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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Descent of Man and Other Stories
+by Edith Wharton
+(#13 in our series by Edith Wharton)
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+Title: The Descent of Man and Other Stories
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: October, 2003  [Etext #4519]
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+[This file was first posted on January 29, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Descent of Man and Other Stories
+by Edith Wharton
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+
+THE DESCENT OF MAN
+
+AND OTHER STORIES
+
+BY EDITH WHARTON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+THE DESCENT OF MAN, AND OTHER STORIES
+
+
+
+
+
+The Descent of Man
+
+The Other Two
+
+Expiation
+
+The Lady's Maid's Bell
+
+The Mission of Jane
+
+The Reckoning
+
+The Letter
+
+The Dilettante
+
+The Quicksand
+
+A Venetian Night's Entertainment
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DESCENT OF MAN
+
+I
+
+
+
+
+
+When Professor Linyard came back from his holiday in the Maine woods
+the air of rejuvenation he brought with him was due less to the
+influences of the climate than to the companionship he had enjoyed
+on his travels. To Mrs. Linyard's observant eye he had appeared to
+set out alone; but an invisible traveller had in fact accompanied
+him, and if his heart beat high it was simply at the pitch of his
+adventure: for the Professor had eloped with an idea.
+
+No one who has not tried the experiment can divine its exhilaration.
+Professor Linyard would not have changed places with any hero of
+romance pledged to a flesh-and-blood abduction. The most fascinating
+female is apt to be encumbered with luggage and scruples: to take up
+a good deal of room in the present and overlap inconveniently into
+the future; whereas an idea can accommodate itself to a single
+molecule of the brain or expand to the circumference of the horizon.
+The Professor's companion had to the utmost this quality of
+adaptability. As the express train whirled him away from the
+somewhat inelastic circle of Mrs. Linyard's affections, his idea
+seemed to be sitting opposite him, and their eyes met every moment
+or two in a glance of joyous complicity; yet when a friend of the
+family presently joined him and began to talk about college matters,
+the idea slipped out of sight in a flash, and the Professor would
+have had no difficulty in proving that he was alone.
+
+But if, from the outset, he found his idea the most agreeable of
+fellow-travellers, it was only in the aromatic solitude of the woods
+that he tasted the full savour of his adventure. There, during the
+long cool August days, lying full length on the pine-needles and
+gazing up into the sky, he would meet the eyes of his companion
+bending over him like a nearer heaven. And what eyes they
+were!--clear yet unfathomable, bubbling with inexhaustible laughter,
+yet drawing their freshness and sparkle from the central depths of
+thought! To a man who for twenty years had faced an eye reflecting
+the obvious with perfect accuracy, these escapes into the
+inscrutable had always been peculiarly inviting; but hitherto the
+Professor's mental infidelities had been restricted by an unbroken
+and relentless domesticity. Now, for the first time since his
+marriage, chance had given him six weeks to himself, and he was
+coming home with his lungs full of liberty.
+
+It must not be inferred that the Professor's domestic relations were
+defective: they were in fact so complete that it was almost
+impossible to get away from them. It is the happy husbands who are
+really in bondage; the little rift within the lute is often a
+passage to freedom. Marriage had given the Professor exactly what he
+had sought in it; a comfortable lining to life. The impossibility of
+rising to sentimental crises had made him scrupulously careful not
+to shirk the practical obligations of the bond. He took as it were a
+sociological view of his case, and modestly regarded himself as a
+brick in that foundation on which the state is supposed to rest.
+Perhaps if Mrs. Linyard had cared about entomology, or had taken
+sides in the war over the transmission of acquired characteristics,
+he might have had a less impersonal notion of marriage; but he was
+unconscious of any deficiency in their relation, and if consulted
+would probably have declared that he didn't want any woman bothering
+with his beetles. His real life had always lain in the universe of
+thought, in that enchanted region which, to those who have lingered
+there, comes to have so much more colour and substance than the
+painted curtain hanging before it. The Professor's particular veil
+of Maia was a narrow strip of homespun woven in a monotonous
+pattern; but he had only to lift it to step into an empire.
+
+This unseen universe was thronged with the most seductive shapes:
+the Professor moved Sultan-like through a seraglio of ideas. But of
+all the lovely apparitions that wove their spells about him, none
+had ever worn quite so persuasive an aspect as this latest
+favourite. For the others were mostly rather grave companions,
+serious-minded and elevating enough to have passed muster in a
+Ladies' Debating Club; but this new fancy of the Professor's was
+simply one embodied laugh. It was, in other words, the smile of
+relaxation at the end of a long day's toil: the flash of irony that
+the laborious mind projects, irresistibly, over labour
+conscientiously performed. The Professor had always been a hard
+worker. If he was an indulgent friend to his ideas, he was also a
+stern task-master to them. For, in addition to their other duties,
+they had to support his family: to pay the butcher and baker, and
+provide for Jack's schooling and Millicent's dresses. The
+Professor's household was a modest one, yet it tasked his ideas to
+keep it up to his wife's standard. Mrs. Linyard was not an exacting
+wife, and she took enough pride in her husband's attainments to pay
+for her honours by turning Millicent's dresses and darning Jack's
+socks, and going to the College receptions year after year in the
+same black silk with shiny seams. It consoled her to see an
+occasional mention of Professor Linyard's remarkable monograph on
+the Ethical Reactions of the Infusoria, or an allusion to his
+investigations into the Unconscious Cerebration of the Amoeba.
+
+Still there were moments when the healthy indifference of Jack and
+Millicent reacted on the maternal sympathies; when Mrs. Linyard
+would have made her husband a railway-director, if by this
+transformation she might have increased her boy's allowance and
+given her daughter a new hat, or a set of furs such as the other
+girls were wearing. Of such moments of rebellion the Professor
+himself was not wholly unconscious. He could not indeed understand
+why any one should want a new hat; and as to an allowance, he had
+had much less money at college than Jack, and had yet managed to buy
+a microscope and collect a few "specimens"; while Jack was free from
+such expensive tastes! But the Professor did not let his want of
+sympathy interfere with the discharge of his paternal obligations.
+He worked hard to keep the wants of his family gratified, and it was
+precisely in the endeavor to attain this end that he at length broke
+down and had to cease from work altogether.
+
+To cease from work was not to cease from thought of it; and in the
+unwonted pause from effort the Professor found himself taking a
+general survey of the field he had travelled. At last it was
+possible to lift his nose from the loom, to step a moment in front
+of the tapestry he had been weaving. From this first inspection of
+the pattern so long wrought over from behind, it was natural to
+glance a little farther and seek its reflection in the public eye.
+It was not indeed of his special task that he thought in this
+connection. He was but one of the great army of weavers at work
+among the threads of that cosmic woof; and what he sought was the
+general impression their labour had produced.
+
+When Professor Linyard first plied his microscope, the audience of
+the man of science had been composed of a few fellow-students,
+sympathetic or hostile as their habits of mind predetermined, but
+versed in the jargon of the profession and familiar with the point
+of departure. In the intervening quarter of a century, however, this
+little group had been swallowed up in a larger public. Every one now
+read scientific books and expressed an opinion on them. The ladies
+and the clergy had taken them up first; now they had passed to the
+school-room and the kindergarten. Daily life was regulated on
+scientific principles; the daily papers had their "Scientific
+Jottings"; nurses passed examinations in hygienic science, and
+babies were fed and dandled according to the new psychology.
+
+The very fact that scientific investigation still had, to some
+minds, a flavour of heterodoxy, gave it a perennial interest. The
+mob had broken down the walls of tradition to batten in the orchard
+of forbidden knowledge. The inaccessible goddess whom the Professor
+had served in his youth now offered her charms in the market-place.
+And yet it was not the same goddess after all, but a pseudo-science
+masquerading in the garb of the real divinity. This false goddess
+had her ritual and her literature. She had her sacred books, written
+by false priests and sold by millions to the faithful. In the most
+successful of these works, ancient dogma and modern discovery were
+depicted in a close embrace under the lime-lights of a hazy
+transcendentalism; and the tableau never failed of its effect. Some
+of the books designed on this popular model had lately fallen into
+the Professor's hands, and they filled him with mingled rage and
+hilarity. The rage soon died: he came to regard this mass of
+pseudo-literature as protecting the truth from desecration. But the
+hilarity remained, and flowed into the form of his idea. And the
+idea--the divine, incomparable idea--was simply that he should
+avenge his goddess by satirizing her false interpreters. He would
+write a skit on the "popular" scientific book; he would so heap
+platitude on platitude, fallacy on fallacy, false analogy on false
+analogy, so use his superior knowledge to abound in the sense of the
+ignorant, that even the gross crowd would join in the laugh against
+its augurs. And the laugh should be something more than the
+distension of mental muscles; it should be the trumpet-blast
+bringing down the walls of ignorance, or at least the little stone
+striking the giant between the eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+
+
+The Professor, on presenting his card, had imagined that it would
+command prompt access to the publisher's sanctuary; but the young
+man who read his name was not moved to immediate action. It was
+clear that Professor Linyard of Hillbridge University was not a
+specific figure to the purveyors of popular literature. But the
+publisher was an old friend; and when the card had finally drifted
+to his office on the languid tide of routine he came forth at once
+to greet his visitor.
+
+The warmth of his welcome convinced the Professor that he had been
+right in bringing his manuscript to Ned Harviss. He and Harviss had
+been at Hillbridge together, and the future publisher had been one
+of the wildest spirits in that band of college outlaws which yearly
+turns out so many inoffensive citizens and kind husbands and
+fathers. The Professor knew the taming qualities of life. He was
+aware that many of his most reckless comrades had been transformed
+into prudent capitalists or cowed wage-earners; but he was almost
+sure that he could count on Harviss. So rare a sense of irony, so
+keen a perception of relative values, could hardly have been blunted
+even by twenty years' intercourse with the obvious.
+
+The publisher's appearance was a little disconcerting. He looked as
+if he had been fattened on popular fiction; and his fat was full of
+optimistic creases. The Professor seemed to see him bowing into his
+office a long train of spotless heroines laden with the maiden
+tribute of the hundredth thousand volume.
+
+Nevertheless, his welcome was reassuring. He did not disown his
+early enormities, and capped his visitor's tentative allusions by
+such flagrant references to the past that the Professor produced his
+manuscript without a scruple.
+
+"What--you don't mean to say you've been doing something in our
+line?"
+
+The Professor smiled. "You publish scientific books sometimes, don't
+you?"
+
+The publisher's optimistic creases relaxed a little. "H'm--it all
+depends--I'm afraid you're a little _too_ scientific for us. We have
+a big sale for scientific breakfast foods, but not for the
+concentrated essences. In your case, of course, I should be
+delighted to stretch a point; but in your own interest I ought to
+tell you that perhaps one of the educational houses would do you
+better."
+
+The Professor leaned back, still smiling luxuriously.
+
+"Well, look it over--I rather think you'll take it."
+
+"Oh, we'll _take_ it, as I say; but the terms might not--"
+
+"No matter about the terms--"
+
+The publisher threw his head back with a laugh. "I had no idea that
+science was so profitable; we find our popular novelists are the
+hardest hands at a bargain."
+
+"Science is disinterested," the Professor corrected him. "And I have
+a fancy to have you publish this thing."
+
+"That's immensely good of you, my dear fellow. Of course your name
+goes with a certain public--and I rather like the originality of our
+bringing out a work so out of our line. I daresay it may boom us
+both." His creases deepened at the thought, and he shone
+encouragingly on the Professor's leave-taking.
+
+Within a fortnight, a line from Harviss recalled the Professor to
+town. He had been looking forward with immense zest to this second
+meeting; Harviss's college roar was in his tympanum, and he pictured
+himself following up the protracted chuckle which would follow his
+friend's progress through the manuscript. He was proud of the
+adroitness with which he had kept his secret from Harviss, had
+maintained to the last the pretense of a serious work, in order to
+give the keener edge to his reader's enjoyment. Not since
+under-graduate days had the Professor tasted such a draught of pure
+fun as his anticipations now poured for him.
+
+This time his card brought instant admission. He was bowed into the
+office like a successful novelist, and Harviss grasped him with both
+hands.
+
+"Well--do you mean to take it?" he asked, with a lingering coquetry.
+
+"Take it? Take it, my dear fellow? It's in press already--you'll
+excuse my not waiting to consult you? There will be no difficulty
+about terms, I assure you, and we had barely time to catch the
+autumn market. My dear Linyard, why didn't you _tell_ me?" His voice
+sank to a reproachful solemnity, and he pushed forward his own
+arm-chair.
+
+The Professor dropped into it with a chuckle. "And miss the joy of
+letting you find out?"
+
+"Well--it _was_ a joy." Harviss held out a box of his best cigars.
+"I don't know when I've had a bigger sensation. It was so deucedly
+unexpected--and, my dear fellow, you've brought it so exactly to the
+right shop."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say so," said the Professor modestly.
+
+Harviss laughed in rich appreciation. "I don't suppose you had a
+doubt of it; but of course I was quite unprepared. And it's so
+extraordinarily out of your line--"
+
+The Professor took off his glasses and rubbed them with a slow
+smile.
+
+"Would you have thought it so--at college?"
+
+Harviss stared. "At college?--Why, you were the most iconoclastic
+devil--"
+
+There was a perceptible pause. The Professor restored his glasses
+and looked at his friend. "Well--?" he said simply.
+
+"Well--?" echoed the other, still staring. "Ah--I see; you mean that
+that's what explains it. The swing of the pendulum, and so forth.
+Well, I admit it's not an uncommon phenomenon. I've conformed
+myself, for example; most of our crowd have, I believe; but somehow
+I hadn't expected it of you."
+
+The close observer might have detected a faint sadness under the
+official congratulation of his tone; but the Professor was too
+amazed to have an ear for such fine shades.
+
+"Expected it of me? Expected what of me?" he gasped. "What in heaven
+do you think this thing is?" And he struck his fist on the
+manuscript which lay between them.
+
+Harviss had recovered his optimistic creases. He rested a benevolent
+eye on the document.
+
+"Why, your apologia--your confession of faith, I should call it. You
+surely must have seen which way you were going? You can't have
+written it in your sleep?"
+
+"Oh, no, I was wide awake enough," said the Professor faintly.
+
+"Well, then, why are you staring at me as if I were _not?"_ Harviss
+leaned forward to lay a reassuring hand on his visitor's worn
+coat-sleeve. "Don't mistake me, my dear Linyard. Don't fancy there
+was the least unkindness in my allusion to your change of front.
+What is growth but the shifting of the stand-point? Why should a man
+be expected to look at life with the same eyes at twenty and at--our
+age? It never occurred to me that you could feel the least delicacy
+in admitting that you have come round a little--have fallen into
+line, so to speak."
+
+But the Professor had sprung up as if to give his lungs more room to
+expand; and from them there issued a laugh which shook the editorial
+rafters.
+
+"Oh, Lord, oh Lord--is it really as good as that?" he gasped.
+
+Harviss had glanced instinctively toward the electric bell on his
+desk; it was evident that he was prepared for an emergency.
+
+"My dear fellow--" he began in a soothing tone.
+
+"Oh, let me have my laugh out, do," implored the Professor.
+"I'll--I'll quiet down in a minute; you needn't ring for the young
+man." He dropped into his chair again, and grasped its arms to
+steady his shaking. "This is the best laugh I've had since college,"
+he brought out between his paroxysms. And then, suddenly, he sat up
+with a groan. "But if it's as good as that it's a failure!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+Harviss, stiffening a little, examined the tip of his cigar. "My
+dear Linyard," he said at length, "I don't understand a word you're
+saying."
+
+The Professor succumbed to a fresh access, from the vortex of which
+he managed to fling out--"But that's the very core of the joke!"
+
+Harviss looked at him resignedly. "What is?"
+
+"Why, your not seeing--your not understanding--"
+
+"Not understanding _what?"_
+
+"Why, what the book is meant to be." His laughter subsided again and
+he sat gazing thoughtfully at the publisher. "Unless it means," he
+wound up, "that I've over-shot the mark."
+
+"If I am the mark, you certainly have," said Harviss, with a glance
+at the clock.
+
+The Professor caught the glance and interpreted it. "The book is a
+skit," he said, rising.
+
+The other stared. "A skit? It's not serious, you mean?"
+
+"Not to me--but it seems you've taken it so."
+
+"You never told me--" began the publisher in a ruffled tone.
+
+"No, I never told you," said the Professor.
+
+Harviss sat staring at the manuscript between them. "I don't pretend
+to be up in such recondite forms of humour," he said, still stiffly.
+"Of course you address yourself to a very small class of readers."
+
+"Oh, infinitely small," admitted the Professor, extending his hand
+toward the manuscript.
+
+Harviss appeared to be pursuing his own train of thought. "That is,"
+he continued, "if you insist on an ironical interpretation."
+
+"If I insist on it--what do you mean?"
+
+The publisher smiled faintly. "Well--isn't the book susceptible of
+another? If _I_ read it without seeing--"
+
+"Well?" murmured the other, fascinated.--"why shouldn't the rest
+of the world?" declared Harviss boldly. "I represent the Average
+Reader--that's my business, that's what I've been training myself to
+do for the last twenty years. It's a mission like another--the thing
+is to do it thoroughly; not to cheat and compromise. I know fellows
+who are publishers in business hours and dilettantes the rest of the
+time. Well, they never succeed: convictions are just as necessary in
+business as in religion. But that's not the point--I was going to
+say that if you'll let me handle this book as a genuine thing I'll
+guarantee to make it go."
+
+The Professor stood motionless, his hand still on the manuscript.
+
+"A genuine thing?" he echoed.
+
+"A serious piece of work--the expression of your convictions. I tell
+you there's nothing the public likes as much as convictions--they'll
+always follow a man who believes in his own ideas. And this book is
+just on the line of popular interest. You've got hold of a big
+thing. It's full of hope and enthusiasm: it's written in the
+religious key. There are passages in it that would do splendidly in
+a Birthday Book--things that popular preachers would quote in their
+sermons. If you'd wanted to catch a big public you couldn't have
+gone about it in a better way. The thing's perfect for my purpose--I
+wouldn't let you alter a word of it. It'll sell like a popular novel
+if you'll let me handle it in the right way."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+
+
+When the Professor left Harviss's office, the manuscript remained
+behind. He thought he had been taken by the huge irony of the
+situation--by the enlarged circumference of the joke. In its
+original form, as Harviss had said, the book would have addressed
+itself to a very limited circle: now it would include the world. The
+elect would understand; the crowd would not; and his work would thus
+serve a double purpose. And, after all, nothing was changed in the
+situation; not a word of the book was to be altered. The change was
+merely in the publisher's point of view, and in the "tip" he was to
+give the reviewers. The Professor had only to hold his tongue and
+look serious.
+
+These arguments found a strong reinforcement in the large premium
+which expressed Harviss's sense of his opportunity. As a satire, the
+book would have brought its author nothing; in fact, its cost would
+have come out of his own pocket, since, as Harviss assured him, no
+publisher would have risked taking it. But as a profession of faith,
+as the recantation of an eminent biologist, whose leanings had
+hitherto been supposed to be toward a cold determinism, it would
+bring in a steady income to author and publisher. The offer found
+the Professor in a moment of financial perplexity. His illness, his
+unwonted holiday, the necessity of postponing a course of well-paid
+lectures, had combined to diminish his resources; and when Harviss
+offered him an advance of a thousand dollars the esoteric savour of
+the joke became irresistible. It was still as a joke that he
+persisted in regarding the transaction; and though he had pledged
+himself not to betray the real intent of the book, he held _in
+petto_ the notion of some day being able to take the public into his
+confidence. As for the initiated, they would know at once: and
+however long a face he pulled, his colleagues would see the tongue
+in his cheek. Meanwhile it fortunately happened that, even if the
+book should achieve the kind of triumph prophesied by Harviss, it
+would not appreciably injure its author's professional standing.
+Professor Linyard was known chiefly as a microscopist. On the
+structure and habits of a certain class of coleoptera he was the
+most distinguished living authority; but none save his intimate
+friends knew what generalizations on the destiny of man he had drawn
+from these special studies. He might have published a treatise on
+the Filioque without disturbing the confidence of those on whose
+approval his reputation rested; and moreover he was sustained by the
+thought that one glance at his book would let them into its secret.
+In fact, so sure was he of this that he wondered the astute Harviss
+had cared to risk such speedy exposure. But Harviss had probably
+reflected that even in this reverberating age the opinions of the
+laboratory do not easily reach the street; and the Professor, at any
+rate, was not bound to offer advice on this point.
+
+The determining cause of his consent was the fact that the book was
+already in press. The Professor knew little about the workings of
+the press, but the phrase gave him a sense of finality, of having
+been caught himself in the toils of that mysterious engine. If he
+had had time to think the matter over, his scruples might have
+dragged him back; but his conscience was eased by the futility of
+resistance.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+
+
+Mrs. Linyard did not often read the papers; and there was therefore
+a special significance in her approaching her husband one evening
+after dinner with a copy of the _New York Investigator_ in her hand.
+Her expression lent solemnity to the act: Mrs. Linyard had a limited
+but distinctive set of expressions, and she now looked as she did
+when the President of the University came to dine.
+
+"You didn't tell me of this, Samuel," she said in a slightly
+tremulous voice.
+
+"Tell you of what?" returned the Professor, reddening to the margin
+of his baldness.
+
+"That you had published a book--I might never have heard of it if
+Mrs. Pease hadn't brought me the paper."
+
+Her husband rubbed his eye-glasses with a groan. "Oh, you would have
+heard of it," he said gloomily.
+
+Mrs. Linyard stared. "Did you wish to keep it from me, Samuel?" And
+as he made no answer, she added with irresistible pride: "Perhaps
+you don't know what beautiful things have been said about it."
+
+He took the paper with a reluctant hand. "Has Pease been saying
+beautiful things about it?"
+
+"The Professor? Mrs. Pease didn't say he had mentioned it."
+
+The author heaved a sigh of relief. His book, as Harviss had
+prophesied, had caught the autumn market: had caught and captured
+it. The publisher had conducted the campaign like an experienced
+strategist. He had completely surrounded the enemy. Every newspaper,
+every periodical, held in ambush an advertisement of "The Vital
+Thing." Weeks in advance the great commander had begun to form his
+lines of attack. Allusions to the remarkable significance of the
+coming work had appeared first in the scientific and literary
+reviews, spreading thence to the supplements of the daily journals.
+Not a moment passed without a quickening touch to the public
+consciousness: seventy millions of people were forced to remember at
+least once a day that Professor Linyard's book was on the verge of
+appearing. Slips emblazoned with the question: _Have you read "The
+Vital Thing"?_ fell from the pages of popular novels and whitened
+the floors of crowded street-cars. The query, in large lettering,
+assaulted the traveller at the railway bookstall, confronted him on
+the walls of "elevated" stations, and seemed, in its ascending
+scale, about to supplant the interrogations as to soap and
+stove-polish which animate our rural scenery.
+
+On the day of publication, the Professor had withdrawn to his
+laboratory. The shriek of the advertisements was in his ears, and
+his one desire was to avoid all knowledge of the event they
+heralded. A reaction of self-consciousness had set in, and if
+Harviss's cheque had sufficed to buy up the first edition of "The
+Vital Thing" the Professor would gladly have devoted it to that
+purpose. But the sense of inevitableness gradually subdued him, and
+he received his wife's copy of the _Investigator_ with a kind of
+impersonal curiosity. The review was a long one, full of extracts:
+he saw, as he glanced over them, how well they would look in a
+volume of "Selections." The reviewer began by thanking his author
+"for sounding with no uncertain voice that note of ringing optimism,
+of faith in man's destiny and the supremacy of good, which has too
+long been silenced by the whining chorus of a decadent nihilism....
+It is well," the writer continued, "when such reminders come to us
+not from the moralist but from the man of science--when from the
+desiccating atmosphere of the laboratory there rises this glorious
+cry of faith and reconstruction."
+
+The review was minute and exhaustive. Thanks no doubt to Harviss's
+diplomacy, it had been given to the _Investigator's_ "best man," and
+the Professor was startled by the bold eye with which his
+emancipated fallacies confronted him. Under the reviewer's handling
+they made up admirably as truths, and their author began to
+understand Harviss's regret that they should be used for any less
+profitable purpose.
+
+The _Investigator_, as Harviss phrased it, "set the pace," and the
+other journals followed, finding it easier to let their critical
+man-of-all-work play a variation on the first reviewer's theme than
+to secure an expert to "do" the book afresh. But it was evident that
+the Professor had captured his public, for all the resources of the
+profession could not, as Harviss gleefully pointed out, have carried
+the book so straight to the heart of the nation. There was something
+noble in the way in which Harviss belittled his own share in the
+achievement, and insisted on the inutility of shoving a book which
+had started with such headway on.
+
+"All I ask you is to admit that I saw what would happen," he said
+with a touch of professional pride. "I knew you'd struck the right
+note--I knew they'd be quoting you from Maine to San Francisco. Good
+as fiction? It's better--it'll keep going longer."
+
+"Will it?" said the Professor with a slight shudder. He was resigned
+to an ephemeral triumph, but the thought of the book's persistency
+frightened him.
+
+"I should say so! Why, you fit in everywhere--science, theology,
+natural history--and then the all-for-the-best element which is so
+popular just now. Why, you come right in with the How-to-Relax
+series, and they sell way up in the millions. And then the book's so
+full of tenderness--there are such lovely things in it about flowers
+and children. I didn't know an old Dryasdust like you could have
+such a lot of sentiment in him. Why, I actually caught myself
+snivelling over that passage about the snowdrops piercing the frozen
+earth; and my wife was saying the other day that, since she's read
+'The Vital Thing,' she begins to think you must write the
+'What-Cheer Column,' in the _Inglenook."_ He threw back his head with
+a laugh which ended in the inspired cry: "And, by George, sir, when
+the thing begins to slow off we'll start somebody writing against
+it, and that will run us straight into another hundred thousand."
+
+And as earnest of this belief he drew the Professor a supplementary
+cheque.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+
+
+Mrs. Linyard's knock cut short the importunities of the lady who had
+been trying to persuade the Professor to be taken by flashlight at
+his study table for the Christmas number of the _Inglenook_. On this
+point the Professor had fancied himself impregnable; but the
+unwonted smile with which he welcomed his wife's intrusion showed
+that his defences were weakening.
+
+The lady from the _Inglenook_ took the hint with professional
+promptness, but said brightly, as she snapped the elastic around her
+note-book: "I shan't let you forget me, Professor."
+
+The groan with which he followed her retreat was interrupted by his
+wife's question: "Do they pay you for these interviews, Samuel?"
+
+The Professor looked at her with sudden attention. "Not directly,"
+he said, wondering at her expression.
+
+She sank down with a sigh. "Indirectly, then?"
+
+"What is the matter, my dear? I gave you Harviss's second cheque the
+other day--"
+
+Her tears arrested him. "Don't be hard on the boy, Samuel! I really
+believe your success has turned his head."
+
+"The boy--what boy? My success--? Explain yourself, Susan!"
+
+"It's only that Jack has--has borrowed some money--which he can't
+repay. But you mustn't think him altogether to blame, Samuel. Since
+the success of your book he has been asked about so much--it's given
+the children quite a different position. Millicent says that
+wherever they go the first question asked is, 'Are you any relation
+of the author of "The Vital Thing"?' Of course we're all very proud
+of the book; but it entails obligations which you may not have
+thought of in writing it."
+
+The Professor sat gazing at the letters and newspaper clippings on
+the study-table which he had just successfully defended from the
+camera of the _Inglenook_. He took up an envelope bearing the name
+of a popular weekly paper.
+
+"I don't know that the _Inglenook_ would help much," he said, "but I
+suppose this might."
+
+Mrs. Linyard's eyes glowed with maternal avidity.
+
+"What is it, Samuel?"
+
+"A series of 'Scientific Sermons' for the Round-the-Gas-Log column
+of _The Woman's World_. I believe that journal has a larger
+circulation than any other weekly, and they pay in proportion."
+
+He had not even asked the extent of Jack's indebtedness. It had been
+so easy to relieve recent domestic difficulties by the timely
+production of Harviss's two cheques, that it now seemed natural to
+get Mrs. Linyard out of the room by promising further
+reinforcements. The Professor had indignantly rejected Harviss's
+suggestion that he should follow up his success by a second volume
+on the same lines. He had sworn not to lend more than a passive
+support to the fraud of "The Vital Thing"; but the temptation to
+free himself from Mrs. Linyard prevailed over his last scruples, and
+within an hour he was at work on the Scientific Sermons.
+
+The Professor was not an unkind man. He really enjoyed making his
+family happy; and it was his own business if his reward for so doing
+was that it kept them out of his way. But the success of "The Vital
+Thing" gave him more than this negative satisfaction. It enlarged
+his own existence and opened new doors into other lives. The
+Professor, during fifty virtuous years, had been cognizant of only
+two types of women: the fond and foolish, whom one married, and the
+earnest and intellectual, whom one did not. Of the two, he
+infinitely preferred the former, even for conversational purposes.
+But as a social instrument woman was unknown to him; and it was not
+till he was drawn into the world on the tide of his literary success
+that he discovered the deficiencies in his classification of the
+sex. Then he learned with astonishment of the existence of a third
+type: the woman who is fond without foolishness and intellectual
+without earnestness. Not that the Professor inspired, or sought to
+inspire, sentimental emotions; but he expanded in the warm
+atmosphere of personal interest which some of his new acquaintances
+contrived to create about him. It was delightful to talk of serious
+things in a setting of frivolity, and to be personal without being
+domestic.
+
+Even in this new world, where all subjects were touched on lightly,
+and emphasis was the only indelicacy, the Professor found himself
+constrained to endure an occasional reference to his book. It was
+unpleasant at first; but gradually he slipped into the habit of
+hearing it talked of, and grew accustomed to telling pretty women
+just how "it had first come to him."
+
+Meanwhile the success of the Scientific Sermons was facilitating his
+family relations. His photograph in the _Inglenook_, to which the
+lady of the note-book had succeeded in appending a vivid interview,
+carried his fame to circles inaccessible even to "The Vital Thing";
+and the Professor found himself the man of the hour. He soon grew
+used to the functions of the office, and gave out hundred-dollar
+interviews on every subject, from labour-strikes to Babism, with a
+frequency which reacted agreeably on the domestic exchequer.
+Presently his head began to figure in the advertising pages of the
+magazines. Admiring readers learned the name of the only
+breakfast-food in use at his table, of the ink with which "The Vital
+Thing" had been written, the soap with which the author's hands were
+washed, and the tissue-builder which fortified him for further
+effort. These confidences endeared the Professor to millions of
+readers, and his head passed in due course from the magazine and the
+newspaper to the biscuit-tin and the chocolate-box.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+
+
+
+The Professor, all the while, was leading a double life. While the
+author of "The Vital Thing" reaped the fruits of popular approval,
+the distinguished microscopist continued his laboratory work
+unheeded save by the few who were engaged in the same line of
+investigations. His divided allegiance had not hitherto affected the
+quality of his work: it seemed to him that he returned to the
+laboratory with greater zest after an afternoon in a drawing-room
+where readings from "The Vital Thing" had alternated with plantation
+melodies and tea. He had long ceased to concern himself with what
+his colleagues thought of his literary career. Of the few whom he
+frequented, none had referred to "The Vital Thing"; and he knew
+enough of their lives to guess that their silence might as fairly be
+attributed to indifference as to disapproval. They were intensely
+interested in the Professor's views on beetles, but they really
+cared very little what he thought of the Almighty.
+
+The Professor entirely shared their feelings, and one of his chief
+reasons for cultivating the success which accident had bestowed on
+him, was that it enabled him to command a greater range of
+appliances for his real work. He had known what it was to lack books
+and instruments; and "The Vital Thing" was the magic wand which
+summoned them to his aid. For some time he had been feeling his way
+along the edge of a discovery: balancing himself with professional
+skill on a plank of hypothesis flung across an abyss of uncertainty.
+The conjecture was the result of years of patient gathering of
+facts: its corroboration would take months more of comparison and
+classification. But at the end of the vista victory loomed. The
+Professor felt within himself that assurance of ultimate
+justification which, to the man of science, makes a life-time seem
+the mere comma between premiss and deduction. But he had reached the
+point where his conjectures required formulation. It was only by
+giving them expression, by exposing them to the comment and
+criticism of his associates, that he could test their final value;
+and this inner assurance was confirmed by the only friend whose
+confidence he invited.
+
+Professor Pease, the husband of the lady who had opened Mrs.
+Linyard's eyes to the triumph of "The Vital Thing," was the
+repository of her husband's scientific experiences. What he thought
+of "The Vital Thing" had never been divulged; and he was capable of
+such vast exclusions that it was quite possible that pervasive work
+had not yet reached him. In any case, it was not likely to affect
+his judgment of the author's professional capacity.
+
+"You want to put that all in a book, Linyard," was Professor Pease's
+summing-up. "I'm sure you've got hold of something big; but to see
+it clearly yourself you ought to outline it for others. Take my
+advice--chuck everything else and get to work tomorrow. It's time
+you wrote a book, anyhow."
+
+_ It's time you wrote a book, anyhow!_ The words smote the Professor
+with mingled pain and ecstasy: he could have wept over their
+significance. But his friend's other phrase reminded him with a
+start of Harviss. "You have got hold of a big thing--" it had been
+the publisher's first comment on "The Vital Thing." But what a world
+of meaning lay between the two phrases! It was the world in which
+the powers who fought for the Professor were destined to wage their
+final battle; and for the moment he had no doubt of the outcome. The
+next day he went to town to see Harviss. He wanted to ask for an
+advance on the new popular edition of "The Vital Thing." He had
+determined to drop a course of supplementary lectures at the
+University, and to give himself up for a year to his book. To do
+this, additional funds were necessary; but thanks to "The Vital
+Thing" they would be forthcoming.
+
+The publisher received him as cordially as usual; but the response
+to his demand was not as prompt as his previous experience had
+entitled him to expect.
+
+"Of course we'll be glad to do what we can for you, Linyard; but the
+fact is, we've decided to give up the idea of the new edition for
+the present."
+
+"You've given up the new edition?"
+
+"Why, yes--we've done pretty well by 'The Vital Thing,' and we're
+inclined to think it's _your_ turn to do something for it now."
+
+The Professor looked at him blankly. "What can I do for it?" he
+asked--"what _more_" his accent added.
