twentieth century has +really begun. Yes, it is only in Lichfield I can detect the raw stuff of +a genuine tragedy; for, depend upon it, Rudolph, the most pathetic +tragedy in life is to get nothing in particular out of it." + +"But, for my part, I don't see what you are driving at," the colonel +stoutly said. + +And Charteris only laughed. "And I hardly expected you to do so, +Rudolph--or not yet, at least." + + + + +PART FIVE - SOUVENIR + + "I am contented by remembrances-- + Dreams of dead passions, wraiths of vanished times, + Fragments of vows, and by-ends of old rhymes-- + Flotsam and jetsam tumbling in the seas + Whereon, long since, put forth our argosies + Which, bent on traffic in the Isles of Love, + Lie foundered somewhere in some firth thereof, + Encradled by eternal silences." + + "Thus, having come to naked bankruptcy, + Let us part friends, as thrifty tradesmen do + When common ventures fail, for it may be + These battered oaths and rhymes may yet ring true + To some fair woman's hearing, so that she + Will listen and think of love, and I of you." + +F. Ashcroft Wheeler. _Revisions_. + + + + +I + + +When the _Reliance_, the _Constitution_ and the _Columbia_ were holding +trial races off Newport to decide which one of these yachts should +defend the _America's_ cup; when the tone of the Japanese press as to +Russia's actions in Manchuria was beginning to grow ominous; when the +Jews of America were drafting a petition to the Czar; and when it was +rumored that the health of Pope Leo XIII was commencing to fail:--at +this remote time, the Musgraves gave their first house-party. + +And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted and admired the apparent +unconcern with which John Charteris and Clarice Pendomer encountered at +Matocton. And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted with approval the +intimacy which was, obviously, flourishing between the little novelist +and Patricia. + +Also Colonel Musgrave had presently good reason to lament a contretemps, +over which he was sulking when Mrs. Pendomer rustled to her seat at the +breakfast-table, with a shortness of breath that was partly due to the +stairs, and in part attributable to her youthful dress, which fitted a +trifle too perfectly. + +"Waffles?" said Mrs. Pendomer. "At my age and weight the first is an +experiment and the fifth an amiable indiscretion of which I am +invariably guilty. Sugar, please." She yawned, and reached a +generously-proportioned arm toward the sugar-bowl. "Yes, that will do, +Pilkins." + +Colonel Musgrave--since the remainder of his house-party had already +breakfasted--raised his fine eyes toward the chandelier, and sighed, as +Pilkins demurely closed the dining-room door. + +Leander Pilkins--butler for a long while now to the Musgraves of +Matocton--would here, if space permitted, be the subject of an encomium. +Leander Pilkins was in Lichfield considered to be, upon the whole, the +handsomest man whom Lichfield had produced; for this quadroon's skin was +like old ivory, and his profile would have done credit to an emperor. +His terrapin is still spoken of in Lichfield as people in less favored +localities speak of the Golden Age, and his mayonnaise (boasts +Lichfield) would have compelled an Olympian to plead for a second +helping. For the rest, his deportment in all functions of butlership is +best described as super-Chesterfieldian; and, indeed, he was generally +known to be a byblow of Captain Beverley Musgrave's, who in his day was +Lichfield's arbiter as touched the social graces. And so, no more of +Pilkins. + +Mrs. Pendomer partook of chops. "Is this remorse," she queried, "or a +convivially induced requirement for bromides? At this unearthly hour of +the morning it is very often difficult to disentangle the two." + +"It is neither," said Colonel Musgrave, and almost snappishly. + +Followed an interval of silence. "Really," said Mrs. Pendomer, and as +with sympathy, "one would think you had at last been confronted with one +of your thirty-seven pasts--or is it thirty-eight, Rudolph?" + +Colonel Musgrave frowned disapprovingly at her frivolity; he swallowed +his coffee, and buttered a superfluous potato. "H'm!" said he; "then you +know?" + +"I know," sighed she, "that a sleeping past frequently suffers from +insomnia." + +"And in that case," said he, darkly, "it is not the only sufferer." + +Mrs. Pendomer considered the attractions of a third waffle--a mellow +blending of autumnal yellows, fringed with a crisp and irresistible +brown, that, for the moment, put to flight all dreams and visions of +slenderness. + +"And Patricia?" she queried, with a mental hiatus. + +Colonel Musgrave flushed. + +"Patricia," he conceded, with mingled dignity and sadness, "is, after +all, still in her twenties----" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pendomer, with a dryness which might mean anything or +nothing; "she _was_ only twenty-one when she married you." + +"I mean," he explained, with obvious patience, "that at her age she--not +unnaturally--takes an immature view of things. Her unspoiled purity," +he added, meditatively, "and innocence and general unsophistication are, +of course, adorable, but I can admit to thinking that for a journey +through life they impress me as excess baggage." + +"Patricia," said Mrs. Pendomer, soothingly, "has ideals. And ideals, +like a hare-lip or a mission in life, should be pitied rather than +condemned, when our friends possess them; especially," she continued, +buttering her waffle, "as so many women have them sandwiched between +their last attack of measles and their first imported complexion. No one +of the three is lasting, Rudolph." + +"H'm!" said he. + +There was another silence. The colonel desperately felt that matters +were not advancing. + +"H'm!" said she, with something of interrogation in her voice. + +"See here, Clarice, I have known you----" + +"You have not!" cried she, very earnestly; "not by five years!" + +"Well, say for some time. You are a sensible woman----" + +"A man," Mrs. Pendomer lamented, parenthetically, "never suspects a +woman of discretion, until she begins to lose her waist." + +"--and I am sure that I can rely upon your womanly tact, and finer +instincts,--and that sort of thing, you know--to help me out of a deuce +of a mess." + +Mrs. Pendomer ate on, in an exceedingly noncommittal fashion, as he +paused, inquiringly. + +"She has been reading some letters," said he, at length; "some letters +that I wrote a long time ago." + +"In the case of so young a girl," observed Mrs. Pendomer, with perfect +comprehension, "I should have undoubtedly recommended a judicious +supervision of her reading-matter." + +"She was looking through an old escritoire," he explained; "Jack +Charteris had suggested that some of my father's letters--during the +War, you know--. might be of value--" + +He paused, for Mrs. Pendomer appeared on the verge of a question. + +But she only said, "So it was Mr. Charteris who suggested Patricia's +searching the desk. Ah, yes! And then--?" + +"And it was years ago--and just the usual sort of thing, though it may +have seemed from the letters--Why, I hadn't given the girl a thought," +he cried, in virtuous indignation, "until Patricia found the +letters--and read them!" + +"Naturally," she assented--"yes,--just as I read George's." + +The smile with which she accompanied this remark, suggested that both +Mr. Pendomer's correspondence and home life were at times of an +interesting nature. + +"I had destroyed the envelopes when she returned them," continued +Colonel Musgrave, with morose confusion of persons. "Patricia doesn't +even know who the girl was--her name, somehow, was not mentioned." + +"'Woman of my heart'--'Dearest girl in all the world,'" quoted Mrs. +Pendomer, reminiscently, "and suchlike tender phrases, scattered in with +a pepper-cruet, after the rough copy was made in pencil, and dated just +'Wednesday,' or 'Thursday,' of course. Ah, you were always very careful, +Rudolph," she sighed; "and now that makes it all the worse, because--as +far as all the evidence goes--these letters may have been returned +yesterday." + +"Why--!" Colonel Musgrave pulled up short, hardly seeing his way clear +through the indignant periods on which he had entered. "I declined," +said he, somewhat lamely, "to discuss the matter with her, in her +present excited and perfectly unreasonable condition." + +Mrs. Pendomer's penciled eyebrows rose, and her lips--which were quite +as red as there was any necessity for their being--twitched. + +"Hysterics?" she asked. + +"Worse!" groaned Colonel Musgrave; "patient resignation under unmerited +affliction!" + +He had picked up a teaspoon, and he carefully balanced it upon his +forefinger. + +"There were certain phrases in these letters which were, somehow, +repeated in certain letters I wrote to Patricia the summer we were +engaged, and--not to put too fine a point upon it--she doesn't like it." + +Mrs. Pendomer smiled, as though she considered this not improbable; and +he continued, with growing embarrassment and indignation: + +"She says there must have been others"--Mrs. Pendomer's smile grew +reminiscent--"any number of others; that she is only an incident in my +life. Er--as you have mentioned, Patricia has certain notions--Northern +idiocies about the awfulness of a young fellow's sowing his wild oats, +which you and I know perfectly well he is going to do, anyhow, if he is +worth his salt. But she doesn't know it, poor little girl. So she won't +listen to reason, and she won't come downstairs--which," lamented +Rudolph Musgrave, plaintively, "is particularly awkward in a +house-party." + +He drummed his fingers, for a moment, on the table. + +"It is," he summed up, "a combination of Ibsen and hysterics, and +of--er, rather declamatory observations concerning there being one law +for the man and another for the woman, and Patricia's realization of the +mistake we both made--and all that sort of nonsense, you know, exactly +as if, I give you my word, she were one of those women who want to +vote." The colonel, patently, considered that feminine outrageousness +could go no farther. "And she is taking menthol and green tea and +mustard plasters and I don't know what all, in bed, prior to--to----" + +"Taking leave?" Mrs. Pendomer suggested. + +"Er--that was mentioned, I believe," said Colonel Musgrave. "But of +course she was only talking." + +Mrs. Pendomer looked about her; and, without, the clean-shaven lawns +and trim box-hedges were very beautiful in the morning sunlight; within, +the same sunlight sparkled over the heavy breakfast service, and gleamed +in the high walnut panels of the breakfast-room. She viewed the +comfortable appointments about her a little wistfully, for Mrs. +Pendomer's purse was not over-full. + +"Of course," said she, as in meditation, "there was the money." + +"Yes," said Rudolph Musgrave, slowly; "there was the money." + +He sprang to his feet, and drew himself erect. Here was a moment he must +give its full dramatic value. + +"Oh, no, Clarice, my marriage may have been an eminently sensible one, +but I love my wife. Oh, believe me, I love her very tenderly, poor +little Patricia! I have weathered some forty-seven birthdays; and I have +done much as other men do, and all that--there have been flirtations and +suchlike, and--er--some women have been kinder to me than I deserved. +But I love her; and there has not been a moment since she came into my +life I haven't loved her, and been--" he waved his hands now impotently, +almost theatrically--"sickened at the thought of the others." + +Mrs. Pendomer's foot tapped the floor whilst he spoke. When he had made +an ending, she inclined her head toward him. + +"Thank you!" said Mrs. Pendomer. + +Colonel Musgrave bit his lip; and he flushed. + +"That," said he, hastily, "was different." + +But the difference, whatever may have been its nature, was seemingly a +matter of unimportance to Mrs. Pendomer, who was in meditation. She +rested her ample chin on a much-bejeweled hand for a moment; and, when +Mrs. Pendomer raised her face, her voice was free from affectation. + +"You will probably never understand that this particular July day is a +crucial point in your life. You will probably remember it, if you +remember it at all, simply as that morning when Patricia found some +girl-or-another's old letters, and behaved rather unreasonably about +them. It was the merest trifle, you will think.... John Charteris +understands women better than you do, Rudolph." + +"I need not pretend at this late day to be as clever as Jack," the +colonel said, in some bewilderment. "But why not more succinctly state +that the Escurial is not a dromedary, although there are many flies in +France? For what on earth has Jack to do with crucial points and July +mornings?" + +"Why, I suppose, I only made bold to introduce his name for the sake of +an illustration, Rudolph. For the last person in the world to realize, +precisely, why any woman did anything is invariably the woman who did +it.... Yet there comes in every married woman's existence that time when +she realizes, suddenly, that her husband has a past which might be +taken as, in itself, a complete and rounded life--as a life which had +run the gamut of all ordinary human passions, and had become familiar +with all ordinary human passions a dishearteningly long while before she +ever came into that life. A woman never realizes that of her lover, +somehow. But to know that your husband, the father of your child, has +lived for other women a life in which you had no part, and never can +have part!--she realizes that, at one time or another, and--and it +sickens her." Mrs. Pendomer smiled as she echoed his phrase, but her +eyes were not mirthful. + +"Ah, she hungers for those dead years, Rudolph, and, though you devote +your whole remaining life to her, nothing can ever make up for them; and +she always hates those shadowy women who have stolen them from her. A +woman never, at heart, forgives the other women who have loved her +husband, even though she cease to care for him herself. For she +remembers--ah, you men forget so easily, Rudolph! God had not invented +memory when he created Adam; it was kept for the woman." + +Then ensued a pause, during which Rudolph Musgrave smiled down upon her, +irresolutely; for he abhorred "a scene," as his vernacular phrased it, +and to him Clarice's present manner bordered upon both the scenic and +the incomprehensible. + +"Ah!--you women!" he temporized. + +There was a glance from eyes whose luster time and irregular living had +conspired to dim. + +"Ah!--you men!" Mrs. Pendomer retorted. "And there we have the tragedy +of life in a nutshell!" + +Silence lasted for a while. The colonel was finding this matutinal talk +discomfortably opulent in pauses. + +"Rudolph, and has it never occurred to you that in marrying Patricia you +swindled her?" + +And naturally his eyebrows lifted. + +"Because a woman wants love." + +"Well, well! and don't I love Patricia?" + +"I dare say that you think you do. Only you have played at loving so +long you are really unable to love anybody as a girl has every right to +be loved in her twenties. Yes, Rudolph, you are being rather subtly +punished for the good times you have had. And, after all, the saddest +punishment is something that happens in us, not something which happens +to us." + +"I wish you wouldn't laugh, Clarice----" + +"I wish I didn't have to. For I would get far more comfort out of +crying, and I don't dare to, because of my complexion. It comes in a +round pasteboard box nowadays, you know, Rudolph, with French +mendacities all over the top--and my eyebrows come in a fat crayon, and +the healthful glow of my lips comes in a little porcelain tub." + +Mrs. Pendomer was playing with a teaspoon now, and a smile hovered about +the aforementioned lips. + +"And yet, do you remember, Rudolph," said she, "that evening at +Assequin, when I wore a blue gown, and they were playing _Fleurs +d'Amour_, and--you said--?" + +"Yes"--there was an effective little catch in his voice--"you were a +wonderful girl, Clarice--'my sunshine girl,' I used to call you. And +blue was always your color; it went with your eyes so exactly. And those +big sleeves they wore then--those tell-tale, crushable sleeves!--they +suited your slender youthfulness so perfectly! Ah, I remember it as +though it were yesterday!" + +Mrs. Pendomer majestically rose to her feet. + +"It was pink! And it was at the Whitebrier you said--what you said! +And--and you don't deserve anything but what you are getting," she +concluded, grimly. + +"I--it was so long ago," Rudolph Musgrave apologized, with mingled +discomfort and vagueness. + +"Yes," she conceded, rather sadly; "it was so long--oh, very long ago! +For we were young then, and we believed in things, and--and Jack +Charteris had not taken a fancy to me--" She sighed and drummed her +fingers on the table. "But women have always helped and shielded you, +haven't they, Rudolph? And now I am going to help you too, for you have +shown me the way. You don't deserve it in the least, but I'll do it." + + + + +II + + +Thus it shortly came about that Mrs. Pendomer mounted, in meditative +mood, to Mrs. Musgrave's rooms; and that Mrs. Pendomer, recovering her +breath, entered, without knocking, into a gloom where cologne and +menthol and the odor of warm rubber contended for mastery. For Patricia +had decided that she was very ill indeed, and was sobbing softly in bed. + +Very calmly, Mrs. Pendomer opened a window, letting in a flood of fresh +air and sunshine; very calmly, she drew a chair--a substantial +arm-chair--to the bedside, and, very calmly, she began: + +"My dear, Rudolph has told me of this ridiculous affair, and--oh, you +equally ridiculous girl!" + +She removed, with deft fingers, a damp and clinging bandage from about +Patricia's head, and patted the back of Patricia's hand, placidly. +Patricia was by this time sitting erect in bed, and her coppery hair was +thick about her face, which was colorless; and, altogether, she was very +rigid and very indignant and very pretty, and very, very young. + +"How dare he tell you--or anybody else!" she cried. + +"We are such old friends, remember," Mrs. Pendomer pleaded, and +rearranged the pillows, soothingly, about her hostess; "and I want to +talk to you quietly and sensibly." + +Patricia sank back among the pillows, and inhaled the fresh air, which, +in spite of herself, she found agreeable. "I--somehow, I don't feel very +sensible," she murmured, half sulky and half shame-faced. + +Mrs. Pendomer hesitated for a moment, and then plunged into the heart of +things. "You are a woman, dear," she said, gently, "though heaven knows +it must have been only yesterday you were playing about the nursery--and +one of the facts we women must face, eventually, is that man is a +polygamous animal. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is true. +Civilization may veneer the fact, but nothing will ever override it, not +even in these new horseless carriages. A man may give his wife the best +that is in him--his love, his trust, his life's work--but it is only the +best there is left. We give our hearts; men dole out theirs, as people +feed bread to birds, with a crumb for everyone. His wife has the +remnant. And the best we women can do is to remember we are credibly +informed that half a loaf is preferable to no bread at all." + +Her face sobered, and she added, pensively: "We might contrive a better +universe, we sister women, but this is not permitted us. So we must take +it as it is." + +Patricia stirred, as talking died away. "I don't believe it," said she; +and she added, with emphasis: "And, anyhow, I hate that nasty trollop!" + +"Ah, but you do believe it." Mrs. Pendomer's voice was insistent. "You +knew it years before you went into long frocks. That knowledge is, I +suppose, a legacy from our mothers." + +Patricia frowned, petulantly, and then burst into choking sobs. "Oh!" +she cried, "it's damnable! Some other woman has had what I can never +have. And I wanted it so!--that first love that means everything--the +love he gave her when I was only a messy little girl, with pig-tails and +too many hands and feet! Oh, that--that hell-cat! She's had everything!" + +There was an interval, during which Mrs. Pendomer smiled crookedly, and +Patricia continued to sob, although at lengthening intervals. Then, Mrs. +Pendomer lifted the packet of letters lying on the bed, and cleared her +throat. + +"H'm!" said she; "so this is what caused all the trouble? You don't +mind?" + +And, considering silence as equivalent to acquiescence, she drew out a +letter at hazard, and read aloud: + +"'Just a line, woman of all the world, to tell you ... but what have I +to tell you, after all? Only the old, old message, so often told that it +seems scarcely worth while to bother the postman about it. Just three +words that innumerable dead lips have whispered, while life was yet good +and old people were unreasonable and skies were blue--three words that +our unborn children's children will whisper to one another when we too +have gone to help the grasses in their growing or to nourish the +victorious, swaying hosts of some field of daffodils. Just three +words--that is my message to you, my lady.... Ah, it is weary waiting +for a sight of your dear face through these long days that are so much +alike and all so empty and colorless! My heart grows hungry as I think +of your great, green eyes and of the mouth that is like a little wound. +I want you so, O dearest girl in all the world! I want you.... Ah, time +travels very slowly that brings you back to me, and, meanwhile, I can +but dream of you and send you impotent scrawls that only vex me with +their futility. For my desire of you--' + +"The remainder," said Mrs. Pendomer, clearing her throat once more, +"appears to consist of insanity and heretical sentiments, in about equal +proportions, all written at the top of a boy's breaking voice. It isn't +Colonel Musgrave's voice--quite--is it?" + +During the reading, Patricia, leaning on one elbow, had regarded her +companion with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. "Now, you see!" she cried +indignantly; "he loved her! He was simply crazy about her." + +"Why, yes." Mrs. Pendomer replaced the letter, carefully, almost +caressingly, among its companions. "My dear, it was years ago. I think +time has by this wreaked a vengeance far more bitter than you could ever +plan on the woman who, after all, never thought to wrong you. For the +bitterest of all bitter things to a woman--to some women, at least--is +to grow old." + +She sighed, and her well-manicured fingers fretted for a moment with the +counterpane. + +"Ah, who will write the tragedy of us women who were 'famous Southern +beauties' once? We were queens of men while our youth lasted, and +diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us. But nothing was +expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much +of, and that is our tragedy. For very few things, my dear, are more +pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind +cannot--cannot, because of its very nature--reach to anything higher! +Middle-age strips her of everything--the admiration, the flattery, the +shallow merriment--all the little things that her little mind longs +for--and other women take her place, in spite of her futile, pitiful +efforts to remain young. And the world goes on as before, and there is a +whispering in the moonlit garden, and young people steal off for wholly +superfluous glasses of water, and the men give her duty dances, and she +is old--ah, so old!--under the rouge and inane smiles and dainty +fripperies that caricature her lost youth! No, my dear, you needn't envy +this woman! Pity her, my dear!" pleaded Clarice Pendomer, and with a +note of earnestness in her voice. + +"Such a woman," said Patricia, with distinctness, "deserves no pity." + +"Well," Mrs. Pendomer conceded, drily, "she doesn't get it. Probably, +because she always grows fat, from sheer lack of will-power to resist +sloth and gluttony--the only agreeable vices left her; and by no stretch +of the imagination can a fat woman be converted into either a pleasing +or heroic figure." + +Mrs. Pendomer paused for a breathing-space, and smiled, though not very +pleasantly. + +"It is, doubtless," said she, "a sight for gods--and quite certainly for +men--to laugh at, this silly woman striving to regain a vanished +frugality of waist. Yes, I suppose it is amusing--but it is also +pitiful. And it is more pitiful still if she has ever loved a man in the +unreasoning way these shallow women sometimes do. Men age so slowly; the +men a girl first knows are young long after she has reached +middle-age--yes, they go on dancing cotillions and talking nonsense in +the garden, long after she has taken to common-sense shoes. And the man +is still young--and he cares for some other woman, who is young and has +all that she has lost--and it seems so unfair!" said Mrs. Pendomer. + +Patricia regarded her for a moment. The purple eyes were alert, their +glance was hard. "You seem to know all about this woman," Patricia +began, in a level voice. "I have heard, of course, what everyone in +Lichfield whispers about you and Rudolph. I have even teased Rudolph +about it, but until to-day I had believed it was a lie." + +"It is often a mistake to indulge in uncommon opinions," said Mrs. +Pendomer. "You get more fun and interest out of it, I don't deny, but +the bill, my dear, is unconscionable." + +"So! you confess it!" + +"My dear, and who am I to stand aside like a coward and see you make a +mountain of this boy-and-girl affair--an affair which Rudolph and I had +practically forgotten--oh, years ago!--until to-day? Why--why, you +_can't_ be jealous of me!" Mrs. Pendomer concluded, half-mockingly. + +Patricia regarded her with deliberation. + +In the windy sunlight, Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but, +unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and +her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which +there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had +dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her +husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped +into the imbroglio--a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate love of +attention, which was, indeed, tolerably notorious; and Patricia's anger +against Rudolph Musgrave gave way to a rather contemptuous pity and a +half-maternal remorse for not having taken better care of him. + +"No," answered Mrs. Pendomer, to her unspoken thought; "no woman could +be seriously jealous of me. Yes, I dare say, I am _passee_ and vain and +frivolous and--harmless. But," she added, meditatively, "you hate me, +just the same." + +"My dear Mrs. Pendomer----" Patricia began, with cool courtesy; then +hesitated. "Yes," she conceded; "I dare say, it is unreasonable--but I +do hate you like the very old Nick." + +"Why, then," spoke Mrs. Pendomer, with cheerfulness, "everything is as +it should be." She rose and smiled. "I am sorry to say I must be leaving +Matocton to-day; the Ullwethers are very pressing, and I really don't +know how to get out of paying them a visit----" + +"So sorry to lose you," cooed Patricia; "but, of course, you know best. +I believe some very good people are visiting the Ullwethers nowadays?" +She extended the letters, blandly. "May I restore your property?" she +queried, with utmost gentleness. + +"Thanks!" Clarice Pendomer took them, and kissed her hostess, not +without tenderness, on the brow. "My dear, be kind to Rudolph. He--he is +rather an attractive man, you know,--and other women are kind to him. We +of Lichfield have always said that he and Jack Charteris were the most +dangerous men that even Lichfield has ever produced----" + +"Why, do people really find Mr. Charteris particularly attractive?" +Patricia demanded, so quickly and so innocently that Mrs. Pendomer could +not deny herself the glance of a charlatan who applauds his fellow's +legerdemain. + +And Patricia colored. + +"Oh, well--! You know how Lichfield gossips," said Mrs. Pendomer. + + + + +III + + +Colonel Musgrave had smoked a preposterous number of unsatisfying +cigarettes on the big front porch of Matocton whilst Mrs. Pendomer was +absent on her mission; and on her return, flushed and triumphant, he +rose in eloquent silence. + +"I've done it, Rudolph," said Mrs. Pendomer. + +"Done what?" he queried, blankly. + +"Restored what my incomprehensible lawyers call the _status quo_; +achieved peace with honor; carried off the spoils of war; and--in +short--arranged everything," answered Mrs. Pendomer, and sank into a +rustic chair, which creaked admonishingly. "And all," she added, +bringing a fan into play, "without a single falsehood. _I_ am not to +blame if Patricia has jumped at the conclusion that these letters were +written to me." + +"My word!" said Rudolph Musgrave, "your methods of restoring domestic +peace to a distracted household are, to say the least, original!" He +seated himself, and lighted another cigarette. + +"Oh, well, Patricia is not deaf, you know, and she has lived in +Lichfield quite a while." Mrs. Pendomer said abruptly, "I have half a +mind to tell you some of the things I know about Aline Van Orden." + +"Please don't," said Colonel Musgrave, "for I would inevitably beard you +on my own porch and smite you to the door-mat. And I am hardly young +enough for such adventures." + +"And poor Aline is dead! And the rest of us are middle-aged now, +Rudolph, and we go in to dinner with the veterans who call us 'Madam,' +and we are prominent in charitable enterprises.... But there was a time +when we were not exactly hideous in appearance, and men did many mad +things for our sakes, and we never lose the memory of that time. +Pleasant memories are among the many privileges of women. Yes," added +Mrs. Pendomer, meditatively, "we derive much the same pleasure from them +a cripple does from rearranging the athletic medals he once won, or a +starving man from thinking of the many excellent dinners he has eaten; +but we can't and we wouldn't part with them, nevertheless." + +Rudolph Musgrave, however, had not honored her with much attention, and +was puzzling over the more or less incomprehensible situation; and, +perceiving this, she ran on, after a little: + +"Oh, it worked--it worked beautifully! You see, she would always have +been very jealous of that other woman; but with me it is different. She +has always known that scandalous story about you and me. And she has +always known me as I am--a frivolous and--say, corpulent, for it is a +more dignified word--and generally unattractive chaperon; and she can't +think of me as ever having been anything else. Young people never really +believe in their elders' youth, Rudolph; at heart, they think we came +into the world with crow's-feet and pepper-and-salt hair, all complete. +So, she is only sorry for you now--rather as a mother would be for a +naughty child; as for me, she isn't jealous--but," sighed Mrs. Pendomer, +"she isn't over-fond of me." + +Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. "It isn't fair," said he; "the +letters were distinctly compromising. It isn't fair you should shoulder +the blame for a woman who was nothing to you. It isn't fair you should +be placed in such a false position." + +"What matter?" pleaded Mrs. Pendomer. "The letters are mine to burn, if +I choose. I have read one of them, by the way, and it is almost word for +word a letter you wrote me a good twenty years ago. And you re-hashed it +for Patricia's benefit too, it seems! You ought to get a mimeograph. Oh, +very well! It doesn't matter now, for Patricia will say nothing--or not +at least to you," she added. + +"Still----" he began. + +"Ah, Rudolph, if I want to do a foolish thing, why won't you let me? +What else is a woman for? They are always doing foolish things. I have +known a woman to throw a man over, because she had seen him without a +collar; and I have known another actually to marry a man, because she +happened to be in love with him. I have known a woman to go on wearing +pink organdie after she has passed forty, and I have known a woman to go +on caring for a man who, she knew, wasn't worth caring for, long after +he had forgotten. We are not brave and sensible, like you men. So why +not let me be foolish, if I want to be?" + +"If," said Colonel Musgrave in some perplexity, "I understand one word +of this farrago, I will be--qualified in various ways." + +"But you don't have to understand," she pleaded. + +"You mean--?" he asked. + +"I mean that I was always fond of Aline, anyhow." + +"Nonsense!" And he was conscious, with vexation, that he had undeniably +flushed. + +"I mean, then, I am a woman, and _I_ understand. Everything is as near +what it should be as is possible while Patricia is seeing so much of--we +will call it the artistic temperament." Mrs. Pendomer shrugged. "But if +I went on in that line you would believe I was jealous. And heaven knows +I am not the least bit so--with the unavoidable qualification that, +being a woman, I can't help rising superior to common-sense." + +He said, "You mean Jack Charteris--? But what on earth has he to do with +these letters?" + +"I don't mean any proper names at all. I simply mean you are not to undo +my work. It would only signify trouble and dissatisfaction and giving up +all this"--she waved her hand lightly toward the lawns of +Matocton,--"and it would mean our giving you up, for, you know, you +haven't any money of your own, Rudolph. Ah, Rudolph, we can't give you +up! We need you to lead our Lichfield germans, and to tell us naughty +little stories, and keep us amused. So _please_ be sensible, Rudolph." + +"Permit me to point out I firmly believe that silence is the perfectest +herald of joy," observed Colonel Musgrave. "Only I do _not_ understand +why you should have dragged John Charteris's name into this ludicrous +affair----" + +"You really do not understand----?" + +But Colonel Musgrave's handsome face declared very plainly that he did +not. + +"Well," Mrs. Pendomer reflected, "I dare say it is best, upon the whole, +you shouldn't. And now you must excuse me, for I am leaving for the +Ullwethers' to-day, and I shan't ever be invited to Matocton again, and +I must tell my maid to pack up. She is a little fool and it will break +her heart to be leaving Pilkins. All human beings are tediously alike. +But, allowing ample time for her to dispose of my best lingerie and of +her unavoidable lamentations, I ought to make the six-forty-five. I have +noticed that one usually does--somehow," said Mrs. Pendomer, and seemed +to smack of allegories. + +And yet it may have been because she knew--as who knew +better?