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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Triumph Of Night, by Edith Wharton
+
+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 Triumph Of Night
+       1916
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2008 [EBook #24351]
+[Last updated: August 30, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner’s Sons
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+It was clear that the sleigh from Weymore had not come; and the
+shivering young traveller from Boston, who had counted on jumping into
+it when he left the train at Northridge Junction, found himself standing
+alone on the open platform, exposed to the full assault of night-fall
+and winter.
+
+The blast that swept him came off New Hampshire snow-fields and ice-hung
+forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable leagues of frozen
+silence, filling them with the same cold roar and sharpening its edge
+against the same bitter black-and-white landscape. Dark, searching
+and sword-like, it alternately muffled and harried its victim, like a
+bull-fighter now whirling his cloak and now planting his darts. This
+analogy brought home to the young man the fact that he himself had
+no cloak, and that the overcoat in which he had faced the relatively
+temperate air of Boston seemed no thicker than a sheet of paper on the
+bleak heights of Northridge. George Faxon said to himself that the place
+was uncommonly well-named. It clung to an exposed ledge over the valley
+from which the train had lifted him, and the wind combed it with teeth
+of steel that he seemed actually to hear scraping against the wooden
+sides of the station. Other building there was none: the village lay far
+down the road, and thither--since the Weymore sleigh had not come--Faxon
+saw himself under the necessity of plodding through several feet of
+snow.
+
+He understood well enough what had happened: his hostess had forgotten
+that he was coming. Young as Faxon was, this sad lucidity of soul had
+been acquired as the result of long experience, and he knew that the
+visitors who can least afford to hire a carriage are almost always those
+whom their hosts forget to send for. Yet to say that Mrs. Culme had
+forgotten him was too crude a way of putting it Similar incidents led
+him to think that she had probably told her maid to tell the butler to
+telephone the coachman to tell one of the grooms (if no one else needed
+him) to drive over to Northridge to fetch the new secretary; but on
+a night like this, what groom who respected his rights would fail to
+forget the order?
+
+Faxon’s obvious course was to struggle through the drifts to the
+village, and there rout out a sleigh to convey him to Weymore; but what
+if, on his arrival at Mrs. Culme’s, no one remembered to ask him
+what this devotion to duty had cost? That, again, was one of the
+contingencies he had expensively learned to look out for, and the
+perspicacity so acquired told him it would be cheaper to spend the night
+at the Northridge inn, and advise Mrs. Culme of his presence there by
+telephone. He had reached this decision, and was about to entrust his
+luggage to a vague man with a lantern, when his hopes were raised by the
+sound of bells.
+
+Two sleighs were just dashing up to the station, and from the foremost
+there sprang a young man muffled in furs.
+
+“Weymore?--No, these are not the Weymore sleighs.”
+
+The voice was that of the youth who had jumped to the platform--a voice
+so agreeable that, in spite of the words, it fell consolingly on Faxon’s
+ears. At the same moment the wandering station-lantern, casting a
+transient light on the speaker, showed his features to be in the
+pleasantest harmony with his voice. He was very fair and very
+young--hardly in the twenties, Faxon thought--but his face, though full
+of a morning freshness, was a trifle too thin and fine-drawn, as though
+a vivid spirit contended in him with a strain of physical weakness.
+Faxon was perhaps the quicker to notice such delicacies of balance
+because his own temperament hung on lightly quivering nerves, which yet,
+as he believed, would never quite swing him beyond a normal sensibility.
+
+“You expected a sleigh from Weymore?” the newcomer continued, standing
+beside Faxon like a slender column of fur.
+
+Mrs. Culme’s secretary explained his difficulty, and the other brushed
+it aside with a contemptuous “Oh, _Mrs. Culme!_” that carried both
+speakers a long way toward reciprocal understanding.
+
+“But then you must be--” The youth broke off with a smile of
+interrogation.
+
+“The new secretary? Yes. But apparently there are no notes to be
+answered this evening.” Faxon’s laugh deepened the sense of solidarity
+which had so promptly established itself between the two.
+
+His friend laughed also. “Mrs. Culme,” he explained, “was lunching at my
+uncle’s to-day, and she said you were due this evening. But seven hours
+is a long time for Mrs. Culme to remember anything.”
+
+“Well,” said Faxon philosophically, “I suppose that’s one of the reasons
+why she needs a secretary. And I’ve always the inn at Northridge,” he
+concluded.
+
+“Oh, but you haven’t, though! It burned down last week.”
+
+“The deuce it did!” said Faxon; but the humour of the situation struck
+him before its inconvenience. His life, for years past, had been mainly
+a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing
+practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a
+small tribute of amusement.
+
+“Oh, well, there’s sure to be somebody in the place who can put me up.”
+
+“No one _you_ could put up with. Besides, Northridge is three miles off,
+and our place--in the opposite direction--is a little nearer.”
+ Through the darkness, Faxon saw his friend sketch a gesture of
+self-introduction. “My name’s Frank Rainer, and I’m staying with my
+uncle at Overdale. I’ve driven over to meet two friends of his, who are
+due in a few minutes from New York. If you don’t mind waiting till they
+arrive I’m sure Overdale can do you better than Northridge. We’re only
+down from town for a few days, but the house is always ready for a lot
+of people.”
+
+“But your uncle--?” Faxon could only object, with the odd sense, through
+his embarrassment, that it would be magically dispelled by his invisible
+friend’s next words.
+
+“Oh, my uncle--you’ll see! I answer for _him!_ I daresay you’ve heard of
+him--John Lavington?”
+
+John Lavington! There was a certain irony in asking if one had heard of
+John Lavington! Even from a post of observation as obscure as that of
+Mrs. Culme’s secretary the rumour of John Lavington’s money, of his
+pictures, his politics, his charities and his hospitality, was as
+difficult to escape as the roar of a cataract in a mountain solitude.
+It might almost have been said that the one place in which one would
+not have expected to come upon him was in just such a solitude as
+now surrounded the speakers--at least in this deepest hour of its
+desertedness. But it was just like Lavington’s brilliant ubiquity to put
+one in the wrong even there.
+
+“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of your uncle.”
+
+“Then you _will_ come, won’t you? We’ve only five minutes to wait.”
+ young Rainer urged, in the tone that dispels scruples by ignoring them;
+and Faxon found himself accepting the invitation as simply as it was
+offered.
+
+A delay in the arrival of the New York train lengthened their five
+minutes to fifteen; and as they paced the icy platform Faxon began to
+see why it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to accede to
+his new acquaintance’s suggestion. It was because Frank Rainer was
+one of the privileged beings who simplify human intercourse by the
+atmosphere of confidence and good humour they diffuse. He produced this
+effect, Faxon noted, by the exercise of no gift but his youth, and of no
+art but his sincerity; and these qualities were revealed in a smile of
+such sweetness that Faxon felt, as never before, what Nature can achieve
+when she deigns to match the face with the mind.
+
+He learned that the young man was the ward, and the only nephew, of John
+Lavington, with whom he had made his home since the death of his mother,
+the great man’s sister. Mr. Lavington, Rainer said, had been “a regular
+brick” to him--“But then he is to every one, you know”--and the young
+fellow’s situation seemed in fact to be perfectly in keeping with his
+person. Apparently the only shade that had ever rested on him was cast
+by the physical weakness which Faxon had already detected. Young Rainer
+had been threatened with tuberculosis, and the disease was so far
+advanced that, according to the highest authorities, banishment to
+Arizona or New Mexico was inevitable. “But luckily my uncle didn’t pack
+me off, as most people would have done, without getting another opinion.
+Whose? Oh, an awfully clever chap, a young doctor with a lot of new
+ideas, who simply laughed at my being sent away, and said I’d do
+perfectly well in New York if I didn’t dine out too much, and if I
+dashed off occasionally to Northridge for a little fresh air. So it’s
+really my uncle’s doing that I’m not in exile--and I feel no end better
+since the new chap told me I needn’t bother.” Young Rainer went on to
+confess that he was extremely fond of dining out, dancing and similar
+distractions; and Faxon, listening to him, was inclined to think that
+the physician who had refused to cut him off altogether from these
+pleasures was probably a better psychologist than his seniors.
+
+“All the same you ought to be careful, you know.” The sense of
+elder-brotherly concern that forced the words from Faxon made him, as he
+spoke, slip his arm through Frank Rainer ‘s.
+
+The latter met the movement with a responsive pressure. “Oh, I _am_:
+awfully, awfully. And then my uncle has such an eye on me!”
+
+“But if your uncle has such an eye on you, what does he say to your
+swallowing knives out here in this Siberian wild?”
+
+Rainer raised his fur collar with a careless gesture. “It’s not that
+that does it--the cold’s good for me.”
+
+“And it’s not the dinners and dances? What is it, then?” Faxon
+good-humouredly insisted; to which his companion answered with a laugh:
+“Well, my uncle says it’s being bored; and I rather think he’s right!”
+
+His laugh ended in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that
+made Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter of
+the fireless waiting-room.
+
+Young Rainer had dropped down on the bench against the wall and pulled
+off one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief. He tossed
+aside his cap and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which was
+intensely white, and beaded with moisture, though his face retained
+a healthy glow. But Faxon’s gaze remained fastened to the hand he had
+uncovered: it was so long, so colourless, so wasted, so much older than
+the brow he passed it over.
+
+“It’s queer--a healthy face but dying hands,” the secretary mused: he
+somehow wished young Rainer had kept on his glove.
+
+The whistle of the express drew the young men to their feet, and the
+next moment two heavily-furred gentlemen had descended to the platform
+and were breasting the rigour of the night. Frank Rainer introduced them
+as Mr. Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was
+being lifted into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving
+lantern-gleam, to be an elderly greyheaded pair, of the average
+prosperous business cut.
+
+They saluted their host’s nephew with friendly familiarity, and Mr.
+Grisben, who seemed the spokesman of the two, ended his greeting with a
+genial--“and many many more of them, dear boy!” which suggested to Faxon
+that their arrival coincided with an anniversary. But he could not press
+the enquiry, for the seat allotted him was at the coachman’s side, while
+Frank Rainer joined his uncle’s guests inside the sleigh.
+
+A swift flight (behind such horses as one could be sure of John
+Lavington’s having) brought them to tall gateposts, an illuminated
+lodge, and an avenue on which the snow had been levelled to the
+smoothness of marble. At the end of the avenue the long house loomed up,
+its principal bulk dark, but one wing sending out a ray of welcome; and
+the next moment Faxon was receiving a violent impression of warmth and
+light, of hot-house plants, hurrying servants, a vast spectacular oak
+hall like a stage-setting, and, in its unreal middle distance, a small
+figure, correctly dressed, conventionally featured, and utterly unlike
+his rather florid conception of the great John Lavington.
+
+The surprise of the contrast remained with him through his hurried
+dressing in the large luxurious bedroom to which he had been shown.
+“I don’t see where he comes in,” was the only way he could put it, so
+difficult was it to fit the exuberance of Lavington’s public personality
+into his host’s contracted frame and manner. Mr. Laving ton, to whom
+Faxon’s case had been rapidly explained by young Rainer, had welcomed
+him with a sort of dry and stilted cordiality that exactly matched
+his narrow face, his stiff hand, and the whiff of scent on his evening
+handkerchief. “Make yourself at home--at home!” he had repeated, in a
+tone that suggested, on his own part, a complete inability to perform
+the feat he urged on his visitor. “Any friend of Frank’s... delighted...
+make yourself thoroughly at home!”
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+In spite of the balmy temperature and complicated conveniences of
+Faxon’s bedroom, the injunction was not easy to obey. It was wonderful
+luck to have found a night’s shelter under the opulent roof of Overdale,
+and he tasted the physical satisfaction to the full. But the place,
+for all its ingenuities of comfort, was oddly cold and unwelcoming.
+He couldn’t have said why, and could only suppose that Mr. Lavington’s
+intense personality--intensely negative, but intense all the same--must,
+in some occult way, have penetrated every corner of his dwelling.
+Perhaps, though, it was merely that Faxon himself was tired and hungry,
+more deeply chilled than he had known till he came in from the cold,
+and unutterably sick of all strange houses, and of the prospect of
+perpetually treading other people’s stairs.
+
+“I hope you’re not famished?” Rainer’s slim figure was in the doorway.
+“My uncle has a little business to attend to with Mr. Grisben, and we
+don’t dine for half an hour. Shall I fetch you, or can you find your way
+down? Come straight to the dining-room--the second door on the left of
+the long gallery.”
+
+He disappeared, leaving a ray of warmth behind him, and Faxon, relieved,
+lit a cigarette and sat down by the fire.
+
+Looking about with less haste, he was struck by a detail that had
+escaped him. The room was full of flowers--a mere “bachelor’s room,” in
+the wing of a house opened only for a few days, in the dead middle of
+a New Hampshire winter! Flowers were everywhere, not in senseless
+profusion, but placed with the same conscious art that he had remarked
+in the grouping of the blossoming shrubs in the hall. A vase of arums
+stood on the writing-table, a cluster of strange-hued carnations on
+the stand at his elbow, and from bowls of glass and porcelain clumps of
+freesia-bulbs diffused their melting fragrance. The fact implied acres
+of glass--but that was the least interesting part of it. The flowers
+themselves, their quality, selection and arrangement, attested on
+some one’s part--and on whose but John Lavington’s?--a solicitous and
+sensitive passion for that particular form of beauty. Well, it simply
+made the man, as he had appeared to Faxon, all the harder to understand!
+
+The half-hour elapsed, and Faxon, rejoicing at the prospect of food, set
+out to make his way to the dining-room. He had not noticed the direction
+he had followed in going to his room, and was puzzled, when he left it,
+to find that two staircases, of apparently equal importance, invited
+him. He chose the one to his right, and reached, at its foot, a long
+gallery such as Rainer had described. The gallery was empty, the doors
+down its length were closed; but Rainer had said: “The second to the
+left,” and Faxon, after pausing for some chance enlightenment which did
+not come, laid his hand on the second knob to the left.
+
+The room he entered was square, with dusky picture-hung walls. In its
+centre, about a table lit by veiled lamps, he fancied Mr. Lavington and
+his guests to be already seated at dinner; then he perceived that the
+table was covered not with viands but with papers, and that he had
+blundered into what seemed to be his host’s study. As he paused Frank
+Rainer looked up.
+
+“Oh, here’s Mr. Faxon. Why not ask him--?”
+
+Mr. Lavington, from the end of the table, reflected his nephew’s smile
+in a glance of impartial benevolence.
+
+“Certainly. Come in, Mr. Faxon. If you won’t think it a liberty--”
+
+Mr. Grisben, who sat opposite his host, turned his head toward the door.
+“Of course Mr. Faxon’s an American citizen?”
+
+Frank Rainer laughed. “That’s all right!... Oh, no, not one of your
+pin-pointed pens, Uncle Jack! Haven’t you got a quill somewhere?”
+
+Mr. Balch, who spoke slowly and as if reluctantly, in a muffled voice of
+which there seemed to be very little left, raised his hand to say: “One
+moment: you acknowledge this to be--?”
+
+“My last will and testament?” Rainer’s laugh redoubled. “Well, I won’t
+answer for the ‘last.’ It’s the first, anyway.”
+
+“It’s a mere formula,” Mr. Balch explained.
+
+“Well, here goes.” Rainer dipped his quill in the inkstand his uncle
+had pushed in his direction, and dashed a gallant signature across the
+document.
+
+Faxon, understanding what was expected of him, and conjecturing that the
+young man was signing his will on the attainment of his majority, had
+placed himself behind Mr. Grisben, and stood awaiting his turn to affix
+his name to the instrument. Rainer, having signed, was about to push the
+paper across the table to Mr. Balch; but the latter, again raising his
+hand, said in his sad imprisoned voice: “The seal--?”
+
+“Oh, does there have to be a seal?”
+
+Faxon, looking over Mr. Grisben at John Lavington, saw a faint frown
+between his impassive eyes. “Really, Frank!” He seemed, Faxon thought,
+slightly irritated by his nephew’s frivolity.
+
+“Who’s got a seal?” Frank Rainer continued, glancing about the table.
+“There doesn’t seem to be one here.”
+
+Mr. Grisben interposed. “A wafer will do. Lavington, you have a wafer?”
+
+Mr. Lavington had recovered his serenity. “There must be some in one
+of the drawers. But I’m ashamed to say I don’t know where my secretary
+keeps these things. He ought to have seen to it that a wafer was sent
+with the document.”
+
+“Oh, hang it--” Frank Rainer pushed the paper aside: “It’s the hand of
+God--and I’m as hungry as a wolf. Let’s dine first, Uncle Jack.”
+
+“I think I’ve a seal upstairs,” said Faxon.
+
+Mr. Lavington sent him a barely perceptible smile. “So sorry to give you
+the trouble--”
+
+“Oh, I say, don’t send him after it now. Let’s wait till after dinner!”
+
+Mr. Lavington continued to smile on _his_ guest, and the latter, as
+if under the faint coercion of the smile, turned from the room and
+ran upstairs. Having taken the seal from his writing-case he came down
+again, and once more opened the door of the study. No one was speaking
+when he entered--they were evidently awaiting his return with the mute
+impatience of hunger, and he put the seal in Rainer’s reach, and stood
+watching while Mr. Grisben struck a match and held it to one of the
+candles flanking the inkstand. As the wax descended on the paper Faxon
+remarked again the strange emaciation, the premature physical weariness,
+of the hand that held it: he wondered if Mr. Lavington had ever noticed
+his nephew’s hand, and if it were not poignantly visible to him now.
