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diff --git a/4533.txt b/4533.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea8ac25 --- /dev/null +++ b/4533.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7417 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other +Stories, by Edith Wharton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories + +Author: Edith Wharton + +Posting Date: August 11, 2009 [EBook #4533] +Release Date: October, 2003 +First Posted: February 4, 2002 +[Last updated: October 16, 2017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HERMIT AND WILD WOMAN *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN AND OTHER STORIES + + +BY + +EDITH WHARTON + + +NEW YORK + + +MCMVIII + + + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + +I _The Hermit and the Wild Woman_ + +II _The Last Asset_ + +III _In Trust_ + +IV _The Pretext_ + +V _The Verdict_ + +VI _The Pot-Boiler_ + +VII _The Best Man_ + + + + +THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN + + +I + +THE Hermit lived in a cave in the hollow of a hill. Below him was a +glen, with a stream in a coppice of oaks and alders, and on the farther +side of the valley, half a day's journey distant, another hill, steep +and bristling, which raised aloft a little walled town with Ghibelline +swallow-tails notched against the sky. + +When the Hermit was a lad, and lived in the town, the crenellations of +the walls had been square-topped, and a Guelf lord had flown his +standard from the keep. Then one day a steel-coloured line of +men-at-arms rode across the valley, wound up the hill and battered in +the gates. Stones and Greek fire rained from the ramparts, shields +clashed in the streets, blade sprang at blade in passages and +stairways, pikes and lances dripped above huddled flesh, and all the +still familiar place was a stew of dying bodies. The boy fled from it +in horror. He had seen his father go forth and not come back, his +mother drop dead from an arquebuse shot as she leaned from the platform +of the tower, his little sister fall with a slit throat across the +altar steps of the chapel--and he ran, ran for his life, through the +slippery streets, over warm twitching bodies, between legs of soldiers +carousing, out of the gates, past burning farmsteads, trampled +wheat-fields, orchards stripped and broken, till the still woods +received him and he fell face down on the unmutilated earth. + +He had no wish to go back. His longing was to live hidden from life. Up +the hillside he found a hollow in the rock, and built before it a porch +of boughs bound together with withies. He fed on nuts and roots, and on +trout which he caught with his hands under the stones in the stream. He +had always been a quiet boy, liking to sit at his mother's feet and +watch the flowers grow on her embroidery frame, while the chaplain read +aloud the histories of the Desert Fathers from a great silver-clasped +volume. He would rather have been bred a clerk and scholar than a +knight's son, and his happiest moments were when he served mass for the +chaplain in the early morning, and felt his heart flutter up and up +like a lark, up and up till it was lost in infinite space and +brightness. Almost as happy were the hours when he sat beside the +foreign painter who came over the mountains to paint the chapel, and +under whose brush celestial faces grew out of the rough wall as if he +had sown some magic seed which flowered while you watched it. With the +appearing of every gold-rimmed face the boy felt he had won another +friend, a friend who would come and bend above him at night, keeping +off the ugly visions which haunted his pillow--visions of the gnawing +monsters about the church-porch, evil-faced bats and dragons, giant +worms and winged bristling hogs, a devil's flock who crept down from +the stone-work at night and hunted the souls of sinful children through +the town. With the growth of the picture the bright mailed angels +thronged so close about the boy's bed that between their interwoven +wings not a snout or a claw could force itself; and he would turn over +sighing on his pillow, which felt as soft and warm as if it had been +lined with down from those sheltering pinions. + +All these thoughts came back to him now in his cave on the cliff-side. +The stillness seemed to enclose him with wings, to fold him away from +life and evil. He was never restless or discontented. He loved the long +silent empty days, each one as like the other as pearls in a +well-matched string. Above all he liked to have time to save his soul. +He had been greatly troubled about his soul since a band of Flagellants +had passed through the town, exhibiting their gaunt scourged bodies and +exhorting the people to turn from soft raiment and delicate fare, from +marriage and money-getting and dancing and games, and think only how +they might escape the devil's talons and the great red blaze of hell. +For days that red blaze hung on the edge of the boy's thoughts like the +light of a burning city across a plain. There seemed to be so many +pitfalls to avoid--so many things were wicked which one might have +supposed to be harmless. How could a child of his age tell? He dared +not for a moment think of anything else. And the scene of sack and +slaughter from which he had fled gave shape and distinctness to that +blood-red vision. Hell was like that, only a million million times +worse. Now he knew how flesh looked when devils' pincers tore it, how +the shrieks of the damned sounded, and how roasting bodies smelled. How +could a Christian spare one moment of his days and nights from the long +long struggle to keep safe from the wrath to come? + +Gradually the horror faded, leaving only a tranquil pleasure in the +minute performance of his religious duties. His mind was not naturally +given to the contemplation of evil, and in the blessed solitude of his +new life his thoughts dwelt more and more on the beauty of holiness. +His desire was to be perfectly good, and to live in love and charity +with his fellow-men; and how could one do this without fleeing from +them? + +At first his life was difficult, for in the winter season he was put to +great straits to feed himself; and there were nights when the sky was +like an iron vault, and a hoarse wind rattled the oakwood in the +valley, and a great fear came on him that was worse than any cold. But +in time it became known to his townsfolk and to the peasants in the +neighbouring valleys that he had withdrawn to the wilderness to lead a +godly life; and after that his worst hardships were over, for pious +persons brought him gifts of oil and dried fruit, one good woman gave +him seeds from her garden, another spun for him a hodden gown, and +others would have brought him all manner of food and clothing, had he +not refused to accept anything but for his bare needs. The good woman +who had given him the seeds showed him also how to build a little +garden on the southern ledge of his cliff, and all one summer the +Hermit carried up soil from the streamside, and the next he carried up +water to keep his garden green. After that the fear of solitude quite +passed from him, for he was so busy all day long that at night he had +much ado to fight off the demon of sleep, which Saint Arsenius the +Abbot has denounced as the chief foe of the solitary. His memory kept +good store of prayers and litanies, besides long passages from the Mass +and other offices, and he marked the hours of his day by different acts +of devotion. On Sundays and feast days, when the wind was set his way, +he could hear the church bells from his native town, and these helped +him to follow the worship of the faithful, and to bear in mind the +seasons of the liturgical year; and what with carrying up water from +the river, digging in the garden, gathering fagots for his fire, +observing his religious duties, and keeping his thoughts continually +upon the salvation of his soul, the Hermit knew not a moment's idleness. + +At first, during his night vigils, he had felt a great fear of the +stars, which seemed to set a cruel watch upon him, as though they spied +out the frailty of his heart and took the measure of his littleness. +But one day a wandering clerk, to whom he chanced to give a night's +shelter, explained to him that, in the opinion of the most learned +doctors of theology, the stars were inhabited by the spirits of the +blessed, and this thought brought great consolation to the Hermit. Even +on winter nights, when the eagle's wings clanged among the peaks, and +he heard the long howl of wolves about the sheep-cotes in the valley, +he no longer felt any fear, but thought of those sounds as representing +the evil voices of the world, and hugged himself in the solitude of his +cave. Sometimes, to keep himself awake, he composed lauds in honour of +Christ and the saints, and they seemed to him so pleasant that he +feared to forget them, so after much debate with himself he decided to +ask a friendly priest from the valley, who sometimes visited him, to +write down the lauds; and the priest wrote them down on comely +sheepskin, which the Hermit dried and prepared with his own hands. When +the Hermit saw them written down they appeared to him so beautiful that +he feared to commit the sin of vanity if he looked at them too often, +so he hid them between two smooth stones in his cave, and vowed that he +would take them out only once in the year, at Easter, when our Lord has +risen and it is meet that Christians should rejoice. And this vow he +faithfully kept; but, alas, when Easter drew near, he found he was +looking forward to the blessed festival less because of our Lord's +rising than because he should then be able to read his pleasant lauds +written on fair sheepskin; and thereupon he took a vow that he would +not look upon the lauds till he lay dying. + +So the Hermit, for many years, lived to the glory of God and in great +peace of mind. + + +II + +ONE day he resolved to set forth on a visit to the Saint of the Rock, +who lived on the other side of the mountains. Travellers had brought +the Hermit report of this solitary, how he lived in great holiness and +austerity in a desert place among the hills, where snow lay all winter, +and in summer the sun beat down cruelly. The Saint, it appeared, had +vowed that he would withdraw from the world to a spot where there was +neither shade nor water, lest he should be tempted to take his ease and +think less continually upon his Maker; but wherever he went he found a +spreading tree or a gushing spring, till at last he climbed up to the +bare heights where nothing grows, and where the only water comes from +the melting of the snow in spring. Here he found a tall rock rising +from the ground, and in it he scooped a hollow with his own hands, +labouring for five years and wearing his fingers to the bone. Then he +seated himself in the hollow, which faced the west, so that in winter +he should have small warmth of the sun and in summer be consumed by it; +and there he had sat without moving for years beyond number. + +The Hermit was greatly drawn by the tale of such austerities, which in +his humility he did not dream of emulating, but desired, for his soul's +good, to contemplate and praise; so one day he bound sandals to his +feet, cut an alder staff from the stream, and set out to visit the +Saint of the Rock. + +It was the pleasant spring season, when seeds are shooting and the bud +is on the tree. The Hermit was troubled at the thought of leaving his +plants without water, but he could not travel in winter by reason of +the snows, and in summer he feared the garden would suffer even more +from his absence. So he set out, praying that rain might fall while he +was away, and hoping to return again in five days. The peasants +labouring in the fields left their work to ask his blessing; and they +would even have followed him in great numbers had he not told them that +he was bound on a pilgrimage to the Saint of the Rock, and that it +behoved him to go alone, as one solitary seeking another. So they +respected his wish, and he went on and entered the forest. In the +forest he walked for two days and slept for two nights. He heard the +wolves crying, and foxes rustling in the covert, and once, at twilight, +a shaggy brown man peered at him through the leaves and galloped away +with a soft padding of hoofs; but the Hermit feared neither wild beasts +nor evil-doers, nor even the fauns and satyrs who linger in unhallowed +forest depths where the Cross has not been raised; for he said: "If I +die, I die to the glory of God, and if I live it must be to the same +end." Only he felt a secret pang at the thought that he might die +without seeing his lauds again. But the third day, without +misadventure, he came out on another valley. + +Then he began to climb the mountain, first through brown woods of beech +and oak, then through pine and broom, and then across red stony ledges +where only a pinched growth of lentisk and briar spread in patches over +the rock. By this time he thought to have reached his goal, but for two +more days he fared on through the same scene, with the sky close over +him and the green valleys of earth receding far below. Sometimes for +hours he saw only the red glistering slopes tufted with thin bushes, +and the hard blue heaven so close that it seemed his hand could touch +it; then at a turn of the path the rocks rolled apart, the eye plunged +down a long pine-clad defile, and beyond it the forest flowed in mighty +undulations to a plain shining with cities and another mountain-range +many days' journey away. To some eyes this would have been a terrible +spectacle, reminding the wayfarer of his remoteness from his kind, and +of the perils which lurk in waste places and the weakness of man +against them; but the Hermit was so mated to solitude, and felt such +love for all things created, that to him the bare rocks sang of their +Maker and the vast distance bore witness to His greatness. So His +servant journeyed on unafraid. + +But one morning, after a long climb over steep and difficult slopes, +the wayfarer halted suddenly at a bend of the way; for beyond the +defile at his feet there was no plain shining with cities, but a bare +expanse of shaken silver that reached away to the rim of the world; and +the Hermit knew it was the sea. Fear seized him then, for it was +terrible to see that great plain move like a heaving bosom, and, as he +looked on it, the earth seemed also to heave beneath him. But presently +he remembered how Christ had walked the waves, and how even Saint Mary +of Egypt, who was a great sinner, had crossed the waters of Jordan +dry-shod to receive the Sacrament from the Abbot Zosimus; and then the +Hermit's heart grew still, and he sang as he went down the mountain: +"The sea shall praise Thee, O Lord." + +All day he kept seeing it and then losing it; but toward night he came +to a cleft of the hills, and lay down in a pine-wood to sleep. He had +now been six days gone, and once and again he thought anxiously of his +herbs; but he said to himself: "What though my garden perish, if I see +a holy man face to face and praise God in his company?" So he was never +long cast down. + +Before daylight he was afoot under the stars; and leaving the wood +where he had slept, began climbing the face of a tall cliff, where he +had to clutch the jutting ledges with his hands, and with every step he +gained, a rock seemed thrust forth to hurl him back. So, footsore and +bleeding, he reached a little stony plain as the sun dropped to the +sea; and in the red light he saw a hollow rock, and the Saint sitting +in the hollow. + +The Hermit fell on his knees, praising God; then he rose and ran across +the plain to the rock. As he drew near he saw that the Saint was a very +old man, clad in goatskin, with a long white beard. He sat motionless, +his hands on his knees, and two red eye-sockets turned to the sunset. +Near him was a young boy in skins who brushed the flies from his face; +but they always came back, and settled on the rheum which ran from his +eyes. + +He did not appear to hear or see the approach of the Hermit, but sat +quite still till the boy said: "Father, here is a pilgrim." + +Then he lifted up his voice and asked angrily who was there and what +the stranger sought. + +The Hermit answered: "Father, the report of your holy practices came to +me a long way off, and being myself a solitary, though not worthy to be +named with you for godliness, it seemed fitting that I should cross the +mountains to visit you, that we might sit together and speak in praise +of solitude." + +The Saint replied: "You fool, how can two sit together and praise +solitude, since by so doing they put an end to the thing they pretend +to honour?" + +The Hermit, at that, was sorely abashed, for he had thought his speech +out on the way, reciting it many times over; and now it appeared to him +vainer than the crackling of thorns under a pot. + +Nevertheless he took heart and said: "True, Father; but may not two +sinners sit together and praise Christ, who has taught them the +blessings of solitude?" + +But the other only answered: "If you had really learned the blessings +of solitude you would not squander them in idle wandering." And, the +Hermit not knowing how to reply, he said again: "If two sinners meet +they can best praise Christ by going each his own way in silence." + +After that he shut his lips and continued motionless while the boy +brushed the flies from his eye-sockets; but the Hermit's heart sank, +and for the first time he felt all the weariness of the way he had +fared, and the great distance dividing him from home. + +He had meant to take counsel with the Saint concerning his lauds, and +whether he ought to destroy them; but now he had no heart to say +another word, and turning away he began to descend the mountain. +Presently he heard steps running behind him, and the boy came up and +pressed a honey-comb in his hand. + +"You have come a long way and must be hungry," he said; but before the +Hermit could thank him he had hastened back to his task. So the Hermit +crept down the mountain till he reached the wood where he had slept +before; and there he made his bed again, but he had no mind to eat +before sleeping, for his heart hungered more than his body; and his +salt tears made the honey-comb bitter. + + +III + +ON the fourteenth day he came to the valley below his cliff, and saw +the walls of his native town against the sky. He was footsore and heavy +of heart, for his long pilgrimage had brought him only weariness and +humiliation, and as no drop of rain had fallen he knew that his garden +must have perished. So he climbed the cliff heavily and reached his +cave at the angelus. + +But there a great wonder awaited him. For though the scant earth of the +hillside was parched and crumbling, his garden-soil reeked with +moisture, and his plants had shot up, fresh and glistening, to a height +they had never before attained. More wonderful still, the tendrils of +the gourd had been trained about his door, and kneeling down he saw +that the earth had been loosened between the rows of sprouting +vegetables, and that every leaf sparkled with drops as though the rain +had but newly ceased. Then it appeared to the Hermit that he beheld a +miracle, but doubting his own deserts he refused to believe himself +worthy of such grace, and went within doors to ponder on what had +befallen him. And on his bed of rushes he saw a young woman sleeping, +clad in an outlandish garment, with strange amulets about her neck. + +The sight was very terrifying to the Hermit, for he recalled how often +the demon, in tempting the Desert Fathers, had taken the form of a +woman for their undoing; but he reflected that, since there was nothing +pleasing to him in the sight of this female, who was brown as a nut and +lean with wayfaring, he ran no great danger in looking at her. At first +he took her for a wandering Egyptian, but as he looked he perceived, +among the heathen charms, an Agnus Dei in her bosom; and this so +surprised him that he bent over and called on her to wake. + +She sprang up with a start, but seeing the Hermit's gown and staff, and +his face above her, lay quiet and said to him: "I have watered your +garden daily in return for the beans and oil that I took from your +store." + +"Who are you, and how do you come here?" asked the Hermit. + +She said: "I am a wild woman and live in the woods." + +And when he pressed her again to tell him why she had sought shelter in +his cave, she said that the land to the south, whence she came, was +full of armed companies and bands of marauders, and that great license +and bloodshed prevailed there; and this the Hermit knew to be true, for +he had heard of it on his homeward journey. The Wild Woman went on to +tell him that she had been hunted through the woods like an animal by a +band of drunken men-at-arms, Lansknechts from the north by their +barbarous dress and speech, and at length, starving and spent, had come +on his cave and hidden herself from her pursuers. "For," she said, "I +fear neither wild beasts nor the woodland people, charcoal burners, +Egyptians, wandering minstrels or chapmen; even the highway robbers do +not touch me, because I am poor and brown; but these armed men flown +with blood and wine are more terrible than wolves and tigers." + +And the Hermit's heart melted, for he thought of his little sister +lying with her throat slit across the altar steps, and of the scenes of +blood and rapine from which he had fled away into the wilderness. So he +said to the stranger that it was not meet he should house her in his +cave, but that he would send a messenger to the town across the valley, +and beg a pious woman there to give her lodging and work in her +household. "For," said he, "I perceive by the blessed image about your +neck that you are not a heathen wilding, but a child of Christ, though +so far astray from Him in the desert." + +"Yes," she said, "I am a Christian, and know as many prayers as you; +but I will never set foot in city walls again, lest I be caught and put +back into the convent." + +"What," cried the Hermit with a start, "you are a runagate nun?" And he +crossed himself, and again thought of the demon. + +She smiled and said: "It is true I was once a cloistered woman, but I +will never willingly be one again. Now drive me forth if you like; but +I cannot go far, for I have a wounded foot, which I got in climbing the +cliff with water for your garden." And she pointed to a deep cut in her +foot. + +At that, for all his fear, the Hermit was moved to pity, and washed the +cut and bound it up; and as he did so he bethought him that perhaps his +strange visitor had been sent to him not for his soul's undoing but for +her own salvation. And from that hour he earnestly yearned to save her. + +But it was not fitting that she should remain in his cave; so, having +given her water to drink and a handful of lentils, he raised her up and +putting his staff in her hand guided her to a hollow not far off in the +face of the cliff. And while he was doing this he heard the sunset +bells ring across the valley, and set about reciting the _Angelus +Domini nuntiavit Mariae_; and she joined in very piously, with her +hands folded, not missing a word. + +Nevertheless the thought of her wickedness weighed on him, and the next +day when he went to carry her food he asked her to tell him how it came +about that she had fallen into such abominable sin. And this is the +story she told. + + +IV + +I WAS born (said she) in the north country, where the winters are long +and cold, where snow sometimes falls in the valleys, and the high +mountains for months are white with it. My father's castle is in a tall +green wood, where the winds always rustle, and a cold river runs down +from the ice-gorges. South of us was the wide plain, glowing with heat, +but above us were stony passes where the eagle nests and the storms +howl; in winter great fires roared in our chimneys, and even in summer +there was always a cool air off the gorges. But when I was a child my +mother went southward in the great Empress's train and I went with her. +We travelled many days, across plains and mountains, and saw Rome, +where the Pope lives in a golden palace, and many other cities, till we +came to the great Emperor's court. There for two years or more we lived +in pomp and merriment, for it was a wonderful court, full of mimes, +magicians, philosophers and poets; and the Empress's ladies spent their +days in mirth and music, dressed in light silken garments, walking in +gardens of roses, and bathing in a great cool marble tank, while the +Emperor's eunuchs guarded the approach to the gardens. Oh, those baths +in the marble tank, my Father! I used to lie awake through the whole +hot southern night, and think of that plunge at sunrise under the last +stars. For we were in a burning country, and I pined for the tall green +woods and the cold stream of my father's valley; and when I had cooled +my limbs in the tank I lay all day in the scant cypress shade and +dreamed of my next bath. + +My mother pined for the coolness till she died; then the Empress put me +in a convent and I was forgotten. The convent was on the side of a bare +yellow hill, where bees made a hot buzzing in the thyme. Below was the +sea, blazing with a million shafts of light; and overhead a blinding +sky, which reflected the sun's glitter like a huge baldric of steel. +Now the convent was built on the site of an old pleasure-house which a +holy Princess had given to our Order; and a part of the house was left +standing with its court and garden. The nuns had built all about the +garden; but they left the cypresses in the middle, and the long marble +tank where the Princess and her ladies had bathed. The tank, however, +as you may conceive, was no longer used as a bath; for the washing of +the body is an indulgence forbidden to cloistered virgins; and our +Abbess, who was famed for her austerities, boasted that, like holy +Sylvia the nun, she never touched water save to bathe her finger-tips +before receiving the Sacrament. With such an example before them, the +nuns were obliged to conform to the same pious rule, and many, having +been bred in the convent from infancy, regarded all ablutions with +horror, and felt no temptation to cleanse the filth from their flesh; +but I, who had bathed daily, had the freshness of clear water in my +veins, and perished slowly for want of it, like your garden herbs in a +drought. + +My cell did not look on the garden, but on the steep mule-path leading +up the cliff, where all day long the sun beat as if with flails of +fire, and I saw the sweating peasants toil up and down behind their +thirsty asses, and the beggars whining and scraping their sores in the +heat. Oh, how I hated to look out through the bars on that burning +world! I used to turn away from it, sick with disgust, and lying on my +hard bed, stare up by the hour at the ceiling of my cell. But flies +crawled in hundreds on the ceiling, and the hot noise they made was +worse than the glare. Sometimes, at an hour when I knew myself +unobserved, I tore off my stifling gown, and hung it over the grated +window, that I might no longer see the shaft of hot sunlight lying +across my cell, and the dust dancing in it like fat in the fire. But +the darkness choked me, and I struggled for breath as though I lay at +the bottom of a pit; so that at last I would spring up, and dragging +down the dress, fling myself on my knees before the Cross, and entreat +our Lord to give me the gift of holiness, that I might escape the +everlasting fires of hell, of which this heat was like an awful +foretaste. For if I could not endure the scorching of a summer's day, +with what constancy could I meet the thought of the flame that dieth +not? + +This longing to escape the heat of hell made me apply myself to a +devouter way of living, and I reflected that if my bodily distress were +somewhat eased I should be able to throw myself with greater zeal into +the practice of vigils and austerities. And at length, having set forth +to the Abbess that the sultry air of my cell induced in me a grievous +heaviness of sleep, I prevailed on her to lodge me in that part of the +building which overlooked the garden. + +For a few days I was quite happy, for instead of the dusty +mountainside, and the sight of the sweating peasants and their asses, I +looked out on dark cypresses and rows of budding vegetables. But +presently I found I had not bettered myself. For with the approach of +midsummer the garden, being all enclosed with buildings, grew as +stifling as my cell. All the green things in it withered and dried off, +leaving trenches of bare red earth, across which the cypresses cast +strips of shade too narrow to cool the aching heads of the nuns who +sought shelter there; and I began to think sorrowfully of my former +cell, where now and then there came a sea-breeze, hot and languid, yet +alive, and where at least I could look out upon the sea. But this was +not the worst; for when the dog-days came I found that the sun, at a +certain hour, cast on the ceiling of my cell the reflection of the +ripples on the garden-tank; and to say how I suffered from this sight +is not within the power of speech. It was indeed agony to watch the +clear water rippling and washing above my head, yet feel no solace of +it on my limbs: as though I had been a senseless brazen image lying at +the bottom of a well. But the image, if it felt no refreshment, would +have suffered no torture; whereas every inch of my skin throbbed with +thirst, and every vein was a mouth of Dives praying for a drop of +water. Oh, Father, how shall I tell you the grievous pains that I +endured? Sometimes I so feared the sight of the mocking ripples +overhead that I hid my eyes from their approach, lying face down on my +burning bed till I knew that they were gone; yet on cloudy days, when +they did not come, the heat was even worse to bear. + +By day I hardly dared trust myself in the garden, for the nuns walked +there, and one fiery noon they found me hanging so close above the tank +that they snatched me away, crying out that I had tried to destroy +myself. The scandal of this reaching the Abbess, she sent for me to +know what demon had beset me; and when I wept and said, the longing to +bathe my burning body, she broke into great anger and cried out: "Do +you not know that this is a sin well-nigh as great as the other, and +condemned by all the greatest saints? For a nun may be tempted to take +her life through excess of self-scrutiny and despair of her own +worthiness; but this desire to indulge the despicable body is one of +the lusts of the flesh, to be classed with concupiscence and adultery." +And she ordered me to sleep every night for a month in my heavy gown, +with a veil upon my face. + +Now, Father, I believe it was this penance that drove me to sin. For we +were in the dog-days, and it was more than flesh could bear. And on the +third night, after the portress had passed, and the lights were out, I +rose and flung off my veil and gown, and knelt in my window fainting. +There was no moon, but the sky was full of stars. At first the garden +was all blackness; but as I looked I saw a faint twinkle between the +cypress-trunks, and I knew it was the starlight on the tank. The water! +The water! It was there close to me--only a few bolts and bars were +between us. + +The portress was a heavy sleeper, and I knew where her keys hung, on a +nail just within the door of her cell. I stole thither, unlatched the +door, seized the keys and crept barefoot down the corridor. The bolts +of the cloister-door were stiff and heavy, and I dragged at them till +the veins in my wrists were bursting. Then I turned the key and it +cried out in the ward. I stood still, my whole body beating with fear +lest the hinges too should have a voice--but no one stirred, and I +pushed open the door and slipped out. The garden was as airless as a +pit, but at least I could stretch my arms in it; and, oh, my Father, +the sweetness of the stars! The stones in the path cut my feet as I +ran, but I thought of the joy of bathing them in the tank, and that +made the wounds sweet to me.... My Father, I have heard of the +temptations which in times past assailed the holy Solitaries of the +desert, flattering the reluctant flesh beyond resistance; but none, I +think, could have surpassed in ecstasy that first touch of the water on +my limbs. To prolong the joy I let myself slip in slowly, resting my +hands on the edge of the tank, and smiling to see my body, as I lowered +it, break up the shining black surface and shatter the starbeams into +splinters. And the water, my Father, seemed to crave me as I craved it. +Its ripples rose about me, first in furtive touches, then in a long +embrace that clung and drew me down; till at length they lay like +kisses on my lips. It was no frank comrade like the mountain pools of +my childhood, but a secret playmate compassionating my pains and +soothing them with noiseless hands. From the first I thought of it as +an accomplice--its whisper seemed to promise me secrecy if I would +promise it love. And I went back and back to it, my Father; all day I +lived in the thought of it; each night I stole to it with fresh +thirst.... + +But at length the old portress died, and a young lay-sister took her +place. She was a light sleeper, and keen-eared; and I knew the danger +of venturing to her cell. I knew the danger, but when darkness came I +felt the water drawing me. The first night I fought on my bed and held +out; but the second I crept to her door. She made no motion when I +entered, but rose up secretly and stole after me; and the second night +she warned the Abbess, and the two came on me as I stood by the tank. + +I was punished with terrible penances: fasting, scourging, +imprisonment, and the privation of drinking water; for the Abbess stood +amazed at the obduracy of my sin, and was resolved to make me an +example to my fellows. For a month I endured the pains of hell; then +one night the Saracen pirates fell on our convent. On a sudden the +darkness was full of flames and blood; but while the other nuns ran +hither and thither, clinging to the Abbess's feet or shrieking on the +steps of the altar, I slipped through an unwatched postern and made my +way to the hills. The next day the Emperor's soldiery descended on the +carousing heathen, slew them and burned their vessels on the beach; the +Abbess and nuns were rescued, the convent walls rebuilt, and peace +restored to the holy precincts. All this I heard from a shepherdess of +the hills, who found me in my hiding, and brought me honeycomb and +water. In her simplicity she offered to lead me home to the convent; +but while she slept I laid off my wimple and scapular, and stealing her +cloak fled away lest she should betray me. And since then I have +wandered alone over the face of the world, living in woods and desert +places, often hungry, often cold and sometimes fearful; yet resigned to +any hardship, and with a front for any peril, if only I may sleep under +the free heaven and wash the dust from my body in cool water. + + +V + +THE Hermit, as may be supposed, was much perturbed by this story, and +dismayed that such sinfulness should cross his path. His first motion +was to drive the woman forth, for he knew the heinousness of the +craving for water, and how Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine and other holy +doctors have taught that they who would purify the soul must not be +distraught by the vain cares of bodily cleanliness; yet, remembering +the lust that drew him to his lauds, he dared not judge his