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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18185-8.txt b/18185-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f013e2c --- /dev/null +++ b/18185-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17905 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Danger Mark, by Robert W. Chambers + +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 Danger Mark + +Author: Robert W. Chambers + +Illustrator: A. B. Wenzell + +Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18185] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DANGER MARK *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Robert Ledger and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Illustration: "'Please do tell me somebody is scandalised.'"] + + +THE DANGER MARK + +BY + +ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + +A.B. WENZELL + + +1909 + + +TO + +MY FRIEND + +JOHN CARRINGTON YATES + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. The Seagraves + + II. In Trust + + III. The Threshold + + IV. The Year of Discretion + + V. Roya-Neh + + VI. Adrift + + VII. Together + + VIII. An Afterglow + + IX. Confession + + X. Dusk + + XI. Fête Galante + + XII. The Love of the Gods + + XIII. Ambitions and Letters + + XIV. The Prophets + + XV. Dysart + + XVI. Through the Woods + + XVII. The Danger Mark + + XVIII. Bon Chien + + XIX. Questions and Answers + + XX. In Search of Herself + + XXI. The Golden Hours + + XXII. Cloudy Mountain + + XXIII. Sine Die + + XXIV. The Prologue Ends + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"'Please do tell me somebody is scandalized'" + +"'Can I have what other women have--silk underwear and stockings?'" + +"'Duane!' she gasped--'why did you?'" + +"Oh, the horror of it!--the shame, the agonized surprise" + +"'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is ... amply +rewarded'" + +"'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'" + +"She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous courtesy" + +"Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms" + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SEAGRAVES + + +All day Sunday they had raised the devil from attic to cellar; Mrs. +Farren was in tears, Howker desperate. Not one out of the fifteen +servants considered necessary to embellish the Seagrave establishment +could do anything with them after Kathleen Severn's sudden departure the +week before. + +When the telegram announcing her mother's sudden illness summoned young +Mrs. Severn to Staten Island, every servant in the household understood +that serious trouble was impending for them. + +Day by day the children became more unruly; Sunday they were demons; and +Mrs. Farren shuddered to think what Monday might bring forth. + +The day began ominously at breakfast with general target practice, +ammunition consisting of projectiles pinched from the interior of hot +muffins. Later, when Mrs. Farren ventured into the schoolroom, she found +Scott Seagrave drawing injurious pictures of Howker on the black-board, +and Geraldine sorting lumps of sugar from the bowl on the +breakfast-tray, which had not yet been removed. + +"Dearies," she began, "it is after nine o'clock and----" + +"No school to-day, Mrs. Farren," interrupted Scott cheerfully; "we +haven't anything to do till Kathleen comes back, and you know it +perfectly well!" + +"Yes, you have, dearie; Mrs. Severn has just sent you this list of +lessons." She held out a black-edged envelope. + +Geraldine, who had been leisurely occupied in dropping cologne on a lump +of sugar, thrust the lump into her pink mouth and turned sharply on Mrs. +Farren. + +"What list?" she demanded. "Give that letter to me.... Oh, Scott! Did +you ever hear of anything half so mean? Kathleen's written out about a +thousand questions in geography for us!" + +"I can't stand that sort of interference!" shouted Scott, dropping his +chalk and aiming a kick at the big papier-maché globe. "I'm sorry +Kathleen's mother is probably going to die, but I've had enough +geography, too." + +"Mrs. Severn's mother died on Friday," said the housekeeper solemnly. + +The children paused, serious for a moment in the presence of the +incomprehensible. + +"We're sorry," said Geraldine slowly.... "When is Kathleen coming back?" + +"Perhaps to-night, dearie----" + +Scott impatiently detached the schoolroom globe from its brass axis: +"I'm sorry, too," he said; "but I'm tired of lessons. Now, Mrs. Farren, +watch me! I'm going to kick a goal from the field. Here, you hold it, +Geraldine; Mrs. Farren, you had better try to block it and cheer for +Yale!" + +Geraldine seized the globe, threw herself flat on the floor, and, head +on one side, wriggled, carefully considering the angle. Then, tipping +the globe, she adjusted it daintily for her brother to kick. + +"A little higher, please; look out there, Mrs. Farren!" said Scott +calmly; "Harvard is going to score this time. Now, Geraldine!" + +Thump! came the kick, but Mrs. Farren had fled, and the big globe struck +the nursery door and bounced back minus half of South America. + +For ten minutes the upper floors echoed with the racket. Geraldine +fiercely disputed her brother's right to kick every time; then, as +usual, when she got what she wanted, gave up to Scott and let him +monopolise the kicking until, satiated, he went back to the black-board, +having obliterated several continents from the face of the globe. + +"You might at least be polite enough to hold it for me to kick," said +his sister. "What a pig you are, Scott." + +"Don't bother me; I'm drawing Howker. You can't kick straight, +anyway----" + +"Yes, I can!" + +Scott, intent on his drawing, muttered: + +"I wish there was another boy in this house; I might have a little fun +to-day if there was anybody to play with." + +There ensued a silence; then he heard his sister's light little feet +flying along the hallway toward their bedrooms, but went on calmly with +his drawing, using some effective coloured crayon on Howker's nose. +Presently he became conscious that Geraldine had re-entered the room. + +"What are you going to do to-day?" he asked, preoccupied. + +Geraldine, dressed in her brother's clothes, was kneeling on one knee +and hastily strapping on a single roller-skate. + +"I'll show you," she said, rising and shaking the dark curls out of her +eyes. "Come on, Scott, I'm going to misbehave all day. Look at me! I've +brought you the boy you wanted to play with." + +Her brother turned, considered her with patronising toleration, then +shrugged his shoulders. + +"You look like one, but you're no good," he said. + +"I can be just as bad as any boy!" she insisted. "I'll do whatever you +do; I'll do worse, I tell you. Dare me to do something!" + +"You don't dare skate backward into the red drawing-room! There's too +much bric-a-brac." + +She turned like a flash and was off, hopping and clattering down-stairs +on her single skate, and a moment later she whirled into the red +drawing-room backward and upset a Sang-de-boeuf jar, reducing the maid +to horrified tears and the jar to powder. + +Howker strove in vain to defend his dining-room when Scott appeared on +one skate; but the breakfast-room and pantry were forcibly turned into +rinks; the twins swept through the halls, met and defeated their nurses, +Margaret and Betty, tumbled down into the lower regions, from there +descended to the basement, and whizzed cheerily through the kitchen, +waving two skateless legs. + +There Mrs. Bramton attempted to buy them off with tribute in the shape +of cup-cakes. + +"Sure, darlints, they do be starvin' yez," purred Mrs. Bramton. "Don't I +know the likes o' them? Now roon away quietlike an' ladylike----" + +"Like a hen," retorted Scott. "I want some preserves." + +"That's all very well," said Geraldine with her mouth full, "but we +expected to skate about the kitchen and watch you make pastry. Kindly +begin, Mrs. Bramton." + +"I'd like to see what's inside of that chicken over there," said Scott. +"And I want you to give me some raisins, Mrs. Bramton----" + +"I'm dying for a glass of milk," added Geraldine. "Get me some dough, +somebody; I'm going to bake something." + +Scott, who, devoured by curiosity, had been sniffing around the spice +cupboard, sneezed violently; a Swedish kitchen-maid threw her apron over +her head, weak with laughter. + +"If you're laughing at me, I'll fix you, Olga!" shouted Scott in a rage; +and the air was suddenly filled with balls of dough. Mrs. Bramton fled +before the storm; a well-directed volley drove the maids to cover and +stampeded the two cats. + +"Take whatever is good to eat, Geraldine. Hurrah! The town surrenders! +Loot it! No quarter!" shouted Scott. However, when Howker arrived they +retired hastily with pockets full of cinnamon sticks, olives, prunes, +and dried currants, climbing triumphantly to the library above, where +they curled up on a leather divan, under the portrait of their mother, +to divide the spoils. + +"Am I bad enough to suit you?" inquired Geraldine with pardonable pride. + +"Pooh! That's nothing. If I had another boy here I'd--I'd----" + +"Well, what?" demanded Geraldine, flushing. "I tell you I can misbehave +as well as any boy. Dare me to do anything and you'll see! I dare you to +dare me!" + +Scott began: "Oh, it's all very easy for a girl to talk----" + +"I _don't_ talk; I _do_ it! And you know perfectly well I do!" + +"You're a girl, after all, even if you have got on my clothes----" + +"Didn't I throw as much dough at Olga and Mrs. Bramton as you did?" + +"You didn't hit anybody." + +"I did! I saw a soft, horrid lump stick to Olga!" + +"Pooh! _You_ can't throw straight----" + +"That's a lie!" said Geraldine excitedly. + +Scott bristled: + +"If you say that again----" + +"All right; go and get the boxing-gloves. You _did_ tell a lie, Scott, +because I did hit Olga!" + +Scott hastily unstrapped his lone skate, cast it clattering from him, +and sped up-stairs. When he returned he hurled a pair of boxing-gloves +at Geraldine, who put them on, laced them, trembling with wrath, and +flew at her brother as soon as his own gloves were fastened. + +They went about their business like lightning, swinging, blocking, +countering. Twice she gave him inviting openings and then punished him +savagely before he could get away; then he attempted in-fighting, but +her legs were too nimble. And after a while he lost his head and came at +her using sheer weight, which set her beside herself with fury. + +Teeth clenched, crimson-cheeked, she side-stepped, feinted, and whipped +in an upper-cut. Then, darting in, she drove home her left with all her +might; and Scott went down with an unmistakable thud. + +"One--two--three--four," she counted, "and you _did_ tell a lie, didn't +you? Five--six--Oh, Scott! I've made your nose bleed horridly! Does it +hurt, dear? Seven--eight----" + +The boy, still confused, rose and instinctively assumed the classic +attitude of self-defence; but his sister threw down her gloves and +offered him her handkerchief, saying: "You've just got to be fair to me +now, Scott. Tell me that I throw straight and that I did hit Olga!" + +He hesitated; wiped his nose: + +"I take it back. You can throw straight. Ginger! What a crack you just +gave me!" + +She was all compunction and honey now, hovering around him where he +stood stanching honourable wounds. After a while he laughed. "Thunder!" +he exclaimed ruefully; "my nose seems to be growing for fair. You're all +right, Geraldine." + +"Here's my last cup-cake, if you like," said his sister, radiant. + +Embarrassed a little by defeat, but nursing no bitterness, he sat down +on the leather divan again and permitted his sister to feed him and tell +him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too, +but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut +finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit. + +"We'll try it again," he began. "I'm all right now, if you like----" + +"Oh, Scott, I don't want to!" + +"Well, we ought to know which of us really can lick the other----" + +"Why, of course, you can lick me every time. Besides, I wouldn't want to +be able to lick you--except when I'm very, very angry. And I ought not +to become angry the way I do. Kathleen tries so hard to make me stop +and reflect before I do things, but I can't seem to learn.... Does your +nose hurt?" + +"Not in the least," said her brother, reddening and changing the +subject. "I say, it looks as though it were going to stop raining." + +He went to the window; the big Seagrave house with its mansard roof, set +in the centre of an entire city block, bounded by Madison and Fifth +Avenues and by Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets, looked out from +its four red brick façades onto strips of lawn and shrubbery, now all +green and golden with new grass and early buds. + +It was topsy-turvy, March-hare weather, which perhaps accounted for the +early April dementia that possessed the children at recurring intervals, +and which nothing ever checked except the ultimate slumber of infantile +exhaustion. + +If anybody in the house possessed authority to punish them, nobody +exercised it. Servants grown gray in the Seagrave service endured much, +partly for the children's sakes, partly in memory of the past; but the +newer and younger domestics had less interest in the past glories and +traditions of an old New York family which, except for two little +children, ten years old, had perished utterly from the face of the land. + +The entire domestic régime was a makeshift--had been almost from the +beginning. Mrs. Farren, the housekeeper, understood it; Howker, the +butler, knew it; Lacy knew it--he who had served forty years as coachman +in the Seagrave family. + +For in all the world there remained not one living soul who through ties +of kinship was authorised to properly control these children. Nor could +they themselves even remember parental authority; and only a shadowy +recollection of their grandfather's lax discipline survived, becoming +gradually, as time passed, nothing more personal to them than a pleasant +legend kept alive and nourished in the carefully guarded stories told +them by Kathleen Severn and by Anthony Seagrave's old servants. + +Yet, in the land, and in his own city of Manhattan, their grandfather +had been a very grand man, with his large fortune, now doubled and still +increasing; he had been a very distinguished man in the world of fashion +with his cultivated taste in art and wine and letters and horses; he had +been a very important man, too, in the civic, social, and political +construction of New York town, in the quaint days when the sexton of Old +Trinity furnished fashionable hostesses with data concerning the +availability of social aspirants. He had been a courtly and fascinating +man, too. He had died a drunkard. + +Now his grandchildren were fast forgetting him. The town had long since +forgotten him. Only an old friend or two and his old servants remembered +what he had been, his virtues, his magnificence, his kindness, and his +weakness. + +But if the Seagrave twins possessed neither father nor mother to +exercise tender temporal and spiritual suzerainty in the nursery, and if +no memory of their grandfather's adoring authority remained, the last +will and testament of Anthony Seagrave had provided a marvellous, +man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled +their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours +even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of +their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their +schooling, the items of their daily routine. + +This colossal automaton, almost terrifyingly impersonal, loomed always +above them, throwing its powerful and gigantic shadow across their +lives. As they grew old enough to understand, it became to them the +embodiment of occult and unpleasant authority which controlled their +coming and going; which chose for them their personal but not their +legal guardian, Kathleen Severn; which fixed upon the number of servants +necessary for the house that Anthony Seagrave directed should be +maintained for his grandchildren; which decided what kind of expenses, +what sort of clothing, what recreations, what accomplishments, what +studies, what religion they should be provided with. + +And the name of this enormous man-contrived machine which took the place +of father and mother was the Half Moon Trust Company, acting as trustee, +guardian, and executor for two little children, who neither understood +why they were sometimes very unruly or that they would one day be very, +very rich. + +As for their outbreaks, an intense sense of loneliness for which they +were unable to account was always followed by a period of restlessness +sure to culminate in violent misbehaviour. + +Such an outbreak had been long impending. So when a telegram called away +their personal guardian, Kathleen Severn, the children broke loose with +the delicate fury of the April tempest outside, which all the morning +had been blotting the western windows with gusts of fragrant rain. + +The storm was passing now; light volleys of rain still arrived at +intervals, slackening as the spring sun broke out, gilding naked +branches and bare brown earth, touching swelling buds and the frail +points of tulips which pricked the soaked loam in close-set thickets. + +From the library bay windows where they stood, the children noticed +dandelions in the grass and snowdrops under the trees and recognised the +green signals of daffodil and narcissus. + +Already crocuses, mauve, white, and yellow, glimmered along a dripping +privet hedge which crowned the brick and granite wall bounding the +domain of Seagrave. East, through the trees, they could see the roofs of +electric cars speeding up and down Madison Avenue, and the houses facing +that avenue. North and south were quiet streets; westward Fifth Avenue +ran, a sheet of wet, golden asphalt glittering under the spring sun, and +beyond it, above the high retaining wall, budding trees stood out +against the sky, and the waters of the Park reservoirs sparkled behind. + +"I am glad it's spring, anyway," said Geraldine listlessly. + +"What's the good of it?" asked Scott. "We'll have to take all our +exercise with Kathleen just the same, and watch other children having +good times. What's the use of spring?" + +"Spring _is_ tiresome," admitted Geraldine thoughtfully. + +"So is winter. I think either would be all right if they'd only let me +have a few friends. There are plenty of boys I'd like to have some fun +with if they'd let me." + +"I wonder," mused Geraldine, "if there is anything the matter with us, +Scott?" + +"Why?" + +"Oh--I don't know. People stare at us so--nurses always watch us and +begin to whisper as soon as we come along. Do you know what a boy said +to me once when I skated very far ahead of Kathleen?" + +"What did he say?" inquired Scott, flattening his nose against the +window-pane to see whether it still hurt him. + +"He asked me if I were too rich and proud to play with other children. I +was so surprised; and I said that we were not rich at all, and that I +never had had any money, and that I was not a bit proud, and would love +to stay and play with him if Kathleen permitted me." + +"Did Kathleen let you? Of course she didn't." + +"I told her what the boy said and I showed her the boy, but she wouldn't +let me stay and play." + +"Kathleen's a pig." + +"No, she isn't, poor dear. They make her act that way--Mr. Tappan makes +her. Our grandfather didn't want us to have friends." + +"I'll tell you what," said Scott impatiently, "when I'm old enough, I'll +have other boys to play with whether Kathleen and--and that Thing--likes +it or not." + +The Thing was the Half Moon Trust Company. + +Geraldine glanced back at the portrait over the divan: + +"Do you know," she ventured, "that I believe mother would have let us +have fun." + +"I'll bet father would, too," said Scott. "Sometimes I feel like kicking +over everything in the house." + +"So do I and I generally do it," observed Geraldine, lifting a slim, +graceful leg and sending a sofa-cushion flying. + +When they had kicked all the cushions from the sofas and divans, Scott +suggested that they go out and help Schmitt, the gardener, who, at that +moment, came into view on the lawn, followed by Olsen wheeling a +barrowful of seedlings in wooden trays. + +So the children descended to the main hall and marched through it, +defying Lang, the second man, refusing hats and overshoes; and presently +were digging blissfully in a flower-bed under the delighted directions +of Schmitt. + +"What are these things, anyway?" demanded Scott, ramming down the moist +earth around a fragile rootlet from which trailed a green leaf or two. + +"Dot vas a verpena, sir," explained the old gardener. "Now you shall +vatch him grow." + +The boy remained squatting for several minutes, staring hard at the +seedling. + +"I can't see it grow," he said to his sister, "and I'm not going to sit +here all day waiting. Come on!" And he gave her a fraternal slap. + +Geraldine wiped her hands on her knickerbockers and started after him; +and away they raced around the house, past the fountains, under trees by +the coach-house, across paths and lawns and flower-beds, tearing about +like a pair of demented kittens. They frisked, climbed trees, chased +each other, wrestled, clutched, tumbled, got mad, made up, and finally, +removing shoes and stockings, began a game of leapfrog. + +Horror-stricken nurses arrived bearing dry towels and footgear, and were +received with fury and a volley of last year's horse-chestnuts. And when +the enemy had been handsomely repulsed, the children started on a tour +of exploration, picking their way with tender, naked feet to the +northern hedge. + +Here Geraldine mounted on Scott's shoulders and drew herself up to the +iron railing which ran along the top of the granite-capped wall between +hedge and street; and Scott followed her, both pockets stuffed with +chestnuts which he had prudently gathered in the shrubbery. + +In the street below there were few passers-by. Each individual wayfarer, +however, received careful attention, Scott having divided the chestnuts, +and the aim of both children being excellent. + +They had been awaiting a new victim for some time, when suddenly +Geraldine pinched her brother with eager satisfaction: + +"Oh, Scott! there comes that boy I told you about!" + +"What boy?" + +"The one who asked me if I was too rich and proud to play with him. And +that must be his sister; they look alike." + +"All right," said Scott; "we'll give them a volley. You take the nurse +and I'll fix the boy.... Ready.... Fire!" + +The ambuscade was perfectly successful; the nurse halted and looked up, +expressing herself definitely upon the manners and customs of the twins; +the boy, who appeared to be amazingly agile, seized a swinging wistaria +vine, clambered up the wall, and, clinging to the outside of the iron +railing, informed Scott that he would punch his head when a pleasing +opportunity presented itself. + +"All right," retorted Scott; "come in and do it now." + +"That's all very well for you to say when you know I can't climb over +this railing!" + +"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Scott, thrilled at the chance of +another boy on the grounds even if he had to fight him; "I'll tell you +what!" sinking his voice to an eager whisper; "You run away from your +nurse as soon as you get into the Park and I'll be at the front door and +I'll let you in. Will you?" + +"Oh, _please_!" whispered Geraldine; "and bring your sister, too!" + +The boy stared at her knickerbockers. "Do _you_ want to fight my +sister?" he asked. + +"I? Oh, no, no, no. You can fight Scott if you like, and your sister and +I will have such fun watching you. Will you?" + +His nurse was calling him to descend, in tones agitated and peremptory; +the boy hesitated, scowled at Scott, looked uncertainly at Geraldine, +then shot a hasty and hostile glance at the interior of the mysterious +Seagrave estate. Curiosity overcame him; also, perhaps, a natural desire +for battle. + +"Yes," he said to Scott, "I'll come back and punch your head for you." + +And very deftly, clinging like a squirrel to the pendant wistaria, he +let himself down into the street again. + +The Seagrave twins, intensely excited, watched them as far as Fifth +Avenue, then rapidly drawing on their shoes and stockings, scrambled +down to the shrubbery and raced for the house. Through it they passed +like a double whirlwind; feeble and perfunctory resistance was offered +by their nurses. + +"Get out of my way!" said Geraldine fiercely; "do you think I'm going to +miss the first chance for some fun that I've ever had in all my life?" + +At the same moment, through the glass-sheeted grill Scott discovered +two small figures dashing up the drive to the porte-cochère. And he +turned on Lang like a wild cat. + +Lang, the man at the door, was disposed to defend his post; Scott +prepared to fly at him, but his sister intervened: + +"Oh, Lang," she pleaded, jumping up and down in an agony of +apprehension, "please, _please_, let them in! We've never had any +friends." She caught his arm piteously; he looked fearfully embarrassed, +for the Seagrave livery was still new to him; nor, during his brief +service, had he fully digested the significance of the policy which so +rigidly guarded these little children lest rumour from without apprise +them of their financial future and the contaminating realisation +undermine their simplicity. + +As he stood, undecided, Geraldine suddenly jerked his hand from the +bronze knob and Scott flung open the door. + +"Come on! Quick!" he cried; and the next moment four small pairs of feet +were flying through the hall, echoing lightly across the terrace, then +skimming the lawn to the sheltering shrubbery beyond. + +"The thing to do," panted Scott, "is to keep out of sight." He seized +his guests by the arms and drew them behind the rhododendrons. "Now," he +said, "what's your name? You, I mean!" + +"Duane Mallett," replied the boy, breathless. "That's my sister, Naïda. +Let's wait a moment before we begin to fight; Naïda and I had to run +like fury to get away from our nurse." + +Naïda was examining Geraldine with an interest almost respectful. + +"I wish they'd let _me_ dress like a boy," she said. "It's fun, isn't +it?" + +"Yes. They don't _let_ me do it; I just did it," replied Geraldine. +"I'll get you a suit of Scott's clothes, if you like. I can get the +boxing-gloves at the same time. Shall I, Scott?" + +"Go ahead," said Scott; "we can pretend there are four boys here." And, +to Duane, as Geraldine sped cautiously away on her errand: "That's a +thing I never did before." + +"What thing?" + +"Play with three boys all by myself. Kathleen--who is Mrs. Severn, our +guardian--is always with us when we are permitted to speak to other boys +and girls." + +"That's babyish," remarked Duane in frank disgust. "You are a +mollycoddle." + +The deep red of mortification spread over Scott's face; he looked shyly +at Naïda, doubly distressed that a girl should hear the degrading term +applied to him. The small girl returned his gaze without a particle of +expression in her face. + +"Mollycoddles," continued Duane cruelly, "do the sort of things you do. +You're one." + +"I--don't _want_ to be one," stammered Scott. "How can I help it?" + +Duane ignored the appeal. "Playing with three boys isn't anything," he +said. "I play with forty every day." + +"W-where?" asked Scott, overwhelmed. + +"In school, of course--at recess--and before nine, and after one. We +have fine times. School's all right. Don't you even go to school?" + +Scott shook his head, too ashamed to speak. Naïda, with a flirt of her +kilted skirts, had abruptly turned her back on him; yet he was miserably +certain she was listening to her brother's merciless catechism. + +"I suppose you don't even know how to play hockey," commented Duane +contemptuously. + +There was no answer. + +"What do you do? Play with dolls? Oh, what a molly!" + +Scott raised his head; he had grown quite white. Naïda, turning, saw the +look on the boy's face. + +"Duane doesn't mean that," she said; "he's only teasing." + +Geraldine came hurrying back with the boxing-gloves and a suit of +Scott's very best clothes, halting when she perceived the situation, for +Scott had walked up to Duane, and the boys stood glaring at one another, +hands doubling up into fists. + +"You think I'm a molly?" asked Scott in a curiously still voice. + +"Yes, I do." + +"Oh, Scott!" cried Geraldine, pushing in between them, "you'll have to +hammer him well for that----" + +Naïda turned and shoved her brother aside: + +"I don't want you to fight him," she said. "I like him." + +"Oh, but they must fight, you know," explained Geraldine earnestly. "If +we didn't fight, we'd really be what you call us. Put on Scott's +clothes, Naïda, and while our brothers are fighting, you and I will +wrestle to prove that I'm not a mollycoddle----" + +"I don't want to," said Naïda tremulously. "I like you, too----" + +"Well, _you're_ one if you don't!" retorted Geraldine. "You can like +anybody and have fun fighting them, too." + +"Put on those clothes, Naïda," said Duane sternly. "Are you going to +take a dare?" + +So she retired very unwillingly into the hedge to costume herself while +the two boys invested their fists with the soft chamois gloves of +combat. + +"We won't bother to shake hands," observed Scott. "Are you ready?" + +"Yes, you will, too," insisted Geraldine; "shake hands before you begin +to fight!" + +"I won't," retorted Scott sullenly; "shake hands with anybody who calls +me--what he did." + +"Very well then; if you don't, I'll put on those gloves and fight you +myself." + +Duane's eyes flew wide open and he gazed upon Geraldine with newly mixed +emotions. She walked over to her brother and said: + +"Remember what Howker told us that father used to say--that squabbling +is disgraceful but a good fight is all right. Duane called you a silly +name. Instead of disputing about it and calling each other names, you +ought to settle it with a fight and be friends afterward.... Isn't that +so, Duane?" + +Duane seemed doubtful. + +"Isn't it so?" she repeated fiercely, stepping so swiftly in front of +him that he jumped back. + +"Yes, I guess so," he admitted; and the sudden smile which Geraldine +flashed on him completed his subjection. + +Naïda, in her boy's clothes, came out, her hands in her pockets, +strutting a little and occasionally bending far over to catch a view of +herself as best she might. + +"All ready!" cried Geraldine; "begin! Look out, Naïda; I'm going to +throw you." + +Behind her the two boys touched gloves, then Scott rushed his man. + +At the same moment Geraldine seized Naïda. + +"We are not to pull hair," she said; "remember! Now, dear, look out for +yourself!" + +Of that classic tournament between the clans of Mallett and Seagrave the +chronicles are lacking. Doubtless their ancestors before them joined +joyously in battle, confident that all details of their prowess would be +carefully recorded by the family minstrel. + +But the battle of that Saturday noon hour was witnessed only by the +sparrows, who were too busy lugging bits of straw and twine to +half-completed nests in the cornices of the House of Seagrave, to pay +much attention to the combat of the Seagrave children, who had gone +quite mad with the happiness of companionship and were expressing it +with all their might. + +Naïda's dark curls mingled with the grass several times before Geraldine +comprehended that her new companion was absurdly at her mercy; and then +she seized her with all the desperation of first possession and kissed +her hard. + +"It's ended," breathed Geraldine tremulously, "and nobody gained the +victory and--you _will_ love me, won't you?" + +"I don't know--I'm all dirt." She looked at Geraldine, bewildered by the +passion of the lonely child's caresses. "Yes--I do love you, Geraldine. +Oh, _look_ at those boys! How perfectly disgraceful! They _must_ +stop--make them stop, Geraldine!" + +Hair on end, grass-stained, dishevelled, and unspeakably dirty, the boys +were now sparring for breath. Grime and perspiration streaked their +countenances. Duane Mallett wore a humorously tinted eye and a +prehensile upper lip; Scott's nose had again yielded to the coy +persuasion of a left-handed jab and the proud blood of the Seagraves +once more offended high heaven on that April day. + +Geraldine, one arm imprisoning Naïda's waist, walked coolly in between +them: + +"Don't let's fight any more. The thing to do is to get Mrs. Bramton to +give you enough for four to eat and bring it back here. Scott, please +shake hands with Duane." + +"I wasn't licked," muttered Scott. + +"Neither was I," said Duane. + +"Nobody was licked by anybody," announced Geraldine. "Do get something +to eat, Scott; Naïda and I are starving!" + +After some hesitation the boys touched gloves respectfully, and Scott +shook off his mitts, and started for the kitchen. + +And there, to his horror and surprise, he was confronted by Mrs. Severn, +black hat, crape veil, and gloves still on, evidently that instant +arrived from those occult and, as the children supposed, distant bournes +of Staten Island, where the supreme mystery of all had been at work. + +"Oh, Scott!" she exclaimed tremulously, "what on earth has happened? +What is all this that Mrs. Farren and Howker have been telling me?" + +The boy stood petrified. Then there surged over him the memory of his +brief happiness in these new companions--a happiness now to be snatched +away ere scarcely tasted. Into the child's dirty, disfigured face came a +hunted expression; he looked about for an avenue of escape, and +Kathleen Severn caught him at the same instant and drew him to her. + +"What is it, Scott? Tell me, darling!" + +"Nothing.... Yes, there is something. I opened the front door and let a +strange boy and girl in to play with us, and I've just been fighting +with him, and we were having such good times--I--" his voice broke--"I +can't bear to have them go--so soon----" + +Kathleen looked at him for a moment, speechless with consternation. +Then: + +"Where are they, Scott?" + +"In the--the hedge." + +"Out _there_?" + +"Yes." + +"_Who_ are they?" + +"Their names are Duane Mallett and Naïda Mallett. We got them to run +away from their nurse. Duane's such a bully fellow." A sob choked him. + +"Come with me at once," said Kathleen. + +Behind the rhododendrons smiling peace was extending its pinions; Duane +had produced a pocketful of jack-stones, and the three children were now +seated on the grass, Naïda manipulating the jacks with soiled but deft +fingers. + +Duane was saying to Geraldine: + +"It's funny that you didn't know you were rich. Everybody says so, and +all the nurses in the Park talk about it every time you and Scott walk +past." + +"If I'm rich," said Geraldine, "why don't I have more money?" + +"Don't they let you have as much as you want?" + +"No--only twenty-five cents every month.... It's my turn, Naïda! Oh, +bother! I missed. Go on, Duane----" + +And, glancing up, her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as Kathleen +Severn, in her mourning veil and gown, came straight up to where they +sat. + +"Geraldine, dear, the grass is too damp to sit on," said Mrs. Severn +quietly. She turned to the youthful guests, who had hastily risen. + +"You are Naïda Mallett, it seems; and you are Duane? Please come in now +and wash and dress properly, because I am going to telephone to your +mother and ask her if you may remain to luncheon and play in the nursery +afterward." + +Dazed, the children silently followed her; one of her arms lay loosely +about the shoulders of her own charges; one encircled Naïda's neck. +Duane walked cautiously beside his sister. + +In the house the nurses took charge; Geraldine, turning on the stairs, +looked back at Kathleen Severn. + +"Are you really going to let them stay?" + +"Yes, I am, darling." + +"And--and may we play together all alone in the nursery?" + +"I think so.... I think so, dear." + +She ran back down the stairs and impetuously flung herself into +Kathleen's arms; then danced away to join the others in the blessed +regions above. + +Mrs. Severn moved slowly to the telephone, and first called up and +reassured Mrs. Mallett, who, however, knew nothing about the affair, as +the nurse was still scouring the Park for her charges. + +Then Mrs. Severn called up the Half Moon Trust Company and presently was +put into communication with Colonel Mallett, the president. To him she +told the entire story, and added: + +"It was inevitable that the gossip of servants should enlighten the +children sooner or later. The irony of it all is that this gossip +filtered in here through your son, Duane. That is how the case stands, +Colonel Mallett; and I have used my judgment and permitted the children +this large liberty which they have long needed, believe me, long, long +needed. I hope that your trust officer, Mr. Tappan, will approve." + +"Good Lord!" said Colonel Mallett over the wire. "Tappan won't stand for +it! You know that he won't, Mrs. Severn. I suppose, if he consults us, +we can call a directors' meeting and consider this new phase of the +case." + +"You ought to; the time is already here when the children should no +longer suffer such utter isolation. They _must_ make acquaintances, they +must have friends, they should go to parties like other children--they +ought to be given outside schooling sooner or later. All of which +questions must be taken up by your directors as soon as possible, +because my children are fast getting out of hand--fast getting away from +me; and before I know it I shall have a young man and a young girl to +account for--and to account to, colonel----" + +"I'll sift out the whole matter with Mr. Tappan; I'll speak to Mr. +Grandcourt and Mr. Beekman to-night. Until you hear from us, no more +visitors for the children. By the way, is that matter--the one we talked +over last month--definitely settled?" + +"Yes. I can't help being worried by the inclination she displays. It +frightens me in such a child." + +"Scott doesn't show it?" + +"No. He hates anything like that." + +"Do the servants thoroughly understand your orders?" + +"I'm a little troubled. I have given orders that no more brandied +peaches are to be made or kept in the house. The child was perfectly +truthful about it. She admitted filling her cologne bottle with the +syrup and sipping it after she was supposed to be asleep." + +"Have you found out about the sherry she stole from the kitchen?" + +"Yes. She told me that for weeks she had kept it hidden and soaked a +lump of sugar in it every night.... She is absolutely truthful, colonel. +I've tried to make her understand the danger." + +"All right. Good-bye." Kathleen Severn hung up the receiver with a deep +indrawn breath. + +From the nursery above came a joyous clamour and trampling and shouting. + +Suddenly she covered her face with her black-gloved hands. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +IN TRUST + + +The enfranchisement of the Seagrave twins proceeded too slowly to +satisfy their increasing desire for personal liberty and their +fast-growing impatience of restraint. + +Occasionally, a few carefully selected and assorted children were +permitted to visit them in relays, and play in the nursery for limited +periods without the personal supervision of Kathleen or the nurses; but +no serious innovation was attempted, no radical step taken without +authority from old Remsen Tappan, the trust officer of the great Half +Moon Trust Company. + +There could be no arguing with Mr. Tappan. + +Shortly before Anthony Seagrave died he had written to his old friend +Tappan: + + "If I live, I shall see to it that my grandchildren know nothing of + the fortune awaiting them until they become of age--which will be + after I am ended. Meanwhile, plain food and clothing, wholesome home + seclusion from the promiscuity of modern child life, and an + exhaustive education in every grace, fashion, and accomplishment of + body and intellect is the training I propose for the development in + them of the only thing in the world worth cultivating--unterrified + individualism. + + "The ignorance which characterises the conduct of modern institutes + of education reduces us all to one mindless level, reproducing _ad + nauseam_ what is known as 'average citizens.' This nation is + already crawling with them; art, religion, letters, government, + business, human ideals remain embryonic because the 'average + citizen' can conceive nothing higher, can comprehend nothing loftier + even when the few who have escaped the deadly levelling grind of + modern methods of education attempt to teach the masses to think for + themselves. + + "That is bad enough in itself--but add to cut-and-dried pedagogy the + outrageous liberty which modern pupils are permitted in school and + college, and add to that the unheard-of luxury in which they + live--and the result is stupidity and utter ruin. + + "My babies must have discipline, system, frugality, and leisure for + individual development drilled into them. I do not wish them to be + ignorant of one single modern grace and accomplishment; mind and + body must be trained together like a pair of Morgan colts. + + "But I will not have them victims of pedagogy; I will not have them + masters of their time and money until they are of age; I will not + permit them to choose companions or pursuits for their leisure until + they are fitted to do so. + + "If there is in them, latent, any propensity toward viciousness--any + unawakened desire for that which has been my failing--hard work from + dawn till dark is the antidote. An exhausted child is beyond + temptation. + + "If I pass forward, Tappan, before you--and it is likely because I + am twenty years older and I have lived unwisely--I shall arrange + matters in such shape that you can carry out something of what I + have tried to begin, far better than I, old friend; for I am strong + in theory and very weak in practice; they are such dear little + things! And when they cry to be taken up--and a modern trained + nurse says 'No! let them cry!' good God! Remsen, I sometimes sneak + into their thoroughly modern and scientifically arranged nursery, + which resembles an operating room in a brand-new hospital, and I + take up my babies and rock them in my arms, terrified lest that + modern and highly trained nurse discover my infraction of sanitary + rule and precept. + + "I don't know; babies were born, and survived cradles and mothers' + arms and kisses long before sterilised milk and bacilli were + invented. + + "You see I _am_ weak in more ways than one. But I do mean to give + them every chance. It isn't that these old arms ache for them, that + this rather tired heart weakens when they cry for God knows what, + and modern science says let them _cry_!--it is that, deep in me, + Tappan, a heathenish idea persists that what they need more than + hygienics and scientific discipline is some of that old-fashioned + love--love which rocks them when it is not good for them--love which + overfeeds them sometimes so that they yell with old-fashioned + colic--love which ventures a bacilli-laden kiss. Friend, friend--I + am very unfit! It will be well for them when I move on. Only try to + love them, Tappan. And if you ever doubt, kill them with indulgence, + rather than with hygiene!" + +He died of pneumonia a few weeks later. He had no chance. Remsen Tappan +picked up the torch from the fallen hand and, blowing it into a brisk +blaze, shuffled forward to light a path through life for the highly +sterilised twins. + +So the Half Moon Trust became father and mother to the Seagrave +children; and Mr. Tappan as dry nurse prescribed the brand of +intellectual pap for them and decided in what manner it should be +administered. + +Now home tuition and the "culture of the indiwidool" was a personal +hobby of Mr. Tappan, and promiscuous schools his abomination. Had not +his own son, Peter Stuyvesant Tappan, been reared upon unsteady legs to +magnificent physical and intellectual manhood under this theory? + +So there was to be no outside education for the youthful Seagraves; from +the nursery schoolroom no chance of escape remained. As they grew older +they became wild to go to school; stories of schoolrooms and playgrounds +and studies and teachers and jolly fellowship and vacations, brought to +them from outside by happier children, almost crazed them with the +longing for it. + +It was hard for them when their little friends the Malletts were sent +abroad to school; Naïda, now aged twelve, to a convent, and Duane, who +was now fifteen, three years older than the Seagrave twins, accompanied +his mother and a tutor, later to enter some school of art in Paris and +develop whatever was in him. For like all parents, Duane's had been +terribly excited over his infantile efforts at picture-making--one of +the commonest and earliest developed of talents, but which never fails +to amaze and delight less gifted parents and which continues to +overstock the world with mediocre artists. + +So it was arranged that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad +with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane's Titianesque genius and +Naïda's unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid +good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic +embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity. Alas! it is those who depart who +forget first; and at the end of a year, Geraldine's and Scott's letters +remained unanswered. + +At the age of thirteen, after an extraordinary meeting of the directors +of the Half Moon Trust Company, it was formally decided that a series of +special tutors should now be engaged to carry on to the bitter end the +Tappan-Seagrave system of home culture; and the road to college was +definitely closed. + +"I want my views understood," said Mr. Tappan, addressing the board of +solemn-visaged directors assembled in session to determine upon the fate +of two motherless little children. "Indiwidoolism is nurtured in +excloosion; the elimination of the extraneous is necessary for the +dewelopment of indiwidoolism. I regard the human indiwidool as sacred. +Like a pearl"--he pronounced it "poil"--"it can grow in beauty and +symmetry and purity and polish only when nourished in seclusion. +Indiwidoolism is a poil without price; and the natal mansion, +gentlemen--if I may be permitted the simulcritude--is its oyster. + +"My old friend, Anthony Seagrave, shared with me this unalterable +conwiction. I remember in the autumn of 1859----" + +The directors settled themselves in their wadded arm-chairs; several +yawned; some folded their hands over their ample stomachs. The June +atmosphere was pleasantly conducive to the sort of after-luncheon +introspection which is easily soothed by monotones of the human voice. + +And while Mr. Tappan droned on and on, some of the directors watched him +with one eye half open, thinking of other things, and some listened, +both eyes half closed, thinking of nothing at all. + +Many considered Mr. Tappan a very terrible old man, though why +terrible, unless the most rigid honesty and bigoted devotion to duty +terrifies, nobody seemed to know. + +Long Island Dutch--with all that it implies--was the dull stock he +rooted in. Born a poor farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, +he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of +tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these +solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the +classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from +the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at +Fortune and brought her to her knees amidst a shower of gold. And all +alone he gathered it in. + +On Coenties Slip his warehouse still bore the legend: "R. Tappan: Iron." +All that he had ever done he had done alone. He knew of no other way; +believed in no other way. + +Plain living, plainer clothing, tireless thinking undisturbed--that had +been his childhood; and it had suited him. + +Never but once had he made any concession to custom and nature, and that +was only when, desiring an heir, he was obliged to enter into human +partnership to realise the wish. + +His son was what his father had made him under the iron cult of solitary +development; and now, the father, loyal in his own way to the memory of +his old friend Anthony Seagrave, meant to do his full duty toward the +orphaned grandchildren. + +So it came to pass that tutors and specialists replaced Kathleen in the +schoolroom; and these ministered to the twin "poils," who were now +fretting through their thirteenth year, mad with desire for +boarding-school. + +Four languages besides their own were adroitly stuffed into them; nor +were letters, arts, and sciences neglected, nor the mundane and social +patter, accomplishments, and refinements, including poise, pose, and +deportment. + +Specialists continued to guide them indoors and out; they rode every +morning at eight with a specialist; they drove in the Park between four +and five with the most noted of four-in-hand specialists; fencing, +sparring, wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, were all supervised by +specialists in those several very important and scientific arts; and +specialists also taught them hygiene: how to walk, sit, breathe; how to +masticate; how to relax after the manner of the domestic cat. + +They had memory lessons; lessons in personal physiology, and in first +aid to themselves. + +Specialists cared for their teeth, their eyes, their hair, their skin, +their hands and feet. + +Everything that was taught them, done for them, indirectly educated them +in the science of self-consideration and deepened an unavoidably natural +belief in their own overwhelming importance. They had not been born so. + +But in the house of Seagrave everything revolved around and centred in +them; everything began for them and ended for them alone. They had no +chance. + +True, they were also instructed in theology and religion; they became +well grounded in the elements of both,--laws, by-laws, theory, legends, +proverbs, truisms, and even a few abstract truths. But there was no +meaning in either to these little prisoners of self. Seclusion is an +enemy to youth; solitude its destruction. + +When the twins were fifteen they went to their first party. A week of +superficial self-restraint and inward delirium was their preparation, a +brief hour of passive bewilderment the realisation. Dazed by the sight +and touch and clamor of the throng, they moved and spoke as in a vision. +The presence of their own kind in such numbers confused them; +overwhelmed, they found no voices to answer the call of happiness. Their +capacity to respond was too limited. + +As in a dream they were removed earlier than anybody else--taken away by +a footman and a maid with decorous pomp and circumstance, carefully +muffled in motor robes, and embedded in a limousine. + +The daily papers, with that lofty purpose which always characterises +them, recorded next morning the important fact that the famous Seagrave +twins had appeared at their first party. + + * * * * * + +Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen the twins might have entered +Harvard, for the entrance examinations were tried on both children, and +both passed brilliantly. + +For a year or two they found a substitute for happiness in pretending +that they were really at college; they simulated, day by day, the life +that they supposed was led there; they became devoted to their new game. +Excited through tales told by tutor and friend, they developed a +passionate loyalty for their college and class; they were solemnly +elected to coveted societies, they witnessed Harvard victories, they +strove fiercely for honours; their ideals were lofty, their courage +clean and high. + +So completely absorbed in the pretence did they become that their own +tutors ventured to suggest to Mr. Tappan that such fiercely realistic +mimicry deserved to be rewarded. Unfortunately, the children heard of +this; but the Trust Officer's short answer killed their interest in +playing at happiness, and their junior year began listlessly and +continued without ambition. There was no heart in the pretence. Their +interest had died. They studied mechanically because they were obliged +to; they no longer cared. + +That winter they went to a few more parties--not many. However, they +were gingerly permitted to witness their first play, and later, the same +year, were taken to "Lohengrin" at the opera. + +During the play, which was a highly moral one, they sat watching, +listening, wide-eyed as children. + +At the opera Geraldine's impetuous soul soared straight up to paradise +with the first heavenly strains, and remained there far above the rigid, +breathless little body, bolt upright in its golden sarcophagus of the +grand tier. + +Her physical consciousness really seemed to have fled. Until the end she +sat unaware of the throngs, of Scott and Kathleen whispering behind her, +of several tall, broad-shouldered, shy young fellows who came into their +box between the acts and tried to discuss anything at all with her, only +to find her blind, deaf, and dumb. + +These were the only memories of her first opera--confused, chaotic +brilliancy, paradise revealed: and long, long afterward, the carriage +flying up Fifth Avenue through darkness all gray with whirling snow. + + * * * * * + +Their eighteenth year dragged, beginning in physical and intellectual +indifference, but promised stormily as they became more accustomed to +glimpses of an outside world--a world teeming with restless young +people in unbelievable quantities. + +Scott had begun to develop two traits: laziness and a tendency to +sullen, unspoken wrath. He took more liberty than was officially granted +him--more than Geraldine dared take--and came into collision with +Kathleen more often now. He boldly overstayed his leave in visiting his +few boy friends for an afternoon; he returned home alone on foot after +dusk, telling the chauffeur to go to the devil. Again and again he +remained out to dinner without permission, and, finally, one afternoon +quietly and stealthily cut his studies, slipped out of the house, and +reappeared about dinner-time, excited, inclined to be boisterously +defiant, admitting that he had borrowed enough money from a friend to go +to a matinée with some other boys, and that he would do it again if he +chose. + +Also, to Kathleen's horror, he swore deliberately at table when Mr. +Tappan's name was mentioned; and Geraldine looked up with startled brown +eyes, divining in her brother something new--something that +unconsciously they both had long, long waited for--the revolt of youth +ere youth had been crushed for ever from the body which encased it. + +"Damn him," repeated Scott, a little frightened at his own words and +attitude; "I've had enough of this baby business; I'm eighteen and I +want two things: some friends to go about with freely, and some money to +do what other boys do. And you can tell Mr. Tappan, for all I care." + +"What would you buy with money that is not already provided for, Scott?" +asked Kathleen, gently ignoring his excited profanity. + +"I don't know; there is no pleasure in using things which that fool of +a Trust Company votes to let you have. Anyway, what I want is liberty +and money." + +"What would you do with what you call liberty, dear?" + +"Do? I'd--I'd--well, I'd go shooting if I wanted to. I'd buy a gun and +go off somewhere after ducks." + +"But your father's old club on the Chesapeake is open to you. Shall I +ask Mr. Tappan?" + +"Oh, yes: I know," he sneered, "and Mr. Tappan would send some chump of +a tutor there to teach me. I don't want to be taught how to hit ducks. I +want to find out for myself. I don't care for that sort of thing," he +repeated savagely; "I just ache to go off somewhere with a boy of my own +age where there's no club and no preserve and no tutor; and where I can +knock about and get whatever there is to get without anybody's help." + +Geraldine said: "You have more liberty now than I have, Scott. What are +you howling for?" + +"The only real liberty I have I take! Anyway, you have enough for a girl +of your age. And you'd better shut up." + +"I won't shut up," she retorted irritably. "I want liberty as much as +you do. If I had any, I'd go to every play and opera in New York. And +I'd go about with my friends and I'd have gowns fitted, and I'd have tea +at Sherry's, and I'd shop and go to matinees and to the Exchange, and +I'd be elected a member of the Commonwealth Club and play basket-ball +there, and swim, and lunch and--and then have another fitting----" + +"Is that what you'd do with your liberty?" he sneered. "Well, I don't +wonder old Tappan doesn't give you any money." + +"I do need money and decent gowns. I'm sick of the frumpy +prunes-and-prisms frocks that Kathleen makes me wear----" + +Kathleen's troubled laugh interrupted her: + +"Dearest, I do the best I can on the allowance made you by Mr. Tappan. +His ideas on modern feminine apparel are perhaps not yours or mine." + +"I should say not!" returned Geraldine angrily. "There isn't a girl of +my age who dresses as horridly as I do. I tell you, Mr. Tappan has got +to let me have money enough to dress decently. If he doesn't, I--I'll +begin to give him as much trouble as Scott does--more, too!" + +She set her teeth and stared at her glass of water. + +"What about my coming-out gown?" she asked. + +"I have written him about your début," said Kathleen soothingly. + +"Oh! What did the old beast say?" + +"He writes," began Kathleen pleasantly, "that he considers eighteen an +unsuitable age for a young girl to make her bow to New York society." + +"Did he say that?" exclaimed Geraldine, furious. "Very well; I shall +write to Colonel Mallett and tell him I simply will not endure it any +longer. I've had enough education; I'm suffocated with it! Besides, I +dislike it. I want a dinner-gown and a ball-gown and my hair waved and +dressed on top of my head instead of bunched half way! I want to have an +engagement pad--I want to have places to go to--people expecting me; I +want silk stockings and pretty underclothes! Doesn't that old fool +understand what a girl wants and needs?" + +She half rose from her seat at the table, pushing away the fruit which a +servant offered; and, laying her hands flat on the cloth, leaned +forward, eyes flashing ominously. + +"I'm getting tired of this," she said. "If it goes on, I'll probably run +away." + +"So will I," said Scott, "but I've good reasons. They haven't done +anything to you. You're making a terrible row about nothing." + +"Yes, they have! They've suppressed me, stifled me, bottled me up, +tinkered at me, overgroomed me, dressed me ridiculously, and stuffed my +mind. And I'm starved all the time! O Kathleen, I'm hungry! hungry! +Can't you understand? + +"They've made me into something I was not. I've never yet had a chance +to be myself. Why couldn't they let me be it? I know--I _know_ that when +at last they set me free because they have to--I--I'll act like a fool; +I'll not know what to do with my liberty--I'll not know how to use +it--how to understand or be understood.... Tell Mr. Tappan that! Tell +him that it is all silly and wrong! Tell him that a young girl never +forgets when other girls laugh at her because she never had any money, +and dresses like a frump, and wears her hair like a baby!... And if he +doesn't listen to us, some day Scott and I will show him and the others +how we feel about it! I can make as much trouble as Scott can; I'll do +it, too----" + +"Geraldine!" + +"Very well. I'm boiling inside when I think of--some things. The +injustice of a lot of hateful, snuffy old men deciding on what sort of +underclothes a young girl shall wear!... And I _will_ make my début! I +will! I will!" + +"Dearest----" + +"Yes, I will! I'll write to them and complain of Mr. Tappan's stingy, +unjust treatment of us both----" + +"Let me do the writing, dear," said Kathleen quietly. And she rose from +the table and left the dining-room, both arms around the necks of the +Seagrave twins, drawing them close to her sides--closer when her +sidelong glance caught the sullen bitterness on the darkening features +of the boy, and when on the girl's fair face she saw the flushed, +wide-eyed, questioning stare. + +When the young, seeking reasons, gaze questioningly at nothing, it is +well to divine and find the truthful answer, lest their _other_ selves, +evoked, stir in darkness, counselling folly. + +The answer to such questions Kathleen knew; who should know better than +she? But it was not for her to reply. All she could do was to summon out +of the vasty deep the powers that ruled her wards and herself; and +these, convoked in solemn assembly because of conflict with their Trust +Officer, might decide in becoming gravity such questions as what shall +be the proper quality and cost of a young girl's corsets; and whether or +not real lace and silk are necessary for attire more intimate still. + + * * * * * + +During the next two years the steadily increasing friction between +Remsen Tappan and his wards began seriously to disturb the directors of +the Half Moon Trust. That worthy old line company viewed with uneasiness +the revolutionary tendencies of the Seagrave twins as expressed in +periodical and passionate letters to Colonel Mallett. The increasing +frequency of these appeals for justice and for intervention +fore-shadowed the desirability of a conference. Besides, there was a +graver matter to consider, which implicated Scott. + +When Kathleen wrote, suggesting a down-town conference to decide +delicate questions concerning Geraldine's undergarments and Scott's new +gun, Colonel Mallett found it more convenient to appoint the Seagrave +house as rendezvous. + +And so it came to pass one pleasant Saturday afternoon in late October +that, in twos and threes, a number of solemn old gentlemen, faultlessly +attired, entered the red drawing-room of the Seagrave house and seated +themselves in an impressive semicircle upon the damask chairs. + +They were Colonel Stuart Mallett, president of the institution, just +returned from Paris with his entire family; Calvin McDermott, Joshua +Hogg, Carl Gumble, Friedrich Gumble; the two vice-presidents, James Cray +and Daniel Montross; Myndert Beekman, treasurer; Augustus Varick, +secretary; the Hon. John D. Ellis; Magnelius Grandcourt 2d, and Remsen +Tappan, Trust Officer. + +If the pillars of the house of Seagrave had been founded upon millions, +the damask and rosewood chairs in the red drawing-room now groaned under +the weight of millions. Power, authority, respectability, and legitimate +affluence sat there majestically enthroned in the mansion of the late +Anthony Seagrave, awaiting in serious tribunal the appearance of the +last of that old New York family. + +Mrs. Severn came in first; the directors rose as one man, urbane, +sprightly, and gallant. She was exceedingly pretty; they recognised it. +They could afford to. + +Compositely they were a smooth, soft-stepping, soft-voiced, company. An +exception or two, like Mr. Tappan, merely accented the composite +impression of rosy-cheeked, neatly shaven, carefully dressed prosperity. +They all were cautious of voice, moderate of speech, chary of gesture. +There was always an impressive pause before a director of the Half Moon +Trust answered even the most harmless question addressed to him. Some +among them made it a conservative rule to swallow nothing several times +before speaking at all. It was a safe habit to acquire. _Aut prudens aut +nullus._ + +Geraldine's starched skirts rustled on the stairway. When she came into +the room the directors of the Half Moon Trust were slightly astonished. +During the youth of the twins, the wives of several gentlemen present +had called at intervals to inspect the growth of Anthony Seagrave's +grandchildren, particularly those worthy and acquisitive ladies who had +children themselves. The far-sighted reap rewards. Some day these baby +twins would be old enough to marry. It was prudent to remember such +details. A position as an old family friend might one day prove of +thrifty advantage in this miserably mercenary world where dog eats dog, +and dividends are sometimes passed. God knows and pities the sorrows of +the rich. + +Geraldine, her slim hand in Colonel Mallett's, courtesied with old-time +quaintness, then her lifted eyes swept the rosy, rotund countenances +before her. To each she courtesied and spoke, offering the questioning +hand of amity. + +The thing that seemed to surprise them was that she had grown since they +had seen her. Time flies when hunting safe investments. The manners she +retained, like her fashion of wearing her hair, and the cut and length +of her apparel were clearly too childish to suit the tall, slender, +prettily rounded figure--the mature oval of the face, the delicately +firm modelling of the features. + +This was no child before them; here stood adorable adolescence, a hint +of the awakening in the velvet-brown eyes which were long and slightly +slanting at the corners; hints, too, in the vivid lips, in the finer +outline of the profile, in faint bluish shadows under the eyes, edging +the curved cheeks' bloom. + +They had not seen her in two years or more, and she had grown up. They +had merely stepped down-town for a hasty two years' glance at the +market, and, behind their backs, the child had turned into a woman. + +Hitherto they had addressed her as "Geraldine" and "child," when a rare +interview had been considered necessary. Now, two years later, +unconsciously, it was "Miss Seagrave," and considerable embarrassment +when the subject of intimate attire could no longer be avoided. + +But Geraldine, unconscious of such things, broached the question with +all the directness characteristic of her. + +"I am sorry I was rude in my last letter," she said gravely, turning to +Mr. Tappan. "Will you please forgive me?... I am glad you came. I do not +think you understand that I am no longer a little girl, and that things +necessary for a woman are necessary for me. I want a quarterly +allowance. I need what a young woman needs. Will you give these things +to me, Mr. Tappan?" + +Mr. Tappan's dry lips cracked apart; he swallowed grimly several times, +then his long bony fingers sought the meagre ends of his black string +tie: + +"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began harshly, and checked +himself, when Geraldine flushed to her ear tips and stamped her foot. +Self-control had gone at last. + +"I won't listen to that!" she said, breathless; "I've listened to it for +ten years--as long as I can remember. Answer me honestly, Mr. Tappan! +Can I have what other women have--silk underwear and stockings--real +lace on my night dresses--and plenty of it? Can I have suitable gowns +and furs, and have my hair dressed properly? I want you to answer; can I +make my début this winter and have the gowns I require--and the liberty +that girls of my age have?" She turned on Colonel Mallett: "The liberty +that Naïda has had is all I want; the sort of things you let her have +all I ask for." And appealing to Magnelius Grandcourt, who stood pursing +his thick lips, puffed out like a surprised pouter pigeon: "Your +daughter Catherine has more than I ask; why do you let her have what you +consider bad for me? _Why_?" + +Mr. Grandcourt swallowed several times, and spoke in an undertone to +Joshua Hogg. But he did not reply to Geraldine. + +Remsen Tappan turned his iron visage toward Colonel Mallett--ignoring +Geraldine's questions. + +"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began again dauntlessly---- + +"Isn't there anybody to answer me?" asked Geraldine, turning from one to +another. + +"Concerning the cultiwation----" + +"Answer me!" she flashed back. There were tears in her voice, but her +eyes blazed. + +"Miss Seagrave," interposed old Mr. Montross gravely, "I beg of you to +remember----" + +"Let him answer me first! I asked him a perfectly plain question. +It--it is silly to ignore me as though I were a foolish child--as though +I didn't know my mind." + +"I think, Mr. Tappan, perhaps if you could give Miss Seagrave a +qualified answer to her questions--make some preliminary statement--" +began Mr. Cray cautiously. + +"Concerning what?" snapped Tappan with a grim stare. + +"Concerning my stockings and my underwear," said Geraldine fiercely. +"I'm tired of dressing like a servant!" + +Mr. Tappan's rugged jaw opened and shut with another snap. + +"I'm opposed to any such innowation," he said. + +"And--my coming out this winter? And my quarterly allowance? Answer me!" + +"Time enough when you turn twenty-one, Miss Seagrave. Cultiwation of +mind concerns you now, not cultiwation of raiment." + +"That--that--" stammered Geraldine, "is s-su-premely s-silly." The tears +reached her eyes; she brushed them away angrily. + +Mallett coughed and glanced at Myndert Beekman, then past the secretary, +Mr. Varick, directly at Mr. Tappan. + +"If you could see your way to--ah--accede to some--a number--perhaps, in +a measure, to all of Miss Seagrave's not unreasonable requests, Mr. +Tappan----" + +[Illustration: "'Can I have what other women have--silk underwear and +stockings?'"] + +He hesitated, looked dubiously at Mr. Montross, who nodded. Mr. Cray, +also, made an almost imperceptible sign of concurrence. Magnelius +Grandcourt, the sixty-year _enfant terrible_ of the company, dreaded +for his impulsive outbursts--though the effect of these outbursts was +always very carefully considered before-hand--stepped jauntily across +the floor, and lifting Geraldine's hand to his rather purplish lips, +saluted it with a flourish. + +"Oh, I say, Tappan, let Miss Seagrave have what she wants!" he exclaimed +with a hearty disregard of caution, which outwardly disturbed but +inwardly deceived nobody except Geraldine and Mrs. Severn. + +Colonel Mallett thought: "The acquisitive beast is striking attitudes on +his fool of a son's account." + +Mr. Tappan's small iron-gray eyes bored two holes through the inward +motives of Mr. Grandcourt, and his mouth tightened till the seamed lips +were merely a line. + +"I think, Magnelius," said Colonel Mallett coldly, "that it is, perhaps, +the sense of our committee that the time has practically arrived for +some change--perhaps radical change--in the--in the--ah--the hitherto +exceedingly wise regulations----" + +"_May_ I have real lace?" cried Geraldine--"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon, +Colonel Mallett, for interrupting, but I was perfectly crazy to know +what you were going to say." + +Other people have been crazier and endured more to learn what hope the +verdict of ponderous authority might hold for them. + +Colonel Mallett, a trifle ruffled at the interruption, swallowed several +times and then continued without haste to rid himself of a weighty +opinion concerning the début and the petticoats of the Half Moon's ward. +He might have made the child happy in one word. It took him twenty +minutes. + +Concurring opinions were then solemnly delivered by every director in +turn except Mr. Tappan, who spoke for half an hour, doggedly dissenting +on every point. + +But the days of the old régime were evidently numbered. He understood +it. He looked across at the crackled portrait of his old friend Anthony +Seagrave; the faded, painted features were obliterated in a bar of +slanting sunlight. + +So, concluding his dissenting opinion, and having done his duty, he sat +down, drawing the skirts of his frock-coat close around his bony thighs. +He had done his best; his reward was this child's hatred--which she +already forgot in the confused delight of her sudden liberation. + +Dazed with happiness, to one after another Geraldine courtesied and +extended the narrow childlike hand of amity--even to him. Then, as +though treading on invisible pink clouds, she floated out and away +up-stairs, scarcely conscious of passing her brother on the stairway, +who was now descending for his turn before the altar of authority. + + * * * * * + +When Scott returned he appeared to be unusually red in the face. +Geraldine seized him ecstatically: + +"Oh, Scott! I _am_ to come out, after all--and I'm to have my quarterly, +and gowns, and everything. I could have hugged Mr. Grandcourt--the dear! +I was so frightened--frightened into rudeness--and then that beast of a +Tappan scared me terribly. But it is all right now--and _what_ did they +promise you, poor dear?" + +Scott's face still remained flushed as he stood, hands in his pockets, +head slightly bent, tracing with the toe of his shoe the carpet pattern. + +"You want to know what they promised me?" he asked, looking up at his +sister with an unpleasant laugh. She poured a few drops of cologne onto +a lump of sugar, placed it between her lips, and nodded: + +"They _did_ promise you something--didn't they?" + +"Oh, certainly. They promised to make it hot for me if I ever again +borrowed money on notes." + +"Scott! did you do that?" + +"Give my note? Certainly. I needed money--I've told old tabby Tappan so +again and again. In a year I'll have all the money I need--so what's the +harm if I borrow a little and promise to pay when I'm of age?" + +Geraldine considered a moment: "It's curious," she reflected, "but do +you know, Scott, I never thought of doing that. It never occurred to me +to do it! Why didn't you tell me?" + +"Because," said her brother with an embarrassed laugh, "it's not exactly +a proper thing to do, I believe. Anyway, they raised a terrible row +about it. Probably that's why they have at last given me a decent +quarterly allowance; they think it's safer, I suppose--and they're +right. The stingy old fossils." + +The boyish boast, the veiled hint of revolt and reprisal vaguely +disturbed Geraldine's sense of justice. + +"After all," she said, "they have meant to be kind. They didn't know +how, that's all. And, Scott, do let us try to be better now. I'm ashamed +of my rudeness to them. And I'm going to be very, very good to Kathleen +and not do one single thing to make her unhappy or even to bother Mr. +Tappan.... And, oh, Scott! my silks and laces! my darling clothes! All +is coming true! Do you hear? And, Scott! Naïda and Duane are back and +I'm dying to see them. Duane is twenty-three, think of it!" + +She seized him and spun him around. + +"If you don't hug me and tell me you're fond of me, I shall go mad. Tell +me you're fond of me, Scott! You do love me, don't you?" + +He kissed his sister with preoccupied toleration: "Whew!" he said, "your +breath reeks of cologne! + +"As for me," he added, half sullenly, "I'm going to have a few things I +want, now.... And do a few things, too." + +But what these things were he did not specify. Nor did Geraldine have +time to speculate, so occupied was she now with preparations for the +wonderful winter which was to come true at last--which was already +beginning to come true with exciting visits to that magic country of +brilliant show-windows which, like an enchanted city by itself, sparkles +from Madison Square to the Plaza between Fourth Avenue and Broadway. + + * * * * * + +Into this sparkling metropolitan zone she hastened with Kathleen; all +day long, week after week, she flitted from shop to shop, never +satisfied, always eager to see, to explore. Yet two things Kathleen +noticed: Geraldine seemed perfectly happy and contented to view the +glitter of vanity fair without thought of acquiring its treasures for +herself; and, when reminded that she was there to buy, she appeared to +be utterly ignorant of the value of money, though a childhood without it +was supposed to have taught her its rarity and preciousness. + +The girl's personal tastes were expensive; she could linger in ecstasy +all the morning over piles of wonderful furs without envy, without even +thinking of them for herself; but when Kathleen mentioned the reason of +their shopping, Geraldine always indicated sables as her choice, any +single piece of which would have required half her yearly allowance to +pay for. + +And she was for ever wishing to present things to Kathleen; silks that +were chosen, model gowns that they examined together, laces, velvets, +jewels, always her first thought seemed to be that Kathleen should have +what they both enjoyed looking at so ardently; and many a laughing +contest they had as to whether her first quarterly allowance should be +spent upon herself or her friends. + +On the surface it would appear that unselfishness was the key to her +character. That was impossible; she had lived too long alone. Yet +Geraldine was clearly not acquisitive; though, when she did buy, her +careless extravagance worried Kathleen. Spendthrift--in that she cared +nothing for the money value of anything--her bright, piquant, eager face +was a welcome sight to the thrifty metropolitan shopkeeper at +Christmas-tide. A delicate madness for giving obsessed her; she bought a +pair of guns for Scott, laces and silks for Kathleen, and for the +servants everything she could think of. Nobody was forgotten, not even +Mr. Tappan, who awoke Christmas morning to gaze grimly upon an antique +jewelled fob all dangling with pencils and seals. In the first flush of +independence it gave her more pleasure to give than to acquire. + +Also, for the first time in her life, she superintended the distribution +of her own charities, flying in the motor with Kathleen from church to +mission, eager, curious, pitiful, appalled, by turns. Sentiment +overwhelmed her; it was a new kind of pleasure. + + * * * * * + +One night she arose shivering from her warm bed, and with ink and paper +sat figuring till nearly dawn how best to distribute what fortune she +might one day possess, and live an exalted life on ten dollars a week. + +Kathleen found her there asleep, head buried in the scattered papers, +limbs icy to the knees; and there ensued an interim of bronchitis which +threatened at one time to postpone her début. + +But the medical profession of Manhattan came to the rescue in +battalions, and Geraldine was soon afoot, once more drifting +ecstatically among the splendours of the shops, thrilling with the +nearness of the day that should set her free among unnumbered hosts of +unknown friends. + +Who would these unknown people turn out to be? What hearts were at that +very moment destined to respond in friendship to her own? + +Often lying awake, nibbling her scented lump of sugar, the darkness +reddening, at intervals, as embers of her bedroom fire dropped glowing +to the hearth, she pictured to herself this vast, brilliant throng +awaiting to welcome her as one of them. And her imagination catching +fire, through closed lids she seemed to see heavenly vistas of youthful +faces--a thousand arms outstretched in welcome; and she, advancing, eyes +dim with happiness, giving herself to this world of youth and +friendship--crossing the threshold--leaving for ever behind her the past +with its loneliness and isolation. + +It was of friendships she dreamed, and the blessed nearness of others, +and the liberty to seek them. She promised herself she would never, +never again permit herself to be alone. She had no definite plans, +except that. Life henceforth must be filled with the bright shapes of +comrades. Life must be only pleasure. Never again must sadness come near +her. A miraculous capacity for happiness seemed to fill her breast, +expanding with the fierce desire for it, until under the closed lids +tears stole out, and there, in the darkness, she held out her bare arms +to the world--the kind, good, generous, warm-hearted world, which was +waiting, just beyond her threshold, to welcome her and love her and +companion her for ever. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE THRESHOLD + + +She awoke tired; she had scarcely closed her eyes that night. The fresh +odour of roses filled her room when her maid arrived with morning gifts +from Kathleen and Scott. + +She lay abed until noon. They started dressing her about three. After +that the day became unreal to her. + + * * * * * + +Manhattan was conventionally affable to Geraldine Seagrave, also +somewhat curious to see what she looked like. Fifth Avenue and the +neighbouring side streets were jammed with motors and carriages on the +bright January afternoon that Geraldine made her bow, and the red and +silver drawing-rooms, so famous a generation ago, were packed +continually. + +What people saw was a big, clumsy house expensively overdecorated in the +appalling taste of forty years ago, now screened by forests of palms and +vast banks of flowers; and they saw a number of people popularly +identified with the sort of society which newspapers delight to revere; +and a few people of real distinction; and a young girl, noticeably pale, +standing beside Kathleen Severn and receiving the patronage of dowagers +and beaux, and the impulsive clasp of fellowship from fresh-faced young +girls and nice-looking, well-mannered young fellows. + +The general opinion seemed to be that Geraldine Seagrave possessed all +the beauty which rumour had attributed to her as her right by +inheritance, but the animation of her clever mother was lacking. Also, +some said that her manners still smacked of the nursery; and that, +unless it had been temporarily frightened out of her, she had little +personality and less charm. + +Nothing, as a matter of fact, had been frightened out of her; for weeks +she had lived in imagination so vividly through that day that when the +day really arrived it found her physically and mentally unresponsive; +the endless reiteration of names sounded meaninglessly in her ears, the +crowding faces blurred. She was passively satisfied to be there, and +content with the touch of hands and the pleasant-voiced formalities of +people pressing toward her from every side. + + * * * * * + +Afterward few impressions remained; she remembered the roses' perfume, +and a very fat woman with a confusing similarity of contour fore and aft +who blocked the lines and rattled on like a machine-gun saying +dreadfully frank things about herself, her family, and everybody she +mentioned. + +Naïda Mallett, whom she had not seen in many years, she had known +immediately, and now remembered. And Naïda had taken her white-gloved +hand shyly, whispering constrained formalities, then had disappeared +into the unreality of it all. + +Duane, her old playmate, may have been there, but she could not remember +having seen him. There were so many, many youths of the New York sort, +all dressed alike, all resembling one another--many, many people flowing +past her where she stood submerged in the silken ebb eddying around her. + + * * * * * + +These were the few hazy impressions remaining--she was recalling them +now while dressing for her first dinner dance. Later, when her maid +released her with a grunt of Gallic disapproval, she, distraite, glanced +at her gown in the mirror, still striving to recall something definite +of the day before. + +"_Was_ Duane there?" she asked Kathleen, who had just entered. + +"No, dear.... Why did you happen to think of Duane Mallett?" + +"Naïda came.... Duane was such a splendid little boy.... I had hoped----" + +Mrs. Severn said coolly: + +"Duane isn't a very splendid man. I might as well tell you now as +later." + +"What in the world do you mean, Kathleen?" + +"I mean that people say he was rather horrid abroad. Some women don't +mind that sort of thing, but I do." + +"Horrid? How?" + +"He went about Europe with unpleasant people. He had too much money--and +that is ruinous for a boy. I hate to disillusion you, but for several +years people have been gossipping about Duane Mallett's exploits abroad; +and they are not savoury." + +"What were they? I am old enough to know." + +"I don't propose to tell you. He was notoriously wild. There were +scandals. Hush! here comes Scott." + +"For Heaven's sake, pinch some colour into your cheeks!" exclaimed her +brother; "we're not going to a wake!" + +And Kathleen said anxiously: "Your gown is perfection, dear; are you a +trifle tired? You do look pale." + +"Tired?" repeated Geraldine--"not in the least, dearest.... If I seem +not to be excited, I really am, internally; but perhaps I haven't +learned how to show it.... Don't I look well? I was so preoccupied with +my gown in the mirror that I forgot to examine my face." + +Mrs. Severn kissed her. "You and your gown are charming. Come, we are +late, and that isn't permitted to débutantes." + + * * * * * + +It was Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt who was giving the first dinner and +dance for Geraldine Seagrave. In the cloak-room she encountered some +very animated women of the younger married set, who spoke to her +amiably, particularly a Mrs. Dysart, who said she knew Duane Mallett, +and who was so friendly that a bit of colour warmed Geraldine's pallid +cheeks and still remained there when, a few minutes later, she saluted +her heavily jewelled hostess and recognised in her the fat fore-and-aft +lady of the day before. + +Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt, glittering like a South American scarab, +detained her with the smallest and chubbiest hands she had ever seen +inside of gloves. + +"My dear, you look ghastly," said her hostess. "You're probably scared +to death. This is my son, Delancy, who is going to take you in, and I'm +wondering about you, because Delancy doesn't get on with débutantes, but +that can't be helped. If he's pig enough not to talk to you, it wouldn't +surprise me--and it's just as well, too, for if he likes anybody he +compromises them, but it's no use your ever liking a Grandcourt, for all +the men make rotten husbands--I'm glad Rosalie Dysart threw him over for +poor Jack Dysart; it saved her a divorce! I'd get one if I could; so +would Magnelius. My husband was a judge once, but he resigned because he +couldn't send people up for the things he was doing himself." + +Mrs. Grandcourt, still gabbling away, turned to greet new arrivals, +merely switching to another subject without interrupting her steady +stream of outrageous talk. She was celebrated for it--and for nothing +else. + +Geraldine, bewildered and a little horrified, looked at her billowy, +bediamonded hostess, then at young Delancy Grandcourt, who, not +perceptibly abashed by his mother's left-handed compliments, lounged +beside her, apparently on the verge of a yawn. + +"My mother says things," he explained patiently; "nobody minds 'em.... +Shall we exchange nonsense--or would you rather save yourself until +dinner?" + +"Save myself what?" she asked nervously. + +"The nuisance of talking to me about nothing. I'm not clever." + +Geraldine reddened. + +"I don't usually talk about nothing." + +"I do," he said. "I never have much to say." + +"Is that because you don't like débutantes?" she asked coldly. + +"It's because they don't care about me.... If you would talk to me, I'd +really be grateful." + +He flushed and stepped back awkwardly to allow room for a slim, handsome +man to pass between them. The very ornamental man did not pass, however, +but calmly turned toward Geraldine, and began to talk to her. + +She presently discovered his name to be Dysart; and she also discovered +that Mr. Dysart didn't know her name; and, for a moment after she had +told him, surprise and a confused sense of resentment silenced her, +because she was quite certain now that they had never been properly +presented. + +That negligence of conventions was not unusual in this new world she +was entering, she had already noticed; and this incident was evidently +another example of custom smilingly ignored. She looked up +questioningly, and Dysart, instantly divining the trouble, laughed in +his easy, attractive fashion--the fashion he usually affected with +women. + +"You seemed so fresh and cool and sweet all alone in this hot corner +that I simply couldn't help coming over to hear whether your voice +matched the ensemble. And it surpasses it. Are you going to be +resentful?" + +"I'm too ignorant to be--or to laugh about it as you do.... Is it +because I look a simpleton that you come to see if I really am?" + +"Are you planning to punish me, Miss Seagrave?" + +"I'm afraid I don't know how." + +"Fate will, anyway, unless I am placed next you at dinner," he said with +his most reassuring smile, and rose gracefully. + +"I'm going to fix it," he added, and, pushing his way toward his +hostess, disappeared in the crush. + +Later young Grandcourt reappeared from the crush to take her in. Every +table seated eight, and, sure enough, as she turned involuntarily to +glance at her neighbour on the right, it was Dysart's pale face, cleanly +cut as a cameo, that met her gaze. He nodded back to her with unfeigned +satisfaction at his own success. + +"That's the way to manage," he said, "when you want a thing very much. +Isn't it, Miss Seagrave?" + +"You did not ask me whether I wanted it," she said. + +"Don't you want me here? If you don't--" His features fell and he made a +pretence of rising. His pale, beautifully sculptured face had become so +fearfully serious that she coloured up quickly. + +"Oh, you _wouldn't_ do such a thing--now! to embarrass me." + +"Yes, I would--I'd do anything desperate." + +But she had already caught the flash of mischief, and realising that he +had been taking more or less for granted in tormenting her, looked down +at her plate and presently tasted what was on it. + +"I know you are not offended," he murmured. "Are you?" + +She knew she was not, too; but she merely shrugged. "Then why do you ask +me, Mr. Dysart?" + +"Because you have such pretty shoulders," he replied seriously. + +"What an idiotic reply to make!" + +"Why? Don't you think you have?" + +"What?" + +"Pretty shoulders." + +"I don't think anything about my shoulders!" + +"You would if there was anything the matter with them," he insisted. + +Once or twice he turned his handsome dark gaze on her while she was +dissecting her terrapin. + +"They tip up a little--at the corners, don't they?" he inquired +anxiously. "Does it hurt?" + +"Tip up? What tips up?" she demanded. + +"Your eyes." + +She swung around toward him, confused and exasperated; but no +seriousness was proof against the delighted malice in Dysart's face; and +she laughed a little, and laughed again when he did. And she thought +that he was, perhaps, the handsomest man she had ever seen. All +débutantes did. + +Young Grandcourt turned from the pretty, over-painted woman who, until +that moment, had apparently held him interested when his food failed to +monopolise his attention, and glanced heavily around at Geraldine. + +All he saw was the back of her head and shoulders. Evidently she was not +missing him. Evidently, too, she was having a very good time with +Dysart. + +"What are you laughing about?" he asked wistfully, leaning forward to +see her face. + +Geraldine glanced back across her shoulder. + +"Mr. Dysart is trying to be impertinent," she replied carelessly; and +returned again to the impertinent one, quite ready for more torment now +that she began to understand how agreeable it was. + +But Dysart's expression had changed; there was something vaguely +caressing in voice and manner as he murmured: + +"Do you know there is something almost divine in your face." + +"What did you say?" asked Geraldine, looking up from her ice in its nest +of spun sugar. + +"You so strenuously reject the truthful compliments I pay you, that +perhaps I'd better not repeat this one." + +"Was it really more absurd flattery?" + +"No, never mind...." He leaned back in his chair, absently turning the +curious, heavily chiselled ring on his little finger, but every few +moments his expressive eyes reverted to her. She was eating her ice with +all the frank enjoyment of a schoolgirl. + +"Do you know, Miss Seagrave, that you and I are really equipped for +better things than talking nonsense." + +"I know that I am," she observed.... "Isn't this spun sugar delicious!" + +"Yes; and so are you." + +But she pretended not to hear. + +He laughed, then fell silent; his dreamy gaze shifted from vacancy to +her--and, casually, across the room, where it settled lightly as a +butterfly on his wife, and there it poised for a moment's inexpressive +examination. Scott Seagrave was talking to Rosalie; she did not notice +her husband. + +After that, with easy nonchalance approaching impudence, he turned to +his own neglected dinner partner, Sylvia Quest, who received his tardy +attentions with childish irritation. She didn't know any better. And +there was now no time to patch up matters, for the signal to rise had +been given and Dysart took Sylvia to the door with genuine relief. She +bored him dreadfully since she had become sentimental over him. They +always did. + +Lounging back through the rising haze of tobacco-smoke he encountered +Peter Tappan and stopped to exchange a word. + +"Dancing?" he inquired, lighting his cigarette. + +Tappan nodded. "You, too, of course." For Dysart was one of those types +known in society as a "dancing man." He also led cotillions, and a +morally blameless life as far as the more virile Commandments were +concerned. + +He said: "That little Seagrave girl is rather fetching." + +Tappan answered indifferently: + +"She resembles the general run of this year's output. She's weedy. They +all ought to marry before they go about to dinners, anyway." + +"Marry whom?" + +"Anybody--Delancy, here, for instance. You know as well as I do that no +woman is possible unless she's married," yawned Tappan. "Isn't that so, +Delancy?" clapping Grandcourt on the shoulder. + +Grandcourt said "yes," to be rid of him; but Dysart turned around with +his usual smile of amused contempt. + +"You think so, too, Delancy," he said, "because what is obvious and +ready-made appeals to you. You think as you eat--heavily--and you miss a +few things. That little Seagrave girl is charming. But you'd never +discover it." + +Grandcourt slowly removed the fat cigar from his lips, rolled it +meditatively between thick forefinger and thumb: + +"Do you know, Jack, that you've been saying that sort of thing to me for +a number of years?" + +"Yes; and it's just as true now as it ever was, old fellow." + +"That may be; but did it ever occur to you that I might get tired +hearing it.... And might, possibly, resent it some day?" + +For a long time Dysart had been uncomfortably conscious that Grandcourt +had had nearly enough of his half-sneering, half-humourous frankness. +His liking for Grandcourt, even as a schoolboy, had invariably +been tinged with tolerance and good-humoured contempt. Dysart had +always led in everything; taken what he chose without considering +Grandcourt--sometimes out of sheer perversity, he had taken what +Grandcourt wanted--not really wanting it himself--as in the case of +Rosalie Dene. + +"What are you talking about resenting?--my monopolising your dinner +partner?" asked Dysart, smiling. "Take her; amuse yourself. I don't want +her." + +Grandcourt inspected his cigar again. "I'm tired of that sort of thing, +too," he said. + +"What sort of thing?" + +"Contenting myself with what you don't want." + +Dysart lit a cigarette, still smiling, then shrugged and turned as +though to go. Around them through the smoke rose the laughing clamour of +young men gathering at the exit. + +"I want to tell you something," said Grandcourt heavily. "I'm an ass to +do it, but I want to tell you." + +Dysart halted patiently. + +"It's this," went on Grandcourt: "between you and my mother, I've never +had a chance; she makes me out a fool and you have always assumed it to +be true." + +Dysart glanced at him with amused contempt. + +A heavy flush rose to Grandcourt's cheek-bones. He said slowly: + +"I want my chance. You had better let me have it when it comes." + +"What chance do you mean?" + +"I mean--a woman. All my life you've been at my elbow to step in. You +took what you wanted--your shadow always falls between me and anybody +I'm inclined to like.... It happened to-night--as usual.... And I tell +you now, at last, I'm tired of it." + +"What a ridiculous idea you seem to have of me," began Dysart, laughing. + +"I'm afraid of you. I always was. Now--let me alone!" + +"Have you ever known me, since I've been married--" He caught +Grandcourt's eye, stammered, and stopped short. Then: "You certainly +are absurd. Delancy! I wouldn't deliberately interfere with you or +disturb a young girl's peace of mind. The trouble with you is----" + +"The trouble with _you_ is that women take to you very quickly, and you +are always trying to see how far you can arouse their interest. What's +the use of risking heartaches to satisfy curiosity?" + +"Oh, I don't have heartaches!" said Dysart, intensely amused. + +"I wasn't thinking of you. I suppose that's the reason you find it +amusing.... Not that I think there's any real harm in you----" + +"Thanks," laughed Dysart; "it only needed that remark to damn me +utterly. Now go and dance with little Miss Seagrave, and don't worry +about my trying to interfere." + +Grandcourt looked sullenly at him. "I'm sorry I spoke, now," he said. "I +never know enough to hold my tongue to you." + +He turned bulkily on his heel and left the dining-hall. There were +others, in throngs, leaving--young, eager-faced fellows, with a +scattering of the usual "dancing" men on whom everybody could always +count, and a few middle-aged gentlemen and women of the younger married +set to give stability to what was, otherwise, a débutante's affair. + +Dysart, strolling about, booked a dance or two, performed creditably, +made his peace, for the sake of peace, with Sylvia Quest, whose ignorant +heart had been partly awakened under his idle investigations. But this +was Sylvia's second season, and she would no doubt learn several things +of which she heretofore had been unaware. Just at present, however, her +heart was very full, and life's outlook was indeed tragic to a young +girl who believed herself wildly in love with a married man, and who +employed all her unhappy wits in the task of concealing it. + +A load of guilt lay upon her soul; the awful fact that she adored him +frightened her terribly; that she could not keep away from him terrified +her still more. But most of all she dreaded that he might guess her +secret. + +"I don't know why you thought I minded your not--not talking to me +during dinner," she faltered. "I was having a perfectly heavenly time +with Peter Tappan." + +"Do you mean that?" murmured Dysart. He could not help playing his part, +even when it no longer interested him. To murmur was as natural to him +as to breathe. + +She looked up piteously. "I would rather have talked to you," she said. +"Peter Tappan is only an overgrown boy. If you had really cared to talk +to me--" She checked herself, flushing deeply. + +O Lord! he thought, contemplating in the girl's lifted eyes the damage +he had not really expected to do. For it had, as usual, surprised him to +realise, too late, how dangerous it is to say too much, and look too +long, and how easy it is to awaken hearts asleep. + +Dancing was to be general before the cotillion. Sylvia would have given +him as many dances as he asked for; he danced once with her as a great +treat, resolving never to experiment any more with anybody.... True, it +might have been amusing to see how far he could have interested the +little Seagrave girl--but he would renounce that; he'd keep away from +everybody. + +But Dysart could no more avoid making eyes at anything in petticoats +than he could help the tenderness of his own smile or the caressing +cadence of his voice, or the subtle, indefinite something in him which +irritated men but left few women indifferent and some greatly perturbed +as he strolled along on his amusing journey through the world. + +He was strolling on now, having managed to leave Sylvia planted; and +presently, without taking any particular trouble to find Geraldine, +discovered her eventually as the centre of a promising circle of men, +very young men and very old men--nothing medium and desirable as yet. + +For a while, amused, Dysart watched her at her first party. Clearly she +was inexperienced; she let these men have their own way and their own +say; she was not handling them skilfully; yet there seemed to be a charm +about this young girl that detached man after man from the passing +throng and added them to her circle--which had now become a half circle, +completely cornering her. + +Animated, shyly confident, brilliant-eyed, and flushed with the +excitement of attracting so much attention, she was beginning to lose +her head a little--just a little. Dysart noticed it in her nervous +laughter; in a slight exaggeration of gesture with fan and flowers; in +the quick movement of her restless little head, as though it were +incumbent upon her to give to every man confronting her his own +particular modicum of attention--which was not like a débutante, either; +and Dysart realised that she was getting on. + +So he sauntered up, breaking through the circle, and reminded Geraldine +of a dance she had not promised him. + +She knew she had not promised, but she was quite ready to give it--had +already opened her lips to assent--when a young man, passing, swung +around abruptly as though to speak to her, hesitating as Geraldine's +glance encountered his without recognition. + +But, as he started to move on, she suddenly knew him; and at the same +moment Kathleen's admonition rang in her ears. Her own voice drowned it. + +"Oh, Duane!" she exclaimed, stretching out her hand across Dysart's line +of advance. + +"You _are_ Geraldine Seagrave, are you not?" he asked smilingly, +retaining her hand in such a manner as practically to compel her to step +past Dysart toward him. + +"Of course I am. You might have known me had you been amiable enough to +appear at my coming out." + +He laughed easily, still retaining her hand and looking down at her from +his inch or two of advantage. Then he casually inspected Dysart, who, +not at all pleased, returned his gaze with a careless unconcern verging +on offence. Few men cared for Dysart on first inspection--or on later +acquaintance; Mallett was no exception. + +Geraldine said, with smiling constraint: + +"It has been so very jolly to see you again." And withdrew her hand, +adding: "I hope--some time----" + +"Won't you let me talk to you now for a moment or two? You are not going +to dismiss me with that sort of come-back--after all these years--are +you?" + +He seemed so serious about it that the girl coloured up. + +"I--that is, Mr. Dysart was going to--to--" She turned and looked at +Dysart, who remained planted where she had left him, exceedingly wroth +at experiencing the sort of casual treatment he had so often meted out +to others. His expression was peevish. Geraldine, confused, began +hurriedly: + +"I thought Mr. Dysart meant to ask me to dance." + +"_Meant_ to?" interrupted Mallett, laughing; "_I_ mean to ask for this +dance, and I do." + +Once more she turned and encountered Dysart's darkening gaze, hesitated, +then with a nervous, gay little gesture to him, partly promise, partly +adieu, she took Mallett's arm. + +It was the first glimmer of coquetry she had ever deliberately +displayed; and at the same instant she became aware that something new +had been suddenly awakened in her--something which stole like a glow +through her veins, exciting her with its novelty. + +"Do you know," she said, "that you have taken me forcibly away from an +exceedingly nice man?" + +"I don't care." + +"Oh--but might I not at least have been consulted?" + +"Didn't you want to come?" he asked, stopping short. There was something +overbearing in his voice and his straight, unwavering gaze. + +She didn't know how to take it, how to meet it. Voice and manner +required some proper response which seemed to be beyond her experience. + +She did not answer; but a slight pressure of her bare arm set him in +motion again. + +The phenomenon interested her; to see what control over this abrupt +young man she really had she ventured a very slight retrograde +arm-pressure, then a delicate touch to right, to left, and forward once +more. It was most interesting; he backed up, guided right and left, and +started forward or halted under perfect control. What had she been +afraid of in him? She ventured to glance around, and, encountering a +warmly personal interest in his gaze, instantly assumed that cold, +blank, virginal mask which the majority of young girls discard at her +age. + +However, her long-checked growth in the arts of womanhood had already +recommenced. She had been growing fast, feverishly, and was just now +passing that period where the desire for masculine admiration innocently +rules all else, but where the discovery of it chills and constrains. + +She passed it at that moment. The next time their glances met she smiled +a little. A new epoch in her life had begun. + +"Where are you taking me?" she asked. "Are we not going to dance?" + +"I thought we might sit out a dance or two in the conservatory--one or +two----" + +"One," she said decidedly. "Here are some palms. Why not sit here?" + +There were a number of people about; she saw them, too, noted his +hesitation, understood it. + +"We'll sit here," she said, and stood smilingly regarding him while he +lugged up two chairs to the most retired corner. + +Slowly waving her fan, she seated herself and surveyed the room. + +It is quite true that reunion after many years usually ends in +constraint and indifference. If she felt slightly bored, she certainly +looked it. Neither of them resembled the childish recollections or +preconceived notions of the other. They found themselves inspecting one +another askance, as though furtively attempting to surprise some +familiar feature, some resemblance to a cherished memory. + +But the changes were too radical; their eyes, looking for old comrades, +encountered the unremembered eyes of strangers--for they were +strangers--this tall young man, with his gray eyes, pleasantly fashioned +mouth, and cleanly moulded cheeks; and this long-limbed girl, who sat, +knees crossed, one long, slim foot nervously swinging above its shadow +on the floor. + +In spite of his youth there was in his manner, if not in his voice, +something tinged with fatigue. She thought of what Kathleen had said +about him; looked up, instinctively questioning him with curious, +uncomprehending eyes; then her gaze wandered, became lost in smiling +retrospection as she thought of Dysart, peevish; and she frankly +regretted him and his dance. + +Young Mallett stirred, passed a rather bony hand over his shaven upper +lip, and said abruptly: "I never expected you'd grow up like this. +You've turned into a different kind of girl. Once you were chubby of +cheek and limb. Do you remember how you used to fight?" + +"Did I?" + +"Certainly. You hit me twice in the eye because I lost my temper +sparring with Scott. Your hands were small but heavy in those days.... I +imagine they're heavier now." + +She laughed, clasped both pretty hands over her knee, and tilted back +against the palm, regarding him from dark, velvety eyes. + +"You were a curiously fascinating child," he said. "I remember how fast +you could run, and how your hair flew--it was thick and dark, with +rather sunny high lights; and you were always running--always on the +go.... You were a remarkably just girl; that I remember. You were +absolutely fair to everybody." + +"I was a very horrid little scrub," she said, watching him over her +gently waving fan, "with a dreadful temper," she added. + +"Have you it now?" + +"Yes. I get over it quickly. Do you find Scott very much changed?" + +"Well, not as much as you. Do you find Naïda changed?" + +"Not nearly as much as you." + +They smiled. The slight embarrassment born of polite indifference +brightened into amiable interest, tinctured by curiosity. + +"Duane, have you been studying painting all these years?" + +"Yes. What have you been doing all these years?" + +"Nothing." A shadow fell across her face. "It has been lonely--until +recently. I began to live yesterday." + +"You used to tell me you were lonely," he nodded. + +"I was. You and Naïda were godsends." Something of the old thrill +stirred her recollection. She leaned forward, looking at him curiously; +the old memory of him was already lending him something of the forgotten +glamour. + +"How tall you are!" she said; "how much thinner and--how very +impressively grown-up you are, Duane. I didn't expect you to be entirely +a man so soon--with such a--an odd--expression----" + +He asked, smiling: "What kind of an expression have I, Geraldine?" + +"Not a boyish one; entirely a man's eyes and mouth and voice--a little +too wise, as though, deep inside, you were tired of something; no, not +exactly that, but as though you had seen many things and had lived some +of them----" + +She checked herself, lips softly apart; and the memory of what she had +heard concerning him returned to her. + +Confused, she continued to laugh lightly, adding: "I believe I was +afraid of you at first. Ought I to be, still? You know more than I +do--you know different kinds of things: your face and voice and manner +show it. I feel humble and ignorant in the presence of so distinguished +a European artist." + +They were laughing together now without a trace of constraint; and she +was aware that his interest in her was unfeigned and unmistakably the +interest of a man for a woman, that he was looking at her as other men +had now begun to look at her, speaking as other men spoke, frankly +interested in her as a woman, finding her agreeable to look at and talk +to. + +In the unawakened depths of her a conviction grew that her old playmate +must be classed with other men--man in the abstract--that indefinite and +interesting term, hinting of pleasures to come and possibilities +unimagined. + +"Did you paint pictures all the time you were abroad?" she asked. + +"Not every minute. I travelled a lot, went about, was asked to shoot in +England and Austria.... I had a good time." + +"Didn't you work hard?" + +"No. Isn't it disgraceful!" + +"But you exhibited in three salons. What were your pictures?" + +"I did a portrait of Lady Bylow and her ten children." + +"Was it a success?" + +He coloured. "They gave me a second medal." + +"Oh, I am so glad!" she exclaimed warmly. "And what were your others?" + +"A thing called 'The Witch.' Rather painful." + +"What was it?" + +"Life size. A young girl arrested in bed. Her frightened beauty is +playing the deuce with the people around. I don't know why I did it--the +painting of textures--her flesh, and the armour of the Puritan guard, +the fur of the black cat--and--well, it was academic and I was young." + +"Did they reward you?" + +"No." + +"What was the third picture?" + +"Oh, just a girl," he said carelessly. + +"Did they give you a prize for it?" + +"Y-yes. Only a mention." + +"Was it a portrait?" + +"Yes--in a way." + +"What was it? Just a girl?" + +"Yes." + +"Who was she?" + +"Oh, just a girl----" + +"Was she pretty?" + +"Yes. Shall we dance this next----" + +"No. Was she a model?" + +"She posed----" + +Geraldine, lips on the edge of her spread fan, regarded him curiously. + +"That is a very romantic life, isn't it?" she murmured. + +"What?" + +"Yours. I don't know much about it; Kathleen took me to hear 'La +Bohême'; and I found Murger's story in the library. I have also read +'Trilby.' Did _you_--were you--was life like that when you studied in +the Latin Quarter?" + +He laughed. "Not a bit. I never saw that species of life off the stage." + +"Oh, wasn't there any romance?" she asked forlornly. + +"Well--as much as you find in New York or anywhere." + +"Is there any romance in New York?" + +"There is anywhere, isn't there? If only one has the instinct to +recognise it and a capacity to comprehend it." + +"Of course," she murmured, "there are artists and studios and models and +poverty everywhere.... I suppose that without poverty real romance is +scarcely possible." + +He was still laughing when he answered: + +"Financial conditions make no difference. Romance is in one's self--or +it is nowhere." + +"Is it in--you?" she asked audaciously. + +He made no pretence of restraining his mirth. + +"Why, I don't know, Geraldine. Lots of people have the capacity for it. +Poverty, art, a studio, a velvet jacket, and models are not +essentials.... You ask if it is in _me_. I think it is. I think it +exists in anybody who can glorify the commonplace. To make people look +with astonished interest at something which has always been too familiar +to arrest their attention--only your romancer can accomplish this." + +"Please go on," she said as he ended. "I'm listening very hard. You +_are_ glorifying commonplaces, you know." + +They both laughed; he, a little red, disconcerted, piqued, and withal +charmed at her dainty thrust at himself. + +"I _was_ talking commonplaces," he admitted, "but how was I to know +enough not to? Women are usually soulfully receptive when a painter +opens a tin of mouldy axioms.... I didn't realise I was encountering my +peer----" + +"You may be encountering more than that," she said, the excitement of +her success with him flushing her adorably. + +"Oh, I've heard how terribly educated you and Scott are. No doubt you +can floor me on anything intellectual. See here, Geraldine, it's simply +wicked!--you are so soft and pretty, and nobody could suspect you of +knowing such a lot and pouncing out on a fellow for trying a few +predigested platitudes on you----" + +"I _don't_ know _anything_, Duane! How perfectly horrid of you!" + +"Well, you've scared me!" + +"I haven't. You're laughing at me. You know well enough that I don't +know the things you know." + +"What are they, in Heaven's name?" + +"Things--experiences--matters that concern life--the world, men, +everything!" + +"You wouldn't be interesting if you knew such things," he said. She +thought there was the same curious hint of indifference, something of +listlessness, almost fatigue in the expression of his eyes. And again, +apparently apropos of nothing, she found herself thinking of what +Kathleen had said about this man. + +"I don't understand you," she said, looking at him. + +He smiled, and the ghost of a shadow passed from his eyes. + +"I was talking at random." + +"I don't think you were." + +"Why not?" + +She shook her head, drawing a long, quiet breath. Silent, lips resting +in softly troubled curves, she thought of what Kathleen had said about +this man. _What_ had he done to disgrace himself? + +A few moments later she rose with decision. + +"Come," she said, unconsciously imperious. + +He looked across the room and saw Dysart. + +"But I haven't begun to tell you--" he began; and she interrupted +smilingly: + +"I know enough about you for a while; I have learned that you are a very +wonderful young man and that I'm inclined to like you. You will come to +see me, won't you?... No, I can't remain here another second. I want to +go to Kathleen. I want you to ask her to dance, too.... Please don't +urge me, Duane. I--this is my first dinner dance--yes, my very first. +And I _don't_ intend to sit in corners--I wish to dance; I desire to be +happy. I want to see lots and lots of men, not just one.... You don't +know all the lonely years I must make up for every minute now, or you +wouldn't look at me in such a sulky, bullying way.... Besides--do you +think I find you a compensation for all those delightful people out +yonder?" + +He glanced up and saw Dysart still watching them. Suddenly he dropped +his hand over hers. + +"Perhaps you may find that compensation in me some day," he said. "How +do you know?" + +"What a silly thing to say! Don't paw me, Duane; you hurt my hand. Look +at what you've done to my fan!" + +"It came between us. I'm sorry for anything that comes between us." + +Both were smiling fixedly; he said nothing for a moment; their gaze +endured until she flinched. + +"Silly," she said, "you are trying to tyrannise over me as you did when +we were children. I remember now----" + +"_You_ did the bullying then." + +"Did I? Then I'll continue." + +"No, you won't; it's my turn." + +"I will if I care to!" + +"Try it." + +"Very well. Take me to Kathleen." + +"Not until I have the dances I want!" + +Again their eyes met in silence. Dark little lights glimmered in hers; +his narrowed. The fixed smile died out. + +"The dances _you_ want!" she repeated. "How do you propose to secure +them? By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair? I want to +tell you something, Duane: these blunt, masterful men are very amusing +on the stage and in fiction, but they're not suitable to have tagging at +heel----" + +"I won't do any tagging at heel," he said; "don't count on it." + +"I have no inclination to count on you at all," she retorted, thoroughly +irritated. + +"You will have it some day." + +"Oh! Do you think so?" + +"Yes.... I didn't mean to speak the way I did. Won't you give me a dance +or two?" + +"No. I had no idea how horrid you could be.... I was told you were.... +Now I can believe it. Take me to Kathleen; do you hear me?" + +After a step or two he said, not looking at her: + +"I'm really sorry, Geraldine. I'm not a brute. Something about that +fellow Dysart upset me." + +"Please don't talk about it any more." + +"No.... Only I _am_ glad to see you again, and I do care for your +regard." + +"Then earn it," she said unevenly, as her anger subsided. "I don't know +very much about men in the world, but I know enough to understand when +they're offensive." + +"Was I?" + +"Yes.... Because you carried me away with a high hand, you thought it +the easiest way to take with me on every occasion.... Duane, do you +know, in some ways, we are somewhat alike? And that is why we used to +fight so." + +"I believe we are," he said slowly. "But--I was never able to keep away +from you." + +"Which makes our outlook rather stormy, doesn't it?" she said, turning +to him with all of her old sweet friendly manner. "_Do_ let us agree, +Duane. Mercy on us! we ought to adore each other--unless we have +forgotten the quarrelsome but adorable friendship of our childhood. _I_ +thought you were the perfection of all boys." + +"I thought there was no girl to equal you, Geraldine." + +She turned audaciously, not quite knowing what she was saying: + +"Think so now, Duane! It will be good for us both." + +"Do you mean it?" + +"Not--seriously," she said.... "And, Duane, please don't be too serious +with me. I am--you make me uncertain--you make me uncomfortable. I don't +know just what to say to you or just how it will be taken. You mustn't +be--that way--with _me_; you won't, will you?" + +He was silent for a moment; then his face lighted up. "No," he said, +laughing; "I'll open another can of platitudes.... You're a dear to +forgive me." + + * * * * * + +Dancing had been general before the cotillion; débutantes continued to +arrive in shoals from other dinners, a gay, rosy, eager throng, filling +drawing-rooms, conservatory, and library with birdlike flutter and +chatter, overflowing into the breakfast-room, banked up on the stairs in +bright-eyed battalions. + +The cotillion, led by Jack Dysart dancing alone, was one of those +carefully thought out intellectual affairs which shakes New York society +to its intellectual foundations. + +In one figure Geraldine came whizzing into the room in a Palm Beach +tricycle-chair trimmed with orchids and propelled by Peter Tappan; and +from her seat amid the flowers she distributed favours--live white +cockatoos, clinging, flapping, screeching on gilded wands; fans spangled +with tiny electric jewels; parasols of pink silk set with incandescent +lights; crystal cages containing great, pale-green Luna moths alive and +fluttering; circus hoops of gilt filled with white tissue paper, through +which the men jumped. + +There was also a Totem-pole figure--and other things, including supper +and champagne, and the semi-obscurity of conservatory and stairs; and +there was the usual laughter to cover heart-aches, and the inevitable +torn gowns and crushed flowers; and a number of young men talking too +loud and too much in the cloak-room, and Rosalie Dysart admitting to +Scott Seagrave in the conservatory that nobody really understood her; +and Delancy Grandcourt edging about the outer borders of the flowery, +perfumed vortex, following Geraldine and losing her a hundred times. + +On one of these occasions she was captured by Duane Mallett and convoyed +to the supper-room, where later she became utterly transfigured into a +laughing, blushing, sparkling, delicious creature, small ears singing +with her first venturesome glass of champagne. + +All the world seemed laughing with her; life itself was only an endless +bubble of laughter, swelling the gay, unending chorus; life was the hot +breeze from scented fans stirring a thousand roses; life was the silken +throng and its whirling and its feverish voices crying out to her to +live! + +Her childhood's playmate had come back a stranger, but already he was +being transformed, through the magic of laughter, into the boy she +remembered; awkwardness of readjusting her relations with him had +entirely vanished; she called him dear Duane, laughed at him, chatted +with him, appealed, contradicted, rebuked, tyrannised, until the young +fellow was clean swept off his feet. + +Then Dysart came, and for the second time the note of coquetry was +struck, clearly, unmistakably, through the tension of a moment's +preliminary silence; and Duane, dumb, furious, yielded her only when she +took Dysart's arm with a finality that became almost insolent as she +turned and looked back at her childhood's comrade, who followed, +scowling at Dysart's graceful back. + +Confused by his hurt and his anger, which seemed out of all logical +proportion to the cause of it, he turned abruptly and collided with +Grandcourt, who had edged up that far, waiting for the opportunity of +which Dysart, as usual, robbed him. + +Grandcourt apologised, muttering something about Mrs. Severn wishing him +to find Miss Seagrave. He stood, awkwardly, looking after Geraldine and +Dysart, but not offering to follow them. + +"Lot of débutantes here--the whole year's output," he said vaguely. +"What a noisy supper-room--eh, Mallett? I'm rather afraid champagne is +responsible for some of it." + +Duane started forward, halted. + +"Did you say Mrs. Severn wants Miss Seagrave?" + +"Y--yes.... I'd better go and tell her, hadn't I?" + +He flushed heavily, but made no movement to follow Geraldine and Dysart, +who had now entered the conservatory and disappeared. + +For a full minute, uncomfortably silent, the two men stood side by side; +then Duane said in a constrained voice: + +"I'll speak to Miss Seagrave, if you'll find her brother and Mrs. +Severn"; and walked slowly toward the palm-set rotunda. + +When he found them--and he found them easily, for Geraldine's +overexcited laughter warned and guided him--Dysart, her fan in his +hands, looked up at Duane intensely annoyed, and the young girl tossed +away a half-destroyed rose and glanced up, the laughter dying out from +lips and eyes. + +"Kathleen sent for you," said Duane drily. + +"I'll come in a minute, Duane." + +"In a moment," repeated Dysart insolently, and turned his back. + +The colour surged into Mallett's face; he turned sharply on his heel. + +"Wait!" said Geraldine; "Duane--do you hear me?" + +"I'll take you back," began Dysart, but she passed in front of him and +laid her hand on Mallett's arm. + +"Won't you wait for me, Duane?" + +And suddenly things seemed to be as they had been in their childhood, +the resurgence swept them both back to the old and stormy footing again. + +"Duane!" + +"What?" + +"I tell you to wait for me--_here_!" She stamped her foot. + +He scowled--but waited. She turned on Dysart: + +"Good-night!"--offering her hand with decision. + +Dysart began: "But I had expected----" + +"_Good-night!_" + +Dysart stared, took the offered hand, hesitated, started to speak, +thought better of it, made a characteristically graceful obeisance, and +an excellent exit, all things considered. + +Geraldine drew a deep breath, moved forward through the flower-set +dimness a step or two, halted, and, as Mallett came up, passed her arm +through his. + +"Duane," she said, "the champagne has gone to my head." + +"Nonsense!" + +"It _has_! My cheeks are queer--the skin fits too tight. My legs don't +belong to me--but they'll do." + +She laughed and turned toward him; her feverish breath touched his +cheek. + +"My first dinner! Isn't it disgraceful? But how could I know?" + +"You mustn't let it scare you." + +"It doesn't. I don't care. I knew something would go wrong. I--the truth +is, that I don't know how to act--how to accept my liberty. I don't know +how to use it. I'm a perfect fool.... Do you think Kathleen will notice +this? Isn't it terrible! She never dreamed I would touch any wine. Do I +look--queer?" + +"No. It isn't so, anyway--and you'll simply lean on me----" + +"Oh, my knees are perfectly steady. It's only that they don't seem to +belong to me. I'm--I'm excited--I've laughed too much--more than I have +ever laughed in all the years of my life put together. You don't know +what I mean, do you, Duane? But it's true; I've talked to-night more +than I ever have in any one week.... And it's gone to my head--all +this--all these people who laugh with me over nothing--follow me, tell +me I am pretty, ask me for dances, favours, beg me for a word with +them--as though I would need asking or urging!--as though my impulse is +not to open my heart to every one of them--open my arms to them--thank +them on my knees for being here--for being nice to me--all these boys +who make little circles around me--so funny, so quaint in their +formality----" + +She pressed his arm tighter. + +"_Let_ me rattle on--let me babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make +up for. Let me talk like a fool; _you_ know I'm not one.... Oh, the +happiness of this one night!--the happiness of it! I never shall have +enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I--I'm perfectly mad over +pleasure; I like men.... I suppose the champagne makes me frank about +it--but I don't care--I do like men----" + +"_That_ one?" demanded Mallett, halting her on the edge of the palms +which screened the conservatory doors. + +"You mean Mr. Dysart? Yes--I--do like him." + +"Well, he's married, and you'd better not," he snapped. + +"C-can't I _like_ him?" in piteous astonishment which set the colour +flying into his face. + +"Why, yes--of course--I didn't mean----" + +"_What_ did you mean? Isn't it--shouldn't he be----" + +"Oh, it's all right, Geraldine. Only he's a sort of a pig to keep you +away from--others----" + +"Other--_pigs_?" + +He turned sharply, seized her, and forcibly turned her toward the light. +She made no effort to control her laughter, excusing it between breaths: + +"I didn't mean to turn what you said into ridicule; it came out before I +meant it.... Do let me laugh a little, Duane. I simply cannot care about +anything serious for a while--I want to be frivolous----" + +"Don't laugh so loud," he whispered. + +She released his arm and sank down on a marble seat behind the flowering +oleanders. + +"Why are you so disagreeable?" she pouted. "I know I'm a perfect fool, +and the champagne has gone to my silly head--and you'll never catch me +this way again.... Don't scowl at me. Why don't you act like other men? +Don't you know how?" + +"Know how?" he repeated, looking down into the adorably flushed face +uplifted. "Know how to do what?" + +"To flirt. I don't. Everybody has tried to teach me to-night--everybody +except you ... Duane.... I'm ready to go home; I'll go. Only my head is +whirling so--Tell me--_are_ you glad to see me again?... Really?... And +you don't mind my folly? And my tormenting you?... And my--my turning +_your_ head a little?" + +"You've done _that_," he said, forcing a laugh. + +"Have I?... I knew it.... You see, I am horridly truthful to-night. _In +vino veritas!_ ... Tell me--did I, all by myself, turn that +too-experienced head of yours?" + +"You're doing it now," he said. + +She laughed deliciously. "Now? Am I? Yes, I know I am. I've made a lot +of men think hard to-night.... I didn't know I could; I never before +thought of it.... And--even _you_, too?... You're not very serious, are +you?" + +"Yes, I am. I tell you, Geraldine, I'm about as much in love with you +as----" + +"In _love_!" + +"Yes----" + +"No!" + +"Yes, I am----" + +But she would not have it put so crudely. + +"You dear boy," she said, "we'll both be quite sane to-morrow.... No, I +don't mind your kissing my hand--I'm dreadfully tired, anyway.... We'll +find Kathleen, shall we? My head doesn't buzz much." + +"Geraldine," he said, deliberately encircling her waist, "you are only +the same small girl I used to know, after all." + +[Illustration: "'Duane!' she gasped--'why did you?'"] + +"Y-yes, I'm afraid so." + +"And you're not really old enough to really care for anybody, are you?" + +"Care?" + +"Love." + +"No, I'm not. Don't talk to me that way, Duane." + +He drew her suddenly into his arms and kissed her on the cheek twice, +and again on the mouth, as, crimson, breathless, she strained away from +him. + +"Duane!" she gasped--"why did you?" Then the throbbing of her body and +crushed lips made her furious. "Why did you do that?" she cried +fiercely--but her voice ended in a dry sob; she covered her head and +face with bare arms; her hands tightened convulsively and clenched. + +"Oh," she said, "how could you!--when I came to you--feeling--afraid of +myself! I know you now. You are what they say you are." + +"What do they say I am?" he stammered. + +"Horrid--I don't know--wild!--whatever that implies.... I didn't care--I +didn't care even to understand, because I thought you generous and nice +to me--and I was so confident of you that I came with you and told you I +had had some champagne which made my head swim.... And you--did this! +It--it was contemptible." + +He bit his lip, but said nothing. + +"Why did you do it?" she demanded, dropping her arms from her face and +staring at him. "Is that the sort of thing you did abroad?" + +"Can't you see I'm in love with you?" he said. + +"Oh! Is _that_ love? Then keep it for your models and--and Bohemian +grisettes! A decent man couldn't have done such a thing to me. I--I +loathe myself for being silly and weak enough to have touched that +wine, but I have more contempt for you than I have for myself. What you +did was cowardly!" + +Much of the colour had fled from her face; her eyes, bluish underneath +the lower lids, turned wearily, helplessly in search of Kathleen. + +"I knew I was unfit for liberty," she said, half to herself. "What an +ending to my first pleasure!" + +"For Heaven's sake, Geraldine," he broke out, "don't take an accident so +tragically----" + +"I want Kathleen. Do you hear?" + +"Very well; I'll find her.... And, whatever you say or think, I _am_ in +love with you," he added fiercely. + +His voice, his words, were meaningless; she was conscious only of the +heavy pulse in throat and temple, of the desire for her room and +darkness. Lights, music, the scent of dying flowers, laughter, men, all +had become abhorrent. Something within her lay bruised and stunned; and, +as never before, the vast and terrible phantom of her loneliness rose +like a nightmare to menace her. + +Later Kathleen came and took her away. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE YEAR OF DISCRETION + + +Her first winter resembled, more or less, the first winter of the +average débutante. + +Under the roof of the metropolitan social temple there was a niche into +which her forefathers had fitted. Within the confines of this she +expected, and was expected, to live and move and have her being, and +ultimately wing upward to her God, leaving the consecrated cubby-hole +reserved for her descendants. + +She did what her sister débutantes did, and some things they did not do, +was asked where they were asked, decorated the same tier of boxes at the +opera, appeared in the same short-skirted entertainments of the Junior +League, saw what they saw, was seen where they were seen, chattered, +danced, and flirted with the same youths, was smitten by the popular +"dancing" man, convalesced in average time, smoked her first cigarette, +fell a victim to the handsome and horrid married destroyer, recovered +with a shock when, as usual, he overdid it, played at being engaged, was +kissed once or twice, adored Sembrich, listened ignorantly but with +intuitive shudders to her first scandals, sent flowers to Ethel +Barrymore, kept Lent with the pure fervour of a conscience troubled and +untainted, drove four in the coaching parade, and lunched afterward at +the Commonwealth Club, where her name was subsequently put up for +election. + +Spectacular charities lured her from the Plaza to Sherry's, from +Sherry's to the St. Regis; church work beguiled her; women's suffrage, +led daintily in a series of circles by Fashion and Wealth, enlisted her +passive patronage. She even tried the slums, but the perfume was too +much for her. + +All the small talk and epigrams of the various petty impinging circles +under the social dome passed into and out of her small ears--gossip, +epigrams, aphorisms, rumours, apropos surmises, asides, and off-stage +observations, subtle with double entendre, harmless and otherwise. + +She met people of fashion, of wealth, and both; and now and then +encountered one or two of those men and women of real distinction whose +names and peregrinations are seldom chronicled in the papers. + +She heard the great artists of the two operas sing in private; was +regaled with information concerning the remarkable decency or indecency +of their private careers. She saw fashionable plays which instructed the +public about squalor, murder, and men's mistresses, which dissected very +skilfully and artistically the ethics of moral degradation. And being as +healthy and curious as the average girl, she found in the theatres +material with which to inform herself about certain occult mysteries +concerning which, heretofore, she had been left mercifully in doubt. + +In spite of Kathleen, it was inevitable that she should acquire from the +fashionable in literature, music, and the drama, that sorry and +unnecessary wisdom which ages souls. + +And if what she saw or heard ever puzzled her, there was always +somebody, young or old, to enlighten her innocent perplexity; and with +each illumination she shrank a little less aloof from this shabby +wisdom gilded with "art," which she could not choose but accept as fact, +but the depravity of which she never was entirely able to comprehend. + +In March the Seagrave twins arrived at the alleged age of discretion. On +their twenty-first birthday the Half Moon Trust Company went solemnly +into court and rendered an accounting of its stewardship; the yearly +reports which it had made during the term of its trusteeship were +brought forward, examined by the court, and the great Half Moon Trust +Company was given an honourable discharge. It had done its duty. The +twins were masters of their financial and moral fate. + +It was about that moribund period of the social solstice when the fag +end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April +rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And +Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a +needy gentleman from Long Island. + +It had been rather trying work to rid Geraldine of the aspirants for her +fortune; during the winter she was proposed to under almost every +conceivable condition and circumstance. Kathleen had been bored and +badgered and bothered and importuned to the verge of exhaustion; Scott +was used, shamelessly, without his suspecting it, and he generally had +in tow a string of financially spavined aspirants who linked arms with +him from club to club, from theatre to opera, from grille to grille, +until he was pleasantly bewildered at his own popularity. + +Geraldine was surprised, confused, shamed, irritated in turn with every +new importunity. But she remained sensible enough to be quite frank and +truthful with Kathleen, except for an exciting secret engagement with +Bunbury Gray which lasted for two weeks. And Kathleen was given strength +sufficient for each case as it presented itself; and now the fag end of +the season died out; the last noble and indigent foreigner had been +eluded; the last old beau foiled; the last squab-headed dancing man +successfully circumvented. And now the gallinaceous half of the world +was leaving town in noisy and glittering migration, headed for temporary +roosts all over the globe, from Newport to Nova Scotia, from Kineo to +Kara Dagh. + +Country houses were opening throughout the Western Hemisphere; Long +Island stirred from its long winter lethargy, stung into active life by +the Oyster Bay mosquito; town houses closed; terrace, pillar, portico, +and windows were already being boarded over; lace curtains came down; +textiles went to the cleaners; the fresh scent of camphor and lavender +lingered in the mellow half-light of rooms where furniture and pictures +loomed linen-shrouded and the polished floor echoed every footstep. + +In the sunny gloom of the Seagrave house Geraldine found a grateful +retreat from the inspiring glare and confused racket of her first +winter; ample time for rest, reverie, and reflection, with only a few +intimates to break her meditations, only informality to reckon with, and +plenty of leisure to plan for the summer. + +Around the house, trees and rhododendrons were now in freshest bloom, +flower-beds fragrant, grass tenderly emerald. The moving shadows of +maple leaves patterned the white walls of her bedroom; wind-blown gusts +of wistaria fragrance, from the long, grapelike, violet-tinted bunches +swaying outside the window, puffed out her curtains every morning. + +At night subtler perfumes stole upward from the dark garden; the roar +of traffic from the avenues was softened; carriage lights in the +purpling dusk of the Park moved like firebugs drifting through level +wooded vistas. Across the reservoir lakes the jewelled night-zone of the +West Side sparkled, reflected across the water in points of trembling +flame; south, a gemmed bar of topaz light, upright against the sky, +marked the Plaza; beyond, sprinkled into space like constellations +dusting endless depths, the lights of the city receded far as the eye +could see. + +In the zenith the sky is always tinted with the strange, sinister +night-glow of the metropolis, red as fire-licked smoke when fog from the +bay settles, pallid as the very shadow of light when nights are clear; +but it is always there--always will be there after the sun goes down +into the western seas, and the eyes of the monstrous iron city burn on +through the centuries. + + * * * * * + +One morning late in April Geraldine Seagrave rode up under the +porte-cochère with her groom, dismounted, patted her horse +sympathetically, and regarded with concern the limping animal as the +groom led him away to the stables. Then she went upstairs. + +To Kathleen, who was preparing to go out, she said: + +"I had scarcely entered the Park, my dear, when poor Bibi pulled up +lame. No, I told Redmond not to saddle another; I suppose Duane will be +furious. Where are you going?" + +"I don't know. Shall I wait for you? I've ordered a victoria." + +"No, thanks. You look so pretty this morning, Kathleen. Sometimes you +appear younger than I do. Scott was pig enough to say so the other day +when I had a headache. It's true enough, too," she added, smiling. + +Kathleen Severn laughed; she looked scarcely more than twenty-five and +she knew it. + +"You pretty thing!" exclaimed Geraldine, kissing her, "no wonder you +attract the really interesting men and leave me the dreadful fledglings! +It's bad of you; and I don't see why I'm stupid enough to have such an +attractive woman for my closest"--a kiss--"dearest friend! Even Duane is +villain enough to tell me that he finds you overwhelmingly attractive. +Did you know it?" + +Geraldine's careless gaiety seemed spontaneous enough; yet there was the +slightest constraint in Kathleen's responsive smile: + +"Duane isn't to be taken seriously," she said. + +"Not by any means," nodded Geraldine, twirling her crop. + +"I'm glad you understand him," observed Kathleen, gazing at the point of +her sunshade. She looked up presently and met Geraldine's dark gaze. +Again there came that almost imperceptible hesitation; then: + +"I certainly do understand Duane Mallett," said Geraldine carelessly. + +"Shall I wait for you?" asked Kathleen. "We can lunch out together and +drive in the Park later." + +"I'm too lazy even to take off my boots and habit. Where's that volume +of Mendez you thought fit to hide from me, you wretch?" + +"Why on earth did you buy it?" + +"I bought it because Rosalie Dysart says Mendez is a great modern master +of prose----" + +"And Rosalie is a great modern mistress of pose. Don't read Mendez." + +"Isn't it necessary for a girl to read----" + +"No, it isn't!" + +"I don't want to be ignorant. Besides, I'm--curious to know----" + +"Be decently curious, dearest. There's a danger mark; don't cross it." + +"I don't wish to." + +She stretched out her arms, crop in hand, doubled them back, and head +tipped on one side, yawned shamelessly at her own laziness. + +"Scott is becoming very restless," she said. + +"About going away?" + +"Yes. I really do think, Kathleen, that we ought to have some +respectable country place to go to. It would be nice for Scott and the +servants and the horses; and you and I need not stay there if it bores +us----" + +"Is he still thinking of that Roya-Neh place? It's horridly expensive to +keep up. Oh, I knew quite well that Scott would bully you into +consenting----" + +"Roya-Neh seems to suit us both," admitted the girl indifferently. "The +shooting and fishing naturally attract Scott; they say it's secluded +enough for you and me to recuperate in; and if we ever want any guests, +it's big enough to entertain dozens in.... I really don't care one way +or the other; you know I never was very crazy about the country--and +poison ivy, and mosquitoes and oil-smelling roads, and hot nights, and +the perfume of fertilisers----" + +"You poor child!" laughed Kathleen; "you don't know anything about the +country except where you've been on Long Island in the immediate +vicinity of your grandfather's horrid old place." + +"Is it any more agreeable up there near Canada?" + +"Roya-Neh is very lovely--of course--but--it's certainly not a wise +investment, dear." + +"Well, if Scott and I buy it, we'd never wish to sell it----" + +"Suppose you were obliged to?" + +Geraldine's velvet eyes widened lazily: + +"Obliged to? Oh--yes--you mean if we went to smash." + +Then her gaze became remote as she stood slowly tapping her gloved palm +with her riding-crop. + +"I think I'll dress," she said absently. + +"Good-bye, then," nodded Kathleen. + +"Good-bye," said the girl, turning lightly away across the hall. +Kathleen's eyes followed the slender retreating figure, so slimly +compact in its buoyancy. There was always something fascinatingly boyish +in Geraldine's light, free carriage--just a touch of carelessness in the +poise--almost a swing at times to the step. Duane had once said: "She +has a bully walk!" Kathleen thought of it as, passing a mirror, she +caught sight of herself. And the sudden glimpse of her own warm, rich +beauty in all its exquisite maturity startled her. Surely she seemed to +be growing younger. + +She was. Dark-violet eyes, ruddy hair, a superb figure, a skin so white +that it looked fragrant, made Kathleen Severn amazingly attractive. Men +found her, to their surprise, rather unresponsive. She was amiable +enough, nicely formal, and perfectly bred, it is true, but inclined to +that sort of aloofness which is marked by lapses of inattention and the +smiling silences of preoccupation. + +She had married, very young, an army officer convalescing from Texan +fever. He died suddenly on the very eve of their postponed +wedding-trip. This was enough to account for lapses of inattention in +any woman. + +But Kathleen Severn had never been demonstrative. She was slow to care +for people. Besides, the responsibility of bringing up the Seagrave +twins had been sufficient to subdue anybody's spirits. She was only +nineteen and a widow of a month when her distant relative, Magnelius +Grandcourt, found her the position as personal guardian of the twins, +then aged nine. Now they were twenty-one and she thirty-one; twelve +years of service, twelve years of steady fidelity, which long ago had +become a changeless and passionate devotion, made up of all she might +have given to the dead, and of the unborn happiness she had never known. +What other sort of love, if there was any, lay within her undeveloped, +nobody knew because nobody had ever aroused it. + +Sunshine transformed into great golden transparencies the lowered shades +in the living room where Geraldine stood, pensive, distraite, idly +twirling her crop by the loop. Presently it flew off her gloved +forefinger and fell clattering across the carpetless floor. She bathed +and dressed leisurely; later, when luncheon was brought to her, she +dropped into a low, wide chair and, ignoring everything except the +strawberries, turned her face to the breeze which was softly rattling +the southern curtains. + +Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, +in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of +herself; but never could completely. + +"For example: if I want to buy Roya-Neh," she mused, biting into an +enormous strawberry, "I can do it.... All I have to do is to say that +I'll buy it.... And I can live there if I choose--as long as I +choose.... It's a very agreeable sensation.... I can have anything I +fancy, without asking Mr. Tappan.... It's rather odd that I don't want +anything." + +She crossed her ankles and lay back watching the sun-moats floating. + +"Suppose," she murmured with perverse humour, "that I wished to build a +bungalow in Timbuctoo ... or stand on my head, now, this very moment! +Nobody on earth could stop me.... I believe I _will_ stand on my head +for a change." + +The sudden smile made the curve of her cheek delicious. She sprang to +her feet, spread her napkin on the polished floor, then gravely bending +double, placed both palms flat on the square of damask, balanced and +raised her body until the straight, slim limbs were rigidly pointed +toward heaven. + +Down tumbled her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and +spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on +both feet breathing fast. + +"It's disgraceful!" she murmured; "I am certainly out of condition. Late +hours are my undoing. Also cigarettes. I wish I didn't like to smoke." + +She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, +heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor. + +Lacking a hair-peg, she sauntered off to her own apartments to find one, +where she remained, lolling in the chaise-longue, alternately blowing +smoke rings into the sunshine and nibbling a bonbon soaked in cologne. +Only a girl can accomplish such combinations. How she ever began this +silly custom of hers she couldn't remember, except that, when a small +child, somebody had forbidden her to taste brandied peach syrup, which +she adored; and the odour of cologne being similarly pleasant, she had +tried it on her palate and found that it produced agreeable sensations. + +It had become a habit. She was conscious of it, but remained indifferent +because she didn't know anything about habits. + +So all that sunny afternoon she lay in the chaise-longue, alternately +reading and dreaming, her scented bonbons at her elbow. Later a maid +brought tea; and a little later Duane Mallett was announced. He +sauntered in, a loosely knit, graceful figure, still wearing his +riding-clothes and dusty boots of the morning. + +Geraldine Seagrave had had time enough to discover, during the past +winter, that her old playfellow was not at all the kind of man he +appeared to be. Women liked him too easily and he liked them without +effort. There was always some girl in love with him until he was found +kissing another. His tastes were amiably catholic; his caress +instinctively casual. Beauty when responsive touched him. No girl he +knew needed to remain unconsoled. + +The majority of women liked him; so did Geraldine Seagrave. The majority +instinctively watched him; so did she. In close acquaintance the man was +a disappointment. It seemed as though there ought to be something deeper +in him than the lightly humourous mockery with which he seemed to regard +his very great talent--a flippancy that veiled always what he said and +did and thought until nobody could clearly understand what he really +thought about anything; and some people doubted that he thought at +all--particularly the thoughtless whom he had carelessly consoled. + +Women were never entirely indifferent concerning him; there remained +always a certain amount of curiosity, whether they found him attractive +or otherwise. + +His humourous indifference to public opinions, bordering on effrontery, +was not entirely unattractive to women, but it always, sooner or later, +aroused their distrust. + +The main trouble with Duane Mallett seemed to be his gaily cynical +willingness to respond to any advance, however slight, that any pretty +woman offered. This responsive partiality was disconcerting enough to +make him dreaded by ambitious mothers, and an object of uneasy interest +to their decorative offspring who were inclined to believe that a rescue +party of one might bring this derelict into port and render him +seaworthy for the voyage of life under their own particular command. + +Besides, he was a painter. Women like them when they are carefully +washed and clothed. + + * * * * * + +As Duane Mallett strolled into the living-room, Geraldine felt again, as +she so often did, a slight sense of insecurity mingle with her liking +for the man, or what might have been liking if she could ever feel +absolute confidence in him. She had been, at times, very close to caring +a great deal for him, when now and again it flashed over her that there +must be in him something serious under his brilliant talent and the idle +perversity which mocked at it. + +But now she recognised in his smile and manner everything that kept her +from ever caring to understand him--the old sense of insecurity in his +ironical formality; and her outstretched hand fell away from his with +indifference. + +"I didn't have the happiness of riding with you, after all," he said, +serenely seating himself and dropping one lank knee over the other. +"Promises wouldn't be valuable unless somebody broke a lot now and +then." + +"You probably had the happiness of riding with some other woman." + +He nodded. + +"Who, this time?" + +"Rosalie Dysart." + +Rumour had been busy with their names recently. The girl's face became +expressionless. + +"Sorry you didn't come," he said, looking out of the window where the +flapping shade revealed a lilac in bloom. + +"How long did you wait for me?" + +"About a minute. Then Rosalie passed----" + +"Rosalies will always continue to pass through your career, my +omnivorous friend.... Did it even occur to you to ride over here and +find out why I missed our appointment?" + +"No; why didn't you come?" + +"Bibi went lame. I'd have had another horse saddled if I hadn't seen +you, over my shoulder, join Mrs. Dysart." + +"Too bad," he commented listlessly. + +"Why? You had a perfectly good time without me, didn't you?" + +"Oh, yes, pretty good. Delancy Grandcourt was out after luncheon, and +when Rosalie left he stuck to me and talked about you until I let my +horse bolt, and it stirred up a few mounted policemen and +riding-schools, I can tell you!" + +"Oh, so you lunched with Mrs. Dysart?" + +"Yes. Where is Kathleen?" + +"Driving," said the girl briefly. "If you don't care for any tea, there +is mineral water and a decanter over there." + +He thanked her, rose and mixed himself what he wanted, and began to walk +leisurely about, the ice tinkling in the glass which he held. At +intervals he quenched his thirst, then resumed his aimless promenade, a +slight smile on his face. + +"Has anything particularly interesting happened to you, Duane?" she +asked, and somehow thought of Rosalie Dysart. + +"No." + +"How are your pictures coming on?" + +"The portrait?" he asked absently. + +"Portrait? I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town. +Whose portrait are you painting?" + +Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew. + +"Rosalie Dysart's," he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower +as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment. + +She lifted her dark eyes curiously. He began to stir the ice in his +glass with a silver paper-cutter. + +"She is wonderfully beautiful, isn't she?" said the girl. + +"Overwhelmingly." + +Geraldine shrugged and gazed into space. She didn't exactly know why she +had given that little hitch to her shoulders. + +"I'd like to paint Kathleen," he observed. + +A flush tinted the girl's cheeks. She said nervously: + +"Why don't you ask her?" + +"I've meant to. Somehow, one doesn't ask things lightly of Kathleen." + +"One doesn't ask things of some women at all," she remarked. + +He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest. + +"Ask what sort of thing?" he inquired, walking over to the table and +resting his glass on it. + +"Oh, I don't know what I meant. Nothing. What is that in your glass? Let +me taste it.... Ugh! It's Scotch!" + +She set back the glass with a shudder. After a few moments she picked it +up again and tasted it disdainfully. + +"Do you like this?" she demanded with youthful contempt. + +"Pretty well," he admitted. + +"It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn't it?" + +"I never noticed that it did." + +And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, +tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she +tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty glass and watched him where +he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his +riding-crop. + +"I'd like to see a typical studio," she said reflectively. + +"I've asked you to mine often enough." + +"Yes, to tea with other people. I don't mean that way. I'd like to see +it when it's not all dusted and in order for feminine inspection. I'd +like to see a man's studio when it's in shape for work--with the +gr-r-reat painter in a fine frenzy painting, and the model posing +madly----" + +"Come on, then! If Kathleen lets you, and you can stand it, come down +and knock some day unexpectedly." + +"O Duane! I _couldn't_, could I?" + +"Not with propriety. But come ahead." + +"Naturally, impropriety appeals to you." + +"Naturally. To you, too, doesn't it?" + +"No. But wouldn't it astonish you if you heard a low, timid knocking +some day when you and your Bohemian friends were carousing and having a +riotous time there----" + +"Yes, it would, but I'm afraid that low, timid knocking couldn't be +heard in the infernal uproar of our usual revelry." + +"Then I'd knock louder and louder, and perhaps kick once or twice if you +didn't come to the door and let me in." + +He laughed. After a moment she laughed, too; her dark eyes were very +friendly now. Watching the amusement in his face, she continued to sip +from his tall, frosted glass, quite unconscious of any distaste for it. +On the contrary, she experienced a slight exhilaration which was +gradually becoming delightful to her. + +"Scotch-and-soda is rather nice, after all," she observed. "I had no +idea--_What_ is the matter with you, Duane?" + +"You haven't swallowed all that, have you?" + +"Yes, is it much?" + +He stared, then with a shrug: "You'd better cut out that sort of thing." + +"What?" she asked, surprised. + +"What you're doing." + +"Tasting your Scotch? Pooh!" she said, "it isn't strong. Do you think +I'm a baby?" + +"Go ahead," he said, "it's your funeral." + +Legs crossed, chin resting on the butt of his riding-crop, he lay back +in his chair watching her. + +Women of her particular type had always fascinated him; Fifth Avenue is +thronged with them in sunny winter mornings--tall, slender, faultlessly +gowned girls, free-limbed, narrow of wrist and foot; cleanly built, +engaging, fearless-eyed; and Geraldine was one of a type characteristic +of that city and of the sunny Avenue where there pass more beautiful +women on a December morning than one can see abroad in half a dozen +years' residence. + +How on earth this hemisphere has managed to evolve them out of its +original material nobody can explain. And young Mallett, recently from +the older hemisphere, was still in a happy trance of surprise at the +discovery. + +Lounging there, watching her where she sat warmly illumined by the +golden light of the window-shade, he said lazily: + +"Do you know that Fifth Avenue is always thronged with you, Geraldine? +I've nearly twisted my head off trying not to miss the assorted visions +of you which float past afoot or driving. Some day one of them will +unbalance me. I'll leap into her victoria, ask her if she'd mind the +temporary inconvenience of being adored by a stranger; and if she's a +good sport she'll take a chance. Don't you think so?" + +"It's more than I'd take with you," said the girl. + +"You've said that several times." + +He laughed, then looked up at her half humorously, half curiously. + +"_You_ would be taking no chances, Geraldine." + +"I'd be taking chances of finding you holding some other girl's hands +within twenty-four hours. And you know it." + +"Hasn't anybody ever held yours?" + +Displeasure tinted her cheeks a deeper red, but she merely shrugged her +shoulders. + +It was true that in the one evanescent and secret affair of her first +winter she had not escaped the calf-like transports of Bunbury Gray. She +had felt, if she had not returned them, the furtively significant +pressure of men's hands in the gaiety and whirl of things; ardent and +chuckle-headed youth had declared itself in conservatories and in +corners; one impetuous mauling from a smitten Harvard boy of eighteen +had left her furiously vexed with herself for her passive attitude while +the tempest passed. True, she had vigorously reproved him later. She +had, alas, occasion, during her first season, to reprove several +demonstrative young men for their unconventionally athletic manner of +declaring their suits. She had been far more severe with the humble, +unattractive, and immobile, however, than with the audacious and +ornamental who had attempted to take her by storm. A sudden if awkward +kiss followed by the fiery declaration of the hot-headed disturbed her +less than the persistent stare of an enamoured pair of eyes. As a child +the description of an assault on a citadel always interested her, but +she had neither sympathy nor interest in a siege. + +Now, musing there in the sunlight on the events of her first winter, she +became aware that she had been more or less instructed in the ways of +men; and, remembering, she lifted her disturbed eyes to inspect this +specimen of a sex which often perplexed but always interested her. + +"What are you smiling about, Duane?" she asked defiantly. + +"Your arraignment of me when half the men in town have been trying to +marry you all winter. You've made a reputation for yourself, too, +Geraldine." + +"As what?" she asked angrily. + +"A head-twister." + +"Do you mean a flirt?" + +"Oh, Lord! Only the French use that term now. But that's the idea, +Geraldine. You are a born one. I fell for the first smile you let loose +on me." + +"You seem to have been a sort of general Humpty Dumpty for falls all +your life, Duane," she said with dangerous sweetness. + +"Like that immortal, I've had only one which permanently shattered me." + +"Which was that, if you please?" + +"The fall you took out of me." + +"In other words," she said disdainfully, "you are beginning to make love +to me again." + +"No.... I _was_ in love with you." + +"You were in love with yourself, young man. You are on such excellent +terms with yourself that you sympathise too ardently with any attractive +woman who takes the least and most innocent notice of you." + +He said, very much amused: "I was perfectly serious over you, +Geraldine." + +"The selfish always take themselves seriously." + +It was she, however, who now sat there bright-eyed and unsmiling, and he +was still laughing, deftly balancing his crop on one finger, and +glancing at her from time to time with that glimmer of ever-latent +mockery which always made her restive at first, then irritated her with +an unreasoning desire to hurt him somehow. But she never seemed able to +reach him. + +"Sooner or later," she said, "women will find you out, thoroughly." + +"And then, just think what a rush there will be to marry me!" + +"There will be a rush to avoid you, Duane. And it will set in before you +know it--" She thought of the recent gossip coupling his name with +Rosalie's, reddened and bit her lip in silence. But somehow the thought +irritated her into speech again: + +"Fortunately, I was among the first to find you out--the first, I +think." + +"Heavens! when was that?" he asked in pretended concern, which +infuriated her. + +"You had better not ask me," she flashed back. "When a woman suddenly +discovers that a man is untrustworthy, do you think she ever forgets +it?" + +"Because I once kissed you? What a dreadful deed!" + +"You forget the circumstances under which you did it." + +He flushed; she had managed to hurt him, after all. He began patiently: + +"I've explained to you a dozen times that I didn't know----" + +"But I _told_ you!" + +"And I couldn't believe you----" + +"But you expect me to believe _you_?" + +He could not exactly interpret her bright, smiling, steady gaze. + +"The trouble with you is," she said, "that there is nothing to you but +good looks and talent. There was once, but it died--over in +Europe--somewhere. No woman trusts a man like you. Don't you know it?" + +His smile did not seem to be very genuine, but he answered lightly: + +"When I ask people to have confidence in me, it will be time for them to +pitch into me." + +"Didn't you once ask me for your confidence--and then abuse it?" she +demanded. + +"I told you I loved you--if that is what you mean. And you doubted it so +strenuously that, perhaps I might be excused for doubting it myself.... +What is the use of talking this way, Geraldine?" + +There was a ring of exasperation in her laughter. She lifted his glass, +sipped a little, and, looking over it at him: + +"I drink to our doubts concerning each other: may nothing ever occur to +disturb them." + +Her cheeks had begun to burn, her eyes were too bright, her voice +unmodulated. + +"Whether or not you ever again take the trouble to ask me to trust you +in that way," she said, "I'll tell you now why I don't and why I never +could. It may amuse you. Shall I?" + +"By all means," he replied amiably; "but it seems to me as though you +are rather rough on me." + +"You were rougher with me the first time I saw you, after all those +years. I met you with perfect confidence, remembering what you once +were. It was my first grown-up party. I was only a fool of a girl, +merely ignorant, unfit to be trusted with a liberty I'd never before +had.... And I took one glass of champagne and it--you know what it +did.... And I was bewildered and frightened, and I told you; and--you +perhaps remember how my confidence in my old play-fellow was requited. +Do you?" + +Reckless impulse urged her on. Heart and pulses were beating very fast +with a persistent desire to hurt him. Her animation, brilliant colour, +her laughter seemed to wing every word like an arrow. She knew he shrank +from what she was saying, in spite of his polite attention, and her +fresh, curved cheek and parted lips took on a brighter tint. Something +was singing, seething in her veins. She lifted her glass, set it down, +and suddenly pushed it from her so violently that it fell with a crash. +A wave of tingling heat mounted to her face, receded, swept back again. +Confused, she straightened up in her chair, breathing fast. _What_ was +coming over her? Again the wave surged back with a deafening rush; her +senses struggled, the blood in her ran riot. Then terror clutched her. +Neither lips nor tongue were very flexible when she spoke. + +"Duane--if you don't mind--would you go away now? I've a wretched +headache." + +He shrugged and stood up. + +"It's curious," he said reflectively, "how utterly determined we seem to +be to misunderstand each other. If you would give me half a +chance--well--never mind." + +"I wish you would go," she murmured, "I really am not well." She could +scarcely hear her own voice amid the deafening tumult of her pulses. +Fright stiffened the fixed smile on her lips. Her plight paralysed her +for a moment. + +"Yes, I'll go," he answered, smiling. "I usually am going +somewhere--most of the time." + +He picked up hat, gloves, and crop, looked down at her, came and stood +at the table, resting one hand on the edge. + +"We're pretty young yet, Geraldine.... I never saw a girl I cared for as +I might have cared for you. It's true, no matter what I have done, or +may do.... But you're quite right, a man of that sort isn't to be +considered"--he laughed and pulled on one glove--"only--I knew as soon +as I saw you that it was to be you or--everybody. First, it was anybody; +then it was you--now it's everybody. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye," she managed to say. The dizzy waves swayed her; she rested +her cheeks between both hands and, leaning there heavily, closed her +eyes to fight against it. She had been seated on the side of a lounge; +and now, feeling blindly behind her, she moved the cushions aside, +turned and dropped among them, burying her blazing face. Over her the +scorching vertigo swept, subsided, rose, and swept again. Oh, the horror +of it!--the shame, the agonised surprise. What was this dreadful thing +that, for the second time, she had unwittingly done? And this time it +was so much more terrible. How could such an accident have happened to +her? How could she face her own soul in the disgrace of it? + +Fear, loathing, frightened incredulity that this could really be +herself, stiffened her body and clinched her hands under her parted +lips. On them her hot breath fell irregularly. + +Rigid, motionless, she lay, breathing faster and more feverishly. Tears +came after a long while, and with them relaxation and lassitude. She +felt that the dreadful thing which had seized and held her was letting +go its hold, was freeing her body and mind; and as it slowly released +her and passed on its terrible silent way, she awoke and sat up with a +frightened cry--to find herself lying on her own bed in utter darkness. + +A moment later her bedroom door opened without a sound and the light +from the hall streamed over Kathleen's bare shoulders and braided hair. + +"Geraldine?" + +The girl scarcely recognised Kathleen's altered voice. She lay +listening, silent, motionless, staring at the white figure. + +"Dearest, I thought you called me. May I come in?" + +"I am not well." + +But Kathleen entered and stood beside the bed, looking down at her in +the dim light. + +"Dearest," she began tremulously, "Duane told me you had a headache and +had gone to your room to lie down, so I didn't disturb you----" + +"Duane," faltered the girl, "is he here? What did he say?" + +"He was in the library before dinner when I came in, and he warned me +not to waken you. Do you know what time it is?" + +"No." + +"It is after midnight.... If you feel ill enough to lie here, you ought +to be undressed. May I help you?" + +There was no answer. For a moment Kathleen stood looking down at the +girl in silence; then a sudden shivering seized her; she strove to +control it, but her knees seemed to give way under it and she dropped +down beside the bed, throwing both arms around Geraldine's neck. + +[Illustration: "Oh, the horror of it!--the shame, the agonised +surprise."] + +"Oh, don't, _don't_!" she whimpered. "It is too terrible! It ruined +your father and your grandfather! Darling, I couldn't bear to tell you +this before, but now I've got to tell you! It is in your blood. +Seagraves die of it! Do you understand?" + +"W-what?" stammered the girl. + +"That all their lives they did what--what you have done to-day--that you +have inherited their terrible inclinations. Even as a little child you +frightened me. Have you forgotten what you and I talked over and cried +over after your first party?" + +The girl said slowly: "I don't know how--it--happened, Kathleen. Duane +came in.... I tasted what he had in his glass.... I don't know why I did +it. I wish I were dead!" + +"There is only one thing to do--never to touch anything--anything----" + +"Y-yes, I know that I must not. But how was I to know before? Will you +tell me?" + +"You understand _now_, thank God!" + +"N-not exactly.... Other girls seem to do as they please without +danger.... It is amazing that such a horrible thing should happen to +me----" + +"It is a shameful thing that it should happen to any woman. And the +horror of it is that almost every hostess in town lets girls of your age +run the risk. Darling, don't you know that the only chance a woman has +with the world is in her self-control? When that goes, her chances go, +every one of them! Dear--we have latent in us much the same vices that +men have. We have within us the same possibilities of temptations, the +same capacity for excesses, the same capabilities for resistance. +Because you are a girl, you are not immune from unworthy desires." + +"I know it. The--the dreadful thing about it is that I do desire such +things. Perhaps I had better not even nibble sugar scented with +cologne----" + +"Do you do _that_?" faltered Kathleen. + +"I did not know there was any danger in it," sobbed the girl. "You have +scared me terribly, Kathleen." + +"Is that true about the cologne?" + +"Y-yes." + +"You don't do it now, do you?" + +"Yes." + +"You don't do it every day, do you?" + +"Yes, several times." + +"How long"--Kathleen's lips almost refused to move--"how long have you +done this?" + +"For a long time. I've been ashamed of it. It's--it's the alcohol in it +that I like, isn't it? I never thought of it in that way till now." + +Kathleen, on her knees by the bedside, was crying silently. The girl +slipped from her arms, turned partly over, and lying on her back, stared +upward through the darkness. + +So this was the secret reason that, unsuspected, had long been stirring +her to instinctive uneasiness, which had made her half ashamed, half +impatient with this silly habit which already inconvenienced her. Yet +even now she could not feel any real alarm; she could not understand +that the fangs of a habit can poison when plucked out. Of course there +was now only one thing to do--keep aloof from everything. That would be +easy. The tingling warmth of the perfume was certainly agreeable, but +she must not risk even such a silly indulgence as that. Really, it was a +very simple matter. She sat up, supporting her weight on one arm. + +"Kathleen, darling," she whispered, bending forward and drawing the +elder woman up onto the bed, "you mustn't be frightened about me. I've +learned some things I didn't know. Do you think Duane--" In the darkness +the blood scorched her face, the humiliation almost crushed her. But she +went on: "Do you think Duane suspects that--that----" + +"I don't think Duane suspects anything," said Kathleen, striving to +steady her voice. "You came in here as soon as you felt--ill; didn't +you?" + +"I--yes----" + +She could say no more. How she came to be on her bed in her own room she +could not remember. It seemed to her as though she had fallen asleep on +the lounge. Somehow, after Duane had gone, she must have waked and gone +to her own room. But she could not recollect doing it. + +Now she realised that she was tired, wretched, feverish. She suffered +Kathleen to undress her, comb her hair, bathe her, and dry the white, +slender body and limbs in which the veins still burned and throbbed. + +When at length she lay between the cool sheets, silent, limp, +heavy-lidded, Kathleen turned out the electric brackets and lighted the +candle. + +"Dear," she said, trying to speak cheerfully, "do you know what your +brother has done?" + +"What?" asked Geraldine drowsily. + +"He has bought Roya-Neh, if you please, and he invites you to draw a +check for half of it and to move there next week. As for me, I was +furious with him. What do you think?" + +Her voice softened to a whisper; she bent over the girl, looking closely +at the closed lids. Under them a faint bluish tint faded into the +whiteness of the cheek. + +"Darling, darling!" whispered Kathleen, bending closer over the sleeping +girl, "I love you so--I love you so!" And even as she said it, between +the sleeper's features and her own floated the vision of Scott's +youthfully earnest face; and she straightened suddenly to her full +height and laid her hand on her breast in consternation. Under the +fingers' soft pressure her heart beat faster. Again, with new dismay, +this incredible sensation was stealing upon her, threatening to +transform itself into something real, something definite, something not +to be stifled or ignored. + +She extinguished the candle; as she felt her way out of the darkness, +arms extended, far away in the house she heard a door open and shut, and +she bent over the balustrade to listen. + +"Is that you, Scott?" she called softly. + +"Yes; Duane and I did some billiards at the club." He looked up at her, +the same slight pucker between his brows, boyishly slender in his +evening dress. "You're not going to bed at once, are you, Kathleen, +dear?" + +"Yes, I am," she said briefly, backing into her own room, but holding +the door ajar so that she could look out at him. + +"Oh, come out and talk to a fellow," he urged; "I'm quite excited about +this Roya-Neh business----" + +"You're a perfect wretch, Scott. I don't want to talk about your unholy +extravagance." + +The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly +disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background. + +"Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette," he began +in his wheedling way. "I'm dying to talk to you about the +game-preserve----" + +"I can't; I'm not attired for a tête-à-tête with anything except my +pillow." + +"Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes----" + +"Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!" + +When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate +shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott +jumped up and dragged a big chair forward. + +"You certainly are stunning, Kathleen," he said frankly; "you look +twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I've a map of the +Roya-Neh forest to show you." + +He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and, +unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk +enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar +and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the +map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a +question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger. + +Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at +the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within +her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths +unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened. + +"Scott, dear," she said quietly, "I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh +forest, but it _was_ too expensive, and it troubles me; so I'm going to +sleep to dream over it." + +"You sweet little goose!" laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm +around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother. + +They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her +warm, yielding body. + +He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that +the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble +in that strange instant--that Kathleen was gone--that, in her calm, +sweet, familiar guise stood a woman--a stranger, exquisite, youthful, +with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for +the first time she had met his gaze across the world. + +She recovered her composure instantly. + +"I'm sorry, Scott, but I'm too sleepy to talk any more. Besides, +Geraldine isn't very well, and I'm going to doze with one eye open. +Good-night, dear." + +"Good-night," said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to +which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ROYA-NEH + + +Late on a fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long +Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of +twelve at Roya-Neh. + +"Hello, Duane!" cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new +possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; "frightfully glad to see +you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There +are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn't that rather +fine?"--looking down through the trees at the lake below. "There are +bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly +English fallow deer. Sorry I got 'em. What do you think of my house? +It's merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial.... Yes, +it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn't. No Seagraves +fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine's quarters up there behind the +leaded windows. Those are Kathleen's where the dinky woodbine twineth. +Mine face the east, and yours are next. Come on out into the park----" + +"Not much!" returned young Mallett. "I want a bath!" + +"The park," interrupted Scott excitedly, "is the largest fenced +game-preserve in America! It's only ten minutes to the Sachem's Gate, if +we walk fast." + +"I want a bath and fresh linen." + +"Don't you care to see the trout? Don't you want to try to catch a +glimpse of a wild boar? I should think you'd be crazy to see----" + +"I'm crazy about almost any old thing when I'm well scrubbed; otherwise, +I'm merely crazy. That was a wild trip up. I'm all over cinders." + +A woman came quietly out onto the terrace, and Duane instantly divined +it, though his back was toward her and her skirts made no sound. + +"Oh, is that you, Kathleen?" he cried, pivoting. "How d'ye do?" with a +vigorous handshake. "Every time I see you you're three times as pretty +as I thought you were when I last saw you." + +"Neat but involved," said Kathleen Severn. "You have a streak of cinder +across that otherwise fascinating nose." + +"I don't doubt it! I'm going. Where's Geraldine?" + +"Having her hair done in your honour; return the compliment by washing +your face. There's a maid inside to show you." + +"Show me how to wash my face!" exclaimed Duane, delighted. "This is +luxury----" + +"I want him to see the Gray Water before it's too late, with the +sunlight on the trees and the big trout jumping," protested Scott. + +"I'll do my own jumping if you'll furnish the tub," observed Duane. +"Where's that agreeable maid who washes your guests' faces?" + +Kathleen nodded an amused dismissal to them. Arm in arm they entered the +house, which was built out of squared blocks of field stone. Scott +motioned the servants aside and did the piloting himself up a broad +stone stairs, east along a wide sunny corridor full of nooks and angles +and antique sofas and potted flowers. + +"Not that way," he said; "Dysart is in there taking a nap. Turn to the +left." + +"Dysart?" repeated Duane. "I didn't know there was to be anybody else +here." + +"I asked Jack Dysart because he's a good rod. Kathleen raised the deuce +about it when I told her, but it was too late. Anyway, I didn't know she +had no use for him. He's certainly clever at dry-fly casting. He uses +pneumatic bodies, not cork or paraffine." + +"Is his wife here?" asked Duane carelessly. + +"Yes. Geraldine asked her as soon as she heard I'd written to Jack. But +when I told her the next day that I expected you, too, she got mad all +over, and we had a lively talk-fest. What was there wrong in my having +you and the Dysarts here at the same time? Don't you get on?" + +"Charmingly," replied Duane airily.... "It will be very interesting, I +think. Is there anybody else here?" + +"Delancy Grandcourt. Isn't he the dead one? But Geraldine wanted him. +And there's that stick of a Quest girl, and Bunbury Gray. Naïda came +over this afternoon from the Tappans' at Iron Hill--thank goodness----" + +"I didn't know my sister was to be here." + +"Yes; and you make twelve, counting Geraldine and me and the Pink 'uns." + +"You didn't tell me it was to be a round-up," repeated Duane, absently +surveying his chintz-hung quarters. "This is a pretty place you've given +me. Where do you get all your electric lights? Where do you get fancy +plumbing in this wilderness?" + +"Our own plant," explained the boy proudly. "Isn't that corking water? +Look at it--heavenly cold and clear, or hot as hell, whichever way +you're inclined--" turning on a silver spigot chiselled like a cherub. +"That water comes from Cloudy Lake, up there on that dome-shaped +mountain. Here, stand here beside me, Duane, and you can see it from +your window. That's the Gilded Dome--that big peak. It's in our park. +There are a few elk on it, not many, because they'd starve out the deer. +As it is, we have to cut browse in winter. For Heaven's sake, hurry, +man! Get into your bath and out again, or we'll miss the trout jumping +along Gray Water and Hurryon Brook." + +"Let 'em jump!" retorted Duane, forcibly ejecting his host from the room +and locking the door. Then, lighting a cigarette, he strolled into the +bath room and started the water running into the porcelain tub. + +He was in excellent spirits, quite undisturbed by the unexpected +proximity of Rosalie Dysart or the possible renewal of their hitherto +slightly hazardous friendship. He laid his cigarette aside for the +express purpose of whistling while undressing. + +Half an hour later, bathed, shaved, and sartorially freshened, he +selected a blue corn-flower from the rural bouquet on his dresser, drew +it through his buttonhole, gave a last alluring twist to his tie, +surveyed himself in the mirror, whistled a few bars, was perfectly +satisfied with himself, then, unlocking the door, strolled out into the +corridor. Having no memory for direction, he took the wrong turn. + +A distractingly pretty maid laid aside her sewing and rose from her +chair to set him right; he bestowed upon her his most courtly thanks. +She was unusually pretty, so he thanked her again, and she dimpled, one +hand fingering her apron's edge. + +"My child," said he gravely, "are you by any fortunate chance as good as +you are ornamental?" + +She replied that she thought she was. + +"In that case," he said, "this is one of those rare occasions in a +thankless world where goodness is amply and instantly rewarded." + +She made a perfunctory resistance, but looked after him, smiling, as he +sauntered off down the hallway, rearranging the blue corn-flower in his +button-hole. At the turn by the window, where potted posies stood, he +encountered Rosalie Dysart in canoe costume--sleeves rolled up, hair +loosened, becomingly tanned, and entirely captivating in her +thoughtfully arranged disarray. + +"Why, Duane!" she exclaimed, offering both her hands with that +impulsively unstudied gesture she carefully cultivated for such +occasions. + +He took them; he always took what women offered. + +"This is very jolly," he said, retaining the hands and examining her +with unfeigned admiration. "Tell me, Mrs. Dysart, are you by any +fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?" + +"I heard you ask that of the maid around the corner," said Rosalie +coolly. "Don't let the bucolic go to your head, Mr. Mallett." And she +disengaged her hands, crossed them behind her, and smiled back at him. +It was his punishment. Her hands were very pretty hands, and well worth +holding. + +"That maid," he said gravely, "has excellent manners. I merely +complimented her upon them.... What else did you--ah--hear, Mrs. +Dysart?" + +"What one might expect to hear wherever you are concerned. I don't +mind. The things you do rather gracefully seem only offensive when other +men do them.... Have you just arrived?" + +"An hour ago. Did you know I was coming?" + +"Geraldine mentioned it to everybody, but I don't think anybody swooned +at the news.... My husband is here." + +She still confronted him, hands behind her, with an audacity which +challenged--her whole being was always a delicate and perpetual +challenge. There are such women. Over her golden-brown head the late +summer sunlight fell, outlining her full, supple figure and bared arms +with a rose light. + +"Well?" she asked. + +"If only you _were_ as good as you are ornamental," he said, looking at +her impudently. "But I'm afraid you're not." + +"What would happen to me if I were?" + +"Why," he said with innocent enthusiasm, "you would have _your_ reward, +too, Mrs. Dysart." + +"The sort of reward which I heard you bestow a few moments ago upon that +maid? I'm no longer the latter, so I suppose I'm not entitled to it, am +I?" + +The smile still edged her pretty mouth; there was an instant when +matters looked dubious for her; but a door opened somewhere, and, still +smiling, she slipped by him and vanished into a neighbouring corridor. + +Howker, the old butler, met him at the foot of the stairs. + +"Tea is served on the Long Terrace, sir. Mr. Seagrave wishes to know +whether you would care to see the trout jumping on the Gray Water this +evening? If so, you are please not to stop for tea, but go directly to +the Sachem's Gate. Redmond will guide you, sir." + +[Illustration: "'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness +is amply ... rewarded.'"] + +"All right, Howker," said Duane absently; and strolled on along the +hall, thinking of Mrs. Dysart. + +The front doors swung wide, opening on the Long Terrace, which looked +out across a valley a hundred feet below, where a small lake glimmered +as still as a mirror against a background of golden willows and low +green mountains. + +There were a number of young people pretending to take tea on the +terrace; and some took it, and others took other things. He knew them +all, and went forward to greet them. Geraldine Seagrave, a new and +bewitching coat of tan tinting cheek and neck, held out her hand with +all the engaging frankness of earlier days. Her clasp was firm, cool, +and nervously cordial--the old confident affection of childhood once +more. + +"I am _so_ glad you came, Duane. I've really missed you." And sweeping +the little circle with an eager glance; "You know everybody, I think. +The Dysarts have not yet appeared, and Scott is down at the Gate Lodge. +Come and sit by me, Duane." + +Two or three girls extended their hands to him--Sylvia Quest, shy and +quiet; Muriel Wye, white-skinned, black-haired, red-lipped, red-cheeked, +with eyes like melted sapphires and the expression of a reckless saint; +and his blond sister, Naïda, who had arrived that afternoon from the +Tappans' at Iron Hill, across the mountain. + +Delancy Grandcourt, uncouth and highly coloured, stood up to shake +hands; Bunbury Gray, a wiry, bronzed little polo-playing squadron man, +hailed Duane with enthusiasm. + +"Awfully glad to see you, Bunny," said Duane, who liked him +immensely--"oh, how are you?" offering his hand to Reginald Wye, a +hard-riding, hard-drinking, straight-shooting young man, who knew +nothing on earth except what concerned sport and the drama. He and his +sister of the sapphire eyes and brilliant cheeks were popularly known as +the Pink 'uns. + +Jack Dysart arrived presently, graceful, supple, always smilingly, +elaborate of manner, apparently unconscious that he was not cordially +admired by the men who returned his greeting. Later, Rosalie, came, +enchantingly demure in her Greuze-like beauty. Chardin might have made +her; possibly Fragonard. She did not resemble the Creator's technique. +Dresden teacups tinkled, ice clattered in tall glasses, the two +fountains splashed away bravely, prettily modulated voices made +agreeable harmony on the terrace, blending with the murmur of leaves +overhead as the wind stirred them to gossip. Over all spread a calm +evening sky. + +"Tea, dear?" asked Geraldine, glancing up at Mrs. Dysart. Rosalie shook +her head with a smile. + +Lang, the second man, was flitting about, busy with a decanter of +Scotch. A moment later Rosalie signified her preference for it with a +slight nod. Geraldine, who sat watching indifferently the filling of +Mrs. Dysart's glass, suddenly leaned back and turned her head sharply, +as though the aroma from glass and decanter were distasteful to her. In +a few minutes she rose, walked over to the parapet, and stood leaning +against the coping, apparently absorbed in the landscape. + +The sun hung low over the flat little tree-clad mountains, which the +lake, now inlaid with pink and gold, reflected. A few fallow deer moved +quietly down there, ruddy spots against the turf. + +Duane, carrying his glass with him, rose and stepped across the strip +of grass to her side, and, glancing askance at her, was on the point of +speaking when he discovered that her eyes were shut and her face +colourless and rigid. + +"What is it?" he asked surprised. "Are you feeling faint, Geraldine?" + +She opened her eyes, velvet dark and troubled, but did not turn around. + +"It's nothing," she answered calmly. "I was thinking of several things." + +"You look so white----" + +"I am perfectly well. Bend over the parapet with me, Duane. Look at +those rocks down there. What a tumble! What a death!" + +He placed his glass between them on the coping, and leaned over. She did +not notice the glass for a moment. Suddenly she wheeled, as though he +had spoken, and her eyes fell on the glass. + +"What _is_ the matter?" he demanded, as she turned on her heel and moved +away. + +"I'm a trifle nervous, I believe. If you want to see the big trout +breaking on Hurryon, you'd better come with me." + +She was walking swiftly down the drive to the south of the house. He +overtook her and fell into slower step beside her. + +The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains; bluish haze veiled +the valley; a horizon of dazzling yellow flecked with violet faded +upward to palest turquoise. High overhead a feathered cloud hung, tinged +with rose. + +The south drive was bordered deep in syringas, all over snowy bloom; and +as they passed they inhaled the full fragrance of the flowers with every +breath. + +"It's like heaven," said Duane; "and you are not incongruous in the +landscape, either." + +She looked around at him; the smile that curved her mouth had the +faintest suspicion of tenderness about it. + +She said slowly: + +"Do you realise that I am genuinely glad to see you? I've been horrid to +you. I don't yet really believe in you, Duane. I detest some of the +things you are and say and do; but, after all, I've missed you. +Incredible as it sounds, I've been a little lonely without you." + +He said gaily: "When a woman becomes accustomed to chasing the family +cat out of the parlour with the broom, she misses the sport when the cat +migrates permanently." + +"Have you migrated--permanently? O Duane! I thought you _did_ care for +me--in your own careless fashion----" + +"I do. But I'm not hopelessly enamoured of your broom-stick!" + +Her laugh was a little less spontaneous, as she answered: + +"I know I have been rather free with my broom. I'm sorry." + +"You _have_ made some sweeping charges on that cat!" he said, laughing. + +"I know I have. That was two months ago. I don't think I am the morally +self-satisfied prig I was two months ago.... I'd be easier on anything +now, even a cat. But don't think I mean more than I do mean, Duane," she +added hastily. "I've missed you a little. I want you to be nice to +me.... After all, you're the oldest friend I have except Kathleen." + +"I'll be as nice as you'll let me," he said. They turned from the +driveway and entered a broad wood road. "As nice as you'll let me," he +repeated. + +"I won't let you be sentimental, if that's what you mean," she observed. + +"Why?" + +"Because you are you." + +"In a derogatory sense?" + +"Somewhat. I might be like you if I were a man, and had your easy, airy, +inconsequential way with women. But I won't let you have it with me, my +casual friend. Don't hope for it." + +"What have I ever done----" + +"Exactly what you're doing now to Rosalie--what you did to a dozen women +this winter--what you did to me"--she turned and looked at him--"the +first time I ever set eyes on you since we were children together. I +know you are not to be taken seriously; almost everybody knows that! And +all the same, Duane, I've thought about you a lot in these two months up +here, and--I'm happy that you've come at last.... You won't mistake me +and try to be sentimental with me, will you?" + +She laid her slim, sun-tanned hand on his arm; they walked on together +through the woodland where green bramble sprays glimmered through +clustering tree trunks and the fading light turned foliage and +undergrowth to that vivid emerald which heralds dusk. + +"Duane," she said, "I'm dreadfully restless and I cannot account for +it.... Perhaps motherless girls are never quite normal; I don't know. +But, lately, the world has seemed very big and threatening around me.... +Scott is nice to me, usually; Kathleen adorable.... I--I don't know what +I want, what it is I miss." + +Her hand still rested lightly on his arm as they walked forward. She +was speaking at intervals almost as though talking in an undertone to +herself: + +"I'm in--perplexity. I've been troubled. Perhaps that is what makes me +tolerant of you; perhaps that's why I'm glad to see you.... Trouble is a +new thing to me. I thought I had troubles--perhaps I had as a child. But +this is deeper, different, disquieting." + +"Are you in love?" he asked. + +"No." + +"Really?" + +"Really." + +"Then what----" + +"I can't tell you. Anyway, it won't last. It can't, ... Can it?" + +She looked around at him, and they both laughed a little at her +inconsequence. + +"I feel better for pretending to tell you, anyway," she said, as they +halted before high iron gates hung between two granite posts from which +the woven wire fence of the game park, ten feet high, stretched away +into the darkening woods on either hand. + +"This is the Sachem's Gate," she said; "here is the key; unlock it, +please." + +Inside they crossed a stream dashing between tanks set with fern and +tall silver birches. + +"Hurryon Brook," she said. "Isn't it a beauty? It pours into the Gray +Water a little farther ahead. We must hasten, or it will be too dark to +see the trout." + +Twice again they crossed the rushing brook on log bridges. Then through +the trees stretching out before them they caught sight of the Gray +Water, crinkling like a flattened sheet of hammered silver. + +Everywhere the surface was starred and ringed and spattered by the +jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap! +clip-clap! splash!--hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that +the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse. + +Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full +length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over, +showing "colour." + +"There is Scott," she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest +quiet--"out there in that canoe. No, he hasn't taken his rod; he seldom +does; he's perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half +the night he's out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting, +just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his +dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very +little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all +around--some within a foot of his canoe! He'll never come in to dress +for dinner unless we call him." + +And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call +floating out across the Gray Water. + +"All right; I'll come!" shouted her brother. "Wait a moment!" + +They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out, +casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then +ten, and scores and myriads. + +They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much +to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the +uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased +as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute. + +"Is not this stillness delicious?" she breathed. + +"It is sweeter when you break it." + +"Please don't say such things.... _Can't_ you understand how much I want +you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don't know why, I've seemed to feel +so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I--just want--a +friend." + +There was a silence; then he said lightly: + +"I've felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I +seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which +they can't break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I +never thought of you as one of those." + +"I seem to be at times--not exactly isolated, but unable to get close +to--to Kathleen, for example. Do you know, Duane, it might be very good +for me to have you to talk to." + +"People usually like to talk to me. I've noticed it. But the curious +part of it is that they have nothing to give me in exchange for my +attention." + +"What do you mean?" + +He laughed. "Oh, nothing. I amuse people; I know it. You--and +everybody--say I am all cleverness and froth--not to be taken seriously. +But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. +Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence--all +are answered by their own echo.... And you and the others think it is I +who answer." + +He laughed, not looking at her: + +"And it happens that you--and the others--are mistaken. If I appear to +be what you say I am, it is merely a form of self-defence. Do you think +I could endure the empty nonsense of a New York winter if I did not +present to it a surface like a sounding-board and let Folly converse +with its own echo--while, behind it, underneath it, Duane Mallett goes +about his own business." + +Astonished, not clearly understanding, she listened in absolute silence. +Never in all her life had she heard him speak in such a manner. She +could not make out whether bitterness lay under his light and easy +speech, whether a maliciously perverse humour lurked there, whether it +was some new mockery. + +He said carelessly: "I give what I receive. And I have never received +any very serious attention from anybody. I'm only Duane Mallett, +identified with the wealthy section of society you inhabit, the son of a +wealthy man, who went abroad and dabbled in colour and who paints +pictures of pretty women. Everybody and the newspapers know me. What I +see of women is a polished coquetry that mirrors my fixed smirk; what I +see of men is less interesting." + +He looked out through the dusk at the darkening water: + +"You say you are beginning to feel isolated. Can anybody with any +rudiment of intellect feel otherwise in the social environment you and I +inhabit--where distinction and inherited position count for absolutely +nothing unless propped up by wealth--where any ass is tolerated whose +fortune and lineage pass inspection--where there is no place for +intelligence and talent, even when combined with breeding and lineage, +unless you are properly ballasted with money enough to forget that you +have any?" + +He laughed. + +"So you feel isolated? I do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of +decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, +frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the +players half dead with ennui and their neighbour's wives----" + +"Duane!" + +"Oh, Lord, you're a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won't shock +you, more's the pity.... As for the game--I'm done with it; I can't +stand it. The amusement I extract doesn't pay. Good God! and you wonder +why I kiss a few of you for distraction's sake, press a finger-tip or +two, brush a waist with my sleeve!" + +He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands +hanging between his knees. + +"Duane," she said in astonishment, "what do you mean? Are you trying to +quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new +forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades +we once were?" + +"We're too old to be comrades. That's book rubbish. Men and women have +nothing in common, intellectually, unless they're in love. For company, +for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather +be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we're going +to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or +for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and +figure in any woman. What's the use of marrying for what you'll scarcely +notice in a month?... If you _are you_, Geraldine, under all your +attractive surface there's something else which you have never given +me." + +"Wh--what?" she asked faintly. + +"Intelligent interest in me." + +"Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you think I underestimate you?" + +"Not as I am. I don't amount to much; but I might if you cared." + +"Cared for you?" + +"No, confound it! Cared for what I could be." + +"I--I don't think I understand. What could you be?" + +"A man, for one thing. I'm a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait +painter for another. The combination is horrible." + +"You are a successful painter." + +"Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since +my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent, +affectionate question about my work?" + +"I--yes--but I don't know anything about----" + +He laughed, and it hurt her. + +"Don't you understand," she said, "that ordinary people are very shy +about talking art to a professional----" + +"I don't want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue eyes and blond +curls can do it. I wanted you to see what I do, say what you think, like +it or damn it--only do something about it! You've never been to my +studio except to stand with the perfumed crowd and talk commonplaces in +front of a picture." + +"I can't go alone." + +"Can't you?" he asked, looking closely at her in the dusk, so close that +she could see every mocking feature. + +"Yes," she said in a low, surprised voice, "I could go +alone--anywhere--with you.... I didn't realise it before, Duane." + +"You never tried. You once mistook an impulse of genuine passion for the +sort of thing I've done since. You made a terrific fuss about being +kissed when I saw, as soon as I saw you, that I wanted to win you, if +you'd let me. Since then you've chosen the key-note of our relations, +not I, and you don't like my interpretation of my part." + +For a while she sat silent, preoccupied with this totally new revelation +of a man about whom she supposed she had long ago made up her mind. + +"I'm glad we've had this talk," she said at last. + +"I am, too. I haven't asked you to fall in love with me; I haven't asked +for your confidence. I've asked you to take an intelligent, affectionate +interest in what I might become, and perhaps you and I won't be so +lonely if you do." + +He struck a match in the darkness and lighted a cigarette. Close inshore +Scott Seagrave's electric torch flashed. They heard the velvety scraping +of the canoe, the rattle and thump as he flung it, bottom upward, on the +sandy point. + +"Hello, you people! Where are you?"--sweeping the wood's edge with his +flash-light--"oh, there you are. Isn't this glorious? Did you ever see +such a sight as those big fellows jumping?" + +"Meanwhile," said his sister, rising, "our guests are doubtless yelling +with hunger. What time is it, Duane? Half-past eight? Please hurry, +Scott; we've got to get back and dress in five minutes!" + +"I can do it easily," announced her brother, going ahead to light the +path. And all the way home he discussed aloud upon the stripping, +hatching, breeding, care, and diseases of trout, never looking back, +and quite confident that they were listening attentively to his woodland +lecture. + +"Duane," she said, lowering her voice, "do you think all our +misunderstandings are ended?" + +"Certainly," he replied gaily. "Don't you?" + +"But how am I going to make everybody think you are not frivolous?" + +"I am frivolous. There's lots of froth to me--on top. You know that sort +of foam you see on grass-stems in the fields. Hidden away inside is a +very clever and busy little creature. He uses the froth to protect +himself." + +"Are you going to froth?" + +"Yes--until----" + +"Until what?" + +"You----" + +"Go on." + +"Shall I say it?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, then, unless you and I find each other intellectually +satisfactory." + +"You said only a man--in love with a woman--could find her interesting +in that way." + +"Yes. What of it?" + +"Nothing.... Only I'm afraid you'll have to froth, then," she said, +laughing. "I haven't any intention of falling in love with you, Duane, +and you'll find me stupid if I don't. Do you know that what you intimate +is very horrid?" + +"Why?" + +"Yes, it is. Besides, it's a sort of threat----" + +"A threat?" + +"Certainly. You threaten to--you know perfectly well what you threaten +to do unless I immediately consider the possibility of our--caring for +each other--sentimentally." + +"But what do you care if you don't care?" + +"I--don't. All the same it's horrid and--and unfair. Suppose I was +frothy and behaved----" + +"Misbehaved?" + +"Yes. Just because you wouldn't agree to take a sentimental interest in +me?" + +"I _would_ agree! I'll agree now!" + +"Suppose you wouldn't?" + +"I can't imagine----" + +"Oh, Duane, be honest! And I'll tell you flatly--if you do misbehave. +Just because I don't particularly desire to rush into your arms----" + +"But I haven't threatened to." + +Unconsciously she laid her hand on his arm again, slipping it a little +way under. + +"You're just as you were years ago--just the dearest of playmates. We're +not too old to play, are we?" + +"I can't with you; it's too dangerous." + +"What nonsense! Yes, you can. You like me for my intelligence in spite +of what you say about men and women----" + +"I wouldn't care for your intelligence if I were not in----" + +"Duane, stop, please!" + +"In danger," he continued blandly, "of proving my proposition." + +"You are insufferable. I am as intelligent as you." + +"I know it, but it wouldn't attract me unless----" + +"It ought to," she said hastily. "And, Duane, I'm going to make you +take me into account. I'm going to exercise a man's privilege with you +by--by saying frankly--several things----" + +"What things?" + +The amused mockery in his voice gave her courage. + +"For one thing, I'm going to tell you that people--gossip--that there +are--are----" + +"Rumours?" he asked in pretended anxiety. + +"Yes.... About you and--of course they are silly and contemptible; but +what's the use of being attentive enough to a woman--careless enough to +give colour to them?" + +After an interval he said: "Perhaps you'll tell me who beside myself +these rumours concern?" + +"You know, don't you?" + +"There might be several," he said coolly. "Who is it?" + +For a moment a tiny flash of anger made her cheeks hot. Then she said: + +"You know perfectly well it's Rosalie. I think we have become good +enough comrades for me to use a man's privilege----" + +"Men wouldn't permit themselves that sort of privilege," he said, +laughing. + +"Aren't men frank with their friends?" she demanded hotly. + +"About as frank as women." + +"I thought--" She hesitated, tingling with the old desire to hurt him, +flick him in the raw, make him wince in his exasperating complacency. +Then, "I've said it anyhow. I'm trying to show an interest in you--as +you asked me to do----" + +He turned in the darkness, caught her hand: + +"You dear little thing," he whispered, laughing. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +ADRIFT + + +During the week the guests at Roya-Neh were left very much to their own +devices. Nobody was asked to do anything; there were several good enough +horses at their disposal, two motor cars, a power-boat, canoes, rods, +and tennis courts and golf links. The chances are they wanted +sea-bathing. Inland guests usually do. + +Scott Seagrave, however, concerned himself little about his guests. All +day long he moused about his new estate, field-glasses dangling, cap on +the back of his head, pockets bulging with untidy odds and ends until +the increasing carelessness of his attire and manners moved Kathleen +Severn to protest. + +"I don't know what is the matter with you, Scott," she said. "You were +always such a fastidious boy--even dandified. Doesn't anybody ever cut +your hair? Doesn't somebody keep your clothes in order?" + +"Yes, but I tear 'em again," he replied, carefully examining a small +dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. "I say, Kathleen, +look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along +Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the +ground-floor apartment of a flat stone." + +Kathleen craned her dainty neck over the shoulder of his ragged shooting +coat. + +"He's red enough to be poisonous, isn't he? Oh, do be careful!" + +"It's only a young newt. Take him in your hand; he's cool and clammy +and rather agreeable." + +"Scott, I won't touch him!" + +"Yes, you will!" He caught her by the arm; "I'm going to teach you not +to be afraid of things outdoors. This lizard-like thing is perfectly +harmless. Hold out your hand!" + +"Oh, Scott, don't make me----" + +"Yes, I will. I thought you and I were going to be in thorough accord +and sympathy and everything else." + +"Yes, but you mustn't bully me." + +"I'm not. I merely want you to get over your absurd fear of live things, +so that you and I can really enjoy ourselves. You said you would, +Kathleen." + +"Can't we be in perfect sympathy and roam about and--and everything, +unless I touch such things?" + +He said reproachfully, balancing the little creature on his palm: "The +fun is in being perfectly confident and fearless. You have no idea how I +like all these things. You said you were going to like 'em, too." + +"I do--rather." + +"Then take this one and pet it." + +She glanced at the boy beside her, realising how completely their former +relations were changing. + +Long ago she had given all her heart to the Seagrave children--all the +unspent passion in her had become an unswerving devotion to them. And +now, a woman still young, the devotion remained, but time was modifying +it in a manner sometimes disquieting. She tried not to remember that +now, in Scott, she had a man to deal with, and tried in vain; and dealt +with him weakly, and he was beginning to do with her as he pleased. + +"You do like to bully me, don't you?" she said. + +"I only want you to like to do what I like to do." + +She stood silent a moment, then, with a shudder, held out her hand, +fingers rigid and wide apart. + +"Oh!" she protested, as he placed the small dark-red amphibian on the +palm, where it crinkled up and lowered its head. + +"That's the idea!" he said, delighted. "Here, I'll take it now. Some day +you'll be able to handle snakes if you'll only have patience." + +"But I don't want to." She stood holding out the contaminated hand for a +moment, then dropped on her knees and scrubbed it vigorously in the +brook. + +"You see," said Scott, squatting cheerfully beside her, "you and I don't +yet begin to realise the pleasure that there is in these woods and +streams--hidden and waiting for us to discover it. I wouldn't bother +with any other woman, but you've always liked what I like, and its half +the fun in having you see these things. Look here, Kathleen, I'm keeping +a book of field notes." He extracted from his stuffed pockets a small +leather-covered book, fished out a stylograph, and wrote the date while +she watched over his shoulder. + +"Discovered what seems to be a small dark-red newt under a stone near +Hurryon Brook. Couldn't make it bite me, so let Kathleen hold it. Query: +Is it a land or water lizard, a salamander, or a newt; and what does it +feed on and where does it deposit its eggs?" + +Kathleen's violet eyes wandered to the written page opposite. + +"Did you really see an otter, Scott?" + +"Yes, I did!" he exclaimed. "Out in the Gray Water, swimming like a dog. +That was yesterday afternoon. It's a scarce creature here. I'll tell you +what, Kathleen; we'll take our luncheon and go out and spend the day +watching for it." + +"No," she said, drying her hands on her handkerchief, "I can't spend +every minute of the day with you. Ask some other woman." + +"What other woman?" She was gazing out at the sunlit ripples. A little +unquiet thrill leaped through her veins, but she went on carelessly: + +"Take some pretty woman out with you. There are several here----" + +"Pretty woman," he repeated. "Do you think that's the only reason I want +you to come?" + +"Only reason? What a silly thing to say, Scott. I am not a pretty woman +to you--in that sense----" + +"You are the prettiest I ever saw," he said, looking at her; and again +the unquiet thrill ran like lightning through her veins. But she only +laughed carelessly and said: + +"Oh, of course, Geraldine and I expect our big brother to say such +things." + +"It has nothing to do with Geraldine or with brothers," he said +doggedly. She strove to laugh, caught his gaze, and, discountenanced, +turned toward the stream. + +"We can cross on the stepping stones," she suggested. And after a +moment: "Are you coming?" + +"See here, Kathleen," he said, "you're not acting squarely with me." + +"What do you mean?" + +"No, you're not. I'm a man, and you know it." + +"Of course you are, Scott." + +"Then I wish you'd recognise it. What's the use of mortifying me when I +act--speak--behave as any man behaves who--who--is--fond of a--person." + +"But I don't mean to--to mortify you. What have I done?" + +He dug his hands into the pockets of his riding breeches, took two or +three short turns along the bank, came back to where she was standing. + +"You probably don't remember," he said, "one night this spring +when--when--" He stopped short. The vivid tint in her cheeks was his +answer--a swift, disconcerting answer to an incomplete question, the +remainder of which he himself had scarcely yet analysed. + +"Scott, dear," she said steadily, in spite of her softly burning cheeks, +"I will be quite honest with you if you wish. I do know what you've been +trying to say. I am conscious that you are no longer the boy I could pet +and love and caress without embarrassment to either of us. You are a +man, but try to remember that I am several years older----" + +"Does that matter!" he burst out. + +"Yes, dear, it does.... I care for you--and Geraldine--more than for +anybody in the world. I understand your loyalty to me, Scott, and I--I +love it. But don't confuse it with any serious sentiment." + +"I do care seriously." + +"You make me very happy. Care for me very, very seriously; I want you +to; I--I need it. But don't mistake the kind of affection that we have +for each other for anything deeper, will you?" + +"Don't you want to care for me--that way?" + +"Not _that_ way, Scott." + +"Why?" + +"I've told you. I am so much older----" + +"_Couldn't_ you, all the same?" + +She was trembling inwardly. She leaned against a white birch-tree and +passed one hand across her eyes and upward through the thick burnished +hair. + +"No, I couldn't," she whispered. + +The boy walked to the edge of the brook. Past him hurried the sun-tipped +ripples; under them, in irregular wedge formation, little ones ahead, +big ones in the rear, lay a school of trout, wavering silhouettes of +amber against the bottom sands. + +One arm encircling the birch-tree, she looked after him in silence, +waiting. And after a while he turned and came back to her: + +"I suppose you knew I fell in love with you that night when--when--you +remember, don't you?" + +She did not answer. + +"I don't know how it happened," he said: "something about you did it. I +want to say that I've loved you ever since. It's made me serious.... I +haven't bothered with girls since. You are the only woman who interests +me. I think about you most of the time when I'm not doing something +else," he explained naïvely. "I know perfectly well I'm in love with you +because I don't dare touch you--and I've never thought of--of kissing +you good-night as we used to before that night last spring.... You +remember that we didn't do it that night, don't you?" + +Still no answer, and Kathleen's delicate, blue-veined hands were +clenched at her sides and her breath came irregularly. + +"That was the reason," he said. "I don't know how I've found courage to +tell you. I've often been afraid you would laugh at me if I told you.... +If it's only our ages--you seem as young as I do...." He looked up, +hopefully; but she made no response. + +The boy drew a long breath. + +"I love you, anyway," he said. "And that's how it is." + +She neither spoke nor stirred. + +"I suppose," he went on, "because I was such a beast of a boy, you can +never forget it." + +"You were the sweetest, the best--" Her voice broke; she swung about, +moved away a few paces, stood still. When he halted behind her she +turned. + +"Dearest," she said tremulously, "let me give you what I can--love, as +always--solicitude, companionship, deep sympathy in your pleasures, deep +interest in your amusements.... Don't ask for more; don't think that you +want more. Don't try to change the loyalty and love you have always had +for something you--neither of us understand--neither of us ought to +desire--or even think of----" + +"Why?" + +"Can't you understand? Even if I were not too old in years, I dare not +give up what I have of you and Geraldine for this new--for anything more +hazardous.... Suppose it were so--that I could venture to think I cared +for you that way? What might I put in peril?--Geraldine's affection for +me--perhaps her relations with you.... And the world is cynical, Scott, +and you are wealthy even among very rich men, and I was your paid +guardian--quite penniless--engaged to care for and instruct----" + +"Don't say such things!" he said angrily. + +"The world would say them--your friends--perhaps Geraldine might be led +to doubt--Oh, Scott, dear, I know, I know! And above all--I am afraid. +There are too many years between us--too many blessed memories of my +children to risk.... Don't try to make me care for you in any other +way." + +A quick flame leaped in his eyes. + +"_Could_ I?" + +"No!" she exclaimed, appalled. + +"Then why do you ask me not to try? I believe I could!" + +"You cannot! You cannot, believe me. Won't you believe me? It must not +happen; it is all wrong--in every way----" + +He stood looking at her with a new expression on his face. + +"If you are so alarmed," he said slowly, "you must have already thought +about it. You'll think about it now, anyway." + +"We are both going to forget it. Promise that you will!" She added +hurriedly: "Drop my hand, please; there is Geraldine--and Mr. +Grandcourt, too!... Tell me--do my eyes look queer? Are they red and +horrid?... Don't look at me that way. For goodness' sake, don't display +any personal interest in me. Go and turn over some flat rocks and find +some lizards!" + +Geraldine, bare-armed and short-skirted, came swinging along the +woodland path, Delancy Grandcourt dogging her heels, as usual, carrying +a pair of rods and catching the artificial flies in the bushes at every +step. + +"We're all out of trout at the house!" she called across to the stream +to her brother. "Jack Dysart is fishing down the creek with Naïda and +Sylvia. Where is Duane?" + +"Somewhere around, I suppose," replied Scott sulkily. His sister took a +running jump, cleared the bank, and alighted on a rock in the stream. +Poised there she looked back at Grandcourt, laughed, sprang forward +from stone to stone, and leaped to the moss beside Kathleen. + +"Hello, dear!" she nodded. "Where did you cross? And where is Duane?" + +"We crossed by the log bridge below," replied Kathleen. She added: +"Duane left us half an hour ago. Wasn't it half an hour ago, Scott?" +with a rising inflection that conveyed something of warning, something +of an appeal. But on Scott's face the sullen disconcerted expression had +not entirely faded, and his sister inspected him curiously. Then without +knowing why, exactly, she turned and looked at Kathleen. + +There was a subdued and dewy brilliancy in Kathleen's eyes, a bright +freshness to her cheeks, radiantly and absurdly youthful; and something +else--something so indefinable, so subtle, that only another woman's +instinct might divine it--something invisible and inward, which +transfigured her with a youthful loveliness almost startling. + +They looked at one another. Geraldine, conscious of something she could +not understand, glanced again at her sulky brother. + +"What's amiss, Scott?" she asked. "Has anything gone wrong anywhere?" + +Scott, pretending to be very busy untangling Grandcourt's cast from the +branches of a lusty young birch, said, "No, of course not," and the +girl, wondering, turned to Kathleen, who sustained her questioning eyes +without a tremor. + +"What's the matter with Scott?" asked his sister. "He's the +guiltiest-looking man--why, it's absurd, Kathleen! Upon my word, the boy +is blushing!" + +"What!" exclaimed Scott so furiously that everybody laughed. And +presently Geraldine asked again where Duane was. + +"Rosalie Dysart is canoeing on the Gray Water, and she hailed him and he +left us and went down to the river," said Kathleen carelessly. + +"Did Duane join her?" + +"I think so--" She hesitated, watching Geraldine's sombre eyes. "I +really don't know," she added. And, in a lower voice: "I wish either +Duane or Rosalie would go. They certainly are behaving unwisely." + +Geraldine turned and looked through the woods toward the Gray Water. + +"It's their affair," she said curtly. "I've got to make Delancy fish or +we won't have enough trout for luncheon. Scott!" calling to her brother, +"your horrid trout won't rise this morning. For goodness' sake, try to +catch something beside lizards and water-beetles!" + +For a moment she stood looking around her, as though perplexed and +preoccupied. There was sunlight on the glade and on the ripples, but the +daylight seemed to have become duller to her. + +She walked up-stream for a little distance before she noticed Grandcourt +plodding faithfully at her heels. + +"Oh!" she said impatiently, "I thought you were fishing. You must catch +something, you know, or we'll all go hungry." + +"Nothing bites on these bally flies," he explained. + +"Nothing bites because your flies are usually caught in a tree-top. +Trout are not arboreal. I'm ashamed of you, Delancy. If you can't keep +your line free in the woods"--she hesitated, then reddening a little +under her tan--"you had better go and get a canoe and find Duane +Mallett and help him catch--something worth while." + +"Don't you want me to stay with you?" asked the big, awkward fellow +appealingly. "There's no fun in being with Rosalie and Duane." + +"No, I don't. Look! Your flies are in that bush! Untangle them and go to +the Gray Water." + +"Won't you come, too, Miss Seagrave?" + +"No; I'm going back to the house.... And don't you dare return without a +decent brace of trout." + +"All right," he said resignedly. The midges bothered him; he mopped his +red face, tugged at the line, but the flies were fast in a hazel bush. + +"Damn this sort of thing," he muttered, looking piteously after +Geraldine. She was already far away among the trees, skirts wrapped +close to avoid briers, big straw hat dangling in one hand. + +As she walked toward the Sachem's Gate she was swinging her hat and +singing, apparently as unconcernedly as though care rested lightly upon +her young shoulders. + +Out on the high-road a number of her guests whizzed past in one of +Scott's motors; there came a swift hail, a gust of wind-blown laughter, +and the car was gone in a whirl of dust. She stood in the road watching +it recede, then walked forward again toward the house. + +Her accustomed elasticity appeared to have left her; the sun was +becoming oppressive; her white-shod feet dragged a little, which was so +unusual that she straightened her head and shoulders with nervous +abruptness. + +"What on earth is the matter with me?" she said, half aloud, to herself. + +During these last two months, and apparently apropos of nothing at all, +an unaccustomed sense of depression sometimes crept upon her. + +At first she disregarded it as the purely physical lassitude of spring, +but now it was beginning to disquiet her. Once a hazy suspicion took +shape--hastily dismissed--that some sense, some temporarily suppressed +desire was troubling her. The same idea had awakened again that evening +on the terrace when the faint odour from the decanter attracted her. And +again she suspected, and shrank away into herself, shocked, frightened, +surprised, yet still defiantly incredulous. + +Yet her suspicions had been correct. It was habit, disturbed by the +tardiness of accustomed tribute, that stirred at moments, demanding +recognition. + +Since that night in early spring when fear and horror of herself had +suddenly checked a custom which she had hitherto supposed to be nothing +worse than foolish, twice--at times inadvertently, at times +deliberately--she had sought relief from sleepless nervousness and this +new depression in the old and apparently harmless manner of her +girlhood. For weeks now she had exercised little control of herself, +feeling immune, yet it scared her a little to recognise again in herself +the restless premonitions of desire. For here, in the sunshine of the +forest-bordered highway, that same dull uneasiness was stirring once +more. + +It was true, other things had stirred her to uneasiness that morning--an +indefinable impression concerning Kathleen--a definite one which +concerned Rosalie Dysart and Duane, and which began to exasperate her. + +All her elasticity was gone now; tired without reason, she plodded on +along the road in her little white shoes, head bent, brown eyes +brooding, striving to fix her wandering thoughts on Duane Mallett to +fight down the threatening murmurs of a peril still scarcely +comprehended. + +"Anyway," she said half aloud, "even if I ever could care for him, I +dare not let myself do it with this absurd inclination always +threatening me." + +She had said it! Scarcely yet understanding the purport of her own +words, yet electrified, glaringly enlightened by them, she halted. A +confused sense that something vital had occurred in her life stilled her +heart and her breathing together. + +After a moment she straightened up and walked forward, turned across the +lawn and into the syringa-bordered drive. + +There was nobody in the terrace except Bunbury Gray in a brilliant +waistcoat, who sat smoking a very large faïence pipe and reading a +sporting magazine. He got up with alacrity when he saw her, fetched her +a big wicker chair, evidently inclined to let her divert him. + +"Oh, I'm not going to," she observed, sinking into the cushions. For a +moment she felt rather limp, then a quiver passed through her, +tightening the relaxed nerves. + +"Bunbury," she said, "do you know any men who ever get tired of idleness +and clothes and their neighbours' wives?" + +"Sure," he said, surprised, "I get tired of those things all right. I've +got enough of this tailor, for example," looking at his trousers. "I'm +tired of idleness, too. Shall we do something and forget the cut of my +clothes?" + +"What do you do when you tire of people and things?" + +"Change partners or go away. That's easy." + +"You can't change yourself--or go away from yourself." + +"But I don't get tired of myself," he explained in astonishment. She +regarded him curiously from the depths of her wicker chair. + +"Bunbury, do you remember when we were engaged?" + +He grinned. "Rather. I wouldn't mind being it again." + +"Engaged?" + +"Sure thing. Will you take me on again, Geraldine?" + +"I thought you cared for Sylvia Quest." + +"I do, but I can stop it." + +She still regarded him with brown-eyed curiosity. + +"Didn't you really tire of our engagement?" + +"You did. You said that my tailor is the vital part of me." + +She laughed. "Well, you _are_ only a carefully groomed combination of +New York good form and good nature, aren't you?" + +"I don't know. That's rather rough, isn't it? Or do you really mean it +that way?" + +"No, Bunny dear. I only mean that you're like the others. All the men I +know are about the same sort. You all wear too many ties and waistcoats; +you are, and say, and do too many kinds of fashionable things. You play +too much tennis, drink too many pegs, gamble too much, ride and drive +too much. You all have too much and too many--if you understand that! +You ask too much and you give too little; you say too much which means +too little. Is there none among you who knows something that amounts to +something, and how to say it and do it?" + +"What the deuce are you driving at, Geraldine?" he asked, bewildered. + +"I'm just tired and irritable, Bunny, and I'm taking it out on you.... +Because you were always kind--and even when foolish you were often +considerate.... That's a new waistcoat, isn't it?" + +"Well--I don't--know," he began, perplexed and suspicious, but she cut +him short with a light little laugh and reached out to pat his hand. + +"Don't mind me. You know I like you.... I'm only bored with your +species. What do you do when you don't know what to do, Bunny?" + +"Take a peg," he said, brightening up. "Do you--shall I call +somebody----" + +"No, please." + +She extended her slim limbs and crossed her feet. Lying still there in +the sunshine, arms crooked behind her head, she gazed straight out +ahead. Light breezes lifted her soft bright hair; the same zephyrs bore +from tennis courts on the east the far laughter and calling of the +unseen players. + +"Who are they?" she inquired. + +"The Pink 'uns, Naïda, and Jack Dysart. There's ten up on every set," he +added, "and I've side obligations with Rosalie and Duane. Take you on if +you like; odds are on the Pink 'uns. Or I'll get a lump of sugar and we +can play 'Fly Loo.'" + +"No, thanks." + +A few moments later she said: + +"Do you know, somehow, recently, the forest world--all this pretty place +of lakes and trees--" waving her arm toward the horizon--"seems to be +tarnished with the hard living and empty thinking of the people I have +brought into it.... I include myself. The region is redolent of money +and the things it buys. I had a better time before I had any or heard +about it." + +"Why, you've always had it----" + +"But I didn't know it. I'd like to give mine away and do something for a +living." + +"Oh, every girl has that notion once in a lifetime." + +"Have they?" she asked. + +"Sure. It's hysteria. I had it myself once. But I found I could keep +busy enough doing nothing without presenting my income to the +Senegambians and spending life in a Wall Street office. Of course if I +had a pretty fancy for the artistic and useful--as Duane Mallett has--I +suppose I'd get busy and paint things and sell 'em by the perspiration +of my brow----" + +She said disdainfully: "If you were never any busier than Duane, you +wouldn't be very busy." + +"I don't know. Duane seems to keep at it, even here, doesn't he?" + +She looked up in surprise: "Duane hasn't done any work since he's been +here, has he?" + +"Didn't you know? What do you suppose he's about every morning?" + +"He's about--Rosalie," she said coolly. "I've never seen any colour box +or easel in their outfit." + +"Oh, he keeps his traps at Hurryon Lodge. He's made a lot of sketches. I +saw several at the Lodge. And he's doing a big canvas of Rosalie down +there, too." + +"At Hurryon Lodge?" + +"Yes. Miller lets them have the garret for a studio." + +"I didn't know that," she said slowly. + +"Didn't you? People are rather catty about it." + +"Catty?" + +Sheer surprise silenced her for a while, then hurt curiosity drove her +to questions; but little Bunbury didn't know much more about the matter, +merely shrugging his shoulders and saying: "It's casual but it's all +right." + +Later the tennis players, sunburned and perspiring, came swinging up +from the courts on their way to the showers. Bunbury began to settle his +obligations; Naïda and the Pink 'uns went indoors; Jack Dysart, +handsome, dishevelled, sat down beside Geraldine, fastening his sleeves. + +"I lost twice twenty," he observed. "Bunny is in fifty, I believe. Duane +and Rosalie lose." + +"Is that all you care about the game?" she asked with a note of contempt +in her voice. + +"Oh, it's good for one's health," he said. + +"So is confession, but there's no sport in it. Tell me, Mr. Dysart, +don't you play any game for it's own sake?" + +"Two, mademoiselle," he said politely. + +"What two?" + +"Chess is one." + +"What is the other?" + +"Love," he replied, smiling at her so blandly that she laughed. Then she +thought of Rosalie, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say something +impudent. But "Do you do that game very well?" was all she said. + +"Would you care to judge how well I do it?" + +"As umpire? Yes, if you like." + +He said: "We will umpire our own game, Miss Seagrave." + +"Oh, we couldn't do that, could we? We couldn't play and umpire, too." +Suddenly the thought of Duane and Rosalie turned her bitter and she +said: + +"We'll have two perfectly disinterested umpires. I choose your wife for +one. Whom do you choose?" + +Over his handsome face the slightest muscular change passed, but far +from wincing he nodded coolly. + +"One umpire is enough," he said. "When our game is well on you may ask +Rosalie to judge how well I've done it--if you care to." + +The bright smile she wore changed. Her face was now only a lovely +dark-eyed mask, behind which her thoughts had suddenly begun +racing--wild little thoughts, all tumult and confusion, all trembling, +too, with some scarcely understood hurt lashing them to recklessness. + +"We'll have two umpires," she insisted, scarcely knowing what she said. +"I'll choose Duane for the second. He and Rosalie ought to be able to +agree on the result of our game." + +Dysart turned his head away leisurely, then looked around again +unsmiling. + +"Two umpires? Soit! But that means you consent to play." + +"Play?" + +"Certainly." + +"With you?" + +"With me." + +"I'll consider it.... Do you know we have been talking utter nonsense?" + +"That's part of the game." + +"Oh, then--do you assume that the--the game has already begun?" + +"It usually opens that way, I believe." + +"And where does it end, Mr. Dysart?" + +"That is for you to say," he replied in a lower voice. + +"Oh! And what are the rules?" + +"The player who first falls really in love loses. There are no stakes. +We play as sportsmen--for the game's sake. Is it understood?" + +She hesitated, smiling, a little excited, a little interested in the way +he put things. + +At that same moment, across the lawn, Rosalie and Duane strolled into +view. She saw them, and with a nervous movement, almost involuntary, she +turned her back on them. + +Neither she nor Dysart spoke. She gazed very steadily at the horizon, as +though there were sounds beyond the green world's rim. A few seconds +later a shadow fell over the terrace at her feet--two shadows +intermingled. She saw them on the grass at her feet, then quietly lifted +her head. + +"We caught no trout," said Rosalie, sitting down on the arm of the chair +that Duane drew forward. "I fussed about in that canoe until Duane came +along, and then we went in swimming." + +"Swimming?" repeated Geraldine, dumfounded. + +Rosalie balanced herself serenely on her chair-arm. + +"Oh, we often do that." + +"Swim--where?" + +"Why across the Gray Water, child!" + +"But--there are no bath houses----" + +Rosalie laughed outright. + +"Quite Arcadian, isn't it? Duane has the forest on one side of the Gray +Water for a dressing-room, and I the forest on the other side. Then we +swim out and shake hands in the middle. Our bathing dresses are drying +on Miller's lawn. Please do tell me somebody is scandalised. I've done +my best to brighten up this house party." + +Dysart, really discountenanced, but not showing it, lighted a cigarette +and asked pleasantly if the water was agreeable. + +"It's magnificent," said Duane; "it was like diving into a lake of iced +Apollinaris. Geraldine, why on earth don't you build some bath houses on +the Gray Waters?" + +Perhaps she had not heard his question. She began to talk very +animatedly to Rosalie about several matters of no consequence. Dysart +rose, stretched his sunburned arms with over-elaborate ease, tossed away +his cigarette, picked up his tennis bat, and said: "See you at luncheon. +Are you coming, Rosalie?" + +"In a moment, Jack." She went on talking inconsequences to Geraldine; +her husband waited, exchanging a remark or two with Duane in his easy, +self-possessed fashion. + +"Dear," said Rosalie at last to Geraldine, "I must run away and dry my +hair. How did we come out at tennis, Jack?" + +"All to the bad," he replied serenely, and nodding to Geraldine and +Duane he entered the house, his young wife strolling beside him and +twisting up her wet hair. + +Duane seated himself and crossed his lank legs, ready for an amiable +chat before he retired to dress for luncheon; but Geraldine did not even +look toward him. She was lying deep in the chair, apparently relaxed and +limp; but every nerve in her was at tension, every delicate muscle taut +and rigid, and in her heart was anger unutterable, and close, very close +to the lids which shadowed with their long fringe the brown eyes' +velvet, were tears. + +"What have you been up to all the morning?" he asked. "Did you try the +fishing?" + +"Yes." + +"Anything doing?" + +"No." + +"I thought they wouldn't rise. It's too clear and hot. That's why I +didn't keep on with Kathleen and Scott. Two are enough on bright water. +Don't you think so?" + +She said nothing. + +"Besides," he added, "I knew you had old Grandcourt running close at +heel and that made four rods on Hurryon. So what was the use of my +joining in?" + +She made no reply. + +"You didn't mind, did you?" he asked carelessly. + +"No." + +"Oh, all right," he nodded, not feeling much relieved. + +The strange blind anger still possessed her. She lay there immobile, +expressionless, enduring it, not trying even to think why; yet her anger +was rising against him, and it surged, receded helplessly, flushed her +veins again till they tingled. But her lids remained closed; the lashes +rested softly on the curve of her cheeks; not a tremor touched her face. + +"I am wondering whether you are feeling all right," he ventured +uneasily, conscious of the tension between them. + +With an effort she took command of herself. + +"The sun was rather hot. It's a headache; I walked back by the road." + +"_With_ the faithful one?" + +"No," she said evenly, "Mr. Grandcourt remained to fish." + +"He went to worship and remained to fish," said Duane, laughing. The +girl lifted her face to look at him--a white little face so strange that +the humour died out in his eyes. + +"He's a good deal of a man," she said. "It's one of my few pleasant +memories of this year--Mr. Grandcourt's niceness to me--and to all +women." + +She set her elbow on the chair's edge and rested her cheek in her +hollowed hand. Her gaze had become remote once more. + +"I didn't know you took him so seriously," he said in a low voice. "I'm +sorry, Geraldine." + +All her composure had returned. She lifted her eyes insolently. + +"Sorry for what?" + +"For speaking as I did." + +"Oh, I don't mind. I thought you might be sorry for yourself." + +"Myself?" + +"And your neighbour's wife," she added. + +"Well, what about myself and my neighbour's wife?" + +"I'm not familiar with such matters." Her face did not change, but the +burning anger suddenly welled up in her again. "I don't know anything +about such affairs, but if you think I ought to I might try to learn." +She laughed and leaned back into the depths of her chair. "You and I are +such intimate friends it's a shame I shouldn't understand and sympathise +with what most interests you." + +He remained silent, gazing down at his shadow on the grass, hands +clasped loosely between his knees. She strove to study him calmly; her +mind was chaos; only the desire to hurt him persisted, rendered sterile +by the confused tumult of her thoughts. + +Presently, looking up: + +"Do you doubt that things are not right between--my neighbour's +wife--and me?" he inquired. + +"The matter doesn't interest me." + +"Doesn't it?" + +"No." + +"Then I have misunderstood you. What is the matter that does interest +you, Geraldine?" + +She made no reply. + +He said, carelessly good-humoured: "I like women. It's curious that they +know it instinctively, because when they're bored or lonely they drift +toward me.... Lonely women are always adrift, Geraldine. There seems to +be some current that sets in toward me; it catches them and they drift +in, linger, and drift on. I seem to be the first port they anchor in.... +Then a day comes when they are gone--drifting on at hazard through the +years----" + +"Wiser for their experience at Port Mallett?" + +"Perhaps. But not sadder, I think." + +"A woman adrift has no regrets," she said with contempt. + +"Wrong. A woman who is in love has none." + +"That is what I mean. The hospitality of Port Mallett ought to leave +them with no regrets." + +He laughed. "But they are not loved," he said. "They know it. That's why +they drift on." + +She turned on him white and tremulous. + +"Haven't you even the excuse of caring for her?" + +"Who?" + +"A neighbour's wife--who comes drifting into your hospitable haven!" + +"I don't pretend to love her, if that is what you mean," he said +pleasantly. + +"Then you make her believe it--and that's dastardly!" + +"Oh, no. Women don't love unless made love to. You've only read that in +books." + +She said a little breathlessly: "You are right. I know men and women +only through books. It's time I learned for myself." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +TOGETHER + + +The end of June and of the house party at Roya-Neh was now near at hand, +and both were to close with a moonlight fête and dance in the forest, +invitations having been sent to distant neighbours who had been +entertaining similar gatherings at Iron Hill and Cloudy Mountain--the +Grays, Beekmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts. + +Silks and satins, shoe buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high +tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people. So it was to +be the inevitable Louis XVI fête--or as near to it as attenuated, +artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane's very clever +and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and +sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town in order that those who +sweat and sew in the perfumed ateliers of Fifth Avenue might use them as +models. + +"The fun--if there's any in dressing up--ought to lie in making your own +costumes," observed Duane. But nobody displayed any inclination to do +so. And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue +ateliers sewed faster. Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and +property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the +house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and +flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met +in one another's bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and +coiffure, lace scarf, and petticoat. + +As for the men, they surreptitiously tried on their embroidered coats +and breeches, admired themselves in secrecy, and let it go at that, +returning with embarrassed relief to cards, tennis, and the various +forms of amiable idleness to which they were accustomed. Only Englishmen +can masquerade seriously. + +Later, however, the men were compelled to pay some semblance of +attention to the general preparations, assemble their foot-gear, +head-gear, stars, orders, sashes, swords, and try them on for Duane +Mallett--to that young man's unconcealed dissatisfaction. + +"You certainly resemble a scratch opera chorus," he observed after +passing in review the sheepish line-up in his room. "Delancy, you're the +limit as a Black Mousquetier--and, by the way, there weren't any in the +reign of Louis XVI, so perhaps that evens up matters. Dysart is the only +man who looks the real thing--or would if he'd remove that monocle. As +for Bunny and the Pink 'un, they ought to be in vaudeville singing +la-la-la." + +"That's really a compliment to our legs," observed Reggie Wye to Bunbury +Gray, flourishing his property sword and gracefully performing a _pas +seul à la Gênée_. + +Dysart, who had been sullen all day, regarded them morosely. + +Scott Seagrave, in his conventional abbé's costume of black and white, +excessively bored, stood by the window trying to catch a glimpse of the +lake to see whether any decent fish were breaking, while Scott walked +around him critically, not much edified by his costume or the way he +wore it. + +"You're a sad and self-conscious-looking bunch," he concluded. "Scott, I +suppose you'll insist on wearing your mustache and eyeglasses." + +"You bet," said Scott simply. + +"All right. And kindly beat it. I want to try on my own plumage in +peace." + +So the costumed ones trooped off to their own quarters with the +half-ashamed smirk usually worn by the American male who has persuaded +himself to frivolity. Delancy Grandcourt tramped away down the hall +banging his big sword, jingling his spurs, and flapping his loose boots. +The Pink 'un and Bunbury Gray slunk off into obscurity, and Scott +wandered back through the long hall until a black-and-red tiger moth +attracted his attention, and he forgot his annoying appearance in +frantic efforts to capture the brilliant moth. + +Dysart, who had been left alone with Duane in the latter's room, +contemplated himself sullenly in the mirror while Duane, seated on the +window sill, waited for him to go. + +"You think I ought to eliminate my eye-glass?" asked Dysart, still +inspecting himself. + +"Yes, in deference to the conventional prejudice of the times. Nobody +wore 'em at that period." + +"You seem to be a stickler for convention--of the Louis XVI sort more +than for the XIX century variety," remarked Dysart with a sneer. + +Duane looked up from his bored contemplation of the rug. + +"You think I'm unconventional?" he asked with a smile. + +"I believe I suggested something of the sort to my wife the other day." + +"Ah," said Duane blandly, "does she agree with you, Dysart?" + +"No doubt she does, because your tendencies toward the unconventional +have been the subject of unpleasant comment recently." + +"By some of your débutante conquests? You mustn't believe all they tell +you." + +"My own eyes and ears are competent witnesses. Do you understand me +now?" + +"No. Neither do you. Don't rely on such witnesses, Dysart; they lack +character to corroborate them. Ask your wife to confirm me--if you ever +find time enough to ask her anything." + +"That's a damned impudent thing to say," returned Dysart, staring at +him. A dull red stained his face, then faded. + +Duane's eyebrows went up--just a shade--yet so insolently that the other +stepped forward, the corners of his mouth white and twitching. + +"I can speak more plainly," he said. "If you can't appreciate a pleasant +hint I can easily accommodate you with the alternative." + +There was silence for a moment. + +"Dysart," said Duane, "what chance do you think you'd have in landing +the--alternative?" + +"That concerns me," said Dysart; and the pinched muscles around the +mouth grew whiter and the man looked suddenly older. Duane had never +before noticed how gray his temples were growing. + +He said in a voice under perfect control: "You're right; the chances you +care to take with me concern yourself. As for your ill-humour, I suppose +I have earned it by being attentive to your wife. What is it you wish; +that my hitherto very harmless attentions should cease?" + +"Yes," said Dysart, and his square jaw quivered. + +"Well, they won't. It takes the sort of man you are to strike classical +attitudes. And, absurd as the paradox appears--and even taking into +consideration your notorious indifference to your wife and your rather +silly reputation as a débutante chaser--I do believe, Dysart, that, deep +inside of you somewhere, there is enough latent decency to have inspired +this resentment toward me--a resentment perfectly natural in any man who +acts squarely toward his wife--but rather far fetched in your case." + +Dysart, pallid, menacing, laid his hand on a chair. + +The other laughed. + +"As bad as that?" he asked contemptuously. "Don't do it, Dysart; it +isn't in your line. You're only a good-looking, popular, dancing man; +all your deviltry is in your legs, and I'd be obliged if they'd +presently waft you out of my room." + +"I suppose," said Dysart unsteadily, "that you would make yourself +noisily ridiculous if I knocked your blackguard head off." + +"It's only in novels that people are knocked down successfully and +artistically," admitted the other. "In everyday life they resent it. +Yes--if you do anything hysterical there will be some sort of a +disgraceful noise, I suppose. It's shoot or suit in these unromantic +days, Dysart, otherwise the newspapers laugh at you." + +Dysart's well-shaped fists relaxed, the chair dropped, but even when he +let it go murder danced in his eyes. + +"Yes," he said, "it's shoot or a suit in these days; you're perfectly +right, Mallett. And we'll let it go at that for the present." + +He stood a moment, straight, handsome, his clearly stencilled eyebrows +knitted, watching Duane. Whatever in the man's face and figure was +usually colourless, unaccented, irresolute, disappeared as he glared +rigidly at the other. + +For there is no resentment like the resentment of the neglectful, no +jealousy like the jealousy of the faithless. + +"To resume, in plain English," he said, "keep away from my wife, +Mallett. You comprehend that, don't you?" + +"Perfectly. Now get out!" + +Dysart hesitated for the fraction of a second longer, as though perhaps +expecting further reply, then turned on his heel and walked out. + +Later, while Duane was examining his own costume preparatory to trying +it on, Scott Seagrave's spectacled and freckled visage protruded into +the room. He knocked as an after-thought. + +"Rosalie sent me. She's dressed in all her gimcracks and wants your +expert opinion. I've got to go----" + +"Where is she?" + +"In her room. I'm going out to the hatchery with Kathleen----" + +"Come and see Rosalie with me, first," said Duane, passing his arm +through Scott's and steering him down the sunny corridor. + +When they knocked, Mrs. Dysart admitted them, revealing herself in full +costume, painted and powdered, the blinds pulled down, and the electric +lights burning behind their rosy shades. + +"It's my final dress rehearsal," she explained. "Mr. Mallett, _is_ my +hair sufficiently à la Lamballe to suit you?" + +"Yes, it is. You're a perfect little porcelain figurette! There's not an +anachronism in you or your make-up. How did you do it?" + +"I merely stuck like grim death to your sketches," she said demurely. + +Scott eyed her without particular interest. "Very corking," he said +vaguely, "but I've got to go down to the hatchery with Kathleen, so you +won't mind if I leave----" + +He closed the door behind him before anybody could speak. Duane moved +toward the door. + +"It's a charming costume," he said, "and most charmingly worn; your hair +is exactly right--not too much powder, you know----" + +"Where shall I put my patch? Here?" + +"Higher." + +"Here?" + +He came back to the centre of the room where she stood. + +"Here," he said, indenting the firm, cool ivory skin with one finger, +"and here. Wear two." + +"And my rings--do you think that my fingers are overloaded?" She held +out her fascinating smooth little hands. He supported them on his +upturned palms and examined the gems critically. + +They talked for a few moments about the rings, then: "Thank you so +much," she said, with a carelessly friendly pressure. "How about my +shoes? Are the buckles of the period?" + +One of her hands encountered his at hazard, lingered, dropped, the +fingers still linked lightly in his. She bent over, knees straight, and +lifted the hem of her petticoat, displaying her Louis XVI footwear. + +"Shoes and buckles are all right," he said; "faultless, true to the +period--very fascinating.... I've got to go--one or two things to +do----" + +They examined the shoes for some time in silence; still bending over she +turned her dainty head and looked around and up at him. There was a +moment's pause, then he kissed her. + +"I was afraid you'd do that--some day," she said, straightening up and +stepping back one pace, so that their linked hands now hung pendant +between them. + +"I was sure of it, too," he said. "Now I think I'd better go--as all +things are en règle, even the kiss, which was classical--pure--Louis +XVI.... Besides, Scott was idiot enough to shut the door. That's Louis +XVI, too, but too much realism is never artistic." + +"We could open the door again--if that's why you're running away from +me." + +"What's the use?" + +She glanced at the door and then calmly seated herself. + +"Do you think that we are together too much?" she asked. + +"Hasn't your husband made similar observations?" he replied, laughing. + +"It isn't for him to make them." + +"Hasn't he objected?" + +"He has suddenly and unaccountably become disagreeable enough to make me +wish he had some real grounds for his excitement!" she said coolly, and +closed her teeth with a little click. She added, between them: "I'm +inclined to give him something real to howl about." + +He said: "You're adrift. Do you know it?" + +"Certainly I know it. Are you prepared to offer salvage? I'm past the +need of a pilot." + +He smiled. "You haven't drifted very far yet--only as far as Mallett +Harbour. That's usually the first port--for derelicts. Anchors are +dropped rather frequently there--but, Rosalie, there's no safe mooring +except in the home port." + +Her pretty, flushed face grew very serious as she looked up +questioningly. + +"Isn't there an anchorage near you, Duane? Are you quite sure?" + +"Why, no, dear, I'm not sure. But let me tell you something: it isn't in +me to love again. And that isn't square to you." + +After a silence she repeated: "Again? Have you been in love?" + +"Yes." + +"Are you embittered? I thought only callow fledglings moped." + +"If I were embittered I'd offer free anchorage to all comers. That's the +fledgling idea--when blighted--be a 'deevil among the weemin,'" he said, +laughing. + +"You have that hospitable reputation now," she persisted, unsmiling. + +"Have I? Judge for yourself then--because no woman I ever knew cares +anything for me now." + +"You mean that if any of them had anything intimate to remember they'd +never remain indifferent?" + +"Well--yes." + +"They'd either hate you or remember you with a certain tenderness." + +"Is that what happens?" he asked, amused. + +"I think so," she said thoughtfully.... "As for what you said, you are +right, Duane; I am adrift.... You--or a man like you could easily board +me--take me in tow. I'm quite sure that something about me signals a +pilot; and that keen eyes and bitter tongues have noted it. And I don't +care. Nor do I know yet what my capabilities for evil are.... Do you +care to--find out?" + +"It wouldn't be a square deal to you, Rosalie." + +"And--if I don't care whether it's a square deal or not?" + +"Why, dear," he said, covering her nervous, pretty hand with both of +his, "I'd break your heart in a week." + +He laughed, dropped her fingers, stepped back to the door, and, laying +his hand on the knob, said evenly: + +"That husband of yours is not the sort of man I particularly take to, +but I believe he's about the average if you'd care to make him so." + +She coloured with surprise. Then something in her scornful eyes inspired +him with sudden intuition. + +"As a matter of fact," he said lightly, "you care for him still." + +"I can very easily prove the contrary," she said, walking slowly up to +him, close, closer, until the slight tremor of contact halted her and +her soft, irregular breath touched his face. + +"What a girl like you needs," he laughed, taking her into his arms, "is +a man to hold her this way--every now and then, and"--he kissed +her--"tell her she is incomparable--which I cannot truthfully tell you, +dear." He released her at arms' length. + +"I don't know whose fault it is," he went on: "I don't know whether he +still really cares for you in spite of his weak peregrinations to other +shrines; but you still care for him. And it's up to you to make him +what he can be--the average husband. There are only two kinds, Rosalie, +the average and the bad." + +She looked straight into his eyes, but the deep, mantling colour belied +her audacity. + +"Do you know," she said, "that we haven't--lived together for two +years?" + +"I don't want to know such things," he said gently. + +"Well, you do know now. I--am--very much alone. You see I have already +become capable of saying anything--and of doing it, too." + +There came a reckless glimmer into her eyes; she set her teeth--a trick +of hers; the fresh lips parted slightly under her rapid breathing. + +"Do you think," she said unevenly, "that I'm going on all my life like +this--without anything more than the passing friendship of men to +balance the example he sets me?" + +"No, I think something is bound to happen, Rosalie. May I suggest what +ought to happen?" + +She nodded thoughtfully; only the quiver of her lower lip betrayed the +tension of self-control. + +"Take him back," he said. + +"I no longer care for him." + +"You are mistaken." + +After a moment she said: "I don't think so; truly I don't. All +consideration for him has died in me. His conduct doesn't +matter--doesn't hurt me any more----" + +"Yes, it does. He's just a plain ass--an average ass--ownerless, and, +like all asses, convinced that he can take care of himself. Go and put +the halter on him again." + +"Go--and--what do you mean?" + +"Tether him. You did once. It's up to you; it's usually up to a woman +when a man wanders untethered. What one woman, or a dozen, can do with a +man his wife can do in the same fashion! What won him in the beginning +always holds good until he thinks he has won you. Then the average man +flourishes his heels. He is doing it. What won him was not you alone, or +love, alone; it was his uncertainty of both that fascinated him. That's +what charms him in others; uncertainty. Many men are that way. It's a +sporting streak in us. If you care for him now--if you could ever care +for him, take him as you took him first.... Do you want him again?" + +She stood leaning against the door, looking down. Much of her colour had +died out. + +"I don't know," she said. + +"I do." + +"Well--_do_ I?" + +"Yes." + +"You think so? Why?" + +"Because he's adrift, too. And he's rather weak, rather handsome, easily +influenced--unjust, selfish, vain, wayward--just the average husband. +And every wife ought to be able to manage these lords of creation, and +keep them out of harm.... And keep them in love, Rosalie. And the way to +do it is the way you did it first.... Try it." He kissed her gaily, +thinking he owed that much to himself. + +And through the door which had swung gently ajar, Geraldine Seagrave saw +them, and Rosalie saw her. + +For a moment the girl halted, pale and rigid, and her heart seemed to +cease its beating; then, as she passed with averted head, Rosalie caught +Duane's wrists in her jewelled grasp and released herself with a +wrench. + +"You've given me enough to think over," she said. "If you want me to +love you, stay--and close that door--and we'll see what happens. If you +don't--you had better go at once, Duane. And leave my door open--to see +what else fate will send me." She clasped her hands behind her back, +laughing nervously. + +"It's like the old child's game--'open your mouth and close your eyes +and see what God will send you?'--usually something not at all +resembling the awaited bonbon.... Good-bye, my altruistic friend--and +thank you for your XXth Century advice, and your Louis XVI assistance." + +"Good-bye," he returned smilingly, and sauntered back toward his room +where his own untried finery awaited him. + +Ahead, far down the corridor, he caught sight of Geraldine, and called +to her, but perhaps she did not hear him for he had to put on +considerable speed to overtake her. + +"In these last few days," he said laughingly, "I seldom catch a glimpse +of you except when you are vanishing into doorways or down corridors." + +She said nothing, did not even turn her head or halt; and, keeping pace +with her, he chatted on amiably about nothing in particular until she +stopped abruptly and looked at him. + +"I am in a hurry. What is it you want, Duane?" + +"Why--nothing," he said in surprise. + +"That is less than you ask of--others." And she turned to continue her +way. + +"Is there anything wrong, Geraldine?" he asked, detaining her. + +"Is there?" she replied, shaking off his hand from her arm. + +"Not as far as I'm concerned." + +"Can't you even tell the truth?" she asked with a desperate attempt to +laugh. + +"Wait a minute," he said. "Evidently something has gone all wrong----" + +"Several things, my solicitous friend; I for one, you for another. Count +the rest for yourself." + +"What has happened to you, Geraldine?" + +"What has always threatened." + +"Will you tell me?" + +"No, I will not. So don't try to look concerned and interested in a +matter that regards me alone." + +"But what is it that has always threatened you?" he insisted gently, +coming nearer--too near to suit her, for she backed away toward the high +latticed window through which the sun poured over the geraniums on the +sill. There was a seat under it. Suddenly her knees threatened to give +way under her; she swayed slightly as she seated herself; a wave of +angry pain swept through her setting lids and lips trembling. + +"Now I want you to tell me what it is that you believe has always +threatened you." + +"Do you think I'd tell you?" she managed to say. Then her +self-possession returned in a flash of exasperation, but she controlled +that, too, and laughed defiantly, confronting him with pretty, insolent +face uptilted. + +"What do you want to know about me? That I'm in the way of being +ultimately damned like all the rest of you?" she said. "Well, I am. I'm +taking chances. Some people take their chances in one way--like you and +Rosalie; some take them in another--as I do.... Once I was afraid to +take any; now I'm not. Who was it said that self-control is only +immorality afraid?" + +"Will you tell me what is worrying you?" he persisted. + +"No, but I'll tell you what annoys me if you like." + +"What?" + +"Fear of notoriety." + +"Notoriety?" + +"Certainly--not for myself--for my house." + +"Is anybody likely to make it notorious?" he demanded, colouring up. + +"Ask yourself.... I haven't the slightest interest in your personal +conduct"--there was a catch in her voice--"except when it threatens to +besmirch my own home." + +The painful colour gathered and settled under his cheek-bones. + +"Do you wish me to leave?" + +"Yes, I do. But you can't without others knowing how and why." + +"Oh, yes, I can----" + +"You are mistaken. I tell you _others_ will know. Some do know already. +And I don't propose to figure with a flaming sword. Kindly remain in +your Eden until it's time to leave--with Eve." + +"Just as you wish," he said, smiling; and that infuriated her. + +"It ought to be as I wish! That much is due me, I think. Have you +anything further to ask, or is your curiosity satisfied?" + +"Not yet. You say that you think something threatens you? What is it?" + +"Not what threatens _you_," she said in contempt. + +"That is no answer." + +"It is enough for you to know." + +He looked her hard in the eyes. "Perhaps," he said in a low voice, "I +know more about you than you imagine I do, Geraldine--_since last +April_." + +She felt the blood leave her face, the tension crisping her muscles; she +sat up very straight and slender among the cushions and defied him. + +"What do you--think you know?" she tried to sneer, but her voice shook +and failed. + +He said: "I'll tell you. For one thing, you're playing fast and loose +with Dysart. He's a safe enough proposition--but what is that sort of +thing going to arouse in you?" + +"What do you mean?" Her voice cleared with an immense relief. He noted +it. + +"It's making you tolerant," he said quietly, "familiar with subtleties, +contemptuous of standards. It's rubbing the bloom off you. You let a man +who is married come too close to you--you betray enough curiosity +concerning him to do it. A drifting woman does that sort of thing, but +why do you cut your cables? Good Lord, Geraldine, it's a fool +business--permitting a man an intimacy----" + +"More harmless than his wife permits you!" she retorted. + +"That is not true." + +"You are supposed to lie about such things, aren't you?" she said, +reddening to the temples. "Oh, I am learning your rotten code, you +see--the code of all these amiable people about me. You've done your +part to instruct me that promiscuous caresses are men's distraction from +ennui; Rosalie evidently is in sympathy with that form of +amusement--many men and women among whom I live in town seem to be quite +as casual as you are.... I did have standards once, scarcely knowing +what they meant; I clung to them out of instinct. And when I went out +into the world I found nobody paying any attention to them." + +"You are wrong." + +"No, I'm not. I go among people and see every standard I set up, +ignored. I go to the theatre and see plays that embody everything I +supposed was unthinkable, let alone unutterable. But the actors utter +everything, and the audience thinks everything--and sometimes laughs. I +can't do that--yet. But I'm progressing." + +"Geraldine----" + +"Wait!... My friends have taught me a great deal during this last +year--by word, precept, and example. Things I held in horror nobody +notices enough to condone. Take treachery, for example. The marital +variety is all around me. Who cares, or is even curious after an hour's +gossip has made it stale news? A divorce here, a divorce there--some +slight curiosity to see who the victims may marry next time--that +curiosity satisfied--and so is everybody. And they go back to their +business of money-getting and money-spending--and that's what my friends +have taught me. Can you wonder that my familiarity with it all breeds +contempt enough to seek almost any amusement in sheer desperation--as +you do?" + +"I have only one amusement," he said. + +"What?" + +"Painting." + +"And your model," she nodded with a short laugh. "Don't forget her. Your +pretences are becoming tiresome, Duane. Your pretty model, Mrs. Dysart, +poses less than you do." + +Another wave of heart-sickness and anger swept over her; she felt the +tears burning close to her lids and turned sharply on him: + +"It's all rotten, I tell you--the whole personnel and routine--these +people, and their petty vices and their idleness and their money! I--I +do want to keep myself above it--clean of it--but what am I to do? One +can't live without friends. If I don't gamble I'm left alone; if I don't +flirt I'm isolated. If one stands aloof from everything one's friends go +elsewhere. What can I do?" + +"Make decent friends. I'm going to." + +He bent forward and struck his knee with his closed fist. + +"I'm going to," he repeated. "I've waited as long as I can for you to +stand by me. I could have even remained among these harmless simians if +you had cared for me. You're all the friend I need. But you've become +one of them. It isn't in you to take an intelligent interest in me, or +in what I care for. I've stood this sort of existence long enough. Now +I'm all through with it." + +She stared. Anger, astonishment, exasperation moved her in turn. +Bitterness unlocked her lips. + +"Are you expecting to take Mrs. Dysart with you to your intellectual +solitude?" + +"I would if I--if we cared for each other," he said, calmly seating +himself. + +She said, revolted: "Can't you even admit that you are in love with her? +Must I confess that I could not avoid seeing you with her in her own +room--half an hour since? Will _that_ wring the truth out of you?" + +"Oh, is that what you mean?" he said wearily. "I believe the door was +open.... Well, Geraldine, whatever you saw won't harm anybody. So come +to your own conclusions.... But I wish you were out of all this--with +your fine insight and your clear intelligence, and your sweetness--oh, +the chances for happiness you and I might have had!" + +"A slim chance with you!" she said. + +"Every chance; perhaps the only chance we'll ever have. And we've missed +it." + +"We've missed nothing"--a sudden and curious tremor set her heart and +pulses beating heavily--"I tell you, Duane, it doesn't matter whom +people of our sort marry because we'll always sicken of our bargain. +What chance for happiness would I run with such a man as you? Or you +with a girl like me?" + +She lay back among the cushions, with a tired little laugh. "We are like +the others of our rotten sort, only less aged, less experienced. But we +have, each of us, our own heritage, our own secret depravity." She +hesitated, reddening, caught his eye, stammered her sentence to a finish +and flinched, crimsoning to the roots of her hair. + +He stood up, paced the room for a few moments, came and stood beside +her. + +"Once," he said very low, "you admitted that you dare go anywhere with +me. Do you remember?" + +"Yes." + +"Those are your rooms, I believe," pointing to a closed door far down +the south corridor. + +"Yes." + +"Take me there now." + +"I--cannot do that----" + +"Yes, you can. You must." + +"Now?--Duane." + +"Yes, now--_now_! I tell you our time is now if it ever is to be at all. +Don't waste words." + +"What do you want to say to me that cannot be said here?" she asked in +consternation. + +He made no answer, but she found herself on her feet and moving slowly +along beside him, his hand just touching her arm as guide. + +"What is it, Duane?" she asked fearfully, as she laid her hand on the +knob and turned to look at his altered face. + +He made no answer. She hesitated, shivered, opened the door, hesitated +again, slowly crossed the threshold, turned and admitted him. + +The western sun flooded the silent chamber of rose and gray; a breeze +moved the curtains, noiselessly; the scent of flowers freshened the +silence. + +There was a divan piled with silken cushions; he placed several for her; +she stood irresolute for a moment, then, with a swift, unquiet side +glance at him, seated herself. + +"What is it?" she asked, looking up, her face beginning to reflect the +grave concern in his. + +"I want you to marry me, Geraldine." + +"Is--is _that_ what----" + +"Partly. I want you to love me, too. But I'll attend to that if you'll +marry me--I'll guarantee that. I--I will guarantee--more than that." + +She was still looking up, searching his sombre face. She saw the muscles +tighten along the jaw; saw the grave lines deepening. A sort of +bewildered fear possessed her. + +"I--am not in love with you, Duane." She added hastily, "I don't trust +you either. How could I----" + +"Yes, you do trust me." + +"After what you have done to Rosalie----" + +"You know that all is square there. Say so!" + +She gazed at the floor, convinced, but not answering. + +"Do you believe I love you?" + +She shook her head, eyes still on the floor. + +"Tell me the truth! Look at me!" + +She said with an effort: "You think you care for me.... You believe you +do, I suppose----" + +"And _you_ believe it, too! Give me my chance--take your own!" + +"_My_ chance?"--with a flash of anger. + +"Yes; take it, and give me mine. I tell you, Geraldine, we are going to +need each other desperately some day. I need you now--to-morrow you'll +need me more; and the day after, and after that in perilous days to +follow our need will be the greater for these hours wasted--can't you +understand by this time that we've nothing to hold us steady through the +sort of life we're born to except--each other----" + +His voice suddenly broke; he dropped down on the couch beside her, +imprisoning her clasped hands on her knees. His emotion, the break in +his voice, excited them both. + +"Are you trying to frighten me and take me by storm?" she demanded, +forcing a smile. "What is the matter, Duane? What do you mean by +peril?... You are scaring me----" + +"Little Geraldine--my little comrade! Can't you understand? It isn't +only my selfish desire for you--it isn't all for myself!--I care more +for you than that. I love you more deeply than a mere lover! Must I say +more to you? Must I even hurt you? Must I tell you what I know--of you?" + +"W-what?" she asked, startled. + +He looked at her miserably. In his eyes she read a meaning that +terrified her. + +"Duane--I don't--understand," she faltered. + +"Yes you do. Let's face it now!" + +"F-face what?" Her voice was only a whisper. + +"I can tell you if you'll love me. Will you?" + +"I don't understand," she repeated in white-lipped distress. "Why do you +look at me so strangely? And you tell me that I--know.... What is it +that I know? Couldn't you tell me? I am--" Her voice failed. + +"Dear--do you remember--once--last April that you were--ill?... And +awoke to find yourself on your own bed?" + +"Duane!" It was a cry of terror. + +"Dearest! Dearest! Do you think I have not known--since then--what has +troubled you--here----" + +She stared at him in crimsoned horror for an instant, then with a dry +sob, bowed her head and covered her face with desperate hands. For a +moment her whole body quivered, then she collapsed. On his knees beside +her he bent and touched with trembling lips her arms, her knees, the +slim ankles desperately interlocked, the tips of her white shoes. + +"Dearest," he whispered brokenly, "I know--I know--believe me. I have +fought through worse, and won out. You said once that something had died +out in me--while I was abroad. It did not die of itself, dear. But it +left its mark.... You say self-control is only depravity afraid.... That +is true; but I have made my depravity fear me. I can do what I please +with it now; I can tempt it, laugh at it, silence it. But it cost me +something to make a slave of it--what you saw in my face is the +claw-mark it left fighting me to the death." + +Very straight on his knees beside her he bent again, pressing her rigid +knees with his lips. + +"I need you, Geraldine--I need all that is best in you; you must love +me--take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you. I'll +love you so confidently that we'll kill it--you and I together--my +strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet +contempt for weakness wherever it may be, even in yourself." + +He touched her; and she shuddered under the light caress, still bent +almost double, and covering her face with both hands. He bent over her, +one knee on the divan. + +"Let's pull ourselves together and talk sense, Geraldine," he said with +an effort at lightness. + +"Don't you remember that bully little girl who swung her fists in single +combat and uppercut her brother and me whenever her sense of fairness +was outraged? The time has come when you, who were so fair to others, +are going to be fair to yourself by marrying me----" + +She dropped both hands and stared at him out of wide, tear-wet eyes. + +"Fair to myself--at your expense, Duane?" + +"What do you mean? I love you." + +"Am I to let you--you marry me--knowing--what you know? Is that what you +call my sense of fairness?" And, as he attempted to speak: + +"Oh, I have thought about it already!--I must have been conscious that +this would happen some day--that--that I was capable of caring for +you--and it alarmed me----" + +"Are you capable of loving me?" + +"Duane, you must not ask me that!" + +"Tell me!" + +But she pushed him back, and they faced each other, her hands remaining +on his shoulders. She strove piteously to endure his gaze, flinched, +strove to push him from her again--but the slender hands lay limply +against him. So they remained, her hands at intervals nervously +tightening and relaxing on his shoulders, her tearful breath coming +faster, the dark eyes closing, opening, turning from him, toward him, +searching, now in his soul, now in her own, her self-command slipping +from her. + +"It is cowardly in me--if I do it," she said in the ghost of a voice. + +"Do what?" + +"Let you risk--what I m-might become." + +"You little saint!" + +"Some saints _were_ depraved at first--weren't they?" she said without a +smile. "Oh, Duane, Duane, to think I could ever be here speaking to you +about--about the horror that has happened to me--looking into your face +and giving up my dreadful secret to you--laying my very soul naked +before you! How can I look at you----" + +"Because I love you. Now give me the right to your lips and heart!" + +There was a long silence. Then she tried to smile. + +"My--my lips? I--thought you took such things--lightly----" + +She hesitated, glanced up at him, then began to tremble. + +"Duane--if you are in earnest about our--about an engagement--promise me +that I may be released if I--think best----" + +"Why?" + +"I--I might fail----" + +"The more need of me. But you can't fail----" + +"Yes, but if I should, dear. Will you release me? I cannot--I will not +engage myself to you--unless you promise to let me go if I think it +best. You know what my word means. Give it back to me if matters go +wrong with me. Will you?" + +"But I am going to marry you now!" he said with a short, excited laugh. + +"Now!" she repeated, appalled. + +"Certainly, to make sure of you. We don't need a license in this State. +There's a parson at West Gate Village.... I intend to make sure of you +now. You can keep it a secret if you like. When you return to town we +can have everything en règle--engagement announced, cards, church +wedding, and all that. Meanwhile I'm going to be sure of you." + +"W-when?" + +"This afternoon." + +His excitement thrilled her; a vivid colour surged over neck and brow. + +"Duane, I did not dream that you cared so much, so truly--Oh, I--I do +love you then!--I love you, Duane! I love you!" + +He drew her suddenly into his arms, close, closer; she lifted her face; +he kissed her; and she gave him her heart with a sob. + +"You will wait for m-me, won't you?" she stammered, striving to keep her +reason through the delicious tumult that swept her senses. "Before I +m-marry you I must be quite certain that you take no risk----" + +She looked up into his steady eyes; a passion of tenderness overwhelmed +her, and her locked arms tightened around his neck. + +"Oh," she whispered, "you _are_ the boy I loved so long, so long ago--my +comrade Duane--my own little boy! How was I to know I loved you this +way, too? How could I understand!" + +Already the glamour of the past was transfiguring the man for her, +changing him back into the lad she had ruled so long ago, glorifying +him--drawing them together into that golden age where her ears already +caught the far cries and laughter of the past. + +Now, her arms around him, she looked at him and looked at him as though +she had not set eyes on him since then. + +"Of course, I love you," she said impatiently, as though surprised and +hurt that he or she had ever doubted it. "You always were mine; you are +_mine_! Nobody else could ever have had you--no matter what you did--or +what I did.... And nobody except you could ever, ever have had me. That +is perfectly plain now.... Oh, you--you darling"--she murmured, drawing +his face against hers. Tears sprang to her brown eyes; her mouth +quivered. + +"You _will_ love me, won't you? Because I'm going quite mad about you, +Duane.... I don't think I know just what I'm saying--or what I'm doing." + +She drew him closer; he caught her, crushing her in his arms, and she +yielded, clung to him for a moment, drew back in flushed resistance, +still bewildered by her own passion. Then, into her eyes came that +divine beauty which comes but once on earth--innocence awakened; and the +white lids drooped a little, and the mouth quivered, surrendering with a +sigh. + + * * * * * + +"You never have, never could love any other man? Say it. I know it, +but--say it, sweetheart!" + +"Only you, Duane." + +"Are you happy?" + +"I am in heaven." + +She closed her eyes--opening them almost immediately and passing one +hand across his face as though afraid he might have vanished. + +"You are there yet," she murmured with a faint smile. + +"So are you," he whispered, laughing--"my little dream girl--my little +brown-eyed, brown-haired, long-legged, swift-running, hard-hitting----" + +"Oh, _do_ you remember that dreadful blow I gave you when we were +sparring in the library? _Did_ it hurt you, my darling--I was sure it +did, but you never would admit it. Tell me now," she coaxed, adorable in +her penitence. + +"Well--yes, it did." He laughed under his breath--"I don't mind telling +you now that it fractured the bridge of my nose." + +"What!"--in horror. "That perfectly delicious straight nose of yours!" + +"Oh, I had it fixed," he said, laughing. "If you deal me no more vital +blows than that I'll never mind----" + +"I--deal you a--a blow, Duane! _I_!" + +"For instance, by not marrying me right away----" + +"Dear--I can't." + +The smile had died out in her eyes and on her lips. + +"You know I can't, don't you?" she said tenderly. "You know I've got to +be fair to you." Her face grew graver. "Dear--when I stop and try to +think--it dismays me to understand how much in love with you I am.... +Because it is too soon.... It would be safer to wait before I start to +love you--this way. There is a cowardly streak in me--a weak +streak----" + +"What blessed nonsense you do talk, don't you?" + +"No, dear." + +She moved slightly toward him, settling close, as though within the +circle of his arms lay some occult protection. + +For a while she lay very close to him, her pale face pressed against his +shoulder, brown eyes remote. Neither spoke. After a long time she laid +her hands on his arms, gently disengaging them, and, freeing herself, +sprang to her feet. A new, lithe and lovely dignity seemed to possess +her--an exquisite, graceful, indefinable something which lent a hint of +splendour to her as she turned and looked down at him. + +Then, mischievously tender, she stooped and touched her childish mouth +to his--her cheek, her throat, her hair, her lids, her hands, in turn +all brushed his lips with fragrance--the very ghost of contact, the +exquisite mockery of caress. + +"If you don't go at once," she murmured, "I'll never let you go at all. +Wait--let me see if anybody is in the corridor----" + +She opened the door and looked out. + +"Not a soul," she whispered, "our reputations are still intact. +Good-bye--I'll put on a fresh gown and meet you in ten minutes!... +Where? Oh, anywhere--_anywhere_, Duane. The Lake. Oh, that is too far +away! Wait here on the stairs for me--that isn't so far away--just sit +on the stairs until I come. Do you promise? _Truly_? Oh, you angel +boy!... Yes--but only one more, then--to be quite sure that you won't +forget to wait on the stairs for me...." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AN AFTERGLOW + + +Deliciously weary, every fibre in her throbbing with physical fatigue, +she had nevertheless found it impossible to sleep. + +The vivid memory of Duane holding her in his arms, while she gave her +heart to him with her lips, left her tremulous and confused by emotions +of which she yet knew little. + +Toward dawn a fever of unrest drove her from her hot, crushed pillows to +the cool of the open casements. The morning was dark and very still; no +breeze stirred; a few big, widely scattered stars watched her. For a +long while she stood there trying to quiet the rapid pulse and fast +breathing; and at length, with an excited little laugh, she sank down +among the cushions on the window-seat and lay back very still, her head, +with its glossy, disordered hair, cradled in her arms. + +"Is _this_ love?" she said to herself. "Is this what it is doing to me? +Am I never again going to sleep?" + +But she could not lie still; her restless hands began groping about in +the darkness, and presently the fire from a cigarette glimmered red. + +She remained quiet for a few moments, elbow among the pillows, cheek on +hand, watching the misty spirals float through the open window. After a +while she sat up nervously and tossed the cigarette from her. Like a +falling star the spark whirled earthward in a wide curve, glowed for a +few seconds on the lawn below, and slowly died out. + +Then an inexplicable thing occurred. Unthinkingly she had turned over +and extended her arm, searching in the darkness behind her. There came a +tinkle, a vague violet perfume, and the starlight fell on her clustering +hair and throat as she lifted and drained the brimming glass. + +Suddenly she stood up; the frail, crystal glass fell from her fingers, +splintering on the stone sill; and with a quick, frightened intake of +breath, lips still wet and scented, and the fire of it already stealing +through her veins, she awoke to stunned comprehension of what she had +done. + +For a moment only startled astonishment dominated her. That she could +have done this thing so instinctively and without forethought or intent, +seemed impossible. She bowed her head in her hands, striving desperately +to recollect the circumstances; she sprang to her feet and paced the +darkened room, trying to understand. A terrified and childish surprise +possessed her, which changed slowly to anger and impatience as she began +to realise the subtle treachery that habit had practised on her--so +stealthy is habit, betraying the body unawares. + +Overwhelmed with consternation, she seated herself to consider the +circumstances; little flashes of alarm assisted her. Then a sort of +delicate madness took possession of her, deafening her ears to the voice +of fear. She refused to be afraid. + +As she sat there, both hands unconsciously indenting her breast, the +clamour and tumult of her senses drowned the voice within. + +No, she would not be afraid!