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+Project Gutenberg's Through stained glass, by George Agnew Chamberlain
+
+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: Through stained glass
+
+Author: George Agnew Chamberlain
+
+Release Date: November 14, 2004 [EBook #14039]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH STAINED GLASS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Dorota Sidor and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH STAINED GLASS
+
+
+A novel by
+
+
+GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN
+
+Author of "Home"
+
+
+New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
+
+
+Copyright, 1915, by
+
+GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN
+
+Published March, 1915
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In 1866 the American minister at Rio de Janeiro turned from the reality
+of a few incongruous and trouble-breeding Kentucky colonels,
+slouched-hatted and frock-coated, wandering through the unfamiliar
+streets of the great South American capital, and saw a nightmare. There
+is a touch of panic in the despatch which he sent to Mr. Seward at a
+time when both secretary and public were held too closely in the throes
+of reconstruction to take alarm at so distant a chimera. Agents of the
+Southern States, wrote the minister, claimed that not thousands of
+families, but a hundred thousand families, would come to Brazil.
+
+As a matter of fact, this exodus, when it took place, was so small that
+it failed to raise a ripple on the social pool of the Western
+Hemisphere. But to the self-chosen few who suffered shipwreck and
+privation, financial loss from their already depleted store, disaster to
+their Utopian dreams, and a great void in their hearts where once had
+been love of country, it became a tragedy--the tragedy of existence.
+
+The ardor that led a small band of irreconcilables to gather their
+households and their household goods about them and flee from a personal
+oppression, as had their ancestors before them, was destined to be short
+lived. From the first, fate frowned upon their enterprise. They looked
+for calm seas and favorable winds, but they found storms and shipwreck.
+Their scanty resources were calculated to meet the needs of only the
+crudest life, but upon the threshold of their goal they fell into the
+red-tape trammels of a civilization older than their own. Where they
+looked for a free country, a wilderness flowing with milk and honey,
+which in their ignorance they imagined unpeopled, they found the
+squatter had been intrenched since the Jesuit fathers and their
+following explored the continent four centuries before. Finally, they
+believed themselves to be the vanguard of a horde, but, once in the
+breach, they found there was no following host.
+
+Most of those who had the means reversed their flight. Others, with
+nothing left but their broken pride, sought aid from the government they
+abhorred, and were given a free passage back in returning men-of-war.
+But when the reflux had waned and died, there was still a residue of
+half a hundred families, most of whom were so destitute that they could
+not reach the coast. With them stayed a very few who were held by their
+premature investments or by a deeper loyalty or a greater pride. Among
+the latter was the head of the divided house of Leighton.
+
+The Reverend Orme Leighton was one of those to whom the war had brought
+a double portion of bitterness, for the Leightons of Leighton, Virginia,
+had fought not alone against the North, but against the North and the
+Leightons of Leighton, Massachusetts.
+
+To the Reverend Orme Leighton, a schism in the church would have meant
+nothing unless it came to the point of cracking heads; but a schism in
+governmental policy, which placed the right to govern one's self and own
+black chattel in the balance, found him taking sides from the first,
+thundering out from the pulpit, supported by text and verse, the divine
+right of personal dominion by purchase, and in superb contradiction
+voicing the constitutional right to self-government. When the day of
+words was past, he did not wait for the desperate cry of the South in
+her later need. Abandoning gown and pulpit for charger and saber, he was
+of the first to rally, of the last to muster out. Nor at the end of the
+long struggle did he find solace in the knowledge that he had fought a
+good fight. To him more than the South had fallen. God had withheld his
+hand from the just cause, and Leighton had fought against Leighton!
+
+It was characteristic of the Reverend Orme Leighton that the rancor
+which came with defeat was not visited upon those members of his clan
+who had fought against him. But for that very reason it was all the more
+poignantly directed against that vague entity, the North. Never, while
+life lasted, would he bow to the dominion of a tyranny, much more, of a
+tyranny which, by dividing the Leightons, had in a measure forced
+neutrality upon the gods.
+
+Leighton House, Virginia, found a ready and fitting purchaser in one of
+the Leightons of Massachusetts. With the funds thus provided, the
+Reverend Orme Leighton moved, lock, stock, and barrel, six thousand
+miles to the south. He settled at San Paulo, where he bought for a song
+a considerable property on the outskirts of the city. He rented,
+besides, a large building in the center of the town, and established
+therein the Leighton Academy. Here he labored single handed until his
+worth as an instructor became known; then the sudden prosperity of the
+venture drove him to engage an ever-increasing staff. The academy
+developed rapidly into a recognized local institution. The first
+material revenue from the successful school was applied to building a
+fitting home on the property bought for a song.
+
+The character of this new Leighton House, which was never known as
+Leighton House, but acquired the name of Consolation Cottage by analogy
+with the Street of the Consolation near which it stood, was as different
+as could well be both from the prevailing local style of architecture
+and from the stately colonial type dear to the heart of every Virginian.
+The building was long and low, with sloping roofs of flat French tiles.
+A broad veranda bordered it on three sides. The symmetry of the whole
+was saved from ugliness by a large central gable the overhanging porch
+of which cast a deep and friendly shadow over the great front door and
+over the wide flights of steps that led down to the curving driveway.
+
+In that luxuriant clime the new house did not long remain bare. A
+clambering wistaria, tree-like geraniums, a giant fuchsia and trellised
+rose-vines soon embowered the verandas, while, on the south side,
+English ivy was gradually coaxed up the bare brick wall. This medley of
+leaf and bloom gave to the whole house that air of friendliness and
+homeliness that marks the shrine of the Anglo-Saxon's household gods the
+world over.
+
+Such was the nest that the Reverend Orme built by the sweat of his brow
+to harbor his little family, which, at the beginning of this history,
+consisted of himself; Ann Leighton, his wife; and Mammy, black as the
+ace of spades without, white within.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Ann Sutherland Leighton was one of those rare religionists that
+occasionally bloom in a most unaccountable manner on a family tree
+having its roots in the turf rather than clinging to Plymouth Rock.
+Isaac Sutherland, her father, had been knowing in horse-flesh, and would
+have looked askance on the Reverend Orme Leighton as a suitor had he not
+also been knowing in men. The truth was that in Leighton the man was
+bigger than the parson, and to the conceded fact that all the world
+loves a lover he added the prestige of the less-bandied truth that all
+the world loves a fighter. He, also, knew horse-flesh. He finally won
+Ann's father over on the day when Ike Sutherland learned to his cost
+that the Reverend Orme could discern through the back of his head that
+distension of the capsular ligament of the hock commonly termed a bog
+spavin.
+
+Ann did not share her husband's extreme views. It was a personal loyalty
+that had brought her uncomplaining to a far country, unbuoyed by the
+Reverend Orme's dreams of a new state, but seeking with an inward
+fervidness some scene of lasting peace wherewith to blot out the memory
+of long years of turmoil and wholesale bereavement.
+
+To her those first years in Consolation Cottage were long--long with the
+weight of six thousand miles from home. Then, with the suddeness of
+answered prayer, a light came into her darkness. He was named Shenton.
+Mammy's broad, homesick face broke into an undying smile. "Sho is mo'
+lak ole times, Mis' Ann, havin' a young Marster abeout." And when, two
+years later, on a Christmas day, Natalie was born, Mammy mixed smiles
+with tears and sobbed, "Oh, Mis' Ann, sho is mo' an' _mo'_ lak ole
+times."
+
+She, too, had her clinging memories of halls, now empty, that echoed
+once to the cries and gurgling laughter of a race in full flower.
+
+As Ann sat one evening on the embowered veranda looking away to the
+north, a child within the circle of each arm, the old aching in her
+breast was stilled. The restless Leighton paused in his stride to gaze
+through fiery, but gloomy, eyes upon his fair-haired baby daughter and
+his son, pale, crowned with dark curls, and cried, with a toss of his
+own dark mane: "As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are
+children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of
+them!"
+
+This realization of the preciousness of children in adversity paved the
+way for the reception of one who was to come to them from under the
+shadow of a family cloud, a certain mysterious personage of tender
+years, Lewis Leighton, by name.
+
+For weeks the name of Lewis Leighton had been whispered about the house,
+first by the grown-ups and finally, when the Reverend Orme and his wife
+had come to the great decision, by the children. The children knew
+nothing of the great decision nor did they know the sources of their
+sudden joy. Their spirits were reaching out to clasp this new thread in
+life at an age when all new threads are golden.
+
+On the appointed day the Reverend Orme went to the nearest seaport to
+meet the youthful voyager and convoy him home. As evening drew near,
+great was the excitement at Consolation Cottage. To Natalie and to
+Shenton, the sudden arrival of an entirely new brother, not in
+swaddling-clothes, but handed down ready-made from the shelf, was an
+event that loomed to unusual proportions. At last the great gate swung
+open, and a cab rattled its leisurely way up the drive.
+
+In an instant the children were on their feet, jumping up and down and
+clapping their hands. "Mother," shouted Shenton, "they're coming!"
+Little Natalie clambered in stumbling haste up the steps and clutched
+Mrs. Leighton's skirts. "Muvver," she cried, in an agony of ecstasy,
+"they're _coming!_"
+
+"Yes, yes, dear; I see. Oh, look how you've rumpled your dress! What
+will Lewis say to that? Come, Shenton, give mother your hand." Slowly
+she led them down the steps, her eyes fixed on the approaching cab.
+
+The Reverend Orme sprang out and up to meet them. He kissed his wife and
+children. Shenton clung to his arm.
+
+"O Dad," he cried, "didn't you bring him?"
+
+"Bring him? I should say I did. Here, step out, young man."
+
+A chubby face above a blouse, a short kilt and fat legs, appeared from
+the shadows of the cab. Grave eyes passed fearlessly over the group on
+the steps until they settled on the broad black face of Mammy.
+
+"Bad nigger!"
+
+Mrs. Leighton gasped and arrested herself in the very movement of
+welcome. Mammy's genial face assumed a terrible scowl, her white eyes
+bulged, and her vast arms went suddenly akimbo.
+
+"Wha' 's that yo' say, yo' young Marster?" she thundered.
+
+"Go--go--_good_ nigger," stuttered the chubby face and smiled. With that
+he was swept from the cab into Mrs. Leighton's arms, and Mammy, grinning
+from ear to ear, caught him by one fat leg and demanded in soft negro
+tones:
+
+"Wha' fo' you call yo' mammy 'bad niggah,' young Marster? Ho! ho!
+'Go--go--_good_ niggah!' Did yo' hea' him, Mis' Ann?"
+
+Shenton and Natalie jumped up and down, with, cries of "Please, Mother,"
+and "Muvver, oh, _please!_" Mrs. Leighton set Lewis on his feet between
+them. Shenton held out his hand. "How d' ye."
+
+"How do do," replied Lewis, gravely. Natalie was plucking at his arm. He
+turned to her. They were almost of a size, but to Natalie he towered an
+inch above her. She held up her lips, and he kissed them. Then they
+stood and stared at each other. Natalie's short forefinger found its way
+to her mouth.
+
+"My dwess is wumpled," she said.
+
+"I got a dog at home," declared Lewis--"a _big_ dog."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+To Natalie, Shenton, and Lewis the scant twenty acres that surrounded
+Consolation Cottage was a vast demesne. Even on a full holiday one could
+choose one's excursions within its limits. From the high-plumed wall of
+bamboos that lined Consolation Street, through the orange-grove, across
+the hollow where were stable and horses, cows and calves, then up again
+to the wood on the other hillside--ah, that was a journey indeed, never
+attempted in a single day. They chose their playground. To-day the
+bamboos held them, to-morrow the distant grove, where were pungent
+fruits, birds'-nests, fantastic insects, and elusive butterflies and
+moths.
+
+Then there was the brier-patch, with its secret chamber. By dint of long
+hours of toil and a purloined kitchen-knife they had tunneled into a
+clearing in the center of the thicket. Of all their retreats, this one
+alone had foiled their watchful overseers. Here was held, undetected,
+many an orgy over stolen fruit.
+
+Nor did they have to seek far for a realm of terror. Behind the
+brier-patch was the priest's wall. Over it was wafted the fragrance of
+unknown flowers and of strange fruits--and the barking of a fierce dog.
+With the same kitchen-knife they pried loose a brick and slipped it out.
+They took turns at peeking through this tiny window on a strange world.
+What ecstasy when first they glimpsed the flat-hatted, black-robed
+figure strolling in the wondrous garden! Then terror seized them, for
+the quick-eyed priest had seen the hole, and before they could flee his
+toe was in it, and his frowning face, surmounted by the flaring hat,
+popped above the wall and glared down upon them.
+
+"Do you hear my dog?" whispered the priest.
+
+It was Natalie, trembling with fright, who answered, feeling a certain
+kinship for anything in skirts.
+
+"Yeth, I do."
+
+"Well," whispered the priest, his face twitching in the effort to look
+stern, "he eats little children." With that he dropped from view.
+
+Lewis and Shenton stared at each other. Natalie began to cry. Lewis
+picked up the brick and slipped it back into place. Shenton helped him
+wedge it in with twigs; then all three stole away, to break into giggles
+and laughter when distance gave them courage.
+
+Natalie and Lewis had another terror, unshared by Shenton. Manoel, the
+Portuguese gardener, who lived in a little two-room house in the hollow,
+had nothing but scowls for them. They feared him with the instinctive
+fear of children, but Shenton was his friend. Did any little tiff arise,
+Shenton was off to see Manoel. He knew the others were afraid to follow.
+Sometimes Manoel took him to his little house.
+
+To Lewis this strange friendship was the one cloud in childhood's happy
+sky. He could not have defined what he felt. It was jealousy mixed with
+hurt pride--jealousy of the hated Manoel, hurt pride at the thought that
+Shenton went where he could not follow.
+
+One day Shenton had been gone an hour. Lewis had seen him with Manoel.
+He knew he was in Manoel's house. What were they doing? Lewis turned to
+Natalie.
+
+"I am going to Manoel's house. Stay here."
+
+Natalie stared at him with wide eyes.
+
+"O, Lewis," she cried after him, "aren't you _'fraid_?"
+
+Lewis crawled stealthily to a back window. He stood on tiptoe and tried
+to look in. His eyes were just below the level of the window-sill. He
+dragged a log of wood beneath the window and climbed upon it. For a long
+time he kept his face glued against one of the little square panes of
+glass.
+
+He forgot fear. In the room which the window commanded was a broad,
+rough table, and Manoel was seated on a bench before it, leaning
+forward, his long arms outstretched along its edge. The table was pushed
+almost against the wall, and in its center stood Shenton, laughing till
+the tears ran down his cheeks. His curly hair was damp and clung to his
+white forehead. His blouse was soiled, his kilt awry. One short stocking
+had fallen down over his shoe. Manoel was also laughing, but silently.
+
+Lewis did not have to wait long to divine the source of mirth, for
+Shenton soon essayed to walk the length of the table. Lifting his arm,
+he pointed along a crack, and swung one leg around to take a first step.
+But he seemed unable to place his foot as he wished. He reeled and fell
+in a giggling ball, which Manoel saved from rolling to the floor.
+
+Shrieks of laughter, deadened by the closed window, came from the child,
+and Manoel's broad shoulders shook with enjoyment. He stood Shenton on
+his feet, and held him till he got his balance; then the play began
+again. Now Lewis felt fear steal over him, yet he could not go away.
+There was something inexpressibly comical in the scene, but it was not
+this that held him. A strange terror had seized him. Something was the
+matter with Shenton. Lewis did not know what it was.
+
+Suddenly Shenton's mood changed to sullen stupor, and Manoel, whose gait
+was also unsteady, picked him up and carried him to a spigot, where he
+carefully unbuttoned the child's waist and soaked his head in cold
+water. The charm was broken. Lewis fled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Routine is the murderer of time. Held by the daily recurring duties of
+her household, Ann Leighton awoke with a gasp to the day that Natalie's
+hair went into pigtails and the boys shed kilts for trousers. At the
+evening hour she gathered the children to her with an increased
+tenderness. Natalie, plump and still rosy, sat in her lap; Shenton, a
+mere wisp of a boy, his face pale with a pallor beyond the pallor of the
+tropics, pressed his dark, curly head against her heart. Her other arm
+encircled Lewis and held him tight, for he was prone to fidget.
+
+They sat on the west veranda and watched the sun plunge to the horizon
+from behind a bank of monster clouds. Before them stretched a valley,
+for Consolation Cottage was set upon a hill. Beyond the valley, and far
+away, rose a line of hills. Suddenly that line became a line of night.
+Black night seized upon all the earth; but beyond there arose into the
+heavens a light that was more glorious than the light of day. A long sea
+of gold seemed to slope away ever so gently, up and up, until it lost
+itself beneath the slumberous mass of clouds that curtained its farther
+shore. Here and there within the sea hung islets of cloud, as still as
+rocks in a waveless ocean.
+
+Natalie stretched out her hand, with chubby fingers outspread, and
+squinted between the black bars they made against the light.
+
+"Mother, what's all that?"
+
+Mrs. Leighton was silent for a moment. The children looked up
+expectantly into her face, but she was not looking down at them. Her
+gaze was fixed upon the afterglow.
+
+"Why," she said at last, "it's a painting of heaven and earth. You see
+the black plain that stretches away and away? That's our world, so dark,
+so full of ruts, so ugly; but it is the rough plain we all must travel
+to reach the shore of light. When life is over, we come to the end of
+night--over there. Then we sail out on the golden sea."
+
+"Are those islands?" asked Lewis, pointing to the suspended cloudlets.
+
+"Yes, islands."
+
+"D'you see that biggest one--the one with a castle and smoke and
+trees?" continued Lewis. "That's the one _I'm_ going to sail to."
+
+"Me, too," said Natalie.
+
+"No, Natalie, you can't. Not to that one, because you're littlest. You
+must sail to that littlest one 'way, 'way over there." Lewis pointed far
+to the south.
+
+Natalie shook her head solemnly.
+
+"No. I'll sail to the big island, too."
+
+"And you, dear?" said Mrs. Leighton to Shenton, looking down at his
+motionless head. Shenton did not answer. He was held by a sudden, still,
+unhealthy sleep.
+
+Mrs. Leighton let Lewis go, pushed Natalie gently from her lap, and
+gathered her first-born in her arms.
+
+"Run to mammy, children," she said.
+
+Holding the sleeping Shenton close to her, she turned a troubled face
+toward the afterglow. The golden sea was gone. There was a last glimmer
+of amber in the heavens, but it faded suddenly, as though somewhere
+beyond the edge of the world some one had put out the light. Night had
+fallen.
+
+Mrs. Leighton carried her boy into the house. She stopped at her
+husband's study door.
+
+"Orme, are you there?" she called. "Please come."
+
+There was the sound of a chair scraping back. The door was flung open.
+Leighton looked from Ann's face to her burden, and his own face paled.
+
+"Again?" he asked.
+
+"O, Orme," cried Ann, "I'm frightened. What is it, Orme? Dr. MacDonald
+must come. Send for him. We _must_ know!"
+
+The Reverend Orme took the boy from her arms and carried him into a
+spare bedroom. He laid him down. Shenton's head fell limply to one side
+upon the pillow. The pillow was white, but not whiter than the boy's
+face.
+
+MacDonald's gruff voice was soon heard in the hall.
+
+"Not one of the bairns, Mammy? Young Shenton, eh?" He came into the room
+and sat down beside the boy. He felt his pulse, undid his waist,
+listened to his heart and lungs. The doctor shook his head and frowned.
+"Nothing extra-ordinary--nothing." Then he brought his face close to the
+boy's mouth, closer and closer.
+
+The doctor sank back in his chair. His shrewd eyes darted from boy to
+father, then to the mother.
+
+"Do not be alarmed," he said to Mrs. Leighton; "the lad is pheesically
+sound. He will awake anon." The doctor arose, and stretched his arms.
+"Eh, but I've had a hard day. Will ye be sae gude as to give me a glass
+of wine, Mistress Leighton?"
+
+Ann started as though from a trance.
+
+"Wine, Doctor?" she stammered. "I'm sorry. We have no wine in the
+house."
+
+"Not even a drop of whisky?"
+
+Ann shook her head.
+
+"Nae whisky in the medicine-chest, nae cooking sherry in the pantry?
+Weel, weel, I must be gaeing." And without a look at Ann's rising color
+or the Reverend Orme's twitching face the doctor was gone.
+
+The Reverend Orme fixed his eyes upon his wife.
+
+"When the boy awakes," he said, "not a word to him. Send him to my
+study." Ann nodded. As the door closed, she fell upon her knees beside
+the bed.
+
+An hour later the study door opened. Shenton entered. His father was
+seated, his nervous hands gripping the arms of his chair. On the desk
+beside him lay a thin cane. He motioned to his son to stand before him.
+
+"My boy," he said, "tell me each thing you have done to-day."
+
+There was a slight pause.
+
+"I have forgotten what I did to-day," answered Shenton, his eyes fixed
+on his father's face.
+
+"That is a falsehood," breathed Leighton, tensely, "I am going to thrash
+you until you remember."
+
+Leighton saw his boy's frail body shrink, he saw a flush leap to his
+cheeks and fade, leaving them dead-white again. Then he looked into his
+son's eyes, and the hand with which he was groping for the cane stopped,
+poised in air. In those eyes there was something that no man could
+thrash. Scorn, anguish, pride, the knowledge of ages, gazed out from a
+child's eyes upon Leighton, and struck terror to his soul. His boy's
+frail body was the abiding-place of a power that laughed at the strength
+of man's hands.
+
+"My boy, O, my boy!" groaned Leighton.
+
+"Father!" cried Shenton, with the cry of a bursting heart, and hurled
+himself into his father's arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The next day was the first of the long vacation, and with it came an
+addition to the Leighton household. Mammy was given a temporary helper,
+a shrewd little maid, with a head thirty years old on shoulders of
+twelve. Lalia was her name. The Reverend Orme had chosen her from among
+his charity pupils. He himself gave her his instructions--never to leave
+Shenton except to run and report the moment he escaped from her charge.
+
+Lalia was accepted without suspicion by the children not as a nurse, but
+as a playmate. Weeks passed. The four played together with a greater
+harmony than the three had ever attained. Day after day the Reverend
+Orme sat waiting in his study and brooding. The dreaded call never came.
+He began to distrust his messenger.
+
+Then one stifling afternoon as he sat dozing in his chair a sharp rap on
+the study door awakened him with a start.
+
+"Master! Master!" called Lalia's voice.
+
+"Yes, yes," cried Leighton; "come in."
+
+As he rose from his chair Lalia entered. She was breathless with
+running.
+
+"Master," she said, "Shenton did quarrel with us. He has gone to
+Manoel--to his house."
+
+"Manoel!" cried Leighton, "Manoel!" and strode hatless out into the
+glaring sun, across the lawn, and down the loquat avenue.
+
+Lewis, standing with Natalie in the orange-orchard, stared, wondering,
+at that hurrying figure. Never had he seen the Reverend Orme walk like
+that, hatless, head hanging and swinging from side to side, fists
+clenched. Where could he he going? Suddenly he knew. The Reverend Orme
+was going to Manoel's house. Shenton was there. Lalia came running to
+them. "Hold Natalie!" Lewis cried to her, and sped away to warn Shenton
+of danger. He ran with all the speed of his eight years, but from the
+first he felt he was too late. The low-hanging branches of the
+orange-trees hindered him.
+
+When he burst through the last of them, he saw the Reverend Orme's tall
+figure, motionless now, standing at the soiled, small-paned window of
+Manoel's house. As he stared, the tall figure crouched and stole out of
+sight, around the corner toward the door. Lewis rushed to the window and
+looked in. It seemed to him only a day since he had had to drag a log to
+stand on to see through this same window.
+
+Shenton was sitting on the bench beside the table, his black, curly head
+hanging to one side. Beyond him sat Manoel, leering and jabbering.
+Between them was a bottle. Lewis's lips were opening for a cry of
+warning when the door was flung wide, and the Reverend Orme stepped into
+the room. Lewis could not see Shenton's face, but he saw his slight form
+suddenly straighten.
+
+Then he realized with a great relief that the Reverend Orme was not
+looking at Shenton; his gaze was fastened on Manoel. Lewis, too, turned
+his eyes on Manoel. Cold sweat came out over him as he saw the terror in
+Manoel's face. The leer was still there, frozen. Over it and through it,
+like a double exposure on a single negative, hung the film of terror.
+The Reverend Orme, his hands half outstretched, walked slowly toward
+Manoel.
+
+Suddenly the Portuguese crouched as though to spring. As quick as the
+gleam of a viper's tongue, Leighton's long arms shot out. Straight for
+the man's throat went his hands. They closed, the long, white fingers
+around a swarthy neck, thumbs doubled in, their knuckles sinking into
+the throat. Lewis felt as though it were his own eyes that started from
+their sockets. With a scream, he turned and ran.
+
+He cast himself beneath the shelter of the first low-hanging
+orange-tree. He saw the Reverend Orme stalk by, bearing Shenton in his
+arms. For the first time in his life Lewis heard the sobs of a grown
+man, and instinctively knew himself the possessor of a secret thing--a
+thing that must never be told.
+
+At the house, alarmed by Natalie's incoherent, excited chatter and
+Lalia's stubborn silence, Mrs. Leighton waited in suspense. Leighton
+entered with his burden and laid it down. Then he turned. She saw his
+face.
+
+"Orme!" she cried, "_Orme!_" and started toward him, groping as though
+she had been blinded.
+
+"Touch me not, Ann," spoke Leighton, with a strange calmness. "Thank
+God! the mark of Cain is on my brow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+That very night Leighton sought out his friend, the chief of police. He
+told him his story from the first creeping fear for his boy to the
+moment of terrible vengeance.
+
+"So you killed him, eh?" said the chief, tossing his cigarette from him
+and thoughtfully lighting another. "Too bad. You ought to have come to
+me first, my friend, turned him over to us for a beating. It would have
+come to the same thing in the end and saved you a world of trouble. But
+what's done, is done. Now we must think. What do you suggest?"
+
+Amazement dawned in Leighton's haggard face.
+
+"What do _I_ suggest?" he answered. "What does the _law_ suggest, sir?
+Are there no courts and prison-bars In this country for--for----"
+
+"There, there," interrupted the chief. "As you say, there are courts, of
+course, gaols, too; but our accommodations for criminals are not
+suitable for gentlemen."
+
+"It is not for me to choose my accommodation, sir. I am here to pay the
+penalty of my crime. I have come to be arrested."
+
+"Arrested?" repeated the chief, staring at Leighton. "Are you not my
+friend? Are you not the friend of all of us that count?"
+
+"But--but----" stammered Leighton.
+
+"Yes, sir," repeated the chief, "my friend."
+
+"What do you mean?" cried Leighton. "Do you mean you will leave my
+punishment to my conscience--to my God?"
+
+The chief looked at him quizzically.
+
+"Your punishment? Why, certainly. To your God, if you like. But let us
+get down to business. You are nervous. Quite natural. When I was an
+irresponsible student, I killed a servant for waking me on the morning
+after a spree. I remember I was nervous for weeks. Now sit still. Calm
+yourself. Let me think for you. In fact, while we've been chatting, I
+_have_ thought for you."
+
+The chief leaned back in his chair and placed his finger-tips together.
+
+"Listen. When it becomes necessary, I shall block all roads--all exits
+from the city--by telegraph. There is one highway--the road into the
+interior--without telegraph as yet. We should never think of blocking
+that.
+
+"Now, as to time available. Let us be on the safe side. You must get
+away to-morrow. You have horses, a wagon, stable-hands. Have you a tent?
+I will lend you one--a large bell tent.
+
+"Now, as to affairs--your property in this town. You will sign papers
+making your friend Lawyer Lima. Rodolpho and me joint trustees. He is my
+bitterest enemy, and I am his. In this way you can rest assured that
+neither of us will rob you."
+
+Leighton made a deprecating gesture. The chief raised his hand and
+smiled.
+
+"Ah," he said, "do not rob me of that thought. It was a stroke of
+genius. Between us," he continued, "we will advance you all the money
+you will need for a year. By that time we can send you more." He rose,
+and held out his hand. "Now, my friend, go, and God go with you!"
+
+Leighton took the chief's hand.
+
+"Good-by. I--I thank you."
+
+"Not at all," said the chief, with a hearty grip. "To-morrow, eh? Get
+away to-morrow."
+
+Leighton walked out and home in a daze. The remembrance of the agony in
+which he had resigned himself to the abandonment of his family, to
+notoriety, disgrace, and retribution, clung to him. What had seemed a
+nightmare, with an awakening bound to come, now became a waking dream,
+more terrible, because no dawn could give it end.
+
+But the chief had been wise. He had left Leighton no time for disastrous
+introspection. Action, work, that sovereign antidote for troubled minds,
+seized upon him. He told Mrs. Leighton in as few words as possible what
+had happened.
+
+She, too, was dazed by the chief's philosophy of friendship.
+
+"But, Orme----" she began.
+
+"I know, I know, Ann," he interrupted. "Only, we haven't time to think
+now, nor time to talk. Call mammy. Remember, we have but the one wagon.
+Pack carefully."
+
+He himself hurried off to arouse the stable-hand. The stable-hand had
+not been to Manoel's house. He knew nothing of what had happened. He
+worked most of the night cheerfully, preparing for the welcome
+camping-trip.
+
+By noon on the following day, when streets and country roads lay
+deserted under the tropic sun, the cavalcade was off. The wagon, drawn
+by two mules in charge of the stable-hand, led the way. It was laden
+with tent, baggage, and the women-folk, Ann, Natalie, and mammy. Behind
+followed Leighton on his favorite horse and Shenton and Lewis on their
+ponies. By sundown they reached the banks of the Tieté. It took men and
+boys an hour to set the big bell tent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Because the road led north, they traveled north. Week after week, month
+after month, sometimes by hard, long stretches where water was scarce,
+sometimes lingering where pasturage was good, sometimes halting to let a
+fever run its course, they pushed northward. The farther they went, the
+more barren became the wilderness. The feudal mansions of the wealthy
+coffee-planters gave way to the miserable abodes of a land of drought.
+But houses were never far between, and wherever there were houses, there
+was cane rum. It was so cheap it was often given away for a smile.
+
+Twice in the long months Shenton had eluded his watchful father, once by
+slipping his saddle-cloth and going back to pick it up, and once by
+riding ahead on a misty morning. Each time he stole back with hanging
+and drooping shoulders. The look of utter despondency and gloomy despair
+in his eyes wrung his parents' hearts, held back his father's hand from
+wrath.
+
+Of them all, Shenton suffered most from fever. There came a time when he
+could no longer ride. Natalie, grown pale and thin, but strong withal,
+took his place on the pony and he hers on the wagon. There he lay long
+hours in his mother's arms.
+
+When all the storms of life had swept over her, Ann Leighton looked back
+upon those days as the abiding-place of her dearest memories. Safe
+within the circle of her arms lay her boy. There no evil could reach
+him, no gnawing temptation ravage his child's will. Her watchful love
+warded off the gloomy hour. His prattle of childish things warmed her
+heart until it swelled to an exquisite agony of content.
+
+One day they awoke to a new presence on the flat horizon. Far, far away
+rose a mountain from the plain. It was wonderfully symmetrical, rising
+to a single peak. All day long they traveled toward it. All day long
+Shenton kept his somber eyes fixed upon it. Toward evening he raised his
+face to his mother's. She leaned over him.
+
+"Mother," he whispered, "I should like to reach the mountain."
+
+Tears welled from her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She held
+Shenton's curly head against her face so that he could not see. She
+stifled a sob and whispered back:
+
+"My boy, you will reach the mountain."
+
+The next day a man of the country joined them. He was dressed in a suit
+and hat of deerskin. On his feet were sandals. Across one shoulder he
+carried a stick from which dangled a bundle. His quick, springy stride
+carried him easily beside the cavalcade.
+
+"The blessing of God be upon your Mercies," was his greeting. "Whence do
+you come and whither do you go? Tell him who so rudely asks, I beg you.
+I am John, the Courier."
+
+Ann and the Reverend Orme looked vaguely at each other. They had no
+answer. But Shenton spoke.
+
+"Friend," he said, "we come from the South. We journey to yonder
+mountain. What is it called?
+
+"It is called the Sorcerer."
+
+"The Sorcerer?" cried Shenton. "That is a strange-name."
+
+"It is called the Sorcerer," said the man, "because it deceives. It is a
+landmark in the wilderness, but it shows no man the way. So equal are
+its sides, that it points neither east nor west nor south nor north.
+Upon, its summit is a single tree, planted by no human hands."
+
+"I see the tree," said Shenton. "Mother, do you see the tree? It is like
+the steeple on a church." Then he turned to the courier. "Friend, the
+mountain points upward."
+
+They camped at the foot of the mountain, for fever had laid its final
+grip upon Shenton. He was too weak to stand the jolting of the wagon.
+One night, while lying in his mother's arms, he slipped away from life.
+
+Leighton looked upon his boy's face, still alight with content at having
+reached the mountain, upon his white, blue-veined body, so pitifully
+frail, and marveled that a frame so weak, so tender, so peaceful, had
+been only now a mighty battle-field.
+
+He gathered up the body in his arms, and calling roughly to Lewis to
+bring an ax, he started up the barren mountainside.
+
+Ann, dumb and tearless, stood before the tent, and watched him with
+unseeing eyes. Natalie, crying, clutched her skirt. At her feet sat
+mammy, her face upturned, tears flowing, her body swaying to her sobs.
+
+Up and up climbed Leighton with Lewis panting behind him. They reached
+the towering summit of the mountain.
+
+A great rock stood at the foot of the lonely tree. Beneath it Leighton
+dug with ax and hands. He tore branches from the tree and spread them
+within. Upon the fresh, green couch he laid the body of his boy. He fell
+upon his knees before it and tried to pray, but could not.
+
+"O, Death," he groaned, "to this young soul hast thou been kind." Then
+with many stones they closed the tomb.
+
+Leighton looked wistfully about him. He was seized by the primitive
+desire of man to leave some visible sign of overwhelming grief. His eyes
+rose above the rock to the lonely tree. Grasping the ax, he climbed the
+tree. High above the mountain-top he cut its stem. Then limb after limb
+fell crashing to the earth until only two were left. Out one and then
+the other he clambered and cut them off. The lonely tree was no more; in
+its place stood a mighty cross.
+
+From far away across the plain, John, the Courier, looked back. His keen
+eyes fell upon the mountain. He stopped and stared.
+
+"Ah, Sorcerer," he murmured, "hast thou now a heart? What power has
+crowned thy brow with the holy cross? Behold! one arm points to the
+rising sun and one to its setting. I shall no longer call thee Sorcerer,
+for thou art become the Guide."
+
+At the edge of the plain stretched a line of hills. Within them was a
+little valley that looked toward the distant mountain. Leighton
+purchased the valley from its owner, Dom Francisco, who prized it
+lightly beside his vast herds of cattle.
+
+At the top of the valley, and facing the mountain, Leighton built his
+new abode, four walls and a roof of homemade tiles. When it was
+finished, he looked upon its ugliness and said, "The Lord hath crushed
+my heart to infinite depths. Let us call this place Nadir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The Leightons, who settled at Nadir after a long year of pilgrimage,
+looked, back upon the happy years at Consolation Cottage as the dead
+might look back upon existence. They were changed indeed. Ann's skin had
+lost the pale pink of transplanted Northern blood. Her sweet face had
+almost lost the dignity of sorrow. It was lined, weather-beaten, at
+times almost vacant. The Reverend Orme's black mane had suddenly turned
+white in streaks. A perpetual scowl knitted his brows. To mammy's broad
+countenance, built for vast smiles, had come a look of plaintive
+despair.
+
+Natalie and Lewis were at the weedy age of nine. It was natural that
+they should have changed, but their change had gone beyond nature. Upon
+them, as upon their elders, had settled the silences and the vaguely
+wondering expression of those who live in lands of drought and hardship,
+who look upon fate daily.
+
+Both of the children had become thin and hard; but to Lewis had come a
+greater change. His brown hair and eyes had darkened almost to black,
+his skin taken on an olive tinge. His face, with its eager eyes
+sometimes shining like the high lights in a deep pool or suddenly grown
+slumberous with dreams, began to proclaim him a Leighton of the
+Leightons. So evident became the badge of lineage that Ann and the
+Reverend Orme both noticed it. To Ann it meant nothing, but in the
+Reverend Orme it aroused bitter memories of his own boy. He began to
+avert his eyes from Lewis.
+
+It was about this time that Natalie and Lewis cut their names to Lew and
+Nat. The two were inseparable. Each had a pony, and they roved at will
+until the sad day when a school was first opened in that wilderness.
+
+It happened that Dom Francisco, the cattle king from whom Leighton had
+purchased Nadir, was a widower twice over and the father of twenty
+children, many of them still of tender years. When he learned that
+Leighton had been a schoolmaster, he did not rest until he had persuaded
+him to undertake the instruction of such of his children as were not
+already of use on the ranch. The Reverend Orme consented from necessity.
+His cash from the sale of Leighton Academy was gone; the rents from
+Consolation Cottage were small and reached him at long intervals.
+
+Once more routine fell upon the Leighton household; once more the years
+stole by.
+
+Lewis's school days were short. The Reverend Orme found that he could
+not stand the constant sight of the boy's face. To save himself from the
+shame of an outburst, he had bought a flock of goats and put Lewis in
+charge. Sometimes on his pony, sometimes on foot, Lewis wandered with
+his flock over the low hills. When the rains had been kind and the
+wilderness was a riot of leaf and bloom above long reaches of verdant
+young grass, his journeys were short. But when the grass was dry, the
+endless thorn-trees leafless, and the whole earth, stripped of Nature's
+awnings, weltered under a brazen sky, the hardy goats carried him far in
+their search for sustenance.
+
+When he was near, Natalie joined him as soon as school and household
+duties would let her. Those were happy, quiet hours. Sometimes she
+brought cookies, hot from mammy's oven, sometimes the richer roly-poly,
+redolent of cinnamon and spice, a confection prized to this day, openly
+by the young, secretly by the old. Nor did Lewis receive her with empty
+hands. One day a monster guava, kept cool under moist leaves, greeted
+her eyes; the next, a brimming hatful of the tart imbu. If fruit failed,
+there was some wondrous toy of fingered clay or carved wood, or,
+perhaps, merely a glimpse of some furry little animal drawn to Lewis's
+knee by the power of vast stillness.
+
+Lewis could not have told what it was he felt for Natalie. She was not
+beautiful, as children of the world go. Her little nose was saddled with
+freckles. Her eyes were brown, with a tinge of gold, but they were too
+big for her pale face. She was thin and lanky. Her hair, which matched
+the color of her eyes, might have been beautiful, but hair done in hard,
+tight braids has no chance to show itself. Lewis only knew that even
+when most grave Natalie's note was a note of joy--the only note of joy
+in all Nadir. To hear her cry, panting from her haste, "What is it
+to-day, Lew? A guava? O, Lew, what a _beauty_!" was ample reward for the
+longest search.
+
+But there were days when Lewis and his goats were too far afield for
+Natalie to come. On those days Lewis carried with him sometimes a book,
+but more often a lump of clay, wrapped in a wet cloth. He would capture
+some frolicking kid and handle him for an hour, gently, but deeply,
+seeking out bone and muscle with his thin, nervous fingers. Then he
+would mold a tiny and clumsy image of the kid in clay. No sooner was it
+done than idleness would pall upon him. Back would go the clay into the
+wet cloth, to be kneaded into a shapeless mass from which a new creation
+might spring forth, a full-grown goat, his pony, any live thing upon
+which he could first lay his hands.
+
+Even so, those days were long. The books he had read many, many times.
+Sometimes the clay would turn brittle under the morning sun, sometimes
+his fingers forgot what cunning they had, sometimes black thought fell
+upon him and held him till he felt a vague despair. He stood within the
+threshold of manhood. Who was he? What was life? Was this life?
+
+About him men married and begat children, goats begat goats, cattle
+begat cattle, one day begat another. Lewis sat with hands locked about
+his knees and stared across the low hills out into the wide plain. "The
+Bible is wrong," he breathed to himself. "The world will never, never
+end."
+
+Little do we know when our present world will end. A day came when Dom
+Francisco, the cattle king, whose herds by popular account were as the
+sands of the desert, asked in marriage the hand of Natalie.
+
+As, toward evening, Lewis headed his flock for home, he saw in the
+distance a pillar of dust. It came rapidly to him. From it emerged
+Natalie on her pony. She jumped down, slipped the reins over her arm,
+and joined him.
+
+"You have come far and fast," he said, glancing at the sweating pony.
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"No," said Natalie, hesitatingly, and then repeated--"no. I've just come
+to talk to you."
+
+For some time they walked in silence behind the great herd of nervous
+goats, which occasionally stopped to pasture, but more often scampered
+ahead till a call from Lewis checked them. Natalie laid her hand on the
+sleeve of Lewis's leather coat, a gesture with which she was wont to
+claim his close attention.
+
+"Lew," she said, "what is marriage?"
+
+Lewis turned and looked down at her. They were both seventeen, but his
+inch start of her had grown to half a foot.
+
+"Marriage? Why, marriage----" He stopped. A faint color flared in his
+cheeks. He looked away from her. Then he said calmly: "Marriage, Nat, is
+just mating--like birds mate. First you see them flying about anyhow;
+then two fly together. They build a nest; they mate; they have little
+birds. The little birds grow up and do the whole thing over again.
+That's--that's marriage."
+
+"So?" said Natalie. A little frown came to her brows. Was that marriage,
+indeed? Then she shook the frown from her. "Lew," she said gravely, but
+placidly, "they tell me I'm to marry Dom Francisco. Isn't it--isn't it
+_funny_?"
+
+Lewis stopped in his tracks and shook her hand from his arm. His eyes
+flared.
+
+"What did you say? They tell you--_who_ told you?"
+
+"Why, Lew!" cried Natalie, tears in her eyes and her lips twitching.
+
+"There, there, Nat," said Lewis, softly. He laid his arm across her
+shoulders in an awkward gesture of affection. "Tell me, Nat. Who was it
+told you--told you that?"
+
+"Father," sobbed Natalie.
+
+Before she knew what he was doing, Lew had leaped upon her pony and was
+off at a gallop.
+
+"Lew!" cried Natalie, "Lew! Shall I bring in the goats?"
+
+He did not heed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Lewis stopped at Nadir only long enough to learn that the Reverend Orme
+had remained at the school-house as had been his wont of late. He found
+him there, idle, sitting at the rough table that served as his desk, and
+brooding. Lewis walked half the length of the room before Leighton saw
+him.
+
+"What are you doing here?"
+
+"What have you been telling Nat?"
+
+The questions were almost simultaneous.
+
+"What have I been telling Natalie?" repeated the Reverend Orme. "Well,
+what _have_ I been telling her?"
+
+Lewis fixed his eyes on Leighton's face.
+
+"Are you really going to marry Nat to that--to that old man?"
+
+The Reverend Orme shifted in his chair.
+
+"Lewis," he said, "I don't know that it's any of your business, but it
+is probable that Natalie will marry Dom Francisco."
+
+Lewis moved awkwardly from one foot to the other, but his eyes never
+shifted.
+
+"Does Mother--Mrs. Leighton know about this? Does mammy? Do they
+_agree_?"
+
+"Young man," answered Leighton, angrily, "they know that, as this world
+goes, Natalie is a lucky girl. Dom Francisco is the wealthiest man in
+the province. Look around you, sir. Whom would you have her marry if not
+Dom Francisco? Some pauper, I suppose. Some foundling."
+
+Lewis's cheeks burned red.
+
+"You need not go so far as to marry her to a foundling," he answered,
+"but you might be kinder to her than to marry her to--to that old man.
+You might choke her to death."
+
+The Reverend Orme leaped from his chair.
+
+"Choke _her_ to death, you--you interloper!" He strode toward Lewis, his
+trembling hands held before him.
+
+"Hold on!" cried Lewis, his eyes flaming. "I'm no drunkard--no cowardly
+Manoel."
+
+The Reverend Orme stopped in his stride. A ghastly pallor came over his
+face.
+
+"Manoel!" he whispered. "What do _you_ know about Manoel?"
+
+Lewis's heart sank low within him. His unbroken silence of years had
+been instinctive. Now, when it was too late, he suddenly realized that
+it had been the thread that held him to Nadir. He had broken it. Never
+more could he and the Reverend Orme sleep beneath the same roof, eat at
+the same table. He saw it in the Reverend Orme's face.
+
+Leighton had staggered back to his chair and sat staring vacantly at the
+floor. Lewis looked at his head, streaked with white, at his brow,
+terribly lined, and at his vacant, staring eyes. He felt a sudden great
+pity for his foster-father, but pity had come too late.
+
+"Sir," he said, "I am going away. I shall need some money." He felt no
+shame at asking for money. For seven years he had tended Leighton's
+goats--tended them so well that in seven years they had increased
+sevenfold.
+
+Leighton unlocked the drawer of his table and took out a small roll of
+bank-notes. He tossed it on the table. Lewis picked out two notes from
+the roll, and pushed the rest back. He started toward the door. Half-way
+he paused and turned to his foster-father.
+
+"Good-by, sir. I'm sorry I let you know that--that I knew."
+
+Leighton did not look up.
+
+"Good-by, Lewis," he said quietly.
+
+Lewis hurried to his little room. He took out all his boyish treasures
+and laid them on the bed. How silly they looked, how childish! He swept
+them away, and spread a large red handkerchief in their place. He heard
+Natalie come in and call for him, but he did not answer. In the
+handkerchief he packed his scanty wardrobe. As he knotted the corners
+together he heard Mrs. Leighton and mammy chatting lightly with Natalie,
+helping her to dress.
+
+Lewis, heavy-hearted, looked about his ugly little room, so bare, but as
+friendly as a plain face endeared by years of kindness. From among his
+discarded treasures he chose the model in clay of a kid, jumping, the
+best he had ever made. He tucked it into his bundle; then he picked up
+the bundle, and walked out into the great room, kitchen, sitting and
+dining room combined.
+
+Mrs. Leighton and mammy were seated at the table. Beside them stood
+Natalie. They turned and looked at Lewis, surprised. Lewis stared at
+Natalie. She wore a dress he had seen but twice before and then on great
+occasions. It had been a birthday present from her parents. It was a
+red, pleated dress. Accordion silk, the women called it.
+
+About Natalie's shoulders was a white, filmy scarf. For the first time
+in her life her hair was loosely piled upon her head. Through it and
+over it ran a bright ribbon. The gloss of the satin ribbon was as naught
+beside the gloss of her shining hair. Her neck, and her arms from the
+elbows, were bare. Her neck was very thin. One could almost see the
+bones.
+
+"Where are you going, Lewis?" said Mrs. Leighton, listlessly.
+
+Lewis felt the tears rise to his eyes. He was ashamed of them.
+
+"Do not speak to me," he said roughly. "You are a wicked woman. You have
+sold Natalie." Then he turned fiercely on mammy. "And you," he
+said--"you have dressed her for the market. You are a bad nigger."
+
+Mrs. Leighton gasped and then began to cry softly. Mammy's eyes stared
+at Lewis.
+
+"Bad niggah, young Marster?" she mumbled vaguely.
+
+Natalie grasped the table and leaned forward. "Lew!" she cried. "Why,
+_Lew_!"
+
+Lewis struck a tear from his cheek, turned, and fled. He went to the
+rough lean-to that served as a stable and began to saddle his pony.
+
+In all the heavens there was not a cloud. It was what the natives, too
+often scourged by drought, called an ugly night. The full moon rose
+visibly into the pale bowl of blue. Above her tropic glare the satellite
+stars shone wanly and far away.