--something of that mischief's nature which was now afoot. + + + + +IV + + +The colonel burned the malefic letters that afternoon. Indeed, the +episode set him to ransacking the desk in which Patricia had found +them--a desk which, as you have heard, was heaped with the miscellaneous +correspondence of the colonel's father dating back a half-century and +more. Much curious matter the colonel discovered there, for "Wild Will" +Musgrave's had been a full-blooded career. And over one packet of +letters, in particular, the colonel sat for a long while with an +unwontedly troubled face. + + + + +PART SIX - BYWAYS + + "Cry _Kismet!_ and take heart. Eros is gone, + Nor may we follow to that loftier air + Olympians breathe. Take heart, and enter where + A lighter Love, vine-crowned, laughs i' the sun, + Oblivious of tangled webs ill-spun + By ancient wearied weavers, for it may be + His guidance leads to lovers of such as we + And hearts so credulous as to be won. + + "Cry _Kismet!_ Put away vain memories + Of all old sorrows and of all old joys, + And learn that life is never quite amiss + So long as unreflective girls and boys + Remember that young lips were meant to kiss, + And hold that laughter is a seemly noise." + +PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._ + + + + +I + + +Patricia sat in the great maple-grove that stands behind Matocton, and +pondered over a note from her husband, who was in Lichfield +superintending the appearance of the July number of the _Lichfield +Historical Association's Quarterly Magazine_. Mr. Charteris lay at +her feet, glancing rapidly over a lengthy letter, which was from his +wife, in Richmond. + +The morning mail was just in, and Patricia had despatched Charteris for +her letters, on the plea that the woods were too beautiful to leave, and +that Matocton, in the unsettled state which marks the end of the week in +a house-party, was intolerable. + +She, undoubtedly, was partial to the grove, having spent the last ten +mornings there. Mr. Charteris had overrated her modest literary +abilities so far as to ask her advice in certain details of his new +book, which was to appear in the autumn, and they had found a vernal +solitude, besides being extremely picturesque, to be conducive to the +forming of really matured opinions. Moreover, she was assured that none +of the members of the house-party would misunderstand her motives; +people were so much less censorious in the country; there was something +in the pastoral purity of Nature, seen face to face, which brought out +one's noblest instincts, and put an end to all horrid gossip and +scandal-mongering. + +Didn't Mrs. Barry-Smith think so? And what was her real opinion of that +rumor about the Hardresses, and was the woman as bad as people said she +was? Thus had Patricia spoken in the privacy of her chamber, at that +hour when ladies do up their hair for the night, and discourse of +mysteries. It is at this time they are said to babble out their hearts +to one another; and so, beyond doubt, this must have been the real state +of the case. + +As Patricia admitted, she had given up bridge and taken to literature +only during the past year. She might more honestly have said within the +last two weeks. In any event, she now conversed of authors with a fitful +persistence like that of an ill-regulated machine. Her comments were +delightfully frank and original, as she had an unusually good memory. Of +two books she was apt to prefer the one with the wider margin, and she +was becoming sufficiently familiar with a number of poets to quote them +inaccurately. + +We have all seen John Charteris's portraits, and most of us have read +his books--or at least, the volume entitled _In Old Lichfield_, which +caused the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_ to apostrophize its author as a +"Child of Genius! whose ardent soul has sounded the mysteries of life, +whose inner vision sweeps over ever widening fields of thought, and +whose chiseled phrases continue patriotically to perpetuate the beauty +of Lichfield's past." But for present purposes it is sufficient to say +that this jewelsmith of words was slight and dark and hook-nosed, and +that his hair was thin, and that he was not ill-favored. It may be of +interest to his admirers--a growing cult--to add that his reason for +wearing a mustache in a period of clean-shaven faces was that, without +it, his mouth was not pleasant to look upon. + +"Heigho!" Patricia said, at length, with a little laugh; "it is very +strange that both of our encumbrances should arrive on the same day!" + +"It is unfortunate," Mr. Charteris admitted, lazily; "but the blessed +state of matrimony is liable to these mishaps. Let us be thankful that +my wife's whim to visit her aunt has given us, at least, two perfect, +golden weeks. Husbands are like bad pennies; and wives resemble the cat +whose adventures have been commemorated by one of our really popular +poets. They always come back." + +Patricia communed with herself, and to Charteris seemed, as she sat in +the chequered sunlight, far more desirable than a married woman has any +right to be. + +"I wish--" she began, slowly. "Oh, but, you know, it was positively +criminal negligence not to have included a dozen fairies among my +sponsors." + +"I too have desiderated this sensible precaution," said Charteris, and +laughed his utter comprehension. "But, after all," he said, and snapped +his fingers gaily, "we still have twenty-four hours, Patricia! Let us +forget the crudities of life, and say foolish things to each other. For +I am pastorally inclined this morning, Patricia; I wish to lie at your +feet and pipe amorous ditties upon an oaten reed. Have you such an +article about you, Patricia?" + +He drew a key-ring from his pocket, and pondered over it. + +"Or would you prefer that I whistle into the opening of this door-key, +to the effect that we must gather our rose-buds while we may, for Time +is still a-flying, fa-la, and that a drear old age, not to mention our +spouses, will soon descend upon us, fa-la-di-leero? A door-key is not +Arcadian, Patricia, but it makes a very creditable noise." + +"Don't be foolish, _mon ami_!" she protested, with an indulgent smile. +"I am unhappy." + +"Unhappy that I have chanced to fall in love with you, Patricia? It is +an accident which might befall any really intelligent person." + +She shrugged her shoulders, ruefully. + +"I have done wrong to let you talk to me as you have done of late. +I--oh, Jack, I am afraid!" + +Mr. Charteris meditated. Somewhere in a neighboring thicket a bird +trilled out his song--a contented, half-hushed song that called his mate +to witness how infinitely blest above all other birds was he. Mr. +Charteris heard him to the end, and languidly made as to applaud; then +Mr. Charteris raised his eyebrows. + +"Of your husband, Patricia?" he queried. + +"I--Rudolph doesn't bother about me nowadays sufficiently to--notice +anything." + +Mr. Charteris smiled. "Of my wife, Patricia?" + +"Good gracious, no! I have not the least doubt you will explain matters +satisfactorily to your wife, for I have always heard that practise makes +perfect." + +Mr. Charteris laughed--a low and very musical laugh. + +"Of me, then, Patricia?" + +"I--I think it is rather of myself I am afraid. Oh, I hate you when you +smile like that! You have evil eyes, Jack! Stop it! Quit hounding me +with your illicit fascinations." The hand she had raised in threatening +fashion fell back into her lap, and she shrugged her shoulders once +more. "My nerves are somewhat upset by the approaching prospect of +connubial felicity, I suppose. Really, though, _mon ami_, your conceit +is appalling." + +Charteris gave vent to a chuckle, and raised the door-key to his lips. + +"When you are quite through your histrionic efforts," he suggested, +apologetically, "I will proceed with my amorous pipings. Really, +Patricia, one might fancy you the heroine of a society drama, working up +the sympathies of the audience before taking to evil ways. Surely, you +are not about to leave your dear, good, patient husband, Patricia? +Heroines only do that on dark and stormy nights, and in an opera +toilette; wearing her best gown seems always to affect a heroine in that +way." + +Mr. Charteris, at this point, dropped the key-ring, and drew nearer to +her; his voice sank to a pleading cadence. + +"We are in Arcadia, Patricia; virtue and vice are contraband in this +charming country, and must be left at the frontier. Let us be adorably +foolish and happy, my lady, and forget for a little the evil days that +approach. Can you not fancy this to be Arcadia, Patricia?--it requires +the merest trifle of imagination. Listen very carefully, and you will +hear the hoofs of fauns rustling among the fallen leaves; they are +watching us, Patricia, from behind every tree-bole. They think you a +dryad--the queen of all the dryads, with the most glorious eyes and hair +and the most tempting lips in all the forest. After a little, shaggy, +big-thewed ventripotent Pan will grow jealous, and ravish you away from +me, as he stole Syrinx from her lover. You are very beautiful, Patricia; +you are quite incredibly beautiful. I adore you, Patricia. Would you +mind if I held your hand? It is a foolish thing to do, but it is +preeminently Arcadian." + +She heard him with downcast eyes; and her cheeks flushed a pink color +that was agreeable to contemplation. + +"Do--do you really care for me, Jack?" she asked, softly; then cried, +"No, no, you needn't answer--because, of course, you worship me madly, +unboundedly, distractedly. They all do, but you do it more convincingly. +You have been taking lessons at night-school, I dare say, at all sorts +of murky institutions. And, Jack, really, cross my heart, I always +stopped the others when they talked this way. I tried to stop you, too. +You know I did?" + +She raised her lashes, a trifle uncertainly, and withdrew her hand from +his, a trifle slowly. "It is wrong--all horribly wrong. I wonder at +myself, I can't understand how in the world I can be such a fool about +you. I must not be alone with you again. I must tell my +husband--everything," she concluded, and manifestly not meaning a word +of what she said. + +"By all means," assented Mr. Charteris, readily. "Let's tell my wife, +too. It will make things so very interesting." + +"Rudolph would be terribly unhappy," she reflected. + +"He would probably never smile again," said Mr. Charteris. "And my +wife--oh, it would upset Anne, quite frightfully! It is our altruistic, +nay, our bounden duty to save them from such misery." + +"I--I don't know what to do!" she wailed. + +"The obvious course," said he, after reflection, "is to shake off the +bonds of matrimony, without further delay. So let's elope, Patricia." + +Patricia, who was really unhappy, took refuge in flippancy, and laughed. + +"I make it a rule," said she, "never to elope on Fridays. Besides, now +I think of it, there is, Rudolph--Ah, Rudolph doesn't care a button's +worth about me, I know. The funny part is that he doesn't know it. He +has simply assumed he is devoted to me, because all respectable people +are devoted to their wives. I can assure you, _mon ami_, he would be a +veritable Othello, if there were any scandal, and would infinitely +prefer the bolster to the divorce-court. He would have us followed and +torn apart by wild policemen." + +Mr. Charteris meditated for a moment. + +"Rudolph, as you are perfectly aware, would simply deplore the terribly +lax modern notions in regard to marriage and talk to newspaper reporters +about this much--" he measured it between thumb and forefinger +--"concerning the beauty and chivalry of the South. He would +do nothing more. I question if Rudolph Musgrave would ever in any +circumstances be capable of decisive action." + +"Ah, don't make fun of Rudolph!" she cried, quickly. "Rudolph can't help +it if he is conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live +with. And for all that he so often plays the jackass-fool about women, +like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack--a well-meaning, clean and +dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer +too much, and you are making a fool of me, and--and that's why I like +you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good, +and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes a halo +sit comfortably. Now, Jack, you know I've tried to be good! I've never +let you kiss me, and I've never let you hold my hand--until to-day-- +and--and----" + +Patricia paused, and laughed. + +"But we were talking of Rudolph," she said, with a touch of weariness. +"Rudolph has all the virtues that a woman most admires until she +attempts to live in the same house with them." + +"I thank you," said Mr. Charteris, "for the high opinion you entertain +of my moral character." He bestowed a reproachful sigh upon her, and +continued: "At any rate, Rudolph Musgrave has been an unusually lucky +man--the luckiest that I know of." + +Patricia had risen as if to go. She turned her big purple eyes on him +for a moment. + +"You--you think so?" she queried, hesitatingly. + +Afterward she spread out her hands in a helpless gesture, and laughed +for no apparent reason, and sat down again. + +"Why?" said Patricia. + +It took Charteris fully an hour to point out all the reasons. + +Patricia told him very frankly that she considered him to be talking +nonsense, but she seemed quite willing to listen. + + + + +II + + +Sunset was approaching on the following afternoon when Rudolph Musgrave, +fresh from Lichfield,--whither, as has been recorded, the bringing out +of the July number of the _Lichfield Historical Associations Quarterly +Magazine_ had called him,--came out on the front porch at Matocton. He +had arrived on the afternoon train, about an hour previously, in time to +superintend little Roger's customary evening transactions with an +astounding quantity of bread and milk; and, Roger abed, his father, +having dressed at once for supper, found himself ready for that meal +somewhat in advance of the rest of the house-party. + +Indeed, only one of them was visible at this moment--a woman, who was +reading on a rustic bench some distance from the house, and whose back +was turned to him. The poise of her head, however, was not unfamiliar; +also, it is not everyone who has hair that is like a nimbus of +thrice-polished gold. + +Colonel Musgrave threw back his shoulders, and drew a deep breath. +Subsequently, with a fine air of unconcern, he inspected the view from +the porch, which was, in fact, quite worthy of his attention. +Interesting things have happened at Matocton--many events that have been +preserved in the local mythology, not always to the credit of the old +Musgraves, and a few which have slipped into a modest niche in history. +It was, perhaps, on these that Colonel Musgrave pondered so intently. + +Once the farthingaled and red-heeled gentry came in sluggish barges to +Matocton, and the broad river on which the estate faces was thick with +bellying sails; since the days of railroads, one approaches the mansion +through the maple-grove in the rear, and enters ignominiously by the +back-door. + +The house stands on a considerable elevation. The main portion, with its +hipped roof and mullioned windows, is very old, but the two wings that +stretch to the east and west are comparatively modern, and date back +little over a century. Time has mellowed them into harmony with the +major part of the house, and the kindly Virginia creeper has done its +utmost to conceal the fact that they are constructed of plebeian bricks +which were baked in this country; but Matocton was Matocton long before +these wings were built, and a mere affair of yesterday, such as the +Revolution, antedates them. They were not standing when Tarleton paid +his famous visit to Matocton. + +In the main hall, you may still see the stairs up which he rode on +horseback, and the slashes which his saber hacked upon the hand-rail. + +To the front of the mansion lies a close-shaven lawn, dotted with +sundry oaks and maples; and thence, the formal gardens descend in six +broad terraces. There is when summer reigns no lovelier spot than this +bright medley of squares and stars and triangles and circles--all Euclid +in flowerage--which glow with multitudinous colors where the sun +strikes. You will find no new flowers at Matocton, though. Here are +verbenas, poppies, lavender and marigolds, sweet-william, hollyhocks and +columbine, phlox, and larkspur, and meadowsweet, and heart's-ease, just +as they were when Thomasine Musgrave, Matocton's first chatelaine, was +wont to tend them; and of all floral parvenus the gardens are innocent. +Box-hedges mark the walkways. + +The seventh terrace was, until lately, uncultivated, the trees having +been cleared away to afford pasturage. It is now closely planted with +beeches, none of great size, and extends to a tangled thicket of +fieldpines and cedar and sassafras and blackberry bushes, which again +masks a drop of some ten feet to the river. + +The beach here is narrow; at high tide, it is rarely more than fifteen +feet in breadth, and is in many places completely submerged. Past this, +the river lapses into the horizon line without a break, save on an +extraordinarily clear day when Bigelow's Island may be seen as a dim +smudge upon the west. + +All these things, Rudolph Musgrave regarded with curiously deep interest +for one who had seen them so many times before. Then, with a shrug of +the shoulders, he sauntered forward across the lawn. He had planned +several appropriate speeches, but, when it came to the point of giving +them utterance, he merely held out his hand in an awkward fashion, and +said: + +"Anne!" + +She looked up from her reading. + +She did this with two red-brown eyes that had no apparent limits to +their depth. Her hand was soft; it seemed quite lost in the broad palm +of a man's hand. + +"Dear Rudolph," she said, as simply as though they had parted yesterday, +"it's awfully good to see you again." + +Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat, and sat down beside her. + +A moment later Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat once more. + +Then Mrs. Charteris laughed. It was a pleasant laugh--a clear, rippling +carol of clean mirth that sparkled in her eyes, and dimpled in her +wholesome cheeks. + +"So! do you find it very, very awkward?" + +"Awkward!" he cried. Their glances met in a flash of comprehension which +seemed to purge the air. Musgrave was not in the least self-conscious +now. He laughed, and lifted an admonitory forefinger. + +"Oh, good Cynara," he said, "I am not what I was. And so I cannot do it, +my dear--I really cannot possibly live up to the requirements of being a +Buried Past. In a proper story-book or play, I would have to come back +from New Zealand or the Transvaal, all covered with glory and epaulets, +and have found you in the last throes of consumption: instead, you have +fattened, Anne, which a Buried Past never does, and which shows a sad +lack of appreciation for my feelings. And I--ah, my dear, I must confess +that my hair is growing gray, and that my life has not been entirely +empty without you, and that I ate and enjoyed two mutton-chops at +luncheon, though I knew I should see you to-day. I am afraid we are +neither of us up to heroics, Anne. So let's be sensible and comfy, my +dear." + +"You brute!" she cried--not looking irreparably angry, yet not without a +real touch of vexation; "don't you know that every woman cherishes the +picture of her former lovers sitting alone in the twilight, and growing +lackadaisical over undying memories and faded letters? And you--you +approach me, after I don't dare to think how many years, as calmly as if +I were an old schoolmate of your mother's, and attempt to talk to me +about mutton-chops! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Rudolph +Musgrave. You might, at least, have started a little at seeing me, and +have clasped your hand to your heart, and have said, 'You, you!' or +something of the sort. I had every right to expect it." + +Mrs. Charteris pouted, and then trifled for a moment with the pages of +her book. + +"And--and I want to tell you that I am sorry for the way I spoke to +you--that night," she swiftly said. Anne did not look at him. "Women +don't understand things that are perfectly simple to men, I suppose--I +mean--that is, Jack said--" + +"That you ought to apologize? It was very like him"--and Colonel +Musgrave smiled to think how like John Charteris it was. "Jack is quite +wonderful," he observed. + +She looked up, saying impulsively, "Rudolph, you don't know how happy he +makes me." + +"Heartless woman, and would you tempt me to end the tragedy of my life +with a Shakesperian fifth act of poisonings and assassination? I spurn +you, temptress. For, after all, it was an unpleasantly long while ago we +went mad for each other," Musgrave announced, and he smiled. "I fancy +that the boy and girl we knew of are as dead now as Nebuchadnezzar. +'Marian's married, and I sit here alive and merry at'--well, not at +forty year, unluckily--" + +"If you continue in that heartless strain, I shall go into the house," +Mrs. Charteris protested. + +Her indignation was exaggerated, but it was not altogether feigned; +women cannot quite pardon a rejected suitor who marries and is content. +They wish him all imaginable happiness and prosperity, of course; and +they are honestly interested in his welfare; but it seems unexpectedly +callous in him. And besides his wife is so perfectly commonplace. + +Mrs. Charteris, therefore, added, with emphasis: "I am really +disgracefully happy." + +"Glad to hear it," said Musgrave, placidly. "So am I." + +"Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph, you are hopeless!" she sighed. "And you used to +make such a nice lover!" + +Mrs. Charteris looked out over the river, which was like melting gold, +and for a moment was silent. + +"I was frightfully in love with you, Rudolph," she said, as half in +wonder. "After--after that horrible time when my parents forced us to +behave rationally, I wept--oh, I must have wept deluges! I firmly +intended to pine away to an early grave. And that second time I liked +you too, but then--there was Jack, you see." + +"H'm!" said Colonel Musgrave; "yes, I see." + +"I want you to continue to be friends with Jack," she went on, and her +face lighted up, and her voice grew tender. "He has the artistic +temperament, and naturally that makes him sensitive, and a trifle +irritable at times. It takes so little to upset him, you see, for he +feels so acutely what he calls the discords of life. I think most men +are jealous of his talents; so they call him selfish and finicky and +conceited. He isn't really, you know. Only, he can't help feeling a +little superior to the majority of men, and his artistic temperament +leads him to magnify the lesser mishaps of life--such as the steak being +overdone, or missing a train. Oh, really, a thing like that worries him +as much as the loss of a fortune, or a death in the family, would upset +anyone else. Jack says there are no such things as trifles in a +harmonious and well-proportioned life, and I suppose that's true to men +of genius. Of course, I am rather a Philistine, and I grate on him at +times--that is, I used to, but he says I have improved wonderfully. And +so we are ridiculously happy, Jack and I." + +Musgrave cast about vainly for an appropriate speech. Then he +compromised with his conscience, and said: "Your husband is a very +clever man." + +"Isn't he?" She had flushed for pleasure at hearing him praised. Oh, +yes, Anne loved Jack Charteris! There was no questioning that; it was +written in her face, was vibrant in her voice as she spoke of him. + +"Now, really, Rudolph, aren't his books wonderful? I don't appreciate +them, of course, for I'm not clever, but I know you do. I don't see why +men think him selfish. I know better. You have to live with Jack to +really appreciate him. And every day I discover some new side of his +character that makes him dearer to me. He's so clever--and so noble. +Why, I remember--Well, before Jack made his first hit with _Astaroth's +Lackey_, he lived with his sister. They hadn't any money, and, of +course, Jack couldn't be expected to take a clerkship or anything like +that, because business details make his head ache, poor boy. So, his +sister taught school, and he lived with her. They were very happy--his +sister simply adores him, and I am positively jealous of her +sometimes--but, unfortunately, the bank in which she kept her money +failed one day. I remember it was just before he asked me to marry him, +and told me, in his dear, laughing manner, that he hadn't a penny in +the world, and that we would have to live on bread and cheese and +kisses. Of course, I had a plenty for us both, though, so we weren't +really in danger of being reduced to that. Well, I wanted to make his +sister an allowance. But Jack pointed out, with considerable reason, +that one person could live very comfortably on an income that had +formerly supported two. He said it wasn't right I should be burdened +with the support of his family. Jack was so sensitive, you see, lest +people might think he was making a mercenary marriage, and that his +sister was profiting by it. Now, I call that one of the noblest things I +ever heard of, for he is devotedly attached to his sister, and, +naturally, it is a great grief to him to see her compelled to work for a +living. His last book was dedicated to her, and the dedication is one of +the most tender and pathetic things I ever read." + +Musgrave was hardly conscious of what she was saying. She was not +particularly intelligent, this handsome, cheery woman, but her voice, +and the richness and sweetness of it, and the vitality of her laugh, +contented his soul. + +Anne was different; the knowledge came again to him quite simply that +Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a little +different from all other people--even Patricia Musgrave. He had no +desire to tell Anne Charteris of this, no idea that it would affect in +any way the tenor of his life. He merely accepted the fact that she was, +after all, Anne Willoughby, and that her dear presence seemed, somehow, +to strengthen and cheer and comfort and content beyond the reach of +expression. + +Yet Musgrave recognized her lack of cleverness, and liked and admired +her none the less. A vision of Patricia arose--a vision of a dainty, +shallow, Dresden-china face with a surprising quantity of vivid hair +about it. Patricia was beautiful; and Patricia was clever, in her +pinchbeck way. But Rudolph Musgrave doubted very much if her mocking +eyes now ever softened into that brooding, sacred tenderness he had seen +in Anne's eyes; and he likewise questioned if a hurried, happy thrill +ran through Patricia's voice when Patricia spoke of her husband. + +"You have unquestionably married an unusual man," Musgrave said. "I--by +Jove, you know, I fancy my wife finds him almost as attractive as you +do." + +"Ah, Rudolph, I can't fancy anyone whom--whom you loved caring for +anyone else. Don't I remember, sir, how irresistible you can be when you +choose?" + +Anne laughed, and raised plump hands to heaven. + +"Really, though, women pursue him to a perfectly indecent extent. I have +to watch over him carefully; not that I distrust him, of course, +for--dear Jack!--he is so devoted to me, and cares so little for other +women, that Joseph would seem in comparison only a depraved _roue_. But +the _women_--why, Rudolph, there was an Italian countess at Rome--the +impudent minx!