sister's +fault too harshly. + +Moreover he was moved by the Wild Woman's story of the hardships she +had suffered, and the godless company she had been driven to +keep--Egyptians, jugglers, outlaws and even sorcerers, who are masters +of the pagan lore of the East, and still practice their dark rites +among the simple folk of the hills. Yet she would not have him think +wholly ill of this vagrant people, from whom she had often received +food and comfort; and her worst danger, as he learned with shame, had +come from the _girovaghi_ or wandering monks, who are the scourge and +dishonour of Christendom; carrying their ribald idleness from one +monastery to another, and leaving on their way a trail of thieving, +revelry and worse. Once or twice the Wild Woman had nearly fallen into +their hands; but had been saved by her own quick wit and skill in +woodcraft. Once, so she assured the Hermit, she had found refuge with a +faun and his female, who fed and sheltered her in their cave, where she +slept on a bed of leaves with their shaggy nurslings; and in this cave +she had seen a stock or idol of wood, extremely seamed and ancient, +before which the wood-creatures, when they thought she slept, laid +garlands and the wild bees' honey-comb. + +She told him also of a hill-village of weavers, where she lived many +weeks, and learned to ply their trade in return for her lodging; and +where wayfaring men in the guise of cobblers, charcoal-burners or +goatherds came and taught strange doctrines at midnight in the poor +hovels. What they taught she could not clearly tell, save that they +believed each soul could commune directly with its Maker, without need +of priest or intercessor; also she had heard from some of their +disciples that there are two Gods, one of good and one of evil, and +that the God of evil has his throne in the Pope's palace in Rome. But +in spite of these dark teachings they were a mild and merciful folk, +full of loving-kindness toward poor persons and wayfarers; so that her +heart grieved for them when one day a Dominican monk appeared in the +village with a company of soldiers, and some of the weavers were seized +and dragged to prison, while others, with their wives and babes, fled +to the winter woods. She fled with them, fearing to be charged with +their heresy, and for months they lay hid in desert places, the older +and weaker, who fell sick from want and exposure, being devoutly +ministered to by their brethren, and dying in the sure faith of heaven. + +All this she related modestly and simply, not as one who joys in a +godless life, but as having been drawn into it through misadventure; +and she told the Hermit that when she heard the sound of church bells +she never failed to say an Ave or a Pater; and that often, as she lay +in the midnight darkness of the forest, she had hushed her fears by +reciting the versicles from the Evening Hour: + + Keep us, O Lord, as the apple of the eye, + Protect us under the shadow of Thy wings. + +The wound in her foot healed slowly; and the Hermit, while it was +mending, repaired daily to her cave, reasoning with her in love and +charity, and exhorting her to return to the cloister. But this she +persistently refused to do; and fearing lest she attempt to fly before +her foot was healed, and so expose herself to hunger and ill-usage, he +promised not to betray her presence, or to take any measures toward +restoring her to her Order. + +He began indeed to doubt whether she had any calling to the life +enclosed; yet her gentleness and innocency of mind made him feel that +she might be won back to holy living, if only her freedom were assured. +So after many inward struggles (since his promise forbade his taking +counsel with any concerning her) he resolved to let her remain in the +cave till some light should come to him. And one day, visiting her +about the hour of Nones (for it became his pious habit to say the +evening office with her), he found her engaged with a little goatherd, +who in a sudden seizure had fallen from a rock above her cave, and lay +senseless and full of blood at her feet. And the Hermit saw with wonder +how skilfully she bound up his cuts and restored his senses, giving him +to drink of a liquor she had distilled from the wild simples of the +mountain; whereat the boy opened his eyes and praised God, as one +restored by heaven. Now it was known that this lad was subject to +possessions, and had more than once dropped lifeless while he heeded +his flock; and the Hermit, knowing that only great saints or unclean +necromancers can loosen devils, feared that the Wild Woman had +exorcised the spirits by means of unholy spells. But she told him that +the goatherd's sickness was caused only by the heat of the sun, and +that, such seizures being common in the hot countries whence she came, +she had learned from a wise woman how to stay them by a decoction of +the _carduus benedictus_, made in the third night of the waxing moon, +but without the aid of magic. + +"But," she continued, "you need not fear my bringing scandal on your +holy retreat, for by the arts of the same wise woman my own wound is +well-nigh healed, and tonight at sunset I set forth on my travels." + +The Hermit's heart grew heavy as she spoke, and it seemed to him that +her own look was sorrowful. And suddenly his perplexities were lifted +from him, and he saw what was God's purpose with the Wild Woman. + +"Why," said he, "do you fly from this place, where you are safe from +molestation, and can look to the saving of your soul? Is it that your +feet weary for the road, and your spirits are heavy for lack of worldly +discourse?" + +She replied that she had no wish to travel, and felt no repugnance to +solitude. "But," said she, "I must go forth to beg my bread, since in +this wilderness there is none but yourself to feed me; and moreover, +when it is known that I have healed the goatherd, curious folk and +scandal-mongers may seek me out, and, learning whence I come, drag me +back to the cloister." + +Then the Hermit answered her and said: "In the early days, when the +faith of Christ was first preached, there were holy women who fled to +the desert and lived there in solitude, to the glory of God and the +edification of their sex. If you are minded to embrace so austere a +life, contenting you with such sustenance as the wilderness yields, and +wearing out your days in prayer and vigil, it may be that you shall +make amends for the great sin you have committed, and live and die in +the peace of the Lord Jesus." + +He spoke thus, knowing that if she left him and returned to her +roaming, hunger and fear might drive her to fresh sin; whereas in a +life of penance and reclusion her eyes might be opened to her iniquity, +and her soul snatched back from ruin. + +He saw that his words moved her, and she seemed about to consent, and +embrace a life of holiness; but suddenly she fell silent, and looked +down on the valley at their feet. + +"A stream flows in the glen below us," she said. "Do you forbid me to +bathe in it in the heat of summer?" + +"It is not I that forbid you, my daughter, but the laws of God," said +the Hermit; "yet see how miraculously heaven protects you--for in the +hot season, when your lust is upon you, our stream runs dry, and +temptation will be removed from you. Moreover on these heights there is +no excess of heat to madden the body, but always, before dawn and at +the angelus, a cool breeze which refreshes it like water." + +And after thinking long on this, and again receiving his promise not to +betray her, the Wild Woman agreed to embrace a life of reclusion; and +the Hermit fell on his knees, worshipping God and rejoicing to think +that, if he saved his sister from sin, his own term of probation would +be shortened. + + +VI + +THEREAFTER for two years the Hermit and the Wild Woman lived side by +side, meeting together to pray on the great feast-days of the year, but +on all other days dwelling apart, engaged in pious practices. + +At first the Hermit, knowing the weakness of woman, and her little +aptitude for the life apart, had feared that he might be disturbed by +the nearness of his penitent; but she faithfully held to his commands, +abstaining from all sight of him save on the Days of Obligation; and +when they met, so modest and devout was her demeanour that she raised +his soul to fresh fervency. And gradually it grew sweet to him to think +that, near by though unseen, was one who performed the same tasks at +the same hours; so that, whether he tended his garden, or recited his +chaplet, or rose under the stars to repeat the midnight office, he had +a companion in all his labours and devotions. + +Meanwhile the report had spread abroad that a holy woman who cast out +devils had made her dwelling in the Hermit's cliff; and many sick +persons from the valley sought her out, and went away restored by her. +These poor pilgrims brought her oil and flour, and with her own hands +she made a garden like the Hermit's, and planted it with corn and +lentils; but she would never take a trout from the brook, or receive +the gift of a snared wild-fowl, for she said that in her vagrant life +the wild creatures of the wood had befriended her, and as she had slept +in peace among them, so now she would never suffer them to be molested. + +In the third year came a plague, and death walked the cities, and many +poor peasants fled to the hills to escape it. These the Hermit and his +penitent faithfully tended, and so skilful were the Wild Woman's +ministrations that the report of them reached the town across the +valley, and a deputation of burgesses came with rich offerings, and +besought her to descend and comfort their sick. The Hermit, seeing her +depart on so dangerous a mission, would have accompanied her, but she +bade him remain and tend those who fled to the hills; and for many days +his heart was consumed in prayer for her, and he feared lest every +fugitive should bring him word of her death. + +But at length she returned, wearied-out but whole, and covered with the +blessings of the townsfolk; and thereafter her name for holiness spread +as wide as the Hermit's. + +Seeing how constant she remained in her chosen life, and what advance +she had made in the way of perfection, the Hermit now felt that it +behoved him to exhort her again to return to the convent; and more than +once he resolved to speak with her, but his heart hung back. At length +he bethought him that by failing in this duty he imperilled his own +soul, and thereupon, on the next feast-day, when they met, he reminded +her that in spite of her good works she still lived in sin and +excommunicate, and that, now she had once more tasted the sweets of +godliness, it was her duty to confess her fault and give herself up to +her superiors. + +She heard him meekly, but when he had spoken she was silent and her +tears ran over; and looking at her he wept also, and said no more. And +they prayed together, and returned each to his cave. + +It was not till late winter that the plague abated; and the spring and +early summer following were heavy with rains and great heat. When the +Hermit visited his penitent at the feast of Pentecost, she appeared to +him so weak and wasted that, when they had recited the _Veni, sancte +spiritus_, and the proper psalms, he taxed her with too great rigour of +penitential practices; but she replied that her weakness was not due to +an excess of discipline, but that she had brought back from her labours +among the sick a heaviness of body which the intemperance of the season +no doubt increased. The evil rains continued, falling chiefly at night, +while by day the land reeked with heat and vapours; so that lassitude +fell on the Hermit also, and he could hardly drag himself down to the +spring whence he drew his drinking-water. Thus he fell into the habit +of going down to the glen before cockcrow, after he had recited Matins; +for at that hour the rain commonly ceased, and a faint air was +stirring. Now because of the wet season the stream had not gone dry, +and instead of replenishing his flagon slowly at the trickling spring, +the Hermit went down to the waterside to fill it; and once, as he +descended the steep slope of the glen, he heard the covert rustle, and +saw the leaves stir as though something moved behind them. As he looked +silence fell, and the leaves grew still; but his heart was shaken, for +it seemed to him that what he had seen in the dusk had a human +semblance, such as the wood-people wear. And he was loth to think that +such unhallowed beings haunted the glen. + +A few days passed, and again, descending to the stream, he saw a figure +flit by him through the covert; and this time a deeper fear entered +into him; but he put away the thought, and prayed fervently for all +souls in temptation. And when he spoke with the Wild Woman again, on +the feast of the Seven Maccabees, which falls on the first day of +August, he was smitten with fear to see her wasted looks, and besought +her to cease from labouring and let him minister to her in her +weakness. But she denied him gently, and replied that all she asked of +him was to keep her steadfastly in his prayers. + +Before the feast of the Assumption the rains ceased, and the plague, +which had begun to show itself, was stayed; but the ardency of the sun +grew greater, and the Hermit's cliff was a fiery furnace. Never had +such heat been known in those regions; but the people did not murmur, +for with the cessation of the rain their crops were saved and the +pestilence banished; and these mercies they ascribed in great part to +the prayers and macerations of the two holy anchorets. Therefore on the +eve of the Assumption they sent a messenger to the Hermit, saying that +at daylight on the morrow the townspeople and all the dwellers in the +valley would come forth, led by their Bishop, who bore the Pope's +blessing to the two solitaries, and who was mindful to celebrate the +Mass of the Assumption in the Hermit's cave in the cliffside. At the +blessed word the Hermit was well-nigh distraught with joy, for he felt +this to be a sign from heaven that his prayers were heard, and that he +had won the Wild Woman's grace as well as his own. And all night he +prayed that on the morrow she might confess her fault and receive the +Sacrament with him. + +Before dawn he recited the psalms of the proper nocturn; then he girded +on his gown and sandals, and went forth to meet the Bishop in the +valley. + +As he went downward daylight stood on the mountains, and he thought he +had never seen so fair a dawn. It filled the farthest heaven with +brightness, and penetrated even to the woody crevices of the glen, as +the grace of God had entered into the obscurest folds of his heart. The +morning airs were hushed, and he heard only the sound of his own +footfall, and the murmur of the stream which, though diminished, still +poured a swift current between the rocks; but as he reached the bottom +of the glen a sound of chanting came to him, and he knew that the +pilgrims were at hand. His heart leapt up and his feet hastened +forward; but at the streamside they were suddenly stayed, for in a pool +where the water was still deep he saw the shining of a woman's +body--and on a stone hard by lay the Wild Woman's gown and sandals. + +Fear and rage possessed the Hermit's heart, and he stood as one smitten +speechless, covering his eyes from the shame. But the song of the +approaching pilgrims swelled ever louder and nearer, and finding voice +he cried to the Wild Woman to come forth and hide herself from the +people. + +She made no answer, but in the dusk he saw her limbs sway with the +swaying of the water, and her eyes were turned to him as if in mockery. +At the sight blind fury filled him, and clambering over the rocks to +the pool's edge he bent down and caught her by the shoulder. At that +moment he could have strangled her with his hands, so abhorrent to him +was the touch of her flesh; but as he cried out on her, heaping her +with cruel names, he saw that her eyes returned his look without +wavering; and suddenly it came to him that she was dead. Then through +all his anger and fear a great pang smote him; for here was his work +undone, and one he had loved in Christ laid low in her sin, in spite of +all his labours. + +One moment pity possessed him; the next he bethought him how the people +would find him bending above the body of a naked woman, whom he had +held up to them as holy, but whom they might now well take for the +secret instrument of his undoing; and beholding how at her touch all +the slow edifice of his holiness was demolished, and his soul in mortal +jeopardy, he felt the earth reel round him and his sight grew red. + +Already the head of the procession had entered the glen, and the +stillness shook with the great sound of the _Salve Regina_. When the +Hermit opened his eyes once more the air was quivering with thronged +candle-flames, which glittered on the gold thread of priestly +vestments, and on the blazing monstrance beneath its canopy; and close +above him was bent the Bishop's face. + +The Hermit struggled to his knees. + +"My Father in God," he cried, "behold, for my sins I have been visited +by a demon--" But as he spoke he perceived that those about him no +longer heeded him, and that the Bishop and all his clergy had fallen on +their knees about the pool. Then the Hermit, following their gaze, saw +that the brown waters of the pool covered the Wild Woman's limbs as +with a garment, and that about her floating head a great light floated; +and to the utmost edges of the throng a cry of praise went up, for many +were there whom the Wild Woman had healed and comforted, and who read +God's mercy in this wonder. But fresh fear fell on the Hermit, for he +had cursed a dying saint, and denounced her aloud to all the people; +and this new anguish, coming so close upon the other, smote down his +weakened frame, so that his limbs failed him and he sank once more to +the ground. + +Again the earth reeled about him, and the bending faces grew remote; +but as he forced his weak voice once more to proclaim his sins he felt +the blessed touch of absolution, and the holy oils of the last voyage +laid on his lips and eyes. Peace returned to him then, and with it a +great longing to look once more upon his lauds, as he had dreamed of +doing at his last hour; but he was too far gone to make this longing +known, and so tried to banish it from his mind. Yet in his weakness the +wish held him, and the tears ran down his face. + +Then, as he lay there, feeling the earth slip from under him, and the +Everlasting Arms replace it, he heard a great peal of voices that +seemed to come down from the sky and mingle with the singing of the +throng; and the words of the chant were the words of his own lauds, so +long hidden in the secret of his breast, and now rejoicing above him +through the spheres. And his soul rose on the chant, and soared with it +to the seat of mercy. + + + + +THE LAST ASSET + + +I + +"THE devil!" Paul Garnett exclaimed as he re-read his note; and the dry +old gentleman who was at the moment his only neighbour in the quiet +restaurant they both frequented, remarked with a smile: "You don't seem +particularly annoyed at meeting him." + +Garnett returned the smile. "I don't know why I apostrophized him, for +he's not in the least present--except inasmuch as he may prove to be at +the bottom of anything unexpected." + +The old gentleman who, like Garnett, was an American, and spoke in the +thin rarefied voice which seems best fitted to emit sententious truths, +twisted his lean neck toward the younger man and cackled out shrewdly: +"Ah, it's generally a woman who is at the bottom of the unexpected. +Not," he added, leaning forward with deliberation to select a +tooth-pick, "that that precludes the devil's being there too." + +Garnett uttered the requisite laugh, and his neighbour, pushing back +his plate, called out with a perfectly unbending American intonation: +"Gassong! L'addition, silver play." + +His repast, as usual, had been a simple one, and he left only thirty +centimes in the plate on which his account was presented; but the +waiter, to whom he was evidently a familiar presence, received the +tribute with Latin affability, and hovered helpfully about the table +while the old gentleman cut and lighted his cigar. + +"Yes," the latter proceeded, revolving the cigar meditatively between +his thin lips, "they're generally both in the same hole, like the owl +and the prairie-dog in the natural history books of my youth. I believe +it was all a mistake about the owl and the prairie-dog, but it isn't +about the unexpected. The fact is, the unexpected _is_ the devil--the +sooner you find that out, the happier you'll be." He leaned back, +tilting his smooth bald head against the blotched mirror behind him, +and rambling on with gentle garrulity while Garnett attacked his omelet. + +"Get your life down to routine--eliminate surprises. Arrange things so +that, when you get up in the morning, you'll know exactly what is going +to happen to you during the day--and the next day and the next. I don't +say it's funny--it ain't. But it's better than being hit on the head by +a brick-bat. That's why I always take my meals at this restaurant. I +know just how much onion they put in things--if I went to the next +place I shouldn't. And I always take the same streets to come +here--I've been doing it for ten years now. I know at which crossings +to look out--I know what I'm going to see in the shop-windows. It saves +a lot of wear and tear to know what's coming. For a good many years I +never did know, from one minute to another, and now I like to think +that everything's cut-and-dried, and nothing unexpected can jump out at +me like a tramp from a ditch." + +He paused calmly to knock the ashes from his cigar, and Garnett said +with a smile: "Doesn't such a plan of life cut off nearly all the +possibilities?" + +The old gentleman made a contemptuous motion. "Possibilities of what? +Of being multifariously miserable? There are lots of ways of being +miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is +to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to +be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time." + +"That was Schopenhauer's idea, I believe," the young man said, pouring +his wine with the smile of youthful incredulity. + +"I guess he hadn't the monopoly," responded his friend. "Lots of people +have found out the secret--the trouble is that so few live up to it." + +He rose from his seat, pushing the table forward, and standing passive +while the waiter advanced with his shabby overcoat and umbrella. Then +he nodded to Garnett, lifted his hat politely to the broad-bosomed lady +behind the desk, and passed out into the street. + +Garnett looked after him with a musing smile. The two had exchanged +views on life for two years without so much as knowing each other's +names. Garnett was a newspaper correspondent whose work kept him mainly +in London, but on his periodic visits to Paris he lodged in a dingy +hotel of the Latin Quarter, the chief merit of which was its nearness +to the cheap and excellent restaurant where the two Americans had made +acquaintance. But Garnett's assiduity in frequenting the place arose, +in the end, less from the excellence of the food than from the +enjoyment of his old friend's conversation. Amid the flashy +sophistications of the Parisian life to which Garnett's trade +introduced him, the American sage's conversation had the crisp and +homely flavor of a native dish--one of the domestic compounds for which +the exiled palate is supposed to yearn. It was a mark of the old man's +impersonality that, in spite of the interest he inspired, Garnett had +never got beyond idly wondering who he might be, where he lived, and +what his occupations were. He was presumably a bachelor--a man of +family ties, however relaxed, though he might have been as often absent +from home would not have been as regularly present in the same +place--and there was about him a boundless desultoriness which renewed +Garnett's conviction that there is no one on earth as idle as an +American who is not busy. From certain allusions it was plain that he +had lived many years in Paris, yet he had not taken the trouble to +adapt his tongue to the local inflections, but spoke French with the +accent of one who has formed his conception of the language from a +phrase-book. + +The city itself seemed to have made as little impression on him as its +speech. He appeared to have no artistic or intellectual curiosities, to +remain untouched by the complex appeal of Paris, while preserving, +perhaps the more strikingly from his very detachment, that odd American +astuteness which seems the fruit of innocence rather than of +experience. His nationality revealed itself again in a mild interest in +the political problems of his adopted country, though they appeared to +preoccupy him only as illustrating the boundless perversity of mankind. +The exhibition of human folly never ceased to divert him, and though +his examples of it seemed mainly drawn from the columns of one exiguous +daily paper, he found there matter for endless variations on his +favorite theme. If this monotony of topic did not weary the younger +man, it was because he fancied he could detect under it the tragic +implication of the fixed idea--of some great moral upheaval which had +flung his friend stripped and starving on the desert island of the +little cafe where they met. He hardly knew wherein he read this +revelation--whether in the resigned shabbiness of the sage's dress, the +impartial courtesy of his manner, or the shade of apprehension which +lurked, indescribably, in his guileless yet suspicious eye. There were +moments when Garnett could only define him by saying that he looked +like a man who had seen a ghost. + + +II + +AN apparition almost as startling had come to Garnett himself in the +shape of the mauve note received from his _concierge_ as he was leaving +the hotel for luncheon. + +Not that, on the face of it, a missive announcing Mrs. Sam Newell's +arrival at Ritz's, and her need of his presence there that afternoon at +five, carried any special mark of the portentous. It was not her being +at Ritz's that surprised him. The fact that she was chronically hard +up, and had once or twice lately been so brutally confronted with the +consequences as to accept--indeed solicit--a loan of five pounds from +him: this circumstance, as Garnett knew, would never be allowed to +affect the general tenor of her existence. If one came to Paris, where +could one go but to Ritz's? Did he see her in some grubby hole across +the river? Or in a family _pension_ near the Place de l'Etoile? There +was no affectation in her tendency to gravitate toward what was +costliest and most conspicuous. In doing so she obeyed one of the +profoundest instincts of her nature, and it was another instinct which +taught her to gratify the first at any cost, even to that of dipping +into the pocket of an impecunious newspaper correspondent. It was a +part of her strength--and of her charm too--that she did such things +naturally, openly, without any of the ugly grimaces of dissimulation or +compunction. + +Her recourse to Garnett had of course marked a specially low ebb in her +fortunes. Save in moments of exceptional dearth she had richer sources +of supply; and he was nearly sure that, by running over the "society +column" of the Paris _Herald_, he should find an explanation, not +perhaps of her presence at Ritz's, but of her means of subsistence +there. What really perplexed him was not the financial but the social +aspect of the case. When Mrs. Newell had left London in July she had +told him that, between Cowes and Scotland, she and Hermy were provided +for till the middle of October: after that, as she put it, they would +have to look about. Why, then, when she had in her hand the opportunity +of living for three months at the expense of the British aristocracy, +did she rush off to Paris at heaven knew whose expense in the beginning +of September? She was not a woman to act incoherently; if she made +mistakes they were not of that kind. Garnett felt sure she would never +willingly relax her hold on her distinguished friends--was it possible +that it was they who had somewhat violently let go of her? + +As Garnett reviewed the situation he began to see that this possibility +had for some time been latent in it. He had felt that something might +happen at any moment--and was not this the something he had obscurely +foreseen? Mrs. Newell really moved too fast: her position was as +perilous as that of an invading army without a base of supplies. She +used up everything too quickly--friends, credit, influence, +forbearance. It was so easy for her to acquire all these--what a pity +she had never learned to keep them! He himself, for instance--the most +insignificant of her acquisitions--was beginning to feel like a +squeezed sponge at the mere thought of her; and it was this sense of +exhaustion, of the inability to provide more, either materially or +morally, which had provoked his exclamation on opening her note. From +the first days of their acquaintance her prodigality had amazed him, +but he had believed it to be surpassed by the infinity of her +resources. If she exhausted old supplies she always found new ones to +replace them. When one set of people began to find her impossible, +another was always beginning to find her indispensable. Yes--but there +were limits--there were only so many sets of people, at least in her +social classification, and when she came to an end of them, what then? +Was this flight to Paris a sign that she had come to an end--was she +going to try Paris because London had failed her? The time of year +precluded such a conjecture. Mrs. Newell's Paris was non-existent in +September. The town was a desert of gaping trippers--he could as soon +think of her seeking social restoration at Margate. + +For a moment it occurred to him that she might have to come over to +replenish her wardrobe; but he knew her dates too well to dwell long on +this hope. It was in April and December that she visited the +dress-makers: before December, he had heard her explain, one got +nothing but "the American fashions." Mrs. Newell's scorn of all things +American was somewhat illogically coupled with the determination to use +her own Americanism to the utmost as a means of social advance. She had +found out long ago that, on certain lines, it paid in London to be +American, and she had manufactured for herself a personality +independent of geographical or social demarcations, and presenting that +remarkable blend of plantation dialect, Bowery slang and hyperbolic +statement, which is the British nobility's favorite idea of an +unadulterated Americanism. Mrs. Newell, for all her talents, was not +naturally either humorous or hyperbolic, and there were times when it +would doubtless have been a relief to her to be as monumentally stolid +as some of the persons whose dulness it was her fate to enliven. It was +perhaps the need of relaxing which had drawn her into her odd intimacy +with Garnett, with whom she did not have to be either scrupulously +English or artificially American, since the impression she made on him +was of no more consequence than that which she produced on her footman. +Garnett was perfectly aware that he owed his success to his +insignificance, but the fact affected him only as adding one more +element to his knowledge of Mrs. Newell's character. He was as ready to +sacrifice his personal vanity in such a cause as he had been, at the +outset of their acquaintance, to sacrifice his professional pride to +the opportunity of knowing her. + +When he had accepted the position of "London correspondent" (with an +occasional side-glance at Paris) to the New York _Searchlight_, he had +not understood that his work was to include the obligation of +"interviewing"; indeed, had the possibility presented itself in +advance, he would have met it by unpacking his valise and returning to +the drudgery of his assistant-editorship in New York. But when, after +three months in Europe, he received a letter from his chief, suggesting +that he should enliven the Sunday _Searchlight_ by a series of "Talks +with Smart Americans in London" (beginning, say, with Mrs. Sam Newell), +the change of focus already enabled him to view the proposal without +passion. For his life on the edge of the great world-caldron of art, +politics and pleasure--of that high-spiced brew which is nowhere else +so subtly and variously compounded--had bred in him an eager appetite +to taste of the heady mixture. He knew he should never have the full +spoon at his lips, but he recalled the peasant-girl in one of +Browning's plays, who has once eaten polenta cut with a knife which has +carved an ortolan. Might not Mrs. Newell, who had so successfully cut a +way into the dense and succulent mass of English society, serve as the +knife to season his polenta? + +He had expected, as the result of the interview, to which she promptly, +almost eagerly, assented, no more than the glimpse of brightly lit +vistas which a waiting messenger may catch through open doors; but +instead he had found himself drawn at once into the inner sanctuary, +not of London society, but of Mrs. Newell's relation to it. She had +been candidly charmed by the idea of the interview: it struck him that +she was conscious of the need of being freshened up. Her appearance was +brilliantly fresh, with the inveterate freshness of the toilet-table; +her paint was as impenetrable as armor. But her personality was a +little tarnished: she was in want of social renovation. She had been +doing and saying the same things for too long a time. London, Cowes, +Homburg, Scotland, Monte Carlo--that had been the round since Hermy was +a baby. Hermy was her daughter, Miss Hermione Newell, who was called in +presently to be shown off to the interviewer and add a paragraph to the +celebration of her mother's charms. + +Miss Newell's appearance was so full of an unassisted freshness that +for a moment Garnett made the mistake of fancying that she could fill a +paragraph of her own. But he soon found that her vague personality was +merely tributary to her parent's; that her youth and grace were, in +some mysterious way, her mother's rather than her own. She smiled +obediently on Garnett, but could contribute little beyond her smile and +the general sweetness of her presence, to the picture of Mrs. Newell's +existence which it was the young man's business to draw. And presently +he found that she had left the room without his noticing it. + +He learned in time that this unnoticeableness was the most conspicuous +thing about her. Burning at best with a mild light, she became +invisible in the glare of her mother's personality. It was in fact only +as a product of her environment that poor Hermione struck the +imagination. With the smartest woman in London as her guide and example +she had never developed a taste for dress, and with opportunities for +enlightenment from which Garnett's fancy recoiled she remained simple, +unsuspicious and tender, with an inclination to good works and +afternoon church, a taste for the society of dull girls, and a clinging +fidelity to old governesses and retired nurse-maids. Mrs. Newell, whose +boast it was that she looked facts in the face, frankly owned that she +had not been able to make anything of Hermione. "If she has a role I +haven't discovered it," she confessed to Garnett. "I've tried +everything, but she doesn't fit in anywhere." + +Mrs. Newell spoke as if her daughter were a piece of furniture acquired +without due reflection, and for which no suitable place could be found. +She got, of course, what she could out of Hermione, who wrote her +notes, ran her errands, saw tiresome people for her, and occupied an +intermediate office between that of lady's maid and secretary; but such +small returns on her investment were not what Mrs. Newell had counted +on. What was the use of producing and educating a handsome daughter if +she did not, in some more positive way, contribute to her parent's +advancement? + + +III + +"IT'S about Hermy," Mrs. Newell said, rising from the heap of +embroidered cushions which formed the background of her afternoon +repose. + +Her sitting-room at Ritz's was full of penetrating warmth and +fragrance. Long-stemmed roses filled the vases on the chimney-piece, in +which a fire sparkled with that effect of luxury which fires produce +when the weather is not cold enough to justify them. On the +writing-table, among notes and cards, and signed photographs of +celebrities, Mrs. Newell's gold inkstand, her jewelled penholder, her +heavily-monogrammed despatch-box, gave back from their expensive +surfaces the glint of the flame, which sought out and magnified the +orient of the pearls among the lady's laces and found a mirror in the +pinky polish of her finger-tips. It was just such a scene as a little +September fire, lit for show and not for warmth, would delight to dwell +on and pick out in all its opulent details; and even Garnett, inured to +Mrs. Newell's capacity for extracting manna from the desert, reflected +that she must have found new fields to glean. + +"It's about Hermy," she repeated, making room for him among the +cushions. "I had to see you at once. We came over yesterday from +London." + +Garnett, seating himself, continued his leisurely survey of the room. +In the glitter of Mrs. Newell's magnificence Hermione, as usual, faded +out of sight, and he hardly noticed her mother's allusion. + +"I have never seen you more resplendent," he remarked. + +She received the tribute with complacency. "The rooms are not bad, are +they? We came over with the Woolsey Hubbards (you've heard of them, of +course?