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@@ -0,0 +1,5874 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, +Part 2 (of 10), 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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) + +Author: Edith Wharton + +Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #306] +Release Date: August, 1995 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY SHORT FICTION *** + + + + +Produced by John Hamm + + + + + +THE EARLY SHORT FICTION OF EDITH WHARTON + +A Ten-Part Collection + +Volume Two + + + +Contents of Part Two + + Stories + AFTERWARD............................January 1910 + THE FULNESS OF LIFE..................December 1893 + A VENETIAN NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT.....December 1903 + XINGU................................December 1911 + THE VERDICT..........................June 1908 + THE RECKONING........................August 1902 + + + Verse + + BOTTICELLI'S MADONNA IN THE LOUVRE...January 1891 + THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI...........February 1891 + THE SONNET...........................November 1891 + TWO BACKGROUNDS......................November 1892 + EXPERIENCE...........................January 1893 + CHARTRES.............................September 1893 + LIFE.................................June 1894 + AN AUTUMN SUNSET.....................October 1894 + + + + + +AFTERWARD + +January 1910 + + + + +I + + +"Oh, there IS one, of course, but you'll never know it." + +The assertion, laughingly flung out six months earlier in a bright June +garden, came back to Mary Boyne with a sharp perception of its latent +significance as she stood, in the December dusk, waiting for the lamps +to be brought into the library. + +The words had been spoken by their friend Alida Stair, as they sat at +tea on her lawn at Pangbourne, in reference to the very house of which +the library in question was the central, the pivotal "feature." Mary +Boyne and her husband, in quest of a country place in one of the +southern or southwestern counties, had, on their arrival in England, +carried their problem straight to Alida Stair, who had successfully +solved it in her own case; but it was not until they had rejected, +almost capriciously, several practical and judicious suggestions that +she threw it out: "Well, there's Lyng, in Dorsetshire. It belongs to +Hugo's cousins, and you can get it for a song." + +The reasons she gave for its being obtainable on these terms--its +remoteness from a station, its lack of electric light, hot-water pipes, +and other vulgar necessities--were exactly those pleading in its +favor with two romantic Americans perversely in search of the economic +drawbacks which were associated, in their tradition, with unusual +architectural felicities. + +"I should never believe I was living in an old house unless I was +thoroughly uncomfortable," Ned Boyne, the more extravagant of the two, +had jocosely insisted; "the least hint of 'convenience' would make me +think it had been bought out of an exhibition, with the pieces numbered, +and set up again." And they had proceeded to enumerate, with humorous +precision, their various suspicions and exactions, refusing to believe +that the house their cousin recommended was REALLY Tudor till they +learned it had no heating system, or that the village church was +literally in the grounds till she assured them of the deplorable +uncertainty of the water-supply. + +"It's too uncomfortable to be true!" Edward Boyne had continued to exult +as the avowal of each disadvantage was successively wrung from her; but +he had cut short his rhapsody to ask, with a sudden relapse to distrust: +"And the ghost? You've been concealing from us the fact that there is no +ghost!" + +Mary, at the moment, had laughed with him, yet almost with her laugh, +being possessed of several sets of independent perceptions, had noted a +sudden flatness of tone in Alida's answering hilarity. + +"Oh, Dorsetshire's full of ghosts, you know." + +"Yes, yes; but that won't do. I don't want to have to drive ten miles +to see somebody else's ghost. I want one of my own on the premises. IS +there a ghost at Lyng?" + +His rejoinder had made Alida laugh again, and it was then that she had +flung back tantalizingly: "Oh, there IS one, of course, but you'll never +know it." + +"Never know it?" Boyne pulled her up. "But what in the world constitutes +a ghost except the fact of its being known for one?" + +"I can't say. But that's the story." + +"That there's a ghost, but that nobody knows it's a ghost?" + +"Well--not till afterward, at any rate." + +"Till afterward?" + +"Not till long, long afterward." + +"But if it's once been identified as an unearthly visitant, why hasn't +its signalement been handed down in the family? How has it managed to +preserve its incognito?" + +Alida could only shake her head. "Don't ask me. But it has." + +"And then suddenly--" Mary spoke up as if from some cavernous depth of +divination--"suddenly, long afterward, one says to one's self, 'THAT WAS +it?'" + +She was oddly startled at the sepulchral sound with which her question +fell on the banter of the other two, and she saw the shadow of the same +surprise flit across Alida's clear pupils. "I suppose so. One just has +to wait." + +"Oh, hang waiting!" Ned broke in. "Life's too short for a ghost who can +only be enjoyed in retrospect. Can't we do better than that, Mary?" + +But it turned out that in the event they were not destined to, for +within three months of their conversation with Mrs. Stair they were +established at Lyng, and the life they had yearned for to the point of +planning it out in all its daily details had actually begun for them. + +It was to sit, in the thick December dusk, by just such a wide-hooded +fireplace, under just such black oak rafters, with the sense that beyond +the mullioned panes the downs were darkening to a deeper solitude: it +was for the ultimate indulgence in such sensations that Mary Boyne had +endured for nearly fourteen years the soul-deadening ugliness of the +Middle West, and that Boyne had ground on doggedly at his engineering +till, with a suddenness that still made her blink, the prodigious +windfall of the Blue Star Mine had put them at a stroke in possession +of life and the leisure to taste it. They had never for a moment meant +their new state to be one of idleness; but they meant to give themselves +only to harmonious activities. She had her vision of painting and +gardening (against a background of gray walls), he dreamed of the +production of his long-planned book on the "Economic Basis of +Culture"; and with such absorbing work ahead no existence could be too +sequestered; they could not get far enough from the world, or plunge +deep enough into the past. + +Dorsetshire had attracted them from the first by a semblance of +remoteness out of all proportion to its geographical position. But +to the Boynes it was one of the ever-recurring wonders of the whole +incredibly compressed island--a nest of counties, as they put it--that +for the production of its effects so little of a given quality went +so far: that so few miles made a distance, and so short a distance a +difference. + +"It's that," Ned had once enthusiastically explained, "that gives such +depth to their effects, such relief to their least contrasts. They've +been able to lay the butter so thick on every exquisite mouthful." + +The butter had certainly been laid on thick at Lyng: the old gray house, +hidden under a shoulder of the downs, had almost all the finer marks of +commerce with a protracted past. The mere fact that it was neither large +nor exceptional made it, to the Boynes, abound the more richly in +its special sense--the sense of having been for centuries a deep, dim +reservoir of life. The life had probably not been of the most vivid +order: for long periods, no doubt, it had fallen as noiselessly into +the past as the quiet drizzle of autumn fell, hour after hour, into the +green fish-pond between the yews; but these back-waters of existence +sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion, +and Mary Boyne had felt from the first the occasional brush of an +intenser memory. + +The feeling had never been stronger than on the December afternoon when, +waiting in the library for the belated lamps, she rose from her seat and +stood among the shadows of the hearth. Her husband had gone off, after +luncheon, for one of his long tramps on the downs. She had noticed of +late that he preferred to be unaccompanied on these occasions; and, +in the tried security of their personal relations, had been driven +to conclude that his book was bothering him, and that he needed the +afternoons to turn over in solitude the problems left from the morning's +work. Certainly the book was not going as smoothly as she had imagined +it would, and the lines of perplexity between his eyes had never been +there in his engineering days. Then he had often looked fagged to the +verge of illness, but the native demon of "worry" had never branded his +brow. Yet the few pages he had so far read to her--the introduction, and +a synopsis of the opening chapter--gave evidences of a firm possession +of his subject, and a deepening confidence in his powers. + +The fact threw her into deeper perplexity, since, now that he had done +with "business" and its disturbing contingencies, the one other possible +element of anxiety was eliminated. Unless it were his health, then? +But physically he had gained since they had come to Dorsetshire, grown +robuster, ruddier, and fresher-eyed. It was only within a week that she +had felt in him the undefinable change that made her restless in his +absence, and as tongue-tied in his presence as though it were SHE who +had a secret to keep from him! + +The thought that there WAS a secret somewhere between them struck her +with a sudden smart rap of wonder, and she looked about her down the +dim, long room. + +"Can it be the house?" she mused. + +The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be +piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of +velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the dusky walls of books, +the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hooded hearth. + +"Why, of course--the house is haunted!" she reflected. + +The ghost--Alida's imperceptible ghost--after figuring largely in the +banter of their first month or two at Lyng, had been gradually discarded +as too ineffectual for imaginative use. Mary had, indeed, as became the +tenant of a haunted house, made the customary inquiries among her few +rural neighbors, but, beyond a vague, "They du say so, Ma'am," the +villagers had nothing to impart. The elusive specter had apparently +never had sufficient identity for a legend to crystallize about it, +and after a time the Boynes had laughingly set the matter down to their +profit-and-loss account, agreeing that Lyng was one of the few houses +good enough in itself to dispense with supernatural enhancements. + +"And I suppose, poor, ineffectual demon, that's why it beats its +beautiful wings in vain in the void," Mary had laughingly concluded. + +"Or, rather," Ned answered, in the same strain, "why, amid so much +that's ghostly, it can never affirm its separate existence as THE +ghost." And thereupon their invisible housemate had finally dropped out +of their references, which were numerous enough to make them promptly +unaware of the loss. + +Now, as she stood on the hearth, the subject of their earlier curiosity +revived in her with a new sense of its meaning--a sense gradually +acquired through close daily contact with the scene of the lurking +mystery. It was the house itself, of course, that possessed the +ghost-seeing faculty, that communed visually but secretly with its own +past; and if one could only get into close enough communion with the +house, one might surprise its secret, and acquire the ghost-sight on +one's own account. Perhaps, in his long solitary hours in this very +room, where she never trespassed till the afternoon, her husband HAD +acquired it already, and was silently carrying the dread weight of +whatever it had revealed to him. Mary was too well-versed in the code of +the spectral world not to know that one could not talk about the ghosts +one saw: to do so was almost as great a breach of good-breeding as to +name a lady in a club. But this explanation did not really satisfy her. +"What, after all, except for the fun of the frisson," she reflected, +"would he really care for any of their old ghosts?" And thence she was +thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one's +greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular +bearing on the case, since, when one DID see a ghost at Lyng, one did +not know it. + +"Not till long afterward," Alida Stair had said. Well, supposing Ned HAD +seen one when they first came, and had known only within the last week +what had happened to him? More and more under the spell of the hour, she +threw back her searching thoughts to the early days of their tenancy, +but at first only to recall a gay confusion of unpacking, settling, +arranging of books, and calling to each other from remote corners of the +house as treasure after treasure of their habitation revealed itself to +them. It was in this particular connection that she presently recalled +a certain soft afternoon of the previous October, when, passing from the +first rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed inspection of the +old house, she had pressed (like a novel heroine) a panel that opened at +her touch, on a narrow flight of stairs leading to an unsuspected flat +ledge of the roof--the roof which, from below, seemed to slope away on +all sides too abruptly for any but practised feet to scale. + +The view from this hidden coign was enchanting, and she had flown down +to snatch Ned from his papers and give him the freedom of her discovery. +She remembered still how, standing on the narrow ledge, he had passed +his arm about her while their gaze flew to the long, tossed horizon-line +of the downs, and then dropped contentedly back to trace the arabesque +of yew hedges about the fish-pond, and the shadow of the cedar on the +lawn. + +"And now the other way," he had said, gently turning her about within +his arm; and closely pressed to him, she had absorbed, like some long, +satisfying draft, the picture of the gray-walled court, the squat lions +on the gates, and the lime-avenue reaching up to the highroad under the +downs. + +It was just then, while they gazed and held each other, that she had +felt his arm relax, and heard a sharp "Hullo!" that made her turn to +glance at him. + +Distinctly, yes, she now recalled she had seen, as she glanced, a shadow +of anxiety, of perplexity, rather, fall across his face; and, following +his eyes, had beheld the figure of a man--a man in loose, grayish +clothes, as it appeared to her--who was sauntering down the lime-avenue +to the court with the tentative gait of a stranger seeking his way. Her +short-sighted eyes had given her but a blurred impression of slightness +and grayness, with something foreign, or at least unlocal, in the cut of +the figure or its garb; but her husband had apparently seen more--seen +enough to make him push past her with a sharp "Wait!" and dash down the +twisting stairs without pausing to give her a hand for the descent. + +A slight tendency to dizziness obliged her, after a provisional clutch +at the chimney against which they had been leaning, to follow him down +more cautiously; and when she had reached the attic landing she paused +again for a less definite reason, leaning over the oak banister to +strain her eyes through the silence of the brown, sun-flecked depths +below. She lingered there till, somewhere in those depths, she heard +the closing of a door; then, mechanically impelled, she went down the +shallow flights of steps till she reached the lower hall. + +The front door stood open on the mild sunlight of the court, and +hall and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and after +listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she quickly crossed +the threshold, and found her husband alone, vaguely fingering the papers +on his desk. + +He looked up, as if surprised at her precipitate entrance, but the +shadow of anxiety had passed from his face, leaving it even, as she +fancied, a little brighter and clearer than usual. + +"What was it? Who was it?" she asked. + +"Who?" he repeated, with the surprise still all on his side. + +"The man we saw coming toward the house." + +He seemed honestly to reflect. "The man? Why, I thought I saw Peters; +I dashed after him to say a word about the stable-drains, but he had +disappeared before I could get down." + +"Disappeared? Why, he seemed to be walking so slowly when we saw him." + +Boyne shrugged his shoulders. "So I thought; but he must have got up +steam in the interval. What do you say to our trying a scramble up +Meldon Steep before sunset?" + +That was all. At the time the occurrence had been less than nothing, +had, indeed, been immediately obliterated by the magic of their first +vision from Meldon Steep, a height which they had dreamed of climbing +ever since they had first seen its bare spine heaving itself above the +low roof of Lyng. Doubtless it was the mere fact of the other incident's +having occurred on the very day of their ascent to Meldon that had kept +it stored away in the unconscious fold of association from which it now +emerged; for in itself it had no mark of the portentous. At the moment +there could have been nothing more natural than that Ned should dash +himself from the roof in the pursuit of dilatory tradesmen. It was the +period when they were always on the watch for one or the other of the +specialists employed about the place; always lying in wait for them, +and dashing out at them with questions, reproaches, or reminders. And +certainly in the distance the gray figure had looked like Peters. + +Yet now, as she reviewed the rapid scene, she felt her husband's +explanation of it to have been invalidated by the look of anxiety on his +face. Why had the familiar appearance of Peters made him anxious? +Why, above all, if it was of such prime necessity to confer with that +authority on the subject of the stable-drains, had the failure to find +him produced such a look of relief? Mary could not say that any one +of these considerations had occurred to her at the time, yet, from the +promptness with which they now marshaled themselves at her summons, she +had a sudden sense that they must all along have been there, waiting +their hour. + + + + +II + + +Weary with her thoughts, she moved toward the window. The library was +now completely dark, and she was surprised to see how much faint light +the outer world still held. + +As she peered out into it across the court, a figure shaped itself in +the tapering perspective of bare lines: it looked a mere blot of deeper +gray in the grayness, and for an instant, as it moved toward her, her +heart thumped to the thought, "It's the ghost!" + +She had time, in that long instant, to feel suddenly that the man of +whom, two months earlier, she had a brief distant vision from the roof +was now, at his predestined hour, about to reveal himself as NOT +having been Peters; and her spirit sank under the impending fear of the +disclosure. But almost with the next tick of the clock the ambiguous +figure, gaining substance and character, showed itself even to her weak +sight as her husband's; and she turned away to meet him, as he entered, +with the confession of her folly. + +"It's really too absurd," she laughed out from the threshold, "but I +never CAN remember!" + +"Remember what?" Boyne questioned as they drew together. + +"That when one sees the Lyng ghost one never knows it." + +Her hand was on his sleeve, and he kept it there, but with no response +in his gesture or in the lines of his fagged, preoccupied face. + +"Did you think you'd seen it?" he asked, after an appreciable interval. + +"Why, I actually took YOU for it, my dear, in my mad determination to +spot it!" + +"Me--just now?" His arm dropped away, and he turned from her with a +faint echo of her laugh. "Really, dearest, you'd better give it up, if +that's the best you can do." + +"Yes, I give it up--I give it up. Have YOU?" she asked, turning round on +him abruptly. + +The parlor-maid had entered with letters and a lamp, and the light +struck up into Boyne's face as he bent above the tray she presented. + +"Have YOU?" Mary perversely insisted, when the servant had disappeared +on her errand of illumination. + +"Have I what?" he rejoined absently, the light bringing out the sharp +stamp of worry between his brows as he turned over the letters. + +"Given up trying to see the ghost." Her heart beat a little at the +experiment she was making. + +Her husband, laying his letters aside, moved away into the shadow of the +hearth. + +"I never tried," he said, tearing open the wrapper of a newspaper. + +"Well, of course," Mary persisted, "the exasperating thing is that +there's no use trying, since one can't be sure till so long afterward." + +He was unfolding the paper as if he had hardly heard her; but after a +pause, during which the sheets rustled spasmodically between his hands, +he lifted his head to say abruptly, "Have you any idea HOW LONG?" + +Mary had sunk into a low chair beside the fireplace. From her seat +she looked up, startled, at her husband's profile, which was darkly +projected against the circle of lamplight. + +"No; none. Have YOU?" she retorted, repeating her former phrase with an +added keenness of intention. + +Boyne crumpled the paper into a bunch, and then inconsequently turned +back with it toward the lamp. + +"Lord, no! I only meant," he explained, with a faint tinge of +impatience, "is there any legend, any tradition, as to that?" + +"Not that I know of," she answered; but the impulse to add, "What makes +you ask?" was checked by the reappearance of the parlor-maid with tea +and a second lamp. + +With the dispersal of shadows, and the repetition of the daily domestic +office, Mary Boyne felt herself less oppressed by that sense of +something mutely imminent which had darkened her solitary afternoon. For +a few moments she gave herself silently to the details of her task, and +when she looked up from it she was struck to the point of bewilderment +by the change in her husband's face. He had seated himself near the +farther lamp, and was absorbed in the perusal of his letters; but was it +something he had found in them, or merely the shifting of her own point +of view, that had restored his features to their normal aspect? The +longer she looked, the more definitely the change affirmed itself. The +lines of painful tension had vanished, and such traces of fatigue as +lingered were of the kind easily attributable to steady mental effort. +He glanced up, as if drawn by her gaze, and met her eyes with a smile. + +"I'm dying for my tea, you know; and here's a letter for you," he said. + +She took the letter he held out in exchange for the cup she proffered +him, and, returning to her seat, broke the seal with the languid gesture +of the reader whose interests are all inclosed in the circle of one +cherished presence. + +Her next conscious motion was that of starting to her feet, the letter +falling to them as she rose, while she held out to her husband a long +newspaper clipping. + +"Ned! What's this? What does it mean?" + +He had risen at the same instant, almost as if hearing her cry before +she uttered it; and for a perceptible space of time he and she studied +each other, like adversaries watching for an advantage, across the space +between her chair and his desk. + +"What's what? You fairly made me jump!" Boyne said at length, moving +toward her with a sudden, half-exasperated laugh. The shadow of +apprehension was on his face again, not now a look of fixed foreboding, +but a shifting vigilance of lips and eyes that gave her the sense of his +feeling himself invisibly surrounded. + +Her hand shook so that she could hardly give him the clipping. + +"This article--from the 'Waukesha Sentinel'--that a man named Elwell has +brought suit against you--that there was something wrong about the Blue +Star Mine. I can't understand more than half." + +They continued to face each other as she spoke, and to her astonishment, +she saw that her words had the almost immediate effect of dissipating +the strained watchfulness of his look. + +"Oh, THAT!" He glanced down the printed slip, and then folded it with +the gesture of one who handles something harmless and familiar. "What's +the matter with you this afternoon, Mary? I thought you'd got bad news." + +She stood before him with her undefinable terror subsiding slowly under +the reassuring touch of his composure. + +"You knew about this, then--it's all right?" + +"Certainly I knew about it; and it's all right." + +"But what IS it? I don't understand. What does this man accuse you of?" + +"Oh, pretty nearly every crime in the calendar." Boyne had tossed the +clipping down, and thrown himself comfortably into an arm-chair near +the fire. "Do you want to hear the story? It's not particularly +interesting--just a squabble over interests in the Blue Star." + +"But who is this Elwell? I don't know the name." + +"Oh, he's a fellow I put into it--gave him a hand up. I told you all +about him at the time." + +"I daresay. I must have forgotten." Vainly she strained back among her +memories. "But if you helped him, why does he make this return?" + +"Oh, probably some shyster lawyer got hold of him and talked him over. +It's all rather technical and complicated. I thought that kind of thing +bored you." + +His wife felt a sting of compunction. Theoretically, she deprecated the +American wife's detachment from her husband's professional interests, +but in practice she had always found it difficult to fix her attention +on Boyne's report of the transactions in which his varied interests +involved him. Besides, she had felt from the first that, in a community +where the amenities of living could be obtained only at the cost of +efforts as arduous as her husband's professional labors, such brief +leisure as they could command should be used as an escape from immediate +preoccupations, a flight to the life they always dreamed of living. Once +or twice, now that this new life had actually drawn its magic circle +about them, she had asked herself if she had done right; but hitherto +such conjectures had been no more than the retrospective excursions of +an active fancy. Now, for the first time, it startled her a little +to find how little she knew of the material foundation on which her +happiness was built. + +She glanced again at her husband, and was reassured by the composure +of his face; yet she felt the need of more definite grounds for her +reassurance. + +"But doesn't this suit worry you? Why have you never spoken to me about +it?" + +He answered both questions at once: "I didn't speak of it at first +because it DID worry me--annoyed me, rather. But it's all ancient +history now. Your correspondent must have got hold of a back number of +the 'Sentinel.'" + +She felt a quick thrill of relief. "You mean it's over? He's lost his +case?" + +There was a just perceptible delay in Boyne's reply. "The suit's been +withdrawn--that's all." + +But she persisted, as if to exonerate herself from the inward charge of +being too easily put off. "Withdrawn because he saw he had no chance?" + +"Oh, he had no chance," Boyne answered. + +She was still struggling with a dimly felt perplexity at the back of her +thoughts. + +"How long ago was it withdrawn?" + +He paused, as if with a slight return of his former uncertainty. "I've +just had the news now; but I've been expecting it." + +"Just now--in one of your letters?" + +"Yes; in one of my letters." + +She made no answer, and was aware only, after a short interval of +waiting, that he had risen, and strolling across the room, had placed +himself on the sofa at her side. She felt him, as he did so, pass an arm +about her, she felt his hand seek hers and clasp it, and turning slowly, +drawn by the warmth of his cheek, she met the smiling clearness of his +eyes. + +"It's all right--it's all right?" she questioned, through the flood of +her dissolving doubts; and "I give you my word it never was righter!" he +laughed back at her, holding her close. + + + + +III + + +One of the strangest things she was afterward to recall out of all the +next day's incredible strangeness was the sudden and complete recovery +of her sense of security. + +It was in the air when she woke in her low-ceilinged, dusky room; it +accompanied her down-stairs to the breakfast-table, flashed out at her +from the fire, and re-duplicated itself brightly from the flanks of the +urn and the sturdy flutings of the Georgian teapot. It was as if, in +some roundabout way, all her diffused apprehensions of the previous +day, with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper +article,--as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return +upon the past,--had between them liquidated the arrears of some haunting +moral obligation. If she had indeed been careless of her husband's +affairs, it was, her new state seemed to prove, because her faith in him +instinctively justified such carelessness; and his right to her faith +had overwhelmingly affirmed itself in the very face of menace and +suspicion. She had never seen him more untroubled, more naturally and +unconsciously in possession of himself, than after the cross-examination +to which she had subjected him: it was almost as if he had been aware of +her lurking doubts, and had wanted the air cleared as much as she did. + +It was as clear, thank Heaven! as the bright outer light that surprised +her almost with a touch of summer when she issued from the house for her +daily round of the gardens. She had left Boyne at his desk, indulging +herself, as she passed the library door, by a last peep at his quiet +face, where he bent, pipe in his mouth, above his papers, and now she +had her own morning's task to perform. The task involved on such charmed +winter days almost as much delighted loitering about the different +quarters of her demesne as if spring were already at work on shrubs and +borders. There were such inexhaustible possibilities still before her, +such opportunities to bring out the latent graces of the old place, +without a single irreverent touch of alteration, that the winter months +were all too short to plan what spring and autumn executed. And her +recovered sense of safety gave, on this particular morning, a peculiar +zest to her progress through the sweet, still place. She went first to +the kitchen-garden, where the espaliered pear-trees drew complicated +patterns on the walls, and pigeons were fluttering and preening about +the silvery-slated roof of their cot. There was something wrong about +the piping of the hothouse, and she was expecting an authority from +Dorchester, who was to drive out between trains and make a diagnosis of +the boiler. But when she dipped into the damp heat of the greenhouses, +among the spiced scents and waxy pinks and reds of old-fashioned +exotics,--even the flora of Lyng was in the note!