--though the burning perfume was mounting +to her head with every breath and the glow grew steadily in her body, +creeping from vein to vein. No, she would not be afraid. It could never +happen again. She would be on her guard after this.... Besides, the +forgetfulness had been so momentary, the imprudence so very slight ... +and it had helped her, too--it was already making her sleepy ... and she +had needed something to quiet her--needed sleep.... + +After a long while she turned languidly and picked up the little crystal +flask from the dresser--an antique bit of glass which Rosalie had given +her. + +Dawn whitened the edges of the sky; the birds were becoming very noisy. +She lifted the curiously cut relic; an imprisoned fluid glimmered with +pale-violet light--some scented French distillation which Rosalie +affected because nobody else had ever heard of it--an aromatic, fiery +essence, faintly perfumed. + +For a moment the girl gazed at it curiously. Then, on deliberate +impulse, she filled another glass. + +"One thing is certain," she said to herself; "if I am capable of +controlling myself at all, I must begin now. If I should touch this it +would be excess.... I would like to, but"--she flung the contents from +the window--"I won't. And _that_ is the way I am able to control +myself." + +She smiled, set the glass aside, and raised her eyes to the paling +stars. When at last she stretched herself out on the bed, dawn was +already lighting the room, but she fell asleep at once. + +It was a flushed and rather heavy slumber, not perfectly natural; and +when Kathleen entered at nine o'clock, followed by Geraldine's maid with +the breakfast-tray, the girl still lay with face buried in her hair, +breathing deeply and irregularly, her lashes wet with tears. + +The maid retired; Kathleen bent low over the feverishly parted lips, +kissed them, hesitated, drew back sharply, and cast a rapid glance +around the room. Then she went over to the dressing-table and lifted +Rosalie's antique flaçon; and set it back slowly, as the girl turned her +face on the pillow and opened her eyes. + +"Is that you, Kathleen?" + +"Yes, dear." + +For a few seconds she lay quite motionless, then, rising on one elbow, +she passed the backs of her fingers across her lids, laughed sleepily, +and straightened up, freeing her eyes from the confusion of her hair. + +"I've had horrid dreams. I've been crying in my sleep. Come here," she +said, stretching out her arms, and Kathleen went slowly. + +The girl pulled her head down, linking both arms around her neck: + +"You darling, can you ever guess what miracle happened to me yesterday?" + +"No.... What?" + +"I promised to marry Duane Mallett!" + +There was no reply. The girl clung to her excitedly, burying her face +against Kathleen's cheek, then released her with a laugh, and saw her +face--saw the sorrowful amazement in it, the pain. + +"Kathleen!" she exclaimed, startled, "what is the matter?" + +Mrs. Severn dropped down on the bed's edge, her hands loosely clasped. +Geraldine's brown eyes searched hers in hurt astonishment. + +"Aren't you glad for me, Kathleen? What is it? Why do you--" And all at +once she divined, and the hot colour stained her from brow to throat. +Kathleen bent forward swiftly and caught her in her arms with a +smothered cry; but the girl freed herself and leaned back, breathing +fast. + +"Duane knows about me," she said. "I told him." + +"He knew before you told him, my darling." + +Another wave of scarlet swept Geraldine's face. + +"That is true.... He found out--last April.... But he and I are not +afraid. I promised him--" And her voice failed as the memory of the +night's indulgence flashed in her brain. + +Kathleen began: "You promised me, too--" And her voice also failed. + +There was a silence; the girl's eyes turned miserably toward the +dressing-table, closed with a slow, inward breath which ended like a +sob; and again she was in Kathleen's arms--struggled from them only to +drop her head on Kathleen's knees and lie, tense face hidden, both hands +clenched. The wave of grief and shame swept her and passed. + +After a while she spoke in a hard little voice: + +"It is foolish to say I cannot control myself.... I did not think what I +was doing last night--that was all. Duane knows my danger--tendency, I +mean. He isn't worried; he knows that I can take care of myself----" + +"Don't marry him until _you_ know you can." + +"But I am perfectly certain of myself now!" + +"Only prove it, darling. Be frank with me. Who in the world loves you as +I do, Geraldine? Who desires happiness for you as I do? What have I in +life besides you and Scott?... And lately, dearest--I _must_ speak as I +feel--something--some indefinable constraint seems to have grown between +you and me--something--I don't exactly know what--that threatens our +intimate understanding----" + +"No, there is nothing!" + +"Be honest with me, dear. What is it?" + +The girl lay silent for a while, then: + +"I don't know myself. I have been--worried. It may have been that." + +"Worried about yourself, you poor lamb?" + +"A little.... And a little about Duane." + +"But, darling, if Duane loves you, that is all cleared up, isn't it?" + +"Yes.... But for a long time he and Rosalie made me perfectly +wretched.... I didn't know I was in love with him, either.... And I +couldn't sleep very much, and I--I simply couldn't tell you how unhappy +they were making me--and I--sometimes--now and then--in fact, very +often, I--formed the custom of--doing what I ought not to have done--to +steady my nerves--in fact, I simply let myself go--badly." + +"Oh, my darling! My darling! Couldn't you have told me--let me sit with +you, talk, read to you--_love_ you to sleep? Why did you do this, +Geraldine?" + +"Nothing--very disgraceful--ever happened. It only helped me to sleep +when I was excited and miserable.... I--I didn't care what I did--Duane +and Rosalie made me so wretched. And there seemed no use in my trying to +be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as +everybody. But I tried and couldn't--I tried, for instance, to misbehave +with Jack Dysart, but I couldn't--and I only hated myself and him and +Rosalie and Duane!" + +She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering. "I want to confess! +I've been horribly depraved for a week! I gambled with the Pink 'uns and +swore as fashionably as I knew how! I scorched my tongue with +cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray's room with the door bolted and let him +teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine +and saki! I let Jack Dysart retain my hand--and try to kiss me--several +times----" + +"Geraldine!" + +"I _did_. I wanted to be horrid." + +She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at +Kathleen, but the child's mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous +hands tightened and relaxed. + +"How bad have I been, Kathleen? It sounds pretty bad to tell it. But +Muriel says 'damn!' and Rosalie says 'the devil!' and when anything goes +wrong and I say, 'Oh, fluff!' I mean swearing, so I thought I'd do +it.... And almost every woman I know smokes and has her favourite +cocktail, and they all bet and play for stakes; and from what I hear +talked about, nobody's conduct is modified because anybody happens to be +married----" + +The horror in Kathleen's blue eyes checked her; she hid her face in her +hands for a moment, then flung out her arms and crushed Kathleen to her +breast. + +"I'm going to tell Duane how I've behaved. I couldn't rest until he +knows the very worst ... how fearfully common and bad a girl I can be. +Darling, don't break down. I don't want to go any closer to the danger +line than I've been. And, oh, I'm so ashamed, so humiliated--I--I wish I +could go to Duane as--as clean and sweet and innocent as he would have +me. For he is the dearest boy--and I love him so, Kathleen. I'm so silly +about him.... I've got to tell him how I behaved, haven't I?" + +[Illustration: "'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a +week!'"] + +"Are--are you going to?" + +"Of course I am!" ... She drew away and sat up very straight in bed, +serious, sombre-eyed, hands clasped tightly about her knees. + +"Do you know," she said, as though to herself, "it is curious that a +trivial desire for anything like that"--pointing to Rosalie's +gift--"should make me restless--annoy me, cause me discomfort. I can't +understand why it should actually torment me. It really does, +sometimes." + +"That is the terrible part of it," faltered Kathleen. "For God's sake, +keep clear of anything with even the faintest odour of alcohol about +it.... Where did you find that cut-glass thing?" + +"Rosalie gave it to me." + +"What is in it?" + +"I don't know--crême de something or other." + +Kathleen took the girl's tightly clasped hands in hers: + +"Geraldine, you've got to be square to Duane. You can't marry him until +you cleanse yourself, until you scour yourself free of this terrible +inclination for stimulants." + +"H-how can I? I don't intend, ever again, to----" + +"Prove it then. Let sufficient time elapse----" + +"How long? A--year?" + +"Dear, if you will show a clean record of self-control for a year I ask +no more. It ought not to be difficult for you to dominate this silly +weakness. Your will-power is scarcely tainted. What fills me with fear +is this habit you have formed of caressing danger--this childish +trifling with something which is still asleep in you--with all that is +weak and ignoble. It is there--it is in all of us--in you, too. Don't +rouse it; it is still asleep--merely a little restless in its +slumber--but, oh, Geraldine! Geraldine!--if you ever awake it!--if you +ever arouse it to its full, fierce consciousness----" + +"I won't," said the girl hastily. "Oh, I won't, I won't, Kathleen, +darling. I do know it's in me--I feel that if I ever let myself go I +could be reckless and wicked. But truly, truly, I won't. I--darling, you +mustn't cry--please, don't--because you are making me cry. I cried in my +sleep, too.... I ought to be very happy--" She forced a laugh through +the bright tears fringing her lashes, bent forward swiftly, kissed +Kathleen, and sprang from the bed. + +"I want my bath and breakfast!" she cried. "If I'm to be a Louis XVI +doll this week, it's time my face was washed and my sawdust reinforced. +Do fix my tray, dear, while I'm in the bath--and ring for my maid.... +And when you go down you may tell Duane to wait for me on the stairs. +It's good discipline; he'll find it stupid because I'll be a long +time--but, oh, Kathleen, it is perfectly heavenly to bully him!" + + * * * * * + +Later she sent a note to him by her maid: + + "TO THE ONLY MAN IN THE WORLD, + ON THE STAIRS. + + "_Patient Sir_: If you will go to the large beech-tree beyond + Hurryon Gate and busy yourself by carving upon it certain initials + intertwined within the circumscribed outlines of a symbol popularly + supposed to represent a human heart, your industry will be + presently and miraculously rewarded by the apparition of her who + presumably occupies no inconsiderable place in your affections." + +At the Hurryon Gate Duane found Rosalie trying to unlock it, a dainty, +smiling Rosalie, fresh as a blossom, and absurdly like a schoolgirl with +her low-cut collar, snowy neck, and the thick braid of hair. Under her +arm she carried her bathing-dress. + +"I'm going for a swim; I nearly perished with the heat last night.... +Did you sleep well, Duane?" + +"Rather well." + +She hesitated, looked up: "Are you coming with me?" + +"I have an appointment." + +"Oh!... Are you going to let me go alone?" + +He laughed: "I've no choice; I really have an appointment this morning." + +She inspected him, drew a step nearer, laid both hands lightly on his +shoulders. + +"Duane, dear," she said, "are you really going to let me drift past you +out to sea--after all?" + +"What else can I do? Besides, you are not going to drift." + +"Yes, I am. You were very nice to me yesterday." + +"It was you who were very sweet to me.... But I told you how matters +stand. You care for your husband." + +"Yes, you did tell me. But it is not true. I thought about it all night +long; I find that I do not care for him--as you told me I did." + +He said, smiling: "Nor do you really care for me." + +"I could care." + +Her hands still lay lightly on his shoulders; he smilingly disengaged +them, saluted the finger tips, and swung them free. + +"No, you couldn't," he said--"nor could I." + +She clasped her hands behind her, confronting him with that gaily +audacious allure which he knew so well: + +"Does a man really care whether or not he is in love with a woman before +he makes love to her?" + +"Do you want an honest answer?" + +"Please." + +"Well, then--if she is sufficiently attractive, a man doesn't usually +care." + +"Am I sufficiently attractive?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--why do you hesitate?... I know the rules of the game. When one +wearies, the other must pretend to.... And then they make their adieux +very amiably.... Isn't that a man's ideal of an affair with a pretty +woman?" + +He laughed: "I suppose so." + +"So do I. You are no novice, are you--as I am?" + +"Are you a novice, Rosalie?" + +"Yes, I am. You probably don't believe it. It is absurd, isn't it, +considering these lonely years--considering what he has done--that I +haven't anything with which to reproach myself." + +"It is very admirable," he said. + +"Oh, yes, theoretically. I was too fastidious--perhaps a little bit too +decent. It's curious how inculcated morals and early precepts make +mountains out of what is really very simple travelling. If a woman +ceases to love her husband, she is going to miss too much in life if +she's afraid to love anybody else.... I suppose I have been afraid." + +"It's rather a wholesome sort of fear," he said. + +"Wholesome as breakfast-food. I hate it. Besides, the fear doesn't exist +any more," shaking her head. "Like the pretty girls in a very popular +and profoundly philosophical entertainment, I've simply got to love +somebody"--she smiled at him--"and I'd prefer to fall honestly and +disgracefully in love with you--if you'd give me the opportunity." There +was a pause. "Otherwise," she concluded, "I shall content myself with +doing a mischief to your sex where I can. I give you the choice, +Duane--I give you the disposal of myself. Am I to love--you?--or be +loved by God knows whom--and make him suffer for it"--she set her little +even teeth--"and pay back to men what man has done to me?" + +"Nonsense," he said good-humouredly; "isn't there anything except +playing at love that counts in the world?" + +"Nothing counts without it. I've learned that much." + +"Some people have done pretty well without it." + +"You haven't. You might have been a really good painter if you cared for +a woman who cared for you. There's no tenderness in your work; it's all +technique and biceps." + +He said gravely: "You are right." + +"Am I?... Do you think you could try to care for me--even for that +reason, Duane--to become a better painter?" + +"I'm afraid not," he said pleasantly. + +There was a silence; her expression changed subtly, then the colour came +back and she smiled and nodded adieu. + +"Good-bye," she said; "I'm going to get into all sorts of mischief. The +black flag is hoisted. _Malheur aux hommes!_" + +"There's one now," said Duane, laughing as Delancy Grandcourt's bulk +appeared among the trees along Hurryon Water. "Lord! what a bungler he +is on a trout-stream!" + +Rosalie turned and gazed at the big, clumsy young man who was fishing +with earnestness and method every unlikely pool in sight. + +"Does he belong to anybody?" she asked, considering him. "I want to do +real damage. He is usually at Geraldine's heels, isn't he?" + +"Oh, let him alone," said Duane; "he's an awfully decent fellow. If a +man of that slow, plodding, faithful species ever is thoroughly aroused +by a woman, it will be a lively day for his tormentor." + +Rosalie's blue eyes sparkled: "Will it?" + +"Yes, it will. You had better not play hob with Delancy. Are you +intending to?" + +"I don't know. Look at the man! That's the fourth time he's landed his +line in a bush! He'll fall into that pool if he's not--mercy!--there he +goes! Did you ever see such a genius for clumsiness?" + +She was moving forward through the trees as she spoke; Duane called +after her in a warning voice: + +"Don't try to do anything to disturb him. It's not good sport; he's a +mighty decent sort, I tell you." + +"I won't play any tricks on your good young man," she said with a shrug +of contempt, and sauntered off toward the Gray Water. Her path, however, +crossed Grandcourt's, and as she stepped upon the footbridge she glanced +down, where, wading gingerly in mid-stream, Delancy floundered and +panted and barely contrived to maintain a precarious footing, while +sending his flies sprawling down the rapids. + +"Good-morning," she nodded, as he caught sight of her. He attempted to +take off his cap, slipped, wallowed, and recovered his balance by +miracle alone. + +"There's a thumping big trout under that bridge," he informed her +eagerly; "he ran downstream just now, but I can't seem to raise him." + +"You splash too much. You'd probably raise him if you raised less of +something else." + +"Is that it?" he inquired innocently. "I try not to, but I generally +manage to raise hell with every pool before I get a chance to fish it. +I'll show you just where he lies. Watch!" + +His cast of flies whistled wildly; there was a quick pang of pain in her +shoulder and she gave a frightened cry. + +"Good Lord! Have I got _you_?" he exclaimed, aghast. + +"You certainly have," she retorted, exasperated, "and you had better +come up and get this hook out! You'll need it if you want to fish any +more." + +Dripping and horrified, he scrambled up the bank to the footbridge; she +flinched, but made no sound, as he freed her from the hook; a red stain +appeared on the sleeve of her waist, above the elbow. + +"It's fortunate that it was a b-barbless hook," he stammered, horribly +embarrassed and contemplating with dismay the damage he had +accomplished; "otherwise," he added, "we would have had to cut out the +hook. We're rather lucky, I think. Is it very painful?" + +"Sufficiently," she said, disgusted. "But I suppose this sort of thing +is nothing unusual for you." + +"I've hooked one or two people," he admitted, reddening. "I suppose you +won't bother to forgive me, but I'm terribly sorry. If you'll let me put +a little mud on it----" + +She disdained to reply. He hovered about her, clumsily solicitous, and +whichever way she turned, he managed to get underfoot, until, thoroughly +vexed, she stood stock-still and opened her arms with a hopeless +gesture: + +"What _are_ you trying to do, Delancy? Do you want to embrace me? I wish +you wouldn't leap about me like a great Dane puppy!" + +The red surged up into his face anew: + +"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm very sorry." + +She looked at him curiously: "I beg yours--you big, silly boy. Don't +blush at me. Great Danes are exceedingly desirable property, you +know.... Did you wish to be forgiven for anything? What on earth are you +doing with that horrid fistful of muck?" + +"I only want to put some mud on that wound, if you'll let me. It's good +for hornet stings----" + +She laughed and backed away: "Do you believe there is any virtue in mud, +Delancy?--good, deep mire--when one is bruised and sore and lonely and +desperate? Oh, don't try to understand--what a funny, confused, stupid +way you have of looking at me! I remember you used to look at me that +way sometimes--oh, long ago--before I was married, I think." + +The heavy colour which surged so readily to his temples began to amuse +her; she leaned back against the bridge rail and contemplated him with +smiling disdain. + +"Do you know," she said, "years ago, I had a slight, healthy suspicion +that you were on the verge of falling in love with me." + +He tried to smile, but the colour died out in his face. + +"Yes, I was on the verge," he contrived to answer. + +"Why didn't you fall over?" + +"I suppose it was because you married Jack Dysart," he said simply. + +"Was _that_ all?" + +"All?" He thought he perceived the jest, and managed to laugh again. + +"Really, I am perfectly serious," repeated Rosalie. "Was that all that +prevented you from falling in love with me--because I was married?" + +"I think so," he said. "Wasn't it reason enough?" + +"I didn't know it was enough for a man. I don't believe I know exactly +how men consider such matters.... You've managed to hook that fly into +my gown again! And now you've torn the skirt hopelessly! What a +devastating sort of creature you are, Delancy! You used to step on my +slippers at dancing school, and, oh, Heaven! how I hated you.... Where +are you going?" for he had begun to walk away, reeling in his wet line +as he moved, his grave, highly coloured face lowered, troubled eyes +intent on what he was doing. + +When she spoke, he halted and raised his head, and she saw the muscles +flexed under the bronze skin of the jaw--saw the lines of pain appear +where his mouth tightened. All of the clumsy boy in him had vanished; +she had never troubled herself to look at him very closely, and it +surprised her to see how worn his face really was under the eyes and +cheek-bones--really surprised her that there was much of dignity, even +of a certain nobility, in his quiet gaze. + +"I asked you where you are going?" she repeated with a faint smile. + +"Nowhere in particular." + +"But you are going _somewhere_, I suppose." + +"I suppose so." + +"In my direction?" + +"I think not." + +"That is very rude of you, Delancy--when you don't even know where my +direction lies. Do you think," she demanded, amused, "that it is +particularly civil of a man to terminate an interview with a woman +before she offers him his congé?" + +He finished reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the +reel-guide, shifted his creel, buttoned on the landing-net, and quietly +turned around and inspected Mrs. Dysart. + +"I want to tell you something," he said. "I have never, even as a boy, +had from you a single word which did not in some vague manner convey a +hint of your contempt for me. Do you realise that?" + +"W-what!" she faltered, bewildered. + +"I don't suppose you do realise it. People generally feel toward me as +you feel; it has always been the fashion to tolerate me. It is a legend +that I am thick-skinned and stupidly slow to take offence. I am not +offended now.... Because I could not be with you.... But I am tired of +it, and I thought it better that you should know it--after all these +years." + +Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the +hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a +stinging flush deepened over her pretty face. + +"Had you anything else to say to me?" he asked, without embarrassment. + +"N-no." + +"Then may I take my departure?" + +She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and +intense curiosity. + +"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you?" she asked. +"Because I haven't meant to." + +He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly +smile fascinated her. + +"You haven't intended to," he said. "It's all right, Rosalie----" + +"But--have I been horrid and disagreeable? Tell me." + +In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her; +slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the +innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What, +after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant +consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy +manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for +himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of +her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her attitude? + +She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life--that is, she had +neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the +curiosity and interest now stirring her. + +"Were you really ever in love with me?" she asked, so frankly that the +painful colour rose to his hair again, and he stood silent, head +lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins. + +"But--good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there's +nothing to be ashamed of in it! I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am +thinking about it with--with a certain re--" She was going to say +regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own +seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting +to him. + +She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of +the awkwardness with which he moved--a great, big powerful machine, +continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own +power might break loose and smash things. That seemed to be the root of +his awkwardness--unskilful self-control--a vague consciousness of the +latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled, +and controlled unskilfully. + +She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of +Grandcourt. Without considering or understanding why, she began to +experience an agreeable sense of restfulness and security in the silence +which endured between them. He stood full in the sunlight, very deeply +preoccupied with the contents of his fly-book; she leaned back on the +sun-scorched railing of the bridge, bathing-suit tucked under one arm, +listening to the melody of the rushing stream below. It seemed almost +like the intimacy of old friendship, this quiet interval in the sun, +with the moving shadows of leaves at their feet and the music of the +water in their ears--a silence unbroken save by that, and the pure, +sweet call-note of some woodland bird from the thickets beyond. + +"What fly are you trying?" she asked, dreamily conscious of the +undisturbed accord. + +"Wood-ibis--do you think they might come to it?" he asked so naturally +that a sudden glow of confidence in him, in the sunlit world around her, +warmed her. + +"Let me look at your book?" + +He brought it. Together they fumbled the brilliantly patterned aluminum +leaves, fumbling with tufted silks and feathers, until she untangled a +most alluringly constructed fly and drew it out, presenting it to him +between forefinger and thumb. + +"Shall we try it?" + +"Certainly," he said. + +Duane, carving hieroglyphics on the bark of the big beech, raised his +head and looked after them. + +"That's a pretty low trick," he said to himself, as they sauntered away +toward the Gray Water. And he scowled in silence and continued his +carving. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +CONFESSION + + +So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West +Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be +made somehow; Geraldine and Naïda Mallett doubled up; twin beds were +installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a +shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless +girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient +to last over from the winter. + +The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier, +gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter--he of the rambling and +casual legs--more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The +Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt +shared Mrs. Severn's room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West +Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his +studio at Hurryon Lodge. + +The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing +young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun; +tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart +horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an +army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over +the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and +decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that +they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as +Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several +respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and +the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter. + +As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that +was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared +in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from +surface cynicism--quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had +characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had +disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, +now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any attitude +about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering +sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a +conscious effort to ignore it, an attitude to disregard what custom has +sanctioned. + +Kathleen had never realised what a really sweet and charming fellow he +was until that morning, when he took her aside and told her of his +engagement. + +"Do you know," he said, "it is as though life had stopped for me many +years ago when Geraldine and I were playmates; it's exactly as though +all the interval of years in between counted less than a dream, and now, +at last, I am awake and taking up real life again.... You see, Kathleen, +as a matter of fact, I'm incomplete by myself. I'm only half of a suit +of clothes; Geraldine always wore the rest of me." + +"However," said Kathleen mischievously, "you've been very tireless in +trying on, they say. It's astonishing you never found a good fit----" + +"That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out +of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal. Are you going to be +nice to me, Kathleen?" + +"Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous +young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly. Then she held him at +arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes: + +"Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it." + +"I could not help doing it." + +But Kathleen repeated: + +"Love her enough. She will be yours to make--yours to unmake, to mould, +fashion, remould--with God's good help. Love her enough." + +"Yes," he said, very soberly. + +A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fête, and +Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her, +never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from +the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of +Seagrave. + +Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving +new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's +separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for +Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate--the old servants +of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain +the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less +conscientious recruits below stairs. + +A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended +the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's +loft, at Hurryon Lodge. + +He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious +and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, +shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a +strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather +heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno. A harsh voice +pronounced his name; old Mr. Tappan extended a dry hand and bored him +through with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket. + +"And do you still cultiwate the fine arts, young man?" he inquired, as +sternly as though he privately suspected Duane of maltreating them. + +Duane shook hands with him. + +"The school of the indiwidool," continued Mr. Tappan, "is what artists +need. Woo the muses in solitude; cultiwate 'em in isolation. Didn't +Benjamin West live out in the backwoods? And I guess he managed to make +good without raising hell in the Eekole di Boze Arts with a lot of +dissipated wagabonds at his elbow, inculcating immoral precepts and +wasting his time and his father's money." + +And he looked very hard at Duane, who winced, but agreed with him +solemnly. + +Geraldine, on the edge of a circle of newly arrived guests, leaned over +and whispered mischievously: + +"Is that what _you_ did at the Ecole des Beaux Arts? Did you behave like +all that or did you cultivate the indiwidool?" + +He shook hands again, solemnly, with Mr. Tappan, stepped back, and +joined her. + +"Where on earth have you been hiding?" she inquired. + +"You said that if I carved certain cabalistic signs on the big +beech-tree you would presently appear to me in a pink cloud--you +faithless little wretch!" + +"How could I? Three motor-loads arrived from Iron Hill before I was half +dressed, and ever since I've been doing my traditional duty; and," in a +lower voice, "I was perfectly crazy to go to the beech-tree all the +time. Did you wait long, you poor boy?" + +"Man is born to wait. I came back just now to find you.... I told +Kathleen," he added, radiant. + +"What?" she whispered, flushing deliciously. "Oh, pooh! I told her about +it this morning--the very first thing. We both snivelled. I didn't sleep +at all last night.... There's something I wish to tell you----" + +The gay smile suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful +tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that +very young, almost childish pathos to her expression. She put out her +hand instinctively and touched him. + +"I want to be alone with you, Duane--for a little while." + +"Shall I go to the beech-tree and wait?" + +She glanced around with a hopeless gesture: + +"You see? Other people are arriving and I've simply got to be here. I +don't see how I can get away before luncheon. Where were you going just +now?" + +"I thought I'd step over to the studio to see what sort of a shake-down +you've given me to repose on." + +"I wish you would. Poor child, I do hope you will be comfortable. It's +perfectly horrid to send you out of the house----" + +"Oh, I don't mind," he nodded, laughing, and she gave him a shy glance +of adieu and turned to receive another guest. + +In his extemporized studio at Hurryon Lodge he found that old Miller had +already provided him with a washstand and accessories, a new tin tub and +a very comfortable iron bed. + +The place was aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, +and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and +picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in +turpentine and black soap. + +Confronting him on a big improvised easel was the full-length, +half-reclining portrait of Rosalie Dysart--a gay, fascinating, fly-away +thing after the deliberately artificial manner of the French court +painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago. Ribbons +fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and +blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken +parody of a shepherdess--a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, +sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional +oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a +dark-blue sky--this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the +perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as +delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the flowered petticoat. + +The unholy ease with which he had done it gave him a secret thrill of +admiration. It was apparently all surface--the exquisite masquerader, +the surrounding detail, the technical graciousness and flow of line and +contour, the effortless brush-work. Yet, with an ease which demanded +very respectful consideration, he had absorbed and transmitted the +frivolous spirit of the old French masters, which they themselves took +so seriously; the portrait was also a likeness, yet delightfully +permeated with the charm of a light-minded epoch; and somehow, behind +and underneath it all, a brilliant mockery sparkled--the half-amused, +half-indifferent brilliancy of the painter himself. It was there for any +who could appreciate it, and it was quite irresistible, particularly +since he had, after a dazzling preliminary study or two from a +gamekeeper's small, chubby son, added, fluttering in mid-air, a pair of +white-winged Loves, chubby as cherubs but much more Gallic. + +Nobody excepting Rosalie and himself had seen the picture. What he meant +to do with it he did not know, half ashamed as he was of its satiric +cleverness. Painters would hate it--stand hypnotised, spellbound the +while--and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of +pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art; +they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay +perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly. +What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an +actor who was eminently fitted to play _Lear_, should bow to his +audience and earnestly perform a very complicated and perfect flip-flap? + +Amused with his own disrespectful reflections, he stood before the +picture, turning from it with a grin from time to time to compare it +with some dozen vigorous canvases hanging along the studio wall--studies +that he knew would instantly command the owlish respect of the truly +earnest--connoisseurs, critics, and academicians in this very earnest +land of ours. + +There was a Sargent-like portrait of old Miller, with something of that +great master's raucous colouring and perhaps intentional discords, and +all of his technical effrontery; and here, too, lurked that shadow of +mockery ever latent in the young man's brush--something far more subtle +than caricature or parody--deeper than the imitation of +manner--something like the evanescent caprice of a strong hand, which +seems to threaten for a second, then passes on lightly, surely, +transforming its menace into a caress. + +There were two adorable nude studies of Miller's granddaughters, aged +six and seven--quaintly and engagingly formal in their naïve +astonishment at finding themselves quite naked. There was a fine sketch +of Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him +the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his +dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter +picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and +Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety +drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud. + +For in Duane's work, from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward +something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the +canvases of the old masters--which survives mould and age, the opacity +of varnish, and the well-intentioned maltreatment of unbaked curators. + +There was no mystery about it; he prepared his canvas with white-lead, +gave it a long sun-bath, modelled in bone-black and an earth-red, gave +it another bath in the sun, and then glazed. This, a choice of +permanent colours, and oil as a medium, was the mechanical technique. + +Standing there, thoughts remote, idly sorting and re-sorting his +brushes, he heard the birds singing on the forest's edge, heard the wind +in the pines blowing, with the sound of flowing water, felt the warmth +of the sun, breathed the mounting freshness from the fields. Life was +still very, very young; it had only begun since love had come, and that +was yesterday. + +And as he stood there, happy, a trifle awed as he began to understand +what life might hold for him, there came quick steps on the stair, a +knock, her voice outside his door: + +"Duane! May I come in?" + +He sprang to the door; she stepped inside, breathing rapidly, delicately +flushed from her haste. + +"I couldn't stand it any longer, so I left Scott to scrape and bow and +pull his forelock. I've got to go back in a few minutes. Are you glad to +see me?" + +He took her in his arms. + +"Dearest, dearest!" she murmured, looking at him with all her heart in +her brown eyes. + +So they stood for a little while, her mouth and body acquiescent to his +embrace. + +"Such a long, long time since I saw you. Nearly half an hour," he said. + +"Yes." She drew away a little: + +"Do you know," she said, looking about her, over his shoulder, "I have +never been here since you took it as a studio." + +She caught a glimpse of the picture on the easel, freed herself, and, +retaining his hand in both of hers, gazed curiously at Rosalie's +portrait. + +"How perfectly charming!" she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of +exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and +disrespectfully jeer at our mincing friends, Boucher, Nattier, _et +al._?" + +"I knew you'd understand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Oh, you wonderful +little thing--you darling!" He caught her to him again, but she twisted +away and tucked one arm under his: + +"Don't, Duane; I want to see these things. What a perfectly dear study +of Miller's kiddies! Oh, it is too lovable, too adorable! You wouldn't +sell that--would you?" + +"Of course not; it's yours, Geraldine." + +After a moment she looked up at him: + +"Ours?" she asked; but the smile faded once more from eyes and lips; she +suffered him to lead her from canvas to canvas, approved them or +remained silent, and presently turned and glanced toward the small iron +bed. Manner and gaze had become distrait. + +"You think this will be comfortable, Duane?" she inquired listlessly. + +"Perfectly," he said. + +She disengaged her hand from his, walked over to the lounge, turned, and +signed for him to seat himself. Then she dropped to her knees and +settled down on the rug at his feet, laying her soft cheek against his +arm. + +"I have some things to tell you," she said in a low voice. + +"Very serious things?" he asked, smiling. + +"Very." + +"All right; I am listening." + +"Very serious things," she repeated, gazing through the window, where +green tree-tops swayed in the breezy sunlight; and she pressed her +cheek closer to his arm. + +"I have not been very--good," she said. + +He looked at her, suppressed the smile that twitched at his mouth, and +waited. + +"I wish I could give myself to you as clean and sweet and untainted +as--as you deserve.... I can't; and before we go any further I must tell +you----" + +"Why, you blessed child," he exclaimed, half laughing, half serious. +"You are not going to confess to me, are you?" + +"Duane, I've got to tell you everything. I couldn't rest unless I was +perfectly honest with you." + +"But, dear," he said, a trifle dismayed, "such confidences are not +necessary. Nor am I fit to hear your list of innocent transgressions----" + +"Oh, they are not very innocent. Let me tell you; let me cleanse myself +as much as I can. I don't want to have any secrets from you, Duane. I +want to go to you as guiltless as confession can make me. I want to +begin clean. Let me tell you. Couldn't you let me tell you, Duane?" + +"And I, dear? Do--do you expect me to tell _you_? Do you expect me to do +as you do?" + +She looked up at him surprised; she had expected it. Something in his +face warned her of her own ignorance. + +"I don't know very much about men, Duane. Are there things you cannot +say to me?" + +"One or two, dear." + +"Do you mean until after we are married?" + +"Not even then. There is no use in your knowing." + +She had never considered that, either. + +"But _ought_ I to know, Duane?" + +"No," he said miserably, "you ought not." + +She sat upright for a few seconds longer, gazing thoughtfully at space, +then pressed her pale face against his knee again in silent faith and +confidence. + +"Anyway, I know you will be fair to me in your own way," she said. +"There is only one way that I know how to be fair to you. Listen." + +And in a shamed voice she forced herself to recite her list of sins; +repeating them as she had confessed them to Kathleen. She told him +everything; her silly and common imprudence with Dysart, which, she +believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she +had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting +and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her +secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making +self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told +him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some +small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All +that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an +average man, listened, head bowed over her fragrant hair, adoring her, +wretched in heart and soul with the heavy knowledge of all he dare not +tell or forget or cleanse from him, kneeling repentant, in the sanctuary +of her love and confidence. + +She told him everything--sins of omission, childish depravities, made +real only by the decalogue. Of indolence, selfishness, unkindness, she +accused herself; strove to count the times when she had yielded to +temptation. + +He was reading the first human heart he had ever known--a heart still +strangely untainted, amid a society where innocence was the exception, +doubtful wisdom the rule, and where curiosity was seldom left very long +in doubt. + +His hands fell over hers as her voice ceased, but he did not speak. + +She waited a little while, then, with a slight nestling movement, turned +and hid her face on his knees. + +"With God's help," she whispered, "I will subdue what threatens me. But +I am afraid of it! Oh, Duane, I am afraid." + +He managed to steady his voice. + +"What is it, darling, that seems to tempt you," he asked; "is it the +taste--the effect?" + +"The--effect. If I could only forget it--but I can't help thinking about +it--I suppose just because it's forbidden--For days, sometimes, there is +not the slightest desire; then something stirs it up in me, begins to +annoy me; or the desire comes sometimes when I am excited or very happy, +or very miserable. There seems to be some degraded instinct in me that +seeks for it whenever my emotions are aroused.... I must be honest with +you; I--I feel that way _now_--because, I suppose, I am a little +excited." + +He raised her and took her in his arms. + +"But you won't, will you? Simply tell me that you won't." + +She looked at him, appalled by her own hesitation. Was it possible, +after the words she had just uttered, the exaltation of confession +still thrilling her, that she could hesitate? Was it morbid +over-conscientiousness in the horror of a broken promise to him that +struck her silent? + +"Say it, Geraldine." + +"Oh, Duane! I've said it so often to Kathleen and myself! Let me +promise myself again--and keep my word. Let me try that way, dear, +before I--I promise you?" + +There was a feverish colour in her face; she spoke rapidly, like one who +temporises, trying to convince others and over-ride the inward voice; +her slender hands were restless on his shoulders, her eyes lowered, +avoiding his. + +"Perhaps if you and Kathleen, and I, myself, were not so afraid--perhaps +if I were not forbidden--if I had your confidence and my own that I +would not abuse my liberty, it might be easier to refrain. Shall we try +it that way, Duane?" + +"Do you think it best?" + +"I think--I might try that way. Dear, I have so much to sustain me +now--so much more at stake! Because there is the dread of losing +you--for, Duane, until I am mistress of myself, I will never, never +marry you--and do you suppose I am going to risk our happiness? Only +leave me free, dear; don't attempt to wall me in at first, and I will +surely find my way." + +She sprang up, trying to smile, hesitated, then slowly came back to +where he was standing and put her arms around his neck. + +"Good-bye until luncheon," she said. "I must go back to my neglected +guests--I am going to run all the way as fast as my legs can carry me! +Kathleen will be dreadfully mortified. Do you love me?... Even after my +horrid confessions?... Oh, you darling!... Now that you know the very +worst, I begin to feel as clean and fresh as though I had just stepped +from the bath.... And I _will_ try to be what you would have me, +dear.... Because I am quite crazy about you--oh, completely mad!" + +She bent impulsively and kissed his hands, freed herself with a +breathless laugh, and turned and fled. + +For a long time her lover stood there, motionless, downcast, clenched +fists in his pockets, face to face with the past. And that which lay +behind him was that which lies behind what is commonly known to the +world as the average man. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +DUSK + + +The Masked Dance was to begin at ten that evening; for that reason +dinner had been served early at scores of small tables on the terrace, a +hilarious and topsy-turvy, but somewhat rapid affair, because everybody +required time for dressing, and already throughout the house maids and +valets were scurrying around, unpacking masks and wigs and dainty +costumes for the adorning of the guests at Roya-Neh. + +Toward nine o'clock the bustle and confusion became distracting; +corridors were haunted by graceful flitting figures in various stages of +deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the +same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered +laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious +complications of intimate attire. + +On the men's side of the house there was less hubbub and some quiet +swearing; much splashing in tubs, much cigarette smoke. Men entered each +other's rooms, half-clad in satin breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled +shirts, asking a helping hand in tying queue ribbons or adjusting +stocks, and lingered to smoke and jest and gossip, and jeer at one +another's finery, or to listen to the town news from those week-enders +recently arrived from the city. + +The talk was money, summer shows, and club gossip, but financial rumours +ruled. + +Young Ellis, in pale blue silk and wig, perched airily, on a table, +became gloomily prophetic concerning the steady retirement of capital +from philanthropic enterprises hatched in Wall Street; Peter Tappan saw +in the endlessly sagging market dire disaster for the future digestions +of wealthy owners of undistributed securities. + +"Marble columns and gold ceilings don't make a trust company," he +sneered. "There are a few billionaire gamblers from the West who seem to +think Wall Street is Coney Island. There'll be a shindy, don't make any +mistake; we're going to have one hell of a time; but when it's over the +corpses will all be shipped--ahem!--west." + +Several men laughed uneasily; one or two old line trust companies were +mentioned; then somebody spoke of the Minnisink, lately taken over by +the Algonquin. + +Duane lighted a cigarette and, watching the match still burning, said: + +"Dysart is a director. You can't ask for any more conservative citizen +than Dysart, can you?" + +Several men looked around for Dysart, but he had stepped out of the +room. + +Ellis said, after a silence: + +"That gambling outfit from the West has bedevilled one or two good +citizens in Gotham town." + +Dr. Bailey shrugged his big, fat shoulders. + +"It's no secret, I suppose, that the Minnisink crowd is being talked +about," he grunted. + +Ellis said in a low but perfectly distinct voice: + +"Neither is it any secret that Jack Dysart has been hit hard in National +Ice." + +Peter Tappan slipped from his seat on the table and threw away his +cigarette: + +"One thing is sure as soubrettes," he observed; "the Clearing House +means to get rid of certain false prophets. The game law is off +prophets--in the fall. There'll be some good gunning--under the laws of +New Jersey." + +"I hope they'll be careful not to injure any marble columns or ruin the +gold-leaf on the ceilings," sneered Ellis. "Come on, some of you +fellows, and fix the buckle in this cursed stock of mine." + +"I thought fixing stocks was rather in your own line," said Duane to the +foxy-visaged and celebrated manipulator, who joined very heartily in the +general and unscrupulous laugh. + +A moment later, Dysart, who had heard every word from the doorway, +walked silently back to his own room and sat down, resting his temples +between his closed fists. + +The well-cut head was already silvery gray at the temples; one month had +done it. When animated, his features still appeared firm and of good +colour; relaxed, they were loose and pallid, and around the mouth fine +lines appeared. Often a man's hands indicate his age, and his betrayed +him, giving the lie to his lithe, straight, graceful figure. The man had +aged amazingly in a month or two. + +Matters were not going very well with him. For one thing, the Half-Moon +Trust Company had finally terminated all dealings with the gorgeous +marble-pillared temple of high finance of which he was a director. For +another, he had met the men of the West, and for them he had done things +which he did not always care to think about. For another, money was +becoming disturbingly scarce, and the time was already past for selling +securities. + +During the last year he had been vaguely aware of some occult hostility +to himself and his enterprises--not the normal hostility of business +aggression--but something indefinable--merely negative at first, then +more disturbing, sinister, foreboding; something in the very air to +which he was growing more sensitive every day. + +By all laws of finance, by all signs and omens, a serious reaction from +the saturnalia of the last few years was already over-due. He had felt +it, without alarm at first, for the men of the West laughed him to scorn +and refused to shorten sail. They still refused. Perhaps they could not. +One thing was certain: he could scarcely manage to take in a single reef +on his own account. He was beginning to realise that the men with whom +rumour was busy were men marked down by their letters; and they either +would not or could not aid him in shortening sail. + +For a month, now, under his bland and graceful learning among the +intimates of his set, Dysart had been slowly but steadily going to +pieces. At such moments as this it showed on the surface. It showed now +in his loose jaw and flaccid cheeks; in the stare of the quenched eyes. + +He was going to pieces, and he was aware of it. For one thing, he +recognised the physical change setting in; for another, his cool, +selfish, self-centred equanimity was being broken down; the rigorous +bodily régime from which he had never heretofore swerved and which alone +enabled him to perform the exacting social duties expected of him, he +had recently neglected. He felt the impending bodily demoralisation, +the threatened mental disintegration; he suspected its symptoms in a +new nervous irritability, in lapses of self-command, in unaccountable +excesses utterly foreign to his habitual self-control. + +Dissolute heretofore only in the negative form, whatever it was that +impended threatening him, seemed also to be driving him into an utter +and monstrous lack of caution, and--God alone knew how--he had at last +done the one thing that he never dreamed of doing. And the knowledge of +it, and the fear of it, bit deeper into his shallow soul every hour of +the day and night. And over all, vague, indefinite, hung something that +menaced all that he cared for most on earth, held most sacred--his +social position in the Borough of Manhattan and his father's pride in +him and it. + + * * * * * + +After a while he stood up in his pale blue silken costume of that +mincing, smirking century which valued a straight back and a well-turned +leg, and very slowly, as though tired, he walked to the door separating +his wife's dressing-room from his own. + +"May I come in?" he asked. + +A maid opened the door, saying that Mrs. Dysart had gone to Miss Quest's +room to have her hair powdered. He seated himself; the maid retired. + +For a while he sat there, absently playing with his gilt-hilted sword, +sombre-eyed, preoccupied, listening to the distant joyous tumult in the +house, until quick, light steps and a breezy flurry of satin at the door +announced his wife's return. + +"Oh," she said coolly; "you?" + +That was her greeting; his was a briefer nod. + +She went to her mirror and studied her face, trying a patch here, a +hint of vermilion there, touching up brow and lashes and the sweet, +curling corners of her mouth. + +"Well?" she inquired, over her shoulder, insolently. + +He got up out of the chair, shut the door, and returned to his seat +again. + +"Have you made up your mind about the _D_ and _P_ securities?" he asked. + +"I told you I'd let you know when I came to any conclusion," she replied +drily. + +"Yes, I know what you said, Rosalie. But the time is shortening. I've +got to meet certain awkward obligations----" + +"So you intimated before." + +He nodded and went on amiably: "All I ask of you is to deposit those +securities with us for a few months. They are as safe with us as they +are with the Half-Moon. Do you think I'd let you do it if I were not +certain?" + +She turned and scrutinised him insultingly: + +"I don't know," she said, "how many kinds of treachery you are capable +of." + +"What do you mean?" + +"What I say. Frankly, I don't know what you are capable of doing with my +money. If I can judge by what you've done with my married life, I +scarcely feel inclined to confide in you financially." + +"There is no use in going over that again," he said patiently. "We +differ little from ordinary people, I fancy. I think our house is as +united as the usual New York domicile. The main thing is to keep it so. +And in a time of some slight apprehension and financial +uneasiness--perhaps even of possible future stress--you and I, for our +own sakes, should stand firmly together to weather any possible gale." + +"I think I am able to weather whatever I am responsible for," she said. +"If you do the same, we can get on as well as we ever have." + +"I don't believe you understand," he persisted, forcing a patient smile. +"All business in the world is conducted upon borrowed capital. I +merely----" + +"Do you need more capital?" she inquired, so bluntly that he winced. + +"Yes, for a few months. I may require a little additional +collateral----" + +"Why don't you borrow it, then?" + +"There is no necessity if you will temporarily transfer----" + +"_Can_ you borrow it? Or is the ice in your trust company too rotten to +stand the strain?" + +He flushed darkly and the temper began to escape in his voice: + +"Has anybody hinted that I couldn't? Have you been discussing my +personal business affairs with any of the pups whom you drag about at +your heels? No matter what your personal attitude toward me may be, only +a fool would undermine the very house that----" + +"I don't believe you understand, Jack," she said quietly; "I care +absolutely nothing about your house." + +"Well, you care about your own social status, I suppose!" he retorted +sharply. + +"Not very much." + +"That's an imbecile thing to say!" + +"Is it?" She turned to the mirror and touched her powdered hair lightly +with both hands, and continued speaking with her back turned toward him: + +"I married you for love. Remember that. There was even something of it +alive in the roots, I think, until within a few days--in spite of what +you are, what you have done to me. Now the thing is dead. I can tell you +when it died, if you like." + +And as he said nothing: + +"It died when I came in late one evening, and, passing my corridor and a +certain locked door, I heard a young girl sobbing. Then it died." + +She turned on him, contemptuously indifferent, and surveyed him at her +leisure: + +"Your conduct to me has been such as to deliberately incite me to evil. +Your attitude has been a constant occult force, driving me toward it. By +the life you have led, and compelled me to lead, you have virtually set +a premium upon my infidelity. What you may have done, I don't know; what +you have done, even recently, I am not sure of. But I know this: you +took my life and made a parody of it. I never lived; I have been tempted +to. If the opportunity comes, I will." + +Dysart rose, his face red and distorted: + +"I thought young Mallett had taught you to live pretty rapidly!" he +said. + +"No," she replied, "you only thought other people thought so. That is +why you resented it. Your jealousy is of that sort--you don't care what +I am, but you do care what the world thinks I am. And that is all there +ever was to you--all there ever will be: desperate devotion to your +wretched little social status, which includes sufficient money and a +chaste wife to make it secure." + +She laughed; fastened a gardenia in her hair: + +"I don't know about your money, and I don't care. As for your wife, she +will remain chaste as long as it suits her, and not one fraction of a +second longer." + +"Are you crazy?" he demanded. + +"Why, it does seem crazy to you, I suppose--that a woman should have no +regard for the sacredness of your social status. I have no regard for +it. As for your honour"--she laughed unpleasantly--"I've never had it to +guard, Jack. And I'll be responsible for my own, and the tarnishing of +it. I think that is all I have to say." + +She walked leisurely toward the door, passing him with a civil nod of +dismissal, and left him standing there in his flower-embroidered +court-dress, the electric light shining full on the thin gray hair at +his temples. + +In the corridor she met Naïda, charming in her blossom-embroidered +panniers; and she took both her hands and kissed her, saying: + +"Perhaps you won't care to have me caress you some day, so I'll take +this opportunity, dear. Where is your brother?" + +"Duane is dressing," she said. "What did you mean by my not wishing to +kiss you some day?" + +"Nothing, silly." And she passed on, turned to the right, and met Sylvia +Quest, looking very frail and delicate in her bath-robe and powdered +hair. The girl passed her with the same timid, almost embarrassed little +inclination with which she now invariably greeted her, and Rosalie +turned and caught her, turning her around with a laugh. "What is the +matter, dear?" + +"M-matter?" stammered Sylvia, trembling under the reaction. + +"Yes. You are not very friendly, and I've always liked you. Have I +offended you, Sylvia?" + +She was looking smilingly straight into the blue eyes. + +"No--oh, no!" said the girl hastily. "How can you think that, Mrs. +Dysart?" + +"Then I don't think it," replied Rosalie, laughing. "You are a trifle +pale, dear. Touch up your lips a bit. It's very Louis XVI. See mine?... +Will you kiss me, Sylvia?" + +Again a strange look flickered in the girl's eyes; Rosalie kissed her +gently; she had turned very white. + +"What is your costume?" asked Mrs. Dysart. + +"Flame colour and gold." + +"Hell's own combination, dear," laughed Rosalie. "You will make an +exquisite little demon shepherdess." + +And she went on, smiling back at the girl in friendly fashion, then +turned and lightly descended the stairway, snapping on her loup-mask +before the jolly crowd below could identify her. + +Masked figures here and there detained her, addressing her in disguised +voices, but she eluded them, slipped through the throngs on terrace and +lawn, ran down the western slope and entered the rose-garden. A man in +mask and violet-gray court costume rose from a marble seat under the +pergola and advanced toward her, the palm of his left hand carelessly +balanced on his gilded hilt. + +"So you did get my note, Duane?" she said, laying her pretty hand on his +arm. + +"I certainly did. What can I do for you, Rosalie?" + +"I don't know. Shall we sit here a moment?" + +He laughed, but continued standing after she was seated. + +The air was heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks +and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and +very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring +and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and +everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out against +the foliage. + +The woman beside him sat with masked head bent and slightly turned from +him; her restless hands worried her fan; her satin-shod feet were +crossed and recrossed. + +"What is the matter?" he asked. + +"Life. It's all so very wrong." + +"Oh," he said, smiling, "so it's life that is amiss, not we!" + +"I suppose we are.... I suppose I am. But, Duane"--she turned and looked +at him--"I haven't had much of a chance yet--to go very right or very +wrong." + +"You've had chances enough for the latter," he said with an unpleasant +laugh. "In this sweet coterie we inhabit, there's always that chance." + +"There are good women in it, good wives. Your sister is in it." + +"Yes, and I mean to take her out," said Duane grimly. "Do you think I +want Naïda to marry some money-fattened pup in this set?" + +"Where can you take her?" + +"Where I'm going in future myself--among people whose brains are not as +obsolete as my appendix; where there still exist standards and +old-fashioned things like principles and religion, and a healthy terror +of the Decalogue!" + +"Is anybody really still afraid of the Decalogue?" she asked curiously. + +"Even we are, but some of us are more afraid of ennui. Fire and fear are +the greatest purifiers in the world; it's fear of some sort or other, +and only fear, that keeps the world as decent as it is." + +"I'm not afraid," she said, playing with her fan. "I'm only afraid of +dying before I have lived at all." + +"What do you call living?" + +"Being loved," she said, and looked up at him. + +"You poor little thing!" he said, only partly in earnest. + +"Yes, I'm sorry for the girl I was.... I was rather a nice girl, Duane. +You remember me before I married." + +"Yes, I do. You were a corker. You are still." + +She nodded: "Yes, outwardly. Within is--nothing. I am very, very old; +very tired." + +He said no more. She sat listlessly watching the dusk-moths hovering +among the pinks. Far away in the darkness rockets were rising, spraying +the sky with fire; faint strains of music came from the forest. + +"Their Fête Galante has begun," she said. "Am I detaining you too long, +Duane?" + +"No." + +She smiled: "It is rather amusing," she observed, "my coming to you for +my morals--to you, Duane, who were once supposed to possess so few." + +"Never mind what I possess," he said, irritated. "What sort of advice do +you expect?" + +"Why, moral advice, of course." + +"Oh! Are you on the verge of demoralisation?" + +"I don't know. Am I?... There is a man----" + +"Of course," he said, coming as near a sneer as he was capable. "I know +what you've done. You've nearly twisted poor Grandcourt's head off his +honest neck. If you want to know what I think of it, it's an abominable +thing to do. Why, anybody can see that the man is in love with you, and +desperately unhappy already, I told you to let him alone. You promised, +too." + +He spoke rapidly, sharply; she bent her fair head in silence until he +ended. + +"May I defend myself?" she asked. + +"Of course." + +"Then--I did not mean to make him care for me." + +"You all say that." + +"Yes; we are not always as innocent as I happen to be this time. I +really did not try, did not think, that he was taking a little +unaccustomed kindness on my part so seriously ... I overdid it; I'd been +beastly to him--most women are rude to Delancy Grandcourt, somehow or +other. I always was. And one day--that day in the forest--somehow +something he said opened my eyes--hurt me.... And women are fools to +believe him one. Why, Duane, he's every inch a man--high-minded, +sensitive, proud, generous, forbearing." + +Duane turned and stared at her; and to her annoyance the blood mounted +to her cheeks, but she went on: + +"Of course he has affected me. I don't know how it might have been with +me if I were not so--so utterly starved." + +"You mean to say you are beginning to care for Delancy Grandcourt?" + +"Care? Yes--in a perfectly nice way----" + +"And otherwise?" + +"I--don't know. I am honest with you, Duane; I don't know. A--a little +devotion of that kind"--she tried to laugh--"goes to my head, perhaps. +I've been so long without it.... I don't know. And I came here to tell +you. I came here to ask you what I ought to do." + +"Good Lord!" said Duane, "do you already care enough for him to worry +about your effect on him?" + +"I--do not wish him to be unhappy." + +"Oh. But you are willing to be unhappy in order to save him any +uneasiness. See here, Rosalie, you'd better pull up sharp." + +"Had I?" + +"Certainly," he said brutally. "Not many days ago you were adrift. Don't +cut your cable again." + +A vivid colour mounted to her temples: + +"That is all over," she said. "Have I not come to you again in spite of +the folly that sent me drifting to you before? And can I pay you a truer +compliment, Duane, than to ask the hospitality of your forbearance and +the shelter of your friendship?" + +"You _are_ a trump, Rosalie," he said, after a moment's scowling. +"You're all right.... I don't know what to say.... If it's going to give +you a little happiness to care for this man----" + +"But what will it do to him, Duane?" + +"It ought to do him good if such a girl as you gives him all of herself +that she decently can. I don't know whether I'm right or wrong!" he +added almost angrily. "Confound it! there seems no end to conjugal +infelicity around us these days. I don't know where the line is--how +close to the danger mark an unhappy woman may drift and do no harm to +anybody. All I know is that I'm sorry--terribly sorry for you. You're a +corker." + +"Thanks," she said with a faint smile. "Do you think Delancy may safely +agree with you without danger to his peace of mind?" + +"Why not? After all, you're entitled to lawful happiness. So is he.... +Only----" + +"Only--what?" + +"I've never seen it succeed." + +"Seen what succeed?" + +"What is popularly known as the platonic." + +"Oh, this isn't _that_," she said naïvely. "He's rather in love already, +and I'm quite sure I could be if I--I let myself." + +Duane groaned. + +"Don't come to me asking what to do, then," he said impatiently, +"because I know what you ought to do and I don't know what I'd do under +the circumstances. You know as well as I do where the danger mark is. +Don't you?" + +"I--suspect." + +"Well, then----" + +"Oh, we haven't reached it yet," she said innocently. + +Her honesty appalled him, and he got up and began to pace the gravel +walk. + +"Do you intend to cross it?" he asked, halting abruptly. + +"No, I don't.... I don't want to.... Do you think there is any fear of +it?" + +"My Lord!" he said in despair, "you talk like a child. I'm trying to +realise that you women--some of you who appear so primed with doubtful, +worldly wisdom--are practically as innocent as the day you married." + +"I don't know very much about some things, Duane." + +"I notice that," he said grimly. + +She said very gravely: "This is the first time I have ever come very +near caring for a man.... I mean since I married." And she rose and +glanced toward the forest. + +They stood together for a moment, listening to the distant music, then, +without speaking, turned and walked toward the distant flare of light +which threw great trees into tangled and grotesque silhouette. + +"Tales of the Geneii," she murmured, fastening her loup; "Fate is the +Sultan. Pray God nobody cuts my head off." + +"You are much too amusing," he said as, side by side, they moved +silently on through the pale starlight, like errant phantoms of a +vanished age, and no further word was said between them, nor did they +look at each other again until, ahead, the road turned silvery under the +rays of the Lodge acetylenes, and beyond, the first cluster of brilliant +lanterns gleamed among the trees. + +"And here we separate," she said. "Good-bye," holding out her hand. "It +is my first rendezvous. Wish me a little happiness, please." + +"Happiness and--good sense," he said, smiling. He retained her hand for +a second, let it go and, stepping back, saluted her gaily as she passed +before him into the blaze of light. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +FÊTE GALANTE + + +The forest, in every direction, was strung with lighted lanterns; tall +torches burning edged the Gray Water, and every flame rippled straight +upward in the still air. + +Through the dark, mid-summer woodland music of violin, viola, and +clarionet rang out, and the laughter and jolly uproar of the dancers +swelled and ebbed, with now and then sudden intervals of silence slowly +filled by the far noise of some unseen stream rushing westward under the +stars. + +Glade, greensward, forest, aisles, and the sylvan dancing floor, bounded +by garlanded and beribboned pillars, swarmed with a gay company. +Torchlight painted strange high lights on silken masks, touching with +subdued sparkles the eyes behind the slanting eye-slits; half a thousand +lanterns threw an orange radiance across the glade, bathing the whirling +throngs of dancers, glimmering on gilded braid and sword hilt, on +powdered hair, on fresh young faces laughing behind their masks; on +white shoulders and jewelled throats, on fan and brooch and spur and +lacquered heel. There was a scent of old-time perfume in the air, and, +as Duane adjusted his mask and drew near, he saw that sets were already +forming for the minuet. + +He recognised Dysart, glorious in silk and powder, perfectly in his +element, and doing his part with eighteenth-century elaboration; +Kathleen, très grande-dame, almost too exquisitely real for counterfeit; +Delancy Grandcourt, very red in the face under his mask, wig slightly +awry, conscientiously behaving as nearly like a masked gentleman of the +period as he knew how; his sister Naïda, sweet and gracious; Scott, +masked and also spectacled, grotesque and preoccupied, casting patient +glances toward the dusky solitudes that he much preferred, and from +whence a distant owl fluted at intervals, inviting his investigations. + +And there were the Pink 'uns, too, easily identified, having all sorts +of a good time with a pair of maskers resembling Doucette Landon and +Peter Tappan; and there in powder, paint, and patch capered the +Beekmans, Ellises, and Montrosses--all the clans of the great and +near-great of the country-side, gathering to join the eternal hunt for +happiness where already the clarionets were sounding "Stole Away." + +For the quarry in that hunt is a spectre; sighted, it steals away; and +if one remains very, very still and listens, one may hear, far and +faint, the undertone of phantom horns mocking the field that rides so +gallantly. + +"Stole away," whispered Duane in Kathleen's ear, as he paused beside +her; and she seemed to know what he meant, for she nodded, smiling: + +"You mean that what we hunt is doomed to die when we ride it down?" + +"Let us be in at the death, anyway," he said. "Kathleen, you're charming +and masked to perfection. It's only that white skin of yours that +betrays you; it always looks as though it were fragrant. Is that +Geraldine surrounded three deep--over there under that oak-tree?" + +"Yes; why are you so late, Duane? And I haven't seen Rosalie, either." + +He did not care to enlighten her, but stood laughing and twirling his +sword-knot and looking across the glittering throng, where a daintily +masked young girl stood defending herself with fan and bouquet against +the persistence of her gallants. Then he shook out the lace at his +gilded cuffs, dropped one palm on his sword-hilt, saluted Kathleen's +finger-tips with graceful precision, and sauntered toward Geraldine, +dusting his nose with his filmy handkerchief--a most convincing replica +of the bland epoch he impersonated. + +As for Geraldine, she was certainly a very lovely incarnation of that +self-satisfied and frivolous century; her success had already excited +her a little; men seemed suddenly to have gone quite mad about her; and +this and her own beauty were taking effect on her, producing an effect +the more vivid, perhaps, because it was a reaction from the perplexities +and tears of yesterday and the passionate tension of the morning. + +Within her breast the sense of impending pleasure stirred and fluttered +deliciously with every breath of music; the confused happiness of being +in love, the relief in relaxation from a sterner problem, the noisy +carnival surging, rioting around her, men crowding about her, eager in +admiration and rivalry, the knowledge of her own loveliness--all these +set the warm blood racing through every vein, and tinted lip and cheek +with a colour in brilliant contrast to the velvety masked eyes and the +snow of the slender neck. + +Through the gay tumult which rang ceaselessly around her, where she +stood, plying her painted fan, her own laughter sounded at intervals, +distinct in its refreshing purity, for it had always that crystalline +quality under a caressing softness; but Duane, who had advanced now to +the outer edge of the circle, detected in her voice no hint of that +thrilling undertone which he had known, which he alone among men had +ever awakened. Her gaiety was careless, irresponsible, childlike in its +clarity; under her crescent mask the smiles on her smooth young face +dawned and died out, brief as sun-spots flashing over snow. Briefer +intervals of apparent detachment from everything succeeded them; a +distrait survey of the lantern-lit dancers, a preoccupied glance at the +man speaking to her, a lifting of the delicate eyebrows in smiling +preoccupation. But always behind the black half-mask her eyes wandered +throughout the throng as though seeking something hidden; and on her +vivid lips the smile became fixed. + +Whether or not she had seen him, Duane could not tell, but presently, as +he forced a path toward her, she stirred, closed her fan, took a step +forward, head a trifle lowered; and right of way was given her, as she +moved slowly through the cluster of men, shaking her head in vexation to +the whispered importunities murmured in her ear, answering each +according to his folly--this man with a laugh, that with a gesture of +hand or shoulder, but never turning to reply, never staying her feet +until, passing close to Duane, and not even looking at him: + +"Where on earth have you been, Duane?" + +"How did you know me?" he said, laughing; "you haven't even looked at me +yet." + +"On peut voir sans regarder, Monsieur. Nous autres demoiselles, nous +voyons très bien, très bien ... et nous ne regardons jamais." + +[Illustration: "She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous +courtesy"] + +She had paused, still not looking directly at him. Then she lifted her +head. + +"Everybody has asked me to dance; I've said yes to everybody, but I've +waited for you," she said. "It will be that way all my life, I think." + +"It has been that way with me, too," he said gaily. "Why should we wait +any more?" + +"Why are you so late?" she asked. She had missed Rosalie, too, but did +not say so. + +"I am rather late," he admitted carelessly; "can you give me this +dance?" + +She stepped nearer, turning her shoulder to the anxious lingerers, who +involuntarily stepped back, leaving a cleared space around them. + +"Make me your very best bow," she whispered, "and take me. I've promised +a dozen men, but it doesn't matter." + +He said in a low voice, "You darling!" and made her a very wonderful +bow, and she dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous +courtesy, and, rising, laid her fingers on his embroidered sleeve. Then +turning, head held erect, and with a certain sweet insolence in the +droop of her white lids, she looked at the men around her. + +Gray said in a low voice to Dysart: "That's as much as to admit that +they're engaged, isn't it? When a girl doesn't give a hoot what she does +to other men, she's nailed, isn't she?" + +Dysart did not answer; Rosalie, passing on Grandcourt's arm, caught the +words and turned swiftly, looking over her shoulder at Geraldine. + +But Geraldine and Duane had already forgotten the outer world; around +them the music swelled; laughter and voice grew indistinct, receding, +blending in the vague tumult of violins. They gazed upon each other +with vast content. + +"As a matter of fact," said Duane, "I don't remember very well how to +dance a minuet. I only wanted to be with you. We'll sit it out if you're +afraid I'll make a holy show of you." + +"Oh, dear," said Geraldine in pretty distress, "and I let you beguile me +when I'm dying to do this minuet. Duane, you _must_ try to remember! +_Everybody_ will be watching us." And as her quick ear caught the +preliminary bars of the ancient and stately measure: + +"It's the Menuet d'Exaudet," she said hurriedly; "listen, I'll instruct +you as we move; I'll sing it under my breath to the air of the violins," +and, her hand in his, she took the first slow, dainty step in the +old-time dance, humming the words as they moved forward: + + "Gravement + Noblement + On s'avance; + On fait trois pas de côté + Deux battus, un jeté + Sans rompre la cadence----" + +Then whispered, smiling: + +"You are quite perfect, Duane; keep your head level, dear: + + "Chassez + Rechassez + En mesure! + Saluez-- + Gravement + Noblement + On s'avance + Sans rompre la cadence. + +"Quite perfect, my handsome cavalier! Oh, we are doing it most +beautifully"--with a deep, sweeping reverence; then rising, as he lifted +her finger-tips: "You are stealing the rest of my heart," she said. + +"Our betrothal dance," he whispered. "Shall it be so, dear?" + +They looked at each other as though they stood there alone; the lovely +old air of the Menuet d'Exaudet seemed to exhale from the tremulous +violins like perfume floating through the woods; figures of masked +dancers passed and repassed them through the orange-tinted glow; there +came a vast rustle of silk, a breezy murmur, the scented wind from +opening fans, the rattle of swords, and the Menuet d'Exaudet ended with +a dull roll of kettle-drums. + +A few minutes later he had her in his arms in a deliciously wild waltz, +a swinging, irresponsible, gipsy-like thing which set the blood coursing +and pulses galloping. + +Every succeeding dance she gave to him. Now and then a tiny cloud of +powder-dust floated from her hair; a ribbon from her shoulder-knot +whipped his face; her breath touched his lips; her voice, at intervals, +thrilled and caressed his ears, a soft, breathless voice, which mounting +exaltation had made unsteadily sweet. + +"You know--dear--I'm dancing every dance with you--in the teeth of +decency, the face of every convention, and defiance of every law of +hospitality. I belong to my guests." + +And again: + +"Do you know, Duane, there's a sort of a delicious madness coming over +me. I'm all trembling under my skin with the overwhelming happiness of +it all. I tell you it's intoxicating me because I don't know how to +endure it." + +He caught fire at her emotion; her palm was burning in his, her breath +came irregularly, lips and cheeks were aflame, as they came to a +breathless halt in the torchlight. + +"Dear," she faltered, "I simply _must_ be decent to my guests.... I'm +dying to dance with you again, but I can't be so rude.... Oh, goodness! +here they come, hordes of them. I'll give them a dance or two--anybody +who speaks first, and then you'll come and find me, won't you?... Isn't +that enough to give them--two or three dances? Isn't that doing my duty +as chatelaine sufficiently?" + +"Don't give them any," he said with conviction. "They'll know we're +engaged if you don't----" + +"Oh, Duane! We are only--only provisionally engaged," she said. "I am +only on probation, dear. You know it can't be announced until I--I'm fit +to marry you----" + +"What nonsense!" he interrupted, almost savagely. "You're winning out; +and even if you are not, I'll marry you, anyway, and make you win!" + +"We have talked that over----" + +"Yes, and it is settled!" + +"No, Duane----" + +"I tell you it is!" + +"No. Hush! Somebody might overhear us. Quick, dear, here comes Bunny and +Reggie Wye and Peter Tappan, all mad as hatters. I've behaved abominably +to them! Will you find me after the third dance? Very well; tell me you +love me then--whisper it, quick!... Ah-h! Moi aussi, Monsieur. And, +remember, after the third dance!" + +She turned slowly from him to confront an aggrieved group of masked +young men, who came up very much hurt, clamouring for justice, +explaining volubly that it was up to her to keep her engagements and +dance with somebody besides Duane Mallett. + +"Mon Dieu, Messieurs, je ne demanderais pas mieux," she said gaily. "Why +didn't somebody ask me before?" + +"You promised us each a dance," retorted Tappan sulkily, "but you never +made good. I'll take mine now if you don't mind----" + +"I'm down first!" insisted the Pink 'un. + +They squabbled over her furiously; Bunbury Gray got her; she swung away +into a waltz on his arm, glancing backward at Duane, who watched her +until she disappeared in the whirl of dancers. Then he strolled to the +edge of the lantern-lit glade, stood for a moment looking absently at +the shadowy woods beyond, and presently sauntered into the luminous +dusk, which became darker and more opaque as he left the glare of the +glade behind. + +Here and there fantastic figures loomed, moving slowly, two and two, +under the fairy foliage; on the Gray Water canoes strung with gaudy +paper lanterns drifted; clouds of red fire rolled rosy and vaporous +along the water's edge; and in the infernal glow, hazy shapes passed and +repassed, finding places among scores of rustic tables, where servants +in old-time livery and powdered wigs hurried to and fro with ices and +salads, and set the white-covered tables with silverware and crystal. + +A dainty masked figure in demon red flitted across his path in the +uncanny radiance. He hailed her, and she turned, hesitated, then, as +though convinced of his identity, laughed, and hastened on with a nod +of invitation. + +"Where are you going, pretty mask?" he inquired, wending his pace and +trying to recognise the costume in the uncertain cross light. + +But she merely laughed and continued to retreat before him, keeping the +distance between them, hastening her steps whenever he struck a faster +gait, pausing and looking back at him with a mocking smile when his +steps slackened; a gracefully malicious, tormenting, laughing creature +of lace and silk, whose retreat was a challenge, whose every movement +and gesture seemed instinct with the witchery of provocation. + +On the edge of the ring of tables she paused, picked up a goblet, held +it out to a passing servant, who immediately filled the glass. + +Then, before Duane could catch her, she drained the goblet to his health +and fled into the shadows, he hard on her heels, pressing her closer, +closer, until the pace became too hot for her, and she turned to face +him, panting and covering her masked face with her fan. + +"Now, my fair unknown, we shall pay a few penalties," he said with +satisfaction; but she defended herself so adroitly that he could not +reach her mask. + +"Be fair to me," she gasped at last; "why are you so rough with me +when--when you need not be? I knew you at once, Jack." + +And she dropped her arms, standing resistless, breathing fast, her +masked face frankly upturned to be kissed. + +"Now, who the devil," thought Duane, "have I got in my arms? And for +whom does she take me?" + +He gazed searchingly into the slitted eye-holes; the eyes appeared to be +blue, as well as he could make out. He looked at the fresh laughing +mouth, a young, sensitive mouth, which even in laughter seemed not +entirely gay. + +"Don't you really mind if I kiss you?" He spoke in a whisper to disguise +his voice. + +"Isn't it a little late to ask me that?" she said; and under her mask +the colour stained her skin. "I think what we do now scarcely matters." + +She was so confident, so plainly awaiting his caress, that for a moment +he was quite ready to console her. And did not, could not, with the +fragrant and yielding intimacy of Geraldine still warm in his quickened +heart. + +She stood quite motionless, her little hands warm in his, her masked +face upturned. And, as he merely stared at her: + +"What is the matter, Jack?" she breathed. "Why do you look at me so +steadily?" + +He ought to have let her go then; he hesitated, wondering which Jack she +supposed him to be; and before he realised it her arms were on his +shoulders, her mouth nearer to his. + +"Jack, you frighten me! What is it?" + +"N-nothing," he continued to stammer. + +"Yes, there is. Does your--your wife suspect--anything----" + +"No, she doesn't," said Duane grimly, trying to free himself without +seeming to. "I've got an appointment----" + +But the girl said piteously: "It isn't--Geraldine, is it?" + +"_What_!" + +"You--you admitted that she attracted you--for a little while.... Oh, I +_did_ forgive you, Jack; truly I did with all my miserable heart! I was +so fearfully unhappy--I would have done anything." ... Her face flushed +scarlet. "And I--did.... But you do love me, don't you?" And the next +moment her lips were on his with a sob. + +Duane reached back and quietly unclasped her fingers. Then very gently +he forced her to a seat on a great fallen log. Still looking up at him, +droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay début with him, she naïvely +slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her +pretty blue eyes. Sylvia Quest! + +The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt +vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over +him swept a startled sequence of emotions--bitter contempt for Dysart, +scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred +it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had +unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated; +succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame +and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never +know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself. + +"If I tell you that all is well--and if I tell you no more than that," +he whispered, "will you trust me?" + +"Have I not done so, Jack?" + +The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury. + +"Then wait here until I return," he said. "Promise." + +"I promise," she sighed, "but I don't understand. I'm a--a little +frightened, dear. But I--believe you." + +He swung on his heel and made toward the lights once more, and a moment +later the man he sought passed within a few feet of him, and Duane knew +him by his costume, which was a blue replica of his own gray silks. + +"Dysart!" he said sharply. + +The masked figure swung gracefully around and stood still, searching the +shadowy woodland inquiringly. + +"I want a word with you. Here--not in the light, if you please. You +recognise my voice, don't you?" + +"Is that you, Mallett?" asked Dysart coldly, as the former appeared in +the light for an instant and turned back again with a curt gesture. + +"Yes. I want you to step over here among the trees, where nobody can +interrupt us." + +Dysart followed more slowly; came to a careless halt: + +"Well, what the devil do you want?" he demanded insolently. + +"I'll tell you. I've had an encounter with a mask who mistook me for +you.... And she has said--several things--under that impression. She +still believes that I am you. I asked her to wait for me over there by +those oaks. Do you see where I mean?" He pointed and Dysart nodded +coolly. "Well, then, I want you to go back there--find her, and act as +though it had been you who heard what she said, not I." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean exactly that. The girl ought never to know that what she said +was heard and--and _understood_, Dysart, by any man in the world except +the blackguard I'm telling this to. Now, do you understand?" + +He stepped nearer: + +"The girl is Sylvia Quest. _Now_, do you understand, damn you!" + +A stray glimmer from the distant lanterns fell across Dysart's masked +visage. The skin around the mouth was loose and ashy, the dry lips +worked. + +"That was a dirty trick of yours," he stammered; "a scoundrelly thing to +do." + +"Do you suppose that I dreamed for an instant that she was convicting +herself and you?" said Duane in bitter contempt. "Go and manufacture +some explanation of my conduct as though it were your own. Let her have +that much peace of mind, anyway." + +"You young sneak!" retorted Dysart. "I suppose you think that what you +have heard will warrant your hanging around my wife. Try it and see." + +"Good God, Dysart!" he said, "I never thought you were anything more +vicious than what is called a 'dancing man.' What are you, anyhow?" + +"You'll learn if you tamper with my affairs," said Dysart. He whipped +off his mask and turned a corpse-like visage on the younger man. Every +feature of his face had altered: his good looks were gone, the youth in +his eyes had disappeared, only a little evil lustre played over them; +and out of the drawn pallor Duane saw an old man peering, an old man's +lips twitching back from uneven and yellowed teeth. + +"Mallett," he said, "you listen to me. Keep your investigating muzzle +out of my affairs; forget what you've ferreted out; steer clear of me +and mine. I want no scandal, but if you raise a breath of it you'll have +enough concerning yourself to occupy you. Do you understand?" + +"No," said Duane mechanically, staring at the man before him. + +"Well, then, to be more precise, if you lift one finger to injure me +you'll cut a figure in court.... And you can marry her later." + +"Who?" + +"My wife. I don't think Miss Seagrave will stand for what I'll drag you +through if you don't keep clear of me!" + +Duane gazed at him curiously: + +"So _that_ is what you are, Dysart," he said aloud to himself. + +Dysart's temples reddened. + +"Yes, and then some!... I understand that you have given yourself the +privilege of discussing my financial affairs in public. Have you?" + +Duane said in a dull voice: "The Algonquin Trust was mentioned, I +believe. I did say that you are a director." + +"You said I was hard hit and that the Clearing House meant to weed out a +certain element that I represented in New York." + +"I did not happen to say that," said Duane wearily, "but another man +did." + +"Oh. _You_ didn't say it?" + +"No. I don't lie, Dysart." + +"Then add to that negative virtue by keeping your mouth shut," said +Dysart between his teeth, "or you'll have other sorts of suits on your +hands. I warn you now to keep clear of me and mine." + +"Just what _is_ yours?" inquired Duane patiently. + +"You'll find out if you touch it." + +"Oh. Is--is Miss Quest included by any hazard? Because if the right +chance falls my way, I shall certainly interfere." + +"If you do, I shall begin suit for alienation within twenty-four +hours." + +"Oh, no, you won't. You're horribly afraid, Dysart. This grimacing of +yours is fear. All you want is to be let alone, to burrow through the +society that breeds your sort. Like a maggot in a chestnut you feed on +what breeds you. I don't care. Feed! What bred you is as rotten as you +are. I'm done with it--done with all this," turning his head toward the +flare of light. "Go on and burrow. What nourishes you can look out for +itself.... Only"--he wheeled around and looked into the darkness where, +unseen, Sylvia Quest awaited him--"only, in this set, the young have +less chance than the waifs of the East Side." + +He walked slowly up to Dysart and struck him across the face with open +palm. + +"Break with that girl or I'll break your head," he said. + +Dysart was down on the leaves, struggling up to his knees, then to his +feet, the thin blood running across his chin. The next instant he sprang +at Duane, who caught him by both arms and forced him savagely into +quivering inertia. + +"Don't," he said. "You're only a thing that dances. Don't move, I tell +you.... Wipe that blood off and go and set the silly girl's heart at +rest.... And keep away from her afterward. Do you hear?" + +He set his teeth and shook him so wickedly that Dysart's head rolled and +his wig fell off. + +"I know something of your sloppy record," he continued, still shaking +him; "I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is +generally understood that you're as sexless as any other of your kind. I +thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of _me_ and _mine_, +Dysart.... And that will be about all." + +He left him planted against a tree and walked toward the lights once +more, breathing heavily and in an ugly mood. + +On the edge of the glade, just outside the lantern glow, he stood +sombre, distrait, inspecting the torn lace on his sleeve, while all +around him people were unmasking amid cries of surprise and shouts of +laughter, and the orchestra was sounding a march, and multicoloured +Bengal fires rolled in clouds from the water's edge, turning the woods +to a magic forest and the people to tinted wraiths. + +Behind him he heard Rosalie's voice, caressing, tormenting by turns; +and, glancing around for her victim, beheld Grandcourt at heel in +calflike adoration. + +Kathleen's laughter swung him the other way. + +"Oh, Duane," she cried, the pink of excitement in her cheeks, "isn't it +all too heavenly! It looks like Paradise afire with all those rosy +clouds rolling under foot. Have you ever seen anything quite as +charming?" + +"It's rotten," said Duane brusquely, tearing the tattered lace free and +tossing it aside. + +"Wh-what!" she exclaimed. + +"I say it's all rotten," he repeated, looking up at her. "All this--the +whole thing--the stupidity of it--the society that's driven to these +kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads--ennui! Look at +us all! For God's sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our +pinchbeck mummery--forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, +polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I'm sick +of it!" + +"Duane!" + +"Oh, yes; I'm one of 'em--dragging my idleness and viciousness and my +stupidity and my money at my heels. I tell you, Kathleen, this is no +good. There's a stench of money everywhere; there's a staler aroma in +the air, too--the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of +stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I'm deadly tired +of it--of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, +whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouetting along the danger +mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of the +overgroomed men who can do nothing except what can be done with money, +who think nothing, know nothing, sweat nothing but money and what it can +buy--like horses and yachts and prima donnas----" + +She uttered a shocked exclamation, but he went on: + +"Yes, prima donnas. Which of our friends was it who bought that pretty +one that sang in 'La Esmeralda'?" + +"Duane!" she exclaimed in consternation; but he took her protesting +hands in his and held her powerless. + +"You happen to be a darling," he said; "but you were not born to this +environment. Geraldine was--and she is a darling. God bless her. Outside +of my sister, Naïda, and you two--with the exception of the newly +fledged and as yet mercifully unregurgitated with vicious wisdom--who +are all these people? Ciphers, save for their balances at their banks; +nameless, save for the noisy reiteration of their hard-fisted forebears' +names; without any ambition, except financial and social; without any +objective, save the escape from ennui--without any taste, culture, +inspiration, except that of physical gratification! Oh, Lord, I'm one of +them, but I resign to-night." + +"Duane, you're quite mad," she said, wrenching her hands free and gazing +at him rather fearfully. + +"I think he's dead sensible," said a calm voice at her elbow; and Scott +Seagrave appeared, twirling his mask and blinking at them through his +spectacles. + +Duane laughed: "Of course I am, you old reptile-hunting, +butterfly-chasing antediluvian! But, come on; Byzantium is gorging its +diamond-swathed girth yonder with salad and champagne; and I'm hungry, +even if Kathleen isn't----" + +"I _am_!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Scott, can't you find Naïda and +Geraldine? Duane and I will keep a table until you return----" + +"I'll find them," said Duane; and he walked off among the noisy, +laughing groups, his progress greeted uproariously from table to table. +He found Naïda and Bunbury Gray, and they at once departed for the +rendezvous indicated. + +"Geraldine was here a little while ago," said Gray, "but she walked to +the lake with Jack Dysart. My, but she's hitting it up," he added +admiringly. + +"Hitting it up?" repeated Duane. + +"For a girl who never does, I mean. I imagine that she's a novice with +champagne. Champagne and Geraldine make a very fetching combination, I +can tell you." + +"She took no more than I," observed Naïda with a shrug; "one solitary +glass. If a girl happens to be high strung and ventures to laugh a +little, some wretched man is sure to misunderstand! Bunny, you're a +gadabout!" + +She made her way out from the maze of tables, Bunny following, somewhat +abashed; and Duane walked toward the shore, where dozens of lantern-hung +canoes bobbed, and the pasteboard cylinders of Bengal fire had burned +to smouldering sparks. + +In the dim light he came on the people he was looking for, seated on the +rocks. Dysart, at her feet, was speaking in an undertone; Geraldine, +partly turned away from him, hands clasped around her knees, was staring +steadily across the water. + +Neither rose as he came up; Dysart merely became mute; Geraldine looked +around with a start; her lips parted in a soundless, mechanical +greeting, then the flush in her cheeks brightened; and as she rose, +Dysart got onto his feet and stood silently facing the new arrival. + +"I said after the third dance, you know," she observed with an assumed +lightness that did not deceive him. And, as he made no answer, he saw +the faint flicker of fright in her eyes and the lower lip quiver. + +He said pleasantly, controlling his voice: "Isn't this after the third +dance? You are to be my partner for supper, I think." + +"A long time after; and I've already sat at Belshazzar's feast, thank +you. I couldn't very well starve waiting for you, could I?" And she +forced a smile. + +"Nevertheless, I must claim your promise," he said. + +There was a silence; she stood for a moment gazing at nothing, with the +same bright, fixed smile, then turned and glanced at Dysart. The glance +was his dismissal and he knew it. + +"If I must give you up," he said cheerfully, at his ease, "please +pronounce sentence." + +"I am afraid you really must, Mr. Dysart." + +There was another interval of constraint; then Dysart spoke. His +self-possession was admirable, his words perfectly chosen, his exit in +faultless taste. + +They looked after him until he was lost to view in the throngs beyond, +then the girl slowly reseated herself, eyes again fixed on the water, +hands clasped tightly upon her knee, and Duane found a place at her +elbow. So they began a duet of silence. + +The little wavelets came dancing shoreward out of the darkness, breaking +with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere +in the night a restless heron croaked and croaked among the willows. + +"Well, little girl?" he asked at last. + +"Well?" she inquired, with a calmness that did not mislead him. + +"I couldn't come to you after the third dance," he said. + +"Why?" + +He evaded the question: "When I came back to the glade the dancing was +already over; so I got Kathleen and Naïda to save a table." + +"Where had you been all the while?" + +"If you really wish to know," he said pleasantly, "I was talking to Jack +Dysart on some rather important matters. I did not realise how the time +went." + +She sat mute, head lowered, staring out across the dark water. Presently +he laid one hand over hers, and she straightened up with a tiny shock, +turned and looked him full in the eyes. + +"I'll tell you why you failed me--failed to keep the first appointment I +ever asked of you. It was because you were so preoccupied with a mask in +flame colour." + +He thought a moment: + +"Did you believe you saw me with somebody in a vermilion costume?" + +"Yes; I did see you. It was too late for me to retire without +attracting your attention. I was not a willing eavesdropper." + +"Who was the girl you thought you saw me with?" + +"Sylvia Quest. She unmasked. There is no mistake." + +So he was obliged to lie, after all. + +"It must have been Dysart you saw. His costume is very like mine, you +know----" + +"Does Jack Dysart stand for minutes holding Sylvia's hands--and is she +accustomed to place her hands on his shoulders, as though expecting to +be kissed? And does he kiss her?" + +So he had to lie again: "No, of course not," he said, smiling. "So it +could not have been Dysart." + +"There are only two costumes like yours and Mr. Dysart's. Do you wish me +to believe that Sylvia is common and depraved enough to put her arms +around the neck of a man who is married?" + +There was no other way: "No," he said, "Sylvia isn't that sort, of +course." + +"It was either Mr. Dysart or you." + +He said nothing. + +"Then it _was_ you!" in hot contempt. + +Still he said nothing. + +"Was it?" with a break in her voice. + +"Men can't admit things of that kind," he managed to say. + +The angry colour surged up to her cheeks, the angry tears started, but +her quivering lips were not under command and she could only stare at +him through the blur of grief, while her white hands clinched and +relaxed, and her fast-beating heart seemed to be driving the very breath +from her body. + +"Geraldine, dear----" + +"It wasn't fair!" she broke out fiercely; "there is no honour in you--no +loyalty! Oh, Duane! Duane! How could you--at the very moment we were +nearer together than we had ever been! It isn't jealousy that is crying +out in me; it is nothing common or ignoble in me that resents what you +have done! It is the treachery of it! How _could_ you, Duane?" + +The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was +to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go +to shield Sylvia Quest--this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation +was already at the mercy of two men? + +"Geraldine," he said, "it was nothing but a carnival flirtation--a +chance encounter that meant nothing--the idlest kind of----" + +"Is it idle to do what you did--and what she did? Oh, if I had only not +seen it--if I only didn't know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you. +Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out +the rest of his dance--and he saw it, too--and he was furious--he must +have been--because he's devoted to Sylvia." She made a hopeless gesture +and dropped her hand to her side: "What a miserable night it has been +for me! It's all spoiled--it's ended.... And I--my courage went.... I've +done what I never thought to do again--what I was fighting down to make +myself safe enough for you to marry--_you_ to marry!" She laughed, but +the mirth rang shockingly false. + +"You mean that you had one glass of champagne," he said. + +"Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I'll have some more presently. Does +it concern you?" + +"I think so, Geraldine." + +"You are wrong. Neither does what you've been doing concern me--the kind +of man you've been--the various phases of degradation you have +accomplished----" + +"What particular species of degradation?" he asked wearily, knowing that +Dysart was now bent on his destruction. "Never mind; don't answer, +Geraldine," he added, "because there's no use in trying to set myself +right; there's no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care +absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; +that if I have ever been unworthy of you--as God knows I have--it is a +bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you." + +"Shall we go back?" she said evenly. + +"Yes, if you wish." + +They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for +their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning +her back squarely on Duane. + +Naïda and Kathleen came across. + +"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister, +smothering a yawn. "I'm horribly sleepy. Duane, it's three o'clock. +Would you mind taking me across to the house?" + +He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the +splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were +Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink +'uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in +ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin. + +"I'm waiting, Duane," said Naïda plaintively. + +So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the +brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a +silvery lustre heralded the coming dawn. + + * * * * * + +When he returned, Geraldine was gone. At the house somebody said she had +come in with Kathleen, not feeling well. + +"The trouble with that girl," said a man whom he did not know, "is that +she's had too much champagne." + +"You lie," said Duane quietly. "Is that perfectly plain to you?" + +For a full minute the young man stood rigid, crimson, glaring at Duane. +Then, having the elements of decency in him, he said: + +"I don't know who you are, but you are perfectly right. I did lie. And +I'll see that nobody else does." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE LOVE OF THE GODS + + +Two days later the majority of the people had left Roya-Neh, and the +remainder were preparing to make their adieux to the young chatelaine by +proxy; for Geraldine had kept her room since the night of the masked +fête, and nobody except Kathleen and Dr. Bailey had seen her. + +"Fashionable fidgets," said Dr. Bailey, in answer to amiable inquiries; +"the girl has been living on her nerves, like the rest of you, only she +can't stand as much as you can." + +To Duane he said, in reply to persistent questions: + +"As a plain and unromantic proposition, young man, it may be her liver. +God alone knows with what young women stuff their bodies in those +bucolic solitudes." + +To Kathleen he said, after questioning her and listening in silence to +her guarded replies: + +"I don't know what is the matter, Mrs. Severn. The girl is extremely +nervous. She acts, to me, as though she had something on her mind, but +she insists that she hasn't. If I were to be here, I might come to some +conclusion within the next day or two." + +Which frightened Kathleen, and she asked whether anything serious might +be anticipated. + +"Not at all," he said. + +So, as he was taking the next train, there was nothing to do. He left a +prescription and whizzed away to the railroad station with the last +motor-load of guests. + +There remained only Duane, Rosalie Dysart, Grandcourt, and Sylvia Quest, +a rather subdued and silent group on the terrace, unresponsive to +Scott's unfeigned gaiety to find himself comparatively alone and free to +follow his own woodland predilections once more. + +"A cordial host you are," observed Rosalie; "you're guests are scarcely +out of sight before you break into inhuman chuckles." + +"Speed the parting," observed Scott, in excellent spirits; "that's the +truest hospitality." + +"I suppose your unrestrained laughter will be our parting portion in a +day or two," she said, amused. + +"No; I don't mind a few people. Do you want to come and look for +scarabs?" + +"Scarabs? Do you imagine you're in Egypt, my poor friend?" + +Scott sniffed: "Didn't you know we had a few living species around here? +Regular scarabs. Kathleen and I found three the other day--one a regular +beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and +copper tinted wing-covers. Do you want to help me hunt for some more? +You'll have to put on overshoes, for they're in the cow-yards." + +Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined. Later she opened a +shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about +the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves +without exciting comment. + +But there was nobody to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a +sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and +preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the +valley. Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come +up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which +linked the days of every summer for her. But Stuyvesant had not arrived; +and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not +too drunk to remember her. + +So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very +colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on +the remoter hills--not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive +look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the +stolen glance. + +As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair +of binoculars and informing the two people behind him--who were not +listening--that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a +thrasher at six hundred yards. + +Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart +information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from +the house. + +"How's Sis?" he inquired. + +"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane. + +"Could I see her?" he asked. + +Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at +that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring +for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, +resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned scarabs or +black-billed cuckoos. + +It had always been so with her; it would always be so. Long ago the +Seagrave twins had demanded all she had to give; now, if Geraldine asked +less, Scott exacted double. And she gave--how happily, only her Maker +and her conscience knew. + +Duane was still reading--or he had all the appearance of reading--when +Sylvia lifted her head from her hand and turned around with an effort +that cost her what colour had remained under the transparent skin of her +oval face. + +"Duane," she said, "it occurred to me just now that you might have +really mistaken what I said and did the other night." She hesitated, +nerving herself to encounter his eyes, lifted and levelled across the +top of his paper at her. + +He waited; she retained enough self-command to continue with an effort +at lightness: + +"Of course it was all carnival fun--my pretending to mistake you for Mr. +Dysart. You understood it, didn't you?" + +"Why, of course," he said, smiling. + +She went on: "I--don't exactly remember what I said--I was trying to +mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent +to pretend to be on--on such impossible terms with Mr. Dysart----" + +There was something too painful in her effort for him to endure. He said +laughingly, not looking at her: + +"Oh, I wasn't ass enough to be deceived, Sylvia. Don't worry, little +girl." And he resumed the study of his paper. + +Minutes passed--terrible minutes for one of them, who strove to find +relief in his careless reassurance, tried desperately to believe him, to +deceive that intuition which seldom fails her sex. + +He, with the print blurred and meaningless before him, sat miserable, +dumb with the sympathy he could not show, hot with the anger he dared +not express. He thought of Dysart as he had revealed himself, now gone +back to town to face that little crop of financial rumours concerning +the Algonquin that persisted so wickedly and would not be quieted. For +the first time in his life, probably, Dysart was compelled to endure the +discomforts of a New York summer--more discomforts this summer than mere +dust and heat and noise. For men who had always been on respectful +financial terms with Dysart and his string of banks and his Algonquin +enterprise were holding aloof from him; men who had figured for years in +the same columns of print where his name was so often seen as director +and trustee and secretary--fellow-members who served for the honour of +serving on boards of all sorts, charity boards, hospital, museum, civic +societies--these men, too, seemed to be politely, pleasantly, even +smilingly edging away from him in some indefinable manner. + +Which seemed to force him toward certain comparatively newcomers among +the wealthy financiers of the metropolis--brilliant, masterful, restless +men from the West, whose friendship in the beginning he had sought, +deeming himself farsighted. + +Now that his vision had become normally adjusted he cared less for this +intimacy which it was too late to break--at least this was not the time +to break it with money becoming unbelievably scarcer every day and a +great railroad man talking angrily, and another great railroad man +preaching caution at a time when the caution of the man in the Street +might mean something so serious to Dysart that he didn't care to think +about it. + +Dysart had gone back to New York in company with several pessimistic +gentlemen--who were very open about backing their fancy; and their fancy +fell on that old, ramshackle jade, Hard Times, by Speculation out of +Folly. According to them there was no hope of her being scratched or +left at the post. + +"She'll run like a scared hearse-horse," said young Grandcourt gloomily. +There was reason for his gloom. Unknown to his father he had invested +heavily in Dysart's schemes. It was his father's contempt that he feared +more than ruin. + +So Dysart had gone to town, leaving behind him the utter indifference of +a wife, the deep contempt of a man; and a white-faced girl alone with +her memories--whatever they might be--and her thoughts, which were +painful if one might judge by her silent, rigid abstraction, and the +lower lip which, at moments, escaped, quivering, from the close-set +teeth. + +When Duane rose, folding his paper with a carelessly pleasant word or +two, she looked up in a kind of naïve terror--like a child startled at +prospect of being left alone. It was curious how those adrift seemed +always to glide his way. It had always been so; even stray cats followed +him in the streets; unhappy dogs trotted persistently at his heels; many +a journey had he made to the Bide-a-wee for some lost creature's sake; +many a softly purring cat had he caressed on his way through life--many +a woman. + +As he strolled toward the eastern end of the terrace, Sylvia looked +after him; and, suddenly, unable to endure isolation, she rose and +followed as instinctively as her lesser sisters-errant. + +It was the trotting of little footsteps behind him on the gravel that +arrested him. A glance at her face was enough; vexed, shocked, yet every +sympathy instantly aroused, he resigned himself to whatever might be +required of him; and within him a bitter mirth stirred--acrid, +unpleasant; but his smile indicated only charmed surprise. + +"I didn't suppose you'd care for a stroll with me," he said; "it is +exceedingly nice of you to give me the chance." + +"I didn't want to be left alone," she said. + +"It is rather quiet here since our gay birds have migrated," he said in +a matter-of-fact way. "Which direction shall we take?" + +"I--don't care." + +"The woods?" + +"No," with a shudder so involuntary that he noticed it. + +"Well, then, we'll go cross country----" + +She looked at her thin, low shoes and then at him. + +"Certainly," he said, "that won't do, will it?" + +She shook her head. + +They were passing the Lodge now where his studio was and where he had +intended to pack up his canvases that afternoon. + +"I'll brew you a cup of tea if you like," he said; "that is, if it's not +too unconventional to frighten you." + +She smiled and nodded. Behind the smile her heavy thoughts throbbed on: +How much did this man know? How much did he suspect? And if he +suspected, how good he was in every word to her--how kind and gentle and +high-minded! And the anguish in her smile caused him to turn hastily to +the door and summon old Miller to bring the tea paraphernalia. + +There was nothing to look at in the studio; all the canvases lay roped +in piles ready for the crates; but Sylvia's gaze remained on them as +though even the rough backs of the stretchers fascinated her. + +"My father was an artist. After he married he did not paint. My mother +was very wealthy, you know.... It seems a pity." + +"What? Wealth?" he asked, smiling. + +"N-no. I mean it seems a little tragic to me that father never continued +to paint." + +Miller's granddaughter came in with the tea. She was a very little girl +with yellow hair and big violet eyes. After she had deposited +everything, she went over to Duane and held up her mouth to be kissed. +He laughed and saluted her. It was a reward for service which she had +suggested when he first came to Roya-Neh; and she trotted away in great +content. + +Sylvia's indifferent gaze followed her; then she sipped the tea Duane +offered. + +"Do you remember your father?" he asked pleasantly. + +"Why, yes. I was fourteen when he died. I remember mother, too. I was +seven." + +Duane said, not looking at her: "It's about the toughest thing that can +happen to a girl. It's tough enough on a boy." + +"It was very hard," she said simply. + +"Haven't you any relatives except your brother Stuyvesant--" he began, +and checked himself, remembering that a youthful aunt of hers had eloped +under scandalous circumstances, and at least one uncle was too notorious +even for the stomachs of the society that whelped him. + +She let it pass in silence, as though she had not heard. Later she +declined more tea and sat deep in her chair, fingers linked under her +chin, lids lowered. + +After a while, as she did not move or speak, he ventured to busy himself +with collecting his brushes, odds and ends of studio equipment. He +scraped several palettes, scrubbed up some palette-knives, screwed the +tops on a dozen tubes of colour, and fussed and messed about until there +seemed to be nothing further to do. So he came back and seated himself, +and, looking up, saw the big tears stealing from under her closed lids. + +He endured it as long as he could. Nothing was said. He leaned nearer +and laid his hand over hers; and at the contact she slipped from the +chair, slid to her knees, and laid her head on the couch beside him, +both hands covering her face, which had turned dead white. + +Minute after minute passed with no sound, no movement except as he +passed his hand over her forehead and hair. He knew what to do when +those who were adrift floated into Port Mallett. And sometimes he did +more than was strictly required, but never less. Toward sundown she +began to feel blindly for her handkerchief. He happened to possess a +fresh one and put it into her groping hand. + +When she was ready to rise she did so, keeping her back toward him and +standing for a while busy with her swollen eyes and disordered hair. + +"Before we go we must have tea together again," he said with perfectly +matter-of-fact cordiality. + +"Y-yes." The voice was very, very small. + +"And in town, too, Sylvia. I had no idea what a companionable girl you +are--how much we have in common. You know silence is the great test of +mutual confidence and understanding. You'll let me see you in town, +won't you?" + +"Yes." + +"That will be jolly. I suppose now that you and I ought to be thinking +about dressing for dinner." + +She assented, moved away a step or two, halted, and, still with her back +turned, held out her hand behind her. He took it, bent and kissed it. + +"See you at dinner," he said cheerfully. + +And she went out very quietly, his handkerchief pressed against her +eyes. + +He came back into the studio, swung nervously toward the couch, turned +and began to pace the floor. + +"Oh, Lord," he said; "the rottenness of it all--the utter rottenness." + + * * * * * + +Dinner that night was not a very gay function; after coffee had been +served, the small group seemed to disintegrate as though by some +prearrangement, Rosalie and Grandcourt finding a place for themselves in +the extreme western shadow of the terrace parapet, Kathleen returning to +the living-room, where she had left her embroidery. + +Scott, talking to Sylvia and Duane, continued to cast restless glances +toward the living-room until he could find the proper moment to get +away. And in a few minutes Duane saw him seated, one leg crossed over +the other, a huge volume on "Scientific Conservation of Natural +Resources" open on his knees, seated as close to Kathleen as he could +conveniently edge, perfectly contented, apparently, to be in her +vicinity. + +From moment to moment, as her pretty hands performed miracles in tinted +silks, she lifted her eyes and silently inspected the boy who sat +absorbed in his book. Perhaps old memories of a child seated in the +schoolroom made tender the curve of her lips as she turned again to her +embroidery; perhaps a sentiment more recent made grave the beautiful +lowered eyes. + +Sylvia, seated at the piano, idly improvising, had unconsciously drifted +into the "Menuet d'Exaudet," and Duane's heart began to quicken as he +stood listening and looking out through the open windows at the stars. + +How long he stood there he did not know; but when, at length, missing +the sound of the piano, he looked around, Sylvia was already on the +stairs, looking back at him as she moved upward. + +"Good-night," she called softly; "I am very tired," and paused as he +came forward and mounted to the step below where she waited. + +"Good-night, Miss Quest," he said, with that nice informality that women +always found so engaging. "If you have nothing better on hand in the +morning, let's go for a climb. I've discovered a wild-boar's nest under +the Golden Dome, and if you'd like to get a glimpse of the little, +furry, striped piglings, I think we can manage it." + +She thanked him with her eyes, held out her thin, graceful hand of a +schoolgirl, then turned slowly and continued her ascent. + +As he descended, Kathleen, looking up from her embroidery, made him a +sign, and he stood still. + +"Where are you going?" asked Scott, as she rose and passed him. + +"I'm coming back in a moment." + +Scott restlessly resumed his book, raising his head from time to time as +though listening for her return, fidgeting about, now examining the +embroidery she had left on the lamp-lit table, now listlessly running +over the pages that had claimed his close attention while she had been +near him. + +Across the hall, in the library, Duane stood absently twisting an +unlighted cigar, and Kathleen, her hand on his shoulder, eyes lifted in +sweet distress, was searching for words that seemed to evade her. + +He cut the knot without any emotion: + +"I know what you are trying to say, Kathleen. It is true that there has +been a wretched misunderstanding, but if I know Geraldine at all I know +that a mere misunderstanding will not do any permanent harm. It is +something else that--worries me." + +"Oh, Duane, I know! I know! She cannot marry you--in honour--until +that--that terrible danger is eliminated. She will not, either. +But--don't give her up! Be with her--with us in this crisis--during it! +See us through it, Duane; she is well worth what she costs us both--and +costs herself." + +"She must marry me now," he said. "I want to fight this thing with all +there is in me and in her, and in my love for her and hers for me. I +can't fight it in this blind, aloof way--this thing that is my +rival--that stands with its claw embedded in her body warning me back! +The horror of it is in the blind, intangible, abstract force that is +against me. I can't fight it aloof from her; I can't take her away from +it unless I have her in my arms to guard, to inspire, to comfort, to +watch. Can't you see, Kathleen, that I must have her every second of the +time?" + +"She will not let you run the risk," murmured Kathleen. "Duane, she had +a dreadful night--she broke down so utterly that it scared me. She is +horribly frightened; her nervous demoralisation is complete. For the +first time, I think, she is really terrified. She says it is hopeless, +that her will and nerve are undermined, her courage contaminated.... +Hour after hour I sat with her; she made me tell her about her +grandfather--about what I knew of the--the taint in her family." + +"Those things are merely predispositions," he said. "Self-command makes +them harmless." + +"I told her that. She says that they are living sparks that will +smoulder while life endures." + +"Suppose they are," he said; "they can never flame unless nursed.... +Kathleen, I want to see her----" + +"She will not." + +"Has she spoken at all of me?" + +"Yes." + +"Bitterly?" + +"Y-yes. I don't know what you did. She is very morbid just now, anyway; +very desperate. But I know that, unconsciously, she counts on an +adjustment of any minor personal difficulty with you.... She loves you +dearly, Duane." + +He passed an unsteady hand across his eyes. + +"She must marry me. I can't stand aloof from this battle any longer." + +"Duane, she will not. I--she said some things--she is morbid, I tell +you--and curiously innocent--in her thoughts--concerning herself and +you. She says she can never marry." + +"Exactly what did she say to you?" + +Kathleen hesitated; the intimacy of the subject left her undecided; then +very seriously her pure, clear gaze met his: + +"She will not marry, for your own sake, and for the sake of +any--children. She has evidently thought it all out.... I must tell you +how it is. There is no use in asking her; she will never consent, Duane, +as long as she is afraid of herself. And how to quiet that fear by +exterminating the reason for it I don't know--" Her voice broke +pitifully. "Only stand by us, Duane. Don't go away just now. You were +packing to go; but please don't leave me just yet. Could you arrange to +remain for a while?" + +"Yes, I'll arrange it.... I'm a little troubled about my father--" He +checked himself. "I could run down to town for a day or two and +return----" + +"Is Colonel Mallett ill?" she asked. + +"N-no.... These are rather strenuous times--or threaten to be. Of course +the Half-Moon is as solid as a rock. But even the very, very great are +beginning to fuss.... And my father is not young, Kathleen. So I thought +I'd like to run down and take him out to dinner once or twice--to a +roof-garden or something, you know. It's rather pathetic that men of his +age, grown gray in service, should feel obliged to remain in the +stifling city this summer." + +"Of course you must go," she said; "you couldn't even hesitate. Is your +mother worried?" + +"I don't suppose she has the slightest notion that there is anything to +worry over. And there isn't, I think. She and Naïda will be in the +Berkshires; I'll go up and stay with them later--when Geraldine is all +right again," he added cheerfully. + +Scott, fidgeting like a neglected pup, came wandering into the hall, +book in hand. + +"For the love of Mike," he said impatiently, "what have you two got to +talk about all night?" + +"My son," observed Duane, "there are a few subjects for conversation +which do not include the centipede and the polka-dotted dickey-bird. +These subjects Kathleen and I furtively indulge in when we can arrange +to elude you." + +Scott covered a yawn and glanced at Kathleen. + +"Is Geraldine all right?" he asked with all the healthy indifference of +a young man who had never been ill, and was, therefore, incapable of +understanding illness in others. + +"Certainly, she's all right," said Duane. And to Kathleen: "I believe +I'll venture to knock at her door----" + +"Oh, no, Duane. She isn't ready to see anybody----" + +"Well, I'll try----" + +"Please, don't!" + +But he had her at a disadvantage, and he only laughed and mounted the +stairs, saying: + +"I'll just exchange a word with her or with her maid, anyway." + +When he turned into the corridor Geraldine's maid, seated in the +window-seat sewing, rose and came forward to take his message. In a few +moments she returned, saying: + +"Miss Seagrave asks to be excused, as she is ready to retire." + +"Ask Miss Seagrave if I can say good-night to her through the door." + +The maid disappeared and returned in a moment. + +"Miss Seagrave wishes you good-night, sir." + +So he thanked the maid pleasantly and walked to his own room, now once +more prepared for him after the departure of those who had temporarily +required it. + +Starlight made the leaded windows brilliant; he opened them wide and +leaned out on the sill, arms folded. The pale astral light illuminated a +fairy world of meadow and garden and spectral trees, and two figures +moving like ghosts down by the fountain among the roses--Rosalie and +Grandcourt pacing the gravel paths shoulder to shoulder under the stars. + +Below him, on the terrace, he saw Kathleen and Scott--the latter +carrying a butterfly net--examining the borders of white pinks with a +lantern. In and out of the yellow rays swam multitudes of night moths, +glittering like flakes of tinsel as the lantern light flashed on their +wings; and Scott was evidently doing satisfactory execution, for every +moment or two Kathleen uncorked the cyanide jar and he dumped into it +from the folds of the net a fluttering victim. + +"That last one is a Pandorus Sphinx!" he said in great excitement to +Kathleen, who had lifted the big glass jar into the lantern light and +was trying to get a glimpse of the exquisite moth, whose wings of olive +green, rose, and bronze velvet were already beating a hazy death tattoo +in the lethal fumes. + +"A Pandorus! Scott, you've wanted one so much!" she exclaimed, +enchanted. + +"You bet I have. Pholus pandorus is pretty rare around here. And I say, +Kathleen, that wasn't a bad net-stroke, was it? You see I had only a +second, and I took a desperate chance." + +She praised his skill warmly; then, as he stood admiring his prize in +the jar which she held up, she suddenly caught him by the arm and +pointed: + +"Oh, quick! There is a hawk-moth over the pinks which resembles nothing +we have seen yet!" + +Scott very cautiously laid his net level, stole forward, shining the +lantern light full on the darting, hazy-winged creature, which was now +poised, hovering over a white blossom and probing the honeyed depths +with a long, slim proboscis. + +"I thought it might be only a Lineata, but it isn't," he said +excitedly. "Did you ever see such a timid moth? The slightest step +scares the creature." + +"Can't you try a quick net-stroke sideways?" + +Her voice was as anxious and unsteady as his own. + +"I'm afraid I'll miss. Lord but it's a lightning flier! Where is it +now?" + +"Behind you. Do be careful! Turn very slowly." + +He pivoted; the slim moth darted past, circled, and hung before a +blossom, wings vibrating so fast that the creature was merely a gray +blur in the lantern light. The next instant Gray's net swung; a furious +fluttering came from the green silk folds; Kathleen whipped off the +cover of the jar, and Duane deftly imprisoned the moth. + +"Upon my word," he said shakily, "I believe I've got a Tersa Sphinx!--a +sub-tropical fellow whose presence here is mere accident!" + +"Oh, if you have!" she breathed softly. She didn't know what a Tersa +Sphinx might be, but if its capture gave him pleasure, that was all she +cared for in the world. + +"It _is_ a Tersa!" he almost shouted. "By George! it's a wonder." + +Radiant, she bent eagerly above the jar where the strange, slender, +gray-and-brown hawk-moth lay dying. Its recoiling proboscis and its +slim, fawn-coloured legs quivered. The eyes glowed like tiny jewels. + +"If we could only keep these little things alive," she sighed; then, +fearful of taking the least iota from his pleasure, added: "but of +course we can't, and for scientific purposes it's all right to let the +lovely little creatures sink into their death-sleep." + +A slight haze had appeared over the lake; a sudden cool streak grew in +the air, which very quickly cleared the flower-beds of moths; and the +pretty sub-tropical sphinx was the last specimen of the evening. + +In the library Scott pulled out a card-table and Kathleen brought +forceps, strips of oiled paper, pins, setting-blocks, needles, and +oblong glass weights; and together, seated opposite each other, they +removed the delicate-winged contents of the collecting jar. + +Kathleen's dainty fingers were very swift and deft with the forceps. +Scott watched her. She picked up the green-and-rose Pandorus, laid it on +its back on a setting-block, affixed and pinned the oiled-paper strips, +drew out the four wings with the setting-needle until they were +symmetrical and the inner margin of the anterior pair was at right +angles with the body. + +Then she arranged the legs, uncoiled and set the proboscis, and weighted +the wings with heavy glass strips. + +They worked rapidly, happily there together, exchanging views and +opinions; and after a while the brilliant spoils of the evening were all +stretched and ready to dry, ultimately to be placed in plaster-of-Paris +mounts and hermetically sealed under glass covers. + +Kathleen went away to cleanse her hands of any taint of cyanide; Scott, +returning from his own ablutions, met her in the hall, and so +miraculously youthful, so fresh and sweet and dainty did she appear +that, in some inexplicable manner, his awkward, self-conscious fear of +touching her suddenly vanished, and the next instant she was in his arms +and he had kissed her. + +"Scott!" she faltered, pushing him from her, too limp and dazed to use +the strength she possessed. + +Surprised at what he had done, amazed that he was not afraid of her, he +held her tightly, thrilled dumb at the exquisite trembling contact. + +"Oh, what are you doing," she stammered, in dire consternation; "what +have you done? We--you cannot--you must let me go, Scott----" + +"You're only a girl, after all--you darling!" he said, inspecting her in +an ecstacy of curiosity. "I wonder why I've been afraid of you for so +long?--just because I love you!" + +"You don't--you can't care for me that way----" + +"I care for you in every kind of a way that anybody can care about +anybody." She turned her shoulder, desperately striving to release +herself, but she had not realised how tall and strong he was. "How small +you are," he repeated wonderingly; "just a soft, slender girl, Kathleen. +I can't see how I ever came to let you make me study when I didn't want +to." + +"Scott, dear," she pleaded breathlessly, "you must let me go. This--this +is utterly impossible----" + +"What is?" + +"That you and I can--could care--this way----" + +"Don't you?" + +"I--no!" + +"Is that the truth, Kathleen?" + +She looked up; the divine distress in her violet eyes sobered him, awed +him for a moment. + +"Kathleen," he said, "there are only a few years' difference between our +ages. I feel older than you; you look younger than I--and you are all in +the world I care for--or ever have cared for. Last spring--that night----" + +"Hush, Scott," she begged, blushing scarlet. + +"I know you remember. That is when I began to love you. You must have +known it." + +She said nothing; the strain of her resisting arms against his breast +had relaxed imperceptibly. + +"What can a fellow say?" he went on a little wildly, checked at moments +by the dryness of his throat and the rapid heartbeats that almost took +his breath away when he looked at her. "I love you so dearly, Kathleen; +there's no use in trying to live without loving you, for I couldn't do +it!... I'm not really young; it makes me furious to think you consider +me in that light. I'm a man, strong enough and old enough to love +you--and make you love me! I _will_ make you!" His arms tightened. + +She uttered a little cry, which was half a sob; his boyish roughness +sent a glow rushing through her. She fought against the peril of it, the +bewildering happiness that welled up--fought against her heart that was +betraying her senses, against the deep, sweet passion that awoke as his +face touched hers. + +"Will you love me?" he said fiercely. + +"No!" + +"Will you?" + +"Yes.... Let me go!" she gasped. + +"Will you love me in the way I mean? Can you?" + +"Yes. I do. I--have, long since.... Let me go!" + +"Then--kiss me." + +She looked up at him a moment, slowly put both arms around his neck: +"Now," she breathed faintly, "release me." + +And at the same instant he saw Geraldine descending the stairs. + +Kathleen saw her, too; saw her turn abruptly, re-mount and disappear. +There was a moment's painful silence, then, without a word, she picked +up her lace skirts, ran up the stairway, and continued swiftly on to +Geraldine's room. + +"May I come in?" She spoke and opened the door of the bedroom at the +same time, and Geraldine turned on her, exasperated, hands clenched, +dark eyes harbouring lightning: + +"Have I gone quite mad, Kathleen, or have you?" she demanded. + +"I think I have," whispered Kathleen, turning white and halting. +"Geraldine, you will _have_ to listen. Scott has told me that he loves +me----" + +"Is this the first time?" + +"No.... It is the first time I have listened. I can't think clearly; I +scarcely know yet what I've said and done. What must you think?... But +won't you be a little gentle with me--a little forbearing--in memory of +what I have been to you--to him--so long?" + +"What do you wish me to think?" asked the girl in a hard voice. "My +brother is of age; he will do what he pleases, I suppose. I--I don't +know what to think; this has astounded me. I never dreamed such a thing +possible----" + +"Nor I--until this spring. I know it is all wrong; this is making me +more fearfully unhappy every minute I live. There is nothing but peril +in it; the discrepancy in our ages makes it hazardous--his youth, his +overwhelming fortune, my position and means--the world will surely, +surely misinterpret, misunderstand--I think even you, his sister, may be +led to credit--what, in your own heart, you must know to be utterly and +cruelly untrue." + +"I don't know what to say or think," repeated Geraldine in a dull voice. +"I can't realise it; I thought that our affection for you was so--so +utterly different." + +She stared curiously at Kathleen, trying to reconcile what she had +always known of her with what she now had to reckon with--strove to +find some alteration in the familiar features, something that she had +never before noticed, some new, unsuspected splendour of beauty and +charm, some undetected and subtle allure. She saw only a wholesome, +young, and lovely woman, fresh-skinned, slender, sweet, and +graceful--the same companion she had always known and, as she +remembered, unchanged in any way since the years of childhood, when +Kathleen was twenty and she and her brother were ten. + +"I suppose," she said, "that if Scott is in love with you, there is only +one thing to do." + +"There are several," said Kathleen in a low voice. + +"Will you not marry him?" + +"I don't know; I think not." + +"Are you not in love with him?" + +"Does that matter?" asked Kathleen steadily. "Scott's happiness is what +is important." + +"But his happiness, apparently, depends on you." + +Kathleen flushed and looked at her curiously. + +"Dear, if I knew that was so, I would give myself to him. Neither you +nor he have ever asked anything of me in vain. Even if I did not love +him--as I do--and he needed me, I would give myself to him. You and he +have been all there was in life for me. But I am afraid that I may not +always be all that life holds for him. He is young; he has had no chance +yet; he has had little experience with women. I think he ought to have +his chance." + +She might have said the same thing of herself. A bride at her husband's +death-bed, widowed before she had ever been a wife, what experience had +she? All her life so far had been devoted to the girl who stood there +confronting her, and to the brother. What did she know of men?--of +whether she might be capable of loving some man more suitable? She had +not given herself the chance. She never would, now. + +There was no selfishness in Kathleen Severn. But there was much in the +Seagrave twins. The very method of their bringing up inculcated it; they +had never had any chance to be otherwise. The "cultiwation of the +indiwidool" had driven it into them, taught them the deification of +self, forced them to consider their own importance above anything else +in the world. + +And it was of that importance that Geraldine was now thinking as she sat +on the edge of her bed, darkly considering these new problems that +chance was laying before her one by one. + +If Scott was going to be unhappy without Kathleen, it followed, as a +matter of course, that he must have Kathleen. The chances Kathleen might +take, what she might have to endure of the world's malice and gossip and +criticism, never entered Geraldine's mind at all. + +"If he is in love with you," she repeated, "it settles it, I think. What +else is there to do but marry him?" + +Kathleen shook her head. "I shall do what is best for him--whatever that +may be." + +"You won't make him unhappy, I suppose?" inquired Geraldine, astonished. + +"Dear, a woman may be truer to the man she loves--and kinder--by +refusing him. Is not that what _you_ have done--for Duane's sake?" + +Geraldine sprang to her feet, face white, mouth distorted with anger: + +"I made a god of Duane!" she broke out breathlessly. "Everything that +was in me--everything that was decent and unselfish and pure-minded +dominated me when I found I loved him. So I would not listen to my own +desire for him, I would not let him risk a terrible unhappiness until I +could go to him as clean and well and straight and unafraid as he could +wish!" She laughed bitterly, and laid her hands on her breast. "Look at +me, Kathleen! I am quite as decent as this god of mine. Why should I +worry over the chances he takes when I have chances enough to take in +marrying him? I was stupid to be so conscientious--I behaved like a +hysterical schoolgirl--or a silly communicant--making him my confessor! +A girl is a perfect fool to make a god out of a man. I made one out of +Duane; and he acted like one. It nearly ended me, but, after all, he is +no worse than I. Whoever it was who said that decency is only depravity +afraid, is right. I _am_ depraved; I _am_ afraid. I'm afraid that I +cannot control myself, for one thing; and I'm afraid of being unhappy +for life if I don't marry Duane. And I'm going to, and let him take his +chances!" + +Kathleen, very pale, said: "That is selfishness--if you do it." + +"Are not men selfish? He will not tell me as much of his life as I have +told him of mine. I have told him everything. How do I know what risk I +run? Yes--I do know; I take the risk of marrying a man notorious for his +facility with women. And he lets me take that risk. Why should I not let +him risk something?" + +The girl seemed strangely excited; her quick breathing and bright, +unsteady eyes betrayed the nervous tension of the last few days. She +said feverishly: + +"There is a lot of nonsense talked about self-sacrifice and love; about +the beauties of abnegation and martyrdom, but, Kathleen, if I shall ever +need him at all, I need him now. I'm afraid to be alone any longer; I'm +frightened at the chances against me. Do you know what these days of +horror have been to me, locked in here--all alone--in the depths of +degradation for what--what I did that night--in distress and shame +unutterable----" + +"My darling----" + +"Wait! I had more to endure--I had to endure the results of my education +in the study of man! I had to realise that I loved one of them who has +done enough to annihilate in me anything except love. I had to learn +that he couldn't kill that--that I want him in spite of it, that I need +him, that my heart is sick with dread; that he can have me when he +will--Oh, Kathleen, I have learned to care less for him than when I +denied him for his own sake--more for him than I did before he held me +in his arms! And that is not a high type of love--I know it--but oh, if +I could only have his arms around me--if I could rest there for a +while--and not feel so frightened, so utterly alone!--I might win out; I +might kill what is menacing me, with God's help--and his!" + +She lay shivering on Kathleen's breast now, dry-eyed, twisting her +ringless fingers in dumb anguish. + +"Darling, darling," murmured Kathleen, "you cannot do this thing. You +cannot let him assume a burden that is yours alone." + +"Why not? What is one's lover for?" + +"Not to use; not to hazard; not to be made responsible for a sick mind +and a will already demoralised. Is it fair to ask him--to let him begin +life with such a burden--such a handicap? Is it not braver, fairer, to +fight it out alone, eradicate what threatens you--oh, my own darling! my +little Geraldine!--is it not fairer to the man you love? Is he not worth +striving for, suffering for? Have you no courage to endure if he is to +be the reward? Is a little selfish weakness, a miserable self-indulgence +to stand between you and life-long happiness?" + +Geraldine looked up; her face was very white: + +"Have you ever been tempted?" + +"Have I not been to-night?" + +"I mean by--something ignoble?" + +"No." + +"Do you know how it hurts?" + +"To--to deny yourself?" + +"Yes.... It is so--difficult--it makes me wretchedly weak.... I only +thought he might help me.... You are right, Kathleen.... I must be +terribly demoralised to have wished it. I--I will not marry him, now. I +don't think I ever will.... You are right. I have got to be fair to him, +no matter what he has been to me.... He has been fearfully unfair. After +all, he is only a man.... I couldn't really love a god." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +AMBITIONS AND LETTERS + + +Rosalie had departed; Grandcourt followed suit next day; Sylvia's +brother, Stuyvesant, had at last found a sober moment at his disposal +and had appeared at Roya-Neh and taken his sister away. Duane was all +ready to go to New York to find out whether his father was worrying over +anything, as the tone of his letters indicated. + +The day he left, Kathleen and Geraldine started on a round of August +house parties, ranging from Lenox to Long Island, including tiresome +week ends and duty visits to some very unpretentious but highly +intellectual relatives of Mrs. Severn. So Scott remained in solitary +possession of Roya-Neh, with its forests, gardens, pastures, lakes and +streams, and a staggering payroll and all the multiplicity of problems +that such responsibility entails. Which pleased him immensely, except +for the departure of Kathleen. + +To play the intellectual country squire had been all he desired on earth +except Kathleen. From the beginning White's "Selborne" had remained his +model for all books, Kathleen for all women. He was satisfied with these +two components of perfect happiness, and with himself, as he was, for +the third ingredient in a contented and symmetrical existence. + +He had accepted his answer from her with more philosophy than she quite +expected or was prepared for, saying that if she made a particular +point of it he would go about next winter and give himself a chance to +meet as many desirable young girls as she thought best; that it was +merely wasting time, but if it made her any happier, he'd wait and +endeavour to return to their relations of unsentimental comradeship +until she was satisfied he knew his mind. + +Kathleen was, at first, a little dismayed at his complacency. It was +only certainty of himself. At twenty-two there is time for anything, and +the vista of life ahead is endless. And there was one thing more which +Kathleen did not know. Under the covering of this Seagrave complacency +and self-centred sufficiency, all alone by itself was developing the +sprouting germ of consideration for others. + +How it started he himself did not know--nor was he even aware that it +had started. But long, solitary rambles and the quiet contemplation of +other things besides himself had awakened first curiosity, then a +dawning suspicion of the rights of others. + +In the silence of forests it is difficult to preserve complacency; under +the stars modesty is born. + +It began to occur to him, by degrees, that his own personal importance +among his kind _might_ be due, in part, to his fortune. And from the +first invasion of that shocking idea matters progressed rather rapidly +with the last of the Seagraves. + +He said uneasily to Duane, once: "Are you going in seriously for +painting?" + +"I _am_ in," observed Duane drily. + +"Professionally?" + +"Sure thing. God hates an amateur." + +"What are you after?" persisted Scott. "Fame?" + +"Yes; I need it in my business." + +"Are you contemplating a velvet coat and bow tie, and a bunch of the +elect at your heels?--ratty men, and pop-eyed young women whose coiffure +needs weeding?" + +Duane laughed. "Are they any more deadly than our own sort? Why endure +either? Because you are developing into a country squire, you don't have +to marry Maud Muller." And he quoted Bret Harte: + + "For there be women fair as she, + Whose verbs and nouns do more agree." + +"You don't have to wallow in a profession, you know." + +"But why the mischief do you want to paint professionally?" inquired +Scott, with unsatisfied curiosity. "It isn't avarice, is it?" + +"I expect to hold out for what my pictures are worth, if that's what you +mean by avarice. What I'm trying to do," added Duane, striking his palm +with his fist as emphasis, "is not to die the son of a wealthy man. If I +can't be anything more, I'm not worth a damn. But I'm going to be. I can +do it, Scott; I'm lazy, I'm undecided, I've a weak streak. And yet, do +you know, with all my blemishes, all my misgivings, all my +discouragements, panics, despondent moments, I am, way down inside, +serenely and unaccountably certain that I can paint like the devil, and +that I am going to do it. That sounds cheeky, doesn't it?" + +"It sounds all right to me," said Scott. And he walked away +thoughtfully, fists dug deep in his pockets. + +And one still, sunny afternoon, standing alone on the dry granite crags +of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles +above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked +down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread +out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds, and a river belonging +to him traced its course across the valley in a single silver thread. +And a slight blush stung his face at the thought that, without any merit +or endeavour of his own, his money had bought it all--his money, that +had always acted as his deputy, fought for him, conquered for him, +spoken for him, vouched for him--perhaps pleaded for him!--he shivered, +and suddenly he realised that this golden voice was, in fact, all there +was to him. + +What had he to identify him on earth among mankind? Only his money. +Wherein did he differ from other men? He had more money. What had he to +offer as excuse for living at all? Money. What had he done? Lived on it, +by it. Why, then, it was the money that was entitled to distinction, and +he figured only as its parasite! Then he was nothing--even a little +less. In the world there was man and there was money. It seemed that he +was a little lower in the scale than either; a parasite--scarcely a +thing of distinction to offer Kathleen Severn. + +Very seriously he looked up at the moon. + +It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned +declaration. He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he +descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of +mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness. + +Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow. And that evening +he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had +taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning. + + "Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed + the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of + courage and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we + conquer the world--which is ourselves. + + "For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not + really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential + and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there + remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity + and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your + interest in my behalf. + + "Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will + tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes + something of a man to dare do it. + + "There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even + against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in + thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your + heart.... Yet I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith + in me to accept that statement--against the evidence of those two + divine witnesses which condemn me--your eyes? Circumstantial + evidence is no good in this case, dear. I can say no more than that. + + "Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other? + + "I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present + distress and despondency. What am I for if not for such moments? + + "That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever + been. I know that my conduct--at least your interpretation of + it--threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that + your attitude toward such a crisis--your solution of such a + situation--should be a leap forward toward self-destruction--a + reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the + more certain that we need each other now if ever. + + "The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind + the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last + few days, is more than I can well endure. Open both doors to me; + leagued we can win through! + + "Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight, + and we two shall stand together and see 'the day break and the + shadows flee away.'" + +That same evening his reply came: + + "My darling, Kathleen will give you this. I don't care what my eyes + saw if you tell me it isn't true. I have loved you, anyway, all the + while--even with my throat full of tears and my mouth bitter with + anger, and my heart torn into several thousand tatters--oh, it is + not very difficult to love you, Duane; the only trouble is to love + you in the right way; which is hard, dear, because I want you so + much; and it's so new to me to be unselfish. I began to learn by + loving you. + + "Which means, that I will not let you take the risk you ask for. + Give me time; I've fought it off since that miserable night. Heaven + alone knows why I surrendered--turning to my deadly enemy for + countenance and comfort to support my childish and contemptible + anger against you. + + "Duane, there is an evil streak in me, and we both must reckon with + it. Long, long before I knew I loved you, things you said and did + often wounded me; and within me a perfectly unreasoning desire to + hurt you--to make you suffer--always flamed up and raged. + + "I think that was partly what made me do what you know I did that + night. It would hurt you; that was my ignoble instinct. God knows + whether it was also a hideous sort of excuse for my weakness--for I + was blazing hot after the last dance--and the gaiety and uproar and + laughter all overexcited me--and then what I had seen you do, and + your not coming to me, and that ominous uneasy impulse stirring! + + "That is the truth as I analyse it. The dreadful thing is that I + could have been capable of dealing our chance of happiness such a + cowardly blow. + + "Well, it is over. The thing has fled for a while. I fought it down, + stamped on it with utter horror and loathing. It--the + encounter--tired me. I am weary yet--from honourable wounds. But I + won out. If it comes back again--Oh, Duane! and it surely will--I + shall face it undaunted once more; and every hydra-head that stirs I + shall kill until the thing lies dead between us for all time. + + "Then, dear, will you take the girl who has done this thing? + + "GERALDINE SEAGRAVE." + +This was his answer on the eve of his departure. + +And on the morning of it Geraldine came down to say good-bye; a fresh, +sweet, and bewildering Geraldine, somewhat slimmer than when he had last +seen her, a little finer in feature, more delicate of body; and there +was about her even a hint of the spirituel as a fascinating trace of +what she had been through, locked in alone behind the doors of her room +and heart. + +She bade him good-morning somewhat shyly, offering her slim hand and +looking at him with the slight uncertainty and bent brows of a person +coming suddenly into a strong light. + +He said under his breath: "You poor darling, how thin you are." + +"Athletics," she said; "Jacob wrestled with an angel, but you know what +I've been facing in the squared circle. Don't speak of it any more, will +you? ... How sunburned you are! What have you been about since I've kept +to my room?" + +"I've painted Miller's kids in the open; I suppose the terrific +influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed +easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration +behind it. I'll think out my own way--grope it out through Pantheon and +living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my +own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been sunstruck by +Sorolla." + +She listened demurely, watching him, her lips sensitive with +understanding; and she laughed when he laughed away his fealty to the +superb Spaniard, knowing himself and the untried strength within him. + +"But when are you coming back to us, Duane?" + +"I don't know. Father's letters perplex me. I'll write you every day, of +course." + +A quick colour tinted her skin: + +"And I will write you every day. I will begin to-day. Kathleen and I +expect to be here in September. But you will come back before that and +keep Scott company; won't you?" + +"I want to get into harness again," he said slowly. "I want to settle +down to work." + +"Can't you work here?" + +"Not very well." + +"Why?" + +"To tell the truth," he admitted, smiling, "I require something more +like a working studio than Miller's garret." + +"That's what I thought," she said shyly, "and Scott and I have the plans +for a studio all ready; and the men are to begin Monday, and Miller is +to take the new gate cottage. Oh, the plans are really very wonderful!" +she added hastily, as Duane looked grateful but dubious. "Rollins and +Calvert drew them. I wrote to Billy Calvert and sent him the original +plans for Hurryon Lodge. Duane, I thought it would please you----" + +"It does, you dear, generous girl! I'm a trifle overwhelmed, that's all +my silence meant. You ought not to do this for me----" + +"Why? Aren't we to be as near each other as we can be until--I am +ready--for something--closer?" + +"Yes.... Certainly.... I'll arrange to work out certain things up here. +As for models, if there is nothing suitable at Westgate village, you +won't mind my importing some, will you?" + +"No," she said, becoming very serious and gravely interested, as +befitted the fiancée of a painter of consequence. "You will do what is +necessary, of course; because I--few girls--are accustomed in the +beginning to the details of such a profession as yours; and I'm very +ignorant, Duane, and I must learn how to second you--intelligently"--she +blushed--"that is, if I'm to amount to anything as an artist's wife." + +"You dear!" he whispered. + +"No; I tell you I am totally ignorant. A studio is an awesome place to +me. I merely know enough to keep out of it when you are using models. +That is safest, isn't it?" + +He said, intensely amused: "It might be safer not to give pink teas +while I am working from the nude." + +"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're not _always_ +painting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?" + +"Not always!" he managed to assure her; and her pretty, confused +laughter mingled with his unembarrassed mirth as the motor-car swung up +to carry him and his traps to the station. + +They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips +threatened to escape control. + +Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing +nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, +but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on +the stone coping of the terrace. + +And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood +examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found +utterance: + +"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating +things, but any ass can do that. One can't make a particular name for +one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and +what a lot of idle idiots are imitating." + +She raised her violet eyes, astonished: + +"Do _you_ want to make a name for yourself?" + +"Yes," he said, reddening. + +"Why not? I'm a nobody. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear +what Duane has to say about amateurs!" + +"But, Scott, you don't have to be anything in particular except what you +are----" + +"What am I?" he demanded. + +"Why--yourself." + +"And what's that?" He grew redder. "I'll tell you, Kathleen. I'm merely +a painfully wealthy young man. Don't laugh; this is becoming deadly +serious to me. By my own exertions I've never done one bally thing +either useful or spectacular. I'm not distinguished by anything except +an unfair share of wealth. I'm not eminent, let alone pre-eminent, even +in that sordid class; there are richer men, plenty of them--some even +who have made their own fortunes and have not been hatched out in a +suffocating plethora of affluence like the larva of the Carnifex +tumble-bug----" + +"Scott!" + +"And I!" he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my +position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't +endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly +wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because +I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon +FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income! +What have I to offer anybody worth while for entertaining me? What have +I to offer you, Kathleen, in exchange for yourself?" + +He was becoming boyishly dramatic with sweeping gestures which amazed +her; but she was conscious that it was all sincere and very real to him. + +"Scott, dear," she began sweetly, uncertain how to take it all; +"kindness, loyalty, and decent breeding are all that a woman cares for +in a man----" + +"You are entitled to more; you are entitled to a man of distinction, of +attainment, of achievement----" + +"Few women ask for that, Scott; few care for it; fewer still understand +it----" + +"You would. I've got a cheek to ask you to marry me--_me!_--before I +wear any tag to identify me except the dollar mark----" + +"Oh, hush, Scott! You are talking utter nonsense; don't you know it?" + +He made a large and rather grandiose gesture: + +"Around me lies opportunity, Kathleen--every stone; every brook----" + +The mischievous laughter of his listener checked him. She said: "I'm +sorry; only it made me think of + + 'Sermons in stones, + Books in the running brooks,' + +and the indignant gentleman who said: 'What damn nonsense! It's "sermons +in _books_, _stones_ in the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I +don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish for fame----" + +"It isn't fame alone, although I wouldn't mind it if I deserved it. It's +that I want to do just one thing that amounts to something. I wish you'd +give me an idea, Kathleen, something useful in--say in entomology." + +Together they walked back to the terrace. Duane had gone; Geraldine sat +sideways on the parapet, her brown eyes fixed on the road along which +her lover had departed. + +"Geraldine," said Kathleen, who very seldom relapsed into the +vernacular, "this brother of yours desires to perform some startling +stunt in entomology and be awarded Carnegie medals." + +"That's about it," said Scott, undaunted. "Some wise guy put it all over +the Boll-weevil, and saved a few billions for the cotton growers; +another gentleman full of scientific thinks studied out the San José +scale; others have got in good licks at mosquitoes and house-flies. I'd +like to tackle something of that sort." + +"Rose-beetles," said his sister briefly. In her voice was a suspicion of +tears, and she kept her head turned from them. + +"Nobody could ever get rid of Rose-beetles," said Kathleen. "But it +_would_ be exciting, wouldn't it, Scott? Think of saving our roses and +peonies and irises every year!" + +"I _am_ thinking of it," said Scott gravely. + +A few moments later he disappeared around the corner of the house, +returning presently, pockets bulging with bottles and boxes, a +field-microscope in one hand, and several volumes on Coleoptera in the +other. + +"They're gone," he said without further explanation. + +"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen. + +"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvæ ought +to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he +descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself +under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and +cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil. + +"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute +effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it +in the garden dirt." + +"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is +about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so +touchingly confident!" + +Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with +his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his +investigations. + +"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are +permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at +his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and +oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big cocoon in one of +them!" + +She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of +tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it +was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism +of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a +child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect, +wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught +so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under +her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned +proudly--even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of +her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility--this +sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart +with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish. + +So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright +hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet +nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, +youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her +conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life. + +And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl, +delicately lovely, already harassed, already perplexed, already bruised +and wearied by her first skirmishes with life; not yet fully +understanding what threatened, what lay before--alas! what lay behind +her--even to the fifth generation. + +They were to motor to Lenox after luncheon. Before that--and leaving +Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching +him--Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book--a +book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her +self-imprisonment. It was called "Simpson on Heredity." + +There were some very hideous illustrated pages in that book; she turned +to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she +first read them. They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies +through successive generations. + +That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not +realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the +soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled. + +She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr. Bailey, who +became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician +who ever read medical works was a fool. Desperation gave her courage to +ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her. But she +had the book under her pillow. It is better to answer such questions +when the young ask them. + +And over it all she pondered and pored, and used a dictionary and +shuddered, frightening herself into a morbid condition until, +desperately scared, she even thought of going to Duane about it; but +could not find the hardihood to do it or the vocabulary necessary. + +Now Duane was gone; and the book lay there between her knees, all its +technical vagueness menacing her with unknown terrors; and she felt that +she could endure it alone no longer. + +She wrote him: + + "You have not been gone an hour, and already I need you. I wish to + ask you about something that is troubling me; I've asked Kathleen + and she doesn't know; and Dr. Bailey was horrid to me, and I tried + to find out from Scott whether he knew, but he wasn't much + interested. So, Duane, who else is there for me to ask except you? + And I don't exactly know whether I may speak about such matters to + you, but I'm rather frightened, and densely ignorant. + + "It is this, dear; in a medical book which I read, it says that + hereditary taints are transmissible; that sometimes they may skip + the second generation but only to appear surely in the third. But it + also says that the taint is very likely to appear in _every_ + generation. + + "Duane, is this _true_? It has worried me sick since I read it. + Because, my darling, if it is so, is it not another reason for our + not marrying? + + "Do you understand? I can and will eradicate what is threatening + _me_, but if I marry you--you _do_ understand, don't you? Isn't it + all right for me to ask you whether, if we should have children, + this thing would menace them? Oh, Duane--Duane! Have I any right to + marry? Children come--God knows how, for nobody ever told me + exactly, and I'm a fool about such things--but I summoned up courage + to ask Dr. Bailey if there was any way to tell before I married + whether I would have any, and he said I would if I had any notion of + my duty and any pretence to self-respect. And I don't know what he + means and I'm bewildered and miserable and afraid to marry you even + when I myself become perfectly well. And that is what worries me, + Duane, and I have nobody in the world to ask about it except you. + Could you please tell me how I might learn what I ought to know + concerning these things without betraying my own vital interest in + them to whomever I ask? You see, Kathleen is as innocent as I. + + "Please tell me all you can, Duane, for I am most unhappy." + + * * * * * + + "The house is very still and full of sunlight and cut flowers. Scott + is meditating great deeds, lying flat in the dirt. Kathleen sits + watching him from the parapet. And I am here in the library, with + that ghastly book at my elbow, pouring out all my doubts and fears + to the only man in the world--whom God bless and protect wherever he + may be--Oh, Duane, Duane, how I love you!" + +She hurriedly directed and sealed the letter and placed it in the box +for outgoing mail; then, unquiet and apprehensive regarding what she had +ventured to write, she began a restless tour of the house, upstairs and +down, wandering aimlessly through sunny corridors, opening doors for a +brief survey of chambers in which only the shadow-patterns of leaves +moved on sunlit walls; still rooms tenanted only by the carefully dusted +furniture which seemed to stand there watching attentively for another +guest. + +Duane had left his pipe in his bedroom. She was silly over it, even to +the point of retiring into her room, shredding some cigarettes, filling +the rather rank bowl, and trying her best to smoke it. But such devotion +was beyond her physical powers; she rinsed her mouth, furious at being +defeated in her pious intentions, and, making an attractive parcel of +the pipe, seized the occasion to write him another letter. + + "There is in my heart," she wrote, "no room for anything except + you; no desire except for you; no hope, no interest that is not + yours. You praise my beauty; you endow me with what you might wish I + really possessed; and oh, I really am so humble at your feet, if you + only knew it! So dazed by your goodness to me, so grateful, so happy + that you have chosen me (I just jumped up to look at myself in the + mirror; I _am_ pretty, Duane, I've a stunning colour just now and + there _is_ a certain charm about me--even I can see it in what you + call the upcurled corners of my mouth, and in my figure and + hands)--and I am so happy that it is true--that you find me + beautiful, that you care for my beauty.... It is so with a man, I + believe; and a girl wishes to have him love her beauty, too. + + "But, Duane, I don't think the average girl cares very much about + that in a man. Of course you are exceedingly nice to look at, and I + notice it sometimes, but not nearly as often as you notice what you + think is externally attractive about me. + + "In my heart, I don't believe it really matters much to a girl what + a man looks like; anyway, it matters very little after she once + knows him. + + "Of course women do notice handsome men--or what we consider + handsome--which is, I believe, not at all what men care for; because + men usually seem to have a desire to kick the man whom women find + good-looking. I know several men who feel that way about Jack + Dysart. I think you do, for one. + + "Poor Jack Dysart! To-day's papers are saying such horridly + unpleasant things about the rich men with whom he was rather closely + associated in business affairs several years ago. I read, but I do + not entirely comprehend. + + "The New York papers seem unusually gloomy this summer; nothing but + predictions of hard times coming, and how many corporations the + attorney-general is going to proceed against, and wicked people who + loot metropolitan railways, and why the district-attorney doesn't do + his duty--which you say he does--oh, dear; I expect that Scott and + Kathleen and I will have to take in boarders this winter; but if + nobody has any money, nobody can pay board, so everybody will be + ruined and I don't very much care, for I could teach school, only + who is to pay my salary if there's no money to pay it with? Oh, + dear! what nonsense I am writing--only to keep on writing, because + it seems to bring you a little nearer--my own--my Duane--my + comrade--the same, same little boy who ran away from his nurse and + came into our garden to fight my brother and--fall in love with his + sister! Oh, Fate! Oh, Destiny! Oh, Duane Mallett! + + "Here is a curious phenomenon. Listen: + + "Away from you I have a woman's courage to tell you how I long for + you, how my heart and my arms ache for you. But when I am with you + I'm less of a woman and more of a girl--a girl not yet accustomed to + some things--always guarded, always a little reticent, always + instinctively recoiling from the contact I really like, always a + little on the defensive against your lips, in spite of + myself--against your arms--where, somehow, I cannot seem to stay + long at a time--will not endure it--_cannot_, somehow. + + "Yet, here, away from you, I so long for your embrace, and cannot + imagine it too long, too close, too tender to satisfy my need of + you. + + "And this is my second letter to you within the hour--one hour after + your departure. + + "Oh, Duane, I do truly miss you so! I go about humming that air you + found so quaint: + + "'Lisetto quittée la plaine, + Moi perdi bonheur à moi, + Yeux à moi semblent fontaine, + Depuis moi pas miré toi,' + + and there's a tear in every note of it, and I'm the most lonely + girl on the face of the earth to-day. + + "GERALDINE QUI PLEURE." + + "P.S.--Voici votre pipe, Monsieur!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE PROPHETS + + +August in town found an unusual number of New York men at the clubs, at +the restaurants, at the summer theatres. Men who very seldom shoved +their noses inside the metropolitan oven during the summer baking were +now to be met everywhere and anywhere within the financial district and +without. The sky-perched and magnificent down-town "clubs" were full of +men who under normal circumstances would have remained at Newport, +Lenox, Bar Harbor, or who at least would have spent the greater portion +of the summer on their yachts or their Long Island estates. + +And in every man's hand or pocket was a newspaper. + +They were scarcely worth reading for mere pleasure, these New York +newspapers; indeed, there was scarcely anything in them to read except a +daily record of the steady decline in securities of every description; +paragraphs noting the passing of dividends; columns setting forth +minutely the opinions of very wealthy men concerning the business +outlook; chronicles in detail of suits brought against railroads and +against great industrial corporations; accounts of inquiries by State +and by Federal authorities into combinations resulting in an alleged +violation of various laws. + +Here and there a failure of some bucket-branded broker was noted--the +reports echoing like the first dropping shots along the firing line. + +Even to the most casual and uninterested outsider it was evident that +already the metropolis was under a tension; that the tension was +increasing almost imperceptibly day by day; that there seemed to be no +very clear idea as to the reason of it, only a confused apprehension, an +apparently unreassuring fear of some grotesque danger ahead, which daily +reading of the newspapers was not at all calculated to allay. + +Of course there were precise reasons for impending trouble given and +reiterated by those amateurs of finance and politics whose opinions are +at the disposal of the newspaper-reading public. + +Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant +phrases such as "undigested securities" and "the treacherous attack on +the nation's integrity." + +Two principal reasons were given for the local financial uneasiness; and +the one made the other ridiculous--first, that the nation's Executive +was mad as Nero and had deliberately begun a senseless holocaust +involving the entire nation; the other that a "panic" was due, anyway. +It resembled the logic of the White Queen of immortal memory, who began +screaming before she pricked her finger in order to save herself any +emotion after the pin had drawn blood. + +Men knew in their hearts that there was no real reason for impending +trouble; that this menace was an unreal thing, intangible, without +substance--only a shadow cast by their own assininity. + +Yet shadows can be made real property when authority so ordains. Because +there was once a man with a donkey who met a stranger in the desert. + +The stranger bargained for and bought the donkey; the late owner shoved +the shekels into his ample pockets and sat down in the mule's shadow to +escape the sun; and the new owner brought suit to recover the rent due +him for the occupation of the shadow cast by his donkey. + +There was also a mule which waited seven years to kick. + +There are asses and mules and all sorts of shadows. The ordinance of +authority can affect only the shadow; the substance is immutable. + +Among other serious gentlemen of consideration and means who had been +unaccustomed to haunt the metropolis in the dog days was Colonel +Alexander Mallett, President of the Half Moon Trust Company, and +incidentally Duane's father. + +His town-house was still open, although his wife and daughter were in +the country. To it, in the comparative cool of the August evenings, came +figures familiar in financial circles; such men as Magnelius Grandcourt, +father of Delancy; and Remsen Tappan, and James Cray. + +Others came and went, men of whom Duane had read in the newspapers--very +great men who dressed very simply, very powerful men who dressed +elaborately; and some were young and red-faced with high living, and one +was damp of hair and long-nosed, with eyes set a trifle too close +together; and one fulfilled every external requisite for a "good +fellow"; and another was very old, very white, with a nut-cracker jaw +and faded eyes, blue as an unweaned pup's, and a cream-coloured wig +curled glossily over waxen ears and a bloodless and furrowed neck. + +All these were very great men; but they and Colonel Mallett journeyed at +intervals into the presence of a greater man who inhabited, all alone, +except for a crew of a hundred men, an enormous yacht, usually at +anchor off the white masonry cliffs of the seething city. + +All alone this very great man inhabited the huge white steamer; and they +piped him fore and they piped him aft and they piped him over the side. +Many a midnight star looked down at the glowing end of his black cigar; +many a dawn shrilled with his boatswain's whistle. He was a very, very +great man; none was greater in New York town. + +It was said of him that he once killed a pompous statesman--by ridicule: + +"I know who _you_ are!" panted a ragged urchin, gazing up in awe as the +famous statesman approached his waiting carriage. + +"And who am I, my little man?" + +"You are the great senator from New York." + +"Yes--you are right. _But_"--and he solemnly pointed his gloved +forefinger toward heaven--"but, remember, there is One even greater than +I." + +Duane had heard the absurd lampoon as a child, and one evening late in +August, smoking his after-dinner cigar beside his father in the empty +conservatory, he recalled the story, which had been one of his father's +favorites. + +But Colonel Mallett scarcely smiled, scarcely heard; and his son watched +him furtively. The trim, elastic figure was less upright this summer; +the close gray hair and cavalry mustache had turned white very rapidly +since spring. For the first time, too, in all his life, Colonel Mallett +wore spectacles; and the thin gold rims irritated his ears and the +delicate bridge of his nose. Under his pleasant eyes the fine skin had +darkened noticeably; thin new lines had sprung downward from the +nostrils' clean-cut wings; but the most noticeable change was in his +hands, which were no longer firm and fairly smooth, but were now the +hands of an old man, restless if not tremulous, unsteady in handling the +cigar which, unnoticed, had gone out. + +They--father and son--had never been very intimate. An excellent +understanding had always existed between them with nothing deeper in it +than a natural affection and an instinctive respect for each other's +privacy. + +This respect now oppressed Duane because long habit, and the understood +pact, seemed to bar him from a sympathy and a practical affection which, +for the first time, it seemed to him his father might care for. + +That his father was worried was plain enough; but how anxious and with +how much reason, he had hesitated to ask, waiting for some voluntary +admission, or at least some opening, which the older man never gave. + +That night, however, he had tried an opening for himself, offering the +old stock story which had always, heretofore, amused his father. And +there had been no response. + +In silence he thought the matter over; his sympathy was always quick; it +hurt him to remain aloof when there might be a chance that he could help +a little. + +"It may amuse you," he said carelessly, "to know how much I've made +since I came back from Paris." + +The elder man looked up preoccupied. His son went on: + +"What you set aside for me brings me ten thousand a year, you know. So +far I haven't touched it. Isn't that pretty good for a start?" + +Colonel Mallett sat up straighter with a glimmer of interest in his +eyes. + +Duane went on, checking off on his fingers: + +"I got fifteen hundred for Mrs. Varick's portrait, the same for Mrs. +James Cray's, a thousand each for portraits of Carl and Friedrich +Gumble; that makes five thousand. Then I had three thousand for the +music-room I did for Mrs. Ellis; and Dinklespiel Brothers, who handle my +pictures, have sold every one I sent; which gives me twelve thousand so +far." + +"I am perfectly astonished," murmured his father. + +Duane laughed. "Oh, I know very well that sheer merit had nothing much +to do with it. The people who gave me orders are all your friends. They +did it as they might have sent in wedding presents; I am your son; I +come back from Paris; it's up to them to do something. They've done +it--those who ever will, I expect--and from now on it will be +different." + +"They've given you a start," said his father. + +"They certainly have done that. Many a brilliant young fellow, with more +ability than I, eats out his heart unrecognised, sterilised for lack of +what came to me because of your influence." + +"It is well to look at it in that way for the present," said his father. +He sat silent for a while, staring through the dusk at the lighted +windows of houses in the rear. Then: + +"I have meant to say, Duane, that I--we"--he found a little difficulty +in choosing his words--"that the Trust Company's officers feel that, for +the present, it is best for them to reconsider their offer that you +should undertake the mural decoration of the new building." + +"Oh," said Duane, "I'm sorry!--but it's all right, father." + +"I told them you'd take it without offence. I told them that I'd tell +you the reason we do not feel quite ready to incur, at this moment, any +additional expenses." + +"Everybody is economising," said Duane cheerfully, "so I understand. No +doubt--later----" + +"No doubt," said his father gravely. + +The son's attitude was careless, untroubled; he dropped one long leg +over the other knee, and idly examining his cigar, cast one swift level +look at the older man: + +"Father?" + +"Yes, my son." + +"I--it just occurred to me that if you happen to have any temporary use +for what you very generously set aside for me, don't stand on ceremony." + +There ensued a long silence. It was his bedtime when Colonel Mallett +stirred in his holland-covered armchair and stood up. + +"Thank you, my son," he said simply; they shook hands and separated; the +father to sleep, if he could; the son to go out into the summer night, +walk to his nearest club, and write his daily letter to the woman he +loved: + + "Dear, it is not at all bad in town--not that murderous, humid heat + that you think I'm up against; and you must stop reproaching + yourself for enjoying the delicious breezes in the Adirondacks. + Women don't know what a jolly time men have in town. Follows the + chronical of this August day: + + "I had your letter; that is breeze enough for me; it was all full of + blue sky and big white clouds and the scent of Adirondack pines. + Isn't it jolly for you and Kathleen to be at the Varicks' camp! And + what a jolly crowd you've run into. + + "I note what you say about your return to the Berkshires, and that + you expect to be at Berkshire Pass Inn with the motor on Monday. + Give my love to Naïda; I know you three and young Montross will have + a bully tour through the hill country. + + "I also note your red-pencil cross at the top of the page--which + always gives me, as soon as I open a letter of yours, the assurance + that all is still well with you and that victory still remains with + you. Thank God! Stand steady, little girl, for the shadows are + flying and the dawn is ours. + + "After your letter, breakfast with father--a rather silent one. Then + he went down-town in his car and I walked to the studio. It's one of + those stable-like studios which decorate the cross-streets in the + 50's, but big enough to work in. + + "A rather bothersome bit of news: the Trust Company reconsiders its + commission; and I have three lunettes and three big mural panels + practically completed. For a while I'll admit I had the blues, but, + after all, some day the Trust Company is likely to take up the thing + again and give me the commission. Anyway, I've had a corking time + doing the things, and lots of valuable practice in handling a big + job and covering large surfaces; and the problem has been most + exciting and interesting because, you see, I've had to solve it, + taking into consideration the architecture and certain fixed keys + and standards, such as the local colour and texture of the marble + and the limitations of the light area. Don't turn up your pretty + nose; it's all very interesting. + + "I didn't bother about luncheon; and about five I went to the club, + rather tired in my spinal column and arm-weary. + + "Nobody was there whom you know except Delancy Grandcourt and + Dysart. The latter certainly looks very haggard. I do not like him + personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the + papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and + the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; + and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human + being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. + For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is + difficult to contemplate any suffering unmoved. + + "There was a letter at the club for me from Scott. He says he's + plugging away at the Rose-beetle's life history as a hors-d'oeuvre + before tackling the appetising problem of his total extermination. + Dear old Scott! I never thought that the boy I fought in your garden + would turn into a spectacled savant. Or that his sister would prove + to be the only inspiration and faith and hope that life holds for + me! + + "I talked to Delancy. He _is_ a good young man, as you've always + insisted. I know one thing; he's high-minded and gentle. Dysart has + a manner of treating him which is most offensive, but it only + reflects discredit on Dysart. + + "Delancy told me that Rosalie is hostess in her own cottage this + month and has asked him up. I heard him speaking rather diffidently + to Dysart about it, and Dysart replied that he didn't 'give a damn + who went to the house,' as he wasn't going. + + "So much for gossip; now a fact or two: my father is plainly worried + over the business outlook; and he's quite alone in the house; and + that is why I don't go back to Roya-Neh just now and join your + brother. I could do plenty of work there. Scott writes that the new + studio is in good shape for me. What a generous girl you are! Be + certain that at the very first opportunity I will go and occupy it + and paint, no doubt, several exceedingly remarkable pictures in it + which will sell for enormous prices and enable us to keep a + maid-of-all-work when we begin our ménage! + + "Father has retired--poor old governor--it tears me all to pieces to + see him so silent and listless. I am here at the club writing this + before I go home to bed. Now I am going. Good-night, my beloved. + + "DUANE." + + "P.S.--An honour, or the chance of it, has suddenly confronted me, + surprising me so much that I don't really dare to believe that it + can possibly happen to me--at least not for years. It is this: I met + Guy Wilton the other day; you don't know him, but he is a most + charming and cultivated man, an engineer. I lunched with him at the + Pyramid--that bully old club into which nothing on earth can take a + man who has not distinguished himself in his profession. It is + composed of professional and business men, the law, the army, navy, + diplomatic and consular, the arts and sciences, and usually the + chief executive of the nation. + + "During luncheon Wilton said: 'You ought to be in here. You are the + proper timber.' + + "I was astounded and told him so. + + "He said: 'By the way, the president of the Academy of Design is + very much impressed with some work of yours he has seen. I've heard + him, and other artists, also, discussing some pictures of yours + which were exhibited in a Fifth Avenue gallery.' + + "Well, you know, Geraldine, the breath was getting scarcer in my + lungs every minute and I hadn't a word to say. And do you know what + that trump of a mining engineer did? He took me about after luncheon + and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very eminent and + delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly nice, and the + president of the Academy, who is startlingly young and amiable, said + that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it was customary that + when anybody was proposed for membership, a man of his own + profession should do it. + + "And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen's name, + and now what do you think! Billy has proposed me, Austin, the marine + painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in my + behalf--professors, army men, navy men, business friends of + father's, architects, writers--and I'm terribly excited over it, + although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it's a + fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway. + + "This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be + proposed for the Pyramid. I know you will be happy over it. + + "D." + +The weather became hotter toward the beginning of September; his studio +was almost unendurable, nor was the house very much better. + +To eat was an effort; to sleep a martyrdom. Night after night he rose +from his hot pillows to stand and listen outside his father's door; but +the old endure heat better than the young, and very often his father was +asleep in the stifling darkness which made sleep for him impossible. + +The usual New York thunder-storms rolled up over Staten Island, covered +the southwest with inky gloom, veined the horizon with lightning, then +burst in spectacular fury over the panting city, drenched it to its +steel foundations, and passed on rumbling up the Hudson, leaving +scarcely any relief behind it. + +In one of these sudden thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest +and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon +hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, +and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tête-à-tête over +their peach and grapefruit salad. + +There was no reason why they should not have been there; no reason why +he should have hesitated to speak to them. But he did hesitate--in fact, +was retiring by the way he came, when Rosalie glanced around with that +instinct which divines a familiar presence, gave him a startled look, +coloured promptly to her temples, and recovered her equanimity with a +smile and a sign for him to join them. So he shook hands, but remained +standing. + +"We ran into town in the racer this morning," she explained. "Delancy +had something on down-town and I wanted to look over some cross-saddles +they made for me at Thompson's. Do be amiable and help us eat our salad. +What a ghastly place town is in September! It's bad enough in the +country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful +prophecies. Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is +about?" + +"It's about something harder to digest than this salad. The public +stomach is ostrichlike, but it can't stand the water-cure. Which is all +Arabic to you, Rosalie, and I don't mean to be impertinent, only the +truth is I don't know why people are losing confidence in the financial +stability of the country, but they apparently are." + +"There's a devilish row on down-town," observed Delancy, blinking, as an +unusually heavy clap of thunder rattled the dishes. + +"What kind of a row?" asked Duane. + +"Greensleeve & Co. have failed, with liabilities of a million and +microscopical assets." + +Rosalie raised her eyebrows; Greensleeve & Co. were once brokers for her +husband if she remembered correctly. Duane had heard of them but was +only vaguely impressed. + +"Is that rather a bad thing?" he inquired. + +"Well--I don't know. It made a noise louder than that thunder. Three +banks fell down in Brooklyn, too." + +"What banks?" + +Delancy named them; it sounded serious, but neither Duane nor Rosalie +were any wiser. + +"The Wolverine Mercantile Loan and Trust Company closed its doors, +also," observed Delancy, dropping the tips of his long, highly coloured +fingers into his finger-bowl as though to wash away all personal +responsibility for these financial flip-flaps. + +Rosalie laughed: "This is pleasant information for a rainy day," she +said. "Duane, have you heard from Geraldine?" + +"Yes, to-day," he said innocently; "she is leaving Lenox this morning +for Roya-Neh. I hear that there is to be some shooting there Christmas +week. Scott writes that the boar and deer are increasing very fast and +must be kept down. You and Delancy are on the list, I believe." + +Rosalie nodded; Delancy said: "Miss Seagrave has been good enough to ask +the family. Yours is booked, too, I fancy." + +"Yes, if my father only feels up to it. Christmas at Roya-Neh ought to +be a jolly affair." + +"Christmas anywhere away from New York ought to be a relief," observed +young Grandcourt drily. + +They laughed without much spirit. Coffee was served, cigarettes lighted. +Presently Grandcourt sent a page to find out if the car had returned +from the garage where Rosalie had sent it for a minor repair. + +The car was ready, it appeared; Rosalie retired to readjust her hair and +veil; the two men standing glanced at one another: + +"I suppose you know," said Delancy, reddening with embarrassment, "that +Mr. and Mrs. Dysart have separated." + +"I heard so yesterday," said Duane coolly. + +The other grew redder: "I heard it from Mrs. Dysart about half an hour +ago." He hesitated, then frankly awkward: "I say, Mallett, I'm a sort of +an ass about these things. Is there any impropriety in my going about +with Mrs. Dysart--under the circumstances?" + +"Why--no!" said Duane. "Rosalie has to go about with people, I suppose. +Only--perhaps it's fairer to her if you don't do it too often--I mean +it's better for her that any one man should not appear to pay her +noticeable attention. You know what mischief can get into print. What's +taken below stairs is often swiped and stealthily perused above stairs." + +"I suppose so. I don't read it myself, but it makes game of my mother +and she finds a furious consolation in taking it to my father and +planning a suit for damages once a week. You're right; most people are +afraid of it. Do you think it's all right for me to motor back with Mrs. +Dysart?" + +"Are _you_ afraid?" asked Duane, smiling. + +"Only on her account," said Grandcourt, so simply that a warm feeling +rose in Duane's heart for this big, ungainly, vividly coloured young +fellow whose direct and honest gaze always refreshed people even when +they laughed at him. + +"Are you driving?" asked Duane. + +"Yes. We came in at a hell of a clip. It made my hair stand, but Mrs. +Dysart likes it.... I say, Mallett, what sort of an outcome do you +suppose there'll be?" + +"Between Rosalie and Jack Dysart?" + +"Yes." + +"I know no more than you, Grandcourt. Why?" + +"Only that--it's too bad. I've known them so long; I'm friendly with +both. Jack is a curious fellow. There's much of good in him, Mallett, +although I believe you and he are not on terms. He is a--I don't mean +this for criticism--but sometimes his manner is unfortunate, leading +people to consider him overbearing. + +"I understand why people think so; I get angry at him, sometimes, +myself--being perhaps rather sensitive and very conscious that I am not +anything remarkable. + +"But, somehow"--he looked earnestly at Duane--"I set a very great value +on old friendships. He and I were at school. I always admired in him the +traits I myself have lacked.... There is something about an old +friendship that seems very important to me. I couldn't very easily break +one.... It is that way with me, Mallett.... Besides, when I think, +perhaps, that Jack Dysart is a trifle overbearing and too free with his +snubs, I go somewhere and cool off; and I think that in his heart he +must like me as well as I do him because, sooner or later, we always +manage to drift together again.... That is one reason why I am so +particular about his wife." + +Another reason happened to be that he had been in love with her himself +when Dysart gracefully shouldered his way between them and married +Rosalie Dene. Duane had heard something about it; and he wondered a +little at the loyalty to such a friendship that this young man so +naïvely confessed. + +"I'll tell you what I think," said Duane; "I think you're the best sort +of an anchor for Rosalie Dysart. Only a fool would mistake your +friendship. But the town's full of 'em, Grandcourt," he added with a +smile. + +"I suppose so.... And I say, Mallett--may I ask you something more?... I +don't like to pester you with questions----" + +"Go on, my friend. I take it as a clean compliment from a clean-cut +man." + +Delancy coloured, checked, but presently found voice to continue: + +"That's very good of you; I thought I might speak to you about this +Greensleeve & Co.'s failure before Mrs. Dysart returns." + +"Certainly," said Duane, surprised; "what about them? They acted for +Dysart at one time, didn't they?" + +"They do now." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Yes, I am. I didn't want to say so before Mrs. Dysart. But the +afternoon papers have it. I don't know why they take such a malicious +pleasure in harrying Dysart--unless on account of his connections with +that Yo Espero crowd--what's their names?--Skelton! Oh, yes, James +Skelton--and Emanuel Klawber with his thirty millions and his string of +banks and trusts and mines; and that plunger, Max Moebus, and old Amos +Flack--Flack the hack stalking-horse of every bull-market, who laid down +on his own brokers and has done everybody's dirty work ever since. How +on earth, Mallett, do you suppose Jack Dysart ever got himself mixed up +with such a lot of skyrockets and disreputable fly-by-nights?" + +Duane did not answer. He had nothing good to say or think of Dysart. + +Rosalie reappeared at that moment in her distractingly pretty pongee +motor-coat and hat. + +"Do come back with us, Duane," she said. "There's a rumble and we'll get +the mud off you with a hose." + +"I'd like to run down sometimes if you'll let me," he said, shaking +hands. + +So they parted, he to return to his studio, where models booked long +ahead awaited him for canvases which he was going on with, although the +great Trust Company that ordered them had practically thrown them back +on his hands. + +That evening at home when he came downstairs dressed in white serge for +dinner, he found his father unusually silent, very pale, and so tired +that he barely tasted the dishes the butler offered, and sat for the +most part motionless, head and shoulders sagging against the back of his +chair. + +And after dinner in the conservatory Duane lighted his father's cigar +and then his own. + +"What's wrong?" he asked, pleasantly invading the privacy of years +because he felt it was the time to do it. + +His father slowly turned his head and looked at him--seemed to study +the well-knit, loosely built, athletic figure of this strong young +man--his only son--as though searching for some support in the youthful +strength he gazed upon. + +He said, very deliberately, but with a voice not perfectly steady: + +"Matters are not going very well, my boy." + +"What matters, father?" + +"Down-town." + +"Yes, I've heard. But, after all, you people in the Half Moon need only +crawl into your shell and lie still." + +"Yes." + +After a silence: + +"Father, have you any outside matters that trouble you?" + +"There are--some." + +"You are not involved seriously?" + +His father made an effort: "I think not, Duane." + +"Oh, all right. If you were, I was going to suggest that I've deposited +what I have, subject to your order, with your own cashier." + +"That is--very kind of you, my son. I may--find use for it--for a short +time. Would you take my note?" + +Duane laughed. He went on presently: "I wrote Naïda the other day. She +has given me power of attorney. What she has is there, any time you need +it." + +His father hung his head in silence; only his colourless and shrunken +hands worked on the arms of his chair. + +"See here, father," said the young fellow; "don't let this thing bother +you. Anything that could possibly happen is better than to have you look +and feel as you do. Suppose the very worst happens--which it won't--but +suppose it did and we all went gaily to utter smash. + +"That is a detail compared with your going to smash physically. Because +Naïda and I never did consider such things vital; and mother is a brick +when it comes to a show-down. And as for me, why, if the very worst hits +us, I can take care of our bunch. It's in me to do it. I suppose you +don't think so. But I can make money enough to keep us together, and, +after all, that's the main thing." + +His father said nothing. + +"Of course," laughed Duane, "I don't for a moment suppose that anything +like that is on the cards. I don't know what your fortune is, but +judging from your generosity to Naïda and me I fancy it's too solid to +worry over. The trouble with you gay old capitalists," he added, "is +that you think in such enormous sums! And you forget that little sums +are required to make us all very happy; and if some of the millions +which you cannot possibly ever use happen to escape you, the tragic +aspect as it strikes you is out of all proportion to the real state of +the case." + +His father felt the effort his son was making; looked up wearily, strove +to smile, to relight his cigar; which Duane did for him, saying: + +"As long as you are not mixed up in that Klawber, Skelton, Moebus crowd, +I'm not inclined to worry. It seems, as of course you know, that +Dysart's brokers failed to-day." + +"So I heard," said his father steadily. He straightened himself in his +chair. "I am sorry. Mr. Greensleeve is a very old friend----" + +The library telephone rang; the second man entered and asked if Colonel +Mallett could speak to Mr. Dysart over the wire on a matter concerning +the Yo Espero district. + +Duane, astonished, sprang up asking if he might not take the message; +then shrank aside as his father got to his feet. He saw the ghastly +pallor on his face as his father passed him, moving toward the library; +stood motionless in troubled amazement, then walked to the open window +of the conservatory and, leaning there, waited. + +His father did not return. Later a servant came: + +"Colonel Mallett has retired, Mr. Duane, and begs that he be +undisturbed, as he is very tired." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +DYSART + + +The possibility that his father could be involved in any of the +spectacular schemes which had evidently caught Dysart, seemed so remote +that Duane's incredulity permitted him to sleep that night, though the +name Yo Espero haunted his dreams. + +But in the morning, something he read in the paper concerning a vast +enterprise, involving the control of the new radium mines in Southern +California, startled him into trying to recollect what he had heard of +Yo Espero and the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Tainting +its title the sinister name of Moebus seemed to reoccur persistently in +his confused imagination. Dysart's name, too, figured in it. And, +somehow, he conceived an idea that his father once received some mining +engineer's reports covering the matter; he even seemed to remember that +Guy Wilton had been called into consultation. + +Whatever associations he had for the name of the Cascade Development and +Securities Company must have originated in Paris the year before his +father returned to America. It seemed to him that Wilton had been in +Spain that year examining the recent and marvellously rich radium find; +and that his father and Wilton exchanged telegrams very frequently +concerning a mine in Southern California known as Yo Espero. + +His father breakfasted in his room that morning, but when he appeared in +the library Duane was relieved to notice that his step was firmer and he +held himself more erect, although his extreme pallor had not changed to +a healthier colour. + +"You know," said Duane, "you've simply got to get out of town for a +while. It's all bally rot, your doing this sort of thing." + +"I may go West for a few weeks," said his father absently. + +"Are you going down-town?" + +"No.... And, Duane, if you don't mind letting me have the house to +myself this morning----" + +He hesitated, glancing from his son to the telephone. + +"Of course not," said Duane heartily. "I'm off to the studio----" + +"I don't mean to throw you out," murmured his father with a painful +attempt to smile, "but there's a stenographer coming from my office and +several--business acquaintances." + +The young fellow rose, patted his father's shoulder lightly: + +"What is really of any importance," he said, "is that you keep your +health and spirits. What I said last night covers my sentiments. If I +can do anything in the world for you, tell me." + +His father took the outstretched hand, lifted his faded eyes with a +strange dumb look; and so they parted. + +On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, Duane, swinging along at a good +pace, turned westward, and half-way to Sixth Avenue encountered Guy +Wilton going east, a packet under one arm, stick and hat in the other +hand, the summer wind blowing the thick curly hair from his temples. + +"Ah," observed Wilton, "early bird and worm, I suppose? Don't try to +bolt me, Duane; I'm full of tough and undigested--er--problems, myself. +Besides, I'm fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening +politely to a man you wanted to assault?" + +Duane laughed, then his eye by accident, caught a superscription on the +packet of papers under Wilton's arm: Yo Espero! His glance reverted in a +flash to Wilton's face. + +The latter said: "I want to write a book entitled 'Gentleman I Have +Kicked.' Of course I've only kicked 'em mentally; but my! what a list I +have!--all sorts, all nations--from certain domestic and predatory +statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress +notorious in a decadent novel!--all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally +I've just used my foot on another social favorite----" + +"Dysart!" said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged +Wilton's pardon. + +"You've sure got a disconcerting way with you," admitted Wilton, very +much out of countenance. + +"It was rotten bad taste in me----" + +Wilton grinned with a wry face: "Nobody is standing much on ceremony +these days. Besides, I'm on to your trail, young man"--tapping the +bundle under his arm--"your eye happened to catch that superscription; +no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to--a rather +embarrassing conclusion." + +Duane's serious face fell: + +"My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy. Are you going up +to see him now?" + +Wilton hesitated: "I suppose I am.... See here, Duane, how much do you +know about--anything?" + +"Nothing," he said without humour; "I'm beginning to worry over my +father's health.... Guy, don't tell me anything that my father's son +ought not to know; but is there something I should know and +don't?--anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?" + +Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then +his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy. + +"I--don't--know," he said slowly. "I'm going to see your father now. If +there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you. Don't +you?" + +"Yes. But he won't. Guy, I don't care a damn about anything except his +health and happiness. If anything threatens either, he won't tell me, +but don't you think I ought to know?" + +"You ask too hard a question for me to answer." + +"Then can you answer me this? Is father at all involved in any of Jack +Dysart's schemes?" + +"I--had better not answer, Duane." + +"You know best. You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his +personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs +and yours." + +"Yes, I understand. Let me think over things for a day or two. Now I've +got to hustle. Good-bye." + +He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, +head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with +nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and +presently rattled off up-town. + +In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few +doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at +a bronze grille. + +The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling +deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the +tiny elevator. + +There was evidently somebody in the second room; Duane had also noticed +a motor waiting outside as he descended from his cab; so he took a seat +and sat twirling his walking-stick between his knees, gloomily +inspecting a room which, in pleasanter days, had not been unfamiliar to +him. + +Instead of the servant returning, there came a click from the elevator, +a quick step, and the master of the house himself walked swiftly into +the room wearing hat and gloves. + +"What do you want?" he inquired briefly. + +"I want to ask you a question or two," said Duane, shocked at the change +in Dysart's face. Haggard, thin, snow-white at the temples with the +light in his eyes almost extinct, the very precision and freshness of +linen and clothing brutally accentuated the ravaged features. + +"What questions?" demanded Dysart, still standing, and without any +emotion whatever in either voice or manner. + +"The first is this: are you in communication with my father concerning +mining stock known as Yo Espero?" + +"I am." + +"Is my father involved in any business transactions in which you figure, +or have figured?" + +"There are some. Yes." + +"Is the Cascade Development and Securities Co. one of them?" + +"Yes, it is." + +Duane's lips were dry with fear; he swallowed, controlled the rising +anger that began to twitch at his throat, and went on in a low, quiet +voice: + +"Is this man--Moebus--connected with any of these transactions in which +you and--and my father are interested?" + +"Yes." + +"Is Klawber?" + +"Max Moebus, Emanuel Klawber, James Skelton, and Amos Flack are +interested. Is that what you want to know?" + +Duane looked at him, stunned. Dysart stepped nearer, speaking almost in +a whisper: + +"Well, what about it? Once I warned you to keep your damned nose out of +my personal affairs----" + +"I make some of them mine!" said Duane sharply; "when crooks get hold of +an honest man, every citizen is a policeman!" + +Dysart, face convulsed with fury, seized his arm in a vicelike grip: + +"Will you keep your cursed mouth shut!" he breathed. "My father is in +the next room. Do you want to kill him?" + +At the same moment there came a stir from the room beyond, the tap-tap +of a cane and shuffling steps across the polished parquet. Dysart's grip +relaxed, his hand fell away, and he made a ghastly grimace as a little +old gentleman came half-trotting, half-shambling to the doorway. He was +small and dapper and pink-skinned under his wig; the pink was paint; his +lips and eyes peered and simpered; from one bird-claw hand dangled a +monocle. + +Jack Dysart made a ghastly and supreme effort: + +"I was just saying to Duane, father, that all this financial agitation +is bound to blow over by December--Duane Mallett, father!"--as the old +man raised his eye-glass and peeped up at the young fellow--"you know +his father, Colonel Mallett." + +"Yes, to be sure, yes, to be sure!" piped the old beau. "How-de-do! +How-de-do-o-o! My son Jack and I motor every morning at this hour. It is +becoming a custom--he! he!--every day from ten to eleven--then a biscuit +and a glass of sherry--then a nap--te-he! Oh, yes, every day, Mr. Mallett, +rain or fair--then luncheon at one, and the cigarette--te-he!--and a +little sleep--and the drive at five! Yes, Mr. Mallett, it is the routine +of a very old man who knew your grandfather--and all his set--when the +town was gay below Bleecker Street! Yes, yes--te-he-he!" + +Nervous spasms which passed as smiles distorted the younger Dysart's +visage; the aged beau offered his hand to Duane, who took it in silence, +his eyes fixed on the shrivelled, painted face: + +"Your grandfather was a very fine man," he piped; "very fine! ve-ery +fine! And so I perceive is his grandson--te-he!--and I flatter myself +that my boy Jack is not unadmired--te-he-he!--no, no--not precisely +unnoticed in New York--the town whose history is the history of his own +race, Mr. Mallett--he is a good son to me--yes, yes, a good son. It is +gratifying to me to know that you are his friend. He is a good friend to +have, Mr. Mallett, a good friend and a good son." + +Duane bent gently over the shrivelled hand. + +"I won't detain you from your drive, Mr. Dysart. I hope you will have a +pleasant one. It is a pleasure to know my grandfather's old friends. +Good-bye." + +And, erect, he hesitated a moment, then, for an old man's sake he held +out his hand to Jack Dysart, bidding him good-bye in a pleasant voice +pitched clear and decided, so that deaf ears might corroborate what +half-blind and peering eyes so dimly beheld. + +Dysart walked to the door with him, waved the servant aside, and, laying +a shaking hand on the bronze knob, opened the door for his unbidden +guest. + +As Duane passed him he said: + +"Thank you, Mallett," in a voice so low that Duane was half-way to his +cab before he understood. + + * * * * * + +That day, and the next, and all that week he worked in his pitlike +studio. Through the high sky-window a cloudless zenith brooded; the heat +became terrific; except for the inevitable crush of the morning and +evening migration south and north, the streets were almost empty under a +blazing sun. + +His father seemed to be physically better. Although he offered no +confidences, it appeared to the son that there was something a little +more cheerful in his voice and manner. It may have been only the +anticipation of departure; for he was going West in a day or two, and it +came out that Wilton was going with him. + +The day he left, Duane drove him to the station. There was a private +car, the "Cyane," attached to the long train. Wilton met them, spoke +pleasantly to Duane; but Colonel Mallett did not invite his son to enter +the car, and adieux were said where they stood. + +As the young fellow turned and passed beneath the car-windows, he caught +a glimpse above him of a heavy-jowled, red face into which a cigar was +stuck--a perfectly enormous expanse of face with two little piglike eyes +almost buried in the mottled fat. + +"That's Max Moebus," observed a train hand respectfully, as Duane +passed close to him; "I guess there's more billions into that there +private car than old Pip's crowd can dig out of their pants pockets on +pay day." + +A little, dry-faced, chin-whiskered man with a loose pot-belly and thin +legs came waddling along, followed by two red-capped negroes with his +luggage. He climbed up the steps of the "Cyane"; the train man winked at +Duane, who had turned to watch him. + +"Amos Flack," he said. "He's their 'lobbygow.'" With which contemptuous +information he spat upon the air-brakes and, shoving both hands into his +pockets, meditatively jingled a bunch of keys. + + * * * * * + +The club was absolutely deserted that night; Duane dined there alone, +then wandered into the great empty room facing Fifth Avenue, his steps +echoing sharply across the carpetless floor. The big windows were open; +there was thunder in the air--the sonorous stillness in which voices and +footsteps in the street ring out ominously. + +He smoked and watched the dim forms of those whom the heat drove forth +into the night, men with coats over their arms and straw hats in their +hands, young girls thinly clad in white, bare-headed, moving two and two +with dragging steps and scarcely spirit left even for common coquetry or +any response to the jesting oafs who passed. + +Here and there a cruising street-dryad threaded the by-paths of the +metropolitan jungle; here and there a policeman, gray helmet in hand, +stood mopping his face, night-club tucked up snugly under one arm. Few +cabs were moving; at intervals a creaking, groaning omnibus rolled +past, its hurricane deck white with the fluttering gowns of women and +young girls. + +Somebody came into the room behind him; Duane turned, but could not +distinguish who it was in the dusk. A little while later the man came +over to where he sat, and he looked up; and it was Dysart. + +There was silence for a full minute; Dysart stood by the window looking +out; Duane paid him no further attention until he wheeled slowly and +said: + +"Do you mind if I have a word with you, Mallett?" + +"Not if it is necessary." + +"I don't know whether it is necessary." + +"Don't bother about it if you are in the slightest doubt." + +Dysart waited a moment, perhaps for some unpleasant emotion to subside; +then: + +"I'll sit down a moment, if you permit." + +He dropped into one of the big, deep, leather chairs and touched the +bell. A servant came; he looked across at Duane, hesitated to speak: + +"Thank you," said Duane curtly. "I've cut it out." + +"Scotch. Bring the decanter," murmured Dysart to the servant. + +When it was served he drained the glass, refilled it, and turned in the +rest of the mineral water. Before he spoke he emptied the glass again +and rang for more mineral water. Then he looked at Duane and said in a +low voice: + +"I thought you were worried the other day when I saw you at my house." + +"What is that to you?" + +Dysart said: "You were very kind--under provocation." + +"I was not kind on your account." + +"I understand. But I don't forget such things." + +Duane glanced at him in profound contempt. Here was the stereotyped +scoundrel with the classical saving trait--the one conventionally +inevitable impulse for good shining like a diamond on a muck-heap--his +apparently disinterested affection for his father. + +"You were very decent to me that day," Dysart said. "You had something +to say to me--but were good enough not to. I came over to-night to give +you a chance to curse me out. It's the square thing to do." + +"What do you know about square dealing?" + +"Go on." + +"I have nothing to add." + +"Then I have if you'll let me." He paused; the other remained silent. +"I've this to say: you are worried sick; I saw that. What worries you +concerns your father. You were merciful to mine. I'll do what I can for +you." + +He swallowed half of what remained in his iced glass, set it back on the +table with fastidious precision: + +"The worst that can happen to your father is to lose control of the Yo +Espero property. I think he is going to lose it. They've crowded me out. +If I could have endured the strain I'd have stood by your father--for +what you did for mine.... But I couldn't, Mallett." + +He moistened his lips again; leaned forward: + +"I think I know one thing about you, anyway; and I'm not afraid you'd +ever use any words of mine against me----" + +"Don't say them!" retorted Duane sharply. + +But Dysart went on: + +"You have no respect for me. You found out one thing about me that +settled me in your opinion. Outside of that, however, you never liked +me." + +"That is perfectly true." + +"I know it. And I want to say now that it was smouldering irritation +from that source--wounded vanity, perhaps--coupled with worry and +increasing cares, that led to that outburst of mine. I never really +believed that my wife needed any protection from the sort of man you +are. You are not that kind." + +"That also is true." + +"And I know it. And now I've cleared up these matters; and there's +another." He bit his lip, thought a moment, then with a deep, long +breath: + +"When you struck me that night I--deserved it. I was half crazy, I +think--with what I had done--with a more material but quite as ruinous +situation developing here in town--with domestic complications--never +mind where all the fault lay--it was demoralising me. Do you think that +I am not perfectly aware that I stand very much alone among men? Do you +suppose that I am not aware of my personal unpopularity as far as men +are concerned? I have never had an intimate friend--except Delancy +Grandcourt. And I've treated him like a beast. There's something wrong +about me; there always has been." + +He slaked his thirst again; his hand shook so that he nearly dropped the +glass: + +"Which is preliminary," he went on, "to saying to you that no matter +what I said in access of rage, I never doubted that your encounter +with--Miss Quest--was an accident. I never doubted that your motive in +coming to me was generous. God knows why I said what I did say. You +struck me; and you were justified.... And that clears up that!" + +"Dysart," said the other, "you don't have to tell me these things." + +"Would you rather not have heard them?" + +Duane thought a moment. + +"I would rather have heard them, I believe." + +"Then may I go on?" + +"Is there anything more to explain between us?" + +"No.... But I would like to say something--in my own behalf. Not that it +matters to you--or to any man, perhaps, except my father. I would like +to say it, Mallett." + +"Very well." + +"Then; I prefer that you should believe I am not a crook. Not that it +matters to you; but I prefer that you do not believe it.... You have +read enough in the papers to know what I mean. I'm telling you now what +I have never uttered to any man; and I haven't the slightest fear you +will repeat it or use it in any manner to my undoing. It is this: + +"The men with whom I was unwise enough to become partially identified +are marked for destruction by the Clearing House Committee and by the +Federal Government. I know it; others know it. Which means the ruthless +elimination of anything doubtful which in future might possibly +compromise the financial stability of this city. + +"It is a brutal programme; the policy they are pursuing is bitterly +unjust. Innocent and guilty alike are going to suffer; I never in all my +life consciously did a crooked thing in business; and yet I say to you +now that these people are bent on my destruction; that they mean to +force us to close the doors of the Algonquin; that they are planning the +ruin of every corporation, every company, every bank, every enterprise +with which I am connected, merely because they have decreed the +financial death of Moebus and Klawber!" + +He made a trembling gesture with clenched hand, and leaned farther +forward: + +"Mallett! There is not one man to-day in Wall Street who has not done, +and who is not doing daily, the very things for which the government +officials and the Clearing House authorities are attempting to get rid +of me. Their attacks on my securities will ultimately ruin me; but such +attacks would ruin any financier, any bank in the United States, if +continued long enough. + +"Doesn't anybody know that when the government conspires with the +Clearing House officials any security can be kicked out of the market? +Don't they know that when bank examiners class any securities as +undesirable, and bank officials throw them out from the loans of such +institutions, that they're not worth the match struck to burn them into +nothing? + +"If they mean to close my companies and bring charges against me, I'll +tell you now, Mallett, any official of any bank which to-day is in +operation, can be indicted!" + +He sat breathing fast, hands clasped nervously between his knees. Duane, +painfully impressed, waited. And after a moment Dysart spoke again: + +"They mean my ruin. There is a bank examiner at work--this very moment +while we're sitting here--on the Collect Pond Bank--which is mine. The +Federal inquisitors went through it once; now a new one is back again. +They found nothing with which to file an adverse report the first time. +Why did they come back? + +"And I'll tell you another thing, Mallett, which may seem a slight +reason for my sullenness and quick temper; they've had secret-service +men following me ever since I returned from Roya-Neh. They are into +everything that I've ever been connected with; there is no institution, +no security in which I am interested, that they have not investigated. + +"And I tell you also, incredible as it may sound, that there is no +security in which I am interested which is not now being attacked by +government officials, and which, as a result of such attacks, is not +depreciating daily. I tell you they've even approached the United States +Court for its consent to a ruinous disposal of certain corporation notes +in which I am interested! Will you tell me what you think of that, +Mallett?" + +Duane said: "I don't know, Dysart. I know almost nothing about such +matters. And--I am sorry that you are in trouble." + +The silence remained unbroken for some time; then Dysart stood up: + +"I don't offer you my hand. You took it once for my father's sake. +That was manly of you, Mallett.... I thought perhaps I might lighten +your anxiety about your father. I hope I have.... And I must ask +your pardon for pressing my private affairs upon you"--he laughed +mirthlessly--"merely because I'd rather you didn't think me a crook--for +my father's sake.... Good-night." + +"Dysart," he said, "why in God's name have you behaved as you have +to--that girl?" + +Dysart stood perfectly motionless, then in a voice under fair control: + +"I understand you. You don't intend that as impertinence; you're a +square man, Mallett--a man who suffers under the evil in others. And +your question to me meant that you thought me not entirely hopeless; +that there was enough of decency in me to arouse your interest. Isn't +that what you meant?" + +"Yes, I think so." + +"Well, then, I'll answer you. There isn't much left of me; there'll be +less left of my fortune before long. I've made a failure of everything, +fortune, friendship, position, happiness. My wife and I are separated; +it is club gossip, I believe. She will probably sue for divorce and get +it. And I ask you, because I don't know, can any amends be made to--the +person you mentioned--by my offering her the sort and condition of man I +now am?" + +"You've got to, haven't you?" asked Duane. + +"Oh! Is that it? A sort of moral formality?" + +"It's conventional; yes. It's expected." + +"By whom?" + +"All the mess that goes to make up this compost heap we call society.... +I think she also would expect it." + +Dysart nodded. + +"If you could make her happy it would square a great many things, +Dysart." + +The other looked up: "You?" + +"I--don't know. Yes, in many ways; in that way at all events--if you +made her happy." + +Dysart stepped forward: "Would you be nice to her if I did? No other +soul in the world knows except you. Other people would be nice to her. +Would _you_? And would you have the woman you marry receive her?" + +"Yes." + +"That is square of you, Mallett.... I meant to do it, anyway.... Thank +you.... Good-night." + +"Good-night," said Duane in a low voice. + +He returned to the house late that night, and found a letter from +Geraldine awaiting him; the first in three days. Seated at the library +table he opened the letter and saw at once that the red-pencilled cross +at the top was missing. + +Minutes passed; the first line blurred under his vacant gaze, for his +eyes travelled no farther. Then the letter fell to the table; he dropped +his head in his arms. + +It was a curiously calm letter when he found courage to read it: + + "I've lost a battle after many victories. It went against me after a + hard fight here alone at Roya-Neh. I think you had better come up. + The fight was on again the next night--that is, night before last, + but I've held fast so far and expect to. Only I wish you'd come. + + "It is no reproach to you if I say that, had you been here, I might + have made a better fight. You couldn't be here; the shame of defeat + is all my own. + + "Duane, it was not a disastrous defeat in one way. I held out for + four days, and thought I had won out. I was stupefied by loss of + sleep, I think; this is not in excuse, only the facts which I lay + bare for your consideration. + + "The defeat was in a way a concession--a half-dazed + compromise--merely a parody on a real victory for the enemy; because + it roused in me a horror that left the enemy almost no consolation, + no comfort, even no physical relief. The enemy is I myself, you + understand--that other self we know about. + + "She was perfectly furious, Duane; she wrestled with me, fought to + make me yield more than I had--which was almost nothing--begged me, + brutalised me, pleaded, tormented, cajoled. I was nearly dead when + the sun rose; but I had gone through it. + + "I wish you could come. She is still watching me. It's an armed + truce, but I know she'll break it if the chance comes. There is no + honour in her, Duane, no faith, no reason, no mercy. I know her. + + "Can you not come? I won't ask it if your father needs you. Only if + he does not, I think you had better come very soon. + + "When may I restore the red cross to the top of my letters to you? I + suppose I had better place it on the next letter, because if I do + not you might think that another battle had gone against me. + + "Don't reproach me. I couldn't stand it just now. Because I am a + very tired girl, Duane, and what has happened is heavy in my + heart--heavy on my head and shoulders like that monster Sindbad + bore. + + "Can you come and free me? One word--your arms around me--and I am + safe. + + "G.S." + +As he finished, a maid came bearing a telegram on a salver. + +"Tell him to wait," said Duane, tearing open the white night-message: + + "Your father is ill at San Antonio and wishes you to come at once. + Notify your mother but do not alarm her. Your father's condition is + favorable, but the outcome is uncertain. + + "WELLS, _Secretary_." + +Duane took three telegram blanks from the note-paper rack and wrote: + + "My father is ill at San Antonio. They have just wired me, and I + shall take the first train. Stand by me now. Win out for my sake. I + put you on your honour until I can reach you." + +And to his father: + + "I leave on first train for San Antonio. It's going to be all right, + father." + +And to his mother: + + "Am leaving for San Antonio because I don't think father is well + enough to I'll write you and wire you. Love to you and Naïda." + +He gave the maid the money, turned, and unhooking the receiver of the +telephone, called up the Grand Central Station. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THROUGH THE WOODS + + +The autumn quiet at Roya-Neh was intensely agreeable to Scott Seagrave. +No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of +the Rose-beetle, _Melolontha subspinosa_, and his scandalous "Life +History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to +distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent +soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike +barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it +was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed +pages. The balm of heavenly silence pervaded the house, and in its +beneficent atmosphere he worked in his undershirt, inhaling inspiration +and the aroma of whale-oil, soap, and carbolic solutions. + +Neither Kathleen nor his sister being present to limit his operations, +the entire house was becoming a vast mess. Living-rooms, library, halls, +billiard-room, were obstructed with "scientific" paraphernalia; hundreds +of glass fruit jars, filled with earth containing the whitish, globular +eggs of the Rose-beetle, encumbered mantel and furniture; glass +aquariums half full of earth, sod, and youthful larvæ of the same sinful +beetle lent pleasing variety to the monotony of Scott's interior +decorative effects. Microscopes, phials, shallow trays bristling with +sprouting seeds, watering-cans, note-books, buckets of tepid water, jars +brimming with chemical solutions, blockaded the legitimate and natural +runways of chamber-maid, parlour-maid, and housekeeper; a loud scream +now and then punctured the scientific silence, recording the Hibernian +discovery of some large, green caterpillar travelling casually somewhere +in the house. + +"Mr. Seagrave, sir," stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, +"your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I can't stand +it no more!" + +But it was only a wholesale hatching of huge hawk-moths that came +whizzing around Lang when he turned on the electric lights; and which, +escaping, swarmed throughout the house, filling it with their loud, +feathery humming, and the shrieks of Milesian domestics. + +And it was into these lively household conditions that Kathleen and +Geraldine unexpectedly arrived from the Berkshires, worn out with their +round of fashionable visits, anxious for the quiet and comfort that is +supposed to be found only under one's own roof-tree. This is what they +found: + +In Geraldine's bath-tub a colony of water-lilies were attempting to take +root for the benefit of several species of water-beetles. The formidable +larvæ of dragon-flies occupied Kathleen's bath; turtles peered at them +from vantage points under the modern plumbing; an enormous frog regarded +Kathleen solemnly from the wet, tiled floor. "Oh, dear," she said as +Scott greeted her rapturously, "have I got to move all these horrid +creatures?" + +"For Heaven's sake don't touch a thing," protested Scott, welcoming his +sister with a perfunctory kiss; "I'll find places for them in a minute." + +"How _could_ you, Scott!" exclaimed Geraldine, backing hastily away +from a branch of green leaves on which several gigantic horned +caterpillars were feeding. "I don't feel like ever sleeping in this room +again," she added, exasperated. + +"Why, Sis," he explained mildly, "those are the caterpillars of the +magnificent Regal moth! They're perfectly harmless, and it's jolly to +watch them tuck away walnut leaves. You'll like to have them here in +your room when you understand how to weigh them on these bully little +scales I've just had sent up from Tiffany's." + +But his sister was too annoyed and too tired to speak. She stood limply +leaning against Kathleen while her brother disposed of his uncanny +menagerie, talking away very cheerfully all the while absorbed in his +grewsome pets. + +But it was not to his sister, it was to Kathleen that his pride in his +achievements was naïvely displayed; his running accompaniment of chatter +was for Kathleen's benefit, his appeals were to her sympathy and +understanding, not to his sister's. + +Geraldine watched him in silence. Tired, not physically very well, this +home-coming meant something to her. She had looked forward to it, and to +her brother, unconsciously wistful for the protection of home and kin. +For the day had been a hard one; she was able to affix the red-cross +mark to her letter to Duane that morning, but it had been a bad day for +her, very bad. + +And now as she stood there, white, nerveless, fatigued, an ache grew in +her breast, a dull desire for somebody of her own kin to lean on; and, +following it, a slow realisation of how far apart from her brother she +had drifted since the old days of cordial understanding in the +schoolroom--the days of loyal sympathy through calm and stress, in +predatory alliance or in the frank conflicts of the squared circle. + +Suddenly her whole heart filled with a blind need of her brother's +sympathy--a desire to return to the old intimacy as though in it there +lay comfort, protection, sanctuary for herself from all that threatened +her--herself! + +Kathleen was assisting Scott to envelop the frog in a bath towel for the +benevolent purpose of transplanting him presently to some other +bath-tub; and Kathleen's golden head and Scott's brown one were very +close together, and they were laughing in that intimate undertone +characteristic of thorough understanding. Her brother's expression as he +looked up at Kathleen Severn, was a revelation to his sister, and it +pierced her with a pang of loneliness so keen that she started forward +in sheer desperation, as though to force a path through something that +was pushing her away from him. + +"Let me take his frogship," she said with a nervous laugh. "I'll put him +into a jolly big tub where you can grow all the water-weeds you like, +Scott." + +Her brother, surprised and gratified, handed her the bath-towel in the +depths of which reposed the batrachian. + +"He's really an interesting fellow, Sis," explained Scott; "he exudes a +sticky, viscous fluid from his pores which is slightly toxic. I'm going +to try it on a Rose-beetle." + +Geraldine shuddered, but forced a smile, and, holding the imprisoned one +with dainty caution, bore him to a palatial and porcelain-lined +bath-tub, into which she shook him with determination and a suppressed +shriek. + +That night at dinner Scott looked up at his sister with something of +the old-time interest and confidence. + +"I was pretty sure you'd take an interest in all these things, sooner or +later. I tell you, Geraldine, it will be half the fun if you'll go into +it with us." + +"I want to," said his sister, smiling, "but don't hurry my progress or +you'll scare me half to death." + +The tragic necessity for occupation, for interesting herself in +something sufficient to take her out of herself, she now understood, and +the deep longing for the love of all she had of kith and kin was +steadily tightening its grip on her, increasing day by day. Nothing else +could take its place; she began to understand that; not her intimacy +with Kathleen, not even her love for Duane. Outside of these there +existed a zone of loneliness in which she was doomed to wander, a zone +peopled only by the phantoms of the parents she had never known long +enough to remember--a dreaded zone of solitude and desolation and peril +for her. The danger line marked its boundary; beyond lay folly and +destruction. + +Little by little Scott began to notice that his sister evidently found +his company desirable, that she followed him about, watching his +so-called scientific pursuits with a curiosity too constant to be +assumed. And it pleased him immensely; and at times he held forth to her +and instructed her with brotherly condescension. + +He noticed, too, that her spirits did not appear to be particularly +lively; there were often long intervals of silence when, together by the +window in the library where he was fussing over his "Life History," she +never spoke, never even moved from her characteristic attitude--seated +deep in a leather chair, arms resting on the padded chair-arms, ankles +crossed, and her head a trifle lowered, as though absorbed in studying +the Herati design on a Persian rug. + +Once, looking up suddenly, he surprised her brown eyes full of tears. + +"Hello!" he said, amazed; "what's the row, Sis?" + +But she only laughed and dried her eyes, denying that there was any +explanation except that girls were sometimes that way for no reason at +all. + +One day he asked Kathleen privately about this, but she merely confirmed +Geraldine's diagnosis of the phenomenon: + +"Tears come into girls' eyes," she said, "and there isn't anybody on +earth who can tell a man why, and he wouldn't comprehend it if anybody +did tell him." + +"I'll tell you one thing," he said sceptically; "if Rose-beetles shed +tears, I'd never rest until I found out why. You bet there's always a +reason that starts anything and always somebody to find it out and tell +another fellow who can understand it!" + +With which brilliant burst of higher philosophy they went out into the +October woods together to hunt for cocoons. + +Geraldine, rather flushed and nervous, met them at Hurryon Gate, +carrying a rifle and wearing the shortest skirts her brother had ever +beheld. The symmetry of her legs moved him to reproof: + +"I thought people looked that way only in tailor's fashion plates," he +said. "What are you after--chipmunks?" + +"Not at all," said his sister. "Do you know what happened to me an hour +ago? I was paddling your canoe into the Hurryon Inlet, and I suppose I +made no noise in disembarking, and I came right on a baby wild boar in +the junipers. It was a tiny thing, not eighteen inches long, Kathleen, +and so cunning and furry and yellowish, with brown stripes on its back, +that I tried to catch it--just to hug it." + +"That was silly," said her brother. + +"I know it was, now. Because I ran after it, and it ran; and, one by +one, a whole herd of the cunning little things sprang out of the hemlock +scrub and went off bucking and bucketing in all directions, and I, like +a simpleton, hard after one of them----" + +"Little idiot," said her brother solicitously. "Are you stark mad?" + +"No, I'm just plain mad. Because, before I knew it, there came a crash +in the underbrush and the biggest, furriest, and wickedest wild boar I +ever saw halted in front of me, ears forward, every hair on end----" + +"Lord save us, you jumped the sow!" groaned her brother. "She might have +torn you to pieces, you ninny!" + +"She meant to, I think. The next thing I knew she came headlong, mouth +open, fairly screaming at me; and I turned and jumped clean into the +Gray Water. Oh, Scott, it was humiliating to have to swim to the point +with all my clothes on, scramble into the canoe, and shove off because a +very angry wild creature drove me out of my own woods!" + +"Well, dear, you won't ever interfere with a sow and pigs again, will +you?" said Kathleen so earnestly that everybody laughed. + +"What's the rifle for?" inquired Scott. "You don't intend to hunt for +her, do you?" + +"Of course not. I'm not vindictive or cruel. But old Miller said, when I +came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast +and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping +them, and sending them to other people for stocking purposes. The +Pink 'uns want some; why don't you?" + +"I don't want to shoot or trap them," said Scott obstinately. + +"Miller says they pulled down deer last winter and tore them to shreds. +Everything in the forest is afraid of them; they drive the deer from the +feeding-grounds, and I don't believe a lynx or even any of the bear that +climb over the fence would dare attack them." + +Kathleen said: "You really ought to ask some men up here to shoot, +Scott. I don't wish to be chased about by a boar." + +"They never bother people," he protested. "What are you going to do with +that rifle, Geraldine?" + +"My nerve has gone," she confessed, laughing; "I prefer to have it with +me when I take walks. It's really safer," she added seriously to +Kathleen. "Miller says that a buck deer can be ugly, too." + +"Oh, Lord!" said her brother, laughing; "it's only because you're the +prettiest thing ever, in that hunting dress! Don't tell me; and kindly +be careful where you point that rifle." + +"As if I needed instructions!" retorted his sister. "I wish I could see +a boar--a big one with a particularly frightful temper and tusks to +match." + +"I'll bet you that you can't kill a boar," he said in good-humoured +disdain. + +"I don't see any to kill." + +"Well, I bet you can't find one. And if you do, I bet you don't kill +him." + +"How long," asked Geraldine dangerously, "does that bet hold good?" + +"All winter, if you like. It's the prettiest single jewel you can pick +out against a new saddle-horse. I need a gay one; I'm getting out of +condition. And all our horses are as interesting as chevaux de bois when +the mechanism is freshly oiled and the organ plays the 'Ride of the +Valkyries.'" + +"I've half a mind to take that wager," said Geraldine, very pink and +bright-eyed. "I think I will take it if----" + +"Please don't, dear," said Kathleen anxiously. "The keepers say that a +wounded boar is perfectly horrid sometimes." + +"Dangerous?" Her eyes glimmered brighter still. + +"Certainly, a wounded boar is dangerous. I heard Miller say----" + +"Bosh!" said Scott. "They run away from you every time. Besides, +Geraldine isn't going to have enough sporting blood in her to take that +bet and make good." + +Something in the quick flush and tilt of her head reminded Scott of the +old days when their differences were settled with eight-ounce gloves. +The same feeling possessed his sister, thrilled her like a sudden, +unexpected glimpse of a happiness which apparently had long been ended +for ever. + +"Oh, Scott," she exclaimed, still thrilling, "it _is_ like old times to +hear you try to bully me. It's so long since I've had enough spirit to +defy you. But I do now!--oh, yes, I do! Why, I believe that if we had +the gloves here, I'd make you fight me or take back what you said about +my not having any sporting spirit!" + +He laughed: "I was thinking of that, too. You're a good sport, Sis. +Don't bother to take that wager----" + +"I _do_ take it!" she cried; "it's like old times and I love it. Now, +Scott, I'll show you a boar before we go to town or I'll buy you a +horse. No backing out; what's said can't be unsaid, remember: + + "King, king, double king, + Can't take back a given thing! + Queen, queen, queen of queens, + What she promises she means!" + +That was a very solemn incantation in nursery days; she laughed a little +in tender tribute to the past. + +Scott was a trifle perturbed. He glanced uneasily at Kathleen, who told +him very plainly that he had contrived to make her anxious and unhappy. +Then she fell back into step with Geraldine, letting Scott wander +disconsolately forward: + +"Dear," she said, passing one arm around the younger girl, "I didn't +quite dare to object too strongly. You looked so--so interested, so +deliciously defiant--so like your real self----" + +"I feel like it to-day, Kathleen; let me turn back in my own +footsteps--if I can. I've been trying so very hard to--to get back to +where there was no--no terror in the world." + +"I know. But, darling, you won't run into any danger, will you?" + +"Do you call a hard-hit beast a danger? I've wounded a more terrible one +than any boar that ever bristled. I'm trying to kill something more +terrifying. And I shall if I live." + +"You poor, brave little martyr!" whispered Kathleen, her violet eyes +filled with sudden tears; "don't you suppose I know what you are doing? +Don't you suppose I watch and pray----" + +"Did _you_ know I was really trying?" asked the girl, astonished--"I +mean before I told you?" + +"Know it! Angels above! Of course I know it. Don't you suppose I've been +watching you slowly winning back to your old dear self--tired, +weary-footed, desolate, almost hopeless, yet always surely finding your +way back through the dreadful twilight to the dear, sweet, generous self +that I know so well--the straightforward, innocent, brave little self +that grew at my knee!--Geraldine--Geraldine, my own dear child!" + +"Hush--I did not know you knew. I am trying. Once I failed. That was not +very long ago, either. Oh, Kathleen, I am trying so hard, so hard! And +to-day has been a dreadful day for me. That is why I went off by myself; +I paddled until I was ready to drop into the lake; and the fright that +the boar gave me almost ended me; but it could not end desire!... So I +took a rifle--anything to interest me--keep me on my feet and moving +somewhere--doing something--anything--anything, Kathleen--until I can +crush it out of me--until there's a chance that I can sleep----" + +"I know--I know! That is why I dared not remonstrate when I saw you +drifting again toward your old affectionate relations with Scott. I'm +afraid of animals--except what few Scott has persuaded me to +tolerate--butterflies and frogs and things. But if anything on earth is +going to interest you--take your mind off yourself--and bring you and +Scott any nearer together, I shall not utter one word against it--even +when it puts you in physical danger and frightens me. Do you +understand?" + +The girl nodded, turned and kissed her. They were following a path made +by game; Scott was out of sight ahead somewhere; they could hear his +boots crashing through the underbrush. After a while the sound died away +in the forest. + +"The main thing," said Geraldine, "is to keep up my interest in the +world. I want to do things. To sit idle is pure destruction to me. I +write to Duane every morning, I read, I do a dozen things that require +my attention--little duties that everybody has. But I can't continue to +write to Duane all day. I can't read all day; duties are soon ended. +And, Kathleen, it's the idle intervals I dread so--the brooding, the +memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine--like +dinner--the--the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell +you, physical fatigue must help to save me--must help my love for Duane, +my love for you and Scott, my self-respect--what is left of it. This +rifle"--she held it out--"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I +won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me." + +"You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly. + +"Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I +wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed +fiercely. "I need something of that sort." + +"You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me +about it," said Kathleen gently. + +Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only +trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane.... +Don't be alarmed; I can't--yet. But if I only could have him now! You +see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would +absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests +me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the +day--to keep me from myself----" + +She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered: + +"I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I +want him now--his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to +love me--_love_ me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!" + +A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the +girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely +understood. + +Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her--the feeling of +happy safety she had in his arms--the contact that thrilled almost past +endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength--that +set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins--that aroused +her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest +would have her. + +And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and +slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked +into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride: + +"I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him +than that?" + +"Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe +that he can save you--if you really feel that he can----" + +"I am trying to save myself--I am trying." She turned and looked off +through the forest, a straight, slender shape in the moving shadows of +the leaves. + +"But if he could really help you--if you truly believe it, dear, I--I +don't know whether you might not venture--now----" + +"No, dear." She slowly closed her eyes, remained motionless for a +moment, drew a deep, long breath, and looked up through the sunlit +branches overhead. + +"I've got to be fair to him," she said aloud to herself; "I must give +myself to him as I ought to be, or not at all.... That is settled." + +She turned to Kathleen and took her hand: + +"Come on, fellow-pilgrim," she said with an effort to smile. "My +cowardice is over for the present." + +A few steps forward they sighted Scott coming back. He was unusually red +in the face and rather excited, and he flourished a stick. + +"Of all the infernal impudence!" he said. "What do you think has +happened to me? I saw a wild boar back there--not a very big one--and he +came out into the trail ahead, and I kept straight on, thinking he'd +hear me and run. And I'm blessed if the brute didn't whirl around and +roughen up, and clatter his tusks until I actually had to come to a +halt!" + +"I don't want to walk in these woods any more," said Kathleen with +sudden conviction. "Please come home, all of us." + +"Nonsense," he said. "I won't stand for being hustled out of my own +woods. Give me that rifle, Geraldine." + +"I certainly will not," she said, smiling. + +"What! Why not?" + +"Because it rather looks as though I'm about to win my bet with you," +observed Geraldine. "Please show me your boar, Scott." And she threw a +cartridge into the magazine and started forward. + +"Don't let her!" pleaded Kathleen. "Scott, it's ridiculous to let that +child do such silly things----" + +"Then stop her if you can," said Scott gloomily, following his sister. +"I don't know anything about wild boar, but I suppose straight shooting +will take care of them, and Sis can do that if she keeps her nerve." + +Geraldine, hastening ahead, rifle poised, scanned the woods with the +palpitating curiosity of an amateur. Eyes and ears alert, she kept +mechanically reassuring herself that the thing to do was to shoot +straight and keep cool, and to keep on shooting whichever way the boar +might take it into his porcine head to run. + +Scott hastened forward to her side: + +"Here's the place," he said, looking about him. "He's concluded to make +off, you see. They usually go off; they only stand when wounded or when +they think they can't get away. He's harmless, I suppose--only it made +me very tired to have him act that way. I hate to be backed out of my +own property." + +Geraldine, rather relieved, yet ashamed not to do all she could, began +to walk toward a clump of low hemlocks. She had heard that wild boar +take that sort of cover. She did not really expect to find anything +there, so when a big black streak crashed out ahead of her she stood +stock still in frozen astonishment, rifle clutched to her breast. + +"Shoot!" shouted her brother. + +"Oh, dear, oh, dear," she said helplessly, "he's gone out of sight! And +I had such a splendid shot!" She stamped with vexation. "What a goose!" +she repeated. "I had a perfectly splendid shot. And all I did was to +jump like a scared cat and stare!" + +"Anyway, you didn't run, and that's a point gained," observed her +brother. "I had to. And that's one on me." + +A moment later he said: "I believe those impudent boar do need a little +thinning out. When is Duane coming?" + +"In November," said Geraldine, still looking vaguely about for the +departed pig. + +"Early?" + +"I think so, if his father is all right again. I've asked Naïda, too. +Rosalie wants to come----" + +"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't," he protested. "All I wanted was a +shooting party to do a little scientific thinning out of these boar. +I'll do some myself, too." + +Geraldine laughed. "Rosalie is a dead shot at a target, dear. She wrote +asking us to invite her to shoot. I don't see how I can very well refuse +her. Do you?" + +"That means her husband, too," grumbled Scott, "and that entire bunch." + +"No; if it's a shooting party, I don't have to ask him." + +Her brother said ungraciously: "Well, I don't care who you ask if +they'll thin out these cheeky brutes. Fancy that two-year-old pig +clattering his tusks at me, planted there in the path with his mane on +end!--You know it mortifies me, Kathleen--it certainly does. One of +these fine days some facetious pig will send me shinning up a tree!" He +grew madder at the speculative indignity. "By ginger! I'm going to have +a shooting party before the snow flies," he muttered, walking forward +between Kathleen and his sister. "Keep your eyes out ahead; we may jump +another at any time, as the wind is all right. And if we do, let him +have it, Geraldine!" + +It was a beautiful woodland through which they moved. + +The late autumn foliage was unusually magnificent, lacking, this year, +those garish and discordant hues which Americans think it necessary to +admire. Oak brown and elm yellow, deep chrome bronze and sombre crimson +the hard woods glowed against backgrounds of pine and hemlock. Larches +were mossy cones of feathery gold; birches slim shafts of snowy gray, +ochre-crowned; silver and green the balsams' spires pierced the canopy +of splendid tapestry upborne by ash and oak and towering pine under a +sky of blue so deep and intense that the lakes reflecting it seemed no +less vivid. + +Already in the brooks they passed painted trout hung low over every bed +of gravel and white sand; the male trout wore his best scarlet fins, and +his sides glowed in alternate patterns, jewelled with ruby and sapphire +spots. Already the ruffed grouse thundered up by coveys, though they had +not yet packed, for the broods still retained their autonomy. + +But somewhere beyond the royal azure of the northern sky, very, very far +away, there was cold in the world, for even last week, through the +violet and primrose dusk, out of the north, shadowy winged things came +speeding, batlike phantoms against the dying light--flight-woodcock +coming through hill-cleft and valley to the land where summer lingered +still. + +And there in mid-forest, right in the tall timber, Scott, advancing, +flushed a woodcock, which darted up, filling the forest with twittering +music--the truest music of our eastern autumn, clear, bewildering, +charming in its evanescent sweetness which leaves in its wake a +startling silence. + +Ahead, lining both sides of a gully deep with last year's leaves, was an +oak grove in mid-forest. Here the brown earth was usually furrowed by +the black snouts of wild boar, for mast lay thick here in autumn and +tender roots invited investigation. + +"Get down flat and crawl," whispered Scott; "there may be a boar or two +on the grounds." + +Kathleen, in her pretty white gown of lace and some sheer stuff, looked +at him piteously; but when he and Geraldine dropped flat and wriggled +forward into the wind, misgiving of what might prowl behind seized her, +and she tucked up her skirts and gave herself to the brown earth with a +tremor of indignation and despair. + +Nearer and nearer they crept, making very little sound; but they made +enough to rouse a young boar, who jerked his head into the air, where he +stood among the acorns, big, furry ears high and wide, nose working +nervously. + +"He's only a yearling," breathed Scott in his sister's ear. "There are +traces of stripes, if you look hard. Wait for a better one." + +They lay silent, all three peering down at the yearling, who stood +motionless, nosing for tainted air, listening, peering about with dull, +near-sighted eyes. + +And, after a long time, as they made no sound, the brute wheeled +suddenly, made a complete circle at a nervous trout, uttered a series of +short, staccato sounds that, when he became older, would become deeper, +more of an ominous roar than a hoarse and irritated grunt. + +Two deer, a doe and a fawn, came picking their way cautiously along the +edge of the gully, sometimes flattening their ears, sometimes necks +outstretched, ears forward, peering ahead at the young and bad-tempered +pig. + +The latter saw them, turned in fury and charged with swiftness +incredible, and the deer stampeded headlong through the forest. + +"What a fierce, little brute!" whispered Kathleen, appalled. "Scott, if +he comes any nearer, I'm going to get into a tree." + +"If he sees us or winds us he'll run. Don't move; there may be a good +boar in presently. I've thought two or three times that I heard +something on that hemlock ridge." + +They listened, holding their breath. Crack! went a distant stick. +Silence; nothing stirred except the yearling who had returned to the +mast and was eagerly nosing among the acorns. They could hear him +crunching the husks, see the gleam of long white teeth which one day +would grow outside that furry muzzle and curve up and backward like +ivory sabres. + +Geraldine whispered: "There's a huge black thing moving in the hemlock +scrub. I can see its feet against the sky-line, and sometimes part of +its bulk----" + +"Oh, heavens," breathed Kathleen, "what is that?" + +Out of the scrub trotted a huge, shaggy, black thing, all head and +shoulders, with body slanting back abruptly to a pair of weak +hindquarters. Down the slope it ran in quick, noiseless, jerky steps; +the yearling turned his head, still munching, ears cocked forward. And +suddenly the monster rushed at him with a squeal, and the yearling +shrieked and fled, chased clear up the slope. + +"It's a sow; don't shoot," whispered Scott. "Look, Sis, you can't see a +sign of tusks. Good heavens, what a huge creature she is!" + +Fierce, formidable, the great beast halted; three striped, partly grown +pigs came rushing and frisking down the gully to join her, filling the +forest with their clumsy clatter and baby squealing. From the ridge the +two deer, who had sneaked back, regarded the scene with terrified +fascination. + +Presently the yearling rushed them out again, then sidled down, +venturing to the edge of the feeding-ground, where he began to crunch +acorns again with a cautious eye on the sow and her noisy brood. + +Here and there a brilliant blue-jay floated down, seized an acorn, and +winged hastily to some near tree where presently he filled the woods +with the noise he made in hammering the acorn into some cleft in the +bark. + +Gradually the sunlight on the leaves reddened; long, luminous shadows +lengthened eastward. Kathleen, lying at full length, her pretty face +between her hands, suddenly sneezed. + +The next moment the feeding-ground was deserted; only a distant crashing +betrayed the line of flight where the great fierce sow and her young +were rushing upward toward the rocks of the Gilded Dome. + +"I'm so sorry," faltered Kathleen, very pink and embarrassed. + +Geraldine sat up and laughed, laying the uncocked rifle across her +knees. + +"Some of these days I'm going to win my wager," she said to her brother. +"And it won't be with a striped yearling, either; it will be with the +biggest, shaggiest, fiercest, tuskiest boar that ranges the Gilded Dome. +And that," she added, looking at Kathleen, "will give me something to +think of and keep me rather busy, I believe." + +"Rather," observed her brother, getting up and helping Kathleen to her +feet. He added, to torment her: "Probably you'll get Duane to win your +bet for you, Sis." + +"No," said the girl gravely; "whatever is to die I must slay all by +myself, Scott--all alone, with no man's help." + +He nodded: "Sure thing; it's the only sporting way. There's no stunt to +it; only keep cool and keep shooting, and drop him before he comes to +close quarters." + +"Yes," she said, looking up at Kathleen. + +Her brother drew her to her feet. She gave him a little hug. + +"Believe in me, dear," she said. "I'll do it easier if you do." + +"Of course I do. You're a better sport than I. You always were. And +that's no idle jest; witness my nose and Duane's in days gone by." + +The girl smiled. As they turned homeward she slung her rifle, passed her +right arm through Kathleen's, and dropped her left on her brother's +shoulder. She was very tired, and hopeful that she might sleep. + +And tired, hopeful, thinking of her lover, she passed through the woods, +leaning on those who were nearest and most dear. + +Somehow--and just why was not clear to her--it seemed at that moment as +though she had passed the danger mark--as though the very worst lay +behind her--close, scarcely clear of her skirts yet, but all the same it +lay behind her, not ahead. + +She knew, and dreaded, and shrank from what still lay before her; she +understood into what ruin treachery to self might precipitate her still +at any moment. And yet, somehow, she felt vaguely that something had +been gained that day which never before had been gained. And she thought +of her lover as she passed through the forest, leaning on Scott and +Kathleen, her little feet keeping step with theirs, her eyes steady in +the red western glare that flooded the forest to an infernal beauty. + +Behind her streamed her gigantic shadow; behind her lay another shadow, +cast by her soul and floating wide of it now. And it must never touch +her soul again, God helping. + +Suddenly her heart almost ceased its beating. Far away within, stirring +in unsuspected depths, something moved furtively. + +Her face whitened a little; her eyes closed, the lids fluttered, opened; +she gazed straight in front of her, walked on, small head erect, lips +firm, facing the hell that lay before her--lay surely, surely before +her. For the breath of it glowed already in her veins and the voices of +it were already busy in her ears, and the unseen stirring of it had +begun once more within her body--that tired white, slender body of hers +which had endured so bravely and so long. + +If sleep would only aid her, come to her in her need, be her ally in the +peril of her solitude--if it would only come, and help her to endure! + +And wondering if it would, not knowing, hoping, she walked onward +through the falling night. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE DANGER MARK + + +Her letters to him still bore the red cross: + + "I understand perfectly why you cannot come," she wrote; "I would do + exactly as you are doing if I had a father. It must be a very great + happiness to have one. My need of you is not as great as his; I can + hold my own alone, I think. You see I am doing it, and you must not + worry. Only, dear, when you have the opportunity, come up if only + for a day." + +And again, in November: + + "You are the sweetest boy, and it is not difficult to understand why + your father cannot endure to have you out of his sight. But is this + not a very heavy strain on you? Of course your mother and Naïda must + not be left alone with him; you are the only son, and your place is + there. + + "Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful + things that any man is called upon to bear--your father stricken, + your mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers--for I have read + them--cruel beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true + or untrue, Duane, remember that it cannot affect my regard for you + and yours. + + "If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others + to do, would not, _could_ not alter my affection for him. + + "Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what + that sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compassion are + needed, too. + + "I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell + me. The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern + financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can + comprehend, it seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what + disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very + men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did + so disastrously. + + "One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever + lived; and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his + son when I am fit to do it." + +And again she wrote: + + "I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its + doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it, + the lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night + long. It is dreadful, terrible! + + "Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when + they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don't know what + it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart--words and + figures and technical phrases and stock quotations--and it means + nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce + outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially + involved. + + "The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so + merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can + scarcely bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who + know nothing about these matters? The interview with your mother and + Naïda, which you say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are! + + "Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too. And, dear, I + don't know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of + any financial use to you, please, please let us! Our fortune, when + it came to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad + securities. I believe that Scott made some changes in our + investments under advice from your father. I don't know what they + were. + + "Don't bother your father with such details now; he has enough to + think of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and + body. Duane, is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand + what the papers are saying? + + "Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours." + +She wrote again: + + "Yes, I had a talk with Scott. I did not know he had been receiving + all those letters from your attorneys. Magnelius Grandcourt manages + the investments. Scott's brokers are Stainer & Elting; our attorneys + are, as you know, Landon, Brooks & Gayfield. + + "Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry. My brother is of age, + sound in mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has + done. It is his affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he + follows it. Your father has no responsibility whatever in the matter + of the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Besides, Scott + tells me that what he did was against the advice of Mr. Tappan. + + "I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon, + and a horrid man named Klawber. + + "Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I + know he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me + that what interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities + Company was the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific + research the world over. Poor Scott! + + "Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which + may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it + could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is + such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I + should understand that! + + "Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I + suppose; I may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you + how much more serious to me are other things--like the loss of faith + in one's self or in others--or the loss of the gentler virtues, + which means the loss of what one once was. + + "The loss of honour is, as you say, a pitiful thing; yet, I think + that when that happens, love and compassion were never more truly + needed. + + "Honour, as I understand it, is not to take advantage of others or + of one's better self. This is a young girl's definition. I cannot + see--if one has yielded once to temptation, and truly repents--why + honour cannot be regained. + + "The honour of men and nations that seems to require arrogance, + aggression, violence for its defence, I do not understand. How can + the misdeeds of others impair one's true honour? How can punishment + for such misdeeds restore it? No; it lies within one, quite + intangible save by one's self. + + "Why should I not know, dear?--I who have lost my own and found it, + have held it desperately for a while, then lost it, then regained + it, holding it again as I do now--alas!--against no other enemy than + I who write this record for your eyes! + + "Dear, I know of nothing lost which may not be regained, except + life. I know of nothing which cannot be rendered tolerable through + loyalty. + + "That material happiness which means so much to some, means now so + very little to me, perhaps because I have never lacked it. + + "Yet I know that, once mistress of myself, nothing else could matter + unless your love failed." + +Again she wrote him toward the end of November: + + "Why will you not let me help you, dear? My fortune is practically + intact so far, except that, of course, I met those obligations which + Scott could not meet. Poor Scott! + + "You know it's rather bewildering to me where millions go to. I + don't quite comprehend how they can so utterly vanish in such a + short time, even in such a frightful fiasco as the Cascade + Development Company. + + "So many people have been here--Mr. Landon and Mr. Gayfield, Mr. + Stainer of Elting & Stainer, that dreadful creature Klawber, a very + horrid man named Amos Flack--and dear, grim, pig-headed Mr. + Tappan--old Remsen Tappan of all men! + + "He practically kicked out Mr. Flack and the creature Klawber, who + had been trying to frighten Scott and me and even our lawyers. + + "And think, Duane! He never uttered one sarcasm, one reproach for + Scott's foolishness; he sat grim and rusty as the iron that he once + dealt in, listening to what Scott had to tell him, never opening + that cragged jaw, never unclosing that thin line of cleavage which + is his mouth. + + "We did not know what he had come for; but we know now. He is _so_ + good--so good, Duane! And I, who hated him as a child, as a girl--I + am almost too ashamed to let him take command and untangle for us, + with those knotted, steel-sinewed fingers of his, the wretched, + tangled mess that has coiled around Scott and me. + + "Surely, this man Klawber is a very great villain; and it seems that + Mr. Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for + Jack Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he + feel! Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He + must have been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; + nothing on earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he + let his best friend go down with it? + + "But it was fine of Delancy to stand by him--fine, fine! His father + is perfectly furious, but, Duane, it _was_ fine! + + "And now, dear, about Scott. It will amuse you, and perhaps horrify + you, if I tell you that he has not turned a hair. + + "Not that he doesn't care; not that he is not more or less + mortified. But he blames nobody except himself; and he's laying + plans quite cheerfully for a career on a small income that really + does not require the austerity and frugality he imagines. + + "One thing is certain; the town house is to be sold. My income is + not sufficient to maintain it and Roya-Neh, and live as we do, and + have anything left. I don't yet know how far my fortune is involved, + but I have a very unpleasant premonition that there is going to be + much less left than anybody believes, and that ultimately we ought + to sell Roya-Neh. + + "However, it is far too early to speculate; besides, this family has + done enough speculating for one generation. + + "Dear, you ask about myself. I am not one bit worried, sad, or + apprehensive. I am _better_, Duane. Do you understand? All this has + developed a set of steadier nerves in me than I have had since I was + a child. + + "A new and curiously keen enjoyment has been slowly growing in me--a + happiness in physical and violent effort. I've a devilish horse to + ride; and I love it! I've climbed all over the Gilded Dome and Lynx + Peak after the biggest and shaggiest boar you ever saw. Oh, Duane! I + came on him just at the edge of evening, and he winded me and went + thundering down the Westgate ravine, and I fired too quickly. + + "But I'm after him almost every day with old Miller, and my arms and + legs are getting so strong, and my flesh so firm, and actually I'm + becoming almost plump in the face! Don't you care for that kind of a + girl? + + "Dear, do you think I've passed the danger mark? Tell me + honestly--not what you want to think, but what you do believe. I + don't know whether I have passed it yet. I feel, somehow, whichever + side of it I am on, that the danger mark is not very far away from + me. I've got to get farther away. The house in town is open. Mrs. + Farren, Hilda, and Nellie are there if we run into town. + + "Kathleen is so happy for me. I've told her about the red cross. She + is too sweet to Scott; she seems to think he really grieves deeply + over the loss of his private fortune. What a dear she is! She is + willing to marry him now; but Scott strikes attitudes and declares + she shall have a man whose name stands for an achievement--meaning, + of course, the Seagrave process for the extermination of the + Rose-beetle. + + "Duane, I am quite unaccountably happy to-day. Nothing seems to + threaten. But don't stop loving me." + +Followed three letters less confident, and another very pitiful--a +frightened letter asking him to come if he could. But his father's +condition forbade it and he dared not. + +Then another letter came, desperate, almost incoherent, yet still +bearing the red cross faintly traced. And on the heels of it a telegram: + + "Could you stand by me until this is over? I am afraid of to-night. + Am on my way to town with my maid, very ill. I know you cannot + leave your father except at night. I will telephone you from the + house. + "G.S." + +On the train a dispatch was handed her: + + "I will be at your house as soon as my father is asleep. Don't + worry. + "DUANE." + +Hour after hour she sat motionless beside the car-window, quiet, pale, +dark eyes remote; trees, houses, trains, telegraph-poles streamed past +in one gray, unending blur; rain which at first had only streaked the +grimy window-glass with cinders, became sleet, then snow, clotting the +dripping panes. + +At last, far away under a heavy sky, the vast misshapen landmarks of New +York loomed up gray through the falling snow; the train roared over the +Harlem, halted at 125th Street, rolled on into the black tunnel, faster, +faster, slower, then more slowly, and stopped. All sounds ceased at the +same moment; silence surrounded her, dreary as the ominous silence +within. + +Dunn met her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, +melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return +from her first opera--the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps +lighted, speeding through the driving snow. Yesterday, the quiet, +untainted whiteness of childhood; to-day, trouble and stress and stained +snow melting into mud--so far behind her lay innocence and peace on the +long road she had travelled! So far had she already journeyed--toward +what? + +She pressed her lips more tightly together and buried her chin in her +sable muff. Beside her, her maid sat shivering and stifling yawn after +yawn and thinking of dinner and creature comforts, and of Dunn, the +footman, whom she did ardently admire. + +The big red brick house among its naked trees seemed sad and deserted as +the brougham flashed into the drive and stopped, the horses stamping and +pawing the frozen gravel. Geraldine had never before been away from home +so long, and now as she descended from the carriage and looked vaguely +about her it seemed as though she had, somehow, become very, very young +again--that it was her child-self that entered under the porte-cochère +after the prescribed drive that always ended outdoor exercise in the +early winter evenings; and she half expected to see old Howker in the +hall, and Margaret trotting up to undo her furs and leggings--half +expected to hear Kathleen's gay greeting, to see her on the stairs, so +young, so sweetly radiant, her arms outstretched in welcome to her +children who had been away scarcely a full hour. + +"I'd like to have a fire in my bedroom and in the upper library," she +said to Hilda, who had smilingly opened the door for her. "I'll dine in +the upper library, too. When Mr. Mallett arrives, you need not come up +to announce him. Ask him to find me in the library." + +To Mrs. Farren she said: "Nobody need sit up. When Mr. Mallett leaves, I +will put the chains on and bolt everything." + +She was destined not to keep this promise. + + * * * * * + +Bathed, her hair brushed and dressed, she suffered her maid to hook her +into a gown which she could put off again unassisted--one of those gowns +that excite masculine admiration by reason of its apparent +inexpensiveness and extreme simplicity. It was horribly expensive, of +course--white, and cut out in a circle around her neck like a young +girl's gown; and it suited Geraldine's slender, rounded throat and her +dainty head with its heavy, loosely drawn masses of brown hair, just +shadowing cheeks and brow. + +When the last hook was looped she dismissed her maid for the night; +Hilda served her at dinner, but she ate little, and the waitress bore +away the last of the almost untouched food, leaving her young mistress +seated before the fire and looking steadily into it. + +The fire was a good one; the fuel oak and ash and beech. The flames made +a silky, rustling sound; now and then a coal fell with a softly +agreeable crash and a swarm of golden sparks whirled up the chimney, +snapping, scintillating, like day fireworks. + +Geraldine sat very still, her mouth resting on her white wrist, and when +she lifted her head the marks of her teeth showed on the skin. Then the +other hand, clutching the arm of her chair, fell to her side cramped +and quivering; she stood up, looked at the fire, pressed both palms +across her eyes, turned and began to pace the room. + +To and fro she moved, slowly, quickly, as the craving for motion ebbed +or increased. At times she made unconscious movements with her arms, now +flinging them wide, now flexing the muscles, clenching the hands; but +always the arms fell helpless, hopeless; the slim, desperate fingers +relaxed; and she moved on again, to and fro, up and down, turning her +gaze toward the clock each time she passed it. + +In her eyes there seemed to be growing a dreadful sort of beauty; there +was fire in them, the luminous brightness of the tortured. On both +cheeks a splendid colour glowed and waned; the slightly drawn lips were +vivid. + +But this--all of it changed as the slow minutes dragged their course; +into the brown eyes crept the first frosty glimmer of desperation; +colour faded from the face, leaving it snowy white; the fulness of the +lips vanished, the chin seemed to grow pointed, and under the eyes +bluish shadows deepened. It promised to go hard with her that night; it +was already going very badly. She knew it, and digging her nails into +her delicate palms, set her teeth together and drew a deep, unsteady +breath. + +She had looked at the clock four times, and the hands seemed to have +moved no more than a minute's space across the dial; and once more she +turned to pace the floor. + +Her lips had lost almost all their colour now; they moved, muttering +tremulous incoherences; the outline of every feature grew finer, +sharper, more spiritual, but dreadfully white. + +Later she found herself on her knees beside the couch, face buried in +the cushions, her small teeth marking her wrist again--heard herself +crying out for somebody to help her--yet her lips had uttered no sound; +it was only her soul in its agony, while the youthful, curved body and +rigid limbs burnt steadily in hell's own flames. + +Again she raised her head and lifted her white face toward the clock. +Only a minute had crept by, and she turned, twisting her interlocked +hands, dry-eyed, dry lips parted, and stared about her. Half stupefied +with pain, stunned, dismayed by the million tiny voices of temptation +assailing her, dinning in her senses, she reeled where she knelt, fell +forward, laid her slender length across the hearth-rug, and set her +teeth in her wrist again, choking back the cry of terror and desolation. + +And there her senses tricked her--or she may have lost +consciousness--for it seemed that the next moment she was on the stairs, +moving stealthily--where? God and her tormented body seemed to know, for +she caught herself halfway down the stairs, cried out on her Maker for +strength, stood swaying, breathless, quivering in the agony of it--and +dragged herself back and up the stairs once more, step by step, to the +landing. + +For a moment she stood there, shaking, ghastly, staring down into the +regions below, where relief lay within her reach. And she dared not even +stare too long; she turned blindly, arms outstretched, feeling her way +back. Every sense within her seemed for the moment deadened; sounds +scarcely penetrated, had no meaning; she heard the grille clash, steps +on the stair; she was trying to get back to the library, paused to rest +at the door, was caught in two strong arms, drawn into them: + +"Duane," she whispered. + +"Darling!"--and as he saw her face--"My God!" + +"Mine, too, Duane. Don't be afraid; I'm holding firm, so far. But I am +very, very ill. Could you help me a little?" + +"Yes, child!--yes, little Geraldine--my little, little girl----" + +"Can you stay near me?" + +"Yes! Good God, yes!" + +"How long?" + +"As long as you want me." + +"Then I can get through with this. I think to-night decides.... If you +will remain with me--for a while----" + +"Yes, dear." + +He drew a chair to the fire; she sank into it; he seated himself beside +her and she clung to his hand with both of hers. + +His eyes fell upon her wrist where the marks of her teeth were +imprinted; he felt her body trembling, saw the tragedy in her eyes, +rose, lifted her as though she were a child, and seating himself, drew +her close against his breast. + +The night was a hard one; sometimes in an access of pain she struggled +for freedom, and all his strength was needed to keep her where she lay. +At times, too, her senses seemed clouded, and she talked incoherently; +sometimes she begged for relief, shamelessly craved it; sometimes she +used all her force, and, almost beside herself, defied him, threatened +him, turned on him infuriated; but his strength held her locked in a +vicelike embrace, and, toward morning, she suddenly relaxed--crumpled +up like a white flower in his arms. For a while her tears fell hot and +fast; then utter prostration left her limp, without movement, even +without a tremor, a dead weight in his arms. + +And, for the second time in his life, lifting her, he bore her to her +room, laid her among the pillows, slipped off her shoes, and, bending +above her, listened. + +She slept profoundly--but it was not the stupor that had chained her +limbs that other time when he had brought her here. + +He went into the library and waited for an hour. Then, very quietly, he +descended the stairs and let himself out into the bitter darkness of a +November morning. + + * * * * * + +About noon next day the Seagraves' brougham drew up before the Mallett +house and Geraldine, in furs, stepped out and crossed the sidewalk with +that swift, lithe grace of hers. The servant opened the grille; she +entered and stood by the great marble-topped hall-table until Duane came +down. Then she gave him her gloved hands, looking him straight in the +eyes. + +She was still pale but self-possessed, and wonderfully pretty in her fur +jacket and toque; and as she stood there, both hands dropped into his, +that nameless and winning grace which had always fascinated him held him +now--something about her that recalled the child in the garden with +clustering hair and slim, straight limbs. + +"You look about fifteen," he said, "you beautiful, slender thing! Did +you come to see my father?" + +"Yes--and your father's son." + +[Illustration: "Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms."] + +"Me?" + +"Is there another like you, Duane--in all the world?" + +"Plenty----" + +"Hush!... When did you go last night?" + +"When you left me for the land of dreams, little lady." + +"So you--carried me." + +He smiled, and a bright flush covered her cheeks. + +"That makes twice," she said steadily. + +"Yes, dear." + +"There will be no third time." + +"Not unless I have a sleepy wife who nods before the fire like a drowsy +child." + +"Do you want that kind?" + +"I want the kind that lay close in my arms before the fire last night." + +"Do you? I think I should like the sort of husband who is strong enough +to cradle that sort of a child.... Could your mother and Naïda receive +me? Could I see your father?" + +"Yes. When are you going back to Roya-Neh?" + +"To-night." + +He said quietly: "Is it safe?" + +"For me to go? Yes--yes, my darling"--her hands tightened over +his--"yes, it is safe--because you made it so. If you knew--if you knew +what is in my heart to--to give you!--what I will be to you some day, +dearest of men----" + +He said unsteadily: "Come upstairs.... My father is very feeble, but +quite cheerful. Do you understand that--that his mind--his memory, +rather, is a little impaired?" + +She lifted his hands and laid her soft lips against them: + +"Will you take me to him, Duane?" + +Colonel Mallett lay in the pale November sunlight, very still, his hands +folded on his breast. And at first she did not know him in this ghost of +the tall, well-built, gray-haired man with ruddy colour and firm, clear +skin. + +As she bent over, he opened his eyes, smiled, pronounced her name, still +smiling and keeping his sunken eyes on her. They were filmy and bluish, +like the eyes of the very old; and the hand she lifted and held was the +stricken hand of age--inert, lifeless, without weight. + +She said that she was so happy to know he was recovering; she told him +how proud everybody was of Duane, what exceptional talent he possessed, +how wonderfully he had painted Miller's children. She spoke to him of +Roya-Neh, and how interesting it had become to them all, told him about +the wild boar and her own mishaps with the guileful pig. + +He smiled, watching her at times; but his wistful gaze always reverted +to his son, who sat at the foot of the couch, chin balanced between his +long, lean hands. + +"You won't go, will you?" he whispered. + +"Where, father?" + +"Away." + +"No, of course not." + +"I mean with--Geraldine," he said feebly. + +"If I did, father, we'd take you with us," he laughed. + +"It is too far, my son.... You and Geraldine are going too far for me to +follow.... Wait a little while." + +Geraldine, blushing, bent down swiftly, her lips brushing the sick +man's wasted face: + +"I would not care for him if I could take him from you." + +"Your father and I were old friends. Your grandfather was a very fine +gentleman.... I am glad.... I am a little tired--a little confused. Is +your grandfather here with you? I would like to see him." + +She said, after a moment, in a low voice: "He did not come with me +to-day." + +"Give him my regards and compliments. And say to him that it would be a +pleasure to see him. I am not very well; has he heard of my +indisposition?" + +"I think he--has." + +"Then he will come," said Colonel Mallett feebly. "Duane, you are not +going, are you? I am a little tired. I think I could sleep if you would +lower the shade and ask your mother to sit by me.... But you won't go +until I am asleep, will you?" + +"No," he said gently, as his mother and Naïda entered and Geraldine rose +to greet them, shocked at the change in Mrs. Mallett. + +She and Naïda went away together; later Duane joined them in the +library, saying that his father was asleep, holding fast to his wife's +hand. + +Geraldine, her arm around Naïda's waist, had been looking at one of +Duane's pictures--the only one of his in the house--merely a stretch of +silvery marsh and a gray, wet sky beyond. + +"Father liked it," he said; "that's why it's here, Geraldine." + +"You never made one brush-stroke that was commonplace in all your life," +said Geraldine abruptly. "Even I can see that." + +"Such praise from a lady!" he exclaimed, laughing. Geraldine smiled, +too, and Naïda's pallid face lightened for a moment. But grief had set +its seal on the house of Mallett; that was plain everywhere; and when +Geraldine kissed Naïda good-bye and walked to the door beside her lover, +a passion of tenderness for him and his overwhelmed her, and when he put +her into her brougham she leaned from the lowered window, clinging to +his hand, careless of who might see them. + +"_Can_ I help in any way?" she whispered. "I told you that my fortune is +still my own--most of it----" + +"Dear, wait!" + +There was a strange look in his eyes; she said no more with her lips, +but her eyes told him all. Then he stepped back, directing Dunn to drive +his mistress to the Commonwealth Club, where she was to lunch with +Sylvia Quest, whom she had met that morning in the blockade at +Forty-second Street, and who had invited her from her motor across the +crupper of a traffic-policeman's horse. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +BON CHIEN + + +The chronology of that last dark and bitter week in November might have +been written "necrology." + +On Monday Colonel Mallett died about sundown; on Wednesday the Hon. John +D. Ellis, while examining an automatic revolver in his bath-room, met +with one of those unfortunate and fatal accidents which sometimes happen +in times of great financial depression. + +Thursday Amos Flack carelessly disappeared, leaving no address; and on +the last day of the week Emanuel Klawber politely excused himself to a +group of very solemn gentlemen who had been assisting him in the +well-known and popular game of "Hunt the Books"; and, stepping outside +the door of the director's office, carefully destroyed what little life +had not already been scared out of his three-hundred-pound person. + +It had been raining all day; Dysart had not felt very well, and +Klawber's unpleasant performance made him ill. He stood in the rain +watching the ambulance arriving at a gallop, then, sickened, turned away +through the dark and dripping crowds, crossed the street, and, lowering +his head against the storm, drove both gloved hands deep into the +pockets of his fashionably cut rain-coat, and started for home. + +It mattered nothing to him that several hard-working newspaper men might +desire to secure his version of Mr. Klawber's taking off, or of his +explanation for it or his sensations concerning it. It mattered nothing +to him that the afternoon papers reported the arrest of James Skelton, +or that Max Moebus had inadvertently, and no doubt in a moment of +intense abstraction, taken a steamer for Europe and the books of the +Shoshone Bank. + +These matters, now seemed a great way off--too unreal to be of personal +moment. He was feeling sick; that occupied his mind. Also the slush on +the sidewalk had wet through his shoes, which probably was not good for +his cough. + +It was scarcely two in the afternoon, yet there remained so little +daylight that the electricity burned in the shops along Fifth Avenue. +Through a smutty, grayish gloom, rain drove densely; his hat and +waterproof coat were heavy with it, the bottoms of his trousers soaked. + +Passing the Patroons Club it occurred to him that hot whiskey might +extinguish his cough. The liveried servants at the door, in the +cloak-room--the page who took his order, the white-headed butler who had +always personally served him, and who served him now, all hesitated and +gazed curiously at him. He paid no attention at the time but remembered +it afterward. + +For an hour he sat alone in the vast empty room before a fire of English +cannel coal, taking his hot whiskey and lemon in slow, absent-minded +gulps. Patches of deep colour lay flat under his cheek-bones, his sunken +abstracted eyes never left the coals. + +The painted gaze of dead Presidents and Governors looked down at him +from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken +wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose +leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering +in their evil immobility. + +He had presented the trophy to the club after a trip somewhere, leaving +the impression that he had shot it. He seldom looked at it, never at the +silver-engraved inscription on the walnut shield. + +Strangely enough, now as he sat there, he thought of the trophy and +looked up at it; and for the first time in his life read the +inscription. + +It made no visible impression upon him except that for a brief moment +the small and vivid patches of colour in his wasted cheeks faintly +tinted the general pallor. But this died out as soon as it appeared; he +drank deliberately, set the hot glass on a table at his elbow, long, +bony fingers still retaining a grip upon it. + +And into his unconcentrated thoughts, strangely enough, came the +memories of little meannesses which he had committed--trivial things +that he supposed he had forgotten long ago; and at first, annoyed, he +let memory drift. + +But, imperceptibly, from the shallows of these little long-forgotten +meannesses, memory drifted uncontrolled into deeper currents; and, +disdainful, he made no effort to control it; and later, could not. And +for the first time in his life he took the trouble to understand the +reason of his unpopularity among men. He had cared nothing for them. + +He cared nothing for them now, unless that half tolerant, half +disdainful companionship of years with Delancy Grandcourt could be +called caring for a man. If their relations ever had been anything more +than a habit he did not know; on what their friendship had ever been +founded he could not tell. It had been his habit to take from Delancy, +accept, or help himself. He had helped himself to Rosalie Dene; and not +long ago he had accepted all that Delancy offered, almost convinced at +the time that it would disappear in the debacle when the Algonquin +crumbled into a rubbish heap of rotten securities. + +A curious friendship--and the only friend he ever had had among +men--stupid, inertly at hand, as inevitably to be counted on as some +battered toy of childhood which escaped the dust heap so long that +custom tolerates its occupation of any closet space convenient: and +habit, at intervals, picks it up to see what's left of it. + + * * * * * + +He had finished his whiskey; the fire seemed to have grown too hot, and +he shoved back his chair. But the room, too, was becoming close, even +stifling. Perspiration glistened on his forehead; he rose and began to +wander from room to room, followed always by the stealthy glances of +servants. + +The sweat on his face had become unpleasantly cold; he came back to the +fire, endured it for a few moments, then, burning and shivering at the +same time, and preferring the latter sensation, he went out to his +letter-box and unlocked it. There was only one envelope there, a letter +from the governing board of the club requesting his resignation. + +The possibility of such an event had never occurred to him; he read the +letter again, folded and placed it in his pocket, went back to the fire +with the idea of burning it, took it out, read it again, folded it +absently, and replaced it in his pocket. + +At that time, except for the dull surprise, the episode did not seem to +affect him particularly. So many things had been accumulating, so many +matters had been menacing him, that one cloud more among the dark, +ominous masses gathering made no deeper impression than slight surprise. + +For a while he stood motionless, hands in his trousers' pockets, head +lowered; then, as somebody entered the farther door, he turned +instinctively and stepped into a private card room, closing the polished +mahogany door. The door opened a moment later and Delancy Grandcourt +walked in. + +"Hello," he said briefly. Dysart, by the window, looked around at him +without any expression whatever. + +"Have you heard about Klawber?" asked Delancy. "They're calling the +extra." + +Dysart looked out of the window. "That's fast work," he said. + +Grandcourt stood for a while in silence, then seated himself, saying: + +"He ought to have lived and tried to make good." + +"He couldn't." + +"He ought to have tried. What's the good of lying down that way?" + +"I don't know. I guess he was tired." + +"That doesn't relieve his creditors." + +"No, but it relieves Klawber." + +Grandcourt said: "You always view things from that side, don't you?" + +"What side?" + +"That of personal convenience." + +"Yes. Why not?" + +"I don't know. Where is it landing you?" + +"I haven't gone into that very thoroughly." There was a trace of +irritation in Dysart's voice; he passed one hand over his forehead; it +was icy, and the hair on it damp. "What the devil do you want of me, +anyway?" he asked. + +"Nothing.... I have never wanted anything of you, have I?" + +Dysart walked the width of the room, then the length of it, then came +and stood by the table, resting on it with one thin hand, in which his +damp handkerchief was crushed to a wad. + +"_What_ is it you've got to say, Delancy? Is it about that loan?" + +"No. Have you heard a word out of me about it?" + +"You've been devilish glum. Good God, I don't blame you; I ought not to +have touched it; I must have been crazy to let you try to help me----" + +"It was my affair. What I choose to do concerns myself," said +Grandcourt, his heavy, troubled face turning redder. "And, Jack, I +understand that my father is making things disagreeable for you. I've +told him not to; and you mustn't let it worry you, because what I had +was my own and what I did with it my own business." + +"Anyway," observed Dysart, after a moment's reflection, "your family is +wealthy." + +A darker flush stained Grandcourt's face; and Dysart's misinterpretation +of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy +lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he +sat silent, his personal feelings merged in an evergrowing anxiety. + +"Why do you cough like that, Jack?" he demanded after a paroxysm had +shaken the other into an armchair, where he lay sweating and panting: + +"It's a cold," Dysart managed to say; "been hanging on for a month." + +"Three months," said Grandcourt tersely. "Why don't you take care of +it?" + +There was a silence; nothing more was said about the cold; and presently +Grandcourt drew a letter from his pocket and handed it silently to +Dysart. It was in Rosalie's handwriting, dated two months before, and +directed to Dysart at Baltimore. The post-office authorities had marked +it, "No address," and had returned it a few days since to the sender. + +These details Dysart noticed on the envelope and the heading of the +first page; he glanced over a line or two, lowered the letter, and +looked questioningly over it at Grandcourt: + +"What's it about?--if you know," he asked wearily. "I'm not inclined +just now to read anything that may be unpleasant." + +Grandcourt said quietly: + +"I have not read the letter, but your wife has told me something of what +it contains. She wrote and mailed it to you weeks ago--before the +crash--saying, I believe, that adversity was not the time for the +settlement of domestic differences, and that if her private fortune +could avert disaster, you were to write immediately to her attorneys." + +Dysart gazed at him as though stunned; then his dull gaze fell once more +on the envelope. He examined it, went all over it with lack-lustre eyes, +laid it aside, and finally began to read his wife's letter--the letter +that had never reached him because he had used another name on the hotel +register in Baltimore. + +Grandcourt watched him with painful interest as he sat, hunched up, +coughing at intervals, and poring over his wife's long, angular +chirography. There was much between the lines to read, but Dysart could +never read it; much to understand, but he could never understand it. + + "Delancy tells me," she wrote, "that you are threatened with very + serious difficulties. Once or twice you yourself have said as much + to me; and my answer was that they no longer concerned me. + + "The situation is this: I have, as you know, consulted counsel with + a view to begin proceedings for a separation. This has been + discontinued--temporarily, at any rate--because I have been led to + believe by your friend, Delancy Grandcourt, that the present is no + time to add to your perplexities. + + "He has, I may add, induced me to believe other things which my + better sense rejects; but no woman's logic--which is always half + sentiment--could remain unshaken by the simple loyalty to you and to + me of this friend of yours and of mine. And this letter would never + have been written except, practically, at his dictation. Kindly + refrain from showing it to him as my acknowledgment here of his + influence in the matter would grieve him very deeply. + + "Because he believes that it is still possible for you and me to + return to civilised relations; he believes that I care for you, + that, in your own leisurely and superficial fashion, you still + really honour the vows that bound you--still in your heart care for + me. Let him believe it; and if you will, for his sake, let us resume + the surface semblance of a common life which, until he persuaded me, + I was determined to abandon. + + "It is an effort to write this; I do it for his sake, and, in that + way, for yours. I don't think you care about me; I don't think you + ever did or ever will. Yet you must know how it was with me until I + could endure my isolation no longer. And I say to you perfectly + frankly that now I care more for this friend of yours, Delancy + Grandcourt, than I care for anybody in the world. Which is why I + write you to offer what I have offered, and to say that if my + private fortune can carry you through the disaster which is so + plainly impending, please write to my attorneys at once as they have + all power in the matter." + +The postscript was dated ten days later, from Dysart's own house: + + "Receiving no reply, I telephoned you, but Brandon says you are away + from the city on business and have left no address, so I took the + liberty of entering your house, selecting this letter from the mass + of nine days' old mail awaiting you, and shall direct it to you at + the hotel in Baltimore where Bunny Gray says that somebody has seen + you several times with a Mr. Skelton." + +As Dysart read, he wiped the chilly perspiration from his haggard face +at intervals, never taking his eyes from the written pages. And at last +he finished his wife's letter, sat very silent, save when the cough +shook him, the sheets of the letter lying loosely in his nerveless hand. + +It was becoming plain to him, in a confused sort of way, that something +beside bad luck and his own miscalculations, was working against +him--had been stealthily moving toward his undoing for a year, now; +something occult, sinister, inexorable. + +He thought of the register at the hotel in Baltimore, of the name he +lived under there during that interval in his career for which he had +accounted to nobody, and never would account--on earth. And into his +memory rose the pale face of Sylvia Quest; and he looked down at the +letter trembling in his hand and thought of her and of his wife and of +the Algonquin Trust Company, and of the chances of salvation he had +missed. + +Grandcourt sat looking at him; there was something in his gaze almost +doglike: + +"Have you read it?" he asked. + +Dysart glanced up abstractedly: "Yes." + +"Is it what I told you?" + +"Yes--substantially." He dried his damp face; "it comes rather late, you +know." + +"Not _too_ late," said the other, mistaking him; "your wife is still +ready to meet you half-way, Jack." + +"Oh--that? I meant the Algonquin matter--" He checked himself, seeing +for the first time in his life contempt distorting Grandcourt's heavy +face. + +"Man! Man!" he said thickly, "is there nothing in that letter for you +except money offered?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"I say, is there nothing in that message to you that touches the manhood +in you?" + +"You don't know what is in it," said Dysart listlessly. Even +Grandcourt's contempt no longer produced any sensation; he looked at the +letter, tore it into long strips, crumpled them and stood up with a +physical effort: + +"I'm going to burn this. Have you anything else to say?" + +"Yes. Good God, Jack, _don't_ you care for your wife? _Can't_ you?" + +"No." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know." His tone became querulous. "How can a man tell why he +becomes indifferent to a woman? I don't know. I never did know. I can't +explain it. But he does." + +Grandcourt stared at him. And suddenly the latent fear that had been +torturing him for the last two weeks died out utterly: this man would +never need watching to prevent any attempt at self-destruction; this man +before him was not of that caste. His self-centred absorption was of a +totally different nature. + +He said, very red in the face, but with a voice well modulated and even: + +"I think I've made a good deal of an ass of myself. I think I may safely +be cast for that rôle in future. Most people, including yourself, think +I'm fitted for it; and most people, and yourself, are right. And I'll +admit it now by taking the liberty of asking you whom you were with in +Baltimore." + +"None of your damned business!" said Dysart, wheeling short on him. + +"Perhaps not. I did not believe it at the time, but I do now.... And her +brother is after you with a gun." + +"What do you mean?" + +"That you'd better get out of town unless you want an uglier scandal on +your hands." + +Dysart stood breathing fast and with such effort that his chest moved +visibly as the lungs strained under the tension: + +"Do you mean to say that drunken whelp suspects anything so--so wildly +absurd----" + +"Which drunken whelp? There are several in town?" + +Dysart glared at him, careless of what he might now believe. + +"I take it you mean that little cur, Quest." + +"Yes, I happen to mean Quest." + +Dysart gave an ugly laugh and turned short on his heel: + +"The whole damn lot of you make me sick," he said. "So does this club." + +A servant held his rain-coat and handed him his hat; he shook his bent +shoulders, stifled a cough, and went out into the rain. + +In his own home his little old father, carefully be-wigged, painted, +cleaned and dressed, came trotting into the lamp-lit living-room fresh +from the ministrations of his valet. + +"There you are, Jack!--te-he! Oh, yes, there you are, you young +dog!--all a-drip with rain for the love o' the ladies, eh, Jack? +Te-he--one's been here to see you--a little white doll in chinchillas, +and scared to death at my civilities--as though she knew the +Dysarts--te-he! Oh, yes, the Dysarts, Jack. But it was monstrous +imprudent, my son--and a good thing that your wife remains at Lenox so +late this season--te-he! A lucky thing, you young dog! And what the +devil do you mean by it--eh? What d'ye mean, I say!" + +Leering, peering, his painted lips pursed up, the little old man seated +himself, gazing with dim, restless eyes at the shadowy blur which +represented to him his handsome son--a Dysart all through, elegant, +debonair, resistless, and, married or single, fatal to feminine peace of +mind. Generations ago Dysarts had been shot very conventionally at ten +paces owing to this same debonair resistlessness; Dysarts had slipped +into and out of all sorts of unsavoury messes on account of this fatal +family failing; some had been neatly winged, some thrust through; some, +in a more sordid age, permitted counsel of ability to explain to a jury +how guiltless a careless gentleman could be under the most unfortunate +and extenuating appearances. + +The son stood in his wet clothes, haggard, lined, ghastly in contrast to +the startling red of his lips, looking at his smirking father: then he +leaned over and touched a bell. + +"Who was it who called on Mrs. Dysart?" he asked, as a servant appeared. + +"Miss Quest, sir," said the man, accepting the cue with stolid +philosophy. + +"Did Miss Quest leave any message?" + +"Yes, sir: Miss Quest desired _Mrs._ Dysart to telephone her on _Mrs._ +Dysart's return from--the country, sir--it being a matter of very great +importance." + +"Thank you." + +"Thank _you_, sir." + +The servant withdrew; the son stood gazing into the hallway. Behind him +his father mumbled and muttered and chuckled to himself in his +easy-chair by the fire! + +"Te-he! They are all alike, the Dysarts--oh, yes, all alike! And now +it's that young dog--Jack!--te-he!--yes, it's Jack, now! But he's a good +son, my boy Jack; he's a good son to me and he's all Dysart, all Dysart; +bon chien chasse de race!--te-he! Oui, ma fois!--bon chien chasse de +race." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS + + +By the first of January it became plain that there was not very much +left of Colonel Mallett's fortune, less of his business reputation, and +even less of his wife's health. But she was now able to travel, and +toward the middle of the month she sailed with Naïda and one maid for +Naples, leaving her son to gather up and straighten out what little of +value still remained in the wreckage of the house of Mallett. What he +cared most about was to straighten out his father's personal reputation; +and this was possible only as far as it concerned Colonel Mallett's +individual honesty. But the rehabilitation was accomplished at the +expense of his father's reputation for business intelligence; and New +York never really excuses such things. + +Not much remained after the amounts due every creditor had been checked +up and provided for; and it took practically all Duane had, almost all +Naïda had, and also the sacrifice of the town house and country villa to +properly protect those who had suffered. Part of his mother's estate +remained intact, enough to permit her and her daughter to live by +practising those inconsequential economies, the necessity for which +fills Europe with about the only sort of Americans cultivated foreigners +can tolerate, and for which predatory Europeans have no use whatever. + +As for Duane, matters were now in such shape that he found it possible +to rent a studio with adjoining bath and bedroom--an installation which, +at one time, was more than he expected to be able to afford. + +The loss of that luxury, which custom had made a necessity, filled his +daily life full of trifling annoyances and surprises which were often +unpleasant and sometimes humorous; but the new and arid order of things +kept him so busy that he had little time for the apathy, bitterness, or +self-commiseration which, in linked sequence, usually follow sudden +disaster. + +Sooner or later it was inevitable that he must feel more keenly the +death of a father who, until in the shadow of impending disaster, had +never offered him a very close intimacy. Their relations had been merely +warm and pleasant--an easy camaraderie between friends--neither +questioned the other's rights to reticence and privacy. Their mutual +silence concerning business pursuits was instinctive; neither father nor +son understood the other's affairs, nor were they interested except in +the success of a good comrade. + +It was inevitable that, in years to come, the realisation of his loss +would become keener and deeper; but now, in the reaction from shock, and +in the anxiety and stress and dire necessity for activity, only the +surface sorrow was understood--the pity of it, the distressing +circumstances surrounding the death of a good father, a good friend, and +a personally upright man. + +The funeral was private; only the immediate family attended. Duane had +written to Geraldine, Kathleen, and Scott not to come, and he had also +asked if he might not go to them when the chance arrived. + +And now the chance had come at last, in the dead of winter; but the +prospect of escape to Geraldine brightened the whole world for him and +gilded the snowy streets of the city with that magic radiance no +flaming planet ever cast. + +He had already shipped a crate of canvases to Roya-Neh; his trunk had +gone, and now, checking with an amused shrug a natural impulse to hail a +cab, he swung his suit-case and himself aboard a car, bound for the +Patroons Club, where he meant to lunch before taking the train for +Roya-Neh. + +He had not been to the club since the catastrophe and his father's +death, and he was very serious and sombre and slightly embarrassed when +he entered. + +A servant took his coat and suit-case with marked but subdued respect. +Men whom he knew and some men whom he scarcely knew at all made it a +point to speak to him or bow to him with a cordiality too pointed not to +affect him, because in it he recognised the acceptance of what he had +fought for--the verdict that publicly exonerated his father from +anything worse than a bad but honest mistake. + +For a second or two he stood in the great marble rotunda looking around +him. In that club familiar figures were lacking--men whose social and +financial position only a few months before seemed impregnable, men who +had gone down in ruin, one or two who had perished by their own hand, +several whose physical and financial stamina had been shattered at the +same terrible moment. Some were ill, some dead, some had resigned, +others had been forced to write their resignations--such men as Dysart +for example, and James Skelton, now in prison, unable to furnish bail. + +But the Patroons was a club of men above the average; a number among +them even belonged to the Pyramid; and the financial disasters of that +summer and winter had spared no club in the five boroughs and no +membership list had been immune from the sinister consequences of a +crash that had resounded from ocean to ocean and had set humble and +great scurrying to cover in every Bourse of the civilised world. + + * * * * * + +As he entered the dining-room and passed to his usual table, he caught +sight of Delancy Grandcourt lunching alone at the table directly behind +him. + +"Hello, Delancy," he said; "shall we join forces?" + +"I'd be glad to; it's very kind of you, Duane," replied Grandcourt, +showing his pleasure at the proposal in the direct honesty of his +response. Few men considered it worth while to cultivate Grandcourt. To +lunch with him was a bore; a tête-à-tête with him assumed the +proportions of a visitation; his slowness and stupidity had become +proverbial in that club; and yet almost the only foundation for it had +been Dysart's attitude toward him; and men's estimate of him was the +more illogical because few men really cared for Dysart's opinions. But +Dysart had introduced him, elected him, and somehow had contrived to +make the public accept his half-sneering measure of Grandcourt as +Grandcourt's true stature. And the man, being shy, reticent, slow to +anger, slower still to take his own part, was tolerated and +good-humouredly avoided when decently possible. So much for the average +man's judgment of an average man. + +Seated opposite to Duane, Grandcourt expressed his pleasure at seeing +him with a simplicity that touched the other. Then, in perfectly good +taste, but with great diffidence, he spoke of Duane's bereavement. + +For a little while they asked and answered those amiably formal +questions convention requires under similar circumstances; then Duane +spoke of Dysart gravely, because new rumours were rife concerning him, +even a veiled hint of possible indictment and arrest. + +"I hope not," said Grandcourt, his heavy features becoming troubled; "he +is a broken man, and no court and jury can punish him more severely than +he has been punished. Nor do I know what they could get out of him. He +has nothing left; everything he possessed has been turned over. He sits +all day in a house that is no longer his, doing nothing, hoping nothing, +hearing nothing, except the childish babble of his old father or the +voices from the hall below, where his servants are fighting off +reporters and cranks and people with grievances. Oh, I tell you, Duane, +it's pitiable, all right!" + +"There was a rumour yesterday of his suicide," said Duane in a low +voice. "I did not credit it." + +Grandcourt shook his head: "He never would do that. He totally lacks +whatever you call it--cowardice or courage--to do that. It is not like +Dysart; it is not in him to do it. He never will, never could. I know +him, Duane." + +Duane nodded. + +Grandcourt spoke again: "He cares for few things; life is one of them. +His father, his social position, his harmless--success with women--" +Grandcourt hesitated, caught Duane's eye. Both men's features became +expressionless. + +Duane said: "I had an exceedingly nice note from Rosalie the other day. +She has bought one of those double-deck apartments--but I fancy you know +about it." + +"Yes," said Grandcourt, turning red. "She was good enough to ask my +opinion." He added with a laugh: "I shouldn't think anybody would want +my opinion after the way I've smashed my own affairs." + +Duane smiled, too. "I've heard," he said, "that yours was the decentest +smash of the season. What is that scriptural business about--about a man +who lays down his fortune for a friend?" + +"His _life_," corrected Grandcourt, very red, "but please don't confound +what I did with anything of importance to anybody." He lighted a cigar +from the burning match offered by Duane, very much embarrassed for a +moment, then suddenly brightened up: + +"I'm in business now," he observed, with a glance at the other, partly +timid, partly of pride. "My father was thoroughly disgusted with me--and +nobody blames him--so he bought me a seat and, Duane, do you know that I +am doing rather well, considering that nobody is doing anything at all." + +Duane laughed heartily, but his mirth did not hurt Grandcourt, who sat +smiling and enjoying his cigar, and looking with confidence into a face +that was so frankly and unusually friendly. + +"You know I always admired you, Duane--even in the days when you never +bothered your head about me," he added naïvely. "Do you remember at +school the caricature you drew of me--all hands and feet and face, and +absolutely no body? I've got that yet; and I'm very proud to have it +when I hear people speak of your artistic success. Some day, if I ever +have any money again, I'll ask you to paint a better portrait of me, if +you have time." + +They laughed again over this mild pleasantry; a cordial understanding +was developing between them, which meant much to Grandcourt, for he was +a lonely man and his shyness had always deprived him of what he most +cared for--what really might have been his only resource--the friendship +of other men. + +For some time, while they were talking, Duane had noticed out of the +corner of his eye another man at a neighbouring table--a thin, pop-eyed, +hollow-chested, unhealthy young fellow, who, at intervals, stared +insolently at Grandcourt, and once or twice contrived to knock over his +glass of whiskey while reaching unsteadily for a fresh cigarette. + +The man was Stuyvesant Quest, drunk as usual, and evidently in an +unpleasant mood. + +Grandcourt's back was toward him; Duane paid him no particular +attention, though at moments he noticed him scowling in their direction +and seemed to hear him fussing and muttering over his whiskey and soda, +which, with cigarettes, comprised his luncheon. + +"I wish I were going up to Roya-Neh with you," repeated Grandcourt. "I +had a bully time up there--everybody was unusually nice to me, and I had +a fine time." + +"I know they'll ask you up whenever you can get away," said Duane. +"Geraldine Seagrave likes you immensely." + +"Does she?" exclaimed Grandcourt, blushing. "I'd rather believe that +than almost anything! She was very, very kind to me, I can tell you; and +Lord knows why, because I've nothing intellectual to offer anybody, and +I certainly am not pretty!" + +Duane, very much amused, looked at his watch. + +"When does your train leave?" asked Grandcourt. + +"I've an hour yet." + +"Come up to my room and smoke. I've better whiskey than we dispense down +here. I'm living at the club, you know. They haven't yet got over my +fiasco at home and I can't stand their joshing." + +Neither of the men noticed that a third man followed them, stumbling up +the stairs as they took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair +by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table +between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest +appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively at +his ease: + +"If you fellows don't mind, I'll butt in a moment," he said. "How are +you, Mallett? How are you?" giving Grandcourt an impertinent look; and +added: "Do you, by any chance, expect your friend Dysart in here this +afternoon?" + +"Dysart is no longer a member of this club," said Grandcourt quietly. +"I've told you that a dozen times." + +"All right, I'll ask you two dozen times more, if I choose," retorted +Quest. "Why not?" And he gave him an ugly stare. + +The man was just drunk enough to be quarrelsome. Duane paid him no +further attention; Grandcourt asked him very civilly if he could do +anything for him. + +"Sure," sneered Quest. "You can tell Dysart that if I ever come across +him I'll shoot him on sight! Tell him that and be damned!" + +"I've already told him that," said Grandcourt with a shrug of contempt. + +The weak, vicious face of the other reddened: + +"What do you mean by taking that tone with me?" he demanded loudly. "Do +you think I won't make good?" He fumbled around in his clothing for a +moment and presently jerked a pistol free--one of the automatic kind +with rubber butt and blued barrel. + +"Unless you are drunker than I've ever seen you," said Grandcourt, +"you'll put up that pistol before I do." + +Quest cursed him steadily for a minute: "Do you think I haven't got the +nerve to use it when m' honour's 'volved? I tell you," he said thickly, +"when m' honour's 'volved----" + +"You get drunk, don't you?" observed Duane. "What a pitiful pup you are, +anyway. Go to bed." + +Quest stood swaying slightly on his heels and considering Duane with the +inquiring solemnity of one who is in process of grasping and digesting +an abstruse proposition. + +"B-bed?" he repeated; "me?" + +"Certainly. A member of this club disgracefully drunk in the afternoon +will certainly hear from the governing board unless he keeps out of +sight until he's sane again." + +"Thank you," said Quest with owlish condescension; "I'm indebted to you +for calling 'tention to m-matters which 'volve honour of m' own club +and----" + +His voice rambled off into a mutter; he sat or rather fell into an +armchair and lay there twitching and mumbling to himself and inspecting +his automatic pistol with prominent watery eyes. + +"You'd better leave that squirt-gun with me," said Grandcourt. + +Quest refused with an oath, and, leaning forward and hammering the +padded chair-arm with his unhealthy looking fist, he broke out into a +violent arraignment of Dysart: + +"Damn him!" he yelled, "I've written him, I've asked for an explanation, +I've 'm-manded t' know why his name's coupled with my sister's----" + +Duane leaned over, slammed the door, and turned short on Quest: + +"Shut up!" he said sharply. "Do you hear! Shut up!" + +"No, I won't shut up! I'll say what I damn please----" + +"Haven't you any decency at all----" + +"I've enough to fix Dysart good and plenty, and I'll do it! I'll--let go +of me, Mallett!--let go, I tell you or----" + +Duane jerked the pistol from his shaky fingers, and when Quest struggled +to his feet with a baffled howl, jammed him back into the chair again +and handed the pistol to Grandcourt, who locked it in a bureau drawer +and pocketed the key. + +"You belong in Matteawan," said the latter, flinging Quest back into the +chair again as the infuriated man still struggled to rise. "You +miserable drunken kid--do you think you would be enhancing your sister's +reputation by dragging her name into a murder trial? What are you, +anyway? By God, if I didn't know your sister as a thoroughbred, I'd have +you posted here for a mongrel and sent packing. The pound is your proper +place, not a club-house"; which was an astonishing speech for Delancy +Grandcourt. + +Again, half contemptuously, but with something almost vicious in his +violence, Grandcourt slammed young Quest back into the chair from which +he had attempted to hurl himself: "Keep quiet," he said; "you're a +particularly vile little wretch, particularly pitiable; but your sister +is a girl of gentle breeding--a sweet, charming, sincere young girl whom +everybody admires and respects. If you are anything but a gutter-mut, +you'll respect her, too, and the only way you can do it is by shutting +that unsanitary whiskey-trap of yours--and keeping it shut--and by +remaining as far away from her as you can, permanently." + +There were one or two more encounters, brief ones; then Quest collapsed +and began to cry. He was shaking, too, all over, apparently on the verge +of some alcoholic crisis. + +Grandcourt went over to Duane: + +"The man is sick, helplessly sick in mind and body. If you'll telephone +Bailey at the Knickerbocker Hospital, he'll send an ambulance and I'll +go up there with this fool boy. He's been like this before. Bailey knows +what to do. Telephone from the station; I don't want the club servants +to gossip any more than is necessary. Do you mind doing it?" + +"Of course not," said Duane. He glanced at the miserable, snivelling, +twitching creature by the fire: "Do you think he'll get over this, or +will he buy another pistol the next time he gets the jumps?" + +Grandcourt looked troubled: + +"I don't know what this breed is likely to do. He's absolutely no good. +He's the only person in the world that is left of the family--except his +sister. He's all she has had to look out for her--a fine legacy, a fine +prop for her to lean on. That's the sort of protection she has had all +her life; that's the example set her in her own home. I don't know what +she's done; it's none of my business; but, Duane, I'm for her!" + +"So am I." + +They stood together in silence for a moment; maudlin sniffles of +self-pity arose from the corner by the fire, alternating with more +hysterical and more ominous sounds presaging some spasmodic crisis. + +Grandcourt said: "Bunny Gray has helped me kennel this pup once or +twice. He's in the club; I think I'll send for him." + +"You'll need help," nodded Duane. "I'll call up the hospital on my way +to the station. Good-bye, Delancy." + +They shook hands and parted. + +At the station Duane telephoned to the hospital, got Dr. Bailey, +arranged for a room in a private ward, and had barely time to catch his +train--in fact, he was in such a hurry that he passed by without seeing +the sister of the very man for whom he had been making such significant +arrangements. + +She wore, as usual, her pretty chinchilla furs, but was so closely +veiled that he might not have recognised her under any circumstances. +She, however, forgetting that she was veiled, remained uncertain as to +whether his failure to speak to her had been intentional or otherwise. +She had halted, expecting him to speak; now she passed on, cheeks +burning, a faint sinking sensation in her heart. + +For she cared a great deal about Duane's friendship; and she was very +unhappy, and morbid and more easily wounded than ever, because somehow +it had come to her ears that rumour was busily hinting things +unthinkable concerning her--nothing definite; yet the very vagueness of +it added to her distress and horror. + +Around her silly head trouble was accumulating very fast since Jack +Dysart had come sauntering into her youthful isolation; and in the +beginning it had been what it usually is to lonely hearts--shy and +grateful recognition of a friendship that flattered; fascination, an +infatuation, innocent enough, until the man in the combination awoke her +to the terrors of stranger emotions involving her deeper and deeper +until she lost her head, and he, for the first time in all his career, +lost his coolly selfish caution. + +How any rumours concerning herself and him had arisen nobody could +explain. There never is any explanation. But they always arise. + +In their small but pretty house, terrible scenes had already occurred +between her and her brother--consternation, anger, and passionate denial +on her part; on his, fury, threats, maudlin paroxysms of self-pity, and +every attitude that drink and utter demoralisation can distort into a +parody on what a brother might say and do. + +To escape it she had gone to Tuxedo for a week; now, fear and foreboding +had brought her back--fear intensified at the very threshold of the city +when Duane seemed to look straight at her and pass her by without +recognition. Men don't do that, but she was too inexperienced to know +it; and she hastened on with a heavy heart, found a taxi-cab to take her +to the only home she had ever known, descended, and rang for admittance. + +In these miserable days she had come to look for hidden meaning even in +the expressionless faces of her trained servants, and now she +misconstrued the respectful smile of welcome, brushed hastily past the +maid who admitted her, and ran upstairs. + +Except for the servants she was alone. She rang for information +concerning her brother; nobody had any. He had not been home in a week. + +Her toilet, after the journey, took her two hours or more to accomplish; +it was dark at five o'clock and snowing heavily when tea was served. She +tasted it, then, unable to subdue her restlessness, went to the +telephone; and after a long delay, heard the voice she tremblingly +expected: + +"Is that you, Jack?" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"H-how are you?" + +"Not very well." + +"Have you heard anything new about certain proceedings?" she inquired +tremulously. + +"Yes; she's begun them." + +"On--on w-what grounds?" + +"Not on any grounds to scare you. It will be a Western matter." + +Her frightened sigh of relief turned her voice to a whisper: + +"Has Stuyve--has a certain relative--annoyed you since I've been away?" + +"Yes, over the telephone, drunk, as usual." + +"Did he make--make any more threats, Jack?" + +"The usual string. Where is he?" + +"I don't know," she said; "he hasn't been home in a week, they tell me. +Jack, do you think it safe for you to drop in here for a few moments +before dinner?" + +"Just as you say. If he comes in, there may be trouble. Which isn't a +good idea, on your account." + +No woman in such circumstances is moved very much by an appeal to her +caution. + +"But I want to see you, Jack," she said miserably. + +"That seems to be the only instinct that governs you," he retorted, +slightly impatient. "Can't you ever learn the elements of prudence? It +seems to me about time that you substituted common sense for immature +impulse in dealing with present problems." + +His voice was cold, emotionless, unpleasant. She stood with the receiver +at her ears, flushing to the tips of them under his rebuke. She always +did; she had known many, recently, but the quick pang of pain was never +any less keen. On the contrary. + +"Don't you want to see me? I have been away for ten days." + +"Yes, I want to see you, of course, but I'm not anxious to spring a mine +under myself--under us both by going into your house at this time." + +"My brother has not been here in a week." + +"Does that accidental fact bar his possible appearance ten minutes from +now?" + +She wondered, vaguely, whether he was afraid of anything except possible +damage to her reputation. She had, lately, considered this question on +several occasions. Being no coward, as far as mere fear for her life was +concerned, she found it difficult to attribute such fear to him. Indeed, +one of the traits in her which he found inexplicable and which he +disliked was a curious fearlessness of death--not uncommon among women +who, all their lives, have had little to live for. + +She said: "If I am not worth a little risk, what is my value to you?" + +"You talk like a baby," he retorted. "Is an interview worth risking a +scandal that will spatter the whole town?" + +"I never count such risks," she said wearily. "Do as you please." + +His voice became angry: "Haven't I enough to face already without +hunting more trouble at present? I supposed I could look to you for +sympathy and aid and common sense, and every day you call me up and +demand that I shall drop everything and fling caution to the winds, and +meet you somewhere! Every day of the year you do it----" + +"I have been away ten days--" she faltered, turning sick and white at +the words he was shouting through the telephone. + +"Well, it was understood you'd stay for a month, wasn't it? Can't you +give me time to turn around? Can't you give me half a chance? Do you +realise what I'm facing? _Do_ you?" + +"Yes. I'm sorry I called you; I was so miserable and lonely----" + +"Well, try to think of somebody besides yourself. You're not the only +miserable person in this city. I've all the misery I can carry at +present; and if you wish to help me, don't make any demands on me until +I'm clear of the tangle that's choking me." + +"Dear, I only wanted to help you--" she stammered, appalled at his tone +and words. + +"All right, then, let me alone!" he snarled, losing all self-command. +"I've stood about all of this I'm going to, from you and your brother +both! Is that plain? I want to be let alone. That is plainer still, +isn't it?" + +"Yes," she said. Her face had become deathly white; she stood frozen, +motionless, clutching the receiver in her small hand. + +His voice altered as he spoke again: + +"Don't feel hurt; I lost my temper and I ask your pardon. But I'm half +crazy with worry--you've seen to-day's papers, I suppose--so you can +understand a man's losing his temper. Please forgive me; I'll try to see +you when I can--when it's advisable. Does that satisfy you?" + +"Yes," she said in a dull voice. + +She put away the receiver and, turning, dropped onto her bed. At eight +o'clock the maid who had come to announce dinner found her young +mistress lying there, clenched hands over her eyes, lying slim and +rigid on her back in the darkness. + +When the electric lamps were lighted she rose, went to the mirror and +looked steadily at herself for a long, long time. + + * * * * * + +She tasted what was offered, seeing nothing, hearing nothing; later, in +her room, a servant came saying that Mr. Gray begged a moment's +interview on a matter of importance connected with her brother. + +It was the only thing that could have moved her to see him. She had +denied herself to him all that winter; she had been obliged to make it +plainer after a letter from him--a nice, stupid, boyish letter, asking +her to marry him. And her reply terminated the attempts of Bunbury Gray +to secure a hearing from the girl who had apparently taken so sudden and +so strange an aversion to a man who had been nice to her all her life. + +They had, at one time, been virtually engaged, after Geraldine Seagrave +had cut him loose, and before Dysart took the trouble to seriously +notice her. But Bunny was youthful and frisky and his tastes were +catholic, and it did not seem to make much difference that Dysart again +stepped casually between them in his graceful way. Yet, curiously +enough, each preserved for the other a shy sort of admiration which, +until last autumn, had made their somewhat infrequent encounters +exceedingly interesting. Autumn had altered their attitudes; Bunny +became serious in proportion to the distance she put between them--which +is of course the usual incentive to masculine importunity. They had had +one or two little scenes at Roya-Neh; the girl even hesitated, unquietly +curious, perplexed at her own attitude, yet diffidently interested in +the man. + +A straw was all that her balance required to incline it; Dysart dropped +it, casually. And there were no more pretty scenes between Bunny Gray +and his lady-love that autumn, only sulks from the youth, and, after +many attempts to secure a hearing, a very direct and honest letter that +winter, which had resulted in his dismissal. + + * * * * * + +She came down to the drawing-room, looking the spectre of herself, but +her stillness and self-possession kept Bunny at his distance, staring, +restless, amazed--all of which very evident symptoms and emotions she +ignored. + +"I have your message," she said. "Has anything happened to my brother?" + +He began: "You mustn't be alarmed, but he is not very well----" + +"I am alarmed. Where is he?" + +"In the Knickerbocker Hospital." + +"Seriously ill?" + +"No. He is in a private ward----" + +"The--alcoholic?" she asked quietly. + +"Yes," he said, flushing with the shame that had not burnt her white +face. + +"May I go to him?" she asked. + +"No!" he exclaimed, horrified. + +She seated herself, hands folded loosely on her lap: + +"What am I to do, Bunny?" + +"Nothing.... I only came to tell you so that you'd know. To-morrow if +you care to telephone Bailey----" + +"Yes; thank you." She closed her eyes; opened them with an effort. + +"If you'll let me, Sylvia, I'll keep you informed," he ventured. + +"Would you? I'd be very glad." + +"Sure thing!" he said with great animation; "I'll go to the hospital as +many times a day as I am allowed, and I'll bring you back a full account +of Stuyve's progress after every visit.... May I, Sylvie?" + +She said nothing. He sat looking at her. He had no great amount of +intellect, but he possessed an undue proportion of heart under the +somewhat striking waistcoats which at all times characterised his +attire. + +"I'm terribly sorry for you," he said, his eyes very wide and round. + +She gazed into space, past him. + +"Do you--would you prefer to have me go?" he stammered. + +There was no reply. + +"Because," he said miserably, "I take it that you haven't much use for +me." + +No word from her. + +"Sylvie?" + +Silence; but she looked up at him. "I haven't changed," he said, and the +healthy colour turned him pink. "I--just--wanted you to know. I thought +perhaps you might like to know----" + +"Why?" Her voice was utterly unlike her own. + +"Why?" he repeated, getting redder. "I don't know--I only thought you +might--it might--amuse you--to know that I haven't changed----" + +"As others have? Is that what you mean, Bunny?" + +"No, no, I didn't think--I didn't mean----" + +"Yes, you did. Why not say it to me? You mean that you, and others, have +heard rumours. You mean that you, unlike others, are trying to make me +understand that you are still loyal to me. Is that it?" + +"Y-yes. Good Lord! Loyal! Why, of course I am. Why, you didn't suppose +I'd be anything else, did you?" + +She opened her pallid lips to speak and could not. + +"Loyal!" he repeated indignantly. "There's no merit in that when a man's +been in love with a girl all his life and didn't know it until she'd got +good and tired of him! You know I'm for you every time, Sylvia; what's +the game in pretending you didn't know it?" + +"No game.... I didn't--know it." + +"Well, you do now, don't you?" + +Her face was colourless as marble. She said, looking at him: "Suppose +the rumour is true?" + +His face flamed: "You don't know what you are saying!" he retorted, +horrified. + +"Suppose it is true?" + +"Sylvia--for Heaven's sake----" + +"Suppose it _is_ true," she repeated in a dead, even voice; "how loyal +would you remain to me then?" + +"As loyal as I am now!" he answered angrily, "if you insist on my +answering such a silly question----" + +"Is that your answer?" + +"Certainly. But----" + +"Are you _sure_?" + +He glared at her; something struck coldly through him, checking breath +and pulse, then releasing both till the heavy beating of his heart made +speech impossible. + +"I thought you were not sure," she said. + +"I _am_ sure!" he broke out. "Good God, Sylvia, what are you doing to +me?" + +"Destroying your faith in me." + +"You can't! I love you!" + +She gave a little gasp: + +"The rumour _is_ true," she said. + +He reeled to his feet; she sat looking up at him, white, silent hands +twisted on her lap. + +"Now you know," she managed to say. "Why don't you go? If you've any +self-respect, you'll go. I've told you what I am; do you want me to +speak more plainly?" + +"Yes," he said between his teeth. + +"Very well; what do you wish to know?" + +"Only one thing.... Do you--care for him?" + +She sat, minute after minute, head bent, thinking, thinking. He never +moved a muscle; and at last she lifted her head. + +"No," she said. + +"Could you care for--me?" + +She made a gesture as though to check him, half rose, fell back, sat +swaying a moment, and suddenly tumbled over sideways, lying a white heap +on the rug at his feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +IN SEARCH OF HERSELF + + +As his train slowed down through the darkness and stopped at the +snow-choked station, Duane, carrying suit-case, satchel, and fur coat, +swung himself off the icy steps of the smoker and stood for a moment on +the platform in the yellow glare of the railway lanterns, looking about +him. + +Sleigh-bells sounded near--chiming through the still, cold air; he +caught sight of two shadowy restive horses, a gaily plumed sleigh, and, +at the same moment, the driver leaned sideways from her buffalo-robed +seat, calling out to him by name. + +"Why, Kathleen!" he exclaimed, hastening forward. "Did you really drive +down here all alone to meet me?" + +She bent over and saluted him, demure, amused, bewitchingly pretty in +her Isabella bear furs: + +"I really did, Duane, without even a groom, so we could talk about +everything and anything all the way home. Give your checks to the +station agent--there he is!--Oh, Mr. Whitley, would you mind sending up +Mr. Mallett's trunks to-night? Thank you _so_ much. Now, Duane, +dear----" + +He tossed suit-case and satchel into the sleigh, put on his fur coat, +and climbing up beside Kathleen, burrowed into the robes. + +"I tell you what," he said seriously, "you're getting to be a howling +beauty; not just an ordinary beauty, but a miracle. Do you mind if I +kiss you again?" + +"Not after that," she said, presenting him a fresh-curved cheek tinted +with rose, and snowy cold. Then, laughing, she swung the impatient +horses to the left; a jingling shower of golden bell-notes followed; and +they were off through the starlight, tearing northward across the snow. + +"Duane!" she said, pulling the young horses down into a swift, swinging +trot, "_what_ do you think! Geraldine doesn't know you're coming!" + +"Why not?" he asked, surprised. "I telegraphed." + +"Yes, but she's been on the mountain with old Miller for three days. +Three of your letters are waiting for her; and then came your telegram, +and of course Scott and I thought we ought to open it." + +"Of course. But what on earth sent Geraldine up the Golden Dome in the +dead of winter?" + +Kathleen shook her pretty head: + +"She's turned into the most uncontrollable sporting proposition you ever +heard of! She's up there at Lynx Peak camp, with her rifle, and old +Miller. They're after that big boar--the biggest, horridest thing in the +whole forest. I saw him once. He's disgusting. Scott objected, and so +did I, but, somehow, I'm becoming reconciled to these break-neck +enterprises she goes in for so hard--so terribly hard, Duane! and all I +do is to fuss a little and make a few tearful objections, and she laughs +and does what she pleases." + +He said: "It is better, is it not, to let her?" + +"Yes," returned Kathleen quietly, "it is better. That is why I say very +little." + +There was a moment's silence, but the constraint did not last. + +"It's twenty below zero, my poor friend," observed Kathleen. "Luckily, +there is no wind to-night, but, all the same, you ought to keep in touch +with your nose and ears." + +Duane investigated cautiously. + +"My features are still sticking to my face," he announced; "is it really +twenty below? It doesn't seem so." + +"It is. Yesterday the thermometers registered thirty below, but nobody +here minds it when the wind doesn't blow; and Geraldine has acquired the +most exquisite colour!--and she's so maddeningly pretty, Duane, and +actually plump, in that long slim way of hers.... And there's another +thing; she is _happier_ than she has been for a long, long while." + +"Has that fact any particular significance to you?" he asked slowly. + +"Vital!... Do you understand me, Duane, dear?" + +"Yes." + +A moment later she called in her clear voice: "Gate, please!" A lantern +flashed; a door opened in the lodge; there came a crunch of snow, a +creak, and the gates of Roya-Neh swung wide in the starlight. + +Kathleen nodded her thanks to the keeper, let the whip whistle, and +spent several minutes in consequence recovering control of the fiery +young horses who were racing like scared deer. The road was wide, +crossed here and there by snowy "rides," and bordered by the splendid +Roya-Neh forests; wide enough to admit a white glow from myriads of +stars. Never had Duane seen so many stars swarming in the heavens; the +winter constellations were magnificent, their diamond-like lustre +silvered the world. + +"I suppose you want to hear all the news, all the gossip, from three +snow-bound rustics, don't you?" she asked. "Well, then, let me +immediately report a most overwhelming tragedy. Scott has just +discovered that several inconsiderate entomologists, who died before he +was born, all wrote elaborate life histories of the Rose-beetle. Isn't +it pathetic? And he's worked _so_ hard, and he's been like a father to +the horrid young grubs, feeding them nice juicy roots, taking their +weights and measures, photographing them, counting their degraded +internal organs--oh, it is too vexing! Because, if you should ask me, I +may say that I've been a mother to them, too, and it enrages me to find +out that all those wretched, squirming, thankless creatures have been +petted and studied and have had their legs counted and their Bertillon +measurements taken years before either Scott or I came into this old +fraud of a scientific world!" + +Duane's unrestrained laughter excited her merriment; the star-lit +woodlands rang with it and the treble chiming of the sleigh-bells. + +"What on earth will he find to do now?" asked Duane. + +"He's going to see it through, he says. Isn't it fine of him? There is +just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying +entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next +summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out +what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something +exciting, Duane. Promise you won't breathe one word!" + +"Not a word!" + +"Well, then--Scott was going to tell you, anyway!--we _think_--but, of +course, we are not sure by any means!--but we venture to think that we +have discovered a disease which kills Rose-beetles. We don't know +exactly what it is yet, or how they get it, but we are practically +convinced that it is a sort of fungus." + +She was very serious, very earnest, charming in her conscientious +imitation of that scientific caution which abhors speculation and never +dares assert anything except dry and proven facts. + +"What are you and Scott aiming at? Are you going to try to start an +epidemic among the Rose-beetles?" he inquired. + +"Oh, it's far too early to even outline our ideas----" + +"That's right; don't tell anything Scott wants to keep quiet about! I'll +never say a word, Kathleen, only if you'll take my advice, feed 'em +fungus! Stuff 'em with it three times a day--give it to them boiled, +fried, au gratin, à la Newburg! That'll fetch 'em!... How is old Scott, +anyway?" + +"Perfectly well," she said demurely. "He informs us daily that he weighs +one hundred and ninety pounds, and stands six feet two in his +snow-shoes. He always mentions it when he tells us that he is going to +scrub your face in a snow-drift, and Geraldine invariably insists that +he isn't man enough. You know, as a matter of fact, we're all behaving +like very silly children up here. Goodness knows what the servants +think." Her smiling face became graver. + +"I am so glad that matters are settled and that there's enough of your +estate left to keep your mother and Naïda in comfort." + +He nodded. "How is Scott coming out?" + +"Why--he'll tell you. I don't believe he has very much left. +Geraldine's part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town, +if she and Scott conclude to keep it. Old Mr. Tappan has been quite +wonderful. Why, Duane, he's a perfect old dear; and we all are so +terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid attitude +toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod." + +"He's a funny old duck," mused Duane. "That son of his, Peter, has had +the 'indiwidool cultiwated' clean out of him. He's only a type, like +Gibson's drawings of Tag's son. Old Tappan may be as honest as a block +of granite, but it's an awful thing that he should ever have presided +over the destinies of children." + +Kathleen sighed. "According to his light he was faithful. I know that +his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children +driven into themselves until they were becoming too self-centred to care +for anything else--to realise that there was anything else or anybody +else except their wishes and themselves to consider.... But, Duane, you +see the right quality was latent in them. They are coming out--they have +emerged splendidly. It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course, +but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not +better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual +social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own +ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set +with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in the +Seagraves was--weakness." + +Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night. + +"I don't know. Tappan's poison may have been the antidote for them in +this case. Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine--suffered?" + +"Yes." + +"Very--much?" + +"Very much, Duane. Has she said nothing about it to you in her letters?" + +"Nothing since she went to town that time. Every letter flies the red +cross. Does she still suffer?" + +"I don't think so. She seems so wonderfully happy--so vigorous, in such +superb physical condition. For a month I have not seen that pitiful, +haunted expression come into her eyes. And it is not mere restlessness +that drives her into perpetual motion now; it's a new delight in living +hard and with all her might every moment of the day!... She overdoes it; +you will turn her energy into other channels. She's ready for you, I +think." + +They drove on in silence for a few minutes, then swung into a broader +avenue of pines. Straight ahead glimmered the lights of Roya-Neh. + +Duane said naïvely: "I don't suppose I could get up to Lynx Peak camp +to-night, could I?" + +Kathleen threw back her head, making no effort to control her laughter. + +"It isn't necessary," she managed to explain; "I sent a messenger up the +mountain with a note to her saying that matters of importance required +her immediate return. She'll come down to-night by sleigh from The Green +Pass and Westgate Centre." + +"Won't she be furious?" he inquired, with a hypocritical side glance at +Kathleen, who laughed derisively and drew in the horses under the +porte-cochère. A groom took their heads; Duane swung Kathleen clear to +the steps just as Scott Seagrave, hearing sleigh-bells, came out, +bareheaded, his dinner-jacket wide open, as though he luxuriated in the +bitter air. + +"Good work!" he said. "How are you, Duane? Geraldine arrived from The +Green Pass about five minutes ago. She thinks you're sleighing, +Kathleen, and she's tremendously curious to know why you want her." + +"She probably suspects," said Kathleen, disappointed. + +"No, she doesn't. I began to talk business immediately, and I know she +thinks that some of Mr. Tappan's lawyers are coming. So they are--next +month," he added with a grin, and, turning on Duane: + +"I think I'll begin festivities by washing your face in the snow." + +"You're not man enough," remarked the other; and the next moment they +had clinched and were swaying and struggling all over the terrace, to +the scandal of the servants peering from the door. + +"He's tired and half frozen!" exclaimed Kathleen; "what a brute you are +to bully him, Scott!" + +"I'll include you in a moment," he panted, loosing Duane and snatching a +handful of snow. Whereupon she caught up sufficient snow to fill the +hollow of her driving glove, powdered his face thoroughly with the +feathery flakes, picked up her skirt and ran for it, knowing full well +she could expect no mercy. + +Duane watched their reckless flight through the hall and upstairs, then +walked in, dropped his coat, and advanced across the heavy rugs toward +the fireplace. + +On the landing above he heard Geraldine's laughter, then silence, then +her clear, careless singing as she descended the stairs: + + "Lisetto quittée la plaine, + Moi perdi bonheur à moi-- + Yeux à moi semblent fontaine + Depuis moi pas miré toi!" + +At the doorway she halted, seeing a man's figure silhouetted against the +firelight. Then she moved forward inquiringly, the ruddy glow full in +her brown eyes; and a little shock passed straight through her. + +"Duane!" she whispered. + +He caught her in his arms, kissed her, locked her closer; her arms +sought his head, clung, quivered, fell away; and with a nervous movement +she twisted clear of him and stood breathing fast, the clamour of her +heart almost suffocating her. And when again he would have drawn her to +him she eluded him, wide-eyed, flushed, lips parted in the struggle for +speech which came at last, brokenly: + +"Dear, you must not take me--that way--yet. I am not ready, Duane. You +must give me time!" + +"Time! Is anything--has anything gone wrong?" + +"No--oh, no, no, no! Don't you understand I must take my own time? I've +won the right to it; I'm winning out, Duane--winning back myself. I must +have my little year of self-respect. Oh, _can't_ you understand that you +mustn't sweep me off my feet this way?--that I'm too proud to go to +you--have you take me while there remains the faintest shadow of risk?" + +"But I don't care! I want you!" he cried. + +"I love you for it; I want you, Duane. But be fair to me; don't take me +until I am as clean and straight and untainted as the girl I was--as I +am becoming--as I will be--surely, surely--my darling!" + +She caught his hands in hers and, close to him, looked into his eyes +smilingly, tearfully, and a little proudly. The sensitive under-lip +quivered; but she held her head high. + +"Don't ask me to give you what is less perfect than I can make it. Don't +let me remember my gift and be ashamed, dear. There must be no memory of +your mistaken generosity to trouble me in the years to come--the long, +splendid years with you. Let me always remember that I gave you myself +as I really can be; let me always know that neither your love nor +compassion were needed to overlook any flaw in what I give." + +She bent her proud little head and laid her lips on his hands, which she +held close between her own. + +"You can so easily carry me by storm, Duane; and in your arms I might be +weak enough to waver and forget and promise to give you now what there +is of me if you demanded it. Don't ask it; don't carry me out of my +depth. There is more to me than I can give you yet. Let me wait to give +it lest I remember your unfairness and my humiliation through the years +to come." + +She lifted her lips to his, offering them; he kissed her; then, with a +little laugh, she abandoned his hands and stepped back, mocking, +tormenting, enjoying his discomfiture. + +"It's cruel, isn't it, you poor lamb! But do you know the year is +already flying very, very fast? Do you think I'm not counting the +days?"--and, suddenly yielding--"if you wish--if you truly do wish it, +dear, I will marry you on the very day that the year--my year--ends. +Come over here"--she seated herself and made a place for him--"and you +won't caress me too much--will you? You wouldn't make me unhappy, would +you?... Why, yes, I suppose that I might let you touch me +occasionally.... And kiss me--at rare intervals.... But not--as we +have.... You won't, will you? Then you may sit here--a little nearer if +you think it wise--and I'm ready to listen to your views concerning +anything on earth, Duane, even including love and wedlock." + +It was very hard for them to judge just what they might or might not +permit each other--how near it was perfectly safe to sit, how long they +might, with impunity, look into each other's eyes in that odd and rather +silly fashion which never seems to be out of date. + +What worried him was the notion that if she would only marry him at once +her safety was secured beyond question; but she explained very sweetly +that her safety was almost secured already; that, if let alone, she was +at present in absolute command of her fate, mistress of her desires, in +full tide of self-control. Now all she required was an interval to +develop character and self-mastery, so that they could meet on even +ground and equal terms when the day arrived for her to surrender to him +the soul and body she had regained. + +"I suppose it's all right," he said with a sigh, but utterly +unconvinced. "You always were fair about things, and if it's your idea +of justice to me and to yourself, that settles it." + +"You dear old stupid!" she said, tenderly amused; "it is the best thing +for our future. The 'sphere of influence' and the 'balance of power' are +as delicate matters to adjust in marriage as they are in world-politics. +You're going to be too famous a painter for your wife to be anything +less than a thorough woman." + +She drew a little away from him, bent her head and clasped both hands +around her knee. + +"There is another reason why I should be in autocratic command over +myself when we marry.... It is difficult for me to explain to you.... Do +you remember that I wrote you once that I was--afraid to marry +you--_not_ for our own sakes?" + +Her young face was grave and serious; she bent her gaze on her ringless +fingers. + +"That," she said, "is the most vital and--sacred reason of all." + +"Yes, dear." He did not dare to touch her, scarcely dared look at the +pure, thoughtful profile until she lifted her head and her fearless eyes +sought his. + +And they smiled, unembarrassed, unafraid. + + * * * * * + +"Those people are deliberately leaving us here to spoon," she declared +indignantly. "I know perfectly well that dinner was announced ages ago!" +And, raising her voice: "Scott, you silly ninny! Where in the world are +you?" + +Scott appeared with alacrity from the library, evidently detained there +in hunger and impatience by Kathleen, who came in a moment later, pretty +eyes innocently perplexed. + +"I declare," she said, "it is nine o'clock and dinner is supposed to be +served at eight!" And she seemed more surprised than ever when old +Howker, who evidently had been listening off stage, entered with +reproachful dignity and announced that ceremony. + +And it was the gayest kind of a ceremony, for they ate and chattered and +laughed there together as inconsequentially as four children, and when +Howker, with pomp and circumstance, brought in a roast boar's head +garnished with holly-like crimson elder, they all stood up and cheered +as though they really liked the idea of eating it. However, there was, +from the same animal, a saddle to follow the jowl, which everybody +tasted and only Scott really liked; and, to Duane's uneasy surprise, +great silver tankards of delicious home-brewed ale were set at every +cover except Geraldine's. + +Catching his eye she shrugged slightly and smiled; and her engaging +glance returned to him at intervals, reassuring, humorously disdainful; +and her serenely amused smile seemed to say: + +"My dear fellow, please enjoy your ale. There is not the slightest +desire on my part to join you." + +"That isn't a very big wild boar," observed Scott, critically eyeing the +saddle. + +"It's a two-year-old," admitted Geraldine. "I only shot him because Lacy +said we were out of meat." + +"_You_ killed him!" exclaimed Duane. + +She gave him a condescending glance; and Scott laughed. + +"She and Miller save this establishment from daily famine," he said. +"You have no idea how many deer and boar it takes to keep the game +within limits and ourselves and domestics decently fed. Just look at the +heads up there on the walls." He waved his arm around the oak +wainscoting, where, at intervals, the great furry heads of wild boar +loomed in the candlelight, ears and mane on end, eyes and white +sabre-like tusks gleaming. "Those are Geraldine's," he said with +brotherly pride. + +"I want to shoot one, too!" said Duane firmly. "Do you think I'm going +to let my affianced put it all over me like that?" + +"_Isn't_ it like a man?" said Geraldine, appealing to Kathleen. "They +simply can't endure it if a girl ventures competition----" + +"You talk like a suffragette," observed her brother. "Duane doesn't +care how many piglings you shoot; he wants to go out alone and get that +old grandfather of all boars, the one which kept you on the mountain for +the last three days----" + +"_My_ boar!" she cried indignantly. "I won't have it! I won't let him. +Oh, Duane, _am_ I a pig to want to manage this affair when I've been +after him all winter?--and he's the biggest, grayest, wiliest thing you +ever saw--a perfectly enormous silvery fellow with two pairs of Japanese +sabre-sheaths for tusks and a mane like a lion, and a double bend in his +nose and----" + +Shouts of laughter checked her flushed animation. + +"Of course I'm not going to sneak out all alone and pot your old pig," +said Duane; "I'll find one for myself on some other mountain----" + +"But I want you to shoot with me!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I wanted +you to see me stalk this boar and mark him down, and have you kill him. +Oh, Duane, that was the fun. I've been saving him, I really have. Miller +knows that I had a shot once--a pretty good one--and wouldn't take it. I +killed a four-year near Hurryon instead, just to save that one----" + +"You're the finest little sport in the land!" said Duane, "and we are +just tormenting you. Of course I'll go with you, but I'm blessed if I +pull trigger on that gentleman pig----" + +"You _must_! I've saved him. Scott, make him say he will! Kathleen, this +is really too annoying! A girl plans and plans and pictures to herself +the happiness and surprise she's going to give a man, and he's too +stupid to comprehend----" + +"Meaning me!" observed Duane. "But I leave it to you, Scott; a man +can't do such a thing decently----" + +"Oh, you silly people," laughed Kathleen; "you may never again see that +boar. Denman, keeper at Northgate when Mr. Atwood owned the estate, told +me that everybody had been after that boar and nobody ever got a shot at +him. Which," she added, "does not surprise me, as there are some hundred +square miles of mountain and forest on this estate, and Scott is lazy +and aging very fast." + +"By the way, Sis, you say you got a four-year near The Green Pass?" + +She nodded, busy with her bon-bon. + +"Was it exciting?" asked Duane, secretly eaten up with pride over her +achievements and sportsmanship. + +"No, not very." She went on with her bon-bon, then glanced up at her +brother, askance, like a bad child afraid of being reported. + +"Old Miller is so fussy," she said--"the old, spoilt tyrant! He is +really very absurd sometimes." + +"Oho!" said Scott suspiciously, "so Miller is coming to me again!" + +"He--I'm afraid he is. Did you," appealing to Kathleen, "ever know a +more obstinate, unreasoning old man----" + +"Geraldine! What did you do!" she exclaimed. + +"Yes," said Scott, annoyed, "what the deuce have you been up to now? +Miller is perfectly right; he's an old hunter and knows his business, +and when he comes to me and complains that you take fool risks, he's +doing his duty!" + +He turned to Duane: + +"That idiot girl," he said, nodding toward his abashed sister, "knocked +over a boar last month, ran up to look at his tusks, and was hurled +into a snowdrift by the beast, who was only creased. He went for Miller, +too, and how he and my sister ever escaped without a terrible slashing +before Geraldine shot the brute, nobody knows.... There's his head up +there--the wicked-looking one over the fireplace." + +"That's not good sportsmanship," said Duane gravely. + +Geraldine hung her head, colouring. + +"I know it; I mean to keep cool; truly, I do. But things happen so +quickly----" + +"Why are you afraid Miller is going to complain?" interrupted her +brother. + +"Scott--it wasn't anything very much--that is, I didn't think so. You'd +have done it--you know it's a point of honour to track down wounded +game." + +She turned to Duane: + +"The Green Pass feeding-ground was about a thousand yards ahead in the +alders, and I made Miller wait while I crept up. There was a fine boar +feeding about two hundred yards off, and I fired and he went over like a +cat in a fit, and then up and off, and I after him, and Miller after me, +telling me to look out." + +She laughed excitedly, and made a little gesture. "That's just why I +ran--to look out!--and the trail was deep and strong and not much +blood-dust. I was so vexed, so distressed, because it was almost sunset +and the boar seemed to be going strongly and faster than a grayhound. +And suddenly Miller shouted something about 'scrub hemlock'--I didn't +know he meant for me to halt!--So I--I"--she looked anxiously at her +brother--"I jumped into the scrub and kicked him up before I knew +it--and he--he tore my kilts--just one or two tears, but it didn't +wound me, Scott, it only just made my leg black and blue--and, anyway, I +got him----" + +"Oh, Lord," groaned her brother, "don't you know enough to reconnoitre a +wounded boar in the scrub? _I_ don't know why he didn't rip you. Do you +want to be killed by a _pig_? What's the use of being all cut and bitten +to pieces, anyway?" + +"No use, dear," she admitted so meekly that Duane scarcely managed to +retain his gravity. + +She came over and humbly slipped her arm through his as they all rose +from the table. + +"Don't think I'm a perfect idiot," she said under her breath; "it's only +inexperience under excitement. You'll see that I've learned a lot when +we go out together. Miller will admit that I'm usually prudent, because, +two weeks ago, I hit a boar and he charged me, and my rifle jammed, and +I went up a tree! Wasn't that prudent?" + +"Perfectly," he said gravely; "only I'd feel safer if you went up a tree +in the first place and remained there. What a child you are, anyway!" + +"Do you know," she confided in him, "I am a regular baby sometimes. I do +the silliest things in the woods. Once I gave Miller the slip and went +off and built a doll's house out of snow and made three snow dolls and +played with them! Isn't that the silliest thing? And another time a boar +came out by the Westgate Oaks, and he was a black, hairy fellow, and so +funny with his chin-whiskers all dotted with icicles that I began to say +aloud: + + 'I swear by the beard + On my chinny-chin-chin--' + +And of course he was off before I could pull trigger for laughing. +Isn't that foolish?" + +"Adorably," he whispered. "You are finding the little girl in the +garden, Geraldine." + +She looked up at him, serious, wistful. + +"It's the boy who found her; I only helped. But I want to bring her home +all alone." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE GOLDEN HOURS + + +The weather was unsuitable for hunting. It snowed for a week, thawed +over night, then froze, then snowed again, but the moon that night +promised a perfect day. + +Young Mallett supposed that he was afoot and afield before anybody else +in house could be stirring, but as he pitched his sketching easel on the +edges of the frozen pasture brook, and opened his field-box, a far hail +from the white hill-top arrested him. + +High poised on the snowy crest above him, clothed in white wool from +collar to knee-kilts, and her thick clustering hair flying, she came +flashing down the hill on her skis, soared high into the sunlight, +landed, and shot downward, pole balanced. + +Like a silvery meteor she came flashing toward him, then her +hair-raising speed slackened, and swinging in a widely gracious curve +she came gliding across the glittering field of snow and quietly stopped +in front of him. + +"Since when, angel, have you acquired this miraculous accomplishment?" +he demanded. + +"Do I do it well, Duane?" + +"A swallow from paradise isn't in your class, dear," he admitted, +fascinated. "Is it easy--this new stunt of yours?" + +"Try it," she said so sweetly that he missed the wickedness in her +smile. + +So, balancing, one hand on his shoulder, she disengaged her moccasins +from the toe-clips, and he shoved his felt timber-jack boots into the +leather loops, and leaning on the pointed pole which she handed him, +gazed with sudden misgiving down the gentle acclivity below. She +encouraged him; he listened, nodding his comprehension of her +instructions, but still gazing down the hill, a trifle ill at ease. + +However, as skates and snow-shoes were no mystery to him, he glanced at +the long, narrow runners curved upward at the extremities, with more +assurance, and his masculine confidence in all things masculine +returned. Then he started, waved his hand, smiling his condescension; +then he realised that he was going faster than he desired to; then his +legs began to do disrespectful things to him. The treachery of his own +private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled +deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly +wide of his body. He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his +trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the +episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting pinwheel of snow. + +Like all masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back, +savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first +toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own +way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to +the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing +heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below without +capsizing. + +She praised him warmly, rescued his wool gloves and cap from snowy +furrows into which their owner had angrily but helplessly dived; and +then she stepped into her skis and ascended the hill beside him with +that long-limbed, graceful, swinging stride which he had ventured to +believe might become him also. + +He said hopelessly: "If you expect me to hunt wild boar with you on +skis, there'll be some wild and widely distributed shooting in this +county. How can I hit a boar while describing unwilling ellipses in +mid-air or how can I run away from one while I'm sticking nose down in a +snow-drift?" + +Too faint with laughter to reply, she stood leaning on her trailing-pole +and looking over his shoulder as he repitched his sketching easel, +squeezed the colours from the leaden tubes, and set his palette. + +"I'm horribly hungry," he grumbled; "too hungry to make a decent sketch. +How cold is it, anyway? I believe that this paint is trying to freeze on +my palette!" + +"What are you going to paint?" she asked, her rounded chin resting on +his shoulder. + +"That frozen brook." He looked around at her, hesitating; and she +laughed and nodded her comprehension. + +"You want to make a sketch of me, dear. Why don't you ask me? Do you +think I'd refuse?" + +"It's so beastly cold to ask you to stand still----" + +"Cold! Why, it's much warmer; it's ten above zero. I'll stand wherever +you wish. Where do you want me; here above you, against the snow and +sky?" + +The transcendent loveliness of the picture she made set that excited +thrill quivering through every vein; but he took a matter-of-fact grip +on his emotions because good work is done in cold blood, even if it +sometimes may be conceived in exaltation. + +"Don't move," he said serenely; "you are exactly right as you stand. +Tell me the very moment you feel cold. Promise?" + +"Yes, dear." + +His freezing colours bothered him, and at times he used them almost like +pastels. He worked rapidly, calmly, and with that impersonal precision +that made every brush stroke an integral factor in the ensemble. + +At almost any stage of the study the accidental brilliancy of his +progress might have been terminated abruptly, leaving a sketch rarely +beautiful in its indicated and unfinished promise. + +But the pitfalls of the accidental had no allurements for him. She +rested, changed position, stretched her limbs, took a long circle or +two, skimming the hillside when she needed the reaction. But always she +came swinging back again to stand and watch her lover with a +half-smiling, half-tender gaze that tried his sangfroid terribly when he +strove to catch it and record it in the calm and scientific technique +which might excite anybody except the workman. + +"Am I pretty, Duane?" + +"Annoyingly divine. I'm trying not to think of it, dear, until my hand +and heart may wobble with impunity. Are you cold?" + +"No.... Do you think you'll make a full-fledged picture from this +motive?" + +"How did you guess?" + +"I don't know. I've a premonition that your reputation is going to soar +up like a blazing star from this waste of snow around us.... I wish--I +wish that it might be from me, through me--my humble aid--that your +glory breaks out----" + +"If it ever does, it will do it through you. I told you that long ago." + +"Yes." + +"I've known it a long, long time, Geraldine. Without you there's nothing +to me except surface. You are the depths of me." + +"And you of me, Duane." Sweet eyes remote, she stood looking into space; +at peace with her soul, dreaming, content. And it was then that he +caught and imprisoned in colour the nameless beauty which was the +foundation for his first famous picture, whose snowy splendour silenced +all except those little critics who chirp automatically, eternally, on +the ruddy hearthstone of the gods. + + * * * * * + +From the distant hill-top a voice bellowed at them through a megaphone; +and, looking aloft, they beheld Scott gesticulating. + +"If you two mental irresponsibles want any breakfast," he shouted, +"you'd better hustle! Miller telephones that the big boar fed below +Cloudy Mountain at sunrise!" + +Geraldine looked at her lover, cheeks pink with excitement. He was +immensely interested, too, and as soon as he could fold his easel, lock +up brushes and palette, protect his canvas with a fresh one faced with +cork buffers, they started for the house, discussing the chances for a +shot that afternoon. + +Like the most desirable and wary of most species of game, furry or +finny, the huge, heavily tusked veterans of the wild-boar family often +feed after dark, being too cunning to banquet by daylight and carouse +with the gayer blades and the big, fierce sows of the neighbourhood. + +Sometimes in the white gloom of snow-storms there is a chance for a +shot; sometimes in a remoter fastness a big boar may deem himself +secure enough to venture out where there are no witnesses to his +solitary gastronomic revels save an Arctic owl or two huddled high in +the hemlocks. + +And it was in the rocky oak-ridges of the wild country under Cloudy +Mountain that Miller had marked down the monarch of all wild pigs--the +great, shaggy, silver-tipped boar, hock-deep in snow, crunching frozen +acorns and glaring off over the gully where mile after mile of white +valley and mountain ranges stretched away, clotted and streaked with +pine. + +"Why don't we all go?" asked Geraldine, seating herself behind the +coffee-urn and looking cordially around at the others. + +"Because, dear," said Kathleen, "I haven't the slightest desire to run +after a wild boar or permit him to amble after me; and all that +reconciles me to your doing it is that Duane is going with you." + +"I personally don't like to kill things," observed Scott briefly. "My +sister is the primitive of this outfit. She's the slayer, the head +hunter, the lady-boss of this kraal." + +"Is it very horrid of me, Duane?" she asked anxiously, "to find +excitement in this sort of thing? Besides, we do need meat, and the game +must be kept thinned down by somebody. And Scott won't." + +"Whatever you do is all right," said Duane, laughing, "even when you +jeer at my gymnastics on skis. Oh, Lord! but I'm hungry. Scott, are you +going to take all those sausages and muffins, you bespectacled ruffian! +Kathleen, heave a plate at him!" + +Kathleen was too scandalised to reply; Scott surrendered the desired +muffins, and sorted the morning mail, which had just been brought in. + +"Nothing for you, Sis, except bills; one letter for Duane, two for +Kathleen, and the rest for me"--he examined the envelopes--"all from +brother correspondents and eager aspirants for entomological honours.... +Here's your letter, Duane!" scaling it across the table in spite of +Kathleen's protest. + +They had the grace to ask each other's permission to read. + +"Oh, listen to this!" exclaimed Scott gleefully: + + "DEAR SIR: Your name has been presented to the Grand + Council which has decided that you are eligible for membership in + the International Entomological Society of East Orange, N.J., and + you have, therefore, been unanimously elected. + + "Have the kindness to inform me of your acceptance and inclose your + check for $25, which includes your dues for five years and a free + subscription to the society's monthly magazine, _The Fly-Paper_----" + +"Scott, don't do it. You get one of those kind of things every day!" +exclaimed Geraldine. "They only want your $25, anyway." + +"It's an innocent recreation," grinned Duane. "Why not let Scott append +to his signature--'M.I.E.S.E.O.N.J.'--Member International Entomological +Society, East Orange, New Jersey. It only costs $25 to do it----" + +"That's all right," said Scott, reddening, "but possibly they may have +read my paper on the Prionians in the last Yonkers _Magazine of +Science_. It wasn't a perfectly rotten paper, was it, Kathleen?" + +"It was mighty clever!" she said warmly. "Don't mind those two scoffers, +Scott. If you take my advice you will join this East Orange Society. +That would make six scientific societies he has joined since Christmas," +she continued, turning on Duane with severe pride; adding, "and there's +a different coloured ribbon decoration for his buttonhole from each +society." + +But Duane and Geraldine were very disrespectful; they politely offered +each other memberships in all sorts of societies, including one yard of +ribbon decoration, one sleigh-bell, and five green trading stamps, until +Scott hurled an orange at Duane, who caught it and blew a kiss at him as +recompense. + +Then they went outside, on Scott's curt invitation, and wrestled and +scuffled and scrubbed each other's faces with snow like schoolboys, +until, declaring they were hungry again, they came back to the +breakfast-room and demanded more muffins and sausages and coffee. + +Kathleen rang and, leaning over, handed Geraldine a brief letter from +Rosalie Dysart: + + "Do you think Geraldine would ask me up for a few days?" it began. + "I'm horribly lonesome and unhappy and I'm being talked about, and + I'd rather be with you wholesome people than with anybody I know, + if you don't mind my making a refuge of your generosity. I'm a real + victim of that dreadful sheet in town, which we all have a contempt + for and never subscribe to, and which some of us borrow from our + maids or read at our modistes--the sheet that some of us are + genuinely afraid of--and part of our fear is that it may neglect + us! You know, don't you, what really vile things it is saying about + me? If you don't, your servants do. + + "So if you'd rather not have me, I won't be offended, and, anyway, + you are dear and decent people and I love you. + + "ROSALIE DENE." + +"How funny," mused Geraldine. "She's dropped Jack Dysart's name already +in private correspondence.... Poor child!" Looking up at Kathleen, "We +must ask her, mustn't we, dear?" + +There was more of virginal severity in Kathleen. She did not see why +Rosalie, under the circumstances, should make a convenience of +Geraldine, but she did not say so; and, perhaps, glancing at the wistful +young girl before her, she understood this new toleration for those in +dubious circumstances--comprehended the unusual gentleness of judgment +which often softens the verdict of those who themselves have drifted too +near the danger mark ever to forget it or to condemn those still adrift. + +"Yes," she said, "ask her." + +Duane looked up from the perusal of his own letter as Kathleen and Scott +strolled off toward the greenhouses where the latter's daily +entomological researches continued under glass and the stimulous +artificial heat and Kathleen Severn. + +"Geraldine," he said, "here's a letter from Bunny Gray. He and Sylvia +Quest were married yesterday very quietly, and they sailed for Cape Town +this morning!" + +"What!" + +"That's what he writes. Did you ever hear of anything quicker?" + +"How funny," she said. "Bunny and Sylvia? I knew he was attentive to her +but----" + +"You mean Dysart?" he said carelessly. "Oh, he's only a confirmed +débutante chaser; a sort of social measles. They all recover rapidly." + +"I had the--social measles," said Geraldine, smiling. + +Duane repressed a shiver. "It's inevitable," he said gaily.... "That +Bunny is a decent fellow." + +"Will you show me his letter?" she asked, extending her hand as a matter +of course. + +"No, dear." + +She looked up surprised. + +"Why not? Oh--I beg your pardon, dear----" + +Duane bent over, kissed her hand, and tossed the letter into the fire. +It was her first experience in shadows cast before, and it came to her +with a little shock that no two are ever one in the prosier sense of the +theory. + +The letter that Duane had read was this: + + "Sylvia and I were married quietly yesterday and she has told me + that you will know why. There is little further for me to say, + Duane. My wife is ill. We're going to Cape Town to live for a + while. We're going to be happy. I am now. She will be. + + "My wife asked me to write you. Her regard for you is very high. + She wishes me to tell you that I know everything I ought to have + known when we were married. You were very kind to her. You're a + good deal of a man, Duane. + + "I want to add something: her brother, Stuyve, is out of the + hospital and loose again. He's got all the virtues of a Pomeranian + pup--that is, none; and he'll make a rotten bad fist of it. I'll + tell you now that, during the past winter, twice, when drunk, he + shot at his sister. She did not tell me this; he did, when in a + snivelling condition at the hospital. + + "So God knows what he may do in this matter. It seems that the + blackguard in question has been warned to steer clear of + Stuyvesant. It's up to them. I shall be glad to have Sylvia at Cape + Town for a while. + + "Delancy Grandcourt was witness for me, Rosalie for Sylvia. Delancy + is a brick. Won't you ask him up to Roya-Neh? He's dying to go. + + "And this is all. It's a queer life, isn't it, old fellow? But a + good sporting proposition, anyway. It suits me. + + "Our love to you, to the little chatelaine of Roya-Neh, to her + brother, to Kathleen. + + "Tell them we are married and off for Cape Town, but tell them no + more. + + "B. Gray." + + "It isn't necessary to say burn this scrawl." + +Geraldine, watching him in calm speculation, said: + +"I don't see why they were married so quietly. Nobody's in mourning----" + +"Dear?" + +"What, dear?" + +"Do something for me." + +"I promise." + +"Then ask Delancy up here to shoot. Do you mind?" + +"I'd love to. Can he come?" + +"I think so." + +"I'll write now. Won't it be jolly," she said innocently, "to have him +and Rosalie here together----" + +The blank change on his face checked her. "Isn't it all right?" she +asked, astonished. + +He had made his blunder. There was only one thing for him to say and he +said it cordially, mentally damning himself for forgetting that Rosalie +was to be invited. + +"I'll write to them both this morning," concluded Geraldine. "Of course +poor Jack Dysart is out of the question." + +"A little," he said mildly. And, furious with himself, he rose as she +stood up, and followed her into the armory, her cool little hand +trailing and just touching his. + +For half an hour they prowled about, examining Winchesters, Stevens, +Mänlichers--every make and pattern of rifle and fowling-piece was +represented in Scott's collection. + +"Odd, isn't it, that he never shoots," mused Duane, lifting out a superb +weapon from the rack behind the glass doors. "This seems to be one of +those murderous, low trajectory pieces that fires a sort of brassy shot +which is still rising when it's a mile beyond the bunker. Now, +sweetheart, if you've a heavy suit of ancient armour which I can crawl +into, I'll defy any boar that roots for mast on Cloudy Mountain." + +It was great fun for Geraldine to lay out their equipment in two neat +piles; a rifle apiece with cases and bandoliers; cartridges, two +hunting-knives with leather sheaths, shooting hoods and coats; and +timberjack's boots for her lover, moccasins for her; a pair of heavy +sweaters for each, and woollen mitts, fashioned to leave the trigger +finger free. + +Beside these she laid two fur-lined overcoats, and backed away in naïve +admiration at her industry. + +"Wonderful, wonderful," he said. "We'll only require saucepans and +boiler lids to look exactly like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee arrayed for +battle. I say, Geraldine, how am I going to flee up a tree with all that +on--and snow-shoes to boot-s," he added shamelessly, grinning over his +degraded wit. + +She ignored it, advised him with motherly directness concerning the +proper underwear he must don, looked at her rifle, examined his and, +bidding him assume it, led him out to the range in the orchard and made +him target his weapon at a hundred yards. + +There was a terrific fusillade for half an hour or so; his work was +respectable, and, satisfied, she led him proudly back to the house and, +curling up on the leather divan in the library, invited him to sit +beside her. + +"Do you love me?" she inquired with such impersonal curiosity that he +revenged himself fully then and there; and she rose and, instinctively +repairing the disorder of her hair, seated herself reproachfully at a +distance. + +"Can't a girl ask a simple question?" she said, aggrieved. + +"Sure. Ask it again, dearest." + +She disdained to reply, and sat coaxing the tendrils of her dark hair to +obey the dainty discipline of her slender fingers. + +"I thought you weren't going to," she observed irrelevantly. But he +seemed to know what she meant. + +"Don't you want me to even touch you for a year?" + +"It isn't a year. Months of it are over." + +"But in the months before us----" + +"No." + +She picked up a book. When he reached for a magazine she looked over the +top of her book at him, then read a little, glanced up, read a little +more, and looked at him again. + +"Duane?" + +"What?" + +"This is a fool of a book. Do you want to read it?" + +"No, thanks." + +"Over my shoulder, I mean?" + +He got up, seated himself on the arm of her chair, and looked at the +printed page over her shoulder. + +For a full minute neither moved; then she turned her head, very slowly, +and, looking into his eyes, she rested her lips on his. + +"My darling," she said; "my darling." + +Which is one of the countless variations of the malady which makes the +world spin round in one continual and perpetual fit. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +CLOUDY MOUNTAIN + + +Five days running, Geraldine, Duane, and old Miller watched for the big +gray boar among the rocky oak ridges under Cloudy Mountain; and though +once they saw his huge tracks, they did not see him. + +Every night, on their return, Scott jeered them and taunted them until a +personal encounter with Duane was absolutely necessary, and they always +adjourned to the snowy field of honour to wipe off the score and each +other's faces with the unblemished snow. + +Rosalie and a Chow-dog arrived by the middle of the week; Delancy toward +the end of it, unencumbered. Duane made a mental note of his own +assininity, and let it go at that. He was as glad to see Rosalie as +anybody, and just as glad to see Delancy, but he'd have preferred to +enjoy the pleasures separately, though it really didn't matter, after +all. + +"Sooner or later," he admitted to himself, "that Delancy man is going to +marry her; and it seems to me she's entitled to another chance in the +world. Even our earthly courts are lenient toward first offenders. As +for the ethics--puzzle it out, you!" He made a gesture including the +world in general, lighted a cigarette, and went out to the gun-room to +join Geraldine. + +"Rosalie and Delancy want to go shooting with us," he explained with a +shrug. + +"Oh, Duane!--and our solitary and very heavenly trips alone together!" + +"I know it. I have just telephoned Miller to get Kemp from Westgate for +them. Is that all right?" + +"Yes"--she hesitated--"I think so." + +"Let Kemp guide them," he insisted. "They'll never hold out as far as +Cloudy Mountain. All they want is to shoot a boar, no matter how big it +is. Miller says the boar are feeding again near the Green Pass. It's +easy enough to send them there." + +"Do you think that is perfectly hospitable? Rosalie and Delancy may find +it rather stupid going off alone together with only Kemp to amuse them. +I am fond of him," she added, "but you know what a woman like Rosalie is +prone to think of Delancy." + +He glanced at her keenly; she had, evidently, not the slightest notion +of the _status quo_. + +"Oh, they'll get along together, all right," he said carelessly. "If +they choose to remain with us, of course we all can keep on to Cloudy +Mountain; but you'll see them accept Kemp and the Green Pass with +grateful alacrity after two miles of snow-shoeing through the brush; and +we'll have the mountain all to ourselves." + +"You're a shameless deviser of schemes, aren't you, dear?" she asked, +considering him with that faint, intimate smile, which, however, had +always in it something of curiosity. "You know perfectly well we could +drive those poor people the whole way to Cloudy Mountain." + +"Why, that _is_ so!" he exclaimed, pretending surprise; "but, after all, +dear, it's better sport to beat up the alders below Green Pass and try +to jump a pig for them. That's true hospitality----" + +She laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, Duane, Duane!" she murmured, +suffering him to capture both her hands and lay them against his face to +cover the glee that twitched it at his own unholy perfidy. + +And so it came about that, after an early luncheon, a big double sleigh +jingled up, received its jolly cargo, and sped away again into the white +woodlands, Kathleen waving adieu and Scott deriding them with scoffing +and snowballs. + +The drive was very beautiful, particularly through the pine and hemlock +belt where the great trees, clothed heavily with snow, bent branch and +crest under the pale winter sunshine. Tall fir-balsams pricked the sky, +perfect cones of white; spruces were snowy mounds; far into the forest +twilight glimmered the unsullied snow. + +As they sped along, Geraldine pointed out imprints of fox and rabbit, +faint trails where a field-mouse had passed, the string of henlike +footprints recording the deliberate progress of some ruffed grouse +picking its leisurely way across the snow; the sharp, indented marks of +squirrels. + +Rosalie was enchanted, Delancy mildly so, but when a deeper trail +ploughed the snow, running parallel to their progress, he regarded it +with more animation. + +"Pig," said Geraldine briefly. + +"Wild?" he inquired. + +"Of course," she smiled; "and probably a good big boar." + +Rosalie thrilled and unconsciously rested her fur-gloved hand on +Delancy's sleeve. + +"You know," she said, "you must shoot a little straighter than you did +at target practice this morning. Because I can't run very fast," she +added with another delightful shudder. + +Delancy, at her anxious request, modestly assured her that he would +"plug" the first boar that showed his tusks; and Geraldine laughed and +made Rosalie promise to do the same. + +"You're both likely to have a shot," she said as the sleigh drew up on a +stone bridge and Miller and Kemp came over and saluted--big, raw-boned +men on snow-shoes, wearing no outer coats over their thin woollen +shirts, although every thermometer at Roya-Neh recorded zero. + +Gun-cases were handed out, rifles withdrawn, and the cases stowed away +in the sleigh again. Fur coats were rolled in pairs, strapped, and slung +behind the broad shoulders of the guides. Then snow-shoes were +adjusted--skis for Geraldine; Miller walked westward and took post; +Kemp's huge bulk closed the eastern extremity of the line, and between +them, two and two at thirty paces apart, stood the hunters, Duane with +Rosalie, Geraldine with Delancy, loading their magazines. + +Ahead was an open wood of second growth, birch, beech, and maple; +sunlight lay in white splashes here and there; nothing except these +blinding pools of light and the soft impression of a fallen twig varied +the immaculate snow surface as far as the eye could see. + +"Forward and silence," called out Geraldine; the mellow swish of +snow-shoes answered her, and she glided forward on her skis, instructing +Delancy under her breath. + +"The wind is right," she said. "They can't scent us here, though deeper +in the mountains the wind cuts up and you never can be sure what it may +do. There's just a chance of jumping a pig here, but there's a better +chance when we strike the alder country. Try not to shoot a sow." + +"How am I to tell?" + +"Sows have no tusks that show. Be careful not to mistake the white +patches of snow on a sow's jowl for tusks. They get them by rooting and +it's not always easy to tell." + +Delancy said very honestly: "You'll have to control me; I'm likely to +let drive at anything." + +"You're more likely to forget to shoot until the pig is out of sight," +she whispered, laughing. "Look! Three trails! They were made last +night." + +"Boar?" + +"Yes," she nodded, glancing at the deep cloven imprints. She leaned +forward and glanced across the line at Miller, who caught her eye and +signalled significantly with one hand. + +"Be ready, Delancy," she whispered. "There's a boar somewhere ahead." + +"How can you tell?" + +"I can scent him. It's strong enough in the wind," she added, wrinkling +her delicate nose with a smile. + +Grandcourt sniffed and sniffed, and finally detected a slight acrid +odour in the light, clear breeze. He looked wisely around him; Geraldine +was skirting a fallen tree on her skis; he started on and was just +rounding a clump of brush when there came a light, crashing noise +directly ahead of him; a big, dark, shaggy creature went bounding and +bucking across his line of vision--a most extraordinary animal, all head +and shoulders and big, furry ears. + +The snapping crack of a rifle echoed by the sharp racket of another shot +aroused him to action too late, for Miller, knife drawn, was hastening +across the snow to a distant dark, motionless heap; and Geraldine stood +jerking back the ejector of her weapon and throwing a fresh cartridge +into the breach. + +"My goodness!" he faltered, "somebody got him! Who fired, Geraldine?" + +She said: "I waited as long as I dared, Delancy. They go like lightning, +you know. I'm terribly sorry you didn't fire." + +"Good girl!" said Duane in a low voice as she sped by him on her skis, +rifle ready for emergencies as old Miller cautiously approached the +shaggy brown heap, knife glittering. + +But there was no emergency; Miller's knife sank to the hilt; Geraldine +uncocked her rifle and bent curiously over the dead boar. + +"Nice tusks. Miss Seagrave," commented the old man. "He's fat as butter, +too. I cal'late he'll tip the beam at a hundred and forty paound!" + +The hunters clustered around with exclamations of admiration; Rosalie, +distractingly pretty in her white wool kilts and cap, knelt down and +touched the fierce, long-nosed head and stroked the furry jowl. + +"Oh, Delancy!" she wailed, "why _didn't_ you 'plug' him as you promised? +_I_ simply _couldn't_ shoot; Duane tried to make me, but I was so +excited and so surprised to see the creature run so fast that all my +ideas went out of my head and I never thought of pulling that wretched +trigger!" + +"That," said Delancy, very red, "is precisely what happened to me." And, +turning to Geraldine, who looked dreadfully repentant: "I heard you tell +me to shoot, and I merely gawked at the beast like a rubbering jay at a +ten-cent show." + +"Everybody does that at first," said Duane cheerfully; "I'll bet +anything that you and Rosalie empty your magazines at the next one." + +"We really must, Delancy," insisted Rosalie as she and Geraldine turned +away when Miller and Kemp tucked up their sleeves and unsheathed their +knives in preparation for unpleasant but necessary details. + +But they worked like lightning; and in exactly seven minutes the heavy +beast was drawn, washed out with snow, roped, and hung to a tree well +out of reach of any four-footed forest marauders that might prowl that +way before night. + +Geraldine, smiling her deprecation of their praise, waited with the +others until the two guides were ready. Then, in the same order as +before, they moved forward, descended the slope, and came into a strange +wilderness of stark gray alders that stretched away in every direction. +And threading, circling, crossing each other everywhere among the alders +ran the trails of deer and wild boar, deep and fresh in the powdery +snow. + +At intervals, as they advanced, hard-wood ridges crossed the bewildering +alder labyrinths. Twice, while ascending these ridges, Rosalie's heart +jumped as a grouse thundered up. Once three steel-gray deer started out +of the scrub and went bounding off, displaying enormous white flags; +once a young buck, hunting for trouble, winded it, whistled, and came +leaping past Rosalie so close that she shrank aside with a half-stifled +cry of apprehension and delight. + +Half a mile farther on Delancy, labouring along on his snow-shoes, +suddenly halted, detaining Geraldine with a quick touch on the shoulder. + +"There's something in that clearing," he whispered. + +Miller had seen it, too; Duane motioned Rosalie forward to join +Delancy, and, side by side, they crept ahead, keeping a clump of scrub +hemlock between them and the edge of the clearing. It was the Green Pass +feed-ground, a rocky strip of pasture climbing upward toward Lynx Peak; +and there, clean cut against the snowy background, three dark objects +were moving, trotting nervously here and there, nosing, nuzzling, +tunnelling the snow with long, sharp muzzles. + +Duane and Geraldine silently unslung their field-glasses. + +"They're boar," he said. + +"Two-year-olds," she nodded. "I do hope they will get one each. Duane, +ought I to have shot that other one?" + +"Of course, you generous child! Otherwise he'd have gone clear away. +That was a cracking shot, too--clean through the backbone at the base of +the skull.... Look at Rosalie! She's unstrapped her snow-shoes and she +and Delancy are crawling on all-fours!" + +Kemp had now joined the stalkers; he was a wise old hunter, and Duane +and Geraldine, keeping very still, watched the operations side by side. + +For half an hour Rosalie lay motionless in the snow on the forest's +edge, and Geraldine was beginning to fret at the prospect of her being +too benumbed by the cold to use her rifle, when Duane touched her on the +arm and drew her attention to a fourth boar. + +The animal came on from behind Rosalie and to Delancy's right--a +good-sized, very black fellow, evidently suspicious yet tempted to +reconnoitre the feeding-ground. + +"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" she whispered; "what a shot Delancy has! Why +_doesn't_ he see him! What on earth is Kemp about? Why, the boar is +within ten feet of Delancy's legs and doesn't see or wind him!" + +"Look!" + +Kemp had caught sight of the fourth boar. Geraldine and Duane saw his +dilemma, saw him silently give Rosalie the signal to fire at the nearest +boar in the open, then saw him turn like a flash and almost drag Delancy +to his feet. + +"Kill that pig, _now_!" he thundered--"unless you want him hackin' your +shins!" + +The boar stood in his tracks, bristling, furious, probably astounded to +find himself so close to the only thing in all the forest that he feared +and would have preferred to flee from. + +Under such conditions boars lose their heads; there was a sudden clatter +of tusks, a muffled, indescribable sound, half squeal, half roar; a +fountain of feathery snow, and two shots close together. Then a third +shot. + +Rosalie, rather pale, threw another cartridge in as Delancy picked +himself out of a snow-bank and looked around him in astonishment. + +"Well done, young lady!" cried Kemp, running a fistful of snow over the +blade of his hunting-knife and nodding his admiration. "I guess it's +just as well you disobeyed orders and let this funny pig have what was +coming to him. Y' ain't hurt, are ye, Mr. Grandcourt?" + +"No; he didn't hit me; I tripped on that root. Did I miss him?" + +"Not at all," said Duane, kneeling down while Miller lifted the great +fierce head. "You hit him all right, but it didn't stop him; it only +turned him. Here's your second bullet, too; and Rosalie, yours did the +business for him. Good for you! It's fine, isn't it, Geraldine?" + +Grandcourt, flushing heavily, turned to Rosalie and held out his hand. +"Thank you," he said; "the brute was right on top of me." + +"Oh, no," she said honestly, "he'd missed you and was going straight on. +I don't know how on earth I ever hit him, but I was so frightened to see +you go over backward and I thought that he'd knocked you down, and I was +perfectly furious----" + +She gave a little sob of excitement, laughed unsteadily, and sat down on +a fallen log, burying her face in her hands. + +They knew enough to let her alone and pretend not to notice her. +Geraldine chattered away cheerfully to the two men while the keepers +drew the game. Delancy tried to listen to her, but his anxious eyes kept +turning toward Rosalie, and at length, unable to endure it, he went over +and sat down beside her, careless of what others might infer. + +"How funny," whispered Geraldine to Duane. "I had no idea that Delancy +was so fond of her. Had you?" + +He started slightly. "I? Oh, no," he said hastily--too hastily. He was a +very poor actor. + +Gravely, head bent, she walked forward beside him after Grandcourt had +announced that he and Rosalie had had enough and that they wished Kemp +to take them and their game to the sleigh. + +Once, looking back, she saw the procession moving in the opposite +direction through the woods, Kemp leading, rope over his shoulder, +dragging the dead boar across the snow; Grandcourt, both rifles slung +across his back, big arm supporting Rosalie, who walked as though very +tired, her bright head drooping, her arm resting on his shoulder. + +Geraldine looked up at Duane thoughtfully, and he supposed that she was +about to speak, but her gaze became remote; she shifted her rifle, and +walked on. + +Before they came to the wild, shaggy country below Cloudy Mountain she +said: + +"I've been thinking it over, Duane. I can see in it nothing that can +concern anybody except themselves. Can you?" + +"Not a thing, dear.... I'm sorry I suggested his coming. I knew about +this, but I clean forgot it when I asked you to invite him." + +"I remember, now, your consternation when you realised it," she said, +smiling. "After all, Duane, if it is bound to happen, I don't mind it +happening here.... Poor, lonely little Rosalie!... I'm depraved enough +to be glad for her--if it is really to be so." + +"I'm glad, too.... Only she ought to begin her action, I think. It's +more prudent and better taste." + +"You said once that you had a contempt for divorce." + +"I never entertain the same opinion of anything two days in succession," +he said, smiling. "When there is any one moral law that can justly cover +every case which it is framed to govern, I'll be glad to remain more +constant in my beliefs." + +"Then you _do_ believe in divorce?" + +"To-day I happen to." + +"Duane, is that your attitude toward everything?" + +"Everything except you," he said cheerfully. "That is literally true. +Even in my painting and in my liking for the work of others, I veer +about like a weather-vane, never holding very long to one point of +view." + +"You're very frank about it." + +"Why not?" + +"Isn't it a--a weakness?" + +"I don't think so," he said so simply that she tucked her arm under his +with a soft, confidential laugh. + +"You goose; do you suppose I think there is a weak fibre in you? I've +always adored the strength in you--even when it was rough enough to +bruise me. Listen, dear; there's only one thing you might possibly +weaken on. Promise you won't." + +"I promise." + +"Then," she said triumphantly, "you'll take first shot at the big boar! +Are you angry because I made you promise? If you only knew, dear, how +happy I have been, saving the best I had to offer, in this forest, for +you! You will make me happy, won't you?" + +"Of course I will, you little trump!" he said, encircling her waist, +forgetful of old Miller, plodding along behind them. + +But it was no secret to old Miller, nor to any native in the +country-side for a radius of forty miles. No modern invention can equal +the wireless celerity that distributes information concerning other +people's business throughout the rural wastes of this great and +gossipping nation. + +She made him release her, blushing hotly as she remembered that Miller +was behind them, and she scolded her lover roundly, until later, in a +moment of thoughtlessness, she leaned close to his shoulder and told him +she adored him with every breath she drew, which was no sillier than his +reply. + +The long blue shadows on the snow and the pink bars of late sunlight had +died out together. It had grown warmer and grayer in the forest; and +after a little one or two snow-flakes came sifting down through the +trees. + +They had not jumped the big silver boar, nor had they found a trace of +him among the trails that crossed and recrossed the silent reaches of +the forest. Light was fading to the colourless, opaque gray which +heralded a snow-storm as they reached the feeding-ground, spread out +their fur coats, and dropped, belly down, to reconnoitre. + +Nothing moved among the oaks. They lay listening minute after minute; no +significant sound broke the silence, no dead branch cracked in the +hemlocks. + +She lay close to him for warmth, chin resting on his shoulder, her cheek +against his. Their snow-shoes were stuck upright in a drift behind them; +beside these squatted old Miller, listening, peering, nostrils working +in the wind like an old dog's. + +They waited and watched through a fine veil of snow descending; in the +white silence there was not a sound save the silken flutter of a lonely +chickadee, friendly, inquiring, dropping from twig to twig until its +tiny bright eyes peered level with Geraldine's. + +Evidently the great boar was not feeding before night. Duane turned his +head restlessly; old Miller, too, had become impatient and they saw him +prowling noiselessly down among the rocks, scrutinising snow and +thickets, casting wise glances among the trees, shaking his white head +as though communing with himself. + +"Well, little girl," breathed Duane, "it looks doubtful, doesn't it?" + +She turned on her side toward him, looking him in the eyes: + +"Does it matter?" + +"No," he said, smiling. + +She reached out her arms; they settled close around his neck, clung for +a second's passionate silence, released him and covered her flushed +face, all but the mouth. Under them his lips met hers. + +The next instant she was on her knees, pink-cheeked, alert, ears +straining in the wind. + +"Miller is coming back very fast!" she whispered to her lover. "I +believe he has good news!" + +Miller was coming fast, holding out in one hand something red and +gray--something that dangled and flapped as he strode--something that +looked horrible and raw. + +"Damn him!" said the old man fiercely, "no wonder he ain't a-feedin'! +Look at this, Miss Seagrave. There's more of it below--a hull mess of it +in the snow." + +"It's a big strip of deer-hide--all raw and bleeding!" faltered the +girl. "What in the world has happened?" + +"_His_ work," said Miller grimly. + +"The--the big boar?" + +"Yes'm. The deer yard over there. He sneaked in on 'em last night and +this doe must have got stuck in a drift. And that devil caught her and +pulled her down and tore her into bits. Why, the woods is all scattered +with shreds o' hide like this! I wish to God you or Mr. Mallett could +get one crack at him! I do, by thunder! Yes'm!" + +But it was already too dusky among the trees to sight a rifle. In +silence they strapped up the coats, fastened on snow-shoes, and moved +out along the bare spur of the mountain, where there was still daylight +in the open, although the thickening snow made everything gray and +vague. + +Here and there a spectral tree loomed up among the rocks; a white hare's +track, paralleled by the big round imprints of a lynx, ran along the +unseen path they followed as Miller guided them toward Westgate. + +Later, outlined in the white waste, ancient apple-trees appeared, +gnarled relics of some long-abandoned clearing; and, as they passed, +Duane chanced to glance across the rocks to the left. + +At first he thought he saw something move, but began to make up his mind +that he was deceived. + +Noticing that he had halted, Geraldine came back, and then Miller +returned to where he stood, squinting through the falling flakes in the +vague landscape beyond. + +"It moved; I seen it," whispered Miller hoarsely. + +"It's a deer," motioned Geraldine; "it's too big for anything else." + +For five minutes in perfect silence they watched the gray, flat forms of +scrub and rock; and Duane was beginning to lose faith in everybody's +eyes when, without warning, a huge, colourless shape detached itself +from the flat silhouettes and moved leisurely out into the open. + +There was no need to speak; trembling slightly, he cleared his rifle +sight of snow, steadied his nerves, raised the weapon, and fired. + +A horrid sort of scream answered the shot; the boar lurched off among +the rocks, and after him at top speed ran Duane and Miller, while +Geraldine, on swift skis, sped eastward like the wind to block retreat +to the mountain. She heard Duane's rifle crack again, then again; heard +a heavy rush in the thicket in front of her, lifted her rifle, fired, +was hurled sideways on the rocks, and knew no more until she unclosed +her bewildered eyes in her lover's arms. + +A sharp pain shot through her; she gasped, turned very white, and lay +with wide eyes and parted lips staring at Duane. + +Suddenly a penetrating aroma filled her lungs; with all her strength she +pushed away the flask at her lips. + +"No! No! Not that! I _will_ not, Duane!" + +"Dear," he said unsteadily, "you are very badly hurt. We are trying to +carry you back. You must let me give you this----" + +"No," she sobbed, "I will not! Duane--I--" Pain made her faint; her +grasp on his arm tightened convulsively; with a supreme effort she +struck the flask out of his hand and dropped back unconscious. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +SINE DIE + + +The message ran: + + "My sister badly hurt in an accident; concussion, intermittent + consciousness. We fear spinal and internal injury. What train + can you catch? + SCOTT SEAGRAVE." + +Which telegram to Josiah Bailey, M.D., started that eminent general +practitioner toward Roya-Neh in company with young Dr. Goss, a surgeon +whose brilliancy and skill did not interfere with his self-restraint +when there were two ways of doing things. + +They were to meet in an hour at the 5.07 train; but before Dr. Bailey +set out for the rendezvous, and while his man was still packing his +suit-case, the physician returned to his office, where a patient waited, +head hanging, picking nervously at his fingers, his prominent, watery +eyes fixed on vacancy. + +The young man neither looked up nor stirred when the doctor entered and +reseated himself, picking up a pencil and pad. He thought a moment, +squinted through his glasses, and continued writing the prescription +which the receipt of the telegram from Roya-Neh had interrupted. + +When he had finished he glanced over the slip of paper, removed his +gold-rimmed reading spectacles, folded them, balanced them thoughtfully +in the palm of his large and healthy hand, considering the young fellow +before him with grave, far-sighted eyes: + +"Stuyvesant," he said, "this prescription is not going to cure you. No +medicine that I can give you is going to perform any such miracle unless +you help yourself. Nothing on earth that man has invented, or is likely +to invent, can cure your disease unless by God's grace the patient +pitches in and helps himself. Is that plain talk?" + +Quest nodded and reached shakily for the prescription; but the doctor +withheld it. + +"You asked for plain talk; are you listening to what I'm saying?" + +"Oh, hell, yes," burst out Quest; "I'm going to pull myself together. +Didn't I tell you I would? But I've got to get a starter first, haven't +I? I've got to have something to key me up first. I've explained to you +that it's this crawling, squirming movement on the backs of my hands +that I can't stand for. I want it stopped; I'll take anything you dope +out; I'll do any turn you call for----" + +"Very well. I've told you to go to Mulqueen's. Go _now_!" + +"All right, doctor. Only they're too damn rough with a man. All right; +I'll go. I _did_ go last winter, and look where I am now!" he snarled +suddenly. "Have I got to get up against all that business again?" + +"You came out in perfectly good shape. It was up to you," said the +doctor, coldly using the vernacular. + +"How was it up to me? You all say that! How was it? I understood that if +I cut it out and went up there and let that iron-fisted Irishman slam me +around, that I'd come out all right. And the first little baby-drink I +hit began the whole thing again!" + +"Why did you take it? You didn't have to." + +"I wanted it," retorted Quest angrily. + +"Not badly enough to make self-control impossible. That's what you went +up there for, to get back self-control. You got it but didn't use it. Do +you think there is any sort of magic serum Mulqueen or I or anybody +under Heaven can pump into you that will render you immune from the +consequences of making an alcohol sewer of yourself?" + +"I certainly supposed I could come out and drink like a gentleman," said +the young man sullenly. + +"Drink like a--_what_? A gentleman? What's that? What's drinking like a +gentleman? I don't know what it is. You either drink alcohol or you +don't; you either swill it or you don't. Anybody can do either. I'm not +aware that either is peculiar to a gentleman. But I know that both are +peculiar to fools." + +Quest muttered, picking his fingers, and cast an ugly side look at the +physician. + +"I don't know what you just said," snapped Dr. Bailey, "but I'll tell +you this: alcohol is poison and it has not--and never had--in any guise +whatever, the slightest compensating value for internal use. It isn't a +food; it's a poison; it isn't a beneficial stimulant; it's a poison; it +isn't an aid to digestion; it's a poison; it isn't a life saver; it's a +life taker. It's a parasite, forger, thief, pander, liar, brutalizer, +murderer! + +"Those are the plain facts. There isn't, and there never has been, one +word to say for it or any excuse, except morbid predisposition or +self-inculcated inclination, to offer for swallowing it. Now go to your +brewers, your wine merchants, your champagne touts, your fool +undergraduates, your clubmen, your guzzling viveurs--and they'll all +tell you the contrary. So will some physicians. And you can take your +choice. Any ass can. That is all, my boy." + +The young man glowered sulkily at the prescription. + +"Do I understand that this will stop the jumps?" + +"If you really believe that, you have never heard me say so," snapped +Dr. Bailey. + +"Well, what the devil will it do?" + +"The directions are there. You have my memorandum of the régime you are +to follow. It will quiet you till you get to Mulqueen's. Those two bits +of paper, however, are useless unless you help yourself. If you want to +become convalescent you can--even yet. It won't be easy; it will hurt; +but you can do it, as I say, even yet. But it is _you_ who must do it, +not I or that bit of paper or Mulqueen! + +"Just now you happen to want to get well because the effect of alcohol +poison disturbs you. Things crawl, as you say, on the back of your hand. +Naturally, you don't care for such phenomena. + +"Well, I've given you the key to mental and physical regeneration. Yours +is not an inherited appetite; yours is not one of those almost +foredoomed and pitiable cases. It's a stupid case; and a case of gross +self-indulgence in stupidity that began in idleness. And that, my son, +is the truth." + +"Is that so?" sneered Quest, rising and pocketing the prescription. + +"Yes, it is so. I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I +knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and +wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You +deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, +one mitigating plea to offer for what you've done to yourself. + +"You stood high in school and in college; you were Phi Beta Kappa, a +convincing debater, a plausible speaker, an excellent writer of good +English--by instinct a good newspaper man. Also you were a man adapted +by nature to live regularly and beyond the coarser temptations. But you +were lazy!" + +Dr. Bailey struck his desk in emphasis. + +"The germ of your self-indulgence lay in gross selfishness. You did what +pleased you; and it suited you to do nothing. I'm telling you how you've +betrayed yourself--how far you'll have to climb to win back. Some men +need a jab with a knife to start their pride; some require a friend's +strong helping arm around them. You need the jab. I'm trying to +administer it without anæsthetics, by telling you what some men think of +you--that it is your monstrous selfishness that has distorted your +normal common sense and landed you where you are. + +"Selfishness alone has resulted in a most cruel and unnatural neglect of +your sister--your only living relative--in a deliberate relapse into +slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which +was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your +sister's income after gambling away your own fortune. + +"I know you; I carried you through teething and measles, my son: and +I've carried you through the horrors of alcoholic delirium. And I say to +you now that, with the mental degeneration already apparent, and your +naturally quick temper, if you break down a few more cells in that +martyred brain of yours, you'll end in an asylum--possibly one reserved +for the _criminal_ insane." + +A dull colour stained the pasty whiteness of Quest's face. For several +minutes he stood there, his fingers working and picking at each other, +his pale, prominent eyes glaring. + +"That's a big indictment, doctor," he said at last. + +"Thank God you think it so," returned the doctor. "If you will stand by +your better self for one week--for only one week--after leaving +Mulqueen's, I'll stand by you for life, my boy. Come! You were a good +sport once. And that little sister of yours is worth it. Come, +Stuyvesant; is it a bargain?" + +He stepped forward and held out his large, firm, reassuring hand. The +young fellow took it limply. + +"Done with you, doctor," he said without conviction; "it's hell for +mine, I suppose, if I don't make my face behave. You're right; I'm the +goat; and if I don't quit butting I'll sure end by slapping some sissy +citizen with an axe." + +He gave the doctor's hand a perfunctory shake with his thin, damp +fingers; dropped it, turned to go, halted, retraced his steps. + +"Will it give me the willies if I kiss a cocktail good-bye before I +start for that fresh guy, Mulqueen?" + +"Start _now_, I tell you! Haven't I your word?" + +"Yes--but on the way to buy transportation can't I offer myself one +last----" + +"_Can't_ you be a good sport, Stuyve?" + +The youth hesitated, scowled. + +"Oh, very well," he said carelessly, turned and went out. + +As he walked along in the slush he said to himself: "I guess it's up +the river for mine.... By God, it's a shame, for I'm feeling pretty +good, too, and that's no idle quip!... Old Squills handed out a line of +talk all right-o!... He landed it, too.... I ought to find something to +do." + +As he walked, a faint glow stimulated his enervated intelligence; ideas, +projects long abandoned, desires forgotten, even a far echo from the old +ambition stirring in its slumber, quickened his slow pulses. The ghost +of what he might have been, nay, what he _could_ have made himself, rose +wavering in his path. Other ghosts, long laid, floated beside him, +accompanying him--the ghosts of dead opportunities, dead ideals, lofty +inspirations long, long strangled. + +"A job," he muttered; "that's the wholesome dope for Willy. There isn't +a newspaper or magazine in town where I can't get next if I speak easy. +I can deliver the goods, too; it's like wiping swipes off a bar----" + +In his abstraction he had walked into the Holland House, and he suddenly +became conscious that he was confronting a familiarly respectful +bartender. + +"Oh, hell," he said, greatly disconcerted, "I want some French vichy, +Gus!" He made a wry face, and added: "Put a dash of tabasco in it, and +salt it." + +A thick-lipped, ruddy-cheeked young fellow, celebrated for his knowledge +of horses, also notorious for other and less desirable characteristics, +stood leaning against the bar, watching him. + +They nodded civilly to one another. Quest swallowed his peppered vichy, +pulled a long face and said: + +"We're a pair of 'em, all right." + +"Pair of what?" inquired the thick-lipped young man, face becoming +rosier and looking more than ever like somebody's groom. + +"Pair of bum whips. We've laid on the lash too hard. I'm going to stable +my five nags--my five wits!"--he explained with a sneer as the other +regarded him with all the bovine intelligence of one of his own +stable-boys--"because they're foundered; and that's the why, young +four-in-hand!" + +He left the bar, adding as he passed: + +"I'm a rotting citizen, but you"--he laughed insolently--"you have +become phosphorescent!" + +The street outside was all fog and melting snow; the cold vichy he had +gulped made him internally uncomfortable. + +"A gay day to go to Mulqueen's," he muttered sourly, gazing about for a +taxicab. + +There was none for hire at that moment; he walked on for a while, +feeling the freezing slush penetrate his boot-soles; and by degrees a +sullen temper rose within him, revolting--not at what he had done to +himself--but at the consequences which were becoming more unpleasant +every moment. + +As he trudged along, slipping, sliding, his overcoat turned up around +his pasty face, his cheeks wet with the icy fog, he continued swearing +to himself, at himself, at the slush, the cold vichy in his belly, the +appetite already awakened which must be denied. + +Denied?... Was he never to have one more decent drink? Was this to be +the absolute and final end? Certainly. Yet his imagination could not +really comprehend, compass, picture to himself life made a nuisance by +self-denial--life in any other guise except as a background for inertia +and indulgence. + +He swore again, profanely asking something occult why he should be +singled out to be made miserable on a day like this? Why, among all the +men he knew, he must go skulking about, lapping up cold mineral water +and cocking one ear to the sounds of human revelry within the Tavern. + +As for his work--yes, he ought to do it.... Interest in it was already +colder; the flare-up was dying down; habitual apathy chilled it to its +embers. Indifference, ill-temper, self-pity, resentment, these were the +steps he was slowly taking backward. He took them, in their natural +sequence, one by one. + +Old Squills meant well, no doubt, but he had been damned impertinent.... +And why had Old Squills dragged in his sister, Sylvia?... He had paid as +much attention to her as any brother does to any sister.... And how had +she repaid him? + +Head lowered doggedly against the sleet which was now falling thickly, +he shouldered his way forward, brooding on his "honour," on his sister, +on Dysart. + +He had not been home in weeks; he did not know of his sister's departure +with Bunny Gray. She had left a letter at home for him, because she knew +no other addresses except his clubs; and inquiry over the telephone +elicited the information that he had not been to any of them. + +But he was going to one of them now. He needed something to kill that +vichy; he'd have one more honest drink in spite of all the Old Squills +and Mulqueens in North America! + +At the Cataract Club there were three fashion-haunting young men +drinking hot Scotches: Dumont, his empurpled skin distended with whiskey +and late suppers, and all his former brilliancy and wit cankered and +rotten with it, and his slim figure and clean-cut face fattened and +flabby with it; Myron Kelter, thin, elegant, exaggerated, talking +eternally about women and his successes with the frailer ones--Myron +Kelter, son of a gentleman, eking out his meagre income by fetching, +carrying, pandering to the rich, who were too fastidious to do what they +paid him for doing in their behalf; and the third, Forbes Winton, +literary dilettante, large in every feature and in waistcoat and in +gesture--large, hard, smooth--very smooth, and worth too many millions +to be contradicted when misstating facts to suit the colour of his too +luxuriant imagination. + +These greeted Quest in their several and fashionably wearied manners, +inviting his soul to loaf. + +Later he had a slight dispute with Winton, who surveyed him coldly, and +insolently repeated his former misstatement of a notorious fact. + +"What rot!" said Quest; "I leave it to you, Kelter; am I right or not?" + +Kelter began a soft and soothing discourse which led nowhere at first +but ended finally in a re-order for four hot Scotches. + +Then Dumont's witty French blood--or the muddied dregs which were left +of it--began to be perversely amusing at Quest's expense. Epigrams +slightly frayed, a jest or two a trifle stale, humorous inversions of +well-known maxims, a biting retort, the originality of which was not +entirely free from suspicion, were his contributions to the festivities. + +Later Kelter's nicely modulated voice and almost affectionate manner +restrained Quest from hurling his glass at the inflamed countenance of +Mr. Dumont. But it did not prevent him from leaving the room in a +vicious temper, and, ultimately, the Cataract Club. + +The early winter night had turned cold and clear; sidewalks glittered, +sheeted with ice. He inhaled a deep breath and expelled a reeking one, +hailed a cab, and drove to the railroad station. + +Here he bought his tickets, choosing a midnight train; for the journey +to Mulqueen's was not a very long one; he could sleep till seven in the +car; and, besides, he had his luggage to collect from the hotel he had +been casually inhabiting. Also he had not yet dined. + +Bodily he felt better, now that the vichy had been "killed"; mentally +his temper became more vicious than ever as he thought of Dumont's +blunted wit at his expense--a wit with edge enough left to make a +ragged, nasty wound. + +"He'll get what's coming to him some day," snarled Quest, returning to +his cab; and he bade the driver take him to the Amphitheatre, a +restaurant resort, wonderful in terra-cotta rocks, papier-maché grottos, +and Croton waterfalls--haunted of certain semi-distinguished pushers of +polite professions, among whom he had been known for years. + +The place was one vast eruption of tiny electric lights, and the lights +of "the profession," and the demi-monde. Virtue and its antithesis +disguised alike in silk attire and pearl collars, rubbed elbows +unconcernedly among the papier-maché grottos; the cascades foamed with +municipal water, waiters sweated and scurried, lights winked and +glimmered, and the music and electric fans annoyed nobody. + +In its usual grotto Quest found the usual group, was welcomed +automatically, sat down at one of the tables, and gave his order. + +Artists, newspaper men, critics, and writers predominated. There was +also a "journalist" doing "brilliant" space work on the _Sun_. He had +been doing it nearly a month and he was only twenty-one. It was his +first job. Ambition tickled his ribs; Fame leaned familiarly over his +shoulder; Destiny made eyes at him. His name was Bunn. + +There was also a smooth-shaven, tired-eyed, little man who had written a +volume on Welsh-rarebits and now drew cartoons. His function was to +torment Bunn; and Bunn never knew it. + +A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his +paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play in town. + +"Kismet," observed little Dill, who did the daily cartoon for the +_Post_, "no critic would be a critic if he could be a fifth-rate anybody +else--or," he added, looking at Bunn, "even a journalist." + +"Is that supposed to be funny?" asked Bunn complacently. "_I_ intend to +do art criticism for the _Herald_." + +"What's the objection to my getting a job on it, too?" inquired Quest, +setting his empty glass aside and signalling the waiter for a re-order. +He expected surprise and congratulation. + +Somebody said, "_You_ take a job!" so impudently that Quest reddened and +turned, showing his narrow, defective teeth. + +"It's my choice that I haven't taken one," he snarled. "Did you think +otherwise?" + +"Don't get huffy, Stuyve," said a large, placid, fat novelist, whose +financial success with mediocre fiction had made him no warmer favourite +among his brothers. + +A row of artists glanced up and coldly continued their salad, their +Vandyck beards all wagging in unison. + +"I want you to understand," said Quest, leaning both elbows offensively +on Dill's table, "that the job I ask for I expect to get." + +"You might have expected that once," said the cool young man who had +spoken before. + +"And I do now!" retorted Quest, raising his voice. "Why not?" + +Somebody said: "You can furnish good copy, all right, Quest; you do it +every day that you're not working." + +Quest, astonished and taken aback at such a universal revelation of the +contempt in which he seemed to be held, found no reply ready--nothing at +hand except another glass of whiskey and soda. + +Minute after minute he sat there among them, sullen, silent, wincing, +nursing his chagrin in deepening wrath and bitterness; and his clouding +mind perceived in the rebuke nothing that he had ever done to deserve +it. + +Who the devil were these rag-tags and bob-tails of the world who +presumed to snub him--these restaurant-haunting outsiders, among whom he +condescended to sit, feeling always the subtle flattery they ought to +accord him by virtue of a social position hopeless of attainment by any +of them? + +Who were they to turn on him like this when he had every reason to +suppose they were not only aware of the great talent he had carelessly +neglected to cultivate through all these years, but must, in the secret +recesses of their grubby souls, reluctantly admire his disdain of the +only distinctions they scrambled for and could ever hope for? + +His black looks seemed to disturb nobody; Bunn, self-centred, cropped +his salad complacently; the Vandyck beards wagged; another critic or +two left, stern slaves to duty and paid ads. + + * * * * * + +The lights bothered him; tremors crawled over and over his skin; within +him a dull rage was burning--a rage directed at no one thing, but which +could at any moment be focussed. + +Men rose and left the table singly, by twos, in groups. He sat, +glowering, head partly averted, scowlingly aware of their going, aware +of their human interest in one another but not in him, aware at last +that he counted for nothing whatever among them. + +Some spoke to him as they passed out; he made them no answer. And at +last he was alone. + +Reaching for his empty glass, he miscalculated the distance between it +and his quivering fingers; it fell and broke to pieces. When the waiter +came he cursed him, flung a bill at him, got up, demanded his coat and +hat, swore at the pallid, little, button-covered page who brought it, +and lurched out into the street. + +A cab stood there; he entered it, fell heavily into a corner of the +seat, bade the driver, "Keep going, damn you!" and sat swaying, +muttering, brooding on the wrongs that the world had done him. + +Wrongs! Yes, by God! Every hand was against him, every tongue slandered +him. Who was he that he should endure it any longer in patience! Had he +not been patient? Had he not submitted to the insults of a fool of a +doctor?--had he not stayed his hand from punishing Dumont's red and +distended face?--had he not silently accepted the insolent retorts of +these Grub Street literati who turned on him and flouted the talent that +lay dormant in him--dead, perhaps--but dead or dormant, it still +matched theirs! And they knew it, damn them! + +Had he not stood enough from the rotten world?--from his own sister, who +had flung his honour into his face with impunity!--from Dysart, whose +maddening and continual ignoring of his letters demanding an +explanation---- + +There seemed to come a sudden flash in his brain; he leaned from the +window and shouted an address to the cabman. His hat had fallen beside +him, but he did not notice its absence on his fevered head. + +"I'll begin with _him_!" he repeated with a thick laugh; "I'll settle +with him first. Now we're going to see! Now we'll find out about several +matters--or I'll break his neck off!--or I'll twist it off--wring it +off!" + +And he beat on his knees with his fists, railing, raging, talking +incoherently, laughing sometimes, sometimes listening, as though, +suddenly, near him, a voice was mocking him. + +He had a pocket full of bills, crushed up; some he gave to the cabman, +some he dropped as he stuffed the others into his pockets, stumbled +toward a bronze-and-glass grille, and rang. The cabman brought him his +hat, put it on him, gathered up the dropped money, and drove off with +his tongue in his cheek. + +Quest rang again; the door opened; he gave his card to the servant, and +stealthily followed him upstairs over the velvet carpet. + +Dysart, in a velvet dressing-gown knotted in close about his waist, +looked over the servant's shoulders and saw Quest standing there in the +hall, leering at him. + +For a moment nobody spoke; Dysart took the offered card mechanically, +glanced at it, looked at Quest, and nodded dismissal to the servant. + +When he and the other man stood alone, he said in a low, uncertain +voice: + +"Get out of here!" + +But Quest pushed past him into the lighted room beyond, and Dysart +followed, very pale. + +"What are you doing here?" he demanded. + +"I've asked you questions, too," retorted Quest. "Answer mine first." + +"Will you get out of here?" + +"Not until I take my answer with me." + +"You're drunk!" + +"I know it. Look out!" + +Dysart moistened his bloodless lips. + +"What do you want to know?" And, as Quest shouted a question at him: +"Keep quiet! Speak lower, I tell you. My father is in the next room." + +"What in hell do I care for your father? Answer me or I'll choke it out +of you! Answer me now, you dancing blackguard! I've got you; I want my +answer, and you've got to give it to me!" + +"If you don't lower your voice," said Dysart between his teeth, "I'll +throw you out of that window!" + +"Lower my voice? Why? Because the old fox might hear the young one yap! +What do I care for you or your doddering family----" + +He went down with a sharp crash; Dysart struck him again as he rose; +then, beside himself, rained blows on him, drove him from corner to +corner, out of the room, into the hall, striking him in the face till +the young fellow reeled and fell against the bath-room door. It gave; he +stumbled into darkness; and after him sprang Dysart, teeth set--sprang +into the darkness which split before him with a roar into a million +splinters of fire. + +He stood for a second swaying, reaching out to grasp at nothing in a +patient, persistent, meaningless way; then he fell backward, striking a +terrified servant, who shrank away and screamed as the light fell on her +apron and cuffs all streaked with blood. + +She screamed again as a young man's white and battered face appeared in +the dark doorway before her. + +"Is he hurt?" he asked. His dilated eyes were fixed upon the thing on +the floor. "What are you howling for? Is he--dead?" whispered Quest. +Suddenly terror overwhelmed him. + +"Get out of my way!" he yelled, hurling the shrieking maid aside, +striking the frightened butler who tried to seize him on the stairs. +There was another manservant at the door, who stood his ground swinging +a bronze statuette. Quest darted into the drawing-room, ran through the +music-room and dining-room beyond, and slammed the door of the butler's +pantry. + +He stood there panting, glaring, his shoulder set against the door; then +he saw a bolt, and shot it, and backed away, pistol swinging in his +bleeding fist. + +Servants were screaming somewhere in the house; doors slammed, a man was +shouting through a telephone amid a confusion of voices that swelled +continually until the four walls rang with the uproar. A little later a +policeman ran through the basement into the yard beyond; another pushed +his way to the pantry door and struck it heavily with his night-stick, +demanding admittance. + +For a second he waited; then the reply came, abrupt, deafening; and he +hurled himself at the bolted door, and it flew wide open. + +But Quest remained uninterested. Nothing concerned him now, lying there +on his back, his bruised young face toward the ceiling, and every +earthly question answered for him as long as time shall last. + + * * * * * + +Up-stairs a very old and shrunken man sat shivering in bed, staring +vacantly at some policemen and making feeble efforts to reach a wig +hanging from a chair beside him--a very glossy, expensive wig, nicely +curled where it was intended to fall above the ears. + +"I don't know," he quavered, smirking at everybody with crackled, +painted lips, "I know nothing whatever about this affair. You must ask +my son Jack, gentlemen--my son Jack--te-he!--oh, yes, he knows; he can +tell you a thing or two, I warrant you! Yes, gentlemen, he's like all +the Dysarts--fit for a fight or a frolic!--te-he!--he's all Dysart, +gentlemen--my son Jack. But he is a good son to me--yes, yes!--a good +son, a good son! Tell him I said so--and--good-night." + +"Nutty," whispered a policeman. "Come on out o' this boodwar and lave +th' ould wan be." + +And they left him smirking, smiling, twitching his faded lips, and +making vague sounds, lying there asleep in his dotage. + +And all night long he lay mumbling his gums and smiling, his sleep +undisturbed by the stir and lights and tramp of feet around him. + +And all night long in the next room lay his son, white as marble and +very still. + +Toward morning he spoke, asking for his father. But they had decided to +probe for the bullet, and he closed his eyes wearily and spoke no more. + +They found it. What Dysart found as the winter sun rose over Manhattan +town, his Maker only knows, for his sunken eyes opened unterrified yet +infinitely sad. But there was a vague smile on his lips after he lay +there dead. + +Nor did his slayer lie less serenely where bars of sunlight moved behind +the lowered curtains, calm as a schoolboy sleeping peacefully after the +eternity of a summer day where he had played too long and fiercely with +a world too rough for him. + +And so, at last, the indictments were dismissed against them both and +their cases adjourned _sine die_. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE PROLOGUE ENDS + + +"Your sister," observed Dr. Bailey to Scott Seagrave, "must be +constructed of India-rubber. There's nothing whatever the matter with +her spine or with her interior. The slight trace of concussion is +disappearing; there's no injury to the skull; nothing serious to +apprehend. Her body will probably be black and blue for a week or two; +she'll doubtless prefer to remain in bed to-morrow and next day. And +that is the worst news I have to tell you." + +He smiled at Kathleen and Duane, who stood together, listening. + +"I told you so," said Scott, intensely relieved. "Duane got scared and +made me send that telegram. I fell out of a tree once, and my sister's +symptoms were exactly like mine." + +Kathleen stole silently from the room; Duane passed his arm through the +doctor's and walked with him to the big, double sleigh which was +waiting. Scott followed with Dr. Goss. + +"About this other matter," said Dr. Bailey; "I can't make it out, Duane. +I saw Jack Dysart two days ago. He was very nervous, but physically +sound. I can't believe it was suicide." + +He unfolded the telegram which had come that morning directed to Duane. + + + "_Mrs. Jack Dysart's husband died this morning. Am trying to + communicate with her. Wire if you know her whereabouts._" + +It was signed with old Mr. Dysart's name, but Dr. Bailey knew he could +never have written the telegram or even have comprehended it. + +The men stood grouped in the snow near the sleigh, waiting; and +presently Rosalie came out on the terrace with Kathleen and Delancy +Grandcourt. Her colour was very bad and there were heavy circles under +her eyes, but she spoke with perfect self-possession, made her adieux +quietly, kissed Kathleen twice, and suffered Grandcourt to help her into +the sleigh. + +Then Grandcourt got in beside her, the two doctors swung aboard in +front, bells jingled, and they whirled away over the snow. + +Kathleen, with Scott and Duane on either side of her, walked back to the +house. + +"Well," said Scott, his voice betraying nervous reaction, "we'll resume +life where we left off when Geraldine did. Don't tell her anything about +Dysart yet. Suppose we go and cheer her up!" + +Geraldine lay on the pillows, rather pallid under the dark masses of +hair clustering around and framing her face. She unclosed her eyes when +Kathleen opened the door for a preliminary survey, and the others filed +solemnly in. + +"Hello," she said faintly, and smiled at Duane. + +"How goes it, Sis?" asked her brother affectionately, shouldering Duane +aside. + +"A little sleepy, but all right. Why on earth did you send for Dr. +Bailey? It was horribly expensive." + +"Duane did," said her brother briefly. "He was scared blue." + +Her eyes rested on her lover, indulgent, dreamily humorous. + +"Such expensive habits," she murmured, "when everybody is economising. +Kathleen, dear, he needs schooling. You and Mr. Tappan ought to take him +in hand and cultiwate him good and hard!" + +Scott, who had been wandering around his sister's room with innate +masculine curiosity concerning the mysteries of intimate femininity, +came upon a sketch of Duane's--the colour not entirely dry yet. + +"It's Sis!" he exclaimed in unfeigned approval. "Lord, but you've made +her a good-looker, Duane. Does she really appear like that to you?" + +"And then some," said Duane. "Keep your fingers off it." + +Scott admired in silence for a while, then: "You certainly are a shark +at it, Duane.... You've struck your gait all right.... I wish I had.... +This Rose-beetle business doesn't promise very well." + +"You write most interestingly about it," said Kathleen warmly. + +"Yes, I can write.... I believe journalism would suit me." + +"The funny column?" suggested Geraldine. + +"Yes, or the birth, marriage, and death column. I could head it, +'Hatched, Matched, and Snatched'----" + +"That is perfectly horrid, Scott," protested his sister; "why do you let +him say such rowdy things, Kathleen?" + +"I can't help it," sighed Kathleen; "I haven't the slightest influence +with him. Look at him now!"--as he laughingly passed his arm around her +and made her two-step around the room, protesting, rosy, deliciously +helpless in the arms of this tall young fellow who held her inflexibly +but with a tenderness surprising. + +Duane smiled and seated himself on the edge of the bed. + +"You plucky little thing," he said, "were you perfectly mad to try to +block that boar in the scrub? You won't ever try such a thing again, +will you, dear?" + +"I was so excited, Duane; I never thought there was any danger----" + +"You didn't think whether there was or not. You didn't care." + +She laughed, wincing under his accusing gaze. + +"You _must_ care, dear." + +"I do," she said, serious when he became so grave. "Tell me again +exactly what happened." + +He said: "I don't think the brute saw you; he was hard hit and was going +blind, and he side-swiped you and sent you flying into the air among +those icy rocks." He drew a long breath, managed to smile in response to +her light touch on his hand. "And that's how it was, dear. He crashed +headlong into a tree; your last shot did it. But Miller and I thought +he'd got you. We carried you in----" + +"_You_ did?" she whispered. + +"Yes. I never was so thoroughly scared in all my life." + +"You poor boy. Are the rifles safe? And did Miller save the head?" + +"He did," said Duane grimly, "and your precious rifles are intact." + +"Lean down, close," she said; "closer. There's more than the rifles +intact, dear." + +"Not your poor bruised body!" + +"My self-respect," she whispered, the pink colour stealing into her +cheeks. "I've won it back. Do you understand? I've gone after my other +self and got her back. I'm mistress of myself, Duane; I'm in full +control, first in command. Do you know what that means?" + +"Does it mean--me?" + +"Yes." + +"When?" + +"When you will." + +He leaned above her, looking down into her eyes. Their fearless +sweetness set him trembling. + +On the floor below Kathleen, at the piano, was playing the Menuet +d'Exaudet. When she ended, Scott, cheerily busy with his infant +Rose-beetles, went about his affairs whistling the air. + +"Our betrothal dance; do you remember?" murmured Geraldine. "Do you love +me, Duane? Tell me so; I need it." + +"I love you," he said. + +She lay looking at him a moment, her head cradled in her dark hair. +Then, moving slowly, and smiling at the pain it gave her, she put both +bare arms around his neck, and lifted her lips to his. + +It was the end of the prologue; the curtain trembled on the rise; the +story of Fate was beginning. But they had no eyes except for each other, +paid no heed save to each other. + +And, unobserved by them, the vast curtain rose in silence, beginning the +strange drama which neither time nor death, perhaps, has power to end. + +THE END + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Danger Mark, by Robert W. 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Chambers + +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 Danger Mark + +Author: Robert W. Chambers + +Illustrator: A. B. Wenzell + +Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18185] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DANGER MARK *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Robert Ledger and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>THE DANGER MARK</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</h2> + +<h3>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY<br /> +A.B. WENZELL<br /> +<br /> +1909<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +TO<br /> +<br /> +MY FRIEND<br /> +<br /> +JOHN CARRINGTON YATES +</h3> + + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image1" name="image1"></a> + <img src="images/image1.jpg" + alt=""'Please do tell me somebody is scandalised.'"" + title=""'Please do tell me somebody is scandalised.'"" /> + <p class="caption">"'Please do tell me somebody is scandalised.'"</p> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2> + + +<ol> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I">The Seagraves</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II">In Trust</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III">The Threshold</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">The Year of Discretion</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V">Roya-Neh</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">Adrift</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">Together</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">An Afterglow</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">Confession</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X">Dusk</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">Fête Galante</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">The Love of the Gods</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">Ambitions and Letters</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">The Prophets</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">Dysart</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">Through the Woods</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">The Danger Mark</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">Bon Chien</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">Questions and Answers</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">In Search of Herself</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">The Golden Hours</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">Cloudy Mountain</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">Sine Die</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">The Prologue Ends</a></li> +</ol> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</a></h2> + + +<ul> +<li><a href="#image1">"'Please do tell me somebody is scandalized'"</a></li> + +<li><a href="#image2">"'Can I have what other women have—silk underwear and stockings?'"</a></li> + +<li><a href="#image3">"'Duane!' she gasped—'why did you?'"</a></li> + +<li><a href="#image4">"Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonized surprise"</a></li> + +<li><a href="#image5">"'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is ... amply rewarded'"</a></li> + +<li><a href="#image6">"'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'"</a></li> + +<li><a href="#image7">"She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous courtesy"</a></li> + +<li><a href="#image8">"Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms"</a></li> +</ul> + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER I<br />THE SEAGRAVES</a></h2> + + +<p>All day Sunday they had raised the devil from attic to cellar; Mrs. +Farren was in tears, Howker desperate. Not one out of the fifteen +servants considered necessary to embellish the Seagrave establishment +could do anything with them after Kathleen Severn's sudden departure the +week before.</p> + +<p>When the telegram announcing her mother's sudden illness summoned young +Mrs. Severn to Staten Island, every servant in the household understood +that serious trouble was impending for them.</p> + +<p>Day by day the children became more unruly; Sunday they were demons; and +Mrs. Farren shuddered to think what Monday might bring forth.</p> + +<p>The day began ominously at breakfast with general target practice, +ammunition consisting of projectiles pinched from the interior of hot +muffins. Later, when Mrs. Farren ventured into the schoolroom, she found +Scott Seagrave drawing injurious pictures of Howker on the black-board, +and Geraldine sorting lumps of sugar from the bowl on the +breakfast-tray, which had not yet been removed.</p> + +<p>"Dearies," she began, "it is after nine o'clock and——"</p> + +<p>"No school to-day, Mrs. Farren," interrupted Scott cheerfully; "we +haven't anything to do till Kathleen comes back, and you know it +perfectly well!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you have, dearie; Mrs. Severn has just sent you this list of +lessons." She held out a black-edged envelope.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, who had been leisurely occupied in dropping cologne on a lump +of sugar, thrust the lump into her pink mouth and turned sharply on Mrs. +Farren.</p> + +<p>"What list?" she demanded. "Give that letter to me.... Oh, Scott! Did +you ever hear of anything half so mean? Kathleen's written out about a +thousand questions in geography for us!"</p> + +<p>"I can't stand that sort of interference!" shouted Scott, dropping his +chalk and aiming a kick at the big papier-maché globe. "I'm sorry +Kathleen's mother is probably going to die, but I've had enough +geography, too."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Severn's mother died on Friday," said the housekeeper solemnly.</p> + +<p>The children paused, serious for a moment in the presence of the +incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>"We're sorry," said Geraldine slowly.... "When is Kathleen coming back?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps to-night, dearie——"</p> + +<p>Scott impatiently detached the schoolroom globe from its brass axis: +"I'm sorry, too," he said; "but I'm tired of lessons. Now, Mrs. Farren, +watch me! I'm going to kick a goal from the field. Here, you hold it, +Geraldine; Mrs. Farren, you had better try to block it and cheer for +Yale!"</p> + +<p>Geraldine seized the globe, threw herself flat on the floor, and, head +on one side, wriggled, carefully considering the angle. Then, tipping +the globe, she adjusted it daintily for her brother to kick.</p> + +<p>"A little higher, please; look out there, Mrs. Farren!" said Scott +calmly; "Harvard is going to score this time. Now, Geraldine!"</p> + +<p>Thump! came the kick, but Mrs. Farren had fled, and the big globe struck +the nursery door and bounced back minus half of South America.</p> + +<p>For ten minutes the upper floors echoed with the racket. Geraldine +fiercely disputed her brother's right to kick every time; then, as +usual, when she got what she wanted, gave up to Scott and let him +monopolise the kicking until, satiated, he went back to the black-board, +having obliterated several continents from the face of the globe.</p> + +<p>"You might at least be polite enough to hold it for me to kick," said +his sister. "What a pig you are, Scott."</p> + +<p>"Don't bother me; I'm drawing Howker. You can't kick straight, anyway——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I can!"</p> + +<p>Scott, intent on his drawing, muttered:</p> + +<p>"I wish there was another boy in this house; I might have a little fun +to-day if there was anybody to play with."</p> + +<p>There ensued a silence; then he heard his sister's light little feet +flying along the hallway toward their bedrooms, but went on calmly with +his drawing, using some effective coloured crayon on Howker's nose. +Presently he became conscious that Geraldine had re-entered the room.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do to-day?" he asked, preoccupied.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, dressed in her brother's clothes, was kneeling on one knee +and hastily strapping on a single roller-skate.</p> + +<p>"I'll show you," she said, rising and shaking the dark curls out of her +eyes. "Come on, Scott, I'm going to misbehave all day. Look at me! I've +brought you the boy you wanted to play with."</p> + +<p>Her brother turned, considered her with patronising toleration, then +shrugged his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"You look like one, but you're no good," he said.</p> + +<p>"I can be just as bad as any boy!" she insisted. "I'll do whatever you +do; I'll do worse, I tell you. Dare me to do something!"</p> + +<p>"You don't dare skate backward into the red drawing-room! There's too +much bric-a-brac."</p> + +<p>She turned like a flash and was off, hopping and clattering down-stairs +on her single skate, and a moment later she whirled into the red +drawing-room backward and upset a Sang-de-boeuf jar, reducing the maid +to horrified tears and the jar to powder.</p> + +<p>Howker strove in vain to defend his dining-room when Scott appeared on +one skate; but the breakfast-room and pantry were forcibly turned into +rinks; the twins swept through the halls, met and defeated their nurses, +Margaret and Betty, tumbled down into the lower regions, from there +descended to the basement, and whizzed cheerily through the kitchen, +waving two skateless legs.</p> + +<p>There Mrs. Bramton attempted to buy them off with tribute in the shape +of cup-cakes.</p> + +<p>"Sure, darlints, they do be starvin' yez," purred Mrs. Bramton. "Don't I +know the likes o' them? Now roon away quietlike an' ladylike——"</p> + +<p>"Like a hen," retorted Scott. "I want some preserves."</p> + +<p>"That's all very well," said Geraldine with her mouth full, "but we +expected to skate about the kitchen and watch you make pastry. Kindly +begin, Mrs. Bramton."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to see what's inside of that chicken over there," said Scott. +"And I want you to give me some raisins, Mrs. Bramton——"</p> + +<p>"I'm dying for a glass of milk," added Geraldine. "Get me some dough, +somebody; I'm going to bake something."</p> + +<p>Scott, who, devoured by curiosity, had been sniffing around the spice +cupboard, sneezed violently; a Swedish kitchen-maid threw her apron over +her head, weak with laughter.</p> + +<p>"If you're laughing at me, I'll fix you, Olga!" shouted Scott in a rage; +and the air was suddenly filled with balls of dough. Mrs. Bramton fled +before the storm; a well-directed volley drove the maids to cover and +stampeded the two cats.</p> + +<p>"Take whatever is good to eat, Geraldine. Hurrah! The town surrenders! +Loot it! No quarter!" shouted Scott. However, when Howker arrived they +retired hastily with pockets full of cinnamon sticks, olives, prunes, +and dried currants, climbing triumphantly to the library above, where +they curled up on a leather divan, under the portrait of their mother, +to divide the spoils.</p> + +<p>"Am I bad enough to suit you?" inquired Geraldine with pardonable pride.</p> + +<p>"Pooh! That's nothing. If I had another boy here I'd—I'd——"</p> + +<p>"Well, what?" demanded Geraldine, flushing. "I tell you I can misbehave +as well as any boy. Dare me to do anything and you'll see! I dare you to +dare me!"</p> + +<p>Scott began: "Oh, it's all very easy for a girl to talk——"</p> + +<p>"I <i>don't</i> talk; I <i>do</i> it! And you know perfectly well I do!"</p> + +<p>"You're a girl, after all, even if you have got on my clothes——"</p> + +<p>"Didn't I throw as much dough at Olga and Mrs. Bramton as you did?"</p> + +<p>"You didn't hit anybody."</p> + +<p>"I did! I saw a soft, horrid lump stick to Olga!"</p> + +<p>"Pooh! <i>You</i> can't throw straight——"</p> + +<p>"That's a lie!" said Geraldine excitedly.</p> + +<p>Scott bristled:</p> + +<p>"If you say that again——"</p> + +<p>"All right; go and get the boxing-gloves. You <i>did</i> tell a lie, Scott, +because I did hit Olga!"</p> + +<p>Scott hastily unstrapped his lone skate, cast it clattering from him, +and sped up-stairs. When he returned he hurled a pair of boxing-gloves +at Geraldine, who put them on, laced them, trembling with wrath, and +flew at her brother as soon as his own gloves were fastened.</p> + +<p>They went about their business like lightning, swinging, blocking, +countering. Twice she gave him inviting openings and then punished him +savagely before he could get away; then he attempted in-fighting, but +her legs were too nimble. And after a while he lost his head and came at +her using sheer weight, which set her beside herself with fury.</p> + +<p>Teeth clenched, crimson-cheeked, she side-stepped, feinted, and whipped +in an upper-cut. Then, darting in, she drove home her left with all her +might; and Scott went down with an unmistakable thud.</p> + +<p>"One—two—three—four," she counted, "and you <i>did</i> tell a lie, didn't +you? Five—six—Oh, Scott! I've made your nose bleed horridly! Does it +hurt, dear? Seven—eight——"</p> + +<p>The boy, still confused, rose and instinctively assumed the classic +attitude of self-defence; but his sister threw down her gloves and +offered him her handkerchief, saying: "You've just got to be fair to me +now, Scott. Tell me that I throw straight and that I did hit Olga!"</p> + +<p>He hesitated; wiped his nose:</p> + +<p>"I take it back. You can throw straight. Ginger! What a crack you just +gave me!"</p> + +<p>She was all compunction and honey now, hovering around him where he +stood stanching honourable wounds. After a while he laughed. "Thunder!" +he exclaimed ruefully; "my nose seems to be growing for fair. You're all +right, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"Here's my last cup-cake, if you like," said his sister, radiant.</p> + +<p>Embarrassed a little by defeat, but nursing no bitterness, he sat down +on the leather divan again and permitted his sister to feed him and tell +him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too, +but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut +finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit.</p> + +<p>"We'll try it again," he began. "I'm all right now, if you like——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott, I don't want to!"</p> + +<p>"Well, we ought to know which of us really can lick the other——"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course, you can lick me every time. Besides, I wouldn't want to +be able to lick you—except when I'm very, very angry. And I ought not +to become angry the way I do. Kathleen tries so hard to make me stop +and reflect before I do things, but I can't seem to learn.... Does your +nose hurt?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least," said her brother, reddening and changing the +subject. "I say, it looks as though it were going to stop raining."</p> + +<p>He went to the window; the big Seagrave house with its mansard roof, set +in the centre of an entire city block, bounded by Madison and Fifth +Avenues and by Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets, looked out from +its four red brick façades onto strips of lawn and shrubbery, now all +green and golden with new grass and early buds.</p> + +<p>It was topsy-turvy, March-hare weather, which perhaps accounted for the +early April dementia that possessed the children at recurring intervals, +and which nothing ever checked except the ultimate slumber of infantile +exhaustion.</p> + +<p>If anybody in the house possessed authority to punish them, nobody +exercised it. Servants grown gray in the Seagrave service endured much, +partly for the children's sakes, partly in memory of the past; but the +newer and younger domestics had less interest in the past glories and +traditions of an old New York family which, except for two little +children, ten years old, had perished utterly from the face of the land.</p> + +<p>The entire domestic régime was a makeshift—had been almost from the +beginning. Mrs. Farren, the housekeeper, understood it; Howker, the +butler, knew it; Lacy knew it—he who had served forty years as coachman +in the Seagrave family.</p> + +<p>For in all the world there remained not one living soul who through ties +of kinship was authorised to properly control these children. Nor could +they themselves even remember parental authority; and only a shadowy +recollection of their grandfather's lax discipline survived, becoming +gradually, as time passed, nothing more personal to them than a pleasant +legend kept alive and nourished in the carefully guarded stories told +them by Kathleen Severn and by Anthony Seagrave's old servants.</p> + +<p>Yet, in the land, and in his own city of Manhattan, their grandfather +had been a very grand man, with his large fortune, now doubled and still +increasing; he had been a very distinguished man in the world of fashion +with his cultivated taste in art and wine and letters and horses; he had +been a very important man, too, in the civic, social, and political +construction of New York town, in the quaint days when the sexton of Old +Trinity furnished fashionable hostesses with data concerning the +availability of social aspirants. He had been a courtly and fascinating +man, too. He had died a drunkard.</p> + +<p>Now his grandchildren were fast forgetting him. The town had long since +forgotten him. Only an old friend or two and his old servants remembered +what he had been, his virtues, his magnificence, his kindness, and his +weakness.</p> + +<p>But if the Seagrave twins possessed neither father nor mother to +exercise tender temporal and spiritual suzerainty in the nursery, and if +no memory of their grandfather's adoring authority remained, the last +will and testament of Anthony Seagrave had provided a marvellous, +man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled +their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours +even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of +their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their +schooling, the items of their daily routine.</p> + +<p>This colossal automaton, almost terrifyingly impersonal, loomed always +above them, throwing its powerful and gigantic shadow across their +lives. As they grew old enough to understand, it became to them the +embodiment of occult and unpleasant authority which controlled their +coming and going; which chose for them their personal but not their +legal guardian, Kathleen Severn; which fixed upon the number of servants +necessary for the house that Anthony Seagrave directed should be +maintained for his grandchildren; which decided what kind of expenses, +what sort of clothing, what recreations, what accomplishments, what +studies, what religion they should be provided with.</p> + +<p>And the name of this enormous man-contrived machine which took the place +of father and mother was the Half Moon Trust Company, acting as trustee, +guardian, and executor for two little children, who neither understood +why they were sometimes very unruly or that they would one day be very, +very rich.</p> + +<p>As for their outbreaks, an intense sense of loneliness for which they +were unable to account was always followed by a period of restlessness +sure to culminate in violent misbehaviour.</p> + +<p>Such an outbreak had been long impending. So when a telegram called away +their personal guardian, Kathleen Severn, the children broke loose with +the delicate fury of the April tempest outside, which all the morning +had been blotting the western windows with gusts of fragrant rain.</p> + +<p>The storm was passing now; light volleys of rain still arrived at +intervals, slackening as the spring sun broke out, gilding naked +branches and bare brown earth, touching swelling buds and the frail +points of tulips which pricked the soaked loam in close-set thickets.</p> + +<p>From the library bay windows where they stood, the children noticed +dandelions in the grass and snowdrops under the trees and recognised the +green signals of daffodil and narcissus.</p> + +<p>Already crocuses, mauve, white, and yellow, glimmered along a dripping +privet hedge which crowned the brick and granite wall bounding the +domain of Seagrave. East, through the trees, they could see the roofs of +electric cars speeding up and down Madison Avenue, and the houses facing +that avenue. North and south were quiet streets; westward Fifth Avenue +ran, a sheet of wet, golden asphalt glittering under the spring sun, and +beyond it, above the high retaining wall, budding trees stood out +against the sky, and the waters of the Park reservoirs sparkled behind.</p> + +<p>"I am glad it's spring, anyway," said Geraldine listlessly.</p> + +<p>"What's the good of it?" asked Scott. "We'll have to take all our +exercise with Kathleen just the same, and watch other children having +good times. What's the use of spring?"</p> + +<p>"Spring <i>is</i> tiresome," admitted Geraldine thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"So is winter. I think either would be all right if they'd only let me +have a few friends. There are plenty of boys I'd like to have some fun +with if they'd let me."</p> + +<p>"I wonder," mused Geraldine, "if there is anything the matter with us, +Scott?"</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—I don't know. People stare at us so—nurses always watch us and +begin to whisper as soon as we come along. Do you know what a boy said +to me once when I skated very far ahead of Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>"What did he say?" inquired Scott, flattening his nose against the +window-pane to see whether it still hurt him.</p> + +<p>"He asked me if I were too rich and proud to play with other children. I +was so surprised; and I said that we were not rich at all, and that I +never had had any money, and that I was not a bit proud, and would love +to stay and play with him if Kathleen permitted me."</p> + +<p>"Did Kathleen let you? Of course she didn't."</p> + +<p>"I told her what the boy said and I showed her the boy, but she wouldn't +let me stay and play."</p> + +<p>"Kathleen's a pig."</p> + +<p>"No, she isn't, poor dear. They make her act that way—Mr. Tappan makes +her. Our grandfather didn't want us to have friends."</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you what," said Scott impatiently, "when I'm old enough, I'll +have other boys to play with whether Kathleen and—and that Thing—likes +it or not."</p> + +<p>The Thing was the Half Moon Trust Company.</p> + +<p>Geraldine glanced back at the portrait over the divan:</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she ventured, "that I believe mother would have let us +have fun."</p> + +<p>"I'll bet father would, too," said Scott. "Sometimes I feel like kicking +over everything in the house."</p> + +<p>"So do I and I generally do it," observed Geraldine, lifting a slim, +graceful leg and sending a sofa-cushion flying.</p> + +<p>When they had kicked all the cushions from the sofas and divans, Scott +suggested that they go out and help Schmitt, the gardener, who, at that +moment, came into view on the lawn, followed by Olsen wheeling a +barrowful of seedlings in wooden trays.</p> + +<p>So the children descended to the main hall and marched through it, +defying Lang, the second man, refusing hats and overshoes; and presently +were digging blissfully in a flower-bed under the delighted directions +of Schmitt.</p> + +<p>"What are these things, anyway?" demanded Scott, ramming down the moist +earth around a fragile rootlet from which trailed a green leaf or two.</p> + +<p>"Dot vas a verpena, sir," explained the old gardener. "Now you shall +vatch him grow."</p> + +<p>The boy remained squatting for several minutes, staring hard at the +seedling.</p> + +<p>"I can't see it grow," he said to his sister, "and I'm not going to sit +here all day waiting. Come on!" And he gave her a fraternal slap.</p> + +<p>Geraldine wiped her hands on her knickerbockers and started after him; +and away they raced around the house, past the fountains, under trees by +the coach-house, across paths and lawns and flower-beds, tearing about +like a pair of demented kittens. They frisked, climbed trees, chased +each other, wrestled, clutched, tumbled, got mad, made up, and finally, +removing shoes and stockings, began a game of leapfrog.</p> + +<p>Horror-stricken nurses arrived bearing dry towels and footgear, and were +received with fury and a volley of last year's horse-chestnuts. And when +the enemy had been handsomely repulsed, the children started on a tour +of exploration, picking their way with tender, naked feet to the +northern hedge.</p> + +<p>Here Geraldine mounted on Scott's shoulders and drew herself up to the +iron railing which ran along the top of the granite-capped wall between +hedge and street; and Scott followed her, both pockets stuffed with +chestnuts which he had prudently gathered in the shrubbery.</p> + +<p>In the street below there were few passers-by. Each individual wayfarer, +however, received careful attention, Scott having divided the chestnuts, +and the aim of both children being excellent.</p> + +<p>They had been awaiting a new victim for some time, when suddenly +Geraldine pinched her brother with eager satisfaction:</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott! there comes that boy I told you about!"</p> + +<p>"What boy?"</p> + +<p>"The one who asked me if I was too rich and proud to play with him. And +that must be his sister; they look alike."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Scott; "we'll give them a volley. You take the nurse +and I'll fix the boy.... Ready.... Fire!"</p> + +<p>The ambuscade was perfectly successful; the nurse halted and looked up, +expressing herself definitely upon the manners and customs of the twins; +the boy, who appeared to be amazingly agile, seized a swinging wistaria +vine, clambered up the wall, and, clinging to the outside of the iron +railing, informed Scott that he would punch his head when a pleasing +opportunity presented itself.</p> + +<p>"All right," retorted Scott; "come in and do it now."</p> + +<p>"That's all very well for you to say when you know I can't climb over +this railing!"</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Scott, thrilled at the chance of +another boy on the grounds even if he had to fight him; "I'll tell you +what!" sinking his voice to an eager whisper; "You run away from your +nurse as soon as you get into the Park and I'll be at the front door and +I'll let you in. Will you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>please</i>!" whispered Geraldine; "and bring your sister, too!"</p> + +<p>The boy stared at her knickerbockers. "Do <i>you</i> want to fight my +sister?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I? Oh, no, no, no. You can fight Scott if you like, and your sister and +I will have such fun watching you. Will you?"</p> + +<p>His nurse was calling him to descend, in tones agitated and peremptory; +the boy hesitated, scowled at Scott, looked uncertainly at Geraldine, +then shot a hasty and hostile glance at the interior of the mysterious +Seagrave estate. Curiosity overcame him; also, perhaps, a natural desire +for battle.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said to Scott, "I'll come back and punch your head for you."</p> + +<p>And very deftly, clinging like a squirrel to the pendant wistaria, he +let himself down into the street again.</p> + +<p>The Seagrave twins, intensely excited, watched them as far as Fifth +Avenue, then rapidly drawing on their shoes and stockings, scrambled +down to the shrubbery and raced for the house. Through it they passed +like a double whirlwind; feeble and perfunctory resistance was offered +by their nurses.</p> + +<p>"Get out of my way!" said Geraldine fiercely; "do you think I'm going to +miss the first chance for some fun that I've ever had in all my life?"</p> + +<p>At the same moment, through the glass-sheeted grill Scott discovered +two small figures dashing up the drive to the porte-cochère. And he +turned on Lang like a wild cat.</p> + +<p>Lang, the man at the door, was disposed to defend his post; Scott +prepared to fly at him, but his sister intervened:</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lang," she pleaded, jumping up and down in an agony of +apprehension, "please, <i>please</i>, let them in! We've never had any +friends." She caught his arm piteously; he looked fearfully embarrassed, +for the Seagrave livery was still new to him; nor, during his brief +service, had he fully digested the significance of the policy which so +rigidly guarded these little children lest rumour from without apprise +them of their financial future and the contaminating realisation +undermine their simplicity.</p> + +<p>As he stood, undecided, Geraldine suddenly jerked his hand from the +bronze knob and Scott flung open the door.</p> + +<p>"Come on! Quick!" he cried; and the next moment four small pairs of feet +were flying through the hall, echoing lightly across the terrace, then +skimming the lawn to the sheltering shrubbery beyond.</p> + +<p>"The thing to do," panted Scott, "is to keep out of sight." He seized +his guests by the arms and drew them behind the rhododendrons. "Now," he +said, "what's your name? You, I mean!"</p> + +<p>"Duane Mallett," replied the boy, breathless. "That's my sister, Naïda. +Let's wait a moment before we begin to fight; Naïda and I had to run +like fury to get away from our nurse."</p> + +<p>Naïda was examining Geraldine with an interest almost respectful.</p> + +<p>"I wish they'd let <i>me</i> dress like a boy," she said. "It's fun, isn't +it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. They don't <i>let</i> me do it; I just did it," replied Geraldine. +"I'll get you a suit of Scott's clothes, if you like. I can get the +boxing-gloves at the same time. Shall I, Scott?"</p> + +<p>"Go ahead," said Scott; "we can pretend there are four boys here." And, +to Duane, as Geraldine sped cautiously away on her errand: "That's a +thing I never did before."</p> + +<p>"What thing?"</p> + +<p>"Play with three boys all by myself. Kathleen—who is Mrs. Severn, our +guardian—is always with us when we are permitted to speak to other boys +and girls."</p> + +<p>"That's babyish," remarked Duane in frank disgust. "You are a +mollycoddle."</p> + +<p>The deep red of mortification spread over Scott's face; he looked shyly +at Naïda, doubly distressed that a girl should hear the degrading term +applied to him. The small girl returned his gaze without a particle of +expression in her face.</p> + +<p>"Mollycoddles," continued Duane cruelly, "do the sort of things you do. +You're one."</p> + +<p>"I—don't <i>want</i> to be one," stammered Scott. "How can I help it?"</p> + +<p>Duane ignored the appeal. "Playing with three boys isn't anything," he +said. "I play with forty every day."</p> + +<p>"W-where?" asked Scott, overwhelmed.</p> + +<p>"In school, of course—at recess—and before nine, and after one. We +have fine times. School's all right. Don't you even go to school?"</p> + +<p>Scott shook his head, too ashamed to speak. Naïda, with a flirt of her +kilted skirts, had abruptly turned her back on him; yet he was miserably +certain she was listening to her brother's merciless catechism.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you don't even know how to play hockey," commented Duane +contemptuously.</p> + +<p>There was no answer.</p> + +<p>"What do you do? Play with dolls? Oh, what a molly!"</p> + +<p>Scott raised his head; he had grown quite white. Naïda, turning, saw the +look on the boy's face.</p> + +<p>"Duane doesn't mean that," she said; "he's only teasing."</p> + +<p>Geraldine came hurrying back with the boxing-gloves and a suit of +Scott's very best clothes, halting when she perceived the situation, for +Scott had walked up to Duane, and the boys stood glaring at one another, +hands doubling up into fists.</p> + +<p>"You think I'm a molly?" asked Scott in a curiously still voice.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott!" cried Geraldine, pushing in between them, "you'll have to +hammer him well for that——"</p> + +<p>Naïda turned and shoved her brother aside:</p> + +<p>"I don't want you to fight him," she said. "I like him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but they must fight, you know," explained Geraldine earnestly. "If +we didn't fight, we'd really be what you call us. Put on Scott's +clothes, Naïda, and while our brothers are fighting, you and I will +wrestle to prove that I'm not a mollycoddle——"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to," said Naïda tremulously. "I like you, too——"</p> + +<p>"Well, <i>you're</i> one if you don't!" retorted Geraldine. "You can like +anybody and have fun fighting them, too."</p> + +<p>"Put on those clothes, Naïda," said Duane sternly. "Are you going to +take a dare?"</p> + +<p>So she retired very unwillingly into the hedge to costume herself while +the two boys invested their fists with the soft chamois gloves of +combat.</p> + +<p>"We won't bother to shake hands," observed Scott. "Are you ready?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you will, too," insisted Geraldine; "shake hands before you begin +to fight!"</p> + +<p>"I won't," retorted Scott sullenly; "shake hands with anybody who calls +me—what he did."</p> + +<p>"Very well then; if you don't, I'll put on those gloves and fight you +myself."</p> + +<p>Duane's eyes flew wide open and he gazed upon Geraldine with newly mixed +emotions. She walked over to her brother and said:</p> + +<p>"Remember what Howker told us that father used to say—that squabbling +is disgraceful but a good fight is all right. Duane called you a silly +name. Instead of disputing about it and calling each other names, you +ought to settle it with a fight and be friends afterward.... Isn't that +so, Duane?"</p> + +<p>Duane seemed doubtful.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it so?" she repeated fiercely, stepping so swiftly in front of +him that he jumped back.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I guess so," he admitted; and the sudden smile which Geraldine +flashed on him completed his subjection.</p> + +<p>Naïda, in her boy's clothes, came out, her hands in her pockets, +strutting a little and occasionally bending far over to catch a view of +herself as best she might.</p> + +<p>"All ready!" cried Geraldine; "begin! Look out, Naïda; I'm going to +throw you."</p> + +<p>Behind her the two boys touched gloves, then Scott rushed his man.</p> + +<p>At the same moment Geraldine seized Naïda.</p> + +<p>"We are not to pull hair," she said; "remember! Now, dear, look out for +yourself!"</p> + +<p>Of that classic tournament between the clans of Mallett and Seagrave the +chronicles are lacking. Doubtless their ancestors before them joined +joyously in battle, confident that all details of their prowess would be +carefully recorded by the family minstrel.</p> + +<p>But the battle of that Saturday noon hour was witnessed only by the +sparrows, who were too busy lugging bits of straw and twine to +half-completed nests in the cornices of the House of Seagrave, to pay +much attention to the combat of the Seagrave children, who had gone +quite mad with the happiness of companionship and were expressing it +with all their might.</p> + +<p>Naïda's dark curls mingled with the grass several times before Geraldine +comprehended that her new companion was absurdly at her mercy; and then +she seized her with all the desperation of first possession and kissed +her hard.</p> + +<p>"It's ended," breathed Geraldine tremulously, "and nobody gained the +victory and—you <i>will</i> love me, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know—I'm all dirt." She looked at Geraldine, bewildered by the +passion of the lonely child's caresses. "Yes—I do love you, Geraldine. +Oh, <i>look</i> at those boys! How perfectly disgraceful! They <i>must</i> +stop—make them stop, Geraldine!"</p> + +<p>Hair on end, grass-stained, dishevelled, and unspeakably dirty, the boys +were now sparring for breath. Grime and perspiration streaked their +countenances. Duane Mallett wore a humorously tinted eye and a +prehensile upper lip; Scott's nose had again yielded to the coy +persuasion of a left-handed jab and the proud blood of the Seagraves +once more offended high heaven on that April day.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, one arm imprisoning Naïda's waist, walked coolly in between +them:</p> + +<p>"Don't let's fight any more. The thing to do is to get Mrs. Bramton to +give you enough for four to eat and bring it back here. Scott, please +shake hands with Duane."</p> + +<p>"I wasn't licked," muttered Scott.</p> + +<p>"Neither was I," said Duane.</p> + +<p>"Nobody was licked by anybody," announced Geraldine. "Do get something +to eat, Scott; Naïda and I are starving!"</p> + +<p>After some hesitation the boys touched gloves respectfully, and Scott +shook off his mitts, and started for the kitchen.</p> + +<p>And there, to his horror and surprise, he was confronted by Mrs. Severn, +black hat, crape veil, and gloves still on, evidently that instant +arrived from those occult and, as the children supposed, distant bournes +of Staten Island, where the supreme mystery of all had been at work.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott!" she exclaimed tremulously, "what on earth has happened? +What is all this that Mrs. Farren and Howker have been telling me?"</p> + +<p>The boy stood petrified. Then there surged over him the memory of his +brief happiness in these new companions—a happiness now to be snatched +away ere scarcely tasted. Into the child's dirty, disfigured face came a +hunted expression; he looked about for an avenue of escape, and +Kathleen Severn caught him at the same instant and drew him to her.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Scott? Tell me, darling!"</p> + +<p>"Nothing.... Yes, there is something. I opened the front door and let a +strange boy and girl in to play with us, and I've just been fighting +with him, and we were having such good times—I—" his voice broke—"I +can't bear to have them go—so soon——"</p> + +<p>Kathleen looked at him for a moment, speechless with consternation. +Then:</p> + +<p>"Where are they, Scott?"</p> + +<p>"In the—the hedge."</p> + +<p>"Out <i>there</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"<i>Who</i> are they?"</p> + +<p>"Their names are Duane Mallett and Naïda Mallett. We got them to run +away from their nurse. Duane's such a bully fellow." A sob choked him.</p> + +<p>"Come with me at once," said Kathleen.</p> + +<p>Behind the rhododendrons smiling peace was extending its pinions; Duane +had produced a pocketful of jack-stones, and the three children were now +seated on the grass, Naïda manipulating the jacks with soiled but deft +fingers.</p> + +<p>Duane was saying to Geraldine:</p> + +<p>"It's funny that you didn't know you were rich. Everybody says so, and +all the nurses in the Park talk about it every time you and Scott walk +past."</p> + +<p>"If I'm rich," said Geraldine, "why don't I have more money?"</p> + +<p>"Don't they let you have as much as you want?"</p> + +<p>"No—only twenty-five cents every month.... It's my turn, Naïda! Oh, +bother! I missed. Go on, Duane——"</p> + +<p>And, glancing up, her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as Kathleen +Severn, in her mourning veil and gown, came straight up to where they +sat.</p> + +<p>"Geraldine, dear, the grass is too damp to sit on," said Mrs. Severn +quietly. She turned to the youthful guests, who had hastily risen.</p> + +<p>"You are Naïda Mallett, it seems; and you are Duane? Please come in now +and wash and dress properly, because I am going to telephone to your +mother and ask her if you may remain to luncheon and play in the nursery +afterward."</p> + +<p>Dazed, the children silently followed her; one of her arms lay loosely +about the shoulders of her own charges; one encircled Naïda's neck. +Duane walked cautiously beside his sister.</p> + +<p>In the house the nurses took charge; Geraldine, turning on the stairs, +looked back at Kathleen Severn.</p> + +<p>"Are you really going to let them stay?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am, darling."</p> + +<p>"And—and may we play together all alone in the nursery?"</p> + +<p>"I think so.... I think so, dear."</p> + +<p>She ran back down the stairs and impetuously flung herself into +Kathleen's arms; then danced away to join the others in the blessed +regions above.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Severn moved slowly to the telephone, and first called up and +reassured Mrs. Mallett, who, however, knew nothing about the affair, as +the nurse was still scouring the Park for her charges.</p> + +<p>Then Mrs. Severn called up the Half Moon Trust Company and presently was +put into communication with Colonel Mallett, the president. To him she +told the entire story, and added:</p> + +<p>"It was inevitable that the gossip of servants should enlighten the +children sooner or later. The irony of it all is that this gossip +filtered in here through your son, Duane. That is how the case stands, +Colonel Mallett; and I have used my judgment and permitted the children +this large liberty which they have long needed, believe me, long, long +needed. I hope that your trust officer, Mr. Tappan, will approve."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" said Colonel Mallett over the wire. "Tappan won't stand for +it! You know that he won't, Mrs. Severn. I suppose, if he consults us, +we can call a directors' meeting and consider this new phase of the +case."</p> + +<p>"You ought to; the time is already here when the children should no +longer suffer such utter isolation. They <i>must</i> make acquaintances, they +must have friends, they should go to parties like other children—they +ought to be given outside schooling sooner or later. All of which +questions must be taken up by your directors as soon as possible, +because my children are fast getting out of hand—fast getting away from +me; and before I know it I shall have a young man and a young girl to +account for—and to account to, colonel——"</p> + +<p>"I'll sift out the whole matter with Mr. Tappan; I'll speak to Mr. +Grandcourt and Mr. Beekman to-night. Until you hear from us, no more +visitors for the children. By the way, is that matter—the one we talked +over last month—definitely settled?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I can't help being worried by the inclination she displays. It +frightens me in such a child."</p> + +<p>"Scott doesn't show it?"</p> + +<p>"No. He hates anything like that."</p> + +<p>"Do the servants thoroughly understand your orders?"</p> + +<p>"I'm a little troubled. I have given orders that no more brandied +peaches are to be made or kept in the house. The child was perfectly +truthful about it. She admitted filling her cologne bottle with the +syrup and sipping it after she was supposed to be asleep."</p> + +<p>"Have you found out about the sherry she stole from the kitchen?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. She told me that for weeks she had kept it hidden and soaked a +lump of sugar in it every night.... She is absolutely truthful, colonel. +I've tried to make her understand the danger."</p> + +<p>"All right. Good-bye." Kathleen Severn hung up the receiver with a deep +indrawn breath.</p> + +<p>From the nursery above came a joyous clamour and trampling and shouting.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she covered her face with her black-gloved hands.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER II<br />IN TRUST</a></h2> + + +<p>The enfranchisement of the Seagrave twins proceeded too slowly to +satisfy their increasing desire for personal liberty and their +fast-growing impatience of restraint.</p> + +<p>Occasionally, a few carefully selected and assorted children were +permitted to visit them in relays, and play in the nursery for limited +periods without the personal supervision of Kathleen or the nurses; but +no serious innovation was attempted, no radical step taken without +authority from old Remsen Tappan, the trust officer of the great Half +Moon Trust Company.</p> + +<p>There could be no arguing with Mr. Tappan.</p> + +<p>Shortly before Anthony Seagrave died he had written to his old friend +Tappan:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"If I live, I shall see to it that my grandchildren know nothing +of the fortune awaiting them until they become of age—which will be +after I am ended. Meanwhile, plain food and clothing, wholesome home +seclusion from the promiscuity of modern child life, and an exhaustive +education in every grace, fashion, and accomplishment of body and +intellect is the training I propose for the development in them of the +only thing in the world worth cultivating—unterrified individualism.</p> + +<p>"The ignorance which characterises the conduct of modern institutes of +education reduces us all to one mindless level, reproducing <i>ad nauseam</i> +what is known as 'average citizens.' This nation is already crawling with them; art, +religion, letters, government, business, human ideals remain embryonic +because the 'average citizen' can conceive nothing higher, can +comprehend nothing loftier even when the few who have escaped the deadly +levelling grind of modern methods of education attempt to teach the +masses to think for themselves.</p> + +<p>"That is bad enough in itself—but add to cut-and-dried pedagogy the +outrageous liberty which modern pupils are permitted in school and +college, and add to that the unheard-of luxury in which they live—and +the result is stupidity and utter ruin.</p> + +<p>"My babies must have discipline, system, frugality, and leisure for +individual development drilled into them. I do not wish them to be +ignorant of one single modern grace and accomplishment; mind and body +must be trained together like a pair of Morgan colts.</p> + +<p>"But I will not have them victims of pedagogy; I will not have them +masters of their time and money until they are of age; I will not permit +them to choose companions or pursuits for their leisure until they are +fitted to do so.</p> + +<p>"If there is in them, latent, any propensity toward viciousness—any +unawakened desire for that which has been my failing—hard work from +dawn till dark is the antidote. An exhausted child is beyond temptation.</p> + +<p>"If I pass forward, Tappan, before you—and it is likely because I am +twenty years older and I have lived unwisely—I shall arrange matters in +such shape that you can carry out something of what I have tried to +begin, far better than I, old friend; for I am strong in theory and very +weak in practice; they are such dear little things! And when they cry to +be taken up—and a modern trained nurse says 'No! let them cry!' good +God! Remsen, I sometimes sneak into their thoroughly modern and +scientifically arranged nursery, which resembles an operating room in a +brand-new hospital, and I take up my babies and rock them in my arms, +terrified lest that modern and highly trained nurse discover my +infraction of sanitary rule and precept.</p> + +<p>"I don't know; babies were born, and survived cradles and mothers' arms +and kisses long before sterilised milk and bacilli were invented.</p> + +<p>"You see I <i>am</i> weak in more ways than one. But I do mean to give them +every chance. It isn't that these old arms ache for them, that this +rather tired heart weakens when they cry for God knows what, and modern +science says let them <i>cry</i>!—it is that, deep in me, Tappan, a +heathenish idea persists that what they need more than hygienics and +scientific discipline is some of that old-fashioned love—love which +rocks them when it is not good for them—love which overfeeds them +sometimes so that they yell with old-fashioned colic—love which +ventures a bacilli-laden kiss. Friend, friend—I am very unfit! It will +be well for them when I move on. Only try to love them, Tappan. And if +you ever doubt, kill them with indulgence, rather than with hygiene!"</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>He died of pneumonia a few weeks later. He had no chance. Remsen Tappan +picked up the torch from the fallen hand and, blowing it into a brisk +blaze, shuffled forward to light a path through life for the highly +sterilised twins.</p> + +<p>So the Half Moon Trust became father and mother to the Seagrave +children; and Mr. Tappan as dry nurse prescribed the brand of +intellectual pap for them and decided in what manner it should be +administered.</p> + +<p>Now home tuition and the "culture of the indiwidool" was a personal +hobby of Mr. Tappan, and promiscuous schools his abomination. Had not +his own son, Peter Stuyvesant Tappan, been reared upon unsteady legs to +magnificent physical and intellectual manhood under this theory?</p> + +<p>So there was to be no outside education for the youthful Seagraves; from +the nursery schoolroom no chance of escape remained. As they grew older +they became wild to go to school; stories of schoolrooms and playgrounds +and studies and teachers and jolly fellowship and vacations, brought to +them from outside by happier children, almost crazed them with the +longing for it.</p> + +<p>It was hard for them when their little friends the Malletts were sent +abroad to school; Naïda, now aged twelve, to a convent, and Duane, who +was now fifteen, three years older than the Seagrave twins, accompanied +his mother and a tutor, later to enter some school of art in Paris and +develop whatever was in him. For like all parents, Duane's had been +terribly excited over his infantile efforts at picture-making—one of +the commonest and earliest developed of talents, but which never fails +to amaze and delight less gifted parents and which continues to +overstock the world with mediocre artists.</p> + +<p>So it was arranged that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad +with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane's Titianesque genius and +Naïda's unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid +good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic +embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity. Alas! it is those who depart who +forget first; and at the end of a year, Geraldine's and Scott's letters +remained unanswered.</p> + +<p>At the age of thirteen, after an extraordinary meeting of the directors +of the Half Moon Trust Company, it was formally decided that a series of +special tutors should now be engaged to carry on to the bitter end the +Tappan-Seagrave system of home culture; and the road to college was +definitely closed.</p> + + +<p>"I want my views understood," said Mr. Tappan, addressing the board of +solemn-visaged directors assembled in session to determine upon the fate +of two motherless little children. "Indiwidoolism is nurtured in +excloosion; the elimination of the extraneous is necessary for the +dewelopment of indiwidoolism. I regard the human indiwidool as sacred. +Like a pearl"—he pronounced it "poil"—"it can grow in beauty and +symmetry and purity and polish only when nourished in seclusion. +Indiwidoolism is a poil without price; and the natal mansion, +gentlemen—if I may be permitted the simulcritude—is its oyster.</p> + +<p>"My old friend, Anthony Seagrave, shared with me this unalterable +conwiction. I remember in the autumn of 1859——"</p> + +<p>The directors settled themselves in their wadded arm-chairs; several +yawned; some folded their hands over their ample stomachs. The June +atmosphere was pleasantly conducive to the sort of after-luncheon +introspection which is easily soothed by monotones of the human voice.</p> + +<p>And while Mr. Tappan droned on and on, some of the directors watched him +with one eye half open, thinking of other things, and some listened, +both eyes half closed, thinking of nothing at all.</p> + +<p>Many considered Mr. Tappan a very terrible old man, though why +terrible, unless the most rigid honesty and bigoted devotion to duty +terrifies, nobody seemed to know.</p> + +<p>Long Island Dutch—with all that it implies—was the dull stock he +rooted in. Born a poor farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, +he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of +tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these +solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the +classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from +the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at +Fortune and brought her to her knees amidst a shower of gold. And all +alone he gathered it in.</p> + +<p>On Coenties Slip his warehouse still bore the legend: "R. Tappan: Iron." +All that he had ever done he had done alone. He knew of no other way; +believed in no other way.</p> + +<p>Plain living, plainer clothing, tireless thinking undisturbed—that had +been his childhood; and it had suited him.</p> + +<p>Never but once had he made any concession to custom and nature, and that +was only when, desiring an heir, he was obliged to enter into human +partnership to realise the wish.</p> + +<p>His son was what his father had made him under the iron cult of solitary +development; and now, the father, loyal in his own way to the memory of +his old friend Anthony Seagrave, meant to do his full duty toward the +orphaned grandchildren.</p> + +<p>So it came to pass that tutors and specialists replaced Kathleen in the +schoolroom; and these ministered to the twin "poils," who were now +fretting through their thirteenth year, mad with desire for +boarding-school.</p> + +<p>Four languages besides their own were adroitly stuffed into them; nor +were letters, arts, and sciences neglected, nor the mundane and social +patter, accomplishments, and refinements, including poise, pose, and +deportment.</p> + +<p>Specialists continued to guide them indoors and out; they rode every +morning at eight with a specialist; they drove in the Park between four +and five with the most noted of four-in-hand specialists; fencing, +sparring, wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, were all supervised by +specialists in those several very important and scientific arts; and +specialists also taught them hygiene: how to walk, sit, breathe; how to +masticate; how to relax after the manner of the domestic cat.</p> + +<p>They had memory lessons; lessons in personal physiology, and in first +aid to themselves.</p> + +<p>Specialists cared for their teeth, their eyes, their hair, their skin, +their hands and feet.</p> + +<p>Everything that was taught them, done for them, indirectly educated them +in the science of self-consideration and deepened an unavoidably natural +belief in their own overwhelming importance. They had not been born so.</p> + +<p>But in the house of Seagrave everything revolved around and centred in +them; everything began for them and ended for them alone. They had no +chance.</p> + +<p>True, they were also instructed in theology and religion; they became +well grounded in the elements of both,—laws, by-laws, theory, legends, +proverbs, truisms, and even a few abstract truths. But there was no +meaning in either to these little prisoners of self. Seclusion is an +enemy to youth; solitude its destruction.</p> + +<p>When the twins were fifteen they went to their first party. A week of +superficial self-restraint and inward delirium was their preparation, a +brief hour of passive bewilderment the realisation. Dazed by the sight +and touch and clamor of the throng, they moved and spoke as in a vision. +The presence of their own kind in such numbers confused them; +overwhelmed, they found no voices to answer the call of happiness. Their +capacity to respond was too limited.</p> + +<p>As in a dream they were removed earlier than anybody else—taken away by +a footman and a maid with decorous pomp and circumstance, carefully +muffled in motor robes, and embedded in a limousine.</p> + +<p>The daily papers, with that lofty purpose which always characterises +them, recorded next morning the important fact that the famous Seagrave +twins had appeared at their first party.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen the twins might have entered +Harvard, for the entrance examinations were tried on both children, and +both passed brilliantly.</p> + +<p>For a year or two they found a substitute for happiness in pretending +that they were really at college; they simulated, day by day, the life +that they supposed was led there; they became devoted to their new game. +Excited through tales told by tutor and friend, they developed a +passionate loyalty for their college and class; they were solemnly +elected to coveted societies, they witnessed Harvard victories, they +strove fiercely for honours; their ideals were lofty, their courage +clean and high.</p> + +<p>So completely absorbed in the pretence did they become that their own +tutors ventured to suggest to Mr. Tappan that such fiercely realistic +mimicry deserved to be rewarded. Unfortunately, the children heard of +this; but the Trust Officer's short answer killed their interest in +playing at happiness, and their junior year began listlessly and +continued without ambition. There was no heart in the pretence. Their +interest had died. They studied mechanically because they were obliged +to; they no longer cared.</p> + +<p>That winter they went to a few more parties—not many. However, they +were gingerly permitted to witness their first play, and later, the same +year, were taken to "Lohengrin" at the opera.</p> + +<p>During the play, which was a highly moral one, they sat watching, +listening, wide-eyed as children.</p> + +<p>At the opera Geraldine's impetuous soul soared straight up to paradise +with the first heavenly strains, and remained there far above the rigid, +breathless little body, bolt upright in its golden sarcophagus of the +grand tier.</p> + +<p>Her physical consciousness really seemed to have fled. Until the end she +sat unaware of the throngs, of Scott and Kathleen whispering behind her, +of several tall, broad-shouldered, shy young fellows who came into their +box between the acts and tried to discuss anything at all with her, only +to find her blind, deaf, and dumb.</p> + +<p>These were the only memories of her first opera—confused, chaotic +brilliancy, paradise revealed: and long, long afterward, the carriage +flying up Fifth Avenue through darkness all gray with whirling snow.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Their eighteenth year dragged, beginning in physical and intellectual +indifference, but promised stormily as they became more accustomed to +glimpses of an outside world—a world teeming with restless young +people in unbelievable quantities.</p> + +<p>Scott had begun to develop two traits: laziness and a tendency to +sullen, unspoken wrath. He took more liberty than was officially granted +him—more than Geraldine dared take—and came into collision with +Kathleen more often now. He boldly overstayed his leave in visiting his +few boy friends for an afternoon; he returned home alone on foot after +dusk, telling the chauffeur to go to the devil. Again and again he +remained out to dinner without permission, and, finally, one afternoon +quietly and stealthily cut his studies, slipped out of the house, and +reappeared about dinner-time, excited, inclined to be boisterously +defiant, admitting that he had borrowed enough money from a friend to go +to a matinée with some other boys, and that he would do it again if he +chose.</p> + +<p>Also, to Kathleen's horror, he swore deliberately at table when Mr. +Tappan's name was mentioned; and Geraldine looked up with startled brown +eyes, divining in her brother something new—something that +unconsciously they both had long, long waited for—the revolt of youth +ere youth had been crushed for ever from the body which encased it.</p> + +<p>"Damn him," repeated Scott, a little frightened at his own words and +attitude; "I've had enough of this baby business; I'm eighteen and I +want two things: some friends to go about with freely, and some money to +do what other boys do. And you can tell Mr. Tappan, for all I care."</p> + +<p>"What would you buy with money that is not already provided for, Scott?" +asked Kathleen, gently ignoring his excited profanity.</p> + +<p>"I don't know; there is no pleasure in using things which that fool of +a Trust Company votes to let you have. Anyway, what I want is liberty +and money."</p> + +<p>"What would you do with what you call liberty, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Do? I'd—I'd—well, I'd go shooting if I wanted to. I'd buy a gun and +go off somewhere after ducks."</p> + +<p>"But your father's old club on the Chesapeake is open to you. Shall I +ask Mr. Tappan?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes: I know," he sneered, "and Mr. Tappan would send some chump of +a tutor there to teach me. I don't want to be taught how to hit ducks. I +want to find out for myself. I don't care for that sort of thing," he +repeated savagely; "I just ache to go off somewhere with a boy of my own +age where there's no club and no preserve and no tutor; and where I can +knock about and get whatever there is to get without anybody's help."</p> + +<p>Geraldine said: "You have more liberty now than I have, Scott. What are +you howling for?"</p> + +<p>"The only real liberty I have I take! Anyway, you have enough for a girl +of your age. And you'd better shut up."</p> + +<p>"I won't shut up," she retorted irritably. "I want liberty as much as +you do. If I had any, I'd go to every play and opera in New York. And +I'd go about with my friends and I'd have gowns fitted, and I'd have tea +at Sherry's, and I'd shop and go to matinees and to the Exchange, and +I'd be elected a member of the Commonwealth Club and play basket-ball +there, and swim, and lunch and—and then have another fitting——"</p> + +<p>"Is that what you'd do with your liberty?" he sneered. "Well, I don't +wonder old Tappan doesn't give you any money."</p> + +<p>"I do need money and decent gowns. I'm sick of the frumpy +prunes-and-prisms frocks that Kathleen makes me wear——"</p> + +<p>Kathleen's troubled laugh interrupted her:</p> + +<p>"Dearest, I do the best I can on the allowance made you by Mr. Tappan. +His ideas on modern feminine apparel are perhaps not yours or mine."</p> + +<p>"I should say not!" returned Geraldine angrily. "There isn't a girl of +my age who dresses as horridly as I do. I tell you, Mr. Tappan has got +to let me have money enough to dress decently. If he doesn't, I—I'll +begin to give him as much trouble as Scott does—more, too!"</p> + +<p>She set her teeth and stared at her glass of water.</p> + +<p>"What about my coming-out gown?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I have written him about your début," said Kathleen soothingly.</p> + +<p>"Oh! What did the old beast say?"</p> + +<p>"He writes," began Kathleen pleasantly, "that he considers eighteen an +unsuitable age for a young girl to make her bow to New York society."</p> + +<p>"Did he say that?" exclaimed Geraldine, furious. "Very well; I shall +write to Colonel Mallett and tell him I simply will not endure it any +longer. I've had enough education; I'm suffocated with it! Besides, I +dislike it. I want a dinner-gown and a ball-gown and my hair waved and +dressed on top of my head instead of bunched half way! I want to have an +engagement pad—I want to have places to go to—people expecting me; I +want silk stockings and pretty underclothes! Doesn't that old fool +understand what a girl wants and needs?"</p> + +<p>She half rose from her seat at the table, pushing away the fruit which a +servant offered; and, laying her hands flat on the cloth, leaned +forward, eyes flashing ominously.</p> + +<p>"I'm getting tired of this," she said. "If it goes on, I'll probably run +away."</p> + +<p>"So will I," said Scott, "but I've good reasons. They haven't done +anything to you. You're making a terrible row about nothing."</p> + +<p>"Yes, they have! They've suppressed me, stifled me, bottled me up, +tinkered at me, overgroomed me, dressed me ridiculously, and stuffed my +mind. And I'm starved all the time! O Kathleen, I'm hungry! hungry! +Can't you understand?</p> + +<p>"They've made me into something I was not. I've never yet had a chance +to be myself. Why couldn't they let me be it? I know—I <i>know</i> that when +at last they set me free because they have to—I—I'll act like a fool; +I'll not know what to do with my liberty—I'll not know how to use +it—how to understand or be understood.... Tell Mr. Tappan that! Tell +him that it is all silly and wrong! Tell him that a young girl never +forgets when other girls laugh at her because she never had any money, +and dresses like a frump, and wears her hair like a baby!... And if he +doesn't listen to us, some day Scott and I will show him and the others +how we feel about it! I can make as much trouble as Scott can; I'll do +it, too——"</p> + +<p>"Geraldine!"</p> + +<p>"Very well. I'm boiling inside when I think of—some things. The +injustice of a lot of hateful, snuffy old men deciding on what sort of +underclothes a young girl shall wear!... And I <i>will</i> make my début! I +will! I will!"</p> + +<p>"Dearest——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I will! I'll write to them and complain of Mr. Tappan's stingy, +unjust treatment of us both——"</p> + +<p>"Let me do the writing, dear," said Kathleen quietly. And she rose from +the table and left the dining-room, both arms around the necks of the +Seagrave twins, drawing them close to her sides—closer when her +sidelong glance caught the sullen bitterness on the darkening features +of the boy, and when on the girl's fair face she saw the flushed, +wide-eyed, questioning stare.</p> + +<p>When the young, seeking reasons, gaze questioningly at nothing, it is +well to divine and find the truthful answer, lest their <i>other</i> selves, +evoked, stir in darkness, counselling folly.</p> + +<p>The answer to such questions Kathleen knew; who should know better than +she? But it was not for her to reply. All she could do was to summon out +of the vasty deep the powers that ruled her wards and herself; and +these, convoked in solemn assembly because of conflict with their Trust +Officer, might decide in becoming gravity such questions as what shall +be the proper quality and cost of a young girl's corsets; and whether or +not real lace and silk are necessary for attire more intimate still.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">During the next two years the steadily increasing friction between +Remsen Tappan and his wards began seriously to disturb the directors of +the Half Moon Trust. That worthy old line company viewed with uneasiness +the revolutionary tendencies of the Seagrave twins as expressed in +periodical and passionate letters to Colonel Mallett. The increasing +frequency of these appeals for justice and for intervention +fore-shadowed the desirability of a conference. Besides, there was a +graver matter to consider, which implicated Scott.</p> + +<p>When Kathleen wrote, suggesting a down-town conference to decide +delicate questions concerning Geraldine's undergarments and Scott's new +gun, Colonel Mallett found it more convenient to appoint the Seagrave +house as rendezvous.</p> + +<p>And so it came to pass one pleasant Saturday afternoon in late October +that, in twos and threes, a number of solemn old gentlemen, faultlessly +attired, entered the red drawing-room of the Seagrave house and seated +themselves in an impressive semicircle upon the damask chairs.</p> + +<p>They were Colonel Stuart Mallett, president of the institution, just +returned from Paris with his entire family; Calvin McDermott, Joshua +Hogg, Carl Gumble, Friedrich Gumble; the two vice-presidents, James Cray +and Daniel Montross; Myndert Beekman, treasurer; Augustus Varick, +secretary; the Hon. John D. Ellis; Magnelius Grandcourt 2d, and Remsen +Tappan, Trust Officer.</p> + +<p>If the pillars of the house of Seagrave had been founded upon millions, +the damask and rosewood chairs in the red drawing-room now groaned under +the weight of millions. Power, authority, respectability, and legitimate +affluence sat there majestically enthroned in the mansion of the late +Anthony Seagrave, awaiting in serious tribunal the appearance of the +last of that old New York family.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Severn came in first; the directors rose as one man, urbane, +sprightly, and gallant. She was exceedingly pretty; they recognised it. +They could afford to.</p> + +<p>Compositely they were a smooth, soft-stepping, soft-voiced, company. An +exception or two, like Mr. Tappan, merely accented the composite +impression of rosy-cheeked, neatly shaven, carefully dressed prosperity. +They all were cautious of voice, moderate of speech, chary of gesture. +There was always an impressive pause before a director of the Half Moon +Trust answered even the most harmless question addressed to him. Some +among them made it a conservative rule to swallow nothing several times +before speaking at all. It was a safe habit to acquire. <i>Aut prudens aut +nullus.</i></p> + +<p>Geraldine's starched skirts rustled on the stairway. When she came into +the room the directors of the Half Moon Trust were slightly astonished. +During the youth of the twins, the wives of several gentlemen present +had called at intervals to inspect the growth of Anthony Seagrave's +grandchildren, particularly those worthy and acquisitive ladies who had +children themselves. The far-sighted reap rewards. Some day these baby +twins would be old enough to marry. It was prudent to remember such +details. A position as an old family friend might one day prove of +thrifty advantage in this miserably mercenary world where dog eats dog, +and dividends are sometimes passed. God knows and pities the sorrows of +the rich.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, her slim hand in Colonel Mallett's, courtesied with old-time +quaintness, then her lifted eyes swept the rosy, rotund countenances +before her. To each she courtesied and spoke, offering the questioning +hand of amity.</p> + +<p>The thing that seemed to surprise them was that she had grown since they +had seen her. Time flies when hunting safe investments. The manners she +retained, like her fashion of wearing her hair, and the cut and length +of her apparel were clearly too childish to suit the tall, slender, +prettily rounded figure—the mature oval of the face, the delicately +firm modelling of the features.</p> + +<p>This was no child before them; here stood adorable adolescence, a hint +of the awakening in the velvet-brown eyes which were long and slightly +slanting at the corners; hints, too, in the vivid lips, in the finer +outline of the profile, in faint bluish shadows under the eyes, edging +the curved cheeks' bloom.</p> + +<p>They had not seen her in two years or more, and she had grown up. They +had merely stepped down-town for a hasty two years' glance at the +market, and, behind their backs, the child had turned into a woman.</p> + +<p>Hitherto they had addressed her as "Geraldine" and "child," when a rare +interview had been considered necessary. Now, two years later, +unconsciously, it was "Miss Seagrave," and considerable embarrassment +when the subject of intimate attire could no longer be avoided.</p> + +<p>But Geraldine, unconscious of such things, broached the question with +all the directness characteristic of her.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry I was rude in my last letter," she said gravely, turning to +Mr. Tappan. "Will you please forgive me?... I am glad you came. I do not +think you understand that I am no longer a little girl, and that things +necessary for a woman are necessary for me. I want a quarterly +allowance. I need what a young woman needs. Will you give these things +to me, Mr. Tappan?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tappan's dry lips cracked apart; he swallowed grimly several times, +then his long bony fingers sought the meagre ends of his black string +tie:</p> + +<p>"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began harshly, and checked +himself, when Geraldine flushed to her ear tips and stamped her foot. +Self-control had gone at last.</p> + +<p>"I won't listen to that!" she said, breathless; "I've listened to it for +ten years—as long as I can remember. Answer me honestly, Mr. Tappan! +Can I have what other women have—silk underwear and stockings—real +lace on my night dresses—and plenty of it? Can I have suitable gowns +and furs, and have my hair dressed properly? I want you to answer; can I +make my début this winter and have the gowns I require—and the liberty +that girls of my age have?" She turned on Colonel Mallett: "The liberty +that Naïda has had is all I want; the sort of things you let her have +all I ask for." And appealing to Magnelius Grandcourt, who stood pursing +his thick lips, puffed out like a surprised pouter pigeon: "Your +daughter Catherine has more than I ask; why do you let her have what you +consider bad for me? <i>Why</i>?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Grandcourt swallowed several times, and spoke in an undertone to +Joshua Hogg. But he did not reply to Geraldine.</p> + +<p>Remsen Tappan turned his iron visage toward Colonel Mallett—ignoring +Geraldine's questions.</p> + +<p>"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began again dauntlessly——</p> + +<p>"Isn't there anybody to answer me?" asked Geraldine, turning from one to +another.</p> + +<p>"Concerning the cultiwation——"</p> + +<p>"Answer me!" she flashed back. There were tears in her voice, but her +eyes blazed.</p> + +<p>"Miss Seagrave," interposed old Mr. Montross gravely, "I beg of you to +remember——"</p> + +<p>"Let him answer me first! I asked him a perfectly plain question. +It—it is silly to ignore me as though I were a foolish child—as though +I didn't know my mind."</p> + +<p>"I think, Mr. Tappan, perhaps if you could give Miss Seagrave a +qualified answer to her questions—make some preliminary statement—" +began Mr. Cray cautiously.</p> + +<p>"Concerning what?" snapped Tappan with a grim stare.</p> + +<p>"Concerning my stockings and my underwear," said Geraldine fiercely. +"I'm tired of dressing like a servant!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tappan's rugged jaw opened and shut with another snap.</p> + +<p>"I'm opposed to any such innowation," he said.</p> + +<p>"And—my coming out this winter? And my quarterly allowance? Answer me!"</p> + +<p>"Time enough when you turn twenty-one, Miss Seagrave. Cultiwation of +mind concerns you now, not cultiwation of raiment."</p> + +<p>"That—that—" stammered Geraldine, "is s-su-premely s-silly." The tears +reached her eyes; she brushed them away angrily.</p> + +<p>Mallett coughed and glanced at Myndert Beekman, then past the secretary, +Mr. Varick, directly at Mr. Tappan.</p> + +<p>"If you could see your way to—ah—accede to some—a number—perhaps, in +a measure, to all of Miss Seagrave's not unreasonable requests, Mr. +Tappan——"</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image2" name="image2"></a> + <img src="images/image2.jpg" + alt=""'Can I have what other women have—silk underwear and stockings?'"" + title=""'Can I have what other women have—silk underwear and stockings?'"" /> + <p class="caption">"'Can I have what other women have—silk underwear and stockings?'"</p> +</div> + + +<p>He hesitated, looked dubiously at Mr. Montross, who nodded. Mr. Cray, +also, made an almost imperceptible sign of concurrence. Magnelius +Grandcourt, the sixty-year <i>enfant terrible</i> of the company, dreaded +for his impulsive outbursts—though the effect of these outbursts was +always very carefully considered before-hand—stepped jauntily across +the floor, and lifting Geraldine's hand to his rather purplish lips, +saluted it with a flourish.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say, Tappan, let Miss Seagrave have what she wants!" he exclaimed +with a hearty disregard of caution, which outwardly disturbed but +inwardly deceived nobody except Geraldine and Mrs. Severn.</p> + +<p>Colonel Mallett thought: "The acquisitive beast is striking attitudes on +his fool of a son's account."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tappan's small iron-gray eyes bored two holes through the inward +motives of Mr. Grandcourt, and his mouth tightened till the seamed lips +were merely a line.</p> + +<p>"I think, Magnelius," said Colonel Mallett coldly, "that it is, perhaps, +the sense of our committee that the time has practically arrived for +some change—perhaps radical change—in the—in the—ah—the hitherto +exceedingly wise regulations——"</p> + +<p>"<i>May</i> I have real lace?" cried Geraldine—"Oh, I <i>beg</i> your pardon, +Colonel Mallett, for interrupting, but I was perfectly crazy to know +what you were going to say."</p> + +<p>Other people have been crazier and endured more to learn what hope the +verdict of ponderous authority might hold for them.</p> + +<p>Colonel Mallett, a trifle ruffled at the interruption, swallowed several +times and then continued without haste to rid himself of a weighty +opinion concerning the début and the petticoats of the Half Moon's ward. +He might have made the child happy in one word. It took him twenty +minutes.</p> + +<p>Concurring opinions were then solemnly delivered by every director in +turn except Mr. Tappan, who spoke for half an hour, doggedly dissenting +on every point.</p> + +<p>But the days of the old régime were evidently numbered. He understood +it. He looked across at the crackled portrait of his old friend Anthony +Seagrave; the faded, painted features were obliterated in a bar of +slanting sunlight.</p> + +<p>So, concluding his dissenting opinion, and having done his duty, he sat +down, drawing the skirts of his frock-coat close around his bony thighs. +He had done his best; his reward was this child's hatred—which she +already forgot in the confused delight of her sudden liberation.</p> + +<p>Dazed with happiness, to one after another Geraldine courtesied and +extended the narrow childlike hand of amity—even to him. Then, as +though treading on invisible pink clouds, she floated out and away +up-stairs, scarcely conscious of passing her brother on the stairway, +who was now descending for his turn before the altar of authority.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">When Scott returned he appeared to be unusually red in the face. +Geraldine seized him ecstatically:</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott! I <i>am</i> to come out, after all—and I'm to have my quarterly, +and gowns, and everything. I could have hugged Mr. Grandcourt—the dear! +I was so frightened—frightened into rudeness—and then that beast of a +Tappan scared me terribly. But it is all right now—and <i>what</i> did they +promise you, poor dear?"</p> + +<p>Scott's face still remained flushed as he stood, hands in his pockets, +head slightly bent, tracing with the toe of his shoe the carpet pattern.</p> + +<p>"You want to know what they promised me?" he asked, looking up at his +sister with an unpleasant laugh. She poured a few drops of cologne onto +a lump of sugar, placed it between her lips, and nodded:</p> + +<p>"They <i>did</i> promise you something—didn't they?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, certainly. They promised to make it hot for me if I ever again +borrowed money on notes."</p> + +<p>"Scott! did you do that?"</p> + +<p>"Give my note? Certainly. I needed money—I've told old tabby Tappan so +again and again. In a year I'll have all the money I need—so what's the +harm if I borrow a little and promise to pay when I'm of age?"</p> + +<p>Geraldine considered a moment: "It's curious," she reflected, "but do +you know, Scott, I never thought of doing that. It never occurred to me +to do it! Why didn't you tell me?"</p> + +<p>"Because," said her brother with an embarrassed laugh, "it's not exactly +a proper thing to do, I believe. Anyway, they raised a terrible row +about it. Probably that's why they have at last given me a decent +quarterly allowance; they think it's safer, I suppose—and they're +right. The stingy old fossils."</p> + +<p>The boyish boast, the veiled hint of revolt and reprisal vaguely +disturbed Geraldine's sense of justice.</p> + +<p>"After all," she said, "they have meant to be kind. They didn't know +how, that's all. And, Scott, do let us try to be better now. I'm ashamed +of my rudeness to them. And I'm going to be very, very good to Kathleen +and not do one single thing to make her unhappy or even to bother Mr. +Tappan.... And, oh, Scott! my silks and laces! my darling clothes! All +is coming true! Do you hear? And, Scott! Naïda and Duane are back and +I'm dying to see them. Duane is twenty-three, think of it!"</p> + +<p>She seized him and spun him around.</p> + +<p>"If you don't hug me and tell me you're fond of me, I shall go mad. Tell +me you're fond of me, Scott! You do love me, don't you?"</p> + +<p>He kissed his sister with preoccupied toleration: "Whew!" he said, "your +breath reeks of cologne!</p> + +<p>"As for me," he added, half sullenly, "I'm going to have a few things I +want, now.... And do a few things, too."</p> + +<p>But what these things were he did not specify. Nor did Geraldine have +time to speculate, so occupied was she now with preparations for the +wonderful winter which was to come true at last—which was already +beginning to come true with exciting visits to that magic country of +brilliant show-windows which, like an enchanted city by itself, sparkles +from Madison Square to the Plaza between Fourth Avenue and Broadway.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Into this sparkling metropolitan zone she hastened with Kathleen; all +day long, week after week, she flitted from shop to shop, never +satisfied, always eager to see, to explore. Yet two things Kathleen +noticed: Geraldine seemed perfectly happy and contented to view the +glitter of vanity fair without thought of acquiring its treasures for +herself; and, when reminded that she was there to buy, she appeared to +be utterly ignorant of the value of money, though a childhood without it +was supposed to have taught her its rarity and preciousness.</p> + +<p>The girl's personal tastes were expensive; she could linger in ecstasy +all the morning over piles of wonderful furs without envy, without even +thinking of them for herself; but when Kathleen mentioned the reason of +their shopping, Geraldine always indicated sables as her choice, any +single piece of which would have required half her yearly allowance to +pay for.</p> + +<p>And she was for ever wishing to present things to Kathleen; silks that +were chosen, model gowns that they examined together, laces, velvets, +jewels, always her first thought seemed to be that Kathleen should have +what they both enjoyed looking at so ardently; and many a laughing +contest they had as to whether her first quarterly allowance should be +spent upon herself or her friends.</p> + +<p>On the surface it would appear that unselfishness was the key to her +character. That was impossible; she had lived too long alone. Yet +Geraldine was clearly not acquisitive; though, when she did buy, her +careless extravagance worried Kathleen. Spendthrift—in that she cared +nothing for the money value of anything—her bright, piquant, eager face +was a welcome sight to the thrifty metropolitan shopkeeper at +Christmas-tide. A delicate madness for giving obsessed her; she bought a +pair of guns for Scott, laces and silks for Kathleen, and for the +servants everything she could think of. Nobody was forgotten, not even +Mr. Tappan, who awoke Christmas morning to gaze grimly upon an antique +jewelled fob all dangling with pencils and seals. In the first flush of +independence it gave her more pleasure to give than to acquire.</p> + +<p>Also, for the first time in her life, she superintended the distribution +of her own charities, flying in the motor with Kathleen from church to +mission, eager, curious, pitiful, appalled, by turns. Sentiment +overwhelmed her; it was a new kind of pleasure.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">One night she arose shivering from her warm bed, and with ink and paper +sat figuring till nearly dawn how best to distribute what fortune she +might one day possess, and live an exalted life on ten dollars a week.</p> + +<p>Kathleen found her there asleep, head buried in the scattered papers, +limbs icy to the knees; and there ensued an interim of bronchitis which +threatened at one time to postpone her début.</p> + +<p>But the medical profession of Manhattan came to the rescue in +battalions, and Geraldine was soon afoot, once more drifting +ecstatically among the splendours of the shops, thrilling with the +nearness of the day that should set her free among unnumbered hosts of +unknown friends.</p> + +<p>Who would these unknown people turn out to be? What hearts were at that +very moment destined to respond in friendship to her own?</p> + +<p>Often lying awake, nibbling her scented lump of sugar, the darkness +reddening, at intervals, as embers of her bedroom fire dropped glowing +to the hearth, she pictured to herself this vast, brilliant throng +awaiting to welcome her as one of them. And her imagination catching +fire, through closed lids she seemed to see heavenly vistas of youthful +faces—a thousand arms outstretched in welcome; and she, advancing, eyes +dim with happiness, giving herself to this world of youth and +friendship—crossing the threshold—leaving for ever behind her the past +with its loneliness and isolation.</p> + +<p>It was of friendships she dreamed, and the blessed nearness of others, +and the liberty to seek them. She promised herself she would never, +never again permit herself to be alone. She had no definite plans, +except that. Life henceforth must be filled with the bright shapes of +comrades. Life must be only pleasure. Never again must sadness come near +her. A miraculous capacity for happiness seemed to fill her breast, +expanding with the fierce desire for it, until under the closed lids +tears stole out, and there, in the darkness, she held out her bare arms +to the world—the kind, good, generous, warm-hearted world, which was +waiting, just beyond her threshold, to welcome her and love her and +companion her for ever.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER III<br />THE THRESHOLD</a></h2> + + +<p>She awoke tired; she had scarcely closed her eyes that night. The fresh +odour of roses filled her room when her maid arrived with morning gifts +from Kathleen and Scott.</p> + +<p>She lay abed until noon. They started dressing her about three. After +that the day became unreal to her.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Manhattan was conventionally affable to Geraldine Seagrave, also +somewhat curious to see what she looked like. Fifth Avenue and the +neighbouring side streets were jammed with motors and carriages on the +bright January afternoon that Geraldine made her bow, and the red and +silver drawing-rooms, so famous a generation ago, were packed +continually.</p> + +<p>What people saw was a big, clumsy house expensively overdecorated in the +appalling taste of forty years ago, now screened by forests of palms and +vast banks of flowers; and they saw a number of people popularly +identified with the sort of society which newspapers delight to revere; +and a few people of real distinction; and a young girl, noticeably pale, +standing beside Kathleen Severn and receiving the patronage of dowagers +and beaux, and the impulsive clasp of fellowship from fresh-faced young +girls and nice-looking, well-mannered young fellows.</p> + +<p>The general opinion seemed to be that Geraldine Seagrave possessed all +the beauty which rumour had attributed to her as her right by +inheritance, but the animation of her clever mother was lacking. Also, +some said that her manners still smacked of the nursery; and that, +unless it had been temporarily frightened out of her, she had little +personality and less charm.</p> + +<p>Nothing, as a matter of fact, had been frightened out of her; for weeks +she had lived in imagination so vividly through that day that when the +day really arrived it found her physically and mentally unresponsive; +the endless reiteration of names sounded meaninglessly in her ears, the +crowding faces blurred. She was passively satisfied to be there, and +content with the touch of hands and the pleasant-voiced formalities of +people pressing toward her from every side.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Afterward few impressions remained; she remembered the roses' perfume, +and a very fat woman with a confusing similarity of contour fore and aft +who blocked the lines and rattled on like a machine-gun saying +dreadfully frank things about herself, her family, and everybody she +mentioned.</p> + +<p>Naïda Mallett, whom she had not seen in many years, she had known +immediately, and now remembered. And Naïda had taken her white-gloved +hand shyly, whispering constrained formalities, then had disappeared +into the unreality of it all.</p> + +<p>Duane, her old playmate, may have been there, but she could not remember +having seen him. There were so many, many youths of the New York sort, +all dressed alike, all resembling one another—many, many people flowing +past her where she stood submerged in the silken ebb eddying around her.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">These were the few hazy impressions remaining—she was recalling them +now while dressing for her first dinner dance. Later, when her maid +released her with a grunt of Gallic disapproval, she, distraite, glanced +at her gown in the mirror, still striving to recall something definite +of the day before.</p> + +<p>"<i>Was</i> Duane there?" she asked Kathleen, who had just entered.</p> + +<p>"No, dear.... Why did you happen to think of Duane Mallett?"</p> + +<p>"Naïda came.... Duane was such a splendid little boy.... I had hoped——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Severn said coolly:</p> + +<p>"Duane isn't a very splendid man. I might as well tell you now as +later."</p> + +<p>"What in the world do you mean, Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that people say he was rather horrid abroad. Some women don't +mind that sort of thing, but I do."</p> + +<p>"Horrid? How?"</p> + +<p>"He went about Europe with unpleasant people. He had too much money—and +that is ruinous for a boy. I hate to disillusion you, but for several +years people have been gossipping about Duane Mallett's exploits abroad; +and they are not savoury."</p> + +<p>"What were they? I am old enough to know."</p> + +<p>"I don't propose to tell you. He was notoriously wild. There were +scandals. Hush! here comes Scott."</p> + +<p>"For Heaven's sake, pinch some colour into your cheeks!" exclaimed her +brother; "we're not going to a wake!"</p> + +<p>And Kathleen said anxiously: "Your gown is perfection, dear; are you a +trifle tired? You do look pale."</p> + +<p>"Tired?" repeated Geraldine—"not in the least, dearest.... If I seem +not to be excited, I really am, internally; but perhaps I haven't +learned how to show it.... Don't I look well? I was so preoccupied with +my gown in the mirror that I forgot to examine my face."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Severn kissed her. "You and your gown are charming. Come, we are +late, and that isn't permitted to débutantes."</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">It was Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt who was giving the first dinner and +dance for Geraldine Seagrave. In the cloak-room she encountered some +very animated women of the younger married set, who spoke to her +amiably, particularly a Mrs. Dysart, who said she knew Duane Mallett, +and who was so friendly that a bit of colour warmed Geraldine's pallid +cheeks and still remained there when, a few minutes later, she saluted +her heavily jewelled hostess and recognised in her the fat fore-and-aft +lady of the day before.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt, glittering like a South American scarab, +detained her with the smallest and chubbiest hands she had ever seen +inside of gloves.</p> + +<p>"My dear, you look ghastly," said her hostess. "You're probably scared +to death. This is my son, Delancy, who is going to take you in, and I'm +wondering about you, because Delancy doesn't get on with débutantes, but +that can't be helped. If he's pig enough not to talk to you, it wouldn't +surprise me—and it's just as well, too, for if he likes anybody he +compromises them, but it's no use your ever liking a Grandcourt, for all +the men make rotten husbands—I'm glad Rosalie Dysart threw him over for +poor Jack Dysart; it saved her a divorce! I'd get one if I could; so +would Magnelius. My husband was a judge once, but he resigned because he +couldn't send people up for the things he was doing himself."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Grandcourt, still gabbling away, turned to greet new arrivals, +merely switching to another subject without interrupting her steady +stream of outrageous talk. She was celebrated for it—and for nothing +else.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, bewildered and a little horrified, looked at her billowy, +bediamonded hostess, then at young Delancy Grandcourt, who, not +perceptibly abashed by his mother's left-handed compliments, lounged +beside her, apparently on the verge of a yawn.</p> + +<p>"My mother says things," he explained patiently; "nobody minds 'em.... +Shall we exchange nonsense—or would you rather save yourself until +dinner?"</p> + +<p>"Save myself what?" she asked nervously.</p> + +<p>"The nuisance of talking to me about nothing. I'm not clever."</p> + +<p>Geraldine reddened.</p> + +<p>"I don't usually talk about nothing."</p> + +<p>"I do," he said. "I never have much to say."</p> + +<p>"Is that because you don't like débutantes?" she asked coldly.</p> + +<p>"It's because they don't care about me.... If you would talk to me, I'd +really be grateful."</p> + +<p>He flushed and stepped back awkwardly to allow room for a slim, handsome +man to pass between them. The very ornamental man did not pass, however, +but calmly turned toward Geraldine, and began to talk to her.</p> + +<p>She presently discovered his name to be Dysart; and she also discovered +that Mr. Dysart didn't know her name; and, for a moment after she had +told him, surprise and a confused sense of resentment silenced her, +because she was quite certain now that they had never been properly +presented.</p> + +<p>That negligence of conventions was not unusual in this new world she +was entering, she had already noticed; and this incident was evidently +another example of custom smilingly ignored. She looked up +questioningly, and Dysart, instantly divining the trouble, laughed in +his easy, attractive fashion—the fashion he usually affected with +women.</p> + +<p>"You seemed so fresh and cool and sweet all alone in this hot corner +that I simply couldn't help coming over to hear whether your voice +matched the ensemble. And it surpasses it. Are you going to be +resentful?"</p> + +<p>"I'm too ignorant to be—or to laugh about it as you do.... Is it +because I look a simpleton that you come to see if I really am?"</p> + +<p>"Are you planning to punish me, Miss Seagrave?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I don't know how."</p> + +<p>"Fate will, anyway, unless I am placed next you at dinner," he said with +his most reassuring smile, and rose gracefully.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to fix it," he added, and, pushing his way toward his +hostess, disappeared in the crush.</p> + +<p>Later young Grandcourt reappeared from the crush to take her in. Every +table seated eight, and, sure enough, as she turned involuntarily to +glance at her neighbour on the right, it was Dysart's pale face, cleanly +cut as a cameo, that met her gaze. He nodded back to her with unfeigned +satisfaction at his own success.</p> + +<p>"That's the way to manage," he said, "when you want a thing very much. +Isn't it, Miss Seagrave?"</p> + +<p>"You did not ask me whether I wanted it," she said.</p> + +<p>"Don't you want me here? If you don't—" His features fell and he made a +pretence of rising. His pale, beautifully sculptured face had become so +fearfully serious that she coloured up quickly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you <i>wouldn't</i> do such a thing—now! to embarrass me."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I would—I'd do anything desperate."</p> + +<p>But she had already caught the flash of mischief, and realising that he +had been taking more or less for granted in tormenting her, looked down +at her plate and presently tasted what was on it.</p> + +<p>"I know you are not offended," he murmured. "Are you?"</p> + +<p>She knew she was not, too; but she merely shrugged. "Then why do you ask +me, Mr. Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"Because you have such pretty shoulders," he replied seriously.</p> + +<p>"What an idiotic reply to make!"</p> + +<p>"Why? Don't you think you have?"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty shoulders."</p> + +<p>"I don't think anything about my shoulders!"</p> + +<p>"You would if there was anything the matter with them," he insisted.</p> + +<p>Once or twice he turned his handsome dark gaze on her while she was +dissecting her terrapin.</p> + +<p>"They tip up a little—at the corners, don't they?" he inquired +anxiously. "Does it hurt?"</p> + +<p>"Tip up? What tips up?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"Your eyes."</p> + +<p>She swung around toward him, confused and exasperated; but no +seriousness was proof against the delighted malice in Dysart's face; and +she laughed a little, and laughed again when he did. And she thought +that he was, perhaps, the handsomest man she had ever seen. All +débutantes did.</p> + +<p>Young Grandcourt turned from the pretty, over-painted woman who, until +that moment, had apparently held him interested when his food failed to +monopolise his attention, and glanced heavily around at Geraldine.</p> + +<p>All he saw was the back of her head and shoulders. Evidently she was not +missing him. Evidently, too, she was having a very good time with +Dysart.</p> + +<p>"What are you laughing about?" he asked wistfully, leaning forward to +see her face.</p> + +<p>Geraldine glanced back across her shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Dysart is trying to be impertinent," she replied carelessly; and +returned again to the impertinent one, quite ready for more torment now +that she began to understand how agreeable it was.</p> + +<p>But Dysart's expression had changed; there was something vaguely +caressing in voice and manner as he murmured:</p> + +<p>"Do you know there is something almost divine in your face."</p> + +<p>"What did you say?" asked Geraldine, looking up from her ice in its nest +of spun sugar.</p> + +<p>"You so strenuously reject the truthful compliments I pay you, that +perhaps I'd better not repeat this one."</p> + +<p>"Was it really more absurd flattery?"</p> + +<p>"No, never mind...." He leaned back in his chair, absently turning the +curious, heavily chiselled ring on his little finger, but every few +moments his expressive eyes reverted to her. She was eating her ice with +all the frank enjoyment of a schoolgirl.</p> + +<p>"Do you know, Miss Seagrave, that you and I are really equipped for +better things than talking nonsense."</p> + +<p>"I know that I am," she observed.... "Isn't this spun sugar delicious!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; and so are you."</p> + +<p>But she pretended not to hear.</p> + +<p>He laughed, then fell silent; his dreamy gaze shifted from vacancy to +her—and, casually, across the room, where it settled lightly as a +butterfly on his wife, and there it poised for a moment's inexpressive +examination. Scott Seagrave was talking to Rosalie; she did not notice +her husband.</p> + +<p>After that, with easy nonchalance approaching impudence, he turned to +his own neglected dinner partner, Sylvia Quest, who received his tardy +attentions with childish irritation. She didn't know any better. And +there was now no time to patch up matters, for the signal to rise had +been given and Dysart took Sylvia to the door with genuine relief. She +bored him dreadfully since she had become sentimental over him. They +always did.</p> + +<p>Lounging back through the rising haze of tobacco-smoke he encountered +Peter Tappan and stopped to exchange a word.</p> + +<p>"Dancing?" he inquired, lighting his cigarette.</p> + +<p>Tappan nodded. "You, too, of course." For Dysart was one of those types +known in society as a "dancing man." He also led cotillions, and a +morally blameless life as far as the more virile Commandments were +concerned.</p> + +<p>He said: "That little Seagrave girl is rather fetching."</p> + +<p>Tappan answered indifferently:</p> + +<p>"She resembles the general run of this year's output. She's weedy. They +all ought to marry before they go about to dinners, anyway."</p> + +<p>"Marry whom?"</p> + +<p>"Anybody—Delancy, here, for instance. You know as well as I do that no +woman is possible unless she's married," yawned Tappan. "Isn't that so, +Delancy?" clapping Grandcourt on the shoulder.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt said "yes," to be rid of him; but Dysart turned around with +his usual smile of amused contempt.</p> + +<p>"You think so, too, Delancy," he said, "because what is obvious and +ready-made appeals to you. You think as you eat—heavily—and you miss a +few things. That little Seagrave girl is charming. But you'd never +discover it."</p> + +<p>Grandcourt slowly removed the fat cigar from his lips, rolled it +meditatively between thick forefinger and thumb:</p> + +<p>"Do you know, Jack, that you've been saying that sort of thing to me for +a number of years?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; and it's just as true now as it ever was, old fellow."</p> + +<p>"That may be; but did it ever occur to you that I might get tired +hearing it.... And might, possibly, resent it some day?"</p> + +<p>For a long time Dysart had been uncomfortably conscious that Grandcourt +had had nearly enough of his half-sneering, half-humourous frankness. +His liking for Grandcourt, even as a schoolboy, had invariably been +tinged with tolerance and good-humoured contempt. Dysart had always led +in everything; taken what he chose without considering +Grandcourt—sometimes out of sheer perversity, he had taken what +Grandcourt wanted—not really wanting it himself—as in the case of +Rosalie Dene.</p> + +<p>"What are you talking about resenting?—my monopolising your dinner +partner?" asked Dysart, smiling. "Take her; amuse yourself. I don't want +her."</p> + +<p>Grandcourt inspected his cigar again. "I'm tired of that sort of thing, +too," he said.</p> + +<p>"What sort of thing?"</p> + +<p>"Contenting myself with what you don't want."</p> + +<p>Dysart lit a cigarette, still smiling, then shrugged and turned as +though to go. Around them through the smoke rose the laughing clamour of +young men gathering at the exit.</p> + +<p>"I want to tell you something," said Grandcourt heavily. "I'm an ass to +do it, but I want to tell you."</p> + +<p>Dysart halted patiently.</p> + +<p>"It's this," went on Grandcourt: "between you and my mother, I've never +had a chance; she makes me out a fool and you have always assumed it to +be true."</p> + +<p>Dysart glanced at him with amused contempt.</p> + +<p>A heavy flush rose to Grandcourt's cheek-bones. He said slowly:</p> + +<p>"I want my chance. You had better let me have it when it comes."</p> + +<p>"What chance do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean—a woman. All my life you've been at my elbow to step in. You +took what you wanted—your shadow always falls between me and anybody +I'm inclined to like.... It happened to-night—as usual.... And I tell +you now, at last, I'm tired of it."</p> + +<p>"What a ridiculous idea you seem to have of me," began Dysart, laughing.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid of you. I always was. Now—let me alone!"</p> + +<p>"Have you ever known me, since I've been married—" He caught +Grandcourt's eye, stammered, and stopped short. Then: "You certainly +are absurd. Delancy! I wouldn't deliberately interfere with you or +disturb a young girl's peace of mind. The trouble with you is——"</p> + +<p>"The trouble with <i>you</i> is that women take to you very quickly, and you +are always trying to see how far you can arouse their interest. What's +the use of risking heartaches to satisfy curiosity?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't have heartaches!" said Dysart, intensely amused.</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking of you. I suppose that's the reason you find it +amusing.... Not that I think there's any real harm in you——"</p> + +<p>"Thanks," laughed Dysart; "it only needed that remark to damn me +utterly. Now go and dance with little Miss Seagrave, and don't worry +about my trying to interfere."</p> + +<p>Grandcourt looked sullenly at him. "I'm sorry I spoke, now," he said. "I +never know enough to hold my tongue to you."</p> + +<p>He turned bulkily on his heel and left the dining-hall. There were +others, in throngs, leaving—young, eager-faced fellows, with a +scattering of the usual "dancing" men on whom everybody could always +count, and a few middle-aged gentlemen and women of the younger married +set to give stability to what was, otherwise, a débutante's affair.</p> + +<p>Dysart, strolling about, booked a dance or two, performed creditably, +made his peace, for the sake of peace, with Sylvia Quest, whose ignorant +heart had been partly awakened under his idle investigations. But this +was Sylvia's second season, and she would no doubt learn several things +of which she heretofore had been unaware. Just at present, however, her +heart was very full, and life's outlook was indeed tragic to a young +girl who believed herself wildly in love with a married man, and who +employed all her unhappy wits in the task of concealing it.</p> + +<p>A load of guilt lay upon her soul; the awful fact that she adored him +frightened her terribly; that she could not keep away from him terrified +her still more. But most of all she dreaded that he might guess her +secret.</p> + +<p>"I don't know why you thought I minded your not—not talking to me +during dinner," she faltered. "I was having a perfectly heavenly time +with Peter Tappan."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that?" murmured Dysart. He could not help playing his part, +even when it no longer interested him. To murmur was as natural to him +as to breathe.</p> + +<p>She looked up piteously. "I would rather have talked to you," she said. +"Peter Tappan is only an overgrown boy. If you had really cared to talk +to me—" She checked herself, flushing deeply.</p> + +<p>O Lord! he thought, contemplating in the girl's lifted eyes the damage +he had not really expected to do. For it had, as usual, surprised him to +realise, too late, how dangerous it is to say too much, and look too +long, and how easy it is to awaken hearts asleep.</p> + +<p>Dancing was to be general before the cotillion. Sylvia would have given +him as many dances as he asked for; he danced once with her as a great +treat, resolving never to experiment any more with anybody.... True, it +might have been amusing to see how far he could have interested the +little Seagrave girl—but he would renounce that; he'd keep away from +everybody.</p> + +<p>But Dysart could no more avoid making eyes at anything in petticoats +than he could help the tenderness of his own smile or the caressing +cadence of his voice, or the subtle, indefinite something in him which +irritated men but left few women indifferent and some greatly perturbed +as he strolled along on his amusing journey through the world.</p> + +<p>He was strolling on now, having managed to leave Sylvia planted; and +presently, without taking any particular trouble to find Geraldine, +discovered her eventually as the centre of a promising circle of men, +very young men and very old men—nothing medium and desirable as yet.</p> + +<p>For a while, amused, Dysart watched her at her first party. Clearly she +was inexperienced; she let these men have their own way and their own +say; she was not handling them skilfully; yet there seemed to be a charm +about this young girl that detached man after man from the passing +throng and added them to her circle—which had now become a half circle, +completely cornering her.</p> + +<p>Animated, shyly confident, brilliant-eyed, and flushed with the +excitement of attracting so much attention, she was beginning to lose +her head a little—just a little. Dysart noticed it in her nervous +laughter; in a slight exaggeration of gesture with fan and flowers; in +the quick movement of her restless little head, as though it were +incumbent upon her to give to every man confronting her his own +particular modicum of attention—which was not like a débutante, either; +and Dysart realised that she was getting on.</p> + +<p>So he sauntered up, breaking through the circle, and reminded Geraldine +of a dance she had not promised him.</p> + +<p>She knew she had not promised, but she was quite ready to give it—had +already opened her lips to assent—when a young man, passing, swung +around abruptly as though to speak to her, hesitating as Geraldine's +glance encountered his without recognition.</p> + +<p>But, as he started to move on, she suddenly knew him; and at the same +moment Kathleen's admonition rang in her ears. Her own voice drowned it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane!" she exclaimed, stretching out her hand across Dysart's line +of advance.</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> Geraldine Seagrave, are you not?" he asked smilingly, +retaining her hand in such a manner as practically to compel her to step +past Dysart toward him.</p> + +<p>"Of course I am. You might have known me had you been amiable enough to +appear at my coming out."</p> + +<p>He laughed easily, still retaining her hand and looking down at her from +his inch or two of advantage. Then he casually inspected Dysart, who, +not at all pleased, returned his gaze with a careless unconcern verging +on offence. Few men cared for Dysart on first inspection—or on later +acquaintance; Mallett was no exception.</p> + +<p>Geraldine said, with smiling constraint:</p> + +<p>"It has been so very jolly to see you again." And withdrew her hand, +adding: "I hope—some time——"</p> + +<p>"Won't you let me talk to you now for a moment or two? You are not going +to dismiss me with that sort of come-back—after all these years—are +you?"</p> + +<p>He seemed so serious about it that the girl coloured up.</p> + +<p>"I—that is, Mr. Dysart was going to—to—" She turned and looked at +Dysart, who remained planted where she had left him, exceedingly wroth +at experiencing the sort of casual treatment he had so often meted out +to others. His expression was peevish. Geraldine, confused, began +hurriedly:</p> + +<p>"I thought Mr. Dysart meant to ask me to dance."</p> + +<p>"<i>Meant</i> to?" interrupted Mallett, laughing; "<i>I</i> mean to ask for this +dance, and I do."</p> + +<p>Once more she turned and encountered Dysart's darkening gaze, hesitated, +then with a nervous, gay little gesture to him, partly promise, partly +adieu, she took Mallett's arm.</p> + +<p>It was the first glimmer of coquetry she had ever deliberately +displayed; and at the same instant she became aware that something new +had been suddenly awakened in her—something which stole like a glow +through her veins, exciting her with its novelty.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she said, "that you have taken me forcibly away from an +exceedingly nice man?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care."</p> + +<p>"Oh—but might I not at least have been consulted?"</p> + +<p>"Didn't you want to come?" he asked, stopping short. There was something +overbearing in his voice and his straight, unwavering gaze.</p> + +<p>She didn't know how to take it, how to meet it. Voice and manner +required some proper response which seemed to be beyond her experience.</p> + +<p>She did not answer; but a slight pressure of her bare arm set him in +motion again.</p> + +<p>The phenomenon interested her; to see what control over this abrupt +young man she really had she ventured a very slight retrograde +arm-pressure, then a delicate touch to right, to left, and forward once +more. It was most interesting; he backed up, guided right and left, and +started forward or halted under perfect control. What had she been +afraid of in him? She ventured to glance around, and, encountering a +warmly personal interest in his gaze, instantly assumed that cold, +blank, virginal mask which the majority of young girls discard at her +age.</p> + +<p>However, her long-checked growth in the arts of womanhood had already +recommenced. She had been growing fast, feverishly, and was just now +passing that period where the desire for masculine admiration innocently +rules all else, but where the discovery of it chills and constrains.</p> + +<p>She passed it at that moment. The next time their glances met she smiled +a little. A new epoch in her life had begun.</p> + +<p>"Where are you taking me?" she asked. "Are we not going to dance?"</p> + +<p>"I thought we might sit out a dance or two in the conservatory—one or +two——"</p> + +<p>"One," she said decidedly. "Here are some palms. Why not sit here?"</p> + +<p>There were a number of people about; she saw them, too, noted his +hesitation, understood it.</p> + +<p>"We'll sit here," she said, and stood smilingly regarding him while he +lugged up two chairs to the most retired corner.</p> + +<p>Slowly waving her fan, she seated herself and surveyed the room.