+
+As Lewis was about to mount, Natalie came running from the house. She
+held her new dress above her knees. Her white scarf streamed out like
+two wings behind her.
+
+"Lew!" she called. "Wait! What are you doing?"
+
+Lewis waited for her. She came close to him and laid her hand upon his
+arm. Her brown eyes, shot with gold, were bigger than ever. They looked
+their question into his face.
+
+"Nat," he said, "I've quarreled with your dad. There's nothing to talk
+about. I must go."
+
+"Go, Lew? Go where?"
+
+Lewis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I don't know," he said. "Just go."
+
+Natalie laid her head against him. Her two hands gripped his shoulders.
+She sobbed as though her heart would break. Lewis put his arm about her.
+He felt the twitching bones of her thin, warm body. His face was in her
+hair.
+
+"Ah, Natalie," he murmured, brokenly, "don't cry! don't cry!"
+
+They were children. They did not think to kiss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Lewis traveled toward the ancient town of Oeiras. He had cast about in
+his mind for some means of livelihood and had decided to become a
+goatskin-buyer. He was hoping to come to an arrangement with some
+merchant in Oeiras.
+
+One morning as he jogged along, his eyes on the ground, his thoughts far
+away, he heard the patter of many hoofs on the hard clay trail. A
+pack-train was coming toward him. At its head rode a guide. The guide
+stopped upon meeting Lewis, and immediately every mule behind him
+stopped, too.
+
+"The blessing of God be upon you, friend!" he drawled. "Whence do you
+come and whither do you go?"
+
+"God's blessing be praised," answered Lewis. "I come from the hills. I
+go to Oeiras."
+
+"To Oeiras? We come thence. It is a long road, Oeiras."
+
+"I go to seek a merchant who will start me as a goat-skin-buyer. Do you
+know of any such?"
+
+"A goatskin-buyer? Friend, for almost every goat there is a
+goatskin-buyer. My brother is one, my father-in-law another. I myself
+shall become one after this trip is over. You would do well to choose
+some other occupation."
+
+Lewis did not smile at the man's guile, though it had not escaped him.
+He was gazing open-mouthed at a horseman who was forcing his way past
+the laden mules. From some distance the horseman yelled in English:
+
+"What the devil's the matter now? Ye gods and little fishes! what are
+you stopping for now?"
+
+The guide shrugged his shoulders and tapped his head.
+
+"Mad," he said; "an idiot. Imagine! He thinks those are words!"
+
+The horseman drew up beside them, wrath in his face.
+
+"Sir," said Lewis, "your guide stopped to greet me. It is the custom of
+the country."
+
+Lewis and Natalie spoke English with the precision of the adults from
+whom they had learned it. They had never heard the argot of American
+childhood, but from mammy and from the tongue of their adopted land they
+had acquired a soft slurring of speech which gave a certain quaintness
+to their diction.
+
+It was the turn of the stranger to stare open-mouthed. Lewis wore the
+uniform of the local cow-boy: a thick, wide-brimmed leather hat,
+fastened under the chin with a thong; a loose deerskin jumper and
+deerskin breeches that fitted tightly to the leg and ended in a long
+flap over the instep. On his feet were sandals and grotesque,
+handwrought spurs. His red bundle was tied to the cantle of his saddle.
+At hearing precise English from such a source, the stranger felt an
+astonishment almost equal to Balaam's surprise on hearing his ass speak.
+
+No less was Lewis's wonder at the stranger's raiment. A pith helmet,
+Norfolk jacket, moleskin riding-breeches, leather puttees, and stout,
+pigskin footwear--these were strange apparel.
+
+The stranger was not old. One would have placed him at forty-five. As a
+matter of fact, he was only forty. He was the first to recover poise. He
+peered keenly into Lewis's face.
+
+"May I ask your name?"
+
+"My name is Lewis Leighton. And yours?"
+
+The stranger waved his hand impatiently.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"I am on my way to Oeiras to seek employment," said Lewis.
+
+"To seek employment, eh?" said the stranger, thoughtfully. "Will you
+tell this misbegotten guide that I wish to return to the water we passed
+a little while ago? I should like to talk to you, if you don't mind."
+
+Lewis translated the order.
+
+"So they are words, after all," said the guide. He shook his head from
+side to side, as one who suspects witchcraft.
+
+When the pack-train was headed back on the road it had come, Lewis
+turned to the guide.
+
+"Whither was your master bound?" he asked.
+
+"Him?" said the guide, with a shrug of his shoulder. "Who knows? No
+sooner does he reach one town than he is off for another. It is his
+life, the madman, to bore a hole through this world of Christ. Just now
+we were headed for the ranch of Dom Francisco. After that, who knows?
+But he pays, friend. Gold oozes from him like matter from a sore."
+
+They came to a spring. The stranger ordered up the fly of a tent. From
+his baggage he took two wonderful folding-chairs and a folding-table,
+opened them, and placed them under the fly. "Sit down," he said to
+Lewis.
+
+The stranger took off his helmet and tossed it on the ground. Lewis
+pulled off his hat hurriedly and laid it aside. The stranger looked at
+him long and earnestly.
+
+"Are you hungry?"
+
+Lewis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"One can always eat," he said.
+
+"Good," said the stranger. "Please tell these loafers to off-load the
+mules and set camp. And call that one here--the black fellow with a
+necklace of chickens."
+
+Lewis did as he was bidden. The man with the chickens stood before the
+stranger and grinned.
+
+The stranger raised his eyes on high.
+
+"Ah, God," he said, "I give Thee thanks that at last I can talk to this
+low-browed, brutal son of a degenerate race of cooks." He turned to
+Lewis. "Tell him," he continued--"tell him that I never want to see
+anything boiled again unless it's his live carcass boiling in oil. Tell
+him that I hate the smell, the sight, and the sound of garlic. Tell him
+that jerked beef is a fitting sustenance for maggots, but not for
+hungering man. Tell him there is a place in the culinary art for red
+peppers, but not by the handful. Tell him, may he burn hereafter as I
+have burned within and lap up with joy the tears that I have shed in
+pain. Tell him--tell him that."
+
+For the first time in the presence of the stranger Lewis smiled. His
+smile was rare and, as is often the case with a rare smile, it held
+accumulated charm.
+
+"Sir," he said, "let me cook a meal for you."
+
+While Lewis cooked, the stranger laid the table for two. In less than an
+hour the meal was ready. A young fowl, spitchcocked, nestled in a snowy
+bed of rice, each grain of which was a world unto itself. The fowl was
+basted with the sovereign gravy of the South; thick, but beaten smooth,
+dusted with pepper and salt, breathing an essence of pork. Beside the
+laden platter was a plate of crisp bread--bread that had been soaked
+into freshness in a wet cloth and then toasted lightly. Beside the bread
+lay a pat of fresh butter on a saucer. It was butter from the tin, but
+washed white in the cool water of the spring, and then sprinkled with
+salt.
+
+The stranger nodded approval as he started to eat.
+
+"A simple meal, my accomplished friend," he said to Lewis, "but I know
+the mouths of the gods are watering."
+
+When nothing was left of the food, the stranger, through Lewis, ordered
+the table cleared, then he turned to his guest.
+
+"You have already had occasion to see how useful you would be to me," he
+said. "I propose that you seek employment no further. Join me not as
+cook, but as interpreter, companion, friend in very present trouble. I
+will pay you a living wage."
+
+Lewis's eyes lighted up. What wage should he demand for accompanying
+this strange man, who drew him as Lewis himself drew shy, wild creatures
+to his knee? No wage. No wage but service. "I will go with you," he
+said.
+
+"Good!" said the stranger. "Now--where shall we go?"
+
+"Where shall we go?" repeated Lewis, puzzled.
+
+"Yes. Where shall we go?"
+
+"That is for you to say," said Lewis, gravely, fearing a joke.
+
+"Not at all," said the stranger. "To me it is a matter of complete
+indifference. Of all the spots on the face of the earth, this is the
+last; no game, no water, no scenery, no women, no food. And having seen
+the last spot on earth, direction no longer interests me. What would
+_you_ like to see?"
+
+Lewis felt himself inside a book of fairy-tales.
+
+"I?" he said, smiling shyly. "I should like to see the sea again."
+
+"Right you are!" said the stranger. "Tell the guide to start for the
+sea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The stranger was accompanied by two muleteers, a cook, a wash-boy, and
+the guide. Not one of these was a menial, for menials do not breed in
+open country. When the stranger shouted for one of them, they all
+gathered round him and stood at ease, smiling at his gestures, guessing
+genially at what he was trying to say, and in the end calmly doing
+things their own way.
+
+When Lewis called the guide, they all came, as was their custom.
+
+"Your master," said Lewis to the guide, "wishes to go to the sea. He
+bids you start for the sea."
+
+The guide stared at Lewis, then at the stranger.
+
+"The sea! What is the sea?"
+
+"The sea," said Lewis, gravely, "is the ocean, the great water where
+ships sail."
+
+"Bah!" said the guide. "More madness. How shall I guide him to the sea
+if I know not where it is? Tell him there is no sea."
+
+One of the muleteers broke in.
+
+"Indeed, there is a sea, but it is far, far away. It is thirty days
+away."
+
+"And how do you go?" asked Lewis.
+
+"I do not know. I only know that one must go to Joazeiro, and from there
+they say there is a road of iron that leads one to the sea."
+
+"Joazeiro!" exclaimed the guide. "Ah, that is some sense. Joazeiro is a
+place. It is on the river. Petrolina is on this side, Joazeiro on that.
+As for this road of iron, hah!" He turned on the muleteer. "Thou, too,
+art mad."
+
+The stranger listened to what Lewis had to say, then he drew out a map
+from his pocket, unfolded it, and spread it on the table. "A road of
+iron, eh? Well, let's see."
+
+The guide grinned at Lewis.
+
+"It is a picture of the world," he said. "He stares at it daily."
+
+"Yes," said the stranger, "here we are--Joazeiro."
+
+Lewis leaned over his shoulder. He saw the word "Joazeiro." From it a
+straight red line ran eastward to the edge of the map.
+
+The stranger measured distances with a pencil. "We can make Joazeiro in
+fifteen days," he said. "Tell the men we will rest to-day and to-night.
+To-morrow we start."
+
+The marvels of that camp were a revelation to Lewis. He kept his mouth
+shut, but his eyes were open. One battered thing after another revealed
+its mystery to him. He turned to the stranger.
+
+"You are a great traveler," he said.
+
+The stranger started. He had been day-dreaming.
+
+"A great traveler? Yes. I have been a wanderer on all the faces of the
+earth. I have lived seven lives. I'll give them to you, if you like."
+
+Lewis smiled, puzzled, but somehow pleased.
+
+"Give them to me--your seven lives?"
+
+The stranger did not answer. Gloom had settled on the face that Lewis
+had seen only alight. Lewis, too, was silent. His life with Ann and the
+Reverend Orme had taught him much. He recognized the dwelling-place of
+sorrow.
+
+Presently the stranger shook his mood from him.
+
+"Come," he said, "let us begin." From one of his bags he took a pack of
+cards. He sat at the table and shuffled them. "There are many games of
+patience," he continued. "They are all founded on averages and thousands
+of combinations, so intricate that the law of recurrence can be
+determined only by months of figuring. However, one can learn a patience
+without bothering with the law of recurrence. I shall now teach you a
+game called Canfield."
+
+Time after time the cards were laid out, played, and reshuffled.
+
+"Now," said the stranger, "do you think you know the game?"
+
+"Yes," said Lewis, "I think so."
+
+He played, with some success.
+
+"You have got out fourteen cards," said the stranger. "You have beaten
+the game."
+
+"How can that be?" asked Lewis.
+
+"It can be," said the stranger, "because this is one of the few games of
+patience that has been reduced to a scientific gambling basis. The odds,
+allowing for the usual advantage to the banker, have been determined at
+five to one. Say I'm the banker. I sell you the pack for fifty-two
+pennies, and I pay you five pennies for every card you get out. Five to
+one. Do you see that?"
+
+Lewis nodded.
+
+"Well," said the stranger. "You got out fourteen cards. If you had paid
+a penny a card for the pack, how much would you have gained over what
+you spent?"
+
+"Eighteen pennies," said Lewis, after a moment. "If I had got them all
+out," he added, "it would have been two hundred and eight pennies."
+
+"Right!" said the stranger. "You have a head for figures. Now, have you
+any money?"
+
+Lewis colored slightly.
+
+"Yes," he said. He fished out his two bank-notes and laid them on the
+table.
+
+The stranger picked them up.
+
+"All right," he said. "I'll sell you the pack for one of these. Now, go
+ahead."
+
+All afternoon Lewis played against the bank with varying fortune. When
+he was ahead, some instinct made him ashamed to call off; when he was
+behind, a fever seized him--a fever to hold his own, to win. His eyes
+began to ache. Toward evening three successive bad hands suddenly wiped
+out his store of money. A feeling of despair came over him.
+
+"Don't worry," said the stranger. He pushed the two notes and another
+toward Lewis. "I'll give you those for your pony. Now, at it you go. Win
+him back."
+
+Lewis played feverishly. In an hour he had lost the three notes.
+
+"Never mind," said the stranger; "I'll give you another chance." He
+pushed one of the notes toward Lewis. "That for your bundle in the red
+handkerchief. You may win the whole lot back in one hand."
+
+Lewis played and lost. Despair seized upon him now with no uncertain
+hand. His money, his pony, even his little bundle gone! This was
+calamity. He suffered as only the young can suffer. His world had
+suddenly become a blank. Through bloodshot eyes he looked upon the
+stranger and tried to hate him, but could not.
+
+"Come," said the stranger, rising and lighting a lantern. "I'm going to
+make you a foolish offer of big odds against me. I'll wager all I've won
+from you against one year's service that you can't beat the game in one
+hand. Eleven cards out of the fifty-two beats the game."
+
+What was a year's service? thought Lewis. He had been willing to give
+that for nothing. He played and lost. Suddenly shame was added to his
+despair. To give service is noble, but to have it bought from you, won
+from you! Lewis fought back his tears desperately. What a fool, what a
+fool this man, this stranger, had made of him!
+
+The stranger took out his watch and looked at it.
+
+"In seven hours and seven minutes," he remarked, "I have given you one
+of my seven lives that it took almost seven years to live. Seven, by the
+way, is one of the mystic numbers."
+
+At his first words Lewis felt a wave of relief--the relief of the diver
+in deep waters who feels himself rising to the surface. Perhaps all was
+not lost. Perhaps this man could restore their imperiled friendship, so
+sudden, already so dear.
+
+The stranger went on:
+
+"Ashamed to stop when you're ahead, too keen to stop when you're behind,
+you've lost all you possessed, jarred your trust in your fellow-man, and
+bartered freedom for slavery--mortgaged a year of your life. You've
+climbed the cliff of greed, got one whiff of sordid elation at the top,
+and tumbled down the precipice of despair. In short, you've lived the
+whole life of a gambler--all in seven hours."
+
+He picked up Lewis's two notes and stuffed them into his own well-filled
+wallet. "They say," he continued, "that only experience teaches. You may
+gamble all the rest of your life, but take it from me, my friend,
+gambling holds no emotion you haven't gone through today."
+
+Their eyes met. Lewis's gaze was puzzled, but intent. The stranger's
+eyes were almost twinkling.
+
+"By the way," he said, "what's in the bundle? Let's see."
+
+Lewis brought his sorry little bundle and laid it on the table. He
+untied the knots with trembling fingers. The stranger poked around the
+contents with his finger. He picked out the little kid of clay, already
+minus a leg.
+
+"Hallo! What's this?"
+
+"A toy," said Lewis, coloring.
+
+"Who made it?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"You did, eh? Well, I'll keep it." The stranger fingered around until he
+found the missing leg. "You can take the rest of your things away. I'll
+lend 'em to you, and your pony. Now let's eat."
+
+That night Lewis, too excited to sleep, lay awake for hours smiling at
+the moon. He was smiling because he felt that somehow, out of the wreck,
+friendship had been saved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The country through which they traveled was familiar to Lewis, tedious
+to the stranger. Sand, sparse grass, and thorn-trees; thorn-trees and
+sand, was their daily portion. The sun beat down and up. They traveled
+long hours by night, less and less by day. They talked little, for night
+has a way of sealing the lips of those who journey under her wing.
+
+Water was scarce. The day before that on which they hoped to make the
+river, a forced march brought them to a certain water-hole. The
+stranger, Lewis, and the guide arrived at it far ahead of the
+pack-train. The water-hole was dry. They were thirsty. They pushed on to
+a little mud house a short way off the trail. The stranger looked up as
+they approached it.
+
+"Do you think it will stand till we get there?" he asked.
+
+Lewis smiled. The house was leaning in three directions. The weight of
+its tiled roof threatened at any moment to crush the long-suffering
+walls to the ground. At one corner stood a great earthen jar, and beside
+the jar an old hag. She held a gourd to her lips. On some straw in the
+shade of the eaves was a setting hen.
+
+"Auntie," called Lewis, "we thirst. Give us water."
+
+The old woman turned and stared at them. Her face, all but her eyes, was
+as dilapidated as her house. Her black eyes, brilliant and piercing,
+shone out of the ruin.
+
+"I have no water for thee to drink, my pretty son," she answered.
+
+"Shameless one!" cried Lewis. "Dost thou drink thyself and deny the
+traveler?"
+
+"Eh, eh!" cackled the old woman. "Thou wouldst share my gourd? Then
+drink, for thy tongue is not so pretty as thy face." She held up the
+gourd to Lewis in both her hands. He took it from her and passed it to
+the stranger.
+
+The stranger made a grimace, but sipped the water. Then he flung gourd
+and water to the ground with; half an oath.
+
+"Bah!" he said to Lewis. "It is salt."
+
+"Salt!" cried Lewis. "But she drank of it. I saw her drink."
+
+"Yes," said the stranger; "she's got an alkalified stomach. Let those
+who hanker after immortality look upon this woman. She will never die."
+
+The old hag laughed.
+
+"Ah, shameless one, eh?" she mumbled. "'Tis the young one should have
+tasted, but no matter, for the son is the spit of the father."
+
+"Auntie," said Lewis, smiling, "give us of thy shade."
+
+"Willingly, my pretty son, for thou hast smiled."
+
+They dismounted. The stranger and Lewis entered the house.
+
+"Here," cried the old woman, "sit here; for when the house falls, the
+weight will go yonder."
+
+Lewis explained to the stranger. He glanced at the old woman.
+
+"Old Immortality has brains," he said. "Might have known it, with those
+eyes."
+
+They sat on the floor of beaten earth. The old woman went out. Through
+the gaps in the walls Lewis saw her build a fire and put a pot of the
+brackish water on to boil. Then he saw her drag the setting hen from her
+nest and wring its neck. He jumped up and rushed out.
+
+"What are you doing?" he cried. "Why kill a setting hen?"
+
+"Aye," said the old woman, "it is a pity, for she is the last chicken in
+the world."
+
+Lewis and the stranger were hungry. Night was falling. There was no sign
+of their belated pack-train. When boiling had done its utmost, they ate
+the last chicken on earth. Before they had finished, a child, pitifully
+thin, came in, bearing on her head a small jar of water.
+
+"Now drink," said the old woman, "for this water came from the river,
+twelve miles away."
+
+They drank, then the stranger set his helmet on the floor for a pillow,
+laid his head upon it, and slept. Lewis sat beside him. The child had
+curled up in a corner. The guide was snoring outside. In the doorway the
+old woman crouched and crooned.
+
+Presently she turned and peered into the house. She beckoned to Lewis.
+He rose and followed her. She led him around the house, through a
+thicket of thorn-trees, and up the slope of a small sand-dune. Toward
+the west sand-dunes rose and fell in monotonous succession.
+
+At the top of the dune the old woman crouched on her heels and motioned
+to Lewis to sit.
+
+"My son," she said, "thou hast taken my carcass for the common clay of
+these parts. I cannot blame thee, but had I the water to wash this
+cursed dust from my face and hands, I would show thee a skin that was
+stained at birth with the olive and veins whose blood flows unmixed
+through generations without end. These wrinkled feet have flattened the
+face of the earth bit by bit. Bear witness those who left me here behind
+to die! My eyes have looked upon things seen and unseen. I am old. To
+youth is given folly; to the old, wisdom. To-night my wisdom shall
+suckle thy folly, for the heavens have shown me a sign."
+
+Lewis stared at the old woman with wondering eyes. He had never seen a
+Gipsy. What was she? he asked himself. No native. The native's mind was
+keen with knowledge of horses, cattle, and goats, but stolid, almost
+stupid, when it came to words and thoughts. There was an exception--the
+mad. The mad prattled and sometimes said extraordinary things. Perhaps
+this woman was mad. He turned half toward her.
+
+"Look up," she commanded. "Dost thou see no sign?"
+
+Lewis lay on his back and gazed into the sky. "I see the moon and the
+stars, Auntie--a young moon and very old stars--but no sign. Not even a
+cloud to remind the world of rain."
+
+The old woman leaned forward and touched his arm. He started.
+
+"Look over there!" She pointed to the west and south. "See how the young
+moon is held within the claws of Scorpion. His back is arched across the
+quarter. His tail points to the south. The Cross that some call Holy
+hangs like a pendent upon its tip. Look up. Upon his arched back he
+bears the circlet--the seven worlds of women."
+
+"I see the Scorpion, Auntie," said Lewis, humoring her. "I see the
+circlet too, but it is far above his back. It is like a crown. Read me
+the sign of the seven worlds of women."
+
+Lewis propped his head on one elbow. Before him squatted the old woman.
+Her hands were locked about her legs. Her chin rested on her knees. Her
+beady eyes shone like two black stars.
+
+"And shall I not read thee a sign?" she continued, swaying from side to
+side. "Child of love art thou. At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder,
+for thou wert conceived too near the heart. Thy path through the world
+is blazed as one blazes a path in the forest. He who is at thy side is
+before thee and after thee. Thou travelest in darkness, but thou art
+cursed and blessed with the gift of sight. The worlds of women are
+seven: spirit, weed, flower, the blind, the visioned, libertine, and
+saint. None of these is for thee. For each child of love there is a
+woman that holds the seven worlds within a single breast. Hold fast to
+thy birthright, even though thou journey with thy back unto the light. I
+have spoken."
+
+A long silence fell upon the sand-dune. Lewis felt held, oppressed. He
+was tired. He wished to sleep, but the woman's words rang in his brain
+like shouts echoing in an empty hall.
+
+Presently came sounds from the mud hut beyond the thorn-thicket. Men
+were calling. There was the patter and scrape of mules' hoofs, the
+whistle of those that urged them on. Lewis and the old hag hurried down.
+The guide, the muleteers, and the stranger were having a wordy struggle.
+
+"Hallo," said the stranger, "where have you been? What are they trying
+to say? I need you even in my sleep."
+
+"They say," said Lewis, "that there is no help for it; we must push on
+to the river now. The mules must have water."
+
+"Right you are," said the stranger. He pointed to one heavily laden
+mule. "We don't need those provisions. Give them to Old Immortality.
+They'll last her a hundred years."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+They arrived in Petrolina at dawn. Before them swept the vast river.
+Beyond it could be seen the dazzling walls and restful, brown-tiled
+roofs of Joazeiro. The distant whistle of a shunting locomotive jarred
+on the morning stillness.
+
+For the first time Lewis saw the stranger in action. Off came the loads.
+They were sorted rapidly. Tent, outfit, and baggage were piled into one
+of the ponderous ferry-canoes that lined the shore. All that was left
+was handed over to the guide for equal division among the men.
+
+"Now," cried the stranger, "there's always a marketplace. Tell them to
+take this worn-out bunch along and find the cattle corner." He waved at
+the ponies and mules.
+
+The market was in full swing. Rubber, goatskins, hides, and orchids from
+the interior; grain, tobacco, sugar, and rum from the river valley, met,
+mingled, and passed at this crossways of commerce. The stranger stood
+beside his mules. The dome of his pith helmet rose above the average
+level of heads. People gazed upon it in mild wonder, and began to crowd
+around.
+
+"Now," said the stranger, poking Lewis's thin pony in the ribs, "offer
+this jack-rabbit for sale, cash and delivery on the minute."
+
+"Offer my--my pony----" stammered Lewis.
+
+The stranger eyed him grimly.
+
+"_Your_ pony?"
+
+Suddenly Lewis remembered. He threw up his head and called out as he was
+bidden. People nudged one another, but no man spoke. Then a wag on the
+outskirts of the crowd shouted:
+
+"I'll give thee a penny for what's left of that horse, brother."
+
+There was a ripple of laughter. Lewis colored, and his eyes grew moist.
+
+"He says he will give a penny," he said.
+
+"A penny?" said the stranger, gravely. "Take it. Cash, mind you. Cash on
+delivery."
+
+The sale was made amid general consternation. As the dazed wag led his
+purchase away, he trembled as though from a first stroke of paralysis.
+The marketplace began to buzz, to hum, and then to shout, "A stranger
+sells horses for a penny, cash on delivery!" They laughed and crowded
+nearer. Merchants forgot their dignity, and came running from the
+streets of the town.
+
+"Now, boy, this one," said the stranger, poking a mule; "but be careful.
+Be careful to wait for the highest bid."
+
+The stranger's warning came just in time. No sooner had Lewis called the
+mule for sale than bids rained on him from every side. One after the
+other, in rapid succession, the animals were sold; but no more went for
+a penny.
+
+His pockets stuffed with notes and silver, the stranger pushed his way
+through the crowd, suddenly grown silent. On the way to the river he
+paid off his men. He climbed into the canoe, and Lewis followed. The
+boatmen shoved off.
+
+The wag, leading Lewis's pony, had followed them to the river-bank.
+
+"Show me thy hoof, partner," he shouted, laughing, to the stranger.
+"Thou shouldst deal in souls, not in horses. I would I had shaken thy
+hand. God go with thee!"
+
+The stranger calmly counted his money.
+
+"Boy," he said, "I have just given you a five-year life in five minutes.
+Write this down in your mind. In high finance he who knows figures
+starves on two dollars a day; success comes to him who knows men."
+
+During the long hours in the dirty train that jerked them toward the
+coat and civilization the stranger began to grow nervous. Lewis looked
+up more than once to find himself the object of a troubled gaze. They
+were the only passengers. There were moments when the road-bed permitted
+snatches of conversation, but it was during a long stop on a side-track
+that the stranger unburdened himself.
+
+"Boy," he said, "the time is coming when I must tell you my name."
+
+"I know your name," said Lewis.
+
+"What!" cried the stranger.
+
+"I know your name," repeated Lewis; "it is Leighton."
+
+"How? How do you know?" The stranger was frowning.
+
+"No," said Lewis, quietly; "I haven't been looking through your things.
+One day my--my foster-father and my foster-mother were talking. They did
+not know I was near. I didn't realize they were talking about me until
+mammy spoke up. Mammy is--well, you know, she's just a mammy----"
+
+"Yes," said the stranger. "What did mammy say?"
+
+"She said," continued Lewis, coloring slightly, "that a Leighton didn't
+have to have his name written in a family Bible because God never
+forgets to write it in his face."
+
+"Good for mammy!" said the stranger. "So that's what they were talking
+about." For a moment he sat silent and thoughtful; then he said: "Boy,
+don't you worry about any family Bible business. Your name's written in
+the family Bible all right. Take it from me; I know. I'm Glendenning
+Leighton--your father." His eyes glistened.
+
+"I'm glad about the name," said Lewis, his face alight. "I'm glad you're
+my dad, too. But I knew that."
+
+"Knew it? How did you know it?"
+
+"The old woman--Old Immortality. Don't you remember? She said, 'The son
+is the spit of the father.'"
+
+"Did she?" said Leighton. "Do you believe everything as easily as that?"
+
+"The heart believes easily," said Lewis.
+
+"Eh? Where'd you get that?"
+
+"I suppose I read it somewhere. I think it is true. She told me my
+fortune."
+
+"Told you your fortune, did she? I thought I was missing something when
+I snored the hours away instead of talking to that bright old lady.
+Fortunes are silly things. Do you remember what she told you?"
+
+"Yes," said Lewis, "I think I remember every word. She said, 'Child of
+love art thou. At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder, for thou wert
+conceived too near the heart----'"
+
+"Stop!"
+
+Lewis looked up. His father's face was livid. His breast heaved as
+though he gasped for air. Then he clenched his fists. Lewis saw the
+veins on his forehead swell as he fought for self-mastery. He calmed
+himself deliberately; then slowly he dropped his face in his hands.
+
+"Some day," he said in a voice so low that Lewis could hardly hear the
+words, "I shall tell you of your mother. Not now."
+
+Gloom, like a tangible presence, filled the car. It pressed down upon
+Lewis. He felt it, but in his heart he knew that for him the day was a
+glad day. The train started. He leaned far out of a window. The evening
+breeze was blowing from the east. To his keen nostrils came a faint
+breath of the sea. When he drew his head in again, the twinkle he had
+already learned to watch for was back in his father's eyes.
+
+"What do you smell, boy?"
+
+"I smell the sea," said Lewis.
+
+"How do you know? How old were you when you made your first voyage?"
+
+"Don't you know?"
+
+Leighton shook his head.
+
+Lewis, looking at his father with wondering eyes, regretted the spoken
+question.
+
+"I was three years old. I suppose I remember the smell of the sea,
+though it seems as if I couldn't possibly. I remember the funnel of the
+steamer, though."
+
+"Seems like looking back on a quite separate life, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Lewis, nodding, "it does."
+
+"Of course it does, and in that fact you've got the germ of an
+individual philosophy. Every man who goes through the stress of life has
+need of an individual philosophy."
+
+"What's yours, sir?"
+
+"I was going to tell you. Life, to me, is like this train, a lot of
+sections and a lot of couplings. When you're through with a car,
+side-track it and--yank out the coupling. Like all philosophies, this
+one has its flaw. Once in a while your soul looks out of the window and
+sees some long-forgotten, side-tracked car beckoning to be coupled on
+again. If you try to go back and pick it up, you're done. Never look
+back, boy; never look back. Live ahead even if you're only living a
+compensation."
+
+"What's a compensation?" asked Lewis.
+
+"A compensation," said Leighton thoughtfully, "is a thing that doesn't
+quite compensate."
+
+Above the rattle of the train sounded the deep bellow of a steamer's
+throttle. Lewis turned to the window. Night had fallen.
+
+"Oh, look, sir!" he cried. "We're almost there!"
+
+Leighton joined him. Before them were spangled, in a great crescent, a
+hundred thousand lights. Along the water-front the lights clustered
+thickly. They climbed a cliff in long zigzags. At the top they clustered
+again. Out on the bay they swayed from halyards, their reflections
+glimmering back from the rippling water like so many agitated moons.
+
+"Right you are--Bahia," said Leighton. "We're almost there, and it's no
+fishing-hamlet, either."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The next morning, as they were sitting, after their coffee and rolls, at
+a little iron table on the esplanade of the Sul Americano, Leighton
+said: "It takes a man five years to learn how to travel in a hurry and
+fifteen more to learn how not to hurry. You may consider that you've
+been a traveler for twenty years." He stretched and yawned. "Let's take
+a walk, slowly."
+
+They started down the broad incline which, in long, descending zigzags,
+cut the cliff that divided lower town from upper. The closely laid
+cobblestones were slippery with age.
+
+"It took a thousand slaves a century to pave these streets," said
+Leighton. "Do you know anything about this town, Bahia?"
+
+"It was once the capital of the empire," said Lewis.
+
+"Yes," said Leighton. "Capital of the empire, seat of learning, citadel
+of the church, last and greatest of the great slave-marts. That's a
+history. Never bother your mind about a man, a woman, or a town that
+hasn't got a history. They may be happy, but they're stupid."
+
+The principal street of the lower town was swarming with a strange
+mixture of humanity. Here and there hurried a foreigner in whites, his
+flushed cheeks and nose flying the banner of John Barleycorn.
+
+Along the sidewalks passed leisurely the doctorated product of the
+universities--doctors of law, doctors of medicine, embryo doctors still
+in the making--each swinging a light cane. Their black hats and cutaway
+coats, in the fashion of a temperate clime, would have looked exotic
+were it not for the serene dignity with which they were worn. With them,
+merchants lazed along, making a deal as they walked. Clerks, under their
+masters' eyes, hurried hither and thither.
+
+These were all white or near-white. The middle of the street, which held
+the great throng, was black. Slaves with nothing on but a loin-cloth
+staggered under two bags of coffee or under a single monster sack of
+cocoa. Their sweating torsos gleamed where the slanting sun struck them.
+Other slaves bore other burdens: a basket of chickens or a bundle of
+sugar-cane on the way to market; a case of goods headed for the stores
+of some importer; now and then a sedan-chair, with curtains drawn; and
+finally a piano, unboxed, on a pilgrimage.
+
+The piano came up the middle of the street borne on the heads of six
+singing negroes. For a hundred yards they would carry it at a shuffling
+trot, their bare feet keeping time to their music, then they would set
+it down and, clapping their hands and still singing, do a shuffle dance
+about it. This was the shanty of piano-movers. No other slave dared sing
+it. It was the badge of a guild.
+
+"D'you hear that?" asked Leighton, nodding his head. "That's a shanty.
+They're singing to keep step."
+
+In shady nooks and corners and in the cool, wide doorways sat still
+other slaves: porters waiting for a stray job; grayheads, too old for
+burdens, plaiting baskets; or a fat mammy behind her pot of couscous.
+
+Three porters sat on little benches on the top step of a church porch.
+Leighton approached one of them.
+
+"Brother," he said, "give me your stool."
+
+The slave rose, and straightened to a great height. He held up his hands
+for a blessing. He grinned when Leighton sat down on his bench. Then he
+looked keenly at Lewis's face, and promptly dragged the black at his
+side to his feet.
+
+"Give thy bench to the young master, thou toad."
+
+Leighton nodded his head.
+
+"No fool, the old boy, eh? The son's the spit of the father." His eyes
+swept the swarming street. "What men! What men!" He was looking at the
+blacks. "Boy, did you ever hear of a general uprising among the slaves
+at home, in the States?"
+
+"No," said Lewis; "there never was one."
+
+"Exactly," said Leighton. "There never was one because in the early days
+our planters found out what not to buy in the way of black meat. They
+weren't looking for the indomitable spirit. They weren't looking for
+men, but for slaves, and the black-birders soon learned that if they
+didn't want to carry their cargo farther than New Orleans they had to
+load up with members of the gentlest tribes. Now, there have been
+terrible uprisings of blacks in the West Indies, in Demerara and here.
+Ask this old chap of what race he is."
+
+Lewis turned and asked the question. The tall black straightened, his
+face grew stern, his eyes moist.
+
+"Tito, my name. I am of the tribe of Minas. In the time of thy
+grandfather I was traded as ransom for a king."
+
+"Hm--m, I can believe it," said Leighton. "Now ask the next one, the
+copper-colored giant."
+
+"And thou?" said Lewis.
+
+"I? I am a Fulah of the Fulahs. Before blacks were, or whites, we were
+thus, the color of both."
+
+"You see?" said Leighton. "Pride. He was afraid you'd take him for a
+mulatto. Now the other fellow, there."
+
+"And thou?" said Lewis.
+
+The third black had remained seated. He turned his eyes slowly to Lewis.
+
+"I am no slave," he began. "I am of the tribe of Houssa. To my master's
+wealth. I added fifteen of my sons. In the great rebellion they fell,
+one and all."
+
+"The great rebellion," said Leighton. "He means the last Houssa
+uprising. Thirty thousand of 'em, and they fought and fell to a man. The
+Government was glad of the chance to wipe 'em out. Ask him how he
+escaped."
+
+"Escaped?" The black's eyes gleamed. "Child, I did not escape. My
+master's son was a babe in arms. My master bade me bear him to safety.
+When I came back, alone I bore my master to the grave. Then it was too
+late. They would not kill me. Now the babe is grown. He tells me I am a
+free man. It is written on paper."
+
+While Leighton and Lewis watched the crowd, they themselves did not
+remain unnoticed. A small group of the leisurely class began to block
+the pavement before them. Father and son were a strange pair. Lewis was
+still in his leather cow-boy clothes. Alone, he would not have attracted
+more notice than a man with a beard and a carpet-bag on Broadway; but
+the juxtaposition of pith helmet, a thing unknown in those parts, and
+countryman's flat leather hat, and the fact of their wearers usurping
+the seats of two black carriers was too much for one native son, dressed
+in the latest Paris fashion.
+
+"Thou, porter," he called to Leighton, "an errand for thee. Go fetch my
+father. He would not miss this sight."
+
+"What does he say?" asked Leighton.
+
+Lewis blushed as people stopped and added their sparkling eyes to those
+of the crowd already gathered.
+
+"He calls you a porter, and bids you fetch his father to see the sight."
+
+"Ask him," said Leighton, calmly, "shall I know him who he thinks is his
+father by his horns?"
+
+Lewis translated innocently enough. The crowd gasped, and then roared
+with laughter. The youth in Paris clothes turned purple with rage, shook
+his little cane at Leighton, and burst into abusive language.
+
+"Why," cried Lewis--"why, what's the matter with him?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Leighton, pensively. "And just now he was
+so dignified!"
+
+A private sedan-chair, borne by four splendid blacks, swung by at a run.
+As it passed, one of its silk curtains was drawn aside and the face of a
+woman, curious to see the reason of the crowd, looked out. The face was
+clear white, blue-veined, red-lipped; under the black eyes were shadows.
+A slight smile curved the red lips as the shadowy eyes fell upon
+Leighton and Lewis.
+
+Leighton went tense, like a hound in leash.
+
+"Look, boy!" he cried. "A patrician passes!"
+
+The lady heard, understood. The smile, that was half-disdain, deepened.
+She bowed slightly, but graciously. The curtain fell.
+
+"Come, boy," said Leighton, "we can't stand that. Let's go find a
+tailor."
+
+"Dad," said Lewis, "do you know her? She bowed."
+
+"She did, God bless her!" said Leighton. "No, I don't know her; but
+let's think kindly of her, for she has added a charming memory to life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Four days later Lewis sat beside his bed, piled high with all the
+paraphernalia that go to make up a gentleman's wardrobe and toilet. He
+was very nervous--so nervous that he had passed an hour striding from
+one side of the small bedroom to the other, making up his mind to try to
+carry out his father's instructions, which were simply to go to his room
+and dress. Lewis had never in his life put on a collar or knotted a tie.
+
+He answered a knock on the door with a cry of dismay. Leighton strode
+into the room.
+
+"Well, what's the matter?"
+
+Lewis looked ruefully from his father's face to the things on the bed
+and back again. He felt himself flushing painfully. He opened his mouth
+to speak and then closed it.
+
+Suddenly Leighton's face lit up. He laughed.
+
+"Well, well," he cried, "this is splendid! You've given me a new
+sensation." He yanked a bath-robe from the bed. "Here, you savage, shed
+those leather togs, but don't lose them. You'll want to take them out
+and look at them some stuffy day. Now put this on and run to your bath."
+
+When Lewis came back to the room he found most of his things had been
+packed away in the big, new trunk. On the bed certain garments were laid
+out. They were laid out in correct order.
+
+Leighton stood beside the bed in a deferential attitude. His face was a
+blank. "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir, or the
+dinner-jacket? If you will allow me, I would suggest the flannels.
+Sultry evening, and Mr. Leighton will be dining on the terrace."
+
+"Yes, I'll wear the flannels," stammered Lewis.
+
+"Your singlet, sir," said Leighton, picking up the undershirt from the
+bed. Article after article he handed to his son in allotted order. Lewis
+put each thing on as fast as his nervous hands would let him. He tried
+to keep his eyes from wandering to the head of the line, where lay
+collar and tie. The collar had been buttoned to the back of the shirt,
+but when it came to fastening it in front, Lewis's fingers fumbled
+hopelessly.
+
+"Allow me, sir," said Leighton. He fastened the collar deftly. "I see
+you don't like that tie with the flannels, sir. My mistake."
+
+He threw open the trunk, and took out a brown cravat of soft silk. "Your
+brown scarf, sir. It goes well with the flannels. Will you watch in the
+glass, sir?" He placed the cravat, measured it carefully, knotted it,
+and drew it up.
+
+Lewis did not watch in the mirror. His eyes were fixed on his father's
+mask of a face. He knew that, inside, his father was bubbling with fun;
+but no ripple showed in his face, no disrespectful twinkle in his eye.
+Leighton was playing the game. Suddenly, for no reason that he could
+name, Lewis began to adore his father.
+
+"Will that do, sir?"
+
+"Certainly," stammered Lewis. "Very nicely, thank you"
+
+"Thank _you_, sir," said Leighton. He handed Lewis the flannel trousers
+and then the coat.
+
+As Lewis finished putting them on, Leighton whirled on his heel.
+
+"Ready, my boy?" The mask was gone.
+
+Lewis laughed back into his father's twinkling eyes.
+
+"Yes, I'm ready," he said rather breathlessly. He followed his father
+out of the room. The new clothes gripped him in awkward places, but as
+he glanced down at the well-pressed flannels, he felt glorified.
+
+That night, while strolling in a back street of the lower town, they
+discovered a tunnel running into the cliff. At its mouth was a
+turnstile.
+
+"Shades of Avernus! What's this?" asked Leighton.
+
+Lewis inquired of the gateman.
+
+"It's an elevator to the upper town," he said.
+
+They paid their fare and walked into the long tunnel. At its end they
+found a prehistoric elevator and a terrific stench. Leighton clapped his
+handkerchief to his nose and dived into the waiting car. Lewis followed
+him. An attendant started the car, and slowly they crept up and up, two
+hundred feet, to the crest of the cliff. As they emerged, Leighton let
+go a mighty breath.
+
+"Holy mackerel!" he said, "and what was that? Ugh! it's here yet!"
+
+The attendant explained. At the bottom of the shaft was a pit into which
+sank the great chains of the car. The pit was full of crude castor-oil,
+cheapest and best of lubricants.
+
+"My boy," said Leighton, as he led the way at a rapid stride toward the
+hotel, "never confuse the picturesque with the ugly. I can stand a bit
+of local color in the way of smells, but there's such a thing as going
+too far, and that went it. We'll prepare at once to leave this town.
+Would you like to go north or south?"
+
+"I don't know, sir," said Lewis.
+
+"Well, we'll just climb on board that big double-funnel that came in
+to-day and leave it to her. What do you say?"
+
+They went south. Four days later, in the early morning, Lewis was
+wakened by a bath-robe hurled at his head.
+
+"Put that on and come up on deck quick!" commanded his father.
+
+Lewis gasped when he reached the deck. They were just entering the
+harbor. On the left, so close that it seemed to threaten them, loomed
+the Sugar-Loaf. On the right, the wash of the steamer creamed on the
+rocks of Santa Cruz. Before them opened the mighty bay, dotted with a
+hundred islands, some crowned with foliage, others with gleaming, white
+walls, and one with an aspiring minaret. Between water and sky stretched
+the city. There was no horizon, for the jagged wall of the Organ
+Mountains towered in a circle into the misty blue. Heaven and earth were
+one.
+
+A white line of surf-foam ran along all the edge of the bay. Languorous
+Aphrodite of the cities of the world, Rio de Janeiro lay naked beyond
+that line, and gloried. Like a dream of fair woman, her feet plunged in
+foam, her body reclining against the heights, her arms outstretched,
+green hills for her pillows, her diadem the shining mountain-peaks,
+queen of the cities of the earth by the gift of Almighty God, she
+gleamed beneath the kiss of dawn.
+
+Leighton drew a long, long breath.
+
+"It will take a lot of bad smells to blot the memory of _that_," he
+said.
+
+They came to the bad smells in about an hour and a quarter. An hour
+later they left the custom-house. Then, each in a rocketing tilbury,
+driven by a yelling Jehu, they shot through the narrow and filthy
+streets of the Rio of that far day and drew up, still trembling with
+fright, at the doors of the Hotel dos Estrangeiros.
+
+"You got here, too!" cried Leighton as Lewis tumbled out of his cab. "We
+had both wheels on the ground at once three separate times. How about
+you?"
+
+"I really don't know anything about what happened, sir," said Lewis,
+grinning. "I was holding on."
+
+"What were they yelling? Did you make anything out of that?" asked
+Leighton, when they had surveyed their rooms and were washing.
+
+"They were shouting at the people in the way," said Lewis. "My driver
+yelled only two things. When a colored person was in the way, it was,
+'Melt chocolate-drop!' and when he shouted at a white man, it was:
+'Clear the way to hell! a foreigner rides with me.'"
+
+"Boy," said Leighton, speaking through several folds of towel and the
+open connecting-door, "if you ever find your brains running to seed, get
+a job as a cabman. There's something about a cab, the world over, that
+breeds wit."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The Rio of 1888 was seething at the vortex of the wordy battle for
+emancipation. The Ouvidor, the smart street of the town, so narrow that
+carriages were not allowed upon it, was the center of the maelstrom.
+Here crowded politician and planter; lawyers, journalists, and students;
+conservative and emancipationist.
+
+At each end of the Ouvidor were squares where daily meetings were held
+the emotional surge of which threatened to lap over into revolution at
+any moment.
+
+The emotion was real. Youths of twenty blossomed into verse never
+equaled before or since in the writings of their prolific race. An
+orator, maddened by the limits of verbal expression, shot himself
+through the heart to add a fitting period to a thundered phrase. Women
+forgot their own bondage, and stripped themselves of jewels for the
+cause.
+
+Leighton and his son, wandering through these scenes, felt like ghosts.
+They had the certainty that all this had happened before. Their lonely,
+calm faces drew upon them hostile, wondering stares.
+
+"Got a clean tablet in your mind?" asked Leighton one day as they
+emerged from an unusually excited scene. "Write this down: Nothing bores
+one like somebody else's belated emotions. When you've had some woman
+insist on kissing you after you're tired of her, you'll understand me
+better. In the meantime, this is bad enough. I can think of only one
+cure for what we've been through here, and that is a Sunday in London.
+Let us start."
+
+"London!" breathed Lewis. "Are we going to London?"
+
+"Yes, we are. It's a peculiar fact, well known and long cursed among
+travelers, that all the steamers in the world arrive in England on
+Saturday afternoon. We'll get to London for Sunday."
+
+During the long voyage, for the first time since the day on which he met
+the stranger, and which already seemed of long ago, Lewis had time to
+think. A sadness settled on him. What were they doing at Nadir on this
+starry night? Were the goats corraled? Who had brought them in? Was
+mammy crooning songs of low-swinging chariots and golden stairs? Was
+Mrs. Leighton still patiently sewing? The Reverend Orme, was he still
+sitting scowling and staring and staring? And Natalie? Was she there, or
+was she gone, married? He drew a great, quivering sigh.
+
+Leighton looked around.
+
+"Trying to pick up a side-tracked car?"
+
+Lewis smiled faintly, but understandingly.
+
+"It's not quite side-tracked--yet," he said.
+
+"Ah, boy, never look back," said Leighton. "But, no; do. Do look back.
+You're young yet. Tell me about it."
+
+Then for a long time Lewis talked of Nadir: of the life there, of the
+Reverend Orme, grown morose through unnamed troubles; of Mrs. Leighton,
+withered away till naught but patience was left; of happy mammy, grown
+sad; of Natalie, friend, playmate, and sacrifice.
+
+"So they wanted to marry your little pal into motherhood twenty times
+over, ready-made," said Leighton. "And you fought them, told 'em what
+you thought of it. You were right, boy; you were right. The wilderness
+must have turned their heads. But you ought to have stayed with it. Why
+didn't you stay with it? You're no quitter."
+
+"There were things I said to the Reverend Orme," said Lewis,
+slowly--"things I knew, that made it impossible for me to stay."
