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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Exiles and Other Stories, by Richard
+Harding Davis, et al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Exiles and Other Stories
+       The Exiles; The Boy Orator of Zepata City; The Other Woman; On the Fever Ship; The Lion and the Unicorn; The Last Ride Together; Miss Delamar's Understudy; The Reporter Who Made Himself King
+
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 18, 2005  [eBook #16090]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXILES AND OTHER STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 16090-h.htm or 16090-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/9/16090/16090-h/16090-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/9/16090/16090-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+The Novels and Stories of Richard Harding Davis
+
+THE EXILES AND OTHER STORIES
+
+by
+
+RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+
+With an Introduction by Charles Dana Gibson
+
+Illustrated
+
+NEW YORK
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+1919
+
+"The Exiles" and "The Boy Orator of Zepata City" from "The Exiles,"
+copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+"The Other Woman" from "Gallagher," copyright, 1891, by CHARLES
+SCRIBNER'S SONS; "On the Fever Ship," "The Lion and the Unicorn," and
+"The Last Ride Together" from "The Lion and the Unicorn," copyright,
+1899, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS; "Miss Delamar's Understudy" from
+"Cinderella," copyright, 1896, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS; "The
+Reporter Who Made Himself King" from "Stories for Boys," copyright,
+1891, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Instead she buried her face in its folds.]
+
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FRIEND
+
+J. DAVIS BRODHEAD
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF DAVIS
+
+
+Dick was twenty-four years old when he came into the smoking-room of
+the Victoria Hotel, in London, after midnight one July night--he was
+dressed as a Thames boatman.
+
+He had been rowing up and down the river since sundown, looking for
+color. He had evidently peopled every dark corner with a pirate, and
+every floating object had meant something to him. He had adventure
+written all over him. It was the first time I had ever seen him, and
+I had never heard of him. I can't now recall another figure in that
+smoke-filled room. I don't remember who introduced us--over
+twenty-seven years have passed since that night. But I can see Dick
+now dressed in a rough brown suit, a soft hat, with a handkerchief
+about his neck, a splendid, healthy, clean-minded, gifted boy at play.
+And so he always remained.
+
+His going out of this world seemed like a boy interrupted in a game he
+loved. And how well and fairly he played it! Surely no one deserved
+success more than Dick. And it is a consolation to know he had more
+than fifty years of just what he wanted. He had health, a great
+talent, and personal charm. There never was a more loyal or unselfish
+friend. There wasn't an atom of envy in him. He had unbounded mental
+and physical courage, and with it all he was sensitive and sometimes
+shy. He often tried to conceal these last two qualities, but never
+succeeded in doing so from those of us who were privileged really to
+know and love him.
+
+His life was filled with just the sort of adventure he liked the best.
+No one ever saw more wars in so many different places or got more out
+of them. And it took the largest war in all history to wear out that
+stout heart.
+
+We shall miss him.
+
+CHARLES DANA GIBSON.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+The First Glimpse of Davis               Charles Dana Gibson
+
+THE EXILES
+
+THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+
+ON THE FEVER SHIP
+
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+
+THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+MISS DELAMAR'S UNDERSTUDY
+
+THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+INSTEAD SHE BURIED HER FACE IN ITS FOLDS (Frontispiece)
+
+STOPPING FOR HALF-HOURS AT A TIME BEFORE A BAZAAR
+
+THE BOAR HUNT
+
+CONSUMED TEA AND THIN SLICES OF BREAD
+
+"I NEVER SAW A KING," GORDON REMARKED
+
+
+
+
+THE EXILES
+
+I
+
+
+The greatest number of people in the world prefer the most highly
+civilized places of the world, because they know what sort of things
+are going to happen there, and because they also know by experience
+that those are the sort of things they like. A very few people prefer
+barbarous and utterly uncivilized portions of the globe for the reason
+that they receive while there new impressions, and because they like
+the unexpected better than a routine of existence, no matter how
+pleasant that routine may be. But the most interesting places of all
+to study are those in which the savage and the cultivated man lie down
+together and try to live together in unity. This is so because we can
+learn from such places just how far a man of cultivation lapses into
+barbarism when he associates with savages, and how far the remnants of
+his former civilization will have influence upon the barbarians among
+whom he has come to live.
+
+There are many such colonies as these, and they are the most picturesque
+plague-spots on the globe. You will find them in New Zealand and at
+Yokohama, in Algiers, Tunis, and Tangier, and scattered thickly all
+along the South American coast-line wherever the law of extradition
+obtains not, and where public opinion, which is one of the things a
+colony can do longest without, is unknown. These are the unofficial
+Botany Bays and Melillas of the world, where the criminal goes of his
+own accord, and not because his government has urged him to do so and
+paid his passage there. This is the story of a young man who went to
+such a place for the benefit he hoped it would be to his health, and
+not because he had robbed any one, or done a young girl an injury. He
+was the only son of Judge Henry Howard Holcombe, of New York. That was
+all that it was generally considered necessary to say of him. It was
+not, however, quite enough, for, while his father had had nothing but
+the right and the good of his State and country to think about, the
+son was further occupied by trying to live up to his father's name.
+Young Holcombe was impressed by this fact from his earliest childhood.
+It rested upon him while at Harvard and during his years at the law
+school, and it went with him into society and into the courts of law.
+When he rose to plead a case he did not forget, nor did those present
+forget, that his father while alive had crowded those same halls with
+silent, earnest listeners; and when he addressed a mass-meeting at
+Cooper Union, or spoke from the back of a cart in the East Side, some
+one was sure to refer to the fact that this last speaker was the son
+of the man who was mobbed because he had dared to be an abolitionist,
+and who later had received the veneration of a great city for his
+bitter fight against Tweed and his followers.
+
+Young Holcombe was an earnest member of every reform club and citizens'
+league, and his distinguished name gave weight as a director to
+charitable organizations and free kindergartens. He had inherited his
+hatred of Tammany Hall, and was unrelenting in his war upon it and its
+handiwork, and he spoke of it and of its immediate downfall with the
+bated breath of one who, though amazed at the wickedness of the thing
+he fights, is not discouraged nor afraid. And he would listen to no
+half-measures. Had not his grandfather quarrelled with Henry Clay, and
+so shaken the friendship of a lifetime, because of a great compromise
+which he could not countenance? And was his grandson to truckle and
+make deals with this hideous octopus that was sucking the life-blood
+from the city's veins? Had he not but yesterday distributed six
+hundred circulars, calling for honest government, to six hundred
+possible voters, all the way up Fourth Avenue?--and when some flippant
+one had said that he might have hired a messenger-boy to have done it
+for him and so saved his energies for something less mechanical, he
+had rebuked the speaker with a reproachful stare and turned away in
+silence.
+
+Life was terribly earnest to young Holcombe, and he regarded it from
+the point of view of one who looks down upon it from the judge's bench,
+and listens with a frown to those who plead its cause. He was not
+fooled by it; he was alive to its wickedness and its evasions. He would
+tell you that he knew for a fact that the window man in his district
+was a cousin of the Tammany candidate, and that the contractor who had
+the cleaning of the street to do was a brother-in-law of one of the
+Hall's sachems, and that the policeman on his beat had not been in the
+country eight months. He spoke of these damning facts with the air of
+one who simply tells you that much, that you should see how terrible
+the whole thing really was, and what he could tell if he wished.
+
+In his own profession he recognized the trials of law-breakers only as
+experiments which went to establish and explain a general principle.
+And prisoners were not men to him, but merely the exceptions that
+proved the excellence of a rule. Holcombe would defend the lowest
+creature or the most outrageous of murderers, not because the man was
+a human being fighting for his liberty or life, but because he wished
+to see if certain evidence would be admitted in the trial of such a
+case. Of one of his clients the judge, who had a daughter of his own,
+said, when he sentenced him, "Were there many more such men as you in
+the world, the women of this land would pray to God to be left
+childless." And when some one asked Holcombe, with ill-concealed
+disgust, how he came to defend the man, he replied: "I wished to show
+the unreliability of expert testimony from medical men. Yes; they tell
+me the man was a very bad lot."
+
+It was measures, not men, to Holcombe, and law and order were his twin
+goddesses, and "no compromise" his watchword.
+
+"You can elect your man if you'll give me two thousand dollars to
+refit our club-room with," one of his political acquaintances once
+said to him. "We've five hundred voters on the rolls now, and the
+members vote as one man. You'd be saving the city twenty times that
+much if you keep Croker's man out of the job. You know _that_ as
+well as I do."
+
+"The city can better afford to lose twenty thousand dollars," Holcombe
+answered, "than we can afford to give a two-cent stamp for
+corruption."
+
+"All right," said the heeler; "all right, Mr. Holcombe. Go on. Fight
+'em your own way. If they'd agree to fight you with pamphlets and
+circulars you'd stand a chance, sir; but as long as they give out
+money and you give out reading-matter to people that can't read,
+they'll win, and I naturally want to be on the winning side."
+
+When the club to which Holcombe belonged finally succeeded in getting
+the Police Commissioners indicted for blackmailing gambling-houses,
+Holcombe was, as a matter of course and of public congratulation, on
+the side of the law; and as Assistant District Attorney--a position
+given him on account of his father's name and in the hope that it
+would shut his mouth--distinguished himself nobly.
+
+Of the four commissioners, three were convicted--the fourth, Patrick
+Meakim, with admirable foresight having fled to that country from
+which few criminals return, and which is vaguely set forth in the
+newspapers as "parts unknown."
+
+The trial had been a severe one upon the zealous Mr. Holcombe, who
+found himself at the end of it in a very bad way, with nerves unstrung
+and brain so fagged that he assented without question when his doctor
+exiled him from New York by ordering a sea voyage, with change of
+environment and rest at the other end of it. Some one else suggested
+the northern coast of Africa and Tangier, and Holcombe wrote minute
+directions to the secretaries of all of his reform clubs urging
+continued efforts on the part of his fellow-workers, and sailed away
+one cold winter's morning for Gibraltar. The great sea laid its hold
+upon him, and the winds from the south thawed the cold in his bones,
+and the sun cheered his tired spirit. He stretched himself at full
+length reading those books which one puts off reading until illness
+gives one the right to do so, and so far as in him lay obeyed his
+doctor's first command, that he should forget New York and all that
+pertained to it. By the time he had reached the Rock he was up and
+ready to drift farther into the lazy, irresponsible life of the
+Mediterranean coast, and he had forgotten his struggles against
+municipal misrule, and was at times for hours together utterly
+oblivious of his own personality.
+
+A dumpy, fat little steamer rolled itself along like a sailor on shore
+from Gibraltar to Tangier, and Holcombe, leaning over the rail of its
+quarter-deck, smiled down at the chattering group of Arabs and Moors
+stretched on their rugs beneath him. A half-naked negro, pulling at
+the dates in the basket between his bare legs, held up a handful to
+him with a laugh, and Holcombe laughed back and emptied the cigarettes
+in his case on top of him, and laughed again as the ship's crew and
+the deck passengers scrambled over one another and shook out their
+voluminous robes in search of them. He felt at ease with the world and
+with himself, and turned his eyes to the white walls of Tangier with a
+pleasure so complete that it shut out even the thought that it was a
+pleasure.
+
+The town seemed one continuous mass of white stucco, with each flat,
+low-lying roof so close to the other that the narrow streets left no
+trace. To the left of it the yellow coastline and the green
+olive-trees and palms stretched up against the sky, and beneath him
+scores of shrieking blacks fought in their boats for a place beside
+the steamer's companion-way. He jumped into one of these open wherries
+and fell sprawling among his baggage, and laughed lightly as a boy as
+the boatman set him on his feet again, and then threw them from under
+him with a quick stroke of the oars. The high, narrow pier was crowded
+with excited customs officers in ragged uniforms and dirty turbans,
+and with a few foreign residents looking for arriving passengers.
+Holcombe had his feet on the upper steps of the ladder, and was
+ascending slowly. There was a fat, heavily built man in blue serge
+leaning across the railing of the pier. He was looking down, and as
+his eyes met Holcombe's face his own straightened into lines of
+amazement and most evident terror. Holcombe stopped at the sight, and
+stared back wondering. And then the lapping waters beneath him and the
+white town at his side faded away, and he was back in the hot, crowded
+court-room with this man's face before him. Meakim, the fourth of the
+Police Commissioners, confronted him, and saw in his presence nothing
+but a menace to himself.
+
+Holcombe came up the last steps of the stairs, and stopped at their
+top. His instinct and life's tradition made him despise the man, and
+to this was added the selfish disgust that his holiday should have
+been so soon robbed of its character by this reminder of all that he
+had been told to put behind him.
+
+Meakim swept off his hat as though it were hurting him, and showed the
+great drops of sweat on his forehead.
+
+"For God's sake!" the man panted, "you can't touch me here, Mr.
+Holcombe. I'm safe here; they told me I'd be. You can't take me. You
+can't touch me."
+
+Holcombe stared at the man coldly, and with a touch of pity and
+contempt. "That is quite right, Mr. Meakim," he said. "The law cannot
+reach you here."
+
+"Then what do you want with me?" the man demanded, forgetful in his
+terror of anything but his own safety.
+
+Holcombe turned upon him sharply. "I am not here on your account, Mr.
+Meakim," he said. "You need not feel the least uneasiness, and," he
+added, dropping his voice as he noticed that others were drawing near,
+"if you keep out of my way, I shall certainly keep out of yours."
+
+The Police Commissioner gave a short laugh partly of bravado and
+partly at his own sudden terror. "I didn't know," he said, breathing
+with relief. "I thought you'd come after me. You don't wonder you give
+me a turn, do you? I _was_ scared." He fanned himself with his
+straw hat, and ran his tongue over his lips. "Going to be here some
+time, Mr. District Attorney?" he added, with grave politeness.
+
+Holcombe could not help but smile at the absurdity of it. It was so
+like what he would have expected of Meakim and his class to give every
+office-holder his full title. "No, Mr. Police Commissioner," he
+answered, grimly, and nodding to his boatmen, pushed his way after
+them and his trunks along the pier.
+
+Meakim was waiting for him as he left the custom-house. He touched his
+hat, and bent the whole upper part of his fat body in an awkward bow.
+"Excuse me, Mr. District Attorney," he began.
+
+"Oh, drop that, will you?" snapped Holcombe. "Now, what is it you
+want, Meakim?"
+
+"I was only going to say," answered the fugitive, with some offended
+dignity, "that as I've been here longer than you, I could perhaps give
+you pointers about the hotels. I've tried 'em all, and they're no
+good, but the Albion's the best."
+
+"Thank you, I'm sure," said Holcombe. "But I have been told to go to
+the Isabella."
+
+"Well, that's pretty good, too," Meakim answered, "if you don't mind
+the tables. They keep you awake most of the night, though, and--"
+
+"The tables? I beg your pardon," said Holcombe, stiffly.
+
+"Not the eatin' tables; the roulette tables," corrected Meakim. "Of
+course," he continued, grinning, "if you're fond of the game, Mr.
+Holcombe, it's handy having them in the same house, but I can steer
+you against a better one back of the French Consulate. Those at the
+Hotel Isabella's crooked."
+
+Holcombe stopped uncertainly. "I don't know just what to do," he said.
+"I think I shall wait until I can see our consul here."
+
+"Oh, he'll send you to the Isabella," said Meakim, cheerfully. "He
+gets two hundred dollars a week for protecting the proprietor, so he
+naturally caps for the house."
+
+Holcombe opened his mouth to express himself, but closed it again, and
+then asked, with some misgivings, of the hotel of which Meakim had
+first spoken.
+
+"Oh, the Albion. Most all the swells go there. It's English, and they
+cook you a good beefsteak. And the boys generally drop in for table
+d'hôte. You see, that's the worst of this place, Mr. Holcombe; there's
+nowhere to go evenings--no club-rooms nor theatre nor nothing; only
+the smoking-room of the hotel or that gambling-house; and they spring
+a double naught on you if there's more than a dollar up."
+
+Holcombe still stood irresolute, his porters eying him from under
+their burdens, and the runners from the different hotels plucking at
+his sleeve.
+
+"There's some very good people at the Albion," urged the Police
+Commissioner, "and three or four of 'em's New-Yorkers. There's the
+Morrises and Ropes, the Consul-General, and Lloyd Carroll--"
+
+"Lloyd Carroll!" exclaimed Holcombe.
+
+"Yes," said Meakim, with a smile, "he's here." He looked at Holcombe
+curiously for a moment, and then exclaimed, with a laugh of
+intelligence, "Why, sure enough, you were Mr. Thatcher's lawyer in
+that case, weren't you? It was you got him his divorce?"
+
+Holcombe nodded.
+
+"Carroll was the man that made it possible, wasn't he?"
+
+Holcombe chafed under this catechism. "He was one of a dozen, I
+believe," he said; but as he moved away he turned and asked: "And Mrs.
+Thatcher. What has become of her?"
+
+The Police Commissioner did not answer at once, but glanced up at
+Holcombe from under his half-shut eyes with a look in which there was
+a mixture of curiosity and of amusement. "You don't mean to say, Mr.
+Holcombe," he began, slowly, with the patronage of the older man and
+with a touch of remonstrance in his tone, "that you're _still_
+with the husband in that case?"
+
+Holcombe looked coldly over Mr. Meakim's head. "I have only a purely
+professional interest in any one of them," he said. "They struck me as
+a particularly nasty lot. Good-morning, sir."
+
+"Well," Meakim called after him, "you needn't see nothing of them if
+you don't want to. You can get rooms to yourself."
+
+Holcombe did get rooms to himself, with a balcony overlooking the bay,
+and arranged with the proprietor of the Albion to have his dinner
+served at a separate table. As others had done this before, no one
+regarded it as an affront upon his society, and several people in the
+hotel made advances to him, which he received politely but coldly. For
+the first week of his visit the town interested him greatly,
+increasing its hold upon him unconsciously to himself. He was restless
+and curious to see it all, and rushed his guide from one of the few
+show-places to the next with an energy which left that fat Oriental
+panting.
+
+[Illustration: Stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar.]
+
+But after three days Holcombe climbed the streets more leisurely,
+stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar, or sent away his
+guide altogether, and stretched himself luxuriously on the broad wall
+of the fortifications. The sun beat down upon him, and wrapped him
+into drowsiness. From far afield came the unceasing murmur of the
+market-place and the bazaars, and the occasional cries of the priests
+from the minarets; the dark blue sea danced and flashed beyond the
+white margin of the town and its protecting reef of rocks where the
+sea-weed rose and fell, and above his head the buzzards swept heavily,
+and called to one another with harsh, frightened cries. At his side
+lay the dusty road, hemmed in by walls of cactus, and along its narrow
+length came lines of patient little donkeys with jangling necklaces,
+led by wild-looking men from the farm-lands and the desert, and women
+muffled and shapeless, with only their bare feet showing, who looked
+at him curiously or meaningly from over the protecting cloth, and
+passed on, leaving him startled and wondering. He began to find that
+the books he had brought wearied him. The sight of the type alone was
+enough to make him close the covers and start up restlessly to look
+for something less absorbing. He found this on every hand, in the lazy
+patience of the bazaars and of the markets, where the chief service of
+all was that of only standing and waiting, and in the farm-lands
+behind Tangier, where half-naked slaves drove great horned buffalo,
+and turned back the soft, chocolate-colored sod with a wooden plough.
+But it was a solitary, selfish holiday, and Holcombe found himself
+wanting certain ones at home to bear him company, and was surprised to
+find that of these none were the men nor the women with whom his
+interests in the city of New York were the most closely connected.
+They were rather foolish people, men at whom he had laughed and whom
+he had rather pitied for having made him do so, and women he had
+looked at distantly as of a kind he might understand when his work was
+over and he wished to be amused. The young girls to whom he was in the
+habit of pouring out his denunciations of evil, and from whom he was
+accustomed to receive advice and moral support, he could not place in
+this landscape. He felt uneasily that they would not allow him to
+enjoy it his own way; they would consider the Moor historically as the
+invader of Catholic Europe, and would be shocked at the lack of proper
+sanitation, and would see the mud. As for himself, he had risen above
+seeing the mud. He looked up now at the broken line of the roof-tops
+against the blue sky, and when a hooded figure drew back from his
+glance he found himself murmuring the words of an Eastern song he had
+read in a book of Indian stories:
+
+  "Alone upon the house-tops, to the north
+    I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
+  The glamour of thy footsteps in the north.
+    Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
+
+  "Below my feet the still bazaar is laid.
+    Far, far below, the weary camels lie--"
+
+Holcombe laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had stopped half-way
+down the hill on which stands the Bashaw's palace, and the whole of
+Tangier lay below him like a great cemetery of white marble. The moon
+was shining clearly over the town and the sea, and a soft wind from
+the sandy farm-lands came to him and played about him like the
+fragrance of a garden. Something moved in him that he did not
+recognize, but which was strangely pleasant, and which ran to his
+brain like the taste of a strong liqueur. It came to him that he was
+alone among strangers, and that what he did now would be known but to
+himself and to these strangers. What it was that he wished to do he
+did not know, but he felt a sudden lifting up and freedom from
+restraint. The spirit of adventure awoke in him and tugged at his
+sleeve, and he was conscious of a desire to gratify it and put it to
+the test.
+
+"'Alone upon the house-tops,'" he began. Then he laughed and clambered
+hurriedly down the steep hill-side. "It's the moonlight," he explained
+to the blank walls and overhanging lattices, "and the place and the
+music of the song. It might be one of the Arabian nights, and I Haroun
+al Raschid. _And_ if I don't get back to the hotel I shall make a
+fool of myself."
+
+He reached the Albion very warm and breathless, with stumbling and
+groping in the dark, and instead of going immediately to bed told the
+waiter to bring him some cool drink out on the terrace of the
+smoking-room. There were two men sitting there in the moonlight, and
+as he came forward one of them nodded to him silently.
+
+"Oh, good-evening, Mr. Meakim!" Holcombe said, gayly, with the spirit
+of the night still upon him. "I've been having adventures." He
+laughed, and stooped to brush the dirt from his knickerbockers and
+stockings. "I went up to the palace to see the town by moonlight, and
+tried to find my way back alone, and fell down three times."
+
+Meakim shook his head gravely. "You'd better be careful at night,
+sir," he said. "The governor has just said that the Sultan won't be
+responsible for the lives of foreigners at night 'unless accompanied
+by soldier and lantern.'"
+
+"Yes, and the legations sent word that they wouldn't have it," broke
+in the other man. "They said they'd hold him responsible anyway."
+
+There was a silence, and Meakim moved in some slight uneasiness. "Mr.
+Holcombe, do you know Mr. Carroll?" he said.
+
+Carroll half rose from his chair, but Holcombe was dragging another
+toward him, and so did not have a hand to give him.
+
+"How are you, Carroll?" he said, pleasantly.
+
+The night was warm, and Holcombe was tired after his rambles, and so
+he sank back in the low wicker chair contentedly enough, and when the
+first cool drink was finished he clapped his hands for another, and
+then another, while the two men sat at the table beside him and
+avoided such topics as would be unfair to any of them.
+
+"And yet," said Holcombe, after the first half-hour had passed, "there
+must be a few agreeable people here. I am sure I saw some very
+nice-looking women to-day coming in from the fox-hunt. And very well
+gotten up, too, in Karki habits. And the men were handsome,
+decent-looking chaps--Englishmen, I think."
+
+"Who does he mean? Were you at the meet to-day?" asked Carroll.
+
+The Tammany chieftain said no, that he did not ride--not after foxes,
+in any event. "But I saw Mrs. Hornby and her sister coming back," he
+said. "They had on those linen habits."
+
+"Well, now, there's a woman who illustrates just what I have been
+saying," continued Carroll. "You picked her out as a self-respecting,
+nice-looking girl--and so she is--but she wouldn't like to have to
+tell all she knows. No, they are all pretty much alike. They wear
+low-neck frocks, and the men put on evening dress for dinner, and they
+ride after foxes, and they drop in to five-o'clock tea, and they all
+play that they're a lot of gilded saints, and it's one of the rules of
+the game that you must believe in the next man, so that he will
+believe in you. I'm breaking the rules myself now, because I say
+'they' when I ought to say 'we.' We're none of us here for our health,
+Holcombe, but it pleases us to pretend we are. It's a sort of give and
+take. We all sit around at dinner-parties and smile and chatter, and
+those English talk about the latest news from 'town,' and how they
+mean to run back for the season or the hunting. But they know they
+don't dare go back, and they know that everybody at the table knows
+it, and that the servants behind them know it. But it's more easy that
+way. There's only a few of us here, and we've got to hang together or
+we'd go crazy."
+
+"That's so," said Meakim, approvingly. "It makes it more sociable."
+
+"It's a funny place," continued Carroll. The wine had loosened his
+tongue, and it was something to him to be able to talk to one of his
+own people again, and to speak from their point of view, so that the
+man who had gone through St. Paul's and Harvard with him would see it
+as such a man should. "It's a funny place, because, in spite of the
+fact that it's a prison, you grow to like it for its freedom. You can
+do things here you can't do in New York, and pretty much everything
+goes there, or it used to, where I hung out. But here you're just your
+own master, and there's no law and no religion and no relations nor
+newspapers to poke into what you do nor how you live. You can
+understand what I mean if you've ever tried living in the West. I used
+to feel the same way the year I was ranching in Texas. My family sent
+me out there to put me out of temptation; but I concluded I'd rather
+drink myself to death on good whiskey at Del's than on the stuff we
+got on the range, so I pulled my freight and came East again. But
+while I was there I was a little king. I was just as good as the next
+man, and he was no better than me. And though the life was rough, and
+it was cold and lonely, there was something in being your own boss
+that made you stick it out there longer than anything else did. It was
+like this, Holcombe." Carroll half rose from his chair and marked what
+he said with his finger. "Every time I took a step and my gun bumped
+against my hip, I'd straighten up and feel good and look for trouble.
+There was nobody to appeal to; it was just between me and him, and no
+one else had any say about it. Well, that's what it's like here. You
+see men come to Tangier on the run, flying from detectives or husbands
+or bank directors, men who have lived perfectly decent, commonplace
+lives up to the time they made their one bad break--which," Carroll
+added, in polite parenthesis, with a deprecatory wave of his hand
+toward Meakim and himself, "we are _all_ likely to do some time,
+aren't we?"
+
+"Just so," said Meakim.
+
+"Of course," assented the District Attorney.
+
+"But as soon as he reaches this place, Holcombe," continued Carroll,
+"he begins to show just how bad he is. It all comes out--all his
+viciousness and rottenness and blackguardism. There is nothing to
+shame it, and there is no one to blame him, and no one is in a
+position to throw the first stone." Carroll dropped his voice and
+pulled his chair forward with a glance over his shoulder. "One of
+those men you saw riding in from the meet to-day. Now, he's a German
+officer, and he's here for forging a note or cheating at cards or
+something quiet and gentlemanly, nothing that shows him to be a brute
+or a beast. But last week he had old Mulley Wazzam buy him a slave
+girl in Fez, and bring her out to his house in the suburbs. It seems
+that the girl was in love with a soldier in the Sultan's body-guard at
+Fez, and tried to run away to join him, and this man met her quite by
+accident as she was making her way south across the sand-hills. He was
+whip that day, and was hurrying out to the meet alone. He had some
+words with the girl first, and then took his whip--it was one of those
+with the long lash to it; you know what I mean--and cut her to pieces
+with it, riding her down on his pony when she tried to run, and
+heading her off and lashing her around the legs and body until she
+fell; then he rode on in his damn pink coat to join the ladies at
+Mango's Drift, where the meet was, and some Riffs found her bleeding
+to death behind the sand-hills. That man held a commission in the
+Emperor's own body-guard, and that's what Tangier did for _him_."
+
+Holcombe glanced at Meakim to see if he would verify this, but
+Meakim's lips were tightly pressed around his cigar, and his eyes were
+half closed.
+
+"And what was done about it?" Holcombe asked, hoarsely.
+
+Carroll laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. "Why, I tell you, and you
+whisper it to the next man, and we pretend not to believe it, and call
+the Riffs liars. As I say, we're none of us here for our health,
+Holcombe, and a public opinion that's manufactured by _déclassée_
+women and men who have run off with somebody's money and somebody's
+else's wife isn't strong enough to try a man for beating his own
+slave."
+
+"But the Moors themselves?" protested Holcombe. "And the Sultan? She's
+one of his subjects, isn't she?"
+
+"She's a woman, and women don't count for much in the East, you know;
+and as for the Sultan, he's an ignorant black savage. When the English
+wanted to blow up those rocks off the western coast, the Sultan
+wouldn't let them. He said Allah had placed them there for some good
+reason of His own, and it was not for man to interfere with the works
+of God. That's the sort of a Sultan he is." Carroll rose suddenly and
+walked into the smoking-room, leaving the two men looking at each
+other in silence.
+
+"That's right," said Meakim, after a pause. "He give it to you just as
+it is, but I never knew him to kick about it before. We're a fair
+field for missionary work, Mr. Holcombe, all of us--at least, some of
+us are." He glanced up as Carroll came back from out of the lighted
+room with an alert, brisk step. His manner had changed in his absence.
+
+"Some of the ladies have come over for a bit of supper," he said.
+"Mrs. Hornby and her sister and Captain Reese. The _chef's_ got
+some birds for us, and I've put a couple of bottles on ice. It will be
+like Del's--hey? A small hot bird and a large cold bottle. They sent
+me out to ask you to join us. They're in our rooms." Meakim rose
+leisurely and lit a fresh cigar, but Holcombe moved uneasily in his
+chair. "You'll come, won't you?" Carroll asked. "I'd like you to meet
+my wife."
+
+Holcombe rose irresolutely and looked at his watch. "I'm afraid it's
+too late for me," he said, without raising his face. "You see, I'm
+here for my health. I--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Carroll, sharply.
+
+"Nonsense, Carroll!" said Holcombe. "I didn't mean _that_. I
+meant it literally. I can't risk midnight suppers yet. My doctor's
+orders are to go to bed at nine, and it's past twelve now. Some other
+time, if you'll be so good; but it's long after my bedtime, and--"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Carroll, quietly, as he turned away. "Are you
+coming, Meakim?"
+
+Meakim lifted his half-empty glass from the table and tasted it slowly
+until Carroll had left them, then he put the glass down, and glanced
+aside to where Holcombe sat looking out over the silent city. Holcombe
+raised his eyes and stared at him steadily.
+
+"Mr. Holcombe--" the fugitive began.
+
+"Yes," replied the lawyer.
+
+Meakim shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "Good-night, sir."
+
+Holcombe's rooms were on the floor above Carroll's, and the laughter
+of the latter's guests and the tinkling of glasses and silver came to
+him as he stepped out upon his balcony. But for this the night was
+very still. The sea beat leisurely on the rocks, and the waves ran up
+the sandy coast with a sound as of some one sweeping. The music of
+women's laughter came up to him suddenly, and he wondered hotly if
+they were laughing at him. He assured himself that it was a matter of
+indifference to him if they were. And with this he had a wish that
+they would not think of him as holding himself aloof. One of the women
+began to sing to a guitar, and to the accompaniment of this a man and
+a young girl came out upon the balcony below, and spoke to each other
+in low, earnest tones, which seemed to carry with them the feeling of
+a caress. Holcombe could not hear what they said, but he could see the
+curve of the woman's white shoulders and the light of her companion's
+cigar as he leaned upon the rail with his back to the moonlight and
+looked into her face. Holcombe felt a sudden touch of loneliness and
+of being very far from home. He shivered slightly as though from the
+cold, and stepping inside closed the window gently behind him.
+
+Although Holcombe met Carroll several times during the following day,
+the latter obviously avoided him, and it was not until late in the
+afternoon that Holcombe was given a chance to speak to him again.
+Carroll was coming down the only street on a run, jumping from one
+rough stone to another, and with his face lighted up with excitement.
+He hailed Holcombe from a distance with a wave of the hand. "There's
+an American man-of-war in the bay," he cried; "one of the new ones. We
+saw her flag from the hotel. Come on!" Holcombe followed as a matter
+of course, as Carroll evidently expected that he would, and they
+reached the end of the landing-pier together, just as the ship of war
+ran up and broke the square red flag of Morocco from her main-mast and
+fired her salute.
+
+"They'll be sending a boat in by-and-by," said Carroll, "and we'll
+have a talk with the men." His enthusiasm touched his companion also,
+and the sight of the floating atom of the great country that was his
+moved him strongly, as though it were a personal message from home. It
+came to him like the familiar stamp, and a familiar handwriting on a
+letter in a far-away land, and made him feel how dear his own country
+was to him and how much he needed it. They were leaning side by side
+upon the rail watching the ship's screws turning the blue waters
+white, and the men running about the deck, and the blue-coated figures
+on the bridge. Holcombe turned to point out the vessel's name to
+Carroll, and found that his companion's eyes were half closed and
+filled with tears.
+
+Carroll laughed consciously and coughed. "We kept it up a bit too late
+last night," he said, "and I'm feeling nervous this morning, and the
+sight of the flag and those boys from home knocked me out." He paused
+for a moment, frowning through his tears and with his brow drawn up
+into many wrinkles. "It's a terrible thing, Holcombe," he began again,
+fiercely, "to be shut off from all of that." He threw out his hand
+with a sudden gesture toward the man-of-war. Holcombe looked down at
+the water and laid his hand lightly on his companion's shoulder.
+Carroll drew away and shook his head. "I don't want any sympathy," he
+said, kindly. "I'm not crying the baby act. But you don't know, and I
+don't believe anybody else knows, what I've gone through and what I've
+suffered. You don't like me, Holcombe, and you don't like my class,
+but I want to tell you something about my coming here. I want you to
+set them right about it at home. And I don't care whether it interests
+you or not," he said, with quick offense; "I want you to listen. It's
+about my wife."
+
+Holcombe bowed his head gravely.
+
+"You got Thatcher his divorce," Carroll continued. "And you know that
+he would never have got it but for me, and that everybody expected
+that I would marry Mrs. Thatcher when the thing was over. And I
+didn't, and everybody said I was a blackguard, and I was. It was bad
+enough before, but I made it worse by not doing the only thing that
+could make it any better. Why I didn't do it I don't know. I had some
+grand ideas of reform about that time, I think, and I thought I owed
+my people something, and that by not making Mrs. Thatcher my mother's
+daughter I would be saving her and my sisters. It was remorse, I
+guess, and I didn't see things straight. I know now what I should have
+done. Well, I left her and she went her own way, and a great many
+people felt sorry for her, and were good to her--not your people, nor
+my people; but enough were good to her to make her see as much of the
+world as she had used to. She never loved Thatcher, and she never
+loved any of the men you brought into that trial except one, and he
+treated her like a cur. That was myself. Well, what with trying to
+please my family, and loving Alice Thatcher all the time and not
+seeing her, and hating her too for bringing me into all that
+notoriety--for I blamed the woman, of course, as a man always will--I
+got to drinking, and then this scrape came and I had to run. I don't
+care anything about that row now, or what you believe about it. I'm
+here, shut off from my home, and that's a worse punishment than any
+damn lawyers can invent. And the man's well again. He saw I was drunk;
+but I wasn't so drunk that I didn't know he was trying to do me, and I
+pounded him just as they say I did, and I'm sorry now I didn't kill
+him."
+
+Holcombe stirred uneasily, and the man at his side lowered his voice
+and went on more calmly:
+
+"If I hadn't been a gentleman, Holcombe, or if it had been another
+cabman he'd fought with, there wouldn't have been any trouble about
+it. But he thought he could get big money out of me, and his friends
+told him to press it until he was paid to pull out, and I hadn't the
+money, and so I had to break bail and run. Well, you've seen the
+place. You've been here long enough to know what it's like, and what
+I've had to go through. Nobody wrote me, and nobody came to see me;
+not one of my own sisters even, though they've been in the Riviera all
+this spring--not a day's journey away. Sometimes a man turned up that
+I knew, but it was almost worse than not seeing any one. It only made
+me more homesick when he'd gone. And for weeks I used to walk up and
+down that beach there alone late in the night, until I got to thinking
+that the waves were talking to me, and I got queer in my head. I had
+to fight it just as I used to have to fight against whiskey, and to
+talk fast so that I wouldn't think. And I tried to kill myself
+hunting, and only got a broken collar-bone for my pains. Well, all
+this time Alice was living in Paris and New York. I heard that some
+English captain was going to marry her, and then I read in the Paris
+_Herald_ that she was settled in the American colony there, and
+one day it gave a list of the people who'd been to a reception she
+gave. She could go where she pleased, and she had money in her own
+right, you know; and she was being revenged on me every day. And I was
+here knowing it, and loving her worse than I ever loved anything on
+earth, and having lost the right to tell her so, and not able to go to
+her. Then one day some chap turned up from here and told her about me,
+and about how miserable I was, and how well I was being punished. He
+thought it would please her, I suppose. I don't know who he was, but I
+guess he was in love with her himself. And then the papers had it that
+I was down with the fever here, and she read about it. I _was_
+ill for a time, and I hoped it was going to carry me off decently, but
+I got up in a week or two, and one day I crawled down here where we're
+standing now to watch the boat come in. I was pretty weak from my
+illness, and I was bluer than I had ever been, and I didn't see
+anything but blackness and bitterness for me anywhere. I turned around
+when the passengers reached the pier, and I saw a woman coming up
+those stairs. Her figure and her shoulders were so like Alice's that
+my heart went right up into my throat, and I couldn't breathe for it.
+I just stood still staring, and when she reached the top of the steps
+she looked up, breathing with the climb, and laughing; and she says,
+'Lloyd, I've come to see you.' And I--I was that lonely and weak that
+I grabbed her hand, and leaned back against the railing, and cried
+there before the whole of them. I don't think she expected it exactly,
+because she didn't know what to do, and just patted me on the
+shoulder, and said, 'I thought I'd run down to cheer you up a bit; and
+I've brought Mrs. Scott with me to chaperon us.' And I said, without
+stopping to think: 'You wouldn't have needed any chaperon, Alice, if I
+hadn't been a cur and a fool. If I had only asked what I can't ask of
+you now'; and, Holcombe, she flushed just like a little girl, and
+laughed, and said, 'Oh, will you, Lloyd?' And you see that ugly iron
+chapel up there, with the corrugated zinc roof and the wooden cross on
+it, next to the mosque? Well, that's where we went first, right from
+this wharf before I let her go to a hotel, and old Ridley, the English
+rector, he married us, and we had a civil marriage too. That's what
+she did for me. She had the whole wide globe to live in, and she gave
+it up to come to Tangier, because I had no other place but Tangier,
+and she's made my life for me, and I'm happier here than I ever was
+before anywhere, and sometimes I think--I hope--that she is, too."
+Carroll's lips moved slightly, and his hands trembled on the rail. He
+coughed, and his voice was gentler when he spoke again. "And so," he
+added, "that's why I felt it last night when you refused to meet her.
+You were right, I know, from your way of thinking, but we've grown
+careless down here, and we look at things differently."
+
+Holcombe did not speak, but put his arm across the other's shoulder,
+and this time Carroll did not shake it off. Holcombe pointed with his
+hand to a tall, handsome woman with heavy yellow hair who was coming
+toward them, with her hands in the pockets of her reefer. "There is
+Mrs. Carroll now," he said. "Won't you present me, and then we can row
+out and see the man-of-war?"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The officers returned their visit during the day, and the American
+Consul-General asked them all to a reception the following afternoon.
+The entire colony came to this, and Holcombe met many people, and
+drank tea with several ladies in riding-habits, and iced drinks with
+all of the men. He found it very amusing, and the situation appealed
+strongly to his somewhat latent sense of humor. That evening in
+writing to his sister he told of his rapid recovery in health, and of
+the possibility of his returning to civilization.
+
+"There was a reception this afternoon at the Consul-General's," he
+wrote, "given to the officers of our man-of-war, and I found myself in
+some rather remarkable company. The Consul himself has become rich by
+selling his protection for two hundred dollars to every wealthy Moor
+who wishes to escape the forced loans which the Sultan is in the habit
+of imposing on the faithful. For five hundred dollars he will furnish
+any one of them with a piece of stamped paper accrediting him as
+minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the Sultan's court.
+Of course the Sultan never receives them, and whatever object they may
+have had in taking the long journey to Fez is never accomplished. Some
+day some one of them will find out how he has been tricked, and will
+return to have the Consul assassinated. This will be a serious loss to
+our diplomatic service. The Consul's wife is a fat German woman who
+formerly kept a hotel here. Her brother has it now, and runs it as an
+annex to a gambling-house. Pat Meakim, the Police Commissioner that I
+indicted, but who jumped his bail, introduced me at the reception to
+the men, with apparently great self-satisfaction, as 'the pride of the
+New York Bar,' and Mrs. Carroll, for whose husband I obtained a
+divorce, showed her gratitude by presenting me to the ladies. It was a
+distinctly Gilbertian situation, and the people to whom they
+introduced me were quite as picturesquely disreputable as themselves.
+So you see--"
+
+Holcombe stopped here and read over what he had written, and then tore
+up the letter. The one he sent in its place said he was getting
+better, but that the climate was not so mild as he had expected it
+would be.
+
+Holcombe engaged the entire first floor of the hotel the next day, and
+entertained the officers and the residents at breakfast, and the
+Admiral made a speech and said how grateful it was to him and to his
+officers to find that wherever they might touch, there were some few
+Americans ready to welcome them as the representatives of the flag
+they all so unselfishly loved, and of the land they still so proudly
+called "home." Carroll, turning his wine-glass slowly between his
+fingers, raised his eyes to catch Holcombe's, and winked at him from
+behind the curtain of the smoke of his cigar, and Holcombe smiled
+grimly, and winked back, with the result that Meakim, who had
+intercepted the signalling, choked on his champagne, and had to be
+pounded violently on the back. Holcombe's breakfast established him as
+a man of means and one who could entertain properly, and after that
+his society was counted upon for every hour of the day. He offered
+money as prizes for the ship's crew to row and swim after, he gave a
+purse for a cross-country pony race, open to members of the Calpe and
+Tangier hunts, and organized picnics and riding parties innumerable.
+He was forced at last to hire a soldier to drive away the beggars when
+he walked abroad. He found it easy to be rich in a place where he was
+given over two hundred copper coins for an English shilling, and he
+distributed his largesses recklessly and with a lack of discrimination
+entirely opposed to the precepts of his organized charities at home.
+He found it so much more amusing to throw a handful of coppers to a
+crowd of fat naked children than to write a check for the Society for
+Suppression of Cruelty to the same beneficiaries.
+
+"You shouldn't give those fellows money," the Consul-General once
+remonstrated with him; "the fact that they're blind is only a proof
+that they have been thieves. When they catch a man stealing here they
+hold his head back, and pass a hot iron in front of his eyes. That's
+why the lids are drawn taut that way. You shouldn't encourage them."
+
+"Perhaps they're not _all_ thieves," said the District Attorney,
+cheerfully, as he hit the circle around him with a handful of coppers;
+"but there is no doubt about it that they're all blind. Which is the
+more to be pitied," he asked the Consul-General, "the man who has
+still to be found out and who can see, or the one who has been exposed
+and who is blind?"
+
+"How should he know?" said Carroll, laughing. "He's never been blind,
+and he still holds his job."
+
+"I don't think that's very funny," said the Consul-General.
+
+A week of pig-sticking came to end Holcombe's stay in Tangier, and he
+threw himself into it and into the freedom of its life with a zest
+that made even the Englishman speak of him as a good fellow. He
+chanced to overhear this, and stopped to consider what it meant. No
+one had ever called him a good fellow at home, but then his life had
+not offered him the chance to show what sort of a good fellow he might
+be, and as Judge Holcombe's son certain things had been debarred him.
+Here he was only the richest tourist since Farwell, the diamond
+smuggler from Amsterdam, had touched there in his yacht.
+
+[Illustration: The boar hunt.]
+
+The week of boar-hunting was spent out-of-doors, on horseback, and in
+tents; the women in two wide circular ones, and the men in another,
+with a mess tent, which they shared in common, pitched between them.
+They had only one change of clothes each, one wet and one dry, and
+they were in the saddle from nine in the morning until late at night,
+when they gathered in a wide circle around the wood-fire and played
+banjoes and listened to stories. Holcombe grew as red as a sailor, and
+jumped his horse over gaping crevasses in the hard sun-baked earth as
+recklessly as though there were nothing in this world so well worth
+sacrificing one's life for as to be the first in at a dumb brute's
+death. He was on friendly terms with them all now--with Miss Terrill,
+the young girl who had been awakened by night and told to leave Monte
+Carlo before daybreak, and with Mrs. Darhah, who would answer to Lady
+Taunton if so addressed, and with Andrews, the Scotch bank clerk, and
+Ollid the boy officer from Gibraltar, who had found some difficulty in
+making the mess account balance. They were all his very good friends,
+and he was especially courteous and attentive to Miss Terrill's wants
+and interests, and fixed her stirrup and once let her pass him to
+charge the boar in his place. She was a silently distant young woman,
+and strangely gentle for one who had had to leave a place, and such a
+place, between days; and her hair, which was very fine and light, ran
+away from under her white helmet in disconnected curls. At night,
+Holcombe used to watch her from out of the shadow when the firelight
+lit up the circle and the tips of the palms above them, and when the
+story-teller's voice was accompanied by bursts of occasional laughter
+from the dragomen in the grove beyond, and the stamping and neighing
+of the horses at their pickets, and the unceasing chorus of the insect
+life about them. She used to sit on one of the rugs with her hands
+clasped about her knees, and with her head resting on Mrs. Hornby's
+broad shoulder, looking down into the embers of the fire, and with the
+story of her life written on her girl's face as irrevocably as though
+old age had set its seal there. Holcombe was kind to them all now,
+even to Meakim, when that gentleman rode leisurely out to the camp
+with the mail and the latest Paris _Herald_, which was their one
+bond of union with the great outside world.
+
+Carroll sat smoking his pipe one night, and bending forward over the
+fire to get its light on the pages of the latest copy of this paper.
+Suddenly he dropped it between his knees. "I say, Holcombe," he cried,
+"here's news! Winthrop Allen has absconded with three hundred thousand
+dollars, and no one knows where."
+
+Holcombe was sitting on the other side of the fire, prying at the
+rowel of his spur with a hunting-knife. He raised his head and
+laughed. "Another good man gone wrong, hey?" he said.
+
+Carroll lowered the paper slowly to his knee and stared curiously
+through the smoky light to where Holcombe sat intent on the rowel of
+his spur. It apparently absorbed his entire attention, and his last
+remark had been an unconsciously natural one. Carroll smiled grimly as
+he folded the paper across his knee. "Now are the mighty fallen,
+indeed," he murmured. He told Meakim of it a few minutes later, and
+they both marvelled. "It's just as I told him, isn't it, and he
+wouldn't believe me. It's the place and the people. Two weeks ago he
+would have raged. Why, Meakim, you know Allen--Winthrop Allen? He's
+one of Holcombe's own sort; older than he is, but one of his own
+people; belongs to the same clubs; and to the same family, I think,
+and yet Harry took it just as a matter of course, with no more
+interest, than if I'd said that Allen was going to be married."
+
+Meakim gave a low, comfortable laugh of content. "It makes me smile,"
+he chuckled, "every time I think of him the day he came up them
+stairs. He scared me half to death, he did, and then he says, just as
+stiff as you please, 'If you'll leave me alone, Mr. Meakim, I'll not
+trouble you.' And now it's 'Meakim this,' and 'Meakim that,' and 'have
+a drink, Meakim,' just as thick as thieves. I have to laugh whenever I
+think of it now. 'If you'll leave me alone, I'll not trouble you, Mr.
+Meakim.'"
+
+Carroll pursed his lips and looked up at the broad expanse of purple
+heavens with the white stars shining through. "It's rather a pity,
+too, in a way," he said, slowly. "He was all the Public Opinion we
+had, and now that he's thrown up the part, why--"
+
+The pig-sticking came to an end finally, and Holcombe distinguished
+himself by taking his first fall, and under romantic circumstances. He
+was in an open place, with Mrs. Carroll at the edge of the brush to
+his right, and Miss Terrill guarding any approach from the left. They
+were too far apart to speak to one another, and sat quite still and
+alert to any noise as the beaters closed in around them. There was a
+sharp rustle in the reeds, and the boar broke out of it some hundred
+feet ahead of Holcombe. He went after it at a gallop, headed it off,
+and ran it fairly on his spear point as it came toward him; but as he
+drew his lance clear his horse came down, falling across him, and for
+the instant knocking him breathless. It was all over in a moment. He
+raised his head to see the boar turn and charge him; he saw where his
+spear point had torn the lower lip from the long tusks, and that the
+blood was pouring down its flank. He tried to draw out his legs, but
+the pony lay fairly across him, kicking and struggling, and held him
+in a vise. So he closed his eyes and covered his head with his arms,
+and crouched in a heap waiting. There was the quick beat of a pony's
+hoofs on the hard soil, and the rush of the boar within a foot of his
+head, and when he looked up he saw Miss Terrill twisting her pony's
+head around to charge the boar again, and heard her shout, "Let me
+have him!" to Mrs. Carroll.
+
+Mrs. Carroll came toward Holcombe with her spear pointed dangerously
+high; she stopped at his side and drew in her rein sharply. "Why don't
+you get up? Are you hurt?" she said. "Wait; lie still," she commanded,
+"or he'll tramp on you. I'll get him off." She slipped from her saddle
+and dragged Holcombe's pony to his feet. Holcombe stood up unsteadily,
+pale through his tan from the pain of the fall and the moment of fear.
+
+"That _was_ nasty," said Mrs. Carroll, with a quick breath. She
+was quite as pale as he.
+
+Holcombe wiped the dirt from his hair and the side of his face, and
+looked past her to where Miss Terrill was surveying the dead boar from
+her saddle, while her pony reared and shied, quivering with excitement
+beneath her. Holcombe mounted stiffly and rode toward her. "I am very
+much obliged to you," he said. "If you hadn't come--"
+
+The girl laughed shortly, and shook her head without looking at him.
+"Why, not at all," she interrupted, quickly. "I would have come just
+as fast if you hadn't been there." She turned in her saddle and looked
+at him frankly. "I was glad to see you go down," she said, "for it
+gave me the first good chance I've had. Are you hurt?"
+
+Holcombe drew himself up stiffly, regardless of the pain in his neck
+and shoulder. "No, I'm all right, thank you," he answered. "At the
+same time," he called after her as she moved away to meet the others,
+"you _did_ save me from being torn up, whether you like it or
+not."
+
+Mrs. Carroll was looking after the girl with observant, comprehending
+eyes. She turned to Holcombe with a smile. "There are a few things you
+have still to learn, Mr. Holcombe," she said, bowing in her saddle
+mockingly, and dropping the point of her spear to him as an adversary
+does in salute. "And perhaps," she added, "it is just as well that
+there are."
+
+Holcombe trotted after her in some concern. "I wonder what she means?"
+he said. "I wonder if I were rude?"
+
+The pig-sticking ended with a long luncheon before the ride back to
+town, at which everything that could be eaten or drunk was put on the
+table, in order, as Meakim explained, that there would be less to
+carry back. He met Holcombe that same evening after the cavalcade had
+reached Tangier as the latter came down the stairs of the Albion.
+Holcombe was in fresh raiment and cleanly shaven, and with the radiant
+air of one who had had his first comfortable bath in a week.
+
+Meakim confronted him with a smiling countenance. "Who do you think
+come to-night on the mail-boat?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. Who?"
+
+"Winthrop Allen, with six trunks," said Meakim, with the triumphant
+air of one who brings important news.
+
+"No, really now," said Holcombe, laughing. "The old hypocrite! I
+wonder what he'll say when he sees me. I wish I could stay over
+another boat, just to remind him of the last time we met. What a fraud
+he is! It was at the club, and he was congratulating me on my noble
+efforts in the cause of justice, and all that sort of thing. He said I
+was a public benefactor. And at that time he must have already
+speculated away about half of what he had stolen of other people's
+money. I'd like to tease him about it."
+
+"What trial was that?" asked Meakim.
+
+Holcombe laughed and shook his head as he moved on down the stairs.
+"Don't ask embarrassing questions, Meakim," he said. "It was one
+_you_ won't forget in a hurry."
+
+"Oh!" said Meakim, with a grin. "All right. There's some mail for you
+in the office."
+
+"Thank you," said Holcombe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few hours later Carroll was watching the roulette wheel in the
+gambling-hall of the Isabella when he saw Meakim come in out of the
+darkness, and stand staring in the doorway, blinking at the lights and
+mopping his face. He had been running, and was visibly excited.
+Carroll crossed over to him and pushed him out into the quiet of the
+terrace. "What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Have you seen Holcombe?" Meakim demanded in reply.
+
+"Not since this afternoon. Why?"
+
+Meakim breathed heavily, and fanned himself with his hat. "Well, he's
+after Winthrop Allen, that's all," he panted. "And when he finds him
+there's going to be a muss. The boy's gone crazy. He's not safe."
+
+"Why? What do you mean? What's Allen done to him?"
+
+"Nothing to him, but to a friend of his. He got a letter to-night in
+the mail that came with Allen. It was from his sister. She wrote him
+all the latest news about Allen, and give him fits for robbing an old
+lady who's been kind to her. She wanted that Holcombe should come
+right back and see what could be done about it. She didn't know, of
+course, that Allen was coming here. The old lady kept a private school
+on Fifth Avenue, and Allen had charge of her savings."
+
+"What is her name?" Carroll asked.
+
+"Field, I think. Martha Field was--"
+
+"The dirty blackguard!" cried Carroll. He turned sharply away and
+returned again to seize Meakim's arm. "Go on," he demanded. "What did
+she say?"
+
+"You know her too, do you?" said Meakim, shaking his head
+sympathetically. "Well, that's all. She used to teach his sister. She
+seems to be a sort of fashionable--"
+
+"I know," said Carroll, roughly. "She taught my sister. She teaches
+everybody's sister. She's the sweetest, simplest old soul that ever
+lived. Holcombe's dead right to be angry. She almost lived at their
+house when his sister was ill."
+
+"Tut! you don't say?" commented Meakim, gravely. "Well, his sister's
+pretty near crazy about it. He give me the letter to read. It got me
+all stirred up. It was just writ in blood. She must be a fine girl,
+his sister. She says this Miss Martha's money was the last thing Allen
+took. He didn't use her stuff, to speculate with, but cashed it in
+just before he sailed and took it with him for spending-money. His
+sister says she's too proud to take help, and she's too old to work."
+
+"How much did he take?"
+
+"Sixty thousand. She's been saving for over forty years."
+
+Carroll's mind took a sudden turn. "And Holcombe?" he demanded,
+eagerly. "What is he going to do? Nothing silly, I hope."
+
+"Well, that's just it. That's why I come to find you," Meakim
+answered, uneasily. "I don't want him to qualify for no Criminal
+Stakes. I got no reason to love him either--But you know--" he
+ended, impotently.
+
+"Yes, I understand," said Carroll. "That's what I meant. Confound the
+boy, why didn't he stay in his law courts! What did he say?"
+
+"Oh, he just raged around. He said he'd tell Allen there was an
+extradition treaty that Allen didn't know about, and that if Allen
+didn't give him the sixty thousand he'd put it in force and make him
+go back and stand trial."
+
+"Compounding a felony, is he?"
+
+"No, nothing of the sort," said Meakim, indignantly. "There isn't any
+extradition treaty, so he wouldn't be doing anything wrong except
+lying a bit."
+
+"Well, it's blackmail, anyway."
+
+"What, blackmail a man like Allen? Huh! He's fair game, if there ever
+was any. But it won't work with him, that's what I'm afraid of. He's
+too cunning to be taken in by it, he is. He had good legal advice
+before he came here, or he wouldn't have come."
+
+Carroll was pacing up and down the terrace. He stopped and spoke over
+his shoulder. "Does Holcombe think Allen has the money with him?" he
+asked.
+
+"Yes, he's sure of it. That's what makes him so keen. He says Allen
+wouldn't dare bank it at Gibraltar, because if he ever went over there
+to draw on it he would get caught, so he must have brought it with him
+here. And he got here so late that Holcombe believes it's in Allen's
+rooms now, and he's like a dog that smells a rat, after it. Allen
+wasn't in when he went up to his room, and he's started out hunting
+for him, and if he don't find him I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he
+broke into the room and just took it."
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Carroll. "He wouldn't do that?"
+
+Meakim pulled and fingered at his heavy watch-chain and laughed
+doubtfully. "I don't know," he said. "He wouldn't have done it three
+months ago, but he's picked up a great deal since then--since he has
+been with us. He's asking for Captain Reese, too."
+
+"What's he want with that blackguard?"
+
+"I don't know; he didn't tell me."
+
+"Come," said Carroll, quickly. "We must stop him." He ran lightly down
+the steps of the terrace to the beach, with Meakim waddling heavily
+after him. "He's got too much at stake, Meakim," he said, in
+half-apology, as they tramped through the sand. "He mustn't spoil it.
+We won't let him."
+
+Holcombe had searched the circuit of Tangier's small extent with
+fruitless effort, his anger increasing momentarily and feeding on each
+fresh disappointment. When he had failed to find the man he sought in
+any place, he returned to the hotel and pushed open the door of the
+smoking-room as fiercely as though he meant to take those within by
+surprise.
+
+"Has Mr. Allen returned?" he demanded. "Or Captain Reese?" The
+attendant thought not, but he would go and see. "No," Holcombe said,
+"I will look for myself." He sprang up the stairs to the third floor,
+and turned down a passage to a door at its farthest end. Here he
+stopped and knocked gently. "Reese," he called; "Reese!" There was no
+response to his summons, and he knocked again, with more impatience,
+and then cautiously turned the handle of the door, and, pushing it
+forward, stepped into the room. "Reese," he said, softly, "its
+Holcombe. Are you here?" The room was dark except for the light from
+the hall, which shone dimly past him and fell upon a gun-rack hanging
+on the wall opposite. Holcombe hurried toward this and ran his hands
+over it, and passed on quickly from that to the mantel and the tables,
+stumbling over chairs and riding-boots as he groped about, and
+tripping on the skin of some animal that lay stretched upon the floor.
+He felt his way, around the entire circuit of the room, and halted
+near the door with an exclamation of disappointment. By this time his
+eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and he noted the white
+surface of the bed in a far corner and ran quickly toward it, groping
+with his hands about the posts at its head. He closed his fingers with
+a quick gasp of satisfaction on a leather belt that hung from it,
+heavy with cartridges and a revolver that swung from its holder.
+Holcombe pulled this out and jerked back the lever, spinning the
+cylinder around under the edge of his thumb. He felt the grease of
+each cartridge as it passed under his nail. The revolver was loaded in
+each chamber, and Holcombe slipped it into the pocket of his coat and
+crept out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He met no
+one in the hall or on the stairs, and passed on quickly to a room on
+the second floor. There was a light in this room which showed through
+the transom and under the crack at the floor, and there was a sound of
+some one moving about within. Holcombe knocked gently and waited.
+
+The movement on the other side of the door ceased, and after a pause a
+voice asked who was there. Holcombe hesitated a second before
+answering, and then said, "It is a servant, sir, with a note for Mr.
+Allen."
+
+At the sound of some one moving toward the door from within, Holcombe
+threw his shoulder against the panel and pressed forward. There was
+the click of the key turning in the lock and of the withdrawal of a
+bolt, and the door was partly opened. Holcombe pushed it back with his
+shoulder, and, stepping quickly inside, closed it again behind him.
+
+The man within, into whose presence he had forced himself, confronted
+him with a look of some alarm, which increased in surprise as he
+recognized his visitor. "Why, Holcombe!" he exclaimed. He looked past
+him as though expecting some one else to follow. "I thought it was a
+servant," he said.
+
+Holcombe made no answer, but surveyed the other closely, and with a
+smile of content. The man before him was of erect carriage, with white
+hair and whiskers, cut after an English fashion which left the mouth
+and chin clean shaven. He was of severe and dignified appearance, and
+though standing as he was in dishabille still gave in his bearing the
+look of an elderly gentleman who had lived a self-respecting,
+well-cared-for, and well-ordered life. The room about him was littered
+with the contents of opened trunks and uncorded boxes. He had been
+interrupted in the task of unpacking and arranging these possessions,
+but he stepped unresentfully toward the bed where his coat lay, and
+pulled it on, feeling at the open collar of his shirt, and giving a
+glance of apology toward the disorder of the apartment.
+
+"The night was so warm," he said, in explanation. "I have been trying
+to get things to rights. I--" He was speaking in some obvious
+embarrassment, and looked uncertainly toward the intruder for help.
+But Holcombe made no explanation, and gave him no greeting. "I heard
+in the hotel that you were here," the other continued, still striving
+to cover up the difficulty of the situation, "and I am sorry to hear
+that you are going so soon." He stopped, and as Holcombe still
+continued smiling, drew himself up stiffly. The look on his face
+hardened into one of offended dignity.
+
+"Really, Mr. Holcombe," he said, sharply, and with strong annoyance in
+his tone, "if you have forced yourself into this room for no other
+purpose than to stand there and laugh, I must ask you to leave it. You
+may not be conscious of it, but your manner is offensive." He turned
+impatiently to the table, and began rearranging the papers upon it.
+Holcombe shifted the weight of his body as it rested against the door
+from one shoulder-blade to the other and closed his hands over the
+door-knob behind him.
+
+"I had a letter to-night from home about you, Allen," he began,
+comfortably. "The person who wrote it was anxious that I should return
+to New York, and set things working in the District Attorney's office
+in order to bring you back. It isn't you they want so much as--"
+
+"How dare you?" cried the embezzler, sternly, in the voice with which
+one might interrupt another in words of shocking blasphemy.
+
+"How dare I what?" asked Holcombe.
+
+"How dare you refer to my misfortune? You of all others--" He stopped,
+and looked at his visitor with flashing eyes. "I thought you a
+gentleman," he said, reproachfully; "I thought you a man of the world,
+a man who in spite of your office, official position, or, rather, on
+account of it, could feel and understand the--a--terrible position in
+which I am placed, and that you would show consideration. Instead of
+which," he cried, his voice rising in indignation, "you have come
+apparently to mock at me. If the instinct of a gentleman does not
+teach you to be silent, I shall have to force you to respect my
+feelings. You can leave the room, sir. Now, at once." He pointed with
+his arm at the door against which Holcombe was leaning, the fingers of
+his outstretched hand trembling visibly.
+
+"Nonsense. Your misfortune! What rot!" Holcombe growled resentfully.
+His eyes wandered around the room as though looking for some one who
+might enjoy the situation with him, and then returned to Allen's face.
+"You mustn't talk like that to me," he said, in serious remonstrance.
+"A man who has robbed people who trusted him for three years, as you
+have done, can't afford to talk of his misfortune. You were too long
+about it, Allen. You had too many chances to put it back.
+_You've_ no feelings to be hurt. Besides, if you have, I'm in a
+hurry, and I've not the time to consider them. Now, what I want of you
+is--"
+
+"Mr. Holcombe," interrupted the other, earnestly.
+
+"Sir," replied the visitor.
+
+"Mr. Holcombe," began Allen, slowly, and with impressive gravity, "I
+do not want any words with you about this, or with any one else. I am
+here owing to a combination of circumstances which have led me through
+hopeless, endless trouble. What I have gone through with nobody knows.
+That is something no one but I can ever understand. But that is now at
+an end. I have taken refuge in flight and safety, where another might
+have remained and compromised and suffered; but I am a weaker brother,
+and--as for punishment, my own conscience, which has punished me so
+terribly in the past, will continue to do so in the future. I am
+greatly to be pitied, Mr. Holcombe, greatly to be pitied. And no one
+knows that better than yourself. You know the value of the position I
+held in New York City, and how well I was suited to it, and it to me.
+And now I am robbed of it all. I am an exile in this wilderness.
+Surely, Mr. Holcombe, this is not the place nor the time when you
+should insult me by recalling the--"
+
+"You contemptible hypocrite," said Holcombe, slowly. "What an ass you
+must think I am! Now, listen to me."
+
+"No, _you_ listen to me," thundered the other. He stepped
+menacingly forward, his chest heaving under his open shirt, and his
+fingers opening and closing at his side. "Leave the room, I tell you,"
+he cried, "or I shall call the servants and make you!" He paused with
+a short, mocking laugh. "Who do you think I am?" he asked; "a child
+that you can insult and gibe at? I'm not a prisoner in the box for you
+to browbeat and bully, Mr. District Attorney. You seem to forget that
+I am out of your jurisdiction now."
+
+He waited, and his manner seemed to invite Holcombe to make some angry
+answer to his tone, but the young man remained grimly silent.
+
+"You are a very important young person at home, Harry," Allen went on,
+mockingly. "But New York State laws do not reach as far as Africa."
+
+"Quite right; that's it exactly," said Holcombe, with cheerful
+alacrity. "I'm glad you have grasped the situation so soon. That makes
+it easier for me. Now, what I have been trying to tell you is this. I
+received a letter about you to-night. It seems that before leaving New
+York you converted bonds and mortgages belonging to Miss Martha Field,
+which she had intrusted to you, into ready money. And that you took
+this money with you. Now, as this is the first place you have stopped
+since leaving New York, except Gibraltar, where you could not have
+banked it, you must have it with you now, here in this town, in this
+hotel, possibly in this room. What else you have belonging to other
+poor devils and corporations does not concern me. It's yours as far as
+I mean to do anything about it. But this sixty thousand dollars which
+belongs to Miss Field, who is the best, purest, and kindest woman I
+have ever known, and who has given away more money than you ever
+stole, is going back with me to-morrow to New York." Holcombe leaned
+forward as he spoke, and rapped with his knuckles on the table. Allen
+confronted him in amazement, in which there was not so much surprise
+at what the other threatened to do as at the fact that it was he who
+had proposed doing it.
+
+"I don't understand," he said, slowly, with the air of a bewildered
+child.
+
+"It's plain enough," replied the other, impatiently. "I tell you I
+want sixty thousand dollars of the money you have with you. You can
+understand that, can't you?"
+
+"But how?" expostulated Allen. "You don't mean to rob me, do you,
+Harry?" he asked with a laugh.
+
+"You're a very stupid person for so clever a one," Holcombe said,
+impatiently. "You must give me sixty thousand dollars--and if you
+don't, I'll take it. Come, now, where is it--in that box?" He pointed
+with his finger toward a square travelling-case covered with black
+leather that stood open on the table filled with papers and blue
+envelopes.
+
+"Take it!" exclaimed Allen. "You, Henry Holcombe? Is it you who are
+speaking? Do I hear you?" He looked at Holcombe with eyes full of
+genuine wonder and a touch of fear. As he spoke his hand reached out
+mechanically and drew the leather-bound box toward him.
+
+"Ah, it is in that box, then," said Holcombe, in a quiet, grave tone.
+"Now count it out, and be quick."
+
+"Are you drunk?" cried the other, fiercely. "Do you propose to turn
+highwayman and thief? What do you mean?" Holcombe reached quickly
+across the table toward the box, but the other drew it back, snapping
+the lid down, and hugging it close against his breast. "If you move,
+Holcombe," he cried, in a voice of terror and warning, "I'll call the
+people of the house and--and expose you."
+
+"Expose me, you idiot," returned Holcombe, fiercely. "How dare
+_you_ talk to me like that!"
+
+Allen dragged the table more evenly between them, as a general works
+on his defenses even while he parleys with the enemy. "It's you who
+are the idiot!" he cried. "Suppose you could overcome me, which would
+be harder than you think, what are you going to do with the money? Do
+you suppose I'd let you leave this country with it? Do you imagine for
+a moment that I would give it up without raising my hand? I'd have you
+dragged to prison from your bed this very night, or I'd have you
+seized as you set your foot upon the wharf. I would appeal to our
+Consul-General. As far as he knows, I am as worthy of protection as
+you are yourself, and, failing him, I'd appeal to the law of the
+land." He stopped for want of breath, and then began again with the
+air of one who finds encouragement in the sound of his own voice.
+"They may not understand extradition here, Holcombe," he said, "but a
+thief is a thief all the world over. What you may be in New York isn't
+going to help you here; neither is your father's name. To these people
+you would be only a hotel thief who forces his way into other men's
+rooms at night and--"
+
+"You poor thing," interrupted Holcombe. "Do you know where you are?"
+he demanded. "You talk, Allen, as though we were within sound of the
+cable-cars on Broadway. This hotel is not the Brunswick, and this
+Consul-General you speak of is another blackguard who knows that a
+word from me at Washington, on my return, or a letter from here would
+lose him his place and his liberty. He's as much of a rascal as any of
+them, and he knows that I know it and that I may use that knowledge.
+_He_ won't help you. And as for the law of the land"--Holcombe's
+voice rose and broke in a mocking laugh--"there is no law of the land.
+_That's why you're here!_ You are in a place populated by exiles
+and outlaws like yourself, who have preyed upon society until society
+has turned and frightened each of them off like a dog with his tail
+between his legs. Don't give yourself confidence, Allen. That's all
+you are, that's all we are--two dogs fighting for a stolen bone. The
+man who rules you here is an ignorant negro, debauched and vicious and
+a fanatic. He is shut off from every one, even to the approach of a
+British ambassador. And what do you suppose he cares for a dog of a
+Christian like you, who has been robbed in a hotel by another
+Christian? And these others. Do you suppose they care? Call out--cry
+for help, and tell them that you have half a million dollars in this
+room, and they will fall on you and strip you of every cent of it, and
+leave you to walk the beach for work. Now, what are you going to do?
+Will you give me the money I want to take back where it belongs, or
+will you call for help and lose it all?"
+
+The two men confronted each other across the narrow length of the
+table. The blood had run to Holcombe's face, but the face of the other
+was drawn and pale with fear.
+
+"You can't frighten me," he gasped, rallying his courage with an
+effort of the will. "You are talking nonsense. This is a respectable
+hotel; it isn't a den of thieves. You are trying to frighten me out of
+the money with your lies and your lawyer's tricks, but you will find
+that I am not so easily fooled. You are dealing with a man, Holcombe,
+who suffered to get what he has, and who doesn't mean to let it go
+without a fight for it. Come near me, I warn you, and I shall call for
+help."
+
+Holcombe backed slowly away from the table and tossed up his hands
+with the gesture of one who gives up his argument. "You will have it,
+will you?" he muttered, grimly. "Very well, you _shall_ fight for
+it." He turned quickly and drove in the bolt of the door and placed
+his shoulders over the electric button in the wall. "I have warned
+you," he said, softly. "I have told you where you are, and that you
+have nothing to expect from the outside. You are absolutely in my
+power to do with as I please." He stopped, and, without moving his
+eyes from Allen's face, drew the revolver from the pocket of his coat.
+His manner was so terrible that Allen gazed at him, breathing faintly,
+and with his eyes fixed in horrible fascination. "There is no law,"
+Holcombe repeated, softly. "There is no help for you now or later. It
+is a question of two men locked in a room with a table and sixty
+thousand dollars between them. That is the situation. Two men and
+sixty thousand dollars. We have returned to first principles, Allen.
+It is a man against a man, and there is no Court of Appeal."
+
+Allen's breath came back to him with a gasp, as though he had been
+shocked with a sudden downpour of icy water.
+
+"There is!" he cried. "There _is_ a Court of Appeal. For God's
+sake, wait. I appeal to Henry Holcombe, to Judge Holcombe's son. I
+appeal to your good name, Harry, to your fame in the world. Think what
+you are doing; for the love of God, don't murder me. I'm a criminal, I
+know, but not what you would be, Holcombe; not that. You are mad or
+drunk. You wouldn't, you couldn't do it. Think of it! _You_,
+Henry Holcombe. _You._"
+
+The fingers of Holcombe's hand moved and tightened around the butt of
+the pistol, the sweat sprang from the pores of his palm. He raised the
+revolver and pointed it. "My sin's on my own head," he said. "Give me
+the money."
+
+The older man glanced fearfully back of him at the open window,
+through which a sea breeze moved the palms outside, so that they
+seemed to whisper together as though aghast at the scene before them.
+The window was three stories from the ground, and Allen's eyes
+returned to the stern face of the younger man. As they stood silent
+there came to them the sound of some one moving in the hall, and of
+men's voices whispering together. Allen's face lit with a sudden
+radiance of hope, and Holcombe's arm moved uncertainly.
+
+"I fancy," he said, in a whisper, "that those are my friends. They
+have some idea of my purpose, and they have come to learn more. If you
+call, I will let them in, and they will strangle you into silence
+until I get the money."
+
+The two men eyed each other steadily, the older seeming to weigh the
+possible truth of Holcombe's last words in his mind. Holcombe broke
+the silence in a lighter tone.
+
+"Playing the policeman is a new role to me," he said, "and I warn you
+that I have but little patience; and, besides, my hand is getting
+tired, and this thing is at full cock."
+
+Allen, for the first time, lowered the box upon the table and drew
+from it a bundle of notes bound together with elastic bandages.
+Holcombe's eyes lighted as brightly at the sight as though the notes
+were for his own private pleasures in the future.
+
+"Be quick!" he said. "I cannot be responsible for the men outside."
+
+Allen bent over the money, his face drawing into closer and sharper
+lines as the amount grew, under his fingers, to the sum Holcombe had
+demanded.
+
+"Sixty thousand!" he said, in a voice of desperate calm.
+
+"Good!" whispered Holcombe. "Pass it over to me. I hope I have taken
+the most of what you have," he said, as he shoved the notes into his
+pocket; "but this is something. Now I warn you," he added, as he
+lowered the trigger of the revolver and put it out of sight, "that any
+attempt to regain this will be futile. I am surrounded by friends; no
+one knows you or cares about you. I shall sleep in my room to-night
+without precaution, for I know that the money is now mine. Nothing you
+can do will recall it. Your cue is silence and secrecy as to what you
+have lost and as to what you still have with you."
+
+He stopped in some confusion, interrupted by a sharp knock at the door
+and two voices calling his name. Allen shrank back in terror.
+
+"You coward!" he hissed. "You promised me you'd be content with what
+you have." Holcombe looked at him in amazement. "And now your
+accomplices are to have their share, too, are they?" the embezzler
+whispered, fiercely. "You lied to me; you mean to take it all."
+
+Holcombe, for an answer, drew back the bolt, but so softly that the
+sound of his voice drowned the noise it made.
+
+"No, not to-night," he said, briskly, so that the his voice penetrated
+into the hall beyond. "I mustn't stop any longer, I'm keeping you up.
+It has been very pleasant to have heard all that news from home. It
+was such a chance, my seeing you before I sailed. Good-night." He
+paused and pretended to listen. "No, Allen, I don't think it's a
+servant," he said. "It's some of my friends looking for me. This is my
+last night on shore, you see." He threw open the door and confronted
+Meakim and Carroll as they stood in some confusion in the dark hall.
+"Yes, it is some of my friends," Holcombe continued. "I'll be with you
+in a minute," he said to them. Then he turned, and, crossing the room
+in their sight, shook Allen by the hand, and bade him good-night and
+good-by.
+
+The embezzler's revulsion of feeling was so keen and the relief so
+great that he was able to smile as Holcombe turned and left him. "I
+wish you a pleasant voyage," he said, faintly.
+
+Then Holcombe shut the door on him, closing him out from their sight.
+He placed his hands on a shoulder of each of the two men and jumped
+step by step down the stairs like a boy as they descended silently in
+front of him. At the foot of the stairs Carroll turned and confronted
+him sternly, staring him in the face. Meakim at one side eyed him
+curiously.
+
+"Well?" said Carroll, with one hand upon Holcombe's wrist.
+
+Holcombe shook his hand free, laughing. "Well," he answered, "I
+persuaded him to make restitution."
+
+"You persuaded him!" exclaimed Carroll, impatiently. "How?"
+
+Holcombe's eyes avoided those of the two inquisitors. He drew a long
+breath, and then burst into a loud fit of hysterical laughter. The two
+men surveyed him grimly. "I argued with him, of course," said
+Holcombe, gayly. "That is my business, man; you forget that I am a
+District Attorney--"
+
+"_We_ didn't forget it," said Carroll, fiercely. "Did _you_?
+What did you do?"
+
+Holcombe backed away up the stairs shaking his head and laughing. "I
+shall never tell you," he said. He pointed with his hand down the
+second flight of stairs. "Meet me in the smoking-room," he continued.
+"I will be there in a minute, and we will have a banquet. Ask the
+others to come. I have something to do first."
+
+The two men turned reluctantly away, and continued on down the stairs
+without speaking and with their faces filled with doubt. Holcombe ran
+first to Reese's room and replaced the pistol in its holder. He was
+trembling as he threw the thing from him, and had barely reached his
+own room and closed the door when a sudden faintness overcame him. The
+weight he had laid on his nerves was gone and the laughter had
+departed from his face. He stood looking back at what he had escaped
+as a man reprieved at the steps of the gallows turns his head to
+glance at the rope he has cheated. Holcombe tossed the bundle of
+notes, upon the table and took an unsteady step across the room. Then
+he turned suddenly and threw himself upon his knees and buried his
+face in the pillow.
+
+The sun rose the next morning on a cool, beautiful day, and the
+Consul's boat, with the American flag trailing from the stern, rose
+and fell on the bluest of blue waters as it carried Holcombe and his
+friends to the steamer's side.
+
+"We are going to miss you very much," Mrs. Carroll said. "I hope you
+won't forget to send us word of yourself."
+
+Miss Terrill said nothing. She was leaning over the side trailing her
+hand in the water, and watching it run between her slim pink fingers.
+She raised her eyes to find Holcombe looking at her intently with a
+strange expression of wistfulness and pity, at which she smiled
+brightly back at him, and began to plan vivaciously with Captain Reese
+for a ride that same afternoon.
+
+They separated over the steamer's deck, and Meakim, for the hundredth
+time, and in the lack of conversation which comes at such moments,
+offered Holcombe a fresh cigar.
+
+"But I have got eight of yours now," said Holcombe.
+
+"That's all right; put it in your pocket," said the Tammany chieftain,
+"and smoke it after dinner. You'll need 'em. They're better than those
+you'll get on the steamer, and they never went through a
+custom-house."
+
+Holcombe cleared his throat in some slight embarrassment. "Is there
+anything I can do for you in New York, Meakim?" he asked. "Anybody I
+can see, or to whom I can deliver a message?"
+
+"No," said Meakim. "I write pretty often. Don't you worry about me,"
+he added, gratefully. "I'll be back there some day myself, when the
+law of limitation lets me."
+
+Holcombe laughed. "Well," he said, "I'd be glad to do something for
+you if you'd let me know what you'd like."
+
+Meakim put his hands behind his back and puffed meditatively on his
+cigar, rolling it between his lips with his tongue. Then he turned it
+between his fingers and tossed the ashes over the side of the boat. He
+gave a little sigh, and then frowned at having done so. "I'll tell you
+what you _can_ do for me, Holcombe," he said, smiling. "Some
+night I wish you would go down to Fourteenth Street, some night this
+spring, when the boys are sitting out on the steps in front of the
+Hall, and just take a drink for me at Ed Lally's; just for luck. Will
+you? That's what I'd like to do. I don't know nothing better than
+Fourteenth Street of a summer evening, with all the people crowding
+into Pastor's on one side of the Hall, and the Third Avenue L cars
+running by on the other. That's a gay sight; ain't it now? With all
+the girls coming in and out of Theiss's, and the sidewalks crowded.
+One of them warm nights when they have to have the windows open, and
+you can hear the music in at Pastor's, and the audience clapping their
+hands. That's great, isn't it? Well," he laughed and shook his head.
+"I'll be back there some day, won't I," he said, wistfully, "and hear
+it for myself."
+
+"Carroll," said Holcombe, drawing the former to one side, "suppose I
+see this cabman when I reach home, and get him to withdraw the charge,
+or agree not to turn up when it comes to trial."
+
+Carroll's face clouded in an instant. "Now, listen to me, Holcombe,"
+he said. "You let my dirty work alone. There's lots of my friends who
+have nothing better to do than just that. You have something better to
+do, and you leave me and my rows to others. I like you for what you
+are, and not for what you can do for me. I don't mean that I don't
+appreciate your offer, but it shouldn't have come from an Assistant
+District Attorney to a fugitive criminal."
+
+"What nonsense!" said Holcombe.
+
+"Don't say that; don't say that!" said Carroll, quickly, as though it
+hurt him. "You wouldn't have said it a month ago."
+
+Holcombe eyed the other with an alert, confident smile. "No, Carroll,"
+he answered, "I would not." He put his hand on the other's shoulder
+with a suggestion in his manner of his former self, and with a touch
+of patronage. "I have learned a great deal in a month," he said.
+"Seven battles were won in seven days once. All my life I have been
+fighting causes, Carroll, and principles. I have been working with
+laws against law-breakers. I have never yet fought a man. It was not
+poor old Meakim, the individual, I prosecuted, but the corrupt
+politician. Now, here I have been thrown with men and women on as
+equal terms as a crew of sailors cast away upon a desert island. We
+were each a law unto himself. And I have been brought face to face,
+and for the first time in my life, not with principles of conduct, not
+with causes, and not with laws, but with my fellow men."
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY
+
+
+The day was cruelly hot, with unwarranted gusts of wind which swept
+the red dust in fierce eddies in at one end of Main Street and out at
+the other, and waltzed fantastically across the prairie. When they had
+passed, human beings opened their eyes again to blink hopelessly at
+the white sun, and swore or gasped, as their nature moved them. There
+were very few human beings in the streets, either in Houston Avenue,
+where there were dwelling-houses, or in the business quarter on Main
+Street. They were all at the new court-house, and every one possessed
+of proper civic pride was either in the packed court-room itself, or
+standing on the high steps outside, or pacing the long, freshly
+calcimined corridors, where there was shade and less dust. It was an
+eventful day in the history of Zepata City. The court-house had been
+long in coming, the appropriation had been denied again and again; but
+at last it stood a proud and hideous fact, like a gray prison,
+towering above the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame houses
+on the prairie around it, new, raw, and cheap, from the tin statue on
+the dome to the stucco round its base already cracking with the sun.
+Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime beds the builders had
+left still lay on the unsodded square, and the bursts of wind drove
+the shavings across it, as they had done since the first day of
+building, when the Hon. Horatio Macon, who had worked for the
+appropriation, had laid the corner-stone and received the homage of
+his constituents.
+
+It seemed a particularly happy and appropriate circumstance that the
+first business in the new court-room should be of itself of an
+important and momentous nature, something that dealt not only with the
+present but with the past of Zepata, and that the trial of so
+celebrated an individual as Abe Barrow should open the court-house
+with _éclat_, as Emma Abbott, who had come all the way from San
+Antonio to do it, had opened the new opera-house the year before. The
+District Attorney had said it would not take very long to dispose of
+Barrow's case, but he had promised it would be an interesting if brief
+trial, and the court-room was filled even to the open windows, where
+men sat crowded together, with the perspiration running down their
+faces, and the red dust settling and turning white upon their
+shoulders.
+
+Abe Barrow, the prisoner, had been as closely associated with the
+early history of Zepata as Colonel Macon himself, and was as widely
+known; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens, and
+two visiting brother-desperadoes, and the corner where his
+gambling-house had stood was still known as Barrow's Corner, to the
+regret of the druggist who had opened a shop there. Ten years before,
+the murder of Deputy Sheriff Welsh had led him to the penitentiary,
+and a month previous to the opening of the new court-house he had been
+freed, and arrested at the prison gate to stand trial for the murder
+of Hubert Thompson. The fight with Thompson had been a fair fight--so
+those said who remembered it--and Thompson was a man they could well
+spare; but the case against Barrow had been prepared during his
+incarceration by the new and youthful District Attorney, "Judge" Henry
+Harvey, and as it offered a fitting sacrifice for the dedication of
+the new temple of justice, the people were satisfied and grateful.
+
+The court-room was as bare of ornament as the cell from which the
+prisoner had just been taken. There was an imitation walnut clock at
+the back of the Judge's hair-cloth sofa, his revolving chair, and his
+high desk. This was the only ornament. Below was the green table of
+the District Attorney, upon which rested his papers and law-books and
+his high hat. To one side sat the jury, ranch-owners and prominent
+citizens, proud of having to serve on this the first day; and on the
+other the prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the citizens of
+Zepata in close rows, crowded together on unpainted benches; back of
+them more citizens standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around all
+the whitewashed walls. Colonel John Stogart, of Dallas, the prisoner's
+attorney, procured obviously at great expense, no one knew by whom,
+and Barrow's wife, a thin yellow-faced woman in a mean-fitting showy
+gown, sat among the local celebrities at the District Attorney's
+elbow. She was the only woman in the room.
+
+Colonel Stogart's speech had been good. The citizens were glad it had
+been so good; it had kept up the general tone of excellence, and it
+was well that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present on this
+occasion, and that he should have made what the citizens of Zepata
+were proud to believe was one of the efforts of his life. As they
+said, a court-house such as this one was not open for business every
+day. It was also proper that Judge Truax, who was a real Judge, and
+not one by courtesy only, as was the young District Attorney, should
+sit upon the bench. He also was associated with the early days and
+with the marvellous growth of Zepata City. He had taught the young
+District Attorney much of what he knew, and his long white hair and
+silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity and the appearance of calm
+justice to the bare room and to the heated words of the rival orators.
+
+Colonel Stogart ceased speaking, and the District Attorney sucked in
+his upper lip with a nervous, impatient sigh as he recognized that the
+visiting attorney had proved murder in the second degree, and that an
+execution in the jail-yard would not follow as a fitting sequence.
+
+But he was determined that so far as in him lay he would at least send
+his man back to the penitentiary for the remainder of his life.
+
+Young Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called,
+was very dear to the people of that booming town. In their eyes he was
+one of the most promising young men in the whole great unwieldy State
+of Texas, and the boy orator thought they were probably right, but he
+was far too clever to let them see it. He was clever in his words and
+in his deeds and in his appearance. And he dressed much more carefully
+than any other man in town, with a frock-coat and a white tie winter
+and summer, and a fine high hat. That he was slight and short of
+stature was something he could not help, and was his greatest, keenest
+regret, and that Napoleon was also short and slight did not serve to
+satisfy him or to make his regret less continual. What availed the
+sharply cut, smoothly shaven face and the eyes that flashed when he
+was moved, or the bell-like voice, if every unlettered ranchman or
+ranger could place both hands on his shoulders and look down at him
+from heights above? But they forgot this and he forgot it before he
+had reached the peroration of his closing speech. They saw only the
+Harry Harvey they knew and adored moving and rousing them with his
+voice, trembling with indignation when he wished to tremble, playing
+all his best tricks in his best manner, and cutting the air with
+sharp, cruel words when he was pleased to be righteously just.
+
+The young District Attorney turned slowly on his heels, and swept the
+court-room carelessly with a glance of the clever black eyes. The
+moment was his. He saw all the men he knew--the men who made his
+little world--crowding silently forward, forgetful of the heat, of the
+suffocating crush of those about them, of the wind that rattled the
+doors in the corridors, and conscious only of him. He saw his old
+preceptor watching keenly from the bench, with a steady glance of
+perfect appreciation, such as that with which one actor in the box
+compliments the other on the stage. He saw the rival attorney--the
+great lawyer from the great city--nervously smiling, with a look of
+confidence that told the lack of it; and he saw the face of the
+prisoner grim and set and hopelessly defiant. The boy orator allowed
+his uplifted arm to fall until the fingers pointed at the prisoner.
+
+"This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors
+hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata City of to-day.
+He comes to us a relic of the past--a past that has brought honor to
+many, wealth to some, and which is dear to all of us who love the
+completed purpose of their work; a past that was full of hardships and
+glorious efforts in the face of daily disappointments, embitterments,
+and rebuffs. But the part _this_ man played in that past lives
+only in the rude court records of that day, in the traditions of the
+gambling-hell and the saloons, and on the headstones of his victims.
+He was one of the excrescences of that unsettled period, an unhappy
+evil--an inevitable evil, I might almost say, as the Mexican
+horse-thieves and the prairie fires and the Indian outbreaks were
+inevitable, as our fathers who built this beautiful city knew to their
+cost. The same chance that was given to them to make a home for
+themselves in the wilderness, to help others to make their homes, to
+assist the civilization and progress not only of this city, but of the
+whole Lone Star State, was given to him, and he refused it, and
+blocked the way of others, and kept back the march of progress, until
+to-day, civilization, which has waxed great and strong--not on account
+of him, remember, but in spite of him--sweeps him out of its way, and
+crushes him and his fellows."
+
+The young District Attorney allowed his arm to drop, and turned to the
+jury, leaning easily with his bent knuckles on the table.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, in his pleasant tones of every-day politeness,
+"the 'bad man' has become an unknown quantity in Zepata City and in
+the State of Texas. It lies with you to see that he remains so. He
+went out of existence with the blanket Indian and the buffalo. He is
+dead, and he must _not_ be resurrected. He was a picturesque evil
+of those early days, but civilization has no use for him, and it has
+killed him, as the railroads and the barb-wire fence have killed the
+cowboy. He does not belong here; he does not fit in; he is not wanted.
+We want men who can breed good cattle, who can build manufactories and
+open banks; storekeepers who can undersell those of other cities; and
+professional men who know their business. We do _not_ want
+desperadoes and 'bad men' and faro-dealers and men who are quick on
+the trigger. A foolish and morbid publicity has cloaked men of this
+class with a notoriety which cheap and pernicious literature has
+greatly helped to disseminate. They have been made romantic when they
+were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were
+only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at
+the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation
+as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and
+you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and
+you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the
+streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid to touch
+him--_afraid_, gentlemen--and children and women will point after
+him as the man who has sent nine others into eternity, and who yet
+walks the streets a free man. And he will become, in the eyes of the
+young and the weak, a hero and a god. This is unfortunate, but it is
+true.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, we want to keep the streets of this city so safe that
+a woman can walk them at midnight without fear of insult, and a man
+can express his opinion on the corner without being shot in the back
+for doing so."
+
+The District Attorney turned from the jury with a bow, and faced Judge
+Truax.
+
+"For the last ten years, your honor, this man, Abner Barrow, has been
+serving a term of imprisonment in the State penitentiary; I ask you to
+send him back there again for the remainder of his life. It will be
+the better place for him, and we will be happier in knowing we have
+done our duty in placing him there. Abe Barrow is out of date. He has
+missed step with the march of progress, and has been out of step for
+ten years, and it is best for all that he should remain out of it
+until he, who has sent nine other men unprepared to meet their God--"
+
+"He is not on trial for the murder of nine men," interrupted Colonel
+Stogart, springing from his chair, "but for the justifiable killing of
+one, and I demand, your honor, that--"
+
+"--has sent nine other men to meet their Maker," continued the
+District Attorney, "meets with the awful judgment of a higher court
+than this."
+
+Colonel Stogart smiled scornfully at the platitude, and sat down with
+an expressive shrug; but no one noticed him.
+
+The District Attorney raised his arm and faced the court-room. "It
+cannot be said of _us_," he cried, "that we have sat idle in the
+market-place. We have advanced and advanced in the last ten years,
+until we have reached the very foremost place with civilized people.
+This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city where he left a
+prairie town, a bank where he spun his roulette wheel, this
+magnificent court-house instead of a vigilance committee. And what is
+his part in this new court-house, which to-day, for the first time,
+throws open its doors to protect the just and to punish the unjust?
+
+"Is he there in the box among those honorable men, the gentlemen of
+the jury? Is he in that great crowd of intelligent, public-spirited
+citizens who make the bone and sinew of this our fair city? Is he on
+the honored bench dispensing justice, and making the intricacies of
+the law straight? No, gentlemen; he has no part in our triumph. He is
+there, in the prisoners' pen, an outlaw, a convicted murderer, and an
+unconvicted assassin, the last of his race--the bullies and bad men of
+the border--a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the
+sight of man. He has outlasted his time; he is a superfluity and an
+outrage on our reign of decency and order. And I ask you, gentlemen,
+to put him away where he will not hear the voice of man nor children's
+laughter, nor see a woman smile, where he will not even see the face
+of the warden who feeds him, nor sunlight except as it is filtered
+through the iron bars of a jail. Bury him with the bitter past, with
+the lawlessness that has gone--that has gone, thank God--and which
+must _not_ return. Place him in the cell where he belongs, and
+whence, had justice been done, he would never have been taken alive."
+
+The District Attorney sat down suddenly, with a quick nod to the Judge
+and the jury, and fumbled over his papers with nervous fingers. He was
+keenly conscious, and excited with the fervor of his own words. He
+heard the reluctantly hushed applause and the whispers of the crowd,
+and noted the quick and combined movement of the jury with a selfish
+sweet pleasure, which showed itself only in the tightening of the lips
+and nostrils. Those nearest him tugged at his sleeve and shook hands
+with him. He remembered this afterward as one of the rewards of the
+moment. He turned the documents before him over and scribbled words
+upon a piece of paper and read a passage in an open law-book. He did
+this quite mechanically, and was conscious of nothing until the
+foreman pronounced the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the
+second degree.
+
+Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, simply, that it lay in
+his power to sentence the prisoner to not less than two years'
+confinement in the State penitentiary or for the remainder of his
+life.
+
+"Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow," he said, with an old
+man's kind severity, "is there anything you have to say on your own
+behalf?"
+
+The District Attorney turned his face, as did all the others, but he
+did not see the prisoner. He still saw himself holding the court-room
+with a spell, and heard his own periods ringing against the
+whitewashed ceiling. The others saw a tall, broad-shouldered man
+leaning heavily forward over the bar of the prisoner's box. His face
+was white with the prison tan, markedly so in contrast with those
+sunburnt by the wind and sun turned toward him, and pinched and
+hollow-eyed and worn. When he spoke, his voice had the huskiness which
+comes from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's.
+
+"I don't know, Judge," he said, hesitatingly, and staring stupidly at
+the mass of faces in the well beneath him, "that I have anything to
+say--in my own behalf. I don't know as it would be any use. I guess
+what the gentleman said about me is all there is to say. He put it
+about right. I've had my fun, and I've got to pay for it--that is, I
+thought it was fun at the time. I am not going to cry any baby act and
+beg off, or anything, if that's what you mean. But there is something
+I'd like to say if I thought you would believe me." He frowned down at
+the green table as though the words he wanted would not come, and his
+eyes wandered from one face to another, until they rested upon the
+bowed head of the only woman in the room. They remained there for some
+short time, and then Barrow drew in his breath more quickly, and
+turned with something like a show of confidence to the jury.
+
+"All that man said of me is true," he said. He gave a toss of his
+hands as a man throws away the reins. "I admit all he says. I
+_am_ a back number; I _am_ out of date; I _was_ a loafer and a
+blackguard. I never shot any man in the back, nor I never assassinated
+no one; but that's neither here nor there. I'm not in a place where I
+can expect people to pick out their words; but, as he says, I _am_ a
+bad lot. He says I have enjoyed a reputation as a desperado. I am not
+bragging of that; I just ask you to remember that he said it. Remember
+it of me. I was not the sort to back down to man or beast, and I'm not
+now. I am not backing down, now; I'm taking my punishment. Whatever
+you please to make it, I'll take it; and that," he went on, more
+slowly, "makes it harder for me to ask what I want to ask, and make
+you all believe I am not asking it for myself."
+
+He stopped, and the silence in the room seemed to give him some faint
+encouragement of sympathy, though it was rather the silence of
+curiosity.
+
+Colonel Stogart gave a stern look upward, and asked the prisoner's
+wife, in a whisper, if she knew what her husband meant to say, but she
+shook her head. She did not know. The District Attorney smiled
+indulgently at the prisoner and at the men about him, but they were
+watching the prisoner.
+
+"That man there," said Barrow, pointing with one gaunt hand at the boy
+attorney, "told you I had no part or parcel in this city or in this
+world; that I belonged to the past; that I had ought to be dead. Now
+that's not so. I have just one thing that belongs to this city and
+this world--and to me; one thing that I couldn't take to jail with me,
+and that I'll have to leave behind me when I go back to it. I mean my
+wife."
+
+The prisoner stopped, and looked so steadily at one place below him
+that those in the back of the court guessed for the first time that
+Mrs. Barrow was in the room, and craned forward to look at her, and
+there was a moment of confusion and a murmur of "Get back there!" "Sit
+still!" The prisoner turned to Judge Truax again and squared his broad
+shoulders, making the more conspicuous his narrow and sunken chest.
+
+"You, sir," he said, quietly, with a change from the tone of
+braggadocio with which he had begun to speak, "remember her, sir, when
+I married her, twelve years ago. She was Henry Holman's daughter, he
+who owned the San Iago Ranch and the triangle brand. I took her from
+the home she had with her father against that gentleman's wishes, sir,
+to live with me over my dance-hall at the Silver Star. You may
+remember her as she was then. She gave up everything a woman ought to
+have to come to me. She thought she was going to be happy with me;
+that's why she come, I guess. Maybe she was happy for about two weeks.
+After that first two weeks her life, sir, was a hell, and I made it a
+hell. I was drunk most of the time, or sleeping it off, and
+ugly-tempered when I was sober. There was shooting and carrying on all
+day and night down-stairs, and she didn't dare to leave her room.
+Besides that, she cared for me, and she was afraid every minute I was
+going to get killed. That's the way she lived for two years.
+Respectable women wouldn't speak to her because she was my wife; even
+them that were friends of hers when she lived on the ranch wouldn't
+speak to her on the street--and she had no children. That was her
+life; she lived alone over the dance-hall; and sometimes when I was
+drunk--I beat her."
+
+The man's white face reddened slowly as he said this; and he stopped,
+and then continued more quickly, with his eyes still fixed on those of
+the Judge:
+
+"At the end of two years I killed Welsh, and they sent me to the
+penitentiary for ten years, and she was free. She could have gone back
+to her folks and got a divorce if she'd wanted to, and never seen me
+again. It was an escape most women'd gone down on their knees and
+thanked their Maker for, and blessed the day they'd been freed from a
+blackguardly drunken brute.
+
+"But what did this woman do--my wife, the woman I misused and beat and
+dragged down in the mud with me? She was too mighty proud to go back
+to her people or to the friends who shook her when she was in trouble;
+and she sold out the place, and bought a ranch with the money, and
+worked it by herself, worked it day and night, until in ten years she
+had made herself an old woman, as you see she is to-day.
+
+"And for what? To get _me_ free again; to bring _me_ things
+to eat in jail, and picture papers and tobacco--when she was living on
+bacon and potatoes, and drinking alkali water--working to pay for a
+lawyer to fight for _me_--to pay for the _best_ lawyer! She
+worked in the fields with her own hands, planting and ploughing,
+working as I never worked for myself in my whole lazy, rotten life.
+That's what that woman there did for me."
+
+The man stopped suddenly, and turned with a puzzled look toward where
+his wife sat, for she had dropped her head on the table in front of
+her, and he had heard her sobbing.
+
+"And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let me have two years out
+of jail to show her how I feel about it. I ask you not to send me back
+for life, sir. Give me just two years--two years of my life while I
+have some strength left to work for her as she worked for me. I only
+want to show her how I care for her _now_. I had the chance, and
+I wouldn't take it; and now, sir, I want to show her that I know and
+understand--now, when it's too late. It's all I've thought of when I
+was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in her own kitchen with her
+hands folded, and me working and sweating in the fields for
+her--working till every bone ached, trying to make it up to her.
+
+"And I can't!" the man cried, suddenly, losing the control he had
+forced upon himself, and tossing his hands up above his head, and with
+his eyes fixed hopelessly on the bowed head below him. "I can't! It's
+too late. It's too late!"
+
+He turned and faced the crowd and the District Attorney defiantly.
+
+"I'm not crying for the men I killed. They're dead. I can't bring them
+back. But she's not dead, and I treated her worse than I treated them.
+_She_ never harmed me, nor got in my way, nor angered me. And now,
+when I want to do what I can for her in the little time that's left,
+_he_ tells you I'm a 'relic of the past,' that civilization's too good
+for me, that you must bury me until it's time to bury me for good.
+Just when I've got something I _must_ live for, something I've got to
+do. Don't you believe me? Don't you understand?"
+
+He turned again toward the Judge, and beat the rail before him
+impotently with his wasted hand. "Don't send me back for life!" he
+cried. "Give me a few years to work for her--two years, one year--to
+show her what I feel here, what I never felt for her before. Look at
+her, gentlemen. Look how worn she is and poorly, and look at her
+hands, and you men must feel how I feel. I don't ask you for myself. I
+don't want to go free on my own account. I am asking it for that
+woman--yes, and for myself, too. I am playing to 'get back,'
+gentlemen. I've lost what I had, and I want to get back; and," he
+cried, querulously, "the game keeps going against me. It's only a few
+years' freedom I want. Send me back for thirty years, but not for
+life. My God! Judge, don't bury me alive, as that man asked you to.
+I'm _not_ civilized, maybe; ways _have_ changed. You are not
+the man I knew; you are all strangers to me. But I could learn. I
+wouldn't bother you in the old way. I only want to live with her. I
+won't harm the rest of you. Give me this last chance. Let me prove
+that what I'm saying is true."
+
+The man stopped and stood, opening and shutting his hands upon the
+rail, and searching with desperate eagerness from face to face, as one
+who has staked all he has watches the wheel spinning his fortune away.
+The gentlemen of the jury sat quite motionless, looking straight ahead
+at the blinding sun, which came through the high, uncurtained windows
+opposite. Outside, the wind banged the shutters against the wall, and
+whistled up the street and round the tin corners of the building, but
+inside the room was very silent. The Mexicans at the door, who could
+not understand, looked curiously at the faces of the men around them,
+and made sure that they had missed something of much importance. For a
+moment no one moved, until there was a sudden stir around the District
+Attorney's table, and the men stepped aside and let the woman pass
+them and throw herself against the prisoner's box. The prisoner bent
+his tall gaunt figure over the rail, and as the woman pressed his one
+hand against her face, touched her shoulders with the other awkwardly.
+
+"There, now," he whispered, soothingly, "don't you take on so. Now you
+know how I feel, it's all right; don't take on."
+
+Judge Truax looked at the paper on his desk for some seconds, and
+raised his head, coughing as he did so. "It lies--" Judge Truax began,
+and then stopped, and began again, in a more certain tone: "It lies at
+the discretion of this Court to sentence the prisoner to a term of
+imprisonment for two years, or for an indefinite period, or for life.
+Owing to--On account of certain circumstances which were--have
+arisen--this sentence is suspended. This court stands adjourned."
+
+As he finished he sprang out of his chair impulsively, and with a
+quick authoritative nod to the young District Attorney, came quickly
+down the steps of the platform. Young Harvey met him at the foot with
+wide-open eyes.
+
+The older man hesitated, and placed his hand upon the District
+Attorney's shoulder. "Harry," he said. His voice was shaken, and his
+hand trembled on the arm of his protégé, for he was an old man and
+easily moved. "Harry, my boy," he said, "do you think you could go to
+Austin and repeat the speech that man made to the Governor?"
+
+The boy orator laughed, and took one of the older man's hands in one
+of his and pressed it quickly. "I'd like d----d well to try," he said.
+
+
+
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+
+
+Young Latimer stood on one of the lower steps of the hall stairs,
+leaning with one hand on the broad railing and smiling down at her.
+She had followed him from the drawing-room and had stopped at the
+entrance, drawing the curtains behind her, and making, unconsciously,
+a dark background for her head and figure. He thought he had never
+seen her look more beautiful, nor that cold, fine air of thorough
+breeding about her which was her greatest beauty to him, more strongly
+in evidence.
+
+"Well, sir," she said, "why don't you go?"
+
+He shifted his position slightly and leaned more comfortably upon the
+railing, as though he intended to discuss it with her at some length.
+
+"How can I go," he said, argumentatively, "with you standing
+there--looking like that?"
+
+"I really believe," the girl said, slowly, "that he is afraid; yes, he
+is afraid. And you always said," she added, turning to him, "you were
+so brave."
+
+"Oh, I am sure I never said that," exclaimed the young man, calmly. "I
+may be brave, in fact, I am quite brave, but I never said I was. Some
+one must have told you."
+
+"Yes, he is afraid," she said, nodding her head to the tall clock
+across the hall, "he is temporizing and trying to save time. And
+afraid of a man, too, and such a good man who would not hurt any one."
+
+"You know a bishop is always a very difficult sort of a person," he
+said, "and when he happens to be your father, the combination is just
+a bit awful. Isn't it now? And especially when one means to ask him
+for his daughter. You know it isn't like asking him to let one smoke
+in his study."
+
+"If I loved a girl," she said, shaking her head and smiling up at him,
+"I wouldn't be afraid of the whole world; that's what they say in
+books, isn't it? I would be so bold and happy."
+
+"Oh, well, I'm bold enough," said the young man, easily; "if I had not
+been, I never would have asked you to marry me; and I'm happy
+enough--that's because I did ask you. But what if he says no,"
+continued the youth; "what if he says he has greater ambitions for
+you, just as they say in books, too? What will you do? Will you run
+away with me? I can borrow a coach just as they used to do, and we can
+drive off through the Park and be married, and come back and ask his
+blessing on our knees--unless he should overtake us on the elevated."
+
+"That," said the girl, decidedly, "is flippant, and I'm going to leave
+you. I never thought to marry a man who would be frightened at the
+very first. I am greatly disappointed."
+
+She stepped back into the drawing-room and pulled the curtains to
+behind her, and then opened them again and whispered, "Please don't be
+long," and disappeared. He waited, smiling, to see if she would make
+another appearance, but she did not, and he heard her touch the keys
+of the piano at the other end of the drawing-room. And so, still
+smiling and with her last words sounding in his ears, he walked slowly
+up the stairs and knocked at the door of the bishop's study. The
+bishop's room was not ecclesiastic in its character. It looked much
+like the room of any man of any calling who cared for his books and to
+have pictures about him, and copies of the beautiful things he had
+seen on his travels. There were pictures of the Virgin and the Child,
+but they were those that are seen in almost any house, and there were
+etchings and plaster casts, and there were hundreds of books, and dark
+red curtains, and an open fire that lit up the pots of brass with
+ferns in them, and the blue and white plaques on the top of the
+bookcase. The bishop sat before his writing-table, with one hand
+shading his eyes from the light of a red-covered lamp, and looked up
+and smiled pleasantly and nodded as the young man entered. He had a
+very strong face, with white hair hanging at the side, but was still a
+young man for one in such a high office. He was a man interested in
+many things, who could talk to men of any profession or to the mere
+man of pleasure, and could interest them in what he said, and force
+their respect and liking. And he was very good, and had, they said,
+seen much trouble.
+
+"I am afraid I interrupted you," said the young man, tentatively.
+
+"No, I have interrupted myself," replied the bishop. "I don't seem to
+make this clear to myself," he said, touching the paper in front of
+him, "and so I very much doubt if I am going to make it clear to any
+one else. However," he added, smiling, as he pushed the manuscript to
+one side, "we are not going to talk about that now. What have you to
+tell me that is new?"
+
+The younger man glanced up quickly at this, but the bishop's face
+showed that his words had had no ulterior meaning, and that he
+suspected nothing more serious to come than the gossip of the clubs or
+a report of the local political fight in which he was keenly
+interested, or on their mission on the East Side. But it seemed an
+opportunity to Latimer.
+
+"I _have_ something new to tell you," he said, gravely, and with
+his eyes turned toward the open fire, "and I don't know how to do it
+exactly. I mean I don't just know how it is generally done or how to
+tell it best." He hesitated and leaned forward, with his hands locked
+in front of him, and his elbows resting on his knees. He was not in
+the least frightened. The bishop had listened to many strange stories,
+to many confessions, in this same study, and had learned to take them
+as a matter of course; but to-night something in the manner of the
+young man before him made him stir uneasily, and he waited for him to
+disclose the object of his visit with some impatience.
+
+"I will suppose, sir," said young Latimer, finally, "that you know me
+rather well--I mean you know who my people are, and what I am doing
+here in New York, and who my friends are, and what my work amounts to.
+You have let me see a great deal of you, and I have appreciated your
+doing so very much; to so young a man as myself it has been a great
+compliment, and it has been of great benefit to me. I know that better
+than any one else. I say this because unless you had shown me this
+confidence it would have been almost impossible for me to say to you
+what I am going to say now. But you have allowed me to come here
+frequently, and to see you and talk with you here in your study, and
+to see even more of your daughter. Of course, sir, you did not suppose
+that I came here only to see you. I came here because I found that, if
+I did not see Miss Ellen for a day, that that day was wasted, and that
+I spent it uneasily and discontentedly, and the necessity of seeing
+her even more frequently has grown so great that I cannot come here as
+often as I seem to want to come unless I am engaged to her, unless I
+come as her husband that is to be." The young man had been speaking
+very slowly and picking his words, but now he raised his head and ran
+on quickly.
+
+"I have spoken to her and told her how I love her, and she has told me
+that she loves me, and that if you will not oppose us, will marry me.
+That is the news I have to tell you, sir. I don't know but that I
+might have told it differently, but that is it. I need not urge on you
+my position and all that, because I do not think that weighs with you;
+but I do tell you that I love Ellen so dearly that, though I am not
+worthy of her, of course, I have no other pleasure than to give her
+pleasure and to try to make her happy. I have the power to do it; but
+what is much more, I have the wish to do it; it is all I think of now,
+and all that I can ever think of. What she thinks of me you must ask
+her; but what she is to me neither she can tell you nor do I believe
+that I myself could make you understand." The young man's face was
+flushed and eager, and as he finished speaking he raised his head and
+watched the bishop's countenance anxiously. But the older man's face
+was hidden by his hand as he leaned with his elbow on his
+writing-table. His other hand was playing with a pen, and when he
+began to speak, which he did after a long pause, he still turned it
+between his fingers and looked down at it.
+
+"I suppose," he said, as softly as though he were speaking to himself,
+"that I should have known this; I suppose that I should have been
+better prepared to hear it. But it is one of those things which men
+put off--I mean those men who have children, put off--as they do
+making their wills, as something that is in the future and that may be
+shirked until it comes. We seem to think that our daughters will live
+with us always, just as we expect to live on ourselves until death
+comes one day and startles us and finds us unprepared." He took down
+his hand and smiled gravely at the younger man with an evident effort,
+and said, "I did not mean to speak so gloomily, but you see my point
+of view must be different from yours. And she says she loves you, does
+she?" he added, gently.
+
+Young Latimer bowed his head and murmured something inarticulately in
+reply, and then held his head erect again and waited, still watching
+the bishop's face.
+
+"I think she might have told me," said the older man; "but then I
+suppose this is the better way. I am young enough to understand that
+the old order changes, that the customs of my father's time differ
+from those of to-day. And there is no alternative, I suppose," he
+said, shaking his head. "I am stopped and told to deliver, and have no
+choice. I will get used to it in time," he went on, "but it seems very
+hard now. Fathers are selfish, I imagine, but she is all I have."
+
+Young Latimer looked gravely into the fire and wondered how long it
+would last. He could just hear the piano from below, and he was
+anxious to return to her. And at the same time he was drawn toward the
+older man before him, and felt rather guilty, as though he really were
+robbing him. But at the bishop's next words he gave up any thought of
+a speedy release, and settled himself in his chair.
+
+"We are still to have a long talk," said the bishop. "There are many
+things I must know, and of which I am sure you will inform me freely.
+I believe there are some who consider me hard, and even narrow on
+different points, but I do not think you will find me so, at least let
+us hope not. I must confess that for a moment I almost hoped that you
+might not be able to answer the questions I must ask you, but it was
+only for a moment. I am only too sure you will not be found wanting,
+and that the conclusion of our talk will satisfy us both. Yes, I am
+confident of that."
+
+His manner changed, nevertheless, and Latimer saw that he was now
+facing a judge and not a plaintiff who had been robbed, and that he
+was in turn the defendant. And still he was in no way frightened.
+
+"I like you," the bishop said, "I like you very much. As you say
+yourself, I have seen a great deal of you, because I have enjoyed your
+society, and your views and talk were good and young and fresh, and
+did me good. You have served to keep me in touch with the outside
+world, a world of which I used to know at one time a great deal. I
+know your people and I know you, I think, and many people have spoken
+to me of you. I see why now. They, no doubt, understood what was
+coming better than myself, and were meaning to reassure me concerning
+you. And they said nothing but what was good of you. But there are
+certain things of which no one can know but yourself, and concerning
+which no other person, save myself, has a right to question you. You
+have promised very fairly for my daughter's future; you have suggested
+more than you have said, but I understood. You can give her many
+pleasures which I have not been able to afford; she can get from you
+the means of seeing more of this world in which she lives, of meeting
+more people, and of indulging in her charities, or in her
+extravagances, for that matter, as she wishes. I have no fear of her
+bodily comfort; her life, as far as that is concerned, will be easier
+and broader, and with more power for good. Her future, as I say, as
+you say also, is assured; but I want to ask you this," the bishop
+leaned forward and watched the young man anxiously, "you can protect
+her in the future, but can you assure me that you can protect her from
+the past?"
+
+Young Latimer raised his eyes calmly and said, "I don't think I quite
+understand."
+
+"I have perfect confidence, I say," returned the bishop, "in you as
+far as your treatment of Ellen is concerned in the future. You love
+her and you would do everything to make the life of the woman you love
+a happy one; but this is it. Can you assure me that there is nothing
+in the past that may reach forward later and touch my daughter through
+you--no ugly story, no oats that have been sowed, and no boomerang
+that you have thrown wantonly and that has not returned--but which may
+return?"
+
+"I think I understand you now, sir," said the young man, quietly. "I
+have lived," he began, "as other men of my sort have lived. You know
+what that is, for you must have seen it about you at college, and
+after that before you entered the Church. I judge so from your
+friends, who were your friends then, I understand. You know how they
+lived. I never went in for dissipation, if you mean that, because it
+never attracted me. I am afraid I kept out of it not so much out of
+respect for others as for respect for myself. I found my self-respect
+was a very good thing to keep, and I rather preferred keeping it and
+losing several pleasures that other men managed to enjoy, apparently
+with free consciences. I confess I used to rather envy them. It is no
+particular virtue on my part; the thing struck me as rather more
+vulgar than wicked, and so I have had no wild oats to speak of; and no
+woman, if that is what you mean, can write an anonymous letter, and no
+man can tell you a story about me that he could not tell in my
+presence."
+
+There was something in the way the young man spoke which would have
+amply satisfied the outsider, had he been present; but the bishop's
+eyes were still unrelaxed and anxious. He made an impatient motion
+with his hand.
+
+"I know you too well, I hope," he said, "to think of doubting your
+attitude in that particular. I know you are a gentleman, that is
+enough for that; but there is something beyond these more common
+evils. You see, I am terribly in earnest over this--you may think
+unjustly so, considering how well I know you, but this child is my
+only child. If her mother had lived, my responsibility would have been
+less great; but, as it is, God has left her here alone to me in my
+hands. I do not think He intended my duty should end when I had fed
+and clothed her, and taught her to read and write. I do not think He
+meant that I should only act as her guardian until the first man she
+fancied fancied her. I must look to her happiness not only now when
+she is with me, but I must assure myself of it when she leaves my
+roof. These common sins of youth I acquit you of. Such things are
+beneath you, I believe, and I did not even consider them. But there
+are other toils in which men become involved, other evils or
+misfortunes which exist, and which threaten all men who are young and
+free and attractive in many ways to women, as well as men. You have
+lived the life of the young man of this day. You have reached a place
+in your profession when you can afford to rest and marry and assume
+the responsibilities of marriage. You look forward to a life of
+content and peace and honorable ambition--a life, with your wife at
+your side, which is to last forty or fifty years. You consider where
+you will be twenty years from now, at what point of your career you
+may become a judge or give up practise; your perspective is unlimited;
+you even think of the college to which you may send your son. It is a
+long, quiet future that you are looking forward to, and you choose my
+daughter as the companion for that future, as the one woman with whom
+you could live content for that length of time. And it is in that
+spirit that you come to me tonight and that you ask me for my
+daughter. Now I am going to ask you one question, and as you answer
+that I will tell you whether or not you can have Ellen for your wife.
+You look forward, as I say, to many years of life, and you have chosen
+her as best suited to live that period with you; but I ask you this,
+and I demand that you answer me truthfully, and that you remember that
+you are speaking to her father. Imagine that I had the power to tell
+you, or rather that some superhuman agent could convince you, that you
+had but a month to live, and that for what you did in that month you
+would not be held responsible either by any moral law or any law made
+by man, and that your life hereafter would not be influenced by your
+conduct in that month, would you spend it, I ask you--and on your
+answer depends mine--would you spend those thirty days, with death at
+the end, with my daughter, or with some other woman of whom I know
+nothing?"
+
+Latimer sat for some time silent, until indeed, his silence assumed
+such a significance that he raised his head impatiently and said with
+a motion of the hand, "I mean to answer you in a minute; I want to be
+sure that I understand."
+
+The bishop bowed his head in assent, and for a still longer period the
+men sat motionless. The clock in the corner seemed to tick more
+loudly, and the dead coals dropping in the grate had a sharp,
+aggressive sound. The notes of the piano that had risen from the room
+below had ceased.
+
+"If I understand you," said Latimer, finally, and his voice and his
+face as he raised it were hard and aggressive, "you are stating a
+purely hypothetical case. You wish to try me by conditions which do
+not exist, which cannot exist. What justice is there, what right is
+there, in asking me to say how I would act under circumstances which
+are impossible, which lie beyond the limit of human experience? You
+cannot judge a man by what he would do if he were suddenly robbed of
+all his mental and moral training and of the habit of years. I am not
+admitting, understand me, that if the conditions which you suggest did
+exist that I would do one whit differently from what I will do if they
+remain as they are. I am merely denying your right to put such a
+question to me at all. You might just as well judge the shipwrecked
+sailors on a raft who eat each other's flesh as you would judge a
+sane, healthy man who did such a thing in his own home. Are you going
+to condemn men who are ice-locked at the North Pole, or buried in the
+heart of Africa, and who have given up all thought of return and are
+half mad and wholly without hope, as you would judge ourselves? Are
+they to be weighed and balanced as you and I are, sitting here within
+the sound of the cabs outside and with a bake-shop around the corner?
+What you propose could not exist, could never happen. I could never be
+placed where I should have to make such a choice, and you have no
+right to ask me what I would do or how I would act under conditions
+that are superhuman--you used the word yourself--where all that I have
+held to be good and just and true would be obliterated. I would be
+unworthy of myself, I would be unworthy of your daughter, if I
+considered such a state of things for a moment, or if I placed my
+hopes of marrying her on the outcome of such a test, and so, sir,"
+said the young man, throwing back his head, "I must refuse to answer
+you."
+
+The bishop lowered his hand from before his eyes and sank back wearily
+into his chair. "You have answered me," he said.
+
+"You have no right to say that," cried the young man, springing to his
+feet. "You have no right to suppose anything or to draw any
+conclusions. I have not answered you." He stood with his head and
+shoulders thrown back, and with his hands resting on his hips and with
+the fingers working nervously at his waist.
+
+"What you have said," replied the bishop, in a voice that had changed
+strangely, and which was inexpressibly sad and gentle, "is merely a
+curtain of words to cover up your true feeling. It would have been so
+easy to have said, 'For thirty days or for life Ellen is the only
+woman who has the power to make me happy.' You see that would have
+answered me and satisfied me. But you did not say that," he added,
+quickly, as the young man made a movement as if to speak.
+
+"Well, and suppose this other woman did exist, what then?" demanded
+Latimer. "The conditions you suggest are impossible; you must, you
+will surely, sir, admit that."
+
+"I do not know," replied the bishop, sadly; "I do not know. It may
+happen that whatever obstacle there has been which has kept you from
+her may be removed. It may be that she has married, it may be that she
+has fallen so low that you cannot marry her. But if you have loved her
+once, you may love her again; whatever it was that separated you in
+the past, that separates you now, that makes you prefer my daughter to
+her, may come to an end when you are married, when it will be too
+late, and when only trouble can come of it, and Ellen would bear that
+trouble. Can I risk that?"
+
+"But I tell you it is impossible," cried the young man. "The woman is
+beyond the love of any man, at least such a man as I am, or try to
+be."
+
+"Do you mean," asked the bishop, gently, and with an eager look of
+hope, "that she is dead?"
+
+Latimer faced the father for some seconds in silence. Then he raised
+his head slowly. "No," he said, "I do not mean she is dead. No, she is
+not dead."
+
+Again the bishop moved back wearily into his chair. "You mean then,"
+he said, "perhaps, that she is a married woman?" Latimer pressed his
+lips together at first as though he would not answer, and then raised
+his eyes coldly. "Perhaps," he said.
+
+The older man had held up his hand as if to signify that what he was
+about to say should be listened to without interruption, when a sharp
+turning of the lock of the door caused both father and the suitor to
+start. Then they turned and looked at each other with anxious inquiry
+and with much concern, for they recognized for the first time that
+their voices had been loud. The older man stepped quickly across the
+floor, but before he reached the middle of the room the door opened
+from the outside, and his daughter stood in the door-way, with her
+head held down and her eyes looking at the floor.
+
+"Ellen!" exclaimed the father, in a voice of pain and the deepest
+pity.
+
+The girl moved toward the place from where his voice came, without
+raising her eyes, and when she reached him put her arms about him and
+hid her face on his shoulder. She moved as though she were tired, as
+though she were exhausted by some heavy work.
+
+"My child," said the bishop, gently, "were you listening?" There was
+no reproach in his voice; it was simply full of pity and concern.
+
+"I thought," whispered the girl, brokenly, "that he would be
+frightened; I wanted to hear what he would say. I thought I could
+laugh at him for it afterward. I did it for a joke. I thought--" She
+stopped with a little gasping sob that she tried to hide, and for a
+moment held herself erect and then sank back again into her father's
+arms with her head upon his breast.
+
+Latimer started forward, holding out his arms to her. "Ellen," he
+said, "surely, Ellen, you are not against me. You see how preposterous
+it is, how unjust it is to me. You cannot mean--"
+
+The girl raised her head and shrugged her shoulders slightly as though
+she were cold. "Father," she said, wearily, "ask him to go away. Why
+does he stay? Ask him to go away."
+
+Latimer stopped and took a step back as though some one had struck
+him, and then stood silent with his face flushed and his eyes
+flashing. It was not in answer to anything that they said that he
+spoke, but to their attitude and what it suggested. "You stand there,"
+he began, "you two stand there as though I were something unclean, as
+though I had committed some crime. You look at me as though I were on
+trial for murder or worse. Both of you together against me. What have
+I done? What difference is there? You loved me a half-hour ago, Ellen;
+you said you did. I know you loved me; and you, sir," he added, more
+quietly, "treated me like a friend. Has anything come since then to
+change me or you? Be fair to me, be sensible. What is the use of this?
+It is a silly, needless, horrible mistake. You know I love you, Ellen;
+love you better than all the world. I don't have to tell you that; you
+know it, you can see and feel it. It does not need to be said; words
+can't make it any truer. You have confused yourselves and stultified
+yourselves with this trick, this test by hypothetical conditions, by
+considering what is not real or possible. It is simple enough; it is
+plain enough. You know I love you, Ellen, and you only, and that is
+all there is to it, and all that there is of any consequence in the
+world to me. The matter stops there; that is all there is for you to
+consider. Answer me, Ellen, speak to me. Tell me that you believe me."
+
+He stopped and moved a step toward her, but as he did so, the girl,
+still without looking up, drew herself nearer to her father and shrank
+more closely into his arms; but the father's face was troubled and
+doubtful, and he regarded the younger man with a look of the most
+anxious scrutiny. Latimer did not regard this. Their hands were raised
+against him as far as he could understand, and he broke forth again
+proudly, and with a defiant indignation:
+
+"What right have you to judge me?" he began; "what do you know of what
+I have suffered, and endured, and overcome? How can you know what I
+have had to give up and put away from me? It's easy enough for you to
+draw your skirts around you, but what can a woman bred as you have
+been bred know of what I've had to fight against and keep under and
+cut away? It was an easy, beautiful idyl to you; your love came to you
+only when it should have come, and for a man who was good and worthy,
+and distinctly eligible--I don't mean that; forgive me, Ellen, but you
+drive me beside myself. But he is good and he believes himself worthy,
+and I say that myself before you both. But I am only worthy and only
+good because of that other love that I put away when it became a
+crime, when it became impossible. Do you know what it cost me? Do you
+know what it meant to me, and what I went through, and how I suffered?
+Do you know who this other woman is whom you are insulting with your
+doubts and guesses in the dark? Can't you spare her? Am I not enough?
+Perhaps it was easy for her, too; perhaps her silence cost her
+nothing; perhaps she did not suffer and has nothing but happiness and
+content to look forward to for the rest of her life; and I tell you
+that it is because we did put it away, and kill it, and not give way
+to it that I am whatever I am to-day; whatever good there is in me is
+due to that temptation and to the fact that I beat it and overcame it
+and kept myself honest and clean. And when I met you and learned to
+know you I believed in my heart that God had sent you to me that I
+might know what it was to love a woman whom I could marry and who
+could be my wife; that you were the reward for my having overcome
+temptation and the sign that I had done well. And now you throw me
+over and put me aside as though I were something low and unworthy,
+because of this temptation, because of this very thing that has made
+me know myself and my own strength and that has kept me up for you."
+
+As the young man had been speaking, the bishop's eyes had never left
+his face, and as he finished, the face of the priest grew clearer and
+decided, and calmly exultant. And as Latimer ceased he bent his head
+above his daughter's, and said in a voice that seemed to speak with
+more than human inspiration. "My child," he said, "if God had given me
+a son I should have been proud if he could have spoken as this young
+man has done."
+
+But the woman only said, "Let him go to her."
+
+"Ellen, oh, Ellen!" cried the father.
+
+He drew back from the girl in his arms and looked anxiously and
+feelingly at her lover. "How could you, Ellen," he said, "how could
+you?" He was watching the young man's face with eyes full of sympathy
+and concern. "How little you know him," he said, "how little you
+understand. He will not do that," he added quickly, but looking
+questioningly at Latimer and speaking in a tone almost of command. "He
+will not undo all that he has done; I know him better than that." But
+Latimer made no answer, and for a moment the two men stood watching
+each other and questioning each other with their eyes. Then Latimer
+turned, and without again so much as glancing at the girl walked
+steadily to the door and left the room. He passed on slowly down the
+stairs and out into the night, and paused upon the top of the steps
+leading to the street. Below him lay the avenue with its double line
+of lights stretching off in two long perspectives. The lamps of
+hundreds of cabs and carriages flashed as they advanced toward him and
+shone for a moment at the turnings of the cross-streets, and from
+either side came the ceaseless rush and murmur, and over all hung the
+strange mystery that covers a great city at night. Latimer's rooms lay
+to the south, but he stood looking toward a spot to the north with a
+reckless, harassed look in his face that had not been there for many
+months. He stood so for a minute, and then gave a short shrug of
+disgust at his momentary doubt and ran quickly down the steps. "No,"
+he said, "if it were for a month, yes; but it is to be for many years,
+many more long years." And turning his back resolutely to the north he
+went slowly home.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE FEVER SHIP
+
+
+There were four rails around the ship's sides, the three lower ones of
+iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between them from
+the canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars which held him
+in. Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding blue water which
+ended in a line of breakers and a yellow coast with ragged palms.
+Beyond that again rose a range of mountain-peaks, and, stuck upon the
+loftiest peak of all, a tiny block-house. It rested on the brow of the
+mountain against the naked sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon
+the dome of a great cathedral.
+
+As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her
+sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines.