+
+"Why, put a little new life in it by writing something else. The
+secret of perpetual motion hasn't yet been discovered, you know, and
+it's one of the laws of literature that books which start with a
+rush are apt to slow down sooner than the crawlers. We've kept 'The
+Vital Thing' going for eighteen months--but, hang it, it ain't so
+vital any more. We simply couldn't see our way to a new edition. Oh,
+I don't say it's dead yet--but it's moribund, and you're the only
+man who can resuscitate it."
+
+The Professor continued to stare. "I--what can I do about it?" he
+stammered.
+
+"Do? Why write another like it--go it one better: you know the
+trick. The public isn't tired of you by any means; but you want to
+make yourself heard again before anybody else cuts in. Write another
+book--write two, and we'll sell them in sets in a box: The Vital
+Thing Series. That will take tremendously in the holidays. Try and
+let us have a new volume by October--I'll be glad to give you a big
+advance if you'll sign a contract on that."
+
+The Professor sat silent: there was too cruel an irony in the
+coincidence.
+
+Harviss looked up at him in surprise.
+
+"Well, what's the matter with taking my advice--you're not going out
+of literature, are you?"
+
+The Professor rose from his chair. "No--I'm going into it," he said
+simply.
+
+"Going into it?"
+
+"I'm going to write a real book--a serious one."
+
+"Good Lord! Most people think 'The Vital Thing' 's serious."
+
+"Yes--but I mean something different."
+
+"In your old line--beetles and so forth?"
+
+"Yes," said the Professor solemnly.
+
+Harviss looked at him with equal gravity. "Well, I'm sorry for
+that," he said, "because it takes you out of our bailiwick. But I
+suppose you've made enough money out of 'The Vital Thing' to permit
+yourself a little harmless amusement. When you want more cash come
+back to us--only don't put it off too long, or some other fellow
+will have stepped into your shoes. Popularity don't keep, you know;
+and the hotter the success the quicker the commodity perishes."
+
+He leaned back, cheerful and sententious, delivering his axioms with
+conscious kindliness.
+
+The Professor, who had risen and moved to the door, turned back with
+a wavering step.
+
+"When did you say another volume would have to be ready?" he
+faltered.
+
+"I said October--but call it a month later. You don't need any
+pushing nowadays."
+
+"And--you'd have no objection to letting me have a little advance
+now? I need some new instruments for my real work."
+
+Harviss extended a cordial hand. "My dear fellow, that's
+talking--I'll write the cheque while you wait; and I daresay we can
+start up the cheap edition of 'The Vital Thing' at the same time, if
+you'll pledge yourself to give us the book by November.--How much?"
+he asked, poised above his cheque-book.
+
+In the street, the Professor stood staring about him, uncertain and
+a little dazed.
+
+"After all, it's only putting it off for six months," he said to
+himself; "and I can do better work when I get my new instruments."
+
+He smiled and raised his hat to the passing victoria of a lady in
+whose copy of "The Vital Thing" he had recently written:
+
+_ Labor est etiam ipsa voluptas._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OTHER TWO
+
+I
+
+
+
+
+
+WAYTHORN, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come
+down to dinner.
+
+It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at
+his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not so old, to be sure--his
+glass gave him little more than the five-and-thirty years to which
+his wife confessed--but he had fancied himself already in the
+temperate zone; yet here he was listening for her step with a tender
+sense of all it symbolized, with some old trail of verse about the
+garlanded nuptial door-posts floating through his enjoyment of the
+pleasant room and the good dinner just beyond it.
+
+They had been hastily recalled from their honeymoon by the illness
+of Lily Haskett, the child of Mrs. Waythorn's first marriage. The
+little girl, at Waythorn's desire, had been transferred to his house
+on the day of her mother's wedding, and the doctor, on their
+arrival, broke the news that she was ill with typhoid, but declared
+that all the symptoms were favorable. Lily could show twelve years
+of unblemished health, and the case promised to be a light one. The
+nurse spoke as reassuringly, and after a moment of alarm Mrs.
+Waythorn had adjusted herself to the situation. She was very fond of
+Lily--her affection for the child had perhaps been her decisive
+charm in Waythorn's eyes--but she had the perfectly balanced nerves
+which her little girl had inherited, and no woman ever wasted less
+tissue in unproductive worry. Waythorn was therefore quite prepared
+to see her come in presently, a little late because of a last look
+at Lily, but as serene and well-appointed as if her good-night kiss
+had been laid on the brow of health. Her composure was restful to
+him; it acted as ballast to his somewhat unstable sensibilities. As
+he pictured her bending over the child's bed he thought how soothing
+her presence must be in illness: her very step would prognosticate
+recovery.
+
+His own life had been a gray one, from temperament rather than
+circumstance, and he had been drawn to her by the unperturbed gayety
+which kept her fresh and elastic at an age when most women's
+activities are growing either slack or febrile. He knew what was
+said about her; for, popular as she was, there had always been a
+faint undercurrent of detraction. When she had appeared in New York,
+nine or ten years earlier, as the pretty Mrs. Haskett whom Gus
+Varick had unearthed somewhere--was it in Pittsburgh or
+Utica?--society, while promptly accepting her, had reserved the
+right to cast a doubt on its own discrimination. Inquiry, however,
+established her undoubted connection with a socially reigning
+family, and explained her recent divorce as the natural result of a
+runaway match at seventeen; and as nothing was known of Mr. Haskett
+it was easy to believe the worst of him.
+
+Alice Haskett's remarriage with Gus Varick was a passport to the set
+whose recognition she coveted, and for a few years the Varicks were
+the most popular couple in town. Unfortunately the alliance was
+brief and stormy, and this time the husband had his champions.
+Still, even Varick's stanchest supporters admitted that he was not
+meant for matrimony, and Mrs. Varick's grievances were of a nature
+to bear the inspection of the New York courts. A New York divorce is
+in itself a diploma of virtue, and in the semi-widowhood of this
+second separation Mrs. Varick took on an air of sanctity, and was
+allowed to confide her wrongs to some of the most scrupulous ears in
+town. But when it was known that she was to marry Waythorn there was
+a momentary reaction. Her best friends would have preferred to see
+her remain in the role of the injured wife, which was as becoming to
+her as crape to a rosy complexion. True, a decent time had elapsed,
+and it was not even suggested that Waythorn had supplanted his
+predecessor. Still, people shook their heads over him, and one
+grudging friend, to whom he affirmed that he took the step with his
+eyes open, replied oracularly: "Yes--and with your ears shut."
+
+Waythorn could afford to smile at these innuendoes. In the Wall
+Street phrase, he had "discounted" them. He knew that society has
+not yet adapted itself to the consequences of divorce, and that till
+the adaptation takes place every woman who uses the freedom the law
+accords her must be her own social justification. Waythorn had an
+amused confidence in his wife's ability to justify herself. His
+expectations were fulfilled, and before the wedding took place Alice
+Varick's group had rallied openly to her support. She took it all
+imperturbably: she had a way of surmounting obstacles without
+seeming to be aware of them, and Waythorn looked back with wonder at
+the trivialities over which he had worn his nerves thin. He had the
+sense of having found refuge in a richer, warmer nature than his
+own, and his satisfaction, at the moment, was humorously summed up
+in the thought that his wife, when she had done all she could for
+Lily, would not be ashamed to come down and enjoy a good dinner.
+
+The anticipation of such enjoyment was not, however, the sentiment
+expressed by Mrs. Waythorn's charming face when she presently joined
+him. Though she had put on her most engaging teagown she had
+neglected to assume the smile that went with it, and Waythorn
+thought he had never seen her look so nearly worried.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "Is anything wrong with Lily?"
+
+"No; I've just been in and she's still sleeping." Mrs. Waythorn
+hesitated. "But something tiresome has happened."
+
+He had taken her two hands, and now perceived that he was crushing a
+paper between them.
+
+"This letter?"
+
+"Yes--Mr. Haskett has written--I mean his lawyer has written."
+
+Waythorn felt himself flush uncomfortably. He dropped his wife's
+hands.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"About seeing Lily. You know the courts--"
+
+"Yes, yes," he interrupted nervously.
+
+Nothing was known about Haskett in New York. He was vaguely supposed
+to have remained in the outer darkness from which his wife had been
+rescued, and Waythorn was one of the few who were aware that he had
+given up his business in Utica and followed her to New York in order
+to be near his little girl. In the days of his wooing, Waythorn had
+often met Lily on the doorstep, rosy and smiling, on her way "to see
+papa."
+
+"I am so sorry," Mrs. Waythorn murmured.
+
+He roused himself. "What does he want?"
+
+"He wants to see her. You know she goes to him once a week."
+
+"Well--he doesn't expect her to go to him now, does he?"
+
+"No--he has heard of her illness; but he expects to come here."
+
+"_Here?_"
+
+Mrs. Waythorn reddened under his gaze. They looked away from each
+other.
+
+"I'm afraid he has the right....You'll see...." She made a
+proffer of the letter.
+
+Waythorn moved away with a gesture of refusal. He stood staring
+about the softly lighted room, which a moment before had seemed so
+full of bridal intimacy.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she repeated. "If Lily could have been moved--"
+
+"That's out of the question," he returned impatiently.
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Her lip was beginning to tremble, and he felt himself a brute.
+
+"He must come, of course," he said. "When is--his day?"
+
+"I'm afraid--to-morrow."
+
+"Very well. Send a note in the morning."
+
+The butler entered to announce dinner.
+
+Waythorn turned to his wife. "Come--you must be tired. It's beastly,
+but try to forget about it," he said, drawing her hand through his
+arm.
+
+"You're so good, dear. I'll try," she whispered back.
+
+Her face cleared at once, and as she looked at him across the
+flowers, between the rosy candle-shades, he saw her lips waver back
+into a smile.
+
+"How pretty everything is!" she sighed luxuriously.
+
+He turned to the butler. "The champagne at once, please. Mrs.
+Waythorn is tired."
+
+In a moment or two their eyes met above the sparkling glasses. Her
+own were quite clear and untroubled: he saw that she had obeyed his
+injunction and forgotten.
+
+Waythorn moved away with a gesture of refusal
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+
+
+A small effaced-looking man.
+
+WAYTHORN, the next morning, went down town earlier than usual.
+Haskett was not likely to come till the afternoon, but the instinct
+of flight drove him forth. He meant to stay away all day--he had
+thoughts of dining at his club. As his door closed behind him he
+reflected that before he opened it again it would have admitted
+another man who had as much right to enter it as himself, and the
+thought filled him with a physical repugnance.
+
+He caught the "elevated" at the employees' hour, and found himself
+crushed between two layers of pendulous humanity. At Eighth Street
+the man facing him wriggled out and another took his place. Waythorn
+glanced up and saw that it was Gus Varick. The men were so close
+together that it was impossible to ignore the smile of recognition
+on Varick's handsome overblown face. And after all--why not? They
+had always been on good terms, and Varick had been divorced before
+Waythorn's attentions to his wife began. The two exchanged a word on
+the perennial grievance of the congested trains, and when a seat at
+their side was miraculously left empty the instinct of
+self-preservation made Waythorn slip into it after Varick.
+
+The latter drew the stout man's breath of relief.
+
+"Lord--I was beginning to feel like a pressed flower." He leaned
+back, looking unconcernedly at Waythorn. "Sorry to hear that Sellers
+is knocked out again."
+
+"Sellers?" echoed Waythorn, starting at his partner's name.
+
+Varick looked surprised. "You didn't know he was laid up with the
+gout?"
+
+"No. I've been away--I only got back last night." Waythorn felt
+himself reddening in anticipation of the other's smile.
+
+"Ah--yes; to be sure. And Sellers's attack came on two days ago. I'm
+afraid he's pretty bad. Very awkward for me, as it happens, because
+he was just putting through a rather important thing for me."
+
+"Ah?" Waythorn wondered vaguely since when Varick had been dealing
+in "important things." Hitherto he had dabbled only in the shallow
+pools of speculation, with which Waythorn's office did not usually
+concern itself.
+
+It occurred to him that Varick might be talking at random, to
+relieve the strain of their propinquity. That strain was becoming
+momentarily more apparent to Waythorn, and when, at Cortlandt
+Street, he caught sight of an acquaintance, and had a sudden vision
+of the picture he and Varick must present to an initiated eye, he
+jumped up with a muttered excuse.
+
+"I hope you'll find Sellers better," said Varick civilly, and he
+stammered back: "If I can be of any use to you--" and let the
+departing crowd sweep him to the platform.
+
+At his office he heard that Sellers was in fact ill with the gout,
+and would probably not be able to leave the house for some weeks.
+
+"I'm sorry it should have happened so, Mr. Waythorn," the senior
+clerk said with affable significance. "Mr. Sellers was very much
+upset at the idea of giving you such a lot of extra work just now."
+
+"Oh, that's no matter," said Waythorn hastily. He secretly welcomed
+the pressure of additional business, and was glad to think that,
+when the day's work was over, he would have to call at his partner's
+on the way home.
+
+He was late for luncheon, and turned in at the nearest restaurant
+instead of going to his club. The place was full, and the waiter
+hurried him to the back of the room to capture the only vacant
+table. In the cloud of cigar-smoke Waythorn did not at once
+distinguish his neighbors; but presently, looking about him, he saw
+Varick seated a few feet off. This time, luckily, they were too far
+apart for conversation, and Varick, who faced another way, had
+probably not even seen him; but there was an irony in their renewed
+nearness.
+
+Varick was said to be fond of good living, and as Waythorn sat
+despatching his hurried luncheon he looked across half enviously at
+the other's leisurely degustation of his meal. When Waythorn first
+saw him he had been helping himself with critical deliberation to a
+bit of Camembert at the ideal point of liquefaction, and now, the
+cheese removed, he was just pouring his _cafe double_ from its
+little two-storied earthen pot. He poured slowly, his ruddy profile
+bent above the task, and one beringed white hand steadying the lid
+of the coffee-pot; then he stretched his other hand to the decanter
+of cognac at his elbow, filled a liqueur-glass, took a tentative
+sip, and poured the brandy into his coffee-cup.
+
+Waythorn watched him in a kind of fascination. What was he thinking
+of--only of the flavor of the coffee and the liqueur? Had the
+morning's meeting left no more trace in his thoughts than on his
+face? Had his wife so completely passed out of his life that even
+this odd encounter with her present husband, within a week after her
+remarriage, was no more than an incident in his day? And as Waythorn
+mused, another idea struck him: had Haskett ever met Varick as
+Varick and he had just met? The recollection of Haskett perturbed
+him, and he rose and left the restaurant, taking a circuitous way
+out to escape the placid irony of Varick's nod.
+
+It was after seven when Waythorn reached home. He thought the
+footman who opened the door looked at him oddly.
+
+"How is Miss Lily?" he asked in haste.
+
+"Doing very well, sir. A gentleman--"
+
+"Tell Barlow to put off dinner for half an hour," Waythorn cut him
+off, hurrying upstairs.
+
+He went straight to his room and dressed without seeing his wife.
+When he reached the drawing-room she was there, fresh and radiant.
+Lily's day had been good; the doctor was not coming back that
+evening.
+
+At dinner Waythorn told her of Sellers's illness and of the
+resulting complications. She listened sympathetically, adjuring him
+not to let himself be overworked, and asking vague feminine
+questions about the routine of the office. Then she gave him the
+chronicle of Lily's day; quoted the nurse and doctor, and told him
+who had called to inquire. He had never seen her more serene and
+unruffled. It struck him, with a curious pang, that she was very
+happy in being with him, so happy that she found a childish pleasure
+in rehearsing the trivial incidents of her day.
+
+After dinner they went to the library, and the servant put the
+coffee and liqueurs on a low table before her and left the room. She
+looked singularly soft and girlish in her rosy pale dress, against
+the dark leather of one of his bachelor armchairs. A day earlier the
+contrast would have charmed him.
+
+He turned away now, choosing a cigar with affected deliberation.
+
+"Did Haskett come?" he asked, with his back to her.
+
+"Oh, yes--he came."
+
+"You didn't see him, of course?"
+
+She hesitated a moment. "I let the nurse see him."
+
+That was all. There was nothing more to ask. He swung round toward
+her, applying a match to his cigar. Well, the thing was over for a
+week, at any rate. He would try not to think of it. She looked up at
+him, a trifle rosier than usual, with a smile in her eyes.
+
+"Ready for your coffee, dear?"
+
+He leaned against the mantelpiece, watching her as she lifted the
+coffee-pot. The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets and
+tipped her soft hair with brightness. How light and slender she was,
+and how each gesture flowed into the next! She seemed a creature all
+compact of harmonies. As the thought of Haskett receded, Waythorn
+felt himself yielding again to the joy of possessorship. They were
+his, those white hands with their flitting motions, his the light
+haze of hair, the lips and eyes....
+
+She set down the coffee-pot, and reaching for the decanter of
+cognac, measured off a liqueur-glass and poured it into his cup.
+
+Waythorn uttered a sudden exclamation.
+
+"What is the matter?" she said, startled.
+
+"Nothing; only--I don't take cognac in my coffee."
+
+"Oh, how stupid of me," she cried.
+
+Their eyes met, and she blushed a sudden agonized red.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+
+
+TEN DAYS later, Mr. Sellers, still house-bound, asked Waythorn to
+call on his way down town.
+
+The senior partner, with his swaddled foot propped up by the fire,
+greeted his associate with an air of embarrassment.
+
+"I'm sorry, my dear fellow; I've got to ask you to do an awkward
+thing for me."
+
+Waythorn waited, and the other went on, after a pause apparently
+given to the arrangement of his phrases: "The fact is, when I was
+knocked out I had just gone into a rather complicated piece of
+business for--Gus Varick."
+
+"Well?" said Waythorn, with an attempt to put him at his ease.
+
+"Well--it's this way: Varick came to me the day before my attack. He
+had evidently had an inside tip from somebody, and had made about a
+hundred thousand. He came to me for advice, and I suggested his
+going in with Vanderlyn."
+
+"Oh, the deuce!" Waythorn exclaimed. He saw in a flash what had
+happened. The investment was an alluring one, but required
+negotiation. He listened intently while Sellers put the case before
+him, and, the statement ended, he said: "You think I ought to see
+Varick?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't as yet. The doctor is obdurate. And this thing
+can't wait. I hate to ask you, but no one else in the office knows
+the ins and outs of it."
+
+Waythorn stood silent. He did not care a farthing for the success of
+Varick's venture, but the honor of the office was to be considered,
+and he could hardly refuse to oblige his partner.
+
+"Very well," he said, "I'll do it."
+
+That afternoon, apprised by telephone, Varick called at the office.
+Waythorn, waiting in his private room, wondered what the others
+thought of it. The newspapers, at the time of Mrs. Waythorn's
+marriage, had acquainted their readers with every detail of her
+previous matrimonial ventures, and Waythorn could fancy the clerks
+smiling behind Varick's back as he was ushered in.
+
+Varick bore himself admirably. He was easy without being
+undignified, and Waythorn was conscious of cutting a much less
+impressive figure. Varick had no head for business, and the talk
+prolonged itself for nearly an hour while Waythorn set forth with
+scrupulous precision the details of the proposed transaction.
+
+"I'm awfully obliged to you," Varick said as he rose. "The fact is
+I'm not used to having much money to look after, and I don't want to
+make an ass of myself--" He smiled, and Waythorn could not help
+noticing that there was something pleasant about his smile. "It
+feels uncommonly queer to have enough cash to pay one's bills. I'd
+have sold my soul for it a few years ago!"
+
+Waythorn winced at the allusion. He had heard it rumored that a lack
+of funds had been one of the determining causes of the Varick
+separation, but it did not occur to him that Varick's words were
+intentional. It seemed more likely that the desire to keep clear of
+embarrassing topics had fatally drawn him into one. Waythorn did not
+wish to be outdone in civility.
+
+"We'll do the best we can for you," he said. "I think this is a good
+thing you're in."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure it's immense. It's awfully good of you--" Varick broke
+off, embarrassed. "I suppose the thing's settled now--but if--"
+
+"If anything happens before Sellers is about, I'll see you again,"
+said Waythorn quietly. He was glad, in the end, to appear the more
+self-possessed of the two.
+
+The course of Lily's illness ran smooth, and as the days passed
+Waythorn grew used to the idea of Haskett's weekly visit. The first
+time the day came round, he stayed out late, and questioned his wife
+as to the visit on his return. She replied at once that Haskett had
+merely seen the nurse downstairs, as the doctor did not wish any one
+in the child's sick-room till after the crisis.
+
+The following week Waythorn was again conscious of the recurrence of
+the day, but had forgotten it by the time he came home to dinner.
+The crisis of the disease came a few days later, with a rapid
+decline of fever, and the little girl was pronounced out of danger.
+In the rejoicing which ensued the thought of Haskett passed out of
+Waythorn's mind and one afternoon, letting himself into the house
+with a latchkey, he went straight to his library without noticing a
+shabby hat and umbrella in the hall.
+
+In the library he found a small effaced-looking man with a thinnish
+gray beard sitting on the edge of a chair. The stranger might have
+been a piano-tuner, or one of those mysteriously efficient persons
+who are summoned in emergencies to adjust some detail of the
+domestic machinery. He blinked at Waythorn through a pair of
+gold-rimmed spectacles and said mildly: "Mr. Waythorn, I presume? I
+am Lily's father."
+
+Waythorn flushed. "Oh--" he stammered uncomfortably. He broke off,
+disliking to appear rude. Inwardly he was trying to adjust the
+actual Haskett to the image of him projected by his wife's
+reminiscences. Waythorn had been allowed to infer that Alice's first
+husband was a brute.
+
+"I am sorry to intrude," said Haskett, with his over-the-counter
+politeness.
+
+"Don't mention it," returned Waythorn, collecting himself. "I
+suppose the nurse has been told?"
+
+"I presume so. I can wait," said Haskett. He had a resigned way of
+speaking, as though life had worn down his natural powers of
+resistance.
+
+Waythorn stood on the threshold, nervously pulling off his gloves.
+
+"I'm sorry you've been detained. I will send for the nurse," he
+said; and as he opened the door he added with an effort: "I'm glad
+we can give you a good report of Lily." He winced as the _we_
+slipped out, but Haskett seemed not to notice it.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Waythorn. It's been an anxious time for me."
+
+"Ah, well, that's past. Soon she'll be able to go to you." Waythorn
+nodded and passed out.
+
+In his own room, he flung himself down with a groan. He hated the
+womanish sensibility which made him suffer so acutely from the
+grotesque chances of life. He had known when he married that his
+wife's former husbands were both living, and that amid the
+multiplied contacts of modern existence there were a thousand
+chances to one that he would run against one or the other, yet he
+found himself as much disturbed by his brief encounter with Haskett
+as though the law had not obligingly removed all difficulties in the
+way of their meeting.
+
+Waythorn sprang up and began to pace the room nervously. He had not
+suffered half so much from his two meetings with Varick. It was
+Haskett's presence in his own house that made the situation so
+intolerable. He stood still, hearing steps in the passage.
+
+"This way, please," he heard the nurse say. Haskett was being taken
+upstairs, then: not a corner of the house but was open to him.
+Waythorn dropped into another chair, staring vaguely ahead of him.
+On his dressing-table stood a photograph of Alice, taken when he had
+first known her. She was Alice Varick then--how fine and exquisite
+he had thought her! Those were Varick's pearls about her neck. At
+Waythorn's instance they had been returned before her marriage. Had
+Haskett ever given her any trinkets--and what had become of them,
+Waythorn wondered? He realized suddenly that he knew very little of
+Haskett's past or present situation; but from the man's appearance
+and manner of speech he could reconstruct with curious precision the
+surroundings of Alice's first marriage. And it startled him to think
+that she had, in the background of her life, a phase of existence so
+different from anything with which he had connected her. Varick,
+whatever his faults, was a gentleman, in the conventional,
+traditional sense of the term: the sense which at that moment
+seemed, oddly enough, to have most meaning to Waythorn. He and
+Varick had the same social habits, spoke the same language,
+understood the same allusions. But this other man...it was
+grotesquely uppermost in Waythorn's mind that Haskett had worn a
+made-up tie attached with an elastic. Why should that ridiculous
+detail symbolize the whole man? Waythorn was exasperated by his own
+paltriness, but the fact of the tie expanded, forced itself on him,
+became as it were the key to Alice's past. He could see her, as Mrs.
+Haskett, sitting in a "front parlor" furnished in plush, with a
+pianola, and a copy of "Ben Hur" on the centre-table. He could see
+her going to the theatre with Haskett--or perhaps even to a "Church
+Sociable"--she in a "picture hat" and Haskett in a black frock-coat,
+a little creased, with the made-up tie on an elastic. On the way
+home they would stop and look at the illuminated shop-windows,
+lingering over the photographs of New York actresses. On Sunday
+afternoons Haskett would take her for a walk, pushing Lily ahead of
+them in a white enameled perambulator, and Waythorn had a vision of
+the people they would stop and talk to. He could fancy how pretty
+Alice must have looked, in a dress adroitly constructed from the
+hints of a New York fashion-paper; how she must have looked down on
+the other women, chafing at her life, and secretly feeling that she
+belonged in a bigger place.
+
+For the moment his foremost thought was one of wonder at the way in
+which she had shed the phase of existence which her marriage with
+Haskett implied. It was as if her whole aspect, every gesture, every
+inflection, every allusion, were a studied negation of that period
+of her life. If she had denied being married to Haskett she could
+hardly have stood more convicted of duplicity than in this
+obliteration of the self which had been his wife.
+
+Waythorn started up, checking himself in the analysis of her
+motives. What right had he to create a fantastic effigy of her and
+then pass judgment on it? She had spoken vaguely of her first
+marriage as unhappy, had hinted, with becoming reticence, that
+Haskett had wrought havoc among her young illusions....It was a
+pity for Waythorn's peace of mind that Haskett's very
+inoffensiveness shed a new light on the nature of those illusions. A
+man would rather think that his wife has been brutalized by her
+first husband than that the process has been reversed.
+
+"Why, how do you do?" she said with a distinct note of pleasure
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+
+
+"MR. WAYTHORN, I don't like that French governess of Lily's."
+
+Haskett, subdued and apologetic, stood before Waythorn in the
+library, revolving his shabby hat in his hand.
+
+Waythorn, surprised in his armchair over the evening paper, stared
+back perplexedly at his visitor.
+
+"You'll excuse my asking to see you," Haskett continued. "But this
+is my last visit, and I thought if I could have a word with you it
+would be a better way than writing to Mrs. Waythorn's lawyer."
+
+Waythorn rose uneasily. He did not like the French governess either;
+but that was irrelevant.
+
+"I am not so sure of that," he returned stiffly; "but since you wish
+it I will give your message to--my wife." He always hesitated over
+the possessive pronoun in addressing Haskett.
+
+The latter sighed. "I don't know as that will help much. She didn't
+like it when I spoke to her."
+
+Waythorn turned red. "When did you see her?" he asked.
+
+"Not since the first day I came to see Lily--right after she was
+taken sick. I remarked to her then that I didn't like the
+governess."
+
+Waythorn made no answer. He remembered distinctly that, after that
+first visit, he had asked his wife if she had seen Haskett. She had
+lied to him then, but she had respected his wishes since; and the
+incident cast a curious light on her character. He was sure she
+would not have seen Haskett that first day if she had divined that
+Waythorn would object, and the fact that she did not divine it was
+almost as disagreeable to the latter as the discovery that she had
+lied to him.
+
+"I don't like the woman," Haskett was repeating with mild
+persistency. "She ain't straight, Mr. Waythorn--she'll teach the
+child to be underhand. I've noticed a change in Lily--she's too
+anxious to please--and she don't always tell the truth. She used to
+be the straightest child, Mr. Waythorn--" He broke off, his voice a
+little thick. "Not but what I want her to have a stylish education,"
+he ended.
+
+Waythorn was touched. "I'm sorry, Mr. Haskett; but frankly, I don't
+quite see what I can do."
+
+Haskett hesitated. Then he laid his hat on the table, and advanced
+to the hearth-rug, on which Waythorn was standing. There was nothing
+aggressive in his manner; but he had the solemnity of a timid man
+resolved on a decisive measure.
+
+"There's just one thing you can do, Mr. Waythorn," he said. "You can
+remind Mrs. Waythorn that, by the decree of the courts, I am
+entitled to have a voice in Lily's bringing up." He paused, and went
+on more deprecatingly: "I'm not the kind to talk about enforcing my
+rights, Mr. Waythorn. I don't know as I think a man is entitled to
+rights he hasn't known how to hold on to; but this business of the
+child is different. I've never let go there--and I never mean to."
+
+The scene left Waythorn deeply shaken. Shamefacedly, in indirect
+ways, he had been finding out about Haskett; and all that he had
+learned was favorable. The little man, in order to be near his
+daughter, had sold out his share in a profitable business in Utica,
+and accepted a modest clerkship in a New York manufacturing house.
+He boarded in a shabby street and had few acquaintances. His passion
+for Lily filled his life. Waythorn felt that this exploration of
+Haskett was like groping about with a dark-lantern in his wife's
+past; but he saw now that there were recesses his lantern had not
+explored. He had never inquired into the exact circumstances of his
+wife's first matrimonial rupture. On the surface all had been fair.
+It was she who had obtained the divorce, and the court had given her
+the child. But Waythorn knew how many ambiguities such a verdict
+might cover. The mere fact that Haskett retained a right over his
+daughter implied an unsuspected compromise. Waythorn was an
+idealist. He always refused to recognize unpleasant contingencies
+till he found himself confronted with them, and then he saw them
+followed by a special train of consequences. His next days were thus
+haunted, and he determined to try to lay the ghosts by conjuring
+them up in his wife's presence.
+
+When he repeated Haskett's request a flame of anger passed over her
+face; but she subdued it instantly and spoke with a slight quiver of
+outraged motherhood.
+
+"It is very ungentlemanly of him," she said.
+
+The word grated on Waythorn. "That is neither here nor there. It's a
+bare question of rights."
+
+She murmured: "It's not as if he could ever be a help to Lily--"
+
+Waythorn flushed. This was even less to his taste. "The question
+is," he repeated, "what authority has he over her?"
+
+She looked downward, twisting herself a little in her seat. "I am
+willing to see him--I thought you objected," she faltered.
+
+In a flash he understood that she knew the extent of Haskett's
+claims. Perhaps it was not the first time she had resisted them.
+
+"My objecting has nothing to do with it," he said coldly; "if
+Haskett has a right to be consulted you must consult him."
+
+She burst into tears, and he saw that she expected him to regard her
+as a victim.
+
+Haskett did not abuse his rights. Waythorn had felt miserably sure
+that he would not. But the governess was dismissed, and from time to
+time the little man demanded an interview with Alice. After the
+first outburst she accepted the situation with her usual
+adaptability. Haskett had once reminded Waythorn of the piano-tuner,
+and Mrs. Waythorn, after a month or two, appeared to class him with
+that domestic familiar. Waythorn could not but respect the father's
+tenacity. At first he had tried to cultivate the suspicion that
+Haskett might be "up to" something, that he had an object in
+securing a foothold in the house. But in his heart Waythorn was sure
+of Haskett's single-mindedness; he even guessed in the latter a mild
+contempt for such advantages as his relation with the Waythorns
+might offer. Haskett's sincerity of purpose made him invulnerable,
+and his successor had to accept him as a lien on the property.
+
+Mr. Sellers was sent to Europe to recover from his gout, and
+Varick's affairs hung on Waythorn's hands. The negotiations were
+prolonged and complicated; they necessitated frequent conferences
+between the two men, and the interests of the firm forbade
+Waythorn's suggesting that his client should transfer his business
+to another office.
+
+Varick appeared well in the transaction. In moments of relaxation
+his coarse streak appeared, and Waythorn dreaded his geniality; but
+in the office he was concise and clear-headed, with a flattering
+deference to Waythorn's judgment. Their business relations being so
+affably established, it would have been absurd for the two men to
+ignore each other in society. The first time they met in a
+drawing-room, Varick took up their intercourse in the same easy key,
+and his hostess's grateful glance obliged Waythorn to respond to it.
+After that they ran across each other frequently, and one evening at
+a ball Waythorn, wandering through the remoter rooms, came upon
+Varick seated beside his wife. She colored a little, and faltered in
+what she was saying; but Varick nodded to Waythorn without rising,
+and the latter strolled on.
+
+In the carriage, on the way home, he broke out nervously: "I didn't
+know you spoke to Varick."
+
+Her voice trembled a little. "It's the first time--he happened to be
+standing near me; I didn't know what to do. It's so awkward, meeting
+everywhere--and he said you had been very kind about some business."
+
+"That's different," said Waythorn.
+
+She paused a moment. "I'll do just as you wish," she returned
+pliantly. "I thought it would be less awkward to speak to him when
+we meet."
+
+Her pliancy was beginning to sicken him. Had she really no will of
+her own--no theory about her relation to these men? She had accepted
+Haskett--did she mean to accept Varick? It was "less awkward," as
+she had said, and her instinct was to evade difficulties or to
+circumvent them. With sudden vividness Waythorn saw how the instinct
+had developed. She was "as easy as an old shoe"--a shoe that too
+many feet had worn. Her elasticity was the result of tension in too
+many different directions. Alice Haskett--Alice Varick--Alice
+Waythorn--she had been each in turn, and had left hanging to each
+name a little of her privacy, a little of her personality, a little
+of the inmost self where the unknown god abides.
+
+"Yes--it's better to speak to Varick," said Waythorn wearily.
+
+"Earth's Martyrs." By Stephen Phillips.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WINTER wore on, and society took advantage of the Waythorns'
+acceptance of Varick. Harassed hostesses were grateful to them for
+bridging over a social difficulty, and Mrs. Waythorn was held up as
+a miracle of good taste. Some experimental spirits could not resist
+the diversion of throwing Varick and his former wife together, and
+there were those who thought he found a zest in the propinquity. But
+Mrs. Waythorn's conduct remained irreproachable. She neither avoided
+Varick nor sought him out. Even Waythorn could not but admit that
+she had discovered the solution of the newest social problem.
+
+He had married her without giving much thought to that problem. He
+had fancied that a woman can shed her past like a man. But now he
+saw that Alice was bound to hers both by the circumstances which
+forced her into continued relation with it, and by the traces it had
+left on her nature. With grim irony Waythorn compared himself to a
+member of a syndicate. He held so many shares in his wife's
+personality and his predecessors were his partners in the business.