+
+"Things you knew? What things?"
+
+Lewis did not answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a gray Sunday that they entered London. In a four-wheeler, the
+roof of which groaned under a pyramid of baggage, they started out into
+the mighty silence of deserted streets. The _plunk! plunk!_ of the
+horse's shod hoofs crashed against the blank walls of the shuttered
+houses and reverberated ahead of them until sound dribbled away down the
+gorge of the all-embracing nothing. Gray, gray; heaven and earth and
+life were gray.
+
+Lewis felt like crying, but Leighton came to the rescue. He was in high
+spirits.
+
+"Boy, look out of the window. Is there anywhere in the world a youth
+spouting verse on a street corner?"
+
+"No," said Lewis.
+
+"Or an orator shooting himself to give point to an impassioned speech?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or women shaking their bangles into the melting-pot for the cause of
+freedom?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I should say not. This is Sunday in London. Take off your hat. You are
+in the graveyard of all the emotions of the earth."
+
+Up one flight of stairs, over a tobacconist's shop, Leighton raised and
+dropped the massive bronze knocker on a deep-set door. He saw Lewis's
+eyes fix on the ponderous knocker.
+
+"Strong door to stand it, eh? They don't make 'em that way any more."
+
+The door swung open. A man-servant in black bowed as Leighton entered.
+
+"Glad to welcome you back, sir. I hope you are well, sir."
+
+"Thanks, Nelton, I'm well as well. So is Master Lewis. Got his room
+ready? Show him the bath."
+
+Lewis, looking upon Nelton, suddenly remembered a little room in the Sul
+Americano at Bahia. He felt sure that when Nelton opened his mouth it
+would be to say, "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir,
+or the dinner-jacket?"
+
+By lunch-time Leighton's high spirits were on the decline, by four
+o'clock they had struck bottom. He kept walking to the windows, only to
+turn his back quickly on what he saw. At last he said:
+
+"D'you know what a 'hundred to one shot' is?"
+
+"No, sir," said Lewis.
+
+"Well," said Leighton, "watch me play one." He sat down, wrote a hurried
+note, and sent it out by Nelton. "The chances, my boy, are one hundred
+to one that the lady's out of town."
+
+When Nelton came back with an answer, Leighton scarcely stopped to open
+it.
+
+"Come on, boy," he called, and was off. By the time Lewis reached the
+street, his father was stepping into a cab. Lewis scrambled after him.
+
+"Doesn't seem proper, Dad, to rush through a graveyard this way."
+
+"Graveyard? It isn't a graveyard any more. I'll prove it to you in a
+minute."
+
+It was more than a minute before they pulled up at a house that seemed
+to belie Leighton's promise. Its door was under a massive portico the
+columns of which rose above the second story. The portico was flanked by
+a parapeted balcony, upon which faced, on each side, a row of French
+windows, closed and curtained, but not shuttered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Leighton rang. The door was opened by a man in livery. So pompous was he
+that Lewis gazed at him open-mouthed. He could hardly tear his eyes from
+him to follow his father, who was being conducted by a second footman
+across the glassy, waxed hall into a vast drawing-room.
+
+The drawing-room might have been a tomb for kings, but Lewis felt more
+awed by it than depressed. It was a room of distances. Upon its stately
+walls hung only six paintings and a tapestry. Leighton did not tell his
+son that the walls carried seven fortunes, because he happened to be one
+of those who saw them only as seven things of joy.
+
+There were other things in the room besides the pictures: a few chairs,
+the brocade of which matched the tapestry on the wall; an inlaid spinet;
+three bronzes. Before one of the bronzes Lewis stopped involuntarily.
+From its massive, columned base to the tip of the living figure it was
+in one piece. Out of the pedestal itself writhed the tortured, reaching
+figure--aspiring man held to earth. Lewis stretched out a reverent hand
+as though he would touch it.
+
+The lackey had thrown open a door and stood waiting. Leighton turned and
+called:
+
+"Come on, boy."
+
+Lewis followed them through a second drawing-room and into a library.
+Here they were asked to sit. Never had Lewis dreamed of such a room. It
+was all in oak--in oak to which a century of ripening had given a rare
+flower.
+
+There was only one picture, and that was placed over the great
+fireplace. It was the portrait of a beautiful woman--waves of gray hair
+above a young face and bright black eyes. The face laughed at them and
+at the rows upon rows of somber books that reached from floor to
+ceiling.
+
+Before the fireplace were two leather chairs and a great leather couch.
+At each end of the couch stood lighted lamps, shaded to a deep-amber
+glow.
+
+The lackey returned.
+
+"Her ladyship waits for you in her room, sir."
+
+Leighton nodded, and led Lewis down a short hall. The library had been
+dark, the hall was darker. Lewis felt depressed. He heard his father
+knock on a door and then open it. Lewis caught his breath.
+
+The door had opened on a little realm of light. Fresh blue and white
+cretonnes and chintzes met his unaccustomed eyes; straight chairs,
+easy-chairs, and deep, low comfy chairs; airy tables, the preposterously
+slender legs of which looked frail and were not; books, paper-backed,
+and gay magazines; a wondrous, limpid cheval-glass.
+
+Across the farther side of the room was a very wide window. Through its
+slender gothic panes one saw a walled lawn and a single elm. Beside the
+window and half turned toward it, so that the light fell across her
+face, sat the woman of the portrait.
+
+"How do!" she cried gaily to Leighton, and held out her hand. She did
+not rise.
+
+"H lne," said Leighton, "your room's so cursedly feminine that it's
+like an assault for a man to enter it."
+
+"I can't give you credit for that, Glen," said the lady, laughing.
+"You've had a year to think it up. Where have you been? That's right.
+Sit down, light up, and talk."
+
+Leighton nodded over his shoulder at Lewis.
+
+"Been fetching him."
+
+"So this is the boy, is it?" The bright eyes stopped smiling. For an
+instant they became shrewd. They swept Lewis from head to foot and back
+again. Lewis bowed, and then stood very straight. He felt the color
+mounting in his cheeks. The smile came back to the lady's eyes.
+
+"Sit down, boy," she said.
+
+For an hour Lewis sat on the edge of a chair and listened to a stream of
+questions and chatter. The chatter was Greek to him. It skimmed over the
+surface of things like a swift skater over thin ice. It never broke into
+deep waters, but somehow you knew the deep waters were there.
+
+At last Leighton arose.
+
+"Boy," he said, "come here. This lady is my pal. There are times when a
+man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you
+feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to
+H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over.
+He's so stiff he'll topple easy."
+
+"Oh, please don't ever!" cried the lady, turning to Lewis. "I'll give
+you money to tip him." She turned back to Leighton. "They're so hard to
+get with legs, Glen."
+
+"Legs be hanged!" said Leighton. "Our age is trading civility for legs.
+The face that welcomes you to a house should be benign----"
+
+"There you go," broke in the lady. "If you'd think a minute, you would
+realize that we don't charter doormen to welcome people, but to keep
+them out." She turned to Lewis. "But not you, boy. You may come any time
+except between nine and ten. That's when I have my bath. What's your
+name? I can't call you boy forever."
+
+"Lewis."
+
+"Well, Lew, you may call me H lne, like your father. It'll make me feel
+even younger than I am."
+
+"H lne is a pretty name," said Lewis.
+
+"None of that, young man," said Leighton. "You'll call H lne my Lady."
+
+"That's a pretty name, too," said Lewis.
+
+"Yes," said the lady, rising and holding out her hand, "call me that--at
+the door."
+
+"Dad," said Lewis as they walked back to the flat, "does she live all
+alone in that big house?"
+
+Leighton came out of a reverie.
+
+"That lady, Lew, is Lady H lne Derl. She is the wife of Lord Derl. You
+won't see much of Lord Derl, because he spends most of his time in a
+sort of home for incurables. His hobby is faunal research. In other
+words, he's a drunkard. Bah! We won't talk any more about _that_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+A few months later, when Lewis had very much modified his ideas of
+London, he was walking with his father in the park at the hour which the
+general English fitness of things assigns to the initiated. A very
+little breaking in and a great deal of tailoring had gone a long way
+with Lewis. Men looked at father and son as though they thought they
+ought to recognize them even if they didn't. Women turned kindly eyes
+upon them.
+
+The morning after Lady Derl took Lewis into her carriage in the park she
+received three separate notes from female friends demanding that she
+"divvy up." Knowing women in general and the three in special, she
+prepared to comply. Often Lewis and his father had been summoned by a
+scribbled note for pot-luck with Lady Derl; but this time it was a
+formal invitation, engraved.
+
+Lewis read his card casually. His face lighted up. Leighton read his
+with deeper perception, and frowned.
+
+"Already!" he grunted. Then he said: "When you've finished breakfast,
+come to my den. I want to talk to you."
+
+Lewis found his father sitting like a judge on the bench, behind a great
+oak desk he rarely used. An envelope, addressed, lay before him. He rang
+for Nelton and sent it out.
+
+"Sit down," he said to Lewis. "Where did you get your education? By
+education I don't mean a knowledge of knives, forks, and fish-eaters.
+That's from Ann Leighton, of course. Nor do I mean the power of adding
+two to two or reciting A B C D, etc. By education a gentleman means
+skill in handling life."
+
+"And have I got it?" asked Lewis, smiling.
+
+"You meet life with a calmness and deftness unusual in a boy," said
+Leighton, gravely.
+
+"I--I don't know," began Lewis. "I've never been educated. By the time I
+was nine I knew how to read and write and figure a little. After
+that--you know--I just sat on the hills for years with the goats. I read
+the Reverend Orme's books, of course."
+
+"What were the books?"
+
+"There weren't many," said Lewis. "There was the Bible, of course. There
+was a little set of Shakspere in awfully fine print and a set of Walter
+Scott."
+
+Leighton nodded. "The Bible is essential but not educative until you
+learn to depolarize it. Shakspere--you'll begin to read Shakspere in
+about ten years. Walter Scott. Scott--well--Scott is just a bright ax
+for the neck of time. What else did you read?"
+
+"I read 'The City of God' but not very often."
+
+For a second Leighton stared; then he burst into laughter. He checked
+himself suddenly.
+
+"Boy," he said, "don't misunderstand. I'm not laughing at the book; I'm
+laughing at your reading St. Augustine even 'not very often!'"
+
+"Why shouldn't you laugh?" asked Lewis, simply. "I laughed sometimes. I
+remember I always laughed at the heading to the twenty-first book."
+
+"Did you?" said Leighton, a look of wonder in his face. "What is it? I
+don't quite recollect the headings that far."
+
+"'Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, and of the various
+objections urged against it,'" quoted Lewis, smiling.
+
+Leighton grinned his appreciation.
+
+"There is a flavor about unconscious humor," he said, "that's like the
+bouquet to a fine wine: only the initiated catch it. I'm afraid you were
+an educated person even before you read St. Augustine. Did he put up a
+good case for torment? You see, you've found me out. I've never read
+him."
+
+"His case was weak in spots," said Lewis. "His examples from nature, for
+instance, proving that bodies may remain unconsumed and alive in fire."
+
+"Yes?" said Leighton.
+
+"He starts out, 'if, therefore the salamander lives in fire, as
+naturalists have recorded----' I looked up salamander in the
+dictionary."
+
+Lewis's eyes were laughing, but Leighton's grew suddenly grave. "Poor
+old chap!" he said. "He didn't know that time rots the sanest argument.
+'Oh... that mine adversary had written a book,' cried one who knew."
+
+Leighton sat thoughtful for a moment, then he threw up his head.
+
+"Well," he said, "we'll give up trying to find out how you got educated.
+Let's change the subject. Has it occurred to you that at any moment you
+may be called upon to support yourself?"
+
+"It did once," said Lewis, "when I started for Oeiras. Then I met you.
+You haven't given me time or--or cause to think about it since. I'm--I'm
+not ungrateful----"
+
+"That's enough," broke in Leighton. "Let's stick to the point. It's a
+lucky thing for the progress of the world that riches often take to the
+wing. It may happen to any of us at any time. The amount of stupidity
+that sweating humanity applies to the task of making a living is
+colossal. In about a million years we'll learn that making a living
+consists in knowing how to do well any necessary thing. It's harder for
+a gentleman to make a living than for a farm-hand. But--come with me."
+
+He took Lewis to a certain Mecca of mighty appetites in the Strand.
+Before choosing a table, he made the round of the roasts, shoulders and
+fowl. They were in great domed, silver salvers, each on a barrow, each
+kept hot over lighted lamps.
+
+Leighton seated himself and ordered.
+
+"Now, boy, without staring take a good look at the man that does the
+carving."
+
+One of the barrows was trundled to their table. An attendant lifted the
+domed cover with a flourish. With astounding rapidity the carver took an
+even cut from the mighty round of beef, then another. The cover was
+clapped on again, and the barrow trundled away.
+
+"You saw him?" asked Leighton.
+
+Lewis nodded.
+
+"Well, that chap got through twenty thousand a year,--pounds, not
+dollars,--capital and income, in just five years. After that he starved.
+I know a man that lent him half a crown. The borrower said he'd live on
+it for a week. Then he found out that, despite being a gentleman, there
+was one little thing he could do well. He could make a roast duck fall
+apart as though by magic, and he could handle a full-sized carving-knife
+with the ease and the grace of a duchess handling a fan. Wow he's
+getting eight hundred a year--pounds again--and all he can eat."
+
+From the eating-house Leighton took Lewis to his club. He sought out a
+small room that is called the smoking-room to this day, relic of an age
+when smokers were still a race apart. In the corner sat an old man
+reading. He was neatly dressed in black. Beside him was a decanter of
+port.
+
+Leighton led the way back to the lounge-room.
+
+"Well, did you see him?"
+
+"The old man?" said Lewis. "Yes, I saw him."
+
+"That's Old Ivory," said Leighton. "He's an honorable. He was cursed by
+the premature birth--to him--of several brothers. In other words, he's
+that saddest of British institutions, a younger son. His brothers, the
+other younger sons, are still eating out of the hand of their eldest
+brother, Lord Bellim. But not Old Ivory. He bought himself an annuity
+ten years ago. How did he do it? Well, he had enough intelligence to
+realize that he hadn't much. He decided he could learn to shoot well at
+fifty yards. He did. Then he went after elephants, and got 'em, in a day
+when they shipped ivory not by the tusk, but by the ton, and sold it at
+fifteen shillings a pound." As they walked back to the flat, Leighton
+said: "Now, take your time and think. Is there anything you know how to
+do well?"
+
+"Nothing," stammered Lewis--"nothing except goats."
+
+"Ah, yes, goats," said Leighton, but his thoughts were not on goats.
+Back in his den, he took from a drawer in the great oak desk the kid
+that Lewis had molded in clay and its broken legs, for another had gone.
+He looked at the fragments thoughtfully. "To my mind," he said, "there
+is little doubt but that you could become efficient at terra-cotta
+designing; you might even become a sculptor."
+
+"A sculptor!" repeated Lewis, as though he voiced a dream.
+
+Leighton paid no attention to the interruption. "I hesitate, however, to
+give you a start toward art because you carry an air of success with
+you. One predicts success for you too--too confidently. And success in
+art is a formidable source of danger."
+
+"Success a source of danger, Dad?"
+
+"In art," corrected Leighton.
+
+"Yesterday," he continued, "you wanted to stop at a shop window, and I
+wouldn't let you. The window contained an inane repetition display of
+thirty horrible prints at two and six each of Lalan's 'Triumph.'"
+Leighton sprang to his feet. "God! Poster lithographs at two and six!
+Boy, Lalan's 'Triumph' _was_ a triumph once. He turned it into a mere
+success. Before the paint was dry, he let them commercialize his
+picture, not in sturdy, faithful prints, but in that--that rubbish."
+
+Leighton strode up and down the room, his arms behind him, his eyes on
+the floor.
+
+"Taking art into the poor man's home, they call it. Bah! If you multiply
+the greatest glory that the genius of man ever imprisoned, and put it
+all over the walls of your house,--bath, kitchen and under the
+bed,--you'll find the mean level of that glory is reduced to the terms
+of the humblest of household utensils."
+
+A smile nickered in Lewis's eyes, but Leighton did not look up.
+
+"Art is never a constant," he continued. "It feeds on spirit, and spirit
+is evanescent. A truly great picture should be seen by the comparative
+few. What every one possesses is necessarily a commonplace.
+
+"And now, to get back. I have never talked seriously to you before; I
+may never do it again. The essence, the distinctive finesse, of
+breeding, lies in a trained gaiety and an implied sincerity. But what I
+must say to you is this: Even in this leveling age there are a few of us
+who look with terror upon an incipient socialism; who believe money as
+money to be despicable and food and clothing, incidental; who abhor
+equality, cherish sorrow and suffering and look uponeducation--knowledge
+of living before God and man--as the ultimate and only source of
+content. That's a creed. I'd like to have you think on it. I'd like to
+have my boy join the Old Guard. Do you begin to see how success in art
+may become a danger?"
+
+"Yes," said Lewis, "I think I do. I think you mean that--that in selling
+art one is apt to sell one's self."
+
+"H--m--m!" said Leighton, "you are older than I am. I'll take you to
+Paris to-morrow."
+
+Nelton knocked, and threw open the door without waiting for an answer.
+
+"Her ladyship," he announced.
+
+Lady Derl entered. She was looking very girlish in a close-fitting,
+tailored walking-suit. The skirt was short--the first short skirt to
+reach London. Beneath it could be seen her very pretty feet. They walked
+excitedly.
+
+Lady Derl was angry. She held a large card in her hand. She tore it into
+bits and tossed it at Leighton's feet.
+
+"Glen," she said, "don't you ever dare to send me one of your engraved
+'regrets' again. Why--why you've been rude to me!"
+
+Leighton hung his head. For one second Lewis had the delightful
+sensation of taking his father for a brother and in trouble.
+
+"H lne," said Leighton. "I apologize humbly and abjectly. I thought it
+would amuse you."
+
+"Apologies are hateful," said Lady Derl. "They're so final. To see a
+fine young quarrel, in the prime of life, die by lightning--sad! sad!"
+She started drawing off her gloves. "Let's have tea." As she poured tea
+for them she asked, "And what's the real reason you two aren't coming to
+my dinner?"
+
+Leighton picked up the maimed kid and laid it on the tea-tray. He nodded
+toward Lewis.
+
+"He made it, I'm going to gamble a bit on him."
+
+"Poor little thing!" said Lady Derl, poking the two-legged kid with her
+finger.
+
+"I'm going to put him under Le Brux,--Saint Anthony,--if he'll take
+him," continued Leighton. "We leave for Paris to-morrow."
+
+"Under Saint Anthony?" repeated Lady Derl. "H--m--m! Perhaps you are
+right. But Blanche, Berthe, and Vi will hold it against me."
+
+When Lewis was alone with his father, he asked: "Does Lady Derl belong
+to the Old Guard?"
+
+"You wouldn't think it, but she does," said Leighton,--"inside."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+"My boy," said Leighton to Lewis two days later, as they were threading
+a narrow street in the shadow of Montmartre, "you will meet in a few
+moments Le Brux, the only living sculptor. You will call him _Maître_
+from the start. If he cuffs you or swears at you, call him _Mon Matre_.
+That's all the French you will need for some months."
+
+Leighton dodged by a sleepy concierge with a grunted greeting and
+climbed a broad stone stairway, then a narrower flight. He knocked on a
+door and opened it. They passed into an enormous room, cluttered, if
+such space could be said to be cluttered, with casts, molding-boards,
+clay, dry and wet, a throne, a couch, a workman's bench, and some
+dilapidated chairs. A man in a smock stood in the midst of the litter.
+
+When Lewis's eye fell upon him as he turned toward them, the room
+suddenly became dwarfed. The man was a giant. A tremendous head, crowned
+with a mass of grayish hair, surmounted a monster body. The voice, when
+it came, did justice to such a frame. "My old one, my friend, Létonne!
+Thou art well come. Thou art the saving grace to an idle hour."
+
+Once more Lewis sat for a long time listening to chatter that was quite
+unintelligible. But he scarcely listened, for his eyes had robbed his
+brain of action. They roamed and feasted upon one bit of sculpture after
+another. Casts, discarded in corners, gleamed through layers of dust
+that could not hide their wondrous contour. Others hung upon the wall.
+Some were fragments. A monster group, half finished, held the center of
+the floor. A ladder was beside it.
+
+Leighton got up and strolled around. "What's new?" he asked. His eyes
+fell on the cast of an arm, a fragment. The arm was outstretched. It was
+the arm of a woman. So lightly had it been molded that it seemed to
+float. It seemed pillowed on invisible clouds.
+
+"_Matre"_, said Leighton, "I want that. How much?"
+
+Le Brux moved over beside the cast. As he approached it, Lewis stared at
+his bulk, at his hairy chest, showing at the open neck of his smock, at
+his great, nervous hands, and wondered if this could be the creator of
+so soft a dream in clay.
+
+"Bah! That?" said Le Brux. "It is only a trifle. Take it. It is thine."
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Leighton. "You lend me the arm, and
+I'll lend you a thousand francs."
+
+"Done!" cried Le Brux, with a laugh that shook heaven and earth. "Ah,
+rascal, thou knowest that I never pay."
+
+As they went the rounds of the atelier, Lewis saw that his father was
+growing nervous. Finally, Leighton drew from his pocket the little kid
+and its two broken legs. He held the lot out to Le Brux. The fragments
+seemed to dwindle to pin-points in Le Brux's vast hand.
+
+"Well," he asked, "what's this?"
+
+Leighton nodded toward Lewis,
+
+"My boy made that."
+
+Le Brux glanced down at his hand. A glint of interest lighted his eyes
+and passed. Then a tremendous frown darkened his brow.
+
+"A pupil, eh? Bah!" With his thumb and forefinger he crushed the kid to
+powder. "I'll take no pupil."
+
+Lewis gulped in dismay at seeing his kid demolished, but not so
+Leighton. He had noted the glint of interest. He turned on Le Brux.
+
+"You'll take no pupil, eh? All right, don't. But you'll take my son. You
+shall and you will."
+
+"I will not," growled Le Brux.
+
+"_Maître"_ began Leighton--"but whom am I calling _Matre_? What are
+you? D'you know what you are?" He shook his finger in Le Brux's face.
+"You think you're a creator, but you're not. You're nothing but a
+palimpsest, the record of a single age. What are your works but one
+man's thumb-print on the face of time? Here I am giving you a chance to
+_be_ a creator, to breed a live human that will carry on the torch--that
+will--"
+
+Le Brux had seated himself heavily on the couch. He held his massive
+head between his hands and groaned.
+
+"Ah, Létonne," he interrupted, "our old friendship is dead--dead by
+violence. Friends have said things to me before,--called me names,--and
+I have stood it. But none of them ever dared call me a palimpsest. Thou
+hast called me a palimpsest!"
+
+Leighton seemed not to hear.
+
+"Somebody," he continued, "that will carry on the mighty tradition of Le
+Brux. I could take a pupil to any one of a lot of whipper-snappers that
+fondle clay, but _my son_ I bring to you. Why? Because you are the
+greatest living sculptor? No. No great sculptor ever made another. If my
+boy's to be a sculptor, the only way you could stop him would be to
+choke him to death."
+
+"I hadn't thought of that," broke in Le Brux, with a look of relief. "If
+he bothers me, eh? It would be easy."
+
+In a flash Leighton was all smiles.
+
+"So," he said, "it is settled. Lewis you stay here. If he throws you
+out, come back again."
+
+"Eh! eh!" cried Le Brux, "not so fast. Listen. This is the most I can
+do. I'll let him stay here. I'll give him the room down the hall that I
+rent to keep any one else out, and--and--I'll use him for a model."
+
+Leighton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"So, let it be so," he said. "The boy will make his own way into your
+big, hollow heart, and use it for a playroom. But just remember,
+_Matre_, that he is a boy--_my_ boy. If he is to go in for all
+this,"--Leighton waved his hand at the casts,--"I want him to start in
+with a man who sees art and art only, a man who didn't turn beast the
+first time he realized God didn't create woman with petticoats."
+
+Le Brux's eyes bulged with comprehension. He thumped his resounding
+chest.
+
+"Me!" he cried--"me, a wet nurse!" He yanked open another button of his
+smock. "Behold me! Have I the attributes?"
+
+Leighton turned his back on him.
+
+"Now you are ranting," he said. He picked up an old newspaper from the
+floor and started to wrap up the cast he had bought. "Now listen,
+_Maître_. Go and dress yourself for a change. The boy and I will spend a
+few hours looking for a fiacre that will stand the weight. Then we'll
+come back, and I'll take you out for a drive to a place where you can
+remind yourself what a tree looks like. I'll also give you a dinner that
+you couldn't order in an hour with Caręme holding your hand."
+
+"Ah, _mon enfant_," sighed Le Brux, folding his hands across his
+stomach, "thou hast struck me below the belt. Thou knowest that my
+memory is not so short but what I will dine with thee."
+
+When at seven o'clock the three sat down at a table which, like
+everything else that came in contact with Le Brux, seemed a size too
+small, Leighton said to his guest:
+
+"_Maître_, it has been my endeavor to provide to-night a single essence
+from each of the five great epochs of modern cookery."
+
+"Yes, my child?" said Le Brux, gravely, but with an expectant gleam in
+his eye.
+
+"In no branch of science," continued Leighton, "have progress and
+innovation been so constantly associated as in gastronomy, and we shall
+consequently abandon the rule of the savants of the last generation and
+proceed from the light to the less light and then to the rich."
+
+"I agree," said Le Brux.
+
+Leighton nodded to the attendant. Soup was served.
+
+"_Cręme d'asperges ŕ la reine_," murmured Le Brux. "Friend, is it not a
+source of regret that with the exception of the swallows'-nest
+extravaganza and your American essence of turtle, no soup has yet been
+invented the price of which is not within the reach of the common herd?
+I predict that even this dream of a master will become a commonplace
+within a generation."
+
+"I am sorry," said Leighton, "that the boy can't understand you. Your
+remark caps an argument I had with him the other day on the evanescent
+spirit in art."
+
+The fish arrived.
+
+"The only fish," remarked Leighton, "that can properly be served without
+a sauce."
+
+"And why?" said Le Brux, helping himself to the young trout fried in
+olive oil and simply garnished with lemon. "I will tell thee. Because
+God himself hath half prepared the dish, giving to this dainty creature
+a fragrance which assails the senses of man and adds to eating a vision
+of purling brooks and overhanging boughs." Suddenly, with his fork
+half-way to his mouth, he paused, and glared at Lewis, who was on the
+point of helping himself. "_Sacrilčge_!"
+
+Leighton looked up.
+
+"My old one, you are perhaps right." He turned to Lewis. "Better skip
+the fish." At the next dish he remarked, "Following the theory that a
+dinner should progress as a child learning to walk, _Maître_, I have at
+this point dared to introduce an entremets--_cčpes francs ŕ la tęte
+noire_----"
+
+"_Ŕ la bordelaise_," completed Le Brux, his nose above the dish. He
+helped Leighton to half of its contents and himself to the rest.
+
+"Have patience, my old one," cried Leighton, "the boy may have an
+uneducated palate, but he is none the less possessed of a sublobular
+void that demands filling at stated intervals."
+
+"Bah!" cried Le Brux, "order him a dish of tripe with onions--and _vin
+ordinaire_. But he'll have to sit at another table."
+
+"No," said Leighton, "that won't do. We'll let him sit here and watch us
+and when they come, we'll give him all the sweets and we'll watch him."
+
+"Agreed," said Le Brux.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+If events had been moving rapidly with Lewis, they had by no means been
+at a standstill at Nadir since that troubled day on which he had
+rebelled, quarreled, and fled, leaving behind him wrath and tears and
+awakened hearts where all had been apathy and somnolence.
+
+Many happenings at Nadir were dated from the day that Lewis went away.
+Late that night mammy and Mrs. Leighton, aided by trembling Natalie, had
+had to carry the Reverend Orme from his chair in the school-room to his
+bed. The left side of his face was drawn grotesquely out of line, but
+despite the disfigurement, there was a look of peace in his ravaged
+countenance, as of one who welcomes night joyfully and calmly after a
+long battle.
+
+Perhaps it was this look of peace that made Ann Leighton regard this
+latest as the lightest of all the calamities that had fallen upon her
+frail shoulders. She felt that in a measure the catastrophe had brought
+the Reverend Orme back--nearer to her heart. Her heart, which had seemed
+to atrophy and shrivel from disuse since the poignant fullness of the
+last days of Shenton, was suddenly revivified. Love, pity, tender
+care,--all the discarded emotions,--returned to light up her withered
+face and give it beauty. Night and day she stayed beside the Reverend
+Orme, reading aright his slightest movement.
+
+To Natalie one need stood out above all others--the need for Lewis. At
+first she waited for news of him, but none came; then she sought out Dom
+Francisco. Word was passed to the cattlemen. They said Lewis had been
+bound for Oeiras. A messenger was sent to Oeiras. He came back with the
+news that Lewis had never arrived there. He had been traced half-way.
+After that no one on the long straight trail had seen the boy. The
+wilderness had swallowed him.
+
+Dom Francisco came almost daily to see the Reverend Orme. "Behold him!"
+he cried at his first visit, aghast at the havoc the stroke had played
+with the tall frame. "He is but a boy, he has fathered but two
+children--and yet--behold him! He is broken!" The sight of the Reverend
+Orme, suddenly grown pitifully old, seemed to work on the white-haired,
+but sturdy, cattle-king by reflection. He, too, grew old suddenly.
+
+Natalie was the first to notice it. She began to nurse the old man as
+she nursed her father,--to treat him as she would a child. When one day
+he spoke almost tremulously of the marriage that was to be, she did not
+even answer him, contenting herself with the smile with which one humors
+extreme youth clamoring for the moon. Gradually, without any discussion
+or open refusal on the part of Natalie, it became understood not only to
+Dom Francisco, but to all the circle at Nadir, that she would never
+marry the old cattle-king.
+
+The sudden departure of Lewis, the Reverend Orme's breakdown, with its
+intimate worry displacing all lesser cares, the absorption of Ann
+Leighton as her husband's constant attendant--these things made of
+Natalie a woman in a night. She assumed direction of the house, and
+calmly ordered mammy around in a way that warmed that old soul, born to
+cheerful servitude. She hired a goatherd and rigidly oversaw his
+handiwork. Then she approached Dom Francisco one evening as he sat at
+her father's bedside and told him that he must find a purchaser for the
+goats--all of them.
+
+The Reverend Orme, although he heard, took no interest in any temporal
+affair. Mrs. Leighton looked up and asked mildly:
+
+"Why, dear?"
+
+"Because we need money," said Natalie. "No doctor would come here. We
+must take father away."
+
+No one recoiled from the idea; but it was new to them all except
+Natalie. It took days and days for it to sink in. It was on Dom
+Francisco that Natalie most exerted herself. He had aged, and age had
+made him weak. He fell a slow, but easy, prey to her youth, grown
+sweetly dominant. He himself would arrange to buy the enormous herd of
+goats, the greatest in the country-side. And, finally, with a great
+shrinking from the definite implication, he agreed to buy back Nadir as
+well.
+
+No mere argument could have led the old man to such a concession. It was
+love--love for these strangers that he had cherished within his gates,
+love for the gloomy man whom he had seen young and then old, love for
+Ann and Natalie and mammy, with their quiet ways, love for the very way
+of life of all of them--a way distantly above anything he had ever
+dreamed before their coming, that drove him, almost against his will, to
+speed their parting. He sent for money. He himself spent long, wistful
+hours preparing the ox-wagon, the litter, and the horses that were to
+bear them away.
+
+Then one night the Reverend Orme slept and awoke no more. In the morning
+Natalie went into the room and found her mother sitting very still
+beside the bed, one of the Reverend Orme's hands in both of hers. Tears
+followed each other slowly down her cheeks. She did not brush them away.
+
+"Mother!" cried Natalie, in the first grip of premonition.
+
+"Hush, dear!" said Mrs. Leighton. "He is gone."
+
+They buried him at the very top of the valley, where the eye, guided by
+the parallel hills, sought ever and again the great mountain thirty
+miles away. In that clear air the distant mountain seemed very near.
+There were those who said they could see the holy cross upon its brow.
+
+That night Mrs. Leighton and mammy sat idle and staring in the house.
+Suddenly they had realized that for them the years of tears had passed.
+They looked at each other and wondered by what long road calm had come
+to them. Not so Natalie. Natalie was out in the night, out upon the
+hills.
+
+She climbed the highest of them all. As she stumbled up the rise, she
+lifted her eyes to the stars. The stars were very high, very far, very
+cold. They struck at her sight like needles.
+
+Natalie covered her eyes. She stood on the crest of the hill. Her
+glorious hair had fallen and wrapped her with its still mantle. Her
+slight breast was heaving. She could hear her struggling heart pounding
+at its cage. She drew a long breath. With all the strength: of her young
+lungs she called: "Lew, where are you? O, Lew, you _must_ come! O, Lew,
+I _need_ you!"
+
+The low hills gave back no echo. It was not silence that swallowed her
+desperate cry, but distance, overwhelming distance. She stared wide-eyed
+across the plain. Suddenly faith left her. She knew that Lewis, could
+not hear. She knew that she was alone. She crumpled into a little heap
+on the top of the highest hill, buried her face in her soft hair, and
+sobbed.
+
+The conviction that their wilderness held Lewis no longer brought a
+certain strength to Natalie's sudden womanhood. It was as though Fate
+had cried to her, "The burden is all thine; take it up," and with the
+same breath had given her the sure courage that comes with renunciation.
+She answered Dom Francisco's wistful questioning before it could take
+shape in words.
+
+"We cannot stay," she said. "We must go. You will still help us to go."
+
+Nature's long silences breed silence in man. Dom Francisco ceased to
+question even with his eyes. He made all ready, delivered them into the
+hands of trusted henchmen, and bade them God's speed. They struck out
+for the sea, but not by the long road that Lewis and the stranger had
+followed. There was a nearer Northern port. Toward it they set their
+faces, Consolation Cottage their goal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Three weeks to a day from the time he had left Lewis in Paris, as Nelton
+was serving him with breakfast, Leighton received a telegram that gave
+him no inconsiderable shock. The telegram was from Le Brux.
+
+"Come at once," it said; "your son has killed me."
+
+Leighton steadied himself with the thought that Le Brux was still alive
+enough to wire before he said:
+
+"Nelton, I'm off for Paris at once. You have half an hour to pack and
+get me to Charing Cross."
+
+Nine hours later he was taking the stairs at Le Brux's two steps at a
+time. As he approached the atelier, he heard sighing groans. He threw
+open the door without knocking. Stretched on the couch was the giant
+frame, wallowing feebly like a harpooned whale at the last gasp.
+
+"_Matre!_" cried Leighton.
+
+The sculptor half raised himself, turned a worn face on Leighton, and
+then burst into a tremendous laugh--one of those laughs that is so
+violent as to be painful.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho!" he roared, and fell back upon his side.
+
+Leighton felt somebody pecking at his arm. He turned, to find the old
+concierge beside him.
+
+"Oh, sir," she almost wept, "can't you do something? He has been like
+that all day."
+
+"Go," he said, "bring me a pail of water." He stood watching Le Brux
+until she returned. "Now," he said, "go out and close the door after
+you."
+
+"Don't be rough with him," sighed the fat concierge as she waddled
+toward the door, drying her hands on her apron.
+
+"Le Brux," said Leighton, "Le Brux!"
+
+"Yes, I hear," gasped the sculptor, his eyes tight shut.
+
+"Le Brux, where is your wound?"
+
+"My wound? Ha! my wound! He would know where is my wound! Here, here, my
+old one, here!" He passed his two hands over his shaking ribs.
+
+"Well, then," said Leighton, "take that!" and he dashed the pail of
+water over the prostrate giant.
+
+Le Brux gasped, gulped, and then sat up on the couch. He suddenly became
+very grave. Water trickled off his chin upon his hairy chest. The soaked
+smock clung to his arms and legs, accentuating the tremendous muscles.
+"M'sieu' Létonne," he said, with alarming calm, "you have committed an
+unpardonable impertinence. At the same time you have unwittingly saved
+my life. You have heard of men, strong men, laughing themselves to
+death?"
+
+Leighton, who had seated himself, bowed.
+
+"Well," continued Le Brux, "I can assure you that you and your pail of
+slops arrived only in time to avert a tragedy. That fact entitles itself
+to recognition, and I am consequently going to tell you all that has
+happened before we part--definitely."
+
+Leighton bowed again.
+
+"As you prophesied, your boy won his way into my foolish heart. I used
+him as a model frequently, and let him hang around me in my idle
+moments. I even gave him clay to play with, and he played with it to
+some effect, his great fault--and it is a very great one--being a
+tendency to do things in miniature. I reproved him good-naturedly--for
+me, and he so far improved as to model a horse--the size of the palm of
+your hand."
+
+Leighton bowed once more in recognition of the pause.
+
+"One day," continued Le Brux, "the boy rushed in here without knocking.
+He had something to show me. I did not have the hardihood to rebuke him,
+but, remembering myself in the quality of wet nurse, I was dismayed, for
+on this very couch lay Cellette--Cellette _simple_, without garnishings,
+you understand. She was lying on her front, her chin in her hand, and
+reading a book. I let her read a book, when I can, for my own peace.
+
+"Well, the boy showed me what he had to show, and that gave me time to
+collect my wits. I saw him look at Cellette without a tremor, and just
+as I was deciding to take the moment by the horns, he did it for me.
+'Oh,' he said, 'are you working on her? _Mon matre_, please let me
+watch!' A vile tongue, English, to understand, but it was easy to read
+his eyes. I said, 'Watch away, my child,' and I continued to transmit
+Cellette to the cloud up there in my big group. The boy stood around.
+When I glanced at the model, his eyes followed. When I worked, he worked
+with me.
+
+"My old one, you may believe it or not, but I felt that boy's fingers
+itching all the time. Finally, I chucked a great lump of clay upon the
+bench yonder, and I said, 'Here, go ahead; you model her, too.'
+Then--then--he--he said----" Le Brux showed signs of choking. He
+controlled himself, and continued--"he said, 'I can't model anything,
+_Maître_, unless I feel it first'"
+
+"Létonne, I give you my word of honor that I kept my face. I not only
+kept my face, but I said to Cellette--she hadn't so much as looked up
+from her book--I said to her, 'Cellette, this young sculptor would like
+to model you, but he says he must feel you first.' Cellette looked
+around at that. You know those gamine eyes of hers that are always sure
+they'll never see anything new in the world? But you don't. In years
+Cellette is very young--long after your time. Well, she turned those
+eyes around, looked the boy over, and said" 'Let the babe feel.' Then
+she went back to her book.
+
+"I waved the boy to her, gravely, with a working of my fingers that was
+as plain as French. It said, 'The lady says you may feel.' The boy steps
+forward, and I pretend to go on with my work."
+
+Le Brux stopped. "Excuse me, my friend," he said nervously. "Will you
+kindly send for another pail of water?"
+
+Leighton glanced into the pail.
+
+"There's enough left," he said impatiently. "Go on."
+
+"Ah, yes," sighed Le Brux, "go on. Just like that, go on. Well, your boy
+went on. He felt her head, her arms, her shoulders; you could see his
+fingers seeking things out. Cellette is a model born--and trained. She
+stood it wonderfully until he came to the muscles of her back. You know
+how we all like to have our backs scratched, just like dogs and cats?
+Well, I don't suppose Cellette had ever happened on just that feeling
+before. It touched the cat chord. She began to gurgle and--and wriggle.
+'Keep still, please,' says the boy, very grave and earnest. And a minute
+later, 'Keep still, will you?' Then he came to her ribs."
+
+Le Brux's cheeks puffed out, and he showed other signs of distress, but
+he controlled himself.
+
+"After that," he continued, "things happened more or less at one and the
+same time. Cellette giggled and squirmed. Then the boy got angry and
+cried, 'Will you keep still? and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook
+her! Shook Cellette till her little head went zig-zag-zigzag. It took
+her the sixteenth part of a second to get to her feet, and when she
+slapped him I myself saw stars. At the same time I saw her face, and I
+yelled, 'Run, boy! Run!' For a second he stood paralyzed with
+wonder,--just long enough for her to get in another slap,--and then,
+just as she was curving her fingers, he--he ran. Her nails only took a
+strip out of his jacket! Oh! oh!"
+
+"_Maître,"_ cried Leighton, tears crawling down his cheeks, "don't you
+dare stop! Go on! Go _on_ Finish now while you have the strength."
+
+"Here they passed and there," groaned Le Brux, pointing at bits of ruin,
+"then I yelled, 'Boy, don't go out of the door, whatever you do. She'll
+follow sure, and we'll never hear the last of it.' Then the thought came
+to me that he was the son of my friend. I lifted up the end of the
+throne. He shot under it. I let it down quickly. I sat upon it. I
+laughed--I----"
+
+Le Brux stopped and stared. Leighton, his feet outstretched, his head
+thrown back, his arms hanging limp, was laughing as he had never laughed
+before. As quick as a cat, Le Brux reached out for the pail and dashed
+its remaining contents in Leighton's face.
+
+"I cannot bear an obligation," he said grimly as Leighton spluttered and
+choked. "Thou savedst my life; I save thine. How is it you say in
+English? 'One good turn deserves another!'"
+
+"_Matre,"_ said Leighton, drying his face and then his eyes, "where is
+the boy now? He's--he's not still under the throne?"
+
+"I don't know where he is," said Le Brux. "He's not under the throne. I
+remember, vaguely, it is true, but I remember letting him out. That was
+this morning. Then I wired to you. Since then I have been laughing
+myself to death."
+
+Leighton continued to wipe his eyes, but Le Brux had sobered down.
+
+"Talk about my mighty impersonality before the nude?" he cried.
+"Impersonality! Bah! Mine? Let me tell you that for your boy the nude in
+the human form doesn't _exist_ any more than a nude snake, fish, dog,
+cat, or canary exists for you or me. He's the most natural, practical,
+educated human being I ever came across, and there are several thousand
+mothers in France that would do well to send their _jeunes filles_ to
+the school that turned him out. In other words, my friend, your boy is
+so fresh that I have no mind to be the one to watch him wither or wake
+up or do any of the things that Paris leads to. I wired for you to take
+him away."
+
+"We'll have to find him first," said Leighton. "Let's look in his room."
+
+Together they walked down the hall. Leighton opened the door without
+knocking. He stood transfixed. Le Brux stared over his shoulder. Lewis,
+with his back to them, was working feverishly at the wet clay piled on a
+board laid across the backs of two chairs. On Lewis's little bed lay
+Cellette, front down, her chin in her hand, and reading a book.
+
+"Holy name of ten thousand pigs!" murmured Le Brux.
+
+Lewis turned.
+
+"Why, Dad!" he cried, "I _am_ glad to see you!"
+
+Leighton's heart was in the grip he gave the boy's hand so frankly held
+out.
+
+"_Maître_," remarked Cellette from the bed, "believe me if you can: he
+is still a babe."
+
+"A babe!" cried Le Brux, catching Lewis with finger and thumb and
+lifting him away from the board. "I should say he is. Here!" He caught
+up chunks of wet clay and hurled them at Lewis's dainty model of
+Cellette. He started molding with sweeps of his thumb. A gigantic, but
+graceful, leg began to take form. He turned and caught Lewis again and
+shook him till his head rolled. "Big!" he roared, thumping his chest.
+"Make it big--like me!"
+
+Leighton returned to London alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Lewis's life in Paris fell into unusual, but not unhappy, lines. It was
+true that when others were around, Le Brux treated him as though he were
+a scullion or at least a poor relative living on his bounty, for the
+great sculptor was in dread lest it be noised about that he had at last
+taken a pupil. But when they were alone, he made up for all his
+brutality by a certain tenderness which he was at great pains to
+dissemble. He had but one phrase of commendation, and it harped back and
+reminded them both of Leighton. When Le Brux was well pleased with
+Lewis, he would say, "My son, I shall yet create thee."
+
+It could not be said that master and pupil lived together. Lewis had a
+room down the hall and the freedom of the great atelier, but he never
+ate with Le Brux and never accompanied him on his rare outings. From the
+very first day he had learned that he must fend for himself.
+
+Curiosity in all that was new about him sustained the boy for a few
+days, but as the fear of getting lost restricted him to the immediate
+neighborhood of his abode,--a neighborhood where the sign "On parle
+anglais" never appeared in the shop windows, and where a restaurateur
+would not deign to speak English even if he knew it,--he gradually
+became a prey to the most terrible of all lonelinesses--the loneliness
+of an outsider in a vast, gay city.
+
+At first he did not dare go into a restaurant. When hunger forced him,
+he would enter a _pâtisserie_, point at one thing and another, take
+without question the change that was handed him, and return to his room
+to eat. The neighborhood, however, was blessed with a series of
+second-hand book-shops. One day his eyes fell on an English-French
+phrase-book. He bought it. He learned the meaning of the cabalistic
+sign, "Table d'hôte. Dîner, 2f." He began to dine out.
+
+In those lonely initiative weeks Lewis's mind sought out Nadir and dwelt
+on it. He counted the months he had been away, and was astounded by
+their number. Never had time seemed so long and so short. He longed to
+talk to Natalie, to tell her the dream that had seized upon him and
+gradually become real. At the little book-shop he bought ink, paper, and
+pen, and began to write.
+
+It was an enormous letter, for one talked easily to Natalie, even on
+paper. At the end he begged her to write to him, to tell him all that
+had happened at Nadir, if, indeed, anything beyond her marriage had
+occurred to mark the passing months. What about the goats? A whole
+string of questions about the goats followed, and then, again, was she
+really married? Was she happy?
+
+The intricacies of getting that letter weighed, properly stamped, and
+posted were too much for Lewis. He sought aid not from Le Brux, but from
+Cellette. It took him a long time to explain what he wanted. Cellette
+stared at him. She seemed so stupid about it that Lewis felt like
+shaking her again, an impulse that, assisted by memory, he easily
+curbed.
+
+"But," cried Cellette at last, "it is so easy--so simple! You go to the
+post, you say, 'Kindly weigh this letter,' you ask how much to put on
+it, you buy the stamps, you affix them, you drop the letter in the slot.
+_Voilŕ_!" She smiled and started off.
+
+Lewis reached out one arm and barred her way.
+
+"Yes, yes," he stammered, "_voilŕ_, of course." A vague recollection of
+his father taming Le Brux with a dinner came to his aid. He explained to
+Cellette that if she would post the letter for him, he would be pleased
+to take her to dinner.
+
+Then Cellette understood in her own way.
+
+"Ah," she cried brightly, "you make excuses to ask me to dine, eh? That
+is delicate. It is gallant. I am charmed. Let us go."
+
+She hung on his arm. She chatted. She never waited for an answer.
+Together they went to the post. People glanced at them and smiled, some
+nodded; but Cellette's face was upturned toward Lewis's. She saw no one
+else. It was his evening.
+
+Gradually it dawned upon her that Lewis was really helpless and terribly
+alone. In that moment she took charge of him as a duck takes charge of
+an orphaned chick. On succeeding evenings she led him to the water, but
+she did not try to make him swim.
+
+Parents still comfort themselves with the illusion that they can choose
+safe guardians for their young. As a matter of fact, guardians of
+innocence are allotted by Fate. When Fate is kind, she allots the
+extremes, a guardian who has never felt a sensation or one who has tired
+of all sensations. The latter adds wisdom to innocence, subtracts it
+from bliss, and--becomes an ideal.