+From his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with severe,
+painstaking interest. Sometimes the wooden rail swept up to the very
+block-house itself, and for a second of time blotted it from sight.
+And again it sank to the level of the line of breakers, and wiped them
+out of the picture as though they were a line of chalk.
+
+The soldier on the cot promised himself that the next swell of the sea
+would send the lowest rail climbing to the very top of the palm-trees
+or, even higher, to the base of the mountains; and when it failed to
+reach even the palm-trees he felt a distinct sense of ill use, of
+having been wronged by some one. There was no other reason for
+submitting to this existence save these tricks upon the wearisome,
+glaring landscape; and now, whoever it was who was working them did
+not seem to be making this effort to entertain him with any
+heartiness.
+
+It was most cruel. Indeed, he decided hotly, it was not to be endured;
+he would bear it no longer, he would make his escape. But he knew that
+this move, which could be conceived in a moment's desperation, could
+only be carried to success with great strategy, secrecy, and careful
+cunning. So he fell back upon his pillow and closed his eyes, as
+though he were asleep, and then opening them again, turned cautiously,
+and spied upon his keeper. As usual, his keeper sat at the foot of the
+cot turning the pages of a huge paper filled with pictures of the war
+printed in daubs of tawdry colors. His keeper was a hard-faced boy
+without human pity or consideration, a very devil of obstinacy and
+fiendish cruelty. To make it worse, the fiend was a person without a
+collar, in a suit of soiled khaki, with a curious red cross bound by a
+safety-pin to his left arm. He was intent upon the paper in his hands;
+he was holding it between his eyes and his prisoner. His vigilance had
+relaxed, and the moment seemed propitious. With a sudden plunge of
+arms and legs, the prisoner swept the bed-sheet from him, and sprang
+at the wooden rail and grasped the iron stanchion beside it. He had
+his knee pressed against the top bar and his bare toes on the iron
+rail beneath it. Below him the blue water waited for him. It was cool
+and dark and gentle and deep. It would certainly put out the fire in
+his bones, he thought; it might even shut out the glare of the sun
+which scorched his eyeballs.
+
+But as he balanced for the leap, a swift weakness and nausea swept
+over him, a weight seized upon his body and limbs. He could not lift
+the lower foot from the iron rail, and he swayed dizzily and trembled.
+He trembled. He who had raced his men and beaten them up the hot hill
+to the trenches of San Juan. But now he was a baby in the hands of a
+giant, who caught him by the wrist and with an iron arm clasped him
+around his waist and pulled him down, and shouted, brutally, "Help,
+some of youse, quick! he's at it again. I can't hold him."
+
+More giants grasped him by the arms and by the legs. One of them took
+the hand that clung to the stanchion in both of his, and pulled back
+the fingers one by one, saying, "Easy now, Lieutenant--easy."
+
+The ragged palms and the sea and blockhouse were swallowed up in a
+black fog, and his body touched the canvas cot again with a sense of
+home-coming and relief and rest. He wondered how he could have cared
+to escape from it. He found it so good to be back again that for a
+long time he wept quite happily, until the fiery pillow was moist and
+cool.
+
+The world outside of the iron bars was like a scene in a theatre set
+for some great event, but the actors were never ready. He remembered
+confusedly a play he had once witnessed before that same scene.
+Indeed, he believed he had played some small part in it; but he
+remembered it dimly, and all trace of the men who had appeared with
+him in it was gone. He had reasoned it out that they were up there
+behind the range of mountains, because great heavy wagons and
+ambulances and cannon were emptied from the ships at the wharf above
+and were drawn away in long lines behind the ragged palms, moving
+always toward the passes between the peaks. At times he was disturbed
+by the thought that he should be up and after them, that some
+tradition of duty made his presence with them imperative. There was
+much to be done back of the mountains. Some event of momentous import
+was being carried forward there, in which he held a part; but the
+doubt soon passed from him, and he was content to lie and watch the
+iron bars rising and falling between the block-house and the white
+surf.
+
+If they had been only humanely kind, his lot would have been bearable,
+but they starved him and held him down when he wished to rise; and
+they would not put out the fire in the pillow, which they might easily
+have done by the simple expedient of throwing it over the ship's side
+into the sea. He himself had done this twice, but the keeper had
+immediately brought a fresh pillow already heated for the torture and
+forced it under his head.
+
+His pleasures were very simple, and so few that he could not
+understand why they robbed him of them so jealously. One was to watch
+a green cluster of bananas that hung above him from the awning,
+twirling on a string. He could count as many of them as five before
+the bunch turned and swung lazily back again, when he could count as
+high as twelve; sometimes when the ship rolled heavily he could count
+to twenty. It was a most fascinating game, and contented him for many
+hours. But when they found this out they sent for the cook to come and
+cut them down, and the cook carried them away to his galley.
+
+Then, one day, a man came out from the shore, swimming through the
+blue water with great splashes. He was a most charming man, who
+spluttered and dove and twisted and lay on his back and kicked his
+legs in an excess of content and delight. It was a real pleasure to
+watch him; not for days had anything so amusing appeared on the other
+side of the prison-bars. But as soon as the keeper saw that the man in
+the water was amusing his prisoner, he leaned over the ship's side and
+shouted, "Sa-ay, you, don't you know there's skarks in there?"
+
+And the swimming man said, "The h-ll there is!" and raced back to the
+shore like a porpoise with great lashing of the water, and ran up the
+beach half-way to the palms before he was satisfied to stop. Then the
+prisoner wept again. It was so disappointing. Life was robbed of
+everything now. He remembered that in a previous existence soldiers
+who cried were laughed at and mocked. But that was so far away and it
+was such an absurd superstition that he had no patience with it. For
+what could be more comforting to a man when he is treated cruelly than
+to cry. It was so obvious an exercise, and when one is so feeble that
+one cannot vault a four-railed barrier it is something to feel that at
+least one is strong enough to cry.
+
+He escaped occasionally, traversing space with marvellous rapidity and
+to great distances, but never to any successful purpose; and his
+flight inevitably ended in ignominious recapture and a sudden
+awakening in bed. At these moments the familiar and hated palms, the
+peaks, and the block-house were more hideous in their reality than the
+most terrifying of his nightmares.
+
+These excursions afield were always predatory; he went forth always to
+seek food. With all the beautiful world from which to elect and
+choose, he sought out only those places where eating was studied and
+elevated to an art. These visits were much more vivid in their detail
+than any he had ever before made to these same resorts. They
+invariably began in a carriage, which carried him swiftly over smooth
+asphalt. One route brought him across a great and beautiful square,
+radiating with rows and rows of flickering lights; two fountains
+splashed in the centre of the square, and six women of stone guarded
+its approaches. One of the women was hung with wreaths of mourning.
+Ahead of him the late twilight darkened behind a great arch, which
+seemed to rise on the horizon of the world, a great window into the
+heavens beyond. At either side strings of white and colored globes
+hung among the trees, and the sound of music came joyfully from
+theatres in the open air. He knew the restaurant under the trees to
+which he was now hastening, and the fountain beside it, and the very
+sparrows balancing on the fountain's edge; he knew every waiter at
+each of the tables, he felt again the gravel crunching under his feet,
+he saw the _maître d'hôtel_ coming forward smiling to receive his
+command, and the waiter in the green apron bowing at his elbow,
+deferential and important, presenting the list of wines. But his
+adventure never passed that point, for he was captured again and once
+more bound to his cot with a close burning sheet.
+
+Or else, he drove more sedately through the London streets in the late
+evening twilight, leaning expectantly across the doors of the hansom
+and pulling carefully at his white gloves. Other hansoms flashed past
+him, the occupant of each with his mind fixed on one idea--dinner. He
+was one of a million of people who were about to dine, or who had
+dined, or who were deep in dining. He was so famished, so weak for
+food of any quality, that the galloping horse in the hansom seemed to
+crawl. The lights of the Embankment passed like the lamps of a
+railroad station as seen from the window of an express; and while his
+mind was still torn between the choice of a thin or thick soup or an
+immediate attack upon cold beef, he was at the door, and the
+_chasseur_ touched his cap, and the little _chasseur_ put
+the wicker guard over the hansom's wheel. As he jumped out he said,
+"Give him half-a-crown," and the driver called after him, "Thank you,
+sir."
+
+It was a beautiful world, this world outside of the iron bars. Every
+one in it contributed to his pleasure and to his comfort. In this
+world he was not starved nor man-handled. He thought of this joyfully
+as he leaped up the stairs, where young men with grave faces and with
+their hands held negligently behind their backs bowed to him in polite
+surprise at his speed. But they had not been starved on condensed
+milk. He threw his coat and hat at one of them, and came down the hall
+fearfully and quite weak with dread lest it should not be real. His
+voice was shaking when he asked Ellis if he had reserved a table. The
+place was all so real, it must be true this time. The way Ellis turned
+and ran his finger down the list showed it was real, because Ellis
+always did that, even when he knew there would not be an empty table
+for an hour. The room was crowded with beautiful women; under the
+light of the red shades they looked kind and approachable, and there
+was food on every table, and iced drinks in silver buckets. It was
+with the joy of great relief that he heard Ellis say to his underling,
+"Numéro cinq, sur la terrace, un couvert." It was real at last.
+Outside, the Thames lay a great gray shadow. The lights of the
+Embankment flashed and twinkled across it, the tower of the House of
+Commons rose against the sky, and here, inside, the waiter was
+hurrying toward him carrying a smoking plate of rich soup with a
+pungent, intoxicating odor.
+
+And then the ragged palms, the glaring sun, the immovable peaks, and
+the white surf stood again before him. The iron rails swept up and
+sank again, the fever sucked at his bones, and the pillow scorched his
+cheek.
+
+One morning for a brief moment he came back to real life again and lay
+quite still, seeing everything about him with clear eyes and for the
+first time, as though he had but just that instant been lifted over
+the ship's side. His keeper, glancing up, found the prisoner's eyes
+considering him curiously, and recognized the change. The instinct of
+discipline brought him to his feet with his fingers at his sides.
+
+"Is the Lieutenant feeling better?"
+
+The Lieutenant surveyed him gravely.
+
+"You are one of our hospital stewards."
+
+"Yes, Lieutenant."
+
+"Why ar'n't you with the regiment?"
+
+"I was wounded, too, sir. I got it same time you did, Lieutenant."
+
+"Am I wounded? Of course, I remember. Is this a hospital ship?"
+
+The steward shrugged his shoulders. "She's one of the transports. They
+have turned her over to the fever cases."
+
+The Lieutenant opened his lips to ask another question; but his own
+body answered that one, and for a moment he lay silent.
+
+"Do they know up North that I--that I'm all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, the papers had it in--there was pictures of the Lieutenant
+in some of them."
+
+"Then I've been ill some time?"
+
+"Oh, about eight days."
+
+The soldier moved uneasily, and the nurse in him became uppermost.
+
+"I guess the Lieutenant hadn't better talk any more," he said. It was
+his voice now which held authority.
+
+The Lieutenant looked out at the palms and the silent gloomy mountains
+and the empty coast-line, where the same wave was rising and falling
+with weary persistence.
+
+"Eight days," he said. His eyes shut quickly, as though with a sudden
+touch of pain. He turned his head and sought for the figure at the
+foot of the cot. Already the figure had grown faint and was receding
+and swaying.
+
+"Has any one written or cabled?" the Lieutenant spoke, hurriedly. He
+was fearful lest the figure should disappear altogether before he
+could obtain his answer. "Has any one come?"
+
+"Why, they couldn't get here, Lieutenant, not yet."
+
+The voice came very faintly. "You go to sleep now, and I'll run and
+fetch some letters and telegrams. When you wake up, maybe I'll have a
+lot for you."
+
+But the Lieutenant caught the nurse by the wrist, and crushed his hand
+in his own thin fingers. They were hot, and left the steward's skin
+wet with perspiration. The Lieutenant laughed gayly.
+
+"You see, Doctor," he said, briskly, "that you can't kill me. I can't
+die. I've got to live, you understand. Because, sir, she said she
+would come. She said if I was wounded, or if I was ill, she would come
+to me. She didn't care what people thought. She would come anyway and
+nurse me--well, she will come.
+
+"So, Doctor--old man--" He plucked at the steward's sleeve, and
+stroked his hand eagerly, "old man--" he began again, beseechingly,
+"you'll not let me die until she comes, will you? What? No, I know I
+won't die. Nothing made by man can kill me. No, not until she comes.
+Then, after that--eight days, she'll be here soon, any moment? What?
+You think so, too? Don't you? Surely, yes, any moment. Yes, I'll go to
+sleep now, and when you see her rowing out from shore you wake me.
+You'll know her; you can't make a mistake. She is like--no, there is
+no one like her--but you can't make a mistake."
+
+That day strange figures began to mount the sides of the ship, and to
+occupy its every turn and angle of space. Some of them fell on their
+knees and slapped the bare decks with their hands, and laughed and
+cried out, "Thank God, I'll see God's country again!" Some of them
+were regulars, bound in bandages; some were volunteers, dirty and
+hollow-eyed, with long beards on boy's faces. Some came on crutches;
+others with their arms around the shoulders of their comrades, staring
+ahead of them with a fixed smile, their lips drawn back and their
+teeth protruding. At every second step they stumbled, and the face of
+each was swept by swift ripples of pain.
+
+They lay on cots so close together that the nurses could not walk
+between them. They lay on the wet decks, in the scuppers, and along
+the transoms and hatches. They were like shipwrecked mariners clinging
+to a raft, and they asked nothing more than that the ship's bow be
+turned toward home. Once satisfied as to that, they relaxed into a
+state of self-pity and miserable oblivion to their environment, from
+which hunger nor nausea nor aching bones could shake them.
+
+The hospital steward touched the Lieutenant lightly on the shoulder.
+
+"We are going North, sir," he said. "The transport's ordered North to
+New York, with these volunteers and the sick and wounded. Do you hear
+me, sir?"
+
+The Lieutenant opened his eyes. "Has she come?" he asked.
+
+"Gee!" exclaimed the hospital steward. He glanced impatiently at the
+blue mountains and the yellow coast, from which the transport was
+drawing rapidly away.
+
+"Well, I can't see her coming just now," he said. "But she will," he
+added.
+
+"You let me know at once when she comes."
+
+"Why, cert'nly, of course," said the steward.
+
+Three trained nurses came over the side just before the transport
+started North. One was a large, motherly looking woman, with a German
+accent. She had been a trained nurse, first in Berlin, and later in
+the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and at Bellevue. The nurse was
+dressed in white, and wore a little silver medal at her throat; and
+she was strong enough to lift a volunteer out of his cot and hold him
+easily in her arms, while one of the convalescents pulled his cot out
+of the rain. Some of the men called her "nurse"; others, who wore
+scapulars around their necks, called her "Sister"; and the officers of
+the medical staff addressed her as Miss Bergen.
+
+Miss Bergen halted beside the cot of the Lieutenant and asked, "Is
+this the fever case you spoke about, Doctor--the one you want moved to
+the officers' ward?" She slipped her hand up under his sleeve and felt
+his wrist.
+
+"His pulse is very high," she said to the steward. "When did you take
+his temperature?" She drew a little morocco case from her pocket and
+from that took a clinical thermometer, which she shook up and down,
+eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal scrutiny. The
+Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the white figure beside
+his cot. His eyes opened and then shut quickly, with a startled look,
+in which doubt struggled with wonderful happiness. His hand stole out
+fearfully and warily until it touched her apron, and then, finding it
+was real, he clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body
+toward her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and
+pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips. He put them from
+him for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.
+
+"Sweetheart," he whispered, "sweetheart, I knew you'd come."
+
+As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer slipped
+from her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation of annoyance.
+The young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed them overboard.
+Neither of them spoke, but they smiled appreciatively. The Lieutenant
+was looking at the nurse with the wonder and hope and hunger of soul
+in his eyes with which a dying man looks at the cross the priest holds
+up before him. What he saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a
+tall, fair girl with great bands and masses of hair, with a head
+rising like a lily from a firm, white throat, set on broad shoulders
+above a straight back and sloping breast--a tall, beautiful creature,
+half-girl, half-woman, who looked back at him shyly, but steadily.
+
+"Listen," he said.
+
+The voice of the sick man was so sure and so sane that the young
+Doctor started, and moved nearer to the head of the cot. "Listen,
+dearest," the Lieutenant whispered. "I wanted to tell you before I
+came South. But I did not dare; and then I was afraid something might
+happen to me, and I could never tell you, and you would never know. So
+I wrote it to you in the will I made at Baiquiri, the night before the
+landing. If you hadn't come now, you would have learned it in that
+way. You would have read there that there never was any one but you;
+the rest were all dream people, foolish, silly--mad. There is no one
+else in the world but you; you have been the only thing in life that
+has counted. I thought I might do something down here that would make
+you care. But I got shot going up a hill, and after that I wasn't able
+to do anything. It was very hot, and the hills were on fire; and they
+took me prisoner, and kept me tied down here, burning on these coals.
+I can't live much longer, but now that I have told you I can have
+peace. They tried to kill me before you came; but they didn't know I
+loved you, they didn't know that men who love you can't die. They
+tried to starve my love for you, to burn it out of me; they tried to
+reach it with their knives. But my love for you is my soul, and they
+can't kill a man's soul. Dear heart, I have lived because you lived.
+Now that you know--now that you understand--what does it matter?"
+
+Miss Bergen shook her head with great vigor. "Nonsense," she said,
+cheerfully. "You are not going to die. As soon as we move you out of
+this rain, and some food cook--"
+
+"Good God!" cried the young Doctor, savagely. "Do you want to kill
+him?"
+
+When she spoke, the patient had thrown his arms heavily across his
+face, and had fallen back, lying rigid on the pillow.
+
+The Doctor led the way across the prostrate bodies, apologizing as he
+went. "I am sorry I spoke so quickly," he said, "but he thought you
+were real. I mean he thought you were some one he really knew--"
+
+"He was just delirious," said the German nurse, calmly.
+
+The Doctor mixed himself a Scotch and soda and drank it with a single
+gesture.
+
+"Ugh!" he said to the ward-room. "I feel as though I'd been opening
+another man's letters."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The transport drove through the empty seas with heavy, clumsy
+upheavals, rolling like a buoy. Having been originally intended for
+the freight-carrying trade, she had no sympathy with hearts that beat
+for a sight of their native land, or for lives that counted their
+remaining minutes by the throbbing of her engines. Occasionally,
+without apparent reason, she was thrown violently from her course; but
+it was invariably the case that when her stern went to starboard,
+something splashed in the water on her port side and drifted past her,
+until, when it had cleared the blades of her propeller, a voice cried
+out, and she was swung back on her home-bound track again.
+
+The Lieutenant missed the familiar palms and the tiny block-house; and
+seeing nothing beyond the iron rails but great wastes of gray water,
+he decided he was on board a prison-ship, or that he had been strapped
+to a raft and cast adrift. People came for hours at a time and stood
+at the foot of his cot, and talked with him and he to them--people he
+had loved and people he had long forgotten, some of whom he had
+thought were dead. One of them he could have sworn he had seen buried
+in a deep trench, and covered with branches of palmetto. He had heard
+the bugler, with tears choking him, sound "taps"; and with his own
+hand he had placed the dead man's campaign hat on the mound of fresh
+earth above the grave. Yet here he was still alive, and he came with
+other men of his troop to speak to him; but when he reached out to
+them they were gone--the real and the unreal, the dead and the
+living--and even She disappeared whenever he tried to take her hand,
+and sometimes the hospital steward drove her away.
+
+"Did that young lady say when she was coming back again?" he asked the
+steward.
+
+"The young lady! What young lady?" asked the steward, wearily.
+
+"The one who has been sitting there," he answered. He pointed with his
+gaunt hand at the man in the next cot.
+
+"Oh, that young lady. Yes, she's coming back. She's just gone below to
+fetch you some hardtack."
+
+The young volunteer in the next cot whined grievously.
+
+"That crazy man gives me the creeps," he groaned. "He's always waking
+me up, and looking at me as though he was going to eat me."
+
+"Shut your head," said the steward. "He's a better crazy man than
+you'll ever be with the little sense you've got. And he has two Mauser
+holes in him. Crazy, eh? It's a damned good thing for you that there
+was about four thousand of us regulars just as crazy as him, or you'd
+never seen the top of the hill."
+
+One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the
+convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their
+pajamas, and pointed one way. The transport was moving swiftly and
+smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise
+with her steam-whistle. The noise was echoed by many more
+steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and
+excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared,
+saluting joyously. All of the excursion steamers had a heavy list to
+the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them crowded to that
+rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered. The fog lifted suddenly, and
+between the iron rails the Lieutenant saw high green hills on either
+side of a great harbor. Houses and trees and thousands of masts swept
+past like a panorama; and beyond was a mirage of three cities, with
+curling smoke-wreaths and sky-reaching buildings, and a great swinging
+bridge, and a giant statue of a woman waving a welcome home.
+
+The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief. He was
+far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it. In his heart
+he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and shouted, and
+climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines. He had been deceived too
+often not to know that it was not real. He knew from cruel experience
+that in a few moments the tall buildings would crumble away, the
+thousands of columns of white smoke that flashed like snow in the sun,
+the busy, shrieking tug-boats, and the great statue would vanish into
+the sea, leaving it gray and bare. He closed his eyes and shut the
+vision out. It was so beautiful that it tempted him; but he would not
+be mocked, and he buried his face in his hands. They were carrying the
+farce too far, he thought. It was really too absurd; for now they were
+at a wharf which was so real that, had he not known by previous
+suffering, he would have been utterly deceived by it. And there were
+great crowds of smiling, cheering people, and a waiting guard of honor
+in fresh uniforms, and rows of police pushing the people this way and
+that; and these men about him were taking it all quite seriously, and
+making ready to disembark, carrying their blanket-rolls and rifles
+with them.
+
+A band was playing joyously, and the man in the next cot, who was
+being lifted to a stretcher, said, "There's the Governor and his
+staff; that's him in the high hat." It was really very well done. The
+Custom-House and the Elevated Railroad and Castle Garden were as like
+to life as a photograph, and the crowd was as well handled as a mob in
+a play. His heart ached for it so that he could not bear the pain, and
+he turned his back on it. It was cruel to keep it up so long. His
+keeper lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty uniform
+which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man--a man who had
+been killed probably, for there were dark brown marks of blood on the
+tunic and breeches. When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle Garden
+and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night, just as he knew
+they would; but when he opened his eyes from the stretcher, they had
+returned again. It was a most remarkably vivid vision. They kept it up
+so well. Now the young Doctor and the hospital steward were pretending
+to carry him down a gangplank and into an open space; and he saw quite
+close to him a long line policemen, and behind them thousands of
+faces, some of them women's faces--women who pointed at him and then
+shook their heads and cried, and pressed their hands to their cheeks,
+still looking at him. He wondered why they cried. He did not know
+them, nor did they know him. No one knew him; these people were only
+ghosts.
+
+There was a quick parting in the crowd. A man he had once known shoved
+two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl's voice speaking
+his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the open space
+and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down over him,
+and he was clasped in two young, firm arms.
+
+"Of course it is not real, of course it is not She," he assured
+himself. "Because She would not do such a thing. Before all these
+people She would not do it."
+
+But he trembled and his heart throbbed so cruelly that he could not
+bear the pain.
+
+She was pretending to cry.
+
+"They wired us you had started for Tampa on the hospital ship," She
+was saying, "and Aunt and I went all the way there before we heard you
+had been sent North. We have been on the cars a week. That is why I
+missed you. Do you understand? It was not my fault. I tried to come.
+Indeed, I tried to come."
+
+She turned her head and looked up fearfully at the young Doctor.
+
+"Tell me, why does he look at me like that?" she asked. "He doesn't
+know me. Is he very ill? Tell me the truth." She drew in her breath
+quickly. "Of course you will tell me the truth."
+
+When she asked the question he felt her arms draw tight about his
+shoulders. It was as though she was holding him to herself, and from
+some one who had reached out for him. In his trouble he turned to his
+old friend and keeper. His voice was hoarse and very low.
+
+"Is this the same young lady who was on the transport--the one you
+used to drive away?"
+
+In his embarrassment, the hospital steward blushed under his tan, and
+stammered.
+
+"Of course it's the same young lady," the Doctor answered, briskly.
+"And I won't let them drive her away." He turned to her, smiling
+gravely. "I think his condition has ceased to be dangerous, madam," he
+said.
+
+People who in a former existence had been his friends, and Her
+brother, gathered about his stretcher and bore him through the crowd
+and lifted him into a carriage filled with cushions, among which he
+sank lower and lower. Then She sat beside him, and he heard Her
+brother say to the coachman, "Home, and drive slowly and keep on the
+asphalt."
+
+The carriage moved forward, and She put her arm about him, and his
+head fell on her shoulder, and neither of them spoke. The vision had
+lasted so long now that he was torn with the joy that after all it
+might be real. But he could not bear the awakening if it were not, so
+he raised his head fearfully and looked up into the beautiful eyes
+above him. His brows were knit, and he struggled with a great doubt
+and an awful joy.
+
+"Dearest," he said, "is it real?"
+
+"Is it real?" she repeated.
+
+Even as a dream, it was so wonderfully beautiful that he was satisfied
+if it could only continue so, if but for a little while.
+
+"Do you think," he begged again, trembling, "that it is going to last
+much longer?"
+
+She smiled, and, bending her head slowly, kissed him.
+
+"It is going to last--always," she said.
+
+
+
+
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+
+
+Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in Jermyn
+Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course, turned into
+lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss was a Florist to
+the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his flower-shop, just in
+front of the middle window on the first floor. By stretching a little,
+each of them could see into the window just beyond him, and could hear
+all that was said inside; and such things as they saw and heard during
+the reign of Captain Carrington, who moved in at the same time they
+did! By day the table in the centre of the room was covered with maps,
+and the Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags
+wrapped around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the maps
+and measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to himself. It
+was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the Captain's only
+intellectual pursuit, for at night the maps were rolled up, and a
+green cloth was spread across the table, and there was much company
+and popping of soda-bottles, and little heaps of gold and silver were
+moved this way and that across the cloth. The smoke drifted out of the
+open windows, and the laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly
+in the empty street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
+reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath them
+and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the Captain's guests
+to depart. The Lion and the Unicorn were rather ashamed of the scandal
+of it, and they were glad when, one day, the Captain went away with
+his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high on a four-wheeler.
+
+Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said, "I wish you good luck, sir."
+And the Captain said, "I'm coming back a Major, Prentiss." But he
+never came back. And one day--the Lion remembered the day very well,
+for on that same day the newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street
+shouting out the news of "a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms. It
+was then that a young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss
+went out to meet her and led her up-stairs. They heard him unlock the
+Captain's door and say, "This is his room, miss," and after he had
+gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre-table. She
+stood there a very long time looking slowly about her, and then she
+took a photograph of the Captain from the frame on the mantel and
+slipped it into her pocket, and when she went out again her veil was
+down, and she was crying. She must have given Prentiss as much as a
+sovereign, for he called her "Your ladyship," which he never did under
+a sovereign.
+
+And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could they
+hear the address she gave the cabman. But it was somewhere up St.
+John's Wood way.
+
+After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and the
+Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful ladies and
+smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy flowers-and
+"buttonholes," and the little round baskets of strawberries, and even
+the peaches at three shillings each, which looked so tempting as they
+lay in the window, wrapped up in cotton-wool, like jewels of great
+price.
+
+Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
+Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five guineas
+a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew that in the
+economy of nations there must always be a higher price for the rich
+American, or else why was he given that strange accent, except to
+betray him into the hands of the London shopkeeper, and the London
+cabby?
+
+The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the
+window nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St.
+James's Church, that stretched between their street and Piccadilly.
+
+"You're lucky in having a bit of green to look out on," he said to
+Prentiss. "I'll take these rooms--at five guineas. That's more than
+they're worth, you know, but as I know it, too, your conscience
+needn't trouble you."
+
+Then his eyes fell on the Lion, and he nodded to him gravely. "How do
+you do?" he said. "I'm coming to live with you for a little time. I
+have read about you and your friends over there. It is a hazard of new
+fortunes with me, your Majesty, so be kind to me, and if I win, I will
+put a new coat of paint on your shield and gild you all over again."
+
+Prentiss smiled obsequiously at the American's pleasantry, but the new
+lodger only stared at him.
+
+"He seemed a social gentleman," said the Unicorn, that night, when the
+Lion and he were talking it over. "Now the Captain, the whole time he
+was here, never gave us so much as a look. This one says he has read
+of us."
+
+"And why not?" growled the Lion. "I hope Prentiss heard what he said
+of our needing a new layer of gilt. It's disgraceful. You can see that
+Lion over Scarlett's, the butcher, as far as Regent Street, and
+Scarlett is only one of Salisbury's creations. He received his
+Letters-Patent only two years back. We date from Palmerston."
+
+The lodger came up the street just at that moment, and stopped and
+looked up at the Lion and the Unicorn from the sidewalk, before he
+opened the door with his night-key. They heard him enter the room and
+feel on the mantel for his pipe, and a moment later he appeared at the
+Lion's window and leaned on the sill, looking down into the street
+below and blowing whiffs of smoke up into the warm night-air.
+
+It was a night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and the
+streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from the
+play, and with groups of men in black and white, making their way to
+supper at the clubs. Hansoms of inky-black, with shining lamps inside
+and out, dashed noiselessly past on mysterious errands, chasing close
+on each other's heels on a mad race, each to its separate goal. From
+the cross streets rose the noises of early night, the rumble of the
+'buses, the creaking of their brakes as they unlocked, the cries of
+the "extras," and the merging of thousands of human voices in a dull
+murmur. The great world of London was closing its shutters for the
+night and putting out the lights; and the new lodger from across the
+sea listened to it with his heart beating quickly, and laughed to
+stifle the touch of fear and homesickness that rose in him.
+
+"I have seen a great play to-night," he said to the Lion, "nobly
+played by great players. What will they care for my poor wares? I see
+that I have been over-bold. But we cannot go back now--not yet."
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded "good-night" to the
+great world beyond his window. "What fortunes lie with ye, ye lights
+of London town?" he quoted, smiling. And they heard him close the door
+of his bedroom, and lock it for the night.
+
+The next morning he bought many geraniums from Prentiss and placed
+them along the broad cornice that stretched across the front of the
+house over the shop-window. The flowers made a band of scarlet on
+either side of the Lion as brilliant as a Tommy's jacket.
+
+"I am trying to propitiate the British Lion by placing flowers before
+his altar," the American said that morning to a visitor.
+
+"The British public, you mean," said the visitor; "they are each
+likely to tear you to pieces."
+
+"Yes, I have heard that the pit on the first night of a bad play is
+something awful," hazarded the American.
+
+"Wait and see," said the visitor.
+
+"Thank you," said the American, meekly.
+
+Every one who came to the first floor front talked about a play. It
+seemed to be something of great moment to the American. It was only a
+bundle of leaves printed in red and black inks and bound in brown
+paper covers. There were two of them, and the American called them by
+different names: one was his comedy and one was his tragedy.
+
+"They are both likely to be tragedies," the Lion heard one of the
+visitors say to another, as they drove away together. "Our young
+friend takes it too seriously."
+
+The American spent most of his time by his desk at the window writing
+on little blue pads and tearing up what he wrote, or in reading over
+one of the plays to himself in a loud voice. In time the number of his
+visitors increased, and to some of these he would read his play; and
+after they had left him he was either depressed and silent or excited
+and jubilant. The Lion could always tell when he was happy because
+then he would go to the side table and pour himself out a drink and
+say, "Here's to me," but when he was depressed he would stand holding
+the glass in his hand, and finally pour the liquor back into the
+bottle again and say, "What's the use of that?"
+
+After he had been in London a month he wrote less and was more
+frequently abroad, sallying forth in beautiful raiment, and coming
+home by daylight.
+
+And he gave suppers, too, but they were less noisy than the Captain's
+had been, and the women who came to them were much more beautiful, and
+their voices when they spoke were sweet and low. Sometimes one of the
+women sang, and the men sat in silence while the people in the street
+below stopped to listen, and would say, "Why, that is So-and-So
+singing," and the Lion and the Unicorn wondered how they could know
+who it was when they could not see her.
+
+The lodger's visitors came to see him at all hours. They seemed to
+regard his rooms as a club, where they could always come for a bite to
+eat or to write notes; and others treated it like a lawyer's office
+and asked advice on all manner of strange subjects. Sometimes the
+visitor wanted to know whether the American thought she ought to take
+£10 a week and go on tour, or stay in town and try to live on £8; or
+whether she should paint landscapes that would not sell, or
+race-horses that would; or whether Reggie really loved her and whether
+she really loved Reggie; or whether the new part in the piece at the
+Court was better than the old part at Terry's, and wasn't she getting
+too old to play "ingenues" anyway.
+
+The lodger seemed to be a general adviser, and smoked and listened
+with grave consideration, and the Unicorn thought his judgment was
+most sympathetic and sensible.
+
+Of all the beautiful ladies who came to call on the lodger the one the
+Unicorn liked the best was the one who wanted to know whether she
+loved Reggie and whether Reggie loved her. She discussed this so
+interestingly while she consumed tea and thin slices of bread that the
+Unicorn almost lost his balance in leaning forward to listen. Her name
+was Marion Cavendish, and it was written over many photographs which
+stood in silver frames in the lodger's rooms. She used to make the tea
+herself, while the lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating
+way of doubling the thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling
+at them like a mouse at a piece of cheese. She had wonderful little
+teeth and Cupid's-bow lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her veil
+only high enough for one to see the two Cupid's-bow lips. When she did
+that the American used to laugh, at nothing apparently, and say, "Oh,
+I guess Reggie loves you well enough."
+
+"But do I love Reggie?" she would ask, sadly, with her teacup held
+poised in air.
+
+[Illustration: Consumed tea and thin slices of bread.]
+
+"I am sure I hope not," the lodger would reply, and she would put down
+the veil quickly, as one would drop a curtain over a beautiful
+picture, and rise with great dignity and say, "If you talk like that I
+shall not come again."
+
+She was sure that if she could only get some work to do her head would
+be filled with more important matters than whether Reggie loved her or
+not.
+
+"But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine just
+at present," she said. "If I don't get a part soon," she announced, "I
+shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for recitations at
+evening parties."
+
+"That seems a desperate revenge," said the American; "and besides, I
+don't want you to get a part, because some one might be idiotic enough
+to take my comedy, and if he should, you must play _Nancy_."
+
+"I would not ask for any salary if I could play _Nancy_," Miss
+Cavendish answered.
+
+They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by her
+saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to see that
+his play was a great play, and by his saying that none but she must
+play _Nancy_.
+
+The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown hair,
+who came from America to paint miniatures of the British aristocracy.
+Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave
+and fearless, and so determined to be independent of every one, even
+of the lodger--especially of the lodger, who, it appeared, had known
+her very well at home. The lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to
+be independent of him, and the two Americans had many arguments and
+disputes about it, but she always said, "It does no good, Philip; it
+only hurts us both when you talk so. I care for nothing, and for no
+one but my art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you
+do not, and, of course, the man I am to marry must." Then Carroll
+would talk, walking up and down, and looking very fierce and
+determined, and telling her how he loved her in such a way that it
+made her look even more proud and beautiful. And she would say more
+gently, "It is very fine to think that any one can care for me like
+that, and very helpful. But unless I cared in the same way it would be
+wicked of me to marry you, and besides--" She would add very quickly
+to prevent his speaking again--"I don't want to marry you or anybody,
+and I never shall. I want to be free and to succeed in my work, just
+as you want to succeed in your work. So please never speak of this
+again." When she went away the lodger used to sit smoking in the big
+arm-chair and beat the arms with his hands, and he would pace up and
+down the room, while his work would lie untouched and his engagements
+pass forgotten.
+
+Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the lodger
+stayed on in Jermyn Street. Helen Cabot had departed on a round of
+visits to country-houses in Scotland, where, as she wrote him, she was
+painting miniatures of her hosts and studying the game of golf. Miss
+Cavendish divided her days between the river and one of the West End
+theatres. She was playing a small part in a farce-comedy.
+
+One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very
+beautiful in a white boating-frock and a straw hat with a Leander
+ribbon. Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting-hole, and
+she was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
+
+"Why don't you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?" Miss
+Cavendish asked. "You need it; you look ill."
+
+"I'd like to, but I can't," said Carroll. "The fact is, I paid in
+advance for these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I'd be losing
+five guineas a week on them."
+
+Miss Cavendish regarded him severely. She had never quite mastered his
+American humor.
+
+"But--five guineas--why, that's nothing to you," she said. Something
+in the lodger's face made her pause. "You don't mean--"
+
+"Yes, I do," said the lodger, smiling. "You see, I started in to lay
+siege to London without sufficient ammunition. London is a large town,
+and it didn't fall as quickly as I thought it would. So I am
+economizing. Mr. Lockhart's Coffee Rooms and I are no longer
+strangers."
+
+Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward him.
+
+"Are you in earnest?" she asked. "For how long?"
+
+"Oh, for the last month," replied the lodger; "they are not at all
+bad--clean and wholesome and all that."
+
+"But the suppers you gave us, and this," she cried, suddenly, waving
+her hands over the pretty tea-things, "and the cake and muffins?"
+
+"My friends, at least," said Carroll, "need not go to Lockhart's."
+
+"And the Savoy?" asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her head. "A
+dream of the past," said Carroll, waving his pipe through the smoke.
+"Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity the
+Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old
+England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence--a pot of bitter
+twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's most amusing on
+the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about
+myself. They are both most interesting subjects."
+
+"Well, I don't like it," Miss Cavendish declared, helplessly. "When I
+think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel--I feel like a robber."
+
+"Don't," begged Carroll. "I am really the most happy of men--that is,
+as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so damned
+miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets--I have £80 to
+last me through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next
+to yourself, the most wonderful woman God ever made. That's enough."
+
+"But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?" asked Miss
+Cavendish.
+
+"I do--that is, I could," answered Carroll, "if I wrote the things
+that sell; but I keep on writing plays that won't."
+
+"And such plays!" exclaimed Marion, warmly; "and to think that they
+are going begging!" She continued, indignantly, "I can't imagine what
+the managers do want."
+
+"I know what they don't want," said the American. Miss Cavendish
+drummed impatiently on the tea-tray.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't be so abject about it," she said. "If I were a
+man I'd make them take those plays."
+
+"How?" asked the American; "with a gun?"
+
+"Well, I'd keep at it until they read them," declared Marion. "I'd sit
+on their front steps all night and I'd follow them in cabs, and I'd
+lie in wait for them at the stage-door. I'd just make them take them."
+
+Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling. "I guess I'll give up and go
+home," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, do, run away before you are beaten," said Miss Cavendish,
+scornfully. "Why, you can't go now. Everybody will be back in town
+soon, and there are a lot of new plays coming on, and some of them are
+sure to be failures, and that's our chance. You rush in with your
+piece, and somebody may take it sooner than close the theatre."
+
+"I'm thinking of closing the theatre myself," said Carroll. "What's
+the use of my hanging on here?" he exclaimed. "It distresses Helen to
+know I am in London, feeling about her as I do--and the Lord only
+knows how it distresses me. And, maybe, if I went away," he said,
+consciously, "she might miss me. She might see the difference."
+
+Miss Cavendish held herself erect and pressed her lips together with a
+severe smile. "If Helen Cabot doesn't see the difference between you
+and the other men she knows now," she said, "I doubt if she ever will.
+Besides--" she continued, and then hesitated.
+
+"Well, go on," urged Carroll.
+
+"Well, I was only going to say," she explained, "that leaving the girl
+alone never did the man any good unless he left her alone willingly.
+If she's sure he still cares, it's just the same to her where he is.
+He might as well stay on in London as go to South Africa. It won't
+help him any. The difference comes when she finds he has stopped
+caring. Why, look at Reggie. He tried that. He went away for ever so
+long, but he kept writing me from wherever he went, so that he was
+perfectly miserable--and I went on enjoying myself. Then when he came
+back, he tried going about with his old friends again. He used to come
+to the theatre with them--oh, with such nice girls!--but he always
+stood in the back of the box and yawned and scowled--so I knew. And,
+anyway, he'd always spoil it all by leaving them and waiting at the
+stage entrance for me. But one day he got tired of the way I treated
+him and went off on a bicycle-tour with Lady Hacksher's girls and some
+men from his regiment, and he was gone three weeks, and never sent me
+even a line; and I got so scared; I couldn't sleep, and I stood it for
+three days more, and then I wired him to come back or I'd jump off
+London Bridge; and he came back that very night from Edinburgh on the
+express, and I was so glad to see him that I got confused, and in the
+general excitement I promised to marry him, so that's how it was with
+us."
+
+"Yes," said the American, without enthusiasm; "but then I still care,
+and Helen knows I care."
+
+"Doesn't she ever fancy that you might care for some one else? You
+have a lot of friends, you know."
+
+"Yes, but she knows they are just that--friends," said the American.
+
+Miss Cavendish stood up to go, and arranged her veil before the mirror
+above the fireplace.
+
+"I come here very often to tea," she said.
+
+"It's very kind of you," said Carroll. He was at the open window,
+looking down into the street for a cab.
+
+"Well, no one knows I am engaged to Reggie," continued Miss Cavendish,
+"except you and Reggie, and he isn't so sure. _She_ doesn't know
+it."
+
+"Well?" said Carroll.
+
+Miss Cavendish smiled a mischievous, kindly smile at him from the
+mirror.
+
+"Well?" she repeated, mockingly. Carroll stared at her and laughed.
+After a pause he said: "It's like a plot in a comedy. But I'm afraid
+I'm too serious for play-acting."
+
+"Yes, it is serious," said Miss Cavendish. She seated herself again
+and regarded the American thoughtfully. "You are too good a man to be
+treated the way that girl is treating you, and no one knows it better
+than she does. She'll change in time, but just now she thinks she
+wants to be independent. She's in love with this picture-painting
+idea, and with the people she meets. It's all new to her--the fuss
+they make over her and the titles, and the way she is asked about. We
+know she can't paint. We know they only give her commissions because
+she's so young and pretty, and American. She amuses them, that's all.
+Well, that cannot last; she'll find it out. She's too clever a girl,
+and she is too fine a girl to be content with that long. Then--then
+she'll come back to you. She feels now that she has both you and the
+others, and she's making you wait; so wait and be cheerful. She's
+worth waiting for; she's young, that's all. She'll see the difference
+in time. But, in the meanwhile, it would hurry matters a bit if she
+thought she had to choose between the new friends and you."
+
+"She could still keep her friends and marry me," said Carroll; "I have
+told her that a hundred times. She could still paint miniatures and
+marry me. But she won't marry me."
+
+"She won't marry you because she knows she can whenever she wants to,"
+cried Marion. "Can't you see that? But if she thought you were going
+to marry some one else now?"
+
+"She would be the first to congratulate me," said Carroll. He rose and
+walked to the fireplace, where he leaned with his arm on the mantel.
+There was a photograph of Helen Cabot near his hand, and he turned
+this toward him and stood for some time staring at it. "My dear
+Marion," he said at last, "I've known Helen ever since she was as
+young as that. Every year I've loved her more, and found new things in
+her to care for; now I love her more than any other man ever loved any
+other woman."
+
+Miss Cavendish shook her head sympathetically.
+
+"Yes, I know," she said; "that's the way Reggie loves me, too."
+
+Carroll went on as though he had not heard her.
+
+"There's a bench in St. James's Park," he said, "where we used to sit
+when she first came here, when she didn't know so many people. We used
+to go there in the morning and throw penny buns to the ducks. That's
+been my amusement this summer since you've all been away--sitting on
+that bench, feeding penny buns to the silly ducks--especially the
+black one, the one she used to like best. And I make pilgrimages to
+all the other places we ever visited together, and try to pretend she
+is with me. And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage
+because she once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other
+absurd things that a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to
+what end? She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we can't go
+on being friends as we once were. What's the use of it all?"
+
+"She is young, I tell you," repeated Miss Cavendish, "and she's too
+sure of you. You've told her you care; now try making her think you
+don't care."
+
+Carroll shook his head impatiently.
+
+"I will not stoop to such tricks and pretense, Marion," he cried,
+impatiently. "All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat and to
+trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded."
+
+Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door. "Such
+amateurs!" she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.
+
+Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of Miss
+Cavendish. Helen and he had met her when they first arrived in London,
+and as she had acted for a season in the United States, she adopted
+the two Americans--and told Helen where to go for boots and hats, and
+advised Carroll about placing his plays. Helen soon made other
+friends, and deserted the artists with whom her work had first thrown
+her. She seemed to prefer the society of the people who bought her
+paintings, and who admired and made much of the painter. As she was
+very beautiful and at an age when she enjoyed everything in life
+keenly and eagerly, to give her pleasure was in itself a distinct
+pleasure; and the worldly tired people she met were considering their
+own entertainment quite as much as hers when they asked her to their
+dinners and dances, or to spend a week with them in the country. In
+her way, she was as independent as was Carroll in his, and as she was
+not in love, as he was, her life was not narrowed down to but one
+ideal. But she was not so young as to consider herself infallible, and
+she had one excellent friend on whom she was dependent for advice and
+to whose directions she submitted implicitly. This was Lady Gower, the
+only person to whom Helen had spoken of Carroll and of his great
+feeling for her. Lady Gower, immediately after her marriage, had been
+a conspicuous and brilliant figure in that set in London which works
+eighteen hours a day to keep itself amused, but after the death of her
+husband she had disappeared into the country as completely as though
+she had entered a convent, and after several years had then re-entered
+the world as a professional philanthropist. Her name was now
+associated entirely with Women's Leagues, with committees that
+presented petitions to Parliament, and with public meetings, at which
+she spoke with marvellous ease and effect. Her old friends said she
+had taken up this new pose as an outlet for her nervous energies, and
+as an effort to forget the man who alone had made life serious to her.
+Others knew her as an earnest woman, acting honestly for what she
+thought was right. Her success, all admitted, was due to her knowledge
+of the world and to her sense of humor, which taught her with whom to
+use her wealth and position, and when to demand what she wanted solely
+on the ground that the cause was just.
+
+She had taken more than a fancy for Helen, and the position of the
+beautiful, motherless girl had appealed to her as one filled with
+dangers. When she grew to know Helen better, she recognized that these
+fears were quite unnecessary, and as she saw more of her she learned
+to care for her deeply. Helen had told her much of Carroll and of his
+double purpose in coming to London; of his brilliant work and his lack
+of success in having it recognized; and of his great and loyal
+devotion to her, and of his lack of success, not in having that
+recognized, but in her own inability to return it. Helen was proud
+that she had been able to make Carroll care for her as he did, and
+that there was anything about her which could inspire a man whom she
+admired so much to believe in her so absolutely and for so long a
+time. But what convinced her that the outcome for which he hoped was
+impossible, was the very fact that she could admire him, and see how
+fine and unselfish his love for her was, and yet remain untouched by
+it.
+
+She had been telling Lady Gower one day of the care he had taken of
+her ever since she was fourteen years of age, and had quoted some of
+the friendly and loverlike acts he had performed in her service, until
+one day they had both found out that his attitude of the elder brother
+was no longer possible, and that he loved her in the old and only way.
+Lady Gower looked at her rather doubtfully and smiled.
+
+"I wish you would bring him to see me, Helen," she said; "I think I
+should like your friend very much. From what you tell me of him I
+doubt if you will find many such men waiting for you in this country.
+Our men marry for reasons of property, or they love blindly, and are
+exacting and selfish before and after they are married. I know,
+because so many women came to me when my husband was alive to ask how
+it was that I continued so happy in my married life."
+
+"But I don't want to marry any one," Helen remonstrated, gently.
+"American girls are not always thinking only of getting married."
+
+"What I meant was this," said Lady Gower: "that, in my experience, I
+have heard of but few men who care in the way this young man seems to
+care for you. You say you do not love him; but if he had wanted to
+gain my interest, he could not have pleaded his cause better than you
+have done. He seems to see your faults and yet love you still, in
+spite of them--or on account of them. And I like the things he does
+for you. I like, for instance, his sending you the book of the moment
+every week for two years. That shows a most unswerving spirit of
+devotion. And the story of the broken bridge in the woods is a
+wonderful story. If I were a young girl, I could love a man for that
+alone. It was a beautiful thing to do."
+
+Helen sat with her chin on her hands, deeply considering this new
+point of view.
+
+"I thought it very foolish of him," she confessed, questioningly, "to
+take such a risk for such a little thing."
+
+Lady Gower smiled down at her from the height of her many years.
+
+"Wait," she said, dryly, "you are very young now--and very rich; every
+one is crowding to give you pleasure, to show his admiration. You are
+a very fortunate girl. But later, these things which some man has done
+because he loved you, and which you call foolish, will grow large in
+your life, and shine out strongly, and when you are discouraged and
+alone, you will take them out, and the memory of them will make you
+proud and happy. They are the honors which women wear in secret."
+
+Helen came back to town in September, and for the first few days was
+so occupied in refurnishing her studio and in visiting the shops that
+she neglected to send Carroll word of her return. When she found that
+a whole week had passed without her having made any effort to see him,
+and appreciated how the fact would hurt her friend, she was filled
+with remorse, and drove at once in great haste to Jermyn Street, to
+announce her return in person. On the way she decided that she would
+soften the blow of her week of neglect by asking him to take her out
+to luncheon. This privilege she had once or twice accorded him, and
+she felt that the pleasure these excursions gave Carroll were worth
+the consternation they caused to Lady Gower.
+
+The servant was uncertain whether Mr. Carroll was at home or not, but
+Helen was too intent upon making restitution to wait for the fact to
+be determined, and, running up the stairs, knocked sharply at the door
+of his study.
+
+A voice bade her come in, and she entered, radiant and smiling her
+welcome. But Carroll was not there to receive it, and, instead, Marion
+Cavendish looked up at her from his desk, where she was busily
+writing. Helen paused with a surprised laugh, but Marion sprang up and
+hailed her gladly. They met half-way across the room and kissed each
+other with the most friendly feeling.
+
+Philip was out, Marion said, and she had just stepped in for a moment
+to write him a note. If Helen would excuse her, she would finish it,
+as she was late for rehearsal.
+
+But she asked over her shoulder, with great interest, if Helen had
+passed a pleasant summer. She thought she had never seen her looking
+so well. Helen thought Miss Cavendish herself was looking very well
+also, but Marion said no; that she was too sunburnt, she would not be
+able to wear a dinner-dress for a month. There was a pause while
+Marion's quill scratched violently across Carroll's note-paper. Helen
+felt that in some way she was being treated as an intruder; or worse,
+as a guest. She did not sit down, it seemed impossible to do so, but
+she moved uncertainly about the room. She noted that there were many
+changes, it seemed more bare and empty; her picture was still on the
+writing-desk, but there were at least six new photographs of Marion.
+Marion herself had brought them to the room that morning, and had
+carefully arranged them in conspicuous places. But Helen could not
+know that. She thought there was an unnecessary amount of writing
+scribbled over the face of each.
+
+Marion addressed her letter and wrote "Immediate" across the envelope,
+and placed it before the clock on the mantel-shelf. "You will find
+Philip looking very badly," she said, as she pulled on her gloves. "He
+has been in town all summer, working very hard--he has had no holiday
+at all. I don't think he's well. I have been a great deal worried
+about him," she added. Her face was bent over the buttons of her
+glove, and when she raised her blue eyes to Helen they were filled
+with serious concern.
+
+"Really," Helen stammered, "I--I didn't know--in his letters he seemed
+very cheerful."
+
+Marion shook her head and turned and stood looking thoughtfully out of
+the window. "He's in a very hard place," she began, abruptly, and then
+stopped as though she had thought better of what she intended to say.
+Helen tried to ask her to go on, but could not bring herself to do so.
+She wanted to get away.
+
+"I tell him he ought to leave London," Marion began again; "he needs a
+change and a rest."
+
+"I should think he might," Helen agreed, "after three months of this
+heat. He wrote me he intended going to Herne Bay or over to Ostend."
+
+"Yes, he had meant to go," Marion answered. She spoke with the air of
+one who possessed the most intimate knowledge of Carroll's movements
+and plans, and change of plans. "But he couldn't," she added. "He
+couldn't afford it. Helen," she said, turning to the other girl,
+dramatically, "do you know--I believe that Philip is very poor."
+
+Miss Cabot exclaimed, incredulously, "Poor!" She laughed. "Why, what
+do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that he has no money," Marion answered, sharply. "These rooms
+represent nothing. He only keeps them on because he paid for them in
+advance. He's been living on three shillings a day. That's poor for
+him. He takes his meals at cabmen's shelters and at Lockhart's, and
+he's been doing so for a month."
+
+Helen recalled with a guilty thrill the receipt of certain boxes of La
+France roses--cut long, in the American fashion--which had arrived
+within the last month at various country-houses. She felt indignant at
+herself, and miserable. Her indignation was largely due to the
+recollection that she had given these flowers to her hostess to
+decorate the dinner-table.
+
+She hated to ask this girl of things which she should have known
+better than any one else. But she forced herself to do it. She felt
+she must know certainly and at once.
+
+"How do you know this?" she asked. "Are you sure there is no mistake?"
+
+"He told me himself," said Marion, "when he talked of letting the
+plays go and returning to America. He said he must go back; that his
+money was gone."
+
+"He is gone to America!" Helen said, blankly.
+
+"No, he wanted to go, but I wouldn't let him," Marion went on. "I told
+him that some one might take his play any day. And this third one he
+has written, the one he finished this summer in town, is the best of
+all, I think. It's a love-story. It's quite beautiful." She turned and
+arranged her veil at the glass, and as she did so, her eyes fell on
+the photographs of herself scattered over the mantel-piece, and she
+smiled slightly. But Helen did not see her--she was sitting down now,
+pulling at the books on the table. She was confused and disturbed by
+emotions which were quite strange to her, and when Marion bade her
+good-by she hardly noticed her departure. What impressed her most of
+all in what Marion had told her was, she was surprised to find, that
+Philip was going away. That she herself had frequently urged him to do
+so, for his own peace of mind, seemed now of no consequence. Now that
+he seriously contemplated it, she recognized that his absence meant to
+her a change in everything. She felt for the first time the peculiar
+place he held in her life. Even if she had seen him but seldom, the
+fact that he was within call had been more of a comfort and a
+necessity to her than she understood.
+
+That he was poor, concerned her chiefly because she knew that,
+although this condition could only be but temporary, it would distress
+him not to have his friends around him, and to entertain them as he
+had been used to do. She wondered eagerly if she might offer to help
+him, but a second thought assured her that, for a man, that sort of
+help from a woman was impossible.
+
+She resented the fact that Marion was deep in his confidence; that it
+was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and of his plans.
+It annoyed her so acutely that she could not remain in the room where
+she had seen her so complacently in possession. And after leaving a
+brief note for Philip, she went away. She stopped a hansom at the
+door, and told the man to drive along the Embankment--she wanted to be
+quite alone, and she felt she could see no one until she had thought
+it all out, and had analyzed the new feelings.
+
+So for several hours she drove slowly up and down, sunk far back in
+the cushions of the cab, and staring with unseeing eyes at the white,
+enamelled tariff and the black dash-board.
+
+She assured herself that she was not jealous of Marion, because, in
+order to be jealous, she first would have to care for Philip in the
+very way she could not bring herself to do.
+
+She decided that his interest in Marion hurt her, because it showed
+that Philip was not capable of remaining true to the one ideal of his
+life. She was sure that this explained her feelings--she was
+disappointed that he had not kept up to his own standard; that he was
+weak enough to turn aside from it for the first pretty pair of eyes.
+But she was too honest and too just to accept that diagnosis of her
+feelings as final--she knew there had been many pairs of eyes in
+America and in London, and that though Philip had seen them, he had
+not answered them when they spoke. No, she confessed frankly, she was
+hurt with herself for neglecting her old friend so selfishly and for
+so long a time; his love gave him claims on her consideration, at
+least, and she had forgotten that and him, and had run after strange
+gods and allowed others to come in and take her place, and to give him
+the sympathy and help which she should have been the first to offer,
+and which would have counted more when coming from her than from any
+one else. She determined to make amends at once for her
+thoughtlessness and selfishness, and her brain was pleasantly occupied
+with plans and acts of kindness. It was a new entertainment, and she
+found she delighted in it. She directed the cabman to go to
+Solomons's, and from there sent Philip a bunch of flowers and a line
+saying that on the following day she was coming to take tea with him.
+She had a guilty feeling that he might consider her friendly advances
+more seriously than she meant them, but it was her pleasure to be
+reckless: her feelings were running riotously, and the sensation was
+so new that she refused to be circumspect or to consider consequences.
+Who could tell, she asked herself with a quick, frightened gasp, but
+that, after all, it might be that she was learning to care? From
+Solomons's she bade the man drive to the shop in Cranbourne Street
+where she was accustomed to purchase the materials she used in
+painting, and Fate, which uses strange agents to work out its ends, so
+directed it that the cabman stopped a few doors below this shop, and
+opposite one where jewelry and other personal effects were bought and
+sold. At any other time, or had she been in any other mood, what
+followed might not have occurred, but Fate, in the person of the
+cabman, arranged it so that the hour and the opportunity came
+together.
+
+There were some old mezzotints in the window of the loan-shop, a
+string of coins and medals, a row of new French posters; and far down
+to the front a tray filled with gold and silver cigarette-cases and
+watches and rings. It occurred to Helen, who was still bent on making
+restitution for her neglect, that a cigarette-case would be more
+appropriate for a man than flowers, and more lasting. And she scanned
+the contents of the window with the eye of one who now saw in
+everything only something which might give Philip pleasure. The two
+objects of value in the tray upon which her eyes first fell were the
+gold seal-ring with which Philip had sealed his letters to her, and,
+lying next to it, his gold watch! There was something almost human in
+the way the ring and watch spoke to her from the past--in the way they
+appealed to her to rescue them from the surroundings to which they had
+been abandoned. She did not know what she meant to do with them nor
+how she could return them to Philip; but there was no question of
+doubt in her manner as she swept with a rush into the shop. There was
+no attempt, either, at bargaining in the way in which she pointed out
+to the young woman behind the counter the particular ring and watch
+she wanted. They had not been left as collateral, the young woman
+said; they had been sold outright.
+
+"Then any one can buy them?" Helen asked, eagerly. "They are for sale
+to the public--to any one?"
+
+The young woman made note of the customer's eagerness, but with an
+unmoved countenance.
+
+"Yes, miss, they are for sale. The ring is four pounds and the watch
+twenty-five."
+
+"Twenty-nine pounds!" Helen gasped.
+
+That was more money than she had in the world, but the fact did not
+distress her, for she had a true artistic disregard for ready money,
+and the absence of it had never disturbed her. But now it assumed a
+sudden and alarming value. She had ten pounds in her purse and ten
+pounds at her studio--these were just enough to pay for a quarter's
+rent and the rates, and there was a hat and cloak in Bond Street which
+she certainly must have. Her only assets consisted of the possibility
+that some one might soon order a miniature, and to her mind that was
+sufficient. Some one always had ordered a miniature, and there was no
+reasonable doubt but that some one would do it again. For a moment she
+questioned if it would not be sufficient if she bought the ring and
+allowed the watch to remain. But she recognized that the ring meant
+more to her than the watch, while the latter, as an old heirloom which
+had been passed down to him from a great-grandfather, meant more to
+Philip. It was for Philip she was doing this, she reminded herself.
+She stood holding his possessions, one in each hand, and looking at
+the young woman blankly. She had no doubt in her mind that at least
+part of the money he had received for them had paid for the flowers he
+had sent to her in Scotland. The certainty of this left her no choice.
+She laid the ring and watch down and pulled the only ring she
+possessed from her own finger. It was a gift from Lady Gower. She had
+no doubt that it was of great value.
+
+"Can you lend me some money on that?" she asked. It was the first time
+she had conducted a business transaction of this nature, and she felt
+as though she were engaging in a burglary.
+
+"We don't lend money, miss," the girl said, "we buy outright. I can
+give you twenty-eight shillings for this," she added.
+
+"Twenty-eight shillings!" Helen gasped. "Why, it is worth--oh, ever so
+much more than that!"
+
+"That is all it is worth to us," the girl answered. She regarded the
+ring indifferently and laid it away from her on the counter. The
+action was final.
+
+Helen's hands rose slowly to her breast, where a pretty watch dangled
+from a bow-knot of crushed diamonds. It was her only possession, and
+she was very fond of it. It also was the gift of one of the several
+great ladies who had adopted her since her residence in London. Helen
+had painted a miniature of this particular great lady which had looked
+so beautiful that the pleasure which the original of the portrait
+derived from the thought that she still really looked as she did in
+the miniature was worth more to her than many diamonds.
+
+But it was different with Helen, and no one could count what it cost
+her to tear away her one proud possession.
+
+"What will you give me for this?" she asked, defiantly.
+
+The girl's eyes showed greater interest. "I can give you twenty pounds
+for that," she said.
+
+"Take it, please," Helen begged, as though she feared if she kept it a
+moment longer she might not be able to make the sacrifice.
+
+"That will be enough now," she went on, taking out her ten-pound note.
+She put Lady Gower's ring back upon her finger and picked up Philip's
+ring and watch with the pleasure of one who has come into a great
+fortune. She turned back at the door.
+
+"Oh," she stammered, "in case any one should inquire, you are not to
+say who bought these."
+
+"No, miss, certainly not," said the woman. Helen gave the direction to
+the cabman and, closing the doors of the hansom, sat looking down at
+the watch and the ring, as they lay in her lap. The thought that they
+had been his most valued possessions, which he had abandoned forever,
+and that they were now entirely hers, to do with as she liked, filled
+her with most intense delight and pleasure. She took up the heavy gold
+ring and placed it on the little finger of her left hand; it was much
+too large, and she removed it and balanced it for a moment doubtfully
+in the palm of her right hand. She was smiling, and her face was lit
+with shy and tender thoughts. She cast a quick glance to the left and
+right as though fearful that people passing in the street would
+observe her, and then slipped the ring over the fourth finger of her
+left hand. She gazed at it with a guilty smile, and then, covering it
+hastily with her other hand, leaned back, clasping it closely, and sat
+frowning far out before her with puzzled eyes.
+
+To Carroll all roads led past Helen's studio, and during the summer,
+while she had been absent in Scotland, it was one of his sad pleasures
+to make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause opposite the house and
+look up at the empty windows of her rooms. It was during this daily
+exercise that he learned, through the arrival of her luggage, of her
+return to London, and when day followed day without her having shown
+any desire to see him or to tell him of her return, he denounced
+himself most bitterly as a fatuous fool.
+
+At the end of the week he sat down and considered his case quite
+calmly. For three years he had loved this girl, deeply and tenderly.
+He had been lover, brother, friend, and guardian. During that time,
+even though she had accepted him in every capacity except as that of
+the prospective husband, she had never given him any real affection,
+nor sympathy, nor help; all she had done for him had been done without
+her knowledge or intent. To know her, to love her, and to scheme to
+give her pleasure had been its own reward, and the only one. For the
+last few months he had been living like a crossing sweeper in order to
+be able to stay in London until she came back to it, and that he might
+still send her the gifts he had always laid on her altar. He had not
+seen her in three months. Three months that had been to him a blank,
+except for his work--which, like all else that he did, was inspired
+and carried on for her. Now at last she had returned and had shown
+that, even as a friend, he was of so little account in her thoughts,
+of so little consequence in her life, that after this long absence she
+had no desire to learn of his welfare or to see him--she did not even
+give him the chance to see her. And so, placing these facts before him
+for the first time since he had loved her, he considered what was due
+to himself. "Was it good enough?" he asked. "Was it just that he
+should continue to wear out his soul and body for this girl who did
+not want what he had to give, who treated him less considerately than
+a man whom she met for the first time at dinner?" He felt he had
+reached the breaking-point; that the time had come when he must
+consider what he owed to himself. There could never be any other woman
+save Helen; but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer, with
+self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it slighted and
+neglected. He was humble enough concerning himself, but of his love he
+was very proud. Other men could give her more in wealth or position,
+but no one could ever love her as he did. "He that hath more let him
+give," he had often quoted to her defiantly, as though he were
+challenging the world, and now he felt he must evolve a makeshift
+world of his own--a world in which she was not his only spring of
+acts; he must begin all over again and keep his love secret and sacred
+until she understood it and wanted it. And if she should never want it
+he would at least have saved it from many rebuffs and insults.
+
+With this determination strong in him, the note Helen had left for him
+after her talk with Marion, and the flowers, and the note with them,
+saying she was coming to take tea on the morrow, failed to move him
+except to make him more bitter. He saw in them only a tardy
+recognition of her neglect--an effort to make up to him for
+thoughtlessness which, from her, hurt him worse than studied slight.
+
+A new _régime_ had begun, and he was determined to establish it
+firmly and to make it impossible for himself to retreat from it; and
+in the note in which he thanked Helen for the flowers and welcomed her
+to tea, he declared his ultimatum.
+
+"You know how terribly I feel," he wrote; "I don't have to tell you
+that, but I cannot always go on dragging out my love and holding it up
+to excite your pity as beggars show their sores. I cannot always go on
+praying before your altar, cutting myself with knives and calling upon
+you to listen to me. You know that there is no one else but you, and
+that there never can be any one but you, and that nothing is changed
+except that after this I am not going to urge and torment you. I shall
+wait as I have always waited--only now I shall wait in silence. You
+know just how little, in one way, I have to offer you, and you know
+just how much I have in love to offer you. It is now for you to
+speak--some day, or never. But you will have to speak first. You will
+never hear a word of love from me again. Why should you? You know it
+is always waiting for you. But if you should ever want it, you must
+come to me, and take off your hat and put it on my table and say,
+'Philip, I have come to stay.' Whether you can ever do that or not can
+make no difference in my love for you. I shall love you always, as no
+man has ever loved a woman in this world, but it is you who must speak
+first; for me, the rest is silence."
+
+The following morning as Helen was leaving the house she found this
+letter lying on the hall-table, and ran back with it to her rooms. A
+week before she would have let it lie on the table and read it on her
+return. She was conscious that this was what she would have done, and
+it pleased her to find that what concerned Philip was now to her the
+thing of greatest interest. She was pleased with her own
+eagerness--her own happiness was a welcome sign, and she was proud and
+glad that she was learning to care.
+
+She read the letter with an anxious pride and pleasure in each word
+that was entirely new. Philip's recriminations did not hurt her, they
+were the sign that he cared; nor did his determination not to speak of
+his love to her hurt her, for she believed him when he said that he
+would always care. She read the letter twice, and then sat for some
+time considering the kind of letter Philip would have written had he
+known her secret--had he known that the ring he had abandoned was now
+upon her finger.
+
+She rose and, crossing to a desk, placed the letter in a drawer, and
+then took it out again and reread the last page. When she had finished
+it she was smiling. For a moment she stood irresolute, and then,
+moving slowly toward the centre-table, cast a guilty look about her
+and, raising her hands, lifted her veil and half withdrew the pins
+that fastened her hat.
+
+"Philip," she began, in a frightened whisper, "I have--I have come
+to--"
+
+The sentence ended in a cry of protest, and she rushed across the room
+as though she were running from herself. She was blushing violently.
+
+"Never!" she cried, as she pulled open the door; "I could never do
+it--never!"
+
+The following afternoon, when Helen was to come to tea, Carroll
+decided that he would receive her with all the old friendliness, but
+that he must be careful to subdue all emotion.
+
+He was really deeply hurt at her treatment, and had it not been that
+she came on her own invitation he would not of his own accord have
+sought to see her. In consequence, he rather welcomed than otherwise
+the arrival of Marion Cavendish, who came a half-hour before Helen was
+expected, and who followed a hasty knock with a precipitate entrance.
+
+"Sit down," she commanded, breathlessly, "and listen. I've been at
+rehearsal all day, or I'd have been here before you were awake." She
+seated herself nervously and nodded her head at Carroll in an excited
+and mysterious manner.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "Have you and Reggie--"
+
+"Listen," Marion repeated. "Our fortunes are made; that is what's the
+matter--and I've made them. If you took half the interest in your work
+I do, you'd have made yours long ago. Last night," she began,
+impressively, "I went to a large supper at the Savoy, and I sat next
+to Charley Wimpole. He came in late, after everybody had finished, and
+I attacked him while he was eating his supper. He said he had been
+rehearsing 'Caste' after the performance; that they've put it on as a
+stop-gap on account of the failure of 'The Triflers,' and that he knew
+revivals were of no use; that he would give any sum for a good modern
+comedy. That was my cue, and I told him I knew of a better comedy than
+any he had produced at his theatre in five years, and that it was
+going begging. He laughed, and asked where was he to find this
+wonderful comedy, and I said, 'It's been in your safe for the last two
+months and you haven't read it.' He said, 'Indeed, how do you know
+that?' and I said, 'Because if you'd read it, it wouldn't be in your
+safe, but on your stage.' So he asked me what the play was about, and
+I told him the plot and what sort of a part his was, and some of his
+scenes, and he began to take notice. He forgot his supper, and very
+soon he grew so interested that he turned his chair round and kept
+eying my supper-card to find out who I was, and at last remembered
+seeing me in 'The New Boy'--and a rotten part it was, too--but he
+remembered it, and he told me to go on and tell him more about your
+play. So I recited it, bit by bit, and he laughed in all the right
+places and got very much excited, and said finally that he would read
+it the first thing this morning." Marion paused, breathlessly. "Oh,
+yes, and he wrote your address on his cuff," she added, with the air
+of delivering a complete and convincing climax.
+
+Carroll stared at her and pulled excitedly on his pipe.
+
+"Oh, Marion!" he gasped, "suppose he should? He won't, though," he
+added, but eying her eagerly and inviting contradiction.
+
+"He will," she answered, stoutly, "if he reads it."
+
+"The other managers read it," Carroll suggested, doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, but what do they know?" Marion returned, loftily. "He knows.
+Charles Wimpole is the only intelligent actor-manager in London."
+
+There was a sharp knock at the door, which Marion in her excitement
+had left ajar, and Prentiss threw it wide open with an impressive
+sweep, as though he were announcing royalty. "Mr. Charles Wimpole," he
+said.
+
+The actor-manager stopped in the doorway bowing gracefully, his hat
+held before him and his hand on his stick as though it were resting on
+a foil. He had the face and carriage of a gallant of the days of
+Congreve, and he wore his modern frock-coat with as much distinction
+as if it were of silk and lace. He was evidently amused. "I couldn't
+help overhearing the last line," he said, smiling. "It gives me a good
+entrance."
+
+Marion gazed at him blankly. "Oh," she gasped, "we--we--were just
+talking about you."
+
+"If you hadn't mentioned my name," the actor said, "I should never
+have guessed it. And this is Mr. Carroll, I hope."
+
+The great man was rather pleased with the situation. As he read it, it
+struck him as possessing strong dramatic possibilities: Carroll was
+the struggling author on the verge of starvation; Marion, his
+sweetheart, flying to him gave him hope; and he was the good fairy
+arriving in the nick of time to set everything right and to make the
+young people happy and prosperous. He rather fancied himself in the
+part of the good fairy, and as he seated himself he bowed to them both
+in a manner which was charmingly inclusive and confidential.
+
+"Miss Cavendish, I imagine, has already warned you that you might
+expect a visit from me," he said, tentatively. Carroll nodded. He was
+too much concerned to interrupt.
+
+"Then I need only tell you," Wimpole continued, "that I got up at an
+absurd hour this morning to read your play; that I did read it; that I
+like it immensely--and that if we can come to terms I shall produce
+it. I shall produce it at once, within a fortnight or three weeks."
+
+Carroll was staring at him intently and continued doing so after
+Wimpole had finished speaking. The actor felt he had somehow missed
+his point, or that Carroll could not have understood him, and
+repeated, "I say I shall put it in rehearsal at once."
+
+Carroll rose abruptly, and pushed back his chair. "I should be very
+glad," he murmured, and strode over to the window, where he stood with
+his back turned to his guests. Wimpole looked after him with a kindly
+smile and nodded his head appreciatively. He had produced even a
+greater effect than his lines seemed to warrant. When he spoke again,
+it was quite simply, and sincerely, and though he spoke for Carroll's
+benefit, he addressed himself to Marion.
+
+"You were quite right last night," he said; "it is a most charming
+piece of work. I am really extremely grateful to you for bringing it
+to my notice." He rose, and going to Carroll, put his hand on his
+shoulder. "My boy," he said, "I congratulate you. I should like to be
+your age, and to have written that play. Come to my theatre to-morrow
+and we will talk terms. Talk it over first with your friends, so that
+I shan't rob you. Do you think you would prefer a lump sum now, and so
+be done with it altogether, or trust that the royalties may--"
+
+"Royalties," prompted Marion, in an eager aside.
+
+The men laughed. "Quite right," Wimpole assented, good-humoredly;
+"it's a poor sportsman who doesn't back his own horse. Well, then,
+until to-morrow."
+
+"But," Carroll began, "one moment, please. I haven't thanked you."
+
+"My dear boy," cried Wimpole, waving him away with his stick, "it is I
+who have to thank you."
+
+"And--and there is a condition," Carroll said, "which goes with the
+play. It is that Miss Cavendish is to have the part of _Nancy_."
+
+Wimpole looked serious and considered for a moment.
+
+"_Nancy_," he said, "the girl who interferes--a very good part. I
+have cast Miss Maddox for it in my mind, but, of course, if the author
+insists--"
+
+Marion, with her elbows on the table, clasped her hands appealingly
+before her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wimpole!" she cried, "you owe me that, at least."
+
+Carroll leaned over and took both of Marion's hands in one of his.
+
+"It's all right," he said; "the author insists."
+
+Wimpole waved his stick again as though it were the magic wand of the
+good fairy.
+
+"You shall have it," he said. "I recall your performance in 'The New
+Boy' with pleasure. I take the play, and Miss Cavendish shall be cast
+for _Nancy_. We shall begin rehearsals at once. I hope you are a
+quick study."
+
+"I'm letter-perfect now," laughed Marion.
+
+Wimpole turned at the door and nodded to them. They were both so
+young, so eager, and so jubilant that he felt strangely old and out of
+it. "Good-by, then," he said.
+
+"Good-by, sir," they both chorused. And Marion cried after him, "And
+thank you a thousand times."
+
+He turned again and looked back at them, but in their rejoicing they
+had already forgotten him. "Bless you, my children," he said, smiling.
+As he was about to close the door a young girl came down the passage
+toward it, and as she was apparently going to Carroll's rooms, the
+actor left the door open behind him.
+
+Neither Marion nor Carroll had noticed his final exit. They were both
+gazing at each other as though, could they find speech, they would ask
+if it were true.
+
+"It's come at last, Marion," Philip said, with an uncertain voice.
+
+"I could weep," cried Marion. "Philip," she exclaimed, "I would rather
+see that play succeed than any play ever written, and I would rather
+play that part in it than--Oh, Philip," she ended, "I'm so proud of
+you!" and rising, she threw her arms about his neck and sobbed on his
+shoulder.
+
+Carroll raised one of her hands and kissed the tips of her fingers
+gently. "I owe it to you, Marion," he said--"all to you."
+
+This was the tableau that was presented through the open door to Miss
+Helen Cabot, hurrying on her errand of restitution and goodwill, and
+with Philip's ring and watch clasped in her hand. They had not heard
+her, nor did they see her at the door, so she drew back quickly and
+ran along the passage and down the stairs into the street.
+
+She did not need now to analyze her feelings. They were only too
+evident. For she could translate what she had just seen as meaning
+only one thing--that she had considered Philip's love so lightly that
+she had not felt it passing away from her until her neglect had killed
+it--until it was too late. And now that it was too late she felt that
+without it her life could not go on. She tried to assure herself that
+only the fact that she had lost it made it seem invaluable, but this
+thought did not comfort her--she was not deceived by it, she knew that
+at last she cared for him deeply and entirely. In her distress she
+blamed herself bitterly, but she also blamed Philip no less bitterly
+for having failed to wait for her. "He might have known that I must
+love him in time," she repeated to herself again and again. She was so
+unhappy that her letter congratulating Philip on his good fortune in
+having his comedy accepted seemed to him cold and unfeeling, and as
+his success meant for him only what it meant to her, he was hurt and
+grievously disappointed.
+
+He accordingly turned the more readily to Marion, whose interest and
+enthusiasm at the rehearsals of the piece seemed in contrast most
+friendly and unselfish. He could not help but compare the attitude of
+the two girls at this time, when the failure or success of his best
+work was still undecided. He felt that as Helen took so little
+interest in his success he could not dare to trouble her with his
+anxieties concerning it, and she attributed his silence to his
+preoccupation and interest in Marion. So the two grew apart, each
+misunderstanding the other and each troubled in spirit at the other's
+indifference.
+
+The first night of the play justified all that Marion and Wimpole had
+claimed for it, and was a great personal triumph for the new
+playwright. The audience was the typical first-night audience of the
+class which Charles Wimpole always commanded. It was brilliant,
+intelligent, and smart, and it came prepared to be pleased.
+
+From one of the upper stage-boxes Helen and Lady Gower watched the
+successful progress of the play with an anxiety almost as keen as that
+of the author. To Helen it seemed as though the giving of these lines
+to the public--these lines which he had so often read to her, and
+altered to her liking--was a desecration. It seemed as though she were
+losing him indeed--as though he now belonged to these strange people,
+all of whom were laughing and applauding his words, from the German
+Princess in the Royal box to the straight-backed Tommy in the pit.
+Instead of the painted scene before her, she saw the birch-trees by
+the river at home, where he had first read her the speech to which
+they were now listening so intensely--the speech in which the hero
+tells the girl he loves her. She remembered that at the time she had
+thought how wonderful it would be if some day some one made such a
+speech to her--not Philip, but a man she loved. And now? If Philip
+would only make that speech to her now!
+
+He came out at last, with Wimpole leading him, and bowed across a
+glaring barrier of lights at a misty but vociferous audience that was
+shouting the generous English bravo! and standing up to applaud. He
+raised his eyes to the box where Helen sat, and saw her staring down
+at the tumult, with her hands clasped under her chin. Her face was
+colorless, but lit with the excitement of the moment; and he saw that
+she was crying.
+
+Lady Gower, from behind her, was clapping her hands delightedly.
+
+"But, my dear Helen," she remonstrated, breathlessly, "you never told
+me he was so good-looking."
+
+"Yes," said Helen, rising abruptly, "he is--very good-looking."
+
+She crossed the box to where her cloak was hanging, but instead of
+taking it down, buried her face in its folds.
+
+"My dear child!" cried Lady Gower, in dismay. "What is it? The
+excitement has been too much for you."
+
+"No, I am just happy," sobbed Helen. "I am just happy for him."
+
+"We will go and tell him so, then," said Lady Gower. "I am sure he
+would like to hear it from you to-night."
+
+Philip was standing in the centre of the stage, surrounded by many
+pretty ladies and elderly men. Wimpole was hovering over him as though
+he had claims upon him by the right of discovery.
+
+But when Philip saw Helen, he pushed his way toward her eagerly and
+took her hand in both of his.
+
+"I am so glad, Phil," she said. She felt it all so deeply that she was
+afraid to say more, but that meant so much to her that she was sure he
+would understand.
+
+He had planned it very differently. For a year he had dreamed that, on
+the first night of his play, there would be a supper, and that he
+would rise and drink her health, and tell his friends and the world
+that she was the woman he loved, and that she had agreed to marry him,
+and that at last he was able, through the success of his play, to make
+her his wife.
+
+And now they met in a crowd to shake hands, and she went her way with
+one of her grand ladies, and he was left among a group of chattering
+strangers. The great English playwright took him by the hand and in
+the hearing of all praised him gracefully and kindly. It did not
+matter to Philip whether the older playwright believed what he said or
+not; he knew it was generously meant.
+
+"I envy you this," the great man was saying. "Don't lose any of it,
+stay and listen to all they have to say. You will never live through
+the first night of your first play but once."
+
+"Yes, I hear them," said Philip, nervously; "they are all too kind.
+But I don't hear the voice I have been listening for," he added, in a
+whisper. The older man pressed his hand again quickly. "My dear boy,"
+he said, "I am sorry."
+
+"Thank you," Philip answered.
+
+Within a week he had forgotten the great man's fine words of praise,
+but the clasp of his hand he cherished always.
+
+Helen met Marion as she was leaving the stage-door and stopped to
+congratulate her on her success in the new part. Marion was radiant.
+To Helen she seemed obstreperously happy and jubilant.
+
+"And, Marion," Helen began, bravely, "I also want to congratulate you
+on something else. You--you--neither of you have told me yet," she
+stammered, "but I am such an old friend of both that I will not be
+kept out of the secret." At these words Marion's air of triumphant
+gayety vanished; she regarded Helen's troubled eyes closely and
+kindly.
+
+"What secret, Helen?" she asked.
+
+"I came to the door of Philip's room the other day when you did not
+know I was there," Helen answered, "and I could not help seeing how
+matters were. And I do congratulate you both--and wish you--oh, such
+happiness!" Without a word Marion dragged her back down the passage to
+her dressing-room, and closed the door.
+
+"Now tell me what you mean," she said.
+
+"I am sorry if I discovered anything you didn't want known yet," said
+Helen, "but the door was open. Mr. Wimpole had just left you and had
+not shut it, and I could not help seeing."
+
+Marion interrupted her with an eager exclamation of enlightenment.
+
+"Oh, you were there, then," she cried. "And you?" she asked,
+eagerly--"you thought Phil cared for me--that we are engaged, and it
+hurt you; you are sorry? Tell me," she demanded, "are you sorry?"
+
+Helen drew back and stretched out her hand toward the door.
+
+"How can you!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "You have no right."
+
+Marion stood between her and the door.
+
+"I have every right," she said, "to help my friends, and I want to
+help you and Philip. And, indeed, I do hope you _are_ sorry. I
+hope you are miserable. And I'm glad you saw me kiss him. That was the
+first and the last time, and I did it because I was happy and glad for
+him; and because I love him, too, but not in the least in the way he
+loves you. No one ever loved any one as he loves you. And it's time
+you found it out. And if I have helped to make you find it out, I'm
+glad, and I don't care how much I hurt you."
+
+"Marion!" exclaimed Helen, "what does it mean? Do you mean that you
+are not engaged; that--"
+
+"Certainly not," Marion answered. "I am going to marry Reggie. It is
+you that Philip loves, and I am very sorry for you that you don't love
+him."
+
+Helen clasped Marion's hands in both of hers.
+
+"But, Marion!" she cried, "I do, oh, I do!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a thick yellow fog the next morning, and with it rain and a
+sticky, depressing dampness which crept through the window-panes, and
+which neither a fire nor blazing gas-jets could overcome.
+
+Philip stood in front of the fireplace with the morning papers piled
+high on the centre-table and scattered over the room about him.
+
+He had read them all, and he knew now what it was to wake up famous,
+but he could not taste it. Now that it had come it meant nothing, and
+that it was so complete a triumph only made it the harder. In his most
+optimistic dreams he had never imagined success so satisfying as the
+reality had proved to be; but in his dreams Helen had always held the
+chief part, and without her, success seemed only to mock him.
+
+He wanted to lay it all before her, to say, "If you are pleased, I am
+happy. If you are satisfied, then I am content. It was done for you,
+and I am wholly yours, and all that I do is yours." And, as though in
+answer to his thoughts, there was an instant knock at the door, and
+Helen entered the room and stood smiling at him across the table.
+
+Her eyes were lit with excitement, and spoke with many emotions, and
+her cheeks were brilliant with color. He had never seen her look more
+beautiful.
+
+"Why, Helen!" he exclaimed, "how good of you to come. Is there
+anything wrong? Is anything the matter?"
+
+She tried to speak, but faltered, and smiled at him appealingly.
+
+"What is it?" he asked in great concern.
+
+Helen drew in her breath quickly, and at the same moment motioned him
+away--and he stepped back and stood watching her in much perplexity.
+
+With her eyes fixed on his she raised her hands to her head, and her
+fingers fumbled with the knot of her veil. She pulled it loose, and
+then, with a sudden courage, lifted her hat proudly, as though it were
+a coronet, and placed it between them on his table.
+
+"Philip," she stammered, with the tears in her voice and eyes, "if you
+will let me--I have come to stay."
+
+The table was no longer between them. He caught her in his arms and
+kissed her face and her uncovered head again and again. From outside
+the rain beat drearily and the fog rolled through the street, but
+inside before the fire the two young people sat close together, asking
+eager questions or sitting in silence, staring at the flames with
+wondering, happy eyes.
+
+The Lion and the Unicorn saw them only once again. It was a month
+later when they stopped in front of the shop in a four-wheeler, with
+their baggage mixed on top of it, and steamer-labels pasted over every
+trunk.
+
+"And, oh, Prentiss!" Carroll called from the cab-window. "I came near
+forgetting. I promised to gild the Lion and the Unicorn if I won out
+in London. So have it done, please, and send the bill to me. For I've
+won out all right." And then he shut the door of the cab, and they
+drove away forever.
+
+"Nice gal, that," growled the Lion. "I always liked her. I am glad
+they've settled it at last."
+
+The Unicorn sighed sentimentally. "The other one's worth two of her,"
+he said.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+A SKETCH CONTAINING THREE POINTS OF VIEW
+
+
+_What the Poet Laureate wrote._
+
+  "There are girls in the Gold Reef City,
+    There are mothers and children too!
+  And they cry 'Hurry up for pity!'
+    So what can a brave man do?
+
+  "I suppose we were wrong, were mad men,
+    Still I think at the Judgment Day,
+  When God sifts the good from the bad men,
+    There'll be something more to say."
+
+
+_What more the Lord Chief Justice found to say._
+
+"In this case we know the immediate consequence of your crime. It has
+been the loss of human life, it has been the disturbance of public
+peace, it has been the creation of a certain sense of distrust of
+public professions and of public faith.... The sentence of this Court
+therefore is that, as to you, Leander Starr Jameson, you be confined
+for a period of fifteen months without hard labor; that you, Sir John
+Willoughby, have ten months' imprisonment; and that you, etc., etc."
+
+                                          _London Times, July 29th._
+
+
+_What the Hon. "Reggie" Blake thought about it._
+
+"H.M. HOLLOWAY PRISON,
+July 28th.
+
+"I am going to keep a diary while I am in prison, that is, if they
+will let me. I never kept one before because I hadn't the time; when I
+was home on leave there was too much going on to bother about it, and
+when I was up country I always came back after a day's riding so tired
+that I was too sleepy to write anything. And now that I have the time,
+I won't have anything to write about. I fancy that more things
+happened to me to-day than are likely to happen again for the next
+eight months, so I will make this day take up as much room in the
+diary as it can. I am writing this on the back of the paper the Warder
+uses for his official reports, while he is hunting up cells to put us
+in. We came down on him rather unexpectedly and he is nervous.
+
+"Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion, but now I
+see that somehow I never really did think I would be in here, and all
+my friends outside, and everything going on just the same as though I
+wasn't alive somewhere. It's like telling yourself that your horse
+can't possibly pull off a race, so that you won't mind so much if he
+doesn't, but you always feel just as bad when he comes in a loser. A
+man can't fool himself into thinking one way when he is hoping the
+other.
+
+"But I am glad it is over, and settled. It was a great bore not
+knowing your luck and having the thing hanging over your head every
+morning when you woke up. Indeed it it was quite a relief when the
+counsel got all through arguing over those proclamations, and the
+Chief Justice summed up, but I nearly went to sleep when I found he
+was going all over it again to the jury. I didn't understand about
+those proclamations myself and I'll lay a fiver the jury didn't
+either. The Colonel said he didn't. I couldn't keep my mind on what
+Russell was explaining about, and I got to thinking how much old
+Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in 'Alice in Wonderland' when
+they tried the knave of spades for stealing the tarts. He has just the
+same sort of a beak and the same sort of a wig, and I wondered why he
+had his wig powdered and the others didn't. Pollock's wig had a hole
+in the top; you could see it when he bent over to take notes. He was
+always taking notes. I don't believe he understood about those
+proclamations either; he never seemed to listen, anyway.
+
+"The Chief Justice certainly didn't love us very much, that's sure;
+and he wasn't going to let anybody else love us either. I felt quite
+the Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in defense. He made
+it sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi heroes and ought to be
+promoted and have medals, but when Lord Russell started in to read the
+Riot Act at us I began to believe that hanging was too good for me.
+I'm sure I never knew I was disturbing the peace of nations; it seems
+like such a large order for a subaltern.
+
+"But the worst was when they made us stand up before all those people
+to be sentenced. I must say I felt shaky about the knees then, not
+because I was afraid of what was coming, but because it was the first
+time I had ever been pointed out before people, and made to feel
+ashamed. And having those girls there, too, looking at one. That
+wasn't just fair to us. It made me feel about ten years old, and I
+remembered how the Head Master used to call me to his desk and say,
+'Blake Senior, two pages of Horace and keep in bounds for a week.' And
+then I heard our names and the months, and my name and 'eight months'
+imprisonment,' and there was a bustle and murmur and the tipstaves
+cried, 'Order in the Court,' and the Judges stood up and shook out
+their big red skirts as though they were shaking off the contamination
+of our presence and rustled away, and I sat down, wondering how long
+eight months was, and wishing they'd given me as much as they gave
+Jameson.
+
+"They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how sorry
+they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left us. I
+thought they might have waited with us and been a little late for
+dinner just that once; but no one waited except a lot of costers
+outside whom we did not know. It was eight o'clock and still quite
+light when we came out, and there was a line of four-wheelers and a
+hansom ready for us. I'd been hoping they would take us out by the
+Strand entrance, just because I'd liked to have seen it again, but
+they marched us instead through the main quadrangle--a beastly, gloomy
+courtyard that echoed, and out, into Carey Street--such a dirty,
+gloomy street. The costers and clerks set up a sort of a cheer when we
+came out, and one of them cried, 'God bless you, sir,' to the doctor,
+but I was sorry they cheered. It seemed like kicking against the
+umpire's decision. The Colonel and I got into a hansom together and we
+trotted off into Chancery Lane and turned into Holborn. Most of the
+shops were closed, and the streets looked empty, but there was a
+lighted clock-face over Mooney's public house, and the hands stood at
+a quarter past eight. I didn't know where Holloway was, and was hoping
+they would have to take us through some decent streets to reach it;
+but we didn't see a part of the city that meant anything to me, or
+that I would choose to travel through again.
+
+"Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the streets
+knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the enamel card on
+the back of the apron. I suppose I read, 'Two-wheeled hackney
+carriage: if hired and discharged within the four-mile limit, 1_s_.'
+at least a hundred times. I got more sensible after a bit, and when we
+had turned into Gray's Inn Road I looked up and saw a tram in front of
+us with 'Holloway Road and King's X,' painted on the steps, and the
+Colonel saw it about the same time I fancy, for we each looked at the
+other, and the Colonel raised his eyebrows. It showed us that at least
+the cabman knew where we were going.
+
+"'They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first, I
+think,' the Colonel said. 'I'd like to have had a look around,
+wouldn't you? This isn't a cheerful neighborhood, is it?'
+
+"There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew's Gardens, and a
+crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and laughing over
+nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the only pleasant
+sight in the ride. I had quite a turn when we came to the New Hospital
+just beyond, for I thought it was Holloway, and it came over me what
+eight months in such a place meant. I believe if I hadn't pulled
+myself up sharp, I'd have jumped out into the street and run away. It
+didn't last more than a few seconds, but I don't want any more like
+them. I was afraid, afraid--there's no use pretending it was anything
+else. I was in a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook,
+as I have seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and
+trembles down his sides.
+
+"During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could stand; I
+felt sure that I couldn't do it--that I'd go mad if they tried to
+force me. The idea was so terrible--of not being master over your own
+legs and arms, to have your flesh and blood and what brains God gave
+you buried alive in stone walls as though they were in a safe with a
+time-lock on the door set for eight months ahead. There's nothing to
+be afraid of in a stone wall really, but it's the idea of the
+thing--of not being free to move about, especially to a chap that has
+always lived in the open as I have, and has had men under him. It was
+no wonder I was in a funk for a minute. I'll bet a fiver the others
+were, too, if they'll only own up to it. I don't mean for long, but
+just when the idea first laid hold of them. Anyway, it was a good
+lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I'll whistle,
+or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful. And I
+don't mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail
+counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or measuring how
+many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that way. I mean to
+sit tight and think of all the good times I've had, and go over them
+in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and remember
+who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that; I'll go
+over house-parties I have been on, and the times I've had in the
+Riviera, and scouting-parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were
+taking Matabele Land.
+
+"They say that if you're good here they give you things to read after
+a month or two, and then I can read up all those instructive books
+that a fellow never does read until he's laid up in bed.
+
+"But that's crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened to-day.
+We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western Terminus, and I
+half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming or going away: I
+would like to have waved my hand to him. It would have been fun to
+have seen his surprise the next morning when he read in the paper that
+he had been bowing to jail-birds, and then I would like to have
+cheated the tipstaves out of just one more friendly good-by. I wanted
+to say good-by to somebody, but I really couldn't feel sorry to see
+the last of any one of those we passed in the streets--they were such
+a dirty, unhappy-looking lot, and the railroad wall ran on forever
+apparently, and we might have been in a foreign country for all we
+knew of it. There were just sooty gray brick tenements and gas-works
+on one side, and the railroad cutting on the other, and semaphores and
+telegraph wires overhead, and smoke and grime everywhere, it looked
+exactly like the sort of street that should lead to a prison, and it
+seemed a pity to take a smart hansom and a good cob into it.
+
+"It was just a bit different from our last ride together--when we rode
+through the night from Krugers-Dorp with hundreds of horses' hoofs
+pounding on the soft veldt behind us, and the carbines clanking
+against the stirrups as they swung on the sling belts. We were being
+hunted then, harassed on either side, scurrying for our lives like the
+Derby Dog in a race-track when every one hoots him and no man steps
+out to help--we were sick for sleep, sick for food, lashed by the
+rain, and we knew that we were beaten; but we were free still, and
+under open skies with the derricks of the Rand rising like gallows on
+our left, and Johannesburg only fifteen miles away."
+
+
+
+
+MISS DELAMAR'S UNDERSTUDY
+
+
+A young man runs two chances of marrying the wrong woman. He marries
+her because she is beautiful, and because he persuades himself that
+every other lovable attribute must be associated with such beauty, or
+because she is in love with him. If this latter is the case, she gives
+certain values to what he thinks and to what he says which no other
+woman gives, and so he observes to himself, "This is the woman who
+best understands _me_."
+
+You can reverse this and say that young women run the same risks, but
+as men are seldom beautiful, the first danger is eliminated. Women
+still marry men, however, because they are loved by them, and in time
+the woman grows to depend upon this love and to need it, and is not
+content without it, and so she consents to marry the man for no other
+reason than because he cares for her. For if a dog, even, runs up to
+you wagging his tail and acting as though he were glad to see you, you
+pat him on the head and say, "What a nice dog." You like him because
+he likes you, and not because he belongs to a fine breed of animal and
+could take blue ribbons at bench shows.
+
+This is the story of a young man who was in love with a beautiful
+woman, and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other
+things. When she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled
+and looked at her and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow
+uninteresting, he would take up his hat and go away, and so he never
+knew how very uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given
+time enough in which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered
+that, were he married to her, he could not take up his hat and go away
+when she became uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not
+brilliant, could not be smiled away either. They would rise up and
+greet him every morning, and would be the last thing he would hear at
+night.
+
+Miss Delamar's beauty was so conspicuous that to pretend not to notice
+it was more foolish than well-bred. You got along more easily and
+simply by accepting it at once, and referring to it, and enjoying its
+effect upon other people. To go out of one's way to talk of other
+things when every one, even Miss Delamar herself, knew what must be
+uppermost in your mind, always seemed as absurd as to strain a point
+in politeness, and to pretend not to notice that a guest had upset his
+claret, or any other embarrassing fact. For Miss Delamar's beauty was
+so distinctly embarrassing that this was the only way to meet it--to
+smile and pass it over and to try, if possible, to get on to something
+else. It was on account of this extraordinary quality in her
+appearance that every one considered her beauty as something which
+transcended her private ownership, and which belonged by right to the
+polite world at large, to any one who could appreciate it properly,
+just as though it were a sunset or a great work of art or of nature.
+And so, when she gave away her photographs no one thought it meant
+anything more serious than a recognition on her part of the fact that
+it would have been unkind and selfish in her not to have shared the
+enjoyment of so much loveliness with others.
+
+Consequently, when she sent one of her largest and most aggravatingly
+beautiful photographs to young Stuart, it was no sign that she cared
+especially for him.
+
+How much young Stuart cared for Miss Delamar, however, was an open
+question and a condition yet to be discovered. That he cared for some
+one, and cared so much that his imagination had begun to picture the
+awful joys and responsibilities of marriage, was only too well known
+to himself, and was a state of mind already suspected by his friends.
+
+Stuart was a member of the New York bar, and the distinguished law
+firm to which he belonged was very proud of its junior member, and
+treated him with indulgence and affection, which was not unmixed with
+amusement. For Stuart's legal knowledge had been gathered in many odd
+corners of the globe, and was various and peculiar. It had been his
+pleasure to study the laws by which men ruled other men in every
+condition of life, and under every sun. The regulations of a new
+mining camp were fraught with as great interest to him as the
+accumulated precedents of the English Constitution, and he had
+investigated the rulings of the mixed courts of Egypt and of the
+government of the little Dutch republic near the Cape with as keen an
+effort to comprehend as he had shown in studying the laws of the
+American colonies and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
+
+But he was not always serious, and it sometimes happened that after he
+had arrived at some queer little island where the native prince and
+the English governor sat in judgment together, his interest in the
+intricacies of their laws would give way to the more absorbing
+occupation of chasing wild boar or shooting at tigers from the top of
+an elephant. And so he was not only regarded as an authority on many
+forms of government and of law, into which no one else had ever taken
+the trouble to look, but his books on big game were eagerly read and
+his articles in the magazines were earnestly discussed, whether they
+told of the divorce laws of Dakota, and the legal rights of widows in
+Cambodia, or the habits of the Mexican lion.
+
+Stuart loved his work better than he knew, but how well he loved Miss
+Delamar neither he nor his friends could tell. She was the most
+beautiful and lovely creature that he had ever seen, and of that only
+was he certain.
+
+Stuart was sitting in the club one day when the conversation turned to
+matrimony. He was among his own particular friends, the men before
+whom he could speak seriously or foolishly without fear of being
+misunderstood or of having what he said retold and spoiled in the
+telling. There was Seldon, the actor, and Rives, who painted pictures,
+and young Sloane, who travelled for pleasure and adventure, and
+Weimer, who stayed at home and wrote for the reviews. They were all
+bachelors, and very good friends, and jealously guarded their little
+circle from the intrusion of either men or women.
+
+"Of course the chief objection to marriage," Stuart said--it was the
+very day in which the picture had been sent to his rooms--"is the old
+one that you can't tell anything about it until you are committed to
+it forever. It is a very silly thing to discuss even, because there is
+no way of bringing it about, but there really should be some sort of a
+preliminary trial. As the man says in the play, 'You wouldn't buy a
+watch without testing it first.' You don't buy a hat even without
+putting it on, and finding out whether it is becoming or not, or
+whether your peculiar style of ugliness can stand it. And yet men go
+gayly off and get married, and make the most awful promises, and alter
+their whole order of life, and risk the happiness of some lovely
+creature on trust, as it were, knowing absolutely nothing of the new
+conditions and responsibilities of the life before them. Even a
+river-pilot has to serve an apprenticeship before he gets a license,
+and yet we are allowed to take just as great risks, and only because
+we _want_ to take them. It's awful, and it's all wrong."
+
+"Well, I don't see what one is going to do about it," commented young
+Sloane, lightly, "except to get divorced. That road is always open."
+
+Sloane was starting the next morning for the Somali Country, in
+Abyssinia, to shoot rhinoceros, and his interest in matrimony was in
+consequence somewhat slight.
+
+"It isn't the fear of the responsibilities that keeps Stuart, nor any
+one of us back," said Weimer, contemptuously. "It's because we're
+selfish. That's the whole truth of the matter. We love our work, or
+our pleasure, or to knock about the world, better than we do any
+particular woman. When one of us comes to love the woman best, his
+conscience won't trouble him long about the responsibilities of
+marrying her."
+
+"Not at all," said Stuart. "I am quite sincere; I maintain that there
+should be a preliminary stage. Of course there can't be, and it's
+absurd to think of it, but it would save a lot of unhappiness."
+
+"Well," said Seldon, dryly, "when you've invented a way to prevent
+marriage from being a lottery, let me know, will you?" He stood up and
+smiled nervously. "Any of you coming to see us to-night?" he asked.
+
+"That's so," exclaimed Weimer; "I forgot. It's the first night of 'A
+Fool and His Money,' isn't it? Of course we're coming."
+
+"I told them to put a box away for you in case you wanted it," Seldon
+continued. "Don't expect much. It's a silly piece, and I've a silly
+part, and I'm very bad in it. You must come around to supper, and tell
+me where I'm bad in it, and we will talk it over. You're coming,
+Stuart?"
+
+"My dear old man," said Stuart, reproachfully, "of course I am. I've
+had my seats for the last three weeks. Do you suppose I could miss
+hearing you mispronounce all the Hindostanee I've taught you?"
+
+"Well, good-night then," said the actor, waving his hand to his
+friends as he moved away. "'We, who are about to die, salute you!'"
+
+"Good luck to you," said Sloane, holding up his glass. "To the Fool
+and His Money," he laughed. He turned to the table again, and sounded
+the bell for the waiter. "Now let's send him a telegram and wish him
+success, and all sign it," he said, "and don't you fellows tell him
+that I wasn't in front to-night. I've got to go to a dinner the
+Travellers' Club are giving me." There was a protesting chorus of
+remonstrance. "Oh, I don't like it any better than you do," said
+Sloane, "but I'll get away, early and join you before the play's over.
+No one in the Travellers' Club, you see, has ever travelled farther
+from New York than London or the Riviera, and so when a member starts
+for Abyssinia they give him a dinner, and he has to take himself very
+seriously indeed, and cry with Seldon, 'I, who am about to die, salute
+you!' If that man there was any use," he added, interrupting himself
+and pointing with his glass at Stuart, "he'd pack up his things
+to-night and come with me."
+
+"Oh, don't urge him," remonstrated Weimer, who had travelled all over
+the world in imagination, with the aid of globes and maps, but never
+had got any farther from home than Montreal. "We can't spare Stuart.
+He has to stop here and invent a preliminary marriage state, so that
+if he finds he doesn't like a girl, he can leave her before it is too
+late."
+
+"You sail at seven, I believe, and from Hoboken, don't you?" asked
+Stuart, undisturbed. "If you'll start at eleven from the New York
+side, I think I'll go with you, but I hate getting up early; and then
+you see--I know what dangers lurk in Abyssinia, but who could tell
+what might not happen to him in Hoboken?"
+
+When Stuart returned to his room, he found a large package set upright
+in an armchair and enveloped by many wrappings; but the handwriting on
+the outside told him at once from whom it came and what it might be,
+and he pounced upon it eagerly and tore it from its covers. The
+photograph was a very large one, and the likeness to the original so
+admirable that the face seemed to smile and radiate with all the
+loveliness and beauty of Miss Delamar herself. Stuart beamed upon it
+with genuine surprise and pleasure, and exclaimed delightedly to
+himself. There was a living quality about the picture which made him
+almost speak to it, and thank Miss Delamar through it for the pleasure
+she had given him and the honor she had bestowed. He was proud,
+flattered, and triumphant, and while he walked about the room deciding
+where he would place it, and holding the picture respectfully before
+him, he smiled upon it with grateful satisfaction.
+
+He decided against his dressing-table as being too intimate a place
+for it, and so carried the picture on from his bedroom to the
+dining-room beyond, where he set it among his silver on the sideboard.
+But so little of his time was spent in this room that he concluded he
+would derive but little pleasure from it there, and so bore it back
+again into his library, where there were many other photographs and
+portraits, and where to other eyes than his own it would be less
+conspicuous.
+
+He tried it first in one place and then in another; but in each
+position the picture predominated and asserted itself so markedly,
+that Stuart gave up the idea of keeping it inconspicuous, and placed
+it prominently over the fireplace, where it reigned supreme above
+every other object in the room. It was not only the most conspicuous
+object there, but the living quality which it possessed in so marked a
+degree, and which was due to its naturalness of pose and the
+excellence of the likeness, made it permeate the place like a presence
+and with the individuality of a real person. Stuart observed this
+effect with amused interest, and noted also that the photographs of
+other women had become commonplace in comparison like lithographs in a
+shop-window, and that the more masculine accessories of a bachelor's
+apartment had grown suddenly aggressive and out of keeping. The
+liquor-case and the racks of arms and of barbarous weapons which he
+had collected with such pride seemed to have lost their former value
+and meaning, and he instinctively began to gather up the mass of books
+and maps and photographs and pipes and gloves which lay scattered upon
+the table, and to put them in their proper place, or to shove them out
+of sight altogether. "If I'm to live up to that picture," he thought,
+"I must see that George keeps this room in better order--and I must
+stop wandering round here in my bath-robe."
+
+His mind continued on the picture while he was dressing, and he was so
+absorbed in it and in analyzing the effect it had had upon him, that
+his servant spoke twice before he heard him.
+
+"No," he answered, "I shall not dine here to-night." Dining at home
+was with him a very simple affair, and a somewhat lonely one, and he
+avoided it almost nightly by indulging himself in a more expensive
+fashion.
+
+But even as he spoke an idea came to Stuart which made him reconsider
+his determination, and which struck him as so amusing, that he stopped
+pulling at his tie and smiled delightedly at himself in the glass
+before him.
+
+"Yes," he said, still smiling, "I will dine here to-night. Get me
+anything in a hurry. You need not wait now; go get the dinner up as
+soon as possible."
+
+The effect which the photograph of Miss Delamar had upon him, and the
+transformation it had accomplished in his room, had been as great as
+would have marked the presence there of the girl herself. While
+considering this it had come to Stuart, like a flash of inspiration,
+that here was a way by which he could test the responsibilities and
+conditions of married life without compromising either himself or the
+girl to whom he would suppose himself to be married.
+
+"I will put that picture at the head of the table," he said, "and I
+will play that it is she herself, her own beautiful, lovely self, and
+I will talk to her and exchange views with her, and make her answer me
+just as she would were we actually married and settled." He looked at
+his watch and found it was just seven o'clock. "I will begin now," he
+said, "and I will keep up the delusion until midnight. To-night is the
+best time to try the experiment, because the picture is new now, and
+its influence will be all the more real. In a few weeks it may have
+lost some of its freshness and reality and will have become one of the
+fixtures in the room."
+
+Stuart decided that under these new conditions it would be more
+pleasant to dine at Delmonico's, and he was on the point of asking the
+Picture what she thought of it, when he remembered that while it had
+been possible for him to make a practise of dining at that place as a
+bachelor, he could not now afford so expensive a luxury, and he
+decided that he had better economize in that particular and go instead
+to one of the _table d'hôte_ restaurants in the neighborhood. He
+regretted not having thought of this sooner, for he did not care to
+dine at a _table d'hôte_ in evening dress, as in some places it
+rendered him conspicuous. So, sooner than have this happen he decided
+to dine at home, as he had originally intended when he first thought
+of attempting this experiment, and then conducted the Picture in to
+dinner and placed her in an armchair facing him, with the candles full
+upon the face.
+
+"Now this is something like," he exclaimed, joyously. "I can't imagine
+anything better than this. Here we are all to ourselves with no one to
+bother us, with no chaperon, or chaperon's husband either, which is
+generally worse. Why is it, my dear," he asked, gayly, in a tone he
+considered affectionate and husbandly, "that the attractive chaperons
+are always handicapped by such stupid husbands, and vice versa?"
+
+"If that is true," replied the Picture, or replied Stuart, rather, for
+the Picture, "I cannot be a very attractive chaperon." Stuart bowed
+politely at this, and then considered the point it had raised as to
+whether he had, in assuming both characters, the right to pay himself
+compliments. He decided against himself in this particular instance,
+but agreed that he was not responsible for anything the Picture might
+say, so long as he sincerely and fairly tried to make it answer him as
+he thought the original would do under like circumstances. From what
+he knew of the original under other conditions, he decided that he
+could give a very close imitation of her point of view.
+
+Stuart's interest in his dinner was so real that he found himself
+neglecting his wife, and he had to pull himself up to his duty with a
+sharp reproof. After smiling back at her for a moment or two until his
+servant had again left them alone, he asked her to tell him what she
+had been doing during the day.
+
+"Oh, nothing very important," said the Picture. "I went shopping in
+the morning and--"
+
+Stuart stopped himself and considered this last remark doubtfully.
+"Now, how do I know she would go shopping?" he asked himself. "People
+from Harlem and women who like bargain-counters, and who eat chocolate
+meringue for lunch, and then stop in at a continuous performance, go
+shopping. It must be the comic-paper sort of wives who go about
+matching shades and buying hooks and eyes. Yes, I must have made Miss
+Delamar's understudy misrepresent her. I beg your pardon, my dear," he
+said aloud to the Picture. "You did _not_ go shopping this
+morning. You probably went to a woman's luncheon somewhere. Tell me
+about that."
+
+"Oh, yes, I went to lunch with the Antwerps," said the Picture, "and
+they had that Russian woman there who is getting up subscriptions for
+the Siberian prisoners. It's rather fine of her, because it exiles her
+from Russia. And she is a princess."
+
+"That's nothing," Stuart interrupted; "they're all princesses when you
+see them on Broadway."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the Picture.
+
+"It's of no consequence," said Stuart, apologetically, "it's a comic
+song. I forgot you didn't like comic songs. Well--go on."
+
+"Oh, then I went to a tea, and then I stopped in to hear Madame Ruvier
+read a paper on the Ethics of Ibsen, and she--"
+
+Stuart's voice had died away gradually, and he caught himself
+wondering whether he had told George to lay in a fresh supply of
+cigars. "I beg your pardon," he said, briskly, "I was listening, but I
+was just wondering whether I had any cigars left. You were saying that
+you had been at Madame Ruvier's, and--"
+
+"I am afraid that you were not interested," said the Picture. "Never
+mind, it's my fault. Sometimes I think I ought to do things of more
+interest, so that I should have something to talk to you about when
+you come home."
+
+Stuart wondered at what hour he would come home now that he was
+married. As a bachelor he had been in the habit of stopping on his way
+up-town from the law-office at the club, or to take tea at the houses
+of the different girls he liked. Of course he could not do that now as
+a married man. He would instead have to limit his calls to married
+women, as all the other married men of his acquaintance did. But at
+the moment he could not think of any attractive married women who
+would like his dropping in on them in such a familiar manner, and the
+other sort did not as yet appeal to him.
+
+He seated himself in front of the coal fire in the library, with the
+Picture in a chair close beside him, and as he puffed pleasantly on
+his cigar he thought how well this suited him, and how delightful it
+was to find content in so simple and continuing a pleasure. He could
+almost feel the pressure of his wife's hand as it lay in his own, as
+they sat in silent sympathy looking into the friendly glow of the
+fire.
+
+There was a long, pleasant pause.
+
+"They're giving Sloane a dinner to-night at the 'Travellers'," Stuart
+said, at last, "in honor of his going to Abyssinia."
+
+Stuart pondered for some short time as to what sort of a reply Miss
+Delamar's understudy ought to make to this innocent remark. He
+recalled the fact that on numerous occasions the original had shown
+not only a lack of knowledge of far-away places, but, what was more
+trying, a lack of interest as well. For the moment he could not see
+her robbed of her pretty environment and tramping through undiscovered
+countries at his side. So the Picture's reply, when it came, was
+strictly in keeping with several remarks which Miss Delamar herself
+had made to him in the past.
+
+"Yes," said the Picture, politely, "and where is Abyssinia--in India,
+isn't it?"
+
+"No, not exactly," corrected Stuart, mildly; "you pass it on your way
+to India, though, as you go through the Red Sea. Sloane is taking
+Winchesters with him and a double express and a 'five fifty.' He wants
+to test their penetration. I think myself that the express is the
+best, but he says Selous and Chanler think very highly of the
+Winchester. I don't know, I never shot a rhinoceros. The time I killed
+that elephant," he went on, pointing at two tusks that stood with some
+assegais in a corner, "I used an express, and I had to let go with
+both barrels. I suppose, though, if I'd needed a third shot, I'd have
+wished it was a Winchester. He was charging the smoke, you see, and I
+couldn't get away because I'd caught my foot--but I told you about
+that, didn't I?" Stuart interrupted himself to ask politely.
+
+"Yes," said the Picture, cheerfully, "I remember it very well; it was
+very foolish of you."
+
+Stuart straightened himself with a slightly injured air and avoided
+the Picture's eye. He had been stopped midway in what was one of his
+favorite stories, and it took a brief space of time for him to recover
+himself, and to sink back again into the pleasant lethargy in which he
+had been basking.
+
+"Still," he said, "I think the express is the better gun."
+
+"Oh, is an 'express' a gun?" exclaimed the Picture, with sudden
+interest. "Of course, I might have known."
+
+Stuart turned in his chair, and surveyed the Picture in some surprise.
+"But, my dear girl," he remonstrated, kindly, "why didn't you ask, if
+you didn't know what I was talking about? What did you suppose it
+was?"
+
+"I didn't know," said the Picture; "I thought it was something to do
+with his luggage. Abyssinia sounds so far away," she explained,
+smiling sweetly. "You can't expect one to be interested in such queer
+places, can you?"
+
+"No," Stuart answered, reluctantly, and looking steadily at the fire,
+"I suppose not. But you see, my dear," he said, "I'd have gone with
+him if I hadn't married you, and so I am naturally interested in his
+outfit. They wanted me to make a comparative study of the little
+semi-independent states down there, and of how far the Italian
+Government allows them to rule themselves. That's what I was to have
+done."
+
+But the Picture hastened to reassure him. "Oh, you mustn't think," she
+exclaimed, quickly, "that I mean to keep you at home. I love to
+travel, too. I want you to go on exploring places just as you've
+always done, only now I will go with you. We might do the Cathedral
+towns, for instance."
+
+"The what?" gasped Stuart, raising his head. "Oh, yes, of course," he
+added, hurriedly, sinking back into his chair with a slightly
+bewildered expression. "That would be very nice. Perhaps your mother
+would like to go, too; it's not a dangerous expedition, is it? I
+_was_ thinking of taking you on a trip through the South
+Seas--but I suppose the Cathedral towns are just as exciting. Or we
+might even penetrate as far into the interior as the English lakes and
+read Wordsworth and Coleridge as we go."
+
+Miss Delamar's understudy observed him closely for a moment, but he
+made no sign, and so she turned her eyes again to the fire with a
+slightly troubled look. She had not a strong sense of humor, but she
+was very beautiful.
+
+Stuart's conscience troubled him for the next few moments, and he
+endeavored to make up for his impatience of the moment before by
+telling the Picture how particularly well she was looking.
+
+"It seems almost selfish to keep it all to myself," he mused.
+
+"You don't mean," inquired the Picture, with tender anxiety, "that you
+want any one else here, do you? I'm sure I could be content to spend
+every evening like this. I've had enough of going out and talking to
+people I don't care about. Two seasons," she added, with the superior
+air of one who has put away childish things, "was quite enough of it
+for me."
+
+"Well, I never took it as seriously as that," said Stuart, "but, of
+course, I don't want any one else here to spoil our evening. It is
+perfect."
+
+He assured himself that it _was_ perfect, but he wondered what
+was the loyal thing for a married couple to do when the conversation
+came to a dead stop. And did the conversation come to a stop because
+they preferred to sit in silent sympathy and communion, or because
+they had nothing interesting to talk about? Stuart doubted if silence
+was the truest expression of the most perfect confidence and sympathy.
+He generally found when he was interested, that either he or his
+companion talked all the time. It was when he was bored that he sat
+silent. But it was probably different with married people. Possibly
+they thought of each other during these pauses, and of their own
+affairs and interests, and then he asked himself how many interests
+could one fairly retain with which the other had nothing to do?
+
+"I suppose," thought Stuart, "that I had better compromise and read
+aloud. Should you like me to read aloud?" he asked, doubtfully.
+
+The Picture brightened perceptibly at this, and said that she thought
+that would be charming. "We might make it quite instructive," she
+suggested, entering eagerly into the idea. "We ought to agree to read
+so many pages every night. Suppose we begin with Guizot's 'History of
+France.' I have always meant to read that, the illustrations look so
+interesting."
+
+"Yes, we might do that," assented Stuart, doubtfully. "It is in six
+volumes, isn't it? Suppose now, instead," he suggested, with an
+impartial air, "we begin that to-morrow night, and go this evening to
+see Seldon's new play, 'The Fool and His Money.' It's not too late,
+and he has saved a box for us, and Weimer and Rives and Sloane will be
+there, and--"
+
+The Picture's beautiful face settled for just an instant in an
+expression of disappointment. "Of course," she replied, slowly, "if
+you wish it. But I thought you said," she went on with a sweet smile,
+"that this was perfect. Now you want to go out again. Isn't this
+better than a hot theatre? You might put up with it for one evening,
+don't you think?"
+
+"Put up with it!" exclaimed Stuart, enthusiastically; "I could spend
+every evening so. It was only a suggestion. It wasn't that I wanted to
+go so much as that I thought Seldon might be a little hurt if I
+didn't. But I can tell him you were not feeling very well, and that we
+will come some other evening. He generally likes to have us there on
+the first night, that's all. But he'll understand."
+
+"Oh," said the Picture, "if you put it in the light of a duty to your
+friend, of course we will go--"
+
+"Not at all," replied Stuart, heartily; "I will read something. I
+should really prefer it. How would you like something of Browning's?"
+
+"Oh, I read all of Browning once," said the Picture. "I think I should
+like something new."
+
+Stuart gasped at this, but said nothing, and began turning over the
+books on the centre-table. He selected one of the monthly magazines,
+and choosing a story which neither of them had read, sat down
+comfortably in front of the fire, and finished it without interruption
+and to the satisfaction of the Picture and himself. The story had made
+the half hour pass very pleasantly, and they both commented on it with
+interest.
+
+"I had an experience once myself something like that," said Stuart,
+with a pleased smile of recollection; "it happened in Paris"--he began
+with the deliberation of a man who is sure of his story--"and it
+turned out in much the same way. It didn't begin in Paris; it really
+began while we were crossing the English Channel to--"
+
+"Oh, you mean about the Russian who took you for some one else and had
+you followed," said the Picture. "Yes, that was like it, except that
+in your case nothing happened."
+
+Stuart took his cigar from between his lips and frowned severely at
+the lighted end for some little time before he spoke.
+
+"My dear," he remonstrated, gently, "you mustn't tell me I've told you
+all my old stories before. It isn't fair. Now that I am married, you
+see, I can't go about and have new experiences, and I've got to make
+use of the old ones."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," exclaimed the Picture, remorsefully. "I didn't
+mean to be rude. Please tell me about it. I should like to hear it
+again, ever so much. I _should_ like to hear it again, really."
+
+"Nonsense," said Stuart, laughing and shaking his head. "I was only
+joking; personally I hate people who tell long stories. That doesn't
+matter. I was thinking of something else."
+
+He continued thinking of something else, which was, that though he had
+been in jest when he spoke of having given up the chance of meeting
+fresh experiences, he had nevertheless described a condition, and a
+painfully true one. His real life seemed to have stopped, and he saw
+himself in the future looking back and referring to it, as though it
+were the career of an entirely different person, of a young man, with
+quick sympathies which required satisfying, as any appetite requires
+food. And he had an uncomfortable doubt that these many ever-ready
+sympathies would rebel if fed on only one diet.
+
+The Picture did not interrupt him in his thoughts, and he let his mind
+follow his eyes as they wandered over the objects above him on the
+mantel-shelf. They all meant something from the past--a busy,
+wholesome past which had formed habits of thought and action, habits
+he could no longer enjoy alone, and which, on the other hand, it was
+quite impossible for him to share with any one else. He was no longer
+to be alone.
+
+Stuart stirred uneasily in his chair and poked at the fire before him.
+
+"Do you remember the day you came to see me," said the Picture,
+sentimentally, "and built the fire yourself and lighted some girl's
+letters to make it burn?"
+
+"Yes," said Stuart, "that is, I _said_ that they were some girl's
+letters. It made it more picturesque. I am afraid they were bills. I
+should say I did remember it," he continued, enthusiastically. "You
+wore a black dress and little red slippers with big black rosettes,
+and you looked as beautiful as--as night--as a moonlight night."
+
+The Picture frowned slightly.
+
+"You are always telling me about how I looked," she complained; "can't
+you remember any time when we were together without remembering what I
+had on and how I appeared?"
+
+"I cannot," said Stuart, promptly. "I can recall lots of other things
+besides, but I can't forget how you looked. You have a fashion of
+emphasizing episodes in that way which is entirely your own. But, as I
+say, I can remember something else. Do you remember, for instance,
+when we went up to West Point on that yacht? Wasn't it a grand day,
+with the autumn leaves on both sides of the Hudson, and the dress
+parade, and the dance afterward at the hotel?"
+
+"Yes, I should think I did," said the Picture, smiling. "You spent all
+your time examining cannon, and talking to the men about 'firing in
+open order,' and left me all alone."
+
+"Left you all alone! I like that," laughed Stuart; "all alone with
+about eighteen officers."
+
+"Well, but that was natural," returned the Picture. "They were men.
+It's natural for a girl to talk to men, but why should a man want to
+talk to men?"
+
+"Well, I know better than that now," said Stuart.
+
+He proceeded to show that he knew better by remaining silent for the
+next half hour, during which time he continued to wonder whether this
+effort to keep up a conversation was not radically wrong. He thought
+of several things he might say, but he argued that it was an
+impossible situation where a man had to make conversation with his own
+wife.
+
+The clock struck ten as he sat waiting, and he moved uneasily in his
+chair.
+
+"What is it?" asked the Picture; "what makes you so restless?"
+
+Stuart regarded the Picture timidly for a moment before he spoke. "I
+was just thinking," he said, doubtfully, "that we might run down after
+all, and take a look in at the last act; it's not too late even now.
+They're sure to run behind on the first night. And then," he urged,
+"we can go around and see Seldon. You have never been behind the
+scenes, have you? It's very interesting."
+
+"No, I have not; but if we do," remonstrated the Picture,
+pathetically, "you _know_ all those men will come trooping home
+with us. You know they will."
+
+"But that's very complimentary," said Stuart. "Why, I like my friends
+to like my wife."
+
+"Yes, but you know how they stay when they get here," she answered; "I
+don't believe they ever sleep. Don't you remember the last supper you
+gave me before we were married, when Mrs. Starr and you all were
+discussing Mr. Seldon's play? She didn't make a move to go until
+half-past two, and I was _that_ sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes
+open."
+
+"Yes," said Stuart, "I remember. I'm sorry. I thought it was very
+interesting. Seldon changed the whole second act on account of what
+she said. Well, after this," he laughed with cheerful desperation, "I
+think I shall make up for the part of a married man in a pair of
+slippers and a dressing-gown, and then perhaps I won't be tempted to
+roam abroad at night."
+
+"You must wear the gown they are going to give you at Oxford," said
+the Picture, smiling placidly. "The one Aunt Lucy was telling me
+about. Why do they give you a gown?" she asked. "It seems such an odd
+thing to do."
+
+"The gown comes with the degree, I believe," said Stuart.
+
+"But why do they give _you_ a degree?" persisted the Picture;
+"you never studied at Oxford, did you?"
+
+Stuart moved slightly in his chair and shook his head. "I thought I
+told you," he said, gently. "No, I never studied there. I wrote some
+books on--things, and they liked them."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember now, you did tell me," said the Picture; "and I
+told Aunt Lucy about it, and said we would be in England during the
+season when you got your degree, and she said you must be awfully
+clever to get it. You see--she does appreciate you, and you always
+treat her so distantly."
+
+"Do I?" said Stuart, quietly. "I'm sorry."
+
+"Will you have your portrait painted in it?" asked the Picture.
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In the gown. You are not listening," said the Picture, reproachfully.
+"You ought to. Aunt Lucy says it's a beautiful shade of red silk, and
+very long. Is it?"
+
+"I don't know," said Stuart. He shook his head, and dropping his chin
+into his hands, stared coldly down into the fire. He tried to persuade
+himself that he had been vainglorious, and that he had given too much
+weight to the honor which the University of Oxford would bestow upon
+him; that he had taken the degree too seriously, and that the
+Picture's view of it was the view of the rest of the world. But he
+could not convince himself that he was entirely at fault.
+
+"Is it too late to begin on Guizot?" suggested his Picture, as an
+alternative to his plan. "It sounds so improving."
+
+"Yes, it is much too late," answered Stuart, decidedly. "Besides, I
+don't want to be improved. I want to be amused, or inspired, or
+scolded. The chief good of friends is that they do one of these three
+things, and a wife should do all three."
+
+"Which shall I do?" asked the Picture, smiling good-humoredly.
+
+Stuart looked at the beautiful face and at the reclining figure of the
+woman to whom he was to turn for sympathy for the rest of his life,
+and felt a cold shiver of terror, that passed as quickly as it came.
+He reached out his hand and placed it on the arm of the chair where
+his wife's hand should have been, and patted the place kindly. He
+would shut his eyes to everything but that she was good and sweet and
+his wife. Whatever else she lacked that her beauty had covered up and
+hidden, and the want of which had Iain unsuspected in their previous
+formal intercourse, could not be mended now. He would settle his step
+to hers, and eliminate all those interests from his life which were
+not hers as well. He had chosen a beautiful idol, and not a companion,
+for a wife. He had tried to warm his hands at the fire of a diamond.
+
+Stuart's eyes closed wearily as though to shut out the memories of the
+past, or the foreknowledge of what the future was sure to be. His head
+sank forward on his breast, and with his hand shading his eyes, he
+looked beyond, through the dying fire, into the succeeding years.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+The gay little French clock on the table sounded the hour of midnight
+briskly, with a pert, insistent clamor, and at the same instant a
+boisterous and unruly knocking answered it from outside the library
+door.
+
+Stuart rose uncertainly from his chair and surveyed the tiny clock
+face with a startled expression of bewilderment and relief.
+
+"Stuart!" his friends called impatiently from the hall. "Stuart, let
+us in!" and without waiting further for recognition a merry company of
+gentlemen pushed their way noisily into the room.
+
+"Where the devil have you been?" demanded Weimer. "You don't deserve
+to be spoken to at all after quitting us like that. But Seldon is so
+good-natured," he went on, "that he sent us after you. It was a great
+success, and he made a rattling good speech, and you missed the whole
+thing; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. We've asked half the
+people in front to supper--two stray Englishmen, all the Wilton girls
+and their governor, and the chap that wrote the play. And Seldon and
+his brother Sam are coming as soon as they get their make-up off.
+Don't stand there like that, but hurry. What have you been doing?"
+
+Stuart gave a nervous, anxious laugh. "Oh, don't ask me," he cried.
+"It was awful. I've been trying an experiment, and I had to keep it up
+until midnight, and--I'm so glad you fellows have come," he continued,
+halting midway in his explanation. "I _was_ blue."
+
+"You've been asleep in front of the fire," said young Sloane, "and
+you've been dreaming."