--who actually made me believe--However, Jack +explained all that, after I had made both a spectacle and a nuisance of +myself, and he had behaved so nobly in the entire affair that for days +afterwards I was positively limp with repentance. Then in Paris that +flighty Mrs. Hardress--but he explained that, too. Some women are +shameless, Rudolph," Mrs. Charteris concluded, and sighed her pity for +them. + +"Utterly so," Musgrave assented, gravely. + +He was feeling a thought uncomfortable. To him the place had grown +portentous. The sun was low, and the long shadows of the trees were +black on the dim lawn. People were assembling for supper, and passing to +and fro under low-hanging branches; and the gaily-colored gowns of the +women glimmered through a faint blue haze like that with which Boucher +and Watteau and Fragonard loved to veil, and thereby to make wistful, +somehow, the antics of those fine parroquet-like manikins who figure in +their _fetes galantes._ + +Inside the house, someone was playing an unpleasant sort of air on the +piano--an air which was quite needlessly creepy and haunting and +insistent. It all seemed like a grim bit out of a play. The tenderness +and pride that shone in Anne's eyes as she boasted of her happiness +troubled Rudolph Musgrave. He had a perfectly unreasonable desire to +carry her away, by force, if necessary, and to protect her from clever +people, and to buy things for her. + +"So, I am an old, old married woman now, and--and I think in some ways +I suit Jack better than a more brilliant person might. I am glad your +wife has taken a fancy to him. And I want you to profit by her example. +Jack says she is one of the most attractive women he ever met. He asked +me to-day why I didn't do my hair like hers. She must make you very +happy, Rudolph?" + +"My wife," Colonel Musgrave said, "is in my partial opinion, a very +clever and very beautiful woman." + +"Yes; cleverness and beauty are sufficient to make any man happy, I +suppose," Anne hazarded. "Jack says, though--_Are_ cleverness and beauty +the main things in life, Rudolph?" + +"Undoubtedly," he protested. + +"Now, that," she said, judicially, "shows the difference in men. Jack +says a man loves a woman, not for her beauty or any other quality she +possesses, but just because she is the woman he loves and can't help +loving." + +"Ah! I dare say that is the usual reason. Yes," said Colonel +Musgrave,--"because she is the woman he loves and cannot help loving!" + +Anne clapped her hands. "Ah, so I have penetrated your indifference at +last, sir!" + +Impulsively, she laid her hand upon his arm, and spoke with earnestness. +"Dear Rudolph, I am so glad you've found the woman you can really love. +Jack says there is only one possible woman in the world for each man, +and that only in a month of Sundays does he find her." + +"Yes." said Musgrave. He had risen, and was looking down in friendly +fashion into her honest, lovely eyes. "Yes, there is only one possible +woman. And--yes, I think I found her, Anne, some years ago." + + + + +III + + +Thus it befell that all passed smoothly with Rudolph Musgrave and Anne +Charteris, with whom he was not in the least in love any longer (he +reflected), although in the nature of things she must always seem to him +a little different from all other people. + +And it befell, too, that the following noon--this day being a Sunday, +warm, clear, and somnolent--Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon +the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In +fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot +to serve against an enemy then harassing his majesty's equanimity and by +him, revilingly, designated as Nothing-to-do. + +And so Anne made for Roger--as she had learned to do for her dead +son--in addition to a respectable navy of paper boats, a vast number of +"boxes" and "Nantucket sinks" and "picture frames" and "footballs." She +had used up the greater part of a magazine before the imp grew tired of +her novel accomplishments. + +For as he invidiously observed, "I can make them for myself now, most +as good as you, only I always tear the bottom of the boat when you pull +it out, and my sinks are kind of wobbly. And besides, I've made up a +story just like your husband gets money for doing. And if I had a +quarter I would buy that green and yellow snake in the toy-store window +and wiggle it at people and scare them into fits." + +"Sonnikins," said Colonel Musgrave, "suppose you tell us the story, and +then we will see if it is really worth a quarter, and try to save you +from this unblushing mendicancy." + +"Well, God bless Father and Mother and little cousins--Oh, no, that's +what I say at night." Roger's voice now altered, assuming shrill +singsong cadences. His pensive gravity would have appeared excessive if +manifested by the Great Sphinx. "What I meant to say was that once upon +a time when the Battle of Gettysburg was going on and houses were being +robbed and burned, and my dear grandfather was being shot through the +heart, a certain house, where the richest man in town lived, was having +feast and merriment, never dreaming of any harm, or thinking of their +little child Rachel, who was on the front porch watching the battle and +screaming with joy at every man that fell dead. One dark-faced man was +struck with a bullet and was hurt. He saw the child laughing at him and +his heart was full of revenge. So that night, when all had gone to bed, +the old dark-faced man went softly in the house and got the little girl +and set the house on fire. And he carried her out in the mountains, and +is that worth a quarter?" + +"Good heavens, no!" said Anne. "How dare you leave us in such harrowing +suspense?" + +"Well, a whole lot more happened, because all the while Rachel was +asleep. When she woke up, she did not know where under the sun she was. +So she walked along for about an hour and came to a little village, and +after a few minutes she came to a large rock, and guess who she met? She +met her father, and when he saw her he hugged her so hard that when he +got through she did not have any breath left in her. And they walked +along, and after a while they came to the wood, and it was now about six +o'clock, and it was very dark, and just then nine robbers jumped out +from behind the trees, and they took a pistol and shot Rachel's father, +and the child fainted. Her papa was dead, so she dug a hole and buried +him, and went right back home. And of course that was all, and if I had +that snake, I wouldn't try to scare you with it, father, anyhow." + +So Colonel Musgrave gave his son a well-earned coin, as the colonel +considered, and it having been decreed, "Now, father, _you_ tell a +story," obediently read aloud from a fat red-covered book. The tale was +of the colonel's selecting, and it dealt with a shepherdess and a +chimney-sweep. + +"And so," the colonel perorated, "the little china people remained +together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and +continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces--And +the tale is a parable, my son. You will find that out some day. I wish +you didn't have to." + +"But is that all, father?" + +"You will find it rather more than enough, sonnikins, when you begin to +interpret. Yes, that is all. Only you are to remember always that they +climbed to the very top of the chimney, where they could see the stars, +before they decided to go back and live upon the parlor table under the +brand-new looking-glass. For the stars are disconcertingly unconcerned +when you have climbed to them, and so altogether unimpressed by your +achievement that it is the nature of all china people to slink home +again, precisely as your Rachel did--and as Mrs. Charteris will assure +you." + +"I?" said Anne. "Now, honestly, Rudolph, I was thinking you ought not to +let him sit upon the grass, because he really has a cold. And if I were +you, I would give him a good dose of castor-oil to-night. Some people +give it in lemon-juice, I know, but I found with my boy that peppermint +is rather less disagreeable. And you could easily send somebody over to +the store at the station----" + +Anne broke off short. "Was I being inadequate again? I am sorry, but +with children you never know what a cold may lead to, and I really do +not believe it good for him to sit in this damp grass." + +"Sonnikins," said Rudolph Musgrave, "you had better climb up into my +lap, before you and I are Podsnapped from the universe by the only +embodiment of common-sense just now within our reach." + +He patted the boy's head and latterly resumed: "I am afraid of you, +Anne. Whenever I am imagining vain things or stitching romantic +possibilities, like embroideries, about the fabric of my past, I always +find the real you in my path, as undeniable as a gas-bill. I don't +believe you ever dare to think, because there is no telling what it +might lead to. You are simply unassailably armored by the courage of +other people's convictions." + +Her candid eyes met his over the boy's bright head. "And what in the +world are you talking about?" + +"I am lamenting. I am rending the air and beating my breast on account +of your obstinate preference for being always in the right. I do wish +you would endeavor to impersonate a human being a trifle more +convincingly----" + +But the great gong, booming out for luncheon, interrupted him at this +point, and Colonel Musgrave was never permitted to finish his complaint +against Anne's unimaginativeness. + + + + +IV + + +On that same Sunday morning, while Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave +contended with little Roger's boredom on the lawn before Matocton, +Patricia and Charteris met by accident on the seventh terrace of the +gardens. Patricia had mentioned casually at the breakfast-table that she +intended to spend the forenoon on this terrace unsabbatically making +notes for a paper on "The Symbolism of Dante," which she was to read +before the Lichfield Woman's Club in October; but Mr. Charteris had not +overheard her. + +He was seated on the front porch, working out a somewhat difficult point +in his new book, when it had first occurred to him that this particular +terrace would be an inspiring and appropriate place in which to think +the matter over, undisturbed, he said. And it was impossible he should +have known that anyone was there, as the seventh terrace happens to be +the only one that, being planted with beech-trees, is completely +screened from observation. From the house, you cannot see anything that +happens there. + +It was a curious accident, though. It really seemed, now that Patricia +had put an ending to their meetings in the maple-grove, Fate was +conspiring to bring them together. + +However, as Mr. Charteris pointed out, there could be no possible +objection to this conspiracy, since they had decided that their +friendship was to be of a purely platonic nature. It was a severe trial +to him, he confessed, to be forced to put aside certain dreams he had +had of the future--mad dreams, perhaps, but such as had seemed very dear +and very plausible to his impractical artistic temperament. + +Still, it heartened him to hope that their friendship--since it was to +be no more--might prove a survival, or rather a veritable renaissance, +of the beautiful old Greek spirit in such matters. And, though the blind +chance that mismanaged the world had chained them to uncongenial, though +certainly well-meaning, persons, this was no logical reason why he and +Patricia should be deprived of the pleasures of intellectual +intercourse. Their souls were too closely akin. + +For Mr. Charteris admitted that his soul was Grecian to the core, and +out of place and puzzled and very lonely in a sordid, bustling world; +and he assured Patricia--she did not object if he called her +Patricia?--that her own soul possessed all the beauty and purity and +calm of an Aphrodite sculptured by Phidias. It was such a soul as Horace +might have loved, as Theocritus might have hymned in glad Greek song. +Patricia flushed, and dissented somewhat. + +"Frankly, _mon ami_," she said, "you are far too attractive for your +company to be quite safe. You are such an adept in the nameless little +attentions that women love--so profuse with lesser sugar-plums of speech +and action--that after two weeks one's husband is really necessary as an +antidote. Sugar-plums are good, but, like all palatable things, +unwholesome. So I shall prescribe Rudolph's company for myself, to ward +off an attack of moral indigestion. I am very glad he has come +back--really glad," she added, conscientiously. "Poor old Rudolph! what +between his interminable antiquities and those demented sections of the +alphabet--What are those things, _mon ami_, that are always going up and +down in Wall Street?" + +"Elevators?" Mr. Charteris suggested. + +"Oh, you jay-bird! I mean those N.P.'s and N.Y.C.'s and those other +letters that are always having flurries and panics and passed dividends. +They keep him incredibly busy." + +And she sighed, tolerantly. Patricia had come within the last two weeks +to believe that she was neglected, if not positively ill-treated, by her +husband; and she had no earthly objection to Mr. Charteris thinking +likewise. Her face expressed patient resignation now, as they walked +under the close-matted foliage of the beech-trees, which made a +pleasant, sun-flecked gloom about them. + +Patricia removed her hat--the morning really was rather close--and +paused where a sunbeam fell upon her copper-colored hair, and glorified +her wistful countenance. She sighed once more, and added a finishing +touch to the portrait of a _femme incomprise_. + +"Pray, don't think, _mon ami_," she said very earnestly, "that I am +blaming Rudolph! I suppose no wife can ever hope to have any part in her +husband's inner life." + +"Not in her own husband's, of course," said Charteris, cryptically. + +"No, for while a woman gives her heart all at once, men crumble theirs +away, as one feeds bread to birds--a crumb to this woman, a crumb to +that--and such a little crumb, sometimes! And his wife gets what is left +over." + +"Pray, where did you read that?" said Charteris. + +"I didn't read it anywhere. It was simply a thought that came to me," +Patricia lied, gently. "But don't let's try to be clever. Cleverness is +always a tax, but before luncheon it is an extortion. Personally, it +makes me feel as if I had attended a welsh-rabbit supper the night +before. Your wife must be very patient." + +"My wife," cried Charteris, in turn resolved to screen an unappreciative +mate, "is the most dear and most kind-hearted among the Philistines. And +yet, at times, I grant you--" + +"Oh, but, of course!" Patricia said impatiently. "I don't for a moment +question that your wife is an angel." + +"And why?" His eyebrows lifted, and he smiled. + +"Why, wasn't it an angel," Patricia queried, all impishness now, "who +kept the first man and woman out of paradise?" + +"If--if I thought you meant that----!" he cried; and then he shrugged +his shoulders. "My wife's virtues merit a better husband than Fate has +accorded her. Anne is the best woman I have ever known." + +Patricia was not unnaturally irritated. After all, one does not take the +trouble to meet a man accidentally in a plantation of young beech-trees +in order to hear him discourse of his wife's good qualities; and +besides, Mr. Charteris was speaking in a disagreeably solemn manner, +rather as if he fancied himself in a cathedral. + +Therefore Patricia cast down her eyes again, and said: + +"Men of genius are so rarely understood by their wives." + +"We will waive the question of genius." Mr. Charteris laughed heartily, +but he had flushed with pleasure. + +"I suppose," he continued, pacing up and down with cat-like fervor, +"that matrimony is always more or less of a compromise--like two +convicts chained together trying to catch each other's gait. After a +while, they succeed to a certain extent; the chain is still heavy, of +course, but it does not gall them as poignantly as it used to do. And I +fear the artistic temperament is not suited to marriage; its capacity +for suffering is too great." + +Mr. Charteris caught his breath in shuddering fashion, and he paused +before Patricia. After a moment he grasped her by both wrists. + +"We are chained fast enough, my lady," he cried, bitterly, "and our +sentence is for life! There are green fields yonder, but our allotted +place is here in the prison-yard. There is laughter yonder in the +fields, and the scent of wild flowers floats in to us at times when we +are weary, and the whispering trees sway their branches over the +prison-wall, and their fruit is good to look on, and they hang within +reach--ah, we might reach them very easily! But this is forbidden fruit, +my lady; and it is not included in our wholesome prison-fare. And so +don't think of it! We have been happy, you and I, for a little. We +might--don't think of it! Don't dare think of it! Go back and help your +husband drag his chain; it galls him as sorely as it does you. It galls +us all. It is the heaviest chain was ever forged; but we do not dare +shake it off!" + +"I--oh, Jack, Jack, don't you dare to talk to me like that! We must be +brave. We must be sensible." Patricia, regardless of her skirts, sat +down upon the ground, and produced a pocket-handkerchief. "I--oh, what +do you mean by making me so unhappy?" she demanded, indignantly. + +"Ah, Patricia," he murmured, as he knelt beside her, "how can you hope +to have a man ever talk to you in a sane fashion? You shouldn't have +such eyes, Patricia! They are purple and fathomless like the ocean, and +when a man looks into them too long his sanity grows weak, and sinks +and drowns in their cool depths, and the man must babble out his foolish +heart to you. Oh, but indeed, you shouldn't have such eyes, Patricia! +They are dangerous, and to ask anybody to believe in their splendor is +an insult to his intelligence, and besides, they are much too bright to +wear in the morning. They are bad form, Patricia." + +"We must be sensible," she babbled. "Your wife is here; my husband is +here. And we--we aren't children or madmen, Jack dear. So we really must +be sensible, I suppose. Oh, Jack," she cried, upon a sudden; "this isn't +honorable!" + +"Why, no! Poor little Anne!" + +Mr. Charteris's eyes grew tender for a moment, because his wife, in a +fashion, was dear to him. Then he laughed, very musically. + +"And how can a man remember honor, Patricia, when the choice lies +between honor and you? You shouldn't have such hair, Patricia! It is a +net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous +sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever +boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia. It is dishonorable to love +you, but I cannot think of that when I am with you and hear you speak. +And when I am not with you, just to remember that dear voice is enough +to set my pulses beating faster. Oh, Patricia, you shouldn't have such a +voice!" + +Charteris broke off in speech. "'Scuse me for interruptin'," the old +mulattress Virginia was saying, "but Mis' Pilkins sen' me say lunch +raydy, Miss Patrisy." + +Virginia seemed to notice nothing out-of-the-way. Having delivered her +message, she went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as +imperturbable as an idol's. But Patricia shivered. + +"She frightens me, _mon ami_. Yes, that old woman always gives me +gooseflesh, and I don't know why--because she is as deaf as a post--and +I simply can't get rid of her. She is a sort of symbol--she, and how +many others, I wonder!... Oh, well, let's hurry." + +So Mr. Charteris was never permitted to finish his complaint against +Patricia's voice. + +It was absolutely imperative they should be on time for luncheon; for, +as Patricia pointed out, the majority of people are censorious and lose +no opportunity for saying nasty things. They are even capable of +sneering at a purely platonic friendship which is attempting to preserve +the beautiful old Greek spirit. + + * * * * * + +She was chattering either of her plans for the autumn, or of Dante and +the discovery of his missing cantos, or else of how abominably Bob +Townsend had treated Rosalind Jemmett, and they had almost reached the +upper terrace--little Roger, indeed, his red head blazing in the +sunlight, was already sidling by shy instalments toward them--when +Patricia moaned inconsequently and for no ascertainable cause fainted. + +It was the first time for four years she had been guilty of such an +indiscretion, she was shortly afterward explaining to various members of +the Musgraves' house-party. It was the heat, no doubt. But since +everybody insisted upon it, she would very willingly toast them in +another bumper of aromatic spirits of ammonia. + +"Just look at that, Rudolph! you've spilt it all over your coat sleeve. +I do wish you would try to be a little less clumsy. Oh, well, I'm spruce +as a new penny now. So let's all go to luncheon." + + + + +V + + +Patricia had not been in perfect health for a long while. It seemed to +her, in retrospect, that ever since the agonies of little Roger's birth +she had been the victim of what she described as "a sort of +all-overishness." Then, too, as has been previously recorded, Patricia +had been operated upon by surgeons, and more than once.... + +"Good Lord!" as she herself declared, "it has reached the point that +when I see a turkey coming to the dinner-table to be carved I can't help +treating it as an ingenue." + +Yet for the last four years she had never fainted, until this. It +disquieted her. Then, too, awoke faint pricking memories of certain +symptoms ... which she had not talked about ... + +Now they alarmed her; and in consequence she took the next morning's +train to Lichfield. + + + + +VI + + +Mrs. Ashmeade, who has been previously quoted, now comes into the story. +She is only an episode. Still, her intervention led to peculiar +results--results, curiously enough, in which she was not in the least +concerned. She simply comes into the story for a moment, and then goes +out of it; but her part is an important one. + +She is like the watchman who announces the coming of Agamemnon; +Clytemnestra sharpens her ax at the news, and the fatal bath is prepared +for the _anax andron_. The tragedy moves on; the house of Atreus falls, +and the wrath of implacable gods bellows across the heavens; meanwhile, +the watchman has gone home to have tea with his family, and we hear no +more of him. There are any number of morals to this. + +Mrs. Ashmeade comes into the story on the day Patricia went to +Lichfield, and some weeks after John Charteris's arrival at Matocton. +Since then, affairs had progressed in a not unnatural sequence. Mr. +Charteris, as we have seen, attributed it to Fate; and, assuredly, there +must be a special providence of some kind that presides over country +houses--a freakish and whimsical providence, which hugely rejoices in +confounding one's sense of time and direction. + +Through its agency, people unaccountably lose their way in the simplest +walks, and turn up late and embarrassed for luncheon. At the end of the +evening, it brings any number of couples blinking out of the dark, with +no idea the clock was striking more than half-past nine. + +And it delights in sending one into the garden--in search of roses or +dahlias or upas-trees or something of the sort, of course--and thereby +causing one to encounter the most unlikely people, and really, quite the +last person one would have thought of meeting, as all frequenters of +house-party junketings will assure you. And thus is this special +house-party providence responsible for a great number of marriages, and, +it may be, for a large percentage of the divorce cases; for, if you +desire very heartily to see anything of another member of a house-party, +this lax-minded and easy-going providence will somehow always bring the +event about in a specious manner, and without any apparent thought of +the consequences. + +And the Musgraves' house-party was no exception. + +Mrs. Ashmeade, for reasons of her own, took daily note of this. The +others were largely engrossed by their own affairs; they did not +seriously concern themselves about the doings of their fellow-guests. +And, besides, if John Charteris manifestly sought the company of +Patricia Musgrave, her husband did not appear to be exorbitantly +dissatisfied or angry or even lonely; and, be this as it might, the fact +remained that Celia Reindan was at this time more than a little +interested in Teddy Anstruther; and Felix Kennaston was undeniably very +attentive to Kathleen Saumarez; and Tom Gelwix was quite certainly +devoting the major part of his existence to sitting upon the beach with +Rosalind Jemmett. + +For, in Lichfield at all events, everyone's house has at least a pane or +so of glass in it; and, if indiscriminate stone-throwing were ever to +become the fashion, there is really no telling what damage might ensue. +And so had Mrs. Ashmeade been a younger woman--had time and an adoring +husband not rendered her as immune to an insanity _a deux_ as any of us +may hope to be upon this side of saintship or senility--why, Mrs. +Ashmeade would most probably have remained passive, and Mrs. Ashmeade +would never have come into this story at all. + +As it was, she approached Rudolph Musgrave with a fixed purpose this +morning as he smoked an after-breakfast cigarette on the front porch of +Matocton. And, + +"Rudolph," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "are you blind?" + +"You mean--?" he asked, and he broke off, for he had really no +conception of what she meant. + +And Mrs. Ashmeade said, "I mean Patricia and Charteris. Did you think I +was by any chance referring to the man in the moon and the Queen of +Sheba?" + +If ever amazement showed in a man's eyes, it shone now in Rudolph +Musgrave's. After a little, the pupils widened in a sort of terror. So +this was what Clarice Pendomer had been hinting at. + +"Nonsense!" he cried. "Why--why, it is utter, preposterous, Bedlamite +nonsense!" He caught his breath in wonder at the notion of such a jest, +remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. "It--oh, no, +Fate hasn't quite so fine a sense of humor as that. The thing is +incredible!" Musgrave laughed, and flushed. "I mean----" + +"I don't think you need tell me what you mean," said Mrs. Ashmeade. She +sat down in a large rocking-chair, and fanned herself, for the day was +warm. "Of course, it is officious and presumptuous and disagreeable of +me to meddle. I don't mind your thinking that. But Rudolph, don't make +the mistake of thinking that Fate ever misses a chance of humiliating us +by showing how poor are our imaginations. The gipsy never does. She is a +posturing mountebank, who thrives by astounding humanity." + +Mrs. Ashmeade paused, and her eyes were full of memories, and very wise. + +"I am only a looker-on at the tragic farce that is being played here," +she continued, after a little, "but lookers-on, you know, see most of +the game. They are not playing fairly with you, Rudolph. When people set +about an infringement of the Decalogue they owe it to their self-respect +to treat with Heaven as a formidable antagonist. To mark the cards is +not enough. They are not playing fairly, my dear, and you ought to know +it." + +He walked up and down the porch once or twice, with his hands behind +him; then he stopped before Mrs. Ashmeade, and smiled down at her. +Without, many locusts shrilled monotonously. + +"No, I do not think you are officious or meddling or anything of the +sort, I think you are one of the best and kindest-hearted women in the +world. But--bless your motherly soul, Polly! the thing is utterly +preposterous. Of course, Patricia is young, and likes attention, and it +pleases her to have men admire her. That, Polly, is perfectly natural. +Why, you wouldn't expect her to sit around under the trees, and read +poetry with her own husband, would you? We have been married far too +long for that, Patricia and I. She thinks me rather prosy and stupid at +times, poor girl, because--well, because, in point of fact, I am. But, +at the bottom of her heart--Oh, it's preposterous! We are the best +friends in the world, I tell you! It is simply that she and Jack have a +great deal in common--" + +"You don't understand John Charteris. I do," said Mrs. Ashmeade, +placidly. "Charteris is simply a baby with a vocabulary. His moral +standpoint is entirely that of infancy. It would be ludicrous to +describe him as selfish, because he is selfishness incarnate. I +sometimes believe it is the only characteristic the man possesses. He +reaches out his hand and takes whatever he wants, just as a baby would, +quite simply, and as a matter of course. He wants your wife now, and he +is reaching out his hand to take her. He probably isn't conscious of +doing anything especially wrong; he is always so plausible in whatever +he does that he ends by deceiving himself, I suppose. For he is always +plausible. It is worse than useless to argue any matter with him, +because he invariably ends by making you feel as if you had been caught +stealing a hat. The only argument that would get the better of John +Charteris is knocking him down, just as spanking is the only argument +which ever gets the better of a baby. Yes, he is very like a +baby--thoroughly selfish and thoroughly dependent on other people; only, +he is a clever baby who exaggerates his own helplessness in order to +appeal to women. He has a taste for women. And women naturally like him, +for he impresses them as an irresponsible child astray in an artful and +designing world. They want to protect him. Even I do, at times. It is +really maternal, you know; we would infinitely prefer for him to be soft +and little, so that we could pick him up, and cuddle him. But as it is, +he is dangerous. He believes whatever he tells himself, you see." + +Her voice died away, and Mrs. Ashmeade fanned herself in the fashion +addicted by perturbed women who, nevertheless, mean to have their say +out--slowly and impersonally, and quite as if she was fanning some one +else through motives of charity. + +"I don't question," Musgrave said, at length, "that Jack is the highly +estimable character you describe. But--oh, it is all nonsense, Polly!" +he cried, with petulance, and with a tinge--if but the merest nuance +--of conviction lacking in his voice. + +The fan continued its majestic sweep from the shade into the sunlight, +and back again into the shadow. Without, many locusts shrilled +monotonously. + +"Rudolph, I know what you meant by saying that Fate hadn't such a fine +sense of humor." + +"My dear madam, it was simply thrown out, in the heat of +conversation--as an axiom----" + +For a moment the fan paused; then went on as before. It was never +charged against Pauline Ashmeade, whatever her shortcomings, that she +was given to unnecessary verbiage. + +Colonel Musgrave was striding up and down, divided between a disposition +to swear at the universe at large and a desire to laugh at it. Somehow, +it did not occur to him to doubt what she had told him. He comprehended +now that, chafing under his indebtedness in the affair of Mrs. Pendomer, +Charteris would most naturally retaliate by making love to his +benefactor's wife, because the colonel also knew John Charteris. And for +the rest, it was useless to struggle against a Fate that planned such +preposterous and elaborate jokes; one might more rationally depend on +Fate to work out some both ludicrous and horrible solution, he +reflected, remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. + +Nevertheless, he paused after a while, and laughed, with a tolerable +affectation of mirth. + +"I say--I--and what in heaven's name, Polly, prompted you to bring me +this choice specimen of a mare's-nest?" + +"Because I am fond of you, I suppose. Isn't one always privileged to be +disagreeable to one's friends? We have been friends a long while, you +know." + +Mrs. Ashmeade was looking out over the river now, but she seemed to see +a great way, a very great way, beyond its glaring waters, and to be +rather uncertain as to whether what she beheld there was of a humorous +or pathetic nature. + +"Rudolph, do you remember that evening--the first summer that I knew +you--at Fortress Monroe, when we sat upon the pier so frightfully late, +and the moon rose out of the bay, and made a great, solid-looking, +silver path that led straight over the rim of the world, and you talked +to me about--about what, now?" + +"Oh, yes, yes!