+If there had been any element of passion in the transaction he would
+have felt less deteriorated by it. The fact that Alice took her
+change of husbands like a change of weather reduced the situation to
+mediocrity. He could have forgiven her for blunders, for excesses;
+for resisting Hackett, for yielding to Varick; for anything but her
+acquiescence and her tact. She reminded him of a juggler tossing
+knives; but the knives were blunt and she knew they would never cut
+her.
+
+And then, gradually, habit formed a protecting surface for his
+sensibilities. If he paid for each day's comfort with the small
+change of his illusions, he grew daily to value the comfort more and
+set less store upon the coin. He had drifted into a dulling
+propinquity with Haskett and Varick and he took refuge in the cheap
+revenge of satirizing the situation. He even began to reckon up the
+advantages which accrued from it, to ask himself if it were not
+better to own a third of a wife who knew how to make a man happy
+than a whole one who had lacked opportunity to acquire the art. For
+it _was_ an art, and made up, like all others, of concessions,
+eliminations and embellishments; of lights judiciously thrown and
+shadows skillfully softened. His wife knew exactly how to manage the
+lights, and he knew exactly to what training she owed her skill. He
+even tried to trace the source of his obligations, to discriminate
+between the influences which had combined to produce his domestic
+happiness: he perceived that Haskett's commonness had made Alice
+worship good breeding, while Varick's liberal construction of the
+marriage bond had taught her to value the conjugal virtues; so that
+he was directly indebted to his predecessors for the devotion which
+made his life easy if not inspiring.
+
+From this phase he passed into that of complete acceptance. He
+ceased to satirize himself because time dulled the irony of the
+situation and the joke lost its humor with its sting. Even the sight
+of Haskett's hat on the hall table had ceased to touch the springs
+of epigram. The hat was often seen there now, for it had been
+decided that it was better for Lily's father to visit her than for
+the little girl to go to his boarding-house. Waythorn, having
+acquiesced in this arrangement, had been surprised to find how
+little difference it made. Haskett was never obtrusive, and the few
+visitors who met him on the stairs were unaware of his identity.
+Waythorn did not know how often he saw Alice, but with himself
+Haskett was seldom in contact.
+
+One afternoon, however, he learned on entering that Lily's father
+was waiting to see him. In the library he found Haskett occupying a
+chair in his usual provisional way. Waythorn always felt grateful to
+him for not leaning back.
+
+"I hope you'll excuse me, Mr. Waythorn," he said rising. "I wanted
+to see Mrs. Waythorn about Lily, and your man asked me to wait here
+till she came in."
+
+"Of course," said Waythorn, remembering that a sudden leak had that
+morning given over the drawing-room to the plumbers.
+
+He opened his cigar-case and held it out to his visitor, and
+Haskett's acceptance seemed to mark a fresh stage in their
+intercourse. The spring evening was chilly, and Waythorn invited his
+guest to draw up his chair to the fire. He meant to find an excuse
+to leave Haskett in a moment; but he was tired and cold, and after
+all the little man no longer jarred on him.
+
+The two were inclosed in the intimacy of their blended cigar-smoke
+when the door opened and Varick walked into the room. Waythorn rose
+abruptly. It was the first time that Varick had come to the house,
+and the surprise of seeing him, combined with the singular
+inopportuneness of his arrival, gave a new edge to Waythorn's
+blunted sensibilities. He stared at his visitor without speaking.
+
+Varick seemed too preoccupied to notice his host's embarrassment.
+
+"My dear fellow," he exclaimed in his most expansive tone, "I must
+apologize for tumbling in on you in this way, but I was too late to
+catch you down town, and so I thought--" He stopped short, catching
+sight of Haskett, and his sanguine color deepened to a flush which
+spread vividly under his scant blond hair. But in a moment he
+recovered himself and nodded slightly. Haskett returned the bow in
+silence, and Waythorn was still groping for speech when the footman
+came in carrying a tea-table.
+
+The intrusion offered a welcome vent to Waythorn's nerves. "What the
+deuce are you bringing this here for?" he said sharply.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but the plumbers are still in the
+drawing-room, and Mrs. Waythorn said she would have tea in the
+library." The footman's perfectly respectful tone implied a
+reflection on Waythorn's reasonableness.
+
+"Oh, very well," said the latter resignedly, and the footman
+proceeded to open the folding tea-table and set out its complicated
+appointments. While this interminable process continued the three
+men stood motionless, watching it with a fascinated stare, till
+Waythorn, to break the silence, said to Varick: "Won't you have a
+cigar?"
+
+He held out the case he had just tendered to Haskett, and Varick
+helped himself with a smile. Waythorn looked about for a match, and
+finding none, proffered a light from his own cigar. Haskett, in the
+background, held his ground mildly, examining his cigar-tip now and
+then, and stepping forward at the right moment to knock its ashes
+into the fire.
+
+The footman at last withdrew, and Varick immediately began: "If I
+could just say half a word to you about this business--"
+
+"Certainly," stammered Waythorn; "in the dining-room--"
+
+But as he placed his hand on the door it opened from without, and
+his wife appeared on the threshold.
+
+She came in fresh and smiling, in her street dress and hat, shedding
+a fragrance from the boa which she loosened in advancing.
+
+"Shall we have tea in here, dear?" she began; and then she caught
+sight of Varick. Her smile deepened, veiling a slight tremor of
+surprise. "Why, how do you do?" she said with a distinct note of
+pleasure.
+
+As she shook hands with Varick she saw Haskett standing behind him.
+Her smile faded for a moment, but she recalled it quickly, with a
+scarcely perceptible side-glance at Waythorn.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Haskett?" she said, and shook hands with him a
+shade less cordially.
+
+The three men stood awkwardly before her, till Varick, always the
+most self-possessed, dashed into an explanatory phrase.
+
+"We--I had to see Waythorn a moment on business," he stammered,
+brick-red from chin to nape.
+
+Haskett stepped forward with his air of mild obstinacy. "I am sorry
+to intrude; but you appointed five o'clock--" he directed his
+resigned glance to the time-piece on the mantel.
+
+She swept aside their embarrassment with a charming gesture of
+hospitality.
+
+"I'm so sorry--I'm always late; but the afternoon was so lovely."
+She stood drawing her gloves off, propitiatory and graceful,
+diffusing about her a sense of ease and familiarity in which the
+situation lost its grotesqueness. "But before talking business," she
+added brightly, "I'm sure every one wants a cup of tea."
+
+She dropped into her low chair by the tea-table, and the two
+visitors, as if drawn by her smile, advanced to receive the cups she
+held out.
+
+She glanced about for Waythorn, and he took the third cup with a
+laugh.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EXPIATION
+
+I.
+
+
+
+
+
+"I CAN never," said Mrs. Fetherel, "hear the bell ring without a
+shudder."
+
+Her unruffled aspect--she was the kind of woman whose emotions never
+communicate themselves to her clothes--and the conventional
+background of the New York drawing-room, with its pervading
+implication of an imminent tea-tray and of an atmosphere in which
+the social functions have become purely reflex, lent to her
+declaration a relief not lost on her cousin Mrs. Clinch, who, from
+the other side of the fireplace, agreed with a glance at the
+clock, that it _was_ the hour for bores.
+
+"Bores!" cried Mrs. Fetherel impatiently. "If I shuddered at _them_,
+I should have a chronic ague!"
+
+She leaned forward and laid a sparkling finger on her cousin's
+shabby black knee. "I mean the newspaper clippings," she whispered.
+
+Mrs. Clinch returned a glance of intelligence. "They've begun
+already?"
+
+"Not yet; but they're sure to now, at any minute, my publisher tells
+me."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel's look of apprehension sat oddly on her small
+features, which had an air of neat symmetry somehow suggestive of
+being set in order every morning by the housemaid. Some one (there
+were rumors that it was her cousin) had once said that Paula
+Fetherel would have been very pretty if she hadn't looked so like a
+moral axiom in a copy-book hand.
+
+Mrs. Clinch received her confidence with a smile. "Well," she said,
+"I suppose you were prepared for the consequences of authorship?"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel blushed brightly. "It isn't their coming," she
+owned--"it's their coming _now_."
+
+"Now?"
+
+"The Bishop's in town."
+
+Mrs. Clinch leaned back and shaped her lips to a whistle which
+deflected in a laugh. "Well!" she said.
+
+"You see!" Mrs. Fetherel triumphed.
+
+"Well--weren't you prepared for the Bishop?"
+
+"Not now--at least, I hadn't thought of his seeing the clippings."
+
+"And why should he see them?"
+
+"Bella--_won't_ you understand? It's John."
+
+"John?"
+
+"Who has taken the most unexpected tone--one might almost say out of
+perversity."
+
+"Oh, perversity--" Mrs. Clinch murmured, observing her cousin
+between lids wrinkled by amusement. "What tone has John taken?"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel threw out her answer with the desperate gesture of a
+woman who lays bare the traces of a marital fist. "The tone of being
+proud of my book."
+
+The measure of Mrs. Clinch's enjoyment overflowed in laughter.
+
+"Oh, you may laugh," Mrs. Fetherel insisted, "but it's no joke to
+me. In the first place, John's liking the book is so--so--such a
+false note--it puts me in such a ridiculous position; and then it
+has set him watching for the reviews--who would ever have suspected
+John of knowing that books were _reviewed?_ Why, he's actually found
+out about the Clipping Bureau, and whenever the postman rings I hear
+John rush out of the library to see if there are any yellow
+envelopes. Of course, when they _do_ come he'll bring them into the
+drawing-room and read them aloud to everybody who happens to be
+here--and the Bishop is sure to happen to be here!"
+
+Mrs. Clinch repressed her amusement. "The picture you draw is a
+lurid one," she conceded, "but your modesty strikes me as abnormal,
+especially in an author. The chances are that some of the clippings
+will be rather pleasant reading. The critics are not all union men."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel stared. "Union men?"
+
+"Well, I mean they don't all belong to the well-known
+Society-for-the-Persecution-of-Rising-Authors. Some of them have
+even been known to defy its regulations and say a good word for a
+new writer."
+
+"Oh, I dare say," said Mrs. Fetherel, with the laugh her cousin's
+epigram exacted. "But you don't quite see my point. I'm not at all
+nervous about the success of my book--my publisher tells me I have
+no need to be--but I _am_ afraid of its being a succes de scandale."
+
+"Mercy!" said Mrs. Clinch, sitting up.
+
+The butler and footman at this moment appeared with the tea-tray,
+and when they had withdrawn, Mrs. Fetherel, bending her brightly
+rippled head above the kettle, continued in a murmur of avowal, "The
+title, even, is a kind of challenge."
+
+"'Fast and Loose,'" Mrs. Clinch mused. "Yes, it ought to take."
+
+"I didn't choose it for that reason!" the author protested. "I
+should have preferred something quieter--less pronounced; but I was
+determined not to shirk the responsibility of what I had written. I
+want people to know beforehand exactly what kind of book they are
+buying."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Clinch, "that's a degree of conscientiousness that
+I've never met with before. So few books fulfil the promise of their
+titles that experienced readers never expect the fare to come up to
+the menu."
+
+"'Fast and Loose' will be no disappointment on that score," her
+cousin significantly returned. "I've handled the subject without
+gloves. I've called a spade a spade."
+
+"You simply make my mouth water! And to think I haven't been able to
+read it yet because every spare minute of my time has been given to
+correcting the proofs of 'How the Birds Keep Christmas'! There's an
+instance of the hardships of an author's life!"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel's eye clouded. "Don't joke, Bella, please. I suppose
+to experienced authors there's always something absurd in the
+nervousness of a new writer, but in my case so much is at stake;
+I've put so much of myself into this book and I'm so afraid of being
+misunderstood...of being, as it were, in advance of my time...
+like poor Flaubert....I _know_ you'll think me ridiculous...
+and if only my own reputation were at stake, I should never give
+it a thought...but the idea of dragging John's name through the
+mire..."
+
+Mrs. Clinch, who had risen and gathered her cloak about her, stood
+surveying from her genial height her cousin's agitated countenance.
+
+"Why did you use John's name, then?"
+
+"That's another of my difficulties! I _had_ to. There would have
+been no merit in publishing such a book under an assumed name; it
+would have been an act of moral cowardice. 'Fast and Loose' is not
+an ordinary novel. A writer who dares to show up the hollowness of
+social conventions must have the courage of her convictions and be
+willing to accept the consequences of defying society. Can you
+imagine Ibsen or Tolstoy writing under a false name?" Mrs. Fetherel
+lifted a tragic eye to her cousin. "You don't know, Bella, how often
+I've envied you since I began to write. I used to wonder
+sometimes--you won't mind my saying so?--why, with all your
+cleverness, you hadn't taken up some more exciting subject than
+natural history; but I see now how wise you were. Whatever happens,
+you will never be denounced by the press!"
+
+"Is that what you're afraid of?" asked Mrs. Clinch, as she grasped
+the bulging umbrella which rested against her chair. "My dear, if I
+had ever had the good luck to be denounced by the press, my brougham
+would be waiting at the door for me at this very moment, and I
+shouldn't have to ruin this umbrella by using it in the rain. Why,
+you innocent, if I'd ever felt the slightest aptitude for showing up
+social conventions, do you suppose I should waste my time writing
+'Nests Ajar' and 'How to Smell the Flowers'? There's a fairly steady
+demand for pseudo-science and colloquial ornithology, but it's
+nothing, simply nothing, to the ravenous call for attacks on social
+institutions--especially by those inside the institutions!"
+
+There was often, to her cousin, a lack of taste in Mrs. Clinch's
+pleasantries, and on this occasion they seemed more than usually
+irrelevant.
+
+"'Fast and Loose' was not written with the idea of a large sale."
+
+Mrs. Clinch was unperturbed. "Perhaps that's just as well," she
+returned, with a philosophic shrug. "The surprise will be all the
+pleasanter, I mean. For of course it's going to sell tremendously;
+especially if you can get the press to denounce it."
+
+"Bella, how _can_ you? I sometimes think you say such things
+expressly to tease me; and yet I should think you of all women would
+understand my purpose in writing such a book. It has always seemed
+to me that the message I had to deliver was not for myself alone,
+but for all the other women in the world who have felt the
+hollowness of our social shams, the ignominy of bowing down to the
+idols of the market, but have lacked either the courage or the power
+to proclaim their independence; and I have fancied, Bella dear, that,
+however severely society might punish me for revealing its
+weaknesses, I could count on the sympathy of those who, like
+you"--Mrs. Fetherel's voice sank--"have passed through the deep
+waters."
+
+Mrs. Clinch gave herself a kind of canine shake, as though to free
+her ample shoulders from any drop of the element she was supposed to
+have traversed.
+
+"Oh, call them muddy rather than deep," she returned; "and you'll
+find, my dear, that women who've had any wading to do are rather shy
+of stirring up mud. It sticks--especially on white clothes."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel lifted an undaunted brow. "I'm not afraid," she
+proclaimed; and at the same instant she dropped her tea-spoon with a
+clatter and shrank back into her seat. "There's the bell," she
+exclaimed, "and I know it's the Bishop!"
+
+It was in fact the Bishop of Ossining, who, impressively announced
+by Mrs. Fetherel's butler, now made an entry that may best be
+described as not inadequate to the expectations the announcement
+raised. The Bishop always entered a room well; but, when unannounced,
+or preceded by a Low Church butler who gave him his surname, his
+appearance lacked the impressiveness conferred on it by the due
+specification of his diocesan dignity. The Bishop was very fond of
+his niece Mrs. Fetherel, and one of the traits he most valued in her
+was the possession of a butler who knew how to announce a bishop.
+
+Mrs. Clinch was also his niece; but, aside from the fact that she
+possessed no butler at all, she had laid herself open to her uncle's
+criticism by writing insignificant little books which had a way of
+going into five or ten editions, while the fruits of his own
+episcopal leisure--"The Wail of Jonah" (twenty cantos in blank
+verse), and "Through a Glass Brightly; or, How to Raise Funds fora
+Memorial Window"--inexplicably languished on the back shelves of a
+publisher noted for his dexterity in pushing "devotional goods."
+Even this indiscretion the Bishop might, however, have condoned, had
+his niece thought fit to turn to him for support and advice at the
+painful juncture of her history when, in her own words, it became
+necessary for her to invite Mr. Clinch to look out for another
+situation. Mr. Clinch's misconduct was of the kind especially
+designed by Providence to test the fortitude of a Christian wife and
+mother, and the Bishop was absolutely distended with seasonable
+advice and edification; so that when Bella met his tentative
+exhortations with the curt remark that she preferred to do her own
+housecleaning unassisted, her uncle's grief at her ingratitude was
+not untempered with sympathy for Mr. Clinch.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bishop's warmest greetings
+were always reserved for Mrs. Fetherel; and on this occasion Mrs.
+Clinch thought she detected, in the salutation which fell to her
+share, a pronounced suggestion that her own presence was
+superfluous--a hint which she took with her usual imperturbable good
+humor.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+
+
+Left alone with the Bishop, Mrs. Fetherel sought the nearest refuge
+from conversation by offering him a cup of tea. The Bishop accepted
+with the preoccupied air of a man to whom, for the moment, tea is but
+a subordinate incident. Mrs. Fetherel's nervousness increased; and
+knowing that the surest way of distracting attention from one's own
+affairs is to affect an interest in those of one's companion, she
+hastily asked if her uncle had come to town on business.
+
+"On business--yes--" said the Bishop in an impressive tone. "I had
+to see my publisher, who has been behaving rather unsatisfactorily
+in regard to my last book."
+
+"Ah--your last book?" faltered Mrs. Fetherel, with a sickening sense
+of her inability to recall the name or nature of the work in
+question, and a mental vow never again to be caught in such
+ignorance of a colleague's productions.
+
+"'Through a Glass Brightly,'" the Bishop explained, with an emphasis
+which revealed his detection of her predicament. "You may remember
+that I sent you a copy last Christmas?"
+
+"Of course I do!" Mrs. Fetherel brightened. "It was that delightful
+story of the poor consumptive girl who had no money, and two little
+brothers to support--"
+
+"Sisters--idiot sisters--" the Bishop gloomily corrected.
+
+"I mean sisters; and who managed to collect money enough to put up a
+beautiful memorial window to her--her grandfather, whom she had
+never seen--"
+
+"But whose sermons had been her chief consolation and support during
+her long struggle with poverty and disease." The Bishop gave the
+satisfied sigh of the workman who reviews his completed task. "A
+touching subject, surely; and I believe I did it justice; at least,
+so my friends assured me."
+
+"Why, yes--I remember there was a splendid review of it in the
+'Reredos'!" cried Mrs. Fetherel, moved by the incipient instinct of
+reciprocity.
+
+"Yes--by my dear friend Mrs. Gollinger, whose husband, the late Dean
+Gollinger, was under very particular obligations to me. Mrs.
+Gollinger is a woman of rare literary acumen, and her praise of my
+book was unqualified; but the public wants more highly seasoned
+fare, and the approval of a thoughtful churchwoman carries less
+weight than the sensational comments of an illiterate journalist."
+The Bishop lent a meditative eye on his spotless gaiters. "At the
+risk of horrifying you, my dear," he added, with a slight laugh, "I
+will confide to you that my best chance of a popular success would
+be to have my book denounced by the press."
+
+"Denounced?" gasped Mrs. Fetherel. "On what ground?"
+
+"On the ground of immorality." The Bishop evaded her startled gaze.
+"Such a thing is inconceivable to you, of course; but I am only
+repeating what my publisher tells me. If, for instance, a critic
+could be induced--I mean, if a critic were to be found, who called
+in question the morality of my heroine in sacrificing her own health
+and that of her idiot sisters in order to put up a memorial window
+to her grandfather, it would probably raise a general controversy in
+the newspapers, and I might count on a sale of ten or fifteen
+thousand within the next year. If he described her as morbid or
+decadent, it might even run to twenty thousand; but that is more than
+I permit myself to hope. In fact, I should be satisfied with any
+general charge of immorality." The Bishop sighed again. "I need
+hardly tell you that I am actuated by no mere literary ambition.
+Those whose opinion I most value have assured me that the book is
+not without merit; but, though it does not become me to dispute
+their verdict, I can truly say that my vanity as an author is not at
+stake. I have, however, a special reason for wishing to increase the
+circulation of 'Through a Glass Brightly'; it was written for a
+purpose--a purpose I have greatly at heart--"
+
+"I know," cried his niece sympathetically. "The chantry window--?"
+
+"Is still empty, alas! and I had great hopes that, under Providence,
+my little book might be the means of filling it. All our wealthy
+parishioners have given lavishly to the cathedral, and it was for
+this reason that, in writing 'Through a Glass,' I addressed my
+appeal more especially to the less well-endowed, hoping by the
+example of my heroine to stimulate the collection of small sums
+throughout the entire diocese, and perhaps beyond it. I am sure,"
+the Bishop feelingly concluded, "the book would have a wide-spread
+influence if people could only be induced to read it!"
+
+His conclusion touched a fresh thread of association in
+Mrs. Fetherel's vibrating nerve-centers. "I never thought of that!"
+she cried.
+
+The Bishop looked at her inquiringly.
+
+"That one's books may not be read at all! How dreadful!" she
+exclaimed.
+
+He smiled faintly. "I had not forgotten that I was addressing an
+authoress," he said. "Indeed, I should not have dared to inflict my
+troubles on any one not of the craft."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel was quivering with the consciousness of her
+involuntary self-betrayal. "Oh, uncle!" she murmured.
+
+"In fact," the Bishop continued, with a gesture which seemed to
+brush away her scruples, "I came here partly to speak to you about
+your novel. 'Fast and Loose,' I think you call it?"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel blushed assentingly.
+
+"And is it out yet?" the Bishop continued.
+
+"It came out about a week ago. But you haven't touched your tea, and
+it must be quite cold. Let me give you another cup..."
+
+"My reason for asking," the Bishop went on, with the bland
+inexorableness with which, in his younger days, he had been known to
+continue a sermon after the senior warden had looked four times at
+his watch--"my reason for asking is, that I hoped I might not be too
+late to induce you to change the title."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel set down the cup she had filled. "The title?" she
+faltered.
+
+The Bishop raised a reassuring hand. "Don't misunderstand me, dear
+child; don't for a moment imagine that I take it to be in anyway
+indicative of the contents of the book. I know you too well for
+that. My first idea was that it had probably been forced on you by
+an unscrupulous publisher--I know too well to what ignoble
+compromises one may be driven in such cases!..." He paused, as
+though to give her the opportunity of confirming this conjecture, but
+she preserved an apprehensive silence, and he went on, as though
+taking up the second point in his sermon--"Or, again, the name may
+have taken your fancy without your realizing all that it implies to
+minds more alive than yours to offensive innuendoes. It
+is--ahem--excessively suggestive, and I hope I am not too late to
+warn you of the false impression it is likely to produce on the very
+readers whose approbation you would most value. My friend Mrs.
+Gollinger, for instance--"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel, as the publication of her novel testified, was in
+theory a woman of independent views; and if in practise she
+sometimes failed to live up to her standard, it was rather from an
+irresistible tendency to adapt herself to her environment than from
+any conscious lack of moral courage. The Bishop's exordium had
+excited in her that sense of opposition which such admonitions are
+apt to provoke; but as he went on she felt herself gradually
+enclosed in an atmosphere in which her theories vainly gasped for
+breath. The Bishop had the immense dialectical advantage of
+invalidating any conclusions at variance with his own by always
+assuming that his premises were among the necessary laws of thought.
+This method, combined with the habit of ignoring any classifications
+but his own, created an element in which the first condition of
+existence was the immediate adoption of his standpoint; so that his
+niece, as she listened, seemed to feel Mrs. Gollinger's Mechlin cap
+spreading its conventual shadow over her rebellious brow and the
+"Revue de Paris" at her elbow turning into a copy of the "Reredos."
+She had meant to assure her uncle that she was quite aware of the
+significance of the title she had chosen, that it had been
+deliberately selected as indicating the subject of her novel, and
+that the book itself had been written indirect defiance of the class
+of readers for whose susceptibilities she was alarmed. The words
+were almost on her lips when the irresistible suggestion conveyed by
+the Bishop's tone and language deflected them into the apologetic
+murmur, "Oh, uncle, you mustn't think--I never meant--" How much
+farther this current of reaction might have carried her, the
+historian is unable to computer, for at this point the door opened
+and her husband entered the room.
+
+"The first review of your book!" he cried, flourishing a yellow
+envelope. "My dear Bishop, how lucky you're here!"
+
+Though the trials of married life have been classified and
+catalogued with exhaustive accuracy, there is one form of conjugal
+misery which has perhaps received inadequate attention; and that is
+the suffering of the versatile woman whose husband is not equally
+adapted to all her moods. Every woman feels for the sister who is
+compelled to wear a bonnet which does not "go" with her gown; but
+how much sympathy is given to her whose husband refuses to harmonize
+with the pose of the moment? Scant justice has, for instance, been
+done to the misunderstood wife whose husband persists in
+understanding her; to the submissive helpmate whose taskmaster shuns
+every opportunity of browbeating her; and to the generous and
+impulsive being whose bills are paid with philosophic calm. Mrs.
+Fetherel, as wives go, had been fairly exempt from trials of this
+nature, for her husband, if undistinguished by pronounced brutality
+or indifference, had at least the negative merit of being her
+intellectual inferior. Landscape gardeners, who are aware of the
+usefulness of a valley in emphasizing the height of a hill, can form
+an idea of the account to which an accomplished woman may turn such
+deficiencies; and it need scarcely be said that Mrs. Fetherel had
+made the most of her opportunities. It was agreeably obvious to
+every one, Fetherel included, that he was not the man to appreciate
+such a woman; but there are no limits to man's perversity, and he
+did his best to invalidate this advantage by admiring her without
+pretending to understand her. What she most suffered from was this
+fatuous approval: the maddening sense that, however she conducted
+herself, he would always admire her. Had he belonged to the class
+whose conversational supplies are drawn from the domestic circle,
+his wife's name would never have been off his lips; and to Mrs.
+Fetherel's sensitive perceptions his frequent silences were
+indicative of the fact that she was his one topic.
+
+It was, in part, the attempt to escape this persistent approbation
+that had driven Mrs. Fetherel to authorship. She had fancied that
+even the most infatuated husband might be counted onto resent, at
+least negatively, an attack on the sanctity of the hearth; and her
+anticipations were heightened by a sense of the unpardonableness of
+her act. Mrs. Fetherel's relations with her husband were in fact
+complicated by an irrepressible tendency to be fond of him; and
+there was a certain pleasure in the prospect of a situation that
+justified the most explicit expiation.
+
+These hopes Fetherel's attitude had already defeated. He read the
+book with enthusiasm, he pressed it on his friends, he sent a copy
+to his mother; and his very soul now hung on the verdict of the
+reviewers. It was perhaps this proof of his general ineptitude that
+made his wife doubly alive to his special defects; so that his
+inopportune entrance was aggravated by the very sound of his voice
+and the hopeless aberration of his smile. Nothing, to the observant,
+is more indicative of a man's character and circumstances than his
+way of entering a room. The Bishop of Ossining, for instance,
+brought with him not only an atmosphere of episcopal authority, but
+an implied opinion on the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and
+on the attitude of the church toward divorce; while the appearance
+of Mrs. Fetherel's husband produced an immediate impression of
+domestic felicity. His mere aspect implied that there was a
+well-filled nursery upstairs; that this wife, if she did not sew on
+his buttons, at least superintended the performance of that task;
+that they both went to church regularly, and that they dined with
+his mother every Sunday evening punctually at seven o'clock.
+
+All this and more was expressed in the affectionate gesture with
+which he now raised the yellow envelope above Mrs. Fetherel's
+clutch; and knowing the uselessness of begging him not to be
+silly, she said, with a dry despair, "You're boring the Bishop
+horribly."
+
+Fetherel turned a radiant eye on that dignitary. "She bores us all
+horribly, doesn't she, sir?" he exulted.
+
+"Have you read it?" said his wife, uncontrollably.
+
+"Read it? Of course not--it's just this minute come. I say, Bishop,
+you're not going--?"
+
+"Not till I've heard this," said the Bishop, settling himself in his
+chair with an indulgent smile.
+
+His niece glanced at him despairingly. "Don't let John's nonsense
+detain you," she entreated.
+
+"Detain him? That's good," guffawed Fetherel. "It isn't as long as
+one of his sermons--won't take me five minutes to read. Here, listen
+to this, ladies and gentlemen: 'In this age of festering pessimism
+and decadent depravity, it is no surprise to the nauseated reviewer
+to open one more volume saturated with the fetid emanations of the
+sewer--'"
+
+Fetherel, who was not in the habit of reading aloud, paused with a
+gasp, and the Bishop glanced sharply at his niece, who kept her gaze
+fixed on the tea-cup she had not yet succeeded in transferring to
+his hand.--"'Of the sewer,'" her husband resumed; "'but his wonder
+is proportionately great when he lights on a novel as sweetly
+inoffensive as Paula Fetherel's "Fast and Loose." Mrs. Fetherel is,
+we believe, a new hand at fiction, and her work reveals frequent
+traces of inexperience; but these are more than atoned for by her
+pure, fresh view of life and her altogether unfashionable regard for
+the reader's moral susceptibilities. Let no one be induced by its
+distinctly misleading title to forego the enjoyment of this pleasant
+picture of domestic life, which, in spite of a total lack of force
+in character-drawing and of consecutiveness in incident, may be
+described as a distinctly pretty story.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+
+
+It was several weeks later that Mrs. Clinch once more brought the
+plebeian aroma of heated tram-cars and muddy street-crossings into
+the violet-scented atmosphere of her cousin's drawing-room.
+
+"Well," she said, tossing a damp bundle of proof into the corner of
+a silk-cushioned bergere, "I've read it at last and I'm not so
+awfully shocked!"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel, who sat near the fire with her head propped on a
+languid hand, looked up without speaking.
+
+"Mercy, Paula," said her visitor, "you're ill."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel shook her head. "I was never better," she
+said, mournfully.
+
+"Then may I help myself to tea? Thanks."
+
+Mrs. Clinch carefully removed her mended glove before taking a
+buttered tea-cake; then she glanced again at her cousin.
+
+"It's not what I said just now--?" she ventured.
+
+"Just now?"
+
+"About 'Fast and Loose'? I came to talk it over."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel sprang to her feet. "I never," she cried dramatically,
+"want to hear it mentioned again!"
+
+"Paula!" exclaimed Mrs. Clinch, setting down her cup.
+
+Mrs. Fetherel slowly turned on her an eye brimming with the
+incommunicable; then, dropping into her seat again, she added, with
+a tragic laugh, "There's nothing left to say."
+
+"Nothing--?" faltered Mrs. Clinch, longing for another tea-cake, but
+feeling the inappropriateness of the impulse in an atmosphere so
+charged with the portentous. "Do you mean that everything _has_ been
+said?" She looked tentatively at her cousin. "Haven't they been
+nice?"
+
+"They've been odious--odious--" Mrs. Fetherel burst out, with an
+ineffectual clutch at her handkerchief. "It's been perfectly
+intolerable!"
+
+Mrs. Clinch, philosophically resigning herself to the propriety of
+taking no more tea, crossed over to her cousin and laid a
+sympathizing hand on that lady's agitated shoulder.
+
+"It _is_ a bore at first," she conceded; "but you'll be surprised to
+see how soon one gets used to it."
+
+"I shall--never--get--used to it--" Mrs. Fetherel brokenly declared.
+
+"Have they been so very nasty--all of them?"
+
+"Every one of them!" the novelist sobbed.
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear; it _does_ hurt, I know--but hadn't you rather
+expected it?"
+
+"Expected it?" cried Mrs. Fetherel, sitting up.
+
+Mrs. Clinch felt her way warily. "I only mean, dear, that I fancied
+from what you said before the book came out--that you rather
+expected--that you'd rather discounted--"
+
+"Their recommending it to everybody as a perfectly harmless story?"
+
+"Good gracious! Is _that_ what they've done?"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel speechlessly nodded.
+
+"Every one of them?"
+
+"Every one--"
+
+"Whew!" said Mrs. Clinch, with an incipient whistle.
+
+"Why, you've just said it yourself!" her cousin suddenly reproached
+her.
+
+"Said what?"
+
+"That you weren't so _awfully_ shocked--"
+
+"I? Oh, well--you see, you'd keyed me up to such a pitch that it
+wasn't quite as bad as I expected--"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel lifted a smile steeled for the worst. "Why not say at
+once," she suggested, "that it's a distinctly pretty story?"
+
+"They haven't said _that?_"
+
+"They've all said it."
+
+"My poor Paula!"
+
+"Even the Bishop--"
+
+"The Bishop called it a pretty story?"
+
+"He wrote me--I've his letter somewhere. The title rather scared
+him--he wanted me to change it; but when he'd read the book he wrote
+that it was all right and that he'd sent several copies to his
+friends."
+
+"The old hypocrite!" cried Mrs. Clinch. "That was nothing but
+professional jealousy."
+
+"Do you think so?" cried her cousin, brightening.
+
+"Sure of it, my dear. His own books don't sell, and he knew the
+quickest way to kill yours was to distribute it through the diocese
+with his blessing."
+
+"Then you don't really think it's a pretty story?"
+
+"Dear me, no! Not nearly as bad as that--"
+
+"You're so good, Bella--but the reviewers?"
+
+"Oh, the reviewers," Mrs. Clinch jeered. She gazed meditatively at
+the cold remains of her tea-cake. "Let me see," she said, suddenly;
+"do you happen to remember if the first review came out in an
+important paper?"
+
+"Yes--the 'Radiator.'"
+
+"That's it! I thought so. Then the others simply followed suit: they
+often do if a big paper sets the pace. Saves a lot of trouble. Now
+if you could only have got the 'Radiator' to denounce you--"
+
+"That's what the Bishop said!" cried Mrs. Fetherel.
+
+"He did?"
+
+"He said his only chance of selling 'Through a Glass Brightly' was
+to have it denounced on the ground of immorality."
+
+"H'm," said Mrs. Clinch. "I thought he knew a trick or two." She
+turned an illuminated eye on her cousin. "You ought to get _him_ to
+denounce 'Fast and Loose'!" she cried.
+
+Mrs. Fetherel looked at her suspiciously. "I suppose every book must
+stand or fall on its own merits," she said in an unconvinced tone.
+
+"Bosh! That view is as extinct as the post-chaise and the
+packet-ship--it belongs to the time when people read books. Nobody
+does that now; the reviewer was the first to set the example, and
+the public were only too thankful to follow it. At first they read
+the reviews; now they read only the publishers' extracts from them.