+
+"Perhaps," laughed Stuart, gayly, "perhaps. But I'm awake now, in any
+event. Sloane, old man," he cried, dropping both hands on the
+youngster's shoulders, "how much money have you? Enough to take me to
+Gibraltar? They can cable me the rest."
+
+"Hoorah!" shouted Sloane, waltzing from one end of the room to the
+other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang.
+"There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his side; "you
+can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all
+yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the
+Winchester is the better gun."
+
+"All right," returned Stuart, gayly, "and I'll try to prove that the
+Italians don't know how to govern a native state. But who is giving
+this supper, anyway?" he demanded. "That is the main thing--that's
+what I want to know."
+
+"You've got to pack, haven't you?" suggested Rives.
+
+"I'll pack when I get back," said Stuart, struggling into his
+greatcoat, and searching in his pockets for his gloves. "Besides, my
+things are always ready and there's plenty of time; the boat doesn't
+leave for six hours yet."
+
+"We'll all come back and help," said Weimer.
+
+"Then I'll never get away," laughed Stuart. He was radiant, happy, and
+excited, like a boy back from school for the holidays. But when they
+had reached the pavement, he halted and ran his hand down into his
+pocket, as though feeling for his latch-key, and stood looking
+doubtfully at his friends.
+
+"What is it now?" asked Rives, impatiently. "Have you forgotten
+something?"
+
+Stuart looked back at the front door in momentary indecision.
+
+"Ye-es," he answered. "I did forget something. But it doesn't matter,"
+he added, cheerfully, taking Sloane's arm.
+
+"Come on," he said, "and so Seldon made a hit, did he? I am glad--and
+tell me, old man, how long will we have to wait at Gib for the P. & O.?"
+
+Stuart's servant had heard the men trooping down the stairs, laughing
+and calling to one another as they went, and judging from this that
+they had departed for the night, he put out all the lights in the
+library and closed the piano, and lifted the windows to clear the room
+of the tobacco-smoke. He did not notice the beautiful photograph
+sitting upright in the armchair before the fireplace, and so left it
+alone in the deserted library.
+
+The cold night-air swept in through the open window and chilled the
+silent room, and the dead coals in the grate dropped one by one into
+the fender with a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture still sat in
+the armchair with the same graceful pose and the same lovely
+expression, and smiled sweetly at the encircling darkness.
+
+
+
+
+THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING
+
+
+The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the
+one who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a
+printer's devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to
+graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer
+take down speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real
+reporter, with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking
+acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even excepting
+Police Captains.
+
+That is the old time journalist's idea of it. That is the way he was
+trained, and that is why at the age of sixty he is still a reporter.
+If you train up a youth in this way, he will go into reporting with
+too full a knowledge of the newspaper business, with no illusions
+concerning it, and with no ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen and
+justifiable impression that he is not paid enough for what he does.
+And he will only do what he is paid to do.
+
+Now, you cannot pay a good reporter for what he does, because he does
+not work for pay. He works for his paper. He gives his time, his
+health, his brains, his sleeping hours, and his eating hours, and
+sometimes his life, to get news for it. He thinks the sun rises only
+that men may have light by which to read it. But if he has been in a
+newspaper office from his youth up, he finds out before he becomes a
+reporter that this is not so, and loses his real value. He should come
+right out of the University where he has been doing "campus notes" for
+the college weekly, and be pitchforked out into city work without
+knowing whether the Battery is at Harlem or Hunter's Point, and with
+the idea that he is a Moulder of Public Opinion and that the Power of
+the Press is greater than the Power of Money, and that the few lines
+he writes are of more value in the Editor's eyes than is the column of
+advertising on the last page, which they are not.
+
+After three years--it is sometimes longer, sometimes not so long--he
+finds out that he has given his nerves and his youth and his
+enthusiasm in exchange for a general fund of miscellaneous knowledge,
+the opportunity of personal encounter with all the greatest and most
+remarkable men and events that have risen in those three years, and a
+great fund of resource an patience. He will find that he has crowded
+the experiences of the lifetime of the ordinary young business man,
+doctor, or lawyer, or man about town, into three short years; that he
+has learned to think and to act quickly, to be patient and unmoved
+when every one else has lost his head, actually or figuratively
+speaking; to write as fast as another man can talk, and to be able to
+talk with authority on matters of which other men do not venture even
+to think until they have read what he has written with a copy-boy at
+his elbow on the night previous.
+
+It is necessary for you to know this, that you may understand what
+manner of man young Albert Gordon was.
+
+Young Gordon had been a reporter just three years. He had left Yale
+when his last living relative died, and had taken the morning train
+for New York, where they had promised him reportorial work on one of
+the innumerable Greatest New York Dailies. He arrived at the office at
+noon, and was sent back over the same road on which he had just come,
+to Spuyten Duyvil, where a train had been wrecked and everybody of
+consequence to suburban New York killed. One of the old reporters
+hurried him to the office again with his "copy," and after he had
+delivered that, he was sent to the Tombs to talk French to a man in
+Murderers' Row, who could not talk anything else, but who had shown
+some international skill in the use of a jimmy. And at eight, he
+covered a flower-show in Madison Square Garden; and at eleven was sent
+over the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at
+the losses to the insurance companies.
+
+He went to bed at one, and dreamed of shattered locomotives, human
+beings lying still with blankets over them, rows of cells, and banks
+of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass
+band in the gallery. He decided when he awoke the next morning that he
+had entered upon a picturesque and exciting career, and as one day
+followed another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more
+and more devoted to it. He was twenty then, and he was now
+twenty-three, and in that time had become a great reporter, and had
+been to Presidential conventions in Chicago, revolutions in Hayti,
+Indian outbreaks on the Plains, and midnight meetings of moonlighters
+in Tennessee, and had seen what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and
+fever could do in great cities, and had contradicted the President,
+and borrowed matches from burglars. And now he thought he would like
+to rest and breathe a bit, and not to work again unless as a war
+correspondent. The only obstacle to his becoming a great war
+correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war, and a war
+correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual as a
+general without an army. He read the papers every morning on the
+elevated trains for war clouds; but though there were many war clouds,
+they always drifted apart, and peace smiled again. This was very
+disappointing to young Gordon, and he became more and more keenly
+discouraged.
+
+And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to write his
+novel. It was to be a novel of New York life, and he wanted a quiet
+place in which to work on it. He was already making inquiries among
+the suburban residents of his acquaintance for just such a quiet spot,
+when he received an offer to go to the Island of Opeki in the North
+Pacific Ocean, as secretary to the American consul at that place. The
+gentleman who had been appointed by the President to act as consul at
+Opeki was Captain Leonard T. Travis, a veteran of the Civil War, who
+had contracted a severe attack of rheumatism while camping out at
+night in the dew, and who on account of this souvenir of his efforts
+to save the Union had allowed the Union he had saved to support him in
+one office or another ever since. He had met young Gordon at a dinner,
+and had had the presumption to ask him to serve as his secretary, and
+Gordon, much to his surprise, had accepted his offer. The idea of a
+quiet life in the tropics with new and beautiful surroundings, and
+with nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, and to write
+his novel besides, seemed to Albert to be just what he wanted; and
+though he did not know nor care much for his superior officer, he
+agreed to go with him promptly, and proceeded to say good-by to his
+friends and to make his preparations. Captain Travis was so delighted
+with getting such a clever young gentleman for his secretary, that he
+referred to him to his friends as "my attaché of legation"; nor did he
+lessen that gentleman's dignity by telling any one that the attaché's
+salary was to be five hundred dollars a year. His own salary was only
+fifteen hundred dollars; and though his brother-in-law, Senator
+Rainsford, tried his best to get the amount raised, he was
+unsuccessful. The consulship to Opeki was instituted early in the
+'50's, to get rid of and reward a third or fourth cousin of the
+President's, whose services during the campaign were important, but
+whose after-presence was embarrassing. He had been created consul to
+Opeki as being more distant and unaccessible than any other known
+spot, and had lived and died there; and so little was known of the
+island, and so difficult was communication with it, that no one knew
+he was dead, until Captain Travis, in his hungry haste for office, had
+uprooted the sad fact. Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had a
+secondary reason for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician had told
+him to go to some warm climate for his rheumatism, and in accepting
+the consulship his object was rather to follow out his doctor's orders
+at his country's expense, than to serve his country at the expense of
+his rheumatism.
+
+Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that
+it was situated about one hundred miles from the Island of Octavia,
+which island, in turn, was simply described as a coaling-station three
+hundred miles distant from the coast of California. Steamers from San
+Francisco to Yokohama stopped every third week at Octavia, and that
+was all that either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of
+their new home. This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to
+stay only as long as he liked it, and to return to the States within a
+few months if he found such a change of plan desirable.
+
+As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he thought
+it would be advisable to furnish himself with a supply of articles
+with which he might trade with the native Opekians, and for this
+purpose he purchased a large quantity of brass rods, because he had
+read that Stanley did so, and added to these brass curtain-chains, and
+about two hundred leaden medals similar to those sold by street
+peddlers during the Constitutional Centennial Celebration in New York
+City.
+
+He also collected even more beautiful but less expensive decorations
+for Christmas-trees, at a wholesale house on Park Row. These he hoped
+to exchange for furs or feathers or weapons, or for whatever other
+curious and valuable trophies the Island of Opeki boasted. He already
+pictured his rooms on his return hung fantastically with crossed
+spears and boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly idols.
+
+His friends told him that he was doing a very foolish thing, and
+argued that once out of the newspaper world, it would be hard to
+regain his place in it. But he thought the novel that he would write
+while lost to the world at Opeki would serve to make up for his
+temporary absence from it, and he expressly and impressively
+stipulated that the editor should wire him if there was a war.
+
+Captain Travis and his secretary crossed the continent without
+adventure, and took passage from San Francisco on the first steamer
+that touched at Octavia. They reached that island in three days, and
+learned with some concern that there was no regular communication with
+Opeki, and that it would be necessary to charter a sailboat for the
+trip. Two fishermen agreed to take them and their trunks, and to get
+them to their destination within sixteen hours if the wind held good.
+It was a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with calm, relentless
+persistence from what was apparently a clear sky; the wind tossed the
+waves as high as the mast and made Captain Travis ill; and as there
+was no deck to the big boat, they were forced to huddle up under
+pieces of canvas, and talked but little. Captain Travis complained of
+frequent twinges of rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale
+at the empty waste of water.
+
+"If I've got to serve a term of imprisonment on a rock in the middle
+of the ocean for four years," he said, "I might just as well have done
+something first to deserve it. This is a pretty way to treat a man who
+bled for his country. This is gratitude, this is." Albert pulled
+heavily on his pipe, and wiped the rain and spray from his face and
+smiled.
+
+"Oh, it won't be so bad when we get there," he said; "they say these
+Southern people are always hospitable, and the whites will be glad to
+see any one from the States."
+
+"There will be a round of diplomatic dinners," said the consul, with
+an attempt at cheerfulness. "I have brought two uniforms to wear at
+them."
+
+It was seven o'clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and one of
+the black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a little low
+line on the horizon.
+
+"Opeki," he said. The line grew in length until it proved to be an
+island with great mountains rising to the clouds, and, as they drew
+nearer and nearer, showed a level coast running back to the foot of
+the mountains and covered with a forest of palms. They next made out a
+village of thatched huts around a grassy square, and at some distance
+from the village a wooden structure with a tin roof.
+
+"I wonder where the town is?" asked the consul, with a nervous glance
+at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he saw was the town.
+
+"That?" gasped the consul. "Is that where all the people on the island
+live?"
+
+The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were other
+natives further back in the mountains, but that they were bad men who
+fought and ate each other. The consul and his attaché of legation
+gazed at the mountains with unspoken misgivings. They were quite near
+now, and could see an immense crowd of men and women, all of them
+black, and clad but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them.
+They seemed greatly excited and ran in and out of the huts, and up and
+down the beach, as wildly as so many black ants. But in the front of
+the group they distinguished three men who they could see were white,
+though they were clothed, like the others, simply in a shirt and a
+short pair of trousers. Two of these three suddenly sprang away on a
+run and disappeared among the palm-trees; but the third one, when he
+recognized the American flag in the halyards, threw his straw hat in
+the water and began turning handsprings over the sand.
+
+"That young gentleman, at least," said Albert, gravely, "seems pleased
+to see us."
+
+A dozen of the natives sprang into the water and came wading and
+swimming toward them, grinning and shouting and swinging their arms.
+
+"I don't think it's quite safe, do you?" said the consul, looking out
+wildly to the open sea. "You see, they don't know who I am."
+
+A great black giant threw one arm over the gunwale and shouted
+something that sounded as if it were spelt Owah, Owah, as the boat
+carried him through the surf.
+
+"How do you do?" said Gordon, doubtfully. The boat shook the giant off
+under the wave and beached itself so suddenly that the American consul
+was thrown forward to his knees. Gordon did not wait to pick him up,
+but jumped out and shook hands with the young man who had turned
+handsprings, while the natives gathered about them in a circle and
+chatted and laughed in delighted excitement.
+
+"I'm awfully glad to see you," said the young man, eagerly. "My name's
+Stedman. I'm from New Haven, Connecticut. Where are you from?"
+
+"New York," said Albert. "This," he added, pointing solemnly to
+Captain Travis, who was still on his knees in the boat, "is the
+American consul to Opeki." The American consul to Opeki gave a wild
+look at Mr. Stedman of New Haven and at the natives.
+
+"See here, young man," he gasped, "is this all there is of Opeki?"
+
+"The American consul?" said young Stedman, with a gasp of amazement,
+and looking from Albert to Captain Travis. "Why, I never supposed they
+would send another here; the last one died about fifteen years ago,
+and there hasn't been one since. I've been living in the consul's
+office with the Bradleys, but I'll move out, of course. I'm sure I'm
+awfully glad to see you. It'll make it so much more pleasant for me."
+
+"Yes," said Captain Travis, bitterly, as he lifted his rheumatic leg
+over the boat; "that's why we came."
+
+Mr. Stedman did not notice this. He was too much pleased to be
+anything but hospitable. "You are soaking wet, aren't you?" he said;
+"and hungry, I guess. You come right over to the consul's office and
+get on some other things."
+
+He turned to the natives and gave some rapid orders in their language,
+and some of them jumped into the boat at this, and began to lift out
+the trunks, and others ran off toward a large, stout old native, who
+was sitting gravely on a log, smoking, with the rain beating unnoticed
+on his gray hair.
+
+"They've gone to tell the King," said Stedman; "but you'd better get
+something to eat first, and then I'll be happy to present you
+properly."
+
+"The King," said Captain Travis, with some awe; "is there a king?"
+
+"I never saw a king," Gordon remarked, "and I'm sure I never expected
+to see one sitting on a log in the rain."
+
+"He's a very good king," said Stedman, confidentially; "and though you
+mightn't think it to look at him, he's a terrible stickler for
+etiquette and form. After supper he'll give you an audience; and if
+you have any tobacco, you had better give him some as a present, and
+you'd better say it's from the President: he doesn't like to take
+presents from common people, he's so proud. The only reason he borrows
+mine is because he thinks I'm the President's son."
+
+"What makes him think that?" demanded the consul, with some shortness.
+Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at the consul and at Albert, and
+said that he guessed some one must have told him.
+
+The consul's office was divided into four rooms with an open court in
+the middle, filled with palms, and watered somewhat unnecessarily by a
+fountain.
+
+"I made that," said Stedman, in a modest, offhand way. "I made it out
+of hollow bamboo reeds connected with a spring. And now I'm making one
+for the King. He saw this and had a lot of bamboo sticks put up all
+over the town, without any underground connections, and couldn't make
+out why the water wouldn't spurt out of them. And because mine spurts,
+he thinks I'm a magician."
+
+"I suppose," grumbled the consul, "some one told him that too."
+
+[Illustration: "I never saw a king," Gordon remarked.]
+
+"I suppose so," said Mr. Stedman, uneasily.
+
+There was a veranda around the consul's office, and inside the walls
+were hung with skins, and pictures from illustrated papers, and there
+was a good deal of bamboo furniture, and four broad, cool-looking
+beds. The place was as clean as a kitchen. "I made the furniture,"
+said Stedman, "and the Bradleys keep the place in order."
+
+"Who are the Bradleys?" asked Albert.
+
+"The Bradleys are those two men you saw with me," said Stedman; "they
+deserted from a British man-of-war that stopped here for coal, and
+they act as my servants. One is Bradley, Sr., and the other Bradley,
+Jr."
+
+"Then vessels do stop here occasionally?" the consul said, with a
+pleased smile.
+
+"Well, not often," said Stedman. "Not so very often; about once a
+year. The Nelson thought this was Octavia, and put off again as soon
+as she found out her mistake, but the Bradleys took to the bush, and
+the boat's crew couldn't find them. When they saw your flag, they
+thought you might mean to send them back, so they ran off to hide
+again; they'll be back, though, when they get hungry."
+
+The supper young Stedman spread for his guests, as he still treated
+them, was very refreshing and very good. There was cold fish and
+pigeon pie, and a hot omelet filled with mushrooms and olives and
+tomatoes and onions all sliced up together, and strong black coffee.
+After supper, Stedman went off to see the King, and came back in a
+little while to say that his Majesty would give them an audience the
+next day after breakfast. "It is too dark now," Stedman explained;
+"and it's raining so that they can't make the street-lamps burn. Did
+you happen to notice our lamps? I invented them; but they don't work
+very well yet. I've got the right idea, though, and I'll soon have the
+town illuminated all over, whether it rains or not."
+
+The consul had been very silent and indifferent, during supper, to all
+around him. Now he looked up with some show of interest.
+
+"How much longer is it going to rain, do you think?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Stedman, critically. "Not more than two
+months, I should say." The consul rubbed his rheumatic leg and sighed,
+but said nothing.
+
+The Bradleys returned about ten o'clock, and came in very sheepishly.
+The consul had gone off to pay the boatmen who had brought them, and
+Albert in his absence assured the sailors that there was not the least
+danger of their being sent away. Then he turned into one of the beds,
+and Stedman took one in another room, leaving the room he had occupied
+heretofore for the consul. As he was saying good-night, Albert
+suggested that he had not yet told them how he came to be on a
+deserted island; but Stedman only laughed and said that that was a
+long story, and that he would tell him all about it in the morning. So
+Albert went off to bed without waiting for the consul to return, and
+fell asleep, wondering at the strangeness of his new life, and
+assuring himself that if the rain only kept up, he would have his
+novel finished in a month.
+
+The sun was shining brightly when he awoke, and the palm-trees outside
+were nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. From the court came the odor
+of strange flowers, and from the window he could see the ocean
+brilliantly blue, and with the sun coloring the spray that beat
+against the coral reefs on the shore.
+
+"Well, the consul can't complain of this," he said, with a laugh of
+satisfaction; and pulling on a bath-robe, he stepped into the next
+room to awaken Captain Travis. But the room was quite empty, and the
+bed undisturbed. The consul's trunk remained just where it had been
+placed near the door, and on it lay a large sheet of foolscap, with
+writing on it, and addressed at the top to Albert Gordon. The
+handwriting was the consul's. Albert picked it up and read it with
+much anxiety. It began abruptly
+
+    The fishermen who brought us to this forsaken spot tell me that
+    it rains here six months in the year, and that this is the first
+    month. I came here to serve my country, for which I fought and
+    bled, but I did not come here to die of rheumatism and pneumonia.
+    I can serve my country better by staying alive; and whether it
+    rains or not, I don't like it. I have been grossly deceived, and
+    I am going back. Indeed, by the time you get this, I will be on
+    my return trip, as I intend leaving with the men who brought us
+    here as soon as they can get the sail up. My cousin, Senator
+    Rainsford, can fix it all right with the President, and can have
+    me recalled in proper form after I get back. But of course it
+    would not do for me to leave my post with no one to take my
+    place, and no one could be more ably fitted to do so than
+    yourself; so I feel no compunctions at leaving you behind. I
+    hereby, therefore, accordingly appoint you my substitute with
+    full power to act, to collect all fees, sign all papers, and
+    attend to all matters pertaining to your office as American
+    consul, and I trust you will worthily uphold the name of that
+    country and government which it has always been my pleasure and
+    duty to serve.
+
+    Your sincere friend and superior officer,
+
+    LEONARD T. TRAVIS.
+
+    P.S. I did not care to disturb you by moving my trunk, so I left
+    it, and you can make what use you please of whatever it contains,
+    as I shall not want tropical garments where I am going. What you
+    will need most, I think, is a waterproof and umbrella.
+
+    P.S. Look out for that young man Stedman. He is too inventive. I
+    hope you will like your high office; but as for myself, I am
+    satisfied with little old New York. Opeki is just a bit too far
+    from civilization to suit me.
+
+Albert held the letter before him and read it over again before he
+moved. Then he jumped to the window. The boat was gone, and there was
+not a sign of it on the horizon.
+
+"The miserable old hypocrite!" he cried, half angry and half laughing.
+"If he thinks I am going to stay here alone he is very greatly
+mistaken. And yet, why not?" he asked. He stopped soliloquizing and
+looked around him, thinking rapidly. As he stood there, Stedman came
+in from the other room, fresh and smiling from his morning's bath.
+
+"Good-morning," he said, "where's the consul?"
+
+"The consul," said Albert, gravely, "is before you. In me you see the
+American consul to Opeki."
+
+"Captain Travis," Albert explained, "has returned to the United
+States. I suppose he feels that he can best serve his country by
+remaining on the spot. In case of another war, now, for instance, he
+would be there to save it again."
+
+"And what are you going to do?" asked Stedman, anxiously. "You will
+not run away, too, will you?"
+
+Albert said that he intended to remain where he was and perform his
+consular duties, to appoint him his secretary, and to elevate the
+United States in the opinion of the Opekians above all other nations.
+
+"They may not think much of the United States in England," he said;
+"but we are going to teach the people of Opeki that America is first
+on the map and that there is no second."
+
+"I'm sure it's very good of you to make me your secretary," said
+Stedman, with some pride. "I hope I won't make any mistakes. What are
+the duties of a consul's secretary?" "That," said Albert, "I do not
+know. But you are rather good at inventing, so you can invent a few.
+That should be your first duty and you should attend to it at once. I
+will have trouble enough finding work for myself. Your salary is five
+hundred dollars a year; and now," he continued briskly, "we want to
+prepare for this reception. We can tell the King that Travis was just
+a guard of honor for the trip, and that I have sent him back to tell
+the President of my safe arrival. That will keep the President from
+getting anxious. There; is nothing," continued Albert, "like a uniform
+to impress people who live in the tropics, and Travis, it so happens,
+has two in his trunk. He intended to wear them on State occasions, and
+as I inherit the trunk and all that is in it, I intend to wear one of
+the uniforms, and you can have the other. But I have first choice,
+because I am consul."
+
+Captain Travis's consular outfit consisted of one full dress and one
+undress United States uniform. Albert put on the dress-coat over a
+pair of white flannel trousers, and looked remarkably brave and
+handsome. Stedman, who was only eighteen and quite thin, did not
+appear so well, until Albert suggested his padding out his chest and
+shoulders with towels. This made him rather warm, but helped his
+general appearance.
+
+"The two Bradleys must dress up, too," said Albert. "I think they
+ought to act as a guard of honor, don't you? The only things I have
+are blazers and jerseys; but it doesn't much matter what they wear, as
+long as they dress alike."
+
+He accordingly called in the two Bradleys, and gave them each a pair
+of the captain's rejected white duck trousers, and a blue jersey
+apiece, with a big white Y on it.
+
+"The students of Yale gave me that," he said to the younger Bradley,
+"in which to play football, and a great man gave me the other. His
+name is Walter Camp; and if you rip or soil that jersey, I'll send you
+back to England in irons; so be careful."
+
+Stedman gazed at his companions in their different costumes,
+doubtfully. "It reminds me," he said, "of private theatricals. Of the
+time our church choir played 'Pinafore.'"
+
+"Yes," assented Albert; "but I don't think we look quite gay enough. I
+tell you what we need--medals. You never saw a diplomat without a lot
+of decorations and medals."
+
+"Well, I can fix that," Stedman said. "I've got a trunkful. I used to
+be the fastest bicycle-rider in Connecticut, and I've got all my
+prizes with me."
+
+Albert said doubtfully that that wasn't exactly the sort of medal he
+meant.
+
+"Perhaps not," returned Stedman, as he began fumbling in his trunk;
+"but the King won't know the difference. He couldn't tell a cross of
+the Legion of Honor from a medal for the tug of war."
+
+So the bicycle medals, of which Stedman seemed to have an innumerable
+quantity, were strung in profusion over Albert's uniform, and in a
+lesser quantity over Stedman's; while a handful of leaden ones, those
+sold on the streets for the Constitutional Centennial, with which
+Albert had provided himself, were wrapped up in a red silk
+handkerchief for presentation to the King; with them Albert placed a
+number of brass rods and brass chains, much to Stedman's delighted
+approval.
+
+"That is a very good idea," he said. "Democratic simplicity is the
+right thing at home, of course; but when you go abroad and mix with
+crowned heads, you want to show them that you know what's what."
+
+"Well," said Albert, gravely, "I sincerely hope this crowned head
+don't know what's what. If he reads 'Connecticut Agricultural State
+Fair. One mile bicycle race. First Prize,' on this badge, when we are
+trying to make him believe it's a war medal, it may hurt his
+feelings."
+
+Bradley, Jr., went ahead to announce the approach of the American
+embassy, which he did with so much manner that the King deferred the
+audience a half-hour, in order that he might better prepare to receive
+his visitors. When the audience did take place, it attracted the
+entire population to the green spot in front of the King's palace, and
+their delight and excitement over the appearance of the visitors was
+sincere and hearty. The King was too polite to appear much surprised,
+but he showed his delight over his presents as simply and openly as a
+child. Thrice he insisted on embracing Albert, and kissing him three
+times on the fore-head, which, Stedman assured him in a side-whisper,
+was a great honor; an honor which was not extended to the secretary,
+although he was given a necklace of animals' claws instead, with which
+he was better satisfied.
+
+After this reception, the embassy marched back to the consul's office,
+surrounded by an immense number of natives, some of whom ran ahead and
+looked back at them, and crowded so close that the two Bradleys had to
+poke at those nearest with their guns. The crowd remained outside the
+office even after the procession of four had disappeared, and cheered.
+This suggested to Gordon that this would be a good time to make a
+speech, which he accordingly did, Stedman translating it, sentence by
+sentence. At the conclusion of this effort, Albert distributed a
+number of brass rings among the married men present, which they placed
+on whichever finger fitted best, and departed delighted.
+
+Albert had wished to give the rings to the married women, but Stedman
+pointed out to him that it would be much cheaper to give them to the
+married men; for while one woman could only have one husband, one man
+could have at least six wives.
+
+"And now, Stedman," said Albert, after the mob had gone, "tell me what
+you are doing on this island."
+
+"It's a very simple story," Stedman said. "I am the representative, or
+agent, or operator, for the Yokohama Cable Company. The Yokohama Cable
+Company is a company organized in San Francisco, for the purpose of
+laying a cable to Yokohama. It is a stock company; and though it
+started out very well, the stock has fallen very low. Between
+ourselves, it is not worth over three or four cents. When the officers
+of the company found out that no one would buy their stock, and that
+no one believed in them or their scheme, they laid a cable to Octavia,
+and extended it on to this island. Then they said they had run out of
+ready money, and would wait until they got more before laying their
+cable any farther. I do not think they ever will lay it any farther,
+but that is none of my business. My business is to answer cable
+messages from San Francisco, so that the people who visit the home
+office can see that at least a part of the cable is working. That
+sometimes impresses them, and they buy stock. There is another chap
+over in Octavia, who relays all my messages and all my replies to
+those messages that come to me through him from San Francisco. They
+never send a message unless they have brought some one to the office
+whom they want to impress, and who, they think, has money to invest in
+the Y.C.C. stock, and so we never go near the wire, except at three
+o'clock every afternoon. And then generally only to say 'How are you?'
+or 'It's raining,' or something like that. I've been saying 'It's
+raining,' now for the last three months, but to-day I will say that
+the new consul has arrived. That will be a pleasant surprise for the
+chap in Octavia, for he must be tired hearing about the weather. He
+generally answers, 'Here too,' or 'So you said,' or something like
+that. I don't know what he says to the home office. He's brighter than
+I am, and that's why they put him between the two ends. He can see
+that the messages are transmitted more fully and more correctly, in a
+way to please possible subscribers."
+
+"Sort of copy editor," suggested Albert.
+
+"Yes, something of that sort, I fancy," said Stedman.
+
+They walked down to the little shed on the shore, where the Y.C.C.
+office was placed, at three that day, and Albert watched Stedman send
+off his message with much interest. The "chap at Octavia," on being
+informed that the American consul had arrived at Opeki, inquired,
+somewhat disrespectfully, "Is it a life sentence?"
+
+"What does he mean by that?" asked Albert.
+
+"I suppose," said his secretary, doubtfully, "that he thinks it a sort
+of a punishment to be sent to Opeki. I hope you won't grow to think
+so."
+
+"Opeki is all very well," said Gordon, "or it will be when we get
+things going our way."
+
+As they walked back to the office, Albert noticed a brass cannon,
+perched on a rock at the entrance to the harbor. This had been put
+there by the last consul, but it had not been fired for many years.
+Albert immediately ordered the two Bradleys to get it in order, and to
+rig up a flag-pole beside it, for one of his American flags, which
+they were to salute every night when they lowered it at sundown.
+
+"And when we are not using it," he said, "the King can borrow it to
+celebrate with, if he doesn't impose on us too often. The royal salute
+ought to be twenty-one guns, I think; but that would use up too much
+powder, so he will have to content himself with two."
+
+"Did you notice," asked Stedman, that night, as they sat on the
+veranda of the consul's house, in the moonlight, "how the people bowed
+to us as we passed?"
+
+"Yes," Albert said he had noticed it. "Why?"
+
+"Well, they never saluted me," replied Stedman. "That sign of respect
+is due to the show we made at the reception."
+
+"It is due to us, in any event," said the consul, severely. "I tell
+you, my secretary, that we, as the representatives of the United
+States Government, must be properly honored on this island. We must
+become a power. And we must do so without getting into trouble with
+the King. We must make them honor him, too, and then as we push him
+up, we will push ourselves up at the same time."
+
+"They don't think much of consuls in Opeki," said Stedman, doubtfully.
+"You see the last one was a pretty poor sort. He brought the office
+into disrepute, and it wasn't really until I came and told them what a
+fine country the United States was, that they had any opinion of it at
+all. Now we must change all that."
+
+"That is just what we will do," said Albert. "We will transform Opeki
+into a powerful and beautiful city. We will make these people work.
+They must put up a palace for the King, and lay out streets, and build
+wharves, and drain the town properly, and light it. I haven't seen
+this patent lighting apparatus of yours, but you had better get to
+work at it at once, and I'll persuade the King to appoint you
+commissioner of highways and gas, with authority to make his people
+toil. And I," he cried, in free enthusiasm, "will organize a navy and
+a standing army. Only," he added, with a relapse of interest, "there
+isn't anybody to fight."
+
+"There isn't?" said Stedman, grimly, with a scornful smile. "You just
+go hunt up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with your standing army once
+and you'll get all the fighting you want."
+
+"The Hillmen?" said Albert.
+
+"The Hillmen are the natives that live up there in the hills," Stedman
+said, nodding his head toward the three high mountains at the other
+end of the island, that stood out blackly against the purple, moonlit
+sky. "There are nearly as many of them as there are Opekians, and they
+hunt and fight for a living and for the pleasure of it. They have an
+old rascal named Messenwah for a king, and they come down here about
+once every three months, and tear things up."
+
+Albert sprang to his feet.
+
+"Oh, they do, do they?" he said, staring up at the mountain-tops.
+"They come down here and tear up things, do they? Well, I think we'll
+stop that, I think we'll stop that! I, don't care how many there are.
+I'll get the two Bradleys to tell me all they know about drilling,
+to-morrow morning, and we'll drill these Opekians, and have sham
+battles, and attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot of wild,
+howling Zulus out of them. And when the Hillmen come down to pay their
+quarterly visit, they'll go back again on a run. At least some of them
+will," he added, ferociously. "Some of them will stay right here."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" said Stedman, with awe; "you are a born fighter,
+aren't you?"
+
+"Well, you wait and see," said Gordon; "maybe I am. I haven't studied
+tactics of war and the history of battles, so that I might be a great
+war correspondent, without learning something. And there is only one
+king on this island, and that is old Ollypybus himself. And I'll go
+over and have a talk with him about it to-morrow."
+
+Young Stedman walked up and down the length of the veranda, in and out
+of the moonlight, with his hands in his pockets, and his head on his
+chest. "You have me all stirred up, Gordon," he said; "you seem so
+confident and bold, and you're not so much older than I am, either."
+
+"My training has been different; that's all," said the reporter.
+
+"Yes," Stedman said, bitterly. "I have been sitting in an office ever
+since I left school, sending news over a wire or a cable, and you have
+been out in the world, gathering it."
+
+"And now," said Gordon, smiling and putting his arm around the other
+boy's shoulders, "we are going to make news ourselves."
+
+"There is one thing I want to say to you before you turn in," said
+Stedman "Before you suggest all these improvements on Ollypybus, you
+must remember that he has ruled absolutely here for twenty years, and
+that he does not think much of consuls. He has only seen your
+predecessor and yourself. He likes you because you appeared with such
+dignity, and because of the presents; but if I were you, I wouldn't
+suggest these improvements as coming from yourself."
+
+"I don't understand," said Gordon; "who could they come from?"
+
+"Well," said Stedman, "if you will allow me to advise--and you see I
+know these people pretty well--I would have all these suggestions come
+from the President direct."
+
+"The President!" exclaimed Gordon; "but how? What does the President
+know or care about Opeki? and it would take so long--oh, I see, the
+cable. Is that what you have been doing?" he asked.
+
+"Well, only once," said Stedman, guiltily; "that was when he wanted to
+turn me out of the consul's office, and I had a cable that very
+afternoon, from the President, ordering me to stay where I was.
+Ollypybus doesn't understand the cable, of course, but he knows that
+it sends messages; and sometimes I pretend to send messages for him to
+the President; but he began asking me to tell the President to come
+and pay him a visit, and I had to stop it."
+
+"I'm glad you told me," said Gordon. "The President shall begin to
+cable to-morrow. He will need an extra appropriation from Congress to
+pay for his private cablegrams alone."
+
+"And there's another thing," said Stedman. "In all your plans, you've
+arranged for the people's improvement, but not for their amusement;
+and they are a peaceful, jolly, simple sort of people, and we must
+please them."
+
+"Have they no games or amusements of their own?" asked Gordon.
+
+"Well, not what we would call games."
+
+"Very well, then, I'll teach them base-ball. Foot-ball would be too
+warm. But that plaza in front of the King's bungalow, where his palace
+is going to be, is just the place for a diamond. On the whole,
+though," added the consul, after a moment's reflection, "you'd better
+attend to that yourself. I don't think it becomes my dignity as
+American consul to take off my coat and give lessons to young Opekians
+in sliding to bases; do you? No; I think you'd better do that. The
+Bradleys will help you, and you had better begin to-morrow. You have
+been wanting to know what a secretary of legation's duties are, and
+now you know. It's to organize base-ball nines. And after you get
+yours ready," he added, as he turned into his room for the night,
+"I'll train one that will sweep yours off the face of the island. For
+_this_ American consul can pitch three curves."
+
+The best laid plans of men go far astray, sometimes, and the great and
+beautiful city that was to rise on the coast of Opeki was not built in
+a day. Nor was it ever built. For before the Bradleys could mark out
+the foul-lines for the base-ball field on the plaza, or teach their
+standing army the goose step, or lay bamboo pipes for the water-mains,
+or clear away the cactus for the extension of the King's palace, the
+Hillmen paid Opeki their quarterly visit.
+
+Albert had called on the King the next morning, with Stedman as his
+interpreter, as he had said he would, and, with maps and sketches, had
+shown his Majesty what he proposed to do toward improving Opeki and
+ennobling her king, and when the King saw Albert's free-hand sketches
+of wharves with tall ships lying at anchor, and rows of Opekian
+warriors with the Bradleys at their head, and the design for his new
+palace, and a royal sedan chair, he believed that these things were
+already his, and not still only on paper, and he appointed Albert his
+Minister of War, Stedman his Minister of Home Affairs, and selected
+two of his wisest and oldest subjects to serve them as joint advisers.
+His enthusiasm was even greater than Gordon's, because he did not
+appreciate the difficulties. He thought Gordon a semi-god, a worker of
+miracles, and urged the putting up of a monument to him at once in the
+public plaza, to which Albert objected, on the ground that it would be
+too suggestive of an idol; and to which Stedman also objected, but for
+the less unselfish reason that it would "be in the way of the
+pitcher's box."
+
+They were feverishly discussing all these great changes, and Stedman
+was translating as rapidly as he could translate, the speeches of four
+different men--for the two counsellors had been called in--all of whom
+wanted to speak at once when there came from outside a great shout,
+and the screams of women, and the clashing of iron, and the pattering
+footsteps of men running.
+
+As they looked at one another in startled surprise, a native ran into
+the room, followed by Bradley, Jr., and threw himself down before the
+King. While he talked, beating his hands and bowing before Ollypybus,
+Bradley, Jr., pulled his forelock to the consul, and told how this man
+lived on the far outskirts of the village; how he had been captured
+while out hunting, by a number of the Hillmen; and how he had escaped
+to tell the people that their old enemies were on the war-path again,
+and rapidly approaching the village.
+
+Outside, the women were gathering in the plaza, with the children
+about them, and the men were running from hut to hut, warning their
+fellows, and arming themselves with spears and swords, and the native
+bows and arrows.
+
+"They might have waited until we had that army trained," said Gordon,
+in a tone of the keenest displeasure. "Tell me, quick, what do they
+generally do when they come?"
+
+"Steal all the cattle and goats, and a woman or two, and set fire to
+the huts in the outskirts," replied Stedman.
+
+"Well, we must stop them," said Gordon, jumping up. "We must take out
+a flag of truce and treat with them. They must be kept off until I
+have my army in working order. It is most inconvenient. If they had
+only waited two months, now, or six weeks even, we could have done
+something; but now we must make peace. Tell the King we are going out
+to fix things with them, and tell him to keep off his warriors until
+he learns whether we succeed or fail."
+
+"But, Gordon!" gasped Stedman. "Albert! You don't understand. Why,
+man, this isn't a street-fight or a cane-rush. They'll stick you full
+of spears, dance on your body, and eat you, maybe. A flag of
+truce!--you're talking nonsense. What do they know of a flag of
+truce?"
+
+"You're talking nonsense, too," said Albert, "and you're talking to
+your superior officer. If you are not with me in this, go back to your
+cable, and tell the man in Octavia that it's a warm day, and that the
+sun is shining; but if you've any spirit in you--and I think you
+have--run to the office and get my Winchester rifles, and the two
+shot-guns, and my revolvers, and my uniform, and a lot of brass things
+for presents, and run all the way there and back. And make time. Play
+you're riding a bicycle at the Agricultural Fair."
+
+Stedman did not hear this last, for he was already off and away,
+pushing through the crowd, and calling on Bradley, Sr., to follow him.
+Bradley, Jr., looked at Gordon with eyes that snapped, like a dog that
+is waiting for his master to throw a stone.
+
+"I can fire a Winchester, sir," he said. "Old Tom can't. He's no good
+at long range 'cept with a big gun, sir. Don't give him the
+Winchester. Give it to me, please, sir."
+
+Albert met Stedman in the plaza, and pulled off his blazer, and put on
+Captain Travis's--now his--uniform coat, and his white pith helmet.
+
+"Now, Jack," he said, "get up there and tell these people that we are
+going out to make peace with these Hillmen, or bring them back
+prisoners of war. Tell them we are the preservers of their homes and
+wives and children; and you, Bradley, take these presents, and young
+Bradley, keep close to me, and carry this rifle."
+
+Stedman's speech was hot and wild enough to suit a critical and
+feverish audience before a barricade in Paris. And when he was
+through, Gordon and Bradley punctuated his oration by firing off the
+two Winchester rifles in the air, at which the people jumped and fell
+on their knees, and prayed to their several gods. The fighting men of
+the village followed the four white men to the outskirts, and took up
+their stand there as Stedman told them to do, and the four walked on
+over the roughly hewn road, to meet the enemy.
+
+Gordon walked with Bradley, Jr., in advance. Stedman and old Tom
+Bradley followed close behind with the two shot-guns, and the presents
+in a basket.
+
+"Are these Hillmen used to guns?" asked Gordon. Stedman said no, they
+were not. "This shot-gun of mine is the only one on the island," he
+explained, "and we never came near enough them before to do anything
+with it. It only carries a hundred yards. The Opekians never make any
+show of resistance. They are quite content if the Hillmen satisfy
+themselves with the outlying huts, as long as they leave them and the
+town alone; so they seldom come to close quarters."
+
+The four men walked on for half an hour or so in silence, peering
+eagerly on every side; but it was not until they had left the woods
+and marched out into the level stretch of grassy country that they
+came upon the enemy. The Hillmen were about forty in number, and were
+as savage and ugly-looking giants as any in a picture-book. They had
+captured a dozen cows and goats, and were driving them on before them,
+as they advanced farther upon the village. When they saw the four men,
+they gave a mixed chorus of cries and yells, and some of them stopped,
+and others ran forward, shaking their spears, and shooting their broad
+arrows into the ground before them. A tall, gray-bearded, muscular old
+man, with a skirt of feathers about him, and necklaces of bones and
+animals' claws around his bare chest, ran in front of them, and seemed
+to be trying to make them approach more slowly.
+
+"Is that Messenwah?" asked Gordon.
+
+"Yes," said Stedman; "he is trying to keep them back. I don't believe
+he ever saw a white man before."
+
+"Stedman," said Albert, speaking quickly, "give your gun to Bradley,
+and go forward with your arms in the air, and waving your
+handkerchief, and tell them in their language that the King is coming.
+If they go at you, Bradley and I will kill a goat or two, to show them
+what we can do with the rifles; and if that don't stop them, we will
+shoot at their legs; and if that don't stop them--I guess you'd better
+come back, and we'll all run."
+
+Stedman looked at Albert, and Albert looked at Stedman, and neither of
+them winced or flinched.
+
+"Is this another of my secretary's duties?" asked the younger boy.
+
+"Yes," said the consul; "but a resignation is always in order. You
+needn't go if you don't like it. You see, you know the language and I
+don't, but I know how to shoot, and you don't."
+
+"That's perfectly satisfactory," said Stedman, handing his gun to old
+Bradley. "I only wanted to know why I was to be sacrificed instead of
+one of the Bradleys. It's because I know the language. Bradley, Sr.,
+you see the evil results of a higher education. Wish me luck, please,"
+he said, "and for goodness' sake," he added impressively, "don't waste
+much time shooting goats."
+
+The Hillmen had stopped about two hundred yards off, and were drawn up
+in two lines, shouting, and dancing, and hurling taunting remarks at
+their few adversaries. The stolen cattle were bunched together back of
+the King. As Stedman walked steadily forward with his handkerchief
+fluttering, and howling out something in their own tongue, they
+stopped and listened. As he advanced, his three companions followed
+him at about fifty yards in the rear. He was one hundred and fifty
+yards from the Hillmen before they made out what he said, and then one
+of the young braves, resenting it as an insult to his chief, shot an
+arrow at him. Stedman dodged the arrow and stood his ground without
+even taking a step backward, only turning slightly to put his hands to
+his mouth, and to shout something which sounded to his companions
+like, "About time to begin on the goats." But the instant the young
+man had fired, King Messenwah swung his club and knocked him down, and
+none of the others moved. Then Messenwah advanced before his men to
+meet Stedman, and on Stedman's opening and shutting his hands to show
+that he was unarmed, the King threw down his club and spears, and came
+forward as empty-handed as himself.
+
+"Ah," gasped Bradley, Jr., with his finger trembling on his lever,
+"let me take a shot at him now." Gordon struck the man's gun up, and
+walked forward in all the glory of his gold and blue uniform; for both
+he and Stedman saw now that Messenwah was more impressed by their
+appearance, and in the fact that they were white men, than with any
+threats of immediate war. So when he saluted Gordon haughtily, that
+young man gave him a haughty nod in return, and bade Stedman tell the
+King that he would permit him to sit down. The King did not quite
+appear to like this, but he sat down, nevertheless, and nodded his
+head gravely.
+
+"Now tell him," said Gordon, "that I come from the ruler of the
+greatest nation on earth, and that I recognize Ollypybus as the only
+King of this island, and that I come to this little three-penny King
+with either peace and presents, or bullets and war."
+
+"Have I got to tell him he's a little threepenny King?" said Stedman,
+plaintively.
+
+"No; you needn't give a literal translation; it can be as free as you
+please."
+
+"Thanks," said the secretary, humbly.
+
+"And tell him," continued Gordon, "that we will give presents to him
+and his warriors if he keeps away from Ollypybus, and agrees to keep
+away always. If he won't do that, try to get him to agree to stay away
+for three months at least, and by that time we can get word to San
+Francisco, and have a dozen muskets over here in two months; and when
+our time of probation is up, and he and his merry men come dancing
+down the hillside, we will blow them up as high as his mountains. But
+you needn't tell him that, either. And if he is proud and haughty, and
+would rather fight, ask him to restrain himself until we show what we
+can do with our weapons at two hundred yards."
+
+Stedman seated himself in the long grass in front of the King, and
+with many revolving gestures of his arms, and much pointing to Gordon,
+and profound nods and bows, retold what Gordon had dictated. When he
+had finished, the King looked at the bundle of presents, and at the
+guns, of which Stedman had given a very wonderful account, but
+answered nothing.
+
+"I guess," said Stedman, with a sigh, "that we will have to give him a
+little practical demonstration to help matters. I am sorry, but I
+think one of those goats has got to die. It's like vivisection. The
+lower order of animals have to suffer for the good of the higher."
+
+"Oh," said Bradley, Jr., cheerfully, "I'd just as soon shoot one of
+those niggers as one of the goats."
+
+So Stedman bade the King tell his men to drive a goat toward them, and
+the King did so, and one of the men struck one of the goats with his
+spear, and it ran clumsily across the plain.
+
+"Take your time, Bradley," said Gordon.
+
+"Aim low, and if you hit it, you can have it for supper."
+
+"And if you miss it," said Stedman, gloomily, "Messenwah may have us
+for supper."
+
+The Hillmen had seated themselves a hundred yards off, while the
+leaders were debating, and they now rose curiously and watched
+Bradley, as he sank upon one knee, and covered the goat with his
+rifle. When it was about one hundred and fifty yards off he fired, and
+the goat fell over dead.
+
+And then all the Hillmen, with the King himself, broke away on a run,
+toward the dead animal, with much shouting. The King came back alone,
+leaving his people standing about and examining the goat. He was much
+excited, and talked and gesticulated violently.
+
+"He says--" said Stedman; "he says--"
+
+"What? yes, goon."
+
+"He says--goodness me!--what do you think he says?"
+
+"Well, what does he say?" cried Gordon, in great excitement. "Don't
+keep it all to yourself."
+
+"He says," said Stedman, "that we are deceived; that he is no longer
+King of the Island of Opeki; that he is in great fear of us, and that
+he has got himself into no end of trouble. He says he sees that we are
+indeed mighty men, that to us he is as helpless as the wild boar
+before the javelin of the hunter."
+
+"Well, he's right," said Gordon. "Go on."
+
+"But that which we ask is no longer his to give. He has sold his
+kingship and his right to this island to another king, who came to him
+two days ago in a great canoe, and who made noises as we do--with
+guns, I suppose he means--and to whom he sold the island for a watch
+that he has in a bag around his neck. And that he signed a paper, and
+made marks on a piece of bark, to show that he gave up the island
+freely and forever."
+
+"What does he mean?" said Gordon. "How can he give up the island?
+Ollypybus is the king of half of it, anyway, and he knows it."
+
+"That's just it," said Stedman. "That's what frightens him. He said he
+didn't care about Ollypybus, and didn't count him in when he made the
+treaty, because he is such a peaceful chap that he knew he could
+thrash him into doing anything he wanted him to do. And now that you
+have turned up and taken Ollypybus's part, he wishes he hadn't sold
+the island, and wishes to know if you are angry."
+
+"Angry? of course I'm angry," said Gordon, glaring as grimly at the
+frightened monarch as he thought was safe. "Who wouldn't be angry? Who
+do you think these people were who made a fool of him, Stedman? Ask
+him to let us see this watch."
+
+Stedman did so, and the King fumbled among his necklaces until he had
+brought out a leather bag tied round his neck with a cord, and
+containing a plain stem-winding silver watch marked on the inside
+"Munich."
+
+"That doesn't tell anything," said Gordon. "But it's plain enough.
+Some foreign ship of war has settled on this place as a
+coaling-station, or has annexed it for colonization, and they've sent
+a boat ashore, and they've made a treaty with this old chap, and
+forced him to sell his birthright for a mess of porridge. Now, that's
+just like those monarchical pirates, imposing upon a poor old black."
+
+Old Bradley looked at him impudently.
+
+"Not at all," said Gordon; "it's quite different with us; we don't
+want to rob him or Ollypybus, or to annex their land. All we want to
+do is to improve it, and have the fun of running it for them and
+meddling in their affairs of state. Well, Stedman," he said, "what
+shall we do?"
+
+Stedman said that the best and only thing to do was to threaten to
+take the watch away from Messenwah, but to give him a revolver
+instead, which would make a friend of him for life, and to keep him
+supplied with cartridges only as long as he behaved himself, and then
+to make him understand that, as Ollypybus had not given his consent to
+the loss of the island, Messenwah's agreement, or treaty, or whatever
+it was, did not stand, and that he had better come down the next day,
+early in the morning, and join in a general consultation. This was
+done, and Messenwah agreed willingly to their proposition, and was
+given his revolver and shown how to shoot it, while the other presents
+were distributed among the other men, who were as happy over them as
+girls with a full dance-card.
+
+"And now, to-morrow," said Stedman, "understand, you are all to come
+down unarmed, and sign a treaty with great Ollypybus, in which he will
+agree to keep to one-half of the island if you keep to yours, and
+there must be no more wars or goat-stealing, or this gentleman on my
+right and I will come up and put holes in you just as the gentleman on
+the left did with the goat."
+
+Messenwah and his warriors promised to come early, and saluted
+reverently as Gordon and his three companions walked up together very
+proudly and stiffly.
+
+"Do you know how I feel?" said Gordon.
+
+"How?" asked Stedman.
+
+"I feel as I used to do in the city, when the boys in the street were
+throwing snowballs, and I had to go by with a high hat on my head and
+pretend not to know they were behind me. I always felt a cold chill
+down my spinal column, and I could feel that snowball, whether it came
+or not, right in the small of my back. And I can feel one of those men
+pulling his bow now, and the arrow sticking out of my right shoulder."
+
+"Oh, no, you can't," said Stedman. "They are too much afraid of those
+rifles. But I do feel sorry for any of those warriors whom old man
+Messenwah doesn't like, now that he has that revolver. He isn't the
+sort to practise on goats."
+
+There was great rejoicing when Stedman and Gordon told their story to
+the King, and the people learned that they were not to have their huts
+burned and their cattle stolen. The armed Opekians formed a guard
+around the ambassadors and escorted them to their homes with cheers
+and shouts, and the women ran to their side and tried to kiss Gordon's
+hand.
+
+"I'm sorry I can't speak the language, Stedman," said Gordon, "or I
+would tell them what a brave man you are. You are too modest to do it
+yourself, even if I dictated something for you to say. As for me," he
+said, pulling off his uniform, "I am thoroughly disgusted and
+disappointed. It never occurred to me until it was all over that this
+was my chance to be a war correspondent. It wouldn't have been much of
+a war, but then I would have been the only one on the spot, and that
+counts for a great deal. Still, my time may come."
+
+"We have a great deal on hand for to-morrow," said Gordon that
+evening, "and we had better turn in early."
+
+And so the people were still singing and rejoicing down in the village
+when the two conspirators for the peace of the country went to sleep
+for the night. It seemed to Gordon as though he had hardly turned his
+pillow twice to get the coolest side when some one touched him, and he
+saw, by the light of the dozen glowworms in the tumbler by his
+bedside, a tall figure at its foot.
+
+"It's me--Bradley," said the figure.
+
+"Yes," said Gordon, with the haste of a man to show that sleep has no
+hold on him; "exactly; what is it?"
+
+"There is a ship of war in the harbor," Bradley answered in a whisper.
+"I heard her anchor chains rattle when she came to, and that woke me.
+I could hear that if I were dead. And then I made sure by her lights;
+she's a great boat, sir, and I can know she's a ship of war by the
+challenging when they change the watch. I thought you'd like to know,
+sir."
+
+Gordon sat up and clutched his knees with his hands. "Yes, of course,"
+he said; "you are quite right. Still, I don't see what there is to
+do."
+
+He did not wish to show too much youthful interest, but though fresh
+from civilization, he had learned how far from it he was, and he was
+curious to see this sign of it that had come so much more quickly than
+he had anticipated.
+
+"Wake Mr. Stedman, will you?" said he, "and we will go and take a look
+at her."
+
+"You can see nothing but the lights," said Bradley, as he left the
+room; "it's a black night, sir."
+
+Stedman was not new from the sight of men and ships of war, and came
+in half dressed and eager.
+
+"Do you suppose it's the big canoe Messenwah spoke of?" he said.
+
+"I thought of that," said Gordon.
+
+The three men fumbled their way down the road to the plaza, and saw,
+as soon as they turned into it, the great outlines and the brilliant
+lights of an immense vessel, still more immense in the darkness, and
+glowing like a strange monster of the sea, with just a suggestion here
+and there, where the lights spread, of her cabins and bridges. As they
+stood on the shore, shivering in the cool night-wind, they heard the
+bells strike over the water.
+
+"It's two o'clock," said Bradley, counting.
+
+"Well, we can do nothing, and they cannot mean to do much to-night,"
+Albert said. "We had better get some more sleep, and, Bradley, you
+keep watch and tell us as soon as day breaks."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said the sailor.
+
+"If that's the man-of-war that made the treaty with Messenwah, and
+Messenwah turns up to-morrow, it looks as if our day would be pretty
+well filled up," said Albert, as they felt their way back to the
+darkness.
+
+"What do you intend to do?" asked his secretary, with a voice of some
+concern.
+
+"I don't know," Albert answered gravely, from the blackness of the
+night. "It looks as if we were getting ahead just a little too fast,
+doesn't it? Well," he added, as they reached the house, "let's try to
+keep in step with the procession, even if we can't be drum-majors and
+walk in front of it." And with this cheering tone of confidence in
+their ears, the two diplomats went soundly asleep again.
+
+The light of the rising sun filled the room, and the parrots were
+chattering outside, when Bradley woke him again.
+
+"They are sending a boat ashore, sir," he said, excitedly, and filled
+with the importance of the occasion. "She's a German man-of-war, and
+one of the new model. A beautiful boat, sir; for her lines were laid
+in Glasgow, and I can tell that, no matter what flag she flies. You
+had best be moving to meet them: the village isn't awake yet."
+
+Albert took a cold bath and dressed leisurely; then he made Bradley,
+Jr., who had slept through it all, get up breakfast, and the two young
+men ate it and drank their coffee comfortably and with an air of
+confidence that deceived their servants, if it did not deceive
+themselves. But when they came down the path, smoking and swinging
+their sticks, and turned into the plaza, their composure left them
+like a mask, and they stopped where they stood. The plaza was enclosed
+by the natives gathered in whispering groups, and depressed by fear
+and wonder. On one side were crowded all the Messenwah warriors,
+unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the Opekians. In the middle of
+the plaza some twenty sailors were busy rearing and bracing a tall
+flag-staff that they had shaped from a royal palm, and they did this
+as unconcernedly and as contemptuously, and with as much indifference
+to the strange groups on either side of them, as though they were
+working on a barren coast, with nothing but the startled sea-gulls
+about them. As Albert and Stedman came upon the scene, the flagpole
+was in place, and the halyards hung from it with a little bundle of
+bunting at the end of one of them.
+
+"We must find the King at once," said Gordon. He was terribly excited
+and angry. "It is easy enough to see what this means. They are going
+through the form of annexing this island to the other lands of the
+German Government. They are robbing old Ollypybus of what is his. They
+have not even given him a silver watch for it."
+
+The King was in his bungalow, facing the plaza. Messenwah was with
+him, and an equal number of each of their councils. The common danger
+had made them lie down together in peace; but they gave a murmur of
+relief as Gordon strode into the room with no ceremony, and greeted
+them with a curt wave of the hand.
+
+"Now then, Stedman, be quick," he said. "Explain to them what this
+means; tell them that I will protect them; that I am anxious to see
+that Ollypybus is not cheated; that we will do all we can for them."
+
+Outside, on the shore, a second boat's crew had landed a group of
+officers and a file of marines. They walked in all the dignity of full
+dress across the plaza to the flag-pole, and formed in line on the
+three sides of it, with the marines facing the sea. The officers, from
+the captain with a prayer-book in his hand, to the youngest middy,
+were as indifferent to the frightened natives about them as the other
+men had been. The natives, awed and afraid, crouched back among their
+huts, the marines and the sailors kept their eyes front, and the
+German captain opened his prayer-book. The debate in the bungalow was
+over.
+
+"If you only had your uniform, sir," said Bradley, Sr., miserably.
+
+"This is a little bit too serious for uniforms and bicycle medals,"
+said Gordon. "And these men are used to gold lace."
+
+He pushed his way through the natives, and stepped confidently across
+the plaza. The youngest middy saw him coming, and nudged the one next
+him with his elbow, and he nudged the next, but none of the officers
+moved, because the captain had begun to read.
+
+"One minute, please," called Gordon.
+
+He stepped out into the hollow square formed by the marines, and
+raised his helmet to the captain.
+
+"Do you speak English or French?" Gordon said in French; "I do not
+understand German."
+
+The captain lowered the book in his hands and gazed reflectively at
+Gordon through his spectacles, and made no reply.
+
+"If I understand this," said the younger man, trying to be very
+impressive and polite, "you are laying claim to this land, in behalf
+of the German Government."
+
+The captain continued to observe him thoughtfully, and then said,
+"That is so," and then asked, "Who are you?"
+
+"I represent the King of this island, Ollypybus, whose people you see
+around you. I also represent the United States Government, that does
+not tolerate a foreign power near her coast, since the days of
+President Monroe and before. The treaty you have made with Messenwah
+is an absurdity. There is only one king with whom to treat, and he--"
+
+The captain turned to one of his officers and said something, and
+then, after giving another curious glance at Gordon, raised his book
+and continued reading, in a deep, unruffled monotone. The officer
+whispered an order, and two of the marines stepped out of line, and
+dropping the muzzles of their muskets, pushed Gordon back out of the
+enclosure, and left him there with his lips white, and trembling all
+over with indignation. He would have liked to have rushed back into
+the lines and broken the captain's spectacles over his sun-tanned nose
+and cheeks, but he was quite sure this would only result in his
+getting shot, or in his being made ridiculous before the natives,
+which was almost as bad; so he stood still for a moment, with his
+blood choking him, and then turned and walked back to where the King
+and Stedman were whispering together. Just as he turned, one of the
+men pulled the halyards, the ball of bunting ran up into the air,
+bobbed, twitched, and turned, and broke into the folds of the German
+flag. At the same moment the marines raised their muskets and fired a
+volley, and the officers saluted and the sailors cheered.
+
+"Do you see that?" cried Stedman, catching Gordon's humor, to
+Ollypybus; "that means that you are no longer king, that strange
+people are coming here to take your land, and to turn your people into
+servants, and to drive you back into the mountains. Are you going to
+submit? are you going to let that flag stay where it is?"
+
+Messenwah and Ollypybus gazed at one another with fearful, helpless
+eyes. "We are afraid," Ollypybus cried; "we do not know what we should
+do."
+
+"What do they say?"
+
+"They say they do not know what to do."
+
+"I know what I'd do," cried Gordon. "If I were not an American consul,
+I'd pull down their old flag, and put a hole in their boat and sink
+her."
+
+"Well, I'd wait until they get under way before you do either of those
+things," said Stedman, soothingly. "That captain seems to be a man of
+much determination of character."
+
+"But I will pull it down," cried Gordon. "I will resign, as Travis
+did. I am no longer consul. You can be consul if you want to. I
+promote you. I am going up a step higher. I mean to be king. Tell
+those two," he ran on, excitedly, "that their only course and only
+hope is in me; that they must make me ruler of the island until this
+thing is over; that I will resign again as soon as it is settled, but
+that some one must act at once, and if they are afraid to, I am not,
+only they must give me authority to act for them. They must abdicate
+in my favor."
+
+"Are you in earnest?" gasped Stedman.
+
+"Don't I talk as if I were?" demanded Gordon, wiping the perspiration
+from his forehead.
+
+"And can I be consul?" said Stedman, cheerfully.
+
+"Of course. Tell them what I propose to do."
+
+Stedman turned and spoke rapidly to the two kings. The people gathered
+closer to hear.
+
+The two rival monarchs looked at one another in silence for a moment,
+and then both began to speak at once, their counsellors interrupting
+them and mumbling their guttural comments with anxious earnestness. It
+did not take them very long to see that they were all of one mind, and
+then they both turned to Gordon and dropped on one knee, and placed
+his hands on their foreheads, and Stedman raised his cap.
+
+"They agree," he explained, for it was but pantomime to Albert. "They
+salute you as a ruler; they are calling you Tellaman, which means
+peacemaker. The Peacemaker, that is your title. I hope you will
+deserve it, but I think they might have chosen a more appropriate
+one."
+
+"Then I'm really King?" demanded Albert, decidedly, "and I can do what
+I please? They give me full power. Quick, do they?"
+
+"Yes, but don't do it," begged Stedman, "and just remember I am
+American consul now, and that is a much superior being to a crowned
+monarch; you said so yourself."
+
+Albert did not reply to this, but ran across the plaza, followed by
+the two Bradleys. The boats had gone.
+
+"Hoist that flag beside the brass cannon," he cried, "and stand ready
+to salute it when I drop this one."
+
+Bradley, Jr., grasped the halyards of the flag, which he had forgotten
+to raise and salute in the morning in all the excitement of the
+arrival of the man-of-war. Bradley, Sr., stood by the brass cannon,
+blowing gently on his lighted fuse. The Peacemaker took the halyards
+of the German flag in his two hands, gave a quick, sharp tug, and down
+came the red, white, and black piece of bunting, and the next moment
+young Bradley sent the Stars and Stripes up in its place. As it rose,
+Bradley's brass cannon barked merrily like a little bull-dog, and the
+Peacemaker cheered.
+
+"Why don't you cheer, Stedman?" he shouted. "Tell those people to
+cheer for all they are worth. What sort of an American consul are
+you?"
+
+Stedman raised his arm half-heartedly to give the time, and opened his
+mouth; but his arm remained fixed and his mouth open, while his eyes
+stared at the retreating boat of the German man-of-war. In the stern
+sheets of this boat the stout German captain was struggling unsteadily
+to his feet; he raised his arm and waved it to some one on the great
+man-of-war, as though giving an order. The natives looked from Stedman
+to the boat, and even Gordon stopped in his cheering, and stood
+motionless, watching. They had not very long to wait. There was a puff
+of white smoke, and a flash, and then a loud report, and across the
+water came a great black ball skipping lightly through and over the
+waves, as easily as a flat stone thrown by a boy. It seemed to come
+very slowly. At least it came slowly enough for every one to see that
+it was coming directly toward the brass cannon. The Bradleys certainly
+saw this, for they ran as fast as they could, and kept on running. The
+ball caught the cannon under its mouth and tossed it in the air,
+knocking the flag-pole into a dozen pieces, and passing on through two
+of the palm-covered huts.
+
+"Great Heavens, Gordon!" cried Stedman; "they are firing on us."
+
+But Gordon's face was radiant and wild.
+
+"Firing on _us_!" he cried. "On us! Don't you see? Don't you understand?
+What do _we_ amount to? They have fired on the American flag! Don't
+you see what that means? It means war. A great international war. And
+I am a war correspondent at last!" He ran up to Stedman and seized him
+by the arm so tightly that it hurt.
+
+"By three o'clock," he said, "they will know in the office what has
+happened. The country will know it to-morrow when the paper is on the
+street; people will read it all over the world. The Emperor will hear
+of it at breakfast; the President will cable for further particulars.
+He will get them. It is the chance of a lifetime, and we are on the
+spot!"
+
+Stedman did not hear this; he was watching the broadside of the ship
+to see another puff of white smoke, but there came no such sign. The
+two row-boats were raised, there was a cloud of black smoke from the
+funnel, a creaking of chains sounding faintly across the water, and
+the ship started at half-speed and moved out of the harbor. The
+Opekians and the Hillmen fell on their knees, or to dancing, as best
+suited their sense of relief, but Gordon shook his head.
+
+"They are only going to land the marines," he said; "perhaps they are
+going to the spot they stopped at before, or to take up another
+position farther out at sea. They will land men and then shell the
+town, and the land forces will march here and co-operate with the
+vessel, and everybody will be taken prisoner or killed. We have the
+centre of the stage, and we are making history."
+
+"I'd rather read it than make it," said Stedman. "You've got us in a
+senseless, silly position, Gordon, and a mighty unpleasant one. And
+for no reason that I can see, except to make copy for your paper."
+
+"Tell those people to get their things together," said Gordon, "and
+march back out of danger into the woods. Tell Ollypybus I am going to
+fix things all right; I don't know just how yet, but I will, and now
+come after me as quickly as you can to the cable office. I've got to
+tell the paper all about it."
+
+It was three o'clock before the "chap at Octavia" answered Stedman's
+signalling. Then Stedman delivered Gordon's message, and immediately
+shut off all connection, before the Octavia operator could question
+him. Gordon dictated his message in this way:--
+
+"Begin with the date line, 'Opeki, June 22.'
+
+"At seven o'clock this morning, the captain and officers of the German
+man-of-war _Kaiser_ went through the ceremony of annexing this
+island in the name of the German Emperor, basing their right to do so
+on an agreement made with a leader of a wandering tribe known as the
+Hillmen. King Ollypybus, the present monarch of Opeki, delegated his
+authority, as also did the leader of the Hillmen, to King Tellaman, or
+the Peacemaker, who tore down the German flag, and raised that of the
+United States in its place. At the same moment the flag was saluted by
+the battery. This salute, being mistaken for an attack on the
+_Kaiser_, was answered by that vessel. Her first shot took
+immediate effect, completely destroying the entire battery of the
+Opekians, cutting down the American flag, and destroying the houses of
+the people--"
+
+"There was only one brass cannon and two huts," expostulated Stedman.
+
+"Well, that was the whole battery, wasn't it?" asked Gordon, "and two
+huts is plural. I said houses of the people. I couldn't say two houses
+of the people. Just you send this as you get it. You are not an
+American consul at the present moment. You are an under-paid agent of
+a cable company, and you send my stuff as I write it. The American
+residents have taken refuge in the consulate--that's us," explained
+Gordon, "and the English residents have sought refuge in the
+woods--that's the Bradleys. King Tellaman--that's me--declares his
+intention of fighting against the annexation. The forces of the
+Opekians are under the command of Captain Thomas Bradley--I guess I
+might as well make him a colonel--of Colonel Thomas Bradley, of the
+English army.
+
+"The American consul says--Now, what do you say, Stedman? Hurry up,
+please," asked Gordon, "and say something good and strong."
+
+"You get me all mixed up," complained Stedman, plaintively. "Which am
+I now, a cable operator or the American consul?"
+
+"Consul, of course. Say something patriotic and about your
+determination to protect the interests of your government, and all
+that." Gordon bit the end of his pencil impatiently, and waited.
+
+"I won't do anything of the sort, Gordon," said Stedman; "you are
+getting me into an awful lot of trouble, and yourself too. I won't say
+a word."
+
+"The American consul," read Gordon, as his pencil wriggled across the
+paper, "refuses to say anything for publication until he has
+communicated with the authorities at Washington, but from all I can
+learn he sympathizes entirely with Tellaman. Your correspondent has
+just returned from an audience with King Tellaman, who rules him to
+inform the American people that the Monroe doctrine will be sustained
+as long as he rules this island. I guess that's enough to begin with,"
+said Gordon. "Now send that off quick, and then get away from the
+instrument before the man in Octavia begins to ask questions. I am
+going out to precipitate matters."
+
+Gordon found the two kings sitting dejectedly side by side, and gazing
+grimly upon the disorder of the village, from which the people were
+taking their leave as quickly as they could get their few belongings
+piled upon the ox-carts. Gordon walked among them, helping them in
+every way he could, and tasting, in their subservience and gratitude,
+the sweets of sovereignty. When Stedman had locked up the cable office
+and rejoined him, he bade him tell Messenwah to send three of his
+youngest men and fastest runners back to the hills to watch for the
+German vessel and see where she was attempting to land her marines.
+
+"This is a tremendous chance for descriptive writing, Stedman," said
+Gordon, enthusiastically; "all this confusion and excitement, and the
+people leaving their homes, and all that. It's like the people getting
+out of Brussels before Waterloo, and then the scene at the foot of the
+mountains, while they are camping out there, until the Germans leave.
+I never had a chance like this before."
+
+It was quite dark by six o'clock, and none of the three messengers had
+as yet returned. Gordon walked up and down the empty plaza and looked
+now at the horizon for the man-of-war, and again down the road back of
+the village. But neither the vessel nor the messengers bearing word of
+her appeared. The night passed without any incident, and in the
+morning Gordon's impatience became so great that he walked out to
+where the villagers were in camp and passed on half way up the
+mountain, but he could see no sign of the man-of-war. He came back
+more restless than before, and keenly disappointed.
+
+"If something don't happen before three o'clock, Stedman," he said,
+"our second cablegram will have to consist of glittering generalities
+and a lengthy interview with King Tellaman, by himself."
+
+Nothing did happen. Ollypybus and Messenwah began to breathe more
+freely. They believed the new king had succeeded in frightening the
+German vessel away forever. But the new king upset their hopes by
+telling them that the Germans had undoubtedly already landed, and had
+probably killed the three messengers.
+
+"Now then," he said, with pleased expectation, as Stedman and he
+seated themselves in the cable office at three o'clock, "open it up
+and let's find out what sort of an impression we have made."
+
+Stedman's face, as the answer came in to his first message of
+greeting, was one of strangely marked disapproval.
+
+"What does he say?" demanded Gordon, anxiously.
+
+"He hasn't done anything but swear yet," answered Stedman, grimly.
+
+"What is he swearing about?"
+
+"He wants to know why I left the cable yesterday. He says he has been
+trying to call me up for the last twenty-four hours, ever since I sent
+my message at three o'clock. The home office is jumping mad, and want
+me discharged. They won't do that, though," he said, in a cheerful
+aside, "because they haven't paid me my salary for the last eight
+months. He says--great Scott! this will please you, Gordon--he says
+that there have been over two hundred queries for matter from papers
+all over the United States, and from Europe. Your paper beat them on
+the news, and now the home office is packed with San Francisco
+reporters, and the telegrams are coming in every minute, and they have
+been abusing him for not answering them, and he says that I'm a fool.
+He wants as much as you can send, and all the details. He says all the
+papers will have to put 'By Yokohama Cable Company' on the top of each
+message they print, and that that is advertising the company, and is
+sending the stock up. It rose fifteen points on 'change in San
+Francisco to-day, and the president and the other officers are
+buying--"
+
+"Oh, I don't want to hear about their old company," snapped out
+Gordon, pacing up and down in despair. "What am I to do? that's what I
+want to know. Here I have the whole country stirred up and begging for
+news. On their knees for it, and a cable all to myself, and the only
+man on the spot, and nothing to say. I'd just like to know how long
+that German idiot intends to wait before he begins shelling this town
+and killing people. He has put me in a most absurd position."
+
+"Here's a message for you, Gordon," said Stedman, with business-like
+calm. "Albert Gordon, correspondent," he read. "Try American consul.
+First message O.K.; beat the country; can take all you send. Give
+names of foreign residents massacred, and fuller account blowing up
+palace. Dodge."
+
+The expression on Gordon's face as this message was slowly read off to
+him, had changed from one of gratified pride to one of puzzled
+consternation.
+
+"What's he mean by foreign residents massacred, and blowing up of
+palace?" asked Stedman, looking over his shoulder anxiously. "Who is
+Dodge?"
+
+"Dodge is the night editor," said Gordon, nervously. "They must have
+read my message wrong. You sent just what I gave you, didn't you?" he
+asked.
+
+"Of course I did," said Stedman, indignantly.
+
+"I didn't say anything about the massacre of anybody, did I?" asked
+Gordon. "I hope they are not improving on my account. What _am_ I
+to do? This is getting awful. I'll have to go out and kill a few
+people myself. Oh, why don't that Dutch captain begin to do something!
+What sort of a fighter does he call himself? He wouldn't shoot at a
+school of porpoises. He's not--"
+
+"Here comes a message to Leonard T. Travis, American consul, Opeki,"
+read Stedman. "It's raining messages to-day. 'Send full details of
+massacre of American citizens by German sailors.' Secretary of--great
+Scott!" gasped Stedman, interrupting himself and gazing at his
+instrument with horrified fascination--"the Secretary of State."
+
+"That settles it," roared Gordon, pulling at his hair and burying his
+face in his hands. "I have _got_ to kill some of them now."
+
+"Albert Gordon, correspondent," read Stedman, impressively, like the
+voice of Fate. "Is Colonel Thomas Bradley, commanding native forces
+at Opeki, Colonel Sir Thomas Kent-Bradley of Crimean war fame?
+Correspondent London _Times_, San Francisco Press Club."
+
+"Go on, go on!" said Gordon, desperately. "I'm getting used to it now.
+Go on!"
+
+"American consul, Opeki," read Stedman. "Home Secretary desires you to
+furnish list of names English residents killed during shelling of
+Opeki by ship of war _Kaiser_, and estimate of amount property
+destroyed. Stoughton, British Embassy, Washington."
+
+"Stedman!" cried Gordon, jumping to his feet, "there's a mistake here
+somewhere. These people cannot all have made my message read like
+that. Some one has altered it, and now I have got to make these people
+here live up to that message, whether they like being massacred and
+blown up or not. Don't answer any of those messages except the one
+from Dodge; tell him things have quieted down a bit, and that I'll
+send four thousand words on the flight of the natives from the
+village, and their encampment at the foot of the mountains, and of the
+exploring party we have sent out to look for the German vessel; and
+now I am going out to make something happen."
+
+Gordon said that he would be gone for two hours at least, and as
+Stedman did not feel capable of receiving any more nerve-stirring
+messages, he cut off all connection with Octavia by saying, "Good-by
+for two hours," and running away from the office. He sat down on a
+rock on the beach, and mopped his face with his handkerchief.
+
+"After a man has taken nothing more exciting than weather reports from
+Octavia for a year," he soliloquized, "it's a bit disturbing to have
+all the crowned heads of Europe and their secretaries calling upon you
+for details of a massacre that never came off."
+
+At the end of two hours Gordon returned from the consulate with a mass
+of manuscript in his hand.
+
+"Here's three thousand words," he said, desperately. "I never wrote
+more and said less in my life. It will make them weep at the office. I
+had to pretend that they knew all that had happened so far; they
+apparently do know more than we do, and I have filled it full of
+prophecies of more trouble ahead, and with interviews with myself and
+the two ex-Kings. The only news element in it is, that the messengers
+have returned to report that the German vessel is not in sight, and
+that there is no news. They think she has gone for good. Suppose she
+has, Stedman," he groaned, looking at him helplessly, "what _am_
+I going to do?"
+
+"Well, as for me," said Stedman, "I'm afraid to go near that cable.
+It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many
+more such shocks as those they gave us this afternoon."
+
+Gordon threw himself down dejectedly in a chair in the office, and
+Stedman approached his instrument gingerly, as though it might
+explode.
+
+"He's swearing again," he explained, sadly, in answer to Gordon's look
+of inquiry. "He wants to know when I am going to stop running away
+from the wire. He has a stack of messages to send, he says, but I
+guess he'd better wait and take your copy first; don't you think so?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Gordon. "I don't want any more messages than I've
+had. That's the best I can do," he said, as he threw his manuscript
+down beside Stedman. "And they can keep on cabling until the wire
+burns red hot, and they won't get any more."
+
+There was silence in the office for some time, while Stedman looked
+over Gordon's copy, and Gordon stared dejectedly out at the ocean.
+
+"This is pretty poor stuff, Gordon," said Stedman. "It's like giving
+people milk when they want brandy."
+
+"Don't you suppose I know that?" growled Gordon. "It's the best I can
+do, isn't it? It's not my fault that we are not all dead now. I can't
+massacre foreign residents if there are no foreign residents, but I
+can commit suicide, though, and I'll do it if something don't happen."
+
+There was a long pause, in which the silence of the office was only
+broken by the sound of the waves beating on the coral reefs outside.
+Stedman raised his head wearily.
+
+"He's swearing again," he said; "he says this stuff of yours is all
+nonsense. He says stock in the Y.C.C. has gone up to one hundred and
+two, and that owners are unloading and making their fortunes, and that
+this sort of descriptive writing is not what the company want."
+
+"What's he think I'm here for?" cried Gordon. "Does he think I pulled
+down the German flag and risked my neck half a dozen times and had
+myself made King just to boom his Yokohama cable stock? Confound him!
+You might at least swear back. Tell him just what the situation is in
+a few words. Here, stop that rigmarole to the paper, and explain to
+your home office that we are awaiting developments, and that, in the
+meanwhile, they must put up with the best we can send them. Wait; send
+this to Octavia."
+
+Gordon wrote rapidly, and read what he wrote as rapidly as it was
+written.
+
+"Operator, Octavia. You seem to have misunderstood my first message.
+The facts in the case are these. A German man-of-war raised a flag on
+this island. It was pulled down and the American flag raised in its
+place and saluted by a brass cannon. The German man-of-war fired once
+at the flag and knocked it down, and then steamed away and has not
+been seen since. Two huts were upset, that is all the damage done; the
+battery consisted of the one brass cannon before mentioned. No one,
+either native or foreign, has been massacred. The English residents
+are two sailors. The American residents are the young man who is
+sending you this cable and myself. Our first message was quite true in
+substance, but perhaps misleading in detail. I made it so because I
+fully expected much more to happen immediately. Nothing has happened,
+or seems likely to happen, and that is the exact situation up to date.
+Albert Gordon."
+
+"Now," he asked, after a pause, "what does he say to that?"
+
+"He doesn't say anything," said Stedman.
+
+"I guess he has fainted. Here it comes," he added in the same breath.
+He bent toward his instrument, and Gordon raised himself from his
+chair and stood beside him as he read it off. The two young men hardly
+breathed in the intensity of their interest.
+
+"Dear Stedman," he slowly read aloud. "You and your young friend are a
+couple of fools. If you had allowed me to send you the messages
+awaiting transmission here to you, you would not have sent me such a
+confession of guilt as you have just done. You had better leave Opeki
+at once or hide in the hills. I am afraid I have placed you in a
+somewhat compromising position with the company, which is unfortunate,
+especially as, if I am not mistaken, they owe you some back pay. You
+should have been wiser in your day, and bought Y.C.C. stock when it
+was down to five cents, as 'yours truly' did. You are not, Stedman, as
+bright a boy as some. And as for your friend, the war correspondent,
+he has queered himself for life. You see, my dear Stedman, after I had
+sent off your first message, and demands for further details came
+pouring in, and I could not get you at the wire to supply them, I took
+the liberty of sending some on myself."
+
+"Great Heavens!" gasped Gordon.
+
+Stedman grew very white under his tan, and the perspiration rolled on
+his cheeks.
+
+"Your message was so general in its nature, that it allowed my
+imagination full play, and I sent on what I thought would please the
+papers, and, what was much more important to me, would advertise the
+Y.C.C. stock. This I have been doing while waiting for material from
+you. Not having a clear idea of the dimensions or population of Opeki,
+it is possible that I have done you and your newspaper friend some
+injustice. I killed off about a hundred American residents, two
+hundred English, because I do not like the English, and a hundred
+French. I blew up old Ollypybus and his palace with dynamite, and
+shelled the city, destroying some hundred thousand dollars' worth of
+property, and then I waited anxiously for your friend to substantiate
+what I had said. This he has most unkindly failed to do. I am very
+sorry, but much more so for him than for myself, for I, my dear
+friend, have cabled on to a man in San Francisco, who is one of the
+directors of the Y.C.C. to sell all my stock, which he has done at one
+hundred and two, and he is keeping the money until I come. And I leave
+Octavia this afternoon to reap my just reward. I am in about twenty
+thousand dollars on your little war, and I feel grateful. So much so
+that I will inform you that the ship of war _Kaiser_ has arrived
+at San Francisco, for which port she sailed directly from Opeki. Her
+captain has explained the real situation, and offered to make every
+amend for the accidental indignity shown to our flag. He says he aimed
+at the cannon, which was trained on his vessel, and which had first
+fired on him. But you must know, my dear Stedman, that before his
+arrival, war-vessels belonging to the several powers mentioned in my
+revised despatches, had started for Opeki at full speed, to revenge
+the butchery of the foreign residents. A word, my dear young friend,
+to the wise is sufficient. I am indebted to you to the extent of
+twenty thousand dollars, and in return I give you this kindly advice.
+Leave Opeki. If there is no other way, swim. But leave Opeki."
+
+The sun, that night, as it sank below the line where the clouds seemed
+to touch the sea, merged them both into a blazing, blood-red curtain,
+and colored the most wonderful spectacle that the natives of Opeki had
+ever seen. Six great ships of war, stretching out over a league of
+sea, stood blackly out against the red background, rolling and rising,
+and leaping forward, flinging back smoke and burning sparks up into
+the air behind them, and throbbing and panting like living creatures
+in their race for revenge. From the south came a three-decked vessel,
+a great island of floating steel, with a flag as red as the angry sky
+behind it, snapping in the wind. To the south of it plunged two long
+low-lying torpedo-boats, flying the French tri-color, and still
+farther to the north towered three magnificent hulls of the White
+Squadron. Vengeance was written on every curve and line, on each
+straining engine-rod, and on each polished gun-muzzle.
+
+And in front of these, a clumsy fishing-boat rose and fell on each
+passing wave. Two sailors sat in the stern, holding the rope and
+tiller, and in the bow, with their backs turned forever toward Opeki,
+stood two young boys, their faces lit by the glow of the setting sun
+and stirred by the sight of the great engines of war plunging past
+them on their errand of vengeance.
+
+"Stedman," said the elder boy, in an awe-struck whisper, and with a
+wave of his hand, "we have not lived in vain."
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Exiles and Other Stories, by Richard Harding Davis, et al</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Exiles and Other Stories, by Richard
+Harding Davis</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Exiles and Other Stories</p>
+<p>       The Exiles; The Boy Orator of Zepata City; The Other Woman; On the Fever Ship; The Lion and the Unicorn; The Last Ride Together; Miss Delamar's Understudy; The Reporter Who Made Himself King</p>
+<p>Author: Richard Harding Davis</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 18, 2005  [eBook #16090]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXILES AND OTHER STORIES***</p>
+<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst<br>
+            and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br>
+            (https://www.pgdp.net)</h3><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="Frontispiece"></a>
+<div class="ctr"><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="Instead she buried her face in its folds." width="330" height="586"></div>
+<p class="imgcaption">Instead she buried her face in its folds.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>
+THE NOVELS AND STORIES OF RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+</h3>
+
+
+<h1>
+THE EXILES
+<br>AND OTHER STORIES
+</h1>
+
+
+
+<h3>
+<i>By</i>
+</h3>
+
+<h2>
+RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+</h2>
+
+
+<h3>
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES DANA GIBSON
+</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>
+ILLUSTRATED
+</h3>
+
+
+<h4>
+NEW YORK<br>
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br>
+1919
+</h4>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="ctr">
+&quot;The Exiles&quot; and &quot;The Boy Orator of Zepata City&quot; from &quot;The Exiles,&quot;
+copyright, 1894, by <span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers</span>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="ctr">
+&quot;The Other Woman&quot; from &quot;Gallagher,&quot; copyright, 1891, by <span class="smcap">Charles
+Scribner's Sons</span>; &quot;On the Fever Ship,&quot; &quot;The Lion and the Unicorn,&quot; and
+&quot;The Last Ride Together&quot; from &quot;The Lion and the Unicorn,&quot; copyright,
+1899, by <span class="smcap">Charles Scribner's Sons</span>; &quot;Miss Delamar's Understudy&quot; from
+&quot;Cinderella,&quot; copyright, 1896, by <span class="smcap">Charles Scribner's Sons</span>; &quot;The
+Reporter Who Made Himself King&quot; from &quot;Stories for Boys,&quot; copyright,
+1891, by <span class="smcap">Charles Scribner's Sons</span>.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<h4>
+TO MY FRIEND
+</h4>
+
+<h3>
+J. DAVIS BRODHEAD
+</h3>
+
+
+
+<a name="glimpse"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF DAVIS
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+Dick was twenty-four years old when he came into the smoking-room of
+the Victoria Hotel, in London, after midnight one July night&mdash;he was
+dressed as a Thames boatman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been rowing up and down the river since sundown, looking for
+color. He had evidently peopled every dark corner with a pirate, and
+every floating object had meant something to him. He had adventure
+written all over him. It was the first time I had ever seen him, and
+I had never heard of him. I can't now recall another figure in that
+smoke-filled room. I don't remember who introduced us&mdash;over
+twenty-seven years have passed since that night. But I can see Dick
+now dressed in a rough brown suit, a soft hat, with a handkerchief
+about his neck, a splendid, healthy, clean-minded, gifted boy at play.
+And so he always remained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His going out of this world seemed like a boy interrupted in a game he
+loved. And how well and fairly he played it! Surely no one deserved
+success more than Dick. And it is a consolation to know he had more
+than fifty years of just what he wanted. He had health, a great
+talent, and personal charm. There never was a more loyal or unselfish
+friend. There wasn't an atom of envy in him. He had unbounded mental
+and physical courage, and with it all he was sensitive and sometimes
+shy. He often tried to conceal these last two qualities, but never
+succeeded in doing so from those of us who were privileged really to
+know and love him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His life was filled with just the sort of adventure he liked the best.
+No one ever saw more wars in so many different places or got more out
+of them. And it took the largest war in all history to wear out that
+stout heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We shall miss him.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+CHARLES DANA GIBSON.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="med">
+<h3>
+CONTENTS
+</h3>
+
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li><i><big>The First Glimpse of Davis</big></i><span class="tocright"><a href="#glimpse"><i>Charles Dana Gibson</i></a></span>
+</li>
+<li>&nbsp;<span class="pageright"><small>PAGE</small></span></li>
+<li>The Exiles                                                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#1">1</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>The Boy Orator Of Zepata City                               <span class="tocright"><a href="#72">72</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>The Other Woman                                             <span class="tocright"><a href="#94">94</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>On The Fever Ship                                          <span class="tocright"><a href="#118">118</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>The Lion And The Unicorn                                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#144">144</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>The Last Ride Together                                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#204">204</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>Miss Delamar's Understudy                                  <span class="tocright"><a href="#214">214</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>The Reporter Who Made Himself King                         <span class="tocright"><a href="#249">249</a></span>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+</h3>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>Instead She Buried Her Face In Its Folds      <span class="tocright"><a href="#Frontispiece"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>
+                                                       &nbsp;<span class="pageright"><small>Facing Page</small></span></li>
+
+
+<li>Stopping For Half-Hours At A Time Before A Bazaar           <span class="tocright"><a href="#14">14</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>The Boar Hunt                                               <span class="tocright"><a href="#38">38</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>Consumed Tea And Thin Slices Of Bread                      <span class="tocright"><a href="#152">152</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li>&quot;I Never Saw A King,&quot; Gordon Remarked                      <span class="tocright"><a href="#262">262</a></span>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<hr class="long">
+
+<a name="1"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+THE EXILES
+</p>
+
+<p class="chapternumber">
+I
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The greatest number of people in the world prefer the most highly
+civilized places of the world, because they know what sort of things
+are going to happen there, and because they also know by experience
+that those are the sort of things they like. A very few people prefer
+barbarous and utterly uncivilized portions of the globe for the reason
+that they receive while there new impressions, and because they like
+the unexpected better than a routine of existence, no matter how
+pleasant that routine may be. But the most interesting places of all
+to study are those in which the savage and the cultivated man lie down
+together and try to live together in unity. This is so because we can
+learn from such places just how far a man of cultivation lapses into
+barbarism when he associates with savages, and how far the remnants of
+his former civilization will have influence upon the barbarians among
+whom he has come to live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are many such colonies as these, and they are the most picturesque
+plague-spots on the globe. You will find them in New Zealand and at
+Yokohama, in Algiers, Tunis, and Tangier, and scattered thickly all
+along the South American coast-line wherever the law of extradition
+obtains not, and where public opinion, which is one of the things a
+colony can do longest without, is unknown. These are the unofficial
+Botany Bays and Melillas of the world, where the criminal goes of his
+own accord, and not because his government has urged him to do so and
+paid his passage there. This is the story of a young man who went to
+such a place for the benefit he hoped it would be to his health, and
+not because he had robbed any one, or done a young girl an injury. He
+was the only son of Judge Henry Howard Holcombe, of New York. That was
+all that it was generally considered necessary to say of him. It was
+not, however, quite enough, for, while his father had had nothing but
+the right and the good of his State and country to think about, the
+son was further occupied by trying to live up to his father's name.
+Young Holcombe was impressed by this fact from his earliest childhood.
+It rested upon him while at Harvard and during his years at the law
+school, and it went with him into society and into the courts of law.
+When he rose to plead a case he did not forget, nor did those present
+forget, that his father while alive had crowded those same halls with
+silent, earnest listeners; and when he addressed a mass-meeting at
+Cooper Union, or spoke from the back of a cart in the East Side, some
+one was sure to refer to the fact that this last speaker was the son
+of the man who was mobbed because he had dared to be an abolitionist,
+and who later had received the veneration of a great city for his
+bitter fight against Tweed and his followers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Holcombe was an earnest member of every reform club and citizens'
+league, and his distinguished name gave weight as a director to
+charitable organizations and free kindergartens. He had inherited his
+hatred of Tammany Hall, and was unrelenting in his war upon it and its
+handiwork, and he spoke of it and of its immediate downfall with the
+bated breath of one who, though amazed at the wickedness of the thing
+he fights, is not discouraged nor afraid. And he would listen to no
+half-measures. Had not his grandfather quarrelled with Henry Clay, and
+so shaken the friendship of a lifetime, because of a great compromise
+which he could not countenance? And was his grandson to truckle and
+make deals with this hideous octopus that was sucking the life-blood
+from the city's veins? Had he not but yesterday distributed six
+hundred circulars, calling for honest government, to six hundred
+possible voters, all the way up Fourth Avenue?&mdash;and when some flippant
+one had said that he might have hired a messenger-boy to have done it
+for him and so saved his energies for something less mechanical, he
+had rebuked the speaker with a reproachful stare and turned away in
+silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Life was terribly earnest to young Holcombe, and he regarded it from
+the point of view of one who looks down upon it from the judge's bench,
+and listens with a frown to those who plead its cause. He was not
+fooled by it; he was alive to its wickedness and its evasions. He would
+tell you that he knew for a fact that the window man in his district
+was a cousin of the Tammany candidate, and that the contractor who had
+the cleaning of the street to do was a brother-in-law of one of the
+Hall's sachems, and that the policeman on his beat had not been in the
+country eight months. He spoke of these damning facts with the air of
+one who simply tells you that much, that you should see how terrible
+the whole thing really was, and what he could tell if he wished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his own profession he recognized the trials of law-breakers only as
+experiments which went to establish and explain a general principle.
+And prisoners were not men to him, but merely the exceptions that
+proved the excellence of a rule. Holcombe would defend the lowest
+creature or the most outrageous of murderers, not because the man was
+a human being fighting for his liberty or life, but because he wished
+to see if certain evidence would be admitted in the trial of such a
+case. Of one of his clients the judge, who had a daughter of his own,
+said, when he sentenced him, &quot;Were there many more such men as you in
+the world, the women of this land would pray to God to be left
+childless.&quot; And when some one asked Holcombe, with ill-concealed
+disgust, how he came to defend the man, he replied: &quot;I wished to show
+the unreliability of expert testimony from medical men. Yes; they tell
+me the man was a very bad lot.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was measures, not men, to Holcombe, and law and order were his twin
+goddesses, and &quot;no compromise&quot; his watchword.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You can elect your man if you'll give me two thousand dollars to
+refit our club-room with,&quot; one of his political acquaintances once
+said to him. &quot;We've five hundred voters on the rolls now, and the
+members vote as one man. You'd be saving the city twenty times that
+much if you keep Croker's man out of the job. You know <i>that</i> as
+well as I do.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The city can better afford to lose twenty thousand dollars,&quot; Holcombe
+answered, &quot;than we can afford to give a two-cent stamp for
+corruption.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;All right,&quot; said the heeler; &quot;all right, Mr. Holcombe. Go on. Fight
+'em your own way. If they'd agree to fight you with pamphlets and
+circulars you'd stand a chance, sir; but as long as they give out
+money and you give out reading-matter to people that can't read,
+they'll win, and I naturally want to be on the winning side.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the club to which Holcombe belonged finally succeeded in getting
+the Police Commissioners indicted for blackmailing gambling-houses,
+Holcombe was, as a matter of course and of public congratulation, on
+the side of the law; and as Assistant District Attorney&mdash;a position
+given him on account of his father's name and in the hope that it
+would shut his mouth&mdash;distinguished himself nobly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of the four commissioners, three were convicted&mdash;the fourth, Patrick
+Meakim, with admirable foresight having fled to that country from
+which few criminals return, and which is vaguely set forth in the
+newspapers as &quot;parts unknown.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trial had been a severe one upon the zealous Mr. Holcombe, who
+found himself at the end of it in a very bad way, with nerves unstrung
+and brain so fagged that he assented without question when his doctor
+exiled him from New York by ordering a sea voyage, with change of
+environment and rest at the other end of it. Some one else suggested
+the northern coast of Africa and Tangier, and Holcombe wrote minute
+directions to the secretaries of all of his reform clubs urging
+continued efforts on the part of his fellow-workers, and sailed away
+one cold winter's morning for Gibraltar. The great sea laid its hold
+upon him, and the winds from the south thawed the cold in his bones,
+and the sun cheered his tired spirit. He stretched himself at full
+length reading those books which one puts off reading until illness
+gives one the right to do so, and so far as in him lay obeyed his
+doctor's first command, that he should forget New York and all that
+pertained to it. By the time he had reached the Rock he was up and
+ready to drift farther into the lazy, irresponsible life of the
+Mediterranean coast, and he had forgotten his struggles against
+municipal misrule, and was at times for hours together utterly
+oblivious of his own personality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dumpy, fat little steamer rolled itself along like a sailor on shore
+from Gibraltar to Tangier, and Holcombe, leaning over the rail of its
+quarter-deck, smiled down at the chattering group of Arabs and Moors
+stretched on their rugs beneath him. A half-naked negro, pulling at
+the dates in the basket between his bare legs, held up a handful to
+him with a laugh, and Holcombe laughed back and emptied the cigarettes
+in his case on top of him, and laughed again as the ship's crew and
+the deck passengers scrambled over one another and shook out their
+voluminous robes in search of them. He felt at ease with the world and
+with himself, and turned his eyes to the white walls of Tangier with a
+pleasure so complete that it shut out even the thought that it was a
+pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The town seemed one continuous mass of white stucco, with each flat,
+low-lying roof so close to the other that the narrow streets left no
+trace. To the left of it the yellow coastline and the green
+olive-trees and palms stretched up against the sky, and beneath him
+scores of shrieking blacks fought in their boats for a place beside
+the steamer's companion-way. He jumped into one of these open wherries
+and fell sprawling among his baggage, and laughed lightly as a boy as
+the boatman set him on his feet again, and then threw them from under
+him with a quick stroke of the oars. The high, narrow pier was crowded
+with excited customs officers in ragged uniforms and dirty turbans,
+and with a few foreign residents looking for arriving passengers.
+Holcombe had his feet on the upper steps of the ladder, and was
+ascending slowly. There was a fat, heavily built man in blue serge
+leaning across the railing of the pier. He was looking down, and as
+his eyes met Holcombe's face his own straightened into lines of
+amazement and most evident terror. Holcombe stopped at the sight, and
+stared back wondering. And then the lapping waters beneath him and the
+white town at his side faded away, and he was back in the hot, crowded
+court-room with this man's face before him. Meakim, the fourth of the
+Police Commissioners, confronted him, and saw in his presence nothing
+but a menace to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe came up the last steps of the stairs, and stopped at their
+top. His instinct and life's tradition made him despise the man, and
+to this was added the selfish disgust that his holiday should have
+been so soon robbed of its character by this reminder of all that he
+had been told to put behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim swept off his hat as though it were hurting him, and showed the
+great drops of sweat on his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;For God's sake!&quot; the man panted, &quot;you can't touch me here, Mr.
+Holcombe. I'm safe here; they told me I'd be. You can't take me. You
+can't touch me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe stared at the man coldly, and with a touch of pity and
+contempt. &quot;That is quite right, Mr. Meakim,&quot; he said. &quot;The law cannot
+reach you here.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Then what do you want with me?&quot; the man demanded, forgetful in his
+terror of anything but his own safety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe turned upon him sharply. &quot;I am not here on your account, Mr.
+Meakim,&quot; he said. &quot;You need not feel the least uneasiness, and,&quot; he
+added, dropping his voice as he noticed that others were drawing near,
+&quot;if you keep out of my way, I shall certainly keep out of yours.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Police Commissioner gave a short laugh partly of bravado and
+partly at his own sudden terror. &quot;I didn't know,&quot; he said, breathing
+with relief. &quot;I thought you'd come after me. You don't wonder you give
+me a turn, do you? I <i>was</i> scared.&quot; He fanned himself with his
+straw hat, and ran his tongue over his lips. &quot;Going to be here some
+time, Mr. District Attorney?&quot; he added, with grave politeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe could not help but smile at the absurdity of it. It was so
+like what he would have expected of Meakim and his class to give every
+office-holder his full title. &quot;No, Mr. Police Commissioner,&quot; he
+answered, grimly, and nodding to his boatmen, pushed his way after
+them and his trunks along the pier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim was waiting for him as he left the custom-house. He touched his
+hat, and bent the whole upper part of his fat body in an awkward bow.
+&quot;Excuse me, Mr. District Attorney,&quot; he began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, drop that, will you?&quot; snapped Holcombe. &quot;Now, what is it you
+want, Meakim?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I was only going to say,&quot; answered the fugitive, with some offended
+dignity, &quot;that as I've been here longer than you, I could perhaps give
+you pointers about the hotels. I've tried 'em all, and they're no
+good, but the Albion's the best.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Thank you, I'm sure,&quot; said Holcombe. &quot;But I have been told to go to
+the Isabella.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, that's pretty good, too,&quot; Meakim answered, &quot;if you don't mind
+the tables. They keep you awake most of the night, though, and&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The tables? I beg your pardon,&quot; said Holcombe, stiffly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Not the eatin' tables; the roulette tables,&quot; corrected Meakim. &quot;Of
+course,&quot; he continued, grinning, &quot;if you're fond of the game, Mr.
+Holcombe, it's handy having them in the same house, but I can steer
+you against a better one back of the French Consulate. Those at the
+Hotel Isabella's crooked.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe stopped uncertainly. &quot;I don't know just what to do,&quot; he said.
+&quot;I think I shall wait until I can see our consul here.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, he'll send you to the Isabella,&quot; said Meakim, cheerfully. &quot;He
+gets two hundred dollars a week for protecting the proprietor, so he
+naturally caps for the house.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe opened his mouth to express himself, but closed it again, and
+then asked, with some misgivings, of the hotel of which Meakim had
+first spoken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, the Albion. Most all the swells go there. It's English, and they
+cook you a good beefsteak. And the boys generally drop in for table
+d'h&ocirc;te. You see, that's the worst of this place, Mr. Holcombe; there's
+nowhere to go evenings&mdash;no club-rooms nor theatre nor nothing; only
+the smoking-room of the hotel or that gambling-house; and they spring
+a double naught on you if there's more than a dollar up.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe still stood irresolute, his porters eying him from under
+their burdens, and the runners from the different hotels plucking at
+his sleeve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There's some very good people at the Albion,&quot; urged the Police
+Commissioner, &quot;and three or four of 'em's New-Yorkers. There's the
+Morrises and Ropes, the Consul-General, and Lloyd Carroll&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Lloyd Carroll!&quot; exclaimed Holcombe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said Meakim, with a smile, &quot;he's here.&quot; He looked at Holcombe
+curiously for a moment, and then exclaimed, with a laugh of
+intelligence, &quot;Why, sure enough, you were Mr. Thatcher's lawyer in
+that case, weren't you? It was you got him his divorce?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Carroll was the man that made it possible, wasn't he?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe chafed under this catechism. &quot;He was one of a dozen, I
+believe,&quot; he said; but as he moved away he turned and asked: &quot;And Mrs.
+Thatcher. What has become of her?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Police Commissioner did not answer at once, but glanced up at
+Holcombe from under his half-shut eyes with a look in which there was
+a mixture of curiosity and of amusement. &quot;You don't mean to say, Mr.
+Holcombe,&quot; he began, slowly, with the patronage of the older man and
+with a touch of remonstrance in his tone, &quot;that you're <i>still</i>
+with the husband in that case?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe looked coldly over Mr. Meakim's head. &quot;I have only a purely
+professional interest in any one of them,&quot; he said. &quot;They struck me as
+a particularly nasty lot. Good-morning, sir.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well,&quot; Meakim called after him, &quot;you needn't see nothing of them if
+you don't want to. You can get rooms to yourself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe did get rooms to himself, with a balcony overlooking the bay,
+and arranged with the proprietor of the Albion to have his dinner
+served at a separate table. As others had done this before, no one
+regarded it as an affront upon his society, and several people in the
+hotel made advances to him, which he received politely but coldly. For
+the first week of his visit the town interested him greatly,
+increasing its hold upon him unconsciously to himself. He was restless
+and curious to see it all, and rushed his guide from one of the few
+show-places to the next with an energy which left that fat Oriental
+panting.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="14"></a>
+<div class="ctr"><img src="images/014.jpg" alt="Stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar." width="541" height="462"></div>
+<p class="imgcaption">Stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But after three days Holcombe climbed the streets more leisurely,
+stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar, or sent away his
+guide altogether, and stretched himself luxuriously on the broad wall
+of the fortifications. The sun beat down upon him, and wrapped him
+into drowsiness. From far afield came the unceasing murmur of the
+market-place and the bazaars, and the occasional cries of the priests
+from the minarets; the dark blue sea danced and flashed beyond the
+white margin of the town and its protecting reef of rocks where the
+sea-weed rose and fell, and above his head the buzzards swept heavily,
+and called to one another with harsh, frightened cries. At his side
+lay the dusty road, hemmed in by walls of cactus, and along its narrow
+length came lines of patient little donkeys with jangling necklaces,
+led by wild-looking men from the farm-lands and the desert, and women
+muffled and shapeless, with only their bare feet showing, who looked
+at him curiously or meaningly from over the protecting cloth, and
+passed on, leaving him startled and wondering. He began to find that
+the books he had brought wearied him. The sight of the type alone was
+enough to make him close the covers and start up restlessly to look
+for something less absorbing. He found this on every hand, in the lazy
+patience of the bazaars and of the markets, where the chief service of
+all was that of only standing and waiting, and in the farm-lands
+behind Tangier, where half-naked slaves drove great horned buffalo,
+and turned back the soft, chocolate-colored sod with a wooden plough.
+But it was a solitary, selfish holiday, and Holcombe found himself
+wanting certain ones at home to bear him company, and was surprised to
+find that of these none were the men nor the women with whom his
+interests in the city of New York were the most closely connected.
+They were rather foolish people, men at whom he had laughed and whom
+he had rather pitied for having made him do so, and women he had
+looked at distantly as of a kind he might understand when his work was
+over and he wished to be amused. The young girls to whom he was in the
+habit of pouring out his denunciations of evil, and from whom he was
+accustomed to receive advice and moral support, he could not place in
+this landscape. He felt uneasily that they would not allow him to
+enjoy it his own way; they would consider the Moor historically as the
+invader of Catholic Europe, and would be shocked at the lack of proper
+sanitation, and would see the mud. As for himself, he had risen above
+seeing the mud. He looked up now at the broken line of the roof-tops
+against the blue sky, and when a hooded figure drew back from his
+glance he found himself murmuring the words of an Eastern song he had
+read in a book of Indian stories:
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;Alone upon the house-tops, to the north</p>
+<p class="i2">I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,&mdash;</p>
+<p>The glamour of thy footsteps in the north.</p>
+<p class="i2">Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;Below my feet the still bazaar is laid.</p>
+<p class="i2">Far, far below, the weary camels lie&mdash;&quot;</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had stopped half-way
+down the hill on which stands the Bashaw's palace, and the whole of
+Tangier lay below him like a great cemetery of white marble. The moon
+was shining clearly over the town and the sea, and a soft wind from
+the sandy farm-lands came to him and played about him like the
+fragrance of a garden. Something moved in him that he did not
+recognize, but which was strangely pleasant, and which ran to his
+brain like the taste of a strong liqueur. It came to him that he was
+alone among strangers, and that what he did now would be known but to
+himself and to these strangers. What it was that he wished to do he
+did not know, but he felt a sudden lifting up and freedom from
+restraint. The spirit of adventure awoke in him and tugged at his
+sleeve, and he was conscious of a desire to gratify it and put it to
+the test.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;'Alone upon the house-tops,'&quot; he began. Then he laughed and clambered
+hurriedly down the steep hill-side. &quot;It's the moonlight,&quot; he explained
+to the blank walls and overhanging lattices, &quot;and the place and the
+music of the song. It might be one of the Arabian nights, and I Haroun
+al Raschid. <i>And</i> if I don't get back to the hotel I shall make a
+fool of myself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He reached the Albion very warm and breathless, with stumbling and
+groping in the dark, and instead of going immediately to bed told the
+waiter to bring him some cool drink out on the terrace of the
+smoking-room. There were two men sitting there in the moonlight, and
+as he came forward one of them nodded to him silently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, good-evening, Mr. Meakim!&quot; Holcombe said, gayly, with the spirit
+of the night still upon him. &quot;I've been having adventures.&quot; He
+laughed, and stooped to brush the dirt from his knickerbockers and
+stockings. &quot;I went up to the palace to see the town by moonlight, and
+tried to find my way back alone, and fell down three times.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim shook his head gravely. &quot;You'd better be careful at night,
+sir,&quot; he said. &quot;The governor has just said that the Sultan won't be
+responsible for the lives of foreigners at night 'unless accompanied
+by soldier and lantern.'&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, and the legations sent word that they wouldn't have it,&quot; broke
+in the other man. &quot;They said they'd hold him responsible anyway.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence, and Meakim moved in some slight uneasiness. &quot;Mr.
+Holcombe, do you know Mr. Carroll?&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll half rose from his chair, but Holcombe was dragging another
+toward him, and so did not have a hand to give him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How are you, Carroll?&quot; he said, pleasantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night was warm, and Holcombe was tired after his rambles, and so
+he sank back in the low wicker chair contentedly enough, and when the
+first cool drink was finished he clapped his hands for another, and
+then another, while the two men sat at the table beside him and
+avoided such topics as would be unfair to any of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And yet,&quot; said Holcombe, after the first half-hour had passed, &quot;there
+must be a few agreeable people here. I am sure I saw some very
+nice-looking women to-day coming in from the fox-hunt. And very well
+gotten up, too, in Karki habits. And the men were handsome,
+decent-looking chaps&mdash;Englishmen, I think.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Who does he mean? Were you at the meet to-day?&quot; asked Carroll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Tammany chieftain said no, that he did not ride&mdash;not after foxes,
+in any event. &quot;But I saw Mrs. Hornby and her sister coming back,&quot; he
+said. &quot;They had on those linen habits.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, now, there's a woman who illustrates just what I have been
+saying,&quot; continued Carroll. &quot;You picked her out as a self-respecting,
+nice-looking girl&mdash;and so she is&mdash;but she wouldn't like to have to
+tell all she knows. No, they are all pretty much alike. They wear
+low-neck frocks, and the men put on evening dress for dinner, and they
+ride after foxes, and they drop in to five-o'clock tea, and they all
+play that they're a lot of gilded saints, and it's one of the rules of
+the game that you must believe in the next man, so that he will
+believe in you. I'm breaking the rules myself now, because I say
+'they' when I ought to say 'we.' We're none of us here for our health,
+Holcombe, but it pleases us to pretend we are. It's a sort of give and
+take. We all sit around at dinner-parties and smile and chatter, and
+those English talk about the latest news from 'town,' and how they
+mean to run back for the season or the hunting. But they know they
+don't dare go back, and they know that everybody at the table knows
+it, and that the servants behind them know it. But it's more easy that
+way. There's only a few of us here, and we've got to hang together or
+we'd go crazy.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That's so,&quot; said Meakim, approvingly. &quot;It makes it more sociable.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's a funny place,&quot; continued Carroll. The wine had loosened his
+tongue, and it was something to him to be able to talk to one of his
+own people again, and to speak from their point of view, so that the
+man who had gone through St. Paul's and Harvard with him would see it
+as such a man should. &quot;It's a funny place, because, in spite of the
+fact that it's a prison, you grow to like it for its freedom. You can
+do things here you can't do in New York, and pretty much everything
+goes there, or it used to, where I hung out. But here you're just your
+own master, and there's no law and no religion and no relations nor
+newspapers to poke into what you do nor how you live. You can
+understand what I mean if you've ever tried living in the West. I used
+to feel the same way the year I was ranching in Texas. My family sent
+me out there to put me out of temptation; but I concluded I'd rather
+drink myself to death on good whiskey at Del's than on the stuff we
+got on the range, so I pulled my freight and came East again. But
+while I was there I was a little king. I was just as good as the next
+man, and he was no better than me. And though the life was rough, and
+it was cold and lonely, there was something in being your own boss
+that made you stick it out there longer than anything else did. It was
+like this, Holcombe.&quot; Carroll half rose from his chair and marked what
+he said with his finger. &quot;Every time I took a step and my gun bumped
+against my hip, I'd straighten up and feel good and look for trouble.
+There was nobody to appeal to; it was just between me and him, and no
+one else had any say about it. Well, that's what it's like here. You
+see men come to Tangier on the run, flying from detectives or husbands
+or bank directors, men who have lived perfectly decent, commonplace
+lives up to the time they made their one bad break&mdash;which,&quot; Carroll
+added, in polite parenthesis, with a deprecatory wave of his hand
+toward Meakim and himself, &quot;we are <i>all</i> likely to do some time,
+aren't we?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Just so,&quot; said Meakim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Of course,&quot; assented the District Attorney.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But as soon as he reaches this place, Holcombe,&quot; continued Carroll,
+&quot;he begins to show just how bad he is. It all comes out&mdash;all his
+viciousness and rottenness and blackguardism. There is nothing to
+shame it, and there is no one to blame him, and no one is in a
+position to throw the first stone.&quot; Carroll dropped his voice and
+pulled his chair forward with a glance over his shoulder. &quot;One of
+those men you saw riding in from the meet to-day. Now, he's a German
+officer, and he's here for forging a note or cheating at cards or
+something quiet and gentlemanly, nothing that shows him to be a brute
+or a beast. But last week he had old Mulley Wazzam buy him a slave
+girl in Fez, and bring her out to his house in the suburbs. It seems
+that the girl was in love with a soldier in the Sultan's body-guard at
+Fez, and tried to run away to join him, and this man met her quite by
+accident as she was making her way south across the sand-hills. He was
+whip that day, and was hurrying out to the meet alone. He had some
+words with the girl first, and then took his whip&mdash;it was one of those
+with the long lash to it; you know what I mean&mdash;and cut her to pieces
+with it, riding her down on his pony when she tried to run, and
+heading her off and lashing her around the legs and body until she
+fell; then he rode on in his damn pink coat to join the ladies at
+Mango's Drift, where the meet was, and some Riffs found her bleeding
+to death behind the sand-hills. That man held a commission in the
+Emperor's own body-guard, and that's what Tangier did for <i>him</i>.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe glanced at Meakim to see if he would verify this, but
+Meakim's lips were tightly pressed around his cigar, and his eyes were
+half closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And what was done about it?&quot; Holcombe asked, hoarsely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. &quot;Why, I tell you, and you
+whisper it to the next man, and we pretend not to believe it, and call
+the Riffs liars. As I say, we're none of us here for our health,
+Holcombe, and a public opinion that's manufactured by <i>d&eacute;class&eacute;e</i>
+women and men who have run off with somebody's money and somebody's
+else's wife isn't strong enough to try a man for beating his own
+slave.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But the Moors themselves?&quot; protested Holcombe. &quot;And the Sultan? She's
+one of his subjects, isn't she?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;She's a woman, and women don't count for much in the East, you know;
+and as for the Sultan, he's an ignorant black savage. When the English
+wanted to blow up those rocks off the western coast, the Sultan
+wouldn't let them. He said Allah had placed them there for some good
+reason of His own, and it was not for man to interfere with the works
+of God. That's the sort of a Sultan he is.&quot; Carroll rose suddenly and
+walked into the smoking-room, leaving the two men looking at each
+other in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That's right,&quot; said Meakim, after a pause. &quot;He give it to you just as
+it is, but I never knew him to kick about it before. We're a fair
+field for missionary work, Mr. Holcombe, all of us&mdash;at least, some of
+us are.&quot; He glanced up as Carroll came back from out of the lighted
+room with an alert, brisk step. His manner had changed in his absence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Some of the ladies have come over for a bit of supper,&quot; he said.
+&quot;Mrs. Hornby and her sister and Captain Reese. The <i>chef's</i> got
+some birds for us, and I've put a couple of bottles on ice. It will be
+like Del's&mdash;hey? A small hot bird and a large cold bottle. They sent
+me out to ask you to join us. They're in our rooms.&quot; Meakim rose
+leisurely and lit a fresh cigar, but Holcombe moved uneasily in his
+chair. &quot;You'll come, won't you?&quot; Carroll asked. &quot;I'd like you to meet
+my wife.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe rose irresolutely and looked at his watch. &quot;I'm afraid it's
+too late for me,&quot; he said, without raising his face. &quot;You see, I'm
+here for my health. I&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I beg your pardon,&quot; said Carroll, sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Nonsense, Carroll!&quot; said Holcombe. &quot;I didn't mean <i>that</i>. I
+meant it literally. I can't risk midnight suppers yet. My doctor's
+orders are to go to bed at nine, and it's past twelve now. Some other
+time, if you'll be so good; but it's long after my bedtime, and&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, certainly,&quot; said Carroll, quietly, as he turned away. &quot;Are you
+coming, Meakim?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim lifted his half-empty glass from the table and tasted it slowly
+until Carroll had left them, then he put the glass down, and glanced
+aside to where Holcombe sat looking out over the silent city. Holcombe
+raised his eyes and stared at him steadily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Mr. Holcombe&mdash;&quot; the fugitive began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; replied the lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim shook his head. &quot;Nothing,&quot; he said. &quot;Good-night, sir.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe's rooms were on the floor above Carroll's, and the laughter
+of the latter's guests and the tinkling of glasses and silver came to
+him as he stepped out upon his balcony. But for this the night was
+very still. The sea beat leisurely on the rocks, and the waves ran up
+the sandy coast with a sound as of some one sweeping. The music of
+women's laughter came up to him suddenly, and he wondered hotly if
+they were laughing at him. He assured himself that it was a matter of
+indifference to him if they were. And with this he had a wish that
+they would not think of him as holding himself aloof. One of the women
+began to sing to a guitar, and to the accompaniment of this a man and
+a young girl came out upon the balcony below, and spoke to each other
+in low, earnest tones, which seemed to carry with them the feeling of
+a caress. Holcombe could not hear what they said, but he could see the
+curve of the woman's white shoulders and the light of her companion's
+cigar as he leaned upon the rail with his back to the moonlight and
+looked into her face. Holcombe felt a sudden touch of loneliness and
+of being very far from home. He shivered slightly as though from the
+cold, and stepping inside closed the window gently behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although Holcombe met Carroll several times during the following day,
+the latter obviously avoided him, and it was not until late in the
+afternoon that Holcombe was given a chance to speak to him again.
+Carroll was coming down the only street on a run, jumping from one
+rough stone to another, and with his face lighted up with excitement.
+He hailed Holcombe from a distance with a wave of the hand. &quot;There's
+an American man-of-war in the bay,&quot; he cried; &quot;one of the new ones. We
+saw her flag from the hotel. Come on!&quot; Holcombe followed as a matter
+of course, as Carroll evidently expected that he would, and they
+reached the end of the landing-pier together, just as the ship of war
+ran up and broke the square red flag of Morocco from her main-mast and
+fired her salute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They'll be sending a boat in by-and-by,&quot; said Carroll, &quot;and we'll
+have a talk with the men.&quot; His enthusiasm touched his companion also,
+and the sight of the floating atom of the great country that was his
+moved him strongly, as though it were a personal message from home. It
+came to him like the familiar stamp, and a familiar handwriting on a
+letter in a far-away land, and made him feel how dear his own country
+was to him and how much he needed it. They were leaning side by side
+upon the rail watching the ship's screws turning the blue waters
+white, and the men running about the deck, and the blue-coated figures
+on the bridge. Holcombe turned to point out the vessel's name to
+Carroll, and found that his companion's eyes were half closed and
+filled with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll laughed consciously and coughed. &quot;We kept it up a bit too late
+last night,&quot; he said, &quot;and I'm feeling nervous this morning, and the
+sight of the flag and those boys from home knocked me out.&quot; He paused
+for a moment, frowning through his tears and with his brow drawn up
+into many wrinkles. &quot;It's a terrible thing, Holcombe,&quot; he began again,
+fiercely, &quot;to be shut off from all of that.&quot; He threw out his hand
+with a sudden gesture toward the man-of-war. Holcombe looked down at
+the water and laid his hand lightly on his companion's shoulder.
+Carroll drew away and shook his head. &quot;I don't want any sympathy,&quot; he
+said, kindly. &quot;I'm not crying the baby act. But you don't know, and I
+don't believe anybody else knows, what I've gone through and what I've
+suffered. You don't like me, Holcombe, and you don't like my class,
+but I want to tell you something about my coming here. I want you to
+set them right about it at home. And I don't care whether it interests
+you or not,&quot; he said, with quick offense; &quot;I want you to listen. It's
+about my wife.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe bowed his head gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You got Thatcher his divorce,&quot; Carroll continued. &quot;And you know that
+he would never have got it but for me, and that everybody expected
+that I would marry Mrs. Thatcher when the thing was over. And I
+didn't, and everybody said I was a blackguard, and I was. It was bad
+enough before, but I made it worse by not doing the only thing that
+could make it any better. Why I didn't do it I don't know. I had some
+grand ideas of reform about that time, I think, and I thought I owed
+my people something, and that by not making Mrs. Thatcher my mother's
+daughter I would be saving her and my sisters. It was remorse, I
+guess, and I didn't see things straight. I know now what I should have
+done. Well, I left her and she went her own way, and a great many
+people felt sorry for her, and were good to her&mdash;not your people, nor
+my people; but enough were good to her to make her see as much of the
+world as she had used to. She never loved Thatcher, and she never
+loved any of the men you brought into that trial except one, and he
+treated her like a cur. That was myself. Well, what with trying to
+please my family, and loving Alice Thatcher all the time and not
+seeing her, and hating her too for bringing me into all that
+notoriety&mdash;for I blamed the woman, of course, as a man always will&mdash;I
+got to drinking, and then this scrape came and I had to run. I don't
+care anything about that row now, or what you believe about it. I'm
+here, shut off from my home, and that's a worse punishment than any
+damn lawyers can invent. And the man's well again. He saw I was drunk;
+but I wasn't so drunk that I didn't know he was trying to do me, and I
+pounded him just as they say I did, and I'm sorry now I didn't kill
+him.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe stirred uneasily, and the man at his side lowered his voice
+and went on more calmly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If I hadn't been a gentleman, Holcombe, or if it had been another
+cabman he'd fought with, there wouldn't have been any trouble about
+it. But he thought he could get big money out of me, and his friends
+told him to press it until he was paid to pull out, and I hadn't the
+money, and so I had to break bail and run. Well, you've seen the
+place. You've been here long enough to know what it's like, and what
+I've had to go through. Nobody wrote me, and nobody came to see me;
+not one of my own sisters even, though they've been in the Riviera all
+this spring&mdash;not a day's journey away. Sometimes a man turned up that
+I knew, but it was almost worse than not seeing any one. It only made
+me more homesick when he'd gone. And for weeks I used to walk up and
+down that beach there alone late in the night, until I got to thinking
+that the waves were talking to me, and I got queer in my head. I had
+to fight it just as I used to have to fight against whiskey, and to
+talk fast so that I wouldn't think. And I tried to kill myself
+hunting, and only got a broken collar-bone for my pains. Well, all
+this time Alice was living in Paris and New York. I heard that some
+English captain was going to marry her, and then I read in the Paris
+<i>Herald</i> that she was settled in the American colony there, and
+one day it gave a list of the people who'd been to a reception she
+gave. She could go where she pleased, and she had money in her own
+right, you know; and she was being revenged on me every day. And I was
+here knowing it, and loving her worse than I ever loved anything on
+earth, and having lost the right to tell her so, and not able to go to
+her. Then one day some chap turned up from here and told her about me,
+and about how miserable I was, and how well I was being punished. He
+thought it would please her, I suppose. I don't know who he was, but I
+guess he was in love with her himself. And then the papers had it that
+I was down with the fever here, and she read about it. I <i>was</i>
+ill for a time, and I hoped it was going to carry me off decently, but
+I got up in a week or two, and one day I crawled down here where we're
+standing now to watch the boat come in. I was pretty weak from my
+illness, and I was bluer than I had ever been, and I didn't see
+anything but blackness and bitterness for me anywhere. I turned around
+when the passengers reached the pier, and I saw a woman coming up
+those stairs. Her figure and her shoulders were so like Alice's that
+my heart went right up into my throat, and I couldn't breathe for it.
+I just stood still staring, and when she reached the top of the steps
+she looked up, breathing with the climb, and laughing; and she says,
+'Lloyd, I've come to see you.' And I&mdash;I was that lonely and weak that
+I grabbed her hand, and leaned back against the railing, and cried
+there before the whole of them. I don't think she expected it exactly,
+because she didn't know what to do, and just patted me on the
+shoulder, and said, 'I thought I'd run down to cheer you up a bit; and
+I've brought Mrs. Scott with me to chaperon us.' And I said, without
+stopping to think: 'You wouldn't have needed any chaperon, Alice, if I
+hadn't been a cur and a fool. If I had only asked what I can't ask of
+you now'; and, Holcombe, she flushed just like a little girl, and
+laughed, and said, 'Oh, will you, Lloyd?' And you see that ugly iron
+chapel up there, with the corrugated zinc roof and the wooden cross on
+it, next to the mosque? Well, that's where we went first, right from
+this wharf before I let her go to a hotel, and old Ridley, the English
+rector, he married us, and we had a civil marriage too. That's what
+she did for me. She had the whole wide globe to live in, and she gave
+it up to come to Tangier, because I had no other place but Tangier,
+and she's made my life for me, and I'm happier here than I ever was
+before anywhere, and sometimes I think&mdash;I hope&mdash;that she is, too.&quot;
+Carroll's lips moved slightly, and his hands trembled on the rail. He
+coughed, and his voice was gentler when he spoke again. &quot;And so,&quot; he
+added, &quot;that's why I felt it last night when you refused to meet her.
+You were right, I know, from your way of thinking, but we've grown
+careless down here, and we look at things differently.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe did not speak, but put his arm across the other's shoulder,
+and this time Carroll did not shake it off. Holcombe pointed with his
+hand to a tall, handsome woman with heavy yellow hair who was coming
+toward them, with her hands in the pockets of her reefer. &quot;There is
+Mrs. Carroll now,&quot; he said. &quot;Won't you present me, and then we can row
+out and see the man-of-war?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="chapternumber">
+II
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The officers returned their visit during the day, and the American
+Consul-General asked them all to a reception the following afternoon.
+The entire colony came to this, and Holcombe met many people, and
+drank tea with several ladies in riding-habits, and iced drinks with
+all of the men. He found it very amusing, and the situation appealed
+strongly to his somewhat latent sense of humor. That evening in
+writing to his sister he told of his rapid recovery in health, and of
+the possibility of his returning to civilization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There was a reception this afternoon at the Consul-General's,&quot; he
+wrote, &quot;given to the officers of our man-of-war, and I found myself in
+some rather remarkable company. The Consul himself has become rich by
+selling his protection for two hundred dollars to every wealthy Moor
+who wishes to escape the forced loans which the Sultan is in the habit
+of imposing on the faithful. For five hundred dollars he will furnish
+any one of them with a piece of stamped paper accrediting him as
+minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the Sultan's court.
+Of course the Sultan never receives them, and whatever object they may
+have had in taking the long journey to Fez is never accomplished. Some
+day some one of them will find out how he has been tricked, and will
+return to have the Consul assassinated. This will be a serious loss to
+our diplomatic service. The Consul's wife is a fat German woman who
+formerly kept a hotel here. Her brother has it now, and runs it as an
+annex to a gambling-house. Pat Meakim, the Police Commissioner that I
+indicted, but who jumped his bail, introduced me at the reception to
+the men, with apparently great self-satisfaction, as 'the pride of the
+New York Bar,' and Mrs. Carroll, for whose husband I obtained a
+divorce, showed her gratitude by presenting me to the ladies. It was a
+distinctly Gilbertian situation, and the people to whom they
+introduced me were quite as picturesquely disreputable as themselves.
+So you see&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe stopped here and read over what he had written, and then tore
+up the letter. The one he sent in its place said he was getting
+better, but that the climate was not so mild as he had expected it
+would be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe engaged the entire first floor of the hotel the next day, and
+entertained the officers and the residents at breakfast, and the
+Admiral made a speech and said how grateful it was to him and to his
+officers to find that wherever they might touch, there were some few
+Americans ready to welcome them as the representatives of the flag
+they all so unselfishly loved, and of the land they still so proudly
+called &quot;home.&quot; Carroll, turning his wine-glass slowly between his
+fingers, raised his eyes to catch Holcombe's, and winked at him from
+behind the curtain of the smoke of his cigar, and Holcombe smiled
+grimly, and winked back, with the result that Meakim, who had
+intercepted the signalling, choked on his champagne, and had to be
+pounded violently on the back. Holcombe's breakfast established him as
+a man of means and one who could entertain properly, and after that
+his society was counted upon for every hour of the day. He offered
+money as prizes for the ship's crew to row and swim after, he gave a
+purse for a cross-country pony race, open to members of the Calpe and
+Tangier hunts, and organized picnics and riding parties innumerable.
+He was forced at last to hire a soldier to drive away the beggars when
+he walked abroad. He found it easy to be rich in a place where he was
+given over two hundred copper coins for an English shilling, and he
+distributed his largesses recklessly and with a lack of discrimination
+entirely opposed to the precepts of his organized charities at home.