--I remember perfectly! One of the most beautiful evenings +I ever saw. I remember it quite distinctly. I talked--I--and what, in +the Lord's name, did I talk about, Polly?" + +"Ah, men forget! A woman never forgets when she is really friends with a +man. I know now you were telling me about Anne Charteris, for you have +been in love with her all your life, Rudolph, in your own particular +half-hearted and dawdling fashion. Perhaps that is why you have had so +many affairs. You plainly found the run of women so unimportant that it +put every woman on her pride to prove she was different. Yes, I +remember. But that night I thought you were trying to make love to me, +and I was disappointed in you, and--yes, rather pleased. Women are all +vain and perfectly inconsistent. But then, girl-children always take +after their fathers." + +Mrs. Ashmeade rose from her chair. Her fan shut with a snap. + +"You were a dear boy, Rudolph, when I first knew you--and what I liked +was that you never made love to me. Of all the boys I have known and +helped to form, you were the only sensible one--the only one who never +presumed. That was rather clever of you, Rudolph. It would have been +ridiculous, for even arithmetically I am older than you. + +"Wouldn't it have been ridiculous, Rudolph?" she demanded, suddenly. + +"Not in the least," Musgrave protested, in courteous wise. "You--why, +Polly, you were a wonderfully handsome woman. Any boy----" + +"Oh, yes!--I was. I'm not now, am I, Rudolph?" Mrs. Ashmeade threw back +her head and laughed naturally. "Ah, dear boy that was, it is unfair, +isn't it, for an old woman to seize upon you in this fashion, and insist +on your making love to her? But I will let you off. You don't have to do +it." + +She caught her skirts in her left hand, preparatory to going, and her +right hand rested lightly on his arm. She spoke in a rather peculiar +voice. + +"Yes," she said, "the boy was a very, very dear boy, and I want the man +to be equally brave and--sensible." + +Musgrave stared after her. "I wonder--I wonder--? Oh, no, that +couldn't be," he said, and wearily. + +"There must be some preposterous situations that don't come about." + + * * * * * + +And afterward he strolled across the lawn, where the locusts were +shrilling, as if in a stubborn prediction of something which was +inevitable, and he meditated upon a great number of things. There were a +host of fleecy little clouds in the sky. He looked up at them, +interrogatively. + +And then he smiled and shook his head. + +"Yet I don't know," said he; "for I am coming to the conclusion that the +world is run on an extremely humorous basis." + +And oddly enough, it was at the same moment that Patricia--in +Lichfield--reached the same conclusion. + + + + +PART SEVEN - YOKED + + "We are as time moulds us, lacking wherewithal + To shape out nobler fortunes or contend + Against all-patient Fates, who may not mend + The allotted pattern of things temporal + Or alter it a jot or e'er let fall + A single stitch thereof, until at last + The web and its drear weavers be overcast + And predetermined darkness swallow all. + + "They have ordained for us a time to sing, + A time to love, a time wherein to tire + Of all spent songs and kisses; caroling + Such elegies as buried dreams require, + Love now departs, and leaves us shivering + Beside the embers of a burned-out fire." + +PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._ + + + + +I + + +The doctor's waiting-room smelt strongly of antiseptics. That was +Patricia's predominating thought as she wandered aimlessly about the +apartment. She fingered its dusty furniture. She remembered afterward +the steel-engraving of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, with General Lee +explaining some evidently important matter to those attentive and +unhumanly stiff politicians; and she remembered, too, how in depicting +one statesman, who unavoidably sat with his back to the spectator, the +artist had exceeded anatomical possibilities in order to obtain a +recognizable full-faced portrait. Yet at the time this picture had not +roused her conscious attention. + +She went presently to the long table austerely decorated with two rows +of magazines, each partly covered by its neighbor, just as shingles are +placed. The arrangement irritated her unreasonably. She wanted to +disarrange these dog-eared pamphlets, to throw them on the floor, to +destroy them. She wondered how many other miserable people had tried to +read these hateful books while they waited in this abominable room. + +She started when the door of the consultation-room opened. The doctor +was patting the silk glove of a harassed-looking woman in black as he +escorted her to the outer door, and was assuring her that everything was +going very well indeed, and that she was not to worry, and so on. + +And presently he spoke with Patricia, for a long while, quite levelly, +of matters which it is not suitable to record. Discreet man that he was, +Wendell Pemberton could not entirely conceal his wonder that Patricia +should have remained so long in ignorance of her condition. He spoke +concerning malformation and functional weaknesses and, although +obscurely because of the bugbear of professional courtesy, voiced his +opinion that Patricia had not received the most adroit medical treatment +at the time of little Roger's birth. + +She was dividedly conscious of a desire to laugh and of the notion that +she must remain outwardly serious, because though this horrible +Pemberton man was talking abject nonsense, she would presently be having +him as a dinner-guest. + +But what if he were not talking nonsense? The possibility, considered, +roused a sensation of falling through infinity. + +"Yes, yes," Patricia civilly assented. "These young doctors have taken +this out of me, and that out of me, as you might take the works out of a +watch. And it has done no good; and they were mistaken in their first +diagnoses, because what they took for true osteomalacia was only---- +Would you mind telling me again? Oh, yes; I had only a +pseudo-osteomalacic rhachitic pelvis, to begin with. To think of +anybody's being mistaken about a simple little trouble like that! And I +suppose I was just born with it, like my mother and all those other +luckless women with Musgrave blood in them?" + +"Fehling and Schliephake at least consider this variety of pelvic +anomaly to be congenital in the majority of cases. But, without going +into the question of heredity at all, I think it only, fair to tell you, +Mrs. Musgrave----" And Pemberton went on talking. + +Neither of the two showed any emotion. + +The doctor went on talking. Patricia did not listen. The man was +talking, she comprehended, but to her his words seemed blurred and +indistinguishable. "Like a talking-machine when it isn't wound up +enough," she decided. + +Subconsciously Patricia was thinking, "You have two big beads of +perspiration on your nose, and if I were to allude to the fact you would +very probably die of embarrassment." + +Aloud Patricia said: "You mean, then, that, to cap it all, a functional +disorder of my heart has become organic, so that I would inevitably die +under another operation? or even at a sudden shock? And that particular +operation is now the solitary chance of saving my life! The dilemma is +neat, isn't it? How God must laugh at the jokes He contrives," said +Patricia. "I wish that I could laugh. And I will. I don't care whether +you think me a reprobate or not, Dr. Pemberton, I want a good stiff +drink of whiskey--the Musgrave size." + +He gave it to her. + + + + +II + + +Patricia had as yet an hour to spend in Lichfield before her train left. +She passed it in the garden of her own home, where she had first seen +Rudolph Musgrave and he had fought with Pevensey. All that seemed very +long ago. + +The dahlia leaves, she noticed, were edged with yellow. She must look to +it that the place was more frequently watered; and that the bulbs were +dug up in September. Next year she meant to set the dahlias thinly, like +a hedge.... + +"Oh, yes, I meant to. Only I won't be alive next year," she recollected. + +She went about the garden to see if Ned had weeded out the wild-pea +vines--a pest which had invaded the trim place lately. Only a few of the +intruders remained, burnt-out and withered as they are annually by the +mid-summer sun. There would be no more fight until next April. + +"Oh, and I have prayed to You, I have always tried to do what You +wanted, and I never asked You to let me be born locked up in a +good-for-nothing Musgrave body! And You won't even let me see a +wild-pea vine again! That isn't much to ask, I think. But You won't let +me do it. You really do have rather funny notions about Your jokes." + +She began to laugh. + +"Oh, very well!" Patricia said aloud. "It is none of my affair that You +elect to run Your world on an extremely humorous basis." + +She was at Matocton in good time for luncheon. + + + + +III + + +Colonel Musgrave had a brief interview with his wife after luncheon. He +began with quiet remonstrance, and ended with an unheard extenuation of +his presumption. Patricia's speech on this occasion was of an unfettered +and heady nature. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said, when she had finally +paused for breath, and had wiped away her tears, and had powdered her +nose, viciously, "to bully a weak and defenseless woman in this way. I +dare say everybody in the house has heard us--brawling and squabbling +just like a hod-carrier and his wife. What's that? You haven't said a +word for fifteen minutes? Oh, la, la, la! well, I don't care. Anyhow, I +have, and I am perfectly sure they heard me, and I am sure I don't care +in the least, and it's all your fault, anyway. Oh, but you have an +abominable nature, Rudolph--a mean and cruel and suspicious nature. Your +bald-headed little Charteris is nothing whatever to me; and I would have +been quite willing to give him up if you had spoken to me in a decent +manner about it. You only _said_----? I don't care what you said; and +besides, if you did speak to me in a decent manner, it simply shows that +your thoughts were so horrid and vulgar that even you weren't so +abandoned as to dare to put them into words. Very well, then, I won't be +seen so much with him in future. I realize you are quite capable of +beating me if I don't give way to your absurd prejudices. Yes, you are, +Rudolph; you're just the sort of man to take pleasure in beating a +woman. After the exhibition of temper you've given this afternoon, I +believe you are capable of anything. Hand me that parasol! Don't keep on +talking to me; for I don't wish to hear anything you have to say. You're +simply driving me to my grave with your continual nagging and abuse and +fault-finding. I'm sure I wish I were dead as much as you do. Is my hat +on straight? How do you expect me to see into that mirror if you stand +directly in front of it? There! not content with robbing me of every +pleasure in life, I verily believe you were going to let me go +downstairs with my hat cocked over one ear. And don't you snort and look +at me like that. I'm not going to meet Mr. Charteris. I'm going driving +with Felix Kennaston; he asked me at luncheon. I suppose you'll object +to him next; you object to all my friends. Very well! Now you've made me +utterly miserable for the entire afternoon, and I'm sure I hope you are +satisfied." + +There was a rustle of skirts, and the door slammed. + + + + +IV + + +Colonel Musgrave went to his own room, where he spent an interval in +meditation. He opened his desk and took out a small packet of papers, +some of which he read listlessly. How curiously life re-echoed itself! +he reflected, for here, again, were castby love-letters potent to breed +mischief; and his talk with Polly Ashmeade had been peculiarly +reminiscent of his more ancient talk with Clarice Pendomer. Everything +that happened seemed to have happened before. + +But presently he shook his head, sighing. Chance had put into his hands +a weapon, and a formidable weapon, it seemed to him, but the colonel did +not care to use it. He preferred to strike with some less grimy cudgel. + +Then he rang for one of the servants, questioned him, and was informed +that Mr. Charteris had gone down to the beach just after luncheon. A +moment later, Colonel Musgrave was walking through the gardens in this +direction. + +As he came to the thicket which screens the beach, he called +Charteris's name loudly, in order to ascertain his whereabouts. And the +novelist's voice answered--yet not at once, but after a brief silence. +It chanced that, at this moment, Musgrave had come to a thin place in +the thicket, and could plainly see Mr. Charteris; he was concealing some +white object in the hollow of a log that lay by the river. A little +later, Musgrave came out upon the beach, and found Charteris seated upon +the same log, an open book upon his knees, and looking back over his +shoulder wonderingly. + +"Oh," said John Charteris, "so it was you, Rudolph? I could not imagine +who it was that called." + +"Yes--I wanted a word with you, Jack." + +Now, there are five little red-and-white bath-houses upon the beach at +Matocton; the nearest of them was some thirty feet from Mr. Charteris. +It might have been either imagination or the prevalent breeze, but +Musgrave certainly thought he heard a door closing. Moreover, as he +walked around the end of the log, he glanced downward as in a casual +manner, and perceived a protrusion which bore an undeniable resemblance +to the handle of a parasol. Musgrave whistled, though, at the bottom of +his heart, he was not surprised; and then, he sat down upon the log, and +for a moment was silent. + +"A beautiful evening," said Mr. Charteris. + +Musgrave lighted a cigarette. + +"Jack, I have something rather difficult to say to you--yes, it is +deuced difficult, and the sooner it is over the better. I--why, +confound it all, man! I want you to stop making love to my wife." + +Mr. Charteris's eyebrows rose. "Really, Colonel Musgrave----." he began, +coolly. + +"Now, you are about to make a scene, you know," said Musgrave, raising +his hand in protest, "and we are not here for that. We are not going to +tear any passions to tatters; we are not going to rant; we are simply +going to have a quiet and sensible talk. We don't happen to be +characters in a romance; for you aren't Lancelot, you know, and I am not +up to the part of Arthur by a great deal. I am not angry, I am not +jealous, nor do I put the matter on any high moral grounds. I simply say +it won't do--no, hang it, it won't do!" + +"I dare not question you are an authority in such matters," said John +Charteris, sweetly--"since among many others, Clarice Pendomer is near +enough to be an obtainable witness." + +Colonel Musgrave grimaced. "But what a gesture!" he thought, +half-enviously. Jack Charteris, quite certainly, meant to make the most +of the immunity Musgrave had purchased for him. None the less, Musgrave +had now his cue. Patricia must be listening. + +And so what Colonel Musgrave said was: "Put it that a burnt child dreads +the fire--is that a reason he should not warn his friends against it?" + +"At least," said Charteris at length, "you are commendably frank. I +appreciate that, Rudolph. I honestly appreciate the fact you have come +to me, not as the husband of that fiction in which kitchen-maids +delight, breathing fire and speaking balderdash, but as one sensible man +to another. Let us be frank, then; let us play with the cards upon the +table. You have charged me with loving your wife; and I answer you +frankly--I do. She does me the honor to return this affection. What, +then, Rudolph?" + +Musgrave blew out a puff of smoke. "I don't especially mind," he said, +slowly. "According to tradition, of course, I ought to spring at your +throat with a smothered curse. But, as a matter of fact, I don't see why +I should be irritated. No, in common reason," he added, upon +consideration, "I am only rather sorry for you both." + +Mr. Charteris sprang to his feet, and walked up and down the beach. "Ah, +you hide your feelings well," he cried, and his laughter was a trifle +unconvincing and a bit angry. "But it is unavailing with me. I know! I +know the sick and impotent hatred of me that is seething in your heart; +and I feel for you the pity you pretend to entertain toward me. Yes, I +pity you. But what would you have? Frankly, while in many ways an +estimable man, you are no fit mate for Patricia. She has the sensitive, +artistic temperament, poor girl; and only we who are cursed with it can +tell you what its possession implies. And you--since frankness is the +order of the day, you know--well, you impress me as being a trifle +inadequate. It is not your fault, perhaps, but the fact remains that you +have never amounted to anything personally. You have simply traded upon +the accident of being born a Musgrave of Matocton. In consequence you +were enabled to marry Patricia's money, just as the Musgraves of +Matocton always marry some woman who is able to support them. Ah, but it +was her money you married, and not Patricia! Any community of interest +between you was impossible, and is radically impossible. Your marriage +was a hideous mistake, just as mine was. For you are starving her soul, +Rudolph, just as Anne has starved mine. And now, at last, when Patricia +and I have seen our single chance of happiness, we cannot--no! we cannot +and we will not--defer to any outworn tradition or to fear of Mrs. +Grundy's narrow-minded prattle!" + +Charteris swept aside the dogmas of the world with an indignant gesture +of somewhat conscious nobility; and he turned to his companion in an +attitude of defiance. + +Musgrave was smiling. He smoked and seemed to enjoy his cigarette. + +The day was approaching sunset. The sun, a glowing ball of copper, hung +low in the west over a rampart of purple clouds, whose heights were +smeared with red. A slight, almost imperceptible, mist rose from the +river, and, where the horizon should have been, a dubious cloudland +prevailed. Far to the west were orange-colored quiverings upon the +stream's surface, but, nearer, the river dimpled with silver-tipped +waves; and, at their feet, the water grew transparent, and splashed over +the sleek, brown sand, and sucked back, leaving a curved line of +bubbles which, one by one, winked, gaped and burst. There was a drowsy +peacefulness in the air; behind them, among the beeches, were many +stealthy wood-sounds; and, at long intervals, a sleepy, peevish +twittering went about the nested trees. + +In Colonel Musgrave's face, the primal peace was mirrored. + +"May I ask," said he at length, "what you propose doing?" + +Mr. Charteris answered promptly. "I, of course, propose," said he, "to +ask Patricia to share the remainder of my life." + +"A euphemism, as I take it, for an elopement. I hardly thought you +intended going so far." + +"Rudolph!" cried Charteris, drawing himself to his full height--and he +was not to blame for the fact that it was but five-feet-six--"I am, I +hope, an honorable man! I cannot eat your salt and steal your honor. So +I loot openly, or not at all." + +The colonel shrugged his shoulders. + +"I presuppose you have counted the cost--and estimated the necessary +breakage?" + +"True love," the novelist declared, in a hushed, sweet voice, "is above +such considerations." + +"I think," said Musgrave slowly, "that any love worthy of the name will +always appraise the cost--to the woman. It is of Patricia I am +thinking." + +"She loves me," Charteris murmured. He glanced up and laughed. "Upon my +soul, you know, I cannot help thinking the situation a bit +farcical--you and I talking over matters in this fashion. But I honestly +believe the one chance of happiness for any of us hinges on Patricia and +me chucking the whole affair, and bolting." + +"No! it won't do--no, hang it, Jack, it will not do!" Musgrave glanced +toward the bath-house, and he lifted his voice. "I am not considering +you in the least--and under the circumstances, you could hardly expect +me to. It is of Patricia I am thinking. I haven't made her altogether +happy. Our marriage was a mating of incongruities--and possibly you are +justified in calling it a mistake. Yet, day in and day out, I think we +get along as well together as do most couples; and it is wasting time to +cry over spilt milk. Instead, it rests with us, the two men who love +her, to decide what is best for Patricia. It is she and only she we must +consider." + +"Ah, you are right!" said Charteris, and his eyes grew tender. "She must +have what she most desires; and all must be sacrificed to that." He +turned and spoke as simply as a child. "Of course, you know, I shall be +giving up a great deal for love of her, but--I am willing." + +Musgrave looked at him for a moment. "H'm doubtless," he assented. "Why, +then, we won't consider the others. We will not consider your wife, +who--who worships you. We won't consider the boy. I, for my part, think +it is a mother's duty to leave an unsullied name to her child, but, +probably, my ideas are bourgeois. We won't consider Patricia's +relatives, who, perhaps, will find it rather unpleasant. In short, we +must consider no one save Patricia." + +"Of course, one cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." + +"No; the question is whether it is absolutely necessary to make the +omelet. I say no." + +"And I," quoth Charteris smiling gently, "say yes." + +"For Patricia," Musgrave went on, as in meditation, but speaking very +clearly, "it means giving up--everything. It means giving up her friends +and the life to which she is accustomed; it means being ashamed to face +those who were formerly her friends. We, the world, our world of +Lichfield, I mean--are lax enough as to the divorce question, heaven +knows, but we can't pardon immorality when coupled with poverty. And you +would be poor, you know. Your books are tremendously clever, Jack, +but--as I happen to know--the proceeds from them would not support two +people in luxury; and Patricia has nothing. That is a sordid detail, of +course, but it is worth considering. Patricia would never be happy in a +three-pair back." + +Mr. Charteris was frankly surprised. "Patricia has--nothing?" + +"Bless your soul, of course not! Her father left the greater part of his +money to our boy, you know. Most of it is still held in trust for our +boy, who is named after him. Not a penny of it belongs to Patricia, and +even I cannot touch anything but a certain amount of interest." + +Mr. Charteris looked at the colonel with eyes that were sad and hurt +and wistful. "I am perfectly aware of your reason for telling me this," +he said, candidly. "I know I have always been thought a mercenary man +since my marriage. At that time I fancied myself too much in love with +Anne to permit any sordid considerations of fortune to stand in the way +of our union. Poor Anne! she little knows what sacrifices I have made +for her! She, too, would be dreadfully unhappy if I permitted her to +realize that our marriage was a mistake." + +"God help her--yes!" groaned Musgrave. + +"And as concerns Patricia, you are entirely right. It would be hideously +unfair to condemn her to a life of comparative poverty. My books sell +better than you think, Rudolph, but still an author cannot hope to +attain affluence so long as he is handicapped by any reverence for the +English language. Yes, I was about to do Patricia a great wrong. I +rejoice that you have pointed out my selfishness. For I have been +abominably selfish. I confess it." + +"I think so," assented Musgrave, calmly. "But, then, my opinion is, +naturally, rather prejudiced." + +"Yes, I can understand what Patricia must mean to you"--Mr. Charteris +sighed, and passed his hand over his forehead in a graceful +fashion,--"and I, also, love her far too dearly to imperil her +happiness. I think that heaven never made a woman more worthy to be +loved. And I had hoped--ah, well, after all, we cannot utterly defy +society! Its prejudices, however unfounded, must be respected. What +would you have? This dunderheaded giantess of a Mrs. Grundy condemns me +to be miserable, and I am powerless. The utmost I can do is to refrain +from whining over the unavoidable. And, Rudolph, you have my word of +honor that henceforth I shall bear in mind more constantly my duty +toward one of my best and oldest friends. I have not dealt with you +quite honestly. I confess it, and I ask your pardon." Mr. Charteris held +out his hand to seal the compact. + +"Word of honor?" queried Colonel Musgrave, with an odd quizzing sort of +fondness for the little novelist, as the colonel took the proffered +hand. "Why, then, that is settled, and I am glad of it. I told you, you +know, it wouldn't do. See you at supper, I suppose?" + +And Rudolph Musgrave glanced at the bath-house, turned on his heel, and +presently plunged into the beech plantation, whistling cheerfully. The +effect of the melody was somewhat impaired by the apparent necessity of +breaking off, at intervals, in order to smile. + +The comedy had been admirably enacted, he considered, on both sides; and +he did not object to Jack Charteris's retiring with all the honors of +war. + + + + +V + + +The colonel had not gone far, however, before he paused, thrust both +hands into his trousers' pockets, and stared down at the ground for a +matter of five minutes. + +Musgrave shook his head. "After all," said he, "I can't trust them. +Patricia is too erratic and too used to having her own way. Jack will +try to break off with her now, of course; but Jack, where women are +concerned, is as weak as water. It is not a nice thing to do, but--well! +one must fight fire with fire." + +Thereupon, he retraced his steps. When he had come to the thin spot in +the thicket, Rudolph Musgrave left the path, and entered the shrubbery. +There he composedly sat down in the shadow of a small cedar. The sight +of his wife upon the beach in converse with Mr. Charteris did not appear +to surprise Colonel Musgrave. + +Patricia was speaking quickly. She held a bedraggled parasol in one +hand. Her husband noted, with a faint thrill of wonder, that, at times, +and in a rather unwholesome, elfish way, Patricia was actually +beautiful. Her big eyes glowed; they flashed with changing lights as +deep waters glitter in the sun; her copper-colored hair seemed luminous, +and her cheeks flushed, arbutus-like. The soft, white stuff that gowned +her had the look of foam; against the gray sky she seemed a freakish +spirit in the act of vanishing. For sky and water were all one lambent +gray by this. In the west was a thin smear of orange; but, for the rest, +the world was of a uniform and gleaming gray. She and Charteris stood in +the heart of a great pearl. + +"Ah, believe me," she was saying, "Rudolph isn't an ophthalmic bat. But +God keep us all respectable! is Rudolph's notion of a sensible +morning-prayer. So he just preferred to see nothing and bleat out +edifying axioms. That is one of his favorite tricks. No, it was a comedy +for my benefit, I tell you. He will allow a deal for the artistic +temperament, no doubt, but he doesn't suppose you fetch along a +white-lace parasol when you go to watch a sunset--especially a parasol +he gave me last month." + +"Indeed," protested Mr. Charteris, "he saw nothing. I was too quick for +him." + +She shrugged her shoulders. "I saw him looking at it. Accordingly, I +paid no attention to what he said. But you--ah, Jack, you were splendid! +I suppose we shall have to elope at once now, though?" + +Charteris gave her no immediate answer. "I am not quite sure, Patricia, +that your husband is not--to a certain extent--in the right. Believe me, +he did not know you were about. He approached me in a perfectly +sensible manner, and exhibited commendable self-restraint; he has played +a difficult part to admiration. I could not have done it better myself. +And it is not for us who have been endowed with gifts denied to Rudolph, +to reproach him for lacking the finer perceptions and sensibilities of +life. Yet, I must admit that, for the time, I was a little hurt by his +evident belief that we would allow our feeling for each other--which is +rather beyond his comprehension, isn't it, dear?