+
+Fate was kind to Lewis in handing him over to Cellette at the tragic
+age. Nature had shown him much; Cellette showed him the rest. She took
+him as a passenger through all the side-shows of life. She was tired of
+payments in flesh and blood. She found her recompense in teaching him
+how to talk, walk, eat, take pleasure in a penny ride on a river boat or
+on top of a bus, and in spending his entire allowance to their best
+joint profit.
+
+In return Lewis received many a boon. He was no longer alone. He was
+introduced as an equal to the haunts of the gay world of embryonic
+art--the only world that has ever solved the problem of being gay
+without money. From the first he was assumed to belong to Cellette. How
+much of the assault, the jeers, the buffoonery, the downright evil of
+initiation, he was saved by this assumption he never knew. Cellette
+knew, but her tongue was held by shame. All her training had taught her
+to be ashamed of "being good." If ever the secret of their astounding
+innocence had got out, professional pride would have forced her to ruin
+Lewis, body and soul, without a moment's hesitation.
+
+Lewis also learned French--a French that rippled along mostly over
+shallows, but that had deep pools of art technic, and occasionally flew
+up and slapped you in the face with a fleck of well-aimed argot.
+
+Weeks, months, passed before Leighton appeared on the scene, summoned by
+a scribbled note from Le Brux. When greetings were over, Leighton asked:
+
+"Well, what is it this time? How is the boy getting along? Is he going
+to be a sculptor?"
+
+"You are wise to ask all your questions at once," said Le Brux. "You
+know I shall talk just as I please. Your boy, just as you said he would,
+has attacked me in the heart. He is a most entertaining babe. I am no
+longer wet nurse. Somebody with the attributes has supplanted
+me--Cellette."
+
+"H--m--m!" said Leighton.
+
+Le Brux held up a ponderous hand.
+
+"Not too fast," he said. "The lady assures me the babe is still on the
+bottle. Such being the case, I sent for you. They are inseparable. They
+have put off falling in love so long that, when they do, it will prove a
+catastrophe for one of them. Take him away for a while. Distort his
+concentrated point of view."
+
+"That's a good idea," said Leighton. "Perhaps I will."
+
+"As for his work--" Le Brux stepped to the door and locked it. "I
+wouldn't have him catch us looking at it for anything." He lifted the
+damp cloth from Lewis's latest bit of modeling, two tense hands, long
+fingers curved like talons, thumbs bent in. They flashed to the eye the
+impression of terrific action.
+
+Leighton gazed long at the hands.
+
+"So," he said, "somewhere the boy has seen a murder."
+
+"Ha!" cried Le Brux. "You see it? You see it? He has not troubled to put
+the throat within that grip but it's there. Ah, it's there! I could see
+it. You see it. Presto! everybody will see it." He replaced the cloth.
+
+"In a couple of years," he went on, "my work will be done. Let him show
+nothing, know nothing, till, then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+"If it's a fine day to-morrow," said Leighton that evening to Lewis,
+"we'll spend it in the country. Ever been in the country around here?"
+
+Lewis shook his head.
+
+"I don't believe Cellette knows anything about the country. It would be
+a great thing, Dad, if we could take her with us. She's shown me around
+a lot. I'd--I'd like to."
+
+Leighton suppressed a grimace.
+
+"Why not?" he replied cheerfully.
+
+The next day was fine and hot. Leighton decided to take a chance on
+innovation, and revisit a quiet stretch on the Marne. It was rather a
+journey to get there, but from the moment the three were settled in
+their third-class carriage time took to wing. As he listened to Lewis's
+and Cellette's chatter, the years rolled back for Leighton. He became
+suddenly young. Lewis felt it. For the second time he had the delightful
+sensation of stumbling across a brother in his father.
+
+Cellette felt it, too. When they left the station and started down the
+cool, damp road to the river, she linked a hand in the arm of each of
+her laughing companions, urged them to a run, and then picked up her
+little feet for mighty leaps of twenty yards at a time. "_Ah,_" she
+cried, "_c'est joli, d'etre trois enfants!_"
+
+How strange the earth smelt! She insisted on stopping and snuffling at
+every odor. New-mown grass; freshly turned loam; a stack of straw,
+packed too wet and left to ruin; dry leaves burning under the hot sun
+into a sort of dull incense--all had their message for her. Even of the
+country Cellette had a dim memory tucked away in her store of
+experience.
+
+They came to the river. From a farmer they hired a boat. Cellette wanted
+to drift down with the stream, but Leighton shook his head. "No, my
+dear, a day on the river is like life: one should leave the quiet, lazy
+drifting till the end."
+
+Leighton rowed, and then Lewis. They held Cellette's hands on the oars
+and she tried to row, but not for long. She said that by her faith it
+was harder than washing somebody else's clothes.
+
+They chose the shade of a great beech for their picnic-ground. Cellette
+ordered them to one side, and started to unpack the lunch-basket that
+had come with Leighton from his hotel. As each item was revealed she
+cast a sidelong glance at Leighton.
+
+"My old one," she said to him when all was properly laid out, "do not
+play at youth and innocence any longer. It takes an old sinner to order
+such a breakfast."
+
+It was a gay meal and a good one, and, like all good meals, led to
+drowsiness. Cellette made a pillow of Lewis's coat and slept. The
+afternoon was very hot. Leighton finished his second cigar, and then
+tapped Lewis on the shoulder. They slipped beyond the screen of the
+low-limbed beech, stripped, and stole into the river.
+
+At the first thoughtless splash Cellette sprang to her feet.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, her eyes lighting, "you bathe, _hein_?" She started
+undoing her bodice.
+
+Leighton stared at her from the water. "What do you do?" he cried in
+rapid French. "You cannot bathe. I won't allow it."
+
+Cellette paused in sheer amazement that any one should think there was
+anything she could not do. Then deliberately she continued undoing
+hooks.
+
+"Why can't I bathe?" she asked out of courtesy or merely because she
+knew the value of keeping up a conversation.
+
+"You can't bathe," said Leighton, desperately, "because you are too
+tender, too delicate. These waters are--miasmic. They are full of
+snakes, too. It was just now that I stepped on one."
+
+"Snakes, eh?" said Cellette, pausing again. "I don't believe you.
+But--snakes!" She shuddered, and then looked as though she were going to
+cry with disappointment.
+
+"Don't you mind just this once, Cellette," cried Lewis, blowing like a
+walrus as he held his place against the current. "We'll come alone some
+time."
+
+Cellette dried the perspiration from her short upper lip with a little
+cotton handkerchief.
+
+"_Mon dieu_, but men are selfish!" she remarked.
+
+Once they were in the boat again, drifting slowly down the shadowy
+river, she forgot her pet, turned suddenly gay, and began to sing songs
+that were as foreign to that still sunset scene as was Cellette herself
+to a dairy. Lewis had heard them before. He looked upon them merely as
+one of Cellette's moods, but they brought a twisted smile to Leighton's
+lips. He glanced at the pompous, indignant setting sun and winked. The
+sun did not wink back; he was surly.
+
+In the train, Cellette, tired and happy, went to sleep. Her head fell on
+Leighton's shoulder. With dexterous fingers he took off her hat and laid
+it aside, then he looked at Lewis shrewdly. But Lewis showed no signs,
+of jealousy. He merely laughed silently and whispered, "Isn't she a
+_funny?_"
+
+They began to talk. Leighton told Lewis he was glad that he had worked
+steadily all these months, that Le Brux spoke well of his work, but
+thought a rest would help it and him.
+
+"What do you say," he went on, "to a little trip all by ourselves
+again?"
+
+"It would be splendid," said Lewis, eagerly. Then, after a pause: "It
+would be fun if we could take Cellette along, too. She'd like it a lot,
+I know."
+
+"Yes," said Leighton, dryly, "I don't doubt she would." He seemed to
+ponder over the point. "No," he said finally, "it wouldn't do. What I
+propose is a man's trip--good stiff walking. We could strike off through
+Metz and Kaiserslautern, hit the Rhine valley somewhere about Dürkheim,
+pass through Mannheim with our eyes shut, and get to Heidelberg and the
+Neckar. Then we could float down the Rhine into Holland. That's the
+toy-country of the world. Great place to make you smile."
+
+Lewis's eyes watered.
+
+"When--when shall we start?"
+
+"We'll start to start to-morrow," said Leighton. "We've got to outfit,
+you know."
+
+Two days later they were ready. Cellette kissed them both good-by.
+Leighton gave her a pretty trinket, a heavy gold locket on a chain. She
+glanced up sidewise at him through half-closed eyes.
+
+"What's this?" she asked in the tone of the woman who knows she must
+always pay.
+
+"Just a little nothing from Lewis," said Leighton. "Something to
+remember him by."
+
+"So," said Cellette, gravely. "I understand. He will not come back. It
+is well."
+
+Leighton patted her shoulder.
+
+"You are shrewd," he said. Then he added, with a smile: "Too shrewd. He
+will be back in two months."
+
+A fiacre carried them beyond the fortifications. The cabman smiled at
+the generous drink-money Leighton gave him, spit on it, and then sat and
+watched father and son as they stepped lightly off up the broad highway.
+"Eh!" he called, choking down the curses with which he usually parted
+from his fares, "good luck! Follow the sun around the earth. It will
+bring you back."
+
+Leighton half turned, and waved his arm. Then they settled down to the
+business of walking. They dropped into their place as a familiar part of
+the open road of only a very few years ago, for they were dressed in the
+orthodox style: knickerbockers; woolen stockings; heavy footwear; short
+jackets; packs, such as once the schoolboy used for books; and
+double-peaked caps.
+
+Shades of a bygone day, where do you skulk? Have you been driven,
+
+
+   Up, up, the stony causeway to the mists above the glare,
+   Where the smell of browsing cattle drowns the petrol in the air?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Just before they left Paris a letter had come for Lewis--a big, official
+envelop, unstamped. He tore it open, full of curiosity and wonder. Out
+fell a fat inclosure. Lewis picked it up and stared. It is always a
+shock to see your own handwriting months after you have sent it off on a
+long journey. Here was his own handwriting on a very soiled envelop,
+plastered over with postmarks. How quaint was the superscription, how
+eloquent the distant dates of the postmarks! "For Natalie. At the Ranch
+of Dom Francisco, on the Road to Oeiras, in the Province of Ceara,
+Brazil."
+
+The envelop had been cut open. Lewis took out the many sheets and
+searched them for a sign. None was there. He looked again at the
+envelop. Across it was stamped a notice of non-delivery on account of
+deficient address. Then his eyes fell on faint writing in pencil under a
+postmark. He recognized the halting handwriting of Dom Francisco's
+eldest girl. "She is gone," she had written. Nothing more.
+
+"Gone?" questioned Lewis. "Gone where? Where could Natalie go?" He read
+parts of his letter over, and blushed at his enthusiasms of almost a
+year ago. Almost a year! Leighton called him. He tore up the letter and
+threw it away. It was time to start. Then had come the good-by to
+Cellette, and after that the wonders of the road had held his mind in a
+constantly renewing grip. They still held it.
+
+Leighton was beyond being a guide. He was a companion. When he could, he
+avoided big cities and monuments. He loved to stop for the night at
+wayside inns where the accommodations were meager, but ample opportunity
+was given for a friendly chat with the hostess cook. And if the inn was
+one of those homely evening meeting-places for old folks, he would say:
+
+"Lew, no country wears its heart on its sleeve, but 'way inside. Let us
+live here a little while and feel the pulse of France."
+
+When they crossed the border, he sat down under the first shade tree and
+made Lewis sit facing him.
+
+"This," he said gravely, "is an eventful moment. You have just entered a
+strange country where cooks have been known to fry a steak and live.
+There are people that eat the steaks and live. It is a wonderful
+country. Their cooks are also generally ignorant of the axiomatic
+mission of a dripping-pan, as soggy fowls will prove to you. But what we
+lose in pleasing alimentation, we make up in scenery and food for
+thought. Collectively, this is the greatest people on earth;
+individually, the smallest. Their national life is the most communal,
+the best regulated, the nearest socialistic of any in the world,
+and--they live it by the inch."
+
+One afternoon, after a long climb through an odorous forest of
+red-stemmed pines, with green-black tops stretching for miles and miles
+in an unbroken canopy, they came out upon a broad view that entranced
+with its sense of illusion. Cities, like bunched cattle, dotted the vast
+plain. Space and the wide, unhindered sweep of the eye reduced their
+greatness to the dimensions of toy-land.
+
+Leighton and Lewis stood long in silence, then they started down the
+road that clung to the steep incline. On the left it was overhung by the
+forest; on the right, earth fell suddenly away in a wooded precipice. As
+the highway clung to the mountain-side, so did quaint villages cling to
+the highway. They came to an old _Gasthaus_, the hinder end of which was
+buttressed over the brink of the valley.
+
+Here they stopped. Their big, square room, the only guest-chamber of the
+little inn, hung in air high above the jumbled roofs of Dürkheim. To the
+right, the valley split to form a niche for a beetling, ruined castle.
+Far out on the plain the lights of Darmstadt and Mannheim began to
+blink. Beyond and above them Heidelberg signaled faintly from the
+opposing hills.
+
+The room shared its aery with a broad, square veranda, trellised and
+vine-covered. Here were tables and chairs, and here Leighton and Lewis
+dined. Before they had finished their meal, two groups had formed about
+separate tables. One was of old men, white-haired, white-bearded, each
+with his pipe and a long mug of beer. The other was of women. They, too,
+were old, white-haired. Their faces were not hard, like the men's, but
+filled with a withered motherliness. The men eyed the two foreigners
+distrustfully as though they hung like a cloud over the accustomed peace
+of that informal village gathering.
+
+"All old, eh?" said Leighton to Lewis with a nod. "And sour. Want to see
+them wake up?"
+
+"Yes," said Lewis.
+
+The woman who served them was young by comparison with the rest.
+Leighton had discovered that she was an Alsatian, and had profited
+thereby in the ordering of his dinner. She was the daughter-in-law of
+the old couple that owned the inn. He turned to her and said in French,
+so that Lewis could understand:
+
+"Smile but once, dear lady. You serve us as though we were Britishers."
+
+The woman turned quickly.
+
+"And are you not Britishers?"
+
+"No," said Leighton; "Americans."
+
+"So!" cried the woman, her face brightening. She turned to the two
+listening groups. "They are not English, after all," she called gaily.
+"They are Americans--Americans of New York!"
+
+There was an instant change of the social atmosphere, a buzz of eager
+talk. The old men and the old women drew near. Then came shy, but eager,
+questions. Hans, Fritz, Anna were in New York. Could Leighton give any
+news of them? Each had his little pathetically confident cry for news of
+son or daughter, and Leighton's personal acquaintance, as an American,
+was taken to range from Toronto to Buenos Aires.
+
+Leighton treated them like children; laughed at them, and then described
+gravely in simple words the distances of the New World, the size and the
+turmoil of its cities.
+
+"Your children are young and strong," he added, noting their wistful
+eyes; "they can stand it. But you--you old folks--are much better off
+here."
+
+"And yet," said an old woman, with longing in her pale eyes, "I have
+stood many things."
+
+Leighton turned to Lewis.
+
+"All old, eh?" he repeated. "Young ones all gone. Do you remember what I
+said about this being the best-regulated state on earth?"
+
+Lewis nodded.
+
+"Well," continued Leighton, "a perfectly regulated state is a fine
+thing, a great thing for humanity. It has only one fault: nobody wants
+to live in it."
+
+Two days later they reached Heidelberg and, on the day following,
+climbed the mountain to the Königstuhl. They stood on the top of the
+tower and gazed on such a sight as Lewis had never seen. Here were no
+endless sands and thorn-trees, no lonely reaches, no tropic glare. All
+was river and wooded glade, harvest and harvesters, spires above knotted
+groups of houses, castle, and hovel. Here and there and everywhere,
+still spirals of smoke hung above the abodes of men. It was like a
+vision of peace and plenty from the Bible.
+
+Lewis was surprised to find that his father was not looking at the
+scene. Leighton was bending over such a dial as no other spot on earth
+could boast. Its radiating spokes of varying lengths pointed to a
+hundred places, almost within the range of sight--names famous in song
+and story, in peace and in war. Leighton read them out, name after name.
+He glanced at Lewis's puzzled face.
+
+"They mean nothing to you?" he asked.
+
+Lewis shook his head.
+
+"So you're not quite educated, after all," said Leighton.
+
+They descended almost at a run to the gardens behind the Schloss. As
+they reached them a long string of carriages drove up from the town.
+They were full of tourists, many of whom wore the enameled flag of the
+United States in their buttonholes. Some of the women carried little
+red, white, and blue silk flags.
+
+Lewis saw his father wince.
+
+"Dad," he asked, "are they Americans?"
+
+"Yes, boy," said Leighton. "Do you remember what I told you about the
+evanescent spirit in art?"
+
+Lewis nodded.
+
+"Well," said Leighton, "a beloved flag has an evanescent spirit, too.
+One shouldn't finger carelessly the image one would adore. That's why I
+winced just now. Collectively, we Americans have never lowered the Stars
+and Stripes, but individually we do it pretty often." Then he threw up
+his head and smiled. "After all, there's a bright side even to blatant
+patriotism. A nation can put up with every form of devotion so long as
+it gets it from all."
+
+"But, Dad," said Lewis, "I thought all American women were beautiful."
+
+"So they are," said Leighton, with a laugh. "When you stop believing
+that, you stop being an American. All American women are beautiful--some
+outside, and the rest inside."
+
+"Why don't you take me to the States?" asked Lewis.
+
+Leighton turned around.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty," said Lewis.
+
+"I'll take you," said Leighton, "when you are old enough to see the
+States. It takes a certain amount of philosophy nowadays to understand
+your country--and mine. Of all the nations in the world, we Americans
+see ourselves least as others see us. We have a national vanity that
+keeps us from studying a looking-glass. That's a paradox," said
+Leighton, smiling at Lewis's puzzled look. "A paradox," he continued,
+"is a verity the unpleasant truth of which is veiled."
+
+"Anyway, I should like to go to the States," said Lewis.
+
+"Just now," said Leighton, "our country is traveling the universal road
+of commercialism, but it's traveling fast. When it gets to the end of
+the road, it will be an interesting country."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Three years later, with the approval of Le Brux, Lewis exhibited the
+"Startled Woman." He did not name it. It named itself. There was no
+single remarkable trait in the handling of the life-size nude figure
+beyond its triumph as a whole--its sure impression of alarm.
+
+Leighton came to Paris for his son's début. When he saw the statue, he
+said:
+
+"It is not great. You are not old enough for that. But it will be a
+success, probably a sensation. What else have you done?"
+
+All the modeling that Lewis had accumulated in the three years of his
+apprenticeship was passed in review. Leighton scarcely looked at the
+casts. He kept his eyes on Le Brux's face and measured his changing
+expression.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Lewis.
+
+"Well," said Leighton, "I suggest we destroy the lot. What do you say,
+Le Brux?"
+
+Le Brux raised his bushy eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and threw out
+his hands.
+
+"Eh," he grunted, "it is for the boy to say. Has he the courage? They
+are his offspring."
+
+The two men stood and looked at Lewis. His eyes passed from them to his
+work and back again to Leighton's face.
+
+"You are my father," he said.
+
+"Come on," cried Leighton, without a moment's hesitation, "let us all
+join in the slaughter. Just remember, boy, that it's no more cruel to
+kill your young than to sell them into slavery."
+
+Three days later all of Paris that counts was talking of the "Startled
+Woman." The name of Leighton _fils_ was in many mouths and in almost as
+many printed paragraphs.
+
+"Leighton _fils_!" cried Lewis. Why _fils_?"
+
+"Paris has a long memory for art, my boy," said Leighton. "Before I
+learned that I could never reach the heights, I raised a small monument
+on a foot-hill. They haven't forgotten it, these critics who never die."
+
+Lewis was assailed by dealers. They offered him prices that seemed to
+him fabulous. But Leighton listened calmly and said, "Wait." The longer
+they waited, the higher climbed the rival dealers. At last came an
+official envelop. "Ah," said Leighton, before Lewis had opened it, "it
+has come."
+
+It was an offer from the state. It was lower than the least of the
+dealers' bids. "That's the prize offer, boy," said Leighton. "Take it."
+
+They went back to London together. Leighton helped Lewis search for a
+studio. They examined many places, pleasant and unpleasant. Finally
+Lewis settled on a great, bare, loft-like room within a few minutes'
+walk of the flat. "This will do," he said.
+
+"Why?" asked Leighton.
+
+"Space," said Lewis. "Le Brux taught me that. One must have space to see
+big."
+
+While they were still busy fitting up the atelier a note came to Lewis
+from Lady Derl. She told him to come and see her at once, to bring all
+his clippings on the "Startled Woman," and a photograph that would do
+the lady more justice than had the newspaper prints.
+
+When Lewis entered Lady Derl's room of light, it seemed to him that he
+had not been away from London for a day. The room was unchanged. Lady
+Derl was unchanged. She did not rise. She held out her hand, and Lewis
+raised her fingers to his lips.
+
+"How well you do it, Lew!" she said. "Sit down."
+
+He sat down and showed her a photograph of his work. She looked at it
+long. For an instant her worldliness dropped from her. She glanced
+shrewdly at Lewis's face. He met her eyes frankly. Then she tossed the
+picture aside.
+
+"You are a nice boy," she said lightly. "I think I'll give a little
+dinner for you. This time your dad won't object."
+
+"I hope not," said Lewis, smiling. "I'm bigger than he is now."
+
+Both laughed, and then chatted until Leighton came in to join them at
+tea. Lady Derl told him of the dinner. He shrugged his shoulders and
+asked when it was to be.
+
+"Don't look so bored," said Lady Derl. "I'll get Old Ivory to come, if
+you 're coming. You two always create an atmosphere within an atmosphere
+where you can breathe the kind of air you like."
+
+Leighton smiled.
+
+"It's a funny thing," he said. "When Ivory and I meet casually, we
+simply nod as though we'd never shared each other's tents; but when we
+are both caught out in society, we fly together and hobnob like
+long-lost brothers. We've made three trips together. Every one of 'em
+was planned at some ultra dinner incrusted with hothouse flowers and
+hothouse women."
+
+"Thanks," said Lady Derl.
+
+Lewis might have been bored by that first formal dinner if he had known
+the difference between women grown under glass and women grown in the
+open. But he didn't. With the exception of Ann Leighton, mammy, and
+Natalie, who were not women at all so much as part and parcel of his own
+fiber, women were just women. He treated them all alike, and with a
+gallant nonchalance that astounded his two neighbors, Lady Blanche
+Trevoy and the Hon. Violet Materlin, accustomed as they were to find
+youths of his age stupidly callow or at best, in their innocence, mildly
+exciting. Leighton, seated at H lne's left, watched Lewis curiously.
+
+"They've taken to him," said H lne.
+
+"Yes," said Leighton. "Nothing wins a woman of the world so quickly as
+the unexpected. The unexpected adds to the ancient lure of curiosity the
+touch of tartness that gives life to a jaded palate. Satiated women are
+the most grateful for such a fillip, and once a woman's grateful, she's
+generous. A generous man will give a beggar a copper, but a generous
+woman will give away all her coppers, and throw in herself for good
+measure."
+
+"When you have to try to be clever, Glen, you're a bore," remarked
+H lne.
+
+"I'm not trying to be clever," said Leighton. "There's a battle going on
+over there, and I was merely throwing light on it."
+
+The battle was worth watching. The two young women were as dissimilar as
+beauty can be. Both had all the charms of well-nurtured and
+well-cared-for flesh. Splendid necks and shoulders, plenty of their own
+hair, lovely contour of face, practice in the use of the lot, were
+theirs in common. But Vi was dark, still, and long of limb. Blanche was
+blonde, vivacious, and compact without being in the least heavy.
+
+Vi spoke slowly. Even for an English woman she had a low voice. It was a
+voice of peculiar power. One always waited for it to finish. Vi knew its
+power. She tormented her opponents by drawling. Blanche also spoke
+softly, but at will she could make her words scratch like the sharp
+claws of a kitten.
+
+"And how did you ever get the model to take that startled pose?" Blanche
+was asking Lewis.
+
+"That's where the luck came in," said Lewis, smiling; "and the luck is
+what keeps the work from being great."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well," said Lewis, "Le Brux says that luck often leads to success,
+never to greatness."
+
+"And how did luck come in?" drawled Vi.
+
+Lewis smiled again.
+
+"I'll tell you," he said. "The model is an old pal of mine. One day we
+were bathing in the Marne,--at least I was bathing, and she was just
+going to,--when a farmer appeared on the scene and yelled at her. She
+was startled and turning to make a run for it when I shouted, 'Hold that
+pose, Cellette! She's a mighty well-trained model. For a second she held
+the pose. That was enough. She remembered it ever after.
+
+"Does it take a lot of training to be a model?" asked Blanche. "How
+would I do?" She turned her bare shoulders frankly to him.
+
+Lewis glanced at her. "Yours is not a beauty that can be held in stone,"
+he said. "You are too respectable for a bacchante, too vivacious for
+anything else." He turned to Vi. "You would do better," he said as
+though she too had asked.
+
+Vi said nothing, but her large, dark eyes suddenly looked away and
+beyond the room. A flush rose slowly into her smooth, dusky cheek.
+Blanche bit her under lip.
+
+"Vi has won out," said H lne to Leighton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Natalie and her mother were sitting on the west veranda of Consolation
+Cottage at the evening hour. Just within the open door of the
+dining-room mammy swayed to and fro in a vast rocking-chair that looked
+too big for her.
+
+The years had not dealt kindly with the three. Years in the tropics
+never do deal kindly with women. Mammy had grown old and thin. Her
+clothes, frayed, but clean, hung loosely upon her. Her hair was turning
+gray. She wore steel-rimmed glasses. Mrs. Leighton's face, while it had
+not returned to the apathy of the years of sorrow at Nadir, was still
+deeply lined and of the color and texture of old parchment. The blue of
+her eyes had paled and paled until light seemed to have almost gone from
+them. To Natalie had come age with youth. She gave the impression of a
+freshly cut flower suddenly wilted by the sun.
+
+In Mrs. Leighton's lap lay two letters. One had brought the news that
+Natalie had inherited from a Northern Leighton aunt an old property on a
+New England hillside. The other contained the third offer from a
+development company that had long coveted the grounds about Consolation
+Cottage.
+
+"It's a great deal of money, dear," said Mrs. Leighton to Natalie. "What
+shall we do?"
+
+For a moment Natalie did not reply, and when she spoke, it was not in
+answer. She said:
+
+"Mother, where is Lew? I want him." Her low voice quivered with desire.
+
+Mrs. Leighton put her fingers into Natalie's soft hair and drew the
+girl's head against her breast. A lump rose in her throat. She longed to
+murmur comfort, but she had long since lost the habit of words. What was
+life worth if she could not buy with it happiness for this her only
+remaining love?
+
+"Darling," she whispered at last, "whatever you wish, whatever you say,
+we'll do. Do you think--would you like to go back to--to Nadir--and look
+for Lewis?"
+
+Natalie divined the sacrifice in those halting words. Her thin arms went
+up around Ann Leighton's neck. She pressed her face hard against her
+mother's shoulder. She wanted to cry, but could not. Without raising her
+face, she shook her head and said:
+
+"No, no. I don't want ever to go back to Nadir. Lew is not there. That
+night--that night after we buried father I went out on the hills and
+called for Lew. He did not answer. Suddenly I just knew he wasn't there.
+I knew that he was far, far away."
+
+Ann Leighton did not try to reason against instinct. She softly rocked
+Natalie to and fro, her pale eyes fixed on the setting sun. Gradually
+the sunset awoke in her mind a stabbing memory. Here on this bench she
+had sat, Natalie, a baby, in her lap, and in the shelter of her arms
+little Lewis and--and Shenton, her boy. By yonder rail she had stood
+with her unconscious boy in her arms, and day had suddenly ceased as
+though beyond the edge of the world somebody had put out the light
+forever. Her pale eyes grew luminous. The unaccustomed tears welled up
+in them and trickled down the cheeks that had known so long a drought.
+They rained on Natalie's head.
+
+"Mother!" cried Natalie, looking up--"Mother!" Then she buried her face
+again in Ann's bosom, and together they sobbed out all the oppressing
+pain and grief of life's heavy moment. Not by strength alone, but also
+by frailty, do mothers hold the hearts of their children. Natalie,
+hearing and feeling her mother sob, passed beyond the bourn of
+generations and knew Ann and herself as one in an indivisible, quivering
+humanity.
+
+Mammy's chair stopped rocking. She listened; then she got up and came
+out on the veranda. Her eyes fell upon mother and daughter huddled
+together in the dusk. She hovered over them. Her loose clothes made her
+seem ample, almost stolid.
+
+"Wha' fo' you chilun's crying?" she demanded.
+
+"We're _not_ crying," sobbed Natalie.
+
+"Huh!" snorted mammy. "Yo' jes come along outen this night air, bof of
+yo', an' have yo' suppah. Come on along, Miss Ann. Come on along, yo'
+young Miss Natalie."
+
+"Just a minute, mammy; in just a minute," gasped Natalie. "You go put
+supper on the table." Then she rose to her feet, and drew her mother up
+to her. "Kiss me," she said and smiled. She was suddenly strong again
+with the strength of youth.
+
+Ann kissed her and she, too, almost smiled.
+
+"Well, dear?" she said.
+
+"We're going away," said Natalie, holding protecting arms around her
+mother. "We're going to sell this place, and then we're just going away
+into another world. This one's too rough for just women. We'll go see
+that old house Aunt Jed left to me. I want to live just once in a house
+that has had more than one life."
+
+Day after day the ship moved steadily northward on an even keel. Upon
+mammy, Natalie, and Mrs. Leighton a miracle began to descend. Years fell
+from their straightening shoulders. At the end of a week, Ann Leighton,
+kneeling alone in her cabin, began her nightly devotions with a paean
+that sounded strangely in her own ears: "Oh, Thou Who hast redeemed my
+life from destruction, crowned me with loving-kindness and tender
+mercies, Who hast satisfied my mouth with good things so that my youth
+is renewed like the eagle's!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Among Leighton's many pet theories was one that he called the axiom of
+the propitious moment. Any tyro at life could tell that a thing needed
+saying; skill came in knowing how to wait to say it. At Lady Derl's
+dinner Leighton had decided to go away for several months. He had
+something to say to Lewis before he went, but he passed nervous days
+waiting to say it. Then came the propitious moment. They were sitting
+alone over a cheerful small fire that played a sort of joyful
+accompaniment to the outdoor struggle of spring against the cold.
+
+"In every society," said Leighton, breaking a long silence, "where women
+have been numerically predominant, the popular conception of morality
+has been lowered. Your historical limitations are such that you'll have
+to take my say-so for the truth of that generality."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Lewis.
+
+"Man's greatest illusion in regard to woman," continued Leighton, "is
+that she's fastidious. Men are fastidious and vulgar; women are neither
+fastidious nor vulgar. There's a reason. Women have been too intimately
+connected through the ages with the slops of life to be fastidious.
+That's driven them to look upon natural things with natural eyes. They
+know that vulgarity isn't necessary, and they revolt from it. These are
+all generalities, of course."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Lewis.
+
+"Women are very wonderful. They are an unconscious incarnation of
+knowledge. Knowledge bears the same relation to the wise that liquor
+does to the man who decided the world would be better without alcohol
+and started to drink it all up. Man's premier temptation is to drink up
+women. Lots of men start to do it, but that's as far as they get. One
+woman can absorb a dozen men; a dozen men can't absorb one woman.
+Women--any one woman--is without end. Am I boring you?"
+
+"No, sir," said Lewis. "You are giving me a perspective."
+
+"You've struck the exact word. Since we met, I've given you several of
+my seven lives, but there's one life a man can't pass on to his son--his
+life with relation to women. He can only give, as you said, a
+perspective."
+
+Leighton chose a cigar carefully and lit it.
+
+"Formerly woman had but one mission," he went on. "She arrived at it
+when she arrived at womanhood. The fashionable age for marriage was
+fifteen. Civilization has pushed it along to twenty-five. Those ten
+cumulative years have put a terrific strain on woman. On the whole, she
+has stood it remarkably well. But as modernity has reduced our
+animalism, it has increased our fundamental immorality and put a
+substantial blot on woman's mission as a mission. Woman has had to learn
+to dissemble charmingly, but in the bottom of her heart she has never
+believed that her mission is intrinsically shameful. That's why every
+woman feels her special case of sinning is right--until she gets caught.
+Do you follow me?"
+
+"I think so," said Lewis.
+
+"Well, if you've followed me, you begin to realize why a superfluity of
+women threatens conventional life. There are an awful lot of women in
+this town, Lew."
+
+Leighton rose to his feet and started walking up and down, his hands
+clasped behind him, his head dropped.
+
+"I haven't been feeding you on all these generalities just to kill time.
+A generality would be worth nothing if it weren't for its exceptions.
+Women are remarkable for the number of their exceptions. You are
+crossing a threshold into a peculiarly lax section and age of woman. I
+want you to believe and to remember that the world still breeds noble
+and innocent women."
+
+Leighton stopped, threw up his head, and fixed Lewis with his eyes.
+
+"Do you know what innocence is? Ask the average clergyman to describe
+innocence to you, and when he gets through, think a bit, take off the
+tinsel words with which he has decked out his graven image, and you'll
+find what? Ignorance enshrined. Every clergy the world has seen has
+enshrined ignorance, and ignorance has no single virtue that a sound
+turnip does not share."
+
+Leighton stopped and faced his son.
+
+"Now, my boy," he said, "here comes the end of the sermon. Beware of the
+second-best in women. Many a man trades his soul not for the whole
+world, but for a bed-fellow." He paused. "I believe," he continued,
+flushing, "I still believe that for every man there is an all-embracing
+woman to whom he is all-embracing. Thank God! I'm childish enough to
+believe in her still, though I speak through soiled lips--the
+all-embracing woman who alone can hold you and that you alone can hold."
+
+Lewis stared absently into the fire.
+
+"'The worlds of women are seven,'" he repeated, half to himself:
+"'spirit, weed, flower, the blind, the visioned, libertine, and saint.
+None of these is for thee. For each child of love there is a woman that
+holds the seven worlds within a single breast. Hold fast to thy
+birthright, even though thou journey with thy back unto the light.'"
+
+"What--where--what's that?" stammered Leighton, staring at his son.
+
+Lewis looked up and smiled.
+
+"Only Old Immortality. Do you remember her? The old woman who told my
+fortune. She said that. D'you know, I think she must have been a
+discarded Gipsy. I never thought of it before. I didn't know then what a
+Gipsy was."
+
+"Gipsy or saint, take it from me, she was, and probably is, a wise
+woman," said Leighton. "Somehow I'm still sure she can never die. Do you
+remember all she said when she told you your fortune?"
+
+"Yes," said Lewis; "I think I do. Every once in a while I've said it
+over to myself."
+
+"I wish you'd write down what she said and--and leave it on my table for
+me. You'll have to do it tonight, for I'm off to-morrow. Old Ivory and I
+have shot so much game we've grown squeamish about it, but it seems
+there's a terrific drought and famine on in the game country of the East
+Coast, and all the reserves have been thrown open. The idea is meat for
+the natives and a thinning out of game in the overstocked country. We
+are going out this time not as murderers, but as philanthropists."
+
+"I'd like to go, too," said Lewis, his eyes lighting. "Won't you let
+me?"
+
+"Not this trip, my boy," said Leighton. "I hate to refuse you anything,
+but don't think I'm robbing you. I'm not. I merely don't wish you to eat
+life too fast. Times will come when you'll _need_ to go away. Just now
+you've got things enough to hunt right here. One of them is art. You may
+think you've arrived, but you haven't--not yet."
+
+"I know I haven't," said Lewis.
+
+Leighton nodded.
+
+"Ever heard this sort of thing? 'Art is giving something for nothing.
+Art is the ensnaring of beauty in an invisible mesh. Art is the ideal of
+common things. Art is a mirage stolen from the heavens and trapped on a
+bit of canvas or on a sheet of paper or in a lump of clay.' And so on
+and so on."
+
+Lewis smiled.
+
+"As a matter of fact," continued Leighton, "those things are merely the
+progeny of art. Art itself is work, and its chief end is expression with
+repression. Remember that--with repression. Many an artist has missed
+greatness by mistaking license for originality and producing debauch. I
+don't want you to do that. I want you to stay here by yourself for a
+while and work; not with your hands, necessarily, but with your mind.
+Get your perspective of life now. Most of the pathetic
+'what-might-have-beens' in the lives of men and women are due to
+misplaced proportions that made them struggle greatly for little
+things."
+
+Lewis looked up and nodded.
+
+"Dad, you've got a knack of saying things that are true in a way that
+makes them visible. When you talk, you make me feel as though some one
+had drawn back the screen from the skylight."
+
+Leighton shrugged his shoulders. For a long moment he was silent; then
+he said:
+
+"A life like mine has no justification if it can't let in light, even
+though it be through stained glass."
+
+Lewis caught a wistful look in his father's eyes. He felt a sudden surge
+of love such as had come to him long years before when he had first
+sounded the depths of his father's tenderness. "There's no light in all
+the world like cathedral light, Dad," he said with a slight tremble in
+his voice, "and it shines through stained glass."
+
+"Thanks, boy, thanks," said Leighton; then he smiled, and threw up his
+head. Lewis had learned to know well that gesture of dismissal to a
+mood.
+
+"Just one more word," continued his father. "When you do get down to
+working with your hands, don't forget repression. Classicism bears the
+relation to art that religion does to the world's progress. It's a
+drag-anchor--a sound measure of safety--despised when seas are calm, but
+treasured against the hour of stress. Let's go and eat."
+
+Lewis rose and put his hand on his father's arm.
+
+"I'll not forget this talk, Dad," he said.
+
+"I hope you won't, boy," said Leighton. "It's harder for me to talk to
+you than you think. I'm driven and held by the knowledge that there are
+only two ways in which a father can lose his son. One is by talking too
+much, the other's by not talking enough. The old trouble of the devil
+and the deep, blue sea; the frying-pan and the fire. Come, we've been
+bandying the sublime; let's get down to the level of stomachs and smile.
+The greatest thing about man is the range of his octaves."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+For a week Lewis missed his father very much. Every time he came into
+the flat its emptiness struck him, robbed him of gaiety, and made him
+feel as though he walked in a dead man's shoes. He was very lonely.
+
+"Helton," he said one night, "I wish things could talk--these old chairs
+and the table and that big worn-out couch, for instance."
+
+"Lucky thing they can't, sir," mumbled Helton, holding the seam of the
+table-cloth in his teeth while he folded it.
+
+"Why?" said Lewis. "Why should it be lucky they can't? Don't you suppose
+if they had the power of talk, they'd have the power of discretion as
+well, just as we have?"
+
+"I don't know about that, sir," said Helton. "Things is servants just
+like us serving-men is. The more wooden a serving-man is in the matter
+of talk, the easier it is for 'im to get a plice. If you ask me, sir, I
+would s'y as chairs is wooden and walls stone an' brick for the comfort
+of their betters, an' that they 'aven't any too much discretion as it
+is, let alone talking."
+
+"Nelton," said Lewis, "I've been waiting to ask you something. I wonder
+if you could tell me."
+
+"Can't s'y in the dark," said Nelton.
+
+"It's this," said Lewis. "Everybody here--all dad's friends except Lady
+Derl--call him Grapes Leighton. Why? I've started to ask him two or
+three times, but somehow something else seems to crop up in his mind,
+and he doesn't give me a chance to finish."
+
+Nelton's lowered eyes flashed a shrewd look at Lewis's face.
+
+"The exercise of discretion ennobles the profession," he said, and
+stopped, a dazed, pleased look in his face at hearing his own rhyme. He
+laid the table-cloth down, took from his pocket the stub of a pencil,
+and wrote the words on his cuff. Then he picked up the cloth, laid it
+over his arm, and opened the door. As he went out he paused and said
+over his shoulder: "Master Lewis, it would hurt the governor's feelin's
+if you asked him or anybody else how he got the nime of Gripes."
+
+Let a man but feel lonely, and his mind immediately harks along the back
+trail of the past. In his lonely week Lewis frequently found himself
+thinking back. It was only by thinking back that he could stay in the
+flat at all. Now for the first time he realized that he had been
+stepping through life with seven-league boots. The future could not
+possibly hold for him the tremendous distances of his past. How far he
+had come since that first dim day at Consolation Cottage!
+
+To every grown-up there is a dim day that marks the beginning of things,
+the first remembered day of childhood. Lewis could not fasten on any
+memory older than the memory of a rickety cab, a tall, gloomy man, and
+then a white-clad group on the steps of Consolation Cottage. Black
+mammy, motherly Mrs. Leighton, curly-headed Shenton, and little Natalie,
+with her 'wumpled' skirt, who had stood on tiptoe to put her lips to
+his, appeared before him now as part of the dawn of life.
+
+As he looked back, he saw that the sun had risen hot on his day of life.
+It had struck down Shenton, blasted the Reverend Orme, withered Ann
+Leighton, and had turned plump little Natalie's body into a thin, wiry
+home for hope. Natalie had always demanded joy even of little things.
+Did she still demand it? Where was Natalie? Lewis asked himself the
+question and felt a twinge of self-reproach. Life had been so full for
+him that he had not stopped to think how empty it might be for Natalie,
+his friend.
+
+How little he had done to trace her! Only the one letter. He decided to
+write again, this time to Dom Francisco. If only he could talk to
+Natalie, what long tours it would take to tell and to hear all! A faint
+flush of anticipation was rising to his cheeks when a rap on the door
+startled him. Before he could look around Nelton announced, "A lady to
+see you, sir."
+
+Lewis leaped to his feet and stepped forward. Had one of the miracles he
+had been taught to believe in come to pass? Had prayer been answered?
+The lady raised her arms and started to take off her veil. Then she
+turned her back to Lewis.
+
+"Do untie it for me," she drawled in the slow voice of Lady Violet
+Manerlin.
+
+Lewis felt his face fall, and was glad she had her back to him. He undid
+her veil with steady, leisurely fingers.
+
+"This is awfully good of you," he said. "How did you know I was alone?"
+
+"Telephoned Nelton, and told him not to say anything."
+
+Vi took off her hat and jacket as well as her veil, and tossed the lot
+into a chair. Then she sat down in a corner of the big couch before the
+fire, doubled one foot under her, tapped the floor with the other, and
+yawned. Lewis offered her a cigarette, took one himself, and then shared
+a match with her.
+
+"It's good of you to take it so calmly," said Vi. "Are you one of the
+fools that must always have an explanation? I'll give you one, if you
+like."
+
+"Don't bother," said Lewis, smiling. "You've been bored--horribly bored.
+You looked out of the window, and saw the green things in the park, and
+remembered that there was only one bit in your list of humanity as green
+and fresh as they, and you headed straight for it."
+
+"Yes," drawled Vi, "like a cow making for the freshest tuft of grass in
+the pasture. Thanks; but I'm almost sorry you told me why I came. That's
+the disappointing thing to us women. When we think we're doing something
+original, somebody with a brain comes along and reduces it to first
+elements, and we find we've only been natural."
+
+Lewis straddled a chair, folded his arms on the back of it, and looked
+Vi over with a professional eye. She was posed for a painter, not for a
+sculptor, but even so he found her worth looking at. A woman can't sit
+on one foot, tap the floor with the other, and lean back, without
+showing the lines of her body.
+
+"Mere length," said Lewis, "is a great handicap to a woman, but add
+proportion to length, and you have the essentials of beauty. Short and
+pretty; long and beautiful. D'you get that? A short woman may be
+beautiful as a table decoration, but let her stand up or lie down and,
+presto! she's just pretty."
+
+Vi reached out one long arm toward the fire, and nicked off the ash from
+her cigarette. She tried to hide the tremor that Lewis's words brought
+to her limbs and the color that his frankly admiring eyes brought to the
+pallor of her cheeks. She was a woman that quivered under admiration.
+
+"Have you never--don't you ever kiss women?" she asked, looking at him
+with slanted eyes.
+
+Lewis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, I suppose so. That is--well, to tell you the truth, I don't
+remember."
+
+For a second Vi stared at him; then she laughed, and he laughed with
+her.
+
+"Oh! oh!" she cried, "I believe you're telling the truth!"
+
+They sat and talked. Nelton brought in tea; then they sat and talked
+some more. A distant bell boomed seven o'clock. Vi started, rose slowly
+to her feet, and stretched.
+
+"Have you got your invitation for the Ruttle-Marter fancy-dress ball
+next week?" she asked, stifling a yawn.
+
+"No," said Lewis; "don't know 'em."
+
+"That doesn't matter," said Vi. "I'll see that you get a card to-morrow.
+I'd like you to come. Nobody is supposed to know it, but I'm going to
+dance. Will you come?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Lewis, rising; "I'll come. I've been a bit lonely since
+dad went away." Then he smiled. "So I was wrong, after all."
+
+"Wrong?" said Vi, staring at him, "When, how?"
+
+"This is what you really came for--to ask me to see you dance," he said,
+laughing.
+
+"Oh, was it?" said Vi. "I'm always wondering why I do things. Well, I
+suppose I'd better go, but I hate to. I've been so comfy here. If you'd
+only press me, I might stay for dinner."
+
+Lewis shook his head.
+
+"Better not."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, you're married, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Vi, grimly, her eyes narrowing.
+
+"Well," said Lewis, "you've heard dad talk. He says marriage is just an
+insurance policy to the mind of woman."
+
+"Yes," said Vi, "and that the best place to keep it is away from the
+fire. Your dad's insight is simply weird. But if you think you're going
+to start on life where he left off, let me tell you you'll be chewing a
+worn-out cud."
+
+Lewis laughed.
+
+"You would be right if I were to live life over on his lines. But I
+won't. He doesn't want me to. He never said so, but I just know."
+
+Vi shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"You have a lot of sense," she said. "There's nothing women dislike
+more. Good-by." She held out her hand and stepped toward him. She seemed
+to misjudge the distance and half lose her balance. The full length of
+her quivering body came up against Lewis. He felt her hot, sweet breath
+almost on his mouth. He flushed. His arms started up from his sides and
+then dropped again.
+
+"Touch and go!" he gasped.
+
+"Which?" drawled Vi, her mouth almost on his, her wide, gray eyes so
+near that he closed his to save himself from blindness.
+
+"Better make it 'go,'" said Lewis, and grinned.
+
+"You've saved yourself," said Vi, with a laugh. "If you hadn't grinned,
+I'd have kissed you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Lewis went to the Ruttle-Marter ball determined to be gay. He searched
+for Vi, but did not find her. By twelve o'clock he had to admit that he
+was more than bored, and said so to a neighbor.
+
+"That's impossible," said the neighbor, yawning. "Boredom is an
+ultimate. There's nothing beyond it; consequently, you can't be more
+than bored."
+
+"You're wrong," said Lady Derl from behind them. "For a man there's
+always something beyond boredom: there's going home."
+
+"_Touché_," cried Lewis and then suddenly straightened. While they had
+been chatting, the curtain of the improvised stage at one end of the
+ball-room had gone up. In the center of the stage stood a figure that
+Lewis would have recognized at once even if he had not been a
+participant in the secret.
+
+The figure was that of a tall woman. Her dark hair--and there was plenty
+of it--was done in the Greek style. So were her clothes, if such filmy
+draperies could be justly termed clothes. They were caught up under her
+breasts, and hung in airy loops to a little below her knees. They were
+worn so skilfully that art did not appear. They fluttered about her
+softly moving limbs, but never flew. The woman was apparently
+blindfolded--with chiffon. The foamy bandage proved an efficient mask.
+Chiffon and draperies were of that color known to connoisseurs as
+_cuisse de nymphe_.
+
+A buzz of interested questioning swept over the company. Mrs.