+He found it so much more amusing to throw a handful of coppers to a
+crowd of fat naked children than to write a check for the Society for
+Suppression of Cruelty to the same beneficiaries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You shouldn't give those fellows money,&quot; the Consul-General once
+remonstrated with him; &quot;the fact that they're blind is only a proof
+that they have been thieves. When they catch a man stealing here they
+hold his head back, and pass a hot iron in front of his eyes. That's
+why the lids are drawn taut that way. You shouldn't encourage them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Perhaps they're not <i>all</i> thieves,&quot; said the District Attorney,
+cheerfully, as he hit the circle around him with a handful of coppers;
+&quot;but there is no doubt about it that they're all blind. Which is the
+more to be pitied,&quot; he asked the Consul-General, &quot;the man who has
+still to be found out and who can see, or the one who has been exposed
+and who is blind?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How should he know?&quot; said Carroll, laughing. &quot;He's never been blind,
+and he still holds his job.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't think that's very funny,&quot; said the Consul-General.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A week of pig-sticking came to end Holcombe's stay in Tangier, and he
+threw himself into it and into the freedom of its life with a zest
+that made even the Englishman speak of him as a good fellow. He
+chanced to overhear this, and stopped to consider what it meant. No
+one had ever called him a good fellow at home, but then his life had
+not offered him the chance to show what sort of a good fellow he might
+be, and as Judge Holcombe's son certain things had been debarred him.
+Here he was only the richest tourist since Farwell, the diamond
+smuggler from Amsterdam, had touched there in his yacht.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="38"></a>
+<div class="ctr"><img src="images/038.jpg" alt="The boar hunt." width="557" height="361"></div>
+<p class="imgcaption">The boar hunt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The week of boar-hunting was spent out-of-doors, on horseback, and in
+tents; the women in two wide circular ones, and the men in another,
+with a mess tent, which they shared in common, pitched between them.
+They had only one change of clothes each, one wet and one dry, and
+they were in the saddle from nine in the morning until late at night,
+when they gathered in a wide circle around the wood-fire and played
+banjoes and listened to stories. Holcombe grew as red as a sailor, and
+jumped his horse over gaping crevasses in the hard sun-baked earth as
+recklessly as though there were nothing in this world so well worth
+sacrificing one's life for as to be the first in at a dumb brute's
+death. He was on friendly terms with them all now&mdash;with Miss Terrill,
+the young girl who had been awakened by night and told to leave Monte
+Carlo before daybreak, and with Mrs. Darhah, who would answer to Lady
+Taunton if so addressed, and with Andrews, the Scotch bank clerk, and
+Ollid the boy officer from Gibraltar, who had found some difficulty in
+making the mess account balance. They were all his very good friends,
+and he was especially courteous and attentive to Miss Terrill's wants
+and interests, and fixed her stirrup and once let her pass him to
+charge the boar in his place. She was a silently distant young woman,
+and strangely gentle for one who had had to leave a place, and such a
+place, between days; and her hair, which was very fine and light, ran
+away from under her white helmet in disconnected curls. At night,
+Holcombe used to watch her from out of the shadow when the firelight
+lit up the circle and the tips of the palms above them, and when the
+story-teller's voice was accompanied by bursts of occasional laughter
+from the dragomen in the grove beyond, and the stamping and neighing
+of the horses at their pickets, and the unceasing chorus of the insect
+life about them. She used to sit on one of the rugs with her hands
+clasped about her knees, and with her head resting on Mrs. Hornby's
+broad shoulder, looking down into the embers of the fire, and with the
+story of her life written on her girl's face as irrevocably as though
+old age had set its seal there. Holcombe was kind to them all now,
+even to Meakim, when that gentleman rode leisurely out to the camp
+with the mail and the latest Paris <i>Herald</i>, which was their one
+bond of union with the great outside world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll sat smoking his pipe one night, and bending forward over the
+fire to get its light on the pages of the latest copy of this paper.
+Suddenly he dropped it between his knees. &quot;I say, Holcombe,&quot; he cried,
+&quot;here's news! Winthrop Allen has absconded with three hundred thousand
+dollars, and no one knows where.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe was sitting on the other side of the fire, prying at the
+rowel of his spur with a hunting-knife. He raised his head and
+laughed. &quot;Another good man gone wrong, hey?&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll lowered the paper slowly to his knee and stared curiously
+through the smoky light to where Holcombe sat intent on the rowel of
+his spur. It apparently absorbed his entire attention, and his last
+remark had been an unconsciously natural one. Carroll smiled grimly as
+he folded the paper across his knee. &quot;Now are the mighty fallen,
+indeed,&quot; he murmured. He told Meakim of it a few minutes later, and
+they both marvelled. &quot;It's just as I told him, isn't it, and he
+wouldn't believe me. It's the place and the people. Two weeks ago he
+would have raged. Why, Meakim, you know Allen&mdash;Winthrop Allen? He's
+one of Holcombe's own sort; older than he is, but one of his own
+people; belongs to the same clubs; and to the same family, I think,
+and yet Harry took it just as a matter of course, with no more
+interest, than if I'd said that Allen was going to be married.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim gave a low, comfortable laugh of content. &quot;It makes me smile,&quot;
+he chuckled, &quot;every time I think of him the day he came up them
+stairs. He scared me half to death, he did, and then he says, just as
+stiff as you please, 'If you'll leave me alone, Mr. Meakim, I'll not
+trouble you.' And now it's 'Meakim this,' and 'Meakim that,' and 'have
+a drink, Meakim,' just as thick as thieves. I have to laugh whenever I
+think of it now. 'If you'll leave me alone, I'll not trouble you, Mr.
+Meakim.'&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll pursed his lips and looked up at the broad expanse of purple
+heavens with the white stars shining through. &quot;It's rather a pity,
+too, in a way,&quot; he said, slowly. &quot;He was all the Public Opinion we
+had, and now that he's thrown up the part, why&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pig-sticking came to an end finally, and Holcombe distinguished
+himself by taking his first fall, and under romantic circumstances. He
+was in an open place, with Mrs. Carroll at the edge of the brush to
+his right, and Miss Terrill guarding any approach from the left. They
+were too far apart to speak to one another, and sat quite still and
+alert to any noise as the beaters closed in around them. There was a
+sharp rustle in the reeds, and the boar broke out of it some hundred
+feet ahead of Holcombe. He went after it at a gallop, headed it off,
+and ran it fairly on his spear point as it came toward him; but as he
+drew his lance clear his horse came down, falling across him, and for
+the instant knocking him breathless. It was all over in a moment. He
+raised his head to see the boar turn and charge him; he saw where his
+spear point had torn the lower lip from the long tusks, and that the
+blood was pouring down its flank. He tried to draw out his legs, but
+the pony lay fairly across him, kicking and struggling, and held him
+in a vise. So he closed his eyes and covered his head with his arms,
+and crouched in a heap waiting. There was the quick beat of a pony's
+hoofs on the hard soil, and the rush of the boar within a foot of his
+head, and when he looked up he saw Miss Terrill twisting her pony's
+head around to charge the boar again, and heard her shout, &quot;Let me
+have him!&quot; to Mrs. Carroll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Carroll came toward Holcombe with her spear pointed dangerously
+high; she stopped at his side and drew in her rein sharply. &quot;Why don't
+you get up? Are you hurt?&quot; she said. &quot;Wait; lie still,&quot; she commanded,
+&quot;or he'll tramp on you. I'll get him off.&quot; She slipped from her saddle
+and dragged Holcombe's pony to his feet. Holcombe stood up unsteadily,
+pale through his tan from the pain of the fall and the moment of fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That <i>was</i> nasty,&quot; said Mrs. Carroll, with a quick breath. She
+was quite as pale as he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe wiped the dirt from his hair and the side of his face, and
+looked past her to where Miss Terrill was surveying the dead boar from
+her saddle, while her pony reared and shied, quivering with excitement
+beneath her. Holcombe mounted stiffly and rode toward her. &quot;I am very
+much obliged to you,&quot; he said. &quot;If you hadn't come&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl laughed shortly, and shook her head without looking at him.
+&quot;Why, not at all,&quot; she interrupted, quickly. &quot;I would have come just
+as fast if you hadn't been there.&quot; She turned in her saddle and looked
+at him frankly. &quot;I was glad to see you go down,&quot; she said, &quot;for it
+gave me the first good chance I've had. Are you hurt?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe drew himself up stiffly, regardless of the pain in his neck
+and shoulder. &quot;No, I'm all right, thank you,&quot; he answered. &quot;At the
+same time,&quot; he called after her as she moved away to meet the others,
+&quot;you <i>did</i> save me from being torn up, whether you like it or
+not.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Carroll was looking after the girl with observant, comprehending
+eyes. She turned to Holcombe with a smile. &quot;There are a few things you
+have still to learn, Mr. Holcombe,&quot; she said, bowing in her saddle
+mockingly, and dropping the point of her spear to him as an adversary
+does in salute. &quot;And perhaps,&quot; she added, &quot;it is just as well that
+there are.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe trotted after her in some concern. &quot;I wonder what she means?&quot;
+he said. &quot;I wonder if I were rude?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pig-sticking ended with a long luncheon before the ride back to
+town, at which everything that could be eaten or drunk was put on the
+table, in order, as Meakim explained, that there would be less to
+carry back. He met Holcombe that same evening after the cavalcade had
+reached Tangier as the latter came down the stairs of the Albion.
+Holcombe was in fresh raiment and cleanly shaven, and with the radiant
+air of one who had had his first comfortable bath in a week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim confronted him with a smiling countenance. &quot;Who do you think
+come to-night on the mail-boat?&quot; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't know. Who?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Winthrop Allen, with six trunks,&quot; said Meakim, with the triumphant
+air of one who brings important news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, really now,&quot; said Holcombe, laughing. &quot;The old hypocrite! I
+wonder what he'll say when he sees me. I wish I could stay over
+another boat, just to remind him of the last time we met. What a fraud
+he is! It was at the club, and he was congratulating me on my noble
+efforts in the cause of justice, and all that sort of thing. He said I
+was a public benefactor. And at that time he must have already
+speculated away about half of what he had stolen of other people's
+money. I'd like to tease him about it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What trial was that?&quot; asked Meakim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe laughed and shook his head as he moved on down the stairs.
+&quot;Don't ask embarrassing questions, Meakim,&quot; he said. &quot;It was one
+<i>you</i> won't forget in a hurry.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh!&quot; said Meakim, with a grin. &quot;All right. There's some mail for you
+in the office.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Holcombe.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+A few hours later Carroll was watching the roulette wheel in the
+gambling-hall of the Isabella when he saw Meakim come in out of the
+darkness, and stand staring in the doorway, blinking at the lights and
+mopping his face. He had been running, and was visibly excited.
+Carroll crossed over to him and pushed him out into the quiet of the
+terrace. &quot;What is it?&quot; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Have you seen Holcombe?&quot; Meakim demanded in reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Not since this afternoon. Why?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim breathed heavily, and fanned himself with his hat. &quot;Well, he's
+after Winthrop Allen, that's all,&quot; he panted. &quot;And when he finds him
+there's going to be a muss. The boy's gone crazy. He's not safe.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Why? What do you mean? What's Allen done to him?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Nothing to him, but to a friend of his. He got a letter to-night in
+the mail that came with Allen. It was from his sister. She wrote him
+all the latest news about Allen, and give him fits for robbing an old
+lady who's been kind to her. She wanted that Holcombe should come
+right back and see what could be done about it. She didn't know, of
+course, that Allen was coming here. The old lady kept a private school
+on Fifth Avenue, and Allen had charge of her savings.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What is her name?&quot; Carroll asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Field, I think. Martha Field was&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The dirty blackguard!&quot; cried Carroll. He turned sharply away and
+returned again to seize Meakim's arm. &quot;Go on,&quot; he demanded. &quot;What did
+she say?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You know her too, do you?&quot; said Meakim, shaking his head
+sympathetically. &quot;Well, that's all. She used to teach his sister. She
+seems to be a sort of fashionable&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I know,&quot; said Carroll, roughly. &quot;She taught my sister. She teaches
+everybody's sister. She's the sweetest, simplest old soul that ever
+lived. Holcombe's dead right to be angry. She almost lived at their
+house when his sister was ill.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Tut! you don't say?&quot; commented Meakim, gravely. &quot;Well, his sister's
+pretty near crazy about it. He give me the letter to read. It got me
+all stirred up. It was just writ in blood. She must be a fine girl,
+his sister. She says this Miss Martha's money was the last thing Allen
+took. He didn't use her stuff, to speculate with, but cashed it in
+just before he sailed and took it with him for spending-money. His
+sister says she's too proud to take help, and she's too old to work.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How much did he take?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Sixty thousand. She's been saving for over forty years.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll's mind took a sudden turn. &quot;And Holcombe?&quot; he demanded,
+eagerly. &quot;What is he going to do? Nothing silly, I hope.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, that's just it. That's why I come to find you,&quot; Meakim
+answered, uneasily. &quot;I don't want him to qualify for no Criminal
+Stakes. I got no reason to love him either&mdash;But you know&mdash;&quot; he
+ended, impotently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, I understand,&quot; said Carroll. &quot;That's what I meant. Confound the
+boy, why didn't he stay in his law courts! What did he say?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, he just raged around. He said he'd tell Allen there was an
+extradition treaty that Allen didn't know about, and that if Allen
+didn't give him the sixty thousand he'd put it in force and make him
+go back and stand trial.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Compounding a felony, is he?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, nothing of the sort,&quot; said Meakim, indignantly. &quot;There isn't any
+extradition treaty, so he wouldn't be doing anything wrong except
+lying a bit.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, it's blackmail, anyway.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What, blackmail a man like Allen? Huh! He's fair game, if there ever
+was any. But it won't work with him, that's what I'm afraid of. He's
+too cunning to be taken in by it, he is. He had good legal advice
+before he came here, or he wouldn't have come.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll was pacing up and down the terrace. He stopped and spoke over
+his shoulder. &quot;Does Holcombe think Allen has the money with him?&quot; he
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, he's sure of it. That's what makes him so keen. He says Allen
+wouldn't dare bank it at Gibraltar, because if he ever went over there
+to draw on it he would get caught, so he must have brought it with him
+here. And he got here so late that Holcombe believes it's in Allen's
+rooms now, and he's like a dog that smells a rat, after it. Allen
+wasn't in when he went up to his room, and he's started out hunting
+for him, and if he don't find him I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he
+broke into the room and just took it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;For God's sake!&quot; cried Carroll. &quot;He wouldn't do that?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim pulled and fingered at his heavy watch-chain and laughed
+doubtfully. &quot;I don't know,&quot; he said. &quot;He wouldn't have done it three
+months ago, but he's picked up a great deal since then&mdash;since he has
+been with us. He's asking for Captain Reese, too.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What's he want with that blackguard?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't know; he didn't tell me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Come,&quot; said Carroll, quickly. &quot;We must stop him.&quot; He ran lightly down
+the steps of the terrace to the beach, with Meakim waddling heavily
+after him. &quot;He's got too much at stake, Meakim,&quot; he said, in
+half-apology, as they tramped through the sand. &quot;He mustn't spoil it.
+We won't let him.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe had searched the circuit of Tangier's small extent with
+fruitless effort, his anger increasing momentarily and feeding on each
+fresh disappointment. When he had failed to find the man he sought in
+any place, he returned to the hotel and pushed open the door of the
+smoking-room as fiercely as though he meant to take those within by
+surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Has Mr. Allen returned?&quot; he demanded. &quot;Or Captain Reese?&quot; The
+attendant thought not, but he would go and see. &quot;No,&quot; Holcombe said,
+&quot;I will look for myself.&quot; He sprang up the stairs to the third floor,
+and turned down a passage to a door at its farthest end. Here he
+stopped and knocked gently. &quot;Reese,&quot; he called; &quot;Reese!&quot; There was no
+response to his summons, and he knocked again, with more impatience,
+and then cautiously turned the handle of the door, and, pushing it
+forward, stepped into the room. &quot;Reese,&quot; he said, softly, &quot;its
+Holcombe. Are you here?&quot; The room was dark except for the light from
+the hall, which shone dimly past him and fell upon a gun-rack hanging
+on the wall opposite. Holcombe hurried toward this and ran his hands
+over it, and passed on quickly from that to the mantel and the tables,
+stumbling over chairs and riding-boots as he groped about, and
+tripping on the skin of some animal that lay stretched upon the floor.
+He felt his way, around the entire circuit of the room, and halted
+near the door with an exclamation of disappointment. By this time his
+eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and he noted the white
+surface of the bed in a far corner and ran quickly toward it, groping
+with his hands about the posts at its head. He closed his fingers with
+a quick gasp of satisfaction on a leather belt that hung from it,
+heavy with cartridges and a revolver that swung from its holder.
+Holcombe pulled this out and jerked back the lever, spinning the
+cylinder around under the edge of his thumb. He felt the grease of
+each cartridge as it passed under his nail. The revolver was loaded in
+each chamber, and Holcombe slipped it into the pocket of his coat and
+crept out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He met no
+one in the hall or on the stairs, and passed on quickly to a room on
+the second floor. There was a light in this room which showed through
+the transom and under the crack at the floor, and there was a sound of
+some one moving about within. Holcombe knocked gently and waited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The movement on the other side of the door ceased, and after a pause a
+voice asked who was there. Holcombe hesitated a second before
+answering, and then said, &quot;It is a servant, sir, with a note for Mr.
+Allen.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of some one moving toward the door from within, Holcombe
+threw his shoulder against the panel and pressed forward. There was
+the click of the key turning in the lock and of the withdrawal of a
+bolt, and the door was partly opened. Holcombe pushed it back with his
+shoulder, and, stepping quickly inside, closed it again behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man within, into whose presence he had forced himself, confronted
+him with a look of some alarm, which increased in surprise as he
+recognized his visitor. &quot;Why, Holcombe!&quot; he exclaimed. He looked past
+him as though expecting some one else to follow. &quot;I thought it was a
+servant,&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe made no answer, but surveyed the other closely, and with a
+smile of content. The man before him was of erect carriage, with white
+hair and whiskers, cut after an English fashion which left the mouth
+and chin clean shaven. He was of severe and dignified appearance, and
+though standing as he was in dishabille still gave in his bearing the
+look of an elderly gentleman who had lived a self-respecting,
+well-cared-for, and well-ordered life. The room about him was littered
+with the contents of opened trunks and uncorded boxes. He had been
+interrupted in the task of unpacking and arranging these possessions,
+but he stepped unresentfully toward the bed where his coat lay, and
+pulled it on, feeling at the open collar of his shirt, and giving a
+glance of apology toward the disorder of the apartment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The night was so warm,&quot; he said, in explanation. &quot;I have been trying
+to get things to rights. I&mdash;&quot; He was speaking in some obvious
+embarrassment, and looked uncertainly toward the intruder for help.
+But Holcombe made no explanation, and gave him no greeting. &quot;I heard
+in the hotel that you were here,&quot; the other continued, still striving
+to cover up the difficulty of the situation, &quot;and I am sorry to hear
+that you are going so soon.&quot; He stopped, and as Holcombe still
+continued smiling, drew himself up stiffly. The look on his face
+hardened into one of offended dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Really, Mr. Holcombe,&quot; he said, sharply, and with strong annoyance in
+his tone, &quot;if you have forced yourself into this room for no other
+purpose than to stand there and laugh, I must ask you to leave it. You
+may not be conscious of it, but your manner is offensive.&quot; He turned
+impatiently to the table, and began rearranging the papers upon it.
+Holcombe shifted the weight of his body as it rested against the door
+from one shoulder-blade to the other and closed his hands over the
+door-knob behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I had a letter to-night from home about you, Allen,&quot; he began,
+comfortably. &quot;The person who wrote it was anxious that I should return
+to New York, and set things working in the District Attorney's office
+in order to bring you back. It isn't you they want so much as&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How dare you?&quot; cried the embezzler, sternly, in the voice with which
+one might interrupt another in words of shocking blasphemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How dare I what?&quot; asked Holcombe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How dare you refer to my misfortune? You of all others&mdash;&quot; He stopped,
+and looked at his visitor with flashing eyes. &quot;I thought you a
+gentleman,&quot; he said, reproachfully; &quot;I thought you a man of the world,
+a man who in spite of your office, official position, or, rather, on
+account of it, could feel and understand the&mdash;a&mdash;terrible position in
+which I am placed, and that you would show consideration. Instead of
+which,&quot; he cried, his voice rising in indignation, &quot;you have come
+apparently to mock at me. If the instinct of a gentleman does not
+teach you to be silent, I shall have to force you to respect my
+feelings. You can leave the room, sir. Now, at once.&quot; He pointed with
+his arm at the door against which Holcombe was leaning, the fingers of
+his outstretched hand trembling visibly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Nonsense. Your misfortune! What rot!&quot; Holcombe growled resentfully.
+His eyes wandered around the room as though looking for some one who
+might enjoy the situation with him, and then returned to Allen's face.
+&quot;You mustn't talk like that to me,&quot; he said, in serious remonstrance.
+&quot;A man who has robbed people who trusted him for three years, as you
+have done, can't afford to talk of his misfortune. You were too long
+about it, Allen. You had too many chances to put it back.
+<i>You've</i> no feelings to be hurt. Besides, if you have, I'm in a
+hurry, and I've not the time to consider them. Now, what I want of you
+is&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Mr. Holcombe,&quot; interrupted the other, earnestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Sir,&quot; replied the visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Mr. Holcombe,&quot; began Allen, slowly, and with impressive gravity, &quot;I
+do not want any words with you about this, or with any one else. I am
+here owing to a combination of circumstances which have led me through
+hopeless, endless trouble. What I have gone through with nobody knows.
+That is something no one but I can ever understand. But that is now at
+an end. I have taken refuge in flight and safety, where another might
+have remained and compromised and suffered; but I am a weaker brother,
+and&mdash;as for punishment, my own conscience, which has punished me so
+terribly in the past, will continue to do so in the future. I am
+greatly to be pitied, Mr. Holcombe, greatly to be pitied. And no one
+knows that better than yourself. You know the value of the position I
+held in New York City, and how well I was suited to it, and it to me.
+And now I am robbed of it all. I am an exile in this wilderness.
+Surely, Mr. Holcombe, this is not the place nor the time when you
+should insult me by recalling the&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You contemptible hypocrite,&quot; said Holcombe, slowly. &quot;What an ass you
+must think I am! Now, listen to me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, <i>you</i> listen to me,&quot; thundered the other. He stepped
+menacingly forward, his chest heaving under his open shirt, and his
+fingers opening and closing at his side. &quot;Leave the room, I tell you,&quot;
+he cried, &quot;or I shall call the servants and make you!&quot; He paused with
+a short, mocking laugh. &quot;Who do you think I am?&quot; he asked; &quot;a child
+that you can insult and gibe at? I'm not a prisoner in the box for you
+to browbeat and bully, Mr. District Attorney. You seem to forget that
+I am out of your jurisdiction now.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited, and his manner seemed to invite Holcombe to make some angry
+answer to his tone, but the young man remained grimly silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You are a very important young person at home, Harry,&quot; Allen went on,
+mockingly. &quot;But New York State laws do not reach as far as Africa.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Quite right; that's it exactly,&quot; said Holcombe, with cheerful
+alacrity. &quot;I'm glad you have grasped the situation so soon. That makes
+it easier for me. Now, what I have been trying to tell you is this. I
+received a letter about you to-night. It seems that before leaving New
+York you converted bonds and mortgages belonging to Miss Martha Field,
+which she had intrusted to you, into ready money. And that you took
+this money with you. Now, as this is the first place you have stopped
+since leaving New York, except Gibraltar, where you could not have
+banked it, you must have it with you now, here in this town, in this
+hotel, possibly in this room. What else you have belonging to other
+poor devils and corporations does not concern me. It's yours as far as
+I mean to do anything about it. But this sixty thousand dollars which
+belongs to Miss Field, who is the best, purest, and kindest woman I
+have ever known, and who has given away more money than you ever
+stole, is going back with me to-morrow to New York.&quot; Holcombe leaned
+forward as he spoke, and rapped with his knuckles on the table. Allen
+confronted him in amazement, in which there was not so much surprise
+at what the other threatened to do as at the fact that it was he who
+had proposed doing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't understand,&quot; he said, slowly, with the air of a bewildered
+child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's plain enough,&quot; replied the other, impatiently. &quot;I tell you I
+want sixty thousand dollars of the money you have with you. You can
+understand that, can't you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But how?&quot; expostulated Allen. &quot;You don't mean to rob me, do you,
+Harry?&quot; he asked with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You're a very stupid person for so clever a one,&quot; Holcombe said,
+impatiently. &quot;You must give me sixty thousand dollars&mdash;and if you
+don't, I'll take it. Come, now, where is it&mdash;in that box?&quot; He pointed
+with his finger toward a square travelling-case covered with black
+leather that stood open on the table filled with papers and blue
+envelopes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Take it!&quot; exclaimed Allen. &quot;You, Henry Holcombe? Is it you who are
+speaking? Do I hear you?&quot; He looked at Holcombe with eyes full of
+genuine wonder and a touch of fear. As he spoke his hand reached out
+mechanically and drew the leather-bound box toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Ah, it is in that box, then,&quot; said Holcombe, in a quiet, grave tone.
+&quot;Now count it out, and be quick.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Are you drunk?&quot; cried the other, fiercely. &quot;Do you propose to turn
+highwayman and thief? What do you mean?&quot; Holcombe reached quickly
+across the table toward the box, but the other drew it back, snapping
+the lid down, and hugging it close against his breast. &quot;If you move,
+Holcombe,&quot; he cried, in a voice of terror and warning, &quot;I'll call the
+people of the house and&mdash;and expose you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Expose me, you idiot,&quot; returned Holcombe, fiercely. &quot;How dare
+<i>you</i> talk to me like that!&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Allen dragged the table more evenly between them, as a general works
+on his defenses even while he parleys with the enemy. &quot;It's you who
+are the idiot!&quot; he cried. &quot;Suppose you could overcome me, which would
+be harder than you think, what are you going to do with the money? Do
+you suppose I'd let you leave this country with it? Do you imagine for
+a moment that I would give it up without raising my hand? I'd have you
+dragged to prison from your bed this very night, or I'd have you
+seized as you set your foot upon the wharf. I would appeal to our
+Consul-General. As far as he knows, I am as worthy of protection as
+you are yourself, and, failing him, I'd appeal to the law of the
+land.&quot; He stopped for want of breath, and then began again with the
+air of one who finds encouragement in the sound of his own voice.
+&quot;They may not understand extradition here, Holcombe,&quot; he said, &quot;but a
+thief is a thief all the world over. What you may be in New York isn't
+going to help you here; neither is your father's name. To these people
+you would be only a hotel thief who forces his way into other men's
+rooms at night and&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You poor thing,&quot; interrupted Holcombe. &quot;Do you know where you are?&quot;
+he demanded. &quot;You talk, Allen, as though we were within sound of the
+cable-cars on Broadway. This hotel is not the Brunswick, and this
+Consul-General you speak of is another blackguard who knows that a
+word from me at Washington, on my return, or a letter from here would
+lose him his place and his liberty. He's as much of a rascal as any of
+them, and he knows that I know it and that I may use that knowledge.
+<i>He</i> won't help you. And as for the law of the land&quot;&mdash;Holcombe's
+voice rose and broke in a mocking laugh&mdash;&quot;there is no law of the land.
+<i>That's why you're here!</i> You are in a place populated by exiles
+and outlaws like yourself, who have preyed upon society until society
+has turned and frightened each of them off like a dog with his tail
+between his legs. Don't give yourself confidence, Allen. That's all
+you are, that's all we are&mdash;two dogs fighting for a stolen bone. The
+man who rules you here is an ignorant negro, debauched and vicious and
+a fanatic. He is shut off from every one, even to the approach of a
+British ambassador. And what do you suppose he cares for a dog of a
+Christian like you, who has been robbed in a hotel by another
+Christian? And these others. Do you suppose they care? Call out&mdash;cry
+for help, and tell them that you have half a million dollars in this
+room, and they will fall on you and strip you of every cent of it, and
+leave you to walk the beach for work. Now, what are you going to do?
+Will you give me the money I want to take back where it belongs, or
+will you call for help and lose it all?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men confronted each other across the narrow length of the
+table. The blood had run to Holcombe's face, but the face of the other
+was drawn and pale with fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You can't frighten me,&quot; he gasped, rallying his courage with an
+effort of the will. &quot;You are talking nonsense. This is a respectable
+hotel; it isn't a den of thieves. You are trying to frighten me out of
+the money with your lies and your lawyer's tricks, but you will find
+that I am not so easily fooled. You are dealing with a man, Holcombe,
+who suffered to get what he has, and who doesn't mean to let it go
+without a fight for it. Come near me, I warn you, and I shall call for
+help.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe backed slowly away from the table and tossed up his hands
+with the gesture of one who gives up his argument. &quot;You will have it,
+will you?&quot; he muttered, grimly. &quot;Very well, you <i>shall</i> fight for
+it.&quot; He turned quickly and drove in the bolt of the door and placed
+his shoulders over the electric button in the wall. &quot;I have warned
+you,&quot; he said, softly. &quot;I have told you where you are, and that you
+have nothing to expect from the outside. You are absolutely in my
+power to do with as I please.&quot; He stopped, and, without moving his
+eyes from Allen's face, drew the revolver from the pocket of his coat.
+His manner was so terrible that Allen gazed at him, breathing faintly,
+and with his eyes fixed in horrible fascination. &quot;There is no law,&quot;
+Holcombe repeated, softly. &quot;There is no help for you now or later. It
+is a question of two men locked in a room with a table and sixty
+thousand dollars between them. That is the situation. Two men and
+sixty thousand dollars. We have returned to first principles, Allen.
+It is a man against a man, and there is no Court of Appeal.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Allen's breath came back to him with a gasp, as though he had been
+shocked with a sudden downpour of icy water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There is!&quot; he cried. &quot;There <i>is</i> a Court of Appeal. For God's
+sake, wait. I appeal to Henry Holcombe, to Judge Holcombe's son. I
+appeal to your good name, Harry, to your fame in the world. Think what
+you are doing; for the love of God, don't murder me. I'm a criminal, I
+know, but not what you would be, Holcombe; not that. You are mad or
+drunk. You wouldn't, you couldn't do it. Think of it! <i>You</i>,
+Henry Holcombe. <i>You.</i>&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fingers of Holcombe's hand moved and tightened around the butt of
+the pistol, the sweat sprang from the pores of his palm. He raised the
+revolver and pointed it. &quot;My sin's on my own head,&quot; he said. &quot;Give me
+the money.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The older man glanced fearfully back of him at the open window,
+through which a sea breeze moved the palms outside, so that they
+seemed to whisper together as though aghast at the scene before them.
+The window was three stories from the ground, and Allen's eyes
+returned to the stern face of the younger man. As they stood silent
+there came to them the sound of some one moving in the hall, and of
+men's voices whispering together. Allen's face lit with a sudden
+radiance of hope, and Holcombe's arm moved uncertainly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I fancy,&quot; he said, in a whisper, &quot;that those are my friends. They
+have some idea of my purpose, and they have come to learn more. If you
+call, I will let them in, and they will strangle you into silence
+until I get the money.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men eyed each other steadily, the older seeming to weigh the
+possible truth of Holcombe's last words in his mind. Holcombe broke
+the silence in a lighter tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Playing the policeman is a new role to me,&quot; he said, &quot;and I warn you
+that I have but little patience; and, besides, my hand is getting
+tired, and this thing is at full cock.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Allen, for the first time, lowered the box upon the table and drew
+from it a bundle of notes bound together with elastic bandages.
+Holcombe's eyes lighted as brightly at the sight as though the notes
+were for his own private pleasures in the future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Be quick!&quot; he said. &quot;I cannot be responsible for the men outside.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Allen bent over the money, his face drawing into closer and sharper
+lines as the amount grew, under his fingers, to the sum Holcombe had
+demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Sixty thousand!&quot; he said, in a voice of desperate calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Good!&quot; whispered Holcombe. &quot;Pass it over to me. I hope I have taken
+the most of what you have,&quot; he said, as he shoved the notes into his
+pocket; &quot;but this is something. Now I warn you,&quot; he added, as he
+lowered the trigger of the revolver and put it out of sight, &quot;that any
+attempt to regain this will be futile. I am surrounded by friends; no
+one knows you or cares about you. I shall sleep in my room to-night
+without precaution, for I know that the money is now mine. Nothing you
+can do will recall it. Your cue is silence and secrecy as to what you
+have lost and as to what you still have with you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped in some confusion, interrupted by a sharp knock at the door
+and two voices calling his name. Allen shrank back in terror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You coward!&quot; he hissed. &quot;You promised me you'd be content with what
+you have.&quot; Holcombe looked at him in amazement. &quot;And now your
+accomplices are to have their share, too, are they?&quot; the embezzler
+whispered, fiercely. &quot;You lied to me; you mean to take it all.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe, for an answer, drew back the bolt, but so softly that the
+sound of his voice drowned the noise it made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, not to-night,&quot; he said, briskly, so that the his voice penetrated
+into the hall beyond. &quot;I mustn't stop any longer, I'm keeping you up.
+It has been very pleasant to have heard all that news from home. It
+was such a chance, my seeing you before I sailed. Good-night.&quot; He
+paused and pretended to listen. &quot;No, Allen, I don't think it's a
+servant,&quot; he said. &quot;It's some of my friends looking for me. This is my
+last night on shore, you see.&quot; He threw open the door and confronted
+Meakim and Carroll as they stood in some confusion in the dark hall.
+&quot;Yes, it is some of my friends,&quot; Holcombe continued. &quot;I'll be with you
+in a minute,&quot; he said to them. Then he turned, and, crossing the room
+in their sight, shook Allen by the hand, and bade him good-night and
+good-by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The embezzler's revulsion of feeling was so keen and the relief so
+great that he was able to smile as Holcombe turned and left him. &quot;I
+wish you a pleasant voyage,&quot; he said, faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Holcombe shut the door on him, closing him out from their sight.
+He placed his hands on a shoulder of each of the two men and jumped
+step by step down the stairs like a boy as they descended silently in
+front of him. At the foot of the stairs Carroll turned and confronted
+him sternly, staring him in the face. Meakim at one side eyed him
+curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well?&quot; said Carroll, with one hand upon Holcombe's wrist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe shook his hand free, laughing. &quot;Well,&quot; he answered, &quot;I
+persuaded him to make restitution.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You persuaded him!&quot; exclaimed Carroll, impatiently. &quot;How?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe's eyes avoided those of the two inquisitors. He drew a long
+breath, and then burst into a loud fit of hysterical laughter. The two
+men surveyed him grimly. &quot;I argued with him, of course,&quot; said
+Holcombe, gayly. &quot;That is my business, man; you forget that I am a
+District Attorney&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;<i>We</i> didn't forget it,&quot; said Carroll, fiercely. &quot;Did <i>you</i>?
+What did you do?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe backed away up the stairs shaking his head and laughing. &quot;I
+shall never tell you,&quot; he said. He pointed with his hand down the
+second flight of stairs. &quot;Meet me in the smoking-room,&quot; he continued.
+&quot;I will be there in a minute, and we will have a banquet. Ask the
+others to come. I have something to do first.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men turned reluctantly away, and continued on down the stairs
+without speaking and with their faces filled with doubt. Holcombe ran
+first to Reese's room and replaced the pistol in its holder. He was
+trembling as he threw the thing from him, and had barely reached his
+own room and closed the door when a sudden faintness overcame him. The
+weight he had laid on his nerves was gone and the laughter had
+departed from his face. He stood looking back at what he had escaped
+as a man reprieved at the steps of the gallows turns his head to
+glance at the rope he has cheated. Holcombe tossed the bundle of
+notes, upon the table and took an unsteady step across the room. Then
+he turned suddenly and threw himself upon his knees and buried his
+face in the pillow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun rose the next morning on a cool, beautiful day, and the
+Consul's boat, with the American flag trailing from the stern, rose
+and fell on the bluest of blue waters as it carried Holcombe and his
+friends to the steamer's side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We are going to miss you very much,&quot; Mrs. Carroll said. &quot;I hope you
+won't forget to send us word of yourself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Terrill said nothing. She was leaning over the side trailing her
+hand in the water, and watching it run between her slim pink fingers.
+She raised her eyes to find Holcombe looking at her intently with a
+strange expression of wistfulness and pity, at which she smiled
+brightly back at him, and began to plan vivaciously with Captain Reese
+for a ride that same afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They separated over the steamer's deck, and Meakim, for the hundredth
+time, and in the lack of conversation which comes at such moments,
+offered Holcombe a fresh cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But I have got eight of yours now,&quot; said Holcombe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That's all right; put it in your pocket,&quot; said the Tammany chieftain,
+&quot;and smoke it after dinner. You'll need 'em. They're better than those
+you'll get on the steamer, and they never went through a
+custom-house.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe cleared his throat in some slight embarrassment. &quot;Is there
+anything I can do for you in New York, Meakim?&quot; he asked. &quot;Anybody I
+can see, or to whom I can deliver a message?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No,&quot; said Meakim. &quot;I write pretty often. Don't you worry about me,&quot;
+he added, gratefully. &quot;I'll be back there some day myself, when the
+law of limitation lets me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe laughed. &quot;Well,&quot; he said, &quot;I'd be glad to do something for
+you if you'd let me know what you'd like.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meakim put his hands behind his back and puffed meditatively on his
+cigar, rolling it between his lips with his tongue. Then he turned it
+between his fingers and tossed the ashes over the side of the boat. He
+gave a little sigh, and then frowned at having done so. &quot;I'll tell you
+what you <i>can</i> do for me, Holcombe,&quot; he said, smiling. &quot;Some
+night I wish you would go down to Fourteenth Street, some night this
+spring, when the boys are sitting out on the steps in front of the
+Hall, and just take a drink for me at Ed Lally's; just for luck. Will
+you? That's what I'd like to do. I don't know nothing better than
+Fourteenth Street of a summer evening, with all the people crowding
+into Pastor's on one side of the Hall, and the Third Avenue L cars
+running by on the other. That's a gay sight; ain't it now? With all
+the girls coming in and out of Theiss's, and the sidewalks crowded.
+One of them warm nights when they have to have the windows open, and
+you can hear the music in at Pastor's, and the audience clapping their
+hands. That's great, isn't it? Well,&quot; he laughed and shook his head.
+&quot;I'll be back there some day, won't I,&quot; he said, wistfully, &quot;and hear
+it for myself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Carroll,&quot; said Holcombe, drawing the former to one side, &quot;suppose I
+see this cabman when I reach home, and get him to withdraw the charge,
+or agree not to turn up when it comes to trial.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll's face clouded in an instant. &quot;Now, listen to me, Holcombe,&quot;
+he said. &quot;You let my dirty work alone. There's lots of my friends who
+have nothing better to do than just that. You have something better to
+do, and you leave me and my rows to others. I like you for what you
+are, and not for what you can do for me. I don't mean that I don't
+appreciate your offer, but it shouldn't have come from an Assistant
+District Attorney to a fugitive criminal.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What nonsense!&quot; said Holcombe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Don't say that; don't say that!&quot; said Carroll, quickly, as though it
+hurt him. &quot;You wouldn't have said it a month ago.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Holcombe eyed the other with an alert, confident smile. &quot;No, Carroll,&quot;
+he answered, &quot;I would not.&quot; He put his hand on the other's shoulder
+with a suggestion in his manner of his former self, and with a touch
+of patronage. &quot;I have learned a great deal in a month,&quot; he said.
+&quot;Seven battles were won in seven days once. All my life I have been
+fighting causes, Carroll, and principles. I have been working with
+laws against law-breakers. I have never yet fought a man. It was not
+poor old Meakim, the individual, I prosecuted, but the corrupt
+politician. Now, here I have been thrown with men and women on as
+equal terms as a crew of sailors cast away upon a desert island. We
+were each a law unto himself. And I have been brought face to face,
+and for the first time in my life, not with principles of conduct, not
+with causes, and not with laws, but with my fellow men.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<a name="72"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The day was cruelly hot, with unwarranted gusts of wind which swept
+the red dust in fierce eddies in at one end of Main Street and out at
+the other, and waltzed fantastically across the prairie. When they had
+passed, human beings opened their eyes again to blink hopelessly at
+the white sun, and swore or gasped, as their nature moved them. There
+were very few human beings in the streets, either in Houston Avenue,
+where there were dwelling-houses, or in the business quarter on Main
+Street. They were all at the new court-house, and every one possessed
+of proper civic pride was either in the packed court-room itself, or
+standing on the high steps outside, or pacing the long, freshly
+calcimined corridors, where there was shade and less dust. It was an
+eventful day in the history of Zepata City. The court-house had been
+long in coming, the appropriation had been denied again and again; but
+at last it stood a proud and hideous fact, like a gray prison,
+towering above the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame houses
+on the prairie around it, new, raw, and cheap, from the tin statue on
+the dome to the stucco round its base already cracking with the sun.
+Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime beds the builders had
+left still lay on the unsodded square, and the bursts of wind drove
+the shavings across it, as they had done since the first day of
+building, when the Hon. Horatio Macon, who had worked for the
+appropriation, had laid the corner-stone and received the homage of
+his constituents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed a particularly happy and appropriate circumstance that the
+first business in the new court-room should be of itself of an
+important and momentous nature, something that dealt not only with the
+present but with the past of Zepata, and that the trial of so
+celebrated an individual as Abe Barrow should open the court-house
+with <i>&eacute;clat</i>, as Emma Abbott, who had come all the way from San
+Antonio to do it, had opened the new opera-house the year before. The
+District Attorney had said it would not take very long to dispose of
+Barrow's case, but he had promised it would be an interesting if brief
+trial, and the court-room was filled even to the open windows, where
+men sat crowded together, with the perspiration running down their
+faces, and the red dust settling and turning white upon their
+shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Abe Barrow, the prisoner, had been as closely associated with the
+early history of Zepata as Colonel Macon himself, and was as widely
+known; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens, and
+two visiting brother-desperadoes, and the corner where his
+gambling-house had stood was still known as Barrow's Corner, to the
+regret of the druggist who had opened a shop there. Ten years before,
+the murder of Deputy Sheriff Welsh had led him to the penitentiary,
+and a month previous to the opening of the new court-house he had been
+freed, and arrested at the prison gate to stand trial for the murder
+of Hubert Thompson. The fight with Thompson had been a fair fight&mdash;so
+those said who remembered it&mdash;and Thompson was a man they could well
+spare; but the case against Barrow had been prepared during his
+incarceration by the new and youthful District Attorney, &quot;Judge&quot; Henry
+Harvey, and as it offered a fitting sacrifice for the dedication of
+the new temple of justice, the people were satisfied and grateful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The court-room was as bare of ornament as the cell from which the
+prisoner had just been taken. There was an imitation walnut clock at
+the back of the Judge's hair-cloth sofa, his revolving chair, and his
+high desk. This was the only ornament. Below was the green table of
+the District Attorney, upon which rested his papers and law-books and
+his high hat. To one side sat the jury, ranch-owners and prominent
+citizens, proud of having to serve on this the first day; and on the
+other the prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the citizens of
+Zepata in close rows, crowded together on unpainted benches; back of
+them more citizens standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around all
+the whitewashed walls. Colonel John Stogart, of Dallas, the prisoner's
+attorney, procured obviously at great expense, no one knew by whom,
+and Barrow's wife, a thin yellow-faced woman in a mean-fitting showy
+gown, sat among the local celebrities at the District Attorney's
+elbow. She was the only woman in the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Stogart's speech had been good. The citizens were glad it had
+been so good; it had kept up the general tone of excellence, and it
+was well that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present on this
+occasion, and that he should have made what the citizens of Zepata
+were proud to believe was one of the efforts of his life. As they
+said, a court-house such as this one was not open for business every
+day. It was also proper that Judge Truax, who was a real Judge, and
+not one by courtesy only, as was the young District Attorney, should
+sit upon the bench. He also was associated with the early days and
+with the marvellous growth of Zepata City. He had taught the young
+District Attorney much of what he knew, and his long white hair and
+silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity and the appearance of calm
+justice to the bare room and to the heated words of the rival orators.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Stogart ceased speaking, and the District Attorney sucked in
+his upper lip with a nervous, impatient sigh as he recognized that the
+visiting attorney had proved murder in the second degree, and that an
+execution in the jail-yard would not follow as a fitting sequence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was determined that so far as in him lay he would at least send
+his man back to the penitentiary for the remainder of his life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Harry Harvey, &quot;The Boy Orator of Zepata City,&quot; as he was called,
+was very dear to the people of that booming town. In their eyes he was
+one of the most promising young men in the whole great unwieldy State
+of Texas, and the boy orator thought they were probably right, but he
+was far too clever to let them see it. He was clever in his words and
+in his deeds and in his appearance. And he dressed much more carefully
+than any other man in town, with a frock-coat and a white tie winter
+and summer, and a fine high hat. That he was slight and short of
+stature was something he could not help, and was his greatest, keenest
+regret, and that Napoleon was also short and slight did not serve to
+satisfy him or to make his regret less continual. What availed the
+sharply cut, smoothly shaven face and the eyes that flashed when he
+was moved, or the bell-like voice, if every unlettered ranchman or
+ranger could place both hands on his shoulders and look down at him
+from heights above? But they forgot this and he forgot it before he
+had reached the peroration of his closing speech. They saw only the
+Harry Harvey they knew and adored moving and rousing them with his
+voice, trembling with indignation when he wished to tremble, playing
+all his best tricks in his best manner, and cutting the air with
+sharp, cruel words when he was pleased to be righteously just.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young District Attorney turned slowly on his heels, and swept the
+court-room carelessly with a glance of the clever black eyes. The
+moment was his. He saw all the men he knew&mdash;the men who made his
+little world&mdash;crowding silently forward, forgetful of the heat, of the
+suffocating crush of those about them, of the wind that rattled the
+doors in the corridors, and conscious only of him. He saw his old
+preceptor watching keenly from the bench, with a steady glance of
+perfect appreciation, such as that with which one actor in the box
+compliments the other on the stage. He saw the rival attorney&mdash;the
+great lawyer from the great city&mdash;nervously smiling, with a look of
+confidence that told the lack of it; and he saw the face of the
+prisoner grim and set and hopelessly defiant. The boy orator allowed
+his uplifted arm to fall until the fingers pointed at the prisoner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;This man,&quot; he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors
+hushed for the moment, &quot;is no part or parcel of Zepata City of to-day.
+He comes to us a relic of the past&mdash;a past that has brought honor to
+many, wealth to some, and which is dear to all of us who love the
+completed purpose of their work; a past that was full of hardships and
+glorious efforts in the face of daily disappointments, embitterments,
+and rebuffs. But the part <i>this</i> man played in that past lives
+only in the rude court records of that day, in the traditions of the
+gambling-hell and the saloons, and on the headstones of his victims.
+He was one of the excrescences of that unsettled period, an unhappy
+evil&mdash;an inevitable evil, I might almost say, as the Mexican
+horse-thieves and the prairie fires and the Indian outbreaks were
+inevitable, as our fathers who built this beautiful city knew to their
+cost. The same chance that was given to them to make a home for
+themselves in the wilderness, to help others to make their homes, to
+assist the civilization and progress not only of this city, but of the
+whole Lone Star State, was given to him, and he refused it, and
+blocked the way of others, and kept back the march of progress, until
+to-day, civilization, which has waxed great and strong&mdash;not on account
+of him, remember, but in spite of him&mdash;sweeps him out of its way, and
+crushes him and his fellows.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young District Attorney allowed his arm to drop, and turned to the
+jury, leaning easily with his bent knuckles on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Gentlemen,&quot; he said, in his pleasant tones of every-day politeness,
+&quot;the 'bad man' has become an unknown quantity in Zepata City and in
+the State of Texas. It lies with you to see that he remains so. He
+went out of existence with the blanket Indian and the buffalo. He is
+dead, and he must <i>not</i> be resurrected. He was a picturesque evil
+of those early days, but civilization has no use for him, and it has
+killed him, as the railroads and the barb-wire fence have killed the
+cowboy. He does not belong here; he does not fit in; he is not wanted.
+We want men who can breed good cattle, who can build manufactories and
+open banks; storekeepers who can undersell those of other cities; and
+professional men who know their business. We do <i>not</i> want
+desperadoes and 'bad men' and faro-dealers and men who are quick on
+the trigger. A foolish and morbid publicity has cloaked men of this
+class with a notoriety which cheap and pernicious literature has
+greatly helped to disseminate. They have been made romantic when they
+were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were
+only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at
+the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation
+as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and
+you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and
+you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the
+streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid to touch
+him&mdash;<i>afraid</i>, gentlemen&mdash;and children and women will point after
+him as the man who has sent nine others into eternity, and who yet
+walks the streets a free man. And he will become, in the eyes of the
+young and the weak, a hero and a god. This is unfortunate, but it is
+true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now, gentlemen, we want to keep the streets of this city so safe that
+a woman can walk them at midnight without fear of insult, and a man
+can express his opinion on the corner without being shot in the back
+for doing so.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The District Attorney turned from the jury with a bow, and faced Judge
+Truax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;For the last ten years, your honor, this man, Abner Barrow, has been
+serving a term of imprisonment in the State penitentiary; I ask you to
+send him back there again for the remainder of his life. It will be
+the better place for him, and we will be happier in knowing we have
+done our duty in placing him there. Abe Barrow is out of date. He has
+missed step with the march of progress, and has been out of step for
+ten years, and it is best for all that he should remain out of it
+until he, who has sent nine other men unprepared to meet their God&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He is not on trial for the murder of nine men,&quot; interrupted Colonel
+Stogart, springing from his chair, &quot;but for the justifiable killing of
+one, and I demand, your honor, that&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;&mdash;has sent nine other men to meet their Maker,&quot; continued the
+District Attorney, &quot;meets with the awful judgment of a higher court
+than this.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Stogart smiled scornfully at the platitude, and sat down with
+an expressive shrug; but no one noticed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The District Attorney raised his arm and faced the court-room. &quot;It
+cannot be said of <i>us</i>,&quot; he cried, &quot;that we have sat idle in the
+market-place. We have advanced and advanced in the last ten years,
+until we have reached the very foremost place with civilized people.
+This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city where he left a
+prairie town, a bank where he spun his roulette wheel, this
+magnificent court-house instead of a vigilance committee. And what is
+his part in this new court-house, which to-day, for the first time,
+throws open its doors to protect the just and to punish the unjust?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Is he there in the box among those honorable men, the gentlemen of
+the jury? Is he in that great crowd of intelligent, public-spirited
+citizens who make the bone and sinew of this our fair city? Is he on
+the honored bench dispensing justice, and making the intricacies of
+the law straight? No, gentlemen; he has no part in our triumph. He is
+there, in the prisoners' pen, an outlaw, a convicted murderer, and an
+unconvicted assassin, the last of his race&mdash;the bullies and bad men of
+the border&mdash;a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the
+sight of man. He has outlasted his time; he is a superfluity and an
+outrage on our reign of decency and order. And I ask you, gentlemen,
+to put him away where he will not hear the voice of man nor children's
+laughter, nor see a woman smile, where he will not even see the face
+of the warden who feeds him, nor sunlight except as it is filtered
+through the iron bars of a jail. Bury him with the bitter past, with
+the lawlessness that has gone&mdash;that has gone, thank God&mdash;and which
+must <i>not</i> return. Place him in the cell where he belongs, and
+whence, had justice been done, he would never have been taken alive.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The District Attorney sat down suddenly, with a quick nod to the Judge
+and the jury, and fumbled over his papers with nervous fingers. He was
+keenly conscious, and excited with the fervor of his own words. He
+heard the reluctantly hushed applause and the whispers of the crowd,
+and noted the quick and combined movement of the jury with a selfish
+sweet pleasure, which showed itself only in the tightening of the lips
+and nostrils. Those nearest him tugged at his sleeve and shook hands
+with him. He remembered this afterward as one of the rewards of the
+moment. He turned the documents before him over and scribbled words
+upon a piece of paper and read a passage in an open law-book. He did
+this quite mechanically, and was conscious of nothing until the
+foreman pronounced the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the
+second degree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, simply, that it lay in
+his power to sentence the prisoner to not less than two years'
+confinement in the State penitentiary or for the remainder of his
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow,&quot; he said, with an old
+man's kind severity, &quot;is there anything you have to say on your own
+behalf?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The District Attorney turned his face, as did all the others, but he
+did not see the prisoner. He still saw himself holding the court-room
+with a spell, and heard his own periods ringing against the
+whitewashed ceiling. The others saw a tall, broad-shouldered man
+leaning heavily forward over the bar of the prisoner's box. His face
+was white with the prison tan, markedly so in contrast with those
+sunburnt by the wind and sun turned toward him, and pinched and
+hollow-eyed and worn. When he spoke, his voice had the huskiness which
+comes from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't know, Judge,&quot; he said, hesitatingly, and staring stupidly at
+the mass of faces in the well beneath him, &quot;that I have anything to
+say&mdash;in my own behalf. I don't know as it would be any use. I guess
+what the gentleman said about me is all there is to say. He put it
+about right. I've had my fun, and I've got to pay for it&mdash;that is, I
+thought it was fun at the time. I am not going to cry any baby act and
+beg off, or anything, if that's what you mean. But there is something
+I'd like to say if I thought you would believe me.&quot; He frowned down at
+the green table as though the words he wanted would not come, and his
+eyes wandered from one face to another, until they rested upon the
+bowed head of the only woman in the room. They remained there for some
+short time, and then Barrow drew in his breath more quickly, and
+turned with something like a show of confidence to the jury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;All that man said of me is true,&quot; he said. He gave a toss of his
+hands as a man throws away the reins. &quot;I admit all he says. I
+<i>am</i> a back number; I <i>am</i> out of date; I <i>was</i> a loafer and a
+blackguard. I never shot any man in the back, nor I never assassinated
+no one; but that's neither here nor there. I'm not in a place where I
+can expect people to pick out their words; but, as he says, I <i>am</i> a
+bad lot. He says I have enjoyed a reputation as a desperado. I am not
+bragging of that; I just ask you to remember that he said it. Remember
+it of me. I was not the sort to back down to man or beast, and I'm not
+now. I am not backing down, now; I'm taking my punishment. Whatever
+you please to make it, I'll take it; and that,&quot; he went on, more
+slowly, &quot;makes it harder for me to ask what I want to ask, and make
+you all believe I am not asking it for myself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped, and the silence in the room seemed to give him some faint
+encouragement of sympathy, though it was rather the silence of
+curiosity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Stogart gave a stern look upward, and asked the prisoner's
+wife, in a whisper, if she knew what her husband meant to say, but she
+shook her head. She did not know. The District Attorney smiled
+indulgently at the prisoner and at the men about him, but they were
+watching the prisoner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That man there,&quot; said Barrow, pointing with one gaunt hand at the boy
+attorney, &quot;told you I had no part or parcel in this city or in this
+world; that I belonged to the past; that I had ought to be dead. Now
+that's not so. I have just one thing that belongs to this city and
+this world&mdash;and to me; one thing that I couldn't take to jail with me,
+and that I'll have to leave behind me when I go back to it. I mean my
+wife.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prisoner stopped, and looked so steadily at one place below him
+that those in the back of the court guessed for the first time that
+Mrs. Barrow was in the room, and craned forward to look at her, and
+there was a moment of confusion and a murmur of &quot;Get back there!&quot; &quot;Sit
+still!&quot; The prisoner turned to Judge Truax again and squared his broad
+shoulders, making the more conspicuous his narrow and sunken chest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You, sir,&quot; he said, quietly, with a change from the tone of
+braggadocio with which he had begun to speak, &quot;remember her, sir, when
+I married her, twelve years ago. She was Henry Holman's daughter, he
+who owned the San Iago Ranch and the triangle brand. I took her from
+the home she had with her father against that gentleman's wishes, sir,
+to live with me over my dance-hall at the Silver Star. You may
+remember her as she was then. She gave up everything a woman ought to
+have to come to me. She thought she was going to be happy with me;
+that's why she come, I guess. Maybe she was happy for about two weeks.
+After that first two weeks her life, sir, was a hell, and I made it a
+hell. I was drunk most of the time, or sleeping it off, and
+ugly-tempered when I was sober. There was shooting and carrying on all
+day and night down-stairs, and she didn't dare to leave her room.
+Besides that, she cared for me, and she was afraid every minute I was
+going to get killed. That's the way she lived for two years.
+Respectable women wouldn't speak to her because she was my wife; even
+them that were friends of hers when she lived on the ranch wouldn't
+speak to her on the street&mdash;and she had no children. That was her
+life; she lived alone over the dance-hall; and sometimes when I was
+drunk&mdash;I beat her.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man's white face reddened slowly as he said this; and he stopped,
+and then continued more quickly, with his eyes still fixed on those of
+the Judge:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;At the end of two years I killed Welsh, and they sent me to the
+penitentiary for ten years, and she was free. She could have gone back
+to her folks and got a divorce if she'd wanted to, and never seen me
+again. It was an escape most women'd gone down on their knees and
+thanked their Maker for, and blessed the day they'd been freed from a
+blackguardly drunken brute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But what did this woman do&mdash;my wife, the woman I misused and beat and
+dragged down in the mud with me? She was too mighty proud to go back
+to her people or to the friends who shook her when she was in trouble;
+and she sold out the place, and bought a ranch with the money, and
+worked it by herself, worked it day and night, until in ten years she
+had made herself an old woman, as you see she is to-day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And for what? To get <i>me</i> free again; to bring <i>me</i> things
+to eat in jail, and picture papers and tobacco&mdash;when she was living on
+bacon and potatoes, and drinking alkali water&mdash;working to pay for a
+lawyer to fight for <i>me</i>&mdash;to pay for the <i>best</i> lawyer! She
+worked in the fields with her own hands, planting and ploughing,
+working as I never worked for myself in my whole lazy, rotten life.
+That's what that woman there did for me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man stopped suddenly, and turned with a puzzled look toward where
+his wife sat, for she had dropped her head on the table in front of
+her, and he had heard her sobbing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let me have two years out
+of jail to show her how I feel about it. I ask you not to send me back
+for life, sir. Give me just two years&mdash;two years of my life while I
+have some strength left to work for her as she worked for me. I only
+want to show her how I care for her <i>now</i>. I had the chance, and
+I wouldn't take it; and now, sir, I want to show her that I know and
+understand&mdash;now, when it's too late. It's all I've thought of when I
+was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in her own kitchen with her
+hands folded, and me working and sweating in the fields for
+her&mdash;working till every bone ached, trying to make it up to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And I can't!&quot; the man cried, suddenly, losing the control he had
+forced upon himself, and tossing his hands up above his head, and with
+his eyes fixed hopelessly on the bowed head below him. &quot;I can't! It's
+too late. It's too late!&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and faced the crowd and the District Attorney defiantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'm not crying for the men I killed. They're dead. I can't bring them
+back. But she's not dead, and I treated her worse than I treated them.
+<i>She</i> never harmed me, nor got in my way, nor angered me. And now,
+when I want to do what I can for her in the little time that's left,
+<i>he</i> tells you I'm a 'relic of the past,' that civilization's too good
+for me, that you must bury me until it's time to bury me for good.
+Just when I've got something I <i>must</i> live for, something I've got to
+do. Don't you believe me? Don't you understand?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned again toward the Judge, and beat the rail before him
+impotently with his wasted hand. &quot;Don't send me back for life!&quot; he
+cried. &quot;Give me a few years to work for her&mdash;two years, one year&mdash;to
+show her what I feel here, what I never felt for her before. Look at
+her, gentlemen. Look how worn she is and poorly, and look at her
+hands, and you men must feel how I feel. I don't ask you for myself. I
+don't want to go free on my own account. I am asking it for that
+woman&mdash;yes, and for myself, too. I am playing to 'get back,'
+gentlemen. I've lost what I had, and I want to get back; and,&quot; he
+cried, querulously, &quot;the game keeps going against me. It's only a few
+years' freedom I want. Send me back for thirty years, but not for
+life. My God! Judge, don't bury me alive, as that man asked you to.
+I'm <i>not</i> civilized, maybe; ways <i>have</i> changed. You are not
+the man I knew; you are all strangers to me. But I could learn. I
+wouldn't bother you in the old way. I only want to live with her. I
+won't harm the rest of you. Give me this last chance. Let me prove
+that what I'm saying is true.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man stopped and stood, opening and shutting his hands upon the
+rail, and searching with desperate eagerness from face to face, as one
+who has staked all he has watches the wheel spinning his fortune away.
+The gentlemen of the jury sat quite motionless, looking straight ahead
+at the blinding sun, which came through the high, uncurtained windows
+opposite. Outside, the wind banged the shutters against the wall, and
+whistled up the street and round the tin corners of the building, but
+inside the room was very silent. The Mexicans at the door, who could
+not understand, looked curiously at the faces of the men around them,
+and made sure that they had missed something of much importance. For a
+moment no one moved, until there was a sudden stir around the District
+Attorney's table, and the men stepped aside and let the woman pass
+them and throw herself against the prisoner's box. The prisoner bent
+his tall gaunt figure over the rail, and as the woman pressed his one
+hand against her face, touched her shoulders with the other awkwardly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There, now,&quot; he whispered, soothingly, &quot;don't you take on so. Now you
+know how I feel, it's all right; don't take on.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Judge Truax looked at the paper on his desk for some seconds, and
+raised his head, coughing as he did so. &quot;It lies&mdash;&quot; Judge Truax began,
+and then stopped, and began again, in a more certain tone: &quot;It lies at
+the discretion of this Court to sentence the prisoner to a term of
+imprisonment for two years, or for an indefinite period, or for life.
+Owing to&mdash;On account of certain circumstances which were&mdash;have
+arisen&mdash;this sentence is suspended. This court stands adjourned.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he finished he sprang out of his chair impulsively, and with a
+quick authoritative nod to the young District Attorney, came quickly
+down the steps of the platform. Young Harvey met him at the foot with
+wide-open eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The older man hesitated, and placed his hand upon the District
+Attorney's shoulder. &quot;Harry,&quot; he said. His voice was shaken, and his
+hand trembled on the arm of his prot&eacute;g&eacute;, for he was an old man and
+easily moved. &quot;Harry, my boy,&quot; he said, &quot;do you think you could go to
+Austin and repeat the speech that man made to the Governor?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy orator laughed, and took one of the older man's hands in one
+of his and pressed it quickly. &quot;I'd like d&mdash;&mdash;d well to try,&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<a name="94"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+Young Latimer stood on one of the lower steps of the hall stairs,
+leaning with one hand on the broad railing and smiling down at her.
+She had followed him from the drawing-room and had stopped at the
+entrance, drawing the curtains behind her, and making, unconsciously,
+a dark background for her head and figure. He thought he had never
+seen her look more beautiful, nor that cold, fine air of thorough
+breeding about her which was her greatest beauty to him, more strongly
+in evidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, sir,&quot; she said, &quot;why don't you go?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shifted his position slightly and leaned more comfortably upon the
+railing, as though he intended to discuss it with her at some length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How can I go,&quot; he said, argumentatively, &quot;with you standing
+there&mdash;looking like that?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I really believe,&quot; the girl said, slowly, &quot;that he is afraid; yes, he
+is afraid. And you always said,&quot; she added, turning to him, &quot;you were
+so brave.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, I am sure I never said that,&quot; exclaimed the young man, calmly. &quot;I
+may be brave, in fact, I am quite brave, but I never said I was. Some
+one must have told you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, he is afraid,&quot; she said, nodding her head to the tall clock
+across the hall, &quot;he is temporizing and trying to save time. And
+afraid of a man, too, and such a good man who would not hurt any one.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You know a bishop is always a very difficult sort of a person,&quot; he
+said, &quot;and when he happens to be your father, the combination is just
+a bit awful. Isn't it now? And especially when one means to ask him
+for his daughter. You know it isn't like asking him to let one smoke
+in his study.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If I loved a girl,&quot; she said, shaking her head and smiling up at him,
+&quot;I wouldn't be afraid of the whole world; that's what they say in
+books, isn't it? I would be so bold and happy.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, well, I'm bold enough,&quot; said the young man, easily; &quot;if I had not
+been, I never would have asked you to marry me; and I'm happy
+enough&mdash;that's because I did ask you. But what if he says no,&quot;
+continued the youth; &quot;what if he says he has greater ambitions for
+you, just as they say in books, too? What will you do? Will you run
+away with me? I can borrow a coach just as they used to do, and we can
+drive off through the Park and be married, and come back and ask his
+blessing on our knees&mdash;unless he should overtake us on the elevated.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That,&quot; said the girl, decidedly, &quot;is flippant, and I'm going to leave
+you. I never thought to marry a man who would be frightened at the
+very first. I am greatly disappointed.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stepped back into the drawing-room and pulled the curtains to
+behind her, and then opened them again and whispered, &quot;Please don't be
+long,&quot; and disappeared. He waited, smiling, to see if she would make
+another appearance, but she did not, and he heard her touch the keys
+of the piano at the other end of the drawing-room. And so, still
+smiling and with her last words sounding in his ears, he walked slowly
+up the stairs and knocked at the door of the bishop's study. The
+bishop's room was not ecclesiastic in its character. It looked much
+like the room of any man of any calling who cared for his books and to
+have pictures about him, and copies of the beautiful things he had
+seen on his travels. There were pictures of the Virgin and the Child,
+but they were those that are seen in almost any house, and there were
+etchings and plaster casts, and there were hundreds of books, and dark
+red curtains, and an open fire that lit up the pots of brass with
+ferns in them, and the blue and white plaques on the top of the
+bookcase. The bishop sat before his writing-table, with one hand
+shading his eyes from the light of a red-covered lamp, and looked up
+and smiled pleasantly and nodded as the young man entered. He had a
+very strong face, with white hair hanging at the side, but was still a
+young man for one in such a high office. He was a man interested in
+many things, who could talk to men of any profession or to the mere
+man of pleasure, and could interest them in what he said, and force
+their respect and liking. And he was very good, and had, they said,
+seen much trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I am afraid I interrupted you,&quot; said the young man, tentatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, I have interrupted myself,&quot; replied the bishop. &quot;I don't seem to
+make this clear to myself,&quot; he said, touching the paper in front of
+him, &quot;and so I very much doubt if I am going to make it clear to any
+one else. However,&quot; he added, smiling, as he pushed the manuscript to
+one side, &quot;we are not going to talk about that now. What have you to
+tell me that is new?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The younger man glanced up quickly at this, but the bishop's face
+showed that his words had had no ulterior meaning, and that he
+suspected nothing more serious to come than the gossip of the clubs or
+a report of the local political fight in which he was keenly
+interested, or on their mission on the East Side. But it seemed an
+opportunity to Latimer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I <i>have</i> something new to tell you,&quot; he said, gravely, and with
+his eyes turned toward the open fire, &quot;and I don't know how to do it
+exactly. I mean I don't just know how it is generally done or how to
+tell it best.&quot; He hesitated and leaned forward, with his hands locked
+in front of him, and his elbows resting on his knees. He was not in
+the least frightened. The bishop had listened to many strange stories,
+to many confessions, in this same study, and had learned to take them
+as a matter of course; but to-night something in the manner of the
+young man before him made him stir uneasily, and he waited for him to
+disclose the object of his visit with some impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I will suppose, sir,&quot; said young Latimer, finally, &quot;that you know me
+rather well&mdash;I mean you know who my people are, and what I am doing
+here in New York, and who my friends are, and what my work amounts to.
+You have let me see a great deal of you, and I have appreciated your
+doing so very much; to so young a man as myself it has been a great
+compliment, and it has been of great benefit to me. I know that better
+than any one else. I say this because unless you had shown me this
+confidence it would have been almost impossible for me to say to you
+what I am going to say now. But you have allowed me to come here
+frequently, and to see you and talk with you here in your study, and
+to see even more of your daughter. Of course, sir, you did not suppose
+that I came here only to see you. I came here because I found that, if
+I did not see Miss Ellen for a day, that that day was wasted, and that
+I spent it uneasily and discontentedly, and the necessity of seeing
+her even more frequently has grown so great that I cannot come here as
+often as I seem to want to come unless I am engaged to her, unless I
+come as her husband that is to be.&quot; The young man had been speaking
+very slowly and picking his words, but now he raised his head and ran
+on quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I have spoken to her and told her how I love her, and she has told me
+that she loves me, and that if you will not oppose us, will marry me.
+That is the news I have to tell you, sir. I don't know but that I
+might have told it differently, but that is it. I need not urge on you
+my position and all that, because I do not think that weighs with you;
+but I do tell you that I love Ellen so dearly that, though I am not
+worthy of her, of course, I have no other pleasure than to give her
+pleasure and to try to make her happy. I have the power to do it; but
+what is much more, I have the wish to do it; it is all I think of now,
+and all that I can ever think of. What she thinks of me you must ask
+her; but what she is to me neither she can tell you nor do I believe
+that I myself could make you understand.&quot; The young man's face was
+flushed and eager, and as he finished speaking he raised his head and
+watched the bishop's countenance anxiously. But the older man's face
+was hidden by his hand as he leaned with his elbow on his
+writing-table. His other hand was playing with a pen, and when he
+began to speak, which he did after a long pause, he still turned it
+between his fingers and looked down at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I suppose,&quot; he said, as softly as though he were speaking to himself,
+&quot;that I should have known this; I suppose that I should have been
+better prepared to hear it. But it is one of those things which men
+put off&mdash;I mean those men who have children, put off&mdash;as they do
+making their wills, as something that is in the future and that may be
+shirked until it comes. We seem to think that our daughters will live
+with us always, just as we expect to live on ourselves until death
+comes one day and startles us and finds us unprepared.&quot; He took down
+his hand and smiled gravely at the younger man with an evident effort,
+and said, &quot;I did not mean to speak so gloomily, but you see my point
+of view must be different from yours. And she says she loves you, does
+she?&quot; he added, gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Latimer bowed his head and murmured something inarticulately in
+reply, and then held his head erect again and waited, still watching
+the bishop's face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I think she might have told me,&quot; said the older man; &quot;but then I
+suppose this is the better way. I am young enough to understand that
+the old order changes, that the customs of my father's time differ
+from those of to-day. And there is no alternative, I suppose,&quot; he
+said, shaking his head. &quot;I am stopped and told to deliver, and have no
+choice. I will get used to it in time,&quot; he went on, &quot;but it seems very
+hard now. Fathers are selfish, I imagine, but she is all I have.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Latimer looked gravely into the fire and wondered how long it
+would last. He could just hear the piano from below, and he was
+anxious to return to her. And at the same time he was drawn toward the
+older man before him, and felt rather guilty, as though he really were
+robbing him. But at the bishop's next words he gave up any thought of
+a speedy release, and settled himself in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We are still to have a long talk,&quot; said the bishop. &quot;There are many
+things I must know, and of which I am sure you will inform me freely.
+I believe there are some who consider me hard, and even narrow on
+different points, but I do not think you will find me so, at least let
+us hope not. I must confess that for a moment I almost hoped that you
+might not be able to answer the questions I must ask you, but it was
+only for a moment. I am only too sure you will not be found wanting,
+and that the conclusion of our talk will satisfy us both. Yes, I am
+confident of that.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His manner changed, nevertheless, and Latimer saw that he was now
+facing a judge and not a plaintiff who had been robbed, and that he
+was in turn the defendant. And still he was in no way frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I like you,&quot; the bishop said, &quot;I like you very much. As you say
+yourself, I have seen a great deal of you, because I have enjoyed your
+society, and your views and talk were good and young and fresh, and
+did me good. You have served to keep me in touch with the outside
+world, a world of which I used to know at one time a great deal. I
+know your people and I know you, I think, and many people have spoken
+to me of you. I see why now. They, no doubt, understood what was
+coming better than myself, and were meaning to reassure me concerning
+you. And they said nothing but what was good of you. But there are
+certain things of which no one can know but yourself, and concerning
+which no other person, save myself, has a right to question you. You
+have promised very fairly for my daughter's future; you have suggested
+more than you have said, but I understood. You can give her many
+pleasures which I have not been able to afford; she can get from you
+the means of seeing more of this world in which she lives, of meeting
+more people, and of indulging in her charities, or in her
+extravagances, for that matter, as she wishes. I have no fear of her
+bodily comfort; her life, as far as that is concerned, will be easier
+and broader, and with more power for good. Her future, as I say, as
+you say also, is assured; but I want to ask you this,&quot; the bishop
+leaned forward and watched the young man anxiously, &quot;you can protect
+her in the future, but can you assure me that you can protect her from
+the past?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Latimer raised his eyes calmly and said, &quot;I don't think I quite
+understand.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I have perfect confidence, I say,&quot; returned the bishop, &quot;in you as
+far as your treatment of Ellen is concerned in the future. You love
+her and you would do everything to make the life of the woman you love
+a happy one; but this is it. Can you assure me that there is nothing
+in the past that may reach forward later and touch my daughter through
+you&mdash;no ugly story, no oats that have been sowed, and no boomerang
+that you have thrown wantonly and that has not returned&mdash;but which may
+return?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I think I understand you now, sir,&quot; said the young man, quietly. &quot;I
+have lived,&quot; he began, &quot;as other men of my sort have lived. You know
+what that is, for you must have seen it about you at college, and
+after that before you entered the Church. I judge so from your
+friends, who were your friends then, I understand. You know how they
+lived. I never went in for dissipation, if you mean that, because it
+never attracted me. I am afraid I kept out of it not so much out of
+respect for others as for respect for myself. I found my self-respect
+was a very good thing to keep, and I rather preferred keeping it and
+losing several pleasures that other men managed to enjoy, apparently
+with free consciences. I confess I used to rather envy them. It is no
+particular virtue on my part; the thing struck me as rather more
+vulgar than wicked, and so I have had no wild oats to speak of; and no
+woman, if that is what you mean, can write an anonymous letter, and no
+man can tell you a story about me that he could not tell in my
+presence.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something in the way the young man spoke which would have
+amply satisfied the outsider, had he been present; but the bishop's
+eyes were still unrelaxed and anxious. He made an impatient motion
+with his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I know you too well, I hope,&quot; he said, &quot;to think of doubting your
+attitude in that particular. I know you are a gentleman, that is
+enough for that; but there is something beyond these more common
+evils. You see, I am terribly in earnest over this&mdash;you may think
+unjustly so, considering how well I know you, but this child is my
+only child. If her mother had lived, my responsibility would have been
+less great; but, as it is, God has left her here alone to me in my
+hands. I do not think He intended my duty should end when I had fed
+and clothed her, and taught her to read and write. I do not think He
+meant that I should only act as her guardian until the first man she
+fancied fancied her. I must look to her happiness not only now when
+she is with me, but I must assure myself of it when she leaves my
+roof. These common sins of youth I acquit you of. Such things are
+beneath you, I believe, and I did not even consider them. But there
+are other toils in which men become involved, other evils or
+misfortunes which exist, and which threaten all men who are young and
+free and attractive in many ways to women, as well as men. You have
+lived the life of the young man of this day. You have reached a place
+in your profession when you can afford to rest and marry and assume
+the responsibilities of marriage. You look forward to a life of
+content and peace and honorable ambition&mdash;a life, with your wife at
+your side, which is to last forty or fifty years. You consider where
+you will be twenty years from now, at what point of your career you
+may become a judge or give up practise; your perspective is unlimited;
+you even think of the college to which you may send your son. It is a
+long, quiet future that you are looking forward to, and you choose my
+daughter as the companion for that future, as the one woman with whom
+you could live content for that length of time. And it is in that
+spirit that you come to me tonight and that you ask me for my
+daughter. Now I am going to ask you one question, and as you answer
+that I will tell you whether or not you can have Ellen for your wife.
+You look forward, as I say, to many years of life, and you have chosen
+her as best suited to live that period with you; but I ask you this,
+and I demand that you answer me truthfully, and that you remember that
+you are speaking to her father. Imagine that I had the power to tell
+you, or rather that some superhuman agent could convince you, that you
+had but a month to live, and that for what you did in that month you
+would not be held responsible either by any moral law or any law made
+by man, and that your life hereafter would not be influenced by your
+conduct in that month, would you spend it, I ask you&mdash;and on your
+answer depends mine&mdash;would you spend those thirty days, with death at
+the end, with my daughter, or with some other woman of whom I know
+nothing?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Latimer sat for some time silent, until indeed, his silence assumed
+such a significance that he raised his head impatiently and said with
+a motion of the hand, &quot;I mean to answer you in a minute; I want to be
+sure that I understand.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bishop bowed his head in assent, and for a still longer period the
+men sat motionless. The clock in the corner seemed to tick more
+loudly, and the dead coals dropping in the grate had a sharp,
+aggressive sound. The notes of the piano that had risen from the room
+below had ceased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If I understand you,&quot; said Latimer, finally, and his voice and his
+face as he raised it were hard and aggressive, &quot;you are stating a
+purely hypothetical case. You wish to try me by conditions which do
+not exist, which cannot exist. What justice is there, what right is
+there, in asking me to say how I would act under circumstances which
+are impossible, which lie beyond the limit of human experience? You
+cannot judge a man by what he would do if he were suddenly robbed of
+all his mental and moral training and of the habit of years. I am not
+admitting, understand me, that if the conditions which you suggest did
+exist that I would do one whit differently from what I will do if they
+remain as they are. I am merely denying your right to put such a
+question to me at all. You might just as well judge the shipwrecked
+sailors on a raft who eat each other's flesh as you would judge a
+sane, healthy man who did such a thing in his own home. Are you going
+to condemn men who are ice-locked at the North Pole, or buried in the
+heart of Africa, and who have given up all thought of return and are
+half mad and wholly without hope, as you would judge ourselves? Are
+they to be weighed and balanced as you and I are, sitting here within
+the sound of the cabs outside and with a bake-shop around the corner?
+What you propose could not exist, could never happen. I could never be
+placed where I should have to make such a choice, and you have no
+right to ask me what I would do or how I would act under conditions
+that are superhuman&mdash;you used the word yourself&mdash;where all that I have
+held to be good and just and true would be obliterated. I would be
+unworthy of myself, I would be unworthy of your daughter, if I
+considered such a state of things for a moment, or if I placed my
+hopes of marrying her on the outcome of such a test, and so, sir,&quot;
+said the young man, throwing back his head, &quot;I must refuse to answer
+you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bishop lowered his hand from before his eyes and sank back wearily
+into his chair. &quot;You have answered me,&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You have no right to say that,&quot; cried the young man, springing to his
+feet. &quot;You have no right to suppose anything or to draw any
+conclusions. I have not answered you.&quot; He stood with his head and
+shoulders thrown back, and with his hands resting on his hips and with
+the fingers working nervously at his waist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What you have said,&quot; replied the bishop, in a voice that had changed
+strangely, and which was inexpressibly sad and gentle, &quot;is merely a
+curtain of words to cover up your true feeling. It would have been so
+easy to have said, 'For thirty days or for life Ellen is the only
+woman who has the power to make me happy.' You see that would have
+answered me and satisfied me. But you did not say that,&quot; he added,
+quickly, as the young man made a movement as if to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, and suppose this other woman did exist, what then?&quot; demanded
+Latimer. &quot;The conditions you suggest are impossible; you must, you
+will surely, sir, admit that.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I do not know,&quot; replied the bishop, sadly; &quot;I do not know. It may
+happen that whatever obstacle there has been which has kept you from
+her may be removed. It may be that she has married, it may be that she
+has fallen so low that you cannot marry her. But if you have loved her
+once, you may love her again; whatever it was that separated you in
+the past, that separates you now, that makes you prefer my daughter to
+her, may come to an end when you are married, when it will be too
+late, and when only trouble can come of it, and Ellen would bear that
+trouble. Can I risk that?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But I tell you it is impossible,&quot; cried the young man. &quot;The woman is
+beyond the love of any man, at least such a man as I am, or try to
+be.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do you mean,&quot; asked the bishop, gently, and with an eager look of
+hope, &quot;that she is dead?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Latimer faced the father for some seconds in silence. Then he raised
+his head slowly. &quot;No,&quot; he said, &quot;I do not mean she is dead. No, she is
+not dead.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the bishop moved back wearily into his chair. &quot;You mean then,&quot;
+he said, &quot;perhaps, that she is a married woman?&quot; Latimer pressed his
+lips together at first as though he would not answer, and then raised
+his eyes coldly. &quot;Perhaps,&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The older man had held up his hand as if to signify that what he was
+about to say should be listened to without interruption, when a sharp
+turning of the lock of the door caused both father and the suitor to
+start. Then they turned and looked at each other with anxious inquiry
+and with much concern, for they recognized for the first time that
+their voices had been loud. The older man stepped quickly across the
+floor, but before he reached the middle of the room the door opened
+from the outside, and his daughter stood in the door-way, with her
+head held down and her eyes looking at the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Ellen!&quot; exclaimed the father, in a voice of pain and the deepest
+pity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl moved toward the place from where his voice came, without
+raising her eyes, and when she reached him put her arms about him and
+hid her face on his shoulder. She moved as though she were tired, as
+though she were exhausted by some heavy work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;My child,&quot; said the bishop, gently, &quot;were you listening?&quot; There was
+no reproach in his voice; it was simply full of pity and concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I thought,&quot; whispered the girl, brokenly, &quot;that he would be
+frightened; I wanted to hear what he would say. I thought I could
+laugh at him for it afterward. I did it for a joke. I thought&mdash;&quot; She
+stopped with a little gasping sob that she tried to hide, and for a
+moment held herself erect and then sank back again into her father's
+arms with her head upon his breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Latimer started forward, holding out his arms to her. &quot;Ellen,&quot; he
+said, &quot;surely, Ellen, you are not against me. You see how preposterous
+it is, how unjust it is to me. You cannot mean&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl raised her head and shrugged her shoulders slightly as though
+she were cold. &quot;Father,&quot; she said, wearily, &quot;ask him to go away. Why
+does he stay? Ask him to go away.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Latimer stopped and took a step back as though some one had struck
+him, and then stood silent with his face flushed and his eyes
+flashing. It was not in answer to anything that they said that he
+spoke, but to their attitude and what it suggested. &quot;You stand there,&quot;
+he began, &quot;you two stand there as though I were something unclean, as
+though I had committed some crime. You look at me as though I were on
+trial for murder or worse. Both of you together against me. What have
+I done? What difference is there? You loved me a half-hour ago, Ellen;
+you said you did. I know you loved me; and you, sir,&quot; he added, more
+quietly, &quot;treated me like a friend. Has anything come since then to
+change me or you? Be fair to me, be sensible. What is the use of this?
+It is a silly, needless, horrible mistake. You know I love you, Ellen;
+love you better than all the world. I don't have to tell you that; you
+know it, you can see and feel it. It does not need to be said; words
+can't make it any truer. You have confused yourselves and stultified
+yourselves with this trick, this test by hypothetical conditions, by
+considering what is not real or possible. It is simple enough; it is
+plain enough. You know I love you, Ellen, and you only, and that is
+all there is to it, and all that there is of any consequence in the
+world to me. The matter stops there; that is all there is for you to
+consider. Answer me, Ellen, speak to me. Tell me that you believe me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped and moved a step toward her, but as he did so, the girl,
+still without looking up, drew herself nearer to her father and shrank
+more closely into his arms; but the father's face was troubled and
+doubtful, and he regarded the younger man with a look of the most
+anxious scrutiny. Latimer did not regard this. Their hands were raised
+against him as far as he could understand, and he broke forth again
+proudly, and with a defiant indignation:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What right have you to judge me?&quot; he began; &quot;what do you know of what
+I have suffered, and endured, and overcome? How can you know what I
+have had to give up and put away from me? It's easy enough for you to
+draw your skirts around you, but what can a woman bred as you have
+been bred know of what I've had to fight against and keep under and
+cut away? It was an easy, beautiful idyl to you; your love came to you
+only when it should have come, and for a man who was good and worthy,
+and distinctly eligible&mdash;I don't mean that; forgive me, Ellen, but you
+drive me beside myself. But he is good and he believes himself worthy,
+and I say that myself before you both. But I am only worthy and only
+good because of that other love that I put away when it became a
+crime, when it became impossible. Do you know what it cost me? Do you
+know what it meant to me, and what I went through, and how I suffered?
+Do you know who this other woman is whom you are insulting with your
+doubts and guesses in the dark? Can't you spare her? Am I not enough?
+Perhaps it was easy for her, too; perhaps her silence cost her
+nothing; perhaps she did not suffer and has nothing but happiness and
+content to look forward to for the rest of her life; and I tell you
+that it is because we did put it away, and kill it, and not give way
+to it that I am whatever I am to-day; whatever good there is in me is
+due to that temptation and to the fact that I beat it and overcame it
+and kept myself honest and clean. And when I met you and learned to
+know you I believed in my heart that God had sent you to me that I
+might know what it was to love a woman whom I could marry and who
+could be my wife; that you were the reward for my having overcome
+temptation and the sign that I had done well. And now you throw me
+over and put me aside as though I were something low and unworthy,
+because of this temptation, because of this very thing that has made
+me know myself and my own strength and that has kept me up for you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the young man had been speaking, the bishop's eyes had never left
+his face, and as he finished, the face of the priest grew clearer and
+decided, and calmly exultant. And as Latimer ceased he bent his head
+above his daughter's, and said in a voice that seemed to speak with
+more than human inspiration. &quot;My child,&quot; he said, &quot;if God had given me
+a son I should have been proud if he could have spoken as this young
+man has done.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the woman only said, &quot;Let him go to her.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Ellen, oh, Ellen!&quot; cried the father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew back from the girl in his arms and looked anxiously and
+feelingly at her lover. &quot;How could you, Ellen,&quot; he said, &quot;how could
+you?&quot; He was watching the young man's face with eyes full of sympathy
+and concern. &quot;How little you know him,&quot; he said, &quot;how little you
+understand. He will not do that,&quot; he added quickly, but looking
+questioningly at Latimer and speaking in a tone almost of command. &quot;He
+will not undo all that he has done; I know him better than that.&quot; But
+Latimer made no answer, and for a moment the two men stood watching
+each other and questioning each other with their eyes. Then Latimer
+turned, and without again so much as glancing at the girl walked
+steadily to the door and left the room. He passed on slowly down the
+stairs and out into the night, and paused upon the top of the steps
+leading to the street. Below him lay the avenue with its double line
+of lights stretching off in two long perspectives. The lamps of
+hundreds of cabs and carriages flashed as they advanced toward him and
+shone for a moment at the turnings of the cross-streets, and from
+either side came the ceaseless rush and murmur, and over all hung the
+strange mystery that covers a great city at night. Latimer's rooms lay
+to the south, but he stood looking toward a spot to the north with a
+reckless, harassed look in his face that had not been there for many
+months. He stood so for a minute, and then gave a short shrug of
+disgust at his momentary doubt and ran quickly down the steps. &quot;No,&quot;
+he said, &quot;if it were for a month, yes; but it is to be for many years,
+many more long years.&quot; And turning his back resolutely to the north he
+went slowly home.
+</p>
+
+<a name="118"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+ON THE FEVER SHIP
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+There were four rails around the ship's sides, the three lower ones of
+iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between them from
+the canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars which held him
+in. Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding blue water which
+ended in a line of breakers and a yellow coast with ragged palms.
+Beyond that again rose a range of mountain-peaks, and, stuck upon the
+loftiest peak of all, a tiny block-house. It rested on the brow of the
+mountain against the naked sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon
+the dome of a great cathedral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her
+sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines.
+From his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with severe,
+painstaking interest. Sometimes the wooden rail swept up to the very
+block-house itself, and for a second of time blotted it from sight.
+And again it sank to the level of the line of breakers, and wiped them
+out of the picture as though they were a line of chalk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The soldier on the cot promised himself that the next swell of the sea
+would send the lowest rail climbing to the very top of the palm-trees
+or, even higher, to the base of the mountains; and when it failed to
+reach even the palm-trees he felt a distinct sense of ill use, of
+having been wronged by some one. There was no other reason for
+submitting to this existence save these tricks upon the wearisome,
+glaring landscape; and now, whoever it was who was working them did
+not seem to be making this effort to entertain him with any
+heartiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was most cruel. Indeed, he decided hotly, it was not to be endured;
+he would bear it no longer, he would make his escape. But he knew that
+this move, which could be conceived in a moment's desperation, could
+only be carried to success with great strategy, secrecy, and careful
+cunning. So he fell back upon his pillow and closed his eyes, as
+though he were asleep, and then opening them again, turned cautiously,
+and spied upon his keeper. As usual, his keeper sat at the foot of the
+cot turning the pages of a huge paper filled with pictures of the war
+printed in daubs of tawdry colors. His keeper was a hard-faced boy
+without human pity or consideration, a very devil of obstinacy and
+fiendish cruelty. To make it worse, the fiend was a person without a
+collar, in a suit of soiled khaki, with a curious red cross bound by a
+safety-pin to his left arm. He was intent upon the paper in his hands;
+he was holding it between his eyes and his prisoner. His vigilance had
+relaxed, and the moment seemed propitious. With a sudden plunge of
+arms and legs, the prisoner swept the bed-sheet from him, and sprang
+at the wooden rail and grasped the iron stanchion beside it. He had
+his knee pressed against the top bar and his bare toes on the iron
+rail beneath it. Below him the blue water waited for him. It was cool
+and dark and gentle and deep. It would certainly put out the fire in
+his bones, he thought; it might even shut out the glare of the sun
+which scorched his eyeballs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as he balanced for the leap, a swift weakness and nausea swept
+over him, a weight seized upon his body and limbs. He could not lift
+the lower foot from the iron rail, and he swayed dizzily and trembled.
+He trembled. He who had raced his men and beaten them up the hot hill
+to the trenches of San Juan. But now he was a baby in the hands of a
+giant, who caught him by the wrist and with an iron arm clasped him
+around his waist and pulled him down, and shouted, brutally, &quot;Help,
+some of youse, quick! he's at it again. I can't hold him.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More giants grasped him by the arms and by the legs. One of them took
+the hand that clung to the stanchion in both of his, and pulled back
+the fingers one by one, saying, &quot;Easy now, Lieutenant&mdash;easy.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ragged palms and the sea and blockhouse were swallowed up in a
+black fog, and his body touched the canvas cot again with a sense of
+home-coming and relief and rest. He wondered how he could have cared
+to escape from it. He found it so good to be back again that for a
+long time he wept quite happily, until the fiery pillow was moist and
+cool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The world outside of the iron bars was like a scene in a theatre set
+for some great event, but the actors were never ready. He remembered
+confusedly a play he had once witnessed before that same scene.
+Indeed, he believed he had played some small part in it; but he
+remembered it dimly, and all trace of the men who had appeared with
+him in it was gone. He had reasoned it out that they were up there
+behind the range of mountains, because great heavy wagons and
+ambulances and cannon were emptied from the ships at the wharf above
+and were drawn away in long lines behind the ragged palms, moving
+always toward the passes between the peaks. At times he was disturbed
+by the thought that he should be up and after them, that some
+tradition of duty made his presence with them imperative. There was
+much to be done back of the mountains. Some event of momentous import
+was being carried forward there, in which he held a part; but the
+doubt soon passed from him, and he was content to lie and watch the
+iron bars rising and falling between the block-house and the white
+surf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If they had been only humanely kind, his lot would have been bearable,
+but they starved him and held him down when he wished to rise; and
+they would not put out the fire in the pillow, which they might easily
+have done by the simple expedient of throwing it over the ship's side
+into the sea. He himself had done this twice, but the keeper had
+immediately brought a fresh pillow already heated for the torture and
+forced it under his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His pleasures were very simple, and so few that he could not
+understand why they robbed him of them so jealously. One was to watch
+a green cluster of bananas that hung above him from the awning,
+twirling on a string. He could count as many of them as five before
+the bunch turned and swung lazily back again, when he could count as
+high as twelve; sometimes when the ship rolled heavily he could count
+to twenty. It was a most fascinating game, and contented him for many
+hours. But when they found this out they sent for the cook to come and
+cut them down, and the cook carried them away to his galley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, one day, a man came out from the shore, swimming through the
+blue water with great splashes. He was a most charming man, who
+spluttered and dove and twisted and lay on his back and kicked his
+legs in an excess of content and delight. It was a real pleasure to
+watch him; not for days had anything so amusing appeared on the other
+side of the prison-bars. But as soon as the keeper saw that the man in
+the water was amusing his prisoner, he leaned over the ship's side and
+shouted, &quot;Sa-ay, you, don't you know there's skarks in there?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the swimming man said, &quot;The h-ll there is!&quot; and raced back to the
+shore like a porpoise with great lashing of the water, and ran up the
+beach half-way to the palms before he was satisfied to stop. Then the
+prisoner wept again. It was so disappointing. Life was robbed of
+everything now. He remembered that in a previous existence soldiers
+who cried were laughed at and mocked. But that was so far away and it
+was such an absurd superstition that he had no patience with it. For
+what could be more comforting to a man when he is treated cruelly than
+to cry. It was so obvious an exercise, and when one is so feeble that
+one cannot vault a four-railed barrier it is something to feel that at
+least one is strong enough to cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He escaped occasionally, traversing space with marvellous rapidity and
+to great distances, but never to any successful purpose; and his
+flight inevitably ended in ignominious recapture and a sudden
+awakening in bed. At these moments the familiar and hated palms, the
+peaks, and the block-house were more hideous in their reality than the
+most terrifying of his nightmares.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These excursions afield were always predatory; he went forth always to
+seek food. With all the beautiful world from which to elect and
+choose, he sought out only those places where eating was studied and
+elevated to an art. These visits were much more vivid in their detail
+than any he had ever before made to these same resorts. They
+invariably began in a carriage, which carried him swiftly over smooth
+asphalt. One route brought him across a great and beautiful square,
+radiating with rows and rows of flickering lights; two fountains
+splashed in the centre of the square, and six women of stone guarded
+its approaches. One of the women was hung with wreaths of mourning.
+Ahead of him the late twilight darkened behind a great arch, which
+seemed to rise on the horizon of the world, a great window into the
+heavens beyond. At either side strings of white and colored globes
+hung among the trees, and the sound of music came joyfully from
+theatres in the open air. He knew the restaurant under the trees to
+which he was now hastening, and the fountain beside it, and the very
+sparrows balancing on the fountain's edge; he knew every waiter at
+each of the tables, he felt again the gravel crunching under his feet,
+he saw the <i>ma&icirc;tre d'h&ocirc;tel</i> coming forward smiling to receive his
+command, and the waiter in the green apron bowing at his elbow,
+deferential and important, presenting the list of wines. But his
+adventure never passed that point, for he was captured again and once
+more bound to his cot with a close burning sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or else, he drove more sedately through the London streets in the late
+evening twilight, leaning expectantly across the doors of the hansom
+and pulling carefully at his white gloves. Other hansoms flashed past
+him, the occupant of each with his mind fixed on one idea&mdash;dinner. He
+was one of a million of people who were about to dine, or who had
+dined, or who were deep in dining. He was so famished, so weak for
+food of any quality, that the galloping horse in the hansom seemed to
+crawl. The lights of the Embankment passed like the lamps of a
+railroad station as seen from the window of an express; and while his
+mind was still torn between the choice of a thin or thick soup or an
+immediate attack upon cold beef, he was at the door, and the
+<i>chasseur</i> touched his cap, and the little <i>chasseur</i> put
+the wicker guard over the hansom's wheel. As he jumped out he said,
+&quot;Give him half-a-crown,&quot; and the driver called after him, &quot;Thank you,
+sir.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a beautiful world, this world outside of the iron bars. Every
+one in it contributed to his pleasure and to his comfort. In this
+world he was not starved nor man-handled. He thought of this joyfully
+as he leaped up the stairs, where young men with grave faces and with
+their hands held negligently behind their backs bowed to him in polite
+surprise at his speed. But they had not been starved on condensed
+milk. He threw his coat and hat at one of them, and came down the hall
+fearfully and quite weak with dread lest it should not be real. His
+voice was shaking when he asked Ellis if he had reserved a table. The
+place was all so real, it must be true this time. The way Ellis turned
+and ran his finger down the list showed it was real, because Ellis
+always did that, even when he knew there would not be an empty table
+for an hour. The room was crowded with beautiful women; under the
+light of the red shades they looked kind and approachable, and there
+was food on every table, and iced drinks in silver buckets. It was
+with the joy of great relief that he heard Ellis say to his underling,
+&quot;Num&eacute;ro cinq, sur la terrace, un couvert.&quot; It was real at last.
+Outside, the Thames lay a great gray shadow. The lights of the
+Embankment flashed and twinkled across it, the tower of the House of
+Commons rose against the sky, and here, inside, the waiter was
+hurrying toward him carrying a smoking plate of rich soup with a
+pungent, intoxicating odor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then the ragged palms, the glaring sun, the immovable peaks, and
+the white surf stood again before him. The iron rails swept up and
+sank again, the fever sucked at his bones, and the pillow scorched his
+cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One morning for a brief moment he came back to real life again and lay
+quite still, seeing everything about him with clear eyes and for the
+first time, as though he had but just that instant been lifted over
+the ship's side. His keeper, glancing up, found the prisoner's eyes
+considering him curiously, and recognized the change. The instinct of
+discipline brought him to his feet with his fingers at his sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Is the Lieutenant feeling better?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lieutenant surveyed him gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You are one of our hospital stewards.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, Lieutenant.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Why ar'n't you with the regiment?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I was wounded, too, sir. I got it same time you did, Lieutenant.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Am I wounded? Of course, I remember. Is this a hospital ship?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The steward shrugged his shoulders. &quot;She's one of the transports. They
+have turned her over to the fever cases.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lieutenant opened his lips to ask another question; but his own
+body answered that one, and for a moment he lay silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do they know up North that I&mdash;that I'm all right?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, yes, the papers had it in&mdash;there was pictures of the Lieutenant
+in some of them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Then I've been ill some time?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, about eight days.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The soldier moved uneasily, and the nurse in him became uppermost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I guess the Lieutenant hadn't better talk any more,&quot; he said. It was
+his voice now which held authority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lieutenant looked out at the palms and the silent gloomy mountains
+and the empty coast-line, where the same wave was rising and falling
+with weary persistence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Eight days,&quot; he said. His eyes shut quickly, as though with a sudden
+touch of pain. He turned his head and sought for the figure at the
+foot of the cot. Already the figure had grown faint and was receding
+and swaying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Has any one written or cabled?&quot; the Lieutenant spoke, hurriedly. He
+was fearful lest the figure should disappear altogether before he
+could obtain his answer. &quot;Has any one come?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Why, they couldn't get here, Lieutenant, not yet.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The voice came very faintly. &quot;You go to sleep now, and I'll run and
+fetch some letters and telegrams. When you wake up, maybe I'll have a
+lot for you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Lieutenant caught the nurse by the wrist, and crushed his hand
+in his own thin fingers. They were hot, and left the steward's skin
+wet with perspiration. The Lieutenant laughed gayly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You see, Doctor,&quot; he said, briskly, &quot;that you can't kill me. I can't
+die. I've got to live, you understand. Because, sir, she said she
+would come. She said if I was wounded, or if I was ill, she would come
+to me. She didn't care what people thought. She would come anyway and
+nurse me&mdash;well, she will come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;So, Doctor&mdash;old man&mdash;&quot; He plucked at the steward's sleeve, and
+stroked his hand eagerly, &quot;old man&mdash;&quot; he began again, beseechingly,
+&quot;you'll not let me die until she comes, will you? What? No, I know I
+won't die. Nothing made by man can kill me. No, not until she comes.
+Then, after that&mdash;eight days, she'll be here soon, any moment? What?
+You think so, too? Don't you? Surely, yes, any moment. Yes, I'll go to
+sleep now, and when you see her rowing out from shore you wake me.
+You'll know her; you can't make a mistake. She is like&mdash;no, there is
+no one like her&mdash;but you can't make a mistake.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That day strange figures began to mount the sides of the ship, and to
+occupy its every turn and angle of space. Some of them fell on their
+knees and slapped the bare decks with their hands, and laughed and
+cried out, &quot;Thank God, I'll see God's country again!&quot; Some of them
+were regulars, bound in bandages; some were volunteers, dirty and
+hollow-eyed, with long beards on boy's faces. Some came on crutches;
+others with their arms around the shoulders of their comrades, staring
+ahead of them with a fixed smile, their lips drawn back and their
+teeth protruding. At every second step they stumbled, and the face of
+each was swept by swift ripples of pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lay on cots so close together that the nurses could not walk
+between them. They lay on the wet decks, in the scuppers, and along
+the transoms and hatches. They were like shipwrecked mariners clinging
+to a raft, and they asked nothing more than that the ship's bow be
+turned toward home. Once satisfied as to that, they relaxed into a
+state of self-pity and miserable oblivion to their environment, from
+which hunger nor nausea nor aching bones could shake them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hospital steward touched the Lieutenant lightly on the shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We are going North, sir,&quot; he said. &quot;The transport's ordered North to
+New York, with these volunteers and the sick and wounded. Do you hear
+me, sir?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lieutenant opened his eyes. &quot;Has she come?&quot; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Gee!&quot; exclaimed the hospital steward. He glanced impatiently at the
+blue mountains and the yellow coast, from which the transport was
+drawing rapidly away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I can't see her coming just now,&quot; he said. &quot;But she will,&quot; he
+added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You let me know at once when she comes.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Why, cert'nly, of course,&quot; said the steward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three trained nurses came over the side just before the transport
+started North. One was a large, motherly looking woman, with a German
+accent. She had been a trained nurse, first in Berlin, and later in
+the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and at Bellevue. The nurse was
+dressed in white, and wore a little silver medal at her throat; and
+she was strong enough to lift a volunteer out of his cot and hold him
+easily in her arms, while one of the convalescents pulled his cot out
+of the rain. Some of the men called her &quot;nurse&quot;; others, who wore
+scapulars around their necks, called her &quot;Sister&quot;; and the officers of
+the medical staff addressed her as Miss Bergen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Bergen halted beside the cot of the Lieutenant and asked, &quot;Is
+this the fever case you spoke about, Doctor&mdash;the one you want moved to
+the officers' ward?&quot; She slipped her hand up under his sleeve and felt
+his wrist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;His pulse is very high,&quot; she said to the steward. &quot;When did you take
+his temperature?&quot; She drew a little morocco case from her pocket and
+from that took a clinical thermometer, which she shook up and down,
+eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal scrutiny. The
+Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the white figure beside
+his cot. His eyes opened and then shut quickly, with a startled look,
+in which doubt struggled with wonderful happiness. His hand stole out
+fearfully and warily until it touched her apron, and then, finding it
+was real, he clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body
+toward her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and
+pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips. He put them from
+him for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Sweetheart,&quot; he whispered, &quot;sweetheart, I knew you'd come.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer slipped
+from her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation of annoyance.
+The young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed them overboard.
+Neither of them spoke, but they smiled appreciatively. The Lieutenant
+was looking at the nurse with the wonder and hope and hunger of soul
+in his eyes with which a dying man looks at the cross the priest holds
+up before him. What he saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a
+tall, fair girl with great bands and masses of hair, with a head
+rising like a lily from a firm, white throat, set on broad shoulders
+above a straight back and sloping breast&mdash;a tall, beautiful creature,
+half-girl, half-woman, who looked back at him shyly, but steadily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Listen,&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The voice of the sick man was so sure and so sane that the young
+Doctor started, and moved nearer to the head of the cot. &quot;Listen,
+dearest,&quot; the Lieutenant whispered. &quot;I wanted to tell you before I
+came South. But I did not dare; and then I was afraid something might
+happen to me, and I could never tell you, and you would never know. So
+I wrote it to you in the will I made at Baiquiri, the night before the
+landing. If you hadn't come now, you would have learned it in that
+way. You would have read there that there never was any one but you;
+the rest were all dream people, foolish, silly&mdash;mad. There is no one
+else in the world but you; you have been the only thing in life that
+has counted. I thought I might do something down here that would make
+you care. But I got shot going up a hill, and after that I wasn't able
+to do anything. It was very hot, and the hills were on fire; and they
+took me prisoner, and kept me tied down here, burning on these coals.
+I can't live much longer, but now that I have told you I can have
+peace. They tried to kill me before you came; but they didn't know I
+loved you, they didn't know that men who love you can't die. They
+tried to starve my love for you, to burn it out of me; they tried to
+reach it with their knives. But my love for you is my soul, and they
+can't kill a man's soul. Dear heart, I have lived because you lived.
+Now that you know&mdash;now that you understand&mdash;what does it matter?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Bergen shook her head with great vigor. &quot;Nonsense,&quot; she said,
+cheerfully. &quot;You are not going to die. As soon as we move you out of
+this rain, and some food cook&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Good God!&quot; cried the young Doctor, savagely. &quot;Do you want to kill
+him?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she spoke, the patient had thrown his arms heavily across his
+face, and had fallen back, lying rigid on the pillow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Doctor led the way across the prostrate bodies, apologizing as he
+went. &quot;I am sorry I spoke so quickly,&quot; he said, &quot;but he thought you
+were real. I mean he thought you were some one he really knew&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He was just delirious,&quot; said the German nurse, calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Doctor mixed himself a Scotch and soda and drank it with a single
+gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Ugh!&quot; he said to the ward-room. &quot;I feel as though I'd been opening
+another man's letters.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+The transport drove through the empty seas with heavy, clumsy
+upheavals, rolling like a buoy. Having been originally intended for
+the freight-carrying trade, she had no sympathy with hearts that beat
+for a sight of their native land, or for lives that counted their
+remaining minutes by the throbbing of her engines. Occasionally,
+without apparent reason, she was thrown violently from her course; but
+it was invariably the case that when her stern went to starboard,
+something splashed in the water on her port side and drifted past her,
+until, when it had cleared the blades of her propeller, a voice cried
+out, and she was swung back on her home-bound track again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lieutenant missed the familiar palms and the tiny block-house; and
+seeing nothing beyond the iron rails but great wastes of gray water,
+he decided he was on board a prison-ship, or that he had been strapped
+to a raft and cast adrift. People came for hours at a time and stood
+at the foot of his cot, and talked with him and he to them&mdash;people he
+had loved and people he had long forgotten, some of whom he had
+thought were dead. One of them he could have sworn he had seen buried
+in a deep trench, and covered with branches of palmetto. He had heard
+the bugler, with tears choking him, sound &quot;taps&quot;; and with his own
+hand he had placed the dead man's campaign hat on the mound of fresh
+earth above the grave. Yet here he was still alive, and he came with
+other men of his troop to speak to him; but when he reached out to
+them they were gone&mdash;the real and the unreal, the dead and the
+living&mdash;and even She disappeared whenever he tried to take her hand,
+and sometimes the hospital steward drove her away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Did that young lady say when she was coming back again?&quot; he asked the
+steward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The young lady! What young lady?&quot; asked the steward, wearily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The one who has been sitting there,&quot; he answered. He pointed with his
+gaunt hand at the man in the next cot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, that young lady. Yes, she's coming back. She's just gone below to
+fetch you some hardtack.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young volunteer in the next cot whined grievously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That crazy man gives me the creeps,&quot; he groaned. &quot;He's always waking
+me up, and looking at me as though he was going to eat me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Shut your head,&quot; said the steward. &quot;He's a better crazy man than
+you'll ever be with the little sense you've got. And he has two Mauser
+holes in him. Crazy, eh? It's a damned good thing for you that there
+was about four thousand of us regulars just as crazy as him, or you'd
+never seen the top of the hill.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the
+convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their
+pajamas, and pointed one way. The transport was moving swiftly and
+smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise
+with her steam-whistle. The noise was echoed by many more
+steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and
+excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared,
+saluting joyously. All of the excursion steamers had a heavy list to
+the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them crowded to that
+rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered. The fog lifted suddenly, and
+between the iron rails the Lieutenant saw high green hills on either
+side of a great harbor. Houses and trees and thousands of masts swept
+past like a panorama; and beyond was a mirage of three cities, with
+curling smoke-wreaths and sky-reaching buildings, and a great swinging
+bridge, and a giant statue of a woman waving a welcome home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief. He was
+far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it. In his heart
+he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and shouted, and
+climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines. He had been deceived too
+often not to know that it was not real. He knew from cruel experience
+that in a few moments the tall buildings would crumble away, the
+thousands of columns of white smoke that flashed like snow in the sun,
+the busy, shrieking tug-boats, and the great statue would vanish into
+the sea, leaving it gray and bare. He closed his eyes and shut the
+vision out. It was so beautiful that it tempted him; but he would not
+be mocked, and he buried his face in his hands. They were carrying the
+farce too far, he thought. It was really too absurd; for now they were
+at a wharf which was so real that, had he not known by previous
+suffering, he would have been utterly deceived by it. And there were
+great crowds of smiling, cheering people, and a waiting guard of honor
+in fresh uniforms, and rows of police pushing the people this way and
+that; and these men about him were taking it all quite seriously, and
+making ready to disembark, carrying their blanket-rolls and rifles
+with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A band was playing joyously, and the man in the next cot, who was
+being lifted to a stretcher, said, &quot;There's the Governor and his
+staff; that's him in the high hat.&quot; It was really very well done. The
+Custom-House and the Elevated Railroad and Castle Garden were as like
+to life as a photograph, and the crowd was as well handled as a mob in
+a play. His heart ached for it so that he could not bear the pain, and
+he turned his back on it. It was cruel to keep it up so long. His
+keeper lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty uniform
+which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man&mdash;a man who had
+been killed probably, for there were dark brown marks of blood on the
+tunic and breeches. When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle Garden
+and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night, just as he knew
+they would; but when he opened his eyes from the stretcher, they had
+returned again. It was a most remarkably vivid vision. They kept it up
+so well. Now the young Doctor and the hospital steward were pretending
+to carry him down a gangplank and into an open space; and he saw quite
+close to him a long line policemen, and behind them thousands of
+faces, some of them women's faces&mdash;women who pointed at him and then
+shook their heads and cried, and pressed their hands to their cheeks,
+still looking at him. He wondered why they cried. He did not know
+them, nor did they know him. No one knew him; these people were only
+ghosts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a quick parting in the crowd. A man he had once known shoved
+two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl's voice speaking
+his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the open space
+and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down over him,
+and he was clasped in two young, firm arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Of course it is not real, of course it is not She,&quot; he assured
+himself. &quot;Because She would not do such a thing. Before all these
+people She would not do it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he trembled and his heart throbbed so cruelly that he could not
+bear the pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was pretending to cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They wired us you had started for Tampa on the hospital ship,&quot; She
+was saying, &quot;and Aunt and I went all the way there before we heard you
+had been sent North. We have been on the cars a week. That is why I
+missed you. Do you understand? It was not my fault. I tried to come.
+Indeed, I tried to come.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her head and looked up fearfully at the young Doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Tell me, why does he look at me like that?&quot; she asked. &quot;He doesn't
+know me. Is he very ill? Tell me the truth.&quot; She drew in her breath
+quickly. &quot;Of course you will tell me the truth.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she asked the question he felt her arms draw tight about his
+shoulders. It was as though she was holding him to herself, and from
+some one who had reached out for him. In his trouble he turned to his
+old friend and keeper. His voice was hoarse and very low.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Is this the same young lady who was on the transport&mdash;the one you
+used to drive away?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his embarrassment, the hospital steward blushed under his tan, and
+stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Of course it's the same young lady,&quot; the Doctor answered, briskly.
+&quot;And I won't let them drive her away.&quot; He turned to her, smiling
+gravely. &quot;I think his condition has ceased to be dangerous, madam,&quot; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People who in a former existence had been his friends, and Her
+brother, gathered about his stretcher and bore him through the crowd
+and lifted him into a carriage filled with cushions, among which he
+sank lower and lower. Then She sat beside him, and he heard Her
+brother say to the coachman, &quot;Home, and drive slowly and keep on the
+asphalt.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The carriage moved forward, and She put her arm about him, and his
+head fell on her shoulder, and neither of them spoke. The vision had
+lasted so long now that he was torn with the joy that after all it
+might be real. But he could not bear the awakening if it were not, so
+he raised his head fearfully and looked up into the beautiful eyes
+above him. His brows were knit, and he struggled with a great doubt
+and an awful joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Dearest,&quot; he said, &quot;is it real?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Is it real?&quot; she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even as a dream, it was so wonderfully beautiful that he was satisfied
+if it could only continue so, if but for a little while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do you think,&quot; he begged again, trembling, &quot;that it is going to last
+much longer?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled, and, bending her head slowly, kissed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It is going to last&mdash;always,&quot; she said.
+</p>
+
+<a name="144"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in Jermyn
+Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course, turned into
+lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss was a Florist to
+the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his flower-shop, just in
+front of the middle window on the first floor. By stretching a little,
+each of them could see into the window just beyond him, and could hear
+all that was said inside; and such things as they saw and heard during
+the reign of Captain Carrington, who moved in at the same time they
+did! By day the table in the centre of the room was covered with maps,
+and the Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags
+wrapped around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the maps
+and measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to himself. It
+was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the Captain's only
+intellectual pursuit, for at night the maps were rolled up, and a
+green cloth was spread across the table, and there was much company
+and popping of soda-bottles, and little heaps of gold and silver were
+moved this way and that across the cloth. The smoke drifted out of the
+open windows, and the laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly
+in the empty street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
+reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath them
+and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the Captain's guests
+to depart. The Lion and the Unicorn were rather ashamed of the scandal
+of it, and they were glad when, one day, the Captain went away with
+his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high on a four-wheeler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said, &quot;I wish you good luck, sir.&quot;
+And the Captain said, &quot;I'm coming back a Major, Prentiss.&quot; But he
+never came back. And one day&mdash;the Lion remembered the day very well,
+for on that same day the newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street
+shouting out the news of &quot;a 'orrible disaster&quot; to the British arms. It
+was then that a young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss
+went out to meet her and led her up-stairs. They heard him unlock the
+Captain's door and say, &quot;This is his room, miss,&quot; and after he had
+gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre-table. She
+stood there a very long time looking slowly about her, and then she
+took a photograph of the Captain from the frame on the mantel and
+slipped it into her pocket, and when she went out again her veil was
+down, and she was crying. She must have given Prentiss as much as a
+sovereign, for he called her &quot;Your ladyship,&quot; which he never did under
+a sovereign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could they
+hear the address she gave the cabman. But it was somewhere up St.
+John's Wood way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and the
+Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful ladies and
+smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy flowers-and
+&quot;buttonholes,&quot; and the little round baskets of strawberries, and even
+the peaches at three shillings each, which looked so tempting as they
+lay in the window, wrapped up in cotton-wool, like jewels of great
+price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
+Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five guineas
+a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew that in the
+economy of nations there must always be a higher price for the rich
+American, or else why was he given that strange accent, except to
+betray him into the hands of the London shopkeeper, and the London
+cabby?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the
+window nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St.
+James's Church, that stretched between their street and Piccadilly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You're lucky in having a bit of green to look out on,&quot; he said to
+Prentiss. &quot;I'll take these rooms&mdash;at five guineas. That's more than
+they're worth, you know, but as I know it, too, your conscience
+needn't trouble you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then his eyes fell on the Lion, and he nodded to him gravely. &quot;How do
+you do?&quot; he said. &quot;I'm coming to live with you for a little time. I
+have read about you and your friends over there. It is a hazard of new
+fortunes with me, your Majesty, so be kind to me, and if I win, I will
+put a new coat of paint on your shield and gild you all over again.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prentiss smiled obsequiously at the American's pleasantry, but the new
+lodger only stared at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He seemed a social gentleman,&quot; said the Unicorn, that night, when the
+Lion and he were talking it over. &quot;Now the Captain, the whole time he
+was here, never gave us so much as a look. This one says he has read
+of us.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And why not?&quot; growled the Lion. &quot;I hope Prentiss heard what he said
+of our needing a new layer of gilt. It's disgraceful. You can see that
+Lion over Scarlett's, the butcher, as far as Regent Street, and
+Scarlett is only one of Salisbury's creations. He received his
+Letters-Patent only two years back. We date from Palmerston.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lodger came up the street just at that moment, and stopped and
+looked up at the Lion and the Unicorn from the sidewalk, before he
+opened the door with his night-key. They heard him enter the room and
+feel on the mantel for his pipe, and a moment later he appeared at the
+Lion's window and leaned on the sill, looking down into the street
+below and blowing whiffs of smoke up into the warm night-air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and the
+streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from the
+play, and with groups of men in black and white, making their way to
+supper at the clubs. Hansoms of inky-black, with shining lamps inside
+and out, dashed noiselessly past on mysterious errands, chasing close
+on each other's heels on a mad race, each to its separate goal. From
+the cross streets rose the noises of early night, the rumble of the
+'buses, the creaking of their brakes as they unlocked, the cries of
+the &quot;extras,&quot; and the merging of thousands of human voices in a dull
+murmur. The great world of London was closing its shutters for the
+night and putting out the lights; and the new lodger from across the
+sea listened to it with his heart beating quickly, and laughed to
+stifle the touch of fear and homesickness that rose in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I have seen a great play to-night,&quot; he said to the Lion, &quot;nobly
+played by great players. What will they care for my poor wares? I see
+that I have been over-bold. But we cannot go back now&mdash;not yet.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded &quot;good-night&quot; to the
+great world beyond his window. &quot;What fortunes lie with ye, ye lights
+of London town?&quot; he quoted, smiling. And they heard him close the door
+of his bedroom, and lock it for the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning he bought many geraniums from Prentiss and placed
+them along the broad cornice that stretched across the front of the
+house over the shop-window. The flowers made a band of scarlet on
+either side of the Lion as brilliant as a Tommy's jacket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I am trying to propitiate the British Lion by placing flowers before
+his altar,&quot; the American said that morning to a visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The British public, you mean,&quot; said the visitor; &quot;they are each
+likely to tear you to pieces.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, I have heard that the pit on the first night of a bad play is
+something awful,&quot; hazarded the American.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Wait and see,&quot; said the visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Thank you,&quot; said the American, meekly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every one who came to the first floor front talked about a play. It
+seemed to be something of great moment to the American. It was only a
+bundle of leaves printed in red and black inks and bound in brown
+paper covers. There were two of them, and the American called them by
+different names: one was his comedy and one was his tragedy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They are both likely to be tragedies,&quot; the Lion heard one of the
+visitors say to another, as they drove away together. &quot;Our young
+friend takes it too seriously.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The American spent most of his time by his desk at the window writing
+on little blue pads and tearing up what he wrote, or in reading over
+one of the plays to himself in a loud voice. In time the number of his
+visitors increased, and to some of these he would read his play; and
+after they had left him he was either depressed and silent or excited
+and jubilant. The Lion could always tell when he was happy because
+then he would go to the side table and pour himself out a drink and
+say, &quot;Here's to me,&quot; but when he was depressed he would stand holding
+the glass in his hand, and finally pour the liquor back into the
+bottle again and say, &quot;What's the use of that?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After he had been in London a month he wrote less and was more
+frequently abroad, sallying forth in beautiful raiment, and coming
+home by daylight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he gave suppers, too, but they were less noisy than the Captain's
+had been, and the women who came to them were much more beautiful, and
+their voices when they spoke were sweet and low. Sometimes one of the
+women sang, and the men sat in silence while the people in the street
+below stopped to listen, and would say, &quot;Why, that is So-and-So
+singing,&quot; and the Lion and the Unicorn wondered how they could know
+who it was when they could not see her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lodger's visitors came to see him at all hours. They seemed to
+regard his rooms as a club, where they could always come for a bite to
+eat or to write notes; and others treated it like a lawyer's office
+and asked advice on all manner of strange subjects. Sometimes the
+visitor wanted to know whether the American thought she ought to take
+&pound;10 a week and go on tour, or stay in town and try to live on &pound;8; or
+whether she should paint landscapes that would not sell, or
+race-horses that would; or whether Reggie really loved her and whether
+she really loved Reggie; or whether the new part in the piece at the
+Court was better than the old part at Terry's, and wasn't she getting
+too old to play &quot;ingenues&quot; anyway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lodger seemed to be a general adviser, and smoked and listened
+with grave consideration, and the Unicorn thought his judgment was
+most sympathetic and sensible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all the beautiful ladies who came to call on the lodger the one the
+Unicorn liked the best was the one who wanted to know whether she
+loved Reggie and whether Reggie loved her. She discussed this so
+interestingly while she consumed tea and thin slices of bread that the
+Unicorn almost lost his balance in leaning forward to listen. Her name
+was Marion Cavendish, and it was written over many photographs which
+stood in silver frames in the lodger's rooms. She used to make the tea
+herself, while the lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating
+way of doubling the thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling
+at them like a mouse at a piece of cheese. She had wonderful little
+teeth and Cupid's-bow lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her veil
+only high enough for one to see the two Cupid's-bow lips. When she did
+that the American used to laugh, at nothing apparently, and say, &quot;Oh,
+I guess Reggie loves you well enough.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But do I love Reggie?&quot; she would ask, sadly, with her teacup held
+poised in air.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="152"></a>
+<div class="ctr"><img src="images/152.jpg" alt="Consumed tea and thin slices of bread." width="363" height="483"></div>
+<p class="imgcaption">Consumed tea and thin slices of bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I am sure I hope not,&quot; the lodger would reply, and she would put down
+the veil quickly, as one would drop a curtain over a beautiful
+picture, and rise with great dignity and say, &quot;If you talk like that I
+shall not come again.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was sure that if she could only get some work to do her head would
+be filled with more important matters than whether Reggie loved her or
+not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine just
+at present,&quot; she said. &quot;If I don't get a part soon,&quot; she announced, &quot;I
+shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for recitations at
+evening parties.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That seems a desperate revenge,&quot; said the American; &quot;and besides, I
+don't want you to get a part, because some one might be idiotic enough
+to take my comedy, and if he should, you must play <i>Nancy</i>.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I would not ask for any salary if I could play <i>Nancy</i>,&quot; Miss
+Cavendish answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by her
+saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to see that
+his play was a great play, and by his saying that none but she must
+play <i>Nancy</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown hair,
+who came from America to paint miniatures of the British aristocracy.
+Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave
+and fearless, and so determined to be independent of every one, even
+of the lodger&mdash;especially of the lodger, who, it appeared, had known
+her very well at home. The lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to
+be independent of him, and the two Americans had many arguments and
+disputes about it, but she always said, &quot;It does no good, Philip; it
+only hurts us both when you talk so. I care for nothing, and for no
+one but my art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you
+do not, and, of course, the man I am to marry must.&quot; Then Carroll
+would talk, walking up and down, and looking very fierce and
+determined, and telling her how he loved her in such a way that it
+made her look even more proud and beautiful. And she would say more
+gently, &quot;It is very fine to think that any one can care for me like
+that, and very helpful. But unless I cared in the same way it would be
+wicked of me to marry you, and besides&mdash;&quot; She would add very quickly
+to prevent his speaking again&mdash;&quot;I don't want to marry you or anybody,
+and I never shall. I want to be free and to succeed in my work, just
+as you want to succeed in your work. So please never speak of this
+again.&quot; When she went away the lodger used to sit smoking in the big
+arm-chair and beat the arms with his hands, and he would pace up and
+down the room, while his work would lie untouched and his engagements
+pass forgotten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the lodger
+stayed on in Jermyn Street. Helen Cabot had departed on a round of
+visits to country-houses in Scotland, where, as she wrote him, she was
+painting miniatures of her hosts and studying the game of golf. Miss
+Cavendish divided her days between the river and one of the West End
+theatres. She was playing a small part in a farce-comedy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very
+beautiful in a white boating-frock and a straw hat with a Leander
+ribbon. Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting-hole, and
+she was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Why don't you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?&quot; Miss
+Cavendish asked. &quot;You need it; you look ill.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'd like to, but I can't,&quot; said Carroll. &quot;The fact is, I paid in
+advance for these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I'd be losing
+five guineas a week on them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cavendish regarded him severely. She had never quite mastered his
+American humor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But&mdash;five guineas&mdash;why, that's nothing to you,&quot; she said. Something
+in the lodger's face made her pause. &quot;You don't mean&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, I do,&quot; said the lodger, smiling. &quot;You see, I started in to lay
+siege to London without sufficient ammunition. London is a large town,
+and it didn't fall as quickly as I thought it would. So I am
+economizing. Mr. Lockhart's Coffee Rooms and I are no longer
+strangers.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Are you in earnest?&quot; she asked. &quot;For how long?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, for the last month,&quot; replied the lodger; &quot;they are not at all
+bad&mdash;clean and wholesome and all that.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But the suppers you gave us, and this,&quot; she cried, suddenly, waving
+her hands over the pretty tea-things, &quot;and the cake and muffins?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;My friends, at least,&quot; said Carroll, &quot;need not go to Lockhart's.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And the Savoy?&quot; asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her head. &quot;A
+dream of the past,&quot; said Carroll, waving his pipe through the smoke.
+&quot;Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity the
+Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old
+England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence&mdash;a pot of bitter
+twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's most amusing on
+the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about
+myself. They are both most interesting subjects.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I don't like it,&quot; Miss Cavendish declared, helplessly. &quot;When I
+think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel&mdash;I feel like a robber.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Don't,&quot; begged Carroll. &quot;I am really the most happy of men&mdash;that is,
+as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so damned
+miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets&mdash;I have &pound;80 to
+last me through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next
+to yourself, the most wonderful woman God ever made. That's enough.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?&quot; asked Miss
+Cavendish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I do&mdash;that is, I could,&quot; answered Carroll, &quot;if I wrote the things
+that sell; but I keep on writing plays that won't.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And such plays!&quot; exclaimed Marion, warmly; &quot;and to think that they
+are going begging!&quot; She continued, indignantly, &quot;I can't imagine what
+the managers do want.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I know what they don't want,&quot; said the American. Miss Cavendish
+drummed impatiently on the tea-tray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I wish you wouldn't be so abject about it,&quot; she said. &quot;If I were a
+man I'd make them take those plays.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How?&quot; asked the American; &quot;with a gun?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I'd keep at it until they read them,&quot; declared Marion. &quot;I'd sit
+on their front steps all night and I'd follow them in cabs, and I'd
+lie in wait for them at the stage-door. I'd just make them take them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling. &quot;I guess I'll give up and go
+home,&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, yes, do, run away before you are beaten,&quot; said Miss Cavendish,
+scornfully. &quot;Why, you can't go now. Everybody will be back in town
+soon, and there are a lot of new plays coming on, and some of them are
+sure to be failures, and that's our chance. You rush in with your
+piece, and somebody may take it sooner than close the theatre.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'm thinking of closing the theatre myself,&quot; said Carroll. &quot;What's
+the use of my hanging on here?&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;It distresses Helen to
+know I am in London, feeling about her as I do&mdash;and the Lord only
+knows how it distresses me. And, maybe, if I went away,&quot; he said,
+consciously, &quot;she might miss me. She might see the difference.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cavendish held herself erect and pressed her lips together with a
+severe smile. &quot;If Helen Cabot doesn't see the difference between you
+and the other men she knows now,&quot; she said, &quot;I doubt if she ever will.
+Besides&mdash;&quot; she continued, and then hesitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, go on,&quot; urged Carroll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I was only going to say,&quot; she explained, &quot;that leaving the girl
+alone never did the man any good unless he left her alone willingly.
+If she's sure he still cares, it's just the same to her where he is.