+
+With this thought in his mind, Faxon raised his eyes to look at
+Mr. Lavington. The great man’s gaze rested on Frank Rainer with an
+expression of untroubled benevolence; and at the same instant Faxon’s
+attention was attracted by the presence in the room of another person,
+who must have joined the group while he was upstairs searching for the
+seal. The new-comer was a man of about Mr. Lavington’s age and figure,
+who stood just behind his chair, and who, at the moment when Faxon
+first saw him, was gazing at young Rainer with an equal intensity of
+attention. The likeness between the two men--perhaps increased by the
+fact that the hooded lamps on the table left the figure behind the
+chair in shadow--struck Faxon the more because of the contrast in their
+expression. John Lavington, during his nephew’s clumsy attempt to
+drop the wax and apply the seal, continued to fasten on him a look
+of half-amused affection; while the man behind the chair, so oddly
+reduplicating the lines of his features and figure, turned on the boy a
+face of pale hostility.
+
+The impression was so startling that Faxon forgot what was going on
+about him. He was just dimly aware of young Rainer’s exclaiming; “Your
+turn, Mr. Grisben!” of Mr. Grisben’s protesting: “No--no; Mr. Faxon
+first,” and of the pen’s being thereupon transferred to his own hand.
+He received it with a deadly sense of being unable to move, or even to
+understand what was expected of him, till he became conscious of Mr.
+Grisben’s paternally pointing out the precise spot on which he was to
+leave his autograph. The effort to fix his attention and steady his hand
+prolonged the process of signing, and when he stood up--a strange weight
+of fatigue on all his limbs--the figure behind Mr. Lavington’s chair was
+gone.
+
+Faxon felt an immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling that the man’s
+exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr.
+Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that
+the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any
+rate he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted.
+Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch inscribing his name
+at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington--his eyes no longer on his
+nephew--examining a strange white-winged orchid in the vase at his
+elbow. Every thing suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple
+again, and Faxon found himself responding with a smile to the affable
+gesture with which his host declared: “And now, Mr. Faxon, we’ll dine.”
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+“I wonder how I blundered into the wrong room just now; I thought you
+told me to take the second door to the left,” Faxon said to Frank Rainer
+as they followed the older men down the gallery.
+
+“So I did; but I probably forgot to tell you which staircase to take.
+Coming from your bedroom, I ought to have said the fourth door to the
+right. It’s a puzzling house, because my uncle keeps adding to it from
+year to year. He built this room last summer for his modern pictures.”
+
+Young Rainer, pausing to open another door, touched an electric button
+which sent a circle of light about the walls of a long room hung with
+canvases of the French impressionist school.
+
+Faxon advanced, attracted by a shimmering Monet, but Rainer laid a hand
+on his arm.
+
+“He bought that last week. But come along--I’ll show you all this after
+dinner. Or _he_ will, rather--he loves it.”
+
+“Does he really love things?”
+
+Rainer stared, clearly perplexed at the question. “Rather! Flowers and
+pictures especially! Haven’t you noticed the flowers? I suppose you
+think his manner’s cold; it seems so at first; but he’s really awfully
+keen about things.”
+
+Faxon looked quickly at the speaker. “Has your uncle a brother?”
+
+“Brother? No--never had. He and my mother were the only ones.”
+
+“Or any relation who--who looks like him? Who might be mistaken for
+him?”
+
+“Not that I ever heard of. Does he remind you of some one?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That’s queer. We’ll ask him if he’s got a double. Come on!”
+
+But another picture had arrested Faxon, and some minutes elapsed before
+he and his young host reached the dining-room. It was a large room,
+with the same conventionally handsome furniture and delicately grouped
+flowers; and Faxon’s first glance showed him that only three men
+were seated about the dining-table. The man who had stood behind Mr.
+Lavington’s chair was not present, and no seat awaited him.
+
+When the young men entered, Mr. Grisben was speaking, and his host, who
+faced the door, sat looking down at his untouched soup-plate and turning
+the spoon about in his small dry hand.
+
+“It’s pretty late to call them rumours--they were devilish close to
+facts when we left town this morning,” Mr. Grisben was saying, with an
+unexpected incisiveness of tone.
+
+Mr. Lavington laid down his spoon and smiled interrogatively. “Oh,
+facts--what _are_ facts? Just the way a thing happens to look at a given
+minute....”
+
+“You haven’t heard anything from town?” Mr. Grisben persisted.
+
+“Not a syllable. So you see.... Balch, a little more of that _petite
+marmite_. Mr. Faxon... between Frank and Mr. Grisben, please.”
+
+The dinner progressed through a series of complicated courses,
+ceremoniously dispensed by a prelatical butler attended by three
+tall footmen, and it was evident that Mr. Lavington took a certain
+satisfaction in the pageant. That, Faxon reflected, was probably
+the joint in his armour--that and the flowers. He had changed the
+subject--not abruptly but firmly--when the young men entered, but
+Faxon perceived that it still possessed the thoughts of the two elderly
+visitors, and Mr. Balch presently observed, in a voice that seemed to
+come from the last survivor down a mine-shaft: “If it _does_ come, it
+will be the biggest crash since ‘93.”
+
+Mr. Lavington looked bored but polite. “Wall Street can stand crashes
+better than it could then. It’s got a robuster constitution.”
+
+“Yes; but--”
+
+“Speaking of constitutions,” Mr. Grisben intervened: “Frank, are you
+taking care of yourself?”
+
+A flush rose to young Rainer’s cheeks.
+
+“Why, of course! Isn’t that what I’m here for?”
+
+“You’re here about three days in the month, aren’t you? And the rest of
+the time it’s crowded restaurants and hot ballrooms in town. I thought
+you were to be shipped off to New Mexico?”
+
+“Oh, I’ve got a new man who says that’s rot.”
+
+“Well, you don’t look as if your new man were right,” said Mr. Grisben
+bluntly.
+
+Faxon saw the lad’s colour fade, and the rings of shadow deepen under
+his gay eyes. At the same moment his uncle turned to him with a renewed
+intensity of attention. There was such solicitude in Mr. Lavington’s
+gaze that it seemed almost to fling a shield between his nephew and Mr.
+Grisben’s tactless scrutiny.
+
+“We think Frank’s a good deal better,” he began; “this new doctor--”
+
+The butler, coming up, bent to whisper a word in his ear, and the
+communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington’s expression. His
+face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as
+to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He
+half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid smile about the table.
+
+“Will you excuse me? The telephone. Peters, go on with the dinner.” With
+small precise steps he walked out of the door which one of the footmen
+had thrown open.
+
+A momentary silence fell on the group; then Mr. Grisben once more
+addressed himself to Rainer. “You ought to have gone, my boy; you ought
+to have gone.”
+
+The anxious look returned to the youth’s eyes. “My uncle doesn’t think
+so, really.”
+
+“You’re not a baby, to be always governed by your uncle’s opinion. You
+came of age to-day, didn’t you? Your uncle spoils you.... that’s what’s
+the matter....”
+
+The thrust evidently went home, for Rainer laughed and looked down with
+a slight accession of colour.
+
+“But the doctor--”
+
+“Use your common sense, Frank! You had to try twenty doctors to find one
+to tell you what you wanted to be told.”
+
+A look of apprehension overshadowed Rainer’, gaiety. “Oh, come--I
+say!... What would _you_ do?” he stammered.
+
+“Pack up and jump on the first train.” Mr. Grisben leaned forward and
+laid his hand kindly on the young man’s arm. “Look here: my nephew Jim
+Grisben is out there ranching on a big scale. He’ll take you in and be
+glad to have you. You say your new doctor thinks it won’t do you any
+good; but he doesn’t pretend to say it will do you harm, does he? Well,
+then--give it a trial. It’ll take you out of hot theatres and night
+restaurants, anyhow.... And all the rest of it.... Eh, Balch?”
+
+“Go!” said Mr. Balch hollowly. “Go _at once_,” he added, as if a closer
+look at the youth’s face had impressed on him the need of backing up his
+friend.
+
+Young Rainer had turned ashy-pale. He tried to stiffen his mouth into a
+smile. “Do I look as bad as all that?”
+
+Mr. Grisben was helping himself to terrapin. “You look like the day
+after an earthquake,” he said.
+
+The terrapin had encircled the table, and been deliberately enjoyed by
+Mr. Lavington’s three visitors (Rainer, Faxon noticed, left his plate
+untouched) before the door was thrown open to re-admit their host.
+Mr. Lavington advanced with an air of recovered composure. He seated
+himself, picked up his napkin and consulted the gold-monogrammed menu.
+“No, don’t bring back the filet.... Some terrapin; yes....” He looked
+affably about the table. “Sorry to have deserted you, but the storm has
+played the deuce with the wires, and I had to wait a long time before I
+could get a good connection. It must be blowing up for a blizzard.”
+
+“Uncle Jack,” young Rainer broke out, “Mr. Grisben’s been lecturing me.”
+
+Mr. Lavington was helping himself to terrapin. “Ah--what about?”
+
+“He thinks I ought to have given New Mexico a show.”
+
+“I want him to go straight out to my nephew at Santa Paz and stay there
+till his next birthday.” Mr. Lavington signed to the butler to hand the
+terrapin to Mr. Grisben, who, as he took a second helping, addressed
+himself again to Rainer. “Jim’s in New York now, and going back the day
+after tomorrow in Olyphant’s private car. I’ll ask Olyphant to squeeze
+you in if you’ll go. And when you’ve been out there a week or two, in
+the saddle all day and sleeping nine hours a night, I suspect you won’t
+think much of the doctor who prescribed New York.”
+
+Faxon spoke up, he knew not why. “I was out there once: it’s a splendid
+life. I saw a fellow--oh, a really _bad_ case--who’d been simply made
+over by it.”
+
+“It _does_ sound jolly,” Rainer laughed, a sudden eagerness in his tone.
+
+His uncle looked at him gently. “Perhaps Grisben’s right. It’s an
+opportunity--”
+
+Faxon glanced up with a start: the figure dimly perceived in the study
+was now more visibly and tangibly planted behind Mr. Lavington’s chair.
+
+“That’s right, Frank: you see your uncle approves. And the trip out
+there with Olyphant isn’t a thing to be missed. So drop a few dozen
+dinners and be at the Grand Central the day after tomorrow at five.”
+
+Mr. Grisben’s pleasant grey eye sought corroboration of his host, and
+Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him as he
+turned his glance on Mr. Lavington. One could not look at Lavington
+without seeing the presence at his back, and it was clear that, the next
+minute, some change in Mr. Grisben’s expression must give his watcher a
+clue.
+
+But Mr. Grisben’s expression did not change: the gaze he fixed on his
+host remained unperturbed, and the clue he gave was the startling one of
+not seeming to see the other figure.
+
+Faxon’s first impulse was to look away, to look anywhere else, to resort
+again to the champagne glass the watchful butler had already brimmed;
+but some fatal attraction, at war in him with an overwhelming physical
+resistance, held his eyes upon the spot they feared.
+
+The figure was still standing, more distinctly, and therefore more
+resemblingly, at Mr. Lavington’s back; and while the latter continued
+to gaze affectionately at his nephew, his counterpart, as before, fixed
+young Rainer with eyes of deadly menace.
+
+Faxon, with what felt like an actual wrench of the muscles, dragged his
+own eyes from the sight to scan the other countenances about the table;
+but not one revealed the least consciousness of what he saw, and a sense
+of mortal isolation sank upon him.
+
+“It’s worth considering, certainly--” he heard Mr. Lavington continue;
+and as Rainer’s face lit up, the face behind his uncle’s chair seemed to
+gather into its look all the fierce weariness of old unsatisfied hates.
+That was the thing that, as the minutes laboured by, Faxon was becoming
+most conscious of. The watcher behind the chair was no longer merely
+malevolent: he had grown suddenly, unutterably tired. His hatred seemed
+to well up out of the very depths of balked effort and thwarted hopes,
+and the fact made him more pitiable, and yet more dire.
+
+Faxon’s look reverted to Mr. Lavington, as if to surprise in him a
+corresponding change. At first none was visible: his pinched smile was
+screwed to his blank face like a gas-light to a white-washed wall. Then
+the fixity of the smile became ominous: Faxon saw that its wearer was
+afraid to let it go. It was evident that Mr. Lavington was unutterably
+tired too, and the discovery sent a colder current through Faxon’s
+veins. Looking down at his untouched plate, he caught the soliciting
+twinkle of the champagne glass; but the sight of the wine turned him
+sick.
+
+“Well, we’ll go into the details presently,” he heard Mr. Lavington say,
+still on the question of his nephew’s future. “Let’s have a cigar first.
+No--not here, Peters.” He turned his smile on Faxon. “When we’ve had
+coffee I want to show you my pictures.”
+
+“Oh, by the way, Uncle Jack--Mr. Faxon wants to know if you’ve got a
+double?”
+
+“A double?” Mr. Lavington, still smiling, continued to address himself
+to his guest. “Not that I know of. Have you seen one, Mr. Faxon?”
+
+Faxon thought: “My God, if I look up now they’ll _both_ be looking at
+me!” To avoid raising his eyes he made as though to lift the glass to
+his lips; but his hand sank inert, and he looked up. Mr. Lavington’s
+glance was politely bent on him, but with a loosening of the strain
+about his heart he saw that the figure behind the chair still kept its
+gaze on Rainer.
+
+“Do you think you’ve seen my double, Mr. Faxon?”
+
+Would the other face turn if he said yes? Faxon felt a dryness in his
+throat. “No,” he answered.
+
+“Ah? It’s possible I’ve a dozen. I believe I’m extremely usual-looking,”
+ Mr. Lavington went on conversationally; and still the other face watched
+Rainer.
+
+“It was... a mistake... a confusion of memory....” Faxon heard himself
+stammer. Mr. Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr.
+Grisben suddenly leaned forward.
+
+“Lavington! What have we been thinking of? We haven’t drunk Frank’s
+health!”
+
+Mr. Lavington reseated himself. “My dear boy!... Peters, another
+bottle....” He turned to his nephew. “After such a sin of omission I
+don’t presume to propose the toast myself... but Frank knows.... Go
+ahead, Grisben!”
+
+The boy shone on his uncle. “No, no, Uncle Jack! Mr. Grisben won’t mind.
+Nobody but _you_--to-day!”
+
+The butler was replenishing the glasses. He filled Mr. Lavington’s last,
+and Mr. Lavington put out his small hand to raise it.... As he did so,
+Faxon looked away.
+
+“Well, then--All the good I’ve wished you in all the past years.... I
+put it into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy and happy and
+many... and _many_, dear boy!”
+
+Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses.
+Automatically, he reached for his. His eyes were still on the table, and
+he repeated to himself with a trembling vehemence: “I won’t look up! I
+won’t.... I won’t....”
+
+His fingers clasped the glass and raised it to the level of his lips.
+He saw the other hands making the same motion. He heard Mr. Grisben’s
+genial “Hear! Hear!” and Mr. Batch’s hollow echo. He said to himself,
+as the rim of the glass touched his lips: “I won’t look up! I swear I
+won’t!--” and he looked.
+
+The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold
+it there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval before he
+could trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to the table. It was
+this merciful preoccupation which saved him, kept him from crying out,
+from losing his hold, from slipping down into the bottomless blackness
+that gaped for him. As long as the problem of the glass engaged him he
+felt able to keep his seat, manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into
+the group; but as the glass touched the table his last link with safety
+snapped. He stood up and dashed out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to turn
+back and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out something
+about a touch of dizziness, and joining them presently; and the boy
+nodded sympathetically and drew back.
+
+At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. “I should like to
+telephone to Weymore,” he said with dry lips.
+
+“Sorry, sir; wires all down. We’ve been trying the last hour to get New
+York again for Mr. Lavington.”
+
+Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The
+lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books; in the ashes a log still
+glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face. The room was
+profoundly silent, the whole house was still: nothing about him gave a
+hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in the room he had flown
+from, and with the covering of his eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed
+to fall on him. But they fell for a moment only; then his lids opened
+again to the monstrous vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a
+part of him forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain.
+But why into his--just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what he
+had seen? What business was it of _his_, in God’s name? Any one of the
+others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated
+it; but _he_, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom
+none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal
+what he knew--_he_ alone had been singled out as the victim of this
+dreadful initiation!
+
+Suddenly he sat up, listening: he had heard a step on the stairs. Some
+one, no doubt, was coming to see how he was--to urge him, if he felt
+better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he opened his
+door; yes, it was young Rainer’s step. Faxon looked down the passage,
+remembered the other stairway and darted to it. All he wanted was to get
+out of the house. Not another instant would he breathe its abominable
+air! What business was it of _his_, in God’s name?
+
+He reached the opposite end of the lower gallery, and beyond it saw
+the hall by which he had entered. It was empty, and on a long table he
+recognized his coat and cap. He got into his coat, unbolted the door,
+and plunged into the purifying night.
+
+The darkness was deep, and the cold so intense that for an instant
+it stopped his breathing. Then he perceived that only a thin snow was
+falling, and resolutely he set his face for flight. The trees along the
+avenue marked his way as he hastened with long strides over the beaten
+snow. Gradually, while he walked, the tumult in his brain subsided. The
+impulse to fly still drove him forward, but he began feel that he was
+flying from a terror of his own creating, and that the most urgent
+reason for escape was the need of hiding his state, of shunning other
+eyes till he should regain his balance.
+
+He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on a
+discouraging situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had turned
+to exasperation when he found that the Weymore sleigh was not awaiting
+him. It was absurd, of course; but, though he had joked with Rainer over
+Mrs. Culme’s forgetfulness, to confess it had cost a pang. That was what
+his rootless life had brought him to: for lack of a personal stake in
+things his sensibility was at the mercy of such trifles.... Yes; that,
+and the cold and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of
+starved aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over
+which, once or twice before, his terrified brain had hung.
+
+Why else, in the name of any imaginable logic, human or devilish,
+should he, a stranger, be singled out for this experience? What could
+it mean to him, how was he related to it, what bearing had it on his
+case?... Unless, indeed, it was just because he was a stranger--a
+stranger everywhere--because he had no personal life, no warm screen of
+private egotisms to shield him from exposure, that he had developed this
+abnormal sensitiveness to the vicissitudes of others. The thought pulled
+him up with a shudder. No! Such a fate was too abominable; all that
+was strong and sound in him rejected it. A thousand times better regard
+himself as ill, disorganized, deluded, than as the predestined victim of
+such warnings!