+Ruttle-Marter, who had been quite abandoned for over an hour, suddenly
+found herself the center of a curious and eager group.
+
+"Who is she?" "What is she?" "Where did you get her?"
+
+The trembling hostess, flushed by the first successful moment in many
+dreary seasons, was almost too gulpy to speak. But words came at last.
+
+"Really, my dear Duchess, I don't know who she is. I don't know where
+she comes from or what she is. I only know her price and the name of her
+dance. If I told the price, well, there wouldn't be any rush in this
+crowd to engage her." So early did power lead the long-suffering Mrs.
+Ruttle-Marter to lap at revenge!
+
+"Well, tell us the name of her dance, anyway," said a tall, soldierly
+gray-head that was feeling something for the first time in twenty years.
+"Do hurry! She's going to begin."
+
+"I can do that," said Mrs. Ruttle-Marter. "Her dance is called 'Love is
+blind.'"
+
+"Love is blind," repeated Lewis to Lady Derl. "Let's see what she makes
+of it."
+
+People did not note just when the music began. They suddenly realized
+it. It was so with Vi's dance. So gradually did her body sway into
+motion that somebody who had been staring at her from the moment she
+appeared whispered, "Why, she's dancing!" only when the first movement
+was nearing its close.
+
+The music was doubly masked. It was masked behind the wings and behind
+the dance. It did not seem interwoven with movement, but appeared more
+as a soft background of sound to motion. So it remained through all the
+first part of the dance which followed unerringly all the traditions of
+Greek classicism, depending for expression entirely on swaying arms and
+body.
+
+"Who would have thought it!" whispered Lewis. "To do something well at a
+range of two thousand years! That's more than art; it's genius."
+
+"It's not genius," whispered back Lady Derl; "it's just body. What's
+more, I think I recognize the body."
+
+"Well," said Lewis, "what if you do? Play the game."
+
+"So I'm right, eh? Oh, I'll play the game, and hate her less into the
+bargain."
+
+So suddenly that it startled, came a crashing chord. The dancer quivered
+from head to foot, became very still, as though she listened to a call,
+and then swirled into the rhythm of the music. The watchers caught their
+breath and held it. The new movement was alien to anything the marbled
+halls of Greece are supposed to have seen; yet it held a haunting
+reminder, as though classicism had suddenly given birth to youth.
+
+The music swelled and mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on
+ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb
+after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play;
+yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,--as
+limp as flowing, rushing water,--she whirled and swayed through all the
+emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell
+prone, riven by a single, throbbing sob. Down came the curtain. The
+music faded away in a long, descending sweep.
+
+Men shouted hoarsely, unaware of what they were crying out, and women
+for once clapped to make a noise, and split their gloves. A youth, his
+hair disordered and a hectic flush in his cheeks, rushed straight for
+the stage, crying, "Who is she?"
+
+Lewis stuck out his foot and tripped him. Great was his fall, and the
+commotion thereof switched the emotions of the throng back to sanity.
+Conventional, dogged clapping and shouts of "_Bis! Bis_!" were relied on
+to bring the curtain up again, and relied on in vain. Once more Mrs.
+Ruttle-Marter was surrounded and beseeched to use her best efforts. As
+she acceded, a servant handed Lewis a scribbled note. "Come and take me
+out of this. Vi," he read. He slipped out behind the servant.
+
+In the cab they were silent for a long time. Lewis's eyes kept wandering
+over Vi, conventional once more, and lazing in her corner.
+
+"Well," she drawled at last, "what did you think of it?"
+
+"Think of it?" said Lewis. "There were three times when I wanted to
+shout, 'Hold that pose!' After that--well, after that my brain stopped
+working."
+
+"Do you mean it?" asked Vi.
+
+"Mean what?"
+
+"About wanting me to hold a pose."
+
+"Yes," said Lewis; "of course. What of it?"
+
+"What of it? Why, I will. When?"
+
+"Do _you_ mean it?" asked Lewis.
+
+Vi nodded.
+
+"Name your own time."
+
+"To-morrow," said Vi, "at ten."
+
+The following morning Lewis was up early, putting his great, bare studio
+in fitting order, and trying to amplify and secure the screened-in
+corner which previous models had frequently damned as a purely tentative
+dressing-room. Promptly at ten Vi appeared.
+
+"Where's your maid?" asked Lewis. "You've simply got to have a maid
+along for this sort of thing."
+
+"You're wrong," said Vi. "It's just the sort of thing one doesn't have a
+maid for. It's easier to trust two to keep quiet than to keep a maid
+from vain imaginings. And--it's a lot less expensive."
+
+"Well," said Lewis, "where's your costume?"
+
+"Here," said Vi, "in my recticule."
+
+They laughed. Ten minutes later Vi appeared in her filmy costume.
+Lewis's face no longer smiled. He was sitting on a bench at the farther
+end of the room, solemnly smoking a pipe. He did not seem to notice that
+Vi's whole body was suffused, nervous.
+
+"Dance," said Lewis.
+
+Vi hesitated a moment and then danced, at first a little stiffly. But
+her mind gradually concentrated on her movements; she began to catch the
+impersonal working atmosphere of a model.
+
+"Hold that!" cried Lewis, and, a second later: "No, that will never do.
+You've stiffened. Try again."
+
+Over and over Vi tried to catch the pose and keep it until, without a
+word, she crossed the room, threw herself on a couch, and began to cry
+from pure exhaustion. When she had partly recovered, she suddenly awoke
+to the fact that Lewis had not come to comfort her. She looked up. Lewis
+was still sitting on the bench. He was filling a fresh pipe.
+
+"Blown over?" he asked casually. "Come on. At it again."
+
+At the end of another half-hour Vi gave up the struggle. She had caught
+the pose twice, but she had been unable to hold it.
+
+"I give it up," she wailed. "I'll simply never be able to _stay_ that
+way."
+
+"If you were a professional dancer," said Lewis, "I'd say 'nonsense' to
+that. But you're not. I'm afraid it would take you weeks, perhaps
+months, to get the stamina. Take it easy now while I make some tea."
+
+"Tea in the morning!" said Vi. "I can't stand it. I'd rather have a
+glass of port or something like that."
+
+"I've no doubt you would, but you're not going to get it," said Lewis,
+calmly, as he went about the business of brewing tea.
+
+Vi finished her first cup, and asked for a second.
+
+"It's quite a bracer, after all," she said. "I feel a lot better." She
+rose and went to the model's throne at one side of the room. "Is this
+where they stand?" she asked.
+
+Lewis nodded.
+
+Vi climbed the throne, and took a pose. Her face was turned from Lewis,
+her right arm half outstretched, her left at her side. She was in the
+act of stepping. Her long left thigh was salient, yet withdrawing. It
+was the pose of one who leads the way.
+
+"This is the pose you will do me in," she said.
+
+For a moment Lewis was silent, then he said gravely:
+
+"No, you don't really want me to do you that way."
+
+"I do, and you will," said Vi, without looking around.
+
+For another long moment Lewis was silent.
+
+"All right," he said at last. "Come down. Dress yourself. You've had
+enough for to-day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Weeks passed. Lewis worked steadily at his figure of Vi. From the time
+the wires had been set and the rough clay slapped on them, he had never
+allowed her to see the figure.
+
+"It's no use asking," he said. "You're no master at this art. The
+workman who shows unfinished stuff to anybody but a master is a fool."
+
+"Well, when, then?" asked Vi, impatiently, after weeks had lengthened to
+months.
+
+"Almost any day now," said Lewis; but before 'any day' came around,
+something happened that materially delayed the satisfaction of Vi's
+curiosity.
+
+Lady Derl had frequently drafted Lewis into dinners that she thought
+would be stupid for her without him. As a result, the inevitable in
+London happened. It became a habit to invite Lewis when Lady Derl was
+coming. He never took her in,--her rank and position made that
+impossible,--but he was there, somewhere at the lower end of the table,
+where she could watch him when she felt bored and occasionally read in
+the astonished faces of his neighbors the devastation he had caused by
+some remark; for Lewis, like his father, had a way of saying things. The
+difference was that Leighton's _mots_ were natural and malicious, while
+Lewis's were only natural. On the whole, Lewis created the greater
+sensation.
+
+The night after Lewis had said "Almost any day now" to Vi, he found
+himself at a semi-diplomatic dinner next to a young person who, like
+himself, seemed to find the affair a bit heavy.
+
+"What did they invite you for?" asked Lewis.
+
+"They couldn't help it," replied the young person, stifling a yawn. "I'm
+the wife of the charge of the Brazilian legation. And you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm here just to take Lady Derl home."
+
+The young person's eyes showed a gleam of interest as they glanced up
+the table to where Lady Derl sat and reigned an easy queen in that
+assembly.
+
+"Oh," she said, "are you? Why you?"
+
+"Well," said Lewis, "I suppose it's because I'm the only man in town
+that always remembers Lady Derl's beauty and gray hair at the same
+time."
+
+The young person smiled.
+
+"I believe I've heard of you. Leighton is your name, isn't it?"
+
+"It's only five minutes since I was introduced," said Lewis, smiling,
+"and you made me say it over three times."
+
+"Ah, yes," said the lady, unperturbed, "but five minutes is a long
+time--sometimes. Is Leighton a common name?"
+
+"Not as common as some," said Lewis. "Why?"
+
+"Nothing, only I know some Leightons in Brazil."
+
+Lady Derl saw Lewis start, and quickly lay down his fork. She watched in
+vain through the rest of that dinner for a conversational sensation at
+his end of the table. When they were in the carriage and on the way home
+she asked:
+
+"Well, what was it?"
+
+"What was what?" said Lewis, out of a reverie.
+
+"What did that Senhora What's-her-name have to tell you that made you
+forget to eat?"
+
+"She was telling me about an old pal of mine," said Lewis. "Did dad ever
+tell you where he found me?"
+
+"Yes," said Lady Derl; "he said he found you in the geometrical center
+of nowhere, surrounded by equal parts of wilderness."
+
+"That's what he thought," said Lewis; "but there was a home tucked into
+the wilderness. It had been my home for a great many years. People had
+been kind to me there--Mrs. Leighton; Natalie, my pal; an old darky
+named just mammy; and, in a way, the Reverend Orme. After I'd been away
+a year, I wrote back. They had gone. I've just found out where they are,
+all but the Reverend Orme. I reckon he must be dead."
+
+"And you're going to write?"
+
+"Write?" said Lewis. "No, I'm not going to write. I'm just going." For a
+moment they were silent, then he said, "There's something about hearing
+of people what were kind to you that makes you feel awfully lonely."
+
+Lady Derl reached out and took his hand. Their hands lay together on his
+knee. The drive came to an end, and they had said nothing more. As they
+stood under the light of the outer hall Hélčne turned to Lewis.
+
+"When are you going?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+She held up her lips to him.
+
+"Kiss me good-by, Boy."
+
+He kissed her, and for a moment gripped her wrists.
+
+"Hélčne," he said, "you've been awfully good to me, too. I--I don't
+forget."
+
+"You don't forget," repeated Lady Derl. "That's why I kissed you. Don't
+be hard on your little pal when you find her. Remember, you've gone a
+long way alone."
+
+As Lewis strode away rapidly toward the flat, the fragrance of Hélčne
+clung to him. It clung to him so long that he forgot Vi--forgot even to
+leave a note for her explaining his sudden departure. When he reached
+Santos, three weeks later, it didn't seem worth while to cable.
+
+As Lewis stepped out of the station at San Paulo, he felt himself in a
+dream. He crossed the street into the public gardens and looked back. He
+had never seen a station like that. It was beautiful. It had the spirit
+of a cathedral raised by some pagan as a shrine to the commercial age.
+Had the railroad bred a dreamer?
+
+Several motor-cars for hire lined the curb. Lewis stepped up to one of
+the drivers.
+
+"How did they come to build that?" he asked in Portuguese, with a nod
+toward the station.
+
+The driver shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Too much money," he said. "The charter limits them to twenty-five per
+cent, profits. They had such a surplus, they told the architect he could
+go as high as he liked. He went pretty high." The driver winked at his
+own joke, but did not smile.
+
+"I want you by the hour," said Lewis. "Do you know Mrs. Leighton's
+house--Street of the Consolation?"
+
+The driver shook his head.
+
+"There's no such house," he said.
+
+"Well, you know the Street of the Consolation? Drive there. Drive
+slowly."
+
+On the way Lewis stared, unbelieving, at the things he saw. Gone were
+the low, thick-walled buildings that memory had prepared him for; gone
+the funny little street-cars drawn by galloping, jack-rabbit mules. In
+their stead were high, imposing fronts, with shallow doorways and heavy
+American electric trams.
+
+The car shot out upon a mighty viaduct. Lewis leaned out and looked
+down. Here was something that he could remember--the valley that split
+the city in two, and up and down the sides of which he had often toiled
+as a boy. Suddenly they were across, and a monster building blotted all
+else from his sight. He looked up at the massive pile. "What is it?" he
+asked.
+
+"Theater built by the state," answered the driver, without looking
+around. "Cost millions."
+
+"Reis?" asked Lewis, smiling.
+
+"Reis? Bah!" grunted the driver. "Pounds."
+
+The street left the level and started to climb. Lewis looked anxiously
+to right and left. He saw a placard that read, "Street of the
+Consolation."
+
+"Stop!" he cried.
+
+The driver drew up at the curb.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked.
+
+"This isn't the Street of the Consolation," said Lewis, dismayed.
+"Where's the big cotton-tree and the priest's house, and--and the
+bamboos? Where are the bamboos?"
+
+The driver looked around curiously.
+
+"I remember them, the bamboos," he said, nodding. "They're gone."
+
+"Wait here," said Lewis.
+
+He stepped out of the car and started to walk slowly up the hill. He
+felt a strange sinking of the heart. In his day there had been no
+sidewalk, only a clay path, beaten hard by the feet of three children on
+their way to school. In his day the blank row of houses had been a mud
+_taipa_ wall, broken just here by the little gate of the priest's house.
+In his day there had been that long, high-plumed bank of bamboos,
+forever swaying and creaking, behind the screen of which had lain the
+wonder realm of childhood.
+
+He came to the spot where the gate to Consolation Cottage had been. The
+old wooden gate and the two friendly, square brick pillars on which it
+had swung were gone; but in their stead rose a wondrous structure of
+scrolled wrought iron between two splendid granite shafts.
+
+Lewis stood on tiptoe and gazed through the gate, up the driveway, to
+where Consolation Cottage had once stood. Through the tepid haze of a
+beautiful tropical garden he saw a high villa. It did not look back at
+him. It seemed to be watching steadily from its hilltop the spread of
+the mighty city in the valley below.
+
+Lewis was brought to himself with a start. Somebody behind him cried
+out, "O-la!" He turned to find two impatient horses almost on top of
+him. A footman was springing from his place beside the coachman to open
+the gate.
+
+Lewis stepped aside. In the smart victoria sat a lady alone. She was
+dressed in white, and wore a great, black picture-hat. Lewis glanced at
+her face. He recognized the Anglo-Saxon pallor. Out of the dead-white
+shone two dark eyes, unnaturally bright. He raised his hat.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he began in English.
+
+The gate had swung open. The horses were plunging on the taut reins. The
+lady drew her skirts in at her side and nodded. Lewis stepped into the
+carriage. The horses shot forward and up the drive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+"It was the only way," said the lady as Lewis handed her out of the
+carriage. "The horses wouldn't wait, once the gates were open. What did
+you wish to say?"
+
+"I--I wanted to ask you about the Leightons," stammered Lewis. "They
+used to live here. That is--"
+
+"I know," said the lady. "Come up on the veranda."
+
+That veranda made Consolation Cottage seem farther away than ever to
+Lewis. Its floor was tiled. Its roof was cleverly arranged to give a
+pergola effect. It was quite vine-covered. The vines hid the glass that
+made it rain-proof. In one corner rugs were placed, wicker chairs, a
+swinging book-rack, and a tea-table. The lady motioned to Lewis to sit
+down. She sat down herself and started drawing off her long gloves. She
+looked curiously at Lewis's face.
+
+"You're a Leighton yourself, aren't you? Some relative to Mrs. Leighton
+and Natalie?"
+
+Lewis nodded.
+
+"A cousin in some Scotch degree to Natalie," he said; "I don't know just
+what." Then he turned his eyes frankly on her.
+
+"Where are they--Mrs. Leighton and--and Natalie?"
+
+"They are gone," said the lady. "They sold out here almost a year ago
+and went back to the States. I have the address somewhere. I'll get it
+for you." She went, but was back in a moment.
+
+"Thanks," said Lewis. He did not look at her any more or around him. His
+eyes fixed vaguely on distance, as one's eyes do when the mind tells
+them they are not wanted.
+
+The lady sat perfectly still and silent. The silence grew and grew until
+by its own weight it suddenly brought Lewis back to the present and
+confusion. He colored. His lips were opening in apology when the lady
+spoke.
+
+"Where have you been?" she asked.
+
+Lewis gave her a grateful look.
+
+"I've been playing about the old place," he said, smiling. "Not alone.
+Natalie, Shenton, and I. We've been racing through the pineapple-patch,
+lying on our backs under an orange-tree, visiting the stables, and--and
+Manoel's little house, hiding in the bramble-patch, and peeking over the
+priest's wall." Lewis waved his hand at the scene that made his words so
+incongruous. "Sounds to you like rank nonsense, I suppose."
+
+The lady shook her head.
+
+"No," she said--"no, it doesn't sound like nonsense."
+
+Then he asked her about Natalie. She told him many little things. At the
+end she said:
+
+"I feel that I've told you nothing. Natalie is one of those persons that
+we generally call a 'queer girl' because we haven't the intelligence or
+the expression to define them. Our local wit said that she was a girl
+whom every man considered himself good enough for, but that considered
+herself too good for any man. That was unjust, but it sounded true
+because sooner or later all the eligibles lined up before Natalie--and
+in vain." The lady frowned. "But she wasn't selfish or hard. She used to
+let them hang on till they just dropped off. She was one of those women
+that nothing surprises. Her train was made up of the ugly and the
+handsome--bore, prude, wit, and libertine. She gave them all something;
+you could feel it. I think she got tired of giving and never taking."
+
+"Is she so beautiful?" asked Lewis.
+
+"Beautiful? Oh, no," said the lady, and then suddenly stopped and
+straightened. She laughed. "Now I look back on it all, it seems she must
+be beautiful, but--but I know she isn't. Now _I'm_ talking nonsense."
+
+"No, you 're not," said Lewis. "There are women like that." He reached
+out for his hat and stick.
+
+"You're not going?" said the lady. "You'll stay to tea?"
+
+Lewis shook his head.
+
+"You've been very kind," he said, "but I must be going."
+
+Without rising, she took the hand that he held out and then sat and
+watched his erect figure swing down the drive to the gate. Suddenly she
+remembered him. They had been together in school. She did not call him
+back. Bores are people that misjudge the values of impressions. The lady
+was not a bore; she was a wise woman.
+
+By traveling overland to Rio, Lewis caught the newest and finest of the
+big steam-packets plying between Buenos Aires and Southampton. This old
+world of his had been moving apace in more ways than one. The years
+since, with his father, he had made this same trip were comparatively
+few, but during them progress had more than taken a long stride; it had
+crossed a line.
+
+He dressed for dinner at eight. As he stepped into the dining-room, he
+paused and stared. It was like walking into some smart London restaurant
+after the theater. Gone were the long ship-boards at which for
+generations human beings had been lined up like cattle at a trough. In
+their place were scattered small tables, round and square, of a capacity
+varying from two to eight.
+
+Around the tables wealth rioted. There were wealthy coffee-planters, who
+spent a yearly fortune on their annual trip to Paris, surrounded by
+their wives and such of their offspring as were old enough to escape the
+nursery table; planters, sheep- and cattle-men from the Argentine, some
+of them married, all accompanied; and women. Lewis had never before seen
+so many beautiful women at one time. It was _the_ boat of the season.
+Over all hung an atmosphere of vintage wines.
+
+Lewis was shown to a seat at a table for two. His _vis-ŕ-vis_ was a
+rare, lonely little man. The black studs in his shirt seemed to explain
+him. He was sour and morose till he found Lewis could speak French, then
+he bubbled over with information. It transpired that the room was alive
+with situations.
+
+"This is a crowded boat, but see the lady over there?"
+
+Lewis's eyes followed the speaker's backward nod. He saw a remarkably
+beautiful blonde in evening dress sitting alone at a table for four. She
+kept her eyes steadily on her plate.
+
+"We call her the Duchess," continued the little man. "She belongs to De
+la Valla, the sugar king. He's got his daughters with him, so she had to
+sit at another table, and he paid four passages for her so she'd be kept
+alone."
+
+Lewis nodded politely.
+
+"Now slant your eyes over my left shoulder," continued the little man.
+
+To Lewis's surprise, he saw another beautiful woman, a bright-eyed
+brunette, sitting alone at a table for four. He turned, interested, to
+his table companion for the explanation.
+
+"Ah-ha!" said the little man, "you begin to wake up. That, my friend, is
+Mlle. Folly Delaires. She's been playing in Buenos Aires. When she saw
+people staring at the Duchess, she stepped up to the purser's office and
+laid down the cash for a table for four. At first we thought it was just
+vanity and a challenge, but we know her better now. She's just the devil
+of mischief and several other things in the flesh. We ought all to be
+grateful for her."
+
+Lewis looked curiously at Mlle. Delaires. He watched to see her get up.
+She passed close to him. She did not have the height that his training
+had taught him was essential to beauty, but she had certain attributes
+that made one suddenly class height with other bloodless statistics.
+From her crown of brown hair to her tiny slippers she was alive.
+Vitality did not radiate from her, but it seemed to lurk, like a
+constant, in her whole body and in her every supple movement. Lewis did
+not see it, but she was of the type that forever takes and never gives.
+
+As she passed close by him he felt an utterly new sensation, as though
+he were standing in a garden of narcotics, and lassitude were stealing
+through his limbs. When she had gone, a single memory clung to him--the
+memory of the wonderful texture of her skin. He had read in a child's
+book of physiology that our skin breathes. The affirmation had meant
+nothing to him beyond mechanics; now, suddenly, it meant much. He had
+seen, felt, this woman's skin breathe, and its breath had been like the
+fragrance of a flower.
+
+For the first time in his life Lewis looked on woman with blind eyes.
+During almost three weeks the years that he had lived in familiar
+contact with women stood him in good stead. He never spoke to the
+bright-eyed rival to the Duchess, but he watched her from afar. Men
+swarmed about her. She stood them as long as they amused her, and then
+would suddenly shake them all off. There were days when she would let no
+one come near her. There was no day when any man could say he had been
+favored above another.
+
+Then came an evening when Lewis had dressed unusually early and slipped
+up to the boat-deck to cool off before dinner. He sat down on a bench
+and half closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw a woman--the
+woman, Folly Delaires--standing with her back to him at the rail. He had
+not heard or seen her come. Almost without volition he arose and stepped
+to the rail. He leaned on it beside her. She did not move away.
+
+"I want to kiss you," said Lewis, and trembled as he heard his own
+words.
+
+The woman did not start. She turned her face slowly toward his.
+
+"And I want you to," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Within two weeks of Lewis's departure for South America, Leighton
+returned from his shooting-trip. Despite the fact that he had not
+written telling Lewis he was coming, he felt a great chagrin at finding
+the flat deserted except for the ever-faithful Nelton.
+
+"Where's the boy?" was Leighton's first question. Even as he stepped
+across the threshold he felt that he stepped into an empty house.
+
+"South America," said Nelton, relieving his master of hat, stick, and
+gloves.
+
+"South America!" cried Leighton, dismayed, and then smiled. "Well, he's
+getting his dad's tricks early. What for?"
+
+"Don't know, sir. Mr. Lewis said as you'd get it from her ladyship."
+
+Lady Derl was out of town. Leighton followed her, stayed two days,
+decided her momentary entourage was not to his taste, and returned to
+London. He reached the flat in the afternoon, just in time to receive a
+caller. The caller was Vi.
+
+"Hallo!" said Leighton as Nelton showed her in, "this is fortune. Take
+off your things and stay."
+
+"I will--some of them," drawled Vi; "but not just yet." She sat down.
+
+"What on earth are you doing in town?" asked Leighton.
+
+"Well," said Vi, "up to three weeks ago I was here at the beck and call
+of your son. Then he suddenly took French leave." She turned and faced
+Leighton. "Where has he gone? It isn't like one of you to be rude in
+little things."
+
+"I don't think Lew meant to be rude," said Leighton. "He's gone to South
+America. He heard about some cousins he 'd lost track of, and he just
+bolted the next morning."
+
+"Cousins!" said Vi. "I didn't know any one still went in for family ties
+to the extent of South America, short of a fat death."
+
+"No," said Leighton, smiling; there's no money in this trip. Why were
+you at his beck and call?"
+
+"Model," said Vi, coolly. "He's been doing me."
+
+"Doing _you_!" said Leighton, looking at her curiously.
+
+"There, there," said Vi, "don't let your imagination run away with you.
+Not in the nude. By the way, can you let me have the key? I left
+something in the studio, and I didn't like to go to Nelton."
+
+"Certainly," said Leighton. "I'll walk by there with you."
+
+Vi gave a shrug of protest, but Leighton's back was already turned. He
+fetched the key, and together they walked over to Lewis's atelier. When
+they had climbed the stairs and were at the door, Vi said a little
+breathlessly and without a drawl:
+
+"Do you mind very much not coming in? I won't be but a minute."
+
+Leighton glanced at her, surprised. "Not at all," he said, and handed
+her the key. He took out a cigarette and lit it as she opened the door
+and closed it behind her. He started pacing up and down the bare hall.
+Presently he grew impatient, and glanced at his watch; then he stopped
+short in his tracks. From behind the closed door came unmistakably the
+sound of a woman sobbing.
+
+Leighton did not hesitate. He threw open the door and walked in. Except
+for Vi, curled up in a little heap on the couch, the atelier was very
+still, vast, somber. In its center shone a patch of light. In the patch
+of light, on a low working pedestal, stood a statue. On the floor were a
+tumbled cloth and a fallen screen. Leighton stood stock-still and
+stared.
+
+The sculptured figure was that of a woman veiled in draperies that were
+merely suggested. Her face, from where Leighton stood, was turned away.
+Her right arm was half outstretched, her left hung at her side, but it
+was peculiarly turned, as though to draw the watcher on. Then there was
+the left thigh. Once the eye fell on that, all else was forgotten. Into
+this sinking sweep had gone all the artist's terrific force of
+expression and suggestion. No live man would have thought of the figure
+as "Woman Leading the Way," once his eyes had fallen on that thigh. To
+such a one the statue named itself with a single flash to the brain, and
+the name it spoke was "Invitation."
+
+Leighton's first impulse was one of unbounded admiration--the admiration
+we give to unbounded power. Then realization and a frown began to come
+slowly to his face. Vi, crumpled up on the couch, and sobbing hard, dry
+sobs,--the sobs that bring age,---helped him to realization. Lewis, his
+boy, had done a base thing.
+
+Without moving, Leighton glanced about the room till his eyes fell on
+the mallet. Then he stepped quickly to it, picked it up, and crossed to
+the statue. Beneath his quick blows the brittle clay fell from the
+skeleton wires in great, jagged chunks. With his foot he crushed a few
+of them to powder. He tossed the mallet aside, and glanced at Vi. She
+was still crying, but she had half risen at the sound of his blows, and
+was staring at him through wet eyes.
+
+Leighton started walking up and down, the frown still on his brow.
+Finally he came to a stop before the couch.
+
+"Vi," he said--"Vi, listen! You must tell me something. It isn't a fair
+question, but never mind that."
+
+She lifted a tear-stained face.
+
+"Vi," said Leighton, tensely, "did he follow?"
+
+Vi raised herself on her arms and stared at him for a moment before she
+gasped:
+
+"You fool, do you suppose I would have cared if he had followed?" Then
+shame gripped her, and she threw herself full-length again, face down.
+Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound.
+
+Leighton waited half an hour. He spent the time walking up and down and
+smoking cigarettes. He was no longer frowning. At the end of the
+half-hour he caught Vi by the arms and lifted her to her feet.
+
+"Come on," he said.
+
+Vi stared at him as one half-awakened.
+
+"I don't want to go anywhere," she said. "I'm very well here."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Leighton, "you don't realize what you're doing to
+yourself. On my word, you look positively puttyish."
+
+"Puttyish!" cried Vi, a flush of anger rising to her face. "Grapes,
+you're brutal! Since when have you learned to trample on a woman?"
+
+"That's better," said Leighton, coolly. "I thought it would rouse you a
+bit."
+
+Vi almost smiled at herself. She laid her hand on Leighton's arm and
+turned him toward the door.
+
+"And they still say that no man knows women," she said. She paused and
+looked back at the fragments of the statue. Her lips twisted. "Even
+boys," she added, "pick out our naked souls and slap them in our faces."
+
+As they walked slowly toward the flat, Vi said:
+
+"I know why you had to ask that question. I'm glad you did. You were
+misjudging Lew. But you can be sure of one thing: no one but us three
+ever saw that statue; I know now that no one but just Lew and myself
+were ever meant to see it. He didn't want to model me that way. When I
+asked for it, he hesitated, then suddenly he gave in." She paused for a
+moment, then she added, "I believe it's part of a man's job to know when
+to trample on women."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+It was night at the flat. There was just chill enough in the air to
+justify a cozy little fire. Through the open windows came the low hum of
+London, subdued by walls and distance to the pitch of a friendly
+accompaniment to talk. In two great leathern chairs, half facing each
+other, Vi and Leighton sat down, the fire between them.
+
+They had been silent for a long time. Vi had been twisting her fingers,
+staring at them. Her lips were half open and mobile. She was even
+flushed. Suddenly she locked her hands and leaned forward.
+
+"Grapes," she said without a drawl, "I have seen myself. It is terrible.
+Nothing is left."
+
+Leighton rose and stepped into his den. He came back slowly with two
+pictures in his hands.
+
+"Look at these," he said. "If you were ten years older, you'd only have
+to glance at them, and they'd open a door to memory."
+
+Vi gazed at the pictures, small paintings of two famous Spanish dancers.
+One was beautiful, languorous, carnal; the other was neither languorous
+nor carnal despite her wonderful body, and she was certainly not
+beautiful. Vi laid the second picture down and held the first. Then
+almost unconsciously she reached out her hand for the discarded picture.
+Gradually the face that was not beautiful drew her until attention grew
+into absorption. The portrait of the languorous beauty fell to her lap
+and then slipped to the floor, face down. Leighton laughed.
+
+Vi glanced up.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Leighton, "except that the effect those pictures had
+on you is an exact parallel to the way the two originals influenced men.
+For that----" Leighton waved a hand at the picture on the floor--"men
+gave all they possessed in the way of worldly goods, and then Wondered
+why they'd done it. But for her--the one you 're looking at----"
+
+He broke off. "You never heard of De Larade? De Larade spent all of his
+short life looking for animate beauty, and worshiping it when he found
+it. But he died leaning too far over a balcony to pick a flower for the
+Woman you're staring at."
+
+"Why?" asked Vi again. "You knew her, of course. Tell me about her."
+
+"I'm going to," said Leighton. "The first time I saw her on the stage
+she seemed to me merely an extra-graceful and extra-sensuous Spanish
+dancer. Nothing to rave over, nothing to stimulate a jaded palate. I
+could have met her; I decided I didn't want to. Later on I did meet her,
+not in her dressing-room, but at a house where she was the last person I
+expected to see."
+
+Leighton picked up a cigarette, lighted it, and sat down.
+
+"The place ought to have protected her," he continued, "but when you've
+seen two thirds of a woman's body, it takes a lot of atmosphere to make
+you forget it. We were in a corner by ourselves. I can't remember just
+what I did. Probably laid my hand on her arm with intent. Well, Vi, she
+didn't thrill the way your blood and mine has thrilled an occasion. She
+just shrank. Then she frowned, and the frown made her look really ugly.
+'Don't forget,' she whispered to me, 'that I'm a married woman. I never
+forget it--not for one minute.'"
+
+Leighton blew a cloud of smoke at the fire. It twisted into wreaths and
+whirled up the chimney.
+
+"Quite a facer, eh?" he went on. "But it didn't down me. It only woke me
+up. 'Have you ever had a man sit down with you beside him and hold you
+so,' I asked her, 'with your back to his knees, your head in his hands
+and his eyes and his mouth close to yours--a man that wasn't trying to
+get to a single goal, but was content to linger with you in the land of
+dreams?'
+
+"Believe me, Vi, the soul of a pure woman that every man thinks he has a
+right to make love to is the shyest of all souls. Such a woman sheds
+innuendo and actions with the proverbial ease of a duck disposing of a
+shower. But just words--the right words--will bring tears to her eyes.
+Well, I'd stumbled on the right words."
+
+"'No,' she said, with a far-away look, 'I've never had a man hold me
+like that. Why?'"
+
+"'Why?' I said, 'Because I will--some day.'"
+
+"'You!'"
+
+"I can't give you all the derision she put into that 'you!' Then her
+face and her eyes went as hard as flint. 'Money?' she asked, and I
+answered, 'No; love.'"
+
+Leighton looked at his cigarette end and flipped it into the fire.
+
+"She laughed, of course, and when she laughed she became to me the most
+unattainable and consequently the most desirable of women. I was at that
+age.
+
+"Well, to cut the story short, I went mad over her, but it wasn't the
+madness that loses its head. It was just cunning--the cunning with a
+touch of fanaticism that always reaches its goal. I laid seige to her by
+day and by night, and at last, one day, she sent for me. She was alone;
+I could see that she meant us to be alone. She made me sit down. She
+stood in front of me. To my eyes she had become beautiful. I wanted her,
+really wanted her.
+
+"What she said was this: 'I've sent for you because, if you keep on,
+you're going to win. No, don't get up. Before you keep on, I want to
+tell you something about myself--about what I believe with all my soul.
+I don't have to tell you that I'm a good woman; you know it. The first
+time you saw me dance you were rather disgusted, weren't you? I nodded.
+'What do you think of my dancing now?"
+
+"I remember my answer to that. It was: 'You possess people gradually,
+you hold them forever. It's more than personality with you, it's power.'
+
+"Her eyes were fastened on me. They drew mine. 'That's right,' she said;
+'look at me. I want you to look at me. You see I'm an ugly woman.' I
+cried out in protest, and I meant it. Her face went suddenly hard. 'You
+fool,' she said, 'say that I'm pretty--say it now!' And I cried out at
+her, 'Not when you look like that. But you can assume beauty. You know
+it.'
+
+"She seemed to pause in her thoughts at that and smiled. 'Can I--for
+you?' she asked in a way that made her divine. Then she jerked herself
+back. 'I'm an ugly woman. My body is wonderful. Look!' She raised her
+long arms, which were bare, gave a half-turn, and glanced at me over her
+shoulder. An apparently simple movement, but it was consummate in grace
+and display. 'You see?' she said, with a flashing smile. Then she turned
+and stood stolidly. 'I didn't have a body worth speaking of once. What
+I've got I made--every bit of it.'
+
+"She sat down sidewise on a chair, folded her arms on the back of it,
+and looked at me over them. 'I have that power you were speaking of. Do
+you know just in what consists a woman's power over a man? I'll tell
+you: in keeping eternally just one thing that he wants.'
+
+"She paused a long time on that, then she went on: 'Some women hold
+their own in the world and their men by beauty, others by wit, others by
+culture, breeding, and occasionally there's a woman clever enough to
+hold her place and her man by wealth. I've got none of these things.
+I've got only one great gift of God by which I hold my power. When
+that's gone, all is gone. Wise people have told me so. I know it is
+true.' She rose slowly, came and stood close beside me. 'It's--it's
+this--that I'm still my own. Do you want to--to rob me?"
+
+Leighton paused, staring into the fire.
+
+"That was the time," he said, "I went off on my longest shooting-trip. I
+never saw her again." He looked up. Vi was very pale.
+
+"You have been cruel--cruel to me," she said.
+
+Leighton sprang to his feet and started walking up and down.
+
+"I have not," he said. "The trouble with you women is you're forever
+wanting to have your cake and eat it, too. If you thought I was going to
+comfort you with sophist assurances that there's a way out of paying the
+price for the kind of life you've led, you were just wrong. What I'm
+trying to do is to give you a prescription for an individual sick soul,
+not a well one."
+
+He stopped and pointed at the picture lying on Vi's lap.
+
+"Don't you see where her philosophy helps you? You've got all the
+elements of power that she lacked--beauty, wit, breeding, wealth,
+and--yes--and mind. She had that, too, but she didn't know it. With all
+that of your cargo left, can't you trade honestly with life? Can't you
+make life worth while, not only just to yourself? You'll be trading in
+compensations, it's true."
+
+Leighton started walking up and down again.
+
+"In one of my many brilliant moments," he went on, "I defined a
+compensation to Lewis as something that doesn't quite compensate. There
+you have the root of most of the sadness in life. But believe me, my
+dear girl, almost all the live people you and I know are trading in
+compensations, and this is what I want you to fasten on. Some of them do
+it nobly."
+
+Leighton stood with folded arms, frowning at the floor. Vi looked up at
+him but could not catch his eye. She rose, picked up her wraps, and then
+came and stood before him. She laid her fingers on his arms.
+
+"Grapes," she said, still without a drawl, "you _have_ helped me--a lot.
+Good night." She held up her lips.
+
+"No, Vi," said Leighton, gravely. "Just give up paying even for kindness
+with a kiss."
+
+Vi nodded her head.
+
+"You're right; only--that kiss wouldn't have been as old as I." She
+turned from him. "I don't think I'll call you 'Grapes' any more."
+
+"Yes, you will," said Leighton. "We're born into one name; we earn
+another. We've got a right to the one we earn. You see, even a man can't
+have his cake----"
+
+But, with a wave of her hand, Vi was gone. Leighton heard Nelton running
+down the stairs to call a cab for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Mlle. Folly Delaires was not born within a stone's throw of the Paris
+fortifications, as her manager would have liked you to believe, but in
+an indefinite street in Cockneydom, so like its mates that, in the words
+of Folly herself, she had to have the homing instinct of a pigeon to
+find it at all. Folly's original name had been--but why give it away?
+She was one of those women who are above and beyond a name--of a class,
+or, rather, of a type that a relatively merciful world produces
+sparingly. She was all body and no soul.
+
+From the moment that Lewis kissed Folly, and then kissed her several
+times more, discovering with each essay depths in the art which even his
+free and easy life had never given him occasion to dream of, he became
+infatuated--so infatuated that the following dialogue passed over him
+and did not wake him.
+
+"Why are you crying?" asked Lewis, whom tears had never before made
+curious.
+
+"I'm crying," gasped Folly, stamping her little foot, "because it's
+taken so _long_!"
+
+Lewis looked down at her brown head, buried against his shoulder, and
+asked dreamily:
+
+"Are you spirit and flower, libertine and saint?"
+
+To which Folly replied: "Well, I was the flower-girl once in a great
+hit, and I played 'The Nun' last season, you remember. As for spirits, I
+had the refusal of one of the spirit parts in the first "Blue Bird"
+show, but there were too many of them, so I turned it down. I'd have
+felt as though I'd gone back to the chorus. Libertine," she mused
+finally--"what _is_ a libertine?"
+
+Lewis's father could have looked at Folly from across the street and
+given her a very complete and charming definition for a libertine in one
+word. But Lewis had not yet reached that wisdom which tells us that man
+learns to know himself last of all. He did not realize that your
+true-born libertine never knows it. Whatever Folly's life may have been,
+and he thought he had no illusions on that score, he seized upon her
+question as proving that she still held the potential bloom of youth and
+a measure of innocence.
+
+To do her justice, Folly was young, and also she had asked her question
+in good faith. As to innocence--well, what has never consciously
+existed, causes no lack. Folly's little world was exceedingly broad in
+one way and as narrow in another, but, like few human worlds, it
+contained a miracle. The miracle was that it absolutely satisfied her.
+She dated happiness, content, and birth itself from the day she went
+wrong.
+
+She had the appearance of being frank, open, and lovable, just as she
+had that appearance of culture which every woman of her type gets from
+the cultivated class of men they prey upon. Pet her, and she murmured
+softly in the king's best English: scratch her, and, like the rock that
+Moses struck, she burst forth in a surprising torrent. Without making
+others merry, she was eternally merry. Without ever feeling the agony of
+thirst, she instilled thirst. A thousand broken-hearted women might have
+looked on her as an avenging sword, if the sword hadn't been two-edged.
+She had a motto, a creed, a philosophy, packed into four words: "Be
+loved; never love."
+
+If both parts of this creed had not been equally imperative, Lewis might
+have escaped. His aloofness was what doomed him. Like all big-game
+hunters, Folly loved the rare trophy, the thing that's hard to get. By
+keeping his distance, Lewis pressed the spring that threw her into
+action. Almost instinctively she concentrated on him all her forces of
+attraction, and Folly's forces of attraction, once you pressed the
+spring, were simply dynamic. Beneath that soft, breathing skin of hers
+was such store of vitality, intensity, and singleness of purpose as only
+the vividly monochromatic ever bring to bear on life.
+
+Lewis, unconsciously in very deep waters indeed, reached London in a
+state of ineffable happiness. Not so Folly. Lewis had awakened in her
+desire. With her, desire was merely the prelude to a natural
+consummation. Folly was worried because one of the first and last things
+Lewis had said to her was, "Darling, when will you marry me?" To which
+she had replied, but without avail, "Let's think about that afterward."
+
+When Lewis reached the flat on a Saturday night, he did not have to tell
+his father that something wonderful had happened. Leighton saw it in his
+face--a face suddenly become more boyish than it had ever been before.
+They rushed feverishly through dinner, for Lewis's mood was contagious.
+Then they went into the living-room, and straight for the two big
+leather chairs which, had they lacked that necessary measure of
+discretion which Nelton had assigned to them, might have told of many a
+battle of the mind with the things that are.
+
+"Well, Boy," said Leighton, "what is it?"
+
+"Dad," cried Lewis, with beaming face, "I've found the woman--the
+all-embracing woman."
+
+Leighton's mind wandered back to the tales of Lewis's little pal
+Natalie.
+
+"Tell me about her--again," he said genially.
+
+"Again!" cried Lewis. "But you've never heard of her--not from me,
+anyway."
+
+"What's her name?" asked Leighton, half aroused.
+
+"Her name," said Lewis, smiling absently into the fire, "is Folly--Folly
+Delaires."
+
+Leighton was a trained stalker of dangerous game. Surprise never
+startled him into movement. It stilled him. Old Ivory had once said of
+him that he could make his heart stop beating at the smell of elephant;
+which is quite a different thing from having your heart stop beating on
+its own hook. When Lewis said, "Folly--Folly Delaires," Leighton
+suddenly became intensely still. He remained still for so long that
+Lewis looked up.
+
+"Well, Dad, what Is it?" he asked, still smiling. "Have you heard of
+her?"
+
+"Yes," said Leighton, quietly, "I've heard of her. I've even seen her.
+She's a beautiful--she has a beautiful body. Tell me just how it
+happened."
+
+Then Lewis talked, and Leighton appeared to listen. He knew all the
+stages of that _via dolorosa_ too well to have to pay close attention to
+Lewis's description, of the first emotional step of man toward man's
+surest tribulation.
+
+There was no outburst from Leighton when Lewis finished. On the
+contrary, he made an effort to hide his thoughts, and succeeded so well
+that, had it not been for a touch of bitterness in his smile, Lewis
+might have been led to think that with this active calm his father would
+have received the announcement of his son's choice of any woman.
+
+"Dad," said Lewis, troubled, "why do you smile like that?"
+
+"I am smiling," said Leighton, "at the tragedy of philanthropy. Any man
+can get; it takes a genius to give. There are things I've got that I'd
+like to give you now--on the eve of your greatest trouble." Lewis threw
+up his head in amazement. He would have protested but, with a
+half-raised hand, Leighton stilled him. "No," he went on, "I don't
+expect you to acquire prescience all in a moment, nor do I expect myself
+to acquire the genius of giving to a sudden need in half an hour. Let's
+let things stand this way. You love Folly Delaires; I don't. I don't
+want to be converted, and you don't. But one of us has simply got to be,
+because--well--because I like to think we've lived too long together in
+spirit to take to two sides of a fence now."
+
+Lewis felt a sudden depression fall on him, all the more terible for the
+exaltation that had preceded it.
+
+"Two sides of a fence, Dad?" he said. "That can never be. I--I've just
+got to convert you. When you know her, she'll help me."
+
+The two rose to their feet on a common impulse. Leighton laid his hand
+on Lewis's shoulder.
+
+"Boy," he said, "forgive me for making your very words my own. I have no
+illusions as to the power of woman. She is at once the supreme source of
+happiness and of poignant suffering. You think your woman will help you;
+I think she'll help me. That neutralizes her a bit, doesn't it? It
+reduces our battle to the terms of single combat--unless one of us is
+right about Folly."
+
+"But, Dad," stammered Lewis, "I don't _want_ a battle."
+
+Leighton pressed his hand down. Unconsciously Lewis straightened under
+the pressure.
+
+"Listen to this," said Leighton. "The battles of life aren't served up
+like the courses at a dinner that you can skip at will. In life we have
+to fight. Mostly we have to fight people we love for things we love
+better. Sometimes we fight them for the very love we bear them. You and
+I are going to fight each other because we can't help it. Let's fight
+like gentlemen--to the finish--and smile. My boy, you don't know Folly."
+
+"It's you who don't know Folly, Dad," said Lewis, He tried to smile, but
+his lips twitched treacherously. Not since Leighton had gambled with
+him, and won all he possessed, had such a blow been dealt to his faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Both Lewis and his father passed a miserable night, but not even Nelton
+could have guessed it when the two met in the morning for a late Sunday
+breakfast. Leighton felt a touch of pride in the bearing of his son. He
+wondered if Lewis had taken to heart a saying of his: "To feel sullen is
+human nature; to show it is ill breeding." He decided that he hadn't, on
+the grounds that no single saying is ever more than a straw tossed on
+the current of life.
+
+When they had finished breakfast in their accustomed cheerful silence,
+Leighton settled down to a long cigar and his paper.
+
+"I suppose you're off to see your lady," he said casually.
+
+Lewis laughed.
+
+"Not yet. She isn't up until twelve ever."
+
+"Doesn't get up until twelve?" said Leighton. "You've found that out,
+eh?"
+
+"I didn't say 'doesn't get up'; I said 'isn't.' She gets up early
+enough, but it takes her hours. I've never even heard of a woman that
+takes such care of herself."
+
+Leighton laid his paper aside.
+
+"By the way," he said, "I've a confession to make to you, one that has
+worried me for some days. Your little affair drove it out of my mind
+last night."
+
+"Well, Dad, go ahead," said Lewis. "I won't be hard on you."
+
+"Have you any recollection of what you were working on before you went
+away?"
+
+For a moment Lewis's face looked blank, then suddenly it flushed. He
+turned sharp eyes on his father.
+
+"I left the studio locked," he said.
+
+Leighton colored in his turn.
+
+"I forgive you that," he said quietly. "Just after I came back to town
+Vi called and told me she had been posing for you. She said she had left
+something in the studio that she wanted to fetch herself. She asked me
+for the key."
+
+Lewis's hands were clenched.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"I went with her--to the door. She asked me to wait outside. She was
+gone a long time. I heard her sobbing----"
+
+"Sobbing? Vi?"
+
+Leighton nodded.
+
+"So--so I went in."