+He might as well stay on in London as go to South Africa. It won't
+help him any. The difference comes when she finds he has stopped
+caring. Why, look at Reggie. He tried that. He went away for ever so
+long, but he kept writing me from wherever he went, so that he was
+perfectly miserable&mdash;and I went on enjoying myself. Then when he came
+back, he tried going about with his old friends again. He used to come
+to the theatre with them&mdash;oh, with such nice girls!&mdash;but he always
+stood in the back of the box and yawned and scowled&mdash;so I knew. And,
+anyway, he'd always spoil it all by leaving them and waiting at the
+stage entrance for me. But one day he got tired of the way I treated
+him and went off on a bicycle-tour with Lady Hacksher's girls and some
+men from his regiment, and he was gone three weeks, and never sent me
+even a line; and I got so scared; I couldn't sleep, and I stood it for
+three days more, and then I wired him to come back or I'd jump off
+London Bridge; and he came back that very night from Edinburgh on the
+express, and I was so glad to see him that I got confused, and in the
+general excitement I promised to marry him, so that's how it was with
+us.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said the American, without enthusiasm; &quot;but then I still care,
+and Helen knows I care.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Doesn't she ever fancy that you might care for some one else? You
+have a lot of friends, you know.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, but she knows they are just that&mdash;friends,&quot; said the American.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cavendish stood up to go, and arranged her veil before the mirror
+above the fireplace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I come here very often to tea,&quot; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's very kind of you,&quot; said Carroll. He was at the open window,
+looking down into the street for a cab.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, no one knows I am engaged to Reggie,&quot; continued Miss Cavendish,
+&quot;except you and Reggie, and he isn't so sure. <i>She</i> doesn't know
+it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well?&quot; said Carroll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cavendish smiled a mischievous, kindly smile at him from the
+mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well?&quot; she repeated, mockingly. Carroll stared at her and laughed.
+After a pause he said: &quot;It's like a plot in a comedy. But I'm afraid
+I'm too serious for play-acting.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, it is serious,&quot; said Miss Cavendish. She seated herself again
+and regarded the American thoughtfully. &quot;You are too good a man to be
+treated the way that girl is treating you, and no one knows it better
+than she does. She'll change in time, but just now she thinks she
+wants to be independent. She's in love with this picture-painting
+idea, and with the people she meets. It's all new to her&mdash;the fuss
+they make over her and the titles, and the way she is asked about. We
+know she can't paint. We know they only give her commissions because
+she's so young and pretty, and American. She amuses them, that's all.
+Well, that cannot last; she'll find it out. She's too clever a girl,
+and she is too fine a girl to be content with that long. Then&mdash;then
+she'll come back to you. She feels now that she has both you and the
+others, and she's making you wait; so wait and be cheerful. She's
+worth waiting for; she's young, that's all. She'll see the difference
+in time. But, in the meanwhile, it would hurry matters a bit if she
+thought she had to choose between the new friends and you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;She could still keep her friends and marry me,&quot; said Carroll; &quot;I have
+told her that a hundred times. She could still paint miniatures and
+marry me. But she won't marry me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;She won't marry you because she knows she can whenever she wants to,&quot;
+cried Marion. &quot;Can't you see that? But if she thought you were going
+to marry some one else now?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;She would be the first to congratulate me,&quot; said Carroll. He rose and
+walked to the fireplace, where he leaned with his arm on the mantel.
+There was a photograph of Helen Cabot near his hand, and he turned
+this toward him and stood for some time staring at it. &quot;My dear
+Marion,&quot; he said at last, &quot;I've known Helen ever since she was as
+young as that. Every year I've loved her more, and found new things in
+her to care for; now I love her more than any other man ever loved any
+other woman.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cavendish shook her head sympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, I know,&quot; she said; &quot;that's the way Reggie loves me, too.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll went on as though he had not heard her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There's a bench in St. James's Park,&quot; he said, &quot;where we used to sit
+when she first came here, when she didn't know so many people. We used
+to go there in the morning and throw penny buns to the ducks. That's
+been my amusement this summer since you've all been away&mdash;sitting on
+that bench, feeding penny buns to the silly ducks&mdash;especially the
+black one, the one she used to like best. And I make pilgrimages to
+all the other places we ever visited together, and try to pretend she
+is with me. And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage
+because she once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other
+absurd things that a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to
+what end? She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we can't go
+on being friends as we once were. What's the use of it all?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;She is young, I tell you,&quot; repeated Miss Cavendish, &quot;and she's too
+sure of you. You've told her you care; now try making her think you
+don't care.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll shook his head impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I will not stoop to such tricks and pretense, Marion,&quot; he cried,
+impatiently. &quot;All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat and to
+trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door. &quot;Such
+amateurs!&quot; she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of Miss
+Cavendish. Helen and he had met her when they first arrived in London,
+and as she had acted for a season in the United States, she adopted
+the two Americans&mdash;and told Helen where to go for boots and hats, and
+advised Carroll about placing his plays. Helen soon made other
+friends, and deserted the artists with whom her work had first thrown
+her. She seemed to prefer the society of the people who bought her
+paintings, and who admired and made much of the painter. As she was
+very beautiful and at an age when she enjoyed everything in life
+keenly and eagerly, to give her pleasure was in itself a distinct
+pleasure; and the worldly tired people she met were considering their
+own entertainment quite as much as hers when they asked her to their
+dinners and dances, or to spend a week with them in the country. In
+her way, she was as independent as was Carroll in his, and as she was
+not in love, as he was, her life was not narrowed down to but one
+ideal. But she was not so young as to consider herself infallible, and
+she had one excellent friend on whom she was dependent for advice and
+to whose directions she submitted implicitly. This was Lady Gower, the
+only person to whom Helen had spoken of Carroll and of his great
+feeling for her. Lady Gower, immediately after her marriage, had been
+a conspicuous and brilliant figure in that set in London which works
+eighteen hours a day to keep itself amused, but after the death of her
+husband she had disappeared into the country as completely as though
+she had entered a convent, and after several years had then re-entered
+the world as a professional philanthropist. Her name was now
+associated entirely with Women's Leagues, with committees that
+presented petitions to Parliament, and with public meetings, at which
+she spoke with marvellous ease and effect. Her old friends said she
+had taken up this new pose as an outlet for her nervous energies, and
+as an effort to forget the man who alone had made life serious to her.
+Others knew her as an earnest woman, acting honestly for what she
+thought was right. Her success, all admitted, was due to her knowledge
+of the world and to her sense of humor, which taught her with whom to
+use her wealth and position, and when to demand what she wanted solely
+on the ground that the cause was just.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had taken more than a fancy for Helen, and the position of the
+beautiful, motherless girl had appealed to her as one filled with
+dangers. When she grew to know Helen better, she recognized that these
+fears were quite unnecessary, and as she saw more of her she learned
+to care for her deeply. Helen had told her much of Carroll and of his
+double purpose in coming to London; of his brilliant work and his lack
+of success in having it recognized; and of his great and loyal
+devotion to her, and of his lack of success, not in having that
+recognized, but in her own inability to return it. Helen was proud
+that she had been able to make Carroll care for her as he did, and
+that there was anything about her which could inspire a man whom she
+admired so much to believe in her so absolutely and for so long a
+time. But what convinced her that the outcome for which he hoped was
+impossible, was the very fact that she could admire him, and see how
+fine and unselfish his love for her was, and yet remain untouched by
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had been telling Lady Gower one day of the care he had taken of
+her ever since she was fourteen years of age, and had quoted some of
+the friendly and loverlike acts he had performed in her service, until
+one day they had both found out that his attitude of the elder brother
+was no longer possible, and that he loved her in the old and only way.
+Lady Gower looked at her rather doubtfully and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I wish you would bring him to see me, Helen,&quot; she said; &quot;I think I
+should like your friend very much. From what you tell me of him I
+doubt if you will find many such men waiting for you in this country.
+Our men marry for reasons of property, or they love blindly, and are
+exacting and selfish before and after they are married. I know,
+because so many women came to me when my husband was alive to ask how
+it was that I continued so happy in my married life.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But I don't want to marry any one,&quot; Helen remonstrated, gently.
+&quot;American girls are not always thinking only of getting married.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What I meant was this,&quot; said Lady Gower: &quot;that, in my experience, I
+have heard of but few men who care in the way this young man seems to
+care for you. You say you do not love him; but if he had wanted to
+gain my interest, he could not have pleaded his cause better than you
+have done. He seems to see your faults and yet love you still, in
+spite of them&mdash;or on account of them. And I like the things he does
+for you. I like, for instance, his sending you the book of the moment
+every week for two years. That shows a most unswerving spirit of
+devotion. And the story of the broken bridge in the woods is a
+wonderful story. If I were a young girl, I could love a man for that
+alone. It was a beautiful thing to do.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen sat with her chin on her hands, deeply considering this new
+point of view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I thought it very foolish of him,&quot; she confessed, questioningly, &quot;to
+take such a risk for such a little thing.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Gower smiled down at her from the height of her many years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Wait,&quot; she said, dryly, &quot;you are very young now&mdash;and very rich; every
+one is crowding to give you pleasure, to show his admiration. You are
+a very fortunate girl. But later, these things which some man has done
+because he loved you, and which you call foolish, will grow large in
+your life, and shine out strongly, and when you are discouraged and
+alone, you will take them out, and the memory of them will make you
+proud and happy. They are the honors which women wear in secret.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen came back to town in September, and for the first few days was
+so occupied in refurnishing her studio and in visiting the shops that
+she neglected to send Carroll word of her return. When she found that
+a whole week had passed without her having made any effort to see him,
+and appreciated how the fact would hurt her friend, she was filled
+with remorse, and drove at once in great haste to Jermyn Street, to
+announce her return in person. On the way she decided that she would
+soften the blow of her week of neglect by asking him to take her out
+to luncheon. This privilege she had once or twice accorded him, and
+she felt that the pleasure these excursions gave Carroll were worth
+the consternation they caused to Lady Gower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The servant was uncertain whether Mr. Carroll was at home or not, but
+Helen was too intent upon making restitution to wait for the fact to
+be determined, and, running up the stairs, knocked sharply at the door
+of his study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A voice bade her come in, and she entered, radiant and smiling her
+welcome. But Carroll was not there to receive it, and, instead, Marion
+Cavendish looked up at her from his desk, where she was busily
+writing. Helen paused with a surprised laugh, but Marion sprang up and
+hailed her gladly. They met half-way across the room and kissed each
+other with the most friendly feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Philip was out, Marion said, and she had just stepped in for a moment
+to write him a note. If Helen would excuse her, she would finish it,
+as she was late for rehearsal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she asked over her shoulder, with great interest, if Helen had
+passed a pleasant summer. She thought she had never seen her looking
+so well. Helen thought Miss Cavendish herself was looking very well
+also, but Marion said no; that she was too sunburnt, she would not be
+able to wear a dinner-dress for a month. There was a pause while
+Marion's quill scratched violently across Carroll's note-paper. Helen
+felt that in some way she was being treated as an intruder; or worse,
+as a guest. She did not sit down, it seemed impossible to do so, but
+she moved uncertainly about the room. She noted that there were many
+changes, it seemed more bare and empty; her picture was still on the
+writing-desk, but there were at least six new photographs of Marion.
+Marion herself had brought them to the room that morning, and had
+carefully arranged them in conspicuous places. But Helen could not
+know that. She thought there was an unnecessary amount of writing
+scribbled over the face of each.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marion addressed her letter and wrote &quot;Immediate&quot; across the envelope,
+and placed it before the clock on the mantel-shelf. &quot;You will find
+Philip looking very badly,&quot; she said, as she pulled on her gloves. &quot;He
+has been in town all summer, working very hard&mdash;he has had no holiday
+at all. I don't think he's well. I have been a great deal worried
+about him,&quot; she added. Her face was bent over the buttons of her
+glove, and when she raised her blue eyes to Helen they were filled
+with serious concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Really,&quot; Helen stammered, &quot;I&mdash;I didn't know&mdash;in his letters he seemed
+very cheerful.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marion shook her head and turned and stood looking thoughtfully out of
+the window. &quot;He's in a very hard place,&quot; she began, abruptly, and then
+stopped as though she had thought better of what she intended to say.
+Helen tried to ask her to go on, but could not bring herself to do so.
+She wanted to get away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I tell him he ought to leave London,&quot; Marion began again; &quot;he needs a
+change and a rest.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I should think he might,&quot; Helen agreed, &quot;after three months of this
+heat. He wrote me he intended going to Herne Bay or over to Ostend.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, he had meant to go,&quot; Marion answered. She spoke with the air of
+one who possessed the most intimate knowledge of Carroll's movements
+and plans, and change of plans. &quot;But he couldn't,&quot; she added. &quot;He
+couldn't afford it. Helen,&quot; she said, turning to the other girl,
+dramatically, &quot;do you know&mdash;I believe that Philip is very poor.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Cabot exclaimed, incredulously, &quot;Poor!&quot; She laughed. &quot;Why, what
+do you mean?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I mean that he has no money,&quot; Marion answered, sharply. &quot;These rooms
+represent nothing. He only keeps them on because he paid for them in
+advance. He's been living on three shillings a day. That's poor for
+him. He takes his meals at cabmen's shelters and at Lockhart's, and
+he's been doing so for a month.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen recalled with a guilty thrill the receipt of certain boxes of La
+France roses&mdash;cut long, in the American fashion&mdash;which had arrived
+within the last month at various country-houses. She felt indignant at
+herself, and miserable. Her indignation was largely due to the
+recollection that she had given these flowers to her hostess to
+decorate the dinner-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hated to ask this girl of things which she should have known
+better than any one else. But she forced herself to do it. She felt
+she must know certainly and at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How do you know this?&quot; she asked. &quot;Are you sure there is no mistake?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He told me himself,&quot; said Marion, &quot;when he talked of letting the
+plays go and returning to America. He said he must go back; that his
+money was gone.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He is gone to America!&quot; Helen said, blankly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, he wanted to go, but I wouldn't let him,&quot; Marion went on. &quot;I told
+him that some one might take his play any day. And this third one he
+has written, the one he finished this summer in town, is the best of
+all, I think. It's a love-story. It's quite beautiful.&quot; She turned and
+arranged her veil at the glass, and as she did so, her eyes fell on
+the photographs of herself scattered over the mantel-piece, and she
+smiled slightly. But Helen did not see her&mdash;she was sitting down now,
+pulling at the books on the table. She was confused and disturbed by
+emotions which were quite strange to her, and when Marion bade her
+good-by she hardly noticed her departure. What impressed her most of
+all in what Marion had told her was, she was surprised to find, that
+Philip was going away. That she herself had frequently urged him to do
+so, for his own peace of mind, seemed now of no consequence. Now that
+he seriously contemplated it, she recognized that his absence meant to
+her a change in everything. She felt for the first time the peculiar
+place he held in her life. Even if she had seen him but seldom, the
+fact that he was within call had been more of a comfort and a
+necessity to her than she understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That he was poor, concerned her chiefly because she knew that,
+although this condition could only be but temporary, it would distress
+him not to have his friends around him, and to entertain them as he
+had been used to do. She wondered eagerly if she might offer to help
+him, but a second thought assured her that, for a man, that sort of
+help from a woman was impossible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She resented the fact that Marion was deep in his confidence; that it
+was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and of his plans.
+It annoyed her so acutely that she could not remain in the room where
+she had seen her so complacently in possession. And after leaving a
+brief note for Philip, she went away. She stopped a hansom at the
+door, and told the man to drive along the Embankment&mdash;she wanted to be
+quite alone, and she felt she could see no one until she had thought
+it all out, and had analyzed the new feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So for several hours she drove slowly up and down, sunk far back in
+the cushions of the cab, and staring with unseeing eyes at the white,
+enamelled tariff and the black dash-board.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She assured herself that she was not jealous of Marion, because, in
+order to be jealous, she first would have to care for Philip in the
+very way she could not bring herself to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She decided that his interest in Marion hurt her, because it showed
+that Philip was not capable of remaining true to the one ideal of his
+life. She was sure that this explained her feelings&mdash;she was
+disappointed that he had not kept up to his own standard; that he was
+weak enough to turn aside from it for the first pretty pair of eyes.
+But she was too honest and too just to accept that diagnosis of her
+feelings as final&mdash;she knew there had been many pairs of eyes in
+America and in London, and that though Philip had seen them, he had
+not answered them when they spoke. No, she confessed frankly, she was
+hurt with herself for neglecting her old friend so selfishly and for
+so long a time; his love gave him claims on her consideration, at
+least, and she had forgotten that and him, and had run after strange
+gods and allowed others to come in and take her place, and to give him
+the sympathy and help which she should have been the first to offer,
+and which would have counted more when coming from her than from any
+one else. She determined to make amends at once for her
+thoughtlessness and selfishness, and her brain was pleasantly occupied
+with plans and acts of kindness. It was a new entertainment, and she
+found she delighted in it. She directed the cabman to go to
+Solomons's, and from there sent Philip a bunch of flowers and a line
+saying that on the following day she was coming to take tea with him.
+She had a guilty feeling that he might consider her friendly advances
+more seriously than she meant them, but it was her pleasure to be
+reckless: her feelings were running riotously, and the sensation was
+so new that she refused to be circumspect or to consider consequences.
+Who could tell, she asked herself with a quick, frightened gasp, but
+that, after all, it might be that she was learning to care? From
+Solomons's she bade the man drive to the shop in Cranbourne Street
+where she was accustomed to purchase the materials she used in
+painting, and Fate, which uses strange agents to work out its ends, so
+directed it that the cabman stopped a few doors below this shop, and
+opposite one where jewelry and other personal effects were bought and
+sold. At any other time, or had she been in any other mood, what
+followed might not have occurred, but Fate, in the person of the
+cabman, arranged it so that the hour and the opportunity came
+together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were some old mezzotints in the window of the loan-shop, a
+string of coins and medals, a row of new French posters; and far down
+to the front a tray filled with gold and silver cigarette-cases and
+watches and rings. It occurred to Helen, who was still bent on making
+restitution for her neglect, that a cigarette-case would be more
+appropriate for a man than flowers, and more lasting. And she scanned
+the contents of the window with the eye of one who now saw in
+everything only something which might give Philip pleasure. The two
+objects of value in the tray upon which her eyes first fell were the
+gold seal-ring with which Philip had sealed his letters to her, and,
+lying next to it, his gold watch! There was something almost human in
+the way the ring and watch spoke to her from the past&mdash;in the way they
+appealed to her to rescue them from the surroundings to which they had
+been abandoned. She did not know what she meant to do with them nor
+how she could return them to Philip; but there was no question of
+doubt in her manner as she swept with a rush into the shop. There was
+no attempt, either, at bargaining in the way in which she pointed out
+to the young woman behind the counter the particular ring and watch
+she wanted. They had not been left as collateral, the young woman
+said; they had been sold outright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Then any one can buy them?&quot; Helen asked, eagerly. &quot;They are for sale
+to the public&mdash;to any one?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young woman made note of the customer's eagerness, but with an
+unmoved countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, miss, they are for sale. The ring is four pounds and the watch
+twenty-five.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Twenty-nine pounds!&quot; Helen gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was more money than she had in the world, but the fact did not
+distress her, for she had a true artistic disregard for ready money,
+and the absence of it had never disturbed her. But now it assumed a
+sudden and alarming value. She had ten pounds in her purse and ten
+pounds at her studio&mdash;these were just enough to pay for a quarter's
+rent and the rates, and there was a hat and cloak in Bond Street which
+she certainly must have. Her only assets consisted of the possibility
+that some one might soon order a miniature, and to her mind that was
+sufficient. Some one always had ordered a miniature, and there was no
+reasonable doubt but that some one would do it again. For a moment she
+questioned if it would not be sufficient if she bought the ring and
+allowed the watch to remain. But she recognized that the ring meant
+more to her than the watch, while the latter, as an old heirloom which
+had been passed down to him from a great-grandfather, meant more to
+Philip. It was for Philip she was doing this, she reminded herself.
+She stood holding his possessions, one in each hand, and looking at
+the young woman blankly. She had no doubt in her mind that at least
+part of the money he had received for them had paid for the flowers he
+had sent to her in Scotland. The certainty of this left her no choice.
+She laid the ring and watch down and pulled the only ring she
+possessed from her own finger. It was a gift from Lady Gower. She had
+no doubt that it was of great value.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Can you lend me some money on that?&quot; she asked. It was the first time
+she had conducted a business transaction of this nature, and she felt
+as though she were engaging in a burglary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We don't lend money, miss,&quot; the girl said, &quot;we buy outright. I can
+give you twenty-eight shillings for this,&quot; she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Twenty-eight shillings!&quot; Helen gasped. &quot;Why, it is worth&mdash;oh, ever so
+much more than that!&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That is all it is worth to us,&quot; the girl answered. She regarded the
+ring indifferently and laid it away from her on the counter. The
+action was final.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen's hands rose slowly to her breast, where a pretty watch dangled
+from a bow-knot of crushed diamonds. It was her only possession, and
+she was very fond of it. It also was the gift of one of the several
+great ladies who had adopted her since her residence in London. Helen
+had painted a miniature of this particular great lady which had looked
+so beautiful that the pleasure which the original of the portrait
+derived from the thought that she still really looked as she did in
+the miniature was worth more to her than many diamonds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was different with Helen, and no one could count what it cost
+her to tear away her one proud possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What will you give me for this?&quot; she asked, defiantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl's eyes showed greater interest. &quot;I can give you twenty pounds
+for that,&quot; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Take it, please,&quot; Helen begged, as though she feared if she kept it a
+moment longer she might not be able to make the sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That will be enough now,&quot; she went on, taking out her ten-pound note.
+She put Lady Gower's ring back upon her finger and picked up Philip's
+ring and watch with the pleasure of one who has come into a great
+fortune. She turned back at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh,&quot; she stammered, &quot;in case any one should inquire, you are not to
+say who bought these.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, miss, certainly not,&quot; said the woman. Helen gave the direction to
+the cabman and, closing the doors of the hansom, sat looking down at
+the watch and the ring, as they lay in her lap. The thought that they
+had been his most valued possessions, which he had abandoned forever,
+and that they were now entirely hers, to do with as she liked, filled
+her with most intense delight and pleasure. She took up the heavy gold
+ring and placed it on the little finger of her left hand; it was much
+too large, and she removed it and balanced it for a moment doubtfully
+in the palm of her right hand. She was smiling, and her face was lit
+with shy and tender thoughts. She cast a quick glance to the left and
+right as though fearful that people passing in the street would
+observe her, and then slipped the ring over the fourth finger of her
+left hand. She gazed at it with a guilty smile, and then, covering it
+hastily with her other hand, leaned back, clasping it closely, and sat
+frowning far out before her with puzzled eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Carroll all roads led past Helen's studio, and during the summer,
+while she had been absent in Scotland, it was one of his sad pleasures
+to make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause opposite the house and
+look up at the empty windows of her rooms. It was during this daily
+exercise that he learned, through the arrival of her luggage, of her
+return to London, and when day followed day without her having shown
+any desire to see him or to tell him of her return, he denounced
+himself most bitterly as a fatuous fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of the week he sat down and considered his case quite
+calmly. For three years he had loved this girl, deeply and tenderly.
+He had been lover, brother, friend, and guardian. During that time,
+even though she had accepted him in every capacity except as that of
+the prospective husband, she had never given him any real affection,
+nor sympathy, nor help; all she had done for him had been done without
+her knowledge or intent. To know her, to love her, and to scheme to
+give her pleasure had been its own reward, and the only one. For the
+last few months he had been living like a crossing sweeper in order to
+be able to stay in London until she came back to it, and that he might
+still send her the gifts he had always laid on her altar. He had not
+seen her in three months. Three months that had been to him a blank,
+except for his work&mdash;which, like all else that he did, was inspired
+and carried on for her. Now at last she had returned and had shown
+that, even as a friend, he was of so little account in her thoughts,
+of so little consequence in her life, that after this long absence she
+had no desire to learn of his welfare or to see him&mdash;she did not even
+give him the chance to see her. And so, placing these facts before him
+for the first time since he had loved her, he considered what was due
+to himself. &quot;Was it good enough?&quot; he asked. &quot;Was it just that he
+should continue to wear out his soul and body for this girl who did
+not want what he had to give, who treated him less considerately than
+a man whom she met for the first time at dinner?&quot; He felt he had
+reached the breaking-point; that the time had come when he must
+consider what he owed to himself. There could never be any other woman
+save Helen; but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer, with
+self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it slighted and
+neglected. He was humble enough concerning himself, but of his love he
+was very proud. Other men could give her more in wealth or position,
+but no one could ever love her as he did. &quot;He that hath more let him
+give,&quot; he had often quoted to her defiantly, as though he were
+challenging the world, and now he felt he must evolve a makeshift
+world of his own&mdash;a world in which she was not his only spring of
+acts; he must begin all over again and keep his love secret and sacred
+until she understood it and wanted it. And if she should never want it
+he would at least have saved it from many rebuffs and insults.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this determination strong in him, the note Helen had left for him
+after her talk with Marion, and the flowers, and the note with them,
+saying she was coming to take tea on the morrow, failed to move him
+except to make him more bitter. He saw in them only a tardy
+recognition of her neglect&mdash;an effort to make up to him for
+thoughtlessness which, from her, hurt him worse than studied slight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A new <i>r&eacute;gime</i> had begun, and he was determined to establish it
+firmly and to make it impossible for himself to retreat from it; and
+in the note in which he thanked Helen for the flowers and welcomed her
+to tea, he declared his ultimatum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You know how terribly I feel,&quot; he wrote; &quot;I don't have to tell you
+that, but I cannot always go on dragging out my love and holding it up
+to excite your pity as beggars show their sores. I cannot always go on
+praying before your altar, cutting myself with knives and calling upon
+you to listen to me. You know that there is no one else but you, and
+that there never can be any one but you, and that nothing is changed
+except that after this I am not going to urge and torment you. I shall
+wait as I have always waited&mdash;only now I shall wait in silence. You
+know just how little, in one way, I have to offer you, and you know
+just how much I have in love to offer you. It is now for you to
+speak&mdash;some day, or never. But you will have to speak first. You will
+never hear a word of love from me again. Why should you? You know it
+is always waiting for you. But if you should ever want it, you must
+come to me, and take off your hat and put it on my table and say,
+'Philip, I have come to stay.' Whether you can ever do that or not can
+make no difference in my love for you. I shall love you always, as no
+man has ever loved a woman in this world, but it is you who must speak
+first; for me, the rest is silence.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following morning as Helen was leaving the house she found this
+letter lying on the hall-table, and ran back with it to her rooms. A
+week before she would have let it lie on the table and read it on her
+return. She was conscious that this was what she would have done, and
+it pleased her to find that what concerned Philip was now to her the
+thing of greatest interest. She was pleased with her own
+eagerness&mdash;her own happiness was a welcome sign, and she was proud and
+glad that she was learning to care.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She read the letter with an anxious pride and pleasure in each word
+that was entirely new. Philip's recriminations did not hurt her, they
+were the sign that he cared; nor did his determination not to speak of
+his love to her hurt her, for she believed him when he said that he
+would always care. She read the letter twice, and then sat for some
+time considering the kind of letter Philip would have written had he
+known her secret&mdash;had he known that the ring he had abandoned was now
+upon her finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose and, crossing to a desk, placed the letter in a drawer, and
+then took it out again and reread the last page. When she had finished
+it she was smiling. For a moment she stood irresolute, and then,
+moving slowly toward the centre-table, cast a guilty look about her
+and, raising her hands, lifted her veil and half withdrew the pins
+that fastened her hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Philip,&quot; she began, in a frightened whisper, &quot;I have&mdash;I have come
+to&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sentence ended in a cry of protest, and she rushed across the room
+as though she were running from herself. She was blushing violently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Never!&quot; she cried, as she pulled open the door; &quot;I could never do
+it&mdash;never!&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following afternoon, when Helen was to come to tea, Carroll
+decided that he would receive her with all the old friendliness, but
+that he must be careful to subdue all emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was really deeply hurt at her treatment, and had it not been that
+she came on her own invitation he would not of his own accord have
+sought to see her. In consequence, he rather welcomed than otherwise
+the arrival of Marion Cavendish, who came a half-hour before Helen was
+expected, and who followed a hasty knock with a precipitate entrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Sit down,&quot; she commanded, breathlessly, &quot;and listen. I've been at
+rehearsal all day, or I'd have been here before you were awake.&quot; She
+seated herself nervously and nodded her head at Carroll in an excited
+and mysterious manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What is it?&quot; he asked. &quot;Have you and Reggie&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Listen,&quot; Marion repeated. &quot;Our fortunes are made; that is what's the
+matter&mdash;and I've made them. If you took half the interest in your work
+I do, you'd have made yours long ago. Last night,&quot; she began,
+impressively, &quot;I went to a large supper at the Savoy, and I sat next
+to Charley Wimpole. He came in late, after everybody had finished, and
+I attacked him while he was eating his supper. He said he had been
+rehearsing 'Caste' after the performance; that they've put it on as a
+stop-gap on account of the failure of 'The Triflers,' and that he knew
+revivals were of no use; that he would give any sum for a good modern
+comedy. That was my cue, and I told him I knew of a better comedy than
+any he had produced at his theatre in five years, and that it was
+going begging. He laughed, and asked where was he to find this
+wonderful comedy, and I said, 'It's been in your safe for the last two
+months and you haven't read it.' He said, 'Indeed, how do you know
+that?' and I said, 'Because if you'd read it, it wouldn't be in your
+safe, but on your stage.' So he asked me what the play was about, and
+I told him the plot and what sort of a part his was, and some of his
+scenes, and he began to take notice. He forgot his supper, and very
+soon he grew so interested that he turned his chair round and kept
+eying my supper-card to find out who I was, and at last remembered
+seeing me in 'The New Boy'&mdash;and a rotten part it was, too&mdash;but he
+remembered it, and he told me to go on and tell him more about your
+play. So I recited it, bit by bit, and he laughed in all the right
+places and got very much excited, and said finally that he would read
+it the first thing this morning.&quot; Marion paused, breathlessly. &quot;Oh,
+yes, and he wrote your address on his cuff,&quot; she added, with the air
+of delivering a complete and convincing climax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll stared at her and pulled excitedly on his pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, Marion!&quot; he gasped, &quot;suppose he should? He won't, though,&quot; he
+added, but eying her eagerly and inviting contradiction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He will,&quot; she answered, stoutly, &quot;if he reads it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The other managers read it,&quot; Carroll suggested, doubtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, but what do they know?&quot; Marion returned, loftily. &quot;He knows.
+Charles Wimpole is the only intelligent actor-manager in London.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a sharp knock at the door, which Marion in her excitement
+had left ajar, and Prentiss threw it wide open with an impressive
+sweep, as though he were announcing royalty. &quot;Mr. Charles Wimpole,&quot; he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The actor-manager stopped in the doorway bowing gracefully, his hat
+held before him and his hand on his stick as though it were resting on
+a foil. He had the face and carriage of a gallant of the days of
+Congreve, and he wore his modern frock-coat with as much distinction
+as if it were of silk and lace. He was evidently amused. &quot;I couldn't
+help overhearing the last line,&quot; he said, smiling. &quot;It gives me a good
+entrance.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marion gazed at him blankly. &quot;Oh,&quot; she gasped, &quot;we&mdash;we&mdash;were just
+talking about you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If you hadn't mentioned my name,&quot; the actor said, &quot;I should never
+have guessed it. And this is Mr. Carroll, I hope.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great man was rather pleased with the situation. As he read it, it
+struck him as possessing strong dramatic possibilities: Carroll was
+the struggling author on the verge of starvation; Marion, his
+sweetheart, flying to him gave him hope; and he was the good fairy
+arriving in the nick of time to set everything right and to make the
+young people happy and prosperous. He rather fancied himself in the
+part of the good fairy, and as he seated himself he bowed to them both
+in a manner which was charmingly inclusive and confidential.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Miss Cavendish, I imagine, has already warned you that you might
+expect a visit from me,&quot; he said, tentatively. Carroll nodded. He was
+too much concerned to interrupt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Then I need only tell you,&quot; Wimpole continued, &quot;that I got up at an
+absurd hour this morning to read your play; that I did read it; that I
+like it immensely&mdash;and that if we can come to terms I shall produce
+it. I shall produce it at once, within a fortnight or three weeks.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll was staring at him intently and continued doing so after
+Wimpole had finished speaking. The actor felt he had somehow missed
+his point, or that Carroll could not have understood him, and
+repeated, &quot;I say I shall put it in rehearsal at once.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll rose abruptly, and pushed back his chair. &quot;I should be very
+glad,&quot; he murmured, and strode over to the window, where he stood with
+his back turned to his guests. Wimpole looked after him with a kindly
+smile and nodded his head appreciatively. He had produced even a
+greater effect than his lines seemed to warrant. When he spoke again,
+it was quite simply, and sincerely, and though he spoke for Carroll's
+benefit, he addressed himself to Marion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You were quite right last night,&quot; he said; &quot;it is a most charming
+piece of work. I am really extremely grateful to you for bringing it
+to my notice.&quot; He rose, and going to Carroll, put his hand on his
+shoulder. &quot;My boy,&quot; he said, &quot;I congratulate you. I should like to be
+your age, and to have written that play. Come to my theatre to-morrow
+and we will talk terms. Talk it over first with your friends, so that
+I shan't rob you. Do you think you would prefer a lump sum now, and so
+be done with it altogether, or trust that the royalties may&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Royalties,&quot; prompted Marion, in an eager aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men laughed. &quot;Quite right,&quot; Wimpole assented, good-humoredly;
+&quot;it's a poor sportsman who doesn't back his own horse. Well, then,
+until to-morrow.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But,&quot; Carroll began, &quot;one moment, please. I haven't thanked you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;My dear boy,&quot; cried Wimpole, waving him away with his stick, &quot;it is I
+who have to thank you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And&mdash;and there is a condition,&quot; Carroll said, &quot;which goes with the
+play. It is that Miss Cavendish is to have the part of <i>Nancy</i>.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wimpole looked serious and considered for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;<i>Nancy</i>,&quot; he said, &quot;the girl who interferes&mdash;a very good part. I
+have cast Miss Maddox for it in my mind, but, of course, if the author
+insists&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marion, with her elbows on the table, clasped her hands appealingly
+before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, Mr. Wimpole!&quot; she cried, &quot;you owe me that, at least.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll leaned over and took both of Marion's hands in one of his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's all right,&quot; he said; &quot;the author insists.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wimpole waved his stick again as though it were the magic wand of the
+good fairy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You shall have it,&quot; he said. &quot;I recall your performance in 'The New
+Boy' with pleasure. I take the play, and Miss Cavendish shall be cast
+for <i>Nancy</i>. We shall begin rehearsals at once. I hope you are a
+quick study.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'm letter-perfect now,&quot; laughed Marion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wimpole turned at the door and nodded to them. They were both so
+young, so eager, and so jubilant that he felt strangely old and out of
+it. &quot;Good-by, then,&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Good-by, sir,&quot; they both chorused. And Marion cried after him, &quot;And
+thank you a thousand times.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned again and looked back at them, but in their rejoicing they
+had already forgotten him. &quot;Bless you, my children,&quot; he said, smiling.
+As he was about to close the door a young girl came down the passage
+toward it, and as she was apparently going to Carroll's rooms, the
+actor left the door open behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither Marion nor Carroll had noticed his final exit. They were both
+gazing at each other as though, could they find speech, they would ask
+if it were true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's come at last, Marion,&quot; Philip said, with an uncertain voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I could weep,&quot; cried Marion. &quot;Philip,&quot; she exclaimed, &quot;I would rather
+see that play succeed than any play ever written, and I would rather
+play that part in it than&mdash;Oh, Philip,&quot; she ended, &quot;I'm so proud of
+you!&quot; and rising, she threw her arms about his neck and sobbed on his
+shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carroll raised one of her hands and kissed the tips of her fingers
+gently. &quot;I owe it to you, Marion,&quot; he said&mdash;&quot;all to you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the tableau that was presented through the open door to Miss
+Helen Cabot, hurrying on her errand of restitution and goodwill, and
+with Philip's ring and watch clasped in her hand. They had not heard
+her, nor did they see her at the door, so she drew back quickly and
+ran along the passage and down the stairs into the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not need now to analyze her feelings. They were only too
+evident. For she could translate what she had just seen as meaning
+only one thing&mdash;that she had considered Philip's love so lightly that
+she had not felt it passing away from her until her neglect had killed
+it&mdash;until it was too late. And now that it was too late she felt that
+without it her life could not go on. She tried to assure herself that
+only the fact that she had lost it made it seem invaluable, but this
+thought did not comfort her&mdash;she was not deceived by it, she knew that
+at last she cared for him deeply and entirely. In her distress she
+blamed herself bitterly, but she also blamed Philip no less bitterly
+for having failed to wait for her. &quot;He might have known that I must
+love him in time,&quot; she repeated to herself again and again. She was so
+unhappy that her letter congratulating Philip on his good fortune in
+having his comedy accepted seemed to him cold and unfeeling, and as
+his success meant for him only what it meant to her, he was hurt and
+grievously disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accordingly turned the more readily to Marion, whose interest and
+enthusiasm at the rehearsals of the piece seemed in contrast most
+friendly and unselfish. He could not help but compare the attitude of
+the two girls at this time, when the failure or success of his best
+work was still undecided. He felt that as Helen took so little
+interest in his success he could not dare to trouble her with his
+anxieties concerning it, and she attributed his silence to his
+preoccupation and interest in Marion. So the two grew apart, each
+misunderstanding the other and each troubled in spirit at the other's
+indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first night of the play justified all that Marion and Wimpole had
+claimed for it, and was a great personal triumph for the new
+playwright. The audience was the typical first-night audience of the
+class which Charles Wimpole always commanded. It was brilliant,
+intelligent, and smart, and it came prepared to be pleased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From one of the upper stage-boxes Helen and Lady Gower watched the
+successful progress of the play with an anxiety almost as keen as that
+of the author. To Helen it seemed as though the giving of these lines
+to the public&mdash;these lines which he had so often read to her, and
+altered to her liking&mdash;was a desecration. It seemed as though she were
+losing him indeed&mdash;as though he now belonged to these strange people,
+all of whom were laughing and applauding his words, from the German
+Princess in the Royal box to the straight-backed Tommy in the pit.
+Instead of the painted scene before her, she saw the birch-trees by
+the river at home, where he had first read her the speech to which
+they were now listening so intensely&mdash;the speech in which the hero
+tells the girl he loves her. She remembered that at the time she had
+thought how wonderful it would be if some day some one made such a
+speech to her&mdash;not Philip, but a man she loved. And now? If Philip
+would only make that speech to her now!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came out at last, with Wimpole leading him, and bowed across a
+glaring barrier of lights at a misty but vociferous audience that was
+shouting the generous English bravo! and standing up to applaud. He
+raised his eyes to the box where Helen sat, and saw her staring down
+at the tumult, with her hands clasped under her chin. Her face was
+colorless, but lit with the excitement of the moment; and he saw that
+she was crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Gower, from behind her, was clapping her hands delightedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But, my dear Helen,&quot; she remonstrated, breathlessly, &quot;you never told
+me he was so good-looking.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said Helen, rising abruptly, &quot;he is&mdash;very good-looking.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She crossed the box to where her cloak was hanging, but instead of
+taking it down, buried her face in its folds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;My dear child!&quot; cried Lady Gower, in dismay. &quot;What is it? The
+excitement has been too much for you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, I am just happy,&quot; sobbed Helen. &quot;I am just happy for him.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We will go and tell him so, then,&quot; said Lady Gower. &quot;I am sure he
+would like to hear it from you to-night.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Philip was standing in the centre of the stage, surrounded by many
+pretty ladies and elderly men. Wimpole was hovering over him as though
+he had claims upon him by the right of discovery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when Philip saw Helen, he pushed his way toward her eagerly and
+took her hand in both of his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I am so glad, Phil,&quot; she said. She felt it all so deeply that she was
+afraid to say more, but that meant so much to her that she was sure he
+would understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had planned it very differently. For a year he had dreamed that, on
+the first night of his play, there would be a supper, and that he
+would rise and drink her health, and tell his friends and the world
+that she was the woman he loved, and that she had agreed to marry him,
+and that at last he was able, through the success of his play, to make
+her his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now they met in a crowd to shake hands, and she went her way with
+one of her grand ladies, and he was left among a group of chattering
+strangers. The great English playwright took him by the hand and in
+the hearing of all praised him gracefully and kindly. It did not
+matter to Philip whether the older playwright believed what he said or
+not; he knew it was generously meant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I envy you this,&quot; the great man was saying. &quot;Don't lose any of it,
+stay and listen to all they have to say. You will never live through
+the first night of your first play but once.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, I hear them,&quot; said Philip, nervously; &quot;they are all too kind.
+But I don't hear the voice I have been listening for,&quot; he added, in a
+whisper. The older man pressed his hand again quickly. &quot;My dear boy,&quot;
+he said, &quot;I am sorry.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Thank you,&quot; Philip answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within a week he had forgotten the great man's fine words of praise,
+but the clasp of his hand he cherished always.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen met Marion as she was leaving the stage-door and stopped to
+congratulate her on her success in the new part. Marion was radiant.
+To Helen she seemed obstreperously happy and jubilant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And, Marion,&quot; Helen began, bravely, &quot;I also want to congratulate you
+on something else. You&mdash;you&mdash;neither of you have told me yet,&quot; she
+stammered, &quot;but I am such an old friend of both that I will not be
+kept out of the secret.&quot; At these words Marion's air of triumphant
+gayety vanished; she regarded Helen's troubled eyes closely and
+kindly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What secret, Helen?&quot; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I came to the door of Philip's room the other day when you did not
+know I was there,&quot; Helen answered, &quot;and I could not help seeing how
+matters were. And I do congratulate you both&mdash;and wish you&mdash;oh, such
+happiness!&quot; Without a word Marion dragged her back down the passage to
+her dressing-room, and closed the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now tell me what you mean,&quot; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I am sorry if I discovered anything you didn't want known yet,&quot; said
+Helen, &quot;but the door was open. Mr. Wimpole had just left you and had
+not shut it, and I could not help seeing.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marion interrupted her with an eager exclamation of enlightenment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, you were there, then,&quot; she cried. &quot;And you?&quot; she asked,
+eagerly&mdash;&quot;you thought Phil cared for me&mdash;that we are engaged, and it
+hurt you; you are sorry? Tell me,&quot; she demanded, &quot;are you sorry?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen drew back and stretched out her hand toward the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How can you!&quot; she exclaimed, indignantly. &quot;You have no right.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marion stood between her and the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I have every right,&quot; she said, &quot;to help my friends, and I want to
+help you and Philip. And, indeed, I do hope you <i>are</i> sorry. I
+hope you are miserable. And I'm glad you saw me kiss him. That was the
+first and the last time, and I did it because I was happy and glad for
+him; and because I love him, too, but not in the least in the way he
+loves you. No one ever loved any one as he loves you. And it's time
+you found it out. And if I have helped to make you find it out, I'm
+glad, and I don't care how much I hurt you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Marion!&quot; exclaimed Helen, &quot;what does it mean? Do you mean that you
+are not engaged; that&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Certainly not,&quot; Marion answered. &quot;I am going to marry Reggie. It is
+you that Philip loves, and I am very sorry for you that you don't love
+him.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen clasped Marion's hands in both of hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But, Marion!&quot; she cried, &quot;I do, oh, I do!&quot;
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+There was a thick yellow fog the next morning, and with it rain and a
+sticky, depressing dampness which crept through the window-panes, and
+which neither a fire nor blazing gas-jets could overcome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Philip stood in front of the fireplace with the morning papers piled
+high on the centre-table and scattered over the room about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had read them all, and he knew now what it was to wake up famous,
+but he could not taste it. Now that it had come it meant nothing, and
+that it was so complete a triumph only made it the harder. In his most
+optimistic dreams he had never imagined success so satisfying as the
+reality had proved to be; but in his dreams Helen had always held the
+chief part, and without her, success seemed only to mock him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted to lay it all before her, to say, &quot;If you are pleased, I am
+happy. If you are satisfied, then I am content. It was done for you,
+and I am wholly yours, and all that I do is yours.&quot; And, as though in
+answer to his thoughts, there was an instant knock at the door, and
+Helen entered the room and stood smiling at him across the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were lit with excitement, and spoke with many emotions, and
+her cheeks were brilliant with color. He had never seen her look more
+beautiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Why, Helen!&quot; he exclaimed, &quot;how good of you to come. Is there
+anything wrong? Is anything the matter?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to speak, but faltered, and smiled at him appealingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What is it?&quot; he asked in great concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen drew in her breath quickly, and at the same moment motioned him
+away&mdash;and he stepped back and stood watching her in much perplexity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With her eyes fixed on his she raised her hands to her head, and her
+fingers fumbled with the knot of her veil. She pulled it loose, and
+then, with a sudden courage, lifted her hat proudly, as though it were
+a coronet, and placed it between them on his table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Philip,&quot; she stammered, with the tears in her voice and eyes, &quot;if you
+will let me&mdash;I have come to stay.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The table was no longer between them. He caught her in his arms and
+kissed her face and her uncovered head again and again. From outside
+the rain beat drearily and the fog rolled through the street, but
+inside before the fire the two young people sat close together, asking
+eager questions or sitting in silence, staring at the flames with
+wondering, happy eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lion and the Unicorn saw them only once again. It was a month
+later when they stopped in front of the shop in a four-wheeler, with
+their baggage mixed on top of it, and steamer-labels pasted over every
+trunk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And, oh, Prentiss!&quot; Carroll called from the cab-window. &quot;I came near
+forgetting. I promised to gild the Lion and the Unicorn if I won out
+in London. So have it done, please, and send the bill to me. For I've
+won out all right.&quot; And then he shut the door of the cab, and they
+drove away forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Nice gal, that,&quot; growled the Lion. &quot;I always liked her. I am glad
+they've settled it at last.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Unicorn sighed sentimentally. &quot;The other one's worth two of her,&quot;
+he said.
+</p>
+
+<a name="204"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+</p>
+
+<p class="chapternumber">
+A SKETCH CONTAINING THREE POINTS OF VIEW
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i><big>What the Poet Laureate wrote.</big></i>
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;There are girls in the Gold Reef City,</p>
+<p class="i2">There are mothers and children too!</p>
+<p>And they cry 'Hurry up for pity!'</p>
+<p class="i2">So what can a brave man do?</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;I suppose we were wrong, were mad men,</p>
+<p class="i2">Still I think at the Judgment Day,</p>
+<p>When God sifts the good from the bad men,</p>
+<p class="i2">There'll be something more to say.&quot;</p></div></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="ctr">
+<i><big>What more the Lord Chief Justice found to say.</big></i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;In this case we know the immediate consequence of your crime. It has
+been the loss of human life, it has been the disturbance of public
+peace, it has been the creation of a certain sense of distrust of
+public professions and of public faith.... The sentence of this Court
+therefore is that, as to you, Leander Starr Jameson, you be confined
+for a period of fifteen months without hard labor; that you, Sir John
+Willoughby, have ten months' imprisonment; and that you, etc., etc.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+                                          <i>London Times, July 29th.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="ctr">
+<i><big>What the Hon. &quot;Reggie&quot; Blake thought about it.</big></i>
+</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">H.M. Holloway Prison</span>,<br>
+&quot;July 28th.</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I am going to keep a diary while I am in prison, that is, if they
+will let me. I never kept one before because I hadn't the time; when I
+was home on leave there was too much going on to bother about it, and
+when I was up country I always came back after a day's riding so tired
+that I was too sleepy to write anything. And now that I have the time,
+I won't have anything to write about. I fancy that more things
+happened to me to-day than are likely to happen again for the next
+eight months, so I will make this day take up as much room in the
+diary as it can. I am writing this on the back of the paper the Warder
+uses for his official reports, while he is hunting up cells to put us
+in. We came down on him rather unexpectedly and he is nervous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion, but now I
+see that somehow I never really did think I would be in here, and all
+my friends outside, and everything going on just the same as though I
+wasn't alive somewhere. It's like telling yourself that your horse
+can't possibly pull off a race, so that you won't mind so much if he
+doesn't, but you always feel just as bad when he comes in a loser. A
+man can't fool himself into thinking one way when he is hoping the
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But I am glad it is over, and settled. It was a great bore not
+knowing your luck and having the thing hanging over your head every
+morning when you woke up. Indeed it it was quite a relief when the
+counsel got all through arguing over those proclamations, and the
+Chief Justice summed up, but I nearly went to sleep when I found he
+was going all over it again to the jury. I didn't understand about
+those proclamations myself and I'll lay a fiver the jury didn't
+either. The Colonel said he didn't. I couldn't keep my mind on what
+Russell was explaining about, and I got to thinking how much old
+Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in 'Alice in Wonderland' when
+they tried the knave of spades for stealing the tarts. He has just the
+same sort of a beak and the same sort of a wig, and I wondered why he
+had his wig powdered and the others didn't. Pollock's wig had a hole
+in the top; you could see it when he bent over to take notes. He was
+always taking notes. I don't believe he understood about those
+proclamations either; he never seemed to listen, anyway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The Chief Justice certainly didn't love us very much, that's sure;
+and he wasn't going to let anybody else love us either. I felt quite
+the Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in defense. He made
+it sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi heroes and ought to be
+promoted and have medals, but when Lord Russell started in to read the
+Riot Act at us I began to believe that hanging was too good for me.
+I'm sure I never knew I was disturbing the peace of nations; it seems
+like such a large order for a subaltern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But the worst was when they made us stand up before all those people
+to be sentenced. I must say I felt shaky about the knees then, not
+because I was afraid of what was coming, but because it was the first
+time I had ever been pointed out before people, and made to feel
+ashamed. And having those girls there, too, looking at one. That
+wasn't just fair to us. It made me feel about ten years old, and I
+remembered how the Head Master used to call me to his desk and say,
+'Blake Senior, two pages of Horace and keep in bounds for a week.' And
+then I heard our names and the months, and my name and 'eight months'
+imprisonment,' and there was a bustle and murmur and the tipstaves
+cried, 'Order in the Court,' and the Judges stood up and shook out
+their big red skirts as though they were shaking off the contamination
+of our presence and rustled away, and I sat down, wondering how long
+eight months was, and wishing they'd given me as much as they gave
+Jameson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how sorry
+they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left us. I
+thought they might have waited with us and been a little late for
+dinner just that once; but no one waited except a lot of costers
+outside whom we did not know. It was eight o'clock and still quite
+light when we came out, and there was a line of four-wheelers and a
+hansom ready for us. I'd been hoping they would take us out by the
+Strand entrance, just because I'd liked to have seen it again, but
+they marched us instead through the main quadrangle&mdash;a beastly, gloomy
+courtyard that echoed, and out, into Carey Street&mdash;such a dirty,
+gloomy street. The costers and clerks set up a sort of a cheer when we
+came out, and one of them cried, 'God bless you, sir,' to the doctor,
+but I was sorry they cheered. It seemed like kicking against the
+umpire's decision. The Colonel and I got into a hansom together and we
+trotted off into Chancery Lane and turned into Holborn. Most of the
+shops were closed, and the streets looked empty, but there was a
+lighted clock-face over Mooney's public house, and the hands stood at
+a quarter past eight. I didn't know where Holloway was, and was hoping
+they would have to take us through some decent streets to reach it;
+but we didn't see a part of the city that meant anything to me, or
+that I would choose to travel through again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the streets
+knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the enamel card on
+the back of the apron. I suppose I read, 'Two-wheeled hackney
+carriage: if hired and discharged within the four-mile limit, 1<i>s</i>.'
+at least a hundred times. I got more sensible after a bit, and when we
+had turned into Gray's Inn Road I looked up and saw a tram in front of
+us with 'Holloway Road and King's X,' painted on the steps, and the
+Colonel saw it about the same time I fancy, for we each looked at the
+other, and the Colonel raised his eyebrows. It showed us that at least
+the cabman knew where we were going.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;'They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first, I
+think,' the Colonel said. 'I'd like to have had a look around,
+wouldn't you? This isn't a cheerful neighborhood, is it?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew's Gardens, and a
+crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and laughing over
+nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the only pleasant
+sight in the ride. I had quite a turn when we came to the New Hospital
+just beyond, for I thought it was Holloway, and it came over me what
+eight months in such a place meant. I believe if I hadn't pulled
+myself up sharp, I'd have jumped out into the street and run away. It
+didn't last more than a few seconds, but I don't want any more like
+them. I was afraid, afraid&mdash;there's no use pretending it was anything
+else. I was in a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook,
+as I have seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and
+trembles down his sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could stand; I
+felt sure that I couldn't do it&mdash;that I'd go mad if they tried to
+force me. The idea was so terrible&mdash;of not being master over your own
+legs and arms, to have your flesh and blood and what brains God gave
+you buried alive in stone walls as though they were in a safe with a
+time-lock on the door set for eight months ahead. There's nothing to
+be afraid of in a stone wall really, but it's the idea of the
+thing&mdash;of not being free to move about, especially to a chap that has
+always lived in the open as I have, and has had men under him. It was
+no wonder I was in a funk for a minute. I'll bet a fiver the others
+were, too, if they'll only own up to it. I don't mean for long, but
+just when the idea first laid hold of them. Anyway, it was a good
+lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I'll whistle,
+or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful. And I
+don't mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail
+counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or measuring how
+many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that way. I mean to
+sit tight and think of all the good times I've had, and go over them
+in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and remember
+who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that; I'll go
+over house-parties I have been on, and the times I've had in the
+Riviera, and scouting-parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were
+taking Matabele Land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They say that if you're good here they give you things to read after
+a month or two, and then I can read up all those instructive books
+that a fellow never does read until he's laid up in bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But that's crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened to-day.
+We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western Terminus, and I
+half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming or going away: I
+would like to have waved my hand to him. It would have been fun to
+have seen his surprise the next morning when he read in the paper that
+he had been bowing to jail-birds, and then I would like to have
+cheated the tipstaves out of just one more friendly good-by. I wanted
+to say good-by to somebody, but I really couldn't feel sorry to see
+the last of any one of those we passed in the streets&mdash;they were such
+a dirty, unhappy-looking lot, and the railroad wall ran on forever
+apparently, and we might have been in a foreign country for all we
+knew of it. There were just sooty gray brick tenements and gas-works
+on one side, and the railroad cutting on the other, and semaphores and
+telegraph wires overhead, and smoke and grime everywhere, it looked
+exactly like the sort of street that should lead to a prison, and it
+seemed a pity to take a smart hansom and a good cob into it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It was just a bit different from our last ride together&mdash;when we rode
+through the night from Krugers-Dorp with hundreds of horses' hoofs
+pounding on the soft veldt behind us, and the carbines clanking
+against the stirrups as they swung on the sling belts. We were being
+hunted then, harassed on either side, scurrying for our lives like the
+Derby Dog in a race-track when every one hoots him and no man steps
+out to help&mdash;we were sick for sleep, sick for food, lashed by the
+rain, and we knew that we were beaten; but we were free still, and
+under open skies with the derricks of the Rand rising like gallows on
+our left, and Johannesburg only fifteen miles away.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<a name="214"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+MISS DELAMAR'S UNDERSTUDY
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+A young man runs two chances of marrying the wrong woman. He marries
+her because she is beautiful, and because he persuades himself that
+every other lovable attribute must be associated with such beauty, or
+because she is in love with him. If this latter is the case, she gives
+certain values to what he thinks and to what he says which no other
+woman gives, and so he observes to himself, &quot;This is the woman who
+best understands <i>me</i>.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You can reverse this and say that young women run the same risks, but
+as men are seldom beautiful, the first danger is eliminated. Women
+still marry men, however, because they are loved by them, and in time
+the woman grows to depend upon this love and to need it, and is not
+content without it, and so she consents to marry the man for no other
+reason than because he cares for her. For if a dog, even, runs up to
+you wagging his tail and acting as though he were glad to see you, you
+pat him on the head and say, &quot;What a nice dog.&quot; You like him because
+he likes you, and not because he belongs to a fine breed of animal and
+could take blue ribbons at bench shows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is the story of a young man who was in love with a beautiful
+woman, and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other
+things. When she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled
+and looked at her and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow
+uninteresting, he would take up his hat and go away, and so he never
+knew how very uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given
+time enough in which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered
+that, were he married to her, he could not take up his hat and go away
+when she became uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not
+brilliant, could not be smiled away either. They would rise up and
+greet him every morning, and would be the last thing he would hear at
+night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Delamar's beauty was so conspicuous that to pretend not to notice
+it was more foolish than well-bred. You got along more easily and
+simply by accepting it at once, and referring to it, and enjoying its
+effect upon other people. To go out of one's way to talk of other
+things when every one, even Miss Delamar herself, knew what must be
+uppermost in your mind, always seemed as absurd as to strain a point
+in politeness, and to pretend not to notice that a guest had upset his
+claret, or any other embarrassing fact. For Miss Delamar's beauty was
+so distinctly embarrassing that this was the only way to meet it&mdash;to
+smile and pass it over and to try, if possible, to get on to something
+else. It was on account of this extraordinary quality in her
+appearance that every one considered her beauty as something which
+transcended her private ownership, and which belonged by right to the
+polite world at large, to any one who could appreciate it properly,
+just as though it were a sunset or a great work of art or of nature.
+And so, when she gave away her photographs no one thought it meant
+anything more serious than a recognition on her part of the fact that
+it would have been unkind and selfish in her not to have shared the
+enjoyment of so much loveliness with others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Consequently, when she sent one of her largest and most aggravatingly
+beautiful photographs to young Stuart, it was no sign that she cared
+especially for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How much young Stuart cared for Miss Delamar, however, was an open
+question and a condition yet to be discovered. That he cared for some
+one, and cared so much that his imagination had begun to picture the
+awful joys and responsibilities of marriage, was only too well known
+to himself, and was a state of mind already suspected by his friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart was a member of the New York bar, and the distinguished law
+firm to which he belonged was very proud of its junior member, and
+treated him with indulgence and affection, which was not unmixed with
+amusement. For Stuart's legal knowledge had been gathered in many odd
+corners of the globe, and was various and peculiar. It had been his
+pleasure to study the laws by which men ruled other men in every
+condition of life, and under every sun. The regulations of a new
+mining camp were fraught with as great interest to him as the
+accumulated precedents of the English Constitution, and he had
+investigated the rulings of the mixed courts of Egypt and of the
+government of the little Dutch republic near the Cape with as keen an
+effort to comprehend as he had shown in studying the laws of the
+American colonies and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was not always serious, and it sometimes happened that after he
+had arrived at some queer little island where the native prince and
+the English governor sat in judgment together, his interest in the
+intricacies of their laws would give way to the more absorbing
+occupation of chasing wild boar or shooting at tigers from the top of
+an elephant. And so he was not only regarded as an authority on many
+forms of government and of law, into which no one else had ever taken
+the trouble to look, but his books on big game were eagerly read and
+his articles in the magazines were earnestly discussed, whether they
+told of the divorce laws of Dakota, and the legal rights of widows in
+Cambodia, or the habits of the Mexican lion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart loved his work better than he knew, but how well he loved Miss
+Delamar neither he nor his friends could tell. She was the most
+beautiful and lovely creature that he had ever seen, and of that only
+was he certain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart was sitting in the club one day when the conversation turned to
+matrimony. He was among his own particular friends, the men before
+whom he could speak seriously or foolishly without fear of being
+misunderstood or of having what he said retold and spoiled in the
+telling. There was Seldon, the actor, and Rives, who painted pictures,
+and young Sloane, who travelled for pleasure and adventure, and
+Weimer, who stayed at home and wrote for the reviews. They were all
+bachelors, and very good friends, and jealously guarded their little
+circle from the intrusion of either men or women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Of course the chief objection to marriage,&quot; Stuart said&mdash;it was the
+very day in which the picture had been sent to his rooms&mdash;&quot;is the old
+one that you can't tell anything about it until you are committed to
+it forever. It is a very silly thing to discuss even, because there is
+no way of bringing it about, but there really should be some sort of a
+preliminary trial. As the man says in the play, 'You wouldn't buy a
+watch without testing it first.' You don't buy a hat even without
+putting it on, and finding out whether it is becoming or not, or
+whether your peculiar style of ugliness can stand it. And yet men go
+gayly off and get married, and make the most awful promises, and alter
+their whole order of life, and risk the happiness of some lovely
+creature on trust, as it were, knowing absolutely nothing of the new
+conditions and responsibilities of the life before them. Even a
+river-pilot has to serve an apprenticeship before he gets a license,
+and yet we are allowed to take just as great risks, and only because
+we <i>want</i> to take them. It's awful, and it's all wrong.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I don't see what one is going to do about it,&quot; commented young
+Sloane, lightly, &quot;except to get divorced. That road is always open.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sloane was starting the next morning for the Somali Country, in
+Abyssinia, to shoot rhinoceros, and his interest in matrimony was in
+consequence somewhat slight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It isn't the fear of the responsibilities that keeps Stuart, nor any
+one of us back,&quot; said Weimer, contemptuously. &quot;It's because we're
+selfish. That's the whole truth of the matter. We love our work, or
+our pleasure, or to knock about the world, better than we do any
+particular woman. When one of us comes to love the woman best, his
+conscience won't trouble him long about the responsibilities of
+marrying her.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Not at all,&quot; said Stuart. &quot;I am quite sincere; I maintain that there
+should be a preliminary stage. Of course there can't be, and it's
+absurd to think of it, but it would save a lot of unhappiness.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well,&quot; said Seldon, dryly, &quot;when you've invented a way to prevent
+marriage from being a lottery, let me know, will you?&quot; He stood up and
+smiled nervously. &quot;Any of you coming to see us to-night?&quot; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That's so,&quot; exclaimed Weimer; &quot;I forgot. It's the first night of 'A
+Fool and His Money,' isn't it? Of course we're coming.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I told them to put a box away for you in case you wanted it,&quot; Seldon
+continued. &quot;Don't expect much. It's a silly piece, and I've a silly
+part, and I'm very bad in it. You must come around to supper, and tell
+me where I'm bad in it, and we will talk it over. You're coming,
+Stuart?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;My dear old man,&quot; said Stuart, reproachfully, &quot;of course I am. I've
+had my seats for the last three weeks. Do you suppose I could miss
+hearing you mispronounce all the Hindostanee I've taught you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, good-night then,&quot; said the actor, waving his hand to his
+friends as he moved away. &quot;'We, who are about to die, salute you!'&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Good luck to you,&quot; said Sloane, holding up his glass. &quot;To the Fool
+and His Money,&quot; he laughed. He turned to the table again, and sounded
+the bell for the waiter. &quot;Now let's send him a telegram and wish him
+success, and all sign it,&quot; he said, &quot;and don't you fellows tell him
+that I wasn't in front to-night. I've got to go to a dinner the
+Travellers' Club are giving me.&quot; There was a protesting chorus of
+remonstrance. &quot;Oh, I don't like it any better than you do,&quot; said
+Sloane, &quot;but I'll get away, early and join you before the play's over.
+No one in the Travellers' Club, you see, has ever travelled farther
+from New York than London or the Riviera, and so when a member starts
+for Abyssinia they give him a dinner, and he has to take himself very
+seriously indeed, and cry with Seldon, 'I, who am about to die, salute
+you!' If that man there was any use,&quot; he added, interrupting himself
+and pointing with his glass at Stuart, &quot;he'd pack up his things
+to-night and come with me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, don't urge him,&quot; remonstrated Weimer, who had travelled all over
+the world in imagination, with the aid of globes and maps, but never
+had got any farther from home than Montreal. &quot;We can't spare Stuart.
+He has to stop here and invent a preliminary marriage state, so that
+if he finds he doesn't like a girl, he can leave her before it is too
+late.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You sail at seven, I believe, and from Hoboken, don't you?&quot; asked
+Stuart, undisturbed. &quot;If you'll start at eleven from the New York
+side, I think I'll go with you, but I hate getting up early; and then
+you see&mdash;I know what dangers lurk in Abyssinia, but who could tell
+what might not happen to him in Hoboken?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Stuart returned to his room, he found a large package set upright
+in an armchair and enveloped by many wrappings; but the handwriting on
+the outside told him at once from whom it came and what it might be,
+and he pounced upon it eagerly and tore it from its covers. The
+photograph was a very large one, and the likeness to the original so
+admirable that the face seemed to smile and radiate with all the
+loveliness and beauty of Miss Delamar herself. Stuart beamed upon it
+with genuine surprise and pleasure, and exclaimed delightedly to
+himself. There was a living quality about the picture which made him
+almost speak to it, and thank Miss Delamar through it for the pleasure
+she had given him and the honor she had bestowed. He was proud,
+flattered, and triumphant, and while he walked about the room deciding
+where he would place it, and holding the picture respectfully before
+him, he smiled upon it with grateful satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He decided against his dressing-table as being too intimate a place
+for it, and so carried the picture on from his bedroom to the
+dining-room beyond, where he set it among his silver on the sideboard.
+But so little of his time was spent in this room that he concluded he
+would derive but little pleasure from it there, and so bore it back
+again into his library, where there were many other photographs and
+portraits, and where to other eyes than his own it would be less
+conspicuous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried it first in one place and then in another; but in each
+position the picture predominated and asserted itself so markedly,
+that Stuart gave up the idea of keeping it inconspicuous, and placed
+it prominently over the fireplace, where it reigned supreme above
+every other object in the room. It was not only the most conspicuous
+object there, but the living quality which it possessed in so marked a
+degree, and which was due to its naturalness of pose and the
+excellence of the likeness, made it permeate the place like a presence
+and with the individuality of a real person. Stuart observed this
+effect with amused interest, and noted also that the photographs of
+other women had become commonplace in comparison like lithographs in a
+shop-window, and that the more masculine accessories of a bachelor's
+apartment had grown suddenly aggressive and out of keeping. The
+liquor-case and the racks of arms and of barbarous weapons which he
+had collected with such pride seemed to have lost their former value
+and meaning, and he instinctively began to gather up the mass of books
+and maps and photographs and pipes and gloves which lay scattered upon
+the table, and to put them in their proper place, or to shove them out
+of sight altogether. &quot;If I'm to live up to that picture,&quot; he thought,
+&quot;I must see that George keeps this room in better order&mdash;and I must
+stop wandering round here in my bath-robe.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mind continued on the picture while he was dressing, and he was so
+absorbed in it and in analyzing the effect it had had upon him, that
+his servant spoke twice before he heard him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No,&quot; he answered, &quot;I shall not dine here to-night.&quot; Dining at home
+was with him a very simple affair, and a somewhat lonely one, and he
+avoided it almost nightly by indulging himself in a more expensive
+fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even as he spoke an idea came to Stuart which made him reconsider
+his determination, and which struck him as so amusing, that he stopped
+pulling at his tie and smiled delightedly at himself in the glass
+before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, still smiling, &quot;I will dine here to-night. Get me
+anything in a hurry. You need not wait now; go get the dinner up as
+soon as possible.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The effect which the photograph of Miss Delamar had upon him, and the
+transformation it had accomplished in his room, had been as great as
+would have marked the presence there of the girl herself. While
+considering this it had come to Stuart, like a flash of inspiration,
+that here was a way by which he could test the responsibilities and
+conditions of married life without compromising either himself or the
+girl to whom he would suppose himself to be married.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I will put that picture at the head of the table,&quot; he said, &quot;and I
+will play that it is she herself, her own beautiful, lovely self, and
+I will talk to her and exchange views with her, and make her answer me
+just as she would were we actually married and settled.&quot; He looked at
+his watch and found it was just seven o'clock. &quot;I will begin now,&quot; he
+said, &quot;and I will keep up the delusion until midnight. To-night is the
+best time to try the experiment, because the picture is new now, and
+its influence will be all the more real. In a few weeks it may have
+lost some of its freshness and reality and will have become one of the
+fixtures in the room.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart decided that under these new conditions it would be more
+pleasant to dine at Delmonico's, and he was on the point of asking the
+Picture what she thought of it, when he remembered that while it had
+been possible for him to make a practise of dining at that place as a
+bachelor, he could not now afford so expensive a luxury, and he
+decided that he had better economize in that particular and go instead
+to one of the <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> restaurants in the neighborhood. He
+regretted not having thought of this sooner, for he did not care to
+dine at a <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> in evening dress, as in some places it
+rendered him conspicuous. So, sooner than have this happen he decided
+to dine at home, as he had originally intended when he first thought
+of attempting this experiment, and then conducted the Picture in to
+dinner and placed her in an armchair facing him, with the candles full
+upon the face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now this is something like,&quot; he exclaimed, joyously. &quot;I can't imagine
+anything better than this. Here we are all to ourselves with no one to
+bother us, with no chaperon, or chaperon's husband either, which is
+generally worse. Why is it, my dear,&quot; he asked, gayly, in a tone he
+considered affectionate and husbandly, &quot;that the attractive chaperons
+are always handicapped by such stupid husbands, and vice versa?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If that is true,&quot; replied the Picture, or replied Stuart, rather, for
+the Picture, &quot;I cannot be a very attractive chaperon.&quot; Stuart bowed
+politely at this, and then considered the point it had raised as to
+whether he had, in assuming both characters, the right to pay himself
+compliments. He decided against himself in this particular instance,
+but agreed that he was not responsible for anything the Picture might
+say, so long as he sincerely and fairly tried to make it answer him as
+he thought the original would do under like circumstances. From what
+he knew of the original under other conditions, he decided that he
+could give a very close imitation of her point of view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart's interest in his dinner was so real that he found himself
+neglecting his wife, and he had to pull himself up to his duty with a
+sharp reproof. After smiling back at her for a moment or two until his
+servant had again left them alone, he asked her to tell him what she
+had been doing during the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, nothing very important,&quot; said the Picture. &quot;I went shopping in
+the morning and&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart stopped himself and considered this last remark doubtfully.
+&quot;Now, how do I know she would go shopping?&quot; he asked himself. &quot;People
+from Harlem and women who like bargain-counters, and who eat chocolate
+meringue for lunch, and then stop in at a continuous performance, go
+shopping. It must be the comic-paper sort of wives who go about
+matching shades and buying hooks and eyes. Yes, I must have made Miss
+Delamar's understudy misrepresent her. I beg your pardon, my dear,&quot; he
+said aloud to the Picture. &quot;You did <i>not</i> go shopping this
+morning. You probably went to a woman's luncheon somewhere. Tell me
+about that.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, yes, I went to lunch with the Antwerps,&quot; said the Picture, &quot;and
+they had that Russian woman there who is getting up subscriptions for
+the Siberian prisoners. It's rather fine of her, because it exiles her
+from Russia. And she is a princess.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That's nothing,&quot; Stuart interrupted; &quot;they're all princesses when you
+see them on Broadway.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I beg your pardon,&quot; said the Picture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's of no consequence,&quot; said Stuart, apologetically, &quot;it's a comic
+song. I forgot you didn't like comic songs. Well&mdash;go on.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, then I went to a tea, and then I stopped in to hear Madame Ruvier
+read a paper on the Ethics of Ibsen, and she&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart's voice had died away gradually, and he caught himself
+wondering whether he had told George to lay in a fresh supply of
+cigars. &quot;I beg your pardon,&quot; he said, briskly, &quot;I was listening, but I
+was just wondering whether I had any cigars left. You were saying that
+you had been at Madame Ruvier's, and&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I am afraid that you were not interested,&quot; said the Picture. &quot;Never
+mind, it's my fault. Sometimes I think I ought to do things of more
+interest, so that I should have something to talk to you about when
+you come home.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart wondered at what hour he would come home now that he was
+married. As a bachelor he had been in the habit of stopping on his way
+up-town from the law-office at the club, or to take tea at the houses
+of the different girls he liked. Of course he could not do that now as
+a married man. He would instead have to limit his calls to married
+women, as all the other married men of his acquaintance did. But at
+the moment he could not think of any attractive married women who
+would like his dropping in on them in such a familiar manner, and the
+other sort did not as yet appeal to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seated himself in front of the coal fire in the library, with the
+Picture in a chair close beside him, and as he puffed pleasantly on
+his cigar he thought how well this suited him, and how delightful it
+was to find content in so simple and continuing a pleasure. He could
+almost feel the pressure of his wife's hand as it lay in his own, as
+they sat in silent sympathy looking into the friendly glow of the
+fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a long, pleasant pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They're giving Sloane a dinner to-night at the 'Travellers',&quot; Stuart
+said, at last, &quot;in honor of his going to Abyssinia.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart pondered for some short time as to what sort of a reply Miss
+Delamar's understudy ought to make to this innocent remark. He
+recalled the fact that on numerous occasions the original had shown
+not only a lack of knowledge of far-away places, but, what was more
+trying, a lack of interest as well. For the moment he could not see
+her robbed of her pretty environment and tramping through undiscovered
+countries at his side. So the Picture's reply, when it came, was
+strictly in keeping with several remarks which Miss Delamar herself
+had made to him in the past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said the Picture, politely, &quot;and where is Abyssinia&mdash;in India,
+isn't it?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, not exactly,&quot; corrected Stuart, mildly; &quot;you pass it on your way
+to India, though, as you go through the Red Sea. Sloane is taking
+Winchesters with him and a double express and a 'five fifty.' He wants
+to test their penetration. I think myself that the express is the
+best, but he says Selous and Chanler think very highly of the
+Winchester. I don't know, I never shot a rhinoceros. The time I killed
+that elephant,&quot; he went on, pointing at two tusks that stood with some
+assegais in a corner, &quot;I used an express, and I had to let go with
+both barrels. I suppose, though, if I'd needed a third shot, I'd have
+wished it was a Winchester. He was charging the smoke, you see, and I
+couldn't get away because I'd caught my foot&mdash;but I told you about
+that, didn't I?&quot; Stuart interrupted himself to ask politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said the Picture, cheerfully, &quot;I remember it very well; it was
+very foolish of you.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart straightened himself with a slightly injured air and avoided
+the Picture's eye. He had been stopped midway in what was one of his
+favorite stories, and it took a brief space of time for him to recover
+himself, and to sink back again into the pleasant lethargy in which he
+had been basking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Still,&quot; he said, &quot;I think the express is the better gun.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, is an 'express' a gun?&quot; exclaimed the Picture, with sudden
+interest. &quot;Of course, I might have known.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart turned in his chair, and surveyed the Picture in some surprise.
+&quot;But, my dear girl,&quot; he remonstrated, kindly, &quot;why didn't you ask, if
+you didn't know what I was talking about? What did you suppose it
+was?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I didn't know,&quot; said the Picture; &quot;I thought it was something to do
+with his luggage. Abyssinia sounds so far away,&quot; she explained,
+smiling sweetly. &quot;You can't expect one to be interested in such queer
+places, can you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No,&quot; Stuart answered, reluctantly, and looking steadily at the fire,
+&quot;I suppose not. But you see, my dear,&quot; he said, &quot;I'd have gone with
+him if I hadn't married you, and so I am naturally interested in his
+outfit. They wanted me to make a comparative study of the little
+semi-independent states down there, and of how far the Italian
+Government allows them to rule themselves. That's what I was to have
+done.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Picture hastened to reassure him. &quot;Oh, you mustn't think,&quot; she
+exclaimed, quickly, &quot;that I mean to keep you at home. I love to
+travel, too. I want you to go on exploring places just as you've
+always done, only now I will go with you. We might do the Cathedral
+towns, for instance.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The what?&quot; gasped Stuart, raising his head. &quot;Oh, yes, of course,&quot; he
+added, hurriedly, sinking back into his chair with a slightly
+bewildered expression. &quot;That would be very nice. Perhaps your mother
+would like to go, too; it's not a dangerous expedition, is it? I
+<i>was</i> thinking of taking you on a trip through the South
+Seas&mdash;but I suppose the Cathedral towns are just as exciting. Or we
+might even penetrate as far into the interior as the English lakes and
+read Wordsworth and Coleridge as we go.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Delamar's understudy observed him closely for a moment, but he
+made no sign, and so she turned her eyes again to the fire with a
+slightly troubled look. She had not a strong sense of humor, but she
+was very beautiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart's conscience troubled him for the next few moments, and he
+endeavored to make up for his impatience of the moment before by
+telling the Picture how particularly well she was looking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It seems almost selfish to keep it all to myself,&quot; he mused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You don't mean,&quot; inquired the Picture, with tender anxiety, &quot;that you
+want any one else here, do you? I'm sure I could be content to spend
+every evening like this. I've had enough of going out and talking to
+people I don't care about. Two seasons,&quot; she added, with the superior
+air of one who has put away childish things, &quot;was quite enough of it
+for me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I never took it as seriously as that,&quot; said Stuart, &quot;but, of
+course, I don't want any one else here to spoil our evening. It is
+perfect.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He assured himself that it <i>was</i> perfect, but he wondered what
+was the loyal thing for a married couple to do when the conversation
+came to a dead stop. And did the conversation come to a stop because
+they preferred to sit in silent sympathy and communion, or because
+they had nothing interesting to talk about? Stuart doubted if silence
+was the truest expression of the most perfect confidence and sympathy.
+He generally found when he was interested, that either he or his
+companion talked all the time. It was when he was bored that he sat
+silent. But it was probably different with married people. Possibly
+they thought of each other during these pauses, and of their own
+affairs and interests, and then he asked himself how many interests
+could one fairly retain with which the other had nothing to do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I suppose,&quot; thought Stuart, &quot;that I had better compromise and read
+aloud. Should you like me to read aloud?&quot; he asked, doubtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Picture brightened perceptibly at this, and said that she thought
+that would be charming. &quot;We might make it quite instructive,&quot; she
+suggested, entering eagerly into the idea. &quot;We ought to agree to read
+so many pages every night. Suppose we begin with Guizot's 'History of
+France.' I have always meant to read that, the illustrations look so
+interesting.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, we might do that,&quot; assented Stuart, doubtfully. &quot;It is in six
+volumes, isn't it? Suppose now, instead,&quot; he suggested, with an
+impartial air, &quot;we begin that to-morrow night, and go this evening to
+see Seldon's new play, 'The Fool and His Money.' It's not too late,
+and he has saved a box for us, and Weimer and Rives and Sloane will be
+there, and&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Picture's beautiful face settled for just an instant in an
+expression of disappointment. &quot;Of course,&quot; she replied, slowly, &quot;if
+you wish it. But I thought you said,&quot; she went on with a sweet smile,
+&quot;that this was perfect. Now you want to go out again. Isn't this
+better than a hot theatre? You might put up with it for one evening,
+don't you think?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Put up with it!&quot; exclaimed Stuart, enthusiastically; &quot;I could spend
+every evening so. It was only a suggestion. It wasn't that I wanted to
+go so much as that I thought Seldon might be a little hurt if I
+didn't. But I can tell him you were not feeling very well, and that we
+will come some other evening. He generally likes to have us there on
+the first night, that's all. But he'll understand.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh,&quot; said the Picture, &quot;if you put it in the light of a duty to your
+friend, of course we will go&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Not at all,&quot; replied Stuart, heartily; &quot;I will read something. I
+should really prefer it. How would you like something of Browning's?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, I read all of Browning once,&quot; said the Picture. &quot;I think I should
+like something new.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart gasped at this, but said nothing, and began turning over the
+books on the centre-table. He selected one of the monthly magazines,
+and choosing a story which neither of them had read, sat down
+comfortably in front of the fire, and finished it without interruption
+and to the satisfaction of the Picture and himself. The story had made
+the half hour pass very pleasantly, and they both commented on it with
+interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I had an experience once myself something like that,&quot; said Stuart,
+with a pleased smile of recollection; &quot;it happened in Paris&quot;&mdash;he began
+with the deliberation of a man who is sure of his story&mdash;&quot;and it
+turned out in much the same way. It didn't begin in Paris; it really
+began while we were crossing the English Channel to&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, you mean about the Russian who took you for some one else and had
+you followed,&quot; said the Picture. &quot;Yes, that was like it, except that
+in your case nothing happened.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart took his cigar from between his lips and frowned severely at
+the lighted end for some little time before he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;My dear,&quot; he remonstrated, gently, &quot;you mustn't tell me I've told you
+all my old stories before. It isn't fair. Now that I am married, you
+see, I can't go about and have new experiences, and I've got to make
+use of the old ones.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, I'm so sorry,&quot; exclaimed the Picture, remorsefully. &quot;I didn't
+mean to be rude. Please tell me about it. I should like to hear it
+again, ever so much. I <i>should</i> like to hear it again, really.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Nonsense,&quot; said Stuart, laughing and shaking his head. &quot;I was only
+joking; personally I hate people who tell long stories. That doesn't
+matter. I was thinking of something else.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He continued thinking of something else, which was, that though he had
+been in jest when he spoke of having given up the chance of meeting
+fresh experiences, he had nevertheless described a condition, and a
+painfully true one. His real life seemed to have stopped, and he saw
+himself in the future looking back and referring to it, as though it
+were the career of an entirely different person, of a young man, with
+quick sympathies which required satisfying, as any appetite requires
+food. And he had an uncomfortable doubt that these many ever-ready
+sympathies would rebel if fed on only one diet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Picture did not interrupt him in his thoughts, and he let his mind
+follow his eyes as they wandered over the objects above him on the
+mantel-shelf. They all meant something from the past&mdash;a busy,
+wholesome past which had formed habits of thought and action, habits
+he could no longer enjoy alone, and which, on the other hand, it was
+quite impossible for him to share with any one else. He was no longer
+to be alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart stirred uneasily in his chair and poked at the fire before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do you remember the day you came to see me,&quot; said the Picture,
+sentimentally, &quot;and built the fire yourself and lighted some girl's
+letters to make it burn?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said Stuart, &quot;that is, I <i>said</i> that they were some girl's
+letters. It made it more picturesque. I am afraid they were bills. I
+should say I did remember it,&quot; he continued, enthusiastically. &quot;You
+wore a black dress and little red slippers with big black rosettes,
+and you looked as beautiful as&mdash;as night&mdash;as a moonlight night.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Picture frowned slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You are always telling me about how I looked,&quot; she complained; &quot;can't
+you remember any time when we were together without remembering what I
+had on and how I appeared?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I cannot,&quot; said Stuart, promptly. &quot;I can recall lots of other things
+besides, but I can't forget how you looked. You have a fashion of
+emphasizing episodes in that way which is entirely your own. But, as I
+say, I can remember something else. Do you remember, for instance,
+when we went up to West Point on that yacht? Wasn't it a grand day,
+with the autumn leaves on both sides of the Hudson, and the dress
+parade, and the dance afterward at the hotel?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, I should think I did,&quot; said the Picture, smiling. &quot;You spent all
+your time examining cannon, and talking to the men about 'firing in
+open order,' and left me all alone.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Left you all alone! I like that,&quot; laughed Stuart; &quot;all alone with
+about eighteen officers.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, but that was natural,&quot; returned the Picture. &quot;They were men.
+It's natural for a girl to talk to men, but why should a man want to
+talk to men?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I know better than that now,&quot; said Stuart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He proceeded to show that he knew better by remaining silent for the
+next half hour, during which time he continued to wonder whether this
+effort to keep up a conversation was not radically wrong. He thought
+of several things he might say, but he argued that it was an
+impossible situation where a man had to make conversation with his own
+wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clock struck ten as he sat waiting, and he moved uneasily in his
+chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What is it?&quot; asked the Picture; &quot;what makes you so restless?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart regarded the Picture timidly for a moment before he spoke. &quot;I
+was just thinking,&quot; he said, doubtfully, &quot;that we might run down after
+all, and take a look in at the last act; it's not too late even now.
+They're sure to run behind on the first night. And then,&quot; he urged,
+&quot;we can go around and see Seldon. You have never been behind the
+scenes, have you? It's very interesting.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No, I have not; but if we do,&quot; remonstrated the Picture,
+pathetically, &quot;you <i>know</i> all those men will come trooping home
+with us. You know they will.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But that's very complimentary,&quot; said Stuart. &quot;Why, I like my friends
+to like my wife.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, but you know how they stay when they get here,&quot; she answered; &quot;I
+don't believe they ever sleep. Don't you remember the last supper you
+gave me before we were married, when Mrs. Starr and you all were
+discussing Mr. Seldon's play? She didn't make a move to go until
+half-past two, and I was <i>that</i> sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes
+open.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said Stuart, &quot;I remember. I'm sorry. I thought it was very
+interesting. Seldon changed the whole second act on account of what
+she said. Well, after this,&quot; he laughed with cheerful desperation, &quot;I
+think I shall make up for the part of a married man in a pair of
+slippers and a dressing-gown, and then perhaps I won't be tempted to
+roam abroad at night.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You must wear the gown they are going to give you at Oxford,&quot; said
+the Picture, smiling placidly. &quot;The one Aunt Lucy was telling me
+about. Why do they give you a gown?&quot; she asked. &quot;It seems such an odd
+thing to do.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The gown comes with the degree, I believe,&quot; said Stuart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But why do they give <i>you</i> a degree?&quot; persisted the Picture;
+&quot;you never studied at Oxford, did you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart moved slightly in his chair and shook his head. &quot;I thought I
+told you,&quot; he said, gently. &quot;No, I never studied there. I wrote some
+books on&mdash;things, and they liked them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, yes, I remember now, you did tell me,&quot; said the Picture; &quot;and I
+told Aunt Lucy about it, and said we would be in England during the
+season when you got your degree, and she said you must be awfully
+clever to get it. You see&mdash;she does appreciate you, and you always
+treat her so distantly.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do I?&quot; said Stuart, quietly. &quot;I'm sorry.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Will you have your portrait painted in it?&quot; asked the Picture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;In what?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;In the gown. You are not listening,&quot; said the Picture, reproachfully.
+&quot;You ought to. Aunt Lucy says it's a beautiful shade of red silk, and
+very long. Is it?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't know,&quot; said Stuart. He shook his head, and dropping his chin
+into his hands, stared coldly down into the fire. He tried to persuade
+himself that he had been vainglorious, and that he had given too much
+weight to the honor which the University of Oxford would bestow upon
+him; that he had taken the degree too seriously, and that the
+Picture's view of it was the view of the rest of the world. But he
+could not convince himself that he was entirely at fault.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Is it too late to begin on Guizot?&quot; suggested his Picture, as an
+alternative to his plan. &quot;It sounds so improving.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, it is much too late,&quot; answered Stuart, decidedly. &quot;Besides, I
+don't want to be improved. I want to be amused, or inspired, or
+scolded. The chief good of friends is that they do one of these three
+things, and a wife should do all three.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Which shall I do?&quot; asked the Picture, smiling good-humoredly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart looked at the beautiful face and at the reclining figure of the
+woman to whom he was to turn for sympathy for the rest of his life,
+and felt a cold shiver of terror, that passed as quickly as it came.
+He reached out his hand and placed it on the arm of the chair where
+his wife's hand should have been, and patted the place kindly. He
+would shut his eyes to everything but that she was good and sweet and
+his wife. Whatever else she lacked that her beauty had covered up and
+hidden, and the want of which had Iain unsuspected in their previous
+formal intercourse, could not be mended now. He would settle his step
+to hers, and eliminate all those interests from his life which were
+not hers as well. He had chosen a beautiful idol, and not a companion,
+for a wife. He had tried to warm his hands at the fire of a diamond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart's eyes closed wearily as though to shut out the memories of the
+past, or the foreknowledge of what the future was sure to be. His head
+sank forward on his breast, and with his hand shading his eyes, he
+looked beyond, through the dying fire, into the succeeding years.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+The gay little French clock on the table sounded the hour of midnight
+briskly, with a pert, insistent clamor, and at the same instant a
+boisterous and unruly knocking answered it from outside the library
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart rose uncertainly from his chair and surveyed the tiny clock
+face with a startled expression of bewilderment and relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Stuart!&quot; his friends called impatiently from the hall. &quot;Stuart, let
+us in!&quot; and without waiting further for recognition a merry company of
+gentlemen pushed their way noisily into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Where the devil have you been?&quot; demanded Weimer. &quot;You don't deserve
+to be spoken to at all after quitting us like that. But Seldon is so
+good-natured,&quot; he went on, &quot;that he sent us after you. It was a great
+success, and he made a rattling good speech, and you missed the whole
+thing; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. We've asked half the
+people in front to supper&mdash;two stray Englishmen, all the Wilton girls
+and their governor, and the chap that wrote the play. And Seldon and
+his brother Sam are coming as soon as they get their make-up off.
+Don't stand there like that, but hurry. What have you been doing?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart gave a nervous, anxious laugh. &quot;Oh, don't ask me,&quot; he cried.
+&quot;It was awful. I've been trying an experiment, and I had to keep it up
+until midnight, and&mdash;I'm so glad you fellows have come,&quot; he continued,
+halting midway in his explanation. &quot;I <i>was</i> blue.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You've been asleep in front of the fire,&quot; said young Sloane, &quot;and
+you've been dreaming.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Perhaps,&quot; laughed Stuart, gayly, &quot;perhaps. But I'm awake now, in any
+event. Sloane, old man,&quot; he cried, dropping both hands on the
+youngster's shoulders, &quot;how much money have you? Enough to take me to
+Gibraltar? They can cable me the rest.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Hoorah!&quot; shouted Sloane, waltzing from one end of the room to the
+other. &quot;And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing,&quot; he sang.
+&quot;There's plenty in my money belt,&quot; he cried, slapping his side; &quot;you
+can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all
+yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the
+Winchester is the better gun.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;All right,&quot; returned Stuart, gayly, &quot;and I'll try to prove that the
+Italians don't know how to govern a native state. But who is giving
+this supper, anyway?&quot; he demanded. &quot;That is the main thing&mdash;that's
+what I want to know.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You've got to pack, haven't you?&quot; suggested Rives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'll pack when I get back,&quot; said Stuart, struggling into his
+greatcoat, and searching in his pockets for his gloves. &quot;Besides, my
+things are always ready and there's plenty of time; the boat doesn't
+leave for six hours yet.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We'll all come back and help,&quot; said Weimer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Then I'll never get away,&quot; laughed Stuart. He was radiant, happy, and
+excited, like a boy back from school for the holidays. But when they
+had reached the pavement, he halted and ran his hand down into his
+pocket, as though feeling for his latch-key, and stood looking
+doubtfully at his friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What is it now?&quot; asked Rives, impatiently. &quot;Have you forgotten
+something?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart looked back at the front door in momentary indecision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Ye-es,&quot; he answered. &quot;I did forget something. But it doesn't matter,&quot;
+he added, cheerfully, taking Sloane's arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Come on,&quot; he said, &quot;and so Seldon made a hit, did he? I am glad&mdash;and
+tell me, old man, how long will we have to wait at Gib for the P. &amp; O.?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stuart's servant had heard the men trooping down the stairs, laughing
+and calling to one another as they went, and judging from this that
+they had departed for the night, he put out all the lights in the
+library and closed the piano, and lifted the windows to clear the room
+of the tobacco-smoke. He did not notice the beautiful photograph
+sitting upright in the armchair before the fireplace, and so left it
+alone in the deserted library.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cold night-air swept in through the open window and chilled the
+silent room, and the dead coals in the grate dropped one by one into
+the fender with a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture still sat in
+the armchair with the same graceful pose and the same lovely
+expression, and smiled sweetly at the encircling darkness.
+</p>
+
+<a name="249"></a>
+<p class="chapter">
+THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the
+one who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a
+printer's devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to
+graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer
+take down speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real
+reporter, with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking
+acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even excepting
+Police Captains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is the old time journalist's idea of it. That is the way he was
+trained, and that is why at the age of sixty he is still a reporter.
+If you train up a youth in this way, he will go into reporting with
+too full a knowledge of the newspaper business, with no illusions
+concerning it, and with no ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen and
+justifiable impression that he is not paid enough for what he does.
+And he will only do what he is paid to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, you cannot pay a good reporter for what he does, because he does
+not work for pay. He works for his paper. He gives his time, his
+health, his brains, his sleeping hours, and his eating hours, and
+sometimes his life, to get news for it. He thinks the sun rises only
+that men may have light by which to read it. But if he has been in a
+newspaper office from his youth up, he finds out before he becomes a
+reporter that this is not so, and loses his real value. He should come
+right out of the University where he has been doing &quot;campus notes&quot; for
+the college weekly, and be pitchforked out into city work without
+knowing whether the Battery is at Harlem or Hunter's Point, and with
+the idea that he is a Moulder of Public Opinion and that the Power of
+the Press is greater than the Power of Money, and that the few lines
+he writes are of more value in the Editor's eyes than is the column of
+advertising on the last page, which they are not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After three years&mdash;it is sometimes longer, sometimes not so long&mdash;he
+finds out that he has given his nerves and his youth and his
+enthusiasm in exchange for a general fund of miscellaneous knowledge,
+the opportunity of personal encounter with all the greatest and most
+remarkable men and events that have risen in those three years, and a
+great fund of resource an patience. He will find that he has crowded
+the experiences of the lifetime of the ordinary young business man,
+doctor, or lawyer, or man about town, into three short years; that he
+has learned to think and to act quickly, to be patient and unmoved
+when every one else has lost his head, actually or figuratively
+speaking; to write as fast as another man can talk, and to be able to
+talk with authority on matters of which other men do not venture even
+to think until they have read what he has written with a copy-boy at
+his elbow on the night previous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is necessary for you to know this, that you may understand what
+manner of man young Albert Gordon was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Gordon had been a reporter just three years. He had left Yale
+when his last living relative died, and had taken the morning train
+for New York, where they had promised him reportorial work on one of
+the innumerable Greatest New York Dailies. He arrived at the office at
+noon, and was sent back over the same road on which he had just come,
+to Spuyten Duyvil, where a train had been wrecked and everybody of
+consequence to suburban New York killed. One of the old reporters
+hurried him to the office again with his &quot;copy,&quot; and after he had
+delivered that, he was sent to the Tombs to talk French to a man in
+Murderers' Row, who could not talk anything else, but who had shown
+some international skill in the use of a jimmy. And at eight, he
+covered a flower-show in Madison Square Garden; and at eleven was sent
+over the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at
+the losses to the insurance companies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to bed at one, and dreamed of shattered locomotives, human
+beings lying still with blankets over them, rows of cells, and banks
+of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass
+band in the gallery. He decided when he awoke the next morning that he
+had entered upon a picturesque and exciting career, and as one day
+followed another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more
+and more devoted to it. He was twenty then, and he was now
+twenty-three, and in that time had become a great reporter, and had
+been to Presidential conventions in Chicago, revolutions in Hayti,
+Indian outbreaks on the Plains, and midnight meetings of moonlighters
+in Tennessee, and had seen what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and
+fever could do in great cities, and had contradicted the President,
+and borrowed matches from burglars. And now he thought he would like
+to rest and breathe a bit, and not to work again unless as a war
+correspondent. The only obstacle to his becoming a great war
+correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war, and a war
+correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual as a
+general without an army. He read the papers every morning on the
+elevated trains for war clouds; but though there were many war clouds,
+they always drifted apart, and peace smiled again. This was very
+disappointing to young Gordon, and he became more and more keenly
+discouraged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to write his
+novel. It was to be a novel of New York life, and he wanted a quiet
+place in which to work on it. He was already making inquiries among
+the suburban residents of his acquaintance for just such a quiet spot,
+when he received an offer to go to the Island of Opeki in the North
+Pacific Ocean, as secretary to the American consul at that place. The
+gentleman who had been appointed by the President to act as consul at
+Opeki was Captain Leonard T. Travis, a veteran of the Civil War, who
+had contracted a severe attack of rheumatism while camping out at
+night in the dew, and who on account of this souvenir of his efforts
+to save the Union had allowed the Union he had saved to support him in
+one office or another ever since. He had met young Gordon at a dinner,
+and had had the presumption to ask him to serve as his secretary, and
+Gordon, much to his surprise, had accepted his offer. The idea of a
+quiet life in the tropics with new and beautiful surroundings, and
+with nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, and to write
+his novel besides, seemed to Albert to be just what he wanted; and
+though he did not know nor care much for his superior officer, he
+agreed to go with him promptly, and proceeded to say good-by to his
+friends and to make his preparations. Captain Travis was so delighted
+with getting such a clever young gentleman for his secretary, that he
+referred to him to his friends as &quot;my attach&eacute; of legation&quot;; nor did he
+lessen that gentleman's dignity by telling any one that the attach&eacute;'s
+salary was to be five hundred dollars a year. His own salary was only
+fifteen hundred dollars; and though his brother-in-law, Senator
+Rainsford, tried his best to get the amount raised, he was
+unsuccessful. The consulship to Opeki was instituted early in the
+'50's, to get rid of and reward a third or fourth cousin of the
+President's, whose services during the campaign were important, but
+whose after-presence was embarrassing. He had been created consul to
+Opeki as being more distant and unaccessible than any other known
+spot, and had lived and died there; and so little was known of the
+island, and so difficult was communication with it, that no one knew
+he was dead, until Captain Travis, in his hungry haste for office, had
+uprooted the sad fact. Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had a
+secondary reason for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician had told
+him to go to some warm climate for his rheumatism, and in accepting
+the consulship his object was rather to follow out his doctor's orders
+at his country's expense, than to serve his country at the expense of
+his rheumatism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that
+it was situated about one hundred miles from the Island of Octavia,
+which island, in turn, was simply described as a coaling-station three
+hundred miles distant from the coast of California. Steamers from San
+Francisco to Yokohama stopped every third week at Octavia, and that
+was all that either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of
+their new home. This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to
+stay only as long as he liked it, and to return to the States within a
+few months if he found such a change of plan desirable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he thought
+it would be advisable to furnish himself with a supply of articles
+with which he might trade with the native Opekians, and for this
+purpose he purchased a large quantity of brass rods, because he had
+read that Stanley did so, and added to these brass curtain-chains, and
+about two hundred leaden medals similar to those sold by street
+peddlers during the Constitutional Centennial Celebration in New York
+City.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He also collected even more beautiful but less expensive decorations
+for Christmas-trees, at a wholesale house on Park Row. These he hoped
+to exchange for furs or feathers or weapons, or for whatever other
+curious and valuable trophies the Island of Opeki boasted. He already
+pictured his rooms on his return hung fantastically with crossed
+spears and boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly idols.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friends told him that he was doing a very foolish thing, and
+argued that once out of the newspaper world, it would be hard to
+regain his place in it. But he thought the novel that he would write
+while lost to the world at Opeki would serve to make up for his
+temporary absence from it, and he expressly and impressively
+stipulated that the editor should wire him if there was a war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Travis and his secretary crossed the continent without
+adventure, and took passage from San Francisco on the first steamer
+that touched at Octavia. They reached that island in three days, and
+learned with some concern that there was no regular communication with
+Opeki, and that it would be necessary to charter a sailboat for the
+trip. Two fishermen agreed to take them and their trunks, and to get
+them to their destination within sixteen hours if the wind held good.
+It was a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with calm, relentless
+persistence from what was apparently a clear sky; the wind tossed the
+waves as high as the mast and made Captain Travis ill; and as there
+was no deck to the big boat, they were forced to huddle up under
+pieces of canvas, and talked but little. Captain Travis complained of
+frequent twinges of rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale
+at the empty waste of water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If I've got to serve a term of imprisonment on a rock in the middle
+of the ocean for four years,&quot; he said, &quot;I might just as well have done
+something first to deserve it. This is a pretty way to treat a man who
+bled for his country. This is gratitude, this is.&quot; Albert pulled
+heavily on his pipe, and wiped the rain and spray from his face and
+smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, it won't be so bad when we get there,&quot; he said; &quot;they say these
+Southern people are always hospitable, and the whites will be glad to
+see any one from the States.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There will be a round of diplomatic dinners,&quot; said the consul, with
+an attempt at cheerfulness. &quot;I have brought two uniforms to wear at
+them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was seven o'clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and one of
+the black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a little low
+line on the horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Opeki,&quot; he said. The line grew in length until it proved to be an
+island with great mountains rising to the clouds, and, as they drew
+nearer and nearer, showed a level coast running back to the foot of
+the mountains and covered with a forest of palms. They next made out a
+village of thatched huts around a grassy square, and at some distance
+from the village a wooden structure with a tin roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I wonder where the town is?&quot; asked the consul, with a nervous glance
+at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he saw was the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That?&quot; gasped the consul. &quot;Is that where all the people on the island
+live?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were other
+natives further back in the mountains, but that they were bad men who
+fought and ate each other. The consul and his attach&eacute; of legation
+gazed at the mountains with unspoken misgivings. They were quite near
+now, and could see an immense crowd of men and women, all of them
+black, and clad but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them.
+They seemed greatly excited and ran in and out of the huts, and up and
+down the beach, as wildly as so many black ants. But in the front of
+the group they distinguished three men who they could see were white,
+though they were clothed, like the others, simply in a shirt and a
+short pair of trousers. Two of these three suddenly sprang away on a
+run and disappeared among the palm-trees; but the third one, when he
+recognized the American flag in the halyards, threw his straw hat in
+the water and began turning handsprings over the sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That young gentleman, at least,&quot; said Albert, gravely, &quot;seems pleased
+to see us.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dozen of the natives sprang into the water and came wading and
+swimming toward them, grinning and shouting and swinging their arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't think it's quite safe, do you?&quot; said the consul, looking out
+wildly to the open sea. &quot;You see, they don't know who I am.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A great black giant threw one arm over the gunwale and shouted
+something that sounded as if it were spelt Owah, Owah, as the boat
+carried him through the surf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How do you do?&quot; said Gordon, doubtfully. The boat shook the giant off
+under the wave and beached itself so suddenly that the American consul
+was thrown forward to his knees. Gordon did not wait to pick him up,
+but jumped out and shook hands with the young man who had turned
+handsprings, while the natives gathered about them in a circle and
+chatted and laughed in delighted excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'm awfully glad to see you,&quot; said the young man, eagerly. &quot;My name's
+Stedman. I'm from New Haven, Connecticut. Where are you from?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;New York,&quot; said Albert. &quot;This,&quot; he added, pointing solemnly to
+Captain Travis, who was still on his knees in the boat, &quot;is the
+American consul to Opeki.&quot; The American consul to Opeki gave a wild
+look at Mr. Stedman of New Haven and at the natives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;See here, young man,&quot; he gasped, &quot;is this all there is of Opeki?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The American consul?&quot; said young Stedman, with a gasp of amazement,
+and looking from Albert to Captain Travis. &quot;Why, I never supposed they
+would send another here; the last one died about fifteen years ago,
+and there hasn't been one since. I've been living in the consul's
+office with the Bradleys, but I'll move out, of course. I'm sure I'm
+awfully glad to see you. It'll make it so much more pleasant for me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said Captain Travis, bitterly, as he lifted his rheumatic leg
+over the boat; &quot;that's why we came.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stedman did not notice this. He was too much pleased to be
+anything but hospitable. &quot;You are soaking wet, aren't you?&quot; he said;
+&quot;and hungry, I guess. You come right over to the consul's office and
+get on some other things.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned to the natives and gave some rapid orders in their language,
+and some of them jumped into the boat at this, and began to lift out
+the trunks, and others ran off toward a large, stout old native, who
+was sitting gravely on a log, smoking, with the rain beating unnoticed
+on his gray hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They've gone to tell the King,&quot; said Stedman; &quot;but you'd better get
+something to eat first, and then I'll be happy to present you
+properly.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The King,&quot; said Captain Travis, with some awe; &quot;is there a king?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I never saw a king,&quot; Gordon remarked, &quot;and I'm sure I never expected
+to see one sitting on a log in the rain.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He's a very good king,&quot; said Stedman, confidentially; &quot;and though you
+mightn't think it to look at him, he's a terrible stickler for
+etiquette and form. After supper he'll give you an audience; and if
+you have any tobacco, you had better give him some as a present, and
+you'd better say it's from the President: he doesn't like to take
+presents from common people, he's so proud. The only reason he borrows
+mine is because he thinks I'm the President's son.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What makes him think that?&quot; demanded the consul, with some shortness.
+Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at the consul and at Albert, and
+said that he guessed some one must have told him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The consul's office was divided into four rooms with an open court in
+the middle, filled with palms, and watered somewhat unnecessarily by a
+fountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I made that,&quot; said Stedman, in a modest, offhand way. &quot;I made it out
+of hollow bamboo reeds connected with a spring. And now I'm making one
+for the King. He saw this and had a lot of bamboo sticks put up all
+over the town, without any underground connections, and couldn't make
+out why the water wouldn't spurt out of them. And because mine spurts,
+he thinks I'm a magician.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I suppose,&quot; grumbled the consul, &quot;some one told him that too.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="262"></a>
+<div class="ctr"><img src="images/262.jpg" alt="&quot;I never saw a king,&quot; Gordon remarked." width="371" height="499"></div>
+<p class="imgcaption">&quot;I never saw a king,&quot; Gordon remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I suppose so,&quot; said Mr. Stedman, uneasily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a veranda around the consul's office, and inside the walls
+were hung with skins, and pictures from illustrated papers, and there
+was a good deal of bamboo furniture, and four broad, cool-looking
+beds. The place was as clean as a kitchen. &quot;I made the furniture,&quot;
+said Stedman, &quot;and the Bradleys keep the place in order.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Who are the Bradleys?&quot; asked Albert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The Bradleys are those two men you saw with me,&quot; said Stedman; &quot;they
+deserted from a British man-of-war that stopped here for coal, and
+they act as my servants. One is Bradley, Sr., and the other Bradley,
+Jr.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Then vessels do stop here occasionally?&quot; the consul said, with a
+pleased smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, not often,&quot; said Stedman. &quot;Not so very often; about once a
+year. The Nelson thought this was Octavia, and put off again as soon
+as she found out her mistake, but the Bradleys took to the bush, and
+the boat's crew couldn't find them. When they saw your flag, they
+thought you might mean to send them back, so they ran off to hide
+again; they'll be back, though, when they get hungry.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The supper young Stedman spread for his guests, as he still treated
+them, was very refreshing and very good. There was cold fish and
+pigeon pie, and a hot omelet filled with mushrooms and olives and
+tomatoes and onions all sliced up together, and strong black coffee.
+After supper, Stedman went off to see the King, and came back in a
+little while to say that his Majesty would give them an audience the
+next day after breakfast. &quot;It is too dark now,&quot; Stedman explained;
+&quot;and it's raining so that they can't make the street-lamps burn. Did
+you happen to notice our lamps? I invented them; but they don't work
+very well yet. I've got the right idea, though, and I'll soon have the
+town illuminated all over, whether it rains or not.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The consul had been very silent and indifferent, during supper, to all
+around him. Now he looked up with some show of interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How much longer is it going to rain, do you think?&quot; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, I don't know,&quot; said Stedman, critically. &quot;Not more than two
+months, I should say.&quot; The consul rubbed his rheumatic leg and sighed,
+but said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bradleys returned about ten o'clock, and came in very sheepishly.
+The consul had gone off to pay the boatmen who had brought them, and
+Albert in his absence assured the sailors that there was not the least
+danger of their being sent away. Then he turned into one of the beds,
+and Stedman took one in another room, leaving the room he had occupied
+heretofore for the consul. As he was saying good-night, Albert
+suggested that he had not yet told them how he came to be on a
+deserted island; but Stedman only laughed and said that that was a
+long story, and that he would tell him all about it in the morning. So
+Albert went off to bed without waiting for the consul to return, and
+fell asleep, wondering at the strangeness of his new life, and
+assuring himself that if the rain only kept up, he would have his
+novel finished in a month.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun was shining brightly when he awoke, and the palm-trees outside
+were nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. From the court came the odor
+of strange flowers, and from the window he could see the ocean
+brilliantly blue, and with the sun coloring the spray that beat
+against the coral reefs on the shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, the consul can't complain of this,&quot; he said, with a laugh of
+satisfaction; and pulling on a bath-robe, he stepped into the next
+room to awaken Captain Travis. But the room was quite empty, and the
+bed undisturbed. The consul's trunk remained just where it had been
+placed near the door, and on it lay a large sheet of foolscap, with
+writing on it, and addressed at the top to Albert Gordon. The
+handwriting was the consul's. Albert picked it up and read it with
+much anxiety. It began abruptly
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+    The fishermen who brought us to this forsaken spot tell me that
+    it rains here six months in the year, and that this is the first
+    month. I came here to serve my country, for which I fought and
+    bled, but I did not come here to die of rheumatism and pneumonia.
+    I can serve my country better by staying alive; and whether it
+    rains or not, I don't like it. I have been grossly deceived, and
+    I am going back. Indeed, by the time you get this, I will be on
+    my return trip, as I intend leaving with the men who brought us
+    here as soon as they can get the sail up. My cousin, Senator
+    Rainsford, can fix it all right with the President, and can have
+    me recalled in proper form after I get back. But of course it
+    would not do for me to leave my post with no one to take my
+    place, and no one could be more ably fitted to do so than
+    yourself; so I feel no compunctions at leaving you behind. I
+    hereby, therefore, accordingly appoint you my substitute with
+    full power to act, to collect all fees, sign all papers, and
+    attend to all matters pertaining to your office as American
+    consul, and I trust you will worthily uphold the name of that
+    country and government which it has always been my pleasure and
+    duty to serve.
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+    Your sincere friend and superior officer,
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+    LEONARD T. TRAVIS.
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+    P.S. I did not care to disturb you by moving my trunk, so I left
+    it, and you can make what use you please of whatever it contains,
+    as I shall not want tropical garments where I am going. What you
+    will need most, I think, is a waterproof and umbrella.
+</p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+    P.S. Look out for that young man Stedman. He is too inventive. I
+    hope you will like your high office; but as for myself, I am
+    satisfied with little old New York. Opeki is just a bit too far
+    from civilization to suit me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert held the letter before him and read it over again before he
+moved. Then he jumped to the window. The boat was gone, and there was
+not a sign of it on the horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The miserable old hypocrite!&quot; he cried, half angry and half laughing.
+&quot;If he thinks I am going to stay here alone he is very greatly
+mistaken. And yet, why not?&quot; he asked. He stopped soliloquizing and
+looked around him, thinking rapidly. As he stood there, Stedman came
+in from the other room, fresh and smiling from his morning's bath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Good-morning,&quot; he said, &quot;where's the consul?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The consul,&quot; said Albert, gravely, &quot;is before you. In me you see the
+American consul to Opeki.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Captain Travis,&quot; Albert explained, &quot;has returned to the United
+States. I suppose he feels that he can best serve his country by
+remaining on the spot. In case of another war, now, for instance, he
+would be there to save it again.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And what are you going to do?&quot; asked Stedman, anxiously. &quot;You will
+not run away, too, will you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert said that he intended to remain where he was and perform his
+consular duties, to appoint him his secretary, and to elevate the
+United States in the opinion of the Opekians above all other nations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They may not think much of the United States in England,&quot; he said;
+&quot;but we are going to teach the people of Opeki that America is first
+on the map and that there is no second.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'm sure it's very good of you to make me your secretary,&quot; said
+Stedman, with some pride. &quot;I hope I won't make any mistakes. What are
+the duties of a consul's secretary?&quot; &quot;That,&quot; said Albert, &quot;I do not
+know. But you are rather good at inventing, so you can invent a few.
+That should be your first duty and you should attend to it at once. I
+will have trouble enough finding work for myself. Your salary is five
+hundred dollars a year; and now,&quot; he continued briskly, &quot;we want to
+prepare for this reception. We can tell the King that Travis was just
+a guard of honor for the trip, and that I have sent him back to tell
+the President of my safe arrival. That will keep the President from
+getting anxious. There; is nothing,&quot; continued Albert, &quot;like a uniform
+to impress people who live in the tropics, and Travis, it so happens,
+has two in his trunk. He intended to wear them on State occasions, and
+as I inherit the trunk and all that is in it, I intend to wear one of
+the uniforms, and you can have the other. But I have first choice,
+because I am consul.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Travis's consular outfit consisted of one full dress and one
+undress United States uniform. Albert put on the dress-coat over a
+pair of white flannel trousers, and looked remarkably brave and
+handsome. Stedman, who was only eighteen and quite thin, did not
+appear so well, until Albert suggested his padding out his chest and
+shoulders with towels. This made him rather warm, but helped his
+general appearance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The two Bradleys must dress up, too,&quot; said Albert. &quot;I think they
+ought to act as a guard of honor, don't you? The only things I have
+are blazers and jerseys; but it doesn't much matter what they wear, as
+long as they dress alike.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accordingly called in the two Bradleys, and gave them each a pair
+of the captain's rejected white duck trousers, and a blue jersey
+apiece, with a big white Y on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The students of Yale gave me that,&quot; he said to the younger Bradley,
+&quot;in which to play football, and a great man gave me the other. His
+name is Walter Camp; and if you rip or soil that jersey, I'll send you
+back to England in irons; so be careful.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman gazed at his companions in their different costumes,
+doubtfully. &quot;It reminds me,&quot; he said, &quot;of private theatricals. Of the
+time our church choir played 'Pinafore.'&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; assented Albert; &quot;but I don't think we look quite gay enough. I
+tell you what we need&mdash;medals. You never saw a diplomat without a lot
+of decorations and medals.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I can fix that,&quot; Stedman said. &quot;I've got a trunkful. I used to
+be the fastest bicycle-rider in Connecticut, and I've got all my
+prizes with me.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert said doubtfully that that wasn't exactly the sort of medal he
+meant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Perhaps not,&quot; returned Stedman, as he began fumbling in his trunk;
+&quot;but the King won't know the difference. He couldn't tell a cross of
+the Legion of Honor from a medal for the tug of war.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the bicycle medals, of which Stedman seemed to have an innumerable
+quantity, were strung in profusion over Albert's uniform, and in a
+lesser quantity over Stedman's; while a handful of leaden ones, those
+sold on the streets for the Constitutional Centennial, with which
+Albert had provided himself, were wrapped up in a red silk
+handkerchief for presentation to the King; with them Albert placed a
+number of brass rods and brass chains, much to Stedman's delighted
+approval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That is a very good idea,&quot; he said. &quot;Democratic simplicity is the
+right thing at home, of course; but when you go abroad and mix with
+crowned heads, you want to show them that you know what's what.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well,&quot; said Albert, gravely, &quot;I sincerely hope this crowned head
+don't know what's what. If he reads 'Connecticut Agricultural State
+Fair. One mile bicycle race. First Prize,' on this badge, when we are
+trying to make him believe it's a war medal, it may hurt his
+feelings.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bradley, Jr., went ahead to announce the approach of the American
+embassy, which he did with so much manner that the King deferred the
+audience a half-hour, in order that he might better prepare to receive
+his visitors. When the audience did take place, it attracted the
+entire population to the green spot in front of the King's palace, and
+their delight and excitement over the appearance of the visitors was
+sincere and hearty. The King was too polite to appear much surprised,
+but he showed his delight over his presents as simply and openly as a
+child. Thrice he insisted on embracing Albert, and kissing him three
+times on the fore-head, which, Stedman assured him in a side-whisper,
+was a great honor; an honor which was not extended to the secretary,
+although he was given a necklace of animals' claws instead, with which
+he was better satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this reception, the embassy marched back to the consul's office,
+surrounded by an immense number of natives, some of whom ran ahead and
+looked back at them, and crowded so close that the two Bradleys had to
+poke at those nearest with their guns. The crowd remained outside the
+office even after the procession of four had disappeared, and cheered.
+This suggested to Gordon that this would be a good time to make a
+speech, which he accordingly did, Stedman translating it, sentence by
+sentence. At the conclusion of this effort, Albert distributed a
+number of brass rings among the married men present, which they placed
+on whichever finger fitted best, and departed delighted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert had wished to give the rings to the married women, but Stedman
+pointed out to him that it would be much cheaper to give them to the
+married men; for while one woman could only have one husband, one man
+could have at least six wives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And now, Stedman,&quot; said Albert, after the mob had gone, &quot;tell me what
+you are doing on this island.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's a very simple story,&quot; Stedman said. &quot;I am the representative, or
+agent, or operator, for the Yokohama Cable Company. The Yokohama Cable
+Company is a company organized in San Francisco, for the purpose of
+laying a cable to Yokohama. It is a stock company; and though it
+started out very well, the stock has fallen very low. Between
+ourselves, it is not worth over three or four cents. When the officers
+of the company found out that no one would buy their stock, and that
+no one believed in them or their scheme, they laid a cable to Octavia,
+and extended it on to this island. Then they said they had run out of
+ready money, and would wait until they got more before laying their
+cable any farther. I do not think they ever will lay it any farther,
+but that is none of my business. My business is to answer cable
+messages from San Francisco, so that the people who visit the home
+office can see that at least a part of the cable is working. That
+sometimes impresses them, and they buy stock. There is another chap
+over in Octavia, who relays all my messages and all my replies to
+those messages that come to me through him from San Francisco. They
+never send a message unless they have brought some one to the office
+whom they want to impress, and who, they think, has money to invest in
+the Y.C.C. stock, and so we never go near the wire, except at three
+o'clock every afternoon. And then generally only to say 'How are you?'
+or 'It's raining,' or something like that. I've been saying 'It's
+raining,' now for the last three months, but to-day I will say that
+the new consul has arrived. That will be a pleasant surprise for the
+chap in Octavia, for he must be tired hearing about the weather. He
+generally answers, 'Here too,' or 'So you said,' or something like
+that. I don't know what he says to the home office. He's brighter than
+I am, and that's why they put him between the two ends. He can see
+that the messages are transmitted more fully and more correctly, in a
+way to please possible subscribers.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Sort of copy editor,&quot; suggested Albert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, something of that sort, I fancy,&quot; said Stedman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked down to the little shed on the shore, where the Y.C.C.
+office was placed, at three that day, and Albert watched Stedman send
+off his message with much interest. The &quot;chap at Octavia,&quot; on being
+informed that the American consul had arrived at Opeki, inquired,
+somewhat disrespectfully, &quot;Is it a life sentence?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What does he mean by that?&quot; asked Albert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I suppose,&quot; said his secretary, doubtfully, &quot;that he thinks it a sort
+of a punishment to be sent to Opeki. I hope you won't grow to think
+so.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Opeki is all very well,&quot; said Gordon, &quot;or it will be when we get
+things going our way.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they walked back to the office, Albert noticed a brass cannon,
+perched on a rock at the entrance to the harbor. This had been put
+there by the last consul, but it had not been fired for many years.
+Albert immediately ordered the two Bradleys to get it in order, and to
+rig up a flag-pole beside it, for one of his American flags, which
+they were to salute every night when they lowered it at sundown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And when we are not using it,&quot; he said, &quot;the King can borrow it to
+celebrate with, if he doesn't impose on us too often. The royal salute
+ought to be twenty-one guns, I think; but that would use up too much
+powder, so he will have to content himself with two.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Did you notice,&quot; asked Stedman, that night, as they sat on the
+veranda of the consul's house, in the moonlight, &quot;how the people bowed
+to us as we passed?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; Albert said he had noticed it. &quot;Why?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, they never saluted me,&quot; replied Stedman. &quot;That sign of respect
+is due to the show we made at the reception.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It is due to us, in any event,&quot; said the consul, severely. &quot;I tell
+you, my secretary, that we, as the representatives of the United
+States Government, must be properly honored on this island. We must
+become a power. And we must do so without getting into trouble with
+the King. We must make them honor him, too, and then as we push him
+up, we will push ourselves up at the same time.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They don't think much of consuls in Opeki,&quot; said Stedman, doubtfully.
+&quot;You see the last one was a pretty poor sort. He brought the office
+into disrepute, and it wasn't really until I came and told them what a
+fine country the United States was, that they had any opinion of it at
+all. Now we must change all that.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That is just what we will do,&quot; said Albert. &quot;We will transform Opeki
+into a powerful and beautiful city. We will make these people work.
+They must put up a palace for the King, and lay out streets, and build
+wharves, and drain the town properly, and light it. I haven't seen
+this patent lighting apparatus of yours, but you had better get to
+work at it at once, and I'll persuade the King to appoint you
+commissioner of highways and gas, with authority to make his people
+toil. And I,&quot; he cried, in free enthusiasm, &quot;will organize a navy and
+a standing army. Only,&quot; he added, with a relapse of interest, &quot;there
+isn't anybody to fight.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There isn't?&quot; said Stedman, grimly, with a scornful smile. &quot;You just
+go hunt up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with your standing army once
+and you'll get all the fighting you want.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The Hillmen?&quot; said Albert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The Hillmen are the natives that live up there in the hills,&quot; Stedman
+said, nodding his head toward the three high mountains at the other
+end of the island, that stood out blackly against the purple, moonlit
+sky. &quot;There are nearly as many of them as there are Opekians, and they
+hunt and fight for a living and for the pleasure of it. They have an
+old rascal named Messenwah for a king, and they come down here about
+once every three months, and tear things up.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert sprang to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, they do, do they?&quot; he said, staring up at the mountain-tops.
+&quot;They come down here and tear up things, do they? Well, I think we'll
+stop that, I think we'll stop that! I, don't care how many there are.
+I'll get the two Bradleys to tell me all they know about drilling,
+to-morrow morning, and we'll drill these Opekians, and have sham
+battles, and attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot of wild,
+howling Zulus out of them. And when the Hillmen come down to pay their
+quarterly visit, they'll go back again on a run. At least some of them
+will,&quot; he added, ferociously. &quot;Some of them will stay right here.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Dear me, dear me!&quot; said Stedman, with awe; &quot;you are a born fighter,
+aren't you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, you wait and see,&quot; said Gordon; &quot;maybe I am. I haven't studied
+tactics of war and the history of battles, so that I might be a great
+war correspondent, without learning something. And there is only one
+king on this island, and that is old Ollypybus himself. And I'll go
+over and have a talk with him about it to-morrow.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Stedman walked up and down the length of the veranda, in and out
+of the moonlight, with his hands in his pockets, and his head on his
+chest. &quot;You have me all stirred up, Gordon,&quot; he said; &quot;you seem so
+confident and bold, and you're not so much older than I am, either.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;My training has been different; that's all,&quot; said the reporter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; Stedman said, bitterly. &quot;I have been sitting in an office ever
+since I left school, sending news over a wire or a cable, and you have
+been out in the world, gathering it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And now,&quot; said Gordon, smiling and putting his arm around the other
+boy's shoulders, &quot;we are going to make news ourselves.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There is one thing I want to say to you before you turn in,&quot; said
+Stedman &quot;Before you suggest all these improvements on Ollypybus, you
+must remember that he has ruled absolutely here for twenty years, and
+that he does not think much of consuls. He has only seen your
+predecessor and yourself. He likes you because you appeared with such
+dignity, and because of the presents; but if I were you, I wouldn't
+suggest these improvements as coming from yourself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't understand,&quot; said Gordon; &quot;who could they come from?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well,&quot; said Stedman, &quot;if you will allow me to advise&mdash;and you see I
+know these people pretty well&mdash;I would have all these suggestions come
+from the President direct.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The President!&quot; exclaimed Gordon; &quot;but how? What does the President
+know or care about Opeki? and it would take so long&mdash;oh, I see, the
+cable. Is that what you have been doing?&quot; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, only once,&quot; said Stedman, guiltily; &quot;that was when he wanted to
+turn me out of the consul's office, and I had a cable that very
+afternoon, from the President, ordering me to stay where I was.
+Ollypybus doesn't understand the cable, of course, but he knows that
+it sends messages; and sometimes I pretend to send messages for him to
+the President; but he began asking me to tell the President to come
+and pay him a visit, and I had to stop it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'm glad you told me,&quot; said Gordon. &quot;The President shall begin to
+cable to-morrow. He will need an extra appropriation from Congress to
+pay for his private cablegrams alone.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And there's another thing,&quot; said Stedman. &quot;In all your plans, you've
+arranged for the people's improvement, but not for their amusement;
+and they are a peaceful, jolly, simple sort of people, and we must
+please them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Have they no games or amusements of their own?&quot; asked Gordon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, not what we would call games.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Very well, then, I'll teach them base-ball. Foot-ball would be too
+warm. But that plaza in front of the King's bungalow, where his palace
+is going to be, is just the place for a diamond. On the whole,
+though,&quot; added the consul, after a moment's reflection, &quot;you'd better
+attend to that yourself. I don't think it becomes my dignity as
+American consul to take off my coat and give lessons to young Opekians
+in sliding to bases; do you? No; I think you'd better do that. The
+Bradleys will help you, and you had better begin to-morrow. You have
+been wanting to know what a secretary of legation's duties are, and
+now you know. It's to organize base-ball nines. And after you get
+yours ready,&quot; he added, as he turned into his room for the night,
+&quot;I'll train one that will sweep yours off the face of the island. For
+<i>this</i> American consul can pitch three curves.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The best laid plans of men go far astray, sometimes, and the great and
+beautiful city that was to rise on the coast of Opeki was not built in
+a day. Nor was it ever built. For before the Bradleys could mark out
+the foul-lines for the base-ball field on the plaza, or teach their
+standing army the goose step, or lay bamboo pipes for the water-mains,
+or clear away the cactus for the extension of the King's palace, the
+Hillmen paid Opeki their quarterly visit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert had called on the King the next morning, with Stedman as his
+interpreter, as he had said he would, and, with maps and sketches, had
+shown his Majesty what he proposed to do toward improving Opeki and
+ennobling her king, and when the King saw Albert's free-hand sketches
+of wharves with tall ships lying at anchor, and rows of Opekian
+warriors with the Bradleys at their head, and the design for his new
+palace, and a royal sedan chair, he believed that these things were
+already his, and not still only on paper, and he appointed Albert his
+Minister of War, Stedman his Minister of Home Affairs, and selected
+two of his wisest and oldest subjects to serve them as joint advisers.
+His enthusiasm was even greater than Gordon's, because he did not
+appreciate the difficulties. He thought Gordon a semi-god, a worker of
+miracles, and urged the putting up of a monument to him at once in the
+public plaza, to which Albert objected, on the ground that it would be
+too suggestive of an idol; and to which Stedman also objected, but for
+the less unselfish reason that it would &quot;be in the way of the
+pitcher's box.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were feverishly discussing all these great changes, and Stedman
+was translating as rapidly as he could translate, the speeches of four
+different men&mdash;for the two counsellors had been called in&mdash;all of whom
+wanted to speak at once when there came from outside a great shout,
+and the screams of women, and the clashing of iron, and the pattering
+footsteps of men running.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they looked at one another in startled surprise, a native ran into
+the room, followed by Bradley, Jr., and threw himself down before the
+King. While he talked, beating his hands and bowing before Ollypybus,
+Bradley, Jr., pulled his forelock to the consul, and told how this man
+lived on the far outskirts of the village; how he had been captured
+while out hunting, by a number of the Hillmen; and how he had escaped
+to tell the people that their old enemies were on the war-path again,
+and rapidly approaching the village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside, the women were gathering in the plaza, with the children
+about them, and the men were running from hut to hut, warning their
+fellows, and arming themselves with spears and swords, and the native
+bows and arrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They might have waited until we had that army trained,&quot; said Gordon,
+in a tone of the keenest displeasure. &quot;Tell me, quick, what do they
+generally do when they come?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Steal all the cattle and goats, and a woman or two, and set fire to
+the huts in the outskirts,&quot; replied Stedman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, we must stop them,&quot; said Gordon, jumping up. &quot;We must take out
+a flag of truce and treat with them. They must be kept off until I
+have my army in working order. It is most inconvenient. If they had
+only waited two months, now, or six weeks even, we could have done
+something; but now we must make peace. Tell the King we are going out
+to fix things with them, and tell him to keep off his warriors until
+he learns whether we succeed or fail.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But, Gordon!&quot; gasped Stedman. &quot;Albert! You don't understand. Why,
+man, this isn't a street-fight or a cane-rush. They'll stick you full
+of spears, dance on your body, and eat you, maybe. A flag of
+truce!&mdash;you're talking nonsense. What do they know of a flag of
+truce?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You're talking nonsense, too,&quot; said Albert, &quot;and you're talking to
+your superior officer. If you are not with me in this, go back to your
+cable, and tell the man in Octavia that it's a warm day, and that the
+sun is shining; but if you've any spirit in you&mdash;and I think you
+have&mdash;run to the office and get my Winchester rifles, and the two
+shot-guns, and my revolvers, and my uniform, and a lot of brass things
+for presents, and run all the way there and back. And make time. Play
+you're riding a bicycle at the Agricultural Fair.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman did not hear this last, for he was already off and away,
+pushing through the crowd, and calling on Bradley, Sr., to follow him.