+
+He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge. The wind had
+risen and was sweeping the snow into his race. The cold had him in its
+grasp again, and he stood uncertain. Should he put his sanity to the
+test and go back? He turned and looked down the dark drive to the house.
+A single ray shone through the trees, evoking a picture of the lights,
+the flowers, the faces grouped about that fatal room. He turned and
+plunged out into the road....
+
+He remembered that, about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had pointed
+out the road to Northridge; and he began to walk in that direction.
+Once in the road he had the gale in his face, and the wet snow on his
+moustache and eye-lashes instantly hardened to ice. The same ice seemed
+to be driving a million blades into his throat and lungs, but he pushed
+on, the vision of the warm room pursuing him.
+
+The snow in the road was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts and
+sank into drifts, and the wind drove against him like a granite cliff.
+Now and then he stopped, gasping, as if an invisible hand had tightened
+an iron band about his body; then he started again, stiffening himself
+against the stealthy penetration of the cold. The snow continued to
+descend out of a pall of inscrutable darkness, and once or twice he
+paused, fearing he had missed the road to Northridge; but, seeing no
+sign of a turn, he ploughed on.
+
+At last, feeling sure that he had walked for more than a mile, he halted
+and looked back. The act of turning brought immediate relief, first
+because it put his back to the wind, and then because, far down the
+road, it showed him the gleam of a lantern. A sleigh was coming--a
+sleigh that might perhaps give him a lift to the village! Fortified by
+the hope, he began to walk back toward the light. It came forward very
+slowly, with unaccountable sigsags and waverings; and even when he was
+within a few yards of it he could catch no sound of sleigh-bells. Then
+it paused and became stationary by the roadside, as though carried by
+a pedestrian who had stopped, exhausted by the cold. The thought made
+Faxon hasten on, and a moment later he was stooping over a motionless
+figure huddled against the snow-bank. The lantern had dropped from its
+bearer’s hand, and Faxon, fearfully raising it, threw its light into the
+face of Frank Rainer.
+
+“Rainer! What on earth are you doing here?”
+
+The boy smiled back through his pallour. “What are _you_, I’d like to
+know?” he retorted; and, scrambling to his feet with a clutch oh Faxon’s
+arm, he added gaily: “Well, I’ve run you down!”
+
+Faxon stood confounded, his heart sinking. The lad’s face was grey.
+
+“What madness--” he began.
+
+“Yes, it _is_. What on earth did you do it for?”
+
+“I? Do what?... Why I.... I was just taking a walk.... I often walk at
+night....”
+
+Frank Rainer burst into a laugh. “On such nights? Then you hadn’t
+bolted?”
+
+“Bolted?”
+
+“Because I’d done something to offend you? My uncle thought you had.”
+
+Faxon grasped his arm. “Did your uncle send you after me?”
+
+“Well, he gave me an awful rowing for not going up to your room with
+you when you said you were ill. And when we found you’d gone we were
+frightened--and he was awfully upset--so I said I’d catch you.... You’re
+_not_ ill, are you?”
+
+“Ill? No. Never better.” Faxon picked up the lantern. “Come; let’s go
+back. It was awfully hot in that dining-room.”
+
+“Yes; I hoped it was only that.”
+
+They trudged on in silence for a few minutes; then Faxon questioned:
+“You’re not too done up?”
+
+“Oh, no. It’s a lot easier with the wind behind us.”
+
+“All right. Don’t talk any more.”
+
+They pushed ahead, walking, in spite of the light that guided them,
+more slowly than Faxon had walked alone into the gale. The fact of his
+companion’s stumbling against a drift gave Faxon a pretext for saying:
+“Take hold of my arm,” and Rainer obeying, gasped out: “I’m blown!”
+
+“So am I. Who wouldn’t be?”
+
+“What a dance you led me! If it hadn’t been for one of the servants
+happening to see you--”
+
+“Yes; all right. And now, won’t you kindly shut up?”
+
+Rainer laughed and hung on him. “Oh, the cold doesn’t hurt me....”
+
+For the first few minutes after Rainer had overtaken him, anxiety
+for the lad had been Faxon’s only thought. But as each labouring step
+carried them nearer to the spot he had been fleeing, the reasons for his
+flight grew more ominous and more insistent. No, he was not ill, he was
+not distraught and deluded--he was the instrument singled out to warn
+and save; and here he was, irresistibly driven, dragging the victim back
+to his doom!
+
+The intensity of the conviction had almost checked his steps. But what
+could he do or say? At all costs he must get Rainer out of the cold,
+into the house and into his bed. After that he would act.
+
+The snow-fall was thickening, and as they reached a stretch of the road
+between open fields the wind took them at an angle, lashing their faces
+with barbed thongs. Rainer stopped to take breath, and Faxon felt the
+heavier pressure of his arm.
+
+“When we get to the lodge, can’t we telephone to the stable for a
+sleigh?”
+
+“If they’re not all asleep at the lodge.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll manage. Don’t talk!” Faxon ordered; and they plodded on....
+
+At length the lantern ray showed ruts that curved away from the road
+under tree-darkness.
+
+Faxon’s spirits rose. “There’s the gate! We’ll be there in five
+minutes.”
+
+As he spoke he caught, above the boundary hedge, the gleam of a light at
+the farther end of the dark avenue. It was the same light that had shone
+on the scene of which every detail was burnt into his brain; and he felt
+again its overpowering reality. No--he couldn’t let the boy go back!
+
+They were at the lodge at last, and Faxon was hammering on the door. He
+said to himself: “I’ll get him inside first, and make them give him a
+hot drink. Then I’ll see--I’ll find an argument....”
+
+There was no answer to his knocking, and after an interval Rainer said:
+“Look here--we’d better go on.”
+
+“No!”
+
+“I can, perfectly--”
+
+“You sha’n’t go to the house, I say!” Faxon redoubled his blows, and
+at length steps sounded on the stairs. Rainer was leaning against the
+lintel, and as the door opened the light from the hall flashed on his
+pale face and fixed eyes. Faxon caught him by the arm and drew him in.
+
+“It _was_ cold out there.” he sighed; and then, abruptly, as if
+invisible shears at a single stroke had cut every muscle in his body, he
+swerved, drooped on Faxon’s arm, and seemed to sink into nothing at his
+feet.
+
+The lodge-keeper and Faxon bent over him, and somehow, between them,
+lifted him into the kitchen and laid him on a sofa by the stove.
+
+The lodge-keeper, stammering: “I’ll ring up the house,” dashed out of
+the room. But Faxon heard the words without heeding them: omens mattered
+nothing now, beside this woe fulfilled. He knelt down to undo the fur
+collar about Rainer’s throat, and as he did so he felt a warm moisture
+on his hands. He held them up, and they were red....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The palms threaded their endless line along the yellow river. The little
+steamer lay at the wharf, and George Faxon, sitting in the verandah of
+the wooden hotel, idly watched the coolies carrying the freight across
+the gang-plank.
+
+He had been looking at such scenes for two months. Nearly five had
+elapsed since he had descended from the train at Northridge and strained
+his eyes for the sleigh that was to take him to Weymore: Weymore, which
+he was never to behold!... Part of the interval--the first part--was
+still a great grey blur. Even now he could not be quite sure how he
+had got back to Boston, reached the house of a cousin, and been thence
+transferred to a quiet room looking out on snow under bare trees. He
+looked out a long time at the same scene, and finally one day a man
+he had known at Harvard came to see him and invited him to go out on a
+business trip to the Malay Peninsula.
+
+“You’ve had a bad shake-up, and it’ll do you no end of good to get away
+from things.”
+
+When the doctor came the next day it turned out that he knew of the plan
+and approved it. “You ought to be quiet for a year. Just loaf and look
+at the landscape,” he advised.
+
+Faxon felt the first faint stirrings of curiosity.
+
+“What’s been the matter with me, anyway?”
+
+“Well, over-work, I suppose. You must have been bottling up for a bad
+breakdown before you started for New Hampshire last December. And the
+shock of that poor boy’s death did the rest.”
+
+Ah, yes--Rainer had died. He remembered....
+
+He started for the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life
+crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was patient
+and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first
+Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar
+things. He seldom looked at a newspaper and he never opened a letter
+without a contraction of the heart. It was not that he had any special
+cause for apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on
+everything. He had looked too deep down into the abyss.... But little
+by little health and energy returned to him, and with them the common
+promptings of curiosity. He was beginning to wonder how the world was
+going, and when, presently, the hotel-keeper told him there were no
+letters for him in the steamer’s mail-bag, he felt a distinct sense of
+disappointment. His friend had gone into the jungle on a long excursion,
+and he was lonely, unoccupied and wholesomely bored. He got up and
+strolled into the stuffy reading-room.
+
+There he found a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle, some
+copies of _Zion’s Herald_ and a pile of New York and London newspapers.
+
+He began to glance through the papers, and was disappointed to find that
+they were less recent than he had hoped. Evidently the last numbers had
+been carried off by luckier travellers. He continued to turn them over,
+picking out the American ones first. These, as it happened, were the
+oldest: they dated back to December and January. To Faxon, however, they
+had all the flavour of novelty, since they covered the precise period
+during which he had virtually ceased to exist. It had never before
+occurred to him to wonder what had happened in the world during that
+interval of obliteration; but now he felt a sudden desire to know.
+
+To prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically,
+and as he found and spread out the earliest number, the date at the top
+of the page entered into his consciousness like a key slipping into a
+lock. It was the seventeenth of December: the date of the day after his
+arrival at Northridge. He glanced at the first page and read in blazing
+characters: “Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company. Lavington’s name
+involved. Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall Street to Its
+Foundations.”
+
+He read on, and when he had finished the first paper he turned to the
+next. There was a gap of three days, but the Opal Cement “Investigation”
+ still held the centre of the stage. From its complex revelations of
+greed and ruin his eye wandered to the death notices, and he read:
+“Rainer. Suddenly, at Northridge, New Hampshire, Francis John, only son
+of the late....”
+
+His eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper and sat for a long time
+with his face in his hands. When he looked up again he noticed that his
+gesture had pushed the other papers from the table and scattered them at
+his feet. The uppermost lay spread out before him, and heavily his eyes
+began their search again. “John Lavington comes forward with plan for
+reconstructing Company. Offers to put in ten millions of his own--The
+proposal under consideration by the District Attorney.”
+
+Ten millions... ten millions of his own. But if John Lavington was
+ruined?... Faxon stood up with a cry. That was it, then--that was what
+the warning meant! And if he had not fled from it, dashed wildly away
+from it into the night, he might have broken the spell of iniquity, the
+powers of darkness might not have prevailed! He caught up the pile of
+newspapers and began to glance through each in turn for the head-line:
+“Wills Admitted to Probate.” In the last of all he found the paragraph
+he sought, and it stared up at him as if with Rainer’s dying eyes.
+
+That--_that_ was what he had done! The powers of pity had singled him
+out to warn and save, and he had closed his ears to their call, and
+washed his hands of it, and fled. Washed his hands of it! That was
+the word. It caught him back to the dreadful moment in the lodge when,
+raising himself up from Rainer’s side, he had looked at his hands and
+seen that they were red....
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Triumph Of Night, by Edith Wharton
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Triumph of Night, by Edith Wharton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Triumph Of Night, by Edith Wharton
+
+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 Triumph Of Night
+       1916
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2008 [EBook #24351]
+[Last updated: August 30, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Edith Wharton <br /><br /> Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner&rsquo;s Sons
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was clear that the sleigh from Weymore had not come; and the shivering
+      young traveller from Boston, who had counted on jumping into it when he
+      left the train at Northridge Junction, found himself standing alone on the
+      open platform, exposed to the full assault of night-fall and winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blast that swept him came off New Hampshire snow-fields and ice-hung
+      forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable leagues of frozen
+      silence, filling them with the same cold roar and sharpening its edge
+      against the same bitter black-and-white landscape. Dark, searching and
+      sword-like, it alternately muffled and harried its victim, like a
+      bull-fighter now whirling his cloak and now planting his darts. This
+      analogy brought home to the young man the fact that he himself had no
+      cloak, and that the overcoat in which he had faced the relatively
+      temperate air of Boston seemed no thicker than a sheet of paper on the
+      bleak heights of Northridge. George Faxon said to himself that the place
+      was uncommonly well-named. It clung to an exposed ledge over the valley
+      from which the train had lifted him, and the wind combed it with teeth of
+      steel that he seemed actually to hear scraping against the wooden sides of
+      the station. Other building there was none: the village lay far down the
+      road, and thither&mdash;since the Weymore sleigh had not come&mdash;Faxon
+      saw himself under the necessity of plodding through several feet of snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He understood well enough what had happened: his hostess had forgotten
+      that he was coming. Young as Faxon was, this sad lucidity of soul had been
+      acquired as the result of long experience, and he knew that the visitors
+      who can least afford to hire a carriage are almost always those whom their
+      hosts forget to send for. Yet to say that Mrs. Culme had forgotten him was
+      too crude a way of putting it Similar incidents led him to think that she
+      had probably told her maid to tell the butler to telephone the coachman to
+      tell one of the grooms (if no one else needed him) to drive over to
+      Northridge to fetch the new secretary; but on a night like this, what
+      groom who respected his rights would fail to forget the order?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon&rsquo;s obvious course was to struggle through the drifts to the village,
+      and there rout out a sleigh to convey him to Weymore; but what if, on his
+      arrival at Mrs. Culme&rsquo;s, no one remembered to ask him what this devotion
+      to duty had cost? That, again, was one of the contingencies he had
+      expensively learned to look out for, and the perspicacity so acquired told
+      him it would be cheaper to spend the night at the Northridge inn, and
+      advise Mrs. Culme of his presence there by telephone. He had reached this
+      decision, and was about to entrust his luggage to a vague man with a
+      lantern, when his hopes were raised by the sound of bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two sleighs were just dashing up to the station, and from the foremost
+      there sprang a young man muffled in furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weymore?&mdash;No, these are not the Weymore sleighs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was that of the youth who had jumped to the platform&mdash;a
+      voice so agreeable that, in spite of the words, it fell consolingly on
+      Faxon&rsquo;s ears. At the same moment the wandering station-lantern, casting a
+      transient light on the speaker, showed his features to be in the
+      pleasantest harmony with his voice. He was very fair and very young&mdash;hardly
+      in the twenties, Faxon thought&mdash;but his face, though full of a
+      morning freshness, was a trifle too thin and fine-drawn, as though a vivid
+      spirit contended in him with a strain of physical weakness. Faxon was
+      perhaps the quicker to notice such delicacies of balance because his own
+      temperament hung on lightly quivering nerves, which yet, as he believed,
+      would never quite swing him beyond a normal sensibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You expected a sleigh from Weymore?&rdquo; the newcomer continued, standing
+      beside Faxon like a slender column of fur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Culme&rsquo;s secretary explained his difficulty, and the other brushed it
+      aside with a contemptuous &ldquo;Oh, <i>Mrs. Culme!</i>&rdquo; that carried both
+      speakers a long way toward reciprocal understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then you must be&mdash;&rdquo; The youth broke off with a smile of
+      interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The new secretary? Yes. But apparently there are no notes to be answered
+      this evening.&rdquo; Faxon&rsquo;s laugh deepened the sense of solidarity which had so
+      promptly established itself between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend laughed also. &ldquo;Mrs. Culme,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;was lunching at my
+      uncle&rsquo;s to-day, and she said you were due this evening. But seven hours is
+      a long time for Mrs. Culme to remember anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Faxon philosophically, &ldquo;I suppose that&rsquo;s one of the reasons
+      why she needs a secretary. And I&rsquo;ve always the inn at Northridge,&rdquo; he
+      concluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but you haven&rsquo;t, though! It burned down last week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The deuce it did!&rdquo; said Faxon; but the humour of the situation struck him
+      before its inconvenience. His life, for years past, had been mainly a
+      succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing
+      practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small
+      tribute of amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, there&rsquo;s sure to be somebody in the place who can put me up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one <i>you</i> could put up with. Besides, Northridge is three miles
+      off, and our place&mdash;in the opposite direction&mdash;is a little
+      nearer.&rdquo; Through the darkness, Faxon saw his friend sketch a gesture of
+      self-introduction. &ldquo;My name&rsquo;s Frank Rainer, and I&rsquo;m staying with my uncle
+      at Overdale. I&rsquo;ve driven over to meet two friends of his, who are due in a
+      few minutes from New York. If you don&rsquo;t mind waiting till they arrive I&rsquo;m
+      sure Overdale can do you better than Northridge. We&rsquo;re only down from town
+      for a few days, but the house is always ready for a lot of people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your uncle&mdash;?&rdquo; Faxon could only object, with the odd sense,
+      through his embarrassment, that it would be magically dispelled by his
+      invisible friend&rsquo;s next words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my uncle&mdash;you&rsquo;ll see! I answer for <i>him!</i> I daresay you&rsquo;ve
+      heard of him&mdash;John Lavington?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Lavington! There was a certain irony in asking if one had heard of
+      John Lavington! Even from a post of observation as obscure as that of Mrs.