</p> + +<p>It is quite true that reunion after many years usually ends in +constraint and indifference. If she felt slightly bored, she certainly +looked it. Neither of them resembled the childish recollections or +preconceived notions of the other. They found themselves inspecting one +another askance, as though furtively attempting to surprise some +familiar feature, some resemblance to a cherished memory.</p> + +<p>But the changes were too radical; their eyes, looking for old comrades, +encountered the unremembered eyes of strangers—for they were +strangers—this tall young man, with his gray eyes, pleasantly fashioned +mouth, and cleanly moulded cheeks; and this long-limbed girl, who sat, +knees crossed, one long, slim foot nervously swinging above its shadow +on the floor.</p> + +<p>In spite of his youth there was in his manner, if not in his voice, +something tinged with fatigue. She thought of what Kathleen had said +about him; looked up, instinctively questioning him with curious, +uncomprehending eyes; then her gaze wandered, became lost in smiling +retrospection as she thought of Dysart, peevish; and she frankly +regretted him and his dance.</p> + +<p>Young Mallett stirred, passed a rather bony hand over his shaven upper +lip, and said abruptly: "I never expected you'd grow up like this. +You've turned into a different kind of girl. Once you were chubby of +cheek and limb. Do you remember how you used to fight?"</p> + +<p>"Did I?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly. You hit me twice in the eye because I lost my temper +sparring with Scott. Your hands were small but heavy in those days.... I +imagine they're heavier now."</p> + +<p>She laughed, clasped both pretty hands over her knee, and tilted back +against the palm, regarding him from dark, velvety eyes.</p> + +<p>"You were a curiously fascinating child," he said. "I remember how fast +you could run, and how your hair flew—it was thick and dark, with +rather sunny high lights; and you were always running—always on the +go.... You were a remarkably just girl; that I remember. You were +absolutely fair to everybody."</p> + +<p>"I was a very horrid little scrub," she said, watching him over her +gently waving fan, "with a dreadful temper," she added.</p> + +<p>"Have you it now?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I get over it quickly. Do you find Scott very much changed?"</p> + +<p>"Well, not as much as you. Do you find Naïda changed?"</p> + +<p>"Not nearly as much as you."</p> + +<p>They smiled. The slight embarrassment born of polite indifference +brightened into amiable interest, tinctured by curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Duane, have you been studying painting all these years?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. What have you been doing all these years?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing." A shadow fell across her face. "It has been lonely—until +recently. I began to live yesterday."</p> + +<p>"You used to tell me you were lonely," he nodded.</p> + +<p>"I was. You and Naïda were godsends." Something of the old thrill +stirred her recollection. She leaned forward, looking at him curiously; +the old memory of him was already lending him something of the forgotten +glamour.</p> + +<p>"How tall you are!" she said; "how much thinner and—how very +impressively grown-up you are, Duane. I didn't expect you to be entirely +a man so soon—with such a—an odd—expression——"</p> + +<p>He asked, smiling: "What kind of an expression have I, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>"Not a boyish one; entirely a man's eyes and mouth and voice—a little +too wise, as though, deep inside, you were tired of something; no, not +exactly that, but as though you had seen many things and had lived some +of them——"</p> + +<p>She checked herself, lips softly apart; and the memory of what she had +heard concerning him returned to her.</p> + +<p>Confused, she continued to laugh lightly, adding: "I believe I was +afraid of you at first. Ought I to be, still? You know more than I +do—you know different kinds of things: your face and voice and manner +show it. I feel humble and ignorant in the presence of so distinguished +a European artist."</p> + +<p>They were laughing together now without a trace of constraint; and she +was aware that his interest in her was unfeigned and unmistakably the +interest of a man for a woman, that he was looking at her as other men +had now begun to look at her, speaking as other men spoke, frankly +interested in her as a woman, finding her agreeable to look at and talk +to.</p> + +<p>In the unawakened depths of her a conviction grew that her old playmate +must be classed with other men—man in the abstract—that indefinite and +interesting term, hinting of pleasures to come and possibilities +unimagined.</p> + +<p>"Did you paint pictures all the time you were abroad?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Not every minute. I travelled a lot, went about, was asked to shoot in +England and Austria.... I had a good time."</p> + +<p>"Didn't you work hard?"</p> + +<p>"No. Isn't it disgraceful!"</p> + +<p>"But you exhibited in three salons. What were your pictures?"</p> + +<p>"I did a portrait of Lady Bylow and her ten children."</p> + +<p>"Was it a success?"</p> + +<p>He coloured. "They gave me a second medal."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am so glad!" she exclaimed warmly. "And what were your others?"</p> + +<p>"A thing called 'The Witch.' Rather painful."</p> + +<p>"What was it?"</p> + +<p>"Life size. A young girl arrested in bed. Her frightened beauty is +playing the deuce with the people around. I don't know why I did it—the +painting of textures—her flesh, and the armour of the Puritan guard, +the fur of the black cat—and—well, it was academic and I was young."</p> + +<p>"Did they reward you?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"What was the third picture?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, just a girl," he said carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Did they give you a prize for it?"</p> + +<p>"Y-yes. Only a mention."</p> + +<p>"Was it a portrait?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—in a way."</p> + +<p>"What was it? Just a girl?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Who was she?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, just a girl——"</p> + +<p>"Was she pretty?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Shall we dance this next——"</p> + +<p>"No. Was she a model?"</p> + +<p>"She posed——"</p> + +<p>Geraldine, lips on the edge of her spread fan, regarded him curiously.</p> + +<p>"That is a very romantic life, isn't it?" she murmured.</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Yours. I don't know much about it; Kathleen took me to hear 'La +Bohême'; and I found Murger's story in the library. I have also read +'Trilby.' Did <i>you</i>—were you—was life like that when you studied in +the Latin Quarter?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Not a bit. I never saw that species of life off the stage."</p> + +<p>"Oh, wasn't there any romance?" she asked forlornly.</p> + +<p>"Well—as much as you find in New York or anywhere."</p> + +<p>"Is there any romance in New York?"</p> + +<p>"There is anywhere, isn't there? If only one has the instinct to +recognise it and a capacity to comprehend it."</p> + +<p>"Of course," she murmured, "there are artists and studios and models and +poverty everywhere.... I suppose that without poverty real romance is +scarcely possible."</p> + +<p>He was still laughing when he answered:</p> + +<p>"Financial conditions make no difference. Romance is in one's self—or +it is nowhere."</p> + +<p>"Is it in—you?" she asked audaciously.</p> + +<p>He made no pretence of restraining his mirth.</p> + +<p>"Why, I don't know, Geraldine. Lots of people have the capacity for it. +Poverty, art, a studio, a velvet jacket, and models are not +essentials.... You ask if it is in <i>me</i>. I think it is. I think it +exists in anybody who can glorify the commonplace. To make people look +with astonished interest at something which has always been too familiar +to arrest their attention—only your romancer can accomplish this."</p> + +<p>"Please go on," she said as he ended. "I'm listening very hard. You +<i>are</i> glorifying commonplaces, you know."</p> + +<p>They both laughed; he, a little red, disconcerted, piqued, and withal +charmed at her dainty thrust at himself.</p> + +<p>"I <i>was</i> talking commonplaces," he admitted, "but how was I to know +enough not to? Women are usually soulfully receptive when a painter +opens a tin of mouldy axioms.... I didn't realise I was encountering my +peer——"</p> + +<p>"You may be encountering more than that," she said, the excitement of +her success with him flushing her adorably.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've heard how terribly educated you and Scott are. No doubt you +can floor me on anything intellectual. See here, Geraldine, it's simply +wicked!—you are so soft and pretty, and nobody could suspect you of +knowing such a lot and pouncing out on a fellow for trying a few +predigested platitudes on you——"</p> + +<p>"I <i>don't</i> know <i>anything</i>, Duane! How perfectly horrid of you!"</p> + +<p>"Well, you've scared me!"</p> + +<p>"I haven't. You're laughing at me. You know well enough that I don't +know the things you know."</p> + +<p>"What are they, in Heaven's name?"</p> + +<p>"Things—experiences—matters that concern life—the world, men, +everything!"</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't be interesting if you knew such things," he said. She +thought there was the same curious hint of indifference, something of +listlessness, almost fatigue in the expression of his eyes. And again, +apparently apropos of nothing, she found herself thinking of what +Kathleen had said about this man.</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you," she said, looking at him.</p> + +<p>He smiled, and the ghost of a shadow passed from his eyes.</p> + +<p>"I was talking at random."</p> + +<p>"I don't think you were."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, drawing a long, quiet breath. Silent, lips resting +in softly troubled curves, she thought of what Kathleen had said about +this man. <i>What</i> had he done to disgrace himself?</p> + +<p>A few moments later she rose with decision.</p> + +<p>"Come," she said, unconsciously imperious.</p> + +<p>He looked across the room and saw Dysart.</p> + +<p>"But I haven't begun to tell you—" he began; and she interrupted +smilingly:</p> + +<p>"I know enough about you for a while; I have learned that you are a very +wonderful young man and that I'm inclined to like you. You will come to +see me, won't you?... No, I can't remain here another second. I want to +go to Kathleen. I want you to ask her to dance, too.... Please don't +urge me, Duane. I—this is my first dinner dance—yes, my very first. +And I <i>don't</i> intend to sit in corners—I wish to dance; I desire to be +happy. I want to see lots and lots of men, not just one.... You don't +know all the lonely years I must make up for every minute now, or you +wouldn't look at me in such a sulky, bullying way.... Besides—do you +think I find you a compensation for all those delightful people out +yonder?"</p> + +<p>He glanced up and saw Dysart still watching them. Suddenly he dropped +his hand over hers.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you may find that compensation in me some day," he said. "How +do you know?"</p> + +<p>"What a silly thing to say! Don't paw me, Duane; you hurt my hand. Look +at what you've done to my fan!"</p> + +<p>"It came between us. I'm sorry for anything that comes between us."</p> + +<p>Both were smiling fixedly; he said nothing for a moment; their gaze +endured until she flinched.</p> + +<p>"Silly," she said, "you are trying to tyrannise over me as you did when +we were children. I remember now——"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> did the bullying then."</p> + +<p>"Did I? Then I'll continue."</p> + +<p>"No, you won't; it's my turn."</p> + +<p>"I will if I care to!"</p> + +<p>"Try it."</p> + +<p>"Very well. Take me to Kathleen."</p> + +<p>"Not until I have the dances I want!"</p> + +<p>Again their eyes met in silence. Dark little lights glimmered in hers; +his narrowed. The fixed smile died out.</p> + +<p>"The dances <i>you</i> want!" she repeated. "How do you propose to secure +them? By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair? I want to +tell you something, Duane: these blunt, masterful men are very amusing +on the stage and in fiction, but they're not suitable to have tagging at +heel——"</p> + +<p>"I won't do any tagging at heel," he said; "don't count on it."</p> + +<p>"I have no inclination to count on you at all," she retorted, thoroughly +irritated.</p> + +<p>"You will have it some day."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Do you think so?"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... I didn't mean to speak the way I did. Won't you give me a dance +or two?"</p> + +<p>"No. I had no idea how horrid you could be.... I was told you were.... +Now I can believe it. Take me to Kathleen; do you hear me?"</p> + +<p>After a step or two he said, not looking at her:</p> + +<p>"I'm really sorry, Geraldine. I'm not a brute. Something about that +fellow Dysart upset me."</p> + +<p>"Please don't talk about it any more."</p> + +<p>"No.... Only I <i>am</i> glad to see you again, and I do care for your +regard."</p> + +<p>"Then earn it," she said unevenly, as her anger subsided. "I don't know +very much about men in the world, but I know enough to understand when +they're offensive."</p> + +<p>"Was I?"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... Because you carried me away with a high hand, you thought it +the easiest way to take with me on every occasion.... Duane, do you +know, in some ways, we are somewhat alike? And that is why we used to +fight so."</p> + +<p>"I believe we are," he said slowly. "But—I was never able to keep away +from you."</p> + +<p>"Which makes our outlook rather stormy, doesn't it?" she said, turning +to him with all of her old sweet friendly manner. "<i>Do</i> let us agree, +Duane. Mercy on us! we ought to adore each other—unless we have +forgotten the quarrelsome but adorable friendship of our childhood. <i>I</i> +thought you were the perfection of all boys."</p> + +<p>"I thought there was no girl to equal you, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>She turned audaciously, not quite knowing what she was saying:</p> + +<p>"Think so now, Duane! It will be good for us both."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean it?"</p> + +<p>"Not—seriously," she said.... "And, Duane, please don't be too serious +with me. I am—you make me uncertain—you make me uncomfortable. I don't +know just what to say to you or just how it will be taken. You mustn't +be—that way—with <i>me</i>; you won't, will you?"</p> + +<p>He was silent for a moment; then his face lighted up. "No," he said, +laughing; "I'll open another can of platitudes.... You're a dear to +forgive me."</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Dancing had been general before the cotillion; débutantes continued to +arrive in shoals from other dinners, a gay, rosy, eager throng, filling +drawing-rooms, conservatory, and library with birdlike flutter and +chatter, overflowing into the breakfast-room, banked up on the stairs in +bright-eyed battalions.</p> + +<p>The cotillion, led by Jack Dysart dancing alone, was one of those +carefully thought out intellectual affairs which shakes New York society +to its intellectual foundations.</p> + +<p>In one figure Geraldine came whizzing into the room in a Palm Beach +tricycle-chair trimmed with orchids and propelled by Peter Tappan; and +from her seat amid the flowers she distributed favours—live white +cockatoos, clinging, flapping, screeching on gilded wands; fans spangled +with tiny electric jewels; parasols of pink silk set with incandescent +lights; crystal cages containing great, pale-green Luna moths alive and +fluttering; circus hoops of gilt filled with white tissue paper, through +which the men jumped.</p> + +<p>There was also a Totem-pole figure—and other things, including supper +and champagne, and the semi-obscurity of conservatory and stairs; and +there was the usual laughter to cover heart-aches, and the inevitable +torn gowns and crushed flowers; and a number of young men talking too +loud and too much in the cloak-room, and Rosalie Dysart admitting to +Scott Seagrave in the conservatory that nobody really understood her; +and Delancy Grandcourt edging about the outer borders of the flowery, +perfumed vortex, following Geraldine and losing her a hundred times.</p> + +<p>On one of these occasions she was captured by Duane Mallett and convoyed +to the supper-room, where later she became utterly transfigured into a +laughing, blushing, sparkling, delicious creature, small ears singing +with her first venturesome glass of champagne.</p> + +<p>All the world seemed laughing with her; life itself was only an endless +bubble of laughter, swelling the gay, unending chorus; life was the hot +breeze from scented fans stirring a thousand roses; life was the silken +throng and its whirling and its feverish voices crying out to her to +live!</p> + +<p>Her childhood's playmate had come back a stranger, but already he was +being transformed, through the magic of laughter, into the boy she +remembered; awkwardness of readjusting her relations with him had +entirely vanished; she called him dear Duane, laughed at him, chatted +with him, appealed, contradicted, rebuked, tyrannised, until the young +fellow was clean swept off his feet.</p> + +<p>Then Dysart came, and for the second time the note of coquetry was +struck, clearly, unmistakably, through the tension of a moment's +preliminary silence; and Duane, dumb, furious, yielded her only when she +took Dysart's arm with a finality that became almost insolent as she +turned and looked back at her childhood's comrade, who followed, +scowling at Dysart's graceful back.</p> + +<p>Confused by his hurt and his anger, which seemed out of all logical +proportion to the cause of it, he turned abruptly and collided with +Grandcourt, who had edged up that far, waiting for the opportunity of +which Dysart, as usual, robbed him.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt apologised, muttering something about Mrs. Severn wishing him +to find Miss Seagrave. He stood, awkwardly, looking after Geraldine and +Dysart, but not offering to follow them.</p> + +<p>"Lot of débutantes here—the whole year's output," he said vaguely. +"What a noisy supper-room—eh, Mallett? I'm rather afraid champagne is +responsible for some of it."</p> + +<p>Duane started forward, halted.</p> + +<p>"Did you say Mrs. Severn wants Miss Seagrave?"</p> + +<p>"Y—yes.... I'd better go and tell her, hadn't I?"</p> + +<p>He flushed heavily, but made no movement to follow Geraldine and Dysart, +who had now entered the conservatory and disappeared.</p> + +<p>For a full minute, uncomfortably silent, the two men stood side by side; +then Duane said in a constrained voice:</p> + +<p>"I'll speak to Miss Seagrave, if you'll find her brother and Mrs. +Severn"; and walked slowly toward the palm-set rotunda.</p> + +<p>When he found them—and he found them easily, for Geraldine's +overexcited laughter warned and guided him—Dysart, her fan in his +hands, looked up at Duane intensely annoyed, and the young girl tossed +away a half-destroyed rose and glanced up, the laughter dying out from +lips and eyes.</p> + +<p>"Kathleen sent for you," said Duane drily.</p> + +<p>"I'll come in a minute, Duane."</p> + +<p>"In a moment," repeated Dysart insolently, and turned his back.</p> + +<p>The colour surged into Mallett's face; he turned sharply on his heel.</p> + +<p>"Wait!" said Geraldine; "Duane—do you hear me?"</p> + +<p>"I'll take you back," began Dysart, but she passed in front of him and +laid her hand on Mallett's arm.</p> + +<p>"Won't you wait for me, Duane?"</p> + +<p>And suddenly things seemed to be as they had been in their childhood, +the resurgence swept them both back to the old and stormy footing again.</p> + +<p>"Duane!"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"I tell you to wait for me—<i>here</i>!" She stamped her foot.</p> + +<p>He scowled—but waited. She turned on Dysart:</p> + +<p>"Good-night!"—offering her hand with decision.</p> + +<p>Dysart began: "But I had expected——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Good-night!</i>"</p> + +<p>Dysart stared, took the offered hand, hesitated, started to speak, +thought better of it, made a characteristically graceful obeisance, and +an excellent exit, all things considered.</p> + +<p>Geraldine drew a deep breath, moved forward through the flower-set +dimness a step or two, halted, and, as Mallett came up, passed her arm +through his.</p> + +<p>"Duane," she said, "the champagne has gone to my head."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!"</p> + +<p>"It <i>has</i>! My cheeks are queer—the skin fits too tight. My legs don't +belong to me—but they'll do."</p> + +<p>She laughed and turned toward him; her feverish breath touched his +cheek.</p> + +<p>"My first dinner! Isn't it disgraceful? But how could I know?"</p> + +<p>"You mustn't let it scare you."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't. I don't care. I knew something would go wrong. I—the truth +is, that I don't know how to act—how to accept my liberty. I don't know +how to use it. I'm a perfect fool.... Do you think Kathleen will notice +this? Isn't it terrible! She never dreamed I would touch any wine. Do I +look—queer?"</p> + +<p>"No. It isn't so, anyway—and you'll simply lean on me——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my knees are perfectly steady. It's only that they don't seem to +belong to me. I'm—I'm excited—I've laughed too much—more than I have +ever laughed in all the years of my life put together. You don't know +what I mean, do you, Duane? But it's true; I've talked to-night more +than I ever have in any one week.... And it's gone to my head—all +this—all these people who laugh with me over nothing—follow me, tell +me I am pretty, ask me for dances, favours, beg me for a word with +them—as though I would need asking or urging!—as though my impulse is +not to open my heart to every one of them—open my arms to them—thank +them on my knees for being here—for being nice to me—all these boys +who make little circles around me—so funny, so quaint in their +formality——"</p> + +<p>She pressed his arm tighter.</p> + +<p>"<i>Let</i> me rattle on—let me babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make +up for. Let me talk like a fool; <i>you</i> know I'm not one.... Oh, the +happiness of this one night!—the happiness of it! I never shall have +enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I—I'm perfectly mad over +pleasure; I like men.... I suppose the champagne makes me frank about +it—but I don't care—I do like men——"</p> + +<p>"<i>That</i> one?" demanded Mallett, halting her on the edge of the palms +which screened the conservatory doors.</p> + +<p>"You mean Mr. Dysart? Yes—I—do like him."</p> + +<p>"Well, he's married, and you'd better not," he snapped.</p> + +<p>"C-can't I <i>like</i> him?" in piteous astonishment which set the colour +flying into his face.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes—of course—I didn't mean——"</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i> did you mean? Isn't it—shouldn't he be——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's all right, Geraldine. Only he's a sort of a pig to keep you +away from—others——"</p> + +<p>"Other—<i>pigs</i>?"</p> + +<p>He turned sharply, seized her, and forcibly turned her toward the light. +She made no effort to control her laughter, excusing it between breaths:</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean to turn what you said into ridicule; it came out before I +meant it.... Do let me laugh a little, Duane. I simply cannot care about +anything serious for a while—I want to be frivolous——"</p> + +<p>"Don't laugh so loud," he whispered.</p> + +<p>She released his arm and sank down on a marble seat behind the flowering +oleanders.</p> + +<p>"Why are you so disagreeable?" she pouted. "I know I'm a perfect fool, +and the champagne has gone to my silly head—and you'll never catch me +this way again.... Don't scowl at me. Why don't you act like other men? +Don't you know how?"</p> + +<p>"Know how?" he repeated, looking down into the adorably flushed face +uplifted. "Know how to do what?"</p> + +<p>"To flirt. I don't. Everybody has tried to teach me to-night—everybody +except you ... Duane.... I'm ready to go home; I'll go. Only my head is +whirling so—Tell me—<i>are</i> you glad to see me again?... Really?... And +you don't mind my folly? And my tormenting you?... And my—my turning +<i>your</i> head a little?"</p> + +<p>"You've done <i>that</i>," he said, forcing a laugh.</p> + +<p>"Have I?... I knew it.... You see, I am horridly truthful to-night. <i>In +vino veritas!</i> ... Tell me—did I, all by myself, turn that +too-experienced head of yours?"</p> + +<p>"You're doing it now," he said.</p> + +<p>She laughed deliciously. "Now? Am I? Yes, I know I am. I've made a lot +of men think hard to-night.... I didn't know I could; I never before +thought of it.... And—even <i>you</i>, too?... You're not very serious, are +you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am. I tell you, Geraldine, I'm about as much in love with you +as——"</p> + +<p>"In <i>love</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Yes——"</p> + +<p>"No!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am——"</p> + +<p>But she would not have it put so crudely.</p> + +<p>"You dear boy," she said, "we'll both be quite sane to-morrow.... No, I +don't mind your kissing my hand—I'm dreadfully tired, anyway.... We'll +find Kathleen, shall we? My head doesn't buzz much."</p> + +<p>"Geraldine," he said, deliberately encircling her waist, "you are only +the same small girl I used to know, after all."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image3" name="image3"></a> + <img src="images/image3.jpg" + alt=""'Duane!' she gasped—'why did you?'"" + title=""'Duane!' she gasped—'why did you?'"" /> + <p class="caption">"'Duane!' she gasped—'why did you?'"</p> +</div> + + +<p>"Y-yes, I'm afraid so."</p> + +<p>"And you're not really old enough to really care for anybody, are you?"</p> + +<p>"Care?"</p> + +<p>"Love."</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not. Don't talk to me that way, Duane."</p> + +<p>He drew her suddenly into his arms and kissed her on the cheek twice, +and again on the mouth, as, crimson, breathless, she strained away from +him.</p> + +<p>"Duane!" she gasped—"why did you?" Then the throbbing of her body and +crushed lips made her furious. "Why did you do that?" she cried +fiercely—but her voice ended in a dry sob; she covered her head and +face with bare arms; her hands tightened convulsively and clenched.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "how could you!—when I came to you—feeling—afraid of +myself! I know you now. You are what they say you are."</p> + +<p>"What do they say I am?" he stammered.</p> + +<p>"Horrid—I don't know—wild!—whatever that implies.... I didn't care—I +didn't care even to understand, because I thought you generous and nice +to me—and I was so confident of you that I came with you and told you I +had had some champagne which made my head swim.... And you—did this! +It—it was contemptible."</p> + +<p>He bit his lip, but said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Why did you do it?" she demanded, dropping her arms from her face and +staring at him. "Is that the sort of thing you did abroad?"</p> + +<p>"Can't you see I'm in love with you?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh! Is <i>that</i> love? Then keep it for your models and—and Bohemian +grisettes! A decent man couldn't have done such a thing to me. I—I +loathe myself for being silly and weak enough to have touched that +wine, but I have more contempt for you than I have for myself. What you +did was cowardly!"</p> + +<p>Much of the colour had fled from her face; her eyes, bluish underneath +the lower lids, turned wearily, helplessly in search of Kathleen.</p> + +<p>"I knew I was unfit for liberty," she said, half to herself. "What an +ending to my first pleasure!"</p> + +<p>"For Heaven's sake, Geraldine," he broke out, "don't take an accident so +tragically——"</p> + +<p>"I want Kathleen. Do you hear?"</p> + +<p>"Very well; I'll find her.... And, whatever you say or think, I <i>am</i> in +love with you," he added fiercely.</p> + +<p>His voice, his words, were meaningless; she was conscious only of the +heavy pulse in throat and temple, of the desire for her room and +darkness. Lights, music, the scent of dying flowers, laughter, men, all +had become abhorrent. Something within her lay bruised and stunned; and, +as never before, the vast and terrible phantom of her loneliness rose +like a nightmare to menace her.</p> + +<p>Later Kathleen came and took her away.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER IV<br />THE YEAR OF DISCRETION</a></h2> + + +<p>Her first winter resembled, more or less, the first winter of the +average débutante.</p> + +<p>Under the roof of the metropolitan social temple there was a niche into +which her forefathers had fitted. Within the confines of this she +expected, and was expected, to live and move and have her being, and +ultimately wing upward to her God, leaving the consecrated cubby-hole +reserved for her descendants.</p> + +<p>She did what her sister débutantes did, and some things they did not +do, was asked where they were asked, decorated the same tier of boxes at +the opera, appeared in the same short-skirted entertainments of the +Junior League, saw what they saw, was seen where they were seen, +chattered, danced, and flirted with the same youths, was smitten by the +popular "dancing" man, convalesced in average time, smoked her first +cigarette, fell a victim to the handsome and horrid married destroyer, +recovered with a shock when, as usual, he overdid it, played at being +engaged, was kissed once or twice, adored Sembrich, listened ignorantly +but with intuitive shudders to her first scandals, sent flowers to Ethel +Barrymore, kept Lent with the pure fervour of a conscience troubled and +untainted, drove four in the coaching parade, and lunched afterward at +the Commonwealth Club, where her name was subsequently put up for +election.</p> + +<p>Spectacular charities lured her from the Plaza to Sherry's, from +Sherry's to the St. Regis; church work beguiled her; women's suffrage, +led daintily in a series of circles by Fashion and Wealth, enlisted her +passive patronage. She even tried the slums, but the perfume was too +much for her.</p> + +<p>All the small talk and epigrams of the various petty impinging circles +under the social dome passed into and out of her small ears—gossip, +epigrams, aphorisms, rumours, apropos surmises, asides, and off-stage +observations, subtle with double entendre, harmless and otherwise.</p> + +<p>She met people of fashion, of wealth, and both; and now and then +encountered one or two of those men and women of real distinction whose +names and peregrinations are seldom chronicled in the papers.</p> + +<p>She heard the great artists of the two operas sing in private; was +regaled with information concerning the remarkable decency or indecency +of their private careers. She saw fashionable plays which instructed the +public about squalor, murder, and men's mistresses, which dissected very +skilfully and artistically the ethics of moral degradation. And being as +healthy and curious as the average girl, she found in the theatres +material with which to inform herself about certain occult mysteries +concerning which, heretofore, she had been left mercifully in doubt.</p> + +<p>In spite of Kathleen, it was inevitable that she should acquire from the +fashionable in literature, music, and the drama, that sorry and +unnecessary wisdom which ages souls.</p> + +<p>And if what she saw or heard ever puzzled her, there was always +somebody, young or old, to enlighten her innocent perplexity; and with +each illumination she shrank a little less aloof from this shabby +wisdom gilded with "art," which she could not choose but accept as fact, +but the depravity of which she never was entirely able to comprehend.</p> + +<p>In March the Seagrave twins arrived at the alleged age of discretion. On +their twenty-first birthday the Half Moon Trust Company went solemnly +into court and rendered an accounting of its stewardship; the yearly +reports which it had made during the term of its trusteeship were +brought forward, examined by the court, and the great Half Moon Trust +Company was given an honourable discharge. It had done its duty. The +twins were masters of their financial and moral fate.</p> + +<p>It was about that moribund period of the social solstice when the fag +end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April +rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And +Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a +needy gentleman from Long Island.</p> + +<p>It had been rather trying work to rid Geraldine of the aspirants for her +fortune; during the winter she was proposed to under almost every +conceivable condition and circumstance. Kathleen had been bored and +badgered and bothered and importuned to the verge of exhaustion; Scott +was used, shamelessly, without his suspecting it, and he generally had +in tow a string of financially spavined aspirants who linked arms with +him from club to club, from theatre to opera, from grille to grille, +until he was pleasantly bewildered at his own popularity.</p> + +<p>Geraldine was surprised, confused, shamed, irritated in turn with every +new importunity. But she remained sensible enough to be quite frank and +truthful with Kathleen, except for an exciting secret engagement with +Bunbury Gray which lasted for two weeks. And Kathleen was given strength +sufficient for each case as it presented itself; and now the fag end of +the season died out; the last noble and indigent foreigner had been +eluded; the last old beau foiled; the last squab-headed dancing man +successfully circumvented. And now the gallinaceous half of the world +was leaving town in noisy and glittering migration, headed for temporary +roosts all over the globe, from Newport to Nova Scotia, from Kineo to +Kara Dagh.</p> + +<p>Country houses were opening throughout the Western Hemisphere; Long +Island stirred from its long winter lethargy, stung into active life by +the Oyster Bay mosquito; town houses closed; terrace, pillar, portico, +and windows were already being boarded over; lace curtains came down; +textiles went to the cleaners; the fresh scent of camphor and lavender +lingered in the mellow half-light of rooms where furniture and pictures +loomed linen-shrouded and the polished floor echoed every footstep.</p> + +<p>In the sunny gloom of the Seagrave house Geraldine found a grateful +retreat from the inspiring glare and confused racket of her first +winter; ample time for rest, reverie, and reflection, with only a few +intimates to break her meditations, only informality to reckon with, and +plenty of leisure to plan for the summer.</p> + +<p>Around the house, trees and rhododendrons were now in freshest bloom, +flower-beds fragrant, grass tenderly emerald. The moving shadows of +maple leaves patterned the white walls of her bedroom; wind-blown gusts +of wistaria fragrance, from the long, grapelike, violet-tinted bunches +swaying outside the window, puffed out her curtains every morning.</p> + +<p>At night subtler perfumes stole upward from the dark garden; the roar +of traffic from the avenues was softened; carriage lights in the +purpling dusk of the Park moved like firebugs drifting through level +wooded vistas. Across the reservoir lakes the jewelled night-zone of the +West Side sparkled, reflected across the water in points of trembling +flame; south, a gemmed bar of topaz light, upright against the sky, +marked the Plaza; beyond, sprinkled into space like constellations +dusting endless depths, the lights of the city receded far as the eye +could see.</p> + +<p>In the zenith the sky is always tinted with the strange, sinister +night-glow of the metropolis, red as fire-licked smoke when fog from the +bay settles, pallid as the very shadow of light when nights are clear; +but it is always there—always will be there after the sun goes down +into the western seas, and the eyes of the monstrous iron city burn on +through the centuries.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">One morning late in April Geraldine Seagrave rode up under the +porte-cochère with her groom, dismounted, patted her horse +sympathetically, and regarded with concern the limping animal as the +groom led him away to the stables. Then she went upstairs.</p> + +<p>To Kathleen, who was preparing to go out, she said:</p> + +<p>"I had scarcely entered the Park, my dear, when poor Bibi pulled up +lame. No, I told Redmond not to saddle another; I suppose Duane will be +furious. Where are you going?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Shall I wait for you? I've ordered a victoria."</p> + +<p>"No, thanks. You look so pretty this morning, Kathleen. Sometimes you +appear younger than I do. Scott was pig enough to say so the other day +when I had a headache. It's true enough, too," she added, smiling.</p> + +<p>Kathleen Severn laughed; she looked scarcely more than twenty-five and +she knew it.</p> + +<p>"You pretty thing!" exclaimed Geraldine, kissing her, "no wonder you +attract the really interesting men and leave me the dreadful fledglings! +It's bad of you; and I don't see why I'm stupid enough to have such an +attractive woman for my closest"—a kiss—"dearest friend! Even Duane is +villain enough to tell me that he finds you overwhelmingly attractive. +Did you know it?"</p> + +<p>Geraldine's careless gaiety seemed spontaneous enough; yet there was the +slightest constraint in Kathleen's responsive smile:</p> + +<p>"Duane isn't to be taken seriously," she said.</p> + +<p>"Not by any means," nodded Geraldine, twirling her crop.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you understand him," observed Kathleen, gazing at the point of +her sunshade. She looked up presently and met Geraldine's dark gaze. +Again there came that almost imperceptible hesitation; then:</p> + +<p>"I certainly do understand Duane Mallett," said Geraldine carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Shall I wait for you?" asked Kathleen. "We can lunch out together and +drive in the Park later."</p> + +<p>"I'm too lazy even to take off my boots and habit. Where's that volume +of Mendez you thought fit to hide from me, you wretch?"</p> + +<p>"Why on earth did you buy it?"</p> + +<p>"I bought it because Rosalie Dysart says Mendez is a great modern master +of prose——"</p> + +<p>"And Rosalie is a great modern mistress of pose. Don't read Mendez."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it necessary for a girl to read——"</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't!"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to be ignorant. Besides, I'm—curious to know——"</p> + +<p>"Be decently curious, dearest. There's a danger mark; don't cross it."</p> + +<p>"I don't wish to."</p> + +<p>She stretched out her arms, crop in hand, doubled them back, and head +tipped on one side, yawned shamelessly at her own laziness.</p> + +<p>"Scott is becoming very restless," she said.</p> + +<p>"About going away?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I really do think, Kathleen, that we ought to have some +respectable country place to go to. It would be nice for Scott and the +servants and the horses; and you and I need not stay there if it bores +us——"</p> + +<p>"Is he still thinking of that Roya-Neh place? It's horridly expensive to +keep up. Oh, I knew quite well that Scott would bully you into +consenting——"</p> + +<p>"Roya-Neh seems to suit us both," admitted the girl indifferently. "The +shooting and fishing naturally attract Scott; they say it's secluded +enough for you and me to recuperate in; and if we ever want any guests, +it's big enough to entertain dozens in.... I really don't care one way +or the other; you know I never was very crazy about the country—and +poison ivy, and mosquitoes and oil-smelling roads, and hot nights, and +the perfume of fertilisers——"</p> + +<p>"You poor child!" laughed Kathleen; "you don't know anything about the +country except where you've been on Long Island in the immediate +vicinity of your grandfather's horrid old place."</p> + +<p>"Is it any more agreeable up there near Canada?"</p> + +<p>"Roya-Neh is very lovely—of course—but—it's certainly not a wise +investment, dear."</p> + +<p>"Well, if Scott and I buy it, we'd never wish to sell it——"</p> + +<p>"Suppose you were obliged to?"</p> + +<p>Geraldine's velvet eyes widened lazily:</p> + +<p>"Obliged to? Oh—yes—you mean if we went to smash."</p> + +<p>Then her gaze became remote as she stood slowly tapping her gloved palm +with her riding-crop.</p> + +<p>"I think I'll dress," she said absently.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, then," nodded Kathleen.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," said the girl, turning lightly away across the hall. +Kathleen's eyes followed the slender retreating figure, so slimly +compact in its buoyancy. There was always something fascinatingly boyish +in Geraldine's light, free carriage—just a touch of carelessness in the +poise—almost a swing at times to the step. Duane had once said: "She +has a bully walk!" Kathleen thought of it as, passing a mirror, she +caught sight of herself. And the sudden glimpse of her own warm, rich +beauty in all its exquisite maturity startled her. Surely she seemed to +be growing younger.</p> + +<p>She was. Dark-violet eyes, ruddy hair, a superb figure, a skin so white +that it looked fragrant, made Kathleen Severn amazingly attractive. Men +found her, to their surprise, rather unresponsive. She was amiable +enough, nicely formal, and perfectly bred, it is true, but inclined to +that sort of aloofness which is marked by lapses of inattention and the +smiling silences of preoccupation.</p> + +<p>She had married, very young, an army officer convalescing from Texan +fever. He died suddenly on the very eve of their postponed +wedding-trip. This was enough to account for lapses of inattention in +any woman.</p> + +<p>But Kathleen Severn had never been demonstrative. She was slow to care +for people. Besides, the responsibility of bringing up the Seagrave +twins had been sufficient to subdue anybody's spirits. She was only +nineteen and a widow of a month when her distant relative, Magnelius +Grandcourt, found her the position as personal guardian of the twins, +then aged nine. Now they were twenty-one and she thirty-one; twelve +years of service, twelve years of steady fidelity, which long ago had +become a changeless and passionate devotion, made up of all she might +have given to the dead, and of the unborn happiness she had never known. +What other sort of love, if there was any, lay within her undeveloped, +nobody knew because nobody had ever aroused it.</p> + +<p>Sunshine transformed into great golden transparencies the lowered shades +in the living room where Geraldine stood, pensive, distraite, idly +twirling her crop by the loop. Presently it flew off her gloved +forefinger and fell clattering across the carpetless floor. She bathed +and dressed leisurely; later, when luncheon was brought to her, she +dropped into a low, wide chair and, ignoring everything except the +strawberries, turned her face to the breeze which was softly rattling +the southern curtains.</p> + +<p>Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, +in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of +herself; but never could completely.</p> + +<p>"For example: if I want to buy Roya-Neh," she mused, biting into an +enormous strawberry, "I can do it.... All I have to do is to say that +I'll buy it.... And I can live there if I choose—as long as I +choose.... It's a very agreeable sensation.... I can have anything I +fancy, without asking Mr. Tappan.... It's rather odd that I don't want +anything."</p> + +<p>She crossed her ankles and lay back watching the sun-moats floating.</p> + +<p>"Suppose," she murmured with perverse humour, "that I wished to build a +bungalow in Timbuctoo ... or stand on my head, now, this very moment! +Nobody on earth could stop me.... I believe I <i>will</i> stand on my head +for a change."</p> + +<p>The sudden smile made the curve of her cheek delicious. She sprang to +her feet, spread her napkin on the polished floor, then gravely bending +double, placed both palms flat on the square of damask, balanced and +raised her body until the straight, slim limbs were rigidly pointed +toward heaven.</p> + +<p>Down tumbled her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and +spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on +both feet breathing fast.</p> + +<p>"It's disgraceful!" she murmured; "I am certainly out of condition. Late +hours are my undoing. Also cigarettes. I wish I didn't like to smoke."</p> + +<p>She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, +heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor.</p> + +<p>Lacking a hair-peg, she sauntered off to her own apartments to find one, +where she remained, lolling in the chaise-longue, alternately blowing +smoke rings into the sunshine and nibbling a bonbon soaked in cologne. +Only a girl can accomplish such combinations. How she ever began this +silly custom of hers she couldn't remember, except that, when a small +child, somebody had forbidden her to taste brandied peach syrup, which +she adored; and the odour of cologne being similarly pleasant, she had +tried it on her palate and found that it produced agreeable sensations.</p> + +<p>It had become a habit. She was conscious of it, but remained indifferent +because she didn't know anything about habits.</p> + +<p>So all that sunny afternoon she lay in the chaise-longue, alternately +reading and dreaming, her scented bonbons at her elbow. Later a maid +brought tea; and a little later Duane Mallett was announced. He +sauntered in, a loosely knit, graceful figure, still wearing his +riding-clothes and dusty boots of the morning.</p> + +<p>Geraldine Seagrave had had time enough to discover, during the past +winter, that her old playfellow was not at all the kind of man he +appeared to be. Women liked him too easily and he liked them without +effort. There was always some girl in love with him until he was found +kissing another. His tastes were amiably catholic; his caress +instinctively casual. Beauty when responsive touched him. No girl he +knew needed to remain unconsoled.</p> + +<p>The majority of women liked him; so did Geraldine Seagrave. The majority +instinctively watched him; so did she. In close acquaintance the man was +a disappointment. It seemed as though there ought to be something deeper +in him than the lightly humourous mockery with which he seemed to regard +his very great talent—a flippancy that veiled always what he said and +did and thought until nobody could clearly understand what he really +thought about anything; and some people doubted that he thought at +all—particularly the thoughtless whom he had carelessly consoled.</p> + +<p>Women were never entirely indifferent concerning him; there remained +always a certain amount of curiosity, whether they found him attractive +or otherwise.</p> + +<p>His humourous indifference to public opinions, bordering on effrontery, +was not entirely unattractive to women, but it always, sooner or later, +aroused their distrust.</p> + +<p>The main trouble with Duane Mallett seemed to be his gaily cynical +willingness to respond to any advance, however slight, that any pretty +woman offered. This responsive partiality was disconcerting enough to +make him dreaded by ambitious mothers, and an object of uneasy interest +to their decorative offspring who were inclined to believe that a rescue +party of one might bring this derelict into port and render him +seaworthy for the voyage of life under their own particular command.</p> + +<p>Besides, he was a painter. Women like them when they are carefully +washed and clothed.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">As Duane Mallett strolled into the living-room, Geraldine felt again, as +she so often did, a slight sense of insecurity mingle with her liking +for the man, or what might have been liking if she could ever feel +absolute confidence in him. She had been, at times, very close to caring +a great deal for him, when now and again it flashed over her that there +must be in him something serious under his brilliant talent and the idle +perversity which mocked at it.</p> + +<p>But now she recognised in his smile and manner everything that kept her +from ever caring to understand him—the old sense of insecurity in his +ironical formality; and her outstretched hand fell away from his with +indifference.</p> + +<p>"I didn't have the happiness of riding with you, after all," he said, +serenely seating himself and dropping one lank knee over the other. +"Promises wouldn't be valuable unless somebody broke a lot now and +then."</p> + +<p>"You probably had the happiness of riding with some other woman."</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>"Who, this time?"</p> + +<p>"Rosalie Dysart."</p> + +<p>Rumour had been busy with their names recently. The girl's face became +expressionless.</p> + +<p>"Sorry you didn't come," he said, looking out of the window where the +flapping shade revealed a lilac in bloom.</p> + +<p>"How long did you wait for me?"</p> + +<p>"About a minute. Then Rosalie passed——"</p> + +<p>"Rosalies will always continue to pass through your career, my +omnivorous friend.... Did it even occur to you to ride over here and +find out why I missed our appointment?"</p> + +<p>"No; why didn't you come?"</p> + +<p>"Bibi went lame. I'd have had another horse saddled if I hadn't seen +you, over my shoulder, join Mrs. Dysart."</p> + +<p>"Too bad," he commented listlessly.</p> + +<p>"Why? You had a perfectly good time without me, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, pretty good. Delancy Grandcourt was out after luncheon, and +when Rosalie left he stuck to me and talked about you until I let my +horse bolt, and it stirred up a few mounted policemen and +riding-schools, I can tell you!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, so you lunched with Mrs. Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Where is Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>"Driving," said the girl briefly. "If you don't care for any tea, there +is mineral water and a decanter over there."</p> + +<p>He thanked her, rose and mixed himself what he wanted, and began to walk +leisurely about, the ice tinkling in the glass which he held. At +intervals he quenched his thirst, then resumed his aimless promenade, a +slight smile on his face.</p> + +<p>"Has anything particularly interesting happened to you, Duane?" she +asked, and somehow thought of Rosalie Dysart.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"How are your pictures coming on?"</p> + +<p>"The portrait?" he asked absently.</p> + +<p>"Portrait? I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town. +Whose portrait are you painting?"</p> + +<p>Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew.</p> + +<p>"Rosalie Dysart's," he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower +as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment.</p> + +<p>She lifted her dark eyes curiously. He began to stir the ice in his +glass with a silver paper-cutter.</p> + +<p>"She is wonderfully beautiful, isn't she?" said the girl.</p> + +<p>"Overwhelmingly."</p> + +<p>Geraldine shrugged and gazed into space. She didn't exactly know why she +had given that little hitch to her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to paint Kathleen," he observed.</p> + +<p>A flush tinted the girl's cheeks. She said nervously:</p> + +<p>"Why don't you ask her?"</p> + +<p>"I've meant to. Somehow, one doesn't ask things lightly of Kathleen."</p> + +<p>"One doesn't ask things of some women at all," she remarked.</p> + +<p>He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest.</p> + +<p>"Ask what sort of thing?" he inquired, walking over to the table and +resting his glass on it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know what I meant. Nothing. What is that in your glass? Let +me taste it.... Ugh! It's Scotch!"</p> + +<p>She set back the glass with a shudder. After a few moments she picked it +up again and tasted it disdainfully.</p> + +<p>"Do you like this?" she demanded with youthful contempt.</p> + +<p>"Pretty well," he admitted.</p> + +<p>"It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"I never noticed that it did."</p> + +<p>And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, +tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she +tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty glass and watched him where +he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his +riding-crop.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to see a typical studio," she said reflectively.</p> + +<p>"I've asked you to mine often enough."</p> + +<p>"Yes, to tea with other people. I don't mean that way. I'd like to see +it when it's not all dusted and in order for feminine inspection. I'd +like to see a man's studio when it's in shape for work—with the +gr-r-reat painter in a fine frenzy painting, and the model posing +madly——"</p> + +<p>"Come on, then! If Kathleen lets you, and you can stand it, come down +and knock some day unexpectedly."</p> + +<p>"O Duane! I <i>couldn't</i>, could I?"</p> + +<p>"Not with propriety. But come ahead."</p> + +<p>"Naturally, impropriety appeals to you."</p> + +<p>"Naturally. To you, too, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"No. But wouldn't it astonish you if you heard a low, timid knocking +some day when you and your Bohemian friends were carousing and having a +riotous time there——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it would, but I'm afraid that low, timid knocking couldn't be +heard in the infernal uproar of our usual revelry."</p> + +<p>"Then I'd knock louder and louder, and perhaps kick once or twice if you +didn't come to the door and let me in."</p> + +<p>He laughed. After a moment she laughed, too; her dark eyes were very +friendly now. Watching the amusement in his face, she continued to sip +from his tall, frosted glass, quite unconscious of any distaste for it. +On the contrary, she experienced a slight exhilaration which was +gradually becoming delightful to her.</p> + +<p>"Scotch-and-soda is rather nice, after all," she observed. "I had no +idea—<i>What</i> is the matter with you, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"You haven't swallowed all that, have you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, is it much?"</p> + +<p>He stared, then with a shrug: "You'd better cut out that sort of thing."</p> + +<p>"What?" she asked, surprised.</p> + +<p>"What you're doing."</p> + +<p>"Tasting your Scotch? Pooh!" she said, "it isn't strong. Do you think +I'm a baby?"</p> + +<p>"Go ahead," he said, "it's your funeral."</p> + +<p>Legs crossed, chin resting on the butt of his riding-crop, he lay back +in his chair watching her.</p> + +<p>Women of her particular type had always fascinated him; Fifth Avenue is +thronged with them in sunny winter mornings—tall, slender, faultlessly +gowned girls, free-limbed, narrow of wrist and foot; cleanly built, +engaging, fearless-eyed; and Geraldine was one of a type characteristic +of that city and of the sunny Avenue where there pass more beautiful +women on a December morning than one can see abroad in half a dozen +years' residence.</p> + +<p>How on earth this hemisphere has managed to evolve them out of its +original material nobody can explain. And young Mallett, recently from +the older hemisphere, was still in a happy trance of surprise at the +discovery.</p> + +<p>Lounging there, watching her where she sat warmly illumined by the +golden light of the window-shade, he said lazily:</p> + +<p>"Do you know that Fifth Avenue is always thronged with you, Geraldine? +I've nearly twisted my head off trying not to miss the assorted visions +of you which float past afoot or driving. Some day one of them will +unbalance me. I'll leap into her victoria, ask her if she'd mind the +temporary inconvenience of being adored by a stranger; and if she's a +good sport she'll take a chance. Don't you think so?"</p> + +<p>"It's more than I'd take with you," said the girl.</p> + +<p>"You've said that several times."</p> + +<p>He laughed, then looked up at her half humorously, half curiously.</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> would be taking no chances, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"I'd be taking chances of finding you holding some other girl's hands +within twenty-four hours. And you know it."</p> + +<p>"Hasn't anybody ever held yours?"</p> + +<p>Displeasure tinted her cheeks a deeper red, but she merely shrugged her +shoulders.</p> + +<p>It was true that in the one evanescent and secret affair of her first +winter she had not escaped the calf-like transports of Bunbury Gray. She +had felt, if she had not returned them, the furtively significant +pressure of men's hands in the gaiety and whirl of things; ardent and +chuckle-headed youth had declared itself in conservatories and in +corners; one impetuous mauling from a smitten Harvard boy of eighteen +had left her furiously vexed with herself for her passive attitude while +the tempest passed. True, she had vigorously reproved him later. She +had, alas, occasion, during her first season, to reprove several +demonstrative young men for their unconventionally athletic manner of +declaring their suits. She had been far more severe with the humble, +unattractive, and immobile, however, than with the audacious and +ornamental who had attempted to take her by storm. A sudden if awkward +kiss followed by the fiery declaration of the hot-headed disturbed her +less than the persistent stare of an enamoured pair of eyes. As a child +the description of an assault on a citadel always interested her, but +she had neither sympathy nor interest in a siege.</p> + +<p>Now, musing there in the sunlight on the events of her first winter, she +became aware that she had been more or less instructed in the ways of +men; and, remembering, she lifted her disturbed eyes to inspect this +specimen of a sex which often perplexed but always interested her.</p> + +<p>"What are you smiling about, Duane?" she asked defiantly.</p> + +<p>"Your arraignment of me when half the men in town have been trying to +marry you all winter. You've made a reputation for yourself, too, +Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"As what?" she asked angrily.</p> + +<p>"A head-twister."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean a flirt?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord! Only the French use that term now. But that's the idea, +Geraldine. You are a born one. I fell for the first smile you let loose +on me."</p> + +<p>"You seem to have been a sort of general Humpty Dumpty for falls all +your life, Duane," she said with dangerous sweetness.</p> + +<p>"Like that immortal, I've had only one which permanently shattered me."</p> + +<p>"Which was that, if you please?"</p> + +<p>"The fall you took out of me."</p> + +<p>"In other words," she said disdainfully, "you are beginning to make love +to me again."</p> + +<p>"No.... I <i>was</i> in love with you."</p> + +<p>"You were in love with yourself, young man. You are on such excellent +terms with yourself that you sympathise too ardently with any attractive +woman who takes the least and most innocent notice of you."</p> + +<p>He said, very much amused: "I was perfectly serious over you, +Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"The selfish always take themselves seriously."</p> + +<p>It was she, however, who now sat there bright-eyed and unsmiling, and he +was still laughing, deftly balancing his crop on one finger, and +glancing at her from time to time with that glimmer of ever-latent +mockery which always made her restive at first, then irritated her with +an unreasoning desire to hurt him somehow. But she never seemed able to +reach him.</p> + +<p>"Sooner or later," she said, "women will find you out, thoroughly."</p> + +<p>"And then, just think what a rush there will be to marry me!"</p> + +<p>"There will be a rush to avoid you, Duane. And it will set in before you +know it—" She thought of the recent gossip coupling his name with +Rosalie's, reddened and bit her lip in silence. But somehow the thought +irritated her into speech again:</p> + +<p>"Fortunately, I was among the first to find you out—the first, I +think."</p> + +<p>"Heavens! when was that?" he asked in pretended concern, which +infuriated her.</p> + +<p>"You had better not ask me," she flashed back. "When a woman suddenly +discovers that a man is untrustworthy, do you think she ever forgets +it?"</p> + +<p>"Because I once kissed you? What a dreadful deed!"</p> + +<p>"You forget the circumstances under which you did it."</p> + +<p>He flushed; she had managed to hurt him, after all. He began patiently:</p> + +<p>"I've explained to you a dozen times that I didn't know——"</p> + +<p>"But I <i>told</i> you!"</p> + +<p>"And I couldn't believe you——"</p> + +<p>"But you expect me to believe <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>He could not exactly interpret her bright, smiling, steady gaze.</p> + +<p>"The trouble with you is," she said, "that there is nothing to you but +good looks and talent. There was once, but it died—over in +Europe—somewhere. No woman trusts a man like you. Don't you know it?"</p> + +<p>His smile did not seem to be very genuine, but he answered lightly:</p> + +<p>"When I ask people to have confidence in me, it will be time for them to +pitch into me."</p> + +<p>"Didn't you once ask me for your confidence—and then abuse it?" she +demanded.</p> + +<p>"I told you I loved you—if that is what you mean. And you doubted it so +strenuously that, perhaps I might be excused for doubting it myself.... +What is the use of talking this way, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>There was a ring of exasperation in her laughter. She lifted his glass, +sipped a little, and, looking over it at him:</p> + +<p>"I drink to our doubts concerning each other: may nothing ever occur to +disturb them."</p> + +<p>Her cheeks had begun to burn, her eyes were too bright, her voice +unmodulated.</p> + +<p>"Whether or not you ever again take the trouble to ask me to trust you +in that way," she said, "I'll tell you now why I don't and why I never +could. It may amuse you. Shall I?"</p> + +<p>"By all means," he replied amiably; "but it seems to me as though you +are rather rough on me."</p> + +<p>"You were rougher with me the first time I saw you, after all those +years. I met you with perfect confidence, remembering what you once +were. It was my first grown-up party. I was only a fool of a girl, +merely ignorant, unfit to be trusted with a liberty I'd never before +had.... And I took one glass of champagne and it—you know what it +did.... And I was bewildered and frightened, and I told you; and—you +perhaps remember how my confidence in my old play-fellow was requited. +Do you?"</p> + +<p>Reckless impulse urged her on. Heart and pulses were beating very fast +with a persistent desire to hurt him. Her animation, brilliant colour, +her laughter seemed to wing every word like an arrow. She knew he shrank +from what she was saying, in spite of his polite attention, and her +fresh, curved cheek and parted lips took on a brighter tint. Something +was singing, seething in her veins. She lifted her glass, set it down, +and suddenly pushed it from her so violently that it fell with a crash. +A wave of tingling heat mounted to her face, receded, swept back again. +Confused, she straightened up in her chair, breathing fast. <i>What</i> was +coming over her? Again the wave surged back with a deafening rush; her +senses struggled, the blood in her ran riot. Then terror clutched her. +Neither lips nor tongue were very flexible when she spoke.</p> + +<p>"Duane—if you don't mind—would you go away now? I've a wretched +headache."</p> + +<p>He shrugged and stood up.</p> + +<p>"It's curious," he said reflectively, "how utterly determined we seem to +be to misunderstand each other. If you would give me half a +chance—well—never mind."</p> + +<p>"I wish you would go," she murmured, "I really am not well." She could +scarcely hear her own voice amid the deafening tumult of her pulses. +Fright stiffened the fixed smile on her lips. Her plight paralysed her +for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'll go," he answered, smiling. "I usually am going +somewhere—most of the time."</p> + +<p>He picked up hat, gloves, and crop, looked down at her, came and stood +at the table, resting one hand on the edge.</p> + +<p>"We're pretty young yet, Geraldine.... I never saw a girl I cared for as +I might have cared for you. It's true, no matter what I have done, or +may do.... But you're quite right, a man of that sort isn't to be +considered"—he laughed and pulled on one glove—"only—I knew as soon +as I saw you that it was to be you or—everybody. First, it was anybody; +then it was you—now it's everybody. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," she managed to say. The dizzy waves swayed her; she rested +her cheeks between both hands and, leaning there heavily, closed her +eyes to fight against it. She had been seated on the side of a lounge; +and now, feeling blindly behind her, she moved the cushions aside, +turned and dropped among them, burying her blazing face. Over her the +scorching vertigo swept, subsided, rose, and swept again. Oh, the horror +of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise. What was this dreadful thing +that, for the second time, she had unwittingly done? And this time it +was so much more terrible. How could such an accident have happened to +her? How could she face her own soul in the disgrace of it?</p> + +<p>Fear, loathing, frightened incredulity that this could really be +herself, stiffened her body and clinched her hands under her parted +lips. On them her hot breath fell irregularly.</p> + +<p>Rigid, motionless, she lay, breathing faster and more feverishly. Tears +came after a long while, and with them relaxation and lassitude. She +felt that the dreadful thing which had seized and held her was letting +go its hold, was freeing her body and mind; and as it slowly released +her and passed on its terrible silent way, she awoke and sat up with a +frightened cry—to find herself lying on her own bed in utter darkness.</p> + +<p>A moment later her bedroom door opened without a sound and the light +from the hall streamed over Kathleen's bare shoulders and braided hair.</p> + +<p>"Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>The girl scarcely recognised Kathleen's altered voice. She lay +listening, silent, motionless, staring at the white figure.</p> + +<p>"Dearest, I thought you called me. May I come in?"</p> + +<p>"I am not well."</p> + +<p>But Kathleen entered and stood beside the bed, looking down at her in +the dim light.</p> + +<p>"Dearest," she began tremulously, "Duane told me you had a headache and +had gone to your room to lie down, so I didn't disturb you——"</p> + +<p>"Duane," faltered the girl, "is he here? What did he say?"</p> + +<p>"He was in the library before dinner when I came in, and he warned me +not to waken you. Do you know what time it is?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"It is after midnight.... If you feel ill enough to lie here, you ought +to be undressed. May I help you?"</p> + +<p>There was no answer. For a moment Kathleen stood looking down at the +girl in silence; then a sudden shivering seized her; she strove to +control it, but her knees seemed to give way under it and she dropped +down beside the bed, throwing both arms around Geraldine's neck.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image4" name="image4"></a> + <img src="images/image4.jpg" + alt=""Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise."" + title=""Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise."" /> + <p class="caption">"Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise."</p> +</div> + + +<p>"Oh, don't, <i>don't</i>!" she whimpered. "It is too terrible! It ruined +your father and your grandfather! Darling, I couldn't bear to tell you +this before, but now I've got to tell you! It is in your blood. +Seagraves die of it! Do you understand?"</p> + +<p>"W-what?" stammered the girl.</p> + +<p>"That all their lives they did what—what you have done to-day—that you +have inherited their terrible inclinations. Even as a little child you +frightened me. Have you forgotten what you and I talked over and cried +over after your first party?"</p> + +<p>The girl said slowly: "I don't know how—it—happened, Kathleen. Duane +came in.... I tasted what he had in his glass.... I don't know why I did +it. I wish I were dead!"</p> + +<p>"There is only one thing to do—never to touch anything—anything——"</p> + +<p>"Y-yes, I know that I must not. But how was I to know before? Will you +tell me?"</p> + +<p>"You understand <i>now</i>, thank God!"</p> + +<p>"N-not exactly.... Other girls seem to do as they please without +danger.... It is amazing that such a horrible thing should happen to +me——"</p> + +<p>"It is a shameful thing that it should happen to any woman. And the +horror of it is that almost every hostess in town lets girls of your age +run the risk. Darling, don't you know that the only chance a woman has +with the world is in her self-control? When that goes, her chances go, +every one of them! Dear—we have latent in us much the same vices that +men have. We have within us the same possibilities of temptations, the +same capacity for excesses, the same capabilities for resistance. +Because you are a girl, you are not immune from unworthy desires."</p> + +<p>"I know it. The—the dreadful thing about it is that I do desire such +things. Perhaps I had better not even nibble sugar scented with +cologne——"</p> + +<p>"Do you do <i>that</i>?" faltered Kathleen.</p> + +<p>"I did not know there was any danger in it," sobbed the girl. "You have +scared me terribly, Kathleen."</p> + +<p>"Is that true about the cologne?"</p> + +<p>"Y-yes."</p> + +<p>"You don't do it now, do you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"You don't do it every day, do you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, several times."</p> + +<p>"How long"—Kathleen's lips almost refused to move—"how long have you +done this?"</p> + +<p>"For a long time. I've been ashamed of it. It's—it's the alcohol in it +that I like, isn't it? I never thought of it in that way till now."</p> + +<p>Kathleen, on her knees by the bedside, was crying silently. The girl +slipped from her arms, turned partly over, and lying on her back, stared +upward through the darkness.</p> + +<p>So this was the secret reason that, unsuspected, had long been stirring +her to instinctive uneasiness, which had made her half ashamed, half +impatient with this silly habit which already inconvenienced her. Yet +even now she could not feel any real alarm; she could not understand +that the fangs of a habit can poison when plucked out. Of course there +was now only one thing to do—keep aloof from everything. That would be +easy. The tingling warmth of the perfume was certainly agreeable, but +she must not risk even such a silly indulgence as that. Really, it was a +very simple matter. She sat up, supporting her weight on one arm.</p> + +<p>"Kathleen, darling," she whispered, bending forward and drawing the +elder woman up onto the bed, "you mustn't be frightened about me. I've +learned some things I didn't know. Do you think Duane—" In the darkness +the blood scorched her face, the humiliation almost crushed her. But she +went on: "Do you think Duane suspects that—that——"</p> + +<p>"I don't think Duane suspects anything," said Kathleen, striving to +steady her voice. "You came in here as soon as you felt—ill; didn't +you?"</p> + +<p>"I—yes——"</p> + +<p>She could say no more. How she came to be on her bed in her own room she +could not remember. It seemed to her as though she had fallen asleep on +the lounge. Somehow, after Duane had gone, she must have waked and gone +to her own room. But she could not recollect doing it.</p> + +<p>Now she realised that she was tired, wretched, feverish. She suffered +Kathleen to undress her, comb her hair, bathe her, and dry the white, +slender body and limbs in which the veins still burned and throbbed.</p> + +<p>When at length she lay between the cool sheets, silent, limp, +heavy-lidded, Kathleen turned out the electric brackets and lighted the +candle.</p> + +<p>"Dear," she said, trying to speak cheerfully, "do you know what your +brother has done?"</p> + +<p>"What?" asked Geraldine drowsily.</p> + +<p>"He has bought Roya-Neh, if you please, and he invites you to draw a +check for half of it and to move there next week. As for me, I was +furious with him. What do you think?"</p> + +<p>Her voice softened to a whisper; she bent over the girl, looking closely +at the closed lids. Under them a faint bluish tint faded into the +whiteness of the cheek.</p> + +<p>"Darling, darling!" whispered Kathleen, bending closer over the sleeping +girl, "I love you so—I love you so!" And even as she said it, between +the sleeper's features and her own floated the vision of Scott's +youthfully earnest face; and she straightened suddenly to her full +height and laid her hand on her breast in consternation. Under the +fingers' soft pressure her heart beat faster. Again, with new dismay, +this incredible sensation was stealing upon her, threatening to +transform itself into something real, something definite, something not +to be stifled or ignored.</p> + +<p>She extinguished the candle; as she felt her way out of the darkness, +arms extended, far away in the house she heard a door open and shut, and +she bent over the balustrade to listen.</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Scott?" she called softly.</p> + +<p>"Yes; Duane and I did some billiards at the club." He looked up at her, +the same slight pucker between his brows, boyishly slender in his +evening dress. "You're not going to bed at once, are you, Kathleen, +dear?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am," she said briefly, backing into her own room, but holding +the door ajar so that she could look out at him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come out and talk to a fellow," he urged; "I'm quite excited about +this Roya-Neh business——"</p> + +<p>"You're a perfect wretch, Scott. I don't want to talk about your unholy +extravagance."</p> + +<p>The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly +disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background.</p> + +<p>"Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette," he began +in his wheedling way. "I'm dying to talk to you about the +game-preserve——"</p> + +<p>"I can't; I'm not attired for a tête-à-tête with anything except my +pillow."</p> + +<p>"Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!"</p> + +<p>When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate +shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott +jumped up and dragged a big chair forward.</p> + +<p>"You certainly are stunning, Kathleen," he said frankly; "you look +twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I've a map of the +Roya-Neh forest to show you."</p> + +<p>He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and, +unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk +enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar +and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the +map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a +question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger.</p> + +<p>Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at +the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within +her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths +unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened.</p> + +<p>"Scott, dear," she said quietly, "I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh +forest, but it <i>was</i> too expensive, and it troubles me; so I'm going to +sleep to dream over it."</p> + +<p>"You sweet little goose!" laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm +around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother.</p> + +<p>They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her +warm, yielding body.</p> + +<p>He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that +the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble +in that strange instant—that Kathleen was gone—that, in her calm, +sweet, familiar guise stood a woman—a stranger, exquisite, youthful, +with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for +the first time she had met his gaze across the world.</p> + +<p>She recovered her composure instantly.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, Scott, but I'm too sleepy to talk any more. Besides, +Geraldine isn't very well, and I'm going to doze with one eye open. +Good-night, dear."</p> + +<p>"Good-night," said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to +which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER V<br />ROYA-NEH</a></h2> + + +<p>Late on a fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long +Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of +twelve at Roya-Neh.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Duane!" cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new +possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; "frightfully glad to see +you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There +are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn't that rather +fine?"—looking down through the trees at the lake below. "There are +bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly +English fallow deer. Sorry I got 'em. What do you think of my house? +It's merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial.... Yes, +it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn't. No Seagraves +fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine's quarters up there behind the +leaded windows. Those are Kathleen's where the dinky woodbine twineth. +Mine face the east, and yours are next. Come on out into the park——"</p> + +<p>"Not much!" returned young Mallett. "I want a bath!"</p> + +<p>"The park," interrupted Scott excitedly, "is the largest fenced +game-preserve in America! It's only ten minutes to the Sachem's Gate, if +we walk fast."</p> + +<p>"I want a bath and fresh linen."</p> + +<p>"Don't you care to see the trout? Don't you want to try to catch a +glimpse of a wild boar? I should think you'd be crazy to see——"</p> + +<p>"I'm crazy about almost any old thing when I'm well scrubbed; otherwise, +I'm merely crazy. That was a wild trip up. I'm all over cinders."</p> + +<p>A woman came quietly out onto the terrace, and Duane instantly divined +it, though his back was toward her and her skirts made no sound.</p> + +<p>"Oh, is that you, Kathleen?" he cried, pivoting. "How d'ye do?" with a +vigorous handshake. "Every time I see you you're three times as pretty +as I thought you were when I last saw you."</p> + +<p>"Neat but involved," said Kathleen Severn. "You have a streak of cinder +across that otherwise fascinating nose."</p> + +<p>"I don't doubt it! I'm going. Where's Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>"Having her hair done in your honour; return the compliment by washing +your face. There's a maid inside to show you."</p> + +<p>"Show me how to wash my face!" exclaimed Duane, delighted. "This is +luxury——"</p> + +<p>"I want him to see the Gray Water before it's too late, with the +sunlight on the trees and the big trout jumping," protested Scott.</p> + +<p>"I'll do my own jumping if you'll furnish the tub," observed Duane. +"Where's that agreeable maid who washes your guests' faces?"</p> + +<p>Kathleen nodded an amused dismissal to them. Arm in arm they entered the +house, which was built out of squared blocks of field stone. Scott +motioned the servants aside and did the piloting himself up a broad +stone stairs, east along a wide sunny corridor full of nooks and angles +and antique sofas and potted flowers.</p> + +<p>"Not that way," he said; "Dysart is in there taking a nap. Turn to the +left."</p> + +<p>"Dysart?" repeated Duane. "I didn't know there was to be anybody else +here."</p> + +<p>"I asked Jack Dysart because he's a good rod. Kathleen raised the deuce +about it when I told her, but it was too late. Anyway, I didn't know she +had no use for him. He's certainly clever at dry-fly casting. He uses +pneumatic bodies, not cork or paraffine."</p> + +<p>"Is his wife here?" asked Duane carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Geraldine asked her as soon as she heard I'd written to Jack. But +when I told her the next day that I expected you, too, she got mad all +over, and we had a lively talk-fest. What was there wrong in my having +you and the Dysarts here at the same time? Don't you get on?"</p> + +<p>"Charmingly," replied Duane airily.... "It will be very interesting, I +think. Is there anybody else here?"</p> + +<p>"Delancy Grandcourt. Isn't he the dead one? But Geraldine wanted him. +And there's that stick of a Quest girl, and Bunbury Gray. Naïda came +over this afternoon from the Tappans' at Iron Hill—thank goodness——"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know my sister was to be here."</p> + +<p>"Yes; and you make twelve, counting Geraldine and me and the Pink 'uns."</p> + +<p>"You didn't tell me it was to be a round-up," repeated Duane, absently +surveying his chintz-hung quarters. "This is a pretty place you've given +me. Where do you get all your electric lights? Where do you get fancy +plumbing in this wilderness?"</p> + +<p>"Our own plant," explained the boy proudly. "Isn't that corking water? +Look at it—heavenly cold and clear, or hot as hell, whichever way +you're inclined—" turning on a silver spigot chiselled like a cherub. +"That water comes from Cloudy Lake, up there on that dome-shaped +mountain. Here, stand here beside me, Duane, and you can see it from +your window. That's the Gilded Dome—that big peak. It's in our park. +There are a few elk on it, not many, because they'd starve out the deer. +As it is, we have to cut browse in winter. For Heaven's sake, hurry, +man! Get into your bath and out again, or we'll miss the trout jumping +along Gray Water and Hurryon Brook."</p> + +<p>"Let 'em jump!" retorted Duane, forcibly ejecting his host from the room +and locking the door. Then, lighting a cigarette, he strolled into the +bath room and started the water running into the porcelain tub.</p> + +<p>He was in excellent spirits, quite undisturbed by the unexpected +proximity of Rosalie Dysart or the possible renewal of their hitherto +slightly hazardous friendship. He laid his cigarette aside for the +express purpose of whistling while undressing.</p> + +<p>Half an hour later, bathed, shaved, and sartorially freshened, he +selected a blue corn-flower from the rural bouquet on his dresser, drew +it through his buttonhole, gave a last alluring twist to his tie, +surveyed himself in the mirror, whistled a few bars, was perfectly +satisfied with himself, then, unlocking the door, strolled out into the +corridor. Having no memory for direction, he took the wrong turn.</p> + +<p>A distractingly pretty maid laid aside her sewing and rose from her +chair to set him right; he bestowed upon her his most courtly thanks. +She was unusually pretty, so he thanked her again, and she dimpled, one +hand fingering her apron's edge.</p> + +<p>"My child," said he gravely, "are you by any fortunate chance as good as +you are ornamental?"</p> + +<p>She replied that she thought she was.</p> + +<p>"In that case," he said, "this is one of those rare occasions in a +thankless world where goodness is amply and instantly rewarded."</p> + +<p>She made a perfunctory resistance, but looked after him, smiling, as he +sauntered off down the hallway, rearranging the blue corn-flower in his +button-hole. At the turn by the window, where potted posies stood, he +encountered Rosalie Dysart in canoe costume—sleeves rolled up, hair +loosened, becomingly tanned, and entirely captivating in her +thoughtfully arranged disarray.</p> + +<p>"Why, Duane!" she exclaimed, offering both her hands with that +impulsively unstudied gesture she carefully cultivated for such +occasions.</p> + +<p>He took them; he always took what women offered.</p> + +<p>"This is very jolly," he said, retaining the hands and examining her +with unfeigned admiration. "Tell me, Mrs. Dysart, are you by any +fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?"</p> + +<p>"I heard you ask that of the maid around the corner," said Rosalie +coolly. "Don't let the bucolic go to your head, Mr. Mallett." And she +disengaged her hands, crossed them behind her, and smiled back at him. +It was his punishment. Her hands were very pretty hands, and well worth +holding.</p> + +<p>"That maid," he said gravely, "has excellent manners. I merely +complimented her upon them.... What else did you—ah—hear, Mrs. +Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"What one might expect to hear wherever you are concerned. I don't +mind. The things you do rather gracefully seem only offensive when other +men do them.... Have you just arrived?"</p> + +<p>"An hour ago. Did you know I was coming?"</p> + +<p>"Geraldine mentioned it to everybody, but I don't think anybody swooned +at the news.... My husband is here."</p> + +<p>She still confronted him, hands behind her, with an audacity which +challenged—her whole being was always a delicate and perpetual +challenge. There are such women. Over her golden-brown head the late +summer sunlight fell, outlining her full, supple figure and bared arms +with a rose light.</p> + +<p>"Well?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"If only you <i>were</i> as good as you are ornamental," he said, looking at +her impudently. "But I'm afraid you're not."</p> + +<p>"What would happen to me if I were?"</p> + +<p>"Why," he said with innocent enthusiasm, "you would have <i>your</i> reward, +too, Mrs. Dysart."</p> + +<p>"The sort of reward which I heard you bestow a few moments ago upon that +maid? I'm no longer the latter, so I suppose I'm not entitled to it, am +I?"</p> + +<p>The smile still edged her pretty mouth; there was an instant when +matters looked dubious for her; but a door opened somewhere, and, still +smiling, she slipped by him and vanished into a neighbouring corridor.</p> + +<p>Howker, the old butler, met him at the foot of the stairs.</p> + +<p>"Tea is served on the Long Terrace, sir. Mr. Seagrave wishes to know +whether you would care to see the trout jumping on the Gray Water this +evening? If so, you are please not to stop for tea, but go directly to +the Sachem's Gate. Redmond will guide you, sir."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image5" name="image5"></a> + <img src="images/image5.jpg" + alt=""'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is amply ... rewarded.'"" + title=""'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is amply ... rewarded.'"" /> + <p class="caption">"'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is amply ... rewarded.'"</p> +</div> + + +<p>"All right, Howker," said Duane absently; and strolled on along the +hall, thinking of Mrs. Dysart.</p> + +<p>The front doors swung wide, opening on the Long Terrace, which looked +out across a valley a hundred feet below, where a small lake glimmered +as still as a mirror against a background of golden willows and low +green mountains.</p> + +<p>There were a number of young people pretending to take tea on the +terrace; and some took it, and others took other things. He knew them +all, and went forward to greet them. Geraldine Seagrave, a new and +bewitching coat of tan tinting cheek and neck, held out her hand with +all the engaging frankness of earlier days. Her clasp was firm, cool, +and nervously cordial—the old confident affection of childhood once +more.</p> + +<p>"I am <i>so</i> glad you came, Duane. I've really missed you." And sweeping +the little circle with an eager glance; "You know everybody, I think. +The Dysarts have not yet appeared, and Scott is down at the Gate Lodge. +Come and sit by me, Duane."</p> + +<p>Two or three girls extended their hands to him—Sylvia Quest, shy and +quiet; Muriel Wye, white-skinned, black-haired, red-lipped, red-cheeked, +with eyes like melted sapphires and the expression of a reckless saint; +and his blond sister, Naïda, who had arrived that afternoon from the +Tappans' at Iron Hill, across the mountain.</p> + +<p>Delancy Grandcourt, uncouth and highly coloured, stood up to shake +hands; Bunbury Gray, a wiry, bronzed little polo-playing squadron man, +hailed Duane with enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>"Awfully glad to see you, Bunny," said Duane, who liked him +immensely—"oh, how are you?" offering his hand to Reginald Wye, a +hard-riding, hard-drinking, straight-shooting young man, who knew +nothing on earth except what concerned sport and the drama. He and his +sister of the sapphire eyes and brilliant cheeks were popularly known as +the Pink 'uns.</p> + +<p>Jack Dysart arrived presently, graceful, supple, always smilingly, +elaborate of manner, apparently unconscious that he was not cordially +admired by the men who returned his greeting. Later, Rosalie, came, +enchantingly demure in her Greuze-like beauty. Chardin might have made +her; possibly Fragonard. She did not resemble the Creator's technique. +Dresden teacups tinkled, ice clattered in tall glasses, the two +fountains splashed away bravely, prettily modulated voices made +agreeable harmony on the terrace, blending with the murmur of leaves +overhead as the wind stirred them to gossip. Over all spread a calm +evening sky.</p> + +<p>"Tea, dear?" asked Geraldine, glancing up at Mrs. Dysart. Rosalie shook +her head with a smile.</p> + +<p>Lang, the second man, was flitting about, busy with a decanter of +Scotch. A moment later Rosalie signified her preference for it with a +slight nod. Geraldine, who sat watching indifferently the filling of +Mrs. Dysart's glass, suddenly leaned back and turned her head sharply, +as though the aroma from glass and decanter were distasteful to her. In +a few minutes she rose, walked over to the parapet, and stood leaning +against the coping, apparently absorbed in the landscape.</p> + +<p>The sun hung low over the flat little tree-clad mountains, which the +lake, now inlaid with pink and gold, reflected. A few fallow deer moved +quietly down there, ruddy spots against the turf.</p> + +<p>Duane, carrying his glass with him, rose and stepped across the strip +of grass to her side, and, glancing askance at her, was on the point of +speaking when he discovered that her eyes were shut and her face +colourless and rigid.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he asked surprised. "Are you feeling faint, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>She opened her eyes, velvet dark and troubled, but did not turn around.</p> + +<p>"It's nothing," she answered calmly. "I was thinking of several things."</p> + +<p>"You look so white——"</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly well. Bend over the parapet with me, Duane. Look at +those rocks down there. What a tumble! What a death!"</p> + +<p>He placed his glass between them on the coping, and leaned over. She did +not notice the glass for a moment. Suddenly she wheeled, as though he +had spoken, and her eyes fell on the glass.</p> + +<p>"What <i>is</i> the matter?" he demanded, as she turned on her heel and moved +away.</p> + +<p>"I'm a trifle nervous, I believe. If you want to see the big trout +breaking on Hurryon, you'd better come with me."</p> + +<p>She was walking swiftly down the drive to the south of the house. He +overtook her and fell into slower step beside her.</p> + +<p>The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains; bluish haze veiled +the valley; a horizon of dazzling yellow flecked with violet faded +upward to palest turquoise. High overhead a feathered cloud hung, tinged +with rose.</p> + +<p>The south drive was bordered deep in syringas, all over snowy bloom; and +as they passed they inhaled the full fragrance of the flowers with every +breath.</p> + +<p>"It's like heaven," said Duane; "and you are not incongruous in the +landscape, either."</p> + +<p>She looked around at him; the smile that curved her mouth had the +faintest suspicion of tenderness about it.</p> + +<p>She said slowly:</p> + +<p>"Do you realise that I am genuinely glad to see you? I've been horrid to +you. I don't yet really believe in you, Duane. I detest some of the +things you are and say and do; but, after all, I've missed you. +Incredible as it sounds, I've been a little lonely without you."</p> + +<p>He said gaily: "When a woman becomes accustomed to chasing the family +cat out of the parlour with the broom, she misses the sport when the cat +migrates permanently."</p> + +<p>"Have you migrated—permanently? O Duane! I thought you <i>did</i> care for +me—in your own careless fashion——"</p> + +<p>"I do. But I'm not hopelessly enamoured of your broom-stick!"</p> + +<p>Her laugh was a little less spontaneous, as she answered:</p> + +<p>"I know I have been rather free with my broom. I'm sorry."</p> + +<p>"You <i>have</i> made some sweeping charges on that cat!" he said, laughing.</p> + +<p>"I know I have. That was two months ago. I don't think I am the morally +self-satisfied prig I was two months ago.... I'd be easier on anything +now, even a cat. But don't think I mean more than I do mean, Duane," she +added hastily. "I've missed you a little. I want you to be nice to +me.... After all, you're the oldest friend I have except Kathleen."</p> + +<p>"I'll be as nice as you'll let me," he said. They turned from the +driveway and entered a broad wood road. "As nice as you'll let me," he +repeated.</p> + +<p>"I won't let you be sentimental, if that's what you mean," she observed.</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because you are you."</p> + +<p>"In a derogatory sense?"</p> + +<p>"Somewhat. I might be like you if I were a man, and had your easy, airy, +inconsequential way with women. But I won't let you have it with me, my +casual friend. Don't hope for it."</p> + +<p>"What have I ever done——"</p> + +<p>"Exactly what you're doing now to Rosalie—what you did to a dozen women +this winter—what you did to me"—she turned and looked at him—"the +first time I ever set eyes on you since we were children together. I +know you are not to be taken seriously; almost everybody knows that! And +all the same, Duane, I've thought about you a lot in these two months up +here, and—I'm happy that you've come at last.... You won't mistake me +and try to be sentimental with me, will you?"</p> + +<p>She laid her slim, sun-tanned hand on his arm; they walked on together +through the woodland where green bramble sprays glimmered through +clustering tree trunks and the fading light turned foliage and +undergrowth to that vivid emerald which heralds dusk.</p> + +<p>"Duane," she said, "I'm dreadfully restless and I cannot account for +it.... Perhaps motherless girls are never quite normal; I don't know. +But, lately, the world has seemed very big and threatening around me.... +Scott is nice to me, usually; Kathleen adorable.... I—I don't know what +I want, what it is I miss."</p> + +<p>Her hand still rested lightly on his arm as they walked forward. She +was speaking at intervals almost as though talking in an undertone to +herself:</p> + +<p>"I'm in—perplexity. I've been troubled. Perhaps that is what makes me +tolerant of you; perhaps that's why I'm glad to see you.... Trouble is a +new thing to me. I thought I had troubles—perhaps I had as a child. But +this is deeper, different, disquieting."</p> + +<p>"Are you in love?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Really?"</p> + +<p>"Really."</p> + +<p>"Then what——"</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you. Anyway, it won't last. It can't, ... Can it?"</p> + +<p>She looked around at him, and they both laughed a little at her +inconsequence.</p> + +<p>"I feel better for pretending to tell you, anyway," she said, as they +halted before high iron gates hung between two granite posts from which +the woven wire fence of the game park, ten feet high, stretched away +into the darkening woods on either hand.</p> + +<p>"This is the Sachem's Gate," she said; "here is the key; unlock it, +please."</p> + +<p>Inside they crossed a stream dashing between tanks set with fern and +tall silver birches.</p> + +<p>"Hurryon Brook," she said. "Isn't it a beauty? It pours into the Gray +Water a little farther ahead. We must hasten, or it will be too dark to +see the trout."</p> + +<p>Twice again they crossed the rushing brook on log bridges. Then through +the trees stretching out before them they caught sight of the Gray +Water, crinkling like a flattened sheet of hammered silver.</p> + +<p>Everywhere the surface was starred and ringed and spattered by the +jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap! +clip-clap! splash!—hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that +the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse.</p> + +<p>Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full +length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over, +showing "colour."</p> + +<p>"There is Scott," she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest +quiet—"out there in that canoe. No, he hasn't taken his rod; he seldom +does; he's perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half +the night he's out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting, +just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his +dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very +little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all +around—some within a foot of his canoe! He'll never come in to dress +for dinner unless we call him."</p> + +<p>And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call +floating out across the Gray Water.</p> + +<p>"All right; I'll come!" shouted her brother. "Wait a moment!"</p> + +<p>They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out, +casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then +ten, and scores and myriads.</p> + +<p>They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much +to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the +uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased +as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute.</p> + +<p>"Is not this stillness delicious?" she breathed.</p> + +<p>"It is sweeter when you break it."</p> + +<p>"Please don't say such things.... <i>Can't</i> you understand how much I want +you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don't know why, I've seemed to feel +so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I—just want—a +friend."</p> + +<p>There was a silence; then he said lightly:</p> + +<p>"I've felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I +seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which +they can't break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I +never thought of you as one of those."</p> + +<p>"I seem to be at times—not exactly isolated, but unable to get close +to—to Kathleen, for example. Do you know, Duane, it might be very good +for me to have you to talk to."</p> + +<p>"People usually like to talk to me. I've noticed it. But the curious +part of it is that they have nothing to give me in exchange for my +attention."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Oh, nothing. I amuse people; I know it. You—and +everybody—say I am all cleverness and froth—not to be taken seriously. +But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. +Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence—all +are answered by their own echo.... And you and the others think it is I +who answer."</p> + +<p>He laughed, not looking at her:</p> + +<p>"And it happens that you—and the others—are mistaken. If I appear to +be what you say I am, it is merely a form of self-defence. Do you think +I could endure the empty nonsense of a New York winter if I did not +present to it a surface like a sounding-board and let Folly converse +with its own echo—while, behind it, underneath it, Duane Mallett goes +about his own business."</p> + +<p>Astonished, not clearly understanding, she listened in absolute silence. +Never in all her life had she heard him speak in such a manner. She +could not make out whether bitterness lay under his light and easy +speech, whether a maliciously perverse humour lurked there, whether it +was some new mockery.</p> + +<p>He said carelessly: "I give what I receive. And I have never received +any very serious attention from anybody. I'm only Duane Mallett, +identified with the wealthy section of society you inhabit, the son of a +wealthy man, who went abroad and dabbled in colour and who paints +pictures of pretty women. Everybody and the newspapers know me. What I +see of women is a polished coquetry that mirrors my fixed smirk; what I +see of men is less interesting."</p> + +<p>He looked out through the dusk at the darkening water:</p> + +<p>"You say you are beginning to feel isolated. Can anybody with any +rudiment of intellect feel otherwise in the social environment you and I +inhabit—where distinction and inherited position count for absolutely +nothing unless propped up by wealth—where any ass is tolerated whose +fortune and lineage pass inspection—where there is no place for +intelligence and talent, even when combined with breeding and lineage, +unless you are properly ballasted with money enough to forget that you +have any?"</p> + +<p>He laughed.</p> + +<p>"So you feel isolated? I do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of +decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, +frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the +players half dead with ennui and their neighbour's wives——"</p> + +<p>"Duane!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord, you're a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won't shock +you, more's the pity.... As for the game—I'm done with it; I can't +stand it. The amusement I extract doesn't pay. Good God! and you wonder +why I kiss a few of you for distraction's sake, press a finger-tip or +two, brush a waist with my sleeve!"</p> + +<p>He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands +hanging between his knees.</p> + +<p>"Duane," she said in astonishment, "what do you mean? Are you trying to +quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new +forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades +we once were?"</p> + +<p>"We're too old to be comrades. That's book rubbish. Men and women have +nothing in common, intellectually, unless they're in love. For company, +for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather +be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we're going +to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or +for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and +figure in any woman. What's the use of marrying for what you'll scarcely +notice in a month?... If you <i>are you</i>, Geraldine, under all your +attractive surface there's something else which you have never given +me."</p> + +<p>"Wh—what?" she asked faintly.</p> + +<p>"Intelligent interest in me."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you think I underestimate you?"</p> + +<p>"Not as I am. I don't amount to much; but I might if you cared."</p> + +<p>"Cared for you?"</p> + +<p>"No, confound it! Cared for what I could be."</p> + +<p>"I—I don't think I understand. What could you be?"</p> + +<p>"A man, for one thing. I'm a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait +painter for another. The combination is horrible."</p> + +<p>"You are a successful painter."</p> + +<p>"Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since +my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent, +affectionate question about my work?"</p> + +<p>"I—yes—but I don't know anything about——"</p> + +<p>He laughed, and it hurt her.</p> + +<p>"Don't you understand," she said, "that ordinary people are very shy +about talking art to a professional——"</p> + +<p>"I don't want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue eyes and blond +curls can do it. I wanted you to see what I do, say what you think, like +it or damn it—only do something about it! You've never been to my +studio except to stand with the perfumed crowd and talk commonplaces in +front of a picture."</p> + +<p>"I can't go alone."</p> + +<p>"Can't you?" he asked, looking closely at her in the dusk, so close that +she could see every mocking feature.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said in a low, surprised voice, "I could go +alone—anywhere—with you.... I didn't realise it before, Duane."</p> + +<p>"You never tried. You once mistook an impulse of genuine passion for the +sort of thing I've done since. You made a terrific fuss about being +kissed when I saw, as soon as I saw you, that I wanted to win you, if +you'd let me. Since then you've chosen the key-note of our relations, +not I, and you don't like my interpretation of my part."</p> + +<p>For a while she sat silent, preoccupied with this totally new revelation +of a man about whom she supposed she had long ago made up her mind.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad we've had this talk," she said at last.</p> + +<p>"I am, too. I haven't asked you to fall in love with me; I haven't asked +for your confidence. I've asked you to take an intelligent, affectionate +interest in what I might become, and perhaps you and I won't be so +lonely if you do."</p> + +<p>He struck a match in the darkness and lighted a cigarette. Close inshore +Scott Seagrave's electric torch flashed. They heard the velvety scraping +of the canoe, the rattle and thump as he flung it, bottom upward, on the +sandy point.</p> + +<p>"Hello, you people! Where are you?"—sweeping the wood's edge with his +flash-light—"oh, there you are. Isn't this glorious? Did you ever see +such a sight as those big fellows jumping?"</p> + +<p>"Meanwhile," said his sister, rising, "our guests are doubtless yelling +with hunger. What time is it, Duane? Half-past eight? Please hurry, +Scott; we've got to get back and dress in five minutes!"</p> + +<p>"I can do it easily," announced her brother, going ahead to light the +path. And all the way home he discussed aloud upon the stripping, +hatching, breeding, care, and diseases of trout, never looking back, +and quite confident that they were listening attentively to his woodland +lecture.</p> + +<p>"Duane," she said, lowering her voice, "do you think all our +misunderstandings are ended?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he replied gaily. "Don't you?"</p> + +<p>"But how am I going to make everybody think you are not frivolous?"</p> + +<p>"I am frivolous. There's lots of froth to me—on top. You know that sort +of foam you see on grass-stems in the fields. Hidden away inside is a +very clever and busy little creature. He uses the froth to protect +himself."</p> + +<p>"Are you going to froth?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—until——"</p> + +<p>"Until what?"</p> + +<p>"You——"</p> + +<p>"Go on."</p> + +<p>"Shall I say it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, unless you and I find each other intellectually +satisfactory."</p> + +<p>"You said only a man—in love with a woman—could find her interesting +in that way."</p> + +<p>"Yes. What of it?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing.... Only I'm afraid you'll have to froth, then," she said, +laughing. "I haven't any intention of falling in love with you, Duane, +and you'll find me stupid if I don't. Do you know that what you intimate +is very horrid?"</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is. Besides, it's a sort of threat——"</p> + +<p>"A threat?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly. You threaten to—you know perfectly well what you threaten +to do unless I immediately consider the possibility of our—caring for +each other—sentimentally."</p> + +<p>"But what do you care if you don't care?"</p> + +<p>"I—don't. All the same it's horrid and—and unfair. Suppose I was +frothy and behaved——"</p> + +<p>"Misbehaved?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Just because you wouldn't agree to take a sentimental interest in +me?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>would</i> agree! I'll agree now!"</p> + +<p>"Suppose you wouldn't?"</p> + +<p>"I can't imagine——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane, be honest! And I'll tell you flatly—if you do misbehave. +Just because I don't particularly desire to rush into your arms——"</p> + +<p>"But I haven't threatened to."</p> + +<p>Unconsciously she laid her hand on his arm again, slipping it a little +way under.</p> + +<p>"You're just as you were years ago—just the dearest of playmates. We're +not too old to play, are we?"</p> + +<p>"I can't with you; it's too dangerous."</p> + +<p>"What nonsense! Yes, you can. You like me for my intelligence in spite +of what you say about men and women——"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't care for your intelligence if I were not in——"</p> + +<p>"Duane, stop, please!"</p> + +<p>"In danger," he continued blandly, "of proving my proposition."</p> + +<p>"You are insufferable. I am as intelligent as you."</p> + +<p>"I know it, but it wouldn't attract me unless——"</p> + +<p>"It ought to," she said hastily. "And, Duane, I'm going to make you +take me into account. I'm going to exercise a man's privilege with you +by—by saying frankly—several things——"</p> + +<p>"What things?"</p> + +<p>The amused mockery in his voice gave her courage.</p> + +<p>"For one thing, I'm going to tell you that people—gossip—that there +are—are——"</p> + +<p>"Rumours?" he asked in pretended anxiety.</p> + +<p>"Yes.... About you and—of course they are silly and contemptible; but +what's the use of being attentive enough to a woman—careless enough to +give colour to them?"</p> + +<p>After an interval he said: "Perhaps you'll tell me who beside myself +these rumours concern?"</p> + +<p>"You know, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"There might be several," he said coolly. "Who is it?"</p> + +<p>For a moment a tiny flash of anger made her cheeks hot. Then she said:</p> + +<p>"You know perfectly well it's Rosalie. I think we have become good +enough comrades for me to use a man's privilege——"</p> + +<p>"Men wouldn't permit themselves that sort of privilege," he said, +laughing.</p> + +<p>"Aren't men frank with their friends?" she demanded hotly.</p> + +<p>"About as frank as women."</p> + +<p>"I thought—" She hesitated, tingling with the old desire to hurt him, +flick him in the raw, make him wince in his exasperating complacency. +Then, "I've said it anyhow. I'm trying to show an interest in you—as +you asked me to do——"</p> + +<p>He turned in the darkness, caught her hand:</p> + +<p>"You dear little thing," he whispered, laughing.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER VI<br />ADRIFT</a></h2> + + +<p>During the week the guests at Roya-Neh were left very much to their own +devices. Nobody was asked to do anything; there were several good enough +horses at their disposal, two motor cars, a power-boat, canoes, rods, +and tennis courts and golf links. The chances are they wanted +sea-bathing. Inland guests usually do.</p> + +<p>Scott Seagrave, however, concerned himself little about his guests. All +day long he moused about his new estate, field-glasses dangling, cap on +the back of his head, pockets bulging with untidy odds and ends until +the increasing carelessness of his attire and manners moved Kathleen +Severn to protest.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what is the matter with you, Scott," she said. "You were +always such a fastidious boy—even dandified. Doesn't anybody ever cut +your hair? Doesn't somebody keep your clothes in order?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but I tear 'em again," he replied, carefully examining a small +dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. "I say, Kathleen, +look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along +Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the +ground-floor apartment of a flat stone."</p> + +<p>Kathleen craned her dainty neck over the shoulder of his ragged shooting +coat.</p> + +<p>"He's red enough to be poisonous, isn't he? Oh, do be careful!"</p> + +<p>"It's only a young newt. Take him in your hand; he's cool and clammy +and rather agreeable."</p> + +<p>"Scott, I won't touch him!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you will!" He caught her by the arm; "I'm going to teach you not +to be afraid of things outdoors. This lizard-like thing is perfectly +harmless. Hold out your hand!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott, don't make me——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I will. I thought you and I were going to be in thorough accord +and sympathy and everything else."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but you mustn't bully me."</p> + +<p>"I'm not. I merely want you to get over your absurd fear of live things, +so that you and I can really enjoy ourselves. You said you would, +Kathleen."</p> + +<p>"Can't we be in perfect sympathy and roam about and—and everything, +unless I touch such things?"</p> + +<p>He said reproachfully, balancing the little creature on his palm: "The +fun is in being perfectly confident and fearless. You have no idea how I +like all these things. You said you were going to like 'em, too."</p> + +<p>"I do—rather."</p> + +<p>"Then take this one and pet it."</p> + +<p>She glanced at the boy beside her, realising how completely their former +relations were changing.</p> + +<p>Long ago she had given all her heart to the Seagrave children—all the +unspent passion in her had become an unswerving devotion to them. And +now, a woman still young, the devotion remained, but time was modifying +it in a manner sometimes disquieting. She tried not to remember that +now, in Scott, she had a man to deal with, and tried in vain; and dealt +with him weakly, and he was beginning to do with her as he pleased.</p> + +<p>"You do like to bully me, don't you?" she said.</p> + +<p>"I only want you to like to do what I like to do."</p> + +<p>She stood silent a moment, then, with a shudder, held out her hand, +fingers rigid and wide apart.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" she protested, as he placed the small dark-red amphibian on the +palm, where it crinkled up and lowered its head.</p> + +<p>"That's the idea!" he said, delighted. "Here, I'll take it now. Some day +you'll be able to handle snakes if you'll only have patience."</p> + +<p>"But I don't want to." She stood holding out the contaminated hand for a +moment, then dropped on her knees and scrubbed it vigorously in the +brook.</p> + +<p>"You see," said Scott, squatting cheerfully beside her, "you and I don't +yet begin to realise the pleasure that there is in these woods and +streams—hidden and waiting for us to discover it. I wouldn't bother +with any other woman, but you've always liked what I like, and its half +the fun in having you see these things. Look here, Kathleen, I'm keeping +a book of field notes." He extracted from his stuffed pockets a small +leather-covered book, fished out a stylograph, and wrote the date while +she watched over his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Discovered what seems to be a small dark-red newt under a stone near +Hurryon Brook. Couldn't make it bite me, so let Kathleen hold it. Query: +Is it a land or water lizard, a salamander, or a newt; and what does it +feed on and where does it deposit its eggs?"</p> + +<p>Kathleen's violet eyes wandered to the written page opposite.</p> + +<p>"Did you really see an otter, Scott?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I did!" he exclaimed. "Out in the Gray Water, swimming like a dog. +That was yesterday afternoon. It's a scarce creature here. I'll tell you +what, Kathleen; we'll take our luncheon and go out and spend the day +watching for it."</p> + +<p>"No," she said, drying her hands on her handkerchief, "I can't spend +every minute of the day with you. Ask some other woman."</p> + +<p>"What other woman?" She was gazing out at the sunlit ripples. A little +unquiet thrill leaped through her veins, but she went on carelessly:</p> + +<p>"Take some pretty woman out with you. There are several here——"</p> + +<p>"Pretty woman," he repeated. "Do you think that's the only reason I want +you to come?"</p> + +<p>"Only reason? What a silly thing to say, Scott. I am not a pretty woman +to you—in that sense——"</p> + +<p>"You are the prettiest I ever saw," he said, looking at her; and again +the unquiet thrill ran like lightning through her veins. But she only +laughed carelessly and said:</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course, Geraldine and I expect our big brother to say such +things."</p> + +<p>"It has nothing to do with Geraldine or with brothers," he said +doggedly. She strove to laugh, caught his gaze, and, discountenanced, +turned toward the stream.</p> + +<p>"We can cross on the stepping stones," she suggested. And after a +moment: "Are you coming?"</p> + +<p>"See here, Kathleen," he said, "you're not acting squarely with me."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"No, you're not. I'm a man, and you know it."</p> + +<p>"Of course you are, Scott."</p> + +<p>"Then I wish you'd recognise it. What's the use of mortifying me when I +act—speak—behave as any man behaves who—who—is—fond of a—person."</p> + +<p>"But I don't mean to—to mortify you. What have I done?"</p> + +<p>He dug his hands into the pockets of his riding breeches, took two or +three short turns along the bank, came back to where she was standing.</p> + +<p>"You probably don't remember," he said, "one night this spring +when—when—" He stopped short. The vivid tint in her cheeks was his +answer—a swift, disconcerting answer to an incomplete question, the +remainder of which he himself had scarcely yet analysed.</p> + +<p>"Scott, dear," she said steadily, in spite of her softly burning cheeks, +"I will be quite honest with you if you wish. I do know what you've been +trying to say. I am conscious that you are no longer the boy I could pet +and love and caress without embarrassment to either of us. You are a +man, but try to remember that I am several years older——"</p> + +<p>"Does that matter!" he burst out.</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear, it does.... I care for you—and Geraldine—more than for +anybody in the world. I understand your loyalty to me, Scott, and I—I +love it. But don't confuse it with any serious sentiment."</p> + +<p>"I do care seriously."</p> + +<p>"You make me very happy. Care for me very, very seriously; I want you +to; I—I need it. But don't mistake the kind of affection that we have +for each other for anything deeper, will you?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you want to care for me—that way?"</p> + +<p>"Not <i>that</i> way, Scott."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"I've told you. I am so much older——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Couldn't</i> you, all the same?"</p> + +<p>She was trembling inwardly. She leaned against a white birch-tree and +passed one hand across her eyes and upward through the thick burnished +hair.</p> + +<p>"No, I couldn't," she whispered.</p> + +<p>The boy walked to the edge of the brook. Past him hurried the sun-tipped +ripples; under them, in irregular wedge formation, little ones ahead, +big ones in the rear, lay a school of trout, wavering silhouettes of +amber against the bottom sands.</p> + +<p>One arm encircling the birch-tree, she looked after him in silence, +waiting. And after a while he turned and came back to her:</p> + +<p>"I suppose you knew I fell in love with you that night when—when—you +remember, don't you?"</p> + +<p>She did not answer.</p> + +<p>"I don't know how it happened," he said: "something about you did it. I +want to say that I've loved you ever since. It's made me serious.... I +haven't bothered with girls since. You are the only woman who interests +me. I think about you most of the time when I'm not doing something +else," he explained naïvely. "I know perfectly well I'm in love with you +because I don't dare touch you—and I've never thought of—of kissing +you good-night as we used to before that night last spring.... You +remember that we didn't do it that night, don't you?"</p> + +<p>Still no answer, and Kathleen's delicate, blue-veined hands were +clenched at her sides and her breath came irregularly.</p> + +<p>"That was the reason," he said. "I don't know how I've found courage to +tell you. I've often been afraid you would laugh at me if I told you.... +If it's only our ages—you seem as young as I do...." He looked up, +hopefully; but she made no response.</p> + +<p>The boy drew a long breath.</p> + +<p>"I love you, anyway," he said. "And that's how it is."</p> + +<p>She neither spoke nor stirred.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," he went on, "because I was such a beast of a boy, you can +never forget it."</p> + +<p>"You were the sweetest, the best—" Her voice broke; she swung about, +moved away a few paces, stood still. When he halted behind her she +turned.</p> + +<p>"Dearest," she said tremulously, "let me give you what I can—love, as +always—solicitude, companionship, deep sympathy in your pleasures, deep +interest in your amusements.... Don't ask for more; don't think that you +want more. Don't try to change the loyalty and love you have always had +for something you—neither of us understand—neither of us ought to +desire—or even think of——"</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Can't you understand? Even if I were not too old in years, I dare not +give up what I have of you and Geraldine for this new—for anything more +hazardous.... Suppose it were so—that I could venture to think I cared +for you that way? What might I put in peril?—Geraldine's affection for +me—perhaps her relations with you.... And the world is cynical, Scott, +and you are wealthy even among very rich men, and I was your paid +guardian—quite penniless—engaged to care for and instruct——"</p> + +<p>"Don't say such things!" he said angrily.</p> + +<p>"The world would say them—your friends—perhaps Geraldine might be led +to doubt—Oh, Scott, dear, I know, I know! And above all—I am afraid. +There are too many years between us—too many blessed memories of my +children to risk.... Don't try to make me care for you in any other +way."</p> + +<p>A quick flame leaped in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"<i>Could</i> I?"</p> + +<p>"No!" she exclaimed, appalled.</p> + +<p>"Then why do you ask me not to try? I believe I could!"</p> + +<p>"You cannot! You cannot, believe me. Won't you believe me? It must not +happen; it is all wrong—in every way——"</p> + +<p>He stood looking at her with a new expression on his face.</p> + +<p>"If you are so alarmed," he said slowly, "you must have already thought +about it. You'll think about it now, anyway."</p> + +<p>"We are both going to forget it. Promise that you will!" She added +hurriedly: "Drop my hand, please; there is Geraldine—and Mr. +Grandcourt, too!... Tell me—do my eyes look queer? Are they red and +horrid?... Don't look at me that way. For goodness' sake, don't display +any personal interest in me. Go and turn over some flat rocks and find +some lizards!"</p> + +<p>Geraldine, bare-armed and short-skirted, came swinging along the +woodland path, Delancy Grandcourt dogging her heels, as usual, carrying +a pair of rods and catching the artificial flies in the bushes at every +step.</p> + +<p>"We're all out of trout at the house!" she called across to the stream +to her brother. "Jack Dysart is fishing down the creek with Naïda and +Sylvia. Where is Duane?"</p> + +<p>"Somewhere around, I suppose," replied Scott sulkily. His sister took a +running jump, cleared the bank, and alighted on a rock in the stream. +Poised there she looked back at Grandcourt, laughed, sprang forward +from stone to stone, and leaped to the moss beside Kathleen.</p> + +<p>"Hello, dear!" she nodded. "Where did you cross? And where is Duane?"</p> + +<p>"We crossed by the log bridge below," replied Kathleen. She added: +"Duane left us half an hour ago. Wasn't it half an hour ago, Scott?" +with a rising inflection that conveyed something of warning, something +of an appeal. But on Scott's face the sullen disconcerted expression had +not entirely faded, and his sister inspected him curiously. Then without +knowing why, exactly, she turned and looked at Kathleen.</p> + +<p>There was a subdued and dewy brilliancy in Kathleen's eyes, a bright +freshness to her cheeks, radiantly and absurdly youthful; and something +else—something so indefinable, so subtle, that only another woman's +instinct might divine it—something invisible and inward, which +transfigured her with a youthful loveliness almost startling.</p> + +<p>They looked at one another. Geraldine, conscious of something she could +not understand, glanced again at her sulky brother.</p> + +<p>"What's amiss, Scott?" she asked. "Has anything gone wrong anywhere?"</p> + +<p>Scott, pretending to be very busy untangling Grandcourt's cast from the +branches of a lusty young birch, said, "No, of course not," and the +girl, wondering, turned to Kathleen, who sustained her questioning eyes +without a tremor.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with Scott?" asked his sister. "He's the +guiltiest-looking man—why, it's absurd, Kathleen! Upon my word, the boy +is blushing!"</p> + +<p>"What!" exclaimed Scott so furiously that everybody laughed. And +presently Geraldine asked again where Duane was.</p> + +<p>"Rosalie Dysart is canoeing on the Gray Water, and she hailed him and he +left us and went down to the river," said Kathleen carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Did Duane join her?"</p> + +<p>"I think so—" She hesitated, watching Geraldine's sombre eyes. "I +really don't know," she added. And, in a lower voice: "I wish either +Duane or Rosalie would go. They certainly are behaving unwisely."</p> + +<p>Geraldine turned and looked through the woods toward the Gray Water.</p> + +<p>"It's their affair," she said curtly. "I've got to make Delancy fish or +we won't have enough trout for luncheon. Scott!" calling to her brother, +"your horrid trout won't rise this morning. For goodness' sake, try to +catch something beside lizards and water-beetles!"</p> + +<p>For a moment she stood looking around her, as though perplexed and +preoccupied. There was sunlight on the glade and on the ripples, but the +daylight seemed to have become duller to her.</p> + +<p>She walked up-stream for a little distance before she noticed Grandcourt +plodding faithfully at her heels.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" she said impatiently, "I thought you were fishing. You must catch +something, you know, or we'll all go hungry."</p> + +<p>"Nothing bites on these bally flies," he explained.</p> + +<p>"Nothing bites because your flies are usually caught in a tree-top. +Trout are not arboreal. I'm ashamed of you, Delancy. If you can't keep +your line free in the woods"—she hesitated, then reddening a little +under her tan—"you had better go and get a canoe and find +Duane Mallett and help him catch—something worth while."</p> + +<p>"Don't you want me to stay with you?" asked the big, awkward fellow +appealingly. "There's no fun in being with Rosalie and Duane."</p> + +<p>"No, I don't. Look! Your flies are in that bush! Untangle them and go to +the Gray Water."</p> + +<p>"Won't you come, too, Miss Seagrave?"</p> + +<p>"No; I'm going back to the house.... And don't you dare return without a +decent brace of trout."</p> + +<p>"All right," he said resignedly. The midges bothered him; he mopped his +red face, tugged at the line, but the flies were fast in a hazel bush.</p> + +<p>"Damn this sort of thing," he muttered, looking piteously after +Geraldine. She was already far away among the trees, skirts wrapped +close to avoid briers, big straw hat dangling in one hand.</p> + +<p>As she walked toward the Sachem's Gate she was swinging her hat and +singing, apparently as unconcernedly as though care rested lightly upon +her young shoulders.</p> + +<p>Out on the high-road a number of her guests whizzed past in one of +Scott's motors; there came a swift hail, a gust of wind-blown laughter, +and the car was gone in a whirl of dust. She stood in the road watching +it recede, then walked forward again toward the house.</p> + +<p>Her accustomed elasticity appeared to have left her; the sun was +becoming oppressive; her white-shod feet dragged a little, which was so +unusual that she straightened her head and shoulders with nervous +abruptness.</p> + +<p>"What on earth is the matter with me?" she said, half aloud, to herself.</p> + +<p>During these last two months, and apparently apropos of nothing at all, +an unaccustomed sense of depression sometimes crept upon her.</p> + +<p>At first she disregarded it as the purely physical lassitude of spring, +but now it was beginning to disquiet her. Once a hazy suspicion took +shape—hastily dismissed—that some sense, some temporarily suppressed +desire was troubling her. The same idea had awakened again that evening +on the terrace when the faint odour from the decanter attracted her. And +again she suspected, and shrank away into herself, shocked, frightened, +surprised, yet still defiantly incredulous.</p> + +<p>Yet her suspicions had been correct. It was habit, disturbed by the +tardiness of accustomed tribute, that stirred at moments, demanding +recognition.</p> + +<p>Since that night in early spring when fear and horror of herself had +suddenly checked a custom which she had hitherto supposed to be nothing +worse than foolish, twice—at times inadvertently, at times +deliberately—she had sought relief from sleepless nervousness and this +new depression in the old and apparently harmless manner of her +girlhood. For weeks now she had exercised little control of herself, +feeling immune, yet it scared her a little to recognise again in herself +the restless premonitions of desire. For here, in the sunshine of the +forest-bordered highway, that same dull uneasiness was stirring once +more.</p> + +<p>It was true, other things had stirred her to uneasiness that morning—an +indefinable impression concerning Kathleen—a definite one which +concerned Rosalie Dysart and Duane, and which began to exasperate her.</p> + +<p>All her elasticity was gone now; tired without reason, she plodded on +along the road in her little white shoes, head bent, brown eyes +brooding, striving to fix her wandering thoughts on Duane Mallett to +fight down the threatening murmurs of a peril still scarcely +comprehended.</p> + +<p>"Anyway," she said half aloud, "even if I ever could care for him, I +dare not let myself do it with this absurd inclination always +threatening me."</p> + +<p>She had said it! Scarcely yet understanding the purport of her own +words, yet electrified, glaringly enlightened by them, she halted. A +confused sense that something vital had occurred in her life stilled her +heart and her breathing together.</p> + +<p>After a moment she straightened up and walked forward, turned across the +lawn and into the syringa-bordered drive.</p> + +<p>There was nobody in the terrace except Bunbury Gray in a brilliant +waistcoat, who sat smoking a very large faïence pipe and reading a +sporting magazine. He got up with alacrity when he saw her, fetched her +a big wicker chair, evidently inclined to let her divert him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not going to," she observed, sinking into the cushions. For a +moment she felt rather limp, then a quiver passed through her, +tightening the relaxed nerves.</p> + +<p>"Bunbury," she said, "do you know any men who ever get tired of idleness +and clothes and their neighbours' wives?"</p> + +<p>"Sure," he said, surprised, "I get tired of those things all right. I've +got enough of this tailor, for example," looking at his trousers. "I'm +tired of idleness, too. Shall we do something and forget the cut of my +clothes?"</p> + +<p>"What do you do when you tire of people and things?"</p> + +<p>"Change partners or go away. That's easy."</p> + +<p>"You can't change yourself—or go away from yourself."</p> + +<p>"But I don't get tired of myself," he explained in astonishment. She +regarded him curiously from the depths of her wicker chair.</p> + +<p>"Bunbury, do you remember when we were engaged?"</p> + +<p>He grinned. "Rather. I wouldn't mind being it again."</p> + +<p>"Engaged?"</p> + +<p>"Sure thing. Will you take me on again, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>"I thought you cared for Sylvia Quest."</p> + +<p>"I do, but I can stop it."</p> + +<p>She still regarded him with brown-eyed curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Didn't you really tire of our engagement?"</p> + +<p>"You did. You said that my tailor is the vital part of me."</p> + +<p>She laughed. "Well, you <i>are</i> only a carefully groomed combination of +New York good form and good nature, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. That's rather rough, isn't it? Or do you really mean it +that way?"</p> + +<p>"No, Bunny dear. I only mean that you're like the others. All the men I +know are about the same sort. You all wear too many ties and waistcoats; +you are, and say, and do too many kinds of fashionable things. You play +too much tennis, drink too many pegs, gamble too much, ride and drive +too much. You all have too much and too many—if you understand that! +You ask too much and you give too little; you say too much which means +too little. Is there none among you who knows something that amounts to +something, and how to say it and do it?"</p> + +<p>"What the deuce are you driving at, Geraldine?" he asked, bewildered.</p> + +<p>"I'm just tired and irritable, Bunny, and I'm taking it out on you.... +Because you were always kind—and even when foolish you were often +considerate.... That's a new waistcoat, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Well—I don't—know," he began, perplexed and suspicious, but she cut +him short with a light little laugh and reached out to pat his hand.</p> + +<p>"Don't mind me. You know I like you.... I'm only bored with your +species. What do you do when you don't know what to do, Bunny?"</p> + +<p>"Take a peg," he said, brightening up. "Do you—shall I call +somebody——"</p> + +<p>"No, please."</p> + +<p>She extended her slim limbs and crossed her feet. Lying still there in +the sunshine, arms crooked behind her head, she gazed straight out +ahead. Light breezes lifted her soft bright hair; the same zephyrs bore +from tennis courts on the east the far laughter and calling of the +unseen players.</p> + +<p>"Who are they?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"The Pink 'uns, Naïda, and Jack Dysart. There's ten up on every set," he +added, "and I've side obligations with Rosalie and Duane. Take you on if +you like; odds are on the Pink 'uns. Or I'll get a lump of sugar and we +can play 'Fly Loo.'"</p> + +<p>"No, thanks."</p> + +<p>A few moments later she said:</p> + +<p>"Do you know, somehow, recently, the forest world—all this pretty place +of lakes and trees—" waving her arm toward the horizon—"seems to be +tarnished with the hard living and empty thinking of the people I have +brought into it.... I include myself. The region is redolent of money +and the things it buys. I had a better time before I had any or heard +about it."</p> + +<p>"Why, you've always had it——"</p> + +<p>"But I didn't know it. I'd like to give mine away and do something for a +living."</p> + +<p>"Oh, every girl has that notion once in a lifetime."</p> + +<p>"Have they?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Sure. It's hysteria. I had it myself once. But I found I could keep +busy enough doing nothing without presenting my income to the +Senegambians and spending life in a Wall Street office. Of course if I +had a pretty fancy for the artistic and useful—as Duane Mallett has—I +suppose I'd get busy and paint things and sell 'em by the perspiration +of my brow——"</p> + +<p>She said disdainfully: "If you were never any busier than Duane, you +wouldn't be very busy."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Duane seems to keep at it, even here, doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>She looked up in surprise: "Duane hasn't done any work since he's been +here, has he?"</p> + +<p>"Didn't you know? What do you suppose he's about every morning?"</p> + +<p>"He's about—Rosalie," she said coolly. "I've never seen any colour box +or easel in their outfit."</p> + +<p>"Oh, he keeps his traps at Hurryon Lodge. He's made a lot of sketches. I +saw several at the Lodge. And he's doing a big canvas of Rosalie down +there, too."</p> + +<p>"At Hurryon Lodge?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Miller lets them have the garret for a studio."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know that," she said slowly.</p> + +<p>"Didn't you? People are rather catty about it."</p> + +<p>"Catty?"</p> + +<p>Sheer surprise silenced her for a while, then hurt curiosity drove her +to questions; but little Bunbury didn't know much more about the matter, +merely shrugging his shoulders and saying: "It's casual but it's all +right."</p> + +<p>Later the tennis players, sunburned and perspiring, came swinging up +from the courts on their way to the showers. Bunbury began to settle his +obligations; Naïda and the Pink 'uns went indoors; Jack Dysart, +handsome, dishevelled, sat down beside Geraldine, fastening his sleeves.</p> + +<p>"I lost twice twenty," he observed. "Bunny is in fifty, I believe. Duane +and Rosalie lose."</p> + +<p>"Is that all you care about the game?" she asked with a note of contempt +in her voice.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's good for one's health," he said.</p> + +<p>"So is confession, but there's no sport in it. Tell me, Mr. Dysart, +don't you play any game for it's own sake?"</p> + +<p>"Two, mademoiselle," he said politely.</p> + +<p>"What two?"</p> + +<p>"Chess is one."</p> + +<p>"What is the other?"</p> + +<p>"Love," he replied, smiling at her so blandly that she laughed. Then she +thought of Rosalie, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say something +impudent. But "Do you do that game very well?" was all she said.</p> + +<p>"Would you care to judge how well I do it?"</p> + +<p>"As umpire? Yes, if you like."</p> + +<p>He said: "We will umpire our own game, Miss Seagrave."</p> + +<p>"Oh, we couldn't do that, could we? We couldn't play and umpire, too." +Suddenly the thought of Duane and Rosalie turned her bitter and she +said:</p> + +<p>"We'll have two perfectly disinterested umpires. I choose your wife for +one. Whom do you choose?"</p> + +<p>Over his handsome face the slightest muscular change passed, but far +from wincing he nodded coolly.</p> + +<p>"One umpire is enough," he said. "When our game is well on you may ask +Rosalie to judge how well I've done it—if you care to."</p> + +<p>The bright smile she wore changed. Her face was now only a lovely +dark-eyed mask, behind which her thoughts had suddenly begun +racing—wild little thoughts, all tumult and confusion, all trembling, +too, with some scarcely understood hurt lashing them to recklessness.</p> + +<p>"We'll have two umpires," she insisted, scarcely knowing what she said. +"I'll choose Duane for the second. He and Rosalie ought to be able to +agree on the result of our game."</p> + +<p>Dysart turned his head away leisurely, then looked around again +unsmiling.</p> + +<p>"Two umpires? Soit! But that means you consent to play."</p> + +<p>"Play?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly."</p> + +<p>"With you?"</p> + +<p>"With me."</p> + +<p>"I'll consider it.... Do you know we have been talking utter nonsense?"</p> + +<p>"That's part of the game."</p> + +<p>"Oh, then—do you assume that the—the game has already begun?"</p> + +<p>"It usually opens that way, I believe."</p> + +<p>"And where does it end, Mr. Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"That is for you to say," he replied in a lower voice.</p> + +<p>"Oh! And what are the rules?"</p> + +<p>"The player who first falls really in love loses. There are no stakes. +We play as sportsmen—for the game's sake. Is it understood?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated, smiling, a little excited, a little interested in the way +he put things.</p> + +<p>At that same moment, across the lawn, Rosalie and Duane strolled into +view. She saw them, and with a nervous movement, almost involuntary, she +turned her back on them.</p> + +<p>Neither she nor Dysart spoke. She gazed very steadily at the horizon, as +though there were sounds beyond the green world's rim. A few seconds +later a shadow fell over the terrace at her feet—two shadows +intermingled. She saw them on the grass at her feet, then quietly lifted +her head.</p> + +<p>"We caught no trout," said Rosalie, sitting down on the arm of the chair +that Duane drew forward. "I fussed about in that canoe until Duane came +along, and then we went in swimming."</p> + +<p>"Swimming?" repeated Geraldine, dumfounded.</p> + +<p>Rosalie balanced herself serenely on her chair-arm.</p> + +<p>"Oh, we often do that."</p> + +<p>"Swim—where?"</p> + +<p>"Why across the Gray Water, child!"</p> + +<p>"But—there are no bath houses——"</p> + +<p>Rosalie laughed outright.</p> + +<p>"Quite Arcadian, isn't it? Duane has the forest on one side of the Gray +Water for a dressing-room, and I the forest on the other side. Then we +swim out and shake hands in the middle. Our bathing dresses are drying +on Miller's lawn. Please do tell me somebody is scandalised. I've done +my best to brighten up this house party."</p> + +<p>Dysart, really discountenanced, but not showing it, lighted a cigarette +and asked pleasantly if the water was agreeable.</p> + +<p>"It's magnificent," said Duane; "it was like diving into a lake of iced +Apollinaris. Geraldine, why on earth don't you build some bath houses on +the Gray Waters?"</p> + +<p>Perhaps she had not heard his question. She began to talk very +animatedly to Rosalie about several matters of no consequence. Dysart +rose, stretched his sunburned arms with over-elaborate ease, tossed away +his cigarette, picked up his tennis bat, and said: "See you at luncheon. +Are you coming, Rosalie?"</p> + +<p>"In a moment, Jack." She went on talking inconsequences to Geraldine; +her husband waited, exchanging a remark or two with Duane in his easy, +self-possessed fashion.</p> + +<p>"Dear," said Rosalie at last to Geraldine, "I must run away and dry my +hair. How did we come out at tennis, Jack?"</p> + +<p>"All to the bad," he replied serenely, and nodding to Geraldine and +Duane he entered the house, his young wife strolling beside him and +twisting up her wet hair.</p> + +<p>Duane seated himself and crossed his lank legs, ready for an amiable +chat before he retired to dress for luncheon; but Geraldine did not even +look toward him. She was lying deep in the chair, apparently relaxed and +limp; but every nerve in her was at tension, every delicate muscle taut +and rigid, and in her heart was anger unutterable, and close, very close +to the lids which shadowed with their long fringe the brown eyes' +velvet, were tears.</p> + +<p>"What have you been up to all the morning?" he asked. "Did you try the +fishing?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Anything doing?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"I thought they wouldn't rise. It's too clear and hot. That's why I +didn't keep on with Kathleen and Scott. Two are enough on bright water. +Don't you think so?"</p> + +<p>She said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Besides," he added, "I knew you had old Grandcourt running close at +heel and that made four rods on Hurryon. So what was the use of my +joining in?"</p> + +<p>She made no reply.</p> + +<p>"You didn't mind, did you?" he asked carelessly.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right," he nodded, not feeling much relieved.</p> + +<p>The strange blind anger still possessed her. She lay there immobile, +expressionless, enduring it, not trying even to think why; yet her anger +was rising against him, and it surged, receded helplessly, flushed her +veins again till they tingled. But her lids remained closed; the lashes +rested softly on the curve of her cheeks; not a tremor touched her face.</p> + +<p>"I am wondering whether you are feeling all right," he ventured +uneasily, conscious of the tension between them.</p> + +<p>With an effort she took command of herself.</p> + +<p>"The sun was rather hot. It's a headache; I walked back by the road."</p> + +<p>"<i>With</i> the faithful one?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said evenly, "Mr. Grandcourt remained to fish."</p> + +<p>"He went to worship and remained to fish," said Duane, laughing. The +girl lifted her face to look at him—a white little face so strange that +the humour died out in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"He's a good deal of a man," she said. "It's one of my few pleasant +memories of this year—Mr. Grandcourt's niceness to me—and to all +women."</p> + +<p>She set her elbow on the chair's edge and rested her cheek in her +hollowed hand. Her gaze had become remote once more.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know you took him so seriously," he said in a low voice. "I'm +sorry, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>All her composure had returned. She lifted her eyes insolently.</p> + +<p>"Sorry for what?"</p> + +<p>"For speaking as I did."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mind. I thought you might be sorry for yourself."</p> + +<p>"Myself?"</p> + +<p>"And your neighbour's wife," she added.</p> + +<p>"Well, what about myself and my neighbour's wife?"</p> + +<p>"I'm not familiar with such matters." Her face did not change, but the +burning anger suddenly welled up in her again. "I don't know anything +about such affairs, but if you think I ought to I might try to learn." +She laughed and leaned back into the depths of her chair. "You and I are +such intimate friends it's a shame I shouldn't understand and sympathise +with what most interests you."</p> + +<p>He remained silent, gazing down at his shadow on the grass, hands +clasped loosely between his knees. She strove to study him calmly; her +mind was chaos; only the desire to hurt him persisted, rendered sterile +by the confused tumult of her thoughts.</p> + +<p>Presently, looking up:</p> + +<p>"Do you doubt that things are not right between—my neighbour's +wife—and me?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"The matter doesn't interest me."</p> + +<p>"Doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Then I have misunderstood you. What is the matter that does interest +you, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>She made no reply.</p> + +<p>He said, carelessly good-humoured: "I like women. It's curious that they +know it instinctively, because when they're bored or lonely they drift +toward me.... Lonely women are always adrift, Geraldine. There seems to +be some current that sets in toward me; it catches them and they drift +in, linger, and drift on. I seem to be the first port they anchor in.... +Then a day comes when they are gone—drifting on at hazard through the +years——"</p> + +<p>"Wiser for their experience at Port Mallett?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. But not sadder, I think."</p> + +<p>"A woman adrift has no regrets," she said with contempt.</p> + +<p>"Wrong. A woman who is in love has none."</p> + +<p>"That is what I mean. The hospitality of Port Mallett ought to leave +them with no regrets."</p> + +<p>He laughed. "But they are not loved," he said. "They know it. That's why +they drift on."</p> + +<p>She turned on him white and tremulous.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you even the excuse of caring for her?"</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"A neighbour's wife—who comes drifting into your hospitable haven!"</p> + +<p>"I don't pretend to love her, if that is what you mean," he said +pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"Then you make her believe it—and that's dastardly!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. Women don't love unless made love to. You've only read that in +books."</p> + +<p>She said a little breathlessly: "You are right. I know men and women +only through books. It's time I learned for myself."</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER VII<br />TOGETHER</a></h2> + + +<p>The end of June and of the house party at Roya-Neh was now near at hand, +and both were to close with a moonlight fête and dance in the forest, +invitations having been sent to distant neighbours who had been +entertaining similar gatherings at Iron Hill and Cloudy Mountain—the +Grays, Beekmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts.</p> + +<p>Silks and satins, shoe buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high +tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people. So it was to +be the inevitable Louis XVI fête—or as near to it as attenuated, +artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane's very clever +and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and +sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town in order that those who +sweat and sew in the perfumed ateliers of Fifth Avenue might use them as +models.</p> + +<p>"The fun—if there's any in dressing up—ought to lie in making your own +costumes," observed Duane. But nobody displayed any inclination to do +so. And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue +ateliers sewed faster. Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and +property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the +house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and +flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met +in one another's bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and +coiffure, lace scarf, and petticoat.</p> + +<p>As for the men, they surreptitiously tried on their embroidered coats +and breeches, admired themselves in secrecy, and let it go at that, +returning with embarrassed relief to cards, tennis, and the various +forms of amiable idleness to which they were accustomed. Only Englishmen +can masquerade seriously.</p> + +<p>Later, however, the men were compelled to pay some semblance of +attention to the general preparations, assemble their foot-gear, +head-gear, stars, orders, sashes, swords, and try them on for Duane +Mallett—to that young man's unconcealed dissatisfaction.</p> + +<p>"You certainly resemble a scratch opera chorus," he observed after +passing in review the sheepish line-up in his room. "Delancy, you're the +limit as a Black Mousquetier—and, by the way, there weren't any in the +reign of Louis XVI, so perhaps that evens up matters. Dysart is the only +man who looks the real thing—or would if he'd remove that monocle. As +for Bunny and the Pink 'un, they ought to be in vaudeville singing +la-la-la."</p> + +<p>"That's really a compliment to our legs," observed Reggie Wye to Bunbury +Gray, flourishing his property sword and gracefully performing a <i>pas +seul à la Gênée</i>.</p> + +<p>Dysart, who had been sullen all day, regarded them morosely.</p> + +<p>Scott Seagrave, in his conventional abbé's costume of black and white, +excessively bored, stood by the window trying to catch a glimpse of the +lake to see whether any decent fish were breaking, while Scott walked +around him critically, not much edified by his costume or the way he +wore it.</p> + +<p>"You're a sad and self-conscious-looking bunch," he concluded. "Scott, I +suppose you'll insist on wearing your mustache and eyeglasses."</p> + +<p>"You bet," said Scott simply.</p> + +<p>"All right. And kindly beat it. I want to try on my own plumage in +peace."</p> + +<p>So the costumed ones trooped off to their own quarters with the +half-ashamed smirk usually worn by the American male who has persuaded +himself to frivolity. Delancy Grandcourt tramped away down the hall +banging his big sword, jingling his spurs, and flapping his loose boots. +The Pink 'un and Bunbury Gray slunk off into obscurity, and Scott +wandered back through the long hall until a black-and-red tiger moth +attracted his attention, and he forgot his annoying appearance in +frantic efforts to capture the brilliant moth.</p> + +<p>Dysart, who had been left alone with Duane in the latter's room, +contemplated himself sullenly in the mirror while Duane, seated on the +window sill, waited for him to go.</p> + +<p>"You think I ought to eliminate my eye-glass?" asked Dysart, still +inspecting himself.</p> + +<p>"Yes, in deference to the conventional prejudice of the times. Nobody +wore 'em at that period."</p> + +<p>"You seem to be a stickler for convention—of the Louis XVI sort more +than for the XIX century variety," remarked Dysart with a sneer.</p> + +<p>Duane looked up from his bored contemplation of the rug.</p> + +<p>"You think I'm unconventional?" he asked with a smile.</p> + +<p>"I believe I suggested something of the sort to my wife the other day."</p> + +<p>"Ah," said Duane blandly, "does she agree with you, Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"No doubt she does, because your tendencies toward the unconventional +have been the subject of unpleasant comment recently."</p> + +<p>"By some of your débutante conquests? You mustn't believe all they tell +you."</p> + +<p>"My own eyes and ears are competent witnesses. Do you understand me +now?"</p> + +<p>"No. Neither do you. Don't rely on such witnesses, Dysart; they lack +character to corroborate them. Ask your wife to confirm me—if you ever +find time enough to ask her anything."</p> + +<p>"That's a damned impudent thing to say," returned Dysart, staring at +him. A dull red stained his face, then faded.</p> + +<p>Duane's eyebrows went up—just a shade—yet so insolently that the other +stepped forward, the corners of his mouth white and twitching.</p> + +<p>"I can speak more plainly," he said. "If you can't appreciate a pleasant +hint I can easily accommodate you with the alternative."</p> + +<p>There was silence for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Dysart," said Duane, "what chance do you think you'd have in landing +the—alternative?"</p> + +<p>"That concerns me," said Dysart; and the pinched muscles around the +mouth grew whiter and the man looked suddenly older. Duane had never +before noticed how gray his temples were growing.</p> + +<p>He said in a voice under perfect control: "You're right; the chances you +care to take with me concern yourself. As for your ill-humour, I suppose +I have earned it by being attentive to your wife. What is it you wish; +that my hitherto very harmless attentions should cease?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Dysart, and his square jaw quivered.</p> + +<p>"Well, they won't. It takes the sort of man you are to strike classical +attitudes. And, absurd as the paradox appears—and even taking into +consideration your notorious indifference to your wife and your rather +silly reputation as a débutante chaser—I do believe, Dysart, that, deep +inside of you somewhere, there is enough latent decency to have inspired +this resentment toward me—a resentment perfectly natural in any man who +acts squarely toward his wife—but rather far fetched in your case."</p> + +<p>Dysart, pallid, menacing, laid his hand on a chair.</p> + +<p>The other laughed.</p> + +<p>"As bad as that?" he asked contemptuously. "Don't do it, Dysart; it +isn't in your line. You're only a good-looking, popular, dancing man; +all your deviltry is in your legs, and I'd be obliged if they'd +presently waft you out of my room."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said Dysart unsteadily, "that you would make yourself +noisily ridiculous if I knocked your blackguard head off."</p> + +<p>"It's only in novels that people are knocked down successfully and +artistically," admitted the other. "In everyday life they resent it. +Yes—if you do anything hysterical there will be some sort of a +disgraceful noise, I suppose. It's shoot or suit in these unromantic +days, Dysart, otherwise the newspapers laugh at you."</p> + +<p>Dysart's well-shaped fists relaxed, the chair dropped, but even when he +let it go murder danced in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "it's shoot or a suit in these days; you're perfectly +right, Mallett. And we'll let it go at that for the present."</p> + +<p>He stood a moment, straight, handsome, his clearly stencilled eyebrows +knitted, watching Duane. Whatever in the man's face and figure was +usually colourless, unaccented, irresolute, disappeared as he glared +rigidly at the other.</p> + +<p>For there is no resentment like the resentment of the neglectful, no +jealousy like the jealousy of the faithless.</p> + +<p>"To resume, in plain English," he said, "keep away from my wife, +Mallett. You comprehend that, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly. Now get out!"</p> + +<p>Dysart hesitated for the fraction of a second longer, as though perhaps +expecting further reply, then turned on his heel and walked out.</p> + +<p>Later, while Duane was examining his own costume preparatory to trying +it on, Scott Seagrave's spectacled and freckled visage protruded into +the room. He knocked as an after-thought.</p> + +<p>"Rosalie sent me. She's dressed in all her gimcracks and wants your +expert opinion. I've got to go——"</p> + +<p>"Where is she?"</p> + +<p>"In her room. I'm going out to the hatchery with Kathleen——"</p> + +<p>"Come and see Rosalie with me, first," said Duane, passing his arm +through Scott's and steering him down the sunny corridor.</p> + +<p>When they knocked, Mrs. Dysart admitted them, revealing herself in full +costume, painted and powdered, the blinds pulled down, and the electric +lights burning behind their rosy shades.</p> + +<p>"It's my final dress rehearsal," she explained. "Mr. Mallett, <i>is</i> my +hair sufficiently à la Lamballe to suit you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is. You're a perfect little porcelain figurette! There's not an +anachronism in you or your make-up. How did you do it?"</p> + +<p>"I merely stuck like grim death to your sketches," she said demurely.</p> + +<p>Scott eyed her without particular interest. "Very corking," he said +vaguely, "but I've got to go down to the hatchery with Kathleen, so you +won't mind if I leave——"</p> + +<p>He closed the door behind him before anybody could speak. Duane moved +toward the door.</p> + +<p>"It's a charming costume," he said, "and most charmingly worn; your hair +is exactly right—not too much powder, you know——"</p> + +<p>"Where shall I put my patch? Here?"</p> + +<p>"Higher."</p> + +<p>"Here?"</p> + +<p>He came back to the centre of the room where she stood.</p> + +<p>"Here," he said, indenting the firm, cool ivory skin with one finger, +"and here. Wear two."</p> + +<p>"And my rings—do you think that my fingers are overloaded?" She held +out her fascinating smooth little hands. He supported them on his +upturned palms and examined the gems critically.</p> + +<p>They talked for a few moments about the rings, then: "Thank you so +much," she said, with a carelessly friendly pressure. "How about my +shoes? Are the buckles of the period?"</p> + +<p>One of her hands encountered his at hazard, lingered, dropped, the +fingers still linked lightly in his. She bent over, knees straight, and +lifted the hem of her petticoat, displaying her Louis XVI footwear.</p> + +<p>"Shoes and buckles are all right," he said; "faultless, true to the +period—very fascinating.... I've got to go—one or two things to +do——"</p> + +<p>They examined the shoes for some time in silence; still bending over she +turned her dainty head and looked around and up at him. There was a +moment's pause, then he kissed her.</p> + +<p>"I was afraid you'd do that—some day," she said, straightening up and +stepping back one pace, so that their linked hands now hung pendant +between them.</p> + +<p>"I was sure of it, too," he said. "Now I think I'd better go—as all +things are en règle, even the kiss, which was classical—pure—Louis +XVI.... Besides, Scott was idiot enough to shut the door. That's Louis +XVI, too, but too much realism is never artistic."</p> + +<p>"We could open the door again—if that's why you're running away from +me."</p> + +<p>"What's the use?"</p> + +<p>She glanced at the door and then calmly seated herself.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that we are together too much?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Hasn't your husband made similar observations?" he replied, laughing.</p> + +<p>"It isn't for him to make them."</p> + +<p>"Hasn't he objected?"</p> + +<p>"He has suddenly and unaccountably become disagreeable enough to make me +wish he had some real grounds for his excitement!" she said coolly, and +closed her teeth with a little click. She added, between them: "I'm +inclined to give him something real to howl about."</p> + +<p>He said: "You're adrift. Do you know it?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly I know it. Are you prepared to offer salvage? I'm past the +need of a pilot."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "You haven't drifted very far yet—only as far as Mallett +Harbour. That's usually the first port—for derelicts. Anchors are +dropped rather frequently there—but, Rosalie, there's no safe mooring +except in the home port."</p> + +<p>Her pretty, flushed face grew very serious as she looked up +questioningly.</p> + +<p>"Isn't there an anchorage near you, Duane? Are you quite sure?"</p> + +<p>"Why, no, dear, I'm not sure. But let me tell you something: it isn't in +me to love again. And that isn't square to you."</p> + +<p>After a silence she repeated: "Again? Have you been in love?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Are you embittered? I thought only callow fledglings moped."</p> + +<p>"If I were embittered I'd offer free anchorage to all comers. That's the +fledgling idea—when blighted—be a 'deevil among the weemin,'" he said, +laughing.</p> + +<p>"You have that hospitable reputation now," she persisted, unsmiling.</p> + +<p>"Have I? Judge for yourself then—because no woman I ever knew cares +anything for me now."</p> + +<p>"You mean that if any of them had anything intimate to remember they'd +never remain indifferent?"</p> + +<p>"Well—yes."</p> + +<p>"They'd either hate you or remember you with a certain tenderness."</p> + +<p>"Is that what happens?" he asked, amused.</p> + +<p>"I think so," she said thoughtfully.... "As for what you said, you are +right, Duane; I am adrift.... You—or a man like you could easily board +me—take me in tow. I'm quite sure that something about me signals a +pilot; and that keen eyes and bitter tongues have noted it. And I don't +care. Nor do I know yet what my capabilities for evil are.... Do you +care to—find out?"</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't be a square deal to you, Rosalie."</p> + +<p>"And—if I don't care whether it's a square deal or not?"</p> + +<p>"Why, dear," he said, covering her nervous, pretty hand with both of +his, "I'd break your heart in a week."</p> + +<p>He laughed, dropped her fingers, stepped back to the door, and, laying +his hand on the knob, said evenly:</p> + +<p>"That husband of yours is not the sort of man I particularly take to, +but I believe he's about the average if you'd care to make him so."</p> + +<p>She coloured with surprise. Then something in her scornful eyes inspired +him with sudden intuition.</p> + +<p>"As a matter of fact," he said lightly, "you care for him still."</p> + +<p>"I can very easily prove the contrary," she said, walking slowly up to +him, close, closer, until the slight tremor of contact halted her and +her soft, irregular breath touched his face.</p> + +<p>"What a girl like you needs," he laughed, taking her into his arms, "is +a man to hold her this way—every now and then, and"—he kissed +her—"tell her she is incomparable—which I cannot truthfully tell you, +dear." He released her at arms' length.</p> + +<p>"I don't know whose fault it is," he went on: "I don't know whether he +still really cares for you in spite of his weak peregrinations to other +shrines; but you still care for him. And it's up to you to make him +what he can be—the average husband. There are only two kinds, Rosalie, +the average and the bad."</p> + +<p>She looked straight into his eyes, but the deep, mantling colour belied +her audacity.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she said, "that we haven't—lived together for two +years?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to know such things," he said gently.</p> + +<p>"Well, you do know now. I—am—very much alone. You see I have already +become capable of saying anything—and of doing it, too."</p> + +<p>There came a reckless glimmer into her eyes; she set her teeth—a trick +of hers; the fresh lips parted slightly under her rapid breathing.</p> + +<p>"Do you think," she said unevenly, "that I'm going on all my life like +this—without anything more than the passing friendship of men to +balance the example he sets me?"</p> + +<p>"No, I think something is bound to happen, Rosalie. May I suggest what +ought to happen?"</p> + +<p>She nodded thoughtfully; only the quiver of her lower lip betrayed the +tension of self-control.</p> + +<p>"Take him back," he said.</p> + +<p>"I no longer care for him."</p> + +<p>"You are mistaken."</p> + +<p>After a moment she said: "I don't think so; truly I don't. All +consideration for him has died in me. His conduct doesn't +matter—doesn't hurt me any more——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it does. He's just a plain ass—an average ass—ownerless, and, +like all asses, convinced that he can take care of himself. Go and put +the halter on him again."</p> + +<p>"Go—and—what do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Tether him. You did once. It's up to you; it's usually up to a woman +when a man wanders untethered. What one woman, or a dozen, can do with a +man his wife can do in the same fashion! What won him in the beginning +always holds good until he thinks he has won you. Then the average man +flourishes his heels. He is doing it. What won him was not you alone, or +love, alone; it was his uncertainty of both that fascinated him. That's +what charms him in others; uncertainty. Many men are that way. It's a +sporting streak in us. If you care for him now—if you could ever care +for him, take him as you took him first.... Do you want him again?"</p> + +<p>She stood leaning against the door, looking down. Much of her colour had +died out.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said.</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"Well—<i>do</i> I?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"You think so? Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because he's adrift, too. And he's rather weak, rather handsome, easily +influenced—unjust, selfish, vain, wayward—just the average husband. +And every wife ought to be able to manage these lords of creation, and +keep them out of harm.... And keep them in love, Rosalie. And the way to +do it is the way you did it first.... Try it." He kissed her gaily, +thinking he owed that much to himself.</p> + +<p>And through the door which had swung gently ajar, Geraldine Seagrave saw +them, and Rosalie saw her.</p> + +<p>For a moment the girl halted, pale and rigid, and her heart seemed to +cease its beating; then, as she passed with averted head, Rosalie caught +Duane's wrists in her jewelled grasp and released herself with a +wrench.</p> + +<p>"You've given me enough to think over," she said. "If you want me to +love you, stay—and close that door—and we'll see what happens. If you +don't—you had better go at once, Duane. And leave my door open—to see +what else fate will send me." She clasped her hands behind her back, +laughing nervously.</p> + +<p>"It's like the old child's game—'open your mouth and close your eyes +and see what God will send you?'—usually something not at all +resembling the awaited bonbon.... Good-bye, my altruistic friend—and +thank you for your XXth Century advice, and your Louis XVI assistance."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," he returned smilingly, and sauntered back toward his room +where his own untried finery awaited him.</p> + +<p>Ahead, far down the corridor, he caught sight of Geraldine, and called +to her, but perhaps she did not hear him for he had to put on +considerable speed to overtake her.</p> + +<p>"In these last few days," he said laughingly, "I seldom catch a glimpse +of you except when you are vanishing into doorways or down corridors."</p> + +<p>She said nothing, did not even turn her head or halt; and, keeping pace +with her, he chatted on amiably about nothing in particular until she +stopped abruptly and looked at him.</p> + +<p>"I am in a hurry. What is it you want, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"Why—nothing," he said in surprise.</p> + +<p>"That is less than you ask of—others." And she turned to continue her +way.</p> + +<p>"Is there anything wrong, Geraldine?" he asked, detaining her.</p> + +<p>"Is there?" she replied, shaking off his hand from her arm.</p> + +<p>"Not as far as I'm concerned."</p> + +<p>"Can't you even tell the truth?" she asked with a desperate attempt to +laugh.</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute," he said. "Evidently something has gone all wrong——"</p> + +<p>"Several things, my solicitous friend; I for one, you for another. Count +the rest for yourself."</p> + +<p>"What has happened to you, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>"What has always threatened."</p> + +<p>"Will you tell me?"</p> + +<p>"No, I will not. So don't try to look concerned and interested in a +matter that regards me alone."</p> + +<p>"But what is it that has always threatened you?" he insisted gently, +coming nearer—too near to suit her, for she backed away toward the high +latticed window through which the sun poured over the geraniums on the +sill. There was a seat under it. Suddenly her knees threatened to give +way under her; she swayed slightly as she seated herself; a wave of +angry pain swept through her setting lids and lips trembling.</p> + +<p>"Now I want you to tell me what it is that you believe has always +threatened you."</p> + +<p>"Do you think I'd tell you?" she managed to say. Then her +self-possession returned in a flash of exasperation, but she controlled +that, too, and laughed defiantly, confronting him with pretty, insolent +face uptilted.</p> + +<p>"What do you want to know about me? That I'm in the way of being +ultimately damned like all the rest of you?" she said. "Well, I am. I'm +taking chances. Some people take their chances in one way—like you and +Rosalie; some take them in another—as I do.... Once I was afraid to +take any; now I'm not. Who was it said that self-control is only +immorality afraid?"</p> + +<p>"Will you tell me what is worrying you?" he persisted.</p> + +<p>"No, but I'll tell you what annoys me if you like."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Fear of notoriety."</p> + +<p>"Notoriety?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly—not for myself—for my house."</p> + +<p>"Is anybody likely to make it notorious?" he demanded, colouring up.</p> + +<p>"Ask yourself.... I haven't the slightest interest in your personal +conduct"—there was a catch in her voice—"except when it threatens to +besmirch my own home."</p> + +<p>The painful colour gathered and settled under his cheek-bones.</p> + +<p>"Do you wish me to leave?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do. But you can't without others knowing how and why."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I can——"</p> + +<p>"You are mistaken. I tell you <i>others</i> will know. Some do know already. +And I don't propose to figure with a flaming sword. Kindly remain in +your Eden until it's time to leave—with Eve."</p> + +<p>"Just as you wish," he said, smiling; and that infuriated her.</p> + +<p>"It ought to be as I wish! That much is due me, I think. Have you +anything further to ask, or is your curiosity satisfied?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet. You say that you think something threatens you? What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Not what threatens <i>you</i>," she said in contempt.</p> + +<p>"That is no answer."</p> + +<p>"It is enough for you to know."</p> + +<p>He looked her hard in the eyes. "Perhaps," he said in a low voice, "I +know more about you than you imagine I do, Geraldine—<i>since last +April</i>."</p> + +<p>She felt the blood leave her face, the tension crisping her muscles; she +sat up very straight and slender among the cushions and defied him.</p> + +<p>"What do you—think you know?" she tried to sneer, but her voice shook +and failed.</p> + +<p>He said: "I'll tell you. For one thing, you're playing fast and loose +with Dysart. He's a safe enough proposition—but what is that sort of +thing going to arouse in you?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Her voice cleared with an immense relief. He noted +it.</p> + +<p>"It's making you tolerant," he said quietly, "familiar with subtleties, +contemptuous of standards. It's rubbing the bloom off you. You let a man +who is married come too close to you—you betray enough curiosity +concerning him to do it. A drifting woman does that sort of thing, but +why do you cut your cables? Good Lord, Geraldine, it's a fool +business—permitting a man an intimacy——"</p> + +<p>"More harmless than his wife permits you!" she retorted.</p> + +<p>"That is not true."</p> + +<p>"You are supposed to lie about such things, aren't you?" she said, +reddening to the temples. "Oh, I am learning your rotten code, you +see—the code of all these amiable people about me. You've done your +part to instruct me that promiscuous caresses are men's distraction from +ennui; Rosalie evidently is in sympathy with that form of +amusement—many men and women among whom I live in town seem to be quite +as casual as you are.... I did have standards once, scarcely knowing +what they meant; I clung to them out of instinct. And when I went out +into the world I found nobody paying any attention to them."</p> + +<p>"You are wrong."</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not. I go among people and see every standard I set up, +ignored. I go to the theatre and see plays that embody everything I +supposed was unthinkable, let alone unutterable. But the actors utter +everything, and the audience thinks everything—and sometimes laughs. I +can't do that—yet. But I'm progressing."</p> + +<p>"Geraldine——"</p> + +<p>"Wait!... My friends have taught me a great deal during this last +year—by word, precept, and example. Things I held in horror nobody +notices enough to condone. Take treachery, for example. The marital +variety is all around me. Who cares, or is even curious after an hour's +gossip has made it stale news? A divorce here, a divorce there—some +slight curiosity to see who the victims may marry next time—that +curiosity satisfied—and so is everybody. And they go back to their +business of money-getting and money-spending—and that's what my friends +have taught me. Can you wonder that my familiarity with it all breeds +contempt enough to seek almost any amusement in sheer desperation—as +you do?"</p> + +<p>"I have only one amusement," he said.</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Painting."</p> + +<p>"And your model," she nodded with a short laugh. "Don't forget her. Your +pretences are becoming tiresome, Duane. Your pretty model, Mrs. Dysart, +poses less than you do."</p> + +<p>Another wave of heart-sickness and anger swept over her; she felt the +tears burning close to her lids and turned sharply on him:</p> + +<p>"It's all rotten, I tell you—the whole personnel and routine—these +people, and their petty vices and their idleness and their money! I—I +do want to keep myself above it—clean of it—but what am I to do? One +can't live without friends. If I don't gamble I'm left alone; if I don't +flirt I'm isolated. If one stands aloof from everything one's friends go +elsewhere. What can I do?"</p> + +<p>"Make decent friends. I'm going to."</p> + +<p>He bent forward and struck his knee with his closed fist.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to," he repeated. "I've waited as long as I can for you to +stand by me. I could have even remained among these harmless simians if +you had cared for me. You're all the friend I need. But you've become +one of them. It isn't in you to take an intelligent interest in me, or +in what I care for. I've stood this sort of existence long enough. Now +I'm all through with it."</p> + +<p>She stared. Anger, astonishment, exasperation moved her in turn. +Bitterness unlocked her lips.</p> + +<p>"Are you expecting to take Mrs. Dysart with you to your intellectual +solitude?"</p> + +<p>"I would if I—if we cared for each other," he said, calmly seating +himself.</p> + +<p>She said, revolted: "Can't you even admit that you are in love with her? +Must I confess that I could not avoid seeing you with her in her own +room—half an hour since? Will <i>that</i> wring the truth out of you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, is that what you mean?" he said wearily. "I believe the door was +open.... Well, Geraldine, whatever you saw won't harm anybody. So come +to your own conclusions.... But I wish you were out of all this—with +your fine insight and your clear intelligence, and your sweetness—oh, +the chances for happiness you and I might have had!"</p> + +<p>"A slim chance with you!" she said.</p> + +<p>"Every chance; perhaps the only chance we'll ever have. And we've missed +it."</p> + +<p>"We've missed nothing"—a sudden and curious tremor set her heart and +pulses beating heavily—"I tell you, Duane, it doesn't matter whom +people of our sort marry because we'll always sicken of our bargain. +What chance for happiness would I run with such a man as you? Or you +with a girl like me?"</p> + +<p>She lay back among the cushions, with a tired little laugh. "We are like +the others of our rotten sort, only less aged, less experienced. But we +have, each of us, our own heritage, our own secret depravity." She +hesitated, reddening, caught his eye, stammered her sentence to a finish +and flinched, crimsoning to the roots of her hair.</p> + +<p>He stood up, paced the room for a few moments, came and stood beside +her.</p> + +<p>"Once," he said very low, "you admitted that you dare go anywhere with +me. Do you remember?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Those are your rooms, I believe," pointing to a closed door far down +the south corridor.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Take me there now."</p> + +<p>"I—cannot do that——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you can. You must."</p> + +<p>"Now?—Duane."</p> + +<p>"Yes, now—<i>now</i>! I tell you our time is now if it ever is to be at all. +Don't waste words."</p> + +<p>"What do you want to say to me that cannot be said here?" she asked in +consternation.</p> + +<p>He made no answer, but she found herself on her feet and moving slowly +along beside him, his hand just touching her arm as guide.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Duane?" she asked fearfully, as she laid her hand on the +knob and turned to look at his altered face.</p> + +<p>He made no answer. She hesitated, shivered, opened the door, hesitated +again, slowly crossed the threshold, turned and admitted him.</p> + +<p>The western sun flooded the silent chamber of rose and gray; a breeze +moved the curtains, noiselessly; the scent of flowers freshened the +silence.</p> + +<p>There was a divan piled with silken cushions; he placed several for her; +she stood irresolute for a moment, then, with a swift, unquiet side +glance at him, seated herself.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she asked, looking up, her face beginning to reflect the +grave concern in his.</p> + +<p>"I want you to marry me, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"Is—is <i>that</i> what——"</p> + +<p>"Partly. I want you to love me, too. But I'll attend to that if you'll +marry me—I'll guarantee that. I—I will guarantee—more than that."</p> + +<p>She was still looking up, searching his sombre face. She saw the muscles +tighten along the jaw; saw the grave lines deepening. A sort of +bewildered fear possessed her.</p> + +<p>"I—am not in love with you, Duane." She added hastily, "I don't trust +you either. How could I——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you do trust me."</p> + +<p>"After what you have done to Rosalie——"</p> + +<p>"You know that all is square there. Say so!"</p> + +<p>She gazed at the floor, convinced, but not answering.</p> + +<p>"Do you believe I love you?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, eyes still on the floor.</p> + +<p>"Tell me the truth! Look at me!"</p> + +<p>She said with an effort: "You think you care for me.... You believe you +do, I suppose——"</p> + +<p>"And <i>you</i> believe it, too! Give me my chance—take your own!"</p> + +<p>"<i>My</i> chance?"—with a flash of anger.</p> + +<p>"Yes; take it, and give me mine. I tell you, Geraldine, we are going to +need each other desperately some day. I need you now—to-morrow you'll +need me more; and the day after, and after that in perilous days to +follow our need will be the greater for these hours wasted—can't you +understand by this time that we've nothing to hold us steady through the +sort of life we're born to except—each other——"</p> + +<p>His voice suddenly broke; he dropped down on the couch beside her, +imprisoning her clasped hands on her knees. His emotion, the break in +his voice, excited them both.</p> + +<p>"Are you trying to frighten me and take me by storm?" she demanded, +forcing a smile. "What is the matter, Duane? What do you mean by +peril?... You are scaring me——"</p> + +<p>"Little Geraldine—my little comrade! Can't you understand? It isn't +only my selfish desire for you—it isn't all for myself!—I care more +for you than that. I love you more deeply than a mere lover! Must I say +more to you? Must I even hurt you? Must I tell you what I know—of you?"</p> + +<p>"W-what?" she asked, startled.</p> + +<p>He looked at her miserably. In his eyes she read a meaning that +terrified her.</p> + +<p>"Duane—I don't—understand," she faltered.</p> + +<p>"Yes you do. Let's face it now!"</p> + +<p>"F-face what?" Her voice was only a whisper.</p> + +<p>"I can tell you if you'll love me. Will you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't understand," she repeated in white-lipped distress. "Why do you +look at me so strangely? And you tell me that I—know.... What is it +that I know? Couldn't you tell me? I am—" Her voice failed.</p> + +<p>"Dear—do you remember—once—last April that you were—ill?... And +awoke to find yourself on your own bed?"</p> + +<p>"Duane!" It was a cry of terror.</p> + +<p>"Dearest! Dearest! Do you think I have not known—since then—what has +troubled you—here——"</p> + +<p>She stared at him in crimsoned horror for an instant, then with a dry +sob, bowed her head and covered her face with desperate hands. For a +moment her whole body quivered, then she collapsed. On his knees beside +her he bent and touched with trembling lips her arms, her knees, the +slim ankles desperately interlocked, the tips of her white shoes.</p> + +<p>"Dearest," he whispered brokenly, "I know—I know—believe me. I have +fought through worse, and won out. You said once that something had died +out in me—while I was abroad. It did not die of itself, dear. But it +left its mark.... You say self-control is only depravity afraid.... That +is true; but I have made my depravity fear me. I can do what I please +with it now; I can tempt it, laugh at it, silence it. But it cost me +something to make a slave of it—what you saw in my face is the +claw-mark it left fighting me to the death."</p> + +<p>Very straight on his knees beside her he bent again, pressing her rigid +knees with his lips.</p> + +<p>"I need you, Geraldine—I need all that is best in you; you must love +me—take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you. I'll +love you so confidently that we'll kill it—you and I together—my +strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet +contempt for weakness wherever it may be, even in yourself."</p> + +<p>He touched her; and she shuddered under the light caress, still bent +almost double, and covering her face with both hands. He bent over her, +one knee on the divan.</p> + +<p>"Let's pull ourselves together and talk sense, Geraldine," he said with +an effort at lightness.</p> + +<p>"Don't you remember that bully little girl who swung her fists in single +combat and uppercut her brother and me whenever her sense of fairness +was outraged? The time has come when you, who were so fair to others, +are going to be fair to yourself by marrying me——"</p> + +<p>She dropped both hands and stared at him out of wide, tear-wet eyes.</p> + +<p>"Fair to myself—at your expense, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean? I love you."</p> + +<p>"Am I to let you—you marry me—knowing—what you know? Is that what you +call my sense of fairness?" And, as he attempted to speak:</p> + +<p>"Oh, I have thought about it already!—I must have been conscious that +this would happen some day—that—that I was capable of caring for +you—and it alarmed me——"</p> + +<p>"Are you capable of loving me?"</p> + +<p>"Duane, you must not ask me that!"</p> + +<p>"Tell me!"</p> + +<p>But she pushed him back, and they faced each other, her hands remaining +on his shoulders. She strove piteously to endure his gaze, flinched, +strove to push him from her again—but the slender hands lay limply +against him. So they remained, her hands at intervals nervously +tightening and relaxing on his shoulders, her tearful breath coming +faster, the dark eyes closing, opening, turning from him, toward him, +searching, now in his soul, now in her own, her self-command slipping +from her.</p> + +<p>"It is cowardly in me—if I do it," she said in the ghost of a voice.</p> + +<p>"Do what?"</p> + +<p>"Let you risk—what I m-might become."</p> + +<p>"You little saint!"</p> + +<p>"Some saints <i>were</i> depraved at first—weren't they?" she said without a +smile. "Oh, Duane, Duane, to think I could ever be here speaking to you +about—about the horror that has happened to me—looking into your face +and giving up my dreadful secret to you—laying my very soul naked +before you! How can I look at you——"</p> + +<p>"Because I love you. Now give me the right to your lips and heart!"</p> + +<p>There was a long silence. Then she tried to smile.</p> + +<p>"My—my lips? I—thought you took such things—lightly——"</p> + +<p>She hesitated, glanced up at him, then began to tremble.</p> + +<p>"Duane—if you are in earnest about our—about an engagement—promise me +that I may be released if I—think best——"</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"I—I might fail——"</p> + +<p>"The more need of me. But you can't fail——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but if I should, dear. Will you release me? I cannot—I will not +engage myself to you—unless you promise to let me go if I think it +best. You know what my word means. Give it back to me if matters go +wrong with me. Will you?"</p> + +<p>"But I am going to marry you now!" he said with a short, excited laugh.</p> + +<p>"Now!" she repeated, appalled.</p> + +<p>"Certainly, to make sure of you. We don't need a license in this State. +There's a parson at West Gate Village.... I intend to make sure of you +now. You can keep it a secret if you like. When you return to town we +can have everything en règle—engagement announced, cards, church +wedding, and all that. Meanwhile I'm going to be sure of you."</p> + +<p>"W-when?"</p> + +<p>"This afternoon."</p> + +<p>His excitement thrilled her; a vivid colour surged over neck and brow.</p> + +<p>"Duane, I did not dream that you cared so much, so truly—Oh, I—I do +love you then!—I love you, Duane! I love you!"</p> + +<p>He drew her suddenly into his arms, close, closer; she lifted her face; +he kissed her; and she gave him her heart with a sob.</p> + +<p>"You will wait for m-me, won't you?" she stammered, striving to keep her +reason through the delicious tumult that swept her senses. "Before I +m-marry you I must be quite certain that you take no risk——"</p> + +<p>She looked up into his steady eyes; a passion of tenderness overwhelmed +her, and her locked arms tightened around his neck.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she whispered, "you <i>are</i> the boy I loved so long, so long ago—my +comrade Duane—my own little boy! How was I to know I loved you this +way, too? How could I understand!"</p> + +<p>Already the glamour of the past was transfiguring the man for her, +changing him back into the lad she had ruled so long ago, glorifying +him—drawing them together into that golden age where her ears already +caught the far cries and laughter of the past.</p> + +<p>Now, her arms around him, she looked at him and looked at him as though +she had not set eyes on him since then.</p> + +<p>"Of course, I love you," she said impatiently, as though surprised and +hurt that he or she had ever doubted it. "You always were mine; you are +<i>mine</i>! Nobody else could ever have had you—no matter what you did—or +what I did.... And nobody except you could ever, ever have had me. That +is perfectly plain now.... Oh, you—you darling"—she murmured, drawing +his face against hers. Tears sprang to her brown eyes; her mouth +quivered.</p> + +<p>"You <i>will</i> love me, won't you? Because I'm going quite mad about you, +Duane.... I don't think I know just what I'm saying—or what I'm doing."</p> + +<p>She drew him closer; he caught her, crushing her in his arms, and she +yielded, clung to him for a moment, drew back in flushed resistance, +still bewildered by her own passion. Then, into her eyes came that +divine beauty which comes but once on earth—innocence awakened; and the +white lids drooped a little, and the mouth quivered, surrendering with a +sigh.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">"You never have, never could love any other man? Say it. I know it, +but—say it, sweetheart!"</p> + +<p>"Only you, Duane."</p> + +<p>"Are you happy?"</p> + +<p>"I am in heaven."</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes—opening them almost immediately and passing one +hand across his face as though afraid he might have vanished.</p> + +<p>"You are there yet," she murmured with a faint smile.</p> + +<p>"So are you," he whispered, laughing—"my little dream girl—my little +brown-eyed, brown-haired, long-legged, swift-running, hard-hitting——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>do</i> you remember that dreadful blow I gave you when we were +sparring in the library? <i>Did</i> it hurt you, my darling—I was sure it +did, but you never would admit it. Tell me now," she coaxed, adorable in +her penitence.</p> + +<p>"Well—yes, it did." He laughed under his breath—"I don't mind telling +you now that it fractured the bridge of my nose."</p> + +<p>"What!"—in horror. "That perfectly delicious straight nose of yours!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I had it fixed," he said, laughing. "If you deal me no more vital +blows than that I'll never mind——"</p> + +<p>"I—deal you a—a blow, Duane! <i>I</i>!"</p> + +<p>"For instance, by not marrying me right away——"</p> + +<p>"Dear—I can't."</p> + +<p>The smile had died out in her eyes and on her lips.</p> + +<p>"You know I can't, don't you?" she said tenderly. "You know I've got to +be fair to you." Her face grew graver. "Dear—when I stop and try to +think—it dismays me to understand how much in love with you I am.... +Because it is too soon.... It would be safer to wait before I start to +love you—this way. There is a cowardly streak in me—a weak +streak——"</p> + +<p>"What blessed nonsense you do talk, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"No, dear."</p> + +<p>She moved slightly toward him, settling close, as though within the +circle of his arms lay some occult protection.</p> + +<p>For a while she lay very close to him, her pale face pressed against his +shoulder, brown eyes remote. Neither spoke. After a long time she laid +her hands on his arms, gently disengaging them, and, freeing herself, +sprang to her feet. A new, lithe and lovely dignity seemed to possess +her—an exquisite, graceful, indefinable something which lent a hint of +splendour to her as she turned and looked down at him.</p> + +<p>Then, mischievously tender, she stooped and touched her childish mouth +to his—her cheek, her throat, her hair, her lids, her hands, in turn +all brushed his lips with fragrance—the very ghost of contact, the +exquisite mockery of caress.</p> + +<p>"If you don't go at once," she murmured, "I'll never let you go at all. +Wait—let me see if anybody is in the corridor——"</p> + +<p>She opened the door and looked out.</p> + +<p>"Not a soul," she whispered, "our reputations are still intact. +Good-bye—I'll put on a fresh gown and meet you in ten minutes!... +Where? Oh, anywhere—<i>anywhere</i>, Duane. The Lake. Oh, that is too far +away! Wait here on the stairs for me—that isn't so far away—just sit +on the stairs until I come. Do you promise? <i>Truly</i>? Oh, you angel +boy!... Yes—but only one more, then—to be quite sure that you won't +forget to wait on the stairs for me...."</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER VIII<br />AN AFTERGLOW</a></h2> + + +<p>Deliciously weary, every fibre in her throbbing with physical fatigue, +she had nevertheless found it impossible to sleep.</p> + +<p>The vivid memory of Duane holding her in his arms, while she gave her +heart to him with her lips, left her tremulous and confused by emotions +of which she yet knew little.</p> + +<p>Toward dawn a fever of unrest drove her from her hot, crushed pillows to +the cool of the open casements. The morning was dark and very still; no +breeze stirred; a few big, widely scattered stars watched her. For a +long while she stood there trying to quiet the rapid pulse and fast +breathing; and at length, with an excited little laugh, she sank down +among the cushions on the window-seat and lay back very still, her head, +with its glossy, disordered hair, cradled in her arms.</p> + +<p>"Is <i>this</i> love?" she said to herself. "Is this what it is doing to me? +Am I never again going to sleep?"</p> + +<p>But she could not lie still; her restless hands began groping about in +the darkness, and presently the fire from a cigarette glimmered red.</p> + +<p>She remained quiet for a few moments, elbow among the pillows, cheek on +hand, watching the misty spirals float through the open window. After a +while she sat up nervously and tossed the cigarette from her. Like a +falling star the spark whirled earthward in a wide curve, glowed for a +few seconds on the lawn below, and slowly died out.</p> + +<p>Then an inexplicable thing occurred. Unthinkingly she had turned over +and extended her arm, searching in the darkness behind her. There came a +tinkle, a vague violet perfume, and the starlight fell on her clustering +hair and throat as she lifted and drained the brimming glass.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she stood up; the frail, crystal glass fell from her fingers, +splintering on the stone sill; and with a quick, frightened intake of +breath, lips still wet and scented, and the fire of it already stealing +through her veins, she awoke to stunned comprehension of what she had +done.</p> + +<p>For a moment only startled astonishment dominated her. That she could +have done this thing so instinctively and without forethought or intent, +seemed impossible. She bowed her head in her hands, striving desperately +to recollect the circumstances; she sprang to her feet and paced the +darkened room, trying to understand. A terrified and childish surprise +possessed her, which changed slowly to anger and impatience as she began +to realise the subtle treachery that habit had practised on her—so +stealthy is habit, betraying the body unawares.</p> + +<p>Overwhelmed with consternation, she seated herself to consider the +circumstances; little flashes of alarm assisted her. Then a sort of +delicate madness took possession of her, deafening her ears to the voice +of fear. She refused to be afraid.</p> + +<p>As she sat there, both hands unconsciously indenting her breast, the +clamour and tumult of her senses drowned the voice within.</p> + +<p>No, she would not be afraid!—though the burning perfume was mounting +to her head with every breath and the glow grew steadily in her body, +creeping from vein to vein. No, she would not be afraid. It could never +happen again. She would be on her guard after this.... Besides, the +forgetfulness had been so momentary, the imprudence so very slight ... +and it had helped her, too—it was already making her sleepy ... and she +had needed something to quiet her—needed sleep....</p> + +<p>After a long while she turned languidly and picked up the little crystal +flask from the dresser—an antique bit of glass which Rosalie had given +her.</p> + +<p>Dawn whitened the edges of the sky; the birds were becoming very noisy. +She lifted the curiously cut relic; an imprisoned fluid glimmered with +pale-violet light—some scented French distillation which Rosalie +affected because nobody else had ever heard of it—an aromatic, fiery +essence, faintly perfumed.</p> + +<p>For a moment the girl gazed at it curiously. Then, on deliberate +impulse, she filled another glass.</p> + +<p>"One thing is certain," she said to herself; "if I am capable of +controlling myself at all, I must begin now. If I should touch this it +would be excess.... I would like to, but"—she flung the contents from +the window—"I won't. And <i>that</i> is the way I am able to control +myself."</p> + +<p>She smiled, set the glass aside, and raised her eyes to the paling +stars. When at last she stretched herself out on the bed, dawn was +already lighting the room, but she fell asleep at once.</p> + +<p>It was a flushed and rather heavy slumber, not perfectly natural; and +when Kathleen entered at nine o'clock, followed by Geraldine's maid with +the breakfast-tray, the girl still lay with face buried in her hair, +breathing deeply and irregularly, her lashes wet with tears.</p> + +<p>The maid retired; Kathleen bent low over the feverishly parted lips, +kissed them, hesitated, drew back sharply, and cast a rapid glance +around the room. Then she went over to the dressing-table and lifted +Rosalie's antique flaçon; and set it back slowly, as the girl turned her +face on the pillow and opened her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear."</p> + +<p>For a few seconds she lay quite motionless, then, rising on one elbow, +she passed the backs of her fingers across her lids, laughed sleepily, +and straightened up, freeing her eyes from the confusion of her hair.</p> + +<p>"I've had horrid dreams. I've been crying in my sleep. Come here," she +said, stretching out her arms, and Kathleen went slowly.</p> + +<p>The girl pulled her head down, linking both arms around her neck:</p> + +<p>"You darling, can you ever guess what miracle happened to me yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"No.... What?"</p> + +<p>"I promised to marry Duane Mallett!"</p> + +<p>There was no reply. The girl clung to her excitedly, burying her face +against Kathleen's cheek, then released her with a laugh, and saw her +face—saw the sorrowful amazement in it, the pain.</p> + +<p>"Kathleen!" she exclaimed, startled, "what is the matter?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Severn dropped down on the bed's edge, her hands loosely clasped. +Geraldine's brown eyes searched hers in hurt astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you glad for me, Kathleen? What is it? Why do you—" And all at +once she divined, and the hot colour stained her from brow to throat. +Kathleen bent forward swiftly and caught her in her arms with a +smothered cry; but the girl freed herself and leaned back, breathing +fast.</p> + +<p>"Duane knows about me," she said. "I told him."</p> + +<p>"He knew before you told him, my darling."</p> + +<p>Another wave of scarlet swept Geraldine's face.</p> + +<p>"That is true.... He found out—last April.... But he and I are not +afraid. I promised him—" And her voice failed as the memory of the +night's indulgence flashed in her brain.</p> + +<p>Kathleen began: "You promised me, too—" And her voice also failed.</p> + +<p>There was a silence; the girl's eyes turned miserably toward the +dressing-table, closed with a slow, inward breath which ended like a +sob; and again she was in Kathleen's arms—struggled from them only to +drop her head on Kathleen's knees and lie, tense face hidden, both hands +clenched. The wave of grief and shame swept her and passed.</p> + +<p>After a while she spoke in a hard little voice:</p> + +<p>"It is foolish to say I cannot control myself.... I did not think what I +was doing last night—that was all. Duane knows my danger—tendency, I +mean. He isn't worried; he knows that I can take care of myself——"</p> + +<p>"Don't marry him until <i>you</i> know you can."</p> + +<p>"But I am perfectly certain of myself now!"</p> + +<p>"Only prove it, darling. Be frank with me. Who in the world loves you as +I do, Geraldine? Who desires happiness for you as I do? What have I in +life besides you and Scott?... And lately, dearest—I <i>must</i> speak as I +feel—something—some indefinable constraint seems to have grown between +you and me—something—I don't exactly know what—that threatens our +intimate understanding——"</p> + +<p>"No, there is nothing!"</p> + +<p>"Be honest with me, dear. What is it?"</p> + +<p>The girl lay silent for a while, then:</p> + +<p>"I don't know myself. I have been—worried. It may have been that."</p> + +<p>"Worried about yourself, you poor lamb?"</p> + +<p>"A little.... And a little about Duane."</p> + +<p>"But, darling, if Duane loves you, that is all cleared up, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... But for a long time he and Rosalie made me perfectly +wretched.... I didn't know I was in love with him, either.... And I +couldn't sleep very much, and I—I simply couldn't tell you how unhappy +they were making me—and I—sometimes—now and then—in fact, very +often, I—formed the custom of—doing what I ought not to have done—to +steady my nerves—in fact, I simply let myself go—badly."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my darling! My darling! Couldn't you have told me—let me sit with +you, talk, read to you—<i>love</i> you to sleep? Why did you do this, +Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing—very disgraceful—ever happened. It only helped me to sleep +when I was excited and miserable.... I—I didn't care what I did—Duane +and Rosalie made me so wretched. And there seemed no use in my trying to +be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as +everybody. But I tried and couldn't—I tried, for instance, to misbehave +with Jack Dysart, but I couldn't—and I only hated myself and him and +Rosalie and Duane!"</p> + +<p>She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering. "I want to confess! +I've been horribly depraved for a week! I gambled with the Pink 'uns and +swore as fashionably as I knew how! I scorched my tongue with +cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray's room with the door bolted and let him +teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine +and saki! I let Jack Dysart retain my hand—and try to kiss me—several +times——"</p> + +<p>"Geraldine!"</p> + +<p>"I <i>did</i>. I wanted to be horrid."</p> + +<p>She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at +Kathleen, but the child's mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous +hands tightened and relaxed.</p> + +<p>"How bad have I been, Kathleen? It sounds pretty bad to tell it. But +Muriel says 'damn!' and Rosalie says 'the devil!' and when anything goes +wrong and I say, 'Oh, fluff!' I mean swearing, so I thought I'd do +it.... And almost every woman I know smokes and has her favourite +cocktail, and they all bet and play for stakes; and from what I hear +talked about, nobody's conduct is modified because anybody happens to be +married——"</p> + +<p>The horror in Kathleen's blue eyes checked her; she hid her face in her +hands for a moment, then flung out her arms and crushed Kathleen to her +breast.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to tell Duane how I've behaved. I couldn't rest until he +knows the very worst ... how fearfully common and bad a girl I can be. +Darling, don't break down. I don't want to go any closer to the danger +line than I've been. And, oh, I'm so ashamed, so humiliated—I—I wish I +could go to Duane as—as clean and sweet and innocent as he would have +me. For he is the dearest boy—and I love him so, Kathleen. I'm so silly +about him.... I've got to tell him how I behaved, haven't I?"</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image6" name="image6"></a> + <img src="images/image6.jpg" + alt=""'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'"" + title=""'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'"" /> + <p class="caption">"'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'"</p> +</div> + + +<p>"Are—are you going to?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I am!" ... She drew away and sat up very straight in bed, +serious, sombre-eyed, hands clasped tightly about her knees.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she said, as though to herself, "it is curious that a +trivial desire for anything like that"—pointing to Rosalie's +gift—"should make me restless—annoy me, cause me discomfort. I can't +understand why it should actually torment me. It really does, +sometimes."</p> + +<p>"That is the terrible part of it," faltered Kathleen. "For God's sake, +keep clear of anything with even the faintest odour of alcohol about +it.... Where did you find that cut-glass thing?"</p> + +<p>"Rosalie gave it to me."</p> + +<p>"What is in it?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know—crême de something or other."</p> + +<p>Kathleen took the girl's tightly clasped hands in hers:</p> + +<p>"Geraldine, you've got to be square to Duane. You can't marry him until +you cleanse yourself, until you scour yourself free of this terrible +inclination for stimulants."</p> + +<p>"H-how can I? I don't intend, ever again, to——"</p> + +<p>"Prove it then. Let sufficient time elapse——"</p> + +<p>"How long? A—year?"</p> + +<p>"Dear, if you will show a clean record of self-control for a year I ask +no more. It ought not to be difficult for you to dominate this silly +weakness. Your will-power is scarcely tainted. What fills me with fear +is this habit you have formed of caressing danger—this childish +trifling with something which is still asleep in you—with all that is +weak and ignoble. It is there—it is in all of us—in you, too. Don't +rouse it; it is still asleep—merely a little restless in its +slumber—but, oh, Geraldine! Geraldine!—if you ever awake it!—if you +ever arouse it to its full, fierce consciousness——"</p> + +<p>"I won't," said the girl hastily. "Oh, I won't, I won't, Kathleen, +darling. I do know it's in me—I feel that if I ever let myself go I +could be reckless and wicked. But truly, truly, I won't. I—darling, you +mustn't cry—please, don't—because you are making me cry. I cried in my +sleep, too.... I ought to be very happy—" She forced a laugh through +the bright tears fringing her lashes, bent forward swiftly, kissed +Kathleen, and sprang from the bed.</p> + +<p>"I want my bath and breakfast!" she cried. "If I'm to be a Louis XVI +doll this week, it's time my face was washed and my sawdust reinforced. +Do fix my tray, dear, while I'm in the bath—and ring for my maid.... +And when you go down you may tell Duane to wait for me on the stairs. +It's good discipline; he'll find it stupid because I'll be a long +time—but, oh, Kathleen, it is perfectly heavenly to bully him!"</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Later she sent a note to him by her maid:</p> + + +<blockquote> + +<p> +"<span class="smcap">To the Only Man in the World,</span><br /> +<span class="smcap i4">On the Stairs.</span> +</p> + + +<p>"<i>Patient Sir</i>: If you will go to the large beech-tree beyond +Hurryon Gate and busy yourself by carving upon it certain initials +intertwined within the circumscribed outlines of a symbol popularly +supposed to represent a human heart, your industry will be +presently and miraculously rewarded by the apparition of her who +presumably occupies no inconsiderable place in your affections."</p> + +</blockquote> + + + +<p>At the Hurryon Gate Duane found Rosalie trying to unlock it, a dainty, +smiling Rosalie, fresh as a blossom, and absurdly like a schoolgirl with +her low-cut collar, snowy neck, and the thick braid of hair. Under her +arm she carried her bathing-dress.</p> + +<p>"I'm going for a swim; I nearly perished with the heat last night.... +Did you sleep well, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"Rather well."</p> + +<p>She hesitated, looked up: "Are you coming with me?"</p> + +<p>"I have an appointment."</p> + +<p>"Oh!... Are you going to let me go alone?"</p> + +<p>He laughed: "I've no choice; I really have an appointment this morning."</p> + +<p>She inspected him, drew a step nearer, laid both hands lightly on his +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Duane, dear," she said, "are you really going to let me drift past you +out to sea—after all?"</p> + +<p>"What else can I do? Besides, you are not going to drift."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am. You were very nice to me yesterday."</p> + +<p>"It was you who were very sweet to me.... But I told you how matters +stand. You care for your husband."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you did tell me. But it is not true. I thought about it all night +long; I find that I do not care for him—as you told me I did."</p> + +<p>He said, smiling: "Nor do you really care for me."</p> + +<p>"I could care."</p> + +<p>Her hands still lay lightly on his shoulders; he smilingly disengaged +them, saluted the finger tips, and swung them free.</p> + +<p>"No, you couldn't," he said—"nor could I."</p> + +<p>She clasped her hands behind her, confronting him with that gaily +audacious allure which he knew so well:</p> + +<p>"Does a man really care whether or not he is in love with a woman before +he makes love to her?"</p> + +<p>"Do you want an honest answer?"</p> + +<p>"Please."</p> + +<p>"Well, then—if she is sufficiently attractive, a man doesn't usually +care."</p> + +<p>"Am I sufficiently attractive?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Then—why do you hesitate?... I know the rules of the game. When one +wearies, the other must pretend to.... And then they make their adieux +very amiably.... Isn't that a man's ideal of an affair with a pretty +woman?"</p> + +<p>He laughed: "I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"So do I. You are no novice, are you—as I am?"</p> + +<p>"Are you a novice, Rosalie?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am. You probably don't believe it. It is absurd, isn't it, +considering these lonely years—considering what he has done—that I +haven't anything with which to reproach myself."</p> + +<p>"It is very admirable," he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, theoretically. I was too fastidious—perhaps a little bit too +decent. It's curious how inculcated morals and early precepts make +mountains out of what is really very simple travelling. If a woman +ceases to love her husband, she is going to miss too much in life if +she's afraid to love anybody else.... I suppose I have been afraid."</p> + +<p>"It's rather a wholesome sort of fear," he said.</p> + +<p>"Wholesome as breakfast-food. I hate it. Besides, the fear doesn't exist +any more," shaking her head. "Like the pretty girls in a very popular +and profoundly philosophical entertainment, I've simply got to love +somebody"—she smiled at him—"and I'd prefer to fall honestly and +disgracefully in love with you—if you'd give me the opportunity." There +was a pause. "Otherwise," she concluded, "I shall content myself with +doing a mischief to your sex where I can. I give you the choice, +Duane—I give you the disposal of myself. Am I to love—you?—or be +loved by God knows whom—and make him suffer for it"—she set her little +even teeth—"and pay back to men what man has done to me?"</p> + +<p>"Nonsense," he said good-humouredly; "isn't there anything except +playing at love that counts in the world?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing counts without it. I've learned that much."</p> + +<p>"Some people have done pretty well without it."</p> + +<p>"You haven't. You might have been a really good painter if you cared for +a woman who cared for you. There's no tenderness in your work; it's all +technique and biceps."</p> + +<p>He said gravely: "You are right."</p> + +<p>"Am I?... Do you think you could try to care for me—even for that +reason, Duane—to become a better painter?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid not," he said pleasantly.</p> + +<p>There was a silence; her expression changed subtly, then the colour came +back and she smiled and nodded adieu.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," she said; "I'm going to get into all sorts of mischief. The +black flag is hoisted. <i>Malheur aux hommes!</i>"</p> + +<p>"There's one now," said Duane, laughing as Delancy Grandcourt's bulk +appeared among the trees along Hurryon Water. "Lord! what a bungler he +is on a trout-stream!"</p> + +<p>Rosalie turned and gazed at the big, clumsy young man who was fishing +with earnestness and method every unlikely pool in sight.</p> + +<p>"Does he belong to anybody?" she asked, considering him. "I want to do +real damage. He is usually at Geraldine's heels, isn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, let him alone," said Duane; "he's an awfully decent fellow. If a +man of that slow, plodding, faithful species ever is thoroughly aroused +by a woman, it will be a lively day for his tormentor."</p> + +<p>Rosalie's blue eyes sparkled: "Will it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it will. You had better not play hob with Delancy. Are you +intending to?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Look at the man! That's the fourth time he's landed his +line in a bush! He'll fall into that pool if he's not—mercy!—there he +goes! Did you ever see such a genius for clumsiness?"</p> + +<p>She was moving forward through the trees as she spoke; Duane called +after her in a warning voice:</p> + +<p>"Don't try to do anything to disturb him. It's not good sport; he's a +mighty decent sort, I tell you."</p> + +<p>"I won't play any tricks on your good young man," she said with a shrug +of contempt, and sauntered off toward the Gray Water. Her path, however, +crossed Grandcourt's, and as she stepped upon the footbridge she glanced +down, where, wading gingerly in mid-stream, Delancy floundered and +panted and barely contrived to maintain a precarious footing, while +sending his flies sprawling down the rapids.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning," she nodded, as he caught sight of her. He attempted to +take off his cap, slipped, wallowed, and recovered his balance by +miracle alone.</p> + +<p>"There's a thumping big trout under that bridge," he informed her +eagerly; "he ran downstream just now, but I can't seem to raise him."</p> + +<p>"You splash too much. You'd probably raise him if you raised less of +something else."</p> + +<p>"Is that it?" he inquired innocently. "I try not to, but I generally +manage to raise hell with every pool before I get a chance to fish it. +I'll show you just where he lies. Watch!"</p> + +<p>His cast of flies whistled wildly; there was a quick pang of pain in her +shoulder and she gave a frightened cry.</p> + +<p>"Good Lord! Have I got <i>you</i>?" he exclaimed, aghast.</p> + +<p>"You certainly have," she retorted, exasperated, "and you had better +come up and get this hook out! You'll need it if you want to fish any +more."</p> + +<p>Dripping and horrified, he scrambled up the bank to the footbridge; she +flinched, but made no sound, as he freed her from the hook; a red stain +appeared on the sleeve of her waist, above the elbow.</p> + +<p>"It's fortunate that it was a b-barbless hook," he stammered, horribly +embarrassed and contemplating with dismay the damage he had +accomplished; "otherwise," he added, "we would have had to cut out the +hook. We're rather lucky, I think. Is it very painful?"</p> + +<p>"Sufficiently," she said, disgusted. "But I suppose this sort of thing +is nothing unusual for you."</p> + +<p>"I've hooked one or two people," he admitted, reddening. "I suppose you +won't bother to forgive me, but I'm terribly sorry. If you'll let me put +a little mud on it——"</p> + +<p>She disdained to reply. He hovered about her, clumsily solicitous, and +whichever way she turned, he managed to get underfoot, until, thoroughly +vexed, she stood stock-still and opened her arms with a hopeless +gesture:</p> + +<p>"What <i>are</i> you trying to do, Delancy? Do you want to embrace me? I wish +you wouldn't leap about me like a great Dane puppy!"</p> + +<p>The red surged up into his face anew:</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm very sorry."</p> + +<p>She looked at him curiously: "I beg yours—you big, silly boy. Don't +blush at me. Great Danes are exceedingly desirable property, you +know.... Did you wish to be forgiven for anything? What on earth are you +doing with that horrid fistful of muck?"</p> + +<p>"I only want to put some mud on that wound, if you'll let me. It's good +for hornet stings——"</p> + +<p>She laughed and backed away: "Do you believe there is any virtue in mud, +Delancy?—good, deep mire—when one is bruised and sore and lonely and +desperate? Oh, don't try to understand—what a funny, confused, stupid +way you have of looking at me! I remember you used to look at me that +way sometimes—oh, long ago—before I was married, I think."</p> + +<p>The heavy colour which surged so readily to his temples began to amuse +her; she leaned back against the bridge rail and contemplated him with +smiling disdain.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she said, "years ago, I had a slight, healthy suspicion +that you were on the verge of falling in love with me."</p> + +<p>He tried to smile, but the colour died out in his face.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I was on the verge," he contrived to answer.</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you fall over?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it was because you married Jack Dysart," he said simply.</p> + +<p>"Was <i>that</i> all?"</p> + +<p>"All?" He thought he perceived the jest, and managed to laugh again.</p> + +<p>"Really, I am perfectly serious," repeated Rosalie. "Was that all that +prevented you from falling in love with me—because I was married?"</p> + +<p>"I think so," he said. "Wasn't it reason enough?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know it was enough for a man. I don't believe I know exactly +how men consider such matters.... You've managed to hook that fly into +my gown again! And now you've torn the skirt hopelessly! What a +devastating sort of creature you are, Delancy! You used to step on my +slippers at dancing school, and, oh, Heaven! how I hated you.... Where +are you going?" for he had begun to walk away, reeling in his wet line +as he moved, his grave, highly coloured face lowered, troubled eyes +intent on what he was doing.</p> + +<p>When she spoke, he halted and raised his head, and she saw the muscles +flexed under the bronze skin of the jaw—saw the lines of pain appear +where his mouth tightened. All of the clumsy boy in him had vanished; +she had never troubled herself to look at him very closely, and it +surprised her to see how worn his face really was under the eyes and +cheek-bones—really surprised her that there was much of dignity, even +of a certain nobility, in his quiet gaze.</p> + +<p>"I asked you where you are going?" she repeated with a faint smile.</p> + +<p>"Nowhere in particular."</p> + +<p>"But you are going <i>somewhere</i>, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"In my direction?"</p> + +<p>"I think not."</p> + +<p>"That is very rude of you, Delancy—when you don't even know where my +direction lies. Do you think," she demanded, amused, "that it is +particularly civil of a man to terminate an interview with a woman +before she offers him his congé?"</p> + +<p>He finished reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the +reel-guide, shifted his creel, buttoned on the landing-net, and quietly +turned around and inspected Mrs. Dysart.</p> + +<p>"I want to tell you something," he said. "I have never, even as a boy, +had from you a single word which did not in some vague manner convey a +hint of your contempt for me. Do you realise that?"</p> + +<p>"W-what!" she faltered, bewildered.</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose you do realise it. People generally feel toward me as +you feel; it has always been the fashion to tolerate me. It is a legend +that I am thick-skinned and stupidly slow to take offence. I am not +offended now.... Because I could not be with you.... But I am tired of +it, and I thought it better that you should know it—after all these +years."</p> + +<p>Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the +hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a +stinging flush deepened over her pretty face.</p> + +<p>"Had you anything else to say to me?" he asked, without embarrassment.</p> + +<p>"N-no."</p> + +<p>"Then may I take my departure?"</p> + +<p>She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and +intense curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you?" she asked. +"Because I haven't meant to."</p> + +<p>He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly +smile fascinated her.</p> + +<p>"You haven't intended to," he said. "It's all right, Rosalie——"</p> + +<p>"But—have I been horrid and disagreeable? Tell me."</p> + +<p>In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her; +slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the +innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What, +after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant +consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy +manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for +himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of +her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her attitude?</p> + +<p>She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life—that is, she had +neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the +curiosity and interest now stirring her.</p> + +<p>"Were you really ever in love with me?" she asked, so frankly that the +painful colour rose to his hair again, and he stood silent, head +lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins.</p> + +<p>"But—good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there's +nothing to be ashamed of in it! I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am +thinking about it with—with a certain re—" She was going to say +regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own +seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting +to him.</p> + +<p>She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of +the awkwardness with which he moved—a great, big powerful machine, +continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own +power might break loose and smash things. That seemed to be the root of +his awkwardness—unskilful self-control—a vague consciousness of the +latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled, +and controlled unskilfully.</p> + +<p>She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of +Grandcourt. Without considering or understanding why, she began to +experience an agreeable sense of restfulness and security in the silence +which endured between them. He stood full in the sunlight, very deeply +preoccupied with the contents of his fly-book; she leaned back on the +sun-scorched railing of the bridge, bathing-suit tucked under one arm, +listening to the melody of the rushing stream below. It seemed almost +like the intimacy of old friendship, this quiet interval in the sun, +with the moving shadows of leaves at their feet and the music of the +water in their ears—a silence unbroken save by that, and the pure, +sweet call-note of some woodland bird from the thickets beyond.</p> + +<p>"What fly are you trying?" she asked, dreamily conscious of the +undisturbed accord.</p> + +<p>"Wood-ibis—do you think they might come to it?" he asked so naturally +that a sudden glow of confidence in him, in the sunlit world around her, +warmed her.</p> + +<p>"Let me look at your book?"</p> + +<p>He brought it. Together they fumbled the brilliantly patterned aluminum +leaves, fumbling with tufted silks and feathers, until she untangled a +most alluringly constructed fly and drew it out, presenting it to him +between forefinger and thumb.</p> + +<p>"Shall we try it?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he said.</p> + +<p>Duane, carving hieroglyphics on the bark of the big beech, raised his +head and looked after them.</p> + +<p>"That's a pretty low trick," he said to himself, as they sauntered away +toward the Gray Water. And he scowled in silence and continued his +carving.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER IX<br />CONFESSION</a></h2> + + +<p>So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West +Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be +made somehow; Geraldine and Naïda Mallett doubled up; twin beds were +installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a +shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless +girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient +to last over from the winter.</p> + +<p>The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier, +gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter—he of the rambling and +casual legs—more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The +Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt +shared Mrs. Severn's room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West +Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his +studio at Hurryon Lodge.</p> + +<p>The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing +young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun; +tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart +horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an +army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over +the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and +decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that +they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as +Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several +respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and +the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter.</p> + +<p>As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that +was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared +in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from +surface cynicism—quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had +characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had +disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, +now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any attitude +about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering +sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a +conscious effort to ignore it, an attitude to disregard what custom has +sanctioned.</p> + +<p>Kathleen had never realised what a really sweet and charming fellow he +was until that morning, when he took her aside and told her of his +engagement.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," he said, "it is as though life had stopped for me many +years ago when Geraldine and I were playmates; it's exactly as though +all the interval of years in between counted less than a dream, and now, +at last, I am awake and taking up real life again.... You see, Kathleen, +as a matter of fact, I'm incomplete by myself. I'm only half of a suit +of clothes; Geraldine always wore the rest of me."</p> + +<p>"However," said Kathleen mischievously, "you've been very tireless in +trying on, they say. It's astonishing you never found a good fit——"</p> + +<p>"That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out +of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal. Are you going to be +nice to me, Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous +young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly. Then she held him at +arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes:</p> + +<p>"Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it."</p> + +<p>"I could not help doing it."</p> + +<p>But Kathleen repeated:</p> + +<p>"Love her enough. She will be yours to make—yours to unmake, to mould, +fashion, remould—with God's good help. Love her enough."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, very soberly.</p> + +<p>A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fête, and +Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her, +never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from +the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of +Seagrave.</p> + +<p>Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving +new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's +separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for +Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate—the old servants +of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain +the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less +conscientious recruits below stairs.</p> + +<p>A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended +the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's +loft, at Hurryon Lodge.</p> + +<p>He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious +and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, +shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a +strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather +heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno. A harsh voice +pronounced his name; old Mr. Tappan extended a dry hand and bored him +through with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket.</p> + +<p>"And do you still cultiwate the fine arts, young man?" he inquired, as +sternly as though he privately suspected Duane of maltreating them.</p> + +<p>Duane shook hands with him.</p> + +<p>"The school of the indiwidool," continued Mr. Tappan, "is what artists +need. Woo the muses in solitude; cultiwate 'em in isolation. Didn't +Benjamin West live out in the backwoods? And I guess he managed to make +good without raising hell in the Eekole di Boze Arts with a lot of +dissipated wagabonds at his elbow, inculcating immoral precepts and +wasting his time and his father's money."</p> + +<p>And he looked very hard at Duane, who winced, but agreed with him +solemnly.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, on the edge of a circle of newly arrived guests, leaned over +and whispered mischievously:</p> + +<p>"Is that what <i>you</i> did at the Ecole des Beaux Arts? Did you behave like +all that or did you cultivate the indiwidool?"</p> + +<p>He shook hands again, solemnly, with Mr. Tappan, stepped back, and +joined her.</p> + +<p>"Where on earth have you been hiding?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"You said that if I carved certain cabalistic signs on the big +beech-tree you would presently appear to me in a pink cloud—you +faithless little wretch!"</p> + +<p>"How could I? Three motor-loads arrived from Iron Hill before I was half +dressed, and ever since I've been doing my traditional duty; and," in a +lower voice, "I was perfectly crazy to go to the beech-tree all the +time. Did you wait long, you poor boy?"</p> + +<p>"Man is born to wait. I came back just now to find you.... I told +Kathleen," he added, radiant.</p> + +<p>"What?" she whispered, flushing deliciously. "Oh, pooh! I told her about +it this morning—the very first thing. We both snivelled. I didn't sleep +at all last night.... There's something I wish to tell you——"</p> + +<p>The gay smile suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful +tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that +very young, almost childish pathos to her expression. She put out her +hand instinctively and touched him.</p> + +<p>"I want to be alone with you, Duane—for a little while."</p> + +<p>"Shall I go to the beech-tree and wait?"</p> + +<p>She glanced around with a hopeless gesture:</p> + +<p>"You see? Other people are arriving and I've simply got to be here. I +don't see how I can get away before luncheon. Where were you going just +now?"</p> + +<p>"I thought I'd step over to the studio to see what sort of a shake-down +you've given me to repose on."</p> + +<p>"I wish you would. Poor child, I do hope you will be comfortable. It's +perfectly horrid to send you out of the house——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mind," he nodded, laughing, and she gave him a shy glance +of adieu and turned to receive another guest.</p> + +<p>In his extemporized studio at Hurryon Lodge he found that old Miller had +already provided him with a washstand and accessories, a new tin tub and +a very comfortable iron bed.</p> + +<p>The place was aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, +and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and +picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in +turpentine and black soap.</p> + +<p>Confronting him on a big improvised easel was the full-length, +half-reclining portrait of Rosalie Dysart—a gay, fascinating, fly-away +thing after the deliberately artificial manner of the French court +painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago. Ribbons +fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and +blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken +parody of a shepherdess—a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, +sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional +oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a +dark-blue sky—this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the +perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as +delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the flowered petticoat.</p> + +<p>The unholy ease with which he had done it gave him a secret thrill of +admiration. It was apparently all surface—the exquisite masquerader, +the surrounding detail, the technical graciousness and flow of line and +contour, the effortless brush-work. Yet, with an ease which demanded +very respectful consideration, he had absorbed and transmitted the +frivolous spirit of the old French masters, which they themselves took +so seriously; the portrait was also a likeness, yet delightfully +permeated with the charm of a light-minded epoch; and somehow, behind +and underneath it all, a brilliant mockery sparkled—the half-amused, +half-indifferent brilliancy of the painter himself. It was there for any +who could appreciate it, and it was quite irresistible, particularly +since he had, after a dazzling preliminary study or two from a +gamekeeper's small, chubby son, added, fluttering in mid-air, a pair of +white-winged Loves, chubby as cherubs but much more Gallic.</p> + +<p>Nobody excepting Rosalie and himself had seen the picture. What he meant +to do with it he did not know, half ashamed as he was of its satiric +cleverness. Painters would hate it—stand hypnotised, spellbound the +while—and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of +pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art; +they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay +perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly. +What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an +actor who was eminently fitted to play <i>Lear</i>, should bow to his +audience and earnestly perform a very complicated and perfect flip-flap?</p> + +<p>Amused with his own disrespectful reflections, he stood before the +picture, turning from it with a grin from time to time to compare it +with some dozen vigorous canvases hanging along the studio wall—studies +that he knew would instantly command the owlish respect of the truly +earnest—connoisseurs, critics, and academicians in this very earnest +land of ours.</p> + +<p>There was a Sargent-like portrait of old Miller, with something of that +great master's raucous colouring and perhaps intentional discords, and +all of his technical effrontery; and here, too, lurked that shadow of +mockery ever latent in the young man's brush—something far more subtle +than caricature or parody—deeper than the imitation of +manner—something like the evanescent caprice of a strong hand, which +seems to threaten for a second, then passes on lightly, surely, +transforming its menace into a caress.</p> + +<p>There were two adorable nude studies of Miller's granddaughters, aged +six and seven—quaintly and engagingly formal in their naïve +astonishment at finding themselves quite naked. There was a fine sketch +of Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him +the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his +dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter +picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and +Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety +drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud.</p> + +<p>For in Duane's work, from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward +something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the +canvases of the old masters—which survives mould and age, the opacity +of varnish, and the well-intentioned maltreatment of unbaked curators.</p> + +<p>There was no mystery about it; he prepared his canvas with white-lead, +gave it a long sun-bath, modelled in bone-black and an earth-red, gave +it another bath in the sun, and then glazed. This, a choice of +permanent colours, and oil as a medium, was the mechanical technique.</p> + +<p>Standing there, thoughts remote, idly sorting and re-sorting his +brushes, he heard the birds singing on the forest's edge, heard the wind +in the pines blowing, with the sound of flowing water, felt the warmth +of the sun, breathed the mounting freshness from the fields. Life was +still very, very young; it had only begun since love had come, and that +was yesterday.</p> + +<p>And as he stood there, happy, a trifle awed as he began to understand +what life might hold for him, there came quick steps on the stair, a +knock, her voice outside his door:</p> + +<p>"Duane! May I come in?"</p> + +<p>He sprang to the door; she stepped inside, breathing rapidly, delicately +flushed from her haste.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't stand it any longer, so I left Scott to scrape and bow and +pull his forelock. I've got to go back in a few minutes. Are you glad to +see me?"</p> + +<p>He took her in his arms.</p> + +<p>"Dearest, dearest!" she murmured, looking at him with all her heart in +her brown eyes.</p> + +<p>So they stood for a little while, her mouth and body acquiescent to his +embrace.</p> + +<p>"Such a long, long time since I saw you. Nearly half an hour," he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes." She drew away a little:</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she said, looking about her, over his shoulder, "I have +never been here since you took it as a studio."</p> + +<p>She caught a glimpse of the picture on the easel, freed herself, and, +retaining his hand in both of hers, gazed curiously at Rosalie's +portrait.</p> + +<p>"How perfectly charming!" she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of +exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and +disrespectfully jeer at our mincing friends, Boucher, Nattier, <i>et +al.</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I knew you'd understand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Oh, you wonderful +little thing—you darling!" He caught her to him again, but she twisted +away and tucked one arm under his:</p> + +<p>"Don't, Duane; I want to see these things. What a perfectly dear study +of Miller's kiddies! Oh, it is too lovable, too adorable! You wouldn't +sell that—would you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not; it's yours, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>After a moment she looked up at him:</p> + +<p>"Ours?" she asked; but the smile faded once more from eyes and lips; she +suffered him to lead her from canvas to canvas, approved them or +remained silent, and presently turned and glanced toward the small iron +bed. Manner and gaze had become distrait.</p> + +<p>"You think this will be comfortable, Duane?" she inquired listlessly.</p> + +<p>"Perfectly," he said.</p> + +<p>She disengaged her hand from his, walked over to the lounge, turned, and +signed for him to seat himself. Then she dropped to her knees and +settled down on the rug at his feet, laying her soft cheek against his +arm.</p> + +<p>"I have some things to tell you," she said in a low voice.</p> + +<p>"Very serious things?" he asked, smiling.</p> + +<p>"Very."</p> + +<p>"All right; I am listening."</p> + +<p>"Very serious things," she repeated, gazing through the window, where +green tree-tops swayed in the breezy sunlight; and she pressed her +cheek closer to his arm.</p> + +<p>"I have not been very—good," she said.</p> + +<p>He looked at her, suppressed the smile that twitched at his mouth, and +waited.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could give myself to you as clean and sweet and untainted +as—as you deserve.... I can't; and before we go any further I must tell +you——"</p> + +<p>"Why, you blessed child," he exclaimed, half laughing, half serious. +"You are not going to confess to me, are you?"</p> + +<p>"Duane, I've got to tell you everything. I couldn't rest unless I was +perfectly honest with you."</p> + +<p>"But, dear," he said, a trifle dismayed, "such confidences are not +necessary. Nor am I fit to hear your list of innocent +transgressions——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they are not very innocent. Let me tell you; let me cleanse myself +as much as I can. I don't want to have any secrets from you, Duane. I +want to go to you as guiltless as confession can make me. I want to +begin clean. Let me tell you. Couldn't you let me tell you, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"And I, dear? Do—do you expect me to tell <i>you</i>? Do you expect me to do +as you do?"</p> + +<p>She looked up at him surprised; she had expected it. Something in his +face warned her of her own ignorance.</p> + +<p>"I don't know very much about men, Duane. Are there things you cannot +say to me?"</p> + +<p>"One or two, dear."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean until after we are married?"</p> + +<p>"Not even then. There is no use in your knowing."</p> + +<p>She had never considered that, either.</p> + +<p>"But <i>ought</i> I to know, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"No," he said miserably, "you ought not."</p> + +<p>She sat upright for a few seconds longer, gazing thoughtfully at space, +then pressed her pale face against his knee again in silent faith and +confidence.</p> + +<p>"Anyway, I know you will be fair to me in your own way," she said. +"There is only one way that I know how to be fair to you. Listen."</p> + +<p>And in a shamed voice she forced herself to recite her list of sins; +repeating them as she had confessed them to Kathleen. She told him +everything; her silly and common imprudence with Dysart, which, she +believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she +had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting +and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her +secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making +self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told +him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some +small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All +that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an +average man, listened, head bowed over her fragrant hair, adoring her, +wretched in heart and soul with the heavy knowledge of all he dare not +tell or forget or cleanse from him, kneeling repentant, in the sanctuary +of her love and confidence.</p> + +<p>She told him everything—sins of omission, childish depravities, made +real only by the decalogue. Of indolence, selfishness, unkindness, she +accused herself; strove to count the times when she had yielded to +temptation.</p> + +<p>He was reading the first human heart he had ever known—a heart still +strangely untainted, amid a society where innocence was the exception, +doubtful wisdom the rule, and where curiosity was seldom left very long +in doubt.</p> + +<p>His hands fell over hers as her voice ceased, but he did not speak.</p> + +<p>She waited a little while, then, with a slight nestling movement, turned +and hid her face on his knees.</p> + +<p>"With God's help," she whispered, "I will subdue what threatens me. But +I am afraid of it! Oh, Duane, I am afraid."</p> + +<p>He managed to steady his voice.</p> + +<p>"What is it, darling, that seems to tempt you," he asked; "is it the +taste—the effect?"</p> + +<p>"The—effect. If I could only forget it—but I can't help thinking about +it—I suppose just because it's forbidden—For days, sometimes, there is +not the slightest desire; then something stirs it up in me, begins to +annoy me; or the desire comes sometimes when I am excited or very happy, +or very miserable. There seems to be some degraded instinct in me that +seeks for it whenever my emotions are aroused.... I must be honest with +you; I—I feel that way <i>now</i>—because, I suppose, I am a little +excited."</p> + +<p>He raised her and took her in his arms.</p> + +<p>"But you won't, will you? Simply tell me that you won't."</p> + +<p>She looked at him, appalled by her own hesitation. Was it possible, +after the words she had just uttered, the exaltation of confession still +thrilling her, that she could hesitate? Was it morbid +over-conscientiousness in the horror of a broken promise to him that +struck her silent?</p> + +<p>"Say it, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane! I've said it so often to Kathleen and myself! Let me +promise myself again—and keep my word. Let me try that way, dear, +before I—I promise you?"</p> + +<p>There was a feverish colour in her face; she spoke rapidly, like one who +temporises, trying to convince others and over-ride the inward voice; +her slender hands were restless on his shoulders, her eyes lowered, +avoiding his.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps if you and Kathleen, and I, myself, were not so afraid—perhaps +if I were not forbidden—if I had your confidence and my own that I +would not abuse my liberty, it might be easier to refrain. Shall we try +it that way, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think it best?"</p> + +<p>"I think—I might try that way. Dear, I have so much to sustain me +now—so much more at stake! Because there is the dread of losing +you—for, Duane, until I am mistress of myself, I will never, never +marry you—and do you suppose I am going to risk our happiness? Only +leave me free, dear; don't attempt to wall me in at first, and I will +surely find my way."</p> + +<p>She sprang up, trying to smile, hesitated, then slowly came back to +where he was standing and put her arms around his neck.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye until luncheon," she said. "I must go back to my neglected +guests—I am going to run all the way as fast as my legs can carry me! +Kathleen will be dreadfully mortified. Do you love me?... Even after my +horrid confessions?... Oh, you darling!... Now that you know the very +worst, I begin to feel as clean and fresh as though I had just stepped +from the bath.... And I <i>will</i> try to be what you would have me, +dear.... Because I am quite crazy about you—oh, completely mad!"</p> + +<p>She bent impulsively and kissed his hands, freed herself with a +breathless laugh, and turned and fled.</p> + +<p>For a long time her lover stood there, motionless, downcast, clenched +fists in his pockets, face to face with the past. And that which lay +behind him was that which lies behind what is commonly known to the +world as the average man.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER X<br />DUSK</a></h2> + + +<p>The Masked Dance was to begin at ten that evening; for that reason +dinner had been served early at scores of small tables on the terrace, a +hilarious and topsy-turvy, but somewhat rapid affair, because everybody +required time for dressing, and already throughout the house maids and +valets were scurrying around, unpacking masks and wigs and dainty +costumes for the adorning of the guests at Roya-Neh.</p> + +<p>Toward nine o'clock the bustle and confusion became distracting; +corridors were haunted by graceful flitting figures in various stages of +deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the +same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered +laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious +complications of intimate attire.</p> + +<p>On the men's side of the house there was less hubbub and some quiet +swearing; much splashing in tubs, much cigarette smoke. Men entered each +other's rooms, half-clad in satin breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled +shirts, asking a helping hand in tying queue ribbons or adjusting +stocks, and lingered to smoke and jest and gossip, and jeer at one +another's finery, or to listen to the town news from those week-enders +recently arrived from the city.</p> + +<p>The talk was money, summer shows, and club gossip, but financial rumours +ruled.</p> + +<p>Young Ellis, in pale blue silk and wig, perched airily, on a table, +became gloomily prophetic concerning the steady retirement of capital +from philanthropic enterprises hatched in Wall Street; Peter Tappan saw +in the endlessly sagging market dire disaster for the future digestions +of wealthy owners of undistributed securities.</p> + +<p>"Marble columns and gold ceilings don't make a trust company," he +sneered. "There are a few billionaire gamblers from the West who seem to +think Wall Street is Coney Island. There'll be a shindy, don't make any +mistake; we're going to have one hell of a time; but when it's over the +corpses will all be shipped—ahem!—west."</p> + +<p>Several men laughed uneasily; one or two old line trust companies were +mentioned; then somebody spoke of the Minnisink, lately taken over by +the Algonquin.</p> + +<p>Duane lighted a cigarette and, watching the match still burning, said:</p> + +<p>"Dysart is a director. You can't ask for any more conservative citizen +than Dysart, can you?"</p> + +<p>Several men looked around for Dysart, but he had stepped out of the +room.</p> + +<p>Ellis said, after a silence:</p> + +<p>"That gambling outfit from the West has bedevilled one or two good +citizens in Gotham town."</p> + +<p>Dr. Bailey shrugged his big, fat shoulders.</p> + +<p>"It's no secret, I suppose, that the Minnisink crowd is being talked +about," he grunted.</p> + +<p>Ellis said in a low but perfectly distinct voice:</p> + +<p>"Neither is it any secret that Jack Dysart has been hit hard in National +Ice."</p> + +<p>Peter Tappan slipped from his seat on the table and threw away his +cigarette:</p> + +<p>"One thing is sure as soubrettes," he observed; "the Clearing House +means to get rid of certain false prophets. The game law is off +prophets—in the fall. There'll be some good gunning—under the laws of +New Jersey."</p> + +<p>"I hope they'll be careful not to injure any marble columns or ruin the +gold-leaf on the ceilings," sneered Ellis. "Come on, some of you +fellows, and fix the buckle in this cursed stock of mine."</p> + +<p>"I thought fixing stocks was rather in your own line," said Duane to the +foxy-visaged and celebrated manipulator, who joined very heartily in the +general and unscrupulous laugh.</p> + +<p>A moment later, Dysart, who had heard every word from the doorway, +walked silently back to his own room and sat down, resting his temples +between his closed fists.</p> + +<p>The well-cut head was already silvery gray at the temples; one month had +done it. When animated, his features still appeared firm and of good +colour; relaxed, they were loose and pallid, and around the mouth fine +lines appeared. Often a man's hands indicate his age, and his betrayed +him, giving the lie to his lithe, straight, graceful figure. The man had +aged amazingly in a month or two.</p> + +<p>Matters were not going very well with him. For one thing, the Half-Moon +Trust Company had finally terminated all dealings with the gorgeous +marble-pillared temple of high finance of which he was a director. For +another, he had met the men of the West, and for them he had done things +which he did not always care to think about. For another, money was +becoming disturbingly scarce, and the time was already past for selling +securities.</p> + +<p>During the last year he had been vaguely aware of some occult hostility +to himself and his enterprises—not the normal hostility of business +aggression—but something indefinable—merely negative at first, then +more disturbing, sinister, foreboding; something in the very air to +which he was growing more sensitive every day.</p> + +<p>By all laws of finance, by all signs and omens, a serious reaction from +the saturnalia of the last few years was already over-due. He had felt +it, without alarm at first, for the men of the West laughed him to scorn +and refused to shorten sail. They still refused. Perhaps they could not. +One thing was certain: he could scarcely manage to take in a single reef +on his own account. He was beginning to realise that the men with whom +rumour was busy were men marked down by their letters; and they either +would not or could not aid him in shortening sail.</p> + +<p>For a month, now, under his bland and graceful learning among the +intimates of his set, Dysart had been slowly but steadily going to +pieces. At such moments as this it showed on the surface. It showed now +in his loose jaw and flaccid cheeks; in the stare of the quenched eyes.</p> + +<p>He was going to pieces, and he was aware of it. For one thing, he +recognised the physical change setting in; for another, his cool, +selfish, self-centred equanimity was being broken down; the rigorous +bodily régime from which he had never heretofore swerved and which alone +enabled him to perform the exacting social duties expected of him, he +had recently neglected. He felt the impending bodily demoralisation, +the threatened mental disintegration; he suspected its symptoms in a +new nervous irritability, in lapses of self-command, in unaccountable +excesses utterly foreign to his habitual self-control.</p> + +<p>Dissolute heretofore only in the negative form, whatever it was that +impended threatening him, seemed also to be driving him into an utter +and monstrous lack of caution, and—God alone knew how—he had at last +done the one thing that he never dreamed of doing. And the knowledge of +it, and the fear of it, bit deeper into his shallow soul every hour of +the day and night. And over all, vague, indefinite, hung something that +menaced all that he cared for most on earth, held most sacred—his +social position in the Borough of Manhattan and his father's pride in +him and it.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">After a while he stood up in his pale blue silken costume of that +mincing, smirking century which valued a straight back and a well-turned +leg, and very slowly, as though tired, he walked to the door separating +his wife's dressing-room from his own.</p> + +<p>"May I come in?" he asked.</p> + +<p>A maid opened the door, saying that Mrs. Dysart had gone to Miss Quest's +room to have her hair powdered. He seated himself; the maid retired.</p> + +<p>For a while he sat there, absently playing with his gilt-hilted sword, +sombre-eyed, preoccupied, listening to the distant joyous tumult in the +house, until quick, light steps and a breezy flurry of satin at the door +announced his wife's return.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said coolly; "you?"</p> + +<p>That was her greeting; his was a briefer nod.</p> + +<p>She went to her mirror and studied her face, trying a patch here, a +hint of vermilion there, touching up brow and lashes and the sweet, +curling corners of her mouth.</p> + +<p>"Well?" she inquired, over her shoulder, insolently.</p> + +<p>He got up out of the chair, shut the door, and returned to his seat +again.</p> + +<p>"Have you made up your mind about the <i>D</i> and <i>P</i> securities?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I told you I'd let you know when I came to any conclusion," she replied +drily.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know what you said, Rosalie. But the time is shortening. I've +got to meet certain awkward obligations——"</p> + +<p>"So you intimated before."</p> + +<p>He nodded and went on amiably: "All I ask of you is to deposit those +securities with us for a few months. They are as safe with us as they +are with the Half-Moon. Do you think I'd let you do it if I were not +certain?"</p> + +<p>She turned and scrutinised him insultingly:</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said, "how many kinds of treachery you are capable +of."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"What I say. Frankly, I don't know what you are capable of doing with my +money. If I can judge by what you've done with my married life, I +scarcely feel inclined to confide in you financially."</p> + +<p>"There is no use in going over that again," he said patiently. "We +differ little from ordinary people, I fancy. I think our house is as +united as the usual New York domicile. The main thing is to keep it so. +And in a time of some slight apprehension and financial +uneasiness—perhaps even of possible future stress—you and I, for our +own sakes, should stand firmly together to weather any possible gale."</p> + +<p>"I think I am able to weather whatever I am responsible for," she said. +"If you do the same, we can get on as well as we ever have."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you understand," he persisted, forcing a patient smile. +"All business in the world is conducted upon borrowed capital. I +merely——"</p> + +<p>"Do you need more capital?" she inquired, so bluntly that he winced.</p> + +<p>"Yes, for a few months. I may require a little additional +collateral——"</p> + +<p>"Why don't you borrow it, then?"</p> + +<p>"There is no necessity if you will temporarily transfer——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Can</i> you borrow it? Or is the ice in your trust company too rotten to +stand the strain?"</p> + +<p>He flushed darkly and the temper began to escape in his voice:</p> + +<p>"Has anybody hinted that I couldn't? Have you been discussing my +personal business affairs with any of the pups whom you drag about at +your heels? No matter what your personal attitude toward me may be, only +a fool would undermine the very house that——"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you understand, Jack," she said quietly; "I care +absolutely nothing about your house."</p> + +<p>"Well, you care about your own social status, I suppose!" he retorted +sharply.</p> + +<p>"Not very much."</p> + +<p>"That's an imbecile thing to say!"</p> + +<p>"Is it?" She turned to the mirror and touched her powdered hair lightly +with both hands, and continued speaking with her back turned toward him:</p> + +<p>"I married you for love. Remember that. There was even something of it +alive in the roots, I think, until within a few days—in spite of what +you are, what you have done to me. Now the thing is dead. I can tell you +when it died, if you like."</p> + +<p>And as he said nothing:</p> + +<p>"It died when I came in late one evening, and, passing my corridor and a +certain locked door, I heard a young girl sobbing. Then it died."</p> + +<p>She turned on him, contemptuously indifferent, and surveyed him at her +leisure:</p> + +<p>"Your conduct to me has been such as to deliberately incite me to evil. +Your attitude has been a constant occult force, driving me toward it. By +the life you have led, and compelled me to lead, you have virtually set +a premium upon my infidelity. What you may have done, I don't know; what +you have done, even recently, I am not sure of. But I know this: you +took my life and made a parody of it. I never lived; I have been tempted +to. If the opportunity comes, I will."</p> + +<p>Dysart rose, his face red and distorted:</p> + +<p>"I thought young Mallett had taught you to live pretty rapidly!" he +said.</p> + +<p>"No," she replied, "you only thought other people thought so. That is +why you resented it. Your jealousy is of that sort—you don't care what +I am, but you do care what the world thinks I am. And that is all there +ever was to you—all there ever will be: desperate devotion to your +wretched little social status, which includes sufficient money and a +chaste wife to make it secure."</p> + +<p>She laughed; fastened a gardenia in her hair:</p> + +<p>"I don't know about your money, and I don't care. As for your wife, she +will remain chaste as long as it suits her, and not one fraction of a +second longer."</p> + +<p>"Are you crazy?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Why, it does seem crazy to you, I suppose—that a woman should have no +regard for the sacredness of your social status. I have no regard for +it. As for your honour"—she laughed unpleasantly—"I've never had it to +guard, Jack. And I'll be responsible for my own, and the tarnishing of +it. I think that is all I have to say."</p> + +<p>She walked leisurely toward the door, passing him with a civil nod of +dismissal, and left him standing there in his flower-embroidered +court-dress, the electric light shining full on the thin gray hair at +his temples.</p> + +<p>In the corridor she met Naïda, charming in her blossom-embroidered +panniers; and she took both her hands and kissed her, saying:</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you won't care to have me caress you some day, so I'll take +this opportunity, dear. Where is your brother?"</p> + +<p>"Duane is dressing," she said. "What did you mean by my not wishing to +kiss you some day?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, silly." And she passed on, turned to the right, and met Sylvia +Quest, looking very frail and delicate in her bath-robe and powdered +hair. The girl passed her with the same timid, almost embarrassed little +inclination with which she now invariably greeted her, and Rosalie +turned and caught her, turning her around with a laugh. "What is the +matter, dear?"</p> + +<p>"M-matter?" stammered Sylvia, trembling under the reaction.</p> + +<p>"Yes. You are not very friendly, and I've always liked you. Have I +offended you, Sylvia?"</p> + +<p>She was looking smilingly straight into the blue eyes.</p> + +<p>"No—oh, no!" said the girl hastily. "How can you think that, Mrs. +Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"Then I don't think it," replied Rosalie, laughing. "You are a trifle +pale, dear. Touch up your lips a bit. It's very Louis XVI. See mine?... +Will you kiss me, Sylvia?"</p> + +<p>Again a strange look flickered in the girl's eyes; Rosalie kissed her +gently; she had turned very white.</p> + +<p>"What is your costume?" asked Mrs. Dysart.</p> + +<p>"Flame colour and gold."</p> + +<p>"Hell's own combination, dear," laughed Rosalie. "You will make an +exquisite little demon shepherdess."</p> + +<p>And she went on, smiling back at the girl in friendly fashion, then +turned and lightly descended the stairway, snapping on her loup-mask +before the jolly crowd below could identify her.</p> + +<p>Masked figures here and there detained her, addressing her in disguised +voices, but she eluded them, slipped through the throngs on terrace and +lawn, ran down the western slope and entered the rose-garden. A man in +mask and violet-gray court costume rose from a marble seat under the +pergola and advanced toward her, the palm of his left hand carelessly +balanced on his gilded hilt.</p> + +<p>"So you did get my note, Duane?" she said, laying her pretty hand on his +arm.</p> + +<p>"I certainly did. What can I do for you, Rosalie?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Shall we sit here a moment?"</p> + +<p>He laughed, but continued standing after she was seated.</p> + +<p>The air was heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks +and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and +very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring +and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and +everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out against +the foliage.</p> + +<p>The woman beside him sat with masked head bent and slightly turned from +him; her restless hands worried her fan; her satin-shod feet were +crossed and recrossed.</p> + +<p>"What is the matter?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Life. It's all so very wrong."</p> + +<p>"Oh," he said, smiling, "so it's life that is amiss, not we!"</p> + +<p>"I suppose we are.... I suppose I am. But, Duane"—she turned and looked +at him—"I haven't had much of a chance yet—to go very right or very +wrong."</p> + +<p>"You've had chances enough for the latter," he said with an unpleasant +laugh. "In this sweet coterie we inhabit, there's always that chance."</p> + +<p>"There are good women in it, good wives. Your sister is in it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I mean to take her out," said Duane grimly. "Do you think I +want Naïda to marry some money-fattened pup in this set?"</p> + +<p>"Where can you take her?"</p> + +<p>"Where I'm going in future myself—among people whose brains are not as +obsolete as my appendix; where there still exist standards and +old-fashioned things like principles and religion, and a healthy terror +of the Decalogue!"</p> + +<p>"Is anybody really still afraid of the Decalogue?" she asked curiously.</p> + +<p>"Even we are, but some of us are more afraid of ennui. Fire and fear are +the greatest purifiers in the world; it's fear of some sort or other, +and only fear, that keeps the world as decent as it is."</p> + +<p>"I'm not afraid," she said, playing with her fan. "I'm only afraid of +dying before I have lived at all."</p> + +<p>"What do you call living?"</p> + +<p>"Being loved," she said, and looked up at him.</p> + +<p>"You poor little thing!" he said, only partly in earnest.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm sorry for the girl I was.... I was rather a nice girl, Duane. +You remember me before I married."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do. You were a corker. You are still."</p> + +<p>She nodded: "Yes, outwardly. Within is—nothing. I am very, very old; +very tired."</p> + +<p>He said no more. She sat listlessly watching the dusk-moths hovering +among the pinks. Far away in the darkness rockets were rising, spraying +the sky with fire; faint strains of music came from the forest.</p> + +<p>"Their Fête Galante has begun," she said. "Am I detaining you too long, +Duane?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>She smiled: "It is rather amusing," she observed, "my coming to you for +my morals—to you, Duane, who were once supposed to possess so few."</p> + +<p>"Never mind what I possess," he said, irritated. "What sort of advice do +you expect?"</p> + +<p>"Why, moral advice, of course."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Are you on the verge of demoralisation?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Am I?... There is a man——"</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said, coming as near a sneer as he was capable. "I know +what you've done. You've nearly twisted poor Grandcourt's head off his +honest neck. If you want to know what I think of it, it's an abominable +thing to do. Why, anybody can see that the man is in love with you, and +desperately unhappy already, I told you to let him alone. You promised, +too."</p> + +<p>He spoke rapidly, sharply; she bent her fair head in silence until he +ended.</p> + +<p>"May I defend myself?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Of course."</p> + +<p>"Then—I did not mean to make him care for me."</p> + +<p>"You all say that."</p> + +<p>"Yes; we are not always as innocent as I happen to be this time. I +really did not try, did not think, that he was taking a little +unaccustomed kindness on my part so seriously ... I overdid it; I'd been +beastly to him—most women are rude to Delancy Grandcourt, somehow or +other. I always was. And one day—that day in the forest—somehow +something he said opened my eyes—hurt me.... And women are fools to +believe him one. Why, Duane, he's every inch a man—high-minded, +sensitive, proud, generous, forbearing."</p> + +<p>Duane turned and stared at her; and to her annoyance the blood mounted +to her cheeks, but she went on:</p> + +<p>"Of course he has affected me. I don't know how it might have been with +me if I were not so—so utterly starved."</p> + +<p>"You mean to say you are beginning to care for Delancy Grandcourt?"</p> + +<p>"Care? Yes—in a perfectly nice way——"</p> + +<p>"And otherwise?"</p> + +<p>"I—don't know. I am honest with you, Duane; I don't know. A—a little +devotion of that kind"—she tried to laugh—"goes to my head, perhaps. +I've been so long without it.... I don't know. And I came here to tell +you. I came here to ask you what I ought to do."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" said Duane, "do you already care enough for him to worry +about your effect on him?"</p> + +<p>"I—do not wish him to be unhappy."</p> + +<p>"Oh. But you are willing to be unhappy in order to save him any +uneasiness. See here, Rosalie, you'd better pull up sharp."</p> + +<p>"Had I?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he said brutally. "Not many days ago you were adrift. Don't +cut your cable again."</p> + +<p>A vivid colour mounted to her temples:</p> + +<p>"That is all over," she said. "Have I not come to you again in spite of +the folly that sent me drifting to you before? And can I pay you a truer +compliment, Duane, than to ask the hospitality of your forbearance and +the shelter of your friendship?"</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> a trump, Rosalie," he said, after a moment's scowling. +"You're all right.... I don't know what to say.... If it's going to give +you a little happiness to care for this man——"</p> + +<p>"But what will it do to him, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"It ought to do him good if such a girl as you gives him all of herself +that she decently can. I don't know whether I'm right or wrong!" he +added almost angrily. "Confound it! there seems no end to conjugal +infelicity around us these days. I don't know where the line is—how +close to the danger mark an unhappy woman may drift and do no harm to +anybody. All I know is that I'm sorry—terribly sorry for you. You're a +corker."</p> + +<p>"Thanks," she said with a faint smile. "Do you think Delancy may safely +agree with you without danger to his peace of mind?"</p> + +<p>"Why not? After all, you're entitled to lawful happiness. So is he.... +Only——"</p> + +<p>"Only—what?"</p> + +<p>"I've never seen it succeed."</p> + +<p>"Seen what succeed?"</p> + +<p>"What is popularly known as the platonic."</p> + +<p>"Oh, this isn't <i>that</i>," she said naïvely. "He's rather in love already, +and I'm quite sure I could be if I—I let myself."</p> + +<p>Duane groaned.</p> + +<p>"Don't come to me asking what to do, then," he said impatiently, +"because I know what you ought to do and I don't know what I'd do under +the circumstances. You know as well as I do where the danger mark is. +Don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I—suspect."</p> + +<p>"Well, then——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, we haven't reached it yet," she said innocently.</p> + +<p>Her honesty appalled him, and he got up and began to pace the gravel +walk.</p> + +<p>"Do you intend to cross it?" he asked, halting abruptly.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't.... I don't want to.... Do you think there is any fear of +it?"</p> + +<p>"My Lord!" he said in despair, "you talk like a child. I'm trying to +realise that you women—some of you who appear so primed with doubtful, +worldly wisdom—are practically as innocent as the day you married."</p> + +<p>"I don't know very much about some things, Duane."</p> + +<p>"I notice that," he said grimly.</p> + +<p>She said very gravely: "This is the first time I have ever come very +near caring for a man.... I mean since I married." And she rose and +glanced toward the forest.</p> + +<p>They stood together for a moment, listening to the distant music, then, +without speaking, turned and walked toward the distant flare of light +which threw great trees into tangled and grotesque silhouette.</p> + +<p>"Tales of the Geneii," she murmured, fastening her loup; "Fate is the +Sultan. Pray God nobody cuts my head off."</p> + +<p>"You are much too amusing," he said as, side by side, they moved +silently on through the pale starlight, like errant phantoms of a +vanished age, and no further word was said between them, nor did they +look at each other again until, ahead, the road turned silvery under the +rays of the Lodge acetylenes, and beyond, the first cluster of brilliant +lanterns gleamed among the trees.</p> + +<p>"And here we separate," she said. "Good-bye," holding out her hand. "It +is my first rendezvous. Wish me a little happiness, please."</p> + +<p>"Happiness and—good sense," he said, smiling. He retained her hand for +a second, let it go and, stepping back, saluted her gaily as she passed +before him into the blaze of light.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XI<br />FÊTE GALANTE</a></h2> + + +<p>The forest, in every direction, was strung with lighted lanterns; tall +torches burning edged the Gray Water, and every flame rippled straight +upward in the still air.</p> + +<p>Through the dark, mid-summer woodland music of violin, viola, and +clarionet rang out, and the laughter and jolly uproar of the dancers +swelled and ebbed, with now and then sudden intervals of silence slowly +filled by the far noise of some unseen stream rushing westward under the +stars.</p> + +<p>Glade, greensward, forest, aisles, and the sylvan dancing floor, bounded +by garlanded and beribboned pillars, swarmed with a gay company. +Torchlight painted strange high lights on silken masks, touching with +subdued sparkles the eyes behind the slanting eye-slits; half a thousand +lanterns threw an orange radiance across the glade, bathing the whirling +throngs of dancers, glimmering on gilded braid and sword hilt, on +powdered hair, on fresh young faces laughing behind their masks; on +white shoulders and jewelled throats, on fan and brooch and spur and +lacquered heel. There was a scent of old-time perfume in the air, and, +as Duane adjusted his mask and drew near, he saw that sets were already +forming for the minuet.</p> + +<p>He recognised Dysart, glorious in silk and powder, perfectly in his +element, and doing his part with eighteenth-century elaboration; +Kathleen, très grande-dame, almost too exquisitely real for counterfeit; +Delancy Grandcourt, very red in the face under his mask, wig slightly +awry, conscientiously behaving as nearly like a masked gentleman of the +period as he knew how; his sister Naïda, sweet and gracious; Scott, +masked and also spectacled, grotesque and preoccupied, casting patient +glances toward the dusky solitudes that he much preferred, and from +whence a distant owl fluted at intervals, inviting his investigations.</p> + +<p>And there were the Pink 'uns, too, easily identified, having all sorts +of a good time with a pair of maskers resembling Doucette Landon and +Peter Tappan; and there in powder, paint, and patch capered the +Beekmans, Ellises, and Montrosses—all the clans of the great and +near-great of the country-side, gathering to join the eternal hunt for +happiness where already the clarionets were sounding "Stole Away."</p> + +<p>For the quarry in that hunt is a spectre; sighted, it steals away; and +if one remains very, very still and listens, one may hear, far and +faint, the undertone of phantom horns mocking the field that rides so +gallantly.</p> + +<p>"Stole away," whispered Duane in Kathleen's ear, as he paused beside +her; and she seemed to know what he meant, for she nodded, smiling:</p> + +<p>"You mean that what we hunt is doomed to die when we ride it down?"</p> + +<p>"Let us be in at the death, anyway," he said. "Kathleen, you're charming +and masked to perfection. It's only that white skin of yours that +betrays you; it always looks as though it were fragrant. Is that +Geraldine surrounded three deep—over there under that oak-tree?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; why are you so late, Duane? And I haven't seen Rosalie, either."</p> + +<p>He did not care to enlighten her, but stood laughing and twirling his +sword-knot and looking across the glittering throng, where a daintily +masked young girl stood defending herself with fan and bouquet against +the persistence of her gallants. Then he shook out the lace at his +gilded cuffs, dropped one palm on his sword-hilt, saluted Kathleen's +finger-tips with graceful precision, and sauntered toward Geraldine, +dusting his nose with his filmy handkerchief—a most convincing replica +of the bland epoch he impersonated.</p> + +<p>As for Geraldine, she was certainly a very lovely incarnation of that +self-satisfied and frivolous century; her success had already excited +her a little; men seemed suddenly to have gone quite mad about her; and +this and her own beauty were taking effect on her, producing an effect +the more vivid, perhaps, because it was a reaction from the perplexities +and tears of yesterday and the passionate tension of the morning.</p> + +<p>Within her breast the sense of impending pleasure stirred and fluttered +deliciously with every breath of music; the confused happiness of being +in love, the relief in relaxation from a sterner problem, the noisy +carnival surging, rioting around her, men crowding about her, eager in +admiration and rivalry, the knowledge of her own loveliness—all these +set the warm blood racing through every vein, and tinted lip and cheek +with a colour in brilliant contrast to the velvety masked eyes and the +snow of the slender neck.</p> + +<p>Through the gay tumult which rang ceaselessly around her, where she +stood, plying her painted fan, her own laughter sounded at intervals, +distinct in its refreshing purity, for it had always that crystalline +quality under a caressing softness; but Duane, who had advanced now to +the outer edge of the circle, detected in her voice no hint of that +thrilling undertone which he had known, which he alone among men had +ever awakened. Her gaiety was careless, irresponsible, childlike in its +clarity; under her crescent mask the smiles on her smooth young face +dawned and died out, brief as sun-spots flashing over snow. Briefer +intervals of apparent detachment from everything succeeded them; a +distrait survey of the lantern-lit dancers, a preoccupied glance at the +man speaking to her, a lifting of the delicate eyebrows in smiling +preoccupation. But always behind the black half-mask her eyes wandered +throughout the throng as though seeking something hidden; and on her +vivid lips the smile became fixed.</p> + +<p>Whether or not she had seen him, Duane could not tell, but presently, as +he forced a path toward her, she stirred, closed her fan, took a step +forward, head a trifle lowered; and right of way was given her, as she +moved slowly through the cluster of men, shaking her head in vexation to +the whispered importunities murmured in her ear, answering each +according to his folly—this man with a laugh, that with a gesture of +hand or shoulder, but never turning to reply, never staying her feet +until, passing close to Duane, and not even looking at him:</p> + +<p>"Where on earth have you been, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"How did you know me?" he said, laughing; "you haven't even looked at me +yet."</p> + +<p>"On peut voir sans regarder, Monsieur. Nous autres demoiselles, nous +voyons très bien, très bien ... et nous ne regardons jamais."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image7" name="image7"></a> + <img src="images/image7.jpg" + alt=""She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous courtesy"" + title=""She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous courtesy"" /> + <p class="caption">"She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous courtesy"</p> +</div> + + +<p>She had paused, still not looking directly at him. Then she lifted her +head.</p> + +<p>"Everybody has asked me to dance; I've said yes to everybody, but I've +waited for you," she said. "It will be that way all my life, I think."</p> + +<p>"It has been that way with me, too," he said gaily. "Why should we wait +any more?"</p> + +<p>"Why are you so late?" she asked. She had missed Rosalie, too, but did +not say so.</p> + +<p>"I am rather late," he admitted carelessly; "can you give me this +dance?"</p> + +<p>She stepped nearer, turning her shoulder to the anxious lingerers, who +involuntarily stepped back, leaving a cleared space around them.</p> + +<p>"Make me your very best bow," she whispered, "and take me. I've promised +a dozen men, but it doesn't matter."</p> + +<p>He said in a low voice, "You darling!" and made her a very wonderful +bow, and she dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous +courtesy, and, rising, laid her fingers on his embroidered sleeve. Then +turning, head held erect, and with a certain sweet insolence in the +droop of her white lids, she looked at the men around her.</p> + +<p>Gray said in a low voice to Dysart: "That's as much as to admit that +they're engaged, isn't it? When a girl doesn't give a hoot what she does +to other men, she's nailed, isn't she?"</p> + +<p>Dysart did not answer; Rosalie, passing on Grandcourt's arm, caught the +words and turned swiftly, looking over her shoulder at Geraldine.</p> + +<p>But Geraldine and Duane had already forgotten the outer world; around +them the music swelled; laughter and voice grew indistinct, receding, +blending in the vague tumult of violins. They gazed upon each other +with vast content.</p> + +<p>"As a matter of fact," said Duane, "I don't remember very well how to +dance a minuet. I only wanted to be with you. We'll sit it out if you're +afraid I'll make a holy show of you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear," said Geraldine in pretty distress, "and I let you beguile me +when I'm dying to do this minuet. Duane, you <i>must</i> try to remember! +<i>Everybody</i> will be watching us." And as her quick ear caught the +preliminary bars of the ancient and stately measure:</p> + +<p>"It's the Menuet d'Exaudet," she said hurriedly; "listen, I'll instruct +you as we move; I'll sing it under my breath to the air of the violins," +and, her hand in his, she took the first slow, dainty step in the +old-time dance, humming the words as they moved forward:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i15">"Gravement</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Noblement</span><br /> +<span class="i0">On s'avance;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">On fait trois pas de côté</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Deux battus, un jeté</span><br /> +<span class="i0">Sans rompre la cadence——"</span> +</p> + + +<p>Then whispered, smiling:</p> + +<p>"You are quite perfect, Duane; keep your head level, dear:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i05">"Chassez</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Rechassez</span><br /> +<span class="i1">En mesure!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Saluez—</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Gravement</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Noblement</span><br /> +<span class="i1">On s'avance</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Sans rompre la cadence.</span> +</p> + +<p>"Quite perfect, my handsome cavalier! Oh, we are doing it most +beautifully"—with a deep, sweeping reverence; then rising, as he lifted +her finger-tips: "You are stealing the rest of my heart," she said.</p> + +<p>"Our betrothal dance," he whispered. "Shall it be so, dear?"</p> + +<p>They looked at each other as though they stood there alone; the lovely +old air of the Menuet d'Exaudet seemed to exhale from the tremulous +violins like perfume floating through the woods; figures of masked +dancers passed and repassed them through the orange-tinted glow; there +came a vast rustle of silk, a breezy murmur, the scented wind from +opening fans, the rattle of swords, and the Menuet d'Exaudet ended with +a dull roll of kettle-drums.