+Bradley, Jr., looked at Gordon with eyes that snapped, like a dog that
+is waiting for his master to throw a stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I can fire a Winchester, sir,&quot; he said. &quot;Old Tom can't. He's no good
+at long range 'cept with a big gun, sir. Don't give him the
+Winchester. Give it to me, please, sir.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert met Stedman in the plaza, and pulled off his blazer, and put on
+Captain Travis's&mdash;now his&mdash;uniform coat, and his white pith helmet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now, Jack,&quot; he said, &quot;get up there and tell these people that we are
+going out to make peace with these Hillmen, or bring them back
+prisoners of war. Tell them we are the preservers of their homes and
+wives and children; and you, Bradley, take these presents, and young
+Bradley, keep close to me, and carry this rifle.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman's speech was hot and wild enough to suit a critical and
+feverish audience before a barricade in Paris. And when he was
+through, Gordon and Bradley punctuated his oration by firing off the
+two Winchester rifles in the air, at which the people jumped and fell
+on their knees, and prayed to their several gods. The fighting men of
+the village followed the four white men to the outskirts, and took up
+their stand there as Stedman told them to do, and the four walked on
+over the roughly hewn road, to meet the enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gordon walked with Bradley, Jr., in advance. Stedman and old Tom
+Bradley followed close behind with the two shot-guns, and the presents
+in a basket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Are these Hillmen used to guns?&quot; asked Gordon. Stedman said no, they
+were not. &quot;This shot-gun of mine is the only one on the island,&quot; he
+explained, &quot;and we never came near enough them before to do anything
+with it. It only carries a hundred yards. The Opekians never make any
+show of resistance. They are quite content if the Hillmen satisfy
+themselves with the outlying huts, as long as they leave them and the
+town alone; so they seldom come to close quarters.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The four men walked on for half an hour or so in silence, peering
+eagerly on every side; but it was not until they had left the woods
+and marched out into the level stretch of grassy country that they
+came upon the enemy. The Hillmen were about forty in number, and were
+as savage and ugly-looking giants as any in a picture-book. They had
+captured a dozen cows and goats, and were driving them on before them,
+as they advanced farther upon the village. When they saw the four men,
+they gave a mixed chorus of cries and yells, and some of them stopped,
+and others ran forward, shaking their spears, and shooting their broad
+arrows into the ground before them. A tall, gray-bearded, muscular old
+man, with a skirt of feathers about him, and necklaces of bones and
+animals' claws around his bare chest, ran in front of them, and seemed
+to be trying to make them approach more slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Is that Messenwah?&quot; asked Gordon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said Stedman; &quot;he is trying to keep them back. I don't believe
+he ever saw a white man before.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Stedman,&quot; said Albert, speaking quickly, &quot;give your gun to Bradley,
+and go forward with your arms in the air, and waving your
+handkerchief, and tell them in their language that the King is coming.
+If they go at you, Bradley and I will kill a goat or two, to show them
+what we can do with the rifles; and if that don't stop them, we will
+shoot at their legs; and if that don't stop them&mdash;I guess you'd better
+come back, and we'll all run.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman looked at Albert, and Albert looked at Stedman, and neither of
+them winced or flinched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Is this another of my secretary's duties?&quot; asked the younger boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said the consul; &quot;but a resignation is always in order. You
+needn't go if you don't like it. You see, you know the language and I
+don't, but I know how to shoot, and you don't.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That's perfectly satisfactory,&quot; said Stedman, handing his gun to old
+Bradley. &quot;I only wanted to know why I was to be sacrificed instead of
+one of the Bradleys. It's because I know the language. Bradley, Sr.,
+you see the evil results of a higher education. Wish me luck, please,&quot;
+he said, &quot;and for goodness' sake,&quot; he added impressively, &quot;don't waste
+much time shooting goats.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Hillmen had stopped about two hundred yards off, and were drawn up
+in two lines, shouting, and dancing, and hurling taunting remarks at
+their few adversaries. The stolen cattle were bunched together back of
+the King. As Stedman walked steadily forward with his handkerchief
+fluttering, and howling out something in their own tongue, they
+stopped and listened. As he advanced, his three companions followed
+him at about fifty yards in the rear. He was one hundred and fifty
+yards from the Hillmen before they made out what he said, and then one
+of the young braves, resenting it as an insult to his chief, shot an
+arrow at him. Stedman dodged the arrow and stood his ground without
+even taking a step backward, only turning slightly to put his hands to
+his mouth, and to shout something which sounded to his companions
+like, &quot;About time to begin on the goats.&quot; But the instant the young
+man had fired, King Messenwah swung his club and knocked him down, and
+none of the others moved. Then Messenwah advanced before his men to
+meet Stedman, and on Stedman's opening and shutting his hands to show
+that he was unarmed, the King threw down his club and spears, and came
+forward as empty-handed as himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Ah,&quot; gasped Bradley, Jr., with his finger trembling on his lever,
+&quot;let me take a shot at him now.&quot; Gordon struck the man's gun up, and
+walked forward in all the glory of his gold and blue uniform; for both
+he and Stedman saw now that Messenwah was more impressed by their
+appearance, and in the fact that they were white men, than with any
+threats of immediate war. So when he saluted Gordon haughtily, that
+young man gave him a haughty nod in return, and bade Stedman tell the
+King that he would permit him to sit down. The King did not quite
+appear to like this, but he sat down, nevertheless, and nodded his
+head gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now tell him,&quot; said Gordon, &quot;that I come from the ruler of the
+greatest nation on earth, and that I recognize Ollypybus as the only
+King of this island, and that I come to this little three-penny King
+with either peace and presents, or bullets and war.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Have I got to tell him he's a little threepenny King?&quot; said Stedman,
+plaintively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;No; you needn't give a literal translation; it can be as free as you
+please.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Thanks,&quot; said the secretary, humbly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And tell him,&quot; continued Gordon, &quot;that we will give presents to him
+and his warriors if he keeps away from Ollypybus, and agrees to keep
+away always. If he won't do that, try to get him to agree to stay away
+for three months at least, and by that time we can get word to San
+Francisco, and have a dozen muskets over here in two months; and when
+our time of probation is up, and he and his merry men come dancing
+down the hillside, we will blow them up as high as his mountains. But
+you needn't tell him that, either. And if he is proud and haughty, and
+would rather fight, ask him to restrain himself until we show what we
+can do with our weapons at two hundred yards.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman seated himself in the long grass in front of the King, and
+with many revolving gestures of his arms, and much pointing to Gordon,
+and profound nods and bows, retold what Gordon had dictated. When he
+had finished, the King looked at the bundle of presents, and at the
+guns, of which Stedman had given a very wonderful account, but
+answered nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I guess,&quot; said Stedman, with a sigh, &quot;that we will have to give him a
+little practical demonstration to help matters. I am sorry, but I
+think one of those goats has got to die. It's like vivisection. The
+lower order of animals have to suffer for the good of the higher.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh,&quot; said Bradley, Jr., cheerfully, &quot;I'd just as soon shoot one of
+those niggers as one of the goats.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Stedman bade the King tell his men to drive a goat toward them, and
+the King did so, and one of the men struck one of the goats with his
+spear, and it ran clumsily across the plain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Take your time, Bradley,&quot; said Gordon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Aim low, and if you hit it, you can have it for supper.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And if you miss it,&quot; said Stedman, gloomily, &quot;Messenwah may have us
+for supper.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Hillmen had seated themselves a hundred yards off, while the
+leaders were debating, and they now rose curiously and watched
+Bradley, as he sank upon one knee, and covered the goat with his
+rifle. When it was about one hundred and fifty yards off he fired, and
+the goat fell over dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then all the Hillmen, with the King himself, broke away on a run,
+toward the dead animal, with much shouting. The King came back alone,
+leaving his people standing about and examining the goat. He was much
+excited, and talked and gesticulated violently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He says&mdash;&quot; said Stedman; &quot;he says&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What? yes, goon.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He says&mdash;goodness me!&mdash;what do you think he says?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, what does he say?&quot; cried Gordon, in great excitement. &quot;Don't
+keep it all to yourself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He says,&quot; said Stedman, &quot;that we are deceived; that he is no longer
+King of the Island of Opeki; that he is in great fear of us, and that
+he has got himself into no end of trouble. He says he sees that we are
+indeed mighty men, that to us he is as helpless as the wild boar
+before the javelin of the hunter.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, he's right,&quot; said Gordon. &quot;Go on.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But that which we ask is no longer his to give. He has sold his
+kingship and his right to this island to another king, who came to him
+two days ago in a great canoe, and who made noises as we do&mdash;with
+guns, I suppose he means&mdash;and to whom he sold the island for a watch
+that he has in a bag around his neck. And that he signed a paper, and
+made marks on a piece of bark, to show that he gave up the island
+freely and forever.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What does he mean?&quot; said Gordon. &quot;How can he give up the island?
+Ollypybus is the king of half of it, anyway, and he knows it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That's just it,&quot; said Stedman. &quot;That's what frightens him. He said he
+didn't care about Ollypybus, and didn't count him in when he made the
+treaty, because he is such a peaceful chap that he knew he could
+thrash him into doing anything he wanted him to do. And now that you
+have turned up and taken Ollypybus's part, he wishes he hadn't sold
+the island, and wishes to know if you are angry.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Angry? of course I'm angry,&quot; said Gordon, glaring as grimly at the
+frightened monarch as he thought was safe. &quot;Who wouldn't be angry? Who
+do you think these people were who made a fool of him, Stedman? Ask
+him to let us see this watch.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman did so, and the King fumbled among his necklaces until he had
+brought out a leather bag tied round his neck with a cord, and
+containing a plain stem-winding silver watch marked on the inside
+&quot;Munich.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That doesn't tell anything,&quot; said Gordon. &quot;But it's plain enough.
+Some foreign ship of war has settled on this place as a
+coaling-station, or has annexed it for colonization, and they've sent
+a boat ashore, and they've made a treaty with this old chap, and
+forced him to sell his birthright for a mess of porridge. Now, that's
+just like those monarchical pirates, imposing upon a poor old black.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Bradley looked at him impudently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Not at all,&quot; said Gordon; &quot;it's quite different with us; we don't
+want to rob him or Ollypybus, or to annex their land. All we want to
+do is to improve it, and have the fun of running it for them and
+meddling in their affairs of state. Well, Stedman,&quot; he said, &quot;what
+shall we do?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman said that the best and only thing to do was to threaten to
+take the watch away from Messenwah, but to give him a revolver
+instead, which would make a friend of him for life, and to keep him
+supplied with cartridges only as long as he behaved himself, and then
+to make him understand that, as Ollypybus had not given his consent to
+the loss of the island, Messenwah's agreement, or treaty, or whatever
+it was, did not stand, and that he had better come down the next day,
+early in the morning, and join in a general consultation. This was
+done, and Messenwah agreed willingly to their proposition, and was
+given his revolver and shown how to shoot it, while the other presents
+were distributed among the other men, who were as happy over them as
+girls with a full dance-card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And now, to-morrow,&quot; said Stedman, &quot;understand, you are all to come
+down unarmed, and sign a treaty with great Ollypybus, in which he will
+agree to keep to one-half of the island if you keep to yours, and
+there must be no more wars or goat-stealing, or this gentleman on my
+right and I will come up and put holes in you just as the gentleman on
+the left did with the goat.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Messenwah and his warriors promised to come early, and saluted
+reverently as Gordon and his three companions walked up together very
+proudly and stiffly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do you know how I feel?&quot; said Gordon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;How?&quot; asked Stedman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I feel as I used to do in the city, when the boys in the street were
+throwing snowballs, and I had to go by with a high hat on my head and
+pretend not to know they were behind me. I always felt a cold chill
+down my spinal column, and I could feel that snowball, whether it came
+or not, right in the small of my back. And I can feel one of those men
+pulling his bow now, and the arrow sticking out of my right shoulder.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, no, you can't,&quot; said Stedman. &quot;They are too much afraid of those
+rifles. But I do feel sorry for any of those warriors whom old man
+Messenwah doesn't like, now that he has that revolver. He isn't the
+sort to practise on goats.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was great rejoicing when Stedman and Gordon told their story to
+the King, and the people learned that they were not to have their huts
+burned and their cattle stolen. The armed Opekians formed a guard
+around the ambassadors and escorted them to their homes with cheers
+and shouts, and the women ran to their side and tried to kiss Gordon's
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'm sorry I can't speak the language, Stedman,&quot; said Gordon, &quot;or I
+would tell them what a brave man you are. You are too modest to do it
+yourself, even if I dictated something for you to say. As for me,&quot; he
+said, pulling off his uniform, &quot;I am thoroughly disgusted and
+disappointed. It never occurred to me until it was all over that this
+was my chance to be a war correspondent. It wouldn't have been much of
+a war, but then I would have been the only one on the spot, and that
+counts for a great deal. Still, my time may come.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We have a great deal on hand for to-morrow,&quot; said Gordon that
+evening, &quot;and we had better turn in early.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the people were still singing and rejoicing down in the village
+when the two conspirators for the peace of the country went to sleep
+for the night. It seemed to Gordon as though he had hardly turned his
+pillow twice to get the coolest side when some one touched him, and he
+saw, by the light of the dozen glowworms in the tumbler by his
+bedside, a tall figure at its foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's me&mdash;Bradley,&quot; said the figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes,&quot; said Gordon, with the haste of a man to show that sleep has no
+hold on him; &quot;exactly; what is it?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There is a ship of war in the harbor,&quot; Bradley answered in a whisper.
+&quot;I heard her anchor chains rattle when she came to, and that woke me.
+I could hear that if I were dead. And then I made sure by her lights;
+she's a great boat, sir, and I can know she's a ship of war by the
+challenging when they change the watch. I thought you'd like to know,
+sir.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gordon sat up and clutched his knees with his hands. &quot;Yes, of course,&quot;
+he said; &quot;you are quite right. Still, I don't see what there is to
+do.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not wish to show too much youthful interest, but though fresh
+from civilization, he had learned how far from it he was, and he was
+curious to see this sign of it that had come so much more quickly than
+he had anticipated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Wake Mr. Stedman, will you?&quot; said he, &quot;and we will go and take a look
+at her.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You can see nothing but the lights,&quot; said Bradley, as he left the
+room; &quot;it's a black night, sir.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman was not new from the sight of men and ships of war, and came
+in half dressed and eager.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do you suppose it's the big canoe Messenwah spoke of?&quot; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I thought of that,&quot; said Gordon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three men fumbled their way down the road to the plaza, and saw,
+as soon as they turned into it, the great outlines and the brilliant
+lights of an immense vessel, still more immense in the darkness, and
+glowing like a strange monster of the sea, with just a suggestion here
+and there, where the lights spread, of her cabins and bridges. As they
+stood on the shore, shivering in the cool night-wind, they heard the
+bells strike over the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;It's two o'clock,&quot; said Bradley, counting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, we can do nothing, and they cannot mean to do much to-night,&quot;
+Albert said. &quot;We had better get some more sleep, and, Bradley, you
+keep watch and tell us as soon as day breaks.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Ay, ay, sir,&quot; said the sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If that's the man-of-war that made the treaty with Messenwah, and
+Messenwah turns up to-morrow, it looks as if our day would be pretty
+well filled up,&quot; said Albert, as they felt their way back to the
+darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What do you intend to do?&quot; asked his secretary, with a voice of some
+concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I don't know,&quot; Albert answered gravely, from the blackness of the
+night. &quot;It looks as if we were getting ahead just a little too fast,
+doesn't it? Well,&quot; he added, as they reached the house, &quot;let's try to
+keep in step with the procession, even if we can't be drum-majors and
+walk in front of it.&quot; And with this cheering tone of confidence in
+their ears, the two diplomats went soundly asleep again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light of the rising sun filled the room, and the parrots were
+chattering outside, when Bradley woke him again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They are sending a boat ashore, sir,&quot; he said, excitedly, and filled
+with the importance of the occasion. &quot;She's a German man-of-war, and
+one of the new model. A beautiful boat, sir; for her lines were laid
+in Glasgow, and I can tell that, no matter what flag she flies. You
+had best be moving to meet them: the village isn't awake yet.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert took a cold bath and dressed leisurely; then he made Bradley,
+Jr., who had slept through it all, get up breakfast, and the two young
+men ate it and drank their coffee comfortably and with an air of
+confidence that deceived their servants, if it did not deceive
+themselves. But when they came down the path, smoking and swinging
+their sticks, and turned into the plaza, their composure left them
+like a mask, and they stopped where they stood. The plaza was enclosed
+by the natives gathered in whispering groups, and depressed by fear
+and wonder. On one side were crowded all the Messenwah warriors,
+unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the Opekians. In the middle of
+the plaza some twenty sailors were busy rearing and bracing a tall
+flag-staff that they had shaped from a royal palm, and they did this
+as unconcernedly and as contemptuously, and with as much indifference
+to the strange groups on either side of them, as though they were
+working on a barren coast, with nothing but the startled sea-gulls
+about them. As Albert and Stedman came upon the scene, the flagpole
+was in place, and the halyards hung from it with a little bundle of
+bunting at the end of one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;We must find the King at once,&quot; said Gordon. He was terribly excited
+and angry. &quot;It is easy enough to see what this means. They are going
+through the form of annexing this island to the other lands of the
+German Government. They are robbing old Ollypybus of what is his. They
+have not even given him a silver watch for it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The King was in his bungalow, facing the plaza. Messenwah was with
+him, and an equal number of each of their councils. The common danger
+had made them lie down together in peace; but they gave a murmur of
+relief as Gordon strode into the room with no ceremony, and greeted
+them with a curt wave of the hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now then, Stedman, be quick,&quot; he said. &quot;Explain to them what this
+means; tell them that I will protect them; that I am anxious to see
+that Ollypybus is not cheated; that we will do all we can for them.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside, on the shore, a second boat's crew had landed a group of
+officers and a file of marines. They walked in all the dignity of full
+dress across the plaza to the flag-pole, and formed in line on the
+three sides of it, with the marines facing the sea. The officers, from
+the captain with a prayer-book in his hand, to the youngest middy,
+were as indifferent to the frightened natives about them as the other
+men had been. The natives, awed and afraid, crouched back among their
+huts, the marines and the sailors kept their eyes front, and the
+German captain opened his prayer-book. The debate in the bungalow was
+over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If you only had your uniform, sir,&quot; said Bradley, Sr., miserably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;This is a little bit too serious for uniforms and bicycle medals,&quot;
+said Gordon. &quot;And these men are used to gold lace.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed his way through the natives, and stepped confidently across
+the plaza. The youngest middy saw him coming, and nudged the one next
+him with his elbow, and he nudged the next, but none of the officers
+moved, because the captain had begun to read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;One minute, please,&quot; called Gordon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stepped out into the hollow square formed by the marines, and
+raised his helmet to the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do you speak English or French?&quot; Gordon said in French; &quot;I do not
+understand German.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain lowered the book in his hands and gazed reflectively at
+Gordon through his spectacles, and made no reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If I understand this,&quot; said the younger man, trying to be very
+impressive and polite, &quot;you are laying claim to this land, in behalf
+of the German Government.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain continued to observe him thoughtfully, and then said,
+&quot;That is so,&quot; and then asked, &quot;Who are you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I represent the King of this island, Ollypybus, whose people you see
+around you. I also represent the United States Government, that does
+not tolerate a foreign power near her coast, since the days of
+President Monroe and before. The treaty you have made with Messenwah
+is an absurdity. There is only one king with whom to treat, and he&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain turned to one of his officers and said something, and
+then, after giving another curious glance at Gordon, raised his book
+and continued reading, in a deep, unruffled monotone. The officer
+whispered an order, and two of the marines stepped out of line, and
+dropping the muzzles of their muskets, pushed Gordon back out of the
+enclosure, and left him there with his lips white, and trembling all
+over with indignation. He would have liked to have rushed back into
+the lines and broken the captain's spectacles over his sun-tanned nose
+and cheeks, but he was quite sure this would only result in his
+getting shot, or in his being made ridiculous before the natives,
+which was almost as bad; so he stood still for a moment, with his
+blood choking him, and then turned and walked back to where the King
+and Stedman were whispering together. Just as he turned, one of the
+men pulled the halyards, the ball of bunting ran up into the air,
+bobbed, twitched, and turned, and broke into the folds of the German
+flag. At the same moment the marines raised their muskets and fired a
+volley, and the officers saluted and the sailors cheered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Do you see that?&quot; cried Stedman, catching Gordon's humor, to
+Ollypybus; &quot;that means that you are no longer king, that strange
+people are coming here to take your land, and to turn your people into
+servants, and to drive you back into the mountains. Are you going to
+submit? are you going to let that flag stay where it is?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Messenwah and Ollypybus gazed at one another with fearful, helpless
+eyes. &quot;We are afraid,&quot; Ollypybus cried; &quot;we do not know what we should
+do.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What do they say?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They say they do not know what to do.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I know what I'd do,&quot; cried Gordon. &quot;If I were not an American consul,
+I'd pull down their old flag, and put a hole in their boat and sink
+her.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, I'd wait until they get under way before you do either of those
+things,&quot; said Stedman, soothingly. &quot;That captain seems to be a man of
+much determination of character.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;But I will pull it down,&quot; cried Gordon. &quot;I will resign, as Travis
+did. I am no longer consul. You can be consul if you want to. I
+promote you. I am going up a step higher. I mean to be king. Tell
+those two,&quot; he ran on, excitedly, &quot;that their only course and only
+hope is in me; that they must make me ruler of the island until this
+thing is over; that I will resign again as soon as it is settled, but
+that some one must act at once, and if they are afraid to, I am not,
+only they must give me authority to act for them. They must abdicate
+in my favor.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Are you in earnest?&quot; gasped Stedman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Don't I talk as if I were?&quot; demanded Gordon, wiping the perspiration
+from his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And can I be consul?&quot; said Stedman, cheerfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Of course. Tell them what I propose to do.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman turned and spoke rapidly to the two kings. The people gathered
+closer to hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two rival monarchs looked at one another in silence for a moment,
+and then both began to speak at once, their counsellors interrupting
+them and mumbling their guttural comments with anxious earnestness. It
+did not take them very long to see that they were all of one mind, and
+then they both turned to Gordon and dropped on one knee, and placed
+his hands on their foreheads, and Stedman raised his cap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They agree,&quot; he explained, for it was but pantomime to Albert. &quot;They
+salute you as a ruler; they are calling you Tellaman, which means
+peacemaker. The Peacemaker, that is your title. I hope you will
+deserve it, but I think they might have chosen a more appropriate
+one.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Then I'm really King?&quot; demanded Albert, decidedly, &quot;and I can do what
+I please? They give me full power. Quick, do they?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, but don't do it,&quot; begged Stedman, &quot;and just remember I am
+American consul now, and that is a much superior being to a crowned
+monarch; you said so yourself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert did not reply to this, but ran across the plaza, followed by
+the two Bradleys. The boats had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Hoist that flag beside the brass cannon,&quot; he cried, &quot;and stand ready
+to salute it when I drop this one.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bradley, Jr., grasped the halyards of the flag, which he had forgotten
+to raise and salute in the morning in all the excitement of the
+arrival of the man-of-war. Bradley, Sr., stood by the brass cannon,
+blowing gently on his lighted fuse. The Peacemaker took the halyards
+of the German flag in his two hands, gave a quick, sharp tug, and down
+came the red, white, and black piece of bunting, and the next moment
+young Bradley sent the Stars and Stripes up in its place. As it rose,
+Bradley's brass cannon barked merrily like a little bull-dog, and the
+Peacemaker cheered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Why don't you cheer, Stedman?&quot; he shouted. &quot;Tell those people to
+cheer for all they are worth. What sort of an American consul are
+you?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman raised his arm half-heartedly to give the time, and opened his
+mouth; but his arm remained fixed and his mouth open, while his eyes
+stared at the retreating boat of the German man-of-war. In the stern
+sheets of this boat the stout German captain was struggling unsteadily
+to his feet; he raised his arm and waved it to some one on the great
+man-of-war, as though giving an order. The natives looked from Stedman
+to the boat, and even Gordon stopped in his cheering, and stood
+motionless, watching. They had not very long to wait. There was a puff
+of white smoke, and a flash, and then a loud report, and across the
+water came a great black ball skipping lightly through and over the
+waves, as easily as a flat stone thrown by a boy. It seemed to come
+very slowly. At least it came slowly enough for every one to see that
+it was coming directly toward the brass cannon. The Bradleys certainly
+saw this, for they ran as fast as they could, and kept on running. The
+ball caught the cannon under its mouth and tossed it in the air,
+knocking the flag-pole into a dozen pieces, and passing on through two
+of the palm-covered huts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Great Heavens, Gordon!&quot; cried Stedman; &quot;they are firing on us.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Gordon's face was radiant and wild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Firing on <i>us</i>!&quot; he cried. &quot;On us! Don't you see? Don't you
+understand? What do <i>we</i> amount to? They have fired on the
+American flag! Don't you see what that means? It means war. A great
+international war. And I am a war correspondent at last!&quot; He ran up to
+Stedman and seized him by the arm so tightly that it hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;By three o'clock,&quot; he said, &quot;they will know in the office what has
+happened. The country will know it to-morrow when the paper is on the
+street; people will read it all over the world. The Emperor will hear
+of it at breakfast; the President will cable for further particulars.
+He will get them. It is the chance of a lifetime, and we are on the
+spot!&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman did not hear this; he was watching the broadside of the ship
+to see another puff of white smoke, but there came no such sign. The
+two row-boats were raised, there was a cloud of black smoke from the
+funnel, a creaking of chains sounding faintly across the water, and
+the ship started at half-speed and moved out of the harbor. The
+Opekians and the Hillmen fell on their knees, or to dancing, as best
+suited their sense of relief, but Gordon shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;They are only going to land the marines,&quot; he said; &quot;perhaps they are
+going to the spot they stopped at before, or to take up another
+position farther out at sea. They will land men and then shell the
+town, and the land forces will march here and co-operate with the
+vessel, and everybody will be taken prisoner or killed. We have the
+centre of the stage, and we are making history.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I'd rather read it than make it,&quot; said Stedman. &quot;You've got us in a
+senseless, silly position, Gordon, and a mighty unpleasant one. And
+for no reason that I can see, except to make copy for your paper.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Tell those people to get their things together,&quot; said Gordon, &quot;and
+march back out of danger into the woods. Tell Ollypybus I am going to
+fix things all right; I don't know just how yet, but I will, and now
+come after me as quickly as you can to the cable office. I've got to
+tell the paper all about it.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was three o'clock before the &quot;chap at Octavia&quot; answered Stedman's
+signalling. Then Stedman delivered Gordon's message, and immediately
+shut off all connection, before the Octavia operator could question
+him. Gordon dictated his message in this way:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Begin with the date line, 'Opeki, June 22.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;At seven o'clock this morning, the captain and officers of the German
+man-of-war <i>Kaiser</i> went through the ceremony of annexing this
+island in the name of the German Emperor, basing their right to do so
+on an agreement made with a leader of a wandering tribe known as the
+Hillmen. King Ollypybus, the present monarch of Opeki, delegated his
+authority, as also did the leader of the Hillmen, to King Tellaman, or
+the Peacemaker, who tore down the German flag, and raised that of the
+United States in its place. At the same moment the flag was saluted by
+the battery. This salute, being mistaken for an attack on the
+<i>Kaiser</i>, was answered by that vessel. Her first shot took
+immediate effect, completely destroying the entire battery of the
+Opekians, cutting down the American flag, and destroying the houses of
+the people&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;There was only one brass cannon and two huts,&quot; expostulated Stedman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, that was the whole battery, wasn't it?&quot; asked Gordon, &quot;and two
+huts is plural. I said houses of the people. I couldn't say two houses
+of the people. Just you send this as you get it. You are not an
+American consul at the present moment. You are an under-paid agent of
+a cable company, and you send my stuff as I write it. The American
+residents have taken refuge in the consulate&mdash;that's us,&quot; explained
+Gordon, &quot;and the English residents have sought refuge in the
+woods&mdash;that's the Bradleys. King Tellaman&mdash;that's me&mdash;declares his
+intention of fighting against the annexation. The forces of the
+Opekians are under the command of Captain Thomas Bradley&mdash;I guess I
+might as well make him a colonel&mdash;of Colonel Thomas Bradley, of the
+English army.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The American consul says&mdash;Now, what do you say, Stedman? Hurry up,
+please,&quot; asked Gordon, &quot;and say something good and strong.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;You get me all mixed up,&quot; complained Stedman, plaintively. &quot;Which am
+I now, a cable operator or the American consul?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Consul, of course. Say something patriotic and about your
+determination to protect the interests of your government, and all
+that.&quot; Gordon bit the end of his pencil impatiently, and waited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I won't do anything of the sort, Gordon,&quot; said Stedman; &quot;you are
+getting me into an awful lot of trouble, and yourself too. I won't say
+a word.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;The American consul,&quot; read Gordon, as his pencil wriggled across the
+paper, &quot;refuses to say anything for publication until he has
+communicated with the authorities at Washington, but from all I can
+learn he sympathizes entirely with Tellaman. Your correspondent has
+just returned from an audience with King Tellaman, who rules him to
+inform the American people that the Monroe doctrine will be sustained
+as long as he rules this island. I guess that's enough to begin with,&quot;
+said Gordon. &quot;Now send that off quick, and then get away from the
+instrument before the man in Octavia begins to ask questions. I am
+going out to precipitate matters.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gordon found the two kings sitting dejectedly side by side, and gazing
+grimly upon the disorder of the village, from which the people were
+taking their leave as quickly as they could get their few belongings
+piled upon the ox-carts. Gordon walked among them, helping them in
+every way he could, and tasting, in their subservience and gratitude,
+the sweets of sovereignty. When Stedman had locked up the cable office
+and rejoined him, he bade him tell Messenwah to send three of his
+youngest men and fastest runners back to the hills to watch for the
+German vessel and see where she was attempting to land her marines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;This is a tremendous chance for descriptive writing, Stedman,&quot; said
+Gordon, enthusiastically; &quot;all this confusion and excitement, and the
+people leaving their homes, and all that. It's like the people getting
+out of Brussels before Waterloo, and then the scene at the foot of the
+mountains, while they are camping out there, until the Germans leave.
+I never had a chance like this before.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was quite dark by six o'clock, and none of the three messengers had
+as yet returned. Gordon walked up and down the empty plaza and looked
+now at the horizon for the man-of-war, and again down the road back of
+the village. But neither the vessel nor the messengers bearing word of
+her appeared. The night passed without any incident, and in the
+morning Gordon's impatience became so great that he walked out to
+where the villagers were in camp and passed on half way up the
+mountain, but he could see no sign of the man-of-war. He came back
+more restless than before, and keenly disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;If something don't happen before three o'clock, Stedman,&quot; he said,
+&quot;our second cablegram will have to consist of glittering generalities
+and a lengthy interview with King Tellaman, by himself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing did happen. Ollypybus and Messenwah began to breathe more
+freely. They believed the new king had succeeded in frightening the
+German vessel away forever. But the new king upset their hopes by
+telling them that the Germans had undoubtedly already landed, and had
+probably killed the three messengers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now then,&quot; he said, with pleased expectation, as Stedman and he
+seated themselves in the cable office at three o'clock, &quot;open it up
+and let's find out what sort of an impression we have made.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman's face, as the answer came in to his first message of
+greeting, was one of strangely marked disapproval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What does he say?&quot; demanded Gordon, anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He hasn't done anything but swear yet,&quot; answered Stedman, grimly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What is he swearing about?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He wants to know why I left the cable yesterday. He says he has been
+trying to call me up for the last twenty-four hours, ever since I sent
+my message at three o'clock. The home office is jumping mad, and want
+me discharged. They won't do that, though,&quot; he said, in a cheerful
+aside, &quot;because they haven't paid me my salary for the last eight
+months. He says&mdash;great Scott! this will please you, Gordon&mdash;he says
+that there have been over two hundred queries for matter from papers
+all over the United States, and from Europe. Your paper beat them on
+the news, and now the home office is packed with San Francisco
+reporters, and the telegrams are coming in every minute, and they have
+been abusing him for not answering them, and he says that I'm a fool.
+He wants as much as you can send, and all the details. He says all the
+papers will have to put 'By Yokohama Cable Company' on the top of each
+message they print, and that that is advertising the company, and is
+sending the stock up. It rose fifteen points on 'change in San
+Francisco to-day, and the president and the other officers are
+buying&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Oh, I don't want to hear about their old company,&quot; snapped out
+Gordon, pacing up and down in despair. &quot;What am I to do? that's what I
+want to know. Here I have the whole country stirred up and begging for
+news. On their knees for it, and a cable all to myself, and the only
+man on the spot, and nothing to say. I'd just like to know how long
+that German idiot intends to wait before he begins shelling this town
+and killing people. He has put me in a most absurd position.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Here's a message for you, Gordon,&quot; said Stedman, with business-like
+calm. &quot;Albert Gordon, correspondent,&quot; he read. &quot;Try American consul.
+First message O.K.; beat the country; can take all you send. Give
+names of foreign residents massacred, and fuller account blowing up
+palace. Dodge.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The expression on Gordon's face as this message was slowly read off to
+him, had changed from one of gratified pride to one of puzzled
+consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What's he mean by foreign residents massacred, and blowing up of
+palace?&quot; asked Stedman, looking over his shoulder anxiously. &quot;Who is
+Dodge?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Dodge is the night editor,&quot; said Gordon, nervously. &quot;They must have
+read my message wrong. You sent just what I gave you, didn't you?&quot; he
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Of course I did,&quot; said Stedman, indignantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I didn't say anything about the massacre of anybody, did I?&quot; asked
+Gordon. &quot;I hope they are not improving on my account. What <i>am</i> I
+to do? This is getting awful. I'll have to go out and kill a few
+people myself. Oh, why don't that Dutch captain begin to do something!
+What sort of a fighter does he call himself? He wouldn't shoot at a
+school of porpoises. He's not&mdash;&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Here comes a message to Leonard T. Travis, American consul, Opeki,&quot;
+read Stedman. &quot;It's raining messages to-day. 'Send full details of
+massacre of American citizens by German sailors.' Secretary of&mdash;great
+Scott!&quot; gasped Stedman, interrupting himself and gazing at his
+instrument with horrified fascination&mdash;&quot;the Secretary of State.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;That settles it,&quot; roared Gordon, pulling at his hair and burying his
+face in his hands. &quot;I have <i>got</i> to kill some of them now.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Albert Gordon, correspondent,&quot; read Stedman, impressively, like the
+voice of Fate. &quot;Is Colonel Thomas Bradley, commanding native forces
+at Opeki, Colonel Sir Thomas Kent-Bradley of Crimean war fame?
+Correspondent London <i>Times</i>, San Francisco Press Club.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Go on, go on!&quot; said Gordon, desperately. &quot;I'm getting used to it now.
+Go on!&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;American consul, Opeki,&quot; read Stedman. &quot;Home Secretary desires you to
+furnish list of names English residents killed during shelling of
+Opeki by ship of war <i>Kaiser</i>, and estimate of amount property
+destroyed. Stoughton, British Embassy, Washington.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Stedman!&quot; cried Gordon, jumping to his feet, &quot;there's a mistake here
+somewhere. These people cannot all have made my message read like
+that. Some one has altered it, and now I have got to make these people
+here live up to that message, whether they like being massacred and
+blown up or not. Don't answer any of those messages except the one
+from Dodge; tell him things have quieted down a bit, and that I'll
+send four thousand words on the flight of the natives from the
+village, and their encampment at the foot of the mountains, and of the
+exploring party we have sent out to look for the German vessel; and
+now I am going out to make something happen.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gordon said that he would be gone for two hours at least, and as
+Stedman did not feel capable of receiving any more nerve-stirring
+messages, he cut off all connection with Octavia by saying, &quot;Good-by
+for two hours,&quot; and running away from the office. He sat down on a
+rock on the beach, and mopped his face with his handkerchief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;After a man has taken nothing more exciting than weather reports from
+Octavia for a year,&quot; he soliloquized, &quot;it's a bit disturbing to have
+all the crowned heads of Europe and their secretaries calling upon you
+for details of a massacre that never came off.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of two hours Gordon returned from the consulate with a mass
+of manuscript in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Here's three thousand words,&quot; he said, desperately. &quot;I never wrote
+more and said less in my life. It will make them weep at the office. I
+had to pretend that they knew all that had happened so far; they
+apparently do know more than we do, and I have filled it full of
+prophecies of more trouble ahead, and with interviews with myself and
+the two ex-Kings. The only news element in it is, that the messengers
+have returned to report that the German vessel is not in sight, and
+that there is no news. They think she has gone for good. Suppose she
+has, Stedman,&quot; he groaned, looking at him helplessly, &quot;what <i>am</i>
+I going to do?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Well, as for me,&quot; said Stedman, &quot;I'm afraid to go near that cable.
+It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many
+more such shocks as those they gave us this afternoon.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gordon threw himself down dejectedly in a chair in the office, and
+Stedman approached his instrument gingerly, as though it might
+explode.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He's swearing again,&quot; he explained, sadly, in answer to Gordon's look
+of inquiry. &quot;He wants to know when I am going to stop running away
+from the wire. He has a stack of messages to send, he says, but I
+guess he'd better wait and take your copy first; don't you think so?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Yes, I do,&quot; said Gordon. &quot;I don't want any more messages than I've
+had. That's the best I can do,&quot; he said, as he threw his manuscript
+down beside Stedman. &quot;And they can keep on cabling until the wire
+burns red hot, and they won't get any more.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was silence in the office for some time, while Stedman looked
+over Gordon's copy, and Gordon stared dejectedly out at the ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;This is pretty poor stuff, Gordon,&quot; said Stedman. &quot;It's like giving
+people milk when they want brandy.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Don't you suppose I know that?&quot; growled Gordon. &quot;It's the best I can
+do, isn't it? It's not my fault that we are not all dead now. I can't
+massacre foreign residents if there are no foreign residents, but I
+can commit suicide, though, and I'll do it if something don't happen.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a long pause, in which the silence of the office was only
+broken by the sound of the waves beating on the coral reefs outside.
+Stedman raised his head wearily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He's swearing again,&quot; he said; &quot;he says this stuff of yours is all
+nonsense. He says stock in the Y.C.C. has gone up to one hundred and
+two, and that owners are unloading and making their fortunes, and that
+this sort of descriptive writing is not what the company want.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;What's he think I'm here for?&quot; cried Gordon. &quot;Does he think I pulled
+down the German flag and risked my neck half a dozen times and had
+myself made King just to boom his Yokohama cable stock? Confound him!
+You might at least swear back. Tell him just what the situation is in
+a few words. Here, stop that rigmarole to the paper, and explain to
+your home office that we are awaiting developments, and that, in the
+meanwhile, they must put up with the best we can send them. Wait; send
+this to Octavia.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gordon wrote rapidly, and read what he wrote as rapidly as it was
+written.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Operator, Octavia. You seem to have misunderstood my first message.
+The facts in the case are these. A German man-of-war raised a flag on
+this island. It was pulled down and the American flag raised in its
+place and saluted by a brass cannon. The German man-of-war fired once
+at the flag and knocked it down, and then steamed away and has not
+been seen since. Two huts were upset, that is all the damage done; the
+battery consisted of the one brass cannon before mentioned. No one,
+either native or foreign, has been massacred. The English residents
+are two sailors. The American residents are the young man who is
+sending you this cable and myself. Our first message was quite true in
+substance, but perhaps misleading in detail. I made it so because I
+fully expected much more to happen immediately. Nothing has happened,
+or seems likely to happen, and that is the exact situation up to date.
+Albert Gordon.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Now,&quot; he asked, after a pause, &quot;what does he say to that?&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;He doesn't say anything,&quot; said Stedman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;I guess he has fainted. Here it comes,&quot; he added in the same breath.
+He bent toward his instrument, and Gordon raised himself from his
+chair and stood beside him as he read it off. The two young men hardly
+breathed in the intensity of their interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Dear Stedman,&quot; he slowly read aloud. &quot;You and your young friend are a
+couple of fools. If you had allowed me to send you the messages
+awaiting transmission here to you, you would not have sent me such a
+confession of guilt as you have just done. You had better leave Opeki
+at once or hide in the hills. I am afraid I have placed you in a
+somewhat compromising position with the company, which is unfortunate,
+especially as, if I am not mistaken, they owe you some back pay. You
+should have been wiser in your day, and bought Y.C.C. stock when it
+was down to five cents, as 'yours truly' did. You are not, Stedman, as
+bright a boy as some. And as for your friend, the war correspondent,
+he has queered himself for life. You see, my dear Stedman, after I had
+sent off your first message, and demands for further details came
+pouring in, and I could not get you at the wire to supply them, I took
+the liberty of sending some on myself.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Great Heavens!&quot; gasped Gordon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stedman grew very white under his tan, and the perspiration rolled on
+his cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Your message was so general in its nature, that it allowed my
+imagination full play, and I sent on what I thought would please the
+papers, and, what was much more important to me, would advertise the
+Y.C.C. stock. This I have been doing while waiting for material from
+you. Not having a clear idea of the dimensions or population of Opeki,
+it is possible that I have done you and your newspaper friend some
+injustice. I killed off about a hundred American residents, two
+hundred English, because I do not like the English, and a hundred
+French. I blew up old Ollypybus and his palace with dynamite, and
+shelled the city, destroying some hundred thousand dollars' worth of
+property, and then I waited anxiously for your friend to substantiate
+what I had said. This he has most unkindly failed to do. I am very
+sorry, but much more so for him than for myself, for I, my dear
+friend, have cabled on to a man in San Francisco, who is one of the
+directors of the Y.C.C. to sell all my stock, which he has done at one
+hundred and two, and he is keeping the money until I come. And I leave
+Octavia this afternoon to reap my just reward. I am in about twenty
+thousand dollars on your little war, and I feel grateful. So much so
+that I will inform you that the ship of war <i>Kaiser</i> has arrived
+at San Francisco, for which port she sailed directly from Opeki. Her
+captain has explained the real situation, and offered to make every
+amend for the accidental indignity shown to our flag. He says he aimed
+at the cannon, which was trained on his vessel, and which had first
+fired on him. But you must know, my dear Stedman, that before his
+arrival, war-vessels belonging to the several powers mentioned in my
+revised despatches, had started for Opeki at full speed, to revenge
+the butchery of the foreign residents. A word, my dear young friend,
+to the wise is sufficient. I am indebted to you to the extent of
+twenty thousand dollars, and in return I give you this kindly advice.
+Leave Opeki. If there is no other way, swim. But leave Opeki.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun, that night, as it sank below the line where the clouds seemed
+to touch the sea, merged them both into a blazing, blood-red curtain,
+and colored the most wonderful spectacle that the natives of Opeki had
+ever seen. Six great ships of war, stretching out over a league of
+sea, stood blackly out against the red background, rolling and rising,
+and leaping forward, flinging back smoke and burning sparks up into
+the air behind them, and throbbing and panting like living creatures
+in their race for revenge. From the south came a three-decked vessel,
+a great island of floating steel, with a flag as red as the angry sky
+behind it, snapping in the wind. To the south of it plunged two long
+low-lying torpedo-boats, flying the French tri-color, and still
+farther to the north towered three magnificent hulls of the White
+Squadron. Vengeance was written on every curve and line, on each
+straining engine-rod, and on each polished gun-muzzle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in front of these, a clumsy fishing-boat rose and fell on each
+passing wave. Two sailors sat in the stern, holding the rope and
+tiller, and in the bow, with their backs turned forever toward Opeki,
+stood two young boys, their faces lit by the glow of the setting sun
+and stirred by the sight of the great engines of war plunging past
+them on their errand of vengeance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Stedman,&quot; said the elder boy, in an awe-struck whisper, and with a
+wave of his hand, &quot;we have not lived in vain.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Exiles and Other Stories, by Richard
+Harding Davis, et al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Exiles and Other Stories
+       The Exiles; The Boy Orator of Zepata City; The Other Woman; On the Fever Ship; The Lion and the Unicorn; The Last Ride Together; Miss Delamar's Understudy; The Reporter Who Made Himself King
+
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 18, 2005  [eBook #16090]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXILES AND OTHER STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 16090-h.htm or 16090-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/9/16090/16090-h/16090-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/9/16090/16090-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+The Novels and Stories of Richard Harding Davis
+
+THE EXILES AND OTHER STORIES
+
+by
+
+RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+
+With an Introduction by Charles Dana Gibson
+
+Illustrated
+
+NEW YORK
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+1919
+
+"The Exiles" and "The Boy Orator of Zepata City" from "The Exiles,"
+copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+"The Other Woman" from "Gallagher," copyright, 1891, by CHARLES
+SCRIBNER'S SONS; "On the Fever Ship," "The Lion and the Unicorn," and
+"The Last Ride Together" from "The Lion and the Unicorn," copyright,
+1899, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS; "Miss Delamar's Understudy" from
+"Cinderella," copyright, 1896, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS; "The
+Reporter Who Made Himself King" from "Stories for Boys," copyright,
+1891, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Instead she buried her face in its folds.]
+
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FRIEND
+
+J. DAVIS BRODHEAD
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF DAVIS
+
+
+Dick was twenty-four years old when he came into the smoking-room of
+the Victoria Hotel, in London, after midnight one July night--he was
+dressed as a Thames boatman.
+
+He had been rowing up and down the river since sundown, looking for
+color. He had evidently peopled every dark corner with a pirate, and
+every floating object had meant something to him. He had adventure
+written all over him. It was the first time I had ever seen him, and
+I had never heard of him. I can't now recall another figure in that
+smoke-filled room. I don't remember who introduced us--over
+twenty-seven years have passed since that night. But I can see Dick
+now dressed in a rough brown suit, a soft hat, with a handkerchief
+about his neck, a splendid, healthy, clean-minded, gifted boy at play.
+And so he always remained.
+
+His going out of this world seemed like a boy interrupted in a game he
+loved. And how well and fairly he played it! Surely no one deserved
+success more than Dick. And it is a consolation to know he had more
+than fifty years of just what he wanted. He had health, a great
+talent, and personal charm. There never was a more loyal or unselfish
+friend. There wasn't an atom of envy in him. He had unbounded mental
+and physical courage, and with it all he was sensitive and sometimes
+shy. He often tried to conceal these last two qualities, but never
+succeeded in doing so from those of us who were privileged really to
+know and love him.
+
+His life was filled with just the sort of adventure he liked the best.
+No one ever saw more wars in so many different places or got more out
+of them. And it took the largest war in all history to wear out that
+stout heart.
+
+We shall miss him.
+
+CHARLES DANA GIBSON.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+The First Glimpse of Davis               Charles Dana Gibson
+
+THE EXILES
+
+THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+
+ON THE FEVER SHIP
+
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+
+THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+MISS DELAMAR'S UNDERSTUDY
+
+THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+INSTEAD SHE BURIED HER FACE IN ITS FOLDS (Frontispiece)
+
+STOPPING FOR HALF-HOURS AT A TIME BEFORE A BAZAAR
+
+THE BOAR HUNT
+
+CONSUMED TEA AND THIN SLICES OF BREAD
+
+"I NEVER SAW A KING," GORDON REMARKED
+
+
+
+
+THE EXILES
+
+I
+
+
+The greatest number of people in the world prefer the most highly
+civilized places of the world, because they know what sort of things
+are going to happen there, and because they also know by experience
+that those are the sort of things they like. A very few people prefer
+barbarous and utterly uncivilized portions of the globe for the reason
+that they receive while there new impressions, and because they like
+the unexpected better than a routine of existence, no matter how
+pleasant that routine may be. But the most interesting places of all
+to study are those in which the savage and the cultivated man lie down
+together and try to live together in unity. This is so because we can
+learn from such places just how far a man of cultivation lapses into
+barbarism when he associates with savages, and how far the remnants of
+his former civilization will have influence upon the barbarians among
+whom he has come to live.
+
+There are many such colonies as these, and they are the most picturesque
+plague-spots on the globe. You will find them in New Zealand and at
+Yokohama, in Algiers, Tunis, and Tangier, and scattered thickly all
+along the South American coast-line wherever the law of extradition
+obtains not, and where public opinion, which is one of the things a
+colony can do longest without, is unknown. These are the unofficial
+Botany Bays and Melillas of the world, where the criminal goes of his
+own accord, and not because his government has urged him to do so and
+paid his passage there. This is the story of a young man who went to
+such a place for the benefit he hoped it would be to his health, and
+not because he had robbed any one, or done a young girl an injury. He
+was the only son of Judge Henry Howard Holcombe, of New York. That was
+all that it was generally considered necessary to say of him. It was
+not, however, quite enough, for, while his father had had nothing but
+the right and the good of his State and country to think about, the
+son was further occupied by trying to live up to his father's name.
+Young Holcombe was impressed by this fact from his earliest childhood.
+It rested upon him while at Harvard and during his years at the law
+school, and it went with him into society and into the courts of law.
+When he rose to plead a case he did not forget, nor did those present
+forget, that his father while alive had crowded those same halls with
+silent, earnest listeners; and when he addressed a mass-meeting at
+Cooper Union, or spoke from the back of a cart in the East Side, some
+one was sure to refer to the fact that this last speaker was the son
+of the man who was mobbed because he had dared to be an abolitionist,
+and who later had received the veneration of a great city for his
+bitter fight against Tweed and his followers.
+
+Young Holcombe was an earnest member of every reform club and citizens'
+league, and his distinguished name gave weight as a director to
+charitable organizations and free kindergartens. He had inherited his
+hatred of Tammany Hall, and was unrelenting in his war upon it and its
+handiwork, and he spoke of it and of its immediate downfall with the
+bated breath of one who, though amazed at the wickedness of the thing
+he fights, is not discouraged nor afraid. And he would listen to no
+half-measures. Had not his grandfather quarrelled with Henry Clay, and
+so shaken the friendship of a lifetime, because of a great compromise
+which he could not countenance? And was his grandson to truckle and
+make deals with this hideous octopus that was sucking the life-blood
+from the city's veins? Had he not but yesterday distributed six
+hundred circulars, calling for honest government, to six hundred
+possible voters, all the way up Fourth Avenue?--and when some flippant
+one had said that he might have hired a messenger-boy to have done it
+for him and so saved his energies for something less mechanical, he
+had rebuked the speaker with a reproachful stare and turned away in
+silence.
+
+Life was terribly earnest to young Holcombe, and he regarded it from
+the point of view of one who looks down upon it from the judge's bench,
+and listens with a frown to those who plead its cause. He was not
+fooled by it; he was alive to its wickedness and its evasions. He would
+tell you that he knew for a fact that the window man in his district
+was a cousin of the Tammany candidate, and that the contractor who had
+the cleaning of the street to do was a brother-in-law of one of the
+Hall's sachems, and that the policeman on his beat had not been in the
+country eight months. He spoke of these damning facts with the air of
+one who simply tells you that much, that you should see how terrible
+the whole thing really was, and what he could tell if he wished.
+
+In his own profession he recognized the trials of law-breakers only as
+experiments which went to establish and explain a general principle.
+And prisoners were not men to him, but merely the exceptions that
+proved the excellence of a rule. Holcombe would defend the lowest
+creature or the most outrageous of murderers, not because the man was
+a human being fighting for his liberty or life, but because he wished
+to see if certain evidence would be admitted in the trial of such a
+case. Of one of his clients the judge, who had a daughter of his own,
+said, when he sentenced him, "Were there many more such men as you in
+the world, the women of this land would pray to God to be left
+childless." And when some one asked Holcombe, with ill-concealed
+disgust, how he came to defend the man, he replied: "I wished to show
+the unreliability of expert testimony from medical men. Yes; they tell
+me the man was a very bad lot."
+
+It was measures, not men, to Holcombe, and law and order were his twin
+goddesses, and "no compromise" his watchword.
+
+"You can elect your man if you'll give me two thousand dollars to
+refit our club-room with," one of his political acquaintances once
+said to him. "We've five hundred voters on the rolls now, and the
+members vote as one man. You'd be saving the city twenty times that
+much if you keep Croker's man out of the job. You know _that_ as
+well as I do."
+
+"The city can better afford to lose twenty thousand dollars," Holcombe
+answered, "than we can afford to give a two-cent stamp for
+corruption."
+
+"All right," said the heeler; "all right, Mr. Holcombe. Go on. Fight
+'em your own way. If they'd agree to fight you with pamphlets and
+circulars you'd stand a chance, sir; but as long as they give out
+money and you give out reading-matter to people that can't read,
+they'll win, and I naturally want to be on the winning side."
+
+When the club to which Holcombe belonged finally succeeded in getting
+the Police Commissioners indicted for blackmailing gambling-houses,
+Holcombe was, as a matter of course and of public congratulation, on
+the side of the law; and as Assistant District Attorney--a position
+given him on account of his father's name and in the hope that it
+would shut his mouth--distinguished himself nobly.
+
+Of the four commissioners, three were convicted--the fourth, Patrick
+Meakim, with admirable foresight having fled to that country from
+which few criminals return, and which is vaguely set forth in the
+newspapers as "parts unknown."
+
+The trial had been a severe one upon the zealous Mr. Holcombe, who
+found himself at the end of it in a very bad way, with nerves unstrung
+and brain so fagged that he assented without question when his doctor
+exiled him from New York by ordering a sea voyage, with change of
+environment and rest at the other end of it. Some one else suggested
+the northern coast of Africa and Tangier, and Holcombe wrote minute
+directions to the secretaries of all of his reform clubs urging
+continued efforts on the part of his fellow-workers, and sailed away
+one cold winter's morning for Gibraltar. The great sea laid its hold
+upon him, and the winds from the south thawed the cold in his bones,
+and the sun cheered his tired spirit. He stretched himself at full
+length reading those books which one puts off reading until illness
+gives one the right to do so, and so far as in him lay obeyed his
+doctor's first command, that he should forget New York and all that
+pertained to it. By the time he had reached the Rock he was up and
+ready to drift farther into the lazy, irresponsible life of the
+Mediterranean coast, and he had forgotten his struggles against
+municipal misrule, and was at times for hours together utterly
+oblivious of his own personality.
+
+A dumpy, fat little steamer rolled itself along like a sailor on shore
+from Gibraltar to Tangier, and Holcombe, leaning over the rail of its
+quarter-deck, smiled down at the chattering group of Arabs and Moors
+stretched on their rugs beneath him. A half-naked negro, pulling at
+the dates in the basket between his bare legs, held up a handful to
+him with a laugh, and Holcombe laughed back and emptied the cigarettes
+in his case on top of him, and laughed again as the ship's crew and
+the deck passengers scrambled over one another and shook out their
+voluminous robes in search of them. He felt at ease with the world and
+with himself, and turned his eyes to the white walls of Tangier with a
+pleasure so complete that it shut out even the thought that it was a
+pleasure.
+
+The town seemed one continuous mass of white stucco, with each flat,
+low-lying roof so close to the other that the narrow streets left no
+trace. To the left of it the yellow coastline and the green
+olive-trees and palms stretched up against the sky, and beneath him
+scores of shrieking blacks fought in their boats for a place beside
+the steamer's companion-way. He jumped into one of these open wherries
+and fell sprawling among his baggage, and laughed lightly as a boy as
+the boatman set him on his feet again, and then threw them from under
+him with a quick stroke of the oars. The high, narrow pier was crowded
+with excited customs officers in ragged uniforms and dirty turbans,
+and with a few foreign residents looking for arriving passengers.
+Holcombe had his feet on the upper steps of the ladder, and was
+ascending slowly. There was a fat, heavily built man in blue serge
+leaning across the railing of the pier. He was looking down, and as
+his eyes met Holcombe's face his own straightened into lines of
+amazement and most evident terror. Holcombe stopped at the sight, and
+stared back wondering. And then the lapping waters beneath him and the
+white town at his side faded away, and he was back in the hot, crowded
+court-room with this man's face before him. Meakim, the fourth of the
+Police Commissioners, confronted him, and saw in his presence nothing
+but a menace to himself.
+
+Holcombe came up the last steps of the stairs, and stopped at their
+top. His instinct and life's tradition made him despise the man, and
+to this was added the selfish disgust that his holiday should have
+been so soon robbed of its character by this reminder of all that he
+had been told to put behind him.
+
+Meakim swept off his hat as though it were hurting him, and showed the
+great drops of sweat on his forehead.
+
+"For God's sake!" the man panted, "you can't touch me here, Mr.
+Holcombe. I'm safe here; they told me I'd be. You can't take me. You
+can't touch me."
+
+Holcombe stared at the man coldly, and with a touch of pity and
+contempt. "That is quite right, Mr. Meakim," he said. "The law cannot
+reach you here."
+
+"Then what do you want with me?" the man demanded, forgetful in his
+terror of anything but his own safety.
+
+Holcombe turned upon him sharply. "I am not here on your account, Mr.
+Meakim," he said. "You need not feel the least uneasiness, and," he
+added, dropping his voice as he noticed that others were drawing near,
+"if you keep out of my way, I shall certainly keep out of yours."
+
+The Police Commissioner gave a short laugh partly of bravado and
+partly at his own sudden terror. "I didn't know," he said, breathing
+with relief. "I thought you'd come after me. You don't wonder you give
+me a turn, do you? I _was_ scared." He fanned himself with his
+straw hat, and ran his tongue over his lips. "Going to be here some
+time, Mr. District Attorney?" he added, with grave politeness.
+
+Holcombe could not help but smile at the absurdity of it. It was so
+like what he would have expected of Meakim and his class to give every
+office-holder his full title. "No, Mr. Police Commissioner," he
+answered, grimly, and nodding to his boatmen, pushed his way after
+them and his trunks along the pier.
+
+Meakim was waiting for him as he left the custom-house. He touched his
+hat, and bent the whole upper part of his fat body in an awkward bow.
+"Excuse me, Mr. District Attorney," he began.
+
+"Oh, drop that, will you?" snapped Holcombe. "Now, what is it you
+want, Meakim?"
+
+"I was only going to say," answered the fugitive, with some offended
+dignity, "that as I've been here longer than you, I could perhaps give
+you pointers about the hotels. I've tried 'em all, and they're no
+good, but the Albion's the best."
+
+"Thank you, I'm sure," said Holcombe. "But I have been told to go to
+the Isabella."
+
+"Well, that's pretty good, too," Meakim answered, "if you don't mind
+the tables. They keep you awake most of the night, though, and--"
+
+"The tables? I beg your pardon," said Holcombe, stiffly.
+
+"Not the eatin' tables; the roulette tables," corrected Meakim. "Of
+course," he continued, grinning, "if you're fond of the game, Mr.
+Holcombe, it's handy having them in the same house, but I can steer
+you against a better one back of the French Consulate. Those at the
+Hotel Isabella's crooked."
+
+Holcombe stopped uncertainly. "I don't know just what to do," he said.
+"I think I shall wait until I can see our consul here."
+
+"Oh, he'll send you to the Isabella," said Meakim, cheerfully. "He
+gets two hundred dollars a week for protecting the proprietor, so he
+naturally caps for the house."
+
+Holcombe opened his mouth to express himself, but closed it again, and
+then asked, with some misgivings, of the hotel of which Meakim had
+first spoken.
+
+"Oh, the Albion. Most all the swells go there. It's English, and they
+cook you a good beefsteak. And the boys generally drop in for table
+d'hote. You see, that's the worst of this place, Mr. Holcombe; there's
+nowhere to go evenings--no club-rooms nor theatre nor nothing; only
+the smoking-room of the hotel or that gambling-house; and they spring
+a double naught on you if there's more than a dollar up."
+
+Holcombe still stood irresolute, his porters eying him from under
+their burdens, and the runners from the different hotels plucking at
+his sleeve.
+
+"There's some very good people at the Albion," urged the Police
+Commissioner, "and three or four of 'em's New-Yorkers. There's the
+Morrises and Ropes, the Consul-General, and Lloyd Carroll--"
+
+"Lloyd Carroll!" exclaimed Holcombe.
+
+"Yes," said Meakim, with a smile, "he's here." He looked at Holcombe
+curiously for a moment, and then exclaimed, with a laugh of
+intelligence, "Why, sure enough, you were Mr. Thatcher's lawyer in
+that case, weren't you? It was you got him his divorce?"
+
+Holcombe nodded.
+
+"Carroll was the man that made it possible, wasn't he?"
+
+Holcombe chafed under this catechism. "He was one of a dozen, I
+believe," he said; but as he moved away he turned and asked: "And Mrs.
+Thatcher. What has become of her?"
+
+The Police Commissioner did not answer at once, but glanced up at
+Holcombe from under his half-shut eyes with a look in which there was
+a mixture of curiosity and of amusement. "You don't mean to say, Mr.
+Holcombe," he began, slowly, with the patronage of the older man and
+with a touch of remonstrance in his tone, "that you're _still_
+with the husband in that case?"
+
+Holcombe looked coldly over Mr. Meakim's head. "I have only a purely
+professional interest in any one of them," he said. "They struck me as
+a particularly nasty lot. Good-morning, sir."
+
+"Well," Meakim called after him, "you needn't see nothing of them if
+you don't want to. You can get rooms to yourself."
+
+Holcombe did get rooms to himself, with a balcony overlooking the bay,
+and arranged with the proprietor of the Albion to have his dinner
+served at a separate table. As others had done this before, no one
+regarded it as an affront upon his society, and several people in the
+hotel made advances to him, which he received politely but coldly. For
+the first week of his visit the town interested him greatly,
+increasing its hold upon him unconsciously to himself. He was restless
+and curious to see it all, and rushed his guide from one of the few
+show-places to the next with an energy which left that fat Oriental
+panting.
+
+[Illustration: Stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar.]
+
+But after three days Holcombe climbed the streets more leisurely,
+stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar, or sent away his
+guide altogether, and stretched himself luxuriously on the broad wall
+of the fortifications. The sun beat down upon him, and wrapped him
+into drowsiness. From far afield came the unceasing murmur of the
+market-place and the bazaars, and the occasional cries of the priests
+from the minarets; the dark blue sea danced and flashed beyond the
+white margin of the town and its protecting reef of rocks where the
+sea-weed rose and fell, and above his head the buzzards swept heavily,
+and called to one another with harsh, frightened cries. At his side
+lay the dusty road, hemmed in by walls of cactus, and along its narrow
+length came lines of patient little donkeys with jangling necklaces,
+led by wild-looking men from the farm-lands and the desert, and women
+muffled and shapeless, with only their bare feet showing, who looked
+at him curiously or meaningly from over the protecting cloth, and
+passed on, leaving him startled and wondering. He began to find that
+the books he had brought wearied him. The sight of the type alone was
+enough to make him close the covers and start up restlessly to look
+for something less absorbing. He found this on every hand, in the lazy
+patience of the bazaars and of the markets, where the chief service of
+all was that of only standing and waiting, and in the farm-lands
+behind Tangier, where half-naked slaves drove great horned buffalo,
+and turned back the soft, chocolate-colored sod with a wooden plough.
+But it was a solitary, selfish holiday, and Holcombe found himself
+wanting certain ones at home to bear him company, and was surprised to
+find that of these none were the men nor the women with whom his
+interests in the city of New York were the most closely connected.
+They were rather foolish people, men at whom he had laughed and whom
+he had rather pitied for having made him do so, and women he had
+looked at distantly as of a kind he might understand when his work was
+over and he wished to be amused. The young girls to whom he was in the
+habit of pouring out his denunciations of evil, and from whom he was
+accustomed to receive advice and moral support, he could not place in
+this landscape. He felt uneasily that they would not allow him to
+enjoy it his own way; they would consider the Moor historically as the
+invader of Catholic Europe, and would be shocked at the lack of proper
+sanitation, and would see the mud. As for himself, he had risen above
+seeing the mud. He looked up now at the broken line of the roof-tops
+against the blue sky, and when a hooded figure drew back from his
+glance he found himself murmuring the words of an Eastern song he had
+read in a book of Indian stories:
+
+  "Alone upon the house-tops, to the north
+    I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
+  The glamour of thy footsteps in the north.
+    Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
+
+  "Below my feet the still bazaar is laid.
+    Far, far below, the weary camels lie--"
+
+Holcombe laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had stopped half-way
+down the hill on which stands the Bashaw's palace, and the whole of
+Tangier lay below him like a great cemetery of white marble. The moon
+was shining clearly over the town and the sea, and a soft wind from
+the sandy farm-lands came to him and played about him like the
+fragrance of a garden. Something moved in him that he did not
+recognize, but which was strangely pleasant, and which ran to his
+brain like the taste of a strong liqueur. It came to him that he was
+alone among strangers, and that what he did now would be known but to
+himself and to these strangers. What it was that he wished to do he
+did not know, but he felt a sudden lifting up and freedom from
+restraint. The spirit of adventure awoke in him and tugged at his
+sleeve, and he was conscious of a desire to gratify it and put it to
+the test.
+
+"'Alone upon the house-tops,'" he began. Then he laughed and clambered
+hurriedly down the steep hill-side. "It's the moonlight," he explained
+to the blank walls and overhanging lattices, "and the place and the
+music of the song. It might be one of the Arabian nights, and I Haroun
+al Raschid. _And_ if I don't get back to the hotel I shall make a
+fool of myself."
+
+He reached the Albion very warm and breathless, with stumbling and
+groping in the dark, and instead of going immediately to bed told the
+waiter to bring him some cool drink out on the terrace of the
+smoking-room. There were two men sitting there in the moonlight, and
+as he came forward one of them nodded to him silently.
+
+"Oh, good-evening, Mr. Meakim!" Holcombe said, gayly, with the spirit
+of the night still upon him. "I've been having adventures." He
+laughed, and stooped to brush the dirt from his knickerbockers and
+stockings. "I went up to the palace to see the town by moonlight, and
+tried to find my way back alone, and fell down three times."
+
+Meakim shook his head gravely. "You'd better be careful at night,
+sir," he said. "The governor has just said that the Sultan won't be
+responsible for the lives of foreigners at night 'unless accompanied
+by soldier and lantern.'"
+
+"Yes, and the legations sent word that they wouldn't have it," broke
+in the other man. "They said they'd hold him responsible anyway."
+
+There was a silence, and Meakim moved in some slight uneasiness. "Mr.
+Holcombe, do you know Mr. Carroll?" he said.
+
+Carroll half rose from his chair, but Holcombe was dragging another
+toward him, and so did not have a hand to give him.
+
+"How are you, Carroll?" he said, pleasantly.
+
+The night was warm, and Holcombe was tired after his rambles, and so
+he sank back in the low wicker chair contentedly enough, and when the
+first cool drink was finished he clapped his hands for another, and
+then another, while the two men sat at the table beside him and
+avoided such topics as would be unfair to any of them.
+
+"And yet," said Holcombe, after the first half-hour had passed, "there
+must be a few agreeable people here. I am sure I saw some very
+nice-looking women to-day coming in from the fox-hunt. And very well
+gotten up, too, in Karki habits. And the men were handsome,
+decent-looking chaps--Englishmen, I think."
+
+"Who does he mean? Were you at the meet to-day?" asked Carroll.
+
+The Tammany chieftain said no, that he did not ride--not after foxes,
+in any event. "But I saw Mrs. Hornby and her sister coming back," he
+said. "They had on those linen habits."
+
+"Well, now, there's a woman who illustrates just what I have been
+saying," continued Carroll. "You picked her out as a self-respecting,
+nice-looking girl--and so she is--but she wouldn't like to have to
+tell all she knows. No, they are all pretty much alike. They wear
+low-neck frocks, and the men put on evening dress for dinner, and they
+ride after foxes, and they drop in to five-o'clock tea, and they all
+play that they're a lot of gilded saints, and it's one of the rules of
+the game that you must believe in the next man, so that he will
+believe in you. I'm breaking the rules myself now, because I say
+'they' when I ought to say 'we.' We're none of us here for our health,
+Holcombe, but it pleases us to pretend we are. It's a sort of give and
+take. We all sit around at dinner-parties and smile and chatter, and
+those English talk about the latest news from 'town,' and how they
+mean to run back for the season or the hunting. But they know they
+don't dare go back, and they know that everybody at the table knows
+it, and that the servants behind them know it. But it's more easy that
+way. There's only a few of us here, and we've got to hang together or
+we'd go crazy."
+
+"That's so," said Meakim, approvingly. "It makes it more sociable."
+
+"It's a funny place," continued Carroll. The wine had loosened his
+tongue, and it was something to him to be able to talk to one of his
+own people again, and to speak from their point of view, so that the
+man who had gone through St. Paul's and Harvard with him would see it
+as such a man should. "It's a funny place, because, in spite of the
+fact that it's a prison, you grow to like it for its freedom. You can
+do things here you can't do in New York, and pretty much everything
+goes there, or it used to, where I hung out. But here you're just your
+own master, and there's no law and no religion and no relations nor
+newspapers to poke into what you do nor how you live. You can
+understand what I mean if you've ever tried living in the West. I used
+to feel the same way the year I was ranching in Texas. My family sent
+me out there to put me out of temptation; but I concluded I'd rather
+drink myself to death on good whiskey at Del's than on the stuff we
+got on the range, so I pulled my freight and came East again. But
+while I was there I was a little king. I was just as good as the next
+man, and he was no better than me. And though the life was rough, and
+it was cold and lonely, there was something in being your own boss
+that made you stick it out there longer than anything else did. It was
+like this, Holcombe." Carroll half rose from his chair and marked what
+he said with his finger. "Every time I took a step and my gun bumped
+against my hip, I'd straighten up and feel good and look for trouble.
+There was nobody to appeal to; it was just between me and him, and no
+one else had any say about it. Well, that's what it's like here. You
+see men come to Tangier on the run, flying from detectives or husbands
+or bank directors, men who have lived perfectly decent, commonplace
+lives up to the time they made their one bad break--which," Carroll
+added, in polite parenthesis, with a deprecatory wave of his hand
+toward Meakim and himself, "we are _all_ likely to do some time,
+aren't we?"
+
+"Just so," said Meakim.
+
+"Of course," assented the District Attorney.
+
+"But as soon as he reaches this place, Holcombe," continued Carroll,
+"he begins to show just how bad he is. It all comes out--all his
+viciousness and rottenness and blackguardism. There is nothing to
+shame it, and there is no one to blame him, and no one is in a
+position to throw the first stone." Carroll dropped his voice and
+pulled his chair forward with a glance over his shoulder. "One of
+those men you saw riding in from the meet to-day. Now, he's a German
+officer, and he's here for forging a note or cheating at cards or
+something quiet and gentlemanly, nothing that shows him to be a brute
+or a beast. But last week he had old Mulley Wazzam buy him a slave
+girl in Fez, and bring her out to his house in the suburbs. It seems
+that the girl was in love with a soldier in the Sultan's body-guard at
+Fez, and tried to run away to join him, and this man met her quite by
+accident as she was making her way south across the sand-hills. He was
+whip that day, and was hurrying out to the meet alone. He had some
+words with the girl first, and then took his whip--it was one of those
+with the long lash to it; you know what I mean--and cut her to pieces
+with it, riding her down on his pony when she tried to run, and
+heading her off and lashing her around the legs and body until she
+fell; then he rode on in his damn pink coat to join the ladies at
+Mango's Drift, where the meet was, and some Riffs found her bleeding
+to death behind the sand-hills. That man held a commission in the
+Emperor's own body-guard, and that's what Tangier did for _him_."
+
+Holcombe glanced at Meakim to see if he would verify this, but
+Meakim's lips were tightly pressed around his cigar, and his eyes were
+half closed.
+
+"And what was done about it?" Holcombe asked, hoarsely.
+
+Carroll laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. "Why, I tell you, and you
+whisper it to the next man, and we pretend not to believe it, and call
+the Riffs liars. As I say, we're none of us here for our health,
+Holcombe, and a public opinion that's manufactured by _declassee_
+women and men who have run off with somebody's money and somebody's
+else's wife isn't strong enough to try a man for beating his own
+slave."
+
+"But the Moors themselves?" protested Holcombe. "And the Sultan? She's
+one of his subjects, isn't she?"
+
+"She's a woman, and women don't count for much in the East, you know;
+and as for the Sultan, he's an ignorant black savage. When the English
+wanted to blow up those rocks off the western coast, the Sultan
+wouldn't let them. He said Allah had placed them there for some good
+reason of His own, and it was not for man to interfere with the works
+of God. That's the sort of a Sultan he is." Carroll rose suddenly and
+walked into the smoking-room, leaving the two men looking at each
+other in silence.
+
+"That's right," said Meakim, after a pause. "He give it to you just as
+it is, but I never knew him to kick about it before. We're a fair
+field for missionary work, Mr. Holcombe, all of us--at least, some of
+us are." He glanced up as Carroll came back from out of the lighted
+room with an alert, brisk step. His manner had changed in his absence.
+
+"Some of the ladies have come over for a bit of supper," he said.
+"Mrs. Hornby and her sister and Captain Reese. The _chef's_ got
+some birds for us, and I've put a couple of bottles on ice. It will be
+like Del's--hey? A small hot bird and a large cold bottle. They sent
+me out to ask you to join us. They're in our rooms." Meakim rose
+leisurely and lit a fresh cigar, but Holcombe moved uneasily in his
+chair. "You'll come, won't you?" Carroll asked. "I'd like you to meet
+my wife."
+
+Holcombe rose irresolutely and looked at his watch. "I'm afraid it's
+too late for me," he said, without raising his face. "You see, I'm
+here for my health. I--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Carroll, sharply.
+
+"Nonsense, Carroll!" said Holcombe. "I didn't mean _that_. I
+meant it literally. I can't risk midnight suppers yet. My doctor's
+orders are to go to bed at nine, and it's past twelve now. Some other
+time, if you'll be so good; but it's long after my bedtime, and--"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Carroll, quietly, as he turned away. "Are you
+coming, Meakim?"
+
+Meakim lifted his half-empty glass from the table and tasted it slowly
+until Carroll had left them, then he put the glass down, and glanced
+aside to where Holcombe sat looking out over the silent city. Holcombe
+raised his eyes and stared at him steadily.
+
+"Mr. Holcombe--" the fugitive began.
+
+"Yes," replied the lawyer.
+
+Meakim shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "Good-night, sir."
+
+Holcombe's rooms were on the floor above Carroll's, and the laughter
+of the latter's guests and the tinkling of glasses and silver came to
+him as he stepped out upon his balcony. But for this the night was
+very still. The sea beat leisurely on the rocks, and the waves ran up
+the sandy coast with a sound as of some one sweeping. The music of
+women's laughter came up to him suddenly, and he wondered hotly if
+they were laughing at him. He assured himself that it was a matter of
+indifference to him if they were. And with this he had a wish that
+they would not think of him as holding himself aloof. One of the women
+began to sing to a guitar, and to the accompaniment of this a man and
+a young girl came out upon the balcony below, and spoke to each other
+in low, earnest tones, which seemed to carry with them the feeling of
+a caress. Holcombe could not hear what they said, but he could see the
+curve of the woman's white shoulders and the light of her companion's
+cigar as he leaned upon the rail with his back to the moonlight and
+looked into her face. Holcombe felt a sudden touch of loneliness and
+of being very far from home. He shivered slightly as though from the
+cold, and stepping inside closed the window gently behind him.
+
+Although Holcombe met Carroll several times during the following day,
+the latter obviously avoided him, and it was not until late in the
+afternoon that Holcombe was given a chance to speak to him again.
+Carroll was coming down the only street on a run, jumping from one
+rough stone to another, and with his face lighted up with excitement.
+He hailed Holcombe from a distance with a wave of the hand. "There's
+an American man-of-war in the bay," he cried; "one of the new ones. We
+saw her flag from the hotel. Come on!" Holcombe followed as a matter
+of course, as Carroll evidently expected that he would, and they
+reached the end of the landing-pier together, just as the ship of war
+ran up and broke the square red flag of Morocco from her main-mast and
+fired her salute.
+
+"They'll be sending a boat in by-and-by," said Carroll, "and we'll
+have a talk with the men." His enthusiasm touched his companion also,
+and the sight of the floating atom of the great country that was his
+moved him strongly, as though it were a personal message from home. It
+came to him like the familiar stamp, and a familiar handwriting on a
+letter in a far-away land, and made him feel how dear his own country
+was to him and how much he needed it. They were leaning side by side
+upon the rail watching the ship's screws turning the blue waters
+white, and the men running about the deck, and the blue-coated figures
+on the bridge. Holcombe turned to point out the vessel's name to
+Carroll, and found that his companion's eyes were half closed and
+filled with tears.
+
+Carroll laughed consciously and coughed. "We kept it up a bit too late
+last night," he said, "and I'm feeling nervous this morning, and the
+sight of the flag and those boys from home knocked me out." He paused
+for a moment, frowning through his tears and with his brow drawn up
+into many wrinkles. "It's a terrible thing, Holcombe," he began again,
+fiercely, "to be shut off from all of that." He threw out his hand
+with a sudden gesture toward the man-of-war. Holcombe looked down at
+the water and laid his hand lightly on his companion's shoulder.
+Carroll drew away and shook his head. "I don't want any sympathy," he
+said, kindly. "I'm not crying the baby act. But you don't know, and I
+don't believe anybody else knows, what I've gone through and what I've
+suffered. You don't like me, Holcombe, and you don't like my class,
+but I want to tell you something about my coming here. I want you to
+set them right about it at home. And I don't care whether it interests
+you or not," he said, with quick offense; "I want you to listen. It's
+about my wife."
+
+Holcombe bowed his head gravely.
+
+"You got Thatcher his divorce," Carroll continued. "And you know that
+he would never have got it but for me, and that everybody expected
+that I would marry Mrs. Thatcher when the thing was over. And I
+didn't, and everybody said I was a blackguard, and I was. It was bad
+enough before, but I made it worse by not doing the only thing that
+could make it any better. Why I didn't do it I don't know. I had some
+grand ideas of reform about that time, I think, and I thought I owed
+my people something, and that by not making Mrs. Thatcher my mother's
+daughter I would be saving her and my sisters. It was remorse, I
+guess, and I didn't see things straight. I know now what I should have
+done. Well, I left her and she went her own way, and a great many
+people felt sorry for her, and were good to her--not your people, nor
+my people; but enough were good to her to make her see as much of the
+world as she had used to. She never loved Thatcher, and she never
+loved any of the men you brought into that trial except one, and he
+treated her like a cur. That was myself. Well, what with trying to
+please my family, and loving Alice Thatcher all the time and not
+seeing her, and hating her too for bringing me into all that
+notoriety--for I blamed the woman, of course, as a man always will--I
+got to drinking, and then this scrape came and I had to run. I don't
+care anything about that row now, or what you believe about it. I'm
+here, shut off from my home, and that's a worse punishment than any
+damn lawyers can invent. And the man's well again. He saw I was drunk;
+but I wasn't so drunk that I didn't know he was trying to do me, and I
+pounded him just as they say I did, and I'm sorry now I didn't kill
+him."
+
+Holcombe stirred uneasily, and the man at his side lowered his voice
+and went on more calmly:
+
+"If I hadn't been a gentleman, Holcombe, or if it had been another
+cabman he'd fought with, there wouldn't have been any trouble about
+it. But he thought he could get big money out of me, and his friends
+told him to press it until he was paid to pull out, and I hadn't the
+money, and so I had to break bail and run. Well, you've seen the
+place. You've been here long enough to know what it's like, and what
+I've had to go through. Nobody wrote me, and nobody came to see me;
+not one of my own sisters even, though they've been in the Riviera all
+this spring--not a day's journey away. Sometimes a man turned up that
+I knew, but it was almost worse than not seeing any one. It only made
+me more homesick when he'd gone. And for weeks I used to walk up and
+down that beach there alone late in the night, until I got to thinking
+that the waves were talking to me, and I got queer in my head. I had
+to fight it just as I used to have to fight against whiskey, and to
+talk fast so that I wouldn't think. And I tried to kill myself
+hunting, and only got a broken collar-bone for my pains. Well, all
+this time Alice was living in Paris and New York. I heard that some
+English captain was going to marry her, and then I read in the Paris
+_Herald_ that she was settled in the American colony there, and
+one day it gave a list of the people who'd been to a reception she
+gave. She could go where she pleased, and she had money in her own
+right, you know; and she was being revenged on me every day. And I was
+here knowing it, and loving her worse than I ever loved anything on
+earth, and having lost the right to tell her so, and not able to go to
+her. Then one day some chap turned up from here and told her about me,
+and about how miserable I was, and how well I was being punished. He
+thought it would please her, I suppose. I don't know who he was, but I
+guess he was in love with her himself. And then the papers had it that
+I was down with the fever here, and she read about it. I _was_
+ill for a time, and I hoped it was going to carry me off decently, but
+I got up in a week or two, and one day I crawled down here where we're
+standing now to watch the boat come in. I was pretty weak from my
+illness, and I was bluer than I had ever been, and I didn't see
+anything but blackness and bitterness for me anywhere. I turned around
+when the passengers reached the pier, and I saw a woman coming up
+those stairs. Her figure and her shoulders were so like Alice's that
+my heart went right up into my throat, and I couldn't breathe for it.
+I just stood still staring, and when she reached the top of the steps
+she looked up, breathing with the climb, and laughing; and she says,
+'Lloyd, I've come to see you.' And I--I was that lonely and weak that
+I grabbed her hand, and leaned back against the railing, and cried
+there before the whole of them. I don't think she expected it exactly,
+because she didn't know what to do, and just patted me on the
+shoulder, and said, 'I thought I'd run down to cheer you up a bit; and
+I've brought Mrs. Scott with me to chaperon us.' And I said, without
+stopping to think: 'You wouldn't have needed any chaperon, Alice, if I
+hadn't been a cur and a fool. If I had only asked what I can't ask of
+you now'; and, Holcombe, she flushed just like a little girl, and
+laughed, and said, 'Oh, will you, Lloyd?' And you see that ugly iron
+chapel up there, with the corrugated zinc roof and the wooden cross on
+it, next to the mosque? Well, that's where we went first, right from
+this wharf before I let her go to a hotel, and old Ridley, the English
+rector, he married us, and we had a civil marriage too. That's what
+she did for me. She had the whole wide globe to live in, and she gave
+it up to come to Tangier, because I had no other place but Tangier,
+and she's made my life for me, and I'm happier here than I ever was
+before anywhere, and sometimes I think--I hope--that she is, too."
+Carroll's lips moved slightly, and his hands trembled on the rail. He
+coughed, and his voice was gentler when he spoke again. "And so," he
+added, "that's why I felt it last night when you refused to meet her.
+You were right, I know, from your way of thinking, but we've grown
+careless down here, and we look at things differently."
+
+Holcombe did not speak, but put his arm across the other's shoulder,
+and this time Carroll did not shake it off. Holcombe pointed with his
+hand to a tall, handsome woman with heavy yellow hair who was coming
+toward them, with her hands in the pockets of her reefer. "There is
+Mrs. Carroll now," he said. "Won't you present me, and then we can row
+out and see the man-of-war?"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The officers returned their visit during the day, and the American
+Consul-General asked them all to a reception the following afternoon.
+The entire colony came to this, and Holcombe met many people, and
+drank tea with several ladies in riding-habits, and iced drinks with
+all of the men. He found it very amusing, and the situation appealed
+strongly to his somewhat latent sense of humor. That evening in
+writing to his sister he told of his rapid recovery in health, and of
+the possibility of his returning to civilization.
+
+"There was a reception this afternoon at the Consul-General's," he
+wrote, "given to the officers of our man-of-war, and I found myself in
+some rather remarkable company. The Consul himself has become rich by
+selling his protection for two hundred dollars to every wealthy Moor
+who wishes to escape the forced loans which the Sultan is in the habit
+of imposing on the faithful. For five hundred dollars he will furnish
+any one of them with a piece of stamped paper accrediting him as
+minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the Sultan's court.
+Of course the Sultan never receives them, and whatever object they may
+have had in taking the long journey to Fez is never accomplished. Some
+day some one of them will find out how he has been tricked, and will
+return to have the Consul assassinated. This will be a serious loss to
+our diplomatic service. The Consul's wife is a fat German woman who
+formerly kept a hotel here. Her brother has it now, and runs it as an
+annex to a gambling-house. Pat Meakim, the Police Commissioner that I
+indicted, but who jumped his bail, introduced me at the reception to
+the men, with apparently great self-satisfaction, as 'the pride of the
+New York Bar,' and Mrs. Carroll, for whose husband I obtained a
+divorce, showed her gratitude by presenting me to the ladies. It was a
+distinctly Gilbertian situation, and the people to whom they
+introduced me were quite as picturesquely disreputable as themselves.
+So you see--"
+
+Holcombe stopped here and read over what he had written, and then tore
+up the letter. The one he sent in its place said he was getting
+better, but that the climate was not so mild as he had expected it
+would be.
+
+Holcombe engaged the entire first floor of the hotel the next day, and
+entertained the officers and the residents at breakfast, and the
+Admiral made a speech and said how grateful it was to him and to his
+officers to find that wherever they might touch, there were some few
+Americans ready to welcome them as the representatives of the flag
+they all so unselfishly loved, and of the land they still so proudly
+called "home." Carroll, turning his wine-glass slowly between his
+fingers, raised his eyes to catch Holcombe's, and winked at him from
+behind the curtain of the smoke of his cigar, and Holcombe smiled
+grimly, and winked back, with the result that Meakim, who had
+intercepted the signalling, choked on his champagne, and had to be
+pounded violently on the back. Holcombe's breakfast established him as
+a man of means and one who could entertain properly, and after that
+his society was counted upon for every hour of the day. He offered
+money as prizes for the ship's crew to row and swim after, he gave a
+purse for a cross-country pony race, open to members of the Calpe and
+Tangier hunts, and organized picnics and riding parties innumerable.
+He was forced at last to hire a soldier to drive away the beggars when
+he walked abroad. He found it easy to be rich in a place where he was
+given over two hundred copper coins for an English shilling, and he
+distributed his largesses recklessly and with a lack of discrimination
+entirely opposed to the precepts of his organized charities at home.
+He found it so much more amusing to throw a handful of coppers to a
+crowd of fat naked children than to write a check for the Society for
+Suppression of Cruelty to the same beneficiaries.
+
+"You shouldn't give those fellows money," the Consul-General once
+remonstrated with him; "the fact that they're blind is only a proof
+that they have been thieves. When they catch a man stealing here they
+hold his head back, and pass a hot iron in front of his eyes. That's
+why the lids are drawn taut that way. You shouldn't encourage them."
+
+"Perhaps they're not _all_ thieves," said the District Attorney,
+cheerfully, as he hit the circle around him with a handful of coppers;
+"but there is no doubt about it that they're all blind. Which is the
+more to be pitied," he asked the Consul-General, "the man who has
+still to be found out and who can see, or the one who has been exposed
+and who is blind?"
+
+"How should he know?" said Carroll, laughing. "He's never been blind,
+and he still holds his job."
+
+"I don't think that's very funny," said the Consul-General.
+
+A week of pig-sticking came to end Holcombe's stay in Tangier, and he
+threw himself into it and into the freedom of its life with a zest
+that made even the Englishman speak of him as a good fellow. He
+chanced to overhear this, and stopped to consider what it meant. No
+one had ever called him a good fellow at home, but then his life had
+not offered him the chance to show what sort of a good fellow he might
+be, and as Judge Holcombe's son certain things had been debarred him.
+Here he was only the richest tourist since Farwell, the diamond
+smuggler from Amsterdam, had touched there in his yacht.
+
+[Illustration: The boar hunt.]
+
+The week of boar-hunting was spent out-of-doors, on horseback, and in
+tents; the women in two wide circular ones, and the men in another,
+with a mess tent, which they shared in common, pitched between them.
+They had only one change of clothes each, one wet and one dry, and
+they were in the saddle from nine in the morning until late at night,
+when they gathered in a wide circle around the wood-fire and played
+banjoes and listened to stories. Holcombe grew as red as a sailor, and
+jumped his horse over gaping crevasses in the hard sun-baked earth as
+recklessly as though there were nothing in this world so well worth
+sacrificing one's life for as to be the first in at a dumb brute's
+death. He was on friendly terms with them all now--with Miss Terrill,
+the young girl who had been awakened by night and told to leave Monte
+Carlo before daybreak, and with Mrs. Darhah, who would answer to Lady
+Taunton if so addressed, and with Andrews, the Scotch bank clerk, and
+Ollid the boy officer from Gibraltar, who had found some difficulty in
+making the mess account balance. They were all his very good friends,
+and he was especially courteous and attentive to Miss Terrill's wants
+and interests, and fixed her stirrup and once let her pass him to
+charge the boar in his place. She was a silently distant young woman,
+and strangely gentle for one who had had to leave a place, and such a
+place, between days; and her hair, which was very fine and light, ran
+away from under her white helmet in disconnected curls. At night,
+Holcombe used to watch her from out of the shadow when the firelight
+lit up the circle and the tips of the palms above them, and when the
+story-teller's voice was accompanied by bursts of occasional laughter
+from the dragomen in the grove beyond, and the stamping and neighing
+of the horses at their pickets, and the unceasing chorus of the insect
+life about them. She used to sit on one of the rugs with her hands
+clasped about her knees, and with her head resting on Mrs. Hornby's
+broad shoulder, looking down into the embers of the fire, and with the
+story of her life written on her girl's face as irrevocably as though
+old age had set its seal there. Holcombe was kind to them all now,
+even to Meakim, when that gentleman rode leisurely out to the camp
+with the mail and the latest Paris _Herald_, which was their one
+bond of union with the great outside world.
+
+Carroll sat smoking his pipe one night, and bending forward over the
+fire to get its light on the pages of the latest copy of this paper.
+Suddenly he dropped it between his knees. "I say, Holcombe," he cried,
+"here's news! Winthrop Allen has absconded with three hundred thousand
+dollars, and no one knows where."
+
+Holcombe was sitting on the other side of the fire, prying at the
+rowel of his spur with a hunting-knife. He raised his head and
+laughed. "Another good man gone wrong, hey?" he said.
+
+Carroll lowered the paper slowly to his knee and stared curiously
+through the smoky light to where Holcombe sat intent on the rowel of
+his spur. It apparently absorbed his entire attention, and his last
+remark had been an unconsciously natural one. Carroll smiled grimly as
+he folded the paper across his knee. "Now are the mighty fallen,
+indeed," he murmured. He told Meakim of it a few minutes later, and
+they both marvelled. "It's just as I told him, isn't it, and he
+wouldn't believe me. It's the place and the people. Two weeks ago he
+would have raged. Why, Meakim, you know Allen--Winthrop Allen? He's
+one of Holcombe's own sort; older than he is, but one of his own
+people; belongs to the same clubs; and to the same family, I think,
+and yet Harry took it just as a matter of course, with no more
+interest, than if I'd said that Allen was going to be married."
+
+Meakim gave a low, comfortable laugh of content. "It makes me smile,"
+he chuckled, "every time I think of him the day he came up them
+stairs. He scared me half to death, he did, and then he says, just as
+stiff as you please, 'If you'll leave me alone, Mr. Meakim, I'll not
+trouble you.' And now it's 'Meakim this,' and 'Meakim that,' and 'have
+a drink, Meakim,' just as thick as thieves. I have to laugh whenever I
+think of it now. 'If you'll leave me alone, I'll not trouble you, Mr.
+Meakim.'"
+
+Carroll pursed his lips and looked up at the broad expanse of purple
+heavens with the white stars shining through. "It's rather a pity,
+too, in a way," he said, slowly. "He was all the Public Opinion we
+had, and now that he's thrown up the part, why--"
+
+The pig-sticking came to an end finally, and Holcombe distinguished
+himself by taking his first fall, and under romantic circumstances. He
+was in an open place, with Mrs. Carroll at the edge of the brush to
+his right, and Miss Terrill guarding any approach from the left. They
+were too far apart to speak to one another, and sat quite still and
+alert to any noise as the beaters closed in around them. There was a
+sharp rustle in the reeds, and the boar broke out of it some hundred
+feet ahead of Holcombe. He went after it at a gallop, headed it off,
+and ran it fairly on his spear point as it came toward him; but as he
+drew his lance clear his horse came down, falling across him, and for
+the instant knocking him breathless. It was all over in a moment. He
+raised his head to see the boar turn and charge him; he saw where his
+spear point had torn the lower lip from the long tusks, and that the
+blood was pouring down its flank. He tried to draw out his legs, but
+the pony lay fairly across him, kicking and struggling, and held him
+in a vise. So he closed his eyes and covered his head with his arms,
+and crouched in a heap waiting. There was the quick beat of a pony's
+hoofs on the hard soil, and the rush of the boar within a foot of his
+head, and when he looked up he saw Miss Terrill twisting her pony's
+head around to charge the boar again, and heard her shout, "Let me
+have him!" to Mrs. Carroll.
+
+Mrs. Carroll came toward Holcombe with her spear pointed dangerously
+high; she stopped at his side and drew in her rein sharply. "Why don't
+you get up? Are you hurt?" she said. "Wait; lie still," she commanded,
+"or he'll tramp on you. I'll get him off." She slipped from her saddle
+and dragged Holcombe's pony to his feet. Holcombe stood up unsteadily,
+pale through his tan from the pain of the fall and the moment of fear.
+
+"That _was_ nasty," said Mrs. Carroll, with a quick breath. She
+was quite as pale as he.
+
+Holcombe wiped the dirt from his hair and the side of his face, and
+looked past her to where Miss Terrill was surveying the dead boar from
+her saddle, while her pony reared and shied, quivering with excitement
+beneath her. Holcombe mounted stiffly and rode toward her. "I am very
+much obliged to you," he said. "If you hadn't come--"
+
+The girl laughed shortly, and shook her head without looking at him.
+"Why, not at all," she interrupted, quickly. "I would have come just
+as fast if you hadn't been there." She turned in her saddle and looked
+at him frankly. "I was glad to see you go down," she said, "for it
+gave me the first good chance I've had. Are you hurt?"
+
+Holcombe drew himself up stiffly, regardless of the pain in his neck
+and shoulder. "No, I'm all right, thank you," he answered. "At the
+same time," he called after her as she moved away to meet the others,
+"you _did_ save me from being torn up, whether you like it or
+not."
+
+Mrs. Carroll was looking after the girl with observant, comprehending
+eyes. She turned to Holcombe with a smile. "There are a few things you
+have still to learn, Mr. Holcombe," she said, bowing in her saddle
+mockingly, and dropping the point of her spear to him as an adversary
+does in salute. "And perhaps," she added, "it is just as well that
+there are."
+
+Holcombe trotted after her in some concern. "I wonder what she means?"
+he said. "I wonder if I were rude?"
+
+The pig-sticking ended with a long luncheon before the ride back to
+town, at which everything that could be eaten or drunk was put on the
+table, in order, as Meakim explained, that there would be less to
+carry back. He met Holcombe that same evening after the cavalcade had
+reached Tangier as the latter came down the stairs of the Albion.
+Holcombe was in fresh raiment and cleanly shaven, and with the radiant
+air of one who had had his first comfortable bath in a week.
+
+Meakim confronted him with a smiling countenance. "Who do you think
+come to-night on the mail-boat?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. Who?"
+
+"Winthrop Allen, with six trunks," said Meakim, with the triumphant
+air of one who brings important news.
+
+"No, really now," said Holcombe, laughing. "The old hypocrite! I
+wonder what he'll say when he sees me. I wish I could stay over
+another boat, just to remind him of the last time we met. What a fraud
+he is! It was at the club, and he was congratulating me on my noble
+efforts in the cause of justice, and all that sort of thing. He said I
+was a public benefactor. And at that time he must have already
+speculated away about half of what he had stolen of other people's
+money. I'd like to tease him about it."
+
+"What trial was that?" asked Meakim.
+
+Holcombe laughed and shook his head as he moved on down the stairs.
+"Don't ask embarrassing questions, Meakim," he said. "It was one
+_you_ won't forget in a hurry."
+
+"Oh!" said Meakim, with a grin. "All right. There's some mail for you
+in the office."
+
+"Thank you," said Holcombe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few hours later Carroll was watching the roulette wheel in the
+gambling-hall of the Isabella when he saw Meakim come in out of the
+darkness, and stand staring in the doorway, blinking at the lights and
+mopping his face. He had been running, and was visibly excited.
+Carroll crossed over to him and pushed him out into the quiet of the
+terrace. "What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Have you seen Holcombe?" Meakim demanded in reply.
+
+"Not since this afternoon. Why?"
+
+Meakim breathed heavily, and fanned himself with his hat. "Well, he's
+after Winthrop Allen, that's all," he panted. "And when he finds him
+there's going to be a muss. The boy's gone crazy. He's not safe."
+
+"Why? What do you mean? What's Allen done to him?"
+
+"Nothing to him, but to a friend of his. He got a letter to-night in
+the mail that came with Allen. It was from his sister. She wrote him
+all the latest news about Allen, and give him fits for robbing an old
+lady who's been kind to her. She wanted that Holcombe should come
+right back and see what could be done about it. She didn't know, of
+course, that Allen was coming here. The old lady kept a private school
+on Fifth Avenue, and Allen had charge of her savings."
+
+"What is her name?" Carroll asked.
+
+"Field, I think. Martha Field was--"
+
+"The dirty blackguard!" cried Carroll. He turned sharply away and
+returned again to seize Meakim's arm. "Go on," he demanded. "What did
+she say?"
+
+"You know her too, do you?" said Meakim, shaking his head
+sympathetically. "Well, that's all. She used to teach his sister. She
+seems to be a sort of fashionable--"
+
+"I know," said Carroll, roughly. "She taught my sister. She teaches
+everybody's sister. She's the sweetest, simplest old soul that ever
+lived. Holcombe's dead right to be angry. She almost lived at their
+house when his sister was ill."
+
+"Tut! you don't say?" commented Meakim, gravely. "Well, his sister's
+pretty near crazy about it. He give me the letter to read. It got me
+all stirred up. It was just writ in blood. She must be a fine girl,
+his sister. She says this Miss Martha's money was the last thing Allen
+took. He didn't use her stuff, to speculate with, but cashed it in
+just before he sailed and took it with him for spending-money. His
+sister says she's too proud to take help, and she's too old to work."
+
+"How much did he take?"
+
+"Sixty thousand. She's been saving for over forty years."
+
+Carroll's mind took a sudden turn. "And Holcombe?" he demanded,
+eagerly. "What is he going to do? Nothing silly, I hope."
+
+"Well, that's just it. That's why I come to find you," Meakim
+answered, uneasily. "I don't want him to qualify for no Criminal
+Stakes. I got no reason to love him either--But you know--" he
+ended, impotently.
+
+"Yes, I understand," said Carroll. "That's what I meant. Confound the
+boy, why didn't he stay in his law courts! What did he say?"
+
+"Oh, he just raged around. He said he'd tell Allen there was an
+extradition treaty that Allen didn't know about, and that if Allen
+didn't give him the sixty thousand he'd put it in force and make him
+go back and stand trial."
+
+"Compounding a felony, is he?"
+
+"No, nothing of the sort," said Meakim, indignantly. "There isn't any
+extradition treaty, so he wouldn't be doing anything wrong except
+lying a bit."
+
+"Well, it's blackmail, anyway."
+
+"What, blackmail a man like Allen? Huh! He's fair game, if there ever
+was any. But it won't work with him, that's what I'm afraid of. He's
+too cunning to be taken in by it, he is. He had good legal advice
+before he came here, or he wouldn't have come."
+
+Carroll was pacing up and down the terrace. He stopped and spoke over
+his shoulder. "Does Holcombe think Allen has the money with him?" he
+asked.
+
+"Yes, he's sure of it. That's what makes him so keen. He says Allen
+wouldn't dare bank it at Gibraltar, because if he ever went over there
+to draw on it he would get caught, so he must have brought it with him
+here. And he got here so late that Holcombe believes it's in Allen's
+rooms now, and he's like a dog that smells a rat, after it. Allen
+wasn't in when he went up to his room, and he's started out hunting
+for him, and if he don't find him I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he
+broke into the room and just took it."
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Carroll. "He wouldn't do that?"
+
+Meakim pulled and fingered at his heavy watch-chain and laughed
+doubtfully. "I don't know," he said. "He wouldn't have done it three
+months ago, but he's picked up a great deal since then--since he has
+been with us. He's asking for Captain Reese, too."
+
+"What's he want with that blackguard?"
+
+"I don't know; he didn't tell me."
+
+"Come," said Carroll, quickly. "We must stop him." He ran lightly down
+the steps of the terrace to the beach, with Meakim waddling heavily
+after him. "He's got too much at stake, Meakim," he said, in
+half-apology, as they tramped through the sand. "He mustn't spoil it.
+We won't let him."
+
+Holcombe had searched the circuit of Tangier's small extent with
+fruitless effort, his anger increasing momentarily and feeding on each
+fresh disappointment. When he had failed to find the man he sought in
+any place, he returned to the hotel and pushed open the door of the
+smoking-room as fiercely as though he meant to take those within by
+surprise.
+
+"Has Mr. Allen returned?" he demanded. "Or Captain Reese?" The
+attendant thought not, but he would go and see. "No," Holcombe said,
+"I will look for myself." He sprang up the stairs to the third floor,
+and turned down a passage to a door at its farthest end. Here he
+stopped and knocked gently. "Reese," he called; "Reese!" There was no
+response to his summons, and he knocked again, with more impatience,
+and then cautiously turned the handle of the door, and, pushing it
+forward, stepped into the room. "Reese," he said, softly, "its
+Holcombe. Are you here?" The room was dark except for the light from
+the hall, which shone dimly past him and fell upon a gun-rack hanging
+on the wall opposite. Holcombe hurried toward this and ran his hands
+over it, and passed on quickly from that to the mantel and the tables,
+stumbling over chairs and riding-boots as he groped about, and
+tripping on the skin of some animal that lay stretched upon the floor.
+He felt his way, around the entire circuit of the room, and halted
+near the door with an exclamation of disappointment. By this time his
+eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and he noted the white
+surface of the bed in a far corner and ran quickly toward it, groping
+with his hands about the posts at its head. He closed his fingers with
+a quick gasp of satisfaction on a leather belt that hung from it,
+heavy with cartridges and a revolver that swung from its holder.
+Holcombe pulled this out and jerked back the lever, spinning the
+cylinder around under the edge of his thumb. He felt the grease of
+each cartridge as it passed under his nail. The revolver was loaded in
+each chamber, and Holcombe slipped it into the pocket of his coat and
+crept out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He met no
+one in the hall or on the stairs, and passed on quickly to a room on
+the second floor. There was a light in this room which showed through
+the transom and under the crack at the floor, and there was a sound of
+some one moving about within. Holcombe knocked gently and waited.
+
+The movement on the other side of the door ceased, and after a pause a
+voice asked who was there. Holcombe hesitated a second before
+answering, and then said, "It is a servant, sir, with a note for Mr.
+Allen."
+
+At the sound of some one moving toward the door from within, Holcombe
+threw his shoulder against the panel and pressed forward. There was
+the click of the key turning in the lock and of the withdrawal of a
+bolt, and the door was partly opened. Holcombe pushed it back with his
+shoulder, and, stepping quickly inside, closed it again behind him.
+
+The man within, into whose presence he had forced himself, confronted
+him with a look of some alarm, which increased in surprise as he
+recognized his visitor. "Why, Holcombe!" he exclaimed. He looked past
+him as though expecting some one else to follow. "I thought it was a
+servant," he said.
+
+Holcombe made no answer, but surveyed the other closely, and with a
+smile of content. The man before him was of erect carriage, with white
+hair and whiskers, cut after an English fashion which left the mouth
+and chin clean shaven. He was of severe and dignified appearance, and
+though standing as he was in dishabille still gave in his bearing the
+look of an elderly gentleman who had lived a self-respecting,
+well-cared-for, and well-ordered life. The room about him was littered
+with the contents of opened trunks and uncorded boxes. He had been
+interrupted in the task of unpacking and arranging these possessions,
+but he stepped unresentfully toward the bed where his coat lay, and
+pulled it on, feeling at the open collar of his shirt, and giving a
+glance of apology toward the disorder of the apartment.
+
+"The night was so warm," he said, in explanation. "I have been trying
+to get things to rights. I--" He was speaking in some obvious
+embarrassment, and looked uncertainly toward the intruder for help.
+But Holcombe made no explanation, and gave him no greeting. "I heard
+in the hotel that you were here," the other continued, still striving
+to cover up the difficulty of the situation, "and I am sorry to hear
+that you are going so soon." He stopped, and as Holcombe still
+continued smiling, drew himself up stiffly. The look on his face
+hardened into one of offended dignity.
+
+"Really, Mr. Holcombe," he said, sharply, and with strong annoyance in
+his tone, "if you have forced yourself into this room for no other
+purpose than to stand there and laugh, I must ask you to leave it. You
+may not be conscious of it, but your manner is offensive." He turned
+impatiently to the table, and began rearranging the papers upon it.
+Holcombe shifted the weight of his body as it rested against the door
+from one shoulder-blade to the other and closed his hands over the
+door-knob behind him.
+
+"I had a letter to-night from home about you, Allen," he began,
+comfortably. "The person who wrote it was anxious that I should return
+to New York, and set things working in the District Attorney's office
+in order to bring you back. It isn't you they want so much as--"
+
+"How dare you?" cried the embezzler, sternly, in the voice with which
+one might interrupt another in words of shocking blasphemy.
+
+"How dare I what?" asked Holcombe.
+
+"How dare you refer to my misfortune? You of all others--" He stopped,
+and looked at his visitor with flashing eyes. "I thought you a
+gentleman," he said, reproachfully; "I thought you a man of the world,
+a man who in spite of your office, official position, or, rather, on
+account of it, could feel and understand the--a--terrible position in
+which I am placed, and that you would show consideration. Instead of
+which," he cried, his voice rising in indignation, "you have come
+apparently to mock at me. If the instinct of a gentleman does not
+teach you to be silent, I shall have to force you to respect my
+feelings. You can leave the room, sir. Now, at once." He pointed with
+his arm at the door against which Holcombe was leaning, the fingers of
+his outstretched hand trembling visibly.
+
+"Nonsense. Your misfortune! What rot!" Holcombe growled resentfully.
+His eyes wandered around the room as though looking for some one who
+might enjoy the situation with him, and then returned to Allen's face.
+"You mustn't talk like that to me," he said, in serious remonstrance.
+"A man who has robbed people who trusted him for three years, as you
+have done, can't afford to talk of his misfortune. You were too long
+about it, Allen. You had too many chances to put it back.
+_You've_ no feelings to be hurt. Besides, if you have, I'm in a
+hurry, and I've not the time to consider them. Now, what I want of you
+is--"
+
+"Mr. Holcombe," interrupted the other, earnestly.
+
+"Sir," replied the visitor.
+
+"Mr. Holcombe," began Allen, slowly, and with impressive gravity, "I
+do not want any words with you about this, or with any one else. I am
+here owing to a combination of circumstances which have led me through
+hopeless, endless trouble. What I have gone through with nobody knows.
+That is something no one but I can ever understand. But that is now at
+an end. I have taken refuge in flight and safety, where another might
+have remained and compromised and suffered; but I am a weaker brother,
+and--as for punishment, my own conscience, which has punished me so
+terribly in the past, will continue to do so in the future. I am
+greatly to be pitied, Mr. Holcombe, greatly to be pitied. And no one
+knows that better than yourself. You know the value of the position I
+held in New York City, and how well I was suited to it, and it to me.
+And now I am robbed of it all. I am an exile in this wilderness.
+Surely, Mr. Holcombe, this is not the place nor the time when you
+should insult me by recalling the--"
+
+"You contemptible hypocrite," said Holcombe, slowly. "What an ass you
+must think I am! Now, listen to me."
+
+"No, _you_ listen to me," thundered the other. He stepped
+menacingly forward, his chest heaving under his open shirt, and his
+fingers opening and closing at his side. "Leave the room, I tell you,"
+he cried, "or I shall call the servants and make you!" He paused with
+a short, mocking laugh. "Who do you think I am?" he asked; "a child
+that you can insult and gibe at? I'm not a prisoner in the box for you
+to browbeat and bully, Mr. District Attorney. You seem to forget that
+I am out of your jurisdiction now."
+
+He waited, and his manner seemed to invite Holcombe to make some angry
+answer to his tone, but the young man remained grimly silent.
+
+"You are a very important young person at home, Harry," Allen went on,
+mockingly. "But New York State laws do not reach as far as Africa."
+
+"Quite right; that's it exactly," said Holcombe, with cheerful
+alacrity. "I'm glad you have grasped the situation so soon. That makes
+it easier for me. Now, what I have been trying to tell you is this. I
+received a letter about you to-night. It seems that before leaving New
+York you converted bonds and mortgages belonging to Miss Martha Field,
+which she had intrusted to you, into ready money. And that you took
+this money with you. Now, as this is the first place you have stopped
+since leaving New York, except Gibraltar, where you could not have
+banked it, you must have it with you now, here in this town, in this
+hotel, possibly in this room. What else you have belonging to other
+poor devils and corporations does not concern me. It's yours as far as
+I mean to do anything about it. But this sixty thousand dollars which
+belongs to Miss Field, who is the best, purest, and kindest woman I
+have ever known, and who has given away more money than you ever
+stole, is going back with me to-morrow to New York." Holcombe leaned
+forward as he spoke, and rapped with his knuckles on the table. Allen
+confronted him in amazement, in which there was not so much surprise
+at what the other threatened to do as at the fact that it was he who
+had proposed doing it.
+
+"I don't understand," he said, slowly, with the air of a bewildered
+child.
+
+"It's plain enough," replied the other, impatiently. "I tell you I
+want sixty thousand dollars of the money you have with you. You can
+understand that, can't you?"
+
+"But how?" expostulated Allen. "You don't mean to rob me, do you,
+Harry?" he asked with a laugh.
+
+"You're a very stupid person for so clever a one," Holcombe said,
+impatiently. "You must give me sixty thousand dollars--and if you
+don't, I'll take it. Come, now, where is it--in that box?" He pointed
+with his finger toward a square travelling-case covered with black
+leather that stood open on the table filled with papers and blue
+envelopes.
+
+"Take it!" exclaimed Allen. "You, Henry Holcombe? Is it you who are
+speaking? Do I hear you?" He looked at Holcombe with eyes full of
+genuine wonder and a touch of fear. As he spoke his hand reached out
+mechanically and drew the leather-bound box toward him.
+
+"Ah, it is in that box, then," said Holcombe, in a quiet, grave tone.
+"Now count it out, and be quick."
+
+"Are you drunk?" cried the other, fiercely. "Do you propose to turn
+highwayman and thief? What do you mean?" Holcombe reached quickly
+across the table toward the box, but the other drew it back, snapping
+the lid down, and hugging it close against his breast. "If you move,
+Holcombe," he cried, in a voice of terror and warning, "I'll call the
+people of the house and--and expose you."
+
+"Expose me, you idiot," returned Holcombe, fiercely. "How dare
+_you_ talk to me like that!"
+
+Allen dragged the table more evenly between them, as a general works
+on his defenses even while he parleys with the enemy. "It's you who
+are the idiot!" he cried. "Suppose you could overcome me, which would
+be harder than you think, what are you going to do with the money? Do
+you suppose I'd let you leave this country with it? Do you imagine for
+a moment that I would give it up without raising my hand? I'd have you
+dragged to prison from your bed this very night, or I'd have you
+seized as you set your foot upon the wharf. I would appeal to our
+Consul-General. As far as he knows, I am as worthy of protection as
+you are yourself, and, failing him, I'd appeal to the law of the
+land." He stopped for want of breath, and then began again with the
+air of one who finds encouragement in the sound of his own voice.
+"They may not understand extradition here, Holcombe," he said, "but a
+thief is a thief all the world over. What you may be in New York isn't
+going to help you here; neither is your father's name. To these people
+you would be only a hotel thief who forces his way into other men's
+rooms at night and--"
+
+"You poor thing," interrupted Holcombe. "Do you know where you are?"
+he demanded. "You talk, Allen, as though we were within sound of the
+cable-cars on Broadway. This hotel is not the Brunswick, and this
+Consul-General you speak of is another blackguard who knows that a
+word from me at Washington, on my return, or a letter from here would
+lose him his place and his liberty. He's as much of a rascal as any of
+them, and he knows that I know it and that I may use that knowledge.
+_He_ won't help you. And as for the law of the land"--Holcombe's
+voice rose and broke in a mocking laugh--"there is no law of the land.
+_That's why you're here!_ You are in a place populated by exiles
+and outlaws like yourself, who have preyed upon society until society
+has turned and frightened each of them off like a dog with his tail
+between his legs. Don't give yourself confidence, Allen. That's all
+you are, that's all we are--two dogs fighting for a stolen bone. The
+man who rules you here is an ignorant negro, debauched and vicious and
+a fanatic. He is shut off from every one, even to the approach of a
+British ambassador. And what do you suppose he cares for a dog of a
+Christian like you, who has been robbed in a hotel by another
+Christian? And these others. Do you suppose they care? Call out--cry
+for help, and tell them that you have half a million dollars in this
+room, and they will fall on you and strip you of every cent of it, and
+leave you to walk the beach for work. Now, what are you going to do?
+Will you give me the money I want to take back where it belongs, or
+will you call for help and lose it all?"
+
+The two men confronted each other across the narrow length of the
+table. The blood had run to Holcombe's face, but the face of the other
+was drawn and pale with fear.
+
+"You can't frighten me," he gasped, rallying his courage with an
+effort of the will. "You are talking nonsense. This is a respectable
+hotel; it isn't a den of thieves. You are trying to frighten me out of
+the money with your lies and your lawyer's tricks, but you will find
+that I am not so easily fooled. You are dealing with a man, Holcombe,
+who suffered to get what he has, and who doesn't mean to let it go
+without a fight for it. Come near me, I warn you, and I shall call for
+help."
+
+Holcombe backed slowly away from the table and tossed up his hands
+with the gesture of one who gives up his argument. "You will have it,
+will you?" he muttered, grimly. "Very well, you _shall_ fight for
+it." He turned quickly and drove in the bolt of the door and placed
+his shoulders over the electric button in the wall. "I have warned
+you," he said, softly. "I have told you where you are, and that you
+have nothing to expect from the outside. You are absolutely in my
+power to do with as I please." He stopped, and, without moving his
+eyes from Allen's face, drew the revolver from the pocket of his coat.
+His manner was so terrible that Allen gazed at him, breathing faintly,
+and with his eyes fixed in horrible fascination. "There is no law,"
+Holcombe repeated, softly. "There is no help for you now or later. It
+is a question of two men locked in a room with a table and sixty
+thousand dollars between them. That is the situation. Two men and
+sixty thousand dollars. We have returned to first principles, Allen.
+It is a man against a man, and there is no Court of Appeal."
+
+Allen's breath came back to him with a gasp, as though he had been
+shocked with a sudden downpour of icy water.
+
+"There is!" he cried. "There _is_ a Court of Appeal. For God's
+sake, wait. I appeal to Henry Holcombe, to Judge Holcombe's son. I
+appeal to your good name, Harry, to your fame in the world. Think what
+you are doing; for the love of God, don't murder me. I'm a criminal, I
+know, but not what you would be, Holcombe; not that. You are mad or
+drunk. You wouldn't, you couldn't do it. Think of it! _You_,
+Henry Holcombe. _You._"
+
+The fingers of Holcombe's hand moved and tightened around the butt of
+the pistol, the sweat sprang from the pores of his palm. He raised the
+revolver and pointed it. "My sin's on my own head," he said. "Give me
+the money."
+
+The older man glanced fearfully back of him at the open window,
+through which a sea breeze moved the palms outside, so that they
+seemed to whisper together as though aghast at the scene before them.
+The window was three stories from the ground, and Allen's eyes
+returned to the stern face of the younger man. As they stood silent
+there came to them the sound of some one moving in the hall, and of
+men's voices whispering together. Allen's face lit with a sudden
+radiance of hope, and Holcombe's arm moved uncertainly.
+
+"I fancy," he said, in a whisper, "that those are my friends. They
+have some idea of my purpose, and they have come to learn more. If you
+call, I will let them in, and they will strangle you into silence
+until I get the money."
+
+The two men eyed each other steadily, the older seeming to weigh the
+possible truth of Holcombe's last words in his mind. Holcombe broke
+the silence in a lighter tone.
+
+"Playing the policeman is a new role to me," he said, "and I warn you
+that I have but little patience; and, besides, my hand is getting
+tired, and this thing is at full cock."
+
+Allen, for the first time, lowered the box upon the table and drew
+from it a bundle of notes bound together with elastic bandages.
+Holcombe's eyes lighted as brightly at the sight as though the notes
+were for his own private pleasures in the future.
+
+"Be quick!" he said. "I cannot be responsible for the men outside."
+
+Allen bent over the money, his face drawing into closer and sharper
+lines as the amount grew, under his fingers, to the sum Holcombe had
+demanded.
+
+"Sixty thousand!" he said, in a voice of desperate calm.
+
+"Good!" whispered Holcombe. "Pass it over to me. I hope I have taken
+the most of what you have," he said, as he shoved the notes into his
+pocket; "but this is something. Now I warn you," he added, as he
+lowered the trigger of the revolver and put it out of sight, "that any
+attempt to regain this will be futile. I am surrounded by friends; no
+one knows you or cares about you. I shall sleep in my room to-night
+without precaution, for I know that the money is now mine. Nothing you
+can do will recall it. Your cue is silence and secrecy as to what you
+have lost and as to what you still have with you."
+
+He stopped in some confusion, interrupted by a sharp knock at the door
+and two voices calling his name. Allen shrank back in terror.
+
+"You coward!" he hissed. "You promised me you'd be content with what
+you have." Holcombe looked at him in amazement. "And now your
+accomplices are to have their share, too, are they?" the embezzler
+whispered, fiercely. "You lied to me; you mean to take it all."
+
+Holcombe, for an answer, drew back the bolt, but so softly that the
+sound of his voice drowned the noise it made.
+
+"No, not to-night," he said, briskly, so that the his voice penetrated
+into the hall beyond. "I mustn't stop any longer, I'm keeping you up.
+It has been very pleasant to have heard all that news from home. It
+was such a chance, my seeing you before I sailed. Good-night." He
+paused and pretended to listen. "No, Allen, I don't think it's a
+servant," he said. "It's some of my friends looking for me. This is my
+last night on shore, you see." He threw open the door and confronted
+Meakim and Carroll as they stood in some confusion in the dark hall.
+"Yes, it is some of my friends," Holcombe continued. "I'll be with you
+in a minute," he said to them. Then he turned, and, crossing the room
+in their sight, shook Allen by the hand, and bade him good-night and
+good-by.
+
+The embezzler's revulsion of feeling was so keen and the relief so
+great that he was able to smile as Holcombe turned and left him. "I
+wish you a pleasant voyage," he said, faintly.
+
+Then Holcombe shut the door on him, closing him out from their sight.
+He placed his hands on a shoulder of each of the two men and jumped
+step by step down the stairs like a boy as they descended silently in
+front of him. At the foot of the stairs Carroll turned and confronted
+him sternly, staring him in the face. Meakim at one side eyed him
+curiously.
+
+"Well?" said Carroll, with one hand upon Holcombe's wrist.
+
+Holcombe shook his hand free, laughing. "Well," he answered, "I
+persuaded him to make restitution."
+
+"You persuaded him!" exclaimed Carroll, impatiently. "How?"
+
+Holcombe's eyes avoided those of the two inquisitors. He drew a long
+breath, and then burst into a loud fit of hysterical laughter. The two
+men surveyed him grimly. "I argued with him, of course," said
+Holcombe, gayly. "That is my business, man; you forget that I am a
+District Attorney--"
+
+"_We_ didn't forget it," said Carroll, fiercely. "Did _you_?
+What did you do?"
+
+Holcombe backed away up the stairs shaking his head and laughing. "I
+shall never tell you," he said. He pointed with his hand down the
+second flight of stairs. "Meet me in the smoking-room," he continued.
+"I will be there in a minute, and we will have a banquet. Ask the
+others to come. I have something to do first."
+
+The two men turned reluctantly away, and continued on down the stairs
+without speaking and with their faces filled with doubt. Holcombe ran
+first to Reese's room and replaced the pistol in its holder. He was
+trembling as he threw the thing from him, and had barely reached his
+own room and closed the door when a sudden faintness overcame him. The
+weight he had laid on his nerves was gone and the laughter had
+departed from his face. He stood looking back at what he had escaped
+as a man reprieved at the steps of the gallows turns his head to
+glance at the rope he has cheated. Holcombe tossed the bundle of
+notes, upon the table and took an unsteady step across the room. Then
+he turned suddenly and threw himself upon his knees and buried his
+face in the pillow.
+
+The sun rose the next morning on a cool, beautiful day, and the
+Consul's boat, with the American flag trailing from the stern, rose
+and fell on the bluest of blue waters as it carried Holcombe and his
+friends to the steamer's side.
+
+"We are going to miss you very much," Mrs. Carroll said. "I hope you
+won't forget to send us word of yourself."
+
+Miss Terrill said nothing. She was leaning over the side trailing her
+hand in the water, and watching it run between her slim pink fingers.
+She raised her eyes to find Holcombe looking at her intently with a
+strange expression of wistfulness and pity, at which she smiled
+brightly back at him, and began to plan vivaciously with Captain Reese
+for a ride that same afternoon.
+
+They separated over the steamer's deck, and Meakim, for the hundredth
+time, and in the lack of conversation which comes at such moments,
+offered Holcombe a fresh cigar.
+
+"But I have got eight of yours now," said Holcombe.
+
+"That's all right; put it in your pocket," said the Tammany chieftain,
+"and smoke it after dinner. You'll need 'em. They're better than those
+you'll get on the steamer, and they never went through a
+custom-house."
+
+Holcombe cleared his throat in some slight embarrassment. "Is there
+anything I can do for you in New York, Meakim?" he asked. "Anybody I
+can see, or to whom I can deliver a message?"
+
+"No," said Meakim. "I write pretty often. Don't you worry about me,"
+he added, gratefully. "I'll be back there some day myself, when the
+law of limitation lets me."
+
+Holcombe laughed. "Well," he said, "I'd be glad to do something for
+you if you'd let me know what you'd like."
+
+Meakim put his hands behind his back and puffed meditatively on his
+cigar, rolling it between his lips with his tongue. Then he turned it
+between his fingers and tossed the ashes over the side of the boat. He
+gave a little sigh, and then frowned at having done so. "I'll tell you
+what you _can_ do for me, Holcombe," he said, smiling. "Some
+night I wish you would go down to Fourteenth Street, some night this
+spring, when the boys are sitting out on the steps in front of the
+Hall, and just take a drink for me at Ed Lally's; just for luck. Will
+you? That's what I'd like to do. I don't know nothing better than
+Fourteenth Street of a summer evening, with all the people crowding
+into Pastor's on one side of the Hall, and the Third Avenue L cars
+running by on the other. That's a gay sight; ain't it now? With all
+the girls coming in and out of Theiss's, and the sidewalks crowded.
+One of them warm nights when they have to have the windows open, and
+you can hear the music in at Pastor's, and the audience clapping their
+hands. That's great, isn't it? Well," he laughed and shook his head.
+"I'll be back there some day, won't I," he said, wistfully, "and hear
+it for myself."
+
+"Carroll," said Holcombe, drawing the former to one side, "suppose I
+see this cabman when I reach home, and get him to withdraw the charge,
+or agree not to turn up when it comes to trial."
+
+Carroll's face clouded in an instant. "Now, listen to me, Holcombe,"
+he said. "You let my dirty work alone. There's lots of my friends who
+have nothing better to do than just that. You have something better to
+do, and you leave me and my rows to others. I like you for what you
+are, and not for what you can do for me. I don't mean that I don't
+appreciate your offer, but it shouldn't have come from an Assistant
+District Attorney to a fugitive criminal."
+
+"What nonsense!" said Holcombe.
+
+"Don't say that; don't say that!" said Carroll, quickly, as though it
+hurt him. "You wouldn't have said it a month ago."
+
+Holcombe eyed the other with an alert, confident smile. "No, Carroll,"
+he answered, "I would not." He put his hand on the other's shoulder
+with a suggestion in his manner of his former self, and with a touch
+of patronage. "I have learned a great deal in a month," he said.
+"Seven battles were won in seven days once. All my life I have been
+fighting causes, Carroll, and principles. I have been working with
+laws against law-breakers. I have never yet fought a man. It was not
+poor old Meakim, the individual, I prosecuted, but the corrupt
+politician. Now, here I have been thrown with men and women on as
+equal terms as a crew of sailors cast away upon a desert island. We
+were each a law unto himself. And I have been brought face to face,
+and for the first time in my life, not with principles of conduct, not
+with causes, and not with laws, but with my fellow men."
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY
+
+
+The day was cruelly hot, with unwarranted gusts of wind which swept
+the red dust in fierce eddies in at one end of Main Street and out at
+the other, and waltzed fantastically across the prairie. When they had
+passed, human beings opened their eyes again to blink hopelessly at
+the white sun, and swore or gasped, as their nature moved them. There
+were very few human beings in the streets, either in Houston Avenue,
+where there were dwelling-houses, or in the business quarter on Main
+Street. They were all at the new court-house, and every one possessed
+of proper civic pride was either in the packed court-room itself, or
+standing on the high steps outside, or pacing the long, freshly
+calcimined corridors, where there was shade and less dust. It was an
+eventful day in the history of Zepata City. The court-house had been
+long in coming, the appropriation had been denied again and again; but
+at last it stood a proud and hideous fact, like a gray prison,
+towering above the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame houses
+on the prairie around it, new, raw, and cheap, from the tin statue on
+the dome to the stucco round its base already cracking with the sun.
+Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime beds the builders had
+left still lay on the unsodded square, and the bursts of wind drove
+the shavings across it, as they had done since the first day of
+building, when the Hon. Horatio Macon, who had worked for the
+appropriation, had laid the corner-stone and received the homage of
+his constituents.
+
+It seemed a particularly happy and appropriate circumstance that the
+first business in the new court-room should be of itself of an
+important and momentous nature, something that dealt not only with the
+present but with the past of Zepata, and that the trial of so
+celebrated an individual as Abe Barrow should open the court-house
+with _eclat_, as Emma Abbott, who had come all the way from San
+Antonio to do it, had opened the new opera-house the year before. The
+District Attorney had said it would not take very long to dispose of
+Barrow's case, but he had promised it would be an interesting if brief
+trial, and the court-room was filled even to the open windows, where
+men sat crowded together, with the perspiration running down their
+faces, and the red dust settling and turning white upon their
+shoulders.