--they're from Detroit), and really they do things very +decently. Their motor-car met us at Boulogne, and the courier always +wires ahead to have the rooms filled with flowers. This _salon,_ is +really a part of their suite. I simply couldn't have afforded it +myself." + +She delivered these facts in a high decisive voice, which had a note +akin to the clink of her many bracelets and the rattle of her ringed +hands against the enamelled cigarette-case which she extended to +Garnett after helping herself from its contents. + +"You are always meeting such charming people," said Garnett with mild +irony; and, reverting to her first remark, he bethought himself to add: +"I hope Miss Hermione is not ill?" + +"Ill? She was never ill in her life," exclaimed Mrs. Newell, as though +her daughter had been accused of an indelicacy. + +"It was only that you said you had come over on her account." + +"So I have. Hermione is to be married." + +Mrs. Newell brought out the words impressively, drawing back to observe +their effect on her visitor. It was such that he received them with a +long silent stare, which finally passed into a cry of wonder. "Married? +For heaven's sake, to whom?" + +Mrs. Newell continued to regard him with a smile so serene and +victorious that he saw she took his somewhat unseemly astonishment as a +merited tribute to her genius. Presently she extended a glittering hand +and took a sheet of note paper from the blotter. + +"You can have that put in to-morrow's _Herald_," she said. + +Garnett, receiving the paper, read in Hermione's own finished hand: "A +marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between the +Comte Louis du Trayas, son of the Marquis du Trayas de la Baume, and +Miss Hermione Newell, daughter of Samuel C. Newell Esqre. of Elmira, N. +Y. Comte Louis du Trayas belongs to one of the oldest and most +distinguished families in France, and is equally well connected in +England, being the nephew of Lord Saint Priscoe and a cousin of the +Countess of Morningfield, whom he frequently visits at Adham and +Portlow." + +The perusal of this document filled Garnett with such deepening wonder +that he could not, for the moment, even do justice to the strangeness +of its being written out for publication in the bride's own hand. +Hermione a bride! Hermione a future countess! Hermione on the brink of +a marriage which would give her not only a great "situation" in the +Parisian world but a footing in some of the best houses in England! +Regardless of its unflattering implications, Garnett prolonged his +stare of mute amazement till Mrs. Newell somewhat sharply +exclaimed--"Well, didn't I always tell you that she would marry a +Frenchman?" + +Garnett, in spite of himself, smiled at this revised version of his +hostess's frequent assertion that Hermione was too goody-goody to take +in England, but that with her little dowdy air she might very well "go +off" in the Faubourg if only a _dot_ could be raked up for her--and the +recollection flashed a new light on the versatility of Mrs. Newell's +genius. + +"But how did you do it--?" was on the tip of his tongue; and he had +barely time to give the query the more conventional turn of: "How did +it happen?" + +"Oh, we were up at Glaish with the Edmund Fitzarthurs. Lady Edmund is a +sort of cousin of the Morningfields', who have a shooting-lodge near +Glaish--a place called Portlow--and young Trayas was there with them. +Lady Edmund, who is a dear, drove Hermy over to Portlow, and the thing +was done in no time. He simply fell over head and ears in love with +her. You know Hermy is really very handsome in her peculiar way. I +don't think you have ever appreciated her," Mrs. Newell summed up with +a note of exquisite reproach. + +"I've appreciated her, I assure you; but one somehow didn't think of +her marrying--so soon." + +"Soon? She's three-and-twenty; but you've no imagination," said Mrs. +Newell; and Garnett inwardly admitted that he had not enough to soar to +the heights of her invention. For the marriage, of course, was an +invention of her own, a superlative stroke of business, in which he was +sure the principal parties had all been passive agents, in which +everyone, from the bankrupt and disreputable Fitzarthurs to the rich +and immaculate Morningfields, had by some mysterious sleight of hand +been made to fit into Mrs. Newell's designs. But it was not enough for +Garnett to marvel at her work--he wanted to understand it, to take it +apart, to find out how the trick had been done. It was true that Mrs. +Newell had always said Hermy might go off in the Faubourg if she had a +_dot_--but even Mrs. Newell's juggling could hardly conjure up a _dot:_ +such feats as she was able to perform in this line were usually made to +serve her own urgent necessities. And besides, who was likely to take +sufficient interest in Hermione to supply her with the means of +marrying a French nobleman? The flowers ordered in advance by the +Woolsey Hubbards' courier made Garnett wonder if that accomplished +functionary had also wired over to have Miss Newell's settlements drawn +up. But of all the comments hovering on his lips the only one he could +decently formulate was the remark that he supposed Mrs. Newell and her +daughter had come over to see the young man's family and make the final +arrangements. + +"Oh, they're made--everything is settled," said Mrs. Newell, looking +him squarely in the eye. "You're wondering, of course, about the +_dot_--Frenchmen never go off their heads to the extent of forgetting +_that;_ or at least their parents don't allow them to." + +Garnett murmured a vague assent, and she went on without the least +appearance of resenting his curiosity: "It all came about so +fortunately. Only fancy, just the week they met I got a little legacy +from an aunt in Elmira--a good soul I hadn't seen or heard of for +years. I suppose I ought to have put on mourning for her, by the way, +but it would have eaten up a good bit of the legacy, and I really +needed it all for poor Hermy. Oh, it's not a fortune, you +understand--but the young man is madly in love, and has always had his +own way, so after a lot of correspondence it's been arranged. They saw +Hermy this morning, and they're enchanted." + +"And the marriage takes place very soon?" + +"Yes, in a few weeks, here. His mother is an invalid and couldn't have +gone to England. Besides, the French don't travel. And as Hermy has +become a Catholic--" + +"Already?" + +Mrs. Newell stared. "It doesn't take long. And it suits Hermy +exactly--she can go to church so much oftener. So I thought," Mrs. +Newell concluded with dignity, "that a wedding at Saint Philippe du +Roule would be the most suitable thing at this season." + +"Dear me," said Garnett, "I am left breathless--I can't catch up with +you. I suppose even the day is fixed, though Miss Hermione doesn't +mention it," and he indicated the official announcement in his hand. + +Mrs. Newell laughed. "Hermy had to write that herself, poor dear, +because my scrawl's too hideous--but I dictated it. No, the day isn't +fixed--that's why I sent for you." There was a splendid directness +about Mrs. Newell. It would never have occurred to her to pretend to +Garnett that she had summoned him for the pleasure of his company. + +"You've sent for me--to fix the day?" he enquired humourously. + +"To remove the last obstacle to its being fixed." + +"I? What kind of an obstacle could I have the least effect on?" + +Mrs. Newell met his banter with a look which quelled it. "I want you to +find her father." + +"Her father? Miss Hermione's--?" + +"My husband, of course. I suppose you know he's living." + +Garnett blushed at his own clumsiness. "I--yes--that is, I really knew +nothing--" he stammered, feeling that each word added to it. If +Hermione was unnoticeable, Mr. Newell had always been invisible. The +young man had never so much as given him a thought, and it was awkward +to come on him so suddenly at a turn of the talk. + +"Well, he is--living here in Paris," said Mrs. Newell, with a note of +asperity which seemed to imply that her friend might have taken the +trouble to post himself on this point. + +"In Paris? But in that case isn't it quite simple--?" + +"To find him? I daresay it won't be difficult, though he is rather +mysterious. But the point is that I can't go to him--and that if I +write to him he won't answer." + +"Ah," said Garnett thoughtfully. + +"And so you've got to find him for me, and tell him." + +"Tell him what?" + +"That he must come to the wedding--that we must show ourselves together +at church and at the breakfast." + +She delivered the behest in her sharp imperative key, the tone of the +born commander. But for once Garnett ventured to question her orders. + +"And supposing he won't come?" + +"He must if he cares for his daughter's happiness. She can't be married +without him." + +"Can't be married?" + +"The French are like that--especially the old families. I was given to +understand at once that my husband must appear--if only to establish +the fact that we're not divorced." + +"Ah--you're _not_, then?" escaped from Garnett. + +"Mercy, no! Divorce is stupid. They don't like it in Europe. And in +this case it would have been the end of Hermy's marriage. They wouldn't +think of letting their son marry the child of divorced parents." + +"How fortunate, then--" + +"Yes; but I always think of such things beforehand. And of course I've +told them that my husband will be present." + +"You think he will consent?" + +"No; not at first; but you must make him. You must tell him how sweet +Hermione is--and you must see Louis, and be able to describe their +happiness. You must dine here to-night--he is coming. We're all dining +with the Hubbards, and they expect you. They have given Hermy some very +good diamonds--though I should have preferred a cheque, as she'll be +horribly poor. But I think Kate Hubbard means to do something about the +trousseau--Hermy is at Paquin's with her now. You've no idea how +delightful all our friends have been.--Ah, here is one of them now," +she broke off smiling, as the door opened to admit, without preliminary +announcement, a gentleman so glossy and ancient, with such a fixed +unnatural freshness of smile and eye, that he gave Garnett the effect +of having been embalmed and then enamelled. It needed not the +exotic-looking ribbon in the visitor's button-hole, nor Mrs. Newell's +introduction of him as her friend Baron Schenkelderff, to assure +Garnett of his connection with a race as ancient as his appearance. + +Baron Schenkelderff greeted his hostess with paternal playfulness, and +the young man with an ease which might have been acquired on the Stock +Exchange and in the dressing-rooms of "leading ladies." He spoke a +faultless, colourless English, from which one felt he might pass with +equal mastery to half a dozen other languages. He enquired +patronizingly for the excellent Hubbards, asked his hostess if she did +not mean to give him a drop of tea and a cigarette, remarked that he +need not ask if Hermione was still closeted with the dress-maker, and, +on the waiter's coming in answer to his ring, ordered the tea himself, +and added a request for _fine champagne_. It was not the first time +that Garnett had seen such minor liberties taken in Mrs. Newell's +drawing-room, but they had hitherto been taken by persons who had at +least the superiority of knowing what they were permitting themselves, +whereas the young man felt almost sure that Baron Schenkelderff's +manner was the most distinguished he could achieve; and this deepened +the disgust with which, as the minutes passed, he yielded to the +conviction that the Baron was Mrs. Newell's aunt. + + +IV + +GARNETT had always foreseen that Mrs. Newell might some day ask him to +do something he should greatly dislike. He had never gone so far as to +conjecture what it might be, but had simply felt that if he allowed his +acquaintance with her to pass from spectatorship to participation he +must be prepared to find himself, at any moment, in a queer situation. + +The moment had come; and he was relieved to find that he could meet it +by refusing her request. He had not always been sure that she would +leave him this alternative. She had a way of involving people in her +complications without their being aware of it, and Garnett had pictured +himself in holes so tight that there might not be room for a wriggle. +Happily in this case he could still move freely. Nothing compelled him +to act as an intermediary between Mrs. Newell and her husband, and it +was preposterous to suppose that, even in a life of such perpetual +upheaval as hers, there were no roots which struck deeper than her +casual intimacy with himself. She had simply laid hands on him because +he happened to be within reach, and he would put himself out of reach +by leaving for London on the morrow. + +Having thus inwardly asserted his independence, he felt free to let his +fancy dwell on the strangeness of the situation. He had always supposed +that Mrs. Newell, in her flight through life, must have thrown a good +many victims to the wolves, and had assumed that Mr. Newell had been +among the number. That he had been dropped overboard at an early stage +in the lady's career seemed probable from the fact that neither his +wife nor his daughter ever mentioned him. Mrs. Newell was incapable of +reticence, and if her husband had still been an active element in her +life he would certainly have figured in her conversation. Garnett, if +he thought of the matter at all, had concluded that divorce must long +since have eliminated Mr. Newell; but he now saw how he had underrated +his friend's faculty for using up the waste material of life. She had +always struck him as the most extravagant of women, yet it turned out +that by a miracle of thrift she had for years kept a superfluous +husband on the chance that he might some day be useful to her. The day +had come, and Mr. Newell was to be called from his obscurity. Garnett +wondered what had become of him in the interval, and in what shape he +would respond to the evocation. The fact that his wife feared he might +not respond to it at all, seemed to show that his exile was voluntary, +or had at least come to appear preferable to other alternatives; but if +that were the case it was curious that he should not have taken legal +means to free himself. He could hardly have had his wife's motives for +wishing to maintain the vague tie between them; but conjecture lost +itself in trying to picture what his point of view was likely to be, +and Garnett, on his way to the Hubbards' dinner that evening, could not +help regretting that circumstances denied him the opportunity of +meeting so enigmatic a person. The young man's knowledge of Mrs. +Newell's methods made him feel that her husband might be an interesting +study. This, however, did not affect his resolve to keep clear of the +business. He entered the Hubbards' dining-room with the firm intention +of refusing to execute Mrs. Newell's commission, and if he changed his +mind in the course of the evening it was not owing to that lady's +persuasions. + +Garnett's curiosity as to the Hubbards' share in Hermione's marriage +was appeased before he had been seated five minutes at their table. + +Mrs. Woolsey Hubbard was an expansive blonde, whose ample but +disciplined outline seemed the result of a well-matched struggle +between her cook and her corset-maker. She talked a great deal of what +was appropriate in dress and conduct, and seemed to regard Mrs. Newell +as a final arbiter on both points. To do or to wear anything +inappropriate would have been extremely mortifying to Mrs. Hubbard, and +she was evidently resolved, at the price of eternal vigilance, to prove +her familiarity with what she frequently referred to as "the right +thing." Mr. Hubbard appeared to have no such preoccupations. Garnett, +if called upon to describe him, would have done so by saying that he +was the American who always pays. The young man, in the course of his +foreign wanderings, had come across many fellow-citizens of Mr. +Hubbard's type, in the most diverse company and surroundings; and +wherever they were to be found, they always had their hands in their +pockets. Mr. Hubbard's standard of gentility was the extent of a man's +capacity to "foot the bill"; and as no one but an occasional compatriot +cared to dispute the privilege with him, he seldom had reason to doubt +his social superiority. + +Garnett, nevertheless, did not believe that this lavish pair were, as +Mrs. Newell would have phrased it, "putting up" Hermione's _dot_. They +would go very far in diamonds, but they would hang back from +securities. Their readiness to pay was indefinably mingled with a dread +of being expected to, and their prodigalities would take flight at the +first hint of coercion. Mrs. Newell, who had had a good deal of +experience in managing this type of millionaire, could be trusted not +to arouse their susceptibilities, and Garnett was therefore certain +that the chimerical legacy had been extracted from other pockets. There +were none in view but those of Baron Schenkelderff, who, seated at Mrs. +Hubbard's right, with a new order in his button-hole, and a fresh glaze +upon his features, enchanted that lady by his careless references to +crowned heads and his condescending approval of the champagne. Garnett +was more than ever certain that it was the Baron who was paying; and it +was this conviction which made him suddenly feel that, at any cost, +Hermione's marriage must take place. He had felt no special interest in +the marriage except as one more proof of Mrs. Newell's extraordinary +capacity; but now it appealed to him from the girl's own stand-point. +For he saw, with a touch of compunction, that in the mephitic air of +her surroundings a love-story of surprising freshness had miraculously +flowered. He had only to intercept the glances which the young couple +exchanged to find himself transported to the candid region of romance. +It was evident that Hermione adored and was adored; that the lovers +believed in each other and in every one about them, and that even the +legacy of the defunct aunt had not been too great a strain on their +faith in human nature. + +His first glance at the Comte Louis du Trayas showed Garnett that, by +some marvel of fitness, Hermione had happened upon a kindred nature. If +the young man's long mild features and short-sighted glance revealed no +special force of character, they showed a benevolence and simplicity as +incorruptible as her own, and declared that their possessor, whatever +his failings, would never imperil the illusions she had so miraculously +preserved. The fact that the girl took her good fortune naturally, and +did not regard herself as suddenly snatched from the jaws of death, +added poignancy to the situation; for if she missed this way of escape, +and was thrown back on her former life, the day of discovery could not +be long deferred. It made Garnett shiver to think of her growing old +between her mother and Schenkelderff, or such successors of the Baron's +as might probably attend on Mrs. Newell's waning fortunes; for it was +clear to him that the Baron marked the first stage in his friend's +decline. When Garnett took leave that evening he had promised Mrs. +Newell that he would try to find her husband. + + +V + +IF Mr. Newell read in the papers the announcement of his daughter's +marriage it did not cause him to lift the veil of seclusion in which +his wife represented him as shrouded. + +A round of the American banks in Paris failed to give Garnett his +address, and it was only in chance talk with one of the young +secretaries of the Embassy that he was put on Mr. Newell's track. The +secretary's father, it appeared, had known the Newells some twenty +years earlier. He had had business relations with Mr. Newell, who was +then a man of property, with factories or something of the kind, the +narrator thought, somewhere in Western New York. There had been at this +period, for Mrs. Newell, a phase of large hospitality and showy +carriages in Washington and at Narragansett. Then her husband had had +reverses, had lost heavily in Wall Street, and had finally drifted +abroad and been lost to sight. The young man did not know at what point +in his financial decline Mr. Newell had parted company with his wife +and daughter; "though you may bet your hat," he philosophically +concluded, "that the old girl hung on as long as there were any +pickings." He did not himself know Mr. Newell's address, but opined +that it might be extracted from a certain official at the Consulate, if +Garnett could give a sufficiently good reason for the request; and here +in fact Mrs. Newell's emissary learned that her husband was to be found +in an obscure street of the Luxembourg quarter. + +In order to be near the scene of action, Garnett went to breakfast at +his usual haunt, determined to despatch his business as early in the +day as politeness allowed. The head waiter welcomed him to a table near +that of the transatlantic sage, who sat in his customary corner, his +head tilted back against the blistered mirror at an angle suggesting +that in a freer civilization his feet would have sought the same level. +He greeted Garnett affably and the two exchanged their usual +generalizations on life till the sage rose to go; whereupon it occurred +to Garnett to accompany him. His friend took the offer in good part, +merely remarking that he was going to the Luxembourg gardens, where it +was his invariable habit, on good days, to feed the sparrows with the +remains of his breakfast roll; and Garnett replied that, as it +happened, his own business lay in the same direction. + +"Perhaps, by the way," he added, "you can tell me how to find the rue +Panonceaux where I must go presently. I thought I knew this quarter +fairly well, but I have never heard of it." + +His companion came to a sudden halt on the narrow sidewalk, to the +confusion of the dense and desultory traffic which marks the old +streets of the Latin quarter. He fixed his mild eye on Garnett and gave +a twist to the cigar which lingered in the corner of his mouth. + +"The rue Panonceaux? It _is_ an out of the way hole, but I can tell you +how to find it," he answered. + +He made no motion to do so, however, but continued to bend on the young +man the full force of his interrogative gaze; then he added abruptly: +"Would you mind telling me your object in going there?" + +Garnett looked at him with surprise: a question so unblushingly +personal was strangely out of keeping with his friend's usual attitude +of detachment. Before he could reply, however, the other had quietly +continued: "Do you happen to be in search of Samuel C. Newell?" + +"Why, yes, I am," said Garnett with a start of conjecture. + +His companion uttered a sigh. "I supposed so," he said resignedly; "and +in that case," he added, "we may as well have the matter out in the +Luxembourg." + +Garnett had halted before him with deepening astonishment. "But you +don't mean to tell me--?" he stammered. + +The little man made a motion of assent. "I am Samuel C. Newell," he +said drily; "and if you have no objection, I prefer not to break +through my habit of feeding the sparrows. We are five minutes late as +it is." + +He quickened his pace without awaiting any reply from Garnett, who +walked beside him in unsubdued wonder till they reached the Luxembourg +gardens, where Mr. Newell, making for one of the less frequented +alleys, seated himself on a bench and drew the fragment of a roll from +his pocket. His coming was evidently expected, for a shower of little +dusky bodies at once descended on him, and the gravel fluttered with +battling wings and beaks as he distributed his dole with impartial +gestures. + +It was not till the ground was white with crumbs, and the first frenzy +of his pensioners appeased, that he turned to Garnett and said: "I +presume, sir, that you come from my wife." + +Garnett coloured with embarrassment: the more simply the old man took +his mission the more complicated it appeared to himself. + +"From your wife--and from Miss Newell," he said at length. "You have +perhaps heard that she is to be married." + +"Oh, yes--I read the _Herald_ pretty faithfully," said Miss Newell's +parent, shaking out another handful of crumbs. + +Garnett cleared his throat. "Then you have no doubt thought it natural +that, under the circumstances, they should wish to communicate with +you." + +The sage continued to fix his attention on the sparrows. "My wife," he +remarked, "might have written to me." + +"Mrs. Newell was afraid she might not hear from you in reply." + +"In reply? Why should she? I suppose she merely wishes to announce the +marriage. She knows I have no money left to buy wedding-presents," said +Mr. Newell astonishingly. + +Garnett felt his colour deepen: he had a vague sense of standing as the +representative of something guilty and enormous, with which he had +rashly identified himself. + +"I don't think you understand," he said. "Mrs. Newell and your daughter +have asked me to see you because they are anxious that you should +consent to appear at the wedding." + +Mr. Newell, at this, ceased to give his attention to the birds, and +turned a compassionate gaze upon Garnett. + +"My dear sir--I don't know your name--" he remarked, "would you mind +telling me how long you have been acquainted with Mrs. Newell?" And +without waiting for an answer he added judicially: "If you wait long +enough she will ask you to do some very disagreeable things for her." + +This echo of his own thoughts gave Garnett a sharp twinge of +discomfort, but he made shift to answer good-humouredly: "If you refer +to my present errand, I must tell you that I don't find it disagreeable +to do anything which may be of service to Miss Hermione." + +Mr. Newell fumbled in his pocket, as though searching unavailingly for +another morsel of bread; then he said: "From her point of view I shall +not be the most important person at the ceremony." + +Garnett smiled. "That is hardly a reason--" he began; but he was +checked by the brevity of tone with which his companion replied: "I am +not aware that I am called upon to give you my reasons." + +"You are certainly not," the young man rejoined, "except in so far as +you are willing to consider me as the messenger of your wife and +daughter." + +"Oh, I accept your credentials," said the other with his dry smile; +"what I don't recognize is their right to send a message." + +This reduced Garnett to silence, and after a moment's pause Mr. Newell +drew his watch from his pocket. + +"I am sorry to cut the conversation short, but my days are mapped out +with a certain regularity, and this is the hour for my nap." He rose as +he spoke and held out his hand with a glint of melancholy humour in his +small clear eyes. + +"You dismiss me, then? I am to take back a refusal?" the young man +exclaimed. + +"My dear sir, those ladies have got on very well without me for a +number of years: I imagine they can put through this wedding without my +help." + +"You are mistaken, then; if it were not for that I shouldn't have +undertaken this errand." + +Mr. Newell paused as he was turning away. "Not for what?" he enquired. + +"The fact that, as it happens, the wedding can't be put through without +your help." + +Mr. Newell's thin lips formed a noiseless whistle. "They've got to have +my consent, have they? Well, is he a good young man?" + +"The bridegroom?" Garnett echoed in surprise. "I hear the best accounts +of him--and Miss Newell is very much in love." + +Her parent met this with an odd smile. "Well, then, I give my +consent--it's all I've got left to give," he added philosophically. + +Garnett hesitated. "But if you consent--if you approve--why do you +refuse your daughter's request?" + +Mr. Newell looked at him a moment. "Ask Mrs. Newell!" he said. And as +Garnett was again silent, he turned away with a slight gesture of +leave-taking. + +But in an instant the young man was at his side. "I will not ask your +reasons, sir," he said, "but I will give you mine for being here. Miss +Newell cannot be married unless you are present at the ceremony. The +young man's parents know that she has a father living, and they give +their consent only on condition that he appears at her marriage. I +believe it is customary in old French families--." + +"Old French families be damned!" said Mr. Newell with sudden vigour. +"She had better marry an American." And he made a more decided motion +to free himself from Garnett's importunities. + +But his resistance only strengthened the young man's. The more +unpleasant the latter's task became, the more unwilling he grew to see +his efforts end in failure. During the three days which had been +consumed in his quest it had become clear to him that the bridegroom's +parents, having been surprised into a reluctant consent, were but too +ready to withdraw it on the plea of Mr. Newell's non-appearance. Mrs. +Newell, on the last edge of tension, had confided to Garnett that the +Morningfields were "being nasty"; and he could picture the whole +powerful clan, on both sides of the Channel, arrayed in a common +resolve to exclude poor Hermione from their ranks. The very inequality +of the contest stirred his blood, and made him vow that in this case at +least the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. In +his talk with the young secretary he had obtained some glimpses of +Baron Schenkelderff's past which fortified this resolve. The Baron, at +one time a familiar figure in a much-observed London set, had been +mixed up in an ugly money-lending business ending in suicide, which had +excluded him from the society most accessible to his race. His alliance +with Mrs. Newell was doubtless a desperate attempt at rehabilitation, a +forlorn hope on both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because it +represented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from social +extinction. That Hermione's marriage was a mere stake in their game did +not in the least affect Garnett's view of its urgency. If on their part +it was a sordid speculation, to her it had the freshness of the first +wooing. If it made of her a mere pawn in their hands, it would put her, +so Garnett hoped, beyond farther risk of such base uses; and to achieve +this had become a necessity to him. + +The sense that, if he lost sight of Mr. Newell, the latter might not +easily be found again, nerved Garnett to hold his ground in spite of +the resistance he encountered; and he tried to put the full force of +his plea into the tone with which he cried: "Ah, you don't know your +daughter!" + + +VI + +MRS. NEWELL, that afternoon, met him on the threshold of her +sitting-room with a "Well?" of pent-up anxiety. + +In the room itself, Baron Schenkelderff sat with crossed legs and head +thrown back, in an attitude which he did not see fit to alter at the +young man's approach. + +Garnett hesitated; but it was not the summariness of the Baron's +greeting which he resented. + +"You've found him?" Mrs. Newell exclaimed. + +"Yes; but--" + +She followed his glance and answered it with a slight shrug. "I can't +take you into my room, because there's a dress-maker there, and she +won't go because she is waiting to be paid. Schenkelderff," she +exclaimed, "you're not wanted; please go and look out of the window." + +The Baron rose and, lighting a cigarette, laughingly retired to the +embrasure. Mrs. Newell flung herself down and signed to Garnett to take +a seat at her side. + +"Well--you've found him? You've talked with him?" + +"Yes; I have talked with him--for an hour." + +She made an impatient movement. "That's too long! Does he refuse?" + +"He doesn't consent." + +"Then you mean--?" + +"He wants time to think it over." + +"Time? There _is_ no time--did you tell him so?" + +"I told him so; but you must remember that he has plenty. He has taken +twenty-four hours." + +Mrs. Newell groaned. "Oh, that's too much. When he thinks things over +he always refuses." + +"Well, he would have refused at once if I had not agreed to the delay." + +She rose nervously from her seat and pressed her hands to her forehead. +"It's too hard, after all I've done! The trousseau is ordered--think +how disgraceful! You must have managed him badly; I'll go and see him +myself." + +The Baron, at this, turned abruptly from his study of the Place Vendome. + +"My dear creature, for heaven's sake don't spoil everything!" he +exclaimed. + +Mrs. Newell coloured furiously. "What's the meaning of that brilliant +speech?" + +"I was merely putting myself in the place of a man on whom you have +ceased to smile." + +He picked up his hat and stick, nodded knowingly to Garnett, and walked +toward the door with an air of creaking jauntiness. + +But on the threshold Mrs. Newell waylaid him. + +"Don't go--I must speak to you," she said, following him into the +antechamber; and Garnett remembered the dress-maker who was not to be +dislodged from her bedroom. + +In a moment Mrs. Newell returned, with a small flat packet which she +vainly sought to dissemble in an inaccessible pocket. + +"He makes everything too odious!" she exclaimed; but whether she +referred to her husband or the Baron it was left to Garnett to decide. + +She sat silent, nervously twisting her cigarette-case between her +fingers, while her visitor rehearsed the details of his conversation +with Mr. Newell. He did not indeed tell her the arguments he had used +to shake her husband's resolve, since in his eloquent sketch of +Hermione's situation there had perforce entered hints unflattering