</p> + +<p>A few minutes later he had her in his arms in a deliciously wild waltz, +a swinging, irresponsible, gipsy-like thing which set the blood coursing +and pulses galloping.</p> + +<p>Every succeeding dance she gave to him. Now and then a tiny cloud of +powder-dust floated from her hair; a ribbon from her shoulder-knot +whipped his face; her breath touched his lips; her voice, at intervals, +thrilled and caressed his ears, a soft, breathless voice, which mounting +exaltation had made unsteadily sweet.</p> + +<p>"You know—dear—I'm dancing every dance with you—in the teeth of +decency, the face of every convention, and defiance of every law of +hospitality. I belong to my guests."</p> + +<p>And again:</p> + +<p>"Do you know, Duane, there's a sort of a delicious madness coming over +me. I'm all trembling under my skin with the overwhelming happiness of +it all. I tell you it's intoxicating me because I don't know how to +endure it."</p> + +<p>He caught fire at her emotion; her palm was burning in his, her breath +came irregularly, lips and cheeks were aflame, as they came to a +breathless halt in the torchlight.</p> + +<p>"Dear," she faltered, "I simply <i>must</i> be decent to my guests.... I'm +dying to dance with you again, but I can't be so rude.... Oh, goodness! +here they come, hordes of them. I'll give them a dance or two—anybody +who speaks first, and then you'll come and find me, won't you?... Isn't +that enough to give them—two or three dances? Isn't that doing my duty +as chatelaine sufficiently?"</p> + +<p>"Don't give them any," he said with conviction. "They'll know we're +engaged if you don't——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane! We are only—only provisionally engaged," she said. "I am +only on probation, dear. You know it can't be announced until I—I'm fit +to marry you——"</p> + +<p>"What nonsense!" he interrupted, almost savagely. "You're winning out; +and even if you are not, I'll marry you, anyway, and make you win!"</p> + +<p>"We have talked that over——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, and it is settled!"</p> + +<p>"No, Duane——"</p> + +<p>"I tell you it is!"</p> + +<p>"No. Hush! Somebody might overhear us. Quick, dear, here comes Bunny and +Reggie Wye and Peter Tappan, all mad as hatters. I've behaved abominably +to them! Will you find me after the third dance? Very well; tell me you +love me then—whisper it, quick!... Ah-h! Moi aussi, Monsieur. And, +remember, after the third dance!"</p> + +<p>She turned slowly from him to confront an aggrieved group of masked +young men, who came up very much hurt, clamouring for justice, +explaining volubly that it was up to her to keep her engagements and +dance with somebody besides Duane Mallett.</p> + +<p>"Mon Dieu, Messieurs, je ne demanderais pas mieux," she said gaily. "Why +didn't somebody ask me before?"</p> + +<p>"You promised us each a dance," retorted Tappan sulkily, "but you never +made good. I'll take mine now if you don't mind——"</p> + +<p>"I'm down first!" insisted the Pink 'un.</p> + +<p>They squabbled over her furiously; Bunbury Gray got her; she swung away +into a waltz on his arm, glancing backward at Duane, who watched her +until she disappeared in the whirl of dancers. Then he strolled to the +edge of the lantern-lit glade, stood for a moment looking absently at +the shadowy woods beyond, and presently sauntered into the luminous +dusk, which became darker and more opaque as he left the glare of the +glade behind.</p> + +<p>Here and there fantastic figures loomed, moving slowly, two and two, +under the fairy foliage; on the Gray Water canoes strung with gaudy +paper lanterns drifted; clouds of red fire rolled rosy and vaporous +along the water's edge; and in the infernal glow, hazy shapes passed and +repassed, finding places among scores of rustic tables, where servants +in old-time livery and powdered wigs hurried to and fro with ices and +salads, and set the white-covered tables with silverware and crystal.</p> + +<p>A dainty masked figure in demon red flitted across his path in the +uncanny radiance. He hailed her, and she turned, hesitated, then, as +though convinced of his identity, laughed, and hastened on with a nod +of invitation.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going, pretty mask?" he inquired, wending his pace and +trying to recognise the costume in the uncertain cross light.</p> + +<p>But she merely laughed and continued to retreat before him, keeping the +distance between them, hastening her steps whenever he struck a faster +gait, pausing and looking back at him with a mocking smile when his +steps slackened; a gracefully malicious, tormenting, laughing creature +of lace and silk, whose retreat was a challenge, whose every movement +and gesture seemed instinct with the witchery of provocation.</p> + +<p>On the edge of the ring of tables she paused, picked up a goblet, held +it out to a passing servant, who immediately filled the glass.</p> + +<p>Then, before Duane could catch her, she drained the goblet to his health +and fled into the shadows, he hard on her heels, pressing her closer, +closer, until the pace became too hot for her, and she turned to face +him, panting and covering her masked face with her fan.</p> + +<p>"Now, my fair unknown, we shall pay a few penalties," he said with +satisfaction; but she defended herself so adroitly that he could not +reach her mask.</p> + +<p>"Be fair to me," she gasped at last; "why are you so rough with me +when—when you need not be? I knew you at once, Jack."</p> + +<p>And she dropped her arms, standing resistless, breathing fast, her +masked face frankly upturned to be kissed.</p> + +<p>"Now, who the devil," thought Duane, "have I got in my arms? And for +whom does she take me?"</p> + +<p>He gazed searchingly into the slitted eye-holes; the eyes appeared to be +blue, as well as he could make out. He looked at the fresh laughing +mouth, a young, sensitive mouth, which even in laughter seemed not +entirely gay.</p> + +<p>"Don't you really mind if I kiss you?" He spoke in a whisper to disguise +his voice.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it a little late to ask me that?" she said; and under her mask +the colour stained her skin. "I think what we do now scarcely matters."</p> + +<p>She was so confident, so plainly awaiting his caress, that for a moment +he was quite ready to console her. And did not, could not, with the +fragrant and yielding intimacy of Geraldine still warm in his quickened +heart.</p> + +<p>She stood quite motionless, her little hands warm in his, her masked +face upturned. And, as he merely stared at her:</p> + +<p>"What is the matter, Jack?" she breathed. "Why do you look at me so +steadily?"</p> + +<p>He ought to have let her go then; he hesitated, wondering which Jack she +supposed him to be; and before he realised it her arms were on his +shoulders, her mouth nearer to his.</p> + +<p>"Jack, you frighten me! What is it?"</p> + +<p>"N-nothing," he continued to stammer.</p> + +<p>"Yes, there is. Does your—your wife suspect—anything——"</p> + +<p>"No, she doesn't," said Duane grimly, trying to free himself without +seeming to. "I've got an appointment——"</p> + +<p>But the girl said piteously: "It isn't—Geraldine, is it?"</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i>!"</p> + +<p>"You—you admitted that she attracted you—for a little while.... Oh, I +<i>did</i> forgive you, Jack; truly I did with all my miserable heart! I was +so fearfully unhappy—I would have done anything." ... Her face flushed +scarlet. "And I—did.... But you do love me, don't you?" And the next +moment her lips were on his with a sob.</p> + +<p>Duane reached back and quietly unclasped her fingers. Then very gently +he forced her to a seat on a great fallen log. Still looking up at him, +droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay début with him, she naïvely +slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her +pretty blue eyes. Sylvia Quest!</p> + +<p>The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt +vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over +him swept a startled sequence of emotions—bitter contempt for Dysart, +scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred +it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had +unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated; +succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame +and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never +know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself.</p> + +<p>"If I tell you that all is well—and if I tell you no more than that," +he whispered, "will you trust me?"</p> + +<p>"Have I not done so, Jack?"</p> + +<p>The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury.</p> + +<p>"Then wait here until I return," he said. "Promise."</p> + +<p>"I promise," she sighed, "but I don't understand. I'm a—a little +frightened, dear. But I—believe you."</p> + +<p>He swung on his heel and made toward the lights once more, and a moment +later the man he sought passed within a few feet of him, and Duane knew +him by his costume, which was a blue replica of his own gray silks.</p> + +<p>"Dysart!" he said sharply.</p> + +<p>The masked figure swung gracefully around and stood still, searching the +shadowy woodland inquiringly.</p> + +<p>"I want a word with you. Here—not in the light, if you please. You +recognise my voice, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Mallett?" asked Dysart coldly, as the former appeared in +the light for an instant and turned back again with a curt gesture.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I want you to step over here among the trees, where nobody can +interrupt us."</p> + +<p>Dysart followed more slowly; came to a careless halt:</p> + +<p>"Well, what the devil do you want?" he demanded insolently.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you. I've had an encounter with a mask who mistook me for +you.... And she has said—several things—under that impression. She +still believes that I am you. I asked her to wait for me over there by +those oaks. Do you see where I mean?" He pointed and Dysart nodded +coolly. "Well, then, I want you to go back there—find her, and act as +though it had been you who heard what she said, not I."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean exactly that. The girl ought never to know that what she said +was heard and—and <i>understood</i>, Dysart, by any man in the world except +the blackguard I'm telling this to. Now, do you understand?"</p> + +<p>He stepped nearer:</p> + +<p>"The girl is Sylvia Quest. <i>Now</i>, do you understand, damn you!"</p> + +<p>A stray glimmer from the distant lanterns fell across Dysart's masked +visage. The skin around the mouth was loose and ashy, the dry lips +worked.</p> + +<p>"That was a dirty trick of yours," he stammered; "a scoundrelly thing to +do."</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose that I dreamed for an instant that she was convicting +herself and you?" said Duane in bitter contempt. "Go and manufacture +some explanation of my conduct as though it were your own. Let her have +that much peace of mind, anyway."</p> + +<p>"You young sneak!" retorted Dysart. "I suppose you think that what you +have heard will warrant your hanging around my wife. Try it and see."</p> + +<p>"Good God, Dysart!" he said, "I never thought you were anything more +vicious than what is called a 'dancing man.' What are you, anyhow?"</p> + +<p>"You'll learn if you tamper with my affairs," said Dysart. He whipped +off his mask and turned a corpse-like visage on the younger man. Every +feature of his face had altered: his good looks were gone, the youth in +his eyes had disappeared, only a little evil lustre played over them; +and out of the drawn pallor Duane saw an old man peering, an old man's +lips twitching back from uneven and yellowed teeth.</p> + +<p>"Mallett," he said, "you listen to me. Keep your investigating muzzle +out of my affairs; forget what you've ferreted out; steer clear of me +and mine. I want no scandal, but if you raise a breath of it you'll have +enough concerning yourself to occupy you. Do you understand?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Duane mechanically, staring at the man before him.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, to be more precise, if you lift one finger to injure me +you'll cut a figure in court.... And you can marry her later."</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"My wife. I don't think Miss Seagrave will stand for what I'll drag you +through if you don't keep clear of me!"</p> + +<p>Duane gazed at him curiously:</p> + +<p>"So <i>that</i> is what you are, Dysart," he said aloud to himself.</p> + +<p>Dysart's temples reddened.</p> + +<p>"Yes, and then some!... I understand that you have given yourself the +privilege of discussing my financial affairs in public. Have you?"</p> + +<p>Duane said in a dull voice: "The Algonquin Trust was mentioned, I +believe. I did say that you are a director."</p> + +<p>"You said I was hard hit and that the Clearing House meant to weed out a +certain element that I represented in New York."</p> + +<p>"I did not happen to say that," said Duane wearily, "but another man +did."</p> + +<p>"Oh. <i>You</i> didn't say it?"</p> + +<p>"No. I don't lie, Dysart."</p> + +<p>"Then add to that negative virtue by keeping your mouth shut," said +Dysart between his teeth, "or you'll have other sorts of suits on your +hands. I warn you now to keep clear of me and mine."</p> + +<p>"Just what <i>is</i> yours?" inquired Duane patiently.</p> + +<p>"You'll find out if you touch it."</p> + +<p>"Oh. Is—is Miss Quest included by any hazard? Because if the right +chance falls my way, I shall certainly interfere."</p> + +<p>"If you do, I shall begin suit for alienation within twenty-four +hours."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you won't. You're horribly afraid, Dysart. This grimacing of +yours is fear. All you want is to be let alone, to burrow through the +society that breeds your sort. Like a maggot in a chestnut you feed on +what breeds you. I don't care. Feed! What bred you is as rotten as you +are. I'm done with it—done with all this," turning his head toward the +flare of light. "Go on and burrow. What nourishes you can look out for +itself.... Only"—he wheeled around and looked into the darkness where, +unseen, Sylvia Quest awaited him—"only, in this set, the young have +less chance than the waifs of the East Side."</p> + +<p>He walked slowly up to Dysart and struck him across the face with open +palm.</p> + +<p>"Break with that girl or I'll break your head," he said.</p> + +<p>Dysart was down on the leaves, struggling up to his knees, then to his +feet, the thin blood running across his chin. The next instant he sprang +at Duane, who caught him by both arms and forced him savagely into +quivering inertia.</p> + +<p>"Don't," he said. "You're only a thing that dances. Don't move, I tell +you.... Wipe that blood off and go and set the silly girl's heart at +rest.... And keep away from her afterward. Do you hear?"</p> + +<p>He set his teeth and shook him so wickedly that Dysart's head rolled and +his wig fell off.</p> + +<p>"I know something of your sloppy record," he continued, still shaking +him; "I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is +generally understood that you're as sexless as any other of your kind. I +thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of <i>me</i> and <i>mine</i>, +Dysart.... And that will be about all."</p> + +<p>He left him planted against a tree and walked toward the lights once +more, breathing heavily and in an ugly mood.</p> + +<p>On the edge of the glade, just outside the lantern glow, he stood +sombre, distrait, inspecting the torn lace on his sleeve, while all +around him people were unmasking amid cries of surprise and shouts of +laughter, and the orchestra was sounding a march, and multicoloured +Bengal fires rolled in clouds from the water's edge, turning the woods +to a magic forest and the people to tinted wraiths.</p> + +<p>Behind him he heard Rosalie's voice, caressing, tormenting by turns; +and, glancing around for her victim, beheld Grandcourt at heel in +calflike adoration.</p> + +<p>Kathleen's laughter swung him the other way.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane," she cried, the pink of excitement in her cheeks, "isn't it +all too heavenly! It looks like Paradise afire with all those rosy +clouds rolling under foot. Have you ever seen anything quite as +charming?"</p> + +<p>"It's rotten," said Duane brusquely, tearing the tattered lace free and +tossing it aside.</p> + +<p>"Wh-what!" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"I say it's all rotten," he repeated, looking up at her. "All this—the +whole thing—the stupidity of it—the society that's driven to these +kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads—ennui! Look at +us all! For God's sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our +pinchbeck mummery—forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, +polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I'm sick +of it!"</p> + +<p>"Duane!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; I'm one of 'em—dragging my idleness and viciousness and my +stupidity and my money at my heels. I tell you, Kathleen, this is no +good. There's a stench of money everywhere; there's a staler aroma in +the air, too—the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of +stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I'm deadly tired +of it—of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, +whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouetting along the danger +mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of the +overgroomed men who can do nothing except what can be done with money, +who think nothing, know nothing, sweat nothing but money and what it can +buy—like horses and yachts and prima donnas——"</p> + +<p>She uttered a shocked exclamation, but he went on:</p> + +<p>"Yes, prima donnas. Which of our friends was it who bought that pretty +one that sang in 'La Esmeralda'?"</p> + +<p>"Duane!" she exclaimed in consternation; but he took her protesting +hands in his and held her powerless.</p> + +<p>"You happen to be a darling," he said; "but you were not born to this +environment. Geraldine was—and she is a darling. God bless her. Outside +of my sister, Naïda, and you two—with the exception of the newly +fledged and as yet mercifully unregurgitated with vicious wisdom—who +are all these people? Ciphers, save for their balances at their banks; +nameless, save for the noisy reiteration of their hard-fisted forebears' +names; without any ambition, except financial and social; without any +objective, save the escape from ennui—without any taste, culture, +inspiration, except that of physical gratification! Oh, Lord, I'm one of +them, but I resign to-night."</p> + +<p>"Duane, you're quite mad," she said, wrenching her hands free and gazing +at him rather fearfully.</p> + +<p>"I think he's dead sensible," said a calm voice at her elbow; and Scott +Seagrave appeared, twirling his mask and blinking at them through his +spectacles.</p> + +<p>Duane laughed: "Of course I am, you old reptile-hunting, +butterfly-chasing antediluvian! But, come on; Byzantium is gorging its +diamond-swathed girth yonder with salad and champagne; and I'm hungry, +even if Kathleen isn't——"</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i>!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Scott, can't you find Naïda and +Geraldine? Duane and I will keep a table until you return——"</p> + +<p>"I'll find them," said Duane; and he walked off among the noisy, +laughing groups, his progress greeted uproariously from table to table. +He found Naïda and Bunbury Gray, and they at once departed for the +rendezvous indicated.</p> + +<p>"Geraldine was here a little while ago," said Gray, "but she walked to +the lake with Jack Dysart. My, but she's hitting it up," he added +admiringly.</p> + +<p>"Hitting it up?" repeated Duane.</p> + +<p>"For a girl who never does, I mean. I imagine that she's a novice with +champagne. Champagne and Geraldine make a very fetching combination, I +can tell you."</p> + +<p>"She took no more than I," observed Naïda with a shrug; "one solitary +glass. If a girl happens to be high strung and ventures to laugh a +little, some wretched man is sure to misunderstand! Bunny, you're a +gadabout!"</p> + +<p>She made her way out from the maze of tables, Bunny following, somewhat +abashed; and Duane walked toward the shore, where dozens of lantern-hung +canoes bobbed, and the pasteboard cylinders of Bengal fire had burned +to smouldering sparks.</p> + +<p>In the dim light he came on the people he was looking for, seated on the +rocks. Dysart, at her feet, was speaking in an undertone; Geraldine, +partly turned away from him, hands clasped around her knees, was staring +steadily across the water.</p> + +<p>Neither rose as he came up; Dysart merely became mute; Geraldine looked +around with a start; her lips parted in a soundless, mechanical +greeting, then the flush in her cheeks brightened; and as she rose, +Dysart got onto his feet and stood silently facing the new arrival.</p> + +<p>"I said after the third dance, you know," she observed with an assumed +lightness that did not deceive him. And, as he made no answer, he saw +the faint flicker of fright in her eyes and the lower lip quiver.</p> + +<p>He said pleasantly, controlling his voice: "Isn't this after the third +dance? You are to be my partner for supper, I think."</p> + +<p>"A long time after; and I've already sat at Belshazzar's feast, thank +you. I couldn't very well starve waiting for you, could I?" And she +forced a smile.</p> + +<p>"Nevertheless, I must claim your promise," he said.</p> + +<p>There was a silence; she stood for a moment gazing at nothing, with the +same bright, fixed smile, then turned and glanced at Dysart. The glance +was his dismissal and he knew it.</p> + +<p>"If I must give you up," he said cheerfully, at his ease, "please +pronounce sentence."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid you really must, Mr. Dysart."</p> + +<p>There was another interval of constraint; then Dysart spoke. His +self-possession was admirable, his words perfectly chosen, his exit in +faultless taste.</p> + +<p>They looked after him until he was lost to view in the throngs beyond, +then the girl slowly reseated herself, eyes again fixed on the water, +hands clasped tightly upon her knee, and Duane found a place at her +elbow. So they began a duet of silence.</p> + +<p>The little wavelets came dancing shoreward out of the darkness, breaking +with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere +in the night a restless heron croaked and croaked among the willows.</p> + +<p>"Well, little girl?" he asked at last.</p> + +<p>"Well?" she inquired, with a calmness that did not mislead him.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't come to you after the third dance," he said.</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>He evaded the question: "When I came back to the glade the dancing was +already over; so I got Kathleen and Naïda to save a table."</p> + +<p>"Where had you been all the while?"</p> + +<p>"If you really wish to know," he said pleasantly, "I was talking to Jack +Dysart on some rather important matters. I did not realise how the time +went."</p> + +<p>She sat mute, head lowered, staring out across the dark water. Presently +he laid one hand over hers, and she straightened up with a tiny shock, +turned and looked him full in the eyes.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you why you failed me—failed to keep the first appointment I +ever asked of you. It was because you were so preoccupied with a mask in +flame colour."</p> + +<p>He thought a moment:</p> + +<p>"Did you believe you saw me with somebody in a vermilion costume?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I did see you. It was too late for me to retire without +attracting your attention. I was not a willing eavesdropper."</p> + +<p>"Who was the girl you thought you saw me with?"</p> + +<p>"Sylvia Quest. She unmasked. There is no mistake."</p> + +<p>So he was obliged to lie, after all.</p> + +<p>"It must have been Dysart you saw. His costume is very like mine, you +know——"</p> + +<p>"Does Jack Dysart stand for minutes holding Sylvia's hands—and is she +accustomed to place her hands on his shoulders, as though expecting to +be kissed? And does he kiss her?"</p> + +<p>So he had to lie again: "No, of course not," he said, smiling. "So it +could not have been Dysart."</p> + +<p>"There are only two costumes like yours and Mr. Dysart's. Do you wish me +to believe that Sylvia is common and depraved enough to put her arms +around the neck of a man who is married?"</p> + +<p>There was no other way: "No," he said, "Sylvia isn't that sort, of +course."</p> + +<p>"It was either Mr. Dysart or you."</p> + +<p>He said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Then it <i>was</i> you!" in hot contempt.</p> + +<p>Still he said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Was it?" with a break in her voice.</p> + +<p>"Men can't admit things of that kind," he managed to say.</p> + +<p>The angry colour surged up to her cheeks, the angry tears started, but +her quivering lips were not under command and she could only stare at +him through the blur of grief, while her white hands clinched and +relaxed, and her fast-beating heart seemed to be driving the very breath +from her body.</p> + +<p>"Geraldine, dear——"</p> + +<p>"It wasn't fair!" she broke out fiercely; "there is no honour in you—no +loyalty! Oh, Duane! Duane! How could you—at the very moment we were +nearer together than we had ever been! It isn't jealousy that is crying +out in me; it is nothing common or ignoble in me that resents what you +have done! It is the treachery of it! How <i>could</i> you, Duane?"</p> + +<p>The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was +to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go +to shield Sylvia Quest—this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation +was already at the mercy of two men?</p> + +<p>"Geraldine," he said, "it was nothing but a carnival flirtation—a +chance encounter that meant nothing—the idlest kind of——"</p> + +<p>"Is it idle to do what you did—and what she did? Oh, if I had only not +seen it—if I only didn't know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you. +Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out +the rest of his dance—and he saw it, too—and he was furious—he must +have been—because he's devoted to Sylvia." She made a hopeless gesture +and dropped her hand to her side: "What a miserable night it has been +for me! It's all spoiled—it's ended.... And I—my courage went.... I've +done what I never thought to do again—what I was fighting down to make +myself safe enough for you to marry—<i>you</i> to marry!" She laughed, but +the mirth rang shockingly false.</p> + +<p>"You mean that you had one glass of champagne," he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I'll have some more presently. Does +it concern you?"</p> + +<p>"I think so, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"You are wrong. Neither does what you've been doing concern me—the kind +of man you've been—the various phases of degradation you have +accomplished——"</p> + +<p>"What particular species of degradation?" he asked wearily, knowing that +Dysart was now bent on his destruction. "Never mind; don't answer, +Geraldine," he added, "because there's no use in trying to set myself +right; there's no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care +absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; +that if I have ever been unworthy of you—as God knows I have—it is a +bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you."</p> + +<p>"Shall we go back?" she said evenly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, if you wish."</p> + +<p>They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for +their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning +her back squarely on Duane.</p> + +<p>Naïda and Kathleen came across.</p> + +<p>"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister, +smothering a yawn. "I'm horribly sleepy. Duane, it's three o'clock. +Would you mind taking me across to the house?"</p> + +<p>He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the +splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were +Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink +'uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in +ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin.</p> + +<p>"I'm waiting, Duane," said Naïda plaintively.</p> + +<p>So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the +brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a +silvery lustre heralded the coming dawn.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">When he returned, Geraldine was gone. At the house somebody said she had +come in with Kathleen, not feeling well.</p> + +<p>"The trouble with that girl," said a man whom he did not know, "is that +she's had too much champagne."</p> + +<p>"You lie," said Duane quietly. "Is that perfectly plain to you?"</p> + +<p>For a full minute the young man stood rigid, crimson, glaring at Duane. +Then, having the elements of decency in him, he said:</p> + +<p>"I don't know who you are, but you are perfectly right. I did lie. And +I'll see that nobody else does."</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XII<br />THE LOVE OF THE GODS</a></h2> + + +<p>Two days later the majority of the people had left Roya-Neh, and the +remainder were preparing to make their adieux to the young chatelaine by +proxy; for Geraldine had kept her room since the night of the masked +fête, and nobody except Kathleen and Dr. Bailey had seen her.</p> + +<p>"Fashionable fidgets," said Dr. Bailey, in answer to amiable inquiries; +"the girl has been living on her nerves, like the rest of you, only she +can't stand as much as you can."</p> + +<p>To Duane he said, in reply to persistent questions:</p> + +<p>"As a plain and unromantic proposition, young man, it may be her liver. +God alone knows with what young women stuff their bodies in those +bucolic solitudes."</p> + +<p>To Kathleen he said, after questioning her and listening in silence to +her guarded replies:</p> + +<p>"I don't know what is the matter, Mrs. Severn. The girl is extremely +nervous. She acts, to me, as though she had something on her mind, but +she insists that she hasn't. If I were to be here, I might come to some +conclusion within the next day or two."</p> + +<p>Which frightened Kathleen, and she asked whether anything serious might +be anticipated.</p> + +<p>"Not at all," he said.</p> + +<p>So, as he was taking the next train, there was nothing to do. He left a +prescription and whizzed away to the railroad station with the last +motor-load of guests.</p> + +<p>There remained only Duane, Rosalie Dysart, Grandcourt, and Sylvia Quest, +a rather subdued and silent group on the terrace, unresponsive to +Scott's unfeigned gaiety to find himself comparatively alone and free to +follow his own woodland predilections once more.</p> + +<p>"A cordial host you are," observed Rosalie; "you're guests are scarcely +out of sight before you break into inhuman chuckles."</p> + +<p>"Speed the parting," observed Scott, in excellent spirits; "that's the +truest hospitality."</p> + +<p>"I suppose your unrestrained laughter will be our parting portion in a +day or two," she said, amused.</p> + +<p>"No; I don't mind a few people. Do you want to come and look for +scarabs?"</p> + +<p>"Scarabs? Do you imagine you're in Egypt, my poor friend?"</p> + +<p>Scott sniffed: "Didn't you know we had a few living species around here? +Regular scarabs. Kathleen and I found three the other day—one a regular +beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and +copper tinted wing-covers. Do you want to help me hunt for some more? +You'll have to put on overshoes, for they're in the cow-yards."</p> + +<p>Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined. Later she opened a +shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about +the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves +without exciting comment.</p> + +<p>But there was nobody to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a +sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and +preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the +valley. Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come +up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which +linked the days of every summer for her. But Stuyvesant had not arrived; +and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not +too drunk to remember her.</p> + +<p>So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very +colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on +the remoter hills—not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive +look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the +stolen glance.</p> + +<p>As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair +of binoculars and informing the two people behind him—who were not +listening—that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a +thrasher at six hundred yards.</p> + +<p>Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart +information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from +the house.</p> + +<p>"How's Sis?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane.</p> + +<p>"Could I see her?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at +that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring +for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, +resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned scarabs or +black-billed cuckoos.</p> + +<p>It had always been so with her; it would always be so. Long ago the +Seagrave twins had demanded all she had to give; now, if Geraldine asked +less, Scott exacted double. And she gave—how happily, only her Maker +and her conscience knew.</p> + +<p>Duane was still reading—or he had all the appearance of reading—when +Sylvia lifted her head from her hand and turned around with an effort +that cost her what colour had remained under the transparent skin of her +oval face.</p> + +<p>"Duane," she said, "it occurred to me just now that you might have +really mistaken what I said and did the other night." She hesitated, +nerving herself to encounter his eyes, lifted and levelled across the +top of his paper at her.</p> + +<p>He waited; she retained enough self-command to continue with an effort +at lightness:</p> + +<p>"Of course it was all carnival fun—my pretending to mistake you for Mr. +Dysart. You understood it, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course," he said, smiling.</p> + +<p>She went on: "I—don't exactly remember what I said—I was trying to +mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent +to pretend to be on—on such impossible terms with Mr. Dysart——"</p> + +<p>There was something too painful in her effort for him to endure. He said +laughingly, not looking at her:</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wasn't ass enough to be deceived, Sylvia. Don't worry, little +girl." And he resumed the study of his paper.</p> + +<p>Minutes passed—terrible minutes for one of them, who strove to find +relief in his careless reassurance, tried desperately to believe him, to +deceive that intuition which seldom fails her sex.</p> + +<p>He, with the print blurred and meaningless before him, sat miserable, +dumb with the sympathy he could not show, hot with the anger he dared +not express. He thought of Dysart as he had revealed himself, now gone +back to town to face that little crop of financial rumours concerning +the Algonquin that persisted so wickedly and would not be quieted. For +the first time in his life, probably, Dysart was compelled to endure the +discomforts of a New York summer—more discomforts this summer than mere +dust and heat and noise. For men who had always been on respectful +financial terms with Dysart and his string of banks and his Algonquin +enterprise were holding aloof from him; men who had figured for years in +the same columns of print where his name was so often seen as director +and trustee and secretary—fellow-members who served for the honour of +serving on boards of all sorts, charity boards, hospital, museum, civic +societies—these men, too, seemed to be politely, pleasantly, even +smilingly edging away from him in some indefinable manner.</p> + +<p>Which seemed to force him toward certain comparatively newcomers among +the wealthy financiers of the metropolis—brilliant, masterful, restless +men from the West, whose friendship in the beginning he had sought, +deeming himself farsighted.</p> + +<p>Now that his vision had become normally adjusted he cared less for this +intimacy which it was too late to break—at least this was not the time +to break it with money becoming unbelievably scarcer every day and a +great railroad man talking angrily, and another great railroad man +preaching caution at a time when the caution of the man in the Street +might mean something so serious to Dysart that he didn't care to think +about it.</p> + +<p>Dysart had gone back to New York in company with several pessimistic +gentlemen—who were very open about backing their fancy; and their fancy +fell on that old, ramshackle jade, Hard Times, by Speculation out of +Folly. According to them there was no hope of her being scratched or +left at the post.</p> + +<p>"She'll run like a scared hearse-horse," said young Grandcourt gloomily. +There was reason for his gloom. Unknown to his father he had invested +heavily in Dysart's schemes. It was his father's contempt that he feared +more than ruin.</p> + +<p>So Dysart had gone to town, leaving behind him the utter indifference of +a wife, the deep contempt of a man; and a white-faced girl alone with +her memories—whatever they might be—and her thoughts, which were +painful if one might judge by her silent, rigid abstraction, and the +lower lip which, at moments, escaped, quivering, from the close-set +teeth.</p> + +<p>When Duane rose, folding his paper with a carelessly pleasant word or +two, she looked up in a kind of naïve terror—like a child startled at +prospect of being left alone. It was curious how those adrift seemed +always to glide his way. It had always been so; even stray cats followed +him in the streets; unhappy dogs trotted persistently at his heels; many +a journey had he made to the Bide-a-wee for some lost creature's sake; +many a softly purring cat had he caressed on his way through life—many +a woman.</p> + +<p>As he strolled toward the eastern end of the terrace, Sylvia looked +after him; and, suddenly, unable to endure isolation, she rose and +followed as instinctively as her lesser sisters-errant.</p> + +<p>It was the trotting of little footsteps behind him on the gravel that +arrested him. A glance at her face was enough; vexed, shocked, yet every +sympathy instantly aroused, he resigned himself to whatever might be +required of him; and within him a bitter mirth stirred—acrid, +unpleasant; but his smile indicated only charmed surprise.</p> + +<p>"I didn't suppose you'd care for a stroll with me," he said; "it is +exceedingly nice of you to give me the chance."</p> + +<p>"I didn't want to be left alone," she said.</p> + +<p>"It is rather quiet here since our gay birds have migrated," he said in +a matter-of-fact way. "Which direction shall we take?"</p> + +<p>"I—don't care."</p> + +<p>"The woods?"</p> + +<p>"No," with a shudder so involuntary that he noticed it.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, we'll go cross country——"</p> + +<p>She looked at her thin, low shoes and then at him.</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he said, "that won't do, will it?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>They were passing the Lodge now where his studio was and where he had +intended to pack up his canvases that afternoon.</p> + +<p>"I'll brew you a cup of tea if you like," he said; "that is, if it's not +too unconventional to frighten you."</p> + +<p>She smiled and nodded. Behind the smile her heavy thoughts throbbed on: +How much did this man know? How much did he suspect? And if he +suspected, how good he was in every word to her—how kind and gentle and +high-minded! And the anguish in her smile caused him to turn hastily to +the door and summon old Miller to bring the tea paraphernalia.</p> + +<p>There was nothing to look at in the studio; all the canvases lay roped +in piles ready for the crates; but Sylvia's gaze remained on them as +though even the rough backs of the stretchers fascinated her.</p> + +<p>"My father was an artist. After he married he did not paint. My mother +was very wealthy, you know.... It seems a pity."</p> + +<p>"What? Wealth?" he asked, smiling.</p> + +<p>"N-no. I mean it seems a little tragic to me that father never continued +to paint."</p> + +<p>Miller's granddaughter came in with the tea. She was a very little girl +with yellow hair and big violet eyes. After she had deposited +everything, she went over to Duane and held up her mouth to be kissed. +He laughed and saluted her. It was a reward for service which she had +suggested when he first came to Roya-Neh; and she trotted away in great +content.</p> + +<p>Sylvia's indifferent gaze followed her; then she sipped the tea Duane +offered.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember your father?" he asked pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes. I was fourteen when he died. I remember mother, too. I was +seven."</p> + +<p>Duane said, not looking at her: "It's about the toughest thing that can +happen to a girl. It's tough enough on a boy."</p> + +<p>"It was very hard," she said simply.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you any relatives except your brother Stuyvesant—" he began, +and checked himself, remembering that a youthful aunt of hers had eloped +under scandalous circumstances, and at least one uncle was too notorious +even for the stomachs of the society that whelped him.</p> + +<p>She let it pass in silence, as though she had not heard. Later she +declined more tea and sat deep in her chair, fingers linked under her +chin, lids lowered.</p> + +<p>After a while, as she did not move or speak, he ventured to busy himself +with collecting his brushes, odds and ends of studio equipment. He +scraped several palettes, scrubbed up some palette-knives, screwed the +tops on a dozen tubes of colour, and fussed and messed about until there +seemed to be nothing further to do. So he came back and seated himself, +and, looking up, saw the big tears stealing from under her closed lids.</p> + +<p>He endured it as long as he could. Nothing was said. He leaned nearer +and laid his hand over hers; and at the contact she slipped from the +chair, slid to her knees, and laid her head on the couch beside him, +both hands covering her face, which had turned dead white.</p> + +<p>Minute after minute passed with no sound, no movement except as he +passed his hand over her forehead and hair. He knew what to do when +those who were adrift floated into Port Mallett. And sometimes he did +more than was strictly required, but never less. Toward sundown she +began to feel blindly for her handkerchief. He happened to possess a +fresh one and put it into her groping hand.</p> + +<p>When she was ready to rise she did so, keeping her back toward him and +standing for a while busy with her swollen eyes and disordered hair.</p> + +<p>"Before we go we must have tea together again," he said with perfectly +matter-of-fact cordiality.</p> + +<p>"Y-yes." The voice was very, very small.</p> + +<p>"And in town, too, Sylvia. I had no idea what a companionable girl you +are—how much we have in common. You know silence is the great test of +mutual confidence and understanding. You'll let me see you in town, +won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"That will be jolly. I suppose now that you and I ought to be thinking +about dressing for dinner."</p> + +<p>She assented, moved away a step or two, halted, and, still with her back +turned, held out her hand behind her. He took it, bent and kissed it.</p> + +<p>"See you at dinner," he said cheerfully.</p> + +<p>And she went out very quietly, his handkerchief pressed against her +eyes.</p> + +<p>He came back into the studio, swung nervously toward the couch, turned +and began to pace the floor.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord," he said; "the rottenness of it all—the utter rottenness."</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Dinner that night was not a very gay function; after coffee had been +served, the small group seemed to disintegrate as though by some +prearrangement, Rosalie and Grandcourt finding a place for themselves in +the extreme western shadow of the terrace parapet, Kathleen returning to +the living-room, where she had left her embroidery.</p> + +<p>Scott, talking to Sylvia and Duane, continued to cast restless glances +toward the living-room until he could find the proper moment to get +away. And in a few minutes Duane saw him seated, one leg crossed over +the other, a huge volume on "Scientific Conservation of Natural +Resources" open on his knees, seated as close to Kathleen as he could +conveniently edge, perfectly contented, apparently, to be in her +vicinity.</p> + +<p>From moment to moment, as her pretty hands performed miracles in tinted +silks, she lifted her eyes and silently inspected the boy who sat +absorbed in his book. Perhaps old memories of a child seated in the +schoolroom made tender the curve of her lips as she turned again to her +embroidery; perhaps a sentiment more recent made grave the beautiful +lowered eyes.</p> + +<p>Sylvia, seated at the piano, idly improvising, had unconsciously drifted +into the "Menuet d'Exaudet," and Duane's heart began to quicken as he +stood listening and looking out through the open windows at the stars.</p> + +<p>How long he stood there he did not know; but when, at length, missing +the sound of the piano, he looked around, Sylvia was already on the +stairs, looking back at him as she moved upward.</p> + +<p>"Good-night," she called softly; "I am very tired," and paused as he +came forward and mounted to the step below where she waited.</p> + +<p>"Good-night, Miss Quest," he said, with that nice informality that women +always found so engaging. "If you have nothing better on hand in the +morning, let's go for a climb. I've discovered a wild-boar's nest under +the Golden Dome, and if you'd like to get a glimpse of the little, +furry, striped piglings, I think we can manage it."</p> + +<p>She thanked him with her eyes, held out her thin, graceful hand of a +schoolgirl, then turned slowly and continued her ascent.</p> + +<p>As he descended, Kathleen, looking up from her embroidery, made him a +sign, and he stood still.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?" asked Scott, as she rose and passed him.</p> + +<p>"I'm coming back in a moment."</p> + +<p>Scott restlessly resumed his book, raising his head from time to time as +though listening for her return, fidgeting about, now examining the +embroidery she had left on the lamp-lit table, now listlessly running +over the pages that had claimed his close attention while she had been +near him.</p> + +<p>Across the hall, in the library, Duane stood absently twisting an +unlighted cigar, and Kathleen, her hand on his shoulder, eyes lifted in +sweet distress, was searching for words that seemed to evade her.</p> + +<p>He cut the knot without any emotion:</p> + +<p>"I know what you are trying to say, Kathleen. It is true that there has +been a wretched misunderstanding, but if I know Geraldine at all I know +that a mere misunderstanding will not do any permanent harm. It is +something else that—worries me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane, I know! I know! She cannot marry you—in honour—until +that—that terrible danger is eliminated. She will not, either. +But—don't give her up! Be with her—with us in this crisis—during it! +See us through it, Duane; she is well worth what she costs us both—and +costs herself."</p> + +<p>"She must marry me now," he said. "I want to fight this thing with all +there is in me and in her, and in my love for her and hers for me. I +can't fight it in this blind, aloof way—this thing that is my +rival—that stands with its claw embedded in her body warning me back! +The horror of it is in the blind, intangible, abstract force that is +against me. I can't fight it aloof from her; I can't take her away from +it unless I have her in my arms to guard, to inspire, to comfort, to +watch. Can't you see, Kathleen, that I must have her every second of the +time?"</p> + +<p>"She will not let you run the risk," murmured Kathleen. "Duane, she had +a dreadful night—she broke down so utterly that it scared me. She is +horribly frightened; her nervous demoralisation is complete. For the +first time, I think, she is really terrified. She says it is hopeless, +that her will and nerve are undermined, her courage contaminated.... +Hour after hour I sat with her; she made me tell her about her +grandfather—about what I knew of the—the taint in her family."</p> + +<p>"Those things are merely predispositions," he said. "Self-command makes +them harmless."</p> + +<p>"I told her that. She says that they are living sparks that will +smoulder while life endures."</p> + +<p>"Suppose they are," he said; "they can never flame unless nursed.... +Kathleen, I want to see her——"</p> + +<p>"She will not."</p> + +<p>"Has she spoken at all of me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Bitterly?"</p> + +<p>"Y-yes. I don't know what you did. She is very morbid just now, anyway; +very desperate. But I know that, unconsciously, she counts on an +adjustment of any minor personal difficulty with you.... She loves you +dearly, Duane."</p> + +<p>He passed an unsteady hand across his eyes.</p> + +<p>"She must marry me. I can't stand aloof from this battle any longer."</p> + +<p>"Duane, she will not. I—she said some things—she is morbid, I tell +you—and curiously innocent—in her thoughts—concerning herself and +you. She says she can never marry."</p> + +<p>"Exactly what did she say to you?"</p> + +<p>Kathleen hesitated; the intimacy of the subject left her undecided; then +very seriously her pure, clear gaze met his:</p> + +<p>"She will not marry, for your own sake, and for the sake of +any—children. She has evidently thought it all out.... I must tell you +how it is. There is no use in asking her; she will never consent, Duane, +as long as she is afraid of herself. And how to quiet that fear by +exterminating the reason for it I don't know—" Her voice broke +pitifully. "Only stand by us, Duane. Don't go away just now. You were +packing to go; but please don't leave me just yet. Could you arrange to +remain for a while?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'll arrange it.... I'm a little troubled about my father—" He +checked himself. "I could run down to town for a day or two and +return——"</p> + +<p>"Is Colonel Mallett ill?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"N-no.... These are rather strenuous times—or threaten to be. Of course +the Half-Moon is as solid as a rock. But even the very, very great are +beginning to fuss.... And my father is not young, Kathleen. So I thought +I'd like to run down and take him out to dinner once or twice—to a +roof-garden or something, you know. It's rather pathetic that men of his +age, grown gray in service, should feel obliged to remain in the +stifling city this summer."</p> + +<p>"Of course you must go," she said; "you couldn't even hesitate. Is your +mother worried?"</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose she has the slightest notion that there is anything to +worry over. And there isn't, I think. She and Naïda will be in the +Berkshires; I'll go up and stay with them later—when Geraldine is all +right again," he added cheerfully.</p> + +<p>Scott, fidgeting like a neglected pup, came wandering into the hall, +book in hand.</p> + +<p>"For the love of Mike," he said impatiently, "what have you two got to +talk about all night?"</p> + +<p>"My son," observed Duane, "there are a few subjects for conversation +which do not include the centipede and the polka-dotted dickey-bird. +These subjects Kathleen and I furtively indulge in when we can arrange +to elude you."</p> + +<p>Scott covered a yawn and glanced at Kathleen.</p> + +<p>"Is Geraldine all right?" he asked with all the healthy indifference of +a young man who had never been ill, and was, therefore, incapable of +understanding illness in others.</p> + +<p>"Certainly, she's all right," said Duane. And to Kathleen: "I believe +I'll venture to knock at her door——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Duane. She isn't ready to see anybody——"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll try——"</p> + +<p>"Please, don't!"</p> + +<p>But he had her at a disadvantage, and he only laughed and mounted the +stairs, saying:</p> + +<p>"I'll just exchange a word with her or with her maid, anyway."</p> + +<p>When he turned into the corridor Geraldine's maid, seated in the +window-seat sewing, rose and came forward to take his message. In a few +moments she returned, saying:</p> + +<p>"Miss Seagrave asks to be excused, as she is ready to retire."</p> + +<p>"Ask Miss Seagrave if I can say good-night to her through the door."</p> + +<p>The maid disappeared and returned in a moment.</p> + +<p>"Miss Seagrave wishes you good-night, sir."</p> + +<p>So he thanked the maid pleasantly and walked to his own room, now once +more prepared for him after the departure of those who had temporarily +required it.</p> + +<p>Starlight made the leaded windows brilliant; he opened them wide and +leaned out on the sill, arms folded. The pale astral light illuminated a +fairy world of meadow and garden and spectral trees, and two figures +moving like ghosts down by the fountain among the roses—Rosalie and +Grandcourt pacing the gravel paths shoulder to shoulder under the stars.</p> + +<p>Below him, on the terrace, he saw Kathleen and Scott—the latter +carrying a butterfly net—examining the borders of white pinks with a +lantern. In and out of the yellow rays swam multitudes of night moths, +glittering like flakes of tinsel as the lantern light flashed on their +wings; and Scott was evidently doing satisfactory execution, for every +moment or two Kathleen uncorked the cyanide jar and he dumped into it +from the folds of the net a fluttering victim.</p> + +<p>"That last one is a Pandorus Sphinx!" he said in great excitement to +Kathleen, who had lifted the big glass jar into the lantern light and +was trying to get a glimpse of the exquisite moth, whose wings of olive +green, rose, and bronze velvet were already beating a hazy death tattoo +in the lethal fumes.</p> + +<p>"A Pandorus! Scott, you've wanted one so much!" she exclaimed, +enchanted.</p> + +<p>"You bet I have. Pholus pandorus is pretty rare around here. And I say, +Kathleen, that wasn't a bad net-stroke, was it? You see I had only a +second, and I took a desperate chance."</p> + +<p>She praised his skill warmly; then, as he stood admiring his prize in +the jar which she held up, she suddenly caught him by the arm and +pointed:</p> + +<p>"Oh, quick! There is a hawk-moth over the pinks which resembles nothing +we have seen yet!"</p> + +<p>Scott very cautiously laid his net level, stole forward, shining the +lantern light full on the darting, hazy-winged creature, which was now +poised, hovering over a white blossom and probing the honeyed depths +with a long, slim proboscis.</p> + +<p>"I thought it might be only a Lineata, but it isn't," he said +excitedly. "Did you ever see such a timid moth? The slightest step +scares the creature."</p> + +<p>"Can't you try a quick net-stroke sideways?"</p> + +<p>Her voice was as anxious and unsteady as his own.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I'll miss. Lord but it's a lightning flier! Where is it +now?"</p> + +<p>"Behind you. Do be careful! Turn very slowly."</p> + +<p>He pivoted; the slim moth darted past, circled, and hung before a +blossom, wings vibrating so fast that the creature was merely a gray +blur in the lantern light. The next instant Gray's net swung; a furious +fluttering came from the green silk folds; Kathleen whipped off the +cover of the jar, and Duane deftly imprisoned the moth.</p> + +<p>"Upon my word," he said shakily, "I believe I've got a Tersa Sphinx!—a +sub-tropical fellow whose presence here is mere accident!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, if you have!" she breathed softly. She didn't know what a Tersa +Sphinx might be, but if its capture gave him pleasure, that was all she +cared for in the world.</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i> a Tersa!" he almost shouted. "By George! it's a wonder."</p> + +<p>Radiant, she bent eagerly above the jar where the strange, slender, +gray-and-brown hawk-moth lay dying. Its recoiling proboscis and its +slim, fawn-coloured legs quivered. The eyes glowed like tiny jewels.</p> + +<p>"If we could only keep these little things alive," she sighed; then, +fearful of taking the least iota from his pleasure, added: "but of +course we can't, and for scientific purposes it's all right to let the +lovely little creatures sink into their death-sleep."</p> + +<p>A slight haze had appeared over the lake; a sudden cool streak grew in +the air, which very quickly cleared the flower-beds of moths; and the +pretty sub-tropical sphinx was the last specimen of the evening.</p> + +<p>In the library Scott pulled out a card-table and Kathleen brought +forceps, strips of oiled paper, pins, setting-blocks, needles, and +oblong glass weights; and together, seated opposite each other, they +removed the delicate-winged contents of the collecting jar.</p> + +<p>Kathleen's dainty fingers were very swift and deft with the forceps. +Scott watched her. She picked up the green-and-rose Pandorus, laid it on +its back on a setting-block, affixed and pinned the oiled-paper strips, +drew out the four wings with the setting-needle until they were +symmetrical and the inner margin of the anterior pair was at right +angles with the body.</p> + +<p>Then she arranged the legs, uncoiled and set the proboscis, and weighted +the wings with heavy glass strips.</p> + +<p>They worked rapidly, happily there together, exchanging views and +opinions; and after a while the brilliant spoils of the evening were all +stretched and ready to dry, ultimately to be placed in plaster-of-Paris +mounts and hermetically sealed under glass covers.</p> + +<p>Kathleen went away to cleanse her hands of any taint of cyanide; Scott, +returning from his own ablutions, met her in the hall, and so +miraculously youthful, so fresh and sweet and dainty did she appear +that, in some inexplicable manner, his awkward, self-conscious fear of +touching her suddenly vanished, and the next instant she was in his arms +and he had kissed her.</p> + +<p>"Scott!" she faltered, pushing him from her, too limp and dazed to use +the strength she possessed.</p> + +<p>Surprised at what he had done, amazed that he was not afraid of her, he +held her tightly, thrilled dumb at the exquisite trembling contact.</p> + +<p>"Oh, what are you doing," she stammered, in dire consternation; "what +have you done? We—you cannot—you must let me go, Scott——"</p> + +<p>"You're only a girl, after all—you darling!" he said, inspecting her in +an ecstacy of curiosity. "I wonder why I've been afraid of you for so +long?—just because I love you!"</p> + +<p>"You don't—you can't care for me that way——"</p> + +<p>"I care for you in every kind of a way that anybody can care about +anybody." She turned her shoulder, desperately striving to release +herself, but she had not realised how tall and strong he was. "How small +you are," he repeated wonderingly; "just a soft, slender girl, Kathleen. +I can't see how I ever came to let you make me study when I didn't want +to."</p> + +<p>"Scott, dear," she pleaded breathlessly, "you must let me go. This—this +is utterly impossible——"</p> + +<p>"What is?"</p> + +<p>"That you and I can—could care—this way——"</p> + +<p>"Don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I—no!"</p> + +<p>"Is that the truth, Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>She looked up; the divine distress in her violet eyes sobered him, awed +him for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Kathleen," he said, "there are only a few years' difference between our +ages. I feel older than you; you look younger than I—and you are all in +the world I care for—or ever have cared for. Last spring—that night——"</p> + +<p>"Hush, Scott," she begged, blushing scarlet.</p> + +<p>"I know you remember. That is when I began to love you. You must have +known it."</p> + +<p>She said nothing; the strain of her resisting arms against his breast +had relaxed imperceptibly.</p> + +<p>"What can a fellow say?" he went on a little wildly, checked at moments +by the dryness of his throat and the rapid heartbeats that almost took +his breath away when he looked at her. "I love you so dearly, Kathleen; +there's no use in trying to live without loving you, for I couldn't do +it!... I'm not really young; it makes me furious to think you consider +me in that light. I'm a man, strong enough and old enough to love +you—and make you love me! I <i>will</i> make you!" His arms tightened.</p> + +<p>She uttered a little cry, which was half a sob; his boyish roughness +sent a glow rushing through her. She fought against the peril of it, the +bewildering happiness that welled up—fought against her heart that was +betraying her senses, against the deep, sweet passion that awoke as his +face touched hers.</p> + +<p>"Will you love me?" he said fiercely.</p> + +<p>"No!"</p> + +<p>"Will you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... Let me go!" she gasped.</p> + +<p>"Will you love me in the way I mean? Can you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I do. I—have, long since.... Let me go!"</p> + +<p>"Then—kiss me."</p> + +<p>She looked up at him a moment, slowly put both arms around his neck: +"Now," she breathed faintly, "release me."</p> + +<p>And at the same instant he saw Geraldine descending the stairs.</p> + +<p>Kathleen saw her, too; saw her turn abruptly, re-mount and disappear. +There was a moment's painful silence, then, without a word, she picked +up her lace skirts, ran up the stairway, and continued swiftly on to +Geraldine's room.</p> + +<p>"May I come in?" She spoke and opened the door of the bedroom at the +same time, and Geraldine turned on her, exasperated, hands clenched, +dark eyes harbouring lightning:</p> + +<p>"Have I gone quite mad, Kathleen, or have you?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"I think I have," whispered Kathleen, turning white and halting. +"Geraldine, you will <i>have</i> to listen. Scott has told me that he loves +me——"</p> + +<p>"Is this the first time?"</p> + +<p>"No.... It is the first time I have listened. I can't think clearly; I +scarcely know yet what I've said and done. What must you think?... But +won't you be a little gentle with me—a little forbearing—in memory of +what I have been to you—to him—so long?"</p> + +<p>"What do you wish me to think?" asked the girl in a hard voice. "My +brother is of age; he will do what he pleases, I suppose. I—I don't +know what to think; this has astounded me. I never dreamed such a thing +possible——"</p> + +<p>"Nor I—until this spring. I know it is all wrong; this is making me +more fearfully unhappy every minute I live. There is nothing but peril +in it; the discrepancy in our ages makes it hazardous—his youth, his +overwhelming fortune, my position and means—the world will surely, +surely misinterpret, misunderstand—I think even you, his sister, may be +led to credit—what, in your own heart, you must know to be utterly and +cruelly untrue."</p> + +<p>"I don't know what to say or think," repeated Geraldine in a dull voice. +"I can't realise it; I thought that our affection for you was so—so +utterly different."</p> + +<p>She stared curiously at Kathleen, trying to reconcile what she had +always known of her with what she now had to reckon with—strove to +find some alteration in the familiar features, something that she had +never before noticed, some new, unsuspected splendour of beauty and +charm, some undetected and subtle allure. She saw only a wholesome, +young, and lovely woman, fresh-skinned, slender, sweet, and +graceful—the same companion she had always known and, as she +remembered, unchanged in any way since the years of childhood, when +Kathleen was twenty and she and her brother were ten.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said, "that if Scott is in love with you, there is only +one thing to do."</p> + +<p>"There are several," said Kathleen in a low voice.</p> + +<p>"Will you not marry him?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know; I think not."</p> + +<p>"Are you not in love with him?"</p> + +<p>"Does that matter?" asked Kathleen steadily. "Scott's happiness is what +is important."</p> + +<p>"But his happiness, apparently, depends on you."</p> + +<p>Kathleen flushed and looked at her curiously.</p> + +<p>"Dear, if I knew that was so, I would give myself to him. Neither you +nor he have ever asked anything of me in vain. Even if I did not love +him—as I do—and he needed me, I would give myself to him. You and he +have been all there was in life for me. But I am afraid that I may not +always be all that life holds for him. He is young; he has had no chance +yet; he has had little experience with women. I think he ought to have +his chance."</p> + +<p>She might have said the same thing of herself. A bride at her husband's +death-bed, widowed before she had ever been a wife, what experience had +she? All her life so far had been devoted to the girl who stood there +confronting her, and to the brother. What did she know of men?—of +whether she might be capable of loving some man more suitable? She had +not given herself the chance. She never would, now.</p> + +<p>There was no selfishness in Kathleen Severn. But there was much in the +Seagrave twins. The very method of their bringing up inculcated it; they +had never had any chance to be otherwise. The "cultiwation of the +indiwidool" had driven it into them, taught them the deification of +self, forced them to consider their own importance above anything else +in the world.</p> + +<p>And it was of that importance that Geraldine was now thinking as she sat +on the edge of her bed, darkly considering these new problems that +chance was laying before her one by one.</p> + +<p>If Scott was going to be unhappy without Kathleen, it followed, as a +matter of course, that he must have Kathleen. The chances Kathleen might +take, what she might have to endure of the world's malice and gossip and +criticism, never entered Geraldine's mind at all.</p> + +<p>"If he is in love with you," she repeated, "it settles it, I think. What +else is there to do but marry him?"</p> + +<p>Kathleen shook her head. "I shall do what is best for him—whatever that +may be."</p> + +<p>"You won't make him unhappy, I suppose?" inquired Geraldine, astonished.</p> + +<p>"Dear, a woman may be truer to the man she loves—and kinder—by +refusing him. Is not that what <i>you</i> have done—for Duane's sake?"</p> + +<p>Geraldine sprang to her feet, face white, mouth distorted with anger:</p> + +<p>"I made a god of Duane!" she broke out breathlessly. "Everything that +was in me—everything that was decent and unselfish and pure-minded +dominated me when I found I loved him. So I would not listen to my own +desire for him, I would not let him risk a terrible unhappiness until I +could go to him as clean and well and straight and unafraid as he could +wish!" She laughed bitterly, and laid her hands on her breast. "Look at +me, Kathleen! I am quite as decent as this god of mine. Why should I +worry over the chances he takes when I have chances enough to take in +marrying him? I was stupid to be so conscientious—I behaved like a +hysterical schoolgirl—or a silly communicant—making him my confessor! +A girl is a perfect fool to make a god out of a man. I made one out of +Duane; and he acted like one. It nearly ended me, but, after all, he is +no worse than I. Whoever it was who said that decency is only depravity +afraid, is right. I <i>am</i> depraved; I <i>am</i> afraid. I'm afraid that I +cannot control myself, for one thing; and I'm afraid of being unhappy +for life if I don't marry Duane. And I'm going to, and let him take his +chances!"</p> + +<p>Kathleen, very pale, said: "That is selfishness—if you do it."</p> + +<p>"Are not men selfish? He will not tell me as much of his life as I have +told him of mine. I have told him everything. How do I know what risk I +run? Yes—I do know; I take the risk of marrying a man notorious for his +facility with women. And he lets me take that risk. Why should I not let +him risk something?"</p> + +<p>The girl seemed strangely excited; her quick breathing and bright, +unsteady eyes betrayed the nervous tension of the last few days. She +said feverishly:</p> + +<p>"There is a lot of nonsense talked about self-sacrifice and love; about +the beauties of abnegation and martyrdom, but, Kathleen, if I shall ever +need him at all, I need him now. I'm afraid to be alone any longer; I'm +frightened at the chances against me. Do you know what these days of +horror have been to me, locked in here—all alone—in the depths of +degradation for what—what I did that night—in distress and shame +unutterable——"</p> + +<p>"My darling——"</p> + +<p>"Wait! I had more to endure—I had to endure the results of my education +in the study of man! I had to realise that I loved one of them who has +done enough to annihilate in me anything except love. I had to learn +that he couldn't kill that—that I want him in spite of it, that I need +him, that my heart is sick with dread; that he can have me when he +will—Oh, Kathleen, I have learned to care less for him than when I +denied him for his own sake—more for him than I did before he held me +in his arms! And that is not a high type of love—I know it—but oh, if +I could only have his arms around me—if I could rest there for a +while—and not feel so frightened, so utterly alone!—I might win out; I +might kill what is menacing me, with God's help—and his!"</p> + +<p>She lay shivering on Kathleen's breast now, dry-eyed, twisting her +ringless fingers in dumb anguish.</p> + +<p>"Darling, darling," murmured Kathleen, "you cannot do this thing. You +cannot let him assume a burden that is yours alone."</p> + +<p>"Why not? What is one's lover for?"</p> + +<p>"Not to use; not to hazard; not to be made responsible for a sick mind +and a will already demoralised. Is it fair to ask him—to let him begin +life with such a burden—such a handicap? Is it not braver, fairer, to +fight it out alone, eradicate what threatens you—oh, my own darling! my +little Geraldine!—is it not fairer to the man you love? Is he not worth +striving for, suffering for? Have you no courage to endure if he is to +be the reward? Is a little selfish weakness, a miserable self-indulgence +to stand between you and life-long happiness?"</p> + +<p>Geraldine looked up; her face was very white:</p> + +<p>"Have you ever been tempted?"</p> + +<p>"Have I not been to-night?"</p> + +<p>"I mean by—something ignoble?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Do you know how it hurts?"</p> + +<p>"To—to deny yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... It is so—difficult—it makes me wretchedly weak.... I only +thought he might help me.... You are right, Kathleen.... I must be +terribly demoralised to have wished it. I—I will not marry him, now. I +don't think I ever will.... You are right. I have got to be fair to him, +no matter what he has been to me.... He has been fearfully unfair. After +all, he is only a man.... I couldn't really love a god."</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XIII<br />AMBITIONS AND LETTERS</a></h2> + + +<p>Rosalie had departed; Grandcourt followed suit next day; Sylvia's +brother, Stuyvesant, had at last found a sober moment at his disposal +and had appeared at Roya-Neh and taken his sister away. Duane was all +ready to go to New York to find out whether his father was worrying over +anything, as the tone of his letters indicated.</p> + +<p>The day he left, Kathleen and Geraldine started on a round of August +house parties, ranging from Lenox to Long Island, including tiresome +week ends and duty visits to some very unpretentious but highly +intellectual relatives of Mrs. Severn. So Scott remained in solitary +possession of Roya-Neh, with its forests, gardens, pastures, lakes and +streams, and a staggering payroll and all the multiplicity of problems +that such responsibility entails. Which pleased him immensely, except +for the departure of Kathleen.</p> + +<p>To play the intellectual country squire had been all he desired on earth +except Kathleen. From the beginning White's "Selborne" had remained his +model for all books, Kathleen for all women. He was satisfied with these +two components of perfect happiness, and with himself, as he was, for +the third ingredient in a contented and symmetrical existence.</p> + +<p>He had accepted his answer from her with more philosophy than she quite +expected or was prepared for, saying that if she made a particular +point of it he would go about next winter and give himself a chance to +meet as many desirable young girls as she thought best; that it was +merely wasting time, but if it made her any happier, he'd wait and +endeavour to return to their relations of unsentimental comradeship +until she was satisfied he knew his mind.</p> + +<p>Kathleen was, at first, a little dismayed at his complacency. It was +only certainty of himself. At twenty-two there is time for anything, and +the vista of life ahead is endless. And there was one thing more which +Kathleen did not know. Under the covering of this Seagrave complacency +and self-centred sufficiency, all alone by itself was developing the +sprouting germ of consideration for others.</p> + +<p>How it started he himself did not know—nor was he even aware that it +had started. But long, solitary rambles and the quiet contemplation of +other things besides himself had awakened first curiosity, then a +dawning suspicion of the rights of others.</p> + +<p>In the silence of forests it is difficult to preserve complacency; under +the stars modesty is born.</p> + +<p>It began to occur to him, by degrees, that his own personal importance +among his kind <i>might</i> be due, in part, to his fortune. And from the +first invasion of that shocking idea matters progressed rather rapidly +with the last of the Seagraves.</p> + +<p>He said uneasily to Duane, once: "Are you going in seriously for +painting?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> in," observed Duane drily.</p> + +<p>"Professionally?"</p> + +<p>"Sure thing. God hates an amateur."</p> + +<p>"What are you after?" persisted Scott. "Fame?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I need it in my business."</p> + +<p>"Are you contemplating a velvet coat and bow tie, and a bunch of the +elect at your heels?—ratty men, and pop-eyed young women whose coiffure +needs weeding?"</p> + +<p>Duane laughed. "Are they any more deadly than our own sort? Why endure +either? Because you are developing into a country squire, you don't have +to marry Maud Muller." And he quoted Bret Harte:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i0">"For there be women fair as she,</span><br /> +<span class="i05">Whose verbs and nouns do more agree."</span> +</p> + +<p>"You don't have to wallow in a profession, you know."</p> + +<p>"But why the mischief do you want to paint professionally?" inquired +Scott, with unsatisfied curiosity. "It isn't avarice, is it?"</p> + +<p>"I expect to hold out for what my pictures are worth, if that's what you +mean by avarice. What I'm trying to do," added Duane, striking his palm +with his fist as emphasis, "is not to die the son of a wealthy man. If I +can't be anything more, I'm not worth a damn. But I'm going to be. I can +do it, Scott; I'm lazy, I'm undecided, I've a weak streak. And yet, do +you know, with all my blemishes, all my misgivings, all my +discouragements, panics, despondent moments, I am, way down inside, +serenely and unaccountably certain that I can paint like the devil, and +that I am going to do it. That sounds cheeky, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"It sounds all right to me," said Scott. And he walked away +thoughtfully, fists dug deep in his pockets.</p> + +<p>And one still, sunny afternoon, standing alone on the dry granite crags +of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles +above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked +down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread +out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds, and a river belonging +to him traced its course across the valley in a single silver thread. +And a slight blush stung his face at the thought that, without any merit +or endeavour of his own, his money had bought it all—his money, that +had always acted as his deputy, fought for him, conquered for him, +spoken for him, vouched for him—perhaps pleaded for him!—he shivered, +and suddenly he realised that this golden voice was, in fact, all there +was to him.</p> + +<p>What had he to identify him on earth among mankind? Only his money. +Wherein did he differ from other men? He had more money. What had he to +offer as excuse for living at all? Money. What had he done? Lived on it, +by it. Why, then, it was the money that was entitled to distinction, and +he figured only as its parasite! Then he was nothing—even a little +less. In the world there was man and there was money. It seemed that he +was a little lower in the scale than either; a parasite—scarcely a +thing of distinction to offer Kathleen Severn.</p> + +<p>Very seriously he looked up at the moon.</p> + +<p>It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned +declaration. He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he +descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of +mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow. And that evening +he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had +taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed the +aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of courage +and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we conquer the +world—which is ourselves.</p> + +<p>"For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not +really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential and +casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there remains +enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity and repay, in +a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your interest in my behalf.</p> + +<p>"Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will +tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes +something of a man to dare do it.</p> + +<p>"There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even +against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in thought +have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your heart.... Yet +I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith in me to accept +that statement—against the evidence of those two divine witnesses which +condemn me—your eyes? Circumstantial evidence is no good in this case, +dear. I can say no more than that.</p> + +<p>"Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other?</p> + +<p>"I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present +distress and despondency. What am I for if not for such moments?</p> + +<p>"That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever +been. I know that my conduct—at least your interpretation of +it—threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that +your attitude toward such a crisis—your solution of such a +situation—should be a leap forward toward self-destruction—a +reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the +more certain that we need each other now if ever.</p> + +<p>"The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind +the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last +few days, is more than I can well endure. Open both doors to me; +leagued we can win through!</p> + +<p>"Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight, +and we two shall stand together and see 'the day break and the +shadows flee away.'"</p></blockquote> + + +<p>That same evening his reply came:</p> + + +<blockquote><p>"My darling, Kathleen will give you this. I don't care what my eyes +saw if you tell me it isn't true. I have loved you, anyway, all the +while—even with my throat full of tears and my mouth bitter with +anger, and my heart torn into several thousand tatters—oh, it is +not very difficult to love you, Duane; the only trouble is to love +you in the right way; which is hard, dear, because I want you so +much; and it's so new to me to be unselfish. I began to learn by +loving you.</p> + +<p>"Which means, that I will not let you take the risk you ask for. +Give me time; I've fought it off since that miserable night. Heaven +alone knows why I surrendered—turning to my deadly enemy for +countenance and comfort to support my childish and contemptible +anger against you.</p> + +<p>"Duane, there is an evil streak in me, and we both must reckon with +it. Long, long before I knew I loved you, things you said and did +often wounded me; and within me a perfectly unreasoning desire to +hurt you—to make you suffer—always flamed up and raged.</p> + +<p>"I think that was partly what made me do what you know I did that +night. It would hurt you; that was my ignoble instinct. God knows +whether it was also a hideous sort of excuse for my weakness—for I +was blazing hot after the last dance—and the gaiety and uproar and +laughter all overexcited me—and then what I had seen you do, and +your not coming to me, and that ominous uneasy impulse stirring!</p> + +<p>"That is the truth as I analyse it. The dreadful thing is that I +could have been capable of dealing our chance of happiness such a +cowardly blow.</p> + +<p>"Well, it is over. The thing has fled for a while. I fought it +down, stamped on it with utter horror and loathing. It—the +encounter—tired me. I am weary yet—from honourable wounds. But I +won out. If it comes back again—Oh, Duane! and it surely will—I +shall face it undaunted once more; and every hydra-head that stirs +I shall kill until the thing lies dead between us for all time.</p> + +<p>"Then, dear, will you take the girl who has done this thing?</p> + +<p class="right"> +"<span class="smcap">Geraldine Seagrave</span>." +</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>This was his answer on the eve of his departure.</p> + +<p>And on the morning of it Geraldine came down to say good-bye; a fresh, +sweet, and bewildering Geraldine, somewhat slimmer than when he had last +seen her, a little finer in feature, more delicate of body; and there +was about her even a hint of the spirituel as a fascinating trace of +what she had been through, locked in alone behind the doors of her room +and heart.</p> + +<p>She bade him good-morning somewhat shyly, offering her slim hand and +looking at him with the slight uncertainty and bent brows of a person +coming suddenly into a strong light.</p> + +<p>He said under his breath: "You poor darling, how thin you are."</p> + +<p>"Athletics," she said; "Jacob wrestled with an angel, but you know what +I've been facing in the squared circle. Don't speak of it any more, will +you? ... How sunburned you are! What have you been about since I've kept +to my room?"</p> + +<p>"I've painted Miller's kids in the open; I suppose the terrific +influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed +easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration +behind it. I'll think out my own way—grope it out through Pantheon and +living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my +own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been sunstruck by +Sorolla."</p> + +<p>She listened demurely, watching him, her lips sensitive with +understanding; and she laughed when he laughed away his fealty to the +superb Spaniard, knowing himself and the untried strength within him.</p> + +<p>"But when are you coming back to us, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Father's letters perplex me. I'll write you every day, of +course."</p> + +<p>A quick colour tinted her skin:</p> + +<p>"And I will write you every day. I will begin to-day. Kathleen and I +expect to be here in September. But you will come back before that and +keep Scott company; won't you?"</p> + +<p>"I want to get into harness again," he said slowly. "I want to settle +down to work."</p> + +<p>"Can't you work here?"</p> + +<p>"Not very well."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth," he admitted, smiling, "I require something more +like a working studio than Miller's garret."</p> + +<p>"That's what I thought," she said shyly, "and Scott and I have the plans +for a studio all ready; and the men are to begin Monday, and Miller is +to take the new gate cottage. Oh, the plans are really very wonderful!" +she added hastily, as Duane looked grateful but dubious. "Rollins and +Calvert drew them. I wrote to Billy Calvert and sent him the original +plans for Hurryon Lodge. Duane, I thought it would please you——"</p> + +<p>"It does, you dear, generous girl! I'm a trifle overwhelmed, that's all +my silence meant. You ought not to do this for me——"</p> + +<p>"Why? Aren't we to be as near each other as we can be until—I am +ready—for something—closer?"</p> + +<p>"Yes.... Certainly.... I'll arrange to work out certain things up here. +As for models, if there is nothing suitable at Westgate village, you +won't mind my importing some, will you?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said, becoming very serious and gravely interested, as +befitted the fiancée of a painter of consequence. "You will do what is +necessary, of course; because I—few girls—are accustomed in the +beginning to the details of such a profession as yours; and I'm very +ignorant, Duane, and I must learn how to second you—intelligently"—she +blushed—"that is, if I'm to amount to anything as an artist's wife."</p> + +<p>"You dear!" he whispered.</p> + +<p>"No; I tell you I am totally ignorant. A studio is an awesome place to +me. I merely know enough to keep out of it when you are using models. +That is safest, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>He said, intensely amused: "It might be safer not to give pink teas +while I am working from the nude."</p> + +<p>"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're not <i>always</i> +painting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?"</p> + +<p>"Not always!" he managed to assure her; and her pretty, confused +laughter mingled with his unembarrassed mirth as the motor-car swung up +to carry him and his traps to the station.</p> + +<p>They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips +threatened to escape control.</p> + +<p>Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing +nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, +but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on +the stone coping of the terrace.</p> + +<p>And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood +examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found +utterance:</p> + +<p>"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating +things, but any ass can do that. One can't make a particular name for +one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and +what a lot of idle idiots are imitating."</p> + +<p>She raised her violet eyes, astonished:</p> + +<p>"Do <i>you</i> want to make a name for yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, reddening.</p> + +<p>"Why not? I'm a nobody. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear +what Duane has to say about amateurs!"</p> + +<p>"But, Scott, you don't have to be anything in particular except what you +are——"</p> + +<p>"What am I?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Why—yourself."</p> + +<p>"And what's that?" He grew redder. "I'll tell you, +Kathleen. I'm merely a painfully wealthy young man. Don't laugh; this is +becoming deadly serious to me. By my own exertions I've never done one +bally thing either useful or spectacular. I'm not distinguished by +anything except an unfair share of wealth. I'm not eminent, let alone +pre-eminent, even in that sordid class; there are richer men, plenty of +them—some even who have made their own fortunes and have not been +hatched out in a suffocating plethora of affluence like the larva of the +Carnifex tumble-bug——"</p> + +<p>"Scott!"</p> + +<p>"And I!" he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my +position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't +endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly +wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because +I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon +FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income! +What have I to offer anybody worth while for entertaining me? What have +I to offer you, Kathleen, in exchange for yourself?"</p> + +<p>He was becoming boyishly dramatic with sweeping gestures which amazed +her; but she was conscious that it was all sincere and very real to him.</p> + +<p>"Scott, dear," she began sweetly, uncertain how to take it all; +"kindness, loyalty, and decent breeding are all that a woman cares for +in a man——"</p> + +<p>"You are entitled to more; you are entitled to a man of distinction, of +attainment, of achievement——"</p> + +<p>"Few women ask for that, Scott; few care for it; fewer still understand +it——"</p> + +<p>"You would. I've got a cheek to ask you to marry me—<i>me!</i>—before I +wear any tag to identify me except the dollar mark——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hush, Scott! You are talking utter nonsense; don't you know it?"</p> + +<p>He made a large and rather grandiose gesture:</p> + +<p>"Around me lies opportunity, Kathleen—every stone; every brook——"</p> + +<p>The mischievous laughter of his listener checked him. She said: "I'm +sorry; only it made me think of</p> + +<p class="center"> +'Sermons in stones,<br /> +Books in the running brooks,' +</p> + +<p>and the indignant gentleman who said: 'What damn nonsense! It's "sermons +in <i>books</i>, <i>stones</i> in the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I +don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish for fame——"</p> + +<p>"It isn't fame alone, although I wouldn't mind it if I deserved it. It's +that I want to do just one thing that amounts to something. I wish you'd +give me an idea, Kathleen, something useful in—say in entomology."</p> + +<p>Together they walked back to the terrace. Duane had gone; Geraldine sat +sideways on the parapet, her brown eyes fixed on the road along which +her lover had departed.</p> + +<p>"Geraldine," said Kathleen, who very seldom relapsed into the +vernacular, "this brother of yours desires to perform some startling +stunt in entomology and be awarded Carnegie medals."</p> + +<p>"That's about it," said Scott, undaunted. "Some wise guy put it all over +the Boll-weevil, and saved a few billions for the cotton growers; +another gentleman full of scientific thinks studied out the San José +scale; others have got in good licks at mosquitoes and house-flies. I'd +like to tackle something of that sort."</p> + +<p>"Rose-beetles," said his sister briefly. In her voice was a suspicion of +tears, and she kept her head turned from them.</p> + +<p>"Nobody could ever get rid of Rose-beetles," said Kathleen. "But it +<i>would</i> be exciting, wouldn't it, Scott? Think of saving our roses and +peonies and irises every year!"</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> thinking of it," said Scott gravely.</p> + +<p>A few moments later he disappeared around the corner of the house, +returning presently, pockets bulging with bottles and boxes, a +field-microscope in one hand, and several volumes on Coleoptera in the +other.</p> + +<p>"They're gone," he said without further explanation.</p> + +<p>"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen.</p> + +<p>"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvæ ought +to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he +descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself +under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and +cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil.</p> + +<p>"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute +effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it +in the garden dirt."</p> + +<p>"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is +about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so +touchingly confident!"</p> + +<p>Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with +his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his +investigations.</p> + +<p>"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are +permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at +his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and +oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big cocoon in one of +them!"</p> + +<p>She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of +tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it +was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism +of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a +child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect, +wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught +so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under +her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned +proudly—even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of +her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility—this +sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart +with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish.</p> + +<p>So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright +hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet +nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, +youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her +conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life.</p> + +<p>And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl, +delicately lovely, already harassed, already perplexed, already bruised +and wearied by her first skirmishes with life; not yet fully +understanding what threatened, what lay before—alas! what lay behind +her—even to the fifth generation.</p> + +<p>They were to motor to Lenox after luncheon. Before that—and leaving +Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching +him—Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book—a +book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her +self-imprisonment. It was called "Simpson on Heredity."</p> + +<p>There were some very hideous illustrated pages in that book; she turned +to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she +first read them. They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies +through successive generations.</p> + +<p>That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not +realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the +soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled.</p> + +<p>She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr. Bailey, who +became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician +who ever read medical works was a fool. Desperation gave her courage to +ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her. But she +had the book under her pillow. It is better to answer such questions +when the young ask them.</p> + +<p>And over it all she pondered and pored, and used a dictionary and +shuddered, frightening herself into a morbid condition until, +desperately scared, she even thought of going to Duane about it; but +could not find the hardihood to do it or the vocabulary necessary.</p> + +<p>Now Duane was gone; and the book lay there between her knees, all its +technical vagueness menacing her with unknown terrors; and she felt that +she could endure it alone no longer.</p> + +<p>She wrote him:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"You have not been gone an hour, and already I need you. +I wish to ask you about something that is troubling me; I've asked +Kathleen and she doesn't know; and Dr. Bailey was horrid to me, and I +tried to find out from Scott whether he knew, but he wasn't much +interested. So, Duane, who else is there for me to ask except you? And I +don't exactly know whether I may speak about such matters to you, but +I'm rather frightened, and densely ignorant.</p> + +<p>"It is this, dear; in a medical book which I read, it says that +hereditary taints are transmissible; that sometimes they may skip the +second generation but only to appear surely in the third. But it also +says that the taint is very likely to appear in <i>every</i> generation.</p> + +<p>"Duane, is this <i>true</i>? It has worried me sick since I read it. Because, +my darling, if it is so, is it not another reason for our not marrying?</p> + +<p>"Do you understand? I can and will eradicate what is threatening <i>me</i>, +but if I marry you—you <i>do</i> understand, don't you? Isn't it all right +for me to ask you whether, if we should have children, this thing would +menace them? Oh, Duane—Duane! Have I any right to marry? Children +come—God knows how, for nobody ever told me exactly, and I'm a fool +about such things—but I summoned up courage to ask Dr. Bailey if there +was any way to tell before I married whether I would have any, and he +said I would if I had any notion of my duty and any pretence to +self-respect. And I don't know what he means and I'm bewildered and +miserable and afraid to marry you even when I myself become perfectly +well. And that is what worries me, Duane, and I have nobody in the world +to ask about it except you. Could you please tell me how I might learn +what I ought to know concerning these things without betraying my own +vital interest in them to whomever I ask? You see, Kathleen is as +innocent as I.</p> + +<p class="thoughtbreak">"Please tell me all you can, Duane, for I am most unhappy."</p> + +<p class="thoughtbreak">"The house is very still and full of sunlight and cut flowers. Scott is +meditating great deeds, lying flat in the dirt. Kathleen sits watching +him from the parapet. And I am here in the library, with that ghastly +book at my elbow, pouring out all my doubts and fears to the only man in +the world—whom God bless and protect wherever he may be—Oh, Duane, +Duane, how I love you!"</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>She hurriedly directed and sealed the letter and placed it in the box +for outgoing mail; then, unquiet and apprehensive regarding what she had +ventured to write, she began a restless tour of the house, upstairs and +down, wandering aimlessly through sunny corridors, opening doors for a +brief survey of chambers in which only the shadow-patterns of leaves +moved on sunlit walls; still rooms tenanted only by the carefully dusted +furniture which seemed to stand there watching attentively for another +guest.</p> + +<p>Duane had left his pipe in his bedroom. She was silly over it, even to +the point of retiring into her room, shredding some cigarettes, filling +the rather rank bowl, and trying her best to smoke it. But such devotion +was beyond her physical powers; she rinsed her mouth, furious at being +defeated in her pious intentions, and, making an attractive parcel of +the pipe, seized the occasion to write him another letter.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"There is in my heart," she wrote, "no room for anything except +you; no desire except for you; no hope, no interest that is not +yours. You praise my beauty; you endow me with what you might wish +I really possessed; and oh, I really am so humble at your feet, if +you only knew it! So dazed by your goodness to me, so grateful, so +happy that you have chosen me (I just jumped up to look at myself +in the mirror; I <i>am</i> pretty, Duane, I've a stunning colour just +now and there <i>is</i> a certain charm about me—even I can see it in +what you call the upcurled corners of my mouth, and in my figure +and hands)—and I am so happy that it is true—that you find me +beautiful, that you care for my beauty.... It is so with a man, I +believe; and a girl wishes to have him love her beauty, too.</p> + +<p>"But, Duane, I don't think the average girl cares very much about +that in a man. Of course you are exceedingly nice to look at, and I +notice it sometimes, but not nearly as often as you notice what you +think is externally attractive about me.</p> + +<p>"In my heart, I don't believe it really matters much to a girl what +a man looks like; anyway, it matters very little after she once +knows him.</p> + +<p>"Of course women do notice handsome men—or what we consider +handsome—which is, I believe, not at all what men care for; +because men usually seem to have a desire to kick the man whom +women find good-looking. I know several men who feel that way about +Jack Dysart. I think you do, for one.</p> + +<p>"Poor Jack Dysart! To-day's papers are saying such horridly +unpleasant things about the rich men with whom he was rather +closely associated in business affairs several years ago. I read, +but I do not entirely comprehend.</p> + +<p>"The New York papers seem unusually gloomy this summer; nothing but +predictions of hard times coming, and how many corporations the +attorney-general is going to proceed against, and wicked people who +loot metropolitan railways, and why the district-attorney doesn't +do his duty—which you say he does—oh, dear; I expect that Scott +and Kathleen and I will have to take in boarders this winter; but +if nobody has any money, nobody can pay board, so everybody will be +ruined and I don't very much care, for I could teach school, only +who is to pay my salary if there's no money to pay it with? Oh, +dear! what nonsense I am writing—only to keep on writing, because +it seems to bring you a little nearer—my own—my Duane—my +comrade—the same, same little boy who ran away from his nurse and +came into our garden to fight my brother and—fall in love with his +sister! Oh, Fate! Oh, Destiny! Oh, Duane Mallett!</p> + +<p>"Here is a curious phenomenon. Listen:</p> + +<p>"Away from you I have a woman's courage to tell you how I long for +you, how my heart and my arms ache for you. But when I am with you +I'm less of a woman and more of a girl—a girl not yet accustomed +to some things—always guarded, always a little reticent, always +instinctively recoiling from the contact I really like, always a +little on the defensive against your lips, in spite of +myself—against your arms—where, somehow, I cannot seem to stay +long at a time—will not endure it—<i>cannot</i>, somehow.</p> + +<p>"Yet, here, away from you, I so long for your embrace, and cannot +imagine it too long, too close, too tender to satisfy my need of +you.</p> + +<p>"And this is my second letter to you within the hour—one hour +after your departure.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane, I do truly miss you so! I go about humming that air you +found so quaint:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +"'Lisetto quittée la plaine,<br /> +<span class="i2">Moi perdi bonheur à moi—</span><br /> +Yeux à moi semblent fontaine<br /> +<span class="i2">Depuis moi pas miré toi!'</span> +</p> + +<p>and there's a tear in every note of it, and I'm the most lonely +girl on the face of the earth to-day.</p> + +<p class="right"> +"<span class="smcap">Geraldine Qui Pleure</span>." +</p> + +<p>"P.S.—Voici votre pipe, Monsieur!"</p> + +</blockquote> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XIV<br />THE PROPHETS</a></h2> + + +<p>August in town found an unusual number of New York men at the clubs, at +the restaurants, at the summer theatres. Men who very seldom shoved +their noses inside the metropolitan oven during the summer baking were +now to be met everywhere and anywhere within the financial district and +without. The sky-perched and magnificent down-town "clubs" were full of +men who under normal circumstances would have remained at Newport, +Lenox, Bar Harbor, or who at least would have spent the greater portion +of the summer on their yachts or their Long Island estates.</p> + +<p>And in every man's hand or pocket was a newspaper.</p> + +<p>They were scarcely worth reading for mere pleasure, these New York +newspapers; indeed, there was scarcely anything in them to read except a +daily record of the steady decline in securities of every description; +paragraphs noting the passing of dividends; columns setting forth +minutely the opinions of very wealthy men concerning the business +outlook; chronicles in detail of suits brought against railroads and +against great industrial corporations; accounts of inquiries by State +and by Federal authorities into combinations resulting in an alleged +violation of various laws.</p> + +<p>Here and there a failure of some bucket-branded broker was noted—the +reports echoing like the first dropping shots along the firing line.</p> + +<p>Even to the most casual and uninterested outsider it was evident that +already the metropolis was under a tension; that the tension was +increasing almost imperceptibly day by day; that there seemed to be no +very clear idea as to the reason of it, only a confused apprehension, an +apparently unreassuring fear of some grotesque danger ahead, which daily +reading of the newspapers was not at all calculated to allay.</p> + +<p>Of course there were precise reasons for impending trouble given and +reiterated by those amateurs of finance and politics whose opinions are +at the disposal of the newspaper-reading public.</p> + +<p>Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant +phrases such as "undigested securities" and "the treacherous attack on +the nation's integrity."</p> + +<p>Two principal reasons were given for the local financial uneasiness; and +the one made the other ridiculous—first, that the nation's Executive +was mad as Nero and had deliberately begun a senseless holocaust +involving the entire nation; the other that a "panic" was due, anyway. +It resembled the logic of the White Queen of immortal memory, who began +screaming before she pricked her finger in order to save herself any +emotion after the pin had drawn blood.</p> + +<p>Men knew in their hearts that there was no real reason for impending +trouble; that this menace was an unreal thing, intangible, without +substance—only a shadow cast by their own assininity.</p> + +<p>Yet shadows can be made real property when authority so ordains. Because +there was once a man with a donkey who met a stranger in the desert.</p> + +<p>The stranger bargained for and bought the donkey; the late owner shoved +the shekels into his ample pockets and sat down in the mule's shadow to +escape the sun; and the new owner brought suit to recover the rent due +him for the occupation of the shadow cast by his donkey.</p> + +<p>There was also a mule which waited seven years to kick.</p> + +<p>There are asses and mules and all sorts of shadows. The ordinance of +authority can affect only the shadow; the substance is immutable.</p> + +<p>Among other serious gentlemen of consideration and means who had been +unaccustomed to haunt the metropolis in the dog days was Colonel +Alexander Mallett, President of the Half Moon Trust Company, and +incidentally Duane's father.</p> + +<p>His town-house was still open, although his wife and daughter were in +the country. To it, in the comparative cool of the August evenings, came +figures familiar in financial circles; such men as Magnelius Grandcourt, +father of Delancy; and Remsen Tappan, and James Cray.</p> + +<p>Others came and went, men of whom Duane had read in the newspapers—very +great men who dressed very simply, very powerful men who dressed +elaborately; and some were young and red-faced with high living, and one +was damp of hair and long-nosed, with eyes set a trifle too close +together; and one fulfilled every external requisite for a "good +fellow"; and another was very old, very white, with a nut-cracker jaw +and faded eyes, blue as an unweaned pup's, and a cream-coloured wig +curled glossily over waxen ears and a bloodless and furrowed neck.</p> + +<p>All these were very great men; but they and Colonel Mallett journeyed at +intervals into the presence of a greater man who inhabited, all alone, +except for a crew of a hundred men, an enormous yacht, usually at +anchor off the white masonry cliffs of the seething city.</p> + +<p>All alone this very great man inhabited the huge white steamer; and they +piped him fore and they piped him aft and they piped him over the side. +Many a midnight star looked down at the glowing end of his black cigar; +many a dawn shrilled with his boatswain's whistle. He was a very, very +great man; none was greater in New York town.</p> + +<p>It was said of him that he once killed a pompous statesman—by ridicule:</p> + +<p>"I know who <i>you</i> are!" panted a ragged urchin, gazing up in awe as the +famous statesman approached his waiting carriage.</p> + +<p>"And who am I, my little man?"</p> + +<p>"You are the great senator from New York."</p> + +<p>"Yes—you are right. <i>But</i>"—and he solemnly pointed his gloved +forefinger toward heaven—"but, remember, there is One even greater than +I."</p> + +<p>Duane had heard the absurd lampoon as a child, and one evening late in +August, smoking his after-dinner cigar beside his father in the empty +conservatory, he recalled the story, which had been one of his father's +favorites.</p> + +<p>But Colonel Mallett scarcely smiled, scarcely heard; and his son watched +him furtively. The trim, elastic figure was less upright this summer; +the close gray hair and cavalry mustache had turned white very rapidly +since spring. For the first time, too, in all his life, Colonel Mallett +wore spectacles; and the thin gold rims irritated his ears and the +delicate bridge of his nose. Under his pleasant eyes the fine skin had +darkened noticeably; thin new lines had sprung downward from the +nostrils' clean-cut wings; but the most noticeable change was in his +hands, which were no longer firm and fairly smooth, but were now the +hands of an old man, restless if not tremulous, unsteady in handling the +cigar which, unnoticed, had gone out.</p> + +<p>They—father and son—had never been very intimate. An excellent +understanding had always existed between them with nothing deeper in it +than a natural affection and an instinctive respect for each other's +privacy.</p> + +<p>This respect now oppressed Duane because long habit, and the understood +pact, seemed to bar him from a sympathy and a practical affection which, +for the first time, it seemed to him his father might care for.</p> + +<p>That his father was worried was plain enough; but how anxious and with +how much reason, he had hesitated to ask, waiting for some voluntary +admission, or at least some opening, which the older man never gave.</p> + +<p>That night, however, he had tried an opening for himself, offering the +old stock story which had always, heretofore, amused his father. And +there had been no response.</p> + +<p>In silence he thought the matter over; his sympathy was always quick; it +hurt him to remain aloof when there might be a chance that he could help +a little.</p> + +<p>"It may amuse you," he said carelessly, "to know how much I've made +since I came back from Paris."</p> + +<p>The elder man looked up preoccupied. His son went on:</p> + +<p>"What you set aside for me brings me ten thousand a year, you know. So +far I haven't touched it. Isn't that pretty good for a start?"</p> + +<p>Colonel Mallett sat up straighter with a glimmer of interest in his +eyes.</p> + +<p>Duane went on, checking off on his fingers:</p> + +<p>"I got fifteen hundred for Mrs. Varick's portrait, the same for Mrs. +James Cray's, a thousand each for portraits of Carl and Friedrich +Gumble; that makes five thousand. Then I had three thousand for the +music-room I did for Mrs. Ellis; and Dinklespiel Brothers, who handle my +pictures, have sold every one I sent; which gives me twelve thousand so +far."</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly astonished," murmured his father.</p> + +<p>Duane laughed. "Oh, I know very well that sheer merit had nothing much +to do with it. The people who gave me orders are all your friends. They +did it as they might have sent in wedding presents; I am your son; I +come back from Paris; it's up to them to do something. They've done +it—those who ever will, I expect—and from now on it will be +different."</p> + +<p>"They've given you a start," said his father.</p> + +<p>"They certainly have done that. Many a brilliant young fellow, with more +ability than I, eats out his heart unrecognised, sterilised for lack of +what came to me because of your influence."</p> + +<p>"It is well to look at it in that way for the present," said his father. +He sat silent for a while, staring through the dusk at the lighted +windows of houses in the rear. Then:</p> + +<p>"I have meant to say, Duane, that I—we"—he found a little difficulty +in choosing his words—"that the Trust Company's officers feel that, for +the present, it is best for them to reconsider their offer that you +should undertake the mural decoration of the new building."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Duane, "I'm sorry!—but it's all right, father."</p> + +<p>"I told them you'd take it without offence. I told them that I'd tell +you the reason we do not feel quite ready to incur, at this moment, any +additional expenses."</p> + +<p>"Everybody is economising," said Duane cheerfully, "so I understand. No +doubt—later——"</p> + +<p>"No doubt," said his father gravely.</p> + +<p>The son's attitude was careless, untroubled; he dropped one long leg +over the other knee, and idly examining his cigar, cast one swift level +look at the older man:</p> + +<p>"Father?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my son."</p> + +<p>"I—it just occurred to me that if you happen to have any temporary use +for what you very generously set aside for me, don't stand on ceremony."</p> + +<p>There ensued a long silence. It was his bedtime when Colonel Mallett +stirred in his holland-covered armchair and stood up.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, my son," he said simply; they shook hands and separated; the +father to sleep, if he could; the son to go out into the summer night, +walk to his nearest club, and write his daily letter to the woman he +loved:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Dear, it is not at all bad in town—not that murderous, humid heat +that you think I'm up against; and you must stop reproaching +yourself for enjoying the delicious breezes in the Adirondacks. +Women don't know what a jolly time men have in town. Follows the +chronical of this August day:</p> + +<p>"I had your letter; that is breeze enough for me; it was all full +of blue sky and big white clouds and the scent of Adirondack pines. +Isn't it jolly for you and Kathleen to be at the Varicks' camp! And +what a jolly crowd you've run into.</p> + +<p>"I note what you say about your return to the Berkshires, and that +you expect to be at Berkshire Pass Inn with the motor on Monday. +Give my love to Naïda; I know you three and young Montross will +have a bully tour through the hill country.</p> + +<p>"I also note your red-pencil cross at the top of the page—which +always gives me, as soon as I open a letter of yours, the assurance +that all is still well with you and that victory still remains with +you. Thank God! Stand steady, little girl, for the shadows are +flying and the dawn is ours.</p> + +<p>"After your letter, breakfast with father—a rather silent one. +Then he went down-town in his car and I walked to the studio. It's +one of those stable-like studios which decorate the cross-streets +in the 50's, but big enough to work in.</p> + +<p>"A rather bothersome bit of news: the Trust Company reconsiders its +commission; and I have three lunettes and three big mural panels +practically completed. For a while I'll admit I had the blues, but, +after all, some day the Trust Company is likely to take up the +thing again and give me the commission. Anyway, I've had a corking +time doing the things, and lots of valuable practice in handling a +big job and covering large surfaces; and the problem has been most +exciting and interesting because, you see, I've had to solve it, +taking into consideration the architecture and certain fixed keys +and standards, such as the local colour and texture of the marble +and the limitations of the light area. Don't turn up your pretty +nose; it's all very interesting.</p> + +<p>"I didn't bother about luncheon; and about five I went to the club, +rather tired in my spinal column and arm-weary.</p> + +<p>"Nobody was there whom you know except Delancy Grandcourt and +Dysart. The latter certainly looks very haggard. I do not like him +personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the +papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and +the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; +and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human +being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. +For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is +difficult to contemplate any suffering unmoved.</p> + +<p>"There was a letter at the club for me from Scott. He says he's +plugging away at the Rose-beetle's life history as a +hors-d'oeuvre before tackling the appetising problem of his total +extermination. Dear old Scott! I never thought that the boy I +fought in your garden would turn into a spectacled savant. Or that +his sister would prove to be the only inspiration and faith and +hope that life holds for me!</p> + +<p>"I talked to Delancy. He <i>is</i> a good young man, as you've always +insisted. I know one thing; he's high-minded and gentle. Dysart has +a manner of treating him which is most offensive, but it only +reflects discredit on Dysart.</p> + +<p>"Delancy told me that Rosalie is hostess in her own cottage this +month and has asked him up. I heard him speaking rather diffidently +to Dysart about it, and Dysart replied that he didn't 'give a damn +who went to the house,' as he wasn't going.</p> + +<p>"So much for gossip; now a fact or two: my father is plainly +worried over the business outlook; and he's quite alone in the +house; and that is why I don't go back to Roya-Neh just now and +join your brother. I could do plenty of work there. Scott writes +that the new studio is in good shape for me. What a generous girl +you are! Be certain that at the very first opportunity I will go +and occupy it and paint, no doubt, several exceedingly remarkable +pictures in it which will sell for enormous prices and enable us to +keep a maid-of-all-work when we begin our ménage!</p> + +<p>"Father has retired—poor old governor—it tears me all to pieces +to see him so silent and listless. I am here at the club writing +this before I go home to bed. Now I am going. Good-night, my +beloved.</p> + +<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Duane.</span>"</p> + + +<p>"P.S.—An honour, or the chance of it, has suddenly confronted me, +surprising me so much that I don't really dare to believe that it +can possibly happen to me—at least not for years. It is this: I +met Guy Wilton the other day; you don't know him, but he is a most +charming and cultivated man, an engineer. I lunched with him at the +Pyramid—that bully old club into which nothing on earth can take a +man who has not distinguished himself in his profession. It is +composed of professional and business men, the law, the army, navy, +diplomatic and consular, the arts and sciences, and usually the +chief executive of the nation.</p> + +<p>"During luncheon Wilton said: 'You ought to be in here. You are the +proper timber.'</p> + +<p>"I was astounded and told him so.</p> + +<p>"He said: 'By the way, the president of the Academy of Design is +very much impressed with some work of yours he has seen. I've heard +him, and other artists, also, discussing some pictures of yours +which were exhibited in a Fifth Avenue gallery.'</p> + +<p>"Well, you know, Geraldine, the breath was getting scarcer in my +lungs every minute and I hadn't a word to say. And do you know what +that trump of a mining engineer did? He took me about after +luncheon and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very +eminent and delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly +nice, and the president of the Academy, who is startlingly young +and amiable, said that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it +was customary that when anybody was proposed for membership, a man +of his own profession should do it.</p> + +<p>"And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen's name, +and now what do you think! Billy has proposed me, Austin, the +marine painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in +my behalf—professors, army men, navy men, business friends of +father's, architects, writers—and I'm terribly excited over it, +although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it's a +fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway.</p> + +<p>"This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be +proposed for the Pyramid. I know you will be happy over it.</p> + +<p class="right">"D."</p></blockquote> + +<p>The weather became hotter toward the beginning of September; his studio +was almost unendurable, nor was the house very much better.</p> + +<p>To eat was an effort; to sleep a martyrdom. Night after night he rose +from his hot pillows to stand and listen outside his father's door; but +the old endure heat better than the young, and very often his father was +asleep in the stifling darkness which made sleep for him impossible.</p> + +<p>The usual New York thunder-storms rolled up over Staten Island, covered +the southwest with inky gloom, veined the horizon with lightning, then +burst in spectacular fury over the panting city, drenched it to its +steel foundations, and passed on rumbling up the Hudson, leaving +scarcely any relief behind it.</p> + +<p>In one of these sudden thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest +and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon +hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, +and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tête-à-tête over +their peach and grapefruit salad.</p> + +<p>There was no reason why they should not have been there; no reason why +he should have hesitated to speak to them. But he did hesitate—in fact, +was retiring by the way he came, when Rosalie glanced around with that +instinct which divines a familiar presence, gave him a startled look, +coloured promptly to her temples, and recovered her equanimity with a +smile and a sign for him to join them. So he shook hands, but remained +standing.</p> + +<p>"We ran into town in the racer this morning," she explained. "Delancy +had something on down-town and I wanted to look over some cross-saddles +they made for me at Thompson's. Do be amiable and help us eat our salad. +What a ghastly place town is in September! It's bad enough in the +country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful +prophecies. Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is +about?"</p> + +<p>"It's about something harder to digest than this salad. The public +stomach is ostrichlike, but it can't stand the water-cure. Which is all +Arabic to you, Rosalie, and I don't mean to be impertinent, only the +truth is I don't know why people are losing confidence in the financial +stability of the country, but they apparently are."</p> + +<p>"There's a devilish row on down-town," observed Delancy, blinking, as an +unusually heavy clap of thunder rattled the dishes.</p> + +<p>"What kind of a row?" asked Duane.</p> + +<p>"Greensleeve & Co. have failed, with liabilities of a million and +microscopical assets."</p> + +<p>Rosalie raised her eyebrows; Greensleeve & Co. were once brokers for her +husband if she remembered correctly. Duane had heard of them but was +only vaguely impressed.</p> + +<p>"Is that rather a bad thing?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Well—I don't know. It made a noise louder than that thunder. Three +banks fell down in Brooklyn, too."</p> + +<p>"What banks?"</p> + +<p>Delancy named them; it sounded serious, but neither Duane nor Rosalie +were any wiser.</p> + +<p>"The Wolverine Mercantile Loan and Trust Company closed its doors, +also," observed Delancy, dropping the tips of his long, highly coloured +fingers into his finger-bowl as though to wash away all personal +responsibility for these financial flip-flaps.</p> + +<p>Rosalie laughed: "This is pleasant information for a rainy day," she +said. "Duane, have you heard from Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, to-day," he said innocently; "she is leaving Lenox this morning +for Roya-Neh. I hear that there is to be some shooting there Christmas +week. Scott writes that the boar and deer are increasing very fast and +must be kept down. You and Delancy are on the list, I believe."</p> + +<p>Rosalie nodded; Delancy said: "Miss Seagrave has been good enough to ask +the family. Yours is booked, too, I fancy."</p> + +<p>"Yes, if my father only feels up to it. Christmas at Roya-Neh ought to +be a jolly affair."</p> + +<p>"Christmas anywhere away from New York ought to be a relief," observed +young Grandcourt drily.</p> + +<p>They laughed without much spirit. Coffee was served, cigarettes lighted. +Presently Grandcourt sent a page to find out if the car had returned +from the garage where Rosalie had sent it for a minor repair.</p> + +<p>The car was ready, it appeared; Rosalie retired to readjust her hair and +veil; the two men standing glanced at one another:</p> + +<p>"I suppose you know," said Delancy, reddening with embarrassment, "that +Mr. and Mrs. Dysart have separated."</p> + +<p>"I heard so yesterday," said Duane coolly.</p> + +<p>The other grew redder: "I heard it from Mrs. Dysart about half an hour +ago." He hesitated, then frankly awkward: "I say, Mallett, I'm a sort of +an ass about these things. Is there any impropriety in my going about +with Mrs. Dysart—under the circumstances?"</p> + +<p>"Why—no!" said Duane. "Rosalie has to go about with people, I suppose. +Only—perhaps it's fairer to her if you don't do it too often—I mean +it's better for her that any one man should not appear to pay her +noticeable attention. You know what mischief can get into print. What's +taken below stairs is often swiped and stealthily perused above stairs."</p> + +<p>"I suppose so. I don't read it myself, but it makes game of my mother +and she finds a furious consolation in taking it to my father and +planning a suit for damages once a week. You're right; most people are +afraid of it. Do you think it's all right for me to motor back with Mrs. +Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"Are <i>you</i> afraid?" asked Duane, smiling.</p> + +<p>"Only on her account," said Grandcourt, so simply that a warm feeling +rose in Duane's heart for this big, ungainly, vividly coloured young +fellow whose direct and honest gaze always refreshed people even when +they laughed at him.</p> + +<p>"Are you driving?" asked Duane.</p> + +<p>"Yes. We came in at a hell of a clip. It made my hair stand, but Mrs. +Dysart likes it.... I say, Mallett, what sort of an outcome do you +suppose there'll be?"</p> + +<p>"Between Rosalie and Jack Dysart?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I know no more than you, Grandcourt. Why?"</p> + +<p>"Only that—it's too bad. I've known them so long; I'm friendly with +both. Jack is a curious fellow. There's much of good in him, Mallett, +although I believe you and he are not on terms. He is a—I don't mean +this for criticism—but sometimes his manner is unfortunate, leading +people to consider him overbearing.</p> + +<p>"I understand why people think so; I get angry at him, sometimes, +myself—being perhaps rather sensitive and very conscious that I am not +anything remarkable.</p> + +<p>"But, somehow"—he looked earnestly at Duane—"I set a very great value +on old friendships. He and I were at school. I always admired in him the +traits I myself have lacked.... There is something about an old +friendship that seems very important to me. I couldn't very easily break +one.... It is that way with me, Mallett.... Besides, when I think, +perhaps, that Jack Dysart is a trifle overbearing and too free with his +snubs, I go somewhere and cool off; and I think that in his heart he +must like me as well as I do him because, sooner or later, we always +manage to drift together again.... That is one reason why I am so +particular about his wife."</p> + +<p>Another reason happened to be that he had been in love with her himself +when Dysart gracefully shouldered his way between them and married +Rosalie Dene. Duane had heard something about it; and he wondered a +little at the loyalty to such a friendship that this young man so +naïvely confessed.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you what I think," said Duane; "I think you're the best sort +of an anchor for Rosalie Dysart. Only a fool would mistake your +friendship. But the town's full of 'em, Grandcourt," he added with a +smile.</p> + +<p>"I suppose so.... And I say, Mallett—may I ask you something more?... I +don't like to pester you with questions——"</p> + +<p>"Go on, my friend. I take it as a clean compliment from a clean-cut +man."</p> + +<p>Delancy coloured, checked, but presently found voice to continue:</p> + +<p>"That's very good of you; I thought I might speak to you about this +Greensleeve & Co.'s failure before Mrs. Dysart returns."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," said Duane, surprised; "what about them? They acted for +Dysart at one time, didn't they?"</p> + +<p>"They do now."</p> + +<p>"Are you sure?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am. I didn't want to say so before Mrs. Dysart. But the +afternoon papers have it. I don't know why they take such a malicious +pleasure in harrying Dysart—unless on account of his connections with +that Yo Espero crowd—what's their names?—Skelton! Oh, yes, James +Skelton—and Emanuel Klawber with his thirty millions and his string of +banks and trusts and mines; and that plunger, Max Moebus, and old Amos +Flack—Flack the hack stalking-horse of every bull-market, who laid down +on his own brokers and has done everybody's dirty work ever since. How +on earth, Mallett, do you suppose Jack Dysart ever got himself mixed up +with such a lot of skyrockets and disreputable fly-by-nights?"</p> + +<p>Duane did not answer. He had nothing good to say or think of Dysart.</p> + +<p>Rosalie reappeared at that moment in her distractingly pretty pongee +motor-coat and hat.</p> + +<p>"Do come back with us, Duane," she said. "There's a rumble and we'll get +the mud off you with a hose."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to run down sometimes if you'll let me," he said, shaking +hands.</p> + +<p>So they parted, he to return to his studio, where models booked long +ahead awaited him for canvases which he was going on with, although the +great Trust Company that ordered them had practically thrown them back +on his hands.</p> + +<p>That evening at home when he came downstairs dressed in white serge for +dinner, he found his father unusually silent, very pale, and so tired +that he barely tasted the dishes the butler offered, and sat for the +most part motionless, head and shoulders sagging against the back of his +chair.</p> + +<p>And after dinner in the conservatory Duane lighted his father's cigar +and then his own.</p> + +<p>"What's wrong?" he asked, pleasantly invading the privacy of years +because he felt it was the time to do it.</p> + +<p>His father slowly turned his head and looked at him—seemed to study +the well-knit, loosely built, athletic figure of this strong young +man—his only son—as though searching for some support in the youthful +strength he gazed upon.</p> + +<p>He said, very deliberately, but with a voice not perfectly steady:</p> + +<p>"Matters are not going very well, my boy."</p> + +<p>"What matters, father?"</p> + +<p>"Down-town."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I've heard. But, after all, you people in the Half Moon need only +crawl into your shell and lie still."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>After a silence:</p> + +<p>"Father, have you any outside matters that trouble you?"</p> + +<p>"There are—some."</p> + +<p>"You are not involved seriously?"</p> + +<p>His father made an effort: "I think not, Duane."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right. If you were, I was going to suggest that I've deposited +what I have, subject to your order, with your own cashier."</p> + +<p>"That is—very kind of you, my son. I may—find use for it—for a short +time. Would you take my note?"</p> + +<p>Duane laughed. He went on presently: "I wrote Naïda the other day. She +has given me power of attorney. What she has is there, any time you need +it."</p> + +<p>His father hung his head in silence; only his colourless and shrunken +hands worked on the arms of his chair.</p> + +<p>"See here, father," said the young fellow; "don't let this thing bother +you. Anything that could possibly happen is better than to have you look +and feel as you do. Suppose the very worst happens—which it won't—but +suppose it did and we all went gaily to utter smash.</p> + +<p>"That is a detail compared with your going to smash physically. Because +Naïda and I never did consider such things vital; and mother is a brick +when it comes to a show-down. And as for me, why, if the very worst hits +us, I can take care of our bunch. It's in me to do it. I suppose you +don't think so. But I can make money enough to keep us together, and, +after all, that's the main thing."</p> + +<p>His father said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Of course," laughed Duane, "I don't for a moment suppose that anything +like that is on the cards. I don't know what your fortune is, but +judging from your generosity to Naïda and me I fancy it's too solid to +worry over. The trouble with you gay old capitalists," he added, "is +that you think in such enormous sums! And you forget that little sums +are required to make us all very happy; and if some of the millions +which you cannot possibly ever use happen to escape you, the tragic +aspect as it strikes you is out of all proportion to the real state of +the case."</p> + +<p>His father felt the effort his son was making; looked up wearily, strove +to smile, to relight his cigar; which Duane did for him, saying:</p> + +<p>"As long as you are not mixed up in that Klawber, Skelton, Moebus crowd, +I'm not inclined to worry. It seems, as of course you know, that +Dysart's brokers failed to-day."</p> + +<p>"So I heard," said his father steadily. He straightened himself in his +chair. "I am sorry. Mr. Greensleeve is a very old friend——"</p> + +<p>The library telephone rang; the second man entered and asked if Colonel +Mallett could speak to Mr. Dysart over the wire on a matter concerning +the Yo Espero district.</p> + +<p>Duane, astonished, sprang up asking if he might not take the message; +then shrank aside as his father got to his feet. He saw the ghastly +pallor on his face as his father passed him, moving toward the library; +stood motionless in troubled amazement, then walked to the open window +of the conservatory and, leaning there, waited.</p> + +<p>His father did not return. Later a servant came:</p> + +<p>"Colonel Mallett has retired, Mr. Duane, and begs that he be +undisturbed, as he is very tired."</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XV<br />DYSART</a></h2> + + +<p>The possibility that his father could be involved in any of the +spectacular schemes which had evidently caught Dysart, seemed so remote +that Duane's incredulity permitted him to sleep that night, though the +name Yo Espero haunted his dreams.</p> + +<p>But in the morning, something he read in the paper concerning a vast +enterprise, involving the control of the new radium mines in Southern +California, startled him into trying to recollect what he had heard of +Yo Espero and the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Tainting +its title the sinister name of Moebus seemed to reoccur persistently in +his confused imagination. Dysart's name, too, figured in it. And, +somehow, he conceived an idea that his father once received some mining +engineer's reports covering the matter; he even seemed to remember that +Guy Wilton had been called into consultation.</p> + +<p>Whatever associations he had for the name of the Cascade Development and +Securities Company must have originated in Paris the year before his +father returned to America. It seemed to him that Wilton had been in +Spain that year examining the recent and marvellously rich radium find; +and that his father and Wilton exchanged telegrams very frequently +concerning a mine in Southern California known as Yo Espero.</p> + +<p>His father breakfasted in his room that morning, but when he appeared in +the library Duane was relieved to notice that his step was firmer and he +held himself more erect, although his extreme pallor had not changed to +a healthier colour.</p> + +<p>"You know," said Duane, "you've simply got to get out of town for a +while. It's all bally rot, your doing this sort of thing."</p> + +<p>"I may go West for a few weeks," said his father absently.</p> + +<p>"Are you going down-town?"</p> + +<p>"No.... And, Duane, if you don't mind letting me have the house to +myself this morning——"</p> + +<p>He hesitated, glancing from his son to the telephone.</p> + +<p>"Of course not," said Duane heartily. "I'm off to the studio——"</p> + +<p>"I don't mean to throw you out," murmured his father with a painful +attempt to smile, "but there's a stenographer coming from my office and +several—business acquaintances."</p> + +<p>The young fellow rose, patted his father's shoulder lightly:</p> + +<p>"What is really of any importance," he said, "is that you keep your +health and spirits. What I said last night covers my sentiments. If I +can do anything in the world for you, tell me."</p> + +<p>His father took the outstretched hand, lifted his faded eyes with a +strange dumb look; and so they parted.</p> + +<p>On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, Duane, swinging along at a good +pace, turned westward, and half-way to Sixth Avenue encountered Guy +Wilton going east, a packet under one arm, stick and hat in the other +hand, the summer wind blowing the thick curly hair from his temples.</p> + +<p>"Ah," observed Wilton, "early bird and worm, I suppose? Don't try to +bolt me, Duane; I'm full of tough and undigested—er—problems, myself. +Besides, I'm fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening +politely to a man you wanted to assault?"</p> + +<p>Duane laughed, then his eye by accident, caught a superscription on the +packet of papers under Wilton's arm: Yo Espero! His glance reverted in a +flash to Wilton's face.</p> + +<p>The latter said: "I want to write a book entitled 'Gentleman I Have +Kicked.' Of course I've only kicked 'em mentally; but my! what a list I +have!—all sorts, all nations—from certain domestic and predatory +statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress +notorious in a decadent novel!—all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally +I've just used my foot on another social favorite——"</p> + +<p>"Dysart!" said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged +Wilton's pardon.</p> + +<p>"You've sure got a disconcerting way with you," admitted Wilton, very +much out of countenance.</p> + +<p>"It was rotten bad taste in me——"</p> + +<p>Wilton grinned with a wry face: "Nobody is standing much on ceremony +these days. Besides, I'm on to your trail, young man"—tapping the +bundle under his arm—"your eye happened to catch that superscription; +no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to—a rather +embarrassing conclusion."</p> + +<p>Duane's serious face fell:</p> + +<p>"My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy. Are you going up +to see him now?"</p> + +<p>Wilton hesitated: "I suppose I am.... See here, Duane, how much do you +know about—anything?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," he said without humour; "I'm beginning to worry over my +father's health.... Guy, don't tell me anything that my father's son +ought not to know; but is there something I should know and +don't?—anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?"</p> + +<p>Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then +his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy.</p> + +<p>"I—don't—know," he said slowly. "I'm going to see your father now. If +there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you. Don't +you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. But he won't. Guy, I don't care a damn about anything except his +health and happiness. If anything threatens either, he won't tell me, +but don't you think I ought to know?"</p> + +<p>"You ask too hard a question for me to answer."</p> + +<p>"Then can you answer me this? Is father at all involved in any of Jack +Dysart's schemes?"</p> + +<p>"I—had better not answer, Duane."</p> + +<p>"You know best. You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his +personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs +and yours."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I understand. Let me think over things for a day or two. Now I've +got to hustle. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, +head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with +nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and +presently rattled off up-town.</p> + +<p>In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few +doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at +a bronze grille.</p> + +<p>The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling +deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the +tiny elevator.</p> + +<p>There was evidently somebody in the second room; Duane had also noticed +a motor waiting outside as he descended from his cab; so he took a seat +and sat twirling his walking-stick between his knees, gloomily +inspecting a room which, in pleasanter days, had not been unfamiliar to +him.</p> + +<p>Instead of the servant returning, there came a click from the elevator, +a quick step, and the master of the house himself walked swiftly into +the room wearing hat and gloves.</p> + +<p>"What do you want?" he inquired briefly.</p> + +<p>"I want to ask you a question or two," said Duane, shocked at the change +in Dysart's face. Haggard, thin, snow-white at the temples with the +light in his eyes almost extinct, the very precision and freshness of +linen and clothing brutally accentuated the ravaged features.</p> + +<p>"What questions?" demanded Dysart, still standing, and without any +emotion whatever in either voice or manner.</p> + +<p>"The first is this: are you in communication with my father concerning +mining stock known as Yo Espero?"</p> + +<p>"I am."</p> + +<p>"Is my father involved in any business transactions in which you figure, +or have figured?"</p> + +<p>"There are some. Yes."</p> + +<p>"Is the Cascade Development and Securities Co. one of them?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is."</p> + +<p>Duane's lips were dry with fear; he swallowed, controlled the rising +anger that began to twitch at his throat, and went on in a low, quiet +voice:</p> + +<p>"Is this man—Moebus—connected with any of these transactions in which +you and—and my father are interested?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Is Klawber?"</p> + +<p>"Max Moebus, Emanuel Klawber, James Skelton, and Amos Flack are +interested. Is that what you want to know?"</p> + +<p>Duane looked at him, stunned. Dysart stepped nearer, speaking almost in +a whisper:</p> + +<p>"Well, what about it? Once I warned you to keep your damned nose out of +my personal affairs——"</p> + +<p>"I make some of them mine!" said Duane sharply; "when crooks get hold of +an honest man, every citizen is a policeman!"</p> + +<p>Dysart, face convulsed with fury, seized his arm in a vicelike grip:</p> + +<p>"Will you keep your cursed mouth shut!" he breathed. "My father is in +the next room. Do you want to kill him?"</p> + +<p>At the same moment there came a stir from the room beyond, the tap-tap +of a cane and shuffling steps across the polished parquet. Dysart's grip +relaxed, his hand fell away, and he made a ghastly grimace as a little +old gentleman came half-trotting, half-shambling to the doorway. He was +small and dapper and pink-skinned under his wig; the pink was paint; his +lips and eyes peered and simpered; from one bird-claw hand dangled a +monocle.</p> + +<p>Jack Dysart made a ghastly and supreme effort:</p> + +<p>"I was just saying to Duane, father, that all this financial agitation +is bound to blow over by December—Duane Mallett, father!"—as the old +man raised his eye-glass and peeped up at the young fellow—"you know +his father, Colonel Mallett."</p> + +<p>"Yes, to be sure, yes, to be sure!" piped the old beau. "How-de-do! +How-de-do-o-o! My son Jack and I motor every morning at this hour. It is +becoming a custom—he! he!—every day from ten to eleven—then a biscuit +and a glass of sherry—then a nap—te-he! Oh, yes, every day, Mr. +Mallett, rain or fair—then luncheon at one, and the +cigarette—te-he!—and a little sleep—and the drive at five! Yes, Mr. +Mallett, it is the routine of a very old man who knew your +grandfather—and all his set—when the town was gay below Bleecker +Street! Yes, yes—te-he-he!"</p> + +<p>Nervous spasms which passed as smiles distorted the younger Dysart's +visage; the aged beau offered his hand to Duane, who took it in silence, +his eyes fixed on the shrivelled, painted face:</p> + +<p>"Your grandfather was a very fine man," he piped; "very fine! ve-ery +fine! And so I perceive is his grandson—te-he!—and I flatter myself +that my boy Jack is not unadmired—te-he-he!—no, no—not precisely +unnoticed in New York—the town whose history is the history of his own +race, Mr. Mallett—he is a good son to me—yes, yes, a good son. It is +gratifying to me to know that you are his friend. He is a good friend to +have, Mr. Mallett, a good friend and a good son."</p> + +<p>Duane bent gently over the shrivelled hand.</p> + +<p>"I won't detain you from your drive, Mr. Dysart. I hope you will have a +pleasant one. It is a pleasure to know my grandfather's old friends. +Good-bye."</p> + +<p>And, erect, he hesitated a moment, then, for an old man's sake he held +out his hand to Jack Dysart, bidding him good-bye in a pleasant voice +pitched clear and decided, so that deaf ears might corroborate what +half-blind and peering eyes so dimly beheld.</p> + +<p>Dysart walked to the door with him, waved the servant aside, and, laying +a shaking hand on the bronze knob, opened the door for his unbidden +guest.</p> + +<p>As Duane passed him he said:</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Mallett," in a voice so low that Duane was half-way to his +cab before he understood.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">That day, and the next, and all that week he worked in his pitlike +studio. Through the high sky-window a cloudless zenith brooded; the heat +became terrific; except for the inevitable crush of the morning and +evening migration south and north, the streets were almost empty under a +blazing sun.</p> + +<p>His father seemed to be physically better. Although he offered no +confidences, it appeared to the son that there was something a little +more cheerful in his voice and manner. It may have been only the +anticipation of departure; for he was going West in a day or two, and it +came out that Wilton was going with him.</p> + +<p>The day he left, Duane drove him to the station. There was a private +car, the "Cyane," attached to the long train. Wilton met them, spoke +pleasantly to Duane; but Colonel Mallett did not invite his son to enter +the car, and adieux were said where they stood.</p> + +<p>As the young fellow turned and passed beneath the car-windows, he caught +a glimpse above him of a heavy-jowled, red face into which a cigar was +stuck—a perfectly enormous expanse of face with two little piglike eyes +almost buried in the mottled fat.</p> + +<p>"That's Max Moebus," observed a train hand respectfully, as Duane +passed close to him; "I guess there's more billions into that there +private car than old Pip's crowd can dig out of their pants pockets on +pay day."</p> + +<p>A little, dry-faced, chin-whiskered man with a loose pot-belly and thin +legs came waddling along, followed by two red-capped negroes with his +luggage. He climbed up the steps of the "Cyane"; the train man winked at +Duane, who had turned to watch him.</p> + +<p>"Amos Flack," he said. "He's their 'lobbygow.'" With which contemptuous +information he spat upon the air-brakes and, shoving both hands into his +pockets, meditatively jingled a bunch of keys.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">The club was absolutely deserted that night; Duane dined there alone, +then wandered into the great empty room facing Fifth Avenue, his steps +echoing sharply across the carpetless floor. The big windows were open; +there was thunder in the air—the sonorous stillness in which voices and +footsteps in the street ring out ominously.</p> + +<p>He smoked and watched the dim forms of those whom the heat drove forth +into the night, men with coats over their arms and straw hats in their +hands, young girls thinly clad in white, bare-headed, moving two and two +with dragging steps and scarcely spirit left even for common coquetry or +any response to the jesting oafs who passed.</p> + +<p>Here and there a cruising street-dryad threaded the by-paths of the +metropolitan jungle; here and there a policeman, gray helmet in hand, +stood mopping his face, night-club tucked up snugly under one arm. Few +cabs were moving; at intervals a creaking, groaning omnibus rolled +past, its hurricane deck white with the fluttering gowns of women and +young girls.</p> + +<p>Somebody came into the room behind him; Duane turned, but could not +distinguish who it was in the dusk. A little while later the man came +over to where he sat, and he looked up; and it was Dysart.</p> + +<p>There was silence for a full minute; Dysart stood by the window looking +out; Duane paid him no further attention until he wheeled slowly and +said:</p> + +<p>"Do you mind if I have a word with you, Mallett?"</p> + +<p>"Not if it is necessary."</p> + +<p>"I don't know whether it is necessary."</p> + +<p>"Don't bother about it if you are in the slightest doubt."</p> + +<p>Dysart waited a moment, perhaps for some unpleasant emotion to subside; +then:</p> + +<p>"I'll sit down a moment, if you permit."</p> + +<p>He dropped into one of the big, deep, leather chairs and touched the +bell. A servant came; he looked across at Duane, hesitated to speak:</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Duane curtly. "I've cut it out."</p> + +<p>"Scotch. Bring the decanter," murmured Dysart to the servant.</p> + +<p>When it was served he drained the glass, refilled it, and turned in the +rest of the mineral water. Before he spoke he emptied the glass again +and rang for more mineral water. Then he looked at Duane and said in a +low voice:</p> + +<p>"I thought you were worried the other day when I saw you at my house."</p> + +<p>"What is that to you?"</p> + +<p>Dysart said: "You were very kind—under provocation."</p> + +<p>"I was not kind on your account."</p> + +<p>"I understand. But I don't forget such things."</p> + +<p>Duane glanced at him in profound contempt. Here was the stereotyped +scoundrel with the classical saving trait—the one conventionally +inevitable impulse for good shining like a diamond on a muck-heap—his +apparently disinterested affection for his father.</p> + +<p>"You were very decent to me that day," Dysart said. "You had something +to say to me—but were good enough not to. I came over to-night to give +you a chance to curse me out. It's the square thing to do."</p> + +<p>"What do you know about square dealing?"</p> + +<p>"Go on."</p> + +<p>"I have nothing to add."</p> + +<p>"Then I have if you'll let me." He paused; the other remained silent. +"I've this to say: you are worried sick; I saw that. What worries you +concerns your father. You were merciful to mine. I'll do what I can for +you."</p> + +<p>He swallowed half of what remained in his iced glass, set it back on the +table with fastidious precision:</p> + +<p>"The worst that can happen to your father is to lose control of the Yo +Espero property. I think he is going to lose it. They've crowded me out. +If I could have endured the strain I'd have stood by your father—for +what you did for mine.... But I couldn't, Mallett."</p> + +<p>He moistened his lips again; leaned forward:</p> + +<p>"I think I know one thing about you, anyway; and I'm not afraid you'd +ever use any words of mine against me——"</p> + +<p>"Don't say them!" retorted Duane sharply.</p> + +<p>But Dysart went on:</p> + +<p>"You have no respect for me. You found out one thing about me that +settled me in your opinion. Outside of that, however, you never liked +me."</p> + +<p>"That is perfectly true."</p> + +<p>"I know it. And I want to say now that it was smouldering irritation +from that source—wounded vanity, perhaps—coupled with worry and +increasing cares, that led to that outburst of mine. I never really +believed that my wife needed any protection from the sort of man you +are. You are not that kind."</p> + +<p>"That also is true."</p> + +<p>"And I know it. And now I've cleared up these matters; and there's +another." He bit his lip, thought a moment, then with a deep, long +breath:</p> + +<p>"When you struck me that night I—deserved it. I was half crazy, I +think—with what I had done—with a more material but quite as ruinous +situation developing here in town—with domestic complications—never +mind where all the fault lay—it was demoralising me. Do you think that +I am not perfectly aware that I stand very much alone among men? Do you +suppose that I am not aware of my personal unpopularity as far as men +are concerned? I have never had an intimate friend—except Delancy +Grandcourt. And I've treated him like a beast. There's something wrong +about me; there always has been."</p> + +<p>He slaked his thirst again; his hand shook so that he nearly dropped the +glass:</p> + +<p>"Which is preliminary," he went on, "to saying to you that no matter +what I said in access of rage, I never doubted that your encounter +with—Miss Quest—was an accident. I never doubted that your motive in +coming to me was generous. God knows why I said what I did say. You +struck me; and you were justified.... And that clears up that!"</p> + +<p>"Dysart," said the other, "you don't have to tell me these things."</p> + +<p>"Would you rather not have heard them?"</p> + +<p>Duane thought a moment.</p> + +<p>"I would rather have heard them, I believe."</p> + +<p>"Then may I go on?"</p> + +<p>"Is there anything more to explain between us?"</p> + +<p>"No.... But I would like to say something—in my own behalf. Not that it +matters to you—or to any man, perhaps, except my father. I would like +to say it, Mallett."</p> + +<p>"Very well."</p> + +<p>"Then; I prefer that you should believe I am not a crook. Not that it +matters to you; but I prefer that you do not believe it.... You have +read enough in the papers to know what I mean. I'm telling you now what +I have never uttered to any man; and I haven't the slightest fear you +will repeat it or use it in any manner to my undoing. It is this:</p> + +<p>"The men with whom I was unwise enough to become partially identified +are marked for destruction by the Clearing House Committee and by the +Federal Government. I know it; others know it. Which means the ruthless +elimination of anything doubtful which in future might possibly +compromise the financial stability of this city.</p> + +<p>"It is a brutal programme; the policy they are pursuing is bitterly +unjust. Innocent and guilty alike are going to suffer; I never in all my +life consciously did a crooked thing in business; and yet I say to you +now that these people are bent on my destruction; that they mean to +force us to close the doors of the Algonquin; that they are planning the +ruin of every corporation, every company, every bank, every enterprise +with which I am connected, merely because they have decreed the +financial death of Moebus and Klawber!"</p> + +<p>He made a trembling gesture with clenched hand, and leaned farther +forward:</p> + +<p>"Mallett! There is not one man to-day in Wall Street who has not done, +and who is not doing daily, the very things for which the government +officials and the Clearing House authorities are attempting to get rid +of me. Their attacks on my securities will ultimately ruin me; but such +attacks would ruin any financier, any bank in the United States, if +continued long enough.</p> + +<p>"Doesn't anybody know that when the government conspires with the +Clearing House officials any security can be kicked out of the market? +Don't they know that when bank examiners class any securities as +undesirable, and bank officials throw them out from the loans of such +institutions, that they're not worth the match struck to burn them into +nothing?</p> + +<p>"If they mean to close my companies and bring charges against me, I'll +tell you now, Mallett, any official of any bank which to-day is in +operation, can be indicted!"</p> + +<p>He sat breathing fast, hands clasped nervously between his knees. Duane, +painfully impressed, waited. And after a moment Dysart spoke again:</p> + +<p>"They mean my ruin. There is a bank examiner at work—this very moment +while we're sitting here—on the Collect Pond Bank—which is mine. The +Federal inquisitors went through it once; now a new one is back again. +They found nothing with which to file an adverse report the first time. +Why did they come back?</p> + +<p>"And I'll tell you another thing, Mallett, which may seem a slight +reason for my sullenness and quick temper; they've had secret-service +men following me ever since I returned from Roya-Neh. They are into +everything that I've ever been connected with; there is no institution, +no security in which I am interested, that they have not investigated.</p> + +<p>"And I tell you also, incredible as it may sound, that there is no +security in which I am interested which is not now being attacked by +government officials, and which, as a result of such attacks, is not +depreciating daily. I tell you they've even approached the United States +Court for its consent to a ruinous disposal of certain corporation notes +in which I am interested! Will you tell me what you think of that, +Mallett?"</p> + +<p>Duane said: "I don't know, Dysart. I know almost nothing about such +matters. And—I am sorry that you are in trouble."</p> + +<p>The silence remained unbroken for some time; then Dysart stood up:</p> + +<p>"I don't offer you my hand. You took it once for my father's sake. That +was manly of you, Mallett.... I thought perhaps I might lighten your +anxiety about your father. I hope I have.... And I must ask your pardon +for pressing my private affairs upon you"—he laughed +mirthlessly—"merely because I'd rather you didn't think me a crook—for +my father's sake.... Good-night."</p> + +<p>"Dysart," he said, "why in God's name have you behaved as you have +to—that girl?"</p> + +<p>Dysart stood perfectly motionless, then in a voice under fair control:</p> + +<p>"I understand you. You don't intend that as impertinence; you're a +square man, Mallett—a man who suffers under the evil in others. And +your question to me meant that you thought me not entirely hopeless; +that there was enough of decency in me to arouse your interest. Isn't +that what you meant?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think so."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, I'll answer you. There isn't much left of me; there'll be +less left of my fortune before long. I've made a failure of everything, +fortune, friendship, position, happiness. My wife and I are separated; +it is club gossip, I believe. She will probably sue for divorce and get +it. And I ask you, because I don't know, can any amends be made to—the +person you mentioned—by my offering her the sort and condition of man I +now am?"</p> + +<p>"You've got to, haven't you?" asked Duane.</p> + +<p>"Oh! Is that it? A sort of moral formality?"</p> + +<p>"It's conventional; yes. It's expected."</p> + +<p>"By whom?"</p> + +<p>"All the mess that goes to make up this compost heap we call society.... +I think she also would expect it."</p> + +<p>Dysart nodded.</p> + +<p>"If you could make her happy it would square a great many things, +Dysart."</p> + +<p>The other looked up: "You?"</p> + +<p>"I—don't know. Yes, in many ways; in that way at all events—if you +made her happy."</p> + +<p>Dysart stepped forward: "Would you be nice to her if I did? No other +soul in the world knows except you. Other people would be nice to her. +Would <i>you</i>? And would you have the woman you marry receive her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"That is square of you, Mallett.... I meant to do it, anyway.... Thank +you.... Good-night."</p> + +<p>"Good-night," said Duane in a low voice.</p> + +<p>He returned to the house late that night, and found a letter from +Geraldine awaiting him; the first in three days. Seated at the library +table he opened the letter and saw at once that the red-pencilled cross +at the top was missing.</p> + +<p>Minutes passed; the first line blurred under his vacant gaze, for his +eyes travelled no farther. Then the letter fell to the table; he dropped +his head in his arms.</p> + +<p>It was a curiously calm letter when he found courage to read it:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I've lost a battle after many victories. It went against me after +a hard fight here alone at Roya-Neh. I think you had better come +up. The fight was on again the next night—that is, night before +last, but I've held fast so far and expect to. Only I wish you'd +come.</p> + +<p>"It is no reproach to you if I say that, had you been here, I might +have made a better fight. You couldn't be here; the shame of defeat +is all my own.</p> + +<p>"Duane, it was not a disastrous defeat in one way. I held out for +four days, and thought I had won out. I was stupefied by loss of +sleep, I think; this is not in excuse, only the facts which I lay +bare for your consideration.</p> + +<p>"The defeat was in a way a concession—a half-dazed +compromise—merely a parody on a real victory for the enemy; +because it roused in me a horror that left the enemy almost no +consolation, no comfort, even no physical relief. The enemy is I +myself, you understand—that other self we know about.</p> + +<p>"She was perfectly furious, Duane; she wrestled with me, fought to +make me yield more than I had—which was almost nothing—begged me, +brutalised me, pleaded, tormented, cajoled. I was nearly dead when +the sun rose; but I had gone through it.</p> + +<p>"I wish you could come. She is still watching me. It's an armed +truce, but I know she'll break it if the chance comes. There is no +honour in her, Duane, no faith, no reason, no mercy. I know her.</p> + +<p>"Can you not come? I won't ask it if your father needs you. Only if +he does not, I think you had better come very soon.</p> + +<p>"When may I restore the red cross to the top of my letters to you? +I suppose I had better place it on the next letter, because if I do +not you might think that another battle had gone against me.</p> + +<p>"Don't reproach me. I couldn't stand it just now. Because I am a +very tired girl, Duane, and what has happened is heavy in my +heart—heavy on my head and shoulders like that monster Sindbad +bore.</p> + +<p>"Can you come and free me? One word—your arms around me—and I am +safe.</p> + +<p class="right">"G.S."</p></blockquote> + + +<p>As he finished, a maid came bearing a telegram on a salver.</p> + +<p>"Tell him to wait," said Duane, tearing open the white night-message:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Your father is ill at San Antonio and wishes you to come at once. +Notify your mother but do not alarm her. Your father's condition is +favorable, but the outcome is uncertain.</p> + +<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Wells</span>, <i>Secretary</i>."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Duane took three telegram blanks from the note-paper rack and wrote:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"My father is ill at San Antonio. They have just wired me, and I shall +take the first train. Stand by me now. Win out for my sake. I put you on +your honour until I can reach you."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And to his father:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I leave on first train for San Antonio. It's going to be all right, +father."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And to his mother:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Am leaving for San Antonio because I don't think father is well enough +to travel alone. I'll write you and wire you. Love to you and Naïda."</p></blockquote> + +<p>He gave the maid the money, turned, and unhooking the receiver of the +telephone, called up the Grand Central Station.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XVI<br />THROUGH THE WOODS</a></h2> + + +<p>The autumn quiet at Roya-Neh was intensely agreeable to Scott Seagrave. +No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of +the Rose-beetle, <i>Melolontha subspinosa</i>, and his scandalous "Life +History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to +distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent +soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike +barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it +was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed +pages. The balm of heavenly silence pervaded the house, and in its +beneficent atmosphere he worked in his undershirt, inhaling inspiration +and the aroma of whale-oil, soap, and carbolic solutions.</p> + +<p>Neither Kathleen nor his sister being present to limit his operations, +the entire house was becoming a vast mess. Living-rooms, library, halls, +billiard-room, were obstructed with "scientific" paraphernalia; hundreds +of glass fruit jars, filled with earth containing the whitish, globular +eggs of the Rose-beetle, encumbered mantel and furniture; glass +aquariums half full of earth, sod, and youthful larvæ of the same sinful +beetle lent pleasing variety to the monotony of Scott's interior +decorative effects. Microscopes, phials, shallow trays bristling with +sprouting seeds, watering-cans, note-books, buckets of tepid water, jars +brimming with chemical solutions, blockaded the legitimate and natural +runways of chamber-maid, parlour-maid, and housekeeper; a loud scream +now and then punctured the scientific silence, recording the Hibernian +discovery of some large, green caterpillar travelling casually somewhere +in the house.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Seagrave, sir," stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, +"your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I can't stand +it no more!"</p> + +<p>But it was only a wholesale hatching of huge hawk-moths that came +whizzing around Lang when he turned on the electric lights; and which, +escaping, swarmed throughout the house, filling it with their loud, +feathery humming, and the shrieks of Milesian domestics.</p> + +<p>And it was into these lively household conditions that Kathleen and +Geraldine unexpectedly arrived from the Berkshires, worn out with their +round of fashionable visits, anxious for the quiet and comfort that is +supposed to be found only under one's own roof-tree. This is what they +found:</p> + +<p>In Geraldine's bath-tub a colony of water-lilies were attempting to take +root for the benefit of several species of water-beetles. The formidable +larvæ of dragon-flies occupied Kathleen's bath; turtles peered at them +from vantage points under the modern plumbing; an enormous frog regarded +Kathleen solemnly from the wet, tiled floor. "Oh, dear," she said as +Scott greeted her rapturously, "have I got to move all these horrid +creatures?"</p> + +<p>"For Heaven's sake don't touch a thing," protested Scott, welcoming his +sister with a perfunctory kiss; "I'll find places for them in a minute."</p> + +<p>"How <i>could</i> you, Scott!" exclaimed Geraldine, backing hastily away +from a branch of green leaves on which several gigantic horned +caterpillars were feeding. "I don't feel like ever sleeping in this room +again," she added, exasperated.</p> + +<p>"Why, Sis," he explained mildly, "those are the caterpillars of the +magnificent Regal moth! They're perfectly harmless, and it's jolly to +watch them tuck away walnut leaves. You'll like to have them here in +your room when you understand how to weigh them on these bully little +scales I've just had sent up from Tiffany's."</p> + +<p>But his sister was too annoyed and too tired to speak. She stood limply +leaning against Kathleen while her brother disposed of his uncanny +menagerie, talking away very cheerfully all the while absorbed in his +grewsome pets.</p> + +<p>But it was not to his sister, it was to Kathleen that his pride in his +achievements was naïvely displayed; his running accompaniment of chatter +was for Kathleen's benefit, his appeals were to her sympathy and +understanding, not to his sister's.</p> + +<p>Geraldine watched him in silence. Tired, not physically very well, this +home-coming meant something to her. She had looked forward to it, and to +her brother, unconsciously wistful for the protection of home and kin. +For the day had been a hard one; she was able to affix the red-cross +mark to her letter to Duane that morning, but it had been a bad day for +her, very bad.</p> + +<p>And now as she stood there, white, nerveless, fatigued, an ache grew in +her breast, a dull desire for somebody of her own kin to lean on; and, +following it, a slow realisation of how far apart from her brother she +had drifted since the old days of cordial understanding in the +schoolroom—the days of loyal sympathy through calm and stress, in +predatory alliance or in the frank conflicts of the squared circle.</p> + +<p>Suddenly her whole heart filled with a blind need of her brother's +sympathy—a desire to return to the old intimacy as though in it there +lay comfort, protection, sanctuary for herself from all that threatened +her—herself!</p> + +<p>Kathleen was assisting Scott to envelop the frog in a bath towel for the +benevolent purpose of transplanting him presently to some other +bath-tub; and Kathleen's golden head and Scott's brown one were very +close together, and they were laughing in that intimate undertone +characteristic of thorough understanding. Her brother's expression as he +looked up at Kathleen Severn, was a revelation to his sister, and it +pierced her with a pang of loneliness so keen that she started forward +in sheer desperation, as though to force a path through something that +was pushing her away from him.</p> + +<p>"Let me take his frogship," she said with a nervous laugh. "I'll put him +into a jolly big tub where you can grow all the water-weeds you like, +Scott."</p> + +<p>Her brother, surprised and gratified, handed her the bath-towel in the +depths of which reposed the batrachian.</p> + +<p>"He's really an interesting fellow, Sis," explained Scott; "he exudes a +sticky, viscous fluid from his pores which is slightly toxic. I'm going +to try it on a Rose-beetle."</p> + +<p>Geraldine shuddered, but forced a smile, and, holding the imprisoned one +with dainty caution, bore him to a palatial and porcelain-lined +bath-tub, into which she shook him with determination and a suppressed +shriek.</p> + +<p>That night at dinner Scott looked up at his sister with something of +the old-time interest and confidence.</p> + +<p>"I was pretty sure you'd take an interest in all these things, sooner or +later. I tell you, Geraldine, it will be half the fun if you'll go into +it with us."</p> + +<p>"I want to," said his sister, smiling, "but don't hurry my progress or +you'll scare me half to death."</p> + +<p>The tragic necessity for occupation, for interesting herself in +something sufficient to take her out of herself, she now understood, and +the deep longing for the love of all she had of kith and kin was +steadily tightening its grip on her, increasing day by day. Nothing else +could take its place; she began to understand that; not her intimacy +with Kathleen, not even her love for Duane. Outside of these there +existed a zone of loneliness in which she was doomed to wander, a zone +peopled only by the phantoms of the parents she had never known long +enough to remember—a dreaded zone of solitude and desolation and peril +for her. The danger line marked its boundary; beyond lay folly and +destruction.</p> + +<p>Little by little Scott began to notice that his sister evidently found +his company desirable, that she followed him about, watching his +so-called scientific pursuits with a curiosity too constant to be +assumed. And it pleased him immensely; and at times he held forth to her +and instructed her with brotherly condescension.</p> + +<p>He noticed, too, that her spirits did not appear to be particularly +lively; there were often long intervals of silence when, together by the +window in the library where he was fussing over his "Life History," she +never spoke, never even moved from her characteristic attitude—seated +deep in a leather chair, arms resting on the padded chair-arms, ankles +crossed, and her head a trifle lowered, as though absorbed in studying +the Herati design on a Persian rug.</p> + +<p>Once, looking up suddenly, he surprised her brown eyes full of tears.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" he said, amazed; "what's the row, Sis?"</p> + +<p>But she only laughed and dried her eyes, denying that there was any +explanation except that girls were sometimes that way for no reason at +all.</p> + +<p>One day he asked Kathleen privately about this, but she merely confirmed +Geraldine's diagnosis of the phenomenon:</p> + +<p>"Tears come into girls' eyes," she said, "and there isn't anybody on +earth who can tell a man why, and he wouldn't comprehend it if anybody +did tell him."</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you one thing," he said sceptically; "if Rose-beetles shed +tears, I'd never rest until I found out why. You bet there's always a +reason that starts anything and always somebody to find it out and tell +another fellow who can understand it!"</p> + +<p>With which brilliant burst of higher philosophy they went out into the +October woods together to hunt for cocoons.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, rather flushed and nervous, met them at Hurryon Gate, +carrying a rifle and wearing the shortest skirts her brother had ever +beheld. The symmetry of her legs moved him to reproof:</p> + +<p>"I thought people looked that way only in tailor's fashion plates," he +said. "What are you after—chipmunks?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all," said his sister. "Do you know what happened to me an hour +ago? I was paddling your canoe into the Hurryon Inlet, and I suppose I +made no noise in disembarking, and I came right on a baby wild boar in +the junipers. It was a tiny thing, not eighteen inches long, Kathleen, +and so cunning and furry and yellowish, with brown stripes on its back, +that I tried to catch it—just to hug it."</p> + +<p>"That was silly," said her brother.</p> + +<p>"I know it was, now. Because I ran after it, and it ran; and, one by +one, a whole herd of the cunning little things sprang out of the hemlock +scrub and went off bucking and bucketing in all directions, and I, like +a simpleton, hard after one of them——"</p> + +<p>"Little idiot," said her brother solicitously. "Are you stark mad?"</p> + +<p>"No, I'm just plain mad. Because, before I knew it, there came a crash +in the underbrush and the biggest, furriest, and wickedest wild boar I +ever saw halted in front of me, ears forward, every hair on end——"</p> + +<p>"Lord save us, you jumped the sow!" groaned her brother. "She might have +torn you to pieces, you ninny!"</p> + +<p>"She meant to, I think. The next thing I knew she came headlong, mouth +open, fairly screaming at me; and I turned and jumped clean into the +Gray Water. Oh, Scott, it was humiliating to have to swim to the point +with all my clothes on, scramble into the canoe, and shove off because a +very angry wild creature drove me out of my own woods!"</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, you won't ever interfere with a sow and pigs again, will +you?" said Kathleen so earnestly that everybody laughed.</p> + +<p>"What's the rifle for?" inquired Scott. "You don't intend to hunt for +her, do you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not. I'm not vindictive or cruel. But old Miller said, when I +came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast +and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping +them, and sending them to other people for stocking purposes. The +Pink 'uns want some; why don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to shoot or trap them," said Scott obstinately.</p> + +<p>"Miller says they pulled down deer last winter and tore them to shreds. +Everything in the forest is afraid of them; they drive the deer from the +feeding-grounds, and I don't believe a lynx or even any of the bear that +climb over the fence would dare attack them."</p> + +<p>Kathleen said: "You really ought to ask some men up here to shoot, +Scott. I don't wish to be chased about by a boar."</p> + +<p>"They never bother people," he protested. "What are you going to do with +that rifle, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>"My nerve has gone," she confessed, laughing; "I prefer to have it with +me when I take walks. It's really safer," she added seriously to +Kathleen. "Miller says that a buck deer can be ugly, too."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord!" said her brother, laughing; "it's only because you're the +prettiest thing ever, in that hunting dress! Don't tell me; and kindly +be careful where you point that rifle."</p> + +<p>"As if I needed instructions!" retorted his sister. "I wish I could see +a boar—a big one with a particularly frightful temper and tusks to +match."</p> + +<p>"I'll bet you that you can't kill a boar," he said in good-humoured +disdain.</p> + +<p>"I don't see any to kill."</p> + +<p>"Well, I bet you can't find one. And if you do, I bet you don't kill +him."</p> + +<p>"How long," asked Geraldine dangerously, "does that bet hold good?"</p> + +<p>"All winter, if you like. It's the prettiest single jewel you can pick +out against a new saddle-horse. I need a gay one; I'm getting out of +condition. And all our horses are as interesting as chevaux de bois when +the mechanism is freshly oiled and the organ plays the 'Ride of the +Valkyries.'"</p> + +<p>"I've half a mind to take that wager," said Geraldine, very pink and +bright-eyed. "I think I will take it if——"</p> + +<p>"Please don't, dear," said Kathleen anxiously. "The keepers say that a +wounded boar is perfectly horrid sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Dangerous?" Her eyes glimmered brighter still.</p> + +<p>"Certainly, a wounded boar is dangerous. I heard Miller say——"</p> + +<p>"Bosh!" said Scott. "They run away from you every time. Besides, +Geraldine isn't going to have enough sporting blood in her to take that +bet and make good."</p> + +<p>Something in the quick flush and tilt of her head reminded Scott of the +old days when their differences were settled with eight-ounce gloves. +The same feeling possessed his sister, thrilled her like a sudden, +unexpected glimpse of a happiness which apparently had long been ended +for ever.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Scott," she exclaimed, still thrilling, "it <i>is</i> like old times to +hear you try to bully me. It's so long since I've had enough spirit to +defy you. But I do now!—oh, yes, I do! Why, I believe that if we had +the gloves here, I'd make you fight me or take back what you said about +my not having any sporting spirit!"</p> + +<p>He laughed: "I was thinking of that, too. You're a good sport, Sis. +Don't bother to take that wager——"</p> + +<p>"I <i>do</i> take it!" she cried; "it's like old times and I love it. Now, +Scott, I'll show you a boar before we go to town or I'll buy you a +horse. No backing out; what's said can't be unsaid, remember:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +"King, king, double king,<br /> +<span class="i05">Can't take back a given thing!</span><br /> +<span class="i05">Queen, queen, queen of queens,</span><br /> +<span class="i05">What she promises she means!"</span> +</p> + +<p>That was a very solemn incantation in nursery days; she laughed a little +in tender tribute to the past.</p> + +<p>Scott was a trifle perturbed. He glanced uneasily at Kathleen, who told +him very plainly that he had contrived to make her anxious and unhappy. +Then she fell back into step with Geraldine, letting Scott wander +disconsolately forward:</p> + +<p>"Dear," she said, passing one arm around the younger girl, "I didn't +quite dare to object too strongly. You looked so—so interested, so +deliciously defiant—so like your real self——"</p> + +<p>"I feel like it to-day, Kathleen; let me turn back in my own +footsteps—if I can. I've been trying so very hard to—to get back to +where there was no—no terror in the world."</p> + +<p>"I know. But, darling, you won't run into any danger, will you?"</p> + +<p>"Do you call a hard-hit beast a danger? I've wounded a more terrible one +than any boar that ever bristled. I'm trying to kill something more +terrifying. And I shall if I live."</p> + +<p>"You poor, brave little martyr!" whispered Kathleen, her violet eyes +filled with sudden tears; "don't you suppose I know what you are doing? +Don't you suppose I watch and pray——"</p> + +<p>"Did <i>you</i> know I was really trying?" asked the girl, astonished—"I +mean before I told you?"</p> + +<p>"Know it! Angels above! Of course I know it. Don't you suppose I've been +watching you slowly winning back to your old dear self—tired, +weary-footed, desolate, almost hopeless, yet always surely finding your +way back through the dreadful twilight to the dear, sweet, generous self +that I know so well—the straightforward, innocent, brave little self +that grew at my knee!—Geraldine—Geraldine, my own dear child!"</p> + +<p>"Hush—I did not know you knew. I am trying. Once I failed. That was not +very long ago, either. Oh, Kathleen, I am trying so hard, so hard! And +to-day has been a dreadful day for me. That is why I went off by myself; +I paddled until I was ready to drop into the lake; and the fright that +the boar gave me almost ended me; but it could not end desire!... So I +took a rifle—anything to interest me—keep me on my feet and moving +somewhere—doing something—anything—anything, Kathleen—until I can +crush it out of me—until there's a chance that I can sleep——"</p> + +<p>"I know—I know! That is why I dared not remonstrate when I saw you +drifting again toward your old affectionate relations with Scott. I'm +afraid of animals—except what few Scott has persuaded me to +tolerate—butterflies and frogs and things. But if anything on earth is +going to interest you—take your mind off yourself—and bring you and +Scott any nearer together, I shall not utter one word against it—even +when it puts you in physical danger and frightens me. Do you +understand?"</p> + +<p>The girl nodded, turned and kissed her. They were following a path made +by game; Scott was out of sight ahead somewhere; they could hear his +boots crashing through the underbrush. After a while the sound died away +in the forest.</p> + +<p>"The main thing," said Geraldine, "is to keep up my interest in the +world. I want to do things. To sit idle is pure destruction to me. I +write to Duane every morning, I read, I do a dozen things that require +my attention—little duties that everybody has. But I can't continue to +write to Duane all day. I can't read all day; duties are soon ended. +And, Kathleen, it's the idle intervals I dread so—the brooding, the +memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine—like +dinner—the—the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell +you, physical fatigue must help to save me—must help my love for Duane, +my love for you and Scott, my self-respect—what is left of it. This +rifle"—she held it out—"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I +won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me."</p> + +<p>"You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly.</p> + +<p>"Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I +wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed +fiercely. "I need something of that sort."</p> + +<p>"You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me +about it," said Kathleen gently.</p> + +<p>Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only +trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane.... +Don't be alarmed; I can't—yet. But if I only could have him now! You +see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would +absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests +me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the +day—to keep me from myself——"</p> + +<p>She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered:</p> + +<p>"I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I +want him now—his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to +love me—<i>love</i> me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!"</p> + +<p>A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the +girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely +understood.</p> + +<p>Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her—the feeling of +happy safety she had in his arms—the contact that thrilled almost past +endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength—that +set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins—that aroused +her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest +would have her.</p> + +<p>And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and +slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked +into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride:</p> + +<p>"I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him +than that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe +that he can save you—if you really feel that he can——"</p> + +<p>"I am trying to save myself—I am trying." She turned and looked off +through the forest, a straight, slender shape in the moving shadows of +the leaves.</p> + +<p>"But if he could really help you—if you truly believe it, dear, I—I +don't know whether you might not venture—now——"</p> + +<p>"No, dear." She slowly closed her eyes, remained motionless for a +moment, drew a deep, long breath, and looked up through the sunlit +branches overhead.</p> + +<p>"I've got to be fair to him," she said aloud to herself; "I must give +myself to him as I ought to be, or not at all.... That is settled."</p> + +<p>She turned to Kathleen and took her hand:</p> + +<p>"Come on, fellow-pilgrim," she said with an effort to smile. "My +cowardice is over for the present."</p> + +<p>A few steps forward they sighted Scott coming back. He was unusually red +in the face and rather excited, and he flourished a stick.</p> + +<p>"Of all the infernal impudence!" he said. "What do you think has +happened to me? I saw a wild boar back there—not a very big one—and he +came out into the trail ahead, and I kept straight on, thinking he'd +hear me and run. And I'm blessed if the brute didn't whirl around and +roughen up, and clatter his tusks until I actually had to come to a +halt!"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to walk in these woods any more," said Kathleen with +sudden conviction. "Please come home, all of us."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense," he said. "I won't stand for being hustled out of my own +woods. Give me that rifle, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"I certainly will not," she said, smiling.</p> + +<p>"What! Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because it rather looks as though I'm about to win my bet with you," +observed Geraldine. "Please show me your boar, Scott." And she threw a +cartridge into the magazine and started forward.</p> + +<p>"Don't let her!" pleaded Kathleen. "Scott, it's ridiculous to let that +child do such silly things——"</p> + +<p>"Then stop her if you can," said Scott gloomily, following his sister. +"I don't know anything about wild boar, but I suppose straight shooting +will take care of them, and Sis can do that if she keeps her nerve."</p> + +<p>Geraldine, hastening ahead, rifle poised, scanned the woods with the +palpitating curiosity of an amateur. Eyes and ears alert, she kept +mechanically reassuring herself that the thing to do was to shoot +straight and keep cool, and to keep on shooting whichever way the boar +might take it into his porcine head to run.</p> + +<p>Scott hastened forward to her side:</p> + +<p>"Here's the place," he said, looking about him. "He's concluded to make +off, you see. They usually go off; they only stand when wounded or when +they think they can't get away. He's harmless, I suppose—only it made +me very tired to have him act that way. I hate to be backed out of my +own property."</p> + +<p>Geraldine, rather relieved, yet ashamed not to do all she could, began +to walk toward a clump of low hemlocks. She had heard that wild boar +take that sort of cover. She did not really expect to find anything +there, so when a big black streak crashed out ahead of her she stood +stock still in frozen astonishment, rifle clutched to her breast.</p> + +<p>"Shoot!" shouted her brother.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, oh, dear," she said helplessly, "he's gone out of sight! And +I had such a splendid shot!" She stamped with vexation. "What a goose!" +she repeated. "I had a perfectly splendid shot. And all I did was to +jump like a scared cat and stare!"</p> + +<p>"Anyway, you didn't run, and that's a point gained," observed her +brother. "I had to. And that's one on me."</p> + +<p>A moment later he said: "I believe those impudent boar do need a little +thinning out. When is Duane coming?"</p> + +<p>"In November," said Geraldine, still looking vaguely about for the +departed pig.</p> + +<p>"Early?"</p> + +<p>"I think so, if his father is all right again. I've asked Naïda, too. +Rosalie wants to come——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't," he protested. "All I wanted was a +shooting party to do a little scientific thinning out of these boar. +I'll do some myself, too."</p> + +<p>Geraldine laughed. "Rosalie is a dead shot at a target, dear. She wrote +asking us to invite her to shoot. I don't see how I can very well refuse +her. Do you?"</p> + +<p>"That means her husband, too," grumbled Scott, "and that entire bunch."</p> + +<p>"No; if it's a shooting party, I don't have to ask him."</p> + +<p>Her brother said ungraciously: "Well, I don't care who you ask if +they'll thin out these cheeky brutes. Fancy that two-year-old pig +clattering his tusks at me, planted there in the path with his mane on +end!—You know it mortifies me, Kathleen—it certainly does. One of +these fine days some facetious pig will send me shinning up a tree!" He +grew madder at the speculative indignity. "By ginger! I'm going to have +a shooting party before the snow flies," he muttered, walking forward +between Kathleen and his sister. "Keep your eyes out ahead; we may jump +another at any time, as the wind is all right. And if we do, let him +have it, Geraldine!"</p> + +<p>It was a beautiful woodland through which they moved.</p> + +<p>The late autumn foliage was unusually magnificent, lacking, this year, +those garish and discordant hues which Americans think it necessary to +admire. Oak brown and elm yellow, deep chrome bronze and sombre crimson +the hard woods glowed against backgrounds of pine and hemlock. Larches +were mossy cones of feathery gold; birches slim shafts of snowy gray, +ochre-crowned; silver and green the balsams' spires pierced the canopy +of splendid tapestry upborne by ash and oak and towering pine under a +sky of blue so deep and intense that the lakes reflecting it seemed no +less vivid.</p> + +<p>Already in the brooks they passed painted trout hung low over every bed +of gravel and white sand; the male trout wore his best scarlet fins, and +his sides glowed in alternate patterns, jewelled with ruby and sapphire +spots. Already the ruffed grouse thundered up by coveys, though they had +not yet packed, for the broods still retained their autonomy.</p> + +<p>But somewhere beyond the royal azure of the northern sky, very, very far +away, there was cold in the world, for even last week, through the +violet and primrose dusk, out of the north, shadowy winged things came +speeding, batlike phantoms against the dying light—flight-woodcock +coming through hill-cleft and valley to the land where summer lingered +still.</p> + +<p>And there in mid-forest, right in the tall timber, Scott, advancing, +flushed a woodcock, which darted up, filling the forest with twittering +music—the truest music of our eastern autumn, clear, bewildering, +charming in its evanescent sweetness which leaves in its wake a +startling silence.</p> + +<p>Ahead, lining both sides of a gully deep with last year's leaves, was an +oak grove in mid-forest. Here the brown earth was usually furrowed by +the black snouts of wild boar, for mast lay thick here in autumn and +tender roots invited investigation.</p> + +<p>"Get down flat and crawl," whispered Scott; "there may be a boar or two +on the grounds."</p> + +<p>Kathleen, in her pretty white gown of lace and some sheer stuff, looked +at him piteously; but when he and Geraldine dropped flat and wriggled +forward into the wind, misgiving of what might prowl behind seized her, +and she tucked up her skirts and gave herself to the brown earth with a +tremor of indignation and despair.</p> + +<p>Nearer and nearer they crept, making very little sound; but they made +enough to rouse a young boar, who jerked his head into the air, where he +stood among the acorns, big, furry ears high and wide, nose working +nervously.</p> + +<p>"He's only a yearling," breathed Scott in his sister's ear. "There are +traces of stripes, if you look hard. Wait for a better one."</p> + +<p>They lay silent, all three peering down at the yearling, who stood +motionless, nosing for tainted air, listening, peering about with dull, +near-sighted eyes.</p> + +<p>And, after a long time, as they made no sound, the brute wheeled +suddenly, made a complete circle at a nervous trout, uttered a series of +short, staccato sounds that, when he became older, would become deeper, +more of an ominous roar than a hoarse and irritated grunt.</p> + +<p>Two deer, a doe and a fawn, came picking their way cautiously along the +edge of the gully, sometimes flattening their ears, sometimes necks +outstretched, ears forward, peering ahead at the young and bad-tempered +pig.</p> + +<p>The latter saw them, turned in fury and charged with swiftness +incredible, and the deer stampeded headlong through the forest.</p> + +<p>"What a fierce, little brute!" whispered Kathleen, appalled. "Scott, if +he comes any nearer, I'm going to get into a tree."</p> + +<p>"If he sees us or winds us he'll run. Don't move; there may be a good +boar in presently. I've thought two or three times that I heard +something on that hemlock ridge."</p> + +<p>They listened, holding their breath. Crack! went a distant stick. +Silence; nothing stirred except the yearling who had returned to the +mast and was eagerly nosing among the acorns. They could hear him +crunching the husks, see the gleam of long white teeth which one day +would grow outside that furry muzzle and curve up and backward like +ivory sabres.</p> + +<p>Geraldine whispered: "There's a huge black thing moving in the hemlock +scrub. I can see its feet against the sky-line, and sometimes part of +its bulk——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, heavens," breathed Kathleen, "what is that?"</p> + +<p>Out of the scrub trotted a huge, shaggy, black thing, all head and +shoulders, with body slanting back abruptly to a pair of weak +hindquarters. Down the slope it ran in quick, noiseless, jerky steps; +the yearling turned his head, still munching, ears cocked forward. And +suddenly the monster rushed at him with a squeal, and the yearling +shrieked and fled, chased clear up the slope.</p> + +<p>"It's a sow; don't shoot," whispered Scott. "Look, Sis, you can't see a +sign of tusks. Good heavens, what a huge creature she is!"</p> + +<p>Fierce, formidable, the great beast halted; three striped, partly grown +pigs came rushing and frisking down the gully to join her, filling the +forest with their clumsy clatter and baby squealing. From the ridge the +two deer, who had sneaked back, regarded the scene with terrified +fascination.</p> + +<p>Presently the yearling rushed them out again, then sidled down, +venturing to the edge of the feeding-ground, where he began to crunch +acorns again with a cautious eye on the sow and her noisy brood.</p> + +<p>Here and there a brilliant blue-jay floated down, seized an acorn, and +winged hastily to some near tree where presently he filled the woods +with the noise he made in hammering the acorn into some cleft in the +bark.</p> + +<p>Gradually the sunlight on the leaves reddened; long, luminous shadows +lengthened eastward. Kathleen, lying at full length, her pretty face +between her hands, suddenly sneezed.</p> + +<p>The next moment the feeding-ground was deserted; only a distant crashing +betrayed the line of flight where the great fierce sow and her young +were rushing upward toward the rocks of the Gilded Dome.</p> + +<p>"I'm so sorry," faltered Kathleen, very pink and embarrassed.</p> + +<p>Geraldine sat up and laughed, laying the uncocked rifle across her +knees.</p> + +<p>"Some of these days I'm going to win my wager," she said to her brother. +"And it won't be with a striped yearling, either; it will be with the +biggest, shaggiest, fiercest, tuskiest boar that ranges the Gilded Dome. +And that," she added, looking at Kathleen, "will give me something to +think of and keep me rather busy, I believe."</p> + +<p>"Rather," observed her brother, getting up and helping Kathleen to her +feet. He added, to torment her: "Probably you'll get Duane to win your +bet for you, Sis."</p> + +<p>"No," said the girl gravely; "whatever is to die I must slay all by +myself, Scott—all alone, with no man's help."</p> + +<p>He nodded: "Sure thing; it's the only sporting way. There's no stunt to +it; only keep cool and keep shooting, and drop him before he comes to +close quarters."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, looking up at Kathleen.</p> + +<p>Her brother drew her to her feet. She gave him a little hug.</p> + +<p>"Believe in me, dear," she said. "I'll do it easier if you do."</p> + +<p>"Of course I do. You're a better sport than I. You always were. And +that's no idle jest; witness my nose and Duane's in days gone by."</p> + +<p>The girl smiled. As they turned homeward she slung her rifle, passed her +right arm through Kathleen's, and dropped her left on her brother's +shoulder. She was very tired, and hopeful that she might sleep.</p> + +<p>And tired, hopeful, thinking of her lover, she passed through the woods, +leaning on those who were nearest and most dear.</p> + +<p>Somehow—and just why was not clear to her—it seemed at that moment as +though she had passed the danger mark—as though the very worst lay +behind her—close, scarcely clear of her skirts yet, but all the same it +lay behind her, not ahead.</p> + +<p>She knew, and dreaded, and shrank from what still lay before her; she +understood into what ruin treachery to self might precipitate her still +at any moment. And yet, somehow, she felt vaguely that something had +been gained that day which never before had been gained. And she thought +of her lover as she passed through the forest, leaning on Scott and +Kathleen, her little feet keeping step with theirs, her eyes steady in +the red western glare that flooded the forest to an infernal beauty.</p> + +<p>Behind her streamed her gigantic shadow; behind her lay another shadow, +cast by her soul and floating wide of it now. And it must never touch +her soul again, God helping.</p> + +<p>Suddenly her heart almost ceased its beating. Far away within, stirring +in unsuspected depths, something moved furtively.</p> + +<p>Her face whitened a little; her eyes closed, the lids fluttered, opened; +she gazed straight in front of her, walked on, small head erect, lips +firm, facing the hell that lay before her—lay surely, surely before +her. For the breath of it glowed already in her veins and the voices of +it were already busy in her ears, and the unseen stirring of it had +begun once more within her body—that tired white, slender body of hers +which had endured so bravely and so long.</p> + +<p>If sleep would only aid her, come to her in her need, be her ally in the +peril of her solitude—if it would only come, and help her to endure!</p> + +<p>And wondering if it would, not knowing, hoping, she walked onward +through the falling night.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XVII<br />THE DANGER MARK</a></h2> + + +<p>Her letters to him still bore the red cross:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>"I understand perfectly why you cannot come," she wrote; "I would do +exactly as you are doing if I had a father. It must be a very great +happiness to have one. My need of you is not as great as his; I can hold +my own alone, I think. You see I am doing it, and you must not worry. +Only, dear, when you have the opportunity, come up if only for a day."</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And again, in November:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"You are the sweetest boy, and it is not difficult to understand why +your father cannot endure to have you out of his sight. But is this not +a very heavy strain on you? Of course your mother and Naïda must not be +left alone with him; you are the only son, and your place is there.</p> + +<p>"Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful +things that any man is called upon to bear—your father stricken, your +mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers—for I have read them—cruel +beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true or untrue, Duane, +remember that it cannot affect my regard for you and yours.</p> + +<p>"If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others to +do, would not, <i>could</i> not alter my affection for him.</p> + +<p>"Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what that +sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compassion are needed, too.</p> + +<p>"I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell me. +The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern financial +operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can comprehend, it +seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what disaster has now +placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very men who now blame your +father have all done successfully what he did so disastrously.</p> + +<p>"One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever lived; +and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his son when I +am fit to do it."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>And again she wrote:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its +doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it, the +lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night long. It +is dreadful, terrible!</p> + +<p>"Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when +they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don't know what it +all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart—words and figures and +technical phrases and stock quotations—and it means nothing, and I +understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce outcry against him +and against the men with whom he was financially involved.</p> + +<p>"The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so +merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can scarcely +bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who know nothing +about these matters? The interview with your mother and Naïda, which you +say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are!</p> + +<p>"Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too. And, dear, I +don't know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of any +financial use to you, please, please let us! Our fortune, when it came +to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad securities. I +believe that Scott made some changes in our investments under advice +from your father. I don't know what they were.</p> + +<p>"Don't bother your father with such details now; he has enough to think +of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and body. Duane, +is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand what the papers +are saying?</p> + +<p>"Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>She wrote again:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"Yes, I had a talk with Scott. I did not know he had been receiving all +those letters from your attorneys. Magnelius Grandcourt manages the +investments. Scott's brokers are Stainer & Elting; our attorneys are, as +you know, Landon, Brooks & Gayfield.</p> + +<p>"Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry. My brother is of age, sound in +mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has done. It is his +affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he follows it. Your father +has no responsibility whatever in the matter of the Cascade Development +and Securities Company. Besides, Scott tells me that what he did was +against the advice of Mr. Tappan.</p> + +<p>"I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon, and a +horrid man named Klawber.</p> + +<p>"Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I know +he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me that what +interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities Company was +the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific research the +world over. Poor Scott!</p> + +<p>"Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which may +involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it could +make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is such a +pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I should +understand that!</p> + +<p>"Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I suppose; I +may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you how much more +serious to me are other things—like the loss of faith in one's self or +in others—or the loss of the gentler virtues, which means the loss of +what one once was.</p> + +<p>"The loss of honour is, as you say, a pitiful thing; yet, I think that +when that happens, love and compassion were never more truly needed.</p> + +<p>"Honour, as I understand it, is not to take advantage of others or of +one's better self. This is a young girl's definition. I cannot see—if +one has yielded once to temptation, and truly repents—why honour cannot +be regained.</p> + +<p>"The honour of men and nations that seems to require arrogance, +aggression, violence for its defence, I do not understand. How can the +misdeeds of others impair one's true honour? How can punishment for such +misdeeds restore it? No; it lies within one, quite intangible save by +one's self.</p> + +<p>"Why should I not know, dear?—I who have lost my own and found it, have +held it desperately for a while, then lost it, then regained it, holding +it again as I do now—alas!—against no other enemy than I who write +this record for your eyes!</p> + +<p>"Dear, I know of nothing lost which may not be regained, except life. I +know of nothing which cannot be rendered tolerable through loyalty.</p> + +<p>"That material happiness which means so much to some, means now so very +little to me, perhaps because I have never lacked it.</p> + +<p>"Yet I know that, once mistress of myself, nothing else could matter +unless your love failed."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Again she wrote him toward the end of November:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"Why will you not let me help you, dear? My fortune is practically +intact so far, except that, of course, I met those obligations which +Scott could not meet. Poor Scott!</p> + +<p>"You know it's rather bewildering to me where millions go to. I don't +quite comprehend how they can so utterly vanish in such a short time, +even in such a frightful fiasco as the Cascade Development Company.</p> + +<p>"So many people have been here—Mr. Landon and Mr. Gayfield, Mr. Stainer +of Elting & Stainer, that dreadful creature Klawber, a very horrid man +named Amos Flack—and dear, grim, pig-headed Mr. Tappan—old Remsen +Tappan of all men!</p> + +<p>"He practically kicked out Mr. Flack and the creature Klawber, who had +been trying to frighten Scott and me and even our lawyers.</p> + +<p>"And think, Duane! He never uttered one sarcasm, one reproach for +Scott's foolishness; he sat grim and rusty as the iron that he once +dealt in, listening to what Scott had to tell him, never opening that +cragged jaw, never unclosing that thin line of cleavage which is his +mouth.</p> + +<p>"We did not know what he had come for; but we know now. He is <i>so</i> +good—so good, Duane! And I, who hated him as a child, as a girl—I am +almost too ashamed to let him take command and untangle for us, with +those knotted, steel-sinewed fingers of his, the wretched, tangled mess +that has coiled around Scott and me.</p> + +<p>"Surely, this man Klawber is a very great villain; and it seems that Mr. +Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for Jack +Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he feel! +Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He must have +been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; nothing on +earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he let his best +friend go down with it?</p> + +<p>"But it was fine of Delancy to stand by him—fine, fine! His father is +perfectly furious, but, Duane, it <i>was</i> fine!</p> + +<p>"And now, dear, about Scott. It will amuse you, and perhaps horrify you, +if I tell you that he has not turned a hair.</p> + +<p>"Not that he doesn't care; not that he is not more or less mortified. +But he blames nobody except himself; and he's laying plans quite +cheerfully for a career on a small income that really does not require +the austerity and frugality he imagines.</p> + +<p>"One thing is certain; the town house is to be sold. My income is not +sufficient to maintain it and Roya-Neh, and live as we do, and have +anything left. I don't yet know how far my fortune is involved, but I +have a very unpleasant premonition that there is going to be much less +left than anybody believes, and that ultimately we ought to sell +Roya-Neh.</p> + +<p>"However, it is far too early to speculate; besides, this family has +done enough speculating for one generation.</p> + +<p>"Dear, you ask about myself. I am not one bit worried, sad, or +apprehensive. I am <i>better</i>, Duane. Do you understand? All this has +developed a set of steadier nerves in me than I have had since I was a +child.</p> + +<p>"A new and curiously keen enjoyment has been slowly growing in me—a +happiness in physical and violent effort. I've a devilish horse to ride; +and I love it! I've climbed all over the Gilded Dome and Lynx Peak after +the biggest and shaggiest boar you ever saw. Oh, Duane! I came on him +just at the edge of evening, and he winded me and went thundering down +the Westgate ravine, and I fired too quickly.</p> + +<p>"But I'm after him almost every day with old Miller, and my arms and +legs are getting so strong, and my flesh so firm, and actually I'm +becoming almost plump in the face! Don't you care for that kind of a +girl?</p> + +<p>"Dear, do you think I've passed the danger mark? Tell me honestly—not +what you want to think, but what you do believe. I don't know whether I +have passed it yet. I feel, somehow, whichever side of it I am on, that +the danger mark is not very far away from me. I've got to get farther +away. The house in town is open. Mrs. Farren, Hilda, and Nellie are +there if we run into town.</p> + +<p>"Kathleen is so happy for me. I've told her about the red cross. She is +too sweet to Scott; she seems to think he really grieves deeply over the +loss of his private fortune. What a dear she is! She is willing to marry +him now; but Scott strikes attitudes and declares she shall have a man +whose name stands for an achievement—meaning, of course, the Seagrave +process for the extermination of the Rose-beetle.</p> + +<p>"Duane, I am quite unaccountably happy to-day. Nothing seems to +threaten. But don't stop loving me."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Followed three letters less confident, and another very pitiful—a +frightened letter asking him to come if he could. But his father's +condition forbade it and he dared not.</p> + +<p>Then another letter came, desperate, almost incoherent, yet still +bearing the red cross faintly traced. And on the heels of it a telegram:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Could you stand by me until this is over? I am afraid of to-night. +Am on my way to town with my maid, very ill. I know you cannot +leave your father except at night. I will telephone you from the +house.</p> + +<p class="right">"G.S."</p></blockquote> + +<p>On the train a dispatch was handed her:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I will be at your house as soon as my father is asleep. Don't +worry.</p> + +<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Duane</span>."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Hour after hour she sat motionless beside the car-window, quiet, pale, +dark eyes remote; trees, houses, trains, telegraph-poles streamed past +in one gray, unending blur; rain which at first had only streaked the +grimy window-glass with cinders, became sleet, then snow, clotting the +dripping panes.</p> + +<p>At last, far away under a heavy sky, the vast misshapen landmarks of New +York loomed up gray through the falling snow; the train roared over the +Harlem, halted at 125th Street, rolled on into the black tunnel, faster, +faster, slower, then more slowly, and stopped. All sounds ceased at the +same moment; silence surrounded her, dreary as the ominous silence +within.</p> + +<p>Dunn met her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, +melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return +from her first opera—the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps +lighted, speeding through the driving snow. Yesterday, the quiet, +untainted whiteness of childhood; to-day, trouble and stress and stained +snow melting into mud—so far behind her lay innocence and peace on the +long road she had travelled! So far had she already journeyed—toward +what?</p> + +<p>She pressed her lips more tightly together and buried her chin in her +sable muff. Beside her, her maid sat shivering and stifling yawn after +yawn and thinking of dinner and creature comforts, and of Dunn, the +footman, whom she did ardently admire.</p> + +<p>The big red brick house among its naked trees seemed sad and deserted as +the brougham flashed into the drive and stopped, the horses stamping and +pawing the frozen gravel. Geraldine had never before been away from home +so long, and now as she descended from the carriage and looked vaguely +about her it seemed as though she had, somehow, become very, very young +again—that it was her child-self that entered under the porte-cochère +after the prescribed drive that always ended outdoor exercise in the +early winter evenings; and she half expected to see old Howker in the +hall, and Margaret trotting up to undo her furs and leggings—half +expected to hear Kathleen's gay greeting, to see her on the stairs, so +young, so sweetly radiant, her arms outstretched in welcome to her +children who had been away scarcely a full hour.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to have a fire in my bedroom and in the upper library," she +said to Hilda, who had smilingly opened the door for her. "I'll dine in +the upper library, too. When Mr. Mallett arrives, you need not come up +to announce him. Ask him to find me in the library."</p> + +<p>To Mrs. Farren she said: "Nobody need sit up. When Mr. Mallett leaves, I +will put the chains on and bolt everything."</p> + +<p>She was destined not to keep this promise.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Bathed, her hair brushed and dressed, she suffered her maid to hook her +into a gown which she could put off again unassisted—one of those gowns +that excite masculine admiration by reason of its apparent +inexpensiveness and extreme simplicity. It was horribly expensive, of +course—white, and cut out in a circle around her neck like a young +girl's gown; and it suited Geraldine's slender, rounded throat and her +dainty head with its heavy, loosely drawn masses of brown hair, just +shadowing cheeks and brow.</p> + +<p>When the last hook was looped she dismissed her maid for the night; +Hilda served her at dinner, but she ate little, and the waitress bore +away the last of the almost untouched food, leaving her young mistress +seated before the fire and looking steadily into it.</p> + +<p>The fire was a good one; the fuel oak and ash and beech. The flames made +a silky, rustling sound; now and then a coal fell with a softly +agreeable crash and a swarm of golden sparks whirled up the chimney, +snapping, scintillating, like day fireworks.</p> + +<p>Geraldine sat very still, her mouth resting on her white wrist, and when +she lifted her head the marks of her teeth showed on the skin. Then the +other hand, clutching the arm of her chair, fell to her side cramped +and quivering; she stood up, looked at the fire, pressed both palms +across her eyes, turned and began to pace the room.</p> + +<p>To and fro she moved, slowly, quickly, as the craving for motion ebbed +or increased. At times she made unconscious movements with her arms, now +flinging them wide, now flexing the muscles, clenching the hands; but +always the arms fell helpless, hopeless; the slim, desperate fingers +relaxed; and she moved on again, to and fro, up and down, turning her +gaze toward the clock each time she passed it.</p> + +<p>In her eyes there seemed to be growing a dreadful sort of beauty; there +was fire in them, the luminous brightness of the tortured. On both +cheeks a splendid colour glowed and waned; the slightly drawn lips were +vivid.</p> + +<p>But this—all of it changed as the slow minutes dragged their course; +into the brown eyes crept the first frosty glimmer of desperation; +colour faded from the face, leaving it snowy white; the fulness of the +lips vanished, the chin seemed to grow pointed, and under the eyes +bluish shadows deepened. It promised to go hard with her that night; it +was already going very badly. She knew it, and digging her nails into +her delicate palms, set her teeth together and drew a deep, unsteady +breath.</p> + +<p>She had looked at the clock four times, and the hands seemed to have +moved no more than a minute's space across the dial; and once more she +turned to pace the floor.</p> + +<p>Her lips had lost almost all their colour now; they moved, muttering +tremulous incoherences; the outline of every feature grew finer, +sharper, more spiritual, but dreadfully white.</p> + +<p>Later she found herself on her knees beside the couch, face buried in +the cushions, her small teeth marking her wrist again—heard herself +crying out for somebody to help her—yet her lips had uttered no sound; +it was only her soul in its agony, while the youthful, curved body and +rigid limbs burnt steadily in hell's own flames.</p> + +<p>Again she raised her head and lifted her white face toward the clock. +Only a minute had crept by, and she turned, twisting her interlocked +hands, dry-eyed, dry lips parted, and stared about her. Half stupefied +with pain, stunned, dismayed by the million tiny voices of temptation +assailing her, dinning in her senses, she reeled where she knelt, fell +forward, laid her slender length across the hearth-rug, and set her +teeth in her wrist again, choking back the cry of terror and desolation.</p> + +<p>And there her senses tricked her—or she may have lost +consciousness—for it seemed that the next moment she was on the stairs, +moving stealthily—where? God and her tormented body seemed to know, for +she caught herself halfway down the stairs, cried out on her Maker for +strength, stood swaying, breathless, quivering in the agony of it—and +dragged herself back and up the stairs once more, step by step, to the +landing.</p> + +<p>For a moment she stood there, shaking, ghastly, staring down into the +regions below, where relief lay within her reach. And she dared not even +stare too long; she turned blindly, arms outstretched, feeling her way +back. Every sense within her seemed for the moment deadened; sounds +scarcely penetrated, had no meaning; she heard the grille clash, steps +on the stair; she was trying to get back to the library, paused to rest +at the door, was caught in two strong arms, drawn into them:</p> + +<p>"Duane," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Darling!"—and as he saw her face—"My God!"</p> + +<p>"Mine, too, Duane. Don't be afraid; I'm holding firm, so far. But I am +very, very ill. Could you help me a little?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, child!—yes, little Geraldine—my little, little girl——"</p> + +<p>"Can you stay near me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes! Good God, yes!"</p> + +<p>"How long?"</p> + +<p>"As long as you want me."</p> + +<p>"Then I can get through with this. I think to-night decides.... If you +will remain with me—for a while——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear."</p> + +<p>He drew a chair to the fire; she sank into it; he seated himself beside +her and she clung to his hand with both of hers.</p> + +<p>His eyes fell upon her wrist where the marks of her teeth were +imprinted; he felt her body trembling, saw the tragedy in her eyes, +rose, lifted her as though she were a child, and seating himself, drew +her close against his breast.</p> + +<p>The night was a hard one; sometimes in an access of pain she struggled +for freedom, and all his strength was needed to keep her where she lay. +At times, too, her senses seemed clouded, and she talked incoherently; +sometimes she begged for relief, shamelessly craved it; sometimes she +used all her force, and, almost beside herself, defied him, threatened +him, turned on him infuriated; but his strength held her locked in a +vicelike embrace, and, toward morning, she suddenly relaxed—crumpled +up like a white flower in his arms. For a while her tears fell hot and +fast; then utter prostration left her limp, without movement, even +without a tremor, a dead weight in his arms.</p> + +<p>And, for the second time in his life, lifting her, he bore her to her +room, laid her among the pillows, slipped off her shoes, and, bending +above her, listened.</p> + +<p>She slept profoundly—but it was not the stupor that had chained her +limbs that other time when he had brought her here.</p> + +<p>He went into the library and waited for an hour. Then, very quietly, he +descended the stairs and let himself out into the bitter darkness of a +November morning.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">About noon next day the Seagraves' brougham drew up before the Mallett +house and Geraldine, in furs, stepped out and crossed the sidewalk with +that swift, lithe grace of hers. The servant opened the grille; she +entered and stood by the great marble-topped hall-table until Duane came +down. Then she gave him her gloved hands, looking him straight in the +eyes.</p> + +<p>She was still pale but self-possessed, and wonderfully pretty in her fur +jacket and toque; and as she stood there, both hands dropped into his, +that nameless and winning grace which had always fascinated him held him +now—something about her that recalled the child in the garden with +clustering hair and slim, straight limbs.</p> + +<p>"You look about fifteen," he said, "you beautiful, slender thing! Did +you come to see my father?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—and your father's son."</p> + + +<div class="figcenter"> + <a id="image8" name="image8"></a> + <img src="images/image8.jpg" + alt=""Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms."" + title=""Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms."" /> + <p class="caption">"Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms."</p> +</div> + + +<p>"Me?"</p> + +<p>"Is there another like you, Duane—in all the world?"</p> + +<p>"Plenty——"</p> + +<p>"Hush!... When did you go last night?"</p> + +<p>"When you left me for the land of dreams, little lady."</p> + +<p>"So you—carried me."</p> + +<p>He smiled, and a bright flush covered her cheeks.</p> + +<p>"That makes twice," she said steadily.</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear."</p> + +<p>"There will be no third time."</p> + +<p>"Not unless I have a sleepy wife who nods before the fire like a drowsy +child."</p> + +<p>"Do you want that kind?"</p> + +<p>"I want the kind that lay close in my arms before the fire last night."</p> + +<p>"Do you? I think I should like the sort of husband who is strong enough +to cradle that sort of a child.... Could your mother and Naïda receive +me? Could I see your father?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. When are you going back to Roya-Neh?"</p> + +<p>"To-night."</p> + +<p>He said quietly: "Is it safe?"</p> + +<p>"For me to go? Yes—yes, my darling"—her hands tightened over +his—"yes, it is safe—because you made it so. If you knew—if you knew +what is in my heart to—to give you!—what I will be to you some day, +dearest of men——"</p> + +<p>He said unsteadily: "Come upstairs.... My father is very feeble, but +quite cheerful. Do you understand that—that his mind—his memory, +rather, is a little impaired?"</p> + +<p>She lifted his hands and laid her soft lips against them:</p> + +<p>"Will you take me to him, Duane?"</p> + +<p>Colonel Mallett lay in the pale November sunlight, very still, his hands +folded on his breast. And at first she did not know him in this ghost of +the tall, well-built, gray-haired man with ruddy colour and firm, clear +skin.</p> + +<p>As she bent over, he opened his eyes, smiled, pronounced her name, still +smiling and keeping his sunken eyes on her. They were filmy and bluish, +like the eyes of the very old; and the hand she lifted and held was the +stricken hand of age—inert, lifeless, without weight.</p> + +<p>She said that she was so happy to know he was recovering; she told him +how proud everybody was of Duane, what exceptional talent he possessed, +how wonderfully he had painted Miller's children. She spoke to him of +Roya-Neh, and how interesting it had become to them all, told him about +the wild boar and her own mishaps with the guileful pig.</p> + +<p>He smiled, watching her at times; but his wistful gaze always reverted +to his son, who sat at the foot of the couch, chin balanced between his +long, lean hands.</p> + +<p>"You won't go, will you?" he whispered.</p> + +<p>"Where, father?"</p> + +<p>"Away."</p> + +<p>"No, of course not."</p> + +<p>"I mean with—Geraldine," he said feebly.</p> + +<p>"If I did, father, we'd take you with us," he laughed.</p> + +<p>"It is too far, my son.... You and Geraldine are going too far for me to +follow.... Wait a little while."</p> + +<p>Geraldine, blushing, bent down swiftly, her lips brushing the sick +man's wasted face:</p> + +<p>"I would not care for him if I could take him from you."</p> + +<p>"Your father and I were old friends. Your grandfather was a very fine +gentleman.... I am glad.... I am a little tired—a little confused. Is +your grandfather here with you? I would like to see him."</p> + +<p>She said, after a moment, in a low voice: "He did not come with me +to-day."</p> + +<p>"Give him my regards and compliments. And say to him that it would be a +pleasure to see him. I am not very well; has he heard of my +indisposition?"</p> + +<p>"I think he—has."</p> + +<p>"Then he will come," said Colonel Mallett feebly. "Duane, you are not +going, are you? I am a little tired. I think I could sleep if you would +lower the shade and ask your mother to sit by me.... But you won't go +until I am asleep, will you?"</p> + +<p>"No," he said gently, as his mother and Naïda entered and Geraldine rose +to greet them, shocked at the change in Mrs. Mallett.</p> + +<p>She and Naïda went away together; later Duane joined them in the +library, saying that his father was asleep, holding fast to his wife's +hand.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, her arm around Naïda's waist, had been looking at one of +Duane's pictures—the only one of his in the house—merely a stretch of +silvery marsh and a gray, wet sky beyond.</p> + +<p>"Father liked it," he said; "that's why it's here, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>"You never made one brush-stroke that was commonplace in all your life," +said Geraldine abruptly. "Even I can see that."</p> + +<p>"Such praise from a lady!" he exclaimed, laughing. Geraldine smiled, +too, and Naïda's pallid face lightened for a moment. But grief had set +its seal on the house of Mallett; that was plain everywhere; and when +Geraldine kissed Naïda good-bye and walked to the door beside her lover, +a passion of tenderness for him and his overwhelmed her, and when he put +her into her brougham she leaned from the lowered window, clinging to +his hand, careless of who might see them.</p> + +<p>"<i>Can</i> I help in any way?" she whispered. "I told you that my fortune is +still my own—most of it——"</p> + +<p>"Dear, wait!"</p> + +<p>There was a strange look in his eyes; she said no more with her lips, +but her eyes told him all. Then he stepped back, directing Dunn to drive +his mistress to the Commonwealth Club, where she was to lunch with +Sylvia Quest, whom she had met that morning in the blockade at +Forty-second Street, and who had invited her from her motor across the +crupper of a traffic-policeman's horse.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XVIII<br />BON CHIEN</a></h2> + + +<p>The chronology of that last dark and bitter week in November might have +been written "necrology."</p> + +<p>On Monday Colonel Mallett died about sundown; on Wednesday the Hon. John +D. Ellis, while examining an automatic revolver in his bath-room, met +with one of those unfortunate and fatal accidents which sometimes happen +in times of great financial depression.</p> + +<p>Thursday Amos Flack carelessly disappeared, leaving no address; and on +the last day of the week Emanuel Klawber politely excused himself to a +group of very solemn gentlemen who had been assisting him in the +well-known and popular game of "Hunt the Books"; and, stepping outside +the door of the director's office, carefully destroyed what little life +had not already been scared out of his three-hundred-pound person.</p> + +<p>It had been raining all day; Dysart had not felt very well, and +Klawber's unpleasant performance made him ill. He stood in the rain +watching the ambulance arriving at a gallop, then, sickened, turned away +through the dark and dripping crowds, crossed the street, and, lowering +his head against the storm, drove both gloved hands deep into the +pockets of his fashionably cut rain-coat, and started for home.</p> + +<p>It mattered nothing to him that several hard-working newspaper men might +desire to secure his version of Mr. Klawber's taking off, or of his +explanation for it or his sensations concerning it. It mattered nothing +to him that the afternoon papers reported the arrest of James Skelton, +or that Max Moebus had inadvertently, and no doubt in a moment of +intense abstraction, taken a steamer for Europe and the books of the +Shoshone Bank.</p> + +<p>These matters, now seemed a great way off—too unreal to be of personal +moment. He was feeling sick; that occupied his mind. Also the slush on +the sidewalk had wet through his shoes, which probably was not good for +his cough.</p> + +<p>It was scarcely two in the afternoon, yet there remained so little +daylight that the electricity burned in the shops along Fifth Avenue. +Through a smutty, grayish gloom, rain drove densely; his hat and +waterproof coat were heavy with it, the bottoms of his trousers soaked.</p> + +<p>Passing the Patroons Club it occurred to him that hot whiskey might +extinguish his cough. The liveried servants at the door, in the +cloak-room—the page who took his order, the white-headed butler who had +always personally served him, and who served him now, all hesitated and +gazed curiously at him. He paid no attention at the time but remembered +it afterward.</p> + +<p>For an hour he sat alone in the vast empty room before a fire of English +cannel coal, taking his hot whiskey and lemon in slow, absent-minded +gulps. Patches of deep colour lay flat under his cheek-bones, his sunken +abstracted eyes never left the coals.</p> + +<p>The painted gaze of dead Presidents and Governors looked down at him +from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken +wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose +leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering +in their evil immobility.</p> + +<p>He had presented the trophy to the club after a trip somewhere, leaving +the impression that he had shot it. He seldom looked at it, never at the +silver-engraved inscription on the walnut shield.</p> + +<p>Strangely enough, now as he sat there, he thought of the trophy and +looked up at it; and for the first time in his life read the +inscription.</p> + +<p>It made no visible impression upon him except that for a brief moment +the small and vivid patches of colour in his wasted cheeks faintly +tinted the general pallor. But this died out as soon as it appeared; he +drank deliberately, set the hot glass on a table at his elbow, long, +bony fingers still retaining a grip upon it.</p> + +<p>And into his unconcentrated thoughts, strangely enough, came the +memories of little meannesses which he had committed—trivial things +that he supposed he had forgotten long ago; and at first, annoyed, he +let memory drift.</p> + +<p>But, imperceptibly, from the shallows of these little long-forgotten +meannesses, memory drifted uncontrolled into deeper currents; and, +disdainful, he made no effort to control it; and later, could not. And +for the first time in his life he took the trouble to understand the +reason of his unpopularity among men. He had cared nothing for them.</p> + +<p>He cared nothing for them now, unless that half tolerant, half +disdainful companionship of years with Delancy Grandcourt could be +called caring for a man. If their relations ever had been anything more +than a habit he did not know; on what their friendship had ever been +founded he could not tell. It had been his habit to take from Delancy, +accept, or help himself. He had helped himself to Rosalie Dene; and not +long ago he had accepted all that Delancy offered, almost convinced at +the time that it would disappear in the debacle when the Algonquin +crumbled into a rubbish heap of rotten securities.</p> + +<p>A curious friendship—and the only friend he ever had had among +men—stupid, inertly at hand, as inevitably to be counted on as some +battered toy of childhood which escaped the dust heap so long that +custom tolerates its occupation of any closet space convenient: and +habit, at intervals, picks it up to see what's left of it.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">He had finished his whiskey; the fire seemed to have grown too hot, and +he shoved back his chair. But the room, too, was becoming close, even +stifling. Perspiration glistened on his forehead; he rose and began to +wander from room to room, followed always by the stealthy glances of +servants.</p> + +<p>The sweat on his face had become unpleasantly cold; he came back to the +fire, endured it for a few moments, then, burning and shivering at the +same time, and preferring the latter sensation, he went out to his +letter-box and unlocked it. There was only one envelope there, a letter +from the governing board of the club requesting his resignation.</p> + +<p>The possibility of such an event had never occurred to him; he read the +letter again, folded and placed it in his pocket, went back to the fire +with the idea of burning it, took it out, read it again, folded it +absently, and replaced it in his pocket.</p> + +<p>At that time, except for the dull surprise, the episode did not seem to +affect him particularly. So many things had been accumulating, so many +matters had been menacing him, that one cloud more among the dark, +ominous masses gathering made no deeper impression than slight surprise.</p> + +<p>For a while he stood motionless, hands in his trousers' pockets, head +lowered; then, as somebody entered the farther door, he turned +instinctively and stepped into a private card room, closing the polished +mahogany door. The door opened a moment later and Delancy Grandcourt +walked in.</p> + +<p>"Hello," he said briefly. Dysart, by the window, looked around at him +without any expression whatever.</p> + +<p>"Have you heard about Klawber?" asked Delancy. "They're calling the +extra."</p> + +<p>Dysart looked out of the window. "That's fast work," he said.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt stood for a while in silence, then seated himself, saying:</p> + +<p>"He ought to have lived and tried to make good."</p> + +<p>"He couldn't."</p> + +<p>"He ought to have tried. What's the good of lying down that way?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I guess he was tired."</p> + +<p>"That doesn't relieve his creditors."</p> + +<p>"No, but it relieves Klawber."</p> + +<p>Grandcourt said: "You always view things from that side, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"What side?"</p> + +<p>"That of personal convenience."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Where is it landing you?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't gone into that very thoroughly." There was a trace of +irritation in Dysart's voice; he passed one hand over his forehead; it +was icy, and the hair on it damp. "What the devil do you want of me, +anyway?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Nothing.... I have never wanted anything of you, have I?"</p> + +<p>Dysart walked the width of the room, then the length of it, then came +and stood by the table, resting on it with one thin hand, in which his +damp handkerchief was crushed to a wad.</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i> is it you've got to say, Delancy? Is it about that loan?"</p> + +<p>"No. Have you heard a word out of me about it?"</p> + +<p>"You've been devilish glum. Good God, I don't blame you; I ought not to +have touched it; I must have been crazy to let you try to help me——"</p> + +<p>"It was my affair. What I choose to do concerns myself," said +Grandcourt, his heavy, troubled face turning redder. "And, Jack, I +understand that my father is making things disagreeable for you. I've +told him not to; and you mustn't let it worry you, because what I had +was my own and what I did with it my own business."</p> + +<p>"Anyway," observed Dysart, after a moment's reflection, "your family is +wealthy."</p> + +<p>A darker flush stained Grandcourt's face; and Dysart's misinterpretation +of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy +lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he +sat silent, his personal feelings merged in an evergrowing anxiety.</p> + +<p>"Why do you cough like that, Jack?" he demanded after a paroxysm had +shaken the other into an armchair, where he lay sweating and panting:</p> + +<p>"It's a cold," Dysart managed to say; "been hanging on for a month."</p> + +<p>"Three months," said Grandcourt tersely. "Why don't you take care of +it?"</p> + +<p>There was a silence; nothing more was said about the cold; and presently +Grandcourt drew a letter from his pocket and handed it silently to +Dysart. It was in Rosalie's handwriting, dated two months before, and +directed to Dysart at Baltimore. The post-office authorities had marked +it, "No address," and had returned it a few days since to the sender.</p> + +<p>These details Dysart noticed on the envelope and the heading of the +first page; he glanced over a line or two, lowered the letter, and +looked questioningly over it at Grandcourt:</p> + +<p>"What's it about?—if you know," he asked wearily. "I'm not inclined +just now to read anything that may be unpleasant."</p> + +<p>Grandcourt said quietly:</p> + +<p>"I have not read the letter, but your wife has told me something of what +it contains. She wrote and mailed it to you weeks ago—before the +crash—saying, I believe, that adversity was not the time for the +settlement of domestic differences, and that if her private fortune +could avert disaster, you were to write immediately to her attorneys."</p> + +<p>Dysart gazed at him as though stunned; then his dull gaze fell once more +on the envelope. He examined it, went all over it with lack-lustre eyes, +laid it aside, and finally began to read his wife's letter—the letter +that had never reached him because he had used another name on the hotel +register in Baltimore.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt watched him with painful interest as he sat, hunched up, +coughing at intervals, and poring over his wife's long, angular +chirography. There was much between the lines to read, but Dysart could +never read it; much to understand, but he could never understand it.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"Delancy tells me," she wrote, "that you are threatened with very +serious difficulties. Once or twice you yourself have said as much to +me; and my answer was that they no longer concerned me.</p> + +<p>"The situation is this: I have, as you know, consulted counsel with a +view to begin proceedings for a separation. This has been +discontinued—temporarily, at any rate—because I have been led to +believe by your friend, Delancy Grandcourt, that the present is no time +to add to your perplexities.</p> + +<p>"He has, I may add, induced me to believe other things which my better +sense rejects; but no woman's logic—which is always half +sentiment—could remain unshaken by the simple loyalty to you and to me +of this friend of yours and of mine. And this letter would never have +been written except, practically, at his dictation. Kindly refrain from +showing it to him as my acknowledgment here of his influence in the +matter would grieve him very deeply.</p> + +<p>"Because he believes that it is still possible for you and me to return +to civilised relations; he believes that I care for you, that, in your +own leisurely and superficial fashion, you still really honour the vows +that bound you—still in your heart care for me. Let him believe it; and +if you will, for his sake, let us resume the surface semblance of a +common life which, until he persuaded me, I was determined to abandon.</p> + +<p>"It is an effort to write this; I do it for his sake, and, in that way, +for yours. I don't think you care about me; I don't think you ever did +or ever will. Yet you must know how it was with me until I could endure +my isolation no longer. And I say to you perfectly frankly that now I +care more for this friend of yours, Delancy Grandcourt, than I care for +anybody in the world. Which is why I write you to offer what I have +offered, and to say that if my private fortune can carry you through the +disaster which is so plainly impending, please write to my attorneys at +once as they have all power in the matter."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>The postscript was dated ten days later, from Dysart's own house:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>"Receiving no reply, I telephoned you, but Brandon says you are away +from the city on business and have left no address, so I took the +liberty of entering your house, selecting this letter from the mass of +nine days' old mail awaiting you, and shall direct it to you at the +hotel in Baltimore where Bunny Gray says that somebody has seen you +several times with a Mr. Skelton."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>As Dysart read, he wiped the chilly perspiration from his haggard face +at intervals, never taking his eyes from the written pages. And at last +he finished his wife's letter, sat very silent, save when the cough +shook him, the sheets of the letter lying loosely in his nerveless hand.</p> + +<p>It was becoming plain to him, in a confused sort of way, that something +beside bad luck and his own miscalculations, was working against +him—had been stealthily moving toward his undoing for a year, now; +something occult, sinister, inexorable.</p> + +<p>He thought of the register at the hotel in Baltimore, of the name he +lived under there during that interval in his career for which he had +accounted to nobody, and never would account—on earth. And into his +memory rose the pale face of Sylvia Quest; and he looked down at the +letter trembling in his hand and thought of her and of his wife and of +the Algonquin Trust Company, and of the chances of salvation he had +missed.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt sat looking at him; there was something in his gaze almost +doglike:</p> + +<p>"Have you read it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Dysart glanced up abstractedly: "Yes."</p> + +<p>"Is it what I told you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—substantially." He dried his damp face; "it comes rather late, you +know."</p> + +<p>"Not <i>too</i> late," said the other, mistaking him; "your wife is still +ready to meet you half-way, Jack."</p> + +<p>"Oh—that? I meant the Algonquin matter—" He checked himself, seeing +for the first time in his life contempt distorting Grandcourt's heavy +face.</p> + +<p>"Man! Man!" he said thickly, "is there nothing in that letter for you +except money offered?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I say, is there nothing in that message to you that touches the manhood +in you?"</p> + +<p>"You don't know what is in it," said Dysart listlessly. Even +Grandcourt's contempt no longer produced any sensation; he looked at the +letter, tore it into long strips, crumpled them and stood up with a +physical effort:</p> + +<p>"I'm going to burn this. Have you anything else to say?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Good God, Jack, <i>don't</i> you care for your wife? <i>Can't</i> you?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know." His tone became querulous. "How can a man tell why he +becomes indifferent to a woman? I don't know. I never did know. I can't +explain it. But he does."</p> + +<p>Grandcourt stared at him. And suddenly the latent fear that had been +torturing him for the last two weeks died out utterly: this man would +never need watching to prevent any attempt at self-destruction; this man +before him was not of that caste. His self-centred absorption was of a +totally different nature.</p> + +<p>He said, very red in the face, but with a voice well modulated and even:</p> + +<p>"I think I've made a good deal of an ass of myself. I think I may safely +be cast for that rôle in future. Most people, including yourself, think +I'm fitted for it; and most people, and yourself, are right. And I'll +admit it now by taking the liberty of asking you whom you were with in +Baltimore."</p> + +<p>"None of your damned business!" said Dysart, wheeling short on him.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not. I did not believe it at the time, but I do now.... And her +brother is after you with a gun."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"That you'd better get out of town unless you want an uglier scandal on +your hands."</p> + +<p>Dysart stood breathing fast and with such effort that his chest moved +visibly as the lungs strained under the tension:</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say that drunken whelp suspects anything so—so wildly +absurd——"</p> + +<p>"Which drunken whelp? There are several in town?"</p> + +<p>Dysart glared at him, careless of what he might now believe.</p> + +<p>"I take it you mean that little cur, Quest."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I happen to mean Quest."</p> + +<p>Dysart gave an ugly laugh and turned short on his heel:</p> + +<p>"The whole damn lot of you make me sick," he said. "So does this club."</p> + +<p>A servant held his rain-coat and handed him his hat; he shook his bent +shoulders, stifled a cough, and went out into the rain.</p> + +<p>In his own home his little old father, carefully be-wigged, painted, +cleaned and dressed, came trotting into the lamp-lit living-room fresh +from the ministrations of his valet.</p> + +<p>"There you are, Jack!—te-he! Oh, yes, there you are, you young +dog!—all a-drip with rain for the love o' the ladies, eh, Jack? +Te-he—one's been here to see you—a little white doll in chinchillas, +and scared to death at my civilities—as though she knew the +Dysarts—te-he! Oh, yes, the Dysarts, Jack. But it was monstrous +imprudent, my son—and a good thing that your wife remains at Lenox so +late this season—te-he! A lucky thing, you young dog! And what the +devil do you mean by it—eh? What d'ye mean, I say!"</p> + +<p>Leering, peering, his painted lips pursed up, the little old man seated +himself, gazing with dim, restless eyes at the shadowy blur which +represented to him his handsome son—a Dysart all through, elegant, +debonair, resistless, and, married or single, fatal to feminine peace of +mind. Generations ago Dysarts had been shot very conventionally at ten +paces owing to this same debonair resistlessness; Dysarts had slipped +into and out of all sorts of unsavoury messes on account of this fatal +family failing; some had been neatly winged, some thrust through; some, +in a more sordid age, permitted counsel of ability to explain to a jury +how guiltless a careless gentleman could be under the most unfortunate +and extenuating appearances.</p> + +<p>The son stood in his wet clothes, haggard, lined, ghastly in contrast to +the startling red of his lips, looking at his smirking father: then he +leaned over and touched a bell.</p> + +<p>"Who was it who called on Mrs. Dysart?" he asked, as a servant appeared.</p> + +<p>"Miss Quest, sir," said the man, accepting the cue with stolid +philosophy.</p> + +<p>"Did Miss Quest leave any message?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir: Miss Quest desired <i>Mrs.</i> Dysart to telephone her on <i>Mrs.</i> +Dysart's return from—the country, sir—it being a matter of very great +importance."</p> + +<p>"Thank you."</p> + +<p>"Thank <i>you</i>, sir."</p> + +<p>The servant withdrew; the son stood gazing into the hallway. Behind him +his father mumbled and muttered and chuckled to himself in his +easy-chair by the fire!</p> + +<p>"Te-he! They are all alike, the Dysarts—oh, yes, all alike! And now +it's that young dog—Jack!—te-he!—yes, it's Jack, now! But he's a good +son, my boy Jack; he's a good son to me and he's all Dysart, all Dysart; +bon chien chasse de race!—te-he! Oui, ma fois!—bon chien chasse de +race."</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XIX<br />QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS</a></h2> + + +<p>By the first of January it became plain that there was not very much +left of Colonel Mallett's fortune, less of his business reputation, and +even less of his wife's health. But she was now able to travel, and +toward the middle of the month she sailed with Naïda and one maid for +Naples, leaving her son to gather up and straighten out what little of +value still remained in the wreckage of the house of Mallett. What he +cared most about was to straighten out his father's personal reputation; +and this was possible only as far as it concerned Colonel Mallett's +individual honesty. But the rehabilitation was accomplished at the +expense of his father's reputation for business intelligence; and New +York never really excuses such things.</p> + +<p>Not much remained after the amounts due every creditor had been checked +up and provided for; and it took practically all Duane had, almost all +Naïda had, and also the sacrifice of the town house and country villa to +properly protect those who had suffered. Part of his mother's estate +remained intact, enough to permit her and her daughter to live by +practising those inconsequential economies, the necessity for which +fills Europe with about the only sort of Americans cultivated foreigners +can tolerate, and for which predatory Europeans have no use whatever.</p> + +<p>As for Duane, matters were now in such shape that he found it possible +to rent a studio with adjoining bath and bedroom—an installation which, +at one time, was more than he expected to be able to afford.</p> + +<p>The loss of that luxury, which custom had made a necessity, filled his +daily life full of trifling annoyances and surprises which were often +unpleasant and sometimes humorous; but the new and arid order of things +kept him so busy that he had little time for the apathy, bitterness, or +self-commiseration which, in linked sequence, usually follow sudden +disaster.</p> + +<p>Sooner or later it was inevitable that he must feel more keenly the +death of a father who, until in the shadow of impending disaster, had +never offered him a very close intimacy. Their relations had been merely +warm and pleasant—an easy camaraderie between friends—neither +questioned the other's rights to reticence and privacy. Their mutual +silence concerning business pursuits was instinctive; neither father nor +son understood the other's affairs, nor were they interested except in +the success of a good comrade.</p> + +<p>It was inevitable that, in years to come, the realisation of his loss +would become keener and deeper; but now, in the reaction from shock, and +in the anxiety and stress and dire necessity for activity, only the +surface sorrow was understood—the pity of it, the distressing +circumstances surrounding the death of a good father, a good friend, and +a personally upright man.</p> + +<p>The funeral was private; only the immediate family attended. Duane had +written to Geraldine, Kathleen, and Scott not to come, and he had also +asked if he might not go to them when the chance arrived.</p> + +<p>And now the chance had come at last, in the dead of winter; but the +prospect of escape to Geraldine brightened the whole world for him and +gilded the snowy streets of the city with that magic radiance no +flaming planet ever cast.</p> + +<p>He had already shipped a crate of canvases to Roya-Neh; his trunk had +gone, and now, checking with an amused shrug a natural impulse to hail a +cab, he swung his suit-case and himself aboard a car, bound for the +Patroons Club, where he meant to lunch before taking the train for +Roya-Neh.</p> + +<p>He had not been to the club since the catastrophe and his father's +death, and he was very serious and sombre and slightly embarrassed when +he entered.</p> + +<p>A servant took his coat and suit-case with marked but subdued respect. +Men whom he knew and some men whom he scarcely knew at all made it a +point to speak to him or bow to him with a cordiality too pointed not to +affect him, because in it he recognised the acceptance of what he had +fought for—the verdict that publicly exonerated his father from +anything worse than a bad but honest mistake.</p> + +<p>For a second or two he stood in the great marble rotunda looking around +him. In that club familiar figures were lacking—men whose social and +financial position only a few months before seemed impregnable, men who +had gone down in ruin, one or two who had perished by their own hand, +several whose physical and financial stamina had been shattered at the +same terrible moment. Some were ill, some dead, some had resigned, +others had been forced to write their resignations—such men as Dysart +for example, and James Skelton, now in prison, unable to furnish bail.</p> + +<p>But the Patroons was a club of men above the average; a number among +them even belonged to the Pyramid; and the financial disasters of that +summer and winter had spared no club in the five boroughs and no +membership list had been immune from the sinister consequences of a +crash that had resounded from ocean to ocean and had set humble and +great scurrying to cover in every Bourse of the civilised world.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">As he entered the dining-room and passed to his usual table, he caught +sight of Delancy Grandcourt lunching alone at the table directly behind +him.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Delancy," he said; "shall we join forces?"</p> + +<p>"I'd be glad to; it's very kind of you, Duane," replied Grandcourt, +showing his pleasure at the proposal in the direct honesty of his +response. Few men considered it worth while to cultivate Grandcourt. To +lunch with him was a bore; a tête-à-tête with him assumed the +proportions of a visitation; his slowness and stupidity had become +proverbial in that club; and yet almost the only foundation for it had +been Dysart's attitude toward him; and men's estimate of him was the +more illogical because few men really cared for Dysart's opinions. But +Dysart had introduced him, elected him, and somehow had contrived to +make the public accept his half-sneering measure of Grandcourt as +Grandcourt's true stature. And the man, being shy, reticent, slow to +anger, slower still to take his own part, was tolerated and +good-humouredly avoided when decently possible. So much for the average +man's judgment of an average man.</p> + +<p>Seated opposite to Duane, Grandcourt expressed his pleasure at seeing +him with a simplicity that touched the other. Then, in perfectly good +taste, but with great diffidence, he spoke of Duane's bereavement.</p> + +<p>For a little while they asked and answered those amiably formal +questions convention requires under similar circumstances; then Duane +spoke of Dysart gravely, because new rumours were rife concerning him, +even a veiled hint of possible indictment and arrest.</p> + +<p>"I hope not," said Grandcourt, his heavy features becoming troubled; "he +is a broken man, and no court and jury can punish him more severely than +he has been punished. Nor do I know what they could get out of him. He +has nothing left; everything he possessed has been turned over. He sits +all day in a house that is no longer his, doing nothing, hoping nothing, +hearing nothing, except the childish babble of his old father or the +voices from the hall below, where his servants are fighting off +reporters and cranks and people with grievances. Oh, I tell you, Duane, +it's pitiable, all right!"</p> + +<p>"There was a rumour yesterday of his suicide," said Duane in a low +voice. "I did not credit it."</p> + +<p>Grandcourt shook his head: "He never would do that. He totally lacks +whatever you call it—cowardice or courage—to do that. It is not like +Dysart; it is not in him to do it. He never will, never could. I know +him, Duane."</p> + +<p>Duane nodded.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt spoke again: "He cares for few things; life is one of them. +His father, his social position, his harmless—success with women—" +Grandcourt hesitated, caught Duane's eye. Both men's features became +expressionless.</p> + +<p>Duane said: "I had an exceedingly nice note from Rosalie the other day. +She has bought one of those double-deck apartments—but I fancy you know +about it."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Grandcourt, turning red. "She was good enough to ask my +opinion." He added with a laugh: "I shouldn't think anybody would want +my opinion after the way I've smashed my own affairs."</p> + +<p>Duane smiled, too. "I've heard," he said, "that yours was the decentest +smash of the season. What is that scriptural business about—about a man +who lays down his fortune for a friend?"</p> + +<p>"His <i>life</i>," corrected Grandcourt, very red, "but please don't confound +what I did with anything of importance to anybody." He lighted a cigar +from the burning match offered by Duane, very much embarrassed for a +moment, then suddenly brightened up:</p> + +<p>"I'm in business now," he observed, with a glance at the other, partly +timid, partly of pride. "My father was thoroughly disgusted with me—and +nobody blames him—so he bought me a seat and, Duane, do you know that I +am doing rather well, considering that nobody is doing anything at all."</p> + +<p>Duane laughed heartily, but his mirth did not hurt Grandcourt, who sat +smiling and enjoying his cigar, and looking with confidence into a face +that was so frankly and unusually friendly.</p> + +<p>"You know I always admired you, Duane—even in the days when you never +bothered your head about me," he added naïvely. "Do you remember at +school the caricature you drew of me—all hands and feet and face, and +absolutely no body? I've got that yet; and I'm very proud to have it +when I hear people speak of your artistic success. Some day, if I ever +have any money again, I'll ask you to paint a better portrait of me, if +you have time."</p> + +<p>They laughed again over this mild pleasantry; a cordial understanding +was developing between them, which meant much to Grandcourt, for he was +a lonely man and his shyness had always deprived him of what he most +cared for—what really might have been his only resource—the friendship +of other men.</p> + +<p>For some time, while they were talking, Duane had noticed out of the +corner of his eye another man at a neighbouring table—a thin, pop-eyed, +hollow-chested, unhealthy young fellow, who, at intervals, stared +insolently at Grandcourt, and once or twice contrived to knock over his +glass of whiskey while reaching unsteadily for a fresh cigarette.</p> + +<p>The man was Stuyvesant Quest, drunk as usual, and evidently in an +unpleasant mood.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt's back was toward him; Duane paid him no particular +attention, though at moments he noticed him scowling in their direction +and seemed to hear him fussing and muttering over his whiskey and soda, +which, with cigarettes, comprised his luncheon.</p> + +<p>"I wish I were going up to Roya-Neh with you," repeated Grandcourt. "I +had a bully time up there—everybody was unusually nice to me, and I had +a fine time."</p> + +<p>"I know they'll ask you up whenever you can get away," said Duane. +"Geraldine Seagrave likes you immensely."</p> + +<p>"Does she?" exclaimed Grandcourt, blushing. "I'd rather believe that +than almost anything! She was very, very kind to me, I can tell you; and +Lord knows why, because I've nothing intellectual to offer anybody, and +I certainly am not pretty!"</p> + +<p>Duane, very much amused, looked at his watch.</p> + +<p>"When does your train leave?" asked Grandcourt.</p> + +<p>"I've an hour yet."</p> + +<p>"Come up to my room and smoke. I've better whiskey than we dispense down +here. I'm living at the club, you know. They haven't yet got over my +fiasco at home and I can't stand their joshing."</p> + +<p>Neither of the men noticed that a third man followed them, stumbling up +the stairs as they took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair +by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table +between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest +appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively at +his ease:</p> + +<p>"If you fellows don't mind, I'll butt in a moment," he said. "How are +you, Mallett? How are you?" giving Grandcourt an impertinent look; and +added: "Do you, by any chance, expect your friend Dysart in here this +afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Dysart is no longer a member of this club," said Grandcourt quietly. +"I've told you that a dozen times."</p> + +<p>"All right, I'll ask you two dozen times more, if I choose," retorted +Quest. "Why not?" And he gave him an ugly stare.</p> + +<p>The man was just drunk enough to be quarrelsome. Duane paid him no +further attention; Grandcourt asked him very civilly if he could do +anything for him.</p> + +<p>"Sure," sneered Quest. "You can tell Dysart that if I ever come across +him I'll shoot him on sight! Tell him that and be damned!"</p> + +<p>"I've already told him that," said Grandcourt with a shrug of contempt.</p> + +<p>The weak, vicious face of the other reddened:</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by taking that tone with me?" he demanded loudly. "Do +you think I won't make good?" He fumbled around in his clothing for a +moment and presently jerked a pistol free—one of the automatic kind +with rubber butt and blued barrel.</p> + +<p>"Unless you are drunker than I've ever seen you," said Grandcourt, +"you'll put up that pistol before I do."</p> + +<p>Quest cursed him steadily for a minute: "Do you think I haven't got the +nerve to use it when m' honour's 'volved? I tell you," he said thickly, +"when m' honour's 'volved——"</p> + +<p>"You get drunk, don't you?" observed Duane. "What a pitiful pup you are, +anyway. Go to bed."</p> + +<p>Quest stood swaying slightly on his heels and considering Duane with the +inquiring solemnity of one who is in process of grasping and digesting +an abstruse proposition.</p> + +<p>"B-bed?" he repeated; "me?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly. A member of this club disgracefully drunk in the afternoon +will certainly hear from the governing board unless he keeps out of +sight until he's sane again."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Quest with owlish condescension; "I'm indebted to you +for calling 'tention to m-matters which 'volve honour of m' own club +and——"</p> + +<p>His voice rambled off into a mutter; he sat or rather fell into an +armchair and lay there twitching and mumbling to himself and inspecting +his automatic pistol with prominent watery eyes.</p> + +<p>"You'd better leave that squirt-gun with me," said Grandcourt.</p> + +<p>Quest refused with an oath, and, leaning forward and hammering the +padded chair-arm with his unhealthy looking fist, he broke out into a +violent arraignment of Dysart:</p> + +<p>"Damn him!" he yelled, "I've written him, I've asked for an explanation, +I've 'm-manded t' know why his name's coupled with my sister's——"</p> + +<p>Duane leaned over, slammed the door, and turned short on Quest:</p> + +<p>"Shut up!" he said sharply. "Do you hear! Shut up!"</p> + +<p>"No, I won't shut up! I'll say what I damn please——"</p> + +<p>"Haven't you any decency at all——"</p> + +<p>"I've enough to fix Dysart good and plenty, and I'll do it! I'll—let go +of me, Mallett!—let go, I tell you or——"</p> + +<p>Duane jerked the pistol from his shaky fingers, and when Quest struggled +to his feet with a baffled howl, jammed him back into the chair again +and handed the pistol to Grandcourt, who locked it in a bureau drawer +and pocketed the key.</p> + +<p>"You belong in Matteawan," said the latter, flinging Quest back into the +chair again as the infuriated man still struggled to rise. "You +miserable drunken kid—do you think you would be enhancing your sister's +reputation by dragging her name into a murder trial? What are you, +anyway? By God, if I didn't know your sister as a thoroughbred, I'd have +you posted here for a mongrel and sent packing. The pound is your proper +place, not a club-house"; which was an astonishing speech for Delancy +Grandcourt.</p> + +<p>Again, half contemptuously, but with something almost vicious in his +violence, Grandcourt slammed young Quest back into the chair from which +he had attempted to hurl himself: "Keep quiet," he said; "you're a +particularly vile little wretch, particularly pitiable; but your sister +is a girl of gentle breeding—a sweet, charming, sincere young girl whom +everybody admires and respects. If you are anything but a gutter-mut, +you'll respect her, too, and the only way you can do it is by shutting +that unsanitary whiskey-trap of yours—and keeping it shut—and by +remaining as far away from her as you can, permanently."</p> + +<p>There were one or two more encounters, brief ones; then Quest collapsed +and began to cry. He was shaking, too, all over, apparently on the verge +of some alcoholic crisis.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt went over to Duane:</p> + +<p>"The man is sick, helplessly sick in mind and body. If you'll telephone +Bailey at the Knickerbocker Hospital, he'll send an ambulance and I'll +go up there with this fool boy. He's been like this before. Bailey knows +what to do. Telephone from the station; I don't want the club servants +to gossip any more than is necessary. Do you mind doing it?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not," said Duane. He glanced at the miserable, snivelling, +twitching creature by the fire: "Do you think he'll get over this, or +will he buy another pistol the next time he gets the jumps?"</p> + +<p>Grandcourt looked troubled:</p> + +<p>"I don't know what this breed is likely to do. He's absolutely no good. +He's the only person in the world that is left of the family—except his +sister. He's all she has had to look out for her—a fine legacy, a fine +prop for her to lean on. That's the sort of protection she has had all +her life; that's the example set her in her own home. I don't know what +she's done; it's none of my business; but, Duane, I'm for her!"</p> + +<p>"So am I."</p> + +<p>They stood together in silence for a moment; maudlin sniffles of +self-pity arose from the corner by the fire, alternating with more +hysterical and more ominous sounds presaging some spasmodic crisis.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt said: "Bunny Gray has helped me kennel this pup once or +twice. He's in the club; I think I'll send for him."</p> + +<p>"You'll need help," nodded Duane. "I'll call up the hospital on my way +to the station. Good-bye, Delancy."</p> + +<p>They shook hands and parted.</p> + +<p>At the station Duane telephoned to the hospital, got Dr. Bailey, +arranged for a room in a private ward, and had barely time to catch his +train—in fact, he was in such a hurry that he passed by without seeing +the sister of the very man for whom he had been making such significant +arrangements.</p> + +<p>She wore, as usual, her pretty chinchilla furs, but was so closely +veiled that he might not have recognised her under any circumstances. +She, however, forgetting that she was veiled, remained uncertain as to +whether his failure to speak to her had been intentional or otherwise. +She had halted, expecting him to speak; now she passed on, cheeks +burning, a faint sinking sensation in her heart.</p> + +<p>For she cared a great deal about Duane's friendship; and she was very +unhappy, and morbid and more easily wounded than ever, because somehow +it had come to her ears that rumour was busily hinting things +unthinkable concerning her—nothing definite; yet the very vagueness of +it added to her distress and horror.</p> + +<p>Around her silly head trouble was accumulating very fast since Jack +Dysart had come sauntering into her youthful isolation; and in the +beginning it had been what it usually is to lonely hearts—shy and +grateful recognition of a friendship that flattered; fascination, an +infatuation, innocent enough, until the man in the combination awoke her +to the terrors of stranger emotions involving her deeper and deeper +until she lost her head, and he, for the first time in all his career, +lost his coolly selfish caution.</p> + +<p>How any rumours concerning herself and him had arisen nobody could +explain. There never is any explanation. But they always arise.</p> + +<p>In their small but pretty house, terrible scenes had already occurred +between her and her brother—consternation, anger, and passionate denial +on her part; on his, fury, threats, maudlin paroxysms of self-pity, and +every attitude that drink and utter demoralisation can distort into a +parody on what a brother might say and do.</p> + +<p>To escape it she had gone to Tuxedo for a week; now, fear and foreboding +had brought her back—fear intensified at the very threshold of the city +when Duane seemed to look straight at her and pass her by without +recognition. Men don't do that, but she was too inexperienced to know +it; and she hastened on with a heavy heart, found a taxi-cab to take her +to the only home she had ever known, descended, and rang for admittance.</p> + +<p>In these miserable days she had come to look for hidden meaning even in +the expressionless faces of her trained servants, and now she +misconstrued the respectful smile of welcome, brushed hastily past the +maid who admitted her, and ran upstairs.</p> + +<p>Except for the servants she was alone. She rang for information +concerning her brother; nobody had any. He had not been home in a week.</p> + +<p>Her toilet, after the journey, took her two hours or more to accomplish; +it was dark at five o'clock and snowing heavily when tea was served. She +tasted it, then, unable to subdue her restlessness, went to the +telephone; and after a long delay, heard the voice she tremblingly +expected:</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Jack?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"H-how are you?"</p> + +<p>"Not very well."</p> + +<p>"Have you heard anything new about certain proceedings?" she inquired +tremulously.</p> + +<p>"Yes; she's begun them."</p> + +<p>"On—on w-what grounds?"</p> + +<p>"Not on any grounds to scare you. It will be a Western matter."</p> + +<p>Her frightened sigh of relief turned her voice to a whisper:</p> + +<p>"Has Stuyve—has a certain relative—annoyed you since I've been away?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, over the telephone, drunk, as usual."</p> + +<p>"Did he make—make any more threats, Jack?"</p> + +<p>"The usual string. Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said; "he hasn't been home in a week, they tell me. +Jack, do you think it safe for you to drop in here for a few moments +before dinner?"</p> + +<p>"Just as you say. If he comes in, there may be trouble. Which isn't a +good idea, on your account."</p> + +<p>No woman in such circumstances is moved very much by an appeal to her +caution.</p> + +<p>"But I want to see you, Jack," she said miserably.</p> + +<p>"That seems to be the only instinct that governs you," he retorted, +slightly impatient. "Can't you ever learn the elements of prudence? It +seems to me about time that you substituted common sense for immature +impulse in dealing with present problems."</p> + +<p>His voice was cold, emotionless, unpleasant. She stood with the receiver +at her ears, flushing to the tips of them under his rebuke. She always +did; she had known many, recently, but the quick pang of pain was never +any less keen. On the contrary.</p> + +<p>"Don't you want to see me? I have been away for ten days."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I want to see you, of course, but I'm not anxious to spring a mine +under myself—under us both by going into your house at this time."</p> + +<p>"My brother has not been here in a week."</p> + +<p>"Does that accidental fact bar his possible appearance ten minutes from +now?"</p> + +<p>She wondered, vaguely, whether he was afraid of anything except possible +damage to her reputation. She had, lately, considered this question on +several occasions. Being no coward, as far as mere fear for her life was +concerned, she found it difficult to attribute such fear to him. Indeed, +one of the traits in her which he found inexplicable and which he +disliked was a curious fearlessness of death—not uncommon among women +who, all their lives, have had little to live for.</p> + +<p>She said: "If I am not worth a little risk, what is my value to you?"</p> + +<p>"You talk like a baby," he retorted. "Is an interview worth risking a +scandal that will spatter the whole town?"</p> + +<p>"I never count such risks," she said wearily. "Do as you please."</p> + +<p>His voice became angry: "Haven't I enough to face already without +hunting more trouble at present? I supposed I could look to you for +sympathy and aid and common sense, and every day you call me up and +demand that I shall drop everything and fling caution to the winds, and +meet you somewhere! Every day of the year you do it——"</p> + +<p>"I have been away ten days—" she faltered, turning sick and white at +the words he was shouting through the telephone.</p> + +<p>"Well, it was understood you'd stay for a month, wasn't it? Can't you +give me time to turn around? Can't you give me half a chance? Do you +realise what I'm facing? <i>Do</i> you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'm sorry I called you; I was so miserable and lonely——"</p> + +<p>"Well, try to think of somebody besides yourself. You're not the only +miserable person in this city. I've all the misery I can carry at +present; and if you wish to help me, don't make any demands on me until +I'm clear of the tangle that's choking me."</p> + +<p>"Dear, I only wanted to help you—" she stammered, appalled at his tone +and words.</p> + +<p>"All right, then, let me alone!" he snarled, losing all self-command. +"I've stood about all of this I'm going to, from you and your brother +both! Is that plain? I want to be let alone. That is plainer still, +isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said. Her face had become deathly white; she stood frozen, +motionless, clutching the receiver in her small hand.</p> + +<p>His voice altered as he spoke again:</p> + +<p>"Don't feel hurt; I lost my temper and I ask your pardon. But I'm half +crazy with worry—you've seen to-day's papers, I suppose—so you can +understand a man's losing his temper. Please forgive me; I'll try to see +you when I can—when it's advisable. Does that satisfy you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said in a dull voice.</p> + +<p>She put away the receiver and, turning, dropped onto her bed. At eight +o'clock the maid who had come to announce dinner found her young +mistress lying there, clenched hands over her eyes, lying slim and +rigid on her back in the darkness.</p> + +<p>When the electric lamps were lighted she rose, went to the mirror and +looked steadily at herself for a long, long time.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">She tasted what was offered, seeing nothing, hearing nothing; later, in +her room, a servant came saying that Mr. Gray begged a moment's +interview on a matter of importance connected with her brother.</p> + +<p>It was the only thing that could have moved her to see him. She had +denied herself to him all that winter; she had been obliged to make it +plainer after a letter from him—a nice, stupid, boyish letter, asking +her to marry him. And her reply terminated the attempts of Bunbury Gray +to secure a hearing from the girl who had apparently taken so sudden and +so strange an aversion to a man who had been nice to her all her life.</p> + +<p>They had, at one time, been virtually engaged, after Geraldine Seagrave +had cut him loose, and before Dysart took the trouble to seriously +notice her. But Bunny was youthful and frisky and his tastes were +catholic, and it did not seem to make much difference that Dysart again +stepped casually between them in his graceful way. Yet, curiously +enough, each preserved for the other a shy sort of admiration which, +until last autumn, had made their somewhat infrequent encounters +exceedingly interesting. Autumn had altered their attitudes; Bunny +became serious in proportion to the distance she put between them—which +is of course the usual incentive to masculine importunity. They had had +one or two little scenes at Roya-Neh; the girl even hesitated, unquietly +curious, perplexed at her own attitude, yet diffidently interested in +the man.</p> + +<p>A straw was all that her balance required to incline it; Dysart dropped +it, casually. And there were no more pretty scenes between Bunny Gray +and his lady-love that autumn, only sulks from the youth, and, after +many attempts to secure a hearing, a very direct and honest letter that +winter, which had resulted in his dismissal.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">She came down to the drawing-room, looking the spectre of herself, but +her stillness and self-possession kept Bunny at his distance, staring, +restless, amazed—all of which very evident symptoms and emotions she +ignored.</p> + +<p>"I have your message," she said. "Has anything happened to my brother?"</p> + +<p>He began: "You mustn't be alarmed, but he is not very well——"</p> + +<p>"I am alarmed. Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"In the Knickerbocker Hospital."</p> + +<p>"Seriously ill?"</p> + +<p>"No. He is in a private ward——"</p> + +<p>"The—alcoholic?" she asked quietly.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, flushing with the shame that had not burnt her white +face.</p> + +<p>"May I go to him?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"No!" he exclaimed, horrified.</p> + +<p>She seated herself, hands folded loosely on her lap:</p> + +<p>"What am I to do, Bunny?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing.... I only came to tell you so that you'd know. To-morrow if +you care to telephone Bailey——"</p> + +<p>"Yes; thank you." She closed her eyes; opened them with an effort.</p> + +<p>"If you'll let me, Sylvia, I'll keep you informed," he ventured.</p> + +<p>"Would you? I'd be very glad."</p> + +<p>"Sure thing!" he said with great animation; "I'll go to the hospital as +many times a day as I am allowed, and I'll bring you back a full account +of Stuyve's progress after every visit.... May I, Sylvie?"</p> + +<p>She said nothing. He sat looking at her. He had no great amount of +intellect, but he possessed an undue proportion of heart under the +somewhat striking waistcoats which at all times characterised his +attire.</p> + +<p>"I'm terribly sorry for you," he said, his eyes very wide and round.</p> + +<p>She gazed into space, past him.</p> + +<p>"Do you—would you prefer to have me go?" he stammered.</p> + +<p>There was no reply.</p> + +<p>"Because," he said miserably, "I take it that you haven't much use for +me."</p> + +<p>No word from her.</p> + +<p>"Sylvie?"</p> + +<p>Silence; but she looked up at him. "I haven't changed," he said, and the +healthy colour turned him pink. "I—just—wanted you to know. I thought +perhaps you might like to know——"</p> + +<p>"Why?" Her voice was utterly unlike her own.</p> + +<p>"Why?" he repeated, getting redder. "I don't know—I only thought you +might—it might—amuse you—to know that I haven't changed——"</p> + +<p>"As others have? Is that what you mean, Bunny?"</p> + +<p>"No, no, I didn't think—I didn't mean——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you did. Why not say it to me? You mean that you, and others, have +heard rumours. You mean that you, unlike others, are trying to make me +understand that you are still loyal to me. Is that it?"</p> + +<p>"Y-yes. Good Lord! Loyal! Why, of course I am. Why, you didn't suppose +I'd be anything else, did you?"</p> + +<p>She opened her pallid lips to speak and could not.</p> + +<p>"Loyal!" he repeated indignantly. "There's no merit in that when a man's +been in love with a girl all his life and didn't know it until she'd got +good and tired of him! You know I'm for you every time, Sylvia; what's +the game in pretending you didn't know it?"</p> + +<p>"No game.... I didn't—know it."</p> + +<p>"Well, you do now, don't you?"</p> + +<p>Her face was colourless as marble. She said, looking at him: "Suppose +the rumour is true?"</p> + +<p>His face flamed: "You don't know what you are saying!" he retorted, +horrified.</p> + +<p>"Suppose it is true?"</p> + +<p>"Sylvia—for Heaven's sake——"</p> + +<p>"Suppose it <i>is</i> true," she repeated in a dead, even voice; "how loyal +would you remain to me then?"</p> + +<p>"As loyal as I am now!" he answered angrily, "if you insist on my +answering such a silly question——"</p> + +<p>"Is that your answer?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly. But——"</p> + +<p>"Are you <i>sure</i>?"</p> + +<p>He glared at her; something struck coldly through him, checking breath +and pulse, then releasing both till the heavy beating of his heart made +speech impossible.</p> + +<p>"I thought you were not sure," she said.</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> sure!" he broke out. "Good God, Sylvia, what are you doing to +me?"</p> + +<p>"Destroying your faith in me."</p> + +<p>"You can't! I love you!"</p> + +<p>She gave a little gasp:</p> + +<p>"The rumour <i>is</i> true," she said.</p> + +<p>He reeled to his feet; she sat looking up at him, white, silent hands +twisted on her lap.</p> + +<p>"Now you know," she managed to say. "Why don't you go? If you've any +self-respect, you'll go. I've told you what I am; do you want me to +speak more plainly?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said between his teeth.</p> + +<p>"Very well; what do you wish to know?"</p> + +<p>"Only one thing.... Do you—care for him?"