--she learned that the +great man had not arrived, and the day being too rare to waste in an +artificial atmosphere, she came out again and paced slowly along the +springy turf of the bowling-green to the gardens behind the house. At +their farther end rose a grass terrace, commanding, over the fish-pond +and the yew hedges, a view of the long house-front, with its twisted +chimney-stacks and the blue shadows of its roof angles, all drenched in +the pale gold moisture of the air. + +Seen thus, across the level tracery of the yews, under the suffused, +mild light, it sent her, from its open windows and hospitably smoking +chimneys, the look of some warm human presence, of a mind slowly ripened +on a sunny wall of experience. She had never before had so deep a sense +of her intimacy with it, such a conviction that its secrets were +all beneficent, kept, as they said to children, "for one's good," so +complete a trust in its power to gather up her life and Ned's into the +harmonious pattern of the long, long story it sat there weaving in the +sun. + +She heard steps behind her, and turned, expecting to see the gardener, +accompanied by the engineer from Dorchester. But only one figure was +in sight, that of a youngish, slightly built man, who, for reasons she +could not on the spot have specified, did not remotely resemble her +preconceived notion of an authority on hot-house boilers. The +new-comer, on seeing her, lifted his hat, and paused with the air of a +gentleman--perhaps a traveler--desirous of having it immediately known +that his intrusion is involuntary. The local fame of Lyng occasionally +attracted the more intelligent sight-seer, and Mary half-expected to see +the stranger dissemble a camera, or justify his presence by producing +it. But he made no gesture of any sort, and after a moment she asked, +in a tone responding to the courteous deprecation of his attitude: "Is +there any one you wish to see?" + +"I came to see Mr. Boyne," he replied. His intonation, rather than his +accent, was faintly American, and Mary, at the familiar note, looked +at him more closely. The brim of his soft felt hat cast a shade on his +face, which, thus obscured, wore to her short-sighted gaze a look of +seriousness, as of a person arriving "on business," and civilly but +firmly aware of his rights. + +Past experience had made Mary equally sensible to such claims; but she +was jealous of her husband's morning hours, and doubtful of his having +given any one the right to intrude on them. + +"Have you an appointment with Mr. Boyne?" she asked. + +He hesitated, as if unprepared for the question. + +"Not exactly an appointment," he replied. + +"Then I'm afraid, this being his working-time, that he can't receive you +now. Will you give me a message, or come back later?" + +The visitor, again lifting his hat, briefly replied that he would come +back later, and walked away, as if to regain the front of the house. As +his figure receded down the walk between the yew hedges, Mary saw him +pause and look up an instant at the peaceful house-front bathed in faint +winter sunshine; and it struck her, with a tardy touch of compunction, +that it would have been more humane to ask if he had come from a +distance, and to offer, in that case, to inquire if her husband could +receive him. But as the thought occurred to her he passed out of +sight behind a pyramidal yew, and at the same moment her attention was +distracted by the approach of the gardener, attended by the bearded +pepper-and-salt figure of the boiler-maker from Dorchester. + +The encounter with this authority led to such far-reaching issues that +they resulted in his finding it expedient to ignore his train, and +beguiled Mary into spending the remainder of the morning in absorbed +confabulation among the greenhouses. She was startled to find, when the +colloquy ended, that it was nearly luncheon-time, and she half expected, +as she hurried back to the house, to see her husband coming out to meet +her. But she found no one in the court but an under-gardener raking +the gravel, and the hall, when she entered it, was so silent that she +guessed Boyne to be still at work behind the closed door of the library. + +Not wishing to disturb him, she turned into the drawing-room, and there, +at her writing-table, lost herself in renewed calculations of the outlay +to which the morning's conference had committed her. The knowledge that +she could permit herself such follies had not yet lost its novelty; and +somehow, in contrast to the vague apprehensions of the previous days, it +now seemed an element of her recovered security, of the sense that, as +Ned had said, things in general had never been "righter." + +She was still luxuriating in a lavish play of figures when the +parlor-maid, from the threshold, roused her with a dubiously worded +inquiry as to the expediency of serving luncheon. It was one of their +jokes that Trimmle announced luncheon as if she were divulging a +state secret, and Mary, intent upon her papers, merely murmured an +absent-minded assent. + +She felt Trimmle wavering expressively on the threshold as if in rebuke +of such offhand acquiescence; then her retreating steps sounded down the +passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall, and went +to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in her turn, +disliking to disturb her husband, yet anxious that he should not exceed +his normal measure of work. As she stood there, balancing her impulses, +the esoteric Trimmle returned with the announcement of luncheon, and +Mary, thus impelled, opened the door and went into the library. + +Boyne was not at his desk, and she peered about her, expecting to +discover him at the book-shelves, somewhere down the length of the room; +but her call brought no response, and gradually it became clear to her +that he was not in the library. + +She turned back to the parlor-maid. + +"Mr. Boyne must be up-stairs. Please tell him that luncheon is ready." + +The parlor-maid appeared to hesitate between the obvious duty of obeying +orders and an equally obvious conviction of the foolishness of +the injunction laid upon her. The struggle resulted in her saying +doubtfully, "If you please, Madam, Mr. Boyne's not up-stairs." + +"Not in his room? Are you sure?" + +"I'm sure, Madam." + +Mary consulted the clock. "Where is he, then?" + +"He's gone out," Trimmle announced, with the superior air of one who has +respectfully waited for the question that a well-ordered mind would have +first propounded. + +Mary's previous conjecture had been right, then. Boyne must have gone to +the gardens to meet her, and since she had missed him, it was clear that +he had taken the shorter way by the south door, instead of going round +to the court. She crossed the hall to the glass portal opening directly +on the yew garden, but the parlor-maid, after another moment of inner +conflict, decided to bring out recklessly, "Please, Madam, Mr. Boyne +didn't go that way." + +Mary turned back. "Where DID he go? And when?" + +"He went out of the front door, up the drive, Madam." It was a matter of +principle with Trimmle never to answer more than one question at a time. + +"Up the drive? At this hour?" Mary went to the door herself, and +glanced across the court through the long tunnel of bare limes. But +its perspective was as empty as when she had scanned it on entering the +house. + +"Did Mr. Boyne leave no message?" she asked. + +Trimmle seemed to surrender herself to a last struggle with the forces +of chaos. + +"No, Madam. He just went out with the gentleman." + +"The gentleman? What gentleman?" Mary wheeled about, as if to front this +new factor. + +"The gentleman who called, Madam," said Trimmle, resignedly. + +"When did a gentleman call? Do explain yourself, Trimmle!" + +Only the fact that Mary was very hungry, and that she wanted to consult +her husband about the greenhouses, would have caused her to lay so +unusual an injunction on her attendant; and even now she was detached +enough to note in Trimmle's eye the dawning defiance of the respectful +subordinate who has been pressed too hard. + +"I couldn't exactly say the hour, Madam, because I didn't let the +gentleman in," she replied, with the air of magnanimously ignoring the +irregularity of her mistress's course. + +"You didn't let him in?" + +"No, Madam. When the bell rang I was dressing, and Agnes--" + +"Go and ask Agnes, then," Mary interjected. Trimmle still wore her +look of patient magnanimity. "Agnes would not know, Madam, for she had +unfortunately burnt her hand in trying the wick of the new lamp from +town--" Trimmle, as Mary was aware, had always been opposed to the new +lamp--"and so Mrs. Dockett sent the kitchen-maid instead." + +Mary looked again at the clock. "It's after two! Go and ask the +kitchen-maid if Mr. Boyne left any word." + +She went into luncheon without waiting, and Trimmle presently brought +her there the kitchen-maid's statement that the gentleman had called +about one o'clock, that Mr. Boyne had gone out with him without leaving +any message. The kitchen-maid did not even know the caller's name, for +he had written it on a slip of paper, which he had folded and handed to +her, with the injunction to deliver it at once to Mr. Boyne. + +Mary finished her luncheon, still wondering, and when it was over, +and Trimmle had brought the coffee to the drawing-room, her wonder had +deepened to a first faint tinge of disquietude. It was unlike Boyne +to absent himself without explanation at so unwonted an hour, and the +difficulty of identifying the visitor whose summons he had apparently +obeyed made his disappearance the more unaccountable. Mary Boyne's +experience as the wife of a busy engineer, subject to sudden calls and +compelled to keep irregular hours, had trained her to the philosophic +acceptance of surprises; but since Boyne's withdrawal from business he +had adopted a Benedictine regularity of life. As if to make up for the +dispersed and agitated years, with their "stand-up" lunches and dinners +rattled down to the joltings of the dining-car, he cultivated the last +refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging his wife's fancy +for the unexpected; and declaring that to a delicate taste there were +infinite gradations of pleasure in the fixed recurrences of habit. + +Still, since no life can completely defend itself from the unforeseen, +it was evident that all Boyne's precautions would sooner or later prove +unavailable, and Mary concluded that he had cut short a tiresome visit +by walking with his caller to the station, or at least accompanying him +for part of the way. + +This conclusion relieved her from farther preoccupation, and she went +out herself to take up her conference with the gardener. Thence she +walked to the village post-office, a mile or so away; and when she +turned toward home, the early twilight was setting in. + +She had taken a foot-path across the downs, and as Boyne, meanwhile, +had probably returned from the station by the highroad, there was little +likelihood of their meeting on the way. She felt sure, however, of his +having reached the house before her; so sure that, when she entered it +herself, without even pausing to inquire of Trimmle, she made directly +for the library. But the library was still empty, and with an unwonted +precision of visual memory she immediately observed that the papers on +her husband's desk lay precisely as they had lain when she had gone in +to call him to luncheon. + +Then of a sudden she was seized by a vague dread of the unknown. She had +closed the door behind her on entering, and as she stood alone in the +long, silent, shadowy room, her dread seemed to take shape and sound, +to be there audibly breathing and lurking among the shadows. Her +short-sighted eyes strained through them, half-discerning an actual +presence, something aloof, that watched and knew; and in the recoil from +that intangible propinquity she threw herself suddenly on the bell-rope +and gave it a desperate pull. + +The long, quavering summons brought Trimmle in precipitately with a +lamp, and Mary breathed again at this sobering reappearance of the +usual. + +"You may bring tea if Mr. Boyne is in," she said, to justify her ring. + +"Very well, Madam. But Mr. Boyne is not in," said Trimmle, putting down +the lamp. + +"Not in? You mean he's come back and gone out again?" + +"No, Madam. He's never been back." + +The dread stirred again, and Mary knew that now it had her fast. + +"Not since he went out with--the gentleman?" + +"Not since he went out with the gentleman." + +"But who WAS the gentleman?" Mary gasped out, with the sharp note of +some one trying to be heard through a confusion of meaningless noises. + +"That I couldn't say, Madam." Trimmle, standing there by the lamp, +seemed suddenly to grow less round and rosy, as though eclipsed by the +same creeping shade of apprehension. + +"But the kitchen-maid knows--wasn't it the kitchen-maid who let him in?" + +"She doesn't know either, Madam, for he wrote his name on a folded +paper." + +Mary, through her agitation, was aware that they were both designating +the unknown visitor by a vague pronoun, instead of the conventional +formula which, till then, had kept their allusions within the bounds of +custom. And at the same moment her mind caught at the suggestion of the +folded paper. + +"But he must have a name! Where is the paper?" + +She moved to the desk, and began to turn over the scattered documents +that littered it. The first that caught her eye was an unfinished letter +in her husband's hand, with his pen lying across it, as though dropped +there at a sudden summons. + +"My dear Parvis,"--who was Parvis?--"I have just received your letter +announcing Elwell's death, and while I suppose there is now no farther +risk of trouble, it might be safer--" + +She tossed the sheet aside, and continued her search; but no folded +paper was discoverable among the letters and pages of manuscript which +had been swept together in a promiscuous heap, as if by a hurried or a +startled gesture. + +"But the kitchen-maid SAW him. Send her here," she commanded, wondering +at her dullness in not thinking sooner of so simple a solution. + +Trimmle, at the behest, vanished in a flash, as if thankful to be out +of the room, and when she reappeared, conducting the agitated underling, +Mary had regained her self-possession, and had her questions pat. + +The gentleman was a stranger, yes--that she understood. But what had he +said? And, above all, what had he looked like? The first question was +easily enough answered, for the disconcerting reason that he had said so +little--had merely asked for Mr. Boyne, and, scribbling something on a +bit of paper, had requested that it should at once be carried in to him. + +"Then you don't know what he wrote? You're not sure it WAS his name?" + +The kitchen-maid was not sure, but supposed it was, since he had written +it in answer to her inquiry as to whom she should announce. + +"And when you carried the paper in to Mr. Boyne, what did he say?" + +The kitchen-maid did not think that Mr. Boyne had said anything, but she +could not be sure, for just as she had handed him the paper and he was +opening it, she had become aware that the visitor had followed her +into the library, and she had slipped out, leaving the two gentlemen +together. + +"But then, if you left them in the library, how do you know that they +went out of the house?" + +This question plunged the witness into momentary inarticulateness, +from which she was rescued by Trimmle, who, by means of ingenious +circumlocutions, elicited the statement that before she could cross the +hall to the back passage she had heard the gentlemen behind her, and had +seen them go out of the front door together. + +"Then, if you saw the gentleman twice, you must be able to tell me what +he looked like." + +But with this final challenge to her powers of expression it became +clear that the limit of the kitchen-maid's endurance had been reached. +The obligation of going to the front door to "show in" a visitor was +in itself so subversive of the fundamental order of things that it had +thrown her faculties into hopeless disarray, and she could only stammer +out, after various panting efforts at evocation, "His hat, mum, was +different-like, as you might say--" + +"Different? How different?" Mary flashed out at her, her own mind, in +the same instant, leaping back to an image left on it that morning, but +temporarily lost under layers of subsequent impressions. + +"His hat had a wide brim, you mean? and his face was pale--a youngish +face?" Mary pressed her, with a white-lipped intensity of interrogation. +But if the kitchen-maid found any adequate answer to this challenge, +it was swept away for her listener down the rushing current of her own +convictions. The stranger--the stranger in the garden! Why had Mary not +thought of him before? She needed no one now to tell her that it was he +who had called for her husband and gone away with him. But who was he, +and why had Boyne obeyed his call? + + + + +IV + + +It leaped out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark, that they +had often called England so little--"such a confoundedly hard place to +get lost in." + +A CONFOUNDEDLY HARD PLACE TO GET LOST IN! That had been her husband's +phrase. And now, with the whole machinery of official investigation +sweeping its flash-lights from shore to shore, and across the dividing +straits; now, with Boyne's name blazing from the walls of every town +and village, his portrait (how that wrung her!) hawked up and down the +country like the image of a hunted criminal; now the little compact, +populous island, so policed, surveyed, and administered, revealed itself +as a Sphinx-like guardian of abysmal mysteries, staring back into his +wife's anguished eyes as if with the malicious joy of knowing something +they would never know! + +In the fortnight since Boyne's disappearance there had been no word of +him, no trace of his movements. Even the usual misleading reports that +raise expectancy in tortured bosoms had been few and fleeting. No one +but the bewildered kitchen-maid had seen him leave the house, and no one +else had seen "the gentleman" who accompanied him. All inquiries in the +neighborhood failed to elicit the memory of a stranger's presence that +day in the neighborhood of Lyng. And no one had met Edward Boyne, either +alone or in company, in any of the neighboring villages, or on the road +across the downs, or at either of the local railway-stations. The sunny +English noon had swallowed him as completely as if he had gone out into +Cimmerian night. + +Mary, while every external means of investigation was working at its +highest pressure, had ransacked her husband's papers for any trace of +antecedent complications, of entanglements or obligations unknown to +her, that might throw a faint ray into the darkness. But if any such +had existed in the background of Boyne's life, they had disappeared as +completely as the slip of paper on which the visitor had written his +name. There remained no possible thread of guidance except--if it were +indeed an exception--the letter which Boyne had apparently been in the +act of writing when he received his mysterious summons. That letter, +read and reread by his wife, and submitted by her to the police, yielded +little enough for conjecture to feed on. + +"I have just heard of Elwell's death, and while I suppose there is now +no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer--" That was all. The "risk +of trouble" was easily explained by the newspaper clipping which had +apprised Mary of the suit brought against her husband by one of his +associates in the Blue Star enterprise. The only new information +conveyed in the letter was the fact of its showing Boyne, when he wrote +it, to be still apprehensive of the results of the suit, though he +had assured his wife that it had been withdrawn, and though the letter +itself declared that the plaintiff was dead. It took several weeks +of exhaustive cabling to fix the identity of the "Parvis" to whom the +fragmentary communication was addressed, but even after these inquiries +had shown him to be a Waukesha lawyer, no new facts concerning the +Elwell suit were elicited. He appeared to have had no direct concern +in it, but to have been conversant with the facts merely as an +acquaintance, and possible intermediary; and he declared himself unable +to divine with what object Boyne intended to seek his assistance. + +This negative information, sole fruit of the first fortnight's feverish +search, was not increased by a jot during the slow weeks that followed. +Mary knew that the investigations were still being carried on, but she +had a vague sense of their gradually slackening, as the actual march of +time seemed to slacken. It was as though the days, flying horror-struck +from the shrouded image of the one inscrutable day, gained assurance as +the distance lengthened, till at last they fell back into their normal +gait. And so with the human imaginations at work on the dark event. No +doubt it occupied them still, but week by week and hour by hour it grew +less absorbing, took up less space, was slowly but inevitably crowded +out of the foreground of consciousness by the new problems perpetually +bubbling up from the vaporous caldron of human experience. + +Even Mary Boyne's consciousness gradually felt the same lowering of +velocity. It still swayed with the incessant oscillations of conjecture; +but they were slower, more rhythmical in their beat. There were moments +of overwhelming lassitude when, like the victim of some poison which +leaves the brain clear, but holds the body motionless, she saw herself +domesticated with the Horror, accepting its perpetual presence as one of +the fixed conditions of life. + +These moments lengthened into hours and days, till she passed into a +phase of stolid acquiescence. She watched the familiar routine of life +with the incurious eye of a savage on whom the meaningless processes of +civilization make but the faintest impression. She had come to regard +herself as part of the routine, a spoke of the wheel, revolving with its +motion; she felt almost like the furniture of the room in which she sat, +an insensate object to be dusted and pushed about with the chairs and +tables. And this deepening apathy held her fast at Lyng, in spite of +the urgent entreaties of friends and the usual medical recommendation of +"change." Her friends supposed that her refusal to move was inspired by +the belief that her husband would one day return to the spot from which +he had vanished, and a beautiful legend grew up about this imaginary +state of waiting. But in reality she had no such belief: the depths of +anguish inclosing her were no longer lighted by flashes of hope. She was +sure that Boyne would never come back, that he had gone out of her sight +as completely as if Death itself had waited that day on the threshold. +She had even renounced, one by one, the various theories as to his +disappearance which had been advanced by the press, the police, and her +own agonized imagination. In sheer lassitude her mind turned from these +alternatives of horror, and sank back into the blank fact that he was +gone. + +No, she would never know what had become of him--no one would ever know. +But the house KNEW; the library in which she spent her long, lonely +evenings knew. For it was here that the last scene had been enacted, +here that the stranger had come, and spoken the word which had caused +Boyne to rise and follow him. The floor she trod had felt his tread; the +books on the shelves had seen his face; and there were moments when the +intense consciousness of the old, dusky walls seemed about to break out +into some audible revelation of their secret. But the revelation +never came, and she knew it would never come. Lyng was not one of the +garrulous old houses that betray the secrets intrusted to them. Its +very legend proved that it had always been the mute accomplice, the +incorruptible custodian of the mysteries it had surprised. And Mary +Boyne, sitting face to face with its portentous silence, felt the +futility of seeking to break it by any human means. + + + + +V + + +"I don't say it WASN'T straight, yet don't say it WAS straight. It was +business." + +Mary, at the words, lifted her head with a start, and looked intently at +the speaker. + +When, half an hour before, a card with "Mr. Parvis" on it had been +brought up to her, she had been immediately aware that the name had been +a part of her consciousness ever since she had read it at the head of +Boyne's unfinished letter. In the library she had found awaiting her a +small neutral-tinted man with a bald head and gold eye-glasses, and it +sent a strange tremor through her to know that this was the person to +whom her husband's last known thought had been directed. + +Parvis, civilly, but without vain preamble,--in the manner of a man who +has his watch in his hand,--had set forth the object of his visit. +He had "run over" to England on business, and finding himself in the +neighborhood of Dorchester, had not wished to leave it without paying +his respects to Mrs. Boyne; without asking her, if the occasion offered, +what she meant to do about Bob Elwell's family. + +The words touched the spring of some obscure dread in Mary's bosom. +Did her visitor, after all, know what Boyne had meant by his unfinished +phrase? She asked for an elucidation of his question, and noticed at +once that he seemed surprised at her continued ignorance of the subject. +Was it possible that she really knew as little as she said? + +"I know nothing--you must tell me," she faltered out; and her visitor +thereupon proceeded to unfold his story. It threw, even to her confused +perceptions, and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the +whole hazy episode of the Blue Star Mine. Her husband had made his money +in that brilliant speculation at the cost of "getting ahead" of some one +less alert to seize the chance; the victim of his ingenuity was young +Robert Elwell, who had "put him on" to the Blue Star scheme. + +Parvis, at Mary's first startled cry, had thrown her a sobering glance +through his impartial glasses. + +"Bob Elwell wasn't smart enough, that's all; if he had been, he might +have turned round and served Boyne the same way. It's the kind of thing +that happens every day in business. I guess it's what the scientists +call the survival of the fittest," said Mr. Parvis, evidently pleased +with the aptness of his analogy. + +Mary felt a physical shrinking from the next question she tried to +frame; it was as though the words on her lips had a taste that nauseated +her. + +"But then--you accuse my husband of doing something dishonorable?" + +Mr. Parvis surveyed the question dispassionately. "Oh, no, I don't. +I don't even say it wasn't straight." He glanced up and down the long +lines of books, as if one of them might have supplied him with the +definition he sought. "I don't say it WASN'T straight, and yet I don't +say it WAS straight. It was business." After all, no definition in his +category could be more comprehensive than that. + +Mary sat staring at him with a look of terror. He seemed to her like the +indifferent, implacable emissary of some dark, formless power. + +"But Mr. Elwell's lawyers apparently did not take your view, since I +suppose the suit was withdrawn by their advice." + +"Oh, yes, they knew he hadn't a leg to stand on, technically. It was +when they advised him to withdraw the suit that he got desperate. You +see, he'd borrowed most of the money he lost in the Blue Star, and he +was up a tree. That's why he shot himself when they told him he had no +show." + +The horror was sweeping over Mary in great, deafening waves. + +"He shot himself? He killed himself because of THAT?" + +"Well, he didn't kill himself, exactly. He dragged on two months before +he died." Parvis emitted the statement as unemotionally as a gramophone +grinding out its "record." + +"You mean that he tried to kill himself, and failed? And tried again?" + +"Oh, he didn't have to try again," said Parvis, grimly. + +They sat opposite each other in silence, he swinging his eye-glass +thoughtfully about his finger, she, motionless, her arms stretched along +her knees in an attitude of rigid tension. + +"But if you knew all this," she began at length, hardly able to force +her voice above a whisper, "how is it that when I wrote you at the +time of my husband's disappearance you said you didn't understand his +letter?" + +Parvis received this without perceptible discomfiture. "Why, I didn't +understand it--strictly speaking. And it wasn't the time to talk +about it, if I had. The Elwell business was settled when the suit was +withdrawn. Nothing I could have told you would have helped you to find +your husband." + +Mary continued to scrutinize him. "Then why are you telling me now?" + +Still Parvis did not hesitate. "Well, to begin with, I supposed you +knew more than you appear to--I mean about the circumstances of Elwell's +death. And then people are talking of it now; the whole matter's been +raked up again. And I thought, if you didn't know, you ought to." + +She remained silent, and he continued: "You see, it's only come out +lately what a bad state Elwell's affairs were in. His wife's a proud +woman, and she fought on as long as she could, going out to work, and +taking sewing at home, when she got too sick--something with the heart, +I believe. But she had his bedridden mother to look after, and the +children, and she broke down under it, and finally had to ask for help. +That attracted attention to the case, and the papers took it up, and a +subscription was started. Everybody out there liked Bob Elwell, and most +of the prominent names in the place are down on the list, and people +began to wonder why--" + +Parvis broke off to fumble in an inner pocket. "Here," he continued, +"here's an account of the whole thing from the 'Sentinel'--a little +sensational, of course. But I guess you'd better look it over." + +He held out a newspaper to Mary, who unfolded it slowly, remembering, +as she did so, the evening when, in that same room, the perusal of +a clipping from the "Sentinel" had first shaken the depths of her +security. + +As she opened the paper, her eyes, shrinking from the glaring +head-lines, "Widow of Boyne's Victim Forced to Appeal for Aid," ran down +the column of text to two portraits inserted in it. The first was +her husband's, taken from a photograph made the year they had come to +England. It was the picture of him that she liked best, the one that +stood on the writing-table up-stairs in her bedroom. As the eyes in the +photograph met hers, she felt it would be impossible to read what was +said of him, and closed her lids with the sharpness of the pain. + +"I thought if you felt disposed to put your name down--" she heard +Parvis continue. + +She opened her eyes with an effort, and they fell on the other portrait. +It was that of a youngish man, slightly built, in rough clothes, with +features somewhat blurred by the shadow of a projecting hat-brim. Where +had she seen that outline before? She stared at it confusedly, her heart +hammering in her throat and ears. Then she gave a cry. + +"This is the man--the man who came for my husband!" + +She heard Parvis start to his feet, and was dimly aware that she had +slipped backward into the corner of the sofa, and that he was bending +above her in alarm. With an intense effort she straightened herself, and +reached out for the paper, which she had dropped. + +"It's the man! I should know him anywhere!" she cried in a voice that +sounded in her own ears like a scream. + +Parvis's voice seemed to come to her from far off, down endless, +fog-muffled windings. + +"Mrs. Boyne, you're not very well. Shall I call somebody? Shall I get a +glass of water?" + +"No, no, no!" She threw herself toward him, her hand frantically +clenching the newspaper. "I tell you, it's the man! I KNOW him! He spoke +to me in the garden!" + +Parvis took the journal from her, directing his glasses to the portrait. +"It can't be, Mrs. Boyne. It's Robert Elwell." + +"Robert Elwell?" Her white stare seemed to travel into space. "Then it +was Robert Elwell who came for him." + +"Came for Boyne? The day he went away?" Parvis's voice dropped as hers +rose. He bent over, laying a fraternal hand on her, as if to coax her +gently back into her seat. "Why, Elwell was dead! Don't you remember?" + +Mary sat with her eyes fixed on the picture, unconscious of what he was +saying. + +"Don't you remember Boyne's unfinished letter to me--the one you found +on his desk that day? It was written just after he'd heard of Elwell's +death." She noticed an odd shake in Parvis's unemotional voice. "Surely +you remember that!" he urged her. + +Yes, she remembered: that was the profoundest horror of it. Elwell had +died the day before her husband's disappearance; and this was Elwell's +portrait; and it was the portrait of the man who had spoken to her in +the garden. She lifted her head and looked slowly about the library. The +library could have borne witness that it was also the portrait of the +man who had come in that day to call Boyne from his unfinished letter. +Through the misty surgings of her brain she heard the faint boom +of half-forgotten words--words spoken by Alida Stair on the lawn at +Pangbourne before Boyne and his wife had ever seen the house at Lyng, or +had imagined that they might one day live there. + +"This was the man who spoke to me," she repeated. + +She looked again at Parvis. He was trying to conceal his disturbance +under what he imagined to be an expression of indulgent commiseration; +but the edges of his lips were blue. "He thinks me mad; but I'm not +mad," she reflected; and suddenly there flashed upon her a way of +justifying her strange affirmation. + +She sat quiet, controlling the quiver of her lips, and waiting till she +could trust her voice to keep its habitual level; then she said, looking +straight at Parvis: "Will you answer me one question, please? When was +it that Robert Elwell tried to kill himself?" + +"When--when?" Parvis stammered. + +"Yes; the date. Please try to remember." + +She saw that he was growing still more afraid of her. "I have a reason," +she insisted gently. + +"Yes, yes. Only I can't remember. About two months before, I should +say." + +"I want the date," she repeated. + +Parvis picked up the newspaper. "We might see here," he said, still +humoring her. He ran his eyes down the page. "Here it is. Last +October--the--" + +She caught the words from him. "The 20th, wasn't it?" With a sharp look +at her, he verified. "Yes, the 20th. Then you DID know?" + +"I know now." Her white stare continued to travel past him. "Sunday, the +20th--that was the day he came first." + +Parvis's voice was almost inaudible. "Came HERE first?" + +"Yes." + +"You saw him twice, then?" + +"Yes, twice." She breathed it at him with dilated eyes. "He came first +on the 20th of October. I remember the date because it was the day +we went up Meldon Steep for the first time." She felt a faint gasp +of inward laughter at the thought that but for that she might have +forgotten. + +Parvis continued to scrutinize her, as if trying to intercept her gaze. + +"We saw him from the roof," she went on. "He came down the lime-avenue +toward the house. He was dressed just as he is in that picture. My +husband saw him first. He was frightened, and ran down ahead of me; but +there was no one there. He had vanished." + +"Elwell had vanished?" Parvis faltered. + +"Yes." Their two whispers seemed to grope for each other. "I couldn't +think what had happened. I see now. He TRIED to come then; but he wasn't +dead enough--he couldn't reach us. He had to wait for two months; and +then he came back again--and Ned went with him." + +She nodded at Parvis with the look of triumph of a child who has +successfully worked out a difficult puzzle. But suddenly she lifted her +hands with a desperate gesture, pressing them to her bursting temples. + +"Oh, my God! I sent him to Ned--I told him where to go! I sent him to +this room!" she screamed out. + +She felt the walls of the room rush toward her, like inward falling +ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if through the ruins, +crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his +touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard +but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn at +Pangbourne. + +"You won't know till afterward," it said. "You won't know till long, +long afterward." + + +The End of Afterward + + + + + +THE FULNESS OF LIFE + +December 1893 + + + + +I. + + +For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet +lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the +heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk +in the tasselled meadow-grasses, one looks up through a level roofing +of maple-leaves at the vast shadowless, and unsuggestive blue. Now and +then, at ever-lengthening intervals, a flash of pain darted through her, +like the ripple of sheet-lightning across such a midsummer sky; but it +was too transitory to shake her stupor, that calm, delicious, bottomless +stupor into which she felt herself sinking more and more deeply, without +a disturbing impulse of resistance, an effort of reattachment to the +vanishing edges of consciousness. + +The resistance, the effort, had known their hour of violence; but +now they were at an end. Through her mind, long harried by grotesque +visions, fragmentary images of the life that she was leaving, tormenting +lines of verse, obstinate presentments of pictures once beheld, +indistinct impressions of rivers, towers, and cupolas, gathered in the +length of journeys half forgotten--through her mind there now only moved +a few primal sensations of colorless well-being; a vague satisfaction +in the thought that she had swallowed her noxious last draught of +medicine... and that she should never again hear the creaking of her +husband's boots--those horrible boots--and that no one would come to +bother her about the next day's dinner... or the butcher's book.... + +At last even these dim sensations spent themselves in the thickening +obscurity which enveloped her; a dusk now filled with pale geometric +roses, circling softly, interminably before her, now darkened to a +uniform blue-blackness, the hue of a summer night without stars. And +into this darkness she felt herself sinking, sinking, with the gentle +sense of security of one upheld from beneath. Like a tepid tide it +rose around her, gliding ever higher and higher, folding in its velvety +embrace her relaxed and tired body, now submerging her breast and +shoulders, now creeping gradually, with soft inexorableness, over her +throat to her chin, to her ears, to her mouth.... Ah, now it was rising +too high; the impulse to struggle was renewed;... her mouth was full;... +she was choking.... Help! + +"It is all over," said the nurse, drawing down the eyelids with official +composure. + +The clock struck three. They remembered it afterward. Someone opened the +window and let in a blast of that strange, neutral air which walks +the earth between darkness and dawn; someone else led the husband into +another room. He walked vaguely, like a blind man, on his creaking +boots. + + + + +II. + + +She stood, as it seemed, on a threshold, yet no tangible gateway was in +front of her. Only a wide vista of light, mild yet penetrating as the +gathered glimmer of innumerable stars, expanded gradually before her +eyes, in blissful contrast to the cavernous darkness from which she had +of late emerged. + +She stepped forward, not frightened, but hesitating, and as her eyes +began to grow more familiar with the melting depths of light about her, +she distinguished the outlines of a landscape, at first swimming in +the opaline uncertainty of Shelley's vaporous creations, then gradually +resolved into distincter shape--the vast unrolling of a sunlit plain, +aerial forms of mountains, and presently the silver crescent of a +river in the valley, and a blue stencilling of trees along its +curve--something suggestive in its ineffable hue of an azure background +of Leonardo's, strange, enchanting, mysterious, leading on the eye and +the imagination into regions of fabulous delight. As she gazed, her +heart beat with a soft and rapturous surprise; so exquisite a promise +she read in the summons of that hyaline distance. + +"And so death is not the end after all," in sheer gladness she heard +herself exclaiming aloud. "I always knew that it couldn't be. I believed +in Darwin, of course. I do still; but then Darwin himself said that he +wasn't sure about the soul--at least, I think he did--and Wallace was a +spiritualist; and then there was St. George Mivart--" + +Her gaze lost itself in the ethereal remoteness of the mountains. + +"How beautiful! How satisfying!" she murmured. "Perhaps now I shall +really know what it is to live." + +As she spoke she felt a sudden thickening of her heart-beats, and +looking up she was aware that before her stood the Spirit of Life. + +"Have you never really known what it is to live?" the Spirit of Life +asked her. + +"I have never known," she replied, "that fulness of life which we all +feel ourselves capable of knowing; though my life has not been without +scattered hints of it, like the scent of earth which comes to one +sometimes far out at sea." + +"And what do you call the fulness of life?" the Spirit asked again. + +"Oh, I can't tell you, if you don't know," she said, almost +reproachfully. "Many words are supposed to define it--love and sympathy +are those in commonest use, but I am not even sure that they are the +right ones, and so few people really know what they mean." + +"You were married," said the Spirit, "yet you did not find the fulness +of life in your marriage?" + +"Oh, dear, no," she replied, with an indulgent scorn, "my marriage was a +very incomplete affair." + +"And yet you were fond of your husband?" + +"You have hit upon the exact word; I was fond of him, yes, just as I +was fond of my grandmother, and the house that I was born in, and my old +nurse. Oh, I was fond of him, and we were counted a very happy couple. +But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house +full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going +in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the +sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; +but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors +perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows +whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the +soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes." + +"And your husband," asked the Spirit, after a pause, "never got beyond +the family sitting-room?" + +"Never," she returned, impatiently; "and the worst of it was that he was +quite content to remain there. He thought it perfectly beautiful, and +sometimes, when he was admiring its commonplace furniture, insignificant +as the chairs and tables of a hotel parlor, I felt like crying out to +him: 'Fool, will you never guess that close at hand are rooms full of +treasures and wonders, such as the eye of man hath not seen, rooms that +no step has crossed, but that might be yours to live in, could you but +find the handle of the door?'" + +"Then," the Spirit continued, "those moments of which you lately spoke, +which seemed to come to you like scattered hints of the fulness of life, +were not shared with your husband?" + +"Oh, no--never. He was different. His boots creaked, and he always +slammed the door when he went out, and he never read anything but +railway novels and the sporting advertisements in the papers--and--and, +in short, we never understood each other in the least." + +"To what influence, then, did you owe those exquisite sensations?" + +"I can hardly tell. Sometimes to the perfume of a flower; sometimes to a +verse of Dante or of Shakespeare; sometimes to a picture or a sunset, +or to one of those calm days at sea, when one seems to be lying in +the hollow of a blue pearl; sometimes, but rarely, to a word spoken by +someone who chanced to give utterance, at the right moment, to what I +felt but could not express." + +"Someone whom you loved?" asked the Spirit. + +"I never loved anyone, in that way," she said, rather sadly, "nor was +I thinking of any one person when I spoke, but of two or three who, by +touching for an instant upon a certain chord of my being, had called +forth a single note of that strange melody which seemed sleeping in my +soul. It has seldom happened, however, that I have owed such feelings to +people; and no one ever gave me a moment of such happiness as it was my +lot to feel one evening in the Church of Or San Michele, in Florence." + +"Tell me about it," said the Spirit. + +"It was near sunset on a rainy spring afternoon in Easter week. The +clouds had vanished, dispersed by a sudden wind, and as we entered the +church the fiery panes of the high windows shone out like lamps through +the dusk. A priest was at the high altar, his white cope a livid spot in +the incense-laden obscurity, the light of the candles flickering up and +down like fireflies about his head; a few people knelt near by. We stole +behind them and sat down on a bench close to the tabernacle of Orcagna. + +"Strange to say, though Florence was not new to me, I had never been in +the church before; and in that magical light I saw for the first time +the inlaid steps, the fluted columns, the sculptured bas-reliefs and +canopy of the marvellous shrine. The marble, worn and mellowed by the +subtle hand of time, took on an unspeakable rosy hue, suggestive in +some remote way of the honey-colored columns of the Parthenon, but more +mystic, more complex, a color not born of the sun's inveterate kiss, +but made up of cryptal twilight, and the flame of candles upon martyrs' +tombs, and gleams of sunset through symbolic panes of chrysoprase and +ruby; such a light as illumines the missals in the library of Siena, +or burns like a hidden fire through the Madonna of Gian Bellini in the +Church of the Redeemer, at Venice; the light of the Middle Ages, richer, +more solemn, more significant than the limpid sunshine of Greece. + +"The church was silent, but for the wail of the priest and the +occasional scraping of a chair against the floor, and as I sat there, +bathed in that light, absorbed in rapt contemplation of the marble +miracle which rose before me, cunningly wrought as a casket of ivory and +enriched with jewel-like incrustations and tarnished gleams of gold, I +felt myself borne onward along a mighty current, whose source seemed to +be in the very beginning of things, and whose tremendous waters gathered +as they went all the mingled streams of human passion and endeavor. +Life in all its varied manifestations of beauty and strangeness seemed +weaving a rhythmical dance around me as I moved, and wherever the spirit +of man had passed I knew that my foot had once been familiar. + +"As I gazed the mediaeval bosses of the tabernacle of Orcagna seemed to +melt and flow into their primal forms so that the folded lotus of +the Nile and the Greek acanthus were braided with the runic knots and +fish-tailed monsters of the North, and all the plastic terror and beauty +born of man's hand from the Ganges to the Baltic quivered and mingled +in Orcagna's apotheosis of Mary. And so the river bore me on, past the +alien face of antique civilizations and the familiar wonders of Greece, +till I swam upon the fiercely rushing tide of the Middle Ages, with its +swirling eddies of passion, its heaven-reflecting pools of poetry +and art; I heard the rhythmic blow of the craftsmen's hammers in the +goldsmiths' workshops and on the walls of churches, the party-cries of +armed factions in the narrow streets, the organ-roll of Dante's verse, +the crackle of the fagots around Arnold of Brescia, the twitter of +the swallows to which St. Francis preached, the laughter of the +ladies listening on the hillside to the quips of the Decameron, while +plague-struck Florence howled beneath them--all this and much more I +heard, joined in strange unison with voices earlier and more remote, +fierce, passionate, or tender, yet subdued to such awful harmony that +I thought of the song that the morning stars sang together and felt as +though it were sounding in my ears. My heart beat to suffocation, the +tears burned my lids, the joy, the mystery of it seemed too intolerable +to be borne. I could not understand even then the words of the song; but +I knew that if there had been someone at my side who could have heard it +with me, we might have found the key to it together. + +"I turned to my husband, who was sitting beside me in an attitude of +patient dejection, gazing into the bottom of his hat; but at that moment +he rose, and stretching his stiffened legs, said, mildly: 'Hadn't we +better be going? There doesn't seem to be much to see here, and you know +the table d'hote dinner is at half-past six o'clock." + + +Her recital ended, there was an interval of silence; then the Spirit of +Life said: "There is a compensation in store for such needs as you have +expressed." + +"Oh, then you DO understand?" she exclaimed. "Tell me what compensation, +I entreat you!" + +"It is ordained," the Spirit answered, "that every soul which seeks +in vain on earth for a kindred soul to whom it can lay bare its inmost +being shall find that soul here and be united to it for eternity." + +A glad cry broke from her lips. "Ah, shall I find him at last?" she +cried, exultant. + +"He is here," said the Spirit of Life. + +She looked up and saw that a man stood near whose soul (for in that +unwonted light she seemed to see his soul more clearly than his face) +drew her toward him with an invincible force. + +"Are you really he?" she murmured. + +"I am he," he answered. + +She laid her hand in his and drew him toward the parapet which overhung +the valley. + +"Shall we go down together," she asked him, "into that marvellous +country; shall we see it together, as if with the self-same eyes, and +tell each other in the same words all that we think and feel?" + +"So," he replied, "have I hoped and dreamed." + +"What?" she asked, with rising joy. "Then you, too, have looked for me?" + +"All my life." + +"How wonderful! And did you never, never find anyone in the other world +who understood you?" + +"Not wholly--not as you and I understand each other." + +"Then you feel it, too? Oh, I am happy," she sighed. + +They stood, hand in hand, looking down over the parapet upon the +shimmering landscape which stretched forth beneath them into sapphirine +space, and the Spirit of Life, who kept watch near the threshold, heard +now and then a floating fragment of their talk blown backward like the +stray swallows which the wind sometimes separates from their migratory +tribe. + +"Did you never feel at sunset--" + +"Ah, yes; but I never heard anyone else say so. Did you?" + +"Do you remember that line in the third canto of the 'Inferno?'" + +"Ah, that line--my favorite always. Is it possible--" + +"You know the stooping Victory in the frieze of the Nike Apteros?" + +"You mean the one who is tying her sandal? Then you have noticed, too, +that all Botticelli and Mantegna are dormant in those flying folds of +her drapery?" + +"After a storm in autumn have you never seen--" + +"Yes, it is curious how certain flowers suggest certain painters--the +perfume of the incarnation, Leonardo; that of the rose, Titian; the +tuberose, Crivelli--" + +"I never supposed that anyone else had noticed it." + +"Have you never thought--" + +"Oh, yes, often and often; but I never dreamed that anyone else had." + +"But surely you must have felt--" + +"Oh, yes, yes; and you, too--" + +"How beautiful! How strange--" + +Their voices rose and fell, like the murmur of two fountains answering +each other across a garden full of flowers. At length, with a certain +tender impatience, he turned to her and said: "Love, why should we +linger here? All eternity lies before us. Let us go down into that +beautiful country together and make a home for ourselves on some blue +hill above the shining river." + +As he spoke, the hand she had forgotten in his was suddenly withdrawn, +and he felt that a cloud was passing over the radiance of her soul. + +"A home," she repeated, slowly, "a home for you and me to live in for +all eternity?" + +"Why not, love? Am I not the soul that yours has sought?" + +"Y-yes--yes, I know--but, don't you see, home would not be like home to +me, unless--" + +"Unless?" he wonderingly repeated. + +She did not answer, but she thought to herself, with an impulse of +whimsical inconsistency, "Unless you slammed the door and wore creaking +boots." + +But he had recovered his hold upon her hand, and by imperceptible +degrees was leading her toward the shining steps which descended to the +valley. + +"Come, O my soul's soul," he passionately implored; "why delay a moment? +Surely you feel, as I do, that eternity itself is too short to hold such +bliss as ours. It seems to me that I can see our home already. Have +I not always seem it in my dreams? It is white, love, is it not, with +polished columns, and a sculptured cornice against the blue? Groves +of laurel and oleander and thickets of roses surround it; but from the +terrace where we walk at sunset, the eye looks out over woodlands and +cool meadows where, deep-bowered under ancient boughs, a stream goes +delicately toward the river. Indoors our favorite pictures hang upon the +walls and the rooms are lined with books. Think, dear, at last we shall +have time to read them all. With which shall we begin? Come, help me to +choose. Shall it be 'Faust' or the 'Vita Nuova,' the 'Tempest' or 'Les +Caprices de Marianne,' or the thirty-first canto of the 'Paradise,' or +'Epipsychidion' or 'Lycidas'? Tell me, dear, which one?" + +As he spoke he saw the answer trembling joyously upon her lips; but it +died in the ensuing silence, and she stood motionless, resisting the +persuasion of his hand. + +"What is it?" he entreated. + +"Wait a moment," she said, with a strange hesitation in her voice. "Tell +me first, are you quite sure of yourself? Is there no one on earth whom +you sometimes remember?" + +"Not since I have seen you," he replied; for, being a man, he had indeed +forgotten. + +Still she stood motionless, and he saw that the shadow deepened on her +soul. + +"Surely, love," he rebuked her, "it was not that which troubled you? For +my part I have walked through Lethe. The past has melted like a cloud +before the moon. I never lived until I saw you." + +She made no answer to his pleadings, but at length, rousing herself with +a visible effort, she turned away from him and moved toward the Spirit +of Life, who still stood near the threshold. + +"I want to ask you a question," she said, in a troubled voice. + +"Ask," said the Spirit. + +"A little while ago," she began, slowly, "you told me that every soul +which has not found a kindred soul on earth is destined to find one +here." + +"And have you not found one?" asked the Spirit. + +"Yes; but will it be so with my husband's soul also?" + +"No," answered the Spirit of Life, "for your husband imagined that +he had found his soul's mate on earth in you; and for such delusions +eternity itself contains no cure." + +She gave a little cry. Was it of disappointment or triumph? + +"Then--then what will happen to him when he comes here?" + +"That I cannot tell you. Some field of activity and happiness he will +doubtless find, in due measure to his capacity for being active and +happy." + +She interrupted, almost angrily: "He will never be happy without me." + +"Do not be too sure of that," said the Spirit. + +She took no notice of this, and the Spirit continued: "He will not +understand you here any better than he did on earth." + +"No matter," she said; "I shall be the only sufferer, for he always +thought that he understood me." + +"His boots will creak just as much as ever--" + +"No matter." + +"And he will slam the door--" + +"Very likely." + +"And continue to read railway novels--" + +She interposed, impatiently: "Many men do worse than that." + +"But you said just now," said the Spirit, "that you did not love him." + +"True," she answered, simply; "but don't you understand that I shouldn't +feel at home without him? It is all very well for a week or two--but for +eternity! After all, I never minded the creaking of his boots, except +when my head ached, and I don't suppose it will ache HERE; and he +was always so sorry when he had slammed the door, only he never COULD +remember not to. Besides, no one else would know how to look after him, +he is so helpless. His inkstand would never be filled, and he would +always be out of stamps and visiting-cards. He would never remember to +have his umbrella re-covered, or to ask the price of anything before he +bought it. Why, he wouldn't even know what novels to read. I always had +to choose the kind he liked, with a murder or a forgery and a successful +detective." + +She turned abruptly to her kindred soul, who stood listening with a mien +of wonder and dismay. + +"Don't you see," she said, "that I can't possibly go with you?" + +"But what do you intend to do?" asked the Spirit of Life. + +"What do I intend to do?" she returned, indignantly. "Why, I mean to +wait for my husband, of course. If he had come here first HE would have +waited for me for years and years; and it would break his heart not to +find me here when he comes." She pointed with a contemptuous gesture +to the magic vision of hill and vale sloping away to the translucent +mountains. "He wouldn't give a fig for all that," she said, "if he +didn't find me here." + +"But consider," warned the Spirit, "that you are now choosing for +eternity. It is a solemn moment." + +"Choosing!" she said, with a half-sad smile. "Do you still keep up here +that old fiction about choosing? I should have thought that YOU knew +better than that. How can I help myself? He will expect to find me here +when he comes, and he would never believe you if you told him that I had +gone away with someone else--never, never." + +"So be it," said the Spirit. "Here, as on earth, each one must decide +for himself." + +She turned to her kindred soul and looked at him gently, almost +wistfully. "I am sorry," she said. "I should have liked to talk with +you again; but you will understand, I know, and I dare say you will find +someone else a great deal cleverer--" + +And without pausing to hear his answer she waved him a swift farewell +and turned back toward the threshold. + +"Will my husband come soon?" she asked the Spirit of Life. + +"That you are not destined to know," the Spirit replied. + +"No matter," she said, cheerfully; "I have all eternity to wait in." + +And still seated alone on the threshold, she listens for the creaking of +his boots. + + +The End of The Fulness of Life + + + + + +A VENETIAN NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT + +December 1903 + + + +This is the story that, in the dining-room of the old Beacon Street +house (now the Aldebaran Club), Judge Anthony Bracknell, of the famous +East India firm of Bracknell & Saulsbee, when the ladies had withdrawn +to the oval parlour (and Maria's harp was throwing its gauzy web of +sound across the Common), used to relate to his grandsons, about the +year that Buonaparte marched upon Moscow. + + + + +I + + +"Him Venice!" said the Lascar with the big earrings; and Tony Bracknell, +leaning on the high gunwale of his father's East Indiaman, the Hepzibah +B., saw far off, across the morning sea, a faint vision of towers and +domes dissolved in golden air. + +It was a rare February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony, newly +of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman of old +Bracknell's fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city trembled +into shape. VENICE! The name, since childhood, had been a magician's +wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salem there hung +a series of yellowing prints which Uncle Richard Saulsbee had brought +home from one of his long voyages: views of heathen mosques and palaces, +of the Grand Turk's Seraglio, of St. Peter's Church in Rome; and, in +a corner--the corner nearest the rack where the old flintlocks hung--a +busy merry populous scene, entitled: ST. MARK'S SQUARE IN VENICE. This +picture, from the first, had singularly taken little Tony's fancy. His +unformulated criticism on the others was that they lacked action. +True, in the view of St. Peter's an experienced-looking gentleman in +a full-bottomed wig was pointing out the fairly obvious monument to a +bashful companion, who had presumably not ventured to raise his eyes to +it; while, at the doors of the Seraglio, a group of turbaned infidels +observed with less hesitancy the approach of a veiled lady on a camel. +But in Venice so many things were happening at once--more, Tony was +sure, than had ever happened in Boston in a twelve-month or in Salem in +a long lifetime. For here, by their garb, were people of every nation +on earth, Chinamen, Turks, Spaniards, and many more, mixed with a +parti-coloured throng of gentry, lacqueys, chapmen, hucksters, and tall +personages in parsons' gowns who stalked through the crowd with an air +of mastery, a string of parasites at their heels. And all these people +seemed to be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the hucksters, +watching the antics of trained dogs and monkeys, distributing doles +to maimed beggars or having their pockets picked by slippery-looking +fellows in black--the whole with such an air of ease and good-humour +that one felt the cut-purses to be as much a part of the show as the +tumbling acrobats and animals. + +As Tony advanced in years and experience this childish mumming lost +its magic; but not so the early imaginings it had excited. For the old +picture had been but the spring-board of fancy, the first step of a +cloud-ladder leading to a land of dreams. With these dreams the name +of Venice remained associated; and all that observation or report +subsequently brought him concerning the place seemed, on a sober +warranty of fact, to confirm its claim to stand midway between +reality and illusion. There was, for instance, a slender Venice glass, +gold-powdered as with lily-pollen or the dust of sunbeams, that, +standing in the corner cabinet betwixt two Lowestoft caddies, seemed, +among its lifeless neighbours, to palpitate like an impaled butterfly. +There was, farther, a gold chain of his mother's, spun of that same +sun-pollen, so thread-like, impalpable, that it slipped through the +fingers like light, yet so strong that it carried a heavy pendant which +seemed held in air as if by magic. MAGIC! That was the word which the +thought of Venice evoked. It was the kind of place, Tony felt, in which +things elsewhere impossible might naturally happen, in which two and two +might make five, a paradox elope with a syllogism, and a conclusion give +the lie to its own premiss. Was there ever a young heart that did not, +once and again, long to get away into such a world as that? Tony, at +least, had felt the longing from the first hour when the axioms in +his horn-book had brought home to him his heavy responsibilities as a +Christian and a sinner. And now here was his wish taking shape before +him, as the distant haze of gold shaped itself into towers and domes +across the morning sea! + +The Reverend Ozias Mounce, Tony's governor and bear-leader, was just +putting a hand to the third clause of the fourth part of a sermon +on Free-Will and Predestination as the Hepzibah B.'s anchor rattled +overboard. Tony, in his haste to be ashore, would have made one plunge +with the anchor; but the Reverend Ozias, on being roused from his +lucubrations, earnestly protested against leaving his argument in +suspense. What was the trifle of an arrival at some Papistical +foreign city, where the very churches wore turbans like so many +Moslem idolators, to the important fact of Mr. Mounce's summing up his +conclusions before the Muse of Theology took flight? He should be happy, +he said, if the tide served, to visit Venice with Mr. Bracknell the next +morning. + +The next morning, ha!