+      Culme&rsquo;s secretary the rumour of John Lavington&rsquo;s money, of his pictures,
+      his politics, his charities and his hospitality, was as difficult to
+      escape as the roar of a cataract in a mountain solitude. It might almost
+      have been said that the one place in which one would not have expected to
+      come upon him was in just such a solitude as now surrounded the speakers&mdash;at
+      least in this deepest hour of its desertedness. But it was just like
+      Lavington&rsquo;s brilliant ubiquity to put one in the wrong even there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I&rsquo;ve heard of your uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you <i>will</i> come, won&rsquo;t you? We&rsquo;ve only five minutes to wait.&rdquo;
+       young Rainer urged, in the tone that dispels scruples by ignoring them;
+      and Faxon found himself accepting the invitation as simply as it was
+      offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A delay in the arrival of the New York train lengthened their five minutes
+      to fifteen; and as they paced the icy platform Faxon began to see why it
+      had seemed the most natural thing in the world to accede to his new
+      acquaintance&rsquo;s suggestion. It was because Frank Rainer was one of the
+      privileged beings who simplify human intercourse by the atmosphere of
+      confidence and good humour they diffuse. He produced this effect, Faxon
+      noted, by the exercise of no gift but his youth, and of no art but his
+      sincerity; and these qualities were revealed in a smile of such sweetness
+      that Faxon felt, as never before, what Nature can achieve when she deigns
+      to match the face with the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He learned that the young man was the ward, and the only nephew, of John
+      Lavington, with whom he had made his home since the death of his mother,
+      the great man&rsquo;s sister. Mr. Lavington, Rainer said, had been &ldquo;a regular
+      brick&rdquo; to him&mdash;&ldquo;But then he is to every one, you know&rdquo;&mdash;and the
+      young fellow&rsquo;s situation seemed in fact to be perfectly in keeping with
+      his person. Apparently the only shade that had ever rested on him was cast
+      by the physical weakness which Faxon had already detected. Young Rainer
+      had been threatened with tuberculosis, and the disease was so far advanced
+      that, according to the highest authorities, banishment to Arizona or New
+      Mexico was inevitable. &ldquo;But luckily my uncle didn&rsquo;t pack me off, as most
+      people would have done, without getting another opinion. Whose? Oh, an
+      awfully clever chap, a young doctor with a lot of new ideas, who simply
+      laughed at my being sent away, and said I&rsquo;d do perfectly well in New York
+      if I didn&rsquo;t dine out too much, and if I dashed off occasionally to
+      Northridge for a little fresh air. So it&rsquo;s really my uncle&rsquo;s doing that
+      I&rsquo;m not in exile&mdash;and I feel no end better since the new chap told me
+      I needn&rsquo;t bother.&rdquo; Young Rainer went on to confess that he was extremely
+      fond of dining out, dancing and similar distractions; and Faxon, listening
+      to him, was inclined to think that the physician who had refused to cut
+      him off altogether from these pleasures was probably a better psychologist
+      than his seniors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same you ought to be careful, you know.&rdquo; The sense of
+      elder-brotherly concern that forced the words from Faxon made him, as he
+      spoke, slip his arm through Frank Rainer &lsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter met the movement with a responsive pressure. &ldquo;Oh, I <i>am</i>:
+      awfully, awfully. And then my uncle has such an eye on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if your uncle has such an eye on you, what does he say to your
+      swallowing knives out here in this Siberian wild?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rainer raised his fur collar with a careless gesture. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that that
+      does it&mdash;the cold&rsquo;s good for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s not the dinners and dances? What is it, then?&rdquo; Faxon
+      good-humouredly insisted; to which his companion answered with a laugh:
+      &ldquo;Well, my uncle says it&rsquo;s being bored; and I rather think he&rsquo;s right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His laugh ended in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that made
+      Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter of the
+      fireless waiting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Rainer had dropped down on the bench against the wall and pulled off
+      one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief. He tossed aside his cap
+      and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which was intensely white,
+      and beaded with moisture, though his face retained a healthy glow. But
+      Faxon&rsquo;s gaze remained fastened to the hand he had uncovered: it was so
+      long, so colourless, so wasted, so much older than the brow he passed it
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s queer&mdash;a healthy face but dying hands,&rdquo; the secretary mused: he
+      somehow wished young Rainer had kept on his glove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whistle of the express drew the young men to their feet, and the next
+      moment two heavily-furred gentlemen had descended to the platform and were
+      breasting the rigour of the night. Frank Rainer introduced them as Mr.
+      Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was being lifted
+      into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving lantern-gleam, to be
+      an elderly greyheaded pair, of the average prosperous business cut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They saluted their host&rsquo;s nephew with friendly familiarity, and Mr.
+      Grisben, who seemed the spokesman of the two, ended his greeting with a
+      genial&mdash;&ldquo;and many many more of them, dear boy!&rdquo; which suggested to
+      Faxon that their arrival coincided with an anniversary. But he could not
+      press the enquiry, for the seat allotted him was at the coachman&rsquo;s side,
+      while Frank Rainer joined his uncle&rsquo;s guests inside the sleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A swift flight (behind such horses as one could be sure of John
+      Lavington&rsquo;s having) brought them to tall gateposts, an illuminated lodge,
+      and an avenue on which the snow had been levelled to the smoothness of
+      marble. At the end of the avenue the long house loomed up, its principal
+      bulk dark, but one wing sending out a ray of welcome; and the next moment
+      Faxon was receiving a violent impression of warmth and light, of hot-house
+      plants, hurrying servants, a vast spectacular oak hall like a
+      stage-setting, and, in its unreal middle distance, a small figure,
+      correctly dressed, conventionally featured, and utterly unlike his rather
+      florid conception of the great John Lavington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surprise of the contrast remained with him through his hurried
+      dressing in the large luxurious bedroom to which he had been shown. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t see where he comes in,&rdquo; was the only way he could put it, so
+      difficult was it to fit the exuberance of Lavington&rsquo;s public personality
+      into his host&rsquo;s contracted frame and manner. Mr. Laving ton, to whom
+      Faxon&rsquo;s case had been rapidly explained by young Rainer, had welcomed him
+      with a sort of dry and stilted cordiality that exactly matched his narrow
+      face, his stiff hand, and the whiff of scent on his evening handkerchief.
+      &ldquo;Make yourself at home&mdash;at home!&rdquo; he had repeated, in a tone that
+      suggested, on his own part, a complete inability to perform the feat he
+      urged on his visitor. &ldquo;Any friend of Frank&rsquo;s... delighted... make yourself
+      thoroughly at home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the balmy temperature and complicated conveniences of Faxon&rsquo;s
+      bedroom, the injunction was not easy to obey. It was wonderful luck to
+      have found a night&rsquo;s shelter under the opulent roof of Overdale, and he
+      tasted the physical satisfaction to the full. But the place, for all its
+      ingenuities of comfort, was oddly cold and unwelcoming. He couldn&rsquo;t have
+      said why, and could only suppose that Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s intense personality&mdash;intensely
+      negative, but intense all the same&mdash;must, in some occult way, have
+      penetrated every corner of his dwelling. Perhaps, though, it was merely
+      that Faxon himself was tired and hungry, more deeply chilled than he had
+      known till he came in from the cold, and unutterably sick of all strange
+      houses, and of the prospect of perpetually treading other people&rsquo;s stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;re not famished?&rdquo; Rainer&rsquo;s slim figure was in the doorway. &ldquo;My
+      uncle has a little business to attend to with Mr. Grisben, and we don&rsquo;t
+      dine for half an hour. Shall I fetch you, or can you find your way down?
+      Come straight to the dining-room&mdash;the second door on the left of the
+      long gallery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He disappeared, leaving a ray of warmth behind him, and Faxon, relieved,
+      lit a cigarette and sat down by the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking about with less haste, he was struck by a detail that had escaped
+      him. The room was full of flowers&mdash;a mere &ldquo;bachelor&rsquo;s room,&rdquo; in the
+      wing of a house opened only for a few days, in the dead middle of a New
+      Hampshire winter! Flowers were everywhere, not in senseless profusion, but
+      placed with the same conscious art that he had remarked in the grouping of
+      the blossoming shrubs in the hall. A vase of arums stood on the
+      writing-table, a cluster of strange-hued carnations on the stand at his
+      elbow, and from bowls of glass and porcelain clumps of freesia-bulbs
+      diffused their melting fragrance. The fact implied acres of glass&mdash;but
+      that was the least interesting part of it. The flowers themselves, their
+      quality, selection and arrangement, attested on some one&rsquo;s part&mdash;and
+      on whose but John Lavington&rsquo;s?&mdash;a solicitous and sensitive passion
+      for that particular form of beauty. Well, it simply made the man, as he
+      had appeared to Faxon, all the harder to understand!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The half-hour elapsed, and Faxon, rejoicing at the prospect of food, set
+      out to make his way to the dining-room. He had not noticed the direction
+      he had followed in going to his room, and was puzzled, when he left it, to
+      find that two staircases, of apparently equal importance, invited him. He
+      chose the one to his right, and reached, at its foot, a long gallery such
+      as Rainer had described. The gallery was empty, the doors down its length
+      were closed; but Rainer had said: &ldquo;The second to the left,&rdquo; and Faxon,
+      after pausing for some chance enlightenment which did not come, laid his
+      hand on the second knob to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room he entered was square, with dusky picture-hung walls. In its
+      centre, about a table lit by veiled lamps, he fancied Mr. Lavington and
+      his guests to be already seated at dinner; then he perceived that the
+      table was covered not with viands but with papers, and that he had
+      blundered into what seemed to be his host&rsquo;s study. As he paused Frank
+      Rainer looked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, here&rsquo;s Mr. Faxon. Why not ask him&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington, from the end of the table, reflected his nephew&rsquo;s smile in
+      a glance of impartial benevolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. Come in, Mr. Faxon. If you won&rsquo;t think it a liberty&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Grisben, who sat opposite his host, turned his head toward the door.
+      &ldquo;Of course Mr. Faxon&rsquo;s an American citizen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank Rainer laughed. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right!... Oh, no, not one of your
+      pin-pointed pens, Uncle Jack! Haven&rsquo;t you got a quill somewhere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Balch, who spoke slowly and as if reluctantly, in a muffled voice of
+      which there seemed to be very little left, raised his hand to say: &ldquo;One
+      moment: you acknowledge this to be&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My last will and testament?&rdquo; Rainer&rsquo;s laugh redoubled. &ldquo;Well, I won&rsquo;t
+      answer for the &lsquo;last.&rsquo; It&rsquo;s the first, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a mere formula,&rdquo; Mr. Balch explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, here goes.&rdquo; Rainer dipped his quill in the inkstand his uncle had
+      pushed in his direction, and dashed a gallant signature across the
+      document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon, understanding what was expected of him, and conjecturing that the
+      young man was signing his will on the attainment of his majority, had
+      placed himself behind Mr. Grisben, and stood awaiting his turn to affix
+      his name to the instrument. Rainer, having signed, was about to push the
+      paper across the table to Mr. Balch; but the latter, again raising his
+      hand, said in his sad imprisoned voice: &ldquo;The seal&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, does there have to be a seal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon, looking over Mr. Grisben at John Lavington, saw a faint frown
+      between his impassive eyes. &ldquo;Really, Frank!&rdquo; He seemed, Faxon thought,
+      slightly irritated by his nephew&rsquo;s frivolity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s got a seal?&rdquo; Frank Rainer continued, glancing about the table.
+      &ldquo;There doesn&rsquo;t seem to be one here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Grisben interposed. &ldquo;A wafer will do. Lavington, you have a wafer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington had recovered his serenity. &ldquo;There must be some in one of
+      the drawers. But I&rsquo;m ashamed to say I don&rsquo;t know where my secretary keeps
+      these things. He ought to have seen to it that a wafer was sent with the
+      document.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang it&mdash;&rdquo; Frank Rainer pushed the paper aside: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the hand
+      of God&mdash;and I&rsquo;m as hungry as a wolf. Let&rsquo;s dine first, Uncle Jack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ve a seal upstairs,&rdquo; said Faxon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington sent him a barely perceptible smile. &ldquo;So sorry to give you
+      the trouble&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, don&rsquo;t send him after it now. Let&rsquo;s wait till after dinner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington continued to smile on <i>his</i> guest, and the latter, as
+      if under the faint coercion of the smile, turned from the room and ran
+      upstairs. Having taken the seal from his writing-case he came down again,
+      and once more opened the door of the study. No one was speaking when he
+      entered&mdash;they were evidently awaiting his return with the mute
+      impatience of hunger, and he put the seal in Rainer&rsquo;s reach, and stood
+      watching while Mr. Grisben struck a match and held it to one of the
+      candles flanking the inkstand. As the wax descended on the paper Faxon
+      remarked again the strange emaciation, the premature physical weariness,
+      of the hand that held it: he wondered if Mr. Lavington had ever noticed
+      his nephew&rsquo;s hand, and if it were not poignantly visible to him now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this thought in his mind, Faxon raised his eyes to look at Mr.
+      Lavington. The great man&rsquo;s gaze rested on Frank Rainer with an expression
+      of untroubled benevolence; and at the same instant Faxon&rsquo;s attention was
+      attracted by the presence in the room of another person, who must have
+      joined the group while he was upstairs searching for the seal. The
+      new-comer was a man of about Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s age and figure, who stood
+      just behind his chair, and who, at the moment when Faxon first saw him,
+      was gazing at young Rainer with an equal intensity of attention. The
+      likeness between the two men&mdash;perhaps increased by the fact that the
+      hooded lamps on the table left the figure behind the chair in shadow&mdash;struck
+      Faxon the more because of the contrast in their expression. John
+      Lavington, during his nephew&rsquo;s clumsy attempt to drop the wax and apply
+      the seal, continued to fasten on him a look of half-amused affection;
+      while the man behind the chair, so oddly reduplicating the lines of his
+      features and figure, turned on the boy a face of pale hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The impression was so startling that Faxon forgot what was going on about
+      him. He was just dimly aware of young Rainer&rsquo;s exclaiming; &ldquo;Your turn, Mr.
+      Grisben!&rdquo; of Mr. Grisben&rsquo;s protesting: &ldquo;No&mdash;no; Mr. Faxon first,&rdquo; and
+      of the pen&rsquo;s being thereupon transferred to his own hand. He received it
+      with a deadly sense of being unable to move, or even to understand what
+      was expected of him, till he became conscious of Mr. Grisben&rsquo;s paternally
+      pointing out the precise spot on which he was to leave his autograph. The
+      effort to fix his attention and steady his hand prolonged the process of
+      signing, and when he stood up&mdash;a strange weight of fatigue on all his
+      limbs&mdash;the figure behind Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s chair was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon felt an immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling that the man&rsquo;s
+      exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr.
+      Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that the
+      unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any rate he
+      was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted. Young
+      Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch inscribing his name at the foot
+      of the document, Mr. Lavington&mdash;his eyes no longer on his nephew&mdash;examining
+      a strange white-winged orchid in the vase at his elbow. Every thing
+      suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple again, and Faxon found
+      himself responding with a smile to the affable gesture with which his host
+      declared: &ldquo;And now, Mr. Faxon, we&rsquo;ll dine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how I blundered into the wrong room just now; I thought you told
+      me to take the second door to the left,&rdquo; Faxon said to Frank Rainer as
+      they followed the older men down the gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I did; but I probably forgot to tell you which staircase to take.
+      Coming from your bedroom, I ought to have said the fourth door to the
+      right. It&rsquo;s a puzzling house, because my uncle keeps adding to it from
+      year to year. He built this room last summer for his modern pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Rainer, pausing to open another door, touched an electric button
+      which sent a circle of light about the walls of a long room hung with
+      canvases of the French impressionist school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon advanced, attracted by a shimmering Monet, but Rainer laid a hand on
+      his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He bought that last week. But come along&mdash;I&rsquo;ll show you all this
+      after dinner. Or <i>he</i> will, rather&mdash;he loves it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he really love things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rainer stared, clearly perplexed at the question. &ldquo;Rather! Flowers and
+      pictures especially! Haven&rsquo;t you noticed the flowers? I suppose you think
+      his manner&rsquo;s cold; it seems so at first; but he&rsquo;s really awfully keen
+      about things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon looked quickly at the speaker. &ldquo;Has your uncle a brother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brother? No&mdash;never had. He and my mother were the only ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or any relation who&mdash;who looks like him? Who might be mistaken for
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I ever heard of. Does he remind you of some one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s queer. We&rsquo;ll ask him if he&rsquo;s got a double. Come on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But another picture had arrested Faxon, and some minutes elapsed before he
+      and his young host reached the dining-room. It was a large room, with the
+      same conventionally handsome furniture and delicately grouped flowers; and
+      Faxon&rsquo;s first glance showed him that only three men were seated about the
+      dining-table. The man who had stood behind Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s chair was not
+      present, and no seat awaited him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the young men entered, Mr. Grisben was speaking, and his host, who
+      faced the door, sat looking down at his untouched soup-plate and turning
+      the spoon about in his small dry hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty late to call them rumours&mdash;they were devilish close to
+      facts when we left town this morning,&rdquo; Mr. Grisben was saying, with an
+      unexpected incisiveness of tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington laid down his spoon and smiled interrogatively. &ldquo;Oh, facts&mdash;what
+      <i>are</i> facts? Just the way a thing happens to look at a given
+      minute....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t heard anything from town?&rdquo; Mr. Grisben persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a syllable. So you see.... Balch, a little more of that <i>petite
+      marmite</i>. Mr. Faxon... between Frank and Mr. Grisben, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner progressed through a series of complicated courses,
+      ceremoniously dispensed by a prelatical butler attended by three tall
+      footmen, and it was evident that Mr. Lavington took a certain satisfaction
+      in the pageant. That, Faxon reflected, was probably the joint in his
+      armour&mdash;that and the flowers. He had changed the subject&mdash;not
+      abruptly but firmly&mdash;when the young men entered, but Faxon perceived
+      that it still possessed the thoughts of the two elderly visitors, and Mr.