--to be coerced by +mercenary considerations." + +"Oh, Rudolph is just a jackass-fool, anyway." She was not particularly +interested in the subject. + +"He can't help that, you know," Charteris reminded her, gently; then, he +asked, after a little: "I suppose it is all true?" + +"That what is true?" + +"About your having no money of your own?" He laughed, but she could see +how deeply he had been pained by Musgrave's suspicions. "I ask, because, +as your husband has discovered, I am utterly sordid, my lady, and care +only for your wealth." + +"Ah, how can you expect a man like that to understand--you? Why, Jack, +how ridiculous in you to be hurt by what the brute thinks! You're as +solemn as an owl, my dear. Yes, it's true enough. My father was not very +well pleased with us--and that horrid will--Ah, Jack, Jack, how +grotesque, how characteristic it was, his thinking such things would +influence you--you, of all men, who scarcely know what money is!" + +"It was even more grotesque I should have been pained by his thinking +it," Charteris said, sadly. "But what would you have? I am so abominably +in love with you that it seemed a sort of desecration when the man +lugged your name into a discussion of money-matters. It really did. And +then, besides--ah, my lady, you know that I would glory in the thought +that I had given up all for you. You know, I think, that I would +willingly work my fingers to the bone just that I might possess you +always. So I had dreamed of love in a cottage--an idyl of blissful +poverty, where Cupid contents himself with crusts and kisses, and mocks +at the proverbial wolf on the doorstep. And I give you my word that +until to-day I had not suspected how blindly selfish I have been! For +poor old prosaic Rudolph is in the right, after all. Your delicate, +tender beauty must not be dragged down to face the unlovely realities +and petty deprivations and squalid makeshifts of such an existence as +ours would be. True, I would glory in them--ah, luxury and riches mean +little to me, my dear, and I can conceive of no greater happiness than +to starve with you. But true love knows how to sacrifice itself. Your +husband was right; it would not be fair to you, Patricia." + +"You--you are going to leave me?" + +"Yes; and I pray that I may be strong enough to relinquish you forever, +because your welfare is more dear to me than my own happiness. No, I do +not pretend that this is easy to do. But when my misery is earned by +serving you I prize my misery." Charteris tried to smile. "What would +you have? I love you," he said, simply. + +"Ah, my dear!" she cried. + +Musgrave's heart was sick within him as he heard the same notes in her +voice that echoed in Anne's voice when she spoke of her husband. This +was a new Patricia; her speech was low and gentle now, and her eyes held +a light Rudolph Musgrave had not seen there for a long while. + +"Ah, my dear, you are the noblest man I have ever known; I wish we women +could be like men. But, oh, Jack, Jack, don't be quixotic! I can't give +you up, my dear--that would never be for my good. Think how unhappy I +have been all these years; think how Rudolph is starving my soul! I want +to be free, Jack; I want to live my own life,--for at least a month or +so--" + +Patricia shivered here. "But none of us is sure of living for a month. +You've shown me a glimpse of what life might be; don't let me sink back +into the old, humdrum existence from a foolish sense of honor! I tell +you, I should go mad! I mean to have my fling while I can get it. And I +mean to have it with you, Jack--just you! I don't fear poverty. You +could write some more wonderful books. I could work, too, Jack dear. +I--I could teach music--or take in washing--or something, anyway. Lots +of women support themselves, you know. Oh, Jack, we would be so happy! +Don't be honorable and brave and disagreeable, Jack dear!" + +For a moment Charteris was silent. The nostrils of his beak-like nose +widened a little, and a curious look came into his face. He discovered +something in the sand that interested him. + +"After all," he demanded, slowly, "is it necessary--to go away--to be +happy?" + +"I don't understand." Her hand lifted from his arm; then quick remorse +smote her, and it fluttered back, confidingly. + +Charteris rose to his feet. "It is, doubtless, a very spectacular and +very stirring performance to cast your cap over the wind-mill in the +face of the world; but, after all, is it not a bit foolish, Patricia? +Lots of people manage these things--more quietly." + +"Oh, Jack!" Patricia's face turned red, then white, and stiffened in a +sort of sick terror. She was a frightened Columbine in stone. "I thought +you cared for me--really, not--that way." + +Patricia rose and spoke with composure. "I think I'll go back to the +house, Mr. Charteris. It's a bit chilly here. You needn't bother to +come." + +Then Mr. Charteris laughed--a choking, sobbing laugh. He raised his +hands impotently toward heaven. "And to think," he cried, "to think that +a man may love a woman with his whole heart--with all that is best and +noblest in him--and she understand him so little!" + +"I do not think I have misunderstood you," Patricia said, in a crisp +voice. "Your proposition was very explicit. I--am sorry. I thought I had +found one thing in the world which I would regret to leave--" + +"And you really believed that I could sully the great love I bear you by +stooping to--that! You really believed that I would sacrifice to you my +home life, my honor, my prospects--all that a man can give--without +testing the quality of your love! You did not know that I spoke to try +you--you actually did not know! Eh, but yours is a light nature, +Patricia! I do not reproach you, for you are only as your narrow +Philistine life has made you. Yet I had hoped better things of you, +Patricia. But you, who pretend to care for me, have leaped at your first +opportunity to pain me--and, if it be any comfort to you, I confess you +have pained me beyond words." And he sank down on the log, and buried +his face in his hands. + +She came to him--it was pitiable to see how she came to him, laughing +and sobbing all in one breath--and knelt humbly by his side, and raised +a grieved, shamed, penitent face to his. + +"Forgive me!" she wailed; "oh, forgive me!" + +"You have pained me beyond words, Patricia," he repeated. He was not +angry--only sorrowful and very much hurt. + +"Ah, Jack! dear Jack, forgive me!" + +Mr. Charteris sighed. "But, of course, I forgive you, Patricia," he +said. "I cannot help it, though, that I am foolishly sensitive where you +are concerned. And I had hoped you knew as much." + +She was happy now. "Dear boy," she murmured, "don't you see it's just +these constant proofs of the greatness and the wonderfulness of your +love--Really, though, Jack, wasn't it too horrid of me to misunderstand +you so? Are you quite sure you're forgiven me entirely--without any +nasty little reservations?" + +Mr. Charteris was quite sure. His face was still sad, but it was +benevolent. + +"Don't you see," she went on, "that it's just these things that make me +care for you so much, and feel sure as eggs is eggs we will be happy? +Ah, Jack, we will be so utterly happy that I am almost afraid to think +of it!" Patricia wiped away the last tear, and laughed, and added, in a +matter-of-fact fashion: "There's a train at six-five in the morning; we +can leave by that, before anyone is up." + +Charteris started. "Your husband loves you," he said, in gentle reproof. +"And quite candidly, you know, Rudolph is worth ten of me." + +"Bah, I tell you, that was a comedy for my benefit," she protested, and +began to laugh. Patricia was unutterably happy now, because she, and not +John Charteris, had been in the wrong. "Poor Rudolph!--he has such a +smug horror of the divorce-court that he would even go so far as to +pretend to be in love with his own wife in order to keep out of it. +Really, Jack, both our better-halves are horribly commonplace and they +will be much better off without us." + +"You forget that Rudolph has my word of honor," said Mr. Charteris, in +indignation. + +And that instant, with one of his baffling changes of mood, he began to +laugh. "Really, though, Patricia, you are very pretty. You are April +embodied in sweet flesh; your soul is just a wisp of April cloud, and +your life an April day, half sun that only seems to warm, and half +tempest that only plays at ferocity; but you are very pretty. That is +why I am thinking, light-headedly, it would be a fine and past doubt an +agreeable exploit to give up everything for such a woman, and am +complacently comparing myself to Antony at Actium. I am thinking it +would be an interesting episode in one's _Life and Letters_. You see, my +dear, I honestly believe the world revolves around John +Charteris--although of course I would never admit that to you if I +thought for a moment you would take me seriously." + +Then presently, sighing, he was grave again. "But, no! Rudolph has my +word of honor," Mr. Charteris repeated, and with unconcealed regret. + +"Ah, does that matter?" she cried. "Does anything matter, except that we +love each other? I tell you I have given the best part of my life to +that man, but I mean to make the most of what is left. He has had my +youth, my love--there was a time, you know, when I actually fancied I +cared for him--and he has only made me unhappy. I hate him, I loathe +him, I detest him, I despise him! I never intend to speak to him +again--oh, yes, I shall have to at supper, I suppose, but that doesn't +count. And I tell you I mean to be happy in the only way that's +possible. Everyone has a right to do that. A woman has an especial +right to take her share of happiness in any way she can, because her +hour of it is so short. Sometimes--sometimes the woman knows how short +it is and it almost frightens her.... But at best, a woman can be really +happy through love alone, Jack dear, and it's only when we are young and +good to look at that men care for us; after that, there is nothing left +but to take to either religion or hand-embroidery, so what does it +matter, after all? Yes, they all grow tired after a while. Jack, I am +only a vain and frivolous person of superlative charm, but I love you +very much, my dear, and I solemnly swear to commit suicide the moment my +first wrinkle arrives. You shall never grow tired of me, my dear." + +She laughed to think how true this was. + +She hurried on: "Jack, kneel down at once, and swear that you are +perfectly sore with loving me, as that ridiculous person says in +Dickens, and whose name I never could remember. Oh, I forgot--Dickens +caricatures nature, doesn't he, and isn't read by really cultured +people? You will have to educate me up to your level, Jack, and I warn +you in advance you will not have time to do it. Yes, I am quite aware +that I am talking nonsense, and am on the verge of hysterics, thank you, +but I rather like it. It is because I am going to have you all to myself +for whatever future there is, and the thought makes me quite drunk. Will +you kindly ring for the patrol-wagon, Jack? Jack, are you quite sure you +love me? Are you perfectly certain you never loved any one else half so +much? No, don't answer me, for I intend to do all the talking for both +of us for the future! I shall tyrannize over you frightfully, and you +will like it. All I ask in return is that you will be a good boy--by +which I mean a naughty boy--and do solemnly swear, promise and affirm +that you will meet me at the side-door at half-past five in the morning, +with a portmanteau and the intention of never going back to your wife. +You swear it? Thank you so much! Now, I think I would like to cry for a +few minutes, and, after that, we will go back to the house, before +supper is over and my eyes are perfectly crimson." + +In fact, Mr. Charteris had consented. Patricia was irresistible as she +pleaded and mocked and scolded and coaxed and laughed and cried, all in +one bewildering breath. Her plan was simple; it was to slip out of +Matocton at dawn, and walk to the near-by station. There they would take +the train, and snap their fingers at convention. The scheme sounded +preposterous in outline, but she demonstrated its practicability in +performance. And Mr. Charteris consented. + +Rudolph Musgrave sat in the shadow of the cedar with fierce and confused +emotions whirling in his soul. He certainly had never thought of this +contingency. + + + + +PART EIGHT - HARVEST + + "Time was I coveted the woes they rued + Whose love commemorates them,--I that meant + To get like grace of love then!--and intent + To win as they had done love's plenitude, + Rapture and havoc, vauntingly I sued + That love like theirs might make a toy of me, + At will caressed, at will (if publicly) + Demolished, as Love found or found not good. + + "To-day I am no longer overbrave. + I have a fever,--I that always knew + This hour was certain!--and am too weak to rave, + Too tired to seek (as later I must do) + Tried remedies--time, manhood and the grave-- + To drug, abate and banish love of you." +ALLEN ROSSITER. _A Fragment_. + + + + +I + + +When Patricia and Charteris had left the beach, Colonel Musgrave parted +the underbrush and stepped down upon the sand He must have air--air and +an open place wherein to fight this out. + +Night had risen about him in bland emptiness. There were no stars +overhead, but a patient, wearied, ancient moon pushed through the +clouds. The trees and the river conferred with one another doubtfully. + +He paced up and down the beach.... + +Musgrave laughed in the darkness. His heart was racing, racing in him, +and his thoughts were blown foam. He raised his hat and bowed +fantastically in the darkness, because the colonel loved his gesture. + +"Signor Lucifer, I present my compliments. You have discoursed with me +very plausibly. I honor your cunning, signor, but if you are indeed a +gentleman, as I have always heard, you will now withdraw and permit me +to regard the matter from a standpoint other than my own. For the others +are weak, signor; as you have doubtless discovered, good women and bad +men are the weakest of their sex. I am the strongest among them, for all +that I am no Hercules; and the outcome of this matter must rest with +me." + +So he sat presently upon the log, where Charteris had sat when Musgrave +came to this beach at sunset. Very long ago that seemed now. For now the +colonel was tired--physically outworn, it seemed to him, as if after +prolonged exertion--and now the moon looked down upon him, passionless, +cold, inexorable, and seemed to await the colonel's decision. + +And it was woefully hard to come to any decision. For, as you know by +this, it was the colonel's besetting infirmity to shrink from making +changes; instinctively he balked--under shelter of whatever +grandiloquent excuse--against commission of any action which would alter +his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. To guide events +was never his forte, as he forlornly knew; and here he was condemned +perforce to play that uncongenial role, with slender chances of reward. + +Yet always Anne's face floated in the darkness. Always Anne's voice +whispered through the lisping of the beeches, through the murmur of the +water.... + +He sat thus for a long while. + + + + +II + + +Musgrave was, not unnaturally, late for supper. It is not to be supposed +that at this meal the colonel faltered in his duties as a host, for, to +the contrary, he narrated several anecdotes in his neatest style. It was +with him a point of honor always to be in company the social triumph of +his generation. He observed with idle interest that Charteris and +Patricia avoided each other in a rather marked manner. Both seemed a +trifle more serious than they were wont to be. + +After supper, Tom Gelwix brought forth a mandolin, and most of the +house-party sang songs, sentimental and otherwise, upon the front porch +of Matocton. Anne had disappeared somewhere. Musgrave subsequently +discovered her in one of the drawing-rooms, puzzling over a number of +papers which her maid had evidently just brought to her. + +Mrs. Charteris looked up with a puckered brow. "Rudolph," said she, +"haven't you an account at the Occidental Bank?" + +"Hardly an account, dear lady,--merely a deposit large enough to +entitle me to receive monthly notices that I have overdrawn it." + +"Why, then, of course, you have a cheque-book. Horrible things, aren't +they?--such a nuisance remembering to fill out those little stubs. Of +course, I forgot to bring mine with me--I always do; and equally, of +course, a vexatious debt turns up and finds me without an Occidental +Bank cheque to my name." + +Musgrave was amused. "That," said he, "is easily remedied. I will get +you one; though even if--Ah, well, what is the good of trying to teach +you adorable women anything about business! You shall have your +indispensable blank form in three minutes." + +He returned in rather less than that time, with the cheque. Anne was +alone now. She was gowned in some dull, soft, yellow stuff, and sat by a +small, marble-topped table, twiddling a fountain-pen. + +"You mustn't sneer at my business methods, Rudolph," she said, pouting a +little as she filled out the cheque. "It isn't polite, sir, in the first +place, and, in the second, I am really very methodical. Of course, I am +always losing my cheque-book, and drawing cheques and forgetting to +enter them, and I usually put down the same deposit two or three +times--all women do that; but, otherwise, I am really very careful. I +manage all the accounts; I can't expect Jack to do that, you know." Mrs. +Charteris signed her name with a flourish, and nodded at the colonel +wisely. "Dear infant, but he is quite too horribly unpractical. Do you +know this bill has been due--oh, for months--and he forgot it entirely +until this evening. Fortunately, he can settle it to-morrow; those +disagreeable publishers of his have telegraphed for him to come to New +York at once, you know. Otherwise--dear, dear! but marrying a genius is +absolutely ruinous to one's credit, isn't it, Rudolph? The tradespeople +will refuse to trust us soon." + +Involuntarily, Musgrave had seen the cheque. It was for a considerable +amount, and it was made out to John Charteris. + +"Beyond doubt," said Musgrave, in his soul, "Jack is colossal! He is +actually drawing on his wife for the necessary expenses for running away +with another woman!" + +The colonel sat down abruptly before the great, open fireplace, and +stared hard at the pine-boughs which were heaped up in it. + +"A penny," said she, at length. + +He glanced up with a smile. "My dear madam, it would be robbery! For a +penny, you may read of the subject of my thoughts in any of the yellow +journals, only far more vividly set forth, and obtain a variety of more +or less savory additions, to boot. I was thinking of the Lethbury case, +and wondering how we could have been so long deceived by the man." + +"Ah, poor Mrs. Lethbury!" Anne sighed, "I am very sorry for her, +Rudolph; she was a good woman, and was always interested in charitable +work." + +"Do you know," said Colonel Musgrave, with deliberation, "it is she I +cannot understand. To discover that he had been systematically +hoodwinking her for some ten years; that, after making away with as much +of her fortune as he was able to lay hands on, he has betrayed business +trust after business trust in order to--to maintain another +establishment; that he has never cared for her, and has made her his +dupe time after time, in order to obtain money for his gambling debts +and other even less reputable obligations--she must realize all these +things now, you know, and one would have thought no woman's love could +possibly survive such a test. Yet, she is standing by him through thick +and thin. Yes, I confess, Amelia Lethbury puzzles me. I don't understand +her mental attitude." + +Musgrave was looking at Anne very intently as he ended. + +"Why, but of course," said Anne, "she realizes that it was all the fault +of that--that other woman; and, besides, the--the entanglement has been +going on only a little over eight years--not ten, Rudolph." + +She was entirely in earnest; Colonel Musgrave could see it plainly. + +"I admit I hadn't looked on it in that light," said he, at length, and +was silent for a moment Then, "Upon my soul, Anne," he cried, "I believe +you think the woman is only doing the natural thing, only doing the +thing one has a right to expect of her, in sticking to that blackguard +after she has found him out!" + +Mrs. Charteris raised her eyebrows; she was really surprised. +"Naturally, she must stand by her husband when he is in trouble; why, +if his own wife didn't, who would, Rudolph? It is just now that he needs +her most. It would be abominable to desert him now." + +Anne paused and thought. "Depend upon it, she knows a better side of his +nature than we can see; she knows him, possibly, to have been misled, or +to have acted thoughtlessly; because otherwise, she would not stand by +him so firmly." Having reached this satisfactory conclusion, Anne began +to laugh--at Musgrave's lack of penetration, probably. "So, you see, +Rudolph, in either case, her conduct is perfectly natural." + +"And this," he cried, "this is how women reason!" + +"Am I very stupid? Jack says I am a bit illogical at times. But, +Rudolph, you mustn't expect a woman to judge the man she loves; if you +call on her to do that, she doesn't reason about it; she just goes on +loving him, and thinking how horrid you are. Women love men as they do +children; they punish them sometimes, but only in deference to public +opinion. A woman will always find an excuse for the man she loves. If he +deserts her, she is miserable until she succeeds in demonstrating to +herself it was entirely her own fault; after that, she is properly +repentant, but far less unhappy; and, anyhow, she goes on loving him +just the same." + +The colonel pondered over this. "Women are different," he said. + +"I don't know. I think that, if all women could be thrown with good +men, they would all be good. Women want to be good; but there comes a +time to each one of them when she wants to make a certain man happy, and +wants that more than anything else in the world; and then, of course, if +he wants--very much--for her to be bad, she will be bad. A bad woman is +always to be explained by a bad man." + +Anne nodded, very wisely; then, she began to laugh, but this time at +herself. "I am talking quite like a book," she said. "Really, I had no +idea I was so clever. But I have thought of this before, Rudolph, and +been sorry for those poor women who--who haven't found the right sort of +man to care for." + +"Yes." Musgrave's face was alert. "You have been luckier than most, +Anne," he said. + +"Lucky!" she cried, and that queer little thrill of happiness woke again +in her rich voice. "Ah, you don't know how lucky I have been, Rudolph! I +have never cared for any one except--well, yes, you, a great while +ago--and Jack. And you are both good men. Ah, Rudolph, it was very dear +and sweet and foolish, the way we loved each other, but you don't +mind--very, very much--do you, if I think Jack is the best man in the +world, and by far the best man in the world for me? He is so good to me; +he is so good and kind and considerate to me, and, even after all these +years of matrimony, he is always the lover. A woman appreciates that, +Rudolph; she wants her husband to be always her lover, just as Jack is, +and never to give in when she coaxes--because she only coaxes when she +knows she is in the wrong--and never, never, to let her see him shaving +himself. If a husband observes these simple rules, Rudolph, his wife +will be a happy woman; and Jack does. In consequence, every day I live I +grow fonder of him, and appreciate him more and more; he grows upon me +just as a taste for strong drink might. Without him--without him--" +Anne's voice died away; then she faced Musgrave, indignantly. "Oh, +Rudolph!" she cried, "how horrid of you, how mean of you, to come here +and suggest the possibility of Jack's dying or running away from me, or +doing anything dreadful like that!" + +Colonel Musgrave was smiling, "I?" said he, equably. "My dear madam! if +you will reconsider,--" + +"No," she conceded, after deliberation, "it wasn't exactly your fault. I +got started on the subject of Jack, and imagined all sorts of horrible +and impossible things. But there is a sort of a something in the air +to-night; probably a storm is coming down the river. So I feel very +morbid and very foolish, Rudolph; but, then, I am in love, you see. +Isn't it funny, after all these years?" Anne asked with a smile;--"and +so you are not to be angry, Rudolph." + +"My dear," he said, "I assure you, the emotion you raise in me is very +far from resembling that of anger." Musgrave rose and laughed. "I fear, +you know, we will create a scandal if we sit here any longer. Let's see +what the others are doing." + + + + +III + + +That night, after his guests had retired, Colonel Musgrave smoked a +cigarette on the front porch of Matocton. The moon, now in the zenith, +was bright and chill. After a while, Musgrave raised his face toward it, +and laughed. + +"Isn't it--isn't it funny?" he demanded, echoing Anne's query ruefully. + +"Eh, well! perhaps I still retained some lingering hope; in a season of +discomfort, most of us look vaguely for a miracle. And, at times, it +comes, but, more often, not; life isn't always a pantomime, with a fairy +god-mother waiting to break through the darkness in a burst of glory and +reunite the severed lovers, and transform their enemies into pantaloons. +In this case, it is certain that the fairy will not come. I am condemned +to be my own god in the machine." + +Having demonstrated this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and +drugged his mind correcting proofsheets--for the _Lichfield Historical +Association's Quarterly Magazine_--and brought down to the year 1805 his +"List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County." + + + + +IV + + +The night was well advanced when Charteris stepped noiselessly into the +room. The colonel was then sedately writing amid a host of motionless +mute watchers, for at Matocton most of the portraits hang in the East +Drawing-room. + +Thus, above the great marble mantel,--carved with thyrsi, and supported +by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,--you will find burly Sebastian +Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas. "Paint +me among dukes and earls with my hat on, to show I am in all things a +Republican, and the finest diamond in the Colony shall be yours," he had +directed the painter, and this was done. Then there is frail Wilhelmina +Musgrave--that famed beauty whose two-hundred-year-old story all +Lichfield knows, and no genealogist has ever cared to detail--eternally +weaving flowers about her shepherd hat. There, too, is Evelyn Ramsay, +before whose roguish loveliness, as you may remember, the colonel had +snapped his fingers in those roseate days when he so joyously considered +his profound unworthiness to be Patricia's husband. There is also the +colonial governor of Albemarle--a Van Dyck this--two Knellers, and +Lely's portrait of Thomas Musgrave, "the poet," with serious blue eyes +and flaxen hair. The painting of Captain George Musgrave, who +distinguished himself at the siege of Cartagena, is admittedly an +inferior piece of work, but it has vigor, none the less; and below it +hangs the sword which was presented to him by the Lord High Admiral. + +So quietly did Charteris come that the colonel was not aware of his +entrance until the novelist had coughed gently. He was in a +dressing-gown, and looked unusually wizened. + +"I saw your light," he said. "I don't seem to be able to sleep, somehow. +It is so infernally hot and still. I suppose there is going to be a +thunderstorm. I hate thunderstorms. They frighten me." The little man +was speaking like a peevish child. + +"Oh, well--! it will at least clear the air," said Rudolph Musgrave. +"Sit down and have a smoke, won't you?" + +"No, thanks." Charteris had gone to the bookshelves and was gently +pushing and pulling at the books so as to arrange their backs in a +mathematically straight line. "I thought I would borrow something to +read--Why, this is the Tennyson you had at college, isn't it? Yes, I +remember it perfectly." + +These two had roomed together through their college days. + +"Yes; it is the old Tennyson. And yonder is the identical Swinburne you +used to spout from, too. Lord, Jack, it seems a century since I used to +listen by the hour to _The Triumph of Time and Dolores!_" + +"Ah, but you didn't really care for them--not even then." Charteris +reached up, his back still turned, and moved a candlestick the fraction +of an inch. "There is something so disgustingly wholesome about you, +Rudolph. And it appears to be ineradicable. I can't imagine how I ever +came to be fond of you." + +The colonel was twirling his pen, his eyes intent upon it. "And yet--we +_were_ fond of each other, weren't we, Jack?" + +"Why, I positively adored you. You were such a strong and healthy +animal. Upon my word, I don't believe I ever missed a single football +game you played in. In fact, I almost learned to understand the game on +your account. You see--it was so good to watch you raging about with +touzled hair, like the only original bull of Bashan, and the others +tumbling like ninepins. It used to make me quite inordinately proud." + +The colonel smoked. "But, Lord! how proud _I_ was when you got medals!" + +"Yes--I remember." + +"Even if I did bully you sometimes. Remember how I used to twist your +arm to make you write my Latin exercises, Jack?" + +"I liked to have you do that," Charteris said, simply. "It hurt a great +deal, but I liked it." + +He had come up behind the colonel, who was still seated. "Yes, that was +a long while ago," said Charteris. "It is rather terrible--isn't it?--to +reflect precisely how long ago it was. Why, I shall be bald in a year or +two from now. But you have kept almost all your beautiful hair, +Rudolph." + +Charteris touched the colonel's head, stroking his hair ever so lightly +once or twice. It was in effect a caress. + +The colonel was aware of the odor of myrrh which always accompanied +Charteris and felt that the little man was trembling. + +"Isn't there--anything you want to tell me, Jack?" the colonel said. He +sat quite still. + +There was the tiniest pause. The caressing finger-tips lifted from +Musgrave's head, but presently gave it one more brief and half-timid +touch. + +"Why, only _au revoir_, I believe. I am leaving at a rather ungodly hour +to-morrow and won't see you, but I hope to return within the week." + +"I hope so, Jack." + +"And, after all, it is too late to be reading. I shall go back to bed +and take more trional. And then, I dare say, I shall sleep. So good-by, +Rudolph." + +"Good-night, Jack." + +"Oh, yes--! I meant good-night, of course." + +The colonel sighed; then he spoke abruptly: + +"No, just a moment, Jack. I didn't ask you to come here to-night; but +since you have come, by chance, I am going to follow the promptings of +that chance, and strike a blow for righteousness with soiled weapons. +Jack, do you remember suggesting that my father's correspondence during +the War might be of value, and that his desk ought to be overhauled?" + +"Why, yes, of course. Mrs. Musgrave was telling me she began the task," +said Charteris, and smiled a little. + +"Unluckily; yes--but--well! in any event, it suggested to me that old +letters are dangerous. I really had no idea what that desk contained. My +father had preserved great stacks of letters. I have been going through +them. They were most of them from women--letters which should never have +been written in the first place, and which he certainly had no right to +keep." + +"What! and is 'Wild Will's' love-correspondence still extant? I fancy it +made interesting reading, Rudolph." + +"There were some letters which in a measure concern you, Jack." The +colonel handed him a small packet of letters. "If you will read the top +one it will explain. I will just go on with my writing." + +He wrote steadily for a moment or two.... Then Charteris laughed +musically. + +"I have always known there was a love-affair between my mother and 'Wild +Will.' But I never suspected until to-night that I had the honor to be +your half-brother, Rudolph--one of 'Wild Will's' innumerable bastards." +Charteris was pallid, and though he seemed perfectly composed, his eyes +glittered as with gusty brilliancies. "I understand now why my reputed +father always made such a difference between my sister and myself. I +never liked old Alvin Charteris, you know. It is a distinct relief to be +informed I have no share in his blood, although of course the knowledge +comes a trifle suddenly." + +"Perhaps I should have kept that knowledge to myself. I know it would +have been kinder. I had meant to be kind. I loathe myself for dabbling +in this mess. But, in view of all things, it seemed necessary to let you +know I am your own brother in the flesh, and that Patricia is your +brother's wife." + +"I see," said Charteris. "According to your standards that would make a +great difference. I don't know, speaking frankly, that it makes much +difference with me." He turned again to the bookshelves, so that +Musgrave could no longer see his face. Charteris ran his fingers +caressingly over the backs of a row of volumes. "I loved my mother, +Rudolph. I never loved anyone else. That makes a difference." Then he +said, "We Musgraves--how patly I catalogue myself already!