+
+Father and son looked steadily at each other for a moment. Then Lewis
+said:
+
+"You've forgiven me for my thought, Dad; now I beg your pardon for it. I
+suppose you saw that that bit of modeling was never intended for the
+Salon? It was meant for Vi--because--well, because I liked her enough
+to----"
+
+"I know," interrupted Leighton. "Well, it worked. It worked as such
+cures seldom do. While Vi was sobbing her heart out on the couch, I
+smashed up the statue with a mallet. That's my confession."
+
+Lewis did not move.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?" asked Leighton. "I smashed up your model of
+Vi."
+
+"I heard you, Dad," said Lewis. "But you mustn't expect me to get
+excited over it, because it's what I should have done myself, once she
+had seen it."
+
+"When I did it," continued Leighton, "I had no doubts; but since then
+I've thought a lot. I want you to know that if that cast had gone into
+marble or bronze, it would have had the eternal life of art itself."
+
+Lewis flushed with pleasure. He knew that such praise from his father
+must have been weighed a thousand times before it gained utterance. Only
+from one other man on earth could commendation bring such a thrill. As
+the name of Le Brux came to his mind, it fell from his father's lips.
+
+"Le Brux has been giving me an awful talking to."
+
+"Le Brux!" cried Lewis. "Has he been here?"
+
+"Only in spirit," said Leighton, smiling. "And this is what he said in
+his voice of thunder: 'If I had been here, I would have stood by that
+figure with a mallet and smashed the head of any man that raised a
+finger against it. What is the world coming to when a mere life weighs
+more in the balance than the most trifling material expression of
+eternity?
+
+"'But, Master,' I said, 'a gentleman must always remember the woman.'
+
+"To which he replied, 'What business has an artist to be anything so
+small as a mere gentleman? It is not alone for fame and repute that we
+great have our being. If by the loss of my single soul I can touch a
+thousand other souls to life, bring sight to the blind and hearing to
+ears that would not hear, what, then, is my soul? Nothing.'"
+
+Leighton stopped and leaned forward.
+
+"Then he said this, and the thunder was gone from his voice: 'When all
+the trappings of the world's religions have rotted away, the vicarious
+intention and example of Christ will still stand and bring a surge to
+the hearts of unforgetful men. Thou child, believe me, what humanity has
+gained of the best is founded solidly on sacrifice--on the individual
+ruin of many men and women and little children.'"
+
+Leighton paused. Lewis was sitting with locked hands. He was trying to
+detach his mind from personalities.
+
+"That's a great sophistry, isn't it?" he said.
+
+"Do you know the difference between a sophistry and a great sophistry?"
+asked Leighton. "A sophistry is a lie; a great sophistry is merely
+super-truth."
+
+"I can see," he went on, "that it's difficult for you to put yourself
+outside sculpture. Let's switch off to literature, because literature,
+next to music, is the supreme expression in art. I heard one of the
+keenest men in London say the other day, 'The man who writes a book that
+everybody agrees with is one of two things: a mere grocer of amusement
+or a mental pander to cash.'
+
+"You've read Irving's tales of the Catskills and of the Alhambra.
+Vignettes. I think I remember seeing you read Hawthorne's "Scarlet
+Letter." I pick out two Americans because to-day our country supports
+more literary grocers and panders than the rest of the world put
+together. It isn't the writers' fault altogether. You can't turn a
+nation from pap in a day any more than you can wean a baby on lobster _ŕ
+la_ Newburg.
+
+"But to get back. You might say that Irving gives the lie to my keen
+friend unless you admit, as I do, that Irving was not a writer of books
+so much as a painter of landscapes. He painted the scenes that were dear
+to his heart, and in his still blue skies he hung the soft mists of
+fable, of legend, and of the pageant of a passing race. Hawthorne was
+his antithesis--a painter of portraits of the souls of men and women.
+That's the highest achievement known to any branch of art." Leighton
+paused. "Do you know why those two men wrote as they did?"
+
+Lewis shook his head.
+
+"Because, to put it in unmistakable English, they had something on their
+chest, and they had to get it off. Irving wrote to get away from life.
+Hawthorne never wrote to get away from life,--he wrote himself into it
+forever and forever."
+
+Leighton paused to get his cigar well alight.
+
+"And now," he went on, "we come to the eternal crux. Which is beauty?
+Irving's placid pictures of light, or Hawthorne's dark portrayals of the
+varying soul of man?" He turned to Lewis. "What's your idea of a prude?"
+
+"A prude," stammered Lewis--"why a prude's a person with an exaggerated
+idea of modesty, isn't it?"
+
+"Bah!" said Leighton, "you are as flat as a dictionary. A prude is a far
+more active evil than that. A prude, my boy, is one who has but a single
+eye, and that in the back of his head, and who keeps his blind face set
+toward nature. If he would be content to walk backward, the world would
+get along more easily, and would like him better the farther he walked.
+The reason the live world has always hated prudes is that it's forever
+being stumbled on by them. Your prude clutches Irving to the small of
+his back and cries, 'This alone is beauty!' But any man with two eyes
+looks and answers, 'You are wrong; this is beauty alone.'
+
+"And now do you see where we've come out? To make a thing of beauty
+alone is to bring a flash of joy to a hard-pressed world. But joy is
+never a force, not even an achievement. It's merely an acquisition. It
+isn't alive. The man who writes on paper or in stone one throbbing cry
+of the soul has lifted the world by the power of his single arm. He
+alone lives. And it is written that you shall know life above all the
+creatures that are in sea and land and in the heavens above the earth by
+this sign: sole among the things that are, life is its own source and
+its own end."
+
+Leighton stopped.
+
+"You see now," he added, "why half of me is sorry that it let the other
+half smash up that cast. What claim has a puny person against one
+flicker of eternal truth?"
+
+"Yes," said Lewis, slowly, "I see. I can follow your logic to the very
+end. I can't answer it. All I know is that I myself--I couldn't have
+paid the price, nor--nor let Vi pay it."
+
+"And to tell you the truth," said Leighton with a smile, "I don't know
+that I'm sorry." Lewis rose to his feet.
+
+"Well, Dad," he said, "it's about twelve o'clock."
+
+"Go ahead, my boy," said Leighton. "Bring the lady to lunch to-day or
+any other day--if she'll come. Just telephone Nelton."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+DURING the next few days Leighton saw little of his son and nothing of
+Folly, but he learned quite casually that the lady was occupying an
+apartment overlooking Hyde Park. From that it was easy for him to guess
+her address, and one morning, without saying anything to Lewis of his
+plans, he presented himself at Folly's door. A trim maid opened to his
+ring.
+
+"Is Mlle. Delaires in, my dear?" asked Leighton.
+
+The maid stiffened, and peered intently at Leighton, who stood at ease
+in the half-dusk of the hall. When she had quite made out his trim,
+well-dressed figure, she decided not to be as haughty as she had at
+first intended.
+
+"Miss Delaires," she said, without quite unbending, however, "is not in
+to callers at half after ten; she's in her bath."
+
+"I am fortunate," remarked Leighton, coolly. "Will you take her my
+card?" He weighted it with a sovereign.
+
+"Oh, sir," said the maid, "it's not fair for me to take it. She won't be
+seeing you. I can promise."
+
+"Where shall I wait?" asked Leighton, stepping past her.
+
+"This way, sir."
+
+He was shown into a small, but dainty, sitting-room. The door beyond was
+ajar, and before the maid closed it he caught a glimpse of a large
+bedroom still in disarray. In the better light the maid glanced at his
+face and then at his card.
+
+"What kin are you to Mr. Lewis Leighton, please, sir?" she asked.
+
+"I have every reason to believe that I'm his father," said Leighton,
+smiling.
+
+"I should say you had, sir," answered the maid, with a laugh, "if looks
+is a guaranty. But even so she won't see you, I'm afraid."
+
+"I don't mind much if she doesn't," said Leighton. "Just to have had
+this chat with you makes it a charming morning."
+
+In saying that Miss Delaires was in her bath, the maid had committed an
+anachronism. Folly was not in her bath. She had been in her bath over an
+hour ago; now she was in her bandages.
+
+Folly's bath-room was not as large as her bedroom, but it was larger
+than anything since Rome. To the casual glance, its tiled floor and
+walls and its numerous immaculate fittings, nickel-trimmed and
+glass-covered, gave the impression of a luxurious private-clinic
+theater. Standing well away from one wall was, in fact, a glass
+operating-table of the latest and choicest design. A more leisurely
+inspection of the room, however, showed this operating-table to be the
+only item--if a large-boned Swedish masseuse be omitted--directly
+reminiscent of a surgery. All the other glittering appliances, including
+an enormous porcelain tub, were subtly allied to the cult of healthy
+flesh.
+
+At the moment when the maid entered with Leighton's card, Folly was
+virtually indistinguishable. She could only be guessed at in the
+mummy-like form extended, but not stretched, if you please, on the
+operating-table. Her face, all but a central oval, was held in a thin
+mask of kidskin, and her whole body, from neck to peeping pink toes, was
+wrapped closely in bandages soaked with cold cream. The bath-tub was
+still half-full of tepid water, from which rose faint exhalations of the
+latest attar, so delicate that they attained deception, and made one
+look around instinctively for flowers.
+
+Folly's big brown eyes seemed to be closed, but in reality they were
+fixed on a little clock in plain, white porcelain, to match the room,
+which stood on a glass shelf high on the wall in front of her. "I'm sure
+that old clock has stopped," she cried petulantly to the masseuse. "Tell
+me if it's ticking."
+
+"Ut's ticking," said the _masseuse_, patiently. Then she added, as
+though she were reciting: "Be mindful. Youth is a fund that can be saved
+up like pennies. The tenure of youth and beauty is determined by the
+amount and the quality--"
+
+"Of relaxation," chanted Folly, breaking in. "It is not enough that the
+body be relaxed; wrinkles come from the mind. Relax your mind even as
+you relax your fingers and your toes. Tra-la-la, la-la!" Folly wriggled
+the free tips of her pink toes. She felt the maid come in. "What do you
+want, Marie?"
+
+"Nothing, Miss," said the maid; "only I think something must of
+happened."
+
+"Nothing, only something's happened," mimicked Folly. "Well, what's
+happened?"
+
+"It's Mr. Lewis's governor, Miss, please. He's here, and he says he just
+must see you."
+
+"So you let him in, did you? At half-past ten in the morning? How much
+did he give you?"
+
+"Oh, nothing at all, Miss." Marie paused. "He's that charming he didn't
+have to give me anything."
+
+"H--m--m!" said Folly. "Well, go ask him what he wants."
+
+"He won't say, Miss. He's that troubled he just keeps his eyes on the
+floor, an' says as he has something private he must tell you. Perhaps
+Mr. Lewis has broke his leg. I'm sure I don't know."
+
+"Come on, Buggins," said Miss Delaires to the masseuse. "Don't you hear?
+There's a gentleman waiting to see me."
+
+Buggins shook her head.
+
+"The hour ut is not finish," she said calmly. "Five minutes yet." And
+for five long minutes Folly had to wait. Then the _masseuse_ went
+swiftly into action. Off came the mask and the long, moist bandages. As
+the bandages uncoiled, Marie rolled them up tightly and placed them, one
+after the other, on the glass shelves of a metal sterilizer. Buggins
+rolled up her white sleeves, and entered forthwith on the major rite.
+
+First she massaged Folly's full, round neck; then her swift, deep
+fingers, passed down one arm and felt out every muscle, every joint, to
+the tips of Folly's fingers. Back up the arm again, across the bosom,
+and down the other arm. Back to the neck once more, and then down and
+around the body to the very last joint of Folly's very last and very
+little toe.
+
+Folly let go a great sigh, sprang from the table, and stood erect, young
+and alive in every fiber, in the center of the blue and white bath-rug.
+The film of cold cream was quite gone. But the _masseuse_ was not yet
+content. She caught up a soft, scented towel and passed it deftly over
+arms, body, and legs, not forgetting the last little toe. When she
+finished, she was on her knees. She looked up and nodded to Folly's
+inquiring glance.
+
+Folly gave a little laugh of pure delight, and stretched. She held her
+doubled fists high above her head. Her whole body glowed in an even,
+unblemished pink. Verily, it seemed to breathe; it breathed with the
+breath of flowers. And no wonder!
+
+When she had finished stretching, Marie was holding ready a gown of
+silk,--dark blue, with a foam of lace at the throat and on the broad
+half-sleeves,--and Buggins had placed lamb's-wool slippers just before
+her feet. But Folly was too full of animal to be even so softly
+imprisoned just yet. With a chuckle of mischief, she gave them each a
+quick push and darted across the room and out by the door.
+
+Maid and masseuse followed her into the bedroom with protesting cries.
+The bedroom had been put in order. Only the bed itself, dressed merely
+in a fresh white sheet and pillows, looked a little naked, for the
+bedclothes proper had been carried out to air. In the center of the bed
+was Folly, curled up like a kitten. Her hair had tumbled down into two
+thick, loose braids. She submitted now to the gown, and wrapped herself
+carefully in it. Propped high against the pillows, a braid of brown hair
+falling forward over each shoulder, and her bare arms lying still at her
+sides, she looked very demure indeed and very sweet.
+
+"Bring tea, Marie," she said softly, "and show in Daddy Leighton."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+LEIGHTON'S first feeling on entering Folly's bedroom was one of despair.
+All his knowledge of the highways and byways of the feminine mind was
+only enough to make him recognize, as he glanced about the room, that he
+was about to encounter more! than a personality, that he was face to
+face with a force.
+
+The most illuminating thing that can be said about Folly's bedroom is
+that Leighton saw the bedroom--the whole of it--before he consciously
+saw Folly. The first impression that the room gave was one of fresh
+air--the weighted air of a garden in bloom, however, rather than that of
+some wind-swept plain. The next, was one of an even and almost stolid
+tone, neither feminine nor masculine, in the furnishings. They were
+masterfully impersonal.
+
+To Leighton, who had had the run of every grade of greasy, professional
+dressing-room, chaotic and slovenly beyond description, and of boudoirs,
+professional and otherwise, each in its appropriate measure a mirror of
+the character of its occupant, the detachment of this big room came as a
+shock. There were only eight pieces of furniture, of which four were
+chairs, yet there was no sense of emptiness. The proportions of the
+remaining objects would have dwarfed a far larger space.
+
+Along the whole length of one wall stood an enormous press in mahogany,
+with sliding-doors. Two of the doors were slightly open, for Folly knew
+that clothes, like people and flowers, need a lot of air. Leighton
+caught a glimpse of filmy nothings hanging on racks; of other nothings,
+mostly white, stacked on deep shelves; of a cluster of hats clinging
+like orchids to invisible bumps; and last and least, of tiny slippers
+all in a row.
+
+At right angles to the press, but well away from it, stood a
+dressing-table surmounted by a wide, low swivel-mirror. The table was
+covered with tapestry under glass. The dull gleam of the tapestry seemed
+to tone down and control the glittering array of toilet articles in
+monogrammed gold. Facing the press, stood a large trinity cheval-glass,
+with swinging wings. In the center of the room was the bed. Behind the
+bed and on each side of it were two high windows. They carried no
+hangings, but were fitted with three shades, differing in weight and
+color, and with adjustable porcelain Venetian blinds which could be made
+to exclude light without excluding air.
+
+Folly's bed was a mighty structure. Like the rest of the furniture, it
+was of mahogany. It was a four-poster, but posts would be a misleading
+term applied to the four fluted pillars that carried the high canopy.
+The canopy itself was trimmed with no tassels or hangings except for a
+single band of thick tapestry brought just low enough to leave the
+casual observer in doubt as to whether there really was a canopy at all.
+
+Having taken in all the surroundings at a glance, Leighton's eyes
+finally fell upon Folly. She lay in a puzzling, soft glow of light.
+Resting high on the pillows, she reached scarcely half-way down the
+length of the great bed. For a second they looked at each other
+solemnly. Then Leighton's glance passed from her face to the two braids
+of hair, down the braids to her bare arms demurely still at her sides,
+down her carefully wrapped figure, down, down to her pink toes. Folly
+was watching that glance. As it reached her toes, she gave them a quick
+wriggle. Leighton jumped as if some one had shot at him, and solemnity
+made a bolt through the open windows, hotly pursued by a ripple and a
+rumble of laughter.
+
+When Leighton had finished laughing, he sat down in a chair and sighed.
+He was trying to figure out just what horse-power it would have taken to
+drag him away from Folly at Lewis's age. Where was he going to find the
+power? For the first time in many years he trembled before a situation.
+He began to talk casually, trying to lead up to the object of his call.
+Two things, however, distracted him. One was the puzzling glow of light
+that bathed Folly and the bed, the other was Folly herself.
+
+Folly was very polite indeed as far as occasional friendly interjections
+went, but as to genuine attention she was distinctly at fault. She did
+not look at Leighton while he talked, but held her gaze dreamily on what
+would have been the sky above her had not three floors of apartments, a
+roof, and several other things intervened.
+
+Finally Leighton exclaimed in exasperation:
+
+"_What_ are you staring at?"
+
+Folly started as though she had just wakened, and turned her eyes on
+him.
+
+"You're too far away," she said. "If you really want to talk to me, come
+over here." She patted the bed at her side.
+
+Leighton crossed over, and sat on the edge of the bed. Something made
+him look up. His jaw dropped. There was a canopy to Folly's bed. It
+consisted of one solid sweep of French mirror so limpid that reflection
+became reality. It was fringed with tiny veiled lights.
+
+Once more Folly's gay ripple of laughter rang out, but it was
+unaccompanied this time. Leighton's fighting blood was up. He stared at
+her stolidly.
+
+"Look here," he said, "I _do_ want to talk to you. Put out those cursed
+little lights!"
+
+"Oh, dear!" gasped Folly as she switched off the lights, "you're such a
+funny man! You make me laugh. Please don't do it any more."
+
+"I won't try any harder than I have so far," said Leighton, grimly.
+"This is what I came to say to you. My boy wants to marry you. I don't
+want him to. I might as well confess that during the last ten minutes
+I've given up any ideas I had of buying you off. I'm not worth a
+million."
+
+"You poor dear," said Folly, "don't worry any longer. I don't want to
+marry Lew. Ask me something else."
+
+"I will," said Leighton. "It's just this. Chuck Lew over. Get rid of
+him. It will hurt him, I know. I can understand that better now than I
+did before. But I'd rather hurt him a bit that way than see him on the
+rack."
+
+"Thanks," said Folly; "but, you see, I can't get rid of him. You can't
+get rid of something you haven't got." She smiled. "Don't you see? I'll
+have to get him before I can oblige you."
+
+"Don't bother," said Leighton. "A clever woman like you often gets rid
+of something she hasn't got. Look here, you don't want to marry Lew,
+and, what's more, you don't love him. You couldn't marry him if you
+wanted to. You know it isn't in you to marry any man. But I tell you,
+Folly, if it really was in you truly to marry Lew, I'd give in and bless
+you. I wouldn't have yesterday, but I would to-day; because, my dear,
+you are simply made up of charms. The only thing missing is a soul."
+
+"You talk better than Lew--not so silly," remarked Folly. "But what's
+the use of all this palaver about marrying? I've told you I don't want
+to marry him."
+
+"Well, what do you want, then?"
+
+"I want Lew," said Folly, smiling. She sat up, and drew her knees into
+the circle of her arms. "He's an awfully nice boy. So like you, Marie
+says. I just want him to have. _You_ know."
+
+"Yes," said Leighton, dryly. "Well, you can't have him."
+
+"Can't have him?" repeated Folly, straightening. "Why not?"
+
+"Because I don't want you to."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Well," said Leighton, "I don't believe in that sort of thing."
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Folly, "now you're trying to make me laugh again! By the
+way, _are_ you Mr. Grapes Leighton?"
+
+"I am," said Leighton, flushing.
+
+Folly called the maid.
+
+"Marie," she said, "bring me my scrap-book--the oldest one."
+
+Leighton moved back to the chair and sat down with a resigned air. Marie
+brought in a huge scrap-book, and placed it on a bracket tea-tray that
+swung in over the bed. Folly opened the book and turned the leaves
+slowly. "Here we are," she said at last, and read, mimicking each
+speaker to a turn:
+
+"'Counsel:' 'Please, Mrs. Bing, just answer yes or no; did you or did
+you not meet Mr. Leighton in the corridor at three o'clock in the
+morning?
+
+"'Mrs. Bing:' 'Well, sir, yes; sir, that is, please your Honor [turning
+to the judge], I _did_ meet Mr. Leighton in the collidoor, but 'e was
+eating of a bunch of grapes that innercent you'd ha' knowed at once as
+'_ee_ 'adn't been up to no mischief.' [Laughter.]
+
+"Order! Order!" boomed Folly, as she slammed the book.
+
+Leighton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That's neither here nor there. You'll find before you get through with
+life what people with brains have known for several centuries. The son
+that's worth anything at all is never like his father. Sons grow."
+
+"I don't care anything about that," said Folly, calmly. "I'm going to
+have Lew because--well, just because I want him."
+
+"And I say you 're not."
+
+"So?" said Folly, her eyes narrowing. Then she smiled and added,
+"There's only one way you can stop me"
+
+"How's that?" said Leighton.
+
+"By making me want somebody else more."
+
+Leighton looked at her keenly for a moment.
+
+"I shall never do that," he said.
+
+"Somehow," said Folly, still smiling, "you've made a fair start. It
+isn't you exactly. It's that you are just Lew--the whole of Lew and a
+lot of things added."
+
+"You are blind," said Leighton; "you don't know the difference between
+addition and subtraction. Anyway, even if I could do it, I wouldn't. I
+want to fight fair--fair with Lew, fair with you, if you're fair with
+me, and fair with myself. But I want to fight, not play. Will you lunch
+at our place to-morrow?"
+
+"Let's see. To-morrow," said Folly, tapping her lips to hide a tiny
+yawn. "Well, we can't fight unless we get together, can we? Yes, I'll
+come."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Immediately upon leaving Folly, Leighton called on Lady Derl, by
+appointment. He had already been to Hélčne with his trouble over Lewis.
+It was she that had told him to see Folly. "In a case of even the
+simplest subtraction," Hélčne had said, "you've got to know what you're
+trying to subtract from."
+
+As usual, Leighton was shown into Hélčne's intimate room. He closed the
+door after him quickly.
+
+"Hélčne," he said, "where's the key?"
+
+"The key? What key?"
+
+"The key to this door. I want to lock myself in here."
+
+"Poor frightened thing!" laughed Hélčne. "Turn around and let me look at
+you. Is your face scratched?"
+
+Leighton pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He stared at
+each familiar object in the room as though he were trying to recall a
+truant mind. Finally his eyes came around to Hélčne, and with a quick
+smile and the old toss of the head with which he was wont to throw off a
+mood, he brought himself back to the present.
+
+"With time and patience," he said, as he sat down, "anybody can get a
+grip on a personality, but a mighty impersonality is like the Deluge
+or--or a steam-roller. Do I look flattened out?"
+
+"You do, rather, for you," said Hélčne. "Tell me about it from the
+beginning." And Leighton did. It took him half an hour. When he got
+through, she said, still smiling, "I'd like to meet this Folly person."
+
+"I see I've talked for nothing," said Leighton. "It isn't the Folly
+person that flattened me out. It's what's around her, outside of her."
+
+"That's what you think," said Hélčne. "But, still, it's she I'd like to
+see."
+
+"That's lucky," said Leighton, "because you 're going to."
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-morrow. Lunch."
+
+"What's the idea?"
+
+"The idea is this. I've been looking her up, viewing her cradle and her
+mother's cradle and that sort of thing. I'd have liked to have viewed
+her father's as well, but it's a case of _cherchez l'homme_."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, the young lady's an emanation from sub-Cockneydom. My idea is
+that that kind can't stand the table and _grande-dame_ test. I'll supply
+the table, with fixtures, and you're going to be the _grande-dame_."
+Leighton's face suddenly became boyishly pleading. "Will you, Hélčne?
+It's more than an imposition to ask; it's an impertinence."
+
+For a moment Hélčne was serious and looked it.
+
+"Glen," she said, "you and I don't have to ask that sort of thing--not
+with each other. We take it. Of course I'll come. I'll enjoy it. But--do
+you think she's really raw enough to give herself away?"
+
+"I don't know," said Leighton, gloomily. "I couldn't think of anything
+else. Lunch begins to look a bit thin for the job. At first I'd thought
+of one of those green-eyed Barbadian cocktails, followed by that
+pale-eyed Swiss wine of mine that Ivory calls the Amber Witch with the
+hidden punch. But I've given them up. You see, I told her I'd play fair
+if she did."
+
+"Yes, I see," said Hélčne.
+
+A psychologist would have liked an hour to study the lightning change
+that came over Folly when, on the following day, she suddenly realized
+Lady Derl. Folly had blown into the flat like a bit of gay thistledown.
+For her, to lunch with one man was the stop this side of boredom; but to
+lunch with two was a delight. If she was allowed to pick the other
+woman, she could just put up with a _partie carrée_. But she hadn't
+picked out Lady Derl. Lady Derl was something that had never touched her
+world except from a box across the footlights on an occasional premičre.
+
+One flash of Folly's eyes took in Lady Derl, and then her long lashes
+drooped before Lady Derl had time to take in Folly. Folly's whole self
+drooped. She was still a bit of thistle-down, but its pal, the breeze,
+was gone. She crossed the room, barely touched Hélčne's hand, and then
+fluttered down to stillness on the edge of a big chair.
+
+At lunch Leighton made desperate efforts to start a breeze and failed.
+Folly said "Yes" and Folly said "No,"--very softly, too,--and that was
+all. Leighton stepped on Hélčne's foot several times, but to no avail.
+Lady Derl was watching Folly. "Could she keep it up? Yes, she could."
+Lady Derl couldn't talk; she wanted to laugh.
+
+Throughout that interminable lunch, Hélčne, Leighton, and Lewis saw
+nothing, thought nothing, but Folly, and, for all any one of them could
+see, Folly didn't know it. "Oh, you adorable _cat!_" thought Lady Derl.
+"Oh, you _adorable!_" sighed Lewis to himself, and, inwardly, Leighton
+groaned, "Oh, you _you!_"
+
+Within twenty minutes of leaving the table, Folly rose from the edge of
+her chair and crossed to Lady Derl.
+
+"Good-by," she breathed shyly, holding out her hand. "I must go now."
+Lewis sprang up to accompany her. They could see he was aching to get
+away somewhere where he could put his arms around her. Leighton crossed
+to the door and held it open. "Good-by," said Folly to him, holding out
+her hand. "I've had _such_ a good time."
+
+At the word "such," Leighton winced and flushed. Then he grinned.
+
+"Good-by, Folly," he said. "I hope you'll come again when you're feeling
+more like yourself."
+
+He closed the door and then rang for Nelton. Nelton came.
+
+"Bring me the iodine," said Leighton, as with his handkerchief he
+stanched the blood from a bad scratch on his right wrist.
+
+"Heavens! Glen," cried Hélčne, "how did you get that?
+
+"Didn't you see me jump when she said '_such_'?" asked Leighton. Then
+they sat down, and Hélčne laughed for a long time, while Leighton tried
+not to. "Oh," he said at last, "I wish we didn't have to think of Lew!"
+
+"You may ask for my advice now," said Hélčne, a little breathlessly.
+"I've got it ready."
+
+"Thank God!" said Leighton. "What is it?"
+
+"It's only a plan to gain time, after all," said Hélčne; "but that's
+what you want--time for Lew to get his puppy eyes opened. You can
+elaborate the idea. I'll just give you the skeleton."
+
+She did, and, soon after, Leighton saw her into a cab. He went back to
+the flat and waited. He knew that Lewis would not be gone long. He would
+be too keen to hear his father's and Lady Derl's verdict.
+
+Leighton had just settled down to a book and a second cigar when Lewis
+came into the room like a breeze that had only a moment to stay.
+
+"Well, Dad," he cried, "what have you got to say now? What has Lady Derl
+got to say?"
+
+Lewis flung himself into a chair, crossed his arms, and stretched his
+legs straight out before him. His head hung to one side, and he was so
+confident of his father's verdict that he was laughing at him out of
+bright eyes.
+
+Leighton laid his book aside and took his cigar from his mouth. He
+leaned toward his son, his elbows on his knees.
+
+"Every time I see Miss Delaires," he said slowly, "my opinion of her
+charms and her accomplishments goes up with a leap."
+
+Lewis nodded, and scarcely refrained from saying, "I told you so."
+
+Leighton's face remained impassive. "She has a much larger repertoire
+than I thought," he continued; "but there's one rôle she can't play."
+
+"What's that?" asked Lewis.
+
+"Marriage."
+
+"Why?" asked Lewis, his face setting. Then he blurted out: "I might as
+Well tell you, she says she doesn't believe in marriage. She's too
+advanced."
+
+"Too advanced!" exclaimed Leighton. "Why, my dear boy, she hasn't
+advanced an inch from the time the strongest man with the biggest club
+had a God-given right to the fairest woman in the tribe and exercised
+it. That was the time for Folly to marry."
+
+"Go easy, Dad," warned Lewis.
+
+"I'm going to, Boy," said Leighton. "You hear a lot of talk to-day on
+the shortcomings of marriage as an institution. The socialists and the
+suffragists and a lot of other near-sighted people have got it into
+their heads that we've outgrown marriage." Leighton puffed at his cigar.
+"Once I was invited out to dinner, and had to eat cabbage because there
+was nothing else. That night I had the most terrible dream of my life. I
+dreamed that instead of growing up, I was growing down, and that by
+morning I had grown down so far that, when I tried to put them on, I
+only reached to the crotch of my trousers. I'll never forget those
+flapping, empty legs."
+
+Lewis smiled.
+
+"You can smile," went on Leighton. "I can't, even now. That's what's
+happened to this age. We've outgrown marriage downward. Your
+near-sighted people talk of contractual agreements, parity of the sexes,
+and of a lot of other drugged panaceas, with the enthusiasm of a hawker
+selling tainted bloaters. They don't see that marriage is founded on a
+rock set deeper than the laws of man. It's a rock upon which their
+jerry-rigged ships of the married state are bound to strike as long as
+there's any Old Guard left standing above the surge of leveled
+humanity."
+
+"And what's the rock?" asked Lewis.
+
+"A woman's devotion," said Leighton, and paused. "Devotion," he went on,
+"is an act of worship, and of prayer as well as of consecration, only,
+with a woman, it isn't an act at all. Sometime perhaps H lne will talk
+to you. If she does, you'll see in her eyes what I'm trying to tell you
+in words."
+
+"And--Folly?" said Lewis. His own pause astounded him.
+
+"Yes, Folly," said Leighton. "Well, that's what Folly lacks--the key,
+the rock, the foundation. The only person Folly has a right to marry is
+herself, and she knows it."
+
+Lewis sighed with disappointment. He had been so sure. Leighton spoke
+again.
+
+"One thing more. Don't forget that to-day you and I--and H lne,
+received Folly here as one of us."
+
+Lewis looked up. Leighton rose, and laid one hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Boy," he said, "don't make a mistress out of anything that has touched
+H lne. You owe that to me."
+
+"I won't, Dad," gulped Lewis. He snatched up his hat and stick and
+hurried out into the open.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+LEIGHTON'S heart ached for his boy as he watched him go, and during the
+next few weeks Iris pity changed into an active anxiety. In setting that
+trap--he could call it nothing else--for Lew, he and H lne had put
+forces into conflict that were not amenable to any light control. Lewis
+had passed his word. Leighton knew he would never go back on it. On the
+other hand, for the first time in all her life Folly's primal instinct
+was being balked by a denial she could comprehend only as having its
+source in Leighton rather than in Lew.
+
+Folly was being eaten away by desire. She was growing desperate. So were
+Marie and the _masseuse._ When a morning came that found Folly with
+purple shadows under her eyes their despair became terror.
+
+"Madame," cried Marie, "why don't you marry him? You've got to stop it.
+You've got to stop it. Anyway, all ways, you've got to stop it. It's
+a-eating of you up. If you're a loving of him that much, why don't
+cher?"
+
+"Loving of him!" sneered Folly. "I--I hate him. No, no, that's not true.
+I don't hate Lew, poor dear. It's _them_ I hate. And I _won't_ be
+beaten." She pounded her doubled knee with her fist. "I don't _want_ to
+marry him; but if they push me, if they keep on pushing me----"
+
+It can be seen from the above that Lew was beginning to get on Folly's
+nerves. She had long since begun to get on his. When they were with
+others it was all right; Folly was her old self. But whenever they were
+alone, the same wordy battle began and never ended. Lew grew morose,
+heavy. He avoided his father, but he could do no work; so time hung on
+his hands, and began to rot away his fiber as only too much time can.
+
+One day H lne sent for Leighton.
+
+"Glen," she said, "we've been playing with something bigger than merely
+Folly. I saw her to-day, just a flash in Bond Street. I saw her face. If
+Lew holds out another week, she's going to marry him, and yet, somehow,
+I don't believe she loves him. Something tells me you weren't wrong when
+you said she could love nothing but just herself."
+
+Leighton sighed.
+
+"I know I wasn't wrong," he said. "But you are right: she's going to
+marry him. And I'll have to stand by and see him through. Watch her
+break him up and throw him off. And I'll have to pick up the pieces and
+stick them together. One doesn't like to have to do that sort of thing
+twice. I did it with my own life. I don't want to do it with Lew's.
+There are such a lot of patched lives. I wanted him--I wanted him--"
+
+H lne crossed the room quickly, and put her arms around Leighton, one
+hand pressing his head to her.
+
+"Glen," she said softly, "why, Glen!"
+
+Leighton was not sobbing. He was simply quivering from head to
+toe--quivering so that he could not speak. His teeth chattered. H lne
+smoothed his brow and his crisp hair, shot with gray. She soothed him.
+
+"H lne," he said at last, "he's my boy."
+
+"Glen," said H lne, "if you love him--love him like that, she can't
+break him up. Don't be frightened. Go and find him. Send him to me."
+
+Leighton did not have to look for Lew. He had scarcely reached the flat
+when Lew came rushing in, a transformed Lew, radiant, throbbing with
+happiness.
+
+"Dad," he cried, "she's said 'Yes.' She's going to marry me. Do you
+hear, Dad?"
+
+"Yes, I hear," said Leighton, dully. Then he tossed back his head. He
+would not blur Lew's happy hour. He held out his hand. "I hear," he
+repeated, "and I'll--I'll see you through."
+
+Lewis gripped the extended hand with all his strength, then he sat down
+and chatted eagerly for half an hour. He did not see that his father was
+tired.
+
+"Go and tell H lne," he said when Lewis at last paused. "Telephone her
+that you want to talk to her."
+
+H lne was on the point of going out. She told Lewis to come and see her
+at ten the next morning. He went, and as he was standing just off the
+hall, waiting to be announced, the knocker on the great front door was
+raised, and fell with a resounding clang. Before the doorman could open,
+it fell again.
+
+Lewis, startled, looked around. The door opened. A large man in evening
+dress staggered in. His clothes were in disorder. His high hat had been
+rubbed the wrong way in spots. But Lewis hardly noticed the clothes. His
+eyes were fastened on the man's face. It was bloated, pouched, and
+mottled with purple spots and veins. Fear filled it. Not a sudden fear,
+but fear that was ingrown, that proclaimed that face its habitual
+habitation. The man's eyes bulged and stared, yet saw nothing that was.
+He blundered past the doorman.
+
+Lewis caught a glimpse of a tawdry woman peering out from a hansom at
+the disappearing man. "Thank Gawd!" he heard her say as the cab drove
+off.
+
+With one hand on the wall the man guided himself toward the stairs at
+the end of the hall. On the first step he stumbled and would have fallen
+had it not been for a quick footman. The man recovered his balance and
+struck viciously at the servant. Then he clutched the baluster, and
+stumbled his way up the stairs.
+
+Lewis was frightened. He turned and hurried through the great, silent
+drawing-rooms, through the somber library, to the little passage to
+H lne's room. He met the footman who had gone to announce him. He did
+not stop to hear what he said. He pushed by him and knocked at H lne's
+door.
+
+"Come in," she cried.
+
+Lewis stood before her. He was excited.
+
+"H lne," he said, "there's a man come in--a horrible man. He pushed by
+the servants. He's gone upstairs. I think--well, I think he's not
+himself. Do you want me to do anything?"
+
+H lne was standing. At Lewis's first words she had flushed; then she
+turned pale, deathly pale, and steadied herself with one hand on the
+back of a chair. She put the other hand to the side of her head and
+pressed it there.
+
+"That's it," she said; "he's--he's not himself." Then she faced Lewis.
+"Lew, that's my--that's Lord Derl that you saw."
+
+"H lne!" cried Lew, putting out quick hands toward her. "Oh, I'm
+sorry--I'm sorry I said that!"
+
+His contrition was so deep, so true, that H lne smiled, to put him at
+his ease.
+
+"It's all right, Lew; it's all right that you saw," she said evenly.
+"Come here. Sit down here. Now, what have you got to tell me?"
+
+Lewis was still frowning.
+
+"It seemed," he said, "such a big thing. Now, somehow, it doesn't seem
+so big. I just wanted to tell you that Folly has come around at last.
+We're going to be married."
+
+For a long moment there was silence, then H lne said: "You love her,
+Lew? You're sure you love her?"
+
+Lewis nodded his head vehemently.
+
+"And you're sure she loves you?" asked H lne.
+
+"Yes," said Lewis, not so positively. "In her way she does. She says
+she's wanted me from the first day she saw me."
+
+H lne sat down. She held one knee in her locked hands. Her face was
+half turned from Lewis. She was staring out through the narrow, Gothic
+panes of the broad window. Her face was still pale and set. Lewis's eyes
+swept over her. Her beauty struck him as never before. Something had
+been added to it. H lne seemed to him a girl, a frail girl. How could
+he ever have thought this Woman worldly! Her fragrance reached him. It
+was a fragrance that had no weight, but it bound him--bound him hand and
+foot in its gossamer web. He felt that he ought to struggle, but that he
+did not wish to. He waited for H lne to speak.
+
+"Love," she said at last, "is a terrible thing. Young people don't know
+what a terrible thing it is. We talk about the word 'love' being so
+abused. We think we abuse it, but it's love that abuses itself. There
+are so many kinds of love, and every big family is bound to include a
+certain number of rotters. Love isn't terrible through the things we do
+to it; it's terrible for the things it does to us."
+
+H lne paused.
+
+"I'm glad you saw what you did to-day because it will make it easier for
+you to understand. Tour father loves me, and I love him. It's not the
+love of youth. It's the love of sanity. The love of sanity is a fine,
+stalwart love, but it hasn't the unnamable sweetness or the ineffaceable
+bitterness of the love of youth. Years ago your father wanted to take me
+away from--from what you saw. There did not seem to be any reason why we
+should not go. He and I--we're not wedded to any place or to any time.
+We have a World that's ours alone. We could take it with us wherever we
+went."
+
+"H lne," whispered Lewis, "why didn't you go?"
+
+"H lne unlocked her hands, put them on the lounge at her sides, and
+stayed herself on them. She stared at the floor.
+
+"We didn't go," she said, "because of the terrible things that
+love--bitter love--had done to us."
+
+She turned luminous eyes toward Lewis.
+
+"You say you love Folly; you think she loves you. Lew, perhaps, she _is_
+your pal to-day. Will she be your pal always? You know what a pal is.
+You've told me about that little girl Natalie. A pal is one who can't do
+wrong, who can't go wrong, who can't grow wrong. Your pal is you--your
+blood, your body, your soul. Is Folly your blood, your body, your soul?
+If she is, she'll grow finer and finer and you will, too, and years and
+time and place will fade away before the greatest battle-cry the world
+has ever known--'We're partners.'"
+
+H lne turned her eyes away.
+
+"But if you're not really pals for always, the one that doesn't care
+will grow coarse. If it's Folly, her past will seize upon her. She'll
+run from your condemning eyes, but you--you can't run from your own
+soul.
+
+"Lew, I know. I'm awake. Every woman has a right to an awakening, but
+most of them by good fortune miss it. There's one in ten that doesn't. I
+didn't. The tenth woman--that's what I'm coming to, and whether it's the
+tenth woman or the tenth man, it's all the same in bitter love."
+
+H lne's eyes took on the far-away look that blots out the present
+world, and clothes a distant vision in flesh and blood.
+
+"You saw what you saw to-day," she went on in a voice so low that Lewis
+leaned forward to catch her words. "Remember that, and then listen. The
+love that comes to youth is like the dawn of day. There is no
+resplendent dawn without a sun, nor does the flower of a woman's soul
+open to a lesser light. The tenth woman," she repeated, "the one woman.
+To her awakening comes with a man, not through him. He is part of the
+dawn of life, and though clouds may later hide his shining face, her
+heart remembers forever the glory of the morning."
+
+The tears welled from her eyes unheeded. Lewis leaped forward with a
+cry.
+
+"H lne! H lne!"
+
+She held him off.
+
+"Don't touch me!" she gasped. "I only wanted you to see the whole burden
+of love. Now go, dear. Please go. I'm--I'm very tired."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Lewis, walking rapidly toward the flat, was thinking over all that Lady
+Derl had said and was trying to bring Folly into line with his thoughts.
+He had never pictured Folly old. He tried now and failed. Folly and
+youth were inseparable; Folly _was_ youth. Then he gave up thinking of
+Folly. That moment did not belong to her. As once before, the fragrance
+and the memory of H lne clung to him, held him.
+
+He passed slowly into the room where Leighton sat. He felt a dread lest
+his father ask him what it was H lne had said. But he wronged his
+father. Leighton merely glanced up, flashed a look into the eyes of his
+son. He saw and knew the light that was there for the light that lingers
+in the eyes of him who comes from looking upon holy inner places.
+
+For an hour neither spoke, then Leighton said:
+
+"Going out to lunch to-day?"
+
+"No," said Lewis; "I've told Nelton I'd be in."
+
+"About this marriage," said Leighton, smiling. "Let's look on it as a
+settled thing that there's going to be a marriage. Have you thought
+about the date and ways and means?"
+
+Lewis flushed.
+
+"Don't misunderstand me," said Leighton. "I might as well tell you that
+I've decided to divide my income equally between us, marriage or no
+marriage."
+
+"Dad!" cried Lewis, half protesting.
+
+"There, there," said Leighton, "you're not getting from me what you
+think. What I mean is that I'm not making any sacrifice. I've lived on
+half my income for some time. You'll need a lump-sum of money besides.
+Your grandmother left you a big house in Albany. It won't bring much,
+but I think you'd better sell it. It's on the wrong side of the town
+now."
+
+"I'll do whatever you say, Dad," said Lewis.
+
+"I suggest that you fix your marriage for six months from now," went on
+Leighton. "That will give us time to go over and untangle certain
+affairs, including the house, on the other side. It isn't altogether on
+account of the house I want to take you over."
+
+Lewis had winced at six months. Now he looked questioningly at his
+father.
+
+"Keep your eyes open as you go through life," continued Leighton, "and
+you'll see that marriage is a great divisor. All the sums of friendship
+and relation are cut in two by marriage. You and I, we've been friends,
+and before I surrender you I think it's only just that I should take you
+over and introduce you to your inheritance."
+
+"My inheritance?" asked Lewis.
+
+"Yes," said Leighton, "your country."
+
+"You might think," continued Leighton, "that I'm an expatriate.
+Externally I have been, but never in the heart. I've been
+waiting--waiting for our country to catch up to me. Under certain
+conditions a man has the right to pick out the stage of civilization
+best adapted to his needs. There are two ways of doing that: either go
+to it or make it come to you. If you're not tied, it's easier to go to
+it, because sometimes it takes more than a generation to make it come to
+you."
+
+"So you've gone to it," said Lewis.
+
+Leighton nodded.
+
+"Nations and individuals travel like the hands of a clock. You can't
+always live in the midday of your life, but you can in the midday of a
+nation. When you get an educated taste, you prefer pheasants, bananas,
+Stilton, and nations when they're at one o'clock. The best flavor--I'm
+not talking about emotions--the best flavor of anything, including life,
+comes with one o'clock."
+
+"What time is it over there now?" asked Leighton.
+
+"About eleven," said Leighton, "top wave of success. Now, these are the
+earmarks of success: a meticulous morality in trifles, ingrowing eyes,
+crudity, enthusiasm, and a majority."
+
+"Heavens!" cried Lewis, "you told me once you were afraid I was going to
+be successful. Am I earmarked like that?"
+
+"You will be," said Leighton, "the minute you're driven to sculpturing
+for the populace--for what it will bring. That's why I'm giving you your
+own income now, because, when you're married, you're going to be pretty
+hard pressed. I don't want you to be able to justify the sale of your
+soul.
+
+"I had an uncle once--he's dead now--that had an only son named Will.
+Uncle Jim was a hard worker. He had a paper-mill, and he was worth a lot
+of money. His son Will wasn't a worker. He didn't own the paper-mill,
+but he never let you forget he was going to. He failed his way through
+school, but he couldn't quite fail through college. Every time he failed
+at anything, he used to say: 'It doesn't matter. Dad will give me a
+start in life, won't you, Dad?' And his father would say, 'I certainly
+will.'
+
+"Well, one morning a little after Will had been flunked out of college,
+he was standing on the lawn whittling. I happened to be looking out of
+the window. I saw Uncle Jim crawling across the grass under cover of a
+rhododendron bush to a position just behind Will. He was carrying under
+one arm an enormous fire-cracker, with the fuse lit. He rolled it out on
+the grass behind Will, and when it went off, Will went, too. He landed
+seventeen feet from the hole the cracker made.
+
+"When he'd turned around, but before he could get his jaw up, my uncle
+said: 'Will, I've always promised I'd give you a start in life. Well,
+I've given it to you--a damn good start, too, judging by the length of
+that jump. Now you git! Not a word. You just git!'
+
+"Will didn't go very far away. He went to the rival town across the
+river. He hadn't learned anything about making paper, but a New England
+Leighton is just naturally born knowing how to make paper. In fifteen
+years Will didn't have much soul left, but he had enough money to buy
+his father out and make him sign an agreement to retire. They were both
+as pleased as Punch. To the day of his death the old man would say, 'I
+certainly gave you a start in life, Will,' and Will would answer with a
+grin, 'Dad, you certainly did.'
+
+"The moral of that yarn is that we Leightons have proved over and over
+that we could play the game of success when we thought it was worth
+while. Will's generation and mine, generally speaking, thought it was
+worth while. But your generation--the best of it--isn't going to think
+so. That's why I'm giving you enough money so that you won't have to
+think about it all the time."
+
+"I'm grateful, Dad," said Lewis. "It's easier to breathe that way."
+
+Leighton nodded. "Sometimes," He continued, "I feel guilty, as though it
+were cowardly not to have lived where I was put. But--have you ever seen
+a straw, caught on a snag, try to stop a river? To your sentimentalist
+that straw looks heroic; to anybody that knows the difference between
+bathos and pathos it simply looks silly. The river of life is bigger
+than that of any nation. We can't stop it, but we can swell it by going
+with it. Did you ever see a mule drink against the current?"
+
+"No," said Lewis, his eyes lighting with memory of a thing that he knew.
+
+"Did you ever see free cattle face a gale?"
+
+"No," said Lewis again.
+
+"Out of the mouths of the dumb come words of wisdom," said Leighton. "Go
+with life, Boy. Don't get stranded on a snag. You'll only look silly.
+I'm glad you've traveled around a bit, because the wider the range of
+your legs the wider your range of vision, and, let me tell you, you'll
+need a mighty broad field of sight to take in America and the Americans.
+
+"Your country and mine is a national paradox. It's the only country
+where you can't buy little things for money. For instance, you can't buy
+four seats that somebody else has a right to from a railway conductor
+for sixty-two and a half cents. There isn't any price at which you can
+get an American to say, 'Yes, sir, thank you, sir,' every time he does
+anything for you."