+Even these are rapidly being replaced by paragraphs borrowed from
+the vocabulary of commerce. I often have to look twice before I am
+sure if I am reading a department-store advertisement or the
+announcement of a new batch of literature. The publishers will soon
+be having their 'fall and spring openings' and their 'special
+importations for Horse-Show Week.' But the Bishop is right, of
+course--nothing helps a book like a rousing attack on its morals; and
+as the publishers can't exactly proclaim the impropriety of their
+own wares, the task has to be left to the press or the pulpit."
+
+"The pulpit--?" Mrs. Fetherel mused.
+
+"Why, yes--look at those two novels in England last year--"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel shook her head hopelessly. "There is so much more
+interest in literature in England than here."
+
+"Well, we've got to make the supply create the demand. The Bishop
+could run your novel up into the hundred thousands in no time."
+
+"But if he can't make his own sell--?"
+
+"My dear, a man can't very well preach against his own writings!"
+
+Mrs. Clinch rose and picked up her proofs.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry for you, Paula dear," she concluded, "but I can't
+help being thankful that there's no demand for pessimism in the
+field of natural history. Fancy having to write 'The Fall of a
+Sparrow,' or 'How the Plants Misbehave!'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+
+
+Mrs. Fetherel, driving up to the Grand Central Station one morning
+about five months later, caught sight of the distinguished novelist,
+Archer Hynes, hurrying into the waiting-room ahead of her. Hynes, on
+his side, recognizing her brougham, turned back to greet her as the
+footman opened the carriage-door.
+
+"My dear colleague! Is it possible that we are traveling together?"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel blushed with pleasure. Hynes had given her two columns
+of praise in the Sunday "Meteor," and she had not yet learned to
+disguise her gratitude.
+
+"I am going to Ossining," she said, smilingly.
+
+"So am I. Why, this is almost as good as an elopement."
+
+"And it will end where elopements ought to--in church."
+
+"In church? You're not going to Ossining to go to church?"
+
+"Why not? There's a special ceremony in the cathedral--the chantry
+window is to be unveiled."
+
+"The chantry window? How picturesque! What _is_ a chantry? And why
+do you want to see it unveiled? Are you after copy--doing something
+in the Huysmans manner? 'La Cathedrale,' eh?"
+
+"Oh, no." Mrs. Fetherel hesitated. "I'm going simply to please my
+uncle," she said, at last.
+
+"Your uncle?"
+
+"The Bishop, you know." She smiled.
+
+"The Bishop--the Bishop of Ossining? Why, wasn't he the chap who
+made that ridiculous attack on your book? Is that prehistoric ass
+your uncle? Upon my soul, I think you're mighty forgiving to travel
+all the way to Ossining for one of his stained-glass sociables!"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel's smile flowed into a gentle laugh. "Oh, I've never
+allowed that to interfere with our friendship. My uncle felt
+dreadfully about having to speak publicly against my book--it was a
+great deal harder for him than for me--but he thought it his duty to
+do so. He has the very highest sense of duty."
+
+"Well," said Hynes, with a shrug, "I don't know that he didn't do
+you a good turn. Look at that!"
+
+They were standing near the book-stall, and he pointed to a placard
+surmounting the counter and emblazoned with the conspicuous
+announcement: "Fast and Loose. New Edition with Author's Portrait.
+Hundred and Fiftieth Thousand."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel frowned impatiently. "How absurd! They've no right to
+use my picture as a poster!"
+
+"There's our train," said Hynes; and they began to push their way
+through the crowd surging toward one of the inner doors.
+
+As they stood wedged between circumferent shoulders, Mrs. Fetherel
+became conscious of the fixed stare of a pretty girl who whispered
+eagerly to her companion: "Look Myrtle! That's Paula Fetherel right
+behind us--I knew her in a minute!"
+
+"Gracious--where?" cried the other girl, giving her head a twist
+which swept her Gainsborough plumes across Mrs. Fetherel's face.
+
+The first speaker's words had carried beyond her companion's ear,
+and a lemon-colored woman in spectacles, who clutched a copy of the
+"Journal of Psychology" on one drab-cotton-gloved hand, stretched her
+disengaged hand across the intervening barrier of humanity.
+
+"Have I the privilege of addressing the distinguished author of
+'Fast and Loose'? If so, let me thank you in the name of the Woman's
+Psychological League of Peoria for your magnificent courage in
+raising the standard of revolt against--"
+
+"You can tell us the rest in the car," said a fat man, pressing his
+good-humored bulk against the speaker's arm.
+
+Mrs. Fetherel, blushing, embarrassed and happy, slipped into the
+space produced by this displacement, and a few moments later had
+taken her seat in the train.
+
+She was a little late, and the other chairs were already filled by a
+company of elderly ladies and clergymen who seemed to belong to the
+same party, and were still busy exchanging greetings and settling
+themselves in their places.
+
+One of the ladies, at Mrs. Fetherel's approach, uttered an
+exclamation of pleasure and advanced with outstretched hand. "My
+dear Mrs. Fetherel! I am so delighted to see you here. May I hope
+you are going to the unveiling of the chantry window? The dear
+Bishop so hoped that you would do so! But perhaps I ought to
+introduce myself. I am Mrs. Gollinger"--she lowered her voice
+expressively--"one of your uncle's oldest friends, one who has stood
+close to him through all this sad business, and who knows what he
+suffered when he felt obliged to sacrifice family affection to the
+call of duty."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel, who had smiled and colored slightly at the beginning
+of this speech, received its close with a deprecating gesture.
+
+"Oh, pray don't mention it," she murmured. "I quite understood how
+my uncle was placed--I bore him no ill will for feeling obliged to
+preach against my book."
+
+"He understood that, and was so touched by it! He has often told me
+that it was the hardest task he was ever called upon to
+perform--and, do you know, he quite feels that this unexpected gift
+of the chantry window is in some way a return for his courage in
+preaching that sermon."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel smiled faintly. "Does he feel that?"
+
+"Yes; he really does. When the funds for the window were so
+mysteriously placed at his disposal, just as he had begun to despair
+of raising them, he assured me that he could not help connecting the
+fact with his denunciation of your book."
+
+"Dear uncle!" sighed Mrs. Fetherel. "Did he say that?"
+
+"And now," continued Mrs. Gollinger, with cumulative rapture--"now
+that you are about to show, by appearing at the ceremony to-day,
+that there has been no break in your friendly relations, the dear
+Bishop's happiness will be complete. He was so longing to have you
+come to the unveiling!"
+
+"He might have counted on me," said Mrs. Fetherel, still smiling.
+
+"Ah, that is so beautifully forgiving of you!" cried Mrs. Gollinger,
+enthusiastically. "But then, the Bishop has always assured me that
+your real nature was very different from that which--if you will
+pardon my saying so--seems to be revealed by your brilliant
+but--er--rather subversive book. 'If you only knew my niece, dear
+Mrs. Gollinger,' he always said, 'you would see that her novel was
+written in all innocence of heart;' and to tell you the truth, when
+I first read the book I didn't think it so very, _very_ shocking. It
+wasn't till the dear Bishop had explained tome--but, dear me, I
+mustn't take up your time in this way when so many others are
+anxious to have a word with you."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel glanced at her in surprise, and Mrs. Gollinger
+continued, with a playful smile: "You forget that your face is
+familiar to thousands whom you have never seen. We all recognized
+you the moment you entered the train, and my friends here are so
+eager to make your acquaintance--even those"--her smile
+deepened--"who thought the dear Bishop not _quite unjustified_ in
+his attack on your remarkable novel."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+
+
+A religious light filled the chantry of Ossining Cathedral, filtering
+through the linen curtain which veiled the central window, and
+mingling with the blaze of tapers on the richly adorned altar.
+
+In this devout atmosphere, agreeably laden with the incense-like
+aroma of Easter lilies and forced lilacs, Mrs. Fetherel knelt with a
+sense of luxurious satisfaction. Beside her sat Archer Hynes, who
+had remembered that there was to be a church scene in his next
+novel, and that his impressions of the devotional environment needed
+refreshing. Mrs. Fetherel was very happy. She was conscious that her
+entrance had sent a thrill through the female devotees who packed
+the chantry, and she had humor enough to enjoy the thought that, but
+for the good Bishop's denunciation of her book, the heads of his
+flock would not have been turned so eagerly in her direction.
+Moreover, as she had entered she had caught sight of a society
+reporter, and she knew that her presence, and the fact that she was
+accompanied by Hynes, would be conspicuously proclaimed in the
+morning papers. All these evidences of the success of her handiwork
+might have turned a calmer head than Mrs. Fetherel's; and though she
+had now learned to dissemble her gratification, it still filled her
+inwardly with a delightful glow.
+
+The Bishop was somewhat late in appearing, and she employed the
+interval in meditating on the plot of her next novel, which was
+already partly sketched out, but for which she had been unable to
+find a satisfactory denouement. By a not uncommon process of
+ratiocination, Mrs. Fetherel's success had convinced her of her
+vocation. She was sure now that it was her duty to lay bare the
+secret plague-spots of society, and she was resolved that there
+should be no doubt as to the purpose of her new book. Experience had
+shown her that where she had fancied she was calling a spade a spade
+she had in fact been alluding in guarded terms to the drawing-room
+shovel. She was determined not to repeat the same mistake, and she
+flattered herself that her coming novel would not need an episcopal
+denunciation to insure its sale, however likely it was to receive
+this crowning evidence of success.
+
+She had reached this point in her meditations when the choir burst
+into song and the ceremony of the unveiling began. The Bishop,
+almost always felicitous in his addresses to the fair sex, was never
+more so than when he was celebrating the triumph of one of his
+cherished purposes. There was a peculiar mixture of Christian
+humility and episcopal exultation in the manner with which he called
+attention to the Creator's promptness in responding to his demand
+for funds, and he had never been more happily inspired than in
+eulogizing the mysterious gift of the chantry window.
+
+Though no hint of the donor's identity had been allowed to escape
+him, it was generally understood that the Bishop knew who had given
+the window, and the congregation awaited in a flutter of suspense
+the possible announcement of a name. None came, however, though the
+Bishop deliciously titillated the curiosity of his flock by circling
+ever closer about the interesting secret. He would not disguise from
+them, he said, that the heart which had divined his inmost wish had
+been a woman's--is it not to woman's intuitions that more than half
+the happiness of earth is owing? What man is obliged to learn by the
+laborious process of experience, woman's wondrous instinct tells her
+at a glance; and so it had been with this cherished scheme, this
+unhoped-for completion of their beautiful chantry. So much, at
+least, he was allowed to reveal; and indeed, had he not done so, the
+window itself would have spoken for him, since the first glance at
+its touching subject and exquisite design would show it to have
+originated in a woman's heart. This tribute to the sex was received
+with an audible sigh of contentment, and the Bishop, always
+stimulated by such evidence of his sway over his hearers, took up
+his theme with gathering eloquence.
+
+Yes--a woman's heart had planned the gift, a woman's hand had
+executed it, and, might he add, without too far withdrawing the veil
+in which Christian beneficence ever loved to drape its acts--might
+he add that, under Providence, a book, a simple book, a mere tale,
+in fact, had had its share in the good work for which they were
+assembled to give thanks?
+
+At this unexpected announcement, a ripple of excitement ran through
+the assemblage, and more than one head was abruptly turned in the
+direction of Mrs. Fetherel, who sat listening in an agony of wonder
+and confusion. It did not escape the observant novelist at her side
+that she drew down her veil to conceal an uncontrollable blush, and
+this evidence of dismay caused him to fix an attentive gaze on her,
+while from her seat across the aisle, Mrs. Gollinger sent a smile of
+unctuous approval.
+
+"A book--a simple book--" the Bishop's voice went on above this
+flutter of mingled emotions. "What is a book? Only a few pages and a
+little ink--and yet one of the mightiest instruments which
+Providence has devised for shaping the destinies of man . .. one of
+the most powerful influences for good or evil which the Creator has
+placed in the hands of his creatures..."
+
+The air seemed intolerably close to Mrs. Fetherel, and she drew out
+her scent-bottle, and then thrust it hurriedly away, conscious that
+she was still the center of an unenviable attention. And all the
+while the Bishop's voice droned on...
+
+"And of all forms of literature, fiction is doubtless that which has
+exercised the greatest sway, for good or ill, over the passions and
+imagination of the masses. Yes, my friends, I am the first to
+acknowledge it--no sermon, however eloquent, no theological
+treatise, however learned and convincing, has ever inflamed the
+heart and imagination like a novel--a simple novel. Incalculable is
+the power exercised over humanity by the great magicians of the
+pen--a power ever enlarging its boundaries and increasing its
+responsibilities as popular education multiplies the number of
+readers....Yes, it is the novelist's hand which can pour balm on
+countless human sufferings, or inoculate mankind with the festering
+poison of a corrupt imagination...."
+
+Mrs. Fetherel had turned white, and her eyes were fixed with a blind
+stare of anger on the large-sleeved figure in the center of the
+chancel.
+
+"And too often, alas, it is the poison and not the balm which the
+unscrupulous hand of genius proffers to its unsuspecting readers.
+But, my friends, why should I continue? None know better than an
+assemblage of Christian women, such as I am now addressing, the
+beneficent or baleful influences of modern fiction; and so, when I
+say that this beautiful chantry window of ours owes its existence in
+part to the romancer's pen"--the Bishop paused, and bending forward,
+seemed to seek a certain face among the countenances eagerly
+addressed to his--"when I say that this pen, which for personal
+reasons it does not become me to celebrate unduly--"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel at this point half rose, pushing back her chair, which
+scraped loudly over the marble floor; but Hynes involuntarily laid a
+warning hand on her arm, and she sank down with a confused murmur
+about the heat.
+
+"--When I confess that this pen, which for once at least has proved
+itself so much mightier than the sword, is that which was inspired
+to trace the simple narrative of 'Through a Glass Brightly'"--Mrs.
+Fetherel looked up with a gasp of mingled relief and anger--"when I
+tell you, my dear friends, that it was your Bishop's own work which
+first roused the mind of one of his flock to the crying need of a
+chantry window, I think you will admit that I am justified in
+celebrating the triumphs of the pen, even though it be the modest
+instrument which your own Bishop wields."
+
+The Bishop paused impressively, and a faint gasp of surprise and
+disappointment was audible throughout the chantry. Something very
+different from this conclusion had been expected, and even Mrs.
+Gollinger's lips curled with a slightly ironic smile. But Archer
+Hynes's attention was chiefly reserved for Mrs. Fetherel, whose face
+had changed with astonishing rapidity from surprise to annoyance,
+from annoyance to relief, and then back again to something very like
+indignation.
+
+The address concluded, the actual ceremony of the unveiling was
+about to take place, and the attention of the congregation soon
+reverted to the chancel, where the choir had grouped themselves
+beneath the veiled window, prepared to burst into a chant of praise
+as the Bishop drew back the hanging. The moment was an impressive
+one, and every eye was fixed on the curtain. Even Hynes's gaze
+strayed to it for a moment, but soon returned to his neighbor's
+face; and then he perceived that Mrs. Fetherel, alone of all the
+persons present, was not looking at the window. Her eyes were fixed
+in an indignant stare on the Bishop; a flush of anger burned
+becomingly under her veil, and her hands nervously crumpled the
+beautifully printed program of the ceremony.
+
+Hynes broke into a smile of comprehension. He glanced at the Bishop,
+and back at the Bishop's niece; then, as the episcopal hand was
+solemnly raised to draw back the curtain, he bent and whispered in
+Mrs. Fetherel's ear:
+
+"Why, you gave it yourself! You wonderful woman, of course you gave
+it yourself!"
+
+Mrs. Fetherel raised her eyes to his with a start. Her blush
+deepened and her lips shaped a hasty "No"; but the denial was
+deflected into the indignant murmur--"It wasn't _his_ silly book
+that did it anyhow!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY'S MAID'S BELL
+
+I
+
+
+
+
+
+IT was the autumn after I had the typhoid. I'd been three months in
+hospital, and when I came out I looked so weak and tottery that the
+two or three ladies I applied to were afraid to engage me. Most of
+my money was gone, and after I'd boarded for two months, hanging
+about the employment-agencies, and answering any advertisement that
+looked any way respectable, I pretty nearly lost heart, for fretting
+hadn't made me fatter, and I didn't see why my luck should ever
+turn. It did though--or I thought so at the time. A Mrs. Railton, a
+friend of the lady that first brought me out to the States, met me
+one day and stopped to speak to me: she was one that had always a
+friendly way with her. She asked me what ailed me to look so white,
+and when I told her, "Why, Hartley," says she, "I believe I've got
+the very place for you. Come in to-morrow and we'll talk about it."
+
+The next day, when I called, she told me the lady she'd in mind was
+a niece of hers, a Mrs. Brympton, a youngish lady, but something of
+an invalid, who lived all the year round at her country-place on the
+Hudson, owing to not being able to stand the fatigue of town life.
+
+"Now, Hartley," Mrs. Railton said, in that cheery way that always
+made me feel things must be going to take a turn for the
+better--"now understand me; it's not a cheerful place i'm sending
+you to. The house is big and gloomy; my niece is nervous, vaporish;
+her husband--well, he's generally away; and the two children are
+dead. A year ago, I would as soon have thought of shutting a rosy
+active girl like you into a vault; but you're not particularly brisk
+yourself just now, are you? and a quiet place, with country air and
+wholesome food and early hours, ought to be the very thing for you.
+Don't mistake me," she added, for I suppose I looked a trifle
+downcast; "you may find it dull, but you won't be unhappy. My niece
+is an angel. Her former maid, who died last spring, had been with
+her twenty years and worshipped the ground she walked on. She's a
+kind mistress to all, and where the mistress is kind, as you know,
+the servants are generally good-humored, so you'll probably get on
+well enough with the rest of the household. And you're the very
+woman I want for my niece: quiet, well-mannered, and educated above
+your station. You read aloud well, I think? That's a good thing; my
+niece likes to be read to. She wants a maid that can be something of
+a companion: her last was, and I can't say how she misses her. It's
+a lonely life...Well, have you decided?"
+
+"Why, ma'am," I said, "I'm not afraid of solitude."
+
+"Well, then, go; my niece will take you on my recommendation. I'll
+telegraph her at once and you can take the afternoon train. She has
+no one to wait on her at present, and I don't want you to lose any
+time."
+
+I was ready enough to start, yet something in me hung back; and to
+gain time I asked, "And the gentleman, ma'am?"
+
+"The gentleman's almost always away, I tell you," said Mrs. Ralston,
+quick-like--"and when he's there," says she suddenly, "you've only
+to keep out of his way."
+
+I took the afternoon train and got out at D-----station at about
+four o'clock. A groom in a dog-cart was waiting, and we drove off at
+a smart pace. It was a dull October day, with rain hanging close
+overhead, and by the time we turned into the Brympton Place woods
+the daylight was almost gone. The drive wound through the woods for
+a mile or two, and came out on a gravel court shut in with thickets
+of tall black-looking shrubs. There were no lights in the windows,
+and the house _did_ look a bit gloomy.
+
+I had asked no questions of the groom, for I never was one to get my
+notion of new masters from their other servants: I prefer to wait
+and see for myself. But I could tell by the look of everything that
+I had got into the right kind of house, and that things were done
+handsomely. A pleasant-faced cook met me at the back door and called
+the house-maid to show me up to my room. "You'll see madam later,"
+she said. "Mrs. Brympton has a visitor."
+
+I hadn't fancied Mrs. Brympton was a lady to have many visitors, and
+somehow the words cheered me. I followed the house-maid upstairs,
+and saw, through a door on the upper landing, that the main part of
+the house seemed well-furnished, with dark panelling and a number of
+old portraits. Another flight of stairs led us up to the servants'
+wing. It was almost dark now, and the house-maid excused herself for
+not having brought a light. "But there's matches in your room," she
+said, "and if you go careful you'll be all right. Mind the step at
+the end of the passage. Your room is just beyond."
+
+I looked ahead as she spoke, and half-way down the passage, I saw a
+woman standing. She drew back into a doorway as we passed, and the
+house-maid didn't appear to notice her. She was a thin woman with a
+white face, and a darkish stuff gown and apron. I took her for the
+housekeeper and thought it odd that she didn't speak, but just gave
+me a long look as she went by. My room opened into a square hall at
+the end of the passage. Facing my door was another which stood open:
+the house-maid exclaimed when she saw it.
+
+"There--Mrs. Blinder's left that door open again!" said she, closing
+it.
+
+"Is Mrs. Blinder the housekeeper?"
+
+"There's no housekeeper: Mrs. Blinder's the cook."
+
+"And is that her room?"
+
+"Laws, no," said the house-maid, cross-like. "That's nobody's room.
+It's empty, I mean, and the door hadn't ought to be open. Mrs.
+Brympton wants it kept locked."
+
+She opened my door and led me into a neat room, nicely furnished,
+with a picture or two on the walls; and having lit a candle she took
+leave, telling me that the servants'-hall tea was at six, and that
+Mrs. Brympton would see me afterward.
+
+I found them a pleasant-spoken set in the servants' hall, and by
+what they let fall I gathered that, as Mrs. Railton had said, Mrs.
+Brympton was the kindest of ladies; but I didn't take much notice of
+their talk, for I was watching to see the pale woman in the dark
+gown come in. She didn't show herself, however, and I wondered if
+she ate apart; but if she wasn't the housekeeper, why should she?
+Suddenly it struck me that she might be a trained nurse, and in that
+case her meals would of course be served in her room. If Mrs.
+Brympton was an invalid it was likely enough she had a nurse. The
+idea annoyed me, I own, for they're not always the easiest to get on
+with, and if I'd known, I shouldn't have taken the place. But there
+I was, and there was no use pulling a long face over it; and not
+being one to ask questions, I waited to see what would turn up.
+
+When tea was over, the house-maid said to the footman: "Has Mr.
+Ranford gone?" and when he said yes, she told me to come up with her
+to Mrs. Brympton.
+
+Mrs. Brympton was lying down in her bedroom. Her lounge stood near
+the fire and beside it was a shaded lamp. She was a delicate-looking
+lady, but when she smiled I felt there was nothing I wouldn't do for
+her. She spoke very pleasantly, in a low voice, asking me my name
+and age and so on, and if I had everything I wanted, and if I wasn't
+afraid of feeling lonely in the country.
+
+"Not with you I wouldn't be, madam," I said, and the words surprised
+me when I'd spoken them, for I'm not an impulsive person; but it was
+just as if I'd thought aloud.
+
+She seemed pleased at that, and said she hoped I'd continue in the
+same mind; then she gave me a few directions about her toilet, and
+said Agnes the house-maid would show me next morning where things
+were kept.
+
+"I am tired to-night, and shall dine upstairs," she said. "Agnes
+will bring me my tray, that you may have time to unpack and settle
+yourself; and later you may come and undress me."
+
+"Very well, ma'am," I said. "You'll ring, I suppose?"
+
+I thought she looked odd.
+
+"No--Agnes will fetch you," says she quickly, and took up her book
+again.
+
+Well--that was certainly strange: a lady's maid having to be fetched
+by the house-maid whenever her lady wanted her! I wondered if there
+were no bells in the house; but the next day I satisfied myself that
+there was one in every room, and a special one ringing from my
+mistress's room to mine; and after that it did strike me as queer
+that, whenever Mrs. Brympton wanted anything, she rang for Agnes,
+who had to walk the whole length of the servants' wing to call me.
+
+But that wasn't the only queer thing in the house. The very next day
+I found out that Mrs. Brympton had no nurse; and then I asked Agnes
+about the woman I had seen in the passage the afternoon before.
+Agnes said she had seen no one, and I saw that she thought I was
+dreaming. To be sure, it was dusk when we went down the passage, and
+she had excused herself for not bringing a light; but I had seen the
+woman plain enough to know her again if we should meet. I decided
+that she must have been a friend of the cook's, or of one of the
+other women-servants: perhaps she had come down from town for a
+night's visit, and the servants wanted it kept secret. Some ladies
+are very stiff about having their servants' friends in the house
+overnight. At any rate, I made up my mind to ask no more questions.
+
+In a day or two, another odd thing happened. I was chatting one
+afternoon with Mrs. Blinder, who was a friendly disposed woman, and
+had been longer in the house than the other servants, and she asked
+me if I was quite comfortable and had everything I needed. I said I
+had no fault to find with my place or with my mistress, but I
+thought it odd that in so large a house there was no sewing-room for
+the lady's maid.
+
+"Why," says she, "there _is_ one; the room you're in is the old
+sewing-room."
+
+"Oh," said I; "and where did the other lady's maid sleep?"
+
+At that she grew confused, and said hurriedly that the servants'
+rooms had all been changed about last year, and she didn't rightly
+remember.
+
+That struck me as peculiar, but I went on as if I hadn't noticed:
+"Well, there's a vacant room opposite mine, and I mean to ask Mrs.
+Brympton if I mayn't use that as a sewing-room."
+
+To my astonishment, Mrs. Blinder went white, and gave my hand a kind
+of squeeze. "Don't do that, my dear," said she, trembling-like. "To
+tell you the truth, that was Emma Saxon's room, and my mistress has
+kept it closed ever since her death."
+
+"And who was Emma Saxon?"
+
+"Mrs. Brympton's former maid."
+
+"The one that was with her so many years?" said I, remembering what
+Mrs. Railton had told me.
+
+Mrs. Blinder nodded.
+
+"What sort of woman was she?"
+
+"No better walked the earth," said Mrs. Blinder. "My mistress loved
+her like a sister."
+
+"But I mean--what did she look like?"
+
+Mrs. Blinder got up and gave me a kind of angry stare. "I'm no great
+hand at describing," she said; "and I believe my pastry's rising."
+And she walked off into the kitchen and shut the door after her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+
+
+I HAD been near a week at Brympton before I saw my master. Word came
+that he was arriving one afternoon, and a change passed over the
+whole household. It was plain that nobody loved him below stairs.
+Mrs. Blinder took uncommon care with the dinner that night, but she
+snapped at the kitchen-maid in a way quite unusual with her; and Mr.
+Wace, the butler, a serious, slow-spoken man, went about his duties
+as if he'd been getting ready for a funeral. He was a great
+Bible-reader, Mr. Wace was, and had a beautiful assortment of texts
+at his command; but that day he used such dreadful language that I
+was about to leave the table, when he assured me it was all out of
+Isaiah; and I noticed that whenever the master came Mr. Wace took to
+the prophets.
+
+About seven, Agnes called me to my mistress's room; and there I
+found Mr. Brympton. He was standing on the hearth; a big fair
+bull-necked man, with a red face and little bad-tempered blue eyes:
+the kind of man a young simpleton might have thought handsome, and
+would have been like to pay dear for thinking it.
+
+He swung about when I came in, and looked me over in a trice. I knew
+what the look meant, from having experienced it once or twice in my
+former places. Then he turned his back on me, and went on talking to
+his wife; and I knew what _that_ meant, too. I was not the kind of
+morsel he was after. The typhoid had served me well enough in one
+way: it kept that kind of gentleman at arm's-length.
+
+"This is my new maid, Hartley," says Mrs. Brympton in her kind
+voice; and he nodded and went on with what he was saying.
+
+In a minute or two he went off, and left my mistress to dress for
+dinner, and I noticed as I waited on her that she was white, and
+chill to the touch.
+
+Mr. Brympton took himself off the next morning, and the whole house
+drew a long breath when he drove away. As for my mistress, she put
+on her hat and furs (for it was a fine winter morning) and went out
+for a walk in the gardens, coming back quite fresh and rosy, so that
+for a minute, before her color faded, I could guess what a pretty
+young lady she must have been, and not so long ago, either.
+
+She had met Mr. Ranford in the grounds, and the two came back
+together, I remember, smiling and talking as they walked along the
+terrace under my window. That was the first time I saw Mr. Ranford,
+though I had often heard his name mentioned in the hall. He was a
+neighbor, it appeared, living a mile or two beyond Brympton, at the
+end of the village; and as he was in the habit of spending his
+winters in the country he was almost the only company my mistress
+had at that season. He was a slight tall gentleman of about thirty,
+and I thought him rather melancholy-looking till I saw his smile,
+which had a kind of surprise in it, like the first warm day in
+spring. He was a great reader, I heard, like my mistress, and the
+two were forever borrowing books of one another, and sometimes (Mr.
+Wace told me) he would read aloud to Mrs. Brympton by the hour, in
+the big dark library where she sat in the winter afternoons. The
+servants all liked him, and perhaps that's more of a compliment than
+the masters suspect. He had a friendly word for every one of us, and
+we were all glad to think that Mrs. Brympton had a pleasant
+companionable gentleman like that to keep her company when the
+master was away. Mr. Ranford seemed on excellent terms with Mr.
+Brympton too; though I couldn't but wonder that two gentlemen so
+unlike each other should be so friendly. But then I knew how the
+real quality can keep their feelings to themselves.
+
+As for Mr. Brympton, he came and went, never staying more than a day
+or two, cursing the dulness and the solitude, grumbling at
+everything, and (as I soon found out) drinking a deal more than was
+good for him. After Mrs. Brympton left the table he would sit half
+the night over the old Brympton port and madeira, and once, as I was
+leaving my mistress's room rather later than usual, I met him coming
+up the stairs in such a state that I turned sick to think of what
+some ladies have to endure and hold their tongues about.
+
+The servants said very little about their master; but from what they
+let drop I could see it had been an unhappy match from the
+beginning. Mr. Brympton was coarse, loud and pleasure-loving; my
+mistress quiet, retiring, and perhaps a trifle cold. Not that she
+was not always pleasant-spoken to him: I thought her wonderfully
+forbearing; but to a gentleman as free as Mr. Brympton I daresay she
+seemed a little offish.
+
+Well, things went on quietly for several weeks. My mistress was
+kind, my duties were light, and I got on well with the other
+servants. In short, I had nothing to complain of; yet there was
+always a weight on me. I can't say why it was so, but I know it was
+not the loneliness that I felt. I soon got used to that; and being
+still languid from the fever, I was thankful for the quiet and the
+good country air. Nevertheless, I was never quite easy in my mind.
+My mistress, knowing I had been ill, insisted that I should take my
+walk regular, and often invented errands for me:--a yard of ribbon
+to be fetched from the village, a letter posted, or a book returned
+to Mr. Ranford. As soon as I was out of doors my spirits rose, and I
+looked forward to my walks through the bare moist-smelling woods;
+but the moment I caught sight of the house again my heart dropped
+down like a stone in a well. It was not a gloomy house exactly, yet
+I never entered it but a feeling of gloom came over me.
+
+Mrs. Brympton seldom went out in winter; only on the finest days did
+she walk an hour at noon on the south terrace. Excepting Mr.
+Ranford, we had no visitors but the doctor, who drove over from
+D-----about once a week. He sent for me once or twice to give me
+some trifling direction about my mistress, and though he never told
+me what her illness was, I thought, from a waxy look she had now and
+then of a morning, that it might be the heart that ailed her. The
+season was soft and unwholesome, and in January we had a long spell
+of rain. That was a sore trial to me, I own, for I couldn't go out,
+and sitting over my sewing all day, listening to the drip, drip of
+the eaves, I grew so nervous that the least sound made me jump.
+Somehow, the thought of that locked room across the passage began to
+weigh on me. Once or twice, in the long rainy nights, I fancied I
+heard noises there; but that was nonsense, of course, and the
+daylight drove such notions out of my head. Well, one morning Mrs.
+Brympton gave me quite a start of pleasure by telling me she wished
+me to go to town for some shopping. I hadn't known till then how low
+my spirits had fallen. I set off in high glee, and my first sight of
+the crowded streets and the cheerful-looking shops quite took me out
+of myself. Toward afternoon, however, the noise and confusion began
+to tire me, and I was actually looking forward to the quiet of
+Brympton, and thinking how I should enjoy the drive home through the
+dark woods, when I ran across an old acquaintance, a maid I had once
+been in service with. We had lost sight of each other for a number
+of years, and I had to stop and tell her what had happened to me in
+the interval. When I mentioned where I was living she rolled up her
+eyes and pulled a long face.
+
+"What! The Mrs. Brympton that lives all the year at her place on the
+Hudson? My dear, you won't stay there three months."
+
+"Oh, but I don't mind the country," says I, offended somehow at her
+tone. "Since the fever I'm glad to be quiet."
+
+She shook her head. "It's not the country I'm thinking of. All I
+know is she's had four maids in the last six months, and the last
+one, who was a friend of mine, told me nobody could stay in the
+house."
+
+"Did she say why?" I asked.
+
+"No--she wouldn't give me her reason. But she says to me, _Mrs.
+Ansey_, she says, _if ever a young woman as you know of thinks of
+going there, you tell her it's not worth while to unpack her
+boxes_."
+
+"Is she young and handsome?" said I, thinking of Mr. Brympton.
+
+"Not her! She's the kind that mothers engage when they've gay young
+gentlemen at college."
+
+Well, though I knew the woman was an idle gossip, the words stuck in
+my head, and my heart sank lower than ever as I drove up to Brympton
+in the dusk. There _was_ something about the house--I was sure of it
+now...
+
+When I went in to tea I heard that Mr. Brympton had arrived, and I
+saw at a glance that there had been a disturbance of some kind. Mrs.
+Blinder's hand shook so that she could hardly pour the tea, and Mr.
+Wace quoted the most dreadful texts full of brimstone. Nobody said a
+word to me then, but when I went up to my room Mrs. Blinder followed
+me.
+
+"Oh, my dear," says she, taking my hand, "I'm so glad and thankful
+you've come back to us!"
+
+That struck me, as you may imagine. "Why," said I, "did you think I
+was leaving for good?"
+
+"No, no, to be sure," said she, a little confused, "but I can't
+a-bear to have madam left alone for a day even." She pressed my hand
+hard, and, "Oh, Miss Hartley," says she, "be good to your mistress,
+as you're a Christian woman." And with that she hurried away, and
+left me staring.
+
+A moment later Agnes called me to Mrs. Brympton. Hearing Mr.
+Brympton's voice in her room, I went round by the dressing-room,
+thinking I would lay out her dinner-gown before going in. The
+dressing-room is a large room with a window over the portico that
+looks toward the gardens. Mr. Brympton's apartments are beyond. When
+I went in, the door into the bedroom was ajar, and I heard Mr.
+Brympton saying angrily:--"One would suppose he was the only person
+fit for you to talk to."
+
+"I don't have many visitors in winter," Mrs. Brympton answered
+quietly.