+
+Abe Barrow, the prisoner, had been as closely associated with the
+early history of Zepata as Colonel Macon himself, and was as widely
+known; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens, and
+two visiting brother-desperadoes, and the corner where his
+gambling-house had stood was still known as Barrow's Corner, to the
+regret of the druggist who had opened a shop there. Ten years before,
+the murder of Deputy Sheriff Welsh had led him to the penitentiary,
+and a month previous to the opening of the new court-house he had been
+freed, and arrested at the prison gate to stand trial for the murder
+of Hubert Thompson. The fight with Thompson had been a fair fight--so
+those said who remembered it--and Thompson was a man they could well
+spare; but the case against Barrow had been prepared during his
+incarceration by the new and youthful District Attorney, "Judge" Henry
+Harvey, and as it offered a fitting sacrifice for the dedication of
+the new temple of justice, the people were satisfied and grateful.
+
+The court-room was as bare of ornament as the cell from which the
+prisoner had just been taken. There was an imitation walnut clock at
+the back of the Judge's hair-cloth sofa, his revolving chair, and his
+high desk. This was the only ornament. Below was the green table of
+the District Attorney, upon which rested his papers and law-books and
+his high hat. To one side sat the jury, ranch-owners and prominent
+citizens, proud of having to serve on this the first day; and on the
+other the prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the citizens of
+Zepata in close rows, crowded together on unpainted benches; back of
+them more citizens standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around all
+the whitewashed walls. Colonel John Stogart, of Dallas, the prisoner's
+attorney, procured obviously at great expense, no one knew by whom,
+and Barrow's wife, a thin yellow-faced woman in a mean-fitting showy
+gown, sat among the local celebrities at the District Attorney's
+elbow. She was the only woman in the room.
+
+Colonel Stogart's speech had been good. The citizens were glad it had
+been so good; it had kept up the general tone of excellence, and it
+was well that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present on this
+occasion, and that he should have made what the citizens of Zepata
+were proud to believe was one of the efforts of his life. As they
+said, a court-house such as this one was not open for business every
+day. It was also proper that Judge Truax, who was a real Judge, and
+not one by courtesy only, as was the young District Attorney, should
+sit upon the bench. He also was associated with the early days and
+with the marvellous growth of Zepata City. He had taught the young
+District Attorney much of what he knew, and his long white hair and
+silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity and the appearance of calm
+justice to the bare room and to the heated words of the rival orators.
+
+Colonel Stogart ceased speaking, and the District Attorney sucked in
+his upper lip with a nervous, impatient sigh as he recognized that the
+visiting attorney had proved murder in the second degree, and that an
+execution in the jail-yard would not follow as a fitting sequence.
+
+But he was determined that so far as in him lay he would at least send
+his man back to the penitentiary for the remainder of his life.
+
+Young Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called,
+was very dear to the people of that booming town. In their eyes he was
+one of the most promising young men in the whole great unwieldy State
+of Texas, and the boy orator thought they were probably right, but he
+was far too clever to let them see it. He was clever in his words and
+in his deeds and in his appearance. And he dressed much more carefully
+than any other man in town, with a frock-coat and a white tie winter
+and summer, and a fine high hat. That he was slight and short of
+stature was something he could not help, and was his greatest, keenest
+regret, and that Napoleon was also short and slight did not serve to
+satisfy him or to make his regret less continual. What availed the
+sharply cut, smoothly shaven face and the eyes that flashed when he
+was moved, or the bell-like voice, if every unlettered ranchman or
+ranger could place both hands on his shoulders and look down at him
+from heights above? But they forgot this and he forgot it before he
+had reached the peroration of his closing speech. They saw only the
+Harry Harvey they knew and adored moving and rousing them with his
+voice, trembling with indignation when he wished to tremble, playing
+all his best tricks in his best manner, and cutting the air with
+sharp, cruel words when he was pleased to be righteously just.
+
+The young District Attorney turned slowly on his heels, and swept the
+court-room carelessly with a glance of the clever black eyes. The
+moment was his. He saw all the men he knew--the men who made his
+little world--crowding silently forward, forgetful of the heat, of the
+suffocating crush of those about them, of the wind that rattled the
+doors in the corridors, and conscious only of him. He saw his old
+preceptor watching keenly from the bench, with a steady glance of
+perfect appreciation, such as that with which one actor in the box
+compliments the other on the stage. He saw the rival attorney--the
+great lawyer from the great city--nervously smiling, with a look of
+confidence that told the lack of it; and he saw the face of the
+prisoner grim and set and hopelessly defiant. The boy orator allowed
+his uplifted arm to fall until the fingers pointed at the prisoner.
+
+"This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors
+hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata City of to-day.
+He comes to us a relic of the past--a past that has brought honor to
+many, wealth to some, and which is dear to all of us who love the
+completed purpose of their work; a past that was full of hardships and
+glorious efforts in the face of daily disappointments, embitterments,
+and rebuffs. But the part _this_ man played in that past lives
+only in the rude court records of that day, in the traditions of the
+gambling-hell and the saloons, and on the headstones of his victims.
+He was one of the excrescences of that unsettled period, an unhappy
+evil--an inevitable evil, I might almost say, as the Mexican
+horse-thieves and the prairie fires and the Indian outbreaks were
+inevitable, as our fathers who built this beautiful city knew to their
+cost. The same chance that was given to them to make a home for
+themselves in the wilderness, to help others to make their homes, to
+assist the civilization and progress not only of this city, but of the
+whole Lone Star State, was given to him, and he refused it, and
+blocked the way of others, and kept back the march of progress, until
+to-day, civilization, which has waxed great and strong--not on account
+of him, remember, but in spite of him--sweeps him out of its way, and
+crushes him and his fellows."
+
+The young District Attorney allowed his arm to drop, and turned to the
+jury, leaning easily with his bent knuckles on the table.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, in his pleasant tones of every-day politeness,
+"the 'bad man' has become an unknown quantity in Zepata City and in
+the State of Texas. It lies with you to see that he remains so. He
+went out of existence with the blanket Indian and the buffalo. He is
+dead, and he must _not_ be resurrected. He was a picturesque evil
+of those early days, but civilization has no use for him, and it has
+killed him, as the railroads and the barb-wire fence have killed the
+cowboy. He does not belong here; he does not fit in; he is not wanted.
+We want men who can breed good cattle, who can build manufactories and
+open banks; storekeepers who can undersell those of other cities; and
+professional men who know their business. We do _not_ want
+desperadoes and 'bad men' and faro-dealers and men who are quick on
+the trigger. A foolish and morbid publicity has cloaked men of this
+class with a notoriety which cheap and pernicious literature has
+greatly helped to disseminate. They have been made romantic when they
+were brutal, brave when they were foolhardy, heroes when they were
+only bullies and blackguards. This man, Abe Barrow, the prisoner at
+the bar, belongs to that class. He enjoys and has enjoyed a reputation
+as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and
+you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and
+you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the
+streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid to touch
+him--_afraid_, gentlemen--and children and women will point after
+him as the man who has sent nine others into eternity, and who yet
+walks the streets a free man. And he will become, in the eyes of the
+young and the weak, a hero and a god. This is unfortunate, but it is
+true.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, we want to keep the streets of this city so safe that
+a woman can walk them at midnight without fear of insult, and a man
+can express his opinion on the corner without being shot in the back
+for doing so."
+
+The District Attorney turned from the jury with a bow, and faced Judge
+Truax.
+
+"For the last ten years, your honor, this man, Abner Barrow, has been
+serving a term of imprisonment in the State penitentiary; I ask you to
+send him back there again for the remainder of his life. It will be
+the better place for him, and we will be happier in knowing we have
+done our duty in placing him there. Abe Barrow is out of date. He has
+missed step with the march of progress, and has been out of step for
+ten years, and it is best for all that he should remain out of it
+until he, who has sent nine other men unprepared to meet their God--"
+
+"He is not on trial for the murder of nine men," interrupted Colonel
+Stogart, springing from his chair, "but for the justifiable killing of
+one, and I demand, your honor, that--"
+
+"--has sent nine other men to meet their Maker," continued the
+District Attorney, "meets with the awful judgment of a higher court
+than this."
+
+Colonel Stogart smiled scornfully at the platitude, and sat down with
+an expressive shrug; but no one noticed him.
+
+The District Attorney raised his arm and faced the court-room. "It
+cannot be said of _us_," he cried, "that we have sat idle in the
+market-place. We have advanced and advanced in the last ten years,
+until we have reached the very foremost place with civilized people.
+This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city where he left a
+prairie town, a bank where he spun his roulette wheel, this
+magnificent court-house instead of a vigilance committee. And what is
+his part in this new court-house, which to-day, for the first time,
+throws open its doors to protect the just and to punish the unjust?
+
+"Is he there in the box among those honorable men, the gentlemen of
+the jury? Is he in that great crowd of intelligent, public-spirited
+citizens who make the bone and sinew of this our fair city? Is he on
+the honored bench dispensing justice, and making the intricacies of
+the law straight? No, gentlemen; he has no part in our triumph. He is
+there, in the prisoners' pen, an outlaw, a convicted murderer, and an
+unconvicted assassin, the last of his race--the bullies and bad men of
+the border--a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the
+sight of man. He has outlasted his time; he is a superfluity and an
+outrage on our reign of decency and order. And I ask you, gentlemen,
+to put him away where he will not hear the voice of man nor children's
+laughter, nor see a woman smile, where he will not even see the face
+of the warden who feeds him, nor sunlight except as it is filtered
+through the iron bars of a jail. Bury him with the bitter past, with
+the lawlessness that has gone--that has gone, thank God--and which
+must _not_ return. Place him in the cell where he belongs, and
+whence, had justice been done, he would never have been taken alive."
+
+The District Attorney sat down suddenly, with a quick nod to the Judge
+and the jury, and fumbled over his papers with nervous fingers. He was
+keenly conscious, and excited with the fervor of his own words. He
+heard the reluctantly hushed applause and the whispers of the crowd,
+and noted the quick and combined movement of the jury with a selfish
+sweet pleasure, which showed itself only in the tightening of the lips
+and nostrils. Those nearest him tugged at his sleeve and shook hands
+with him. He remembered this afterward as one of the rewards of the
+moment. He turned the documents before him over and scribbled words
+upon a piece of paper and read a passage in an open law-book. He did
+this quite mechanically, and was conscious of nothing until the
+foreman pronounced the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the
+second degree.
+
+Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, simply, that it lay in
+his power to sentence the prisoner to not less than two years'
+confinement in the State penitentiary or for the remainder of his
+life.
+
+"Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow," he said, with an old
+man's kind severity, "is there anything you have to say on your own
+behalf?"
+
+The District Attorney turned his face, as did all the others, but he
+did not see the prisoner. He still saw himself holding the court-room
+with a spell, and heard his own periods ringing against the
+whitewashed ceiling. The others saw a tall, broad-shouldered man
+leaning heavily forward over the bar of the prisoner's box. His face
+was white with the prison tan, markedly so in contrast with those
+sunburnt by the wind and sun turned toward him, and pinched and
+hollow-eyed and worn. When he spoke, his voice had the huskiness which
+comes from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's.
+
+"I don't know, Judge," he said, hesitatingly, and staring stupidly at
+the mass of faces in the well beneath him, "that I have anything to
+say--in my own behalf. I don't know as it would be any use. I guess
+what the gentleman said about me is all there is to say. He put it
+about right. I've had my fun, and I've got to pay for it--that is, I
+thought it was fun at the time. I am not going to cry any baby act and
+beg off, or anything, if that's what you mean. But there is something
+I'd like to say if I thought you would believe me." He frowned down at
+the green table as though the words he wanted would not come, and his
+eyes wandered from one face to another, until they rested upon the
+bowed head of the only woman in the room. They remained there for some
+short time, and then Barrow drew in his breath more quickly, and
+turned with something like a show of confidence to the jury.
+
+"All that man said of me is true," he said. He gave a toss of his
+hands as a man throws away the reins. "I admit all he says. I
+_am_ a back number; I _am_ out of date; I _was_ a loafer and a
+blackguard. I never shot any man in the back, nor I never assassinated
+no one; but that's neither here nor there. I'm not in a place where I
+can expect people to pick out their words; but, as he says, I _am_ a
+bad lot. He says I have enjoyed a reputation as a desperado. I am not
+bragging of that; I just ask you to remember that he said it. Remember
+it of me. I was not the sort to back down to man or beast, and I'm not
+now. I am not backing down, now; I'm taking my punishment. Whatever
+you please to make it, I'll take it; and that," he went on, more
+slowly, "makes it harder for me to ask what I want to ask, and make
+you all believe I am not asking it for myself."
+
+He stopped, and the silence in the room seemed to give him some faint
+encouragement of sympathy, though it was rather the silence of
+curiosity.
+
+Colonel Stogart gave a stern look upward, and asked the prisoner's
+wife, in a whisper, if she knew what her husband meant to say, but she
+shook her head. She did not know. The District Attorney smiled
+indulgently at the prisoner and at the men about him, but they were
+watching the prisoner.
+
+"That man there," said Barrow, pointing with one gaunt hand at the boy
+attorney, "told you I had no part or parcel in this city or in this
+world; that I belonged to the past; that I had ought to be dead. Now
+that's not so. I have just one thing that belongs to this city and
+this world--and to me; one thing that I couldn't take to jail with me,
+and that I'll have to leave behind me when I go back to it. I mean my
+wife."
+
+The prisoner stopped, and looked so steadily at one place below him
+that those in the back of the court guessed for the first time that
+Mrs. Barrow was in the room, and craned forward to look at her, and
+there was a moment of confusion and a murmur of "Get back there!" "Sit
+still!" The prisoner turned to Judge Truax again and squared his broad
+shoulders, making the more conspicuous his narrow and sunken chest.
+
+"You, sir," he said, quietly, with a change from the tone of
+braggadocio with which he had begun to speak, "remember her, sir, when
+I married her, twelve years ago. She was Henry Holman's daughter, he
+who owned the San Iago Ranch and the triangle brand. I took her from
+the home she had with her father against that gentleman's wishes, sir,
+to live with me over my dance-hall at the Silver Star. You may
+remember her as she was then. She gave up everything a woman ought to
+have to come to me. She thought she was going to be happy with me;
+that's why she come, I guess. Maybe she was happy for about two weeks.
+After that first two weeks her life, sir, was a hell, and I made it a
+hell. I was drunk most of the time, or sleeping it off, and
+ugly-tempered when I was sober. There was shooting and carrying on all
+day and night down-stairs, and she didn't dare to leave her room.
+Besides that, she cared for me, and she was afraid every minute I was
+going to get killed. That's the way she lived for two years.
+Respectable women wouldn't speak to her because she was my wife; even
+them that were friends of hers when she lived on the ranch wouldn't
+speak to her on the street--and she had no children. That was her
+life; she lived alone over the dance-hall; and sometimes when I was
+drunk--I beat her."
+
+The man's white face reddened slowly as he said this; and he stopped,
+and then continued more quickly, with his eyes still fixed on those of
+the Judge:
+
+"At the end of two years I killed Welsh, and they sent me to the
+penitentiary for ten years, and she was free. She could have gone back
+to her folks and got a divorce if she'd wanted to, and never seen me
+again. It was an escape most women'd gone down on their knees and
+thanked their Maker for, and blessed the day they'd been freed from a
+blackguardly drunken brute.
+
+"But what did this woman do--my wife, the woman I misused and beat and
+dragged down in the mud with me? She was too mighty proud to go back
+to her people or to the friends who shook her when she was in trouble;
+and she sold out the place, and bought a ranch with the money, and
+worked it by herself, worked it day and night, until in ten years she
+had made herself an old woman, as you see she is to-day.
+
+"And for what? To get _me_ free again; to bring _me_ things
+to eat in jail, and picture papers and tobacco--when she was living on
+bacon and potatoes, and drinking alkali water--working to pay for a
+lawyer to fight for _me_--to pay for the _best_ lawyer! She
+worked in the fields with her own hands, planting and ploughing,
+working as I never worked for myself in my whole lazy, rotten life.
+That's what that woman there did for me."
+
+The man stopped suddenly, and turned with a puzzled look toward where
+his wife sat, for she had dropped her head on the table in front of
+her, and he had heard her sobbing.
+
+"And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let me have two years out
+of jail to show her how I feel about it. I ask you not to send me back
+for life, sir. Give me just two years--two years of my life while I
+have some strength left to work for her as she worked for me. I only
+want to show her how I care for her _now_. I had the chance, and
+I wouldn't take it; and now, sir, I want to show her that I know and
+understand--now, when it's too late. It's all I've thought of when I
+was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in her own kitchen with her
+hands folded, and me working and sweating in the fields for
+her--working till every bone ached, trying to make it up to her.
+
+"And I can't!" the man cried, suddenly, losing the control he had
+forced upon himself, and tossing his hands up above his head, and with
+his eyes fixed hopelessly on the bowed head below him. "I can't! It's
+too late. It's too late!"
+
+He turned and faced the crowd and the District Attorney defiantly.
+
+"I'm not crying for the men I killed. They're dead. I can't bring them
+back. But she's not dead, and I treated her worse than I treated them.
+_She_ never harmed me, nor got in my way, nor angered me. And now,
+when I want to do what I can for her in the little time that's left,
+_he_ tells you I'm a 'relic of the past,' that civilization's too good
+for me, that you must bury me until it's time to bury me for good.
+Just when I've got something I _must_ live for, something I've got to
+do. Don't you believe me? Don't you understand?"
+
+He turned again toward the Judge, and beat the rail before him
+impotently with his wasted hand. "Don't send me back for life!" he
+cried. "Give me a few years to work for her--two years, one year--to
+show her what I feel here, what I never felt for her before. Look at
+her, gentlemen. Look how worn she is and poorly, and look at her
+hands, and you men must feel how I feel. I don't ask you for myself. I
+don't want to go free on my own account. I am asking it for that
+woman--yes, and for myself, too. I am playing to 'get back,'
+gentlemen. I've lost what I had, and I want to get back; and," he
+cried, querulously, "the game keeps going against me. It's only a few
+years' freedom I want. Send me back for thirty years, but not for
+life. My God! Judge, don't bury me alive, as that man asked you to.
+I'm _not_ civilized, maybe; ways _have_ changed. You are not
+the man I knew; you are all strangers to me. But I could learn. I
+wouldn't bother you in the old way. I only want to live with her. I
+won't harm the rest of you. Give me this last chance. Let me prove
+that what I'm saying is true."
+
+The man stopped and stood, opening and shutting his hands upon the
+rail, and searching with desperate eagerness from face to face, as one
+who has staked all he has watches the wheel spinning his fortune away.
+The gentlemen of the jury sat quite motionless, looking straight ahead
+at the blinding sun, which came through the high, uncurtained windows
+opposite. Outside, the wind banged the shutters against the wall, and
+whistled up the street and round the tin corners of the building, but
+inside the room was very silent. The Mexicans at the door, who could
+not understand, looked curiously at the faces of the men around them,
+and made sure that they had missed something of much importance. For a
+moment no one moved, until there was a sudden stir around the District
+Attorney's table, and the men stepped aside and let the woman pass
+them and throw herself against the prisoner's box. The prisoner bent
+his tall gaunt figure over the rail, and as the woman pressed his one
+hand against her face, touched her shoulders with the other awkwardly.
+
+"There, now," he whispered, soothingly, "don't you take on so. Now you
+know how I feel, it's all right; don't take on."
+
+Judge Truax looked at the paper on his desk for some seconds, and
+raised his head, coughing as he did so. "It lies--" Judge Truax began,
+and then stopped, and began again, in a more certain tone: "It lies at
+the discretion of this Court to sentence the prisoner to a term of
+imprisonment for two years, or for an indefinite period, or for life.
+Owing to--On account of certain circumstances which were--have
+arisen--this sentence is suspended. This court stands adjourned."
+
+As he finished he sprang out of his chair impulsively, and with a
+quick authoritative nod to the young District Attorney, came quickly
+down the steps of the platform. Young Harvey met him at the foot with
+wide-open eyes.
+
+The older man hesitated, and placed his hand upon the District
+Attorney's shoulder. "Harry," he said. His voice was shaken, and his
+hand trembled on the arm of his protege, for he was an old man and
+easily moved. "Harry, my boy," he said, "do you think you could go to
+Austin and repeat the speech that man made to the Governor?"
+
+The boy orator laughed, and took one of the older man's hands in one
+of his and pressed it quickly. "I'd like d----d well to try," he said.
+
+
+
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+
+
+Young Latimer stood on one of the lower steps of the hall stairs,
+leaning with one hand on the broad railing and smiling down at her.
+She had followed him from the drawing-room and had stopped at the
+entrance, drawing the curtains behind her, and making, unconsciously,
+a dark background for her head and figure. He thought he had never
+seen her look more beautiful, nor that cold, fine air of thorough
+breeding about her which was her greatest beauty to him, more strongly
+in evidence.
+
+"Well, sir," she said, "why don't you go?"
+
+He shifted his position slightly and leaned more comfortably upon the
+railing, as though he intended to discuss it with her at some length.
+
+"How can I go," he said, argumentatively, "with you standing
+there--looking like that?"
+
+"I really believe," the girl said, slowly, "that he is afraid; yes, he
+is afraid. And you always said," she added, turning to him, "you were
+so brave."
+
+"Oh, I am sure I never said that," exclaimed the young man, calmly. "I
+may be brave, in fact, I am quite brave, but I never said I was. Some
+one must have told you."
+
+"Yes, he is afraid," she said, nodding her head to the tall clock
+across the hall, "he is temporizing and trying to save time. And
+afraid of a man, too, and such a good man who would not hurt any one."
+
+"You know a bishop is always a very difficult sort of a person," he
+said, "and when he happens to be your father, the combination is just
+a bit awful. Isn't it now? And especially when one means to ask him
+for his daughter. You know it isn't like asking him to let one smoke
+in his study."
+
+"If I loved a girl," she said, shaking her head and smiling up at him,
+"I wouldn't be afraid of the whole world; that's what they say in
+books, isn't it? I would be so bold and happy."
+
+"Oh, well, I'm bold enough," said the young man, easily; "if I had not
+been, I never would have asked you to marry me; and I'm happy
+enough--that's because I did ask you. But what if he says no,"
+continued the youth; "what if he says he has greater ambitions for
+you, just as they say in books, too? What will you do? Will you run
+away with me? I can borrow a coach just as they used to do, and we can
+drive off through the Park and be married, and come back and ask his
+blessing on our knees--unless he should overtake us on the elevated."
+
+"That," said the girl, decidedly, "is flippant, and I'm going to leave
+you. I never thought to marry a man who would be frightened at the
+very first. I am greatly disappointed."
+
+She stepped back into the drawing-room and pulled the curtains to
+behind her, and then opened them again and whispered, "Please don't be
+long," and disappeared. He waited, smiling, to see if she would make
+another appearance, but she did not, and he heard her touch the keys
+of the piano at the other end of the drawing-room. And so, still
+smiling and with her last words sounding in his ears, he walked slowly
+up the stairs and knocked at the door of the bishop's study. The
+bishop's room was not ecclesiastic in its character. It looked much
+like the room of any man of any calling who cared for his books and to
+have pictures about him, and copies of the beautiful things he had
+seen on his travels. There were pictures of the Virgin and the Child,
+but they were those that are seen in almost any house, and there were
+etchings and plaster casts, and there were hundreds of books, and dark
+red curtains, and an open fire that lit up the pots of brass with
+ferns in them, and the blue and white plaques on the top of the
+bookcase. The bishop sat before his writing-table, with one hand
+shading his eyes from the light of a red-covered lamp, and looked up
+and smiled pleasantly and nodded as the young man entered. He had a
+very strong face, with white hair hanging at the side, but was still a
+young man for one in such a high office. He was a man interested in
+many things, who could talk to men of any profession or to the mere
+man of pleasure, and could interest them in what he said, and force
+their respect and liking. And he was very good, and had, they said,
+seen much trouble.
+
+"I am afraid I interrupted you," said the young man, tentatively.
+
+"No, I have interrupted myself," replied the bishop. "I don't seem to
+make this clear to myself," he said, touching the paper in front of
+him, "and so I very much doubt if I am going to make it clear to any
+one else. However," he added, smiling, as he pushed the manuscript to
+one side, "we are not going to talk about that now. What have you to
+tell me that is new?"
+
+The younger man glanced up quickly at this, but the bishop's face
+showed that his words had had no ulterior meaning, and that he
+suspected nothing more serious to come than the gossip of the clubs or
+a report of the local political fight in which he was keenly
+interested, or on their mission on the East Side. But it seemed an
+opportunity to Latimer.
+
+"I _have_ something new to tell you," he said, gravely, and with
+his eyes turned toward the open fire, "and I don't know how to do it
+exactly. I mean I don't just know how it is generally done or how to
+tell it best." He hesitated and leaned forward, with his hands locked
+in front of him, and his elbows resting on his knees. He was not in
+the least frightened. The bishop had listened to many strange stories,
+to many confessions, in this same study, and had learned to take them
+as a matter of course; but to-night something in the manner of the
+young man before him made him stir uneasily, and he waited for him to
+disclose the object of his visit with some impatience.
+
+"I will suppose, sir," said young Latimer, finally, "that you know me
+rather well--I mean you know who my people are, and what I am doing
+here in New York, and who my friends are, and what my work amounts to.
+You have let me see a great deal of you, and I have appreciated your
+doing so very much; to so young a man as myself it has been a great
+compliment, and it has been of great benefit to me. I know that better
+than any one else. I say this because unless you had shown me this
+confidence it would have been almost impossible for me to say to you
+what I am going to say now. But you have allowed me to come here
+frequently, and to see you and talk with you here in your study, and
+to see even more of your daughter. Of course, sir, you did not suppose
+that I came here only to see you. I came here because I found that, if
+I did not see Miss Ellen for a day, that that day was wasted, and that
+I spent it uneasily and discontentedly, and the necessity of seeing
+her even more frequently has grown so great that I cannot come here as
+often as I seem to want to come unless I am engaged to her, unless I
+come as her husband that is to be." The young man had been speaking
+very slowly and picking his words, but now he raised his head and ran
+on quickly.
+
+"I have spoken to her and told her how I love her, and she has told me
+that she loves me, and that if you will not oppose us, will marry me.
+That is the news I have to tell you, sir. I don't know but that I
+might have told it differently, but that is it. I need not urge on you
+my position and all that, because I do not think that weighs with you;
+but I do tell you that I love Ellen so dearly that, though I am not
+worthy of her, of course, I have no other pleasure than to give her
+pleasure and to try to make her happy. I have the power to do it; but
+what is much more, I have the wish to do it; it is all I think of now,
+and all that I can ever think of. What she thinks of me you must ask
+her; but what she is to me neither she can tell you nor do I believe
+that I myself could make you understand." The young man's face was
+flushed and eager, and as he finished speaking he raised his head and
+watched the bishop's countenance anxiously. But the older man's face
+was hidden by his hand as he leaned with his elbow on his
+writing-table. His other hand was playing with a pen, and when he
+began to speak, which he did after a long pause, he still turned it
+between his fingers and looked down at it.
+
+"I suppose," he said, as softly as though he were speaking to himself,
+"that I should have known this; I suppose that I should have been
+better prepared to hear it. But it is one of those things which men
+put off--I mean those men who have children, put off--as they do
+making their wills, as something that is in the future and that may be
+shirked until it comes. We seem to think that our daughters will live
+with us always, just as we expect to live on ourselves until death
+comes one day and startles us and finds us unprepared." He took down
+his hand and smiled gravely at the younger man with an evident effort,
+and said, "I did not mean to speak so gloomily, but you see my point
+of view must be different from yours. And she says she loves you, does
+she?" he added, gently.
+
+Young Latimer bowed his head and murmured something inarticulately in
+reply, and then held his head erect again and waited, still watching
+the bishop's face.
+
+"I think she might have told me," said the older man; "but then I
+suppose this is the better way. I am young enough to understand that
+the old order changes, that the customs of my father's time differ
+from those of to-day. And there is no alternative, I suppose," he
+said, shaking his head. "I am stopped and told to deliver, and have no
+choice. I will get used to it in time," he went on, "but it seems very
+hard now. Fathers are selfish, I imagine, but she is all I have."
+
+Young Latimer looked gravely into the fire and wondered how long it
+would last. He could just hear the piano from below, and he was
+anxious to return to her. And at the same time he was drawn toward the
+older man before him, and felt rather guilty, as though he really were
+robbing him. But at the bishop's next words he gave up any thought of
+a speedy release, and settled himself in his chair.
+
+"We are still to have a long talk," said the bishop. "There are many
+things I must know, and of which I am sure you will inform me freely.
+I believe there are some who consider me hard, and even narrow on
+different points, but I do not think you will find me so, at least let
+us hope not. I must confess that for a moment I almost hoped that you
+might not be able to answer the questions I must ask you, but it was
+only for a moment. I am only too sure you will not be found wanting,
+and that the conclusion of our talk will satisfy us both. Yes, I am
+confident of that."
+
+His manner changed, nevertheless, and Latimer saw that he was now
+facing a judge and not a plaintiff who had been robbed, and that he
+was in turn the defendant. And still he was in no way frightened.
+
+"I like you," the bishop said, "I like you very much. As you say
+yourself, I have seen a great deal of you, because I have enjoyed your
+society, and your views and talk were good and young and fresh, and
+did me good. You have served to keep me in touch with the outside
+world, a world of which I used to know at one time a great deal. I
+know your people and I know you, I think, and many people have spoken
+to me of you. I see why now. They, no doubt, understood what was
+coming better than myself, and were meaning to reassure me concerning
+you. And they said nothing but what was good of you. But there are
+certain things of which no one can know but yourself, and concerning
+which no other person, save myself, has a right to question you. You
+have promised very fairly for my daughter's future; you have suggested
+more than you have said, but I understood. You can give her many
+pleasures which I have not been able to afford; she can get from you
+the means of seeing more of this world in which she lives, of meeting
+more people, and of indulging in her charities, or in her
+extravagances, for that matter, as she wishes. I have no fear of her
+bodily comfort; her life, as far as that is concerned, will be easier
+and broader, and with more power for good. Her future, as I say, as
+you say also, is assured; but I want to ask you this," the bishop
+leaned forward and watched the young man anxiously, "you can protect
+her in the future, but can you assure me that you can protect her from
+the past?"
+
+Young Latimer raised his eyes calmly and said, "I don't think I quite
+understand."
+
+"I have perfect confidence, I say," returned the bishop, "in you as
+far as your treatment of Ellen is concerned in the future. You love
+her and you would do everything to make the life of the woman you love
+a happy one; but this is it. Can you assure me that there is nothing
+in the past that may reach forward later and touch my daughter through
+you--no ugly story, no oats that have been sowed, and no boomerang
+that you have thrown wantonly and that has not returned--but which may
+return?"
+
+"I think I understand you now, sir," said the young man, quietly. "I
+have lived," he began, "as other men of my sort have lived. You know
+what that is, for you must have seen it about you at college, and
+after that before you entered the Church. I judge so from your
+friends, who were your friends then, I understand. You know how they
+lived. I never went in for dissipation, if you mean that, because it
+never attracted me. I am afraid I kept out of it not so much out of
+respect for others as for respect for myself. I found my self-respect
+was a very good thing to keep, and I rather preferred keeping it and
+losing several pleasures that other men managed to enjoy, apparently
+with free consciences. I confess I used to rather envy them. It is no
+particular virtue on my part; the thing struck me as rather more
+vulgar than wicked, and so I have had no wild oats to speak of; and no
+woman, if that is what you mean, can write an anonymous letter, and no
+man can tell you a story about me that he could not tell in my
+presence."
+
+There was something in the way the young man spoke which would have
+amply satisfied the outsider, had he been present; but the bishop's
+eyes were still unrelaxed and anxious. He made an impatient motion
+with his hand.
+
+"I know you too well, I hope," he said, "to think of doubting your
+attitude in that particular. I know you are a gentleman, that is
+enough for that; but there is something beyond these more common
+evils. You see, I am terribly in earnest over this--you may think
+unjustly so, considering how well I know you, but this child is my
+only child. If her mother had lived, my responsibility would have been
+less great; but, as it is, God has left her here alone to me in my
+hands. I do not think He intended my duty should end when I had fed
+and clothed her, and taught her to read and write. I do not think He
+meant that I should only act as her guardian until the first man she
+fancied fancied her. I must look to her happiness not only now when
+she is with me, but I must assure myself of it when she leaves my
+roof. These common sins of youth I acquit you of. Such things are
+beneath you, I believe, and I did not even consider them. But there
+are other toils in which men become involved, other evils or
+misfortunes which exist, and which threaten all men who are young and
+free and attractive in many ways to women, as well as men. You have
+lived the life of the young man of this day. You have reached a place
+in your profession when you can afford to rest and marry and assume
+the responsibilities of marriage. You look forward to a life of
+content and peace and honorable ambition--a life, with your wife at
+your side, which is to last forty or fifty years. You consider where
+you will be twenty years from now, at what point of your career you
+may become a judge or give up practise; your perspective is unlimited;
+you even think of the college to which you may send your son. It is a
+long, quiet future that you are looking forward to, and you choose my
+daughter as the companion for that future, as the one woman with whom
+you could live content for that length of time. And it is in that
+spirit that you come to me tonight and that you ask me for my
+daughter. Now I am going to ask you one question, and as you answer
+that I will tell you whether or not you can have Ellen for your wife.
+You look forward, as I say, to many years of life, and you have chosen
+her as best suited to live that period with you; but I ask you this,
+and I demand that you answer me truthfully, and that you remember that
+you are speaking to her father. Imagine that I had the power to tell
+you, or rather that some superhuman agent could convince you, that you
+had but a month to live, and that for what you did in that month you
+would not be held responsible either by any moral law or any law made
+by man, and that your life hereafter would not be influenced by your
+conduct in that month, would you spend it, I ask you--and on your
+answer depends mine--would you spend those thirty days, with death at
+the end, with my daughter, or with some other woman of whom I know
+nothing?"
+
+Latimer sat for some time silent, until indeed, his silence assumed
+such a significance that he raised his head impatiently and said with
+a motion of the hand, "I mean to answer you in a minute; I want to be
+sure that I understand."
+
+The bishop bowed his head in assent, and for a still longer period the
+men sat motionless. The clock in the corner seemed to tick more
+loudly, and the dead coals dropping in the grate had a sharp,
+aggressive sound. The notes of the piano that had risen from the room
+below had ceased.
+
+"If I understand you," said Latimer, finally, and his voice and his
+face as he raised it were hard and aggressive, "you are stating a
+purely hypothetical case. You wish to try me by conditions which do
+not exist, which cannot exist. What justice is there, what right is
+there, in asking me to say how I would act under circumstances which
+are impossible, which lie beyond the limit of human experience? You
+cannot judge a man by what he would do if he were suddenly robbed of
+all his mental and moral training and of the habit of years. I am not
+admitting, understand me, that if the conditions which you suggest did
+exist that I would do one whit differently from what I will do if they
+remain as they are. I am merely denying your right to put such a
+question to me at all. You might just as well judge the shipwrecked
+sailors on a raft who eat each other's flesh as you would judge a
+sane, healthy man who did such a thing in his own home. Are you going
+to condemn men who are ice-locked at the North Pole, or buried in the
+heart of Africa, and who have given up all thought of return and are
+half mad and wholly without hope, as you would judge ourselves? Are
+they to be weighed and balanced as you and I are, sitting here within
+the sound of the cabs outside and with a bake-shop around the corner?
+What you propose could not exist, could never happen. I could never be
+placed where I should have to make such a choice, and you have no
+right to ask me what I would do or how I would act under conditions
+that are superhuman--you used the word yourself--where all that I have
+held to be good and just and true would be obliterated. I would be
+unworthy of myself, I would be unworthy of your daughter, if I
+considered such a state of things for a moment, or if I placed my
+hopes of marrying her on the outcome of such a test, and so, sir,"
+said the young man, throwing back his head, "I must refuse to answer
+you."
+
+The bishop lowered his hand from before his eyes and sank back wearily
+into his chair. "You have answered me," he said.
+
+"You have no right to say that," cried the young man, springing to his
+feet. "You have no right to suppose anything or to draw any
+conclusions. I have not answered you." He stood with his head and
+shoulders thrown back, and with his hands resting on his hips and with
+the fingers working nervously at his waist.
+
+"What you have said," replied the bishop, in a voice that had changed
+strangely, and which was inexpressibly sad and gentle, "is merely a
+curtain of words to cover up your true feeling. It would have been so
+easy to have said, 'For thirty days or for life Ellen is the only
+woman who has the power to make me happy.' You see that would have
+answered me and satisfied me. But you did not say that," he added,
+quickly, as the young man made a movement as if to speak.
+
+"Well, and suppose this other woman did exist, what then?" demanded
+Latimer. "The conditions you suggest are impossible; you must, you
+will surely, sir, admit that."
+
+"I do not know," replied the bishop, sadly; "I do not know. It may
+happen that whatever obstacle there has been which has kept you from
+her may be removed. It may be that she has married, it may be that she
+has fallen so low that you cannot marry her. But if you have loved her
+once, you may love her again; whatever it was that separated you in
+the past, that separates you now, that makes you prefer my daughter to
+her, may come to an end when you are married, when it will be too
+late, and when only trouble can come of it, and Ellen would bear that
+trouble. Can I risk that?"
+
+"But I tell you it is impossible," cried the young man. "The woman is
+beyond the love of any man, at least such a man as I am, or try to
+be."
+
+"Do you mean," asked the bishop, gently, and with an eager look of
+hope, "that she is dead?"
+
+Latimer faced the father for some seconds in silence. Then he raised
+his head slowly. "No," he said, "I do not mean she is dead. No, she is
+not dead."
+
+Again the bishop moved back wearily into his chair. "You mean then,"
+he said, "perhaps, that she is a married woman?" Latimer pressed his
+lips together at first as though he would not answer, and then raised
+his eyes coldly. "Perhaps," he said.
+
+The older man had held up his hand as if to signify that what he was
+about to say should be listened to without interruption, when a sharp
+turning of the lock of the door caused both father and the suitor to
+start. Then they turned and looked at each other with anxious inquiry
+and with much concern, for they recognized for the first time that
+their voices had been loud. The older man stepped quickly across the
+floor, but before he reached the middle of the room the door opened
+from the outside, and his daughter stood in the door-way, with her
+head held down and her eyes looking at the floor.
+
+"Ellen!" exclaimed the father, in a voice of pain and the deepest
+pity.
+
+The girl moved toward the place from where his voice came, without
+raising her eyes, and when she reached him put her arms about him and
+hid her face on his shoulder. She moved as though she were tired, as
+though she were exhausted by some heavy work.
+
+"My child," said the bishop, gently, "were you listening?" There was
+no reproach in his voice; it was simply full of pity and concern.
+
+"I thought," whispered the girl, brokenly, "that he would be
+frightened; I wanted to hear what he would say. I thought I could
+laugh at him for it afterward. I did it for a joke. I thought--" She
+stopped with a little gasping sob that she tried to hide, and for a
+moment held herself erect and then sank back again into her father's
+arms with her head upon his breast.
+
+Latimer started forward, holding out his arms to her. "Ellen," he
+said, "surely, Ellen, you are not against me. You see how preposterous
+it is, how unjust it is to me. You cannot mean--"
+
+The girl raised her head and shrugged her shoulders slightly as though
+she were cold. "Father," she said, wearily, "ask him to go away. Why
+does he stay? Ask him to go away."
+
+Latimer stopped and took a step back as though some one had struck
+him, and then stood silent with his face flushed and his eyes
+flashing. It was not in answer to anything that they said that he
+spoke, but to their attitude and what it suggested. "You stand there,"
+he began, "you two stand there as though I were something unclean, as
+though I had committed some crime. You look at me as though I were on
+trial for murder or worse. Both of you together against me. What have
+I done? What difference is there? You loved me a half-hour ago, Ellen;
+you said you did. I know you loved me; and you, sir," he added, more
+quietly, "treated me like a friend. Has anything come since then to
+change me or you? Be fair to me, be sensible. What is the use of this?
+It is a silly, needless, horrible mistake. You know I love you, Ellen;
+love you better than all the world. I don't have to tell you that; you
+know it, you can see and feel it. It does not need to be said; words
+can't make it any truer. You have confused yourselves and stultified
+yourselves with this trick, this test by hypothetical conditions, by
+considering what is not real or possible. It is simple enough; it is
+plain enough. You know I love you, Ellen, and you only, and that is
+all there is to it, and all that there is of any consequence in the
+world to me. The matter stops there; that is all there is for you to
+consider. Answer me, Ellen, speak to me. Tell me that you believe me."
+
+He stopped and moved a step toward her, but as he did so, the girl,
+still without looking up, drew herself nearer to her father and shrank
+more closely into his arms; but the father's face was troubled and
+doubtful, and he regarded the younger man with a look of the most
+anxious scrutiny. Latimer did not regard this. Their hands were raised
+against him as far as he could understand, and he broke forth again
+proudly, and with a defiant indignation:
+
+"What right have you to judge me?" he began; "what do you know of what
+I have suffered, and endured, and overcome? How can you know what I
+have had to give up and put away from me? It's easy enough for you to
+draw your skirts around you, but what can a woman bred as you have
+been bred know of what I've had to fight against and keep under and
+cut away? It was an easy, beautiful idyl to you; your love came to you
+only when it should have come, and for a man who was good and worthy,
+and distinctly eligible--I don't mean that; forgive me, Ellen, but you
+drive me beside myself. But he is good and he believes himself worthy,
+and I say that myself before you both. But I am only worthy and only
+good because of that other love that I put away when it became a
+crime, when it became impossible. Do you know what it cost me? Do you
+know what it meant to me, and what I went through, and how I suffered?
+Do you know who this other woman is whom you are insulting with your
+doubts and guesses in the dark? Can't you spare her? Am I not enough?
+Perhaps it was easy for her, too; perhaps her silence cost her
+nothing; perhaps she did not suffer and has nothing but happiness and
+content to look forward to for the rest of her life; and I tell you
+that it is because we did put it away, and kill it, and not give way
+to it that I am whatever I am to-day; whatever good there is in me is
+due to that temptation and to the fact that I beat it and overcame it
+and kept myself honest and clean. And when I met you and learned to
+know you I believed in my heart that God had sent you to me that I
+might know what it was to love a woman whom I could marry and who
+could be my wife; that you were the reward for my having overcome
+temptation and the sign that I had done well. And now you throw me
+over and put me aside as though I were something low and unworthy,
+because of this temptation, because of this very thing that has made
+me know myself and my own strength and that has kept me up for you."
+
+As the young man had been speaking, the bishop's eyes had never left
+his face, and as he finished, the face of the priest grew clearer and
+decided, and calmly exultant. And as Latimer ceased he bent his head
+above his daughter's, and said in a voice that seemed to speak with
+more than human inspiration. "My child," he said, "if God had given me
+a son I should have been proud if he could have spoken as this young
+man has done."
+
+But the woman only said, "Let him go to her."
+
+"Ellen, oh, Ellen!" cried the father.
+
+He drew back from the girl in his arms and looked anxiously and
+feelingly at her lover. "How could you, Ellen," he said, "how could
+you?" He was watching the young man's face with eyes full of sympathy
+and concern. "How little you know him," he said, "how little you
+understand. He will not do that," he added quickly, but looking
+questioningly at Latimer and speaking in a tone almost of command. "He
+will not undo all that he has done; I know him better than that." But
+Latimer made no answer, and for a moment the two men stood watching
+each other and questioning each other with their eyes. Then Latimer
+turned, and without again so much as glancing at the girl walked
+steadily to the door and left the room. He passed on slowly down the
+stairs and out into the night, and paused upon the top of the steps
+leading to the street. Below him lay the avenue with its double line
+of lights stretching off in two long perspectives. The lamps of
+hundreds of cabs and carriages flashed as they advanced toward him and
+shone for a moment at the turnings of the cross-streets, and from
+either side came the ceaseless rush and murmur, and over all hung the
+strange mystery that covers a great city at night. Latimer's rooms lay
+to the south, but he stood looking toward a spot to the north with a
+reckless, harassed look in his face that had not been there for many
+months. He stood so for a minute, and then gave a short shrug of
+disgust at his momentary doubt and ran quickly down the steps. "No,"
+he said, "if it were for a month, yes; but it is to be for many years,
+many more long years." And turning his back resolutely to the north he
+went slowly home.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE FEVER SHIP
+
+
+There were four rails around the ship's sides, the three lower ones of
+iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between them from
+the canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars which held him
+in. Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding blue water which
+ended in a line of breakers and a yellow coast with ragged palms.
+Beyond that again rose a range of mountain-peaks, and, stuck upon the
+loftiest peak of all, a tiny block-house. It rested on the brow of the
+mountain against the naked sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon
+the dome of a great cathedral.
+
+As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her
+sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines.
+From his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with severe,
+painstaking interest. Sometimes the wooden rail swept up to the very
+block-house itself, and for a second of time blotted it from sight.
+And again it sank to the level of the line of breakers, and wiped them
+out of the picture as though they were a line of chalk.
+
+The soldier on the cot promised himself that the next swell of the sea
+would send the lowest rail climbing to the very top of the palm-trees
+or, even higher, to the base of the mountains; and when it failed to
+reach even the palm-trees he felt a distinct sense of ill use, of
+having been wronged by some one. There was no other reason for
+submitting to this existence save these tricks upon the wearisome,
+glaring landscape; and now, whoever it was who was working them did
+not seem to be making this effort to entertain him with any
+heartiness.
+
+It was most cruel. Indeed, he decided hotly, it was not to be endured;
+he would bear it no longer, he would make his escape. But he knew that
+this move, which could be conceived in a moment's desperation, could
+only be carried to success with great strategy, secrecy, and careful
+cunning. So he fell back upon his pillow and closed his eyes, as
+though he were asleep, and then opening them again, turned cautiously,
+and spied upon his keeper. As usual, his keeper sat at the foot of the
+cot turning the pages of a huge paper filled with pictures of the war
+printed in daubs of tawdry colors. His keeper was a hard-faced boy
+without human pity or consideration, a very devil of obstinacy and
+fiendish cruelty. To make it worse, the fiend was a person without a
+collar, in a suit of soiled khaki, with a curious red cross bound by a
+safety-pin to his left arm. He was intent upon the paper in his hands;
+he was holding it between his eyes and his prisoner. His vigilance had
+relaxed, and the moment seemed propitious. With a sudden plunge of
+arms and legs, the prisoner swept the bed-sheet from him, and sprang
+at the wooden rail and grasped the iron stanchion beside it. He had
+his knee pressed against the top bar and his bare toes on the iron
+rail beneath it. Below him the blue water waited for him. It was cool
+and dark and gentle and deep. It would certainly put out the fire in
+his bones, he thought; it might even shut out the glare of the sun
+which scorched his eyeballs.
+
+But as he balanced for the leap, a swift weakness and nausea swept
+over him, a weight seized upon his body and limbs. He could not lift
+the lower foot from the iron rail, and he swayed dizzily and trembled.
+He trembled. He who had raced his men and beaten them up the hot hill
+to the trenches of San Juan. But now he was a baby in the hands of a
+giant, who caught him by the wrist and with an iron arm clasped him
+around his waist and pulled him down, and shouted, brutally, "Help,
+some of youse, quick! he's at it again. I can't hold him."
+
+More giants grasped him by the arms and by the legs. One of them took
+the hand that clung to the stanchion in both of his, and pulled back
+the fingers one by one, saying, "Easy now, Lieutenant--easy."
+
+The ragged palms and the sea and blockhouse were swallowed up in a
+black fog, and his body touched the canvas cot again with a sense of
+home-coming and relief and rest. He wondered how he could have cared
+to escape from it. He found it so good to be back again that for a
+long time he wept quite happily, until the fiery pillow was moist and
+cool.
+
+The world outside of the iron bars was like a scene in a theatre set
+for some great event, but the actors were never ready. He remembered
+confusedly a play he had once witnessed before that same scene.
+Indeed, he believed he had played some small part in it; but he
+remembered it dimly, and all trace of the men who had appeared with
+him in it was gone. He had reasoned it out that they were up there
+behind the range of mountains, because great heavy wagons and
+ambulances and cannon were emptied from the ships at the wharf above
+and were drawn away in long lines behind the ragged palms, moving
+always toward the passes between the peaks. At times he was disturbed
+by the thought that he should be up and after them, that some
+tradition of duty made his presence with them imperative. There was
+much to be done back of the mountains. Some event of momentous import
+was being carried forward there, in which he held a part; but the
+doubt soon passed from him, and he was content to lie and watch the
+iron bars rising and falling between the block-house and the white
+surf.
+
+If they had been only humanely kind, his lot would have been bearable,
+but they starved him and held him down when he wished to rise; and
+they would not put out the fire in the pillow, which they might easily
+have done by the simple expedient of throwing it over the ship's side
+into the sea. He himself had done this twice, but the keeper had
+immediately brought a fresh pillow already heated for the torture and
+forced it under his head.
+
+His pleasures were very simple, and so few that he could not
+understand why they robbed him of them so jealously. One was to watch
+a green cluster of bananas that hung above him from the awning,
+twirling on a string. He could count as many of them as five before
+the bunch turned and swung lazily back again, when he could count as
+high as twelve; sometimes when the ship rolled heavily he could count
+to twenty. It was a most fascinating game, and contented him for many
+hours. But when they found this out they sent for the cook to come and
+cut them down, and the cook carried them away to his galley.
+
+Then, one day, a man came out from the shore, swimming through the
+blue water with great splashes. He was a most charming man, who
+spluttered and dove and twisted and lay on his back and kicked his
+legs in an excess of content and delight. It was a real pleasure to
+watch him; not for days had anything so amusing appeared on the other
+side of the prison-bars. But as soon as the keeper saw that the man in
+the water was amusing his prisoner, he leaned over the ship's side and
+shouted, "Sa-ay, you, don't you know there's skarks in there?"
+
+And the swimming man said, "The h-ll there is!" and raced back to the
+shore like a porpoise with great lashing of the water, and ran up the
+beach half-way to the palms before he was satisfied to stop. Then the
+prisoner wept again. It was so disappointing. Life was robbed of
+everything now. He remembered that in a previous existence soldiers
+who cried were laughed at and mocked. But that was so far away and it
+was such an absurd superstition that he had no patience with it. For
+what could be more comforting to a man when he is treated cruelly than
+to cry. It was so obvious an exercise, and when one is so feeble that
+one cannot vault a four-railed barrier it is something to feel that at
+least one is strong enough to cry.
+
+He escaped occasionally, traversing space with marvellous rapidity and
+to great distances, but never to any successful purpose; and his
+flight inevitably ended in ignominious recapture and a sudden
+awakening in bed. At these moments the familiar and hated palms, the
+peaks, and the block-house were more hideous in their reality than the
+most terrifying of his nightmares.
+
+These excursions afield were always predatory; he went forth always to
+seek food. With all the beautiful world from which to elect and
+choose, he sought out only those places where eating was studied and
+elevated to an art. These visits were much more vivid in their detail
+than any he had ever before made to these same resorts. They
+invariably began in a carriage, which carried him swiftly over smooth
+asphalt. One route brought him across a great and beautiful square,
+radiating with rows and rows of flickering lights; two fountains
+splashed in the centre of the square, and six women of stone guarded
+its approaches. One of the women was hung with wreaths of mourning.
+Ahead of him the late twilight darkened behind a great arch, which
+seemed to rise on the horizon of the world, a great window into the
+heavens beyond. At either side strings of white and colored globes
+hung among the trees, and the sound of music came joyfully from
+theatres in the open air. He knew the restaurant under the trees to
+which he was now hastening, and the fountain beside it, and the very
+sparrows balancing on the fountain's edge; he knew every waiter at
+each of the tables, he felt again the gravel crunching under his feet,
+he saw the _maitre d'hotel_ coming forward smiling to receive his
+command, and the waiter in the green apron bowing at his elbow,
+deferential and important, presenting the list of wines. But his
+adventure never passed that point, for he was captured again and once
+more bound to his cot with a close burning sheet.
+
+Or else, he drove more sedately through the London streets in the late
+evening twilight, leaning expectantly across the doors of the hansom
+and pulling carefully at his white gloves. Other hansoms flashed past
+him, the occupant of each with his mind fixed on one idea--dinner. He
+was one of a million of people who were about to dine, or who had
+dined, or who were deep in dining. He was so famished, so weak for
+food of any quality, that the galloping horse in the hansom seemed to
+crawl. The lights of the Embankment passed like the lamps of a
+railroad station as seen from the window of an express; and while his
+mind was still torn between the choice of a thin or thick soup or an
+immediate attack upon cold beef, he was at the door, and the
+_chasseur_ touched his cap, and the little _chasseur_ put
+the wicker guard over the hansom's wheel. As he jumped out he said,
+"Give him half-a-crown," and the driver called after him, "Thank you,
+sir."
+
+It was a beautiful world, this world outside of the iron bars. Every
+one in it contributed to his pleasure and to his comfort. In this
+world he was not starved nor man-handled. He thought of this joyfully
+as he leaped up the stairs, where young men with grave faces and with
+their hands held negligently behind their backs bowed to him in polite
+surprise at his speed. But they had not been starved on condensed
+milk. He threw his coat and hat at one of them, and came down the hall
+fearfully and quite weak with dread lest it should not be real. His
+voice was shaking when he asked Ellis if he had reserved a table. The
+place was all so real, it must be true this time. The way Ellis turned
+and ran his finger down the list showed it was real, because Ellis
+always did that, even when he knew there would not be an empty table
+for an hour. The room was crowded with beautiful women; under the
+light of the red shades they looked kind and approachable, and there
+was food on every table, and iced drinks in silver buckets. It was
+with the joy of great relief that he heard Ellis say to his underling,
+"Numero cinq, sur la terrace, un couvert." It was real at last.
+Outside, the Thames lay a great gray shadow. The lights of the
+Embankment flashed and twinkled across it, the tower of the House of
+Commons rose against the sky, and here, inside, the waiter was
+hurrying toward him carrying a smoking plate of rich soup with a
+pungent, intoxicating odor.
+
+And then the ragged palms, the glaring sun, the immovable peaks, and
+the white surf stood again before him. The iron rails swept up and
+sank again, the fever sucked at his bones, and the pillow scorched his
+cheek.
+
+One morning for a brief moment he came back to real life again and lay
+quite still, seeing everything about him with clear eyes and for the
+first time, as though he had but just that instant been lifted over
+the ship's side. His keeper, glancing up, found the prisoner's eyes
+considering him curiously, and recognized the change. The instinct of
+discipline brought him to his feet with his fingers at his sides.
+
+"Is the Lieutenant feeling better?"
+
+The Lieutenant surveyed him gravely.
+
+"You are one of our hospital stewards."
+
+"Yes, Lieutenant."
+
+"Why ar'n't you with the regiment?"
+
+"I was wounded, too, sir. I got it same time you did, Lieutenant."
+
+"Am I wounded? Of course, I remember. Is this a hospital ship?"
+
+The steward shrugged his shoulders. "She's one of the transports. They
+have turned her over to the fever cases."
+
+The Lieutenant opened his lips to ask another question; but his own
+body answered that one, and for a moment he lay silent.
+
+"Do they know up North that I--that I'm all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, the papers had it in--there was pictures of the Lieutenant
+in some of them."
+
+"Then I've been ill some time?"
+
+"Oh, about eight days."
+
+The soldier moved uneasily, and the nurse in him became uppermost.
+
+"I guess the Lieutenant hadn't better talk any more," he said. It was
+his voice now which held authority.
+
+The Lieutenant looked out at the palms and the silent gloomy mountains
+and the empty coast-line, where the same wave was rising and falling
+with weary persistence.
+
+"Eight days," he said. His eyes shut quickly, as though with a sudden
+touch of pain. He turned his head and sought for the figure at the
+foot of the cot. Already the figure had grown faint and was receding
+and swaying.
+
+"Has any one written or cabled?" the Lieutenant spoke, hurriedly. He
+was fearful lest the figure should disappear altogether before he
+could obtain his answer. "Has any one come?"
+
+"Why, they couldn't get here, Lieutenant, not yet."
+
+The voice came very faintly. "You go to sleep now, and I'll run and
+fetch some letters and telegrams. When you wake up, maybe I'll have a
+lot for you."
+
+But the Lieutenant caught the nurse by the wrist, and crushed his hand
+in his own thin fingers. They were hot, and left the steward's skin
+wet with perspiration. The Lieutenant laughed gayly.
+
+"You see, Doctor," he said, briskly, "that you can't kill me. I can't
+die. I've got to live, you understand. Because, sir, she said she
+would come. She said if I was wounded, or if I was ill, she would come
+to me. She didn't care what people thought. She would come anyway and
+nurse me--well, she will come.
+
+"So, Doctor--old man--" He plucked at the steward's sleeve, and
+stroked his hand eagerly, "old man--" he began again, beseechingly,
+"you'll not let me die until she comes, will you? What? No, I know I
+won't die. Nothing made by man can kill me. No, not until she comes.
+Then, after that--eight days, she'll be here soon, any moment? What?
+You think so, too? Don't you? Surely, yes, any moment. Yes, I'll go to
+sleep now, and when you see her rowing out from shore you wake me.
+You'll know her; you can't make a mistake. She is like--no, there is
+no one like her--but you can't make a mistake."
+
+That day strange figures began to mount the sides of the ship, and to
+occupy its every turn and angle of space. Some of them fell on their
+knees and slapped the bare decks with their hands, and laughed and
+cried out, "Thank God, I'll see God's country again!" Some of them
+were regulars, bound in bandages; some were volunteers, dirty and
+hollow-eyed, with long beards on boy's faces. Some came on crutches;
+others with their arms around the shoulders of their comrades, staring
+ahead of them with a fixed smile, their lips drawn back and their
+teeth protruding. At every second step they stumbled, and the face of
+each was swept by swift ripples of pain.
+
+They lay on cots so close together that the nurses could not walk
+between them. They lay on the wet decks, in the scuppers, and along
+the transoms and hatches. They were like shipwrecked mariners clinging
+to a raft, and they asked nothing more than that the ship's bow be
+turned toward home. Once satisfied as to that, they relaxed into a
+state of self-pity and miserable oblivion to their environment, from
+which hunger nor nausea nor aching bones could shake them.
+
+The hospital steward touched the Lieutenant lightly on the shoulder.
+
+"We are going North, sir," he said. "The transport's ordered North to
+New York, with these volunteers and the sick and wounded. Do you hear
+me, sir?"
+
+The Lieutenant opened his eyes. "Has she come?" he asked.
+
+"Gee!" exclaimed the hospital steward. He glanced impatiently at the
+blue mountains and the yellow coast, from which the transport was
+drawing rapidly away.
+
+"Well, I can't see her coming just now," he said. "But she will," he
+added.
+
+"You let me know at once when she comes."
+
+"Why, cert'nly, of course," said the steward.
+
+Three trained nurses came over the side just before the transport
+started North. One was a large, motherly looking woman, with a German
+accent. She had been a trained nurse, first in Berlin, and later in
+the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and at Bellevue. The nurse was
+dressed in white, and wore a little silver medal at her throat; and
+she was strong enough to lift a volunteer out of his cot and hold him
+easily in her arms, while one of the convalescents pulled his cot out
+of the rain. Some of the men called her "nurse"; others, who wore
+scapulars around their necks, called her "Sister"; and the officers of
+the medical staff addressed her as Miss Bergen.
+
+Miss Bergen halted beside the cot of the Lieutenant and asked, "Is
+this the fever case you spoke about, Doctor--the one you want moved to
+the officers' ward?" She slipped her hand up under his sleeve and felt
+his wrist.
+
+"His pulse is very high," she said to the steward. "When did you take
+his temperature?" She drew a little morocco case from her pocket and
+from that took a clinical thermometer, which she shook up and down,
+eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal scrutiny. The
+Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the white figure beside
+his cot. His eyes opened and then shut quickly, with a startled look,
+in which doubt struggled with wonderful happiness. His hand stole out
+fearfully and warily until it touched her apron, and then, finding it
+was real, he clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body
+toward her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and
+pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips. He put them from
+him for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.
+
+"Sweetheart," he whispered, "sweetheart, I knew you'd come."
+
+As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer slipped
+from her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation of annoyance.
+The young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed them overboard.
+Neither of them spoke, but they smiled appreciatively. The Lieutenant
+was looking at the nurse with the wonder and hope and hunger of soul
+in his eyes with which a dying man looks at the cross the priest holds
+up before him. What he saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a
+tall, fair girl with great bands and masses of hair, with a head
+rising like a lily from a firm, white throat, set on broad shoulders
+above a straight back and sloping breast--a tall, beautiful creature,
+half-girl, half-woman, who looked back at him shyly, but steadily.
+
+"Listen," he said.
+
+The voice of the sick man was so sure and so sane that the young
+Doctor started, and moved nearer to the head of the cot. "Listen,
+dearest," the Lieutenant whispered. "I wanted to tell you before I
+came South. But I did not dare; and then I was afraid something might
+happen to me, and I could never tell you, and you would never know. So
+I wrote it to you in the will I made at Baiquiri, the night before the
+landing. If you hadn't come now, you would have learned it in that
+way. You would have read there that there never was any one but you;
+the rest were all dream people, foolish, silly--mad. There is no one
+else in the world but you; you have been the only thing in life that
+has counted. I thought I might do something down here that would make
+you care. But I got shot going up a hill, and after that I wasn't able
+to do anything. It was very hot, and the hills were on fire; and they
+took me prisoner, and kept me tied down here, burning on these coals.
+I can't live much longer, but now that I have told you I can have
+peace. They tried to kill me before you came; but they didn't know I
+loved you, they didn't know that men who love you can't die. They
+tried to starve my love for you, to burn it out of me; they tried to
+reach it with their knives. But my love for you is my soul, and they
+can't kill a man's soul. Dear heart, I have lived because you lived.
+Now that you know--now that you understand--what does it matter?"
+
+Miss Bergen shook her head with great vigor. "Nonsense," she said,
+cheerfully. "You are not going to die. As soon as we move you out of
+this rain, and some food cook--"
+
+"Good God!" cried the young Doctor, savagely. "Do you want to kill
+him?"
+
+When she spoke, the patient had thrown his arms heavily across his
+face, and had fallen back, lying rigid on the pillow.
+
+The Doctor led the way across the prostrate bodies, apologizing as he
+went. "I am sorry I spoke so quickly," he said, "but he thought you
+were real. I mean he thought you were some one he really knew--"
+
+"He was just delirious," said the German nurse, calmly.
+
+The Doctor mixed himself a Scotch and soda and drank it with a single
+gesture.
+
+"Ugh!" he said to the ward-room. "I feel as though I'd been opening
+another man's letters."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The transport drove through the empty seas with heavy, clumsy
+upheavals, rolling like a buoy. Having been originally intended for
+the freight-carrying trade, she had no sympathy with hearts that beat
+for a sight of their native land, or for lives that counted their
+remaining minutes by the throbbing of her engines. Occasionally,
+without apparent reason, she was thrown violently from her course; but
+it was invariably the case that when her stern went to starboard,
+something splashed in the water on her port side and drifted past her,
+until, when it had cleared the blades of her propeller, a voice cried
+out, and she was swung back on her home-bound track again.
+
+The Lieutenant missed the familiar palms and the tiny block-house; and
+seeing nothing beyond the iron rails but great wastes of gray water,
+he decided he was on board a prison-ship, or that he had been strapped
+to a raft and cast adrift. People came for hours at a time and stood
+at the foot of his cot, and talked with him and he to them--people he
+had loved and people he had long forgotten, some of whom he had
+thought were dead. One of them he could have sworn he had seen buried
+in a deep trench, and covered with branches of palmetto. He had heard
+the bugler, with tears choking him, sound "taps"; and with his own
+hand he had placed the dead man's campaign hat on the mound of fresh
+earth above the grave. Yet here he was still alive, and he came with
+other men of his troop to speak to him; but when he reached out to
+them they were gone--the real and the unreal, the dead and the
+living--and even She disappeared whenever he tried to take her hand,
+and sometimes the hospital steward drove her away.
+
+"Did that young lady say when she was coming back again?" he asked the
+steward.
+
+"The young lady! What young lady?" asked the steward, wearily.
+
+"The one who has been sitting there," he answered. He pointed with his
+gaunt hand at the man in the next cot.
+
+"Oh, that young lady. Yes, she's coming back. She's just gone below to
+fetch you some hardtack."
+
+The young volunteer in the next cot whined grievously.
+
+"That crazy man gives me the creeps," he groaned. "He's always waking
+me up, and looking at me as though he was going to eat me."
+
+"Shut your head," said the steward. "He's a better crazy man than
+you'll ever be with the little sense you've got. And he has two Mauser
+holes in him. Crazy, eh? It's a damned good thing for you that there
+was about four thousand of us regulars just as crazy as him, or you'd
+never seen the top of the hill."
+
+One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the
+convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their
+pajamas, and pointed one way. The transport was moving swiftly and
+smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise
+with her steam-whistle. The noise was echoed by many more
+steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and
+excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared,
+saluting joyously. All of the excursion steamers had a heavy list to
+the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them crowded to that
+rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered. The fog lifted suddenly, and
+between the iron rails the Lieutenant saw high green hills on either
+side of a great harbor. Houses and trees and thousands of masts swept
+past like a panorama; and beyond was a mirage of three cities, with
+curling smoke-wreaths and sky-reaching buildings, and a great swinging
+bridge, and a giant statue of a woman waving a welcome home.
+
+The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief. He was
+far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it. In his heart
+he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and shouted, and
+climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines. He had been deceived too
+often not to know that it was not real. He knew from cruel experience
+that in a few moments the tall buildings would crumble away, the
+thousands of columns of white smoke that flashed like snow in the sun,
+the busy, shrieking tug-boats, and the great statue would vanish into
+the sea, leaving it gray and bare. He closed his eyes and shut the
+vision out. It was so beautiful that it tempted him; but he would not
+be mocked, and he buried his face in his hands. They were carrying the
+farce too far, he thought. It was really too absurd; for now they were
+at a wharf which was so real that, had he not known by previous
+suffering, he would have been utterly deceived by it. And there were
+great crowds of smiling, cheering people, and a waiting guard of honor
+in fresh uniforms, and rows of police pushing the people this way and
+that; and these men about him were taking it all quite seriously, and
+making ready to disembark, carrying their blanket-rolls and rifles
+with them.
+
+A band was playing joyously, and the man in the next cot, who was
+being lifted to a stretcher, said, "There's the Governor and his
+staff; that's him in the high hat." It was really very well done. The
+Custom-House and the Elevated Railroad and Castle Garden were as like
+to life as a photograph, and the crowd was as well handled as a mob in
+a play. His heart ached for it so that he could not bear the pain, and
+he turned his back on it. It was cruel to keep it up so long. His
+keeper lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty uniform
+which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man--a man who had
+been killed probably, for there were dark brown marks of blood on the
+tunic and breeches. When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle Garden
+and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night, just as he knew
+they would; but when he opened his eyes from the stretcher, they had
+returned again. It was a most remarkably vivid vision. They kept it up
+so well. Now the young Doctor and the hospital steward were pretending
+to carry him down a gangplank and into an open space; and he saw quite
+close to him a long line policemen, and behind them thousands of
+faces, some of them women's faces--women who pointed at him and then
+shook their heads and cried, and pressed their hands to their cheeks,
+still looking at him. He wondered why they cried. He did not know
+them, nor did they know him. No one knew him; these people were only
+ghosts.
+
+There was a quick parting in the crowd. A man he had once known shoved
+two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl's voice speaking
+his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the open space
+and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down over him,
+and he was clasped in two young, firm arms.
+
+"Of course it is not real, of course it is not She," he assured
+himself. "Because She would not do such a thing. Before all these
+people She would not do it."
+
+But he trembled and his heart throbbed so cruelly that he could not
+bear the pain.
+
+She was pretending to cry.
+
+"They wired us you had started for Tampa on the hospital ship," She
+was saying, "and Aunt and I went all the way there before we heard you
+had been sent North. We have been on the cars a week. That is why I
+missed you. Do you understand? It was not my fault. I tried to come.
+Indeed, I tried to come."
+
+She turned her head and looked up fearfully at the young Doctor.
+
+"Tell me, why does he look at me like that?" she asked. "He doesn't
+know me. Is he very ill? Tell me the truth." She drew in her breath
+quickly. "Of course you will tell me the truth."
+
+When she asked the question he felt her arms draw tight about his
+shoulders. It was as though she was holding him to herself, and from
+some one who had reached out for him. In his trouble he turned to his
+old friend and keeper. His voice was hoarse and very low.
+
+"Is this the same young lady who was on the transport--the one you
+used to drive away?"
+
+In his embarrassment, the hospital steward blushed under his tan, and
+stammered.
+
+"Of course it's the same young lady," the Doctor answered, briskly.
+"And I won't let them drive her away." He turned to her, smiling
+gravely. "I think his condition has ceased to be dangerous, madam," he
+said.
+
+People who in a former existence had been his friends, and Her
+brother, gathered about his stretcher and bore him through the crowd
+and lifted him into a carriage filled with cushions, among which he
+sank lower and lower. Then She sat beside him, and he heard Her
+brother say to the coachman, "Home, and drive slowly and keep on the
+asphalt."
+
+The carriage moved forward, and She put her arm about him, and his
+head fell on her shoulder, and neither of them spoke. The vision had
+lasted so long now that he was torn with the joy that after all it
+might be real. But he could not bear the awakening if it were not, so
+he raised his head fearfully and looked up into the beautiful eyes
+above him. His brows were knit, and he struggled with a great doubt
+and an awful joy.
+
+"Dearest," he said, "is it real?"
+
+"Is it real?" she repeated.
+
+Even as a dream, it was so wonderfully beautiful that he was satisfied
+if it could only continue so, if but for a little while.
+
+"Do you think," he begged again, trembling, "that it is going to last
+much longer?"
+
+She smiled, and, bending her head slowly, kissed him.
+
+"It is going to last--always," she said.
+
+
+
+
+THE LION AND THE UNICORN
+
+
+Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in Jermyn
+Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course, turned into
+lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss was a Florist to
+the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his flower-shop, just in
+front of the middle window on the first floor. By stretching a little,
+each of them could see into the window just beyond him, and could hear
+all that was said inside; and such things as they saw and heard during
+the reign of Captain Carrington, who moved in at the same time they
+did! By day the table in the centre of the room was covered with maps,
+and the Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags
+wrapped around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the maps
+and measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to himself. It
+was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the Captain's only
+intellectual pursuit, for at night the maps were rolled up, and a
+green cloth was spread across the table, and there was much company
+and popping of soda-bottles, and little heaps of gold and silver were
+moved this way and that across the cloth. The smoke drifted out of the
+open windows, and the laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly
+in the empty street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
+reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath them
+and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the Captain's guests
+to depart. The Lion and the Unicorn were rather ashamed of the scandal
+of it, and they were glad when, one day, the Captain went away with
+his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high on a four-wheeler.
+
+Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said, "I wish you good luck, sir."
+And the Captain said, "I'm coming back a Major, Prentiss." But he
+never came back. And one day--the Lion remembered the day very well,
+for on that same day the newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street
+shouting out the news of "a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms. It
+was then that a young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss
+went out to meet her and led her up-stairs. They heard him unlock the
+Captain's door and say, "This is his room, miss," and after he had
+gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre-table. She
+stood there a very long time looking slowly about her, and then she
+took a photograph of the Captain from the frame on the mantel and
+slipped it into her pocket, and when she went out again her veil was
+down, and she was crying. She must have given Prentiss as much as a
+sovereign, for he called her "Your ladyship," which he never did under
+a sovereign.
+
+And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could they
+hear the address she gave the cabman. But it was somewhere up St.
+John's Wood way.
+
+After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and the
+Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful ladies and
+smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy flowers-and
+"buttonholes," and the little round baskets of strawberries, and even
+the peaches at three shillings each, which looked so tempting as they
+lay in the window, wrapped up in cotton-wool, like jewels of great
+price.
+
+Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
+Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five guineas
+a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew that in the
+economy of nations there must always be a higher price for the rich
+American, or else why was he given that strange accent, except to
+betray him into the hands of the London shopkeeper, and the London
+cabby?
+
+The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the
+window nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St.
+James's Church, that stretched between their street and Piccadilly.
+
+"You're lucky in having a bit of green to look out on," he said to
+Prentiss. "I'll take these rooms--at five guineas. That's more than
+they're worth, you know, but as I know it, too, your conscience
+needn't trouble you."
+
+Then his eyes fell on the Lion, and he nodded to him gravely. "How do
+you do?" he said. "I'm coming to live with you for a little time. I
+have read about you and your friends over there. It is a hazard of new
+fortunes with me, your Majesty, so be kind to me, and if I win, I will
+put a new coat of paint on your shield and gild you all over again."
+
+Prentiss smiled obsequiously at the American's pleasantry, but the new
+lodger only stared at him.
+
+"He seemed a social gentleman," said the Unicorn, that night, when the
+Lion and he were talking it over. "Now the Captain, the whole time he
+was here, never gave us so much as a look. This one says he has read
+of us."
+
+"And why not?" growled the Lion. "I hope Prentiss heard what he said
+of our needing a new layer of gilt. It's disgraceful. You can see that
+Lion over Scarlett's, the butcher, as far as Regent Street, and
+Scarlett is only one of Salisbury's creations. He received his
+Letters-Patent only two years back. We date from Palmerston."
+
+The lodger came up the street just at that moment, and stopped and
+looked up at the Lion and the Unicorn from the sidewalk, before he
+opened the door with his night-key. They heard him enter the room and
+feel on the mantel for his pipe, and a moment later he appeared at the
+Lion's window and leaned on the sill, looking down into the street
+below and blowing whiffs of smoke up into the warm night-air.
+
+It was a night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and the
+streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from the
+play, and with groups of men in black and white, making their way to
+supper at the clubs. Hansoms of inky-black, with shining lamps inside
+and out, dashed noiselessly past on mysterious errands, chasing close
+on each other's heels on a mad race, each to its separate goal. From
+the cross streets rose the noises of early night, the rumble of the
+'buses, the creaking of their brakes as they unlocked, the cries of
+the "extras," and the merging of thousands of human voices in a dull
+murmur. The great world of London was closing its shutters for the
+night and putting out the lights; and the new lodger from across the
+sea listened to it with his heart beating quickly, and laughed to
+stifle the touch of fear and homesickness that rose in him.
+
+"I have seen a great play to-night," he said to the Lion, "nobly
+played by great players. What will they care for my poor wares? I see
+that I have been over-bold. But we cannot go back now--not yet."
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded "good-night" to the
+great world beyond his window. "What fortunes lie with ye, ye lights
+of London town?" he quoted, smiling. And they heard him close the door
+of his bedroom, and lock it for the night.
+
+The next morning he bought many geraniums from Prentiss and placed
+them along the broad cornice that stretched across the front of the
+house over the shop-window. The flowers made a band of scarlet on
+either side of the Lion as brilliant as a Tommy's jacket.
+
+"I am trying to propitiate the British Lion by placing flowers before
+his altar," the American said that morning to a visitor.
+
+"The British public, you mean," said the visitor; "they are each
+likely to tear you to pieces."
+
+"Yes, I have heard that the pit on the first night of a bad play is
+something awful," hazarded the American.
+
+"Wait and see," said the visitor.
+
+"Thank you," said the American, meekly.
+
+Every one who came to the first floor front talked about a play. It
+seemed to be something of great moment to the American. It was only a
+bundle of leaves printed in red and black inks and bound in brown
+paper covers. There were two of them, and the American called them by
+different names: one was his comedy and one was his tragedy.
+
+"They are both likely to be tragedies," the Lion heard one of the
+visitors say to another, as they drove away together. "Our young
+friend takes it too seriously."
+
+The American spent most of his time by his desk at the window writing
+on little blue pads and tearing up what he wrote, or in reading over
+one of the plays to himself in a loud voice. In time the number of his
+visitors increased, and to some of these he would read his play; and
+after they had left him he was either depressed and silent or excited
+and jubilant. The Lion could always tell when he was happy because
+then he would go to the side table and pour himself out a drink and
+say, "Here's to me," but when he was depressed he would stand holding
+the glass in his hand, and finally pour the liquor back into the
+bottle again and say, "What's the use of that?"
+
+After he had been in London a month he wrote less and was more
+frequently abroad, sallying forth in beautiful raiment, and coming
+home by daylight.
+
+And he gave suppers, too, but they were less noisy than the Captain's
+had been, and the women who came to them were much more beautiful, and
+their voices when they spoke were sweet and low. Sometimes one of the
+women sang, and the men sat in silence while the people in the street
+below stopped to listen, and would say, "Why, that is So-and-So
+singing," and the Lion and the Unicorn wondered how they could know
+who it was when they could not see her.
+
+The lodger's visitors came to see him at all hours. They seemed to
+regard his rooms as a club, where they could always come for a bite to
+eat or to write notes; and others treated it like a lawyer's office
+and asked advice on all manner of strange subjects. Sometimes the
+visitor wanted to know whether the American thought she ought to take
+L10 a week and go on tour, or stay in town and try to live on L8; or
+whether she should paint landscapes that would not sell, or
+race-horses that would; or whether Reggie really loved her and whether
+she really loved Reggie; or whether the new part in the piece at the
+Court was better than the old part at Terry's, and wasn't she getting
+too old to play "ingenues" anyway.
+
+The lodger seemed to be a general adviser, and smoked and listened
+with grave consideration, and the Unicorn thought his judgment was
+most sympathetic and sensible.
+
+Of all the beautiful ladies who came to call on the lodger the one the
+Unicorn liked the best was the one who wanted to know whether she
+loved Reggie and whether Reggie loved her. She discussed this so
+interestingly while she consumed tea and thin slices of bread that the
+Unicorn almost lost his balance in leaning forward to listen. Her name
+was Marion Cavendish, and it was written over many photographs which
+stood in silver frames in the lodger's rooms. She used to make the tea
+herself, while the lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating
+way of doubling the thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling
+at them like a mouse at a piece of cheese. She had wonderful little
+teeth and Cupid's-bow lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her veil
+only high enough for one to see the two Cupid's-bow lips. When she did
+that the American used to laugh, at nothing apparently, and say, "Oh,
+I guess Reggie loves you well enough."
+
+"But do I love Reggie?" she would ask, sadly, with her teacup held
+poised in air.
+
+[Illustration: Consumed tea and thin slices of bread.]
+
+"I am sure I hope not," the lodger would reply, and she would put down
+the veil quickly, as one would drop a curtain over a beautiful
+picture, and rise with great dignity and say, "If you talk like that I
+shall not come again."
+
+She was sure that if she could only get some work to do her head would
+be filled with more important matters than whether Reggie loved her or
+not.
+
+"But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine just
+at present," she said. "If I don't get a part soon," she announced, "I
+shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for recitations at
+evening parties."
+
+"That seems a desperate revenge," said the American; "and besides, I
+don't want you to get a part, because some one might be idiotic enough
+to take my comedy, and if he should, you must play _Nancy_."
+
+"I would not ask for any salary if I could play _Nancy_," Miss
+Cavendish answered.
+
+They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by her
+saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to see that
+his play was a great play, and by his saying that none but she must
+play _Nancy_.
+
+The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown hair,
+who came from America to paint miniatures of the British aristocracy.
+Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave
+and fearless, and so determined to be independent of every one, even
+of the lodger--especially of the lodger, who, it appeared, had known
+her very well at home. The lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to
+be independent of him, and the two Americans had many arguments and
+disputes about it, but she always said, "It does no good, Philip; it
+only hurts us both when you talk so. I care for nothing, and for no
+one but my art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you
+do not, and, of course, the man I am to marry must." Then Carroll
+would talk, walking up and down, and looking very fierce and
+determined, and telling her how he loved her in such a way that it
+made her look even more proud and beautiful. And she would say more
+gently, "It is very fine to think that any one can care for me like
+that, and very helpful. But unless I cared in the same way it would be
+wicked of me to marry you, and besides--" She would add very quickly
+to prevent his speaking again--"I don't want to marry you or anybody,
+and I never shall. I want to be free and to succeed in my work, just
+as you want to succeed in your work. So please never speak of this
+again." When she went away the lodger used to sit smoking in the big
+arm-chair and beat the arms with his hands, and he would pace up and
+down the room, while his work would lie untouched and his engagements
+pass forgotten.
+
+Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the lodger
+stayed on in Jermyn Street. Helen Cabot had departed on a round of
+visits to country-houses in Scotland, where, as she wrote him, she was
+painting miniatures of her hosts and studying the game of golf. Miss
+Cavendish divided her days between the river and one of the West End
+theatres. She was playing a small part in a farce-comedy.
+
+One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very
+beautiful in a white boating-frock and a straw hat with a Leander
+ribbon. Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting-hole, and
+she was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
+
+"Why don't you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?" Miss
+Cavendish asked. "You need it; you look ill."
+
+"I'd like to, but I can't," said Carroll. "The fact is, I paid in
+advance for these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I'd be losing
+five guineas a week on them."
+
+Miss Cavendish regarded him severely. She had never quite mastered his
+American humor.
+
+"But--five guineas--why, that's nothing to you," she said. Something
+in the lodger's face made her pause. "You don't mean--"
+
+"Yes, I do," said the lodger, smiling. "You see, I started in to lay
+siege to London without sufficient ammunition. London is a large town,
+and it didn't fall as quickly as I thought it would. So I am
+economizing. Mr. Lockhart's Coffee Rooms and I are no longer
+strangers."
+
+Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward him.
+
+"Are you in earnest?" she asked. "For how long?"
+
+"Oh, for the last month," replied the lodger; "they are not at all
+bad--clean and wholesome and all that."
+
+"But the suppers you gave us, and this," she cried, suddenly, waving
+her hands over the pretty tea-things, "and the cake and muffins?"
+
+"My friends, at least," said Carroll, "need not go to Lockhart's."
+
+"And the Savoy?" asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her head. "A
+dream of the past," said Carroll, waving his pipe through the smoke.
+"Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity the
+Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old
+England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence--a pot of bitter
+twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's most amusing on
+the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about
+myself. They are both most interesting subjects."
+
+"Well, I don't like it," Miss Cavendish declared, helplessly. "When I
+think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel--I feel like a robber."
+
+"Don't," begged Carroll. "I am really the most happy of men--that is,
+as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so damned
+miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets--I have L80 to
+last me through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next
+to yourself, the most wonderful woman God ever made. That's enough."
+
+"But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?" asked Miss
+Cavendish.
+
+"I do--that is, I could," answered Carroll, "if I wrote the things
+that sell; but I keep on writing plays that won't."
+
+"And such plays!" exclaimed Marion, warmly; "and to think that they
+are going begging!" She continued, indignantly, "I can't imagine what
+the managers do want."
+
+"I know what they don't want," said the American. Miss Cavendish
+drummed impatiently on the tea-tray.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't be so abject about it," she said. "If I were a
+man I'd make them take those plays."
+
+"How?" asked the American; "with a gun?"
+
+"Well, I'd keep at it until they read them," declared Marion. "I'd sit
+on their front steps all night and I'd follow them in cabs, and I'd
+lie in wait for them at the stage-door. I'd just make them take them."
+
+Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling. "I guess I'll give up and go
+home," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, do, run away before you are beaten," said Miss Cavendish,
+scornfully. "Why, you can't go now. Everybody will be back in town
+soon, and there are a lot of new plays coming on, and some of them are
+sure to be failures, and that's our chance. You rush in with your
+piece, and somebody may take it sooner than close the theatre."
+
+"I'm thinking of closing the theatre myself," said Carroll. "What's
+the use of my hanging on here?" he exclaimed. "It distresses Helen to
+know I am in London, feeling about her as I do--and the Lord only
+knows how it distresses me. And, maybe, if I went away," he said,
+consciously, "she might miss me. She might see the difference."
+
+Miss Cavendish held herself erect and pressed her lips together with a
+severe smile. "If Helen Cabot doesn't see the difference between you
+and the other men she knows now," she said, "I doubt if she ever will.
+Besides--" she continued, and then hesitated.
+
+"Well, go on," urged Carroll.
+
+"Well, I was only going to say," she explained, "that leaving the girl
+alone never did the man any good unless he left her alone willingly.
+If she's sure he still cares, it's just the same to her where he is.
+He might as well stay on in London as go to South Africa. It won't
+help him any. The difference comes when she finds he has stopped
+caring. Why, look at Reggie. He tried that. He went away for ever so
+long, but he kept writing me from wherever he went, so that he was
+perfectly miserable--and I went on enjoying myself. Then when he came
+back, he tried going about with his old friends again. He used to come
+to the theatre with them--oh, with such nice girls!--but he always
+stood in the back of the box and yawned and scowled--so I knew. And,
+anyway, he'd always spoil it all by leaving them and waiting at the
+stage entrance for me. But one day he got tired of the way I treated
+him and went off on a bicycle-tour with Lady Hacksher's girls and some
+men from his regiment, and he was gone three weeks, and never sent me
+even a line; and I got so scared; I couldn't sleep, and I stood it for
+three days more, and then I wired him to come back or I'd jump off
+London Bridge; and he came back that very night from Edinburgh on the
+express, and I was so glad to see him that I got confused, and in the
+general excitement I promised to marry him, so that's how it was with
+us."
+
+"Yes," said the American, without enthusiasm; "but then I still care,
+and Helen knows I care."
+
+"Doesn't she ever fancy that you might care for some one else? You
+have a lot of friends, you know."
+
+"Yes, but she knows they are just that--friends," said the American.
+
+Miss Cavendish stood up to go, and arranged her veil before the mirror
+above the fireplace.
+
+"I come here very often to tea," she said.
+
+"It's very kind of you," said Carroll. He was at the open window,
+looking down into the street for a cab.
+
+"Well, no one knows I am engaged to Reggie," continued Miss Cavendish,
+"except you and Reggie, and he isn't so sure. _She_ doesn't know
+it."
+
+"Well?" said Carroll.
+
+Miss Cavendish smiled a mischievous, kindly smile at him from the
+mirror.
+
+"Well?" she repeated, mockingly. Carroll stared at her and laughed.
+After a pause he said: "It's like a plot in a comedy. But I'm afraid
+I'm too serious for play-acting."
+
+"Yes, it is serious," said Miss Cavendish. She seated herself again
+and regarded the American thoughtfully. "You are too good a man to be
+treated the way that girl is treating you, and no one knows it better
+than she does. She'll change in time, but just now she thinks she
+wants to be independent. She's in love with this picture-painting
+idea, and with the people she meets. It's all new to her--the fuss
+they make over her and the titles, and the way she is asked about. We
+know she can't paint. We know they only give her commissions because
+she's so young and pretty, and American. She amuses them, that's all.
+Well, that cannot last; she'll find it out. She's too clever a girl,
+and she is too fine a girl to be content with that long. Then--then
+she'll come back to you. She feels now that she has both you and the
+others, and she's making you wait; so wait and be cheerful. She's
+worth waiting for; she's young, that's all. She'll see the difference
+in time. But, in the meanwhile, it would hurry matters a bit if she
+thought she had to choose between the new friends and you."
+
+"She could still keep her friends and marry me," said Carroll; "I have
+told her that a hundred times. She could still paint miniatures and
+marry me. But she won't marry me."
+
+"She won't marry you because she knows she can whenever she wants to,"
+cried Marion. "Can't you see that? But if she thought you were going
+to marry some one else now?"
+
+"She would be the first to congratulate me," said Carroll. He rose and
+walked to the fireplace, where he leaned with his arm on the mantel.
+There was a photograph of Helen Cabot near his hand, and he turned
+this toward him and stood for some time staring at it. "My dear
+Marion," he said at last, "I've known Helen ever since she was as
+young as that. Every year I've loved her more, and found new things in
+her to care for; now I love her more than any other man ever loved any
+other woman."
+
+Miss Cavendish shook her head sympathetically.
+
+"Yes, I know," she said; "that's the way Reggie loves me, too."
+
+Carroll went on as though he had not heard her.
+
+"There's a bench in St. James's Park," he said, "where we used to sit
+when she first came here, when she didn't know so many people. We used
+to go there in the morning and throw penny buns to the ducks. That's
+been my amusement this summer since you've all been away--sitting on
+that bench, feeding penny buns to the silly ducks--especially the
+black one, the one she used to like best. And I make pilgrimages to
+all the other places we ever visited together, and try to pretend she
+is with me. And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage
+because she once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other
+absurd things that a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to
+what end? She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we can't go
+on being friends as we once were. What's the use of it all?"
+
+"She is young, I tell you," repeated Miss Cavendish, "and she's too
+sure of you. You've told her you care; now try making her think you
+don't care."
+
+Carroll shook his head impatiently.
+
+"I will not stoop to such tricks and pretense, Marion," he cried,
+impatiently. "All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat and to
+trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded."
+
+Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door. "Such
+amateurs!" she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.
+
+Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of Miss
+Cavendish. Helen and he had met her when they first arrived in London,
+and as she had acted for a season in the United States, she adopted
+the two Americans--and told Helen where to go for boots and hats, and
+advised Carroll about placing his plays. Helen soon made other
+friends, and deserted the artists with whom her work had first thrown
+her. She seemed to prefer the society of the people who bought her
+paintings, and who admired and made much of the painter. As she was
+very beautiful and at an age when she enjoyed everything in life
+keenly and eagerly, to give her pleasure was in itself a distinct
+pleasure; and the worldly tired people she met were considering their
+own entertainment quite as much as hers when they asked her to their
+dinners and dances, or to spend a week with them in the country. In
+her way, she was as independent as was Carroll in his, and as she was
+not in love, as he was, her life was not narrowed down to but one
+ideal. But she was not so young as to consider herself infallible, and
+she had one excellent friend on whom she was dependent for advice and
+to whose directions she submitted implicitly. This was Lady Gower, the
+only person to whom Helen had spoken of Carroll and of his great
+feeling for her. Lady Gower, immediately after her marriage, had been
+a conspicuous and brilliant figure in that set in London which works
+eighteen hours a day to keep itself amused, but after the death of her
+husband she had disappeared into the country as completely as though
+she had entered a convent, and after several years had then re-entered
+the world as a professional philanthropist. Her name was now
+associated entirely with Women's Leagues, with committees that
+presented petitions to Parliament, and with public meetings, at which
+she spoke with marvellous ease and effect. Her old friends said she
+had taken up this new pose as an outlet for her nervous energies, and
+as an effort to forget the man who alone had made life serious to her.
+Others knew her as an earnest woman, acting honestly for what she
+thought was right. Her success, all admitted, was due to her knowledge
+of the world and to her sense of humor, which taught her with whom to
+use her wealth and position, and when to demand what she wanted solely
+on the ground that the cause was just.
+
+She had taken more than a fancy for Helen, and the position of the
+beautiful, motherless girl had appealed to her as one filled with
+dangers. When she grew to know Helen better, she recognized that these
+fears were quite unnecessary, and as she saw more of her she learned
+to care for her deeply. Helen had told her much of Carroll and of his
+double purpose in coming to London; of his brilliant work and his lack
+of success in having it recognized; and of his great and loyal
+devotion to her, and of his lack of success, not in having that
+recognized, but in her own inability to return it. Helen was proud
+that she had been able to make Carroll care for her as he did, and
+that there was anything about her which could inspire a man whom she
+admired so much to believe in her so absolutely and for so long a
+time. But what convinced her that the outcome for which he hoped was
+impossible, was the very fact that she could admire him, and see how
+fine and unselfish his love for her was, and yet remain untouched by
+it.
+
+She had been telling Lady Gower one day of the care he had taken of
+her ever since she was fourteen years of age, and had quoted some of
+the friendly and loverlike acts he had performed in her service, until
+one day they had both found out that his attitude of the elder brother
+was no longer possible, and that he loved her in the old and only way.
+Lady Gower looked at her rather doubtfully and smiled.
+
+"I wish you would bring him to see me, Helen," she said; "I think I
+should like your friend very much. From what you tell me of him I
+doubt if you will find many such men waiting for you in this country.
+Our men marry for reasons of property, or they love blindly, and are
+exacting and selfish before and after they are married. I know,
+because so many women came to me when my husband was alive to ask how
+it was that I continued so happy in my married life."
+
+"But I don't want to marry any one," Helen remonstrated, gently.
+"American girls are not always thinking only of getting married."
+
+"What I meant was this," said Lady Gower: "that, in my experience, I
+have heard of but few men who care in the way this young man seems to
+care for you. You say you do not love him; but if he had wanted to
+gain my interest, he could not have pleaded his cause better than you
+have done. He seems to see your faults and yet love you still, in
+spite of them--or on account of them. And I like the things he does
+for you. I like, for instance, his sending you the book of the moment
+every week for two years. That shows a most unswerving spirit of
+devotion. And the story of the broken bridge in the woods is a
+wonderful story. If I were a young girl, I could love a man for that
+alone. It was a beautiful thing to do."
+
+Helen sat with her chin on her hands, deeply considering this new
+point of view.
+
+"I thought it very foolish of him," she confessed, questioningly, "to
+take such a risk for such a little thing."
+
+Lady Gower smiled down at her from the height of her many years.
+
+"Wait," she said, dryly, "you are very young now--and very rich; every
+one is crowding to give you pleasure, to show his admiration. You are
+a very fortunate girl. But later, these things which some man has done
+because he loved you, and which you call foolish, will grow large in
+your life, and shine out strongly, and when you are discouraged and
+alone, you will take them out, and the memory of them will make you
+proud and happy. They are the honors which women wear in secret."
+
+Helen came back to town in September, and for the first few days was
+so occupied in refurnishing her studio and in visiting the shops that
+she neglected to send Carroll word of her return. When she found that
+a whole week had passed without her having made any effort to see him,
+and appreciated how the fact would hurt her friend, she was filled
+with remorse, and drove at once in great haste to Jermyn Street, to
+announce her return in person. On the way she decided that she would
+soften the blow of her week of neglect by asking him to take her out
+to luncheon. This privilege she had once or twice accorded him, and
+she felt that the pleasure these excursions gave Carroll were worth
+the consternation they caused to Lady Gower.
+
+The servant was uncertain whether Mr. Carroll was at home or not, but
+Helen was too intent upon making restitution to wait for the fact to
+be determined, and, running up the stairs, knocked sharply at the door
+of his study.
+
+A voice bade her come in, and she entered, radiant and smiling her
+welcome. But Carroll was not there to receive it, and, instead, Marion
+Cavendish looked up at her from his desk, where she was busily
+writing. Helen paused with a surprised laugh, but Marion sprang up and
+hailed her gladly. They met half-way across the room and kissed each
+other with the most friendly feeling.
+
+Philip was out, Marion said, and she had just stepped in for a moment
+to write him a note. If Helen would excuse her, she would finish it,
+as she was late for rehearsal.
+
+But she asked over her shoulder, with great interest, if Helen had
+passed a pleasant summer. She thought she had never seen her looking
+so well. Helen thought Miss Cavendish herself was looking very well
+also, but Marion said no; that she was too sunburnt, she would not be
+able to wear a dinner-dress for a month. There was a pause while
+Marion's quill scratched violently across Carroll's note-paper. Helen
+felt that in some way she was being treated as an intruder; or worse,
+as a guest. She did not sit down, it seemed impossible to do so, but
+she moved uncertainly about the room. She noted that there were many
+changes, it seemed more bare and empty; her picture was still on the
+writing-desk, but there were at least six new photographs of Marion.
+Marion herself had brought them to the room that morning, and had
+carefully arranged them in conspicuous places. But Helen could not
+know that. She thought there was an unnecessary amount of writing
+scribbled over the face of each.
+
+Marion addressed her letter and wrote "Immediate" across the envelope,
+and placed it before the clock on the mantel-shelf. "You will find
+Philip looking very badly," she said, as she pulled on her gloves. "He
+has been in town all summer, working very hard--he has had no holiday
+at all. I don't think he's well. I have been a great deal worried
+about him," she added. Her face was bent over the buttons of her
+glove, and when she raised her blue eyes to Helen they were filled
+with serious concern.
+
+"Really," Helen stammered, "I--I didn't know--in his letters he seemed
+very cheerful."
+
+Marion shook her head and turned and stood looking thoughtfully out of
+the window. "He's in a very hard place," she began, abruptly, and then
+stopped as though she had thought better of what she intended to say.
+Helen tried to ask her to go on, but could not bring herself to do so.
+She wanted to get away.
+
+"I tell him he ought to leave London," Marion began again; "he needs a
+change and a rest."
+
+"I should think he might," Helen agreed, "after three months of this
+heat. He wrote me he intended going to Herne Bay or over to Ostend."
+
+"Yes, he had meant to go," Marion answered. She spoke with the air of
+one who possessed the most intimate knowledge of Carroll's movements
+and plans, and change of plans. "But he couldn't," she added. "He
+couldn't afford it. Helen," she said, turning to the other girl,
+dramatically, "do you know--I believe that Philip is very poor."
+
+Miss Cabot exclaimed, incredulously, "Poor!" She laughed. "Why, what
+do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that he has no money," Marion answered, sharply. "These rooms
+represent nothing. He only keeps them on because he paid for them in
+advance. He's been living on three shillings a day. That's poor for
+him. He takes his meals at cabmen's shelters and at Lockhart's, and
+he's been doing so for a month."
+
+Helen recalled with a guilty thrill the receipt of certain boxes of La
+France roses--cut long, in the American fashion--which had arrived
+within the last month at various country-houses. She felt indignant at
+herself, and miserable. Her indignation was largely due to the
+recollection that she had given these flowers to her hostess to
+decorate the dinner-table.
+
+She hated to ask this girl of things which she should have known
+better than any one else. But she forced herself to do it. She felt
+she must know certainly and at once.
+
+"How do you know this?" she asked. "Are you sure there is no mistake?"
+
+"He told me himself," said Marion, "when he talked of letting the
+plays go and returning to America. He said he must go back; that his
+money was gone."
+
+"He is gone to America!" Helen said, blankly.
+
+"No, he wanted to go, but I wouldn't let him," Marion went on. "I told
+him that some one might take his play any day. And this third one he
+has written, the one he finished this summer in town, is the best of
+all, I think. It's a love-story. It's quite beautiful." She turned and
+arranged her veil at the glass, and as she did so, her eyes fell on
+the photographs of herself scattered over the mantel-piece, and she
+smiled slightly. But Helen did not see her--she was sitting down now,
+pulling at the books on the table. She was confused and disturbed by
+emotions which were quite strange to her, and when Marion bade her
+good-by she hardly noticed her departure. What impressed her most of
+all in what Marion had told her was, she was surprised to find, that
+Philip was going away. That she herself had frequently urged him to do
+so, for his own peace of mind, seemed now of no consequence. Now that
+he seriously contemplated it, she recognized that his absence meant to
+her a change in everything. She felt for the first time the peculiar
+place he held in her life. Even if she had seen him but seldom, the
+fact that he was within call had been more of a comfort and a
+necessity to her than she understood.
+
+That he was poor, concerned her chiefly because she knew that,
+although this condition could only be but temporary, it would distress
+him not to have his friends around him, and to entertain them as he
+had been used to do. She wondered eagerly if she might offer to help
+him, but a second thought assured her that, for a man, that sort of
+help from a woman was impossible.
+
+She resented the fact that Marion was deep in his confidence; that it
+was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and of his plans.
+It annoyed her so acutely that she could not remain in the room where
+she had seen her so complacently in possession. And after leaving a
+brief note for Philip, she went away. She stopped a hansom at the
+door, and told the man to drive along the Embankment--she wanted to be
+quite alone, and she felt she could see no one until she had thought
+it all out, and had analyzed the new feelings.
+
+So for several hours she drove slowly up and down, sunk far back in
+the cushions of the cab, and staring with unseeing eyes at the white,
+enamelled tariff and the black dash-board.
+
+She assured herself that she was not jealous of Marion, because, in
+order to be jealous, she first would have to care for Philip in the
+very way she could not bring herself to do.
+
+She decided that his interest in Marion hurt her, because it showed
+that Philip was not capable of remaining true to the one ideal of his
+life. She was sure that this explained her feelings--she was
+disappointed that he had not kept up to his own standard; that he was
+weak enough to turn aside from it for the first pretty pair of eyes.
+But she was too honest and too just to accept that diagnosis of her
+feelings as final--she knew there had been many pairs of eyes in
+America and in London, and that though Philip had seen them, he had
+not answered them when they spoke. No, she confessed frankly, she was
+hurt with herself for neglecting her old friend so selfishly and for
+so long a time; his love gave him claims on her consideration, at
+least, and she had forgotten that and him, and had run after strange
+gods and allowed others to come in and take her place, and to give him
+the sympathy and help which she should have been the first to offer,
+and which would have counted more when coming from her than from any
+one else. She determined to make amends at once for her
+thoughtlessness and selfishness, and her brain was pleasantly occupied
+with plans and acts of kindness. It was a new entertainment, and she
+found she delighted in it. She directed the cabman to go to
+Solomons's, and from there sent Philip a bunch of flowers and a line
+saying that on the following day she was coming to take tea with him.
+She had a guilty feeling that he might consider her friendly advances
+more seriously than she meant them, but it was her pleasure to be
+reckless: her feelings were running riotously, and the sensation was
+so new that she refused to be circumspect or to consider consequences.
+Who could tell, she asked herself with a quick, frightened gasp, but
+that, after all, it might be that she was learning to care? From
+Solomons's she bade the man drive to the shop in Cranbourne Street
+where she was accustomed to purchase the materials she used in
+painting, and Fate, which uses strange agents to work out its ends, so
+directed it that the cabman stopped a few doors below this shop, and
+opposite one where jewelry and other personal effects were bought and
+sold. At any other time, or had she been in any other mood, what
+followed might not have occurred, but Fate, in the person of the
+cabman, arranged it so that the hour and the opportunity came
+together.
+
+There were some old mezzotints in the window of the loan-shop, a
+string of coins and medals, a row of new French posters; and far down
+to the front a tray filled with gold and silver cigarette-cases and
+watches and rings. It occurred to Helen, who was still bent on making
+restitution for her neglect, that a cigarette-case would be more
+appropriate for a man than flowers, and more lasting. And she scanned
+the contents of the window with the eye of one who now saw in
+everything only something which might give Philip pleasure. The two
+objects of value in the tray upon which her eyes first fell were the
+gold seal-ring with which Philip had sealed his letters to her, and,
+lying next to it, his gold watch! There was something almost human in
+the way the ring and watch spoke to her from the past--in the way they
+appealed to her to rescue them from the surroundings to which they had
+been abandoned. She did not know what she meant to do with them nor
+how she could return them to Philip; but there was no question of
+doubt in her manner as she swept with a rush into the shop. There was
+no attempt, either, at bargaining in the way in which she pointed out
+to the young woman behind the counter the particular ring and watch
+she wanted. They had not been left as collateral, the young woman
+said; they had been sold outright.
+
+"Then any one can buy them?" Helen asked, eagerly. "They are for sale
+to the public--to any one?"
+
+The young woman made note of the customer's eagerness, but with an
+unmoved countenance.
+
+"Yes, miss, they are for sale. The ring is four pounds and the watch
+twenty-five."
+
+"Twenty-nine pounds!" Helen gasped.
+
+That was more money than she had in the world, but the fact did not
+distress her, for she had a true artistic disregard for ready money,
+and the absence of it had never disturbed her. But now it assumed a
+sudden and alarming value. She had ten pounds in her purse and ten
+pounds at her studio--these were just enough to pay for a quarter's
+rent and the rates, and there was a hat and cloak in Bond Street which
+she certainly must have. Her only assets consisted of the possibility
+that some one might soon order a miniature, and to her mind that was
+sufficient. Some one always had ordered a miniature, and there was no
+reasonable doubt but that some one would do it again. For a moment she
+questioned if it would not be sufficient if she bought the ring and
+allowed the watch to remain. But she recognized that the ring meant
+more to her than the watch, while the latter, as an old heirloom which
+had been passed down to him from a great-grandfather, meant more to
+Philip. It was for Philip she was doing this, she reminded herself.
+She stood holding his possessions, one in each hand, and looking at
+the young woman blankly. She had no doubt in her mind that at least
+part of the money he had received for them had paid for the flowers he
+had sent to her in Scotland. The certainty of this left her no choice.
+She laid the ring and watch down and pulled the only ring she
+possessed from her own finger. It was a gift from Lady Gower. She had
+no doubt that it was of great value.
+
+"Can you lend me some money on that?" she asked. It was the first time
+she had conducted a business transaction of this nature, and she felt
+as though she were engaging in a burglary.
+
+"We don't lend money, miss," the girl said, "we buy outright. I can
+give you twenty-eight shillings for this," she added.
+
+"Twenty-eight shillings!" Helen gasped. "Why, it is worth--oh, ever so
+much more than that!"
+
+"That is all it is worth to us," the girl answered. She regarded the
+ring indifferently and laid it away from her on the counter. The
+action was final.
+
+Helen's hands rose slowly to her breast, where a pretty watch dangled
+from a bow-knot of crushed diamonds. It was her only possession, and
+she was very fond of it. It also was the gift of one of the several
+great ladies who had adopted her since her residence in London. Helen
+had painted a miniature of this particular great lady which had looked
+so beautiful that the pleasure which the original of the portrait
+derived from the thought that she still really looked as she did in
+the miniature was worth more to her than many diamonds.
+
+But it was different with Helen, and no one could count what it cost
+her to tear away her one proud possession.
+
+"What will you give me for this?" she asked, defiantly.
+
+The girl's eyes showed greater interest. "I can give you twenty pounds
+for that," she said.
+
+"Take it, please," Helen begged, as though she feared if she kept it a
+moment longer she might not be able to make the sacrifice.
+
+"That will be enough now," she went on, taking out her ten-pound note.
+She put Lady Gower's ring back upon her finger and picked up Philip's
+ring and watch with the pleasure of one who has come into a great
+fortune. She turned back at the door.
+
+"Oh," she stammered, "in case any one should inquire, you are not to
+say who bought these."
+
+"No, miss, certainly not," said the woman. Helen gave the direction to
+the cabman and, closing the doors of the hansom, sat looking down at
+the watch and the ring, as they lay in her lap. The thought that they
+had been his most valued possessions, which he had abandoned forever,
+and that they were now entirely hers, to do with as she liked, filled
+her with most intense delight and pleasure. She took up the heavy gold
+ring and placed it on the little finger of her left hand; it was much
+too large, and she removed it and balanced it for a moment doubtfully
+in the palm of her right hand. She was smiling, and her face was lit
+with shy and tender thoughts. She cast a quick glance to the left and
+right as though fearful that people passing in the street would
+observe her, and then slipped the ring over the fourth finger of her
+left hand. She gazed at it with a guilty smile, and then, covering it
+hastily with her other hand, leaned back, clasping it closely, and sat
+frowning far out before her with puzzled eyes.
+
+To Carroll all roads led past Helen's studio, and during the summer,
+while she had been absent in Scotland, it was one of his sad pleasures
+to make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause opposite the house and
+look up at the empty windows of her rooms. It was during this daily
+exercise that he learned, through the arrival of her luggage, of her
+return to London, and when day followed day without her having shown
+any desire to see him or to tell him of her return, he denounced
+himself most bitterly as a fatuous fool.
+
+At the end of the week he sat down and considered his case quite
+calmly. For three years he had loved this girl, deeply and tenderly.
+He had been lover, brother, friend, and guardian. During that time,
+even though she had accepted him in every capacity except as that of
+the prospective husband, she had never given him any real affection,
+nor sympathy, nor help; all she had done for him had been done without
+her knowledge or intent. To know her, to love her, and to scheme to
+give her pleasure had been its own reward, and the only one. For the
+last few months he had been living like a crossing sweeper in order to
+be able to stay in London until she came back to it, and that he might
+still send her the gifts he had always laid on her altar. He had not
+seen her in three months. Three months that had been to him a blank,
+except for his work--which, like all else that he did, was inspired
+and carried on for her. Now at last she had returned and had shown
+that, even as a friend, he was of so little account in her thoughts,
+of so little consequence in her life, that after this long absence she
+had no desire to learn of his welfare or to see him--she did not even
+give him the chance to see her. And so, placing these facts before him
+for the first time since he had loved her, he considered what was due
+to himself. "Was it good enough?" he asked. "Was it just that he
+should continue to wear out his soul and body for this girl who did
+not want what he had to give, who treated him less considerately than
+a man whom she met for the first time at dinner?" He felt he had
+reached the breaking-point; that the time had come when he must
+consider what he owed to himself. There could never be any other woman
+save Helen; but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer, with
+self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it slighted and
+neglected. He was humble enough concerning himself, but of his love he
+was very proud. Other men could give her more in wealth or position,
+but no one could ever love her as he did. "He that hath more let him
+give," he had often quoted to her defiantly, as though he were
+challenging the world, and now he felt he must evolve a makeshift
+world of his own--a world in which she was not his only spring of
+acts; he must begin all over again and keep his love secret and sacred
+until she understood it and wanted it. And if she should never want it
+he would at least have saved it from many rebuffs and insults.
+
+With this determination strong in him, the note Helen had left for him
+after her talk with Marion, and the flowers, and the note with them,
+saying she was coming to take tea on the morrow, failed to move him
+except to make him more bitter. He saw in them only a tardy
+recognition of her neglect--an effort to make up to him for
+thoughtlessness which, from her, hurt him worse than studied slight.
+
+A new _regime_ had begun, and he was determined to establish it
+firmly and to make it impossible for himself to retreat from it; and
+in the note in which he thanked Helen for the flowers and welcomed her
+to tea, he declared his ultimatum.
+
+"You know how terribly I feel," he wrote; "I don't have to tell you
+that, but I cannot always go on dragging out my love and holding it up
+to excite your pity as beggars show their sores. I cannot always go on
+praying before your altar, cutting myself with knives and calling upon
+you to listen to me. You know that there is no one else but you, and
+that there never can be any one but you, and that nothing is changed
+except that after this I am not going to urge and torment you. I shall
+wait as I have always waited--only now I shall wait in silence. You
+know just how little, in one way, I have to offer you, and you know
+just how much I have in love to offer you. It is now for you to
+speak--some day, or never. But you will have to speak first. You will
+never hear a word of love from me again. Why should you? You know it
+is always waiting for you. But if you should ever want it, you must
+come to me, and take off your hat and put it on my table and say,
+'Philip, I have come to stay.' Whether you can ever do that or not can
+make no difference in my love for you. I shall love you always, as no
+man has ever loved a woman in this world, but it is you who must speak
+first; for me, the rest is silence."
+
+The following morning as Helen was leaving the house she found this
+letter lying on the hall-table, and ran back with it to her rooms. A
+week before she would have let it lie on the table and read it on her
+return. She was conscious that this was what she would have done, and
+it pleased her to find that what concerned Philip was now to her the
+thing of greatest interest. She was pleased with her own
+eagerness--her own happiness was a welcome sign, and she was proud and
+glad that she was learning to care.
+
+She read the letter with an anxious pride and pleasure in each word
+that was entirely new. Philip's recriminations did not hurt her, they
+were the sign that he cared; nor did his determination not to speak of
+his love to her hurt her, for she believed him when he said that he
+would always care. She read the letter twice, and then sat for some
+time considering the kind of letter Philip would have written had he
+known her secret--had he known that the ring he had abandoned was now
+upon her finger.
+
+She rose and, crossing to a desk, placed the letter in a drawer, and
+then took it out again and reread the last page. When she had finished
+it she was smiling. For a moment she stood irresolute, and then,
+moving slowly toward the centre-table, cast a guilty look about her
+and, raising her hands, lifted her veil and half withdrew the pins
+that fastened her hat.
+
+"Philip," she began, in a frightened whisper, "I have--I have come
+to--"
+
+The sentence ended in a cry of protest, and she rushed across the room
+as though she were running from herself. She was blushing violently.
+
+"Never!" she cried, as she pulled open the door; "I could never do
+it--never!"
+
+The following afternoon, when Helen was to come to tea, Carroll
+decided that he would receive her with all the old friendliness, but
+that he must be careful to subdue all emotion.
+
+He was really deeply hurt at her treatment, and had it not been that
+she came on her own invitation he would not of his own accord have
+sought to see her. In consequence, he rather welcomed than otherwise
+the arrival of Marion Cavendish, who came a half-hour before Helen was
+expected, and who followed a hasty knock with a precipitate entrance.
+
+"Sit down," she commanded, breathlessly, "and listen. I've been at
+rehearsal all day, or I'd have been here before you were awake." She
+seated herself nervously and nodded her head at Carroll in an excited
+and mysterious manner.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "Have you and Reggie--"
+
+"Listen," Marion repeated. "Our fortunes are made; that is what's the
+matter--and I've made them. If you took half the interest in your work
+I do, you'd have made yours long ago. Last night," she began,
+impressively, "I went to a large supper at the Savoy, and I sat next
+to Charley Wimpole. He came in late, after everybody had finished, and
+I attacked him while he was eating his supper. He said he had been
+rehearsing 'Caste' after the performance; that they've put it on as a
+stop-gap on account of the failure of 'The Triflers,' and that he knew
+revivals were of no use; that he would give any sum for a good modern
+comedy. That was my cue, and I told him I knew of a better comedy than
+any he had produced at his theatre in five years, and that it was
+going begging. He laughed, and asked where was he to find this
+wonderful comedy, and I said, 'It's been in your safe for the last two
+months and you haven't read it.' He said, 'Indeed, how do you know
+that?' and I said, 'Because if you'd read it, it wouldn't be in your
+safe, but on your stage.' So he asked me what the play was about, and
+I told him the plot and what sort of a part his was, and some of his
+scenes, and he began to take notice. He forgot his supper, and very
+soon he grew so interested that he turned his chair round and kept
+eying my supper-card to find out who I was, and at last remembered
+seeing me in 'The New Boy'--and a rotten part it was, too--but he
+remembered it, and he told me to go on and tell him more about your
+play. So I recited it, bit by bit, and he laughed in all the right
+places and got very much excited, and said finally that he would read
+it the first thing this morning." Marion paused, breathlessly. "Oh,
+yes, and he wrote your address on his cuff," she added, with the air
+of delivering a complete and convincing climax.
+
+Carroll stared at her and pulled excitedly on his pipe.
+
+"Oh, Marion!" he gasped, "suppose he should? He won't, though," he
+added, but eying her eagerly and inviting contradiction.
+
+"He will," she answered, stoutly, "if he reads it."
+
+"The other managers read it," Carroll suggested, doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, but what do they know?" Marion returned, loftily. "He knows.
+Charles Wimpole is the only intelligent actor-manager in London."
+
+There was a sharp knock at the door, which Marion in her excitement
+had left ajar, and Prentiss threw it wide open with an impressive
+sweep, as though he were announcing royalty. "Mr. Charles Wimpole," he
+said.
+
+The actor-manager stopped in the doorway bowing gracefully, his hat
+held before him and his hand on his stick as though it were resting on
+a foil. He had the face and carriage of a gallant of the days of
+Congreve, and he wore his modern frock-coat with as much distinction
+as if it were of silk and lace. He was evidently amused. "I couldn't
+help overhearing the last line," he said, smiling. "It gives me a good
+entrance."
+
+Marion gazed at him blankly. "Oh," she gasped, "we--we--were just
+talking about you."
+
+"If you hadn't mentioned my name," the actor said, "I should never
+have guessed it. And this is Mr. Carroll, I hope."
+
+The great man was rather pleased with the situation. As he read it, it
+struck him as possessing strong dramatic possibilities: Carroll was
+the struggling author on the verge of starvation; Marion, his
+sweetheart, flying to him gave him hope; and he was the good fairy
+arriving in the nick of time to set everything right and to make the
+young people happy and prosperous. He rather fancied himself in the
+part of the good fairy, and as he seated himself he bowed to them both
+in a manner which was charmingly inclusive and confidential.
+
+"Miss Cavendish, I imagine, has already warned you that you might
+expect a visit from me," he said, tentatively. Carroll nodded. He was
+too much concerned to interrupt.
+
+"Then I need only tell you," Wimpole continued, "that I got up at an
+absurd hour this morning to read your play; that I did read it; that I
+like it immensely--and that if we can come to terms I shall produce
+it. I shall produce it at once, within a fortnight or three weeks."
+
+Carroll was staring at him intently and continued doing so after
+Wimpole had finished speaking. The actor felt he had somehow missed
+his point, or that Carroll could not have understood him, and
+repeated, "I say I shall put it in rehearsal at once."
+
+Carroll rose abruptly, and pushed back his chair. "I should be very
+glad," he murmured, and strode over to the window, where he stood with
+his back turned to his guests. Wimpole looked after him with a kindly
+smile and nodded his head appreciatively. He had produced even a
+greater effect than his lines seemed to warrant. When he spoke again,
+it was quite simply, and sincerely, and though he spoke for Carroll's
+benefit, he addressed himself to Marion.
+
+"You were quite right last night," he said; "it is a most charming
+piece of work. I am really extremely grateful to you for bringing it
+to my notice." He rose, and going to Carroll, put his hand on his
+shoulder. "My boy," he said, "I congratulate you. I should like to be
+your age, and to have written that play. Come to my theatre to-morrow
+and we will talk terms. Talk it over first with your friends, so that
+I shan't rob you. Do you think you would prefer a lump sum now, and so
+be done with it altogether, or trust that the royalties may--"
+
+"Royalties," prompted Marion, in an eager aside.
+
+The men laughed. "Quite right," Wimpole assented, good-humoredly;
+"it's a poor sportsman who doesn't back his own horse. Well, then,
+until to-morrow."
+
+"But," Carroll began, "one moment, please. I haven't thanked you."
+
+"My dear boy," cried Wimpole, waving him away with his stick, "it is I
+who have to thank you."
+
+"And--and there is a condition," Carroll said, "which goes with the
+play. It is that Miss Cavendish is to have the part of _Nancy_."
+
+Wimpole looked serious and considered for a moment.
+
+"_Nancy_," he said, "the girl who interferes--a very good part. I
+have cast Miss Maddox for it in my mind, but, of course, if the author
+insists--"
+
+Marion, with her elbows on the table, clasped her hands appealingly
+before her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wimpole!" she cried, "you owe me that, at least."
+
+Carroll leaned over and took both of Marion's hands in one of his.
+
+"It's all right," he said; "the author insists."
+
+Wimpole waved his stick again as though it were the magic wand of the
+good fairy.
+
+"You shall have it," he said. "I recall your performance in 'The New
+Boy' with pleasure. I take the play, and Miss Cavendish shall be cast
+for _Nancy_. We shall begin rehearsals at once. I hope you are a
+quick study."
+
+"I'm letter-perfect now," laughed Marion.
+
+Wimpole turned at the door and nodded to them. They were both so
+young, so eager, and so jubilant that he felt strangely old and out of
+it. "Good-by, then," he said.
+
+"Good-by, sir," they both chorused. And Marion cried after him, "And
+thank you a thousand times."
+
+He turned again and looked back at them, but in their rejoicing they
+had already forgotten him. "Bless you, my children," he said, smiling.
+As he was about to close the door a young girl came down the passage
+toward it, and as she was apparently going to Carroll's rooms, the
+actor left the door open behind him.
+
+Neither Marion nor Carroll had noticed his final exit. They were both
+gazing at each other as though, could they find speech, they would ask
+if it were true.
+
+"It's come at last, Marion," Philip said, with an uncertain voice.
+
+"I could weep," cried Marion. "Philip," she exclaimed, "I would rather
+see that play succeed than any play ever written, and I would rather
+play that part in it than--Oh, Philip," she ended, "I'm so proud of
+you!" and rising, she threw her arms about his neck and sobbed on his
+shoulder.
+
+Carroll raised one of her hands and kissed the tips of her fingers
+gently. "I owe it to you, Marion," he said--"all to you."
+
+This was the tableau that was presented through the open door to Miss
+Helen Cabot, hurrying on her errand of restitution and goodwill, and
+with Philip's ring and watch clasped in her hand. They had not heard
+her, nor did they see her at the door, so she drew back quickly and
+ran along the passage and down the stairs into the street.
+
+She did not need now to analyze her feelings. They were only too
+evident. For she could translate what she had just seen as meaning
+only one thing--that she had considered Philip's love so lightly that
+she had not felt it passing away from her until her neglect had killed
+it--until it was too late. And now that it was too late she felt that
+without it her life could not go on. She tried to assure herself that
+only the fact that she had lost it made it seem invaluable, but this
+thought did not comfort her--she was not deceived by it, she knew that
+at last she cared for him deeply and entirely. In her distress she
+blamed herself bitterly, but she also blamed Philip no less bitterly
+for having failed to wait for her. "He might have known that I must
+love him in time," she repeated to herself again and again. She was so
+unhappy that her letter congratulating Philip on his good fortune in
+having his comedy accepted seemed to him cold and unfeeling, and as
+his success meant for him only what it meant to her, he was hurt and
+grievously disappointed.
+
+He accordingly turned the more readily to Marion, whose interest and
+enthusiasm at the rehearsals of the piece seemed in contrast most
+friendly and unselfish. He could not help but compare the attitude of
+the two girls at this time, when the failure or success of his best
+work was still undecided. He felt that as Helen took so little
+interest in his success he could not dare to trouble her with his
+anxieties concerning it, and she attributed his silence to his
+preoccupation and interest in Marion. So the two grew apart, each
+misunderstanding the other and each troubled in spirit at the other's
+indifference.
+
+The first night of the play justified all that Marion and Wimpole had
+claimed for it, and was a great personal triumph for the new
+playwright. The audience was the typical first-night audience of the
+class which Charles Wimpole always commanded. It was brilliant,
+intelligent, and smart, and it came prepared to be pleased.
+
+From one of the upper stage-boxes Helen and Lady Gower watched the
+successful progress of the play with an anxiety almost as keen as that
+of the author. To Helen it seemed as though the giving of these lines
+to the public--these lines which he had so often read to her, and
+altered to her liking--was a desecration. It seemed as though she were
+losing him indeed--as though he now belonged to these strange people,
+all of whom were laughing and applauding his words, from the German
+Princess in the Royal box to the straight-backed Tommy in the pit.
+Instead of the painted scene before her, she saw the birch-trees by
+the river at home, where he had first read her the speech to which
+they were now listening so intensely--the speech in which the hero
+tells the girl he loves her. She remembered that at the time she had
+thought how wonderful it would be if some day some one made such a
+speech to her--not Philip, but a man she loved. And now? If Philip
+would only make that speech to her now!
+
+He came out at last, with Wimpole leading him, and bowed across a
+glaring barrier of lights at a misty but vociferous audience that was
+shouting the generous English bravo! and standing up to applaud. He
+raised his eyes to the box where Helen sat, and saw her staring down
+at the tumult, with her hands clasped under her chin. Her face was
+colorless, but lit with the excitement of the moment; and he saw that
+she was crying.
+
+Lady Gower, from behind her, was clapping her hands delightedly.
+
+"But, my dear Helen," she remonstrated, breathlessly, "you never told
+me he was so good-looking."
+
+"Yes," said Helen, rising abruptly, "he is--very good-looking."
+
+She crossed the box to where her cloak was hanging, but instead of
+taking it down, buried her face in its folds.
+
+"My dear child!" cried Lady Gower, in dismay. "What is it? The
+excitement has been too much for you."
+
+"No, I am just happy," sobbed Helen. "I am just happy for him."
+
+"We will go and tell him so, then," said Lady Gower. "I am sure he
+would like to hear it from you to-night."
+
+Philip was standing in the centre of the stage, surrounded by many
+pretty ladies and elderly men. Wimpole was hovering over him as though
+he had claims upon him by the right of discovery.
+
+But when Philip saw Helen, he pushed his way toward her eagerly and
+took her hand in both of his.
+
+"I am so glad, Phil," she said. She felt it all so deeply that she was
+afraid to say more, but that meant so much to her that she was sure he
+would understand.
+
+He had planned it very differently. For a year he had dreamed that, on
+the first night of his play, there would be a supper, and that he
+would rise and drink her health, and tell his friends and the world
+that she was the woman he loved, and that she had agreed to marry him,
+and that at last he was able, through the success of his play, to make
+her his wife.
+
+And now they met in a crowd to shake hands, and she went her way with
+one of her grand ladies, and he was left among a group of chattering
+strangers. The great English playwright took him by the hand and in
+the hearing of all praised him gracefully and kindly. It did not
+matter to Philip whether the older playwright believed what he said or
+not; he knew it was generously meant.
+
+"I envy you this," the great man was saying. "Don't lose any of it,
+stay and listen to all they have to say. You will never live through
+the first night of your first play but once."
+
+"Yes, I hear them," said Philip, nervously; "they are all too kind.
+But I don't hear the voice I have been listening for," he added, in a
+whisper. The older man pressed his hand again quickly. "My dear boy,"
+he said, "I am sorry."
+
+"Thank you," Philip answered.
+
+Within a week he had forgotten the great man's fine words of praise,
+but the clasp of his hand he cherished always.
+
+Helen met Marion as she was leaving the stage-door and stopped to
+congratulate her on her success in the new part. Marion was radiant.
+To Helen she seemed obstreperously happy and jubilant.
+
+"And, Marion," Helen began, bravely, "I also want to congratulate you
+on something else. You--you--neither of you have told me yet," she
+stammered, "but I am such an old friend of both that I will not be
+kept out of the secret." At these words Marion's air of triumphant
+gayety vanished; she regarded Helen's troubled eyes closely and
+kindly.
+
+"What secret, Helen?" she asked.
+
+"I came to the door of Philip's room the other day when you did not
+know I was there," Helen answered, "and I could not help seeing how
+matters were. And I do congratulate you both--and wish you--oh, such
+happiness!" Without a word Marion dragged her back down the passage to
+her dressing-room, and closed the door.
+
+"Now tell me what you mean," she said.
+
+"I am sorry if I discovered anything you didn't want known yet," said
+Helen, "but the door was open. Mr. Wimpole had just left you and had
+not shut it, and I could not help seeing."
+
+Marion interrupted her with an eager exclamation of enlightenment.
+
+"Oh, you were there, then," she cried. "And you?" she asked,
+eagerly--"you thought Phil cared for me--that we are engaged, and it
+hurt you; you are sorry? Tell me," she demanded, "are you sorry?"
+
+Helen drew back and stretched out her hand toward the door.
+
+"How can you!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "You have no right."
+
+Marion stood between her and the door.
+
+"I have every right," she said, "to help my friends, and I want to
+help you and Philip. And, indeed, I do hope you _are_ sorry. I
+hope you are miserable. And I'm glad you saw me kiss him. That was the
+first and the last time, and I did it because I was happy and glad for
+him; and because I love him, too, but not in the least in the way he
+loves you. No one ever loved any one as he loves you. And it's time
+you found it out. And if I have helped to make you find it out, I'm
+glad, and I don't care how much I hurt you."
+
+"Marion!" exclaimed Helen, "what does it mean? Do you mean that you
+are not engaged; that--"
+
+"Certainly not," Marion answered. "I am going to marry Reggie. It is
+you that Philip loves, and I am very sorry for you that you don't love
+him."
+
+Helen clasped Marion's hands in both of hers.
+
+"But, Marion!" she cried, "I do, oh, I do!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a thick yellow fog the next morning, and with it rain and a
+sticky, depressing dampness which crept through the window-panes, and
+which neither a fire nor blazing gas-jets could overcome.