+
+"Lunch is served, sir, thank you, sir," announced the impassive Nelton
+from the doorway.
+
+Lewis smiled, and then laughed at his father's face.
+
+"Nelton," said Leighton, "did you hear what I was saying?"
+
+"I did, sir, thank----"
+
+"Yes, yes," broke in Leighton, "we know. Well, Nelton, your pay is
+raised. Ten per cent."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Nelton, unmoved. "Thank _you,_ sir."
+
+"As I was saying," continued Leighton to Lewis, "a country where money
+can't buy little things. A leveled country where there's less under dog
+than anywhere else on the face of the earth. A people that's more
+communal and less socialistic than any other commonwealth. A happy
+nation, my boy--a happy nation of discontented units. Do you get that?
+Of discontented units."
+
+"Yes, I think I do," said Lewis.
+
+"You don't, but you will in time," said Leighton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+WHEN Lewis burst upon Folly with the news that his father had given not
+only consent to the marriage, but half his income to smooth the way to
+it, Folly frowned. What was the game? she wondered. But the first thing
+she asked was:
+
+"And how much is that?"
+
+Lewis stammered, and said really he didn't know, which made Folly laugh.
+Then he told her about the six months and the trip to America. Whereupon
+Folly nodded her head and said:
+
+"Oh, that's it, is it? Well, your governor is willing to pay pretty
+thick for six months of you. All I want to know is, Will you come back
+to me?"
+
+"Come back to you, Folly?" cried Lewis, "Of course I'll come back to
+you. Why, that's just what I'm going for. To sell the house and fix
+things so I _can_ come back to you."
+
+At the same hour Leighton was saying good-by to H lne. He had not
+really come to say good-by. He had come to thank her for her sacrifice,
+for the things he knew she had said to Lew. He did not try to thank her
+in words. A boyish glance, an awkward movement, a laugh that
+broke--these things said more to H lne than words.
+
+"So you've got six months' grace," said H lne, when Leighton had told
+her how things stood. "Glen, do you remember this: 'All erotic love is a
+progression. There is no amatory affection that can stand the strain of
+a separation of six months in conjunction with six thousand miles. All
+the standard tales of _grande passion_ and absence are--'"
+
+"'Legendary hypotheses based on a neurotic foundation,'" finished
+Leighton. "Yes, I remember that theory of mine. I'm building on it."
+
+"I thought you were," said H lne. "Don't build too confidently. Lew has
+a strain of constancy in him. It's quite unconscious, but it's there.
+Just add my theory to yours."
+
+"What's your theory?" asked Leighton.
+
+"My theory," said H lne, "is that little girl Natalie. I don't suppose
+she's little now."
+
+Leighton frowned.
+
+"Do you know where Natalie is living? She's _there_." His brow clouded
+with thoughts of the scene of his bitter love.
+
+H lne understood.
+
+"I know. I thought so," she said.
+
+"I'll send Lewis to her."
+
+"No, Glen," said H lne softly, "you'll take him to her."
+
+When all was ready for the start, Nelton appeared before Leighton.
+
+"Please, sir," he said, "I've taken the liberty of packing my bags, too,
+thank, you, sir. I thought, sir, since you're both going, the flat might
+be locked up."
+
+"Well," said Leighton, "I suppose it might for once. Where are you off
+to?"
+
+"Why, with you, sir. If you don't mind, sir, I'd like to see this
+America."
+
+Leighton smiled.
+
+"Come along, by all means, Nelton," he said. "Go ahead with the baggage,
+and see that Master Lewis and I get a compartment to ourselves. Here's
+half a crown."
+
+Leighton and Lewis were not traveling with the rush of the traffic. It
+was too early in the year. While the boat was not crowded, it was by no
+means deserted. It had just that number of passengers on board which an
+old traveler would like to stipulate for on buying his ticket; enough to
+keep the saloons from hollow echoes, and not enough to block even a
+single deck.
+
+"Are these all Americans?" asked Lewis on their third day out.
+
+Leighton glanced rapidly up and down the deck.
+
+"No," he said, "there's hardly a typical American in the lot. Wrong time
+of year. You see there are more men than women. That's a sure sign this
+isn't an American pleasure-boat. There are a good many English on board,
+the traveling kind. They're going over to 'do' America before the heat
+comes on. What Americans you see are tainted."
+
+"What's a tainted American?" asked Lewis.
+
+"I'm a tainted American, and you are," said Leighton. "A tainted
+American is one who has lived so long abroad that he goes to America on
+business."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+The house that Aunt Jed had left to Natalie stood on the lip of a vast
+basin. From its veranda one looked down into a peaceful cup of life. The
+variegated green of the valley proclaimed to the wandering eye,
+
+
+     "All sorts are here that all the earth yields!
+      Variety without end."
+
+
+There was a patchwork of fields bordered with gray stone walls, of stray
+bits of pasture, of fallow meadow and glint of running water, of
+woodland, orchard, and the habitations of man made still by distance.
+
+Aunt Jed's house was not on the highway. The highway was miles off, and
+cut the far side of the basin in a long, straight slant. On that gash of
+white one could see occasional tiny motor-cars hurrying up and down like
+toys on a taut string. Only one motor, a pioneer car, had struggled up
+the road that led past Natalie's door, and immediately after, that
+detour had been marked as impassable on all the best maps.
+
+In fact, the road up to Aunt Jed's looked more like a river-bed than a
+road. It had a gully and many "thank-you-ma'ams." It was plentifully
+sown with pebbles as big as your head and hard as flint, which gave tit
+for tat to every wheel that struck them. Every time Mrs. Leighton
+ventured in Natalie's cart--and it was seldom indeed except to go to
+church--she would say, "We really must have this road fixed."
+
+But Natalie would only laugh and say,
+
+"Not a bit of it. I like it that way."
+
+Natalie had bought for a song a little mare named Gipsy. Nobody, man or
+woman, could drive Gip; she just went. Whoever rode, held on and prayed
+for her to stop. Gip hated that road down into the valley. If she could
+have gone from top to bottom in one jump, she would have done it. As it
+was, she did the next best thing. What made you love Gip was that she
+came up the hill almost as fast as she went down.
+
+Soon after Gip became Natalie's, she awoke to find herself famous from
+an attempt to pass over and through a stalled motor-car. After that the
+farmers used to keep an eye out for her, especially on Sundays, and give
+her the whole road when they saw her coming. Ann Leighton said it was
+undignified to go to church like that, to which Natalie replied:
+
+"Think what it's doing for your color, Mother. Besides, think of church.
+You must admit that church here has gone a bit tough. I really couldn't
+stand it except sandwiched between two slices of Gip."
+
+Aunt Jed's house--nobody ever called it anything else--was typical of
+the old New England style, except that a broad veranda had been added to
+the length of the front by the generation that had outraged custom and
+reduced the best parlor and the front door to everyday uses. This must
+have happened many years before Natalie's advent, for a monster climbing
+rose of hardy disposition had more than half covered the veranda before
+she came.
+
+The house itself was of clapboards painted white, and stood four square;
+its small-paned windows, flanked with green shutters, blinking toward
+the west. It had a very prim air, said to have been absorbed from Aunt
+Jed, and seemed to be eternally trying to draw back its skirts from
+contact with the interloping veranda and the rose-tree, which, toward
+the end of the flowering season, certainly gave it a mussed appearance.
+At such times, if the great front door was left open on a warm day, the
+house took on a look of open-mouthed horror, which immediately relapsed
+to primness once the door was closed.
+
+Natalie was the discoverer of this evidence of personality. Sitting
+under the two giant elms that were the sole ornament of the soft old
+lawn, she suddenly caught the look on the face of the house, and called
+out:
+
+"Mother, come here! Come quickly!" as though the look couldn't possibly
+last through Mrs. Leighton's leisurely approach.
+
+"What is it, dear?" asked Mrs. Leighton.
+
+"Why, the house!" said Natalie. "Look at it. It's horrified at
+something. I think it must be the mess the roses have made. Can't you
+see what it's saying? It's saying, 'Well, I never!'"
+
+Mrs. Leighton laughed.
+
+"It does look sort of funny," she said.
+
+Just then old mammy put her gray head out of the door to hear what the
+talk was about. She wore glasses, as becoming to her age, but peered
+over them when she wanted to see anything.
+
+"What youans larffin' abeout?" she demanded.
+
+"We're laughing at the house," cried Natalie. "It's got its mouth open
+and the funniest look on its face. Come and see."
+
+"Mo' nonsense," grunted mammy and slammed the door.
+
+Then it was that the house seemed to withdraw suddenly into the primness
+of virginal white paint.
+
+"That's what it wanted," cried Natalie, excitedly--"just to get its
+mouth shut. O Mother, isn't it an old _dear_?"
+
+Stub Hollow had looked upon the new arrivals at Aunt Jed's as summer
+people until they began to frequent Stub Hollow's first and only
+Presbyterian church. Natalie, who like all people of charm, was many
+years younger inside than she was out, immediately perceived that the
+introduction of mammy in her best Sunday turban into that congregation
+would do a great deal toward destroying its comatose atmosphere. Like
+many another New England village church, Stub Hollow's needed a jar and
+needed it badly. But it wasn't the church that got the jar.
+
+Upon the introduction of Gip into the family circle, it was conceded
+that there was no longer any reason why mammy should resign the benefits
+of communal worship. Consequently, with many a grunt,--for good food and
+better air had well nigh doubled her proportions,--mammy climbed from
+the veranda to the back seat of the cart and filled it. For a moment it
+seemed doubtful whether mammy or Gip would hold the ground, but Gip
+finally won out by clawing rapidly at the pebbly road and getting the
+advantage of the down grade.
+
+Neither Natalie nor Mrs. Leighton ever knew just where it was they lost
+mammy, but it couldn't have been far from the gate; for just as they
+were dipping into the wood half-way down the hill, Mrs. Leighton
+happened to glance back, missed mammy, and saw her stocky form waddling
+across the lawn toward the back of the house. Mrs. Leighton was also
+young inside. She said nothing.
+
+When finally they drew up, with the assistance of three broad-shouldered
+swains, at the church, Natalie looked back and gasped,
+
+"Mammy! Mother, where's mammy?"
+
+"You don't suppose she could have got off to pick flowers, do you?"
+asked Mrs. Leighton, softly.
+
+"Why, _Mother_!" cried Natalie. "Do you know that mammy may be _killed_?
+We'll have to go straight back."
+
+"No, we won't," said Mrs. Leighton, flushing at her levity before the
+very portals of the church. "She's all right. I looked back, and saw her
+crossing the lawn."
+
+"Even so," said Natalie, severely, "I'm surprised at _you_." Then she
+laughed.
+
+Church seemed very long that day, but at last they were out in the
+sunshine again and Gip was given her full head. No sooner had Zeke, the
+hired man, seized the bit than Natalie sprang from the cart and rushed
+to the kitchen. She found mammy going placidly about her business.
+
+"Doan' yo' talk to me, chile," she burst out at sight of Natalie. "Doan'
+yo' dast talk to me!"
+
+Natalie threw her arms about her.
+
+"You poor mammy," she murmured. "Aren't you hurt?"
+
+"Hurt!" snorted mammy. "Yo' mammy mought 'a' been killed ef she didn'
+carry her cushions along wif 'er pu'sson."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+Six miles away from Aunt Jed's, on the top of a hill overlooking the
+Housatonic Valley, stood the Leighton homestead, a fine old-fashioned
+house, now unoccupied save for a care-taking farmer and his wife, who
+farmed the Leighton acres on shares. The homestead belonged to Lewis's
+father, and in the natural course of events was destined to become
+Lewis's property.
+
+Great was the excitement at Homestead Farm when a telegram arrived
+announcing the imminent arrival of owner and son.
+
+"Land sakes! William," gasped Mrs. Tuck, "in two days! You'll hev to
+send 'em a telegram tellin' 'em it can't be done nohow. I told you my
+conscience was a-prickin' me over the spring cleanin'. Seems like
+Providence was a-jostlin' my elbow all these days, and I was jest too
+ornery to pay heed."
+
+"In two days, it says," repeated William; "and we can't send no telegram
+because there ain't no address."
+
+Tuck and his wife had no children. They occupied the kitchen for a
+living-room and the big bedroom over it at night. The main part of the
+house was shut up. The hired hands occupied rooms in the barn that had
+once been the quarters of a numerous stable force, for the Leightons had
+always gone in for horses, as two or three long-standing trotting
+records at neighboring county fairs gave evidence.
+
+Mrs. Tuck was not long in facing the inevitable. First of all she
+commandeered all the labor on the farm; then she sent a call for aid to
+a couple of neighbors. Within an hour all the green shutters had swung
+wide on their creaking hinges, and the window-sashes were up. Out of the
+open windows poured some dust and a great deal of commotion. Before
+night the big house was spick and span from garret to cellar.
+
+"Does seem to me," said Mrs. Tuck, as she placed a very scrappy supper
+before William, "like dust is as human as guinea pigs. Where you say it
+can't get in, it jest breeds."
+
+"Now you sit down and take it easy, Mrs. Tuck," said William, who had
+married late in life and never got on familiar terms with his wife. "I
+reckon them men-folks ain't so took with reddin' up as you think they
+be."
+
+"Oh, I know," said the tired, but by no means exhausted, Mrs. Tuck, "I
+ain't forgettin' their innards, ef thet's what you're thinkin' of. You
+just tell Silas to kill four broilers, an' I'll clean 'em to-night.
+Thet'll give me a start, and to-morow I c'n do a few dozen pies. I _hev_
+got some mince-meat, thank goodness! an' you c'n get me in some of them
+early apples in the morning. Seems like I'm not going to sleep a wink
+for thinkin'."
+
+Lewis and Leighton did not motor from New York to the Homestead Farm, as
+ten years later they might have done. Motors, while common, were still
+in that stage of development which made them a frequent source of
+revenue to the farmer with a stout team of horses. Consequently it was
+by train that they arrived at Leighton's home station--a station that
+had grown out of all recognition since last he had seen it.
+
+However, he himself had not grown out of recognition. A lank figure of a
+man, red-cheeked, white-bearded, slouch-hatted, and in his
+shirt-sleeves, stepped forward and held out a horny hand.
+
+"Well, Glen, how be ye? Sure am glad to see ye back."
+
+"Me, too," said Leighton, grinning and flushing with pleasure. "Come
+here, Lew. Shake hands with Mr. Tuck."
+
+"Well, I swan!" chuckled William as he crushed Lewis's knuckles. "Guess
+you don't recollec' ridin' on my knee, young feller?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Lewis, and smiled into the old man's moist blue
+eyes.
+
+"And who he this?" asked William, turning toward Nelton.
+
+"That? Oh, that's Nelton," said Lewis.
+
+"Glad to meet ye, Mr. Nelton. Put it thar!" said William, holding out a
+vast hand.
+
+For an instant Nelton paused, then, with set teeth and the air of one
+who comes to grips with an electric battery, he laid his fingers in Mr.
+Tuck's grasp. "Huh!" remarked William, "ye ain't got much grip. Wait
+tell we've stuffed ye with buttermilk 'n' pies 'n' victuals 'n' things."
+
+Nelton said not a word, but cast an agonized look at Leighton, who came
+to his aid.
+
+"Now, William, what have you brought down?"
+
+"Well, Glen, there's me an' the kerryall for the folks, an' Silas here
+with the spring-wagon for the trunks."
+
+"Good," said Leighton. "Here, Silas, take these checks and look after
+Mr. Nelton. Lew and I will go in the carryall."
+
+"Fancy your governor a-pullin' of my leg!" murmured Nelton, presumably
+to Lewis, but apparently to space. "Why don't 'e tell this old josser as
+I'm a menial, and be done with it."
+
+Old William started, stared at Nelton, then at Leighton. He walked off
+toward the carryall, scratching his head.
+
+"What is it?" he asked Lewis, in a loud whisper.
+
+"That's dad's valet," said Lewis, grinning.
+
+"Valley, is it?" said William, glancing over one shoulder. "Nice, lush
+bit o' green, to look at him. What does he do?"
+
+"Looks after dad. Waits on him, helps him dress, and packs his bags for
+him."
+
+William stopped in his tracks and turned on Leighton.
+
+"Glen," he said, "I don't know ez you c'n stand to ride in the old
+kerryall. I ain't brought no sofy pillows, ner even a fire-screen to
+keep the sun from sp'ilin' yer complexion."
+
+Leighton smiled, but said nothing. They had reached the carryall, an old
+hickory structure sadly in need of paint. Hitched to it were two rangy
+bays. The harness was a piece of ingenious patchwork, fitted with hames
+instead of collars. Leighton stepped into the back seat, and Lewis
+followed. William unhitched the horses and climbed into the cramped
+front seat. When he had settled down, his knees seemed to be peering
+over the dash-board. "Gid ap!" he cried, and the bays started off slowly
+across the bridge.
+
+The road to the homestead followed down the river for three miles before
+it took to the hills. No sooner had the carryall made the turn into the
+River Road than the bays sprang forward so suddenly that Lewis's hat
+flew off backward, and for a moment he thought his head had followed.
+
+"Heh!" he called, "I've lost my hat!"
+
+"Never mind your hat, Son," shouted William. "Silas'll pick it up."
+
+The bays evidently thought he was shouting at them. They let their
+enormous stride out another link. The carryall plowed through the dust,
+rattled over pebbles, and, where the road ran damp under overhanging
+trees, shot four streams of mud from its flying wheels. Old William
+chewed steadily at the cud of tobacco he had kept tucked in his cheek
+during the interview at the station. His long arms were stretched full
+length along the taut reins. If he had only had hand-holds on them, he
+would have been quite content. As it was, he was grinning.
+
+"Gee, Dad!" gasped Lewis, "d'you know those horses are still
+_trotting_!"
+
+Leighton leaned forward.
+
+"Got a match, William?" he shouted above the creak and rattle of the
+carryall.
+
+"Heh?" yelled William.
+
+The bays let out another link.
+
+"Got a match?" repeated Leighton. "I want to smoke."
+
+William waved his beard at his left-hand pocket.
+
+As they struck a bit of quiet, soft road, Leighton called:
+
+"Why don't you let 'em out? You've gone and left your whip at home. How
+are we going to get up the hill?"
+
+The grin faded from Old William's face. "_Gid ap!_" he roared, and then
+the bays showed what they could really do in the way of hurrying for
+the doctor. The old carryall leaped a thank-you-ma'am clean. When it
+struck, the hickory wheels bent to the storm, but did not break.
+Instead, they shot their load into the air. A low-hanging branch swooped
+down and swept the canopy, supports and all, off the carryall. William
+never looked back.
+
+Lewis clung to the back of the front seat.
+
+"D-d-dad," he stuttered, "p-please don't say anything more to him! D-d'you
+know they're _still_ trotting?"
+
+At last the bays swung off upon the steep Hill Road, and slowed down to
+a fast, pulling walk. Old William dropped the reins on the dash-board,
+made a telling shot with tobacco juice at a sunflower three yards off,
+and turned to have a chat.
+
+"Glen," he said, "I reckon, after all, there's times when you c'n do
+without sofy pillows."
+
+"Why, William," said Leighton, still pale with fright, "If I'd had a
+pillow, I'd have gone fast asleep." Then he smiled. "Some of the old
+stock?"
+
+William nodded.
+
+"I don't mind tellin' you I ain't drove like thet sence the day me'n
+you--"
+
+"Never mind since when, William," broke in Leighton, sharply. "How's
+Mrs. Tuck?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+"Is that the house?" asked Lewis, as they mounted the brow of the hill.
+
+Leighton nodded.
+
+Across a wide expanse of green that was hardly smooth enough to be
+called a lawn gleamed the stately homestead. It was of deep-red brick,
+trimmed with white. It stood amid a grove of giant sugar-maples. The
+maples blended with the green shutters of the house, and made it seem
+part and parcel of the grove. Upon its front no veranda had dared
+encroach, but at one side could be seen a vine-covered stoop that might
+have been called a veranda had it not been dwarfed to insignificance by
+the size of the house. The front door, which alone in that country-side
+boasted two leaves, was wide open, and on the steps leading up to it,
+resplendent in fresh gingham, stood Mrs. Tuck.
+
+With some difficulty William persuaded the bays to turn into the
+long-unused drive that swept up to the front door. Leighton sprang out.
+
+"Hallo, Mrs. Tuck!" he cried. "How are you?"
+
+"How do you do? I'm very pleased to see you back, Mr. Leighton," said
+Mrs. Tuck, who read the best ten-cent literature and could talk "real
+perlite" for five minutes at a stretch. "Come right along in. You'll
+find all the rooms redded up--I mean--"
+
+"Yes, yes," laughed Leighton, "I know what you mean all right. I haven't
+even forgotten the smell of hot mince pies. Lew, don't you notice a sort
+of culinary incense----'
+
+"Land sakes! them pies is a-_burnin'_!" shrieked Mrs. Tuck as she turned
+and ran.
+
+William offered to show the way to the bedrooms, but Leighton refused.
+
+"No," he said, "we'll come around and help you put up the team. No use
+washing up till we get our things."
+
+Silas, with the spring-wagon, duly appeared. On top of the baggage, legs
+in air, was the discarded canopy of the carryall. Beside Silas sat
+Nelton. He was trembling all over. In his lap he held Lewis's hat. His
+bulging eyes were fastened on it.
+
+"There they be," grunted Silas. "Told you they was all right. William be
+a keerful driver."
+
+Nelton raised his eyes slowly. They lit, with wonder.
+
+"Mr. Leighton," he cried, "Master Lewis, are you safe?'
+
+"Quite safe, Nelton," said Leighton. "Why?"
+
+Nelton mutely held out Lew's hat and jerked his head back at the wrecked
+canopy.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Leighton, nodding; "we dropped those. Thank you for
+picking them up. Take the bags up-stairs."
+
+"Lew," said Leighton, as they were washing, "did you use to have dinner
+at night at Nadir or supper?"
+
+"Supper," said Lewis.
+
+"Well," said Leighton, "that's what you'll get today--at six o'clock,
+and don't you be frightened when you see it. It has been said of the
+Scotch that the most wonderful thing about them is that they can live on
+oats. The mystery of the brawn and muscle of New England is no less
+wrapped up in pies. But don't hesitate. Pitch in. There's something
+about this air that turns a nightly mixture of mince-pies, pumpkin-pies,
+custard-pies, lemon-pies, and apple-pies, with cheese, into a substance
+as heavenly light as fresh-fallen manna. It is a tradition, wisely
+fostered by the farmers, that the only thing that can bring nightmare
+and the colic to a stomach in New England are green apples and stolen
+melons."
+
+Lewis was in good appetite, as was Leighton. They ate heartily of many
+things besides pies, went to bed at nine, and would have slept the round
+of the clock had not a great gong--a bit of steel rail hung on a
+wire--and all the multitudinous noises of farm headquarters broken out
+in one simultaneous chorus at half-past five in a glorious morning.
+
+Noisy geese and noisier cocks, whinnying horses and lowing cattle, the
+rattle of milk-tins, the squeak of the well-boom, the clank of
+mowing-machines, the swish of a passing brush-harrow, and, finally, the
+clamoring gong, were too much for Nelton. Lewis, on his way to look for
+a bath, caught him stuffing what he called "cotton an' wool" into his
+ears.
+
+"Tork about the streets of Lunnon, Master Lewis," he said. "I calls this
+country life _deafenin'_."
+
+Lewis had wanted to telegraph to Natalie, but Leighton had stopped him.
+
+"You've waited too long for that," he had said. "You have apparently
+neglected Natalie and Mrs. Leighton. When people think they've been
+neglected, never give them a chance to think up what they're going to
+say to you. Just fall on them."
+
+As soon as they had breakfasted, Leighton took Lewis to the top of the
+hill at the back of the homestead. It was a high hill. It commanded a
+long stretch of the Housatonic Valley to the east, and toward the west
+and north it overlooked two ridges, with the dips between, before the
+eye came up against the barrier of the Berkshire range.
+
+Lewis drew a long breath of the cold, morning air.
+
+"It's beautiful, Dad," he said.
+
+"Beautiful!" repeated Leighton, his eyes sweeping slowly and wistfully
+across the scene. "Boy, God has made no lovelier land."
+
+Then he turned to the west and pointed across to the second ridge. "Do
+you see that gleam of white that stands quite alone?"
+
+"Yes, I think I see what you mean," said Lewis. "'Way down, just below
+it, you can see the tip of a church steeple."
+
+"So you can," said Leighton. "Well, that gleam of white is Aunt Jed's.
+Make for it. That's where you'll find Natalie."
+
+"Is it?" said Lewis, straightening, and with a flush of excitement in
+his cheeks. "Aren't you coming, too?"
+
+"No," said Leighton; "not to-day. We won't expect you back before
+supper. Tell Mrs. Leighton that I'll be over soon to see her and thank
+her."
+
+Lewis started off with an eager stride, only to learn that Aunt Jed's
+was farther away than it looked. He found a road and followed it through
+the valley and up the first ridge, then seeing that the road meandered
+off to the right into a village, he struck off across the fields
+straight for the distant house.
+
+He had passed through the moist bottoms and come upon a tract of
+rock-strewn pasture land when he saw before him the figure of a girl.
+Her back was to him. A great, rough straw hat hid her head. She wore a
+white blouse and a close-fitting blue skirt. She was tall and supple,
+but she walked slowly, with her eyes on the ground. In one hand she
+carried a little tin pail.
+
+Lewis came up behind her.
+
+"What are you looking for?" he asked.
+
+The girl started and turned. Lewis stepped forward. They stood and
+stared at each other. The little tin pail slipped from the girl's hand.
+
+"Strawberries," she stammered. "I was looking for strawberries." Then
+she added so low that he scarcely heard her, "Lew?"
+
+"Nat!" cried Lewis. "It _is_ Nat!"
+
+Natalie swayed toward him. He caught her by the arms. She looked at him
+and tried to smile, but instead she crumpled into a heap on a rock and
+cried--cried as though her heart would break.
+
+Lewis sat down beside her and put one arm around her.
+
+"Why, Nat, aren't you glad to see me? Nat, don't cry! Aren't you glad
+I've come?"
+
+Natalie nodded her head hard, but did not try to speak. Not till she had
+quite finished crying did she look up. Then her tear-stained face broke
+into a radiant smile.
+
+"That's--that's why I'm crying," she gasped; "because I'm so glad."
+
+So there they sat together and talked about what? About strawberries.
+Lewis said that he had walked miles across the fields, and seen heaps of
+blossoms but no berries. He didn't think the wild ones had berries.
+Which, Natalie said, was nonsense. Of course they had berries, only it
+was too early. She had found three that were pinkish. She pointed to
+them where they had rolled from the little tin pail. Lewis picked one up
+and examined it.
+
+"You're right," he said gravely, "it's a strawberry."
+
+Then silence fell upon them--a long silence, and at the end Lewis said:
+
+"Nat, do you remember at Nadir the guavas--when, you'd come out to where
+I was with the goats?"
+
+Natalie nodded, a starry look in her far-away eyes.
+
+"Nat," said Lew, "tell me about it--about Nadir--about--about
+everything. About how you went back to Consolation Cottage."
+
+Natalie flashed a look at him.
+
+"How did you know we had been back to Consolation Cottage?"
+
+"Why, I went there," said Lewis. "It isn't three months since I went
+there."
+
+"Did you, Lew?" said Natalie, her face brightening. "Did you go just to
+look for us?"
+
+"Of course," said Lewis. "Now tell me."
+
+"No," said Natalie, with a shake of her head, "you first."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+In the innocence of that first hour Lewis told Natalie all. He even told
+her of Folly, as though Folly, like all else, was something they could
+share between them. Natalie did not wince. There are blows that just
+sting--the sharp, quick blows that make us cry out, and then wonder why
+we cried, so quickly does the pain pass. They are nothing beside the
+blows that slowly fall and crush and keep their pain back till the
+overwhelming last.
+
+People wonder at the cruel punishment a battered man can take and never
+cry out, at the calm that fills the moment of life after the mortal
+wound, and at the steady, quiet gaze of big game stricken unto death.
+They do not know that when the blood of man or beast is up, when the
+heart thunders fast in conflict or in the chase, there is no pain. A man
+can get so excited over some trifle that a bullet will plow through his
+flesh without his noticing it. Pain comes afterward. Pain is always an
+awakening.
+
+Natalie was excited at the sudden presence of Lew and at the wonder of
+his tale. In that galaxy of words that painted to her a climbing fairy
+movement of growth and achievement the single fact of Folly shot through
+her and away, but the wound stayed. For the moment she did not know that
+she was stricken, nor did Lewis guess. And so it happened that that
+whole day passed like a flash of happy light.
+
+Natalie, in her wisdom, had gone ahead to warn Mrs. Leighton and mammy
+of Lewis's coming. Even so, when the two women took him into their long
+embrace, he knew by the throbbing of their hearts how deeply joy can
+shake foundations that have stood firm against the heaviest shocks of
+grief.
+
+Gip and the cart, with Natalie at the helm, whisked Lewis back to the
+homestead. What memories of galloping ponies and a far, wide world that
+ride awakened they did not speak in words, but the light that was in
+their faces when at the homestead gate they said good night was the
+light that shines for children walking hand in hand in the morning land
+of faith.
+
+Natalie could not eat that night. She slipped away early to bed--to the
+little, old-fashioned bed that had been Aunt Jed's. It, too, was a
+four-poster; but so pompous a name overweighted its daintiness. So light
+were its trimmings in white, so snowy the mounds of its pillows and the
+narrow reach of its counterpane, that it seemed more like a
+nesting-place for untainted dreams than the sensible, stocky little bed
+it was.
+
+Natalie went to bed and to sleep, but scarcely had the last gleam faded
+from the western sky when she awoke. A sudden terror seized her. The
+pillow beneath her cheek was wet. Upon her heart a great weight pressed
+down and down. For a moment she rebelled. She had gone to sleep in the
+lap of her happiest day. How could she wake to grief? A single word
+tapped at her brain: Folly, Folly. And then she knew--she knew the wound
+her happy day had left; and wide-eyed, fighting for breath, her arms
+outstretched, she felt the slow birth of the pain that lives and lives
+and grows with life.
+
+Natalie cried easily for happiness, and so the tears that she could
+spare to grief were few. Not for nothing had she been born to the note
+of joy. Through all her life, so troubled, so thinly spread with
+pleasures, she had clung to her inheritance. Often had her mind
+questioned her heart: "What is there in this empty day? Why do you
+laugh? Why do you sing?" And ever her heart had answered, "I laugh and
+sing because, if not to-day, then to-morrow, the full day cometh."
+
+But to-night her inheritance seemed a little and a cruel thing.
+Wide-eyed she prayed for the tears that would not come. Dry were her
+eyes, dry was her throat, and dry the pressing weight upon her heart.
+Hours passed, and then she put forth her strength. She slipped from the
+bed and walked with groping hands toward the open window. In the
+semi-darkness she moved like a tall, pale light. Down her back and
+across her bosom her hair fell like a caressing shadow. Her white feet
+made no sound.
+
+She reached the window and knelt, her arms folded upon the low sill. She
+tossed the hair from before her face and looked out upon the still
+night. How far were the stars to-night--as cold and far as on that night
+of long ago when she had stood on the top of the highest hill and called
+to the desert for Lew!
+
+She stayed at the window for a long time, and found meager comfort at
+last in the thought that Lewis could not have guessed. How could he have
+guessed what she herself had not known? She arose and went back to bed.
+Then she lay thinking and planning a course that should keep not only
+Lewis but also Mrs. Leighton and mammy blind to the wound she bore. And
+while she was in the midst of planning, sleep came and made good its
+ancient right to lock hands with tired youth.
+
+Leighton was crestfallen to see in what high spirits Lew had come back
+from his first day with Natalie. He lost faith at once in H lne's cure.
+Then, as they went to bed, he clutched at a straw.
+
+"Lew," he asked, "did you tell your pal everything?"
+
+"Everything I could think of in the time," said Lewis, smiling. "One day
+isn't much when you've got half of two lives to go over. Of course there
+were things we forgot. We'll have them to tell to-morrow."
+
+"Was Folly one of the things you forgot?"
+
+"No," answered Lewis and paused, a puzzled look on his brow. He was
+wondering why he had remembered Folly. To-night she seemed very far
+away. Then he threw back his head and looked at his father. "Why did you
+ask that?"
+
+Leighton did not answer for a moment. Finally he said:
+
+"Because it's the one thing you hadn't a right to keep to yourself. I'm
+glad you saw that. Always start square with a woman. If you
+do,--afterward,--she'll forgive you anything."
+
+Lewis went to bed with the puzzled look still on his face. It was not
+because he had _seen_ anything that he had told of Folly. He had told of
+her simply as a part of chronology--something that couldn't be skipped
+without leaving a gap. Now he wondered, if he had had time to think,
+would he have told? He had scarcely put the question to himself when
+sleep blotted out thought.
+
+On the next day Leighton had the bays hitched to what was left of the
+carryall, and with Silas and Lewis drove over to Aunt Jed's to pay his
+respects to Mrs. Leighton. Natalie and Lew went off for a ramble in the
+hills. Mammy bustled about her kitchen dreaming out a dream of an early
+dinner for the company, and murmuring instructions to Ephy, a pale
+little slip of a woman whom the household, seeking to help, had
+installed as helper. Mrs. Leighton stayed with Leighton out under the
+elms. They talked little, but they said much.
+
+It was still early in the day when Leighton said:
+
+"I shall call you Ann. You must call me Glen."
+
+"Of course," answered Mrs. Leighton, and then wondered why it was "of
+course." "I suppose," she said aloud, "it's 'of course' because of Lew.
+I feel as though I were sitting here years ahead, talking to Lew when
+his head will be turning gray."
+
+"Don't!" cried Leighton. "Don't say that! Lew travels a different road."
+
+Mrs. Leighton looked up, surprised at his tone.
+
+"Perhaps you don't see what we can see. Perhaps you don't know what you
+have done for Lew."
+
+"I have done nothing for Lew," said Leighton, quickly. "If anything has
+been done for Lew, it was done in the years when I was far from him in
+body, in mind, and in spirit. Lew would have been himself without me. It
+is doubtful whether he would have been himself without you. I--I don't
+forget that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+At four o'clock Leighton sent for Silas.
+
+"Take the team home, Silas," he said. "We're going to walk. Come along,
+Lew."
+
+"It's awfully early, Dad," said Lew, with a protesting glance at the
+high sun.
+
+"The next to the last thing a man learns in social finesse," said
+Leighton, "and the very last rule that reaches the brain of woman, is to
+say good-by while it's still a shock to one's hosts."
+
+"And it's still a shock to-day," said Mrs. Leighton, smiling. "But you
+mustn't quarrel with what your father's said, Lew," she added. "He's
+given you the key to the heart of 'Come again!'"
+
+"As if Lew would ever need that!" cried Natalie.
+
+Soon after leaving the house, Leighton struck off to the right and up.
+His step was not springy. His head hung low on his breast, and his
+fingers gripped nervously at the light stick he carried. He did not
+speak, and Lewis knew enough not to break that silence. They crossed a
+field, Leighton walking slightly ahead. He did not have to look up to
+lead the way.
+
+Presently they came into a lane. It dipped off to the left, into the
+valley. It was bordered by low, gray stone walls. On its right hung a
+thick wood of second-growth trees--a New England wood, various beyond
+the variety of any other forest on earth. It breathed a mingled essence
+of faint odors. The fronds of the trees reached over and embowered the
+lane.
+
+On the left the view was open to the valley by reason of a pasture. The
+low stone wall was topped by a snaky fence of split rails. They were so
+old, so gray, that they, too, seemed of stone. Beyond them sloped the
+meager pasture-land; brown, almost barren even in the youth of the year.
+It was strewn with flat, outcropping rocks. Here and there rose a mighty
+oak. A splotch of green marked a spring. Below the spring one saw the
+pale blush of laurel in early June.
+
+Leighton stopped and prodded the road with his stick. Lewis looked down.
+He saw that his father's hand was trembling. His eyes wandered to a big
+stone that peeped from the loam in the very track of any passing wheel.
+The stone was covered with moss--old moss. It was a long time since
+wheels had passed that way.
+
+Leighton walked on a few steps, and then paused again, his eyes fixed on
+a spot at the right of the lane where the old wall had tumbled and
+brought with it a tangled mass of fox-grape vine. He left the roadway
+and sat on the lower wall, his back against a rail. He motioned to Lewis
+to sit down too.
+
+"I have brought you here," said Leighton and stopped. His voice had been
+so low that Lewis had understood not a word. "I have brought you here,"
+said Leighton again, and this time clearly, "to tell you about your
+mother."
+
+Lewis restrained himself from looking at his father's face.
+
+"Your mother's name," went on Leighton, "was Jeanette O'Reilly. She was
+a milk-maid. That is, she didn't have to milk the cows, but she took
+charge of the milk when it came into the creamery and did to and with it
+all the things that women do with milk. I only knew your mother when she
+was seventeen. No one seemed to know where Jeanette came from. Perhaps
+Aunt Jed knew. I think she did, but she never told. I never asked. To me
+Jeanette came straight from the hand of God.
+
+"I have known many beautiful women, but since Jeanette, the beauty of
+women has not spoken to the soul of me. There is a beauty--and it was
+hers--that cries out, just as a still and glorious morning cries out, to
+the open windows of the soul. To me Jeanette was all sighing, sobbing
+beauty. Beauty did not rest upon her; it glowed through her. She alone
+was the prism through which my eyes could look upon the Promised Land. I
+knew it, and so--I told my father.
+
+"I was only a boy, not yet of age. My father never hesitated. All the
+power that law and tradition allowed he brought to bear. He forbade me
+to visit Aunt Jed's or to see Jeanette again. He gave me to understand
+that the years held no hope for me--that on the day I broke his command
+I would cut myself off from him and home. To clinch things, he sent me
+away to college a month early, and put me under a tutor.
+
+"There is a love that forgets all else--that forgets honor. I forged a
+letter to the authorities and signed my father's name to it. It told
+them to send me back at once--that my mother was ill. I came back to
+these hills, but not home. Far back in the woods here William Tuck had a
+hut. He was a wood-cutter. He lived alone. He owed nothing to any man.
+Many a time we had shot and fished together. I came back to William.
+
+"This lane doesn't lead to Aunt Jed's. This land never belonged to her.
+Here we used to meet, Jeanette and I. You see the mass of fox-grape over
+yonder? In that day the wall hadn't tumbled. It stood straight and firm.
+The fox-grape sprang from it and climbed in a great veil over the young
+trees. Behind that wall, in the cool dusk of the grapevine, we used to
+sit and laugh inside when a rare buggy or a wagon went by."
+
+Leighton drew a long breath.
+
+"I used to lie with my head in Jeanette's lap because it was the only
+way I could see her eyes. Her lashes were so long that when she raised
+them it was like the slow flutter of the wings of a butterfly at rest.
+She did not raise them often. She kept them down--almost against the
+soft round of her cheek--because--because, she said, she could dream
+better that way.
+
+"How shall I tell you about her hair? I used to reach up and pull at it
+until it tumbled. And then, because Jeanette's hair never laughed except
+when it was the playmate of light, I used to drag her to her feet,
+across the wall, across the lane, down there to the flat rock just above
+the spring.
+
+"There we would sit, side by side, and every once in a while look
+fearfully around, so public seemed that open space. But all we ever saw
+for our pains was a squirrel or perhaps a woodchuck looking around
+fearfully, too. Jeanette would sit with her hands braced behind her, her
+tumbled hair splashing down over her shoulders and down her back. The
+setting sun would come skipping over the hills and play in her hair, and
+Jeanette's hair would laugh--laugh out loud. And I--I would bury my face
+in it, as you bury your face in flowers, and wonder at the unshed tears
+that smarted in my eyes."
+
+Leighton stopped to sigh. It was a quivering sigh that made Lewis want
+to put out his hand and touch his father, but he was afraid to move.
+Leighton went on.
+
+"Look well about you, boy. No wheel has jarred this silence for many a
+year--not since I bought the land you see and closed the road. Man
+seldom comes here now,--only children in the fall of the year when the
+chestnuts are ripe. Jeanette liked children. She was never anything but
+a child herself. Look well about you, I say, for these still woods and
+fields, with God's free air blowing over them,--they were your cradle,
+the cradle of your being.
+
+"It was Jeanette that made me go back to college when college opened,
+but months later it was William that sent for me when Jeanette was too
+weak to stop him. The term was almost over. Through all the winter I had
+never mentioned Jeanette to the folks at home, hoping that my father
+would let me come home for the summer and wander these hills unwatched.
+Now William wrote. I couldn't make out each individual word, but the sum
+of what he tried to tell flew to my heart.
+
+"Jeanette had disappeared from Aunt Jed's three months before. They had
+not found her, for they had watched for her only where I was. She had
+gone to William's little house. She had been hidden away there. While
+she was well enough, she had not let him send for me. There was panic in
+William's letter, for he wrote that he would meet the first train by
+which I could come, and every other train thereafter.
+
+"You heard William say the other day that he had never driven like that
+since--and there I stopped him. It was since the day I came back to
+Jeanette he was going to say. We didn't mind the horses breaking that
+day. Where the going was good, they ran because they felt like it; where
+it was bad, they ran because I made them. I asked William if he had a
+doctor, and he said he had. He had done more than that: he had married
+Mrs. Tuck to look after Jeanette.
+
+"We stopped in the village for the parson. I was going to blurt out the
+truth to him, but William was wiser. He told him that some one was
+dying. So we got the old man between us, and I drove while William held
+him. He would have jumped out. He thought we were mad."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+Leighton paused as he thought grimly over that ride. Then he went on:
+
+"The last thing my father paid for out of his own pocket on my account
+was that team of horses from the livery stable. They got to William's
+all right, but they were broken--broken past repair. Poor beasts! Even
+so we were only just in time. The old parson married me to Jeanette. I
+would have killed him if he had hesitated. I didn't have to tell him so;
+he saw it.
+
+"For one blessed moment Jeanette forgot pain and locked her arms about
+my neck. Then they pushed me out, and William and the parson with me.
+Mrs. Tuck and the doctor stayed in there. You were born." Leighton
+gripped his hands hard on his stick. "What--what was it the old
+Woman--the fortune-teller--said?"
+
+"'Child of love art thou,'" repeated Lewis, in a voice lower than his
+father's. "'At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder, for thou wert
+conceived too near the heart.'"
+
+Leighton trembled as though with the ague. He nodded his head, already
+low sunk upon his breast.
+
+"It was that--just that," he whispered. "They called us in, the old
+preacher and me. Jeanette stayed just for a moment, her hand in mine,
+her eyes in mine, and then--she was gone. The old parson cried like a
+child. I wondered why he cried. Suddenly I knew, and my curses rose
+above his prayers. I sprang for William's rifle in the corner, and
+before they could stop me, I shot you.
+
+"Boy, I shot to kill; but the best shot at a hundred yards will miss
+every time at a hundred inches. The bullet just grazed your shoulder,
+and at the sting of it you began to gasp and presently to cry. Tears
+afterward the doctor told me you would never have lived to draw a single
+breath if it hadn't been for that shot. The shock of it was what started
+your heart, your lungs. They had tried slapping, and it hadn't done any
+good."
+
+Leighton paused again, before he went on in a dull voice.
+
+"After that I can tell you what happened only from hearsay. Aunt Jed
+came and took you and what was left of Jeanette, your mother. Sometime
+you must stop in the churchyard down yonder under the steeple and look
+for a little slab that tells nothing--nothing except that Jeanette died
+a wife before the law and--and much beloved before God.
+
+"They kept me at William's for days until I was in my right mind. The
+day they took me home was the day father paid for the horses--the day he
+died. I don't know if he would have forgiven me if he had lived. I never
+saw him again alive, after he knew. I've often wondered. I would give a
+lot to know, even to-day, that he would have forgiven. But life is like
+that. Death strikes and leaves us blind--blind to some vital spring of
+love, could we but find it and touch it."
+
+Lewis was young. Just to hear the burden that had lain so long upon his
+father's heart was too much for him. Not for nothing had Leighton lived
+beside his boy. There, under the still trees, their souls reached out
+and touched. Lewis dropped his head and arms upon his father's knees and
+sobbed. He felt as though his whole heart was welling up in tears.
+
+Leighton's hand fell caressingly upon him. He did not speak until his
+boy had finished crying, then he said:
+
+"I've told you all this because you alone in all the world have a right
+to know, a right to know your full inheritance--the inheritance of a
+child of love."
+
+Leighton paused.
+
+"I never saw you again," he went on, "until that day when we met down
+there at the ends of the earth. Aunt Jed had sent you down there to hide
+you from me. Before she died she told me where you were and sent me to
+you. She needn't have told me to go after you.
+
+"As you go on and meet a wider world, you will hear strange things of
+your father. Believe them all, and then, if you can, still remember.
+Don't waste love. That's a prayer and a charge. I've wasted a lot of
+life and self, but never a jot of love. Now go, boy. Tell them I've
+stayed behind for supper."
+
+Lewis did not hurry. When he reached the homestead, it was already late.
+Mrs. Tuck had kept their supper hot for them. When she saw Lewis come in
+alone, she rushed up to him with eager questions of his father. Lewis
+looked with new eyes upon her kindly anxious face.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "Dad stayed behind. He doesn't want any
+supper."
+
+Mrs. Tuck looked shrewdly at him, and then turned away.
+
+"It ain't never all right," she said half to herself, "when a man
+full-grown don't want his supper."
+
+Lewis saw nothing more of his father that night. He tried to keep awake,
+but it was long after sleep had conquered him that Leighton came in. And
+during the days that followed he saw less and less of his father. Early
+in the morning Leighton would be up. He would eat, and then wander about
+the place listlessly with his cigar. His head hanging, he would wander
+farther and farther from the house until, almost without volition, he
+would suddenly strike off in a straight line across the hills.
+
+Lewis would have noticed the desertion more had it not been for Natalie.
+Natalie claimed and held all his days. Together they walked and drove
+till Lewis had learned all the highways and byways that Natalie had long
+since discovered. She liked the byways best, and twice she drove through
+crowding brush to the foot of the lane that was barred.
+
+"I've often come here," she said, "and I've even tried to pull those
+bars down, but they're solider than they look. I'm not strong enough.
+Will you help me some day? I want to follow that dear old mossy lane to
+its end, if it has one. It looks as if it led straight into the land of
+dreams."
+
+"It probably does," said Lewis. "I'll never help you pull down those
+bars, because, if you've got any heart, you can look at them and see
+that whoever put them up owns that land of dreams, and there's no land
+of dreams with room for more than two people, and they must be holding
+hands."
+
+"You've made me not want to go in there," said Natalie as she turned Gip
+around. "How could you see it like that? You're not a woman."
+
+Lewis did not answer, but when, two days later, they were out after
+strawberries, and Natalie led him through a wood in the valley to the
+foot of the pasture with the oaks and the spring, Lewis stopped her.
+
+"Don't let's go up there, Nan," he said. "That's part of somebody else's
+land of dreams. Dad's tip there somewhere, I'm sure."
+
+Natalie looked at him, and he saw in her eyes that she knew all that he
+had not told in words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+Leighton and Lewis made two business trips away from the homestead, and
+on both occasions, as soon as affairs permitted, hurried back with equal
+eagerness. Leighton tried to read significance into the fact that Lewis
+was not chafing at his absence from Folly, but he could not because
+Lewis wrote to Folly every week, and seemed to revel in telling her
+everything. Folly's answers were few and far between.