</p> + +<p>She sat, minute after minute, head bent, thinking, thinking. He never +moved a muscle; and at last she lifted her head.</p> + +<p>"No," she said.</p> + +<p>"Could you care for—me?"</p> + +<p>She made a gesture as though to check him, half rose, fell back, sat +swaying a moment, and suddenly tumbled over sideways, lying a white heap +on the rug at his feet.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XX<br />IN SEARCH OF HERSELF</a></h2> + + +<p>As his train slowed down through the darkness and stopped at the +snow-choked station, Duane, carrying suit-case, satchel, and fur coat, +swung himself off the icy steps of the smoker and stood for a moment on +the platform in the yellow glare of the railway lanterns, looking about +him.</p> + +<p>Sleigh-bells sounded near—chiming through the still, cold air; he +caught sight of two shadowy restive horses, a gaily plumed sleigh, and, +at the same moment, the driver leaned sideways from her buffalo-robed +seat, calling out to him by name.</p> + +<p>"Why, Kathleen!" he exclaimed, hastening forward. "Did you really drive +down here all alone to meet me?"</p> + +<p>She bent over and saluted him, demure, amused, bewitchingly pretty in +her Isabella bear furs:</p> + +<p>"I really did, Duane, without even a groom, so we could talk about +everything and anything all the way home. Give your checks to the +station agent—there he is!—Oh, Mr. Whitley, would you mind sending up +Mr. Mallett's trunks to-night? Thank you <i>so</i> much. Now, Duane, +dear——"</p> + +<p>He tossed suit-case and satchel into the sleigh, put on his fur coat, +and climbing up beside Kathleen, burrowed into the robes.</p> + +<p>"I tell you what," he said seriously, "you're getting to be a howling +beauty; not just an ordinary beauty, but a miracle. Do you mind if I +kiss you again?"</p> + +<p>"Not after that," she said, presenting him a fresh-curved cheek tinted +with rose, and snowy cold. Then, laughing, she swung the impatient +horses to the left; a jingling shower of golden bell-notes followed; and +they were off through the starlight, tearing northward across the snow.</p> + +<p>"Duane!" she said, pulling the young horses down into a swift, swinging +trot, "<i>what</i> do you think! Geraldine doesn't know you're coming!"</p> + +<p>"Why not?" he asked, surprised. "I telegraphed."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but she's been on the mountain with old Miller for three days. +Three of your letters are waiting for her; and then came your telegram, +and of course Scott and I thought we ought to open it."</p> + +<p>"Of course. But what on earth sent Geraldine up the Golden Dome in the +dead of winter?"</p> + +<p>Kathleen shook her pretty head:</p> + +<p>"She's turned into the most uncontrollable sporting proposition you ever +heard of! She's up there at Lynx Peak camp, with her rifle, and old +Miller. They're after that big boar—the biggest, horridest thing in the +whole forest. I saw him once. He's disgusting. Scott objected, and so +did I, but, somehow, I'm becoming reconciled to these break-neck +enterprises she goes in for so hard—so terribly hard, Duane! and all I +do is to fuss a little and make a few tearful objections, and she laughs +and does what she pleases."</p> + +<p>He said: "It is better, is it not, to let her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," returned Kathleen quietly, "it is better. That is why I say very +little."</p> + +<p>There was a moment's silence, but the constraint did not last.</p> + +<p>"It's twenty below zero, my poor friend," observed Kathleen. "Luckily, +there is no wind to-night, but, all the same, you ought to keep in touch +with your nose and ears."</p> + +<p>Duane investigated cautiously.</p> + +<p>"My features are still sticking to my face," he announced; "is it really +twenty below? It doesn't seem so."</p> + +<p>"It is. Yesterday the thermometers registered thirty below, but nobody +here minds it when the wind doesn't blow; and Geraldine has acquired the +most exquisite colour!—and she's so maddeningly pretty, Duane, and +actually plump, in that long slim way of hers.... And there's another +thing; she is <i>happier</i> than she has been for a long, long while."</p> + +<p>"Has that fact any particular significance to you?" he asked slowly.</p> + +<p>"Vital!... Do you understand me, Duane, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>A moment later she called in her clear voice: "Gate, please!" A lantern +flashed; a door opened in the lodge; there came a crunch of snow, a +creak, and the gates of Roya-Neh swung wide in the starlight.</p> + +<p>Kathleen nodded her thanks to the keeper, let the whip whistle, and +spent several minutes in consequence recovering control of the fiery +young horses who were racing like scared deer. The road was wide, +crossed here and there by snowy "rides," and bordered by the splendid +Roya-Neh forests; wide enough to admit a white glow from myriads of +stars. Never had Duane seen so many stars swarming in the heavens; the +winter constellations were magnificent, their diamond-like lustre +silvered the world.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you want to hear all the news, all the gossip, from three +snow-bound rustics, don't you?" she asked. "Well, then, let me +immediately report a most overwhelming tragedy. Scott has just +discovered that several inconsiderate entomologists, who died before he +was born, all wrote elaborate life histories of the Rose-beetle. Isn't +it pathetic? And he's worked <i>so</i> hard, and he's been like a father to +the horrid young grubs, feeding them nice juicy roots, taking their +weights and measures, photographing them, counting their degraded +internal organs—oh, it is too vexing! Because, if you should ask me, I +may say that I've been a mother to them, too, and it enrages me to find +out that all those wretched, squirming, thankless creatures have been +petted and studied and have had their legs counted and their Bertillon +measurements taken years before either Scott or I came into this old +fraud of a scientific world!"</p> + +<p>Duane's unrestrained laughter excited her merriment; the star-lit +woodlands rang with it and the treble chiming of the sleigh-bells.</p> + +<p>"What on earth will he find to do now?" asked Duane.</p> + +<p>"He's going to see it through, he says. Isn't it fine of him? There is +just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying +entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next +summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out +what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something +exciting, Duane. Promise you won't breathe one word!"</p> + +<p>"Not a word!"</p> + +<p>"Well, then—Scott was going to tell you, anyway!—we <i>think</i>—but, of +course, we are not sure by any means!—but we venture to think that we +have discovered a disease which kills Rose-beetles. We don't know +exactly what it is yet, or how they get it, but we are practically +convinced that it is a sort of fungus."</p> + +<p>She was very serious, very earnest, charming in her conscientious +imitation of that scientific caution which abhors speculation and never +dares assert anything except dry and proven facts.</p> + +<p>"What are you and Scott aiming at? Are you going to try to start an +epidemic among the Rose-beetles?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's far too early to even outline our ideas——"</p> + +<p>"That's right; don't tell anything Scott wants to keep quiet about! I'll +never say a word, Kathleen, only if you'll take my advice, feed 'em +fungus! Stuff 'em with it three times a day—give it to them boiled, +fried, au gratin, à la Newburg! That'll fetch 'em!... How is old Scott, +anyway?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly well," she said demurely. "He informs us daily that he weighs +one hundred and ninety pounds, and stands six feet two in his +snow-shoes. He always mentions it when he tells us that he is going to +scrub your face in a snow-drift, and Geraldine invariably insists that +he isn't man enough. You know, as a matter of fact, we're all behaving +like very silly children up here. Goodness knows what the servants +think." Her smiling face became graver.</p> + +<p>"I am so glad that matters are settled and that there's enough of your +estate left to keep your mother and Naïda in comfort."</p> + +<p>He nodded. "How is Scott coming out?"</p> + +<p>"Why—he'll tell you. I don't believe he has very much left. +Geraldine's part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town, +if she and Scott conclude to keep it. Old Mr. Tappan has been quite +wonderful. Why, Duane, he's a perfect old dear; and we all are so +terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid attitude +toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod."</p> + +<p>"He's a funny old duck," mused Duane. "That son of his, Peter, has had +the 'indiwidool cultiwated' clean out of him. He's only a type, like +Gibson's drawings of Tag's son. Old Tappan may be as honest as a block +of granite, but it's an awful thing that he should ever have presided +over the destinies of children."</p> + +<p>Kathleen sighed. "According to his light he was faithful. I know that +his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children +driven into themselves until they were becoming too self-centred to care +for anything else—to realise that there was anything else or anybody +else except their wishes and themselves to consider.... But, Duane, you +see the right quality was latent in them. They are coming out—they have +emerged splendidly. It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course, +but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not +better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual +social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own +ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set +with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in the +Seagraves was—weakness."</p> + +<p>Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Tappan's poison may have been the antidote for them in +this case. Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine—suffered?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Very—much?"</p> + +<p>"Very much, Duane. Has she said nothing about it to you in her letters?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing since she went to town that time. Every letter flies the red +cross. Does she still suffer?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think so. She seems so wonderfully happy—so vigorous, in such +superb physical condition. For a month I have not seen that pitiful, +haunted expression come into her eyes. And it is not mere restlessness +that drives her into perpetual motion now; it's a new delight in living +hard and with all her might every moment of the day!... She overdoes it; +you will turn her energy into other channels. She's ready for you, I +think."</p> + +<p>They drove on in silence for a few minutes, then swung into a broader +avenue of pines. Straight ahead glimmered the lights of Roya-Neh.</p> + +<p>Duane said naïvely: "I don't suppose I could get up to Lynx Peak camp +to-night, could I?"</p> + +<p>Kathleen threw back her head, making no effort to control her laughter.</p> + +<p>"It isn't necessary," she managed to explain; "I sent a messenger up the +mountain with a note to her saying that matters of importance required +her immediate return. She'll come down to-night by sleigh from The Green +Pass and Westgate Centre."</p> + +<p>"Won't she be furious?" he inquired, with a hypocritical side glance at +Kathleen, who laughed derisively and drew in the horses under the +porte-cochère. A groom took their heads; Duane swung Kathleen clear to +the steps just as Scott Seagrave, hearing sleigh-bells, came out, +bareheaded, his dinner-jacket wide open, as though he luxuriated in the +bitter air.</p> + +<p>"Good work!" he said. "How are you, Duane? Geraldine arrived from The +Green Pass about five minutes ago. She thinks you're sleighing, +Kathleen, and she's tremendously curious to know why you want her."</p> + +<p>"She probably suspects," said Kathleen, disappointed.</p> + +<p>"No, she doesn't. I began to talk business immediately, and I know she +thinks that some of Mr. Tappan's lawyers are coming. So they are—next +month," he added with a grin, and, turning on Duane:</p> + +<p>"I think I'll begin festivities by washing your face in the snow."</p> + +<p>"You're not man enough," remarked the other; and the next moment they +had clinched and were swaying and struggling all over the terrace, to +the scandal of the servants peering from the door.</p> + +<p>"He's tired and half frozen!" exclaimed Kathleen; "what a brute you are +to bully him, Scott!"</p> + +<p>"I'll include you in a moment," he panted, loosing Duane and snatching a +handful of snow. Whereupon she caught up sufficient snow to fill the +hollow of her driving glove, powdered his face thoroughly with the +feathery flakes, picked up her skirt and ran for it, knowing full well +she could expect no mercy.</p> + +<p>Duane watched their reckless flight through the hall and upstairs, then +walked in, dropped his coat, and advanced across the heavy rugs toward +the fireplace.</p> + +<p>On the landing above he heard Geraldine's laughter, then silence, then +her clear, careless singing as she descended the stairs:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +"Lisetto quittée la plaine,<br /> +<span class="i2">Moi perdi bonheur à moi—</span><br /> +Yeux à moi semblent fontaine<br /> +<span class="i2">Depuis moi pas miré toi!"</span> +</p> + +<p>At the doorway she halted, seeing a man's figure silhouetted against the +firelight. Then she moved forward inquiringly, the ruddy glow full in +her brown eyes; and a little shock passed straight through her.</p> + +<p>"Duane!" she whispered.</p> + +<p>He caught her in his arms, kissed her, locked her closer; her arms +sought his head, clung, quivered, fell away; and with a nervous movement +she twisted clear of him and stood breathing fast, the clamour of her +heart almost suffocating her. And when again he would have drawn her to +him she eluded him, wide-eyed, flushed, lips parted in the struggle for +speech which came at last, brokenly:</p> + +<p>"Dear, you must not take me—that way—yet. I am not ready, Duane. You +must give me time!"</p> + +<p>"Time! Is anything—has anything gone wrong?"</p> + +<p>"No—oh, no, no, no! Don't you understand I must take my own time? I've +won the right to it; I'm winning out, Duane—winning back myself. I must +have my little year of self-respect. Oh, <i>can't</i> you understand that you +mustn't sweep me off my feet this way?—that I'm too proud to go to +you—have you take me while there remains the faintest shadow of risk?"</p> + +<p>"But I don't care! I want you!" he cried.</p> + +<p>"I love you for it; I want you, Duane. But be fair to me; don't take me +until I am as clean and straight and untainted as the girl I was—as I +am becoming—as I will be—surely, surely—my darling!"</p> + +<p>She caught his hands in hers and, close to him, looked into his eyes +smilingly, tearfully, and a little proudly. The sensitive under-lip +quivered; but she held her head high.</p> + +<p>"Don't ask me to give you what is less perfect than I can make it. Don't +let me remember my gift and be ashamed, dear. There must be no memory of +your mistaken generosity to trouble me in the years to come—the long, +splendid years with you. Let me always remember that I gave you myself +as I really can be; let me always know that neither your love nor +compassion were needed to overlook any flaw in what I give."</p> + +<p>She bent her proud little head and laid her lips on his hands, which she +held close between her own.</p> + +<p>"You can so easily carry me by storm, Duane; and in your arms I might be +weak enough to waver and forget and promise to give you now what there +is of me if you demanded it. Don't ask it; don't carry me out of my +depth. There is more to me than I can give you yet. Let me wait to give +it lest I remember your unfairness and my humiliation through the years +to come."</p> + +<p>She lifted her lips to his, offering them; he kissed her; then, with a +little laugh, she abandoned his hands and stepped back, mocking, +tormenting, enjoying his discomfiture.</p> + +<p>"It's cruel, isn't it, you poor lamb! But do you know the year is +already flying very, very fast? Do you think I'm not counting the +days?"—and, suddenly yielding—"if you wish—if you truly do wish it, +dear, I will marry you on the very day that the year—my year—ends. +Come over here"—she seated herself and made a place for him—"and you +won't caress me too much—will you? You wouldn't make me unhappy, would +you?... Why, yes, I suppose that I might let you touch me +occasionally.... And kiss me—at rare intervals.... But not—as we +have.... You won't, will you? Then you may sit here—a little nearer if +you think it wise—and I'm ready to listen to your views concerning +anything on earth, Duane, even including love and wedlock."</p> + +<p>It was very hard for them to judge just what they might or might not +permit each other—how near it was perfectly safe to sit, how long they +might, with impunity, look into each other's eyes in that odd and rather +silly fashion which never seems to be out of date.</p> + +<p>What worried him was the notion that if she would only marry him at once +her safety was secured beyond question; but she explained very sweetly +that her safety was almost secured already; that, if let alone, she was +at present in absolute command of her fate, mistress of her desires, in +full tide of self-control. Now all she required was an interval to +develop character and self-mastery, so that they could meet on even +ground and equal terms when the day arrived for her to surrender to him +the soul and body she had regained.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's all right," he said with a sigh, but utterly +unconvinced. "You always were fair about things, and if it's your idea +of justice to me and to yourself, that settles it."</p> + +<p>"You dear old stupid!" she said, tenderly amused; "it is the best thing +for our future. The 'sphere of influence' and the 'balance of power' are +as delicate matters to adjust in marriage as they are in world-politics. +You're going to be too famous a painter for your wife to be anything +less than a thorough woman."</p> + +<p>She drew a little away from him, bent her head and clasped both hands +around her knee.</p> + +<p>"There is another reason why I should be in autocratic command over +myself when we marry.... It is difficult for me to explain to you.... Do +you remember that I wrote you once that I was—afraid to marry +you—<i>not</i> for our own sakes?"</p> + +<p>Her young face was grave and serious; she bent her gaze on her ringless +fingers.</p> + +<p>"That," she said, "is the most vital and—sacred reason of all."</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear." He did not dare to touch her, scarcely dared look at the +pure, thoughtful profile until she lifted her head and her fearless eyes +sought his.</p> + +<p>And they smiled, unembarrassed, unafraid.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">"Those people are deliberately leaving us here to spoon," she declared +indignantly. "I know perfectly well that dinner was announced ages ago!" +And, raising her voice: "Scott, you silly ninny! Where in the world are +you?"</p> + +<p>Scott appeared with alacrity from the library, evidently detained there +in hunger and impatience by Kathleen, who came in a moment later, pretty +eyes innocently perplexed.</p> + +<p>"I declare," she said, "it is nine o'clock and dinner is supposed to be +served at eight!" And she seemed more surprised than ever when old +Howker, who evidently had been listening off stage, entered with +reproachful dignity and announced that ceremony.</p> + +<p>And it was the gayest kind of a ceremony, for they ate and chattered and +laughed there together as inconsequentially as four children, and when +Howker, with pomp and circumstance, brought in a roast boar's head +garnished with holly-like crimson elder, they all stood up and cheered +as though they really liked the idea of eating it. However, there was, +from the same animal, a saddle to follow the jowl, which everybody +tasted and only Scott really liked; and, to Duane's uneasy surprise, +great silver tankards of delicious home-brewed ale were set at every +cover except Geraldine's.</p> + +<p>Catching his eye she shrugged slightly and smiled; and her engaging +glance returned to him at intervals, reassuring, humorously disdainful; +and her serenely amused smile seemed to say:</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow, please enjoy your ale. There is not the slightest +desire on my part to join you."</p> + +<p>"That isn't a very big wild boar," observed Scott, critically eyeing the +saddle.</p> + +<p>"It's a two-year-old," admitted Geraldine. "I only shot him because Lacy +said we were out of meat."</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> killed him!" exclaimed Duane.</p> + +<p>She gave him a condescending glance; and Scott laughed.</p> + +<p>"She and Miller save this establishment from daily famine," he said. +"You have no idea how many deer and boar it takes to keep the game +within limits and ourselves and domestics decently fed. Just look at the +heads up there on the walls." He waved his arm around the oak +wainscoting, where, at intervals, the great furry heads of wild boar +loomed in the candlelight, ears and mane on end, eyes and white +sabre-like tusks gleaming. "Those are Geraldine's," he said with +brotherly pride.</p> + +<p>"I want to shoot one, too!" said Duane firmly. "Do you think I'm going +to let my affianced put it all over me like that?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Isn't</i> it like a man?" said Geraldine, appealing to Kathleen. "They +simply can't endure it if a girl ventures competition——"</p> + +<p>"You talk like a suffragette," observed her brother. "Duane doesn't +care how many piglings you shoot; he wants to go out alone and get that +old grandfather of all boars, the one which kept you on the mountain for +the last three days——"</p> + +<p>"<i>My</i> boar!" she cried indignantly. "I won't have it! I won't let him. +Oh, Duane, <i>am</i> I a pig to want to manage this affair when I've been +after him all winter?—and he's the biggest, grayest, wiliest thing you +ever saw—a perfectly enormous silvery fellow with two pairs of Japanese +sabre-sheaths for tusks and a mane like a lion, and a double bend in his +nose and——"</p> + +<p>Shouts of laughter checked her flushed animation.</p> + +<p>"Of course I'm not going to sneak out all alone and pot your old pig," +said Duane; "I'll find one for myself on some other mountain——"</p> + +<p>"But I want you to shoot with me!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I wanted +you to see me stalk this boar and mark him down, and have you kill him. +Oh, Duane, that was the fun. I've been saving him, I really have. Miller +knows that I had a shot once—a pretty good one—and wouldn't take it. I +killed a four-year near Hurryon instead, just to save that one——"</p> + +<p>"You're the finest little sport in the land!" said Duane, "and we are +just tormenting you. Of course I'll go with you, but I'm blessed if I +pull trigger on that gentleman pig——"</p> + +<p>"You <i>must</i>! I've saved him. Scott, make him say he will! Kathleen, this +is really too annoying! A girl plans and plans and pictures to herself +the happiness and surprise she's going to give a man, and he's too +stupid to comprehend——"</p> + +<p>"Meaning me!" observed Duane. "But I leave it to you, Scott; a man +can't do such a thing decently——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you silly people," laughed Kathleen; "you may never again see that +boar. Denman, keeper at Northgate when Mr. Atwood owned the estate, told +me that everybody had been after that boar and nobody ever got a shot at +him. Which," she added, "does not surprise me, as there are some hundred +square miles of mountain and forest on this estate, and Scott is lazy +and aging very fast."</p> + +<p>"By the way, Sis, you say you got a four-year near The Green Pass?"</p> + +<p>She nodded, busy with her bon-bon.</p> + +<p>"Was it exciting?" asked Duane, secretly eaten up with pride over her +achievements and sportsmanship.</p> + +<p>"No, not very." She went on with her bon-bon, then glanced up at her +brother, askance, like a bad child afraid of being reported.</p> + +<p>"Old Miller is so fussy," she said—"the old, spoilt tyrant! He is +really very absurd sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Oho!" said Scott suspiciously, "so Miller is coming to me again!"</p> + +<p>"He—I'm afraid he is. Did you," appealing to Kathleen, "ever know a +more obstinate, unreasoning old man——"</p> + +<p>"Geraldine! What did you do!" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Scott, annoyed, "what the deuce have you been up to now? +Miller is perfectly right; he's an old hunter and knows his business, +and when he comes to me and complains that you take fool risks, he's +doing his duty!"</p> + +<p>He turned to Duane:</p> + +<p>"That idiot girl," he said, nodding toward his abashed sister, "knocked +over a boar last month, ran up to look at his tusks, and was hurled +into a snowdrift by the beast, who was only creased. He went for Miller, +too, and how he and my sister ever escaped without a terrible slashing +before Geraldine shot the brute, nobody knows.... There's his head up +there—the wicked-looking one over the fireplace."</p> + +<p>"That's not good sportsmanship," said Duane gravely.</p> + +<p>Geraldine hung her head, colouring.</p> + +<p>"I know it; I mean to keep cool; truly, I do. But things happen so +quickly——"</p> + +<p>"Why are you afraid Miller is going to complain?" interrupted her +brother.</p> + +<p>"Scott—it wasn't anything very much—that is, I didn't think so. You'd +have done it—you know it's a point of honour to track down wounded +game."</p> + +<p>She turned to Duane:</p> + +<p>"The Green Pass feeding-ground was about a thousand yards ahead in the +alders, and I made Miller wait while I crept up. There was a fine boar +feeding about two hundred yards off, and I fired and he went over like a +cat in a fit, and then up and off, and I after him, and Miller after me, +telling me to look out."</p> + +<p>She laughed excitedly, and made a little gesture. "That's just why I +ran—to look out!—and the trail was deep and strong and not much +blood-dust. I was so vexed, so distressed, because it was almost sunset +and the boar seemed to be going strongly and faster than a grayhound. +And suddenly Miller shouted something about 'scrub hemlock'—I didn't +know he meant for me to halt!—So I—I"—she looked anxiously at her +brother—"I jumped into the scrub and kicked him up before I knew +it—and he—he tore my kilts—just one or two tears, but it didn't +wound me, Scott, it only just made my leg black and blue—and, anyway, I +got him——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord," groaned her brother, "don't you know enough to reconnoitre a +wounded boar in the scrub? <i>I</i> don't know why he didn't rip you. Do you +want to be killed by a <i>pig</i>? What's the use of being all cut and bitten +to pieces, anyway?"</p> + +<p>"No use, dear," she admitted so meekly that Duane scarcely managed to +retain his gravity.</p> + +<p>She came over and humbly slipped her arm through his as they all rose +from the table.</p> + +<p>"Don't think I'm a perfect idiot," she said under her breath; "it's only +inexperience under excitement. You'll see that I've learned a lot when +we go out together. Miller will admit that I'm usually prudent, because, +two weeks ago, I hit a boar and he charged me, and my rifle jammed, and +I went up a tree! Wasn't that prudent?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly," he said gravely; "only I'd feel safer if you went up a tree +in the first place and remained there. What a child you are, anyway!"</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she confided in him, "I am a regular baby sometimes. I do +the silliest things in the woods. Once I gave Miller the slip and went +off and built a doll's house out of snow and made three snow dolls and +played with them! Isn't that the silliest thing? And another time a boar +came out by the Westgate Oaks, and he was a black, hairy fellow, and so +funny with his chin-whiskers all dotted with icicles that I began to say +aloud:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +'I swear by the beard<br /> +<span class="i05">On my chinny-chin-chin—'</span> +</p> + +<p>And of course he was off before I could pull trigger for laughing. +Isn't that foolish?"</p> + +<p>"Adorably," he whispered. "You are finding the little girl in the +garden, Geraldine."</p> + +<p>She looked up at him, serious, wistful.</p> + +<p>"It's the boy who found her; I only helped. But I want to bring her home +all alone."</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XXI<br />THE GOLDEN HOURS</a></h2> + + +<p>The weather was unsuitable for hunting. It snowed for a week, thawed +over night, then froze, then snowed again, but the moon that night +promised a perfect day.</p> + +<p>Young Mallett supposed that he was afoot and afield before anybody else +in house could be stirring, but as he pitched his sketching easel on the +edges of the frozen pasture brook, and opened his field-box, a far hail +from the white hill-top arrested him.</p> + +<p>High poised on the snowy crest above him, clothed in white wool from +collar to knee-kilts, and her thick clustering hair flying, she came +flashing down the hill on her skis, soared high into the sunlight, +landed, and shot downward, pole balanced.</p> + +<p>Like a silvery meteor she came flashing toward him, then her +hair-raising speed slackened, and swinging in a widely gracious curve +she came gliding across the glittering field of snow and quietly stopped +in front of him.</p> + +<p>"Since when, angel, have you acquired this miraculous accomplishment?" +he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Do I do it well, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"A swallow from paradise isn't in your class, dear," he admitted, +fascinated. "Is it easy—this new stunt of yours?"</p> + +<p>"Try it," she said so sweetly that he missed the wickedness in her +smile.</p> + +<p>So, balancing, one hand on his shoulder, she disengaged her moccasins +from the toe-clips, and he shoved his felt timber-jack boots into the +leather loops, and leaning on the pointed pole which she handed him, +gazed with sudden misgiving down the gentle acclivity below. She +encouraged him; he listened, nodding his comprehension of her +instructions, but still gazing down the hill, a trifle ill at ease.</p> + +<p>However, as skates and snow-shoes were no mystery to him, he glanced at +the long, narrow runners curved upward at the extremities, with more +assurance, and his masculine confidence in all things masculine +returned. Then he started, waved his hand, smiling his condescension; +then he realised that he was going faster than he desired to; then his +legs began to do disrespectful things to him. The treachery of his own +private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled +deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly +wide of his body. He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his +trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the +episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting pinwheel of snow.</p> + +<p>Like all masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back, +savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first +toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own +way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to +the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing +heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below without +capsizing.</p> + +<p>She praised him warmly, rescued his wool gloves and cap from snowy +furrows into which their owner had angrily but helplessly dived; and +then she stepped into her skis and ascended the hill beside him with +that long-limbed, graceful, swinging stride which he had ventured to +believe might become him also.</p> + +<p>He said hopelessly: "If you expect me to hunt wild boar with you on +skis, there'll be some wild and widely distributed shooting in this +county. How can I hit a boar while describing unwilling ellipses in +mid-air or how can I run away from one while I'm sticking nose down in a +snow-drift?"</p> + +<p>Too faint with laughter to reply, she stood leaning on her trailing-pole +and looking over his shoulder as he repitched his sketching easel, +squeezed the colours from the leaden tubes, and set his palette.</p> + +<p>"I'm horribly hungry," he grumbled; "too hungry to make a decent sketch. +How cold is it, anyway? I believe that this paint is trying to freeze on +my palette!"</p> + +<p>"What are you going to paint?" she asked, her rounded chin resting on +his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"That frozen brook." He looked around at her, hesitating; and she +laughed and nodded her comprehension.</p> + +<p>"You want to make a sketch of me, dear. Why don't you ask me? Do you +think I'd refuse?"</p> + +<p>"It's so beastly cold to ask you to stand still——"</p> + +<p>"Cold! Why, it's much warmer; it's ten above zero. I'll stand wherever +you wish. Where do you want me; here above you, against the snow and +sky?"</p> + +<p>The transcendent loveliness of the picture she made set that excited +thrill quivering through every vein; but he took a matter-of-fact grip +on his emotions because good work is done in cold blood, even if it +sometimes may be conceived in exaltation.</p> + +<p>"Don't move," he said serenely; "you are exactly right as you stand. +Tell me the very moment you feel cold. Promise?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear."</p> + +<p>His freezing colours bothered him, and at times he used them almost like +pastels. He worked rapidly, calmly, and with that impersonal precision +that made every brush stroke an integral factor in the ensemble.</p> + +<p>At almost any stage of the study the accidental brilliancy of his +progress might have been terminated abruptly, leaving a sketch rarely +beautiful in its indicated and unfinished promise.</p> + +<p>But the pitfalls of the accidental had no allurements for him. She +rested, changed position, stretched her limbs, took a long circle or +two, skimming the hillside when she needed the reaction. But always she +came swinging back again to stand and watch her lover with a +half-smiling, half-tender gaze that tried his sangfroid terribly when he +strove to catch it and record it in the calm and scientific technique +which might excite anybody except the workman.</p> + +<p>"Am I pretty, Duane?"</p> + +<p>"Annoyingly divine. I'm trying not to think of it, dear, until my hand +and heart may wobble with impunity. Are you cold?"</p> + +<p>"No.... Do you think you'll make a full-fledged picture from this +motive?"</p> + +<p>"How did you guess?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I've a premonition that your reputation is going to soar +up like a blazing star from this waste of snow around us.... I wish—I +wish that it might be from me, through me—my humble aid—that your +glory breaks out——"</p> + +<p>"If it ever does, it will do it through you. I told you that long ago."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I've known it a long, long time, Geraldine. Without you there's nothing +to me except surface. You are the depths of me."</p> + +<p>"And you of me, Duane." Sweet eyes remote, she stood looking into space; +at peace with her soul, dreaming, content. And it was then that he +caught and imprisoned in colour the nameless beauty which was the +foundation for his first famous picture, whose snowy splendour silenced +all except those little critics who chirp automatically, eternally, on +the ruddy hearthstone of the gods.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">From the distant hill-top a voice bellowed at them through a megaphone; +and, looking aloft, they beheld Scott gesticulating.</p> + +<p>"If you two mental irresponsibles want any breakfast," he shouted, +"you'd better hustle! Miller telephones that the big boar fed below +Cloudy Mountain at sunrise!"</p> + +<p>Geraldine looked at her lover, cheeks pink with excitement. He was +immensely interested, too, and as soon as he could fold his easel, lock +up brushes and palette, protect his canvas with a fresh one faced with +cork buffers, they started for the house, discussing the chances for a +shot that afternoon.</p> + +<p>Like the most desirable and wary of most species of game, furry or +finny, the huge, heavily tusked veterans of the wild-boar family often +feed after dark, being too cunning to banquet by daylight and carouse +with the gayer blades and the big, fierce sows of the neighbourhood.</p> + +<p>Sometimes in the white gloom of snow-storms there is a chance for a +shot; sometimes in a remoter fastness a big boar may deem himself +secure enough to venture out where there are no witnesses to his +solitary gastronomic revels save an Arctic owl or two huddled high in +the hemlocks.</p> + +<p>And it was in the rocky oak-ridges of the wild country under Cloudy +Mountain that Miller had marked down the monarch of all wild pigs—the +great, shaggy, silver-tipped boar, hock-deep in snow, crunching frozen +acorns and glaring off over the gully where mile after mile of white +valley and mountain ranges stretched away, clotted and streaked with +pine.</p> + +<p>"Why don't we all go?" asked Geraldine, seating herself behind the +coffee-urn and looking cordially around at the others.</p> + +<p>"Because, dear," said Kathleen, "I haven't the slightest desire to run +after a wild boar or permit him to amble after me; and all that +reconciles me to your doing it is that Duane is going with you."</p> + +<p>"I personally don't like to kill things," observed Scott briefly. "My +sister is the primitive of this outfit. She's the slayer, the head +hunter, the lady-boss of this kraal."</p> + +<p>"Is it very horrid of me, Duane?" she asked anxiously, "to find +excitement in this sort of thing? Besides, we do need meat, and the game +must be kept thinned down by somebody. And Scott won't."</p> + +<p>"Whatever you do is all right," said Duane, laughing, "even when you +jeer at my gymnastics on skis. Oh, Lord! but I'm hungry. Scott, are you +going to take all those sausages and muffins, you bespectacled ruffian! +Kathleen, heave a plate at him!"</p> + +<p>Kathleen was too scandalised to reply; Scott surrendered the desired +muffins, and sorted the morning mail, which had just been brought in.</p> + +<p>"Nothing for you, Sis, except bills; one letter for Duane, two for +Kathleen, and the rest for me"—he examined the envelopes—"all from +brother correspondents and eager aspirants for entomological honours.... +Here's your letter, Duane!" scaling it across the table in spite of +Kathleen's protest.</p> + +<p>They had the grace to ask each other's permission to read.</p> + +<p>"Oh, listen to this!" exclaimed Scott gleefully:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>: Your name has been presented to the Grand +Council which has decided that you are eligible for membership in +the International Entomological Society of East Orange, N.J., and +you have, therefore, been unanimously elected.</p> + +<p>"Have the kindness to inform me of your acceptance and inclose your +check for $25, which includes your dues for five years and a free +subscription to the society's monthly magazine, <i>The Fly-Paper</i>——"</p></blockquote> + +<p>"Scott, don't do it. You get one of those kind of things every day!" +exclaimed Geraldine. "They only want your $25, anyway."</p> + +<p>"It's an innocent recreation," grinned Duane. "Why not let Scott append +to his signature—'M.I.E.S.E.O.N.J.'—Member International Entomological +Society, East Orange, New Jersey. It only costs $25 to do it——"</p> + +<p>"That's all right," said Scott, reddening, "but possibly they may have +read my paper on the Prionians in the last Yonkers <i>Magazine of +Science</i>. It wasn't a perfectly rotten paper, was it, Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>"It was mighty clever!" she said warmly. "Don't mind those two scoffers, +Scott. If you take my advice you will join this East Orange Society. +That would make six scientific societies he has joined since Christmas," +she continued, turning on Duane with severe pride; adding, "and there's +a different coloured ribbon decoration for his buttonhole from each +society."</p> + +<p>But Duane and Geraldine were very disrespectful; they politely offered +each other memberships in all sorts of societies, including one yard of +ribbon decoration, one sleigh-bell, and five green trading stamps, until +Scott hurled an orange at Duane, who caught it and blew a kiss at him as +recompense.</p> + +<p>Then they went outside, on Scott's curt invitation, and wrestled and +scuffled and scrubbed each other's faces with snow like schoolboys, +until, declaring they were hungry again, they came back to the +breakfast-room and demanded more muffins and sausages and coffee.</p> + +<p>Kathleen rang and, leaning over, handed Geraldine a brief letter from +Rosalie Dysart:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Do you think Geraldine would ask me up for a few days?" it began. +"I'm horribly lonesome and unhappy and I'm being talked about, and +I'd rather be with you wholesome people than with anybody I know, +if you don't mind my making a refuge of your generosity. I'm a real +victim of that dreadful sheet in town, which we all have a contempt +for and never subscribe to, and which some of us borrow from our +maids or read at our modistes—the sheet that some of us are +genuinely afraid of—and part of our fear is that it may neglect +us! You know, don't you, what really vile things it is saying about +me? If you don't, your servants do.</p> + +<p>"So if you'd rather not have me, I won't be offended, and, anyway, +you are dear and decent people and I love you.</p> + +<p class="right"> +"<span class="smcap">Rosalie Dene</span>." +</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>"How funny," mused Geraldine. "She's dropped Jack Dysart's name already +in private correspondence.... Poor child!" Looking up at Kathleen, "We +must ask her, mustn't we, dear?"</p> + +<p>There was more of virginal severity in Kathleen. She did not see why +Rosalie, under the circumstances, should make a convenience of +Geraldine, but she did not say so; and, perhaps, glancing at the wistful +young girl before her, she understood this new toleration for those in +dubious circumstances—comprehended the unusual gentleness of judgment +which often softens the verdict of those who themselves have drifted too +near the danger mark ever to forget it or to condemn those still adrift.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "ask her."</p> + +<p>Duane looked up from the perusal of his own letter as Kathleen and Scott +strolled off toward the greenhouses where the latter's daily +entomological researches continued under glass and the stimulous +artificial heat and Kathleen Severn.</p> + +<p>"Geraldine," he said, "here's a letter from Bunny Gray. He and Sylvia +Quest were married yesterday very quietly, and they sailed for Cape Town +this morning!"</p> + +<p>"What!"</p> + +<p>"That's what he writes. Did you ever hear of anything quicker?"</p> + +<p>"How funny," she said. "Bunny and Sylvia? I knew he was attentive to her +but——"</p> + +<p>"You mean Dysart?" he said carelessly. "Oh, he's only a confirmed +débutante chaser; a sort of social measles. They all recover rapidly."</p> + +<p>"I had the—social measles," said Geraldine, smiling.</p> + +<p>Duane repressed a shiver. "It's inevitable," he said gaily.... "That +Bunny is a decent fellow."</p> + +<p>"Will you show me his letter?" she asked, extending her hand as a matter +of course.</p> + +<p>"No, dear."</p> + +<p>She looked up surprised.</p> + +<p>"Why not? Oh—I beg your pardon, dear——"</p> + +<p>Duane bent over, kissed her hand, and tossed the letter into the fire. +It was her first experience in shadows cast before, and it came to her +with a little shock that no two are ever one in the prosier sense of the +theory.</p> + +<p>The letter that Duane had read was this:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Sylvia and I were married quietly yesterday and she has told me +that you will know why. There is little further for me to say, +Duane. My wife is ill. We're going to Cape Town to live for a +while. We're going to be happy. I am now. She will be.</p> + +<p>"My wife asked me to write you. Her regard for you is very high. +She wishes me to tell you that I know everything I ought to have +known when we were married. You were very kind to her. You're a +good deal of a man, Duane.</p> + +<p>"I want to add something: her brother, Stuyve, is out of the +hospital and loose again. He's got all the virtues of a Pomeranian +pup—that is, none; and he'll make a rotten bad fist of it. I'll +tell you now that, during the past winter, twice, when drunk, he +shot at his sister. She did not tell me this; he did, when in a +snivelling condition at the hospital.</p> + +<p>"So God knows what he may do in this matter. It seems that the +blackguard in question has been warned to steer clear of +Stuyvesant. It's up to them. I shall be glad to have Sylvia at Cape +Town for a while.</p> + +<p>"Delancy Grandcourt was witness for me, Rosalie for Sylvia. Delancy +is a brick. Won't you ask him up to Roya-Neh? He's dying to go.</p> + +<p>"And this is all. It's a queer life, isn't it, old fellow? But a +good sporting proposition, anyway. It suits me.</p> + +<p>"Our love to you, to the little chatelaine of Roya-Neh, to her +brother, to Kathleen.</p> + +<p>"Tell them we are married and off for Cape Town, but tell them no +more.</p> + +<p class="right"> +"B. Gray." +</p> + +<p>"It isn't necessary to say burn this scrawl."</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>Geraldine, watching him in calm speculation, said:</p> + +<p>"I don't see why they were married so quietly. Nobody's in mourning——"</p> + +<p>"Dear?"</p> + +<p>"What, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Do something for me."</p> + +<p>"I promise."</p> + +<p>"Then ask Delancy up here to shoot. Do you mind?"</p> + +<p>"I'd love to. Can he come?"</p> + +<p>"I think so."</p> + +<p>"I'll write now. Won't it be jolly," she said innocently, "to have him +and Rosalie here together——"</p> + +<p>The blank change on his face checked her. "Isn't it all right?" she +asked, astonished.</p> + +<p>He had made his blunder. There was only one thing for him to say and he +said it cordially, mentally damning himself for forgetting that Rosalie +was to be invited.</p> + +<p>"I'll write to them both this morning," concluded Geraldine. "Of course +poor Jack Dysart is out of the question."</p> + +<p>"A little," he said mildly. And, furious with himself, he rose as she +stood up, and followed her into the armory, her cool little hand +trailing and just touching his.</p> + +<p>For half an hour they prowled about, examining Winchesters, Stevens, +Mänlichers—every make and pattern of rifle and fowling-piece was +represented in Scott's collection.</p> + +<p>"Odd, isn't it, that he never shoots," mused Duane, lifting out a superb +weapon from the rack behind the glass doors. "This seems to be one of +those murderous, low trajectory pieces that fires a sort of brassy shot +which is still rising when it's a mile beyond the bunker. Now, +sweetheart, if you've a heavy suit of ancient armour which I can crawl +into, I'll defy any boar that roots for mast on Cloudy Mountain."</p> + +<p>It was great fun for Geraldine to lay out their equipment in two neat +piles; a rifle apiece with cases and bandoliers; cartridges, two +hunting-knives with leather sheaths, shooting hoods and coats; and +timberjack's boots for her lover, moccasins for her; a pair of heavy +sweaters for each, and woollen mitts, fashioned to leave the trigger +finger free.</p> + +<p>Beside these she laid two fur-lined overcoats, and backed away in naïve +admiration at her industry.</p> + +<p>"Wonderful, wonderful," he said. "We'll only require saucepans and +boiler lids to look exactly like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee arrayed for +battle. I say, Geraldine, how am I going to flee up a tree with all that +on—and snow-shoes to boot-s," he added shamelessly, grinning over his +degraded wit.</p> + +<p>She ignored it, advised him with motherly directness concerning the +proper underwear he must don, looked at her rifle, examined his and, +bidding him assume it, led him out to the range in the orchard and made +him target his weapon at a hundred yards.</p> + +<p>There was a terrific fusillade for half an hour or so; his work was +respectable, and, satisfied, she led him proudly back to the house and, +curling up on the leather divan in the library, invited him to sit +beside her.</p> + +<p>"Do you love me?" she inquired with such impersonal curiosity that he +revenged himself fully then and there; and she rose and, instinctively +repairing the disorder of her hair, seated herself reproachfully at a +distance.</p> + +<p>"Can't a girl ask a simple question?" she said, aggrieved.</p> + +<p>"Sure. Ask it again, dearest."</p> + +<p>She disdained to reply, and sat coaxing the tendrils of her dark hair to +obey the dainty discipline of her slender fingers.</p> + +<p>"I thought you weren't going to," she observed irrelevantly. But he +seemed to know what she meant.</p> + +<p>"Don't you want me to even touch you for a year?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't a year. Months of it are over."</p> + +<p>"But in the months before us——"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>She picked up a book. When he reached for a magazine she looked over the +top of her book at him, then read a little, glanced up, read a little +more, and looked at him again.</p> + +<p>"Duane?"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"This is a fool of a book. Do you want to read it?"</p> + +<p>"No, thanks."</p> + +<p>"Over my shoulder, I mean?"</p> + +<p>He got up, seated himself on the arm of her chair, and looked at the +printed page over her shoulder.</p> + +<p>For a full minute neither moved; then she turned her head, very slowly, +and, looking into his eyes, she rested her lips on his.</p> + +<p>"My darling," she said; "my darling."</p> + +<p>Which is one of the countless variations of the malady which makes the +world spin round in one continual and perpetual fit.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XXII<br />CLOUDY MOUNTAIN</a></h2> + + +<p>Five days running, Geraldine, Duane, and old Miller watched for the big +gray boar among the rocky oak ridges under Cloudy Mountain; and though +once they saw his huge tracks, they did not see him.</p> + +<p>Every night, on their return, Scott jeered them and taunted them until a +personal encounter with Duane was absolutely necessary, and they always +adjourned to the snowy field of honour to wipe off the score and each +other's faces with the unblemished snow.</p> + +<p>Rosalie and a Chow-dog arrived by the middle of the week; Delancy toward +the end of it, unencumbered. Duane made a mental note of his own +assininity, and let it go at that. He was as glad to see Rosalie as +anybody, and just as glad to see Delancy, but he'd have preferred to +enjoy the pleasures separately, though it really didn't matter, after +all.</p> + +<p>"Sooner or later," he admitted to himself, "that Delancy man is going to +marry her; and it seems to me she's entitled to another chance in the +world. Even our earthly courts are lenient toward first offenders. As +for the ethics—puzzle it out, you!" He made a gesture including the +world in general, lighted a cigarette, and went out to the gun-room to +join Geraldine.</p> + +<p>"Rosalie and Delancy want to go shooting with us," he explained with a +shrug.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Duane!—and our solitary and very heavenly trips alone together!"</p> + +<p>"I know it. I have just telephoned Miller to get Kemp from Westgate for +them. Is that all right?"</p> + +<p>"Yes"—she hesitated—"I think so."</p> + +<p>"Let Kemp guide them," he insisted. "They'll never hold out as far as +Cloudy Mountain. All they want is to shoot a boar, no matter how big it +is. Miller says the boar are feeding again near the Green Pass. It's +easy enough to send them there."</p> + +<p>"Do you think that is perfectly hospitable? Rosalie and Delancy may find +it rather stupid going off alone together with only Kemp to amuse them. +I am fond of him," she added, "but you know what a woman like Rosalie is +prone to think of Delancy."</p> + +<p>He glanced at her keenly; she had, evidently, not the slightest notion +of the <i>status quo</i>.</p> + +<p>"Oh, they'll get along together, all right," he said carelessly. "If +they choose to remain with us, of course we all can keep on to Cloudy +Mountain; but you'll see them accept Kemp and the Green Pass with +grateful alacrity after two miles of snow-shoeing through the brush; and +we'll have the mountain all to ourselves."</p> + +<p>"You're a shameless deviser of schemes, aren't you, dear?" she asked, +considering him with that faint, intimate smile, which, however, had +always in it something of curiosity. "You know perfectly well we could +drive those poor people the whole way to Cloudy Mountain."</p> + +<p>"Why, that <i>is</i> so!" he exclaimed, pretending surprise; "but, after all, +dear, it's better sport to beat up the alders below Green Pass and try +to jump a pig for them. That's true hospitality——"</p> + +<p>She laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, Duane, Duane!" she murmured, +suffering him to capture both her hands and lay them against his face to +cover the glee that twitched it at his own unholy perfidy.</p> + +<p>And so it came about that, after an early luncheon, a big double sleigh +jingled up, received its jolly cargo, and sped away again into the white +woodlands, Kathleen waving adieu and Scott deriding them with scoffing +and snowballs.</p> + +<p>The drive was very beautiful, particularly through the pine and hemlock +belt where the great trees, clothed heavily with snow, bent branch and +crest under the pale winter sunshine. Tall fir-balsams pricked the sky, +perfect cones of white; spruces were snowy mounds; far into the forest +twilight glimmered the unsullied snow.</p> + +<p>As they sped along, Geraldine pointed out imprints of fox and rabbit, +faint trails where a field-mouse had passed, the string of henlike +footprints recording the deliberate progress of some ruffed grouse +picking its leisurely way across the snow; the sharp, indented marks of +squirrels.</p> + +<p>Rosalie was enchanted, Delancy mildly so, but when a deeper trail +ploughed the snow, running parallel to their progress, he regarded it +with more animation.</p> + +<p>"Pig," said Geraldine briefly.</p> + +<p>"Wild?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Of course," she smiled; "and probably a good big boar."</p> + +<p>Rosalie thrilled and unconsciously rested her fur-gloved hand on +Delancy's sleeve.</p> + +<p>"You know," she said, "you must shoot a little straighter than you did +at target practice this morning. Because I can't run very fast," she +added with another delightful shudder.</p> + +<p>Delancy, at her anxious request, modestly assured her that he would +"plug" the first boar that showed his tusks; and Geraldine laughed and +made Rosalie promise to do the same.</p> + +<p>"You're both likely to have a shot," she said as the sleigh drew up on a +stone bridge and Miller and Kemp came over and saluted—big, raw-boned +men on snow-shoes, wearing no outer coats over their thin woollen +shirts, although every thermometer at Roya-Neh recorded zero.</p> + +<p>Gun-cases were handed out, rifles withdrawn, and the cases stowed away +in the sleigh again. Fur coats were rolled in pairs, strapped, and slung +behind the broad shoulders of the guides. Then snow-shoes were +adjusted—skis for Geraldine; Miller walked westward and took post; +Kemp's huge bulk closed the eastern extremity of the line, and between +them, two and two at thirty paces apart, stood the hunters, Duane with +Rosalie, Geraldine with Delancy, loading their magazines.</p> + +<p>Ahead was an open wood of second growth, birch, beech, and maple; +sunlight lay in white splashes here and there; nothing except these +blinding pools of light and the soft impression of a fallen twig varied +the immaculate snow surface as far as the eye could see.</p> + +<p>"Forward and silence," called out Geraldine; the mellow swish of +snow-shoes answered her, and she glided forward on her skis, instructing +Delancy under her breath.</p> + +<p>"The wind is right," she said. "They can't scent us here, though deeper +in the mountains the wind cuts up and you never can be sure what it may +do. There's just a chance of jumping a pig here, but there's a better +chance when we strike the alder country. Try not to shoot a sow."</p> + +<p>"How am I to tell?"</p> + +<p>"Sows have no tusks that show. Be careful not to mistake the white +patches of snow on a sow's jowl for tusks. They get them by rooting and +it's not always easy to tell."</p> + +<p>Delancy said very honestly: "You'll have to control me; I'm likely to +let drive at anything."</p> + +<p>"You're more likely to forget to shoot until the pig is out of sight," +she whispered, laughing. "Look! Three trails! They were made last +night."</p> + +<p>"Boar?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she nodded, glancing at the deep cloven imprints. She leaned +forward and glanced across the line at Miller, who caught her eye and +signalled significantly with one hand.</p> + +<p>"Be ready, Delancy," she whispered. "There's a boar somewhere ahead."</p> + +<p>"How can you tell?"</p> + +<p>"I can scent him. It's strong enough in the wind," she added, wrinkling +her delicate nose with a smile.</p> + +<p>Grandcourt sniffed and sniffed, and finally detected a slight acrid +odour in the light, clear breeze. He looked wisely around him; Geraldine +was skirting a fallen tree on her skis; he started on and was just +rounding a clump of brush when there came a light, crashing noise +directly ahead of him; a big, dark, shaggy creature went bounding and +bucking across his line of vision—a most extraordinary animal, all head +and shoulders and big, furry ears.</p> + +<p>The snapping crack of a rifle echoed by the sharp racket of another shot +aroused him to action too late, for Miller, knife drawn, was hastening +across the snow to a distant dark, motionless heap; and Geraldine stood +jerking back the ejector of her weapon and throwing a fresh cartridge +into the breach.</p> + +<p>"My goodness!" he faltered, "somebody got him! Who fired, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>She said: "I waited as long as I dared, Delancy. They go like lightning, +you know. I'm terribly sorry you didn't fire."</p> + +<p>"Good girl!" said Duane in a low voice as she sped by him on her skis, +rifle ready for emergencies as old Miller cautiously approached the +shaggy brown heap, knife glittering.</p> + +<p>But there was no emergency; Miller's knife sank to the hilt; Geraldine +uncocked her rifle and bent curiously over the dead boar.</p> + +<p>"Nice tusks. Miss Seagrave," commented the old man. "He's fat as butter, +too. I cal'late he'll tip the beam at a hundred and forty paound!"</p> + +<p>The hunters clustered around with exclamations of admiration; Rosalie, +distractingly pretty in her white wool kilts and cap, knelt down and +touched the fierce, long-nosed head and stroked the furry jowl.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Delancy!" she wailed, "why <i>didn't</i> you 'plug' him as you promised? +<i>I</i> simply <i>couldn't</i> shoot; Duane tried to make me, but I was so +excited and so surprised to see the creature run so fast that all my +ideas went out of my head and I never thought of pulling that wretched +trigger!"</p> + +<p>"That," said Delancy, very red, "is precisely what happened to me." And, +turning to Geraldine, who looked dreadfully repentant: "I heard you tell +me to shoot, and I merely gawked at the beast like a rubbering jay at a +ten-cent show."</p> + +<p>"Everybody does that at first," said Duane cheerfully; "I'll bet +anything that you and Rosalie empty your magazines at the next one."</p> + +<p>"We really must, Delancy," insisted Rosalie as she and Geraldine turned +away when Miller and Kemp tucked up their sleeves and unsheathed their +knives in preparation for unpleasant but necessary details.</p> + +<p>But they worked like lightning; and in exactly seven minutes the heavy +beast was drawn, washed out with snow, roped, and hung to a tree well +out of reach of any four-footed forest marauders that might prowl that +way before night.</p> + +<p>Geraldine, smiling her deprecation of their praise, waited with the +others until the two guides were ready. Then, in the same order as +before, they moved forward, descended the slope, and came into a strange +wilderness of stark gray alders that stretched away in every direction. +And threading, circling, crossing each other everywhere among the alders +ran the trails of deer and wild boar, deep and fresh in the powdery +snow.</p> + +<p>At intervals, as they advanced, hard-wood ridges crossed the bewildering +alder labyrinths. Twice, while ascending these ridges, Rosalie's heart +jumped as a grouse thundered up. Once three steel-gray deer started out +of the scrub and went bounding off, displaying enormous white flags; +once a young buck, hunting for trouble, winded it, whistled, and came +leaping past Rosalie so close that she shrank aside with a half-stifled +cry of apprehension and delight.</p> + +<p>Half a mile farther on Delancy, labouring along on his snow-shoes, +suddenly halted, detaining Geraldine with a quick touch on the shoulder.</p> + +<p>"There's something in that clearing," he whispered.</p> + +<p>Miller had seen it, too; Duane motioned Rosalie forward to join +Delancy, and, side by side, they crept ahead, keeping a clump of scrub +hemlock between them and the edge of the clearing. It was the Green Pass +feed-ground, a rocky strip of pasture climbing upward toward Lynx Peak; +and there, clean cut against the snowy background, three dark objects +were moving, trotting nervously here and there, nosing, nuzzling, +tunnelling the snow with long, sharp muzzles.</p> + +<p>Duane and Geraldine silently unslung their field-glasses.</p> + +<p>"They're boar," he said.</p> + +<p>"Two-year-olds," she nodded. "I do hope they will get one each. Duane, +ought I to have shot that other one?"</p> + +<p>"Of course, you generous child! Otherwise he'd have gone clear away. +That was a cracking shot, too—clean through the backbone at the base of +the skull.... Look at Rosalie! She's unstrapped her snow-shoes and she +and Delancy are crawling on all-fours!"</p> + +<p>Kemp had now joined the stalkers; he was a wise old hunter, and Duane +and Geraldine, keeping very still, watched the operations side by side.</p> + +<p>For half an hour Rosalie lay motionless in the snow on the forest's +edge, and Geraldine was beginning to fret at the prospect of her being +too benumbed by the cold to use her rifle, when Duane touched her on the +arm and drew her attention to a fourth boar.</p> + +<p>The animal came on from behind Rosalie and to Delancy's right—a +good-sized, very black fellow, evidently suspicious yet tempted to +reconnoitre the feeding-ground.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" she whispered; "what a shot Delancy has! Why +<i>doesn't</i> he see him! What on earth is Kemp about? Why, the boar is +within ten feet of Delancy's legs and doesn't see or wind him!"</p> + +<p>"Look!"</p> + +<p>Kemp had caught sight of the fourth boar. Geraldine and Duane saw his +dilemma, saw him silently give Rosalie the signal to fire at the nearest +boar in the open, then saw him turn like a flash and almost drag Delancy +to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Kill that pig, <i>now</i>!" he thundered—"unless you want him hackin' your +shins!"</p> + +<p>The boar stood in his tracks, bristling, furious, probably astounded to +find himself so close to the only thing in all the forest that he feared +and would have preferred to flee from.</p> + +<p>Under such conditions boars lose their heads; there was a sudden clatter +of tusks, a muffled, indescribable sound, half squeal, half roar; a +fountain of feathery snow, and two shots close together. Then a third +shot.</p> + +<p>Rosalie, rather pale, threw another cartridge in as Delancy picked +himself out of a snow-bank and looked around him in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Well done, young lady!" cried Kemp, running a fistful of snow over the +blade of his hunting-knife and nodding his admiration. "I guess it's +just as well you disobeyed orders and let this funny pig have what was +coming to him. Y' ain't hurt, are ye, Mr. Grandcourt?"</p> + +<p>"No; he didn't hit me; I tripped on that root. Did I miss him?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all," said Duane, kneeling down while Miller lifted the great +fierce head. "You hit him all right, but it didn't stop him; it only +turned him. Here's your second bullet, too; and Rosalie, yours did the +business for him. Good for you! It's fine, isn't it, Geraldine?"</p> + +<p>Grandcourt, flushing heavily, turned to Rosalie and held out his hand. +"Thank you," he said; "the brute was right on top of me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she said honestly, "he'd missed you and was going straight on. +I don't know how on earth I ever hit him, but I was so frightened to see +you go over backward and I thought that he'd knocked you down, and I was +perfectly furious——"</p> + +<p>She gave a little sob of excitement, laughed unsteadily, and sat down on +a fallen log, burying her face in her hands.</p> + +<p>They knew enough to let her alone and pretend not to notice her. +Geraldine chattered away cheerfully to the two men while the keepers +drew the game. Delancy tried to listen to her, but his anxious eyes kept +turning toward Rosalie, and at length, unable to endure it, he went over +and sat down beside her, careless of what others might infer.</p> + +<p>"How funny," whispered Geraldine to Duane. "I had no idea that Delancy +was so fond of her. Had you?"</p> + +<p>He started slightly. "I? Oh, no," he said hastily—too hastily. He was a +very poor actor.</p> + +<p>Gravely, head bent, she walked forward beside him after Grandcourt had +announced that he and Rosalie had had enough and that they wished Kemp +to take them and their game to the sleigh.</p> + +<p>Once, looking back, she saw the procession moving in the opposite +direction through the woods, Kemp leading, rope over his shoulder, +dragging the dead boar across the snow; Grandcourt, both rifles slung +across his back, big arm supporting Rosalie, who walked as though very +tired, her bright head drooping, her arm resting on his shoulder.</p> + +<p>Geraldine looked up at Duane thoughtfully, and he supposed that she was +about to speak, but her gaze became remote; she shifted her rifle, and +walked on.</p> + +<p>Before they came to the wild, shaggy country below Cloudy Mountain she +said:</p> + +<p>"I've been thinking it over, Duane. I can see in it nothing that can +concern anybody except themselves. Can you?"</p> + +<p>"Not a thing, dear.... I'm sorry I suggested his coming. I knew about +this, but I clean forgot it when I asked you to invite him."</p> + +<p>"I remember, now, your consternation when you realised it," she said, +smiling. "After all, Duane, if it is bound to happen, I don't mind it +happening here.... Poor, lonely little Rosalie!... I'm depraved enough +to be glad for her—if it is really to be so."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad, too.... Only she ought to begin her action, I think. It's +more prudent and better taste."</p> + +<p>"You said once that you had a contempt for divorce."</p> + +<p>"I never entertain the same opinion of anything two days in succession," +he said, smiling. "When there is any one moral law that can justly cover +every case which it is framed to govern, I'll be glad to remain more +constant in my beliefs."</p> + +<p>"Then you <i>do</i> believe in divorce?"</p> + +<p>"To-day I happen to."</p> + +<p>"Duane, is that your attitude toward everything?"</p> + +<p>"Everything except you," he said cheerfully. "That is literally true. +Even in my painting and in my liking for the work of others, I veer +about like a weather-vane, never holding very long to one point of +view."</p> + +<p>"You're very frank about it."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Isn't it a—a weakness?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think so," he said so simply that she tucked her arm under his +with a soft, confidential laugh.</p> + +<p>"You goose; do you suppose I think there is a weak fibre in you? I've +always adored the strength in you—even when it was rough enough to +bruise me. Listen, dear; there's only one thing you might possibly +weaken on. Promise you won't."</p> + +<p>"I promise."</p> + +<p>"Then," she said triumphantly, "you'll take first shot at the big boar! +Are you angry because I made you promise? If you only knew, dear, how +happy I have been, saving the best I had to offer, in this forest, for +you! You will make me happy, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I will, you little trump!" he said, encircling her waist, +forgetful of old Miller, plodding along behind them.</p> + +<p>But it was no secret to old Miller, nor to any native in the +country-side for a radius of forty miles. No modern invention can equal +the wireless celerity that distributes information concerning other +people's business throughout the rural wastes of this great and +gossipping nation.</p> + +<p>She made him release her, blushing hotly as she remembered that Miller +was behind them, and she scolded her lover roundly, until later, in a +moment of thoughtlessness, she leaned close to his shoulder and told him +she adored him with every breath she drew, which was no sillier than his +reply.</p> + +<p>The long blue shadows on the snow and the pink bars of late sunlight had +died out together. It had grown warmer and grayer in the forest; and +after a little one or two snow-flakes came sifting down through the +trees.</p> + +<p>They had not jumped the big silver boar, nor had they found a trace of +him among the trails that crossed and recrossed the silent reaches of +the forest. Light was fading to the colourless, opaque gray which +heralded a snow-storm as they reached the feeding-ground, spread out +their fur coats, and dropped, belly down, to reconnoitre.</p> + +<p>Nothing moved among the oaks. They lay listening minute after minute; no +significant sound broke the silence, no dead branch cracked in the +hemlocks.</p> + +<p>She lay close to him for warmth, chin resting on his shoulder, her cheek +against his. Their snow-shoes were stuck upright in a drift behind them; +beside these squatted old Miller, listening, peering, nostrils working +in the wind like an old dog's.</p> + +<p>They waited and watched through a fine veil of snow descending; in the +white silence there was not a sound save the silken flutter of a lonely +chickadee, friendly, inquiring, dropping from twig to twig until its +tiny bright eyes peered level with Geraldine's.</p> + +<p>Evidently the great boar was not feeding before night. Duane turned his +head restlessly; old Miller, too, had become impatient and they saw him +prowling noiselessly down among the rocks, scrutinising snow and +thickets, casting wise glances among the trees, shaking his white head +as though communing with himself.</p> + +<p>"Well, little girl," breathed Duane, "it looks doubtful, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>She turned on her side toward him, looking him in the eyes:</p> + +<p>"Does it matter?"</p> + +<p>"No," he said, smiling.</p> + +<p>She reached out her arms; they settled close around his neck, clung for +a second's passionate silence, released him and covered her flushed +face, all but the mouth. Under them his lips met hers.</p> + +<p>The next instant she was on her knees, pink-cheeked, alert, ears +straining in the wind.</p> + +<p>"Miller is coming back very fast!" she whispered to her lover. "I +believe he has good news!"</p> + +<p>Miller was coming fast, holding out in one hand something red and +gray—something that dangled and flapped as he strode—something that +looked horrible and raw.</p> + +<p>"Damn him!" said the old man fiercely, "no wonder he ain't a-feedin'! +Look at this, Miss Seagrave. There's more of it below—a hull mess of it +in the snow."</p> + +<p>"It's a big strip of deer-hide—all raw and bleeding!" faltered the +girl. "What in the world has happened?"</p> + +<p>"<i>His</i> work," said Miller grimly.</p> + +<p>"The—the big boar?"</p> + +<p>"Yes'm. The deer yard over there. He sneaked in on 'em last night and +this doe must have got stuck in a drift. And that devil caught her and +pulled her down and tore her into bits. Why, the woods is all scattered +with shreds o' hide like this! I wish to God you or Mr. Mallett could +get one crack at him! I do, by thunder! Yes'm!"</p> + +<p>But it was already too dusky among the trees to sight a rifle. In +silence they strapped up the coats, fastened on snow-shoes, and moved +out along the bare spur of the mountain, where there was still daylight +in the open, although the thickening snow made everything gray and +vague.</p> + +<p>Here and there a spectral tree loomed up among the rocks; a white hare's +track, paralleled by the big round imprints of a lynx, ran along the +unseen path they followed as Miller guided them toward Westgate.</p> + +<p>Later, outlined in the white waste, ancient apple-trees appeared, +gnarled relics of some long-abandoned clearing; and, as they passed, +Duane chanced to glance across the rocks to the left.</p> + +<p>At first he thought he saw something move, but began to make up his mind +that he was deceived.</p> + +<p>Noticing that he had halted, Geraldine came back, and then Miller +returned to where he stood, squinting through the falling flakes in the +vague landscape beyond.</p> + +<p>"It moved; I seen it," whispered Miller hoarsely.</p> + +<p>"It's a deer," motioned Geraldine; "it's too big for anything else."</p> + +<p>For five minutes in perfect silence they watched the gray, flat forms of +scrub and rock; and Duane was beginning to lose faith in everybody's +eyes when, without warning, a huge, colourless shape detached itself +from the flat silhouettes and moved leisurely out into the open.</p> + +<p>There was no need to speak; trembling slightly, he cleared his rifle +sight of snow, steadied his nerves, raised the weapon, and fired.</p> + +<p>A horrid sort of scream answered the shot; the boar lurched off among +the rocks, and after him at top speed ran Duane and Miller, while +Geraldine, on swift skis, sped eastward like the wind to block retreat +to the mountain. She heard Duane's rifle crack again, then again; heard +a heavy rush in the thicket in front of her, lifted her rifle, fired, +was hurled sideways on the rocks, and knew no more until she unclosed +her bewildered eyes in her lover's arms.</p> + +<p>A sharp pain shot through her; she gasped, turned very white, and lay +with wide eyes and parted lips staring at Duane.</p> + +<p>Suddenly a penetrating aroma filled her lungs; with all her strength she +pushed away the flask at her lips.</p> + +<p>"No! No! Not that! I <i>will</i> not, Duane!"</p> + +<p>"Dear," he said unsteadily, "you are very badly hurt. We are trying to +carry you back. You must let me give you this——"</p> + +<p>"No," she sobbed, "I will not! Duane—I—" Pain made her faint; her +grasp on his arm tightened convulsively; with a supreme effort she +struck the flask out of his hand and dropped back unconscious.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XXIII<br />SINE DIE</a></h2> + +<p>The message ran:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"My sister badly hurt in an accident; concussion, +intermittent consciousness. We fear spinal and internal injury. +What train can you catch?</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Scott Seagrave</span>."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Which telegram to Josiah Bailey, M.D., started that eminent general +practitioner toward Roya-Neh in company with young Dr. Goss, a surgeon +whose brilliancy and skill did not interfere with his self-restraint +when there were two ways of doing things.</p> + +<p>They were to meet in an hour at the 5.07 train; but before Dr. Bailey +set out for the rendezvous, and while his man was still packing his +suit-case, the physician returned to his office, where a patient waited, +head hanging, picking nervously at his fingers, his prominent, watery +eyes fixed on vacancy.</p> + +<p>The young man neither looked up nor stirred when the doctor entered and +reseated himself, picking up a pencil and pad. He thought a moment, +squinted through his glasses, and continued writing the prescription +which the receipt of the telegram from Roya-Neh had interrupted.</p> + +<p>When he had finished he glanced over the slip of paper, removed his +gold-rimmed reading spectacles, folded them, balanced them thoughtfully +in the palm of his large and healthy hand, considering the young fellow +before him with grave, far-sighted eyes:</p> + +<p>"Stuyvesant," he said, "this prescription is not going to cure you. No +medicine that I can give you is going to perform any such miracle unless +you help yourself. Nothing on earth that man has invented, or is likely +to invent, can cure your disease unless by God's grace the patient +pitches in and helps himself. Is that plain talk?"</p> + +<p>Quest nodded and reached shakily for the prescription; but the doctor +withheld it.</p> + +<p>"You asked for plain talk; are you listening to what I'm saying?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell, yes," burst out Quest; "I'm going to pull myself together. +Didn't I tell you I would? But I've got to get a starter first, haven't +I? I've got to have something to key me up first. I've explained to you +that it's this crawling, squirming movement on the backs of my hands +that I can't stand for. I want it stopped; I'll take anything you dope +out; I'll do any turn you call for——"</p> + +<p>"Very well. I've told you to go to Mulqueen's. Go <i>now</i>!"</p> + +<p>"All right, doctor. Only they're too damn rough with a man. All right; +I'll go. I <i>did</i> go last winter, and look where I am now!" he snarled +suddenly. "Have I got to get up against all that business again?"</p> + +<p>"You came out in perfectly good shape. It was up to you," said the +doctor, coldly using the vernacular.</p> + +<p>"How was it up to me? You all say that! How was it? I understood that if +I cut it out and went up there and let that iron-fisted Irishman slam me +around, that I'd come out all right. And the first little baby-drink I +hit began the whole thing again!"</p> + +<p>"Why did you take it? You didn't have to."</p> + +<p>"I wanted it," retorted Quest angrily.</p> + +<p>"Not badly enough to make self-control impossible. That's what you went +up there for, to get back self-control. You got it but didn't use it. Do +you think there is any sort of magic serum Mulqueen or I or anybody +under Heaven can pump into you that will render you immune from the +consequences of making an alcohol sewer of yourself?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly supposed I could come out and drink like a gentleman," said +the young man sullenly.</p> + +<p>"Drink like a—<i>what</i>? A gentleman? What's that? What's drinking like a +gentleman? I don't know what it is. You either drink alcohol or you +don't; you either swill it or you don't. Anybody can do either. I'm not +aware that either is peculiar to a gentleman. But I know that both are +peculiar to fools."</p> + +<p>Quest muttered, picking his fingers, and cast an ugly side look at the +physician.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you just said," snapped Dr. Bailey, "but I'll tell +you this: alcohol is poison and it has not—and never had—in any guise +whatever, the slightest compensating value for internal use. It isn't a +food; it's a poison; it isn't a beneficial stimulant; it's a poison; it +isn't an aid to digestion; it's a poison; it isn't a life saver; it's a +life taker. It's a parasite, forger, thief, pander, liar, brutalizer, +murderer!</p> + +<p>"Those are the plain facts. There isn't, and there never has been, one +word to say for it or any excuse, except morbid predisposition or +self-inculcated inclination, to offer for swallowing it. Now go to your +brewers, your wine merchants, your champagne touts, your fool +undergraduates, your clubmen, your guzzling viveurs—and they'll all +tell you the contrary. So will some physicians. And you can take your +choice. Any ass can. That is all, my boy."</p> + +<p>The young man glowered sulkily at the prescription.</p> + +<p>"Do I understand that this will stop the jumps?"</p> + +<p>"If you really believe that, you have never heard me say so," snapped +Dr. Bailey.</p> + +<p>"Well, what the devil will it do?"</p> + +<p>"The directions are there. You have my memorandum of the régime you are +to follow. It will quiet you till you get to Mulqueen's. Those two bits +of paper, however, are useless unless you help yourself. If you want to +become convalescent you can—even yet. It won't be easy; it will hurt; +but you can do it, as I say, even yet. But it is <i>you</i> who must do it, +not I or that bit of paper or Mulqueen!</p> + +<p>"Just now you happen to want to get well because the effect of alcohol +poison disturbs you. Things crawl, as you say, on the back of your hand. +Naturally, you don't care for such phenomena.</p> + +<p>"Well, I've given you the key to mental and physical regeneration. Yours +is not an inherited appetite; yours is not one of those almost +foredoomed and pitiable cases. It's a stupid case; and a case of gross +self-indulgence in stupidity that began in idleness. And that, my son, +is the truth."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" sneered Quest, rising and pocketing the prescription.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is so. I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I +knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and +wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You +deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, +one mitigating plea to offer for what you've done to yourself.</p> + +<p>"You stood high in school and in college; you were Phi Beta Kappa, a +convincing debater, a plausible speaker, an excellent writer of good +English—by instinct a good newspaper man. Also you were a man adapted +by nature to live regularly and beyond the coarser temptations. But you +were lazy!"</p> + +<p>Dr. Bailey struck his desk in emphasis.</p> + +<p>"The germ of your self-indulgence lay in gross selfishness. You did what +pleased you; and it suited you to do nothing. I'm telling you how you've +betrayed yourself—how far you'll have to climb to win back. Some men +need a jab with a knife to start their pride; some require a friend's +strong helping arm around them. You need the jab. I'm trying to +administer it without anæsthetics, by telling you what some men think of +you—that it is your monstrous selfishness that has distorted your +normal common sense and landed you where you are.</p> + +<p>"Selfishness alone has resulted in a most cruel and unnatural neglect of +your sister—your only living relative—in a deliberate relapse into +slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which +was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your +sister's income after gambling away your own fortune.</p> + +<p>"I know you; I carried you through teething and measles, my son: and +I've carried you through the horrors of alcoholic delirium. And I say to +you now that, with the mental degeneration already apparent, and your +naturally quick temper, if you break down a few more cells in that +martyred brain of yours, you'll end in an asylum—possibly one reserved +for the <i>criminal</i> insane."</p> + +<p>A dull colour stained the pasty whiteness of Quest's face. For several +minutes he stood there, his fingers working and picking at each other, +his pale, prominent eyes glaring.</p> + +<p>"That's a big indictment, doctor," he said at last.</p> + +<p>"Thank God you think it so," returned the doctor. "If you will stand by +your better self for one week—for only one week—after leaving +Mulqueen's, I'll stand by you for life, my boy. Come! You were a good +sport once. And that little sister of yours is worth it. Come, +Stuyvesant; is it a bargain?"</p> + +<p>He stepped forward and held out his large, firm, reassuring hand. The +young fellow took it limply.</p> + +<p>"Done with you, doctor," he said without conviction; "it's hell for +mine, I suppose, if I don't make my face behave. You're right; I'm the +goat; and if I don't quit butting I'll sure end by slapping some sissy +citizen with an axe."</p> + +<p>He gave the doctor's hand a perfunctory shake with his thin, damp +fingers; dropped it, turned to go, halted, retraced his steps.</p> + +<p>"Will it give me the willies if I kiss a cocktail good-bye before I +start for that fresh guy, Mulqueen?"</p> + +<p>"Start <i>now</i>, I tell you! Haven't I your word?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—but on the way to buy transportation can't I offer myself one +last——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Can't</i> you be a good sport, Stuyve?"</p> + +<p>The youth hesitated, scowled.</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well," he said carelessly, turned and went out.</p> + +<p>As he walked along in the slush he said to himself: "I guess it's up +the river for mine.... By God, it's a shame, for I'm feeling pretty +good, too, and that's no idle quip!... Old Squills handed out a line of +talk all right-o!... He landed it, too.... I ought to find something to +do."</p> + +<p>As he walked, a faint glow stimulated his enervated intelligence; ideas, +projects long abandoned, desires forgotten, even a far echo from the old +ambition stirring in its slumber, quickened his slow pulses. The ghost +of what he might have been, nay, what he <i>could</i> have made himself, rose +wavering in his path. Other ghosts, long laid, floated beside him, +accompanying him—the ghosts of dead opportunities, dead ideals, lofty +inspirations long, long strangled.</p> + +<p>"A job," he muttered; "that's the wholesome dope for Willy. There isn't +a newspaper or magazine in town where I can't get next if I speak easy. +I can deliver the goods, too; it's like wiping swipes off a bar——"</p> + +<p>In his abstraction he had walked into the Holland House, and he suddenly +became conscious that he was confronting a familiarly respectful +bartender.</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell," he said, greatly disconcerted, "I want some French vichy, +Gus!" He made a wry face, and added: "Put a dash of tabasco in it, and +salt it."</p> + +<p>A thick-lipped, ruddy-cheeked young fellow, celebrated for his knowledge +of horses, also notorious for other and less desirable characteristics, +stood leaning against the bar, watching him.</p> + +<p>They nodded civilly to one another. Quest swallowed his peppered vichy, +pulled a long face and said:</p> + +<p>"We're a pair of 'em, all right."</p> + +<p>"Pair of what?" inquired the thick-lipped young man, face becoming +rosier and looking more than ever like somebody's groom.</p> + +<p>"Pair of bum whips. We've laid on the lash too hard. I'm going to stable +my five nags—my five wits!"—he explained with a sneer as the other +regarded him with all the bovine intelligence of one of his own +stable-boys—"because they're foundered; and that's the why, young +four-in-hand!"</p> + +<p>He left the bar, adding as he passed:</p> + +<p>"I'm a rotting citizen, but you"—he laughed insolently—"you have +become phosphorescent!"</p> + +<p>The street outside was all fog and melting snow; the cold vichy he had +gulped made him internally uncomfortable.</p> + +<p>"A gay day to go to Mulqueen's," he muttered sourly, gazing about for a +taxicab.</p> + +<p>There was none for hire at that moment; he walked on for a while, +feeling the freezing slush penetrate his boot-soles; and by degrees a +sullen temper rose within him, revolting—not at what he had done to +himself—but at the consequences which were becoming more unpleasant +every moment.</p> + +<p>As he trudged along, slipping, sliding, his overcoat turned up around +his pasty face, his cheeks wet with the icy fog, he continued swearing +to himself, at himself, at the slush, the cold vichy in his belly, the +appetite already awakened which must be denied.</p> + +<p>Denied?... Was he never to have one more decent drink? Was this to be +the absolute and final end? Certainly. Yet his imagination could not +really comprehend, compass, picture to himself life made a nuisance by +self-denial—life in any other guise except as a background for inertia +and indulgence.</p> + +<p>He swore again, profanely asking something occult why he should be +singled out to be made miserable on a day like this? Why, among all the +men he knew, he must go skulking about, lapping up cold mineral water +and cocking one ear to the sounds of human revelry within the Tavern.</p> + +<p>As for his work—yes, he ought to do it.... Interest in it was already +colder; the flare-up was dying down; habitual apathy chilled it to its +embers. Indifference, ill-temper, self-pity, resentment, these were the +steps he was slowly taking backward. He took them, in their natural +sequence, one by one.</p> + +<p>Old Squills meant well, no doubt, but he had been damned impertinent.... +And why had Old Squills dragged in his sister, Sylvia?... He had paid as +much attention to her as any brother does to any sister.... And how had +she repaid him?</p> + +<p>Head lowered doggedly against the sleet which was now falling thickly, +he shouldered his way forward, brooding on his "honour," on his sister, +on Dysart.</p> + +<p>He had not been home in weeks; he did not know of his sister's departure +with Bunny Gray. She had left a letter at home for him, because she knew +no other addresses except his clubs; and inquiry over the telephone +elicited the information that he had not been to any of them.</p> + +<p>But he was going to one of them now. He needed something to kill that +vichy; he'd have one more honest drink in spite of all the Old Squills +and Mulqueens in North America!</p> + +<p>At the Cataract Club there were three fashion-haunting young men +drinking hot Scotches: Dumont, his empurpled skin distended with whiskey +and late suppers, and all his former brilliancy and wit cankered and +rotten with it, and his slim figure and clean-cut face fattened and +flabby with it; Myron Kelter, thin, elegant, exaggerated, talking +eternally about women and his successes with the frailer ones—Myron +Kelter, son of a gentleman, eking out his meagre income by fetching, +carrying, pandering to the rich, who were too fastidious to do what they +paid him for doing in their behalf; and the third, Forbes Winton, +literary dilettante, large in every feature and in waistcoat and in +gesture—large, hard, smooth—very smooth, and worth too many millions +to be contradicted when misstating facts to suit the colour of his too +luxuriant imagination.</p> + +<p>These greeted Quest in their several and fashionably wearied manners, +inviting his soul to loaf.</p> + +<p>Later he had a slight dispute with Winton, who surveyed him coldly, and +insolently repeated his former misstatement of a notorious fact.</p> + +<p>"What rot!" said Quest; "I leave it to you, Kelter; am I right or not?"</p> + +<p>Kelter began a soft and soothing discourse which led nowhere at first +but ended finally in a re-order for four hot Scotches.</p> + +<p>Then Dumont's witty French blood—or the muddied dregs which were left +of it—began to be perversely amusing at Quest's expense. Epigrams +slightly frayed, a jest or two a trifle stale, humorous inversions of +well-known maxims, a biting retort, the originality of which was not +entirely free from suspicion, were his contributions to the festivities.</p> + +<p>Later Kelter's nicely modulated voice and almost affectionate manner +restrained Quest from hurling his glass at the inflamed countenance of +Mr. Dumont. But it did not prevent him from leaving the room in a +vicious temper, and, ultimately, the Cataract Club.</p> + +<p>The early winter night had turned cold and clear; sidewalks glittered, +sheeted with ice. He inhaled a deep breath and expelled a reeking one, +hailed a cab, and drove to the railroad station.</p> + +<p>Here he bought his tickets, choosing a midnight train; for the journey +to Mulqueen's was not a very long one; he could sleep till seven in the +car; and, besides, he had his luggage to collect from the hotel he had +been casually inhabiting. Also he had not yet dined.</p> + +<p>Bodily he felt better, now that the vichy had been "killed"; mentally +his temper became more vicious than ever as he thought of Dumont's +blunted wit at his expense—a wit with edge enough left to make a +ragged, nasty wound.</p> + +<p>"He'll get what's coming to him some day," snarled Quest, returning to +his cab; and he bade the driver take him to the Amphitheatre, a +restaurant resort, wonderful in terra-cotta rocks, papier-maché grottos, +and Croton waterfalls—haunted of certain semi-distinguished pushers of +polite professions, among whom he had been known for years.</p> + +<p>The place was one vast eruption of tiny electric lights, and the lights +of "the profession," and the demi-monde. Virtue and its antithesis +disguised alike in silk attire and pearl collars, rubbed elbows +unconcernedly among the papier-maché grottos; the cascades foamed with +municipal water, waiters sweated and scurried, lights winked and +glimmered, and the music and electric fans annoyed nobody.</p> + +<p>In its usual grotto Quest found the usual group, was welcomed +automatically, sat down at one of the tables, and gave his order.</p> + +<p>Artists, newspaper men, critics, and writers predominated. There was +also a "journalist" doing "brilliant" space work on the <i>Sun</i>. He had +been doing it nearly a month and he was only twenty-one. It was his +first job. Ambition tickled his ribs; Fame leaned familiarly over his +shoulder; Destiny made eyes at him. His name was Bunn.</p> + +<p>There was also a smooth-shaven, tired-eyed, little man who had written a +volume on Welsh-rarebits and now drew cartoons. His function was to +torment Bunn; and Bunn never knew it.</p> + +<p>A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his +paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play in town.</p> + +<p>"Kismet," observed little Dill, who did the daily cartoon for the +<i>Post</i>, "no critic would be a critic if he could be a fifth-rate anybody +else—or," he added, looking at Bunn, "even a journalist."</p> + +<p>"Is that supposed to be funny?" asked Bunn complacently. "<i>I</i> intend to +do art criticism for the <i>Herald</i>."</p> + +<p>"What's the objection to my getting a job on it, too?" inquired Quest, +setting his empty glass aside and signalling the waiter for a re-order. +He expected surprise and congratulation.</p> + +<p>Somebody said, "<i>You</i> take a job!" so impudently that Quest reddened and +turned, showing his narrow, defective teeth.</p> + +<p>"It's my choice that I haven't taken one," he snarled. "Did you think +otherwise?"</p> + +<p>"Don't get huffy, Stuyve," said a large, placid, fat novelist, whose +financial success with mediocre fiction had made him no warmer favourite +among his brothers.</p> + +<p>A row of artists glanced up and coldly continued their salad, their +Vandyck beards all wagging in unison.</p> + +<p>"I want you to understand," said Quest, leaning both elbows offensively +on Dill's table, "that the job I ask for I expect to get."</p> + +<p>"You might have expected that once," said the cool young man who had +spoken before.</p> + +<p>"And I do now!" retorted Quest, raising his voice. "Why not?"</p> + +<p>Somebody said: "You can furnish good copy, all right, Quest; you do it +every day that you're not working."</p> + +<p>Quest, astonished and taken aback at such a universal revelation of the +contempt in which he seemed to be held, found no reply ready—nothing at +hand except another glass of whiskey and soda.</p> + +<p>Minute after minute he sat there among them, sullen, silent, wincing, +nursing his chagrin in deepening wrath and bitterness; and his clouding +mind perceived in the rebuke nothing that he had ever done to deserve +it.</p> + +<p>Who the devil were these rag-tags and bob-tails of the world who +presumed to snub him—these restaurant-haunting outsiders, among whom he +condescended to sit, feeling always the subtle flattery they ought to +accord him by virtue of a social position hopeless of attainment by any +of them?</p> + +<p>Who were they to turn on him like this when he had every reason to +suppose they were not only aware of the great talent he had carelessly +neglected to cultivate through all these years, but must, in the secret +recesses of their grubby souls, reluctantly admire his disdain of the +only distinctions they scrambled for and could ever hope for?</p> + +<p>His black looks seemed to disturb nobody; Bunn, self-centred, cropped +his salad complacently; the Vandyck beards wagged; another critic or +two left, stern slaves to duty and paid ads.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">The lights bothered him; tremors crawled over and over his skin; within +him a dull rage was burning—a rage directed at no one thing, but which +could at any moment be focussed.</p> + +<p>Men rose and left the table singly, by twos, in groups. He sat, +glowering, head partly averted, scowlingly aware of their going, aware +of their human interest in one another but not in him, aware at last +that he counted for nothing whatever among them.</p> + +<p>Some spoke to him as they passed out; he made them no answer. And at +last he was alone.</p> + +<p>Reaching for his empty glass, he miscalculated the distance between it +and his quivering fingers; it fell and broke to pieces. When the waiter +came he cursed him, flung a bill at him, got up, demanded his coat and +hat, swore at the pallid, little, button-covered page who brought it, +and lurched out into the street.</p> + +<p>A cab stood there; he entered it, fell heavily into a corner of the +seat, bade the driver, "Keep going, damn you!" and sat swaying, +muttering, brooding on the wrongs that the world had done him.</p> + +<p>Wrongs! Yes, by God! Every hand was against him, every tongue slandered +him. Who was he that he should endure it any longer in patience! Had he +not been patient? Had he not submitted to the insults of a fool of a +doctor?—had he not stayed his hand from punishing Dumont's red and +distended face?—had he not silently accepted the insolent retorts of +these Grub Street literati who turned on him and flouted the talent that +lay dormant in him—dead, perhaps—but dead or dormant, it still +matched theirs! And they knew it, damn them!</p> + +<p>Had he not stood enough from the rotten world?—from his own sister, who +had flung his honour into his face with impunity!—from Dysart, whose +maddening and continual ignoring of his letters demanding an +explanation——</p> + +<p>There seemed to come a sudden flash in his brain; he leaned from the +window and shouted an address to the cabman. His hat had fallen beside +him, but he did not notice its absence on his fevered head.</p> + +<p>"I'll begin with <i>him</i>!" he repeated with a thick laugh; "I'll settle +with him first. Now we're going to see! Now we'll find out about several +matters—or I'll break his neck off!—or I'll twist it off—wring it +off!"</p> + +<p>And he beat on his knees with his fists, railing, raging, talking +incoherently, laughing sometimes, sometimes listening, as though, +suddenly, near him, a voice was mocking him.</p> + +<p>He had a pocket full of bills, crushed up; some he gave to the cabman, +some he dropped as he stuffed the others into his pockets, stumbled +toward a bronze-and-glass grille, and rang. The cabman brought him his +hat, put it on him, gathered up the dropped money, and drove off with +his tongue in his cheek.</p> + +<p>Quest rang again; the door opened; he gave his card to the servant, and +stealthily followed him upstairs over the velvet carpet.</p> + +<p>Dysart, in a velvet dressing-gown knotted in close about his waist, +looked over the servant's shoulders and saw Quest standing there in the +hall, leering at him.</p> + +<p>For a moment nobody spoke; Dysart took the offered card mechanically, +glanced at it, looked at Quest, and nodded dismissal to the servant.</p> + +<p>When he and the other man stood alone, he said in a low, uncertain +voice:</p> + +<p>"Get out of here!"</p> + +<p>But Quest pushed past him into the lighted room beyond, and Dysart +followed, very pale.</p> + +<p>"What are you doing here?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"I've asked you questions, too," retorted Quest. "Answer mine first."</p> + +<p>"Will you get out of here?"</p> + +<p>"Not until I take my answer with me."</p> + +<p>"You're drunk!"</p> + +<p>"I know it. Look out!"</p> + +<p>Dysart moistened his bloodless lips.</p> + +<p>"What do you want to know?" And, as Quest shouted a question at him: +"Keep quiet! Speak lower, I tell you. My father is in the next room."</p> + +<p>"What in hell do I care for your father? Answer me or I'll choke it out +of you! Answer me now, you dancing blackguard! I've got you; I want my +answer, and you've got to give it to me!"</p> + +<p>"If you don't lower your voice," said Dysart between his teeth, "I'll +throw you out of that window!"</p> + +<p>"Lower my voice? Why? Because the old fox might hear the young one yap! +What do I care for you or your doddering family——"</p> + +<p>He went down with a sharp crash; Dysart struck him again as he rose; +then, beside himself, rained blows on him, drove him from corner to +corner, out of the room, into the hall, striking him in the face till +the young fellow reeled and fell against the bath-room door. It gave; he +stumbled into darkness; and after him sprang Dysart, teeth set—sprang +into the darkness which split before him with a roar into a million +splinters of fire.</p> + +<p>He stood for a second swaying, reaching out to grasp at nothing in a +patient, persistent, meaningless way; then he fell backward, striking a +terrified servant, who shrank away and screamed as the light fell on her +apron and cuffs all streaked with blood.</p> + +<p>She screamed again as a young man's white and battered face appeared in +the dark doorway before her.</p> + +<p>"Is he hurt?" he asked. His dilated eyes were fixed upon the thing on +the floor. "What are you howling for? Is he—dead?" whispered Quest. +Suddenly terror overwhelmed him.</p> + +<p>"Get out of my way!" he yelled, hurling the shrieking maid aside, +striking the frightened butler who tried to seize him on the stairs. +There was another manservant at the door, who stood his ground swinging +a bronze statuette. Quest darted into the drawing-room, ran through the +music-room and dining-room beyond, and slammed the door of the butler's +pantry.</p> + +<p>He stood there panting, glaring, his shoulder set against the door; then +he saw a bolt, and shot it, and backed away, pistol swinging in his +bleeding fist.</p> + +<p>Servants were screaming somewhere in the house; doors slammed, a man was +shouting through a telephone amid a confusion of voices that swelled +continually until the four walls rang with the uproar. A little later a +policeman ran through the basement into the yard beyond; another pushed +his way to the pantry door and struck it heavily with his night-stick, +demanding admittance.</p> + +<p>For a second he waited; then the reply came, abrupt, deafening; and he +hurled himself at the bolted door, and it flew wide open.</p> + +<p>But Quest remained uninterested. Nothing concerned him now, lying there +on his back, his bruised young face toward the ceiling, and every +earthly question answered for him as long as time shall last.</p> + + +<p class="thoughtbreak">Up-stairs a very old and shrunken man sat shivering in bed, staring +vacantly at some policemen and making feeble efforts to reach a wig +hanging from a chair beside him—a very glossy, expensive wig, nicely +curled where it was intended to fall above the ears.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he quavered, smirking at everybody with crackled, +painted lips, "I know nothing whatever about this affair. You must ask +my son Jack, gentlemen—my son Jack—te-he!—oh, yes, he knows; he can +tell you a thing or two, I warrant you! Yes, gentlemen, he's like all +the Dysarts—fit for a fight or a frolic!—te-he!—he's all Dysart, +gentlemen—my son Jack. But he is a good son to me—yes, yes!—a good +son, a good son! Tell him I said so—and—good-night."</p> + +<p>"Nutty," whispered a policeman. "Come on out o' this boodwar and lave +th' ould wan be."</p> + +<p>And they left him smirking, smiling, twitching his faded lips, and +making vague sounds, lying there asleep in his dotage.</p> + +<p>And all night long he lay mumbling his gums and smiling, his sleep +undisturbed by the stir and lights and tramp of feet around him.</p> + +<p>And all night long in the next room lay his son, white as marble and +very still.</p> + +<p>Toward morning he spoke, asking for his father. But they had decided to +probe for the bullet, and he closed his eyes wearily and spoke no more.</p> + +<p>They found it. What Dysart found as the winter sun rose over Manhattan +town, his Maker only knows, for his sunken eyes opened unterrified yet +infinitely sad. But there was a vague smile on his lips after he lay +there dead.</p> + +<p>Nor did his slayer lie less serenely where bars of sunlight moved behind +the lowered curtains, calm as a schoolboy sleeping peacefully after the +eternity of a summer day where he had played too long and fiercely with +a world too rough for him.</p> + +<p>And so, at last, the indictments were dismissed against them both and +their cases adjourned <i>sine die</i>.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a> +<a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XXIV<br />THE PROLOGUE ENDS</a></h2> + + +<p>"Your sister," observed Dr. Bailey to Scott Seagrave, "must be +constructed of India-rubber. There's nothing whatever the matter with +her spine or with her interior. The slight trace of concussion is +disappearing; there's no injury to the skull; nothing serious to +apprehend. Her body will probably be black and blue for a week or two; +she'll doubtless prefer to remain in bed to-morrow and next day. And +that is the worst news I have to tell you."</p> + +<p>He smiled at Kathleen and Duane, who stood together, listening.</p> + +<p>"I told you so," said Scott, intensely relieved. "Duane got scared and +made me send that telegram. I fell out of a tree once, and my sister's +symptoms were exactly like mine."</p> + +<p>Kathleen stole silently from the room; Duane passed his arm through the +doctor's and walked with him to the big, double sleigh which was +waiting. Scott followed with Dr. Goss.</p> + +<p>"About this other matter," said Dr. Bailey; "I can't make it out, Duane. +I saw Jack Dysart two days ago. He was very nervous, but physically +sound. I can't believe it was suicide."</p> + +<p>He unfolded the telegram which had come that morning directed to Duane.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>"<i>Mrs. Jack Dysart's husband died this morning. Am trying to +communicate with her. Wire if you know her whereabouts.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>It was signed with old Mr. Dysart's name, but Dr. Bailey knew he could +never have written the telegram or even have comprehended it.</p> + +<p>The men stood grouped in the snow near the sleigh, waiting; and +presently Rosalie came out on the terrace with Kathleen and Delancy +Grandcourt. Her colour was very bad and there were heavy circles under +her eyes, but she spoke with perfect self-possession, made her adieux +quietly, kissed Kathleen twice, and suffered Grandcourt to help her into +the sleigh.</p> + +<p>Then Grandcourt got in beside her, the two doctors swung aboard in +front, bells jingled, and they whirled away over the snow.</p> + +<p>Kathleen, with Scott and Duane on either side of her, walked back to the +house.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Scott, his voice betraying nervous reaction, "we'll resume +life where we left off when Geraldine did. Don't tell her anything about +Dysart yet. Suppose we go and cheer her up!"</p> + +<p>Geraldine lay on the pillows, rather pallid under the dark masses of +hair clustering around and framing her face. She unclosed her eyes when +Kathleen opened the door for a preliminary survey, and the others filed +solemnly in.</p> + +<p>"Hello," she said faintly, and smiled at Duane.</p> + +<p>"How goes it, Sis?" asked her brother affectionately, shouldering Duane +aside.</p> + +<p>"A little sleepy, but all right. Why on earth did you send for Dr. +Bailey? It was horribly expensive."</p> + +<p>"Duane did," said her brother briefly. "He was scared blue."</p> + +<p>Her eyes rested on her lover, indulgent, dreamily humorous.</p> + +<p>"Such expensive habits," she murmured, "when everybody is economising. +Kathleen, dear, he needs schooling. You and Mr. Tappan ought to take him +in hand and cultiwate him good and hard!"</p> + +<p>Scott, who had been wandering around his sister's room with innate +masculine curiosity concerning the mysteries of intimate femininity, +came upon a sketch of Duane's—the colour not entirely dry yet.</p> + +<p>"It's Sis!" he exclaimed in unfeigned approval. "Lord, but you've made +her a good-looker, Duane. Does she really appear like that to you?"</p> + +<p>"And then some," said Duane. "Keep your fingers off it."</p> + +<p>Scott admired in silence for a while, then: "You certainly are a shark +at it, Duane.... You've struck your gait all right.... I wish I had.... +This Rose-beetle business doesn't promise very well."</p> + +<p>"You write most interestingly about it," said Kathleen warmly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I can write.... I believe journalism would suit me."</p> + +<p>"The funny column?" suggested Geraldine.</p> + +<p>"Yes, or the birth, marriage, and death column. I could head it, +'Hatched, Matched, and Snatched'——"</p> + +<p>"That is perfectly horrid, Scott," protested his sister; "why do you let +him say such rowdy things, Kathleen?"</p> + +<p>"I can't help it," sighed Kathleen; "I haven't the slightest influence +with him. Look at him now!"—as he laughingly passed his arm around her +and made her two-step around the room, protesting, rosy, deliciously +helpless in the arms of this tall young fellow who held her inflexibly +but with a tenderness surprising.</p> + +<p>Duane smiled and seated himself on the edge of the bed.</p> + +<p>"You plucky little thing," he said, "were you perfectly mad to try to +block that boar in the scrub? You won't ever try such a thing again, +will you, dear?"</p> + +<p>"I was so excited, Duane; I never thought there was any danger——"</p> + +<p>"You didn't think whether there was or not. You didn't care."</p> + +<p>She laughed, wincing under his accusing gaze.</p> + +<p>"You <i>must</i> care, dear."</p> + +<p>"I do," she said, serious when he became so grave. "Tell me again +exactly what happened."</p> + +<p>He said: "I don't think the brute saw you; he was hard hit and was going +blind, and he side-swiped you and sent you flying into the air among +those icy rocks." He drew a long breath, managed to smile in response to +her light touch on his hand. "And that's how it was, dear. He crashed +headlong into a tree; your last shot did it. But Miller and I thought +he'd got you. We carried you in——"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> did?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I never was so thoroughly scared in all my life."</p> + +<p>"You poor boy. Are the rifles safe? And did Miller save the head?"</p> + +<p>"He did," said Duane grimly, "and your precious rifles are intact."</p> + +<p>"Lean down, close," she said; "closer. There's more than the rifles +intact, dear."</p> + +<p>"Not your poor bruised body!"</p> + +<p>"My self-respect," she whispered, the pink colour stealing into her +cheeks. "I've won it back. Do you understand? I've gone after my other +self and got her back. I'm mistress of myself, Duane; I'm in full +control, first in command. Do you know what that means?"</p> + +<p>"Does it mean—me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"When?"</p> + +<p>"When you will."</p> + +<p>He leaned above her, looking down into her eyes. Their fearless +sweetness set him trembling.</p> + +<p>On the floor below Kathleen, at the piano, was playing the Menuet +d'Exaudet. When she ended, Scott, cheerily busy with his infant +Rose-beetles, went about his affairs whistling the air.</p> + +<p>"Our betrothal dance; do you remember?" murmured Geraldine. "Do you love +me, Duane? Tell me so; I need it."</p> + +<p>"I love you," he said.</p> + +<p>She lay looking at him a moment, her head cradled in her dark hair. +Then, moving slowly, and smiling at the pain it gave her, she put both +bare arms around his neck, and lifted her lips to his.</p> + +<p>It was the end of the prologue; the curtain trembled on the rise; the +story of Fate was beginning. But they had no eyes except for each other, +paid no heed save to each other.</p> + +<p>And, unobserved by them, the vast curtain rose in silence, beginning the +strange drama which neither time nor death, perhaps, has power to end.</p> + +<h3>THE END</h3> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Danger Mark, by Robert W. 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Chambers + +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 Danger Mark + +Author: Robert W. Chambers + +Illustrator: A. B. Wenzell + +Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18185] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DANGER MARK *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Robert Ledger and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Illustration: "'Please do tell me somebody is scandalised.'"] + + +THE DANGER MARK + +BY + +ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + +WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + +A.B. WENZELL + + +1909 + + +TO + +MY FRIEND + +JOHN CARRINGTON YATES + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. The Seagraves + + II. In Trust + + III. The Threshold + + IV. The Year of Discretion + + V. Roya-Neh + + VI. Adrift + + VII. Together + + VIII. An Afterglow + + IX. Confession + + X. Dusk + + XI. Fete Galante + + XII. The Love of the Gods + + XIII. Ambitions and Letters + + XIV. The Prophets + + XV. Dysart + + XVI. Through the Woods + + XVII. The Danger Mark + + XVIII. Bon Chien + + XIX. Questions and Answers + + XX. In Search of Herself + + XXI. The Golden Hours + + XXII. Cloudy Mountain + + XXIII. Sine Die + + XXIV. The Prologue Ends + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"'Please do tell me somebody is scandalized'" + +"'Can I have what other women have--silk underwear and stockings?'" + +"'Duane!' she gasped--'why did you?'" + +"Oh, the horror of it!--the shame, the agonized surprise" + +"'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is ... amply +rewarded'" + +"'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'" + +"She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous courtesy" + +"Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms" + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SEAGRAVES + + +All day Sunday they had raised the devil from attic to cellar; Mrs. +Farren was in tears, Howker desperate. Not one out of the fifteen +servants considered necessary to embellish the Seagrave establishment +could do anything with them after Kathleen Severn's sudden departure the +week before. + +When the telegram announcing her mother's sudden illness summoned young +Mrs. Severn to Staten Island, every servant in the household understood +that serious trouble was impending for them. + +Day by day the children became more unruly; Sunday they were demons; and +Mrs. Farren shuddered to think what Monday might bring forth. + +The day began ominously at breakfast with general target practice, +ammunition consisting of projectiles pinched from the interior of hot +muffins. Later, when Mrs. Farren ventured into the schoolroom, she found +Scott Seagrave drawing injurious pictures of Howker on the black-board, +and Geraldine sorting lumps of sugar from the bowl on the +breakfast-tray, which had not yet been removed. + +"Dearies," she began, "it is after nine o'clock and----" + +"No school to-day, Mrs. Farren," interrupted Scott cheerfully; "we +haven't anything to do till Kathleen comes back, and you know it +perfectly well!" + +"Yes, you have, dearie; Mrs. Severn has just sent you this list of +lessons." She held out a black-edged envelope. + +Geraldine, who had been leisurely occupied in dropping cologne on a lump +of sugar, thrust the lump into her pink mouth and turned sharply on Mrs. +Farren. + +"What list?" she demanded. "Give that letter to me.... Oh, Scott! Did +you ever hear of anything half so mean? Kathleen's written out about a +thousand questions in geography for us!" + +"I can't stand that sort of interference!" shouted Scott, dropping his +chalk and aiming a kick at the big papier-mache globe. "I'm sorry +Kathleen's mother is probably going to die, but I've had enough +geography, too." + +"Mrs. Severn's mother died on Friday," said the housekeeper solemnly. + +The children paused, serious for a moment in the presence of the +incomprehensible. + +"We're sorry," said Geraldine slowly.... "When is Kathleen coming back?" + +"Perhaps to-night, dearie----" + +Scott impatiently detached the schoolroom globe from its brass axis: +"I'm sorry, too," he said; "but I'm tired of lessons. Now, Mrs. Farren, +watch me! I'm going to kick a goal from the field. Here, you hold it, +Geraldine; Mrs. Farren, you had better try to block it and cheer for +Yale!" + +Geraldine seized the globe, threw herself flat on the floor, and, head +on one side, wriggled, carefully considering the angle. Then, tipping +the globe, she adjusted it daintily for her brother to kick. + +"A little higher, please; look out there, Mrs. Farren!" said Scott +calmly; "Harvard is going to score this time. Now, Geraldine!" + +Thump! came the kick, but Mrs. Farren had fled, and the big globe struck +the nursery door and bounced back minus half of South America. + +For ten minutes the upper floors echoed with the racket. Geraldine +fiercely disputed her brother's right to kick every time; then, as +usual, when she got what she wanted, gave up to Scott and let him +monopolise the kicking until, satiated, he went back to the black-board, +having obliterated several continents from the face of the globe. + +"You might at least be polite enough to hold it for me to kick," said +his sister. "What a pig you are, Scott." + +"Don't bother me; I'm drawing Howker. You can't kick straight, +anyway----" + +"Yes, I can!" + +Scott, intent on his drawing, muttered: + +"I wish there was another boy in this house; I might have a little fun +to-day if there was anybody to play with." + +There ensued a silence; then he heard his sister's light little feet +flying along the hallway toward their bedrooms, but went on calmly with +his drawing, using some effective coloured crayon on Howker's nose. +Presently he became conscious that Geraldine had re-entered the room. + +"What are you going to do to-day?" he asked, preoccupied. + +Geraldine, dressed in her brother's clothes, was kneeling on one knee +and hastily strapping on a single roller-skate. + +"I'll show you," she said, rising and shaking the dark curls out of her +eyes. "Come on, Scott, I'm going to misbehave all day. Look at me! I've +brought you the boy you wanted to play with." + +Her brother turned, considered her with patronising toleration, then +shrugged his shoulders. + +"You look like one, but you're no good," he said. + +"I can be just as bad as any boy!" she insisted. "I'll do whatever you +do; I'll do worse, I tell you. Dare me to do something!" + +"You don't dare skate backward into the red drawing-room! There's too +much bric-a-brac." + +She turned like a flash and was off, hopping and clattering down-stairs +on her single skate, and a moment later she whirled into the red +drawing-room backward and upset a Sang-de-boeuf jar, reducing the maid +to horrified tears and the jar to powder. + +Howker strove in vain to defend his dining-room when Scott appeared on +one skate; but the breakfast-room and pantry were forcibly turned into +rinks; the twins swept through the halls, met and defeated their nurses, +Margaret and Betty, tumbled down into the lower regions, from there +descended to the basement, and whizzed cheerily through the kitchen, +waving two skateless legs. + +There Mrs. Bramton attempted to buy them off with tribute in the shape +of cup-cakes. + +"Sure, darlints, they do be starvin' yez," purred Mrs. Bramton. "Don't I +know the likes o' them? Now roon away quietlike an' ladylike----" + +"Like a hen," retorted Scott. "I want some preserves." + +"That's all very well," said Geraldine with her mouth full, "but we +expected to skate about the kitchen and watch you make pastry. Kindly +begin, Mrs. Bramton." + +"I'd like to see what's inside of that chicken over there," said Scott. +"And I want you to give me some raisins, Mrs. Bramton----" + +"I'm dying for a glass of milk," added Geraldine. "Get me some dough, +somebody; I'm going to bake something." + +Scott, who, devoured by curiosity, had been sniffing around the spice +cupboard, sneezed violently; a Swedish kitchen-maid threw her apron over +her head, weak with laughter. + +"If you're laughing at me, I'll fix you, Olga!" shouted Scott in a rage; +and the air was suddenly filled with balls of dough. Mrs. Bramton fled +before the storm; a well-directed volley drove the maids to cover and +stampeded the two cats. + +"Take whatever is good to eat, Geraldine. Hurrah! The town surrenders! +Loot it! No quarter!" shouted Scott. However, when Howker arrived they +retired hastily with pockets full of cinnamon sticks, olives, prunes, +and dried currants, climbing triumphantly to the library above, where +they curled up on a leather divan, under the portrait of their mother, +to divide the spoils. + +"Am I bad enough to suit you?" inquired Geraldine with pardonable pride. + +"Pooh! That's nothing. If I had another boy here I'd--I'd----" + +"Well, what?" demanded Geraldine, flushing. "I tell you I can misbehave +as well as any boy. Dare me to do anything and you'll see! I dare you to +dare me!" + +Scott began: "Oh, it's all very easy for a girl to talk----" + +"I _don't_ talk; I _do_ it! And you know perfectly well I do!" + +"You're a girl, after all, even if you have got on my clothes----" + +"Didn't I throw as much dough at Olga and Mrs. Bramton as you did?" + +"You didn't hit anybody." + +"I did! I saw a soft, horrid lump stick to Olga!" + +"Pooh! _You_ can't throw straight----" + +"That's a lie!" said Geraldine excitedly. + +Scott bristled: + +"If you say that again----" + +"All right; go and get the boxing-gloves. You _did_ tell a lie, Scott, +because I did hit Olga!" + +Scott hastily unstrapped his lone skate, cast it clattering from him, +and sped up-stairs. When he returned he hurled a pair of boxing-gloves +at Geraldine, who put them on, laced them, trembling with wrath, and +flew at her brother as soon as his own gloves were fastened. + +They went about their business like lightning, swinging, blocking, +countering. Twice she gave him inviting openings and then punished him +savagely before he could get away; then he attempted in-fighting, but +her legs were too nimble. And after a while he lost his head and came at +her using sheer weight, which set her beside herself with fury. + +Teeth clenched, crimson-cheeked, she side-stepped, feinted, and whipped +in an upper-cut. Then, darting in, she drove home her left with all her +might; and Scott went down with an unmistakable thud. + +"One--two--three--four," she counted, "and you _did_ tell a lie, didn't +you? Five--six--Oh, Scott! I've made your nose bleed horridly! Does it +hurt, dear? Seven--eight----" + +The boy, still confused, rose and instinctively assumed the classic +attitude of self-defence; but his sister threw down her gloves and +offered him her handkerchief, saying: "You've just got to be fair to me +now, Scott. Tell me that I throw straight and that I did hit Olga!" + +He hesitated; wiped his nose: + +"I take it back. You can throw straight. Ginger! What a crack you just +gave me!" + +She was all compunction and honey now, hovering around him where he +stood stanching honourable wounds. After a while he laughed. "Thunder!" +he exclaimed ruefully; "my nose seems to be growing for fair. You're all +right, Geraldine." + +"Here's my last cup-cake, if you like," said his sister, radiant. + +Embarrassed a little by defeat, but nursing no bitterness, he sat down +on the leather divan again and permitted his sister to feed him and tell +him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too, +but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut +finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit. + +"We'll try it again," he began. "I'm all right now, if you like----" + +"Oh, Scott, I don't want to!" + +"Well, we ought to know which of us really can lick the other----" + +"Why, of course, you can lick me every time. Besides, I wouldn't want to +be able to lick you--except when I'm very, very angry. And I ought not +to become angry the way I do. Kathleen tries so hard to make me stop +and reflect before I do things, but I can't seem to learn.... Does your +nose hurt?" + +"Not in the least," said her brother, reddening and changing the +subject. "I say, it looks as though it were going to stop raining." + +He went to the window; the big Seagrave house with its mansard roof, set +in the centre of an entire city block, bounded by Madison and Fifth +Avenues and by Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets, looked out from +its four red brick facades onto strips of lawn and shrubbery, now all +green and golden with new grass and early buds. + +It was topsy-turvy, March-hare weather, which perhaps accounted for the +early April dementia that possessed the children at recurring intervals, +and which nothing ever checked except the ultimate slumber of infantile +exhaustion. + +If anybody in the house possessed authority to punish them, nobody +exercised it. Servants grown gray in the Seagrave service endured much, +partly for the children's sakes, partly in memory of the past; but the +newer and younger domestics had less interest in the past glories and +traditions of an old New York family which, except for two little +children, ten years old, had perished utterly from the face of the land. + +The entire domestic regime was a makeshift--had been almost from the +beginning. Mrs. Farren, the housekeeper, understood it; Howker, the +butler, knew it; Lacy knew it--he who had served forty years as coachman +in the Seagrave family. + +For in all the world there remained not one living soul who through ties +of kinship was authorised to properly control these children. Nor could +they themselves even remember parental authority; and only a shadowy +recollection of their grandfather's lax discipline survived, becoming +gradually, as time passed, nothing more personal to them than a pleasant +legend kept alive and nourished in the carefully guarded stories told +them by Kathleen Severn and by Anthony Seagrave's old servants. + +Yet, in the land, and in his own city of Manhattan, their grandfather +had been a very grand man, with his large fortune, now doubled and still +increasing; he had been a very distinguished man in the world of fashion +with his cultivated taste in art and wine and letters and horses; he had +been a very important man, too, in the civic, social, and political +construction of New York town, in the quaint days when the sexton of Old +Trinity furnished fashionable hostesses with data concerning the +availability of social aspirants. He had been a courtly and fascinating +man, too. He had died a drunkard. + +Now his grandchildren were fast forgetting him. The town had long since +forgotten him. Only an old friend or two and his old servants remembered +what he had been, his virtues, his magnificence, his kindness, and his +weakness. + +But if the Seagrave twins possessed neither father nor mother to +exercise tender temporal and spiritual suzerainty in the nursery, and if +no memory of their grandfather's adoring authority remained, the last +will and testament of Anthony Seagrave had provided a marvellous, +man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled +their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours +even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of +their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their +schooling, the items of their daily routine. + +This colossal automaton, almost terrifyingly impersonal, loomed always +above them, throwing its powerful and gigantic shadow across their +lives. As they grew old enough to understand, it became to them the +embodiment of occult and unpleasant authority which controlled their +coming and going; which chose for them their personal but not their +legal guardian, Kathleen Severn; which fixed upon the number of servants +necessary for the house that Anthony Seagrave directed should be +maintained for his grandchildren; which decided what kind of expenses, +what sort of clothing, what recreations, what accomplishments, what +studies, what religion they should be provided with. + +And the name of this enormous man-contrived machine which took the place +of father and mother was the Half Moon Trust Company, acting as trustee, +guardian, and executor for two little children, who neither understood +why they were sometimes very unruly or that they would one day be very, +very rich. + +As for their outbreaks, an intense sense of loneliness for which they +were unable to account was always followed by a period of restlessness +sure to culminate in violent misbehaviour. + +Such an outbreak had been long impending. So when a telegram called away +their personal guardian, Kathleen Severn, the children broke loose with +the delicate fury of the April tempest outside, which all the morning +had been blotting the western windows with gusts of fragrant rain. + +The storm was passing now; light volleys of rain still arrived at +intervals, slackening as the spring sun broke out, gilding naked +branches and bare brown earth, touching swelling buds and the frail +points of tulips which pricked the soaked loam in close-set thickets. + +From the library bay windows where they stood, the children noticed +dandelions in the grass and snowdrops under the trees and recognised the +green signals of daffodil and narcissus. + +Already crocuses, mauve, white, and yellow, glimmered along a dripping +privet hedge which crowned the brick and granite wall bounding the +domain of Seagrave. East, through the trees, they could see the roofs of +electric cars speeding up and down Madison Avenue, and the houses facing +that avenue. North and south were quiet streets; westward Fifth Avenue +ran, a sheet of wet, golden asphalt glittering under the spring sun, and +beyond it, above the high retaining wall, budding trees stood out +against the sky, and the waters of the Park reservoirs sparkled behind. + +"I am glad it's spring, anyway," said Geraldine listlessly. + +"What's the good of it?" asked Scott. "We'll have to take all our +exercise with Kathleen just the same, and watch other children having +good times. What's the use of spring?" + +"Spring _is_ tiresome," admitted Geraldine thoughtfully. + +"So is winter. I think either would be all right if they'd only let me +have a few friends. There are plenty of boys I'd like to have some fun +with if they'd let me." + +"I wonder," mused Geraldine, "if there is anything the matter with us, +Scott?" + +"Why?" + +"Oh--I don't know. People stare at us so--nurses always watch us and +begin to whisper as soon as we come along. Do you know what a boy said +to me once when I skated very far ahead of Kathleen?" + +"What did he say?" inquired Scott, flattening his nose against the +window-pane to see whether it still hurt him. + +"He asked me if I were too rich and proud to play with other children. I +was so surprised; and I said that we were not rich at all, and that I +never had had any money, and that I was not a bit proud, and would love +to stay and play with him if Kathleen permitted me." + +"Did Kathleen let you? Of course she didn't." + +"I told her what the boy said and I showed her the boy, but she wouldn't +let me stay and play." + +"Kathleen's a pig." + +"No, she isn't, poor dear. They make her act that way--Mr. Tappan makes +her. Our grandfather didn't want us to have friends." + +"I'll tell you what," said Scott impatiently, "when I'm old enough, I'll +have other boys to play with whether Kathleen and--and that Thing--likes +it or not." + +The Thing was the Half Moon Trust Company. + +Geraldine glanced back at the portrait over the divan: + +"Do you know," she ventured, "that I believe mother would have let us +have fun." + +"I'll bet father would, too," said Scott. "Sometimes I feel like kicking +over everything in the house." + +"So do I and I generally do it," observed Geraldine, lifting a slim, +graceful leg and sending a sofa-cushion flying. + +When they had kicked all the cushions from the sofas and divans, Scott +suggested that they go out and help Schmitt, the gardener, who, at that +moment, came into view on the lawn, followed by Olsen wheeling a +barrowful of seedlings in wooden trays. + +So the children descended to the main hall and marched through it, +defying Lang, the second man, refusing hats and overshoes; and presently +were digging blissfully in a flower-bed under the delighted directions +of Schmitt. + +"What are these things, anyway?" demanded Scott, ramming down the moist +earth around a fragile rootlet from which trailed a green leaf or two. + +"Dot vas a verpena, sir," explained the old gardener. "Now you shall +vatch him grow." + +The boy remained squatting for several minutes, staring hard at the +seedling. + +"I can't see it grow," he said to his sister, "and I'm not going to sit +here all day waiting. Come on!" And he gave her a fraternal slap. + +Geraldine wiped her hands on her knickerbockers and started after him; +and away they raced around the house, past the fountains, under trees by +the coach-house, across paths and lawns and flower-beds, tearing about +like a pair of demented kittens. They frisked, climbed trees, chased +each other, wrestled, clutched, tumbled, got mad, made up, and finally, +removing shoes and stockings, began a game of leapfrog. + +Horror-stricken nurses arrived bearing dry towels and footgear, and were +received with fury and a volley of last year's horse-chestnuts. And when +the enemy had been handsomely repulsed, the children started on a tour +of exploration, picking their way with tender, naked feet to the +northern hedge. + +Here Geraldine mounted on Scott's shoulders and drew herself up to the +iron railing which ran along the top of the granite-capped wall between +hedge and street; and Scott followed her, both pockets stuffed with +chestnuts which he had prudently gathered in the shrubbery. + +In the street below there were few passers-by. Each individual wayfarer, +however, received careful attention, Scott having divided the chestnuts, +and the aim of both children being excellent. + +They had been awaiting a new victim for some time, when suddenly +Geraldine pinched her brother with eager satisfaction: + +"Oh, Scott! there comes that boy I told you about!" + +"What boy?" + +"The one who asked me if I was too rich and proud to play with him. And +that must be his sister; they look alike." + +"All right," said Scott; "we'll give them a volley. You take the nurse +and I'll fix the boy.... Ready.... Fire!" + +The ambuscade was perfectly successful; the nurse halted and looked up, +expressing herself definitely upon the manners and customs of the twins; +the boy, who appeared to be amazingly agile, seized a swinging wistaria +vine, clambered up the wall, and, clinging to the outside of the iron +railing, informed Scott that he would punch his head when a pleasing +opportunity presented itself. + +"All right," retorted Scott; "come in and do it now." + +"That's all very well for you to say when you know I can't climb over +this railing!" + +"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Scott, thrilled at the chance of +another boy on the grounds even if he had to fight him; "I'll tell you +what!" sinking his voice to an eager whisper; "You run away from your +nurse as soon as you get into the Park and I'll be at the front door and +I'll let you in. Will you?" + +"Oh, _please_!" whispered Geraldine; "and bring your sister, too!" + +The boy stared at her knickerbockers. "Do _you_ want to fight my +sister?" he asked. + +"I? Oh, no, no, no. You can fight Scott if you like, and your sister and +I will have such fun watching you. Will you?" + +His nurse was calling him to descend, in tones agitated and peremptory; +the boy hesitated, scowled at Scott, looked uncertainly at Geraldine, +then shot a hasty and hostile glance at the interior of the mysterious +Seagrave estate. Curiosity overcame him; also, perhaps, a natural desire +for battle. + +"Yes," he said to Scott, "I'll come back and punch your head for you." + +And very deftly, clinging like a squirrel to the pendant wistaria, he +let himself down into the street again. + +The Seagrave twins, intensely excited, watched them as far as Fifth +Avenue, then rapidly drawing on their shoes and stockings, scrambled +down to the shrubbery and raced for the house. Through it they passed +like a double whirlwind; feeble and perfunctory resistance was offered +by their nurses. + +"Get out of my way!" said Geraldine fiercely; "do you think I'm going to +miss the first chance for some fun that I've ever had in all my life?" + +At the same moment, through the glass-sheeted grill Scott discovered +two small figures dashing up the drive to the porte-cochere. And he +turned on Lang like a wild cat. + +Lang, the man at the door, was disposed to defend his post; Scott +prepared to fly at him, but his sister intervened: + +"Oh, Lang," she pleaded, jumping up and down in an agony of +apprehension, "please, _please_, let them in! We've never had any +friends." She caught his arm piteously; he looked fearfully embarrassed, +for the Seagrave livery was still new to him; nor, during his brief +service, had he fully digested the significance of the policy which so +rigidly guarded these little children lest rumour from without apprise +them of their financial future and the contaminating realisation +undermine their simplicity. + +As he stood, undecided, Geraldine suddenly jerked his hand from the +bronze knob and Scott flung open the door. + +"Come on! Quick!" he cried; and the next moment four small pairs of feet +were flying through the hall, echoing lightly across the terrace, then +skimming the lawn to the sheltering shrubbery beyond. + +"The thing to do," panted Scott, "is to keep out of sight." He seized +his guests by the arms and drew them behind the rhododendrons. "Now," he +said, "what's your name? You, I mean!" + +"Duane Mallett," replied the boy, breathless. "That's my sister, Naida. +Let's wait a moment before we begin to fight; Naida and I had to run +like fury to get away from our nurse." + +Naida was examining Geraldine with an interest almost respectful. + +"I wish they'd let _me_ dress like a boy," she said. "It's fun, isn't +it?" + +"Yes. They don't _let_ me do it; I just did it," replied Geraldine. +"I'll get you a suit of Scott's clothes, if you like. I can get the +boxing-gloves at the same time. Shall I, Scott?" + +"Go ahead," said Scott; "we can pretend there are four boys here." And, +to Duane, as Geraldine sped cautiously away on her errand: "That's a +thing I never did before." + +"What thing?" + +"Play with three boys all by myself. Kathleen--who is Mrs. Severn, our +guardian--is always with us when we are permitted to speak to other boys +and girls." + +"That's babyish," remarked Duane in frank disgust. "You are a +mollycoddle." + +The deep red of mortification spread over Scott's face; he looked shyly +at Naida, doubly distressed that a girl should hear the degrading term +applied to him. The small girl returned his gaze without a particle of +expression in her face. + +"Mollycoddles," continued Duane cruelly, "do the sort of things you do. +You're one." + +"I--don't _want_ to be one," stammered Scott. "How can I help it?" + +Duane ignored the appeal. "Playing with three boys isn't anything," he +said. "I play with forty every day." + +"W-where?" asked Scott, overwhelmed. + +"In school, of course--at recess--and before nine, and after one. We +have fine times. School's all right. Don't you even go to school?" + +Scott shook his head, too ashamed to speak. Naida, with a flirt of her +kilted skirts, had abruptly turned her back on him; yet he was miserably +certain she was listening to her brother's merciless catechism. + +"I suppose you don't even know how to play hockey," commented Duane +contemptuously. + +There was no answer. + +"What do you do? Play with dolls? Oh, what a molly!" + +Scott raised his head; he had grown quite white. Naida, turning, saw the +look on the boy's face. + +"Duane doesn't mean that," she said; "he's only teasing." + +Geraldine came hurrying back with the boxing-gloves and a suit of +Scott's very best clothes, halting when she perceived the situation, for +Scott had walked up to Duane, and the boys stood glaring at one another, +hands doubling up into fists. + +"You think I'm a molly?" asked Scott in a curiously still voice. + +"Yes, I do." + +"Oh, Scott!" cried Geraldine, pushing in between them, "you'll have to +hammer him well for that----" + +Naida turned and shoved her brother aside: + +"I don't want you to fight him," she said. "I like him." + +"Oh, but they must fight, you know," explained Geraldine earnestly. "If +we didn't fight, we'd really be what you call us. Put on Scott's +clothes, Naida, and while our brothers are fighting, you and I will +wrestle to prove that I'm not a mollycoddle----" + +"I don't want to," said Naida tremulously. "I like you, too----" + +"Well, _you're_ one if you don't!" retorted Geraldine. "You can like +anybody and have fun fighting them, too." + +"Put on those clothes, Naida," said Duane sternly. "Are you going to +take a dare?" + +So she retired very unwillingly into the hedge to costume herself while +the two boys invested their fists with the soft chamois gloves of +combat. + +"We won't bother to shake hands," observed Scott. "Are you ready?" + +"Yes, you will, too," insisted Geraldine; "shake hands before you begin +to fight!" + +"I won't," retorted Scott sullenly; "shake hands with anybody who calls +me--what he did." + +"Very well then; if you don't, I'll put on those gloves and fight you +myself." + +Duane's eyes flew wide open and he gazed upon Geraldine with newly mixed +emotions. She walked over to her brother and said: + +"Remember what Howker told us that father used to say--that squabbling +is disgraceful but a good fight is all right. Duane called you a silly +name. Instead of disputing about it and calling each other names, you +ought to settle it with a fight and be friends afterward.... Isn't that +so, Duane?" + +Duane seemed doubtful. + +"Isn't it so?" she repeated fiercely, stepping so swiftly in front of +him that he jumped back. + +"Yes, I guess so," he admitted; and the sudden smile which Geraldine +flashed on him completed his subjection. + +Naida, in her boy's clothes, came out, her hands in her pockets, +strutting a little and occasionally bending far over to catch a view of +herself as best she might. + +"All ready!" cried Geraldine; "begin! Look out, Naida; I'm going to +throw you." + +Behind her the two boys touched gloves, then Scott rushed his man. + +At the same moment Geraldine seized Naida. + +"We are not to pull hair," she said; "remember! Now, dear, look out for +yourself!" + +Of that classic tournament between the clans of Mallett and Seagrave the +chronicles are lacking. Doubtless their ancestors before them joined +joyously in battle, confident that all details of their prowess would be +carefully recorded by the family minstrel. + +But the battle of that Saturday noon hour was witnessed only by the +sparrows, who were too busy lugging bits of straw and twine to +half-completed nests in the cornices of the House of Seagrave, to pay +much attention to the combat of the Seagrave children, who had gone +quite mad with the happiness of companionship and were expressing it +with all their might. + +Naida's dark curls mingled with the grass several times before Geraldine +comprehended that her new companion was absurdly at her mercy; and then +she seized her with all the desperation of first possession and kissed +her hard. + +"It's ended," breathed Geraldine tremulously, "and nobody gained the +victory and--you _will_ love me, won't you?" + +"I don't know--I'm all dirt." She looked at Geraldine, bewildered by the +passion of the lonely child's caresses. "Yes--I do love you, Geraldine. +Oh, _look_ at those boys! How perfectly disgraceful! They _must_ +stop--make them stop, Geraldine!" + +Hair on end, grass-stained, dishevelled, and unspeakably dirty, the boys +were now sparring for breath. Grime and perspiration streaked their +countenances. Duane Mallett wore a humorously tinted eye and a +prehensile upper lip; Scott's nose had again yielded to the coy +persuasion of a left-handed jab and the proud blood of the Seagraves +once more offended high heaven on that April day. + +Geraldine, one arm imprisoning Naida's waist, walked coolly in between +them: + +"Don't let's fight any more. The thing to do is to get Mrs. Bramton to +give you enough for four to eat and bring it back here. Scott, please +shake hands with Duane." + +"I wasn't licked," muttered Scott. + +"Neither was I," said Duane. + +"Nobody was licked by anybody," announced Geraldine. "Do get something +to eat, Scott; Naida and I are starving!" + +After some hesitation the boys touched gloves respectfully, and Scott +shook off his mitts, and started for the kitchen. + +And there, to his horror and surprise, he was confronted by Mrs. Severn, +black hat, crape veil, and gloves still on, evidently that instant +arrived from those occult and, as the children supposed, distant bournes +of Staten Island, where the supreme mystery of all had been at work. + +"Oh, Scott!" she exclaimed tremulously, "what on earth has happened? +What is all this that Mrs. Farren and Howker have been telling me?" + +The boy stood petrified. Then there surged over him the memory of his +brief happiness in these new companions--a happiness now to be snatched +away ere scarcely tasted. Into the child's dirty, disfigured face came a +hunted expression; he looked about for an avenue of escape, and +Kathleen Severn caught him at the same instant and drew him to her. + +"What is it, Scott? Tell me, darling!" + +"Nothing.... Yes, there is something. I opened the front door and let a +strange boy and girl in to play with us, and I've just been fighting +with him, and we were having such good times--I--" his voice broke--"I +can't bear to have them go--so soon----" + +Kathleen looked at him for a moment, speechless with consternation. +Then: + +"Where are they, Scott?" + +"In the--the hedge." + +"Out _there_?" + +"Yes." + +"_Who_ are they?" + +"Their names are Duane Mallett and Naida Mallett. We got them to run +away from their nurse. Duane's such a bully fellow." A sob choked him. + +"Come with me at once," said Kathleen. + +Behind the rhododendrons smiling peace was extending its pinions; Duane +had produced a pocketful of jack-stones, and the three children were now +seated on the grass, Naida manipulating the jacks with soiled but deft +fingers. + +Duane was saying to Geraldine: + +"It's funny that you didn't know you were rich. Everybody says so, and +all the nurses in the Park talk about it every time you and Scott walk +past." + +"If I'm rich," said Geraldine, "why don't I have more money?" + +"Don't they let you have as much as you want?" + +"No--only twenty-five cents every month.... It's my turn, Naida! Oh, +bother! I missed. Go on, Duane----" + +And, glancing up, her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as Kathleen +Severn, in her mourning veil and gown, came straight up to where they +sat. + +"Geraldine, dear, the grass is too damp to sit on," said Mrs. Severn +quietly. She turned to the youthful guests, who had hastily risen. + +"You are Naida Mallett, it seems; and you are Duane? Please come in now +and wash and dress properly, because I am going to telephone to your +mother and ask her if you may remain to luncheon and play in the nursery +afterward." + +Dazed, the children silently followed her; one of her arms lay loosely +about the shoulders of her own charges; one encircled Naida's neck. +Duane walked cautiously beside his sister. + +In the house the nurses took charge; Geraldine, turning on the stairs, +looked back at Kathleen Severn. + +"Are you really going to let them stay?" + +"Yes, I am, darling." + +"And--and may we play together all alone in the nursery?" + +"I think so.... I think so, dear." + +She ran back down the stairs and impetuously flung herself into +Kathleen's arms; then danced away to join the others in the blessed +regions above. + +Mrs. Severn moved slowly to the telephone, and first called up and +reassured Mrs. Mallett, who, however, knew nothing about the affair, as +the nurse was still scouring the Park for her charges. + +Then Mrs. Severn called up the Half Moon Trust Company and presently was +put into communication with Colonel Mallett, the president. To him she +told the entire story, and added: + +"It was inevitable that the gossip of servants should enlighten the +children sooner or later. The irony of it all is that this gossip +filtered in here through your son, Duane. That is how the case stands, +Colonel Mallett; and I have used my judgment and permitted the children +this large liberty which they have long needed, believe me, long, long +needed. I hope that your trust officer, Mr. Tappan, will approve." + +"Good Lord!" said Colonel Mallett over the wire. "Tappan won't stand for +it! You know that he won't, Mrs. Severn. I suppose, if he consults us, +we can call a directors' meeting and consider this new phase of the +case." + +"You ought to; the time is already here when the children should no +longer suffer such utter isolation. They _must_ make acquaintances, they +must have friends, they should go to parties like other children--they +ought to be given outside schooling sooner or later. All of which +questions must be taken up by your directors as soon as possible, +because my children are fast getting out of hand--fast getting away from +me; and before I know it I shall have a young man and a young girl to +account for--and to account to, colonel----" + +"I'll sift out the whole matter with Mr. Tappan; I'll speak to Mr. +Grandcourt and Mr. Beekman to-night. Until you hear from us, no more +visitors for the children. By the way, is that matter--the one we talked +over last month--definitely settled?" + +"Yes. I can't help being worried by the inclination she displays. It +frightens me in such a child." + +"Scott doesn't show it?" + +"No. He hates anything like that." + +"Do the servants thoroughly understand your orders?" + +"I'm a little troubled. I have given orders that no more brandied +peaches are to be made or kept in the house. The child was perfectly +truthful about it. She admitted filling her cologne bottle with the +syrup and sipping it after she was supposed to be asleep." + +"Have you found out about the sherry she stole from the kitchen?" + +"Yes. She told me that for weeks she had kept it hidden and soaked a +lump of sugar in it every night.... She is absolutely truthful, colonel. +I've tried to make her understand the danger." + +"All right. Good-bye." Kathleen Severn hung up the receiver with a deep +indrawn breath. + +From the nursery above came a joyous clamour and trampling and shouting. + +Suddenly she covered her face with her black-gloved hands. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +IN TRUST + + +The enfranchisement of the Seagrave twins proceeded too slowly to +satisfy their increasing desire for personal liberty and their +fast-growing impatience of restraint. + +Occasionally, a few carefully selected and assorted children were +permitted to visit them in relays, and play in the nursery for limited +periods without the personal supervision of Kathleen or the nurses; but +no serious innovation was attempted, no radical step taken without +authority from old Remsen Tappan, the trust officer of the great Half +Moon Trust Company. + +There could be no arguing with Mr. Tappan. + +Shortly before Anthony Seagrave died he had written to his old friend +Tappan: + + "If I live, I shall see to it that my grandchildren know nothing of + the fortune awaiting them until they become of age--which will be + after I am ended. Meanwhile, plain food and clothing, wholesome home + seclusion from the promiscuity of modern child life, and an + exhaustive education in every grace, fashion, and accomplishment of + body and intellect is the training I propose for the development in + them of the only thing in the world worth cultivating--unterrified + individualism. + + "The ignorance which characterises the conduct of modern institutes + of education reduces us all to one mindless level, reproducing _ad + nauseam_ what is known as 'average citizens.' This nation is + already crawling with them; art, religion, letters, government, + business, human ideals remain embryonic because the 'average + citizen' can conceive nothing higher, can comprehend nothing loftier + even when the few who have escaped the deadly levelling grind of + modern methods of education attempt to teach the masses to think for + themselves. + + "That is bad enough in itself--but add to cut-and-dried pedagogy the + outrageous liberty which modern pupils are permitted in school and + college, and add to that the unheard-of luxury in which they + live--and the result is stupidity and utter ruin. + + "My babies must have discipline, system, frugality, and leisure for + individual development drilled into them. I do not wish them to be + ignorant of one single modern grace and accomplishment; mind and + body must be trained together like a pair of Morgan colts. + + "But I will not have them victims of pedagogy; I will not have them + masters of their time and money until they are of age; I will not + permit them to choose companions or pursuits for their leisure until + they are fitted to do so. + + "If there is in them, latent, any propensity toward viciousness--any + unawakened desire for that which has been my failing--hard work from + dawn till dark is the antidote. An exhausted child is beyond + temptation. + + "If I pass forward, Tappan, before you--and it is likely because I + am twenty years older and I have lived unwisely--I shall arrange + matters in such shape that you can carry out something of what I + have tried to begin, far better than I, old friend; for I am strong + in theory and very weak in practice; they are such dear little + things! And when they cry to be taken up--and a modern trained + nurse says 'No! let them cry!' good God! Remsen, I sometimes sneak + into their thoroughly modern and scientifically arranged nursery, + which resembles an operating room in a brand-new hospital, and I + take up my babies and rock them in my arms, terrified lest that + modern and highly trained nurse discover my infraction of sanitary + rule and precept. + + "I don't know; babies were born, and survived cradles and mothers' + arms and kisses long before sterilised milk and bacilli were + invented. + + "You see I _am_ weak in more ways than one. But I do mean to give + them every chance. It isn't that these old arms ache for them, that + this rather tired heart weakens when they cry for God knows what, + and modern science says let them _cry_!--it is that, deep in me, + Tappan, a heathenish idea persists that what they need more than + hygienics and scientific discipline is some of that old-fashioned + love--love which rocks them when it is not good for them--love which + overfeeds them sometimes so that they yell with old-fashioned + colic--love which ventures a bacilli-laden kiss. Friend, friend--I + am very unfit! It will be well for them when I move on. Only try to + love them, Tappan. And if you ever doubt, kill them with indulgence, + rather than with hygiene!" + +He died of pneumonia a few weeks later. He had no chance. Remsen Tappan +picked up the torch from the fallen hand and, blowing it into a brisk +blaze, shuffled forward to light a path through life for the highly +sterilised twins. + +So the Half Moon Trust became father and mother to the Seagrave +children; and Mr. Tappan as dry nurse prescribed the brand of +intellectual pap for them and decided in what manner it should be +administered. + +Now home tuition and the "culture of the indiwidool" was a personal +hobby of Mr. Tappan, and promiscuous schools his abomination. Had not +his own son, Peter Stuyvesant Tappan, been reared upon unsteady legs to +magnificent physical and intellectual manhood under this theory? + +So there was to be no outside education for the youthful Seagraves; from +the nursery schoolroom no chance of escape remained. As they grew older +they became wild to go to school; stories of schoolrooms and playgrounds +and studies and teachers and jolly fellowship and vacations, brought to +them from outside by happier children, almost crazed them with the +longing for it. + +It was hard for them when their little friends the Malletts were sent +abroad to school; Naida, now aged twelve, to a convent, and Duane, who +was now fifteen, three years older than the Seagrave twins, accompanied +his mother and a tutor, later to enter some school of art in Paris and +develop whatever was in him. For like all parents, Duane's had been +terribly excited over his infantile efforts at picture-making--one of +the commonest and earliest developed of talents, but which never fails +to amaze and delight less gifted parents and which continues to +overstock the world with mediocre artists. + +So it was arranged that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad +with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane's Titianesque genius and +Naida's unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid +good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic +embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity. Alas! it is those who depart who +forget first; and at the end of a year, Geraldine's and Scott's letters +remained unanswered. + +At the age of thirteen, after an extraordinary meeting of the directors +of the Half Moon Trust Company, it was formally decided that a series of +special tutors should now be engaged to carry on to the bitter end the +Tappan-Seagrave system of home culture; and the road to college was +definitely closed. + +"I want my views understood," said Mr. Tappan, addressing the board of +solemn-visaged directors assembled in session to determine upon the fate +of two motherless little children. "Indiwidoolism is nurtured in +excloosion; the elimination of the extraneous is necessary for the +dewelopment of indiwidoolism. I regard the human indiwidool as sacred. +Like a pearl"--he pronounced it "poil"--"it can grow in beauty and +symmetry and purity and polish only when nourished in seclusion. +Indiwidoolism is a poil without price; and the natal mansion, +gentlemen--if I may be permitted the simulcritude--is its oyster. + +"My old friend, Anthony Seagrave, shared with me this unalterable +conwiction. I remember in the autumn of 1859----" + +The directors settled themselves in their wadded arm-chairs; several +yawned; some folded their hands over their ample stomachs. The June +atmosphere was pleasantly conducive to the sort of after-luncheon +introspection which is easily soothed by monotones of the human voice. + +And while Mr. Tappan droned on and on, some of the directors watched him +with one eye half open, thinking of other things, and some listened, +both eyes half closed, thinking of nothing at all. + +Many considered Mr. Tappan a very terrible old man, though why +terrible, unless the most rigid honesty and bigoted devotion to duty +terrifies, nobody seemed to know. + +Long Island Dutch--with all that it implies--was the dull stock he +rooted in. Born a poor farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, +he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of +tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these +solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the +classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from +the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at +Fortune and brought her to her knees amidst a shower of gold. And all +alone he gathered it in. + +On Coenties Slip his warehouse still bore the legend: "R. Tappan: Iron." +All that he had ever done he had done alone. He knew of no other way; +believed in no other way. + +Plain living, plainer clothing, tireless thinking undisturbed--that had +been his childhood; and it had suited him. + +Never but once had he made any concession to custom and nature, and that +was only when, desiring an heir, he was obliged to enter into human +partnership to realise the wish. + +His son was what his father had made him under the iron cult of solitary +development; and now, the father, loyal in his own way to the memory of +his old friend Anthony Seagrave, meant to do his full duty toward the +orphaned grandchildren. + +So it came to pass that tutors and specialists replaced Kathleen in the +schoolroom; and these ministered to the twin "poils," who were now +fretting through their thirteenth year, mad with desire for +boarding-school. + +Four languages besides their own were adroitly stuffed into them; nor +were letters, arts, and sciences neglected, nor the mundane and social +patter, accomplishments, and refinements, including poise, pose, and +deportment. + +Specialists continued to guide them indoors and out; they rode every +morning at eight with a specialist; they drove in the Park between four +and five with the most noted of four-in-hand specialists; fencing, +sparring, wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, were all supervised by +specialists in those several very important and scientific arts; and +specialists also taught them hygiene: how to walk, sit, breathe; how to +masticate; how to relax after the manner of the domestic cat. + +They had memory lessons; lessons in personal physiology, and in first +aid to themselves. + +Specialists cared for their teeth, their eyes, their hair, their skin, +their hands and feet. + +Everything that was taught them, done for them, indirectly educated them +in the science of self-consideration and deepened an unavoidably natural +belief in their own overwhelming importance. They had not been born so. + +But in the house of Seagrave everything revolved around and centred in +them; everything began for them and ended for them alone. They had no +chance. + +True, they were also instructed in theology and religion; they became +well grounded in the elements of both,--laws, by-laws, theory, legends, +proverbs, truisms, and even a few abstract truths. But there was no +meaning in either to these little prisoners of self. Seclusion is an +enemy to youth; solitude its destruction. + +When the twins were fifteen they went to their first party. A week of +superficial self-restraint and inward delirium was their preparation, a +brief hour of passive bewilderment the realisation. Dazed by the sight +and touch and clamor of the throng, they moved and spoke as in a vision. +The presence of their own kind in such numbers confused them; +overwhelmed, they found no voices to answer the call of happiness. Their +capacity to respond was too limited. + +As in a dream they were removed earlier than anybody else--taken away by +a footman and a maid with decorous pomp and circumstance, carefully +muffled in motor robes, and embedded in a limousine. + +The daily papers, with that lofty purpose which always characterises +them, recorded next morning the important fact that the famous Seagrave +twins had appeared at their first party. + + * * * * * + +Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen the twins might have entered +Harvard, for the entrance examinations were tried on both children, and +both passed brilliantly. + +For a year or two they found a substitute for happiness in pretending +that they were really at college; they simulated, day by day, the life +that they supposed was led there; they became devoted to their new game. +Excited through tales told by tutor and friend, they developed a +passionate loyalty for their college and class; they were solemnly +elected to coveted societies, they witnessed Harvard victories, they +strove fiercely for honours; their ideals were lofty, their courage +clean and high. + +So completely absorbed in the pretence did they become that their own +tutors ventured to suggest to Mr. Tappan that such fiercely realistic +mimicry deserved to be rewarded. Unfortunately, the children heard of +this; but the Trust Officer's short answer killed their interest in +playing at happiness, and their junior year began listlessly and +continued without ambition. There was no heart in the pretence. Their +interest had died. They studied mechanically because they were obliged +to; they no longer cared. + +That winter they went to a few more parties--not many. However, they +were gingerly permitted to witness their first play, and later, the same +year, were taken to "Lohengrin" at the opera. + +During the play, which was a highly moral one, they sat watching, +listening, wide-eyed as children. + +At the opera Geraldine's impetuous soul soared straight up to paradise +with the first heavenly strains, and remained there far above the rigid, +breathless little body, bolt upright in its golden sarcophagus of the +grand tier. + +Her physical consciousness really seemed to have fled. Until the end she +sat unaware of the throngs, of Scott and Kathleen whispering behind her, +of several tall, broad-shouldered, shy young fellows who came into their +box between the acts and tried to discuss anything at all with her, only +to find her blind, deaf, and dumb. + +These were the only memories of her first opera--confused, chaotic +brilliancy, paradise revealed: and long, long afterward, the carriage +flying up Fifth Avenue through darkness all gray with whirling snow. + + * * * * * + +Their eighteenth year dragged, beginning in physical and intellectual +indifference, but promised stormily as they became more accustomed to +glimpses of an outside world--a world teeming with restless young +people in unbelievable quantities. + +Scott had begun to develop two traits: laziness and a tendency to +sullen, unspoken wrath. He took more liberty than was officially granted +him--more than Geraldine dared take--and came into collision with +Kathleen more often now. He boldly overstayed his leave in visiting his +few boy friends for an afternoon; he returned home alone on foot after +dusk, telling the chauffeur to go to the devil. Again and again he +remained out to dinner without permission, and, finally, one afternoon +quietly and stealthily cut his studies, slipped out of the house, and +reappeared about dinner-time, excited, inclined to be boisterously +defiant, admitting that he had borrowed enough money from a friend to go +to a matinee with some other boys, and that he would do it again if he +chose. + +Also, to Kathleen's horror, he swore deliberately at table when Mr. +Tappan's name was mentioned; and Geraldine looked up with startled brown +eyes, divining in her brother something new--something that +unconsciously they both had long, long waited for--the revolt of youth +ere youth had been crushed for ever from the body which encased it. + +"Damn him," repeated Scott, a little frightened at his own words and +attitude; "I've had enough of this baby business; I'm eighteen and I +want two things: some friends to go about with freely, and some money to +do what other boys do. And you can tell Mr. Tappan, for all I care." + +"What would you buy with money that is not already provided for, Scott?" +asked Kathleen, gently ignoring his excited profanity. + +"I don't know; there is no pleasure in using things which that fool of +a Trust Company votes to let you have. Anyway, what I want is liberty +and money." + +"What would you do with what you call liberty, dear?" + +"Do? I'd--I'd--well, I'd go shooting if I wanted to. I'd buy a gun and +go off somewhere after ducks." + +"But your father's old club on the Chesapeake is open to you. Shall I +ask Mr. Tappan?" + +"Oh, yes: I know," he sneered, "and Mr. Tappan would send some chump of +a tutor there to teach me. I don't want to be taught how to hit ducks. I +want to find out for myself. I don't care for that sort of thing," he +repeated savagely; "I just ache to go off somewhere with a boy of my own +age where there's no club and no preserve and no tutor; and where I can +knock about and get whatever there is to get without anybody's help." + +Geraldine said: "You have more liberty now than I have, Scott. What are +you howling for?" + +"The only real liberty I have I take! Anyway, you have enough for a girl +of your age. And you'd better shut up." + +"I won't shut up," she retorted irritably. "I want liberty as much as +you do. If I had any, I'd go to every play and opera in New York. And +I'd go about with my friends and I'd have gowns fitted, and I'd have tea +at Sherry's, and I'd shop and go to matinees and to the Exchange, and +I'd be elected a member of the Commonwealth Club and play basket-ball +there, and swim, and lunch and--and then have another fitting----" + +"Is that what you'd do with your liberty?" he sneered. "Well, I don't +wonder old Tappan doesn't give you any money." + +"I do need money and decent gowns. I'm sick of the frumpy +prunes-and-prisms frocks that Kathleen makes me wear----" + +Kathleen's troubled laugh interrupted her: + +"Dearest, I do the best I can on the allowance made you by Mr. Tappan. +His ideas on modern feminine apparel are perhaps not yours or mine." + +"I should say not!" returned Geraldine angrily. "There isn't a girl of +my age who dresses as horridly as I do. I tell you, Mr. Tappan has got +to let me have money enough to dress decently. If he doesn't, I--I'll +begin to give him as much trouble as Scott does--more, too!" + +She set her teeth and stared at her glass of water. + +"What about my coming-out gown?" she asked. + +"I have written him about your debut," said Kathleen soothingly. + +"Oh! What did the old beast say?" + +"He writes," began Kathleen pleasantly, "that he considers eighteen an +unsuitable age for a young girl to make her bow to New York society." + +"Did he say that?" exclaimed Geraldine, furious. "Very well; I shall +write to Colonel Mallett and tell him I simply will not endure it any +longer. I've had enough education; I'm suffocated with it! Besides, I +dislike it. I want a dinner-gown and a ball-gown and my hair waved and +dressed on top of my head instead of bunched half way! I want to have an +engagement pad--I want to have places to go to--people expecting me; I +want silk stockings and pretty underclothes! Doesn't that old fool +understand what a girl wants and needs?" + +She half rose from her seat at the table, pushing away the fruit which a +servant offered; and, laying her hands flat on the cloth, leaned +forward, eyes flashing ominously. + +"I'm getting tired of this," she said. "If it goes on, I'll probably run +away." + +"So will I," said Scott, "but I've good reasons. They haven't done +anything to you. You're making a terrible row about nothing." + +"Yes, they have! They've suppressed me, stifled me, bottled me up, +tinkered at me, overgroomed me, dressed me ridiculously, and stuffed my +mind. And I'm starved all the time! O Kathleen, I'm hungry! hungry! +Can't you understand? + +"They've made me into something I was not. I've never yet had a chance +to be myself. Why couldn't they let me be it? I know--I _know_ that when +at last they set me free because they have to--I--I'll act like a fool; +I'll not know what to do with my liberty--I'll not know how to use +it--how to understand or be understood.... Tell Mr. Tappan that! Tell +him that it is all silly and wrong! Tell him that a young girl never +forgets when other girls laugh at her because she never had any money, +and dresses like a frump, and wears her hair like a baby!... And if he +doesn't listen to us, some day Scott and I will show him and the others +how we feel about it! I can make as much trouble as Scott can; I'll do +it, too----" + +"Geraldine!" + +"Very well. I'm boiling inside when I think of--some things. The +injustice of a lot of hateful, snuffy old men deciding on what sort of +underclothes a young girl shall wear!... And I _will_ make my debut! I +will! I will!" + +"Dearest----" + +"Yes, I will! I'll write to them and complain of Mr. Tappan's stingy, +unjust treatment of us both----" + +"Let me do the writing, dear," said Kathleen quietly. And she rose from +the table and left the dining-room, both arms around the necks of the +Seagrave twins, drawing them close to her sides--closer when her +sidelong glance caught the sullen bitterness on the darkening features +of the boy, and when on the girl's fair face she saw the flushed, +wide-eyed, questioning stare. + +When the young, seeking reasons, gaze questioningly at nothing, it is +well to divine and find the truthful answer, lest their _other_ selves, +evoked, stir in darkness, counselling folly. + +The answer to such questions Kathleen knew; who should know better than +she? But it was not for her to reply. All she could do was to summon out +of the vasty deep the powers that ruled her wards and herself; and +these, convoked in solemn assembly because of conflict with their Trust +Officer, might decide in becoming gravity such questions as what shall +be the proper quality and cost of a young girl's corsets; and whether or +not real lace and silk are necessary for attire more intimate still. + + * * * * * + +During the next two years the steadily increasing friction between +Remsen Tappan and his wards began seriously to disturb the directors of +the Half Moon Trust. That worthy old line company viewed with uneasiness +the revolutionary tendencies of the Seagrave twins as expressed in +periodical and passionate letters to Colonel Mallett. The increasing +frequency of these appeals for justice and for intervention +fore-shadowed the desirability of a conference. Besides, there was a +graver matter to consider, which implicated Scott. + +When Kathleen wrote, suggesting a down-town conference to decide +delicate questions concerning Geraldine's undergarments and Scott's new +gun, Colonel Mallett found it more convenient to appoint the Seagrave +house as rendezvous. + +And so it came to pass one pleasant Saturday afternoon in late October +that, in twos and threes, a number of solemn old gentlemen, faultlessly +attired, entered the red drawing-room of the Seagrave house and seated +themselves in an impressive semicircle upon the damask chairs. + +They were Colonel Stuart Mallett, president of the institution, just +returned from Paris with his entire family; Calvin McDermott, Joshua +Hogg, Carl Gumble, Friedrich Gumble; the two vice-presidents, James Cray +and Daniel Montross; Myndert Beekman, treasurer; Augustus Varick, +secretary; the Hon. John D. Ellis; Magnelius Grandcourt 2d, and Remsen +Tappan, Trust Officer. + +If the pillars of the house of Seagrave had been founded upon millions, +the damask and rosewood chairs in the red drawing-room now groaned under +the weight of millions. Power, authority, respectability, and legitimate +affluence sat there majestically enthroned in the mansion of the late +Anthony Seagrave, awaiting in serious tribunal the appearance of the +last of that old New York family. + +Mrs. Severn came in first; the directors rose as one man, urbane, +sprightly, and gallant. She was exceedingly pretty; they recognised it. +They could afford to. + +Compositely they were a smooth, soft-stepping, soft-voiced, company. An +exception or two, like Mr. Tappan, merely accented the composite +impression of rosy-cheeked, neatly shaven, carefully dressed prosperity. +They all were cautious of voice, moderate of speech, chary of gesture. +There was always an impressive pause before a director of the Half Moon +Trust answered even the most harmless question addressed to him. Some +among them made it a conservative rule to swallow nothing several times +before speaking at all. It was a safe habit to acquire. _Aut prudens aut +nullus._ + +Geraldine's starched skirts rustled on the stairway. When she came into +the room the directors of the Half Moon Trust were slightly astonished. +During the youth of the twins, the wives of several gentlemen present +had called at intervals to inspect the growth of Anthony Seagrave's +grandchildren, particularly those worthy and acquisitive ladies who had +children themselves. The far-sighted reap rewards. Some day these baby +twins would be old enough to marry. It was prudent to remember such +details. A position as an old family friend might one day prove of +thrifty advantage in this miserably mercenary world where dog eats dog, +and dividends are sometimes passed. God knows and pities the sorrows of +the rich. + +Geraldine, her slim hand in Colonel Mallett's, courtesied with old-time +quaintness, then her lifted eyes swept the rosy, rotund countenances +before her. To each she courtesied and spoke, offering the questioning +hand of amity. + +The thing that seemed to surprise them was that she had grown since they +had seen her. Time flies when hunting safe investments. The manners she +retained, like her fashion of wearing her hair, and the cut and length +of her apparel were clearly too childish to suit the tall, slender, +prettily rounded figure--the mature oval of the face, the delicately +firm modelling of the features. + +This was no child before them; here stood adorable adolescence, a hint +of the awakening in the velvet-brown eyes which were long and slightly +slanting at the corners; hints, too, in the vivid lips, in the finer +outline of the profile, in faint bluish shadows under the eyes, edging +the curved cheeks' bloom. + +They had not seen her in two years or more, and she had grown up. They +had merely stepped down-town for a hasty two years' glance at the +market, and, behind their backs, the child had turned into a woman. + +Hitherto they had addressed her as "Geraldine" and "child," when a rare +interview had been considered necessary. Now, two years later, +unconsciously, it was "Miss Seagrave," and considerable embarrassment +when the subject of intimate attire could no longer be avoided. + +But Geraldine, unconscious of such things, broached the question with +all the directness characteristic of her. + +"I am sorry I was rude in my last letter," she said gravely, turning to +Mr. Tappan. "Will you please forgive me?... I am glad you came. I do not +think you understand that I am no longer a little girl, and that things +necessary for a woman are necessary for me. I want a quarterly +allowance. I need what a young woman needs. Will you give these things +to me, Mr. Tappan?" + +Mr. Tappan's dry lips cracked apart; he swallowed grimly several times, +then his long bony fingers sought the meagre ends of his black string +tie: + +"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began harshly, and checked +himself, when Geraldine flushed to her ear tips and stamped her foot. +Self-control had gone at last. + +"I won't listen to that!" she said, breathless; "I've listened to it for +ten years--as long as I can remember. Answer me honestly, Mr. Tappan! +Can I have what other women have--silk underwear and stockings--real +lace on my night dresses--and plenty of it? Can I have suitable gowns +and furs, and have my hair dressed properly? I want you to answer; can I +make my debut this winter and have the gowns I require--and the liberty +that girls of my age have?" She turned on Colonel Mallett: "The liberty +that Naida has had is all I want; the sort of things you let her have +all I ask for." And appealing to Magnelius Grandcourt, who stood pursing +his thick lips, puffed out like a surprised pouter pigeon: "Your +daughter Catherine has more than I ask; why do you let her have what you +consider bad for me? _Why_?" + +Mr. Grandcourt swallowed several times, and spoke in an undertone to +Joshua Hogg. But he did not reply to Geraldine. + +Remsen Tappan turned his iron visage toward Colonel Mallett--ignoring +Geraldine's questions. + +"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began again dauntlessly---- + +"Isn't there anybody to answer me?" asked Geraldine, turning from one to +another. + +"Concerning the cultiwation----" + +"Answer me!" she flashed back. There were tears in her voice, but her +eyes blazed. + +"Miss Seagrave," interposed old Mr. Montross gravely, "I beg of you to +remember----" + +"Let him answer me first! I asked him a perfectly plain question. +It--it is silly to ignore me as though I were a foolish child--as though +I didn't know my mind." + +"I think, Mr. Tappan, perhaps if you could give Miss Seagrave a +qualified answer to her questions--make some preliminary statement--" +began Mr. Cray cautiously. + +"Concerning what?" snapped Tappan with a grim stare. + +"Concerning my stockings and my underwear," said Geraldine fiercely. +"I'm tired of dressing like a servant!" + +Mr. Tappan's rugged jaw opened and shut with another snap. + +"I'm opposed to any such innowation," he said. + +"And--my coming out this winter? And my quarterly allowance? Answer me!" + +"Time enough when you turn twenty-one, Miss Seagrave. Cultiwation of +mind concerns you now, not cultiwation of raiment." + +"That--that--" stammered Geraldine, "is s-su-premely s-silly." The tears +reached her eyes; she brushed them away angrily. + +Mallett coughed and glanced at Myndert Beekman, then past the secretary, +Mr. Varick, directly at Mr. Tappan. + +"If you could see your way to--ah--accede to some--a number--perhaps, in +a measure, to all of Miss Seagrave's not unreasonable requests, Mr. +Tappan----" + +[Illustration: "'Can I have what other women have--silk underwear and +stockings?'"] + +He hesitated, looked dubiously at Mr. Montross, who nodded. Mr. Cray, +also, made an almost imperceptible sign of concurrence. Magnelius +Grandcourt, the sixty-year _enfant terrible_ of the company, dreaded +for his impulsive outbursts--though the effect of these outbursts was +always very carefully considered before-hand--stepped jauntily across +the floor, and lifting Geraldine's hand to his rather purplish lips, +saluted it with a flourish. + +"Oh, I say, Tappan, let Miss Seagrave have what she wants!" he exclaimed +with a hearty disregard of caution, which outwardly disturbed but +inwardly deceived nobody except Geraldine and Mrs. Severn. + +Colonel Mallett thought: "The acquisitive beast is striking attitudes on +his fool of a son's account." + +Mr. Tappan's small iron-gray eyes bored two holes through the inward +motives of Mr. Grandcourt, and his mouth tightened till the seamed lips +were merely a line. + +"I think, Magnelius," said Colonel Mallett coldly, "that it is, perhaps, +the sense of our committee that the time has practically arrived for +some change--perhaps radical change--in the--in the--ah--the hitherto +exceedingly wise regulations----" + +"_May_ I have real lace?" cried Geraldine--"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon, +Colonel Mallett, for interrupting, but I was perfectly crazy to know +what you were going to say." + +Other people have been crazier and endured more to learn what hope the +verdict of ponderous authority might hold for them. + +Colonel Mallett, a trifle ruffled at the interruption, swallowed several +times and then continued without haste to rid himself of a weighty +opinion concerning the debut and the petticoats of the Half Moon's ward. +He might have made the child happy in one word. It took him twenty +minutes. + +Concurring opinions were then solemnly delivered by every director in +turn except Mr. Tappan, who spoke for half an hour, doggedly dissenting +on every point. + +But the days of the old regime were evidently numbered. He understood +it. He looked across at the crackled portrait of his old friend Anthony +Seagrave; the faded, painted features were obliterated in a bar of +slanting sunlight. + +So, concluding his dissenting opinion, and having done his duty, he sat +down, drawing the skirts of his frock-coat close around his bony thighs. +He had done his best; his reward was this child's hatred--which she +already forgot in the confused delight of her sudden liberation. + +Dazed with happiness, to one after another Geraldine courtesied and +extended the narrow childlike hand of amity--even to him. Then, as +though treading on invisible pink clouds, she floated out and away +up-stairs, scarcely conscious of passing her brother on the stairway, +who was now descending for his turn before the altar of authority. + + * * * * * + +When Scott returned he appeared to be unusually red in the face. +Geraldine seized him ecstatically: + +"Oh, Scott! I _am_ to come out, after all--and I'm to have my quarterly, +and gowns, and everything. I could have hugged Mr. Grandcourt--the dear! +I was so frightened--frightened into rudeness--and then that beast of a +Tappan scared me terribly. But it is all right now--and _what_ did they +promise you, poor dear?" + +Scott's face still remained flushed as he stood, hands in his pockets, +head slightly bent, tracing with the toe of his shoe the carpet pattern. + +"You want to know what they promised me?" he asked, looking up at his +sister with an unpleasant laugh. She poured a few drops of cologne onto +a lump of sugar, placed it between her lips, and nodded: + +"They _did_ promise you something--didn't they?" + +"Oh, certainly. They promised to make it hot for me if I ever again +borrowed money on notes." + +"Scott! did you do that?" + +"Give my note? Certainly. I needed money--I've told old tabby Tappan so +again and again. In a year I'll have all the money I need--so what's the +harm if I borrow a little and promise to pay when I'm of age?" + +Geraldine considered a moment: "It's curious," she reflected, "but do +you know, Scott, I never thought of doing that. It never occurred to me +to do it! Why didn't you tell me?" + +"Because," said her brother with an embarrassed laugh, "it's not exactly +a proper thing to do, I believe. Anyway, they raised a terrible row +about it. Probably that's why they have at last given me a decent +quarterly allowance; they think it's safer, I suppose--and they're +right. The stingy old fossils." + +The boyish boast, the veiled hint of revolt and reprisal vaguely +disturbed Geraldine's sense of justice. + +"After all," she said, "they have meant to be kind. They didn't know +how, that's all. And, Scott, do let us try to be better now. I'm ashamed +of my rudeness to them. And I'm going to be very, very good to Kathleen +and not do one single thing to make her unhappy or even to bother Mr. +Tappan.... And, oh, Scott! my silks and laces! my darling clothes! All +is coming true! Do you hear? And, Scott! Naida and Duane are back and +I'm dying to see them. Duane is twenty-three, think of it!" + +She seized him and spun him around. + +"If you don't hug me and tell me you're fond of me, I shall go mad. Tell +me you're fond of me, Scott! You do love me, don't you?" + +He kissed his sister with preoccupied toleration: "Whew!" he said, "your +breath reeks of cologne! + +"As for me," he added, half sullenly, "I'm going to have a few things I +want, now.... And do a few things, too." + +But what these things were he did not specify. Nor did Geraldine have +time to speculate, so occupied was she now with preparations for the +wonderful winter which was to come true at last--which was already +beginning to come true with exciting visits to that magic country of +brilliant show-windows which, like an enchanted city by itself, sparkles +from Madison Square to the Plaza between Fourth Avenue and Broadway. + + * * * * * + +Into this sparkling metropolitan zone she hastened with Kathleen; all +day long, week after week, she flitted from shop to shop, never +satisfied, always eager to see, to explore. Yet two things Kathleen +noticed: Geraldine seemed perfectly happy and contented to view the +glitter of vanity fair without thought of acquiring its treasures for +herself; and, when reminded that she was there to buy, she appeared to +be utterly ignorant of the value of money, though a childhood without it +was supposed to have taught her its rarity and preciousness. + +The girl's personal tastes were expensive; she could linger in ecstasy +all the morning over piles of wonderful furs without envy, without even +thinking of them for herself; but when Kathleen mentioned the reason of +their shopping, Geraldine always indicated sables as her choice, any +single piece of which would have required half her yearly allowance to +pay for. + +And she was for ever wishing to present things to Kathleen; silks that +were chosen, model gowns that they examined together, laces, velvets, +jewels, always her first thought seemed to be that Kathleen should have +what they both enjoyed looking at so ardently; and many a laughing +contest they had as to whether her first quarterly allowance should be +spent upon herself or her friends. + +On the surface it would appear that unselfishness was the key to her +character. That was impossible; she had lived too long alone. Yet +Geraldine was clearly not acquisitive; though, when she did buy, her +careless extravagance worried Kathleen. Spendthrift--in that she cared +nothing for the money value of anything--her bright, piquant, eager face +was a welcome sight to the thrifty metropolitan shopkeeper at +Christmas-tide. A delicate madness for giving obsessed her; she bought a +pair of guns for Scott, laces and silks for Kathleen, and for the +servants everything she could think of. Nobody was forgotten, not even +Mr. Tappan, who awoke Christmas morning to gaze grimly upon an antique +jewelled fob all dangling with pencils and seals. In the first flush of +independence it gave her more pleasure to give than to acquire. + +Also, for the first time in her life, she superintended the distribution +of her own charities, flying in the motor with Kathleen from church to +mission, eager, curious, pitiful, appalled, by turns. Sentiment +overwhelmed her; it was a new kind of pleasure. + + * * * * * + +One night she arose shivering from her warm bed, and with ink and paper +sat figuring till nearly dawn how best to distribute what fortune she +might one day possess, and live an exalted life on ten dollars a week. + +Kathleen found her there asleep, head buried in the scattered papers, +limbs icy to the knees; and there ensued an interim of bronchitis which +threatened at one time to postpone her debut. + +But the medical profession of Manhattan came to the rescue in +battalions, and Geraldine was soon afoot, once more drifting +ecstatically among the splendours of the shops, thrilling with the +nearness of the day that should set her free among unnumbered hosts of +unknown friends. + +Who would these unknown people turn out to be? What hearts were at that +very moment destined to respond in friendship to her own? + +Often lying awake, nibbling her scented lump of sugar, the darkness +reddening, at intervals, as embers of her bedroom fire dropped glowing +to the hearth, she pictured to herself this vast, brilliant throng +awaiting to welcome her as one of them. And her imagination catching +fire, through closed lids she seemed to see heavenly vistas of youthful +faces--a thousand arms outstretched in welcome; and she, advancing, eyes +dim with happiness, giving herself to this world of youth and +friendship--crossing the threshold--leaving for ever behind her the past +with its loneliness and isolation. + +It was of friendships she dreamed, and the blessed nearness of others, +and the liberty to seek them. She promised herself she would never, +never again permit herself to be alone. She had no definite plans, +except that. Life henceforth must be filled with the bright shapes of +comrades. Life must be only pleasure. Never again must sadness come near +her. A miraculous capacity for happiness seemed to fill her breast, +expanding with the fierce desire for it, until under the closed lids +tears stole out, and there, in the darkness, she held out her bare arms +to the world--the kind, good, generous, warm-hearted world, which was +waiting, just beyond her threshold, to welcome her and love her and +companion her for ever. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE THRESHOLD + + +She awoke tired; she had scarcely closed her eyes that night. The fresh +odour of roses filled her room when her maid arrived with morning gifts +from Kathleen and Scott. + +She lay abed until noon. They started dressing her about three. After +that the day became unreal to her. + + * * * * * + +Manhattan was conventionally affable to Geraldine Seagrave, also +somewhat curious to see what she looked like. Fifth Avenue and the +neighbouring side streets were jammed with motors and carriages on the +bright January afternoon that Geraldine made her bow, and the red and +silver drawing-rooms, so famous a generation ago, were packed +continually. + +What people saw was a big, clumsy house expensively overdecorated in the +appalling taste of forty years ago, now screened by forests of palms and +vast banks of flowers; and they saw a number of people popularly +identified with the sort of society which newspapers delight to revere; +and a few people of real distinction; and a young girl, noticeably pale, +standing beside Kathleen Severn and receiving the patronage of dowagers +and beaux, and the impulsive clasp of fellowship from fresh-faced young +girls and nice-looking, well-mannered young fellows. + +The general opinion seemed to be that Geraldine Seagrave possessed all +the beauty which rumour had attributed to her as her right by +inheritance, but the animation of her clever mother was lacking. Also, +some said that her manners still smacked of the nursery; and that, +unless it had been temporarily frightened out of her, she had little +personality and less charm. + +Nothing, as a matter of fact, had been frightened out of her; for weeks +she had lived in imagination so vividly through that day that when the +day really arrived it found her physically and mentally unresponsive; +the endless reiteration of names sounded meaninglessly in her ears, the +crowding faces blurred. She was passively satisfied to be there, and +content with the touch of hands and the pleasant-voiced formalities of +people pressing toward her from every side. + + * * * * * + +Afterward few impressions remained; she remembered the roses' perfume, +and a very fat woman with a confusing similarity of contour fore and aft +who blocked the lines and rattled on like a machine-gun saying +dreadfully frank things about herself, her family, and everybody she +mentioned. + +Naida Mallett, whom she had not seen in many years, she had known +immediately, and now remembered. And Naida had taken her white-gloved +hand shyly, whispering constrained formalities, then had disappeared +into the unreality of it all. + +Duane, her old playmate, may have been there, but she could not remember +having seen him. There were so many, many youths of the New York sort, +all dressed alike, all resembling one another--many, many people flowing +past her where she stood submerged in the silken ebb eddying around her. + + * * * * * + +These were the few hazy impressions remaining--she was recalling them +now while dressing for her first dinner dance. Later, when her maid +released her with a grunt of Gallic disapproval, she, distraite, glanced +at her gown in the mirror, still striving to recall something definite +of the day before. + +"_Was_ Duane there?" she asked Kathleen, who had just entered. + +"No, dear.... Why did you happen to think of Duane Mallett?" + +"Naida came.... Duane was such a splendid little boy.... I had hoped----" + +Mrs. Severn said coolly: + +"Duane isn't a very splendid man. I might as well tell you now as +later." + +"What in the world do you mean, Kathleen?" + +"I mean that people say he was rather horrid abroad. Some women don't +mind that sort of thing, but I do." + +"Horrid? How?" + +"He went about Europe with unpleasant people. He had too much money--and +that is ruinous for a boy. I hate to disillusion you, but for several +years people have been gossipping about Duane Mallett's exploits abroad; +and they are not savoury." + +"What were they? I am old enough to know." + +"I don't propose to tell you. He was notoriously wild. There were +scandals. Hush! here comes Scott." + +"For Heaven's sake, pinch some colour into your cheeks!" exclaimed her +brother; "we're not going to a wake!" + +And Kathleen said anxiously: "Your gown is perfection, dear; are you a +trifle tired? You do look pale." + +"Tired?" repeated Geraldine--"not in the least, dearest.... If I seem +not to be excited, I really am, internally; but perhaps I haven't +learned how to show it.... Don't I look well? I was so preoccupied with +my gown in the mirror that I forgot to examine my face." + +Mrs. Severn kissed her. "You and your gown are charming. Come, we are +late, and that isn't permitted to debutantes." + + * * * * * + +It was Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt who was giving the first dinner and +dance for Geraldine Seagrave. In the cloak-room she encountered some +very animated women of the younger married set, who spoke to her +amiably, particularly a Mrs. Dysart, who said she knew Duane Mallett, +and who was so friendly that a bit of colour warmed Geraldine's pallid +cheeks and still remained there when, a few minutes later, she saluted +her heavily jewelled hostess and recognised in her the fat fore-and-aft +lady of the day before. + +Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt, glittering like a South American scarab, +detained her with the smallest and chubbiest hands she had ever seen +inside of gloves. + +"My dear, you look ghastly," said her hostess. "You're probably scared +to death. This is my son, Delancy, who is going to take you in, and I'm +wondering about you, because Delancy doesn't get on with debutantes, but +that can't be helped. If he's pig enough not to talk to you, it wouldn't +surprise me--and it's just as well, too, for if he likes anybody he +compromises them, but it's no use your ever liking a Grandcourt, for all +the men make rotten husbands--I'm glad Rosalie Dysart threw him over for +poor Jack Dysart; it saved her a divorce! I'd get one if I could; so +would Magnelius. My husband was a judge once, but he resigned because he +couldn't send people up for the things he was doing himself." + +Mrs. Grandcourt, still gabbling away, turned to greet new arrivals, +merely switching to another subject without interrupting her steady +stream of outrageous talk. She was celebrated for it--and for nothing +else. + +Geraldine, bewildered and a little horrified, looked at her billowy, +bediamonded hostess, then at young Delancy Grandcourt, who, not +perceptibly abashed by his mother's left-handed compliments, lounged +beside her, apparently on the verge of a yawn. + +"My mother says things," he explained patiently; "nobody minds 'em.... +Shall we exchange nonsense--or would you rather save yourself until +dinner?" + +"Save myself what?" she asked nervously. + +"The nuisance of talking to me about nothing. I'm not clever." + +Geraldine reddened. + +"I don't usually talk about nothing." + +"I do," he said. "I never have much to say." + +"Is that because you don't like debutantes?" she asked coldly. + +"It's because they don't care about me.... If you would talk to me, I'd +really be grateful." + +He flushed and stepped back awkwardly to allow room for a slim, handsome +man to pass between them. The very ornamental man did not pass, however, +but calmly turned toward Geraldine, and began to talk to her. + +She presently discovered his name to be Dysart; and she also discovered +that Mr. Dysart didn't know her name; and, for a moment after she had +told him, surprise and a confused sense of resentment silenced her, +because she was quite certain now that they had never been properly +presented. + +That negligence of conventions was not unusual in this new world she +was entering, she had already noticed; and this incident was evidently +another example of custom smilingly ignored. She looked up +questioningly, and Dysart, instantly divining the trouble, laughed in +his easy, attractive fashion--the fashion he usually affected with +women. + +"You seemed so fresh and cool and sweet all alone in this hot corner +that I simply couldn't help coming over to hear whether your voice +matched the ensemble. And it surpasses it. Are you going to be +resentful?" + +"I'm too ignorant to be--or to laugh about it as you do.... Is it +because I look a simpleton that you come to see if I really am?" + +"Are you planning to punish me, Miss Seagrave?" + +"I'm afraid I don't know how." + +"Fate will, anyway, unless I am placed next you at dinner," he said with +his most reassuring smile, and rose gracefully. + +"I'm going to fix it," he added, and, pushing his way toward his +hostess, disappeared in the crush. + +Later young Grandcourt reappeared from the crush to take her in. Every +table seated eight, and, sure enough, as she turned involuntarily to +glance at her neighbour on the right, it was Dysart's pale face, cleanly +cut as a cameo, that met her gaze. He nodded back to her with unfeigned +satisfaction at his own success. + +"That's the way to manage," he said, "when you want a thing very much. +Isn't it, Miss Seagrave?" + +"You did not ask me whether I wanted it," she said. + +"Don't you want me here? If you don't--" His features fell and he made a +pretence of rising. His pale, beautifully sculptured face had become so +fearfully serious that she coloured up quickly. + +"Oh, you _wouldn't_ do such a thing--now! to embarrass me." + +"Yes, I would--I'd do anything desperate." + +But she had already caught the flash of mischief, and realising that he +had been taking more or less for granted in tormenting her, looked down +at her plate and presently tasted what was on it. + +"I know you are not offended," he murmured. "Are you?" + +She knew she was not, too; but she merely shrugged. "Then why do you ask +me, Mr. Dysart?" + +"Because you have such pretty shoulders," he replied seriously. + +"What an idiotic reply to make!" + +"Why? Don't you think you have?" + +"What?" + +"Pretty shoulders." + +"I don't think anything about my shoulders!" + +"You would if there was anything the matter with them," he insisted. + +Once or twice he turned his handsome dark gaze on her while she was +dissecting her terrapin. + +"They tip up a little--at the corners, don't they?" he inquired +anxiously. "Does it hurt?" + +"Tip up? What tips up?" she demanded. + +"Your eyes." + +She swung around toward him, confused and exasperated; but no +seriousness was proof against the delighted malice in Dysart's face; and +she laughed a little, and laughed again when he did. And she thought +that he was, perhaps, the handsomest man she had ever seen. All +debutantes did. + +Young Grandcourt turned from the pretty, over-painted woman who, until +that moment, had apparently held him interested when his food failed to +monopolise his attention, and glanced heavily around at Geraldine. + +All he saw was the back of her head and shoulders. Evidently she was not +missing him. Evidently, too, she was having a very good time with +Dysart. + +"What are you laughing about?" he asked wistfully, leaning forward to +see her face. + +Geraldine glanced back across her shoulder. + +"Mr. Dysart is trying to be impertinent," she replied carelessly; and +returned again to the impertinent one, quite ready for more torment now +that she began to understand how agreeable it was. + +But Dysart's expression had changed; there was something vaguely +caressing in voice and manner as he murmured: + +"Do you know there is something almost divine in your face." + +"What did you say?" asked Geraldine, looking up from her ice in its nest +of spun sugar. + +"You so strenuously reject the truthful compliments I pay you, that +perhaps I'd better not repeat this one." + +"Was it really more absurd flattery?" + +"No, never mind...." He leaned back in his chair, absently turning the +curious, heavily chiselled ring on his little finger, but every few +moments his expressive eyes reverted to her. She was eating her ice with +all the frank enjoyment of a schoolgirl. + +"Do you know, Miss Seagrave, that you and I are really equipped for +better things than talking nonsense." + +"I know that I am," she observed.... "Isn't this spun sugar delicious!" + +"Yes; and so are you." + +But she pretended not to hear. + +He laughed, then fell silent; his dreamy gaze shifted from vacancy to +her--and, casually, across the room, where it settled lightly as a +butterfly on his wife, and there it poised for a moment's inexpressive +examination. Scott Seagrave was talking to Rosalie; she did not notice +her husband. + +After that, with easy nonchalance approaching impudence, he turned to +his own neglected dinner partner, Sylvia Quest, who received his tardy +attentions with childish irritation. She didn't know any better. And +there was now no time to patch up matters, for the signal to rise had +been given and Dysart took Sylvia to the door with genuine relief. She +bored him dreadfully since she had become sentimental over him. They +always did. + +Lounging back through the rising haze of tobacco-smoke he encountered +Peter Tappan and stopped to exchange a word. + +"Dancing?" he inquired, lighting his cigarette. + +Tappan nodded. "You, too, of course." For Dysart was one of those types +known in society as a "dancing man." He also led cotillions, and a +morally blameless life as far as the more virile Commandments were +concerned. + +He said: "That little Seagrave girl is rather fetching." + +Tappan answered indifferently: + +"She resembles the general run of this year's output. She's weedy. They +all ought to marry before they go about to dinners, anyway." + +"Marry whom?" + +"Anybody--Delancy, here, for instance. You know as well as I do that no +woman is possible unless she's married," yawned Tappan. "Isn't that so, +Delancy?" clapping Grandcourt on the shoulder. + +Grandcourt said "yes," to be rid of him; but Dysart turned around with +his usual smile of amused contempt. + +"You think so, too, Delancy," he said, "because what is obvious and +ready-made appeals to you. You think as you eat--heavily--and you miss a +few things. That little Seagrave girl is charming. But you'd never +discover it." + +Grandcourt slowly removed the fat cigar from his lips, rolled it +meditatively between thick forefinger and thumb: + +"Do you know, Jack, that you've been saying that sort of thing to me for +a number of years?" + +"Yes; and it's just as true now as it ever was, old fellow." + +"That may be; but did it ever occur to you that I might get tired +hearing it.... And might, possibly, resent it some day?" + +For a long time Dysart had been uncomfortably conscious that Grandcourt +had had nearly enough of his half-sneering, half-humourous frankness. +His liking for Grandcourt, even as a schoolboy, had invariably +been tinged with tolerance and good-humoured contempt. Dysart had +always led in everything; taken what he chose without considering +Grandcourt--sometimes out of sheer perversity, he had taken what +Grandcourt wanted--not really wanting it himself--as in the case of +Rosalie Dene. + +"What are you talking about resenting?--my monopolising your dinner +partner?" asked Dysart, smiling. "Take her; amuse yourself. I don't want +her." + +Grandcourt inspected his cigar again. "I'm tired of that sort of thing, +too," he said. + +"What sort of thing?" + +"Contenting myself with what you don't want." + +Dysart lit a cigarette, still smiling, then shrugged and turned as +though to go. Around them through the smoke rose the laughing clamour of +young men gathering at the exit. + +"I want to tell you something," said Grandcourt heavily. "I'm an ass to +do it, but I want to tell you." + +Dysart halted patiently. + +"It's this," went on Grandcourt: "between you and my mother, I've never +had a chance; she makes me out a fool and you have always assumed it to +be true." + +Dysart glanced at him with amused contempt. + +A heavy flush rose to Grandcourt's cheek-bones. He said slowly: + +"I want my chance. You had better let me have it when it comes." + +"What chance do you mean?" + +"I mean--a woman. All my life you've been at my elbow to step in. You +took what you wanted--your shadow always falls between me and anybody +I'm inclined to like.... It happened to-night--as usual.... And I tell +you now, at last, I'm tired of it." + +"What a ridiculous idea you seem to have of me," began Dysart, laughing. + +"I'm afraid of you. I always was. Now--let me alone!" + +"Have you ever known me, since I've been married--" He caught +Grandcourt's eye, stammered, and stopped short. Then: "You certainly +are absurd. Delancy! I wouldn't deliberately interfere with you or +disturb a young girl's peace of mind. The trouble with you is----" + +"The trouble with _you_ is that women take to you very quickly, and you +are always trying to see how far you can arouse their interest. What's +the use of risking heartaches to satisfy curiosity?" + +"Oh, I don't have heartaches!" said Dysart, intensely amused. + +"I wasn't thinking of you. I suppose that's the reason you find it +amusing.... Not that I think there's any real harm in you----" + +"Thanks," laughed Dysart; "it only needed that remark to damn me +utterly. Now go and dance with little Miss Seagrave, and don't worry +about my trying to interfere." + +Grandcourt looked sullenly at him. "I'm sorry I spoke, now," he said. "I +never know enough to hold my tongue to you." + +He turned bulkily on his heel and left the dining-hall. There were +others, in throngs, leaving--young, eager-faced fellows, with a +scattering of the usual "dancing" men on whom everybody could always +count, and a few middle-aged gentlemen and women of the younger married +set to give stability to what was, otherwise, a debutante's affair. + +Dysart, strolling about, booked a dance or two, performed creditably, +made his peace, for the sake of peace, with Sylvia Quest, whose ignorant +heart had been partly awakened under his idle investigations. But this +was Sylvia's second season, and she would no doubt learn several things +of which she heretofore had been unaware. Just at present, however, her +heart was very full, and life's outlook was indeed tragic to a young +girl who believed herself wildly in love with a married man, and who +employed all her unhappy wits in the task of concealing it. + +A load of guilt lay upon her soul; the awful fact that she adored him +frightened her terribly; that she could not keep away from him terrified +her still more. But most of all she dreaded that he might guess her +secret. + +"I don't know why you thought I minded your not--not talking to me +during dinner," she faltered. "I was having a perfectly heavenly time +with Peter Tappan." + +"Do you mean that?" murmured Dysart. He could not help playing his part, +even when it no longer interested him. To murmur was as natural to him +as to breathe. + +She looked up piteously. "I would rather have talked to you," she said. +"Peter Tappan is only an overgrown boy. If you had really cared to talk +to me--" She checked herself, flushing deeply. + +O Lord! he thought, contemplating in the girl's lifted eyes the damage +he had not really expected to do. For it had, as usual, surprised him to +realise, too late, how dangerous it is to say too much, and look too +long, and how easy it is to awaken hearts asleep. + +Dancing was to be general before the cotillion. Sylvia would have given +him as many dances as he asked for; he danced once with her as a great +treat, resolving never to experiment any more with anybody.... True, it +might have been amusing to see how far he could have interested the +little Seagrave girl--but he would renounce that; he'd keep away from +everybody. + +But Dysart could no more avoid making eyes at anything in petticoats +than he could help the tenderness of his own smile or the caressing +cadence of his voice, or the subtle, indefinite something in him which +irritated men but left few women indifferent and some greatly perturbed +as he strolled along on his amusing journey through the world. + +He was strolling on now, having managed to leave Sylvia planted; and +presently, without taking any particular trouble to find Geraldine, +discovered her eventually as the centre of a promising circle of men, +very young men and very old men--nothing medium and desirable as yet. + +For a while, amused, Dysart watched her at her first party. Clearly she +was inexperienced; she let these men have their own way and their own +say; she was not handling them skilfully; yet there seemed to be a charm +about this young girl that detached man after man from the passing +throng and added them to her circle--which had now become a half circle, +completely cornering her. + +Animated, shyly confident, brilliant-eyed, and flushed with the +excitement of attracting so much attention, she was beginning to lose +her head a little--just a little. Dysart noticed it in her nervous +laughter; in a slight exaggeration of gesture with fan and flowers; in +the quick movement of her restless little head, as though it were +incumbent upon her to give to every man confronting her his own +particular modicum of attention--which was not like a debutante, either; +and Dysart realised that she was getting on. + +So he sauntered up, breaking through the circle, and reminded Geraldine +of a dance she had not promised him. + +She knew she had not promised, but she was quite ready to give it--had +already opened her lips to assent--when a young man, passing, swung +around abruptly as though to speak to her, hesitating as Geraldine's +glance encountered his without recognition. + +But, as he started to move on, she suddenly knew him; and at the same +moment Kathleen's admonition rang in her ears. Her own voice drowned it. + +"Oh, Duane!" she exclaimed, stretching out her hand across Dysart's line +of advance. + +"You _are_ Geraldine Seagrave, are you not?" he asked smilingly, +retaining her hand in such a manner as practically to compel her to step +past Dysart toward him. + +"Of course I am. You might have known me had you been amiable enough to +appear at my coming out." + +He laughed easily, still retaining her hand and looking down at her from +his inch or two of advantage. Then he casually inspected Dysart, who, +not at all pleased, returned his gaze with a careless unconcern verging +on offence. Few men cared for Dysart on first inspection--or on later +acquaintance; Mallett was no exception. + +Geraldine said, with smiling constraint: + +"It has been so very jolly to see you again." And withdrew her hand, +adding: "I hope--some time----" + +"Won't you let me talk to you now for a moment or two? You are not going +to dismiss me with that sort of come-back--after all these years--are +you?" + +He seemed so serious about it that the girl coloured up. + +"I--that is, Mr. Dysart was going to--to--" She turned and looked at +Dysart, who remained planted where she had left him, exceedingly wroth +at experiencing the sort of casual treatment he had so often meted out +to others. His expression was peevish. Geraldine, confused, began +hurriedly: + +"I thought Mr. Dysart meant to ask me to dance." + +"_Meant_ to?" interrupted Mallett, laughing; "_I_ mean to ask for this +dance, and I do." + +Once more she turned and encountered Dysart's darkening gaze, hesitated, +then with a nervous, gay little gesture to him, partly promise, partly +adieu, she took Mallett's arm. + +It was the first glimmer of coquetry she had ever deliberately +displayed; and at the same instant she became aware that something new +had been suddenly awakened in her--something which stole like a glow +through her veins, exciting her with its novelty. + +"Do you know," she said, "that you have taken me forcibly away from an +exceedingly nice man?" + +"I don't care." + +"Oh--but might I not at least have been consulted?" + +"Didn't you want to come?" he asked, stopping short. There was something +overbearing in his voice and his straight, unwavering gaze. + +She didn't know how to take it, how to meet it. Voice and manner +required some proper response which seemed to be beyond her experience. + +She did not answer; but a slight pressure of her bare arm set him in +motion again. + +The phenomenon interested her; to see what control over this abrupt +young man she really had she ventured a very slight retrograde +arm-pressure, then a delicate touch to right, to left, and forward once +more. It was most interesting; he backed up, guided right and left, and +started forward or halted under perfect control. What had she been +afraid of in him? She ventured to glance around, and, encountering a +warmly personal interest in his gaze, instantly assumed that cold, +blank, virginal mask which the majority of young girls discard at her +age. + +However, her long-checked growth in the arts of womanhood had already +recommenced. She had been growing fast, feverishly, and was just now +passing that period where the desire for masculine admiration innocently +rules all else, but where the discovery of it chills and constrains. + +She passed it at that moment. The next time their glances met she smiled +a little. A new epoch in her life had begun. + +"Where are you taking me?" she asked. "Are we not going to dance?" + +"I thought we might sit out a dance or two in the conservatory--one or +two----" + +"One," she said decidedly. "Here are some palms. Why not sit here?" + +There were a number of people about; she saw them, too, noted his +hesitation, understood it. + +"We'll sit here," she said, and stood smilingly regarding him while he +lugged up two chairs to the most retired corner. + +Slowly waving her fan, she seated herself and surveyed the room. + +It is quite true that reunion after many years usually ends in +constraint and indifference. If she felt slightly bored, she certainly +looked it. Neither of them resembled the childish recollections or +preconceived notions of the other. They found themselves inspecting one +another askance, as though furtively attempting to surprise some +familiar feature, some resemblance to a cherished memory. + +But the changes were too radical; their eyes, looking for old comrades, +encountered the unremembered eyes of strangers--for they were +strangers--this tall young man, with his gray eyes, pleasantly fashioned +mouth, and cleanly moulded cheeks; and this long-limbed girl, who sat, +knees crossed, one long, slim foot nervously swinging above its shadow +on the floor. + +In spite of his youth there was in his manner, if not in his voice, +something tinged with fatigue. She thought of what Kathleen had said +about him; looked up, instinctively questioning him with curious, +uncomprehending eyes; then her gaze wandered, became lost in smiling +retrospection as she thought of Dysart, peevish; and she frankly +regretted him and his dance. + +Young Mallett stirred, passed a rather bony hand over his shaven upper +lip, and said abruptly: "I never expected you'd grow up like this. +You've turned into a different kind of girl. Once you were chubby of +cheek and limb. Do you remember how you used to fight?" + +"Did I?" + +"Certainly. You hit me twice in the eye because I lost my temper +sparring with Scott. Your hands were small but heavy in those days.... I +imagine they're heavier now." + +She laughed, clasped both pretty hands over her knee, and tilted back +against the palm, regarding him from dark, velvety eyes. + +"You were a curiously fascinating child," he said. "I remember how fast +you could run, and how your hair flew--it was thick and dark, with +rather sunny high lights; and you were always running--always on the +go.... You were a remarkably just girl; that I remember. You were +absolutely fair to everybody." + +"I was a very horrid little scrub," she said, watching him over her +gently waving fan, "with a dreadful temper," she added. + +"Have you it now?" + +"Yes. I get over it quickly. Do you find Scott very much changed?" + +"Well, not as much as you. Do you find Naida changed?" + +"Not nearly as much as you." + +They smiled. The slight embarrassment born of polite indifference +brightened into amiable interest, tinctured by curiosity. + +"Duane, have you been studying painting all these years?" + +"Yes. What have you been doing all these years?" + +"Nothing." A shadow fell across her face. "It has been lonely--until +recently. I began to live yesterday." + +"You used to tell me you were lonely," he nodded. + +"I was. You and Naida were godsends." Something of the old thrill +stirred her recollection. She leaned forward, looking at him curiously; +the old memory of him was already lending him something of the forgotten +glamour. + +"How tall you are!" she said; "how much thinner and--how very +impressively grown-up you are, Duane. I didn't expect you to be entirely +a man so soon--with such a--an odd--expression----" + +He asked, smiling: "What kind of an expression have I, Geraldine?" + +"Not a boyish one; entirely a man's eyes and mouth and voice--a little +too wise, as though, deep inside, you were tired of something; no, not +exactly that, but as though you had seen many things and had lived some +of them----" + +She checked herself, lips softly apart; and the memory of what she had +heard concerning him returned to her. + +Confused, she continued to laugh lightly, adding: "I believe I was +afraid of you at first. Ought I to be, still? You know more than I +do--you know different kinds of things: your face and voice and manner +show it. I feel humble and ignorant in the presence of so distinguished +a European artist." + +They were laughing together now without a trace of constraint; and she +was aware that his interest in her was unfeigned and unmistakably the +interest of a man for a woman, that he was looking at her as other men +had now begun to look at her, speaking as other men spoke, frankly +interested in her as a woman, finding her agreeable to look at and talk +to. + +In the unawakened depths of her a conviction grew that her old playmate +must be classed with other men--man in the abstract--that indefinite and +interesting term, hinting of pleasures to come and possibilities +unimagined. + +"Did you paint pictures all the time you were abroad?" she asked. + +"Not every minute. I travelled a lot, went about, was asked to shoot in +England and Austria.... I had a good time." + +"Didn't you work hard?" + +"No. Isn't it disgraceful!" + +"But you exhibited in three salons. What were your pictures?" + +"I did a portrait of Lady Bylow and her ten children." + +"Was it a success?" + +He coloured. "They gave me a second medal." + +"Oh, I am so glad!" she exclaimed warmly. "And what were your others?" + +"A thing called 'The Witch.' Rather painful." + +"What was it?" + +"Life size. A young girl arrested in bed. Her frightened beauty is +playing the deuce with the people around. I don't know why I did it--the +painting of textures--her flesh, and the armour of the Puritan guard, +the fur of the black cat--and--well, it was academic and I was young." + +"Did they reward you?" + +"No." + +"What was the third picture?" + +"Oh, just a girl," he said carelessly. + +"Did they give you a prize for it?" + +"Y-yes. Only a mention." + +"Was it a portrait?" + +"Yes--in a way." + +"What was it? Just a girl?" + +"Yes." + +"Who was she?" + +"Oh, just a girl----" + +"Was she pretty?" + +"Yes. Shall we dance this next----" + +"No. Was she a model?" + +"She posed----" + +Geraldine, lips on the edge of her spread fan, regarded him curiously. + +"That is a very romantic life, isn't it?" she murmured. + +"What?" + +"Yours. I don't know much about it; Kathleen took me to hear 'La +Boheme'; and I found Murger's story in the library. I have also read +'Trilby.' Did _you_--were you--was life like that when you studied in +the Latin Quarter?" + +He laughed. "Not a bit. I never saw that species of life off the stage." + +"Oh, wasn't there any romance?" she asked forlornly. + +"Well--as much as you find in New York or anywhere." + +"Is there any romance in New York?" + +"There is anywhere, isn't there? If only one has the instinct to +recognise it and a capacity to comprehend it." + +"Of course," she murmured, "there are artists and studios and models and +poverty everywhere.... I suppose that without poverty real romance is +scarcely possible." + +He was still laughing when he answered: + +"Financial conditions make no difference. Romance is in one's self--or +it is nowhere." + +"Is it in--you?" she asked audaciously. + +He made no pretence of restraining his mirth. + +"Why, I don't know, Geraldine. Lots of people have the capacity for it. +Poverty, art, a studio, a velvet jacket, and models are not +essentials.... You ask if it is in _me_. I think it is. I think it +exists in anybody who can glorify the commonplace. To make people look +with astonished interest at something which has always been too familiar +to arrest their attention--only your romancer can accomplish this." + +"Please go on," she said as he ended. "I'm listening very hard. You +_are_ glorifying commonplaces, you know." + +They both laughed; he, a little red, disconcerted, piqued, and withal +charmed at her dainty thrust at himself. + +"I _was_ talking commonplaces," he admitted, "but how was I to know +enough not to? Women are usually soulfully receptive when a painter +opens a tin of mouldy axioms.... I didn't realise I was encountering my +peer----" + +"You may be encountering more than that," she said, the excitement of +her success with him flushing her adorably. + +"Oh, I've heard how terribly educated you and Scott are. No doubt you +can floor me on anything intellectual. See here, Geraldine, it's simply +wicked!--you are so soft and pretty, and nobody could suspect you of +knowing such a lot and pouncing out on a fellow for trying a few +predigested platitudes on you----" + +"I _don't_ know _anything_, Duane! How perfectly horrid of you!" + +"Well, you've scared me!" + +"I haven't. You're laughing at me. You know well enough that I don't +know the things you know." + +"What are they, in Heaven's name?" + +"Things--experiences--matters that concern life--the world, men, +everything!" + +"You wouldn't be interesting if you knew such things," he said. She +thought there was the same curious hint of indifference, something of +listlessness, almost fatigue in the expression of his eyes. And again, +apparently apropos of nothing, she found herself thinking of what +Kathleen had said about this man. + +"I don't understand you," she said, looking at him. + +He smiled, and the ghost of a shadow passed from his eyes. + +"I was talking at random." + +"I don't think you were." + +"Why not?" + +She shook her head, drawing a long, quiet breath. Silent, lips resting +in softly troubled curves, she thought of what Kathleen had said about +this man. _What_ had he done to disgrace himself? + +A few moments later she rose with decision. + +"Come," she said, unconsciously imperious. + +He looked across the room and saw Dysart. + +"But I haven't begun to tell you--" he began; and she interrupted +smilingly: + +"I know enough about you for a while; I have learned that you are a very +wonderful young man and that I'm inclined to like you. You will come to +see me, won't you?... No, I can't remain here another second. I want to +go to Kathleen. I want you to ask her to dance, too.... Please don't +urge me, Duane. I--this is my first dinner dance--yes, my very first. +And I _don't_ intend to sit in corners--I wish to dance; I desire to be +happy. I want to see lots and lots of men, not just one.... You don't +know all the lonely years I must make up for every minute now, or you +wouldn't look at me in such a sulky, bullying way.... Besides--do you +think I find you a compensation for all those delightful people out +yonder?" + +He glanced up and saw Dysart still watching them. Suddenly he dropped +his hand over hers. + +"Perhaps you may find that compensation in me some day," he said. "How +do you know?" + +"What a silly thing to say! Don't paw me, Duane; you hurt my hand. Look +at what you've done to my fan!" + +"It came between us. I'm sorry for anything that comes between us." + +Both were smiling fixedly; he said nothing for a moment; their gaze +endured until she flinched. + +"Silly," she said, "you are trying to tyrannise over me as you did when +we were children. I remember now----" + +"_You_ did the bullying then." + +"Did I? Then I'll continue." + +"No, you won't; it's my turn." + +"I will if I care to!" + +"Try it." + +"Very well. Take me to Kathleen." + +"Not until I have the dances I want!" + +Again their eyes met in silence. Dark little lights glimmered in hers; +his narrowed. The fixed smile died out. + +"The dances _you_ want!" she repeated. "How do you propose to secure +them? By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair? I want to +tell you something, Duane: these blunt, masterful men are very amusing +on the stage and in fiction, but they're not suitable to have tagging at +heel----" + +"I won't do any tagging at heel," he said; "don't count on it." + +"I have no inclination to count on you at all," she retorted, thoroughly +irritated. + +"You will have it some day." + +"Oh! Do you think so?" + +"Yes.... I didn't mean to speak the way I did. Won't you give me a dance +or two?" + +"No. I had no idea how horrid you could be.... I was told you were.... +Now I can believe it. Take me to Kathleen; do you hear me?" + +After a step or two he said, not looking at her: + +"I'm really sorry, Geraldine. I'm not a brute. Something about that +fellow Dysart upset me." + +"Please don't talk about it any more." + +"No.... Only I _am_ glad to see you again, and I do care for your +regard." + +"Then earn it," she said unevenly, as her anger subsided. "I don't know +very much about men in the world, but I know enough to understand when +they're offensive." + +"Was I?" + +"Yes.... Because you carried me away with a high hand, you thought it +the easiest way to take with me on every occasion.... Duane, do you +know, in some ways, we are somewhat alike? And that is why we used to +fight so." + +"I believe we are," he said slowly. "But--I was never able to keep away +from you." + +"Which makes our outlook rather stormy, doesn't it?" she said, turning +to him with all of her old sweet friendly manner. "_Do_ let us agree, +Duane. Mercy on us! we ought to adore each other--unless we have +forgotten the quarrelsome but adorable friendship of our childhood. _I_ +thought you were the perfection of all boys." + +"I thought there was no girl to equal you, Geraldine." + +She turned audaciously, not quite knowing what she was saying: + +"Think so now, Duane! It will be good for us both." + +"Do you mean it?" + +"Not--seriously," she said.... "And, Duane, please don't be too serious +with me. I am--you make me uncertain--you make me uncomfortable. I don't +know just what to say to you or just how it will be taken. You mustn't +be--that way--with _me_; you won't, will you?" + +He was silent for a moment; then his face lighted up. "No," he said, +laughing; "I'll open another can of platitudes.... You're a dear to +forgive me." + + * * * * * + +Dancing had been general before the cotillion; debutantes continued to +arrive in shoals from other dinners, a gay, rosy, eager throng, filling +drawing-rooms, conservatory, and library with birdlike flutter and +chatter, overflowing into the breakfast-room, banked up on the stairs in +bright-eyed battalions. + +The cotillion, led by Jack Dysart dancing alone, was one of those +carefully thought out intellectual affairs which shakes New York society +to its intellectual foundations. + +In one figure Geraldine came whizzing into the room in a Palm Beach +tricycle-chair trimmed with orchids and propelled by Peter Tappan; and +from her seat amid the flowers she distributed favours--live white +cockatoos, clinging, flapping, screeching on gilded wands; fans spangled +with tiny electric jewels; parasols of pink silk set with incandescent +lights; crystal cages containing great, pale-green Luna moths alive and +fluttering; circus hoops of gilt filled with white tissue paper, through +which the men jumped. + +There was also a Totem-pole figure--and other things, including supper +and champagne, and the semi-obscurity of conservatory and stairs; and +there was the usual laughter to cover heart-aches, and the inevitable +torn gowns and crushed flowers; and a number of young men talking too +loud and too much in the cloak-room, and Rosalie Dysart admitting to +Scott Seagrave in the conservatory that nobody really understood her; +and Delancy Grandcourt edging about the outer borders of the flowery, +perfumed vortex, following Geraldine and losing her a hundred times. + +On one of these occasions she was captured by Duane Mallett and convoyed +to the supper-room, where later she became utterly transfigured into a +laughing, blushing, sparkling, delicious creature, small ears singing +with her first venturesome glass of champagne. + +All the world seemed laughing with her; life itself was only an endless +bubble of laughter, swelling the gay, unending chorus; life was the hot +breeze from scented fans stirring a thousand roses; life was the silken +throng and its whirling and its feverish voices crying out to her to +live! + +Her childhood's playmate had come back a stranger, but already he was +being transformed, through the magic of laughter, into the boy she +remembered; awkwardness of readjusting her relations with him had +entirely vanished; she called him dear Duane, laughed at him, chatted +with him, appealed, contradicted, rebuked, tyrannised, until the young +fellow was clean swept off his feet. + +Then Dysart came, and for the second time the note of coquetry was +struck, clearly, unmistakably, through the tension of a moment's +preliminary silence; and Duane, dumb, furious, yielded her only when she +took Dysart's arm with a finality that became almost insolent as she +turned and looked back at her childhood's comrade, who followed, +scowling at Dysart's graceful back. + +Confused by his hurt and his anger, which seemed out of all logical +proportion to the cause of it, he turned abruptly and collided with +Grandcourt, who had edged up that far, waiting for the opportunity of +which Dysart, as usual, robbed him. + +Grandcourt apologised, muttering something about Mrs. Severn wishing him +to find Miss Seagrave. He stood, awkwardly, looking after Geraldine and +Dysart, but not offering to follow them. + +"Lot of debutantes here--the whole year's output," he said vaguely. +"What a noisy supper-room--eh, Mallett? I'm rather afraid champagne is +responsible for some of it." + +Duane started forward, halted. + +"Did you say Mrs. Severn wants Miss Seagrave?" + +"Y--yes.... I'd better go and tell her, hadn't I?" + +He flushed heavily, but made no movement to follow Geraldine and Dysart, +who had now entered the conservatory and disappeared. + +For a full minute, uncomfortably silent, the two men stood side by side; +then Duane said in a constrained voice: + +"I'll speak to Miss Seagrave, if you'll find her brother and Mrs. +Severn"; and walked slowly toward the palm-set rotunda. + +When he found them--and he found them easily, for Geraldine's +overexcited laughter warned and guided him--Dysart, her fan in his +hands, looked up at Duane intensely annoyed, and the young girl tossed +away a half-destroyed rose and glanced up, the laughter dying out from +lips and eyes. + +"Kathleen sent for you," said Duane drily. + +"I'll come in a minute, Duane." + +"In a moment," repeated Dysart insolently, and turned his back. + +The colour surged into Mallett's face; he turned sharply on his heel. + +"Wait!" said Geraldine; "Duane--do you hear me?" + +"I'll take you back," began Dysart, but she passed in front of him and +laid her hand on Mallett's arm. + +"Won't you wait for me, Duane?" + +And suddenly things seemed to be as they had been in their childhood, +the resurgence swept them both back to the old and stormy footing again. + +"Duane!" + +"What?" + +"I tell you to wait for me--_here_!" She stamped her foot. + +He scowled--but waited. She turned on Dysart: + +"Good-night!"--offering her hand with decision. + +Dysart began: "But I had expected----" + +"_Good-night!_" + +Dysart stared, took the offered hand, hesitated, started to speak, +thought better of it, made a characteristically graceful obeisance, and +an excellent exit, all things considered. + +Geraldine drew a deep breath, moved forward through the flower-set +dimness a step or two, halted, and, as Mallett came up, passed her arm +through his. + +"Duane," she said, "the champagne has gone to my head." + +"Nonsense!" + +"It _has_! My cheeks are queer--the skin fits too tight. My legs don't +belong to me--but they'll do." + +She laughed and turned toward him; her feverish breath touched his +cheek. + +"My first dinner! Isn't it disgraceful? But how could I know?" + +"You mustn't let it scare you." + +"It doesn't. I don't care. I knew something would go wrong. I--the truth +is, that I don't know how to act--how to accept my liberty. I don't know +how to use it. I'm a perfect fool.... Do you think Kathleen will notice +this? Isn't it terrible! She never dreamed I would touch any wine. Do I +look--queer?" + +"No. It isn't so, anyway--and you'll simply lean on me----" + +"Oh, my knees are perfectly steady. It's only that they don't seem to +belong to me. I'm--I'm excited--I've laughed too much--more than I have +ever laughed in all the years of my life put together. You don't know +what I mean, do you, Duane? But it's true; I've talked to-night more +than I ever have in any one week.... And it's gone to my head--all +this--all these people who laugh with me over nothing--follow me, tell +me I am pretty, ask me for dances, favours, beg me for a word with +them--as though I would need asking or urging!--as though my impulse is +not to open my heart to every one of them--open my arms to them--thank +them on my knees for being here--for being nice to me--all these boys +who make little circles around me--so funny, so quaint in their +formality----" + +She pressed his arm tighter. + +"_Let_ me rattle on--let me babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make +up for. Let me talk like a fool; _you_ know I'm not one.... Oh, the +happiness of this one night!--the happiness of it! I never shall have +enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I--I'm perfectly mad over +pleasure; I like men.... I suppose the champagne makes me frank about +it--but I don't care--I do like men----" + +"_That_ one?" demanded Mallett, halting her on the edge of the palms +which screened the conservatory doors. + +"You mean Mr. Dysart? Yes--I--do like him." + +"Well, he's married, and you'd better not," he snapped. + +"C-can't I _like_ him?" in piteous astonishment which set the colour +flying into his face. + +"Why, yes--of course--I didn't mean----" + +"_What_ did you mean? Isn't it--shouldn't he be----" + +"Oh, it's all right, Geraldine. Only he's a sort of a pig to keep you +away from--others----" + +"Other--_pigs_?" + +He turned sharply, seized her, and forcibly turned her toward the light. +She made no effort to control her laughter, excusing it between breaths: + +"I didn't mean to turn what you said into ridicule; it came out before I +meant it.... Do let me laugh a little, Duane. I simply cannot care about +anything serious for a while--I want to be frivolous----" + +"Don't laugh so loud," he whispered. + +She released his arm and sank down on a marble seat behind the flowering +oleanders. + +"Why are you so disagreeable?" she pouted. "I know I'm a perfect fool, +and the champagne has gone to my silly head--and you'll never catch me +this way again.... Don't scowl at me. Why don't you act like other men? +Don't you know how?" + +"Know how?" he repeated, looking down into the adorably flushed face +uplifted. "Know how to do what?" + +"To flirt. I don't. Everybody has tried to teach me to-night--everybody +except you ... Duane.... I'm ready to go home; I'll go. Only my head is +whirling so--Tell me--_are_ you glad to see me again?... Really?... And +you don't mind my folly? And my tormenting you?... And my--my turning +_your_ head a little?" + +"You've done _that_," he said, forcing a laugh. + +"Have I?... I knew it.... You see, I am horridly truthful to-night. _In +vino veritas!_ ... Tell me--did I, all by myself, turn that +too-experienced head of yours?" + +"You're doing it now," he said. + +She laughed deliciously. "Now? Am I? Yes, I know I am. I've made a lot +of men think hard to-night.... I didn't know I could; I never before +thought of it.... And--even _you_, too?... You're not very serious, are +you?" + +"Yes, I am. I tell you, Geraldine, I'm about as much in love with you +as----" + +"In _love_!" + +"Yes----" + +"No!" + +"Yes, I am----" + +But she would not have it put so crudely. + +"You dear boy," she said, "we'll both be quite sane to-morrow.... No, I +don't mind your kissing my hand--I'm dreadfully tired, anyway.... We'll +find Kathleen, shall we? My head doesn't buzz much." + +"Geraldine," he said, deliberately encircling her waist, "you are only +the same small girl I used to know, after all." + +[Illustration: "'Duane!' she gasped--'why did you?'"] + +"Y-yes, I'm afraid so." + +"And you're not really old enough to really care for anybody, are you?" + +"Care?" + +"Love." + +"No, I'm not. Don't talk to me that way, Duane." + +He drew her suddenly into his arms and kissed her on the cheek twice, +and again on the mouth, as, crimson, breathless, she strained away from +him. + +"Duane!" she gasped--"why did you?" Then the throbbing of her body and +crushed lips made her furious. "Why did you do that?" she cried +fiercely--but her voice ended in a dry sob; she covered her head and +face with bare arms; her hands tightened convulsively and clenched. + +"Oh," she said, "how could you!--when I came to you--feeling--afraid of +myself! I know you now. You are what they say you are." + +"What do they say I am?" he stammered. + +"Horrid--I don't know--wild!--whatever that implies.... I didn't care--I +didn't care even to understand, because I thought you generous and nice +to me--and I was so confident of you that I came with you and told you I +had had some champagne which made my head swim.... And you--did this! +It--it was contemptible." + +He bit his lip, but said nothing. + +"Why did you do it?" she demanded, dropping her arms from her face and +staring at him. "Is that the sort of thing you did abroad?" + +"Can't you see I'm in love with you?" he said. + +"Oh! Is _that_ love? Then keep it for your models and--and Bohemian +grisettes! A decent man couldn't have done such a thing to me. I--I +loathe myself for being silly and weak enough to have touched that +wine, but I have more contempt for you than I have for myself. What you +did was cowardly!" + +Much of the colour had fled from her face; her eyes, bluish underneath +the lower lids, turned wearily, helplessly in search of Kathleen. + +"I knew I was unfit for liberty," she said, half to herself. "What an +ending to my first pleasure!" + +"For Heaven's sake, Geraldine," he broke out, "don't take an accident so +tragically----" + +"I want Kathleen. Do you hear?" + +"Very well; I'll find her.... And, whatever you say or think, I _am_ in +love with you," he added fiercely. + +His voice, his words, were meaningless; she was conscious only of the +heavy pulse in throat and temple, of the desire for her room and +darkness. Lights, music, the scent of dying flowers, laughter, men, all +had become abhorrent. Something within her lay bruised and stunned; and, +as never before, the vast and terrible phantom of her loneliness rose +like a nightmare to menace her. + +Later Kathleen came and took her away. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE YEAR OF DISCRETION + + +Her first winter resembled, more or less, the first winter of the +average debutante. + +Under the roof of the metropolitan social temple there was a niche into +which her forefathers had fitted. Within the confines of this she +expected, and was expected, to live and move and have her being, and +ultimately wing upward to her God, leaving the consecrated cubby-hole +reserved for her descendants. + +She did what her sister debutantes did, and some things they did not do, +was asked where they were asked, decorated the same tier of boxes at the +opera, appeared in the same short-skirted entertainments of the Junior +League, saw what they saw, was seen where they were seen, chattered, +danced, and flirted with the same youths, was smitten by the popular +"dancing" man, convalesced in average time, smoked her first cigarette, +fell a victim to the handsome and horrid married destroyer, recovered +with a shock when, as usual, he overdid it, played at being engaged, was +kissed once or twice, adored Sembrich, listened ignorantly but with +intuitive shudders to her first scandals, sent flowers to Ethel +Barrymore, kept Lent with the pure fervour of a conscience troubled and +untainted, drove four in the coaching parade, and lunched afterward at +the Commonwealth Club, where her name was subsequently put up for +election. + +Spectacular charities lured her from the Plaza to Sherry's, from +Sherry's to the St. Regis; church work beguiled her; women's suffrage, +led daintily in a series of circles by Fashion and Wealth, enlisted her +passive patronage. She even tried the slums, but the perfume was too +much for her. + +All the small talk and epigrams of the various petty impinging circles +under the social dome passed into and out of her small ears--gossip, +epigrams, aphorisms, rumours, apropos surmises, asides, and off-stage +observations, subtle with double entendre, harmless and otherwise. + +She met people of fashion, of wealth, and both; and now and then +encountered one or two of those men and women of real distinction whose +names and peregrinations are seldom chronicled in the papers. + +She heard the great artists of the two operas sing in private; was +regaled with information concerning the remarkable decency or indecency +of their private careers. She saw fashionable plays which instructed the +public about squalor, murder, and men's mistresses, which dissected very +skilfully and artistically the ethics of moral degradation. And being as +healthy and curious as the average girl, she found in the theatres +material with which to inform herself about certain occult mysteries +concerning which, heretofore, she had been left mercifully in doubt. + +In spite of Kathleen, it was inevitable that she should acquire from the +fashionable in literature, music, and the drama, that sorry and +unnecessary wisdom which ages souls. + +And if what she saw or heard ever puzzled her, there was always +somebody, young or old, to enlighten her innocent perplexity; and with +each illumination she shrank a little less aloof from this shabby +wisdom gilded with "art," which she could not choose but accept as fact, +but the depravity of which she never was entirely able to comprehend. + +In March the Seagrave twins arrived at the alleged age of discretion. On +their twenty-first birthday the Half Moon Trust Company went solemnly +into court and rendered an accounting of its stewardship; the yearly +reports which it had made during the term of its trusteeship were +brought forward, examined by the court, and the great Half Moon Trust +Company was given an honourable discharge. It had done its duty. The +twins were masters of their financial and moral fate. + +It was about that moribund period of the social solstice when the fag +end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April +rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And +Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a +needy gentleman from Long Island. + +It had been rather trying work to rid Geraldine of the aspirants for her +fortune; during the winter she was proposed to under almost every +conceivable condition and circumstance. Kathleen had been bored and +badgered and bothered and importuned to the verge of exhaustion; Scott +was used, shamelessly, without his suspecting it, and he generally had +in tow a string of financially spavined aspirants who linked arms with +him from club to club, from theatre to opera, from grille to grille, +until he was pleasantly bewildered at his own popularity. + +Geraldine was surprised, confused, shamed, irritated in turn with every +new importunity. But she remained sensible enough to be quite frank and +truthful with Kathleen, except for an exciting secret engagement with +Bunbury Gray which lasted for two weeks. And Kathleen was given strength +sufficient for each case as it presented itself; and now the fag end of +the season died out; the last noble and indigent foreigner had been +eluded; the last old beau foiled; the last squab-headed dancing man +successfully circumvented. And now the gallinaceous half of the world +was leaving town in noisy and glittering migration, headed for temporary +roosts all over the globe, from Newport to Nova Scotia, from Kineo to +Kara Dagh. + +Country houses were opening throughout the Western Hemisphere; Long +Island stirred from its long winter lethargy, stung into active life by +the Oyster Bay mosquito; town houses closed; terrace, pillar, portico, +and windows were already being boarded over; lace curtains came down; +textiles went to the cleaners; the fresh scent of camphor and lavender +lingered in the mellow half-light of rooms where furniture and pictures +loomed linen-shrouded and the polished floor echoed every footstep. + +In the sunny gloom of the Seagrave house Geraldine found a grateful +retreat from the inspiring glare and confused racket of her first +winter; ample time for rest, reverie, and reflection, with only a few +intimates to break her meditations, only informality to reckon with, and +plenty of leisure to plan for the summer. + +Around the house, trees and rhododendrons were now in freshest bloom, +flower-beds fragrant, grass tenderly emerald. The moving shadows of +maple leaves patterned the white walls of her bedroom; wind-blown gusts +of wistaria fragrance, from the long, grapelike, violet-tinted bunches +swaying outside the window, puffed out her curtains every morning. + +At night subtler perfumes stole upward from the dark garden; the roar +of traffic from the avenues was softened; carriage lights in the +purpling dusk of the Park moved like firebugs drifting through level +wooded vistas. Across the reservoir lakes the jewelled night-zone of the +West Side sparkled, reflected across the water in points of trembling +flame; south, a gemmed bar of topaz light, upright against the sky, +marked the Plaza; beyond, sprinkled into space like constellations +dusting endless depths, the lights of the city receded far as the eye +could see. + +In the zenith the sky is always tinted with the strange, sinister +night-glow of the metropolis, red as fire-licked smoke when fog from the +bay settles, pallid as the very shadow of light when nights are clear; +but it is always there--always will be there after the sun goes down +into the western seas, and the eyes of the monstrous iron city burn on +through the centuries. + + * * * * * + +One morning late in April Geraldine Seagrave rode up under the +porte-cochere with her groom, dismounted, patted her horse +sympathetically, and regarded with concern the limping animal as the +groom led him away to the stables. Then she went upstairs. + +To Kathleen, who was preparing to go out, she said: + +"I had scarcely entered the Park, my dear, when poor Bibi pulled up +lame. No, I told Redmond not to saddle another; I suppose Duane will be +furious. Where are you going?" + +"I don't know. Shall I wait for you? I've ordered a victoria." + +"No, thanks. You look so pretty this morning, Kathleen. Sometimes you +appear younger than I do. Scott was pig enough to say so the other day +when I had a headache. It's true enough, too," she added, smiling. + +Kathleen Severn laughed; she looked scarcely more than twenty-five and +she knew it. + +"You pretty thing!" exclaimed Geraldine, kissing her, "no wonder you +attract the really interesting men and leave me the dreadful fledglings! +It's bad of you; and I don't see why I'm stupid enough to have such an +attractive woman for my closest"--a kiss--"dearest friend! Even Duane is +villain enough to tell me that he finds you overwhelmingly attractive. +Did you know it?" + +Geraldine's careless gaiety seemed spontaneous enough; yet there was the +slightest constraint in Kathleen's responsive smile: + +"Duane isn't to be taken seriously," she said. + +"Not by any means," nodded Geraldine, twirling her crop. + +"I'm glad you understand him," observed Kathleen, gazing at the point of +her sunshade. She looked up presently and met Geraldine's dark gaze. +Again there came that almost imperceptible hesitation; then: + +"I certainly do understand Duane Mallett," said Geraldine carelessly. + +"Shall I wait for you?" asked Kathleen. "We can lunch out together and +drive in the Park later." + +"I'm too lazy even to take off my boots and habit. Where's that volume +of Mendez you thought fit to hide from me, you wretch?" + +"Why on earth did you buy it?" + +"I bought it because Rosalie Dysart says Mendez is a great modern master +of prose----" + +"And Rosalie is a great modern mistress of pose. Don't read Mendez." + +"Isn't it necessary for a girl to read----" + +"No, it isn't!" + +"I don't want to be ignorant. Besides, I'm--curious to know----" + +"Be decently curious, dearest. There's a danger mark; don't cross it." + +"I don't wish to." + +She stretched out her arms, crop in hand, doubled them back, and head +tipped on one side, yawned shamelessly at her own laziness. + +"Scott is becoming very restless," she said. + +"About going away?" + +"Yes. I really do think, Kathleen, that we ought to have some +respectable country place to go to. It would be nice for Scott and the +servants and the horses; and you and I need not stay there if it bores +us----" + +"Is he still thinking of that Roya-Neh place? It's horridly expensive to +keep up. Oh, I knew quite well that Scott would bully you into +consenting----" + +"Roya-Neh seems to suit us both," admitted the girl indifferently. "The +shooting and fishing naturally attract Scott; they say it's secluded +enough for you and me to recuperate in; and if we ever want any guests, +it's big enough to entertain dozens in.... I really don't care one way +or the other; you know I never was very crazy about the country--and +poison ivy, and mosquitoes and oil-smelling roads, and hot nights, and +the perfume of fertilisers----" + +"You poor child!" laughed Kathleen; "you don't know anything about the +country except where you've been on Long Island in the immediate +vicinity of your grandfather's horrid old place." + +"Is it any more agreeable up there near Canada?" + +"Roya-Neh is very lovely--of course--but--it's certainly not a wise +investment, dear." + +"Well, if Scott and I buy it, we'd never wish to sell it----" + +"Suppose you were obliged to?" + +Geraldine's velvet eyes widened lazily: + +"Obliged to? Oh--yes--you mean if we went to smash." + +Then her gaze became remote as she stood slowly tapping her gloved palm +with her riding-crop. + +"I think I'll dress," she said absently. + +"Good-bye, then," nodded Kathleen. + +"Good-bye," said the girl, turning lightly away across the hall. +Kathleen's eyes followed the slender retreating figure, so slimly +compact in its buoyancy. There was always something fascinatingly boyish +in Geraldine's light, free carriage--just a touch of carelessness in the +poise--almost a swing at times to the step. Duane had once said: "She +has a bully walk!" Kathleen thought of it as, passing a mirror, she +caught sight of herself. And the sudden glimpse of her own warm, rich +beauty in all its exquisite maturity startled her. Surely she seemed to +be growing younger. + +She was. Dark-violet eyes, ruddy hair, a superb figure, a skin so white +that it looked fragrant, made Kathleen Severn amazingly attractive. Men +found her, to their surprise, rather unresponsive. She was amiable +enough, nicely formal, and perfectly bred, it is true, but inclined to +that sort of aloofness which is marked by lapses of inattention and the +smiling silences of preoccupation. + +She had married, very young, an army officer convalescing from Texan +fever. He died suddenly on the very eve of their postponed +wedding-trip. This was enough to account for lapses of inattention in +any woman. + +But Kathleen Severn had never been demonstrative. She was slow to care +for people. Besides, the responsibility of bringing up the Seagrave +twins had been sufficient to subdue anybody's spirits. She was only +nineteen and a widow of a month when her distant relative, Magnelius +Grandcourt, found her the position as personal guardian of the twins, +then aged nine. Now they were twenty-one and she thirty-one; twelve +years of service, twelve years of steady fidelity, which long ago had +become a changeless and passionate devotion, made up of all she might +have given to the dead, and of the unborn happiness she had never known. +What other sort of love, if there was any, lay within her undeveloped, +nobody knew because nobody had ever aroused it. + +Sunshine transformed into great golden transparencies the lowered shades +in the living room where Geraldine stood, pensive, distraite, idly +twirling her crop by the loop. Presently it flew off her gloved +forefinger and fell clattering across the carpetless floor. She bathed +and dressed leisurely; later, when luncheon was brought to her, she +dropped into a low, wide chair and, ignoring everything except the +strawberries, turned her face to the breeze which was softly rattling +the southern curtains. + +Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, +in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of +herself; but never could completely. + +"For example: if I want to buy Roya-Neh," she mused, biting into an +enormous strawberry, "I can do it.... All I have to do is to say that +I'll buy it.... And I can live there if I choose--as long as I +choose.... It's a very agreeable sensation.... I can have anything I +fancy, without asking Mr. Tappan.... It's rather odd that I don't want +anything." + +She crossed her ankles and lay back watching the sun-moats floating. + +"Suppose," she murmured with perverse humour, "that I wished to build a +bungalow in Timbuctoo ... or stand on my head, now, this very moment! +Nobody on earth could stop me.... I believe I _will_ stand on my head +for a change." + +The sudden smile made the curve of her cheek delicious. She sprang to +her feet, spread her napkin on the polished floor, then gravely bending +double, placed both palms flat on the square of damask, balanced and +raised her body until the straight, slim limbs were rigidly pointed +toward heaven. + +Down tumbled her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and +spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on +both feet breathing fast. + +"It's disgraceful!" she murmured; "I am certainly out of condition. Late +hours are my undoing. Also cigarettes. I wish I didn't like to smoke." + +She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, +heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor. + +Lacking a hair-peg, she sauntered off to her own apartments to find one, +where she remained, lolling in the chaise-longue, alternately blowing +smoke rings into the sunshine and nibbling a bonbon soaked in cologne. +Only a girl can accomplish such combinations. How she ever began this +silly custom of hers she couldn't remember, except that, when a small +child, somebody had forbidden her to taste brandied peach syrup, which +she adored; and the odour of cologne being similarly pleasant, she had +tried it on her palate and found that it produced agreeable sensations. + +It had become a habit. She was conscious of it, but remained indifferent +because she didn't know anything about habits. + +So all that sunny afternoon she lay in the chaise-longue, alternately +reading and dreaming, her scented bonbons at her elbow. Later a maid +brought tea; and a little later Duane Mallett was announced. He +sauntered in, a loosely knit, graceful figure, still wearing his +riding-clothes and dusty boots of the morning. + +Geraldine Seagrave had had time enough to discover, during the past +winter, that her old playfellow was not at all the kind of man he +appeared to be. Women liked him too easily and he liked them without +effort. There was always some girl in love with him until he was found +kissing another. His tastes were amiably catholic; his caress +instinctively casual. Beauty when responsive touched him. No girl he +knew needed to remain unconsoled. + +The majority of women liked him; so did Geraldine Seagrave. The majority +instinctively watched him; so did she. In close acquaintance the man was +a disappointment. It seemed as though there ought to be something deeper +in him than the lightly humourous mockery with which he seemed to regard +his very great talent--a flippancy that veiled always what he said and +did and thought until nobody could clearly understand what he really +thought about anything; and some people doubted that he thought at +all--particularly the thoughtless whom he had carelessly consoled. + +Women were never entirely indifferent concerning him; there remained +always a certain amount of curiosity, whether they found him attractive +or otherwise. + +His humourous indifference to public opinions, bordering on effrontery, +was not entirely unattractive to women, but it always, sooner or later, +aroused their distrust. + +The main trouble with Duane Mallett seemed to be his gaily cynical +willingness to respond to any advance, however slight, that any pretty +woman offered. This responsive partiality was disconcerting enough to +make him dreaded by ambitious mothers, and an object of uneasy interest +to their decorative offspring who were inclined to believe that a rescue +party of one might bring this derelict into port and render him +seaworthy for the voyage of life under their own particular command. + +Besides, he was a painter. Women like them when they are carefully +washed and clothed. + + * * * * * + +As Duane Mallett strolled into the living-room, Geraldine felt again, as +she so often did, a slight sense of insecurity mingle with her liking +for the man, or what might have been liking if she could ever feel +absolute confidence in him. She had been, at times, very close to caring +a great deal for him, when now and again it flashed over her that there +must be in him something serious under his brilliant talent and the idle +perversity which mocked at it. + +But now she recognised in his smile and manner everything that kept her +from ever caring to understand him--the old sense of insecurity in his +ironical formality; and her outstretched hand fell away from his with +indifference. + +"I didn't have the happiness of riding with you, after all," he said, +serenely seating himself and dropping one lank knee over the other. +"Promises wouldn't be valuable unless somebody broke a lot now and +then." + +"You probably had the happiness of riding with some other woman." + +He nodded. + +"Who, this time?" + +"Rosalie Dysart." + +Rumour had been busy with their names recently. The girl's face became +expressionless. + +"Sorry you didn't come," he said, looking out of the window where the +flapping shade revealed a lilac in bloom. + +"How long did you wait for me?" + +"About a minute. Then Rosalie passed----" + +"Rosalies will always continue to pass through your career, my +omnivorous friend.... Did it even occur to you to ride over here and +find out why I missed our appointment?" + +"No; why didn't you come?" + +"Bibi went lame. I'd have had another horse saddled if I hadn't seen +you, over my shoulder, join Mrs. Dysart." + +"Too bad," he commented listlessly. + +"Why? You had a perfectly good time without me, didn't you?" + +"Oh, yes, pretty good. Delancy Grandcourt was out after luncheon, and +when Rosalie left he stuck to me and talked about you until I let my +horse bolt, and it stirred up a few mounted policemen and +riding-schools, I can tell you!" + +"Oh, so you lunched with Mrs. Dysart?" + +"Yes. Where is Kathleen?" + +"Driving," said the girl briefly. "If you don't care for any tea, there +is mineral water and a decanter over there." + +He thanked her, rose and mixed himself what he wanted, and began to walk +leisurely about, the ice tinkling in the glass which he held. At +intervals he quenched his thirst, then resumed his aimless promenade, a +slight smile on his face. + +"Has anything particularly interesting happened to you, Duane?" she +asked, and somehow thought of Rosalie Dysart. + +"No." + +"How are your pictures coming on?" + +"The portrait?" he asked absently. + +"Portrait? I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town. +Whose portrait are you painting?" + +Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew. + +"Rosalie Dysart's," he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower +as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment. + +She lifted her dark eyes curiously. He began to stir the ice in his +glass with a silver paper-cutter. + +"She is wonderfully beautiful, isn't she?" said the girl. + +"Overwhelmingly." + +Geraldine shrugged and gazed into space. She didn't exactly know why she +had given that little hitch to her shoulders. + +"I'd like to paint Kathleen," he observed. + +A flush tinted the girl's cheeks. She said nervously: + +"Why don't you ask her?" + +"I've meant to. Somehow, one doesn't ask things lightly of Kathleen." + +"One doesn't ask things of some women at all," she remarked. + +He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest. + +"Ask what sort of thing?" he inquired, walking over to the table and +resting his glass on it. + +"Oh, I don't know what I meant. Nothing. What is that in your glass? Let +me taste it.... Ugh! It's Scotch!" + +She set back the glass with a shudder. After a few moments she picked it +up again and tasted it disdainfully. + +"Do you like this?" she demanded with youthful contempt. + +"Pretty well," he admitted. + +"It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn't it?" + +"I never noticed that it did." + +And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, +tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she +tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty glass and watched him where +he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his +riding-crop. + +"I'd like to see a typical studio," she said reflectively. + +"I've asked you to mine often enough." + +"Yes, to tea with other people. I don't mean that way. I'd like to see +it when it's not all dusted and in order for feminine inspection. I'd +like to see a man's studio when it's in shape for work--with the +gr-r-reat painter in a fine frenzy painting, and the model posing +madly----" + +"Come on, then! If Kathleen lets you, and you can stand it, come down +and knock some day unexpectedly." + +"O Duane! I _couldn't_, could I?" + +"Not with propriety. But come ahead." + +"Naturally, impropriety appeals to you." + +"Naturally. To you, too, doesn't it?" + +"No. But wouldn't it astonish you if you heard a low, timid knocking +some day when you and your Bohemian friends were carousing and having a +riotous time there----" + +"Yes, it would, but I'm afraid that low, timid knocking couldn't be +heard in the infernal uproar of our usual revelry." + +"Then I'd knock louder and louder, and perhaps kick once or twice if you +didn't come to the door and let me in." + +He laughed. After a moment she laughed, too; her dark eyes were very +friendly now. Watching the amusement in his face, she continued to sip +from his tall, frosted glass, quite unconscious of any distaste for it. +On the contrary, she experienced a slight exhilaration which was +gradually becoming delightful to her. + +"Scotch-and-soda is rather nice, after all," she observed. "I had no +idea--_What_ is the matter with you, Duane?" + +"You haven't swallowed all that, have you?" + +"Yes, is it much?" + +He stared, then with a shrug: "You'd better cut out that sort of thing." + +"What?" she asked, surprised. + +"What you're doing." + +"Tasting your Scotch? Pooh!" she said, "it isn't strong. Do you think +I'm a baby?" + +"Go ahead," he said, "it's your funeral." + +Legs crossed, chin resting on the butt of his riding-crop, he lay back +in his chair watching her. + +Women of her particular type had always fascinated him; Fifth Avenue is +thronged with them in sunny winter mornings--tall, slender, faultlessly +gowned girls, free-limbed, narrow of wrist and foot; cleanly built, +engaging, fearless-eyed; and Geraldine was one of a type characteristic +of that city and of the sunny Avenue where there pass more beautiful +women on a December morning than one can see abroad in half a dozen +years' residence. + +How on earth this hemisphere has managed to evolve them out of its +original material nobody can explain. And young Mallett, recently from +the older hemisphere, was still in a happy trance of surprise at the +discovery. + +Lounging there, watching her where she sat warmly illumined by the +golden light of the window-shade, he said lazily: + +"Do you know that Fifth Avenue is always thronged with you, Geraldine? +I've nearly twisted my head off trying not to miss the assorted visions +of you which float past afoot or driving. Some day one of them will +unbalance me. I'll leap into her victoria, ask her if she'd mind the +temporary inconvenience of being adored by a stranger; and if she's a +good sport she'll take a chance. Don't you think so?" + +"It's more than I'd take with you," said the girl. + +"You've said that several times." + +He laughed, then looked up at her half humorously, half curiously. + +"_You_ would be taking no chances, Geraldine." + +"I'd be taking chances of finding you holding some other girl's hands +within twenty-four hours. And you know it." + +"Hasn't anybody ever held yours?" + +Displeasure tinted her cheeks a deeper red, but she merely shrugged her +shoulders. + +It was true that in the one evanescent and secret affair of her first +winter she had not escaped the calf-like transports of Bunbury Gray. She +had felt, if she had not returned them, the furtively significant +pressure of men's hands in the gaiety and whirl of things; ardent and +chuckle-headed youth had declared itself in conservatories and in +corners; one impetuous mauling from a smitten Harvard boy of eighteen +had left her furiously vexed with herself for her passive attitude while +the tempest passed. True, she had vigorously reproved him later. She +had, alas, occasion, during her first season, to reprove several +demonstrative young men for their unconventionally athletic manner of +declaring their suits. She had been far more severe with the humble, +unattractive, and immobile, however, than with the audacious and +ornamental who had attempted to take her by storm. A sudden if awkward +kiss followed by the fiery declaration of the hot-headed disturbed her +less than the persistent stare of an enamoured pair of eyes. As a child +the description of an assault on a citadel always interested her, but +she had neither sympathy nor interest in a siege. + +Now, musing there in the sunlight on the events of her first winter, she +became aware that she had been more or less instructed in the ways of +men; and, remembering, she lifted her disturbed eyes to inspect this +specimen of a sex which often perplexed but always interested her. + +"What are you smiling about, Duane?" she asked defiantly. + +"Your arraignment of me when half the men in town have been trying to +marry you all winter. You've made a reputation for yourself, too, +Geraldine." + +"As what?" she asked angrily. + +"A head-twister." + +"Do you mean a flirt?" + +"Oh, Lord! Only the French use that term now. But that's the idea, +Geraldine. You are a born one. I fell for the first smile you let loose +on me." + +"You seem to have been a sort of general Humpty Dumpty for falls all +your life, Duane," she said with dangerous sweetness. + +"Like that immortal, I've had only one which permanently shattered me." + +"Which was that, if you please?" + +"The fall you took out of me." + +"In other words," she said disdainfully, "you are beginning to make love +to me again." + +"No.... I _was_ in love with you." + +"You were in love with yourself, young man. You are on such excellent +terms with yourself that you sympathise too ardently with any attractive +woman who takes the least and most innocent notice of you." + +He said, very much amused: "I was perfectly serious over you, +Geraldine." + +"The selfish always take themselves seriously." + +It was she, however, who now sat there bright-eyed and unsmiling, and he +was still laughing, deftly balancing his crop on one finger, and +glancing at her from time to time with that glimmer of ever-latent +mockery which always made her restive at first, then irritated her with +an unreasoning desire to hurt him somehow. But she never seemed able to +reach him. + +"Sooner or later," she said, "women will find you out, thoroughly." + +"And then, just think what a rush there will be to marry me!" + +"There will be a rush to avoid you, Duane. And it will set in before you +know it--" She thought of the recent gossip coupling his name with +Rosalie's, reddened and bit her lip in silence. But somehow the thought +irritated her into speech again: + +"Fortunately, I was among the first to find you out--the first, I +think." + +"Heavens! when was that?" he asked in pretended concern, which +infuriated her. + +"You had better not ask me," she flashed back. "When a woman suddenly +discovers that a man is untrustworthy, do you think she ever forgets +it?" + +"Because I once kissed you? What a dreadful deed!" + +"You forget the circumstances under which you did it." + +He flushed; she had managed to hurt him, after all. He began patiently: + +"I've explained to you a dozen times that I didn't know----" + +"But I _told_ you!" + +"And I couldn't believe you----" + +"But you expect me to believe _you_?" + +He could not exactly interpret her bright, smiling, steady gaze. + +"The trouble with you is," she said, "that there is nothing to you but +good looks and talent. There was once, but it died--over in +Europe--somewhere. No woman trusts a man like you. Don't you know it?" + +His smile did not seem to be very genuine, but he answered lightly: + +"When I ask people to have confidence in me, it will be time for them to +pitch into me." + +"Didn't you once ask me for your confidence--and then abuse it?" she +demanded. + +"I told you I loved you--if that is what you mean. And you doubted it so +strenuously that, perhaps I might be excused for doubting it myself.... +What is the use of talking this way, Geraldine?" + +There was a ring of exasperation in her laughter. She lifted his glass, +sipped a little, and, looking over it at him: + +"I drink to our doubts concerning each other: may nothing ever occur to +disturb them." + +Her cheeks had begun to burn, her eyes were too bright, her voice +unmodulated. + +"Whether or not you ever again take the trouble to ask me to trust you +in that way," she said, "I'll tell you now why I don't and why I never +could. It may amuse you. Shall I?" + +"By all means," he replied amiably; "but it seems to me as though you +are rather rough on me." + +"You were rougher with me the first time I saw you, after all those +years. I met you with perfect confidence, remembering what you once +were. It was my first grown-up party. I was only a fool of a girl, +merely ignorant, unfit to be trusted with a liberty I'd never before +had.... And I took one glass of champagne and it--you know what it +did.... And I was bewildered and frightened, and I told you; and--you +perhaps remember how my confidence in my old play-fellow was requited. +Do you?" + +Reckless impulse urged her on. Heart and pulses were beating very fast +with a persistent desire to hurt him. Her animation, brilliant colour, +her laughter seemed to wing every word like an arrow. She knew he shrank +from what she was saying, in spite of his polite attention, and her +fresh, curved cheek and parted lips took on a brighter tint. Something +was singing, seething in her veins. She lifted her glass, set it down, +and suddenly pushed it from her so violently that it fell with a crash. +A wave of tingling heat mounted to her face, receded, swept back again. +Confused, she straightened up in her chair, breathing fast. _What_ was +coming over her? Again the wave surged back with a deafening rush; her +senses struggled, the blood in her ran riot. Then terror clutched her. +Neither lips nor tongue were very flexible when she spoke. + +"Duane--if you don't mind--would you go away now? I've a wretched +headache." + +He shrugged and stood up. + +"It's curious," he said reflectively, "how utterly determined we seem to +be to misunderstand each other. If you would give me half a +chance--well--never mind." + +"I wish you would go," she murmured, "I really am not well." She could +scarcely hear her own voice amid the deafening tumult of her pulses. +Fright stiffened the fixed smile on her lips. Her plight paralysed her +for a moment. + +"Yes, I'll go," he answered, smiling. "I usually am going +somewhere--most of the time." + +He picked up hat, gloves, and crop, looked down at her, came and stood +at the table, resting one hand on the edge. + +"We're pretty young yet, Geraldine.... I never saw a girl I cared for as +I might have cared for you. It's true, no matter what I have done, or +may do.... But you're quite right, a man of that sort isn't to be +considered"--he laughed and pulled on one glove--"only--I knew as soon +as I saw you that it was to be you or--everybody. First, it was anybody; +then it was you--now it's everybody. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye," she managed to say. The dizzy waves swayed her; she rested +her cheeks between both hands and, leaning there heavily, closed her +eyes to fight against it. She had been seated on the side of a lounge; +and now, feeling blindly behind her, she moved the cushions aside, +turned and dropped among them, burying her blazing face. Over her the +scorching vertigo swept, subsided, rose, and swept again. Oh, the horror +of it!--the shame, the agonised surprise. What was this dreadful thing +that, for the second time, she had unwittingly done? And this time it +was so much more terrible. How could such an accident have happened to +her? How could she face her own soul in the disgrace of it? + +Fear, loathing, frightened incredulity that this could really be +herself, stiffened her body and clinched her hands under her parted +lips. On them her hot breath fell irregularly. + +Rigid, motionless, she lay, breathing faster and more feverishly. Tears +came after a long while, and with them relaxation and lassitude. She +felt that the dreadful thing which had seized and held her was letting +go its hold, was freeing her body and mind; and as it slowly released +her and passed on its terrible silent way, she awoke and sat up with a +frightened cry--to find herself lying on her own bed in utter darkness. + +A moment later her bedroom door opened without a sound and the light +from the hall streamed over Kathleen's bare shoulders and braided hair. + +"Geraldine?" + +The girl scarcely recognised Kathleen's altered voice. She lay +listening, silent, motionless, staring at the white figure. + +"Dearest, I thought you called me. May I come in?" + +"I am not well." + +But Kathleen entered and stood beside the bed, looking down at her in +the dim light. + +"Dearest," she began tremulously, "Duane told me you had a headache and +had gone to your room to lie down, so I didn't disturb you----" + +"Duane," faltered the girl, "is he here? What did he say?" + +"He was in the library before dinner when I came in, and he warned me +not to waken you. Do you know what time it is?" + +"No." + +"It is after midnight.... If you feel ill enough to lie here, you ought +to be undressed. May I help you?" + +There was no answer. For a moment Kathleen stood looking down at the +girl in silence; then a sudden shivering seized her; she strove to +control it, but her knees seemed to give way under it and she dropped +down beside the bed, throwing both arms around Geraldine's neck. + +[Illustration: "Oh, the horror of it!