to +her mother; but he gave the impression that his hearer had in the end +been moved, and for that reason had consented to defer his refusal. + +"Ah, it's not that--it's to prolong our misery!" Mrs. Newell exclaimed; +and after a moment she added drearily: "He has been waiting for such an +opportunity for years." + +It seemed needless for Garnett to protract his visit, and he took leave +with the promise to report at once the result of his final talk with +Mr. Newell. But as he was passing through the ante-chamber a side-door +opened and Hermione stood before him. Her face was flushed and shaken +out of its usual repose of line, and he saw at once that she had been +waiting for him. + +"Mr. Garnett!" she said in a whisper. + +He paused, considering her with surprise: he had never supposed her +capable of such emotion as her voice and eyes revealed. + +"I want to speak to you; we are quite safe here. Mamma is with the +dress-maker," she explained, closing the door behind her, while Garnett +laid aside his hat and stick. + +"I am at your service," he said. + +"You have seen my father? Mamma told me that you were to see him +to-day," the girl went on, standing close to him in order that she +might not have to raise her voice. + +"Yes; I have seen him," Garnett replied with increasing wonder. +Hermione had never before mentioned her father to him, and it was by a +slight stretch of veracity that he had included her name in her +mother's plea to Mr. Newell. He had supposed her to be either +unconscious of the transaction, or else too much engrossed in her own +happiness to give it a thought; and he had forgiven her the last +alternative in consideration of the abnormal character of her filial +relations. But now he saw that he must readjust his view of her. + +"You went to ask him to come to my wedding; I know about it," Hermione +continued. "Of course it is the custom--people will think it odd if he +does not come." She paused, and then asked: "Does he consent?" + +"No; he has not yet consented." + +"Ah, I thought so when I saw Mamma just now!" + +"But he hasn't quite refused--he has promised to think it over." + +"But he hated it--he hated the idea?" + +Garnett hesitated. "It seemed to arouse painful associations." + +"Ah, it would--it would!" she exclaimed. + +He was astonished at the passion of her accent; astonished still more +at the tone with which she went on, laying her hand on his arm: "Mr. +Garnett, he must not be asked--he has been asked too often to do things +that he hated!" + +Garnett looked at the girl with a shock of awe. What abysses of +knowledge did her purity hide? + +"But, my dear Miss Hermione--" he began. + +"I know what you are going to say," she interrupted him. "It is +necessary that he should be present at the marriage or the du Trayas +will break it off. They don't want it very much, at any rate," she +added with a strange candour, "and they will not be sorry, perhaps--for +of course Louis would have to obey them." + +"So I explained to your father," Garnett assured her. + +"Yes--yes; I knew you would put it to him. But that makes no +difference, Mr. Garnett. He must not be forced to come unwillingly." + +"But if he sees the point--after all, no one can force him!" + +"No; but if it is painful to him--if it reminds him too much ... Oh, +Mr. Garnett, I was not a child when he left us.... I was old enough to +see ... to see how it must hurt him even now to be reminded. Peace was +all he asked for, and I want him to be left in peace!" + +Garnett paused in deep embarrassment. "My dear child, there is no need +to remind you that your own future--" + +She had a gesture that recalled her mother. "My future must take care +of itself; he must not be made to see us!" she said imperatively. And +as Garnett remained silent she went on: "I have always hoped he did not +hate me, but he would hate me now if he were forced to see me." + +"Not if he could see you at this moment!" he exclaimed. + +She lifted her face with swimming eyes. + +"Well, go to him, then; tell him what I have said to you!" + +Garnett continued to stand before her, deeply struck. "It might be the +best thing," he reflected inwardly; but he did not give utterance to +the thought. He merely put out his hand, holding Hermione's in a long +pressure. + +"I will do whatever you wish," he replied. + +"You understand that I am in earnest?" she urged tenaciously. + +"I am quite sure of it." + +"Then I want you to repeat to him what I have said--I want him to be +left undisturbed. I don't want him ever to hear of us again!" + +The next day, at the appointed hour, Garnett resorted to the Luxembourg +gardens, which Mr. Newell had named as a meeting-place in preference to +his own lodgings. It was clear that he did not wish to admit the young +man any further into his privacy than the occasion required, and the +extreme shabbiness of his dress hinted that pride might be the cause of +his reluctance. + +Garnett found him feeding the sparrows, but he desisted at the young +man's approach, and said at once: "You will not thank me for bringing +you all this distance." + +"If that means that you are going to send me away with a refusal, I +have come to spare you the necessity," Garnett answered. + +Mr. Newell turned on him a glance of undisguised wonder, in which an +undertone of disappointment might almost have been detected. + + +"Ah--they've got no use for me, after all?" he said ironically. + +Garnett, in reply, related without comment his conversation with +Hermione, and the message with which she had charged him. He remembered +her words exactly and repeated them without modification, heedless of +what they implied or revealed. + +Mr. Newell listened with an immovable face, occasionally casting a +crumb to his flock. When Garnett ended he asked: "Does her mother know +of this?" + +"Assuredly not!" cried Garnett with a movement of disgust. + +"You must pardon me; but Mrs. Newell is a very ingenious woman." Mr. +Newell shook out his remaining crumbs and turned thoughtfully toward +Garnett. + +"You believe it's quite clear to Hermione that these people will use my +refusal as a pretext for backing out of the marriage?" + +"Perfectly clear--she told me so herself." + +"Doesn't she consider the young man rather chicken-hearted?" + +"No; he has already put up a big fight for her, and you know the French +look at these things differently. He's only twenty-three and his +marrying against his parents' approval is in itself an act of heroism." + +"Yes; I believe they look at it that way," Mr. Newell assented. He rose +and picked up the half-smoked cigar which he had laid on the bench +beside him. + +"What do they wear at these French weddings, anyhow? A dress-suit, +isn't it?" he asked. + +The question was such a surprise to Garnett that for the moment he +could only stammer out--"You consent then? I may go and tell her?" + +"You may tell my girl--yes." He gave a vague laugh and added: "One way +or another, my wife always gets what she wants." + + +VII + +MR. NEWELL'S consent brought with it no accompanying concessions. In +the first flush of his success Garnett had pictured himself as bringing +together the father and daughter, and hovering in an attitude of +benediction over a family group in which Mrs. Newell did not very +distinctly figure. + +But Mr. Newell's conditions were inflexible. He would "see the thing +through" for his daughter's sake; but he stipulated that in the +meantime there should be no meetings or farther communications of any +kind. He agreed to be ready when Garnett called for him, at the +appointed hour on the wedding-day; but until then he begged to be left +alone. To this decision he adhered immovably, and when Garnett conveyed +it to Hermione she accepted it with a deep look of understanding. As +for Mrs. Newell she was too much engrossed in the nuptial preparations +to give her husband another thought. She had gained her point, she had +disarmed her foes, and in the first flush of success she had no time to +remember by what means her victory had been won. Even Garnett's +services received little recognition, unless he found them sufficiently +compensated by the new look in Hermione's eyes. + +The principal figures in Mrs. Newell's foreground were the Woolsey +Hubbards and Baron Schenkelderff. With these she was in hourly +consultation, and Mrs. Hubbard went about aureoled with the importance +of her close connection with an "aristocratic marriage," and dazzled by +the Baron's familiarity with the intricacies of the Almanach de Gotha. +In his society and Mrs. Newell's, Mrs. Hubbard evidently felt that she +had penetrated to the sacred precincts where "the right thing" +flourished in its native soil. As for Hermione, her look of happiness +had returned, but with an undertint of melancholy, visible perhaps only +to Garnett, but to him always hauntingly present. Outwardly she sank +back into her passive self, resigned to serve as the brilliant +lay-figure on which Mrs. Newell hung the trophies of conquest. +Preparations for the wedding were zealously pressed. Mrs. Newell knew +the danger of giving people time to think things over, and her fears +about her husband being allayed, she began to dread a new attempt +at evasion on the part of the bridegroom's family. + +"The sooner it's over the sounder I shall sleep!" she declared to +Garnett; and all the mitigations of art could not conceal the fact that +she was desperately in need of that restorative. There were moments, +indeed, when he was sorrier for her than for her husband or her +daughter; so black and unfathomable appeared the abyss into which she +must slip back if she lost her hold on this last spar of safety. + +But she did not lose her hold; his own experience, as well as her +husband's declaration, might have told him that she always got what she +wanted. How much she had wanted this particular thing was shown by the +way in which, on the last day, when all peril was over, she bloomed out +in renovated splendour. It gave Garnett a shivering sense of the +ugliness of the alternative which had confronted her. + +The day came; the showy coupe provided by Mrs. Newell presented itself +punctually at Garnett's door, and the young man entered it and drove to +the rue Panonceaus. It was a little melancholy back street, with lean +old houses sweating rust and damp, and glimpses of pit-life gardens, +black and sunless, between walls bristling with iron spikes. On the +narrow pavement a blind man pottered along led by a red-eyed poodle: a +little farther on a dishevelled woman sat grinding coffee on the +threshold of a _buvette_. The bridal carriage stopped before one of the +doorways, with a clatter of hoofs and harness which drew the +neighbourhood to its windows, and Garnett started to mount the +ill-smelling stairs to the fourth floor, on which he learned from the +_concierge_ that Mr. Newell lodged. But half-way up he met the latter +descending, and they turned and went down together. + +Hermione's parent wore his usual imperturbable look, and his eye seemed +as full as ever of generalisations on human folly; but there was +something oddly shrunken and submerged in his appearance, as though he +had grown smaller or his clothes larger. And on the last hypothesis +Garnett paused--for it became evident to him that Mr. Newell had hired +his dress-suit. + +Seated at the young man's side on the satin cushions, he remained +silent while the carriage rolled smoothly and rapidly through the +net-work of streets leading to the Boulevard Saint-Germain; only once +he remarked, glancing at the elaborate fittings of the coupe: "Is this +Mrs. Newell's carriage?" + +"I believe so--yes," Garnett assented, with the guilty sense that in +defining that lady's possessions it was impossible not to trespass on +those of her friends. + +Mr. Newell made no farther comment, but presently requested his +companion to rehearse to him once more the exact duties which were to +devolve on him during the coming ceremony. Having mastered these he +remained silent, fixing a dry speculative eye on the panorama of the +brilliant streets, till the carriage drew up at the entrance of Saint +Philippe du Roule. + +With the same air of composure he followed his guide through the mob of +spectators, and up the crimson velvet steps, at the head of which, but +for a word from Garnett, a formidable Suisse, glittering with cocked +hat and mace, would have checked the advance of the small crumpled +figure so oddly out of keeping with the magnificence of the bridal +party. The French fashion prescribing that the family _cortege_ shall +follow the bride to the altar, the vestibule of the church was thronged +with the participatore in the coming procession; but if Mr. Newell felt +any nervousness at his sudden projection into this unfamiliar group, +nothing in his look or manner betrayed it. He stood beside Garnett till +a white-favoured carriage, dashing up to the church with a superlative +glitter of highly groomed horseflesh and silver-plated harness, +deposited the snowy apparition of the bride, supported by her mother; +then, as Hermione entered the vestibule, he went forward quietly to +meet her. + +The girl, wrapped in the haze of her bridal veil, and a little +confused, perhaps, by the anticipation of the meeting, paused a moment, +as if in doubt, before the small oddly-clad figure which blocked her +path--a horrible moment to Garnett, who felt a pang of misery at this +satire on the infallibility of the filial instinct. He longed to make +some sign, to break in some way the pause of uncertainty; but before he +could move he saw Mrs. Newell give her daughter a sharp push, he saw a +blush of compunction flood Hermione's face, and the girl, throwing back +her veil, bent her tall head and flung her arms about her father. + +Mr. Newell emerged unshaken from the embrace: it seemed to have no +effect beyond giving an odder twist to his tie. He stood beside his +daughter till the church doors were thrown open; then, at a sign from +the verger, he gave her his arm, and the strange couple, with the long +train of fashion and finery behind them, started on their march to the +altar. + +Garnett had already slipped into the church and secured a post of +vantage which gave him a side-view over the assemblage. The building +was thronged--Mrs. Newell had attained her ambition and given Hermione +a smart wedding. Garnett's eye travelled curiously from one group to +another--from the numerous representatives of the bridegroom's family, +all stamped with the same air of somewhat dowdy distinction, the air of +having had their thinking done for them for so long that they could no +longer perform the act individually, and the heterogeneous company of +Mrs. Newell's friends, who presented, on the opposite side of the nave, +every variety of individual conviction in dress and conduct. Of the two +groups the latter was decidedly the more interesting to Garnett, who +observed that it comprised not only such recent acquisitions as the +Woolsey Hubbards and the Baron, but also sundry more important figures +which of late had faded to the verse of Mrs. Newell's horizon. +Hermione's marriage had drawn them back, had once more made her mother +a social entity, had in short already accomplished the object for which +it had been planned and executed. + +And as he looked about him Garnett saw that all the other actors in the +show faded into insignificance beside the dominant figure of Mrs. +Newell, became mere marionettes pulled hither and thither by the hidden +wires of her intention. One and all they were there to serve her ends +and accomplish her purpose: Schenkelderff and the Hubbards to pay for +the show, the bride and bridegroom to seal and symbolize her social +rehabilitation, Garnett himself as the humble instrument adjusting the +different parts of the complicated machinery, and her husband, finally, +as the last stake in her game, the last asset on which she could draw +to rebuild her fallen fortunes. At the thought Garnett was filled with +a deep disgust for what the scene signified, and for his own share in +it. He had been her tool and dupe like the others; if he imagined that +he was serving Hermione, it was for her mother's ends that he had +worked. What right had he to sentimentalise a marriage founded on such +base connivances, and how could he have imagined that in so doing he +was acting a disinterested part? + +While these thoughts were passing through his mind the ceremony had +already begun, and the principal personages in the drama were ranged +before him in the row of crimson velvet chairs which fills the +foreground of a Catholic marriage. Through the glow of lights and the +perfumed haze about the altar, Garnett's eyes rested on the central +figures of the group, and gradually the others disappeared from his +view and his mind. After all, neither Mrs. Newell's schemes nor his own +share in them could ever unsanctify Hermione's marriage. It was one +more testimony to life's indefatigable renewals, to nature's secret of +drawing fragrance from corruption; and as his eyes turned from the +girl's illuminated presence to the resigned and stoical figure sunk in +the adjoining chair, it occured to him that he had perhaps worked +better than he knew in placing them, if only for a moment, side by side. + + + + +IN TRUST + + +IN the good days, just after we all left college, Ned Halidon and I +used to listen, laughing and smoking, while Paul Ambrose set forth his +plans. + +They were immense, these plans, involving, as it sometimes seemed, the +ultimate aesthetic redemption of the whole human race; and +provisionally restoring the sense of beauty to those unhappy millions +of our fellow country-men who, as Ambrose movingly pointed out, now +live and die in surroundings of unperceived and unmitigated ugliness. + +"I want to bring the poor starved wretches back to their lost +inheritance, to the divine past they've thrown away--I want to make 'em +hate ugliness so that they'll smash nearly everything in sight," he +would passionately exclaim, stretching his arms across the shabby +black-walnut writing-table and shaking his thin consumptive fist in the +fact of all the accumulated ugliness in the world. + +"You might set the example by smashing that table," I once suggested +with youthful brutality; and Paul, pulling himself up, cast a surprised +glance at me, and then looked slowly about the parental library, in +which we sat. + +His parents were dead, and he had inherited the house in Seventeenth +Street, where his grandfather Ambrose had lived in a setting of black +walnut and pier glasses, giving Madeira dinners, and saying to his +guests, as they rejoined the ladies across a florid waste of Aubusson +carpet: "This, sir, is Dabney's first study for the Niagara--the +Grecian Slave in the bay window was executed for me in Rome twenty +years ago by my old friend Ezra Stimpson--" by token of which he passed +for a Maecenas in the New York of the 'forties,' and a poem had once +been published in the Keepsake or the Book of Beauty "On a picture in +the possession of Jonathan Ambrose, Esqre." + +Since then the house had remained unchanged. Paul's father, a frugal +liver and hard-headed manipulator of investments, did not inherit old +Jonathan's artistic sensibilities, and was content to live and die in +the unmodified black walnut and red rep of his predecessor. It was only +in Paul that the grandfather's aesthetic faculty revived, and Mrs. +Ambrose used often to say to her husband, as they watched the little +pale-browed boy poring over an old number of the _Art Journal:_ "Paul +will know how to appreciate your father's treasures." + +In recognition of these transmitted gifts Paul, on leaving Harvard, was +sent to Paris with a tutor, and established in a studio in which +nothing was ever done. He could not paint, and recognized the fact +early enough to save himself much wasted labor and his friends many +painful efforts in dissimulation. But he brought back a touching +enthusiasm for the forms of beauty which an old civilization had +revealed to him and an apostolic ardour in the cause of their +dissemination. + +He had paused in his harangue to take in my ill-timed parenthesis, and +the color mounted slowly to his thin cheek-bones. + +"It _is_ an ugly room," he owned, as though he had noticed the library +for the first time. + +The desk was carved at the angles with the heads of helmeted knights +with long black-walnut moustaches. The red cloth top was worn +thread-bare, and patterned like a map with islands and peninsulas of +ink; and in its centre throned a massive bronze inkstand representing a +Syrian maiden slumbering by a well beneath a palm-tree. + +"The fact is," I said, walking home that evening with Ned Halidon, "old +Paul will never do anything, for the simple reason that he's too +stingy." + +Ned, who was an idealist, shook his handsome head. "It's not that, my +dear fellow. He simply doesn't see things when they're too close to +him. I'm glad you woke him up to that desk." + +The next time I dined with Paul he said, when we entered the library, +and I had gently rejected one of his cheap cigars in favour of a +superior article of my own: "Look here, I've been looking round for a +decent writing-table. I don't care, as a rule, to turn out old things, +especially when they've done good service, but I see now that this is +too monstrous--" + +"For an apostle of beauty to write his evangel on," I agreed, "it _is_ +a little inappropriate, except as an awful warning." + +Paul colored. "Well, but, my dear fellow, I'd no idea how much a table +of this kind costs. I find I can't get anything decent--the plainest +mahogany--under a hundred and fifty." He hung his head, and pretended +not to notice that I was taking out my own cigar. + +"Well, what's a hundred and fifty to you?" I rejoined. "You talk as if +you had to live on a book-keeper's salary, with a large family to +support." + +He smiled nervously and twirled the ring on his thin finger. "I know--I +know--that's all very well. But for twenty tables that I _don't_ buy I +can send some fellow abroad and unseal his eyes." + +"Oh, hang it, do both!" I exclaimed impatiently; but the writing-table +was never bought. The library remained as it was, and so did the +contention between Halidon and myself, as to whether this inconsistent +acceptance of his surroundings was due, on our friend's part, to a +congenital inability to put his hand in his pocket, or to a real +unconsciousness of the ugliness that happened to fall inside his point +of vision. + +"But he owned that the table was ugly," I agreed. + +"Yes, but not till you'd called his attention to the fact; and I'll +wager he became unconscious of it again as soon as your back was +turned." + +"Not before he'd had time to look at a lot of others, and make up his +mind that he couldn't afford to buy one." + +"That was just his excuse. He'd rather be thought mean than insensible +to ugliness. But the truth is that he doesn't mind the table and is +used to it. He knows his way about the drawers." + +"But he could get another with the same number of drawers." + +"Too much trouble," argued Halidon. + +"Too much money," I persisted. + +"Oh, hang it, now, if he were mean would he have founded three +travelling scholarships and be planning this big Academy of Arts?" + +"Well, he's mean to himself, at any rate." + +"Yes; and magnificently, royally generous to all the world besides!" +Halidon exclaimed with one of his great flushes of enthusiasm. + +But if, on the whole, the last word remained with Halidon, and +Ambrose's personal chariness seemed a trifling foible compared to his +altruistic breadth of intention, yet neither of us could help +observing, as time went on, that the habit of thrift was beginning to +impede the execution of his schemes of art-philanthropy. The three +travelling scholarships had been founded in the first blaze of his +ardour, and before the personal management of his property had awakened +in him the sleeping instincts of parsimony. But as his capital +accumulated, and problems of investment and considerations of interest +began to encroach upon his visionary hours, we saw a gradual arrest in +the practical development of his plan. + +"For every thousand dollars he talks of spending on his work, I believe +he knocks off a cigar, or buys one less newspaper," Halidon grumbled +affectionately; "but after all," he went on, with one of the quick +revivals of optimism that gave a perpetual freshness to his spirit, +"after all, it makes one admire him all the more when one sees such a +nature condemned to be at war with the petty inherited instinct of +greed." + +Still, I could see it was a disappointment to Halidon that the great +project of the Academy of Arts should languish on paper long after all +its details had been discussed and settled to the satisfaction of the +projector, and of the expert advisers he had called in council. + +"He's quite right to do nothing in a hurry--to take advice and compare +ideas and points of view--to collect and classify his material in +advance," Halidon argued, in answer to a taunt of mine about Paul's +perpetually reiterated plea that he was still waiting for So-and-so's +report; "but now that the plan's mature--and _such_ a plan! You'll +grant it's magnificent?--I should think he'd burn to see it carried +out, instead of pottering over it till his enthusiasm cools and the +whole business turns stale on his hands." + +That summer Ambrose went to Europe, and spent his holiday in a frugal +walking-tour through Brittany. When he came back he seemed refreshed by +his respite from business cares and from the interminable revision of +his cherished scheme; while contact with the concrete manifestations of +beauty had, as usual, renewed his flagging ardour. + +"By Jove," he cried, "whenever I indulged my unworthy eyes in a long +gaze at one of those big things--picture or church or statue--I kept +saying to myself: 'You lucky devil, you, to be able to provide such a +sight as that for eyes that can make some good use of it! Isn't it +better to give fifty fellows a chance to paint or carve or build, than +to be able to daub canvas or punch clay in a corner all by yourself?'" + +"Well," I said, when he had worked off his first ebullition, "when is +the foundation stone to be laid?" + +His excitement dropped. "The foundation stone--?" + +"When are you going to touch the electric button that sets the thing +going?" + +Paul, with his hands in his sagging pockets, began to pace the library +hearth-rug--I can see him now, setting his shabby red slippers between +its ramified cabbages. + +"My dear fellow, there are one or two points to be considered +still--one or two new suggestions I picked up over there--" + +I sat silent, and he paused before me, flushing to the roots of his +thin hair. "You think I've had time enough--that I ought to have put +the thing through before this? I suppose you're right; I can see that +even Ned Halidon thinks so; and he has always understood my +difficulties better than you have." + +This insinuation exasperated me. "Ned would have put it through years +ago!" I broke out. + +Paul pulled at his straggling moustache. "You mean he has more +executive capacity? More--no, it's not that; he's not afraid to spend +money, and I am!" he suddenly exclaimed. + +He had never before alluded to this weakness to either of us, and I sat +abashed, suffering from his evident distress. But he remained planted +before me, his little legs wide apart, his eyes fixed on mine in an +agony of voluntary self-exposure. + +"That's my trouble, and I know it. Big sums frighten me--I can't look +them in the face. By George, I wish Ned had the carrying out of this +scheme--I wish he could spend my money for me!" His face was lit by the +reflection of a passing thought. "Do you know, I shouldn't wonder if I +dropped out of the running before either of you chaps, and in case I do +I've half a mind to leave everything in trust to Halidon, and let him +put the job through for me." + +"Much better have your own fun with it," I retorted; but he shook his +head, saying with a sigh as he turned away: "It's _not_ fun to +me--that's the worst of it." + +Halidon, to whom I could not help repeating our talk, was amused and +touched by his friend's thought. + +"Heaven knows what will become of the scheme, if Paul doesn't live to +carry it out. There are a lot of hungry Ambrose cousins who will make +one gulp of his money, and never give a dollar to the work. Jove, it +_would_ be a fine thing to have the carrying out of such a plan--but +he'll do it yet, you'll see he'll do it yet!" cried Ned, his old faith +in his friend flaming up again through the wet blanket of fact. + + +II + +PAUL AMBROSE did not die and leave his fortune to Halidon, but the +following summer he did something far more unexpected. He went abroad +again, and came back married. Now our busy fancy had never seen Paul +married. Even Ned recognized the vague unlikelihood of such a +metamorphosis. + +"He'd stick at the parson's fee--not to mention the best man's +scarf-pin. And I should hate," Ned added sentimentally, "to see 'the +touch of a woman's hand' desecrate the sublime ugliness of the +ancestral home. Think of such a house made 'cozy'!" + +But when the news came he would own neither to surprise nor to +disappointment. + +"Goodbye, poor Academy!" I exclaimed, tossing over the bridegroom's +eight-page rhapsody to Halidon, who had received its duplicate by the +same post. + +"Now, why the deuce do you say that?" he growled. "I never saw such a +beast as you are for imputing mean motives." + +To defend myself from this accusation I put out my hand and recovered +Paul's letter. + +"Here: listen to this. 'Studying art in Paris when I met her--"the +vision and the faculty divine, but lacking the accomplishment," etc.... +A little ethereal profile, like one of Piero della Francesca's angels +... not rich, thank heaven, _but not afraid of money_, and already +enamored of my project for fertilizing my sterile millions...'" + +"Well, why the deuce--?" Ned began again, as though I had convicted +myself out of my friend's mouth; and I could only grumble obscurely: +"It's all too pat." + +He brushed aside my misgivings. "Thank heaven, she can't paint, anyhow. +And now that I think of it, Paul's just the kind of chap who ought +to have a dozen children." + +"Ah, then indeed: goodbye, poor Academy!" I croaked. + +The lady was lovely, of that there could be no doubt; and if Paul now +for a time forgot the Academy, his doing so was but a vindication of +his sex. Halidon had only a glimpse of the returning couple before he +was himself snatched up in one of the chariots of adventure that seemed +perpetually waiting at his door. This time he was going to the far East +in the train of a "special mission," and his head was humming with new +hopes and ardors; but he had time for a last word with me about Ambrose. + +"You'll see--you'll see!" he summed up hopefully as we parted; and what +I was to see was, of course, the crowning pinnacle of the Academy +lifting itself against the horizon of the immediate future. + +It was in the nature of things that I should, meanwhile, see less than +formerly of the projector of that unrealized structure. Paul had a +personal dread of society, but he wished to show his wife to the world, +and I was not often a spectator on these occasions. Paul indeed, good +fellow, tried to maintain the pretense of an unbroken intercourse, and +to this end I was asked to dine now and then; but when I went I found +guests of a new type, who, after dinner, talked of sport and stocks, +while their host blinked at them silently through the smoke of his +cheap cigars. + +The first innovation that struck me was a sudden improvement in the +quality of the cigars. Was this Daisy's doing? (Mrs. Ambrose was +Daisy.) It was hard to tell--she produced her results so noiselessly. +With her fair bent head and vague smile, she seemed to watch life flow +by without, as yet, trusting anything of her own to its current. But +she was watching, at any rate, and anything might come of that. Such +modifications as she produced were as yet almost imperceptible to any +but the trained observer. I saw that Paul wished her to be well +dressed, but also that he suffered her to drive in a hired brougham, +and to have her door opened by the raw-boned Celt who had bumped down +the dishes on his bachelor table. The drawing-room curtains were +renewed, but this change served only to accentuate the enormities of +the carpet, and perhaps discouraged Mrs. Ambrose from farther +experiments. At any rate, the desecrating touch that Halidon had +affected to dread made no other inroads on the serried ugliness of the +Ambrose interior. + +In the early summer, when Ned returned, the Ambroses had flown to +Europe again--and the Academy was still on paper. + +"Well, what do you make of her?" the traveller asked, as we sat over +our first dinner together. + +"Too many things--and they don't hang together. Perhaps she's still in +the chrysalis stage." + +"Has Paul chucked the scheme altogether?" + +"No. He sent for me and we had a talk about it just before he sailed." + +"And what impression did you get?" + +"That he had waited to send for me _till_ just before he sailed." + +"Oh, there you go again!" I offered no denial, and after a pause he +asked: "Did _she_ ever talk to you about it?" + +"Yes. Once or twice--in snatches." + +"Well--?" + +"She thinks it all _too_ beautiful. She would like to see beauty put +within the reach of everyone." + +"And the practical side--?" + +"She says she doesn't understand business." + +Halidon rose with a shrug. "Very likely you frightened her with your +ugly sardonic grin." + +"It's not my fault if my smile doesn't add to the sum-total of beauty." + +"Well," he said, ignoring me, "next winter we shall see." + +But the next winter did not bring Ambrose back. A brief line, written +in November from the Italian lakes, told me that he had "a rotten +cough," and that the doctors were packing him off to Egypt. Would I see +the architects for him, and explain to the trustees? (The Academy +already had trustees, and all the rest of its official hierarchy.) And +would they all excuse his not writing more than a word? He was really +too groggy--but a little warm weather would set him up again, and he +would certainly come home in the spring. + +He came home in the spring--in the hold of the ship, with his widow +several decks above. The funeral services were attended by all the +officers of the Academy, and by two of the young fellows who had won +the travelling scholarships, and who shed tears of genuine grief when +their benefactor was committed to the grave. + +After that there was a pause of suspense--and then the newspapers +announced that the late Paul Ambrose had left his entire estate to his +widow. The board of the Academy dissolved like a summer cloud, and the +secretary lighted his pipe for a year with the official paper of the +still-born institution. + +After a decent lapse of time I called at the house in Seventeenth +Street, and found a man attaching a real-estate agent's sign to the +window and a van-load of luggage backing away from the door. The +care-taker told me that Mrs. Ambrose was sailing the next morning. Not +long afterward I saw the library table with the helmeted knights +standing before an auctioneer's door in University Place; and I looked +with a pang at the familiar ink-stains, in which I had so often traced +the geography of Paul's visionary world. + +Halidon, who had picked up another job in the Orient, wrote me an +elegiac letter on Paul's death, ending with--"And what about the +Academy?" and for all answer I sent him a newspaper