+
+Leighton would have given much to see one of Folly's letters. He
+wondered if her maid wrote them for her. He used to watch Lewis reading
+them. They were invariably short--mere notes. Lewis would read each one
+several times to make it seem like a letter. He seemed to feel that his
+father would like to see one of the letters, and one day, to keep
+himself from calling himself coward, he impulsively handed one over.
+
+Leighton read the scant three pages slowly. It was as though Folly had
+reached across the sea to scratch him again, for the note was well
+written in a bold, round hand. It was short because Folly combined the
+wisdom of the serpent with the voice of a dove. She knew the limits of
+her shibboleth of culture, and never passed them. She said only the
+things she had learned to write correctly. They were few.
+
+The few weeks at the homestead had changed Leighton. A single mood held
+him--a mood that he never threw off with a toss of his head. He seemed
+to have lost his philosophy of cheerfulness at the word of command.
+Lewis was too absorbed in his long days with Natalie to notice it, but
+Nelton took it upon himself to open his eyes.
+
+"Larst month," he said, "you and the governor was brothers. Now persons
+don't have to ask me is he your father. It's written in his fyce. It's
+this country life as has done it. Noisy, I calls it. No rest."
+
+Lewis felt penitent. He suggested to Leighton a day together, a tramp
+and a picnic, but Leighton shook his head.
+
+"I don't want to have to talk," he said bluntly.
+
+"Dad," said Lewis, "let's go away."
+
+Leighton started as though the words were something he had too long
+waited for.
+
+"Go away?" he repeated. How often had he said, "To go away is the
+sovereign cure." "Yes," he went on, "I believe you are right. I think
+it's high time--past time--for me to clear. Will you come or stay?"
+
+"I'll come if it's London," said Lewis, smiling.
+
+"London first, of course," said Leighton, gravely. "To-day is Tuesday.
+Say we start on Thursday. That gives us a day to go over and say
+good-by."
+
+"One day isn't enough," said Lewis. "Make it two."
+
+"All right," agreed Leighton.
+
+For that afternoon Lewis and Natalie had planned a long tramp, but
+before they had gone a mile from Aunt Jed's a purling brook in the
+depths of a still wood raised before them an impassable barrier of
+beauty. By a common, unspoken consent they sat down beside the gurgling
+water. They talked much and were silent much.
+
+For the first time Lewis had something in mind which he was afraid to
+tell to Natalie. He was not afraid for her. It was a selfish fear. He
+was afraid for himself--afraid to tell her that two short days would
+close the door for them on childhood. He wondered that mere years had
+been powerless to close that door. He looked on Natalie, and knew that
+renunciation would be hard.
+
+Natalie had tossed aside her hat. She sat leaning against the crisp
+trunk of a silver birch. Her hands were in her lap. Her dress was
+crumpled up, displaying her crossed feet and the tantalizing line of her
+slim ankles. Against the copper green of the tree trunk the mass of her
+hair was pressed, gold upon the shadow of gold. Her moist lips were half
+open. Her eyes were away, playing with memory.
+
+"Bet you can't tell me the first thing you ever said to me," said Lewis.
+
+"My dwess is wumpled," said Natalie, promptly, a single dimple coming
+and going with her sudden smile. Then she looked down and blushed. She
+straightened out her skirt, and patted it in place. They looked at each
+other and laughed.
+
+"Do you remember what came after that?" said Lewis, teasingly. "We
+kissed each other."
+
+Natalie nodded.
+
+"Nat," said Lewis, "do you remember any kiss after that one?"
+
+"No," said Natalie.
+
+"Funny," said Lewis. "I don't either. Do you want me to kiss you when it
+comes to saying good-by?"
+
+Natalie turned a wide and questioning look on him.
+
+"No," she said in a tone he had never heard from her before,
+
+Lewis sank back upon one elbow. He had been on the point of telling her
+that good-by was only two days off. Her tone stopped him. "Do you
+remember the night of the sunset?" he asked, instead.
+
+Natalie nodded.
+
+"I said I was going to sail to the biggest island. You said you were,
+too, and I said you couldn't because you were littlest. Do you
+remember?"
+
+Natalie sank her head slowly in assent. Her lower lip trembled. Suddenly
+she laughed and sprang to her feet.
+
+"Come on," she cried, "or we'll be late for supper. I'll beat you to the
+fence." She was off with a rush, but Lewis got to the fence first. He
+helped her over with mock ceremony. When they came to a wall farther on
+he helped her over again. This helping Natalie over obstacles was
+something new. It gave him faint twinges of pleasure.
+
+They came to the foot of the pasture at the back of the house and to the
+last wall of all. "Come on," said Lewis, smiling and holding out his
+hand.
+
+"Not this time, silly," said Natalie. "Don't you see the bars are down?"
+
+"Yes, I see," said Lewis, springing into the open gap in the wall, "but
+you're not coming through here. You're going over."
+
+"Am I?" said Natalie, and rushed at him. With one arm he caught her
+around the waist and threw her back. She landed on all fours, like a
+cat. Then, laughing, she sprang up and came at him again, only to be
+hurled back once more. Lewis was laughing, too, laughing at this last
+romp in the name of childhood. Natalie was so strong, so stipple, that
+he handled her roughly without fear of hurting her. They both felt the
+joy of strength and battle and exulted. Four times Natalie stormed the
+breach, and four times was she hurled back. Then she stood, panting, and
+holding her sides, the blood rioting in her cheeks, and fire in her
+eyes.
+
+"Give up?" asked Lewis.
+
+Natalie shook her head.
+
+"We'll be late for supper."
+
+"I don't care," said Natalie. "I'll never give up; only I'm cold." She
+shivered.
+
+"Cold, Nat?" cried Lewis. "Here." He started to take off his thick tweed
+coat. At the exact moment when his arms were imprisoned in the sleeves,
+Natalie shot by him. She held her skirts above her knees and ran.
+
+Long was the chase before Lewis caught her. He threw his arms around her
+and held her. Natalie did not struggle.
+
+"You can't carry me back," she gasped. "It's too far." Then suddenly
+from her eyes a woman looked out--a woman Lewis did not know. His arms
+dropped to his sides. He felt the blood pumping in his heart--his heart
+that had been pressed but now against the breast of this strange
+unknown. By one impulse they turned from each other and walked silently
+to the house. They were strangers,
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+That evening when Natalie was driving him home Lewis told her that
+to-morrow was good-by. Gip, as usual, was holding Natalie's attention so
+that she could scarcely pay heed to what Lewis was saying. But the
+central fact that he and Leighton were going hung in her mind and sank
+in slowly, so that when they got to the homestead she could say quite
+evenly:
+
+"Shall we see you again?"
+
+"Of course," said Lewis, "Dad and I will come over to say good-by."
+
+"Come for supper," said Natalie. "I won't be home in the morning. Good
+night."
+
+Lewis walked slowly to the house, Natalie had not given him time to ask
+why she would not be at home in the morning. He grudged giving that
+morning to any foreign interest. He wondered what he could do to kill
+all that time alone.
+
+The next afternoon he and Leighton drove over to Aunt Jed's in state.
+Leighton was still held by his mood--a mood that was not morose so much
+as distant. Lewis himself was in no good humor. The morning had palled
+on him even more than he had feared. Now he felt himself chilled when he
+longed to be warmed. Where his spirit cried out for sunshine, his
+father's mood threw only shadow. How tangible and real a thing was that
+shadow he never realized until they reached Aunt Jed's and found that it
+had got there before them.
+
+Despite mammy's art, the supper was a sad affair. It was not the sadness
+of close-knitted hearts about to part that seized upon the company. Love
+can thrive on the bitter-sweet of that pain. It was a deeper
+sadness--the sadness that in evil hours seizes upon the individual soul
+and says: "You stand alone. From this desert place of the mind you can
+flee by the road of any trifling distraction, but into it no companion
+ever enters. You stand alone." "I myself," cries the soul of man, and
+recoils from that brink of infinite distance. Such was the mood that
+Leighton had imposed on those he touched that day, for, while he could
+take no company into his desert place, by simply going there he could
+drive the rest each to his far wilderness.
+
+After supper they sat long in a silence without communion. It became
+unbearable. In such an hour bodily nearness becomes a repulsion. Lewis
+rebelled. He looked indignantly at Natalie. She too was young. Why did
+not her youth revolt? But Natalie wasn't feeling young that night. She
+did not answer his look.
+
+"Dad," said Lewis, "I think we'd better go. We have to make an early
+start."
+
+"All right," said Leighton, listlessly. "Tell Silas."
+
+Lewis rose and turned to Natalie.
+
+"Aren't you coming?" he asked.
+
+Natalie got up slowly, and drew a filmy white scarf--a cloud, she called
+it--about her shoulders. There seemed an alien chill in the air.
+
+As they walked toward the barn, a memory that had been playing
+hide-and-seek with Lewis's mind throughout the evening suddenly met him
+full in the face of thought. He stopped and stared at Natalie. She was
+dressed in red. What was it they had called that birthday dress of long
+ago? Accordion silk. The breeze caught Natalie's skirt and played with
+it, opening out the soft pleats and closing them again. The breeze
+seized upon the ends of the cloud and lifted them fitfully as though
+they were wings too tired for full flight.
+
+"Nat," whispered Lewis, "You remember the night I left Nadir. Is it the
+same dress?"
+
+"Silly," said Natalie, smiling faintly. "I've grown ten inches since
+then."
+
+Lewis reached out slowly and took her hands. How he remembered that
+good-by, every bit of it! Natalie's hands gripping his shoulders, his
+arms about her twitching, warm body, his face buried in her fragrant
+hair! But to-night her hands were cold and trembling to withdrawal. He
+felt withdrawal in her whole body, so close to him, so far away. Why was
+she so far away? Suddenly he remembered yesterday--the moment when the
+stranger woman had looked out at him from Natalie's eyes. She was far
+away because they two had traveled far from childhood.
+
+His own hands were hot. They were eager to seize Natalie, to drag
+himself back, and her with him, into childhood's land of faith. But he
+knew he had not the strength for that. He had only the strength to drop
+her cold hands and to turn and shout for Silas.
+
+On the way home Lewis plunged rebelliously against his father's mood.
+
+"Dad," he said, "do you think Natalie belongs to the Old Guard?"
+
+"The Old Guard?" repeated Leighton, vacantly. Then a gleam of-light
+dawned in his eyes. "Your little pal--the Old Guard. No, she doesn't
+belong in the way of a recruit; she hasn't joined the ranks. Do you want
+to know why? Because, boy, your little pal and women like her are the
+foundation, the life's blood, of the Old Guard. She doesn't have to
+join. She is, was, and always will be the Old Guard itself. In her
+single heart she holds the seven worlds of women."
+
+"But, Dad," said Lewis, half turning in his seat, "you don't know
+Natalie. You've never once talked to her."
+
+Leighton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I've met lots of men that know God; I've never seen one that could
+prove him. I know Natalie better--better----" Then suddenly his mind
+trailed off to its desert place. He would speak no more that night.
+
+The next day they were off. Action and movement brought a measure of
+relief from the very start. Leighton glanced almost eagerly from the
+windows of the hurrying train, watching for the sudden turn and the new
+view. There remained in his eyes, however, a desperate question. Was
+"going away" still the sovereign cure?
+
+At New York a cable awaited him. He opened it, read it, and turned
+bruskly to Lewis.
+
+"I'm not going to London," he said. "I'm going to Naples direct. Old
+Ivory will wait for me there. You'll be going to London, I suppose."
+
+For the first time Lewis felt far away from his father. He flushed. He
+felt like crying, because it came upon him suddenly that he was far away
+from his father, that they had been traveling different roads for many
+days. Pride came to his aid.
+
+"Yes," he said, steadily, "I shall go to London."
+
+Leighton nodded and turned to Nelton. He gave him a string of rapid
+orders, to which Nelton answered with his frequent and unfailing: "Yes,
+sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+"Wait here," said Leighton. "I'm going to answer this."
+
+He hurried away, and Lewis, feeling unaccountably tired, sat down on a
+divan. Nelton remained on guard beside the bags, repulsing the attacks
+of too anxious bell-boys. To him came a large, heavy-faced person,
+pensively plying a toothpick.
+
+"Say, young feller," he said, "how much do you get?"
+
+Nelton stared, dumfounded, at the stranger.
+
+"How much do I get?" he stammered.
+
+"Yep, just that," said the stranger. "What's your pay?"
+
+Helton's face turned a brick red. He glared steadily into the stranger's
+eyes, but said nothing.
+
+"Well, well, never mind the figure if you're ashamed of it," said the
+stranger, calmly. "This is my offer. If you'll shake your boss and come
+to me, I'll double your pay every year so long as you stick to that
+'Yes, sir, thank you, sir,' talk and manner. What do you say? Is it a
+deal?"
+
+"What do I s'y?" repeated Nelton, licking his lips. Lewis, grinning on
+the lounge, was eavesdropping with all his ears.
+
+"H--m--m," said the stranger, "double your pay every year _if you keep
+it up_."
+
+"I s'y this," said Nelton, a slight tremble in his voice, "I've been
+serving gentlemen so long that I don't think we'd hit it off together,
+thank you."
+
+The stranger's shrewd eyes twinkled, but he was otherwise unmoved.
+
+"Perhaps you're right," he mumbled, still plying his toothpick. "Anyway,
+I'm glad you're not a worm." He drew a large business card from his
+pocket and held it out. "Come to me if you ever want a man's job."
+
+Nelton took the card and held it out as though he had been petrified in
+the act. His bulging eyes watched the stranger as he sauntered leisurely
+back to his seat, then they turned to Lewis.
+
+"What do you think of that?" they asked.
+
+Lewis held out his hand for the card and glanced at the name.
+
+"Nelton," he said, "you've made a mistake. Better go over and tell the
+old boy you've reconsidered his proposition. I'll fix it up with dad.
+You'll be able to retire in three years."
+
+"Master Lewis," said Nelton, gravely, "there's lots of people besides
+you and the governor that thinks we serving-men says 'Yes, sir, thank
+you, sir,' to any one for the syke of a guinea a week and keep. Now you
+and the stout party eating the toothpick over yonder knows better."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+On the following day, while Leighton and Lewis were sorting out their
+things and Nelton was packing, Leighton said:
+
+"Nelton, you'd better go back to London with Mr. Lewis."
+
+"Beg your pardon, sir," said Nelton from the depths of a trunk, "but I'd
+like to go with you, sir."
+
+"Where to?" asked Leighton, surprised. "Africa?"
+
+"Yes, sir, Africa, sir."
+
+Leighton paused for a moment before he said:
+
+"Nelton, you can't go to Africa, not as a serving-man. You wouldn't be
+useful and you wouldn't be comfortable. Africa's a queer place, the
+cradle of slavery and the land of the free. A place," he continued, half
+to himself, "where masters become men. They are freed from their
+servants by the law that says white shall not serve white while the
+black looks on lest he be amazed that the gods should wait upon each
+other."
+
+He turned back to Nelton and added with a smile that was kindly:
+
+"What would you do in a land where just to be white spells kingship--a
+kingship held by the power to stand up to your thirty miles a day, to
+bear hunger and thirst without whimpering, to stand steady in danger,
+and to shoot straight and keep clean always? It's a land where all the
+whites sit down to the same table, but it isn't every white that can get
+to the table. You mustn't think I'm picking on you, Nelton. The man
+that's going with me is always hard up, but I heard him refuse an offer
+of Lord Dubbley's of all expenses and a thousand pounds down to take him
+on a trip."
+
+"Lord Dubbley!" repeated Nelton, impressed. "Is there anything w'at a
+lord can't 'ave?"
+
+"Yes," said Leighton. "There are still tables you can't sit down at for
+just money or name, but they are getting further and further away."
+
+"Mr. Lewis Leighton and servant" attracted considerable attention on the
+_Laurentia_, but let it be said to Lewis's credit, or, rather, to the
+credit of his abstraction, that he did not notice it. Never before had
+Lewis had so much to think about. His parting with his father ought to
+have been more than a formality. Why had it been a mere incident--an
+incident scarcely salient among the happenings of a busy day? As he
+looked back, Lewis began to see that it was not yesterday or the day
+before that he had parted from his father. When was it, then? Suddenly
+it came upon him that their real farewell had been said in that still,
+deserted lane overlooking his father's land of dreams.
+
+The realization depressed him. He did not know why. He did not know that
+the physical partings in this world are as nothing compared with those
+divisions of the spirit that come to us unawares, that are never seen in
+anticipation, but are known all too poignantly when, missing from beside
+us some long familiar soul, we look back and see the parting of the
+ways.
+
+Then there was another matter that had come to puzzle his inexperience.
+He knew nothing of his father's theory that there is no erotic affection
+that can stand a separation of six months in conjunction with six
+thousand miles. To youth erotic affection is nonexistent; all emotional
+impulse is love. Along this road the race would have come to utter
+marital disaster long ago were it not for the fact that youth takes in a
+new impulse with every breath.
+
+In certain aspects Lewis had the maturity of his age. People who looked
+at him saw a man, not a boy. But there was a shy and hidden side of him
+that was very young indeed. He was one of those men in whom youth is
+inherent, a legion that cling long to dreams and are ever ready to stand
+and fall by some chosen illusion. Reason can not rob them of God, nor
+women rob them of woman.
+
+To Lewis's youth had come a new impulse so entangled with contact with
+H lne, with Leighton, and with Natalie that he could not quite define
+it. He only knew that it had pushed Folly back in his vision--so far
+back that his mind could not fasten upon and hold her in the place to
+which he had given her a right. The realization troubled him. He worried
+over it, but comforted himself with the thought that once his eyes could
+feast again upon her living self, she would blot out, as before, all
+else in life.
+
+He should have arrived in London on Saturday night, but a heavy fog held
+the steamer to the open sea over night, and it was only late on Sunday
+morning that he disembarked at Plymouth. Well on in the afternoon he
+reached town and rushed to the flat for a wash and a change before
+seeking Folly.
+
+Eager to taste the pleasures of surprising the lady of his choice, he
+had sent her no word of his coming, and as a consequence he found her
+apartment empty--empty for him, for Folly was not in. Marie opened the
+door, and after a few gasping words of welcome told him that Folly had
+just gone out, that she was driving in the park; but wouldn't he come in
+and wait?
+
+At first he said "Yes," but his impatience did not let him even cross
+the threshold. It drove him out to the park with the assurance that it
+was better to hunt for a needle in a haystack than to sit down and wait
+for the needle to crawl out to him. For a while he stood at a point of
+vantage and watched the long procession of private motor-cars and
+carriages, but he watched in vain. Depressed, he started to walk, and
+his mood carried him away from the throng.
+
+He was walking head down when a lonely carriage standing by the curb
+drew his eye. At first he thought desire had deceived his senses. The
+equipage looked very like Folly's smart little victoria, but it was
+empty, and the man on the box was a stranger. Lewis approached him
+doubtfully. "Is this Miss Delaires's carriage?" he asked.
+
+The man looked him over before he answered:
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Where is Miss Delaires?" asked Lewis, his face brightening.
+
+"Doin' 'er mile," replied the coachman.
+
+Lewis waved his hand toward a path to the right questioningly. The man
+nodded. Feeling suddenly young again, Lewis hurried along the path with
+a long and eager stride. He had not gone far when he saw a dainty
+figure, grotesquely accompanied by a ragamuffin, coming toward him. He
+did not have to ask himself twice if the dainty figure was Folly's. If
+he had been blind, the singing of the blood in his veins would have
+spelled her name.
+
+He stepped behind a screening bush and waited to spring out at her. His
+eyes fastened curiously upon the ragamuffin. He could see that he was
+speaking to Folly, and that she was paying no regard to him. Presently
+Lewis could hear what he was saying:
+
+"Aw, naow, lydy, give us a penny, won't cher?"
+
+"I won't," replied Folly, sharply. "I said I wouldn't, and I won't. I'll
+give you up to the first officer we come to, though, if you don't
+clear."
+
+"Ah, ga-am!" said the youth, whose head scarcely reached to Folly's
+waist. "Course you won't give me no penny. _You_ ain't no lydy."
+
+Folly stopped in her tracks. Her face went suddenly livid with rage.
+
+"No lydy!" she cried in the most directly expressive of all idioms. "If
+I wasn't a _perfect_ lydy, I'd slap your blankety blank little blank."
+
+At each word of the virile repartee of Cockneydom coming so
+incongruously from those soft lips, Lewis's heart went down and down in
+big, jolting bumps. Scarcely aware of what he was doing, he stepped out
+into the path. Folly looked up and saw him. The look of amazement in his
+face, eyes staring and mouth open and gulping, struck and held her for a
+second before she realized who it was that stood before her.
+
+For just the fraction of a moment longer she was frightened and puzzled
+by Lewis's dumfounded mien; then her mind harked back for the clue and
+got it. No one had to tell her that the game was up so far as Lewis was
+concerned. She knew it. Her face suddenly crinkled up with mirth. With a
+peal of laughter, she dodged him and ran improperly for her very proper
+little turnout. He did not follow except with his eyes.
+
+"Larfin' at _us_, governor," jibed the diminutive cockney, putting a
+rail between himself and Lewis. "The 'uzzy! The minute I lays my heye on
+that marm, I says, 'Blime yer, _you_ ain't no lydy'! I say, governor,
+give us a penny."
+
+Lewis turned away and took a few steps gropingly, head down, as though
+he walked in a trance. Presently he stopped and came back, feeling with
+finger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket. He drew out a gold coin,
+looked at it gravely, and flipped it across the rail at the ragamuffin.
+Then he turned and walked off with a rapid stride.
+
+The little cockney snatched at the coin, and popped it into his mouth.
+Too overwhelmed to speak his gratitude, he stood on his head until Lewis
+was out of sight. It was the first time in his life that he had handled,
+much less possessed, a "thick un."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+The expert surgeon, operating for blindness on the membranes of the eye,
+is denied the bulwark of an anesthetic. Such a one will tell you that
+the moment of success is the moment most pregnant with disaster. To the
+patient who has known only the fraction of life that lies in darkness,
+the sudden coming of light is a miracle beyond mere resurrection from
+the dead. But he is warned he must avoid any spasm of joy. Should he cry
+out and start at the coming of the dawn, in that moment he bids farewell
+forever to the light of day.
+
+Something of this shock of sudden sight had come to Lewis, but it came
+to him with no spasm of joy. A man who has been drugged does not awake
+to joy, but to pain. Liberation and suffering too often walk hand in
+hand. Lewis had felt no bondage; consequently his freedom was as
+terrible as it was sudden. It plunged him into depths of depression he
+had never before sounded.
+
+From the park he went mechanically to the flat, and sat for hours by the
+window looking out upon the dead Sunday gray of London. Darkness came,
+and with it Nelton and lights. Nelton remarked that there was nothing to
+eat in the house.
+
+"I know," said Lewis, and sat on, too abject to dress and go out for
+dinner. In his depression his thoughts turned naturally to his father.
+He thought of joining him, and searched time-tables and sailings, only
+to find that he could not catch up with the expedition. Besides, as he
+looked back on their last days in America, he doubted whether his father
+would have welcomed his coming.
+
+The next few days were terrible indeed, for Lady Derl, as he had feared,
+was out of town. He wrote to her, begging her to let him know where she
+was and when she would come to London. For three days he waited for an
+answer, and then the emptiness of the whole world, the despair of
+isolation, drove him to his studio and to work.
+
+He had had an impulse to write to Natalie, even to go to her; but there
+was a fineness in his nature that stopped him, a shame born of the
+realization of his blindness and of the pity in which H lne and
+Leighton and perhaps even Natalie must have held him.
+
+Suddenly the full import of H lne's intimate sacrifice in the disrobing
+of the palpitating sorrow of her life and of his father's immolation of
+his land of dreams struck him. They had done these things to make him
+see, and he had remained blind. They had struck the golden chords of the
+paean of mighty love, and he had clung, smiling and unhearing, to his
+penny whistle.
+
+For the first time, and with Folly farther away than ever before, he saw
+her as she was. Once he had thought that she and youth were inseparable,
+that Folly _was_ youth. Now, in the power of sudden vision, he saw as
+his father had seen all along, that Folly was as old as woman, that she
+had never been young.
+
+These things did not come to Lewis in a single day, but in long hours of
+work spread over many weeks. He was laboring at a frieze, a commission
+that had come to him through Le Brux, and upon which he had done
+considerable work before going to America. What he had done had not been
+altogether pleasing to his father. Lewis had felt it, though Leighton
+had said little beyond damning it to success.
+
+Now Lewis saw the beginning he had made through his father's eyes. He
+saw the facile riot and exaggerations of youth, and contrasted their
+quick appeal to a hurried age with the modesty of the art that hides
+behind the vision and reveals itself not to an age or to ages, but in
+the long, slow measure of life everlasting. He undid all but the
+skeleton of what he had done, and on the bare frame built the
+progression of repressed beauty which was to escape the glancing eye
+only to find a long abiding-place in the hearts of those who worship
+seldom, but worship long.
+
+At last he got word from H lne. Has letter had followed her to the
+Continent and from there to Egypt. She wrote that she was tired of
+travel, and was coming home. In a postscript she mentioned a glimpse of
+Leighton at Port Said. Lewis was impatient to see her. He had begun to
+know his liberation.
+
+The revelation that had come to him in the park was not destined to
+stand alone. Between such women as Folly and their victims exists an
+almost invariable camaraderie that forbids the spoiling of sport. The
+inculcation of this questionable loyalty is considered by some the last
+attribute of the finished adventuress, and by others it is said to be
+due to the fact that such women draw and are drawn by men whose major
+rule is to "play fair." Both conclusions are erroneous, as any victim
+can testify.
+
+The news that Lewis no longer followed in Folly's train permeated his
+world with a rapidity that has no parallel outside of London except in
+the mental telegraphy of aboriginal Africa. Men soon began to talk to
+him, to tell him things. He turned upon the first with an indignant
+question, "Why didn't you tell me this before?" and the informer stared
+at him and smiled until Lewis found the answer for himself and flushed.
+Ten thousand pointing fingers cannot show the sunrise to the blind.
+
+By the time H lne came back, Lewis not only knew his liberation, but
+had begun to bless Folly as we bless the stroke of lightning that
+strikes at us and just misses. He complied with H lne's summons
+promptly, but with a deliberation that surprised him, for it was not
+until he was on the way to her house that he realized that he had no
+troubles to pour out to her ear.
+
+Nevertheless, a sense of peace fell upon him as he entered the familiar
+room of cheerful blue chintzes and light. H lne was as he had ever
+known her. She gave him a slow, measuring welcome, and then sat back and
+let him talk. Woman's judgment may err in clinging to the last word, but
+never is her finesse at fault in ceding the first.
+
+H lne heard Lewis's tale from start to finish with only one
+interruption. It took her five minutes to find out just what it was
+Folly had said in her own tongue to the little cockney in his, and even
+at that there were one or two words she had to guess. When she thought
+she had them all, she sat up straight and laughed.
+
+Lewis stared at her.
+
+"Do you think it's funny?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, no, of course not," gasped Lady Derl, trying to gulp down her
+mirth. "Not at all." And then she laughed again.
+
+Lewis waited solemnly for her to finish, then he told her of some of the
+things he had heard at the club.
+
+"H lne," he finished, "I want you to know that I don't only see what a
+fool I was. I see more than that. I see what you and dad sacrificed to
+my blindness. I want you to know that you didn't do it in vain. Six
+months ago, if I had found Folly out, I would have gone to the dogs,
+taken her on her own terms, and said good-by to honor and my word to
+dad. It's--it's from that that you have saved me."
+
+H lne waved her hand deprecatingly.
+
+"I did little enough for you, Lew. Not half what I would willingly have
+done. But--but your dad--I wrote you I'd seen him just for an hour at
+Port Said. Your dad, Lew, he's given you all he had."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Lewis, troubled.
+
+"Nothing," said H lne, her thoughts wandering; "nothing that telling
+will show you." She turned back to him and smiled. "Let's talk about
+your pal Natalie. We're great friends."
+
+"Friends?" said Lewis. "Have you been writing to her?"
+
+"Oh, no," said H lne. "Women don't have to know each other to be
+friends."
+
+"Why, there's nothing more to tell about Natalie," said Lewis.
+
+H lne looked him squarely in the eyes.
+
+"Tell me honestly," she said; "haven't you wanted to go back to
+Natalie?"
+
+Lewis flushed. He rose and picked up his hat and stick.
+
+"'You can give a new hat to a king, but it isn't everybody that will
+take your cast-off clothes,' That's one of dad's, of course."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Through that winter Lewis worked steadily forward to a goal that he knew
+his father could not cavil at. He knew it instinctively. His grasp
+steadied to expression with repression, or, as one of his envious, but
+honest, competitors put it, genius had bowed to sanity.
+
+It is usual to credit these rebirths in individual art to some great
+grief, but no great grief had come to Lewis. His work fulfilled its
+promise in just such measure as he had fulfilled himself. In as much as
+he had matured, in so much had his art. Man is not ripened by a shock,
+but by those elements that develop him to the point of feeling and
+knowing the shock when it comes to him. In a drab world, drab would have
+been Lewis's end; but, little as he realized it, his world had not been
+drab.
+
+Three steady, but varying, lights had shone upon him. The influence of
+Natalie, as soft and still as reflected light; of H lne, worldly before
+the world, but big of heart; and of Leighton, who had been judged in all
+things that he might judge, had drawn Lewis up above his self-chosen
+level, given sight to his eyes, and reduced Folly to the proportions of
+a little final period to the paragraph of irresponsible youth.
+
+To maturity Lewis had added a gravity that had come to him with the
+realization that in distancing himself from youth he had also
+unwittingly drawn away from the hearts that had done most toward
+bringing him emancipation. He had no psychological turn of mind. He
+could not penetrate the sudden reserve that had fallen upon his father
+or the apparent increasing distraction with which H lne met his visits.
+He did not know that it is in youth and in age that hearts attain their
+closest contact and that the soul that finds itself, generally does so
+in solitude.
+
+He was hurt by the long silence of his father--a silence unbroken now in
+months, and by H lne's withdrawal, which was marked enough to make him
+prolong the intervals between his visits to her, and baffled him on
+those rare occasions when they met.
+
+His life became somber and, as lightning comes only to clouds, so to his
+clouded skies came the flash and the blow of a letter from Africa. It
+was not from his father, but from Old Ivory. He found it on the
+breakfast table and started to open it, but some premonition arrested
+him. He laid it aside, tried to finish his meal, and failed. A thickness
+in his throat would not let him eat. He left the table and went into the
+living-room, closing the door behind him.
+
+He opened the letter and read the first few words, then he sat and
+stared for many a long minute into the fire, the half-crumpled sheets
+held tightly in his hand.
+
+Nelton opened the door.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," he said; "you have an engagement at ten."
+
+"Break it by telephone," said Lewis. "Don't come in again unless I ring.
+I'm out if anybody calls."
+
+When Nelton had closed the door, Lewis spread the letter on his knee and
+read:
+
+
+    Dear Lew:
+
+    All is well with your dad at last. I'm a poor hand to talk and a
+    poorer to write, for my finger is crooked to hold a trigger, not a
+    pen. But he gave me it to do. Don't take it too hard that a man with
+    only plain words is blunt. Your father is gone.
+
+    I don't have to tell you that in the last few weeks before he left
+    you your dad grew old. He's grown old before, but never as old as
+    that. The other times, the mere sight and smell of Africa started
+    his blood again. But this time he stayed old--until to-day.
+
+    To-day we were out after elephant, and your dad had won the toss for
+    first shot. We hadn't gone a mile from camp when a lone bull buffalo
+    crossed the trail, and your dad tried for him--a long, quick shot.
+    The bullet only plowed his rump. The bull charged up the wind
+    straight for us, and before the thunder of him got near enough to
+    drown a shout, your dad yelled out "He's mine, Ive! He's mine!" I
+    held my fire, God help me; so did your dad--held it till the bull
+    had passed the death-line. You know with charging buffalo there's
+    more to stop than just life. There's weight and momentum and there's
+    a rage that no other, man or beast, can equal.
+
+    Your dad got him--got him with the perfect shot,--but not before the
+    bull had passed the death-line. And so, dear boy, they broke even, a
+    life for a life. And your dad was glad. With the bones of his body
+    crushed to a pulp, he could smile as I've never seen him smile
+    before. He pulled me down close to him and he said: "Bury me
+    here--right here, Ive, and tell my boy I stopped to take on a
+    side-tracked car. That's a part of our language. He'll understand."
+
+
+
+Lewis's eyes went blind over his father's words, his father's message.
+"Tell my boy I stopped to take on a side-tracked car." Half across the
+world those words carried him back and back over half of life to a
+rattling train, a boy, and the wondrous stranger, speaking: "Every man
+who goes through the stress of life has need of an individual
+philosophy... Life to me is like this train; a lot of sections and a lot
+of couplings... Once in a while your soul looks out of the window and
+sees some long-forgotten, side-tracked car beckoning to be coupled on
+again. If you try to go back and pick it up, you're done."
+
+Not in Africa had his father stopped to take on a side-tracked car, but
+on a day that was already months ago when, standing in a still, deserted
+lane, he turned to face forever that moment of his life that had nearest
+touched divinity.
+
+Lewis sat pondering for hours. It was not grief he was feeling so much
+as an immeasurable loss. One grieves at death when it seems futile, when
+it robs youth or racks old age, when it devastates hopes or wrecks a
+vision. But death had not come so to his father. It had come as a
+fulfilment. Lewis knew instinctively that thus and thus only would his
+father have wished to strike into the royal road.
+
+But the loss seized upon his heart and made it ache. He thought
+despondently, as which one of us has not, face to face with the fact of
+death, of things undone and of words unsaid. How cruel seemed their last
+hurried farewell, how hard that his father could not have known that his
+sacrifice had told for his boy's liberty, that his wisdom had rightly
+seen the path his art must follow to its land of promise! "Hard for
+you--only for you," whispered the voice of his new-found maturity.
+
+It was natural that with reaction should come to Lewis a desire to talk,
+to seek comfort and sympathy, and it was natural that he should turn to
+H lne. He walked slowly to her house. The doorman turned from him to
+pick up a note from the hall table. He handed it to Lewis.
+
+"Her ladyship is not in, sir, to-day. Her ladyship told me to give you
+the note when you called."
+
+Lewis took the note and walked out. He opened it absently and read:
+
+
+    Lew darling, I have heard. They will tell you that I am out. I'm not
+    out, but I am broken. I cannot let you see me. Dear, I have given
+    you all that I had to give.
+
+
+
+He stood stock-still and read the words again, then he raised his eyes
+and looked slowly about him. Street, faces, trees, walls, and towers
+faded from his view. He stood in the midst of an illimitable void. A
+terror of loneliness fell upon him. He felt as though his full heart
+must speak or break, but in all his present world there was no ear to
+hear. Suddenly the impulse of a lifetime, often felt, seldom answered,
+came to him with an insistence that would not be denied. Go to Natalie.
+Tell Natalie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+
+Spring was in the very act of birth when Lewis found himself once more
+in the old carryall threading the River Road. This time he sat beside
+Old William, and the horses plodded along slowly, tamed by the slack
+reins lying neglected on their backs. Old William was not driving. His
+hands, loosely holding the lines, lay on his knees. Down his pink cheeks
+and into his white beard crawled tears from his wide blue eyes.
+
+"Glen dead! Little Glen Leighton dead!" he said aloud from time to time,
+and Lewis knew himself forgotten. He forgave the old man for the sake of
+the picture he conjured--a picture of that other boyhood when "little
+Glen Leighton" and the wood-cutter had hunted and fished and roamed
+these crowding hills together.
+
+The next day was one of pouring showers. Twice Lewis left the house,
+only to be turned back by the rain. He was not afraid of getting wet,
+but he was afraid of having to talk to Natalie indoors. He could not
+remember ever having talked to her hemmed in by four walls.
+
+But on the morrow he awoke to clean-washed skies and a fuzzy pale-green
+carpet that spread across the fields and rose in bumps and mounds over
+trees and budding shrubs. He left the homestead early, and struck out
+for Aunt Jed's. As he approached the house, a strange diffidence fell
+upon him. He was afraid to go in. For an hour he sat on the top rail of
+a fence and watched.
+
+At last Natalie came out. She started to walk toward him, but presently
+turned to the right. Lewis followed her. At first she walked fast, but
+soon she began to pause beside some burst of green or tempting downy
+mass of pussy-willow, as though she were in two minds whether to fill
+her arms and rush back, carrying spring into the house or to go on. She
+went on slowly until she reached the barrier of rails that closed the
+entrance to Leighton's land of dreams. Here Lewis came up with her.
+
+"Nat," he said, "shall I help you over?"
+
+Natalie whirled round at the sound of his voice. Just for a second there
+was fright in her eyes; then color mounted swiftly into her pale cheeks,
+and her lips opened to speak, but she said nothing. There was something
+in Lewis's face that stopped her--a look of age and of hunger. She
+wanted to ask him why he had come back, but her heart was beating so
+fast that she dared not trust her voice.
+
+Lewis was frightened, too. He was frightened lest he should find the
+strange woman when he needed just the oldest pal he had in the world.
+
+"Nat," he blurted out, "dad is dead."
+
+When a man thinks he is being clumsy and tactless with a woman, he is
+generally making a master stroke. At Lewis's words, so simple, so
+child-like, the conscious flush died from Natalie's cheeks, her heart
+steadied down, and her eyes filled with the sudden tears of sympathy.
+
+"Dead, Lew? Your dad dead?"
+
+She put her arms around him and kissed him softly; then she drew him to
+a low rock. They sat down side by side.
+
+"Tell Natalie," she said.
+
+Lewis could never remember that hour with Natalie except as a whole.
+Between the bursting of a dam and the moment when the pent-up waters
+stretch to their utmost level and peace there is no division of time. He
+knew only that it was like that with him. He had come in oppression, he
+had found peace.
+
+Then he looked up into Natalie's speaking face and knew that he had
+found more. He had found again his old pal. "A pal is one who can't do
+wrong who can't go wrong, who can't grow wrong." Who had said that?
+H lne--H lne, who, never having seen Natalie save with the inner
+vision, knew her for a friend. To Folly his body had cried, "Let us stay
+young together!" To Natalie his blood, his body, and his soul were ready
+to cry out, "Let us grow old together!"
+
+Natalie had not followed the turn of his emotion. She broke in upon his
+thought and brought him back.
+
+"I never talked to your dad, but--we knew each other, we liked each
+other."
+
+Lewis started.
+
+"That's funny," he said.
+
+"Is it?" said Natalie. "I suppose it sounds odd, but--"
+
+"No," interrupted Lewis, "that's not what I mean. It's odd because
+H lne said just the same thing about you. She said you were great
+friends--that women didn't have to know each other to be friends."
+
+"They don't have to know men to be friends, either," said Natalie,
+"unless--"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"Unless they love them. If they love them, they've got to know them
+through and through to be friends. Love twists a woman's vision. Lots of
+women are ruined because they can't wait to see through and through."
+
+"Why, Nat," said Lewis, "you're talking like dad. Dad never
+talks--talked--without turning on the light."
+
+"Doesn't he?" said Natalie.
+
+Lewis nodded.
+
+"There are people that think of dad as a bad man. He has told me so. But
+he wasn't bad to me or to H lne or Nelton or Old William, and we're the
+ones that knew him best."
+
+For a time they were silent, then Natalie said: "Lew, you're older than
+you ever were before. Is it just losing your dad?"
+
+Lewis shook his head.
+
+"No," he said, "it wasn't that. I finished growing up just after I got
+back to London. I'm not the only thing that has grown. My work--sometime
+I'll show you my work before and after. I wish I could have shown it to
+dad,--I wish I could have told him that I've said good-by to Folly."
+
+"Good-by to Folly?" cried Natalie, with a leap of the heart. Then her
+heart sank back. "You mean you've said good-by to foolishness, to
+childish things?"
+
+"Both," said Lewis. "Folly Delaires and childish things."
+
+"Why?" asked Natalie, shortly.
+
+"Because," said Lewis, "it was given me to see her through and through."
+
+"And now?" breathed Natalie, drawing slightly away from him lest he hear
+the thumping of her heart.
+
+Lewis turned his head and looked at her. The flush was back in her
+cheeks, her eyes were wide and staring far away, her moist lips were
+half open, and her bosom rose and fell in the long, halting swell of
+tremulous breath.
+
+There is a beauty that transcends the fixed bounds of flesh, that leaps
+to the eye of love when all the world is blind. The flower that opens
+slowly, the face grown dear through half of life, needs no tenure in
+memory. It lives. Tears can not dim its beauty nor age destroy its
+grace, for the vision is part of him who sees.
+
+The vision came to Lewis. His arms trembled to grip Natalie, to outrage
+her trust, and seize too lightly the promise of the years.
+
+"Now, Nat?" he said hoarsely. He raised his hands slowly, took off her
+hat, and tossed it aside. Then with trembling fingers he let down her
+hair. It tumbled about her shoulders in a gold and copper glory of light
+and shade. Natalie did not stir. Lewis caught up a handful of her hair
+and held it against his cheek. "Now," he said, "I stay here. Since long
+before the day you said that you and I would sail together to the
+biggest island you've held my hand, and I've held yours. Sometimes I've
+forgotten, but--but I've never really let go. I'll not let go now. I'll
+cling to you, walk beside you, live with you, hand in hand, until the
+day you know me through and through.
+
+"And then?" whispered Natalie.
+
+"Then I'll love you," said Lewis, gravely. "For me you hold all the
+seven worlds of women. I've--I've been walking with my back to the
+light."
+
+Natalie laughed--the soft laughter with which women choke back tears.
+She put up her hands and drew Lewis's head against her breast.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHN FOX, JR'S.
+
+STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS
+
++May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE. Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree
+that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine
+lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he
+finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the
+_footprints of a girl_. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and
+the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder
+chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine."
+
+
+THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
+
+This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It
+is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often
+springs the flower of civilization.
+
+"Chad." the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he
+came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood,
+seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and
+mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif,
+by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the
+mountains.
+
+
+A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
+
+The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of
+moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the
+heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two
+impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's"
+charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the
+love making of the mountaineers.
+
+Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of
+Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26th ST., NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE NOVELS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL
+
+THE INSIDE OF THE CUP. Illustrated by Howard Giles.
+
+The Reverend John Hodder is called to a fashionable church in a
+middle-western city. He knows little of modern problems and in his
+theology is as orthodox as the rich men who control his church could
+desire. But the facts of modern life are thrust upon him; an awakening
+follows and in the end he works out a solution.
+
+A FAR COUNTRY. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.
+
+This novel is concerned with big problems of the day. As _The Inside of
+the Cup_ gets down to the essentials in its discussion of religion, so
+_A Far Country_ deals in a story that is intense and dramatic, with
+other vital issues confronting the twentieth century.
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE. Illustrated by J. H. Gardner Soper.
+
+This, Mr. Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine,
+is throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It
+is frankly a modern love story.
+
+MR. CREWE'S CAREER. Illus. by A. I. Keller and Kinneys.
+
+A new England state is under the political domination of a railway and
+Mr, Crewe, a millionaire, seizes a moment when the cause of the people
+is being espoused by an ardent young attorney, to further his own
+interest in a political way. The daughter of the railway president plays
+no small part in the situation.
+
+THE CROSSING. Illustrated by S. Adamson and L. Baylis.
+
+Describing the battle of Fort Moultrie, the blazing of the Kentucky
+wilderness, the expedition of Clark and his handful of followers in
+Illinois, the beginning of civilization along the Ohio and Mississippi,
+and the treasonable schemes against Washington.
+
+CONISTON. Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn.
+
+A deft blending of love and politics. A New Englander is the hero, a
+crude man who rose to political prominence by his own powers, and then
+surrendered all for the love of a woman.
+
+THE CELEBRITY. An episode.
+
+An inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of personalities
+between a celebrated author and a bicycle salesman. It is the purest,
+keenest fun--and is American to the core.
+
+THE CRISIS. Illustrated with scenes from the Photo-Play.
+
+A book that presents the great crisis in our national life with splendid
+power and with a sympathy, a sincerity, and a patriotism that are
+inspiring.
+
+RICHARD CARVEL. Illustrated by Malcolm Frazer.
+
+An historical novel which gives a real and vivid picture of Colonial
+times, and is good, clean, spirited reading in all its phases and
+interesting throughout.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ZANE GREY'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS Colored frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton.
+
+Most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent Mexican
+border of the present day. A New York society girl buys a ranch which
+becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her
+property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is
+captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightful
+close.
+
+DESERT GOLD Illustrated by Douglas Duer.
+
+Another fascinating story of the Mexican border. Two men, lost in the
+desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no
+farther. The rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the
+border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors
+had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine.
+
+RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE Illustrated by Douglas Duer.
+
+A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon
+authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch
+owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible
+hand of the Mormon Church to break her will.
+
+THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN Illustrated with photograph reproductions.
+
+This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones,
+known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona desert
+and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons
+and giant pines." It is a fascinating story.
+
+THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT Jacket in color. Frontispiece.
+
+This big human drama is played in the Painted Desert. A lovely girl, who
+has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New Englander. The
+Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second
+wife of one of the Mormons--Well, that's the problem of this
+sensational, big selling story.
+
+BETTY ZANE Illustrated by Louis F. Grant.
+
+This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful
+young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers. Life
+along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the
+beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Fort, and Betty's
+final race for life, make up this never-to-be-forgotten story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JACK LONDON'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JOHN BARLEYCORN. Illustrated by H. T. Dunn.
+
+This remarkable book is a record of the author's own amazing
+experiences. This big, brawny world rover, who has been acquainted with
+alcohol from boyhood, comes out boldly against John Barleycorn. It is a
+string of exciting adventures, yet it forcefully conveys an unforgetable
+idea and makes a typical Jack London book.
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE MOON. Frontispiece by George Harper.
+
+The story opens in the city slums where Billy Roberts, teamster and
+ex-prize fighter, and Saxon Brown, laundry worker, meet and love and
+marry. They tramp from one end of California to the other, and in the
+Valley of the Moon find the farm paradise that is to be their salvation.
+
+BURNING DAYLIGHT. Four illustrations.
+
+The story of an adventurer who went to Alaska and laid the foundations
+of his fortune before the gold hunters arrived. Bringing his fortunes to
+the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and
+recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. He then starts out as a
+merciless exploiter on his own account. Finally he takes to drinking and
+becomes a picture of degeneration. About this time he falls in love with
+his stenographer and wins her heart but not her hand and then--but read
+the story!
+
+A SON OF THE SUN. Illustrated by A. O. Fischer and C. W. Ashley.
+
+David Grief was once a light-haired, blue-eyed youth Who came from
+England to the South Seas in search of adventure. Tanned like a native
+and as lithe as a tiger, he became a real son of the sun. The life
+appealed to him and he remained and became very wealthy.
+
+THE CALL OF THE WILD. Illustrations by Philip R. Goodwin and Charles
+Livingston Bull. Decorations by Charles E. Hooper.
+
+A book of dog adventures as exciting as any man's exploits could be.
+Here is excitement to stir the blood and here is picturesque color to
+transport the reader to primitive scenes.
+
+THE SEA WOLF. Illustrated by W. J. Aylward.
+
+Told by a man whom Fate suddenly swings from his fastidious life into
+the power of the brutal captain of a sealing schooner. A novel of
+adventure warmed by a beautiful love episode that every reader will hail
+with delight.
+
+WHITE FANG. Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull.
+
+"White Fang" is part dog, part wolf and all brute, living in the frozen
+north; he gradually comes under the spell of man's companionship, and
+surrenders all at the last in a fight with a bull dog. Thereafter he is
+man's loving slave.
+
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