+      Balch presently observed, in a voice that seemed to come from the last
+      survivor down a mine-shaft: &ldquo;If it <i>does</i> come, it will be the
+      biggest crash since &lsquo;93.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington looked bored but polite. &ldquo;Wall Street can stand crashes
+      better than it could then. It&rsquo;s got a robuster constitution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speaking of constitutions,&rdquo; Mr. Grisben intervened: &ldquo;Frank, are you
+      taking care of yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A flush rose to young Rainer&rsquo;s cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course! Isn&rsquo;t that what I&rsquo;m here for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re here about three days in the month, aren&rsquo;t you? And the rest of
+      the time it&rsquo;s crowded restaurants and hot ballrooms in town. I thought you
+      were to be shipped off to New Mexico?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve got a new man who says that&rsquo;s rot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you don&rsquo;t look as if your new man were right,&rdquo; said Mr. Grisben
+      bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon saw the lad&rsquo;s colour fade, and the rings of shadow deepen under his
+      gay eyes. At the same moment his uncle turned to him with a renewed
+      intensity of attention. There was such solicitude in Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s gaze
+      that it seemed almost to fling a shield between his nephew and Mr.
+      Grisben&rsquo;s tactless scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We think Frank&rsquo;s a good deal better,&rdquo; he began; &ldquo;this new doctor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The butler, coming up, bent to whisper a word in his ear, and the
+      communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s expression. His
+      face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as to
+      fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He
+      half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid smile about the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you excuse me? The telephone. Peters, go on with the dinner.&rdquo; With
+      small precise steps he walked out of the door which one of the footmen had
+      thrown open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A momentary silence fell on the group; then Mr. Grisben once more
+      addressed himself to Rainer. &ldquo;You ought to have gone, my boy; you ought to
+      have gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The anxious look returned to the youth&rsquo;s eyes. &ldquo;My uncle doesn&rsquo;t think so,
+      really.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not a baby, to be always governed by your uncle&rsquo;s opinion. You
+      came of age to-day, didn&rsquo;t you? Your uncle spoils you.... that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s
+      the matter....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thrust evidently went home, for Rainer laughed and looked down with a
+      slight accession of colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the doctor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Use your common sense, Frank! You had to try twenty doctors to find one
+      to tell you what you wanted to be told.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A look of apprehension overshadowed Rainer&rsquo;, gaiety. &ldquo;Oh, come&mdash;I
+      say!... What would <i>you</i> do?&rdquo; he stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pack up and jump on the first train.&rdquo; Mr. Grisben leaned forward and laid
+      his hand kindly on the young man&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Look here: my nephew Jim Grisben
+      is out there ranching on a big scale. He&rsquo;ll take you in and be glad to
+      have you. You say your new doctor thinks it won&rsquo;t do you any good; but he
+      doesn&rsquo;t pretend to say it will do you harm, does he? Well, then&mdash;give
+      it a trial. It&rsquo;ll take you out of hot theatres and night restaurants,
+      anyhow.... And all the rest of it.... Eh, Balch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go!&rdquo; said Mr. Balch hollowly. &ldquo;Go <i>at once</i>,&rdquo; he added, as if a
+      closer look at the youth&rsquo;s face had impressed on him the need of backing
+      up his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Rainer had turned ashy-pale. He tried to stiffen his mouth into a
+      smile. &ldquo;Do I look as bad as all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Grisben was helping himself to terrapin. &ldquo;You look like the day after
+      an earthquake,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The terrapin had encircled the table, and been deliberately enjoyed by Mr.
+      Lavington&rsquo;s three visitors (Rainer, Faxon noticed, left his plate
+      untouched) before the door was thrown open to re-admit their host. Mr.
+      Lavington advanced with an air of recovered composure. He seated himself,
+      picked up his napkin and consulted the gold-monogrammed menu. &ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t
+      bring back the filet.... Some terrapin; yes....&rdquo; He looked affably about
+      the table. &ldquo;Sorry to have deserted you, but the storm has played the deuce
+      with the wires, and I had to wait a long time before I could get a good
+      connection. It must be blowing up for a blizzard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Jack,&rdquo; young Rainer broke out, &ldquo;Mr. Grisben&rsquo;s been lecturing me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington was helping himself to terrapin. &ldquo;Ah&mdash;what about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks I ought to have given New Mexico a show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want him to go straight out to my nephew at Santa Paz and stay there
+      till his next birthday.&rdquo; Mr. Lavington signed to the butler to hand the
+      terrapin to Mr. Grisben, who, as he took a second helping, addressed
+      himself again to Rainer. &ldquo;Jim&rsquo;s in New York now, and going back the day
+      after tomorrow in Olyphant&rsquo;s private car. I&rsquo;ll ask Olyphant to squeeze you
+      in if you&rsquo;ll go. And when you&rsquo;ve been out there a week or two, in the
+      saddle all day and sleeping nine hours a night, I suspect you won&rsquo;t think
+      much of the doctor who prescribed New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon spoke up, he knew not why. &ldquo;I was out there once: it&rsquo;s a splendid
+      life. I saw a fellow&mdash;oh, a really <i>bad</i> case&mdash;who&rsquo;d been
+      simply made over by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>does</i> sound jolly,&rdquo; Rainer laughed, a sudden eagerness in his
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His uncle looked at him gently. &ldquo;Perhaps Grisben&rsquo;s right. It&rsquo;s an
+      opportunity&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon glanced up with a start: the figure dimly perceived in the study was
+      now more visibly and tangibly planted behind Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, Frank: you see your uncle approves. And the trip out there
+      with Olyphant isn&rsquo;t a thing to be missed. So drop a few dozen dinners and
+      be at the Grand Central the day after tomorrow at five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Grisben&rsquo;s pleasant grey eye sought corroboration of his host, and
+      Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him as he turned
+      his glance on Mr. Lavington. One could not look at Lavington without
+      seeing the presence at his back, and it was clear that, the next minute,
+      some change in Mr. Grisben&rsquo;s expression must give his watcher a clue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Grisben&rsquo;s expression did not change: the gaze he fixed on his host
+      remained unperturbed, and the clue he gave was the startling one of not
+      seeming to see the other figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon&rsquo;s first impulse was to look away, to look anywhere else, to resort
+      again to the champagne glass the watchful butler had already brimmed; but
+      some fatal attraction, at war in him with an overwhelming physical
+      resistance, held his eyes upon the spot they feared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The figure was still standing, more distinctly, and therefore more
+      resemblingly, at Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s back; and while the latter continued to
+      gaze affectionately at his nephew, his counterpart, as before, fixed young
+      Rainer with eyes of deadly menace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon, with what felt like an actual wrench of the muscles, dragged his
+      own eyes from the sight to scan the other countenances about the table;
+      but not one revealed the least consciousness of what he saw, and a sense
+      of mortal isolation sank upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s worth considering, certainly&mdash;&rdquo; he heard Mr. Lavington
+      continue; and as Rainer&rsquo;s face lit up, the face behind his uncle&rsquo;s chair
+      seemed to gather into its look all the fierce weariness of old unsatisfied
+      hates. That was the thing that, as the minutes laboured by, Faxon was
+      becoming most conscious of. The watcher behind the chair was no longer
+      merely malevolent: he had grown suddenly, unutterably tired. His hatred
+      seemed to well up out of the very depths of balked effort and thwarted
+      hopes, and the fact made him more pitiable, and yet more dire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon&rsquo;s look reverted to Mr. Lavington, as if to surprise in him a
+      corresponding change. At first none was visible: his pinched smile was
+      screwed to his blank face like a gas-light to a white-washed wall. Then
+      the fixity of the smile became ominous: Faxon saw that its wearer was
+      afraid to let it go. It was evident that Mr. Lavington was unutterably
+      tired too, and the discovery sent a colder current through Faxon&rsquo;s veins.
+      Looking down at his untouched plate, he caught the soliciting twinkle of
+      the champagne glass; but the sight of the wine turned him sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll go into the details presently,&rdquo; he heard Mr. Lavington say,
+      still on the question of his nephew&rsquo;s future. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s have a cigar first.
+      No&mdash;not here, Peters.&rdquo; He turned his smile on Faxon. &ldquo;When we&rsquo;ve had
+      coffee I want to show you my pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, by the way, Uncle Jack&mdash;Mr. Faxon wants to know if you&rsquo;ve got a
+      double?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A double?&rdquo; Mr. Lavington, still smiling, continued to address himself to
+      his guest. &ldquo;Not that I know of. Have you seen one, Mr. Faxon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon thought: &ldquo;My God, if I look up now they&rsquo;ll <i>both</i> be looking at
+      me!&rdquo; To avoid raising his eyes he made as though to lift the glass to his
+      lips; but his hand sank inert, and he looked up. Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s glance
+      was politely bent on him, but with a loosening of the strain about his
+      heart he saw that the figure behind the chair still kept its gaze on
+      Rainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;ve seen my double, Mr. Faxon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Would the other face turn if he said yes? Faxon felt a dryness in his
+      throat. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah? It&rsquo;s possible I&rsquo;ve a dozen. I believe I&rsquo;m extremely usual-looking,&rdquo;
+       Mr. Lavington went on conversationally; and still the other face watched
+      Rainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was... a mistake... a confusion of memory....&rdquo; Faxon heard himself
+      stammer. Mr. Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr. Grisben
+      suddenly leaned forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lavington! What have we been thinking of? We haven&rsquo;t drunk Frank&rsquo;s
+      health!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lavington reseated himself. &ldquo;My dear boy!... Peters, another
+      bottle....&rdquo; He turned to his nephew. &ldquo;After such a sin of omission I don&rsquo;t
+      presume to propose the toast myself... but Frank knows.... Go ahead,
+      Grisben!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy shone on his uncle. &ldquo;No, no, Uncle Jack! Mr. Grisben won&rsquo;t mind.
+      Nobody but <i>you</i>&mdash;to-day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The butler was replenishing the glasses. He filled Mr. Lavington&rsquo;s last,
+      and Mr. Lavington put out his small hand to raise it.... As he did so,
+      Faxon looked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;All the good I&rsquo;ve wished you in all the past years.... I
+      put it into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy and happy and
+      many... and <i>many</i>, dear boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses. Automatically,
+      he reached for his. His eyes were still on the table, and he repeated to
+      himself with a trembling vehemence: &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t look up! I won&rsquo;t.... I
+      won&rsquo;t....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His fingers clasped the glass and raised it to the level of his lips. He
+      saw the other hands making the same motion. He heard Mr. Grisben&rsquo;s genial
+      &ldquo;Hear! Hear!&rdquo; and Mr. Batch&rsquo;s hollow echo. He said to himself, as the rim
+      of the glass touched his lips: &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t look up! I swear I won&rsquo;t!&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and he looked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold it
+      there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval before he could
+      trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to the table. It was this
+      merciful preoccupation which saved him, kept him from crying out, from
+      losing his hold, from slipping down into the bottomless blackness that
+      gaped for him. As long as the problem of the glass engaged him he felt
+      able to keep his seat, manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into the
+      group; but as the glass touched the table his last link with safety
+      snapped. He stood up and dashed out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to turn back
+      and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out something about a
+      touch of dizziness, and joining them presently; and the boy nodded
+      sympathetically and drew back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. &ldquo;I should like to
+      telephone to Weymore,&rdquo; he said with dry lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry, sir; wires all down. We&rsquo;ve been trying the last hour to get New
+      York again for Mr. Lavington.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The
+      lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books; in the ashes a log still
+      glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face. The room was
+      profoundly silent, the whole house was still: nothing about him gave a
+      hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in the room he had flown
+      from, and with the covering of his eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed to
+      fall on him. But they fell for a moment only; then his lids opened again
+      to the monstrous vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a part of
+      him forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain. But why
+      into his&mdash;just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what he had
+      seen? What business was it of <i>his</i>, in God&rsquo;s name? Any one of the
+      others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it;
+      but <i>he</i>, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom
+      none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal
+      what he knew&mdash;<i>he</i> alone had been singled out as the victim of
+      this dreadful initiation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he sat up, listening: he had heard a step on the stairs. Some
+      one, no doubt, was coming to see how he was&mdash;to urge him, if he felt
+      better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he opened his door;
+      yes, it was young Rainer&rsquo;s step. Faxon looked down the passage, remembered
+      the other stairway and darted to it. All he wanted was to get out of the
+      house. Not another instant would he breathe its abominable air! What
+      business was it of <i>his</i>, in God&rsquo;s name?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached the opposite end of the lower gallery, and beyond it saw the
+      hall by which he had entered. It was empty, and on a long table he
+      recognized his coat and cap. He got into his coat, unbolted the door, and
+      plunged into the purifying night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness was deep, and the cold so intense that for an instant it
+      stopped his breathing. Then he perceived that only a thin snow was
+      falling, and resolutely he set his face for flight. The trees along the
+      avenue marked his way as he hastened with long strides over the beaten
+      snow. Gradually, while he walked, the tumult in his brain subsided. The
+      impulse to fly still drove him forward, but he began feel that he was
+      flying from a terror of his own creating, and that the most urgent reason
+      for escape was the need of hiding his state, of shunning other eyes till
+      he should regain his balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on a
+      discouraging situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had turned to
+      exasperation when he found that the Weymore sleigh was not awaiting him.
+      It was absurd, of course; but, though he had joked with Rainer over Mrs.
+      Culme&rsquo;s forgetfulness, to confess it had cost a pang. That was what his
+      rootless life had brought him to: for lack of a personal stake in things
+      his sensibility was at the mercy of such trifles.... Yes; that, and the
+      cold and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of starved
+      aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over which,
+      once or twice before, his terrified brain had hung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why else, in the name of any imaginable logic, human or devilish, should
+      he, a stranger, be singled out for this experience? What could it mean to
+      him, how was he related to it, what bearing had it on his case?... Unless,
+      indeed, it was just because he was a stranger&mdash;a stranger everywhere&mdash;because
+      he had no personal life, no warm screen of private egotisms to shield him
+      from exposure, that he had developed this abnormal sensitiveness to the
+      vicissitudes of others. The thought pulled him up with a shudder. No! Such
+      a fate was too abominable; all that was strong and sound in him rejected
+      it. A thousand times better regard himself as ill, disorganized, deluded,
+      than as the predestined victim of such warnings!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge. The wind had
+      risen and was sweeping the snow into his race. The cold had him in its
+      grasp again, and he stood uncertain. Should he put his sanity to the test
+      and go back? He turned and looked down the dark drive to the house. A
+      single ray shone through the trees, evoking a picture of the lights, the
+      flowers, the faces grouped about that fatal room. He turned and plunged
+      out into the road....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered that, about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had pointed
+      out the road to Northridge; and he began to walk in that direction. Once
+      in the road he had the gale in his face, and the wet snow on his moustache
+      and eye-lashes instantly hardened to ice. The same ice seemed to be
+      driving a million blades into his throat and lungs, but he pushed on, the
+      vision of the warm room pursuing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The snow in the road was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts and sank
+      into drifts, and the wind drove against him like a granite cliff. Now and
+      then he stopped, gasping, as if an invisible hand had tightened an iron
+      band about his body; then he started again, stiffening himself against the
+      stealthy penetration of the cold. The snow continued to descend out of a
+      pall of inscrutable darkness, and once or twice he paused, fearing he had
+      missed the road to Northridge; but, seeing no sign of a turn, he ploughed
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, feeling sure that he had walked for more than a mile, he halted
+      and looked back. The act of turning brought immediate relief, first
+      because it put his back to the wind, and then because, far down the road,
+      it showed him the gleam of a lantern. A sleigh was coming&mdash;a sleigh
+      that might perhaps give him a lift to the village! Fortified by the hope,
+      he began to walk back toward the light. It came forward very slowly, with
+      unaccountable sigsags and waverings; and even when he was within a few
+      yards of it he could catch no sound of sleigh-bells. Then it paused and
+      became stationary by the roadside, as though carried by a pedestrian who
+      had stopped, exhausted by the cold. The thought made Faxon hasten on, and
+      a moment later he was stooping over a motionless figure huddled against
+      the snow-bank. The lantern had dropped from its bearer&rsquo;s hand, and Faxon,
+      fearfully raising it, threw its light into the face of Frank Rainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rainer! What on earth are you doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy smiled back through his pallour. &ldquo;What are <i>you</i>, I&rsquo;d like to
+      know?&rdquo; he retorted; and, scrambling to his feet with a clutch oh Faxon&rsquo;s
+      arm, he added gaily: &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve run you down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon stood confounded, his heart sinking. The lad&rsquo;s face was grey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What madness&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it <i>is</i>. What on earth did you do it for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? Do what?... Why I.... I was just taking a walk.... I often walk at
+      night....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank Rainer burst into a laugh. &ldquo;On such nights? Then you hadn&rsquo;t bolted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bolted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;d done something to offend you? My uncle thought you had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon grasped his arm. &ldquo;Did your uncle send you after me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he gave me an awful rowing for not going up to your room with you
+      when you said you were ill. And when we found you&rsquo;d gone we were
+      frightened&mdash;and he was awfully upset&mdash;so I said I&rsquo;d catch
+      you.... You&rsquo;re <i>not</i> ill, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ill? No. Never better.&rdquo; Faxon picked up the lantern. &ldquo;Come; let&rsquo;s go
+      back. It was awfully hot in that dining-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I hoped it was only that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They trudged on in silence for a few minutes; then Faxon questioned:
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not too done up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no. It&rsquo;s a lot easier with the wind behind us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Don&rsquo;t talk any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They pushed ahead, walking, in spite of the light that guided them, more
+      slowly than Faxon had walked alone into the gale. The fact of his
+      companion&rsquo;s stumbling against a drift gave Faxon a pretext for saying:
+      &ldquo;Take hold of my arm,&rdquo; and Rainer obeying, gasped out: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m blown!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I. Who wouldn&rsquo;t be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a dance you led me! If it hadn&rsquo;t been for one of the servants
+      happening to see you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; all right. And now, won&rsquo;t you kindly shut up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rainer laughed and hung on him. &ldquo;Oh, the cold doesn&rsquo;t hurt me....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first few minutes after Rainer had overtaken him, anxiety for the
+      lad had been Faxon&rsquo;s only thought. But as each labouring step carried them
+      nearer to the spot he had been fleeing, the reasons for his flight grew
+      more ominous and more insistent. No, he was not ill, he was not distraught
+      and deluded&mdash;he was the instrument singled out to warn and save; and
+      here he was, irresistibly driven, dragging the victim back to his doom!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intensity of the conviction had almost checked his steps. But what
+      could he do or say? At all costs he must get Rainer out of the cold, into
+      the house and into his bed. After that he would act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The snow-fall was thickening, and as they reached a stretch of the road
+      between open fields the wind took them at an angle, lashing their faces
+      with barbed thongs. Rainer stopped to take breath, and Faxon felt the
+      heavier pressure of his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we get to the lodge, can&rsquo;t we telephone to the stable for a sleigh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they&rsquo;re not all asleep at the lodge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll manage. Don&rsquo;t talk!&rdquo; Faxon ordered; and they plodded on....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the lantern ray showed ruts that curved away from the road under
+      tree-darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon&rsquo;s spirits rose. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the gate! We&rsquo;ll be there in five minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he caught, above the boundary hedge, the gleam of a light at
+      the farther end of the dark avenue. It was the same light that had shone
+      on the scene of which every detail was burnt into his brain; and he felt
+      again its overpowering reality. No&mdash;he couldn&rsquo;t let the boy go back!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were at the lodge at last, and Faxon was hammering on the door. He
+      said to himself: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get him inside first, and make them give him a hot
+      drink. Then I&rsquo;ll see&mdash;I&rsquo;ll find an argument....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer to his knocking, and after an interval Rainer said:
+      &ldquo;Look here&mdash;we&rsquo;d better go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, perfectly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t go to the house, I say!&rdquo; Faxon redoubled his blows, and at
+      length steps sounded on the stairs. Rainer was leaning against the lintel,
+      and as the door opened the light from the hall flashed on his pale face
+      and fixed eyes. Faxon caught him by the arm and drew him in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>was</i> cold out there.&rdquo; he sighed; and then, abruptly, as if
+      invisible shears at a single stroke had cut every muscle in his body, he
+      swerved, drooped on Faxon&rsquo;s arm, and seemed to sink into nothing at his
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lodge-keeper and Faxon bent over him, and somehow, between them,
+      lifted him into the kitchen and laid him on a sofa by the stove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lodge-keeper, stammering: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll ring up the house,&rdquo; dashed out of the
+      room. But Faxon heard the words without heeding them: omens mattered
+      nothing now, beside this woe fulfilled. He knelt down to undo the fur
+      collar about Rainer&rsquo;s throat, and as he did so he felt a warm moisture on
+      his hands. He held them up, and they were red....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The palms threaded their endless line along the yellow river. The little
+      steamer lay at the wharf, and George Faxon, sitting in the verandah of the
+      wooden hotel, idly watched the coolies carrying the freight across the
+      gang-plank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been looking at such scenes for two months. Nearly five had elapsed
+      since he had descended from the train at Northridge and strained his eyes
+      for the sleigh that was to take him to Weymore: Weymore, which he was
+      never to behold!... Part of the interval&mdash;the first part&mdash;was
+      still a great grey blur. Even now he could not be quite sure how he had
+      got back to Boston, reached the house of a cousin, and been thence
+      transferred to a quiet room looking out on snow under bare trees. He
+      looked out a long time at the same scene, and finally one day a man he had
+      known at Harvard came to see him and invited him to go out on a business
+      trip to the Malay Peninsula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had a bad shake-up, and it&rsquo;ll do you no end of good to get away
+      from things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the doctor came the next day it turned out that he knew of the plan
+      and approved it. &ldquo;You ought to be quiet for a year. Just loaf and look at
+      the landscape,&rdquo; he advised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faxon felt the first faint stirrings of curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s been the matter with me, anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, over-work, I suppose. You must have been bottling up for a bad
+      breakdown before you started for New Hampshire last December. And the
+      shock of that poor boy&rsquo;s death did the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, yes&mdash;Rainer had died. He remembered....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He started for the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life
+      crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was patient
+      and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first
+      Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar things.