clipping recording +the terms of the will, and another announcing the sale of the house and +Mrs. Ambrose's departure for Europe. + +Though Ned and I corresponded with tolerable regularity I received no +direct answer to this communication till about eighteen months later, +when he surprised me by a letter dated from Florence. It began: "Though +she tells me you have never understood her--" and when I had reached +that point I laid it down and stared out of my office window at the +chimney-pots and the dirty snow on the roof. + +"Ned Halidon and Paul's wife!" I murmured; and, incongruously enough, +my next thought was: "I wish I'd bought the library table that day." + +The letter went on with waxing eloquence: "I could not stand the money +if it were not that, to her as well as to me, it represents the sacred +opportunity of at last giving speech to his inarticulateness ..." + +"Oh, damn it, they're too glib!" I muttered, dashing the letter down; +then, controlling my unreasoning resentment, I read on. "You remember, +old man, those words of his that you repeated to me three or four years +ago: 'I've half a mind to leave my money in trust to Ned'? Well, it +_has_ come to me in trust--as if in mysterious fulfillment of his +thought; and, oh, dear chap--" I dashed the letter down again, and +plunged into my work. + + +III + +"WON'T you own yourself a beast, dear boy?" Halidon asked me gently, +one afternoon of the following spring. + +I had escaped for a six weeks' holiday, and was lying outstretched +beside him in a willow chair on the terrace of their villa above +Florence. + +My eyes turned from the happy vale at our feet to the illuminated face +beside me. A little way off, at the other end of the terrace, Mrs. +Halidon was bending over a pot of carnations on the balustrade. + +"Oh, cheerfully," I assented. + +"You see," he continued, glowing, "living here costs us next to +nothing, and it was quite _her_ idea, our founding that fourth +scholarship in memory of Paul." + +I had already heard of the fourth scholarship, but I may have betrayed +my surprise at the plural pronoun, for the blood rose under Ned's +sensitive skin, and he said with an embarrassed laugh: "Ah, she so +completely makes me forget that it's not mine too." + +"Well, the great thing is that you both think of it chiefly as his." + +"Oh, chiefly--altogether. I should be no more than a wretched parasite +if I didn't live first of all for that!" + +Mrs. Halidon had turned and was advancing toward us with the slow step +of leisurely enjoyment. The bud of her beauty had at last unfolded: her +vague enigmatical gaze had given way to the clear look of the woman +whose hand is on the clue of life. + +"_She's_ not living for anything but her own happiness," I mused, "and +why in heaven's name should she? But Ned--" + +"My wife," Halidon continued, his eyes following mine, "my wife feels +it too, even more strongly. You know a woman's sensitiveness. +She's--there's nothing she wouldn't do for his memory--because--in +other ways.... You understand," he added, lowering his tone as she drew +nearer, "that as soon as the child is born we mean to go home for good, +and take up his work--Paul's work." + +Mrs. Halidon recovered slowly after the birth of her child: the return +to America was deferred for six months, and then again for a whole +year. I heard of the Halidons as established first at Biarritz, then in +Rome. The second summer Ned wrote me a line from St. Moritz. He said +the place agreed so well with his wife--who was still delicate--that +they were "thinking of building a house there: a mere cleft in the +rocks, to hide our happiness in when it becomes too exuberant"--and the +rest of the letter, very properly, was filled with a rhapsody upon his +little daughter. He spoke of her as Paula. + +The following year the Halidons reappeared in New York, and I heard +with surprise that they had taken the Brereton house for the winter. + +"Well, why not?" I argued with myself. "After all, the money is hers: +as far as I know the will didn't even hint at a restriction. Why should +I expect a pretty woman with two children" (for now there was an heir) +"to spend her fortune on a visionary scheme that its originator hadn't +the heart to carry out?" + +"Yes," cried the devil's advocate--"but Ned?" + +My first impression of Halidon was that he had thickened--thickened all +through. He was heavier, physically, with the ruddiness of good living +rather than of hard training; he spoke more deliberately, and had less +frequent bursts of subversive enthusiasm. Well, he was a father, a +householder--yes, and a capitalist now. It was fitting that his manner +should show a sense of these responsibilities. As for Mrs. Halidon, it +was evident that the only responsibilities she was conscious of were +those of the handsome woman and the accomplished hostess. She was +handsomer than ever, with her two babies at her knee--perfect mother as +she was perfect wife. Poor Paul! I wonder if he ever dreamed what a +flower was hidden in the folded bud? + +Not long after their arrival, I dined alone with the Halidons, and +lingered on to smoke with Ned while his wife went alone to the opera. +He seemed dull and out of sorts, and complained of a twinge of gout. + +"Fact is, I don't get enough exercise--I must look about for a horse." + +He had gone afoot for a good many years, and kept his clear skin and +quick eye on that homely regimen--but I had to remind myself that, +after all, we were both older; and also that the Halidons had champagne +every evening. + +"How do you like these cigars? They're some I've just got out from +London, but I'm not quite satisfied with them myself," he grumbled, +pushing toward me the silver box and its attendant taper. + +I leaned to the flame, and our eyes met as I lit my cigar. Ned flushed +and laughed uneasily. "Poor Paul! Were you thinking of those execrable +weeds of his?--I wonder how I knew you were? Probably because I have +been wanting to talk to you of our plan--I sent Daisy off alone so that +we might have a quiet evening. Not that she isn't interested, only the +technical details bore her." + +I hesitated. "Are there many technical details left to settle?" + +Halidon pushed his armchair back from the fire-light, and twirled his +cigar between his fingers. "I didn't suppose there were till I began to +look into things a little more closely. You know I never had much of a +head for business, and it was chiefly with you that Paul used to go +over the figures." + +"The figures--?" + +"There it is, you see." He paused. "Have you any idea how much this +thing is going to cost?" + +"Approximately, yes." + +"And have you any idea how much we--how much Daisy's fortune amounts +to?" + +"None whatever," I hastened to assert. + +He looked relieved. "Well, we simply can't do it--and live." + +"Live?" + +"Paul didn't _live_," he said impatiently. "I can't ask a woman with +two children to think of--hang it, she's under no actual obligation--" +He rose and began to walk the floor. Presently he paused and halted in +front of me, defensively, as Paul had once done years before. "It's not +that I've lost the sense of _my_ obligation--it grows keener with the +growth of my happiness; but my position's a delicate one--" + +"Ah, my dear fellow--" + +"You _do_ see it? I knew you would." (Yes, he was duller!) "That's the +point. I can't strip my wife and children to carry out a plan--a plan +so nebulous that even its inventor.... The long and short of it is that +the whole scheme must be re-studied, reorganized. Paul lived in a world +of dreams." + +I rose and tossed my cigar into the fire. "There were some things he +never dreamed of," I said. + +Halidon rose too, facing me uneasily. "You mean--?" + +"That _you_ would taunt him with not having spent that money." + +He pulled himself up with darkening brows; then the muscles of his +forehead relaxed, a flush suffused it, and he held out his hand in +boyish penitence. + +"I stand a good deal from you," he said. + +He kept up his idea of going over the Academy question--threshing it +out once for all, as he expressed it; but my suggestion that we should +provisionally resuscitate the extinct board did not meet with his +approval. + +"Not till the whole business is settled. I shouldn't have the +face-- Wait till I can go to them and say: 'We're laying the +foundation-stone on such a day.'" + +We had one or two conferences, and Ned speedily lost himself in a maze +of figures. His nimble fancy was recalcitrant to mental discipline, and +he excused his inattention with the plea that he had no head for +business. + +"All I know is that it's a colossal undertaking, and that short of +living on bread and water--" and then we turned anew to the hard +problem of retrenchment. + +At the close of the second conference we fixed a date for a third, when +Ned's business adviser was to be called in; but before the day came, I +learned casually that the Halidons had gone south. Some weeks later Ned +wrote me from Florida, apologizing for his remissness. They had rushed +off suddenly--his wife had a cough, he explained. + +When they returned in the spring, I heard that they had bought the +Brereton house, for what seemed to my inexperienced ears a very large +sum. But Ned, whom I met one day at the club, explained to me +convincingly that it was really the most economical thing they could +do. "You don't understand about such things, dear boy, living in your +Diogenes tub; but wait till there's a Mrs. Diogenes. I can assure you +it's a lot cheaper than building, which is what Daisy would have +preferred, and of course," he added, his color rising as our eyes met, +"of course, once the Academy's going, I shall have to make my +head-quarters here; and I suppose even you won't grudge me a roof over +my head." + +The Brereton roof was a vast one, with a marble balustrade about it; +and I could quite understand, without Ned's halting explanation, that +"under the circumstances" it would be necessary to defer what he called +"our work--" "Of course, after we've rallied from this amputation, we +shall grow fresh supplies--I mean my wife's investments will," he +laughingly corrected, "and then we'll have no big outlays ahead and +shall know exactly where we stand. After all, my dear fellow, charity +begins at home!" + + +IV + +THE Halidons floated off to Europe for the summer. In due course their +return was announced in the social chronicle, and walking up Fifth +Avenue one afternoon I saw the back of the Brereton house sheathed in +scaffolding, and realized that they were adding a wing. + +I did not look up Halidon, nor did I hear from him till the middle of +the winter. Once or twice, meanwhile, I had seen him in the back of his +wife's opera box; but Mrs. Halidon had grown so resplendent that she +reduced her handsome husband to a supernumerary. In January the papers +began to talk of the Halidon ball; and in due course I received a card +for it. I was not a frequenter of balls, and had no intention of going +to this one; but when the day came some obscure impulse moved me to set +aside my rule, and toward midnight I presented myself at Ned's +illuminated portals. + +I shall never forget his look when I accosted him on the threshold of +the big new ballroom. With celibate egoism I had rather fancied he +would be gratified by my departure from custom; but one glance showed +me my mistake. He smiled warmly, indeed, and threw into his hand-clasp +an artificial energy of welcome--"You of all people--my dear fellow! +Have you seen Daisy?"--but the look behind the smile made me feel cold +in the crowded room. + +Nor was Mrs. Halidon's greeting calculated to restore my circulation. +"Have you come to spy on us?" her frosty smile seemed to say; and I +crept home early, wondering if she had not found me out. + +It was the following week that Halidon turned up one day in my office. +He looked pale and thinner, and for the first time I noticed a dash of +gray in his hair. I was startled at the change in him, but I reflected +that it was nearly a year since we had looked at each other by +daylight, and that my shaving-glass had doubtless a similar tale to +tell. + +He fidgeted about the office, told me a funny story about his little +boy, and then dropped into a chair. + +"Look here," he said, "I want to go into business." + +"Business?" I stared. + +"Well, why not? I suppose men have gone to work, even at my age, and +not made a complete failure of it. The fact is, I want to make some +money." He paused, and added: "I've heard of an opportunity to pick up +for next to nothing a site for the Academy, and if I could lay my hands +on a little cash--" + +"Do you want to speculate?" I interposed. + +"Heaven forbid! But don't you see that, if I had a fixed job--so much a +quarter--I could borrow the money and pay it off gradually?" + +I meditated upon this astounding proposition. "Do you really think it's +wise to buy a site before--" + +"Before what?" + +"Well--seeing ahead a little?" + +His face fell for a moment, but he rejoined cheerfully: "It's an +exceptional chance, and after all, I _shall_ see ahead if I can get +regular work. I can put by a little every month, and by and bye, when +our living expenses diminish, my wife means to come forward--her idea +would be to give the building--" + +He broke off and drummed on the table, waiting nervously for me to +speak. He did not say on what grounds he still counted on a diminution +of his household expenses, and I had not the cruelty to press this +point; but I murmured, after a moment: "I think you're right--I should +try to buy the land." + +We discussed his potentialities for work, which were obviously still an +unknown quantity, and the conference ended in my sending him to a firm +of real-estate brokers who were looking out for a partner with a little +money to invest. Halidon had a few thousands of his own, which he +decided to embark in the venture; and thereafter, for the remaining +months of the winter, he appeared punctually at a desk in the brokers' +office, and sketched plans of the Academy on the back of their business +paper. The site for the future building had meanwhile been bought, and +I rather deplored the publicity which Ned gave to the fact; but, after +all, since this publicity served to commit him more deeply, to pledge +him conspicuously to the completion of his task, it was perhaps a wise +instinct of self-coercion that had prompted him. + +It was a dull winter in realty, and toward spring, when the market +began to revive, one of the Halidon children showed symptoms of a +delicate throat, and the fashionable doctor who humoured the family +ailments counselled--nay, commanded--a prompt flight to the +Mediterranean. + +"He says a New York spring would be simply criminal--and as for those +ghastly southern places, my wife won't hear of them; so we're off. But +I shall be back in July, and I mean to stick to the office all summer." + +He was true to his word, and reappeared just as all his friends were +deserting town. For two torrid months he sat at his desk, drawing fresh +plans of the Academy, and waiting for the wind-fall of a "big deal"; +but in September he broke down from the effect of the unwonted +confinement, and his indignant wife swept him off to the mountains. + +"Why Ned should work when we have the money--I wish he would sell that +wretched piece of land!" And sell it he did one day: I chanced on a +record of the transaction in the realty column of the morning paper. He +afterward explained the sale to me at length. Owing to some spasmodic +effort at municipal improvement, there had been an unforeseen rise in +the adjoining property, and it would have been foolish--yes, I agreed +that it would have been foolish. He had made $10,000 on the sale, and +that would go toward paying off what he had borrowed for the original +purchase. Meanwhile he could be looking about for another site. + +Later in the winter he told me it was a bad time to look. His position +in the real-estate business enabled him to follow the trend of the +market, and that trend was obstinately upward. But of course there +would be a reaction--and he was keeping his eyes open. + +As the resuscitated Academy scheme once more fell into abeyance, I saw +Halidon less and less frequently; and we had not met for several +months, when one day of June, my morning paper startled me with the +announcement that the President had appointed Edward Halidon of New +York to be Civil Commissioner of our newly acquired Eastern possession, +the Manana Islands. "The unhealthy climate of the islands, and the +defective sanitation of the towns, make it necessary that vigorous +measures should be taken to protect the health of the American citizens +established there, and it is believed that Mr. Halidon's large +experience of Eastern life and well-known energy of character--" I read +the paragraph twice; then I dropped the paper, and projected myself +through the subway to Halidon's office. But he was not there; he had +not been there for a month. One of the clerks believed he was in +Washington. + +"It's true, then!" I said to myself. "But Mrs. Halidon in the +Mananas--?" + +A day or two later Ned appeared in my office. He looked better than +when we had last met, and there was a determined line about his lips. + +"My wife? Heaven forbid! You don't suppose I should think of taking +her? But the job is a tremendously interesting one, and it's the kind +of work I believe I can do--the only kind," he added, smiling rather +ruefully. + +"But my dear Ned--" + +He faced me with a look of quiet resolution. "I think I've been through +all the _buts_. It's an infernal climate, of course, but then I am used +to the East--I know what precautions to take. And it would be a big +thing to clean up that Augean stable." + +"But consider your wife and children--" + +He met this with deliberation. "I _have_ considered my children--that's +the point. I don't want them to be able to say, when they look back: +'He was content to go on living on that money--'" + +"My dear Ned--" + +"That's the one thing they _shan't_ say of me," he pressed on +vehemently. "I've tried other ways--but I'm no good at business. I see +now that I shall never make money enough to carry out the scheme +myself; but at least I can clear out, and not go on being _his_ +pensioner--seeing his dreams turned into horses and carpets and +clothes--" + +He broke off, and leaning on my desk hid his face in his hands. When he +looked up again his flush of wrath had subsided. + +"Just understand me--it's not _her_ fault. Don't fancy I'm trying for +an instant to shift the blame. A woman with children simply obeys the +instinct of her sex; she puts them first--and I wouldn't have it +otherwise. As far as she's concerned there were no conditions +attached--there's no reason why she should make any sacrifice." He +paused, and added painfully: "The trouble is, I can't make her see that +I am differently situated." + +"But, Ned, the climate--what are you going to gain by chucking yourself +away?" + +He lifted his brows. "That's a queer argument from _you_. And, besides, +I'm up to the tricks of all those ague-holes. And I've _got_ to live, +you see: I've got something to put through." He saw my look of enquiry, +and added with a shy, poignant laugh--how I hear it still!--: "I don't +mean only the job in hand, though that's enough in itself; but Paul's +work--you understand.--It won't come in _my_ day, of course--I've got +to accept that--but my boy's a splendid chap" (the boy was three), "and +I tell you what it is, old man, I believe when he grows up _he'll put +it through_." + +Halidon went to the Mananas, and for two years the journals brought me +incidental reports of the work he was accomplishing. He certainly had +found a job to his hand: official words of commendation rang through +the country, and there were lengthy newspaper leaders on the efficiency +with which our representative was prosecuting his task in that lost +corner of our colonies. Then one day a brief paragraph announced his +death--"one of the last victims of the pestilence he had so +successfully combated." + +That evening, at my club, I heard men talking of him. One said: "What's +the use of a fellow wasting himself on a lot of savages?" and another +wiseacre opined: "Oh, he went off because there was friction at home. A +fellow like that, who knew the East, would have got through all right +if he'd taken the proper precautions. I saw him before he left, and I +never saw a man look less as if he wanted to live." + +I turned on the last speaker, and my voice made him drop his lighted +cigar on his complacent knuckles. + +"I never knew a man," I exclaimed, "who had better reasons for wanting +to live!" + +A handsome youth mused: "Yes, his wife is very beautiful--but it +doesn't follow--" + +And then some one nudged him, for they knew I was Halidon's friend. + + + + +THE PRETEXT + + +I + +MRS. RANSOM, when the front door had closed on her visitor, passed with +a spring from the drawing-room to the narrow hall, and thence up the +narrow stairs to her bedroom. + +Though slender, and still light of foot, she did not always move so +quickly: hitherto, in her life, there had not been much to hurry for, +save the recurring domestic tasks that compel haste without fostering +elasticity; but some impetus of youth revived, communicated to her by +her talk with Guy Dawnish, now found expression in her girlish flight +upstairs, her girlish impatience to bolt herself into her room with her +throbs and her blushes. + +Her blushes? Was she really blushing? + +She approached the cramped eagle-topped mirror above her plain prim +dressing-table: just such a meagre concession to the weakness of the +flesh as every old-fashioned house in Wentworth counted among its +relics. The face reflected in this unflattering surface--for even the +mirrors of Wentworth erred on the side of depreciation--did not seem, +at first sight, a suitable theatre for the display of the tenderer +emotions, and its owner blushed more deeply as the fact was forced upon +her. + +Her fair hair had grown too thin--it no longer quite hid the blue veins +in her candid forehead--a forehead that one seemed to see turned toward +professorial desks, in large bare halls where a snowy winter light fell +uncompromisingly on rows of "thoughtful women." Her mouth was thin, +too, and a little strained; her lips were too pale; and there were +lines in the corners of her eyes. It was a face which had grown +middle-aged while it waited for the joys of youth. + +Well--but if she could still blush? Instinctively she drew back a +little, so that her scrutiny became less microscopic, and the pretty +lingering pink threw a veil over her pallor, the hollows in her +temples, the faint wrinkles of inexperience about her lips and eyes. +How a little colour helped! It made her eyes so deep and shining. She +saw now why bad women rouged.... Her redness deepened at the thought. + +But suddenly she noticed for the first time that the collar of her +dress was cut too low. It showed the shrunken lines of the throat. She +rummaged feverishly in a tidy scentless drawer, and snatching out a bit +of black velvet, bound it about her neck. Yes--that was better. It gave +her the relief she needed. Relief--contrast--that was it! She had never +had any, either in her appearance or in her setting. She was as flat as +the pattern of the wall-paper--and so was her life. And all the people +about her had the same look. Wentworth was the kind of place where +husbands and wives gradually grew to resemble each other--one or two of +her friends, she remembered, had told her lately that she and Ransom +were beginning to look alike.... + +But why had she always, so tamely, allowed her aspect to conform to her +situation? Perhaps a gayer exterior would have provoked a brighter +fate. Even now--she turned back to the glass, loosened the tight +strands of hair above her brow, ran the fine end of the comb under them +with a rapid frizzing motion, and then disposed them, more lightly and +amply, above her eager face. Yes--it was really better; it made a +difference. She smiled at herself with a timid coquetry, and her lips +seemed rosier as she smiled. Then she laid down the comb and the smile +faded. It made a difference, certainly--but was it right to try to make +one's hair look thicker and wavier than it really was? Between that and +rouging the ethical line seemed almost impalpable, and the spectre of +her rigid New England ancestry rose reprovingly before her. She was +sure that none of her grandmothers had ever simulated a curl or +encouraged a blush. A blush, indeed! What had any of them ever had to +blush for in all their frozen lives? And what, in Heaven's name, had +she? She sat down in the stiff mahogany rocking-chair beside her +work-table and tried to collect herself. From childhood she had been +taught to "collect herself"--but never before had her small sensations +and aspirations been so widely scattered, diffused over so vague and +uncharted an expanse. Hitherto they had lain in neatly sorted and +easily accessible bundles on the high shelves of a perfectly ordered +moral consciousness. And now--now that for the first time they _needed_ +collecting--now that the little winged and scattered bits of self were +dancing madly down the vagrant winds of fancy, she knew no spell to +call them to the fold again. The best way, no doubt--if only her +bewilderment permitted--was to go back to the beginning--the beginning, +at least, of to-day's visit--to recapitulate, word for word and look +for look.... + +She clasped her hands on the arms of the chair, checked its swaying +with a firm thrust of her foot, and fixed her eyes upon the inward +vision.... + +To begin with, what had made to-day's visit so different from the +others? It became suddenly vivid to her that there had been many, +almost daily, others, since Guy Dawnish's coming to Wentworth. Even the +previous winter--the winter of his arrival from England--his visits had +been numerous enough to make Wentworth aware that--very naturally--Mrs. +Ransom was "looking after" the stray young Englishman committed to her +husband's care by an eminent Q. C. whom the Ransoms had known on one of +their brief London visits, and with whom Ransom had since maintained +professional relations. All this was in the natural order of things, as +sanctioned by the social code of Wentworth. Every one was kind to Guy +Dawnish--some rather importunately so, as Margaret Ransom had smiled to +observe--but it was recognized as fitting that she should be kindest, +since he was in a sense her property, since his people in England, by +profusely acknowledging her kindness, had given it the domestic +sanction without which, to Wentworth, any social relation between the +sexes remained unhallowed and to be viewed askance. Yes! And even this +second winter, when the visits had become so much more frequent, so +admitted a part of the day's routine, there had not been, from any one, +a hint of surprise or of conjecture.... + +Mrs. Ransom smiled with a faint bitterness. She was protected by her +age, no doubt--her age and her past, and the image her mirror gave back +to her.... + +Her door-handle turned suddenly, and the bolt's resistance was met by +an impatient knock. + +"Margaret!" + +She started up, her brightness fading, and unbolted the door to admit +her husband. + +"Why are you locked in? Why, you're not dressed yet!" he exclaimed. + +It was possible for Ransom to reach his dressing-room by a slight +circuit through the passage; but it was characteristic of the +relentless domesticity of their relation that he chose, as a matter of +course, the directer way through his wife's bedroom. She had never +before been disturbed by this practice, which she accepted as +inevitable, but had merely adapted her own habits to it, delaying her +hasty toilet till he was safely in his room, or completing it before +she heard his step on the stair; since a scrupulous traditional prudery +had miraculously survived this massacre of all the privacies. + +"Oh, I shan't dress this evening--I shall just have some tea in the +library after you've gone," she answered absently. "Your things are +laid out," she added, rousing herself. + +He looked surprised. "The dinner's at seven. I suppose the speeches +will begin at nine. I thought you were coming to hear them." + +She wavered. "I don't know. I think not. Mrs. Sperry's ill, and I've no +one else to go with." + +He glanced at his watch. "Why not get hold of Dawnish? Wasn't he here +just now? Why didn't you ask him?" + +She turned toward her dressing-table, and straightened the comb and +brush with a nervous hand. Her husband had given her, that morning, two +tickets for the ladies' gallery in Hamblin Hall, where the great public +dinner of the evening was to take place--a banquet offered by the +faculty of Wentworth to visitors of academic eminence--and she had +meant to ask Dawnish to go with her: it had seemed the most natural +thing to do, till the end of his visit came, and then, after all, she +had not spoken.... + +"It's too late now," she murmured, bending over her pin cushion. + +"Too late? Not if you telephone him." + +Her husband came toward her, and she turned quickly to face him, lest +he should suspect her of trying to avoid his eye. To what duplicity was +she already committed! + +Ransom laid a friendly hand on her arm: "Come along, Margaret. You know +I speak for the bar." She was aware, in his voice, of a little note of +surprise at his having to remind her of this. + +"Oh, yes. I meant to go, of course--" + +"Well, then--" He opened his dressing-room door, and caught a glimpse +of the retreating house-maid's skirt. "Here's Maria now. Maria! Call up +Mr. Dawnish--at Mrs. Creswell's, you know. Tell him Mrs. Ransom wants +him to go with her to hear the speeches this evening--the _speeches_, +you understand?--and he's to call for her at a quarter before nine." + +Margaret heard the Irish "Yessir" on the stairs, and stood motionless, +while her husband added loudly: "And bring me some towels when you come +up." Then he turned back into his wife's room. + +"Why, it would be a thousand pities for Guy to miss this. He's so +interested in the way we do things over here--and I don't know that +he's ever heard me speak in public." Again the slight note of fatuity! +Was it possible that Ransom was a fatuous man? + +He paused in front of her, his short-sighted unobservant glance +concentrating itself unexpectedly on her face. + +"You're not going like that, are you?" he asked, with glaring +eye-glasses. + +"Like what?" she faltered, lifting a conscious hand to the velvet at +her throat. + +"With your hair in such a fearful mess. Have you been shampooing it? +You look like the Brant girl at the end of a tennis-match." + +The Brant girl was their horror--the horror of all right-thinking +Wentworth; a laced, whale-boned, frizzle-headed, high-heeled daughter +of iniquity, who came--from New York, of course--on long, disturbing, +tumultuous visits to a Wentworth aunt, working havoc among the +freshmen, and leaving, when she departed, an angry wake of criticism +that ruffled the social waters for weeks. _She_, too, had tried her +hand at Guy--with ludicrous unsuccess. And now, to be compared to +her--to be accused of looking "New Yorky!" Ah, there are times when +husbands are obtuse; and Ransom, as he stood there, thick and yet +juiceless, in his dry legal middle age, with his wiry dust-coloured +beard, and his perpetual _pince-nez_, seemed to his wife a sudden +embodiment of this traditional attribute. Not that she had ever fancied +herself, poor soul, a "_femme incomprise_." She had, on the contrary, +prided herself on being understood by her husband, almost as much as on +her own complete comprehension of him. Wentworth laid a good deal of +stress on "motives"; and Margaret Ransom and her husband had dwelt in a +complete community of motive. It had been the proudest day of her life +when, without consulting her, he had refused an offer of partnership in +an eminent New York firm because he preferred the distinction of +practising in Wentworth, of being known as the legal representative of +the University. Wentworth, in fact, had always been the bond between +the two; they were united in their veneration for that estimable seat +of learning, and in their modest yet vivid consciousness of possessing +its tone. The Wentworth "tone" is unmistakable: it permeates every part +of the social economy, from the _coiffure_ of the ladies to the +preparation of the food. It has its sumptuary laws as well as its +curriculum of learning. It sits in judgment not only on its own +townsmen but on the rest of the world--enlightening, criticising, +ostracizing a heedless universe--and non-conformity to Wentworth +standards involves obliteration from Wentworth's consciousness. + +In a world without traditions, without reverence, without stability, +such little expiring centres of prejudice and precedent make an +irresistible appeal to those instincts for which a democracy has +neglected to provide. Wentworth, with its "tone," its backward +references, its inflexible aversions and condemnations, its hard moral +outline preserved intact against a whirling background of experiment, +had been all the poetry and history of Margaret Ransom's life. Yes, +what she had really esteemed in her husband was the fact of his being +so intense an embodiment of Wentworth; so long and closely identified, +for instance, with its legal affairs, that he was almost a part of its +university existence, that of course, at a college banquet, he would +inevitably speak for the bar! + +It was wonderful of how much consequence all this had seemed till +now.... + + +II + +WHEN, punctually at ten minutes to seven, her husband had emerged from +the house, Margaret Ransom remained seated in her bedroom, addressing +herself anew to the difficult process of self-collection. As an aid to +this endeavour, she bent forward and looked out of the window, +following Ransom's figure as it receded down the elm-shaded street. He +moved almost alone between the prim flowerless grass-plots, the white +porches, the protrusion of irrelevant shingled gables, which stamped +the empty street as part of an American college town. She had always +been proud of living in Hill Street, where the university people +congregated, proud to associate her husband's retreating back, as he +walked daily to his office, with backs literary and pedagogic, backs of +which it was whispered, for the edification of duly-impressed visitors: +"Wait till that old boy turns--that's so-and-so." + +This had been her world, a world destitute of personal experience, but +filled with a rich sense of privilege and distinction, of being not as +those millions were who, denied the inestimable advantage of living at +Wentworth, pursued elsewhere careers foredoomed to futility by that +very fact. + +And now--! + +She rose and turned to her work-table where she had dropped, on +entering, the handful of photographs that Guy Dawnish had left with +her. While he sat so close, pointing out and explaining, she had hardly +taken in the details; but now, on the full tones of his low young +voice, they came back with redoubled distinctness. This was Guise +Abbey, his uncle's place in Wiltshire, where, under his grandfather's +rule, Guy's own boyhood had been spent: a long gabled Jacobean facade, +many-chimneyed, ivy-draped, overhung (she felt sure) by the boughs of a +venerable rookery. And in this other picture--the walled garden at +Guise--that was his uncle, Lord Askern, a hale gouty-looking figure, +planted robustly on the terrace, a gun on his shoulder and a couple of +setters at his feet. And here was the river below the park, with Guy +"punting" a girl in a flapping hat--how Margaret hated the flap that +hid the girl's face! And here was the tennis-court, with Guy among a +jolly cross-legged group of youths in flannels, and pretty girls about +the tea-table under the big lime: in the centre the curate handing +bread and butter, and in the middle distance a footman approaching with +more cups. + +Margaret raised this picture closer to her eyes, puzzling, in the +diminished light, over the face of the girl nearest to Guy +Dawnish--bent above him in profile, while he laughingly lifted his +head. No hat hid this profile, which stood out clearly against the +foliage behind it. + +"And who is that handsome girl?" Margaret had said, detaining the +photograph as he pushed it aside, and struck by the fact that, of the +whole group, he had left only this member unnamed. + +"Oh, only Gwendolen Matcher--I've always known her--. Look at this: the +almshouses at Guise. Aren't they jolly?" + +And then--without her having had the courage to ask if the girl in the +punt were also Gwendolen Matcher--they passed on to photographs of his +rooms at Oxford, of a cousin's studio in London--one of Lord Askern's +grandsons was "artistic"--of the rose-hung cottage in Wales to which, +on the old Earl's death, his daughter-in-law, Guy's mother, had retired. + +Every one of the photographs opened a window on the life Margaret had +been trying to picture since she had known him--a life so rich, so +romantic, so packed--in the mere casual vocabulary of daily life--with +historic reference and poetic allusion, that she felt almost oppressed +by this distant whiff of its air. The very words he used fascinated and +bewildered her. He seemed to have been born into all sorts of +connections, political, historical, official, that made the Ransom +situation at Wentworth as featureless as the top shelf of a dark +closet. Some one in the family had "asked for the Chiltern +Hundreds"--one uncle was an Elder Brother of the Trinity House--some +one else was the Master of a College--some one was in command at +Devonport--the Army, the Navy, the House of Commons, the House of +Lords, the most venerable seats of learning, were all woven into the +dense background of this young man's light unconscious talk. For the +unconsciousness was unmistakable. Margaret was not without experience +of the transatlantic visitor who sounds loud names and evokes +reverberating connections. The poetry of Guy Dawnish's situation lay in +the fact that it was so completely a part of early associations and +accepted facts. Life was like that in England--in Wentworth of course +(where he had been sent, through his uncle's influence, for two years' +training in the neighbouring electrical works at Smedden)--in +Wentworth, though "immensely jolly," it was different. The fact that he +was qualifying to be an electrical engineer--with the hope of a +secretaryship at the London end of the great Smedden Company--that, at +best, he was returning home to a life of industrial "grind," this fact, +though avowedly a bore, did not disconnect him from that brilliant +pinnacled past, that many-faceted life in which the brightest episodes +of the whole body of English fiction seemed collectively reflected. Of +course he would have to work--younger sons' sons almost always had +to--but his uncle Askern (like Wentworth) was "immensely jolly," and +Guise always open to him, and his other uncle, the Master, a capital +old boy too--and in town he could always put up with his clever aunt, +Lady Caroline Duckett, who had made a "beastly marriage" and was +horribly poor, but who knew everybody jolly and amusing, and had always +been particularly kind to him. + +It was not--and Margaret had not, even in her own thoughts, to defend +herself from the imputation--it was not what Wentworth would have +called the "material side" of her friend's situation that captivated +her. She was austerely proof against such appeals: her enthusiasms were +all of the imaginative order. What subjugated her was the unexampled +prodigality with which he poured for her the same draught of tradition +of which Wentworth held out its little teacupful. He besieged her with +a million Wentworths in one--saying, as it were: "All these are mine +for the asking--and I choose you instead!" + +For this, she told herself somewhat dizzily, was what it came to--the +summing-up toward which her conscientious efforts at self-collection +had been gradually pushing her: with all this in reach, Guy Dawnish was +leaving Wentworth reluctantly. + +"I _was_ a bit lonely here at first--but _now!