--Tony murmured a submissive "Yes, sir," winked at +the subjugated captain, buckled on his sword, pressed his hat down +with a flourish, and before the Reverend Ozias had arrived at his next +deduction, was skimming merrily shoreward in the Hepzibah's gig. + +A moment more and he was in the thick of it! Here was the very world of +the old print, only suffused with sunlight and colour, and bubbling +with merry noises. What a scene it was! A square enclosed in fantastic +painted buildings, and peopled with a throng as fantastic: a bawling, +laughing, jostling, sweating mob, parti-coloured, parti-speeched, +crackling and sputtering under the hot sun like a dish of fritters over +a kitchen fire. Tony, agape, shouldered his way through the press, aware +at once that, spite of the tumult, the shrillness, the gesticulation, +there was no undercurrent of clownishness, no tendency to horse-play, +as in such crowds on market-day at home, but a kind of facetious suavity +which seemed to include everybody in the circumference of one huge joke. +In such an air the sense of strangeness soon wore off, and Tony was +beginning to feel himself vastly at home, when a lift of the tide bore +him against a droll-looking bell-ringing fellow who carried above his +head a tall metal tree hung with sherbet-glasses. + +The encounter set the glasses spinning and three or four spun off and +clattered to the stones. The sherbet-seller called on all the saints, +and Tony, clapping a lordly hand to his pocket, tossed him a ducat by +mistake for a sequin. The fellow's eyes shot out of their orbits, +and just then a personable-looking young man who had observed the +transaction stepped up to Tony and said pleasantly, in English: + +"I perceive, sir, that you are not familiar with our currency." + +"Does he want more?" says Tony, very lordly; whereat the other laughed +and replied: "You have given him enough to retire from his business and +open a gaming-house over the arcade." + +Tony joined in the laugh, and this incident bridging the preliminaries, +the two young men were presently hobnobbing over a glass of Canary in +front of one of the coffee-houses about the square. Tony counted +himself lucky to have run across an English-speaking companion who was +good-natured enough to give him a clue to the labyrinth; and when he had +paid for the Canary (in the coin his friend selected) they set out +again to view the town. The Italian gentleman, who called himself Count +Rialto, appeared to have a very numerous acquaintance, and was able to +point out to Tony all the chief dignitaries of the state, the men of ton +and ladies of fashion, as well as a number of other characters of a kind +not openly mentioned in taking a census of Salem. + +Tony, who was not averse from reading when nothing better offered, +had perused the "Merchant of Venice" and Mr. Otway's fine tragedy; but +though these pieces had given him a notion that the social usages of +Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for the surprising +appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The +gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious striped trousers, +short cloaks and feathered hats. One nobleman wore a ruff and doctor's +gown, another a black velvet tunic slashed with rose-colour; while the +President of the dreaded Council of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow +with a rapier-like nose, a buff leather jerkin and a trailing scarlet +cloak that the crowd was careful not to step on. + +It was all vastly diverting, and Tony would gladly have gone on forever; +but he had given his word to the captain to be at the landing-place at +sunset, and here was dusk already creeping over the skies! Tony was a +man of honour; and having pressed on the Count a handsome damascened +dagger selected from one of the goldsmiths' shops in a narrow street +lined with such wares, he insisted on turning his face toward the +Hepzibah's gig. The Count yielded reluctantly; but as they came out +again on the square they were caught in a great throng pouring toward +the doors of the cathedral. + +"They go to Benediction," said the Count. "A beautiful sight, with many +lights and flowers. It is a pity you cannot take a peep at it." + +Tony thought so too, and in another minute a legless beggar had pulled +back the leathern flap of the cathedral door, and they stood in a +haze of gold and perfume that seemed to rise and fall on the mighty +undulations of the organ. Here the press was as thick as without; and as +Tony flattened himself against a pillar, he heard a pretty voice at his +elbow:--"Oh, sir, oh, sir, your sword!" + +He turned at sound of the broken English, and saw a girl who matched the +voice trying to disengage her dress from the tip of his scabbard. +She wore one of the voluminous black hoods which the Venetian ladies +affected, and under its projecting eaves her face spied out at him as +sweet as a nesting bird. + +In the dusk their hands met over the scabbard, and as she freed herself +a shred of her lace flounce clung to Tony's enchanted fingers. Looking +after her, he saw she was on the arm of a pompous-looking graybeard in +a long black gown and scarlet stockings, who, on perceiving the +exchange of glances between the young people, drew the lady away with a +threatening look. + +The Count met Tony's eye with a smile. "One of our Venetian beauties," +said he; "the lovely Polixena Cador. She is thought to have the finest +eyes in Venice." + +"She spoke English," stammered Tony. + +"Oh--ah--precisely: she learned the language at the Court of Saint +James's, where her father, the Senator, was formerly accredited as +Ambassador. She played as an infant with the royal princes of England." + +"And that was her father?" + +"Assuredly: young ladies of Donna Polixena's rank do not go abroad save +with their parents or a duenna." + +Just then a soft hand slid into Tony's. His heart gave a foolish bound, +and he turned about half-expecting to meet again the merry eyes under +the hood; but saw instead a slender brown boy, in some kind of fanciful +page's dress, who thrust a folded paper between his fingers and vanished +in the throng. Tony, in a tingle, glanced surreptitiously at the Count, +who appeared absorbed in his prayers. The crowd, at the ringing of a +bell, had in fact been overswept by a sudden wave of devotion; and Tony +seized the moment to step beneath a lighted shrine with his letter. + +"I am in dreadful trouble and implore your help. Polixena"--he read; +but hardly had he seized the sense of the words when a hand fell on his +shoulder, and a stern-looking man in a cocked hat, and bearing a kind of +rod or mace, pronounced a few words in Venetian. + +Tony, with a start, thrust the letter in his breast, and tried to jerk +himself free; but the harder he jerked the tighter grew the other's +grip, and the Count, presently perceiving what had happened, pushed +his way through the crowd, and whispered hastily to his companion: "For +God's sake, make no struggle. This is serious. Keep quiet and do as I +tell you." + +Tony was no chicken-heart. He had something of a name for pugnacity +among the lads of his own age at home, and was not the man to stand in +Venice what he would have resented in Salem; but the devil of it was +that this black fellow seemed to be pointing to the letter in his +breast; and this suspicion was confirmed by the Count's agitated +whisper. + +"This is one of the agents of the Ten.--For God's sake, no outcry." He +exchanged a word or two with the mace-bearer and again turned to Tony. +"You have been seen concealing a letter about your person--" + +"And what of that?" says Tony furiously. + +"Gently, gently, my master. A letter handed to you by the page of Donna +Polixena Cador.--A black business! Oh, a very black business! This Cador +is one of the most powerful nobles in Venice--I beseech you, not a word, +sir! Let me think--deliberate--" + +His hand on Tony's shoulder, he carried on a rapid dialogue with the +potentate in the cocked hat. + +"I am sorry, sir--but our young ladies of rank are as jealously guarded +as the Grand Turk's wives, and you must be answerable for this scandal. +The best I can do is to have you taken privately to the Palazzo Cador, +instead of being brought before the Council. I have pleaded your youth +and inexperience"--Tony winced at this--"and I think the business may +still be arranged." + +Meanwhile the agent of the Ten had yielded his place to a sharp-featured +shabby-looking fellow in black, dressed somewhat like a lawyer's clerk, +who laid a grimy hand on Tony's arm, and with many apologetic gestures +steered him through the crowd to the doors of the church. The Count held +him by the other arm, and in this fashion they emerged on the square, +which now lay in darkness save for the many lights twinkling under the +arcade and in the windows of the gaming-rooms above it. + +Tony by this time had regained voice enough to declare that he would go +where they pleased, but that he must first say a word to the mate of the +Hepzibah, who had now been awaiting him some two hours or more at the +landing-place. + +The Count repeated this to Tony's custodian, but the latter shook his +head and rattled off a sharp denial. + +"Impossible, sir," said the Count. "I entreat you not to insist. Any +resistance will tell against you in the end." + +Tony fell silent. With a rapid eye he was measuring his chances of +escape. In wind and limb he was more than a mate for his captors, and +boyhood's ruses were not so far behind him but he felt himself equal to +outwitting a dozen grown men; but he had the sense to see that at a cry +the crowd would close in on him. Space was what he wanted: a clear ten +yards, and he would have laughed at Doge and Council. But the throng was +thick as glue, and he walked on submissively, keeping his eye alert for +an opening. Suddenly the mob swerved aside after some new show. Tony's +fist shot out at the black fellow's chest, and before the latter could +right himself the young New Englander was showing a clean pair of heels +to his escort. On he sped, cleaving the crowd like a flood-tide in +Gloucester bay, diving under the first arch that caught his eye, +dashing down a lane to an unlit water-way, and plunging across a narrow +hump-back bridge which landed him in a black pocket between walls. But +now his pursuers were at his back, reinforced by the yelping mob. The +walls were too high to scale, and for all his courage Tony's breath came +short as he paced the masonry cage in which ill-luck had landed him. +Suddenly a gate opened in one of the walls, and a slip of a servant +wench looked out and beckoned him. There was no time to weigh chances. +Tony dashed through the gate, his rescuer slammed and bolted it, and the +two stood in a narrow paved well between high houses. + + + + +II + + +The servant picked up a lantern and signed to Tony to follow her. They +climbed a squalid stairway of stone, felt their way along a corridor, +and entered a tall vaulted room feebly lit by an oil-lamp hung from +the painted ceiling. Tony discerned traces of former splendour in his +surroundings, but he had no time to examine them, for a figure started +up at his approach and in the dim light he recognized the girl who was +the cause of all his troubles. + +She sprang toward him with outstretched hands, but as he advanced her +face changed and she shrank back abashed. + +"This is a misunderstanding--a dreadful misunderstanding," she cried +out in her pretty broken English. "Oh, how does it happen that you are +here?" + +"Through no choice of my own, madam, I assure you!" retorted Tony, not +over-pleased by his reception. + +"But why--how--how did you make this unfortunate mistake?" + +"Why, madam, if you'll excuse my candour, I think the mistake was +yours--" + +"Mine?" + +--"in sending me a letter--" + +"YOU--a letter?" + +--"by a simpleton of a lad, who must needs hand it to me under your +father's very nose--" + +The girl broke in on him with a cry. "What! It was YOU who received my +letter?" She swept round on the little maid-servant and submerged her +under a flood of Venetian. The latter volleyed back in the same jargon, +and as she did so, Tony's astonished eye detected in her the doubleted +page who had handed him the letter in Saint Mark's. + +"What!" he cried, "the lad was this girl in disguise?" + +Polixena broke off with an irrepressible smile; but her face clouded +instantly and she returned to the charge. + +"This wicked, careless girl--she has ruined me, she will be my undoing! +Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not intended +for you--it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my +mother's, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance--oh, how can I ever +excuse myself to you?" + +"No excuses are needed, madam," said Tony, bowing; "though I am +surprised, I own, that any one should mistake me for an ambassador." + +Here a wave of mirth again overran Polixena's face. "Oh, sir, you +must pardon my poor girl's mistake. She heard you speaking English, +and--and--I had told her to hand the letter to the handsomest foreigner +in the church." Tony bowed again, more profoundly. "The English +Ambassador," Polixena added simply, "is a very handsome man." + +"I wish, madam, I were a better proxy!" + +She echoed his laugh, and then clapped her hands together with a look +of anguish. "Fool that I am! How can I jest at such a moment? I am in +dreadful trouble, and now perhaps I have brought trouble on you also-- +Oh, my father! I hear my father coming!" She turned pale and leaned +tremblingly upon the little servant. + +Footsteps and loud voices were in fact heard outside, and a moment +later the red-stockinged Senator stalked into the room attended by +half-a-dozen of the magnificoes whom Tony had seen abroad in the square. +At sight of him, all clapped hands to their swords and burst into +furious outcries; and though their jargon was unintelligible to the +young man, their tones and gestures made their meaning unpleasantly +plain. The Senator, with a start of anger, first flung himself on the +intruder; then, snatched back by his companions, turned wrathfully on +his daughter, who, at his feet, with outstretched arms and streaming +face, pleaded her cause with all the eloquence of young distress. +Meanwhile the other nobles gesticulated vehemently among themselves, +and one, a truculent-looking personage in ruff and Spanish cape, stalked +apart, keeping a jealous eye on Tony. The latter was at his wit's +end how to comport himself, for the lovely Polixena's tears had +quite drowned her few words of English, and beyond guessing that the +magnificoes meant him a mischief he had no notion what they would be at. + +At this point, luckily, his friend Count Rialto suddenly broke in on +the scene, and was at once assailed by all the tongues in the room. He +pulled a long face at sight of Tony, but signed to the young man to be +silent, and addressed himself earnestly to the Senator. The latter, at +first, would not draw breath to hear him; but presently, sobering, +he walked apart with the Count, and the two conversed together out of +earshot. + +"My dear sir," said the Count, at length turning to Tony with a +perturbed countenance, "it is as I feared, and you are fallen into a +great misfortune." + +"A great misfortune! A great trap, I call it!" shouted Tony, whose +blood, by this time, was boiling; but as he uttered the word the +beautiful Polixena cast such a stricken look on him that he blushed up +to the forehead. + +"Be careful," said the Count, in a low tone. "Though his Illustriousness +does not speak your language, he understands a few words of it, and--" + +"So much the better!" broke in Tony; "I hope he will understand me if I +ask him in plain English what is his grievance against me." + +The Senator, at this, would have burst forth again; but the Count, +stepping between, answered quickly: "His grievance against you is that +you have been detected in secret correspondence with his daughter, the +most noble Polixena Cador, the betrothed bride of this gentleman, the +most illustrious Marquess Zanipolo--" and he waved a deferential hand at +the frowning hidalgo of the cape and ruff. + +"Sir," said Tony, "if that is the extent of my offence, it lies with +the young lady to set me free, since by her own avowal--" but here he +stopped short, for, to his surprise, Polixena shot a terrified glance at +him. + +"Sir," interposed the Count, "we are not accustomed in Venice to take +shelter behind a lady's reputation." + +"No more are we in Salem," retorted Tony in a white heat. "I was merely +about to remark that, by the young lady's avowal, she has never seen me +before." + +Polixena's eyes signalled her gratitude, and he felt he would have died +to defend her. + +The Count translated his statement, and presently pursued: "His +Illustriousness observes that, in that case, his daughter's misconduct +has been all the more reprehensible." + +"Her misconduct? Of what does he accuse her?" + +"Of sending you, just now, in the church of Saint Mark's, a letter which +you were seen to read openly and thrust in your bosom. The incident +was witnessed by his Illustriousness the Marquess Zanipolo, who, in +consequence, has already repudiated his unhappy bride." + +Tony stared contemptuously at the black Marquess. "If his +Illustriousness is so lacking in gallantry as to repudiate a lady on so +trivial a pretext, it is he and not I who should be the object of her +father's resentment." + +"That, my dear young gentleman, is hardly for you to decide. Your only +excuse being your ignorance of our customs, it is scarcely for you to +advise us how to behave in matters of punctilio." + +It seemed to Tony as though the Count were going over to his enemies, +and the thought sharpened his retort. + +"I had supposed," said he, "that men of sense had much the same +behaviour in all countries, and that, here as elsewhere, a gentleman +would be taken at his word. I solemnly affirm that the letter I was seen +to read reflects in no way on the honour of this young lady, and has in +fact nothing to do with what you suppose." + +As he had himself no notion what the letter was about, this was as far +as he dared commit himself. + +There was another brief consultation in the opposing camp, and the +Count then said:--"We all know, sir, that a gentleman is obliged to meet +certain enquiries by a denial; but you have at your command the means of +immediately clearing the lady. Will you show the letter to her father?" + +There was a perceptible pause, during which Tony, while appearing to +look straight before him, managed to deflect an interrogatory glance +toward Polixena. Her reply was a faint negative motion, accompanied by +unmistakable signs of apprehension. + +"Poor girl!" he thought, "she is in a worse case than I imagined, and +whatever happens I must keep her secret." + +He turned to the Senator with a deep bow. "I am not," said he, "in the +habit of showing my private correspondence to strangers." + +The Count interpreted these words, and Donna Polixena's father, dashing +his hand on his hilt, broke into furious invective, while the Marquess +continued to nurse his outraged feelings aloof. + +The Count shook his head funereally. "Alas, sir, it is as I feared. +This is not the first time that youth and propinquity have led to fatal +imprudence. But I need hardly, I suppose, point out the obligation +incumbent upon you as a man of honour." + +Tony stared at him haughtily, with a look which was meant for the +Marquess. "And what obligation is that?" + +"To repair the wrong you have done--in other words, to marry the lady." + +Polixena at this burst into tears, and Tony said to himself: "Why in +heaven does she not bid me show the letter?" Then he remembered that it +had no superscription, and that the words it contained, supposing them +to have been addressed to himself, were hardly of a nature to disarm +suspicion. The sense of the girl's grave plight effaced all thought of +his own risk, but the Count's last words struck him as so preposterous +that he could not repress a smile. + +"I cannot flatter myself," said he, "that the lady would welcome this +solution." + +The Count's manner became increasingly ceremonious. "Such modesty," +he said, "becomes your youth and inexperience; but even if it were +justified it would scarcely alter the case, as it is always assumed in +this country that a young lady wishes to marry the man whom her father +has selected." + +"But I understood just now," Tony interposed, "that the gentleman yonder +was in that enviable position." + +"So he was, till circumstances obliged him to waive the privilege in +your favour." + +"He does me too much honour; but if a deep sense of my unworthiness +obliges me to decline--" + +"You are still," interrupted the Count, "labouring under a +misapprehension. Your choice in the matter is no more to be consulted +than the lady's. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is necessary that +you should marry her within the hour." + +Tony, at this, for all his spirit, felt the blood run thin in his veins. +He looked in silence at the threatening visages between himself and the +door, stole a side-glance at the high barred windows of the apartment, +and then turned to Polixena, who had fallen sobbing at her father's +feet. + +"And if I refuse?" said he. + +The Count made a significant gesture. "I am not so foolish as to +threaten a man of your mettle. But perhaps you are unaware what the +consequences would be to the lady." + +Polixena, at this, struggling to her feet, addressed a few impassioned +words to the Count and her father; but the latter put her aside with an +obdurate gesture. + +The Count turned to Tony. "The lady herself pleads for you--at what +cost you do not guess--but as you see it is vain. In an hour his +Illustriousness's chaplain will be here. Meanwhile his Illustriousness +consents to leave you in the custody of your betrothed." + +He stepped back, and the other gentlemen, bowing with deep ceremony to +Tony, stalked out one by one from the room. Tony heard the key turn in +the lock, and found himself alone with Polixena. + + + + +III + + +The girl had sunk into a chair, her face hidden, a picture of shame +and agony. So moving was the sight that Tony once again forgot his own +extremity in the view of her distress. He went and kneeled beside her, +drawing her hands from her face. + +"Oh, don't make me look at you!" she sobbed; but it was on his bosom +that she hid from his gaze. He held her there a breathing-space, as +he might have clasped a weeping child; then she drew back and put him +gently from her. + +"What humiliation!" she lamented. + +"Do you think I blame you for what has happened?" + +"Alas, was it not my foolish letter that brought you to this plight? And +how nobly you defended me! How generous it was of you not to show the +letter! If my father knew I had written to the Ambassador to save me +from this dreadful marriage his anger against me would be even greater." + +"Ah--it was that you wrote for?" cried Tony with unaccountable relief. + +"Of course--what else did you think?" + +"But is it too late for the Ambassador to save you?" + +"From YOU?" A smile flashed through her tears. "Alas, yes." She drew +back and hid her face again, as though overcome by a fresh wave of +shame. + +Tony glanced about him. "If I could wrench a bar out of that window--" +he muttered. + +"Impossible! The court is guarded. You are a prisoner, alas.--Oh, I must +speak!" She sprang up and paced the room. "But indeed you can scarce +think worse of me than you do already--" + +"I think ill of you?" + +"Alas, you must! To be unwilling to marry the man my father has chosen +for me--" + +"Such a beetle-browed lout! It would be a burning shame if you married +him." + +"Ah, you come from a free country. Here a girl is allowed no choice." + +"It is infamous, I say--infamous!" + +"No, no--I ought to have resigned myself, like so many others." + +"Resigned yourself to that brute! Impossible!" + +"He has a dreadful name for violence--his gondolier has told my little +maid such tales of him! But why do I talk of myself, when it is of you I +should be thinking?" + +"Of me, poor child?" cried Tony, losing his head. + +"Yes, and how to save you--for I CAN save you! But every moment +counts--and yet what I have to say is so dreadful." + +"Nothing from your lips could seem dreadful." + +"Ah, if he had had your way of speaking!" + +"Well, now at least you are free of him," said Tony, a little wildly; +but at this she stood up and bent a grave look on him. + +"No, I am not free," she said; "but you are, if you will do as I tell +you." + +Tony, at this, felt a sudden dizziness; as though, from a mad flight +through clouds and darkness, he had dropped to safety again, and the +fall had stunned him. + +"What am I to do?" he said. + +"Look away from me, or I can never tell you." + +He thought at first that this was a jest, but her eyes commanded him, +and reluctantly he walked away and leaned in the embrasure of the +window. She stood in the middle of the room, and as soon as his back +was turned she began to speak in a quick monotonous voice, as though she +were reciting a lesson. + +"You must know that the Marquess Zanipolo, though a great noble, is +not a rich man. True, he has large estates, but he is a desperate +spendthrift and gambler, and would sell his soul for a round sum of +ready money.--If you turn round I shall not go on!--He wrangled horribly +with my father over my dowry--he wanted me to have more than either of +my sisters, though one married a Procurator and the other a grandee +of Spain. But my father is a gambler too--oh, such fortunes as are +squandered over the arcade yonder! And so--and so--don't turn, I implore +you--oh, do you begin to see my meaning?" + +She broke off sobbing, and it took all his strength to keep his eyes +from her. + +"Go on," he said. + +"Will you not understand? Oh, I would say anything to save you! You +don't know us Venetians--we're all to be bought for a price. It is +not only the brides who are marketable--sometimes the husbands sell +themselves too. And they think you rich--my father does, and the +others--I don't know why, unless you have shown your money too +freely--and the English are all rich, are they not? And--oh, oh--do you +understand? Oh, I can't bear your eyes!" + +She dropped into a chair, her head on her arms, and Tony in a flash was +at her side. + +"My poor child, my poor Polixena!" he cried, and wept and clasped her. + +"You ARE rich, are you not? You would promise them a ransom?" she +persisted. + +"To enable you to marry the Marquess?" + +"To enable you to escape from this place. Oh, I hope I may never see +your face again." She fell to weeping once more, and he drew away and +paced the floor in a fever. + +Presently she sprang up with a fresh air of resolution, and pointed to a +clock against the wall. "The hour is nearly over. It is quite true that +my father is gone to fetch his chaplain. Oh, I implore you, be warned by +me! There is no other way of escape." + +"And if I do as you say--?" + +"You are safe! You are free! I stake my life on it." + +"And you--you are married to that villain?" + +"But I shall have saved you. Tell me your name, that I may say it to +myself when I am alone." + +"My name is Anthony. But you must not marry that fellow." + +"You forgive me, Anthony? You don't think too badly of me?" + +"I say you must not marry that fellow." + +She laid a trembling hand on his arm. "Time presses," she adjured him, +"and I warn you there is no other way." + +For a moment he had a vision of his mother, sitting very upright, on a +Sunday evening, reading Dr. Tillotson's sermons in the best parlour at +Salem; then he swung round on the girl and caught both her hands in his. +"Yes, there is," he cried, "if you are willing. Polixena, let the priest +come!" + +She shrank back from him, white and radiant. "Oh, hush, be silent!" she +said. + +"I am no noble Marquess, and have no great estates," he cried. "My +father is a plain India merchant in the colony of Massachusetts--but if +you--" + +"Oh, hush, I say! I don't know what your long words mean. But I bless +you, bless you, bless you on my knees!" And she knelt before him, and +fell to kissing his hands. + +He drew her up to his breast and held her there. + +"You are willing, Polixena?" he said. + +"No, no!" She broke from him with outstretched hands. "I am not willing. +You mistake me. I must marry the Marquess, I tell you!" + +"On my money?" he taunted her; and her burning blush rebuked him. + +"Yes, on your money," she said sadly. + +"Why? Because, much as you hate him, you hate me still more?" + +She was silent. + +"If you hate me, why do you sacrifice yourself for me?" he persisted. + +"You torture me! And I tell you the hour is past." + +"Let it pass. I'll not accept your sacrifice. I will not lift a finger +to help another man to marry you." + +"Oh, madman, madman!" she murmured. + +Tony, with crossed arms, faced her squarely, and she leaned against the +wall a few feet off from him. Her breast throbbed under its lace and +falbalas, and her eyes swam with terror and entreaty. + +"Polixena, I love you!" he cried. + +A blush swept over her throat and bosom, bathing her in light to the +verge of her troubled brows. + +"I love you! I love you!" he repeated. + +And now she was on his breast again, and all their youth was in their +lips. But her embrace was as fleeting as a bird's poise and before he +knew it he clasped empty air, and half the room was between them. + +She was holding up a little coral charm and laughing. "I took it from +your fob," she said. "It is of no value, is it? And I shall not get any +of the money, you know." + +She continued to laugh strangely, and the rouge burned like fire in her +ashen face. + +"What are you talking of?" he said. + +"They never give me anything but the clothes I wear. And I shall never +see you again, Anthony!" She gave him a dreadful look. "Oh, my poor boy, +my poor love--'I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, POLIXENA!'" + +He thought she had turned light-headed, and advanced to her with +soothing words; but she held him quietly at arm's length, and as he +gazed he read the truth in her face. + +He fell back from her, and a sob broke from him as he bowed his head on +his hands. + +"Only, for God's sake, have the money ready, or there may be foul play +here," she said. + +As she spoke there was a great tramping of steps outside and a burst of +voices on the threshold. + +"It is all a lie," she gasped out, "about my marriage, and the Marquess, +and the Ambassador, and the Senator--but not, oh, not about your danger +in this place--or about my love," she breathed to him. And as the key +rattled in the door she laid her lips on his brow. + +The key rattled, and the door swung open--but the black-cassocked +gentleman who stepped in, though a priest indeed, was no votary of +idolatrous rites, but that sound orthodox divine, the Reverend Ozias +Mounce, looking very much perturbed at his surroundings, and very much +on the alert for the Scarlet Woman. He was supported, to his evident +relief, by the captain of the Hepzibah B., and the procession was closed +by an escort of stern-looking fellows in cocked hats and small-swords, +who led between them Tony's late friends the magnificoes, now as sorry a +looking company as the law ever landed in her net. + +The captain strode briskly into the room, uttering a grunt of +satisfaction as he clapped eyes on Tony. + +"So, Mr. Bracknell," said he, "you have been seeing the Carnival with +this pack of mummers, have you? And this is where your pleasuring has +landed you? H'm--a pretty establishment, and a pretty lady at the head +of it." He glanced about the apartment and doffed his hat with mock +ceremony to Polixena, who faced him like a princess. + +"Why, my girl," said he, amicably, "I think I saw you this morning in +the square, on the arm of the Pantaloon yonder; and as for that Captain +Spavent--" and he pointed a derisive finger at the Marquess--"I've +watched him drive his bully's trade under the arcade ever since I +first dropped anchor in these waters. Well, well," he continued, his +indignation subsiding, "all's fair in Carnival, I suppose, but this +gentleman here is under sailing orders, and I fear we must break up your +little party." + +At this Tony saw Count Rialto step forward, looking very small and +explanatory, and uncovering obsequiously to the captain. + +"I can assure you, sir," said the Count in his best English, "that this +incident is the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and if you +will oblige us by dismissing these myrmidons, any of my friends +here will be happy to offer satisfaction to Mr. Bracknell and his +companions." + +Mr. Mounce shrank visibly at this, and the captain burst into a loud +guffaw. + +"Satisfaction?" says he. "Why, my cock, that's very handsome of you, +considering the rope's at your throats. But we'll not take advantage of +your generosity, for I fear Mr. Bracknell has already trespassed on +it too long. You pack of galley-slaves, you!" he spluttered suddenly, +"decoying young innocents with that devil's bait of yours--" His eye +fell on Polixena, and his voice softened unaccountably. "Ah, well, we +must all see the Carnival once, I suppose," he said. "All's well that +ends well, as the fellow says in the play; and now, if you please, Mr. +Bracknell, if you'll take the reverend gentleman's arm there, we'll +bid adieu to our hospitable entertainers, and right about face for the +Hepzibah." + + +The End of A Venetian Night's Entertainment + + + + + +XINGU + +December, 1911 + + +Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as +though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded +the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other +indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four +winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that +the entertainment of distinguished strangers became one of its accepted +functions; in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated +"Osric Dane," on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge, an invitation to +be present at the next meeting. + +The Club was to meet at Mrs. Ballinger's. The other members, behind +her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede +her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive +setting for the entertainment of celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret +observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fall back on. + +Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded +it as one of her obligations to entertain the Lunch Club's distinguished +guests. Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was +of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one +possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth +could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set +herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, +was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly +stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep +footmen clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff of +responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted that Mrs. Ballinger, +whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow scope of two +parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to entertain +Osric Dane. + +The question of that lady's reception had for a month past profoundly +moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt +themselves unequal to the task, but that their sense of the opportunity +plunged them into the agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the +alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as +Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the +author of "The Wings of Death," no forebodings of the kind disturbed the +conscious adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. +"The Wings of Death" had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluyck's suggestion, been +chosen as the subject of discussion at the last club meeting, and +each member had thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to +appropriate whatever seemed most likely to be of use in the comments +of the others. Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the +opportunity thus offered; but it was now openly recognised that, as a +member of the Lunch Club, Mrs. Roby was a failure. "It all comes," as +Miss Van Vluyck put it, "of accepting a woman on a man's estimation." +Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge from a prolonged sojourn in exotic +regions--the other ladies no longer took the trouble to remember +where--had been emphatically commended by the distinguished biologist, +Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had ever met; and the +members of the Lunch Club, awed by an encomium that carried the weight +of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the Professor's social sympathies +would follow the line of his scientific bent, had seized the chance of +annexing a biological member. Their disillusionment was complete. At +Miss Van Vluyck's first off-hand mention of the pterodactyl Mrs. Roby +had confusedly murmured: "I know so little about metres--" and after +that painful betrayal of incompetence she had prudently withdrawn from +farther participation in the mental gymnastics of the club. + +"I suppose she flattered him," Miss Van Vluyck summed up--"or else it's +the way she does her hair." + +The dimensions of Miss Van Vluyck's dining-room having restricted the +membership of the club to six, the non-conductiveness of one member was +a serious obstacle to the exchange of ideas, and some wonder had already +been expressed that Mrs. Roby should care to live, as it were, on the +intellectual bounty of the others. This feeling was augmented by the +discovery that she had not yet read "The Wings of Death." She owned +to having heard the name of Osric Dane; but that--incredible as it +appeared--was the extent of her acquaintance with the celebrated +novelist. The ladies could not conceal their surprise, but Mrs. +Ballinger, whose pride in the club made her wish to put even Mrs. Roby +in the best possible light, gently insinuated that, though she had not +had time to acquaint herself with "The Wings of Death," she must at +least be familiar with its equally remarkable predecessor, "The Supreme +Instant." + +Mrs. Roby wrinkled her sunny brows in a conscientious effort of memory, +as a result of which she recalled that, oh, yes, she HAD seen the book +at her brother's, when she was staying with him in Brazil, and had even +carried it off to read one day on a boating party; but they had all +got to shying things at each other in the boat, and the book had gone +overboard, so she had never had the chance-- + +The picture evoked by this anecdote did not advance Mrs. Roby's credit +with the club, and there was a painful pause, which was broken by +Mrs. Plinth's remarking: "I can understand that, with all your other +pursuits, you should not find much time for reading; but I should have +thought you might at least have GOT UP 'The Wings of Death' before Osric +Dane's arrival." + +Mrs. Roby took this rebuke good-humouredly. She had meant, she owned +to glance through the book; but she had been so absorbed in a novel of +Trollope's that-- + +"No one reads Trollope now," Mrs. Ballinger interrupted impatiently. + +Mrs. Roby looked pained. "I'm only just beginning," she confessed. + +"And does he interest you?" Mrs. Plinth inquired. + +"He amuses me." + +"Amusement," said Mrs. Plinth sententiously, "is hardly what I look for +in my choice of books." + +"Oh, certainly, 'The Wings of Death' is not amusing," ventured Mrs. +Leveret, whose manner of putting forth an opinion was like that of an +obliging salesman with a variety of other styles to submit if his first +selection does not suit. + +"Was it MEANT to be?" enquired Mrs. Plinth, who was fond of asking +questions that she permitted no one but herself to answer. "Assuredly +not." + +"Assuredly not--that is what I was going to say," assented Mrs. Leveret, +hastily rolling up her opinion and reaching for another. "It was meant +to--to elevate." + +Miss Van Vluyck adjusted her spectacles as though they were the black +cap of condemnation. "I hardly see," she interposed, "how a book steeped +in the bitterest pessimism can be said to elevate, however much it may +instruct." + +"I meant, of course, to instruct," said Mrs. Leveret, flurried by the +unexpected distinction between two terms which she had supposed to be +synonymous. Mrs. Leveret's enjoyment of the Lunch Club was frequently +marred by such surprises; and not knowing her own value to the other +ladies as a mirror for their mental complacency she was sometimes +troubled by a doubt of her worthiness to join in their debates. It was +only the fact of having a dull sister who thought her clever that saved +her from a sense of hopeless inferiority. + +"Do they get married in the end?" Mrs. Roby interposed. + +"They--who?" the Lunch Club collectively exclaimed. + +"Why, the girl and man. It's a novel, isn't it? I always think that's +the one thing that matters. If they're parted it spoils my dinner." + +Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Ballinger exchanged scandalised glances, and the +latter said: "I should hardly advise you to read 'The Wings of Death,' +in that spirit. For my part, when there are so many books that one HAS +to read, I wonder how any one can find time for those that are merely +amusing." + +"The beautiful part of it," Laura Glyde murmured, "is surely just +this--that no one can tell HOW 'The Wings of Death' ends. Osric Dane, +overcome by the dread significance of her own meaning, has mercifully +veiled it--perhaps even from herself--as Apelles, in representing the +sacrifice of Iphigenia, veiled the face of Agamemnon." + +"What's that? Is it poetry?" whispered Mrs. Leveret nervously to Mrs. +Plinth, who, disdaining a definite reply, said coldly: "You should +look it up. I always make it a point to look things up." Her tone +added--"though I might easily have it done for me by the footman." + +"I was about to say," Miss Van Vluyck resumed, "that it must always be a +question whether a book CAN instruct unless it elevates." + +"Oh--" murmured Mrs. Leveret, now feeling herself hopelessly astray. + +"I don't know," said Mrs. Ballinger, scenting in Miss Van Vluyck's tone +a tendency to depreciate the coveted distinction of entertaining Osric +Dane; "I don't know that such a question can seriously be raised as to a +book which has attracted more attention among thoughtful people than any +novel since 'Robert Elsmere.'" + +"Oh, but don't you see," exclaimed Laura Glyde, "that it's just the +dark hopelessness of it all--the wonderful tone-scheme of black on +black--that makes it such an artistic achievement? It reminded me so +when I read it of Prince Rupert's maniere noire... the book is etched, +not painted, yet one feels the colour values so intensely..." + +"Who is HE?" Mrs. Leveret whispered to her neighbour. "Some one she's +met abroad?" + +"The wonderful part of the book," Mrs. Ballinger conceded, "is that it +may be looked at from so many points of view. I hear that as a study of +determinism Professor Lupton ranks it with 'The Data of Ethics.'" + +"I'm told that Osric Dane spent ten years in preparatory studies +before beginning to write it," said Mrs. Plinth. "She looks up +everything--verifies everything. It has always been my principle, as +you know. Nothing would induce me, now, to put aside a book before I'd +finished it, just because I can buy as many more as I want." + +"And what do YOU think of 'The Wings of Death'?" Mrs. Roby abruptly +asked her. + +It was the kind of question that might be termed out of order, and the +ladies glanced at each other as though disclaiming any share in such a +breach of discipline. They all knew that there was nothing Mrs. Plinth +so much disliked as being asked her opinion of a book. Books were +written to read; if one read them what more could be expected? To be +questioned in detail regarding the contents of a volume seemed to her +as great an outrage as being searched for smuggled laces at the Custom +House. The club had always respected this idiosyncrasy of Mrs. Plinth's. +Such opinions as she had were imposing and substantial: her mind, like +her house, was furnished with monumental "pieces" that were not meant +to be suddenly disarranged; and it was one of the unwritten rules of +the Lunch Club that, within her own province, each member's habits +of thought should be respected. The meeting therefore closed with +an increased sense, on the part of the other ladies, of Mrs. Roby's +hopeless unfitness to be one of them. + + + + +II + + +Mrs. Leveret, on the eventful day, had arrived early at Mrs. +Ballinger's, her volume of Appropriate Allusions in her pocket. + +It always flustered Mrs. Leveret to be late at the Lunch Club: she liked +to collect her thoughts and gather a hint, as the others assembled, of +the turn the conversation was likely to take. To-day, however, she +felt herself completely at a loss; and even the familiar contact of +Appropriate Allusions, which stuck into her as she sat down, failed to +give her any reassurance. It was an admirable little volume, compiled +to meet all the social emergencies; so that, whether on the occasion +of Anniversaries, joyful or melancholy (as the classification ran), +of Banquets, social or municipal, or of Baptisms, Church of England +or sectarian, its student need never be at a loss for a pertinent +reference. Mrs. Leveret, though she had for years devoutly conned its +pages, valued it, however, rather for its moral support than for its +practical services; for though in the privacy of her own room she +commanded an army of quotations, these invariably deserted her at the +critical moment, and the only line she retained--CANST THOU DRAW OUT +LEVIATHAN WITH A HOOK?--was one she had never yet found the occasion to +apply. + +To-day she felt that even the complete mastery of the volume would +hardly have insured her self-possession; for she thought it probable, +even if she DID, in some miraculous way, remember an Allusion, it would +be only to find that Osric Dane used a different volume (Mrs. Leveret +was convinced that literary people always carried them), and would +consequently not recognise her quotations. + +Mrs. Leveret's sense of being adrift was intensified by the appearance +of Mrs. Ballinger's drawing-room. To a careless eye its aspect was +unchanged; but those acquainted with Mrs. Ballinger's way of +arranging her books would instantly have detected the marks of recent +perturbation. Mrs. Ballinger's province, as a member of the Lunch Club, +was the Book of the Day. On that, whatever it was, from a novel to +a treatise on experimental psychology, she was confidently, +authoritatively "up." What became of last year's books, or last week's +even; what she did with the "subjects" she had previously professed with +equal authority; no one had ever yet discovered. Her mind was an hotel +where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their +address behind, and frequently without paying for their board. It was +Mrs. Ballinger's boast that she was "abreast with the Thought of the +Day," and her pride that this advanced position should be expressed by +the books on her drawing-room table. These volumes, frequently renewed, +and almost always damp from the press, bore names generally unfamiliar +to Mrs. Leveret, and giving her, as she furtively scanned them, a +disheartening glimpse of new fields of knowledge to be breathlessly +traversed in Mrs. Ballinger's wake. But to-day a number of +maturer-looking volumes were adroitly mingled with the primeurs of the +press--Karl Marx jostled Professor Bergson, and the "Confessions of St. +Augustine" lay beside the last work on "Mendelism"; so that even to Mrs. +Leveret's fluttered perceptions it was clear that Mrs. Ballinger didn't +in the least know what Osric Dane was likely to talk about, and had +taken measures to be prepared for anything. Mrs. Leveret felt like a +passenger on an ocean steamer who is told that there is no immediate +danger, but that she had better put on her life-belt. + +It was a relief to be roused from these forebodings by Miss Van Vluyck's +arrival. + +"Well, my dear," the new-comer briskly asked her hostess, "what subjects +are we to discuss to-day?" + +Mrs. Ballinger was furtively replacing a volume of Wordsworth by a copy +of Verlaine. "I hardly know," she said somewhat nervously. "Perhaps we +had better leave that to circumstances." + +"Circumstances?" said Miss Van Vluyck drily. "That means, I suppose, +that Laura Glyde will take the floor as usual, and we shall be deluged +with literature." + +Philanthropy and statistics were Miss Van Vluyck's province, and she +naturally resented any tendency to divert their guest's attention from +these topics. + +Mrs. Plinth at this moment appeared. + +"Literature?" she protested in a tone of remonstrance. "But this is +perfectly unexpected. I understood we were to talk of Osric Dane's +novel." + +Mrs. Ballinger winced at the discrimination, but let it pass. "We can +hardly make that our chief subject--at least not TOO intentionally," she +suggested. "Of course we can let our talk DRIFT in that direction; but +we ought to have some other topic as an introduction, and that is what +I wanted to consult you about. The fact is, we know so little of Osric +Dane's tastes and interests that it is difficult to make any special +preparation." + +"It may be difficult," said Mrs. Plinth with decision, "but it is +absolutely necessary. I know what that happy-go-lucky principle +leads to. As I told one of my nieces the other day, there are certain +emergencies for which a lady should always be prepared. It's in shocking +taste to wear colours when one pays a visit of condolence, or a last +year's dress when there are reports that one's husband is on the wrong +side of the market; and so it is with conversation. All I ask is that I +should know beforehand what is to be talked about; then I feel sure of +being able to say the proper thing." + +"I quite agree with you," Mrs. Ballinger anxiously assented; "but--" + +And at that instant, heralded by the fluttered parlour-maid, Osric Dane +appeared upon the threshold. + +Mrs. Leveret told her sister afterward that she had known at a glance +what was coming. She saw that Osric Dane was not going to meet them +half way. That distinguished personage had indeed entered with an air of +compulsion not calculated to promote the easy exercise of hospitality. +She looked as though she were about to be photographed for a new edition +of her books. + +The desire to propitiate a divinity is generally in inverse ratio to its +responsiveness, and the sense of discouragement produced by Osric Dane's +entrance visibly increased the Lunch Club's eagerness to please her. Any +lingering idea that she might consider herself under an obligation to +her entertainers was at once dispelled by her manner: as Mrs. Leveret +said afterward to her sister, she had a way of looking at you that made +you feel as if there was something wrong with your hat. This evidence +of greatness produced such an immediate impression on the ladies that a +shudder of awe ran through them when Mrs. Roby, as their hostess led +the great personage into the dining-room, turned back to whisper to the +others: "What a brute she is!" + +The hour about the table did not tend to correct this verdict. It was +passed by Osric Dane in the silent deglutition of Mrs. Ballinger's menu, +and by the members of the Club in the emission of tentative platitudes +which their guest seemed to swallow as perfunctorily as the successive +courses of the luncheon. + +Mrs. Ballinger's deplorable delay in fixing a topic had thrown the +Club into a mental disarray which increased with the return to the +drawing-room, where the actual business of discussion was to open. Each +lady waited for the other to speak; and there was a general shock +of disappointment when their hostess opened the conversation by the +painfully commonplace inquiry: "Is this your first visit to Hillbridge?" + +Even Mrs. Leveret was conscious that this was a bad beginning; and a +vague impulse of deprecation made Miss Glyde interject: "It is a very +small place indeed." + +Mrs. Plinth bristled. "We have a great many representative people," she +said, in the tone of one who speaks for her order. + +Osric Dane turned to her thoughtfully. "What do they represent?" she +asked. + +Mrs. Plinth's constitutional dislike to being questioned was intensified +by her sense of unpreparedness; and her reproachful glance passed the +question on to Mrs. Ballinger. + +"Why," said that lady, glancing in turn at the other members, "as a +community I hope it is not too much to say that we stand for culture." + +"For art--" Miss Glyde eagerly interjected. + +"For art and literature," Mrs. Ballinger emended. + +"And for sociology, I trust," snapped Miss Van Vluyck. + +"We have a standard," said Mrs. Plinth, feeling herself suddenly secure +on the vast expanse of a generalisation: and Mrs. Leveret, thinking +there must be room for more than one on so broad a statement, took +courage to murmur: "Oh, certainly; we have a standard." + +"The object of our little club," Mrs. Ballinger continued, "is to +concentrate the highest tendencies of Hillbridge--to centralise and +focus its complex intellectual effort." + +This was felt to be so happy that the ladies drew an almost audible +breath of relief. + +"We aspire," the President went on, "to stand for what is highest in +art, literature and ethics." + +Osric Dane again turned to her. "What ethics?" she asked. + +A tremor of apprehension encircled the room. None of the ladies required +any preparation to pronounce on a question of morals; but when they +were called ethics it was different. The club, when fresh from +the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," the "Reader's Handbook" or Smith's +"Classical Dictionary," could deal confidently with any subject; but +when taken unawares it had been known to define agnosticism as a heresy +of the Early Church and Professor Froude as a distinguished histologist; +and such minor members as Mrs. Leveret still secretly regarded ethics as +something vaguely pagan. + +Even to Mrs. Ballinger, Osric Dane's question was unsettling, and there +was a general sense of gratitude when Laura Glyde leaned forward to say, +with her most sympathetic accent: "You must excuse us, Mrs. Dane, for +not being able, just at present, to talk of anything but 'The Wings of +Death.'" + +"Yes," said Miss Van Vluyck, with a sudden resolve to carry the war into +the enemy's camp. "We are so anxious to know the exact purpose you had +in mind in writing your wonderful book." + +"You will find," Mrs. Plinth interposed, "that we are not superficial +readers." + +"We are eager to hear from you," Miss Van Vluyck continued, "if +the pessimistic tendency of the book is an expression of your own +convictions or--" + +"Or merely," Miss Glyde hastily thrust in, "a sombre background brushed +in to throw your figures into more vivid relief. ARE you not primarily +plastic?" + +"I have always maintained," Mrs. Ballinger interposed, "that you +represent the purely objective method--" + +Osric Dane helped herself critically to coffee. "How do you define +objective?" she then inquired. + +There was a flurried pause before Laura Glyde intensely murmured: "In +reading YOU we don't define, we feel." + +Osric Dane smiled. "The cerebellum," she remarked, "is not infrequently +the seat of the literary emotions." And she took a second lump of sugar. + +The sting that this remark was vaguely felt to conceal was almost +neutralised by the satisfaction of being addressed in such technical +language. + +"Ah, the cerebellum," said Miss Van Vluyck complacently. "The Club took +a course in psychology last winter." + +"Which psychology?" asked Osric Dane. + +There was an agonising pause, during which each member of the Club +secretly deplored the distressing inefficiency of the others. Only Mrs. +Roby went on placidly sipping her chartreuse. At last Mrs. Ballinger +said, with an attempt at a high tone: "Well, really, you know, it was +last year that we took psychology, and this winter we have been so +absorbed in--" + +She broke off, nervously trying to recall some of the Club's +discussions; but her faculties seemed to be paralysed by the petrifying +stare of Osric Dane. What HAD the club been absorbed in lately? Mrs. +Ballinger, with a vague purpose of gaining time, repeated slowly: "We've +been so intensely absorbed in--" + +Mrs. Roby put down her liqueur glass and drew near the group with a +smile. + +"In Xingu?" she gently prompted. + +A thrill ran through the other members. They exchanged confused +glances, and then, with one accord, turned a gaze of mingled relief +and interrogation on their unexpected rescuer. The expression of each +denoted a different phase of the same emotion. Mrs. Plinth was the first +to compose her features to an air of reassurance: after a moment's hasty +adjustment her look almost implied that it was she who had given the +word to Mrs. Ballinger. + +"Xingu, of course!" exclaimed the latter with her accustomed promptness, +while Miss Van Vluyck and Laura Glyde seemed to be plumbing the depths +of memory, and Mrs. Leveret, feeling apprehensively for Appropriate +Allusions, was somehow reassured by the uncomfortable pressure of its +bulk against her person. + +Osric Dane's change of countenance was no less striking than that of +her entertainers. She too put down her coffee-cup, but with a look of +distinct annoyance: she too wore, for a brief moment, what Mrs. Roby +afterward described as the look of feeling for something in the back +of her head; and before she could dissemble these momentary signs of +weakness, Mrs. Roby, turning to her with a deferential smile, had said: +"And we've been so hoping that to-day you would tell us just what you +think of it." + +Osric Dane received the homage of the smile as a matter of course; but +the accompanying question obviously embarrassed her, and it became clear +to her observers that she was not quick at shifting her facial scenery. +It was as though her countenance had so long been set in an expression +of unchallenged superiority that the muscles had stiffened, and refused +to obey her orders. + +"Xingu--" she murmured, as if seeking in her turn to gain time. + +Mrs. Roby continued to press her. "Knowing how engrossing the subject +is, you will understand how it happens that the Club has let everything +else go to the wall for the moment. Since we took up Xingu I might +almost say--were it not for your books--that nothing else seems to us +worth remembering." + +Osric Dane's stern features were darkened rather than lit up by an +uneasy smile. "I am glad to hear there is one exception," she gave out +between narrowed lips. + +"Oh, of course," Mrs. Roby said prettily; "but as you have shown us +that--so very naturally!--you don't care to talk about your own things, +we really can't let you off from telling us exactly what you think about +Xingu; especially," she added, with a persuasive smile, "as some people +say that one of your last books was simply saturated with it." + +It was an IT, then--the assurance sped like fire through the parched +minds of the other members. In their eagerness to gain the least +little clue to Xingu they almost forgot the joy of assisting at the +discomfiture of Mrs. Dane. + +The latter reddened nervously under her antagonist's direct assault. +"May I ask," she faltered out in an embarrassed tone, "to which of my +books you refer?" + +Mrs. Roby did not falter. "That's just what I want you to tell us; +because, though I was present, I didn't actually take part." + +"Present at what?" Mrs. Dane took her up; and for an instant the +trembling members of the Lunch Club thought that the champion Providence +had raised up for them had lost a point. But Mrs. Roby explained herself +gaily: "At the discussion, of course. And so we're dreadfully anxious to +know just how it was that you went into the Xingu." + +There was a portentous pause, a silence so big with incalculable dangers +that the members with one accord checked the words on their lips, like +soldiers dropping their arms to watch a single combat between their +leaders. Then Mrs. Dane gave expression to their inmost dread by saying +sharply: "Ah--you say THE Xingu, do you?" + +Mrs. Roby smiled undauntedly. "It IS a shade pedantic, isn't it? +Personally, I always drop the article; but I don't know how the other +members feel about it." + +The other members looked as though they would willingly have dispensed +with this deferential appeal to their opinion, and Mrs. Roby, after a +bright glance about the group, went on: "They probably think, as I do, +that nothing really matters except the thing itself--except Xingu." + +No immediate reply seemed to occur to Mrs. Dane, and Mrs. Ballinger +gathered courage to say: "Surely every one must feel that about Xingu." + +Mrs. Plinth came to her support with a heavy murmur of assent, and Laura +Glyde breathed emotionally: "I have known cases where it has changed a +whole life." + +"It has done me worlds of good," Mrs. Leveret interjected, seeming +to herself to remember that she had either taken it or read it in the +winter before. + +"Of course," Mrs. Roby admitted, "the difficulty is that one must give +up so much time to it. It's very long." + +"I can't imagine," said Miss Van Vluyck tartly, "grudging the time given +to such a subject." + +"And deep in places," Mrs. Roby pursued; (so then it was a book!) "And +it isn't easy to skip." + +"I never skip," said Mrs. Plinth dogmatically. + +"Ah, it's dangerous to, in Xingu. Even at the start there are places +where one can't. One must just wade through." + +"I should hardly call it WADING," said Mrs. Ballinger sarcastically. + +Mrs. Roby sent her a look of interest. "Ah--you always found it went +swimmingly?" + +Mrs. Ballinger hesitated. "Of course there are difficult passages," she +conceded modestly. + +"Yes; some are not at all clear--even," Mrs. Roby added, "if one is +familiar with the original." + +"As I suppose you are?" Osric Dane interposed, suddenly fixing her with +a look of challenge. + +Mrs. Roby met it by a deprecating smile. "Oh, it's really not difficult +up to a certain point; though some of the branches are very little +known, and it's almost impossible to get at the source." + +"Have you ever tried?" Mrs. Plinth enquired, still distrustful of Mrs. +Roby's thoroughness. + +Mrs. Roby was silent for a moment; then she replied with lowered lids: +"No--but a friend of mine did; a very brilliant man; and he told me it +was best for women--not to..." + +A shudder ran around the room. Mrs. Leveret coughed so that the +parlour-maid, who was handing the cigarettes, should not hear; Miss Van +Vluyck's face took on a nauseated expression, and Mrs. Plinth looked as +if she were passing some one she did not care to bow to. But the most +remarkable result of Mrs. Roby's words was the effect they produced on +the Lunch Club's distinguished guest. Osric Dane's impassive features +suddenly melted to an expression of the warmest human sympathy, and +edging her chair toward Mrs. Roby's she asked: "Did he really? And--did +you find he was right?" + +Mrs. Ballinger, in whom annoyance at Mrs. Roby's unwonted assumption +of prominence was beginning to displace gratitude for the aid she had +rendered, could not consent to her being allowed, by such dubious means, +to monopolise the attention of their guest. If Osric Dane had not enough +self-respect to resent Mrs. Roby's flippancy, at least the Lunch Club +would do so in the person of its President. + +Mrs. Ballinger laid her hand on Mrs. Roby's arm. "We must not forget," +she said with a frigid amiability, "that absorbing as Xingu is to US, it +may be less interesting to--" + +"Oh, no, on the contrary, I assure you," Osric Dane energetically +intervened. + +"--to others," Mrs. Ballinger finished firmly; "and we must not allow +our little meeting to end without persuading Mrs. Dane to say a few +words to us on a subject which, to-day, is much more present in all our +thoughts. I refer, of course, to 'The Wings of Death.'" + +The other members, animated by various degrees of the same sentiment, +and encouraged by the humanised mien of their redoubtable guest, +repeated after Mrs. Ballinger: "Oh, yes, you really MUST talk to us a +little about your book." + +Osric Dane's expression became as bored, though not as haughty, as when +her work had been previously mentioned. But before she could respond +to Mrs. Ballinger's request, Mrs. Roby had risen from her seat, and was +pulling her veil down over her frivolous nose. + +"I'm so sorry," she said, advancing toward her hostess