--we Musgraves +have a deal to answer for, Rudolph." + +"And doesn't that make it all the more our duty to live clean and honest +lives? to make the debt no greater than it is?" Both men were oddly +quiet. + +"Eh, I am not so sure." John Charteris waved airily toward Sebastian +Musgrave's counterfeit, then toward the other portraits. "It was they +who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph--all that we were to have in +this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their +histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous +race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the +dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under +any obligation. In fact, I rather think God owes us an apology, +Rudolph." + +He spoke with quaint wistfulness. The colonel sat regarding him in +silence, with shocked, disapproving eyes. Then Charteris cocked his head +to one side and grinned like a hobgoblin. + +"What wouldn't you give," he demanded, "to know what I am really +thinking of at this very moment while I talk so calmly? Well, you will +never know. And for the rest, you are at liberty to use your +all-important documents as you may elect. I am John Charteris; whatever +man begot my body, he is rotten bones to-day, and it is as such I value +him. I was never anybody's son--or friend or brother or lover,--but just +a pen that someone far bigger and far nobler than John Charteris writes +with occasionally. Whereas you--but, oh, you are funny, Rudolph!" And +then, "Good-night, dear brother," Charteris added, sweetly, as he left +the room. + + * * * * * + +And Rudolph Musgrave could not quite believe in the actuality of what +had just happened. In common with most of us, he got his general notions +concerning the laws of life from reading fiction; and here was the +material for a Renaissance tragedy wasted so far as any denouement went. +Destiny, once more, was hardly rising to the possibilities of the +situation. The weapon chance had forged had failed Rudolph Musgrave +utterly; and, indeed, he wondered now how he could ever have esteemed it +formidable. Jack was his half-brother. In noveldom or in a melodrama +this discovery would have transformed their mutual dealings; but as a +workaday world's fact, Musgrave would not honestly say that it had in +any way affected his feelings toward Jack, and it appeared to have left +Charteris equally unaltered. + +"I am not sure, though. We can only guess where Jack is concerned. He +goes his own way always, tricky and furtive and lonelier than any other +human being I have ever known. It is loneliness that looks out of his +eyes, really, even when he is mocking and sneering," the colonel +meditated. + +Then he sighed and went back to the tabulation of his lists of wills. + + + + +V + + +The day was growing strong in the maple-grove behind Matocton. As yet, +the climbing sun fired only the topmost branches, and flooded them with +a tempered radiance through which birds plunged and shrilled vague +rumors to one another. Beneath, a green twilight lingered--twilight +which held a gem-like glow, chill and lucent and steady as that of an +emerald. Vagrant little puffs of wind bustled among the leaves, with a +thin pretense of purpose, and then lapsed, and merged in the large, +ambiguous whispering which went stealthily about the grove. + +Rudolph Musgrave sat on a stone beside the road that winds through the +woods toward the railway station, and smoked, nervously. He was +disheartened of the business of living, and, absurdly enough, as it +seemed to him, he was hungry. + +"It has to be done quietly and without the remotest chance of Anne's +ever hearing of it, and without the remotest chance of its ever having +to be done again. I have about fifteen minutes in which to convince +Patricia both of her own folly and of the fact that Jack is an +unmitigated cad, and to get him off the place quietly, so that Anne will +suspect nothing. And I never knew any reasonable argument to appeal to +Patricia, and Jack will be a cornered rat! Yes, it is a large contract, +and I would give a great deal--a very great deal--to know how I am going +to fulfil it." + +At this moment his wife and Mr. Charteris, carrying two portmanteaux, +came around a bend in the road not twenty feet from Musgrave. They were +both rather cross. In the clean and more prosaic light of morning an +elopement seemed almost silly; moreover, Patricia had had no breakfast, +and Charteris had been much annoyed by his wife, who had breakfasted +with him, and had insisted on driving to the station with him. It was a +trivial-seeming fact, but, perhaps, not unworthy of notice, that +Patricia was carrying her own portmanteau, as well as an umbrella. + +The three faced one another in the cool twilight. The woods stirred +lazily about them. The birds were singing on a wager now. + +"Ah," said Colonel Musgrave, "so you have come at last. I have been +expecting you for some time." + +Patricia dropped her portmanteau, sullenly. Mr. Charteris placed his +with care to the side of the road, and said, "Oh!" It was perhaps the +only observation that occurred to him. + +"Patricia," Musgrave began, very kindly and very gravely, "you are +about to do a foolish thing. At the bottom of your heart, even now, you +know you are about to do a foolish thing--a thing you will regret +bitterly and unavailingly for the rest of time. You are turning your +back on the world--our world--on the one possible world you could ever +be happy in. You can't be happy in the half-world, Patricia; you aren't +that sort. But you can never come back to us then, Patricia; it doesn't +matter what the motive was, what the temptation was, or how great the +repentance is--you cannot ever return. That is the law, Patricia; +perhaps, it isn't always a just law. We didn't make it, you and I, but +it is the law, and we must obey it. Our world merely says that, leaving +it once, you cannot ever return: such is the only punishment it awards +you, for it knows, this wise old world of ours, that such is the +bitterest punishment which could ever be devised for you. Our world has +made you what you are; in every thought and ideal and emotion you +possess, you are a product of our world. You couldn't live in the +half-world, Patricia; you are a product of our world that can never take +root in that alien soil. Come back to us before it is too late, +Patricia!" + +Musgrave shook himself all over, rather like a Newfoundland dog coming +out of the water, and the grave note died from his voice. He smiled, and +rubbed his hands together. + +"And now," said he, "I will stop talking like a problem play, and we +will say no more about it. Give me your portmanteau, my dear, and upon +my word of honor, you will never hear a word further from me in the +matter. Jack, here, can take the train, just as he intended. And--and +you and I will go back to the house, and have a good, hot breakfast +together. Eh, Patricia?" + +She was thinking, unreasonably enough, how big and strong and clean her +husband looked in the growing light. It was a pity Jack was so small. +However, she faced Musgrave coldly, and thought how ludicrously wide of +the mark were all these threats of ostracism. She shudderingly wished he +would not talk of soil and taking root and hideous things like that, but +otherwise the colonel left her unmoved. He was certainly good-looking, +though. + +Charteris was lighting a cigarette, with a queer, contented look. He +knew the value of Patricia's stubbornness now; still, he appeared to be +using an unnecessary number of matches. + +"I should have thought you would have perceived the lack of dignity, as +well as the utter uselessness, in making such a scene," Patricia said. +"We aren't suited for each other, Rudolph; and it is better--far better +for both of us--to have done with the farce of pretending to be. I am +sorry that you still care for me. I didn't know that. But, for the +future, I intend to live my own life." + +Patricia's voice faltered, and she stretched out her hands a little +toward her husband in an odd gust of friendliness. He looked so kind; +and he was not smiling in that way she never liked. "Surely that isn't +so unpardonable a crime, Rudolph?" she asked, almost humbly. + +"No, my dear," he answered, "it is not unpardonable--it is impossible. +You can't lead your own life, Patricia; none of us can. Each life is +bound up with many others, and every rash act of yours, every hasty word +of yours, must affect to some extent the lives of those who are nearest +and most dear to you. But, oh, it is not argument that I would be at! +Patricia, there was a woman once--She was young, and wealthy, and--ah, +well, I won't deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I +will serve up to you no praises of her sauced with lies. But fate and +nature had combined to give her everything a woman can desire, and all +this that woman freely gave to me--to me who hadn't youth or wealth or +fame or anything! And I can't stand by, for that dear dead girl's sake, +and watch your life go wrong, Patricia!" + +"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf"--and when had she used that +half-forgotten nickname last, he wondered. "You imagine you are in love +with a girl because you happen to like the color of her eyes, or because +there is a curve about her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, +Olaf, as we women understand it." + +And wildly hideous and sad, it seemed to Colonel Musgrave--this dreary +parody of their old love-talk. Only, he dimly knew that she had +forgotten John Charteris existed, and that to her this moment seemed no +less sardonic. + +Charteris inhaled, lazily; yet, he did not like the trembling about +Patricia's mouth. Her hands, too, opened and shut tight before she +spoke. + +"It is too late now," she said, dully. "I gave you all there was to +give. You gave me just what Grandma Pendomer and all the others had left +you able to give. That remnant isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand +it. And, anyhow, it is too late now." + +Yet Patricia was remembering a time when Rudolph's voice held always +that grave, tender note in speaking to her; it seemed a great while ago. +And he was big and manly, just like his voice, Rudolph was; and he +looked very kind. Desperately, Patricia began to count over the times +her husband had offended her. Hadn't he talked to her in the most +unwarrantable manner only yesterday afternoon? + +"Too late!--oh, not a bit of it!" Musgrave cried. His voice sank +persuasively. "Why, Patricia, you are only thinking the matter over for +the first time. You have only begun to think of it. Why, there is the +boy--our boy, Patricia! Surely, you hadn't thought of Roger?" + +He had found the right chord at last. It quivered and thrilled under his +touch; and the sense of mastery leaped in his blood. Of a sudden, he +knew himself dominant. Her face was red, then white, and her eyes +wavered before the blaze of his, that held her, compellingly. + +"Now, honestly, just between you and me," the colonel said, +confidentially, "was there ever a better and braver and quainter and +handsomer boy in the world? Why, Patricia, surely, you wouldn't +willingly--of your own accord--go away from him, and never see him +again? Oh, you haven't thought, I tell you! Think, Patricia! Don't you +remember that first day, when I came into your room at the hospital and +he--ah, how wrinkled and red and old-looking he was then, wasn't he, +little wife? Don't you remember how he was lying on your breast, and how +I took you both in my arms, and held you close for a moment, and how for +a long, long while there wasn't anything left of the whole wide world +except just us three and God smiling down upon us? Don't you remember, +Patricia? Don't you remember his first tooth--why, we were as proud of +him, you and I, as if there had never been a tooth before in all the +history of the world! Don't you remember the first day he walked? Why, +he staggered a great distance--oh, nearly two yards!--and caught hold of +my hand, and laughed and turned back--to you. You didn't run away from +him then, Patricia. Are you going to do it now?" + +She struggled under his look. She had an absurd desire to cry, just that +he might console her. She knew he would. Why was it so hard to remember +that she hated Rudolph! Of course, she hated him; she loved that other +man yonder. His name was Jack. She turned toward Charteris, and the +reassuring smile with which he greeted her, impressed Patricia as being +singularly nasty. She hated both of them; she wanted--in that brief time +which remained for having anything--only her boy, her soft, warm little +Roger who had eyes like Rudolph's. + +"I--I--it's too late, Rudolph," she stammered, parrot-like. "If you had +only taken better care of me, Rudolph! If--No, it's too late, I tell +you! You will be kind to Roger. I am only weak and frivolous and +heartlesss. I am not fit to be his mother. I'm not fit, Rudolph! +Rudolph, I tell you I'm not fit! Ah, let me go, my dear!--in mercy, let +me go! For I haven't loved the boy as I ought to, and I am afraid to +look you in the face, and you won't let me take my eyes away--you won't +let me! Ah, Rudolph, let me go!" + +"Not fit?" His voice thrilled with strength, and pulsed with tender +cadences. "Ah, Patricia, I am not fit to be his father! But, between +us--between us, mightn't we do much for him? Come back to us, +Patricia--to me and the boy! We need you, my dear. Ah, I am only a +stolid, unattractive fogy, I know; but you loved me once, and--I am the +father of your child. My standards are out-of-date, perhaps, and in any +event they are not your standards, and that difference has broken many +ties between us; but I am the father of your child. You must--you _must_ +come back to me and the boy!" Musgrave caught her face between his +hands, and lifted it toward his. "Patricia, don't make any mistake! +There is nothing you care for so much as that boy. You can't give him +up! If you had to walk over red-hot ploughshares to come to him, you +would do it; if you could win him a moment's happiness by a lifetime of +poverty and misery and degradation, you would do it. And so would I, +little wife. That is the tie which still unites us; that is the tie +which is too strong ever to break. Come back to us, Patricia--to me and +the boy." + +"I--Jack, Jack, take me away!" she wailed helplessly. + +Charteris came forward with a smile. He was quite sure of Patricia now. + +"Colonel Musgrave," he said, with a faint drawl, "if you have entirely +finished your edifying and, I assure you, highly entertaining monologue, +I will ask you to excuse us. I--oh, man, man!" Charteris cried, not +unkindly, "don't you see it is the only possible outcome?" + +Musgrave faced him. The glow of hard-earned victory was pulsing in the +colonel's blood, but his eyes were chill stars. "Now, Jack," he said, +equably, "I am going to talk to you. In fact, I am going to discharge an +agreeable duty toward you." + +Musgrave drew close to him. Charteris shrugged his shoulders; his smile, +however, was not entirely satisfactory. It did not suggest enjoyment. + +"I don't blame you for being what you are," Musgrave went on, curtly. +"You were born so, doubtless. I don't blame a snake for being what it +is. But, when I see a snake, I claim the right to set my foot on its +head; when I see a man like you--well, this is the right I claim." + +Thereupon Rudolph Musgrave struck his half-brother in the face with his +open hand. The colonel was a strong man, physically, and, on this +occasion, he made no effort to curb his strength. + +"Now," Musgrave concluded, "you are going away from this place very +quickly, and you are going alone. You will do this because I tell you to +do so, and because you are afraid of me. Understand, also--if you will +be so good--that the only reason I don't give you a thorough thrashing +is that I don't think you are worth the trouble. I only want Patricia to +perceive exactly what sort of man you are." + +The blow staggered Charteris. He seemed to grow smaller. His clothes +seemed to hang more loosely about him. His face was paper-white, and the +red mark showed plainly upon it. + +"There would be no earthly sense in my hitting you back," he said +equably. "It would only necessitate my getting the thrashing which, I +can assure you, we are equally anxious to avoid. Of course you are able +to knock me down and so on, because you are nearly twice as big as I am. +I fail to see that proves anything in particular. Come, Patricia!" And +he turned to her, and reached out his hand. + +She shrank from him. She drew away from him, without any vehemence, as +if he had been some slimy, harmless reptile. A woman does not like to +see fear in a man's eyes; and there was fear in Mr. Charteris's eyes, +for all that he smiled. Patricia's heart sickened. She loathed him, and +she was a little sorry for him. + +"Oh, you cur, you cur!" she gasped, in a wondering whisper. Patricia +went to her husband, and held out her hands. She was afraid of him. She +was proud of him, the strong animal. "Take me away, Rudolph," she said, +simply; "take me away from that--that coward. Take me away, my dear. You +may beat me, too, if you like, Rudolph. I dare say I have deserved it. +But I want you to deal brutally with me, to carry me away by force, just +as you threatened to do the day we were married--at the Library, you +remember, when the man was crying 'Fresh oranges!' and you smelt so +deliciously of soap and leather and cigarette smoke." + +Musgrave took both her hands in his. He smiled at Charteris. + +The novelist returned the smile, intensifying its sweetness. "I fancy, +Rudolph," he said, "that, after all, I shall have to take that train +alone." + +Mr. Charteris continued, with a grimace: "You have no notion, though, +how annoying it is not to possess an iota of what is vulgarly considered +manliness. But what am I to do? I was not born with the knack of +enduring physical pain. Oh, yes, I am a coward, if you like to put it +nakedly; but I was born so, willy-nilly. Personally, if I had been +consulted in the matter, I would have preferred the usual portion of +valor. However! the sanctity of the hearth has been most edifyingly +preserved--and, after all, the woman is not worth squabbling about." + +There was exceedingly little of the mountebank in him now; he kicked +Patricia's portmanteau, frankly and viciously, as he stepped over it to +lift his own. Holding this in one hand, John Charteris spoke, honestly: + +"Rudolph, I had a trifle underrated your resources. For you are a brave +man--we physical cowards, you know, admire that above all things--and a +strong man and a clever man, in that you have adroitly played upon the +purely brutal traits of women. Any she-animal clings to its young and +looks for protection in its mate. Upon a higher ground I would have +beaten you, but as an animal you are my superior. Still, a thing done +has an end. You have won back your wife in open fight. I fancy, by the +way, that you have rather laid up future trouble for yourself in doing +so, but I honor the skill you have shown. Colonel Musgrave, it is to you +that, as the vulgar phrase it, I take off my hat." + +Thereupon, Mr. Charteris uncovered his head with perfect gravity, and +turned on his heel, and went down the road, whistling melodiously. + +Musgrave stared after him, for a while. The lust of victory died; the +tumult and passion and fervor were gone from Musgrave's soul. He could +very easily imagine the things Jack Charteris would say to Anne +concerning him; and the colonel knew that she would believe them all. He +had won the game; he had played it, heartily and skilfully and +successfully; and his reward was that the old bickerings with Patricia +should continue, and that Anne should be taught to loathe him. He +foresaw it all very plainly as he stood, hand in hand with his wife. + +But Anne would be happy. It was for that he had played. + + + + +VI + + +They came back to Matocton almost silently. The spell of the dawn was +broken; it was honest, garish day now, and they were both hungry. + +Patricia's spirits were rising, as a butterfly's might after a +thunderstorm. Since she had only a few months to live, she would at +least not waste them in squabbling. She would be conscientiously +agreeable to everybody. + +"Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph!" she cooed, "if I had only known all along that +you loved me!" + +"My dear," he protested, fondly, "it seemed such a matter of course." He +was a little tired, perhaps; the portmanteau seemed very heavy. + +"A woman likes to be told--a woman likes to be told every day. +Otherwise, she forgets," Patricia murmured. Then her face grew tenderly +reproachful. "Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph, see what your carelessness and +neglect has nearly led to! It nearly led to my running away with a man +like--like that! It would have been all your fault, Rudolph, if I had. +You know it would have been, Rudolph." + +And Patricia sighed once more, and then laughed and became magnanimous. + +"Yes--yes, after all, you are the boy's father." She smiled up at him +kindly and indulgently. "I forgive you, Rudolph," said Patricia. + +He must have shown that pardon from Patricia just now was not unflavored +with irony, for she continued, in another voice: "Who, after all, is the +one human being you love? You know that it's the boy, and just the boy +alone. I gave you that boy. You should remember that, I think--" + +"I do remember it, Patricia--" + +"I bore the child. I paid the price, not you," Patricia said, very +quiet. "No, I don't mean the price all women have to pay--" She paused +in their leisurely progress, and drew vague outlines in the roadway with +the ferrule of her umbrella before she looked up into Rudolph Musgrave's +face. She appraised it for a long while and quite as if her husband were +a stranger. + +"Yes, I could make you very sorry for me, if I wanted to." Her thoughts +ran thus. "But what's the use? You could only become an interminable +nuisance in trying to soothe my dying hours. You have just obstinately +squatted around in Lichfield and devoted all your time to being +beautiful and good and mooning around women for I don't know how many +years. You make me tired, and I have half a mind to tell you so right +now. And there really is no earthly sense in attempting to explain +things to you. You have so got into the habit of being beautiful and +good that you are capable of quoting Scripture after I have finished. +Then I would assuredly box your jaws, because I don't yearn to be a poor +stricken dear and weep on anybody's bosom. And I don't particularly care +about your opinion of me, anyway." + +Aloud she said: "Oh, well! let's go and get some breakfast." + + + + +VII + + +And thus the situation stayed. Patricia told him nothing. And Rudolph +Musgrave, knowing that according to his lights he had behaved not +unhandsomely, was the merest trifle patronizing and rather like a person +speaking from a superior plane in his future dealings with Patricia. +Moreover, he was engrossed at this time by his scholarly compilation of +Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to 1800, which was printed the +following February. + +She told him nothing. She was a devoted mother for two days' space, and +then candidly decided that Roger was developing into the most +insufferable of little prigs. + +"And, besides, if he had never been born I would quite probably have +lived to keep my teeth in a glass of water at night. And I can't help +thinking of that privilege being denied me whenever I look at him." + +She told Rudolph Musgrave nothing. She was finding it mildly amusing to +note how people came and went at Matocton, and to appraise these people +disinterestedly, because she would never see them again. + +Patricia was drawing her own conclusions as to Lichfield's aristocracy. +These people--for the most part a preposterously handsome race--were the +pleasantest of companions and their manners were perfection; but there +was enough of old Roger Stapylton's blood in Patricia's veins to make +her feel, however obscurely, that nobody is justified in living without +even an attempt at any personal achievement. The younger men evinced a +marked tendency to leave Lichfield, to make their homes elsewhere, she +noted, and they very often attained prominence; there was Joe Parkinson, +for instance, who had lunched at Oyster Bay only last Thursday, +according to the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_. And, meanwhile, the men of +her husband's generation clung to their old mansions, and were +ornamental, certainly, and were, very certainly, profoundly +self-satisfied; for they adhered to the customs of yesterday under the +comfortable delusion that this was the only way to uphold yesterday's +ideals. But what, in heaven's name, had any of these men of Rudolph +Musgrave's circle ever done beyond enough perfunctory desk-work, say, to +furnish him food and clothes? + +"A hamlet of Hamlets," was Patricia's verdict as to Lichfield--"whose +actual tragedy isn't that their fathers were badly treated, but that +they themselves are constitutionally unable to do anything except talk +about how badly their fathers were treated." + +No, it was not altogether that these men were indolent. Rudolph and +Rudolph's peers had been reared in the belief that when any manual labor +became inevitable, you as a matter of course entrusted its execution to +a negro; and, forced themselves to labor, they not unnaturally complied +with an ever-present sense of unfair treatment, and, in consequence, +performed the work inefficiently. Lichfield had no doubt preserved a +comely manner of living; but it had produced in the last half-century +nothing of real importance except John Charteris. + + + + +VIII + + +For Charteris was important. Patricia was rereading all the books that +Charteris had published, and they engrossed her with an augmenting +admiration. + +But it is unnecessary to dilate upon the marvelous and winning pictures +of life in Lichfield before the War between the States which Charteris +has painted in his novels. "Even as the king of birds that with +unwearied wing soars nearest to the sun, yet wears upon his breast the +softest down,"--as we learn from no less eminent authority than that of +the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_--"so Mr. Charteris is equally expert in +depicting the derring-do and tenderness of those glorious days of +chivalry, of fair women and brave men, of gentle breeding, of splendid +culture and wholesome living." + +Patricia was not a little puzzled by these books. The traditional +Lichfield, she decided in the outcome, may very possibly have been just +the trick-work of a charlatan's cleverness; but, even in that event, +here were the tales of life in Lichfield--ardent, sumptuous and +fragrant throughout with the fragrance of love and roses, of rhyme and +of youth's lovely fallacies; and for the pot-pourri, if it deserved no +higher name, all who believed that living ought to be a uniformly noble +transaction could not fail to be grateful eternally. + +Esthetic values apart--and, indeed, to all such values Patricia accorded +a provisional respect--what most impressed her Stapyltonian mind was the +fact that these books represented, in a perfectly tangible way, success. +Patricia very heartily admired success when it was brevetted as such by +the applause of others. And while to be a noted stylist, and even to be +reasonably sure of annotated reissuement for the plaguing of unborn +schoolchildren, was all well enough, in an unimportant, high-minded way, +Patricia was far more vividly impressed by the blunt figures which told +how many of John Charteris's books had been bought and paid for. She +accepted these figures as his publishers gave them forth, implicitly; +and she marveled over and took odd joy in these figures. They enabled +her to admire Charteris's books without reservation. + +By this time Mrs. Ashmeade had managed, in the most natural manner, to +tell Patricia a deal concerning Charteris. No halo graced the portrait +Mrs. Ashmeade painted.... But, indeed, Patricia now viewed John +Charteris, considered as a person, without any particular bias. She did +not especially care--now--what the man had done or had omitted to do. + +But the venerable incongruity of the writer and his work confronted her +intriguingly. A Charteris writes _In Old Lichfield;_ a Cockney +drug-clerk writes _The Eve of St. Agnes;_ a genteel printer evolves a +Lovelace; and a cutpurse pens the _Ballad of Dead Ladies_ in a brothel. +It is manifestly impossible; and it happens. + +So here, then, was a knave who held, somehow, the keys to a courtlier +and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for +all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing? +Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous +maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And, +anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle put +the best of himself into these books, had somehow clarified the +abhorrent mixture of ability and evil which was John Charteris; and the +best in him she found, on this hypothesis, to be a deal more admirable +than the best in Rudolph Musgrave. + +"It _is_ a part of Jack," she fiercely said. "It is, because I know it +is. All this is part of him--as much a part of him as the cowardice and +the trickery. So I don't really care if he is a liar and a coward. I +ought to, I suppose. But at the bottom of my heart I admire him. He has +made something; he has created these beautiful books, and they will be +here when we are all dead. He doesn't leave the world just as he found +it. That is the only real cowardice, I think--especially as I am going +to do it----" + +And later she said, belligerently: "If I had been a man I could have at +least assassinated somebody who was prominent. I do wish Rudolph was +not such a stick-in-the-mud. And I wish I liked Rudolph better. But on +the whole I prefer the physical coward to the moral one. Rudolph simply +bores me stiff with his benevolent airs. He just walks around the place +forgiving me sixty times to the hour, and if he doesn't stop it I am +going to slap him." + +Thus Patricia. + + + + +IX + + +The world knows how Charteris was killed in Fairhaven by Jasper +Hardress--the husband of "that flighty Mrs. Hardress" Anne had spoken +of. + +"And I hardly know," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "whether more to admire the +justice or the sardonic humor of the performance. Here after hundreds of +entanglements with women, John Charteris manages to be shot by a jealous +maniac on account of a woman with whom--for a wonder--his relations were +proven to be innocent. The man needed