+      He seldom looked at a newspaper and he never opened a letter without a
+      contraction of the heart. It was not that he had any special cause for
+      apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on everything.
+      He had looked too deep down into the abyss.... But little by little health
+      and energy returned to him, and with them the common promptings of
+      curiosity. He was beginning to wonder how the world was going, and when,
+      presently, the hotel-keeper told him there were no letters for him in the
+      steamer&rsquo;s mail-bag, he felt a distinct sense of disappointment. His friend
+      had gone into the jungle on a long excursion, and he was lonely,
+      unoccupied and wholesomely bored. He got up and strolled into the stuffy
+      reading-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There he found a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle, some copies
+      of <i>Zion&rsquo;s Herald</i> and a pile of New York and London newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to glance through the papers, and was disappointed to find that
+      they were less recent than he had hoped. Evidently the last numbers had
+      been carried off by luckier travellers. He continued to turn them over,
+      picking out the American ones first. These, as it happened, were the
+      oldest: they dated back to December and January. To Faxon, however, they
+      had all the flavour of novelty, since they covered the precise period
+      during which he had virtually ceased to exist. It had never before
+      occurred to him to wonder what had happened in the world during that
+      interval of obliteration; but now he felt a sudden desire to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically,
+      and as he found and spread out the earliest number, the date at the top of
+      the page entered into his consciousness like a key slipping into a lock.
+      It was the seventeenth of December: the date of the day after his arrival
+      at Northridge. He glanced at the first page and read in blazing
+      characters: &ldquo;Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company. Lavington&rsquo;s name
+      involved. Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall Street to Its
+      Foundations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He read on, and when he had finished the first paper he turned to the
+      next. There was a gap of three days, but the Opal Cement &ldquo;Investigation&rdquo;
+       still held the centre of the stage. From its complex revelations of greed
+      and ruin his eye wandered to the death notices, and he read: &ldquo;Rainer.
+      Suddenly, at Northridge, New Hampshire, Francis John, only son of the
+      late....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper and sat for a long time
+      with his face in his hands. When he looked up again he noticed that his
+      gesture had pushed the other papers from the table and scattered them at
+      his feet. The uppermost lay spread out before him, and heavily his eyes
+      began their search again. &ldquo;John Lavington comes forward with plan for
+      reconstructing Company. Offers to put in ten millions of his own&mdash;The
+      proposal under consideration by the District Attorney.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten millions... ten millions of his own. But if John Lavington was
+      ruined?... Faxon stood up with a cry. That was it, then&mdash;that was
+      what the warning meant! And if he had not fled from it, dashed wildly away
+      from it into the night, he might have broken the spell of iniquity, the
+      powers of darkness might not have prevailed! He caught up the pile of
+      newspapers and began to glance through each in turn for the head-line:
+      &ldquo;Wills Admitted to Probate.&rdquo; In the last of all he found the paragraph he
+      sought, and it stared up at him as if with Rainer&rsquo;s dying eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That&mdash;<i>that</i> was what he had done! The powers of pity had
+      singled him out to warn and save, and he had closed his ears to their
+      call, and washed his hands of it, and fled. Washed his hands of it! That
+      was the word. It caught him back to the dreadful moment in the lodge when,
+      raising himself up from Rainer&rsquo;s side, he had looked at his hands and seen
+      that they were red....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Triumph Of Night, by Edith Wharton
+
+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 Triumph Of Night
+       1916
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2008 [EBook #24351]
+[Last updated: August 30, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+It was clear that the sleigh from Weymore had not come; and the
+shivering young traveller from Boston, who had counted on jumping into
+it when he left the train at Northridge Junction, found himself standing
+alone on the open platform, exposed to the full assault of night-fall
+and winter.
+
+The blast that swept him came off New Hampshire snow-fields and ice-hung
+forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable leagues of frozen
+silence, filling them with the same cold roar and sharpening its edge
+against the same bitter black-and-white landscape. Dark, searching
+and sword-like, it alternately muffled and harried its victim, like a
+bull-fighter now whirling his cloak and now planting his darts. This
+analogy brought home to the young man the fact that he himself had
+no cloak, and that the overcoat in which he had faced the relatively
+temperate air of Boston seemed no thicker than a sheet of paper on the
+bleak heights of Northridge. George Faxon said to himself that the place
+was uncommonly well-named. It clung to an exposed ledge over the valley
+from which the train had lifted him, and the wind combed it with teeth
+of steel that he seemed actually to hear scraping against the wooden
+sides of the station. Other building there was none: the village lay far
+down the road, and thither--since the Weymore sleigh had not come--Faxon
+saw himself under the necessity of plodding through several feet of
+snow.
+
+He understood well enough what had happened: his hostess had forgotten
+that he was coming. Young as Faxon was, this sad lucidity of soul had
+been acquired as the result of long experience, and he knew that the
+visitors who can least afford to hire a carriage are almost always those
+whom their hosts forget to send for. Yet to say that Mrs. Culme had
+forgotten him was too crude a way of putting it Similar incidents led
+him to think that she had probably told her maid to tell the butler to
+telephone the coachman to tell one of the grooms (if no one else needed
+him) to drive over to Northridge to fetch the new secretary; but on
+a night like this, what groom who respected his rights would fail to
+forget the order?
+
+Faxon's obvious course was to struggle through the drifts to the
+village, and there rout out a sleigh to convey him to Weymore; but what
+if, on his arrival at Mrs. Culme's, no one remembered to ask him
+what this devotion to duty had cost? That, again, was one of the
+contingencies he had expensively learned to look out for, and the
+perspicacity so acquired told him it would be cheaper to spend the night
+at the Northridge inn, and advise Mrs. Culme of his presence there by
+telephone. He had reached this decision, and was about to entrust his
+luggage to a vague man with a lantern, when his hopes were raised by the
+sound of bells.
+
+Two sleighs were just dashing up to the station, and from the foremost
+there sprang a young man muffled in furs.
+
+"Weymore?--No, these are not the Weymore sleighs."
+
+The voice was that of the youth who had jumped to the platform--a voice
+so agreeable that, in spite of the words, it fell consolingly on Faxon's
+ears. At the same moment the wandering station-lantern, casting a
+transient light on the speaker, showed his features to be in the
+pleasantest harmony with his voice. He was very fair and very
+young--hardly in the twenties, Faxon thought--but his face, though full
+of a morning freshness, was a trifle too thin and fine-drawn, as though
+a vivid spirit contended in him with a strain of physical weakness.
+Faxon was perhaps the quicker to notice such delicacies of balance
+because his own temperament hung on lightly quivering nerves, which yet,
+as he believed, would never quite swing him beyond a normal sensibility.
+
+"You expected a sleigh from Weymore?" the newcomer continued, standing
+beside Faxon like a slender column of fur.
+
+Mrs. Culme's secretary explained his difficulty, and the other brushed
+it aside with a contemptuous "Oh, _Mrs. Culme!_" that carried both
+speakers a long way toward reciprocal understanding.
+
+"But then you must be--" The youth broke off with a smile of
+interrogation.
+
+"The new secretary? Yes. But apparently there are no notes to be
+answered this evening." Faxon's laugh deepened the sense of solidarity
+which had so promptly established itself between the two.
+
+His friend laughed also. "Mrs. Culme," he explained, "was lunching at my
+uncle's to-day, and she said you were due this evening. But seven hours
+is a long time for Mrs. Culme to remember anything."
+
+"Well," said Faxon philosophically, "I suppose that's one of the reasons
+why she needs a secretary. And I've always the inn at Northridge," he
+concluded.
+
+"Oh, but you haven't, though! It burned down last week."
+
+"The deuce it did!" said Faxon; but the humour of the situation struck
+him before its inconvenience. His life, for years past, had been mainly
+a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing
+practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a
+small tribute of amusement.
+
+"Oh, well, there's sure to be somebody in the place who can put me up."
+
+"No one _you_ could put up with. Besides, Northridge is three miles off,
+and our place--in the opposite direction--is a little nearer."
+Through the darkness, Faxon saw his friend sketch a gesture of
+self-introduction. "My name's Frank Rainer, and I'm staying with my
+uncle at Overdale. I've driven over to meet two friends of his, who are
+due in a few minutes from New York. If you don't mind waiting till they
+arrive I'm sure Overdale can do you better than Northridge. We're only
+down from town for a few days, but the house is always ready for a lot
+of people."
+
+"But your uncle--?" Faxon could only object, with the odd sense, through
+his embarrassment, that it would be magically dispelled by his invisible
+friend's next words.
+
+"Oh, my uncle--you'll see! I answer for _him!_ I daresay you've heard of
+him--John Lavington?"
+
+John Lavington! There was a certain irony in asking if one had heard of
+John Lavington! Even from a post of observation as obscure as that of
+Mrs. Culme's secretary the rumour of John Lavington's money, of his
+pictures, his politics, his charities and his hospitality, was as
+difficult to escape as the roar of a cataract in a mountain solitude.
+It might almost have been said that the one place in which one would
+not have expected to come upon him was in just such a solitude as
+now surrounded the speakers--at least in this deepest hour of its
+desertedness. But it was just like Lavington's brilliant ubiquity to put
+one in the wrong even there.
+
+"Oh, yes, I've heard of your uncle."
+
+"Then you _will_ come, won't you? We've only five minutes to wait."
+young Rainer urged, in the tone that dispels scruples by ignoring them;
+and Faxon found himself accepting the invitation as simply as it was
+offered.
+
+A delay in the arrival of the New York train lengthened their five
+minutes to fifteen; and as they paced the icy platform Faxon began to
+see why it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to accede to
+his new acquaintance's suggestion. It was because Frank Rainer was
+one of the privileged beings who simplify human intercourse by the
+atmosphere of confidence and good humour they diffuse. He produced this
+effect, Faxon noted, by the exercise of no gift but his youth, and of no
+art but his sincerity; and these qualities were revealed in a smile of
+such sweetness that Faxon felt, as never before, what Nature can achieve
+when she deigns to match the face with the mind.
+
+He learned that the young man was the ward, and the only nephew, of John
+Lavington, with whom he had made his home since the death of his mother,
+the great man's sister. Mr. Lavington, Rainer said, had been "a regular
+brick" to him--"But then he is to every one, you know"--and the young
+fellow's situation seemed in fact to be perfectly in keeping with his
+person. Apparently the only shade that had ever rested on him was cast
+by the physical weakness which Faxon had already detected. Young Rainer
+had been threatened with tuberculosis, and the disease was so far
+advanced that, according to the highest authorities, banishment to
+Arizona or New Mexico was inevitable. "But luckily my uncle didn't pack
+me off, as most people would have done, without getting another opinion.
+Whose? Oh, an awfully clever chap, a young doctor with a lot of new
+ideas, who simply laughed at my being sent away, and said I'd do
+perfectly well in New York if I didn't dine out too much, and if I
+dashed off occasionally to Northridge for a little fresh air. So it's
+really my uncle's doing that I'm not in exile--and I feel no end better
+since the new chap told me I needn't bother." Young Rainer went on to
+confess that he was extremely fond of dining out, dancing and similar
+distractions; and Faxon, listening to him, was inclined to think that
+the physician who had refused to cut him off altogether from these
+pleasures was probably a better psychologist than his seniors.
+
+"All the same you ought to be careful, you know." The sense of
+elder-brotherly concern that forced the words from Faxon made him, as he
+spoke, slip his arm through Frank Rainer 's.
+
+The latter met the movement with a responsive pressure. "Oh, I _am_:
+awfully, awfully. And then my uncle has such an eye on me!"
+
+"But if your uncle has such an eye on you, what does he say to your
+swallowing knives out here in this Siberian wild?"
+
+Rainer raised his fur collar with a careless gesture. "It's not that
+that does it--the cold's good for me."
+
+"And it's not the dinners and dances? What is it, then?" Faxon
+good-humouredly insisted; to which his companion answered with a laugh:
+"Well, my uncle says it's being bored; and I rather think he's right!"
+
+His laugh ended in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that
+made Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter of
+the fireless waiting-room.
+
+Young Rainer had dropped down on the bench against the wall and pulled
+off one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief. He tossed
+aside his cap and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which was
+intensely white, and beaded with moisture, though his face retained
+a healthy glow. But Faxon's gaze remained fastened to the hand he had
+uncovered: it was so long, so colourless, so wasted, so much older than
+the brow he passed it over.
+
+"It's queer--a healthy face but dying hands," the secretary mused: he
+somehow wished young Rainer had kept on his glove.
+
+The whistle of the express drew the young men to their feet, and the
+next moment two heavily-furred gentlemen had descended to the platform
+and were breasting the rigour of the night. Frank Rainer introduced them
+as Mr. Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was
+being lifted into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving
+lantern-gleam, to be an elderly greyheaded pair, of the average
+prosperous business cut.
+
+They saluted their host's nephew with friendly familiarity, and Mr.
+Grisben, who seemed the spokesman of the two, ended his greeting with a
+genial--"and many many more of them, dear boy!" which suggested to Faxon
+that their arrival coincided with an anniversary. But he could not press
+the enquiry, for the seat allotted him was at the coachman's side, while
+Frank Rainer joined his uncle's guests inside the sleigh.
+
+A swift flight (behind such horses as one could be sure of John
+Lavington's having) brought them to tall gateposts, an illuminated
+lodge, and an avenue on which the snow had been levelled to the
+smoothness of marble. At the end of the avenue the long house loomed up,
+its principal bulk dark, but one wing sending out a ray of welcome; and
+the next moment Faxon was receiving a violent impression of warmth and
+light, of hot-house plants, hurrying servants, a vast spectacular oak
+hall like a stage-setting, and, in its unreal middle distance, a small
+figure, correctly dressed, conventionally featured, and utterly unlike
+his rather florid conception of the great John Lavington.
+
+The surprise of the contrast remained with him through his hurried
+dressing in the large luxurious bedroom to which he had been shown.