with outstretched +hand, "but before Mrs. Dane begins I think I'd better run away. +Unluckily, as you know, I haven't read her books, so I should be at a +terrible disadvantage among you all; and besides, I've an engagement to +play bridge." + +If Mrs. Roby had simply pleaded her ignorance of Osric Dane's works as +a reason for withdrawing, the Lunch Club, in view of her recent prowess, +might have approved such evidence of discretion; but to couple this +excuse with the brazen announcement that she was foregoing the privilege +for the purpose of joining a bridge-party, was only one more instance of +her deplorable lack of discrimination. + +The ladies were disposed, however, to feel that her departure--now +that she had performed the sole service she was ever likely to render +them--would probably make for greater order and dignity in the impending +discussion, besides relieving them of the sense of self-distrust which +her presence always mysteriously produced. Mrs. Ballinger therefore +restricted herself to a formal murmur of regret, and the other members +were just grouping themselves comfortably about Osric Dane when the +latter, to their dismay, started up from the sofa on which she had been +deferentially enthroned. + +"Oh wait--do wait, and I'll go with you!" she called out to Mrs. Roby; +and, seizing the hands of the disconcerted members, she administered +a series of farewell pressures with the mechanical haste of a +railway-conductor punching tickets. + +"I'm so sorry--I'd quite forgotten--" she flung back at them from the +threshold; and as she joined Mrs. Roby, who had turned in surprise at +her appeal, the other ladies had the mortification of hearing her say, +in a voice which she did not take the pains to lower: "If you'll let +me walk a little way with you, I should so like to ask you a few more +questions about Xingu..." + + + + +III + + +The incident had been so rapid that the door closed on the departing +pair before the other members had had time to understand what was +happening. Then a sense of the indignity put upon them by Osric Dane's +unceremonious desertion began to contend with the confused feeling that +they had been cheated out of their due without exactly knowing how or +why. + +There was an awkward silence, during which Mrs. Ballinger, with a +perfunctory hand, rearranged the skilfully grouped literature at which +her distinguished guest had not so much as glanced; then Miss Van Vluyck +tartly pronounced: "Well, I can't say that I consider Osric Dane's +departure a great loss." + +This confession crystallised the fluid resentment of the other members, +and Mrs. Leveret exclaimed: "I do believe she came on purpose to be +nasty!" + +It was Mrs. Plinth's private opinion that Osric Dane's attitude toward +the Lunch Club might have been very different had it welcomed her in the +majestic setting of the Plinth drawing-rooms; but not liking to reflect +on the inadequacy of Mrs. Ballinger's establishment she sought a +round-about satisfaction in depreciating her savoir faire. + +"I said from the first that we ought to have had a subject ready. It's +what always happens when you're unprepared. Now if we'd only got up +Xingu--" + +The slowness of Mrs. Plinth's mental processes was always allowed for +by the Club; but this instance of it was too much for Mrs. Ballinger's +equanimity. + +"Xingu!" she scoffed. "Why, it was the fact of our knowing so much more +about it than she did--unprepared though we were--that made Osric Dane +so furious. I should have thought that was plain enough to everybody!" + +This retort impressed even Mrs. Plinth, and Laura Glyde, moved by an +impulse of generosity, said: "Yes, we really ought to be grateful +to Mrs. Roby for introducing the topic. It may have made Osric Dane +furious, but at least it made her civil." + +"I am glad we were able to show her," added Miss Van Vluyck, "that a +broad and up-to-date culture is not confined to the great intellectual +centres." + +This increased the satisfaction of the other members, and they began +to forget their wrath against Osric Dane in the pleasure of having +contributed to her defeat. + +Miss Van Vluyck thoughtfully rubbed her spectacles. "What surprised me +most," she continued, "was that Fanny Roby should be so up on Xingu." + +This frank admission threw a slight chill on the company, but Mrs. +Ballinger said with an air of indulgent irony: "Mrs. Roby always has the +knack of making a little go a long way; still, we certainly owe her a +debt for happening to remember that she'd heard of Xingu." And this was +felt by the other members to be a graceful way of cancelling once for +all the Club's obligation to Mrs. Roby. + +Even Mrs. Leveret took courage to speed a timid shaft of irony: "I fancy +Osric Dane hardly expected to take a lesson in Xingu at Hillbridge!" + +Mrs. Ballinger smiled. "When she asked me what we represented--do you +remember?--I wish I'd simply said we represented Xingu!" + +All the ladies laughed appreciatively at this sally, except Mrs. Plinth, +who said, after a moment's deliberation: "I'm not sure it would have +been wise to do so." + +Mrs. Ballinger, who was already beginning to feel as if she had +launched at Osric Dane the retort which had just occurred to her, looked +ironically at Mrs. Plinth. "May I ask why?" she enquired. + +Mrs. Plinth looked grave. "Surely," she said, "I understood from Mrs. +Roby herself that the subject was one it was as well not to go into too +deeply?" + +Miss Van Vluyck rejoined with precision: "I think that applied only to +an investigation of the origin of the--of the--"; and suddenly she found +that her usually accurate memory had failed her. "It's a part of the +subject I never studied myself," she concluded lamely. + +"Nor I," said Mrs. Ballinger. + +Laura Glyde bent toward them with widened eyes. "And yet it +seems--doesn't it?--the part that is fullest of an esoteric +fascination?" + +"I don't know on what you base that," said Miss Van Vluyck +argumentatively. + +"Well, didn't you notice how intensely interested Osric Dane became +as soon as she heard what the brilliant foreigner--he WAS a foreigner, +wasn't he?--had told Mrs. Roby about the origin--the origin of the +rite--or whatever you call it?" + +Mrs. Plinth looked disapproving, and Mrs. Ballinger visibly wavered. +Then she said in a decisive tone: "It may not be desirable to touch on +the--on that part of the subject in general conversation; but, from the +importance it evidently has to a woman of Osric Dane's distinction, +I feel as if we ought not to be afraid to discuss it among +ourselves--without gloves--though with closed doors, if necessary." + +"I'm quite of your opinion," Miss Van Vluyck came briskly to her +support; "on condition, that is, that all grossness of language is +avoided." + +"Oh, I'm sure we shall understand without that," Mrs. Leveret tittered; +and Laura Glyde added significantly: "I fancy we can read between the +lines," while Mrs. Ballinger rose to assure herself that the doors were +really closed. + +Mrs. Plinth had not yet given her adhesion. "I hardly see," she +began, "what benefit is to be derived from investigating such peculiar +customs--" + +But Mrs. Ballinger's patience had reached the extreme limit of tension. +"This at least," she returned; "that we shall not be placed again in the +humiliating position of finding ourselves less up on our own subjects +than Fanny Roby!" + +Even to Mrs. Plinth this argument was conclusive. She peered furtively +about the room and lowered her commanding tones to ask: "Have you got a +copy?" + +"A--a copy?" stammered Mrs. Ballinger. She was aware that the other +members were looking at her expectantly, and that this answer was +inadequate, so she supported it by asking another question. "A copy of +what?" + +Her companions bent their expectant gaze on Mrs. Plinth, who, in turn, +appeared less sure of herself than usual. "Why, of--of--the book," she +explained. + +"What book?" snapped Miss Van Vluyck, almost as sharply as Osric Dane. + +Mrs. Ballinger looked at Laura Glyde, whose eyes were interrogatively +fixed on Mrs. Leveret. The fact of being deferred to was so new to +the latter that it filled her with an insane temerity. "Why, Xingu, of +course!" she exclaimed. + +A profound silence followed this direct challenge to the resources +of Mrs. Ballinger's library, and the latter, after glancing nervously +toward the Books of the Day, returned in a deprecating voice: "It's not +a thing one cares to leave about." + +"I should think NOT!" exclaimed Mrs. Plinth. + +"It IS a book, then?" said Miss Van Vluyck. + +This again threw the company into disarray, and Mrs. Ballinger, with an +impatient sigh, rejoined: "Why--there IS a book--naturally..." + +"Then why did Miss Glyde call it a religion?" + +Laura Glyde started up. "A religion? I never--" + +"Yes, you did," Miss Van Vluyck insisted; "you spoke of rites; and Mrs. +Plinth said it was a custom." + +Miss Glyde was evidently making a desperate effort to reinforce her +statement; but accuracy of detail was not her strongest point. At length +she began in a deep murmur: "Surely they used to do something of the +kind at the Eleusinian mysteries--" + +"Oh--" said Miss Van Vluyck, on the verge of disapproval; and Mrs. +Plinth protested: "I understood there was to be no indelicacy!" + +Mrs. Ballinger could not control her irritation. "Really, it is too +bad that we should not be able to talk the matter over quietly among +ourselves. Personally, I think that if one goes into Xingu at all--" + +"Oh, so do I!" cried Miss Glyde. + +"And I don't see how one can avoid doing so, if one wishes to keep up +with the Thought of the Day--" + +Mrs. Leveret uttered an exclamation of relief. "There--that's it!" she +interposed. + +"What's it?" the President curtly took her up. + +"Why--it's a--a Thought: I mean a philosophy." + +This seemed to bring a certain relief to Mrs. Ballinger and Laura Glyde, +but Miss Van Vluyck said dogmatically: "Excuse me if I tell you that +you're all mistaken. Xingu happens to be a language." + +"A language!" the Lunch Club cried. + +"Certainly. Don't you remember Fanny Roby's saying that there were +several branches, and that some were hard to trace? What could that +apply to but dialects?" + +Mrs. Ballinger could no longer restrain a contemptuous laugh. "Really, +if the Lunch Club has reached such a pass that it has to go to Fanny +Roby for instruction on a subject like Xingu, it had almost better cease +to exist!" + +"It's really her fault for not being clearer," Laura Glyde put in. + +"Oh, clearness and Fanny Roby!" Mrs. Ballinger shrugged. "I daresay we +shall find she was mistaken on almost every point." + +"Why not look it up?" said Mrs. Plinth. + +As a rule this recurrent suggestion of Mrs. Plinth's was ignored in the +heat of discussion, and only resorted to afterward in the privacy of +each member's home. But on the present occasion the desire to ascribe +their own confusion of thought to the vague and contradictory nature of +Mrs. Roby's statements caused the members of the Lunch Club to utter a +collective demand for a book of reference. + +At this point the production of her treasured volume gave Mrs. Leveret, +for a moment, the unusual experience of occupying the centre front; but +she was not able to hold it long, for Appropriate Allusions contained no +mention of Xingu. + +"Oh, that's not the kind of thing we want!" exclaimed Miss Van Vluyck. +She cast a disparaging glance over Mrs. Ballinger's assortment of +literature, and added impatiently: "Haven't you any useful books?" + +"Of course I have," replied Mrs. Ballinger indignantly; "but I keep them +in my husband's dressing-room." + +From this region, after some difficulty and delay, the parlour-maid +produced the W-Z volume of an Encyclopaedia and, in deference to the +fact that the demand for it had come from Miss Van Vluyck, laid the +ponderous tome before her. + +There was a moment of painful suspense while Miss Van Vluyck rubbed her +spectacles, adjusted them, and turned to Z; and a murmur of surprise +when she said: "It isn't here." + +"I suppose," said Mrs. Plinth, "it's not fit to be put in a book of +reference." + +"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Ballinger. "Try X." + +Miss Van Vluyck turned back through the volume, peering short-sightedly +up and down the pages, till she came to a stop and remained motionless, +like a dog on a point. + +"Well, have you found it?" Mrs. Ballinger enquired, after a considerable +delay. + +"Yes. I've found it," said Miss Van Vluyck in a queer voice. + +Mrs. Plinth hastily interposed: "I beg you won't read it aloud if +there's anything offensive." + +Miss Van Vluyck, without answering, continued her silent scrutiny. + +"Well, what IS it?" exclaimed Laura Glyde excitedly. + +"DO tell us!" urged Mrs. Leveret, feeling that she would have something +awful to tell her sister. + +Miss Van Vluyck pushed the volume aside and turned slowly toward the +expectant group. + +"It's a river." + +"A RIVER?" + +"Yes: in Brazil. Isn't that where she's been living?" + +"Who? Fanny Roby? Oh, but you must be mistaken. You've been reading the +wrong thing," Mrs. Ballinger exclaimed, leaning over her to seize the +volume. + +"It's the only XINGU in the Encyclopaedia; and she HAS been living in +Brazil," Miss Van Vluyck persisted. + +"Yes: her brother has a consulship there," Mrs. Leveret eagerly +interposed. + +"But it's too ridiculous! I--we--why we ALL remember studying Xingu last +year--or the year before last," Mrs. Ballinger stammered. + +"I thought I did when YOU said so," Laura Glyde avowed. + +"I said so?" cried Mrs. Ballinger. + +"Yes. You said it had crowded everything else out of your mind." + +"Well, YOU said it had changed your whole life!" + +"For that matter, Miss Van Vluyck said she had never grudged the time +she'd given it." + +Mrs. Plinth interposed: "I made it clear that I knew nothing whatever of +the original." + +Mrs. Ballinger broke off the dispute with a groan. "Oh, what does it +all matter if she's been making fools of us? I believe Miss Van Vluyck's +right--she was talking of the river all the while!" + +"How could she? It's too preposterous," Miss Glyde exclaimed. + +"Listen." Miss Van Vluyck had repossessed herself of the Encyclopaedia, +and restored her spectacles to a nose reddened by excitement. "'The +Xingu, one of the principal rivers of Brazil, rises on the plateau of +Mato Grosso, and flows in a northerly direction for a length of no less +than one thousand one hundred and eighteen miles, entering the Amazon +near the mouth of the latter river. The upper course of the Xingu is +auriferous and fed by numerous branches. Its source was first discovered +in 1884 by the German explorer von den Steinen, after a difficult and +dangerous expedition through a region inhabited by tribes still in the +Stone Age of culture.'" + +The ladies received this communication in a state of stupefied silence +from which Mrs. Leveret was the first to rally. "She certainly DID speak +of its having branches." + +The word seemed to snap the last thread of their incredulity. "And of +its great length," gasped Mrs. Ballinger. + +"She said it was awfully deep, and you couldn't skip--you just had to +wade through," Miss Glyde subjoined. + +The idea worked its way more slowly through Mrs. Plinth's compact +resistances. "How could there be anything improper about a river?" she +inquired. + +"Improper?" + +"Why, what she said about the source--that it was corrupt?" + +"Not corrupt, but hard to get at," Laura Glyde corrected. "Some +one who'd been there had told her so. I daresay it was the explorer +himself--doesn't it say the expedition was dangerous?" + +"'Difficult and dangerous,'" read Miss Van Vluyck. + +Mrs. Ballinger pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. "There's +nothing she said that wouldn't apply to a river--to this river!" She +swung about excitedly to the other members. "Why, do you remember her +telling us that she hadn't read 'The Supreme Instant' because she'd +taken it on a boating party while she was staying with her brother, +and some one had 'shied' it overboard--'shied' of course was her own +expression?" + +The ladies breathlessly signified that the expression had not escaped +them. + +"Well--and then didn't she tell Osric Dane that one of her books was +simply saturated with Xingu? Of course it was, if some of Mrs. Roby's +rowdy friends had thrown it into the river!" + +This surprising reconstruction of the scene in which they had just +participated left the members of the Lunch Club inarticulate. At length +Mrs. Plinth, after visibly labouring with the problem, said in a heavy +tone: "Osric Dane was taken in too." + +Mrs. Leveret took courage at this. "Perhaps that's what Mrs. Roby did +it for. She said Osric Dane was a brute, and she may have wanted to give +her a lesson." + +Miss Van Vluyck frowned. "It was hardly worth while to do it at our +expense." + +"At least," said Miss Glyde with a touch of bitterness, "she succeeded +in interesting her, which was more than we did." + +"What chance had we?" rejoined Mrs. Ballinger. "Mrs. Roby monopolised +her from the first. And THAT, I've no doubt, was her purpose--to give +Osric Dane a false impression of her own standing in the Club. She would +hesitate at nothing to attract attention: we all know how she took in +poor Professor Foreland." + +"She actually makes him give bridge-teas every Thursday," Mrs. Leveret +piped up. + +Laura Glyde struck her hands together. "Why, this is Thursday, and it's +THERE she's gone, of course; and taken Osric with her!" + +"And they're shrieking over us at this moment," said Mrs. Ballinger +between her teeth. + +This possibility seemed too preposterous to be admitted. "She would +hardly dare," said Miss Van Vluyck, "confess the imposture to Osric +Dane." + +"I'm not so sure: I thought I saw her make a sign as she left. If she +hadn't made a sign, why should Osric Dane have rushed out after her?" + +"Well, you know, we'd all been telling her how wonderful Xingu was, and +she said she wanted to find out more about it," Mrs. Leveret said, with +a tardy impulse of justice to the absent. + +This reminder, far from mitigating the wrath of the other members, gave +it a stronger impetus. + +"Yes--and that's exactly what they're both laughing over now," said +Laura Glyde ironically. + +Mrs. Plinth stood up and gathered her expensive furs about her +monumental form. "I have no wish to criticise," she said; "but unless +the Lunch Club can protect its members against the recurrence of +such--such unbecoming scenes, I for one--" + +"Oh, so do I!" agreed Miss Glyde, rising also. + +Miss Van Vluyck closed the Encyclopaedia and proceeded to button herself +into her jacket. "My time is really too valuable--" she began. + +"I fancy we are all of one mind," said Mrs. Ballinger, looking +searchingly at Mrs. Leveret, who looked at the others. + +"I always deprecate anything like a scandal--" Mrs. Plinth continued. + +"She has been the cause of one to-day!" exclaimed Miss Glyde. + +Mrs. Leveret moaned: "I don't see how she COULD!" and Miss Van Vluyck +said, picking up her note-book: "Some women stop at nothing." + +"--but if," Mrs. Plinth took up her argument impressively, "anything +of the kind had happened in MY house" (it never would have, her tone +implied), "I should have felt that I owed it to myself either to ask for +Mrs. Roby's resignation--or to offer mine." + +"Oh, Mrs. Plinth--" gasped the Lunch Club. + +"Fortunately for me," Mrs. Plinth continued with an awful magnanimity, +"the matter was taken out of my hands by our President's decision that +the right to entertain distinguished guests was a privilege vested in +her office; and I think the other members will agree that, as she was +alone in this opinion, she ought to be alone in deciding on the best way +of effacing its--its really deplorable consequences." + +A deep silence followed this unexpected outbreak of Mrs. Plinth's +long-stored resentment. + +"I don't see why I should be expected to ask her to resign--" Mrs. +Ballinger at length began; but Laura Glyde turned back to remind her: +"You know she made you say that you'd got on swimmingly in Xingu." + +An ill-timed giggle escaped from Mrs. Leveret, and Mrs. Ballinger +energetically continued "--but you needn't think for a moment that I'm +afraid to!" + +The door of the drawing-room closed on the retreating backs of the +Lunch Club, and the President of that distinguished association, seating +herself at her writing-table, and pushing away a copy of "The Wings +of Death" to make room for her elbow, drew forth a sheet of the club's +note-paper, on which she began to write: "My dear Mrs. Roby--" + + +The End of Xingu + + + + + +THE VERDICT + +June 1908 + + +I had always thought Jack Gisburn rather a cheap genius--though a good +fellow enough--so it was no great surprise to me to hear that, in the +height of his glory, he had dropped his painting, married a rich widow, +and established himself in a villa on the Riviera. (Though I rather +thought it would have been Rome or Florence.) + +"The height of his glory"--that was what the women called it. I can hear +Mrs. Gideon Thwing--his last Chicago sitter--deploring his unaccountable +abdication. "Of course it's going to send the value of my picture 'way +up; but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham--the loss to Arrt is all I +think of." The word, on Mrs. Thwing's lips, multiplied its RS as though +they were reflected in an endless vista of mirrors. And it was not only +the Mrs. Thwings who mourned. Had not the exquisite Hermia Croft, at the +last Grafton Gallery show, stopped me before Gisburn's "Moon-dancers" to +say, with tears in her eyes: "We shall not look upon its like again"? + +Well!--even through the prism of Hermia's tears I felt able to face the +fact with equanimity. Poor Jack Gisburn! The women had made him--it was +fitting that they should mourn him. Among his own sex fewer regrets +were heard, and in his own trade hardly a murmur. Professional jealousy? +Perhaps. If it were, the honour of the craft was vindicated by little +Claude Nutley, who, in all good faith, brought out in the Burlington a +very handsome "obituary" on Jack--one of those showy articles stocked +with random technicalities that I have heard (I won't say by whom) +compared to Gisburn's painting. And so--his resolve being apparently +irrevocable--the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs. Thwing had +predicted, the price of "Gisburns" went up. + +It was not till three years later that, in the course of a few weeks' +idling on the Riviera, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why Gisburn +had given up his painting. On reflection, it really was a tempting +problem. To accuse his wife would have been too easy--his fair sitters +had been denied the solace of saying that Mrs. Gisburn had "dragged him +down." For Mrs. Gisburn--as such--had not existed till nearly a year +after Jack's resolve had been taken. It might be that he had married +her--since he liked his ease--because he didn't want to go on painting; +but it would have been hard to prove that he had given up his painting +because he had married her. + +Of course, if she had not dragged him down, she had equally, as Miss +Croft contended, failed to "lift him up"--she had not led him back to +the easel. To put the brush into his hand again--what a vocation for +a wife! But Mrs. Gisburn appeared to have disdained it--and I felt it +might be interesting to find out why. + +The desultory life of the Riviera lends itself to such purely academic +speculations; and having, on my way to Monte Carlo, caught a glimpse +of Jack's balustraded terraces between the pines, I had myself borne +thither the next day. + +I found the couple at tea beneath their palm-trees; and Mrs. Gisburn's +welcome was so genial that, in the ensuing weeks, I claimed it +frequently. It was not that my hostess was "interesting": on that point +I could have given Miss Croft the fullest reassurance. It was just +because she was NOT interesting--if I may be pardoned the bull--that I +found her so. For Jack, all his life, had been surrounded by interesting +women: they had fostered his art, it had been reared in the hot-house +of their adulation. And it was therefore instructive to note what effect +the "deadening atmosphere of mediocrity" (I quote Miss Croft) was having +on him. + +I have mentioned that Mrs. Gisburn was rich; and it was immediately +perceptible that her husband was extracting from this circumstance a +delicate but substantial satisfaction. It is, as a rule, the people who +scorn money who get most out of it; and Jack's elegant disdain of +his wife's big balance enabled him, with an appearance of perfect +good-breeding, to transmute it into objects of art and luxury. To the +latter, I must add, he remained relatively indifferent; but he was +buying Renaissance bronzes and eighteenth-century pictures with a +discrimination that bespoke the amplest resources. + +"Money's only excuse is to put beauty into circulation," was one of +the axioms he laid down across the Sevres and silver of an exquisitely +appointed luncheon-table, when, on a later day, I had again run over +from Monte Carlo; and Mrs. Gisburn, beaming on him, added for my +enlightenment: "Jack is so morbidly sensitive to every form of beauty." + +Poor Jack! It had always been his fate to have women say such things of +him: the fact should be set down in extenuation. What struck me now +was that, for the first time, he resented the tone. I had seen him, so +often, basking under similar tributes--was it the conjugal note that +robbed them of their savour? No--for, oddly enough, it became apparent +that he was fond of Mrs. Gisburn--fond enough not to see her absurdity. +It was his own absurdity he seemed to be wincing under--his own attitude +as an object for garlands and incense. + +"My dear, since I've chucked painting people don't say that stuff about +me--they say it about Victor Grindle," was his only protest, as he rose +from the table and strolled out onto the sunlit terrace. + +I glanced after him, struck by his last word. Victor Grindle was, in +fact, becoming the man of the moment--as Jack himself, one might put it, +had been the man of the hour. The younger artist was said to have formed +himself at my friend's feet, and I wondered if a tinge of jealousy +underlay the latter's mysterious abdication. But no--for it was not +till after that event that the rose Dubarry drawing-rooms had begun to +display their "Grindles." + +I turned to Mrs. Gisburn, who had lingered to give a lump of sugar to +her spaniel in the dining-room. + +"Why HAS he chucked painting?" I asked abruptly. + +She raised her eyebrows with a hint of good-humoured surprise. + +"Oh, he doesn't HAVE to now, you know; and I want him to enjoy himself," +she said quite simply. + +I looked about the spacious white-panelled room, with its famille-verte +vases repeating the tones of the pale damask curtains, and its +eighteenth-century pastels in delicate faded frames. + +"Has he chucked his pictures too? I haven't seen a single one in the +house." + +A slight shade of constraint crossed Mrs. Gisburn's open countenance. +"It's his ridiculous modesty, you know. He says they're not fit to have +about; he's sent them all away except one--my portrait--and that I have +to keep upstairs." + +His ridiculous modesty--Jack's modesty about his pictures? My curiosity +was growing like the bean-stalk. I said persuasively to my hostess: "I +must really see your portrait, you know." + +She glanced out almost timorously at the terrace where her husband, +lounging in a hooded chair, had lit a cigar and drawn the Russian +deerhound's head between his knees. + +"Well, come while he's not looking," she said, with a laugh that tried +to hide her nervousness; and I followed her between the marble Emperors +of the hall, and up the wide stairs with terra-cotta nymphs poised among +flowers at each landing. + +In the dimmest corner of her boudoir, amid a profusion of delicate and +distinguished objects, hung one of the familiar oval canvases, in the +inevitable garlanded frame. The mere outline of the frame called up all +Gisburn's past! + +Mrs. Gisburn drew back the window-curtains, moved aside a jardiniere +full of pink azaleas, pushed an arm-chair away, and said: "If you stand +here you can just manage to see it. I had it over the mantel-piece, but +he wouldn't let it stay." + +Yes--I could just manage to see it--the first portrait of Jack's I +had ever had to strain my eyes over! Usually they had the place +of honour--say the central panel in a pale yellow or rose Dubarry +drawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it took the light +through curtains of old Venetian point. The more modest place became the +picture better; yet, as my eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, all +the characteristic qualities came out--all the hesitations disguised +as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which, with such +consummate skill, he managed to divert attention from the real business +of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail. Mrs. Gisburn, +presenting a neutral surface to work on--forming, as it were, so +inevitably the background of her own picture--had lent herself in an +unusual degree to the display of this false virtuosity. The picture +was one of Jack's "strongest," as his admirers would have put it--it +represented, on his part, a swelling of muscles, a congesting of +veins, a balancing, straddling and straining, that reminded one of the +circus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met, in short, at +every point the demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" because +she was tired of being painted "sweetly"--and yet not to lose an atom of +the sweetness. + +"It's the last he painted, you know," Mrs. Gisburn said with pardonable +pride. "The last but one," she corrected herself--"but the other doesn't +count, because he destroyed it." + +"Destroyed it?" I was about to follow up this clue when I heard a +footstep and saw Jack himself on the threshold. + +As he stood there, his hands in the pockets of his velveteen coat, the +thin brown waves of hair pushed back from his white forehead, his +lean sunburnt cheeks furrowed by a smile that lifted the tips of a +self-confident moustache, I felt to what a degree he had the same +quality as his pictures--the quality of looking cleverer than he was. + +His wife glanced at him deprecatingly, but his eyes travelled past her +to the portrait. + +"Mr. Rickham wanted to see it," she began, as if excusing herself. He +shrugged his shoulders, still smiling. + +"Oh, Rickham found me out long ago," he said lightly; then, passing his +arm through mine: "Come and see the rest of the house." + +He showed it to me with a kind of naive suburban pride: the bath-rooms, +the speaking-tubes, the dress-closets, the trouser-presses--all the +complex simplifications of the millionaire's domestic economy. And +whenever my wonder paid the expected tribute he said, throwing out +his chest a little: "Yes, I really don't see how people manage to live +without that." + +Well--it was just the end one might have foreseen for him. Only he was, +through it all and in spite of it all--as he had been through, and in +spite of, his pictures--so handsome, so charming, so disarming, that one +longed to cry out: "Be dissatisfied with your leisure!" as once one had +longed to say: "Be dissatisfied with your work!" + +But, with the cry on my lips, my diagnosis suffered an unexpected check. + +"This is my own lair," he said, leading me into a dark plain room at +the end of the florid vista. It was square and brown and leathery: no +"effects"; no bric-a-brac, none of the air of posing for reproduction in +a picture weekly--above all, no least sign of ever having been used as a +studio. + +The fact brought home to me the absolute finality of Jack's break with +his old life. + +"Don't you ever dabble with paint any more?" I asked, still looking +about for a trace of such activity. + +"Never," he said briefly. + +"Or water-colour--or