+
+"You have _me!_" he flung at her, sneering.
+
+"You are here so seldom," said she.
+
+"Well--whose fault is that? You make the place about as lively as a
+family vault--"
+
+With that I rattled the toilet-things, to give my mistress warning
+and she rose and called me in.
+
+The two dined alone, as usual, and I knew by Mr. Wace's manner at
+supper that things must be going badly. He quoted the prophets
+something terrible, and worked on the kitchen-maid so that she
+declared she wouldn't go down alone to put the cold meat in the
+ice-box. I felt nervous myself, and after I had put my mistress to
+bed I was half-tempted to go down again and persuade Mrs. Blinder to
+sit up awhile over a game of cards. But I heard her door closing for
+the night, and so I went on to my own room. The rain had begun
+again, and the drip, drip, drip seemed to be dropping into my brain.
+I lay awake listening to it, and turning over what my friend in town
+had said. What puzzled me was that it was always the maids who left...
+
+After a while I slept; but suddenly a loud noise wakened me. My bell
+had rung. I sat up, terrified by the unusual sound, which seemed to
+go on jangling through the darkness. My hands shook so that I
+couldn't find the matches. At length I struck a light and jumped out
+of bed. I began to think I must have been dreaming; but I looked at
+the bell against the wall, and there was the little hammer still
+quivering.
+
+I was just beginning to huddle on my clothes when I heard another
+sound. This time it was the door of the locked room opposite mine
+softly opening and closing. I heard the sound distinctly, and it
+frightened me so that I stood stock still. Then I heard a footstep
+hurrying down the passage toward the main house. The floor being
+carpeted, the sound was very faint, but I was quite sure it was a
+woman's step. I turned cold with the thought of it, and for a minute
+or two I dursn't breathe or move. Then I came to my senses.
+
+"Alice Hartley," says I to myself, "someone left that room just now
+and ran down the passage ahead of you. The idea isn't pleasant, but
+you may as well face it. Your mistress has rung for you, and to
+answer her bell you've got to go the way that other woman has gone."
+
+Well--I did it. I never walked faster in my life, yet I thought I
+should never get to the end of the passage or reach Mrs. Brympton's
+room. On the way I heard nothing and saw nothing: all was dark and
+quiet as the grave. When I reached my mistress's door the silence
+was so deep that I began to think I must be dreaming, and was
+half-minded to turn back. Then a panic seized me, and I knocked.
+
+There was no answer, and I knocked again, loudly. To my astonishment
+the door was opened by Mr. Brympton. He started back when he saw me,
+and in the light of my candle his face looked red and savage.
+
+_ "You!"_ he said, in a queer voice. _"How many of you are there, in
+God's name?"_
+
+At that I felt the ground give under me; but I said to myself that
+he had been drinking, and answered as steadily as I could: "May I go
+in, sir? Mrs. Brympton has rung for me."
+
+"You may all go in, for what I care," says he, and, pushing by me,
+walked down the hall to his own bedroom. I looked after him as he
+went, and to my surprise I saw that he walked as straight as a sober
+man.
+
+I found my mistress lying very weak and still, but she forced a
+smile when she saw me, and signed to me to pour out some drops for
+her. After that she lay without speaking, her breath coming quick,
+and her eyes closed. Suddenly she groped out with her hand, and "_
+Emma_," says she, faintly.
+
+"It's Hartley, madam," I said. "Do you want anything?"
+
+She opened her eyes wide and gave me a startled look.
+
+"I was dreaming," she said. "You may go, now, Hartley, and thank you
+kindly. I'm quite well again, you see." And she turned her face away
+from me.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+
+
+THERE was no more sleep for me that night, and I was thankful when
+daylight came.
+
+Soon afterward, Agnes called me to Mrs. Brympton. I was afraid she
+was ill again, for she seldom sent for me before nine, but I found
+her sitting up in bed, pale and drawn-looking, but quite herself.
+
+"Hartley," says she quickly, "will you put on your things at once
+and go down to the village for me? I want this prescription made
+up--" here she hesitated a minute and blushed--"and I should like
+you to be back again before Mr. Brympton is up."
+
+"Certainly, madam," I said.
+
+"And--stay a moment--" she called me back as if an idea had just
+struck her--"while you're waiting for the mixture, you'll have time
+to go on to Mr. Ranford's with this note."
+
+It was a two-mile walk to the village, and on my way I had time to
+turn things over in my mind. It struck me as peculiar that my
+mistress should wish the prescription made up without Mr. Brympton's
+knowledge; and, putting this together with the scene of the night
+before, and with much else that I had noticed and suspected, I began
+to wonder if the poor lady was weary of her life, and had come to
+the mad resolve of ending it. The idea took such hold on me that I
+reached the village on a run, and dropped breathless into a chair
+before the chemist's counter. The good man, who was just taking down
+his shutters, stared at me so hard that it brought me to myself.
+
+"Mr. Limmel," I says, trying to speak indifferent, "will you run
+your eye over this, and tell me if it's quite right?"
+
+He put on his spectacles and studied the prescription.
+
+"Why, it's one of Dr. Walton's," says he. "What should be wrong with
+it?"
+
+"Well--is it dangerous to take?"
+
+"Dangerous--how do you mean?"
+
+I could have shaken the man for his stupidity.
+
+"I mean--if a person was to take too much of it--by mistake of
+course--" says I, my heart in my throat.
+
+"Lord bless you, no. It's only lime-water. You might feed it to a
+baby by the bottleful."
+
+I gave a great sigh of relief, and hurried on to Mr. Ranford's. But
+on the way another thought struck me. If there was nothing to
+conceal about my visit to the chemist's, was it my other errand that
+Mrs. Brympton wished me to keep private? Somehow, that thought
+frightened me worse than the other. Yet the two gentlemen seemed
+fast friends, and I would have staked my head on my mistress's
+goodness. I felt ashamed of my suspicions, and concluded that I was
+still disturbed by the strange events of the night. I left the note
+at Mr. Ranford's--and, hurrying back to Brympton, slipped in by a
+side door without being seen, as I thought.
+
+An hour later, however, as I was carrying in my mistress's
+breakfast, I was stopped in the hall by Mr. Brympton.
+
+"What were you doing out so early?" he says, looking hard at me.
+
+"Early--me, sir?" I said, in a tremble.
+
+"Come, come," he says, an angry red spot coming out on his forehead,
+"didn't I see you scuttling home through the shrubbery an hour or
+more ago?"
+
+I'm a truthful woman by nature, but at that a lie popped out
+ready-made. "No, sir, you didn't," said I, and looked straight back
+at him.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and gave a sullen laugh. "I suppose you
+think I was drunk last night?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"No, sir, I don't," I answered, this time truthfully enough.
+
+He turned away with another shrug. "A pretty notion my servants have
+of me!" I heard him mutter as he walked off.
+
+Not till I had settled down to my afternoon's sewing did I realize
+how the events of the night had shaken me. I couldn't pass that
+locked door without a shiver. I knew I had heard someone come out of
+it, and walk down the passage ahead of me. I thought of speaking to
+Mrs. Blinder or to Mr. Wace, the only two in the house who appeared
+to have an inkling of what was going on, but I had a feeling that if
+I questioned them they would deny everything, and that I might learn
+more by holding my tongue and keeping my eyes open. The idea of
+spending another night opposite the locked room sickened me, and
+once I was seized with the notion of packing my trunk and taking the
+first train to town; but it wasn't in me to throw over a kind
+mistress in that manner, and I tried to go on with my sewing as if
+nothing had happened.
+
+I hadn't worked ten minutes before the sewing-machine broke down. It
+was one I had found in the house, a good machine, but a trifle out
+of order: Mrs. Blinder said it had never been used since Emma
+Saxon's death. I stopped to see what was wrong, and as I was working
+at the machine a drawer which I had never been able to open slid
+forward and a photograph fell out. I picked it up and sat looking at
+it in a maze. It was a woman's likeness, and I knew I had seen the
+face somewhere--the eyes had an asking look that I had felt on me
+before. And suddenly I remembered the pale woman in the passage.
+
+I stood up, cold all over, and ran out of the room. My heart seemed
+to be thumping in the top of my head, and I felt as if I should
+never get away from the look in those eyes. I went straight to Mrs.
+Blinder. She was taking her afternoon nap, and sat up with a jump
+when I came in.
+
+"Mrs. Blinder," said I, "who is that?" And I held out the
+photograph.
+
+She rubbed her eyes and stared.
+
+"Why, Emma Saxon," says she. "Where did you find it?"
+
+I looked hard at her for a minute. "Mrs. Blinder," I said, "I've
+seen that face before."
+
+Mrs. Blinder got up and walked over to the looking-glass. "Dear me!
+I must have been asleep," she says. "My front is all over one ear.
+And now do run along, Miss Hartley, dear, for I hear the clock
+striking four, and I must go down this very minute and put on the
+Virginia ham for Mr. Brympton's dinner."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+
+
+TO all appearances, things went on as usual for a week or two. The
+only difference was that Mr. Brympton stayed on, instead of going
+off as he usually did, and that Mr. Ranford never showed himself. I
+heard Mr. Brympton remark on this one afternoon when he was sitting
+in my mistress's room before dinner.
+
+"Where's Ranford?" says he. "He hasn't been near the house for a
+week. Does he keep away because I'm here?"
+
+Mrs. Brympton spoke so low that I couldn't catch her answer.
+
+"Well," he went on, "two's company and three's trumpery; I'm sorry
+to be in Ranford's way, and I suppose I shall have to take myself
+off again in a day or two and give him a show." And he laughed at
+his own joke.
+
+The very next day, as it happened, Mr. Ranford called. The footman
+said the three were very merry over their tea in the library, and
+Mr. Brympton strolled down to the gate with Mr. Ranford when he
+left.
+
+I have said that things went on as usual; and so they did with the
+rest of the household; but as for myself, I had never been the same
+since the night my bell had rung. Night after night I used to lie
+awake, listening for it to ring again, and for the door of the
+locked room to open stealthily. But the bell never rang, and I heard
+no sound across the passage. At last the silence began to be more
+dreadful to me than the most mysterious sounds. I felt that
+_someone_ were cowering there, behind the locked door, watching and
+listening as I watched and listened, and I could almost have cried
+out, "Whoever you are, come out and let me see you face to face, but
+don't lurk there and spy on me in the darkness!"
+
+Feeling as I did, you may wonder I didn't give warning. Once I very
+nearly did so; but at the last moment something held me back.
+Whether it was compassion for my mistress, who had grown more and
+more dependent on me, or unwillingness to try a new place, or some
+other feeling that I couldn't put a name to, I lingered on as if
+spell-bound, though every night was dreadful to me, and the days but
+little better.
+
+For one thing, I didn't like Mrs. Brympton's looks. She had never
+been the same since that night, no more than I had. I thought she
+would brighten up after Mr. Brympton left, but though she seemed
+easier in her mind, her spirits didn't revive, nor her strength
+either. She had grown attached to me, and seemed to like to have me
+about; and Agnes told me one day that, since Emma Saxon's death, I
+was the only maid her mistress had taken to. This gave me a warm
+feeling for the poor lady, though after all there was little I could
+do to help her.
+
+After Mr. Brympton's departure, Mr. Ranford took to coming again,
+though less often than formerly. I met him once or twice in the
+grounds, or in the village, and I couldn't but think there was a
+change in him too; but I set it down to my disordered fancy.
+
+The weeks passed, and Mr. Brympton had now been a month absent. We
+heard he was cruising with a friend in the West Indies, and Mr. Wace
+said that was a long way off, but though you had the wings of a dove
+and went to the uttermost parts of the earth, you couldn't get away
+from the Almighty. Agnes said that as long as he stayed away from
+Brympton, the Almighty might have him and welcome; and this raised a
+laugh, though Mrs. Blinder tried to look shocked, and Mr. Wace said
+the bears would eat us.
+
+We were all glad to hear that the West Indies were a long way off,
+and I remember that, in spite of Mr. Wace's solemn looks, we had a
+very merry dinner that day in the hall. I don't know if it was
+because of my being in better spirits, but I fancied Mrs. Brympton
+looked better too, and seemed more cheerful in her manner. She had
+been for a walk in the morning, and after luncheon she lay down in
+her room, and I read aloud to her. When she dismissed me I went to
+my own room feeling quite bright and happy, and for the first time
+in weeks walked past the locked door without thinking of it. As I
+sat down to my work I looked out and saw a few snow-flakes falling.
+The sight was pleasanter than the eternal rain, and I pictured to
+myself how pretty the bare gardens would look in their white mantle.
+It seemed to me as if the snow would cover up all the dreariness,
+indoors as well as out.
+
+The fancy had hardly crossed my mind when I heard a step at my side.
+I looked up, thinking it was Agnes.
+
+"Well, Agnes--" said I, and the words froze on my tongue; for there,
+in the door, stood Emma Saxon.
+
+I don't know how long she stood there. I only know I couldn't stir
+or take my eyes from her. Afterward I was terribly frightened, but
+at the time it wasn't fear I felt, but something deeper and quieter.
+She looked at me long and long, and her face was just one dumb
+prayer to me--but how in the world was I to help her? Suddenly she
+turned, and I heard her walk down the passage. This time I wasn't
+afraid to follow--I felt that I must know what she wanted. I sprang
+up and ran out. She was at the other end of the passage, and I
+expected her to take the turn toward my mistress's room; but instead
+of that she pushed open the door that led to the backstairs. I
+followed her down the stairs, and across the passageway to the back
+door. The kitchen and hall were empty at that hour, the servants
+being off duty, except for the footman, who was in the pantry. At
+the door she stood still a moment, with another look at me; then she
+turned the handle, and stepped out. For a minute I hesitated. Where
+was she leading me to? The door had closed softly after her, and I
+opened it and looked out, half-expecting to find that she had
+disappeared. But I saw her a few yards off, hurrying across the
+court-yard to the path through the woods. Her figure looked black
+and lonely in the snow, and for a second my heart failed me and I
+thought of turning back. But all the while she was drawing me after
+her; and catching up an old shawl of Mrs. Blinder's I ran out into
+the open.
+
+Emma Saxon was in the wood-path now. She walked on steadily, and I
+followed at the same pace, till we passed out of the gates and
+reached the high-road. Then she struck across the open fields to the
+village. By this time the ground was white, and as she climbed the
+slope of a bare hill ahead of me I noticed that she left no
+foot-prints behind her. At sight of that, my heart shrivelled up
+within me, and my knees were water. Somehow, it was worse here than
+indoors. She made the whole countryside seem lonely as the grave,
+with none but us two in it, and no help in the wide world.
+
+Once I tried to go back; but she turned and looked at me, and it was
+as if she had dragged me with ropes. After that I followed her like
+a dog. We came to the village, and she led me through it, past the
+church and the blacksmith's shop, and down the lane to Mr.
+Ranford's. Mr. Ranford's house stands close to the road: a plain
+old-fashioned building, with a flagged path leading to the door
+between box-borders. The lane was deserted, and as I turned into it,
+I saw Emma Saxon pause under the old elm by the gate. And now
+another fear came over me. I saw that we had reached the end of our
+journey, and that it was my turn to act. All the way from Brympton I
+had been asking myself what she wanted of me, but I had followed in
+a trance, as it were, and not till I saw her stop at Mr. Ranford's
+gate did my brain begin to clear itself. It stood a little way off
+in the snow, my heart beating fit to strangle me, and my feet frozen
+to the ground; and she stood under the elm and watched me.
+
+I knew well enough that she hadn't led me there for nothing. I felt
+there was something I ought to say or do--but how was I to guess
+what it was? I had never thought harm of my mistress and Mr.
+Ranford, but I was sure now that, from one cause or another, some
+dreadful thing hung over them. _She_ knew what it was; she would
+tell me if she could; perhaps she would answer if I questioned her.
+
+It turned me faint to think of speaking to her; but I plucked up
+heart and dragged myself across the few yards between us. As I did
+so, I heard the house-door open, and saw Mr. Ranford approaching. He
+looked handsome and cheerful, as my mistress had looked that
+morning, and at sight of him the blood began to flow again in my
+veins.
+
+"Why, Hartley," said he, "what's the matter? I saw you coming down
+the lane just now, and came out to see if you had taken root in the
+snow." He stopped and stared at me. "What are you looking at?" he
+says.
+
+I turned toward the elm as he spoke, and his eyes followed me; but
+there was no one there. The lane was empty as far as the eye could
+reach.
+
+A sense of helplessness came over me. She was gone, and I had not
+been able to guess what she wanted. Her last look had pierced me to
+the marrow; and yet it had not told me! All at once, I felt more
+desolate than when she had stood there watching me. It seemed as if
+she had left me all alone to carry the weight of the secret I
+couldn't guess. The snow went round me in great circles, and the
+ground fell away from me....
+
+A drop of brandy and the warmth of Mr. Ranford's fire soon brought
+me to, and I insisted on being driven back at once to Brympton. It
+was nearly dark, and I was afraid my mistress might be wanting me. I
+explained to Mr. Ranford that I had been out for a walk and had been
+taken with a fit of giddiness as I passed his gate. This was true
+enough; yet I never felt more like a liar than when I said it.
+
+When I dressed Mrs. Brympton for dinner she remarked on my pale
+looks and asked what ailed me. I told her I had a headache, and she
+said she would not require me again that evening, and advised me to
+go to bed.
+
+It was a fact that I could scarcely keep on my feet; yet I had no
+fancy to spend a solitary evening in my room. I sat downstairs in
+the hall as long as I could hold my head up; but by nine I crept
+upstairs, too weary to care what happened if I could but get my head
+on a pillow. The rest of the household went to bed soon afterward;
+they kept early hours when the master was away, and before ten I
+heard Mrs. Blinder's door close, and Mr. Wace's soon after.
+
+It was a very still night, earth and air all muffled in snow. Once
+in bed I felt easier, and lay quiet, listening to the strange noises
+that come out in a house after dark. Once I thought I heard a door
+open and close again below: it might have been the glass door that
+led to the gardens. I got up and peered out of the window; but it
+was in the dark of the moon, and nothing visible outside but the
+streaking of snow against the panes.
+
+I went back to bed and must have dozed, for I jumped awake to the
+furious ringing of my bell. Before my head was clear I had sprung
+out of bed, and was dragging on my clothes. _It is going to happen
+now_, I heard myself saying; but what I meant I had no notion. My
+hands seemed to be covered with glue--I thought I should never get
+into my clothes. At last I opened my door and peered down the
+passage. As far as my candle-flame carried, I could see nothing
+unusual ahead of me. I hurried on, breathless; but as I pushed open
+the baize door leading to the main hall my heart stood still, for
+there at the head of the stairs was Emma Saxon, peering dreadfully
+down into the darkness.
+
+For a second I couldn't stir; but my hand slipped from the door, and
+as it swung shut the figure vanished. At the same instant there came
+another sound from below stairs--a stealthy mysterious sound, as of
+a latch-key turning in the house-door. I ran to Mrs. Brympton's room
+and knocked.
+
+There was no answer, and I knocked again. This time I heard some one
+moving in the room; the bolt slipped back and my mistress stood
+before me. To my surprise I saw that she had not undressed for the
+night. She gave me a startled look.
+
+"What is this, Hartley?" she says in a whisper. "Are you ill? What
+are you doing here at this hour?"
+
+"I am not ill, madam; but my bell rang."
+
+At that she turned pale, and seemed about to fall.
+
+"You are mistaken," she said harshly; "I didn't ring. You must have
+been dreaming." I had never heard her speak in such a tone. "Go back
+to bed," she said, closing the door on me.
+
+But as she spoke I heard sounds again in the hall below: a man's
+step this time; and the truth leaped out on me.
+
+"Madam," I said, pushing past her, "there is someone in the house--"
+
+"Someone--?"
+
+"Mr. Brympton, I think--I hear his step below--"
+
+A dreadful look came over her, and without a word, she dropped flat
+at my feet. I fell on my knees and tried to lift her: by the way she
+breathed I saw it was no common faint. But as I raised her head
+there came quick steps on the stairs and across the hall: the door
+was flung open, and there stood Mr. Brympton, in his
+travelling-clothes, the snow dripping from him. He drew back with a
+start as he saw me kneeling by my mistress.
+
+"What the devil is this?" he shouted. He was less high-colored than
+usual, and the red spot came out on his forehead.
+
+"Mrs. Brympton has fainted, sir," said I.
+
+He laughed unsteadily and pushed by me. "It's a pity she didn't
+choose a more convenient moment. I'm sorry to disturb her, but--"
+
+I raised myself up, aghast at the man's action.
+
+"Sir," said I, "are you mad? What are you doing?"
+
+"Going to meet a friend," said he, and seemed to make for the
+dressing-room.
+
+At that my heart turned over. I don't know what I thought or feared;
+but I sprang up and caught him by the sleeve.
+
+"Sir, sir," said I, "for pity's sake look at your wife!"
+
+He shook me off furiously.
+
+"It seems that's done for me," says he, and caught hold of the
+dressing-room door.
+
+At that moment I heard a slight noise inside. Slight as it was, he
+heard it too, and tore the door open; but as he did so he dropped
+back. On the threshold stood Emma Saxon. All was dark behind her,
+but I saw her plainly, and so did he. He threw up his hands as if to
+hide his face from her; and when I looked again she was gone.
+
+He stood motionless, as if the strength had run out of him; and in
+the stillness my mistress suddenly raised herself, and opening her
+eyes fixed a look on him. Then she fell back, and I saw the
+death-flutter pass over her....
+
+We buried her on the third day, in a driving snow-storm. There were
+few people in the church, for it was bad weather to come from town,
+and I've a notion my mistress was one that hadn't many near friends.
+Mr. Ranford was among the last to come, just before they carried her
+up the aisle. He was in black, of course, being such a friend of the
+family, and I never saw a gentleman so pale. As he passed me, I
+noticed that he leaned a trifle on a stick he carried; and I fancy
+Mr. Brympton noticed it too, for the red spot came out sharp on his
+forehead, and all through the service he kept staring across the
+church at Mr. Ranford, instead of following the prayers as a mourner
+should.
+
+When it was over and we went out to the graveyard, Mr. Ranford had
+disappeared, and as soon as my poor mistress's body was underground,
+Mr. Brympton jumped into the carriage nearest the gate and drove off
+without a word to any of us. I heard him call out, "To the station,"
+and we servants went back alone to the house.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MISSION OF JANE
+
+I
+
+
+
+
+
+LETHBURY, surveying his wife across the dinner table, found his
+transient conjugal glance arrested by an indefinable change in her
+appearance.
+
+"How smart you look! Is that a new gown?" he asked.
+
+Her answering look seemed to deprecate his charging her with the
+extravagance of wasting a new gown on him, and he now perceived that
+the change lay deeper than any accident of dress. At the same time,
+he noticed that she betrayed her consciousness of it by a delicate,
+almost frightened blush. It was one of the compensations of Mrs.
+Lethbury's protracted childishness that she still blushed as
+prettily as at eighteen. Her body had been privileged not to
+outstrip her mind, and the two, as it seemed to Lethbury, were
+destined to travel together through an eternity of girlishness.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," she said.
+
+Since she never did, he always wondered at her bringing this out as
+a fresh grievance against him; but his wonder was unresentful, and
+he said good-humoredly: "You sparkle so that I thought you had on
+your diamonds."
+
+She sighed and blushed again.
+
+"It must be," he continued, "that you've been to a dressmaker's
+opening. You're absolutely brimming with illicit enjoyment."
+
+She stared again, this time at the adjective. His adjectives always
+embarrassed her: their unintelligibleness savored of impropriety.
+
+"In short," he summed up, "you've been doing something that you're
+thoroughly ashamed of."
+
+To his surprise she retorted: "I don't see why I should be ashamed
+of it!"
+
+Lethbury leaned back with a smile of enjoyment. When there was
+nothing better going he always liked to listen to her explanations.
+
+"Well--?" he said.
+
+She was becoming breathless and ejaculatory. "Of course you'll
+laugh--you laugh at everything!"
+
+"That rather blunts the point of my derision, doesn't it?" he
+interjected; but she rushed on without noticing:
+
+"It's so easy to laugh at things."
+
+"Ah," murmured Lethbury with relish, "that's Aunt Sophronia's, isn't
+it?"
+
+Most of his wife's opinions were heirlooms, and he took a quaint
+pleasure in tracing their descent. She was proud of their age, and
+saw no reason for discarding them while they were still serviceable.
+Some, of course, were so fine that she kept them for state
+occasions, like her great-grandmother's Crown Derby; but from the
+lady known as Aunt Sophronia she had inherited a stout set of
+every-day prejudices that were practically as good as new; whereas
+her husband's, as she noticed, were always having to be replaced. In
+the early days she had fancied there might be a certain satisfaction
+in taxing him with the fact; but she had long since been silenced by
+the reply: "My dear, I'm not a rich man, but I never use an opinion
+twice if I can help it."
+
+She was reduced, therefore, to dwelling on his moral deficiencies;
+and one of the most obvious of these was his refusal to take things
+seriously. On this occasion, however, some ulterior purpose kept her
+from taking up his taunt.
+
+"I'm not in the least ashamed!" she repeated, with the air of
+shaking a banner to the wind; but the domestic atmosphere being
+calm, the banner drooped unheroically.
+
+"That," said Lethbury judicially, "encourages me to infer that you
+ought to be, and that, consequently, you've been giving yourself the
+unusual pleasure of doing something I shouldn't approve of."
+
+She met this with an almost solemn directness. "No," she said. "You
+won't approve of it. I've allowed for that."
+
+"Ah," he exclaimed, setting down his liqueur-glass. "You've worked
+out the whole problem, eh?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"That's uncommonly interesting. And what is it?"
+
+She looked at him quietly. "A baby."
+
+If it was seldom given her to surprise him, she had attained the
+distinction for once.
+
+"A baby?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A--human baby?"
+
+"Of course!" she cried, with the virtuous resentment of the woman
+who has never allowed dogs in the house.
+
+Lethbury's puzzled stare broke into a fresh smile. "A baby I sha'n't
+approve of? Well, in the abstract I don't think much of them, I
+admit. Is this an abstract baby?"
+
+Again she frowned at the adjective; but she had reached a pitch of
+exaltation at which such obstacles could not deter her.
+
+"It's the loveliest baby--" she murmured.
+
+"Ah, then it's concrete. It exists. In this harsh world it draws its
+breath in pain--"
+
+"It's the healthiest child I ever saw!" she indignantly corrected.
+
+"You've seen it, then?"
+
+Again the accusing blush suffused her. "Yes--I've seen it."
+
+"And to whom does the paragon belong?"
+
+And here indeed she confounded him. "To me--I hope," she declared.
+
+He pushed his chair back with an inarticulate murmur. "To _you_--?"
+
+"To _us_," she corrected.
+
+"Good Lord!" he said. If there had been the least hint of
+hallucination in her transparent gaze--but no: it was as clear, as
+shallow, as easily fathomable as when he had first suffered the
+sharp surprise of striking bottom in it.
+
+It occurred to him that perhaps she was trying to be funny: he knew
+that there is nothing more cryptic than the humor of the unhumorous.
+
+"Is it a joke?" he faltered.
+
+"Oh, I hope not. I want it so much to be a reality--"
+
+He paused to smile at the limitations of a world in which jokes were
+not realities, and continued gently: "But since it is one already--"
+
+"To us, I mean: to you and me. I want--" her voice wavered, and her
+eyes with it. "I have always wanted so dreadfully...it has been
+such a disappointment...not to..."
+
+"I see," said Lethbury slowly.
+
+But he had not seen before. It seemed curious, now, that he had
+never thought of her taking it in that way, had never surmised any
+hidden depths beneath her outspread obviousness. He felt as though
+he had touched a secret spring in her mind.
+
+There was a moment's silence, moist and tremulous on her part,
+awkward and slightly irritated on his.
+
+"You've been lonely, I suppose?" he began. It was odd, having
+suddenly to reckon with the stranger who gazed at him out of her
+trivial eyes.
+
+"At times," she said.
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"It was not your fault. A man has so many occupations; and women who
+are clever--or very handsome--I suppose that's an occupation too.
+Sometimes I've felt that when dinner was ordered I had nothing to do
+till the next day."
+
+"Oh," he groaned.
+
+"It wasn't your fault," she insisted. "I never told you--but when I
+chose that rose-bud paper for the front room upstairs, I always
+thought--"
+
+"Well--?"
+
+"It would be such a pretty paper--for a baby--to wake up in. That
+was years ago, of course; but it was rather an expensive paper...
+and it hasn't faded in the least..." she broke off incoherently.
+
+"It hasn't faded?"
+
+"No--and so I thought...as we don't use the room for anything ...
+now that Aunt Sophronia is dead...I thought I might...
+you might...oh, Julian, if you could only have seen it just
+waking up in its crib!"
+
+"Seen what--where? You haven't got a baby upstairs?"
+
+"Oh, no--not _yet_," she said, with her rare laugh--the girlish
+bubbling of merriment that had seemed one of her chief graces in the
+early days. It occurred to him that he had not given her enough
+things to laugh about lately. But then she needed such very
+elementary things: it was as difficult to amuse her as a savage. He
+concluded that he was not sufficiently simple.
+
+"Alice," he said, almost solemnly, "what _do_ you mean?"
+
+She hesitated a moment: he saw her gather her courage for a supreme
+effort. Then she said slowly, gravely, as though she were
+pronouncing a sacramental phrase:
+
+"I'm so lonely without a little child--and I thought perhaps you'd
+let me adopt one....It's at the hospital...its mother is
+dead...and I could...pet it, and dress it, and do things for
+it...and it's such a good baby...you can ask any of the
+nurses...it would never, _never_ bother you by crying..."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+
+
+Lethbury accompanied his wife to the hospital in a mood of chastened
+wonder. It did not occur to him to oppose her wish. He knew, of
+course, that he would have to bear the brunt of the situation: the
+jokes at the club, the inquiries, the explanations. He saw himself
+in the comic role of the adopted father, and welcomed it as an
+expiation. For in his rapid reconstruction of the past he found
+himself cutting a shabbier figure than he cared to admit. He had
+always been intolerant of stupid people, and it was his punishment
+to be convicted of stupidity. As his mind traversed the years
+between his marriage and this unexpected assumption of paternity, he
+saw, in the light of an overheated imagination, many signs of
+unwonted crassness. It was not that he had ceased to think his wife
+stupid: she _was_ stupid, limited, inflexible; but there was a
+pathos in the struggles of her swaddled mind, in its blind reachings
+toward the primal emotions. He had always thought she would have
+been happier with a child; but he had thought it mechanically,
+because it had so often been thought before, because it was in the
+nature of things to think it of every woman, because his wife was so
+eminently one of a species that she fitted into all the
+generalizations on the sex. But he had regarded this generalization
+as merely typical of the triumph of tradition over experience.
+Maternity was no doubt the supreme function of primitive woman, the
+one end to which her whole organism tended; but the law of
+increasing complexity had operated in both sexes, and he had not
+seriously supposed that, outside the world of Christmas fiction and
+anecdotic art, such truisms had any special hold on the feminine
+imagination. Now he saw that the arts in question were kept alive by
+the vitality of the sentiments they appealed to.
+
+Lethbury was in fact going through a rapid process of readjustment.
+His marriage had been a failure, but he had preserved toward his
+wife the exact fidelity of act that is sometimes supposed to excuse
+any divagation of feeling; so that, for years, the tie between them
+had consisted mainly in his abstaining from making love to other
+women. The abstention had not always been easy, for the world is
+surprisingly well-stocked with the kind of woman one ought to have
+married but did not; and Lethbury had not escaped the solicitation
+of such alternatives. His immunity had been purchased at the cost of
+taking refuge in the somewhat rarified atmosphere of his
+perceptions; and his world being thus limited, he had given unusual
+care to its details, compensating himself for the narrowness of his
+horizon by the minute finish of his foreground. It was a world of
+fine shadings and the nicest proportions, where impulse seldom set a
+blundering foot, and the feast of reason was undisturbed by an
+intemperate flow of soul. To such a banquet his wife naturally
+remained uninvited. The diet would have disagreed with her, and she
+would probably have objected to the other guests. But Lethbury,
+miscalculating her needs, had hitherto supposed that he had made
+ample provision for them, and was consequently at liberty to enjoy
+his own fare without any reproach of mendicancy at his gates. Now he
+beheld her pressing a starved face against the windows of his life,
+and in his imaginative reaction he invested her with a pathos
+borrowed from the sense of his own shortcomings.
+
+In the hospital, the imaginative process continued with increasing
+force. He looked at his wife with new eyes. Formerly she had been to
+him a mere bundle of negations, a labyrinth of dead walls and bolted
+doors. There was nothing behind the walls, and the doors led
+no-whither: he had sounded and listened often enough to be sure of
+that. Now he felt like a traveller who, exploring some ancient ruin,
+comes on an inner cell, intact amid the general dilapidation, and
+painted with images which reveal the forgotten uses of the building.
+
+His wife stood by a white crib in one of the wards. In the crib lay
+a child, a year old, the nurse affirmed, but to Lethbury's eye a
+mere dateless fragment of humanity projected against a background of
+conjecture. Over this anonymous particle of life Mrs. Lethbury
+leaned, such ecstasy reflected in her face as strikes up, in
+Correggio's Night-piece, from the child's body to the mother's
+countenance. it was a light that irradiated and dazzled her. She
+looked up at an inquiry of Lethbury's, but as their glances met he
+perceived that she no longer saw him, that he had become as
+invisible to her as she had long been to him. He had to transfer his
+question to the nurse.
+
+"What is the child's name?" he asked.
+
+"We call her Jane," said the nurse.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+
+
+Lethbury, at first, had resisted the idea of a legal adoption; but
+when he found that his wife's curiously limited imagination
+prevented her regarding the child as hers till it had been made so
+by process of law, he promptly withdrew his objection. On one point
+only he remained inflexible; and that was the changing of the waif's
+name. Mrs. Lethbury, almost at once, had expressed a wish to
+rechristen it: she fluctuated between Muriel and Gladys, deferring
+the moment of decision like a lady wavering between two bonnets. But
+Lethbury was unyielding. In the general surrender of his prejudices
+this one alone held out.
+
+"But Jane is so dreadful," Mrs. Lethbury protested.
+
+"Well, we don't know that _she_ won't be dreadful. She may grow up a
+Jane."