+"I don't see where he comes in," was the only way he could put it, so
+difficult was it to fit the exuberance of Lavington's public personality
+into his host's contracted frame and manner. Mr. Laving ton, to whom
+Faxon's case had been rapidly explained by young Rainer, had welcomed
+him with a sort of dry and stilted cordiality that exactly matched
+his narrow face, his stiff hand, and the whiff of scent on his evening
+handkerchief. "Make yourself at home--at home!" he had repeated, in a
+tone that suggested, on his own part, a complete inability to perform
+the feat he urged on his visitor. "Any friend of Frank's... delighted...
+make yourself thoroughly at home!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+In spite of the balmy temperature and complicated conveniences of
+Faxon's bedroom, the injunction was not easy to obey. It was wonderful
+luck to have found a night's shelter under the opulent roof of Overdale,
+and he tasted the physical satisfaction to the full. But the place,
+for all its ingenuities of comfort, was oddly cold and unwelcoming.
+He couldn't have said why, and could only suppose that Mr. Lavington's
+intense personality--intensely negative, but intense all the same--must,
+in some occult way, have penetrated every corner of his dwelling.
+Perhaps, though, it was merely that Faxon himself was tired and hungry,
+more deeply chilled than he had known till he came in from the cold,
+and unutterably sick of all strange houses, and of the prospect of
+perpetually treading other people's stairs.
+
+"I hope you're not famished?" Rainer's slim figure was in the doorway.
+"My uncle has a little business to attend to with Mr. Grisben, and we
+don't dine for half an hour. Shall I fetch you, or can you find your way
+down? Come straight to the dining-room--the second door on the left of
+the long gallery."
+
+He disappeared, leaving a ray of warmth behind him, and Faxon, relieved,
+lit a cigarette and sat down by the fire.
+
+Looking about with less haste, he was struck by a detail that had
+escaped him. The room was full of flowers--a mere "bachelor's room," in
+the wing of a house opened only for a few days, in the dead middle of
+a New Hampshire winter! Flowers were everywhere, not in senseless
+profusion, but placed with the same conscious art that he had remarked
+in the grouping of the blossoming shrubs in the hall. A vase of arums
+stood on the writing-table, a cluster of strange-hued carnations on
+the stand at his elbow, and from bowls of glass and porcelain clumps of
+freesia-bulbs diffused their melting fragrance. The fact implied acres
+of glass--but that was the least interesting part of it. The flowers
+themselves, their quality, selection and arrangement, attested on
+some one's part--and on whose but John Lavington's?--a solicitous and
+sensitive passion for that particular form of beauty. Well, it simply
+made the man, as he had appeared to Faxon, all the harder to understand!
+
+The half-hour elapsed, and Faxon, rejoicing at the prospect of food, set
+out to make his way to the dining-room. He had not noticed the direction
+he had followed in going to his room, and was puzzled, when he left it,
+to find that two staircases, of apparently equal importance, invited
+him. He chose the one to his right, and reached, at its foot, a long
+gallery such as Rainer had described. The gallery was empty, the doors
+down its length were closed; but Rainer had said: "The second to the
+left," and Faxon, after pausing for some chance enlightenment which did
+not come, laid his hand on the second knob to the left.
+
+The room he entered was square, with dusky picture-hung walls. In its
+centre, about a table lit by veiled lamps, he fancied Mr. Lavington and
+his guests to be already seated at dinner; then he perceived that the
+table was covered not with viands but with papers, and that he had
+blundered into what seemed to be his host's study. As he paused Frank
+Rainer looked up.
+
+"Oh, here's Mr. Faxon. Why not ask him--?"
+
+Mr. Lavington, from the end of the table, reflected his nephew's smile
+in a glance of impartial benevolence.
+
+"Certainly. Come in, Mr. Faxon. If you won't think it a liberty--"
+
+Mr. Grisben, who sat opposite his host, turned his head toward the door.
+"Of course Mr. Faxon's an American citizen?"
+
+Frank Rainer laughed. "That's all right!... Oh, no, not one of your
+pin-pointed pens, Uncle Jack! Haven't you got a quill somewhere?"
+
+Mr. Balch, who spoke slowly and as if reluctantly, in a muffled voice of
+which there seemed to be very little left, raised his hand to say: "One
+moment: you acknowledge this to be--?"
+
+"My last will and testament?" Rainer's laugh redoubled. "Well, I won't
+answer for the 'last.' It's the first, anyway."
+
+"It's a mere formula," Mr. Balch explained.
+
+"Well, here goes." Rainer dipped his quill in the inkstand his uncle
+had pushed in his direction, and dashed a gallant signature across the
+document.
+
+Faxon, understanding what was expected of him, and conjecturing that the
+young man was signing his will on the attainment of his majority, had
+placed himself behind Mr. Grisben, and stood awaiting his turn to affix
+his name to the instrument. Rainer, having signed, was about to push the
+paper across the table to Mr. Balch; but the latter, again raising his
+hand, said in his sad imprisoned voice: "The seal--?"
+
+"Oh, does there have to be a seal?"
+
+Faxon, looking over Mr. Grisben at John Lavington, saw a faint frown
+between his impassive eyes. "Really, Frank!" He seemed, Faxon thought,
+slightly irritated by his nephew's frivolity.
+
+"Who's got a seal?" Frank Rainer continued, glancing about the table.
+"There doesn't seem to be one here."
+
+Mr. Grisben interposed. "A wafer will do. Lavington, you have a wafer?"
+
+Mr. Lavington had recovered his serenity. "There must be some in one
+of the drawers. But I'm ashamed to say I don't know where my secretary
+keeps these things. He ought to have seen to it that a wafer was sent
+with the document."
+
+"Oh, hang it--" Frank Rainer pushed the paper aside: "It's the hand of
+God--and I'm as hungry as a wolf. Let's dine first, Uncle Jack."
+
+"I think I've a seal upstairs," said Faxon.
+
+Mr. Lavington sent him a barely perceptible smile. "So sorry to give you
+the trouble--"
+
+"Oh, I say, don't send him after it now. Let's wait till after dinner!"
+
+Mr. Lavington continued to smile on _his_ guest, and the latter, as
+if under the faint coercion of the smile, turned from the room and
+ran upstairs. Having taken the seal from his writing-case he came down
+again, and once more opened the door of the study. No one was speaking
+when he entered--they were evidently awaiting his return with the mute
+impatience of hunger, and he put the seal in Rainer's reach, and stood
+watching while Mr. Grisben struck a match and held it to one of the
+candles flanking the inkstand. As the wax descended on the paper Faxon
+remarked again the strange emaciation, the premature physical weariness,
+of the hand that held it: he wondered if Mr. Lavington had ever noticed
+his nephew's hand, and if it were not poignantly visible to him now.
+
+With this thought in his mind, Faxon raised his eyes to look at
+Mr. Lavington. The great man's gaze rested on Frank Rainer with an
+expression of untroubled benevolence; and at the same instant Faxon's
+attention was attracted by the presence in the room of another person,
+who must have joined the group while he was upstairs searching for the
+seal. The new-comer was a man of about Mr. Lavington's age and figure,
+who stood just behind his chair, and who, at the moment when Faxon
+first saw him, was gazing at young Rainer with an equal intensity of
+attention. The likeness between the two men--perhaps increased by the
+fact that the hooded lamps on the table left the figure behind the
+chair in shadow--struck Faxon the more because of the contrast in their
+expression. John Lavington, during his nephew's clumsy attempt to
+drop the wax and apply the seal, continued to fasten on him a look
+of half-amused affection; while the man behind the chair, so oddly
+reduplicating the lines of his features and figure, turned on the boy a
+face of pale hostility.
+
+The impression was so startling that Faxon forgot what was going on
+about him. He was just dimly aware of young Rainer's exclaiming; "Your
+turn, Mr. Grisben!" of Mr. Grisben's protesting: "No--no; Mr. Faxon
+first," and of the pen's being thereupon transferred to his own hand.
+He received it with a deadly sense of being unable to move, or even to
+understand what was expected of him, till he became conscious of Mr.
+Grisben's paternally pointing out the precise spot on which he was to
+leave his autograph. The effort to fix his attention and steady his hand
+prolonged the process of signing, and when he stood up--a strange weight
+of fatigue on all his limbs--the figure behind Mr. Lavington's chair was
+gone.
+
+Faxon felt an immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling that the man's
+exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr.
+Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that
+the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any
+rate he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted.
+Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch inscribing his name
+at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington--his eyes no longer on his
+nephew--examining a strange white-winged orchid in the vase at his
+elbow. Every thing suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple
+again, and Faxon found himself responding with a smile to the affable
+gesture with which his host declared: "And now, Mr. Faxon, we'll dine."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"I wonder how I blundered into the wrong room just now; I thought you
+told me to take the second door to the left," Faxon said to Frank Rainer
+as they followed the older men down the gallery.
+
+"So I did; but I probably forgot to tell you which staircase to take.
+Coming from your bedroom, I ought to have said the fourth door to the
+right. It's a puzzling house, because my uncle keeps adding to it from
+year to year. He built this room last summer for his modern pictures."
+
+Young Rainer, pausing to open another door, touched an electric button
+which sent a circle of light about the walls of a long room hung with
+canvases of the French impressionist school.
+
+Faxon advanced, attracted by a shimmering Monet, but Rainer laid a hand
+on his arm.
+
+"He bought that last week. But come along--I'll show you all this after
+dinner. Or _he_ will, rather--he loves it."
+
+"Does he really love things?"
+
+Rainer stared, clearly perplexed at the question. "Rather! Flowers and
+pictures especially! Haven't you noticed the flowers? I suppose you
+think his manner's cold; it seems so at first; but he's really awfully
+keen about things."
+
+Faxon looked quickly at the speaker. "Has your uncle a brother?"
+
+"Brother? No--never had. He and my mother were the only ones."
+
+"Or any relation who--who looks like him? Who might be mistaken for
+him?"
+
+"Not that I ever heard of. Does he remind you of some one?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's queer. We'll ask him if he's got a double. Come on!"
+
+But another picture had arrested Faxon, and some minutes elapsed before
+he and his young host reached the dining-room. It was a large room,
+with the same conventionally handsome furniture and delicately grouped
+flowers; and Faxon's first glance showed him that only three men
+were seated about the dining-table. The man who had stood behind Mr.
+Lavington's chair was not present, and no seat awaited him.
+
+When the young men entered, Mr. Grisben was speaking, and his host, who
+faced the door, sat looking down at his untouched soup-plate and turning
+the spoon about in his small dry hand.
+
+"It's pretty late to call them rumours--they were devilish close to
+facts when we left town this morning," Mr. Grisben was saying, with an
+unexpected incisiveness of tone.
+
+Mr. Lavington laid down his spoon and smiled interrogatively. "Oh,
+facts--what _are_ facts? Just the way a thing happens to look at a given
+minute...."
+
+"You haven't heard anything from town?" Mr. Grisben persisted.
+
+"Not a syllable. So you see.... Balch, a little more of that _petite
+marmite_. Mr. Faxon... between Frank and Mr. Grisben, please."
+
+The dinner progressed through a series of complicated courses,
+ceremoniously dispensed by a prelatical butler attended by three
+tall footmen, and it was evident that Mr. Lavington took a certain
+satisfaction in the pageant. That, Faxon reflected, was probably
+the joint in his armour--that and the flowers. He had changed the
+subject--not abruptly but firmly--when the young men entered, but
+Faxon perceived that it still possessed the thoughts of the two elderly
+visitors, and Mr. Balch presently observed, in a voice that seemed to
+come from the last survivor down a mine-shaft: "If it _does_ come, it
+will be the biggest crash since '93."
+
+Mr. Lavington looked bored but polite. "Wall Street can stand crashes
+better than it could then. It's got a robuster constitution."
+
+"Yes; but--"
+
+"Speaking of constitutions," Mr. Grisben intervened: "Frank, are you
+taking care of yourself?"
+
+A flush rose to young Rainer's cheeks.
+
+"Why, of course! Isn't that what I'm here for?"
+
+"You're here about three days in the month, aren't you? And the rest of
+the time it's crowded restaurants and hot ballrooms in town. I thought
+you were to be shipped off to New Mexico?"
+
+"Oh, I've got a new man who says that's rot."
+
+"Well, you don't look as if your new man were right," said Mr. Grisben
+bluntly.
+
+Faxon saw the lad's colour fade, and the rings of shadow deepen under
+his gay eyes. At the same moment his uncle turned to him with a renewed
+intensity of attention. There was such solicitude in Mr. Lavington's
+gaze that it seemed almost to fling a shield between his nephew and Mr.
+Grisben's tactless scrutiny.
+
+"We think Frank's a good deal better," he began; "this new doctor--"
+
+The butler, coming up, bent to whisper a word in his ear, and the
+communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington's expression. His
+face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as
+to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He
+half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid smile about the table.
+
+"Will you excuse me? The telephone. Peters, go on with the dinner." With
+small precise steps he walked out of the door which one of the footmen
+had thrown open.
+
+A momentary silence fell on the group; then Mr. Grisben once more
+addressed himself to Rainer. "You ought to have gone, my boy; you ought
+to have gone."
+
+The anxious look returned to the youth's eyes. "My uncle doesn't think
+so, really."
+
+"You're not a baby, to be always governed by your uncle's opinion. You
+came of age to-day, didn't you? Your uncle spoils you.... that's what's
+the matter...."
+
+The thrust evidently went home, for Rainer laughed and looked down with
+a slight accession of colour.
+
+"But the doctor--"
+
+"Use your common sense, Frank! You had to try twenty doctors to find one
+to tell you what you wanted to be told."
+
+A look of apprehension overshadowed Rainer', gaiety. "Oh, come--I
+say!... What would _you_ do?" he stammered.
+
+"Pack up and jump on the first train." Mr. Grisben leaned forward and
+laid his hand kindly on the young man's arm. "Look here: my nephew Jim
+Grisben is out there ranching on a big scale. He'll take you in and be
+glad to have you. You say your new doctor thinks it won't do you any
+good; but he doesn't pretend to say it will do you harm, does he? Well,
+then--give it a trial. It'll take you out of hot theatres and night
+restaurants, anyhow.... And all the rest of it.... Eh, Balch?"
+
+"Go!" said Mr. Balch hollowly. "Go _at once_," he added, as if a closer
+look at the youth's face had impressed on him the need of backing up his
+friend.
+
+Young Rainer had turned ashy-pale. He tried to stiffen his mouth into a
+smile. "Do I look as bad as all that?"
+
+Mr. Grisben was helping himself to terrapin. "You look like the day
+after an earthquake," he said.
+
+The terrapin had encircled the table, and been deliberately enjoyed by
+Mr. Lavington's three visitors (Rainer, Faxon noticed, left his plate
+untouched) before the door was thrown open to re-admit their host.
+Mr. Lavington advanced with an air of recovered composure. He seated
+himself, picked up his napkin and consulted the gold-monogrammed menu.
+"No, don't bring back the filet.... Some terrapin; yes...." He looked
+affably about the table. "Sorry to have deserted you, but the storm has
+played the deuce with the wires, and I had to wait a long time before I
+could get a good connection. It must be blowing up for a blizzard."
+
+"Uncle Jack," young Rainer broke out, "Mr. Grisben's been lecturing me."
+
+Mr. Lavington was helping himself to terrapin. "Ah--what about?"
+
+"He thinks I ought to have given New Mexico a show."
+
+"I want him to go straight out to my nephew at Santa Paz and stay there
+till his next birthday." Mr. Lavington signed to the butler to hand the
+terrapin to Mr. Grisben, who, as he took a second helping, addressed
+himself again to Rainer. "Jim's in New York now, and going back the day
+after tomorrow in Olyphant's private car. I'll ask Olyphant to squeeze
+you in if you'll go. And when you've been out there a week or two, in
+the saddle all day and sleeping nine hours a night, I suspect you won't
+think much of the doctor who prescribed New York."
+
+Faxon spoke up, he knew not why. "I was out there once: it's a splendid
+life. I saw a fellow--oh, a really _bad_ case--who'd been simply made
+over by it."
+
+"It _does_ sound jolly," Rainer laughed, a sudden eagerness in his tone.
+
+His uncle looked at him gently. "Perhaps Grisben's right. It's an
+opportunity--"
+
+Faxon glanced up with a start: the figure dimly perceived in the study
+was now more visibly and tangibly planted behind Mr. Lavington's chair.
+
+"That's right, Frank: you see your uncle approves. And the trip out
+there with Olyphant isn't a thing to be missed. So drop a few dozen
+dinners and be at the Grand Central the day after tomorrow at five."
+
+Mr. Grisben's pleasant grey eye sought corroboration of his host, and
+Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him as he
+turned his glance on Mr. Lavington. One could not look at Lavington
+without seeing the presence at his back, and it was clear that, the next
+minute, some change in Mr. Grisben's expression must give his watcher a
+clue.
+
+But Mr. Grisben's expression did not change: the gaze he fixed on his
+host remained unperturbed, and the clue he gave was the startling one of
+not seeming to see the other figure.
+
+Faxon's first impulse was to look away, to look anywhere else, to resort
+again to the champagne glass the watchful butler had already brimmed;
+but some fatal attraction, at war in him with an overwhelming physical
+resistance, held his eyes upon the spot they feared.
+
+The figure was still standing, more distinctly, and therefore more
+resemblingly, at Mr. Lavington's back; and while the latter continued
+to gaze affectionately at his nephew, his counterpart, as before, fixed
+young Rainer with eyes of deadly menace.
+
+Faxon, with what felt like an actual wrench of the muscles, dragged his
+own eyes from the sight to scan the other countenances about the table;
+but not one revealed the least consciousness of what he saw, and a sense
+of mortal isolation sank upon him.
+
+"It's worth considering, certainly--" he heard Mr. Lavington continue;
+and as Rainer's face lit up, the face behind his uncle's chair seemed to
+gather into its look all the fierce weariness of old unsatisfied hates.