_" And again: "It will be +jolly, of course, to see them all again--but there are some things one +doesn't easily give up...." + +If he had known only Wentworth, it would have been wonderful enough +that he should have chosen her out of all Wentworth--but to have known +that other life, and to set her in the balance against it--poor +Margaret Ransom, in whom, at the moment, nothing seemed of weight but +her years! Ah, it might well produce, in nerves and brain, and poor +unpractised pulses, a flushed tumult of sensation, the rush of a great +wave of life, under which memory struggled in vain to reassert itself, +to particularize again just what his last words--the very last--had +been.... + +When consciousness emerged, quivering, from this retrospective assault, +it pushed Margaret Ransom--feeling herself a mere leaf in the +blast--toward the writing-table from which her innocent and voluminous +correspondence habitually flowed. She had a letter to write now--much +shorter but more difficult than any she had ever been called on to +indite. + +"Dear Mr. Dawnish," she began, "since telephoning you just now I have +decided not--" + +Maria's voice, at the door, announced that tea was in the library: "And +I s'pose it's the brown silk you'll wear to the speaking?" + +In the usual order of the Ransom existence, its mistress's toilet was +performed unassisted; and the mere enquiry--at once friendly and +deferential--projected, for Margaret, a strong light on the importance +of the occasion. That she should answer: "But I am not going," when the +going was so manifestly part of a household solemnity about which the +thoughts below stairs fluttered in proud participation; that in face of +such participation she should utter a word implying indifference or +hesitation--nay, revealing herself the transposed, uprooted thing she +had been on the verge of becoming; to do this was--well! infinitely +harder than to perform the alternative act of tearing up the sheet of +note-paper under her reluctant pen. + +Yes, she said, she would wear the brown silk.... + + +III + +ALL the heat and glare from the long illuminated table, about which the +fumes of many courses still hung in a savoury fog, seemed to surge up +to the ladies' gallery, and concentrate themselves in the burning +cheeks of a slender figure withdrawn behind the projection of a pillar. + +It never occurred to Margaret Ransom that she was sitting in the shade. +She supposed that the full light of the chandeliers was beating on her +face--and there were moments when it seemed as though all the heads +about the great horse-shoe below, bald, shaggy, sleek, close-thatched, +or thinly latticed, were equipped with an additional pair of eyes, set +at an angle which enabled them to rake her face as relentlessly as the +electric burners. + +In the lull after a speech, the gallery was fluttering with the rustle +of programmes consulted, and Mrs. Sheff (the Brant girl's aunt) leaned +forward to say enthusiastically: "And now we're to hear Mr. Ransom!" + +A louder buzz rose from the table, and the heads (without relaxing +their upward vigilance) seemed to merge, and flow together, like an +attentive flood, toward the upper end of the horse-shoe, where all the +threads of Margaret Ransom's consciousness were suddenly drawn into +what seemed a small speck, no more--a black speck that rose, hung in +air, dissolved into gyrating gestures, became distended, enormous, +preponderant--became her husband "speaking." + +"It's the heat--" Margaret gasped, pressing her handkerchief to her +whitening lips, and finding just strength enough left to push back +farther into the shadow. + +She felt a touch on her arm. "It _is_ horrible--shall we go?" a voice +suggested; and, "Yes, yes, let us go," she whispered, feeling, with a +great throb of relief, _that_ to be the only possible, the only +conceivable, solution. To sit and listen to her husband _now_--how +could she ever have thought she could survive it? Luckily, under the +lingering hubbub from below, his opening words were inaudible, and she +had only to run the gauntlet of sympathetic feminine glances, shot +after her between waving fans and programmes, as, guided by Guy +Dawnish, she managed to reach the door. It was really so hot that even +Mrs. Sheff was not much surprised--till long afterward.... + +The winding staircase was empty, half dark and blessedly silent. In a +committee room below Dawnish found the inevitable water jug, and filled +a glass for her, while she leaned back, confronted only by a frowning +college President in an emblazoned frame. The academic frown descended +on her like an anathema when she rose and followed her companion out of +the building. + +Hamblin Hall stands at the end of the long green "Campus" with its +sextuple line of elms--the boast and the singularity of Wentworth. A +pale spring moon, rising above the dome of the University library at +the opposite end of the elm-walk, diffused a pearly mildness in the +sky, melted to thin haze the shadows of the trees, and turned to golden +yellow the lights of the college windows. Against this soft suffusion +of light the Library cupola assumed a Bramantesque grace, the white +steeple of the congregational church became a campanile topped by a +winged spirit, and the scant porticoes of the older halls the +colonnades of classic temples. + +"This is better--" Dawnish said, as they passed down the steps and +under the shadow of the elms. + +They moved on a little way in silence before he began again: "You're +too tired to walk. Let us sit down a few minutes." + +Her feet, in truth, were leaden, and not far off a group of park +benches, encircling the pedestal of a patriot in bronze, invited them +to rest. But Dawnish was guiding her toward a lateral path which bent, +through shrubberies, toward a strip of turf between two of the +buildings. + +"It will be cooler by the river," he said, moving on without waiting +for a possible protest. None came: it seemed easier, for the moment, to +let herself be led without any conventional feint of resistance. And +besides, there was nothing wrong about _this_--the wrong would have +been in sitting up there in the glare, pretending to listen to her +husband, a dutiful wife among her kind.... + +The path descended, as both knew, to the chosen, the inimitable spot of +Wentworth: that fugitive curve of the river, where, before hurrying on +to glut the brutal industries of South Wentworth and Smedden, it +simulated for a few hundred yards the leisurely pace of an ancient +university stream, with willows on its banks and a stretch of turf +extending from the grounds of Hamblin Hall to the boat houses at the +farther bend. Here too were benches, beneath the willows, and so close +to the river that the voice of its gliding softened and filled out the +reverberating silence between Margaret and her companion, and made her +feel that she knew why he had brought her there. + +"Do you feel better?" he asked gently as he sat down beside her. + +"Oh, yes. I only needed a little air." + +"I'm so glad you did. Of course the speeches were tremendously +interesting--but I prefer this. What a good night!" + +"Yes." + +There was a pause, which now, after all, the soothing accompaniment of +the river seemed hardly sufficient to fill. + +"I wonder what time it is. I ought to be going home," Margaret began at +length. + +"Oh, it's not late. They'll be at it for hours in there--yet." + +She made a faint inarticulate sound. She wanted to say: "No--Robert's +speech was to be the last--" but she could not bring herself to +pronounce Ransom's name, and at the moment no other way of refuting her +companion's statement occurred to her. + +The young man leaned back luxuriously, reassured by her silence. + +"You see it's my last chance--and I want to make the most of it." + +"Your last chance?" How stupid of her to repeat his words on that +cooing note of interrogation! It was just such a lead as the Brant girl +might have given him. + +"To be with you--like this. I haven't had so many. And there's less +than a week left." + +She attempted to laugh. "Perhaps it will sound longer if you call it +five days." + +The flatness of that, again! And she knew there were people who called +her intelligent. Fortunately he did not seem to notice it; but her +laugh continued to sound in her own ears--the coquettish chirp of +middle age! She decided that if he spoke again--if he _said +anything_--she would make no farther effort at evasion: she would take +it directly, seriously, frankly--she would not be doubly disloyal. + +"Besides," he continued, throwing his arm along the back of the bench, +and turning toward her so that his face was like a dusky bas-relief +with a silver rim--"besides, there's something I've been wanting to +tell you." + +The sound of the river seemed to cease altogether: the whole world +became silent. + +Margaret had trusted her inspiration farther than it appeared likely to +carry her. Again she could think of nothing happier than to repeat, on +the same witless note of interrogation: "To tell me?" + +"You only." + +The constraint, the difficulty, seemed to be on his side now: she +divined it by the renewed shifting of his attitude--he was capable, +usually, of such fine intervals of immobility--and by a confusion in +his utterance that set her own voice throbbing in her throat. + +"You've been so perfect to me," he began again. "It's not my fault if +you've made me feel that you would understand everything--make +allowances for everything--see just how a man may have held out, and +fought against a thing--as long as he had the strength.... This may be +my only chance; and I can't go away without telling you." + +He had turned from her now, and was staring at the river, so that his +profile was projected against the moonlight in all its beautiful young +dejection. + +There was a slight pause, as though he waited for her to speak; then +she leaned forward and laid her hand on his. + +"If I have really been--if I have done for you even the least part of +what you say ... what you imagine ... will you do for me, now, just one +thing in return?" + +He sat motionless, as if fearing to frighten away the shy touch on his +hand, and she left it there, conscious of her gesture only as part of +the high ritual of their farewell. + +"What do you want me to do?" he asked in a low tone. + +"_Not_ to tell me!" she breathed on a deep note of entreaty. + +"_Not_ to tell you--?" + +"Anything--_anything_--just to leave our ... our friendship ... as it +has been--as--as a painter, if a friend asked him, might leave a +picture--not quite finished, perhaps ... but all the more exquisite...." + +She felt the hand under hers slip away, recover itself, and seek her +own, which had flashed out of reach in the same instant--felt the start +that swept him round on her as if he had been caught and turned about +by the shoulders. + +"You--_you_--?" he stammered, in a strange voice full of fear and +tenderness; but she held fast, so centred in her inexorable resolve +that she was hardly conscious of the effect her words might be +producing. + +"Don't you see," she hurried on, "don't you _feel_ how much safer it +is--yes, I'm willing to put it so!--how much safer to leave everything +undisturbed ... just as ... as it has grown of itself ... without +trying to say: 'It's this or that'...? It's what we each choose to call +it to ourselves, after all, isn't it? Don't let us try to find a name +that ... that we should both agree upon ... we probably shouldn't +succeed." She laughed abruptly. "And ghosts vanish when one names +them!" she ended with a break in her voice. + +When she ceased her heart was beating so violently that there was a +rush in her ears like the noise of the river after rain, and she did +not immediately make out what he was answering. But as she recovered +her lucidity she said to herself that, whatever he was saying, she must +not hear it; and she began to speak again, half playfully, half +appealingly, with an eloquence of entreaty, an ingenuity in argument, +of which she had never dreamed herself capable. And then, suddenly, +strangling hands seemed to reach up from her heart to her throat, and +she had to stop. + +Her companion remained motionless. He had not tried to regain her hand, +and his eyes were away from her, on the river. But his nearness had +become something formidable and exquisite--something she had never +before imagined. A flush of guilt swept over her--vague reminiscences +of French novels and of opera plots. This was what such women felt, +then ... this was "shame." ... Phrases of the newspaper and the pulpit +danced before her.... She dared not speak, and his silence began to +frighten her. Had ever a heart beat so wildly before in Wentworth? + +He turned at last, and taking her two hands, quite simply, kissed them +one after the other. + +"I shall never forget--" he said in a confused voice, unlike his own. + +A return of strength enabled her to rise, and even to let her eyes meet +his for a moment. + +"Thank you," she said, simply also. + +She turned away from the bench, regaining the path that led back to the +college buildings, and he walked beside her in silence. When they +reached the elm walk it was dotted with dispersing groups. The +"speaking" was over, and Hamblin Hall had poured its audience out into +the moonlight. Margaret felt a rush of relief, followed by a receding +wave of regret. She had the distinct sensation that her hour--her one +hour--was over. + +One of the groups just ahead broke up as they approached, and projected +Ransom's solid bulk against the moonlight. + +"My husband," she said, hastening forward; and she never afterward +forgot the look of his back--heavy, round-shouldered, yet a little +pompous--in a badly fitting overcoat that stood out at the neck and hid +his collar. She had never before noticed how he dressed. + + +IV + +THEY met again, inevitably, before Dawnish left; but the thing she +feared did not happen--he did not try to see her alone. + +It even became clear to her, in looking back, that he had deliberately +avoided doing so; and this seemed merely an added proof of his +"understanding," of that deep undefinable communion that set them alone +in an empty world, as if on a peak above the clouds. + +The five days passed in a flash; and when the last one came, it brought +to Margaret Ransom an hour of weakness, of profound disorganization, +when old barriers fell, old convictions faded--when to be alone with +him for a moment became, after all, the one craving of her heart. She +knew he was coming that afternoon to say "good-by"--and she knew also +that Ransom was to be away at South Wentworth. She waited alone in her +pale little drawing-room, with its scant kakemonos, its one or two +chilly reproductions from the antique, its slippery Chippendale chairs. +At length the bell rang, and her world became a rosy blur--through +which she presently discerned the austere form of Mrs. Sperry, wife of +the Professor of palaeontology, who had come to talk over with her the +next winter's programme for the Higher Thought Club. They debated the +question for an hour, and when Mrs. Sperry departed Margaret had a +confused impression that the course was to deal with the influence of +the First Crusade on the development of European architecture--but the +sentient part of her knew only that Dawnish had not come. + +He "bobbed in," as he would have put it, after dinner--having, it +appeared, run across Ransom early in the day, and learned that the +latter would be absent till evening. Margaret was in the study with her +husband when the door opened and Dawnish stood there. Ransom--who had +not had time to dress--was seated at his desk, a pile of shabby law +books at his elbow, the light from a hanging lamp falling on his +grayish stubble of hair, his sallow forehead and spectacled eyes. +Dawnish, towering higher than usual against the shadows of the room, +and refined by his unusual pallor, hung a moment on the threshold, then +came in, explaining himself profusely--laughing, accepting a cigar, +letting Ransom push an arm-chair forward--a Dawnish she had never seen, +ill at ease, ejaculatory, yet somehow more mature, more obscurely in +command of himself. + +Margaret drew back, seating herself in the shade, in such a way that +she saw her husband's head first, and beyond it their visitor's, +relieved against the dusk of the book shelves. Her heart was still--she +felt no throbbing in her throat or temples: all her life seemed +concentrated in the hand that lay on her knee, the hand he would touch +when they said good-by. + +Afterward her heart rang all the changes, and there was a mood in which +she reproached herself for cowardice--for having deliberately missed +her one moment with him, the moment in which she might have sounded the +depths of life, for joy or anguish. But that mood was fleeting and +infrequent. In quieter hours she blushed for it--she even trembled to +think that he might have guessed such a regret in her. It seemed to +convict her of a lack of fineness that he should have had, in his youth +and his power, a tenderer, surer sense of the peril of a rash +touch--should have handled the case so much more delicately. + +At first her days were fire and the nights long solemn vigils. Her +thoughts were no longer vulgarized and defaced by any notion of +"guilt," of mental disloyalty. She was ashamed now of her shame. What +had happened was as much outside the sphere of her marriage as some +transaction in a star. It had simply given her a secret life of +incommunicable joys, as if all the wasted springs of her youth had been +stored in some hidden pool, and she could return there now to bathe in +them. + +After that there came a phase of loneliness, through which the life +about her loomed phantasmal and remote. She thought the dead must feel +thus, repeating the vain gestures of the living beside some Stygian +shore. She wondered if any other woman had lived to whom _nothing had +ever happened?_ And then his first letter came.... + +It was a charming letter--a perfect letter. The little touch of +awkwardness and constraint under its boyish spontaneity told her more +than whole pages of eloquence. He spoke of their friendship--of their +good days together.... Ransom, chancing to come in while she read, +noticed the foreign stamps; and she was able to hand him the letter, +saying gaily: "There's a message for you," and knowing all the while +that _her_ message was safe in her heart. + +On the days when the letters came the outlines of things grew +indistinct, and she could never afterward remember what she had done or +how the business of life had been carried on. It was always a surprise +when she found dinner on the table as usual, and Ransom seated opposite +to her, running over the evening paper. + +But though Dawnish continued to write, with all the English loyalty to +the outward observances of friendship, his communications came only at +intervals of several weeks, and between them she had time to repossess +herself, to regain some sort of normal contact with life. And the +customary, the recurring, gradually reclaimed her, the net of habit +tightened again--her daily life became real, and her one momentary +escape from it an exquisite illusion. Not that she ceased to believe in +the miracle that had befallen her: she still treasured the reality of +her one moment beside the river. What reason was there for doubting it? +She could hear the ring of truth in young Dawnish's voice: "It's not my +fault if you've made me feel that you would understand everything...." +No! she believed in her miracle, and the belief sweetened and illumined +her life; but she came to see that what was for her the transformation +of her whole being might well have been, for her companion, a mere +passing explosion of gratitude, of boyish good-fellowship touched with +the pang of leave-taking. She even reached the point of telling herself +that it was "better so": this view of the episode so defended it from +the alternating extremes of self-reproach and derision, so enshrined it +in a pale immortality to which she could make her secret pilgrimages +without reproach. + +For a long time she had not been able to pass by the bench under the +willows--she even avoided the elm walk till autumn had stripped its +branches. But every day, now, she noted a step toward recovery; and at +last a day came when, walking along the river, she said to herself, as +she approached the bench: "I used not to be able to pass here without +thinking of him; _and now I am not thinking of him at all!_" + +This seemed such convincing proof of her recovery that she began, as +spring returned, to permit herself, now and then, a quiet session on +the bench--a dedicated hour from which she went back fortified to her +task. + +She had not heard from her friend for six weeks or more--the intervals +between his letters were growing longer. But that was "best" too, and +she was not anxious, for she knew he had obtained the post he had been +preparing for, and that his active life in London had begun. The +thought reminded her, one mild March day, that in leaving the house she +had thrust in her reticule a letter from a Wentworth friend who was +abroad on a holiday. The envelope bore the London post mark, a fact +showing that the lady's face was turned toward home. Margaret seated +herself on her bench, and drawing out the letter began to read it. + +The London described was that of shops and museums--as remote as +possible from the setting of Guy Dawnish's existence. But suddenly +Margaret's eye fell on his name, and the page began to tremble in her +hands. + +"I heard such a funny thing yesterday about your friend Mr. Dawnish. We +went to a tea at Professor Bunce's (I do wish you knew the +Bunces--their atmosphere is so _uplifting_), and there I met that Miss +Bruce-Pringle who came out last year to take a course in histology at +the Annex. Of course she asked about you and Mr. Ransom, and then she +told me she had just seen Mr. Dawnish's aunt--the clever one he was +always talking about, Lady Caroline something--and that they were all +in a dreadful state about him. I wonder if you knew he was engaged when +he went to America? He never mentioned it to _us_. She said it was not +a positive engagement, but an understanding with a girl he has always +been devoted to, who lives near their place in Wiltshire; and both +families expected the marriage to take place as soon as he got back. It +seems the girl is an heiress (you know _how low_ the English ideals are +compared with ours), and Miss Bruce-Pringle said his relations were +perfectly delighted at his 'being provided for,' as she called it. +Well, when he got back he asked the girl to release him; and she and +her family were furious, and so were his people; but he holds out, and +won't marry her, and won't give a reason, except that he has 'formed an +unfortunate attachment.' Did you ever hear anything so peculiar? His +aunt, who is quite wild about it, says it must have happened at +Wentworth, because he didn't go anywhere else in America. Do you +suppose it _could_ have been the Brant girl? But why 'unfortunate' when +everybody knows she would have jumped at him?" + +Margaret folded the letter and looked out across the river. It was not +the same river, but a mystic current shot with moonlight. The bare +willows wove a leafy veil above her head, and beside her she felt the +nearness of youth and tempestuous tenderness. It had all happened just +here, on this very seat by the river--it had come to her, and passed +her by, and she had not held out a hand to detain it.... + +Well! Was it not, by that very abstention, made more deeply and +ineffaceably hers? She could argue thus while she had thought the +episode, on his side, a mere transient effect of propinquity; but now +that she knew it had altered the whole course of his life, now that it +took on substance and reality, asserted a separate existence outside of +her own troubled consciousness--now it seemed almost cowardly to have +missed her share in it. + +She walked home in a dream. Now and then, when she passed an +acquaintance, she wondered if the pain and glory were written on her +face. But Mrs. Sperry, who stopped her at the corner of Maverick Street +to say a word about the next meeting of the Higher Thought Club, seemed +to remark no change in her. + +When she reached home Ransom had not yet returned from the office, and +she went straight to the library to tidy his writing-table. It was part +of her daily duty to bring order out of the chaos of his papers, and of +late she had fastened on such small recurring tasks as some one falling +over a precipice might snatch at the weak bushes in its clefts. + +When she had sorted the letters she took up some pamphlets and +newspapers, glancing over them to see if they were to be kept. Among +the papers was a page torn from a London _Times_ of the previous month. +Her eye ran down its columns and suddenly a paragraph flamed out. + +"We are requested to state that the marriage arranged between Mr. Guy +Dawnish, son of the late Colonel the Hon. Roderick Dawnish, of Malby, +Wilts, and Gwendolen, daughter of Samuel Matcher, Esq. of Armingham +Towers, Wilts, will not take place." + +Margaret dropped the paper and sat down, hiding her face against the +stained baize of the desk. She remembered the photograph of the +tennis-court at Guise--she remembered the handsome girl at whom Guy +Dawnish looked up, laughing. A gust of tears shook her, loosening the +dry surface of conventional feeling, welling up from unsuspected +depths. She was sorry--very sorry, yet so glad--so ineffably, +impenitently glad. + + +V + +THERE came a reaction in which she decided to write to him. She even +sketched out a letter of sisterly, almost motherly, remonstrance, in +which she reminded him that he "still had all his life before him." But +she reflected that so, after all, had she; and that seemed to weaken +the argument. + +In the end she decided not to send the letter. He had never spoken to +her of his engagement to Gwendolen Matcher, and his letters had +contained no allusion to any sentimental disturbance in his life. She +had only his few broken words, that night by the river, on which to +build her theory of the case. But illuminated by the phrase "an +unfortunate attachment" the theory towered up, distinct and immovable, +like some high landmark by which travellers shape their course. She had +been loved--extraordinarily loved. But he had chosen that she should +know of it by his silence rather than by his speech. He had understood +that only on those terms could their transcendant communion +continue--that he must lose her to keep her. To break that silence +would be like spilling a cup of water in a waste of sand. There would +be nothing left for her thirst. + +Her life, thenceforward, was bathed in a tranquil beauty. The days +flowed by like a river beneath the moon--each ripple caught the +brightness and passed it on. She began to take a renewed interest in +her familiar round of duties. The tasks which had once seemed +colourless and irksome had now a kind of sacrificial sweetness, a +symbolic meaning into which she alone was initiated. She had been +restless--had longed to travel; now she felt that she should never +again care to leave Wentworth. But if her desire to wander had ceased, +she travelled in spirit, performing invisible pilgrimages in the +footsteps of her friend. She regretted that her one short visit to +England had taken her so little out of London--that her acquaintance +with the landscape had been formed chiefly through the windows of a +railway carriage. She threw herself into the architectural studies of +the Higher Thought Club, and distinguished herself, at the spring +meetings, by her fluency, her competence, her inexhaustible curiosity +on the subject of the growth of English Gothic. She ransacked the +shelves of the college library, she borrowed photographs of the +cathedrals, she pored over the folio pages of "The Seats of Noblemen +and Gentlemen." She was like some banished princess who learns that she +has inherited a domain in her own country, who knows that she will +never see it, yet feels, wherever she walks, its soil beneath her feet. + +May was half over, and the Higher Thought Club was to hold its last +meeting, previous to the college festivities which, in early June, +agreeably disorganized the social routine of Wentworth. The meeting was +to take place in Margaret Ransom's drawing-room, and on the day before +she sat upstairs preparing for her dual duties as hostess and +orator--for she had been invited to read the final paper of the course. +In order to sum up with precision her conclusions on the subject of +English Gothic she had been rereading an analysis of the structural +features of the principal English cathedrals; and she was murmuring +over to herself the phrase: "The longitudinal arches of Lincoln have an +approximately elliptical form," when there came a knock on the door, +and Maria's voice announced: "There's a lady down in the parlour." + +Margaret's soul dropped from the heights of the shadowy vaulting to the +dead level of an afternoon call at Wentworth. + +"A lady? Did she give no name?" + +Maria became confused. "She only said she was a lady--" and in reply to +her mistress's look of mild surprise: "Well, ma'am, she told me so +three or four times over." + +Margaret laid her book down, leaving it open at the description of +Lincoln, and slowly descended the stairs. As she did so, she repeated +to herself: "The longitudinal arches are elliptical." + +On the threshold below, she had the odd impression that her bare and +inanimate drawing-room was brimming with life and noise--an impression +produced, as she presently perceived, by the resolute forward dash--it +was almost a pounce--of the one small figure restlessly measuring its +length. + +The dash checked itself within a yard of Margaret, and the lady--a +stranger--held back long enough to stamp on her hostess a sharp +impression of sallowness, leanness, keenness, before she said, in a +voice that might have been addressing an unruly committee meeting: "I +am Lady Caroline Duckett--a fact I found it impossible to make clear to +the young woman who let me in." + +A warm wave rushed up from Margaret's heart to her throat and forehead. +She held out both hands impulsively. "Oh, I'm so glad--I'd no idea--" + +Her voice sank under her visitor's impartial scrutiny. + +"I don't wonder," said the latter drily. "I suppose she didn't mention, +either, that my object in calling here was to see Mrs. Ransom?" + +"Oh, yes--won't you sit down?" Margaret pushed a chair forward. She +seated herself at a little distance, brain and heart humming with a +confused interchange of signals. This dark sharp woman was his +aunt--the "clever aunt" who had had such a hard life, but had always +managed to keep her head above water. Margaret remembered that Guy had +spoken of her kindness--perhaps she would seem kinder when they had +talked together a little. Meanwhile