etching?" + +His confident eyes grew dim, and his cheeks paled a little under their +handsome sunburn. + +"Never think of it, my dear fellow--any more than if I'd never touched a +brush." + +And his tone told me in a flash that he never thought of anything else. + +I moved away, instinctively embarrassed by my unexpected discovery; and +as I turned, my eye fell on a small picture above the mantel-piece--the +only object breaking the plain oak panelling of the room. + +"Oh, by Jove!" I said. + +It was a sketch of a donkey--an old tired donkey, standing in the rain +under a wall. + +"By Jove--a Stroud!" I cried. + +He was silent; but I felt him close behind me, breathing a little +quickly. + +"What a wonder! Made with a dozen lines--but on everlasting foundations. +You lucky chap, where did you get it?" + +He answered slowly: "Mrs. Stroud gave it to me." + +"Ah--I didn't know you even knew the Strouds. He was such an inflexible +hermit." + +"I didn't--till after.... She sent for me to paint him when he was +dead." + +"When he was dead? You?" + +I must have let a little too much amazement escape through my surprise, +for he answered with a deprecating laugh: "Yes--she's an awful +simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have him done by +a fashionable painter--ah, poor Stroud! She thought it the surest way +of proclaiming his greatness--of forcing it on a purblind public. And at +the moment I was THE fashionable painter." + +"Ah, poor Stroud--as you say. Was THAT his history?" + +"That was his history. She believed in him, gloried in him--or thought +she did. But she couldn't bear not to have all the drawing-rooms with +her. She couldn't bear the fact that, on varnishing days, one could +always get near enough to see his pictures. Poor woman! She's just a +fragment groping for other fragments. Stroud is the only whole I ever +knew." + +"You ever knew? But you just said--" + +Gisburn had a curious smile in his eyes. + +"Oh, I knew him, and he knew me--only it happened after he was dead." + +I dropped my voice instinctively. "When she sent for you?" + +"Yes--quite insensible to the irony. She wanted him vindicated--and by +me!" + +He laughed again, and threw back his head to look up at the sketch +of the donkey. "There were days when I couldn't look at that +thing--couldn't face it. But I forced myself to put it here; and now +it's cured me--cured me. That's the reason why I don't dabble any more, +my dear Rickham; or rather Stroud himself is the reason." + +For the first time my idle curiosity about my companion turned into a +serious desire to understand him better. + +"I wish you'd tell me how it happened," I said. + +He stood looking up at the sketch, and twirling between his fingers a +cigarette he had forgotten to light. Suddenly he turned toward me. + +"I'd rather like to tell you--because I've always suspected you of +loathing my work." + +I made a deprecating gesture, which he negatived with a good-humoured +shrug. + +"Oh, I didn't care a straw when I believed in myself--and now it's an +added tie between us!" + +He laughed slightly, without bitterness, and pushed one of the deep +arm-chairs forward. "There: make yourself comfortable--and here are the +cigars you like." + +He placed them at my elbow and continued to wander up and down the room, +stopping now and then beneath the picture. + +"How it happened? I can tell you in five minutes--and it didn't take +much longer to happen.... I can remember now how surprised and pleased +I was when I got Mrs. Stroud's note. Of course, deep down, I had always +FELT there was no one like him--only I had gone with the stream, echoed +the usual platitudes about him, till I half got to think he was a +failure, one of the kind that are left behind. By Jove, and he WAS left +behind--because he had come to stay! The rest of us had to let ourselves +be swept along or go under, but he was high above the current--on +everlasting foundations, as you say. + +"Well, I went off to the house in my most egregious mood--rather moved, +Lord forgive me, at the pathos of poor Stroud's career of failure being +crowned by the glory of my painting him! Of course I meant to do the +picture for nothing--I told Mrs. Stroud so when she began to stammer +something about her poverty. I remember getting off a prodigious phrase +about the honour being MINE--oh, I was princely, my dear Rickham! I was +posing to myself like one of my own sitters. + +"Then I was taken up and left alone with him. I had sent all my traps in +advance, and I had only to set up the easel and get to work. He had been +dead only twenty-four hours, and he died suddenly, of heart disease, +so that there had been no preliminary work of destruction--his face +was clear and untouched. I had met him once or twice, years before, and +thought him insignificant and dingy. Now I saw that he was superb. + +"I was glad at first, with a merely aesthetic satisfaction: glad to have +my hand on such a 'subject.' Then his strange life-likeness began +to affect me queerly--as I blocked the head in I felt as if he were +watching me do it. The sensation was followed by the thought: if he WERE +watching me, what would he say to my way of working? My strokes began to +go a little wild--I felt nervous and uncertain. + +"Once, when I looked up, I seemed to see a smile behind his close +grayish beard--as if he had the secret, and were amusing himself by +holding it back from me. That exasperated me still more. The secret? +Why, I had a secret worth twenty of his! I dashed at the canvas +furiously, and tried some of my bravura tricks. But they failed me, +they crumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits--I couldn't +distract his attention; he just kept his eyes on the hard passages +between. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or covered up with +some lying paint. And how he saw through my lies! + +"I looked up again, and caught sight of that sketch of the donkey +hanging on the wall near his bed. His wife told me afterward it was the +last thing he had done--just a note taken with a shaking hand, when he +was down in Devonshire recovering from a previous heart attack. Just +a note! But it tells his whole history. There are years of patient +scornful persistence in every line. A man who had swum with the current +could never have learned that mighty up-stream stroke.... + +"I turned back to my work, and went on groping and muddling; then I +looked at the donkey again. I saw that, when Stroud laid in the first +stroke, he knew just what the end would be. He had possessed his +subject, absorbed it, recreated it. When had I done that with any of my +things? They hadn't been born of me--I had just adopted them.... + +"Hang it, Rickham, with that face watching me I couldn't do another +stroke. The plain truth was, I didn't know where to put it--I HAD NEVER +KNOWN. Only, with my sitters and my public, a showy splash of colour +covered up the fact--I just threw paint into their faces.... Well, paint +was the one medium those dead eyes could see through--see straight to +the tottering foundations underneath. Don't you know how, in talking +a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one +wants to but what one can? Well--that was the way I painted; and as he +lay there and watched me, the thing they called my 'technique' collapsed +like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, you understand, poor Stroud--he +just lay there quietly watching, and on his lips, through the gray +beard, I seemed to hear the question: 'Are you sure you know where +you're coming out?' + +"If I could have painted that face, with that question on it, I should +have done a great thing. The next greatest thing was to see that I +couldn't--and that grace was given me. But, oh, at that minute, Rickham, +was there anything on earth I wouldn't have given to have Stroud alive +before me, and to hear him say: 'It's not too late--I'll show you how'? + +"It WAS too late--it would have been, even if he'd been alive. I packed +up my traps, and went down and told Mrs. Stroud. Of course I didn't +tell her THAT--it would have been Greek to her. I simply said I couldn't +paint him, that I was too moved. She rather liked the idea--she's so +romantic! It was that that made her give me the donkey. But she was +terribly upset at not getting the portrait--she did so want him 'done' +by some one showy! At first I was afraid she wouldn't let me off--and at +my wits' end I suggested Grindle. Yes, it was I who started Grindle: I +told Mrs. Stroud he was the 'coming' man, and she told somebody else, +and so it got to be true.... And he painted Stroud without wincing; and +she hung the picture among her husband's things...." + +He flung himself down in the arm-chair near mine, laid back his head, +and clasping his arms beneath it, looked up at the picture above the +chimney-piece. + +"I like to fancy that Stroud himself would have given it to me, if he'd +been able to say what he thought that day." + +And, in answer to a question I put half-mechanically--"Begin again?" +he flashed out. "When the one thing that brings me anywhere near him is +that I knew enough to leave off?" + +He stood up and laid his hand on my shoulder with a laugh. "Only the +irony of it is that I AM still painting--since Grindle's doing it +for me! The Strouds stand alone, and happen once--but there's no +exterminating our kind of art." + + +The End of The Verdict + + + + + +THE RECKONING + +August, 1902 + + + + +I + + +"The marriage law of the new dispensation will be: THOU SHALT NOT BE +UNFAITHFUL--TO THYSELF." + +A discreet murmur of approval filled the studio, and through the haze of +cigarette smoke Mrs. Clement Westall, as her husband descended from his +improvised platform, saw him merged in a congratulatory group of ladies. +Westall's informal talks on "The New Ethics" had drawn about him an +eager following of the mentally unemployed--those who, as he had once +phrased it, liked to have their brain-food cut up for them. The talks +had begun by accident. Westall's ideas were known to be "advanced," but +hitherto their advance had not been in the direction of publicity. He +had been, in his wife's opinion, almost pusillanimously careful not +to let his personal views endanger his professional standing. Of late, +however, he had shown a puzzling tendency to dogmatize, to throw down +the gauntlet, to flaunt his private code in the face of society; and the +relation of the sexes being a topic always sure of an audience, a few +admiring friends had persuaded him to give his after-dinner opinions a +larger circulation by summing them up in a series of talks at the Van +Sideren studio. + +The Herbert Van Siderens were a couple who subsisted, socially, on +the fact that they had a studio. Van Sideren's pictures were chiefly +valuable as accessories to the mise en scene which differentiated his +wife's "afternoons" from the blighting functions held in long New York +drawing-rooms, and permitted her to offer their friends whiskey-and-soda +instead of tea. Mrs. Van Sideren, for her part, was skilled in making +the most of the kind of atmosphere which a lay-figure and an easel +create; and if at times she found the illusion hard to maintain, and +lost courage to the extent of almost wishing that Herbert could paint, +she promptly overcame such moments of weakness by calling in some fresh +talent, some extraneous re-enforcement of the "artistic" impression. It +was in quest of such aid that she had seized on Westall, coaxing him, +somewhat to his wife's surprise, into a flattered participation in her +fraud. It was vaguely felt, in the Van Sideren circle, that all the +audacities were artistic, and that a teacher who pronounced marriage +immoral was somehow as distinguished as a painter who depicted +purple grass and a green sky. The Van Sideren set were tired of the +conventional color-scheme in art and conduct. + +Julia Westall had long had her own views on the immorality of marriage; +she might indeed have claimed her husband as a disciple. In the early +days of their union she had secretly resented his disinclination to +proclaim himself a follower of the new creed; had been inclined to tax +him with moral cowardice, with a failure to live up to the convictions +for which their marriage was supposed to stand. That was in the +first burst of propagandism, when, womanlike, she wanted to turn her +disobedience into a law. Now she felt differently. She could hardly +account for the change, yet being a woman who never allowed her impulses +to remain unaccounted for, she tried to do so by saying that she did not +care to have the articles of her faith misinterpreted by the vulgar. In +this connection, she was beginning to think that almost every one was +vulgar; certainly there were few to whom she would have cared to intrust +the defence of so esoteric a doctrine. And it was precisely at this +point that Westall, discarding his unspoken principles, had chosen to +descend from the heights of privacy, and stand hawking his convictions +at the street-corner! + +It was Una Van Sideren who, on this occasion, unconsciously focussed +upon herself Mrs. Westall's wandering resentment. In the first place, +the girl had no business to be there. It was "horrid"--Mrs. Westall +found herself slipping back into the old feminine vocabulary--simply +"horrid" to think of a young girl's being allowed to listen to such +talk. The fact that Una smoked cigarettes and sipped an occasional +cocktail did not in the least tarnish a certain radiant innocency which +made her appear the victim, rather than the accomplice, of her parents' +vulgarities. Julia Westall felt in a hot helpless way that something +ought to be done--that some one ought to speak to the girl's mother. And +just then Una glided up. + +"Oh, Mrs. Westall, how beautiful it was!" Una fixed her with large +limpid eyes. "You believe it all, I suppose?" she asked with seraphic +gravity. + +"All--what, my dear child?" + +The girl shone on her. "About the higher life--the freer expansion of +the individual--the law of fidelity to one's self," she glibly recited. + +Mrs. Westall, to her own wonder, blushed a deep and burning blush. + +"My dear Una," she said, "you don't in the least understand what it's +all about!" + +Miss Van Sideren stared, with a slowly answering blush. "Don't YOU, +then?" she murmured. + +Mrs. Westall laughed. "Not always--or altogether! But I should like some +tea, please." + +Una led her to the corner where innocent beverages were dispensed. As +Julia received her cup she scrutinized the girl more carefully. It was +not such a girlish face, after all--definite lines were forming under +the rosy haze of youth. She reflected that Una must be six-and-twenty, +and wondered why she had not married. A nice stock of ideas she would +have as her dower! If THEY were to be a part of the modern girl's +trousseau-- + +Mrs. Westall caught herself up with a start. It was as though some one +else had been speaking--a stranger who had borrowed her own voice: she +felt herself the dupe of some fantastic mental ventriloquism. Concluding +suddenly that the room was stifling and Una's tea too sweet, she set +down her cup, and looked about for Westall: to meet his eyes had long +been her refuge from every uncertainty. She met them now, but only, +as she felt, in transit; they included her parenthetically in a larger +flight. She followed the flight, and it carried her to a corner to which +Una had withdrawn--one of the palmy nooks to which Mrs. Van Sideren +attributed the success of her Saturdays. Westall, a moment later, had +overtaken his look, and found a place at the girl's side. She bent +forward, speaking eagerly; he leaned back, listening, with the +depreciatory smile which acted as a filter to flattery, enabling him +to swallow the strongest doses without apparent grossness of appetite. +Julia winced at her own definition of the smile. + + +On the way home, in the deserted winter dusk, Westall surprised his wife +by a sudden boyish pressure of her arm. "Did I open their eyes a bit? +Did I tell them what you wanted me to?" he asked gaily. + +Almost unconsciously, she let her arm slip from his. "What I wanted--?" + +"Why, haven't you--all this time?" She caught the honest wonder of his +tone. "I somehow fancied you'd rather blamed me for not talking more +openly--before-- You've made me feel, at times, that I was sacrificing +principles to expediency." + +She paused a moment over her reply; then she asked quietly: "What made +you decide not to--any longer?" + +She felt again the vibration of a faint surprise. "Why--the wish to +please you!" he answered, almost too simply. + +"I wish you would not go on, then," she said abruptly. + +He stopped in his quick walk, and she felt his stare through the +darkness. + +"Not go on--?" + +"Call a hansom, please. I'm tired," broke from her with a sudden rush of +physical weariness. + +Instantly his solicitude enveloped her. The room had been infernally +hot--and then that confounded cigarette smoke--he had noticed once or +twice that she looked pale--she mustn't come to another Saturday. She +felt herself yielding, as she always did, to the warm influence of his +concern for her, the feminine in her leaning on the man in him with a +conscious intensity of abandonment. He put her in the hansom, and her +hand stole into his in the darkness. A tear or two rose, and she let +them fall. It was so delicious to cry over imaginary troubles! + +That evening, after dinner, he surprised her by reverting to the subject +of his talk. He combined a man's dislike of uncomfortable questions +with an almost feminine skill in eluding them; and she knew that if he +returned to the subject he must have some special reason for doing so. + +"You seem not to have cared for what I said this afternoon. Did I put +the case badly?" + +"No--you put it very well." + +"Then what did you mean by saying that you would rather not have me go +on with it?" + +She glanced at him nervously, her ignorance of his intention deepening +her sense of helplessness. + +"I don't think I care to hear such things discussed in public." + +"I don't understand you," he exclaimed. Again the feeling that his +surprise was genuine gave an air of obliquity to her own attitude. She +was not sure that she understood herself. + +"Won't you explain?" he said with a tinge of impatience. Her eyes +wandered about the familiar drawing-room which had been the scene of so +many of their evening confidences. The shaded lamps, the quiet-colored +walls hung with mezzotints, the pale spring flowers scattered here and +there in Venice glasses and bowls of old Sevres, recalled, she hardly +knew why, the apartment in which the evenings of her first marriage had +been passed--a wilderness of rosewood and upholstery, with a picture of +a Roman peasant above the mantel-piece, and a Greek slave in "statuary +marble" between the folding-doors of the back drawing-room. It was a +room with which she had never been able to establish any closer relation +than that between a traveller and a railway station; and now, as +she looked about at the surroundings which stood for her deepest +affinities--the room for which she had left that other room--she was +startled by the same sense of strangeness and unfamiliarity. The prints, +the flowers, the subdued tones of the old porcelains, seemed to typify a +superficial refinement that had no relation to the deeper significances +of life. + +Suddenly she heard her husband repeating his question. + +"I don't know that I can explain," she faltered. + +He drew his arm-chair forward so that he faced her across the hearth. +The light of a reading-lamp fell on his finely drawn face, which had +a kind of surface-sensitiveness akin to the surface-refinement of its +setting. + +"Is it that you no longer believe in our ideas?" he asked. + +"In our ideas--?" + +"The ideas I am trying to teach. The ideas you and I are supposed to +stand for." He paused a moment. "The ideas on which our marriage was +founded." + +The blood rushed to her face. He had his reasons, then--she was sure now +that he had his reasons! In the ten years of their marriage, how +often had either of them stopped to consider the ideas on which it was +founded? How often does a man dig about the basement of his house to +examine its foundation? The foundation is there, of course--the house +rests on it--but one lives abovestairs and not in the cellar. It +was she, indeed, who in the beginning had insisted on reviewing the +situation now and then, on recapitulating the reasons which justified +her course, on proclaiming, from time to time, her adherence to the +religion of personal independence; but she had long ceased to feel +the need of any such ideal standards, and had accepted her marriage as +frankly and naturally as though it had been based on the primitive needs +of the heart, and needed no special sanction to explain or justify it. + +"Of course I still believe in our ideas!" she exclaimed. + +"Then I repeat that I don't understand. It was a part of your theory +that the greatest possible publicity should be given to our view of +marriage. Have you changed your mind in that respect?" + +She hesitated. "It depends on circumstances--on the public one is +addressing. The set of people that the Van Siderens get about them don't +care for the truth or falseness of a doctrine. They are attracted simply +by its novelty." + +"And yet it was in just such a set of people that you and I met, and +learned the truth from each other." + +"That was different." + +"In what way?" + +"I was not a young girl, to begin with. It is perfectly unfitting that +young girls should be present at--at such times--should hear such things +discussed--" + +"I thought you considered it one of the deepest social wrongs that such +things never ARE discussed before young girls; but that is beside +the point, for I don't remember seeing any young girl in my audience +to-day--" + +"Except Una Van Sideren!" + +He turned slightly and pushed back the lamp at his elbow. + +"Oh, Miss Van Sideren--naturally--" + +"Why naturally?" + +"The daughter of the house--would you have had her sent out with her +governess?" + +"If I had a daughter I should not allow such things to go on in my +house!" + +Westall, stroking his mustache, leaned back with a faint smile. "I fancy +Miss Van Sideren is quite capable of taking care of herself." + +"No girl knows how to take care of herself--till it's too late." + +"And yet you would deliberately deny her the surest means of +self-defence?" + +"What do you call the surest means of self-defence?" + +"Some preliminary knowledge of human nature in its relation to the +marriage tie." + +She made an impatient gesture. "How should you like to marry that kind +of a girl?" + +"Immensely--if she were my kind of girl in other respects." + +She took up the argument at another point. + +"You are quite mistaken if you think such talk does not affect young +girls. Una was in a state of the most absurd exaltation--" She broke +off, wondering why she had spoken. + +Westall reopened a magazine which he had laid aside at the beginning +of their discussion. "What you tell me is immensely flattering to my +oratorical talent--but I fear you overrate its effect. I can assure you +that Miss Van Sideren doesn't have to have her thinking done for her. +She's quite capable of doing it herself." + +"You seem very familiar with her mental processes!" flashed unguardedly +from his wife. + +He looked up quietly from the pages he was cutting. + +"I should like to be," he answered. "She interests me." + + + + +II + + +If there be a distinction in being misunderstood, it was one denied to +Julia Westall when she left her first husband. Every one was ready to +excuse and even to defend her. The world she adorned agreed that John +Arment was "impossible," and hostesses gave a sigh of relief at the +thought that it would no longer be necessary to ask him to dine. + +There had been no scandal connected with the divorce: neither side +had accused the other of the offence euphemistically described as +"statutory." The Arments had indeed been obliged to transfer their +allegiance to a State which recognized desertion as a cause for divorce, +and construed the term so liberally that the seeds of desertion were +shown to exist in every union. Even Mrs. Arment's second marriage did +not make traditional morality stir in its sleep. It was known that she +had not met her second husband till after she had parted from the first, +and she had, moreover, replaced a rich man by a poor one. Though Clement +Westall was acknowledged to be a rising lawyer, it was generally felt +that his fortunes would not rise as rapidly as his reputation. The +Westalls would probably always have to live quietly and go out to +dinner in cabs. Could there be better evidence of Mrs. Arment's complete +disinterestedness? + +If the reasoning by which her friends justified her course was somewhat +cruder and less complex than her own elucidation of the matter, both +explanations led to the same conclusion: John Arment was impossible. The +only difference was that, to his wife, his impossibility was something +deeper than a social disqualification. She had once said, in ironical +defence of her marriage, that it had at least preserved her from +the necessity of sitting next to him at dinner; but she had not then +realized at what cost the immunity was purchased. John Arment was +impossible; but the sting of his impossibility lay in the fact that he +made it impossible for those about him to be other than himself. By +an unconscious process of elimination he had excluded from the world +everything of which he did not feel a personal need: had become, as it +were, a climate in which only his own requirements survived. This might +seem to imply a deliberate selfishness; but there was nothing deliberate +about Arment. He was as instinctive as an animal or a child. It was this +childish element in his nature which sometimes for a moment unsettled +his wife's estimate of him. Was it possible that he was simply +undeveloped, that he had delayed, somewhat longer than is usual, the +laborious process of growing up? He had the kind of sporadic shrewdness +which causes it to be said of a dull man that he is "no fool"; and it +was this quality that his wife found most trying. Even to the naturalist +it is annoying to have his deductions disturbed by some unforeseen +aberrancy of form or function; and how much more so to the wife whose +estimate of herself is inevitably bound up with her judgment of her +husband! + +Arment's shrewdness did not, indeed, imply any latent intellectual +power; it suggested, rather, potentialities of feeling, of suffering, +perhaps, in a blind rudimentary way, on which Julia's sensibilities +naturally declined to linger. She so fully understood her own +reasons for leaving him that she disliked to think they were not as +comprehensible to her husband. She was haunted, in her analytic moments, +by the look of perplexity, too inarticulate for words, with which he had +acquiesced to her explanations. + +These moments were rare with her, however. Her marriage had been too +concrete a misery to be surveyed philosophically. If she had been +unhappy for complex reasons, the unhappiness was as real as though it +had been uncomplicated. Soul is more bruisable than flesh, and Julia was +wounded in every fibre of her spirit. Her husband's personality seemed +to be closing gradually in on her, obscuring the sky and cutting off +the air, till she felt herself shut up among the decaying bodies of +her starved hopes. A sense of having been decoyed by some world-old +conspiracy into this bondage of body and soul filled her with despair. +If marriage was the slow life-long acquittal of a debt contracted in +ignorance, then marriage was a crime against human nature. She, for one, +would have no share in maintaining the pretence of which she had been a +victim: the pretence that a man and a woman, forced into the narrowest +of personal relations, must remain there till the end, though they +may have outgrown the span of each other's natures as the mature tree +outgrows the iron brace about the sapling. + +It was in the first heat of her moral indignation that she had met +Clement Westall. She had seen at once that he was "interested," and had +fought off the discovery, dreading any influence that should draw her +back into the bondage of conventional relations. To ward off the peril +she had, with an almost crude precipitancy, revealed her opinions to +him. To her surprise, she found that he shared them. She was attracted +by the frankness of a suitor who, while pressing his suit, admitted that +he did not believe in marriage. Her worst audacities did not seem to +surprise him: he had thought out all that she had felt, and they had +reached the same conclusion. People grew at varying rates, and the yoke +that was an easy fit for the one might soon become galling to the other. +That was what divorce was for: the readjustment of personal relations. +As soon as their necessarily transitive nature was recognized they would +gain in dignity as well as in harmony. There would be no farther need +of the ignoble concessions and connivances, the perpetual sacrifice of +personal delicacy and moral pride, by means of which imperfect marriages +were now held together. Each partner to the contract would be on his +mettle, forced to live up to the highest standard of self-development, +on pain of losing the other's respect and affection. The low nature +could no longer drag the higher down, but must struggle to rise, or +remain alone on its inferior level. The only necessary condition to a +harmonious marriage was a frank recognition of this truth, and a solemn +agreement between the contracting parties to keep faith with themselves, +and not to live together for a moment after complete accord had ceased +to exist between them. The new adultery was unfaithfulness to self. + +It was, as Westall had just reminded her, on this understanding that +they had married. The ceremony was an unimportant concession to social +prejudice: now that the door of divorce stood open, no marriage need +be an imprisonment, and the contract therefore no longer involved any +diminution of self-respect. The nature of their attachment placed +them so far beyond the reach of such contingencies that it was easy to +discuss them with an open mind; and Julia's sense of security made her +dwell with a tender insistence on Westall's promise to claim his release +when he should cease to love her. The exchange of these vows seemed +to make them, in a sense, champions of the new law, pioneers in the +forbidden realm of individual freedom: they felt that they had somehow +achieved beatitude without martyrdom. + +This, as Julia now reviewed the past, she perceived to have been her +theoretical attitude toward marriage. It was unconsciously, insidiously, +that her ten years of happiness with Westall had developed another +conception of the tie; a reversion, rather, to the old instinct of +passionate dependency and possessorship that now made her blood revolt +at the mere hint of change. Change? Renewal? Was that what they +had called it, in their foolish jargon? Destruction, extermination +rather--this rending of a myriad fibres interwoven with another's being! +Another? But he was not other! He and she were one, one in the mystic +sense which alone gave marriage its significance. The new law was not +for them, but for the disunited creatures forced into a mockery of +union. The gospel she had felt called on to proclaim had no bearing on +her own case.... She sent for the doctor and told him she was sure she +needed a nerve tonic. + +She took the nerve tonic diligently, but it failed to act as a sedative +to her fears. She did not know what she feared; but that made her +anxiety the more pervasive. Her husband had not reverted to the subject +of his Saturday talks. He was unusually kind and considerate, with a +softening of his quick manner, a touch of shyness in his consideration, +that sickened her with new fears. She told herself that it was because +she looked