+
+Philip stood in front of the fireplace with the morning papers piled
+high on the centre-table and scattered over the room about him.
+
+He had read them all, and he knew now what it was to wake up famous,
+but he could not taste it. Now that it had come it meant nothing, and
+that it was so complete a triumph only made it the harder. In his most
+optimistic dreams he had never imagined success so satisfying as the
+reality had proved to be; but in his dreams Helen had always held the
+chief part, and without her, success seemed only to mock him.
+
+He wanted to lay it all before her, to say, "If you are pleased, I am
+happy. If you are satisfied, then I am content. It was done for you,
+and I am wholly yours, and all that I do is yours." And, as though in
+answer to his thoughts, there was an instant knock at the door, and
+Helen entered the room and stood smiling at him across the table.
+
+Her eyes were lit with excitement, and spoke with many emotions, and
+her cheeks were brilliant with color. He had never seen her look more
+beautiful.
+
+"Why, Helen!" he exclaimed, "how good of you to come. Is there
+anything wrong? Is anything the matter?"
+
+She tried to speak, but faltered, and smiled at him appealingly.
+
+"What is it?" he asked in great concern.
+
+Helen drew in her breath quickly, and at the same moment motioned him
+away--and he stepped back and stood watching her in much perplexity.
+
+With her eyes fixed on his she raised her hands to her head, and her
+fingers fumbled with the knot of her veil. She pulled it loose, and
+then, with a sudden courage, lifted her hat proudly, as though it were
+a coronet, and placed it between them on his table.
+
+"Philip," she stammered, with the tears in her voice and eyes, "if you
+will let me--I have come to stay."
+
+The table was no longer between them. He caught her in his arms and
+kissed her face and her uncovered head again and again. From outside
+the rain beat drearily and the fog rolled through the street, but
+inside before the fire the two young people sat close together, asking
+eager questions or sitting in silence, staring at the flames with
+wondering, happy eyes.
+
+The Lion and the Unicorn saw them only once again. It was a month
+later when they stopped in front of the shop in a four-wheeler, with
+their baggage mixed on top of it, and steamer-labels pasted over every
+trunk.
+
+"And, oh, Prentiss!" Carroll called from the cab-window. "I came near
+forgetting. I promised to gild the Lion and the Unicorn if I won out
+in London. So have it done, please, and send the bill to me. For I've
+won out all right." And then he shut the door of the cab, and they
+drove away forever.
+
+"Nice gal, that," growled the Lion. "I always liked her. I am glad
+they've settled it at last."
+
+The Unicorn sighed sentimentally. "The other one's worth two of her,"
+he said.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+A SKETCH CONTAINING THREE POINTS OF VIEW
+
+
+_What the Poet Laureate wrote._
+
+  "There are girls in the Gold Reef City,
+    There are mothers and children too!
+  And they cry 'Hurry up for pity!'
+    So what can a brave man do?
+
+  "I suppose we were wrong, were mad men,
+    Still I think at the Judgment Day,
+  When God sifts the good from the bad men,
+    There'll be something more to say."
+
+
+_What more the Lord Chief Justice found to say._
+
+"In this case we know the immediate consequence of your crime. It has
+been the loss of human life, it has been the disturbance of public
+peace, it has been the creation of a certain sense of distrust of
+public professions and of public faith.... The sentence of this Court
+therefore is that, as to you, Leander Starr Jameson, you be confined
+for a period of fifteen months without hard labor; that you, Sir John
+Willoughby, have ten months' imprisonment; and that you, etc., etc."
+
+                                          _London Times, July 29th._
+
+
+_What the Hon. "Reggie" Blake thought about it._
+
+"H.M. HOLLOWAY PRISON,
+July 28th.
+
+"I am going to keep a diary while I am in prison, that is, if they
+will let me. I never kept one before because I hadn't the time; when I
+was home on leave there was too much going on to bother about it, and
+when I was up country I always came back after a day's riding so tired
+that I was too sleepy to write anything. And now that I have the time,
+I won't have anything to write about. I fancy that more things
+happened to me to-day than are likely to happen again for the next
+eight months, so I will make this day take up as much room in the
+diary as it can. I am writing this on the back of the paper the Warder
+uses for his official reports, while he is hunting up cells to put us
+in. We came down on him rather unexpectedly and he is nervous.
+
+"Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion, but now I
+see that somehow I never really did think I would be in here, and all
+my friends outside, and everything going on just the same as though I
+wasn't alive somewhere. It's like telling yourself that your horse
+can't possibly pull off a race, so that you won't mind so much if he
+doesn't, but you always feel just as bad when he comes in a loser. A
+man can't fool himself into thinking one way when he is hoping the
+other.
+
+"But I am glad it is over, and settled. It was a great bore not
+knowing your luck and having the thing hanging over your head every
+morning when you woke up. Indeed it it was quite a relief when the
+counsel got all through arguing over those proclamations, and the
+Chief Justice summed up, but I nearly went to sleep when I found he
+was going all over it again to the jury. I didn't understand about
+those proclamations myself and I'll lay a fiver the jury didn't
+either. The Colonel said he didn't. I couldn't keep my mind on what
+Russell was explaining about, and I got to thinking how much old
+Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in 'Alice in Wonderland' when
+they tried the knave of spades for stealing the tarts. He has just the
+same sort of a beak and the same sort of a wig, and I wondered why he
+had his wig powdered and the others didn't. Pollock's wig had a hole
+in the top; you could see it when he bent over to take notes. He was
+always taking notes. I don't believe he understood about those
+proclamations either; he never seemed to listen, anyway.
+
+"The Chief Justice certainly didn't love us very much, that's sure;
+and he wasn't going to let anybody else love us either. I felt quite
+the Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in defense. He made
+it sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi heroes and ought to be
+promoted and have medals, but when Lord Russell started in to read the
+Riot Act at us I began to believe that hanging was too good for me.
+I'm sure I never knew I was disturbing the peace of nations; it seems
+like such a large order for a subaltern.
+
+"But the worst was when they made us stand up before all those people
+to be sentenced. I must say I felt shaky about the knees then, not
+because I was afraid of what was coming, but because it was the first
+time I had ever been pointed out before people, and made to feel
+ashamed. And having those girls there, too, looking at one. That
+wasn't just fair to us. It made me feel about ten years old, and I
+remembered how the Head Master used to call me to his desk and say,
+'Blake Senior, two pages of Horace and keep in bounds for a week.' And
+then I heard our names and the months, and my name and 'eight months'
+imprisonment,' and there was a bustle and murmur and the tipstaves
+cried, 'Order in the Court,' and the Judges stood up and shook out
+their big red skirts as though they were shaking off the contamination
+of our presence and rustled away, and I sat down, wondering how long
+eight months was, and wishing they'd given me as much as they gave
+Jameson.
+
+"They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how sorry
+they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left us. I
+thought they might have waited with us and been a little late for
+dinner just that once; but no one waited except a lot of costers
+outside whom we did not know. It was eight o'clock and still quite
+light when we came out, and there was a line of four-wheelers and a
+hansom ready for us. I'd been hoping they would take us out by the
+Strand entrance, just because I'd liked to have seen it again, but
+they marched us instead through the main quadrangle--a beastly, gloomy
+courtyard that echoed, and out, into Carey Street--such a dirty,
+gloomy street. The costers and clerks set up a sort of a cheer when we
+came out, and one of them cried, 'God bless you, sir,' to the doctor,
+but I was sorry they cheered. It seemed like kicking against the
+umpire's decision. The Colonel and I got into a hansom together and we
+trotted off into Chancery Lane and turned into Holborn. Most of the
+shops were closed, and the streets looked empty, but there was a
+lighted clock-face over Mooney's public house, and the hands stood at
+a quarter past eight. I didn't know where Holloway was, and was hoping
+they would have to take us through some decent streets to reach it;
+but we didn't see a part of the city that meant anything to me, or
+that I would choose to travel through again.
+
+"Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the streets
+knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the enamel card on
+the back of the apron. I suppose I read, 'Two-wheeled hackney
+carriage: if hired and discharged within the four-mile limit, 1_s_.'
+at least a hundred times. I got more sensible after a bit, and when we
+had turned into Gray's Inn Road I looked up and saw a tram in front of
+us with 'Holloway Road and King's X,' painted on the steps, and the
+Colonel saw it about the same time I fancy, for we each looked at the
+other, and the Colonel raised his eyebrows. It showed us that at least
+the cabman knew where we were going.
+
+"'They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first, I
+think,' the Colonel said. 'I'd like to have had a look around,
+wouldn't you? This isn't a cheerful neighborhood, is it?'
+
+"There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew's Gardens, and a
+crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and laughing over
+nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the only pleasant
+sight in the ride. I had quite a turn when we came to the New Hospital
+just beyond, for I thought it was Holloway, and it came over me what
+eight months in such a place meant. I believe if I hadn't pulled
+myself up sharp, I'd have jumped out into the street and run away. It
+didn't last more than a few seconds, but I don't want any more like
+them. I was afraid, afraid--there's no use pretending it was anything
+else. I was in a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook,
+as I have seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and
+trembles down his sides.
+
+"During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could stand; I
+felt sure that I couldn't do it--that I'd go mad if they tried to
+force me. The idea was so terrible--of not being master over your own
+legs and arms, to have your flesh and blood and what brains God gave
+you buried alive in stone walls as though they were in a safe with a
+time-lock on the door set for eight months ahead. There's nothing to
+be afraid of in a stone wall really, but it's the idea of the
+thing--of not being free to move about, especially to a chap that has
+always lived in the open as I have, and has had men under him. It was
+no wonder I was in a funk for a minute. I'll bet a fiver the others
+were, too, if they'll only own up to it. I don't mean for long, but
+just when the idea first laid hold of them. Anyway, it was a good
+lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I'll whistle,
+or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful. And I
+don't mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail
+counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or measuring how
+many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that way. I mean to
+sit tight and think of all the good times I've had, and go over them
+in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and remember
+who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that; I'll go
+over house-parties I have been on, and the times I've had in the
+Riviera, and scouting-parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were
+taking Matabele Land.
+
+"They say that if you're good here they give you things to read after
+a month or two, and then I can read up all those instructive books
+that a fellow never does read until he's laid up in bed.
+
+"But that's crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened to-day.
+We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western Terminus, and I
+half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming or going away: I
+would like to have waved my hand to him. It would have been fun to
+have seen his surprise the next morning when he read in the paper that
+he had been bowing to jail-birds, and then I would like to have
+cheated the tipstaves out of just one more friendly good-by. I wanted
+to say good-by to somebody, but I really couldn't feel sorry to see
+the last of any one of those we passed in the streets--they were such
+a dirty, unhappy-looking lot, and the railroad wall ran on forever
+apparently, and we might have been in a foreign country for all we
+knew of it. There were just sooty gray brick tenements and gas-works
+on one side, and the railroad cutting on the other, and semaphores and
+telegraph wires overhead, and smoke and grime everywhere, it looked
+exactly like the sort of street that should lead to a prison, and it
+seemed a pity to take a smart hansom and a good cob into it.
+
+"It was just a bit different from our last ride together--when we rode
+through the night from Krugers-Dorp with hundreds of horses' hoofs
+pounding on the soft veldt behind us, and the carbines clanking
+against the stirrups as they swung on the sling belts. We were being
+hunted then, harassed on either side, scurrying for our lives like the
+Derby Dog in a race-track when every one hoots him and no man steps
+out to help--we were sick for sleep, sick for food, lashed by the
+rain, and we knew that we were beaten; but we were free still, and
+under open skies with the derricks of the Rand rising like gallows on
+our left, and Johannesburg only fifteen miles away."
+
+
+
+
+MISS DELAMAR'S UNDERSTUDY
+
+
+A young man runs two chances of marrying the wrong woman. He marries
+her because she is beautiful, and because he persuades himself that
+every other lovable attribute must be associated with such beauty, or
+because she is in love with him. If this latter is the case, she gives
+certain values to what he thinks and to what he says which no other
+woman gives, and so he observes to himself, "This is the woman who
+best understands _me_."
+
+You can reverse this and say that young women run the same risks, but
+as men are seldom beautiful, the first danger is eliminated. Women
+still marry men, however, because they are loved by them, and in time
+the woman grows to depend upon this love and to need it, and is not
+content without it, and so she consents to marry the man for no other
+reason than because he cares for her. For if a dog, even, runs up to
+you wagging his tail and acting as though he were glad to see you, you
+pat him on the head and say, "What a nice dog." You like him because
+he likes you, and not because he belongs to a fine breed of animal and
+could take blue ribbons at bench shows.
+
+This is the story of a young man who was in love with a beautiful
+woman, and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other
+things. When she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled
+and looked at her and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow
+uninteresting, he would take up his hat and go away, and so he never
+knew how very uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given
+time enough in which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered
+that, were he married to her, he could not take up his hat and go away
+when she became uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not
+brilliant, could not be smiled away either. They would rise up and
+greet him every morning, and would be the last thing he would hear at
+night.
+
+Miss Delamar's beauty was so conspicuous that to pretend not to notice
+it was more foolish than well-bred. You got along more easily and
+simply by accepting it at once, and referring to it, and enjoying its
+effect upon other people. To go out of one's way to talk of other
+things when every one, even Miss Delamar herself, knew what must be
+uppermost in your mind, always seemed as absurd as to strain a point
+in politeness, and to pretend not to notice that a guest had upset his
+claret, or any other embarrassing fact. For Miss Delamar's beauty was
+so distinctly embarrassing that this was the only way to meet it--to
+smile and pass it over and to try, if possible, to get on to something
+else. It was on account of this extraordinary quality in her
+appearance that every one considered her beauty as something which
+transcended her private ownership, and which belonged by right to the
+polite world at large, to any one who could appreciate it properly,
+just as though it were a sunset or a great work of art or of nature.
+And so, when she gave away her photographs no one thought it meant
+anything more serious than a recognition on her part of the fact that
+it would have been unkind and selfish in her not to have shared the
+enjoyment of so much loveliness with others.
+
+Consequently, when she sent one of her largest and most aggravatingly
+beautiful photographs to young Stuart, it was no sign that she cared
+especially for him.
+
+How much young Stuart cared for Miss Delamar, however, was an open
+question and a condition yet to be discovered. That he cared for some
+one, and cared so much that his imagination had begun to picture the
+awful joys and responsibilities of marriage, was only too well known
+to himself, and was a state of mind already suspected by his friends.
+
+Stuart was a member of the New York bar, and the distinguished law
+firm to which he belonged was very proud of its junior member, and
+treated him with indulgence and affection, which was not unmixed with
+amusement. For Stuart's legal knowledge had been gathered in many odd
+corners of the globe, and was various and peculiar. It had been his
+pleasure to study the laws by which men ruled other men in every
+condition of life, and under every sun. The regulations of a new
+mining camp were fraught with as great interest to him as the
+accumulated precedents of the English Constitution, and he had
+investigated the rulings of the mixed courts of Egypt and of the
+government of the little Dutch republic near the Cape with as keen an
+effort to comprehend as he had shown in studying the laws of the
+American colonies and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
+
+But he was not always serious, and it sometimes happened that after he
+had arrived at some queer little island where the native prince and
+the English governor sat in judgment together, his interest in the
+intricacies of their laws would give way to the more absorbing
+occupation of chasing wild boar or shooting at tigers from the top of
+an elephant. And so he was not only regarded as an authority on many
+forms of government and of law, into which no one else had ever taken
+the trouble to look, but his books on big game were eagerly read and
+his articles in the magazines were earnestly discussed, whether they
+told of the divorce laws of Dakota, and the legal rights of widows in
+Cambodia, or the habits of the Mexican lion.
+
+Stuart loved his work better than he knew, but how well he loved Miss
+Delamar neither he nor his friends could tell. She was the most
+beautiful and lovely creature that he had ever seen, and of that only
+was he certain.
+
+Stuart was sitting in the club one day when the conversation turned to
+matrimony. He was among his own particular friends, the men before
+whom he could speak seriously or foolishly without fear of being
+misunderstood or of having what he said retold and spoiled in the
+telling. There was Seldon, the actor, and Rives, who painted pictures,
+and young Sloane, who travelled for pleasure and adventure, and
+Weimer, who stayed at home and wrote for the reviews. They were all
+bachelors, and very good friends, and jealously guarded their little
+circle from the intrusion of either men or women.
+
+"Of course the chief objection to marriage," Stuart said--it was the
+very day in which the picture had been sent to his rooms--"is the old
+one that you can't tell anything about it until you are committed to
+it forever. It is a very silly thing to discuss even, because there is
+no way of bringing it about, but there really should be some sort of a
+preliminary trial. As the man says in the play, 'You wouldn't buy a
+watch without testing it first.' You don't buy a hat even without
+putting it on, and finding out whether it is becoming or not, or
+whether your peculiar style of ugliness can stand it. And yet men go
+gayly off and get married, and make the most awful promises, and alter
+their whole order of life, and risk the happiness of some lovely
+creature on trust, as it were, knowing absolutely nothing of the new
+conditions and responsibilities of the life before them. Even a
+river-pilot has to serve an apprenticeship before he gets a license,
+and yet we are allowed to take just as great risks, and only because
+we _want_ to take them. It's awful, and it's all wrong."
+
+"Well, I don't see what one is going to do about it," commented young
+Sloane, lightly, "except to get divorced. That road is always open."
+
+Sloane was starting the next morning for the Somali Country, in
+Abyssinia, to shoot rhinoceros, and his interest in matrimony was in
+consequence somewhat slight.
+
+"It isn't the fear of the responsibilities that keeps Stuart, nor any
+one of us back," said Weimer, contemptuously. "It's because we're
+selfish. That's the whole truth of the matter. We love our work, or
+our pleasure, or to knock about the world, better than we do any
+particular woman. When one of us comes to love the woman best, his
+conscience won't trouble him long about the responsibilities of
+marrying her."
+
+"Not at all," said Stuart. "I am quite sincere; I maintain that there
+should be a preliminary stage. Of course there can't be, and it's
+absurd to think of it, but it would save a lot of unhappiness."
+
+"Well," said Seldon, dryly, "when you've invented a way to prevent
+marriage from being a lottery, let me know, will you?" He stood up and
+smiled nervously. "Any of you coming to see us to-night?" he asked.
+
+"That's so," exclaimed Weimer; "I forgot. It's the first night of 'A
+Fool and His Money,' isn't it? Of course we're coming."
+
+"I told them to put a box away for you in case you wanted it," Seldon
+continued. "Don't expect much. It's a silly piece, and I've a silly
+part, and I'm very bad in it. You must come around to supper, and tell
+me where I'm bad in it, and we will talk it over. You're coming,
+Stuart?"
+
+"My dear old man," said Stuart, reproachfully, "of course I am. I've
+had my seats for the last three weeks. Do you suppose I could miss
+hearing you mispronounce all the Hindostanee I've taught you?"
+
+"Well, good-night then," said the actor, waving his hand to his
+friends as he moved away. "'We, who are about to die, salute you!'"
+
+"Good luck to you," said Sloane, holding up his glass. "To the Fool
+and His Money," he laughed. He turned to the table again, and sounded
+the bell for the waiter. "Now let's send him a telegram and wish him
+success, and all sign it," he said, "and don't you fellows tell him
+that I wasn't in front to-night. I've got to go to a dinner the
+Travellers' Club are giving me." There was a protesting chorus of
+remonstrance. "Oh, I don't like it any better than you do," said
+Sloane, "but I'll get away, early and join you before the play's over.
+No one in the Travellers' Club, you see, has ever travelled farther
+from New York than London or the Riviera, and so when a member starts
+for Abyssinia they give him a dinner, and he has to take himself very
+seriously indeed, and cry with Seldon, 'I, who am about to die, salute
+you!' If that man there was any use," he added, interrupting himself
+and pointing with his glass at Stuart, "he'd pack up his things
+to-night and come with me."
+
+"Oh, don't urge him," remonstrated Weimer, who had travelled all over
+the world in imagination, with the aid of globes and maps, but never
+had got any farther from home than Montreal. "We can't spare Stuart.
+He has to stop here and invent a preliminary marriage state, so that
+if he finds he doesn't like a girl, he can leave her before it is too
+late."
+
+"You sail at seven, I believe, and from Hoboken, don't you?" asked
+Stuart, undisturbed. "If you'll start at eleven from the New York
+side, I think I'll go with you, but I hate getting up early; and then
+you see--I know what dangers lurk in Abyssinia, but who could tell
+what might not happen to him in Hoboken?"
+
+When Stuart returned to his room, he found a large package set upright
+in an armchair and enveloped by many wrappings; but the handwriting on
+the outside told him at once from whom it came and what it might be,
+and he pounced upon it eagerly and tore it from its covers. The
+photograph was a very large one, and the likeness to the original so
+admirable that the face seemed to smile and radiate with all the
+loveliness and beauty of Miss Delamar herself. Stuart beamed upon it
+with genuine surprise and pleasure, and exclaimed delightedly to
+himself. There was a living quality about the picture which made him
+almost speak to it, and thank Miss Delamar through it for the pleasure
+she had given him and the honor she had bestowed. He was proud,
+flattered, and triumphant, and while he walked about the room deciding
+where he would place it, and holding the picture respectfully before
+him, he smiled upon it with grateful satisfaction.
+
+He decided against his dressing-table as being too intimate a place
+for it, and so carried the picture on from his bedroom to the
+dining-room beyond, where he set it among his silver on the sideboard.
+But so little of his time was spent in this room that he concluded he
+would derive but little pleasure from it there, and so bore it back
+again into his library, where there were many other photographs and
+portraits, and where to other eyes than his own it would be less
+conspicuous.
+
+He tried it first in one place and then in another; but in each
+position the picture predominated and asserted itself so markedly,
+that Stuart gave up the idea of keeping it inconspicuous, and placed
+it prominently over the fireplace, where it reigned supreme above
+every other object in the room. It was not only the most conspicuous
+object there, but the living quality which it possessed in so marked a
+degree, and which was due to its naturalness of pose and the
+excellence of the likeness, made it permeate the place like a presence
+and with the individuality of a real person. Stuart observed this
+effect with amused interest, and noted also that the photographs of
+other women had become commonplace in comparison like lithographs in a
+shop-window, and that the more masculine accessories of a bachelor's
+apartment had grown suddenly aggressive and out of keeping. The
+liquor-case and the racks of arms and of barbarous weapons which he
+had collected with such pride seemed to have lost their former value
+and meaning, and he instinctively began to gather up the mass of books
+and maps and photographs and pipes and gloves which lay scattered upon
+the table, and to put them in their proper place, or to shove them out
+of sight altogether. "If I'm to live up to that picture," he thought,
+"I must see that George keeps this room in better order--and I must
+stop wandering round here in my bath-robe."
+
+His mind continued on the picture while he was dressing, and he was so
+absorbed in it and in analyzing the effect it had had upon him, that
+his servant spoke twice before he heard him.
+
+"No," he answered, "I shall not dine here to-night." Dining at home
+was with him a very simple affair, and a somewhat lonely one, and he
+avoided it almost nightly by indulging himself in a more expensive
+fashion.
+
+But even as he spoke an idea came to Stuart which made him reconsider
+his determination, and which struck him as so amusing, that he stopped
+pulling at his tie and smiled delightedly at himself in the glass
+before him.
+
+"Yes," he said, still smiling, "I will dine here to-night. Get me
+anything in a hurry. You need not wait now; go get the dinner up as
+soon as possible."
+
+The effect which the photograph of Miss Delamar had upon him, and the
+transformation it had accomplished in his room, had been as great as
+would have marked the presence there of the girl herself. While
+considering this it had come to Stuart, like a flash of inspiration,
+that here was a way by which he could test the responsibilities and
+conditions of married life without compromising either himself or the
+girl to whom he would suppose himself to be married.
+
+"I will put that picture at the head of the table," he said, "and I
+will play that it is she herself, her own beautiful, lovely self, and
+I will talk to her and exchange views with her, and make her answer me
+just as she would were we actually married and settled." He looked at
+his watch and found it was just seven o'clock. "I will begin now," he
+said, "and I will keep up the delusion until midnight. To-night is the
+best time to try the experiment, because the picture is new now, and
+its influence will be all the more real. In a few weeks it may have
+lost some of its freshness and reality and will have become one of the
+fixtures in the room."
+
+Stuart decided that under these new conditions it would be more
+pleasant to dine at Delmonico's, and he was on the point of asking the
+Picture what she thought of it, when he remembered that while it had
+been possible for him to make a practise of dining at that place as a
+bachelor, he could not now afford so expensive a luxury, and he
+decided that he had better economize in that particular and go instead
+to one of the _table d'hote_ restaurants in the neighborhood. He
+regretted not having thought of this sooner, for he did not care to
+dine at a _table d'hote_ in evening dress, as in some places it
+rendered him conspicuous. So, sooner than have this happen he decided
+to dine at home, as he had originally intended when he first thought
+of attempting this experiment, and then conducted the Picture in to
+dinner and placed her in an armchair facing him, with the candles full
+upon the face.
+
+"Now this is something like," he exclaimed, joyously. "I can't imagine
+anything better than this. Here we are all to ourselves with no one to
+bother us, with no chaperon, or chaperon's husband either, which is
+generally worse. Why is it, my dear," he asked, gayly, in a tone he
+considered affectionate and husbandly, "that the attractive chaperons
+are always handicapped by such stupid husbands, and vice versa?"
+
+"If that is true," replied the Picture, or replied Stuart, rather, for
+the Picture, "I cannot be a very attractive chaperon." Stuart bowed
+politely at this, and then considered the point it had raised as to
+whether he had, in assuming both characters, the right to pay himself
+compliments. He decided against himself in this particular instance,
+but agreed that he was not responsible for anything the Picture might
+say, so long as he sincerely and fairly tried to make it answer him as
+he thought the original would do under like circumstances. From what
+he knew of the original under other conditions, he decided that he
+could give a very close imitation of her point of view.
+
+Stuart's interest in his dinner was so real that he found himself
+neglecting his wife, and he had to pull himself up to his duty with a
+sharp reproof. After smiling back at her for a moment or two until his
+servant had again left them alone, he asked her to tell him what she
+had been doing during the day.
+
+"Oh, nothing very important," said the Picture. "I went shopping in
+the morning and--"
+
+Stuart stopped himself and considered this last remark doubtfully.
+"Now, how do I know she would go shopping?" he asked himself. "People
+from Harlem and women who like bargain-counters, and who eat chocolate
+meringue for lunch, and then stop in at a continuous performance, go
+shopping. It must be the comic-paper sort of wives who go about
+matching shades and buying hooks and eyes. Yes, I must have made Miss
+Delamar's understudy misrepresent her. I beg your pardon, my dear," he
+said aloud to the Picture. "You did _not_ go shopping this
+morning. You probably went to a woman's luncheon somewhere. Tell me
+about that."
+
+"Oh, yes, I went to lunch with the Antwerps," said the Picture, "and
+they had that Russian woman there who is getting up subscriptions for
+the Siberian prisoners. It's rather fine of her, because it exiles her
+from Russia. And she is a princess."
+
+"That's nothing," Stuart interrupted; "they're all princesses when you
+see them on Broadway."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the Picture.
+
+"It's of no consequence," said Stuart, apologetically, "it's a comic
+song. I forgot you didn't like comic songs. Well--go on."
+
+"Oh, then I went to a tea, and then I stopped in to hear Madame Ruvier
+read a paper on the Ethics of Ibsen, and she--"
+
+Stuart's voice had died away gradually, and he caught himself
+wondering whether he had told George to lay in a fresh supply of
+cigars. "I beg your pardon," he said, briskly, "I was listening, but I
+was just wondering whether I had any cigars left. You were saying that
+you had been at Madame Ruvier's, and--"
+
+"I am afraid that you were not interested," said the Picture. "Never
+mind, it's my fault. Sometimes I think I ought to do things of more
+interest, so that I should have something to talk to you about when
+you come home."
+
+Stuart wondered at what hour he would come home now that he was
+married. As a bachelor he had been in the habit of stopping on his way
+up-town from the law-office at the club, or to take tea at the houses
+of the different girls he liked. Of course he could not do that now as
+a married man. He would instead have to limit his calls to married
+women, as all the other married men of his acquaintance did. But at
+the moment he could not think of any attractive married women who
+would like his dropping in on them in such a familiar manner, and the
+other sort did not as yet appeal to him.
+
+He seated himself in front of the coal fire in the library, with the
+Picture in a chair close beside him, and as he puffed pleasantly on
+his cigar he thought how well this suited him, and how delightful it
+was to find content in so simple and continuing a pleasure. He could
+almost feel the pressure of his wife's hand as it lay in his own, as
+they sat in silent sympathy looking into the friendly glow of the
+fire.
+
+There was a long, pleasant pause.
+
+"They're giving Sloane a dinner to-night at the 'Travellers'," Stuart
+said, at last, "in honor of his going to Abyssinia."
+
+Stuart pondered for some short time as to what sort of a reply Miss
+Delamar's understudy ought to make to this innocent remark. He
+recalled the fact that on numerous occasions the original had shown
+not only a lack of knowledge of far-away places, but, what was more
+trying, a lack of interest as well. For the moment he could not see
+her robbed of her pretty environment and tramping through undiscovered
+countries at his side. So the Picture's reply, when it came, was
+strictly in keeping with several remarks which Miss Delamar herself
+had made to him in the past.
+
+"Yes," said the Picture, politely, "and where is Abyssinia--in India,
+isn't it?"
+
+"No, not exactly," corrected Stuart, mildly; "you pass it on your way
+to India, though, as you go through the Red Sea. Sloane is taking
+Winchesters with him and a double express and a 'five fifty.' He wants
+to test their penetration. I think myself that the express is the
+best, but he says Selous and Chanler think very highly of the
+Winchester. I don't know, I never shot a rhinoceros. The time I killed
+that elephant," he went on, pointing at two tusks that stood with some
+assegais in a corner, "I used an express, and I had to let go with
+both barrels. I suppose, though, if I'd needed a third shot, I'd have
+wished it was a Winchester. He was charging the smoke, you see, and I
+couldn't get away because I'd caught my foot--but I told you about
+that, didn't I?" Stuart interrupted himself to ask politely.
+
+"Yes," said the Picture, cheerfully, "I remember it very well; it was
+very foolish of you."
+
+Stuart straightened himself with a slightly injured air and avoided
+the Picture's eye. He had been stopped midway in what was one of his
+favorite stories, and it took a brief space of time for him to recover
+himself, and to sink back again into the pleasant lethargy in which he
+had been basking.
+
+"Still," he said, "I think the express is the better gun."
+
+"Oh, is an 'express' a gun?" exclaimed the Picture, with sudden
+interest. "Of course, I might have known."
+
+Stuart turned in his chair, and surveyed the Picture in some surprise.
+"But, my dear girl," he remonstrated, kindly, "why didn't you ask, if
+you didn't know what I was talking about? What did you suppose it
+was?"
+
+"I didn't know," said the Picture; "I thought it was something to do
+with his luggage. Abyssinia sounds so far away," she explained,
+smiling sweetly. "You can't expect one to be interested in such queer
+places, can you?"
+
+"No," Stuart answered, reluctantly, and looking steadily at the fire,
+"I suppose not. But you see, my dear," he said, "I'd have gone with
+him if I hadn't married you, and so I am naturally interested in his
+outfit. They wanted me to make a comparative study of the little
+semi-independent states down there, and of how far the Italian
+Government allows them to rule themselves. That's what I was to have
+done."
+
+But the Picture hastened to reassure him. "Oh, you mustn't think," she
+exclaimed, quickly, "that I mean to keep you at home. I love to
+travel, too. I want you to go on exploring places just as you've
+always done, only now I will go with you. We might do the Cathedral
+towns, for instance."
+
+"The what?" gasped Stuart, raising his head. "Oh, yes, of course," he
+added, hurriedly, sinking back into his chair with a slightly
+bewildered expression. "That would be very nice. Perhaps your mother
+would like to go, too; it's not a dangerous expedition, is it? I
+_was_ thinking of taking you on a trip through the South
+Seas--but I suppose the Cathedral towns are just as exciting. Or we
+might even penetrate as far into the interior as the English lakes and
+read Wordsworth and Coleridge as we go."
+
+Miss Delamar's understudy observed him closely for a moment, but he
+made no sign, and so she turned her eyes again to the fire with a
+slightly troubled look. She had not a strong sense of humor, but she
+was very beautiful.
+
+Stuart's conscience troubled him for the next few moments, and he
+endeavored to make up for his impatience of the moment before by
+telling the Picture how particularly well she was looking.
+
+"It seems almost selfish to keep it all to myself," he mused.
+
+"You don't mean," inquired the Picture, with tender anxiety, "that you
+want any one else here, do you? I'm sure I could be content to spend
+every evening like this. I've had enough of going out and talking to
+people I don't care about. Two seasons," she added, with the superior
+air of one who has put away childish things, "was quite enough of it
+for me."
+
+"Well, I never took it as seriously as that," said Stuart, "but, of
+course, I don't want any one else here to spoil our evening. It is
+perfect."
+
+He assured himself that it _was_ perfect, but he wondered what
+was the loyal thing for a married couple to do when the conversation
+came to a dead stop. And did the conversation come to a stop because
+they preferred to sit in silent sympathy and communion, or because
+they had nothing interesting to talk about? Stuart doubted if silence
+was the truest expression of the most perfect confidence and sympathy.
+He generally found when he was interested, that either he or his
+companion talked all the time. It was when he was bored that he sat
+silent. But it was probably different with married people. Possibly
+they thought of each other during these pauses, and of their own
+affairs and interests, and then he asked himself how many interests
+could one fairly retain with which the other had nothing to do?
+
+"I suppose," thought Stuart, "that I had better compromise and read
+aloud. Should you like me to read aloud?" he asked, doubtfully.
+
+The Picture brightened perceptibly at this, and said that she thought
+that would be charming. "We might make it quite instructive," she
+suggested, entering eagerly into the idea. "We ought to agree to read
+so many pages every night. Suppose we begin with Guizot's 'History of
+France.' I have always meant to read that, the illustrations look so
+interesting."
+
+"Yes, we might do that," assented Stuart, doubtfully. "It is in six
+volumes, isn't it? Suppose now, instead," he suggested, with an
+impartial air, "we begin that to-morrow night, and go this evening to
+see Seldon's new play, 'The Fool and His Money.' It's not too late,
+and he has saved a box for us, and Weimer and Rives and Sloane will be
+there, and--"
+
+The Picture's beautiful face settled for just an instant in an
+expression of disappointment. "Of course," she replied, slowly, "if
+you wish it. But I thought you said," she went on with a sweet smile,
+"that this was perfect. Now you want to go out again. Isn't this
+better than a hot theatre? You might put up with it for one evening,
+don't you think?"
+
+"Put up with it!" exclaimed Stuart, enthusiastically; "I could spend
+every evening so. It was only a suggestion. It wasn't that I wanted to
+go so much as that I thought Seldon might be a little hurt if I
+didn't. But I can tell him you were not feeling very well, and that we
+will come some other evening. He generally likes to have us there on
+the first night, that's all. But he'll understand."
+
+"Oh," said the Picture, "if you put it in the light of a duty to your
+friend, of course we will go--"
+
+"Not at all," replied Stuart, heartily; "I will read something. I
+should really prefer it. How would you like something of Browning's?"
+
+"Oh, I read all of Browning once," said the Picture. "I think I should
+like something new."
+
+Stuart gasped at this, but said nothing, and began turning over the
+books on the centre-table. He selected one of the monthly magazines,
+and choosing a story which neither of them had read, sat down
+comfortably in front of the fire, and finished it without interruption
+and to the satisfaction of the Picture and himself. The story had made
+the half hour pass very pleasantly, and they both commented on it with
+interest.
+
+"I had an experience once myself something like that," said Stuart,
+with a pleased smile of recollection; "it happened in Paris"--he began
+with the deliberation of a man who is sure of his story--"and it
+turned out in much the same way. It didn't begin in Paris; it really
+began while we were crossing the English Channel to--"
+
+"Oh, you mean about the Russian who took you for some one else and had
+you followed," said the Picture. "Yes, that was like it, except that
+in your case nothing happened."
+
+Stuart took his cigar from between his lips and frowned severely at
+the lighted end for some little time before he spoke.
+
+"My dear," he remonstrated, gently, "you mustn't tell me I've told you
+all my old stories before. It isn't fair. Now that I am married, you
+see, I can't go about and have new experiences, and I've got to make
+use of the old ones."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," exclaimed the Picture, remorsefully. "I didn't
+mean to be rude. Please tell me about it. I should like to hear it
+again, ever so much. I _should_ like to hear it again, really."
+
+"Nonsense," said Stuart, laughing and shaking his head. "I was only
+joking; personally I hate people who tell long stories. That doesn't
+matter. I was thinking of something else."
+
+He continued thinking of something else, which was, that though he had
+been in jest when he spoke of having given up the chance of meeting
+fresh experiences, he had nevertheless described a condition, and a
+painfully true one. His real life seemed to have stopped, and he saw
+himself in the future looking back and referring to it, as though it
+were the career of an entirely different person, of a young man, with
+quick sympathies which required satisfying, as any appetite requires
+food. And he had an uncomfortable doubt that these many ever-ready
+sympathies would rebel if fed on only one diet.
+
+The Picture did not interrupt him in his thoughts, and he let his mind
+follow his eyes as they wandered over the objects above him on the
+mantel-shelf. They all meant something from the past--a busy,
+wholesome past which had formed habits of thought and action, habits
+he could no longer enjoy alone, and which, on the other hand, it was
+quite impossible for him to share with any one else. He was no longer
+to be alone.
+
+Stuart stirred uneasily in his chair and poked at the fire before him.
+
+"Do you remember the day you came to see me," said the Picture,
+sentimentally, "and built the fire yourself and lighted some girl's
+letters to make it burn?"
+
+"Yes," said Stuart, "that is, I _said_ that they were some girl's
+letters. It made it more picturesque. I am afraid they were bills. I
+should say I did remember it," he continued, enthusiastically. "You
+wore a black dress and little red slippers with big black rosettes,
+and you looked as beautiful as--as night--as a moonlight night."
+
+The Picture frowned slightly.
+
+"You are always telling me about how I looked," she complained; "can't
+you remember any time when we were together without remembering what I
+had on and how I appeared?"
+
+"I cannot," said Stuart, promptly. "I can recall lots of other things
+besides, but I can't forget how you looked. You have a fashion of
+emphasizing episodes in that way which is entirely your own. But, as I
+say, I can remember something else. Do you remember, for instance,
+when we went up to West Point on that yacht? Wasn't it a grand day,
+with the autumn leaves on both sides of the Hudson, and the dress
+parade, and the dance afterward at the hotel?"
+
+"Yes, I should think I did," said the Picture, smiling. "You spent all
+your time examining cannon, and talking to the men about 'firing in
+open order,' and left me all alone."
+
+"Left you all alone! I like that," laughed Stuart; "all alone with
+about eighteen officers."
+
+"Well, but that was natural," returned the Picture. "They were men.
+It's natural for a girl to talk to men, but why should a man want to
+talk to men?"
+
+"Well, I know better than that now," said Stuart.
+
+He proceeded to show that he knew better by remaining silent for the
+next half hour, during which time he continued to wonder whether this
+effort to keep up a conversation was not radically wrong. He thought
+of several things he might say, but he argued that it was an
+impossible situation where a man had to make conversation with his own
+wife.
+
+The clock struck ten as he sat waiting, and he moved uneasily in his
+chair.
+
+"What is it?" asked the Picture; "what makes you so restless?"
+
+Stuart regarded the Picture timidly for a moment before he spoke. "I
+was just thinking," he said, doubtfully, "that we might run down after
+all, and take a look in at the last act; it's not too late even now.
+They're sure to run behind on the first night. And then," he urged,
+"we can go around and see Seldon. You have never been behind the
+scenes, have you? It's very interesting."
+
+"No, I have not; but if we do," remonstrated the Picture,
+pathetically, "you _know_ all those men will come trooping home
+with us. You know they will."
+
+"But that's very complimentary," said Stuart. "Why, I like my friends
+to like my wife."
+
+"Yes, but you know how they stay when they get here," she answered; "I
+don't believe they ever sleep. Don't you remember the last supper you
+gave me before we were married, when Mrs. Starr and you all were
+discussing Mr. Seldon's play? She didn't make a move to go until
+half-past two, and I was _that_ sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes
+open."
+
+"Yes," said Stuart, "I remember. I'm sorry. I thought it was very
+interesting. Seldon changed the whole second act on account of what
+she said. Well, after this," he laughed with cheerful desperation, "I
+think I shall make up for the part of a married man in a pair of
+slippers and a dressing-gown, and then perhaps I won't be tempted to
+roam abroad at night."
+
+"You must wear the gown they are going to give you at Oxford," said
+the Picture, smiling placidly. "The one Aunt Lucy was telling me
+about. Why do they give you a gown?" she asked. "It seems such an odd
+thing to do."
+
+"The gown comes with the degree, I believe," said Stuart.
+
+"But why do they give _you_ a degree?" persisted the Picture;
+"you never studied at Oxford, did you?"
+
+Stuart moved slightly in his chair and shook his head. "I thought I
+told you," he said, gently. "No, I never studied there. I wrote some
+books on--things, and they liked them."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember now, you did tell me," said the Picture; "and I
+told Aunt Lucy about it, and said we would be in England during the
+season when you got your degree, and she said you must be awfully
+clever to get it. You see--she does appreciate you, and you always
+treat her so distantly."
+
+"Do I?" said Stuart, quietly. "I'm sorry."
+
+"Will you have your portrait painted in it?" asked the Picture.
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In the gown. You are not listening," said the Picture, reproachfully.
+"You ought to. Aunt Lucy says it's a beautiful shade of red silk, and
+very long. Is it?"
+
+"I don't know," said Stuart. He shook his head, and dropping his chin
+into his hands, stared coldly down into the fire. He tried to persuade
+himself that he had been vainglorious, and that he had given too much
+weight to the honor which the University of Oxford would bestow upon
+him; that he had taken the degree too seriously, and that the
+Picture's view of it was the view of the rest of the world. But he
+could not convince himself that he was entirely at fault.
+
+"Is it too late to begin on Guizot?" suggested his Picture, as an
+alternative to his plan. "It sounds so improving."
+
+"Yes, it is much too late," answered Stuart, decidedly. "Besides, I
+don't want to be improved. I want to be amused, or inspired, or
+scolded. The chief good of friends is that they do one of these three
+things, and a wife should do all three."
+
+"Which shall I do?" asked the Picture, smiling good-humoredly.
+
+Stuart looked at the beautiful face and at the reclining figure of the
+woman to whom he was to turn for sympathy for the rest of his life,
+and felt a cold shiver of terror, that passed as quickly as it came.
+He reached out his hand and placed it on the arm of the chair where
+his wife's hand should have been, and patted the place kindly. He
+would shut his eyes to everything but that she was good and sweet and
+his wife. Whatever else she lacked that her beauty had covered up and
+hidden, and the want of which had Iain unsuspected in their previous
+formal intercourse, could not be mended now. He would settle his step
+to hers, and eliminate all those interests from his life which were
+not hers as well. He had chosen a beautiful idol, and not a companion,
+for a wife. He had tried to warm his hands at the fire of a diamond.
+
+Stuart's eyes closed wearily as though to shut out the memories of the
+past, or the foreknowledge of what the future was sure to be. His head
+sank forward on his breast, and with his hand shading his eyes, he
+looked beyond, through the dying fire, into the succeeding years.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+The gay little French clock on the table sounded the hour of midnight
+briskly, with a pert, insistent clamor, and at the same instant a
+boisterous and unruly knocking answered it from outside the library
+door.
+
+Stuart rose uncertainly from his chair and surveyed the tiny clock
+face with a startled expression of bewilderment and relief.
+
+"Stuart!" his friends called impatiently from the hall. "Stuart, let
+us in!" and without waiting further for recognition a merry company of
+gentlemen pushed their way noisily into the room.
+
+"Where the devil have you been?" demanded Weimer. "You don't deserve
+to be spoken to at all after quitting us like that. But Seldon is so
+good-natured," he went on, "that he sent us after you. It was a great
+success, and he made a rattling good speech, and you missed the whole
+thing; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. We've asked half the
+people in front to supper--two stray Englishmen, all the Wilton girls
+and their governor, and the chap that wrote the play. And Seldon and
+his brother Sam are coming as soon as they get their make-up off.
+Don't stand there like that, but hurry. What have you been doing?"
+
+Stuart gave a nervous, anxious laugh. "Oh, don't ask me," he cried.
+"It was awful. I've been trying an experiment, and I had to keep it up
+until midnight, and--I'm so glad you fellows have come," he continued,
+halting midway in his explanation. "I _was_ blue."
+
+"You've been asleep in front of the fire," said young Sloane, "and
+you've been dreaming."
+
+"Perhaps," laughed Stuart, gayly, "perhaps. But I'm awake now, in any
+event. Sloane, old man," he cried, dropping both hands on the
+youngster's shoulders, "how much money have you? Enough to take me to
+Gibraltar? They can cable me the rest."
+
+"Hoorah!" shouted Sloane, waltzing from one end of the room to the
+other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang.
+"There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his side; "you
+can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all
+yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the
+Winchester is the better gun."
+
+"All right," returned Stuart, gayly, "and I'll try to prove that the
+Italians don't know how to govern a native state. But who is giving
+this supper, anyway?" he demanded. "That is the main thing--that's
+what I want to know."
+
+"You've got to pack, haven't you?" suggested Rives.
+
+"I'll pack when I get back," said Stuart, struggling into his
+greatcoat, and searching in his pockets for his gloves. "Besides, my
+things are always ready and there's plenty of time; the boat doesn't
+leave for six hours yet."
+
+"We'll all come back and help," said Weimer.
+
+"Then I'll never get away," laughed Stuart. He was radiant, happy, and
+excited, like a boy back from school for the holidays. But when they
+had reached the pavement, he halted and ran his hand down into his
+pocket, as though feeling for his latch-key, and stood looking
+doubtfully at his friends.
+
+"What is it now?" asked Rives, impatiently. "Have you forgotten
+something?"
+
+Stuart looked back at the front door in momentary indecision.
+
+"Ye-es," he answered. "I did forget something. But it doesn't matter,"
+he added, cheerfully, taking Sloane's arm.
+
+"Come on," he said, "and so Seldon made a hit, did he? I am glad--and
+tell me, old man, how long will we have to wait at Gib for the P. & O.?"
+
+Stuart's servant had heard the men trooping down the stairs, laughing
+and calling to one another as they went, and judging from this that
+they had departed for the night, he put out all the lights in the
+library and closed the piano, and lifted the windows to clear the room
+of the tobacco-smoke. He did not notice the beautiful photograph
+sitting upright in the armchair before the fireplace, and so left it
+alone in the deserted library.
+
+The cold night-air swept in through the open window and chilled the
+silent room, and the dead coals in the grate dropped one by one into
+the fender with a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture still sat in
+the armchair with the same graceful pose and the same lovely
+expression, and smiled sweetly at the encircling darkness.
+
+
+
+
+THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING
+
+
+The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the
+one who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a
+printer's devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to
+graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer
+take down speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real
+reporter, with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking
+acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even excepting
+Police Captains.
+
+That is the old time journalist's idea of it. That is the way he was
+trained, and that is why at the age of sixty he is still a reporter.
+If you train up a youth in this way, he will go into reporting with
+too full a knowledge of the newspaper business, with no illusions
+concerning it, and with no ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen and
+justifiable impression that he is not paid enough for what he does.
+And he will only do what he is paid to do.
+
+Now, you cannot pay a good reporter for what he does, because he does
+not work for pay. He works for his paper. He gives his time, his
+health, his brains, his sleeping hours, and his eating hours, and
+sometimes his life, to get news for it. He thinks the sun rises only
+that men may have light by which to read it. But if he has been in a
+newspaper office from his youth up, he finds out before he becomes a
+reporter that this is not so, and loses his real value. He should come
+right out of the University where he has been doing "campus notes" for
+the college weekly, and be pitchforked out into city work without
+knowing whether the Battery is at Harlem or Hunter's Point, and with
+the idea that he is a Moulder of Public Opinion and that the Power of
+the Press is greater than the Power of Money, and that the few lines
+he writes are of more value in the Editor's eyes than is the column of
+advertising on the last page, which they are not.
+
+After three years--it is sometimes longer, sometimes not so long--he
+finds out that he has given his nerves and his youth and his
+enthusiasm in exchange for a general fund of miscellaneous knowledge,
+the opportunity of personal encounter with all the greatest and most
+remarkable men and events that have risen in those three years, and a
+great fund of resource an patience. He will find that he has crowded
+the experiences of the lifetime of the ordinary young business man,
+doctor, or lawyer, or man about town, into three short years; that he
+has learned to think and to act quickly, to be patient and unmoved
+when every one else has lost his head, actually or figuratively
+speaking; to write as fast as another man can talk, and to be able to
+talk with authority on matters of which other men do not venture even
+to think until they have read what he has written with a copy-boy at
+his elbow on the night previous.
+
+It is necessary for you to know this, that you may understand what
+manner of man young Albert Gordon was.
+
+Young Gordon had been a reporter just three years. He had left Yale
+when his last living relative died, and had taken the morning train
+for New York, where they had promised him reportorial work on one of
+the innumerable Greatest New York Dailies. He arrived at the office at
+noon, and was sent back over the same road on which he had just come,
+to Spuyten Duyvil, where a train had been wrecked and everybody of
+consequence to suburban New York killed. One of the old reporters
+hurried him to the office again with his "copy," and after he had
+delivered that, he was sent to the Tombs to talk French to a man in
+Murderers' Row, who could not talk anything else, but who had shown
+some international skill in the use of a jimmy. And at eight, he
+covered a flower-show in Madison Square Garden; and at eleven was sent
+over the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at
+the losses to the insurance companies.
+
+He went to bed at one, and dreamed of shattered locomotives, human
+beings lying still with blankets over them, rows of cells, and banks
+of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass
+band in the gallery. He decided when he awoke the next morning that he
+had entered upon a picturesque and exciting career, and as one day
+followed another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more
+and more devoted to it. He was twenty then, and he was now
+twenty-three, and in that time had become a great reporter, and had
+been to Presidential conventions in Chicago, revolutions in Hayti,
+Indian outbreaks on the Plains, and midnight meetings of moonlighters
+in Tennessee, and had seen what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and
+fever could do in great cities, and had contradicted the President,
+and borrowed matches from burglars. And now he thought he would like
+to rest and breathe a bit, and not to work again unless as a war
+correspondent. The only obstacle to his becoming a great war
+correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war, and a war
+correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual as a
+general without an army. He read the papers every morning on the
+elevated trains for war clouds; but though there were many war clouds,
+they always drifted apart, and peace smiled again. This was very
+disappointing to young Gordon, and he became more and more keenly
+discouraged.
+
+And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to write his
+novel. It was to be a novel of New York life, and he wanted a quiet
+place in which to work on it. He was already making inquiries among
+the suburban residents of his acquaintance for just such a quiet spot,
+when he received an offer to go to the Island of Opeki in the North
+Pacific Ocean, as secretary to the American consul at that place. The
+gentleman who had been appointed by the President to act as consul at
+Opeki was Captain Leonard T. Travis, a veteran of the Civil War, who
+had contracted a severe attack of rheumatism while camping out at
+night in the dew, and who on account of this souvenir of his efforts
+to save the Union had allowed the Union he had saved to support him in
+one office or another ever since. He had met young Gordon at a dinner,
+and had had the presumption to ask him to serve as his secretary, and
+Gordon, much to his surprise, had accepted his offer. The idea of a
+quiet life in the tropics with new and beautiful surroundings, and
+with nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, and to write
+his novel besides, seemed to Albert to be just what he wanted; and
+though he did not know nor care much for his superior officer, he
+agreed to go with him promptly, and proceeded to say good-by to his
+friends and to make his preparations. Captain Travis was so delighted
+with getting such a clever young gentleman for his secretary, that he
+referred to him to his friends as "my attache of legation"; nor did he
+lessen that gentleman's dignity by telling any one that the attache's
+salary was to be five hundred dollars a year. His own salary was only
+fifteen hundred dollars; and though his brother-in-law, Senator
+Rainsford, tried his best to get the amount raised, he was
+unsuccessful. The consulship to Opeki was instituted early in the
+'50's, to get rid of and reward a third or fourth cousin of the
+President's, whose services during the campaign were important, but
+whose after-presence was embarrassing. He had been created consul to
+Opeki as being more distant and unaccessible than any other known
+spot, and had lived and died there; and so little was known of the
+island, and so difficult was communication with it, that no one knew
+he was dead, until Captain Travis, in his hungry haste for office, had
+uprooted the sad fact. Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had a
+secondary reason for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician had told
+him to go to some warm climate for his rheumatism, and in accepting
+the consulship his object was rather to follow out his doctor's orders
+at his country's expense, than to serve his country at the expense of
+his rheumatism.
+
+Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that
+it was situated about one hundred miles from the Island of Octavia,
+which island, in turn, was simply described as a coaling-station three
+hundred miles distant from the coast of California. Steamers from San
+Francisco to Yokohama stopped every third week at Octavia, and that
+was all that either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of
+their new home. This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to
+stay only as long as he liked it, and to return to the States within a
+few months if he found such a change of plan desirable.
+
+As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he thought
+it would be advisable to furnish himself with a supply of articles
+with which he might trade with the native Opekians, and for this
+purpose he purchased a large quantity of brass rods, because he had
+read that Stanley did so, and added to these brass curtain-chains, and
+about two hundred leaden medals similar to those sold by street
+peddlers during the Constitutional Centennial Celebration in New York
+City.
+
+He also collected even more beautiful but less expensive decorations
+for Christmas-trees, at a wholesale house on Park Row. These he hoped
+to exchange for furs or feathers or weapons, or for whatever other
+curious and valuable trophies the Island of Opeki boasted. He already
+pictured his rooms on his return hung fantastically with crossed
+spears and boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly idols.
+
+His friends told him that he was doing a very foolish thing, and
+argued that once out of the newspaper world, it would be hard to
+regain his place in it. But he thought the novel that he would write
+while lost to the world at Opeki would serve to make up for his
+temporary absence from it, and he expressly and impressively
+stipulated that the editor should wire him if there was a war.
+
+Captain Travis and his secretary crossed the continent without
+adventure, and took passage from San Francisco on the first steamer
+that touched at Octavia. They reached that island in three days, and
+learned with some concern that there was no regular communication with
+Opeki, and that it would be necessary to charter a sailboat for the
+trip. Two fishermen agreed to take them and their trunks, and to get
+them to their destination within sixteen hours if the wind held good.
+It was a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with calm, relentless
+persistence from what was apparently a clear sky; the wind tossed the
+waves as high as the mast and made Captain Travis ill; and as there
+was no deck to the big boat, they were forced to huddle up under
+pieces of canvas, and talked but little. Captain Travis complained of
+frequent twinges of rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale
+at the empty waste of water.
+
+"If I've got to serve a term of imprisonment on a rock in the middle
+of the ocean for four years," he said, "I might just as well have done
+something first to deserve it. This is a pretty way to treat a man who
+bled for his country. This is gratitude, this is." Albert pulled
+heavily on his pipe, and wiped the rain and spray from his face and
+smiled.
+
+"Oh, it won't be so bad when we get there," he said; "they say these
+Southern people are always hospitable, and the whites will be glad to
+see any one from the States."
+
+"There will be a round of diplomatic dinners," said the consul, with
+an attempt at cheerfulness. "I have brought two uniforms to wear at
+them."
+
+It was seven o'clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and one of
+the black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a little low
+line on the horizon.
+
+"Opeki," he said. The line grew in length until it proved to be an
+island with great mountains rising to the clouds, and, as they drew
+nearer and nearer, showed a level coast running back to the foot of
+the mountains and covered with a forest of palms. They next made out a
+village of thatched huts around a grassy square, and at some distance
+from the village a wooden structure with a tin roof.
+
+"I wonder where the town is?" asked the consul, with a nervous glance
+at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he saw was the town.
+
+"That?" gasped the consul. "Is that where all the people on the island
+live?"
+
+The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were other
+natives further back in the mountains, but that they were bad men who
+fought and ate each other. The consul and his attache of legation
+gazed at the mountains with unspoken misgivings. They were quite near
+now, and could see an immense crowd of men and women, all of them
+black, and clad but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them.
+They seemed greatly excited and ran in and out of the huts, and up and
+down the beach, as wildly as so many black ants. But in the front of
+the group they distinguished three men who they could see were white,
+though they were clothed, like the others, simply in a shirt and a
+short pair of trousers. Two of these three suddenly sprang away on a
+run and disappeared among the palm-trees; but the third one, when he
+recognized the American flag in the halyards, threw his straw hat in
+the water and began turning handsprings over the sand.
+
+"That young gentleman, at least," said Albert, gravely, "seems pleased
+to see us."
+
+A dozen of the natives sprang into the water and came wading and
+swimming toward them, grinning and shouting and swinging their arms.
+
+"I don't think it's quite safe, do you?" said the consul, looking out
+wildly to the open sea. "You see, they don't know who I am."
+
+A great black giant threw one arm over the gunwale and shouted
+something that sounded as if it were spelt Owah, Owah, as the boat
+carried him through the surf.
+
+"How do you do?" said Gordon, doubtfully. The boat shook the giant off
+under the wave and beached itself so suddenly that the American consul
+was thrown forward to his knees. Gordon did not wait to pick him up,
+but jumped out and shook hands with the young man who had turned
+handsprings, while the natives gathered about them in a circle and
+chatted and laughed in delighted excitement.
+
+"I'm awfully glad to see you," said the young man, eagerly. "My name's
+Stedman. I'm from New Haven, Connecticut. Where are you from?"
+
+"New York," said Albert. "This," he added, pointing solemnly to
+Captain Travis, who was still on his knees in the boat, "is the
+American consul to Opeki." The American consul to Opeki gave a wild
+look at Mr. Stedman of New Haven and at the natives.
+
+"See here, young man," he gasped, "is this all there is of Opeki?"
+
+"The American consul?" said young Stedman, with a gasp of amazement,
+and looking from Albert to Captain Travis. "Why, I never supposed they
+would send another here; the last one died about fifteen years ago,
+and there hasn't been one since. I've been living in the consul's
+office with the Bradleys, but I'll move out, of course. I'm sure I'm
+awfully glad to see you. It'll make it so much more pleasant for me."
+
+"Yes," said Captain Travis, bitterly, as he lifted his rheumatic leg
+over the boat; "that's why we came."
+
+Mr. Stedman did not notice this. He was too much pleased to be
+anything but hospitable. "You are soaking wet, aren't you?" he said;
+"and hungry, I guess. You come right over to the consul's office and
+get on some other things."
+
+He turned to the natives and gave some rapid orders in their language,
+and some of them jumped into the boat at this, and began to lift out
+the trunks, and others ran off toward a large, stout old native, who
+was sitting gravely on a log, smoking, with the rain beating unnoticed
+on his gray hair.
+
+"They've gone to tell the King," said Stedman; "but you'd better get
+something to eat first, and then I'll be happy to present you
+properly."
+
+"The King," said Captain Travis, with some awe; "is there a king?"
+
+"I never saw a king," Gordon remarked, "and I'm sure I never expected
+to see one sitting on a log in the rain."
+
+"He's a very good king," said Stedman, confidentially; "and though you
+mightn't think it to look at him, he's a terrible stickler for
+etiquette and form. After supper he'll give you an audience; and if
+you have any tobacco, you had better give him some as a present, and
+you'd better say it's from the President: he doesn't like to take
+presents from common people, he's so proud. The only reason he borrows
+mine is because he thinks I'm the President's son."
+
+"What makes him think that?" demanded the consul, with some shortness.
+Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at the consul and at Albert, and
+said that he guessed some one must have told him.
+
+The consul's office was divided into four rooms with an open court in
+the middle, filled with palms, and watered somewhat unnecessarily by a
+fountain.
+
+"I made that," said Stedman, in a modest, offhand way. "I made it out
+of hollow bamboo reeds connected with a spring. And now I'm making one
+for the King. He saw this and had a lot of bamboo sticks put up all
+over the town, without any underground connections, and couldn't make
+out why the water wouldn't spurt out of them. And because mine spurts,
+he thinks I'm a magician."
+
+"I suppose," grumbled the consul, "some one told him that too."
+
+[Illustration: "I never saw a king," Gordon remarked.]
+
+"I suppose so," said Mr. Stedman, uneasily.
+
+There was a veranda around the consul's office, and inside the walls
+were hung with skins, and pictures from illustrated papers, and there
+was a good deal of bamboo furniture, and four broad, cool-looking
+beds. The place was as clean as a kitchen. "I made the furniture,"
+said Stedman, "and the Bradleys keep the place in order."
+
+"Who are the Bradleys?" asked Albert.
+
+"The Bradleys are those two men you saw with me," said Stedman; "they
+deserted from a British man-of-war that stopped here for coal, and
+they act as my servants. One is Bradley, Sr., and the other Bradley,
+Jr."
+
+"Then vessels do stop here occasionally?" the consul said, with a
+pleased smile.
+
+"Well, not often," said Stedman. "Not so very often; about once a
+year. The Nelson thought this was Octavia, and put off again as soon
+as she found out her mistake, but the Bradleys took to the bush, and
+the boat's crew couldn't find them. When they saw your flag, they
+thought you might mean to send them back, so they ran off to hide
+again; they'll be back, though, when they get hungry."
+
+The supper young Stedman spread for his guests, as he still treated
+them, was very refreshing and very good. There was cold fish and
+pigeon pie, and a hot omelet filled with mushrooms and olives and
+tomatoes and onions all sliced up together, and strong black coffee.
+After supper, Stedman went off to see the King, and came back in a
+little while to say that his Majesty would give them an audience the
+next day after breakfast. "It is too dark now," Stedman explained;
+"and it's raining so that they can't make the street-lamps burn. Did
+you happen to notice our lamps? I invented them; but they don't work
+very well yet. I've got the right idea, though, and I'll soon have the
+town illuminated all over, whether it rains or not."
+
+The consul had been very silent and indifferent, during supper, to all
+around him. Now he looked up with some show of interest.
+
+"How much longer is it going to rain, do you think?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Stedman, critically. "Not more than two
+months, I should say." The consul rubbed his rheumatic leg and sighed,
+but said nothing.
+
+The Bradleys returned about ten o'clock, and came in very sheepishly.
+The consul had gone off to pay the boatmen who had brought them, and
+Albert in his absence assured the sailors that there was not the least
+danger of their being sent away. Then he turned into one of the beds,
+and Stedman took one in another room, leaving the room he had occupied
+heretofore for the consul. As he was saying good-night, Albert
+suggested that he had not yet told them how he came to be on a
+deserted island; but Stedman only laughed and said that that was a
+long story, and that he would tell him all about it in the morning. So
+Albert went off to bed without waiting for the consul to return, and
+fell asleep, wondering at the strangeness of his new life, and
+assuring himself that if the rain only kept up, he would have his
+novel finished in a month.
+
+The sun was shining brightly when he awoke, and the palm-trees outside
+were nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. From the court came the odor
+of strange flowers, and from the window he could see the ocean
+brilliantly blue, and with the sun coloring the spray that beat
+against the coral reefs on the shore.
+
+"Well, the consul can't complain of this," he said, with a laugh of
+satisfaction; and pulling on a bath-robe, he stepped into the next
+room to awaken Captain Travis. But the room was quite empty, and the
+bed undisturbed. The consul's trunk remained just where it had been
+placed near the door, and on it lay a large sheet of foolscap, with
+writing on it, and addressed at the top to Albert Gordon. The
+handwriting was the consul's. Albert picked it up and read it with
+much anxiety. It began abruptly
+
+    The fishermen who brought us to this forsaken spot tell me that
+    it rains here six months in the year, and that this is the first
+    month. I came here to serve my country, for which I fought and
+    bled, but I did not come here to die of rheumatism and pneumonia.
+    I can serve my country better by staying alive; and whether it
+    rains or not, I don't like it. I have been grossly deceived, and
+    I am going back. Indeed, by the time you get this, I will be on
+    my return trip, as I intend leaving with the men who brought us
+    here as soon as they can get the sail up. My cousin, Senator
+    Rainsford, can fix it all right with the President, and can have
+    me recalled in proper form after I get back. But of course it
+    would not do for me to leave my post with no one to take my
+    place, and no one could be more ably fitted to do so than
+    yourself; so I feel no compunctions at leaving you behind. I
+    hereby, therefore, accordingly appoint you my substitute with
+    full power to act, to collect all fees, sign all papers, and
+    attend to all matters pertaining to your office as American
+    consul, and I trust you will worthily uphold the name of that
+    country and government which it has always been my pleasure and
+    duty to serve.
+
+    Your sincere friend and superior officer,
+
+    LEONARD T. TRAVIS.
+
+    P.S. I did not care to disturb you by moving my trunk, so I left
+    it, and you can make what use you please of whatever it contains,
+    as I shall not want tropical garments where I am going. What you
+    will need most, I think, is a waterproof and umbrella.
+
+    P.S. Look out for that young man Stedman. He is too inventive. I
+    hope you will like your high office; but as for myself, I am
+    satisfied with little old New York. Opeki is just a bit too far
+    from civilization to suit me.
+
+Albert held the letter before him and read it over again before he
+moved. Then he jumped to the window. The boat was gone, and there was
+not a sign of it on the horizon.
+
+"The miserable old hypocrite!" he cried, half angry and half laughing.
+"If he thinks I am going to stay here alone he is very greatly
+mistaken. And yet, why not?" he asked. He stopped soliloquizing and
+looked around him, thinking rapidly. As he stood there, Stedman came
+in from the other room, fresh and smiling from his morning's bath.
+
+"Good-morning," he said, "where's the consul?"
+
+"The consul," said Albert, gravely, "is before you. In me you see the
+American consul to Opeki."
+
+"Captain Travis," Albert explained, "has returned to the United
+States. I suppose he feels that he can best serve his country by
+remaining on the spot. In case of another war, now, for instance, he
+would be there to save it again."
+
+"And what are you going to do?" asked Stedman, anxiously. "You will
+not run away, too, will you?"
+
+Albert said that he intended to remain where he was and perform his
+consular duties, to appoint him his secretary, and to elevate the
+United States in the opinion of the Opekians above all other nations.
+
+"They may not think much of the United States in England," he said;
+"but we are going to teach the people of Opeki that America is first
+on the map and that there is no second."
+
+"I'm sure it's very good of you to make me your secretary," said
+Stedman, with some pride. "I hope I won't make any mistakes. What are
+the duties of a consul's secretary?" "That," said Albert, "I do not
+know. But you are rather good at inventing, so you can invent a few.
+That should be your first duty and you should attend to it at once. I
+will have trouble enough finding work for myself. Your salary is five
+hundred dollars a year; and now," he continued briskly, "we want to
+prepare for this reception. We can tell the King that Travis was just
+a guard of honor for the trip, and that I have sent him back to tell
+the President of my safe arrival. That will keep the President from
+getting anxious. There; is nothing," continued Albert, "like a uniform
+to impress people who live in the tropics, and Travis, it so happens,
+has two in his trunk. He intended to wear them on State occasions, and
+as I inherit the trunk and all that is in it, I intend to wear one of
+the uniforms, and you can have the other. But I have first choice,
+because I am consul."
+
+Captain Travis's consular outfit consisted of one full dress and one
+undress United States uniform. Albert put on the dress-coat over a
+pair of white flannel trousers, and looked remarkably brave and
+handsome. Stedman, who was only eighteen and quite thin, did not
+appear so well, until Albert suggested his padding out his chest and
+shoulders with towels. This made him rather warm, but helped his
+general appearance.
+
+"The two Bradleys must dress up, too," said Albert. "I think they
+ought to act as a guard of honor, don't you? The only things I have
+are blazers and jerseys; but it doesn't much matter what they wear, as
+long as they dress alike."
+
+He accordingly called in the two Bradleys, and gave them each a pair
+of the captain's rejected white duck trousers, and a blue jersey
+apiece, with a big white Y on it.
+
+"The students of Yale gave me that," he said to the younger Bradley,
+"in which to play football, and a great man gave me the other. His
+name is Walter Camp; and if you rip or soil that jersey, I'll send you
+back to England in irons; so be careful."
+
+Stedman gazed at his companions in their different costumes,
+doubtfully. "It reminds me," he said, "of private theatricals. Of the
+time our church choir played 'Pinafore.'"
+
+"Yes," assented Albert; "but I don't think we look quite gay enough. I
+tell you what we need--medals. You never saw a diplomat without a lot
+of decorations and medals."
+
+"Well, I can fix that," Stedman said. "I've got a trunkful. I used to
+be the fastest bicycle-rider in Connecticut, and I've got all my
+prizes with me."
+
+Albert said doubtfully that that wasn't exactly the sort of medal he
+meant.
+
+"Perhaps not," returned Stedman, as he began fumbling in his trunk;
+"but the King won't know the difference. He couldn't tell a cross of
+the Legion of Honor from a medal for the tug of war."
+
+So the bicycle medals, of which Stedman seemed to have an innumerable
+quantity, were strung in profusion over Albert's uniform, and in a
+lesser quantity over Stedman's; while a handful of leaden ones, those
+sold on the streets for the Constitutional Centennial, with which
+Albert had provided himself, were wrapped up in a red silk
+handkerchief for presentation to the King; with them Albert placed a
+number of brass rods and brass chains, much to Stedman's delighted
+approval.
+
+"That is a very good idea," he said. "Democratic simplicity is the
+right thing at home, of course; but when you go abroad and mix with
+crowned heads, you want to show them that you know what's what."
+
+"Well," said Albert, gravely, "I sincerely hope this crowned head
+don't know what's what. If he reads 'Connecticut Agricultural State
+Fair. One mile bicycle race. First Prize,' on this badge, when we are
+trying to make him believe it's a war medal, it may hurt his
+feelings."
+
+Bradley, Jr., went ahead to announce the approach of the American
+embassy, which he did with so much manner that the King deferred the
+audience a half-hour, in order that he might better prepare to receive
+his visitors. When the audience did take place, it attracted the
+entire population to the green spot in front of the King's palace, and
+their delight and excitement over the appearance of the visitors was
+sincere and hearty. The King was too polite to appear much surprised,
+but he showed his delight over his presents as simply and openly as a
+child. Thrice he insisted on embracing Albert, and kissing him three
+times on the fore-head, which, Stedman assured him in a side-whisper,
+was a great honor; an honor which was not extended to the secretary,
+although he was given a necklace of animals' claws instead, with which
+he was better satisfied.
+
+After this reception, the embassy marched back to the consul's office,
+surrounded by an immense number of natives, some of whom ran ahead and
+looked back at them, and crowded so close that the two Bradleys had to
+poke at those nearest with their guns. The crowd remained outside the
+office even after the procession of four had disappeared, and cheered.
+This suggested to Gordon that this would be a good time to make a
+speech, which he accordingly did, Stedman translating it, sentence by
+sentence. At the conclusion of this effort, Albert distributed a
+number of brass rings among the married men present, which they placed
+on whichever finger fitted best, and departed delighted.
+
+Albert had wished to give the rings to the married women, but Stedman
+pointed out to him that it would be much cheaper to give them to the
+married men; for while one woman could only have one husband, one man
+could have at least six wives.
+
+"And now, Stedman," said Albert, after the mob had gone, "tell me what
+you are doing on this island."
+
+"It's a very simple story," Stedman said. "I am the representative, or
+agent, or operator, for the Yokohama Cable Company. The Yokohama Cable
+Company is a company organized in San Francisco, for the purpose of
+laying a cable to Yokohama. It is a stock company; and though it
+started out very well, the stock has fallen very low. Between
+ourselves, it is not worth over three or four cents. When the officers
+of the company found out that no one would buy their stock, and that
+no one believed in them or their scheme, they laid a cable to Octavia,
+and extended it on to this island. Then they said they had run out of
+ready money, and would wait until they got more before laying their
+cable any farther. I do not think they ever will lay it any farther,
+but that is none of my business. My business is to answer cable
+messages from San Francisco, so that the people who visit the home
+office can see that at least a part of the cable is working. That
+sometimes impresses them, and they buy stock. There is another chap
+over in Octavia, who relays all my messages and all my replies to
+those messages that come to me through him from San Francisco. They
+never send a message unless they have brought some one to the office
+whom they want to impress, and who, they think, has money to invest in
+the Y.C.C. stock, and so we never go near the wire, except at three
+o'clock every afternoon. And then generally only to say 'How are you?'
+or 'It's raining,' or something like that. I've been saying 'It's
+raining,' now for the last three months, but to-day I will say that
+the new consul has arrived. That will be a pleasant surprise for the
+chap in Octavia, for he must be tired hearing about the weather. He
+generally answers, 'Here too,' or 'So you said,' or something like
+that. I don't know what he says to the home office. He's brighter than
+I am, and that's why they put him between the two ends. He can see
+that the messages are transmitted more fully and more correctly, in a
+way to please possible subscribers."
+
+"Sort of copy editor," suggested Albert.
+
+"Yes, something of that sort, I fancy," said Stedman.
+
+They walked down to the little shed on the shore, where the Y.C.C.
+office was placed, at three that day, and Albert watched Stedman send
+off his message with much interest. The "chap at Octavia," on being
+informed that the American consul had arrived at Opeki, inquired,
+somewhat disrespectfully, "Is it a life sentence?"
+
+"What does he mean by that?" asked Albert.
+
+"I suppose," said his secretary, doubtfully, "that he thinks it a sort
+of a punishment to be sent to Opeki. I hope you won't grow to think
+so."
+
+"Opeki is all very well," said Gordon, "or it will be when we get
+things going our way."
+
+As they walked back to the office, Albert noticed a brass cannon,
+perched on a rock at the entrance to the harbor. This had been put
+there by the last consul, but it had not been fired for many years.
+Albert immediately ordered the two Bradleys to get it in order, and to
+rig up a flag-pole beside it, for one of his American flags, which
+they were to salute every night when they lowered it at sundown.
+
+"And when we are not using it," he said, "the King can borrow it to
+celebrate with, if he doesn't impose on us too often. The royal salute
+ought to be twenty-one guns, I think; but that would use up too much
+powder, so he will have to content himself with two."
+
+"Did you notice," asked Stedman, that night, as they sat on the
+veranda of the consul's house, in the moonlight, "how the people bowed
+to us as we passed?"
+
+"Yes," Albert said he had noticed it. "Why?"
+
+"Well, they never saluted me," replied Stedman. "That sign of respect
+is due to the show we made at the reception."
+
+"It is due to us, in any event," said the consul, severely. "I tell
+you, my secretary, that we, as the representatives of the United
+States Government, must be properly honored on this island. We must
+become a power. And we must do so without getting into trouble with
+the King. We must make them honor him, too, and then as we push him
+up, we will push ourselves up at the same time."
+
+"They don't think much of consuls in Opeki," said Stedman, doubtfully.
+"You see the last one was a pretty poor sort. He brought the office
+into disrepute, and it wasn't really until I came and told them what a
+fine country the United States was, that they had any opinion of it at
+all. Now we must change all that."
+
+"That is just what we will do," said Albert. "We will transform Opeki
+into a powerful and beautiful city. We will make these people work.
+They must put up a palace for the King, and lay out streets, and build
+wharves, and drain the town properly, and light it. I haven't seen
+this patent lighting apparatus of yours, but you had better get to
+work at it at once, and I'll persuade the King to appoint you
+commissioner of highways and gas, with authority to make his people
+toil. And I," he cried, in free enthusiasm, "will organize a navy and
+a standing army. Only," he added, with a relapse of interest, "there
+isn't anybody to fight."
+
+"There isn't?" said Stedman, grimly, with a scornful smile. "You just
+go hunt up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with your standing army once
+and you'll get all the fighting you want."
+
+"The Hillmen?" said Albert.
+
+"The Hillmen are the natives that live up there in the hills," Stedman
+said, nodding his head toward the three high mountains at the other
+end of the island, that stood out blackly against the purple, moonlit
+sky. "There are nearly as many of them as there are Opekians, and they
+hunt and fight for a living and for the pleasure of it. They have an
+old rascal named Messenwah for a king, and they come down here about
+once every three months, and tear things up."
+
+Albert sprang to his feet.
+
+"Oh, they do, do they?" he said, staring up at the mountain-tops.
+"They come down here and tear up things, do they? Well, I think we'll
+stop that, I think we'll stop that! I, don't care how many there are.
+I'll get the two Bradleys to tell me all they know about drilling,
+to-morrow morning, and we'll drill these Opekians, and have sham
+battles, and attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot of wild,
+howling Zulus out of them. And when the Hillmen come down to pay their
+quarterly visit, they'll go back again on a run. At least some of them
+will," he added, ferociously. "Some of them will stay right here."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" said Stedman, with awe; "you are a born fighter,
+aren't you?"
+
+"Well, you wait and see," said Gordon; "maybe I am. I haven't studied
+tactics of war and the history of battles, so that I might be a great
+war correspondent, without learning something. And there is only one
+king on this island, and that is old Ollypybus himself. And I'll go
+over and have a talk with him about it to-morrow."
+
+Young Stedman walked up and down the length of the veranda, in and out
+of the moonlight, with his hands in his pockets, and his head on his
+chest. "You have me all stirred up, Gordon," he said; "you seem so
+confident and bold, and you're not so much older than I am, either."
+
+"My training has been different; that's all," said the reporter.
+
+"Yes," Stedman said, bitterly. "I have been sitting in an office ever
+since I left school, sending news over a wire or a cable, and you have
+been out in the world, gathering it."
+
+"And now," said Gordon, smiling and putting his arm around the other
+boy's shoulders, "we are going to make news ourselves."
+
+"There is one thing I want to say to you before you turn in," said
+Stedman "Before you suggest all these improvements on Ollypybus, you
+must remember that he has ruled absolutely here for twenty years, and
+that he does not think much of consuls. He has only seen your
+predecessor and yourself. He likes you because you appeared with such
+dignity, and because of the presents; but if I were you, I wouldn't
+suggest these improvements as coming from yourself."
+
+"I don't understand," said Gordon; "who could they come from?"
+
+"Well," said Stedman, "if you will allow me to advise--and you see I
+know these people pretty well--I would have all these suggestions come
+from the President direct."
+
+"The President!" exclaimed Gordon; "but how? What does the President
+know or care about Opeki? and it would take so long--oh, I see, the
+cable. Is that what you have been doing?" he asked.
+
+"Well, only once," said Stedman, guiltily; "that was when he wanted to
+turn me out of the consul's office, and I had a cable that very
+afternoon, from the President, ordering me to stay where I was.
+Ollypybus doesn't understand the cable, of course, but he knows that
+it sends messages; and sometimes I pretend to send messages for him to
+the President; but he began asking me to tell the President to come
+and pay him a visit, and I had to stop it."
+
+"I'm glad you told me," said Gordon. "The President shall begin to
+cable to-morrow. He will need an extra appropriation from Congress to
+pay for his private cablegrams alone."
+
+"And there's another thing," said Stedman. "In all your plans, you've
+arranged for the people's improvement, but not for their amusement;
+and they are a peaceful, jolly, simple sort of people, and we must
+please them."
+
+"Have they no games or amusements of their own?" asked Gordon.
+
+"Well, not what we would call games."
+
+"Very well, then, I'll teach them base-ball. Foot-ball would be too
+warm. But that plaza in front of the King's bungalow, where his palace
+is going to be, is just the place for a diamond. On the whole,
+though," added the consul, after a moment's reflection, "you'd better
+attend to that yourself. I don't think it becomes my dignity as
+American consul to take off my coat and give lessons to young Opekians
+in sliding to bases; do you? No; I think you'd better do that. The
+Bradleys will help you, and you had better begin to-morrow. You have
+been wanting to know what a secretary of legation's duties are, and
+now you know. It's to organize base-ball nines. And after you get
+yours ready," he added, as he turned into his room for the night,
+"I'll train one that will sweep yours off the face of the island. For
+_this_ American consul can pitch three curves."
+
+The best laid plans of men go far astray, sometimes, and the great and
+beautiful city that was to rise on the coast of Opeki was not built in
+a day. Nor was it ever built. For before the Bradleys could mark out
+the foul-lines for the base-ball field on the plaza, or teach their
+standing army the goose step, or lay bamboo pipes for the water-mains,
+or clear away the cactus for the extension of the King's palace, the
+Hillmen paid Opeki their quarterly visit.
+
+Albert had called on the King the next morning, with Stedman as his
+interpreter, as he had said he would, and, with maps and sketches, had
+shown his Majesty what he proposed to do toward improving Opeki and
+ennobling her king, and when the King saw Albert's free-hand sketches
+of wharves with tall ships lying at anchor, and rows of Opekian
+warriors with the Bradleys at their head, and the design for his new
+palace, and a royal sedan chair, he believed that these things were
+already his, and not still only on paper, and he appointed Albert his
+Minister of War, Stedman his Minister of Home Affairs, and selected
+two of his wisest and oldest subjects to serve them as joint advisers.
+His enthusiasm was even greater than Gordon's, because he did not
+appreciate the difficulties. He thought Gordon a semi-god, a worker of
+miracles, and urged the putting up of a monument to him at once in the
+public plaza, to which Albert objected, on the ground that it would be
+too suggestive of an idol; and to which Stedman also objected, but for
+the less unselfish reason that it would "be in the way of the
+pitcher's box."
+
+They were feverishly discussing all these great changes, and Stedman
+was translating as rapidly as he could translate, the speeches of four
+different men--for the two counsellors had been called in--all of whom
+wanted to speak at once when there came from outside a great shout,
+and the screams of women, and the clashing of iron, and the pattering
+footsteps of men running.
+
+As they looked at one another in startled surprise, a native ran into
+the room, followed by Bradley, Jr., and threw himself down before the
+King. While he talked, beating his hands and bowing before Ollypybus,
+Bradley, Jr., pulled his forelock to the consul, and told how this man
+lived on the far outskirts of the village; how he had been captured
+while out hunting, by a number of the Hillmen; and how he had escaped
+to tell the people that their old enemies were on the war-path again,
+and rapidly approaching the village.
+
+Outside, the women were gathering in the plaza, with the children
+about them, and the men were running from hut to hut, warning their
+fellows, and arming themselves with spears and swords, and the native
+bows and arrows.
+
+"They might have waited until we had that army trained," said Gordon,
+in a tone of the keenest displeasure. "Tell me, quick, what do they
+generally do when they come?"
+
+"Steal all the cattle and goats, and a woman or two, and set fire to
+the huts in the outskirts," replied Stedman.
+
+"Well, we must stop them," said Gordon, jumping up. "We must take out
+a flag of truce and treat with them. They must be kept off until I
+have my army in working order. It is most inconvenient. If they had
+only waited two months, now, or six weeks even, we could have done
+something; but now we must make peace. Tell the King we are going out
+to fix things with them, and tell him to keep off his warriors until
+he learns whether we succeed or fail."
+
+"But, Gordon!" gasped Stedman. "Albert! You don't understand. Why,
+man, this isn't a street-fight or a cane-rush. They'll stick you full
+of spears, dance on your body, and eat you, maybe. A flag of
+truce!--you're talking nonsense. What do they know of a flag of
+truce?"
+
+"You're talking nonsense, too," said Albert, "and you're talking to
+your superior officer. If you are not with me in this, go back to your
+cable, and tell the man in Octavia that it's a warm day, and that the
+sun is shining; but if you've any spirit in you--and I think you
+have--run to the office and get my Winchester rifles, and the two
+shot-guns, and my revolvers, and my uniform, and a lot of brass things
+for presents, and run all the way there and back. And make time. Play
+you're riding a bicycle at the Agricultural Fair."
+
+Stedman did not hear this last, for he was already off and away,
+pushing through the crowd, and calling on Bradley, Sr., to follow him.
+Bradley, Jr., looked at Gordon with eyes that snapped, like a dog that
+is waiting for his master to throw a stone.
+
+"I can fire a Winchester, sir," he said. "Old Tom can't. He's no good
+at long range 'cept with a big gun, sir. Don't give him the
+Winchester. Give it to me, please, sir."
+
+Albert met Stedman in the plaza, and pulled off his blazer, and put on
+Captain Travis's--now his--uniform coat, and his white pith helmet.
+
+"Now, Jack," he said, "get up there and tell these people that we are
+going out to make peace with these Hillmen, or bring them back
+prisoners of war. Tell them we are the preservers of their homes and
+wives and children; and you, Bradley, take these presents, and young
+Bradley, keep close to me, and carry this rifle."
+
+Stedman's speech was hot and wild enough to suit a critical and
+feverish audience before a barricade in Paris. And when he was
+through, Gordon and Bradley punctuated his oration by firing off the
+two Winchester rifles in the air, at which the people jumped and fell
+on their knees, and prayed to their several gods. The fighting men of
+the village followed the four white men to the outskirts, and took up
+their stand there as Stedman told them to do, and the four walked on
+over the roughly hewn road, to meet the enemy.
+
+Gordon walked with Bradley, Jr., in advance. Stedman and old Tom
+Bradley followed close behind with the two shot-guns, and the presents
+in a basket.
+
+"Are these Hillmen used to guns?" asked Gordon. Stedman said no, they
+were not. "This shot-gun of mine is the only one on the island," he
+explained, "and we never came near enough them before to do anything
+with it. It only carries a hundred yards. The Opekians never make any
+show of resistance. They are quite content if the Hillmen satisfy
+themselves with the outlying huts, as long as they leave them and the
+town alone; so they seldom come to close quarters."
+
+The four men walked on for half an hour or so in silence, peering
+eagerly on every side; but it was not until they had left the woods
+and marched out into the level stretch of grassy country that they
+came upon the enemy. The Hillmen were about forty in number, and were
+as savage and ugly-looking giants as any in a picture-book. They had
+captured a dozen cows and goats, and were driving them on before them,
+as they advanced farther upon the village. When they saw the four men,
+they gave a mixed chorus of cries and yells, and some of them stopped,
+and others ran forward, shaking their spears, and shooting their broad
+arrows into the ground before them. A tall, gray-bearded, muscular old
+man, with a skirt of feathers about him, and necklaces of bones and
+animals' claws around his bare chest, ran in front of them, and seemed
+to be trying to make them approach more slowly.
+
+"Is that Messenwah?" asked Gordon.
+
+"Yes," said Stedman; "he is trying to keep them back. I don't believe
+he ever saw a white man before."
+
+"Stedman," said Albert, speaking quickly, "give your gun to Bradley,
+and go forward with your arms in the air, and waving your
+handkerchief, and tell them in their language that the King is coming.
+If they go at you, Bradley and I will kill a goat or two, to show them
+what we can do with the rifles; and if that don't stop them, we will
+shoot at their legs; and if that don't stop them--I guess you'd better
+come back, and we'll all run."
+
+Stedman looked at Albert, and Albert looked at Stedman, and neither of
+them winced or flinched.
+
+"Is this another of my secretary's duties?" asked the younger boy.
+
+"Yes," said the consul; "but a resignation is always in order. You
+needn't go if you don't like it. You see, you know the language and I
+don't, but I know how to shoot, and you don't."
+
+"That's perfectly satisfactory," said Stedman, handing his gun to old
+Bradley. "I only wanted to know why I was to be sacrificed instead of
+one of the Bradleys. It's because I know the language. Bradley, Sr.,
+you see the evil results of a higher education. Wish me luck, please,"
+he said, "and for goodness' sake," he added impressively, "don't waste
+much time shooting goats."
+
+The Hillmen had stopped about two hundred yards off, and were drawn up
+in two lines, shouting, and dancing, and hurling taunting remarks at
+their few adversaries. The stolen cattle were bunched together back of
+the King. As Stedman walked steadily forward with his handkerchief
+fluttering, and howling out something in their own tongue, they
+stopped and listened. As he advanced, his three companions followed
+him at about fifty yards in the rear. He was one hundred and fifty
+yards from the Hillmen before they made out what he said, and then one
+of the young braves, resenting it as an insult to his chief, shot an
+arrow at him. Stedman dodged the arrow and stood his ground without
+even taking a step backward, only turning slightly to put his hands to
+his mouth, and to shout something which sounded to his companions
+like, "About time to begin on the goats." But the instant the young
+man had fired, King Messenwah swung his club and knocked him down, and
+none of the others moved. Then Messenwah advanced before his men to
+meet Stedman, and on Stedman's opening and shutting his hands to show
+that he was unarmed, the King threw down his club and spears, and came
+forward as empty-handed as himself.
+
+"Ah," gasped Bradley, Jr., with his finger trembling on his lever,
+"let me take a shot at him now." Gordon struck the man's gun up, and
+walked forward in all the glory of his gold and blue uniform; for both
+he and Stedman saw now that Messenwah was more impressed by their
+appearance, and in the fact that they were white men, than with any
+threats of immediate war. So when he saluted Gordon haughtily, that
+young man gave him a haughty nod in return, and bade Stedman tell the
+King that he would permit him to sit down. The King did not quite
+appear to like this, but he sat down, nevertheless, and nodded his
+head gravely.
+
+"Now tell him," said Gordon, "that I come from the ruler of the
+greatest nation on earth, and that I recognize Ollypybus as the only
+King of this island, and that I come to this little three-penny King
+with either peace and presents, or bullets and war."
+
+"Have I got to tell him he's a little threepenny King?" said Stedman,
+plaintively.
+
+"No; you needn't give a literal translation; it can be as free as you
+please."
+
+"Thanks," said the secretary, humbly.
+
+"And tell him," continued Gordon, "that we will give presents to him
+and his warriors if he keeps away from Ollypybus, and agrees to keep
+away always. If he won't do that, try to get him to agree to stay away
+for three months at least, and by that time we can get word to San
+Francisco, and have a dozen muskets over here in two months; and when
+our time of probation is up, and he and his merry men come dancing
+down the hillside, we will blow them up as high as his mountains. But
+you needn't tell him that, either. And if he is proud and haughty, and
+would rather fight, ask him to restrain himself until we show what we
+can do with our weapons at two hundred yards."
+
+Stedman seated himself in the long grass in front of the King, and
+with many revolving gestures of his arms, and much pointing to Gordon,
+and profound nods and bows, retold what Gordon had dictated. When he
+had finished, the King looked at the bundle of presents, and at the
+guns, of which Stedman had given a very wonderful account, but
+answered nothing.
+
+"I guess," said Stedman, with a sigh, "that we will have to give him a
+little practical demonstration to help matters. I am sorry, but I
+think one of those goats has got to die. It's like vivisection. The
+lower order of animals have to suffer for the good of the higher."
+
+"Oh," said Bradley, Jr., cheerfully, "I'd just as soon shoot one of
+those niggers as one of the goats."
+
+So Stedman bade the King tell his men to drive a goat toward them, and
+the King did so, and one of the men struck one of the goats with his
+spear, and it ran clumsily across the plain.
+
+"Take your time, Bradley," said Gordon.
+
+"Aim low, and if you hit it, you can have it for supper."
+
+"And if you miss it," said Stedman, gloomily, "Messenwah may have us
+for supper."
+
+The Hillmen had seated themselves a hundred yards off, while the
+leaders were debating, and they now rose curiously and watched
+Bradley, as he sank upon one knee, and covered the goat with his
+rifle. When it was about one hundred and fifty yards off he fired, and
+the goat fell over dead.
+
+And then all the Hillmen, with the King himself, broke away on a run,
+toward the dead animal, with much shouting. The King came back alone,
+leaving his people standing about and examining the goat. He was much
+excited, and talked and gesticulated violently.
+
+"He says--" said Stedman; "he says--"
+
+"What? yes, goon."
+
+"He says--goodness me!--what do you think he says?"
+
+"Well, what does he say?" cried Gordon, in great excitement. "Don't
+keep it all to yourself."
+
+"He says," said Stedman, "that we are deceived; that he is no longer
+King of the Island of Opeki; that he is in great fear of us, and that
+he has got himself into no end of trouble. He says he sees that we are
+indeed mighty men, that to us he is as helpless as the wild boar
+before the javelin of the hunter."
+
+"Well, he's right," said Gordon. "Go on."
+
+"But that which we ask is no longer his to give. He has sold his
+kingship and his right to this island to another king, who came to him
+two days ago in a great canoe, and who made noises as we do--with
+guns, I suppose he means--and to whom he sold the island for a watch
+that he has in a bag around his neck. And that he signed a paper, and
+made marks on a piece of bark, to show that he gave up the island
+freely and forever."
+
+"What does he mean?" said Gordon. "How can he give up the island?
+Ollypybus is the king of half of it, anyway, and he knows it."
+
+"That's just it," said Stedman. "That's what frightens him. He said he
+didn't care about Ollypybus, and didn't count him in when he made the
+treaty, because he is such a peaceful chap that he knew he could
+thrash him into doing anything he wanted him to do. And now that you
+have turned up and taken Ollypybus's part, he wishes he hadn't sold
+the island, and wishes to know if you are angry."
+
+"Angry? of course I'm angry," said Gordon, glaring as grimly at the
+frightened monarch as he thought was safe. "Who wouldn't be angry? Who
+do you think these people were who made a fool of him, Stedman? Ask
+him to let us see this watch."
+
+Stedman did so, and the King fumbled among his necklaces until he had
+brought out a leather bag tied round his neck with a cord, and
+containing a plain stem-winding silver watch marked on the inside
+"Munich."
+
+"That doesn't tell anything," said Gordon. "But it's plain enough.
+Some foreign ship of war has settled on this place as a
+coaling-station, or has annexed it for colonization, and they've sent
+a boat ashore, and they've made a treaty with this old chap, and
+forced him to sell his birthright for a mess of porridge. Now, that's
+just like those monarchical pirates, imposing upon a poor old black."
+
+Old Bradley looked at him impudently.
+
+"Not at all," said Gordon; "it's quite different with us; we don't
+want to rob him or Ollypybus, or to annex their land. All we want to
+do is to improve it, and have the fun of running it for them and
+meddling in their affairs of state. Well, Stedman," he said, "what
+shall we do?"
+
+Stedman said that the best and only thing to do was to threaten to
+take the watch away from Messenwah, but to give him a revolver
+instead, which would make a friend of him for life, and to keep him
+supplied with cartridges only as long as he behaved himself, and then
+to make him understand that, as Ollypybus had not given his consent to
+the loss of the island, Messenwah's agreement, or treaty, or whatever
+it was, did not stand, and that he had better come down the next day,
+early in the morning, and join in a general consultation. This was
+done, and Messenwah agreed willingly to their proposition, and was
+given his revolver and shown how to shoot it, while the other presents
+were distributed among the other men, who were as happy over them as
+girls with a full dance-card.
+
+"And now, to-morrow," said Stedman, "understand, you are all to come
+down unarmed, and sign a treaty with great Ollypybus, in which he will
+agree to keep to one-half of the island if you keep to yours, and
+there must be no more wars or goat-stealing, or this gentleman on my
+right and I will come up and put holes in you just as the gentleman on
+the left did with the goat."
+
+Messenwah and his warriors promised to come early, and saluted
+reverently as Gordon and his three companions walked up together very
+proudly and stiffly.
+
+"Do you know how I feel?" said Gordon.
+
+"How?" asked Stedman.
+
+"I feel as I used to do in the city, when the boys in the street were
+throwing snowballs, and I had to go by with a high hat on my head and
+pretend not to know they were behind me. I always felt a cold chill
+down my spinal column, and I could feel that snowball, whether it came
+or not, right in the small of my back. And I can feel one of those men
+pulling his bow now, and the arrow sticking out of my right shoulder."
+
+"Oh, no, you can't," said Stedman. "They are too much afraid of those
+rifles. But I do feel sorry for any of those warriors whom old man
+Messenwah doesn't like, now that he has that revolver. He isn't the
+sort to practise on goats."
+
+There was great rejoicing when Stedman and Gordon told their story to
+the King, and the people learned that they were not to have their huts
+burned and their cattle stolen. The armed Opekians formed a guard
+around the ambassadors and escorted them to their homes with cheers
+and shouts, and the women ran to their side and tried to kiss Gordon's
+hand.
+
+"I'm sorry I can't speak the language, Stedman," said Gordon, "or I
+would tell them what a brave man you are. You are too modest to do it
+yourself, even if I dictated something for you to say. As for me," he
+said, pulling off his uniform, "I am thoroughly disgusted and
+disappointed. It never occurred to me until it was all over that this
+was my chance to be a war correspondent. It wouldn't have been much of
+a war, but then I would have been the only one on the spot, and that
+counts for a great deal. Still, my time may come."
+
+"We have a great deal on hand for to-morrow," said Gordon that
+evening, "and we had better turn in early."
+
+And so the people were still singing and rejoicing down in the village
+when the two conspirators for the peace of the country went to sleep
+for the night. It seemed to Gordon as though he had hardly turned his
+pillow twice to get the coolest side when some one touched him, and he
+saw, by the light of the dozen glowworms in the tumbler by his
+bedside, a tall figure at its foot.
+
+"It's me--Bradley," said the figure.
+
+"Yes," said Gordon, with the haste of a man to show that sleep has no
+hold on him; "exactly; what is it?"
+
+"There is a ship of war in the harbor," Bradley answered in a whisper.
+"I heard her anchor chains rattle when she came to, and that woke me.
+I could hear that if I were dead. And then I made sure by her lights;
+she's a great boat, sir, and I can know she's a ship of war by the
+challenging when they change the watch. I thought you'd like to know,
+sir."
+
+Gordon sat up and clutched his knees with his hands. "Yes, of course,"
+he said; "you are quite right. Still, I don't see what there is to
+do."
+
+He did not wish to show too much youthful interest, but though fresh
+from civilization, he had learned how far from it he was, and he was
+curious to see this sign of it that had come so much more quickly than
+he had anticipated.
+
+"Wake Mr. Stedman, will you?" said he, "and we will go and take a look
+at her."
+
+"You can see nothing but the lights," said Bradley, as he left the
+room; "it's a black night, sir."
+
+Stedman was not new from the sight of men and ships of war, and came
+in half dressed and eager.
+
+"Do you suppose it's the big canoe Messenwah spoke of?" he said.
+
+"I thought of that," said Gordon.
+
+The three men fumbled their way down the road to the plaza, and saw,
+as soon as they turned into it, the great outlines and the brilliant
+lights of an immense vessel, still more immense in the darkness, and
+glowing like a strange monster of the sea, with just a suggestion here
+and there, where the lights spread, of her cabins and bridges. As they
+stood on the shore, shivering in the cool night-wind, they heard the
+bells strike over the water.
+
+"It's two o'clock," said Bradley, counting.
+
+"Well, we can do nothing, and they cannot mean to do much to-night,"
+Albert said. "We had better get some more sleep, and, Bradley, you
+keep watch and tell us as soon as day breaks."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said the sailor.
+
+"If that's the man-of-war that made the treaty with Messenwah, and
+Messenwah turns up to-morrow, it looks as if our day would be pretty
+well filled up," said Albert, as they felt their way back to the
+darkness.
+
+"What do you intend to do?" asked his secretary, with a voice of some
+concern.
+
+"I don't know," Albert answered gravely, from the blackness of the
+night. "It looks as if we were getting ahead just a little too fast,
+doesn't it? Well," he added, as they reached the house, "let's try to
+keep in step with the procession, even if we can't be drum-majors and
+walk in front of it." And with this cheering tone of confidence in
+their ears, the two diplomats went soundly asleep again.
+
+The light of the rising sun filled the room, and the parrots were
+chattering outside, when Bradley woke him again.
+
+"They are sending a boat ashore, sir," he said, excitedly, and filled
+with the importance of the occasion. "She's a German man-of-war, and
+one of the new model. A beautiful boat, sir; for her lines were laid
+in Glasgow, and I can tell that, no matter what flag she flies. You
+had best be moving to meet them: the village isn't awake yet."
+
+Albert took a cold bath and dressed leisurely; then he made Bradley,
+Jr., who had slept through it all, get up breakfast, and the two young
+men ate it and drank their coffee comfortably and with an air of
+confidence that deceived their servants, if it did not deceive
+themselves. But when they came down the path, smoking and swinging
+their sticks, and turned into the plaza, their composure left them
+like a mask, and they stopped where they stood. The plaza was enclosed
+by the natives gathered in whispering groups, and depressed by fear
+and wonder. On one side were crowded all the Messenwah warriors,
+unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the Opekians. In the middle of
+the plaza some twenty sailors were busy rearing and bracing a tall
+flag-staff that they had shaped from a royal palm, and they did this
+as unconcernedly and as contemptuously, and with as much indifference
+to the strange groups on either side of them, as though they were
+working on a barren coast, with nothing but the startled sea-gulls
+about them. As Albert and Stedman came upon the scene, the flagpole
+was in place, and the halyards hung from it with a little bundle of
+bunting at the end of one of them.
+
+"We must find the King at once," said Gordon. He was terribly excited
+and angry. "It is easy enough to see what this means. They are going
+through the form of annexing this island to the other lands of the
+German Government. They are robbing old Ollypybus of what is his. They
+have not even given him a silver watch for it."
+
+The King was in his bungalow, facing the plaza. Messenwah was with
+him, and an equal number of each of their councils. The common danger
+had made them lie down together in peace; but they gave a murmur of
+relief as Gordon strode into the room with no ceremony, and greeted
+them with a curt wave of the hand.
+
+"Now then, Stedman, be quick," he said. "Explain to them what this
+means; tell them that I will protect them; that I am anxious to see
+that Ollypybus is not cheated; that we will do all we can for them."
+
+Outside, on the shore, a second boat's crew had landed a group of
+officers and a file of marines. They walked in all the dignity of full
+dress across the plaza to the flag-pole, and formed in line on the
+three sides of it, with the marines facing the sea. The officers, from
+the captain with a prayer-book in his hand, to the youngest middy,
+were as indifferent to the frightened natives about them as the other
+men had been. The natives, awed and afraid, crouched back among their
+huts, the marines and the sailors kept their eyes front, and the
+German captain opened his prayer-book. The debate in the bungalow was
+over.
+
+"If you only had your uniform, sir," said Bradley, Sr., miserably.
+
+"This is a little bit too serious for uniforms and bicycle medals,"
+said Gordon. "And these men are used to gold lace."
+
+He pushed his way through the natives, and stepped confidently across
+the plaza. The youngest middy saw him coming, and nudged the one next
+him with his elbow, and he nudged the next, but none of the officers
+moved, because the captain had begun to read.
+
+"One minute, please," called Gordon.
+
+He stepped out into the hollow square formed by the marines, and
+raised his helmet to the captain.
+
+"Do you speak English or French?" Gordon said in French; "I do not
+understand German."
+
+The captain lowered the book in his hands and gazed reflectively at
+Gordon through his spectacles, and made no reply.
+
+"If I understand this," said the younger man, trying to be very
+impressive and polite, "you are laying claim to this land, in behalf
+of the German Government."
+
+The captain continued to observe him thoughtfully, and then said,
+"That is so," and then asked, "Who are you?"
+
+"I represent the King of this island, Ollypybus, whose people you see
+around you. I also represent the United States Government, that does
+not tolerate a foreign power near her coast, since the days of
+President Monroe and before. The treaty you have made with Messenwah
+is an absurdity. There is only one king with whom to treat, and he--"
+
+The captain turned to one of his officers and said something, and
+then, after giving another curious glance at Gordon, raised his book
+and continued reading, in a deep, unruffled monotone. The officer
+whispered an order, and two of the marines stepped out of line, and
+dropping the muzzles of their muskets, pushed Gordon back out of the
+enclosure, and left him there with his lips white, and trembling all
+over with indignation. He would have liked to have rushed back into
+the lines and broken the captain's spectacles over his sun-tanned nose
+and cheeks, but he was quite sure this would only result in his
+getting shot, or in his being made ridiculous before the natives,
+which was almost as bad; so he stood still for a moment, with his
+blood choking him, and then turned and walked back to where the King
+and Stedman were whispering together. Just as he turned, one of the
+men pulled the halyards, the ball of bunting ran up into the air,
+bobbed, twitched, and turned, and broke into the folds of the German
+flag. At the same moment the marines raised their muskets and fired a
+volley, and the officers saluted and the sailors cheered.
+
+"Do you see that?" cried Stedman, catching Gordon's humor, to
+Ollypybus; "that means that you are no longer king, that strange
+people are coming here to take your land, and to turn your people into
+servants, and to drive you back into the mountains. Are you going to
+submit? are you going to let that flag stay where it is?"
+
+Messenwah and Ollypybus gazed at one another with fearful, helpless
+eyes. "We are afraid," Ollypybus cried; "we do not know what we should
+do."
+
+"What do they say?"
+
+"They say they do not know what to do."
+
+"I know what I'd do," cried Gordon. "If I were not an American consul,
+I'd pull down their old flag, and put a hole in their boat and sink
+her."
+
+"Well, I'd wait until they get under way before you do either of those
+things," said Stedman, soothingly. "That captain seems to be a man of
+much determination of character."
+
+"But I will pull it down," cried Gordon. "I will resign, as Travis
+did. I am no longer consul. You can be consul if you want to. I
+promote you. I am going up a step higher. I mean to be king. Tell
+those two," he ran on, excitedly, "that their only course and only
+hope is in me; that they must make me ruler of the island until this
+thing is over; that I will resign again as soon as it is settled, but
+that some one must act at once, and if they are afraid to, I am not,
+only they must give me authority to act for them. They must abdicate
+in my favor."
+
+"Are you in earnest?" gasped Stedman.
+
+"Don't I talk as if I were?" demanded Gordon, wiping the perspiration
+from his forehead.
+
+"And can I be consul?" said Stedman, cheerfully.
+
+"Of course. Tell them what I propose to do."
+
+Stedman turned and spoke rapidly to the two kings. The people gathered
+closer to hear.
+
+The two rival monarchs looked at one another in silence for a moment,
+and then both began to speak at once, their counsellors interrupting
+them and mumbling their guttural comments with anxious earnestness. It
+did not take them very long to see that they were all of one mind, and
+then they both turned to Gordon and dropped on one knee, and placed
+his hands on their foreheads, and Stedman raised his cap.
+
+"They agree," he explained, for it was but pantomime to Albert. "They
+salute you as a ruler; they are calling you Tellaman, which means
+peacemaker. The Peacemaker, that is your title. I hope you will
+deserve it, but I think they might have chosen a more appropriate
+one."
+
+"Then I'm really King?" demanded Albert, decidedly, "and I can do what
+I please? They give me full power. Quick, do they?"
+
+"Yes, but don't do it," begged Stedman, "and just remember I am
+American consul now, and that is a much superior being to a crowned
+monarch; you said so yourself."
+
+Albert did not reply to this, but ran across the plaza, followed by
+the two Bradleys. The boats had gone.
+
+"Hoist that flag beside the brass cannon," he cried, "and stand ready
+to salute it when I drop this one."
+
+Bradley, Jr., grasped the halyards of the flag, which he had forgotten
+to raise and salute in the morning in all the excitement of the
+arrival of the man-of-war. Bradley, Sr., stood by the brass cannon,
+blowing gently on his lighted fuse. The Peacemaker took the halyards
+of the German flag in his two hands, gave a quick, sharp tug, and down
+came the red, white, and black piece of bunting, and the next moment
+young Bradley sent the Stars and Stripes up in its place. As it rose,
+Bradley's brass cannon barked merrily like a little bull-dog, and the
+Peacemaker cheered.
+
+"Why don't you cheer, Stedman?" he shouted. "Tell those people to
+cheer for all they are worth. What sort of an American consul are
+you?"
+
+Stedman raised his arm half-heartedly to give the time, and opened his
+mouth; but his arm remained fixed and his mouth open, while his eyes
+stared at the retreating boat of the German man-of-war. In the stern
+sheets of this boat the stout German captain was struggling unsteadily
+to his feet; he raised his arm and waved it to some one on the great
+man-of-war, as though giving an order. The natives looked from Stedman
+to the boat, and even Gordon stopped in his cheering, and stood
+motionless, watching. They had not very long to wait. There was a puff
+of white smoke, and a flash, and then a loud report, and across the
+water came a great black ball skipping lightly through and over the
+waves, as easily as a flat stone thrown by a boy. It seemed to come
+very slowly. At least it came slowly enough for every one to see that
+it was coming directly toward the brass cannon. The Bradleys certainly
+saw this, for they ran as fast as they could, and kept on running. The
+ball caught the cannon under its mouth and tossed it in the air,
+knocking the flag-pole into a dozen pieces, and passing on through two
+of the palm-covered huts.
+
+"Great Heavens, Gordon!" cried Stedman; "they are firing on us."
+
+But Gordon's face was radiant and wild.
+
+"Firing on _us_!" he cried. "On us! Don't you see? Don't you understand?
+What do _we_ amount to? They have fired on the American flag! Don't
+you see what that means? It means war. A great international war. And
+I am a war correspondent at last!" He ran up to Stedman and seized him
+by the arm so tightly that it hurt.
+
+"By three o'clock," he said, "they will know in the office what has
+happened. The country will know it to-morrow when the paper is on the
+street; people will read it all over the world. The Emperor will hear
+of it at breakfast; the President will cable for further particulars.
+He will get them. It is the chance of a lifetime, and we are on the
+spot!"
+
+Stedman did not hear this; he was watching the broadside of the ship
+to see another puff of white smoke, but there came no such sign. The
+two row-boats were raised, there was a cloud of black smoke from the
+funnel, a creaking of chains sounding faintly across the water, and
+the ship started at half-speed and moved out of the harbor. The
+Opekians and the Hillmen fell on their knees, or to dancing, as best
+suited their sense of relief, but Gordon shook his head.
+
+"They are only going to land the marines," he said; "perhaps they are
+going to the spot they stopped at before, or to take up another
+position farther out at sea. They will land men and then shell the
+town, and the land forces will march here and co-operate with the
+vessel, and everybody will be taken prisoner or killed. We have the
+centre of the stage, and we are making history."
+
+"I'd rather read it than make it," said Stedman. "You've got us in a
+senseless, silly position, Gordon, and a mighty unpleasant one. And
+for no reason that I can see, except to make copy for your paper."
+
+"Tell those people to get their things together," said Gordon, "and
+march back out of danger into the woods. Tell Ollypybus I am going to
+fix things all right; I don't know just how yet, but I will, and now
+come after me as quickly as you can to the cable office. I've got to
+tell the paper all about it."
+
+It was three o'clock before the "chap at Octavia" answered Stedman's
+signalling. Then Stedman delivered Gordon's message, and immediately
+shut off all connection, before the Octavia operator could question
+him. Gordon dictated his message in this way:--
+
+"Begin with the date line, 'Opeki, June 22.'
+
+"At seven o'clock this morning, the captain and officers of the German
+man-of-war _Kaiser_ went through the ceremony of annexing this
+island in the name of the German Emperor, basing their right to do so
+on an agreement made with a leader of a wandering tribe known as the
+Hillmen. King Ollypybus, the present monarch of Opeki, delegated his
+authority, as also did the leader of the Hillmen, to King Tellaman, or
+the Peacemaker, who tore down the German flag, and raised that of the
+United States in its place. At the same moment the flag was saluted by
+the battery. This salute, being mistaken for an attack on the
+_Kaiser_, was answered by that vessel. Her first shot took
+immediate effect, completely destroying the entire battery of the
+Opekians, cutting down the American flag, and destroying the houses of
+the people--"
+
+"There was only one brass cannon and two huts," expostulated Stedman.
+
+"Well, that was the whole battery, wasn't it?" asked Gordon, "and two
+huts is plural. I said houses of the people. I couldn't say two houses
+of the people. Just you send this as you get it. You are not an
+American consul at the present moment. You are an under-paid agent of
+a cable company, and you send my stuff as I write it. The American
+residents have taken refuge in the consulate--that's us," explained
+Gordon, "and the English residents have sought refuge in the
+woods--that's the Bradleys. King Tellaman--that's me--declares his
+intention of fighting against the annexation. The forces of the
+Opekians are under the command of Captain Thomas Bradley--I guess I
+might as well make him a colonel--of Colonel Thomas Bradley, of the
+English army.
+
+"The American consul says--Now, what do you say, Stedman? Hurry up,
+please," asked Gordon, "and say something good and strong."
+
+"You get me all mixed up," complained Stedman, plaintively. "Which am
+I now, a cable operator or the American consul?"
+
+"Consul, of course. Say something patriotic and about your
+determination to protect the interests of your government, and all
+that." Gordon bit the end of his pencil impatiently, and waited.
+
+"I won't do anything of the sort, Gordon," said Stedman; "you are
+getting me into an awful lot of trouble, and yourself too. I won't say
+a word."
+
+"The American consul," read Gordon, as his pencil wriggled across the
+paper, "refuses to say anything for publication until he has
+communicated with the authorities at Washington, but from all I can
+learn he sympathizes entirely with Tellaman. Your correspondent has
+just returned from an audience with King Tellaman, who rules him to
+inform the American people that the Monroe doctrine will be sustained
+as long as he rules this island. I guess that's enough to begin with,"
+said Gordon. "Now send that off quick, and then get away from the
+instrument before the man in Octavia begins to ask questions. I am
+going out to precipitate matters."
+
+Gordon found the two kings sitting dejectedly side by side, and gazing
+grimly upon the disorder of the village, from which the people were
+taking their leave as quickly as they could get their few belongings
+piled upon the ox-carts. Gordon walked among them, helping them in
+every way he could, and tasting, in their subservience and gratitude,
+the sweets of sovereignty. When Stedman had locked up the cable office
+and rejoined him, he bade him tell Messenwah to send three of his
+youngest men and fastest runners back to the hills to watch for the
+German vessel and see where she was attempting to land her marines.
+
+"This is a tremendous chance for descriptive writing, Stedman," said
+Gordon, enthusiastically; "all this confusion and excitement, and the
+people leaving their homes, and all that. It's like the people getting
+out of Brussels before Waterloo, and then the scene at the foot of the
+mountains, while they are camping out there, until the Germans leave.
+I never had a chance like this before."
+
+It was quite dark by six o'clock, and none of the three messengers had
+as yet returned. Gordon walked up and down the empty plaza and looked
+now at the horizon for the man-of-war, and again down the road back of
+the village. But neither the vessel nor the messengers bearing word of
+her appeared. The night passed without any incident, and in the
+morning Gordon's impatience became so great that he walked out to
+where the villagers were in camp and passed on half way up the
+mountain, but he could see no sign of the man-of-war. He came back
+more restless than before, and keenly disappointed.
+
+"If something don't happen before three o'clock, Stedman," he said,
+"our second cablegram will have to consist of glittering generalities
+and a lengthy interview with King Tellaman, by himself."
+
+Nothing did happen. Ollypybus and Messenwah began to breathe more
+freely. They believed the new king had succeeded in frightening the
+German vessel away forever. But the new king upset their hopes by
+telling them that the Germans had undoubtedly already landed, and had
+probably killed the three messengers.
+
+"Now then," he said, with pleased expectation, as Stedman and he
+seated themselves in the cable office at three o'clock, "open it up
+and let's find out what sort of an impression we have made."
+
+Stedman's face, as the answer came in to his first message of
+greeting, was one of strangely marked disapproval.
+
+"What does he say?" demanded Gordon, anxiously.
+
+"He hasn't done anything but swear yet," answered Stedman, grimly.
+
+"What is he swearing about?"
+
+"He wants to know why I left the cable yesterday. He says he has been
+trying to call me up for the last twenty-four hours, ever since I sent
+my message at three o'clock. The home office is jumping mad, and want
+me discharged. They won't do that, though," he said, in a cheerful
+aside, "because they haven't paid me my salary for the last eight
+months. He says--great Scott! this will please you, Gordon--he says
+that there have been over two hundred queries for matter from papers
+all over the United States, and from Europe. Your paper beat them on
+the news, and now the home office is packed with San Francisco
+reporters, and the telegrams are coming in every minute, and they have
+been abusing him for not answering them, and he says that I'm a fool.
+He wants as much as you can send, and all the details. He says all the
+papers will have to put 'By Yokohama Cable Company' on the top of each
+message they print, and that that is advertising the company, and is
+sending the stock up. It rose fifteen points on 'change in San
+Francisco to-day, and the president and the other officers are
+buying--"
+
+"Oh, I don't want to hear about their old company," snapped out
+Gordon, pacing up and down in despair. "What am I to do? that's what I
+want to know. Here I have the whole country stirred up and begging for
+news. On their knees for it, and a cable all to myself, and the only
+man on the spot, and nothing to say. I'd just like to know how long
+that German idiot intends to wait before he begins shelling this town
+and killing people. He has put me in a most absurd position."
+
+"Here's a message for you, Gordon," said Stedman, with business-like
+calm. "Albert Gordon, correspondent," he read. "Try American consul.
+First message O.K.; beat the country; can take all you send. Give
+names of foreign residents massacred, and fuller account blowing up
+palace. Dodge."
+
+The expression on Gordon's face as this message was slowly read off to
+him, had changed from one of gratified pride to one of puzzled
+consternation.
+
+"What's he mean by foreign residents massacred, and blowing up of
+palace?" asked Stedman, looking over his shoulder anxiously. "Who is
+Dodge?"
+
+"Dodge is the night editor," said Gordon, nervously. "They must have
+read my message wrong. You sent just what I gave you, didn't you?" he
+asked.
+
+"Of course I did," said Stedman, indignantly.
+
+"I didn't say anything about the massacre of anybody, did I?" asked
+Gordon. "I hope they are not improving on my account. What _am_ I
+to do? This is getting awful. I'll have to go out and kill a few
+people myself. Oh, why don't that Dutch captain begin to do something!
+What sort of a fighter does he call himself? He wouldn't shoot at a
+school of porpoises. He's not--"
+
+"Here comes a message to Leonard T. Travis, American consul, Opeki,"
+read Stedman. "It's raining messages to-day. 'Send full details of
+massacre of American citizens by German sailors.' Secretary of--great
+Scott!" gasped Stedman, interrupting himself and gazing at his
+instrument with horrified fascination--"the Secretary of State."
+
+"That settles it," roared Gordon, pulling at his hair and burying his
+face in his hands. "I have _got_ to kill some of them now."
+
+"Albert Gordon, correspondent," read Stedman, impressively, like the
+voice of Fate. "Is Colonel Thomas Bradley, commanding native forces
+at Opeki, Colonel Sir Thomas Kent-Bradley of Crimean war fame?
+Correspondent London _Times_, San Francisco Press Club."
+
+"Go on, go on!" said Gordon, desperately. "I'm getting used to it now.
+Go on!"
+
+"American consul, Opeki," read Stedman. "Home Secretary desires you to
+furnish list of names English residents killed during shelling of
+Opeki by ship of war _Kaiser_, and estimate of amount property
+destroyed. Stoughton, British Embassy, Washington."
+
+"Stedman!" cried Gordon, jumping to his feet, "there's a mistake here
+somewhere. These people cannot all have made my message read like
+that. Some one has altered it, and now I have got to make these people
+here live up to that message, whether they like being massacred and
+blown up or not. Don't answer any of those messages except the one
+from Dodge; tell him things have quieted down a bit, and that I'll
+send four thousand words on the flight of the natives from the
+village, and their encampment at the foot of the mountains, and of the
+exploring party we have sent out to look for the German vessel; and
+now I am going out to make something happen."
+
+Gordon said that he would be gone for two hours at least, and as
+Stedman did not feel capable of receiving any more nerve-stirring
+messages, he cut off all connection with Octavia by saying, "Good-by
+for two hours," and running away from the office. He sat down on a
+rock on the beach, and mopped his face with his handkerchief.
+
+"After a man has taken nothing more exciting than weather reports from
+Octavia for a year," he soliloquized, "it's a bit disturbing to have
+all the crowned heads of Europe and their secretaries calling upon you
+for details of a massacre that never came off."
+
+At the end of two hours Gordon returned from the consulate with a mass
+of manuscript in his hand.
+
+"Here's three thousand words," he said, desperately. "I never wrote
+more and said less in my life. It will make them weep at the office. I
+had to pretend that they knew all that had happened so far; they
+apparently do know more than we do, and I have filled it full of
+prophecies of more trouble ahead, and with interviews with myself and
+the two ex-Kings. The only news element in it is, that the messengers
+have returned to report that the German vessel is not in sight, and
+that there is no news. They think she has gone for good. Suppose she
+has, Stedman," he groaned, looking at him helplessly, "what _am_
+I going to do?"
+
+"Well, as for me," said Stedman, "I'm afraid to go near that cable.
+It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many
+more such shocks as those they gave us this afternoon."
+
+Gordon threw himself down dejectedly in a chair in the office, and
+Stedman approached his instrument gingerly, as though it might
+explode.
+
+"He's swearing again," he explained, sadly, in answer to Gordon's look
+of inquiry. "He wants to know when I am going to stop running away
+from the wire. He has a stack of messages to send, he says, but I
+guess he'd better wait and take your copy first; don't you think so?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Gordon. "I don't want any more messages than I've
+had. That's the best I can do," he said, as he threw his manuscript
+down beside Stedman. "And they can keep on cabling until the wire
+burns red hot, and they won't get any more."
+
+There was silence in the office for some time, while Stedman looked
+over Gordon's copy, and Gordon stared dejectedly out at the ocean.
+
+"This is pretty poor stuff, Gordon," said Stedman. "It's like giving
+people milk when they want brandy."
+
+"Don't you suppose I know that?" growled Gordon. "It's the best I can
+do, isn't it? It's not my fault that we are not all dead now. I can't
+massacre foreign residents if there are no foreign residents, but I
+can commit suicide, though, and I'll do it if something don't happen."
+
+There was a long pause, in which the silence of the office was only
+broken by the sound of the waves beating on the coral reefs outside.
+Stedman raised his head wearily.
+
+"He's swearing again," he said; "he says this stuff of yours is all
+nonsense. He says stock in the Y.C.C. has gone up to one hundred and
+two, and that owners are unloading and making their fortunes, and that
+this sort of descriptive writing is not what the company want."
+
+"What's he think I'm here for?" cried Gordon. "Does he think I pulled
+down the German flag and risked my neck half a dozen times and had
+myself made King just to boom his Yokohama cable stock? Confound him!
+You might at least swear back. Tell him just what the situation is in
+a few words. Here, stop that rigmarole to the paper, and explain to
+your home office that we are awaiting developments, and that, in the
+meanwhile, they must put up with the best we can send them. Wait; send
+this to Octavia."
+
+Gordon wrote rapidly, and read what he wrote as rapidly as it was
+written.
+
+"Operator, Octavia. You seem to have misunderstood my first message.
+The facts in the case are these. A German man-of-war raised a flag on
+this island. It was pulled down and the American flag raised in its
+place and saluted by a brass cannon. The German man-of-war fired once
+at the flag and knocked it down, and then steamed away and has not
+been seen since. Two huts were upset, that is all the damage done; the
+battery consisted of the one brass cannon before mentioned. No one,
+either native or foreign, has been massacred. The English residents
+are two sailors. The American residents are the young man who is
+sending you this cable and myself. Our first message was quite true in
+substance, but perhaps misleading in detail. I made it so because I
+fully expected much more to happen immediately. Nothing has happened,
+or seems likely to happen, and that is the exact situation up to date.
+Albert Gordon."
+
+"Now," he asked, after a pause, "what does he say to that?"
+
+"He doesn't say anything," said Stedman.
+
+"I guess he has fainted. Here it comes," he added in the same breath.
+He bent toward his instrument, and Gordon raised himself from his
+chair and stood beside him as he read it off. The two young men hardly
+breathed in the intensity of their interest.
+
+"Dear Stedman," he slowly read aloud. "You and your young friend are a
+couple of fools. If you had allowed me to send you the messages
+awaiting transmission here to you, you would not have sent me such a
+confession of guilt as you have just done. You had better leave Opeki
+at once or hide in the hills. I am afraid I have placed you in a
+somewhat compromising position with the company, which is unfortunate,
+especially as, if I am not mistaken, they owe you some back pay. You
+should have been wiser in your day, and bought Y.C.C. stock when it
+was down to five cents, as 'yours truly' did. You are not, Stedman, as
+bright a boy as some. And as for your friend, the war correspondent,
+he has queered himself for life. You see, my dear Stedman, after I had
+sent off your first message, and demands for further details came
+pouring in, and I could not get you at the wire to supply them, I took
+the liberty of sending some on myself."
+
+"Great Heavens!" gasped Gordon.
+
+Stedman grew very white under his tan, and the perspiration rolled on
+his cheeks.
+
+"Your message was so general in its nature, that it allowed my
+imagination full play, and I sent on what I thought would please the
+papers, and, what was much more important to me, would advertise the
+Y.C.C. stock. This I have been doing while waiting for material from
+you. Not having a clear idea of the dimensions or population of Opeki,
+it is possible that I have done you and your newspaper friend some
+injustice. I killed off about a hundred American residents, two
+hundred English, because I do not like the English, and a hundred
+French. I blew up old Ollypybus and his palace with dynamite, and
+shelled the city, destroying some hundred thousand dollars' worth of
+property, and then I waited anxiously for your friend to substantiate
+what I had said. This he has most unkindly failed to do. I am very
+sorry, but much more so for him than for myself, for I, my dear
+friend, have cabled on to a man in San Francisco, who is one of the
+directors of the Y.C.C. to sell all my stock, which he has done at one
+hundred and two, and he is keeping the money until I come. And I leave
+Octavia this afternoon to reap my just reward. I am in about twenty
+thousand dollars on your little war, and I feel grateful. So much so
+that I will inform you that the ship of war _Kaiser_ has arrived
+at San Francisco, for which port she sailed directly from Opeki. Her
+captain has explained the real situation, and offered to make every
+amend for the accidental indignity shown to our flag. He says he aimed
+at the cannon, which was trained on his vessel, and which had first
+fired on him. But you must know, my dear Stedman, that before his
+arrival, war-vessels belonging to the several powers mentioned in my
+revised despatches, had started for Opeki at full speed, to revenge
+the butchery of the foreign residents. A word, my dear young friend,
+to the wise is sufficient. I am indebted to you to the extent of
+twenty thousand dollars, and in return I give you this kindly advice.
+Leave Opeki. If there is no other way, swim. But leave Opeki."
+
+The sun, that night, as it sank below the line where the clouds seemed
+to touch the sea, merged them both into a blazing, blood-red curtain,
+and colored the most wonderful spectacle that the natives of Opeki had
+ever seen. Six great ships of war, stretching out over a league of
+sea, stood blackly out against the red background, rolling and rising,
+and leaping forward, flinging back smoke and burning sparks up into
+the air behind them, and throbbing and panting like living creatures
+in their race for revenge. From the south came a three-decked vessel,
+a great island of floating steel, with a flag as red as the angry sky
+behind it, snapping in the wind. To the south of it plunged two long
+low-lying torpedo-boats, flying the French tri-color, and still
+farther to the north towered three magnificent hulls of the White
+Squadron. Vengeance was written on every curve and line, on each
+straining engine-rod, and on each polished gun-muzzle.
+
+And in front of these, a clumsy fishing-boat rose and fell on each
+passing wave. Two sailors sat in the stern, holding the rope and
+tiller, and in the bow, with their backs turned forever toward Opeki,
+stood two young boys, their faces lit by the glow of the setting sun
+and stirred by the sight of the great engines of war plunging past
+them on their errand of vengeance.
+
+"Stedman," said the elder boy, in an awe-struck whisper, and with a
+wave of his hand, "we have not lived in vain."
+
+
+
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