the first impression she produced +was of an amplitude out of all proportion to her somewhat scant +exterior. With her small flat figure, her shabby heterogeneous dress, +she was as dowdy as any Professor's wife at Wentworth; but her +dowdiness (Margaret borrowed a literary analogy to define it), her +dowdiness was somehow "of the centre." Like the insignificant emissary +of a great power, she was to be judged rather by her passports than her +person. + +While Margaret was receiving these impressions, Lady Caroline, with +quick bird-like twists of her head, was gathering others from the pale +void spaces of the drawing-room. Her eyes, divided by a sharp nose like +a bill, seemed to be set far enough apart to see at separate angles; +but suddenly she bent both of them on Margaret. + +"This _is_ Mrs. Ransom's house?" she asked, with an emphasis on the +verb that gave a distinct hint of unfulfilled expectations. + +Margaret assented. + +"Because your American houses, especially in the provincial towns, all +look so remarkably alike, that I thought I might have been mistaken; +and as my time is extremely limited--in fact I'm sailing on Wednesday--" + +She paused long enough to let Margaret say: "I had no idea you were in +this country." + +Lady Caroline made no attempt to take this up. "And so much of it," she +carried on her sentence, "has been wasted in talking to people I really +hadn't the slightest desire to see, that you must excuse me if I go +straight to the point." + +Margaret felt a sudden tension of the heart. "Of course," she said +while a voice within her cried: "He is dead--he has left me a message." + +There was another pause; then Lady Caroline went on, with increasing +asperity: "So that--in short--if I _could_ see Mrs. Ransom at once--" + +Margaret looked up in surprise. "I am Mrs. Ransom," she said. + +The other stared a moment, with much the same look of cautious +incredulity that had marked her inspection of the drawing-room. Then +light came to her. + +"Oh, I beg your pardon. I should have said that I wished to see Mrs. +_Robert_ Ransom, not Mrs. Ransom. But I understood that in the States +you don't make those distinctions." She paused a moment, and then went +on, before Margaret could answer: "Perhaps, after all, it's as well +that I should see you instead, since you're evidently one of the +household--your son and his wife live with you, I suppose? Yes, on the +whole, then, it's better--I shall be able to talk so much more +frankly." She spoke as if, as a rule, circumstances prevented her +giving rein to this propensity. "And frankness, of course, is the only +way out of this--this extremely tiresome complication. You know, I +suppose, that my nephew thinks he's in love with your daughter-in-law?" + +Margaret made a slight movement, but her visitor pressed on without +heeding it. "Oh, don't fancy, please, that I'm pretending to take a +high moral ground--though his mother does, poor dear! I can perfectly +imagine that in a place like this--I've just been driving about it for +two hours--a young man of Guy's age would _have_ to provide himself +with some sort of distraction, and he's not the kind to go in for +anything objectionable. Oh, we quite allow for that--we should allow +for the whole affair, if it hadn't so preposterously ended in his +throwing over the girl he was engaged to, and upsetting an arrangement +that affected a number of people besides himself. I understand that in +the States it's different--the young people have only themselves to +consider. In England--in our class, I mean--a great deal may depend on +a young man's making a good match; and in Guy's case I may say that his +mother and sisters (I won't include myself, though I might) have been +simply stranded--thrown overboard--by his freak. You can understand how +serious it is when I tell you that it's that and nothing else that has +brought me all the way to America. And my first idea was to go straight +to your daughter-in-law, since her influence is the only thing we can +count on now, and put it to her fairly, as I'm putting it to you. But, +on the whole, I dare say it's better to see you first--you might give +me an idea of the line to take with her. I'm prepared to throw myself +on her mercy!" + +Margaret rose from her chair, outwardly rigid in proportion to her +inward tremor. + +"You don't understand--" she began. + +Lady Caroline brushed the interruption aside. "Oh, but I +do--completely! I cast no reflection on your daughter-in-law. Guy has +made it quite clear to us that his attachment is--has, in short, not +been rewarded. But don't you see that that's the worst part of it? +There'd be much more hope of his recovering if Mrs. Robert Ransom +had--had--" + +Margaret's voice broke from her in a cry. "I am Mrs. Robert Ransom," +she said. + +If Lady Caroline Duckett had hitherto given her hostess the impression +of a person not easily silenced, this fact added sensibly to the effect +produced by the intense stillness which now fell on her. + +She sat quite motionless, her large bangled hands clasped about the +meagre fur boa she had unwound from her neck on entering, her rusty +black veil pushed up to the edge of a "fringe" of doubtful +authenticity, her thin lips parted on a gasp that seemed to sharpen +itself on the edges of her teeth. So overwhelming and helpless was her +silence that Margaret began to feel a motion of pity beneath her +indignation--a desire at least to facilitate the excuses which must +terminate their disastrous colloquy. But when Lady Caroline found voice +she did not use it to excuse herself. + +"You _can't_ be," she said, quite simply. + +"Can't be?" Margaret stammered, with a flushing cheek. + +"I mean, it's some mistake. Are there _two_ Mrs. Robert Ransoms in the +same town? Your family arrangements are so extremely puzzling." She had +a farther rush of enlightenment. "Oh, I _see!_ I ought of course to +have asked for Mrs. Robert Ransom 'Junior'!" + +The idea sent her to her feet with a haste which showed her impatience +to make up for lost time. + +"There is no other Mrs. Robert Ransom at Wentworth," said Margaret. + +"No other--no 'Junior'? Are you _sure?_" Lady Caroline fell back into +her seat again. "Then I simply don't see," she murmured helplessly. + +Margaret's blush had fixed itself on her throbbing forehead. She +remained standing, while her strange visitor continued to gaze at her +with a perturbation in which the consciousness of indiscretion had +evidently as yet no part. + +"I simply don't see," she repeated. + +Suddenly she sprang up, and advancing to Margaret laid an inspired hand +on her arm. "But, my dear woman, you can help us out all the same; you +can help us to find out _who it is_--and you will, won't you? Because, +as it's not you, you can't in the least mind what I've been saying--" + +Margaret, freeing her arm from her visitor's hold, drew back a step; +but Lady Caroline instantly rejoined her. + +"Of course, I can see that if it _had_ been, you might have been +annoyed: I dare say I put the case stupidly--but I'm so bewildered by +this new development--by his using you all this time as a pretext--that +I really don't know where to turn for light on the mystery--" + +She had Margaret in her imperious grasp again, but the latter broke +from her with a more resolute gesture. + +"I'm afraid I have no light to give you," she began; but once more Lady +Caroline caught her up. + +"Oh, but do please understand me! I condemn Guy most strongly for using +your name--when we all know you'd been so amazingly kind to him! I +haven't a word to say in his defence--but of course the important thing +now is: _who is the woman, since you're not?_" + +The question rang out loudly, as if all the pale puritan corners of the +room flung it back with a shudder at the speaker. In the silence that +ensued Margaret felt the blood ebbing back to her heart; then she said, +in a distinct and level voice: "I know nothing of the history of Mr. +Dawnish." + +Lady Caroline gave a stare and a gasp. Her distracted hand groped for +her boa and she began to wind it mechanically about her long neck. + +"It would really be an enormous help to us--and to poor Gwendolen +Matcher," she persisted pleadingly. "And you'd be doing Guy himself a +good turn." + +Margaret remained silent and motionless while her visitor drew on one +of the worn gloves she had pulled off to adjust her veil. Lady Caroline +gave the veil a final twitch. + +"I've come a tremendously long way," she said, "and, since it isn't +you, I can't think why you won't help me...." + +When the door had closed on her visitor Margaret Ransom went slowly up +the stairs to her room. As she dragged her feet from one step to +another, she remembered how she had sprung up the same steep flight +after that visit of Guy Dawnish's when she had looked in the glass and +seen on her face the blush of youth. + +When she reached her room she bolted the door as she had done that day, +and again looked at herself in the narrow mirror above her +dressing-table. It was just a year since then--the elms were budding +again, the willows hanging their green veil above the bench by the +river. But there was no trace of youth left in her face--she saw it now +as others had doubtless always seen it. If it seemed as it did to Lady +Caroline Duckett, what look must it have worn to the fresh gaze of +young Guy Dawnish? + +A pretext--she had been a pretext. He had used her name to screen some +one else--or perhaps merely to escape from a situation of which he was +weary. She did not care to conjecture what his motive had +been--everything connected with him had grown so remote and alien. She +felt no anger--only an unspeakable sadness, a sadness which she knew +would never be appeased. + +She looked at herself long and steadily; she wished to clear her eyes +of all illusions. Then she turned away and took her usual seat beside +her work-table. From where she sat she could look down the empty +elm-shaded street, up which, at this hour every day, she was sure to +see her husband's figure advancing. She would see it presently--she +would see it for many years to come. She had a sudden aching sense of +the length of the years that stretched before her. Strange that one who +was not young should still, in all likelihood, have so long to live! + +Nothing was changed in the setting of her life, perhaps nothing would +ever change in it. She would certainly live and die in Wentworth. And +meanwhile the days would go on as usual, bringing the usual +obligations. As the word flitted through her brain she remembered that +she had still to put the finishing touches to the paper she was to read +the next afternoon at the meeting of the Higher Thought Club. + +The book she had been reading lay face downward beside her, where she +had left it an hour ago. She took it up, and slowly and painfully, like +a child laboriously spelling out the syllables, she went on with the +rest of the sentence: + +--"and they spring from a level not much above that of the springing of +the transverse and diagonal ribs, which are so arranged as to give a +convex curve to the surface of the vaulting conoid." + + + + +THE VERDICT + + +I HAD always thought Jack Gisburn rather a cheap genius--though a good +fellow enough--so it was no great surprise to me to hear that, in the +height of his glory, he had dropped his painting, married a rich widow, +and established himself in a villa on the Riviera. (Though I rather +thought it would have been Rome or Florence.) + +"The height of his glory"--that was what the women called it. I can +hear Mrs. Gideon Thwing--his last Chicago sitter--deploring his +unaccountable abdication. "Of course it's going to send the value of my +picture 'way up; but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham--the loss to +Arrt is all I think of." The word, on Mrs. Thwing's lips, multiplied +its _rs_ as though they were reflected in an endless vista of mirrors. +And it was not only the Mrs. Thwings who mourned. Had not the exquisite +Hermia Croft, at the last Grafton Gallery show, stopped me before +Gisburn's "Moon-dancers" to say, with tears in her eyes: "We shall not +look upon its like again"? + +Well!--even through the prism of Hermia's tears I felt able to face the +fact with equanimity. Poor Jack Gisburn! The women had made him--it was +fitting that they should mourn him. Among his own sex fewer regrets +were heard, and in his own trade hardly a murmur. Professional +jealousy? Perhaps. If it were, the honour of the craft was vindicated +by little Claude Nutley, who, in all good faith, brought out in the +Burlington a very handsome "obituary" on Jack--one of those showy +articles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won't +say by whom) compared to Gisburn's painting. And so--his resolve being +apparently irrevocable--the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs. +Thwing had predicted, the price of "Gisburns" went up. + +It was not till three years later that, in the course of a few weeks' +idling on the Riviera, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why Gisburn +had given up his painting. On reflection, it really was a tempting +problem. To accuse his wife would have been too easy--his fair sitters +had been denied the solace of saying that Mrs. Gisburn had "dragged him +down." For Mrs. Gisburn--as such--had not existed till nearly a year +after Jack's resolve had been taken. It might be that he had married +her--since he liked his ease--because he didn't want to go on painting; +but it would have been hard to prove that he had given up his painting +because he had married her. + +Of course, if she had not dragged him down, she had equally, as Miss +Croft contended, failed to "lift him up"--she had not led him back to +the easel. To put the brush into his hand again--what a vocation for a +wife! But Mrs. Gisburn appeared to have disdained it--and I felt it +might be interesting to find out why. + +The desultory life of the Riviera lends itself to such purely academic +speculations; and having, on my way to Monte Carlo, caught a glimpse of +Jack's balustraded terraces between the pines, I had myself borne +thither the next day. + +I found the couple at tea beneath their palm-trees; and Mrs. Gisburn's +welcome was so genial that, in the ensuing weeks, I claimed it +frequently. It was not that my hostess was "interesting": on that point +I could have given Miss Croft the fullest reassurance. It was just +because she was _not_ interesting--if I may be pardoned the bull--that +I found her so. For Jack, all his life, had been surrounded by +interesting women: they had fostered his art, it had been reared in the +hot-house of their adulation. And it was therefore instructive to note +what effect the "deadening atmosphere of mediocrity" (I quote Miss +Croft) was having on him. + +I have mentioned that Mrs. Gisburn was rich; and it was immediately +perceptible that her husband was extracting from this circumstance a +delicate but substantial satisfaction. It is, as a rule, the people who +scorn money who get most out of it; and Jack's elegant disdain of his +wife's big balance enabled him, with an appearance of perfect +good-breeding, to transmute it into objects of art and luxury. To the +latter, I must add, he remained relatively indifferent; but he was +buying Renaissance bronzes and eighteenth-century pictures with a +discrimination that bespoke the amplest resources. + +"Money's only excuse is to put beauty into circulation," was one of the +axioms he laid down across the Sevres and silver of an exquisitely +appointed luncheon-table, when, on a later day, I had again run over +from Monte Carlo; and Mrs. Gisburn, beaming on him, added for my +enlightenment: "Jack is so morbidly sensitive to every form of beauty." + +Poor Jack! It had always been his fate to have women say such things of +him: the fact should be set down in extenuation. What struck me now was +that, for the first time, he resented the tone. I had seen him, so +often, basking under similar tributes--was it the conjugal note that +robbed them of their savour? No--for, oddly enough, it became apparent +that he was fond of Mrs. Gisburn--fond enough not to see her absurdity. +It was his own absurdity he seemed to be wincing under--his own +attitude as an object for garlands and incense. + +"My dear, since I've chucked painting people don't say that stuff about +me--they say it about Victor Grindle," was his only protest, as he rose +from the table and strolled out onto the sunlit terrace. + +I glanced after him, struck by his last word. Victor Grindle was, in +fact, becoming the man of the moment--as Jack himself, one might put +it, had been the man of the hour. The younger artist was said to have +formed himself at my friend's feet, and I wondered if a tinge of +jealousy underlay the latter's mysterious abdication. But no--for it +was not till after that event that the _rose Dubarry_ drawing-rooms had +begun to display their "Grindles." + +I turned to Mrs. Gisburn, who had lingered to give a lump of sugar to +her spaniel in the dining-room. + +"Why _has_ he chucked painting?" I asked abruptly. + +She raised her eyebrows with a hint of good-humoured surprise. + +"Oh, he doesn't _have_ to now, you know; and I want him to enjoy +himself," she said quite simply. + +I looked about the spacious white-panelled room, with its +_famille-verte_ vases repeating the tones of the pale damask curtains, +and its eighteenth-century pastels in delicate faded frames. + +"Has he chucked his pictures too? I haven't seen a single one in the +house." + +A slight shade of constraint crossed Mrs. Gisburn's open countenance. +"It's his ridiculous modesty, you know. He says they're not fit to have +about; he's sent them all away except one--my portrait--and that I have +to keep upstairs." + +His ridiculous modesty--Jack's modesty about his pictures? My curiosity +was growing like the bean-stalk. I said persuasively to my hostess: "I +must really see your portrait, you know." + +She glanced out almost timorously at the terrace where her husband, +lounging in a hooded chair, had lit a cigar and drawn the Russian +deerhound's head between his knees. + +"Well, come while he's not looking," she said, with a laugh that tried +to hide her nervousness; and I followed her between the marble Emperors +of the hall, and up the wide stairs with terra-cotta nymphs poised +among flowers at each landing. + +In the dimmest corner of her boudoir, amid a profusion of delicate and +distinguished objects, hung one of the familiar oval canvases, in the +inevitable garlanded frame. The mere outline of the frame called up all +Gisburn's past! + +Mrs. Gisburn drew back the window-curtains, moved aside a _jardiniere_ +full of pink azaleas, pushed an arm-chair away, and said: "If you stand +here you can just manage to see it. I had it over the mantel-piece, but +he wouldn't let it stay." + +Yes--I could just manage to see it--the first portrait of Jack's I had +ever had to strain my eyes over! Usually they had the place of +honour--say the central panel in a pale yellow or _rose Dubarry_ +drawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it took the light +through curtains of old Venetian point. The more modest place became +the picture better; yet, as my eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, +all the characteristic qualities came out--all the hesitations +disguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which, with +such consummate skill, he managed to divert attention from the real +business of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail. Mrs. +Gisburn, presenting a neutral surface to work on--forming, as it were, +so inevitably the background of her own picture--had lent herself in an +unusual degree to the display of this false virtuosity. The picture was +one of Jack's "strongest," as his admirers would have put it--it +represented, on his part, a swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins, +a balancing, straddling and straining, that reminded one of the +circus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met, in short, at +every point the demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" because +she was tired of being painted "sweetly"--and yet not to lose an atom +of the sweetness. + +"It's the last he painted, you know," Mrs. Gisburn said with pardonable +pride. "The last but one," she corrected herself--"but the other +doesn't count, because he destroyed it." + +"Destroyed it?" I was about to follow up this clue when I heard a +footstep and saw Jack himself on the threshold. + +As he stood there, his hands in the pockets of his velveteen coat, the +thin brown waves of hair pushed back from his white forehead, his lean +sunburnt cheeks furrowed by a smile that lifted the tips of a +self-confident moustache, I felt to what a degree he had the same +quality as his pictures--the quality of looking cleverer than he was. + +His wife glanced at him deprecatingly, but his eyes travelled past her +to the portrait. + +"Mr. Rickham wanted to see it," she began, as if excusing herself. He +shrugged his shoulders, still smiling. + +"Oh, Rickham found me out long ago," he said lightly; then, passing his +arm through mine: "Come and see the rest of the house." + +He showed it to me with a kind of naive suburban pride: the bath-rooms, +the speaking-tubes, the dress-closets, the trouser-presses--all the +complex simplifications of the millionaire's domestic economy. And +whenever my wonder paid the expected tribute he said, throwing out his +chest a little: "Yes, I really don't see how people manage to live +without that." + +Well--it was just the end one might have foreseen for him. Only he was, +through it all and in spite of it all--as he had been through, and in +spite of, his pictures--so handsome, so charming, so disarming, that +one longed to cry out: "Be dissatisfied with your leisure!" as once one +had longed to say: "Be dissatisfied with your work!" + +But, with the cry on my lips, my diagnosis suffered an unexpected check. + +"This is my own lair," he said, leading me into a dark plain room at +the end of the florid vista. It was square and brown and leathery: no +"effects"; no bric-a-brac, none of the air of posing for reproduction +in a picture weekly--above all, no least sign of ever having been used +as a studio. + +The fact brought home to me the absolute finality of Jack's break with +his old life. + +"Don't you ever dabble with paint any more?" I asked, still looking +about for a trace of such activity. + +"Never," he said briefly. + +"Or water-colour--or etching?" + +His confident eyes grew dim, and his cheeks paled a little under their +handsome sunburn. + +"Never think of it, my dear fellow--any more than if I'd never touched +a brush." + +And his tone told me in a flash that he never thought of anything else. + +I moved away, instinctively embarrassed by my unexpected discovery; and +as I turned, my eye fell on a small picture above the mantel-piece--the +only object breaking the plain oak panelling of the room. + +"Oh, by Jove!" I said. + +It was a sketch of a donkey--an old tired donkey, standing in the rain +under a wall. + +"By Jove--a Stroud!" I cried. + +He was silent; but I felt him close behind me, breathing a little +quickly. + +"What a wonder! Made with a dozen lines--but on everlasting +foundations. You lucky chap, where did you get it?" + +He answered slowly: "Mrs. Stroud gave it to me." + +"Ah--I didn't know you even knew the Strouds. He was such an inflexible +hermit." + +"I didn't--till after.... She sent for me to paint him when he was +dead." + +"When he was dead? You?" + +I must have let a little too much amazement escape through my surprise, +for he answered with a deprecating laugh: "Yes--she's an awful +simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have him done by +a fashionable painter--ah, poor Stroud! She thought it the surest way +of proclaiming his greatness--of forcing it on a purblind public. And +at the moment I was _the_ fashionable painter." + +"Ah, poor Stroud--as you say. Was _that_ his history?" + +"That was his history. She believed in him, gloried in him--or thought +she did. But she couldn't bear not to have all the drawing-rooms with +her. She couldn't bear the fact that, on varnishing days, one could +always get near enough to see his pictures. Poor woman! She's just a +fragment groping for other fragments. Stroud is the only whole I ever +knew." + +"You ever knew? But you just said--" + +Gisburn had a curious smile in his eyes. + +"Oh, I knew him, and he knew me--only it happened after he was dead." + +I dropped my voice instinctively. "When she sent for you?" + +"Yes--quite insensible to the irony. She wanted him vindicated--and by +me!" + +He laughed again, and threw back his head to look up at the sketch of +the donkey. "There were days when I couldn't look at that +thing--couldn't face it. But I forced myself to put it here; and now +it's cured me--cured me. That's the reason why I don't dabble any more, +my dear Rickham; or rather Stroud himself is the reason." + +For the first time my idle curiosity about my companion turned into a +serious desire to understand him better. + +"I wish you'd tell me how it happened," I said. + +He stood looking up at the sketch, and twirling between his fingers a +cigarette he had forgotten to light. Suddenly he turned toward me. + +"I'd rather like to tell you--because I've always suspected you of +loathing my work." + +I made a deprecating gesture, which he negatived with a good-humoured +shrug. + +"Oh, I didn't care a straw when I believed in myself--and now it's an +added tie between us!" + +He laughed slightly, without bitterness, and pushed one of the deep +arm-chairs forward. "There: make yourself comfortable--and here are the +cigars you like." + +He placed them at my elbow and continued to wander up and down the +room, stopping now and then beneath the picture. + +"How it happened? I can tell you in five minutes--and it didn't take +much longer to happen.... I can remember now how surprised and pleased +I was when I got Mrs. Stroud's note. Of course, deep down, I had always +_felt_ there was no one like him--only I had gone with the stream, +echoed the usual platitudes about him, till I half got to think he was +a failure, one of the kind that are left behind. By Jove, and he _was_ +left behind--because he had come to stay! The rest of us had to let +ourselves be swept along or go under, but he was high above the +current--on everlasting foundations, as you say. + +"Well, I went off to the house in my most egregious mood--rather moved, +Lord forgive me, at the pathos of poor Stroud's career of failure being +crowned by the glory of my painting him! Of course I meant to do the +picture for nothing--I told Mrs. Stroud so when she began to stammer +something about her poverty. I remember getting off a prodigious phrase +about the honour being _mine_--oh, I was princely, my dear Rickham! I +was posing to myself like one of my own sitters. + +"Then I was taken up and left alone with him. I had sent all my traps +in advance, and I had only to set up the easel and get to work. He had +been dead only twenty-four hours, and he died suddenly, of heart +disease, so that there had been no preliminary work of destruction--his +face was clear and untouched. I had met him once or twice, years +before, and thought him insignificant and dingy. Now I saw that he was +superb. + +"I was glad at first, with a merely aesthetic satisfaction: glad to +have my hand on such a 'subject.' Then his strange life-likeness began +to affect me queerly--as I blocked the head in I felt as if he were +watching me do it. The sensation was followed by the thought: if he +_were_ watching me, what would he say to my way of working? My strokes +began to go a little wild--I felt nervous and uncertain. + +"Once, when I looked up, I seemed to see a smile behind his close +grayish beard--as if he had the secret, and were amusing himself by +holding it back from me. That exasperated me still more. The secret? +Why, I had a secret worth twenty of his! I dashed at the canvas +furiously, and tried some of my bravura tricks. But they failed me, +they crumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits--I couldn't +distract his attention; he just kept his eyes on the hard passages +between. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or covered up with +some lying paint. And how he saw through my lies! + +"I looked up again, and caught sight of that sketch of the donkey +hanging on the wall near his bed. His wife told me afterward it was the +last thing he had done--just a note taken with a shaking hand, when he +was down in Devonshire recovering from a previous heart attack. Just a +note! But it tells his whole history. There are years of patient +scornful persistence in every line. A man who had swum with the current +could never have learned that mighty up-stream stroke.... + +"I turned back to my work, and went on groping and muddling; then I +looked at the donkey again. I saw that, when Stroud laid in the first +stroke, he knew just what the end would be. He had possessed his +subject, absorbed it, recreated it. When had I done that with any of my +things? They hadn't been born of me--I had just adopted them.... + +"Hang it, Rickham, with that face watching me I couldn't do another +stroke. The plain truth was, I didn't know where to put it--_I had +never known_. Only, with my sitters and my public, a showy splash of +colour covered up the fact--I just threw paint into their faces.... +Well, paint was the one medium those dead eyes could see through--see +straight to the tottering foundations underneath. Don't you know how, +in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time +not what one wants to but what one can? Well--that was the way I +painted; and as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my +'technique' collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, you +understand, poor Stroud--he just lay there quietly watching, and on his +lips, through the gray beard, I seemed to hear the question: 'Are you +sure you know where you're coming out?' + +"If I could have painted that face, with that question on it, I should +have done a great thing. The next greatest thing was to see that I +couldn't--and that grace was given me. But, oh, at that minute, +Rickham, was there anything on earth I wouldn't have given to have +Stroud alive before me, and to hear him say: 'It's not too late--I'll +show you how'? + +"It _was_ too late--it would have been, even if he'd been alive. I +packed up my traps, and went down and told Mrs. Stroud. Of course I +didn't tell her _that_--it would have been Greek to her. I simply said +I couldn't paint him, that I was too moved. She rather liked the +idea--she's so romantic! It was that that made her give me the donkey. +But she was terribly upset at not getting the portrait--she did so want +him 'done' by some one showy! At first I was afraid she wouldn't let me +off--and at my wits' end I suggested Grindle. Yes, it was I who started +Grindle: I told Mrs. Stroud he was the 'coming' man, and she told +somebody else, and so it got to be true.... And he painted Stroud +without wincing; and she hung the picture among her husband's +things...." + +He flung himself down in the arm-chair near mine, laid back his head, +and clasping his arms beneath it, looked up at the picture above the +chimney-piece. + +"I like to fancy that Stroud himself would have given it to me, if he'd +been able to say what he thought that day." + +And, in answer to a question I put half-mechanically--"Begin again?" he +flashed out. "When the one thing that brings me anywhere near him is +that I knew enough to leave off?" + +He stood up and laid his hand on my shoulder with a laugh. "Only the +irony of it is that I _am_ still painting--since Grindle's doing it for +me! The Strouds stand alone, and happen once--but there's no +exterminating our kind of art." + + + + +THE POT-BOILER + + +I + +The studio faced north, looking out over a dismal reach of roofs and +chimneys, and rusty fire-escapes hung with heterogeneous garments. A +crust of dirty snow covered the level surfaces, and a December sky with +more snow in it lowered over them. + +The room was bare and gaunt, with blotched walls and a stained uneven +floor. On a divan lay a pile of "properties"--limp draperies, an +Algerian scarf, a moth-eaten fan of peacock feathers. The janitor had +forgotten to fill the coal-scuttle over-night, and the cast-iron stove +projected its cold flanks into the room like a black iceberg. Ned +Stanwell, who had just added his hat and great-coat to the +miscellaneous heap on the divan, turned from the empty stove with a +shiver. + +"By Jove, this is a little too much like the last act of _Boheme_," he +said, slipping into his coat again after a vain glance at the +coal-scuttle. Much solitude, and a lively habit of mind, had bred in +him the habit of audible soliloquy, and having flung a shout for the +janitor down the seven flights dividing the studio from the basement, +he turned back, picking up the thread of his monologue. "Exactly like +_Boheme_, really--that crack in the wall is much more like a +stage-crack than a real one--just the sort of crack Mungold would paint +if he were doing a Humble Interior." + +Mungold, the fashionable portrait-painter of the hour, was the +favourite object of the younger men's irony. + +"It only needs Kate Arran to be borne in dying," Stanwell continued +with a laugh. "Much more likely to be poor little Caspar, though," he +concluded. + +His neighbour across the landing--the little sculptor, Caspar Arran, +humorously called "Gasper" on account of his bronchial asthma--had +lately been joined by a sister, Kate Arran, a strapping girl, fresh +from the country, who had installed herself in the little room off her +brother's studio, keeping house for him with a chafing-dish and a +coffee-machine, to the mirth and envy of the other young men in the +building. + +Poor little Gasper had been very bad all the autumn, and it was +surmised that his sister's presence, which he spoke of growlingly, as a +troublesome necessity devolved on him by the inopportune death of an +aunt, was really an indication of his failing ability to take care of +himself. Kate Arran took his complaints with unfailing good-humour, +darned his socks, brushed his clothes, fed him with steaming broths and +foaming milk-punches, and listened with reverential assent to his +interminable disquisitions on art. Every one in the house was sorry for +little Gasper, and the other fellows liked him all the more because it +was so impossible to like his sculpture; but his talk was a bore, and +when his colleagues ran in to see him they were apt to keep a hand on +the door-knob and to plead a pressing engagement. At least they had +been till Kate came; but now they began to show a disposition to enter +and sit down. Caspar, who was no fool, perceived the change, and +perhaps detected its cause; at any rate, he showed no special +gratification at the increased cordiality of his friends, and Kate, who +followed him in everything, took this as a sign that guests were to be +discouraged. + +There was one exception, however: Ned Stanwell, who was deplorably +good-natured, had always lent a patient ear to Caspar, and he now +reaped his reward by being taken into Kate's favour. Before she had +been a month in the building they were on confidential terms as to +Caspar's health, and lately Stanwell had penetrated farther, even to +the inmost recesses of her anxiety about her brother's career. Caspar +had recently had a bad blow in the refusal of his _magnum opus_--a vast +allegorical group--by the Commissioners of the Minneapolis Exhibition. +He took the rejection with Promethean irony, proclaimed it as the +clinching proof of his ability, and abounded in reasons why, even in an +age of such crass artistic ignorance, a refusal so egregious must react +to the advantage of its object. But his sister's indignation, if as +glowing, was a shade less hopeful. Of course Caspar was going to +succeed--she knew it was only a question of time--but she paled at the +word and turned imploring eyes on Stanwell. _Was there time enough?