--the shame, the agonised +surprise."] + +"Oh, don't, _don't_!" she whimpered. "It is too terrible! It ruined +your father and your grandfather! Darling, I couldn't bear to tell you +this before, but now I've got to tell you! It is in your blood. +Seagraves die of it! Do you understand?" + +"W-what?" stammered the girl. + +"That all their lives they did what--what you have done to-day--that you +have inherited their terrible inclinations. Even as a little child you +frightened me. Have you forgotten what you and I talked over and cried +over after your first party?" + +The girl said slowly: "I don't know how--it--happened, Kathleen. Duane +came in.... I tasted what he had in his glass.... I don't know why I did +it. I wish I were dead!" + +"There is only one thing to do--never to touch anything--anything----" + +"Y-yes, I know that I must not. But how was I to know before? Will you +tell me?" + +"You understand _now_, thank God!" + +"N-not exactly.... Other girls seem to do as they please without +danger.... It is amazing that such a horrible thing should happen to +me----" + +"It is a shameful thing that it should happen to any woman. And the +horror of it is that almost every hostess in town lets girls of your age +run the risk. Darling, don't you know that the only chance a woman has +with the world is in her self-control? When that goes, her chances go, +every one of them! Dear--we have latent in us much the same vices that +men have. We have within us the same possibilities of temptations, the +same capacity for excesses, the same capabilities for resistance. +Because you are a girl, you are not immune from unworthy desires." + +"I know it. The--the dreadful thing about it is that I do desire such +things. Perhaps I had better not even nibble sugar scented with +cologne----" + +"Do you do _that_?" faltered Kathleen. + +"I did not know there was any danger in it," sobbed the girl. "You have +scared me terribly, Kathleen." + +"Is that true about the cologne?" + +"Y-yes." + +"You don't do it now, do you?" + +"Yes." + +"You don't do it every day, do you?" + +"Yes, several times." + +"How long"--Kathleen's lips almost refused to move--"how long have you +done this?" + +"For a long time. I've been ashamed of it. It's--it's the alcohol in it +that I like, isn't it? I never thought of it in that way till now." + +Kathleen, on her knees by the bedside, was crying silently. The girl +slipped from her arms, turned partly over, and lying on her back, stared +upward through the darkness. + +So this was the secret reason that, unsuspected, had long been stirring +her to instinctive uneasiness, which had made her half ashamed, half +impatient with this silly habit which already inconvenienced her. Yet +even now she could not feel any real alarm; she could not understand +that the fangs of a habit can poison when plucked out. Of course there +was now only one thing to do--keep aloof from everything. That would be +easy. The tingling warmth of the perfume was certainly agreeable, but +she must not risk even such a silly indulgence as that. Really, it was a +very simple matter. She sat up, supporting her weight on one arm. + +"Kathleen, darling," she whispered, bending forward and drawing the +elder woman up onto the bed, "you mustn't be frightened about me. I've +learned some things I didn't know. Do you think Duane--" In the darkness +the blood scorched her face, the humiliation almost crushed her. But she +went on: "Do you think Duane suspects that--that----" + +"I don't think Duane suspects anything," said Kathleen, striving to +steady her voice. "You came in here as soon as you felt--ill; didn't +you?" + +"I--yes----" + +She could say no more. How she came to be on her bed in her own room she +could not remember. It seemed to her as though she had fallen asleep on +the lounge. Somehow, after Duane had gone, she must have waked and gone +to her own room. But she could not recollect doing it. + +Now she realised that she was tired, wretched, feverish. She suffered +Kathleen to undress her, comb her hair, bathe her, and dry the white, +slender body and limbs in which the veins still burned and throbbed. + +When at length she lay between the cool sheets, silent, limp, +heavy-lidded, Kathleen turned out the electric brackets and lighted the +candle. + +"Dear," she said, trying to speak cheerfully, "do you know what your +brother has done?" + +"What?" asked Geraldine drowsily. + +"He has bought Roya-Neh, if you please, and he invites you to draw a +check for half of it and to move there next week. As for me, I was +furious with him. What do you think?" + +Her voice softened to a whisper; she bent over the girl, looking closely +at the closed lids. Under them a faint bluish tint faded into the +whiteness of the cheek. + +"Darling, darling!" whispered Kathleen, bending closer over the sleeping +girl, "I love you so--I love you so!" And even as she said it, between +the sleeper's features and her own floated the vision of Scott's +youthfully earnest face; and she straightened suddenly to her full +height and laid her hand on her breast in consternation. Under the +fingers' soft pressure her heart beat faster. Again, with new dismay, +this incredible sensation was stealing upon her, threatening to +transform itself into something real, something definite, something not +to be stifled or ignored. + +She extinguished the candle; as she felt her way out of the darkness, +arms extended, far away in the house she heard a door open and shut, and +she bent over the balustrade to listen. + +"Is that you, Scott?" she called softly. + +"Yes; Duane and I did some billiards at the club." He looked up at her, +the same slight pucker between his brows, boyishly slender in his +evening dress. "You're not going to bed at once, are you, Kathleen, +dear?" + +"Yes, I am," she said briefly, backing into her own room, but holding +the door ajar so that she could look out at him. + +"Oh, come out and talk to a fellow," he urged; "I'm quite excited about +this Roya-Neh business----" + +"You're a perfect wretch, Scott. I don't want to talk about your unholy +extravagance." + +The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly +disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background. + +"Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette," he began +in his wheedling way. "I'm dying to talk to you about the +game-preserve----" + +"I can't; I'm not attired for a tete-a-tete with anything except my +pillow." + +"Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes----" + +"Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!" + +When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate +shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott +jumped up and dragged a big chair forward. + +"You certainly are stunning, Kathleen," he said frankly; "you look +twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I've a map of the +Roya-Neh forest to show you." + +He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and, +unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk +enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar +and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the +map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a +question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger. + +Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at +the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within +her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths +unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened. + +"Scott, dear," she said quietly, "I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh +forest, but it _was_ too expensive, and it troubles me; so I'm going to +sleep to dream over it." + +"You sweet little goose!" laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm +around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother. + +They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her +warm, yielding body. + +He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that +the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble +in that strange instant--that Kathleen was gone--that, in her calm, +sweet, familiar guise stood a woman--a stranger, exquisite, youthful, +with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for +the first time she had met his gaze across the world. + +She recovered her composure instantly. + +"I'm sorry, Scott, but I'm too sleepy to talk any more. Besides, +Geraldine isn't very well, and I'm going to doze with one eye open. +Good-night, dear." + +"Good-night," said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to +which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ROYA-NEH + + +Late on a fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long +Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of +twelve at Roya-Neh. + +"Hello, Duane!" cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new +possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; "frightfully glad to see +you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There +are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn't that rather +fine?"--looking down through the trees at the lake below. "There are +bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly +English fallow deer. Sorry I got 'em. What do you think of my house? +It's merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial.... Yes, +it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn't. No Seagraves +fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine's quarters up there behind the +leaded windows. Those are Kathleen's where the dinky woodbine twineth. +Mine face the east, and yours are next. Come on out into the park----" + +"Not much!" returned young Mallett. "I want a bath!" + +"The park," interrupted Scott excitedly, "is the largest fenced +game-preserve in America! It's only ten minutes to the Sachem's Gate, if +we walk fast." + +"I want a bath and fresh linen." + +"Don't you care to see the trout? Don't you want to try to catch a +glimpse of a wild boar? I should think you'd be crazy to see----" + +"I'm crazy about almost any old thing when I'm well scrubbed; otherwise, +I'm merely crazy. That was a wild trip up. I'm all over cinders." + +A woman came quietly out onto the terrace, and Duane instantly divined +it, though his back was toward her and her skirts made no sound. + +"Oh, is that you, Kathleen?" he cried, pivoting. "How d'ye do?" with a +vigorous handshake. "Every time I see you you're three times as pretty +as I thought you were when I last saw you." + +"Neat but involved," said Kathleen Severn. "You have a streak of cinder +across that otherwise fascinating nose." + +"I don't doubt it! I'm going. Where's Geraldine?" + +"Having her hair done in your honour; return the compliment by washing +your face. There's a maid inside to show you." + +"Show me how to wash my face!" exclaimed Duane, delighted. "This is +luxury----" + +"I want him to see the Gray Water before it's too late, with the +sunlight on the trees and the big trout jumping," protested Scott. + +"I'll do my own jumping if you'll furnish the tub," observed Duane. +"Where's that agreeable maid who washes your guests' faces?" + +Kathleen nodded an amused dismissal to them. Arm in arm they entered the +house, which was built out of squared blocks of field stone. Scott +motioned the servants aside and did the piloting himself up a broad +stone stairs, east along a wide sunny corridor full of nooks and angles +and antique sofas and potted flowers. + +"Not that way," he said; "Dysart is in there taking a nap. Turn to the +left." + +"Dysart?" repeated Duane. "I didn't know there was to be anybody else +here." + +"I asked Jack Dysart because he's a good rod. Kathleen raised the deuce +about it when I told her, but it was too late. Anyway, I didn't know she +had no use for him. He's certainly clever at dry-fly casting. He uses +pneumatic bodies, not cork or paraffine." + +"Is his wife here?" asked Duane carelessly. + +"Yes. Geraldine asked her as soon as she heard I'd written to Jack. But +when I told her the next day that I expected you, too, she got mad all +over, and we had a lively talk-fest. What was there wrong in my having +you and the Dysarts here at the same time? Don't you get on?" + +"Charmingly," replied Duane airily.... "It will be very interesting, I +think. Is there anybody else here?" + +"Delancy Grandcourt. Isn't he the dead one? But Geraldine wanted him. +And there's that stick of a Quest girl, and Bunbury Gray. Naida came +over this afternoon from the Tappans' at Iron Hill--thank goodness----" + +"I didn't know my sister was to be here." + +"Yes; and you make twelve, counting Geraldine and me and the Pink 'uns." + +"You didn't tell me it was to be a round-up," repeated Duane, absently +surveying his chintz-hung quarters. "This is a pretty place you've given +me. Where do you get all your electric lights? Where do you get fancy +plumbing in this wilderness?" + +"Our own plant," explained the boy proudly. "Isn't that corking water? +Look at it--heavenly cold and clear, or hot as hell, whichever way +you're inclined--" turning on a silver spigot chiselled like a cherub. +"That water comes from Cloudy Lake, up there on that dome-shaped +mountain. Here, stand here beside me, Duane, and you can see it from +your window. That's the Gilded Dome--that big peak. It's in our park. +There are a few elk on it, not many, because they'd starve out the deer. +As it is, we have to cut browse in winter. For Heaven's sake, hurry, +man! Get into your bath and out again, or we'll miss the trout jumping +along Gray Water and Hurryon Brook." + +"Let 'em jump!" retorted Duane, forcibly ejecting his host from the room +and locking the door. Then, lighting a cigarette, he strolled into the +bath room and started the water running into the porcelain tub. + +He was in excellent spirits, quite undisturbed by the unexpected +proximity of Rosalie Dysart or the possible renewal of their hitherto +slightly hazardous friendship. He laid his cigarette aside for the +express purpose of whistling while undressing. + +Half an hour later, bathed, shaved, and sartorially freshened, he +selected a blue corn-flower from the rural bouquet on his dresser, drew +it through his buttonhole, gave a last alluring twist to his tie, +surveyed himself in the mirror, whistled a few bars, was perfectly +satisfied with himself, then, unlocking the door, strolled out into the +corridor. Having no memory for direction, he took the wrong turn. + +A distractingly pretty maid laid aside her sewing and rose from her +chair to set him right; he bestowed upon her his most courtly thanks. +She was unusually pretty, so he thanked her again, and she dimpled, one +hand fingering her apron's edge. + +"My child," said he gravely, "are you by any fortunate chance as good as +you are ornamental?" + +She replied that she thought she was. + +"In that case," he said, "this is one of those rare occasions in a +thankless world where goodness is amply and instantly rewarded." + +She made a perfunctory resistance, but looked after him, smiling, as he +sauntered off down the hallway, rearranging the blue corn-flower in his +button-hole. At the turn by the window, where potted posies stood, he +encountered Rosalie Dysart in canoe costume--sleeves rolled up, hair +loosened, becomingly tanned, and entirely captivating in her +thoughtfully arranged disarray. + +"Why, Duane!" she exclaimed, offering both her hands with that +impulsively unstudied gesture she carefully cultivated for such +occasions. + +He took them; he always took what women offered. + +"This is very jolly," he said, retaining the hands and examining her +with unfeigned admiration. "Tell me, Mrs. Dysart, are you by any +fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?" + +"I heard you ask that of the maid around the corner," said Rosalie +coolly. "Don't let the bucolic go to your head, Mr. Mallett." And she +disengaged her hands, crossed them behind her, and smiled back at him. +It was his punishment. Her hands were very pretty hands, and well worth +holding. + +"That maid," he said gravely, "has excellent manners. I merely +complimented her upon them.... What else did you--ah--hear, Mrs. +Dysart?" + +"What one might expect to hear wherever you are concerned. I don't +mind. The things you do rather gracefully seem only offensive when other +men do them.... Have you just arrived?" + +"An hour ago. Did you know I was coming?" + +"Geraldine mentioned it to everybody, but I don't think anybody swooned +at the news.... My husband is here." + +She still confronted him, hands behind her, with an audacity which +challenged--her whole being was always a delicate and perpetual +challenge. There are such women. Over her golden-brown head the late +summer sunlight fell, outlining her full, supple figure and bared arms +with a rose light. + +"Well?" she asked. + +"If only you _were_ as good as you are ornamental," he said, looking at +her impudently. "But I'm afraid you're not." + +"What would happen to me if I were?" + +"Why," he said with innocent enthusiasm, "you would have _your_ reward, +too, Mrs. Dysart." + +"The sort of reward which I heard you bestow a few moments ago upon that +maid? I'm no longer the latter, so I suppose I'm not entitled to it, am +I?" + +The smile still edged her pretty mouth; there was an instant when +matters looked dubious for her; but a door opened somewhere, and, still +smiling, she slipped by him and vanished into a neighbouring corridor. + +Howker, the old butler, met him at the foot of the stairs. + +"Tea is served on the Long Terrace, sir. Mr. Seagrave wishes to know +whether you would care to see the trout jumping on the Gray Water this +evening? If so, you are please not to stop for tea, but go directly to +the Sachem's Gate. Redmond will guide you, sir." + +[Illustration: "'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness +is amply ... rewarded.'"] + +"All right, Howker," said Duane absently; and strolled on along the +hall, thinking of Mrs. Dysart. + +The front doors swung wide, opening on the Long Terrace, which looked +out across a valley a hundred feet below, where a small lake glimmered +as still as a mirror against a background of golden willows and low +green mountains. + +There were a number of young people pretending to take tea on the +terrace; and some took it, and others took other things. He knew them +all, and went forward to greet them. Geraldine Seagrave, a new and +bewitching coat of tan tinting cheek and neck, held out her hand with +all the engaging frankness of earlier days. Her clasp was firm, cool, +and nervously cordial--the old confident affection of childhood once +more. + +"I am _so_ glad you came, Duane. I've really missed you." And sweeping +the little circle with an eager glance; "You know everybody, I think. +The Dysarts have not yet appeared, and Scott is down at the Gate Lodge. +Come and sit by me, Duane." + +Two or three girls extended their hands to him--Sylvia Quest, shy and +quiet; Muriel Wye, white-skinned, black-haired, red-lipped, red-cheeked, +with eyes like melted sapphires and the expression of a reckless saint; +and his blond sister, Naida, who had arrived that afternoon from the +Tappans' at Iron Hill, across the mountain. + +Delancy Grandcourt, uncouth and highly coloured, stood up to shake +hands; Bunbury Gray, a wiry, bronzed little polo-playing squadron man, +hailed Duane with enthusiasm. + +"Awfully glad to see you, Bunny," said Duane, who liked him +immensely--"oh, how are you?" offering his hand to Reginald Wye, a +hard-riding, hard-drinking, straight-shooting young man, who knew +nothing on earth except what concerned sport and the drama. He and his +sister of the sapphire eyes and brilliant cheeks were popularly known as +the Pink 'uns. + +Jack Dysart arrived presently, graceful, supple, always smilingly, +elaborate of manner, apparently unconscious that he was not cordially +admired by the men who returned his greeting. Later, Rosalie, came, +enchantingly demure in her Greuze-like beauty. Chardin might have made +her; possibly Fragonard. She did not resemble the Creator's technique. +Dresden teacups tinkled, ice clattered in tall glasses, the two +fountains splashed away bravely, prettily modulated voices made +agreeable harmony on the terrace, blending with the murmur of leaves +overhead as the wind stirred them to gossip. Over all spread a calm +evening sky. + +"Tea, dear?" asked Geraldine, glancing up at Mrs. Dysart. Rosalie shook +her head with a smile. + +Lang, the second man, was flitting about, busy with a decanter of +Scotch. A moment later Rosalie signified her preference for it with a +slight nod. Geraldine, who sat watching indifferently the filling of +Mrs. Dysart's glass, suddenly leaned back and turned her head sharply, +as though the aroma from glass and decanter were distasteful to her. In +a few minutes she rose, walked over to the parapet, and stood leaning +against the coping, apparently absorbed in the landscape. + +The sun hung low over the flat little tree-clad mountains, which the +lake, now inlaid with pink and gold, reflected. A few fallow deer moved +quietly down there, ruddy spots against the turf. + +Duane, carrying his glass with him, rose and stepped across the strip +of grass to her side, and, glancing askance at her, was on the point of +speaking when he discovered that her eyes were shut and her face +colourless and rigid. + +"What is it?" he asked surprised. "Are you feeling faint, Geraldine?" + +She opened her eyes, velvet dark and troubled, but did not turn around. + +"It's nothing," she answered calmly. "I was thinking of several things." + +"You look so white----" + +"I am perfectly well. Bend over the parapet with me, Duane. Look at +those rocks down there. What a tumble! What a death!" + +He placed his glass between them on the coping, and leaned over. She did +not notice the glass for a moment. Suddenly she wheeled, as though he +had spoken, and her eyes fell on the glass. + +"What _is_ the matter?" he demanded, as she turned on her heel and moved +away. + +"I'm a trifle nervous, I believe. If you want to see the big trout +breaking on Hurryon, you'd better come with me." + +She was walking swiftly down the drive to the south of the house. He +overtook her and fell into slower step beside her. + +The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains; bluish haze veiled +the valley; a horizon of dazzling yellow flecked with violet faded +upward to palest turquoise. High overhead a feathered cloud hung, tinged +with rose. + +The south drive was bordered deep in syringas, all over snowy bloom; and +as they passed they inhaled the full fragrance of the flowers with every +breath. + +"It's like heaven," said Duane; "and you are not incongruous in the +landscape, either." + +She looked around at him; the smile that curved her mouth had the +faintest suspicion of tenderness about it. + +She said slowly: + +"Do you realise that I am genuinely glad to see you? I've been horrid to +you. I don't yet really believe in you, Duane. I detest some of the +things you are and say and do; but, after all, I've missed you. +Incredible as it sounds, I've been a little lonely without you." + +He said gaily: "When a woman becomes accustomed to chasing the family +cat out of the parlour with the broom, she misses the sport when the cat +migrates permanently." + +"Have you migrated--permanently? O Duane! I thought you _did_ care for +me--in your own careless fashion----" + +"I do. But I'm not hopelessly enamoured of your broom-stick!" + +Her laugh was a little less spontaneous, as she answered: + +"I know I have been rather free with my broom. I'm sorry." + +"You _have_ made some sweeping charges on that cat!" he said, laughing. + +"I know I have. That was two months ago. I don't think I am the morally +self-satisfied prig I was two months ago.... I'd be easier on anything +now, even a cat. But don't think I mean more than I do mean, Duane," she +added hastily. "I've missed you a little. I want you to be nice to +me.... After all, you're the oldest friend I have except Kathleen." + +"I'll be as nice as you'll let me," he said. They turned from the +driveway and entered a broad wood road. "As nice as you'll let me," he +repeated. + +"I won't let you be sentimental, if that's what you mean," she observed. + +"Why?" + +"Because you are you." + +"In a derogatory sense?" + +"Somewhat. I might be like you if I were a man, and had your easy, airy, +inconsequential way with women. But I won't let you have it with me, my +casual friend. Don't hope for it." + +"What have I ever done----" + +"Exactly what you're doing now to Rosalie--what you did to a dozen women +this winter--what you did to me"--she turned and looked at him--"the +first time I ever set eyes on you since we were children together. I +know you are not to be taken seriously; almost everybody knows that! And +all the same, Duane, I've thought about you a lot in these two months up +here, and--I'm happy that you've come at last.... You won't mistake me +and try to be sentimental with me, will you?" + +She laid her slim, sun-tanned hand on his arm; they walked on together +through the woodland where green bramble sprays glimmered through +clustering tree trunks and the fading light turned foliage and +undergrowth to that vivid emerald which heralds dusk. + +"Duane," she said, "I'm dreadfully restless and I cannot account for +it.... Perhaps motherless girls are never quite normal; I don't know. +But, lately, the world has seemed very big and threatening around me.... +Scott is nice to me, usually; Kathleen adorable.... I--I don't know what +I want, what it is I miss." + +Her hand still rested lightly on his arm as they walked forward. She +was speaking at intervals almost as though talking in an undertone to +herself: + +"I'm in--perplexity. I've been troubled. Perhaps that is what makes me +tolerant of you; perhaps that's why I'm glad to see you.... Trouble is a +new thing to me. I thought I had troubles--perhaps I had as a child. But +this is deeper, different, disquieting." + +"Are you in love?" he asked. + +"No." + +"Really?" + +"Really." + +"Then what----" + +"I can't tell you. Anyway, it won't last. It can't, ... Can it?" + +She looked around at him, and they both laughed a little at her +inconsequence. + +"I feel better for pretending to tell you, anyway," she said, as they +halted before high iron gates hung between two granite posts from which +the woven wire fence of the game park, ten feet high, stretched away +into the darkening woods on either hand. + +"This is the Sachem's Gate," she said; "here is the key; unlock it, +please." + +Inside they crossed a stream dashing between tanks set with fern and +tall silver birches. + +"Hurryon Brook," she said. "Isn't it a beauty? It pours into the Gray +Water a little farther ahead. We must hasten, or it will be too dark to +see the trout." + +Twice again they crossed the rushing brook on log bridges. Then through +the trees stretching out before them they caught sight of the Gray +Water, crinkling like a flattened sheet of hammered silver. + +Everywhere the surface was starred and ringed and spattered by the +jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap! +clip-clap! splash!--hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that +the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse. + +Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full +length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over, +showing "colour." + +"There is Scott," she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest +quiet--"out there in that canoe. No, he hasn't taken his rod; he seldom +does; he's perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half +the night he's out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting, +just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his +dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very +little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all +around--some within a foot of his canoe! He'll never come in to dress +for dinner unless we call him." + +And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call +floating out across the Gray Water. + +"All right; I'll come!" shouted her brother. "Wait a moment!" + +They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out, +casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then +ten, and scores and myriads. + +They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much +to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the +uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased +as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute. + +"Is not this stillness delicious?" she breathed. + +"It is sweeter when you break it." + +"Please don't say such things.... _Can't_ you understand how much I want +you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don't know why, I've seemed to feel +so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I--just want--a +friend." + +There was a silence; then he said lightly: + +"I've felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I +seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which +they can't break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I +never thought of you as one of those." + +"I seem to be at times--not exactly isolated, but unable to get close +to--to Kathleen, for example. Do you know, Duane, it might be very good +for me to have you to talk to." + +"People usually like to talk to me. I've noticed it. But the curious +part of it is that they have nothing to give me in exchange for my +attention." + +"What do you mean?" + +He laughed. "Oh, nothing. I amuse people; I know it. You--and +everybody--say I am all cleverness and froth--not to be taken seriously. +But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. +Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence--all +are answered by their own echo.... And you and the others think it is I +who answer." + +He laughed, not looking at her: + +"And it happens that you--and the others--are mistaken. If I appear to +be what you say I am, it is merely a form of self-defence. Do you think +I could endure the empty nonsense of a New York winter if I did not +present to it a surface like a sounding-board and let Folly converse +with its own echo--while, behind it, underneath it, Duane Mallett goes +about his own business." + +Astonished, not clearly understanding, she listened in absolute silence. +Never in all her life had she heard him speak in such a manner. She +could not make out whether bitterness lay under his light and easy +speech, whether a maliciously perverse humour lurked there, whether it +was some new mockery. + +He said carelessly: "I give what I receive. And I have never received +any very serious attention from anybody. I'm only Duane Mallett, +identified with the wealthy section of society you inhabit, the son of a +wealthy man, who went abroad and dabbled in colour and who paints +pictures of pretty women. Everybody and the newspapers know me. What I +see of women is a polished coquetry that mirrors my fixed smirk; what I +see of men is less interesting." + +He looked out through the dusk at the darkening water: + +"You say you are beginning to feel isolated. Can anybody with any +rudiment of intellect feel otherwise in the social environment you and I +inhabit--where distinction and inherited position count for absolutely +nothing unless propped up by wealth--where any ass is tolerated whose +fortune and lineage pass inspection--where there is no place for +intelligence and talent, even when combined with breeding and lineage, +unless you are properly ballasted with money enough to forget that you +have any?" + +He laughed. + +"So you feel isolated? I do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of +decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, +frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the +players half dead with ennui and their neighbour's wives----" + +"Duane!" + +"Oh, Lord, you're a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won't shock +you, more's the pity.... As for the game--I'm done with it; I can't +stand it. The amusement I extract doesn't pay. Good God! and you wonder +why I kiss a few of you for distraction's sake, press a finger-tip or +two, brush a waist with my sleeve!" + +He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands +hanging between his knees. + +"Duane," she said in astonishment, "what do you mean? Are you trying to +quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new +forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades +we once were?" + +"We're too old to be comrades. That's book rubbish. Men and women have +nothing in common, intellectually, unless they're in love. For company, +for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather +be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we're going +to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or +for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and +figure in any woman. What's the use of marrying for what you'll scarcely +notice in a month?... If you _are you_, Geraldine, under all your +attractive surface there's something else which you have never given +me." + +"Wh--what?" she asked faintly. + +"Intelligent interest in me." + +"Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you think I underestimate you?" + +"Not as I am. I don't amount to much; but I might if you cared." + +"Cared for you?" + +"No, confound it! Cared for what I could be." + +"I--I don't think I understand. What could you be?" + +"A man, for one thing. I'm a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait +painter for another. The combination is horrible." + +"You are a successful painter." + +"Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since +my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent, +affectionate question about my work?" + +"I--yes--but I don't know anything about----" + +He laughed, and it hurt her. + +"Don't you understand," she said, "that ordinary people are very shy +about talking art to a professional----" + +"I don't want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue eyes and blond +curls can do it. I wanted you to see what I do, say what you think, like +it or damn it--only do something about it! You've never been to my +studio except to stand with the perfumed crowd and talk commonplaces in +front of a picture." + +"I can't go alone." + +"Can't you?" he asked, looking closely at her in the dusk, so close that +she could see every mocking feature. + +"Yes," she said in a low, surprised voice, "I could go +alone--anywhere--with you.... I didn't realise it before, Duane." + +"You never tried. You once mistook an impulse of genuine passion for the +sort of thing I've done since. You made a terrific fuss about being +kissed when I saw, as soon as I saw you, that I wanted to win you, if +you'd let me. Since then you've chosen the key-note of our relations, +not I, and you don't like my interpretation of my part." + +For a while she sat silent, preoccupied with this totally new revelation +of a man about whom she supposed she had long ago made up her mind. + +"I'm glad we've had this talk," she said at last. + +"I am, too. I haven't asked you to fall in love with me; I haven't asked +for your confidence. I've asked you to take an intelligent, affectionate +interest in what I might become, and perhaps you and I won't be so +lonely if you do." + +He struck a match in the darkness and lighted a cigarette. Close inshore +Scott Seagrave's electric torch flashed. They heard the velvety scraping +of the canoe, the rattle and thump as he flung it, bottom upward, on the +sandy point. + +"Hello, you people! Where are you?"--sweeping the wood's edge with his +flash-light--"oh, there you are. Isn't this glorious? Did you ever see +such a sight as those big fellows jumping?" + +"Meanwhile," said his sister, rising, "our guests are doubtless yelling +with hunger. What time is it, Duane? Half-past eight? Please hurry, +Scott; we've got to get back and dress in five minutes!" + +"I can do it easily," announced her brother, going ahead to light the +path. And all the way home he discussed aloud upon the stripping, +hatching, breeding, care, and diseases of trout, never looking back, +and quite confident that they were listening attentively to his woodland +lecture. + +"Duane," she said, lowering her voice, "do you think all our +misunderstandings are ended?" + +"Certainly," he replied gaily. "Don't you?" + +"But how am I going to make everybody think you are not frivolous?" + +"I am frivolous. There's lots of froth to me--on top. You know that sort +of foam you see on grass-stems in the fields. Hidden away inside is a +very clever and busy little creature. He uses the froth to protect +himself." + +"Are you going to froth?" + +"Yes--until----" + +"Until what?" + +"You----" + +"Go on." + +"Shall I say it?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, then, unless you and I find each other intellectually +satisfactory." + +"You said only a man--in love with a woman--could find her interesting +in that way." + +"Yes. What of it?" + +"Nothing.... Only I'm afraid you'll have to froth, then," she said, +laughing. "I haven't any intention of falling in love with you, Duane, +and you'll find me stupid if I don't. Do you know that what you intimate +is very horrid?" + +"Why?" + +"Yes, it is. Besides, it's a sort of threat----" + +"A threat?" + +"Certainly. You threaten to--you know perfectly well what you threaten +to do unless I immediately consider the possibility of our--caring for +each other--sentimentally." + +"But what do you care if you don't care?" + +"I--don't. All the same it's horrid and--and unfair. Suppose I was +frothy and behaved----" + +"Misbehaved?" + +"Yes. Just because you wouldn't agree to take a sentimental interest in +me?" + +"I _would_ agree! I'll agree now!" + +"Suppose you wouldn't?" + +"I can't imagine----" + +"Oh, Duane, be honest! And I'll tell you flatly--if you do misbehave. +Just because I don't particularly desire to rush into your arms----" + +"But I haven't threatened to." + +Unconsciously she laid her hand on his arm again, slipping it a little +way under. + +"You're just as you were years ago--just the dearest of playmates. We're +not too old to play, are we?" + +"I can't with you; it's too dangerous." + +"What nonsense! Yes, you can. You like me for my intelligence in spite +of what you say about men and women----" + +"I wouldn't care for your intelligence if I were not in----" + +"Duane, stop, please!" + +"In danger," he continued blandly, "of proving my proposition." + +"You are insufferable. I am as intelligent as you." + +"I know it, but it wouldn't attract me unless----" + +"It ought to," she said hastily. "And, Duane, I'm going to make you +take me into account. I'm going to exercise a man's privilege with you +by--by saying frankly--several things----" + +"What things?" + +The amused mockery in his voice gave her courage. + +"For one thing, I'm going to tell you that people--gossip--that there +are--are----" + +"Rumours?" he asked in pretended anxiety. + +"Yes.... About you and--of course they are silly and contemptible; but +what's the use of being attentive enough to a woman--careless enough to +give colour to them?" + +After an interval he said: "Perhaps you'll tell me who beside myself +these rumours concern?" + +"You know, don't you?" + +"There might be several," he said coolly. "Who is it?" + +For a moment a tiny flash of anger made her cheeks hot. Then she said: + +"You know perfectly well it's Rosalie. I think we have become good +enough comrades for me to use a man's privilege----" + +"Men wouldn't permit themselves that sort of privilege," he said, +laughing. + +"Aren't men frank with their friends?" she demanded hotly. + +"About as frank as women." + +"I thought--" She hesitated, tingling with the old desire to hurt him, +flick him in the raw, make him wince in his exasperating complacency. +Then, "I've said it anyhow. I'm trying to show an interest in you--as +you asked me to do----" + +He turned in the darkness, caught her hand: + +"You dear little thing," he whispered, laughing. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +ADRIFT + + +During the week the guests at Roya-Neh were left very much to their own +devices. Nobody was asked to do anything; there were several good enough +horses at their disposal, two motor cars, a power-boat, canoes, rods, +and tennis courts and golf links. The chances are they wanted +sea-bathing. Inland guests usually do. + +Scott Seagrave, however, concerned himself little about his guests. All +day long he moused about his new estate, field-glasses dangling, cap on +the back of his head, pockets bulging with untidy odds and ends until +the increasing carelessness of his attire and manners moved Kathleen +Severn to protest. + +"I don't know what is the matter with you, Scott," she said. "You were +always such a fastidious boy--even dandified. Doesn't anybody ever cut +your hair? Doesn't somebody keep your clothes in order?" + +"Yes, but I tear 'em again," he replied, carefully examining a small +dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. "I say, Kathleen, +look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along +Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the +ground-floor apartment of a flat stone." + +Kathleen craned her dainty neck over the shoulder of his ragged shooting +coat. + +"He's red enough to be poisonous, isn't he? Oh, do be careful!" + +"It's only a young newt. Take him in your hand; he's cool and clammy +and rather agreeable." + +"Scott, I won't touch him!" + +"Yes, you will!" He caught her by the arm; "I'm going to teach you not +to be afraid of things outdoors. This lizard-like thing is perfectly +harmless. Hold out your hand!" + +"Oh, Scott, don't make me----" + +"Yes, I will. I thought you and I were going to be in thorough accord +and sympathy and everything else." + +"Yes, but you mustn't bully me." + +"I'm not. I merely want you to get over your absurd fear of live things, +so that you and I can really enjoy ourselves. You said you would, +Kathleen." + +"Can't we be in perfect sympathy and roam about and--and everything, +unless I touch such things?" + +He said reproachfully, balancing the little creature on his palm: "The +fun is in being perfectly confident and fearless. You have no idea how I +like all these things. You said you were going to like 'em, too." + +"I do--rather." + +"Then take this one and pet it." + +She glanced at the boy beside her, realising how completely their former +relations were changing. + +Long ago she had given all her heart to the Seagrave children--all the +unspent passion in her had become an unswerving devotion to them. And +now, a woman still young, the devotion remained, but time was modifying +it in a manner sometimes disquieting. She tried not to remember that +now, in Scott, she had a man to deal with, and tried in vain; and dealt +with him weakly, and he was beginning to do with her as he pleased. + +"You do like to bully me, don't you?" she said. + +"I only want you to like to do what I like to do." + +She stood silent a moment, then, with a shudder, held out her hand, +fingers rigid and wide apart. + +"Oh!" she protested, as he placed the small dark-red amphibian on the +palm, where it crinkled up and lowered its head. + +"That's the idea!" he said, delighted. "Here, I'll take it now. Some day +you'll be able to handle snakes if you'll only have patience." + +"But I don't want to." She stood holding out the contaminated hand for a +moment, then dropped on her knees and scrubbed it vigorously in the +brook. + +"You see," said Scott, squatting cheerfully beside her, "you and I don't +yet begin to realise the pleasure that there is in these woods and +streams--hidden and waiting for us to discover it. I wouldn't bother +with any other woman, but you've always liked what I like, and its half +the fun in having you see these things. Look here, Kathleen, I'm keeping +a book of field notes." He extracted from his stuffed pockets a small +leather-covered book, fished out a stylograph, and wrote the date while +she watched over his shoulder. + +"Discovered what seems to be a small dark-red newt under a stone near +Hurryon Brook. Couldn't make it bite me, so let Kathleen hold it. Query: +Is it a land or water lizard, a salamander, or a newt; and what does it +feed on and where does it deposit its eggs?" + +Kathleen's violet eyes wandered to the written page opposite. + +"Did you really see an otter, Scott?" + +"Yes, I did!" he exclaimed. "Out in the Gray Water, swimming like a dog. +That was yesterday afternoon. It's a scarce creature here. I'll tell you +what, Kathleen; we'll take our luncheon and go out and spend the day +watching for it." + +"No," she said, drying her hands on her handkerchief, "I can't spend +every minute of the day with you. Ask some other woman." + +"What other woman?" She was gazing out at the sunlit ripples. A little +unquiet thrill leaped through her veins, but she went on carelessly: + +"Take some pretty woman out with you. There are several here----" + +"Pretty woman," he repeated. "Do you think that's the only reason I want +you to come?" + +"Only reason? What a silly thing to say, Scott. I am not a pretty woman +to you--in that sense----" + +"You are the prettiest I ever saw," he said, looking at her; and again +the unquiet thrill ran like lightning through her veins. But she only +laughed carelessly and said: + +"Oh, of course, Geraldine and I expect our big brother to say such +things." + +"It has nothing to do with Geraldine or with brothers," he said +doggedly. She strove to laugh, caught his gaze, and, discountenanced, +turned toward the stream. + +"We can cross on the stepping stones," she suggested. And after a +moment: "Are you coming?" + +"See here, Kathleen," he said, "you're not acting squarely with me." + +"What do you mean?" + +"No, you're not. I'm a man, and you know it." + +"Of course you are, Scott." + +"Then I wish you'd recognise it. What's the use of mortifying me when I +act--speak--behave as any man behaves who--who--is--fond of a--person." + +"But I don't mean to--to mortify you. What have I done?" + +He dug his hands into the pockets of his riding breeches, took two or +three short turns along the bank, came back to where she was standing. + +"You probably don't remember," he said, "one night this spring +when--when--" He stopped short. The vivid tint in her cheeks was his +answer--a swift, disconcerting answer to an incomplete question, the +remainder of which he himself had scarcely yet analysed. + +"Scott, dear," she said steadily, in spite of her softly burning cheeks, +"I will be quite honest with you if you wish. I do know what you've been +trying to say. I am conscious that you are no longer the boy I could pet +and love and caress without embarrassment to either of us. You are a +man, but try to remember that I am several years older----" + +"Does that matter!" he burst out. + +"Yes, dear, it does.... I care for you--and Geraldine--more than for +anybody in the world. I understand your loyalty to me, Scott, and I--I +love it. But don't confuse it with any serious sentiment." + +"I do care seriously." + +"You make me very happy. Care for me very, very seriously; I want you +to; I--I need it. But don't mistake the kind of affection that we have +for each other for anything deeper, will you?" + +"Don't you want to care for me--that way?" + +"Not _that_ way, Scott." + +"Why?" + +"I've told you. I am so much older----" + +"_Couldn't_ you, all the same?" + +She was trembling inwardly. She leaned against a white birch-tree and +passed one hand across her eyes and upward through the thick burnished +hair. + +"No, I couldn't," she whispered. + +The boy walked to the edge of the brook. Past him hurried the sun-tipped +ripples; under them, in irregular wedge formation, little ones ahead, +big ones in the rear, lay a school of trout, wavering silhouettes of +amber against the bottom sands. + +One arm encircling the birch-tree, she looked after him in silence, +waiting. And after a while he turned and came back to her: + +"I suppose you knew I fell in love with you that night when--when--you +remember, don't you?" + +She did not answer. + +"I don't know how it happened," he said: "something about you did it. I +want to say that I've loved you ever since. It's made me serious.... I +haven't bothered with girls since. You are the only woman who interests +me. I think about you most of the time when I'm not doing something +else," he explained naively. "I know perfectly well I'm in love with you +because I don't dare touch you--and I've never thought of--of kissing +you good-night as we used to before that night last spring.... You +remember that we didn't do it that night, don't you?" + +Still no answer, and Kathleen's delicate, blue-veined hands were +clenched at her sides and her breath came irregularly. + +"That was the reason," he said. "I don't know how I've found courage to +tell you. I've often been afraid you would laugh at me if I told you.... +If it's only our ages--you seem as young as I do...." He looked up, +hopefully; but she made no response. + +The boy drew a long breath. + +"I love you, anyway," he said. "And that's how it is." + +She neither spoke nor stirred. + +"I suppose," he went on, "because I was such a beast of a boy, you can +never forget it." + +"You were the sweetest, the best--" Her voice broke; she swung about, +moved away a few paces, stood still. When he halted behind her she +turned. + +"Dearest," she said tremulously, "let me give you what I can--love, as +always--solicitude, companionship, deep sympathy in your pleasures, deep +interest in your amusements.... Don't ask for more; don't think that you +want more. Don't try to change the loyalty and love you have always had +for something you--neither of us understand--neither of us ought to +desire--or even think of----" + +"Why?" + +"Can't you understand? Even if I were not too old in years, I dare not +give up what I have of you and Geraldine for this new--for anything more +hazardous.... Suppose it were so--that I could venture to think I cared +for you that way? What might I put in peril?--Geraldine's affection for +me--perhaps her relations with you.... And the world is cynical, Scott, +and you are wealthy even among very rich men, and I was your paid +guardian--quite penniless--engaged to care for and instruct----" + +"Don't say such things!" he said angrily. + +"The world would say them--your friends--perhaps Geraldine might be led +to doubt--Oh, Scott, dear, I know, I know! And above all--I am afraid. +There are too many years between us--too many blessed memories of my +children to risk.... Don't try to make me care for you in any other +way." + +A quick flame leaped in his eyes. + +"_Could_ I?" + +"No!" she exclaimed, appalled. + +"Then why do you ask me not to try? I believe I could!" + +"You cannot! You cannot, believe me. Won't you believe me? It must not +happen; it is all wrong--in every way----" + +He stood looking at her with a new expression on his face. + +"If you are so alarmed," he said slowly, "you must have already thought +about it. You'll think about it now, anyway." + +"We are both going to forget it. Promise that you will!" She added +hurriedly: "Drop my hand, please; there is Geraldine--and Mr. +Grandcourt, too!... Tell me--do my eyes look queer? Are they red and +horrid?... Don't look at me that way. For goodness' sake, don't display +any personal interest in me. Go and turn over some flat rocks and find +some lizards!" + +Geraldine, bare-armed and short-skirted, came swinging along the +woodland path, Delancy Grandcourt dogging her heels, as usual, carrying +a pair of rods and catching the artificial flies in the bushes at every +step. + +"We're all out of trout at the house!" she called across to the stream +to her brother. "Jack Dysart is fishing down the creek with Naida and +Sylvia. Where is Duane?" + +"Somewhere around, I suppose," replied Scott sulkily. His sister took a +running jump, cleared the bank, and alighted on a rock in the stream. +Poised there she looked back at Grandcourt, laughed, sprang forward +from stone to stone, and leaped to the moss beside Kathleen. + +"Hello, dear!" she nodded. "Where did you cross? And where is Duane?" + +"We crossed by the log bridge below," replied Kathleen. She added: +"Duane left us half an hour ago. Wasn't it half an hour ago, Scott?" +with a rising inflection that conveyed something of warning, something +of an appeal. But on Scott's face the sullen disconcerted expression had +not entirely faded, and his sister inspected him curiously. Then without +knowing why, exactly, she turned and looked at Kathleen. + +There was a subdued and dewy brilliancy in Kathleen's eyes, a bright +freshness to her cheeks, radiantly and absurdly youthful; and something +else--something so indefinable, so subtle, that only another woman's +instinct might divine it--something invisible and inward, which +transfigured her with a youthful loveliness almost startling. + +They looked at one another. Geraldine, conscious of something she could +not understand, glanced again at her sulky brother. + +"What's amiss, Scott?" she asked. "Has anything gone wrong anywhere?" + +Scott, pretending to be very busy untangling Grandcourt's cast from the +branches of a lusty young birch, said, "No, of course not," and the +girl, wondering, turned to Kathleen, who sustained her questioning eyes +without a tremor. + +"What's the matter with Scott?" asked his sister. "He's the +guiltiest-looking man--why, it's absurd, Kathleen! Upon my word, the boy +is blushing!" + +"What!" exclaimed Scott so furiously that everybody laughed. And +presently Geraldine asked again where Duane was. + +"Rosalie Dysart is canoeing on the Gray Water, and she hailed him and he +left us and went down to the river," said Kathleen carelessly. + +"Did Duane join her?" + +"I think so--" She hesitated, watching Geraldine's sombre eyes. "I +really don't know," she added. And, in a lower voice: "I wish either +Duane or Rosalie would go. They certainly are behaving unwisely." + +Geraldine turned and looked through the woods toward the Gray Water. + +"It's their affair," she said curtly. "I've got to make Delancy fish or +we won't have enough trout for luncheon. Scott!" calling to her brother, +"your horrid trout won't rise this morning. For goodness' sake, try to +catch something beside lizards and water-beetles!" + +For a moment she stood looking around her, as though perplexed and +preoccupied. There was sunlight on the glade and on the ripples, but the +daylight seemed to have become duller to her. + +She walked up-stream for a little distance before she noticed Grandcourt +plodding faithfully at her heels. + +"Oh!" she said impatiently, "I thought you were fishing. You must catch +something, you know, or we'll all go hungry." + +"Nothing bites on these bally flies," he explained. + +"Nothing bites because your flies are usually caught in a tree-top. +Trout are not arboreal. I'm ashamed of you, Delancy. If you can't keep +your line free in the woods"--she hesitated, then reddening a little +under her tan--"you had better go and get a canoe and find Duane +Mallett and help him catch--something worth while." + +"Don't you want me to stay with you?" asked the big, awkward fellow +appealingly. "There's no fun in being with Rosalie and Duane." + +"No, I don't. Look! Your flies are in that bush! Untangle them and go to +the Gray Water." + +"Won't you come, too, Miss Seagrave?" + +"No; I'm going back to the house.... And don't you dare return without a +decent brace of trout." + +"All right," he said resignedly. The midges bothered him; he mopped his +red face, tugged at the line, but the flies were fast in a hazel bush. + +"Damn this sort of thing," he muttered, looking piteously after +Geraldine. She was already far away among the trees, skirts wrapped +close to avoid briers, big straw hat dangling in one hand. + +As she walked toward the Sachem's Gate she was swinging her hat and +singing, apparently as unconcernedly as though care rested lightly upon +her young shoulders. + +Out on the high-road a number of her guests whizzed past in one of +Scott's motors; there came a swift hail, a gust of wind-blown laughter, +and the car was gone in a whirl of dust. She stood in the road watching +it recede, then walked forward again toward the house. + +Her accustomed elasticity appeared to have left her; the sun was +becoming oppressive; her white-shod feet dragged a little, which was so +unusual that she straightened her head and shoulders with nervous +abruptness. + +"What on earth is the matter with me?" she said, half aloud, to herself. + +During these last two months, and apparently apropos of nothing at all, +an unaccustomed sense of depression sometimes crept upon her. + +At first she disregarded it as the purely physical lassitude of spring, +but now it was beginning to disquiet her. Once a hazy suspicion took +shape--hastily dismissed--that some sense, some temporarily suppressed +desire was troubling her. The same idea had awakened again that evening +on the terrace when the faint odour from the decanter attracted her. And +again she suspected, and shrank away into herself, shocked, frightened, +surprised, yet still defiantly incredulous. + +Yet her suspicions had been correct. It was habit, disturbed by the +tardiness of accustomed tribute, that stirred at moments, demanding +recognition. + +Since that night in early spring when fear and horror of herself had +suddenly checked a custom which she had hitherto supposed to be nothing +worse than foolish, twice--at times inadvertently, at times +deliberately--she had sought relief from sleepless nervousness and this +new depression in the old and apparently harmless manner of her +girlhood. For weeks now she had exercised little control of herself, +feeling immune, yet it scared her a little to recognise again in herself +the restless premonitions of desire. For here, in the sunshine of the +forest-bordered highway, that same dull uneasiness was stirring once +more. + +It was true, other things had stirred her to uneasiness that morning--an +indefinable impression concerning Kathleen--a definite one which +concerned Rosalie Dysart and Duane, and which began to exasperate her. + +All her elasticity was gone now; tired without reason, she plodded on +along the road in her little white shoes, head bent, brown eyes +brooding, striving to fix her wandering thoughts on Duane Mallett to +fight down the threatening murmurs of a peril still scarcely +comprehended. + +"Anyway," she said half aloud, "even if I ever could care for him, I +dare not let myself do it with this absurd inclination always +threatening me." + +She had said it! Scarcely yet understanding the purport of her own +words, yet electrified, glaringly enlightened by them, she halted. A +confused sense that something vital had occurred in her life stilled her +heart and her breathing together. + +After a moment she straightened up and walked forward, turned across the +lawn and into the syringa-bordered drive. + +There was nobody in the terrace except Bunbury Gray in a brilliant +waistcoat, who sat smoking a very large faience pipe and reading a +sporting magazine. He got up with alacrity when he saw her, fetched her +a big wicker chair, evidently inclined to let her divert him. + +"Oh, I'm not going to," she observed, sinking into the cushions. For a +moment she felt rather limp, then a quiver passed through her, +tightening the relaxed nerves. + +"Bunbury," she said, "do you know any men who ever get tired of idleness +and clothes and their neighbours' wives?" + +"Sure," he said, surprised, "I get tired of those things all right. I've +got enough of this tailor, for example," looking at his trousers. "I'm +tired of idleness, too. Shall we do something and forget the cut of my +clothes?" + +"What do you do when you tire of people and things?" + +"Change partners or go away. That's easy." + +"You can't change yourself--or go away from yourself." + +"But I don't get tired of myself," he explained in astonishment. She +regarded him curiously from the depths of her wicker chair. + +"Bunbury, do you remember when we were engaged?" + +He grinned. "Rather. I wouldn't mind being it again." + +"Engaged?" + +"Sure thing. Will you take me on again, Geraldine?" + +"I thought you cared for Sylvia Quest." + +"I do, but I can stop it." + +She still regarded him with brown-eyed curiosity. + +"Didn't you really tire of our engagement?" + +"You did. You said that my tailor is the vital part of me." + +She laughed. "Well, you _are_ only a carefully groomed combination of +New York good form and good nature, aren't you?" + +"I don't know. That's rather rough, isn't it? Or do you really mean it +that way?" + +"No, Bunny dear. I only mean that you're like the others. All the men I +know are about the same sort. You all wear too many ties and waistcoats; +you are, and say, and do too many kinds of fashionable things. You play +too much tennis, drink too many pegs, gamble too much, ride and drive +too much. You all have too much and too many--if you understand that! +You ask too much and you give too little; you say too much which means +too little. Is there none among you who knows something that amounts to +something, and how to say it and do it?" + +"What the deuce are you driving at, Geraldine?" he asked, bewildered. + +"I'm just tired and irritable, Bunny, and I'm taking it out on you.... +Because you were always kind--and even when foolish you were often +considerate.... That's a new waistcoat, isn't it?" + +"Well--I don't--know," he began, perplexed and suspicious, but she cut +him short with a light little laugh and reached out to pat his hand. + +"Don't mind me. You know I like you.... I'm only bored with your +species. What do you do when you don't know what to do, Bunny?" + +"Take a peg," he said, brightening up. "Do you--shall I call +somebody----" + +"No, please." + +She extended her slim limbs and crossed her feet. Lying still there in +the sunshine, arms crooked behind her head, she gazed straight out +ahead. Light breezes lifted her soft bright hair; the same zephyrs bore +from tennis courts on the east the far laughter and calling of the +unseen players. + +"Who are they?" she inquired. + +"The Pink 'uns, Naida, and Jack Dysart. There's ten up on every set," he +added, "and I've side obligations with Rosalie and Duane. Take you on if +you like; odds are on the Pink 'uns. Or I'll get a lump of sugar and we +can play 'Fly Loo.'" + +"No, thanks." + +A few moments later she said: + +"Do you know, somehow, recently, the forest world--all this pretty place +of lakes and trees--" waving her arm toward the horizon--"seems to be +tarnished with the hard living and empty thinking of the people I have +brought into it.... I include myself. The region is redolent of money +and the things it buys. I had a better time before I had any or heard +about it." + +"Why, you've always had it----" + +"But I didn't know it. I'd like to give mine away and do something for a +living." + +"Oh, every girl has that notion once in a lifetime." + +"Have they?" she asked. + +"Sure. It's hysteria. I had it myself once. But I found I could keep +busy enough doing nothing without presenting my income to the +Senegambians and spending life in a Wall Street office. Of course if I +had a pretty fancy for the artistic and useful--as Duane Mallett has--I +suppose I'd get busy and paint things and sell 'em by the perspiration +of my brow----" + +She said disdainfully: "If you were never any busier than Duane, you +wouldn't be very busy." + +"I don't know. Duane seems to keep at it, even here, doesn't he?" + +She looked up in surprise: "Duane hasn't done any work since he's been +here, has he?" + +"Didn't you know? What do you suppose he's about every morning?" + +"He's about--Rosalie," she said coolly. "I've never seen any colour box +or easel in their outfit." + +"Oh, he keeps his traps at Hurryon Lodge. He's made a lot of sketches. I +saw several at the Lodge. And he's doing a big canvas of Rosalie down +there, too." + +"At Hurryon Lodge?" + +"Yes. Miller lets them have the garret for a studio." + +"I didn't know that," she said slowly. + +"Didn't you? People are rather catty about it." + +"Catty?" + +Sheer surprise silenced her for a while, then hurt curiosity drove her +to questions; but little Bunbury didn't know much more about the matter, +merely shrugging his shoulders and saying: "It's casual but it's all +right." + +Later the tennis players, sunburned and perspiring, came swinging up +from the courts on their way to the showers. Bunbury began to settle his +obligations; Naida and the Pink 'uns went indoors; Jack Dysart, +handsome, dishevelled, sat down beside Geraldine, fastening his sleeves. + +"I lost twice twenty," he observed. "Bunny is in fifty, I believe. Duane +and Rosalie lose." + +"Is that all you care about the game?" she asked with a note of contempt +in her voice. + +"Oh, it's good for one's health," he said. + +"So is confession, but there's no sport in it. Tell me, Mr. Dysart, +don't you play any game for it's own sake?" + +"Two, mademoiselle," he said politely. + +"What two?" + +"Chess is one." + +"What is the other?" + +"Love," he replied, smiling at her so blandly that she laughed. Then she +thought of Rosalie, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say something +impudent. But "Do you do that game very well?" was all she said. + +"Would you care to judge how well I do it?" + +"As umpire? Yes, if you like." + +He said: "We will umpire our own game, Miss Seagrave." + +"Oh, we couldn't do that, could we? We couldn't play and umpire, too." +Suddenly the thought of Duane and Rosalie turned her bitter and she +said: + +"We'll have two perfectly disinterested umpires. I choose your wife for +one. Whom do you choose?" + +Over his handsome face the slightest muscular change passed, but far +from wincing he nodded coolly. + +"One umpire is enough," he said. "When our game is well on you may ask +Rosalie to judge how well I've done it--if you care to." + +The bright smile she wore changed. Her face was now only a lovely +dark-eyed mask, behind which her thoughts had suddenly begun +racing--wild little thoughts, all tumult and confusion, all trembling, +too, with some scarcely understood hurt lashing them to recklessness. + +"We'll have two umpires," she insisted, scarcely knowing what she said. +"I'll choose Duane for the second. He and Rosalie ought to be able to +agree on the result of our game." + +Dysart turned his head away leisurely, then looked around again +unsmiling. + +"Two umpires? Soit! But that means you consent to play." + +"Play?" + +"Certainly." + +"With you?" + +"With me." + +"I'll consider it.... Do you know we have been talking utter nonsense?" + +"That's part of the game." + +"Oh, then--do you assume that the--the game has already begun?" + +"It usually opens that way, I believe." + +"And where does it end, Mr. Dysart?" + +"That is for you to say," he replied in a lower voice. + +"Oh! And what are the rules?" + +"The player who first falls really in love loses. There are no stakes. +We play as sportsmen--for the game's sake. Is it understood?" + +She hesitated, smiling, a little excited, a little interested in the way +he put things. + +At that same moment, across the lawn, Rosalie and Duane strolled into +view. She saw them, and with a nervous movement, almost involuntary, she +turned her back on them. + +Neither she nor Dysart spoke. She gazed very steadily at the horizon, as +though there were sounds beyond the green world's rim. A few seconds +later a shadow fell over the terrace at her feet--two shadows +intermingled. She saw them on the grass at her feet, then quietly lifted +her head. + +"We caught no trout," said Rosalie, sitting down on the arm of the chair +that Duane drew forward. "I fussed about in that canoe until Duane came +along, and then we went in swimming." + +"Swimming?" repeated Geraldine, dumfounded. + +Rosalie balanced herself serenely on her chair-arm. + +"Oh, we often do that." + +"Swim--where?" + +"Why across the Gray Water, child!" + +"But--there are no bath houses----" + +Rosalie laughed outright. + +"Quite Arcadian, isn't it? Duane has the forest on one side of the Gray +Water for a dressing-room, and I the forest on the other side. Then we +swim out and shake hands in the middle. Our bathing dresses are drying +on Miller's lawn. Please do tell me somebody is scandalised. I've done +my best to brighten up this house party." + +Dysart, really discountenanced, but not showing it, lighted a cigarette +and asked pleasantly if the water was agreeable. + +"It's magnificent," said Duane; "it was like diving into a lake of iced +Apollinaris. Geraldine, why on earth don't you build some bath houses on +the Gray Waters?" + +Perhaps she had not heard his question. She began to talk very +animatedly to Rosalie about several matters of no consequence. Dysart +rose, stretched his sunburned arms with over-elaborate ease, tossed away +his cigarette, picked up his tennis bat, and said: "See you at luncheon. +Are you coming, Rosalie?" + +"In a moment, Jack." She went on talking inconsequences to Geraldine; +her husband waited, exchanging a remark or two with Duane in his easy, +self-possessed fashion. + +"Dear," said Rosalie at last to Geraldine, "I must run away and dry my +hair. How did we come out at tennis, Jack?" + +"All to the bad," he replied serenely, and nodding to Geraldine and +Duane he entered the house, his young wife strolling beside him and +twisting up her wet hair. + +Duane seated himself and crossed his lank legs, ready for an amiable +chat before he retired to dress for luncheon; but Geraldine did not even +look toward him. She was lying deep in the chair, apparently relaxed and +limp; but every nerve in her was at tension, every delicate muscle taut +and rigid, and in her heart was anger unutterable, and close, very close +to the lids which shadowed with their long fringe the brown eyes' +velvet, were tears. + +"What have you been up to all the morning?" he asked. "Did you try the +fishing?" + +"Yes." + +"Anything doing?" + +"No." + +"I thought they wouldn't rise. It's too clear and hot. That's why I +didn't keep on with Kathleen and Scott. Two are enough on bright water. +Don't you think so?" + +She said nothing. + +"Besides," he added, "I knew you had old Grandcourt running close at +heel and that made four rods on Hurryon. So what was the use of my +joining in?" + +She made no reply. + +"You didn't mind, did you?" he asked carelessly. + +"No." + +"Oh, all right," he nodded, not feeling much relieved. + +The strange blind anger still possessed her. She lay there immobile, +expressionless, enduring it, not trying even to think why; yet her anger +was rising against him, and it surged, receded helplessly, flushed her +veins again till they tingled. But her lids remained closed; the lashes +rested softly on the curve of her cheeks; not a tremor touched her face. + +"I am wondering whether you are feeling all right," he ventured +uneasily, conscious of the tension between them. + +With an effort she took command of herself. + +"The sun was rather hot. It's a headache; I walked back by the road." + +"_With_ the faithful one?" + +"No," she said evenly, "Mr. Grandcourt remained to fish." + +"He went to worship and remained to fish," said Duane, laughing. The +girl lifted her face to look at him--a white little face so strange that +the humour died out in his eyes. + +"He's a good deal of a man," she said. "It's one of my few pleasant +memories of this year--Mr. Grandcourt's niceness to me--and to all +women." + +She set her elbow on the chair's edge and rested her cheek in her +hollowed hand. Her gaze had become remote once more. + +"I didn't know you took him so seriously," he said in a low voice. "I'm +sorry, Geraldine." + +All her composure had returned. She lifted her eyes insolently. + +"Sorry for what?" + +"For speaking as I did." + +"Oh, I don't mind. I thought you might be sorry for yourself." + +"Myself?" + +"And your neighbour's wife," she added. + +"Well, what about myself and my neighbour's wife?" + +"I'm not familiar with such matters." Her face did not change, but the +burning anger suddenly welled up in her again. "I don't know anything +about such affairs, but if you think I ought to I might try to learn." +She laughed and leaned back into the depths of her chair. "You and I are +such intimate friends it's a shame I shouldn't understand and sympathise +with what most interests you." + +He remained silent, gazing down at his shadow on the grass, hands +clasped loosely between his knees. She strove to study him calmly; her +mind was chaos; only the desire to hurt him persisted, rendered sterile +by the confused tumult of her thoughts. + +Presently, looking up: + +"Do you doubt that things are not right between--my neighbour's +wife--and me?" he inquired. + +"The matter doesn't interest me." + +"Doesn't it?" + +"No." + +"Then I have misunderstood you. What is the matter that does interest +you, Geraldine?" + +She made no reply. + +He said, carelessly good-humoured: "I like women. It's curious that they +know it instinctively, because when they're bored or lonely they drift +toward me.... Lonely women are always adrift, Geraldine. There seems to +be some current that sets in toward me; it catches them and they drift +in, linger, and drift on. I seem to be the first port they anchor in.... +Then a day comes when they are gone--drifting on at hazard through the +years----" + +"Wiser for their experience at Port Mallett?" + +"Perhaps. But not sadder, I think." + +"A woman adrift has no regrets," she said with contempt. + +"Wrong. A woman who is in love has none." + +"That is what I mean. The hospitality of Port Mallett ought to leave +them with no regrets." + +He laughed. "But they are not loved," he said. "They know it. That's why +they drift on." + +She turned on him white and tremulous. + +"Haven't you even the excuse of caring for her?" + +"Who?" + +"A neighbour's wife--who comes drifting into your hospitable haven!" + +"I don't pretend to love her, if that is what you mean," he said +pleasantly. + +"Then you make her believe it--and that's dastardly!" + +"Oh, no. Women don't love unless made love to. You've only read that in +books." + +She said a little breathlessly: "You are right. I know men and women +only through books. It's time I learned for myself." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +TOGETHER + + +The end of June and of the house party at Roya-Neh was now near at hand, +and both were to close with a moonlight fete and dance in the forest, +invitations having been sent to distant neighbours who had been +entertaining similar gatherings at Iron Hill and Cloudy Mountain--the +Grays, Beekmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts. + +Silks and satins, shoe buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high +tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people. So it was to +be the inevitable Louis XVI fete--or as near to it as attenuated, +artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane's very clever +and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and +sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town in order that those who +sweat and sew in the perfumed ateliers of Fifth Avenue might use them as +models. + +"The fun--if there's any in dressing up--ought to lie in making your own +costumes," observed Duane. But nobody displayed any inclination to do +so. And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue +ateliers sewed faster. Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and +property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the +house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and +flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met +in one another's bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and +coiffure, lace scarf, and petticoat. + +As for the men, they surreptitiously tried on their embroidered coats +and breeches, admired themselves in secrecy, and let it go at that, +returning with embarrassed relief to cards, tennis, and the various +forms of amiable idleness to which they were accustomed. Only Englishmen +can masquerade seriously. + +Later, however, the men were compelled to pay some semblance of +attention to the general preparations, assemble their foot-gear, +head-gear, stars, orders, sashes, swords, and try them on for Duane +Mallett--to that young man's unconcealed dissatisfaction. + +"You certainly resemble a scratch opera chorus," he observed after +passing in review the sheepish line-up in his room. "Delancy, you're the +limit as a Black Mousquetier--and, by the way, there weren't any in the +reign of Louis XVI, so perhaps that evens up matters. Dysart is the only +man who looks the real thing--or would if he'd remove that monocle. As +for Bunny and the Pink 'un, they ought to be in vaudeville singing +la-la-la." + +"That's really a compliment to our legs," observed Reggie Wye to Bunbury +Gray, flourishing his property sword and gracefully performing a _pas +seul a la Genee_. + +Dysart, who had been sullen all day, regarded them morosely. + +Scott Seagrave, in his conventional abbe's costume of black and white, +excessively bored, stood by the window trying to catch a glimpse of the +lake to see whether any decent fish were breaking, while Scott walked +around him critically, not much edified by his costume or the way he +wore it. + +"You're a sad and self-conscious-looking bunch," he concluded. "Scott, I +suppose you'll insist on wearing your mustache and eyeglasses." + +"You bet," said Scott simply. + +"All right. And kindly beat it. I want to try on my own plumage in +peace." + +So the costumed ones trooped off to their own quarters with the +half-ashamed smirk usually worn by the American male who has persuaded +himself to frivolity. Delancy Grandcourt tramped away down the hall +banging his big sword, jingling his spurs, and flapping his loose boots. +The Pink 'un and Bunbury Gray slunk off into obscurity, and Scott +wandered back through the long hall until a black-and-red tiger moth +attracted his attention, and he forgot his annoying appearance in +frantic efforts to capture the brilliant moth. + +Dysart, who had been left alone with Duane in the latter's room, +contemplated himself sullenly in the mirror while Duane, seated on the +window sill, waited for him to go. + +"You think I ought to eliminate my eye-glass?" asked Dysart, still +inspecting himself. + +"Yes, in deference to the conventional prejudice of the times. Nobody +wore 'em at that period." + +"You seem to be a stickler for convention--of the Louis XVI sort more +than for the XIX century variety," remarked Dysart with a sneer. + +Duane looked up from his bored contemplation of the rug. + +"You think I'm unconventional?" he asked with a smile. + +"I believe I suggested something of the sort to my wife the other day." + +"Ah," said Duane blandly, "does she agree with you, Dysart?" + +"No doubt she does, because your tendencies toward the unconventional +have been the subject of unpleasant comment recently." + +"By some of your debutante conquests? You mustn't believe all they tell +you." + +"My own eyes and ears are competent witnesses. Do you understand me +now?" + +"No. Neither do you. Don't rely on such witnesses, Dysart; they lack +character to corroborate them. Ask your wife to confirm me--if you ever +find time enough to ask her anything." + +"That's a damned impudent thing to say," returned Dysart, staring at +him. A dull red stained his face, then faded. + +Duane's eyebrows went up--just a shade--yet so insolently that the other +stepped forward, the corners of his mouth white and twitching. + +"I can speak more plainly," he said. "If you can't appreciate a pleasant +hint I can easily accommodate you with the alternative." + +There was silence for a moment. + +"Dysart," said Duane, "what chance do you think you'd have in landing +the--alternative?" + +"That concerns me," said Dysart; and the pinched muscles around the +mouth grew whiter and the man looked suddenly older. Duane had never +before noticed how gray his temples were growing. + +He said in a voice under perfect control: "You're right; the chances you +care to take with me concern yourself. As for your ill-humour, I suppose +I have earned it by being attentive to your wife. What is it you wish; +that my hitherto very harmless attentions should cease?" + +"Yes," said Dysart, and his square jaw quivered. + +"Well, they won't. It takes the sort of man you are to strike classical +attitudes. And, absurd as the paradox appears--and even taking into +consideration your notorious indifference to your wife and your rather +silly reputation as a debutante chaser--I do believe, Dysart, that, deep +inside of you somewhere, there is enough latent decency to have inspired +this resentment toward me--a resentment perfectly natural in any man who +acts squarely toward his wife--but rather far fetched in your case." + +Dysart, pallid, menacing, laid his hand on a chair. + +The other laughed. + +"As bad as that?" he asked contemptuously. "Don't do it, Dysart; it +isn't in your line. You're only a good-looking, popular, dancing man; +all your deviltry is in your legs, and I'd be obliged if they'd +presently waft you out of my room." + +"I suppose," said Dysart unsteadily, "that you would make yourself +noisily ridiculous if I knocked your blackguard head off." + +"It's only in novels that people are knocked down successfully and +artistically," admitted the other. "In everyday life they resent it. +Yes--if you do anything hysterical there will be some sort of a +disgraceful noise, I suppose. It's shoot or suit in these unromantic +days, Dysart, otherwise the newspapers laugh at you." + +Dysart's well-shaped fists relaxed, the chair dropped, but even when he +let it go murder danced in his eyes. + +"Yes," he said, "it's shoot or a suit in these days; you're perfectly +right, Mallett. And we'll let it go at that for the present." + +He stood a moment, straight, handsome, his clearly stencilled eyebrows +knitted, watching Duane. Whatever in the man's face and figure was +usually colourless, unaccented, irresolute, disappeared as he glared +rigidly at the other. + +For there is no resentment like the resentment of the neglectful, no +jealousy like the jealousy of the faithless. + +"To resume, in plain English," he said, "keep away from my wife, +Mallett. You comprehend that, don't you?" + +"Perfectly. Now get out!" + +Dysart hesitated for the fraction of a second longer, as though perhaps +expecting further reply, then turned on his heel and walked out. + +Later, while Duane was examining his own costume preparatory to trying +it on, Scott Seagrave's spectacled and freckled visage protruded into +the room. He knocked as an after-thought. + +"Rosalie sent me. She's dressed in all her gimcracks and wants your +expert opinion. I've got to go----" + +"Where is she?" + +"In her room. I'm going out to the hatchery with Kathleen----" + +"Come and see Rosalie with me, first," said Duane, passing his arm +through Scott's and steering him down the sunny corridor. + +When they knocked, Mrs. Dysart admitted them, revealing herself in full +costume, painted and powdered, the blinds pulled down, and the electric +lights burning behind their rosy shades. + +"It's my final dress rehearsal," she explained. "Mr. Mallett, _is_ my +hair sufficiently a la Lamballe to suit you?" + +"Yes, it is. You're a perfect little porcelain figurette! There's not an +anachronism in you or your make-up. How did you do it?" + +"I merely stuck like grim death to your sketches," she said demurely. + +Scott eyed her without particular interest. "Very corking," he said +vaguely, "but I've got to go down to the hatchery with Kathleen, so you +won't mind if I leave----" + +He closed the door behind him before anybody could speak. Duane moved +toward the door. + +"It's a charming costume," he said, "and most charmingly worn; your hair +is exactly right--not too much powder, you know----" + +"Where shall I put my patch? Here?" + +"Higher." + +"Here?" + +He came back to the centre of the room where she stood. + +"Here," he said, indenting the firm, cool ivory skin with one finger, +"and here. Wear two." + +"And my rings--do you think that my fingers are overloaded?" She held +out her fascinating smooth little hands. He supported them on his +upturned palms and examined the gems critically. + +They talked for a few moments about the rings, then: "Thank you so +much," she said, with a carelessly friendly pressure. "How about my +shoes? Are the buckles of the period?" + +One of her hands encountered his at hazard, lingered, dropped, the +fingers still linked lightly in his. She bent over, knees straight, and +lifted the hem of her petticoat, displaying her Louis XVI footwear. + +"Shoes and buckles are all right," he said; "faultless, true to the +period--very fascinating.... I've got to go--one or two things to +do----" + +They examined the shoes for some time in silence; still bending over she +turned her dainty head and looked around and up at him. There was a +moment's pause, then he kissed her. + +"I was afraid you'd do that--some day," she said, straightening up and +stepping back one pace, so that their linked hands now hung pendant +between them. + +"I was sure of it, too," he said. "Now I think I'd better go--as all +things are en regle, even the kiss, which was classical--pure--Louis +XVI.... Besides, Scott was idiot enough to shut the door. That's Louis +XVI, too, but too much realism is never artistic." + +"We could open the door again--if that's why you're running away from +me." + +"What's the use?" + +She glanced at the door and then calmly seated herself. + +"Do you think that we are together too much?" she asked. + +"Hasn't your husband made similar observations?" he replied, laughing. + +"It isn't for him to make them." + +"Hasn't he objected?" + +"He has suddenly and unaccountably become disagreeable enough to make me +wish he had some real grounds for his excitement!" she said coolly, and +closed her teeth with a little click. She added, between them: "I'm +inclined to give him something real to howl about." + +He said: "You're adrift. Do you know it?" + +"Certainly I know it. Are you prepared to offer salvage? I'm past the +need of a pilot." + +He smiled. "You haven't drifted very far yet--only as far as Mallett +Harbour. That's usually the first port--for derelicts. Anchors are +dropped rather frequently there--but, Rosalie, there's no safe mooring +except in the home port." + +Her pretty, flushed face grew very serious as she looked up +questioningly. + +"Isn't there an anchorage near you, Duane? Are you quite sure?" + +"Why, no, dear, I'm not sure. But let me tell you something: it isn't in +me to love again. And that isn't square to you." + +After a silence she repeated: "Again? Have you been in love?" + +"Yes." + +"Are you embittered? I thought only callow fledglings moped." + +"If I were embittered I'd offer free anchorage to all comers. That's the +fledgling idea--when blighted--be a 'deevil among the weemin,'" he said, +laughing. + +"You have that hospitable reputation now," she persisted, unsmiling. + +"Have I? Judge for yourself then--because no woman I ever knew cares +anything for me now." + +"You mean that if any of them had anything intimate to remember they'd +never remain indifferent?" + +"Well--yes." + +"They'd either hate you or remember you with a certain tenderness." + +"Is that what happens?" he asked, amused. + +"I think so," she said thoughtfully.... "As for what you said, you are +right, Duane; I am adrift.... You--or a man like you could easily board +me--take me in tow. I'm quite sure that something about me signals a +pilot; and that keen eyes and bitter tongues have noted it. And I don't +care. Nor do I know yet what my capabilities for evil are.... Do you +care to--find out?" + +"It wouldn't be a square deal to you, Rosalie." + +"And--if I don't care whether it's a square deal or not?" + +"Why, dear," he said, covering her nervous, pretty hand with both of +his, "I'd break your heart in a week." + +He laughed, dropped her fingers, stepped back to the door, and, laying +his hand on the knob, said evenly: + +"That husband of yours is not the sort of man I particularly take to, +but I believe he's about the average if you'd care to make him so." + +She coloured with surprise. Then something in her scornful eyes inspired +him with sudden intuition. + +"As a matter of fact," he said lightly, "you care for him still." + +"I can very easily prove the contrary," she said, walking slowly up to +him, close, closer, until the slight tremor of contact halted her and +her soft, irregular breath touched his face. + +"What a girl like you needs," he laughed, taking her into his arms, "is +a man to hold her this way--every now and then, and"--he kissed +her--"tell her she is incomparable--which I cannot truthfully tell you, +dear." He released her at arms' length. + +"I don't know whose fault it is," he went on: "I don't know whether he +still really cares for you in spite of his weak peregrinations to other +shrines; but you still care for him. And it's up to you to make him +what he can be--the average husband. There are only two kinds, Rosalie, +the average and the bad." + +She looked straight into his eyes, but the deep, mantling colour belied +her audacity. + +"Do you know," she said, "that we haven't--lived together for two +years?" + +"I don't want to know such things," he said gently. + +"Well, you do know now. I--am--very much alone. You see I have already +become capable of saying anything--and of doing it, too." + +There came a reckless glimmer into her eyes; she set her teeth--a trick +of hers; the fresh lips parted slightly under her rapid breathing. + +"Do you think," she said unevenly, "that I'm going on all my life like +this--without anything more than the passing friendship of men to +balance the example he sets me?" + +"No, I think something is bound to happen, Rosalie. May I suggest what +ought to happen?" + +She nodded thoughtfully; only the quiver of her lower lip betrayed the +tension of self-control. + +"Take him back," he said. + +"I no longer care for him." + +"You are mistaken." + +After a moment she said: "I don't think so; truly I don't. All +consideration for him has died in me. His conduct doesn't +matter--doesn't hurt me any more----" + +"Yes, it does. He's just a plain ass--an average ass--ownerless, and, +like all asses, convinced that he can take care of himself. Go and put +the halter on him again." + +"Go--and--what do you mean?" + +"Tether him. You did once. It's up to you; it's usually up to a woman +when a man wanders untethered. What one woman, or a dozen, can do with a +man his wife can do in the same fashion! What won him in the beginning +always holds good until he thinks he has won you. Then the average man +flourishes his heels. He is doing it. What won him was not you alone, or +love, alone; it was his uncertainty of both that fascinated him. That's +what charms him in others; uncertainty. Many men are that way. It's a +sporting streak in us. If you care for him now--if you could ever care +for him, take him as you took him first.... Do you want him again?" + +She stood leaning against the door, looking down. Much of her colour had +died out. + +"I don't know," she said. + +"I do." + +"Well--_do_ I?" + +"Yes." + +"You think so? Why?" + +"Because he's adrift, too. And he's rather weak, rather handsome, easily +influenced--unjust, selfish, vain, wayward--just the average husband. +And every wife ought to be able to manage these lords of creation, and +keep them out of harm.... And keep them in love, Rosalie. And the way to +do it is the way you did it first.... Try it." He kissed her gaily, +thinking he owed that much to himself. + +And through the door which had swung gently ajar, Geraldine Seagrave saw +them, and Rosalie saw her. + +For a moment the girl halted, pale and rigid, and her heart seemed to +cease its beating; then, as she passed with averted head, Rosalie caught +Duane's wrists in her jewelled grasp and released herself with a +wrench. + +"You've given me enough to think over," she said. "If you want me to +love you, stay--and close that door--and we'll see what happens. If you +don't--you had better go at once, Duane. And leave my door open--to see +what else fate will send me." She clasped her hands behind her back, +laughing nervously. + +"It's like the old child's game--'open your mouth and close your eyes +and see what God will send you?'--usually something not at all +resembling the awaited bonbon.... Good-bye, my altruistic friend--and +thank you for your XXth Century advice, and your Louis XVI assistance." + +"Good-bye," he returned smilingly, and sauntered back toward his room +where his own untried finery awaited him. + +Ahead, far down the corridor, he caught sight of Geraldine, and called +to her, but perhaps she did not hear him for he had to put on +considerable speed to overtake her. + +"In these last few days," he said laughingly, "I seldom catch a glimpse +of you except when you are vanishing into doorways or down corridors." + +She said nothing, did not even turn her head or halt; and, keeping pace +with her, he chatted on amiably about nothing in particular until she +stopped abruptly and looked at him. + +"I am in a hurry. What is it you want, Duane?" + +"Why--nothing," he said in surprise. + +"That is less than you ask of--others." And she turned to continue her +way. + +"Is there anything wrong, Geraldine?" he asked, detaining her. + +"Is there?" she replied, shaking off his hand from her arm. + +"Not as far as I'm concerned." + +"Can't you even tell the truth?" she asked with a desperate attempt to +laugh. + +"Wait a minute," he said. "Evidently something has gone all wrong----" + +"Several things, my solicitous friend; I for one, you for another. Count +the rest for yourself." + +"What has happened to you, Geraldine?" + +"What has always threatened." + +"Will you tell me?" + +"No, I will not. So don't try to look concerned and interested in a +matter that regards me alone." + +"But what is it that has always threatened you?" he insisted gently, +coming nearer--too near to suit her, for she backed away toward the high +latticed window through which the sun poured over the geraniums on the +sill. There was a seat under it. Suddenly her knees threatened to give +way under her; she swayed slightly as she seated herself; a wave of +angry pain swept through her setting lids and lips trembling. + +"Now I want you to tell me what it is that you believe has always +threatened you." + +"Do you think I'd tell you?" she managed to say. Then her +self-possession returned in a flash of exasperation, but she controlled +that, too, and laughed defiantly, confronting him with pretty, insolent +face uptilted. + +"What do you want to know about me? That I'm in the way of being +ultimately damned like all the rest of you?" she said. "Well, I am. I'm +taking chances. Some people take their chances in one way--like you and +Rosalie; some take them in another--as I do.... Once I was afraid to +take any; now I'm not. Who was it said that self-control is only +immorality afraid?" + +"Will you tell me what is worrying you?" he persisted. + +"No, but I'll tell you what annoys me if you like." + +"What?" + +"Fear of notoriety." + +"Notoriety?" + +"Certainly--not for myself--for my house." + +"Is anybody likely to make it notorious?" he demanded, colouring up. + +"Ask yourself.... I haven't the slightest interest in your personal +conduct"--there was a catch in her voice--"except when it threatens to +besmirch my own home." + +The painful colour gathered and settled under his cheek-bones. + +"Do you wish me to leave?" + +"Yes, I do. But you can't without others knowing how and why." + +"Oh, yes, I can----" + +"You are mistaken. I tell you _others_ will know. Some do know already. +And I don't propose to figure with a flaming sword. Kindly remain in +your Eden until it's time to leave--with Eve." + +"Just as you wish," he said, smiling; and that infuriated her. + +"It ought to be as I wish! That much is due me, I think. Have you +anything further to ask, or is your curiosity satisfied?" + +"Not yet. You say that you think something threatens you? What is it?" + +"Not what threatens _you_," she said in contempt. + +"That is no answer." + +"It is enough for you to know." + +He looked her hard in the eyes. "Perhaps," he said in a low voice, "I +know more about you than you imagine I do, Geraldine--_since last +April_." + +She felt the blood leave her face, the tension crisping her muscles; she +sat up very straight and slender among the cushions and defied him. + +"What do you--think you know?" she tried to sneer, but her voice shook +and failed. + +He said: "I'll tell you. For one thing, you're playing fast and loose +with Dysart. He's a safe enough proposition--but what is that sort of +thing going to arouse in you?" + +"What do you mean?" Her voice cleared with an immense relief. He noted +it. + +"It's making you tolerant," he said quietly, "familiar with subtleties, +contemptuous of standards. It's rubbing the bloom off you. You let a man +who is married come too close to you--you betray enough curiosity +concerning him to do it. A drifting woman does that sort of thing, but +why do you cut your cables? Good Lord, Geraldine, it's a fool +business--permitting a man an intimacy----" + +"More harmless than his wife permits you!" she retorted. + +"That is not true." + +"You are supposed to lie about such things, aren't you?" she said, +reddening to the temples. "Oh, I am learning your rotten code, you +see--the code of all these amiable people about me. You've done your +part to instruct me that promiscuous caresses are men's distraction from +ennui; Rosalie evidently is in sympathy with that form of +amusement--many men and women among whom I live in town seem to be quite +as casual as you are.... I did have standards once, scarcely knowing +what they meant; I clung to them out of instinct. And when I went out +into the world I found nobody paying any attention to them." + +"You are wrong." + +"No, I'm not. I go among people and see every standard I set up, +ignored. I go to the theatre and see plays that embody everything I +supposed was unthinkable, let alone unutterable. But the actors utter +everything, and the audience thinks everything--and sometimes laughs. I +can't do that--yet. But I'm progressing." + +"Geraldine----" + +"Wait!... My friends have taught me a great deal during this last +year--by word, precept, and example. Things I held in horror nobody +notices enough to condone. Take treachery, for example. The marital +variety is all around me. Who cares, or is even curious after an hour's +gossip has made it stale news? A divorce here, a divorce there--some +slight curiosity to see who the victims may marry next time--that +curiosity satisfied--and so is everybody. And they go back to their +business of money-getting and money-spending--and that's what my friends +have taught me. Can you wonder that my familiarity with it all breeds +contempt enough to seek almost any amusement in sheer desperation--as +you do?" + +"I have only one amusement," he said. + +"What?" + +"Painting." + +"And your model," she nodded with a short laugh. "Don't forget her. Your +pretences are becoming tiresome, Duane. Your pretty model, Mrs. Dysart, +poses less than you do." + +Another wave of heart-sickness and anger swept over her; she felt the +tears burning close to her lids and turned sharply on him: + +"It's all rotten, I tell you--the whole personnel and routine--these +people, and their petty vices and their idleness and their money! I--I +do want to keep myself above it--clean of it--but what am I to do? One +can't live without friends. If I don't gamble I'm left alone; if I don't +flirt I'm isolated. If one stands aloof from everything one's friends go +elsewhere. What can I do?" + +"Make decent friends. I'm going to." + +He bent forward and struck his knee with his closed fist. + +"I'm going to," he repeated. "I've waited as long as I can for you to +stand by me. I could have even remained among these harmless simians if +you had cared for me. You're all the friend I need. But you've become +one of them. It isn't in you to take an intelligent interest in me, or +in what I care for. I've stood this sort of existence long enough. Now +I'm all through with it." + +She stared. Anger, astonishment, exasperation moved her in turn. +Bitterness unlocked her lips. + +"Are you expecting to take Mrs. Dysart with you to your intellectual +solitude?" + +"I would if I--if we cared for each other," he said, calmly seating +himself. + +She said, revolted: "Can't you even admit that you are in love with her? +Must I confess that I could not avoid seeing you with her in her own +room--half an hour since? Will _that_ wring the truth out of you?" + +"Oh, is that what you mean?" he said wearily. "I believe the door was +open.... Well, Geraldine, whatever you saw won't harm anybody. So come +to your own conclusions.... But I wish you were out of all this--with +your fine insight and your clear intelligence, and your sweetness--oh, +the chances for happiness you and I might have had!" + +"A slim chance with you!" she said. + +"Every chance; perhaps the only chance we'll ever have. And we've missed +it." + +"We've missed nothing"--a sudden and curious tremor set her heart and +pulses beating heavily--"I tell you, Duane, it doesn't matter whom +people of our sort marry because we'll always sicken of our bargain. +What chance for happiness would I run with such a man as you? Or you +with a girl like me?" + +She lay back among the cushions, with a tired little laugh. "We are like +the others of our rotten sort, only less aged, less experienced. But we +have, each of us, our own heritage, our own secret depravity." She +hesitated, reddening, caught his eye, stammered her sentence to a finish +and flinched, crimsoning to the roots of her hair. + +He stood up, paced the room for a few moments, came and stood beside +her. + +"Once," he said very low, "you admitted that you dare go anywhere with +me. Do you remember?" + +"Yes." + +"Those are your rooms, I believe," pointing to a closed door far down +the south corridor. + +"Yes." + +"Take me there now." + +"I--cannot do that----" + +"Yes, you can. You must." + +"Now?--Duane." + +"Yes, now--_now_! I tell you our time is now if it ever is to be at all. +Don't waste words." + +"What do you want to say to me that cannot be said here?" she asked in +consternation. + +He made no answer, but she found herself on her feet and moving slowly +along beside him, his hand just touching her arm as guide. + +"What is it, Duane?" she asked fearfully, as she laid her hand on the +knob and turned to look at his altered face. + +He made no answer. She hesitated, shivered, opened the door, hesitated +again, slowly crossed the threshold, turned and admitted him. + +The western sun flooded the silent chamber of rose and gray; a breeze +moved the curtains, noiselessly; the scent of flowers freshened the +silence. + +There was a divan piled with silken cushions; he placed several for her; +she stood irresolute for a moment, then, with a swift, unquiet side +glance at him, seated herself. + +"What is it?" she asked, looking up, her face beginning to reflect the +grave concern in his. + +"I want you to marry me, Geraldine." + +"Is--is _that_ what----" + +"Partly. I want you to love me, too. But I'll attend to that if you'll +marry me--I'll guarantee that. I--I will guarantee--more than that." + +She was still looking up, searching his sombre face. She saw the muscles +tighten along the jaw; saw the grave lines deepening. A sort of +bewildered fear possessed her. + +"I--am not in love with you, Duane." She added hastily, "I don't trust +you either. How could I----" + +"Yes, you do trust me." + +"After what you have done to Rosalie----" + +"You know that all is square there. Say so!" + +She gazed at the floor, convinced, but not answering. + +"Do you believe I love you?" + +She shook her head, eyes still on the floor. + +"Tell me the truth! Look at me!" + +She said with an effort: "You think you care for me.... You believe you +do, I suppose----" + +"And _you_ believe it, too! Give me my chance--take your own!" + +"_My_ chance?"--with a flash of anger. + +"Yes; take it, and give me mine. I tell you, Geraldine, we are going to +need each other desperately some day. I need you now--to-morrow you'll +need me more; and the day after, and after that in perilous days to +follow our need will be the greater for these hours wasted--can't you +understand by this time that we've nothing to hold us steady through the +sort of life we're born to except--each other----" + +His voice suddenly broke; he dropped down on the couch beside her, +imprisoning her clasped hands on her knees. His emotion, the break in +his voice, excited them both. + +"Are you trying to frighten me and take me by storm?" she demanded, +forcing a smile. "What is the matter, Duane? What do you mean by +peril?... You are scaring me----" + +"Little Geraldine--my little comrade! Can't you understand? It isn't +only my selfish desire for you--it isn't all for myself!--I care more +for you than that. I love you more deeply than a mere lover! Must I say +more to you? Must I even hurt you? Must I tell you what I know--of you?" + +"W-what?" she asked, startled. + +He looked at her miserably. In his eyes she read a meaning that +terrified her. + +"Duane--I don't--understand," she faltered. + +"Yes you do. Let's face it now!" + +"F-face what?" Her voice was only a whisper. + +"I can tell you if you'll love me. Will you?" + +"I don't understand," she repeated in white-lipped distress. "Why do you +look at me so strangely? And you tell me that I--know.... What is it +that I know? Couldn't you tell me? I am--" Her voice failed. + +"Dear--do you remember--once--last April that you were--ill?... And +awoke to find yourself on your own bed?" + +"Duane!" It was a cry of terror. + +"Dearest! Dearest! Do you think I have not known--since then--what has +troubled you--here----" + +She stared at him in crimsoned horror for an instant, then with a dry +sob, bowed her head and covered her face with desperate hands. For a +moment her whole body quivered, then she collapsed. On his knees beside +her he bent and touched with trembling lips her arms, her knees, the +slim ankles desperately interlocked, the tips of her white shoes. + +"Dearest," he whispered brokenly, "I know--I know--believe me. I have +fought through worse, and won out. You said once that something had died +out in me--while I was abroad. It did not die of itself, dear. But it +left its mark.... You say self-control is only depravity afraid.... That +is true; but I have made my depravity fear me. I can do what I please +with it now; I can tempt it, laugh at it, silence it. But it cost me +something to make a slave of it--what you saw in my face is the +claw-mark it left fighting me to the death." + +Very straight on his knees beside her he bent again, pressing her rigid +knees with his lips. + +"I need you, Geraldine--I need all that is best in you; you must love +me--take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you. I'll +love you so confidently that we'll kill it--you and I together--my +strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet +contempt for weakness wherever it may be, even in yourself." + +He touched her; and she shuddered under the light caress, still bent +almost double, and covering her face with both hands. He bent over her, +one knee on the divan. + +"Let's pull ourselves together and talk sense, Geraldine," he said with +an effort at lightness. + +"Don't you remember that bully little girl who swung her fists in single +combat and uppercut her brother and me whenever her sense of fairness +was outraged? The time has come when you, who were so fair to others, +are going to be fair to yourself by marrying me----" + +She dropped both hands and stared at him out of wide, tear-wet eyes. + +"Fair to myself--at your expense, Duane?" + +"What do you mean? I love you." + +"Am I to let you--you marry me--knowing--what you know? Is that what you +call my sense of fairness?" And, as he attempted to speak: + +"Oh, I have thought about it already!--I must have been conscious that +this would happen some day--that--that I was capable of caring for +you--and it alarmed me----" + +"Are you capable of loving me?" + +"Duane, you must not ask me that!" + +"Tell me!" + +But she pushed him back, and they faced each other, her hands remaining +on his shoulders. She strove piteously to endure his gaze, flinched, +strove to push him from her again--but the slender hands lay limply +against him. So they remained, her hands at intervals nervously +tightening and relaxing on his shoulders, her tearful breath coming +faster, the dark eyes closing, opening, turning from him, toward him, +searching, now in his soul, now in her own, her self-command slipping +from her. + +"It is cowardly in me--if I do it," she said in the ghost of a voice. + +"Do what?" + +"Let you risk--what I m-might become." + +"You little saint!" + +"Some saints _were_ depraved at first--weren't they?" she said without a +smile. "Oh, Duane, Duane, to think I could ever be here speaking to you +about--about the horror that has happened to me--looking into your face +and giving up my dreadful secret to you--laying my very soul naked +before you! How can I look at you----" + +"Because I love you. Now give me the right to your lips and heart!" + +There was a long silence. Then she tried to smile. + +"My--my lips? I--thought you took such things--lightly----" + +She hesitated, glanced up at him, then began to tremble. + +"Duane--if you are in earnest about our--about an engagement--promise me +that I may be released if I--think best----" + +"Why?" + +"I--I might fail----" + +"The more need of me. But you can't fail----" + +"Yes, but if I should, dear. Will you release me? I cannot--I will not +engage myself to you--unless you promise to let me go if I think it +best. You know what my word means. Give it back to me if matters go +wrong with me. Will you?" + +"But I am going to marry you now!" he said with a short, excited laugh. + +"Now!" she repeated, appalled. + +"Certainly, to make sure of you. We don't need a license in this State. +There's a parson at West Gate Village.... I intend to make sure of you +now. You can keep it a secret if you like. When you return to town we +can have everything en regle--engagement announced, cards, church +wedding, and all that. Meanwhile I'm going to be sure of you." + +"W-when?" + +"This afternoon." + +His excitement thrilled her; a vivid colour surged over neck and brow. + +"Duane, I did not dream that you cared so much, so truly--Oh, I--I do +love you then!--I love you, Duane! I love you!" + +He drew her suddenly into his arms, close, closer; she lifted her face; +he kissed her; and she gave him her heart with a sob. + +"You will wait for m-me, won't you?" she stammered, striving to keep her +reason through the delicious tumult that swept her senses. "Before I +m-marry you I must be quite certain that you take no risk----" + +She looked up into his steady eyes; a passion of tenderness overwhelmed +her, and her locked arms tightened around his neck. + +"Oh," she whispered, "you _are_ the boy I loved so long, so long ago--my +comrade Duane--my own little boy! How was I to know I loved you this +way, too? How could I understand!" + +Already the glamour of the past was transfiguring the man for her, +changing him back into the lad she had ruled so long ago, glorifying +him--drawing them together into that golden age where her ears already +caught the far cries and laughter of the past. + +Now, her arms around him, she looked at him and looked at him as though +she had not set eyes on him since then. + +"Of course, I love you," she said impatiently, as though surprised and +hurt that he or she had ever doubted it. "You always were mine; you are +_mine_! Nobody else could ever have had you--no matter what you did--or +what I did.... And nobody except you could ever, ever have had me. That +is perfectly plain now.... Oh, you--you darling"--she murmured, drawing +his face against hers. Tears sprang to her brown eyes; her mouth +quivered. + +"You _will_ love me, won't you? Because I'm going quite mad about you, +Duane.... I don't think I know just what I'm saying--or what I'm doing." + +She drew him closer; he caught her, crushing her in his arms, and she +yielded, clung to him for a moment, drew back in flushed resistance, +still bewildered by her own passion. Then, into her eyes came that +divine beauty which comes but once on earth--innocence awakened; and the +white lids drooped a little, and the mouth quivered, surrendering with a +sigh. + + * * * * * + +"You never have, never could love any other man? Say it. I know it, +but--say it, sweetheart!" + +"Only you, Duane." + +"Are you happy?" + +"I am in heaven." + +She closed her eyes--opening them almost immediately and passing one +hand across his face as though afraid he might have vanished. + +"You are there yet," she murmured with a faint smile. + +"So are you," he whispered, laughing--"my little dream girl--my little +brown-eyed, brown-haired, long-legged, swift-running, hard-hitting----" + +"Oh, _do_ you remember that dreadful blow I gave you when we were +sparring in the library? _Did_ it hurt you, my darling--I was sure it +did, but you never would admit it. Tell me now," she coaxed, adorable in +her penitence. + +"Well--yes, it did." He laughed under his breath--"I don't mind telling +you now that it fractured the bridge of my nose." + +"What!"--in horror. "That perfectly delicious straight nose of yours!" + +"Oh, I had it fixed," he said, laughing. "If you deal me no more vital +blows than that I'll never mind----" + +"I--deal you a--a blow, Duane! _I_!" + +"For instance, by not marrying me right away----" + +"Dear--I can't." + +The smile had died out in her eyes and on her lips. + +"You know I can't, don't you?" she said tenderly. "You know I've got to +be fair to you." Her face grew graver. "Dear--when I stop and try to +think--it dismays me to understand how much in love with you I am.... +Because it is too soon.... It would be safer to wait before I start to +love you--this way. There is a cowardly streak in me--a weak +streak----" + +"What blessed nonsense you do talk, don't you?" + +"No, dear." + +She moved slightly toward him, settling close, as though within the +circle of his arms lay some occult protection. + +For a while she lay very close to him, her pale face pressed against his +shoulder, brown eyes remote. Neither spoke. After a long time she laid +her hands on his arms, gently disengaging them, and, freeing herself, +sprang to her feet. A new, lithe and lovely dignity seemed to possess +her--an exquisite, graceful, indefinable something which lent a hint of +splendour to her as she turned and looked down at him. + +Then, mischievously tender, she stooped and touched her childish mouth +to his--her cheek, her throat, her hair, her lids, her hands, in turn +all brushed his lips with fragrance--the very ghost of contact, the +exquisite mockery of caress. + +"If you don't go at once," she murmured, "I'll never let you go at all. +Wait--let me see if anybody is in the corridor----" + +She opened the door and looked out. + +"Not a soul," she whispered, "our reputations are still intact. +Good-bye--I'll put on a fresh gown and meet you in ten minutes!... +Where? Oh, anywhere--_anywhere_, Duane. The Lake. Oh, that is too far +away! Wait here on the stairs for me--that isn't so far away--just sit +on the stairs until I come. Do you promise? _Truly_? Oh, you angel +boy!... Yes--but only one more, then--to be quite sure that you won't +forget to wait on the stairs for me...." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AN AFTERGLOW + + +Deliciously weary, every fibre in her throbbing with physical fatigue, +she had nevertheless found it impossible to sleep. + +The vivid memory of Duane holding her in his arms, while she gave her +heart to him with her lips, left her tremulous and confused by emotions +of which she yet knew little. + +Toward dawn a fever of unrest drove her from her hot, crushed pillows to +the cool of the open casements. The morning was dark and very still; no +breeze stirred; a few big, widely scattered stars watched her. For a +long while she stood there trying to quiet the rapid pulse and fast +breathing; and at length, with an excited little laugh, she sank down +among the cushions on the window-seat and lay back very still, her head, +with its glossy, disordered hair, cradled in her arms. + +"Is _this_ love?" she said to herself. "Is this what it is doing to me? +Am I never again going to sleep?" + +But she could not lie still; her restless hands began groping about in +the darkness, and presently the fire from a cigarette glimmered red. + +She remained quiet for a few moments, elbow among the pillows, cheek on +hand, watching the misty spirals float through the open window. After a +while she sat up nervously and tossed the cigarette from her. Like a +falling star the spark whirled earthward in a wide curve, glowed for a +few seconds on the lawn below, and slowly died out. + +Then an inexplicable thing occurred. Unthinkingly she had turned over +and extended her arm, searching in the darkness behind her. There came a +tinkle, a vague violet perfume, and the starlight fell on her clustering +hair and throat as she lifted and drained the brimming glass. + +Suddenly she stood up; the frail, crystal glass fell from her fingers, +splintering on the stone sill; and with a quick, frightened intake of +breath, lips still wet and scented, and the fire of it already stealing +through her veins, she awoke to stunned comprehension of what she had +done. + +For a moment only startled astonishment dominated her. That she could +have done this thing so instinctively and without forethought or intent, +seemed impossible. She bowed her head in her hands, striving desperately +to recollect the circumstances; she sprang to her feet and paced the +darkened room, trying to understand. A terrified and childish surprise +possessed her, which changed slowly to anger and impatience as she began +to realise the subtle treachery that habit had practised on her--so +stealthy is habit, betraying the body unawares. + +Overwhelmed with consternation, she seated herself to consider the +circumstances; little flashes of alarm assisted her. Then a sort of +delicate madness took possession of her, deafening her ears to the voice +of fear. She refused to be afraid. + +As she sat there, both hands unconsciously indenting her breast, the +clamour and tumult of her senses drowned the voice within. + +No, she would not be afraid!--though the burning perfume was mounting +to her head with every breath and the glow grew steadily in her body, +creeping from vein to vein. No, she would not be afraid. It could never +happen again. She would be on her guard after this.... Besides, the +forgetfulness had been so momentary, the imprudence so very slight ... +and it had helped her, too--it was already making her sleepy ... and she +had needed something to quiet her--needed sleep.... + +After a long while she turned languidly and picked up the little crystal +flask from the dresser--an antique bit of glass which Rosalie had given +her. + +Dawn whitened the edges of the sky; the birds were becoming very noisy. +She lifted the curiously cut relic; an imprisoned fluid glimmered with +pale-violet light--some scented French distillation which Rosalie +affected because nobody else had ever heard of it--an aromatic, fiery +essence, faintly perfumed. + +For a moment the girl gazed at it curiously. Then, on deliberate +impulse, she filled another glass. + +"One thing is certain," she said to herself; "if I am capable of +controlling myself at all, I must begin now. If I should touch this it +would be excess.... I would like to, but"--she flung the contents from +the window--"I won't. And _that_ is the way I am able to control +myself." + +She smiled, set the glass aside, and raised her eyes to the paling +stars. When at last she stretched herself out on the bed, dawn was +already lighting the room, but she fell asleep at once. + +It was a flushed and rather heavy slumber, not perfectly natural; and +when Kathleen entered at nine o'clock, followed by Geraldine's maid with +the breakfast-tray, the girl still lay with face buried in her hair, +breathing deeply and irregularly, her lashes wet with tears. + +The maid retired; Kathleen bent low over the feverishly parted lips, +kissed them, hesitated, drew back sharply, and cast a rapid glance +around the room. Then she went over to the dressing-table and lifted +Rosalie's antique flacon; and set it back slowly, as the girl turned her +face on the pillow and opened her eyes. + +"Is that you, Kathleen?" + +"Yes, dear." + +For a few seconds she lay quite motionless, then, rising on one elbow, +she passed the backs of her fingers across her lids, laughed sleepily, +and straightened up, freeing her eyes from the confusion of her hair. + +"I've had horrid dreams. I've been crying in my sleep. Come here," she +said, stretching out her arms, and Kathleen went slowly. + +The girl pulled her head down, linking both arms around her neck: + +"You darling, can you ever guess what miracle happened to me yesterday?" + +"No.... What?" + +"I promised to marry Duane Mallett!" + +There was no reply. The girl clung to her excitedly, burying her face +against Kathleen's cheek, then released her with a laugh, and saw her +face--saw the sorrowful amazement in it, the pain. + +"Kathleen!" she exclaimed, startled, "what is the matter?" + +Mrs. Severn dropped down on the bed's edge, her hands loosely clasped. +Geraldine's brown eyes searched hers in hurt astonishment. + +"Aren't you glad for me, Kathleen? What is it? Why do you--" And all at +once she divined, and the hot colour stained her from brow to throat. +Kathleen bent forward swiftly and caught her in her arms with a +smothered cry; but the girl freed herself and leaned back, breathing +fast. + +"Duane knows about me," she said. "I told him." + +"He knew before you told him, my darling." + +Another wave of scarlet swept Geraldine's face. + +"That is true.... He found out--last April.... But he and I are not +afraid. I promised him--" And her voice failed as the memory of the +night's indulgence flashed in her brain. + +Kathleen began: "You promised me, too--" And her voice also failed. + +There was a silence; the girl's eyes turned miserably toward the +dressing-table, closed with a slow, inward breath which ended like a +sob; and again she was in Kathleen's arms--struggled from them only to +drop her head on Kathleen's knees and lie, tense face hidden, both hands +clenched. The wave of grief and shame swept her and passed. + +After a while she spoke in a hard little voice: + +"It is foolish to say I cannot control myself.... I did not think what I +was doing last night--that was all. Duane knows my danger--tendency, I +mean. He isn't worried; he knows that I can take care of myself----" + +"Don't marry him until _you_ know you can." + +"But I am perfectly certain of myself now!" + +"Only prove it, darling. Be frank with me. Who in the world loves you as +I do, Geraldine? Who desires happiness for you as I do? What have I in +life besides you and Scott?... And lately, dearest--I _must_ speak as I +feel--something--some indefinable constraint seems to have grown between +you and me--something--I don't exactly know what--that threatens our +intimate understanding----" + +"No, there is nothing!" + +"Be honest with me, dear. What is it?" + +The girl lay silent for a while, then: + +"I don't know myself. I have been--worried. It may have been that." + +"Worried about yourself, you poor lamb?" + +"A little.... And a little about Duane." + +"But, darling, if Duane loves you, that is all cleared up, isn't it?" + +"Yes.... But for a long time he and Rosalie made me perfectly +wretched.... I didn't know I was in love with him, either.... And I +couldn't sleep very much, and I--I simply couldn't tell you how unhappy +they were making me--and I--sometimes--now and then--in fact, very +often, I--formed the custom of--doing what I ought not to have done--to +steady my nerves--in fact, I simply let myself go--badly." + +"Oh, my darling! My darling! Couldn't you have told me--let me sit with +you, talk, read to you--_love_ you to sleep? Why did you do this, +Geraldine?" + +"Nothing--very disgraceful--ever happened. It only helped me to sleep +when I was excited and miserable.... I--I didn't care what I did--Duane +and Rosalie made me so wretched. And there seemed no use in my trying to +be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as +everybody. But I tried and couldn't--I tried, for instance, to misbehave +with Jack Dysart, but I couldn't--and I only hated myself and him and +Rosalie and Duane!" + +She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering. "I want to confess! +I've been horribly depraved for a week! I gambled with the Pink 'uns and +swore as fashionably as I knew how! I scorched my tongue with +cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray's room with the door bolted and let him +teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine +and saki! I let Jack Dysart retain my hand--and try to kiss me--several +times----" + +"Geraldine!" + +"I _did_. I wanted to be horrid." + +She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at +Kathleen, but the child's mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous +hands tightened and relaxed. + +"How bad have I been, Kathleen? It sounds pretty bad to tell it. But +Muriel says 'damn!' and Rosalie says 'the devil!' and when anything goes +wrong and I say, 'Oh, fluff!' I mean swearing, so I thought I'd do +it.... And almost every woman I know smokes and has her favourite +cocktail, and they all bet and play for stakes; and from what I hear +talked about, nobody's conduct is modified because anybody happens to be +married----" + +The horror in Kathleen's blue eyes checked her; she hid her face in her +hands for a moment, then flung out her arms and crushed Kathleen to her +breast. + +"I'm going to tell Duane how I've behaved. I couldn't rest until he +knows the very worst ... how fearfully common and bad a girl I can be. +Darling, don't break down. I don't want to go any closer to the danger +line than I've been. And, oh, I'm so ashamed, so humiliated--I--I wish I +could go to Duane as--as clean and sweet and innocent as he would have +me. For he is the dearest boy--and I love him so, Kathleen. I'm so silly +about him.... I've got to tell him how I behaved, haven't I?" + +[Illustration: "'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a +week!'"] + +"Are--are you going to?" + +"Of course I am!" ... She drew away and sat up very straight in bed, +serious, sombre-eyed, hands clasped tightly about her knees. + +"Do you know," she said, as though to herself, "it is curious that a +trivial desire for anything like that"--pointing to Rosalie's +gift--"should make me restless--annoy me, cause me discomfort. I can't +understand why it should actually torment me. It really does, +sometimes." + +"That is the terrible part of it," faltered Kathleen. "For God's sake, +keep clear of anything with even the faintest odour of alcohol about +it.... Where did you find that cut-glass thing?" + +"Rosalie gave it to me." + +"What is in it?" + +"I don't know--creme de something or other." + +Kathleen took the girl's tightly clasped hands in hers: + +"Geraldine, you've got to be square to Duane. You can't marry him until +you cleanse yourself, until you scour yourself free of this terrible +inclination for stimulants." + +"H-how can I? I don't intend, ever again, to----" + +"Prove it then. Let sufficient time elapse----" + +"How long? A--year?" + +"Dear, if you will show a clean record of self-control for a year I ask +no more. It ought not to be difficult for you to dominate this silly +weakness. Your will-power is scarcely tainted. What fills me with fear +is this habit you have formed of caressing danger--this childish +trifling with something which is still asleep in you--with all that is +weak and ignoble. It is there--it is in all of us--in you, too. Don't +rouse it; it is still asleep--merely a little restless in its +slumber--but, oh, Geraldine! Geraldine!--if you ever awake it!--if you +ever arouse it to its full, fierce consciousness----" + +"I won't," said the girl hastily. "Oh, I won't, I won't, Kathleen, +darling. I do know it's in me--I feel that if I ever let myself go I +could be reckless and wicked. But truly, truly, I won't. I--darling, you +mustn't cry--please, don't--because you are making me cry. I cried in my +sleep, too.... I ought to be very happy--" She forced a laugh through +the bright tears fringing her lashes, bent forward swiftly, kissed +Kathleen, and sprang from the bed. + +"I want my bath and breakfast!" she cried. "If I'm to be a Louis XVI +doll this week, it's time my face was washed and my sawdust reinforced. +Do fix my tray, dear, while I'm in the bath--and ring for my maid.... +And when you go down you may tell Duane to wait for me on the stairs. +It's good discipline; he'll find it stupid because I'll be a long +time--but, oh, Kathleen, it is perfectly heavenly to bully him!" + + * * * * * + +Later she sent a note to him by her maid: + + "TO THE ONLY MAN IN THE WORLD, + ON THE STAIRS. + + "_Patient Sir_: If you will go to the large beech-tree beyond + Hurryon Gate and busy yourself by carving upon it certain initials + intertwined within the circumscribed outlines of a symbol popularly + supposed to represent a human heart, your industry will be + presently and miraculously rewarded by the apparition of her who + presumably occupies no inconsiderable place in your affections." + +At the Hurryon Gate Duane found Rosalie trying to unlock it, a dainty, +smiling Rosalie, fresh as a blossom, and absurdly like a schoolgirl with +her low-cut collar, snowy neck, and the thick braid of hair. Under her +arm she carried her bathing-dress. + +"I'm going for a swim; I nearly perished with the heat last night.... +Did you sleep well, Duane?" + +"Rather well." + +She hesitated, looked up: "Are you coming with me?" + +"I have an appointment." + +"Oh!... Are you going to let me go alone?" + +He laughed: "I've no choice; I really have an appointment this morning." + +She inspected him, drew a step nearer, laid both hands lightly on his +shoulders. + +"Duane, dear," she said, "are you really going to let me drift past you +out to sea--after all?" + +"What else can I do? Besides, you are not going to drift." + +"Yes, I am. You were very nice to me yesterday." + +"It was you who were very sweet to me.... But I told you how matters +stand. You care for your husband." + +"Yes, you did tell me. But it is not true. I thought about it all night +long; I find that I do not care for him--as you told me I did." + +He said, smiling: "Nor do you really care for me." + +"I could care." + +Her hands still lay lightly on his shoulders; he smilingly disengaged +them, saluted the finger tips, and swung them free. + +"No, you couldn't," he said--"nor could I." + +She clasped her hands behind her, confronting him with that gaily +audacious allure which he knew so well: + +"Does a man really care whether or not he is in love with a woman before +he makes love to her?" + +"Do you want an honest answer?" + +"Please." + +"Well, then--if she is sufficiently attractive, a man doesn't usually +care." + +"Am I sufficiently attractive?" + +"Yes." + +"Then--why do you hesitate?... I know the rules of the game. When one +wearies, the other must pretend to.... And then they make their adieux +very amiably.... Isn't that a man's ideal of an affair with a pretty +woman?" + +He laughed: "I suppose so." + +"So do I. You are no novice, are you--as I am?" + +"Are you a novice, Rosalie?" + +"Yes, I am. You probably don't believe it. It is absurd, isn't it, +considering these lonely years--considering what he has done--that I +haven't anything with which to reproach myself." + +"It is very admirable," he said. + +"Oh, yes, theoretically. I was too fastidious--perhaps a little bit too +decent. It's curious how inculcated morals and early precepts make +mountains out of what is really very simple travelling. If a woman +ceases to love her husband, she is going to miss too much in life if +she's afraid to love anybody else.... I suppose I have been afraid." + +"It's rather a wholesome sort of fear," he said. + +"Wholesome as breakfast-food. I hate it. Besides, the fear doesn't exist +any more," shaking her head. "Like the pretty girls in a very popular +and profoundly philosophical entertainment, I've simply got to love +somebody"--she smiled at him--"and I'd prefer to fall honestly and +disgracefully in love with you--if you'd give me the opportunity." There +was a pause. "Otherwise," she concluded, "I shall content myself with +doing a mischief to your sex where I can. I give you the choice, +Duane--I give you the disposal of myself. Am I to love--you?--or be +loved by God knows whom--and make him suffer for it"--she set her little +even teeth--"and pay back to men what man has done to me?" + +"Nonsense," he said good-humouredly; "isn't there anything except +playing at love that counts in the world?" + +"Nothing counts without it. I've learned that much." + +"Some people have done pretty well without it." + +"You haven't. You might have been a really good painter if you cared for +a woman who cared for you. There's no tenderness in your work; it's all +technique and biceps." + +He said gravely: "You are right." + +"Am I?... Do you think you could try to care for me--even for that +reason, Duane--to become a better painter?" + +"I'm afraid not," he said pleasantly. + +There was a silence; her expression changed subtly, then the colour came +back and she smiled and nodded adieu. + +"Good-bye," she said; "I'm going to get into all sorts of mischief. The +black flag is hoisted. _Malheur aux hommes!_" + +"There's one now," said Duane, laughing as Delancy Grandcourt's bulk +appeared among the trees along Hurryon Water. "Lord! what a bungler he +is on a trout-stream!" + +Rosalie turned and gazed at the big, clumsy young man who was fishing +with earnestness and method every unlikely pool in sight. + +"Does he belong to anybody?" she asked, considering him. "I want to do +real damage. He is usually at Geraldine's heels, isn't he?" + +"Oh, let him alone," said Duane; "he's an awfully decent fellow. If a +man of that slow, plodding, faithful species ever is thoroughly aroused +by a woman, it will be a lively day for his tormentor." + +Rosalie's blue eyes sparkled: "Will it?" + +"Yes, it will. You had better not play hob with Delancy. Are you +intending to?" + +"I don't know. Look at the man! That's the fourth time he's landed his +line in a bush! He'll fall into that pool if he's not--mercy!--there he +goes! Did you ever see such a genius for clumsiness?" + +She was moving forward through the trees as she spoke; Duane called +after her in a warning voice: + +"Don't try to do anything to disturb him. It's not good sport; he's a +mighty decent sort, I tell you." + +"I won't play any tricks on your good young man," she said with a shrug +of contempt, and sauntered off toward the Gray Water. Her path, however, +crossed Grandcourt's, and as she stepped upon the footbridge she glanced +down, where, wading gingerly in mid-stream, Delancy floundered and +panted and barely contrived to maintain a precarious footing, while +sending his flies sprawling down the rapids. + +"Good-morning," she nodded, as he caught sight of her. He attempted to +take off his cap, slipped, wallowed, and recovered his balance by +miracle alone. + +"There's a thumping big trout under that bridge," he informed her +eagerly; "he ran downstream just now, but I can't seem to raise him." + +"You splash too much. You'd probably raise him if you raised less of +something else." + +"Is that it?" he inquired innocently. "I try not to, but I generally +manage to raise hell with every pool before I get a chance to fish it. +I'll show you just where he lies. Watch!" + +His cast of flies whistled wildly; there was a quick pang of pain in her +shoulder and she gave a frightened cry. + +"Good Lord! Have I got _you_?" he exclaimed, aghast. + +"You certainly have," she retorted, exasperated, "and you had better +come up and get this hook out! You'll need it if you want to fish any +more." + +Dripping and horrified, he scrambled up the bank to the footbridge; she +flinched, but made no sound, as he freed her from the hook; a red stain +appeared on the sleeve of her waist, above the elbow. + +"It's fortunate that it was a b-barbless hook," he stammered, horribly +embarrassed and contemplating with dismay the damage he had +accomplished; "otherwise," he added, "we would have had to cut out the +hook. We're rather lucky, I think. Is it very painful?" + +"Sufficiently," she said, disgusted. "But I suppose this sort of thing +is nothing unusual for you." + +"I've hooked one or two people," he admitted, reddening. "I suppose you +won't bother to forgive me, but I'm terribly sorry. If you'll let me put +a little mud on it----" + +She disdained to reply. He hovered about her, clumsily solicitous, and +whichever way she turned, he managed to get underfoot, until, thoroughly +vexed, she stood stock-still and opened her arms with a hopeless +gesture: + +"What _are_ you trying to do, Delancy? Do you want to embrace me? I wish +you wouldn't leap about me like a great Dane puppy!" + +The red surged up into his face anew: + +"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm very sorry." + +She looked at him curiously: "I beg yours--you big, silly boy. Don't +blush at me. Great Danes are exceedingly desirable property, you +know.... Did you wish to be forgiven for anything? What on earth are you +doing with that horrid fistful of muck?" + +"I only want to put some mud on that wound, if you'll let me. It's good +for hornet stings----" + +She laughed and backed away: "Do you believe there is any virtue in mud, +Delancy?--good, deep mire--when one is bruised and sore and lonely and +desperate? Oh, don't try to understand--what a funny, confused, stupid +way you have of looking at me! I remember you used to look at me that +way sometimes--oh, long ago--before I was married, I think." + +The heavy colour which surged so readily to his temples began to amuse +her; she leaned back against the bridge rail and contemplated him with +smiling disdain. + +"Do you know," she said, "years ago, I had a slight, healthy suspicion +that you were on the verge of falling in love with me." + +He tried to smile, but the colour died out in his face. + +"Yes, I was on the verge," he contrived to answer. + +"Why didn't you fall over?" + +"I suppose it was because you married Jack Dysart," he said simply. + +"Was _that_ all?" + +"All?" He thought he perceived the jest, and managed to laugh again. + +"Really, I am perfectly serious," repeated Rosalie. "Was that all that +prevented you from falling in love with me--because I was married?" + +"I think so," he said. "Wasn't it reason enough?" + +"I didn't know it was enough for a man. I don't believe I know exactly +how men consider such matters.... You've managed to hook that fly into +my gown again! And now you've torn the skirt hopelessly! What a +devastating sort of creature you are, Delancy! You used to step on my +slippers at dancing school, and, oh, Heaven! how I hated you.... Where +are you going?" for he had begun to walk away, reeling in his wet line +as he moved, his grave, highly coloured face lowered, troubled eyes +intent on what he was doing. + +When she spoke, he halted and raised his head, and she saw the muscles +flexed under the bronze skin of the jaw--saw the lines of pain appear +where his mouth tightened. All of the clumsy boy in him had vanished; +she had never troubled herself to look at him very closely, and it +surprised her to see how worn his face really was under the eyes and +cheek-bones--really surprised her that there was much of dignity, even +of a certain nobility, in his quiet gaze. + +"I asked you where you are going?" she repeated with a faint smile. + +"Nowhere in particular." + +"But you are going _somewhere_, I suppose." + +"I suppose so." + +"In my direction?" + +"I think not." + +"That is very rude of you, Delancy--when you don't even know where my +direction lies. Do you think," she demanded, amused, "that it is +particularly civil of a man to terminate an interview with a woman +before she offers him his conge?" + +He finished reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the +reel-guide, shifted his creel, buttoned on the landing-net, and quietly +turned around and inspected Mrs. Dysart. + +"I want to tell you something," he said. "I have never, even as a boy, +had from you a single word which did not in some vague manner convey a +hint of your contempt for me. Do you realise that?" + +"W-what!" she faltered, bewildered. + +"I don't suppose you do realise it. People generally feel toward me as +you feel; it has always been the fashion to tolerate me. It is a legend +that I am thick-skinned and stupidly slow to take offence. I am not +offended now.... Because I could not be with you.... But I am tired of +it, and I thought it better that you should know it--after all these +years." + +Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the +hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a +stinging flush deepened over her pretty face. + +"Had you anything else to say to me?" he asked, without embarrassment. + +"N-no." + +"Then may I take my departure?" + +She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and +intense curiosity. + +"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you?" she asked. +"Because I haven't meant to." + +He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly +smile fascinated her. + +"You haven't intended to," he said. "It's all right, Rosalie----" + +"But--have I been horrid and disagreeable? Tell me." + +In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her; +slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the +innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What, +after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant +consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy +manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for +himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of +her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her attitude? + +She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life--that is, she had +neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the +curiosity and interest now stirring her. + +"Were you really ever in love with me?" she asked, so frankly that the +painful colour rose to his hair again, and he stood silent, head +lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins. + +"But--good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there's +nothing to be ashamed of in it! I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am +thinking about it with--with a certain re--" She was going to say +regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own +seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting +to him. + +She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of +the awkwardness with which he moved--a great, big powerful machine, +continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own +power might break loose and smash things. That seemed to be the root of +his awkwardness--unskilful self-control--a vague consciousness of the +latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled, +and controlled unskilfully. + +She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of +Grandcourt. Without considering or understanding why, she began to +experience an agreeable sense of restfulness and security in the silence +which endured between them. He stood full in the sunlight, very deeply +preoccupied with the contents of his fly-book; she leaned back on the +sun-scorched railing of the bridge, bathing-suit tucked under one arm, +listening to the melody of the rushing stream below. It seemed almost +like the intimacy of old friendship, this quiet interval in the sun, +with the moving shadows of leaves at their feet and the music of the +water in their ears--a silence unbroken save by that, and the pure, +sweet call-note of some woodland bird from the thickets beyond. + +"What fly are you trying?" she asked, dreamily conscious of the +undisturbed accord. + +"Wood-ibis--do you think they might come to it?" he asked so naturally +that a sudden glow of confidence in him, in the sunlit world around her, +warmed her. + +"Let me look at your book?" + +He brought it. Together they fumbled the brilliantly patterned aluminum +leaves, fumbling with tufted silks and feathers, until she untangled a +most alluringly constructed fly and drew it out, presenting it to him +between forefinger and thumb. + +"Shall we try it?" + +"Certainly," he said. + +Duane, carving hieroglyphics on the bark of the big beech, raised his +head and looked after them. + +"That's a pretty low trick," he said to himself, as they sauntered away +toward the Gray Water. And he scowled in silence and continued his +carving. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +CONFESSION + + +So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West +Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be +made somehow; Geraldine and Naida Mallett doubled up; twin beds were +installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a +shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless +girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient +to last over from the winter. + +The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier, +gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter--he of the rambling and +casual legs--more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The +Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt +shared Mrs. Severn's room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West +Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his +studio at Hurryon Lodge. + +The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing +young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun; +tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart +horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an +army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over +the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and +decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that +they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as +Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several +respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and +the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter. + +As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that +was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared +in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from +surface cynicism--quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had +characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had +disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, +now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any attitude +about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering +sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a +conscious effort to ignore it, an attitude to disregard what custom has +sanctioned. + +Kathleen had never realised what a really sweet and charming fellow he +was until that morning, when he took her aside and told her of his +engagement. + +"Do you know," he said, "it is as though life had stopped for me many +years ago when Geraldine and I were playmates; it's exactly as though +all the interval of years in between counted less than a dream, and now, +at last, I am awake and taking up real life again.... You see, Kathleen, +as a matter of fact, I'm incomplete by myself. I'm only half of a suit +of clothes; Geraldine always wore the rest of me." + +"However," said Kathleen mischievously, "you've been very tireless in +trying on, they say. It's astonishing you never found a good fit----" + +"That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out +of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal. Are you going to be +nice to me, Kathleen?" + +"Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous +young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly. Then she held him at +arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes: + +"Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it." + +"I could not help doing it." + +But Kathleen repeated: + +"Love her enough. She will be yours to make--yours to unmake, to mould, +fashion, remould--with God's good help. Love her enough." + +"Yes," he said, very soberly. + +A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fete, and +Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her, +never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from +the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of +Seagrave. + +Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving +new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's +separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for +Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate--the old servants +of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain +the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less +conscientious recruits below stairs. + +A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended +the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's +loft, at Hurryon Lodge. + +He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious +and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, +shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a +strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather +heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno. A harsh voice +pronounced his name; old Mr. Tappan extended a dry hand and bored him +through with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket. + +"And do you still cultiwate the fine arts, young man?" he inquired, as +sternly as though he privately suspected Duane of maltreating them. + +Duane shook hands with him. + +"The school of the indiwidool," continued Mr. Tappan, "is what artists +need. Woo the muses in solitude; cultiwate 'em in isolation. Didn't +Benjamin West live out in the backwoods? And I guess he managed to make +good without raising hell in the Eekole di Boze Arts with a lot of +dissipated wagabonds at his elbow, inculcating immoral precepts and +wasting his time and his father's money." + +And he looked very hard at Duane, who winced, but agreed with him +solemnly. + +Geraldine, on the edge of a circle of newly arrived guests, leaned over +and whispered mischievously: + +"Is that what _you_ did at the Ecole des Beaux Arts? Did you behave like +all that or did you cultivate the indiwidool?" + +He shook hands again, solemnly, with Mr. Tappan, stepped back, and +joined her. + +"Where on earth have you been hiding?" she inquired. + +"You said that if I carved certain cabalistic signs on the big +beech-tree you would presently appear to me in a pink cloud--you +faithless little wretch!" + +"How could I? Three motor-loads arrived from Iron Hill before I was half +dressed, and ever since I've been doing my traditional duty; and," in a +lower voice, "I was perfectly crazy to go to the beech-tree all the +time. Did you wait long, you poor boy?" + +"Man is born to wait. I came back just now to find you.... I told +Kathleen," he added, radiant. + +"What?" she whispered, flushing deliciously. "Oh, pooh! I told her about +it this morning--the very first thing. We both snivelled. I didn't sleep +at all last night.... There's something I wish to tell you----" + +The gay smile suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful +tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that +very young, almost childish pathos to her expression. She put out her +hand instinctively and touched him. + +"I want to be alone with you, Duane--for a little while." + +"Shall I go to the beech-tree and wait?" + +She glanced around with a hopeless gesture: + +"You see? Other people are arriving and I've simply got to be here. I +don't see how I can get away before luncheon. Where were you going just +now?" + +"I thought I'd step over to the studio to see what sort of a shake-down +you've given me to repose on." + +"I wish you would. Poor child, I do hope you will be comfortable. It's +perfectly horrid to send you out of the house----" + +"Oh, I don't mind," he nodded, laughing, and she gave him a shy glance +of adieu and turned to receive another guest. + +In his extemporized studio at Hurryon Lodge he found that old Miller had +already provided him with a washstand and accessories, a new tin tub and +a very comfortable iron bed. + +The place was aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, +and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and +picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in +turpentine and black soap. + +Confronting him on a big improvised easel was the full-length, +half-reclining portrait of Rosalie Dysart--a gay, fascinating, fly-away +thing after the deliberately artificial manner of the French court +painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago. Ribbons +fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and +blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken +parody of a shepherdess--a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, +sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional +oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a +dark-blue sky--this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the +perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as +delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the flowered petticoat. + +The unholy ease with which he had done it gave him a secret thrill of +admiration. It was apparently all surface--the exquisite masquerader, +the surrounding detail, the technical graciousness and flow of line and +contour, the effortless brush-work. Yet, with an ease which demanded +very respectful consideration, he had absorbed and transmitted the +frivolous spirit of the old French masters, which they themselves took +so seriously; the portrait was also a likeness, yet delightfully +permeated with the charm of a light-minded epoch; and somehow, behind +and underneath it all, a brilliant mockery sparkled--the half-amused, +half-indifferent brilliancy of the painter himself. It was there for any +who could appreciate it, and it was quite irresistible, particularly +since he had, after a dazzling preliminary study or two from a +gamekeeper's small, chubby son, added, fluttering in mid-air, a pair of +white-winged Loves, chubby as cherubs but much more Gallic. + +Nobody excepting Rosalie and himself had seen the picture. What he meant +to do with it he did not know, half ashamed as he was of its satiric +cleverness. Painters would hate it--stand hypnotised, spellbound the +while--and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of +pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art; +they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay +perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly. +What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an +actor who was eminently fitted to play _Lear_, should bow to his +audience and earnestly perform a very complicated and perfect flip-flap? + +Amused with his own disrespectful reflections, he stood before the +picture, turning from it with a grin from time to time to compare it +with some dozen vigorous canvases hanging along the studio wall--studies +that he knew would instantly command the owlish respect of the truly +earnest--connoisseurs, critics, and academicians in this very earnest +land of ours. + +There was a Sargent-like portrait of old Miller, with something of that +great master's raucous colouring and perhaps intentional discords, and +all of his technical effrontery; and here, too, lurked that shadow of +mockery ever latent in the young man's brush--something far more subtle +than caricature or parody--deeper than the imitation of +manner--something like the evanescent caprice of a strong hand, which +seems to threaten for a second, then passes on lightly, surely, +transforming its menace into a caress. + +There were two adorable nude studies of Miller's granddaughters, aged +six and seven--quaintly and engagingly formal in their naive +astonishment at finding themselves quite naked. There was a fine sketch +of Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him +the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his +dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter +picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and +Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety +drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud. + +For in Duane's work, from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward +something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the +canvases of the old masters--which survives mould and age, the opacity +of varnish, and the well-intentioned maltreatment of unbaked curators. + +There was no mystery about it; he prepared his canvas with white-lead, +gave it a long sun-bath, modelled in bone-black and an earth-red, gave +it another bath in the sun, and then glazed. This, a choice of +permanent colours, and oil as a medium, was the mechanical technique. + +Standing there, thoughts remote, idly sorting and re-sorting his +brushes, he heard the birds singing on the forest's edge, heard the wind +in the pines blowing, with the sound of flowing water, felt the warmth +of the sun, breathed the mounting freshness from the fields. Life was +still very, very young; it had only begun since love had come, and that +was yesterday. + +And as he stood there, happy, a trifle awed as he began to understand +what life might hold for him, there came quick steps on the stair, a +knock, her voice outside his door: + +"Duane! May I come in?" + +He sprang to the door; she stepped inside, breathing rapidly, delicately +flushed from her haste. + +"I couldn't stand it any longer, so I left Scott to scrape and bow and +pull his forelock. I've got to go back in a few minutes. Are you glad to +see me?" + +He took her in his arms. + +"Dearest, dearest!" she murmured, looking at him with all her heart in +her brown eyes. + +So they stood for a little while, her mouth and body acquiescent to his +embrace. + +"Such a long, long time since I saw you. Nearly half an hour," he said. + +"Yes." She drew away a little: + +"Do you know," she said, looking about her, over his shoulder, "I have +never been here since you took it as a studio." + +She caught a glimpse of the picture on the easel, freed herself, and, +retaining his hand in both of hers, gazed curiously at Rosalie's +portrait. + +"How perfectly charming!" she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of +exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and +disrespectfully jeer at our mincing friends, Boucher, Nattier, _et +al._?" + +"I knew you'd understand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Oh, you wonderful +little thing--you darling!" He caught her to him again, but she twisted +away and tucked one arm under his: + +"Don't, Duane; I want to see these things. What a perfectly dear study +of Miller's kiddies! Oh, it is too lovable, too adorable! You wouldn't +sell that--would you?" + +"Of course not; it's yours, Geraldine." + +After a moment she looked up at him: + +"Ours?" she asked; but the smile faded once more from eyes and lips; she +suffered him to lead her from canvas to canvas, approved them or +remained silent, and presently turned and glanced toward the small iron +bed. Manner and gaze had become distrait. + +"You think this will be comfortable, Duane?" she inquired listlessly. + +"Perfectly," he said. + +She disengaged her hand from his, walked over to the lounge, turned, and +signed for him to seat himself. Then she dropped to her knees and +settled down on the rug at his feet, laying her soft cheek against his +arm. + +"I have some things to tell you," she said in a low voice. + +"Very serious things?" he asked, smiling. + +"Very." + +"All right; I am listening." + +"Very serious things," she repeated, gazing through the window, where +green tree-tops swayed in the breezy sunlight; and she pressed her +cheek closer to his arm. + +"I have not been very--good," she said. + +He looked at her, suppressed the smile that twitched at his mouth, and +waited. + +"I wish I could give myself to you as clean and sweet and untainted +as--as you deserve.... I can't; and before we go any further I must tell +you----" + +"Why, you blessed child," he exclaimed, half laughing, half serious. +"You are not going to confess to me, are you?" + +"Duane, I've got to tell you everything. I couldn't rest unless I was +perfectly honest with you." + +"But, dear," he said, a trifle dismayed, "such confidences are not +necessary. Nor am I fit to hear your list of innocent transgressions----" + +"Oh, they are not very innocent. Let me tell you; let me cleanse myself +as much as I can. I don't want to have any secrets from you, Duane. I +want to go to you as guiltless as confession can make me. I want to +begin clean. Let me tell you. Couldn't you let me tell you, Duane?" + +"And I, dear? Do--do you expect me to tell _you_? Do you expect me to do +as you do?" + +She looked up at him surprised; she had expected it. Something in his +face warned her of her own ignorance. + +"I don't know very much about men, Duane. Are there things you cannot +say to me?" + +"One or two, dear." + +"Do you mean until after we are married?" + +"Not even then. There is no use in your knowing." + +She had never considered that, either. + +"But _ought_ I to know, Duane?" + +"No," he said miserably, "you ought not." + +She sat upright for a few seconds longer, gazing thoughtfully at space, +then pressed her pale face against his knee again in silent faith and +confidence. + +"Anyway, I know you will be fair to me in your own way," she said. +"There is only one way that I know how to be fair to you. Listen." + +And in a shamed voice she forced herself to recite her list of sins; +repeating them as she had confessed them to Kathleen. She told him +everything; her silly and common imprudence with Dysart, which, she +believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she +had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting +and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her +secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making +self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told +him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some +small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All +that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an +average man, listened, head bowed over her fragrant hair, adoring her, +wretched in heart and soul with the heavy knowledge of all he dare not +tell or forget or cleanse from him, kneeling repentant, in the sanctuary +of her love and confidence. + +She told him everything--sins of omission, childish depravities, made +real only by the decalogue. Of indolence, selfishness, unkindness, she +accused herself; strove to count the times when she had yielded to +temptation. + +He was reading the first human heart he had ever known--a heart still +strangely untainted, amid a society where innocence was the exception, +doubtful wisdom the rule, and where curiosity was seldom left very long +in doubt. + +His hands fell over hers as her voice ceased, but he did not speak. + +She waited a little while, then, with a slight nestling movement, turned +and hid her face on his knees. + +"With God's help," she whispered, "I will subdue what threatens me. But +I am afraid of it! Oh, Duane, I am afraid." + +He managed to steady his voice. + +"What is it, darling, that seems to tempt you," he asked; "is it the +taste--the effect?" + +"The--effect. If I could only forget it--but I can't help thinking about +it--I suppose just because it's forbidden--For days, sometimes, there is +not the slightest desire; then something stirs it up in me, begins to +annoy me; or the desire comes sometimes when I am excited or very happy, +or very miserable. There seems to be some degraded instinct in me that +seeks for it whenever my emotions are aroused.... I must be honest with +you; I--I feel that way _now_--because, I suppose, I am a little +excited." + +He raised her and took her in his arms. + +"But you won't, will you? Simply tell me that you won't." + +She looked at him, appalled by her own hesitation. Was it possible, +after the words she had just uttered, the exaltation of confession +still thrilling her, that she could hesitate? Was it morbid +over-conscientiousness in the horror of a broken promise to him that +struck her silent? + +"Say it, Geraldine." + +"Oh, Duane! I've said it so often to Kathleen and myself! Let me +promise myself again--and keep my word. Let me try that way, dear, +before I--I promise you?" + +There was a feverish colour in her face; she spoke rapidly, like one who +temporises, trying to convince others and over-ride the inward voice; +her slender hands were restless on his shoulders, her eyes lowered, +avoiding his. + +"Perhaps if you and Kathleen, and I, myself, were not so afraid--perhaps +if I were not forbidden--if I had your confidence and my own that I +would not abuse my liberty, it might be easier to refrain. Shall we try +it that way, Duane?" + +"Do you think it best?" + +"I think--I might try that way. Dear, I have so much to sustain me +now--so much more at stake! Because there is the dread of losing +you--for, Duane, until I am mistress of myself, I will never, never +marry you--and do you suppose I am going to risk our happiness? Only +leave me free, dear; don't attempt to wall me in at first, and I will +surely find my way." + +She sprang up, trying to smile, hesitated, then slowly came back to +where he was standing and put her arms around his neck. + +"Good-bye until luncheon," she said. "I must go back to my neglected +guests--I am going to run all the way as fast as my legs can carry me! +Kathleen will be dreadfully mortified. Do you love me?... Even after my +horrid confessions?... Oh, you darling!... Now that you know the very +worst, I begin to feel as clean and fresh as though I had just stepped +from the bath.... And I _will_ try to be what you would have me, +dear.... Because I am quite crazy about you--oh, completely mad!" + +She bent impulsively and kissed his hands, freed herself with a +breathless laugh, and turned and fled. + +For a long time her lover stood there, motionless, downcast, clenched +fists in his pockets, face to face with the past. And that which lay +behind him was that which lies behind what is commonly known to the +world as the average man. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +DUSK + + +The Masked Dance was to begin at ten that evening; for that reason +dinner had been served early at scores of small tables on the terrace, a +hilarious and topsy-turvy, but somewhat rapid affair, because everybody +required time for dressing, and already throughout the house maids and +valets were scurrying around, unpacking masks and wigs and dainty +costumes for the adorning of the guests at Roya-Neh. + +Toward nine o'clock the bustle and confusion became distracting; +corridors were haunted by graceful flitting figures in various stages of +deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the +same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered +laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious +complications of intimate attire. + +On the men's side of the house there was less hubbub and some quiet +swearing; much splashing in tubs, much cigarette smoke. Men entered each +other's rooms, half-clad in satin breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled +shirts, asking a helping hand in tying queue ribbons or adjusting +stocks, and lingered to smoke and jest and gossip, and jeer at one +another's finery, or to listen to the town news from those week-enders +recently arrived from the city. + +The talk was money, summer shows, and club gossip, but financial rumours +ruled. + +Young Ellis, in pale blue silk and wig, perched airily, on a table, +became gloomily prophetic concerning the steady retirement of capital +from philanthropic enterprises hatched in Wall Street; Peter Tappan saw +in the endlessly sagging market dire disaster for the future digestions +of wealthy owners of undistributed securities. + +"Marble columns and gold ceilings don't make a trust company," he +sneered. "There are a few billionaire gamblers from the West who seem to +think Wall Street is Coney Island. There'll be a shindy, don't make any +mistake; we're going to have one hell of a time; but when it's over the +corpses will all be shipped--ahem!--west." + +Several men laughed uneasily; one or two old line trust companies were +mentioned; then somebody spoke of the Minnisink, lately taken over by +the Algonquin. + +Duane lighted a cigarette and, watching the match still burning, said: + +"Dysart is a director. You can't ask for any more conservative citizen +than Dysart, can you?" + +Several men looked around for Dysart, but he had stepped out of the +room. + +Ellis said, after a silence: + +"That gambling outfit from the West has bedevilled one or two good +citizens in Gotham town." + +Dr. Bailey shrugged his big, fat shoulders. + +"It's no secret, I suppose, that the Minnisink crowd is being talked +about," he grunted. + +Ellis said in a low but perfectly distinct voice: + +"Neither is it any secret that Jack Dysart has been hit hard in National +Ice." + +Peter Tappan slipped from his seat on the table and threw away his +cigarette: + +"One thing is sure as soubrettes," he observed; "the Clearing House +means to get rid of certain false prophets. The game law is off +prophets--in the fall. There'll be some good gunning--under the laws of +New Jersey." + +"I hope they'll be careful not to injure any marble columns or ruin the +gold-leaf on the ceilings," sneered Ellis. "Come on, some of you +fellows, and fix the buckle in this cursed stock of mine." + +"I thought fixing stocks was rather in your own line," said Duane to the +foxy-visaged and celebrated manipulator, who joined very heartily in the +general and unscrupulous laugh. + +A moment later, Dysart, who had heard every word from the doorway, +walked silently back to his own room and sat down, resting his temples +between his closed fists. + +The well-cut head was already silvery gray at the temples; one month had +done it. When animated, his features still appeared firm and of good +colour; relaxed, they were loose and pallid, and around the mouth fine +lines appeared. Often a man's hands indicate his age, and his betrayed +him, giving the lie to his lithe, straight, graceful figure. The man had +aged amazingly in a month or two. + +Matters were not going very well with him. For one thing, the Half-Moon +Trust Company had finally terminated all dealings with the gorgeous +marble-pillared temple of high finance of which he was a director. For +another, he had met the men of the West, and for them he had done things +which he did not always care to think about. For another, money was +becoming disturbingly scarce, and the time was already past for selling +securities. + +During the last year he had been vaguely aware of some occult hostility +to himself and his enterprises--not the normal hostility of business +aggression--but something indefinable--merely negative at first, then +more disturbing, sinister, foreboding; something in the very air to +which he was growing more sensitive every day. + +By all laws of finance, by all signs and omens, a serious reaction from +the saturnalia of the last few years was already over-due. He had felt +it, without alarm at first, for the men of the West laughed him to scorn +and refused to shorten sail. They still refused. Perhaps they could not. +One thing was certain: he could scarcely manage to take in a single reef +on his own account. He was beginning to realise that the men with whom +rumour was busy were men marked down by their letters; and they either +would not or could not aid him in shortening sail. + +For a month, now, under his bland and graceful learning among the +intimates of his set, Dysart had been slowly but steadily going to +pieces. At such moments as this it showed on the surface. It showed now +in his loose jaw and flaccid cheeks; in the stare of the quenched eyes. + +He was going to pieces, and he was aware of it. For one thing, he +recognised the physical change setting in; for another, his cool, +selfish, self-centred equanimity was being broken down; the rigorous +bodily regime from which he had never heretofore swerved and which alone +enabled him to perform the exacting social duties expected of him, he +had recently neglected. He felt the impending bodily demoralisation, +the threatened mental disintegration; he suspected its symptoms in a +new nervous irritability, in lapses of self-command, in unaccountable +excesses utterly foreign to his habitual self-control. + +Dissolute heretofore only in the negative form, whatever it was that +impended threatening him, seemed also to be driving him into an utter +and monstrous lack of caution, and--God alone knew how--he had at last +done the one thing that he never dreamed of doing. And the knowledge of +it, and the fear of it, bit deeper into his shallow soul every hour of +the day and night. And over all, vague, indefinite, hung something that +menaced all that he cared for most on earth, held most sacred--his +social position in the Borough of Manhattan and his father's pride in +him and it. + + * * * * * + +After a while he stood up in his pale blue silken costume of that +mincing, smirking century which valued a straight back and a well-turned +leg, and very slowly, as though tired, he walked to the door separating +his wife's dressing-room from his own. + +"May I come in?" he asked. + +A maid opened the door, saying that Mrs. Dysart had gone to Miss Quest's +room to have her hair powdered. He seated himself; the maid retired. + +For a while he sat there, absently playing with his gilt-hilted sword, +sombre-eyed, preoccupied, listening to the distant joyous tumult in the +house, until quick, light steps and a breezy flurry of satin at the door +announced his wife's return. + +"Oh," she said coolly; "you?" + +That was her greeting; his was a briefer nod. + +She went to her mirror and studied her face, trying a patch here, a +hint of vermilion there, touching up brow and lashes and the sweet, +curling corners of her mouth. + +"Well?" she inquired, over her shoulder, insolently. + +He got up out of the chair, shut the door, and returned to his seat +again. + +"Have you made up your mind about the _D_ and _P_ securities?" he asked. + +"I told you I'd let you know when I came to any conclusion," she replied +drily. + +"Yes, I know what you said, Rosalie. But the time is shortening. I've +got to meet certain awkward obligations----" + +"So you intimated before." + +He nodded and went on amiably: "All I ask of you is to deposit those +securities with us for a few months. They are as safe with us as they +are with the Half-Moon. Do you think I'd let you do it if I were not +certain?" + +She turned and scrutinised him insultingly: + +"I don't know," she said, "how many kinds of treachery you are capable +of." + +"What do you mean?" + +"What I say. Frankly, I don't know what you are capable of doing with my +money. If I can judge by what you've done with my married life, I +scarcely feel inclined to confide in you financially." + +"There is no use in going over that again," he said patiently. "We +differ little from ordinary people, I fancy. I think our house is as +united as the usual New York domicile. The main thing is to keep it so. +And in a time of some slight apprehension and financial +uneasiness--perhaps even of possible future stress--you and I, for our +own sakes, should stand firmly together to weather any possible gale." + +"I think I am able to weather whatever I am responsible for," she said. +"If you do the same, we can get on as well as we ever have." + +"I don't believe you understand," he persisted, forcing a patient smile. +"All business in the world is conducted upon borrowed capital. I +merely----" + +"Do you need more capital?" she inquired, so bluntly that he winced. + +"Yes, for a few months. I may require a little additional +collateral----" + +"Why don't you borrow it, then?" + +"There is no necessity if you will temporarily transfer----" + +"_Can_ you borrow it? Or is the ice in your trust company too rotten to +stand the strain?" + +He flushed darkly and the temper began to escape in his voice: + +"Has anybody hinted that I couldn't? Have you been discussing my +personal business affairs with any of the pups whom you drag about at +your heels? No matter what your personal attitude toward me may be, only +a fool would undermine the very house that----" + +"I don't believe you understand, Jack," she said quietly; "I care +absolutely nothing about your house." + +"Well, you care about your own social status, I suppose!" he retorted +sharply. + +"Not very much." + +"That's an imbecile thing to say!" + +"Is it?" She turned to the mirror and touched her powdered hair lightly +with both hands, and continued speaking with her back turned toward him: + +"I married you for love. Remember that. There was even something of it +alive in the roots, I think, until within a few days--in spite of what +you are, what you have done to me. Now the thing is dead. I can tell you +when it died, if you like." + +And as he said nothing: + +"It died when I came in late one evening, and, passing my corridor and a +certain locked door, I heard a young girl sobbing. Then it died." + +She turned on him, contemptuously indifferent, and surveyed him at her +leisure: + +"Your conduct to me has been such as to deliberately incite me to evil. +Your attitude has been a constant occult force, driving me toward it. By +the life you have led, and compelled me to lead, you have virtually set +a premium upon my infidelity. What you may have done, I don't know; what +you have done, even recently, I am not sure of. But I know this: you +took my life and made a parody of it. I never lived; I have been tempted +to. If the opportunity comes, I will." + +Dysart rose, his face red and distorted: + +"I thought young Mallett had taught you to live pretty rapidly!" he +said. + +"No," she replied, "you only thought other people thought so. That is +why you resented it. Your jealousy is of that sort--you don't care what +I am, but you do care what the world thinks I am. And that is all there +ever was to you--all there ever will be: desperate devotion to your +wretched little social status, which includes sufficient money and a +chaste wife to make it secure." + +She laughed; fastened a gardenia in her hair: + +"I don't know about your money, and I don't care. As for your wife, she +will remain chaste as long as it suits her, and not one fraction of a +second longer." + +"Are you crazy?" he demanded. + +"Why, it does seem crazy to you, I suppose--that a woman should have no +regard for the sacredness of your social status. I have no regard for +it. As for your honour"--she laughed unpleasantly--"I've never had it to +guard, Jack. And I'll be responsible for my own, and the tarnishing of +it. I think that is all I have to say." + +She walked leisurely toward the door, passing him with a civil nod of +dismissal, and left him standing there in his flower-embroidered +court-dress, the electric light shining full on the thin gray hair at +his temples. + +In the corridor she met Naida, charming in her blossom-embroidered +panniers; and she took both her hands and kissed her, saying: + +"Perhaps you won't care to have me caress you some day, so I'll take +this opportunity, dear. Where is your brother?" + +"Duane is dressing," she said. "What did you mean by my not wishing to +kiss you some day?" + +"Nothing, silly." And she passed on, turned to the right, and met Sylvia +Quest, looking very frail and delicate in her bath-robe and powdered +hair. The girl passed her with the same timid, almost embarrassed little +inclination with which she now invariably greeted her, and Rosalie +turned and caught her, turning her around with a laugh. "What is the +matter, dear?" + +"M-matter?" stammered Sylvia, trembling under the reaction. + +"Yes. You are not very friendly, and I've always liked you. Have I +offended you, Sylvia?" + +She was looking smilingly straight into the blue eyes. + +"No--oh, no!" said the girl hastily. "How can you think that, Mrs. +Dysart?" + +"Then I don't think it," replied Rosalie, laughing. "You are a trifle +pale, dear. Touch up your lips a bit. It's very Louis XVI. See mine?... +Will you kiss me, Sylvia?" + +Again a strange look flickered in the girl's eyes; Rosalie kissed her +gently; she had turned very white. + +"What is your costume?" asked Mrs. Dysart. + +"Flame colour and gold." + +"Hell's own combination, dear," laughed Rosalie. "You will make an +exquisite little demon shepherdess." + +And she went on, smiling back at the girl in friendly fashion, then +turned and lightly descended the stairway, snapping on her loup-mask +before the jolly crowd below could identify her. + +Masked figures here and there detained her, addressing her in disguised +voices, but she eluded them, slipped through the throngs on terrace and +lawn, ran down the western slope and entered the rose-garden. A man in +mask and violet-gray court costume rose from a marble seat under the +pergola and advanced toward her, the palm of his left hand carelessly +balanced on his gilded hilt. + +"So you did get my note, Duane?" she said, laying her pretty hand on his +arm. + +"I certainly did. What can I do for you, Rosalie?" + +"I don't know. Shall we sit here a moment?" + +He laughed, but continued standing after she was seated. + +The air was heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks +and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and +very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring +and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and +everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out against +the foliage. + +The woman beside him sat with masked head bent and slightly turned from +him; her restless hands worried her fan; her satin-shod feet were +crossed and recrossed. + +"What is the matter?" he asked. + +"Life. It's all so very wrong." + +"Oh," he said, smiling, "so it's life that is amiss, not we!" + +"I suppose we are.... I suppose I am. But, Duane"--she turned and looked +at him--"I haven't had much of a chance yet--to go very right or very +wrong." + +"You've had chances enough for the latter," he said with an unpleasant +laugh. "In this sweet coterie we inhabit, there's always that chance." + +"There are good women in it, good wives. Your sister is in it." + +"Yes, and I mean to take her out," said Duane grimly. "Do you think I +want Naida to marry some money-fattened pup in this set?" + +"Where can you take her?" + +"Where I'm going in future myself--among people whose brains are not as +obsolete as my appendix; where there still exist standards and +old-fashioned things like principles and religion, and a healthy terror +of the Decalogue!" + +"Is anybody really still afraid of the Decalogue?" she asked curiously. + +"Even we are, but some of us are more afraid of ennui. Fire and fear are +the greatest purifiers in the world; it's fear of some sort or other, +and only fear, that keeps the world as decent as it is." + +"I'm not afraid," she said, playing with her fan. "I'm only afraid of +dying before I have lived at all." + +"What do you call living?" + +"Being loved," she said, and looked up at him. + +"You poor little thing!" he said, only partly in earnest. + +"Yes, I'm sorry for the girl I was.... I was rather a nice girl, Duane. +You remember me before I married." + +"Yes, I do. You were a corker. You are still." + +She nodded: "Yes, outwardly. Within is--nothing. I am very, very old; +very tired." + +He said no more. She sat listlessly watching the dusk-moths hovering +among the pinks. Far away in the darkness rockets were rising, spraying +the sky with fire; faint strains of music came from the forest. + +"Their Fete Galante has begun," she said. "Am I detaining you too long, +Duane?" + +"No." + +She smiled: "It is rather amusing," she observed, "my coming to you for +my morals--to you, Duane, who were once supposed to possess so few." + +"Never mind what I possess," he said, irritated. "What sort of advice do +you expect?" + +"Why, moral advice, of course." + +"Oh! Are you on the verge of demoralisation?" + +"I don't know. Am I?... There is a man----" + +"Of course," he said, coming as near a sneer as he was capable. "I know +what you've done. You've nearly twisted poor Grandcourt's head off his +honest neck. If you want to know what I think of it, it's an abominable +thing to do. Why, anybody can see that the man is in love with you, and +desperately unhappy already, I told you to let him alone. You promised, +too." + +He spoke rapidly, sharply; she bent her fair head in silence until he +ended. + +"May I defend myself?" she asked. + +"Of course." + +"Then--I did not mean to make him care for me." + +"You all say that." + +"Yes; we are not always as innocent as I happen to be this time. I +really did not try, did not think, that he was taking a little +unaccustomed kindness on my part so seriously ... I overdid it; I'd been +beastly to him--most women are rude to Delancy Grandcourt, somehow or +other. I always was. And one day--that day in the forest--somehow +something he said opened my eyes--hurt me.... And women are fools to +believe him one. Why, Duane, he's every inch a man--high-minded, +sensitive, proud, generous, forbearing." + +Duane turned and stared at her; and to her annoyance the blood mounted +to her cheeks, but she went on: + +"Of course he has affected me. I don't know how it might have been with +me if I were not so--so utterly starved." + +"You mean to say you are beginning to care for Delancy Grandcourt?" + +"Care? Yes--in a perfectly nice way----" + +"And otherwise?" + +"I--don't know. I am honest with you, Duane; I don't know. A--a little +devotion of that kind"--she tried to laugh--"goes to my head, perhaps. +I've been so long without it.... I don't know. And I came here to tell +you. I came here to ask you what I ought to do." + +"Good Lord!" said Duane, "do you already care enough for him to worry +about your effect on him?" + +"I--do not wish him to be unhappy." + +"Oh. But you are willing to be unhappy in order to save him any +uneasiness. See here, Rosalie, you'd better pull up sharp." + +"Had I?" + +"Certainly," he said brutally. "Not many days ago you were adrift. Don't +cut your cable again." + +A vivid colour mounted to her temples: + +"That is all over," she said. "Have I not come to you again in spite of +the folly that sent me drifting to you before? And can I pay you a truer +compliment, Duane, than to ask the hospitality of your forbearance and +the shelter of your friendship?" + +"You _are_ a trump, Rosalie," he said, after a moment's scowling. +"You're all right.... I don't know what to say.... If it's going to give +you a little happiness to care for this man----" + +"But what will it do to him, Duane?" + +"It ought to do him good if such a girl as you gives him all of herself +that she decently can. I don't know whether I'm right or wrong!" he +added almost angrily. "Confound it! there seems no end to conjugal +infelicity around us these days. I don't know where the line is--how +close to the danger mark an unhappy woman may drift and do no harm to +anybody. All I know is that I'm sorry--terribly sorry for you. You're a +corker." + +"Thanks," she said with a faint smile. "Do you think Delancy may safely +agree with you without danger to his peace of mind?" + +"Why not? After all, you're entitled to lawful happiness. So is he.... +Only----" + +"Only--what?" + +"I've never seen it succeed." + +"Seen what succeed?" + +"What is popularly known as the platonic." + +"Oh, this isn't _that_," she said naively. "He's rather in love already, +and I'm quite sure I could be if I--I let myself." + +Duane groaned. + +"Don't come to me asking what to do, then," he said impatiently, +"because I know what you ought to do and I don't know what I'd do under +the circumstances. You know as well as I do where the danger mark is. +Don't you?" + +"I--suspect." + +"Well, then----" + +"Oh, we haven't reached it yet," she said innocently. + +Her honesty appalled him, and he got up and began to pace the gravel +walk. + +"Do you intend to cross it?" he asked, halting abruptly. + +"No, I don't.... I don't want to.... Do you think there is any fear of +it?" + +"My Lord!" he said in despair, "you talk like a child. I'm trying to +realise that you women--some of you who appear so primed with doubtful, +worldly wisdom--are practically as innocent as the day you married." + +"I don't know very much about some things, Duane." + +"I notice that," he said grimly. + +She said very gravely: "This is the first time I have ever come very +near caring for a man.... I mean since I married." And she rose and +glanced toward the forest. + +They stood together for a moment, listening to the distant music, then, +without speaking, turned and walked toward the distant flare of light +which threw great trees into tangled and grotesque silhouette. + +"Tales of the Geneii," she murmured, fastening her loup; "Fate is the +Sultan. Pray God nobody cuts my head off." + +"You are much too amusing," he said as, side by side, they moved +silently on through the pale starlight, like errant phantoms of a +vanished age, and no further word was said between them, nor did they +look at each other again until, ahead, the road turned silvery under the +rays of the Lodge acetylenes, and beyond, the first cluster of brilliant +lanterns gleamed among the trees. + +"And here we separate," she said. "Good-bye," holding out her hand. "It +is my first rendezvous. Wish me a little happiness, please." + +"Happiness and--good sense," he said, smiling. He retained her hand for +a second, let it go and, stepping back, saluted her gaily as she passed +before him into the blaze of light. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +FETE GALANTE + + +The forest, in every direction, was strung with lighted lanterns; tall +torches burning edged the Gray Water, and every flame rippled straight +upward in the still air. + +Through the dark, mid-summer woodland music of violin, viola, and +clarionet rang out, and the laughter and jolly uproar of the dancers +swelled and ebbed, with now and then sudden intervals of silence slowly +filled by the far noise of some unseen stream rushing westward under the +stars. + +Glade, greensward, forest, aisles, and the sylvan dancing floor, bounded +by garlanded and beribboned pillars, swarmed with a gay company. +Torchlight painted strange high lights on silken masks, touching with +subdued sparkles the eyes behind the slanting eye-slits; half a thousand +lanterns threw an orange radiance across the glade, bathing the whirling +throngs of dancers, glimmering on gilded braid and sword hilt, on +powdered hair, on fresh young faces laughing behind their masks; on +white shoulders and jewelled throats, on fan and brooch and spur and +lacquered heel. There was a scent of old-time perfume in the air, and, +as Duane adjusted his mask and drew near, he saw that sets were already +forming for the minuet. + +He recognised Dysart, glorious in silk and powder, perfectly in his +element, and doing his part with eighteenth-century elaboration; +Kathleen, tres grande-dame, almost too exquisitely real for counterfeit; +Delancy Grandcourt, very red in the face under his mask, wig slightly +awry, conscientiously behaving as nearly like a masked gentleman of the +period as he knew how; his sister Naida, sweet and gracious; Scott, +masked and also spectacled, grotesque and preoccupied, casting patient +glances toward the dusky solitudes that he much preferred, and from +whence a distant owl fluted at intervals, inviting his investigations. + +And there were the Pink 'uns, too, easily identified, having all sorts +of a good time with a pair of maskers resembling Doucette Landon and +Peter Tappan; and there in powder, paint, and patch capered the +Beekmans, Ellises, and Montrosses--all the clans of the great and +near-great of the country-side, gathering to join the eternal hunt for +happiness where already the clarionets were sounding "Stole Away." + +For the quarry in that hunt is a spectre; sighted, it steals away; and +if one remains very, very still and listens, one may hear, far and +faint, the undertone of phantom horns mocking the field that rides so +gallantly. + +"Stole away," whispered Duane in Kathleen's ear, as he paused beside +her; and she seemed to know what he meant, for she nodded, smiling: + +"You mean that what we hunt is doomed to die when we ride it down?" + +"Let us be in at the death, anyway," he said. "Kathleen, you're charming +and masked to perfection. It's only that white skin of yours that +betrays you; it always looks as though it were fragrant. Is that +Geraldine surrounded three deep--over there under that oak-tree?" + +"Yes; why are you so late, Duane? And I haven't seen Rosalie, either." + +He did not care to enlighten her, but stood laughing and twirling his +sword-knot and looking across the glittering throng, where a daintily +masked young girl stood defending herself with fan and bouquet against +the persistence of her gallants. Then he shook out the lace at his +gilded cuffs, dropped one palm on his sword-hilt, saluted Kathleen's +finger-tips with graceful precision, and sauntered toward Geraldine, +dusting his nose with his filmy handkerchief--a most convincing replica +of the bland epoch he impersonated. + +As for Geraldine, she was certainly a very lovely incarnation of that +self-satisfied and frivolous century; her success had already excited +her a little; men seemed suddenly to have gone quite mad about her; and +this and her own beauty were taking effect on her, producing an effect +the more vivid, perhaps, because it was a reaction from the perplexities +and tears of yesterday and the passionate tension of the morning. + +Within her breast the sense of impending pleasure stirred and fluttered +deliciously with every breath of music; the confused happiness of being +in love, the relief in relaxation from a sterner problem, the noisy +carnival surging, rioting around her, men crowding about her, eager in +admiration and rivalry, the knowledge of her own loveliness--all these +set the warm blood racing through every vein, and tinted lip and cheek +with a colour in brilliant contrast to the velvety masked eyes and the +snow of the slender neck. + +Through the gay tumult which rang ceaselessly around her, where she +stood, plying her painted fan, her own laughter sounded at intervals, +distinct in its refreshing purity, for it had always that crystalline +quality under a caressing softness; but Duane, who had advanced now to +the outer edge of the circle, detected in her voice no hint of that +thrilling undertone which he had known, which he alone among men had +ever awakened. Her gaiety was careless, irresponsible, childlike in its +clarity; under her crescent mask the smiles on her smooth young face +dawned and died out, brief as sun-spots flashing over snow. Briefer +intervals of apparent detachment from everything succeeded them; a +distrait survey of the lantern-lit dancers, a preoccupied glance at the +man speaking to her, a lifting of the delicate eyebrows in smiling +preoccupation. But always behind the black half-mask her eyes wandered +throughout the throng as though seeking something hidden; and on her +vivid lips the smile became fixed. + +Whether or not she had seen him, Duane could not tell, but presently, as +he forced a path toward her, she stirred, closed her fan, took a step +forward, head a trifle lowered; and right of way was given her, as she +moved slowly through the cluster of men, shaking her head in vexation to +the whispered importunities murmured in her ear, answering each +according to his folly--this man with a laugh, that with a gesture of +hand or shoulder, but never turning to reply, never staying her feet +until, passing close to Duane, and not even looking at him: + +"Where on earth have you been, Duane?" + +"How did you know me?" he said, laughing; "you haven't even looked at me +yet." + +"On peut voir sans regarder, Monsieur. Nous autres demoiselles, nous +voyons tres bien, tres bien ... et nous ne regardons jamais." + +[Illustration: "She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous +courtesy"] + +She had paused, still not looking directly at him. Then she lifted her +head. + +"Everybody has asked me to dance; I've said yes to everybody, but I've +waited for you," she said. "It will be that way all my life, I think." + +"It has been that way with me, too," he said gaily. "Why should we wait +any more?" + +"Why are you so late?" she asked. She had missed Rosalie, too, but did +not say so. + +"I am rather late," he admitted carelessly; "can you give me this +dance?" + +She stepped nearer, turning her shoulder to the anxious lingerers, who +involuntarily stepped back, leaving a cleared space around them. + +"Make me your very best bow," she whispered, "and take me. I've promised +a dozen men, but it doesn't matter." + +He said in a low voice, "You darling!" and made her a very wonderful +bow, and she dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous +courtesy, and, rising, laid her fingers on his embroidered sleeve. Then +turning, head held erect, and with a certain sweet insolence in the +droop of her white lids, she looked at the men around her. + +Gray said in a low voice to Dysart: "That's as much as to admit that +they're engaged, isn't it? When a girl doesn't give a hoot what she does +to other men, she's nailed, isn't she?" + +Dysart did not answer; Rosalie, passing on Grandcourt's arm, caught the +words and turned swiftly, looking over her shoulder at Geraldine. + +But Geraldine and Duane had already forgotten the outer world; around +them the music swelled; laughter and voice grew indistinct, receding, +blending in the vague tumult of violins. They gazed upon each other +with vast content. + +"As a matter of fact," said Duane, "I don't remember very well how to +dance a minuet. I only wanted to be with you. We'll sit it out if you're +afraid I'll make a holy show of you." + +"Oh, dear," said Geraldine in pretty distress, "and I let you beguile me +when I'm dying to do this minuet. Duane, you _must_ try to remember! +_Everybody_ will be watching us." And as her quick ear caught the +preliminary bars of the ancient and stately measure: + +"It's the Menuet d'Exaudet," she said hurriedly; "listen, I'll instruct +you as we move; I'll sing it under my breath to the air of the violins," +and, her hand in his, she took the first slow, dainty step in the +old-time dance, humming the words as they moved forward: + + "Gravement + Noblement + On s'avance; + On fait trois pas de cote + Deux battus, un jete + Sans rompre la cadence----" + +Then whispered, smiling: + +"You are quite perfect, Duane; keep your head level, dear: + + "Chassez + Rechassez + En mesure! + Saluez-- + Gravement + Noblement + On s'avance + Sans rompre la cadence. + +"Quite perfect, my handsome cavalier! Oh, we are doing it most +beautifully"--with a deep, sweeping reverence; then rising, as he lifted +her finger-tips: "You are stealing the rest of my heart," she said. + +"Our betrothal dance," he whispered. "Shall it be so, dear?" + +They looked at each other as though they stood there alone; the lovely +old air of the Menuet d'Exaudet seemed to exhale from the tremulous +violins like perfume floating through the woods; figures of masked +dancers passed and repassed them through the orange-tinted glow; there +came a vast rustle of silk, a breezy murmur, the scented wind from +opening fans, the rattle of swords, and the Menuet d'Exaudet ended with +a dull roll of kettle-drums. + +A few minutes later he had her in his arms in a deliciously wild waltz, +a swinging, irresponsible, gipsy-like thing which set the blood coursing +and pulses galloping. + +Every succeeding dance she gave to him. Now and then a tiny cloud of +powder-dust floated from her hair; a ribbon from her shoulder-knot +whipped his face; her breath touched his lips; her voice, at intervals, +thrilled and caressed his ears, a soft, breathless voice, which mounting +exaltation had made unsteadily sweet. + +"You know--dear--I'm dancing every dance with you--in the teeth of +decency, the face of every convention, and defiance of every law of +hospitality. I belong to my guests." + +And again: + +"Do you know, Duane, there's a sort of a delicious madness coming over +me. I'm all trembling under my skin with the overwhelming happiness of +it all. I tell you it's intoxicating me because I don't know how to +endure it." + +He caught fire at her emotion; her palm was burning in his, her breath +came irregularly, lips and cheeks were aflame, as they came to a +breathless halt in the torchlight. + +"Dear," she faltered, "I simply _must_ be decent to my guests.... I'm +dying to dance with you again, but I can't be so rude.... Oh, goodness! +here they come, hordes of them. I'll give them a dance or two--anybody +who speaks first, and then you'll come and find me, won't you?... Isn't +that enough to give them--two or three dances? Isn't that doing my duty +as chatelaine sufficiently?" + +"Don't give them any," he said with conviction. "They'll know we're +engaged if you don't----" + +"Oh, Duane! We are only--only provisionally engaged," she said. "I am +only on probation, dear. You know it can't be announced until I--I'm fit +to marry you----" + +"What nonsense!" he interrupted, almost savagely. "You're winning out; +and even if you are not, I'll marry you, anyway, and make you win!" + +"We have talked that over----" + +"Yes, and it is settled!" + +"No, Duane----" + +"I tell you it is!" + +"No. Hush! Somebody might overhear us. Quick, dear, here comes Bunny and +Reggie Wye and Peter Tappan, all mad as hatters. I've behaved abominably +to them! Will you find me after the third dance? Very well; tell me you +love me then--whisper it, quick!... Ah-h! Moi aussi, Monsieur. And, +remember, after the third dance!" + +She turned slowly from him to confront an aggrieved group of masked +young men, who came up very much hurt, clamouring for justice, +explaining volubly that it was up to her to keep her engagements and +dance with somebody besides Duane Mallett. + +"Mon Dieu, Messieurs, je ne demanderais pas mieux," she said gaily. "Why +didn't somebody ask me before?" + +"You promised us each a dance," retorted Tappan sulkily, "but you never +made good. I'll take mine now if you don't mind----" + +"I'm down first!" insisted the Pink 'un. + +They squabbled over her furiously; Bunbury Gray got her; she swung away +into a waltz on his arm, glancing backward at Duane, who watched her +until she disappeared in the whirl of dancers. Then he strolled to the +edge of the lantern-lit glade, stood for a moment looking absently at +the shadowy woods beyond, and presently sauntered into the luminous +dusk, which became darker and more opaque as he left the glare of the +glade behind. + +Here and there fantastic figures loomed, moving slowly, two and two, +under the fairy foliage; on the Gray Water canoes strung with gaudy +paper lanterns drifted; clouds of red fire rolled rosy and vaporous +along the water's edge; and in the infernal glow, hazy shapes passed and +repassed, finding places among scores of rustic tables, where servants +in old-time livery and powdered wigs hurried to and fro with ices and +salads, and set the white-covered tables with silverware and crystal. + +A dainty masked figure in demon red flitted across his path in the +uncanny radiance. He hailed her, and she turned, hesitated, then, as +though convinced of his identity, laughed, and hastened on with a nod +of invitation. + +"Where are you going, pretty mask?" he inquired, wending his pace and +trying to recognise the costume in the uncertain cross light. + +But she merely laughed and continued to retreat before him, keeping the +distance between them, hastening her steps whenever he struck a faster +gait, pausing and looking back at him with a mocking smile when his +steps slackened; a gracefully malicious, tormenting, laughing creature +of lace and silk, whose retreat was a challenge, whose every movement +and gesture seemed instinct with the witchery of provocation. + +On the edge of the ring of tables she paused, picked up a goblet, held +it out to a passing servant, who immediately filled the glass. + +Then, before Duane could catch her, she drained the goblet to his health +and fled into the shadows, he hard on her heels, pressing her closer, +closer, until the pace became too hot for her, and she turned to face +him, panting and covering her masked face with her fan. + +"Now, my fair unknown, we shall pay a few penalties," he said with +satisfaction; but she defended herself so adroitly that he could not +reach her mask. + +"Be fair to me," she gasped at last; "why are you so rough with me +when--when you need not be? I knew you at once, Jack." + +And she dropped her arms, standing resistless, breathing fast, her +masked face frankly upturned to be kissed. + +"Now, who the devil," thought Duane, "have I got in my arms? And for +whom does she take me?" + +He gazed searchingly into the slitted eye-holes; the eyes appeared to be +blue, as well as he could make out. He looked at the fresh laughing +mouth, a young, sensitive mouth, which even in laughter seemed not +entirely gay. + +"Don't you really mind if I kiss you?" He spoke in a whisper to disguise +his voice. + +"Isn't it a little late to ask me that?" she said; and under her mask +the colour stained her skin. "I think what we do now scarcely matters." + +She was so confident, so plainly awaiting his caress, that for a moment +he was quite ready to console her. And did not, could not, with the +fragrant and yielding intimacy of Geraldine still warm in his quickened +heart. + +She stood quite motionless, her little hands warm in his, her masked +face upturned. And, as he merely stared at her: + +"What is the matter, Jack?" she breathed. "Why do you look at me so +steadily?" + +He ought to have let her go then; he hesitated, wondering which Jack she +supposed him to be; and before he realised it her arms were on his +shoulders, her mouth nearer to his. + +"Jack, you frighten me! What is it?" + +"N-nothing," he continued to stammer. + +"Yes, there is. Does your--your wife suspect--anything----" + +"No, she doesn't," said Duane grimly, trying to free himself without +seeming to. "I've got an appointment----" + +But the girl said piteously: "It isn't--Geraldine, is it?" + +"_What_!" + +"You--you admitted that she attracted you--for a little while.... Oh, I +_did_ forgive you, Jack; truly I did with all my miserable heart! I was +so fearfully unhappy--I would have done anything." ... Her face flushed +scarlet. "And I--did.... But you do love me, don't you?" And the next +moment her lips were on his with a sob. + +Duane reached back and quietly unclasped her fingers. Then very gently +he forced her to a seat on a great fallen log. Still looking up at him, +droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay debut with him, she naively +slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her +pretty blue eyes. Sylvia Quest! + +The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt +vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over +him swept a startled sequence of emotions--bitter contempt for Dysart, +scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred +it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had +unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated; +succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame +and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never +know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself. + +"If I tell you that all is well--and if I tell you no more than that," +he whispered, "will you trust me?" + +"Have I not done so, Jack?" + +The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury. + +"Then wait here until I return," he said. "Promise." + +"I promise," she sighed, "but I don't understand. I'm a--a little +frightened, dear. But I--believe you." + +He swung on his heel and made toward the lights once more, and a moment +later the man he sought passed within a few feet of him, and Duane knew +him by his costume, which was a blue replica of his own gray silks. + +"Dysart!" he said sharply. + +The masked figure swung gracefully around and stood still, searching the +shadowy woodland inquiringly. + +"I want a word with you. Here--not in the light, if you please. You +recognise my voice, don't you?" + +"Is that you, Mallett?" asked Dysart coldly, as the former appeared in +the light for an instant and turned back again with a curt gesture. + +"Yes. I want you to step over here among the trees, where nobody can +interrupt us." + +Dysart followed more slowly; came to a careless halt: + +"Well, what the devil do you want?" he demanded insolently. + +"I'll tell you. I've had an encounter with a mask who mistook me for +you.... And she has said--several things--under that impression. She +still believes that I am you. I asked her to wait for me over there by +those oaks. Do you see where I mean?" He pointed and Dysart nodded +coolly. "Well, then, I want you to go back there--find her, and act as +though it had been you who heard what she said, not I." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean exactly that. The girl ought never to know that what she said +was heard and--and _understood_, Dysart, by any man in the world except +the blackguard I'm telling this to. Now, do you understand?" + +He stepped nearer: + +"The girl is Sylvia Quest. _Now_, do you understand, damn you!" + +A stray glimmer from the distant lanterns fell across Dysart's masked +visage. The skin around the mouth was loose and ashy, the dry lips +worked. + +"That was a dirty trick of yours," he stammered; "a scoundrelly thing to +do." + +"Do you suppose that I dreamed for an instant that she was convicting +herself and you?" said Duane in bitter contempt. "Go and manufacture +some explanation of my conduct as though it were your own. Let her have +that much peace of mind, anyway." + +"You young sneak!" retorted Dysart. "I suppose you think that what you +have heard will warrant your hanging around my wife. Try it and see." + +"Good God, Dysart!" he said, "I never thought you were anything more +vicious than what is called a 'dancing man.' What are you, anyhow?" + +"You'll learn if you tamper with my affairs," said Dysart. He whipped +off his mask and turned a corpse-like visage on the younger man. Every +feature of his face had altered: his good looks were gone, the youth in +his eyes had disappeared, only a little evil lustre played over them; +and out of the drawn pallor Duane saw an old man peering, an old man's +lips twitching back from uneven and yellowed teeth. + +"Mallett," he said, "you listen to me. Keep your investigating muzzle +out of my affairs; forget what you've ferreted out; steer clear of me +and mine. I want no scandal, but if you raise a breath of it you'll have +enough concerning yourself to occupy you. Do you understand?" + +"No," said Duane mechanically, staring at the man before him. + +"Well, then, to be more precise, if you lift one finger to injure me +you'll cut a figure in court.... And you can marry her later." + +"Who?" + +"My wife. I don't think Miss Seagrave will stand for what I'll drag you +through if you don't keep clear of me!" + +Duane gazed at him curiously: + +"So _that_ is what you are, Dysart," he said aloud to himself. + +Dysart's temples reddened. + +"Yes, and then some!... I understand that you have given yourself the +privilege of discussing my financial affairs in public. Have you?" + +Duane said in a dull voice: "The Algonquin Trust was mentioned, I +believe. I did say that you are a director." + +"You said I was hard hit and that the Clearing House meant to weed out a +certain element that I represented in New York." + +"I did not happen to say that," said Duane wearily, "but another man +did." + +"Oh. _You_ didn't say it?" + +"No. I don't lie, Dysart." + +"Then add to that negative virtue by keeping your mouth shut," said +Dysart between his teeth, "or you'll have other sorts of suits on your +hands. I warn you now to keep clear of me and mine." + +"Just what _is_ yours?" inquired Duane patiently. + +"You'll find out if you touch it." + +"Oh. Is--is Miss Quest included by any hazard? Because if the right +chance falls my way, I shall certainly interfere." + +"If you do, I shall begin suit for alienation within twenty-four +hours." + +"Oh, no, you won't. You're horribly afraid, Dysart. This grimacing of +yours is fear. All you want is to be let alone, to burrow through the +society that breeds your sort. Like a maggot in a chestnut you feed on +what breeds you. I don't care. Feed! What bred you is as rotten as you +are. I'm done with it--done with all this," turning his head toward the +flare of light. "Go on and burrow. What nourishes you can look out for +itself.... Only"--he wheeled around and looked into the darkness where, +unseen, Sylvia Quest awaited him--"only, in this set, the young have +less chance than the waifs of the East Side." + +He walked slowly up to Dysart and struck him across the face with open +palm. + +"Break with that girl or I'll break your head," he said. + +Dysart was down on the leaves, struggling up to his knees, then to his +feet, the thin blood running across his chin. The next instant he sprang +at Duane, who caught him by both arms and forced him savagely into +quivering inertia. + +"Don't," he said. "You're only a thing that dances. Don't move, I tell +you.... Wipe that blood off and go and set the silly girl's heart at +rest.... And keep away from her afterward. Do you hear?" + +He set his teeth and shook him so wickedly that Dysart's head rolled and +his wig fell off. + +"I know something of your sloppy record," he continued, still shaking +him; "I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is +generally understood that you're as sexless as any other of your kind. I +thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of _me_ and _mine_, +Dysart.... And that will be about all." + +He left him planted against a tree and walked toward the lights once +more, breathing heavily and in an ugly mood. + +On the edge of the glade, just outside the lantern glow, he stood +sombre, distrait, inspecting the torn lace on his sleeve, while all +around him people were unmasking amid cries of surprise and shouts of +laughter, and the orchestra was sounding a march, and multicoloured +Bengal fires rolled in clouds from the water's edge, turning the woods +to a magic forest and the people to tinted wraiths. + +Behind him he heard Rosalie's voice, caressing, tormenting by turns; +and, glancing around for her victim, beheld Grandcourt at heel in +calflike adoration. + +Kathleen's laughter swung him the other way. + +"Oh, Duane," she cried, the pink of excitement in her cheeks, "isn't it +all too heavenly! It looks like Paradise afire with all those rosy +clouds rolling under foot. Have you ever seen anything quite as +charming?" + +"It's rotten," said Duane brusquely, tearing the tattered lace free and +tossing it aside. + +"Wh-what!" she exclaimed. + +"I say it's all rotten," he repeated, looking up at her. "All this--the +whole thing--the stupidity of it--the society that's driven to these +kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads--ennui! Look at +us all! For God's sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our +pinchbeck mummery--forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, +polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I'm sick +of it!" + +"Duane!" + +"Oh, yes; I'm one of 'em--dragging my idleness and viciousness and my +stupidity and my money at my heels. I tell you, Kathleen, this is no +good. There's a stench of money everywhere; there's a staler aroma in +the air, too--the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of +stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I'm deadly tired +of it--of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, +whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouetting along the danger +mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of the +overgroomed men who can do nothing except what can be done with money, +who think nothing, know nothing, sweat nothing but money and what it can +buy--like horses and yachts and prima donnas----" + +She uttered a shocked exclamation, but he went on: + +"Yes, prima donnas. Which of our friends was it who bought that pretty +one that sang in 'La Esmeralda'?" + +"Duane!" she exclaimed in consternation; but he took her protesting +hands in his and held her powerless. + +"You happen to be a darling," he said; "but you were not born to this +environment. Geraldine was--and she is a darling. God bless her. Outside +of my sister, Naida, and you two--with the exception of the newly +fledged and as yet mercifully unregurgitated with vicious wisdom--who +are all these people? Ciphers, save for their balances at their banks; +nameless, save for the noisy reiteration of their hard-fisted forebears' +names; without any ambition, except financial and social; without any +objective, save the escape from ennui--without any taste, culture, +inspiration, except that of physical gratification! Oh, Lord, I'm one of +them, but I resign to-night." + +"Duane, you're quite mad," she said, wrenching her hands free and gazing +at him rather fearfully. + +"I think he's dead sensible," said a calm voice at her elbow; and Scott +Seagrave appeared, twirling his mask and blinking at them through his +spectacles. + +Duane laughed: "Of course I am, you old reptile-hunting, +butterfly-chasing antediluvian! But, come on; Byzantium is gorging its +diamond-swathed girth yonder with salad and champagne; and I'm hungry, +even if Kathleen isn't----" + +"I _am_!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Scott, can't you find Naida and +Geraldine? Duane and I will keep a table until you return----" + +"I'll find them," said Duane; and he walked off among the noisy, +laughing groups, his progress greeted uproariously from table to table. +He found Naida and Bunbury Gray, and they at once departed for the +rendezvous indicated. + +"Geraldine was here a little while ago," said Gray, "but she walked to +the lake with Jack Dysart. My, but she's hitting it up," he added +admiringly. + +"Hitting it up?" repeated Duane. + +"For a girl who never does, I mean. I imagine that she's a novice with +champagne. Champagne and Geraldine make a very fetching combination, I +can tell you." + +"She took no more than I," observed Naida with a shrug; "one solitary +glass. If a girl happens to be high strung and ventures to laugh a +little, some wretched man is sure to misunderstand! Bunny, you're a +gadabout!" + +She made her way out from the maze of tables, Bunny following, somewhat +abashed; and Duane walked toward the shore, where dozens of lantern-hung +canoes bobbed, and the pasteboard cylinders of Bengal fire had burned +to smouldering sparks. + +In the dim light he came on the people he was looking for, seated on the +rocks. Dysart, at her feet, was speaking in an undertone; Geraldine, +partly turned away from him, hands clasped around her knees, was staring +steadily across the water. + +Neither rose as he came up; Dysart merely became mute; Geraldine looked +around with a start; her lips parted in a soundless, mechanical +greeting, then the flush in her cheeks brightened; and as she rose, +Dysart got onto his feet and stood silently facing the new arrival. + +"I said after the third dance, you know," she observed with an assumed +lightness that did not deceive him. And, as he made no answer, he saw +the faint flicker of fright in her eyes and the lower lip quiver. + +He said pleasantly, controlling his voice: "Isn't this after the third +dance? You are to be my partner for supper, I think." + +"A long time after; and I've already sat at Belshazzar's feast, thank +you. I couldn't very well starve waiting for you, could I?" And she +forced a smile. + +"Nevertheless, I must claim your promise," he said. + +There was a silence; she stood for a moment gazing at nothing, with the +same bright, fixed smile, then turned and glanced at Dysart. The glance +was his dismissal and he knew it. + +"If I must give you up," he said cheerfully, at his ease, "please +pronounce sentence." + +"I am afraid you really must, Mr. Dysart." + +There was another interval of constraint; then Dysart spoke. His +self-possession was admirable, his words perfectly chosen, his exit in +faultless taste. + +They looked after him until he was lost to view in the throngs beyond, +then the girl slowly reseated herself, eyes again fixed on the water, +hands clasped tightly upon her knee, and Duane found a place at her +elbow. So they began a duet of silence. + +The little wavelets came dancing shoreward out of the darkness, breaking +with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere +in the night a restless heron croaked and croaked among the willows. + +"Well, little girl?" he asked at last. + +"Well?" she inquired, with a calmness that did not mislead him. + +"I couldn't come to you after the third dance," he said. + +"Why?" + +He evaded the question: "When I came back to the glade the dancing was +already over; so I got Kathleen and Naida to save a table." + +"Where had you been all the while?" + +"If you really wish to know," he said pleasantly, "I was talking to Jack +Dysart on some rather important matters. I did not realise how the time +went." + +She sat mute, head lowered, staring out across the dark water. Presently +he laid one hand over hers, and she straightened up with a tiny shock, +turned and looked him full in the eyes. + +"I'll tell you why you failed me--failed to keep the first appointment I +ever asked of you. It was because you were so preoccupied with a mask in +flame colour." + +He thought a moment: + +"Did you believe you saw me with somebody in a vermilion costume?" + +"Yes; I did see you. It was too late for me to retire without +attracting your attention. I was not a willing eavesdropper." + +"Who was the girl you thought you saw me with?" + +"Sylvia Quest. She unmasked. There is no mistake." + +So he was obliged to lie, after all. + +"It must have been Dysart you saw. His costume is very like mine, you +know----" + +"Does Jack Dysart stand for minutes holding Sylvia's hands--and is she +accustomed to place her hands on his shoulders, as though expecting to +be kissed? And does he kiss her?" + +So he had to lie again: "No, of course not," he said, smiling. "So it +could not have been Dysart." + +"There are only two costumes like yours and Mr. Dysart's. Do you wish me +to believe that Sylvia is common and depraved enough to put her arms +around the neck of a man who is married?" + +There was no other way: "No," he said, "Sylvia isn't that sort, of +course." + +"It was either Mr. Dysart or you." + +He said nothing. + +"Then it _was_ you!" in hot contempt. + +Still he said nothing. + +"Was it?" with a break in her voice. + +"Men can't admit things of that kind," he managed to say. + +The angry colour surged up to her cheeks, the angry tears started, but +her quivering lips were not under command and she could only stare at +him through the blur of grief, while her white hands clinched and +relaxed, and her fast-beating heart seemed to be driving the very breath +from her body. + +"Geraldine, dear----" + +"It wasn't fair!" she broke out fiercely; "there is no honour in you--no +loyalty! Oh, Duane! Duane! How could you--at the very moment we were +nearer together than we had ever been! It isn't jealousy that is crying +out in me; it is nothing common or ignoble in me that resents what you +have done! It is the treachery of it! How _could_ you, Duane?" + +The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was +to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go +to shield Sylvia Quest--this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation +was already at the mercy of two men? + +"Geraldine," he said, "it was nothing but a carnival flirtation--a +chance encounter that meant nothing--the idlest kind of----" + +"Is it idle to do what you did--and what she did? Oh, if I had only not +seen it--if I only didn't know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you. +Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out +the rest of his dance--and he saw it, too--and he was furious--he must +have been--because he's devoted to Sylvia." She made a hopeless gesture +and dropped her hand to her side: "What a miserable night it has been +for me! It's all spoiled--it's ended.... And I--my courage went.... I've +done what I never thought to do again--what I was fighting down to make +myself safe enough for you to marry--_you_ to marry!" She laughed, but +the mirth rang shockingly false. + +"You mean that you had one glass of champagne," he said. + +"Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I'll have some more presently. Does +it concern you?" + +"I think so, Geraldine." + +"You are wrong. Neither does what you've been doing concern me--the kind +of man you've been--the various phases of degradation you have +accomplished----" + +"What particular species of degradation?" he asked wearily, knowing that +Dysart was now bent on his destruction. "Never mind; don't answer, +Geraldine," he added, "because there's no use in trying to set myself +right; there's no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care +absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; +that if I have ever been unworthy of you--as God knows I have--it is a +bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you." + +"Shall we go back?" she said evenly. + +"Yes, if you wish." + +They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for +their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning +her back squarely on Duane. + +Naida and Kathleen came across. + +"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister, +smothering a yawn. "I'm horribly sleepy. Duane, it's three o'clock. +Would you mind taking me across to the house?" + +He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the +splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were +Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink +'uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in +ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin. + +"I'm waiting, Duane," said Naida plaintively. + +So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the +brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a +silvery lustre heralded the coming dawn. + + * * * * * + +When he returned, Geraldine was gone. At the house somebody said she had +come in with Kathleen, not feeling well. + +"The trouble with that girl," said a man whom he did not know, "is that +she's had too much champagne." + +"You lie," said Duane quietly. "Is that perfectly plain to you?" + +For a full minute the young man stood rigid, crimson, glaring at Duane. +Then, having the elements of decency in him, he said: + +"I don't know who you are, but you are perfectly right. I did lie. And +I'll see that nobody else does." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE LOVE OF THE GODS + + +Two days later the majority of the people had left Roya-Neh, and the +remainder were preparing to make their adieux to the young chatelaine by +proxy; for Geraldine had kept her room since the night of the masked +fete, and nobody except Kathleen and Dr. Bailey had seen her. + +"Fashionable fidgets," said Dr. Bailey, in answer to amiable inquiries; +"the girl has been living on her nerves, like the rest of you, only she +can't stand as much as you can." + +To Duane he said, in reply to persistent questions: + +"As a plain and unromantic proposition, young man, it may be her liver. +God alone knows with what young women stuff their bodies in those +bucolic solitudes." + +To Kathleen he said, after questioning her and listening in silence to +her guarded replies: + +"I don't know what is the matter, Mrs. Severn. The girl is extremely +nervous. She acts, to me, as though she had something on her mind, but +she insists that she hasn't. If I were to be here, I might come to some +conclusion within the next day or two." + +Which frightened Kathleen, and she asked whether anything serious might +be anticipated. + +"Not at all," he said. + +So, as he was taking the next train, there was nothing to do. He left a +prescription and whizzed away to the railroad station with the last +motor-load of guests. + +There remained only Duane, Rosalie Dysart, Grandcourt, and Sylvia Quest, +a rather subdued and silent group on the terrace, unresponsive to +Scott's unfeigned gaiety to find himself comparatively alone and free to +follow his own woodland predilections once more. + +"A cordial host you are," observed Rosalie; "you're guests are scarcely +out of sight before you break into inhuman chuckles." + +"Speed the parting," observed Scott, in excellent spirits; "that's the +truest hospitality." + +"I suppose your unrestrained laughter will be our parting portion in a +day or two," she said, amused. + +"No; I don't mind a few people. Do you want to come and look for +scarabs?" + +"Scarabs? Do you imagine you're in Egypt, my poor friend?" + +Scott sniffed: "Didn't you know we had a few living species around here? +Regular scarabs. Kathleen and I found three the other day--one a regular +beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and +copper tinted wing-covers. Do you want to help me hunt for some more? +You'll have to put on overshoes, for they're in the cow-yards." + +Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined. Later she opened a +shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about +the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves +without exciting comment. + +But there was nobody to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a +sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and +preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the +valley. Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come +up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which +linked the days of every summer for her. But Stuyvesant had not arrived; +and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not +too drunk to remember her. + +So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very +colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on +the remoter hills--not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive +look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the +stolen glance. + +As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair +of binoculars and informing the two people behind him--who were not +listening--that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a +thrasher at six hundred yards. + +Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart +information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from +the house. + +"How's Sis?" he inquired. + +"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane. + +"Could I see her?" he asked. + +Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at +that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring +for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, +resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned scarabs or +black-billed cuckoos. + +It had always been so with her; it would always be so. Long ago the +Seagrave twins had demanded all she had to give; now, if Geraldine asked +less, Scott exacted double. And she gave--how happily, only her Maker +and her conscience knew. + +Duane was still reading--or he had all the appearance of reading--when +Sylvia lifted her head from her hand and turned around with an effort +that cost her what colour had remained under the transparent skin of her +oval face. + +"Duane," she said, "it occurred to me just now that you might have +really mistaken what I said and did the other night." She hesitated, +nerving herself to encounter his eyes, lifted and levelled across the +top of his paper at her. + +He waited; she retained enough self-command to continue with an effort +at lightness: + +"Of course it was all carnival fun--my pretending to mistake you for Mr. +Dysart. You understood it, didn't you?" + +"Why, of course," he said, smiling. + +She went on: "I--don't exactly remember what I said--I was trying to +mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent +to pretend to be on--on such impossible terms with Mr. Dysart----" + +There was something too painful in her effort for him to endure. He said +laughingly, not looking at her: + +"Oh, I wasn't ass enough to be deceived, Sylvia. Don't worry, little +girl." And he resumed the study of his paper. + +Minutes passed--terrible minutes for one of them, who strove to find +relief in his careless reassurance, tried desperately to believe him, to +deceive that intuition which seldom fails her sex. + +He, with the print blurred and meaningless before him, sat miserable, +dumb with the sympathy he could not show, hot with the anger he dared +not express. He thought of Dysart as he had revealed himself, now gone +back to town to face that little crop of financial rumours concerning +the Algonquin that persisted so wickedly and would not be quieted. For +the first time in his life, probably, Dysart was compelled to endure the +discomforts of a New York summer--more discomforts this summer than mere +dust and heat and noise. For men who had always been on respectful +financial terms with Dysart and his string of banks and his Algonquin +enterprise were holding aloof from him; men who had figured for years in +the same columns of print where his name was so often seen as director +and trustee and secretary--fellow-members who served for the honour of +serving on boards of all sorts, charity boards, hospital, museum, civic +societies--these men, too, seemed to be politely, pleasantly, even +smilingly edging away from him in some indefinable manner. + +Which seemed to force him toward certain comparatively newcomers among +the wealthy financiers of the metropolis--brilliant, masterful, restless +men from the West, whose friendship in the beginning he had sought, +deeming himself farsighted. + +Now that his vision had become normally adjusted he cared less for this +intimacy which it was too late to break--at least this was not the time +to break it with money becoming unbelievably scarcer every day and a +great railroad man talking angrily, and another great railroad man +preaching caution at a time when the caution of the man in the Street +might mean something so serious to Dysart that he didn't care to think +about it. + +Dysart had gone back to New York in company with several pessimistic +gentlemen--who were very open about backing their fancy; and their fancy +fell on that old, ramshackle jade, Hard Times, by Speculation out of +Folly. According to them there was no hope of her being scratched or +left at the post. + +"She'll run like a scared hearse-horse," said young Grandcourt gloomily. +There was reason for his gloom. Unknown to his father he had invested +heavily in Dysart's schemes. It was his father's contempt that he feared +more than ruin. + +So Dysart had gone to town, leaving behind him the utter indifference of +a wife, the deep contempt of a man; and a white-faced girl alone with +her memories--whatever they might be--and her thoughts, which were +painful if one might judge by her silent, rigid abstraction, and the +lower lip which, at moments, escaped, quivering, from the close-set +teeth. + +When Duane rose, folding his paper with a carelessly pleasant word or +two, she looked up in a kind of naive terror--like a child startled at +prospect of being left alone. It was curious how those adrift seemed +always to glide his way. It had always been so; even stray cats followed +him in the streets; unhappy dogs trotted persistently at his heels; many +a journey had he made to the Bide-a-wee for some lost creature's sake; +many a softly purring cat had he caressed on his way through life--many +a woman. + +As he strolled toward the eastern end of the terrace, Sylvia looked +after him; and, suddenly, unable to endure isolation, she rose and +followed as instinctively as her lesser sisters-errant. + +It was the trotting of little footsteps behind him on the gravel that +arrested him. A glance at her face was enough; vexed, shocked, yet every +sympathy instantly aroused, he resigned himself to whatever might be +required of him; and within him a bitter mirth stirred--acrid, +unpleasant; but his smile indicated only charmed surprise. + +"I didn't suppose you'd care for a stroll with me," he said; "it is +exceedingly nice of you to give me the chance." + +"I didn't want to be left alone," she said. + +"It is rather quiet here since our gay birds have migrated," he said in +a matter-of-fact way. "Which direction shall we take?" + +"I--don't care." + +"The woods?" + +"No," with a shudder so involuntary that he noticed it. + +"Well, then, we'll go cross country----" + +She looked at her thin, low shoes and then at him. + +"Certainly," he said, "that won't do, will it?" + +She shook her head. + +They were passing the Lodge now where his studio was and where he had +intended to pack up his canvases that afternoon. + +"I'll brew you a cup of tea if you like," he said; "that is, if it's not +too unconventional to frighten you." + +She smiled and nodded. Behind the smile her heavy thoughts throbbed on: +How much did this man know? How much did he suspect? And if he +suspected, how good he was in every word to her--how kind and gentle and +high-minded! And the anguish in her smile caused him to turn hastily to +the door and summon old Miller to bring the tea paraphernalia. + +There was nothing to look at in the studio; all the canvases lay roped +in piles ready for the crates; but Sylvia's gaze remained on them as +though even the rough backs of the stretchers fascinated her. + +"My father was an artist. After he married he did not paint. My mother +was very wealthy, you know.... It seems a pity." + +"What? Wealth?" he asked, smiling. + +"N-no. I mean it seems a little tragic to me that father never continued +to paint." + +Miller's granddaughter came in with the tea. She was a very little girl +with yellow hair and big violet eyes. After she had deposited +everything, she went over to Duane and held up her mouth to be kissed. +He laughed and saluted her. It was a reward for service which she had +suggested when he first came to Roya-Neh; and she trotted away in great +content. + +Sylvia's indifferent gaze followed her; then she sipped the tea Duane +offered. + +"Do you remember your father?" he asked pleasantly. + +"Why, yes. I was fourteen when he died. I remember mother, too. I was +seven." + +Duane said, not looking at her: "It's about the toughest thing that can +happen to a girl. It's tough enough on a boy." + +"It was very hard," she said simply. + +"Haven't you any relatives except your brother Stuyvesant--" he began, +and checked himself, remembering that a youthful aunt of hers had eloped +under scandalous circumstances, and at least one uncle was too notorious +even for the stomachs of the society that whelped him. + +She let it pass in silence, as though she had not heard. Later she +declined more tea and sat deep in her chair, fingers linked under her +chin, lids lowered. + +After a while, as she did not move or speak, he ventured to busy himself +with collecting his brushes, odds and ends of studio equipment. He +scraped several palettes, scrubbed up some palette-knives, screwed the +tops on a dozen tubes of colour, and fussed and messed about until there +seemed to be nothing further to do. So he came back and seated himself, +and, looking up, saw the big tears stealing from under her closed lids. + +He endured it as long as he could. Nothing was said. He leaned nearer +and laid his hand over hers; and at the contact she slipped from the +chair, slid to her knees, and laid her head on the couch beside him, +both hands covering her face, which had turned dead white. + +Minute after minute passed with no sound, no movement except as he +passed his hand over her forehead and hair. He knew what to do when +those who were adrift floated into Port Mallett. And sometimes he did +more than was strictly required, but never less. Toward sundown she +began to feel blindly for her handkerchief. He happened to possess a +fresh one and put it into her groping hand. + +When she was ready to rise she did so, keeping her back toward him and +standing for a while busy with her swollen eyes and disordered hair. + +"Before we go we must have tea together again," he said with perfectly +matter-of-fact cordiality. + +"Y-yes." The voice was very, very small. + +"And in town, too, Sylvia. I had no idea what a companionable girl you +are--how much we have in common. You know silence is the great test of +mutual confidence and understanding. You'll let me see you in town, +won't you?" + +"Yes." + +"That will be jolly. I suppose now that you and I ought to be thinking +about dressing for dinner." + +She assented, moved away a step or two, halted, and, still with her back +turned, held out her hand behind her. He took it, bent and kissed it. + +"See you at dinner," he said cheerfully. + +And she went out very quietly, his handkerchief pressed against her +eyes. + +He came back into the studio, swung nervously toward the couch, turned +and began to pace the floor. + +"Oh, Lord," he said; "the rottenness of it all--the utter rottenness." + + * * * * * + +Dinner that night was not a very gay function; after coffee had been +served, the small group seemed to disintegrate as though by some +prearrangement, Rosalie and Grandcourt finding a place for themselves in +the extreme western shadow of the terrace parapet, Kathleen returning to +the living-room, where she had left her embroidery. + +Scott, talking to Sylvia and Duane, continued to cast restless glances +toward the living-room until he could find the proper moment to get +away. And in a few minutes Duane saw him seated, one leg crossed over +the other, a huge volume on "Scientific Conservation of Natural +Resources" open on his knees, seated as close to Kathleen as he could +conveniently edge, perfectly contented, apparently, to be in her +vicinity. + +From moment to moment, as her pretty hands performed miracles in tinted +silks, she lifted her eyes and silently inspected the boy who sat +absorbed in his book. Perhaps old memories of a child seated in the +schoolroom made tender the curve of her lips as she turned again to her +embroidery; perhaps a sentiment more recent made grave the beautiful +lowered eyes. + +Sylvia, seated at the piano, idly improvising, had unconsciously drifted +into the "Menuet d'Exaudet," and Duane's heart began to quicken as he +stood listening and looking out through the open windows at the stars. + +How long he stood there he did not know; but when, at length, missing +the sound of the piano, he looked around, Sylvia was already on the +stairs, looking back at him as she moved upward. + +"Good-night," she called softly; "I am very tired," and paused as he +came forward and mounted to the step below where she waited. + +"Good-night, Miss Quest," he said, with that nice informality that women +always found so engaging. "If you have nothing better on hand in the +morning, let's go for a climb. I've discovered a wild-boar's nest under +the Golden Dome, and if you'd like to get a glimpse of the little, +furry, striped piglings, I think we can manage it." + +She thanked him with her eyes, held out her thin, graceful hand of a +schoolgirl, then turned slowly and continued her ascent. + +As he descended, Kathleen, looking up from her embroidery, made him a +sign, and he stood still. + +"Where are you going?" asked Scott, as she rose and passed him. + +"I'm coming back in a moment." + +Scott restlessly resumed his book, raising his head from time to time as +though listening for her return, fidgeting about, now examining the +embroidery she had left on the lamp-lit table, now listlessly running +over the pages that had claimed his close attention while she had been +near him. + +Across the hall, in the library, Duane stood absently twisting an +unlighted cigar, and Kathleen, her hand on his shoulder, eyes lifted in +sweet distress, was searching for words that seemed to evade her. + +He cut the knot without any emotion: + +"I know what you are trying to say, Kathleen. It is true that there has +been a wretched misunderstanding, but if I know Geraldine at all I know +that a mere misunderstanding will not do any permanent harm. It is +something else that--worries me." + +"Oh, Duane, I know! I know! She cannot marry you--in honour--until +that--that terrible danger is eliminated. She will not, either. +But--don't give her up! Be with her--with us in this crisis--during it! +See us through it, Duane; she is well worth what she costs us both--and +costs herself." + +"She must marry me now," he said. "I want to fight this thing with all +there is in me and in her, and in my love for her and hers for me. I +can't fight it in this blind, aloof way--this thing that is my +rival--that stands with its claw embedded in her body warning me back! +The horror of it is in the blind, intangible, abstract force that is +against me. I can't fight it aloof from her; I can't take her away from +it unless I have her in my arms to guard, to inspire, to comfort, to +watch. Can't you see, Kathleen, that I must have her every second of the +time?" + +"She will not let you run the risk," murmured Kathleen. "Duane, she had +a dreadful night--she broke down so utterly that it scared me. She is +horribly frightened; her nervous demoralisation is complete. For the +first time, I think, she is really terrified. She says it is hopeless, +that her will and nerve are undermined, her courage contaminated.... +Hour after hour I sat with her; she made me tell her about her +grandfather--about what I knew of the--the taint in her family." + +"Those things are merely predispositions," he said. "Self-command makes +them harmless." + +"I told her that. She says that they are living sparks that will +smoulder while life endures." + +"Suppose they are," he said; "they can never flame unless nursed.... +Kathleen, I want to see her----" + +"She will not." + +"Has she spoken at all of me?" + +"Yes." + +"Bitterly?" + +"Y-yes. I don't know what you did. She is very morbid just now, anyway; +very desperate. But I know that, unconsciously, she counts on an +adjustment of any minor personal difficulty with you.... She loves you +dearly, Duane." + +He passed an unsteady hand across his eyes. + +"She must marry me. I can't stand aloof from this battle any longer." + +"Duane, she will not. I--she said some things--she is morbid, I tell +you--and curiously innocent--in her thoughts--concerning herself and +you. She says she can never marry." + +"Exactly what did she say to you?" + +Kathleen hesitated; the intimacy of the subject left her undecided; then +very seriously her pure, clear gaze met his: + +"She will not marry, for your own sake, and for the sake of +any--children. She has evidently thought it all out.... I must tell you +how it is. There is no use in asking her; she will never consent, Duane, +as long as she is afraid of herself. And how to quiet that fear by +exterminating the reason for it I don't know--" Her voice broke +pitifully. "Only stand by us, Duane. Don't go away just now. You were +packing to go; but please don't leave me just yet. Could you arrange to +remain for a while?" + +"Yes, I'll arrange it.... I'm a little troubled about my father--" He +checked himself. "I could run down to town for a day or two and +return----" + +"Is Colonel Mallett ill?" she asked. + +"N-no.... These are rather strenuous times--or threaten to be. Of course +the Half-Moon is as solid as a rock. But even the very, very great are +beginning to fuss.... And my father is not young, Kathleen. So I thought +I'd like to run down and take him out to dinner once or twice--to a +roof-garden or something, you know. It's rather pathetic that men of his +age, grown gray in service, should feel obliged to remain in the +stifling city this summer." + +"Of course you must go," she said; "you couldn't even hesitate. Is your +mother worried?" + +"I don't suppose she has the slightest notion that there is anything to +worry over. And there isn't, I think. She and Naida will be in the +Berkshires; I'll go up and stay with them later--when Geraldine is all +right again," he added cheerfully. + +Scott, fidgeting like a neglected pup, came wandering into the hall, +book in hand. + +"For the love of Mike," he said impatiently, "what have you two got to +talk about all night?" + +"My son," observed Duane, "there are a few subjects for conversation +which do not include the centipede and the polka-dotted dickey-bird. +These subjects Kathleen and I furtively indulge in when we can arrange +to elude you." + +Scott covered a yawn and glanced at Kathleen. + +"Is Geraldine all right?" he asked with all the healthy indifference of +a young man who had never been ill, and was, therefore, incapable of +understanding illness in others. + +"Certainly, she's all right," said Duane. And to Kathleen: "I believe +I'll venture to knock at her door----" + +"Oh, no, Duane. She isn't ready to see anybody----" + +"Well, I'll try----" + +"Please, don't!" + +But he had her at a disadvantage, and he only laughed and mounted the +stairs, saying: + +"I'll just exchange a word with her or with her maid, anyway." + +When he turned into the corridor Geraldine's maid, seated in the +window-seat sewing, rose and came forward to take his message. In a few +moments she returned, saying: + +"Miss Seagrave asks to be excused, as she is ready to retire." + +"Ask Miss Seagrave if I can say good-night to her through the door." + +The maid disappeared and returned in a moment. + +"Miss Seagrave wishes you good-night, sir." + +So he thanked the maid pleasantly and walked to his own room, now once +more prepared for him after the departure of those who had temporarily +required it. + +Starlight made the leaded windows brilliant; he opened them wide and +leaned out on the sill, arms folded. The pale astral light illuminated a +fairy world of meadow and garden and spectral trees, and two figures +moving like ghosts down by the fountain among the roses--Rosalie and +Grandcourt pacing the gravel paths shoulder to shoulder under the stars. + +Below him, on the terrace, he saw Kathleen and Scott--the latter +carrying a butterfly net--examining the borders of white pinks with a +lantern. In and out of the yellow rays swam multitudes of night moths, +glittering like flakes of tinsel as the lantern light flashed on their +wings; and Scott was evidently doing satisfactory execution, for every +moment or two Kathleen uncorked the cyanide jar and he dumped into it +from the folds of the net a fluttering victim. + +"That last one is a Pandorus Sphinx!" he said in great excitement to +Kathleen, who had lifted the big glass jar into the lantern light and +was trying to get a glimpse of the exquisite moth, whose wings of olive +green, rose, and bronze velvet were already beating a hazy death tattoo +in the lethal fumes. + +"A Pandorus! Scott, you've wanted one so much!" she exclaimed, +enchanted. + +"You bet I have. Pholus pandorus is pretty rare around here. And I say, +Kathleen, that wasn't a bad net-stroke, was it? You see I had only a +second, and I took a desperate chance." + +She praised his skill warmly; then, as he stood admiring his prize in +the jar which she held up, she suddenly caught him by the arm and +pointed: + +"Oh, quick! There is a hawk-moth over the pinks which resembles nothing +we have seen yet!" + +Scott very cautiously laid his net level, stole forward, shining the +lantern light full on the darting, hazy-winged creature, which was now +poised, hovering over a white blossom and probing the honeyed depths +with a long, slim proboscis. + +"I thought it might be only a Lineata, but it isn't," he said +excitedly. "Did you ever see such a timid moth? The slightest step +scares the creature." + +"Can't you try a quick net-stroke sideways?" + +Her voice was as anxious and unsteady as his own. + +"I'm afraid I'll miss. Lord but it's a lightning flier! Where is it +now?" + +"Behind you. Do be careful! Turn very slowly." + +He pivoted; the slim moth darted past, circled, and hung before a +blossom, wings vibrating so fast that the creature was merely a gray +blur in the lantern light. The next instant Gray's net swung; a furious +fluttering came from the green silk folds; Kathleen whipped off the +cover of the jar, and Duane deftly imprisoned the moth. + +"Upon my word," he said shakily, "I believe I've got a Tersa Sphinx!--a +sub-tropical fellow whose presence here is mere accident!" + +"Oh, if you have!" she breathed softly. She didn't know what a Tersa +Sphinx might be, but if its capture gave him pleasure, that was all she +cared for in the world. + +"It _is_ a Tersa!" he almost shouted. "By George! it's a wonder." + +Radiant, she bent eagerly above the jar where the strange, slender, +gray-and-brown hawk-moth lay dying. Its recoiling proboscis and its +slim, fawn-coloured legs quivered. The eyes glowed like tiny jewels. + +"If we could only keep these little things alive," she sighed; then, +fearful of taking the least iota from his pleasure, added: "but of +course we can't, and for scientific purposes it's all right to let the +lovely little creatures sink into their death-sleep." + +A slight haze had appeared over the lake; a sudden cool streak grew in +the air, which very quickly cleared the flower-beds of moths; and the +pretty sub-tropical sphinx was the last specimen of the evening. + +In the library Scott pulled out a card-table and Kathleen brought +forceps, strips of oiled paper, pins, setting-blocks, needles, and +oblong glass weights; and together, seated opposite each other, they +removed the delicate-winged contents of the collecting jar. + +Kathleen's dainty fingers were very swift and deft with the forceps. +Scott watched her. She picked up the green-and-rose Pandorus, laid it on +its back on a setting-block, affixed and pinned the oiled-paper strips, +drew out the four wings with the setting-needle until they were +symmetrical and the inner margin of the anterior pair was at right +angles with the body. + +Then she arranged the legs, uncoiled and set the proboscis, and weighted +the wings with heavy glass strips. + +They worked rapidly, happily there together, exchanging views and +opinions; and after a while the brilliant spoils of the evening were all +stretched and ready to dry, ultimately to be placed in plaster-of-Paris +mounts and hermetically sealed under glass covers. + +Kathleen went away to cleanse her hands of any taint of cyanide; Scott, +returning from his own ablutions, met her in the hall, and so +miraculously youthful, so fresh and sweet and dainty did she appear +that, in some inexplicable manner, his awkward, self-conscious fear of +touching her suddenly vanished, and the next instant she was in his arms +and he had kissed her. + +"Scott!" she faltered, pushing him from her, too limp and dazed to use +the strength she possessed. + +Surprised at what he had done, amazed that he was not afraid of her, he +held her tightly, thrilled dumb at the exquisite trembling contact. + +"Oh, what are you doing," she stammered, in dire consternation; "what +have you done? We--you cannot--you must let me go, Scott----" + +"You're only a girl, after all--you darling!" he said, inspecting her in +an ecstacy of curiosity. "I wonder why I've been afraid of you for so +long?--just because I love you!" + +"You don't--you can't care for me that way----" + +"I care for you in every kind of a way that anybody can care about +anybody." She turned her shoulder, desperately striving to release +herself, but she had not realised how tall and strong he was. "How small +you are," he repeated wonderingly; "just a soft, slender girl, Kathleen. +I can't see how I ever came to let you make me study when I didn't want +to." + +"Scott, dear," she pleaded breathlessly, "you must let me go. This--this +is utterly impossible----" + +"What is?" + +"That you and I can--could care--this way----" + +"Don't you?" + +"I--no!" + +"Is that the truth, Kathleen?" + +She looked up; the divine distress in her violet eyes sobered him, awed +him for a moment. + +"Kathleen," he said, "there are only a few years' difference between our +ages. I feel older than you; you look younger than I--and you are all in +the world I care for--or ever have cared for. Last spring--that night----" + +"Hush, Scott," she begged, blushing scarlet. + +"I know you remember. That is when I began to love you. You must have +known it." + +She said nothing; the strain of her resisting arms against his breast +had relaxed imperceptibly. + +"What can a fellow say?" he went on a little wildly, checked at moments +by the dryness of his throat and the rapid heartbeats that almost took +his breath away when he looked at her. "I love you so dearly, Kathleen; +there's no use in trying to live without loving you, for I couldn't do +it!... I'm not really young; it makes me furious to think you consider +me in that light. I'm a man, strong enough and old enough to love +you--and make you love me! I _will_ make you!" His arms tightened. + +She uttered a little cry, which was half a sob; his boyish roughness +sent a glow rushing through her. She fought against the peril of it, the +bewildering happiness that welled up--fought against her heart that was +betraying her senses, against the deep, sweet passion that awoke as his +face touched hers. + +"Will you love me?" he said fiercely. + +"No!" + +"Will you?" + +"Yes.... Let me go!" she gasped. + +"Will you love me in the way I mean? Can you?" + +"Yes. I do. I--have, long since.... Let me go!" + +"Then--kiss me." + +She looked up at him a moment, slowly put both arms around his neck: +"Now," she breathed faintly, "release me." + +And at the same instant he saw Geraldine descending the stairs. + +Kathleen saw her, too; saw her turn abruptly, re-mount and disappear. +There was a moment's painful silence, then, without a word, she picked +up her lace skirts, ran up the stairway, and continued swiftly on to +Geraldine's room. + +"May I come in?" She spoke and opened the door of the bedroom at the +same time, and Geraldine turned on her, exasperated, hands clenched, +dark eyes harbouring lightning: + +"Have I gone quite mad, Kathleen, or have you?" she demanded. + +"I think I have," whispered Kathleen, turning white and halting. +"Geraldine, you will _have_ to listen. Scott has told me that he loves +me----" + +"Is this the first time?" + +"No.... It is the first time I have listened. I can't think clearly; I +scarcely know yet what I've said and done. What must you think?... But +won't you be a little gentle with me--a little forbearing--in memory of +what I have been to you--to him--so long?" + +"What do you wish me to think?" asked the girl in a hard voice. "My +brother is of age; he will do what he pleases, I suppose. I--I don't +know what to think; this has astounded me. I never dreamed such a thing +possible----" + +"Nor I--until this spring. I know it is all wrong; this is making me +more fearfully unhappy every minute I live. There is nothing but peril +in it; the discrepancy in our ages makes it hazardous--his youth, his +overwhelming fortune, my position and means--the world will surely, +surely misinterpret, misunderstand--I think even you, his sister, may be +led to credit--what, in your own heart, you must know to be utterly and +cruelly untrue." + +"I don't know what to say or think," repeated Geraldine in a dull voice. +"I can't realise it; I thought that our affection for you was so--so +utterly different." + +She stared curiously at Kathleen, trying to reconcile what she had +always known of her with what she now had to reckon with--strove to +find some alteration in the familiar features, something that she had +never before noticed, some new, unsuspected splendour of beauty and +charm, some undetected and subtle allure. She saw only a wholesome, +young, and lovely woman, fresh-skinned, slender, sweet, and +graceful--the same companion she had always known and, as she +remembered, unchanged in any way since the years of childhood, when +Kathleen was twenty and she and her brother were ten. + +"I suppose," she said, "that if Scott is in love with you, there is only +one thing to do." + +"There are several," said Kathleen in a low voice. + +"Will you not marry him?" + +"I don't know; I think not." + +"Are you not in love with him?" + +"Does that matter?" asked Kathleen steadily. "Scott's happiness is what +is important." + +"But his happiness, apparently, depends on you." + +Kathleen flushed and looked at her curiously. + +"Dear, if I knew that was so, I would give myself to him. Neither you +nor he have ever asked anything of me in vain. Even if I did not love +him--as I do--and he needed me, I would give myself to him. You and he +have been all there was in life for me. But I am afraid that I may not +always be all that life holds for him. He is young; he has had no chance +yet; he has had little experience with women. I think he ought to have +his chance." + +She might have said the same thing of herself. A bride at her husband's +death-bed, widowed before she had ever been a wife, what experience had +she? All her life so far had been devoted to the girl who stood there +confronting her, and to the brother. What did she know of men?--of +whether she might be capable of loving some man more suitable? She had +not given herself the chance. She never would, now. + +There was no selfishness in Kathleen Severn. But there was much in the +Seagrave twins. The very method of their bringing up inculcated it; they +had never had any chance to be otherwise. The "cultiwation of the +indiwidool" had driven it into them, taught them the deification of +self, forced them to consider their own importance above anything else +in the world. + +And it was of that importance that Geraldine was now thinking as she sat +on the edge of her bed, darkly considering these new problems that +chance was laying before her one by one. + +If Scott was going to be unhappy without Kathleen, it followed, as a +matter of course, that he must have Kathleen. The chances Kathleen might +take, what she might have to endure of the world's malice and gossip and +criticism, never entered Geraldine's mind at all. + +"If he is in love with you," she repeated, "it settles it, I think. What +else is there to do but marry him?" + +Kathleen shook her head. "I shall do what is best for him--whatever that +may be." + +"You won't make him unhappy, I suppose?" inquired Geraldine, astonished. + +"Dear, a woman may be truer to the man she loves--and kinder--by +refusing him. Is not that what _you_ have done--for Duane's sake?" + +Geraldine sprang to her feet, face white, mouth distorted with anger: + +"I made a god of Duane!" she broke out breathlessly. "Everything that +was in me--everything that was decent and unselfish and pure-minded +dominated me when I found I loved him. So I would not listen to my own +desire for him, I would not let him risk a terrible unhappiness until I +could go to him as clean and well and straight and unafraid as he could +wish!" She laughed bitterly, and laid her hands on her breast. "Look at +me, Kathleen! I am quite as decent as this god of mine. Why should I +worry over the chances he takes when I have chances enough to take in +marrying him? I was stupid to be so conscientious--I behaved like a +hysterical schoolgirl--or a silly communicant--making him my confessor! +A girl is a perfect fool to make a god out of a man. I made one out of +Duane; and he acted like one. It nearly ended me, but, after all, he is +no worse than I. Whoever it was who said that decency is only depravity +afraid, is right. I _am_ depraved; I _am_ afraid. I'm afraid that I +cannot control myself, for one thing; and I'm afraid of being unhappy +for life if I don't marry Duane. And I'm going to, and let him take his +chances!" + +Kathleen, very pale, said: "That is selfishness--if you do it." + +"Are not men selfish? He will not tell me as much of his life as I have +told him of mine. I have told him everything. How do I know what risk I +run? Yes--I do know; I take the risk of marrying a man notorious for his +facility with women. And he lets me take that risk. Why should I not let +him risk something?" + +The girl seemed strangely excited; her quick breathing and bright, +unsteady eyes betrayed the nervous tension of the last few days. She +said feverishly: + +"There is a lot of nonsense talked about self-sacrifice and love; about +the beauties of abnegation and martyrdom, but, Kathleen, if I shall ever +need him at all, I need him now. I'm afraid to be alone any longer; I'm +frightened at the chances against me. Do you know what these days of +horror have been to me, locked in here--all alone--in the depths of +degradation for what--what I did that night--in distress and shame +unutterable----" + +"My darling----" + +"Wait! I had more to endure--I had to endure the results of my education +in the study of man! I had to realise that I loved one of them who has +done enough to annihilate in me anything except love. I had to learn +that he couldn't kill that--that I want him in spite of it, that I need +him, that my heart is sick with dread; that he can have me when he +will--Oh, Kathleen, I have learned to care less for him than when I +denied him for his own sake--more for him than I did before he held me +in his arms! And that is not a high type of love--I know it--but oh, if +I could only have his arms around me--if I could rest there for a +while--and not feel so frightened, so utterly alone!--I might win out; I +might kill what is menacing me, with God's help--and his!" + +She lay shivering on Kathleen's breast now, dry-eyed, twisting her +ringless fingers in dumb anguish. + +"Darling, darling," murmured Kathleen, "you cannot do this thing. You +cannot let him assume a burden that is yours alone." + +"Why not? What is one's lover for?" + +"Not to use; not to hazard; not to be made responsible for a sick mind +and a will already demoralised. Is it fair to ask him--to let him begin +life with such a burden--such a handicap? Is it not braver, fairer, to +fight it out alone, eradicate what threatens you--oh, my own darling! my +little Geraldine!--is it not fairer to the man you love? Is he not worth +striving for, suffering for? Have you no courage to endure if he is to +be the reward? Is a little selfish weakness, a miserable self-indulgence +to stand between you and life-long happiness?" + +Geraldine looked up; her face was very white: + +"Have you ever been tempted?" + +"Have I not been to-night?" + +"I mean by--something ignoble?" + +"No." + +"Do you know how it hurts?" + +"To--to deny yourself?" + +"Yes.... It is so--difficult--it makes me wretchedly weak.... I only +thought he might help me.... You are right, Kathleen.... I must be +terribly demoralised to have wished it. I--I will not marry him, now. I +don't think I ever will.... You are right. I have got to be fair to him, +no matter what he has been to me.... He has been fearfully unfair. After +all, he is only a man.... I couldn't really love a god." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +AMBITIONS AND LETTERS + + +Rosalie had departed; Grandcourt followed suit next day; Sylvia's +brother, Stuyvesant, had at last found a sober moment at his disposal +and had appeared at Roya-Neh and taken his sister away. Duane was all +ready to go to New York to find out whether his father was worrying over +anything, as the tone of his letters indicated. + +The day he left, Kathleen and Geraldine started on a round of August +house parties, ranging from Lenox to Long Island, including tiresome +week ends and duty visits to some very unpretentious but highly +intellectual relatives of Mrs. Severn. So Scott remained in solitary +possession of Roya-Neh, with its forests, gardens, pastures, lakes and +streams, and a staggering payroll and all the multiplicity of problems +that such responsibility entails. Which pleased him immensely, except +for the departure of Kathleen. + +To play the intellectual country squire had been all he desired on earth +except Kathleen. From the beginning White's "Selborne" had remained his +model for all books, Kathleen for all women. He was satisfied with these +two components of perfect happiness, and with himself, as he was, for +the third ingredient in a contented and symmetrical existence. + +He had accepted his answer from her with more philosophy than she quite +expected or was prepared for, saying that if she made a particular +point of it he would go about next winter and give himself a chance to +meet as many desirable young girls as she thought best; that it was +merely wasting time, but if it made her any happier, he'd wait and +endeavour to return to their relations of unsentimental comradeship +until she was satisfied he knew his mind. + +Kathleen was, at first, a little dismayed at his complacency. It was +only certainty of himself. At twenty-two there is time for anything, and +the vista of life ahead is endless. And there was one thing more which +Kathleen did not know. Under the covering of this Seagrave complacency +and self-centred sufficiency, all alone by itself was developing the +sprouting germ of consideration for others. + +How it started he himself did not know--nor was he even aware that it +had started. But long, solitary rambles and the quiet contemplation of +other things besides himself had awakened first curiosity, then a +dawning suspicion of the rights of others. + +In the silence of forests it is difficult to preserve complacency; under +the stars modesty is born. + +It began to occur to him, by degrees, that his own personal importance +among his kind _might_ be due, in part, to his fortune. And from the +first invasion of that shocking idea matters progressed rather rapidly +with the last of the Seagraves. + +He said uneasily to Duane, once: "Are you going in seriously for +painting?" + +"I _am_ in," observed Duane drily. + +"Professionally?" + +"Sure thing. God hates an amateur." + +"What are you after?" persisted Scott. "Fame?" + +"Yes; I need it in my business." + +"Are you contemplating a velvet coat and bow tie, and a bunch of the +elect at your heels?--ratty men, and pop-eyed young women whose coiffure +needs weeding?" + +Duane laughed. "Are they any more deadly than our own sort? Why endure +either? Because you are developing into a country squire, you don't have +to marry Maud Muller." And he quoted Bret Harte: + + "For there be women fair as she, + Whose verbs and nouns do more agree." + +"You don't have to wallow in a profession, you know." + +"But why the mischief do you want to paint professionally?" inquired +Scott, with unsatisfied curiosity. "It isn't avarice, is it?" + +"I expect to hold out for what my pictures are worth, if that's what you +mean by avarice. What I'm trying to do," added Duane, striking his palm +with his fist as emphasis, "is not to die the son of a wealthy man. If I +can't be anything more, I'm not worth a damn. But I'm going to be. I can +do it, Scott; I'm lazy, I'm undecided, I've a weak streak. And yet, do +you know, with all my blemishes, all my misgivings, all my +discouragements, panics, despondent moments, I am, way down inside, +serenely and unaccountably certain that I can paint like the devil, and +that I am going to do it. That sounds cheeky, doesn't it?" + +"It sounds all right to me," said Scott. And he walked away +thoughtfully, fists dug deep in his pockets. + +And one still, sunny afternoon, standing alone on the dry granite crags +of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles +above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked +down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread +out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds, and a river belonging +to him traced its course across the valley in a single silver thread. +And a slight blush stung his face at the thought that, without any merit +or endeavour of his own, his money had bought it all--his money, that +had always acted as his deputy, fought for him, conquered for him, +spoken for him, vouched for him--perhaps pleaded for him!--he shivered, +and suddenly he realised that this golden voice was, in fact, all there +was to him. + +What had he to identify him on earth among mankind? Only his money. +Wherein did he differ from other men? He had more money. What had he to +offer as excuse for living at all? Money. What had he done? Lived on it, +by it. Why, then, it was the money that was entitled to distinction, and +he figured only as its parasite! Then he was nothing--even a little +less. In the world there was man and there was money. It seemed that he +was a little lower in the scale than either; a parasite--scarcely a +thing of distinction to offer Kathleen Severn. + +Very seriously he looked up at the moon. + +It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned +declaration. He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he +descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of +mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness. + +Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow. And that evening +he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had +taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning. + + "Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed + the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of + courage and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we + conquer the world--which is ourselves. + + "For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not + really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential + and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there + remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity + and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your + interest in my behalf. + + "Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will + tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes + something of a man to dare do it. + + "There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even + against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in + thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your + heart.... Yet I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith + in me to accept that statement--against the evidence of those two + divine witnesses which condemn me--your eyes? Circumstantial + evidence is no good in this case, dear. I can say no more than that. + + "Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other? + + "I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present + distress and despondency. What am I for if not for such moments? + + "That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever + been. I know that my conduct--at least your interpretation of + it--threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that + your attitude toward such a crisis--your solution of such a + situation--should be a leap forward toward self-destruction--a + reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the + more certain that we need each other now if ever. + + "The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind + the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last + few days, is more than I can well endure. Open both doors to me; + leagued we can win through! + + "Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight, + and we two shall stand together and see 'the day break and the + shadows flee away.'" + +That same evening his reply came: + + "My darling, Kathleen will give you this. I don't care what my eyes + saw if you tell me it isn't true. I have loved you, anyway, all the + while--even with my throat full of tears and my mouth bitter with + anger, and my heart torn into several thousand tatters--oh, it is + not very difficult to love you, Duane; the only trouble is to love + you in the right way; which is hard, dear, because I want you so + much; and it's so new to me to be unselfish. I began to learn by + loving you. + + "Which means, that I will not let you take the risk you ask for. + Give me time; I've fought it off since that miserable night. Heaven + alone knows why I surrendered--turning to my deadly enemy for + countenance and comfort to support my childish and contemptible + anger against you. + + "Duane, there is an evil streak in me, and we both must reckon with + it. Long, long before I knew I loved you, things you said and did + often wounded me; and within me a perfectly unreasoning desire to + hurt you--to make you suffer--always flamed up and raged. + + "I think that was partly what made me do what you know I did that + night. It would hurt you; that was my ignoble instinct. God knows + whether it was also a hideous sort of excuse for my weakness--for I + was blazing hot after the last dance--and the gaiety and uproar and + laughter all overexcited me--and then what I had seen you do, and + your not coming to me, and that ominous uneasy impulse stirring! + + "That is the truth as I analyse it. The dreadful thing is that I + could have been capable of dealing our chance of happiness such a + cowardly blow. + + "Well, it is over. The thing has fled for a while. I fought it down, + stamped on it with utter horror and loathing. It--the + encounter--tired me. I am weary yet--from honourable wounds. But I + won out. If it comes back again--Oh, Duane! and it surely will--I + shall face it undaunted once more; and every hydra-head that stirs I + shall kill until the thing lies dead between us for all time. + + "Then, dear, will you take the girl who has done this thing? + + "GERALDINE SEAGRAVE." + +This was his answer on the eve of his departure. + +And on the morning of it Geraldine came down to say good-bye; a fresh, +sweet, and bewildering Geraldine, somewhat slimmer than when he had last +seen her, a little finer in feature, more delicate of body; and there +was about her even a hint of the spirituel as a fascinating trace of +what she had been through, locked in alone behind the doors of her room +and heart. + +She bade him good-morning somewhat shyly, offering her slim hand and +looking at him with the slight uncertainty and bent brows of a person +coming suddenly into a strong light. + +He said under his breath: "You poor darling, how thin you are." + +"Athletics," she said; "Jacob wrestled with an angel, but you know what +I've been facing in the squared circle. Don't speak of it any more, will +you? ... How sunburned you are! What have you been about since I've kept +to my room?" + +"I've painted Miller's kids in the open; I suppose the terrific +influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed +easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration +behind it. I'll think out my own way--grope it out through Pantheon and +living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my +own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been sunstruck by +Sorolla." + +She listened demurely, watching him, her lips sensitive with +understanding; and she laughed when he laughed away his fealty to the +superb Spaniard, knowing himself and the untried strength within him. + +"But when are you coming back to us, Duane?" + +"I don't know. Father's letters perplex me. I'll write you every day, of +course." + +A quick colour tinted her skin: + +"And I will write you every day. I will begin to-day. Kathleen and I +expect to be here in September. But you will come back before that and +keep Scott company; won't you?" + +"I want to get into harness again," he said slowly. "I want to settle +down to work." + +"Can't you work here?" + +"Not very well." + +"Why?" + +"To tell the truth," he admitted, smiling, "I require something more +like a working studio than Miller's garret." + +"That's what I thought," she said shyly, "and Scott and I have the plans +for a studio all ready; and the men are to begin Monday, and Miller is +to take the new gate cottage. Oh, the plans are really very wonderful!" +she added hastily, as Duane looked grateful but dubious. "Rollins and +Calvert drew them. I wrote to Billy Calvert and sent him the original +plans for Hurryon Lodge. Duane, I thought it would please you----" + +"It does, you dear, generous girl! I'm a trifle overwhelmed, that's all +my silence meant. You ought not to do this for me----" + +"Why? Aren't we to be as near each other as we can be until--I am +ready--for something--closer?" + +"Yes.... Certainly.... I'll arrange to work out certain things up here. +As for models, if there is nothing suitable at Westgate village, you +won't mind my importing some, will you?" + +"No," she said, becoming very serious and gravely interested, as +befitted the fiancee of a painter of consequence. "You will do what is +necessary, of course; because I--few girls--are accustomed in the +beginning to the details of such a profession as yours; and I'm very +ignorant, Duane, and I must learn how to second you--intelligently"--she +blushed--"that is, if I'm to amount to anything as an artist's wife." + +"You dear!" he whispered. + +"No; I tell you I am totally ignorant. A studio is an awesome place to +me. I merely know enough to keep out of it when you are using models. +That is safest, isn't it?" + +He said, intensely amused: "It might be safer not to give pink teas +while I am working from the nude." + +"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're not _always_ +painting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?" + +"Not always!" he managed to assure her; and her pretty, confused +laughter mingled with his unembarrassed mirth as the motor-car swung up +to carry him and his traps to the station. + +They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips +threatened to escape control. + +Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing +nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, +but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on +the stone coping of the terrace. + +And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood +examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found +utterance: + +"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating +things, but any ass can do that. One can't make a particular name for +one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and +what a lot of idle idiots are imitating." + +She raised her violet eyes, astonished: + +"Do _you_ want to make a name for yourself?" + +"Yes," he said, reddening. + +"Why not? I'm a nobody. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear +what Duane has to say about amateurs!" + +"But, Scott, you don't have to be anything in particular except what you +are----" + +"What am I?" he demanded. + +"Why--yourself." + +"And what's that?" He grew redder. "I'll tell you, Kathleen. I'm merely +a painfully wealthy young man. Don't laugh; this is becoming deadly +serious to me. By my own exertions I've never done one bally thing +either useful or spectacular. I'm not distinguished by anything except +an unfair share of wealth. I'm not eminent, let alone pre-eminent, even +in that sordid class; there are richer men, plenty of them--some even +who have made their own fortunes and have not been hatched out in a +suffocating plethora of affluence like the larva of the Carnifex +tumble-bug----" + +"Scott!" + +"And I!" he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my +position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't +endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly +wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because +I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon +FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income! +What have I to offer anybody worth while for entertaining me? What have +I to offer you, Kathleen, in exchange for yourself?" + +He was becoming boyishly dramatic with sweeping gestures which amazed +her; but she was conscious that it was all sincere and very real to him. + +"Scott, dear," she began sweetly, uncertain how to take it all; +"kindness, loyalty, and decent breeding are all that a woman cares for +in a man----" + +"You are entitled to more; you are entitled to a man of distinction, of +attainment, of achievement----" + +"Few women ask for that, Scott; few care for it; fewer still understand +it----" + +"You would. I've got a cheek to ask you to marry me--_me!