killing, but it is asking too much +of human nature to put up with his being made a martyr of." + +She cried a little, though. "It--it's because I remember him when he was +turning out his first mustache," she explained, lucidly. + + * * * * * + +But with the horror and irony of John Charteris's assassination the +biographer of Rudolph Musgrave has really nothing to do save in so far +as this event influenced the life of Rudolph Musgrave. + +It was on the day of Charteris's death--a fine, clear afternoon in late +September--that Rudolph Musgrave went bass-fishing with some eight of +his masculine guests. Luncheon was brought to them in a boat about two +o'clock, along with the day's mail. + +"I say--! But listen, everybody!" cried Alfred Chayter, whose mail +included a morning paper--the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_, in fact. + +He read aloud. + +"I wish I could be with Anne," thought Colonel Musgrave. "It may be I +could make things easier." + +But Anne was in Lichfield now.... + +He had just finished dressing for supper when it occurred to him that +since their return from the river he had not seen Patricia. He was +afraid that Patricia, also, would be upset by this deplorable news. + +As he crossed the hall Virginia came out of Patricia's rooms. The +colonel raised his voice in speaking to her, for with age Virginia was +growing very deaf. + +"Yaas, suh," she said, "I'm doin' middlin' well, suh, thank yeh, suh. +Jus' took the evenin' mail to Miss Patricy, like I always do, suh." She +went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an +idol's. + +He went into Patricia's bedroom. Patricia had been taking an afternoon +nap, and had not risen from the couch, where she lay with three or four +unopened letters upon her breast. Two she had opened and dropped upon +the floor. She seemed not to hear him when he spoke her name, and yet +she was not asleep, because her eyes were partly unclosed. + +There was no purple glint in them, as once there had been always. Her +countenance, indeed, showed everywhere less brightly tinted than +normally it should be. Her heavy copper-colored hair, alone undimmed, +seemed, like some parasitic growth (he thought), to sustain its beauty +by virtue of having drained Patricia's body of color and vitality. + +There was a newspaper in her right hand, with flamboyant headlines, +because to Lichfield the death of John Charteris was an event of +importance. + +Patricia seemed very young. You saw that she had suffered. You knew it +was not fair to hurt a child like that. + +But, indeed, Rudolph Musgrave hardly realized as yet that Patricia was +dead. For Colonel Musgrave was thinking of that time when this same +Patricia had first come to him, fire-new from the heart of an ancient +sunset, and he had noted, for the first time, that her hair was like the +reflection of a sunset in rippling waters, and that her mouth was an +inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her eyes +were purple glimpses of infinity. + +"This same Patricia!" he said, aloud. + + + + +PART NINE - RELICS + + "You have chosen the love 'that lives sans murmurings, + Sans passion,' and incuriously endures + The gradual lapse of time. You have chosen as yours + A level life of little happenings; + And through the long autumnal evenings + Lord Love, no doubt, is of the company, + And hugs your ingleside contentedly, + Smiles at old griefs, and rustles needless wings. + + "And yet I think that sometimes memories + Of divers trysts, of blood that urged like wine + On moonlit nights, and of that first long kiss + Whereby your lips were first made one with mine, + Awake and trouble you, and loving is + Once more important and perhaps divine." + + ALLEN ROSSITER. _Two in October._ + + + + +I + + +To those who knew John Charteris only through the medium of the printed +page it must have appeared that the novelist was stayed in mid-career by +an accident of unrelieved and singular brutality. And truly, thus +extinguished by the unfounded jealousy of a madman, the force of +Charteris's genius seemed, and seems to-day, as emphasized by that +sinister caprice of chance which annihilated it. + +But people in Lichfield, after the manner of each prophet's countrymen, +had their own point of view. The artist always stood between these +people and the artist's handiwork, in part obscuring it. + +In any event, it was generally agreed in Lichfield that Anne Charteris's +conduct after her husband's death was not all which could be desired. To +begin with, she attended the funeral, in black, it was true, but wearing +only the lightest of net veils pinned under her chin--"more as if she +were going somewhere on the train, you know, than as if she were in +genuine bereavement." + +"Jack didn't approve of mourning. He said it was a heathen survival." +That was the only explanation she offered. + +It seemed inadequate to Lichfield. It was preferable, as good taste +went, for a widow to be too overcome to attend her husband's funeral at +all. And Mrs. Charteris had not wept once during the church ceremony, +and had not even had hysterics during the interment at Cedarwood; and +she had capped a scandalous morning's work by remaining with the +undertaker and the bricklayers to supervise the closing of John +Charteris's grave. + +"Why, but of course. It is the last thing I will ever be allowed to do +for him," she had said, in innocent surprise. "Why shouldn't I?" + +Her air was such that you were both to talk to her about appearances. + +"Because she isn't a bit like a widow," as Mrs. Ashmeade pointed out. +"Anybody can condole with a widow, and devote two outer sheets to +explaining that you realize nothing you can say will be of any comfort +to her, and begin at the top of the inside page by telling her how much +better off he is to-day--which I have always thought a double-edged +assertion when advanced to a man's widow. But you cannot condole with a +lantern whose light has been blown out. That is what Anne is." + +Mrs. Ashmeade meditated and appeared dissatisfied. "And John Charteris +of all people!" + +Anne was presently about the Memorial Edition of her husband's +collected writings. It was magnificently printed and when marketed +achieved a flattering success. Robert Etheridge Townsend was +commissioned to write the authorized _Life of John Charteris_ and to +arrange the two volumes of _Letters_. + +Anne was considered an authority on literature and art in general, +through virtue of reflected glory. And in the interviews she granted +various journalists it was noticeable that she no longer referred to +"Jack" or to "Mr. Charteris," but to "my husband." To have been his wife +was her one claim on estimation. And, for the rest, it is inadequate to +love the memory of a martyr. Worship is demanded; and so the wife became +the priestess. + + + + +II + + +Into Colonel Musgrave's mental processes during this period it will not +do to pry too closely. The man had his white nights and his battles, in +part with real grief and regret, and in part with sundry emotions which +he took on faith as the emotions he ought to have, and, therefore, +manifestly, suffered under.... "Patricia was my wife, Jack was my +brother," ran his verdict in the outcome; and beyond that he did not +care to go. + +For death cowed his thoughts. In the colonel's explicit theology dead +people were straightway conveyed to either one or the other of two +places. He had very certainly never known anybody who in his opinion +merited the torments of his orthodox Gehenna; so that in imagination he +vaguely populated its blazing corridors with Nero and Judas and Caesar +Borgia and Henry VIII, and Spanish Inquisitors and the aboriginal +American Indians--excepting of course his ancestress Pocahontas--and +with Benedict Arnold and all the "carpet-baggers" and suchlike other +eminent practitioners of depravity. For no one whom Rudolph Musgrave +had ever encountered in the flesh had been really and profoundly wicked, +Rudolph Musgrave considered; and so, he always gravely estimated +this-or-that acquaintance, after death, to be "better off, poor +fellow"--as the colonel phrased it, with a tinge of +self-contradiction--even if he actually refrained in fancy from endowing +the deceased with aureate harps and crowns and footgear. In fine, death +cowed the colonel's thoughts; beyond the grave they did not care to +venture, and when confronted with that abyss they decorously balked. + +Patricia and Jack were as a matter of course "better off," then--and, +miraculously purged of faults, with all their defects somehow remedied, +the colonel's wife and brother, with Agatha and the colonel's other +interred relatives, were partaking of dignified joys in bright supernal +iridescent realms, which the colonel resignedly looked forward to +entering, on some comfortably remote day or another, and thus rejoining +his transfigured kindred.... Such was the colonel's charitable decision, +in the forming whereof logic was in no way implicated. For religion, as +the colonel would have told you sedately, was not a thing to be reasoned +about. Attempting to do that, you became in Rudolph Musgrave's honest +eyes regrettably flippant. + +Meanwhile Cousin Lucy Fentnor was taking care of the colonel and little +Roger. And Lichfield, long before the lettering on Patricia's tombstone +had time to lose its first light dusty gray, had accredited Cousin Lucy +Fentnor with illimitable willingness to become Mrs. Rudolph Musgrave, +upon proper solicitation, although such tittle-tattle is neither here +nor there; for at worst, a widowed, childless and impoverished +second-cousin, discreetly advanced in her forties, was entitled to keep +house for the colonel in his bereavement, as a jointly beneficial +arrangement, without provoking scandal's tongue to more than a jocose +innuendo or two when people met for "auction"--that new-fangled +perplexing variant of bridge, just introduced, wherein you bid on the +suits.... And, besides, Cousin Lucy Fentnor (as befitted any one born an +Allardyce) was to all accounts a notable housekeeper, famed alike for +the perilous glassiness of her hardwood floors, her dexterous management +of servants, her Honiton-braid fancy-work (familiar to every patron of +Lichfield charity bazaars), and her unparalleled calves-foot jelly. +Under Cousin Lucy Fentnor's systematized coddling little Roger grew like +the proverbial ill weed, and the colonel likewise waxed perceptibly in +girth. + +Thus it was that accident and a woman's intervention seemed once more to +combine in shielding Rudolph Musgrave from discomfort. And in +consequence it was considered improbable that at this late day the +colonel would do the proper thing by Clarice Pendomer, as, at the first +tidings of Patricia's death, had been authentically rumored among the +imaginative; and, in fact, Lichfield no longer considered that +necessary. The claim of outraged morality against these two had been +thrown out of court, through some unworded social statute of +limitation, as far as Lichfield went. Of course it was interesting to +note that the colonel called at Mrs. Pendomer's rather frequently +nowadays; but, then, Clarice Pendomer had all sorts of callers +now--though not many in skirts--and she played poker with men for money +until unregenerate hours of the night, and was reputed with a wealth of +corroborative detail to have even less discussable sources of income: so +that, indeed, Clarice Pendomer was now rather precariously retained +within the social pale through her initial precaution of having been +born a Bellingham.... But all such tittle-tattle, as has been said, is +quite beside the mark, since with the decadence of Clarice Pendomer this +chronicle has, in the outcome, as scant concern as with the marital +aspirations of Cousin Lucy Fentnor. + +And, moreover, the colonel--in colloquial phrase at least--went +everywhere. After the six months of comparative seclusion which decency +exacted of his widowerhood--and thereby afforded him ample leisure to +complete and publish his _Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to +1800_--the colonel, be it repeated, went everywhere; and people found +him no whit the worse company for his black gloves and the somber band +stitched to his coatsleeve. So Lichfield again received him gladly, as +the social triumph of his generation. Handsome and trim and affable, no +imaginable tourist could possibly have divined--for everybody in +Lichfield knew, of course--that Rudolph Musgrave had rounded his +half-century; and he stayed, as ever, invaluable to Lichfield matrons +alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town" girl, the management +of a cotillon, and the prevention of unpleasant pauses among incongruous +dinner-companies. + +But of Anne Charteris he saw very little nowadays. And, indeed, it was +of her own choice that Anne lived apart from Lichfieldian junketings, +contented with her dreams and her pride therein, and her remorseful +tender memories of the things she might have done for Jack and had not +done--lived upon exalted levels nowadays, to which the colonel's more +urbane bereavement did not aspire. + + + + +III + + +"Charteris" was engraved in large, raised letters upon the granite +coping over which Anne stepped to enter the trim burial-plot wherein her +dead lay. + +The place to-day is one of the "points of interest" in Cedarwood. +Tourists, passing through Lichfield, visit it as inevitably as they do +the graves of the Presidents, the Southern generals and the many other +famous people which the old cemetery contains; and the negro hackmen of +Lichfield are already profuse in inaccurate information concerning its +occupant. In a phrase, the post card which pictures "E 9436--Grave of +John Charteris" is among the seven similar misinterpretations of +localities most frequently demanded in Lichfieldian drugstores and +news-stands. + +Her victoria had paused a trifle farther up the hill, where two big +sycamores overhung the roadway. She came into the place alone, walking +quickly, for she was unwarrantably flustered by her late encounter. And +when she found, of all people, Rudolph Musgrave standing by her +husband's grave, as in a sort of puzzled and yet reverent meditation, +she was, and somehow as half-guiltily, assuring herself there was no +possible reason for the repugnance--nay, the rage,--which a mere +glimpse of trudging, painted and flamboyant Clarice Pendomer had +kindled. Yet it must be recorded that Anne had always detested Clarice. + +Now Anne spoke, as the phrase runs, before she thought. "She came with +you!" + +And he answered, as from the depths of an uncalled-for comprehension +which was distinctly irritating: + +"Yes. And Harry, too, for that matter. Only our talk got somehow to be +not quite the sort it would be salutary for him to take an interest in. +So we told Harry to walk on slowly to the gate, and be sure not to do +any number of things he would never have thought of if we hadn't +suggested them. You know how people are with children----" + +"Harry is--her boy?" Anne, being vexed, had almost added--"and yours?" + +"Oh----! Say the _fons et origo_ of the Pendomer divorce case, poor +little chap. Yes, Harry is her boy." + +Anne said, and again, as she perceived within the moment, a thought too +expeditiously: "I wish you wouldn't bring them here, Colonel Musgrave." + +Indeed, it seemed to her flat desecration that Musgrave should have +brought his former mistress into this hallowed plot of ground. She did +not mind--illogically, perhaps--his bringing the child. + +"Eh----? Oh, yes," said Colonel Musgrave. He was sensibly nettled. "You +wish 'Colonel Musgrave' wouldn't bring them here. But then, you see, we +had been to Patricia's grave. And we remembered how Jack stood by us +both when--when things bade fair to be even more unpleasant for Clarice +and myself than they actually were. You shouldn't, I think, grudge even +such moral reprobates the privilege of being properly appreciative of +what he did for both of us. Besides, you always come on Saturdays, you +know. We couldn't very well anticipate that you would be here this +afternoon." + +So he had been at pains to spy upon her! Anne phrased it thus in her +soul, being irritated, and crisply answered: + +"I am leaving Lichfield to-morrow. I had meant this to be my farewell to +them until October." + +Colonel Musgrave had glanced toward the little headstone, with its +rather lengthy epitaph, which marked the resting-place of this woman's +only child; and then to the tall shaft whereon was engraved just "John +Charteris." The latter inscription was very characteristic of her +view-point, he reflected; and yet reasonable, too; as one might mention +a Hector or a Goethe, say, without being at pains to disclaim allusion +to the minor sharers of either name. + +"Yes," he said. "Well, I shall not intrude." + +"No--wait," she dissented. + +Her voice was altered now, for there had come into it a marvelous +gentleness. + +And Colonel Musgrave remained motionless. The whole world was +motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him. + +Sunset was at hand. On one side was the high wooden fence which showed +the boundary of Cedarwood, and through its palings and above it, was +visible the broad, shallow river, comfortably colored, for the most +part, like _cafe au lait_, but flecked with many patches of foam and +flat iron-colored rocks and innumerable islets, some no bigger than a +billiard-table, but with even the tiniest boasting a tree or two. On the +other--westward--was a mounting vista of close-shaven turf, and many +copings, like magnified geometrical problems, and a host of stunted +growing things--with the staid verdancy of evergreens predominant--and a +multitude of candid shafts and slabs and crosses and dwarfed lambs and +meditant angels. + +Some of these thronged memorials were tinged with violet, and others +were a-glitter like silver, just as the ordered trees shaded them or no +from the low sun. The disposition of all worldly affairs, the man dimly +knew, was very anciently prearranged by an illimitable and, upon the +whole, a kindly wisdom. + +She was considering the change in him. Anne was recollecting that +Colonel Musgrave had somewhat pointedly avoided her since her widowhood. +He seemed almost a stranger nowadays. + +And she could not recognize in the man any resemblance to the boy whom +she remembered--so long ago--excepting just his womanish mouth, which +was as in the old time very full and red and sensitive. And, +illogically enough, both this great change in him and this one feature +that had never changed annoyed her equally. + +She was also worried by his odd tone of flippancy. It jarred, it +vaguely--for the phrase has no equivalent--"rubbed her the wrong way." +Here at a martyr's tomb it was hideously out-of-place, and yet she did +not see her way clear to rebuke. So she remained silent. + +But Rudolph Musgrave was uncanny in some respects. For he said within +the moment, "I am not a bit like John Charteris, am I?" + +"No," she answered, quietly. It had been her actual thought. + +Anne stayed a tiny while quite motionless. Her eyes saw nothing +physical. It was the attitude, Colonel Musgrave reflected, of one who +listens to a far-off music and, incommunicably, you knew that the music +was of a martial sort. She was all in black, of course, very slim and +pure and beautiful. The great cluster of red roses, loosely held, was +like blood against the somber gown. + +The widow of John Charteris, in fine, was a very different person from +that Anne Willoughby whom Rudolph Musgrave had loved so long and long +ago. This woman had tasted of tonic sorrows unknown to Rudolph Musgrave, +and had got consolation too, somehow, in far half-credible uplands +unvisited by him. But, he knew, she lived, and was so exquisite, mainly +by virtue of that delusion which he, of all men, had preserved; Anne +Charteris was of his creation, his masterpiece; and viewing her, he was +aware of great reverence and joy. + +Anne was happy. It was for that he had played. + +But aloud, "I am envious," Rudolph Musgrave declared. "He is the single +solitary man I ever knew whose widow was contented to be simply his +relict for ever and ever, amen. For you will always be just the woman +John Charteris loved, won't you? Yes, if you lived to be thirty-seven +years older than Methuselah, and every genius and potentate in the world +should come a-wooing in the meantime, it never would occur to you that +you could possibly be anything, even to an insane person, except his +relict. And he has been dead now all of three whole years! So I am +envious, just as we ordinary mortals can't help being of you both; +and--may I say it?--I am glad." + + + + +IV + + +They were standing thus when a boy of ten or eleven came unhurriedly +into the "section." He assumed possession of Colonel Musgrave's hand as +though the action were a matter of course. + +"I got lost, Colonel Musgrave," the child composedly announced. "I +walked ever so far, and the gate wasn't where we left it. And the roads +kept turning and twisting so, it seemed I'd never get anywhere. I don't +like being lost when it's getting dark and there's so many dead people +'round, do you?" + +The colonel was moved to disapproval. "Young man, I suppose your poor +deserted mother is looking for you everywhere, and has probably torn out +every solitary strand of hair she possesses by this time." + +"I reckon she is," the boy assented. The topic did not appear to be in +his eyes of preeminent importance. + +Then Anne Charteris said, "Harry," and her voice was such that Rudolph +Musgrave wheeled with amazement in his face. + +The boy had gone to her complaisantly, and she stood now with one hand +on either of his shoulders, regarding him. Her lips were parted, but +they did not move at all. + +"You are Mrs. Pendomer's boy, aren't you?" said Anne Charteris, in a +while. She had some difficulty in articulation. + +"Yes'm," Harry assented, "and we come here 'most every Wednesday, and, +please, ma'am, you're hurtin' me." + +"I didn't mean to--dear," the woman added, painfully. "Don't interfere +with me, Rudolph Musgrave! Your mother must be very fond of you, Harry. +I had a little boy once. I was fond of him. He would have been eleven +years old last February." + +"Please, ma'am, I wasn't eleven till April, and I ain't tall for my age, +but Tubby Parsons says----" + +The woman gave an odd, unhuman sound. "Not until April!" + +"Harry," said Colonel Musgrave then, "an enormous whale is coming down +the river in precisely two minutes. Perhaps if you were to look through +the palings of that fence you might see him. I don't suppose you would +care to, though?" + +And Harry strolled resignedly toward the fence. Harry Pendomer did not +like this funny lady who had hurt, frightened eyes. He did not believe +in the whale, of course, any more than he did in Santa Claus. But like +most children, he patiently accepted the fact that grown people are +unaccountable overlords appointed by some vast _betise_, whom, if only +through prudential motives, it is preferable to humor. + + + + +V + + +Colonel Musgrave stood now upon the other side of John Charteris's +grave--just in the spot that was reserved for her own occupancy some +day. + +"You are ill, Anne. You are not fit to be out. Go home." + +"I had a little boy once," she said. "'But that's all past and gone, and +good times and bad times and all times pass over.' There's an odd simple +music in the sentence, isn't there? Yet I remember it chiefly because I +used to read that book to him and he loved it. And it was my child that +died. Why is this other child so like him?" + +"Oh, then, that's it, is it?" said Rudolph Musgrave, as in relief. +"Bless me, I suppose all these little shavers are pretty much alike. I +can only tell Roger from the other boys by his red head. Humanity in the +raw, you know. Still, it is no wonder it gave you a turn. You had much +better go home, however, and not take any foolish risks, and put your +feet in hot water, and rub cologne on your temples, and do all the other +suitable things----" + +"I remember now," she continued, without any apparent emotion, and as +though he had not spoken. "When I came into the room you were saying +that the child must be considered. You were both very angry, and I was +alarmed--foolishly alarmed, perhaps. And my--and John Charteris said, +'Let him tell, then'--and you told me--" + +"The truth, Anne." + +"And he sat quietly by. Oh, if he'd had the grace, the common +manliness--!" She shivered here. "But he never interrupted you. I--I was +not looking at him. I was thinking how vile you were. And when you had +ended, he said, 'My dear, I am sorry you should have been involved in +this. But since you are, I think we can assure Rudolph that both of us +will regard his confidence as sacred.' Then I remembered him, and +thought how noble he was! And all those years that were so happy, hour +by hour, he was letting you--meet his bills!" She seemed to wrench out +the inadequate metaphor. + +You could hear the far-off river, now, faint as the sound of boiling +water. + +After a few pacings Colonel Musgrave turned upon her. He spoke with a +curious simplicity. + +"There isn't any use in lying to you. You wouldn't believe. You would +only go to some one else--some woman probably,--who would jump at the +chance of telling you everything and a deal more. Yes, there are a great +many 'they _do_ say's' floating about. This was the only one that came +near being--serious. The man was very clever.--Oh, he wasn't vulgarly +lecherous. He was simply--Jack Charteris. He always irritated Lichfield, +though, by not taking Lichfield very seriously. You would hear every +by-end of retaliative and sniggered-over mythology, and in your present +state of mind you would believe all of them. I happen to know that a +great many of these stories are not true." + +"A great many of these stories," Anne repeated, "aren't true! A great +many aren't! That ought to be consoling, oughtn't it?" She spoke without +a trace of bitterness. + +"I express myself very badly. What I really mean, what I am aiming at, +is that I wish you would let me answer any questions you might like to +ask, because I will answer them truthfully. Very few people would. You +see, you go about the world so like a gray-stone saint who has just +stepped down from her niche for the fraction of a second," he added, as +with venom, "that it is only human nature to dislike you." + +Anne was not angry. It had come to her, quite as though she were +considering some other woman, that what the man said was, in a fashion, +true. + +"There is sunlight and fresh air in the street," John Charteris had been +wont to declare, "and there is a culvert at the corner. I think it is a +mistake for us to emphasize the culvert." + +So he had trained her to disbelieve in its existence. She saw this now. +It did not matter. It seemed to her that nothing mattered any more. + +"I've only one question, I think. Why did you do it?" She spoke with +bright amazement in her eyes. + +"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he seriocomically deplored. "Why, because it was +such a noble thing to do. It was so like the estimable young man in a +play, you know, who acknowledges the crime he never committed and takes +a curtain-call immediately afterwards. In fine, I simply observed to +myself, with the late Monsieur de Bergerac, 'But what a gesture!'" And +he parodied an actor's motion in this role. + +She stayed unsmiling and patiently awaiting veracity. Anne did not +understand that Colonel Musgrave was telling the absolute truth. And so, + +"You haven't _any_ sense of humor," he lamented. "You used to have a +deal, too, before you took to being conscientiously cheerful, and +diffusing sweetness and light among your cowering associates. Well, it +was because it helped him a little. Oh, I am being truthful now. I had +some reason to dislike Jack Charteris, but odd as it is, I know to-day I +never did. I ought to have, perhaps. But I didn't." + +"My friend, you are being almost truthful. But I want the truth entire." + +"It isn't polite to disbelieve people," he reproved her; "or at the very +least, according to the best books on etiquette, you ought not to do it +audibly. Would you mind if I smoked? I could be more veracious then. +There is something in tobacco that makes frankness a matter of course. I +thank you." + +He produced an amber holder, fitted a cigarette into it, and presently +inhaled twice. He said, with a curt voice: + +"The reason, naturally, was you. You may remember certain things that +happened just before John Charteris came and took you. Oh, that is +precisely what he did! You are rather a narrow-minded woman now, in +consequence--or in my humble opinion, at least--and deplorably superior. +It pleased the man to have in his house--if you will overlook my +venturing into metaphor,--one cool room very sparsely furnished where he +could come when the mood seized him. He took the raw material from me, +wherewith to build that room, because he wanted that room. I acquiesced, +because I had not the skill wherewith to fight him." + +Anne understood him now, as with a great drench of surprise. And fear +was what she felt in chief when she saw for just this moment as though +it had lightened, the man's face transfigured, and tender, and strange +to her. + +"I tried to buy your happiness, to--yes, just to keep you blind +indefinitely. Had the price been heavier, I would have paid it the more +gladly. Fate has played a sorry trick. _You_ would never have seen +through him. My dear, I have wanted very often to shake you," he said. + +And she knew, in a glorious terror, that she desired him to shake her, +and as she had never desired anything else in life. + +"Oh, well, I am just a common, ordinary, garden-sort of fool. The +Musgraves always are, in one fashion or another," he sulkily concluded. +And now the demigod was merely Rudolph Musgrave again, and she was not +afraid any longer, but only inexpressibly fordone. + +"Isn't that like a woman?" he presently demanded of the June heavens. +"To drag something out of a man with inflexibility, monomania and moral +grappling-irons, and _then_ not like it! Oh, very well! I am disgusted +by your sex's axiomatic variability. I shall take Harry to his fond +mamma at once." + +She did not say anything. A certain new discovery obsessed her like a +piece of piercing music. + +Then Rudolph Musgrave gave the tiniest of gestures downward. "And I have +told you this, in chief, because we two remember him. He wanted you. He +took you. You are his. You will always be. He gave you just a fragment +of himself. That fragment was worth more than everything I had to +offer." + +Anne very carefully arranged her roses on the ivy-covered grave. "I do +not know--meanwhile, I give these to our master. And my real widowhood +begins to-day." + +And as she rose he looked at her across the colorful mound, and smiled, +half as with embarrassment. A lie, he thought, might ameliorate the +situation, and he bravely hazarded a prodigious one. "Is it necessary to +tell you that Jack loved you? And that the others never really counted?" + +He rejoiced to see that Anne believed him. "No," she assented, "no, not +with him. Oddly enough, I am proud of that, even now. But--don't you +see?