badly--because he knew about the doctor and the nerve +tonic--that he showed this deference to her wishes, this eagerness to +screen her from moral draughts; but the explanation simply cleared the +way for fresh inferences. + +The week passed slowly, vacantly, like a prolonged Sunday. On Saturday +the morning post brought a note from Mrs. Van Sideren. Would dear Julia +ask Mr. Westall to come half an hour earlier than usual, as there was to +be some music after his "talk"? Westall was just leaving for his office +when his wife read the note. She opened the drawing-room door and called +him back to deliver the message. + +He glanced at the note and tossed it aside. "What a bore! I shall have +to cut my game of racquets. Well, I suppose it can't be helped. Will you +write and say it's all right?" + +Julia hesitated a moment, her hand stiffening on the chair-back against +which she leaned. + +"You mean to go on with these talks?" she asked. + +"I--why not?" he returned; and this time it struck her that his surprise +was not quite unfeigned. The discovery helped her to find words. + +"You said you had started them with the idea of pleasing me--" + +"Well?" + +"I told you last week that they didn't please me." + +"Last week? Oh--" He seemed to make an effort of memory. "I thought you +were nervous then; you sent for the doctor the next day." + +"It was not the doctor I needed; it was your assurance--" + +"My assurance?" + +Suddenly she felt the floor fail under her. She sank into the chair with +a choking throat, her words, her reasons slipping away from her like +straws down a whirling flood. + +"Clement," she cried, "isn't it enough for you to know that I hate it?" + +He turned to close the door behind them; then he walked toward her and +sat down. "What is it that you hate?" he asked gently. + +She had made a desperate effort to rally her routed argument. + +"I can't bear to have you speak as if--as if--our marriage--were like +the other kind--the wrong kind. When I heard you there, the other +afternoon, before all those inquisitive gossiping people, proclaiming +that husbands and wives had a right to leave each other whenever they +were tired--or had seen some one else--" + +Westall sat motionless, his eyes fixed on a pattern of the carpet. + +"You HAVE ceased to take this view, then?" he said as she broke +off. "You no longer believe that husbands and wives ARE justified in +separating--under such conditions?" + +"Under such conditions?" she stammered. "Yes--I still believe that--but +how can we judge for others? What can we know of the circumstances--?" + +He interrupted her. "I thought it was a fundamental article of our +creed that the special circumstances produced by marriage were not to +interfere with the full assertion of individual liberty." He paused a +moment. "I thought that was your reason for leaving Arment." + +She flushed to the forehead. It was not like him to give a personal turn +to the argument. + +"It was my reason," she said simply. + +"Well, then--why do you refuse to recognize its validity now?" + +"I don't--I don't--I only say that one can't judge for others." + +He made an impatient movement. "This is mere hair-splitting. What you +mean is that, the doctrine having served your purpose when you needed +it, you now repudiate it." + +"Well," she exclaimed, flushing again, "what if I do? What does it +matter to us?" + +Westall rose from his chair. He was excessively pale, and stood before +his wife with something of the formality of a stranger. + +"It matters to me," he said in a low voice, "because I do NOT repudiate +it." + +"Well--?" + +"And because I had intended to invoke it as"-- + +He paused and drew his breath deeply. She sat silent, almost deafened by +her heart-beats. + +--"as a complete justification of the course I am about to take." + +Julia remained motionless. "What course is that?" she asked. + +He cleared his throat. "I mean to claim the fulfilment of your promise." + +For an instant the room wavered and darkened; then she recovered a +torturing acuteness of vision. Every detail of her surroundings pressed +upon her: the tick of the clock, the slant of sunlight on the wall, the +hardness of the chair-arms that she grasped, were a separate wound to +each sense. + +"My promise--" she faltered. + +"Your part of our mutual agreement to set each other free if one or the +other should wish to be released." + +She was silent again. He waited a moment, shifting his position +nervously; then he said, with a touch of irritability: "You acknowledge +the agreement?" + +The question went through her like a shock. She lifted her head to it +proudly. "I acknowledge the agreement," she said. + +"And--you don't mean to repudiate it?" + +A log on the hearth fell forward, and mechanically he advanced and +pushed it back. + +"No," she answered slowly, "I don't mean to repudiate it." + +There was a pause. He remained near the hearth, his elbow resting on the +mantel-shelf. Close to his hand stood a little cup of jade that he had +given her on one of their wedding anniversaries. She wondered vaguely if +he noticed it. + +"You intend to leave me, then?" she said at length. + +His gesture seemed to deprecate the crudeness of the allusion. + +"To marry some one else?" + +Again his eye and hand protested. She rose and stood before him. + +"Why should you be afraid to tell me? Is it Una Van Sideren?" + +He was silent. + +"I wish you good luck," she said. + + + + +III + + +She looked up, finding herself alone. She did not remember when or how +he had left the room, or how long afterward she had sat there. The fire +still smouldered on the hearth, but the slant of sunlight had left the +wall. + +Her first conscious thought was that she had not broken her word, that +she had fulfilled the very letter of their bargain. There had been no +crying out, no vain appeal to the past, no attempt at temporizing or +evasion. She had marched straight up to the guns. + +Now that it was over, she sickened to find herself alive. She looked +about her, trying to recover her hold on reality. Her identity seemed to +be slipping from her, as it disappears in a physical swoon. "This is my +room--this is my house," she heard herself saying. Her room? Her house? +She could almost hear the walls laugh back at her. + +She stood up, a dull ache in every bone. The silence of the room +frightened her. She remembered, now, having heard the front door close +a long time ago: the sound suddenly re-echoed through her brain. Her +husband must have left the house, then--her HUSBAND? She no longer knew +in what terms to think: the simplest phrases had a poisoned edge. She +sank back into her chair, overcome by a strange weakness. The clock +struck ten--it was only ten o'clock! Suddenly she remembered that +she had not ordered dinner... or were they dining out that evening? +DINNER--DINING OUT--the old meaningless phraseology pursued her! She +must try to think of herself as she would think of some one else, a some +one dissociated from all the familiar routine of the past, whose wants +and habits must gradually be learned, as one might spy out the ways of a +strange animal... + +The clock struck another hour--eleven. She stood up again and walked +to the door: she thought she would go up stairs to her room. HER room? +Again the word derided her. She opened the door, crossed the narrow +hall, and walked up the stairs. As she passed, she noticed Westall's +sticks and umbrellas: a pair of his gloves lay on the hall table. The +same stair-carpet mounted between the same walls; the same old French +print, in its narrow black frame, faced her on the landing. This visual +continuity was intolerable. Within, a gaping chasm; without, the same +untroubled and familiar surface. She must get away from it before she +could attempt to think. But, once in her room, she sat down on the +lounge, a stupor creeping over her... + +Gradually her vision cleared. A great deal had happened in the +interval--a wild marching and countermarching of emotions, arguments, +ideas--a fury of insurgent impulses that fell back spent upon +themselves. She had tried, at first, to rally, to organize these chaotic +forces. There must be help somewhere, if only she could master the inner +tumult. Life could not be broken off short like this, for a whim, a +fancy; the law itself would side with her, would defend her. The law? +What claim had she upon it? She was the prisoner of her own choice: she +had been her own legislator, and she was the predestined victim of +the code she had devised. But this was grotesque, intolerable--a mad +mistake, for which she could not be held accountable! The law she had +despised was still there, might still be invoked... invoked, but to what +end? Could she ask it to chain Westall to her side? SHE had been +allowed to go free when she claimed her freedom--should she show less +magnanimity than she had exacted? Magnanimity? The word lashed her with +its irony--one does not strike an attitude when one is fighting for +life! She would threaten, grovel, cajole... she would yield anything to +keep her hold on happiness. Ah, but the difficulty lay deeper! The law +could not help her--her own apostasy could not help her. She was the +victim of the theories she renounced. It was as though some giant +machine of her own making had caught her up in its wheels and was +grinding her to atoms... + +It was afternoon when she found herself out-of-doors. She walked with +an aimless haste, fearing to meet familiar faces. The day was radiant, +metallic: one of those searching American days so calculated to +reveal the shortcomings of our street-cleaning and the excesses of our +architecture. The streets looked bare and hideous; everything stared +and glittered. She called a passing hansom, and gave Mrs. Van Sideren's +address. She did not know what had led up to the act; but she found +herself suddenly resolved to speak, to cry out a warning. It was too +late to save herself--but the girl might still be told. The hansom +rattled up Fifth Avenue; she sat with her eyes fixed, avoiding +recognition. At the Van Siderens' door she sprang out and rang the bell. +Action had cleared her brain, and she felt calm and self-possessed. She +knew now exactly what she meant to say. + +The ladies were both out... the parlor-maid stood waiting for a card. +Julia, with a vague murmur, turned away from the door and lingered a +moment on the sidewalk. Then she remembered that she had not paid the +cab-driver. She drew a dollar from her purse and handed it to him. +He touched his hat and drove off, leaving her alone in the long empty +street. She wandered away westward, toward strange thoroughfares, where +she was not likely to meet acquaintances. The feeling of aimlessness had +returned. Once she found herself in the afternoon torrent of Broadway, +swept past tawdry shops and flaming theatrical posters, with a +succession of meaningless faces gliding by in the opposite direction... + +A feeling of faintness reminded her that she had not eaten since +morning. She turned into a side street of shabby houses, with rows of +ash-barrels behind bent area railings. In a basement window she saw the +sign LADIES' RESTAURANT: a pie and a dish of doughnuts lay against the +dusty pane like petrified food in an ethnological museum. She entered, +and a young woman with a weak mouth and a brazen eye cleared a table for +her near the window. The table was covered with a red and white cotton +cloth and adorned with a bunch of celery in a thick tumbler and a +salt-cellar full of grayish lumpy salt. Julia ordered tea, and sat a +long time waiting for it. She was glad to be away from the noise and +confusion of the streets. The low-ceilinged room was empty, and two or +three waitresses with thin pert faces lounged in the background staring +at her and whispering together. At last the tea was brought in a +discolored metal teapot. Julia poured a cup and drank it hastily. It was +black and bitter, but it flowed through her veins like an elixir. She +was almost dizzy with exhilaration. Oh, how tired, how unutterably tired +she had been! + +She drank a second cup, blacker and bitterer, and now her mind was once +more working clearly. She felt as vigorous, as decisive, as when she had +stood on the Van Siderens' door-step--but the wish to return there had +subsided. She saw now the futility of such an attempt--the humiliation +to which it might have exposed her... The pity of it was that she did +not know what to do next. The short winter day was fading, and she +realized that she could not remain much longer in the restaurant without +attracting notice. She paid for her tea and went out into the street. +The lamps were alight, and here and there a basement shop cast an +oblong of gas-light across the fissured pavement. In the dusk there was +something sinister about the aspect of the street, and she hastened back +toward Fifth Avenue. She was not used to being out alone at that hour. + +At the corner of Fifth Avenue she paused and stood watching the stream +of carriages. At last a policeman caught sight of her and signed to her +that he would take her across. She had not meant to cross the street, +but she obeyed automatically, and presently found herself on the +farther corner. There she paused again for a moment; but she fancied the +policeman was watching her, and this sent her hastening down the nearest +side street... After that she walked a long time, vaguely... Night had +fallen, and now and then, through the windows of a passing carriage, she +caught the expanse of an evening waistcoat or the shimmer of an opera +cloak... + +Suddenly she found herself in a familiar street. She stood still a +moment, breathing quickly. She had turned the corner without noticing +whither it led; but now, a few yards ahead of her, she saw the house +in which she had once lived--her first husband's house. The blinds were +drawn, and only a faint translucence marked the windows and the transom +above the door. As she stood there she heard a step behind her, and a +man walked by in the direction of the house. He walked slowly, with a +heavy middle-aged gait, his head sunk a little between the shoulders, +the red crease of his neck visible above the fur collar of his overcoat. +He crossed the street, went up the steps of the house, drew forth a +latch-key, and let himself in... + +There was no one else in sight. Julia leaned for a long time against the +area-rail at the corner, her eyes fixed on the front of the house. The +feeling of physical weariness had returned, but the strong tea still +throbbed in her veins and lit her brain with an unnatural clearness. +Presently she heard another step draw near, and moving quickly away, she +too crossed the street and mounted the steps of the house. The impulse +which had carried her there prolonged itself in a quick pressure of the +electric bell--then she felt suddenly weak and tremulous, and grasped +the balustrade for support. The door opened and a young footman with +a fresh inexperienced face stood on the threshold. Julia knew in an +instant that he would admit her. + +"I saw Mr. Arment going in just now," she said. "Will you ask him to see +me for a moment?" + +The footman hesitated. "I think Mr. Arment has gone up to dress for +dinner, madam." + +Julia advanced into the hall. "I am sure he will see me--I will not +detain him long," she said. She spoke quietly, authoritatively, in the +tone which a good servant does not mistake. The footman had his hand on +the drawing-room door. + +"I will tell him, madam. What name, please?" + +Julia trembled: she had not thought of that. "Merely say a lady," she +returned carelessly. + +The footman wavered and she fancied herself lost; but at that instant +the door opened from within and John Arment stepped into the hall. He +drew back sharply as he saw her, his florid face turning sallow with +the shock; then the blood poured back to it, swelling the veins on his +temples and reddening the lobes of his thick ears. + +It was long since Julia had seen him, and she was startled at the change +in his appearance. He had thickened, coarsened, settled down into +the enclosing flesh. But she noted this insensibly: her one conscious +thought was that, now she was face to face with him, she must not let +him escape till he had heard her. Every pulse in her body throbbed with +the urgency of her message. + +She went up to him as he drew back. "I must speak to you," she said. + +Arment hesitated, red and stammering. Julia glanced at the footman, and +her look acted as a warning. The instinctive shrinking from a "scene" +predominated over every other impulse, and Arment said slowly: "Will you +come this way?" + +He followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door. Julia, as she +advanced, was vaguely aware that the room at least was unchanged: time +had not mitigated its horrors. The contadina still lurched from the +chimney-breast, and the Greek slave obstructed the threshold of the +inner room. The place was alive with memories: they started out from +every fold of the yellow satin curtains and glided between the angles of +the rosewood furniture. But while some subordinate agency was carrying +these impressions to her brain, her whole conscious effort was centred +in the act of dominating Arment's will. The fear that he would refuse +to hear her mounted like fever to her brain. She felt her purpose melt +before it, words and arguments running into each other in the heat of +her longing. For a moment her voice failed her, and she imagined herself +thrust out before she could speak; but as she was struggling for a word, +Arment pushed a chair forward, and said quietly: "You are not well." + +The sound of his voice steadied her. It was neither kind nor unkind--a +voice that suspended judgment, rather, awaiting unforeseen developments. +She supported herself against the back of the chair and drew a deep +breath. "Shall I send for something?" he continued, with a cold +embarrassed politeness. + +Julia raised an entreating hand. "No--no--thank you. I am quite well." + +He paused midway toward the bell and turned on her. "Then may I ask--?" + +"Yes," she interrupted him. "I came here because I wanted to see you. +There is something I must tell you." + +Arment continued to scrutinize her. "I am surprised at that," he said. +"I should have supposed that any communication you may wish to make +could have been made through our lawyers." + +"Our lawyers!" She burst into a little laugh. "I don't think they could +help me--this time." + +Arment's face took on a barricaded look. "If there is any question of +help--of course--" + +It struck her, whimsically, that she had seen that look when some shabby +devil called with a subscription-book. Perhaps he thought she wanted him +to put his name down for so much in sympathy--or even in money... +The thought made her laugh again. She saw his look change slowly to +perplexity. All his facial changes were slow, and she remembered, +suddenly, how it had once diverted her to shift that lumbering scenery +with a word. For the first time it struck her that she had been cruel. +"There IS a question of help," she said in a softer key: "you can help +me; but only by listening... I want to tell you something..." + +Arment's resistance was not yielding. "Would it not be easier +to--write?" he suggested. + +She shook her head. "There is no time to write... and it won't take +long." She raised her head and their eyes met. "My husband has left me," +she said. + +"Westall--?" he stammered, reddening again. + +"Yes. This morning. Just as I left you. Because he was tired of me." + +The words, uttered scarcely above a whisper, seemed to dilate to the +limit of the room. Arment looked toward the door; then his embarrassed +glance returned to Julia. + +"I am very sorry," he said awkwardly. + +"Thank you," she murmured. + +"But I don't see--" + +"No--but you will--in a moment. Won't you listen to me? Please!" +Instinctively she had shifted her position putting herself between +him and the door. "It happened this morning," she went on in short +breathless phrases. "I never suspected anything--I thought we +were--perfectly happy... Suddenly he told me he was tired of me... there +is a girl he likes better... He has gone to her..." As she spoke, the +lurking anguish rose upon her, possessing her once more to the exclusion +of every other emotion. Her eyes ached, her throat swelled with it, and +two painful tears burnt a way down her face. + +Arment's constraint was increasing visibly. "This--this is very +unfortunate," he began. "But I should say the law--" + +"The law?" she echoed ironically. "When he asks for his freedom?" + +"You are not obliged to give it." + +"You were not obliged to give me mine--but you did." + +He made a protesting gesture. + +"You saw that the law couldn't help you--didn't you?" she went on. +"That is what I see now. The law represents material rights--it can't go +beyond. If we don't recognize an inner law... the obligation that love +creates... being loved as well as loving... there is nothing to +prevent our spreading ruin unhindered... is there?" She raised her head +plaintively, with the look of a bewildered child. "That is what I see +now... what I wanted to tell you. He leaves me because he's tired... but +I was not tired; and I don't understand why he is. That's the dreadful +part of it--the not understanding: I hadn't realized what it meant. +But I've been thinking of it all day, and things have come back to +me--things I hadn't noticed... when you and I..." She moved closer to +him, and fixed her eyes on his with the gaze that tries to reach beyond +words. "I see now that YOU didn't understand--did you?" + +Their eyes met in a sudden shock of comprehension: a veil seemed to be +lifted between them. Arment's lip trembled. + +"No," he said, "I didn't understand." + +She gave a little cry, almost of triumph. "I knew it! I knew it! You +wondered--you tried to tell me--but no words came... You saw your life +falling in ruins... the world slipping from you... and you couldn't +speak or move!" + +She sank down on the chair against which she had been leaning. "Now I +know--now I know," she repeated. + +"I am very sorry for you," she heard Arment stammer. + +She looked up quickly. "That's not what I came for. I don't want you to +be sorry. I came to ask you to forgive me... for not understanding that +YOU didn't understand... That's all I wanted to say." She rose with a +vague sense that the end had come, and put out a groping hand toward the +door. + +Arment stood motionless. She turned to him with a faint smile. + +"You forgive me?" + +"There is nothing to forgive--" + +"Then will you shake hands for good-by?" She felt his hand in hers: it +was nerveless, reluctant. + +"Good-by," she repeated. "I understand now." + +She opened the door and passed out into the hall. As she did so, Arment +took an impulsive step forward; but just then the footman, who was +evidently alive to his obligations, advanced from the background to let +her out. She heard Arment fall back. The footman threw open the door, +and she found herself outside in the darkness. + +The End of The Reckoning + + + + + +VERSE + + + + +BOTTICELLI'S MADONNA IN THE LOUVRE. + + + WHAT strange presentiment, O Mother, lies + On thy waste brow and sadly-folded lips, + Forefeeling the Light's terrible eclipse + On Calvary, as if love made thee wise, + And thou couldst read in those dear infant eyes + The sorrow that beneath their smiling sleeps, + And guess what bitter tears a mother weeps + When the cross darkens her unclouded skies? + + Sad Lady, if some mother, passing thee, + Should feel a throb of thy foreboding pain, + And think--"My child at home clings so to me, + With the same smile... and yet in vain, in vain, + Since even this Jesus died on Calvary"-- + Say to her then: "He also rose again." + + + + +THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI. + + + ILARIA, thou that wert so fair and dear + That death would fain disown thee, grief made wise + With prophecy thy husband's widowed eyes + And bade him call the master's art to rear + Thy perfect image on the sculptured bier, + With dreaming lids, hands laid in peaceful guise + Beneath the breast that seems to fall and rise, + And lips that at love's call should answer, "Here!" + + First-born of the Renascence, when thy soul + Cast the sweet robing of the flesh aside, + Into these lovelier marble limbs it stole, + Regenerate in art's sunrise clear and wide + As saints who, having kept faith's raiment whole, + Change it above for garments glorified. + + + + +THE SONNET. + + PURE form, that like some chalice of old time + Contain'st the liquid of the poet's thought + Within thy curving hollow, gem-enwrought + With interwoven traceries of rhyme, + While o'er thy brim the bubbling fancies climb, + What thing am I, that undismayed have sought + To pour my verse with trembling hand untaught + Into a shape so small yet so sublime? + Because perfection haunts the hearts of men, + Because thy sacred chalice gathered up + The wine of Petrarch, Shakspere, Shelley--then + Receive these tears of failure as they drop + (Sole vintage of my life), since I am fain + To pour them in a consecrated cup. + + + + +TWO BACKGROUNDS. + + + I. LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR. + + + HERE by the ample river's argent sweep, + Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls, + A tower-crowned Cybele in armored sleep + The city lies, fat plenty in her halls, + With calm, parochial spires that hold in fee + The friendly gables clustered at their base, + And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place, + The Gothic minster's winged immensity; + And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood, + Two placid hearts, to all life's good resigned, + Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find + Long years of peace and dreamless plenitude. + + + II. MONA LISA. + + + Yon strange blue city crowns a scarped steep + No mortal foot hath bloodlessly essayed; + Dreams and illusions beacon from its keep, + But at the gate an Angel bares his blade; + And tales are told of those who thought to gain + At dawn its ramparts; but when evening fell + Far off they saw each fading pinnacle + Lit with wild lightnings from the heaven of pain; + Yet there two souls, whom life's perversities + Had mocked with want in plenty, tears in mirth, + Might meet in dreams, ungarmented of earth, + And drain Joy's awful chalice to the lees. + + + + +EXPERIENCE. + + + I. + + LIKE Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand + Upon the desert verge of death, and say: + "What shall avail the woes of yesterday + To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land + Whose currency is strange unto our hand? + In life's small market they have served to pay + Some late-found rapture, could we but delay + Till Time hath matched our means to our demand." + + But otherwise Fate wills it, for, behold, + Our gathered strength of individual pain, + When Time's long alchemy hath made it gold, + Dies with us--hoarded all these years in vain, + Since those that might be heir to it the mould + Renew, and coin themselves new griefs again. + + + II. + + O, Death, we come full-handed to thy gate, + Rich with strange burden of the mingled years, + Gains and renunciations, mirth and tears, + And love's oblivion, and remembering hate, + Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight + Upon our souls--and shall our hopes and fears + Buy nothing of thee, Death? Behold our wares, + And sell us the one joy for which we wait. + Had we lived longer, life had such for sale, + With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap, + But now we stand before thy shadowy pale, + And all our longings lie within thy keep-- + Death, can it be the years shall naught avail? + + "Not so," Death answered, "they shall purchase sleep." + + + + +CHARTRES. + + + I. + + IMMENSE, august, like some Titanic bloom, + The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, + Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, + Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, + And stamened with keen flamelets that illume + The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, + By surging worshippers thick-thronged of yore, + A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, + The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea-- + For these alone the finials fret the skies, + The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, + While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, + Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, + The cloud of witnesses still testifies. + + + II. + + The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatize + The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. + A rigid fetich in her robe of gold + The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, + Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, + Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. + The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, + Stands stark and gray beneath the burning skies. + Wellnigh again its mighty frame-work grows + To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn + From hot humanity's impatient woes; + The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, + And in the east one giant window shows + The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn. + + + + +LIFE. + + + LIFE, like a marble block, is given to all, + A blank, inchoate mass of years and days, + Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays + Some shape of strength or symmetry to call; + One shatters it in bits to mend a wall; + One in a craftier hand the chisel lays, + And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia's gaze, + Carves it apace in toys fantastical. + + But least is he who, with enchanted eyes + Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be, + Muses which god he shall immortalize + In the proud Parian's perpetuity, + Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies + That the night cometh wherein none shall see. + + + + +AN AUTUMN SUNSET + + + I + + LEAGUERED in fire + The wild black promontories of the coast extend + Their savage silhouettes; + The sun in universal carnage sets, + And, halting higher, + The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, + Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, + That, balked, yet stands at bay. + Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day + In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, + A wan valkyrie whose wide pinions shine + Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, + And in her lifted hand swings high o'erhead, + Above the waste of war, + The silver torch-light of the evening star + Wherewith to search the faces of the dead. + + + II + + Lagooned in gold, + Seem not those jetty promontories rather + The outposts of some ancient land forlorn, + Uncomforted of morn, + Where old oblivions gather, + The melancholy, unconsoling fold + Of all things that go utterly to death + And mix no more, no more + With life's perpetually awakening breath? + Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore, + Over such sailless seas, + To walk with hope's slain importunities + In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not + All things be there forgot, + Save the sea's golden barrier and the black + Closecrouching promontories? + Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories, + Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade, + A spectre self-destroyed, + So purged of all remembrance and sucked back + Into the primal void, + That should we on that shore phantasmal meet + I should not know the coming of your feet? + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Short Fiction of Edith +Wharton, Part 2 (of 10), by Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY SHORT FICTION *** + +***** This file should be named 306.txt or 306.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/306/ + +Produced by John Hamm + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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