_--before I +wear any tag to identify me except the dollar mark----" + +"Oh, hush, Scott! You are talking utter nonsense; don't you know it?" + +He made a large and rather grandiose gesture: + +"Around me lies opportunity, Kathleen--every stone; every brook----" + +The mischievous laughter of his listener checked him. She said: "I'm +sorry; only it made me think of + + 'Sermons in stones, + Books in the running brooks,' + +and the indignant gentleman who said: 'What damn nonsense! It's "sermons +in _books_, _stones_ in the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I +don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish for fame----" + +"It isn't fame alone, although I wouldn't mind it if I deserved it. It's +that I want to do just one thing that amounts to something. I wish you'd +give me an idea, Kathleen, something useful in--say in entomology." + +Together they walked back to the terrace. Duane had gone; Geraldine sat +sideways on the parapet, her brown eyes fixed on the road along which +her lover had departed. + +"Geraldine," said Kathleen, who very seldom relapsed into the +vernacular, "this brother of yours desires to perform some startling +stunt in entomology and be awarded Carnegie medals." + +"That's about it," said Scott, undaunted. "Some wise guy put it all over +the Boll-weevil, and saved a few billions for the cotton growers; +another gentleman full of scientific thinks studied out the San Jose +scale; others have got in good licks at mosquitoes and house-flies. I'd +like to tackle something of that sort." + +"Rose-beetles," said his sister briefly. In her voice was a suspicion of +tears, and she kept her head turned from them. + +"Nobody could ever get rid of Rose-beetles," said Kathleen. "But it +_would_ be exciting, wouldn't it, Scott? Think of saving our roses and +peonies and irises every year!" + +"I _am_ thinking of it," said Scott gravely. + +A few moments later he disappeared around the corner of the house, +returning presently, pockets bulging with bottles and boxes, a +field-microscope in one hand, and several volumes on Coleoptera in the +other. + +"They're gone," he said without further explanation. + +"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen. + +"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvae ought +to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he +descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself +under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and +cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil. + +"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute +effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it +in the garden dirt." + +"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is +about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so +touchingly confident!" + +Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with +his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his +investigations. + +"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are +permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at +his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and +oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big cocoon in one of +them!" + +She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of +tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it +was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism +of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a +child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect, +wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught +so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under +her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned +proudly--even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of +her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility--this +sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart +with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish. + +So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright +hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet +nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, +youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her +conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life. + +And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl, +delicately lovely, already harassed, already perplexed, already bruised +and wearied by her first skirmishes with life; not yet fully +understanding what threatened, what lay before--alas! what lay behind +her--even to the fifth generation. + +They were to motor to Lenox after luncheon. Before that--and leaving +Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching +him--Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book--a +book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her +self-imprisonment. It was called "Simpson on Heredity." + +There were some very hideous illustrated pages in that book; she turned +to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she +first read them. They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies +through successive generations. + +That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not +realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the +soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled. + +She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr. Bailey, who +became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician +who ever read medical works was a fool. Desperation gave her courage to +ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her. But she +had the book under her pillow. It is better to answer such questions +when the young ask them. + +And over it all she pondered and pored, and used a dictionary and +shuddered, frightening herself into a morbid condition until, +desperately scared, she even thought of going to Duane about it; but +could not find the hardihood to do it or the vocabulary necessary. + +Now Duane was gone; and the book lay there between her knees, all its +technical vagueness menacing her with unknown terrors; and she felt that +she could endure it alone no longer. + +She wrote him: + + "You have not been gone an hour, and already I need you. I wish to + ask you about something that is troubling me; I've asked Kathleen + and she doesn't know; and Dr. Bailey was horrid to me, and I tried + to find out from Scott whether he knew, but he wasn't much + interested. So, Duane, who else is there for me to ask except you? + And I don't exactly know whether I may speak about such matters to + you, but I'm rather frightened, and densely ignorant. + + "It is this, dear; in a medical book which I read, it says that + hereditary taints are transmissible; that sometimes they may skip + the second generation but only to appear surely in the third. But it + also says that the taint is very likely to appear in _every_ + generation. + + "Duane, is this _true_? It has worried me sick since I read it. + Because, my darling, if it is so, is it not another reason for our + not marrying? + + "Do you understand? I can and will eradicate what is threatening + _me_, but if I marry you--you _do_ understand, don't you? Isn't it + all right for me to ask you whether, if we should have children, + this thing would menace them? Oh, Duane--Duane! Have I any right to + marry? Children come--God knows how, for nobody ever told me + exactly, and I'm a fool about such things--but I summoned up courage + to ask Dr. Bailey if there was any way to tell before I married + whether I would have any, and he said I would if I had any notion of + my duty and any pretence to self-respect. And I don't know what he + means and I'm bewildered and miserable and afraid to marry you even + when I myself become perfectly well. And that is what worries me, + Duane, and I have nobody in the world to ask about it except you. + Could you please tell me how I might learn what I ought to know + concerning these things without betraying my own vital interest in + them to whomever I ask? You see, Kathleen is as innocent as I. + + "Please tell me all you can, Duane, for I am most unhappy." + + * * * * * + + "The house is very still and full of sunlight and cut flowers. Scott + is meditating great deeds, lying flat in the dirt. Kathleen sits + watching him from the parapet. And I am here in the library, with + that ghastly book at my elbow, pouring out all my doubts and fears + to the only man in the world--whom God bless and protect wherever he + may be--Oh, Duane, Duane, how I love you!" + +She hurriedly directed and sealed the letter and placed it in the box +for outgoing mail; then, unquiet and apprehensive regarding what she had +ventured to write, she began a restless tour of the house, upstairs and +down, wandering aimlessly through sunny corridors, opening doors for a +brief survey of chambers in which only the shadow-patterns of leaves +moved on sunlit walls; still rooms tenanted only by the carefully dusted +furniture which seemed to stand there watching attentively for another +guest. + +Duane had left his pipe in his bedroom. She was silly over it, even to +the point of retiring into her room, shredding some cigarettes, filling +the rather rank bowl, and trying her best to smoke it. But such devotion +was beyond her physical powers; she rinsed her mouth, furious at being +defeated in her pious intentions, and, making an attractive parcel of +the pipe, seized the occasion to write him another letter. + + "There is in my heart," she wrote, "no room for anything except + you; no desire except for you; no hope, no interest that is not + yours. You praise my beauty; you endow me with what you might wish I + really possessed; and oh, I really am so humble at your feet, if you + only knew it! So dazed by your goodness to me, so grateful, so happy + that you have chosen me (I just jumped up to look at myself in the + mirror; I _am_ pretty, Duane, I've a stunning colour just now and + there _is_ a certain charm about me--even I can see it in what you + call the upcurled corners of my mouth, and in my figure and + hands)--and I am so happy that it is true--that you find me + beautiful, that you care for my beauty.... It is so with a man, I + believe; and a girl wishes to have him love her beauty, too. + + "But, Duane, I don't think the average girl cares very much about + that in a man. Of course you are exceedingly nice to look at, and I + notice it sometimes, but not nearly as often as you notice what you + think is externally attractive about me. + + "In my heart, I don't believe it really matters much to a girl what + a man looks like; anyway, it matters very little after she once + knows him. + + "Of course women do notice handsome men--or what we consider + handsome--which is, I believe, not at all what men care for; because + men usually seem to have a desire to kick the man whom women find + good-looking. I know several men who feel that way about Jack + Dysart. I think you do, for one. + + "Poor Jack Dysart! To-day's papers are saying such horridly + unpleasant things about the rich men with whom he was rather closely + associated in business affairs several years ago. I read, but I do + not entirely comprehend. + + "The New York papers seem unusually gloomy this summer; nothing but + predictions of hard times coming, and how many corporations the + attorney-general is going to proceed against, and wicked people who + loot metropolitan railways, and why the district-attorney doesn't do + his duty--which you say he does--oh, dear; I expect that Scott and + Kathleen and I will have to take in boarders this winter; but if + nobody has any money, nobody can pay board, so everybody will be + ruined and I don't very much care, for I could teach school, only + who is to pay my salary if there's no money to pay it with? Oh, + dear! what nonsense I am writing--only to keep on writing, because + it seems to bring you a little nearer--my own--my Duane--my + comrade--the same, same little boy who ran away from his nurse and + came into our garden to fight my brother and--fall in love with his + sister! Oh, Fate! Oh, Destiny! Oh, Duane Mallett! + + "Here is a curious phenomenon. Listen: + + "Away from you I have a woman's courage to tell you how I long for + you, how my heart and my arms ache for you. But when I am with you + I'm less of a woman and more of a girl--a girl not yet accustomed to + some things--always guarded, always a little reticent, always + instinctively recoiling from the contact I really like, always a + little on the defensive against your lips, in spite of + myself--against your arms--where, somehow, I cannot seem to stay + long at a time--will not endure it--_cannot_, somehow. + + "Yet, here, away from you, I so long for your embrace, and cannot + imagine it too long, too close, too tender to satisfy my need of + you. + + "And this is my second letter to you within the hour--one hour after + your departure. + + "Oh, Duane, I do truly miss you so! I go about humming that air you + found so quaint: + + "'Lisetto quittee la plaine, + Moi perdi bonheur a moi, + Yeux a moi semblent fontaine, + Depuis moi pas mire toi,' + + and there's a tear in every note of it, and I'm the most lonely + girl on the face of the earth to-day. + + "GERALDINE QUI PLEURE." + + "P.S.--Voici votre pipe, Monsieur!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE PROPHETS + + +August in town found an unusual number of New York men at the clubs, at +the restaurants, at the summer theatres. Men who very seldom shoved +their noses inside the metropolitan oven during the summer baking were +now to be met everywhere and anywhere within the financial district and +without. The sky-perched and magnificent down-town "clubs" were full of +men who under normal circumstances would have remained at Newport, +Lenox, Bar Harbor, or who at least would have spent the greater portion +of the summer on their yachts or their Long Island estates. + +And in every man's hand or pocket was a newspaper. + +They were scarcely worth reading for mere pleasure, these New York +newspapers; indeed, there was scarcely anything in them to read except a +daily record of the steady decline in securities of every description; +paragraphs noting the passing of dividends; columns setting forth +minutely the opinions of very wealthy men concerning the business +outlook; chronicles in detail of suits brought against railroads and +against great industrial corporations; accounts of inquiries by State +and by Federal authorities into combinations resulting in an alleged +violation of various laws. + +Here and there a failure of some bucket-branded broker was noted--the +reports echoing like the first dropping shots along the firing line. + +Even to the most casual and uninterested outsider it was evident that +already the metropolis was under a tension; that the tension was +increasing almost imperceptibly day by day; that there seemed to be no +very clear idea as to the reason of it, only a confused apprehension, an +apparently unreassuring fear of some grotesque danger ahead, which daily +reading of the newspapers was not at all calculated to allay. + +Of course there were precise reasons for impending trouble given and +reiterated by those amateurs of finance and politics whose opinions are +at the disposal of the newspaper-reading public. + +Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant +phrases such as "undigested securities" and "the treacherous attack on +the nation's integrity." + +Two principal reasons were given for the local financial uneasiness; and +the one made the other ridiculous--first, that the nation's Executive +was mad as Nero and had deliberately begun a senseless holocaust +involving the entire nation; the other that a "panic" was due, anyway. +It resembled the logic of the White Queen of immortal memory, who began +screaming before she pricked her finger in order to save herself any +emotion after the pin had drawn blood. + +Men knew in their hearts that there was no real reason for impending +trouble; that this menace was an unreal thing, intangible, without +substance--only a shadow cast by their own assininity. + +Yet shadows can be made real property when authority so ordains. Because +there was once a man with a donkey who met a stranger in the desert. + +The stranger bargained for and bought the donkey; the late owner shoved +the shekels into his ample pockets and sat down in the mule's shadow to +escape the sun; and the new owner brought suit to recover the rent due +him for the occupation of the shadow cast by his donkey. + +There was also a mule which waited seven years to kick. + +There are asses and mules and all sorts of shadows. The ordinance of +authority can affect only the shadow; the substance is immutable. + +Among other serious gentlemen of consideration and means who had been +unaccustomed to haunt the metropolis in the dog days was Colonel +Alexander Mallett, President of the Half Moon Trust Company, and +incidentally Duane's father. + +His town-house was still open, although his wife and daughter were in +the country. To it, in the comparative cool of the August evenings, came +figures familiar in financial circles; such men as Magnelius Grandcourt, +father of Delancy; and Remsen Tappan, and James Cray. + +Others came and went, men of whom Duane had read in the newspapers--very +great men who dressed very simply, very powerful men who dressed +elaborately; and some were young and red-faced with high living, and one +was damp of hair and long-nosed, with eyes set a trifle too close +together; and one fulfilled every external requisite for a "good +fellow"; and another was very old, very white, with a nut-cracker jaw +and faded eyes, blue as an unweaned pup's, and a cream-coloured wig +curled glossily over waxen ears and a bloodless and furrowed neck. + +All these were very great men; but they and Colonel Mallett journeyed at +intervals into the presence of a greater man who inhabited, all alone, +except for a crew of a hundred men, an enormous yacht, usually at +anchor off the white masonry cliffs of the seething city. + +All alone this very great man inhabited the huge white steamer; and they +piped him fore and they piped him aft and they piped him over the side. +Many a midnight star looked down at the glowing end of his black cigar; +many a dawn shrilled with his boatswain's whistle. He was a very, very +great man; none was greater in New York town. + +It was said of him that he once killed a pompous statesman--by ridicule: + +"I know who _you_ are!" panted a ragged urchin, gazing up in awe as the +famous statesman approached his waiting carriage. + +"And who am I, my little man?" + +"You are the great senator from New York." + +"Yes--you are right. _But_"--and he solemnly pointed his gloved +forefinger toward heaven--"but, remember, there is One even greater than +I." + +Duane had heard the absurd lampoon as a child, and one evening late in +August, smoking his after-dinner cigar beside his father in the empty +conservatory, he recalled the story, which had been one of his father's +favorites. + +But Colonel Mallett scarcely smiled, scarcely heard; and his son watched +him furtively. The trim, elastic figure was less upright this summer; +the close gray hair and cavalry mustache had turned white very rapidly +since spring. For the first time, too, in all his life, Colonel Mallett +wore spectacles; and the thin gold rims irritated his ears and the +delicate bridge of his nose. Under his pleasant eyes the fine skin had +darkened noticeably; thin new lines had sprung downward from the +nostrils' clean-cut wings; but the most noticeable change was in his +hands, which were no longer firm and fairly smooth, but were now the +hands of an old man, restless if not tremulous, unsteady in handling the +cigar which, unnoticed, had gone out. + +They--father and son--had never been very intimate. An excellent +understanding had always existed between them with nothing deeper in it +than a natural affection and an instinctive respect for each other's +privacy. + +This respect now oppressed Duane because long habit, and the understood +pact, seemed to bar him from a sympathy and a practical affection which, +for the first time, it seemed to him his father might care for. + +That his father was worried was plain enough; but how anxious and with +how much reason, he had hesitated to ask, waiting for some voluntary +admission, or at least some opening, which the older man never gave. + +That night, however, he had tried an opening for himself, offering the +old stock story which had always, heretofore, amused his father. And +there had been no response. + +In silence he thought the matter over; his sympathy was always quick; it +hurt him to remain aloof when there might be a chance that he could help +a little. + +"It may amuse you," he said carelessly, "to know how much I've made +since I came back from Paris." + +The elder man looked up preoccupied. His son went on: + +"What you set aside for me brings me ten thousand a year, you know. So +far I haven't touched it. Isn't that pretty good for a start?" + +Colonel Mallett sat up straighter with a glimmer of interest in his +eyes. + +Duane went on, checking off on his fingers: + +"I got fifteen hundred for Mrs. Varick's portrait, the same for Mrs. +James Cray's, a thousand each for portraits of Carl and Friedrich +Gumble; that makes five thousand. Then I had three thousand for the +music-room I did for Mrs. Ellis; and Dinklespiel Brothers, who handle my +pictures, have sold every one I sent; which gives me twelve thousand so +far." + +"I am perfectly astonished," murmured his father. + +Duane laughed. "Oh, I know very well that sheer merit had nothing much +to do with it. The people who gave me orders are all your friends. They +did it as they might have sent in wedding presents; I am your son; I +come back from Paris; it's up to them to do something. They've done +it--those who ever will, I expect--and from now on it will be +different." + +"They've given you a start," said his father. + +"They certainly have done that. Many a brilliant young fellow, with more +ability than I, eats out his heart unrecognised, sterilised for lack of +what came to me because of your influence." + +"It is well to look at it in that way for the present," said his father. +He sat silent for a while, staring through the dusk at the lighted +windows of houses in the rear. Then: + +"I have meant to say, Duane, that I--we"--he found a little difficulty +in choosing his words--"that the Trust Company's officers feel that, for +the present, it is best for them to reconsider their offer that you +should undertake the mural decoration of the new building." + +"Oh," said Duane, "I'm sorry!--but it's all right, father." + +"I told them you'd take it without offence. I told them that I'd tell +you the reason we do not feel quite ready to incur, at this moment, any +additional expenses." + +"Everybody is economising," said Duane cheerfully, "so I understand. No +doubt--later----" + +"No doubt," said his father gravely. + +The son's attitude was careless, untroubled; he dropped one long leg +over the other knee, and idly examining his cigar, cast one swift level +look at the older man: + +"Father?" + +"Yes, my son." + +"I--it just occurred to me that if you happen to have any temporary use +for what you very generously set aside for me, don't stand on ceremony." + +There ensued a long silence. It was his bedtime when Colonel Mallett +stirred in his holland-covered armchair and stood up. + +"Thank you, my son," he said simply; they shook hands and separated; the +father to sleep, if he could; the son to go out into the summer night, +walk to his nearest club, and write his daily letter to the woman he +loved: + + "Dear, it is not at all bad in town--not that murderous, humid heat + that you think I'm up against; and you must stop reproaching + yourself for enjoying the delicious breezes in the Adirondacks. + Women don't know what a jolly time men have in town. Follows the + chronical of this August day: + + "I had your letter; that is breeze enough for me; it was all full of + blue sky and big white clouds and the scent of Adirondack pines. + Isn't it jolly for you and Kathleen to be at the Varicks' camp! And + what a jolly crowd you've run into. + + "I note what you say about your return to the Berkshires, and that + you expect to be at Berkshire Pass Inn with the motor on Monday. + Give my love to Naida; I know you three and young Montross will have + a bully tour through the hill country. + + "I also note your red-pencil cross at the top of the page--which + always gives me, as soon as I open a letter of yours, the assurance + that all is still well with you and that victory still remains with + you. Thank God! Stand steady, little girl, for the shadows are + flying and the dawn is ours. + + "After your letter, breakfast with father--a rather silent one. Then + he went down-town in his car and I walked to the studio. It's one of + those stable-like studios which decorate the cross-streets in the + 50's, but big enough to work in. + + "A rather bothersome bit of news: the Trust Company reconsiders its + commission; and I have three lunettes and three big mural panels + practically completed. For a while I'll admit I had the blues, but, + after all, some day the Trust Company is likely to take up the thing + again and give me the commission. Anyway, I've had a corking time + doing the things, and lots of valuable practice in handling a big + job and covering large surfaces; and the problem has been most + exciting and interesting because, you see, I've had to solve it, + taking into consideration the architecture and certain fixed keys + and standards, such as the local colour and texture of the marble + and the limitations of the light area. Don't turn up your pretty + nose; it's all very interesting. + + "I didn't bother about luncheon; and about five I went to the club, + rather tired in my spinal column and arm-weary. + + "Nobody was there whom you know except Delancy Grandcourt and + Dysart. The latter certainly looks very haggard. I do not like him + personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the + papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and + the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; + and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human + being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. + For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is + difficult to contemplate any suffering unmoved. + + "There was a letter at the club for me from Scott. He says he's + plugging away at the Rose-beetle's life history as a hors-d'oeuvre + before tackling the appetising problem of his total extermination. + Dear old Scott! I never thought that the boy I fought in your garden + would turn into a spectacled savant. Or that his sister would prove + to be the only inspiration and faith and hope that life holds for + me! + + "I talked to Delancy. He _is_ a good young man, as you've always + insisted. I know one thing; he's high-minded and gentle. Dysart has + a manner of treating him which is most offensive, but it only + reflects discredit on Dysart. + + "Delancy told me that Rosalie is hostess in her own cottage this + month and has asked him up. I heard him speaking rather diffidently + to Dysart about it, and Dysart replied that he didn't 'give a damn + who went to the house,' as he wasn't going. + + "So much for gossip; now a fact or two: my father is plainly worried + over the business outlook; and he's quite alone in the house; and + that is why I don't go back to Roya-Neh just now and join your + brother. I could do plenty of work there. Scott writes that the new + studio is in good shape for me. What a generous girl you are! Be + certain that at the very first opportunity I will go and occupy it + and paint, no doubt, several exceedingly remarkable pictures in it + which will sell for enormous prices and enable us to keep a + maid-of-all-work when we begin our menage! + + "Father has retired--poor old governor--it tears me all to pieces to + see him so silent and listless. I am here at the club writing this + before I go home to bed. Now I am going. Good-night, my beloved. + + "DUANE." + + "P.S.--An honour, or the chance of it, has suddenly confronted me, + surprising me so much that I don't really dare to believe that it + can possibly happen to me--at least not for years. It is this: I met + Guy Wilton the other day; you don't know him, but he is a most + charming and cultivated man, an engineer. I lunched with him at the + Pyramid--that bully old club into which nothing on earth can take a + man who has not distinguished himself in his profession. It is + composed of professional and business men, the law, the army, navy, + diplomatic and consular, the arts and sciences, and usually the + chief executive of the nation. + + "During luncheon Wilton said: 'You ought to be in here. You are the + proper timber.' + + "I was astounded and told him so. + + "He said: 'By the way, the president of the Academy of Design is + very much impressed with some work of yours he has seen. I've heard + him, and other artists, also, discussing some pictures of yours + which were exhibited in a Fifth Avenue gallery.' + + "Well, you know, Geraldine, the breath was getting scarcer in my + lungs every minute and I hadn't a word to say. And do you know what + that trump of a mining engineer did? He took me about after luncheon + and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very eminent and + delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly nice, and the + president of the Academy, who is startlingly young and amiable, said + that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it was customary that + when anybody was proposed for membership, a man of his own + profession should do it. + + "And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen's name, + and now what do you think! Billy has proposed me, Austin, the marine + painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in my + behalf--professors, army men, navy men, business friends of + father's, architects, writers--and I'm terribly excited over it, + although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it's a + fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway. + + "This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be + proposed for the Pyramid. I know you will be happy over it. + + "D." + +The weather became hotter toward the beginning of September; his studio +was almost unendurable, nor was the house very much better. + +To eat was an effort; to sleep a martyrdom. Night after night he rose +from his hot pillows to stand and listen outside his father's door; but +the old endure heat better than the young, and very often his father was +asleep in the stifling darkness which made sleep for him impossible. + +The usual New York thunder-storms rolled up over Staten Island, covered +the southwest with inky gloom, veined the horizon with lightning, then +burst in spectacular fury over the panting city, drenched it to its +steel foundations, and passed on rumbling up the Hudson, leaving +scarcely any relief behind it. + +In one of these sudden thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest +and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon +hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, +and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tete-a-tete over +their peach and grapefruit salad. + +There was no reason why they should not have been there; no reason why +he should have hesitated to speak to them. But he did hesitate--in fact, +was retiring by the way he came, when Rosalie glanced around with that +instinct which divines a familiar presence, gave him a startled look, +coloured promptly to her temples, and recovered her equanimity with a +smile and a sign for him to join them. So he shook hands, but remained +standing. + +"We ran into town in the racer this morning," she explained. "Delancy +had something on down-town and I wanted to look over some cross-saddles +they made for me at Thompson's. Do be amiable and help us eat our salad. +What a ghastly place town is in September! It's bad enough in the +country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful +prophecies. Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is +about?" + +"It's about something harder to digest than this salad. The public +stomach is ostrichlike, but it can't stand the water-cure. Which is all +Arabic to you, Rosalie, and I don't mean to be impertinent, only the +truth is I don't know why people are losing confidence in the financial +stability of the country, but they apparently are." + +"There's a devilish row on down-town," observed Delancy, blinking, as an +unusually heavy clap of thunder rattled the dishes. + +"What kind of a row?" asked Duane. + +"Greensleeve & Co. have failed, with liabilities of a million and +microscopical assets." + +Rosalie raised her eyebrows; Greensleeve & Co. were once brokers for her +husband if she remembered correctly. Duane had heard of them but was +only vaguely impressed. + +"Is that rather a bad thing?" he inquired. + +"Well--I don't know. It made a noise louder than that thunder. Three +banks fell down in Brooklyn, too." + +"What banks?" + +Delancy named them; it sounded serious, but neither Duane nor Rosalie +were any wiser. + +"The Wolverine Mercantile Loan and Trust Company closed its doors, +also," observed Delancy, dropping the tips of his long, highly coloured +fingers into his finger-bowl as though to wash away all personal +responsibility for these financial flip-flaps. + +Rosalie laughed: "This is pleasant information for a rainy day," she +said. "Duane, have you heard from Geraldine?" + +"Yes, to-day," he said innocently; "she is leaving Lenox this morning +for Roya-Neh. I hear that there is to be some shooting there Christmas +week. Scott writes that the boar and deer are increasing very fast and +must be kept down. You and Delancy are on the list, I believe." + +Rosalie nodded; Delancy said: "Miss Seagrave has been good enough to ask +the family. Yours is booked, too, I fancy." + +"Yes, if my father only feels up to it. Christmas at Roya-Neh ought to +be a jolly affair." + +"Christmas anywhere away from New York ought to be a relief," observed +young Grandcourt drily. + +They laughed without much spirit. Coffee was served, cigarettes lighted. +Presently Grandcourt sent a page to find out if the car had returned +from the garage where Rosalie had sent it for a minor repair. + +The car was ready, it appeared; Rosalie retired to readjust her hair and +veil; the two men standing glanced at one another: + +"I suppose you know," said Delancy, reddening with embarrassment, "that +Mr. and Mrs. Dysart have separated." + +"I heard so yesterday," said Duane coolly. + +The other grew redder: "I heard it from Mrs. Dysart about half an hour +ago." He hesitated, then frankly awkward: "I say, Mallett, I'm a sort of +an ass about these things. Is there any impropriety in my going about +with Mrs. Dysart--under the circumstances?" + +"Why--no!" said Duane. "Rosalie has to go about with people, I suppose. +Only--perhaps it's fairer to her if you don't do it too often--I mean +it's better for her that any one man should not appear to pay her +noticeable attention. You know what mischief can get into print. What's +taken below stairs is often swiped and stealthily perused above stairs." + +"I suppose so. I don't read it myself, but it makes game of my mother +and she finds a furious consolation in taking it to my father and +planning a suit for damages once a week. You're right; most people are +afraid of it. Do you think it's all right for me to motor back with Mrs. +Dysart?" + +"Are _you_ afraid?" asked Duane, smiling. + +"Only on her account," said Grandcourt, so simply that a warm feeling +rose in Duane's heart for this big, ungainly, vividly coloured young +fellow whose direct and honest gaze always refreshed people even when +they laughed at him. + +"Are you driving?" asked Duane. + +"Yes. We came in at a hell of a clip. It made my hair stand, but Mrs. +Dysart likes it.... I say, Mallett, what sort of an outcome do you +suppose there'll be?" + +"Between Rosalie and Jack Dysart?" + +"Yes." + +"I know no more than you, Grandcourt. Why?" + +"Only that--it's too bad. I've known them so long; I'm friendly with +both. Jack is a curious fellow. There's much of good in him, Mallett, +although I believe you and he are not on terms. He is a--I don't mean +this for criticism--but sometimes his manner is unfortunate, leading +people to consider him overbearing. + +"I understand why people think so; I get angry at him, sometimes, +myself--being perhaps rather sensitive and very conscious that I am not +anything remarkable. + +"But, somehow"--he looked earnestly at Duane--"I set a very great value +on old friendships. He and I were at school. I always admired in him the +traits I myself have lacked.... There is something about an old +friendship that seems very important to me. I couldn't very easily break +one.... It is that way with me, Mallett.... Besides, when I think, +perhaps, that Jack Dysart is a trifle overbearing and too free with his +snubs, I go somewhere and cool off; and I think that in his heart he +must like me as well as I do him because, sooner or later, we always +manage to drift together again.... That is one reason why I am so +particular about his wife." + +Another reason happened to be that he had been in love with her himself +when Dysart gracefully shouldered his way between them and married +Rosalie Dene. Duane had heard something about it; and he wondered a +little at the loyalty to such a friendship that this young man so +naively confessed. + +"I'll tell you what I think," said Duane; "I think you're the best sort +of an anchor for Rosalie Dysart. Only a fool would mistake your +friendship. But the town's full of 'em, Grandcourt," he added with a +smile. + +"I suppose so.... And I say, Mallett--may I ask you something more?... I +don't like to pester you with questions----" + +"Go on, my friend. I take it as a clean compliment from a clean-cut +man." + +Delancy coloured, checked, but presently found voice to continue: + +"That's very good of you; I thought I might speak to you about this +Greensleeve & Co.'s failure before Mrs. Dysart returns." + +"Certainly," said Duane, surprised; "what about them? They acted for +Dysart at one time, didn't they?" + +"They do now." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Yes, I am. I didn't want to say so before Mrs. Dysart. But the +afternoon papers have it. I don't know why they take such a malicious +pleasure in harrying Dysart--unless on account of his connections with +that Yo Espero crowd--what's their names?--Skelton! Oh, yes, James +Skelton--and Emanuel Klawber with his thirty millions and his string of +banks and trusts and mines; and that plunger, Max Moebus, and old Amos +Flack--Flack the hack stalking-horse of every bull-market, who laid down +on his own brokers and has done everybody's dirty work ever since. How +on earth, Mallett, do you suppose Jack Dysart ever got himself mixed up +with such a lot of skyrockets and disreputable fly-by-nights?" + +Duane did not answer. He had nothing good to say or think of Dysart. + +Rosalie reappeared at that moment in her distractingly pretty pongee +motor-coat and hat. + +"Do come back with us, Duane," she said. "There's a rumble and we'll get +the mud off you with a hose." + +"I'd like to run down sometimes if you'll let me," he said, shaking +hands. + +So they parted, he to return to his studio, where models booked long +ahead awaited him for canvases which he was going on with, although the +great Trust Company that ordered them had practically thrown them back +on his hands. + +That evening at home when he came downstairs dressed in white serge for +dinner, he found his father unusually silent, very pale, and so tired +that he barely tasted the dishes the butler offered, and sat for the +most part motionless, head and shoulders sagging against the back of his +chair. + +And after dinner in the conservatory Duane lighted his father's cigar +and then his own. + +"What's wrong?" he asked, pleasantly invading the privacy of years +because he felt it was the time to do it. + +His father slowly turned his head and looked at him--seemed to study +the well-knit, loosely built, athletic figure of this strong young +man--his only son--as though searching for some support in the youthful +strength he gazed upon. + +He said, very deliberately, but with a voice not perfectly steady: + +"Matters are not going very well, my boy." + +"What matters, father?" + +"Down-town." + +"Yes, I've heard. But, after all, you people in the Half Moon need only +crawl into your shell and lie still." + +"Yes." + +After a silence: + +"Father, have you any outside matters that trouble you?" + +"There are--some." + +"You are not involved seriously?" + +His father made an effort: "I think not, Duane." + +"Oh, all right. If you were, I was going to suggest that I've deposited +what I have, subject to your order, with your own cashier." + +"That is--very kind of you, my son. I may--find use for it--for a short +time. Would you take my note?" + +Duane laughed. He went on presently: "I wrote Naida the other day. She +has given me power of attorney. What she has is there, any time you need +it." + +His father hung his head in silence; only his colourless and shrunken +hands worked on the arms of his chair. + +"See here, father," said the young fellow; "don't let this thing bother +you. Anything that could possibly happen is better than to have you look +and feel as you do. Suppose the very worst happens--which it won't--but +suppose it did and we all went gaily to utter smash. + +"That is a detail compared with your going to smash physically. Because +Naida and I never did consider such things vital; and mother is a brick +when it comes to a show-down. And as for me, why, if the very worst hits +us, I can take care of our bunch. It's in me to do it. I suppose you +don't think so. But I can make money enough to keep us together, and, +after all, that's the main thing." + +His father said nothing. + +"Of course," laughed Duane, "I don't for a moment suppose that anything +like that is on the cards. I don't know what your fortune is, but +judging from your generosity to Naida and me I fancy it's too solid to +worry over. The trouble with you gay old capitalists," he added, "is +that you think in such enormous sums! And you forget that little sums +are required to make us all very happy; and if some of the millions +which you cannot possibly ever use happen to escape you, the tragic +aspect as it strikes you is out of all proportion to the real state of +the case." + +His father felt the effort his son was making; looked up wearily, strove +to smile, to relight his cigar; which Duane did for him, saying: + +"As long as you are not mixed up in that Klawber, Skelton, Moebus crowd, +I'm not inclined to worry. It seems, as of course you know, that +Dysart's brokers failed to-day." + +"So I heard," said his father steadily. He straightened himself in his +chair. "I am sorry. Mr. Greensleeve is a very old friend----" + +The library telephone rang; the second man entered and asked if Colonel +Mallett could speak to Mr. Dysart over the wire on a matter concerning +the Yo Espero district. + +Duane, astonished, sprang up asking if he might not take the message; +then shrank aside as his father got to his feet. He saw the ghastly +pallor on his face as his father passed him, moving toward the library; +stood motionless in troubled amazement, then walked to the open window +of the conservatory and, leaning there, waited. + +His father did not return. Later a servant came: + +"Colonel Mallett has retired, Mr. Duane, and begs that he be +undisturbed, as he is very tired." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +DYSART + + +The possibility that his father could be involved in any of the +spectacular schemes which had evidently caught Dysart, seemed so remote +that Duane's incredulity permitted him to sleep that night, though the +name Yo Espero haunted his dreams. + +But in the morning, something he read in the paper concerning a vast +enterprise, involving the control of the new radium mines in Southern +California, startled him into trying to recollect what he had heard of +Yo Espero and the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Tainting +its title the sinister name of Moebus seemed to reoccur persistently in +his confused imagination. Dysart's name, too, figured in it. And, +somehow, he conceived an idea that his father once received some mining +engineer's reports covering the matter; he even seemed to remember that +Guy Wilton had been called into consultation. + +Whatever associations he had for the name of the Cascade Development and +Securities Company must have originated in Paris the year before his +father returned to America. It seemed to him that Wilton had been in +Spain that year examining the recent and marvellously rich radium find; +and that his father and Wilton exchanged telegrams very frequently +concerning a mine in Southern California known as Yo Espero. + +His father breakfasted in his room that morning, but when he appeared in +the library Duane was relieved to notice that his step was firmer and he +held himself more erect, although his extreme pallor had not changed to +a healthier colour. + +"You know," said Duane, "you've simply got to get out of town for a +while. It's all bally rot, your doing this sort of thing." + +"I may go West for a few weeks," said his father absently. + +"Are you going down-town?" + +"No.... And, Duane, if you don't mind letting me have the house to +myself this morning----" + +He hesitated, glancing from his son to the telephone. + +"Of course not," said Duane heartily. "I'm off to the studio----" + +"I don't mean to throw you out," murmured his father with a painful +attempt to smile, "but there's a stenographer coming from my office and +several--business acquaintances." + +The young fellow rose, patted his father's shoulder lightly: + +"What is really of any importance," he said, "is that you keep your +health and spirits. What I said last night covers my sentiments. If I +can do anything in the world for you, tell me." + +His father took the outstretched hand, lifted his faded eyes with a +strange dumb look; and so they parted. + +On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, Duane, swinging along at a good +pace, turned westward, and half-way to Sixth Avenue encountered Guy +Wilton going east, a packet under one arm, stick and hat in the other +hand, the summer wind blowing the thick curly hair from his temples. + +"Ah," observed Wilton, "early bird and worm, I suppose? Don't try to +bolt me, Duane; I'm full of tough and undigested--er--problems, myself. +Besides, I'm fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening +politely to a man you wanted to assault?" + +Duane laughed, then his eye by accident, caught a superscription on the +packet of papers under Wilton's arm: Yo Espero! His glance reverted in a +flash to Wilton's face. + +The latter said: "I want to write a book entitled 'Gentleman I Have +Kicked.' Of course I've only kicked 'em mentally; but my! what a list I +have!--all sorts, all nations--from certain domestic and predatory +statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress +notorious in a decadent novel!--all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally +I've just used my foot on another social favorite----" + +"Dysart!" said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged +Wilton's pardon. + +"You've sure got a disconcerting way with you," admitted Wilton, very +much out of countenance. + +"It was rotten bad taste in me----" + +Wilton grinned with a wry face: "Nobody is standing much on ceremony +these days. Besides, I'm on to your trail, young man"--tapping the +bundle under his arm--"your eye happened to catch that superscription; +no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to--a rather +embarrassing conclusion." + +Duane's serious face fell: + +"My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy. Are you going up +to see him now?" + +Wilton hesitated: "I suppose I am.... See here, Duane, how much do you +know about--anything?" + +"Nothing," he said without humour; "I'm beginning to worry over my +father's health.... Guy, don't tell me anything that my father's son +ought not to know; but is there something I should know and +don't?--anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?" + +Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then +his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy. + +"I--don't--know," he said slowly. "I'm going to see your father now. If +there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you. Don't +you?" + +"Yes. But he won't. Guy, I don't care a damn about anything except his +health and happiness. If anything threatens either, he won't tell me, +but don't you think I ought to know?" + +"You ask too hard a question for me to answer." + +"Then can you answer me this? Is father at all involved in any of Jack +Dysart's schemes?" + +"I--had better not answer, Duane." + +"You know best. You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his +personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs +and yours." + +"Yes, I understand. Let me think over things for a day or two. Now I've +got to hustle. Good-bye." + +He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, +head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with +nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and +presently rattled off up-town. + +In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few +doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at +a bronze grille. + +The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling +deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the +tiny elevator. + +There was evidently somebody in the second room; Duane had also noticed +a motor waiting outside as he descended from his cab; so he took a seat +and sat twirling his walking-stick between his knees, gloomily +inspecting a room which, in pleasanter days, had not been unfamiliar to +him. + +Instead of the servant returning, there came a click from the elevator, +a quick step, and the master of the house himself walked swiftly into +the room wearing hat and gloves. + +"What do you want?" he inquired briefly. + +"I want to ask you a question or two," said Duane, shocked at the change +in Dysart's face. Haggard, thin, snow-white at the temples with the +light in his eyes almost extinct, the very precision and freshness of +linen and clothing brutally accentuated the ravaged features. + +"What questions?" demanded Dysart, still standing, and without any +emotion whatever in either voice or manner. + +"The first is this: are you in communication with my father concerning +mining stock known as Yo Espero?" + +"I am." + +"Is my father involved in any business transactions in which you figure, +or have figured?" + +"There are some. Yes." + +"Is the Cascade Development and Securities Co. one of them?" + +"Yes, it is." + +Duane's lips were dry with fear; he swallowed, controlled the rising +anger that began to twitch at his throat, and went on in a low, quiet +voice: + +"Is this man--Moebus--connected with any of these transactions in which +you and--and my father are interested?" + +"Yes." + +"Is Klawber?" + +"Max Moebus, Emanuel Klawber, James Skelton, and Amos Flack are +interested. Is that what you want to know?" + +Duane looked at him, stunned. Dysart stepped nearer, speaking almost in +a whisper: + +"Well, what about it? Once I warned you to keep your damned nose out of +my personal affairs----" + +"I make some of them mine!" said Duane sharply; "when crooks get hold of +an honest man, every citizen is a policeman!" + +Dysart, face convulsed with fury, seized his arm in a vicelike grip: + +"Will you keep your cursed mouth shut!" he breathed. "My father is in +the next room. Do you want to kill him?" + +At the same moment there came a stir from the room beyond, the tap-tap +of a cane and shuffling steps across the polished parquet. Dysart's grip +relaxed, his hand fell away, and he made a ghastly grimace as a little +old gentleman came half-trotting, half-shambling to the doorway. He was +small and dapper and pink-skinned under his wig; the pink was paint; his +lips and eyes peered and simpered; from one bird-claw hand dangled a +monocle. + +Jack Dysart made a ghastly and supreme effort: + +"I was just saying to Duane, father, that all this financial agitation +is bound to blow over by December--Duane Mallett, father!"--as the old +man raised his eye-glass and peeped up at the young fellow--"you know +his father, Colonel Mallett." + +"Yes, to be sure, yes, to be sure!" piped the old beau. "How-de-do! +How-de-do-o-o! My son Jack and I motor every morning at this hour. It is +becoming a custom--he! he!--every day from ten to eleven--then a biscuit +and a glass of sherry--then a nap--te-he! Oh, yes, every day, Mr. Mallett, +rain or fair--then luncheon at one, and the cigarette--te-he!--and a +little sleep--and the drive at five! Yes, Mr. Mallett, it is the routine +of a very old man who knew your grandfather--and all his set--when the +town was gay below Bleecker Street! Yes, yes--te-he-he!" + +Nervous spasms which passed as smiles distorted the younger Dysart's +visage; the aged beau offered his hand to Duane, who took it in silence, +his eyes fixed on the shrivelled, painted face: + +"Your grandfather was a very fine man," he piped; "very fine! ve-ery +fine! And so I perceive is his grandson--te-he!--and I flatter myself +that my boy Jack is not unadmired--te-he-he!--no, no--not precisely +unnoticed in New York--the town whose history is the history of his own +race, Mr. Mallett--he is a good son to me--yes, yes, a good son. It is +gratifying to me to know that you are his friend. He is a good friend to +have, Mr. Mallett, a good friend and a good son." + +Duane bent gently over the shrivelled hand. + +"I won't detain you from your drive, Mr. Dysart. I hope you will have a +pleasant one. It is a pleasure to know my grandfather's old friends. +Good-bye." + +And, erect, he hesitated a moment, then, for an old man's sake he held +out his hand to Jack Dysart, bidding him good-bye in a pleasant voice +pitched clear and decided, so that deaf ears might corroborate what +half-blind and peering eyes so dimly beheld. + +Dysart walked to the door with him, waved the servant aside, and, laying +a shaking hand on the bronze knob, opened the door for his unbidden +guest. + +As Duane passed him he said: + +"Thank you, Mallett," in a voice so low that Duane was half-way to his +cab before he understood. + + * * * * * + +That day, and the next, and all that week he worked in his pitlike +studio. Through the high sky-window a cloudless zenith brooded; the heat +became terrific; except for the inevitable crush of the morning and +evening migration south and north, the streets were almost empty under a +blazing sun. + +His father seemed to be physically better. Although he offered no +confidences, it appeared to the son that there was something a little +more cheerful in his voice and manner. It may have been only the +anticipation of departure; for he was going West in a day or two, and it +came out that Wilton was going with him. + +The day he left, Duane drove him to the station. There was a private +car, the "Cyane," attached to the long train. Wilton met them, spoke +pleasantly to Duane; but Colonel Mallett did not invite his son to enter +the car, and adieux were said where they stood. + +As the young fellow turned and passed beneath the car-windows, he caught +a glimpse above him of a heavy-jowled, red face into which a cigar was +stuck--a perfectly enormous expanse of face with two little piglike eyes +almost buried in the mottled fat. + +"That's Max Moebus," observed a train hand respectfully, as Duane +passed close to him; "I guess there's more billions into that there +private car than old Pip's crowd can dig out of their pants pockets on +pay day." + +A little, dry-faced, chin-whiskered man with a loose pot-belly and thin +legs came waddling along, followed by two red-capped negroes with his +luggage. He climbed up the steps of the "Cyane"; the train man winked at +Duane, who had turned to watch him. + +"Amos Flack," he said. "He's their 'lobbygow.'" With which contemptuous +information he spat upon the air-brakes and, shoving both hands into his +pockets, meditatively jingled a bunch of keys. + + * * * * * + +The club was absolutely deserted that night; Duane dined there alone, +then wandered into the great empty room facing Fifth Avenue, his steps +echoing sharply across the carpetless floor. The big windows were open; +there was thunder in the air--the sonorous stillness in which voices and +footsteps in the street ring out ominously. + +He smoked and watched the dim forms of those whom the heat drove forth +into the night, men with coats over their arms and straw hats in their +hands, young girls thinly clad in white, bare-headed, moving two and two +with dragging steps and scarcely spirit left even for common coquetry or +any response to the jesting oafs who passed. + +Here and there a cruising street-dryad threaded the by-paths of the +metropolitan jungle; here and there a policeman, gray helmet in hand, +stood mopping his face, night-club tucked up snugly under one arm. Few +cabs were moving; at intervals a creaking, groaning omnibus rolled +past, its hurricane deck white with the fluttering gowns of women and +young girls. + +Somebody came into the room behind him; Duane turned, but could not +distinguish who it was in the dusk. A little while later the man came +over to where he sat, and he looked up; and it was Dysart. + +There was silence for a full minute; Dysart stood by the window looking +out; Duane paid him no further attention until he wheeled slowly and +said: + +"Do you mind if I have a word with you, Mallett?" + +"Not if it is necessary." + +"I don't know whether it is necessary." + +"Don't bother about it if you are in the slightest doubt." + +Dysart waited a moment, perhaps for some unpleasant emotion to subside; +then: + +"I'll sit down a moment, if you permit." + +He dropped into one of the big, deep, leather chairs and touched the +bell. A servant came; he looked across at Duane, hesitated to speak: + +"Thank you," said Duane curtly. "I've cut it out." + +"Scotch. Bring the decanter," murmured Dysart to the servant. + +When it was served he drained the glass, refilled it, and turned in the +rest of the mineral water. Before he spoke he emptied the glass again +and rang for more mineral water. Then he looked at Duane and said in a +low voice: + +"I thought you were worried the other day when I saw you at my house." + +"What is that to you?" + +Dysart said: "You were very kind--under provocation." + +"I was not kind on your account." + +"I understand. But I don't forget such things." + +Duane glanced at him in profound contempt. Here was the stereotyped +scoundrel with the classical saving trait--the one conventionally +inevitable impulse for good shining like a diamond on a muck-heap--his +apparently disinterested affection for his father. + +"You were very decent to me that day," Dysart said. "You had something +to say to me--but were good enough not to. I came over to-night to give +you a chance to curse me out. It's the square thing to do." + +"What do you know about square dealing?" + +"Go on." + +"I have nothing to add." + +"Then I have if you'll let me." He paused; the other remained silent. +"I've this to say: you are worried sick; I saw that. What worries you +concerns your father. You were merciful to mine. I'll do what I can for +you." + +He swallowed half of what remained in his iced glass, set it back on the +table with fastidious precision: + +"The worst that can happen to your father is to lose control of the Yo +Espero property. I think he is going to lose it. They've crowded me out. +If I could have endured the strain I'd have stood by your father--for +what you did for mine.... But I couldn't, Mallett." + +He moistened his lips again; leaned forward: + +"I think I know one thing about you, anyway; and I'm not afraid you'd +ever use any words of mine against me----" + +"Don't say them!" retorted Duane sharply. + +But Dysart went on: + +"You have no respect for me. You found out one thing about me that +settled me in your opinion. Outside of that, however, you never liked +me." + +"That is perfectly true." + +"I know it. And I want to say now that it was smouldering irritation +from that source--wounded vanity, perhaps--coupled with worry and +increasing cares, that led to that outburst of mine. I never really +believed that my wife needed any protection from the sort of man you +are. You are not that kind." + +"That also is true." + +"And I know it. And now I've cleared up these matters; and there's +another." He bit his lip, thought a moment, then with a deep, long +breath: + +"When you struck me that night I--deserved it. I was half crazy, I +think--with what I had done--with a more material but quite as ruinous +situation developing here in town--with domestic complications--never +mind where all the fault lay--it was demoralising me. Do you think that +I am not perfectly aware that I stand very much alone among men? Do you +suppose that I am not aware of my personal unpopularity as far as men +are concerned? I have never had an intimate friend--except Delancy +Grandcourt. And I've treated him like a beast. There's something wrong +about me; there always has been." + +He slaked his thirst again; his hand shook so that he nearly dropped the +glass: + +"Which is preliminary," he went on, "to saying to you that no matter +what I said in access of rage, I never doubted that your encounter +with--Miss Quest--was an accident. I never doubted that your motive in +coming to me was generous. God knows why I said what I did say. You +struck me; and you were justified.... And that clears up that!" + +"Dysart," said the other, "you don't have to tell me these things." + +"Would you rather not have heard them?" + +Duane thought a moment. + +"I would rather have heard them, I believe." + +"Then may I go on?" + +"Is there anything more to explain between us?" + +"No.... But I would like to say something--in my own behalf. Not that it +matters to you--or to any man, perhaps, except my father. I would like +to say it, Mallett." + +"Very well." + +"Then; I prefer that you should believe I am not a crook. Not that it +matters to you; but I prefer that you do not believe it.... You have +read enough in the papers to know what I mean. I'm telling you now what +I have never uttered to any man; and I haven't the slightest fear you +will repeat it or use it in any manner to my undoing. It is this: + +"The men with whom I was unwise enough to become partially identified +are marked for destruction by the Clearing House Committee and by the +Federal Government. I know it; others know it. Which means the ruthless +elimination of anything doubtful which in future might possibly +compromise the financial stability of this city. + +"It is a brutal programme; the policy they are pursuing is bitterly +unjust. Innocent and guilty alike are going to suffer; I never in all my +life consciously did a crooked thing in business; and yet I say to you +now that these people are bent on my destruction; that they mean to +force us to close the doors of the Algonquin; that they are planning the +ruin of every corporation, every company, every bank, every enterprise +with which I am connected, merely because they have decreed the +financial death of Moebus and Klawber!" + +He made a trembling gesture with clenched hand, and leaned farther +forward: + +"Mallett! There is not one man to-day in Wall Street who has not done, +and who is not doing daily, the very things for which the government +officials and the Clearing House authorities are attempting to get rid +of me. Their attacks on my securities will ultimately ruin me; but such +attacks would ruin any financier, any bank in the United States, if +continued long enough. + +"Doesn't anybody know that when the government conspires with the +Clearing House officials any security can be kicked out of the market? +Don't they know that when bank examiners class any securities as +undesirable, and bank officials throw them out from the loans of such +institutions, that they're not worth the match struck to burn them into +nothing? + +"If they mean to close my companies and bring charges against me, I'll +tell you now, Mallett, any official of any bank which to-day is in +operation, can be indicted!" + +He sat breathing fast, hands clasped nervously between his knees. Duane, +painfully impressed, waited. And after a moment Dysart spoke again: + +"They mean my ruin. There is a bank examiner at work--this very moment +while we're sitting here--on the Collect Pond Bank--which is mine. The +Federal inquisitors went through it once; now a new one is back again. +They found nothing with which to file an adverse report the first time. +Why did they come back? + +"And I'll tell you another thing, Mallett, which may seem a slight +reason for my sullenness and quick temper; they've had secret-service +men following me ever since I returned from Roya-Neh. They are into +everything that I've ever been connected with; there is no institution, +no security in which I am interested, that they have not investigated. + +"And I tell you also, incredible as it may sound, that there is no +security in which I am interested which is not now being attacked by +government officials, and which, as a result of such attacks, is not +depreciating daily. I tell you they've even approached the United States +Court for its consent to a ruinous disposal of certain corporation notes +in which I am interested! Will you tell me what you think of that, +Mallett?" + +Duane said: "I don't know, Dysart. I know almost nothing about such +matters. And--I am sorry that you are in trouble." + +The silence remained unbroken for some time; then Dysart stood up: + +"I don't offer you my hand. You took it once for my father's sake. +That was manly of you, Mallett.... I thought perhaps I might lighten +your anxiety about your father. I hope I have.... And I must ask +your pardon for pressing my private affairs upon you"--he laughed +mirthlessly--"merely because I'd rather you didn't think me a crook--for +my father's sake.... Good-night." + +"Dysart," he said, "why in God's name have you behaved as you have +to--that girl?" + +Dysart stood perfectly motionless, then in a voice under fair control: + +"I understand you. You don't intend that as impertinence; you're a +square man, Mallett--a man who suffers under the evil in others. And +your question to me meant that you thought me not entirely hopeless; +that there was enough of decency in me to arouse your interest. Isn't +that what you meant?" + +"Yes, I think so." + +"Well, then, I'll answer you. There isn't much left of me; there'll be +less left of my fortune before long. I've made a failure of everything, +fortune, friendship, position, happiness. My wife and I are separated; +it is club gossip, I believe. She will probably sue for divorce and get +it. And I ask you, because I don't know, can any amends be made to--the +person you mentioned--by my offering her the sort and condition of man I +now am?" + +"You've got to, haven't you?" asked Duane. + +"Oh! Is that it? A sort of moral formality?" + +"It's conventional; yes. It's expected." + +"By whom?" + +"All the mess that goes to make up this compost heap we call society.... +I think she also would expect it." + +Dysart nodded. + +"If you could make her happy it would square a great many things, +Dysart." + +The other looked up: "You?" + +"I--don't know. Yes, in many ways; in that way at all events--if you +made her happy." + +Dysart stepped forward: "Would you be nice to her if I did? No other +soul in the world knows except you. Other people would be nice to her. +Would _you_? And would you have the woman you marry receive her?" + +"Yes." + +"That is square of you, Mallett.... I meant to do it, anyway.... Thank +you.... Good-night." + +"Good-night," said Duane in a low voice. + +He returned to the house late that night, and found a letter from +Geraldine awaiting him; the first in three days. Seated at the library +table he opened the letter and saw at once that the red-pencilled cross +at the top was missing. + +Minutes passed; the first line blurred under his vacant gaze, for his +eyes travelled no farther. Then the letter fell to the table; he dropped +his head in his arms. + +It was a curiously calm letter when he found courage to read it: + + "I've lost a battle after many victories. It went against me after a + hard fight here alone at Roya-Neh. I think you had better come up. + The fight was on again the next night--that is, night before last, + but I've held fast so far and expect to. Only I wish you'd come. + + "It is no reproach to you if I say that, had you been here, I might + have made a better fight. You couldn't be here; the shame of defeat + is all my own. + + "Duane, it was not a disastrous defeat in one way. I held out for + four days, and thought I had won out. I was stupefied by loss of + sleep, I think; this is not in excuse, only the facts which I lay + bare for your consideration. + + "The defeat was in a way a concession--a half-dazed + compromise--merely a parody on a real victory for the enemy; because + it roused in me a horror that left the enemy almost no consolation, + no comfort, even no physical relief. The enemy is I myself, you + understand--that other self we know about. + + "She was perfectly furious, Duane; she wrestled with me, fought to + make me yield more than I had--which was almost nothing--begged me, + brutalised me, pleaded, tormented, cajoled. I was nearly dead when + the sun rose; but I had gone through it. + + "I wish you could come. She is still watching me. It's an armed + truce, but I know she'll break it if the chance comes. There is no + honour in her, Duane, no faith, no reason, no mercy. I know her. + + "Can you not come? I won't ask it if your father needs you. Only if + he does not, I think you had better come very soon. + + "When may I restore the red cross to the top of my letters to you? I + suppose I had better place it on the next letter, because if I do + not you might think that another battle had gone against me. + + "Don't reproach me. I couldn't stand it just now. Because I am a + very tired girl, Duane, and what has happened is heavy in my + heart--heavy on my head and shoulders like that monster Sindbad + bore. + + "Can you come and free me? One word--your arms around me--and I am + safe. + + "G.S." + +As he finished, a maid came bearing a telegram on a salver. + +"Tell him to wait," said Duane, tearing open the white night-message: + + "Your father is ill at San Antonio and wishes you to come at once. + Notify your mother but do not alarm her. Your father's condition is + favorable, but the outcome is uncertain. + + "WELLS, _Secretary_." + +Duane took three telegram blanks from the note-paper rack and wrote: + + "My father is ill at San Antonio. They have just wired me, and I + shall take the first train. Stand by me now. Win out for my sake. I + put you on your honour until I can reach you." + +And to his father: + + "I leave on first train for San Antonio. It's going to be all right, + father." + +And to his mother: + + "Am leaving for San Antonio because I don't think father is well + enough to I'll write you and wire you. Love to you and Naida." + +He gave the maid the money, turned, and unhooking the receiver of the +telephone, called up the Grand Central Station. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THROUGH THE WOODS + + +The autumn quiet at Roya-Neh was intensely agreeable to Scott Seagrave. +No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of +the Rose-beetle, _Melolontha subspinosa_, and his scandalous "Life +History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to +distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent +soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike +barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it +was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed +pages. The balm of heavenly silence pervaded the house, and in its +beneficent atmosphere he worked in his undershirt, inhaling inspiration +and the aroma of whale-oil, soap, and carbolic solutions. + +Neither Kathleen nor his sister being present to limit his operations, +the entire house was becoming a vast mess. Living-rooms, library, halls, +billiard-room, were obstructed with "scientific" paraphernalia; hundreds +of glass fruit jars, filled with earth containing the whitish, globular +eggs of the Rose-beetle, encumbered mantel and furniture; glass +aquariums half full of earth, sod, and youthful larvae of the same sinful +beetle lent pleasing variety to the monotony of Scott's interior +decorative effects. Microscopes, phials, shallow trays bristling with +sprouting seeds, watering-cans, note-books, buckets of tepid water, jars +brimming with chemical solutions, blockaded the legitimate and natural +runways of chamber-maid, parlour-maid, and housekeeper; a loud scream +now and then punctured the scientific silence, recording the Hibernian +discovery of some large, green caterpillar travelling casually somewhere +in the house. + +"Mr. Seagrave, sir," stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, +"your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I can't stand +it no more!" + +But it was only a wholesale hatching of huge hawk-moths that came +whizzing around Lang when he turned on the electric lights; and which, +escaping, swarmed throughout the house, filling it with their loud, +feathery humming, and the shrieks of Milesian domestics. + +And it was into these lively household conditions that Kathleen and +Geraldine unexpectedly arrived from the Berkshires, worn out with their +round of fashionable visits, anxious for the quiet and comfort that is +supposed to be found only under one's own roof-tree. This is what they +found: + +In Geraldine's bath-tub a colony of water-lilies were attempting to take +root for the benefit of several species of water-beetles. The formidable +larvae of dragon-flies occupied Kathleen's bath; turtles peered at them +from vantage points under the modern plumbing; an enormous frog regarded +Kathleen solemnly from the wet, tiled floor. "Oh, dear," she said as +Scott greeted her rapturously, "have I got to move all these horrid +creatures?" + +"For Heaven's sake don't touch a thing," protested Scott, welcoming his +sister with a perfunctory kiss; "I'll find places for them in a minute." + +"How _could_ you, Scott!" exclaimed Geraldine, backing hastily away +from a branch of green leaves on which several gigantic horned +caterpillars were feeding. "I don't feel like ever sleeping in this room +again," she added, exasperated. + +"Why, Sis," he explained mildly, "those are the caterpillars of the +magnificent Regal moth! They're perfectly harmless, and it's jolly to +watch them tuck away walnut leaves. You'll like to have them here in +your room when you understand how to weigh them on these bully little +scales I've just had sent up from Tiffany's." + +But his sister was too annoyed and too tired to speak. She stood limply +leaning against Kathleen while her brother disposed of his uncanny +menagerie, talking away very cheerfully all the while absorbed in his +grewsome pets. + +But it was not to his sister, it was to Kathleen that his pride in his +achievements was naively displayed; his running accompaniment of chatter +was for Kathleen's benefit, his appeals were to her sympathy and +understanding, not to his sister's. + +Geraldine watched him in silence. Tired, not physically very well, this +home-coming meant something to her. She had looked forward to it, and to +her brother, unconsciously wistful for the protection of home and kin. +For the day had been a hard one; she was able to affix the red-cross +mark to her letter to Duane that morning, but it had been a bad day for +her, very bad. + +And now as she stood there, white, nerveless, fatigued, an ache grew in +her breast, a dull desire for somebody of her own kin to lean on; and, +following it, a slow realisation of how far apart from her brother she +had drifted since the old days of cordial understanding in the +schoolroom--the days of loyal sympathy through calm and stress, in +predatory alliance or in the frank conflicts of the squared circle. + +Suddenly her whole heart filled with a blind need of her brother's +sympathy--a desire to return to the old intimacy as though in it there +lay comfort, protection, sanctuary for herself from all that threatened +her--herself! + +Kathleen was assisting Scott to envelop the frog in a bath towel for the +benevolent purpose of transplanting him presently to some other +bath-tub; and Kathleen's golden head and Scott's brown one were very +close together, and they were laughing in that intimate undertone +characteristic of thorough understanding. Her brother's expression as he +looked up at Kathleen Severn, was a revelation to his sister, and it +pierced her with a pang of loneliness so keen that she started forward +in sheer desperation, as though to force a path through something that +was pushing her away from him. + +"Let me take his frogship," she said with a nervous laugh. "I'll put him +into a jolly big tub where you can grow all the water-weeds you like, +Scott." + +Her brother, surprised and gratified, handed her the bath-towel in the +depths of which reposed the batrachian. + +"He's really an interesting fellow, Sis," explained Scott; "he exudes a +sticky, viscous fluid from his pores which is slightly toxic. I'm going +to try it on a Rose-beetle." + +Geraldine shuddered, but forced a smile, and, holding the imprisoned one +with dainty caution, bore him to a palatial and porcelain-lined +bath-tub, into which she shook him with determination and a suppressed +shriek. + +That night at dinner Scott looked up at his sister with something of +the old-time interest and confidence. + +"I was pretty sure you'd take an interest in all these things, sooner or +later. I tell you, Geraldine, it will be half the fun if you'll go into +it with us." + +"I want to," said his sister, smiling, "but don't hurry my progress or +you'll scare me half to death." + +The tragic necessity for occupation, for interesting herself in +something sufficient to take her out of herself, she now understood, and +the deep longing for the love of all she had of kith and kin was +steadily tightening its grip on her, increasing day by day. Nothing else +could take its place; she began to understand that; not her intimacy +with Kathleen, not even her love for Duane. Outside of these there +existed a zone of loneliness in which she was doomed to wander, a zone +peopled only by the phantoms of the parents she had never known long +enough to remember--a dreaded zone of solitude and desolation and peril +for her. The danger line marked its boundary; beyond lay folly and +destruction. + +Little by little Scott began to notice that his sister evidently found +his company desirable, that she followed him about, watching his +so-called scientific pursuits with a curiosity too constant to be +assumed. And it pleased him immensely; and at times he held forth to her +and instructed her with brotherly condescension. + +He noticed, too, that her spirits did not appear to be particularly +lively; there were often long intervals of silence when, together by the +window in the library where he was fussing over his "Life History," she +never spoke, never even moved from her characteristic attitude--seated +deep in a leather chair, arms resting on the padded chair-arms, ankles +crossed, and her head a trifle lowered, as though absorbed in studying +the Herati design on a Persian rug. + +Once, looking up suddenly, he surprised her brown eyes full of tears. + +"Hello!" he said, amazed; "what's the row, Sis?" + +But she only laughed and dried her eyes, denying that there was any +explanation except that girls were sometimes that way for no reason at +all. + +One day he asked Kathleen privately about this, but she merely confirmed +Geraldine's diagnosis of the phenomenon: + +"Tears come into girls' eyes," she said, "and there isn't anybody on +earth who can tell a man why, and he wouldn't comprehend it if anybody +did tell him." + +"I'll tell you one thing," he said sceptically; "if Rose-beetles shed +tears, I'd never rest until I found out why. You bet there's always a +reason that starts anything and always somebody to find it out and tell +another fellow who can understand it!" + +With which brilliant burst of higher philosophy they went out into the +October woods together to hunt for cocoons. + +Geraldine, rather flushed and nervous, met them at Hurryon Gate, +carrying a rifle and wearing the shortest skirts her brother had ever +beheld. The symmetry of her legs moved him to reproof: + +"I thought people looked that way only in tailor's fashion plates," he +said. "What are you after--chipmunks?" + +"Not at all," said his sister. "Do you know what happened to me an hour +ago? I was paddling your canoe into the Hurryon Inlet, and I suppose I +made no noise in disembarking, and I came right on a baby wild boar in +the junipers. It was a tiny thing, not eighteen inches long, Kathleen, +and so cunning and furry and yellowish, with brown stripes on its back, +that I tried to catch it--just to hug it." + +"That was silly," said her brother. + +"I know it was, now. Because I ran after it, and it ran; and, one by +one, a whole herd of the cunning little things sprang out of the hemlock +scrub and went off bucking and bucketing in all directions, and I, like +a simpleton, hard after one of them----" + +"Little idiot," said her brother solicitously. "Are you stark mad?" + +"No, I'm just plain mad. Because, before I knew it, there came a crash +in the underbrush and the biggest, furriest, and wickedest wild boar I +ever saw halted in front of me, ears forward, every hair on end----" + +"Lord save us, you jumped the sow!" groaned her brother. "She might have +torn you to pieces, you ninny!" + +"She meant to, I think. The next thing I knew she came headlong, mouth +open, fairly screaming at me; and I turned and jumped clean into the +Gray Water. Oh, Scott, it was humiliating to have to swim to the point +with all my clothes on, scramble into the canoe, and shove off because a +very angry wild creature drove me out of my own woods!" + +"Well, dear, you won't ever interfere with a sow and pigs again, will +you?" said Kathleen so earnestly that everybody laughed. + +"What's the rifle for?" inquired Scott. "You don't intend to hunt for +her, do you?" + +"Of course not. I'm not vindictive or cruel. But old Miller said, when I +came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast +and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping +them, and sending them to other people for stocking purposes. The +Pink 'uns want some; why don't you?" + +"I don't want to shoot or trap them," said Scott obstinately. + +"Miller says they pulled down deer last winter and tore them to shreds. +Everything in the forest is afraid of them; they drive the deer from the +feeding-grounds, and I don't believe a lynx or even any of the bear that +climb over the fence would dare attack them." + +Kathleen said: "You really ought to ask some men up here to shoot, +Scott. I don't wish to be chased about by a boar." + +"They never bother people," he protested. "What are you going to do with +that rifle, Geraldine?" + +"My nerve has gone," she confessed, laughing; "I prefer to have it with +me when I take walks. It's really safer," she added seriously to +Kathleen. "Miller says that a buck deer can be ugly, too." + +"Oh, Lord!" said her brother, laughing; "it's only because you're the +prettiest thing ever, in that hunting dress! Don't tell me; and kindly +be careful where you point that rifle." + +"As if I needed instructions!" retorted his sister. "I wish I could see +a boar--a big one with a particularly frightful temper and tusks to +match." + +"I'll bet you that you can't kill a boar," he said in good-humoured +disdain. + +"I don't see any to kill." + +"Well, I bet you can't find one. And if you do, I bet you don't kill +him." + +"How long," asked Geraldine dangerously, "does that bet hold good?" + +"All winter, if you like. It's the prettiest single jewel you can pick +out against a new saddle-horse. I need a gay one; I'm getting out of +condition. And all our horses are as interesting as chevaux de bois when +the mechanism is freshly oiled and the organ plays the 'Ride of the +Valkyries.'" + +"I've half a mind to take that wager," said Geraldine, very pink and +bright-eyed. "I think I will take it if----" + +"Please don't, dear," said Kathleen anxiously. "The keepers say that a +wounded boar is perfectly horrid sometimes." + +"Dangerous?" Her eyes glimmered brighter still. + +"Certainly, a wounded boar is dangerous. I heard Miller say----" + +"Bosh!" said Scott. "They run away from you every time. Besides, +Geraldine isn't going to have enough sporting blood in her to take that +bet and make good." + +Something in the quick flush and tilt of her head reminded Scott of the +old days when their differences were settled with eight-ounce gloves. +The same feeling possessed his sister, thrilled her like a sudden, +unexpected glimpse of a happiness which apparently had long been ended +for ever. + +"Oh, Scott," she exclaimed, still thrilling, "it _is_ like old times to +hear you try to bully me. It's so long since I've had enough spirit to +defy you. But I do now!--oh, yes, I do! Why, I believe that if we had +the gloves here, I'd make you fight me or take back what you said about +my not having any sporting spirit!" + +He laughed: "I was thinking of that, too. You're a good sport, Sis. +Don't bother to take that wager----" + +"I _do_ take it!" she cried; "it's like old times and I love it. Now, +Scott, I'll show you a boar before we go to town or I'll buy you a +horse. No backing out; what's said can't be unsaid, remember: + + "King, king, double king, + Can't take back a given thing! + Queen, queen, queen of queens, + What she promises she means!" + +That was a very solemn incantation in nursery days; she laughed a little +in tender tribute to the past. + +Scott was a trifle perturbed. He glanced uneasily at Kathleen, who told +him very plainly that he had contrived to make her anxious and unhappy. +Then she fell back into step with Geraldine, letting Scott wander +disconsolately forward: + +"Dear," she said, passing one arm around the younger girl, "I didn't +quite dare to object too strongly. You looked so--so interested, so +deliciously defiant--so like your real self----" + +"I feel like it to-day, Kathleen; let me turn back in my own +footsteps--if I can. I've been trying so very hard to--to get back to +where there was no--no terror in the world." + +"I know. But, darling, you won't run into any danger, will you?" + +"Do you call a hard-hit beast a danger? I've wounded a more terrible one +than any boar that ever bristled. I'm trying to kill something more +terrifying. And I shall if I live." + +"You poor, brave little martyr!" whispered Kathleen, her violet eyes +filled with sudden tears; "don't you suppose I know what you are doing? +Don't you suppose I watch and pray----" + +"Did _you_ know I was really trying?" asked the girl, astonished--"I +mean before I told you?" + +"Know it! Angels above! Of course I know it. Don't you suppose I've been +watching you slowly winning back to your old dear self--tired, +weary-footed, desolate, almost hopeless, yet always surely finding your +way back through the dreadful twilight to the dear, sweet, generous self +that I know so well--the straightforward, innocent, brave little self +that grew at my knee!--Geraldine--Geraldine, my own dear child!" + +"Hush--I did not know you knew. I am trying. Once I failed. That was not +very long ago, either. Oh, Kathleen, I am trying so hard, so hard! And +to-day has been a dreadful day for me. That is why I went off by myself; +I paddled until I was ready to drop into the lake; and the fright that +the boar gave me almost ended me; but it could not end desire!... So I +took a rifle--anything to interest me--keep me on my feet and moving +somewhere--doing something--anything--anything, Kathleen--until I can +crush it out of me--until there's a chance that I can sleep----" + +"I know--I know! That is why I dared not remonstrate when I saw you +drifting again toward your old affectionate relations with Scott. I'm +afraid of animals--except what few Scott has persuaded me to +tolerate--butterflies and frogs and things. But if anything on earth is +going to interest you--take your mind off yourself--and bring you and +Scott any nearer together, I shall not utter one word against it--even +when it puts you in physical danger and frightens me. Do you +understand?" + +The girl nodded, turned and kissed her. They were following a path made +by game; Scott was out of sight ahead somewhere; they could hear his +boots crashing through the underbrush. After a while the sound died away +in the forest. + +"The main thing," said Geraldine, "is to keep up my interest in the +world. I want to do things. To sit idle is pure destruction to me. I +write to Duane every morning, I read, I do a dozen things that require +my attention--little duties that everybody has. But I can't continue to +write to Duane all day. I can't read all day; duties are soon ended. +And, Kathleen, it's the idle intervals I dread so--the brooding, the +memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine--like +dinner--the--the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell +you, physical fatigue must help to save me--must help my love for Duane, +my love for you and Scott, my self-respect--what is left of it. This +rifle"--she held it out--"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I +won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me." + +"You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly. + +"Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I +wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed +fiercely. "I need something of that sort." + +"You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me +about it," said Kathleen gently. + +Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only +trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane.... +Don't be alarmed; I can't--yet. But if I only could have him now! You +see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would +absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests +me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the +day--to keep me from myself----" + +She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered: + +"I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I +want him now--his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to +love me--_love_ me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!" + +A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the +girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely +understood. + +Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her--the feeling of +happy safety she had in his arms--the contact that thrilled almost past +endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength--that +set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins--that aroused +her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest +would have her. + +And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and +slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked +into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride: + +"I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him +than that?" + +"Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe +that he can save you--if you really feel that he can----" + +"I am trying to save myself--I am trying." She turned and looked off +through the forest, a straight, slender shape in the moving shadows of +the leaves. + +"But if he could really help you--if you truly believe it, dear, I--I +don't know whether you might not venture--now----" + +"No, dear." She slowly closed her eyes, remained motionless for a +moment, drew a deep, long breath, and looked up through the sunlit +branches overhead. + +"I've got to be fair to him," she said aloud to herself; "I must give +myself to him as I ought to be, or not at all.... That is settled." + +She turned to Kathleen and took her hand: + +"Come on, fellow-pilgrim," she said with an effort to smile. "My +cowardice is over for the present." + +A few steps forward they sighted Scott coming back. He was unusually red +in the face and rather excited, and he flourished a stick. + +"Of all the infernal impudence!" he said. "What do you think has +happened to me? I saw a wild boar back there--not a very big one--and he +came out into the trail ahead, and I kept straight on, thinking he'd +hear me and run. And I'm blessed if the brute didn't whirl around and +roughen up, and clatter his tusks until I actually had to come to a +halt!" + +"I don't want to walk in these woods any more," said Kathleen with +sudden conviction. "Please come home, all of us." + +"Nonsense," he said. "I won't stand for being hustled out of my own +woods. Give me that rifle, Geraldine." + +"I certainly will not," she said, smiling. + +"What! Why not?" + +"Because it rather looks as though I'm about to win my bet with you," +observed Geraldine. "Please show me your boar, Scott." And she threw a +cartridge into the magazine and started forward. + +"Don't let her!" pleaded Kathleen. "Scott, it's ridiculous to let that +child do such silly things----" + +"Then stop her if you can," said Scott gloomily, following his sister. +"I don't know anything about wild boar, but I suppose straight shooting +will take care of them, and Sis can do that if she keeps her nerve." + +Geraldine, hastening ahead, rifle poised, scanned the woods with the +palpitating curiosity of an amateur. Eyes and ears alert, she kept +mechanically reassuring herself that the thing to do was to shoot +straight and keep cool, and to keep on shooting whichever way the boar +might take it into his porcine head to run. + +Scott hastened forward to her side: + +"Here's the place," he said, looking about him. "He's concluded to make +off, you see. They usually go off; they only stand when wounded or when +they think they can't get away. He's harmless, I suppose--only it made +me very tired to have him act that way. I hate to be backed out of my +own property." + +Geraldine, rather relieved, yet ashamed not to do all she could, began +to walk toward a clump of low hemlocks. She had heard that wild boar +take that sort of cover. She did not really expect to find anything +there, so when a big black streak crashed out ahead of her she stood +stock still in frozen astonishment, rifle clutched to her breast. + +"Shoot!" shouted her brother. + +"Oh, dear, oh, dear," she said helplessly, "he's gone out of sight! And +I had such a splendid shot!" She stamped with vexation. "What a goose!" +she repeated. "I had a perfectly splendid shot. And all I did was to +jump like a scared cat and stare!" + +"Anyway, you didn't run, and that's a point gained," observed her +brother. "I had to. And that's one on me." + +A moment later he said: "I believe those impudent boar do need a little +thinning out. When is Duane coming?" + +"In November," said Geraldine, still looking vaguely about for the +departed pig. + +"Early?" + +"I think so, if his father is all right again. I've asked Naida, too. +Rosalie wants to come----" + +"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't," he protested. "All I wanted was a +shooting party to do a little scientific thinning out of these boar. +I'll do some myself, too." + +Geraldine laughed. "Rosalie is a dead shot at a target, dear. She wrote +asking us to invite her to shoot. I don't see how I can very well refuse +her. Do you?" + +"That means her husband, too," grumbled Scott, "and that entire bunch." + +"No; if it's a shooting party, I don't have to ask him." + +Her brother said ungraciously: "Well, I don't care who you ask if +they'll thin out these cheeky brutes. Fancy that two-year-old pig +clattering his tusks at me, planted there in the path with his mane on +end!--You know it mortifies me, Kathleen--it certainly does. One of +these fine days some facetious pig will send me shinning up a tree!" He +grew madder at the speculative indignity. "By ginger! I'm going to have +a shooting party before the snow flies," he muttered, walking forward +between Kathleen and his sister. "Keep your eyes out ahead; we may jump +another at any time, as the wind is all right. And if we do, let him +have it, Geraldine!" + +It was a beautiful woodland through which they moved. + +The late autumn foliage was unusually magnificent, lacking, this year, +those garish and discordant hues which Americans think it necessary to +admire. Oak brown and elm yellow, deep chrome bronze and sombre crimson +the hard woods glowed against backgrounds of pine and hemlock. Larches +were mossy cones of feathery gold; birches slim shafts of snowy gray, +ochre-crowned; silver and green the balsams' spires pierced the canopy +of splendid tapestry upborne by ash and oak and towering pine under a +sky of blue so deep and intense that the lakes reflecting it seemed no +less vivid. + +Already in the brooks they passed painted trout hung low over every bed +of gravel and white sand; the male trout wore his best scarlet fins, and +his sides glowed in alternate patterns, jewelled with ruby and sapphire +spots. Already the ruffed grouse thundered up by coveys, though they had +not yet packed, for the broods still retained their autonomy. + +But somewhere beyond the royal azure of the northern sky, very, very far +away, there was cold in the world, for even last week, through the +violet and primrose dusk, out of the north, shadowy winged things came +speeding, batlike phantoms against the dying light--flight-woodcock +coming through hill-cleft and valley to the land where summer lingered +still. + +And there in mid-forest, right in the tall timber, Scott, advancing, +flushed a woodcock, which darted up, filling the forest with twittering +music--the truest music of our eastern autumn, clear, bewildering, +charming in its evanescent sweetness which leaves in its wake a +startling silence. + +Ahead, lining both sides of a gully deep with last year's leaves, was an +oak grove in mid-forest. Here the brown earth was usually furrowed by +the black snouts of wild boar, for mast lay thick here in autumn and +tender roots invited investigation. + +"Get down flat and crawl," whispered Scott; "there may be a boar or two +on the grounds." + +Kathleen, in her pretty white gown of lace and some sheer stuff, looked +at him piteously; but when he and Geraldine dropped flat and wriggled +forward into the wind, misgiving of what might prowl behind seized her, +and she tucked up her skirts and gave herself to the brown earth with a +tremor of indignation and despair. + +Nearer and nearer they crept, making very little sound; but they made +enough to rouse a young boar, who jerked his head into the air, where he +stood among the acorns, big, furry ears high and wide, nose working +nervously. + +"He's only a yearling," breathed Scott in his sister's ear. "There are +traces of stripes, if you look hard. Wait for a better one." + +They lay silent, all three peering down at the yearling, who stood +motionless, nosing for tainted air, listening, peering about with dull, +near-sighted eyes. + +And, after a long time, as they made no sound, the brute wheeled +suddenly, made a complete circle at a nervous trout, uttered a series of +short, staccato sounds that, when he became older, would become deeper, +more of an ominous roar than a hoarse and irritated grunt. + +Two deer, a doe and a fawn, came picking their way cautiously along the +edge of the gully, sometimes flattening their ears, sometimes necks +outstretched, ears forward, peering ahead at the young and bad-tempered +pig. + +The latter saw them, turned in fury and charged with swiftness +incredible, and the deer stampeded headlong through the forest. + +"What a fierce, little brute!" whispered Kathleen, appalled. "Scott, if +he comes any nearer, I'm going to get into a tree." + +"If he sees us or winds us he'll run. Don't move; there may be a good +boar in presently. I've thought two or three times that I heard +something on that hemlock ridge." + +They listened, holding their breath. Crack! went a distant stick. +Silence; nothing stirred except the yearling who had returned to the +mast and was eagerly nosing among the acorns. They could hear him +crunching the husks, see the gleam of long white teeth which one day +would grow outside that furry muzzle and curve up and backward like +ivory sabres. + +Geraldine whispered: "There's a huge black thing moving in the hemlock +scrub. I can see its feet against the sky-line, and sometimes part of +its bulk----" + +"Oh, heavens," breathed Kathleen, "what is that?" + +Out of the scrub trotted a huge, shaggy, black thing, all head and +shoulders, with body slanting back abruptly to a pair of weak +hindquarters. Down the slope it ran in quick, noiseless, jerky steps; +the yearling turned his head, still munching, ears cocked forward. And +suddenly the monster rushed at him with a squeal, and the yearling +shrieked and fled, chased clear up the slope. + +"It's a sow; don't shoot," whispered Scott. "Look, Sis, you can't see a +sign of tusks. Good heavens, what a huge creature she is!" + +Fierce, formidable, the great beast halted; three striped, partly grown +pigs came rushing and frisking down the gully to join her, filling the +forest with their clumsy clatter and baby squealing. From the ridge the +two deer, who had sneaked back, regarded the scene with terrified +fascination. + +Presently the yearling rushed them out again, then sidled down, +venturing to the edge of the feeding-ground, where he began to crunch +acorns again with a cautious eye on the sow and her noisy brood. + +Here and there a brilliant blue-jay floated down, seized an acorn, and +winged hastily to some near tree where presently he filled the woods +with the noise he made in hammering the acorn into some cleft in the +bark. + +Gradually the sunlight on the leaves reddened; long, luminous shadows +lengthened eastward. Kathleen, lying at full length, her pretty face +between her hands, suddenly sneezed. + +The next moment the feeding-ground was deserted; only a distant crashing +betrayed the line of flight where the great fierce sow and her young +were rushing upward toward the rocks of the Gilded Dome. + +"I'm so sorry," faltered Kathleen, very pink and embarrassed. + +Geraldine sat up and laughed, laying the uncocked rifle across her +knees. + +"Some of these days I'm going to win my wager," she said to her brother. +"And it won't be with a striped yearling, either; it will be with the +biggest, shaggiest, fiercest, tuskiest boar that ranges the Gilded Dome. +And that," she added, looking at Kathleen, "will give me something to +think of and keep me rather busy, I believe." + +"Rather," observed her brother, getting up and helping Kathleen to her +feet. He added, to torment her: "Probably you'll get Duane to win your +bet for you, Sis." + +"No," said the girl gravely; "whatever is to die I must slay all by +myself, Scott--all alone, with no man's help." + +He nodded: "Sure thing; it's the only sporting way. There's no stunt to +it; only keep cool and keep shooting, and drop him before he comes to +close quarters." + +"Yes," she said, looking up at Kathleen. + +Her brother drew her to her feet. She gave him a little hug. + +"Believe in me, dear," she said. "I'll do it easier if you do." + +"Of course I do. You're a better sport than I. You always were. And +that's no idle jest; witness my nose and Duane's in days gone by." + +The girl smiled. As they turned homeward she slung her rifle, passed her +right arm through Kathleen's, and dropped her left on her brother's +shoulder. She was very tired, and hopeful that she might sleep. + +And tired, hopeful, thinking of her lover, she passed through the woods, +leaning on those who were nearest and most dear. + +Somehow--and just why was not clear to her--it seemed at that moment as +though she had passed the danger mark--as though the very worst lay +behind her--close, scarcely clear of her skirts yet, but all the same it +lay behind her, not ahead. + +She knew, and dreaded, and shrank from what still lay before her; she +understood into what ruin treachery to self might precipitate her still +at any moment. And yet, somehow, she felt vaguely that something had +been gained that day which never before had been gained. And she thought +of her lover as she passed through the forest, leaning on Scott and +Kathleen, her little feet keeping step with theirs, her eyes steady in +the red western glare that flooded the forest to an infernal beauty. + +Behind her streamed her gigantic shadow; behind her lay another shadow, +cast by her soul and floating wide of it now. And it must never touch +her soul again, God helping. + +Suddenly her heart almost ceased its beating. Far away within, stirring +in unsuspected depths, something moved furtively. + +Her face whitened a little; her eyes closed, the lids fluttered, opened; +she gazed straight in front of her, walked on, small head erect, lips +firm, facing the hell that lay before her--lay surely, surely before +her. For the breath of it glowed already in her veins and the voices of +it were already busy in her ears, and the unseen stirring of it had +begun once more within her body--that tired white, slender body of hers +which had endured so bravely and so long. + +If sleep would only aid her, come to her in her need, be her ally in the +peril of her solitude--if it would only come, and help her to endure! + +And wondering if it would, not knowing, hoping, she walked onward +through the falling night. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE DANGER MARK + + +Her letters to him still bore the red cross: + + "I understand perfectly why you cannot come," she wrote; "I would do + exactly as you are doing if I had a father. It must be a very great + happiness to have one. My need of you is not as great as his; I can + hold my own alone, I think. You see I am doing it, and you must not + worry. Only, dear, when you have the opportunity, come up if only + for a day." + +And again, in November: + + "You are the sweetest boy, and it is not difficult to understand why + your father cannot endure to have you out of his sight. But is this + not a very heavy strain on you? Of course your mother and Naida must + not be left alone with him; you are the only son, and your place is + there. + + "Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful + things that any man is called upon to bear--your father stricken, + your mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers--for I have read + them--cruel beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true + or untrue, Duane, remember that it cannot affect my regard for you + and yours. + + "If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others + to do, would not, _could_ not alter my affection for him. + + "Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what + that sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compassion are + needed, too. + + "I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell + me. The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern + financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can + comprehend, it seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what + disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very + men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did + so disastrously. + + "One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever + lived; and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his + son when I am fit to do it." + +And again she wrote: + + "I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its + doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it, + the lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night + long. It is dreadful, terrible! + + "Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when + they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don't know what + it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart--words and + figures and technical phrases and stock quotations--and it means + nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce + outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially + involved. + + "The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so + merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can + scarcely bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who + know nothing about these matters? The interview with your mother and + Naida, which you say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are! + + "Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too. And, dear, I + don't know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of + any financial use to you, please, please let us! Our fortune, when + it came to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad + securities. I believe that Scott made some changes in our + investments under advice from your father. I don't know what they + were. + + "Don't bother your father with such details now; he has enough to + think of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and + body. Duane, is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand + what the papers are saying? + + "Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours." + +She wrote again: + + "Yes, I had a talk with Scott. I did not know he had been receiving + all those letters from your attorneys. Magnelius Grandcourt manages + the investments. Scott's brokers are Stainer & Elting; our attorneys + are, as you know, Landon, Brooks & Gayfield. + + "Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry. My brother is of age, + sound in mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has + done. It is his affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he + follows it. Your father has no responsibility whatever in the matter + of the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Besides, Scott + tells me that what he did was against the advice of Mr. Tappan. + + "I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon, + and a horrid man named Klawber. + + "Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I + know he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me + that what interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities + Company was the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific + research the world over. Poor Scott! + + "Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which + may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it + could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is + such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I + should understand that! + + "Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I + suppose; I may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you + how much more serious to me are other things--like the loss of faith + in one's self or in others--or the loss of the gentler virtues, + which means the loss of what one once was. + + "The loss of honour is, as you say, a pitiful thing; yet, I think + that when that happens, love and compassion were never more truly + needed. + + "Honour, as I understand it, is not to take advantage of others or + of one's better self. This is a young girl's definition. I cannot + see--if one has yielded once to temptation, and truly repents--why + honour cannot be regained. + + "The honour of men and nations that seems to require arrogance, + aggression, violence for its defence, I do not understand. How can + the misdeeds of others impair one's true honour? How can punishment + for such misdeeds restore it? No; it lies within one, quite + intangible save by one's self. + + "Why should I not know, dear?--I who have lost my own and found it, + have held it desperately for a while, then lost it, then regained + it, holding it again as I do now--alas!--against no other enemy than + I who write this record for your eyes! + + "Dear, I know of nothing lost which may not be regained, except + life. I know of nothing which cannot be rendered tolerable through + loyalty. + + "That material happiness which means so much to some, means now so + very little to me, perhaps because I have never lacked it. + + "Yet I know that, once mistress of myself, nothing else could matter + unless your love failed." + +Again she wrote him toward the end of November: + + "Why will you not let me help you, dear? My fortune is practically + intact so far, except that, of course, I met those obligations which + Scott could not meet. Poor Scott! + + "You know it's rather bewildering to me where millions go to. I + don't quite comprehend how they can so utterly vanish in such a + short time, even in such a frightful fiasco as the Cascade + Development Company. + + "So many people have been here--Mr. Landon and Mr. Gayfield, Mr. + Stainer of Elting & Stainer, that dreadful creature Klawber, a very + horrid man named Amos Flack--and dear, grim, pig-headed Mr. + Tappan--old Remsen Tappan of all men! + + "He practically kicked out Mr. Flack and the creature Klawber, who + had been trying to frighten Scott and me and even our lawyers. + + "And think, Duane! He never uttered one sarcasm, one reproach for + Scott's foolishness; he sat grim and rusty as the iron that he once + dealt in, listening to what Scott had to tell him, never opening + that cragged jaw, never unclosing that thin line of cleavage which + is his mouth. + + "We did not know what he had come for; but we know now. He is _so_ + good--so good, Duane! And I, who hated him as a child, as a girl--I + am almost too ashamed to let him take command and untangle for us, + with those knotted, steel-sinewed fingers of his, the wretched, + tangled mess that has coiled around Scott and me. + + "Surely, this man Klawber is a very great villain; and it seems that + Mr. Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for + Jack Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he + feel! Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He + must have been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; + nothing on earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he + let his best friend go down with it? + + "But it was fine of Delancy to stand by him--fine, fine! His father + is perfectly furious, but, Duane, it _was_ fine! + + "And now, dear, about Scott. It will amuse you, and perhaps horrify + you, if I tell you that he has not turned a hair. + + "Not that he doesn't care; not that he is not more or less + mortified. But he blames nobody except himself; and he's laying + plans quite cheerfully for a career on a small income that really + does not require the austerity and frugality he imagines. + + "One thing is certain; the town house is to be sold. My income is + not sufficient to maintain it and Roya-Neh, and live as we do, and + have anything left. I don't yet know how far my fortune is involved, + but I have a very unpleasant premonition that there is going to be + much less left than anybody believes, and that ultimately we ought + to sell Roya-Neh. + + "However, it is far too early to speculate; besides, this family has + done enough speculating for one generation. + + "Dear, you ask about myself. I am not one bit worried, sad, or + apprehensive. I am _better_, Duane. Do you understand? All this has + developed a set of steadier nerves in me than I have had since I was + a child. + + "A new and curiously keen enjoyment has been slowly growing in me--a + happiness in physical and violent effort. I've a devilish horse to + ride; and I love it! I've climbed all over the Gilded Dome and Lynx + Peak after the biggest and shaggiest boar you ever saw. Oh, Duane! I + came on him just at the edge of evening, and he winded me and went + thundering down the Westgate ravine, and I fired too quickly. + + "But I'm after him almost every day with old Miller, and my arms and + legs are getting so strong, and my flesh so firm, and actually I'm + becoming almost plump in the face! Don't you care for that kind of a + girl? + + "Dear, do you think I've passed the danger mark? Tell me + honestly--not what you want to think, but what you do believe. I + don't know whether I have passed it yet. I feel, somehow, whichever + side of it I am on, that the danger mark is not very far away from + me. I've got to get farther away. The house in town is open. Mrs. + Farren, Hilda, and Nellie are there if we run into town. + + "Kathleen is so happy for me. I've told her about the red cross. She + is too sweet to Scott; she seems to think he really grieves deeply + over the loss of his private fortune. What a dear she is! She is + willing to marry him now; but Scott strikes attitudes and declares + she shall have a man whose name stands for an achievement--meaning, + of course, the Seagrave process for the extermination of the + Rose-beetle. + + "Duane, I am quite unaccountably happy to-day. Nothing seems to + threaten. But don't stop loving me." + +Followed three letters less confident, and another very pitiful--a +frightened letter asking him to come if he could. But his father's +condition forbade it and he dared not. + +Then another letter came, desperate, almost incoherent, yet still +bearing the red cross faintly traced. And on the heels of it a telegram: + + "Could you stand by me until this is over? I am afraid of to-night. + Am on my way to town with my maid, very ill. I know you cannot + leave your father except at night. I will telephone you from the + house. + "G.S." + +On the train a dispatch was handed her: + + "I will be at your house as soon as my father is asleep. Don't + worry. + "DUANE." + +Hour after hour she sat motionless beside the car-window, quiet, pale, +dark eyes remote; trees, houses, trains, telegraph-poles streamed past +in one gray, unending blur; rain which at first had only streaked the +grimy window-glass with cinders, became sleet, then snow, clotting the +dripping panes. + +At last, far away under a heavy sky, the vast misshapen landmarks of New +York loomed up gray through the falling snow; the train roared over the +Harlem, halted at 125th Street, rolled on into the black tunnel, faster, +faster, slower, then more slowly, and stopped. All sounds ceased at the +same moment; silence surrounded her, dreary as the ominous silence +within. + +Dunn met her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, +melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return +from her first opera--the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps +lighted, speeding through the driving snow. Yesterday, the quiet, +untainted whiteness of childhood; to-day, trouble and stress and stained +snow melting into mud--so far behind her lay innocence and peace on the +long road she had travelled! So far had she already journeyed--toward +what? + +She pressed her lips more tightly together and buried her chin in her +sable muff. Beside her, her maid sat shivering and stifling yawn after +yawn and thinking of dinner and creature comforts, and of Dunn, the +footman, whom she did ardently admire. + +The big red brick house among its naked trees seemed sad and deserted as +the brougham flashed into the drive and stopped, the horses stamping and +pawing the frozen gravel. Geraldine had never before been away from home +so long, and now as she descended from the carriage and looked vaguely +about her it seemed as though she had, somehow, become very, very young +again--that it was her child-self that entered under the porte-cochere +after the prescribed drive that always ended outdoor exercise in the +early winter evenings; and she half expected to see old Howker in the +hall, and Margaret trotting up to undo her furs and leggings--half +expected to hear Kathleen's gay greeting, to see her on the stairs, so +young, so sweetly radiant, her arms outstretched in welcome to her +children who had been away scarcely a full hour. + +"I'd like to have a fire in my bedroom and in the upper library," she +said to Hilda, who had smilingly opened the door for her. "I'll dine in +the upper library, too. When Mr. Mallett arrives, you need not come up +to announce him. Ask him to find me in the library." + +To Mrs. Farren she said: "Nobody need sit up. When Mr. Mallett leaves, I +will put the chains on and bolt everything." + +She was destined not to keep this promise. + + * * * * * + +Bathed, her hair brushed and dressed, she suffered her maid to hook her +into a gown which she could put off again unassisted--one of those gowns +that excite masculine admiration by reason of its apparent +inexpensiveness and extreme simplicity. It was horribly expensive, of +course--white, and cut out in a circle around her neck like a young +girl's gown; and it suited Geraldine's slender, rounded throat and her +dainty head with its heavy, loosely drawn masses of brown hair, just +shadowing cheeks and brow. + +When the last hook was looped she dismissed her maid for the night; +Hilda served her at dinner, but she ate little, and the waitress bore +away the last of the almost untouched food, leaving her young mistress +seated before the fire and looking steadily into it. + +The fire was a good one; the fuel oak and ash and beech. The flames made +a silky, rustling sound; now and then a coal fell with a softly +agreeable crash and a swarm of golden sparks whirled up the chimney, +snapping, scintillating, like day fireworks. + +Geraldine sat very still, her mouth resting on her white wrist, and when +she lifted her head the marks of her teeth showed on the skin. Then the +other hand, clutching the arm of her chair, fell to her side cramped +and quivering; she stood up, looked at the fire, pressed both palms +across her eyes, turned and began to pace the room. + +To and fro she moved, slowly, quickly, as the craving for motion ebbed +or increased. At times she made unconscious movements with her arms, now +flinging them wide, now flexing the muscles, clenching the hands; but +always the arms fell helpless, hopeless; the slim, desperate fingers +relaxed; and she moved on again, to and fro, up and down, turning her +gaze toward the clock each time she passed it. + +In her eyes there seemed to be growing a dreadful sort of beauty; there +was fire in them, the luminous brightness of the tortured. On both +cheeks a splendid colour glowed and waned; the slightly drawn lips were +vivid. + +But this--all of it changed as the slow minutes dragged their course; +into the brown eyes crept the first frosty glimmer of desperation; +colour faded from the face, leaving it snowy white; the fulness of the +lips vanished, the chin seemed to grow pointed, and under the eyes +bluish shadows deepened. It promised to go hard with her that night; it +was already going very badly. She knew it, and digging her nails into +her delicate palms, set her teeth together and drew a deep, unsteady +breath. + +She had looked at the clock four times, and the hands seemed to have +moved no more than a minute's space across the dial; and once more she +turned to pace the floor. + +Her lips had lost almost all their colour now; they moved, muttering +tremulous incoherences; the outline of every feature grew finer, +sharper, more spiritual, but dreadfully white. + +Later she found herself on her knees beside the couch, face buried in +the cushions, her small teeth marking her wrist again--heard herself +crying out for somebody to help her--yet her lips had uttered no sound; +it was only her soul in its agony, while the youthful, curved body and +rigid limbs burnt steadily in hell's own flames. + +Again she raised her head and lifted her white face toward the clock. +Only a minute had crept by, and she turned, twisting her interlocked +hands, dry-eyed, dry lips parted, and stared about her. Half stupefied +with pain, stunned, dismayed by the million tiny voices of temptation +assailing her, dinning in her senses, she reeled where she knelt, fell +forward, laid her slender length across the hearth-rug, and set her +teeth in her wrist again, choking back the cry of terror and desolation. + +And there her senses tricked her--or she may have lost +consciousness--for it seemed that the next moment she was on the stairs, +moving stealthily--where? God and her tormented body seemed to know, for +she caught herself halfway down the stairs, cried out on her Maker for +strength, stood swaying, breathless, quivering in the agony of it--and +dragged herself back and up the stairs once more, step by step, to the +landing. + +For a moment she stood there, shaking, ghastly, staring down into the +regions below, where relief lay within her reach. And she dared not even +stare too long; she turned blindly, arms outstretched, feeling her way +back. Every sense within her seemed for the moment deadened; sounds +scarcely penetrated, had no meaning; she heard the grille clash, steps +on the stair; she was trying to get back to the library, paused to rest +at the door, was caught in two strong arms, drawn into them: + +"Duane," she whispered. + +"Darling!"--and as he saw her face--"My God!" + +"Mine, too, Duane. Don't be afraid; I'm holding firm, so far. But I am +very, very ill. Could you help me a little?" + +"Yes, child!--yes, little Geraldine--my little, little girl----" + +"Can you stay near me?" + +"Yes! Good God, yes!" + +"How long?" + +"As long as you want me." + +"Then I can get through with this. I think to-night decides.... If you +will remain with me--for a while----" + +"Yes, dear." + +He drew a chair to the fire; she sank into it; he seated himself beside +her and she clung to his hand with both of hers. + +His eyes fell upon her wrist where the marks of her teeth were +imprinted; he felt her body trembling, saw the tragedy in her eyes, +rose, lifted her as though she were a child, and seating himself, drew +her close against his breast. + +The night was a hard one; sometimes in an access of pain she struggled +for freedom, and all his strength was needed to keep her where she lay. +At times, too, her senses seemed clouded, and she talked incoherently; +sometimes she begged for relief, shamelessly craved it; sometimes she +used all her force, and, almost beside herself, defied him, threatened +him, turned on him infuriated; but his strength held her locked in a +vicelike embrace, and, toward morning, she suddenly relaxed--crumpled +up like a white flower in his arms. For a while her tears fell hot and +fast; then utter prostration left her limp, without movement, even +without a tremor, a dead weight in his arms. + +And, for the second time in his life, lifting her, he bore her to her +room, laid her among the pillows, slipped off her shoes, and, bending +above her, listened. + +She slept profoundly--but it was not the stupor that had chained her +limbs that other time when he had brought her here. + +He went into the library and waited for an hour. Then, very quietly, he +descended the stairs and let himself out into the bitter darkness of a +November morning. + + * * * * * + +About noon next day the Seagraves' brougham drew up before the Mallett +house and Geraldine, in furs, stepped out and crossed the sidewalk with +that swift, lithe grace of hers. The servant opened the grille; she +entered and stood by the great marble-topped hall-table until Duane came +down. Then she gave him her gloved hands, looking him straight in the +eyes. + +She was still pale but self-possessed, and wonderfully pretty in her fur +jacket and toque; and as she stood there, both hands dropped into his, +that nameless and winning grace which had always fascinated him held him +now--something about her that recalled the child in the garden with +clustering hair and slim, straight limbs. + +"You look about fifteen," he said, "you beautiful, slender thing! Did +you come to see my father?" + +"Yes--and your father's son." + +[Illustration: "Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms."] + +"Me?" + +"Is there another like you, Duane--in all the world?" + +"Plenty----" + +"Hush!... When did you go last night?" + +"When you left me for the land of dreams, little lady." + +"So you--carried me." + +He smiled, and a bright flush covered her cheeks. + +"That makes twice," she said steadily. + +"Yes, dear." + +"There will be no third time." + +"Not unless I have a sleepy wife who nods before the fire like a drowsy +child." + +"Do you want that kind?" + +"I want the kind that lay close in my arms before the fire last night." + +"Do you? I think I should like the sort of husband who is strong enough +to cradle that sort of a child.... Could your mother and Naida receive +me? Could I see your father?" + +"Yes. When are you going back to Roya-Neh?" + +"To-night." + +He said quietly: "Is it safe?" + +"For me to go? Yes--yes, my darling"--her hands tightened over +his--"yes, it is safe--because you made it so. If you knew--if you knew +what is in my heart to--to give you!--what I will be to you some day, +dearest of men----" + +He said unsteadily: "Come upstairs.... My father is very feeble, but +quite cheerful. Do you understand that--that his mind--his memory, +rather, is a little impaired?" + +She lifted his hands and laid her soft lips against them: + +"Will you take me to him, Duane?" + +Colonel Mallett lay in the pale November sunlight, very still, his hands +folded on his breast. And at first she did not know him in this ghost of +the tall, well-built, gray-haired man with ruddy colour and firm, clear +skin. + +As she bent over, he opened his eyes, smiled, pronounced her name, still +smiling and keeping his sunken eyes on her. They were filmy and bluish, +like the eyes of the very old; and the hand she lifted and held was the +stricken hand of age--inert, lifeless, without weight. + +She said that she was so happy to know he was recovering; she told him +how proud everybody was of Duane, what exceptional talent he possessed, +how wonderfully he had painted Miller's children. She spoke to him of +Roya-Neh, and how interesting it had become to them all, told him about +the wild boar and her own mishaps with the guileful pig. + +He smiled, watching her at times; but his wistful gaze always reverted +to his son, who sat at the foot of the couch, chin balanced between his +long, lean hands. + +"You won't go, will you?" he whispered. + +"Where, father?" + +"Away." + +"No, of course not." + +"I mean with--Geraldine," he said feebly. + +"If I did, father, we'd take you with us," he laughed. + +"It is too far, my son.... You and Geraldine are going too far for me to +follow.... Wait a little while." + +Geraldine, blushing, bent down swiftly, her lips brushing the sick +man's wasted face: + +"I would not care for him if I could take him from you." + +"Your father and I were old friends. Your grandfather was a very fine +gentleman.... I am glad.... I am a little tired--a little confused. Is +your grandfather here with you? I would like to see him." + +She said, after a moment, in a low voice: "He did not come with me +to-day." + +"Give him my regards and compliments. And say to him that it would be a +pleasure to see him. I am not very well; has he heard of my +indisposition?" + +"I think he--has." + +"Then he will come," said Colonel Mallett feebly. "Duane, you are not +going, are you? I am a little tired. I think I could sleep if you would +lower the shade and ask your mother to sit by me.... But you won't go +until I am asleep, will you?" + +"No," he said gently, as his mother and Naida entered and Geraldine rose +to greet them, shocked at the change in Mrs. Mallett. + +She and Naida went away together; later Duane joined them in the +library, saying that his father was asleep, holding fast to his wife's +hand. + +Geraldine, her arm around Naida's waist, had been looking at one of +Duane's pictures--the only one of his in the house--merely a stretch of +silvery marsh and a gray, wet sky beyond. + +"Father liked it," he said; "that's why it's here, Geraldine." + +"You never made one brush-stroke that was commonplace in all your life," +said Geraldine abruptly. "Even I can see that." + +"Such praise from a lady!" he exclaimed, laughing. Geraldine smiled, +too, and Naida's pallid face lightened for a moment. But grief had set +its seal on the house of Mallett; that was plain everywhere; and when +Geraldine kissed Naida good-bye and walked to the door beside her lover, +a passion of tenderness for him and his overwhelmed her, and when he put +her into her brougham she leaned from the lowered window, clinging to +his hand, careless of who might see them. + +"_Can_ I help in any way?" she whispered. "I told you that my fortune is +still my own--most of it----" + +"Dear, wait!" + +There was a strange look in his eyes; she said no more with her lips, +but her eyes told him all. Then he stepped back, directing Dunn to drive +his mistress to the Commonwealth Club, where she was to lunch with +Sylvia Quest, whom she had met that morning in the blockade at +Forty-second Street, and who had invited her from her motor across the +crupper of a traffic-policeman's horse. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +BON CHIEN + + +The chronology of that last dark and bitter week in November might have +been written "necrology." + +On Monday Colonel Mallett died about sundown; on Wednesday the Hon. John +D. Ellis, while examining an automatic revolver in his bath-room, met +with one of those unfortunate and fatal accidents which sometimes happen +in times of great financial depression. + +Thursday Amos Flack carelessly disappeared, leaving no address; and on +the last day of the week Emanuel Klawber politely excused himself to a +group of very solemn gentlemen who had been assisting him in the +well-known and popular game of "Hunt the Books"; and, stepping outside +the door of the director's office, carefully destroyed what little life +had not already been scared out of his three-hundred-pound person. + +It had been raining all day; Dysart had not felt very well, and +Klawber's unpleasant performance made him ill. He stood in the rain +watching the ambulance arriving at a gallop, then, sickened, turned away +through the dark and dripping crowds, crossed the street, and, lowering +his head against the storm, drove both gloved hands deep into the +pockets of his fashionably cut rain-coat, and started for home. + +It mattered nothing to him that several hard-working newspaper men might +desire to secure his version of Mr. Klawber's taking off, or of his +explanation for it or his sensations concerning it. It mattered nothing +to him that the afternoon papers reported the arrest of James Skelton, +or that Max Moebus had inadvertently, and no doubt in a moment of +intense abstraction, taken a steamer for Europe and the books of the +Shoshone Bank. + +These matters, now seemed a great way off--too unreal to be of personal +moment. He was feeling sick; that occupied his mind. Also the slush on +the sidewalk had wet through his shoes, which probably was not good for +his cough. + +It was scarcely two in the afternoon, yet there remained so little +daylight that the electricity burned in the shops along Fifth Avenue. +Through a smutty, grayish gloom, rain drove densely; his hat and +waterproof coat were heavy with it, the bottoms of his trousers soaked. + +Passing the Patroons Club it occurred to him that hot whiskey might +extinguish his cough. The liveried servants at the door, in the +cloak-room--the page who took his order, the white-headed butler who had +always personally served him, and who served him now, all hesitated and +gazed curiously at him. He paid no attention at the time but remembered +it afterward. + +For an hour he sat alone in the vast empty room before a fire of English +cannel coal, taking his hot whiskey and lemon in slow, absent-minded +gulps. Patches of deep colour lay flat under his cheek-bones, his sunken +abstracted eyes never left the coals. + +The painted gaze of dead Presidents and Governors looked down at him +from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken +wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose +leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering +in their evil immobility. + +He had presented the trophy to the club after a trip somewhere, leaving +the impression that he had shot it. He seldom looked at it, never at the +silver-engraved inscription on the walnut shield. + +Strangely enough, now as he sat there, he thought of the trophy and +looked up at it; and for the first time in his life read the +inscription. + +It made no visible impression upon him except that for a brief moment +the small and vivid patches of colour in his wasted cheeks faintly +tinted the general pallor. But this died out as soon as it appeared; he +drank deliberately, set the hot glass on a table at his elbow, long, +bony fingers still retaining a grip upon it. + +And into his unconcentrated thoughts, strangely enough, came the +memories of little meannesses which he had committed--trivial things +that he supposed he had forgotten long ago; and at first, annoyed, he +let memory drift. + +But, imperceptibly, from the shallows of these little long-forgotten +meannesses, memory drifted uncontrolled into deeper currents; and, +disdainful, he made no effort to control it; and later, could not. And +for the first time in his life he took the trouble to understand the +reason of his unpopularity among men. He had cared nothing for them. + +He cared nothing for them now, unless that half tolerant, half +disdainful companionship of years with Delancy Grandcourt could be +called caring for a man. If their relations ever had been anything more +than a habit he did not know; on what their friendship had ever been +founded he could not tell. It had been his habit to take from Delancy, +accept, or help himself. He had helped himself to Rosalie Dene; and not +long ago he had accepted all that Delancy offered, almost convinced at +the time that it would disappear in the debacle when the Algonquin +crumbled into a rubbish heap of rotten securities. + +A curious friendship--and the only friend he ever had had among +men--stupid, inertly at hand, as inevitably to be counted on as some +battered toy of childhood which escaped the dust heap so long that +custom tolerates its occupation of any closet space convenient: and +habit, at intervals, picks it up to see what's left of it. + + * * * * * + +He had finished his whiskey; the fire seemed to have grown too hot, and +he shoved back his chair. But the room, too, was becoming close, even +stifling. Perspiration glistened on his forehead; he rose and began to +wander from room to room, followed always by the stealthy glances of +servants. + +The sweat on his face had become unpleasantly cold; he came back to the +fire, endured it for a few moments, then, burning and shivering at the +same time, and preferring the latter sensation, he went out to his +letter-box and unlocked it. There was only one envelope there, a letter +from the governing board of the club requesting his resignation. + +The possibility of such an event had never occurred to him; he read the +letter again, folded and placed it in his pocket, went back to the fire +with the idea of burning it, took it out, read it again, folded it +absently, and replaced it in his pocket. + +At that time, except for the dull surprise, the episode did not seem to +affect him particularly. So many things had been accumulating, so many +matters had been menacing him, that one cloud more among the dark, +ominous masses gathering made no deeper impression than slight surprise. + +For a while he stood motionless, hands in his trousers' pockets, head +lowered; then, as somebody entered the farther door, he turned +instinctively and stepped into a private card room, closing the polished +mahogany door. The door opened a moment later and Delancy Grandcourt +walked in. + +"Hello," he said briefly. Dysart, by the window, looked around at him +without any expression whatever. + +"Have you heard about Klawber?" asked Delancy. "They're calling the +extra." + +Dysart looked out of the window. "That's fast work," he said. + +Grandcourt stood for a while in silence, then seated himself, saying: + +"He ought to have lived and tried to make good." + +"He couldn't." + +"He ought to have tried. What's the good of lying down that way?" + +"I don't know. I guess he was tired." + +"That doesn't relieve his creditors." + +"No, but it relieves Klawber." + +Grandcourt said: "You always view things from that side, don't you?" + +"What side?" + +"That of personal convenience." + +"Yes. Why not?" + +"I don't know. Where is it landing you?" + +"I haven't gone into that very thoroughly." There was a trace of +irritation in Dysart's voice; he passed one hand over his forehead; it +was icy, and the hair on it damp. "What the devil do you want of me, +anyway?" he asked. + +"Nothing.... I have never wanted anything of you, have I?" + +Dysart walked the width of the room, then the length of it, then came +and stood by the table, resting on it with one thin hand, in which his +damp handkerchief was crushed to a wad. + +"_What_ is it you've got to say, Delancy? Is it about that loan?" + +"No. Have you heard a word out of me about it?" + +"You've been devilish glum. Good God, I don't blame you; I ought not to +have touched it; I must have been crazy to let you try to help me----" + +"It was my affair. What I choose to do concerns myself," said +Grandcourt, his heavy, troubled face turning redder. "And, Jack, I +understand that my father is making things disagreeable for you. I've +told him not to; and you mustn't let it worry you, because what I had +was my own and what I did with it my own business." + +"Anyway," observed Dysart, after a moment's reflection, "your family is +wealthy." + +A darker flush stained Grandcourt's face; and Dysart's misinterpretation +of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy +lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he +sat silent, his personal feelings merged in an evergrowing anxiety. + +"Why do you cough like that, Jack?" he demanded after a paroxysm had +shaken the other into an armchair, where he lay sweating and panting: + +"It's a cold," Dysart managed to say; "been hanging on for a month." + +"Three months," said Grandcourt tersely. "Why don't you take care of +it?" + +There was a silence; nothing more was said about the cold; and presently +Grandcourt drew a letter from his pocket and handed it silently to +Dysart. It was in Rosalie's handwriting, dated two months before, and +directed to Dysart at Baltimore. The post-office authorities had marked +it, "No address," and had returned it a few days since to the sender. + +These details Dysart noticed on the envelope and the heading of the +first page; he glanced over a line or two, lowered the letter, and +looked questioningly over it at Grandcourt: + +"What's it about?--if you know," he asked wearily. "I'm not inclined +just now to read anything that may be unpleasant." + +Grandcourt said quietly: + +"I have not read the letter, but your wife has told me something of what +it contains. She wrote and mailed it to you weeks ago--before the +crash--saying, I believe, that adversity was not the time for the +settlement of domestic differences, and that if her private fortune +could avert disaster, you were to write immediately to her attorneys." + +Dysart gazed at him as though stunned; then his dull gaze fell once more +on the envelope. He examined it, went all over it with lack-lustre eyes, +laid it aside, and finally began to read his wife's letter--the letter +that had never reached him because he had used another name on the hotel +register in Baltimore. + +Grandcourt watched him with painful interest as he sat, hunched up, +coughing at intervals, and poring over his wife's long, angular +chirography. There was much between the lines to read, but Dysart could +never read it; much to understand, but he could never understand it. + + "Delancy tells me," she wrote, "that you are threatened with very + serious difficulties. Once or twice you yourself have said as much + to me; and my answer was that they no longer concerned me. + + "The situation is this: I have, as you know, consulted counsel with + a view to begin proceedings for a separation. This has been + discontinued--temporarily, at any rate--because I have been led to + believe by your friend, Delancy Grandcourt, that the present is no + time to add to your perplexities. + + "He has, I may add, induced me to believe other things which my + better sense rejects; but no woman's logic--which is always half + sentiment--could remain unshaken by the simple loyalty to you and to + me of this friend of yours and of mine. And this letter would never + have been written except, practically, at his dictation. Kindly + refrain from showing it to him as my acknowledgment here of his + influence in the matter would grieve him very deeply. + + "Because he believes that it is still possible for you and me to + return to civilised relations; he believes that I care for you, + that, in your own leisurely and superficial fashion, you still + really honour the vows that bound you--still in your heart care for + me. Let him believe it; and if you will, for his sake, let us resume + the surface semblance of a common life which, until he persuaded me, + I was determined to abandon. + + "It is an effort to write this; I do it for his sake, and, in that + way, for yours. I don't think you care about me; I don't think you + ever did or ever will. Yet you must know how it was with me until I + could endure my isolation no longer. And I say to you perfectly + frankly that now I care more for this friend of yours, Delancy + Grandcourt, than I care for anybody in the world. Which is why I + write you to offer what I have offered, and to say that if my + private fortune can carry you through the disaster which is so + plainly impending, please write to my attorneys at once as they have + all power in the matter." + +The postscript was dated ten days later, from Dysart's own house: + + "Receiving no reply, I telephoned you, but Brandon says you are away + from the city on business and have left no address, so I took the + liberty of entering your house, selecting this letter from the mass + of nine days' old mail awaiting you, and shall direct it to you at + the hotel in Baltimore where Bunny Gray says that somebody has seen + you several times with a Mr. Skelton." + +As Dysart read, he wiped the chilly perspiration from his haggard face +at intervals, never taking his eyes from the written pages. And at last +he finished his wife's letter, sat very silent, save when the cough +shook him, the sheets of the letter lying loosely in his nerveless hand. + +It was becoming plain to him, in a confused sort of way, that something +beside bad luck and his own miscalculations, was working against +him--had been stealthily moving toward his undoing for a year, now; +something occult, sinister, inexorable. + +He thought of the register at the hotel in Baltimore, of the name he +lived under there during that interval in his career for which he had +accounted to nobody, and never would account--on earth. And into his +memory rose the pale face of Sylvia Quest; and he looked down at the +letter trembling in his hand and thought of her and of his wife and of +the Algonquin Trust Company, and of the chances of salvation he had +missed. + +Grandcourt sat looking at him; there was something in his gaze almost +doglike: + +"Have you read it?" he asked. + +Dysart glanced up abstractedly: "Yes." + +"Is it what I told you?" + +"Yes--substantially." He dried his damp face; "it comes rather late, you +know." + +"Not _too_ late," said the other, mistaking him; "your wife is still +ready to meet you half-way, Jack." + +"Oh--that? I meant the Algonquin matter--" He checked himself, seeing +for the first time in his life contempt distorting Grandcourt's heavy +face. + +"Man! Man!" he said thickly, "is there nothing in that letter for you +except money offered?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"I say, is there nothing in that message to you that touches the manhood +in you?" + +"You don't know what is in it," said Dysart listlessly. Even +Grandcourt's contempt no longer produced any sensation; he looked at the +letter, tore it into long strips, crumpled them and stood up with a +physical effort: + +"I'm going to burn this. Have you anything else to say?" + +"Yes. Good God, Jack, _don't_ you care for your wife? _Can't_ you?" + +"No." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know." His tone became querulous. "How can a man tell why he +becomes indifferent to a woman? I don't know. I never did know. I can't +explain it. But he does." + +Grandcourt stared at him. And suddenly the latent fear that had been +torturing him for the last two weeks died out utterly: this man would +never need watching to prevent any attempt at self-destruction; this man +before him was not of that caste. His self-centred absorption was of a +totally different nature. + +He said, very red in the face, but with a voice well modulated and even: + +"I think I've made a good deal of an ass of myself. I think I may safely +be cast for that role in future. Most people, including yourself, think +I'm fitted for it; and most people, and yourself, are right. And I'll +admit it now by taking the liberty of asking you whom you were with in +Baltimore." + +"None of your damned business!" said Dysart, wheeling short on him. + +"Perhaps not. I did not believe it at the time, but I do now.... And her +brother is after you with a gun." + +"What do you mean?" + +"That you'd better get out of town unless you want an uglier scandal on +your hands." + +Dysart stood breathing fast and with such effort that his chest moved +visibly as the lungs strained under the tension: + +"Do you mean to say that drunken whelp suspects anything so--so wildly +absurd----" + +"Which drunken whelp? There are several in town?" + +Dysart glared at him, careless of what he might now believe. + +"I take it you mean that little cur, Quest." + +"Yes, I happen to mean Quest." + +Dysart gave an ugly laugh and turned short on his heel: + +"The whole damn lot of you make me sick," he said. "So does this club." + +A servant held his rain-coat and handed him his hat; he shook his bent +shoulders, stifled a cough, and went out into the rain. + +In his own home his little old father, carefully be-wigged, painted, +cleaned and dressed, came trotting into the lamp-lit living-room fresh +from the ministrations of his valet. + +"There you are, Jack!--te-he! Oh, yes, there you are, you young +dog!--all a-drip with rain for the love o' the ladies, eh, Jack? +Te-he--one's been here to see you--a little white doll in chinchillas, +and scared to death at my civilities--as though she knew the +Dysarts--te-he! Oh, yes, the Dysarts, Jack. But it was monstrous +imprudent, my son--and a good thing that your wife remains at Lenox so +late this season--te-he! A lucky thing, you young dog! And what the +devil do you mean by it--eh? What d'ye mean, I say!" + +Leering, peering, his painted lips pursed up, the little old man seated +himself, gazing with dim, restless eyes at the shadowy blur which +represented to him his handsome son--a Dysart all through, elegant, +debonair, resistless, and, married or single, fatal to feminine peace of +mind. Generations ago Dysarts had been shot very conventionally at ten +paces owing to this same debonair resistlessness; Dysarts had slipped +into and out of all sorts of unsavoury messes on account of this fatal +family failing; some had been neatly winged, some thrust through; some, +in a more sordid age, permitted counsel of ability to explain to a jury +how guiltless a careless gentleman could be under the most unfortunate +and extenuating appearances. + +The son stood in his wet clothes, haggard, lined, ghastly in contrast to +the startling red of his lips, looking at his smirking father: then he +leaned over and touched a bell. + +"Who was it who called on Mrs. Dysart?" he asked, as a servant appeared. + +"Miss Quest, sir," said the man, accepting the cue with stolid +philosophy. + +"Did Miss Quest leave any message?" + +"Yes, sir: Miss Quest desired _Mrs._ Dysart to telephone her on _Mrs._ +Dysart's return from--the country, sir--it being a matter of very great +importance." + +"Thank you." + +"Thank _you_, sir." + +The servant withdrew; the son stood gazing into the hallway. Behind him +his father mumbled and muttered and chuckled to himself in his +easy-chair by the fire! + +"Te-he! They are all alike, the Dysarts--oh, yes, all alike! And now +it's that young dog--Jack!--te-he!--yes, it's Jack, now! But he's a good +son, my boy Jack; he's a good son to me and he's all Dysart, all Dysart; +bon chien chasse de race!--te-he! Oui, ma fois!--bon chien chasse de +race." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS + + +By the first of January it became plain that there was not very much +left of Colonel Mallett's fortune, less of his business reputation, and +even less of his wife's health. But she was now able to travel, and +toward the middle of the month she sailed with Naida and one maid for +Naples, leaving her son to gather up and straighten out what little of +value still remained in the wreckage of the house of Mallett. What he +cared most about was to straighten out his father's personal reputation; +and this was possible only as far as it concerned Colonel Mallett's +individual honesty. But the rehabilitation was accomplished at the +expense of his father's reputation for business intelligence; and New +York never really excuses such things. + +Not much remained after the amounts due every creditor had been checked +up and provided for; and it took practically all Duane had, almost all +Naida had, and also the sacrifice of the town house and country villa to +properly protect those who had suffered. Part of his mother's estate +remained intact, enough to permit her and her daughter to live by +practising those inconsequential economies, the necessity for which +fills Europe with about the only sort of Americans cultivated foreigners +can tolerate, and for which predatory Europeans have no use whatever. + +As for Duane, matters were now in such shape that he found it possible +to rent a studio with adjoining bath and bedroom--an installation which, +at one time, was more than he expected to be able to afford. + +The loss of that luxury, which custom had made a necessity, filled his +daily life full of trifling annoyances and surprises which were often +unpleasant and sometimes humorous; but the new and arid order of things +kept him so busy that he had little time for the apathy, bitterness, or +self-commiseration which, in linked sequence, usually follow sudden +disaster. + +Sooner or later it was inevitable that he must feel more keenly the +death of a father who, until in the shadow of impending disaster, had +never offered him a very close intimacy. Their relations had been merely +warm and pleasant--an easy camaraderie between friends--neither +questioned the other's rights to reticence and privacy. Their mutual +silence concerning business pursuits was instinctive; neither father nor +son understood the other's affairs, nor were they interested except in +the success of a good comrade. + +It was inevitable that, in years to come, the realisation of his loss +would become keener and deeper; but now, in the reaction from shock, and +in the anxiety and stress and dire necessity for activity, only the +surface sorrow was understood--the pity of it, the distressing +circumstances surrounding the death of a good father, a good friend, and +a personally upright man. + +The funeral was private; only the immediate family attended. Duane had +written to Geraldine, Kathleen, and Scott not to come, and he had also +asked if he might not go to them when the chance arrived. + +And now the chance had come at last, in the dead of winter; but the +prospect of escape to Geraldine brightened the whole world for him and +gilded the snowy streets of the city with that magic radiance no +flaming planet ever cast. + +He had already shipped a crate of canvases to Roya-Neh; his trunk had +gone, and now, checking with an amused shrug a natural impulse to hail a +cab, he swung his suit-case and himself aboard a car, bound for the +Patroons Club, where he meant to lunch before taking the train for +Roya-Neh. + +He had not been to the club since the catastrophe and his father's +death, and he was very serious and sombre and slightly embarrassed when +he entered. + +A servant took his coat and suit-case with marked but subdued respect. +Men whom he knew and some men whom he scarcely knew at all made it a +point to speak to him or bow to him with a cordiality too pointed not to +affect him, because in it he recognised the acceptance of what he had +fought for--the verdict that publicly exonerated his father from +anything worse than a bad but honest mistake. + +For a second or two he stood in the great marble rotunda looking around +him. In that club familiar figures were lacking--men whose social and +financial position only a few months before seemed impregnable, men who +had gone down in ruin, one or two who had perished by their own hand, +several whose physical and financial stamina had been shattered at the +same terrible moment. Some were ill, some dead, some had resigned, +others had been forced to write their resignations--such men as Dysart +for example, and James Skelton, now in prison, unable to furnish bail. + +But the Patroons was a club of men above the average; a number among +them even belonged to the Pyramid; and the financial disasters of that +summer and winter had spared no club in the five boroughs and no +membership list had been immune from the sinister consequences of a +crash that had resounded from ocean to ocean and had set humble and +great scurrying to cover in every Bourse of the civilised world. + + * * * * * + +As he entered the dining-room and passed to his usual table, he caught +sight of Delancy Grandcourt lunching alone at the table directly behind +him. + +"Hello, Delancy," he said; "shall we join forces?" + +"I'd be glad to; it's very kind of you, Duane," replied Grandcourt, +showing his pleasure at the proposal in the direct honesty of his +response. Few men considered it worth while to cultivate Grandcourt. To +lunch with him was a bore; a tete-a-tete with him assumed the +proportions of a visitation; his slowness and stupidity had become +proverbial in that club; and yet almost the only foundation for it had +been Dysart's attitude toward him; and men's estimate of him was the +more illogical because few men really cared for Dysart's opinions. But +Dysart had introduced him, elected him, and somehow had contrived to +make the public accept his half-sneering measure of Grandcourt as +Grandcourt's true stature. And the man, being shy, reticent, slow to +anger, slower still to take his own part, was tolerated and +good-humouredly avoided when decently possible. So much for the average +man's judgment of an average man. + +Seated opposite to Duane, Grandcourt expressed his pleasure at seeing +him with a simplicity that touched the other. Then, in perfectly good +taste, but with great diffidence, he spoke of Duane's bereavement. + +For a little while they asked and answered those amiably formal +questions convention requires under similar circumstances; then Duane +spoke of Dysart gravely, because new rumours were rife concerning him, +even a veiled hint of possible indictment and arrest. + +"I hope not," said Grandcourt, his heavy features becoming troubled; "he +is a broken man, and no court and jury can punish him more severely than +he has been punished. Nor do I know what they could get out of him. He +has nothing left; everything he possessed has been turned over. He sits +all day in a house that is no longer his, doing nothing, hoping nothing, +hearing nothing, except the childish babble of his old father or the +voices from the hall below, where his servants are fighting off +reporters and cranks and people with grievances. Oh, I tell you, Duane, +it's pitiable, all right!" + +"There was a rumour yesterday of his suicide," said Duane in a low +voice. "I did not credit it." + +Grandcourt shook his head: "He never would do that. He totally lacks +whatever you call it--cowardice or courage--to do that. It is not like +Dysart; it is not in him to do it. He never will, never could. I know +him, Duane." + +Duane nodded. + +Grandcourt spoke again: "He cares for few things; life is one of them. +His father, his social position, his harmless--success with women--" +Grandcourt hesitated, caught Duane's eye. Both men's features became +expressionless. + +Duane said: "I had an exceedingly nice note from Rosalie the other day. +She has bought one of those double-deck apartments--but I fancy you know +about it." + +"Yes," said Grandcourt, turning red. "She was good enough to ask my +opinion." He added with a laugh: "I shouldn't think anybody would want +my opinion after the way I've smashed my own affairs." + +Duane smiled, too. "I've heard," he said, "that yours was the decentest +smash of the season. What is that scriptural business about--about a man +who lays down his fortune for a friend?" + +"His _life_," corrected Grandcourt, very red, "but please don't confound +what I did with anything of importance to anybody." He lighted a cigar +from the burning match offered by Duane, very much embarrassed for a +moment, then suddenly brightened up: + +"I'm in business now," he observed, with a glance at the other, partly +timid, partly of pride. "My father was thoroughly disgusted with me--and +nobody blames him--so he bought me a seat and, Duane, do you know that I +am doing rather well, considering that nobody is doing anything at all." + +Duane laughed heartily, but his mirth did not hurt Grandcourt, who sat +smiling and enjoying his cigar, and looking with confidence into a face +that was so frankly and unusually friendly. + +"You know I always admired you, Duane--even in the days when you never +bothered your head about me," he added naively. "Do you remember at +school the caricature you drew of me--all hands and feet and face, and +absolutely no body? I've got that yet; and I'm very proud to have it +when I hear people speak of your artistic success. Some day, if I ever +have any money again, I'll ask you to paint a better portrait of me, if +you have time." + +They laughed again over this mild pleasantry; a cordial understanding +was developing between them, which meant much to Grandcourt, for he was +a lonely man and his shyness had always deprived him of what he most +cared for--what really might have been his only resource--the friendship +of other men. + +For some time, while they were talking, Duane had noticed out of the +corner of his eye another man at a neighbouring table--a thin, pop-eyed, +hollow-chested, unhealthy young fellow, who, at intervals, stared +insolently at Grandcourt, and once or twice contrived to knock over his +glass of whiskey while reaching unsteadily for a fresh cigarette. + +The man was Stuyvesant Quest, drunk as usual, and evidently in an +unpleasant mood. + +Grandcourt's back was toward him; Duane paid him no particular +attention, though at moments he noticed him scowling in their direction +and seemed to hear him fussing and muttering over his whiskey and soda, +which, with cigarettes, comprised his luncheon. + +"I wish I were going up to Roya-Neh with you," repeated Grandcourt. "I +had a bully time up there--everybody was unusually nice to me, and I had +a fine time." + +"I know they'll ask you up whenever you can get away," said Duane. +"Geraldine Seagrave likes you immensely." + +"Does she?" exclaimed Grandcourt, blushing. "I'd rather believe that +than almost anything! She was very, very kind to me, I can tell you; and +Lord knows why, because I've nothing intellectual to offer anybody, and +I certainly am not pretty!" + +Duane, very much amused, looked at his watch. + +"When does your train leave?" asked Grandcourt. + +"I've an hour yet." + +"Come up to my room and smoke. I've better whiskey than we dispense down +here. I'm living at the club, you know. They haven't yet got over my +fiasco at home and I can't stand their joshing." + +Neither of the men noticed that a third man followed them, stumbling up +the stairs as they took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair +by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table +between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest +appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively at +his ease: + +"If you fellows don't mind, I'll butt in a moment," he said. "How are +you, Mallett? How are you?" giving Grandcourt an impertinent look; and +added: "Do you, by any chance, expect your friend Dysart in here this +afternoon?" + +"Dysart is no longer a member of this club," said Grandcourt quietly. +"I've told you that a dozen times." + +"All right, I'll ask you two dozen times more, if I choose," retorted +Quest. "Why not?" And he gave him an ugly stare. + +The man was just drunk enough to be quarrelsome. Duane paid him no +further attention; Grandcourt asked him very civilly if he could do +anything for him. + +"Sure," sneered Quest. "You can tell Dysart that if I ever come across +him I'll shoot him on sight! Tell him that and be damned!" + +"I've already told him that," said Grandcourt with a shrug of contempt. + +The weak, vicious face of the other reddened: + +"What do you mean by taking that tone with me?" he demanded loudly. "Do +you think I won't make good?" He fumbled around in his clothing for a +moment and presently jerked a pistol free--one of the automatic kind +with rubber butt and blued barrel. + +"Unless you are drunker than I've ever seen you," said Grandcourt, +"you'll put up that pistol before I do." + +Quest cursed him steadily for a minute: "Do you think I haven't got the +nerve to use it when m' honour's 'volved? I tell you," he said thickly, +"when m' honour's 'volved----" + +"You get drunk, don't you?" observed Duane. "What a pitiful pup you are, +anyway. Go to bed." + +Quest stood swaying slightly on his heels and considering Duane with the +inquiring solemnity of one who is in process of grasping and digesting +an abstruse proposition. + +"B-bed?" he repeated; "me?" + +"Certainly. A member of this club disgracefully drunk in the afternoon +will certainly hear from the governing board unless he keeps out of +sight until he's sane again." + +"Thank you," said Quest with owlish condescension; "I'm indebted to you +for calling 'tention to m-matters which 'volve honour of m' own club +and----" + +His voice rambled off into a mutter; he sat or rather fell into an +armchair and lay there twitching and mumbling to himself and inspecting +his automatic pistol with prominent watery eyes. + +"You'd better leave that squirt-gun with me," said Grandcourt. + +Quest refused with an oath, and, leaning forward and hammering the +padded chair-arm with his unhealthy looking fist, he broke out into a +violent arraignment of Dysart: + +"Damn him!" he yelled, "I've written him, I've asked for an explanation, +I've 'm-manded t' know why his name's coupled with my sister's----" + +Duane leaned over, slammed the door, and turned short on Quest: + +"Shut up!" he said sharply. "Do you hear! Shut up!" + +"No, I won't shut up! I'll say what I damn please----" + +"Haven't you any decency at all----" + +"I've enough to fix Dysart good and plenty, and I'll do it! I'll--let go +of me, Mallett!--let go, I tell you or----" + +Duane jerked the pistol from his shaky fingers, and when Quest struggled +to his feet with a baffled howl, jammed him back into the chair again +and handed the pistol to Grandcourt, who locked it in a bureau drawer +and pocketed the key. + +"You belong in Matteawan," said the latter, flinging Quest back into the +chair again as the infuriated man still struggled to rise. "You +miserable drunken kid--do you think you would be enhancing your sister's +reputation by dragging her name into a murder trial? What are you, +anyway? By God, if I didn't know your sister as a thoroughbred, I'd have +you posted here for a mongrel and sent packing. The pound is your proper +place, not a club-house"; which was an astonishing speech for Delancy +Grandcourt. + +Again, half contemptuously, but with something almost vicious in his +violence, Grandcourt slammed young Quest back into the chair from which +he had attempted to hurl himself: "Keep quiet," he said; "you're a +particularly vile little wretch, particularly pitiable; but your sister +is a girl of gentle breeding--a sweet, charming, sincere young girl whom +everybody admires and respects. If you are anything but a gutter-mut, +you'll respect her, too, and the only way you can do it is by shutting +that unsanitary whiskey-trap of yours--and keeping it shut--and by +remaining as far away from her as you can, permanently." + +There were one or two more encounters, brief ones; then Quest collapsed +and began to cry. He was shaking, too, all over, apparently on the verge +of some alcoholic crisis. + +Grandcourt went over to Duane: + +"The man is sick, helplessly sick in mind and body. If you'll telephone +Bailey at the Knickerbocker Hospital, he'll send an ambulance and I'll +go up there with this fool boy. He's been like this before. Bailey knows +what to do. Telephone from the station; I don't want the club servants +to gossip any more than is necessary. Do you mind doing it?" + +"Of course not," said Duane. He glanced at the miserable, snivelling, +twitching creature by the fire: "Do you think he'll get over this, or +will he buy another pistol the next time he gets the jumps?" + +Grandcourt looked troubled: + +"I don't know what this breed is likely to do. He's absolutely no good. +He's the only person in the world that is left of the family--except his +sister. He's all she has had to look out for her--a fine legacy, a fine +prop for her to lean on. That's the sort of protection she has had all +her life; that's the example set her in her own home. I don't know what +she's done; it's none of my business; but, Duane, I'm for her!" + +"So am I." + +They stood together in silence for a moment; maudlin sniffles of +self-pity arose from the corner by the fire, alternating with more +hysterical and more ominous sounds presaging some spasmodic crisis. + +Grandcourt said: "Bunny Gray has helped me kennel this pup once or +twice. He's in the club; I think I'll send for him." + +"You'll need help," nodded Duane. "I'll call up the hospital on my way +to the station. Good-bye, Delancy." + +They shook hands and parted. + +At the station Duane telephoned to the hospital, got Dr. Bailey, +arranged for a room in a private ward, and had barely time to catch his +train--in fact, he was in such a hurry that he passed by without seeing +the sister of the very man for whom he had been making such significant +arrangements. + +She wore, as usual, her pretty chinchilla furs, but was so closely +veiled that he might not have recognised her under any circumstances. +She, however, forgetting that she was veiled, remained uncertain as to +whether his failure to speak to her had been intentional or otherwise. +She had halted, expecting him to speak; now she passed on, cheeks +burning, a faint sinking sensation in her heart. + +For she cared a great deal about Duane's friendship; and she was very +unhappy, and morbid and more easily wounded than ever, because somehow +it had come to her ears that rumour was busily hinting things +unthinkable concerning her--nothing definite; yet the very vagueness of +it added to her distress and horror. + +Around her silly head trouble was accumulating very fast since Jack +Dysart had come sauntering into her youthful isolation; and in the +beginning it had been what it usually is to lonely hearts--shy and +grateful recognition of a friendship that flattered; fascination, an +infatuation, innocent enough, until the man in the combination awoke her +to the terrors of stranger emotions involving her deeper and deeper +until she lost her head, and he, for the first time in all his career, +lost his coolly selfish caution. + +How any rumours concerning herself and him had arisen nobody could +explain. There never is any explanation. But they always arise. + +In their small but pretty house, terrible scenes had already occurred +between her and her brother--consternation, anger, and passionate denial +on her part; on his, fury, threats, maudlin paroxysms of self-pity, and +every attitude that drink and utter demoralisation can distort into a +parody on what a brother might say and do. + +To escape it she had gone to Tuxedo for a week; now, fear and foreboding +had brought her back--fear intensified at the very threshold of the city +when Duane seemed to look straight at her and pass her by without +recognition. Men don't do that, but she was too inexperienced to know +it; and she hastened on with a heavy heart, found a taxi-cab to take her +to the only home she had ever known, descended, and rang for admittance. + +In these miserable days she had come to look for hidden meaning even in +the expressionless faces of her trained servants, and now she +misconstrued the respectful smile of welcome, brushed hastily past the +maid who admitted her, and ran upstairs. + +Except for the servants she was alone. She rang for information +concerning her brother; nobody had any. He had not been home in a week. + +Her toilet, after the journey, took her two hours or more to accomplish; +it was dark at five o'clock and snowing heavily when tea was served. She +tasted it, then, unable to subdue her restlessness, went to the +telephone; and after a long delay, heard the voice she tremblingly +expected: + +"Is that you, Jack?" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"H-how are you?" + +"Not very well." + +"Have you heard anything new about certain proceedings?" she inquired +tremulously. + +"Yes; she's begun them." + +"On--on w-what grounds?" + +"Not on any grounds to scare you. It will be a Western matter." + +Her frightened sigh of relief turned her voice to a whisper: + +"Has Stuyve--has a certain relative--annoyed you since I've been away?" + +"Yes, over the telephone, drunk, as usual." + +"Did he make--make any more threats, Jack?" + +"The usual string. Where is he?" + +"I don't know," she said; "he hasn't been home in a week, they tell me. +Jack, do you think it safe for you to drop in here for a few moments +before dinner?" + +"Just as you say. If he comes in, there may be trouble. Which isn't a +good idea, on your account." + +No woman in such circumstances is moved very much by an appeal to her +caution. + +"But I want to see you, Jack," she said miserably. + +"That seems to be the only instinct that governs you," he retorted, +slightly impatient. "Can't you ever learn the elements of prudence? It +seems to me about time that you substituted common sense for immature +impulse in dealing with present problems." + +His voice was cold, emotionless, unpleasant. She stood with the receiver +at her ears, flushing to the tips of them under his rebuke. She always +did; she had known many, recently, but the quick pang of pain was never +any less keen. On the contrary. + +"Don't you want to see me? I have been away for ten days." + +"Yes, I want to see you, of course, but I'm not anxious to spring a mine +under myself--under us both by going into your house at this time." + +"My brother has not been here in a week." + +"Does that accidental fact bar his possible appearance ten minutes from +now?" + +She wondered, vaguely, whether he was afraid of anything except possible +damage to her reputation. She had, lately, considered this question on +several occasions. Being no coward, as far as mere fear for her life was +concerned, she found it difficult to attribute such fear to him. Indeed, +one of the traits in her which he found inexplicable and which he +disliked was a curious fearlessness of death--not uncommon among women +who, all their lives, have had little to live for. + +She said: "If I am not worth a little risk, what is my value to you?" + +"You talk like a baby," he retorted. "Is an interview worth risking a +scandal that will spatter the whole town?" + +"I never count such risks," she said wearily. "Do as you please." + +His voice became angry: "Haven't I enough to face already without +hunting more trouble at present? I supposed I could look to you for +sympathy and aid and common sense, and every day you call me up and +demand that I shall drop everything and fling caution to the winds, and +meet you somewhere! Every day of the year you do it----" + +"I have been away ten days--" she faltered, turning sick and white at +the words he was shouting through the telephone. + +"Well, it was understood you'd stay for a month, wasn't it? Can't you +give me time to turn around? Can't you give me half a chance? Do you +realise what I'm facing? _Do_ you?" + +"Yes. I'm sorry I called you; I was so miserable and lonely----" + +"Well, try to think of somebody besides yourself. You're not the only +miserable person in this city. I've all the misery I can carry at +present; and if you wish to help me, don't make any demands on me until +I'm clear of the tangle that's choking me." + +"Dear, I only wanted to help you--" she stammered, appalled at his tone +and words. + +"All right, then, let me alone!" he snarled, losing all self-command. +"I've stood about all of this I'm going to, from you and your brother +both! Is that plain? I want to be let alone. That is plainer still, +isn't it?" + +"Yes," she said. Her face had become deathly white; she stood frozen, +motionless, clutching the receiver in her small hand. + +His voice altered as he spoke again: + +"Don't feel hurt; I lost my temper and I ask your pardon. But I'm half +crazy with worry--you've seen to-day's papers, I suppose--so you can +understand a man's losing his temper. Please forgive me; I'll try to see +you when I can--when it's advisable. Does that satisfy you?" + +"Yes," she said in a dull voice. + +She put away the receiver and, turning, dropped onto her bed. At eight +o'clock the maid who had come to announce dinner found her young +mistress lying there, clenched hands over her eyes, lying slim and +rigid on her back in the darkness. + +When the electric lamps were lighted she rose, went to the mirror and +looked steadily at herself for a long, long time. + + * * * * * + +She tasted what was offered, seeing nothing, hearing nothing; later, in +her room, a servant came saying that Mr. Gray begged a moment's +interview on a matter of importance connected with her brother. + +It was the only thing that could have moved her to see him. She had +denied herself to him all that winter; she had been obliged to make it +plainer after a letter from him--a nice, stupid, boyish letter, asking +her to marry him. And her reply terminated the attempts of Bunbury Gray +to secure a hearing from the girl who had apparently taken so sudden and +so strange an aversion to a man who had been nice to her all her life. + +They had, at one time, been virtually engaged, after Geraldine Seagrave +had cut him loose, and before Dysart took the trouble to seriously +notice her. But Bunny was youthful and frisky and his tastes were +catholic, and it did not seem to make much difference that Dysart again +stepped casually between them in his graceful way. Yet, curiously +enough, each preserved for the other a shy sort of admiration which, +until last autumn, had made their somewhat infrequent encounters +exceedingly interesting. Autumn had altered their attitudes; Bunny +became serious in proportion to the distance she put between them--which +is of course the usual incentive to masculine importunity. They had had +one or two little scenes at Roya-Neh; the girl even hesitated, unquietly +curious, perplexed at her own attitude, yet diffidently interested in +the man. + +A straw was all that her balance required to incline it; Dysart dropped +it, casually. And there were no more pretty scenes between Bunny Gray +and his lady-love that autumn, only sulks from the youth, and, after +many attempts to secure a hearing, a very direct and honest letter that +winter, which had resulted in his dismissal. + + * * * * * + +She came down to the drawing-room, looking the spectre of herself, but +her stillness and self-possession kept Bunny at his distance, staring, +restless, amazed--all of which very evident symptoms and emotions she +ignored. + +"I have your message," she said. "Has anything happened to my brother?" + +He began: "You mustn't be alarmed, but he is not very well----" + +"I am alarmed. Where is he?" + +"In the Knickerbocker Hospital." + +"Seriously ill?" + +"No. He is in a private ward----" + +"The--alcoholic?" she asked quietly. + +"Yes," he said, flushing with the shame that had not burnt her white +face. + +"May I go to him?" she asked. + +"No!" he exclaimed, horrified. + +She seated herself, hands folded loosely on her lap: + +"What am I to do, Bunny?" + +"Nothing.... I only came to tell you so that you'd know. To-morrow if +you care to telephone Bailey----" + +"Yes; thank you." She closed her eyes; opened them with an effort. + +"If you'll let me, Sylvia, I'll keep you informed," he ventured. + +"Would you? I'd be very glad." + +"Sure thing!" he said with great animation; "I'll go to the hospital as +many times a day as I am allowed, and I'll bring you back a full account +of Stuyve's progress after every visit.... May I, Sylvie?" + +She said nothing. He sat looking at her. He had no great amount of +intellect, but he possessed an undue proportion of heart under the +somewhat striking waistcoats which at all times characterised his +attire. + +"I'm terribly sorry for you," he said, his eyes very wide and round. + +She gazed into space, past him. + +"Do you--would you prefer to have me go?" he stammered. + +There was no reply. + +"Because," he said miserably, "I take it that you haven't much use for +me." + +No word from her. + +"Sylvie?" + +Silence; but she looked up at him. "I haven't changed," he said, and the +healthy colour turned him pink. "I--just--wanted you to know. I thought +perhaps you might like to know----" + +"Why?" Her voice was utterly unlike her own. + +"Why?" he repeated, getting redder. "I don't know--I only thought you +might--it might--amuse you--to know that I haven't changed----" + +"As others have? Is that what you mean, Bunny?" + +"No, no, I didn't think--I didn't mean----" + +"Yes, you did. Why not say it to me? You mean that you, and others, have +heard rumours. You mean that you, unlike others, are trying to make me +understand that you are still loyal to me. Is that it?" + +"Y-yes. Good Lord! Loyal! Why, of course I am. Why, you didn't suppose +I'd be anything else, did you?" + +She opened her pallid lips to speak and could not. + +"Loyal!" he repeated indignantly. "There's no merit in that when a man's +been in love with a girl all his life and didn't know it until she'd got +good and tired of him! You know I'm for you every time, Sylvia; what's +the game in pretending you didn't know it?" + +"No game.... I didn't--know it." + +"Well, you do now, don't you?" + +Her face was colourless as marble. She said, looking at him: "Suppose +the rumour is true?" + +His face flamed: "You don't know what you are saying!" he retorted, +horrified. + +"Suppose it is true?" + +"Sylvia--for Heaven's sake----" + +"Suppose it _is_ true," she repeated in a dead, even voice; "how loyal +would you remain to me then?" + +"As loyal as I am now!" he answered angrily, "if you insist on my +answering such a silly question----" + +"Is that your answer?" + +"Certainly. But----" + +"Are you _sure_?" + +He glared at her; something struck coldly through him, checking breath +and pulse, then releasing both till the heavy beating of his heart made +speech impossible. + +"I thought you were not sure," she said. + +"I _am_ sure!" he broke out. "Good God, Sylvia, what are you doing to +me?" + +"Destroying your faith in me." + +"You can't! I love you!" + +She gave a little gasp: + +"The rumour _is_ true," she said. + +He reeled to his feet; she sat looking up at him, white, silent hands +twisted on her lap. + +"Now you know," she managed to say. "Why don't you go? If you've any +self-respect, you'll go. I've told you what I am; do you want me to +speak more plainly?" + +"Yes," he said between his teeth. + +"Very well; what do you wish to know?" + +"Only one thing.... Do you--care for him?" + +She sat, minute after minute, head bent, thinking, thinking. He never +moved a muscle; and at last she lifted her head. + +"No," she said. + +"Could you care for--me?" + +She made a gesture as though to check him, half rose, fell back, sat +swaying a moment, and suddenly tumbled over sideways, lying a white heap +on the rug at his feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +IN SEARCH OF HERSELF + + +As his train slowed down through the darkness and stopped at the +snow-choked station, Duane, carrying suit-case, satchel, and fur coat, +swung himself off the icy steps of the smoker and stood for a moment on +the platform in the yellow glare of the railway lanterns, looking about +him. + +Sleigh-bells sounded near--chiming through the still, cold air; he +caught sight of two shadowy restive horses, a gaily plumed sleigh, and, +at the same moment, the driver leaned sideways from her buffalo-robed +seat, calling out to him by name. + +"Why, Kathleen!" he exclaimed, hastening forward. "Did you really drive +down here all alone to meet me?" + +She bent over and saluted him, demure, amused, bewitchingly pretty in +her Isabella bear furs: + +"I really did, Duane, without even a groom, so we could talk about +everything and anything all the way home. Give your checks to the +station agent--there he is!--Oh, Mr. Whitley, would you mind sending up +Mr. Mallett's trunks to-night? Thank you _so_ much. Now, Duane, +dear----" + +He tossed suit-case and satchel into the sleigh, put on his fur coat, +and climbing up beside Kathleen, burrowed into the robes. + +"I tell you what," he said seriously, "you're getting to be a howling +beauty; not just an ordinary beauty, but a miracle. Do you mind if I +kiss you again?" + +"Not after that," she said, presenting him a fresh-curved cheek tinted +with rose, and snowy cold. Then, laughing, she swung the impatient +horses to the left; a jingling shower of golden bell-notes followed; and +they were off through the starlight, tearing northward across the snow. + +"Duane!" she said, pulling the young horses down into a swift, swinging +trot, "_what_ do you think! Geraldine doesn't know you're coming!" + +"Why not?" he asked, surprised. "I telegraphed." + +"Yes, but she's been on the mountain with old Miller for three days. +Three of your letters are waiting for her; and then came your telegram, +and of course Scott and I thought we ought to open it." + +"Of course. But what on earth sent Geraldine up the Golden Dome in the +dead of winter?" + +Kathleen shook her pretty head: + +"She's turned into the most uncontrollable sporting proposition you ever +heard of! She's up there at Lynx Peak camp, with her rifle, and old +Miller. They're after that big boar--the biggest, horridest thing in the +whole forest. I saw him once. He's disgusting. Scott objected, and so +did I, but, somehow, I'm becoming reconciled to these break-neck +enterprises she goes in for so hard--so terribly hard, Duane! and all I +do is to fuss a little and make a few tearful objections, and she laughs +and does what she pleases." + +He said: "It is better, is it not, to let her?" + +"Yes," returned Kathleen quietly, "it is better. That is why I say very +little." + +There was a moment's silence, but the constraint did not last. + +"It's twenty below zero, my poor friend," observed Kathleen. "Luckily, +there is no wind to-night, but, all the same, you ought to keep in touch +with your nose and ears." + +Duane investigated cautiously. + +"My features are still sticking to my face," he announced; "is it really +twenty below? It doesn't seem so." + +"It is. Yesterday the thermometers registered thirty below, but nobody +here minds it when the wind doesn't blow; and Geraldine has acquired the +most exquisite colour!--and she's so maddeningly pretty, Duane, and +actually plump, in that long slim way of hers.... And there's another +thing; she is _happier_ than she has been for a long, long while." + +"Has that fact any particular significance to you?" he asked slowly. + +"Vital!... Do you understand me, Duane, dear?" + +"Yes." + +A moment later she called in her clear voice: "Gate, please!" A lantern +flashed; a door opened in the lodge; there came a crunch of snow, a +creak, and the gates of Roya-Neh swung wide in the starlight. + +Kathleen nodded her thanks to the keeper, let the whip whistle, and +spent several minutes in consequence recovering control of the fiery +young horses who were racing like scared deer. The road was wide, +crossed here and there by snowy "rides," and bordered by the splendid +Roya-Neh forests; wide enough to admit a white glow from myriads of +stars. Never had Duane seen so many stars swarming in the heavens; the +winter constellations were magnificent, their diamond-like lustre +silvered the world. + +"I suppose you want to hear all the news, all the gossip, from three +snow-bound rustics, don't you?" she asked. "Well, then, let me +immediately report a most overwhelming tragedy. Scott has just +discovered that several inconsiderate entomologists, who died before he +was born, all wrote elaborate life histories of the Rose-beetle. Isn't +it pathetic? And he's worked _so_ hard, and he's been like a father to +the horrid young grubs, feeding them nice juicy roots, taking their +weights and measures, photographing them, counting their degraded +internal organs--oh, it is too vexing! Because, if you should ask me, I +may say that I've been a mother to them, too, and it enrages me to find +out that all those wretched, squirming, thankless creatures have been +petted and studied and have had their legs counted and their Bertillon +measurements taken years before either Scott or I came into this old +fraud of a scientific world!" + +Duane's unrestrained laughter excited her merriment; the star-lit +woodlands rang with it and the treble chiming of the sleigh-bells. + +"What on earth will he find to do now?" asked Duane. + +"He's going to see it through, he says. Isn't it fine of him? There is +just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying +entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next +summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out +what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something +exciting, Duane. Promise you won't breathe one word!" + +"Not a word!" + +"Well, then--Scott was going to tell you, anyway!--we _think_--but, of +course, we are not sure by any means!--but we venture to think that we +have discovered a disease which kills Rose-beetles. We don't know +exactly what it is yet, or how they get it, but we are practically +convinced that it is a sort of fungus." + +She was very serious, very earnest, charming in her conscientious +imitation of that scientific caution which abhors speculation and never +dares assert anything except dry and proven facts. + +"What are you and Scott aiming at? Are you going to try to start an +epidemic among the Rose-beetles?" he inquired. + +"Oh, it's far too early to even outline our ideas----" + +"That's right; don't tell anything Scott wants to keep quiet about! I'll +never say a word, Kathleen, only if you'll take my advice, feed 'em +fungus! Stuff 'em with it three times a day--give it to them boiled, +fried, au gratin, a la Newburg! That'll fetch 'em!... How is old Scott, +anyway?" + +"Perfectly well," she said demurely. "He informs us daily that he weighs +one hundred and ninety pounds, and stands six feet two in his +snow-shoes. He always mentions it when he tells us that he is going to +scrub your face in a snow-drift, and Geraldine invariably insists that +he isn't man enough. You know, as a matter of fact, we're all behaving +like very silly children up here. Goodness knows what the servants +think." Her smiling face became graver. + +"I am so glad that matters are settled and that there's enough of your +estate left to keep your mother and Naida in comfort." + +He nodded. "How is Scott coming out?" + +"Why--he'll tell you. I don't believe he has very much left. +Geraldine's part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town, +if she and Scott conclude to keep it. Old Mr. Tappan has been quite +wonderful. Why, Duane, he's a perfect old dear; and we all are so +terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid attitude +toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod." + +"He's a funny old duck," mused Duane. "That son of his, Peter, has had +the 'indiwidool cultiwated' clean out of him. He's only a type, like +Gibson's drawings of Tag's son. Old Tappan may be as honest as a block +of granite, but it's an awful thing that he should ever have presided +over the destinies of children." + +Kathleen sighed. "According to his light he was faithful. I know that +his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children +driven into themselves until they were becoming too self-centred to care +for anything else--to realise that there was anything else or anybody +else except their wishes and themselves to consider.... But, Duane, you +see the right quality was latent in them. They are coming out--they have +emerged splendidly. It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course, +but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not +better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual +social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own +ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set +with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in the +Seagraves was--weakness." + +Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night. + +"I don't know. Tappan's poison may have been the antidote for them in +this case. Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine--suffered?" + +"Yes." + +"Very--much?" + +"Very much, Duane. Has she said nothing about it to you in her letters?" + +"Nothing since she went to town that time. Every letter flies the red +cross. Does she still suffer?" + +"I don't think so. She seems so wonderfully happy--so vigorous, in such +superb physical condition. For a month I have not seen that pitiful, +haunted expression come into her eyes. And it is not mere restlessness +that drives her into perpetual motion now; it's a new delight in living +hard and with all her might every moment of the day!... She overdoes it; +you will turn her energy into other channels. She's ready for you, I +think." + +They drove on in silence for a few minutes, then swung into a broader +avenue of pines. Straight ahead glimmered the lights of Roya-Neh. + +Duane said naively: "I don't suppose I could get up to Lynx Peak camp +to-night, could I?" + +Kathleen threw back her head, making no effort to control her laughter. + +"It isn't necessary," she managed to explain; "I sent a messenger up the +mountain with a note to her saying that matters of importance required +her immediate return. She'll come down to-night by sleigh from The Green +Pass and Westgate Centre." + +"Won't she be furious?" he inquired, with a hypocritical side glance at +Kathleen, who laughed derisively and drew in the horses under the +porte-cochere. A groom took their heads; Duane swung Kathleen clear to +the steps just as Scott Seagrave, hearing sleigh-bells, came out, +bareheaded, his dinner-jacket wide open, as though he luxuriated in the +bitter air. + +"Good work!" he said. "How are you, Duane? Geraldine arrived from The +Green Pass about five minutes ago. She thinks you're sleighing, +Kathleen, and she's tremendously curious to know why you want her." + +"She probably suspects," said Kathleen, disappointed. + +"No, she doesn't. I began to talk business immediately, and I know she +thinks that some of Mr. Tappan's lawyers are coming. So they are--next +month," he added with a grin, and, turning on Duane: + +"I think I'll begin festivities by washing your face in the snow." + +"You're not man enough," remarked the other; and the next moment they +had clinched and were swaying and struggling all over the terrace, to +the scandal of the servants peering from the door. + +"He's tired and half frozen!" exclaimed Kathleen; "what a brute you are +to bully him, Scott!" + +"I'll include you in a moment," he panted, loosing Duane and snatching a +handful of snow. Whereupon she caught up sufficient snow to fill the +hollow of her driving glove, powdered his face thoroughly with the +feathery flakes, picked up her skirt and ran for it, knowing full well +she could expect no mercy. + +Duane watched their reckless flight through the hall and upstairs, then +walked in, dropped his coat, and advanced across the heavy rugs toward +the fireplace. + +On the landing above he heard Geraldine's laughter, then silence, then +her clear, careless singing as she descended the stairs: + + "Lisetto quittee la plaine, + Moi perdi bonheur a moi-- + Yeux a moi semblent fontaine + Depuis moi pas mire toi!" + +At the doorway she halted, seeing a man's figure silhouetted against the +firelight. Then she moved forward inquiringly, the ruddy glow full in +her brown eyes; and a little shock passed straight through her. + +"Duane!" she whispered. + +He caught her in his arms, kissed her, locked her closer; her arms +sought his head, clung, quivered, fell away; and with a nervous movement +she twisted clear of him and stood breathing fast, the clamour of her +heart almost suffocating her. And when again he would have drawn her to +him she eluded him, wide-eyed, flushed, lips parted in the struggle for +speech which came at last, brokenly: + +"Dear, you must not take me--that way--yet. I am not ready, Duane. You +must give me time!" + +"Time! Is anything--has anything gone wrong?" + +"No--oh, no, no, no! Don't you understand I must take my own time? I've +won the right to it; I'm winning out, Duane--winning back myself. I must +have my little year of self-respect. Oh, _can't_ you understand that you +mustn't sweep me off my feet this way?--that I'm too proud to go to +you--have you take me while there remains the faintest shadow of risk?" + +"But I don't care! I want you!" he cried. + +"I love you for it; I want you, Duane. But be fair to me; don't take me +until I am as clean and straight and untainted as the girl I was--as I +am becoming--as I will be--surely, surely--my darling!" + +She caught his hands in hers and, close to him, looked into his eyes +smilingly, tearfully, and a little proudly. The sensitive under-lip +quivered; but she held her head high. + +"Don't ask me to give you what is less perfect than I can make it. Don't +let me remember my gift and be ashamed, dear. There must be no memory of +your mistaken generosity to trouble me in the years to come--the long, +splendid years with you. Let me always remember that I gave you myself +as I really can be; let me always know that neither your love nor +compassion were needed to overlook any flaw in what I give." + +She bent her proud little head and laid her lips on his hands, which she +held close between her own. + +"You can so easily carry me by storm, Duane; and in your arms I might be +weak enough to waver and forget and promise to give you now what there +is of me if you demanded it. Don't ask it; don't carry me out of my +depth. There is more to me than I can give you yet. Let me wait to give +it lest I remember your unfairness and my humiliation through the years +to come." + +She lifted her lips to his, offering them; he kissed her; then, with a +little laugh, she abandoned his hands and stepped back, mocking, +tormenting, enjoying his discomfiture. + +"It's cruel, isn't it, you poor lamb! But do you know the year is +already flying very, very fast? Do you think I'm not counting the +days?"--and, suddenly yielding--"if you wish--if you truly do wish it, +dear, I will marry you on the very day that the year--my year--ends. +Come over here"--she seated herself and made a place for him--"and you +won't caress me too much--will you? You wouldn't make me unhappy, would +you?... Why, yes, I suppose that I might let you touch me +occasionally.... And kiss me--at rare intervals.... But not--as we +have.... You won't, will you? Then you may sit here--a little nearer if +you think it wise--and I'm ready to listen to your views concerning +anything on earth, Duane, even including love and wedlock." + +It was very hard for them to judge just what they might or might not +permit each other--how near it was perfectly safe to sit, how long they +might, with impunity, look into each other's eyes in that odd and rather +silly fashion which never seems to be out of date. + +What worried him was the notion that if she would only marry him at once +her safety was secured beyond question; but she explained very sweetly +that her safety was almost secured already; that, if let alone, she was +at present in absolute command of her fate, mistress of her desires, in +full tide of self-control. Now all she required was an interval to +develop character and self-mastery, so that they could meet on even +ground and equal terms when the day arrived for her to surrender to him +the soul and body she had regained. + +"I suppose it's all right," he said with a sigh, but utterly +unconvinced. "You always were fair about things, and if it's your idea +of justice to me and to yourself, that settles it." + +"You dear old stupid!" she said, tenderly amused; "it is the best thing +for our future. The 'sphere of influence' and the 'balance of power' are +as delicate matters to adjust in marriage as they are in world-politics. +You're going to be too famous a painter for your wife to be anything +less than a thorough woman." + +She drew a little away from him, bent her head and clasped both hands +around her knee. + +"There is another reason why I should be in autocratic command over +myself when we marry.... It is difficult for me to explain to you.... Do +you remember that I wrote you once that I was--afraid to marry +you--_not_ for our own sakes?" + +Her young face was grave and serious; she bent her gaze on her ringless +fingers. + +"That," she said, "is the most vital and--sacred reason of all." + +"Yes, dear." He did not dare to touch her, scarcely dared look at the +pure, thoughtful profile until she lifted her head and her fearless eyes +sought his. + +And they smiled, unembarrassed, unafraid. + + * * * * * + +"Those people are deliberately leaving us here to spoon," she declared +indignantly. "I know perfectly well that dinner was announced ages ago!" +And, raising her voice: "Scott, you silly ninny! Where in the world are +you?" + +Scott appeared with alacrity from the library, evidently detained there +in hunger and impatience by Kathleen, who came in a moment later, pretty +eyes innocently perplexed. + +"I declare," she said, "it is nine o'clock and dinner is supposed to be +served at eight!" And she seemed more surprised than ever when old +Howker, who evidently had been listening off stage, entered with +reproachful dignity and announced that ceremony. + +And it was the gayest kind of a ceremony, for they ate and chattered and +laughed there together as inconsequentially as four children, and when +Howker, with pomp and circumstance, brought in a roast boar's head +garnished with holly-like crimson elder, they all stood up and cheered +as though they really liked the idea of eating it. However, there was, +from the same animal, a saddle to follow the jowl, which everybody +tasted and only Scott really liked; and, to Duane's uneasy surprise, +great silver tankards of delicious home-brewed ale were set at every +cover except Geraldine's. + +Catching his eye she shrugged slightly and smiled; and her engaging +glance returned to him at intervals, reassuring, humorously disdainful; +and her serenely amused smile seemed to say: + +"My dear fellow, please enjoy your ale. There is not the slightest +desire on my part to join you." + +"That isn't a very big wild boar," observed Scott, critically eyeing the +saddle. + +"It's a two-year-old," admitted Geraldine. "I only shot him because Lacy +said we were out of meat." + +"_You_ killed him!" exclaimed Duane. + +She gave him a condescending glance; and Scott laughed. + +"She and Miller save this establishment from daily famine," he said. +"You have no idea how many deer and boar it takes to keep the game +within limits and ourselves and domestics decently fed. Just look at the +heads up there on the walls." He waved his arm around the oak +wainscoting, where, at intervals, the great furry heads of wild boar +loomed in the candlelight, ears and mane on end, eyes and white +sabre-like tusks gleaming. "Those are Geraldine's," he said with +brotherly pride. + +"I want to shoot one, too!" said Duane firmly. "Do you think I'm going +to let my affianced put it all over me like that?" + +"_Isn't_ it like a man?" said Geraldine, appealing to Kathleen. "They +simply can't endure it if a girl ventures competition----" + +"You talk like a suffragette," observed her brother. "Duane doesn't +care how many piglings you shoot; he wants to go out alone and get that +old grandfather of all boars, the one which kept you on the mountain for +the last three days----" + +"_My_ boar!" she cried indignantly. "I won't have it! I won't let him. +Oh, Duane, _am_ I a pig to want to manage this affair when I've been +after him all winter?--and he's the biggest, grayest, wiliest thing you +ever saw--a perfectly enormous silvery fellow with two pairs of Japanese +sabre-sheaths for tusks and a mane like a lion, and a double bend in his +nose and----" + +Shouts of laughter checked her flushed animation. + +"Of course I'm not going to sneak out all alone and pot your old pig," +said Duane; "I'll find one for myself on some other mountain----" + +"But I want you to shoot with me!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I wanted +you to see me stalk this boar and mark him down, and have you kill him. +Oh, Duane, that was the fun. I've been saving him, I really have. Miller +knows that I had a shot once--a pretty good one--and wouldn't take it. I +killed a four-year near Hurryon instead, just to save that one----" + +"You're the finest little sport in the land!" said Duane, "and we are +just tormenting you. Of course I'll go with you, but I'm blessed if I +pull trigger on that gentleman pig----" + +"You _must_! I've saved him. Scott, make him say he will! Kathleen, this +is really too annoying! A girl plans and plans and pictures to herself +the happiness and surprise she's going to give a man, and he's too +stupid to comprehend----" + +"Meaning me!" observed Duane. "But I leave it to you, Scott; a man +can't do such a thing decently----" + +"Oh, you silly people," laughed Kathleen; "you may never again see that +boar. Denman, keeper at Northgate when Mr. Atwood owned the estate, told +me that everybody had been after that boar and nobody ever got a shot at +him. Which," she added, "does not surprise me, as there are some hundred +square miles of mountain and forest on this estate, and Scott is lazy +and aging very fast." + +"By the way, Sis, you say you got a four-year near The Green Pass?" + +She nodded, busy with her bon-bon. + +"Was it exciting?" asked Duane, secretly eaten up with pride over her +achievements and sportsmanship. + +"No, not very." She went on with her bon-bon, then glanced up at her +brother, askance, like a bad child afraid of being reported. + +"Old Miller is so fussy," she said--"the old, spoilt tyrant! He is +really very absurd sometimes." + +"Oho!" said Scott suspiciously, "so Miller is coming to me again!" + +"He--I'm afraid he is. Did you," appealing to Kathleen, "ever know a +more obstinate, unreasoning old man----" + +"Geraldine! What did you do!" she exclaimed. + +"Yes," said Scott, annoyed, "what the deuce have you been up to now? +Miller is perfectly right; he's an old hunter and knows his business, +and when he comes to me and complains that you take fool risks, he's +doing his duty!" + +He turned to Duane: + +"That idiot girl," he said, nodding toward his abashed sister, "knocked +over a boar last month, ran up to look at his tusks, and was hurled +into a snowdrift by the beast, who was only creased. He went for Miller, +too, and how he and my sister ever escaped without a terrible slashing +before Geraldine shot the brute, nobody knows.... There's his head up +there--the wicked-looking one over the fireplace." + +"That's not good sportsmanship," said Duane gravely. + +Geraldine hung her head, colouring. + +"I know it; I mean to keep cool; truly, I do. But things happen so +quickly----" + +"Why are you afraid Miller is going to complain?" interrupted her +brother. + +"Scott--it wasn't anything very much--that is, I didn't think so. You'd +have done it--you know it's a point of honour to track down wounded +game." + +She turned to Duane: + +"The Green Pass feeding-ground was about a thousand yards ahead in the +alders, and I made Miller wait while I crept up. There was a fine boar +feeding about two hundred yards off, and I fired and he went over like a +cat in a fit, and then up and off, and I after him, and Miller after me, +telling me to look out." + +She laughed excitedly, and made a little gesture. "That's just why I +ran--to look out!--and the trail was deep and strong and not much +blood-dust. I was so vexed, so distressed, because it was almost sunset +and the boar seemed to be going strongly and faster than a grayhound. +And suddenly Miller shouted something about 'scrub hemlock'--I didn't +know he meant for me to halt!--So I--I"--she looked anxiously at her +brother--"I jumped into the scrub and kicked him up before I knew +it--and he--he tore my kilts--just one or two tears, but it didn't +wound me, Scott, it only just made my leg black and blue--and, anyway, I +got him----" + +"Oh, Lord," groaned her brother, "don't you know enough to reconnoitre a +wounded boar in the scrub? _I_ don't know why he didn't rip you. Do you +want to be killed by a _pig_? What's the use of being all cut and bitten +to pieces, anyway?" + +"No use, dear," she admitted so meekly that Duane scarcely managed to +retain his gravity. + +She came over and humbly slipped her arm through his as they all rose +from the table. + +"Don't think I'm a perfect idiot," she said under her breath; "it's only +inexperience under excitement. You'll see that I've learned a lot when +we go out together. Miller will admit that I'm usually prudent, because, +two weeks ago, I hit a boar and he charged me, and my rifle jammed, and +I went up a tree! Wasn't that prudent?" + +"Perfectly," he said gravely; "only I'd feel safer if you went up a tree +in the first place and remained there. What a child you are, anyway!" + +"Do you know," she confided in him, "I am a regular baby sometimes. I do +the silliest things in the woods. Once I gave Miller the slip and went +off and built a doll's house out of snow and made three snow dolls and +played with them! Isn't that the silliest thing? And another time a boar +came out by the Westgate Oaks, and he was a black, hairy fellow, and so +funny with his chin-whiskers all dotted with icicles that I began to say +aloud: + + 'I swear by the beard + On my chinny-chin-chin--' + +And of course he was off before I could pull trigger for laughing. +Isn't that foolish?" + +"Adorably," he whispered. "You are finding the little girl in the +garden, Geraldine." + +She looked up at him, serious, wistful. + +"It's the boy who found her; I only helped. But I want to bring her home +all alone." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE GOLDEN HOURS + + +The weather was unsuitable for hunting. It snowed for a week, thawed +over night, then froze, then snowed again, but the moon that night +promised a perfect day. + +Young Mallett supposed that he was afoot and afield before anybody else +in house could be stirring, but as he pitched his sketching easel on the +edges of the frozen pasture brook, and opened his field-box, a far hail +from the white hill-top arrested him. + +High poised on the snowy crest above him, clothed in white wool from +collar to knee-kilts, and her thick clustering hair flying, she came +flashing down the hill on her skis, soared high into the sunlight, +landed, and shot downward, pole balanced. + +Like a silvery meteor she came flashing toward him, then her +hair-raising speed slackened, and swinging in a widely gracious curve +she came gliding across the glittering field of snow and quietly stopped +in front of him. + +"Since when, angel, have you acquired this miraculous accomplishment?" +he demanded. + +"Do I do it well, Duane?" + +"A swallow from paradise isn't in your class, dear," he admitted, +fascinated. "Is it easy--this new stunt of yours?" + +"Try it," she said so sweetly that he missed the wickedness in her +smile. + +So, balancing, one hand on his shoulder, she disengaged her moccasins +from the toe-clips, and he shoved his felt timber-jack boots into the +leather loops, and leaning on the pointed pole which she handed him, +gazed with sudden misgiving down the gentle acclivity below. She +encouraged him; he listened, nodding his comprehension of her +instructions, but still gazing down the hill, a trifle ill at ease. + +However, as skates and snow-shoes were no mystery to him, he glanced at +the long, narrow runners curved upward at the extremities, with more +assurance, and his masculine confidence in all things masculine +returned. Then he started, waved his hand, smiling his condescension; +then he realised that he was going faster than he desired to; then his +legs began to do disrespectful things to him. The treachery of his own +private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled +deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly +wide of his body. He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his +trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the +episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting pinwheel of snow. + +Like all masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back, +savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first +toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own +way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to +the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing +heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below without +capsizing. + +She praised him warmly, rescued his wool gloves and cap from snowy +furrows into which their owner had angrily but helplessly dived; and +then she stepped into her skis and ascended the hill beside him with +that long-limbed, graceful, swinging stride which he had ventured to +believe might become him also. + +He said hopelessly: "If you expect me to hunt wild boar with you on +skis, there'll be some wild and widely distributed shooting in this +county. How can I hit a boar while describing unwilling ellipses in +mid-air or how can I run away from one while I'm sticking nose down in a +snow-drift?" + +Too faint with laughter to reply, she stood leaning on her trailing-pole +and looking over his shoulder as he repitched his sketching easel, +squeezed the colours from the leaden tubes, and set his palette. + +"I'm horribly hungry," he grumbled; "too hungry to make a decent sketch. +How cold is it, anyway? I believe that this paint is trying to freeze on +my palette!" + +"What are you going to paint?" she asked, her rounded chin resting on +his shoulder. + +"That frozen brook." He looked around at her, hesitating; and she +laughed and nodded her comprehension. + +"You want to make a sketch of me, dear. Why don't you ask me? Do you +think I'd refuse?" + +"It's so beastly cold to ask you to stand still----" + +"Cold! Why, it's much warmer; it's ten above zero. I'll stand wherever +you wish. Where do you want me; here above you, against the snow and +sky?" + +The transcendent loveliness of the picture she made set that excited +thrill quivering through every vein; but he took a matter-of-fact grip +on his emotions because good work is done in cold blood, even if it +sometimes may be conceived in exaltation. + +"Don't move," he said serenely; "you are exactly right as you stand. +Tell me the very moment you feel cold. Promise?" + +"Yes, dear." + +His freezing colours bothered him, and at times he used them almost like +pastels. He worked rapidly, calmly, and with that impersonal precision +that made every brush stroke an integral factor in the ensemble. + +At almost any stage of the study the accidental brilliancy of his +progress might have been terminated abruptly, leaving a sketch rarely +beautiful in its indicated and unfinished promise. + +But the pitfalls of the accidental had no allurements for him. She +rested, changed position, stretched her limbs, took a long circle or +two, skimming the hillside when she needed the reaction. But always she +came swinging back again to stand and watch her lover with a +half-smiling, half-tender gaze that tried his sangfroid terribly when he +strove to catch it and record it in the calm and scientific technique +which might excite anybody except the workman. + +"Am I pretty, Duane?" + +"Annoyingly divine. I'm trying not to think of it, dear, until my hand +and heart may wobble with impunity. Are you cold?" + +"No.... Do you think you'll make a full-fledged picture from this +motive?" + +"How did you guess?" + +"I don't know. I've a premonition that your reputation is going to soar +up like a blazing star from this waste of snow around us.... I wish--I +wish that it might be from me, through me--my humble aid--that your +glory breaks out----" + +"If it ever does, it will do it through you. I told you that long ago." + +"Yes." + +"I've known it a long, long time, Geraldine. Without you there's nothing +to me except surface. You are the depths of me." + +"And you of me, Duane." Sweet eyes remote, she stood looking into space; +at peace with her soul, dreaming, content. And it was then that he +caught and imprisoned in colour the nameless beauty which was the +foundation for his first famous picture, whose snowy splendour silenced +all except those little critics who chirp automatically, eternally, on +the ruddy hearthstone of the gods. + + * * * * * + +From the distant hill-top a voice bellowed at them through a megaphone; +and, looking aloft, they beheld Scott gesticulating. + +"If you two mental irresponsibles want any breakfast," he shouted, +"you'd better hustle! Miller telephones that the big boar fed below +Cloudy Mountain at sunrise!" + +Geraldine looked at her lover, cheeks pink with excitement. He was +immensely interested, too, and as soon as he could fold his easel, lock +up brushes and palette, protect his canvas with a fresh one faced with +cork buffers, they started for the house, discussing the chances for a +shot that afternoon. + +Like the most desirable and wary of most species of game, furry or +finny, the huge, heavily tusked veterans of the wild-boar family often +feed after dark, being too cunning to banquet by daylight and carouse +with the gayer blades and the big, fierce sows of the neighbourhood. + +Sometimes in the white gloom of snow-storms there is a chance for a +shot; sometimes in a remoter fastness a big boar may deem himself +secure enough to venture out where there are no witnesses to his +solitary gastronomic revels save an Arctic owl or two huddled high in +the hemlocks. + +And it was in the rocky oak-ridges of the wild country under Cloudy +Mountain that Miller had marked down the monarch of all wild pigs--the +great, shaggy, silver-tipped boar, hock-deep in snow, crunching frozen +acorns and glaring off over the gully where mile after mile of white +valley and mountain ranges stretched away, clotted and streaked with +pine. + +"Why don't we all go?" asked Geraldine, seating herself behind the +coffee-urn and looking cordially around at the others. + +"Because, dear," said Kathleen, "I haven't the slightest desire to run +after a wild boar or permit him to amble after me; and all that +reconciles me to your doing it is that Duane is going with you." + +"I personally don't like to kill things," observed Scott briefly. "My +sister is the primitive of this outfit. She's the slayer, the head +hunter, the lady-boss of this kraal." + +"Is it very horrid of me, Duane?" she asked anxiously, "to find +excitement in this sort of thing? Besides, we do need meat, and the game +must be kept thinned down by somebody. And Scott won't." + +"Whatever you do is all right," said Duane, laughing, "even when you +jeer at my gymnastics on skis. Oh, Lord! but I'm hungry. Scott, are you +going to take all those sausages and muffins, you bespectacled ruffian! +Kathleen, heave a plate at him!" + +Kathleen was too scandalised to reply; Scott surrendered the desired +muffins, and sorted the morning mail, which had just been brought in. + +"Nothing for you, Sis, except bills; one letter for Duane, two for +Kathleen, and the rest for me"--he examined the envelopes--"all from +brother correspondents and eager aspirants for entomological honours.... +Here's your letter, Duane!" scaling it across the table in spite of +Kathleen's protest. + +They had the grace to ask each other's permission to read. + +"Oh, listen to this!" exclaimed Scott gleefully: + + "DEAR SIR: Your name has been presented to the Grand + Council which has decided that you are eligible for membership in + the International Entomological Society of East Orange, N.J., and + you have, therefore, been unanimously elected. + + "Have the kindness to inform me of your acceptance and inclose your + check for $25, which includes your dues for five years and a free + subscription to the society's monthly magazine, _The Fly-Paper_----" + +"Scott, don't do it. You get one of those kind of things every day!" +exclaimed Geraldine. "They only want your $25, anyway." + +"It's an innocent recreation," grinned Duane. "Why not let Scott append +to his signature--'M.I.E.S.E.O.N.J.'--Member International Entomological +Society, East Orange, New Jersey. It only costs $25 to do it----" + +"That's all right," said Scott, reddening, "but possibly they may have +read my paper on the Prionians in the last Yonkers _Magazine of +Science_. It wasn't a perfectly rotten paper, was it, Kathleen?" + +"It was mighty clever!" she said warmly. "Don't mind those two scoffers, +Scott. If you take my advice you will join this East Orange Society. +That would make six scientific societies he has joined since Christmas," +she continued, turning on Duane with severe pride; adding, "and there's +a different coloured ribbon decoration for his buttonhole from each +society." + +But Duane and Geraldine were very disrespectful; they politely offered +each other memberships in all sorts of societies, including one yard of +ribbon decoration, one sleigh-bell, and five green trading stamps, until +Scott hurled an orange at Duane, who caught it and blew a kiss at him as +recompense. + +Then they went outside, on Scott's curt invitation, and wrestled and +scuffled and scrubbed each other's faces with snow like schoolboys, +until, declaring they were hungry again, they came back to the +breakfast-room and demanded more muffins and sausages and coffee. + +Kathleen rang and, leaning over, handed Geraldine a brief letter from +Rosalie Dysart: + + "Do you think Geraldine would ask me up for a few days?" it began. + "I'm horribly lonesome and unhappy and I'm being talked about, and + I'd rather be with you wholesome people than with anybody I know, + if you don't mind my making a refuge of your generosity. I'm a real + victim of that dreadful sheet in town, which we all have a contempt + for and never subscribe to, and which some of us borrow from our + maids or read at our modistes--the sheet that some of us are + genuinely afraid of--and part of our fear is that it may neglect + us! You know, don't you, what really vile things it is saying about + me? If you don't, your servants do. + + "So if you'd rather not have me, I won't be offended, and, anyway, + you are dear and decent people and I love you. + + "ROSALIE DENE." + +"How funny," mused Geraldine. "She's dropped Jack Dysart's name already +in private correspondence.... Poor child!" Looking up at Kathleen, "We +must ask her, mustn't we, dear?" + +There was more of virginal severity in Kathleen. She did not see why +Rosalie, under the circumstances, should make a convenience of +Geraldine, but she did not say so; and, perhaps, glancing at the wistful +young girl before her, she understood this new toleration for those in +dubious circumstances--comprehended the unusual gentleness of judgment +which often softens the verdict of those who themselves have drifted too +near the danger mark ever to forget it or to condemn those still adrift. + +"Yes," she said, "ask her." + +Duane looked up from the perusal of his own letter as Kathleen and Scott +strolled off toward the greenhouses where the latter's daily +entomological researches continued under glass and the stimulous +artificial heat and Kathleen Severn. + +"Geraldine," he said, "here's a letter from Bunny Gray. He and Sylvia +Quest were married yesterday very quietly, and they sailed for Cape Town +this morning!" + +"What!" + +"That's what he writes. Did you ever hear of anything quicker?" + +"How funny," she said. "Bunny and Sylvia? I knew he was attentive to her +but----" + +"You mean Dysart?" he said carelessly. "Oh, he's only a confirmed +debutante chaser; a sort of social measles. They all recover rapidly." + +"I had the--social measles," said Geraldine, smiling. + +Duane repressed a shiver. "It's inevitable," he said gaily.... "That +Bunny is a decent fellow." + +"Will you show me his letter?" she asked, extending her hand as a matter +of course. + +"No, dear." + +She looked up surprised. + +"Why not? Oh--I beg your pardon, dear----" + +Duane bent over, kissed her hand, and tossed the letter into the fire. +It was her first experience in shadows cast before, and it came to her +with a little shock that no two are ever one in the prosier sense of the +theory. + +The letter that Duane had read was this: + + "Sylvia and I were married quietly yesterday and she has told me + that you will know why. There is little further for me to say, + Duane. My wife is ill. We're going to Cape Town to live for a + while. We're going to be happy. I am now. She will be. + + "My wife asked me to write you. Her regard for you is very high. + She wishes me to tell you that I know everything I ought to have + known when we were married. You were very kind to her. You're a + good deal of a man, Duane. + + "I want to add something: her brother, Stuyve, is out of the + hospital and loose again. He's got all the virtues of a Pomeranian + pup--that is, none; and he'll make a rotten bad fist of it. I'll + tell you now that, during the past winter, twice, when drunk, he + shot at his sister. She did not tell me this; he did, when in a + snivelling condition at the hospital. + + "So God knows what he may do in this matter. It seems that the + blackguard in question has been warned to steer clear of + Stuyvesant. It's up to them. I shall be glad to have Sylvia at Cape + Town for a while. + + "Delancy Grandcourt was witness for me, Rosalie for Sylvia. Delancy + is a brick. Won't you ask him up to Roya-Neh? He's dying to go. + + "And this is all. It's a queer life, isn't it, old fellow? But a + good sporting proposition, anyway. It suits me. + + "Our love to you, to the little chatelaine of Roya-Neh, to her + brother, to Kathleen. + + "Tell them we are married and off for Cape Town, but tell them no + more. + + "B. Gray." + + "It isn't necessary to say burn this scrawl." + +Geraldine, watching him in calm speculation, said: + +"I don't see why they were married so quietly. Nobody's in mourning----" + +"Dear?" + +"What, dear?" + +"Do something for me." + +"I promise." + +"Then ask Delancy up here to shoot. Do you mind?" + +"I'd love to. Can he come?" + +"I think so." + +"I'll write now. Won't it be jolly," she said innocently, "to have him +and Rosalie here together----" + +The blank change on his face checked her. "Isn't it all right?" she +asked, astonished. + +He had made his blunder. There was only one thing for him to say and he +said it cordially, mentally damning himself for forgetting that Rosalie +was to be invited. + +"I'll write to them both this morning," concluded Geraldine. "Of course +poor Jack Dysart is out of the question." + +"A little," he said mildly. And, furious with himself, he rose as she +stood up, and followed her into the armory, her cool little hand +trailing and just touching his. + +For half an hour they prowled about, examining Winchesters, Stevens, +Maenlichers--every make and pattern of rifle and fowling-piece was +represented in Scott's collection. + +"Odd, isn't it, that he never shoots," mused Duane, lifting out a superb +weapon from the rack behind the glass doors. "This seems to be one of +those murderous, low trajectory pieces that fires a sort of brassy shot +which is still rising when it's a mile beyond the bunker. Now, +sweetheart, if you've a heavy suit of ancient armour which I can crawl +into, I'll defy any boar that roots for mast on Cloudy Mountain." + +It was great fun for Geraldine to lay out their equipment in two neat +piles; a rifle apiece with cases and bandoliers; cartridges, two +hunting-knives with leather sheaths, shooting hoods and coats; and +timberjack's boots for her lover, moccasins for her; a pair of heavy +sweaters for each, and woollen mitts, fashioned to leave the trigger +finger free. + +Beside these she laid two fur-lined overcoats, and backed away in naive +admiration at her industry. + +"Wonderful, wonderful," he said. "We'll only require saucepans and +boiler lids to look exactly like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee arrayed for +battle. I say, Geraldine, how am I going to flee up a tree with all that +on--and snow-shoes to boot-s," he added shamelessly, grinning over his +degraded wit. + +She ignored it, advised him with motherly directness concerning the +proper underwear he must don, looked at her rifle, examined his and, +bidding him assume it, led him out to the range in the orchard and made +him target his weapon at a hundred yards. + +There was a terrific fusillade for half an hour or so; his work was +respectable, and, satisfied, she led him proudly back to the house and, +curling up on the leather divan in the library, invited him to sit +beside her. + +"Do you love me?" she inquired with such impersonal curiosity that he +revenged himself fully then and there; and she rose and, instinctively +repairing the disorder of her hair, seated herself reproachfully at a +distance. + +"Can't a girl ask a simple question?" she said, aggrieved. + +"Sure. Ask it again, dearest." + +She disdained to reply, and sat coaxing the tendrils of her dark hair to +obey the dainty discipline of her slender fingers. + +"I thought you weren't going to," she observed irrelevantly. But he +seemed to know what she meant. + +"Don't you want me to even touch you for a year?" + +"It isn't a year. Months of it are over." + +"But in the months before us----" + +"No." + +She picked up a book. When he reached for a magazine she looked over the +top of her book at him, then read a little, glanced up, read a little +more, and looked at him again. + +"Duane?" + +"What?" + +"This is a fool of a book. Do you want to read it?" + +"No, thanks." + +"Over my shoulder, I mean?" + +He got up, seated himself on the arm of her chair, and looked at the +printed page over her shoulder. + +For a full minute neither moved; then she turned her head, very slowly, +and, looking into his eyes, she rested her lips on his. + +"My darling," she said; "my darling." + +Which is one of the countless variations of the malady which makes the +world spin round in one continual and perpetual fit. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +CLOUDY MOUNTAIN + + +Five days running, Geraldine, Duane, and old Miller watched for the big +gray boar among the rocky oak ridges under Cloudy Mountain; and though +once they saw his huge tracks, they did not see him. + +Every night, on their return, Scott jeered them and taunted them until a +personal encounter with Duane was absolutely necessary, and they always +adjourned to the snowy field of honour to wipe off the score and each +other's faces with the unblemished snow. + +Rosalie and a Chow-dog arrived by the middle of the week; Delancy toward +the end of it, unencumbered. Duane made a mental note of his own +assininity, and let it go at that. He was as glad to see Rosalie as +anybody, and just as glad to see Delancy, but he'd have preferred to +enjoy the pleasures separately, though it really didn't matter, after +all. + +"Sooner or later," he admitted to himself, "that Delancy man is going to +marry her; and it seems to me she's entitled to another chance in the +world. Even our earthly courts are lenient toward first offenders. As +for the ethics--puzzle it out, you!" He made a gesture including the +world in general, lighted a cigarette, and went out to the gun-room to +join Geraldine. + +"Rosalie and Delancy want to go shooting with us," he explained with a +shrug. + +"Oh, Duane!--and our solitary and very heavenly trips alone together!" + +"I know it. I have just telephoned Miller to get Kemp from Westgate for +them. Is that all right?" + +"Yes"--she hesitated--"I think so." + +"Let Kemp guide them," he insisted. "They'll never hold out as far as +Cloudy Mountain. All they want is to shoot a boar, no matter how big it +is. Miller says the boar are feeding again near the Green Pass. It's +easy enough to send them there." + +"Do you think that is perfectly hospitable? Rosalie and Delancy may find +it rather stupid going off alone together with only Kemp to amuse them. +I am fond of him," she added, "but you know what a woman like Rosalie is +prone to think of Delancy." + +He glanced at her keenly; she had, evidently, not the slightest notion +of the _status quo_. + +"Oh, they'll get along together, all right," he said carelessly. "If +they choose to remain with us, of course we all can keep on to Cloudy +Mountain; but you'll see them accept Kemp and the Green Pass with +grateful alacrity after two miles of snow-shoeing through the brush; and +we'll have the mountain all to ourselves." + +"You're a shameless deviser of schemes, aren't you, dear?" she asked, +considering him with that faint, intimate smile, which, however, had +always in it something of curiosity. "You know perfectly well we could +drive those poor people the whole way to Cloudy Mountain." + +"Why, that _is_ so!" he exclaimed, pretending surprise; "but, after all, +dear, it's better sport to beat up the alders below Green Pass and try +to jump a pig for them. That's true hospitality----" + +She laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, Duane, Duane!" she murmured, +suffering him to capture both her hands and lay them against his face to +cover the glee that twitched it at his own unholy perfidy. + +And so it came about that, after an early luncheon, a big double sleigh +jingled up, received its jolly cargo, and sped away again into the white +woodlands, Kathleen waving adieu and Scott deriding them with scoffing +and snowballs. + +The drive was very beautiful, particularly through the pine and hemlock +belt where the great trees, clothed heavily with snow, bent branch and +crest under the pale winter sunshine. Tall fir-balsams pricked the sky, +perfect cones of white; spruces were snowy mounds; far into the forest +twilight glimmered the unsullied snow. + +As they sped along, Geraldine pointed out imprints of fox and rabbit, +faint trails where a field-mouse had passed, the string of henlike +footprints recording the deliberate progress of some ruffed grouse +picking its leisurely way across the snow; the sharp, indented marks of +squirrels. + +Rosalie was enchanted, Delancy mildly so, but when a deeper trail +ploughed the snow, running parallel to their progress, he regarded it +with more animation. + +"Pig," said Geraldine briefly. + +"Wild?" he inquired. + +"Of course," she smiled; "and probably a good big boar." + +Rosalie thrilled and unconsciously rested her fur-gloved hand on +Delancy's sleeve. + +"You know," she said, "you must shoot a little straighter than you did +at target practice this morning. Because I can't run very fast," she +added with another delightful shudder. + +Delancy, at her anxious request, modestly assured her that he would +"plug" the first boar that showed his tusks; and Geraldine laughed and +made Rosalie promise to do the same. + +"You're both likely to have a shot," she said as the sleigh drew up on a +stone bridge and Miller and Kemp came over and saluted--big, raw-boned +men on snow-shoes, wearing no outer coats over their thin woollen +shirts, although every thermometer at Roya-Neh recorded zero. + +Gun-cases were handed out, rifles withdrawn, and the cases stowed away +in the sleigh again. Fur coats were rolled in pairs, strapped, and slung +behind the broad shoulders of the guides. Then snow-shoes were +adjusted--skis for Geraldine; Miller walked westward and took post; +Kemp's huge bulk closed the eastern extremity of the line, and between +them, two and two at thirty paces apart, stood the hunters, Duane with +Rosalie, Geraldine with Delancy, loading their magazines. + +Ahead was an open wood of second growth, birch, beech, and maple; +sunlight lay in white splashes here and there; nothing except these +blinding pools of light and the soft impression of a fallen twig varied +the immaculate snow surface as far as the eye could see. + +"Forward and silence," called out Geraldine; the mellow swish of +snow-shoes answered her, and she glided forward on her skis, instructing +Delancy under her breath. + +"The wind is right," she said. "They can't scent us here, though deeper +in the mountains the wind cuts up and you never can be sure what it may +do. There's just a chance of jumping a pig here, but there's a better +chance when we strike the alder country. Try not to shoot a sow." + +"How am I to tell?" + +"Sows have no tusks that show. Be careful not to mistake the white +patches of snow on a sow's jowl for tusks. They get them by rooting and +it's not always easy to tell." + +Delancy said very honestly: "You'll have to control me; I'm likely to +let drive at anything." + +"You're more likely to forget to shoot until the pig is out of sight," +she whispered, laughing. "Look! Three trails! They were made last +night." + +"Boar?" + +"Yes," she nodded, glancing at the deep cloven imprints. She leaned +forward and glanced across the line at Miller, who caught her eye and +signalled significantly with one hand. + +"Be ready, Delancy," she whispered. "There's a boar somewhere ahead." + +"How can you tell?" + +"I can scent him. It's strong enough in the wind," she added, wrinkling +her delicate nose with a smile. + +Grandcourt sniffed and sniffed, and finally detected a slight acrid +odour in the light, clear breeze. He looked wisely around him; Geraldine +was skirting a fallen tree on her skis; he started on and was just +rounding a clump of brush when there came a light, crashing noise +directly ahead of him; a big, dark, shaggy creature went bounding and +bucking across his line of vision--a most extraordinary animal, all head +and shoulders and big, furry ears. + +The snapping crack of a rifle echoed by the sharp racket of another shot +aroused him to action too late, for Miller, knife drawn, was hastening +across the snow to a distant dark, motionless heap; and Geraldine stood +jerking back the ejector of her weapon and throwing a fresh cartridge +into the breach. + +"My goodness!" he faltered, "somebody got him! Who fired, Geraldine?" + +She said: "I waited as long as I dared, Delancy. They go like lightning, +you know. I'm terribly sorry you didn't fire." + +"Good girl!" said Duane in a low voice as she sped by him on her skis, +rifle ready for emergencies as old Miller cautiously approached the +shaggy brown heap, knife glittering. + +But there was no emergency; Miller's knife sank to the hilt; Geraldine +uncocked her rifle and bent curiously over the dead boar. + +"Nice tusks. Miss Seagrave," commented the old man. "He's fat as butter, +too. I cal'late he'll tip the beam at a hundred and forty paound!" + +The hunters clustered around with exclamations of admiration; Rosalie, +distractingly pretty in her white wool kilts and cap, knelt down and +touched the fierce, long-nosed head and stroked the furry jowl. + +"Oh, Delancy!" she wailed, "why _didn't_ you 'plug' him as you promised? +_I_ simply _couldn't_ shoot; Duane tried to make me, but I was so +excited and so surprised to see the creature run so fast that all my +ideas went out of my head and I never thought of pulling that wretched +trigger!" + +"That," said Delancy, very red, "is precisely what happened to me." And, +turning to Geraldine, who looked dreadfully repentant: "I heard you tell +me to shoot, and I merely gawked at the beast like a rubbering jay at a +ten-cent show." + +"Everybody does that at first," said Duane cheerfully; "I'll bet +anything that you and Rosalie empty your magazines at the next one." + +"We really must, Delancy," insisted Rosalie as she and Geraldine turned +away when Miller and Kemp tucked up their sleeves and unsheathed their +knives in preparation for unpleasant but necessary details. + +But they worked like lightning; and in exactly seven minutes the heavy +beast was drawn, washed out with snow, roped, and hung to a tree well +out of reach of any four-footed forest marauders that might prowl that +way before night. + +Geraldine, smiling her deprecation of their praise, waited with the +others until the two guides were ready. Then, in the same order as +before, they moved forward, descended the slope, and came into a strange +wilderness of stark gray alders that stretched away in every direction. +And threading, circling, crossing each other everywhere among the alders +ran the trails of deer and wild boar, deep and fresh in the powdery +snow. + +At intervals, as they advanced, hard-wood ridges crossed the bewildering +alder labyrinths. Twice, while ascending these ridges, Rosalie's heart +jumped as a grouse thundered up. Once three steel-gray deer started out +of the scrub and went bounding off, displaying enormous white flags; +once a young buck, hunting for trouble, winded it, whistled, and came +leaping past Rosalie so close that she shrank aside with a half-stifled +cry of apprehension and delight. + +Half a mile farther on Delancy, labouring along on his snow-shoes, +suddenly halted, detaining Geraldine with a quick touch on the shoulder. + +"There's something in that clearing," he whispered. + +Miller had seen it, too; Duane motioned Rosalie forward to join +Delancy, and, side by side, they crept ahead, keeping a clump of scrub +hemlock between them and the edge of the clearing. It was the Green Pass +feed-ground, a rocky strip of pasture climbing upward toward Lynx Peak; +and there, clean cut against the snowy background, three dark objects +were moving, trotting nervously here and there, nosing, nuzzling, +tunnelling the snow with long, sharp muzzles. + +Duane and Geraldine silently unslung their field-glasses. + +"They're boar," he said. + +"Two-year-olds," she nodded. "I do hope they will get one each. Duane, +ought I to have shot that other one?" + +"Of course, you generous child! Otherwise he'd have gone clear away. +That was a cracking shot, too--clean through the backbone at the base of +the skull.... Look at Rosalie! She's unstrapped her snow-shoes and she +and Delancy are crawling on all-fours!" + +Kemp had now joined the stalkers; he was a wise old hunter, and Duane +and Geraldine, keeping very still, watched the operations side by side. + +For half an hour Rosalie lay motionless in the snow on the forest's +edge, and Geraldine was beginning to fret at the prospect of her being +too benumbed by the cold to use her rifle, when Duane touched her on the +arm and drew her attention to a fourth boar. + +The animal came on from behind Rosalie and to Delancy's right--a +good-sized, very black fellow, evidently suspicious yet tempted to +reconnoitre the feeding-ground. + +"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" she whispered; "what a shot Delancy has! Why +_doesn't_ he see him! What on earth is Kemp about? Why, the boar is +within ten feet of Delancy's legs and doesn't see or wind him!" + +"Look!" + +Kemp had caught sight of the fourth boar. Geraldine and Duane saw his +dilemma, saw him silently give Rosalie the signal to fire at the nearest +boar in the open, then saw him turn like a flash and almost drag Delancy +to his feet. + +"Kill that pig, _now_!" he thundered--"unless you want him hackin' your +shins!" + +The boar stood in his tracks, bristling, furious, probably astounded to +find himself so close to the only thing in all the forest that he feared +and would have preferred to flee from. + +Under such conditions boars lose their heads; there was a sudden clatter +of tusks, a muffled, indescribable sound, half squeal, half roar; a +fountain of feathery snow, and two shots close together. Then a third +shot. + +Rosalie, rather pale, threw another cartridge in as Delancy picked +himself out of a snow-bank and looked around him in astonishment. + +"Well done, young lady!" cried Kemp, running a fistful of snow over the +blade of his hunting-knife and nodding his admiration. "I guess it's +just as well you disobeyed orders and let this funny pig have what was +coming to him. Y' ain't hurt, are ye, Mr. Grandcourt?" + +"No; he didn't hit me; I tripped on that root. Did I miss him?" + +"Not at all," said Duane, kneeling down while Miller lifted the great +fierce head. "You hit him all right, but it didn't stop him; it only +turned him. Here's your second bullet, too; and Rosalie, yours did the +business for him. Good for you! It's fine, isn't it, Geraldine?" + +Grandcourt, flushing heavily, turned to Rosalie and held out his hand. +"Thank you," he said; "the brute was right on top of me." + +"Oh, no," she said honestly, "he'd missed you and was going straight on. +I don't know how on earth I ever hit him, but I was so frightened to see +you go over backward and I thought that he'd knocked you down, and I was +perfectly furious----" + +She gave a little sob of excitement, laughed unsteadily, and sat down on +a fallen log, burying her face in her hands. + +They knew enough to let her alone and pretend not to notice her. +Geraldine chattered away cheerfully to the two men while the keepers +drew the game. Delancy tried to listen to her, but his anxious eyes kept +turning toward Rosalie, and at length, unable to endure it, he went over +and sat down beside her, careless of what others might infer. + +"How funny," whispered Geraldine to Duane. "I had no idea that Delancy +was so fond of her. Had you?" + +He started slightly. "I? Oh, no," he said hastily--too hastily. He was a +very poor actor. + +Gravely, head bent, she walked forward beside him after Grandcourt had +announced that he and Rosalie had had enough and that they wished Kemp +to take them and their game to the sleigh. + +Once, looking back, she saw the procession moving in the opposite +direction through the woods, Kemp leading, rope over his shoulder, +dragging the dead boar across the snow; Grandcourt, both rifles slung +across his back, big arm supporting Rosalie, who walked as though very +tired, her bright head drooping, her arm resting on his shoulder. + +Geraldine looked up at Duane thoughtfully, and he supposed that she was +about to speak, but her gaze became remote; she shifted her rifle, and +walked on. + +Before they came to the wild, shaggy country below Cloudy Mountain she +said: + +"I've been thinking it over, Duane. I can see in it nothing that can +concern anybody except themselves. Can you?" + +"Not a thing, dear.... I'm sorry I suggested his coming. I knew about +this, but I clean forgot it when I asked you to invite him." + +"I remember, now, your consternation when you realised it," she said, +smiling. "After all, Duane, if it is bound to happen, I don't mind it +happening here.... Poor, lonely little Rosalie!... I'm depraved enough +to be glad for her--if it is really to be so." + +"I'm glad, too.... Only she ought to begin her action, I think. It's +more prudent and better taste." + +"You said once that you had a contempt for divorce." + +"I never entertain the same opinion of anything two days in succession," +he said, smiling. "When there is any one moral law that can justly cover +every case which it is framed to govern, I'll be glad to remain more +constant in my beliefs." + +"Then you _do_ believe in divorce?" + +"To-day I happen to." + +"Duane, is that your attitude toward everything?" + +"Everything except you," he said cheerfully. "That is literally true. +Even in my painting and in my liking for the work of others, I veer +about like a weather-vane, never holding very long to one point of +view." + +"You're very frank about it." + +"Why not?" + +"Isn't it a--a weakness?" + +"I don't think so," he said so simply that she tucked her arm under his +with a soft, confidential laugh. + +"You goose; do you suppose I think there is a weak fibre in you? I've +always adored the strength in you--even when it was rough enough to +bruise me. Listen, dear; there's only one thing you might possibly +weaken on. Promise you won't." + +"I promise." + +"Then," she said triumphantly, "you'll take first shot at the big boar! +Are you angry because I made you promise? If you only knew, dear, how +happy I have been, saving the best I had to offer, in this forest, for +you! You will make me happy, won't you?" + +"Of course I will, you little trump!" he said, encircling her waist, +forgetful of old Miller, plodding along behind them. + +But it was no secret to old Miller, nor to any native in the +country-side for a radius of forty miles. No modern invention can equal +the wireless celerity that distributes information concerning other +people's business throughout the rural wastes of this great and +gossipping nation. + +She made him release her, blushing hotly as she remembered that Miller +was behind them, and she scolded her lover roundly, until later, in a +moment of thoughtlessness, she leaned close to his shoulder and told him +she adored him with every breath she drew, which was no sillier than his +reply. + +The long blue shadows on the snow and the pink bars of late sunlight had +died out together. It had grown warmer and grayer in the forest; and +after a little one or two snow-flakes came sifting down through the +trees. + +They had not jumped the big silver boar, nor had they found a trace of +him among the trails that crossed and recrossed the silent reaches of +the forest. Light was fading to the colourless, opaque gray which +heralded a snow-storm as they reached the feeding-ground, spread out +their fur coats, and dropped, belly down, to reconnoitre. + +Nothing moved among the oaks. They lay listening minute after minute; no +significant sound broke the silence, no dead branch cracked in the +hemlocks. + +She lay close to him for warmth, chin resting on his shoulder, her cheek +against his. Their snow-shoes were stuck upright in a drift behind them; +beside these squatted old Miller, listening, peering, nostrils working +in the wind like an old dog's. + +They waited and watched through a fine veil of snow descending; in the +white silence there was not a sound save the silken flutter of a lonely +chickadee, friendly, inquiring, dropping from twig to twig until its +tiny bright eyes peered level with Geraldine's. + +Evidently the great boar was not feeding before night. Duane turned his +head restlessly; old Miller, too, had become impatient and they saw him +prowling noiselessly down among the rocks, scrutinising snow and +thickets, casting wise glances among the trees, shaking his white head +as though communing with himself. + +"Well, little girl," breathed Duane, "it looks doubtful, doesn't it?" + +She turned on her side toward him, looking him in the eyes: + +"Does it matter?" + +"No," he said, smiling. + +She reached out her arms; they settled close around his neck, clung for +a second's passionate silence, released him and covered her flushed +face, all but the mouth. Under them his lips met hers. + +The next instant she was on her knees, pink-cheeked, alert, ears +straining in the wind. + +"Miller is coming back very fast!" she whispered to her lover. "I +believe he has good news!" + +Miller was coming fast, holding out in one hand something red and +gray--something that dangled and flapped as he strode--something that +looked horrible and raw. + +"Damn him!" said the old man fiercely, "no wonder he ain't a-feedin'! +Look at this, Miss Seagrave. There's more of it below--a hull mess of it +in the snow." + +"It's a big strip of deer-hide--all raw and bleeding!" faltered the +girl. "What in the world has happened?" + +"_His_ work," said Miller grimly. + +"The--the big boar?" + +"Yes'm. The deer yard over there. He sneaked in on 'em last night and +this doe must have got stuck in a drift. And that devil caught her and +pulled her down and tore her into bits. Why, the woods is all scattered +with shreds o' hide like this! I wish to God you or Mr. Mallett could +get one crack at him! I do, by thunder! Yes'm!" + +But it was already too dusky among the trees to sight a rifle. In +silence they strapped up the coats, fastened on snow-shoes, and moved +out along the bare spur of the mountain, where there was still daylight +in the open, although the thickening snow made everything gray and +vague. + +Here and there a spectral tree loomed up among the rocks; a white hare's +track, paralleled by the big round imprints of a lynx, ran along the +unseen path they followed as Miller guided them toward Westgate. + +Later, outlined in the white waste, ancient apple-trees appeared, +gnarled relics of some long-abandoned clearing; and, as they passed, +Duane chanced to glance across the rocks to the left. + +At first he thought he saw something move, but began to make up his mind +that he was deceived. + +Noticing that he had halted, Geraldine came back, and then Miller +returned to where he stood, squinting through the falling flakes in the +vague landscape beyond. + +"It moved; I seen it," whispered Miller hoarsely. + +"It's a deer," motioned Geraldine; "it's too big for anything else." + +For five minutes in perfect silence they watched the gray, flat forms of +scrub and rock; and Duane was beginning to lose faith in everybody's +eyes when, without warning, a huge, colourless shape detached itself +from the flat silhouettes and moved leisurely out into the open. + +There was no need to speak; trembling slightly, he cleared his rifle +sight of snow, steadied his nerves, raised the weapon, and fired. + +A horrid sort of scream answered the shot; the boar lurched off among +the rocks, and after him at top speed ran Duane and Miller, while +Geraldine, on swift skis, sped eastward like the wind to block retreat +to the mountain. She heard Duane's rifle crack again, then again; heard +a heavy rush in the thicket in front of her, lifted her rifle, fired, +was hurled sideways on the rocks, and knew no more until she unclosed +her bewildered eyes in her lover's arms. + +A sharp pain shot through her; she gasped, turned very white, and lay +with wide eyes and parted lips staring at Duane. + +Suddenly a penetrating aroma filled her lungs; with all her strength she +pushed away the flask at her lips. + +"No! No! Not that! I _will_ not, Duane!" + +"Dear," he said unsteadily, "you are very badly hurt. We are trying to +carry you back. You must let me give you this----" + +"No," she sobbed, "I will not! Duane--I--" Pain made her faint; her +grasp on his arm tightened convulsively; with a supreme effort she +struck the flask out of his hand and dropped back unconscious. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +SINE DIE + + +The message ran: + + "My sister badly hurt in an accident; concussion, intermittent + consciousness. We fear spinal and internal injury. What train + can you catch? + SCOTT SEAGRAVE." + +Which telegram to Josiah Bailey, M.D., started that eminent general +practitioner toward Roya-Neh in company with young Dr. Goss, a surgeon +whose brilliancy and skill did not interfere with his self-restraint +when there were two ways of doing things. + +They were to meet in an hour at the 5.07 train; but before Dr. Bailey +set out for the rendezvous, and while his man was still packing his +suit-case, the physician returned to his office, where a patient waited, +head hanging, picking nervously at his fingers, his prominent, watery +eyes fixed on vacancy. + +The young man neither looked up nor stirred when the doctor entered and +reseated himself, picking up a pencil and pad. He thought a moment, +squinted through his glasses, and continued writing the prescription +which the receipt of the telegram from Roya-Neh had interrupted. + +When he had finished he glanced over the slip of paper, removed his +gold-rimmed reading spectacles, folded them, balanced them thoughtfully +in the palm of his large and healthy hand, considering the young fellow +before him with grave, far-sighted eyes: + +"Stuyvesant," he said, "this prescription is not going to cure you. No +medicine that I can give you is going to perform any such miracle unless +you help yourself. Nothing on earth that man has invented, or is likely +to invent, can cure your disease unless by God's grace the patient +pitches in and helps himself. Is that plain talk?" + +Quest nodded and reached shakily for the prescription; but the doctor +withheld it. + +"You asked for plain talk; are you listening to what I'm saying?" + +"Oh, hell, yes," burst out Quest; "I'm going to pull myself together. +Didn't I tell you I would? But I've got to get a starter first, haven't +I? I've got to have something to key me up first. I've explained to you +that it's this crawling, squirming movement on the backs of my hands +that I can't stand for. I want it stopped; I'll take anything you dope +out; I'll do any turn you call for----" + +"Very well. I've told you to go to Mulqueen's. Go _now_!" + +"All right, doctor. Only they're too damn rough with a man. All right; +I'll go. I _did_ go last winter, and look where I am now!" he snarled +suddenly. "Have I got to get up against all that business again?" + +"You came out in perfectly good shape. It was up to you," said the +doctor, coldly using the vernacular. + +"How was it up to me? You all say that! How was it? I understood that if +I cut it out and went up there and let that iron-fisted Irishman slam me +around, that I'd come out all right. And the first little baby-drink I +hit began the whole thing again!" + +"Why did you take it? You didn't have to." + +"I wanted it," retorted Quest angrily. + +"Not badly enough to make self-control impossible. That's what you went +up there for, to get back self-control. You got it but didn't use it. Do +you think there is any sort of magic serum Mulqueen or I or anybody +under Heaven can pump into you that will render you immune from the +consequences of making an alcohol sewer of yourself?" + +"I certainly supposed I could come out and drink like a gentleman," said +the young man sullenly. + +"Drink like a--_what_? A gentleman? What's that? What's drinking like a +gentleman? I don't know what it is. You either drink alcohol or you +don't; you either swill it or you don't. Anybody can do either. I'm not +aware that either is peculiar to a gentleman. But I know that both are +peculiar to fools." + +Quest muttered, picking his fingers, and cast an ugly side look at the +physician. + +"I don't know what you just said," snapped Dr. Bailey, "but I'll tell +you this: alcohol is poison and it has not--and never had--in any guise +whatever, the slightest compensating value for internal use. It isn't a +food; it's a poison; it isn't a beneficial stimulant; it's a poison; it +isn't an aid to digestion; it's a poison; it isn't a life saver; it's a +life taker. It's a parasite, forger, thief, pander, liar, brutalizer, +murderer! + +"Those are the plain facts. There isn't, and there never has been, one +word to say for it or any excuse, except morbid predisposition or +self-inculcated inclination, to offer for swallowing it. Now go to your +brewers, your wine merchants, your champagne touts, your fool +undergraduates, your clubmen, your guzzling viveurs--and they'll all +tell you the contrary. So will some physicians. And you can take your +choice. Any ass can. That is all, my boy." + +The young man glowered sulkily at the prescription. + +"Do I understand that this will stop the jumps?" + +"If you really believe that, you have never heard me say so," snapped +Dr. Bailey. + +"Well, what the devil will it do?" + +"The directions are there. You have my memorandum of the regime you are +to follow. It will quiet you till you get to Mulqueen's. Those two bits +of paper, however, are useless unless you help yourself. If you want to +become convalescent you can--even yet. It won't be easy; it will hurt; +but you can do it, as I say, even yet. But it is _you_ who must do it, +not I or that bit of paper or Mulqueen! + +"Just now you happen to want to get well because the effect of alcohol +poison disturbs you. Things crawl, as you say, on the back of your hand. +Naturally, you don't care for such phenomena. + +"Well, I've given you the key to mental and physical regeneration. Yours +is not an inherited appetite; yours is not one of those almost +foredoomed and pitiable cases. It's a stupid case; and a case of gross +self-indulgence in stupidity that began in idleness. And that, my son, +is the truth." + +"Is that so?" sneered Quest, rising and pocketing the prescription. + +"Yes, it is so. I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I +knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and +wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You +deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, +one mitigating plea to offer for what you've done to yourself. + +"You stood high in school and in college; you were Phi Beta Kappa, a +convincing debater, a plausible speaker, an excellent writer of good +English--by instinct a good newspaper man. Also you were a man adapted +by nature to live regularly and beyond the coarser temptations. But you +were lazy!" + +Dr. Bailey struck his desk in emphasis. + +"The germ of your self-indulgence lay in gross selfishness. You did what +pleased you; and it suited you to do nothing. I'm telling you how you've +betrayed yourself--how far you'll have to climb to win back. Some men +need a jab with a knife to start their pride; some require a friend's +strong helping arm around them. You need the jab. I'm trying to +administer it without anaesthetics, by telling you what some men think of +you--that it is your monstrous selfishness that has distorted your +normal common sense and landed you where you are. + +"Selfishness alone has resulted in a most cruel and unnatural neglect of +your sister--your only living relative--in a deliberate relapse into +slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which +was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your +sister's income after gambling away your own fortune. + +"I know you; I carried you through teething and measles, my son: and +I've carried you through the horrors of alcoholic delirium. And I say to +you now that, with the mental degeneration already apparent, and your +naturally quick temper, if you break down a few more cells in that +martyred brain of yours, you'll end in an asylum--possibly one reserved +for the _criminal_ insane." + +A dull colour stained the pasty whiteness of Quest's face. For several +minutes he stood there, his fingers working and picking at each other, +his pale, prominent eyes glaring. + +"That's a big indictment, doctor," he said at last. + +"Thank God you think it so," returned the doctor. "If you will stand by +your better self for one week--for only one week--after leaving +Mulqueen's, I'll stand by you for life, my boy. Come! You were a good +sport once. And that little sister of yours is worth it. Come, +Stuyvesant; is it a bargain?" + +He stepped forward and held out his large, firm, reassuring hand. The +young fellow took it limply. + +"Done with you, doctor," he said without conviction; "it's hell for +mine, I suppose, if I don't make my face behave. You're right; I'm the +goat; and if I don't quit butting I'll sure end by slapping some sissy +citizen with an axe." + +He gave the doctor's hand a perfunctory shake with his thin, damp +fingers; dropped it, turned to go, halted, retraced his steps. + +"Will it give me the willies if I kiss a cocktail good-bye before I +start for that fresh guy, Mulqueen?" + +"Start _now_, I tell you! Haven't I your word?" + +"Yes--but on the way to buy transportation can't I offer myself one +last----" + +"_Can't_ you be a good sport, Stuyve?" + +The youth hesitated, scowled. + +"Oh, very well," he said carelessly, turned and went out. + +As he walked along in the slush he said to himself: "I guess it's up +the river for mine.... By God, it's a shame, for I'm feeling pretty +good, too, and that's no idle quip!... Old Squills handed out a line of +talk all right-o!... He landed it, too.... I ought to find something to +do." + +As he walked, a faint glow stimulated his enervated intelligence; ideas, +projects long abandoned, desires forgotten, even a far echo from the old +ambition stirring in its slumber, quickened his slow pulses. The ghost +of what he might have been, nay, what he _could_ have made himself, rose +wavering in his path. Other ghosts, long laid, floated beside him, +accompanying him--the ghosts of dead opportunities, dead ideals, lofty +inspirations long, long strangled. + +"A job," he muttered; "that's the wholesome dope for Willy. There isn't +a newspaper or magazine in town where I can't get next if I speak easy. +I can deliver the goods, too; it's like wiping swipes off a bar----" + +In his abstraction he had walked into the Holland House, and he suddenly +became conscious that he was confronting a familiarly respectful +bartender. + +"Oh, hell," he said, greatly disconcerted, "I want some French vichy, +Gus!" He made a wry face, and added: "Put a dash of tabasco in it, and +salt it." + +A thick-lipped, ruddy-cheeked young fellow, celebrated for his knowledge +of horses, also notorious for other and less desirable characteristics, +stood leaning against the bar, watching him. + +They nodded civilly to one another. Quest swallowed his peppered vichy, +pulled a long face and said: + +"We're a pair of 'em, all right." + +"Pair of what?" inquired the thick-lipped young man, face becoming +rosier and looking more than ever like somebody's groom. + +"Pair of bum whips. We've laid on the lash too hard. I'm going to stable +my five nags--my five wits!"--he explained with a sneer as the other +regarded him with all the bovine intelligence of one of his own +stable-boys--"because they're foundered; and that's the why, young +four-in-hand!" + +He left the bar, adding as he passed: + +"I'm a rotting citizen, but you"--he laughed insolently--"you have +become phosphorescent!" + +The street outside was all fog and melting snow; the cold vichy he had +gulped made him internally uncomfortable. + +"A gay day to go to Mulqueen's," he muttered sourly, gazing about for a +taxicab. + +There was none for hire at that moment; he walked on for a while, +feeling the freezing slush penetrate his boot-soles; and by degrees a +sullen temper rose within him, revolting--not at what he had done to +himself--but at the consequences which were becoming more unpleasant +every moment. + +As he trudged along, slipping, sliding, his overcoat turned up around +his pasty face, his cheeks wet with the icy fog, he continued swearing +to himself, at himself, at the slush, the cold vichy in his belly, the +appetite already awakened which must be denied. + +Denied?... Was he never to have one more decent drink? Was this to be +the absolute and final end? Certainly. Yet his imagination could not +really comprehend, compass, picture to himself life made a nuisance by +self-denial--life in any other guise except as a background for inertia +and indulgence. + +He swore again, profanely asking something occult why he should be +singled out to be made miserable on a day like this? Why, among all the +men he knew, he must go skulking about, lapping up cold mineral water +and cocking one ear to the sounds of human revelry within the Tavern. + +As for his work--yes, he ought to do it.... Interest in it was already +colder; the flare-up was dying down; habitual apathy chilled it to its +embers. Indifference, ill-temper, self-pity, resentment, these were the +steps he was slowly taking backward. He took them, in their natural +sequence, one by one. + +Old Squills meant well, no doubt, but he had been damned impertinent.... +And why had Old Squills dragged in his sister, Sylvia?... He had paid as +much attention to her as any brother does to any sister.... And how had +she repaid him? + +Head lowered doggedly against the sleet which was now falling thickly, +he shouldered his way forward, brooding on his "honour," on his sister, +on Dysart. + +He had not been home in weeks; he did not know of his sister's departure +with Bunny Gray. She had left a letter at home for him, because she knew +no other addresses except his clubs; and inquiry over the telephone +elicited the information that he had not been to any of them. + +But he was going to one of them now. He needed something to kill that +vichy; he'd have one more honest drink in spite of all the Old Squills +and Mulqueens in North America! + +At the Cataract Club there were three fashion-haunting young men +drinking hot Scotches: Dumont, his empurpled skin distended with whiskey +and late suppers, and all his former brilliancy and wit cankered and +rotten with it, and his slim figure and clean-cut face fattened and +flabby with it; Myron Kelter, thin, elegant, exaggerated, talking +eternally about women and his successes with the frailer ones--Myron +Kelter, son of a gentleman, eking out his meagre income by fetching, +carrying, pandering to the rich, who were too fastidious to do what they +paid him for doing in their behalf; and the third, Forbes Winton, +literary dilettante, large in every feature and in waistcoat and in +gesture--large, hard, smooth--very smooth, and worth too many millions +to be contradicted when misstating facts to suit the colour of his too +luxuriant imagination. + +These greeted Quest in their several and fashionably wearied manners, +inviting his soul to loaf. + +Later he had a slight dispute with Winton, who surveyed him coldly, and +insolently repeated his former misstatement of a notorious fact. + +"What rot!" said Quest; "I leave it to you, Kelter; am I right or not?" + +Kelter began a soft and soothing discourse which led nowhere at first +but ended finally in a re-order for four hot Scotches. + +Then Dumont's witty French blood--or the muddied dregs which were left +of it--began to be perversely amusing at Quest's expense. Epigrams +slightly frayed, a jest or two a trifle stale, humorous inversions of +well-known maxims, a biting retort, the originality of which was not +entirely free from suspicion, were his contributions to the festivities. + +Later Kelter's nicely modulated voice and almost affectionate manner +restrained Quest from hurling his glass at the inflamed countenance of +Mr. Dumont. But it did not prevent him from leaving the room in a +vicious temper, and, ultimately, the Cataract Club. + +The early winter night had turned cold and clear; sidewalks glittered, +sheeted with ice. He inhaled a deep breath and expelled a reeking one, +hailed a cab, and drove to the railroad station. + +Here he bought his tickets, choosing a midnight train; for the journey +to Mulqueen's was not a very long one; he could sleep till seven in the +car; and, besides, he had his luggage to collect from the hotel he had +been casually inhabiting. Also he had not yet dined. + +Bodily he felt better, now that the vichy had been "killed"; mentally +his temper became more vicious than ever as he thought of Dumont's +blunted wit at his expense--a wit with edge enough left to make a +ragged, nasty wound. + +"He'll get what's coming to him some day," snarled Quest, returning to +his cab; and he bade the driver take him to the Amphitheatre, a +restaurant resort, wonderful in terra-cotta rocks, papier-mache grottos, +and Croton waterfalls--haunted of certain semi-distinguished pushers of +polite professions, among whom he had been known for years. + +The place was one vast eruption of tiny electric lights, and the lights +of "the profession," and the demi-monde. Virtue and its antithesis +disguised alike in silk attire and pearl collars, rubbed elbows +unconcernedly among the papier-mache grottos; the cascades foamed with +municipal water, waiters sweated and scurried, lights winked and +glimmered, and the music and electric fans annoyed nobody. + +In its usual grotto Quest found the usual group, was welcomed +automatically, sat down at one of the tables, and gave his order. + +Artists, newspaper men, critics, and writers predominated. There was +also a "journalist" doing "brilliant" space work on the _Sun_. He had +been doing it nearly a month and he was only twenty-one. It was his +first job. Ambition tickled his ribs; Fame leaned familiarly over his +shoulder; Destiny made eyes at him. His name was Bunn. + +There was also a smooth-shaven, tired-eyed, little man who had written a +volume on Welsh-rarebits and now drew cartoons. His function was to +torment Bunn; and Bunn never knew it. + +A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his +paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play in town. + +"Kismet," observed little Dill, who did the daily cartoon for the +_Post_, "no critic would be a critic if he could be a fifth-rate anybody +else--or," he added, looking at Bunn, "even a journalist." + +"Is that supposed to be funny?" asked Bunn complacently. "_I_ intend to +do art criticism for the _Herald_." + +"What's the objection to my getting a job on it, too?" inquired Quest, +setting his empty glass aside and signalling the waiter for a re-order. +He expected surprise and congratulation. + +Somebody said, "_You_ take a job!" so impudently that Quest reddened and +turned, showing his narrow, defective teeth. + +"It's my choice that I haven't taken one," he snarled. "Did you think +otherwise?" + +"Don't get huffy, Stuyve," said a large, placid, fat novelist, whose +financial success with mediocre fiction had made him no warmer favourite +among his brothers. + +A row of artists glanced up and coldly continued their salad, their +Vandyck beards all wagging in unison. + +"I want you to understand," said Quest, leaning both elbows offensively +on Dill's table, "that the job I ask for I expect to get." + +"You might have expected that once," said the cool young man who had +spoken before. + +"And I do now!" retorted Quest, raising his voice. "Why not?" + +Somebody said: "You can furnish good copy, all right, Quest; you do it +every day that you're not working." + +Quest, astonished and taken aback at such a universal revelation of the +contempt in which he seemed to be held, found no reply ready--nothing at +hand except another glass of whiskey and soda. + +Minute after minute he sat there among them, sullen, silent, wincing, +nursing his chagrin in deepening wrath and bitterness; and his clouding +mind perceived in the rebuke nothing that he had ever done to deserve +it. + +Who the devil were these rag-tags and bob-tails of the world who +presumed to snub him--these restaurant-haunting outsiders, among whom he +condescended to sit, feeling always the subtle flattery they ought to +accord him by virtue of a social position hopeless of attainment by any +of them? + +Who were they to turn on him like this when he had every reason to +suppose they were not only aware of the great talent he had carelessly +neglected to cultivate through all these years, but must, in the secret +recesses of their grubby souls, reluctantly admire his disdain of the +only distinctions they scrambled for and could ever hope for? + +His black looks seemed to disturb nobody; Bunn, self-centred, cropped +his salad complacently; the Vandyck beards wagged; another critic or +two left, stern slaves to duty and paid ads. + + * * * * * + +The lights bothered him; tremors crawled over and over his skin; within +him a dull rage was burning--a rage directed at no one thing, but which +could at any moment be focussed. + +Men rose and left the table singly, by twos, in groups. He sat, +glowering, head partly averted, scowlingly aware of their going, aware +of their human interest in one another but not in him, aware at last +that he counted for nothing whatever among them. + +Some spoke to him as they passed out; he made them no answer. And at +last he was alone. + +Reaching for his empty glass, he miscalculated the distance between it +and his quivering fingers; it fell and broke to pieces. When the waiter +came he cursed him, flung a bill at him, got up, demanded his coat and +hat, swore at the pallid, little, button-covered page who brought it, +and lurched out into the street. + +A cab stood there; he entered it, fell heavily into a corner of the +seat, bade the driver, "Keep going, damn you!" and sat swaying, +muttering, brooding on the wrongs that the world had done him. + +Wrongs! Yes, by God! Every hand was against him, every tongue slandered +him. Who was he that he should endure it any longer in patience! Had he +not been patient? Had he not submitted to the insults of a fool of a +doctor?--had he not stayed his hand from punishing Dumont's red and +distended face?--had he not silently accepted the insolent retorts of +these Grub Street literati who turned on him and flouted the talent that +lay dormant in him--dead, perhaps--but dead or dormant, it still +matched theirs! And they knew it, damn them! + +Had he not stood enough from the rotten world?--from his own sister, who +had flung his honour into his face with impunity!--from Dysart, whose +maddening and continual ignoring of his letters demanding an +explanation---- + +There seemed to come a sudden flash in his brain; he leaned from the +window and shouted an address to the cabman. His hat had fallen beside +him, but he did not notice its absence on his fevered head. + +"I'll begin with _him_!" he repeated with a thick laugh; "I'll settle +with him first. Now we're going to see! Now we'll find out about several +matters--or I'll break his neck off!--or I'll twist it off--wring it +off!" + +And he beat on his knees with his fists, railing, raging, talking +incoherently, laughing sometimes, sometimes listening, as though, +suddenly, near him, a voice was mocking him. + +He had a pocket full of bills, crushed up; some he gave to the cabman, +some he dropped as he stuffed the others into his pockets, stumbled +toward a bronze-and-glass grille, and rang. The cabman brought him his +hat, put it on him, gathered up the dropped money, and drove off with +his tongue in his cheek. + +Quest rang again; the door opened; he gave his card to the servant, and +stealthily followed him upstairs over the velvet carpet. + +Dysart, in a velvet dressing-gown knotted in close about his waist, +looked over the servant's shoulders and saw Quest standing there in the +hall, leering at him. + +For a moment nobody spoke; Dysart took the offered card mechanically, +glanced at it, looked at Quest, and nodded dismissal to the servant. + +When he and the other man stood alone, he said in a low, uncertain +voice: + +"Get out of here!" + +But Quest pushed past him into the lighted room beyond, and Dysart +followed, very pale. + +"What are you doing here?" he demanded. + +"I've asked you questions, too," retorted Quest. "Answer mine first." + +"Will you get out of here?" + +"Not until I take my answer with me." + +"You're drunk!" + +"I know it. Look out!" + +Dysart moistened his bloodless lips. + +"What do you want to know?" And, as Quest shouted a question at him: +"Keep quiet! Speak lower, I tell you. My father is in the next room." + +"What in hell do I care for your father? Answer me or I'll choke it out +of you! Answer me now, you dancing blackguard! I've got you; I want my +answer, and you've got to give it to me!" + +"If you don't lower your voice," said Dysart between his teeth, "I'll +throw you out of that window!" + +"Lower my voice? Why? Because the old fox might hear the young one yap! +What do I care for you or your doddering family----" + +He went down with a sharp crash; Dysart struck him again as he rose; +then, beside himself, rained blows on him, drove him from corner to +corner, out of the room, into the hall, striking him in the face till +the young fellow reeled and fell against the bath-room door. It gave; he +stumbled into darkness; and after him sprang Dysart, teeth set--sprang +into the darkness which split before him with a roar into a million +splinters of fire. + +He stood for a second swaying, reaching out to grasp at nothing in a +patient, persistent, meaningless way; then he fell backward, striking a +terrified servant, who shrank away and screamed as the light fell on her +apron and cuffs all streaked with blood. + +She screamed again as a young man's white and battered face appeared in +the dark doorway before her. + +"Is he hurt?" he asked. His dilated eyes were fixed upon the thing on +the floor. "What are you howling for? Is he--dead?" whispered Quest. +Suddenly terror overwhelmed him. + +"Get out of my way!" he yelled, hurling the shrieking maid aside, +striking the frightened butler who tried to seize him on the stairs. +There was another manservant at the door, who stood his ground swinging +a bronze statuette. Quest darted into the drawing-room, ran through the +music-room and dining-room beyond, and slammed the door of the butler's +pantry. + +He stood there panting, glaring, his shoulder set against the door; then +he saw a bolt, and shot it, and backed away, pistol swinging in his +bleeding fist. + +Servants were screaming somewhere in the house; doors slammed, a man was +shouting through a telephone amid a confusion of voices that swelled +continually until the four walls rang with the uproar. A little later a +policeman ran through the basement into the yard beyond; another pushed +his way to the pantry door and struck it heavily with his night-stick, +demanding admittance. + +For a second he waited; then the reply came, abrupt, deafening; and he +hurled himself at the bolted door, and it flew wide open. + +But Quest remained uninterested. Nothing concerned him now, lying there +on his back, his bruised young face toward the ceiling, and every +earthly question answered for him as long as time shall last. + + * * * * * + +Up-stairs a very old and shrunken man sat shivering in bed, staring +vacantly at some policemen and making feeble efforts to reach a wig +hanging from a chair beside him--a very glossy, expensive wig, nicely +curled where it was intended to fall above the ears. + +"I don't know," he quavered, smirking at everybody with crackled, +painted lips, "I know nothing whatever about this affair. You must ask +my son Jack, gentlemen--my son Jack--te-he!--oh, yes, he knows; he can +tell you a thing or two, I warrant you! Yes, gentlemen, he's like all +the Dysarts--fit for a fight or a frolic!--te-he!--he's all Dysart, +gentlemen--my son Jack. But he is a good son to me--yes, yes!--a good +son, a good son! Tell him I said so--and--good-night." + +"Nutty," whispered a policeman. "Come on out o' this boodwar and lave +th' ould wan be." + +And they left him smirking, smiling, twitching his faded lips, and +making vague sounds, lying there asleep in his dotage. + +And all night long he lay mumbling his gums and smiling, his sleep +undisturbed by the stir and lights and tramp of feet around him. + +And all night long in the next room lay his son, white as marble and +very still. + +Toward morning he spoke, asking for his father. But they had decided to +probe for the bullet, and he closed his eyes wearily and spoke no more. + +They found it. What Dysart found as the winter sun rose over Manhattan +town, his Maker only knows, for his sunken eyes opened unterrified yet +infinitely sad. But there was a vague smile on his lips after he lay +there dead. + +Nor did his slayer lie less serenely where bars of sunlight moved behind +the lowered curtains, calm as a schoolboy sleeping peacefully after the +eternity of a summer day where he had played too long and fiercely with +a world too rough for him. + +And so, at last, the indictments were dismissed against them both and +their cases adjourned _sine die_. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE PROLOGUE ENDS + + +"Your sister," observed Dr. Bailey to Scott Seagrave, "must be +constructed of India-rubber. There's nothing whatever the matter with +her spine or with her interior. The slight trace of concussion is +disappearing; there's no injury to the skull; nothing serious to +apprehend. Her body will probably be black and blue for a week or two; +she'll doubtless prefer to remain in bed to-morrow and next day. And +that is the worst news I have to tell you." + +He smiled at Kathleen and Duane, who stood together, listening. + +"I told you so," said Scott, intensely relieved. "Duane got scared and +made me send that telegram. I fell out of a tree once, and my sister's +symptoms were exactly like mine." + +Kathleen stole silently from the room; Duane passed his arm through the +doctor's and walked with him to the big, double sleigh which was +waiting. Scott followed with Dr. Goss. + +"About this other matter," said Dr. Bailey; "I can't make it out, Duane. +I saw Jack Dysart two days ago. He was very nervous, but physically +sound. I can't believe it was suicide." + +He unfolded the telegram which had come that morning directed to Duane. + + + "_Mrs. Jack Dysart's husband died this morning. Am trying to + communicate with her. Wire if you know her whereabouts._" + +It was signed with old Mr. Dysart's name, but Dr. Bailey knew he could +never have written the telegram or even have comprehended it. + +The men stood grouped in the snow near the sleigh, waiting; and +presently Rosalie came out on the terrace with Kathleen and Delancy +Grandcourt. Her colour was very bad and there were heavy circles under +her eyes, but she spoke with perfect self-possession, made her adieux +quietly, kissed Kathleen twice, and suffered Grandcourt to help her into +the sleigh. + +Then Grandcourt got in beside her, the two doctors swung aboard in +front, bells jingled, and they whirled away over the snow. + +Kathleen, with Scott and Duane on either side of her, walked back to the +house. + +"Well," said Scott, his voice betraying nervous reaction, "we'll resume +life where we left off when Geraldine did. Don't tell her anything about +Dysart yet. Suppose we go and cheer her up!" + +Geraldine lay on the pillows, rather pallid under the dark masses of +hair clustering around and framing her face. She unclosed her eyes when +Kathleen opened the door for a preliminary survey, and the others filed +solemnly in. + +"Hello," she said faintly, and smiled at Duane. + +"How goes it, Sis?" asked her brother affectionately, shouldering Duane +aside. + +"A little sleepy, but all right. Why on earth did you send for Dr. +Bailey? It was horribly expensive." + +"Duane did," said her brother briefly. "He was scared blue." + +Her eyes rested on her lover, indulgent, dreamily humorous. + +"Such expensive habits," she murmured, "when everybody is economising. +Kathleen, dear, he needs schooling. You and Mr. Tappan ought to take him +in hand and cultiwate him good and hard!" + +Scott, who had been wandering around his sister's room with innate +masculine curiosity concerning the mysteries of intimate femininity, +came upon a sketch of Duane's--the colour not entirely dry yet. + +"It's Sis!" he exclaimed in unfeigned approval. "Lord, but you've made +her a good-looker, Duane. Does she really appear like that to you?" + +"And then some," said Duane. "Keep your fingers off it." + +Scott admired in silence for a while, then: "You certainly are a shark +at it, Duane.... You've struck your gait all right.... I wish I had.... +This Rose-beetle business doesn't promise very well." + +"You write most interestingly about it," said Kathleen warmly. + +"Yes, I can write.... I believe journalism would suit me." + +"The funny column?" suggested Geraldine. + +"Yes, or the birth, marriage, and death column. I could head it, +'Hatched, Matched, and Snatched'----" + +"That is perfectly horrid, Scott," protested his sister; "why do you let +him say such rowdy things, Kathleen?" + +"I can't help it," sighed Kathleen; "I haven't the slightest influence +with him. Look at him now!"--as he laughingly passed his arm around her +and made her two-step around the room, protesting, rosy, deliciously +helpless in the arms of this tall young fellow who held her inflexibly +but with a tenderness surprising. + +Duane smiled and seated himself on the edge of the bed. + +"You plucky little thing," he said, "were you perfectly mad to try to +block that boar in the scrub? You won't ever try such a thing again, +will you, dear?" + +"I was so excited, Duane; I never thought there was any danger----" + +"You didn't think whether there was or not. You didn't care." + +She laughed, wincing under his accusing gaze. + +"You _must_ care, dear." + +"I do," she said, serious when he became so grave. "Tell me again +exactly what happened." + +He said: "I don't think the brute saw you; he was hard hit and was going +blind, and he side-swiped you and sent you flying into the air among +those icy rocks." He drew a long breath, managed to smile in response to +her light touch on his hand. "And that's how it was, dear. He crashed +headlong into a tree; your last shot did it. But Miller and I thought +he'd got you. We carried you in----" + +"_You_ did?" she whispered. + +"Yes. I never was so thoroughly scared in all my life." + +"You poor boy. Are the rifles safe? And did Miller save the head?" + +"He did," said Duane grimly, "and your precious rifles are intact." + +"Lean down, close," she said; "closer. There's more than the rifles +intact, dear." + +"Not your poor bruised body!" + +"My self-respect," she whispered, the pink colour stealing into her +cheeks. "I've won it back. Do you understand? I've gone after my other +self and got her back. I'm mistress of myself, Duane; I'm in full +control, first in command. Do you know what that means?" + +"Does it mean--me?" + +"Yes." + +"When?" + +"When you will." + +He leaned above her, looking down into her eyes. Their fearless +sweetness set him trembling. + +On the floor below Kathleen, at the piano, was playing the Menuet +d'Exaudet. When she ended, Scott, cheerily busy with his infant +Rose-beetles, went about his affairs whistling the air. + +"Our betrothal dance; do you remember?" murmured Geraldine. "Do you love +me, Duane? Tell me so; I need it." + +"I love you," he said. + +She lay looking at him a moment, her head cradled in her dark hair. +Then, moving slowly, and smiling at the pain it gave her, she put both +bare arms around his neck, and lifted her lips to his. + +It was the end of the prologue; the curtain trembled on the rise; the +story of Fate was beginning. But they had no eyes except for each other, +paid no heed save to each other. + +And, unobserved by them, the vast curtain rose in silence, beginning the +strange drama which neither time nor death, perhaps, has power to end. + +THE END + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Danger Mark, by Robert W. 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