--I never loved him. I was just his priestess--the priestess of a +stucco god! Otherwise, I would know it wasn't his fault, but altogether +that of--the others." + +He grimaced and gave a bantering flirt of his head. He said, with +quizzing eyes: + +"Would it do any good to quote Lombroso, and Maudsley, and Gall, and +Krafft-Ebing, and Flechsig, and so on? and to tell you that the +excessive use of one brain faculty must necessarily cause a lack of +nutriment to all the other brain-cells? It would be rather up-to-date. +There is a deal I could tell you also as to what poisonous blood he +inherited; but to do this I have not the right." And then Rudolph +Musgrave said in all sincerity: "'A wild, impetuous whirlwind of passion +and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly _melody_ dwelling in +the heart of it.'" + +She had put aside alike the drolling and the palliative suggestion, like +flimsy veils. "I think it wouldn't do any good whatever. When growing +things are broken by the whirlwind, they don't, as a rule, discuss the +theory of air-currents as a consolation. Men such as he was take what +they desire. It isn't fair--to us others. But it's true, for all that--" + +Their eyes met warily; and for no reason which they shared in common +they smiled together. + +"Poor little Lady of Shalott," said Rudolph Musgrave, "the mirror is +cracked from side to side, isn't it? I am sorry. For life is not so +easily disposed of. And there is only life to look at now, and life is a +bewilderingly complex business, you will find, because the laws of it +are so childishly simple--and implacable. And one of these laws seems to +be that in our little planet, might makes right--" + +He stayed to puff his cigarette. + +"Oh, Rudolph dear, don't--don't be just a merry-Andrew!" she cried +impulsively, before he had time to continue, which she perceived he +meant to do, as if it did not matter. + +And he took her full meaning, quite as he had been used in the old times +to discourse upon a half-sentence. "I am afraid I am that, rather," he +said, reflectively. "But then Clarice and I could hardly have weathered +scandal except by making ourselves particularly agreeable to everybody. +And somehow I got into the habit of making people laugh. It isn't very +difficult. I am rather an adept at telling stories which just graze +impropriety, for instance. You know, they call me the social triumph of +my generation. And people are glad to see me because I am 'so awfully +funny' and 'simply killing' and so on. And I suppose it tells in the +long run--like the dyer's hand, you know." + +"It does tell." Anne was thinking it would always tell. And that, too, +would be John Charteris's handiwork. + +Ensued a silence. Rudolph Musgrave was painstakingly intent upon his +cigarette. A nestward-plunging bird called to his mate impatiently. +Then Anne shook her head impatiently. + +"Come, while I'm thinking, I will drive you back to Lichfield." + +"Oh, no; that wouldn't do at all," he said, with absolute decision. "No, +you see I have to return the boy. And I can't quite imagine your +carriage waiting at the doors of 'that Mrs. Pendomer.'" + +"Oh," Anne fleetingly thought, "_he_ would have understood." But aloud +she only said: "And do you think I hate her any longer? Yes, it is true +I hated her until to-day, and now I'm just sincerely sorry for her. For +she and I--and you and even the child yonder--and all that any of us is +to-day--are just so many relics of John Charteris. Yet he has done with +us--at last!" + +She said this with an inhalation of the breath; but she did not look at +him. + +"Take care!" he said, with an unreasonable harshness. "For I forewarn +you I am imagining vain things." + +"I'm not afraid, somehow." But Anne did not look at him. + +He saw as with a rending shock how like the widow of John Charteris was +to Anne Willoughby; and unforgotten pulses, very strange and irrational +and dear, perplexed him sorely. He debated, and flung aside the +cigarette as an out-moded detail of his hobbling part. + +"You say I did a noble thing for you. I tried to. But quixotism has its +price. To-day I am not quite the man who did that thing. John Charteris +has set his imprint too deep upon us. We served his pleasure. We are not +any longer the boy and girl who loved each other." + +She waited in the rising twilight with a yet averted face. The world was +motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him. And the +disposition of all worldly affairs, the man dimly knew, was very +anciently prearranged by an illimitable and, upon the whole, a kindly +wisdom. + +So that, "My dear, my dear!" he swiftly said: "I don't think I can word +just what my feeling is for you. Always my view of the world has been +that you existed, and that some other people existed--as accessories--" + +Then he was silent for a heart-beat, appraising her. His hands lifted +toward her and fell within the moment, as if it were in impotence. + +Anne spoke at last, and the sweet voice of her was very glad and proud +and confident. + +"My friend, remember that I have not thanked you. You have done the most +foolish and--the manliest thing I ever knew a man to do, just for my +sake. And I have accepted it as if it were a matter of course. And I +shall always do so. Because it was your right to do this very brave and +foolish thing for me. I know you joyed in doing it. Rudolph ... you +cannot understand how glad I am you joyed in doing it." + +Their eyes met. It is not possible to tell you all they were aware of +through that moment, because it is a knowledge so rarely apprehended, +and even then for such a little while, that no man who has sensed it can +remember afterward aught save the splendor and perfection of it. + + * * * * * + +And yet Anne looked back once. There was just the tall, stark shaft, and +on it "John Charteris." The thing was ominous and vast, all colored like +wet gravel, save where the sunlight tipped it with clean silver very +high above their reach. + +"Come," she quickly said to Rudolph Musgrave; "come, for I am afraid." + + + + +VI + + +And are we then to leave them with glad faces turned to that new day +wherein, above the ashes of old errors and follies and mischances and +miseries, they were to raise the structure of such a happiness as earth +rarely witnesses? Would it not be, instead, a grateful task more fully +to depicture how Rudolph Musgrave's love of Anne won finally to its +reward, and these two shared the evening of their lives in tranquil +service of unswerving love come to its own at last? + +Undoubtedly, since the espousal of one's first love--by oneself--is a +phenomenon rarely encountered outside of popular fiction, it would be a +very gratifying task to record that Anne and Rudolph Musgrave were +married that autumn; that subsequently Lichfield was astounded by the +fervor of their life-long bliss; that Colonel and (the second) Mrs. +Musgrave were universally respected, in a word, and their dinner-parties +were always prominently chronicled by the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_; +and that Anne took excellent care of little Roger, and that she and her +second husband proved eminently suited to each other. + +But, as a matter of fact, not one of these things ever happened.... + +"I have been thinking it over," Anne deplored. "Oh, Rudolph dear, I +perfectly realize you are the best and noblest man I ever knew. And I +have always loved you very much, my dear; that is why I could never +abide poor Mrs. Pendomer. And yet--it is a feeling I simply can't +explain----" + +"That you belong to Jack in spite of everything?" the colonel said. +"Why, but of course! I might have known that Jack would never have +allowed any simple incidental happening such as his death to cause his +missing a possible trick." + +Anne would have comforted Rudolph Musgrave; but, to her discomfiture, +the colonel was grinning, however ruefully. + +"I was thinking," he stated, "of the only time that I ever, to my +knowledge, talked face to face with the devil. It is rather odd how +obstinately life clings to the most hackneyed trick of ballad-makers; +and still naively pretends to enrich her productions by the stale device +of introducing a refrain--so that the idlest remarks of as much as three +years ago keep cropping up as the actual gist of the present!... +However, were it within my power, I would evoke Amaimon straightway now +to come up yonder, through your hearthrug, and to answer me quite +honestly if I did not tell him on the beach at Matocton that this, +precisely this, would be the outcome of your knowing everything!" + +"I told you that I couldn't, quite, _explain_----" Anne said. + +"Eh, but I can, my dear," he informed her. "The explanation is that +Lichfield bore us, shaped us, and made us what we are. We may not enjoy +a monopoly of the virtues here in Lichfield, but there is one trait at +least which the children of Lichfield share in common. We are loyal. We +give but once; and when we give, we give all that we have; and when we +have once given it, neither common-sense, nor a concourse of +expostulating seraphim, nor anything else in the universe, can induce us +to believe that a retraction, or even a qualification, of the gift would +be quite worthy of us." + +"But that--that's foolish. Why, it's unreasonable," Anne pointed out. + +"Of course it is. And that is why I am proud of Lichfield. And that is +why you are to-day Jack's wife and always will be just Jack's wife--and +why to-day I am Patricia's husband--and why Lichfield to-day is +Lichfield. There is something braver in life than to be just reasonable, +thank God! And so, we keep the faith, my dear, however obsolete we find +fidelity to be. We keep to the old faith--we of Lichfield, who have +given hostages to the past. We remember even now that we gave freely in +an old time, and did not haggle.... And so, we are proud--yes! we are +consumedly proud, and we know that we have earned the right to be +proud." + +A little later Colonel Musgrave said: + +"And yet--it takes a monstrous while to dispose of our universe's +subtleties. I have loved you my whole life long, as accurately as we +can phrase these matters. There is no--no _reasonable_ reason why you +should not marry me now; and you would marry me if I pressed it. And I +do not press it. Perhaps it all comes of our both having been reared in +Lichfield. Perhaps that is why I, too, have been 'thinking it over.' You +see," he added, with a smile, "the rivet in grandfather's neck is not +lightly to be ignored, after all. No, you do not know what I am talking +about, my dear. And--well, anyhow, I belong to Patricia. Upon the whole, +I am glad that I belong to Patricia; for Patricia and what Patricia +meant to me was the one vital thing in a certain person's rather +hand-to-mouth existence--oh, yes, in spite of everything! I know it now. +Anne Charteris," the colonel cried, "I wouldn't marry you or any other +woman breathing, even though you were to kneel and implore me upon the +knees of a centipede. For I belong to Patricia; and the rivet stays +unbroken, after all." + +"Oh, and am I being very foolish again?" Anne asked. "For I have been +remembering that when--when Jack was not quite truthful about some +things, you know,--the truth he hid was always one which would have hurt +me. And I like to believe that was, at least in part, the reason he hid +it, Rudolph. So he purchased my happiness--well, at ugly prices perhaps. +But he purchased it, none the less; and I had it through all those +years. So why shouldn't I--after all--be very grateful to him? And, +besides"--her voice broke--"besides, he was Jack, you know. He belonged +to me. What does it matter what he did? He belonged to me, and I loved +him." + +And to the colonel's discomfort Anne began to cry. + +"There, there!" he said, "so the real truth is out at last. And tears +don't help very much. It does seem a bit unfair, my dear, I know. But +that is simply because you and I are living in a universe which has +never actually committed itself, under any penalizing bond, to be +entirely candid as to the laws by which it is conducted." + + * * * * * + +But it may be that Rudolph Musgrave voiced quite obsolete views. For he +said this at a very remote period--when the Beef Trust was being +"investigated" in Washington; when an excited Iberian constabulary was +still hunting the anarchists who had attempted to assassinate the young +King and Queen of Spain upon their wedding-day; when the rebuilding of +an earthquake-shattered San Francisco was just beginning to be talked of +as a possibility; and when editorials were mostly devoted to discussion +of what Mr. Bryan would have to say about bi-metallism when he returned +from his foreign tour. + +And, besides, it was Rudolph Musgrave's besetting infirmity always to +shrink--under shelter of whatever grandiloquent excuse--from making +changes. One may permissibly estimate this foible to have weighed with +him a little, even now, just as in all things it had always weighed in +Lichfield with all his generation. An old custom is not lightly broken. + + + + +PART TEN - IMPRIMIS + + "So let us laugh, lest vain rememberings + Breed, as of old, some rude bucolic cry + Of awkward anguishes, of dreams that die + Without decorum, of Love lacking wings + Yet striving you-ward in his flounderings + Eternally,--as now, even when I lie + As I lie now, who know that you and I + Exist and heed not lesser happenings. + + "I was. I am. I will be. Eh, no doubt + For some sufficient cause, I drift, defer, + Equivocate, dream, hazard, grow more stout, + Age, am no longer Love's idolater,-- + And yet I could and would not live without + Your faith that heartens and your doubts which spur." + + +LIONEL CROCHARD. _Palinodia_. + + + + +I + + +So weeks and months, and presently irrevocable years, passed tranquilly; +and nothing very important seemed to happen nowadays, either for good or +ill; and Rudolph Musgrave was content enough. + +True, there befell, and with increasing frequency, periods when one must +lie abed, and be coaxed into taking interminable medicines, and be +ministered unto generally, because one was of a certain age nowadays, +and must be prudent. But even such necessities, these underhanded +indignities of time, had their alleviations. Trained nurses, for +example, were uncommonly well-informed and agreeable young women, when +you came to know them--and quite lady-like, too, for all that in our +topsy-turvy days these girls had to work for their living. Unthinkable +as it seemed, the colonel found that his night-nurse, a Miss Ramsay, was +actually by birth a Ramsay of Blenheim; and for a little the discovery +depressed him. But to be made much of, upon whatever terms, was always +treatment to which the colonel submitted only too docilely. And, +besides, in this queer, comfortable, just half-waking state, the +colonel found one had the drollest dreams, evolving fancies such as were +really a credit to one's imagination.... + +For instance, one very often imagined that Patricia was more close at +hand nowadays.... No, she was not here in the room, of course, but +outside, in the street, at the corner below, where the letterbox stood. +Yes, she was undoubtedly there, the colonel reflected drowsily. And they +had been so certain her return could only result in unhappiness, and +they were so wise, that whilst she waited for her opportunity Patricia +herself began to be a little uneasy. She had patrolled the block six +times before the chance came. + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, drowsily pleased by his own +inventiveness, that Patricia was glad this afternoon was so hot that no +one was abroad except the small boy at the corner house, who sat upon +the bottom porch-step, and, as children so often do, appeared intently +to appraise the world at large with an inexplicable air of +disappointment. + +"Now think how Rudolph would feel,"--the colonel whimsically played at +reading Patricia's reflection--"if I were to be arrested as a suspicious +character--that's what the newspapers always call them, I think--on his +very doorstep! And he must have been home a half-hour ago at least, +because I know it's after five. But the side-gate's latched, and I can't +ring the door-bell--if only because it would be too ridiculous to have +to ask the maid to tell Colonel Musgrave his wife wanted to see him. +Besides, I don't know the new house-girl. I wish now we hadn't let old +Mary go, even though she was so undependable about thorough-cleaning." + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia was tired of pacing +before the row of houses, each so like the other, and compared herself +to Gulliver astray upon a Brobdingnagian bookshelf which held a "library +set" of some huge author. She had lost interest, too, in the new house +upon the other side. + +"If things were different I would have to call on them. But as it is, I +am spared that bother at least," said Patricia, just as if being dead +did not change people at all. + +Then a colored woman, trim and frillily-capped, came out of the watched +house. She bore some eight or nine letters in one hand, and fanned +herself with them in a leisurely flat-footed progress to the mailbox at +the lower corner. + +"She looks capable," was Patricia's grudging commentary, in slipping +through the doorway into the twilight of the hall. "But it isn't safe to +leave the front-door open like this. One never knows--No, I can tell by +the look of her she's the sort that can't be induced to sleep on the +lot, and takes mysterious bundles home at night." + + + + +II + + +And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, now in the full flow of this droll +dream, that Patricia resentfully noted her front-hall had been "meddled +with." This much alone might Patricia observe in a swift transit to the +parlor. + +She waited there until the maid returned; and registered to the woman's +credit the discreet soft closing of the front-door and afterward the +well-nigh inaudible swish of the rear door of the dining-room as the +maid went back into the kitchen. + +"In any event," Patricia largely conceded, "she probably doesn't clash +the knives and forks in the pantry after supper, like she was hostile +armaments with any number of cutlasses apiece. I remember Rudolph simply +couldn't stand it when we had Ethel." + +So much was satisfactory. Only--her parlor was so altered! + +There was--to give you just her instantaneous first impression--so +little in it. Broad spaces of plain color showed everywhere; and +Patricia's ideal of what a parlor should be, as befitted the chatelaine +of a fine home in Lichfield, had always been the tangled elegancies of +the front show-window of a Woman's Exchange for Fancy Work. The room had +even been repapered--odiously, as she considered; and the shiny floor of +it boasted just three inefficient rugs, like dingy rafts upon a sea of +very strong coffee. + +Patricia looked in vain for her grandiose plush-covered chairs, her +immaculate "tidies," and the proud yellow lambrequin, embroidered in +high relief with white gardenias, which had formerly adorned the +mantelpiece. The heart of her hungered for her unforgotten and +unforgettable "watered-silk" papering wherein white roses bloomed +exuberantly against a yellow background--which deplorably faded if you +did not keep the window-shades down, she remembered--and she wanted back +her white thick comfortable carpet which hid the floor completely, so +that everywhere you trod upon the buxomest of stalwart yellow roses, +each bunch of which was lavishly tied with wind-blown ribbons. + +Then, too, her cherished spinning-wheel, at least two hundred and fifty +years old, which had looked so pretty after she had gilded it and added +a knot of pink sarsenet, was departed; and gone as well was the +mirror-topped table, with its array of china swan and frogs and +water-lilies artistically grouped about its speckless surface. Even her +prized engraving of "Michael Angelo Buonarotti"--contentedly regarding +his just finished Moses, while a pope tiptoed into the room through a +side-door--had been removed, with all its splendors of red-plush and +intricate gilt-framing. + +Just here and there, in fine, like a familiar face in a crowd, she could +discover some one of her more sedately-colored "parlor ornaments"; and +the whole history of it--its donor or else its price, the gestures of +the shopman, even what sort of weather it was when she and Rudolph found +"exactly what I've been looking for" in the shop-window, and the +Stapyltonian, haggling over the price with which Patricia had +bargained--such unimportant details as these now vividly awakened in +recollection.... In fine, this room was not her parlor at all, and in it +Patricia was lonely.... Yes, yes, she would be nowadays, the colonel +reflected, for he himself had never been in thorough sympathy with all +the changes made by Roger's self-assured young wife. + +Thus it was with the first floor of the house, through which Patricia +strayed with uniform discomfort. This place was home no longer. + +Thus it was with the first floor of the house. Everywhere the equipments +were strange, or at best arranged not quite as Patricia would have +placed them. Yet they had not any look of being recently purchased. Even +that hideous stair-carpet was a little worn, she noted, as noiselessly +she mounted to the second story. + +The house was perfectly quiet, save for a tiny shrill continuance of +melody that somehow seemed only to pierce the silence, not to dispel it. +Rudolph--of all things!--had in her absence acquired a canary. And +everybody knew what an interminable nuisance a canary was. + +She entered the front room. It had been her bedroom ever since her +marriage. She remembered this as with a gush of defiant joy. + + + + +III + + +So it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia came actually into the +room that had been hers.... + +A canary was singing there, very sweet and shrill and as in defiant joy. +Its trilling seemed to fill the room. In the brief pauses of his song +the old clock, from which Rudolph had removed the pendulum on the night +of Agatha's death would interpose an obstinate slow ticking; and +immediately the clock-noise would be drowned in melody. Otherwise the +room was silent. + +In the alcove stood the bed which had been Patricia's. Intent upon its +occupant were three persons, with their backs turned to her. One +Patricia could easily divine to be a doctor; he was twiddling a +hypodermic syringe between his fingers, and the set of his shoulders was +that of acquiescence. Profiles of the others she saw: one a passive +nurse in uniform, who was patiently chafing the right hand of the bed's +occupant; the other a lean-featured red-haired stranger, who sat +crouched in his chair and held the dying man's left hand. + +For in the bed, supported by many pillows, and facing Patricia, was a +dying man. He was very old, having thick tumbled hair which, like his +two-weeks' beard, was uniformly white. His eyelids drooped a trifle, so +that he seemed to meditate concerning something ineffably remote and +serious, yet not, upon the whole, unsatisfactory. You saw and heard the +intake of each breath, so painfully drawn, and expelled with manifest +relief, as if the man were very tired of breathing. Yet the bedclothes +heaved with his vain efforts just to keep on breathing. And sometimes +his parted lips would twitch curiously.... Rudolph Musgrave, too, could +see all this quite plainly, in the mirror over the mantel. + +The doctor spoke. "Yes--it's the end, Professor Musgrave," he said. For +this lean-featured red-haired stranger to whom the doctor spoke, a +pedagogue to his finger-tips, had once been Patricia's dearly-purchased, +chubby baby Roger. + +And Rudolph Musgrave stayed motionless. He knew Patricia was there; but +that fact no longer seemed either very strange or even unnatural; and +besides, it was against some law for him to look at her until Patricia +had called him.... Meanwhile, just opposite, above the mirror, and +facing him, was the Stuart portrait of young Gerald Musgrave. This +picture had now hung there for a great many years. The boy still smiled +at you in undiminished raillery, even though he smiled ambiguously, and +with a sort of humorous sadness in his eyes. Once, very long ago--when +the picture hung downstairs--some one had said that Gerald Musgrave's +life was barren. The dying man could not now recollect, quite, who that +person was. + +Rudolph Musgrave stayed motionless. He comprehended that he was dying. +The greatest of all changes was at hand; and he, who had always shrunk +from making changes, was now content enough.... Indeed, with Rudolph +Musgrave living had always been a vaguely dissatisfactory business, a +hand-to-mouth proceeding which he had scrambled through, as he saw now, +without any worthy aim or even any intelligible purpose. He had nothing +very heinous with which to reproach himself; but upon the other side, he +had most certainly nothing of which to be particularly proud. + +So this was all that living came to! You heard of other people being +rapt by splendid sins and splendid virtues, and you anticipated that +to-morrow some such majestic energy would transfigure your own living, +and change everything: but the great adventure never arrived, somehow; +and the days were frittered away piecemeal, what with eating your +dinner, and taking a wholesome walk, and checking up your bank account, +and dovetailing scraps of parish registers and land-patents and county +records into an irrefutable pedigree, and seeing that your clothes were +pressed, and looking over the newspapers--and what with other +infinitesimal avocations, each one innocent, none of any particular +importance, and each consuming an irrevocable moment of the allotted +time--until at last you found that living had not, necessarily, any +climax at all.... And Patricia would call him presently. + +Once, very long ago, some one had said that the most pathetic tragedy in +life was to get nothing in particular out of it. The dying man could not +now recollect, quite, who that person was. + +He wondered, vaguely, what might have been the outcome if Rudolph +Musgrave had whole-heartedly sought, not waited for, the great +adventure; if Rudolph Musgrave had put--however irrationally--more +energy and less second-thought into living; if Rudolph Musgrave had not +been contented to be just a Musgrave of Matocton.... Well, it was too +late now. He viewed his whole life now, in epitome, and much as you may +see at night the hackneyed vista from your window leap to incisiveness +under the lash of lightning. No, the life of Rudolph Musgrave had never +risen to the plane of dignity, not even to that of seeming to Rudolph +Musgrave a connected and really important transaction on Rudolph +Musgrave's part. Yet Lichfield, none the better for Rudolph Musgrave's +having lived, was none the worse, thank heaven! And there were younger +men in Lichfield--men who did not mean to fail as Rudolph Musgrave and +his fellows all had failed.... Eh, yes, what was the toast that Rudolph +Musgrave drank, so long ago, to the new Lichfield which these younger +men were making? + +"To this new South, that has not any longer need of me or of my kind. + +"To this new South! She does not gaze unwillingly, nor too complacently, +upon old years, and dares concede that but with loss of manliness may +any man encroach upon the heritage of a dog or of a trotting-horse, and +consider the exploits of an ancestor to guarantee an innate and personal +excellence. + +"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with +her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain +speech. And her high past she values now, in chief, as fit foundation of +that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with augmenting +strokes." + +Yes, that was it. And it was true. Yet Rudolph Musgrave's life on earth +was ending now--the only life that he would ever have on earth--and it +had never risen to the plane of seeming even to Rudolph Musgrave a +really important transaction on Rudolph Musgrave's part.... + +Then Patricia spoke. Low and very low she called to Olaf, and the dim, +wistful eyes of Rudolph Musgrave lifted, and gazed full upon her +standing there, and were no longer wistful. And the man made as though +to rise, and could not, and his face was very glad. + +For in the dying man had awakened the pulses of an old, strange, +half-forgotten magic, and all his old delight in the girl who had shared +in and had provoked this ancient wonder-working, together with a quite +new consciousness of the inseparability of Patricia's foibles from his +existence; so that he was incuriously aware of his imbecility in not +having known always that Patricia must come back some day, not as a +glorious, unfamiliar angel, but unaltered. + +"I am glad you haven't changed.... Why, but of course! Nothing would +have counted if you had changed--not even for the better, Patricia. For +you and what you meant to me were real. That only was real--that we, not +being demigods, but being just what we were, once climbed together very +high, where we could glimpse the stars--and nothing else can ever be of +any importance. What we inherited was too much for us, was it not, my +dear? And now it is not formidable any longer. Oh, but I loved you very +greatly, Patricia! And now at last, my dear, I seem to understand--as in +that old, old time when you and I were glad together----" + +But he did not say this aloud, for it seemed to him that he stood in a +cool, pleasant garden, and that Patricia came toward him through the +long shadows of sunset. The lacy folds and furbelows and +semi-transparencies that clothed her were now tinged with gold and now, +as a hedge or a flower bed screened her from the level rays, were +softened into multitudinous graduations of grays and mauves and violets. + +They did not speak. But in her eyes he found compassion and such +tenderness as awed him; and then, as a light is puffed out, they were +the eyes of a friendly stranger. He understood, for an instant, that of +necessity it was decreed time must turn back and everything, even +Rudolph Musgrave, be just as it had been when he first saw Patricia. For +they had made nothing of their lives; and so, they must begin all over +again. + +"_Failure is not permitted_" he was saying.... + +"_You're Cousin Rudolph, aren't you?_" she asked.... + +And Rudolph Musgrave knew he had forgotten something of vast import, but +what this knowledge had pertained to he no longer knew. Then Rudolph +Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about his heart, +that her hair was like the reflection of a sunset in rippling +waters--only many times more beautiful, of course--and that her mouth +was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her +eyes were purple glimpses of infinity. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck +by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK *** + +***** This file should be named 10041.txt or 10041.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/4/10041/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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