+
+His wife exclaimed reproachfully. "The nurse says she's the
+loveliest--"
+
+"Don't they always say that?" asked Lethbury patiently. He was
+prepared to be inexhaustibly patient now that he had reached a firm
+foothold of opposition.
+
+"It's cruel to call her Jane," Mrs. Lethbury pleaded.
+
+"It's ridiculous to call her Muriel."
+
+"The nurse is _sure_ she must be a lady's child."
+
+Lethbury winced: he had tried, all along, to keep his mind off the
+question of antecedents.
+
+"Well, let her prove it," he said, with a rising sense of
+exasperation. He wondered how he could ever have allowed himself to
+be drawn into such a ridiculous business; for the first time he felt
+the full irony of it. He had visions of coming home in the afternoon
+to a house smelling of linseed and paregoric, and of being greeted
+by a chronic howl as he went up stairs to dress for dinner. He had
+never been a club-man, but he saw himself becoming one now.
+
+The worst of his anticipations were unfulfilled. The baby was
+surprisingly well and surprisingly quiet. Such infantile remedies as
+she absorbed were not potent enough to be perceived beyond the
+nursery; and when Lethbury could be induced to enter that sanctuary,
+there was nothing to jar his nerves in the mild pink presence of his
+adopted daughter. Jars there were, indeed: they were probably
+inevitable in the disturbed routine of the household; but they
+occurred between Mrs. Lethbury and the nurses, and Jane contributed
+to them only a placid stare which might have served as a rebuke to
+the combatants.
+
+In the reaction from his first impulse of atonement, Lethbury noted
+with sharpened perceptions the effect of the change on his wife's
+character. He saw already the error of supposing that it could work
+any transformation in her. It simply magnified her existing
+qualities. She was like a dried sponge put in water: she expanded,
+but she did not change her shape. From the stand-point of scientific
+observation it was curious to see how her stored instincts responded
+to the pseudo-maternal call. She overflowed with the petty maxims of
+the occasion. One felt in her the epitome, the consummation, of
+centuries of animal maternity, so that this little woman, who
+screamed at a mouse and was nervous about burglars, came to typify
+the cave-mother rending her prey for her young.
+
+It was less easy to regard philosophically the practical effects of
+her borrowed motherhood. Lethbury found with surprise that she was
+becoming assertive and definite. She no longer represented the
+negative side of his life; she showed, indeed, a tendency to
+inconvenient affirmations. She had gradually expanded her assumption
+of motherhood till it included his own share in the relation, and he
+suddenly found himself regarded as the father of Jane. This was a
+contingency he had not foreseen, and it took all his philosophy to
+accept it; but there were moments of compensation. For Mrs. Lethbury
+was undoubtedly happy for the first time in years; and the thought
+that he had tardily contributed to this end reconciled him to the
+irony of the means.
+
+At first he was inclined to reproach himself for still viewing the
+situation from the outside, for remaining a spectator instead of a
+participant. He had been allured, for a moment, by the vision of
+severed hands meeting over a cradle, as the whole body of domestic
+fiction bears witness to their doing; and the fact that no such
+conjunction took place he could explain only on the ground that it
+was a borrowed cradle. He did not dislike the little girl. She still
+remained to him a hypothetical presence, a query rather than a fact;
+but her nearness was not unpleasant, and there were moments when her
+tentative utterances, her groping steps, seemed to loosen the dry
+accretions enveloping his inner self. But even at such
+moments--moments which he invited and caressed--she did not bring
+him nearer to his wife. He now perceived that he had made a certain
+place in his life for Mrs. Lethbury, and that she no longer fitted
+into it. It was too late to enlarge the space, and so she overflowed
+and encroached. Lethbury struggled against the sense of submergence.
+He let down barrier after barrier, yielded privacy after privacy;
+but his wife's personality continued to dilate. She was no longer
+herself alone: she was herself and Jane. Gradually, in a monstrous
+fusion of identity, she became herself, himself and Jane; and
+instead of trying to adapt her to a spare crevice of his character,
+he found himself carelessly squeezed into the smallest compartment
+of the domestic economy.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+
+
+He continued to tell himself that he was satisfied if his wife was
+happy; and it was not till the child's tenth year that he felt a
+doubt of her happiness.
+
+Jane had been a preternaturally good child. During the eight years
+of her adoption she had caused her foster-parents no anxiety beyond
+those connected with the usual succession of youthful diseases. But
+her unknown progenitors had given her a robust constitution, and she
+passed unperturbed through measles, chicken-pox and whooping-cough.
+If there was any suffering it was endured vicariously by Mrs.
+Lethbury, whose temperature rose and fell with the patient's, and
+who could not hear Jane sneeze without visions of a marble angel
+weeping over a broken column. But though Jane's prompt recoveries
+continued to belie such premonitions, though her existence continued
+to move forward on an even keel of good health and good conduct,
+Mrs. Lethbury's satisfaction showed no corresponding advance.
+Lethbury, at first, was disposed to add her disappointment to the
+long list of feminine inconsistencies with which the sententious
+observer of life builds up his favorite induction; but circumstances
+presently led him to take a kindlier view of the case.
+
+Hitherto his wife had regarded him as a negligible factor in Jane's
+evolution. Beyond providing for his adopted daughter, and effacing
+himself before her, he was not expected to contribute to her
+well-being. But as time passed he appeared to his wife in a new
+light. It was he who was to educate Jane. In matters of the
+intellect, Mrs. Lethbury was the first to declare her
+deficiencies--to proclaim them, even, with a certain virtuous
+superiority. She said she did not pretend to be clever, and there
+was no denying the truth of the assertion. Now, however, she seemed
+less ready, not to own her limitations, but to glory in them.
+Confronted with the problem of Jane's instruction, she stood in awe
+of the child.
+
+"I have always been stupid, you know," she said to Lethbury with a
+new humility, "and I'm afraid I sha'n't know what is best for Jane.
+I'm sure she has a wonderfully good mind, and I should reproach
+myself if I didn't give her every opportunity." She looked at him
+helplessly. "You must tell me what ought to be done."
+
+Lethbury was not unwilling to oblige her. Somewhere in his mental
+lumber-room there rusted a theory of education such as usually
+lingers among the impedimenta of the childless. He brought this out,
+refurbished it, and applied it to Jane. At first he thought his wife
+had not overrated the quality of the child's mind. Jane seemed
+extraordinarily intelligent. Her precocious definiteness of mind was
+encouraging to her inexperienced preceptor. She had no difficulty in
+fixing her attention, and he felt that every fact he imparted was
+being etched in metal. He helped his wife to engage the best
+teachers, and for a while continued to take an ex-official interest
+in his adopted daughter's studies. But gradually his interest waned.
+Jane's ideas did not increase with her acquisitions. Her young mind
+remained a mere receptacle for facts: a kind of cold-storage from
+which anything that had been put there could be taken out at a
+moment's notice, intact but congealed. She developed, moreover, an
+inordinate pride in the capacity of her mental storehouse, and a
+tendency to pelt her public with its contents. She was overheard to
+jeer at her nurse for not knowing when the Saxon Heptarchy had
+fallen, and she alternately dazzled and depressed Mrs. Lethbury by
+the wealth of her chronological allusions. She showed no interest in
+the significance of the facts she amassed: she simply collected
+dates as another child might have collected stamps or marbles. To
+her foster-mother she seemed a prodigy of wisdom; but Lethbury saw,
+with a secret movement of sympathy, how the aptitudes in which Mrs.
+Lethbury gloried were slowly estranging her from their possessor.
+
+"She is getting too clever for me," his wife said to him, after one
+of Jane's historical flights, "but I am so glad that she will be a
+companion to you."
+
+Lethbury groaned in spirit. He did not look forward to Jane's
+companionship. She was still a good little girl: but there was
+something automatic and formal in her goodness, as though it were a
+kind of moral calisthenics that she went through for the sake of
+showing her agility. An early consciousness of virtue had moreover
+constituted her the natural guardian and adviser of her elders.
+Before she was fifteen she had set about reforming the household.
+She took Mrs. Lethbury in hand first; then she extended her efforts
+to the servants, with consequences more disastrous to the domestic
+harmony; and lastly she applied herself to Lethbury. She proved to
+him by statistics that he smoked too much, and that it was injurious
+to the optic nerve to read in bed. She took him to task for not
+going to church more regularly, and pointed out to him the evils of
+desultory reading. She suggested that a regular course of study
+encourages mental concentration, and hinted that inconsecutiveness
+of thought is a sign of approaching age.
+
+To her adopted mother her suggestions were equally pertinent. She
+instructed Mrs. Lethbury in an improved way of making beef stock,
+and called her attention to the unhygienic qualities of carpets. She
+poured out distracting facts about bacilli and vegetable mould, and
+demonstrated that curtains and picture-frames are a hot-bed of
+animal organisms. She learned by heart the nutritive ingredients of
+the principal articles of diet, and revolutionized the cuisine by an
+attempt to establish a scientific average between starch and
+phosphates. Four cooks left during this experiment, and Lethbury
+fell into the habit of dining at his club.
+
+Once or twice, at the outset, he had tried to check Jane's ardor;
+but his efforts resulted only in hurting his wife's feelings. Jane
+remained impervious, and Mrs. Lethbury resented any attempt to
+protect her from her daughter. Lethbury saw that she was consoled
+for the sense of her own inferiority by the thought of what Jane's
+intellectual companionship must be to him; and he tried to keep up
+the illusion by enduring with what grace he might the blighting
+edification of Jane's discourse.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+
+
+As Jane grew up, he sometimes avenged himself by wondering if his
+wife was still sorry that they had not called her Muriel. Jane was
+not ugly; she developed, indeed, a kind of categorical prettiness
+that might have been a projection of her mind. She had a creditable
+collection of features, but one had to take an inventory of them to
+find out that she was good-looking. The fusing grace had been
+omitted.
+
+Mrs. Lethbury took a touching pride in her daughter's first steps in
+the world. She expected Jane to take by her complexion those whom
+she did not capture by her learning. But Jane's rosy freshness did
+not work any perceptible ravages. Whether the young men guessed the
+axioms on her lips and detected the encyclopaedia in her eye, or
+whether they simply found no intrinsic interest in these features,
+certain it is, that, in spite of her mother's heroic efforts, and of
+incessant calls on Lethbury's purse, Jane, at the end of her first
+season, had dropped hopelessly out of the running. A few duller
+girls found her interesting, and one or two young men came to the
+house with the object of meeting other young women; but she was
+rapidly becoming one of the social supernumeraries who are asked out
+only because they are on people's lists.
+
+The blow was bitter to Mrs. Lethbury; but she consoled herself with
+the idea that Jane had failed because she was too clever. Jane
+probably shared this conviction; at all events she betrayed no
+consciousness of failure. She had developed a pronounced taste for
+society, and went out, unweariedly and obstinately, winter after
+winter, while Mrs. Lethbury toiled in her wake, showering attentions
+on oblivious hostesses. To Lethbury there was something at once
+tragic and exasperating in the sight of their two figures, the one
+conciliatory, the other dogged, both pursuing with unabated zeal the
+elusive prize of popularity. He even began to feel a personal stake
+in the pursuit, not as it concerned Jane, but as it affected his
+wife. He saw that the latter was the victim of Jane's
+disappointment: that Jane was not above the crude satisfaction of
+"taking it out" of her mother. Experience checked the impulse to
+come to his wife's defence; and when his resentment was at its
+height, Jane disarmed him by giving up the struggle.
+
+Nothing was said to mark her capitulation; but Lethbury noticed that
+the visiting ceased, and that the dressmaker's bills diminished. At
+the same time, Mrs. Lethbury made it known that Jane had taken up
+charities; and before long Jane's conversation confirmed this
+announcement. At first Lethbury congratulated himself on the change;
+but Jane's domesticity soon began to weigh on him. During the day
+she was sometimes absent on errands of mercy; but in the evening she
+was always there. At first she and Mrs. Lethbury sat in the
+drawing-room together, and Lethbury smoked in the library; but
+presently Jane formed the habit of joining him there, and he began
+to suspect that he was included among the objects of her
+philanthropy.
+
+Mrs. Lethbury confirmed the suspicion. "Jane has grown very
+serious-minded lately," she said. "She imagines that she used to
+neglect you, and she is trying to make up for it. Don't discourage
+her," she added innocently.
+
+Such a plea delivered Lethbury helpless to his daughter's
+ministrations: and he found himself measuring the hours he spent
+with her by the amount of relief they must be affording her mother.
+There were even moments when he read a furtive gratitude in Mrs.
+Lethbury's eye.
+
+But Lethbury was no hero, and he had nearly reached the limit of
+vicarious endurance when something wonderful happened. They never
+quite knew afterward how it had come about, or who first perceived
+it; but Mrs. Lethbury one day gave tremulous voice to their
+inferences.
+
+"Of course," she said, "he comes here because of Elise." The young
+lady in question, a friend of Jane's, was possessed of attractions
+which had already been found to explain the presence of masculine
+visitors.
+
+Lethbury risked a denial. "I don't think he does," he declared.
+
+"But Elise is thought very pretty," Mrs. Lethbury insisted.
+
+"I can't help that," said Lethbury doggedly.
+
+He saw a faint light in his wife's eyes; but she remarked
+carelessly: "Mr. Budd would be a very good match for Elise."
+
+Lethbury could hardly repress a chuckle: he was so exquisitely aware
+that she was trying to propitiate the gods.
+
+For a few weeks neither said a word; then Mrs. Lethbury once more
+reverted to the subject.
+
+"It is a month since Elise went abroad," she said.
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"And Mr. Budd seems to come here just as often--"
+
+"Ah," said Lethbury with heroic indifference; and his wife hastily
+changed the subject.
+
+Mr. Winstanley Budd was a young man who suffered from an excess of
+manner. Politeness gushed from him in the driest seasons. He was
+always performing feats of drawing-room chivalry, and the approach
+of the most unobtrusive female threw him into attitudes which
+endangered the furniture. His features, being of the cherubic order,
+did not lend themselves to this role; but there were moments when he
+appeared to dominate them, to force them into compliance with an
+aquiline ideal. The range of Mr. Budd's social benevolence made its
+object hard to distinguish. He spread his cloak so indiscriminately
+that one could not always interpret the gesture, and Jane's
+impassive manner had the effect of increasing his demonstrations:
+she threw him into paroxysms of politeness.
+
+At first he filled the house with his amenities; but gradually it
+became apparent that his most dazzling effects were directed
+exclusively to Jane. Lethbury and his wife held their breath and
+looked away from each other. They pretended not to notice the
+frequency of Mr. Budd's visits, they struggled against an imprudent
+inclination to leave the young people too much alone. Their
+conclusions were the result of indirect observation, for neither of
+them dared to be caught watching Mr. Budd: they behaved like
+naturalists on the trail of a rare butterfly.
+
+In his efforts not to notice Mr. Budd, Lethbury centred his
+attentions on Jane; and Jane, at this crucial moment, wrung from him
+a reluctant admiration. While her parents went about dissembling
+their emotions, she seemed to have none to conceal. She betrayed
+neither eagerness nor surprise; so complete was her unconcern that
+there were moments when Lethbury feared it was obtuseness, when he
+could hardly help whispering to her that now was the moment to lower
+the net.
+
+Meanwhile the velocity of Mr. Budd's gyrations increased with the
+ardor of courtship: his politeness became incandescent, and Jane
+found herself the centre of a pyrotechnical display culminating in
+the "set piece" of an offer of marriage.
+
+Mrs. Lethbury imparted the news to her husband one evening after
+their daughter had gone to bed. The announcement was made and
+received with an air of detachment, as though both feared to be
+betrayed into unseemly exultation; but Lethbury, as his wife ended,
+could not repress the inquiry, "Have they decided on a day?"
+
+Mrs. Lethbury's superior command of her features enabled her to look
+shocked. "What can you be thinking of? He only offered himself at
+five!"
+
+"Of course--of course--" stammered Lethbury--"but nowadays people
+marry after such short engagements--"
+
+"Engagement!" said his wife solemnly. "There is no engagement."
+
+Lethbury dropped his cigar. "What on earth do you mean?"
+
+"Jane is thinking it over."
+
+_"Thinking it over?"_ "She has asked for a month before deciding."
+
+Lethbury sank back with a gasp. Was it genius or was it madness? He
+felt incompetent to decide; and Mrs. Lethbury's next words showed
+that she shared his difficulty.
+
+"Of course I don't want to hurry Jane--"
+
+"Of course not," he acquiesced.
+
+"But I pointed out to her that a young man of Mr. Budd's impulsive
+temperament might--might be easily discouraged--"
+
+"Yes; and what did she say?"
+
+"She said that if she was worth winning she was worth waiting for."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+
+
+
+The period of Mr. Budd's probation could scarcely have cost him as
+much mental anguish as it caused his would-be parents-in-law.
+
+Mrs. Lethbury, by various ruses, tried to shorten the ordeal, but
+Jane remained inexorable; and each morning Lethbury came down to
+breakfast with the certainty of finding a letter of withdrawal from
+her discouraged suitor.
+
+When at length the decisive day came, and Mrs. Lethbury, at its
+close, stole into the library with an air of chastened joy, they
+stood for a moment without speaking; then Mrs. Lethbury paid a
+fitting tribute to the proprieties by faltering out: "It will be
+dreadful to have to give her up--"
+
+Lethbury could not repress a warning gesture; but even as it escaped
+him, he realized that his wife's grief was genuine.
+
+"Of course, of course," he said, vainly sounding his own emotional
+shallows for an answering regret. And yet it was his wife who had
+suffered most from Jane!
+
+He had fancied that these sufferings would be effaced by the milder
+atmosphere of their last weeks together; but felicity did not soften
+Jane. Not for a moment did she relax her dominion: she simply
+widened it to include a new subject. Mr. Budd found himself under
+orders with the others; and a new fear assailed Lethbury as he saw
+Jane assume prenuptial control of her betrothed. Lethbury had never
+felt any strong personal interest in Mr. Budd; but, as Jane's
+prospective husband, the young man excited his sympathy. To his
+surprise, he found that Mrs. Lethbury shared the feeling.
+
+"I'm afraid he may find Jane a little exacting," she said, after an
+evening dedicated to a stormy discussion of the wedding
+arrangements. "She really ought to make some concessions. If he
+_wants_ to be married in a black frock-coat instead of a dark gray
+one--" She paused and looked doubtfully at Lethbury.
+
+"What can I do about it?" he said.
+
+"You might explain to him--tell him that Jane isn't always--"
+
+Lethbury made an impatient gesture. "What are you afraid of? His
+finding her out or his not finding her out?"
+
+Mrs. Lethbury flushed. "You put it so dreadfully!"
+
+Her husband mused for a moment; then he said with an air of cheerful
+hypocrisy: "After all, Budd is old enough to take care of himself."
+
+But the next day Mrs. Lethbury surprised him. Late in the afternoon
+she entered the library, so breathless and inarticulate that he
+scented a catastrophe.
+
+"I've done it!" she cried.
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Told him." She nodded toward the door. "He's just gone. Jane is
+out, and I had a chance to talk to him alone."
+
+Lethbury pushed a chair forward and she sank into it.
+
+"What did you tell him? That she is _not_ always--"
+
+Mrs. Lethbury lifted a tragic eye. "No; I told him that she always
+_is_--"
+
+"Always _is_--?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a pause. Lethbury made a call on his hoarded philosophy.
+He saw Jane suddenly reinstated in her evening seat by the library
+fire; but an answering chord in him thrilled at his wife's heroism.
+
+"Well--what did he say?"
+
+Mrs. Lethbury's agitation deepened. It was clear that the blow had
+fallen.
+
+"He...he said...that we...had never understood Jane...
+or appreciated her..." The final syllables were lost in her
+handkerchief, and she left him marvelling at the mechanism of a
+woman.
+
+After that, Lethbury faced the future with an undaunted eye. They
+had done their duty--at least his wife had done hers--and they were
+reaping the usual harvest of ingratitude with a zest seldom accorded
+to such reaping. There was a marked change in Mr. Budd's manner, and
+his increasing coldness sent a genial glow through Lethbury's
+system. It was easy to bear with Jane in the light of Mr. Budd's
+disapproval.
+
+There was a good deal to be borne in the last days, and the brunt of
+it fell on Mrs. Lethbury. Jane marked her transition to the married
+state by an appropriate but incongruous display of nerves. She
+became sentimental, hysterical and reluctant. She quarrelled with
+her betrothed and threatened to return the ring. Mrs. Lethbury had
+to intervene, and Lethbury felt the hovering sword of destiny. But
+the blow was suspended. Mr. Budd's chivalry was proof against all
+his bride's caprices, and his devotion throve on her cruelty.
+Lethbury feared that he was too faithful, too enduring, and longed
+to urge him to vary his tactics. Jane presently reappeared with the
+ring on her finger, and consented to try on the wedding-dress; but
+her uncertainties, her reactions, were prolonged till the final day.
+
+When it dawned, Lethbury was still in an ecstasy of apprehension.
+Feeling reasonably sure of the principal actors, he had centred his
+fears on incidental possibilities. The clergyman might have a
+stroke, or the church might burn down, or there might be something
+wrong with the license. He did all that was humanly possible to
+avert such contingencies, but there remained that incalculable
+factor known as the hand of God. Lethbury seemed to feel it groping
+for him.
+
+In the church it almost had him by the nape. Mr. Budd was late; and
+for five immeasurable minutes Lethbury and Jane faced a churchful of
+conjecture. Then the bridegroom appeared, flushed but chivalrous,
+and explaining to his father-in-law under cover of the ritual that
+he had torn his glove and had to go back for another.
+
+"You'll be losing the ring next," muttered Lethbury; but Mr. Budd
+produced this article punctually, and a moment or two later was
+bearing its wearer captive down the aisle.
+
+At the wedding-breakfast Lethbury caught his wife's eye fixed on him
+in mild disapproval, and understood that his hilarity was exceeding
+the bounds of fitness. He pulled himself together, and tried to
+subdue his tone; but his jubilation bubbled over like a
+champagne-glass perpetually refilled. The deeper his draughts, the
+higher it rose.
+
+It was at the brim when, in the wake of the dispersing guests, Jane
+came down in her travelling-dress and fell on her mother's neck.
+
+"I can't leave you!" she wailed, and Lethbury felt as suddenly
+sobered as a man under a douche. But if the bride was reluctant her
+captor was relentless. Never had Mr. Budd been more dominant, more
+aquiline. Lethbury's last fears were dissipated as the young man
+snatched Jane from her mother's bosom and bore her off to the
+brougham.
+
+The brougham rolled away, the last milliner's girl forsook her post
+by the awning, the red carpet was folded up, and the house door
+closed. Lethbury stood alone in the hall with his wife. As he turned
+toward her, he noticed the look of tired heroism in her eyes, the
+deepened lines of her face. They reflected his own symptoms too
+accurately not to appeal to him. The nervous tension had been
+horrible. He went up to her, and an answering impulse made her lay a
+hand on his arm. He held it there a moment.
+
+"Let us go off and have a jolly little dinner at a restaurant," he
+proposed.
+
+There had been a time when such a suggestion would have surprised
+her to the verge of disapproval; but now she agreed to it at once.
+
+"Oh, that would be so nice," she murmured with a great sigh of
+relief and assuagement.
+
+Jane had fulfilled her mission after all: she had drawn them
+together at last.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+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."
+
+"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 LETTER
+
+I
+
+
+
+
+
+For many years he had lived withdrawn from the world in which he had
+once played so active and even turbulent a part. The study of Tuscan
+art was his only pursuit, and it was to help him in the
+classification of his notes and documents that I was first called to
+his villa. Colonel Alingdon had then the look of a very old man,
+though his age can hardly have exceeded seventy. He was small and
+bent, with a finely wrinkled face which still wore the tan of
+youthful exposure. But for this dusky redness it would have been
+hard to reconstruct from the shrunken recluse, with his low
+fastidious voice and carefully tended hands, an image of that young
+knight of adventure whose sword had been at the service of every
+uprising which stirred the uneasy soil of Italy in the first half of
+the nineteenth century.
+
+Though I was more of a proficient in Colonel Alingdon's later than
+his earlier pursuits, the thought of his soldiering days was always
+coming between me and the pacific work of his old age. As we sat
+collating papers and comparing photographs, I had the feeling that
+this dry and quiet old man had seen even stranger things than people
+said: that he knew more of the inner history of Europe than half the
+diplomatists of his day.
+
+I was not alone in this conviction; and the friend who had engaged
+me for Colonel Alingdon had appended to his instructions the
+injunction to "get him to talk." But this was what no one could do.
+Colonel Alingdon was ready to discuss by the hour the date of a
+Giottesque triptych, or the attribution of a disputed master; but on
+the history of his early life he was habitually silent.
+
+It was perhaps because I recognized this silence and respected it
+that it afterward came to be broken for me. Or it was perhaps merely
+because, as the failure of Colonel Alingdon's sight cut him off from
+his work, he felt the natural inclination of age to revert from the
+empty present to the crowded past. For one cause or another he _did_
+talk to me in the last year of his life; and I felt myself mingled,
+to an extent inconceivable to the mere reader of history, with the
+passionate scenes of the Italian struggle for liberty. Colonel
+Alingdon had been mixed with it in all its phases: he had known the
+last Carbonari and the Young Italy of Mazzini; he had been in
+Perugia when the mercenaries of a liberal Pope slaughtered women and
+children in the streets; he had been in Sicily with the Thousand,
+and in Milan during the _Cinque Giornate_.
+
+"They say the Italians didn't know how to fight," he said one day,
+musingly--"that the French had to come down and do their work for
+them. People forget how long it was since they had had any fighting
+to do. But they hadn't forgotten how to suffer and hold their
+tongues; how to die and take their secrets with them. The Italian
+war of independence was really carried on underground: it was one of
+those awful silent struggles which are so much more terrible than
+the roar of a battle. It's a deuced sight easier to charge with your
+regiment than to lie rotting in an Austrian prison and know that if
+you give up the name of a friend or two you can go back scot-free to
+your wife and children. And thousands and thousands of Italians had
+the choice given them--and hardly one went back."
+
+He sat silent, his meditative fingertips laid together, his eyes
+fixed on the past which was the now only thing clearly visible to
+them.
+
+"And the women?" I said. "Were they as brave as the men?"
+
+I had not spoken quite at random. I had always heard that there had
+been as much of love as of war in Colonel Alingdon's early career,
+and I hoped that my question might give a personal turn to his
+reminiscences.
+
+"The women?" he repeated. "They were braver--for they had more to
+bear and less to do. Italy could never have been saved without
+them."
+
+His eye had kindled and I detected in it the reflection of some
+vivid memory. It was then that I asked him what was the bravest
+thing he had ever known of a woman's doing.
+
+The question was such a vague one that I hardly knew why I had put
+it, but to my surprise he answered almost at once, as though I had
+touched on a subject of frequent meditation.
+
+"The bravest thing I ever saw done by a woman," he said, "was
+brought about by an act of my own--and one of which I am not
+particularly proud. For that reason I have never spoken of it
+before--there was a time when I didn't even care to think of it--but
+all that is past now. She died years ago, and so did the Jack
+Alingdon she knew, and in telling you the story I am no more than
+the mouthpiece of an old tradition which some ancestor might have
+handed down to me."
+
+He leaned back, his clear blind gaze fixed smilingly on me, and I
+had the feeling that, in groping through the labyrinth of his young
+adventures, I had come unawares upon their central point.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+
+
+When I was in Milan in 'forty-seven an unlucky thing happened to me.
+
+I had been sent there to look over the ground by some of my Italian
+friends in England. As an English officer I had no difficulty in
+getting into Milanese society, for England had for years been the
+refuge of the Italian fugitives, and I was known to be working in
+their interests. It was just the kind of job I liked, and I never
+enjoyed life more than I did in those days. There was a great deal
+going on--good music, balls and theatres. Milan kept up her gayety
+to the last. The English were shocked by the _insouciance_ of a race
+who could dance under the very nose of the usurper; but those who
+understood the situation knew that Milan was playing Brutus, and
+playing it uncommonly well.
+
+I was in the thick of it all--it was just the atmosphere to suit a
+young fellow of nine-and-twenty, with a healthy passion for waltzing
+and fighting. But, as I said, an unlucky thing happened to me. I was
+fool enough to fall in love with Donna Candida Falco. You have heard
+of her, of course: you know the share she had in the great work. In
+a different way she was what the terrible Princess Belgioioso had
+been to an earlier generation. But Donna Candida was not terrible.
+She was quiet, discreet and charming. When I knew her she was a
+widow of thirty, her husband, Andrea Falco, having died ten years
+previously, soon after their marriage. The marriage had been
+notoriously unhappy, and his death was a release to Donna Candida.
+Her family were of Modena, but they had come to live in Milan soon
+after the execution of Ciro Menotti and his companions. You remember
+the details of that business? The Duke of Modena, one of the most
+adroit villains in Europe, had been bitten with the hope of uniting
+the Italian states under his rule. It was a vision of Italian
+liberation--of a sort. A few madmen were dazzled by it, and Ciro
+Menotti was one of them. You know the end. The Duke of Modena, who
+had counted on Louis Philippe's backing, found that that astute
+sovereign had betrayed him to Austria. Instantly, he saw that his
+first business was to get rid of the conspirators he had created.
+There was nothing easier than for a Hapsburg Este to turn on a
+friend. Ciro Menotti had staked his life for the Duke--and the Duke
+took it. You may remember that, on the night when seven hundred men
+and a cannon attacked Menotti's house, the Duke was seen looking on
+at the slaughter from an arcade across the square.
+
+Well, among the lesser fry taken that night was a lad of eighteen,
+Emilio Verna, who was the only brother of Donna Candida. The Verna
+family was one of the most respected in Modena. It consisted, at
+that time, of the mother, Countess Verna, of young Emilio and his
+sister. Count Verna had been in Spielberg in the twenties. He had
+never recovered from his sufferings there, and died in exile,
+without seeing his wife and children again. Countess Verna had been
+an ardent patriot in her youth, but the failure of the first
+attempts against Austria had discouraged her. She thought that in
+losing her husband she had sacrificed enough for her country, and
+her one idea was to keep Emilio on good terms with the government.
+But the Verna blood was not tractable, and his father's death was
+not likely to make Emilio a good subject of the Estes. Not that he
+had as yet taken any active share in the work of the conspirators:
+he simply hadn't had time. At his trial there was nothing to show
+that he had been in Menotti's confidence; but he had been seen once
+or twice coming out of what the ducal police called "suspicious"
+houses, and in his desk were found some verses to Italy. That was
+enough to hang a man in Modena, and Emilio Verna was hanged.
+
+The Countess never recovered from the blow. The circumstances of her
+son's death were too abominable, to unendurable. If he had risked
+his life in the conspiracy, she might have been reconciled to his
+losing it. But he was a mere child, who had sat at home, chafing but
+powerless, while his seniors plotted and fought. He had been
+sacrificed to the Duke's insane fear, to his savage greed for
+victims, and the Countess Verna was not to be consoled.
+
+As soon as possible, the mother and daughter left Modena for Milan.
+There they lived in seclusion till Candida's marriage. During her
+girlhood she had had to accept her mother's view of life: to shut
+herself up in the tomb in which the poor woman brooded over her
+martyrs. But that was not the girl's way of honoring the dead. At
+the moment when the first shot was fired on Menotti's house she had
+been reading Petrarch's Ode to the Lords of Italy, and the lines
+_l'antico valor Ne Vitalici cor non e ancor morto_ had lodged like a
+bullet in her brain. From the day of her marriage she began to take
+a share in the silent work which was going on throughout Italy.
+Milan was at that time the centre of the movement, and Candida Falco
+threw herself into it with all the passion which her unhappy
+marriage left unsatisfied. At first she had to act with great
+reserve, for her husband was a prudent man, who did not care to have
+his habits disturbed by political complications; but after his death
+there was nothing to restrain her, except the exquisite tact which
+enabled her to work night and day in the Italian cause without
+giving the Austrian authorities a pretext for interference.
+
+When I first knew Donna Candida, her mother was still living: a
+tragic woman, prematurely bowed, like an image of death in the
+background of the daughter's brilliant life. The Countess, since her
+son's death, had become a patriot again, though in a narrower sense
+than Candida. The mother's first thought was that her dead must be
+avenged, the daughter's that Italy must be saved; but from different
+motives they worked for the same end. Candida felt for the Countess
+that protecting tenderness with which Italian children so often
+regard their parents, a feeling heightened by the reverence which
+the mother's sufferings inspired. Countess Verna, as the wife and
+mother of martyrs, had done what Candida longed to do: she had given
+her utmost to Italy. There must have been moments when the
+self-absorption of her grief chilled her daughter's ardent spirit;
+but Candida revered in her mother the image of their afflicted
+country.
+
+"It was too terrible," she said, speaking of what the Countess had
+suffered after Emilio's death. "All the circumstances were too
+unmerciful. It seemed as if God had turned His face from my mother;
+as if she had been singled out to suffer more than any of the
+others. All the other families received some message or token of
+farewell from the prisoners. One of them bribed the gaoler to carry
+a letter--another sent a lock of hair by the chaplain. But Emilio
+made no sign, sent no word. My mother felt as though he had turned
+his back on us. She used to sit for hours, saying again and again,
+'Why was he the only one to forget his mother?' I tried to comfort
+her, but it was useless: she had suffered too much. Now I never
+reason with her; I listen, and let her ease her poor heart. Do you
+know, she still asks me sometimes if I think he may have left a
+letter--if there is no way of finding out if he left one? She
+forgets that I have tried again and again: that I have sent bribes
+and messages to the gaoler, the chaplain, to every one who came near
+him. The answer is always the same--no one has ever heard of a
+letter. I suppose the poor boy was stunned, and did not think of
+writing. Who knows what was passing through his poor bewildered
+brain? But it would have been a great help to my mother to have a
+word from him. If I had known how to imitate his writing I should
+have forged a letter."
+
+I knew enough of the Italians to understand how her boy's silence
+must have aggravated the Countess's grief. Precious as a message
+from a dying son would be to any mother, such signs of tenderness
+have to the Italians a peculiar significance. The Latin race is
+rhetorical: it possesses the gift of death-bed eloquence, the knack
+of saying the effective thing on momentous occasions. The letters
+which the Italian patriots sent home from their prisons or from the
+scaffold are not the halting farewells that anguish would have wrung
+from a less expressive race: they are veritable "compositions,"
+saved from affectation only by the fact that fluency and sonority
+are a part of the Latin inheritance. Such letters, passed from hand
+to hand among the bereaved families, were not only a comfort to the
+survivors but an incentive to fresh sacrifices. They were the "seed
+of the martyrs" with which Italy was being sown; and I knew what it
+meant to the Countess Verna to have no such treasure in her bosom,
+to sit silent while other mothers quoted their sons' last words.