+That was the thing that, as the minutes laboured by, Faxon was becoming
+most conscious of. The watcher behind the chair was no longer merely
+malevolent: he had grown suddenly, unutterably tired. His hatred seemed
+to well up out of the very depths of balked effort and thwarted hopes,
+and the fact made him more pitiable, and yet more dire.
+
+Faxon's look reverted to Mr. Lavington, as if to surprise in him a
+corresponding change. At first none was visible: his pinched smile was
+screwed to his blank face like a gas-light to a white-washed wall. Then
+the fixity of the smile became ominous: Faxon saw that its wearer was
+afraid to let it go. It was evident that Mr. Lavington was unutterably
+tired too, and the discovery sent a colder current through Faxon's
+veins. Looking down at his untouched plate, he caught the soliciting
+twinkle of the champagne glass; but the sight of the wine turned him
+sick.
+
+"Well, we'll go into the details presently," he heard Mr. Lavington say,
+still on the question of his nephew's future. "Let's have a cigar first.
+No--not here, Peters." He turned his smile on Faxon. "When we've had
+coffee I want to show you my pictures."
+
+"Oh, by the way, Uncle Jack--Mr. Faxon wants to know if you've got a
+double?"
+
+"A double?" Mr. Lavington, still smiling, continued to address himself
+to his guest. "Not that I know of. Have you seen one, Mr. Faxon?"
+
+Faxon thought: "My God, if I look up now they'll _both_ be looking at
+me!" To avoid raising his eyes he made as though to lift the glass to
+his lips; but his hand sank inert, and he looked up. Mr. Lavington's
+glance was politely bent on him, but with a loosening of the strain
+about his heart he saw that the figure behind the chair still kept its
+gaze on Rainer.
+
+"Do you think you've seen my double, Mr. Faxon?"
+
+Would the other face turn if he said yes? Faxon felt a dryness in his
+throat. "No," he answered.
+
+"Ah? It's possible I've a dozen. I believe I'm extremely usual-looking,"
+Mr. Lavington went on conversationally; and still the other face watched
+Rainer.
+
+"It was... a mistake... a confusion of memory...." Faxon heard himself
+stammer. Mr. Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr.
+Grisben suddenly leaned forward.
+
+"Lavington! What have we been thinking of? We haven't drunk Frank's
+health!"
+
+Mr. Lavington reseated himself. "My dear boy!... Peters, another
+bottle...." He turned to his nephew. "After such a sin of omission I
+don't presume to propose the toast myself... but Frank knows.... Go
+ahead, Grisben!"
+
+The boy shone on his uncle. "No, no, Uncle Jack! Mr. Grisben won't mind.
+Nobody but _you_--to-day!"
+
+The butler was replenishing the glasses. He filled Mr. Lavington's last,
+and Mr. Lavington put out his small hand to raise it.... As he did so,
+Faxon looked away.
+
+"Well, then--All the good I've wished you in all the past years.... I
+put it into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy and happy and
+many... and _many_, dear boy!"
+
+Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses.
+Automatically, he reached for his. His eyes were still on the table, and
+he repeated to himself with a trembling vehemence: "I won't look up! I
+won't.... I won't...."
+
+His fingers clasped the glass and raised it to the level of his lips.
+He saw the other hands making the same motion. He heard Mr. Grisben's
+genial "Hear! Hear!" and Mr. Batch's hollow echo. He said to himself,
+as the rim of the glass touched his lips: "I won't look up! I swear I
+won't!--" and he looked.
+
+The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold
+it there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval before he
+could trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to the table. It was
+this merciful preoccupation which saved him, kept him from crying out,
+from losing his hold, from slipping down into the bottomless blackness
+that gaped for him. As long as the problem of the glass engaged him he
+felt able to keep his seat, manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into
+the group; but as the glass touched the table his last link with safety
+snapped. He stood up and dashed out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to turn
+back and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out something
+about a touch of dizziness, and joining them presently; and the boy
+nodded sympathetically and drew back.
+
+At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. "I should like to
+telephone to Weymore," he said with dry lips.
+
+"Sorry, sir; wires all down. We've been trying the last hour to get New
+York again for Mr. Lavington."
+
+Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The
+lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books; in the ashes a log still
+glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face. The room was
+profoundly silent, the whole house was still: nothing about him gave a
+hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in the room he had flown
+from, and with the covering of his eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed
+to fall on him. But they fell for a moment only; then his lids opened
+again to the monstrous vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a
+part of him forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain.
+But why into his--just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what he
+had seen? What business was it of _his_, in God's name? Any one of the
+others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated
+it; but _he_, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom
+none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal
+what he knew--_he_ alone had been singled out as the victim of this
+dreadful initiation!
+
+Suddenly he sat up, listening: he had heard a step on the stairs. Some
+one, no doubt, was coming to see how he was--to urge him, if he felt
+better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he opened his
+door; yes, it was young Rainer's step. Faxon looked down the passage,
+remembered the other stairway and darted to it. All he wanted was to get
+out of the house. Not another instant would he breathe its abominable
+air! What business was it of _his_, in God's name?
+
+He reached the opposite end of the lower gallery, and beyond it saw
+the hall by which he had entered. It was empty, and on a long table he
+recognized his coat and cap. He got into his coat, unbolted the door,
+and plunged into the purifying night.
+
+The darkness was deep, and the cold so intense that for an instant
+it stopped his breathing. Then he perceived that only a thin snow was
+falling, and resolutely he set his face for flight. The trees along the
+avenue marked his way as he hastened with long strides over the beaten
+snow. Gradually, while he walked, the tumult in his brain subsided. The
+impulse to fly still drove him forward, but he began feel that he was
+flying from a terror of his own creating, and that the most urgent
+reason for escape was the need of hiding his state, of shunning other
+eyes till he should regain his balance.
+
+He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on a
+discouraging situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had turned
+to exasperation when he found that the Weymore sleigh was not awaiting
+him. It was absurd, of course; but, though he had joked with Rainer over
+Mrs. Culme's forgetfulness, to confess it had cost a pang. That was what
+his rootless life had brought him to: for lack of a personal stake in
+things his sensibility was at the mercy of such trifles.... Yes; that,
+and the cold and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of
+starved aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over
+which, once or twice before, his terrified brain had hung.
+
+Why else, in the name of any imaginable logic, human or devilish,
+should he, a stranger, be singled out for this experience? What could
+it mean to him, how was he related to it, what bearing had it on his
+case?... Unless, indeed, it was just because he was a stranger--a
+stranger everywhere--because he had no personal life, no warm screen of
+private egotisms to shield him from exposure, that he had developed this
+abnormal sensitiveness to the vicissitudes of others. The thought pulled
+him up with a shudder. No! Such a fate was too abominable; all that
+was strong and sound in him rejected it. A thousand times better regard
+himself as ill, disorganized, deluded, than as the predestined victim of
+such warnings!
+
+He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge. The wind had
+risen and was sweeping the snow into his race. The cold had him in its
+grasp again, and he stood uncertain. Should he put his sanity to the
+test and go back? He turned and looked down the dark drive to the house.
+A single ray shone through the trees, evoking a picture of the lights,
+the flowers, the faces grouped about that fatal room. He turned and
+plunged out into the road....
+
+He remembered that, about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had pointed
+out the road to Northridge; and he began to walk in that direction.
+Once in the road he had the gale in his face, and the wet snow on his
+moustache and eye-lashes instantly hardened to ice. The same ice seemed
+to be driving a million blades into his throat and lungs, but he pushed
+on, the vision of the warm room pursuing him.
+
+The snow in the road was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts and
+sank into drifts, and the wind drove against him like a granite cliff.
+Now and then he stopped, gasping, as if an invisible hand had tightened
+an iron band about his body; then he started again, stiffening himself
+against the stealthy penetration of the cold. The snow continued to
+descend out of a pall of inscrutable darkness, and once or twice he
+paused, fearing he had missed the road to Northridge; but, seeing no
+sign of a turn, he ploughed on.
+
+At last, feeling sure that he had walked for more than a mile, he halted
+and looked back. The act of turning brought immediate relief, first
+because it put his back to the wind, and then because, far down the
+road, it showed him the gleam of a lantern. A sleigh was coming--a
+sleigh that might perhaps give him a lift to the village! Fortified by
+the hope, he began to walk back toward the light. It came forward very
+slowly, with unaccountable sigsags and waverings; and even when he was
+within a few yards of it he could catch no sound of sleigh-bells. Then
+it paused and became stationary by the roadside, as though carried by
+a pedestrian who had stopped, exhausted by the cold. The thought made
+Faxon hasten on, and a moment later he was stooping over a motionless
+figure huddled against the snow-bank. The lantern had dropped from its
+bearer's hand, and Faxon, fearfully raising it, threw its light into the
+face of Frank Rainer.
+
+"Rainer! What on earth are you doing here?"
+
+The boy smiled back through his pallour. "What are _you_, I'd like to
+know?" he retorted; and, scrambling to his feet with a clutch oh Faxon's
+arm, he added gaily: "Well, I've run you down!"
+
+Faxon stood confounded, his heart sinking. The lad's face was grey.
+
+"What madness--" he began.
+
+"Yes, it _is_. What on earth did you do it for?"
+
+"I? Do what?... Why I.... I was just taking a walk.... I often walk at
+night...."
+
+Frank Rainer burst into a laugh. "On such nights? Then you hadn't
+bolted?"
+
+"Bolted?"
+
+"Because I'd done something to offend you? My uncle thought you had."
+
+Faxon grasped his arm. "Did your uncle send you after me?"
+
+"Well, he gave me an awful rowing for not going up to your room with
+you when you said you were ill. And when we found you'd gone we were
+frightened--and he was awfully upset--so I said I'd catch you.... You're
+_not_ ill, are you?"
+
+"Ill? No. Never better." Faxon picked up the lantern. "Come; let's go
+back. It was awfully hot in that dining-room."
+
+"Yes; I hoped it was only that."
+
+They trudged on in silence for a few minutes; then Faxon questioned:
+"You're not too done up?"
+
+"Oh, no. It's a lot easier with the wind behind us."
+
+"All right. Don't talk any more."
+
+They pushed ahead, walking, in spite of the light that guided them,
+more slowly than Faxon had walked alone into the gale. The fact of his
+companion's stumbling against a drift gave Faxon a pretext for saying:
+"Take hold of my arm," and Rainer obeying, gasped out: "I'm blown!"
+
+"So am I. Who wouldn't be?"
+
+"What a dance you led me! If it hadn't been for one of the servants
+happening to see you--"
+
+"Yes; all right. And now, won't you kindly shut up?"
+
+Rainer laughed and hung on him. "Oh, the cold doesn't hurt me...."
+
+For the first few minutes after Rainer had overtaken him, anxiety
+for the lad had been Faxon's only thought. But as each labouring step
+carried them nearer to the spot he had been fleeing, the reasons for his
+flight grew more ominous and more insistent. No, he was not ill, he was
+not distraught and deluded--he was the instrument singled out to warn
+and save; and here he was, irresistibly driven, dragging the victim back
+to his doom!
+
+The intensity of the conviction had almost checked his steps. But what
+could he do or say? At all costs he must get Rainer out of the cold,
+into the house and into his bed. After that he would act.
+
+The snow-fall was thickening, and as they reached a stretch of the road
+between open fields the wind took them at an angle, lashing their faces
+with barbed thongs. Rainer stopped to take breath, and Faxon felt the
+heavier pressure of his arm.
+
+"When we get to the lodge, can't we telephone to the stable for a
+sleigh?"
+
+"If they're not all asleep at the lodge."
+
+"Oh, I'll manage. Don't talk!" Faxon ordered; and they plodded on....
+
+At length the lantern ray showed ruts that curved away from the road
+under tree-darkness.
+
+Faxon's spirits rose. "There's the gate! We'll be there in five
+minutes."
+
+As he spoke he caught, above the boundary hedge, the gleam of a light at
+the farther end of the dark avenue. It was the same light that had shone
+on the scene of which every detail was burnt into his brain; and he felt
+again its overpowering reality. No--he couldn't let the boy go back!
+
+They were at the lodge at last, and Faxon was hammering on the door. He
+said to himself: "I'll get him inside first, and make them give him a
+hot drink. Then I'll see--I'll find an argument...."
+
+There was no answer to his knocking, and after an interval Rainer said:
+"Look here--we'd better go on."
+
+"No!"
+
+"I can, perfectly--"
+
+"You sha'n't go to the house, I say!" Faxon redoubled his blows, and
+at length steps sounded on the stairs. Rainer was leaning against the
+lintel, and as the door opened the light from the hall flashed on his
+pale face and fixed eyes. Faxon caught him by the arm and drew him in.
+
+"It _was_ cold out there." he sighed; and then, abruptly, as if
+invisible shears at a single stroke had cut every muscle in his body, he
+swerved, drooped on Faxon's arm, and seemed to sink into nothing at his
+feet.
+
+The lodge-keeper and Faxon bent over him, and somehow, between them,
+lifted him into the kitchen and laid him on a sofa by the stove.
+
+The lodge-keeper, stammering: "I'll ring up the house," dashed out of
+the room. But Faxon heard the words without heeding them: omens mattered
+nothing now, beside this woe fulfilled. He knelt down to undo the fur
+collar about Rainer's throat, and as he did so he felt a warm moisture
+on his hands. He held them up, and they were red....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The palms threaded their endless line along the yellow river. The little
+steamer lay at the wharf, and George Faxon, sitting in the verandah of
+the wooden hotel, idly watched the coolies carrying the freight across
+the gang-plank.
+
+He had been looking at such scenes for two months. Nearly five had
+elapsed since he had descended from the train at Northridge and strained
+his eyes for the sleigh that was to take him to Weymore: Weymore, which
+he was never to behold!... Part of the interval--the first part--was
+still a great grey blur. Even now he could not be quite sure how he
+had got back to Boston, reached the house of a cousin, and been thence
+transferred to a quiet room looking out on snow under bare trees. He
+looked out a long time at the same scene, and finally one day a man
+he had known at Harvard came to see him and invited him to go out on a
+business trip to the Malay Peninsula.
+
+"You've had a bad shake-up, and it'll do you no end of good to get away
+from things."
+
+When the doctor came the next day it turned out that he knew of the plan
+and approved it. "You ought to be quiet for a year. Just loaf and look
+at the landscape," he advised.
+
+Faxon felt the first faint stirrings of curiosity.
+
+"What's been the matter with me, anyway?"
+
+"Well, over-work, I suppose. You must have been bottling up for a bad
+breakdown before you started for New Hampshire last December. And the
+shock of that poor boy's death did the rest."
+
+Ah, yes--Rainer had died. He remembered....
+
+He started for the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life
+crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was patient
+and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first
+Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar
+things. He seldom looked at a newspaper and he never opened a letter
+without a contraction of the heart. It was not that he had any special
+cause for apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on
+everything. He had looked too deep down into the abyss.... But little
+by little health and energy returned to him, and with them the common
+promptings of curiosity. He was beginning to wonder how the world was
+going, and when, presently, the hotel-keeper told him there were no
+letters for him in the steamer's mail-bag, he felt a distinct sense of
+disappointment. His friend had gone into the jungle on a long excursion,
+and he was lonely, unoccupied and wholesomely bored. He got up and
+strolled into the stuffy reading-room.
+
+There he found a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle, some
+copies of _Zion's Herald_ and a pile of New York and London newspapers.
+
+He began to glance through the papers, and was disappointed to find that
+they were less recent than he had hoped. Evidently the last numbers had
+been carried off by luckier travellers. He continued to turn them over,
+picking out the American ones first. These, as it happened, were the
+oldest: they dated back to December and January. To Faxon, however, they
+had all the flavour of novelty, since they covered the precise period
+during which he had virtually ceased to exist. It had never before
+occurred to him to wonder what had happened in the world during that
+interval of obliteration; but now he felt a sudden desire to know.
+
+To prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically,
+and as he found and spread out the earliest number, the date at the top
+of the page entered into his consciousness like a key slipping into a
+lock. It was the seventeenth of December: the date of the day after his
+arrival at Northridge. He glanced at the first page and read in blazing
+characters: "Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company. Lavington's name
+involved. Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall Street to Its
+Foundations."
+
+He read on, and when he had finished the first paper he turned to the
+next. There was a gap of three days, but the Opal Cement "Investigation"
+still held the centre of the stage. From its complex revelations of
+greed and ruin his eye wandered to the death notices, and he read:
+"Rainer. Suddenly, at Northridge, New Hampshire, Francis John, only son
+of the late...."
+
+His eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper and sat for a long time
+with his face in his hands. When he looked up again he noticed that his
+gesture had pushed the other papers from the table and scattered them at
+his feet. The uppermost lay spread out before him, and heavily his eyes
+began their search again. "John Lavington comes forward with plan for
+reconstructing Company. Offers to put in ten millions of his own--The
+proposal under consideration by the District Attorney."
+
+Ten millions... ten millions of his own. But if John Lavington was
+ruined?... Faxon stood up with a cry. That was it, then--that was what
+the warning meant! And if he had not fled from it, dashed wildly away
+from it into the night, he might have broken the spell of iniquity, the
+powers of darkness might not have prevailed! He caught up the pile of
+newspapers and began to glance through each in turn for the head-line:
+"Wills Admitted to Probate." In the last of all he found the paragraph
+he sought, and it stared up at him as if with Rainer's dying eyes.
+
+That--_that_ was what he had done! The powers of pity had singled him
+out to warn and save, and he had closed his ears to their call, and
+washed his hands of it, and fled. Washed his hands of it! That was
+the word. It caught him back to the dreadful moment in the lodge when,
+raising himself up from Rainer's side, he had looked at his hands and
+seen that they were red....
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Triumph Of Night, by Edith Wharton
+
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