+
+I said just now that it was an unlucky day for me when I fell in
+love with Donna Candida; and no doubt you have guessed the reason.
+She was in love with some one else. It was the old situation of
+Heine's song. That other loved another--loved Italy, and with an
+undivided passion. His name was Fernando Briga, and at that time he
+was one of the foremost liberals in Italy. He came of a middle-class
+Modenese family. His father was a doctor, a prudent man, engrossed
+in his profession and unwilling to compromise it by meddling in
+politics. His irreproachable attitude won the confidence of the
+government, and the Duke conferred on him the sinister office of
+physician to the prisons of Modena. It was this Briga who attended
+Emilio Falco, and several of the other prisoners who were executed
+at the same time.
+
+Under shelter of his father's loyalty young Fernando conspired in
+safety. He was studying medicine, and every one supposed him to be
+absorbed in his work; but as a matter of fact he was fast ripening
+into one of Mazzini's ablest lieutenants. His career belongs to
+history, so I need not enlarge on it here. In 1847 he was in Milan,
+and had become one of the leading figures in the liberal group which
+was working for a coalition with Piedmont. Like all the ablest men
+of his day, he had cast off Mazziniism and pinned his faith to the
+house of Savoy. The Austrian government had an eye on him, but he
+had inherited his father's prudence, though he used it for nobler
+ends, and his discretion enabled him to do far more for the cause
+than a dozen enthusiasts could have accomplished. No one understood
+this better than Donna Candida. She had a share of his caution, and
+he trusted her with secrets which he would not have confided to many
+men. Her drawing-room was the centre of the Piedmontese party, yet
+so clever was she in averting suspicion that more than one hunted
+conspirator hid in her house, and was helped across the Alps by her
+agents.
+
+Briga relied on her as he did on no one else; but he did not love
+her, and she knew it. Still, she was young, she was handsome, and he
+loved no one else: how could she give up hoping? From her intimate
+friends she made no secret of her feelings: Italian women are not
+reticent in such matters, and Donna Candida was proud of loving a
+hero. You will see at once that I had no chance; but if she could
+not give up hope, neither could I. Perhaps in her desire to secure
+my services for the cause she may have shown herself overkind; or
+perhaps I was still young enough to set down to my own charms a
+success due to quite different causes. At any rate, I persuaded
+myself that if I could manage to do something conspicuous for Italy
+I might yet make her care for me. With such an incentive you will
+not wonder that I worked hard; but though Donna Candida was full of
+gratitude she continued to adore my rival.
+
+One day we had a hot scene. I began, I believe, by reproaching her
+with having led me on; and when she defended herself, I retaliated
+by taunting her with Briga's indifference. She grew pale at that,
+and said it was enough to love a hero, even without hope of return;
+and as she said it she herself looked so heroic, so radiant, so
+unattainably the woman I wanted, that a sneer may have escaped
+me:--was she so sure then that Briga was a hero? I remember her
+proud silence and our wretched parting. I went away feeling that at
+last I had really lost her; and the thought made me savage and
+vindictive.
+
+Soon after, as it happened, came the _Five Days_, and Milan was
+free. I caught a distant glimpse of Donna Candida in the hospital to
+which I was carried after the fight; but my wound was a slight one
+and in twenty-four hours I was about again on crutches. I hoped she
+might send for me, but she did not, and I was too sulky to make the
+first advance. A day or two later I heard there had been a commotion
+in Modena, and not being in fighting trim I got leave to go over
+there with one or two men whom the Modenese liberals had called in
+to help them. When we arrived the precious Duke had been swept out
+and a provisional government set up. One of my companions, who was a
+Modenese, was made a member, and knowing that I wanted something to
+do, he commissioned me to look up some papers in the ducal archives.
+It was fascinating work, for in the pursuit of my documents I
+uncovered the hidden springs of his late Highness's paternal
+administration. The principal papers relative to the civil and
+criminal administration of Modena have since been published, and the
+world knows how that estimable sovereign cared for the material and
+spiritual welfare of his subjects.
+
+Well--in the course of my search, I came across a file of old papers
+marked: "Taken from political prisoners. A.D. 1831." It was the year
+of Menotti's conspiracy, and everything connected with that date was
+thrilling. I loosened the band and ran over the letters. Suddenly I
+came across one which was docketed: "Given by Doctor Briga's son to
+the warder of His Highness's prisons." _Doctor Briga's son?_ That
+could be no other than Fernando: I knew he was an only child. But
+how came such a paper into his hands, and how had it passed from
+them into those of the Duke's warder? My own hands shook as I opened
+the letter--I felt the man suddenly in my power.
+
+Then I began to read. "My adored mother, even in this lowest circle
+of hell all hearts are not closed to pity, and I have been given the
+hope that these last words of farewell may reach you...." My eyes
+ran on over pages of plaintive rhetoric. "Embrace for me my adored
+Candida...let her never forget the cause for which her father
+and brother perished...let her keep alive in her breast the
+thought of Spielberg and Reggio. Do not grieve that I die so young...
+though not with those heroes in deed I was with them in spirit,
+and am worthy to be enrolled in the sacred phalanx..." and so on.
+Before I reached the signature I knew the letter was from Emilio
+Verna.
+
+I put it in my pocket, finished my work and started immediately for
+Milan. I didn't quite know what I meant to do--my head was in a
+whirl. I saw at once what must have happened. Fernando Briga, then a
+lad of fifteen or sixteen, had attended his father in prison during
+Emilio Verna's last hours, and the latter, perhaps aware of the
+lad's liberal sympathies, had found an opportunity of giving him the
+letter. But why had Briga given it up to the warder? That was the
+puzzling question. The docket said: "_ Given by_ Doctor Briga's
+son"--but it might mean "taken from." Fernando might have been seen
+to receive the letter and might have been searched on leaving the
+prison. But that would not account for his silence afterward. How
+was it that, if he knew of the letter, he had never told Emilio's
+family of it? There was only one explanation. If the letter had been
+taken from him by force he would have had no reason for concealing
+its existence; and his silence was clear proof that he had given it
+up voluntarily, no doubt in the hope of standing well with the
+authorities. But then he was a traitor and a coward; the patriot of
+'forty-eight had begun life as an informer! But does innate
+character ever change so radically that the lad who has committed a
+base act at fifteen may grow up into an honorable man? A good man
+may be corrupted by life, but can the years turn a born sneak into a
+hero?
+
+You may fancy how I answered my own questions....If Briga had
+been false and cowardly then, was he not sure to be false and
+cowardly still? In those days there were traitors under every coat,
+and more than one brave fellow had been sold to the police by his
+best friend....You will say that Briga's record was unblemished,
+that he had exposed himself to danger too frequently, had stood by
+his friends too steadfastly, to permit of a rational doubt of his
+good faith. So reason might have told me in a calmer moment, but she
+was not allowed to make herself heard just then. I was young, I was
+angry, I chose to think I had been unfairly treated, and perhaps at
+my rival's instigation. It was not unlikely that Briga knew of my
+love for Donna Candida, and had encouraged her to use it in the good
+cause. Was she not always at his bidding? My blood boiled at the
+thought, and reaching Milan in a rage I went straight to Donna
+Candida.
+
+I had measured the exact force of the blow I was going to deal. The
+triumph of the liberals in Modena had revived public interest in the
+unsuccessful struggle of their predecessors, the men who, sixteen
+years earlier, had paid for the same attempt with their lives. The
+victors of 'forty-eight wished to honor the vanquished of
+'thirty-two. All the families exiled by the ducal government were
+hastening back to recover possession of their confiscated property
+and of the graves of their dead. Already it had been decided to
+raise a monument to Menotti and his companions. There were to be
+speeches, garlands, a public holiday: the thrill of the
+commemoration would run through Europe. You see what it would have
+meant to the poor Countess to appear on the scene with her boy's
+letter in her hand; and you see also what the memorandum on the back
+of the letter would have meant to Donna Candida. Poor Emilio's
+farewell would be published in all the journals of Europe: the
+finding of the letter would be on every one's lips. And how conceal
+those fatal words on the back? At the moment, it seemed to me that
+fortune could not have given me a handsomer chance of destroying my
+rival than in letting me find the letter which he stood convicted of
+having suppressed.
+
+My sentiment was perhaps not a strictly honorable one; yet what
+could I do but give the letter to Donna Candida? To keep it back was
+out of the question; and with the best will in the world I could not
+have erased Briga's name from the back. The mistake I made was in
+thinking it lucky that the paper had fallen into my hands.
+
+Donna Candida was alone when I entered. We had parted in anger, but
+she held out her hand with a smile of pardon, and asked what news I
+brought from Modena. The smile exasperated me: I felt as though she
+were trying to get me into her power again.
+
+"I bring you a letter from your brother," I said, and handed it to
+her. I had purposely turned the superscription downward, so that she
+should not see it.
+
+She uttered an incredulous cry and tore the letter open. A light
+struck up from it into her face as she read--a radiance that smote
+me to the soul. For a moment I longed to snatch the paper from her
+and efface the name on the back. It hurt me to think how short-lived
+her happiness must be.
+
+Then she did a fatal thing. She came up to me, caught my two hands
+and kissed them. "Oh, thank you--bless you a thousand times! He died
+thinking of us--he died loving Italy!"
+
+I put her from me gently: it was not the kiss I wanted, and the
+touch of her lips hardened me.
+
+She shone on me through her happy tears. "What happiness--what
+consolation you have brought my poor mother! This will take the
+bitterness from her grief. And that it should come to her now! Do
+you know, she had a presentiment of it? When we heard of the Duke's
+flight her first word was: 'Now we may find Emilio's letter.' At
+heart she was always sure that he had written--I suppose some
+blessed instinct told her so." She dropped her face on her hands,
+and I saw her tears fall on the wretched letter.
+
+In a moment she looked up again, with eyes that blessed and trusted
+me. "Tell me where you found it," she said.
+
+I told her.
+
+"Oh, the savages! They took it from him--"
+
+My opportunity had come. "No," I said, "it appears they did _not_
+take it from him."
+
+"Then how--"
+
+I waited a moment. "The letter," I said, looking full at her, "was
+given up to the warder of the prison by the son of Doctor Briga."
+
+She stared, repeating the words slowly. "The son of Doctor Briga?
+But that is--Fernando," she said.
+
+"I have always understood," I replied, "that your friend was an only
+son."
+
+I had expected an outcry of horror; if she had uttered it I could
+have forgiven her anything. But I heard, instead, an incredulous
+exclamation: my statement was really too preposterous! I saw that
+her mind had flashed back to our last talk, and that she charged me
+with something too nearly true to be endurable.
+
+"My brother's letter? Given to the prison warder by Fernando Briga?
+My dear Captain Alingdon--on what authority do you expect me to
+believe such a tale?"
+
+Her incredulity had in it an evident implication of bad faith, and I
+was stung to a quick reply.
+
+"If you will turn over the letter you will see."
+
+She continued to gaze at me a moment: then she obeyed. I don't think
+I ever admired her more than I did then. As she read the name a
+tremor crossed her face; and that was all. Her mind must have
+reached out instantly to the farthest consequences of the discovery,
+but the long habit of self-command enabled her to steady her muscles
+at once. If I had not been on the alert I should have seen no hint
+of emotion.
+
+For a while she looked fixedly at the back of the letter; then she
+raised her eyes to mine.
+
+"Can you tell me who wrote this?" she asked.
+
+Her composure irritated me. She had rallied all her forces to
+Briga's defence, and I felt as though my triumph were slipping from
+me.
+
+"Probably one of the clerks of the archives," I answered. "It is
+written in the same hand as all the other memoranda relating to the
+political prisoners of that year."
+
+"But it is a lie!" she exclaimed. "He was never admitted to the
+prisons."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"How should he have been?"
+
+"He might have gone as his father's assistant."
+
+"But if he had seen my poor brother he would have told me long ago."
+
+"Not if he had really given up this letter," I retorted.
+
+I supposed her quick intelligence had seized this from the first;
+but I saw now that it came to her as a shock. She stood motionless,
+clenching the letter in her hands, and I could guess the rapid
+travel of her thoughts.
+
+Suddenly she came up to me. "Colonel Alingdon," she said, "you have
+been a good friend of mine, though I think you have not liked me
+lately. But whether you like me or not, I know you will not deceive
+me. On your honor, do you think this memorandum may have been
+written later than the letter?"
+
+I hesitated. If she had cried out once against Briga I should have
+wished myself out of the business; but she was too sure of him.
+
+"On my honor," I said, "I think it hardly possible. The ink has
+faded to the same degree."
+
+She made a rapid comparison and folded the letter with a gesture of
+assent.
+
+"It may have been written by an enemy," I went on, wishing to clear
+myself of any appearance of malice.
+
+She shook her head. "He was barely fifteen--and his father was on
+the side of the government. Besides, this would have served him with
+the government, and the liberals would never have known of it."
+
+This was unanswerable--and still not a word of revolt against the
+man whose condemnation she was pronouncing!
+
+"Then--" I said with a vague gesture.
+
+She caught me up. "Then--?"
+
+"You have answered my objections," I returned.
+
+"Your objections?"
+
+"To thinking that Signor Briga could have begun his career as a
+patriot by betraying a friend."
+
+I had brought her to the test at last, but my eyes shrank from her
+face as I spoke. There was a dead silence, which I broke by adding
+lamely: "But no doubt Signor Briga could explain."
+
+She lifted her head, and I saw that my triumph was to be short. She
+stood erect, a few paces from me, resting her hand on a table, but
+not for support.
+
+"Of course he can explain," she said; "do you suppose I ever doubted
+it? But--" she paused a moment, fronting me nobly--"he need not, for
+I understand it all now."
+
+"Ah," I murmured with a last flicker of irony.
+
+"I understand," she repeated. It was she, now, who sought my eyes
+and held them. "It is quite simple--he could not have done
+otherwise."
+
+This was a little too oracular to be received with equanimity. I
+suppose I smiled.
+
+"He could not have done otherwise," she repeated with tranquil
+emphasis. "He merely did what is every Italian's duty--he put Italy
+before himself and his friends." She waited a moment, and then went
+on with growing passion: "Surely you must see what I mean? He was
+evidently in the prison with his father at the time of my poor
+brother's death. Emilio perhaps guessed that he was a friend--or
+perhaps appealed to him because he was young and looked kind. But
+don't you see how dangerous it would have been for Briga to bring
+this letter to us, or even to hide it in his father's house? It is
+true that he was not yet suspected of liberalism, but he was already
+connected with Young Italy, and it is just because he managed to
+keep himself so free of suspicion that he was able to do such good
+work for the cause." She paused, and then went on with a firmer
+voice. "You don't know the danger we all lived in. The government
+spies were everywhere. The laws were set aside as the Duke
+pleased--was not Emilio hanged for having an ode to Italy in his
+desk? After Menotti's conspiracy the Duke grew mad with fear--he was
+haunted by the dread of assassination. The police, to prove their
+zeal, had to trump up false charges and arrest innocent persons--you
+remember the case of poor Ricci? Incriminating papers were smuggled
+into people's houses--they were condemned to death on the paid
+evidence of brigands and galley-slaves. The families of the
+revolutionists were under the closest observation and were shunned
+by all who wished to stand well with the government. If Briga had
+been seen going into our house he would at once have been suspected.
+If he had hidden Emilio's letter at home, its discovery might have
+ruined his family as well as himself. It was his duty to consider
+all these things. In those days no man could serve two masters, and
+he had to choose between endangering the cause and failing to serve
+a friend. He chose the latter--and he was right."
+
+I stood listening, fascinated by the rapidity and skill with which
+she had built up the hypothesis of Briga's defence. But before she
+ended a strange thing happened--her argument had convinced me. It
+seemed to me quite likely that Briga had in fact been actuated by
+the motives she suggested.
+
+I suppose she read the admission in my face, for hers lit up
+victoriously.
+
+"You see?" she exclaimed. "Ah, it takes one brave man to understand
+another."
+
+Perhaps I winced a little at being thus coupled with her hero; at
+any rate, some last impulse of resistance made me say: "I should be
+quite convinced, if Briga had only spoken of the letter afterward.
+If brave people understand each other, I cannot see why he should
+have been afraid of telling you the truth."
+
+She colored deeply, and perhaps not quite resentfully.
+
+"You are right," she said; "he need not have been afraid. But he
+does not know me as I know him. I was useful to Italy, and he may
+have feared to risk my friendship."
+
+"You are the most generous woman I ever knew!" I exclaimed.
+
+She looked at me intently. "You also are generous," she said.
+
+I stiffened instantly, suspecting a purpose behind her praise. "I
+have given you small proof of it!" I said.
+
+She seemed surprised. "In bringing me this letter? What else could
+you do?" She sighed deeply. "You can give me proof enough now."
+
+She had dropped into a chair, and I saw that we had reached the most
+difficult point in our interview.
+
+"Captain Alingdon," she said, "does any one else know of this
+letter?"
+
+"No. I was alone in the archives when I found it."
+
+"And you spoke of it to no one?"
+
+"To no one."
+
+"Then no one must know."
+
+I bowed. "It is for you to decide."
+
+She paused. "Not even my mother," she continued, with a painful
+blush.
+
+I looked at her in amazement. "Not even--?"
+
+She shook her head sadly. "You think me a cruel daughter? Well--_he_
+was a cruel friend. What he did was done for Italy: shall I allow
+myself to be surpassed?"
+
+I felt a pang of commiseration for the mother. "But you will at
+least tell the Countess--"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. "My poor mother--don't make it more
+difficult for me!"
+
+"But I don't understand--"
+
+"Don't you see that she might find it impossible to forgive him? She
+has suffered so much! And I can't risk that--for in her anger she
+might speak. And even if she forgave him, she might be tempted to
+show the letter. Don't you see that, even now, a word of this might
+ruin him? I will trust his fate to no one. If Italy needed him then
+she needs him far more to-day."
+
+She stood before me magnificently, in the splendor of her great
+refusal; then she turned to the writing-table at which she had been
+seated when I came in. Her sealing-taper was still alight, and she
+held her brother's letter to the flame.
+
+I watched her in silence while it burned; but one more question rose
+to my lips.
+
+"You will tell _him_, then, what you have done for him?" I cried.
+
+And at that the heroine turned woman, melted and pressed unhappy
+hands in mine.
+
+"Don't you see that I can never tell him what I do for him? That is
+my gift to Italy," she said.
+
+The Dilettante.
+
+IT was on an impulse hardly needing the arguments he found himself
+advancing in its favor, that Thursdale, on his way to the club,
+turned as usual into Mrs. Vervain's street.
+
+The "as usual" was his own qualification of the act; a convenient
+way of bridging the interval--in days and other sequences--that lay
+between this visit and the last. It was characteristic of him that
+he instinctively excluded his call two days earlier, with Ruth
+Gaynor, from the list of his visits to Mrs. Vervain: the special
+conditions attending it had made it no more like a visit to Mrs.
+Vervain than an engraved dinner invitation is like a personal
+letter. Yet it was to talk over his call with Miss Gaynor that he
+was now returning to the scene of that episode; and it was because
+Mrs. Vervain could be trusted to handle the talking over as
+skilfully as the interview itself that, at her corner, he had felt
+the dilettante's irresistible craving to take a last look at a work
+of art that was passing out of his possession.
+
+On the whole, he knew no one better fitted to deal with the
+unexpected than Mrs. Vervain. She excelled in the rare art of taking
+things for granted, and Thursdale felt a pardonable pride in the
+thought that she owed her excellence to his training. Early in his
+career Thursdale had made the mistake, at the outset of his
+acquaintance with a lady, of telling her that he loved her and
+exacting the same avowal in return. The latter part of that episode
+had been like the long walk back from a picnic, when one has to
+carry all the crockery one has finished using: it was the last time
+Thursdale ever allowed himself to be encumbered with the debris of a
+feast. He thus incidentally learned that the privilege of loving her
+is one of the least favors that a charming woman can accord; and in
+seeking to avoid the pitfalls of sentiment he had developed a
+science of evasion in which the woman of the moment became a mere
+implement of the game. He owed a great deal of delicate enjoyment to
+the cultivation of this art. The perils from which it had been his
+refuge became naively harmless: was it possible that he who now took
+his easy way along the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw
+heights of emotion? Youth is a high-colored season; but he had the
+satisfaction of feeling that he had entered earlier than most into
+that chiar'oscuro of sensation where every half-tone has its value.
+
+As a promoter of this pleasure no one he had known was comparable to
+Mrs. Vervain. He had taught a good many women not to betray their
+feelings, but he had never before had such fine material to work in.
+She had been surprisingly crude when he first knew her; capable of
+making the most awkward inferences, of plunging through thin ice, of
+recklessly undressing her emotions; but she had acquired, under the
+discipline of his reticences and evasions, a skill almost equal to
+his own, and perhaps more remarkable in that it involved keeping
+time with any tune he played and reading at sight some uncommonly
+difficult passages.
+
+It had taken Thursdale seven years to form this fine talent; but the
+result justified the effort. At the crucial moment she had been
+perfect: her way of greeting Miss Gaynor had made him regret that he
+had announced his engagement by letter. it was an evasion that
+confessed a difficulty; a deviation implying an obstacle, where, by
+common consent, it was agreed to see none; it betrayed, in short, a
+lack of confidence in the completeness of his method. It had been
+his pride never to put himself in a position which had to be
+quitted, as it were, by the back door; but here, as he perceived,
+the main portals would have opened for him of their own accord. All
+this, and much more, he read in the finished naturalness with which
+Mrs. Vervain had met Miss Gaynor. He had never seen a better piece
+of work: there was no over-eagerness, no suspicious warmth, above
+all (and this gave her art the grace of a natural quality) there
+were none of those damnable implications whereby a woman, in
+welcoming her friend's betrothed, may keep him on pins and needles
+while she laps the lady in complacency. So masterly a performance,
+indeed, hardly needed the offset of Miss Gaynor's door-step
+words--"To be so kind to me, how she must have liked you!"--though
+he caught himself wishing it lay within the bounds of fitness to
+transmit them, as a final tribute, to the one woman he knew who was
+unfailingly certain to enjoy a good thing. It was perhaps the one
+drawback to his new situation that it might develop good things
+which it would be impossible to hand on to Margaret Vervain.
+
+The fact that he had made the mistake of underrating his friend's
+powers, the consciousness that his writing must have betrayed his
+distrust of her efficiency, seemed an added reason for turning down
+her street instead of going on to the club. He would show her that
+he knew how to value her; he would ask her to achieve with him a
+feat infinitely rarer and more delicate than the one he had appeared
+to avoid. Incidentally, he would also dispose of the interval of
+time before dinner: ever since he had seen Miss Gaynor off, an hour
+earlier, on her return journey to Buffalo, he had been wondering how
+he should put in the rest of the afternoon. It was absurd, how he
+missed the girl....Yes, that was it; the desire to talk about
+her was, after all, at the bottom of his impulse to call on Mrs.
+Vervain! It was absurd, if you like--but it was delightfully
+rejuvenating. He could recall the time when he had been afraid of
+being obvious: now he felt that this return to the primitive
+emotions might be as restorative as a holiday in the Canadian woods.
+And it was precisely by the girl's candor, her directness, her lack
+of complications, that he was taken. The sense that she might say
+something rash at any moment was positively exhilarating: if she had
+thrown her arms about him at the station he would not have given a
+thought to his crumpled dignity. It surprised Thursdale to find what
+freshness of heart he brought to the adventure; and though his sense
+of irony prevented his ascribing his intactness to any conscious
+purpose, he could but rejoice in the fact that his sentimental
+economies had left him such a large surplus to draw upon.
+
+Mrs. Vervain was at home--as usual. When one visits the cemetery one
+expects to find the angel on the tombstone, and it struck Thursdale
+as another proof of his friend's good taste that she had been in no
+undue haste to change her habits. The whole house appeared to count
+on his coming; the footman took his hat and overcoat as naturally as
+though there had been no lapse in his visits; and the drawing-room
+at once enveloped him in that atmosphere of tacit intelligence which
+Mrs. Vervain imparted to her very furniture.
+
+It was a surprise that, in this general harmony of circumstances,
+Mrs. Vervain should herself sound the first false note.
+
+"You?" she exclaimed; and the book she held slipped from her hand.
+
+It was crude, certainly; unless it were a touch of the finest art.
+The difficulty of classifying it disturbed Thursdale's balance.
+
+"Why not?" he said, restoring the book. "Isn't it my hour?" And as
+she made no answer, he added gently, "Unless it's some one else's?"
+
+She laid the book aside and sank back into her chair. "Mine,
+merely," she said.
+
+"I hope that doesn't mean that you're unwilling to share it?"
+
+"With you? By no means. You're welcome to my last crust."
+
+He looked at her reproachfully. "Do you call this the last?"
+
+She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. "It's a
+way of giving it more flavor!"
+
+He returned the smile. "A visit to you doesn't need such
+condiments."
+
+She took this with just the right measure of retrospective
+amusement.
+
+"Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special taste," she
+confessed.
+
+Her smile was so confident, so reassuring, that it lulled him into
+the imprudence of saying, "Why should you want it to be different
+from what was always so perfectly right?"
+
+She hesitated. "Doesn't the fact that it's the last constitute a
+difference?"
+
+"The last--my last visit to you?"
+
+"Oh, metaphorically, I mean--there's a break in the continuity."
+
+Decidedly, she was pressing too hard: unlearning his arts already!
+
+"I don't recognize it," he said. "Unless you make me--" he added,
+with a note that slightly stirred her attitude of languid attention.
+
+She turned to him with grave eyes. "You recognize no difference
+whatever?"
+
+"None--except an added link in the chain."
+
+"An added link?"
+
+"In having one more thing to like you for--your letting Miss Gaynor
+see why I had already so many." He flattered himself that this turn
+had taken the least hint of fatuity from the phrase.
+
+Mrs. Vervain sank into her former easy pose. "Was it that you came
+for?" she asked, almost gaily.
+
+"If it is necessary to have a reason--that was one."
+
+"To talk to me about Miss Gaynor?"
+
+"To tell you how she talks about you."
+
+"That will be very interesting--especially if you have seen her
+since her second visit to me."
+
+"Her second visit?" Thursdale pushed his chair back with a start and
+moved to another. "She came to see you again?"
+
+"This morning, yes--by appointment."
+
+He continued to look at her blankly. "You sent for her?"
+
+"I didn't have to--she wrote and asked me last night. But no doubt
+you have seen her since."
+
+Thursdale sat silent. He was trying to separate his words from his
+thoughts, but they still clung together inextricably. "I saw her off
+just now at the station."
+
+"And she didn't tell you that she had been here again?"
+
+"There was hardly time, I suppose--there were people about--" he
+floundered.
+
+"Ah, she'll write, then."
+
+He regained his composure. "Of course she'll write: very often, I
+hope. You know I'm absurdly in love," he cried audaciously.
+
+She tilted her head back, looking up at him as he leaned against the
+chimney-piece. He had leaned there so often that the attitude
+touched a pulse which set up a throbbing in her throat. "Oh, my poor
+Thursdale!" she murmured.
+
+"I suppose it's rather ridiculous," he owned; and as she remained
+silent, he added, with a sudden break--"Or have you another reason
+for pitying me?"
+
+Her answer was another question. "Have you been back to your rooms
+since you left her?"
+
+"Since I left her at the station? I came straight here."
+
+"Ah, yes--you _could:_ there was no reason--" Her words passed into
+a silent musing.
+
+Thursdale moved nervously nearer. "You said you had something to
+tell me?"
+
+"Perhaps I had better let her do so. There may be a letter at your
+rooms."
+
+"A letter? What do you mean? A letter from _her?_ What has
+happened?"
+
+His paleness shook her, and she raised a hand of reassurance.
+"Nothing has happened--perhaps that is just the worst of it. You
+always _hated_, you know," she added incoherently, "to have things
+happen: you never would let them."
+
+"And now--?"
+
+"Well, that was what she came here for: I supposed you had guessed.
+To know if anything had happened."
+
+"Had happened?" He gazed at her slowly. "Between you and me?" he
+said with a rush of light.
+
+The words were so much cruder than any that had ever passed between
+them that the color rose to her face; but she held his startled
+gaze.
+
+"You know girls are not quite as unsophisticated as they used to be.
+Are you surprised that such an idea should occur to her?"
+
+His own color answered hers: it was the only reply that came to him.
+
+Mrs. Vervain went on, smoothly: "I supposed it might have struck you
+that there were times when we presented that appearance."
+
+He made an impatient gesture. "A man's past is his own!"
+
+"Perhaps--it certainly never belongs to the woman who has shared it.
+But one learns such truths only by experience; and Miss Gaynor is
+naturally inexperienced."
+
+"Of course--but--supposing her act a natural one--" he floundered
+lamentably among his innuendoes--"I still don't see--how there was
+anything--"
+
+"Anything to take hold of? There wasn't--"
+
+"Well, then--?" escaped him, in crude satisfaction; but as she did
+not complete the sentence he went on with a faltering laugh: "She
+can hardly object to the existence of a mere friendship between us!"
+
+"But she does," said Mrs. Vervain.
+
+Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no
+trace of jealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still
+hear the candid ring of the girl's praise of Mrs. Vervain. If she
+were such an abyss of insincerity as to dissemble distrust under
+such frankness, she must at least be more subtle than to bring her
+doubts to her rival for solution. The situation seemed one through
+which one could no longer move in a penumbra, and he let in a burst
+of light with the direct query: "Won't you explain what you mean?"
+
+Mrs. Vervain sat silent, not provokingly, as though to prolong his
+distress, but as if, in the attenuated phraseology he had taught
+her, it was difficult to find words robust enough to meet his
+challenge. It was the first time he had ever asked her to explain
+anything; and she had lived so long in dread of offering
+elucidations which were not wanted, that she seemed unable to
+produce one on the spot.
+
+At last she said slowly: "She came to find out if you were really
+free."
+
+Thursdale colored again. "Free?" he stammered, with a sense of
+physical disgust at contact with such crassness.
+
+"Yes--if I had quite done with you." She smiled in recovered
+security. "It seems she likes clear outlines; she has a passion for
+definitions."
+
+"Yes--well?" he said, wincing at the echo of his own subtlety.
+
+"Well--and when I told her that you had never belonged to me, she
+wanted me to define _my_ status--to know exactly where I had stood
+all along."
+
+Thursdale sat gazing at her intently; his hand was not yet on the
+clue. "And even when you had told her that--"
+
+"Even when I had told her that I had _had_ no status--that I had
+never stood anywhere, in any sense she meant," said Mrs. Vervain,
+slowly--"even then she wasn't satisfied, it seems."
+
+He uttered an uneasy exclamation. "She didn't believe you, you
+mean?"
+
+"I mean that she _did_ believe me: too thoroughly."
+
+"Well, then--in God's name, what did she want?"
+
+"Something more--those were the words she used."
+
+"Something more? Between--between you and me? Is it a conundrum?" He
+laughed awkwardly.
+
+"Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer
+forbidden to contemplate the relation of the sexes."
+
+"So it seems!" he commented. "But since, in this case, there wasn't
+any--" he broke off, catching the dawn of a revelation in her gaze.
+
+"That's just it. The unpardonable offence has been--in our not
+offending."
+
+He flung himself down despairingly. "I give it up!--What did you
+tell her?" he burst out with sudden crudeness.
+
+"The exact truth. If I had only known," she broke off with a
+beseeching tenderness, "won't you believe that I would still have
+lied for you?"
+
+"Lied for me? Why on earth should you have lied for either of us?"
+
+"To save you--to hide you from her to the last! As I've hidden you
+from myself all these years!" She stood up with a sudden tragic
+import in her movement. "You believe me capable of that, don't you?
+If I had only guessed--but I have never known a girl like her; she
+had the truth out of me with a spring."
+
+"The truth that you and I had never--"
+
+"Had never--never in all these years! Oh, she knew why--she measured
+us both in a flash. She didn't suspect me of having haggled with
+you--her words pelted me like hail. 'He just took what he
+wanted--sifted and sorted you to suit his taste. Burnt out the gold
+and left a heap of cinders. And you let him--you let yourself be cut
+in bits'--she mixed her metaphors a little--'be cut in bits, and
+used or discarded, while all the while every drop of blood in you
+belonged to him! But he's Shylock--and you have bled to death of the
+pound of flesh he has cut out of you.' But she despises me the most,
+you know--far the most--" Mrs. Vervain ended.
+
+The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room: they
+seemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon intimacy, the
+kind of intimacy on which at any moment, a visitor might intrude
+without perceptibly lowering the atmosphere. It was as though a
+grand opera-singer had strained the acoustics of a private
+music-room.
+
+Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was between
+them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the
+veils of reticence and ambiguity had fallen.
+
+His first words were characteristic. "She _does_ despise me, then?"
+he exclaimed.
+
+"She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the
+heart."
+
+He was excessively pale. "Please tell me exactly what she said of
+me."
+
+"She did not speak much of you: she is proud. But I gather that
+while she understands love or indifference, her eyes have never been
+opened to the many intermediate shades of feeling. At any rate, she
+expressed an unwillingness to be taken with reservations--she thinks
+you would have loved her better if you had loved some one else
+first. The point of view is original--she insists on a man with a
+past!"
+
+"Oh, a past--if she's serious--I could rake up a past!" he said with
+a laugh.
+
+"So I suggested: but she has her eyes on his particular portion of
+it. She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know what
+you had done to me; and before I could guess her drift I blundered
+into telling her."
+
+Thursdale drew a difficult breath. "I never supposed--your revenge
+is complete," he said slowly.
+
+He heard a little gasp in her throat. "My revenge? When I sent for
+you to warn you--to save you from being surprised as _I_ was
+surprised?"
+
+"You're very good--but it's rather late to talk of saving me." He
+held out his hand in the mechanical gesture of leave-taking.
+
+"How you must care!--for I never saw you so dull," was her answer.
+"Don't you see that it's not too late for me to help you?" And as he
+continued to stare, she brought out sublimely: "Take the rest--in
+imagination! Let it at least be of that much use to you. Tell her I
+lied to her--she's too ready to believe it! And so, after all, in a
+sense, I sha'n't have been wasted."
+
+His stare hung on her, widening to a kind of wonder. She gave the
+look back brightly, unblushingly, as though the expedient were too
+simple to need oblique approaches. It was extraordinary how a few
+words had swept them from an atmosphere of the most complex
+dissimulations to this contact of naked souls.
+
+It was not in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but
+something in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light. He
+went up to his friend and took her hand.
+
+"You would do it--you would do it!"
+
+She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook.
+
+"Good-by," he said, kissing it.
+
+"Good-by? You are going--?"
+
+"To get my letter."
+
+"Your letter? The letter won't matter, if you will only do what I
+ask."
+
+He returned her gaze. "I might, I suppose, without being out of
+character. Only, don't you see that if your plan helped me it could
+only harm her?"
+
+"Harm _her?_"
+
+"To sacrifice you wouldn't make me different. I shall go on being
+what I have always been--sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do
+you want my punishment to fall on _her?_"
+
+She looked at him long and deeply. "Ah, if I had to choose between
+you--!"
+
+"You would let her take her chance? But I can't, you see. I must
+take my punishment alone."
+
+She drew her hand away, sighing. "Oh, there will be no punishment
+for either of you."
+
+"For either of us? There will be the reading of her letter for me."
+
+She shook her head with a slight laugh. "There will be no letter."
+
+Thursdale faced about from the threshold with fresh life in his
+look. "No letter? You don't mean--"
+
+"I mean that she's been with you since I saw her--she's seen you and
+heard your voice. If there _is_ a letter, she has recalled it--from
+the first station, by telegraph."
+
+He turned back to the door, forcing an answer to her smile. "But in
+the mean while I shall have read it," he said.
+
+The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful
+emptiness of the room.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE QUICKSAND
+
+I
+
+
+
+
+
+AS Mrs. Quentin's victoria, driving homeward, turned from the Park
+into Fifth Avenue, she divined her son's tall figure walking ahead
+of her in the twilight. His long stride covered the ground more
+rapidly than usual, and she had a premonition that, if he were going
+home at that hour, it was because he wanted to see her.
+
+Mrs. Quentin, though not a fanciful woman, was sometimes aware of a
+sixth sense enabling her to detect the faintest vibrations of her
+son's impulses. She was too shrewd to fancy herself the one mother
+in possession of this faculty, but she permitted herself to think
+that few could exercise it more discreetly. If she could not help
+overhearing Alan's thoughts, she had the courage to keep her
+discoveries to herself, the tact to take for granted nothing that
+lay below the surface of their spoken intercourse: she knew that
+most people would rather have their letters read than their
+thoughts. For this superfeminine discretion Alan repaid her
+by--being Alan. There could have been no completer reward. He was
+the key to the meaning of life, the justification of what must have
+seemed as incomprehensible as it was odious, had it not
+all-sufficingly ended in himself. He was a perfect son, and Mrs.
+Quentin had always hungered for perfection.
+
+Her house, in a minor way, bore witness to the craving. One felt it
+to be the result of a series of eliminations: there was nothing
+fortuitous in its blending of line and color. The almost morbid
+finish of every material detail of her life suggested the
+possibility that a diversity of energies had, by some pressure of
+circumstance, been forced into the channel of a narrow
+dilettanteism. Mrs. Quentin's fastidiousness had, indeed, the flaw
+of being too one-sided. Her friends were not always worthy of the
+chairs they sat in, and she overlooked in her associates defects she
+would not have tolerated in her bric-a-brac. Her house was, in fact,
+never so distinguished as when it was empty; and it was at its best
+in the warm fire-lit silence that now received her.
+
+Her son, who had overtaken her on the door-step, followed her into
+the drawing-room, and threw himself into an armchair near the fire,
+while she laid off her furs and busied herself about the tea table.
+For a while neither spoke; but glancing at him across the kettle,
+his mother noticed that he sat staring at the embers with a look she
+had never seen on his face, though its arrogant young outline was as
+familiar to her as her own thoughts. The look extended itself to his
+negligent attitude, to the droop of his long fine hands, the
+dejected tilt of his head against the cushions. It was like the
+moral equivalent of physical fatigue: he looked, as he himself would
+have phrased it, dead-beat, played out. Such an air was so foreign
+to his usual bright indomitableness that Mrs. Quentin had the sense
+of an unfamiliar presence, in which she must observe herself, must
+raise hurried barriers against an alien approach. It was one of the
+drawbacks of their excessive intimacy that any break in it seemed a
+chasm.
+
+She was accustomed to let his thoughts circle about her before they
+settled into speech, and she now sat in motionless expectancy, as
+though a sound might frighten them away.
+
+At length, without turning his eyes from the fire, he said: "I'm so
+glad you're a nice old-fashioned intuitive woman. It's painful to
+see them think."
+
+Her apprehension had already preceded him. "Hope Fenno--?" she
+faltered.
+
+He nodded. "She's been thinking--hard. It was very painful--to me,
+at least; and I don't believe she enjoyed it: she said she didn't."
+He stretched his feet to the fire. "The result of her cogitations is
+that she won't have me. She arrived at this by pure
+ratiocination--it's not a question of feeling, you understand. I'm
+the only man she's ever loved--but she won't have me. What novels
+did you read when you were young, dear? I'm convinced it all turns
+on that. If she'd been brought up on Trollope and Whyte-Melville,
+instead of Tolstoi and Mrs. Ward, we should have now been vulgarly
+sitting on a sofa, trying on the engagement-ring."
+
+Mrs. Quentin at first was kept silent by the mother's instinctive
+anger that the girl she has not wanted for her son should have dared
+to refuse him. Then she said, "Tell me, dear."
+
+"My good woman, she has scruples."
+
+"Scruples?"
+
+"Against the paper. She objects to me in my official capacity as
+owner of the _Radiator_."
+
+His mother did not echo his laugh.
+
+"She had found a solution, of course--she overflows with expedients.
+I was to chuck the paper, and we were to live happily ever afterward
+on canned food and virtue. She even had an alternative ready--women
+are so full of resources! I was to turn the _Radiator_ into an
+independent organ, and run it at a loss to show the public what a
+model newspaper ought to be. On the whole, I think she fancied this
+plan more than the other--it commended itself to her as being more
+uncomfortable and aggressive. It's not the fashion nowadays to be
+good by stealth."
+
+Mrs. Quentin said to herself, "I didn't know how much he cared!"
+Aloud she murmured, "You must give her time."
+
+"Time?"
+
+"To move out the old prejudices and make room for new ones."
+
+"My dear mother, those she has are brand-new; that's the trouble
+with them. She's tremendously up-to-date. She takes in all the moral
+fashion-papers, and wears the newest thing in ethics."
+
+Her resentment lost its way in the intricacies of his metaphor. "Is
+she so very religious?"
+
+"You dear archaic woman! She's hopelessly irreligious; that's the
+difficulty. You can make a religious woman believe almost anything:
+there's the habit of credulity to work on. But when a girl's faith
+in the Deluge has been shaken, it's very hard to inspire her with
+confidence. She makes you feel that, before believing in you, it's
+her duty as a conscientious agnostic to find out whether you're not
+obsolete, or whether the text isn't corrupt, or somebody hasn't
+proved conclusively that you never existed, anyhow."
+
+Mrs. Quentin was again silent. The two moved in that atmosphere of
+implications and assumptions where the lightest word may shake down
+the dust of countless stored impressions; and speech was sometimes
+more difficult between them than had their union been less close.
+
+Presently she ventured, "It's impossible?"
+
+"Impossible?"
+
+She seemed to use her words cautiously, like weapons that might slip
+and inflict a cut. "What she suggests."
+
+Her son, raising himself, turned to look at her for the first time.
+Their glance met in a shock of comprehension. He was with her
+against the girl, then! Her satisfaction overflowed in a murmur of
+tenderness.
+
+"Of course not, dear. One can't change--change one's life...."
+
+"One's self," he emended. "That's what I tell her. What's the use of
+my giving up the paper if I keep my point of view?"
+
+The psychological distinction attracted her. "Which is it she minds
+most?"
+
+"Oh, the paper--for the present. She undertakes to modify the point
+of view afterward. All she asks is that I shall renounce my heresy:
+the gift of grace will come later."
+
+Mrs. Quentin sat gazing into her untouched cup. Her son's first
+words had produced in her the hallucinated sense of struggling in
+the thick of a crowd that he could not see. It was horrible to feel
+herself hemmed in by influences imperceptible to him; yet if
+anything could have increased her misery it would have been the
+discovery that her ghosts had become visible.
+
+As though to divert his attention, she precipitately asked, "And
+you--?"
+
+His answer carried the shock of an evocation. "I merely asked her
+what she thought of _you_."
+
+"Of me?"
+
+"She admires you immensely, you know."
+
+For a moment Mrs. Quentin's cheek showed the lingering light of
+girlhood: praise transmitted by her son acquired something of the
+transmitter's merit. "Well--?" she smiled.
+
+"Well--you didn't make my father give up the _Radiator_, did you?"
+
+His mother, stiffening, made a circuitous return: "She never comes
+here. How can she know me?"
+
+"She's so poor! She goes out so little." He rose and leaned against
+the mantel-piece, dislodging with impatient fingers a slender bronze
+wrestler poised on a porphyry base, between two warm-toned Spanish
+ivories. "And then her mother--" he added, as if involuntarily.
+
+"Her mother has never visited me," Mrs. Quentin finished for him.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "Mrs. Fenno has the scope of a wax doll.
+Her rule of conduct is taken from her grandmother's sampler."
+
+"But the daughter is so modern--and yet--"
+
+"The result is the same? Not exactly. _She_ admires you--oh,
+immensely!" He replaced the bronze and turned to his mother with a
+smile. "Aren't you on some hospital committee together? What
+especially strikes her is your way of doing good. She says
+philanthropy is not a line of conduct, but a state of mind--and it
+appears that you are one of the elect."
+
+As, in the vague diffusion of physical pain, relief seems to come
+with the acuter pang of a single nerve, Mrs. Quentin felt herself
+suddenly eased by a rush of anger against the girl. "If she loved
+you--" she began.
+
+His gesture checked her. "I'm not asking you to get her to do that."
+
+The two were again silent, facing each other in the disarray of a
+common catastrophe--as though their thoughts, at the summons of
+danger, had rushed naked into action. Mrs. Quentin, at this
+revealing moment, saw for the first time how many elements of her
+son's character had seemed comprehensible simply because they were
+familiar: as, in reading a foreign language, we take the meaning of
+certain words for granted till the context corrects us. Often as in
+a given case, her maternal musings had figured his conduct, she now
+found herself at a loss to forecast it; and with this failure of
+intuition came a sense of the subserviency which had hitherto made
+her counsels but the anticipation of his wish. Her despair escaped
+in the moan, "What _is_ it you ask me?"
+
+"To talk to her."
+
+"Talk to her?"
+
+"Show her--tell her--make her understand that the paper has always
+been a thing outside your life--that hasn't touched you--that
+needn't touch _her_. Only, let her hear you--watch you--be with
+you--she'll see...she can't help seeing..."
+
+His mother faltered. "But if she's given you her reasons--?"
+
+"Let her give them to you! If she can--when she sees you...." His
+impatient hand again displaced the wrestler. "I care abominably," he
+confessed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+
+
+On the Fenno threshold a sudden sense of the futility of the attempt
+had almost driven Mrs. Quentin back to her carriage; but the door
+was already opening, and a parlor-maid who believed that Miss Fenno
+was in led the way to the depressing drawing-room. It was the kind
+of room in which no member of the family is likely to be found
+except after dinner or after death. The chairs and tables looked
+like poor relations who had repaid their keep by a long career of
+grudging usefulness: they seemed banded together against intruders
+in a sullen conspiracy of discomfort. Mrs. Quentin, keenly
+susceptible to such influences, read failure in every angle of the
+upholstery. She was incapable of the vulgar error of thinking that
+Hope Fenno might be induced to marry Alan for his money; but between
+this assumption and the inference that the girl's imagination might
+be touched by the finer possibilities of wealth, good taste admitted
+a distinction. The Fenno furniture, however, presented to such
+reasoning the obtuseness of its black-walnut chamferings; and
+something in its attitude suggested that its owners would be as
+uncompromising. The room showed none of the modern attempts at
+palliation, no apologetic draping of facts; and Mrs. Quentin,
+provisionally perched on a green-reps Gothic sofa with which it was
+clearly impossible to establish any closer relations, concluded
+that, had Mrs. Fenno needed another seat of the same size, she would
+have set out placidly to match the one on which her visitor now
+languished.
+
+To Mrs. Quentin's fancy, Hope Fenno's opinions, presently imparted
+in a clear young voice from the opposite angle of the Gothic sofa,
+partook of the character of their surroundings. The girl's mind was
+like a large light empty place, scantily furnished with a few
+massive prejudices, not designed to add to any one's comfort but too
+ponderous to be easily moved. Mrs. Quentin's own intelligence, in
+which its owner, in an artistically shaded half-light, had so long
+moved amid a delicate complexity of sensations, seemed in comparison
+suddenly close and crowded; and in taking refuge there from the
+glare of the young girl's candor, the older woman found herself
+stumbling in an unwonted obscurity. Her uneasiness resolved itself
+into a sense of irritation against her listener. Mrs. Quentin knew
+that the momentary value of any argument lies in the capacity of the
+mind to which it is addressed, and as her shafts of persuasion spent
+themselves against Miss Fenno's obduracy, she said to herself that,
+since conduct is governed by emotions rather than ideas, the really
+strong people are those who mistake their sensations for opinions.
+Viewed in this light, Miss Fenno was certainly very strong: there
+was an unmistakable ring of finality in the tone with which she
+declared,
+
+"It's impossible."
+
+Mrs. Quentin's answer veiled the least shade of feminine resentment.
+"I told Alan that, where he had failed, there was no chance of my
+making an impression."
+
+Hope Fenno laid on her visitor's an almost reverential hand. "Dear
+Mrs. Quentin, it's the impression you make that confirms the
+impossibility."
+
+Mrs. Quentin waited a moment: she was perfectly aware that, where
+her feelings were concerned, her sense of humor was not to be relied
+on. "Do I make such an odious impression?" she asked at length, with
+a smile that seemed to give the girl her choice of two meanings.
+
+"You make such a beautiful one! It's too beautiful--it obscures my
+judgment."
+
+Mrs. Quentin looked at her thoughtfully. "Would it be permissible, I
+wonder, for an older woman to suggest that, at your age, it isn't
+always a misfortune to have what one calls one's judgment
+temporarily obscured?"
+
+Miss Fenno flushed. "I try not to judge others--"
+
+"You judge Alan."
+
+"Ah, _he_ is not others," she murmured, with an accent that touched
+the older woman.
+
+"You judge his mother."
+
+"I don't; I don't!"
+
+Mrs. Quentin pressed her point. "You judge yourself, then, as you
+would be in my position--and your verdict condemns me."
+
+"How can you think it? It's because I appreciate the difference in
+our point of view that I find it so difficult to defend myself--"
+
+"Against what?"
+
+"The temptation to imagine that I might be as _you_ are--feeling as
+I do."
+
+Mrs. Quentin rose with a sigh. "My child, in my day love was less
+subtle." She added, after a moment, "Alan is a perfect son."
+
+"Ah, that again--that makes it worse!"
+
+"Worse?"
+
+"Just as your goodness does, your sweetness, your immense indulgence
+in letting me discuss things with you in a way that must seem almost
+an impertinence."
+
+Mrs. Quentin's smile was not without irony. "You must remember that
+I do it for Alan."
+
+"That's what I love you for!" the girl instantly returned; and again
+her tone touched her listener.
+
+"And yet you're sacrificing him--and to an idea!"
+
+"Isn't it to ideas that all the sacrifices that were worth while
+have been made?"
+
+"One may sacrifice one's self."
+
+Miss Fenno's color rose. "That's what I'm doing," she said gently.
+
+Mrs. Quentin took her hand. "I believe you are," she answered. "And
+it isn't true that I speak only for Alan. Perhaps I did when I
+began; but now I want to plead for you too--against yourself." She
+paused, and then went on with a deeper note: "I have let you, as you
+say, speak your mind to me in terms that some women might have
+resented, because I wanted to show you how little, as the years go
+on, theories, ideas, abstract conceptions of life, weigh against the
+actual, against the particular way in which life presents itself to
+us--to women especially. To decide beforehand exactly how one ought
+to behave in given circumstances is like deciding that one will
+follow a certain direction in crossing an unexplored country.
+Afterward we find that we must turn out for the obstacles--cross the
+rivers where they're shallowest--take the tracks that others have
+beaten--make all sorts of unexpected concessions. Life is made up of
+compromises: that is what youth refuses to understand. I've lived
+long enough to doubt whether any real good ever came of sacrificing
+beautiful facts to even more beautiful theories. Do I seem
+casuistical? I don't know--there may be losses either way...but
+the love of the man one loves...of the child one loves...
+that makes up for everything...."
+
+She had spoken with a thrill which seemed to communicate itself to
+the hand her listener had left in hers. Her eyes filled suddenly,
+but through their dimness she saw the girl's lips shape a last
+desperate denial:
+
+"Don't you see it's because I feel all this that I mustn't--that I
+can't?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+
+
+Mrs. Quentin, in the late spring afternoon, had turned in at the
+doors of the Metropolitan Museum. She had been walking in the Park,
+in a solitude oppressed by the ever-present sense of her son's
+trouble, and had suddenly remembered that some one had added a
+Beltraffio to the collection. It was an old habit of Mrs. Quentin's
+to seek in the enjoyment of the beautiful the distraction that most
+of her acquaintances appeared to find in each other's company. She
+had few friends, and their society was welcome to her only in her
+more superficial moods; but she could drug anxiety with a picture as
+some women can soothe it with a bonnet.
+
+During the six months that had elapsed since her visit to Miss Fenno
+she had been conscious of a pain of which she had supposed herself
+no longer capable: as a man will continue to feel the ache of an
+amputated arm. She had fancied that all her centres of feeling had
+been transferred to Alan; but she now found herself subject to a
+kind of dual suffering, in which her individual pang was the keener
+in that it divided her from her son's. Alan had surprised her: she
+had not foreseen that he would take a sentimental rebuff so hard.
+His disappointment took the uncommunicative form of a sterner
+application to work. He threw himself into the concerns of the
+_Radiator_ with an aggressiveness that almost betrayed itself in the
+paper. Mrs. Quentin never read the _Radiator_, but from the glimpses
+of it reflected in the other journals she gathered that it was at
+least not being subjected to the moral reconstruction which had been
+one of Miss Fenno's alternatives.
+
+Mrs. Quentin never spoke to her son of what had happened. She was
+superior to the cheap satisfaction of avenging his injury by
+depreciating its cause. She knew that in sentimental sorrows such
+consolations are as salt in the wound. The avoidance of a subject so
+vividly present to both could not but affect the closeness of their
+relation. An invisible presence hampered their liberty of speech and
+thought. The girl was always between them; and to hide the sense of
+her intrusion they began to be less frequently together. It was then
+that Mrs. Quentin measured the extent of her isolation. Had she ever
+dared to forecast such a situation, she would have proceeded on the
+conventional theory that her son's suffering must draw her nearer to
+him; and this was precisely the relief that was denied her. Alan's
+uncommunicativeness extended below the level of speech, and his
+mother, reduced to the helplessness of dead-reckoning, had not even
+the solace of adapting her sympathy to his needs. She did not know
+what he felt: his course was incalculable to her. She sometimes
+wondered if she had become as incomprehensible to him; and it was to
+find a moment's refuge from the dogging misery of such conjectures
+that she had now turned in at the Museum.
+
+The long line of mellow canvases seemed to receive her into the rich
+calm of an autumn twilight. She might have been walking in an
+enchanted wood where the footfall of care never sounded. So deep was
+the sense of seclusion that, as she turned from her prolonged
+communion with the new Beltraffio, it was a surprise to find she was
+not alone.
+
+A young lady who had risen from the central ottoman stood in
+suspended flight as Mrs. Quentin faced her. The older woman was the
+first to regain her self-possession.
+
+"Miss Fenno!" she said.
+
+The girl advanced with a blush. As it faded, Mrs. Quentin noticed a
+change in her. There had always been something bright and bannerlike
+in her aspect, but now her look drooped, and she hung at half-mast,
+as it were. Mrs. Quentin, in the embarrassment of surprising a
+secret that its possessor was doubtless unconscious of betraying,
+reverted hurriedly to the Beltraffio.
+
+"I came to see this," she said. "It's very beautiful."
+
+Miss Fenno's eye travelled incuriously over the mystic blue reaches
+of the landscape. "I suppose so," she assented; adding, after
+another tentative pause, "You come here often, don't you?"
+
+"Very often," Mrs. Quentin answered. "I find pictures a great help."
+
+"A help?"
+
+"A rest, I mean...if one is tired or out of sorts."
+
+"Ah," Miss Fenno murmured, looking down.
+
+"This Beltraffio is new, you know," Mrs. Quentin continued. "What a
+wonderful background, isn't it? Is he a painter who interests you?"
+
+The girl glanced again at the dusky canvas, as though in a final
+endeavor to extract from it a clue to the consolations of art. "I
+don't know," she said at length; "I'm afraid I don't understand
+pictures." She moved nearer to Mrs. Quentin and held out her hand.
+
+"You're going?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mrs. Quentin looked at her. "Let me drive you home," she said,
+impulsively. She was feeling, with a shock of surprise, that it gave
+her, after all, no pleasure to see how much the girl had suffered.
+
+Miss Fenno stiffened perceptibly. "Thank you; I shall like the
+walk."
+
+Mrs. Quentin dropped her hand with a corresponding movement of
+withdrawal, and a momentary wave of antagonism seemed to sweep the
+two women apart. Then, as Mrs. Quentin, bowing slightly, again
+addressed herself to the picture, she felt a sudden touch on her
+arm.
+
+"Mrs. Quentin," the girl faltered, "I really came here because I saw
+your carriage." Her eyes sank, and then fluttered back to her
+hearer's face. "I've been horribly unhappy!" she exclaimed.
+
+Mrs. Quentin was silent. If Hope Fenno had expected an immediate
+response to her appeal, she was disappointed. The older woman's face
+was like a veil dropped before her thoughts.
+
+"I've thought so often," the girl went on precipitately, "of what
+you said that day you came to see me last autumn. I think I
+understand now what you meant--what you tried to make me see....
+Oh, Mrs. Quentin," she broke out, "I didn't mean to tell you this--I
+never dreamed of it till this moment--but you _do_ remember what you
+said, don't you? You must remember it! And now that I've met you in
+this way, I can't help telling you that I believe--I begin to
+believe--that you were right, after all."
+
+Mrs. Quentin had listened without moving; but now she raised her
+eyes with a slight smile. "Do you wish me to say this to Alan?" she
+asked.
+
+The girl flushed, but her glance braved the smile. "Would he still
+care to hear it?" she said fearlessly.
+
+Mrs. Quentin took momentary refuge in a renewed inspection of the
+Beltraffio; then, turning, she said, with a kind of reluctance: "He
+would still care."
+
+"Ah!" broke from the girl.
+
+During this exchange of words the two speakers had drifted
+unconsciously toward one of the benches. Mrs. Quentin glanced about
+her: a custodian who had been hovering in the doorway sauntered into
+the adjoining gallery, and they remained alone among the silvery
+Vandykes and flushed bituminous Halses. Mrs. Quentin sank down on
+the bench and reached a hand to the girl.
+
+"Sit by me," she said.
+
+Miss Fenno dropped beside her. In both women the stress of emotion
+was too strong for speech. The girl was still trembling, and Mrs.
+Quentin was the first to regain her composure.
+
+"You say you've suffered," she began at last. "Do you suppose _I_
+haven't?"
+
+"I knew you had. That made it so much worse for me--that I should
+have been the cause of your suffering for Alan!"
+
+Mrs. Quentin drew a deep breath. "Not for Alan only," she said. Miss
+Fenno turned on her a wondering glance. "Not for Alan only. _That_
+pain every woman expects--and knows how to bear. We all know our
+children must have such disappointments, and to suffer with them is
+not the deepest pain. It's the suffering apart--in ways they don't
+understand." She breathed deeply. "I want you to know what I mean.
+You were right--that day--and I was wrong."
+
+"Oh," the girl faltered.
+
+Mrs. Quentin went on in a voice of passionate lucidity. "I knew it
+then--I knew it even while I was trying to argue with you--I've
+always known it! I didn't want my son to marry you till I heard your
+reasons for refusing him; and then--then I longed to see you his
+wife!"
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Quentin!"
+
+"I longed for it; but I knew it mustn't be."
+
+"Mustn't be?"
+
+Mrs. Quentin shook her head sadly, and the girl, gaining courage
+from this mute negation, cried with an uncontrollable escape of
+feeling:
+
+"It's because you thought me hard, obstinate narrow-minded? Oh, I
+understand that so well! My self-righteousness must have seemed so
+petty! A girl who could sacrifice a man's future to her own moral
+vanity--for it _was_ a form of vanity; you showed me that plainly
+enough--how you must have despised me! But I am not that girl
+now--indeed I'm not. I'm not impulsive--I think things out. I've
+thought this out. I know Alan loves me--I know _how_ he loves
+me--and I believe I can help him--oh, not in the ways I had fancied
+before--but just merely by loving him." She paused, but Mrs. Quentin
+made no sign. "I see it all so differently now. I see what an
+influence love itself may be--how my believing in him, loving him,
+accepting him just as he is, might help him more than any theories,
+any arguments. I might have seen this long ago in looking at
+_you_--as he often told me--in seeing how you'd kept yourself apart
+from--from--Mr. Quentin's work and his--been always the beautiful
+side of life to them--kept their faith alive in spite of
+themselves--not by interfering, preaching, reforming, but by--just
+loving them and being there--" She looked at Mrs. Quentin with a
+simple nobleness. "It isn't as if I cared for the money, you know;
+if I cared for that, I should be afraid--"
+
+"You will care for it in time," Mrs. Quentin said suddenly.
+
+Miss Fenno drew back, releasing her hand. "In time?"
+
+"Yes; when there's nothing else left." She stared a moment at the
+pictures. "My poor child," she broke out, "I've heard all you say so
+often before!"
+
+"You've heard it?"
+
+"Yes--from myself. I felt as you do, I argued as you do, I acted as
+I mean to prevent your doing, when I married Alan's father."
+
+The long empty gallery seemed to reverberate with the girl's
+startled exclamation--"Oh, Mrs. Quentin--"
+
+"Hush; let me speak. Do you suppose I'd do this if you were the kind
+of pink-and-white idiot he ought to have married? It's because I see
+you're alive, as I was, tingling with beliefs, ambitions, energies,
+as I was--that I can't see you walled up alive, as I was, without
+stretching out a hand to save you!" She sat gazing rigidly forward,
+her eyes on the pictures, speaking in the low precipitate tone of
+one who tries to press the meaning of a lifetime into a few
+breathless sentences.
+
+"When I met Alan's father," she went on, "I knew nothing of his--his
+work. We met abroad, where I had been living with my mother. That
+was twenty-six years ago, when the _Radiator_ was less--less
+notorious than it is now. I knew my husband owned a newspaper--a
+great newspaper--and nothing more. I had never seen a copy of the
+_Radiator_; I had no notion what it stood for, in politics--or in
+other ways. We were married in Europe, and a few months afterward we
+came to live here. People were already beginning to talk about the
+_Radiator_. My husband, on leaving college, had bought it with some
+money an old uncle had left him, and the public at first was merely
+curious to see what an ambitious, stirring young man without any
+experience of journalism was going to make out of his experiment.
+They found first of all that he was going to make a great deal of
+money out of it. I found that out too. I was so happy in other ways
+that it didn't make much difference at first; though it was pleasant
+to be able to help my mother, to be generous and charitable, to live
+in a nice house, and wear the handsome gowns he liked to see me in.
+But still it didn't really count--it counted so little that when,
+one day, I learned what the _Radiator_ was, I would have gone out
+into the streets barefooted rather than live another hour on the
+money it brought in...." Her voice sank, and she paused to steady
+it. The girl at her side did not speak or move. "I shall never
+forget that day," she began again. "The paper had stripped bare some
+family scandal--some miserable bleeding secret that a dozen unhappy
+people had been struggling to keep out of print--that _would_ have
+been kept out if my husband had not--Oh, you must guess the rest! I
+can't go on!"
+
+She felt a hand on hers. "You mustn't go on, Mrs. Quentin," the girl
+whispered.
+
+"Yes, I must--I must! You must be made to understand." She drew a
+deep breath. "My husband was not like Alan. When he found out how I
+felt about it he was surprised at first--but gradually he began to
+see--or at least I fancied he saw--the hatefulness of it. At any
+rate he saw how I suffered, and he offered to give up the whole
+thing--to sell the paper. It couldn't be done all of a sudden, of
+course--he made me see that--for he had put all his money in it, and
+he had no special aptitude for any other kind of work. He was a born
+journalist--like Alan. It was a great sacrifice for him to give up
+the paper, but he promised to do it--in time--when a good
+opportunity offered. Meanwhile, of course, he wanted to build it up,
+to increase the circulation--and to do that he had to keep on in the
+same way--he made that clear to me. I saw that we were in a vicious
+circle. The paper, to sell well, had to be made more and more
+detestable and disgraceful. At first I rebelled--but somehow--I
+can't tell you how it was--after that first concession the ground
+seemed to give under me: with every struggle I sank deeper. And
+then--then Alan was born. He was such a delicate baby that there was
+very little hope of saving him. But money did it--the money from the
+paper. I took him abroad to see the best physicians--I took him to a
+warm climate every winter. In hot weather the doctors recommended
+sea air, and we had a yacht and cruised every summer. I owed his
+life to the _Radiator_. And when he began to grow stronger the habit
+was formed--the habit of luxury. He could not get on without the
+things he had always been used to. He pined in bad air; he drooped
+under monotony and discomfort; he throve on variety, amusement,
+travel, every kind of novelty and excitement. And all I wanted for
+him his inexhaustible foster-mother was there to give!
+
+"My husband said nothing, but he must have seen how things were
+going. There was no more talk of giving up the _Radiator_. He never
+reproached me with my inconsistency, but I thought he must despise
+me, and the thought made me reckless. I determined to ignore the
+paper altogether--to take what it gave as though I didn't know where
+it came from. And to excuse this I invented the theory that one may,
+so to speak, purify money by putting it to good uses. I gave away a
+great deal in charity--I indulged myself very little at first. All
+the money that was not spent on Alan I tried to do good with. But
+gradually, as my boy grew up, the problem became more complicated.
+How was I to protect Alan from the contamination I had let him live
+in? I couldn't preach by example--couldn't hold up his father as a
+warning, or denounce the money we were living on. All I could do was
+to disguise the inner ugliness of life by making it beautiful
+outside--to build a wall of beauty between him and the facts of
+life, turn his tastes and interests another way, hide the _Radiator_
+from him as a smiling woman at a ball may hide a cancer in her
+breast! Just as Alan was entering college his father died. Then I
+saw my way clear. I had loved my husband--and yet I drew my first
+free breath in years. For the _Radiator_ had been left to Alan
+outright--there was nothing on earth to prevent his selling it when
+he came of age. And there was no excuse for his not selling it. I
+had brought him up to depend on money, but the paper had given us
+enough money to gratify all his tastes. At last we could turn on the
+monster that had nourished us. I felt a savage joy in the thought--I
+could hardly bear to wait till Alan came of age. But I had never
+spoken to him of the paper, and I didn't dare speak of it now. Some
+false shame kept me back, some vague belief in his ignorance. I
+would wait till he was twenty-one, and then we should be free.
+
+"I waited--the day came, and I spoke. You can guess his answer, I
+suppose. He had no idea of selling the _Radiator_. It wasn't the
+money he cared for--it was the career that tempted him. He was a
+born journalist, and his ambition, ever since he could remember, had
+been to carry on his father's work, to develop, to surpass it. There
+was nothing in the world as interesting as modern journalism. He
+couldn't imagine any other kind of life that wouldn't bore him to
+death. A newspaper like the _Radiator_ might be made one of the
+biggest powers on earth, and he loved power, and meant to have all
+he could get. I listened to him in a kind of trance. I couldn't find
+a word to say. His father had had scruples--he had none. I seemed to
+realize at once that argument would be useless. I don't know that I
+even tried to plead with him--he was so bright and hard and
+inaccessible! Then I saw that he was, after all, what I had made
+him--the creature of my concessions, my connivances, my evasions.
+That was the price I had paid for him--I had kept him at that cost!
+
+"Well--I _had_ kept him, at any rate. That was the feeling that
+survived. He was my boy, my son, my very own--till some other woman
+took him. Meanwhile the old life must go on as it could. I gave up
+the struggle. If at that point he was inaccessible, at others he was
+close to me. He has always been a perfect son. Our tastes grew
+together--we enjoyed the same books, the same pictures, the same
+people. All I had to do was to look at him in profile to see the
+side of him that was really mine. At first I kept thinking of the
+dreadful other side--but gradually the impression faded, and I kept
+my mind turned from it, as one does from a deformity in a face one
+loves. I thought I had made my last compromise with life--had hit on
+a _modus vivendi_ that would last my time.
+
+"And then he met you. I had always been prepared for his marrying,
+but not a girl like you. I thought he would choose a sweet thing who
+would never pry into his closets--he hated women with ideas! But as
+soon as I saw you I knew the struggle would have to begin again. He
+is so much stronger than his father--he is full of the most
+monstrous convictions. And he has the courage of them, too--you saw
+last year that his love for you never made him waver. He believes in
+his work; he adores it--it is a kind of hideous idol to which he
+would make human sacrifices! He loves you still--I've been honest
+with you--but his love wouldn't change him. It is you who would have
+to change--to die gradually, as I have died, till there is only one
+live point left in me. Ah, if one died completely--that's simple
+enough! But something persists--remember that--a single point, an
+aching nerve of truth. Now and then you may drug it--but a touch
+wakes it again, as your face has waked it in me. There's always
+enough of one's old self left to suffer with...."
+
+She stood up and faced the girl abruptly. "What shall I tell Alan?"
+she said.
+
+Miss Fenno sat motionless, her eyes on the ground. Twilight was
+falling on the gallery--a twilight which seemed to emanate not so
+much from the glass dome overhead as from the crepuscular depths
+into which the faces of the pictures were receding. The custodian's
+step sounded warningly down the corridor. When the girl looked up
+she was alone.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A VENETIAN NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT
+
+I
+
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Descent of Man and Other Stories
+by Edith Wharton
+
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