_ It +was the one element in the combination that she could not count on; and +Stanwell, reddening under her look of interrogation, and cursing his +own glaring robustness, would affirm that of course, of course, of +course, by everything that was holy there was time enough--with the +mental reservation that there wouldn't be, even if poor Caspar lived to +be a hundred. + +"Vos that you yelling for the shanitor, Mr. Sdanwell?" inquired an +affable voice through the doorway; and Stanwell, turning with a laugh, +confronted the squat figure of a middle-aged man in an expensive fur +coat, who looked as if his face secreted the oil which he used on his +hair. + +"Hullo, Shepson--I should say I was yelling. Did you ever feel such an +atmosphere? That fool has forgotten to light the stove. Come in, but +for heaven's sake don't take off your coat." + +Mr. Shepson glanced about the studio with a look which seemed to say +that, where so much else was lacking, the absence of a fire hardly +added to the general sense of destitution. + +"Vell, you ain't as vell fixed as Mr. Mungold--ever been to his studio, +Mr. Sdanwell? De most ex_quis_ite blush hangings, and a gas-fire, +choost as natural--" + +"Oh, hang it, Shepson, do you call _that_ a studio? It's like a +manicure's parlour--or a beauty-doctor's. By George," broke off +Stanwell, "and that's just what he is!" + +"A peauty-doctor?" + +"Yes--oh, well, you wouldn't see," murmured Stanwell, mentally storing +his epigram for more appreciative ears. "But you didn't come just to +make me envious of Mungold's studio, did you?" And he pushed forward a +chair for his visitor. + +The latter, however, declined it with an affable motion. "Of gourse +not, of gourse not--but Mr. Mungold is a sensible man. He makes a lot +of money, you know." + +"Is that what you came to tell me?" said Stanwell, still humorously. + +"My gootness, no--I was downstairs looking at Holbrook's sdained class, +and I shoost thought I'd sdep up a minute and take a beep at your vork." + +"Much obliged, I'm sure--especially as I assume that you don't want any +of it." Try as he would, Stanwell could not keep a note of eagerness +from his voice. Mr. Shepson caught the note, and eyed him shrewdly +through gold-rimmed glasses. + +"Vell, vell, vell--I'm not prepared to commit myself. Shoost let me +take a look round, vill you?" + +"With the greatest pleasure--and I'll give another shout for the coal." + +Stanwell went out on the landing, and Mr. Shepson, left to himself, +began a meditative progress about the room. On an easel facing the +improvised dais stood a canvas on which a young woman's head had been +blocked in. It was just in that happy state of semi-evocation when a +picture seems to detach itself from the grossness of its medium and +live a wondrous moment in the actual; and the quality of the head in +question--a vigorous dusky youthfulness, a kind of virgin majesty--lent +itself to this illusion of vitality. Stanwell, who had re-entered the +studio, could not help drawing a sharp breath as he saw the +picture-dealer pausing with tilted head before this portrait: it +seemed, at one moment, so impossible that he should not be struck with +it, at the next so incredible that he should be. + +Shepson cocked his parrot-eye at the canvas with a desultory "Vat's +dat?" which sent a twinge through the young man. + +"That? Oh--a sketch of a young lady," stammered Stanwell, flushing at +the imbecility of his reply. "It's Miss Arran, you know," he added, +"the sister of my neighbour here, the sculptor." + +"Sgulpture? There's no market for modern sgulpture except tombstones," +said Shepson disparagingly, passing on as if he included the sister's +portrait in his condemnation of her brother's trade. + +Stanwell smiled, but more at himself than Shepson. How could he ever +have supposed that the gross fool would see anything in his sketch of +Kate Arran? He stood aside, straining after detachment, while the +dealer continued his round of exploration, waddling up to the canvases +on the walls, prodding with his stick at those stacked in corners, +prying and peering sideways like a great bird rummaging for seed. He +seemed to find little nutriment in the course of his search, for the +sounds he emitted expressed a weary distaste for misdirected effort, +and he completed his round without having thought it worth while to +draw a single canvas from its obscurity. + +As his visits always had the same result, Stanwell was reduced to +wondering why he had come again; but Shepson was not the man to indulge +in vague roamings through the field of art, and it was safe to conclude +that his purpose would in due course reveal itself. His tour brought +him at length face to face with the painter, where he paused, clasping +his plump gloved hands behind his back, and shaking an admonitory head. + +"Gleffer--very gleffer, of course--I suppose you'll let me know when +you want to sell anything?" + +"Let you know?" gasped Stanwell, to whom the room grew so glowingly hot +that he thought for a moment the janitor must have made up the fire. + +Shepson gave a dry laugh. "Vell, it doesn't sdrike me that you want to +now--doing this kind of thing, you know!" And he swept a comprehensive +hand about the studio. + +"Ah," said Stanwell, who could not keep a note of flatness out of his +laugh. + +"See here, Mr. Sdanwell, vot do you do it for? If you do it for +yourself and the other fellows, vell and good--only don't ask me round. +I sell pictures, I don't theorize about them. Ven you vant to sell, +gome to me with what my gustomers vant. You can do it--you're smart +enough. You can do most anything. Vere's dat bortrait of Gladys Glyde +dat you showed at the Fake Club last autumn? Dat little thing in de +Romney sdyle? Dat vas a little shem, now," exclaimed Mr. Shepson, whose +pronunciation became increasingly Semitic in moments of excitement. + +Stanwell stared. Called upon a few months previously to contribute to +an exhibition of skits on well-known artists, he had used the +photograph of a favourite music-hall "star" as the basis of a picture +in the pseudo-historical style affected by the popular +portrait-painters of the day. + +"That thing?" he said contemptuously. "How on earth did you happen to +see it?" + +"I see everything," returned the dealer with an oracular smile. "If +you've got it here let me look at it, please." + +It cost Stanwell a few minutes' search to unearth his skit--a clever +blending of dash and sentimentality, in just the right proportion to +create the impression of a powerful brush subdued to mildness by the +charms of the sitter. Stanwell had thrown it off in a burst of +imitative frenzy, beginning for the mere joy of the satire, but +gradually fascinated by the problem of producing the requisite mingling +of attributes. He was surprised now to see how well he had caught the +note, and Shepson's face reflected his approval. + +"By George! Dat's something like," the dealer ejaculated. + +"Like what? Like Mungold?" Stanwell laughed. + +"Like business! Like a big order for a bortrait, Mr. Sdanwell--dat's +what it's like!" cried Shepson, swinging round on him. + +Stanwell's stare widened. "An order for me?" + +"Vy not? Accidents _vill_ happen," said Shepson jocosely. "De fact is, +Mrs. Archer Millington wants to be bainted--you know her sdyle? Well, +she prides herself on her likeness to little Gladys. And so ven she saw +dat bicture of yours at de Fake Show she made a note of your name, and +de udder day she sent for me and she says: 'Mr. Shepson, I'm tired of +Mungold--all my friends are done by Mungold. I vant to break away and +be orishinal--I vant to be done by the bainter that did Gladys Glyde." + +Shepson waited to observe the result of this overwhelming announcement, +and Stanwell, after a momentary halt of surprise, brought out +laughingly: "But this _is_ a Mungold. Is this what she calls being +original?" + +"Shoost exactly," said Shepson, with unexpected acuteness. "That's vat +dey all want--something different from what all deir friends have got, +but shoost like it all de same. Dat's de public all over! Mrs. +Millington don't want a Mungold, because everybody's got a Mungold, but +she wants a picture that's in the same sdyle, because dat's _de_ sdyle, +and she's afraid of any oder!" + +Stanwell was listening with real enjoyment. "Ah, you know your public," +he murmured. + +"Vell, you do, too, or you couldn't have painted dat," the dealer +retorted. "And I don't say dey're wrong--mind dat. I like a bretty +picture myself. And I understand the way dey feel. Dey're villing to +let Sargent take liberties vid them, because it's like being punched in +de ribs by a King; but if anybody else baints them, they vant to look +as sweet as an obituary." He turned earnestly to Stanwell. "The thing +is to attract their notice. Vonce you got it they von't gif you dime to +sleep. And dat's why I'm here to-day--you've attracted Mrs. +Millington's notice, and vonce you're hung in dat new ball-room--dat's +vere she vants you, in a big gold panel--vonce you're dere, vy, you'll +be like the Pianola--no home gompleat without you. And I ain't going to +charge you any commission on the first job!" + +He stood before the painter, exuding a mixture of deference and +patronage in which either element might predominate as events +developed; but Stanwell could see in the incident only the stuff for a +good story. + +"My dear Shepson," he said, "what are you talking about? This is no +picture of mine. Why don't you ask me to do you a Corot at once? I hear +there's a great demand for them still in the West. Or an Arthur +Schracker--I can do Schracker as well as Mungold," he added, turning +around a small canvas at which a paint-pot seemed to have been hurled +with violence from a considerable distance. + +Shepson ignored the allusion to Corot, but screwed his eyes at the +picture. "Ah, Schracker--vell, the Schracker sdyle would take first +rate if you were a foreigner--but, for goodness sake, don't try it on +Mrs. Millington!" + +Stanwell pushed the two skits aside. "Oh, you can trust me," he cried +humorously. "The pearls and the eyes very large--the extremities very +small. Isn't that about the size of it?" + +"Dat's it--dat's it. And the cheque as big as you vant to make it! Mrs. +Millington vants the picture finished in time for her first barty in +the new ball-room, and if you rush the job she won't sdickle at an +extra thousand. Vill you come along with me now and arrange for your +first sitting?" + +He stood before the young man, urgent, paternal, and so imbued with the +importance of his mission that his face stretched to a ludicrous length +of dismay when Stanwell, administering a good-humoured push to his +shoulder, cried gaily: "My dear fellow, it will make my price rise +still higher when the lady hears I'm too busy to take any orders at +present--and that I'm actually obliged to turn you out now because I'm +expecting a sitter!" + +It was part of Shepson's business to have a quick ear for the note of +finality, and he offered no resistance to Stanwell's friendly +impulsion; but on the threshold he paused to murmur, with a regretful +glance at the denuded studio: "You could haf done it, Mr. Sdanwell--you +could haf done it!" + + +II + +KATE ARRAN was Stanwell's sitter; but the janitor had hardly filled the +stove when she came in to say that she could not sit. Caspar had had a +bad night: he was depressed and feverish, and in spite of his protests +she had resolved to fetch the doctor. Care sat on her usually tranquil +features, and Stanwell, as he offered to go for the doctor, wished he +could have caught in his picture the wide gloom of her brow. There was +always a kind of Biblical breadth in the expression of her emotions, +and today she suggested a text from Isaiah. + +"But you're not busy?" she hesitated; in the full voice which seemed +tuned to a solemn rhetoric. + +"I meant to be--with you. But since that's off I'm quite unemployed." + +She smiled interrogatively. "I thought perhaps you had an order. I met +Mr. Shepson rubbing his hands on the landing." + +"Was he rubbing his hands? Well, it was not over me. He says that from +the style of my pictures he doesn't suppose I want to sell." + +She looked at him superbly. "Well, do you?" + +He embraced his bleak walls in a circular gesture. "Judge for yourself!" + +"Ah, but it's splendidly furnished!" + +"With rejected pictures, you mean?" + +"With ideals!" she exclaimed in a tone caught from her brother, and +which would have been irritating to Stanwell if it had not been moving. + +He gave a slight shrug and took up his hat; but she interposed to say +that if it didn't make any difference she would prefer to have him go +and sit with poor Caspar, while she ran for the doctor and did some +household errands by the way. Stanwell divined in her request the need +for a brief respite from Caspar, and though he shivered at the thought +of her facing the cold in the scant jacket which had been her only wear +since he had known her, he let her go without a protest, and betook +himself to Arran's studio. + +He found the little sculptor dressed and roaming fretfully about the +melancholy room in which he and his plastic off-spring lodged together. +In one corner, where Kate's chair and work-table stood, a scrupulous +order prevailed; but the rest of the apartment had the dreary +untidiness, the damp grey look, which the worker in clay usually +creates about him. In the centre of this desert stood the shrouded +image of Caspar's disappointment: the colossal rejected group as to +which his friends could seldom remember whether it represented Jove +hurling a Titan from Olympus or Science Subjugating Religion. Caspar +was the sworn foe of religion, which he appeared to regard as +indirectly connected with his inability to sell his statues. + +The sculptor was too ill to work, and Stanwell's appearance loosed the +pent-up springs of his talk. + +"Hullo! What are you doing here? I thought Kate had gone over to sit to +you. She wanted a little fresh air? I should say enough of it came in +through these windows. How like a woman, when she's agreed to do a +certain thing, to make up her mind at once that she's got to do +another! They don't call it caprice--it's always duty: that's the +humour of it. I'll be bound Kate alleged a pressing engagement. Sorry +she should waste your time so, my dear fellow. Here am I with plenty of +it to burn--look at my hand shake; I can't do a thing! Well, luckily +nobody wants me to--posterity may suffer, but the present generation +isn't worrying. The present generation wants to be carved in +sugar-candy, or painted in maple syrup. It doesn't want to be told the +truth about itself or about anything in the universe. The prophets have +always lived in a garret, my dear fellow--only the ravens don't always +find out their address! Speaking of ravens, though, Kate told me she +saw old Shepson coming out of your place--I say, old man, you're not +meditating an apostasy? You're not doing the kind of thing that Shepson +would look at?" + +Stanwell laughed. "Oh, he looked at them--but only to confirm his +reasons for rejecting them." + +"Ha! ha! That's right--he wanted to refresh his memory with their +badness. But how on earth did he happen to have any doubts on the +subject? I should as soon have thought of his coming in here!" + +Stanwell winced at the analogy, but replied in Caspar's key: "Oh, he's +not as sure of any of us as he is of you!" + +The sculptor received this tribute with a joyous expletive. "By God, +no, he's sure of me, as you say! He and his tribe know that I'll starve +in my tracks sooner than make a concession--a single concession. A +fellow came after me once to do an angel on a tombstone--an angel +leaning against a broken column, and looking as if it was waiting for +the elevator and wondering why in hell it didn't come. He said he +wanted me to show that the deceased was pining to get to heaven. As she +was his wife I didn't dispute the proposition, but when I asked him +what he understood by _heaven_ he grabbed his hat and walked out of the +studio. _He_ didn't wait for the elevator." + +Stanwell listened with a practised smile. The story of the man who had +come to order the angel was so familiar to Arran's friends that its +only interest consisted in waiting to see what variation he would give +to the retort which had put the mourner to flight. It was generally +supposed that this visit represented the sculptor's nearest approach to +an order, and one of his fellow-craftsmen had been heard to remark that +if Caspar _had_ made the tombstone, the lady under it would have tried +harder than ever to get to heaven. To Stanwell's present mood, however, +there was something more than usually irritating in the gratuitous +assumption that Arran had only to derogate from his altitude to have a +press of purchasers at his door. + +"Well--what did you gain by kicking your widower out?" he objected. +"Why can't a man do two kinds of work--one to please himself and the +other to boil the pot?" + +Caspar stopped in his jerky walk--the stride of a tall man attempted +with short legs (it sometimes appeared to Stanwell to symbolize his +artistic endeavour). + +"Why can't a man--why can't he? You ask me that, Stanwell?" he blazed +out. + +"Yes; and what's more, I'll answer you: it isn't everybody who can +adapt his art as he wants to!" + +Caspar stood before him, gasping with incredulous scorn. "Adapt his +art? As he wants to? Unhappy wretch, what lingo are you talking? If you +mean that it isn't every honest man who can be a renegade--" + +"That's just what I do mean: he can't unless he's clever enough to see +the other side." + +The deep groan with which Caspar met this casuistry was cut short by a +knock at the studio door, which thereupon opened to admit a small +dapperly-dressed man with a silky moustache and mildly-bulging eyes. + +"Ah, Mungold," exclaimed Stanwell, to cover the gloomy silence with +which Arran received the new-comer; whereat the latter, with the air of +a man who does not easily believe himself unwelcome, bestowed a +sympathetic pressure on the sculptor's hand. + +"My dear chap, I've just met Miss Arran, and she told me you were laid +up with a bad cold, so I thought I'd pop in and cheer you up a little." + +He looked about him with a smile evidently intended as the first act in +his beneficent programme. + +Mr. Mungold, freshly soaped and scented, with a neat glaze of gentility +extending from his varnished boot-tips to his glossy hat, looked like +the "flattered" portrait of a common man--just such an idealized +presentment as his own brush might have produced. As a rule, however, +he devoted himself to the portrayal of the other sex, painting ladies +in syrup, as Arran said, with marsh-mallow children leaning against +their knees. He was as quick as a dressmaker at catching new ideas, and +the style of his pictures changed as rapidly as that of the +fashion-plates. One year all his sitters were done on oval canvases, +with gauzy draperies and a background of clouds; the next they were +seated under an immemorial elm, caressing enormous dogs obviously +constructed out of door-mats. Whatever their occupation they always +looked straight out of the canvas, giving the impression that their +eyes were fixed on an invisible camera. This gave rise to the rumour +that Mungold "did" his portraits from photographs; it was even said +that he had invented a way of transferring an enlarged photograph to +the canvas, so that all that remained was to fill in the colours. If he +heard of this charge he took it calmly, but probably it had not reached +the high spheres in which he moved, and in which he was esteemed for +painting pearls better, and making unsuggestive children look lovelier, +than any of his fellow-craftsmen. Mr. Mungold, in fact, deemed it a +part of his professional duty to study his sitters in their home-life; +and as this life was chiefly led in the homes of others, he was too +busy dining out and going to the opera to mingle much with his +colleagues. But as no one is wholly consistent, Mr. Mungold had lately +belied his ambitions by falling in love with Kate Arran; and with that +gentle persistency which made him so wonderful in managing obstreperous +infantile sitters, he had contrived to establish a precarious footing +in her brother's studio. + +Part of his success was due to the fact that he could not easily think +himself the object of a rebuff. If it seemed to hit him he regarded it +as deflected from its aim, and brushed it aside with a discreet +gesture. A touch of comedy was lent to the situation by the fact that, +till Kate Arran's coming, Mungold had always served as her brother's +Awful Example. It was a mark of Arran's lack of humour that he +persisted in regarding the little man as a conscious apostate, instead +of perceiving that he painted as he could, in a world which really +looked to him like a vast confectioner's window. Stanwell had never +quite divined how Mungold had won over the sister, to whom her +brother's prejudices were a religion; but he suspected the painter of +having united a deep belief in Caspar's gifts with the occasional offer +of opportune delicacies--the port-wine or game which Kate had no other +means of procuring for her patient. + +Stanwell, persuaded that Mungold would stick to his post till Miss +Arran's return, felt himself freed from his promise to the latter and +left the incongruous pair to themselves. There had been a time when it +amused him to see Caspar submerge the painter in a torrent of turbid +eloquence, and to watch poor Mungold sputtering under the rush of +denunciation, yet emitting little bland phrases of assent, like a +gentleman drowning correctly, in gloves and eye-glasses. But Stanwell +was beginning to find less food for gaiety than for envy in the +contemplation of his colleague. After all, Mungold held his ground, he +did not go under. Spite of his manifest absurdity he had succeeded in +propitiating the sister, in making himself tolerated by the brother; +and the fact that his success was due to the ability to purchase +port-wine and game was not in this case a mitigating circumstance. +Stanwell knew that the Arrans really preferred him to Mungold, but the +knowledge only sharpened his envy of the latter, whose friendship could +command visible tokens of expression, while poor Stanwell's remained +gloomily inarticulate. As he returned to his over-populated studio and +surveyed anew the pictures of which Shepson had not offered to relieve +him, he found himself wishing, not for Mungold's lack of scruples, for +he believed him to be the most scrupulous of men, but for that happy +mean of talent which so completely satisfied the artistic requirements +of the inartistic. Mungold was not to be despised as an apostate--he +was to be congratulated as a man whose aptitudes were exactly in line +with the taste of the persons he liked to dine with. + +At this point in his meditations, Stanwell's eye fell on the portrait +of Miss Gladys Glyde. It was really, as Shepson said, as good as a +Mungold; yet it could never be made to serve the same purpose, because +it was the work of a man who knew it was bad art. That at least would +have been Caspar Arran's contention--poor Caspar, who produced as bad +art in the service of the loftiest convictions! The distinction began +to look like mere casuistry to Stanwell. He had never been very proud +of his own adaptability. It had seemed to him to indicate the lack of +an individual stand-point, and he had tried to counteract it by the +cultivation of an aggressively personal style. But the cursed knack was +in his fingers--he was always at the mercy of some other man's +sensations, and there were moments when he blushed to remember that his +grandfather had spent a laborious life-time in Rome, copying the Old +Masters for a generation which lacked the facile resource of the +camera. Now, however, it struck him that the ancestral versatility +might be a useful inheritance. In art, after all, the greatest of them +did what they could; and if a man could do several things instead of +one, why should he not profit by the multiplicity of his gifts? If one +had two talents why not serve two masters? + + +III + +STANWELL, while seeing Caspar through the attack which had been the +cause of his sister's arrival, had struck up a friendship with the +young doctor who climbed the patient's seven flights with unremitting +fidelity. The two, since then, had continued to exchange confidences +regarding the sculptor's health, and Stanwell, anxious to waylay the +doctor after his visit, left the studio door ajar, and went out when he +heard a sound of leave-taking across the landing. But it appeared that +the doctor had just come, and that it was Mungold who was making his +adieux. + +The latter at once assumed that Stanwell had been on the alert for him, +and met the supposed advance by affably inviting himself into the +studio. + +"May I come and take a look around, my dear fellow? I have been meaning +to drop in for an age--" Mungold always spoke with a girlish emphasis +and effusiveness--"but I have been so busy getting up Mrs. Van Orley's +tableaux--English eighteenth century portraits, you know--that really, +what with that and my sittings, I've hardly had time to think. And then +you know you owe me about a dozen visits! But you're a savage--you +don't pay visits. You stay here and _piocher_--which is wiser, as the +results prove. Ah, you're very strong--immensely strong!" He paused in +the middle of the studio, glancing about a little apprehensively, as +though he thought the stored energy of the pictures might result in an +explosion. "Very original--very striking--ah, Miss Arran! A powerful +head; but--excuse the suggestion--isn't there just the least little +lack of sweetness? You don't think she has the sweet type? Perhaps +not--but could she be so lovely if she were not intensely feminine? +Just at present, though, she is not looking her best--she is horribly +tired. I am afraid there is very little money left--and poor dear +Caspar is so impossible: he won't hear of a loan. Otherwise I should be +most happy--. But I came just now to propose a piece of work--in fact +to give him an order. Mrs. Archer Millington has built a new ball-room, +as I daresay you may have seen in the papers, and she has been kind +enough to ask me for some hints--oh, merely as a friend: I don't +presume to do more than advise. But her decorator wants to do something +with Cupids--something light and playful, you understand. And so I +ventured to say that I knew a very clever sculptor--well, I _do_ +believe Caspar has talent--latent talent, you know--and at any rate a +job of that sort would be a big lift for him. At least I thought he +would regard it so; but you should have heard him when I showed him the +decorator's sketch. He asked me what the Cupids were to be done +in--lard? And if I thought he had had his training at a confectioner's? +And I don't know what more besides--but he worked himself up to such a +degree that he brought on a frightful fit of coughing, and Miss Arran, +I'm afraid, was rather annoyed with me when she came in, though I'm +sure an order from Mrs. Archer Millington is not a thing that would +annoy most people!" + +Mr. Mungold paused, breathless with the rehearsal of his wrongs, and +Stanwell said with a smile: "You know poor Caspar is terribly stiff on +the purity of the artist's aim." + +"The artist's aim?" Mr. Mungold stared. "What is the artist's aim but +to please--isn't that the purpose of all true art? But his theories are +so extravagant. I really don't know what I shall say to Mrs. +Millington--she is not used to being refused. I suppose I had better +put it on the ground of ill-health." The artist glanced at his handsome +repeater. "Dear me, I promised to be at Mrs. Van Orley's before twelve +o'clock. We are to settle about the curtain before luncheon. My dear +fellow, it has been a privilege to see your work. By the way, you have +never done any modelling, I suppose? You're so extraordinarily +versatile--I didn't know whether you might care to undertake the Cupids +yourself." + +Stanwell had to wait a long time for the doctor; and when the latter +came out he looked grave. Worse? No, he couldn't say that Caspar was +worse--but then he wasn't any better. There was nothing mortal the +matter, but the question was how long he could hold out. It was the +kind of case where there is no use in drugs--he had just scribbled a +prescription to quiet Miss Arran. + +"It's the cold, I suppose," Stanwell groaned. "He ought to be shipped +off to Florida." + +The doctor made a negative gesture. "Florida be hanged! What he wants +is to sell his group. That would set him up quicker than sitting on the +equator." + +"Sell his group?" Stanwell echoed. "But he's so indifferent to +recognition--he believes in himself so thoroughly. I thought at first +he would be hard hit when the Exhibition Committee refused it, but he +seems to regard that as another proof of its superiority." + +His visitor turned on him the penetrating eye of the confessor. +"Indifferent to recognition? He's eating his heart out for it. Can't +you see that all that talk is just so much whistling to keep his +courage up? The name of his disease is failure--and I can't write the +prescription that will cure that complaint. But if somebody would come +along and take a fancy to those two naked parties who are breaking each +other's heads, we'd have Mr. Caspar putting on a pound a day." + +The truth of this diagnosis became suddenly vivid to Stanwell. How dull +of him not to have seen before that it was not cold or privation which +was killing Caspar--not anxiety for his sister's future, nor the ache +of watching her daily struggle--but simply the cankering thought that +he might die before he had made himself known! It was his vanity that +was starving to death, and all Mungold's hampers could not appease that +hunger. Stanwell was not shocked by the discovery--he was only the more +sorry for the little man, who was, after all, denied that solace of +self-sufficiency which his talk so noisily proclaimed. His lot seemed +hard enough when Stanwell had pictured him as buoyed up by the scorn of +public opinion--it became tragic if he was denied that support. The +artist wondered if Kate had guessed her brother's secret, or if she +were still the dupe of his stoicism. Stanwell was sure that the +sculptor would take no one into his confidence, and least of all his +sister, whose faith in his artistic independence was the chief prop of +that tottering pose. Kate's penetration was not great, and Stanwell +recalled the incredulous smile with which she had heard him defend poor +Mungold's "sincerity" against Caspar's assaults; but she had the +insight of the heart, and where her brother's happiness was concerned +she might have seen deeper than any of them. It was this last +consideration which took the strongest hold on Stanwell--he felt +Caspar's sufferings chiefly through the thought of his sister's +possible disillusionment. + + +IV + +WITHIN three months two events had set the studio building talking. +Stanwell had painted a full-length portrait of Mrs. Archer Millington, +and Caspar Arran had received an order to execute his group in marble. + +The name of the sculptor's patron had not been divulged. The order came +through Shepson, who explained that an American customer living abroad, +having seen a photograph of the group in one of the papers, had at once +cabled home to secure it. He intended to bestow it on a public building +in America, and not wishing to advertise his munificence, had preferred +that even the sculptor should remain ignorant of his name. The group +bought by an enlightened compatriot for the adornment of a civic +building in his native land! There could hardly be a more complete +vindication of unappreciated genius, and Caspar made the most of the +argument. He was not exultant, he was sublimely magnanimous. He had +always said that he could afford to await the Verdict of Posterity, and +his unknown patron's act clearly shadowed forth that impressive +decision. Happily it also found expression in a cheque which it would +have taken more philosophy to await. The group was paid for in advance, +and Kate's joy in her brother's recognition was deliciously mingled +with the thrill of ordering him some new clothes, and coaxing him out +to dine succulently at a neighbouring restaurant. Caspar flourished +insufferably on this regime: he began to strike the attitude of the +recognized Great Master, who gives advice and encouragement to the +struggling neophyte. He held himself up as an example of the reward of +disinterestedness, of the triumph of the artist who clings obstinately +to his convictions. + +"A man must believe in his star--look at Napoleon! It's the dogged +trust in one's convictions that tells--it always ends by forcing the +public into line. Only be sure you make no concessions--don't give in +to any of their humbug! An artist who listens to the critics is +ruined--they never have any use for the poor devils who do what they +tell them to. Run after fame and she'll keep you running, but stay in +your own corner and do your own work, and by George, sir, she'll come +crawling up to you and ask to have her likeness done!" + +These exhortations were chiefly directed to Stanwell, partly because +the inmates of the other studios were apt to elude them, partly also +because the rumours concerning Stanwell's portrait of Mrs. Millington +had begun to disquiet the sculptor. At first he had taken a +condescending interest in the fact of his friend's receiving an order, +and had admonished him not to lose the chance of "showing up" his +sitter and her environment. It was a splendid opportunity for a fellow +with a "message" to be introduced into the tents of the Philistine, and +Stanwell was charged to drive a long sharp nail into the enemy's skull. +But presently Arran began to suspect that the portrait was not as +comminatory as he could have wished. Mungold, the most kindly of +rivals, let drop a word of injudicious praise: the picture, he said, +promised to be delightfully "in keeping" with the decorations of the +ball-room, and the lady's gown harmonized exquisitely with the +window-curtains. Stanwell, called to account by his monitor, reminded +the latter that he himself had been selected by Mungold to do the +Cupids for Mrs. Millington's ball-room, and that the friendly artist's +praise could, therefore, not be taken as positive evidence of +incapacity. + +"Ah, but I didn't do them--I kicked him out!" Caspar rejoined; and +Stanwell could only plead that, even in the cause of art, one could +hardly kick a lady. + +"Ah, that's the worst of it. If the women get at you you're lost. +You're young, you're impressionable, you won't mind my saying that +you're not built for a stoic, and hang it, they'll coddle you, they'll +enervate you, they'll sentimentalize you, they'll make a Mungold of +you!" + +"Ah, poor Mungold," Stanwell laughed. "If he lived the life of an +anchorite he couldn't help painting pictures that would please Mrs. +Millington." + +"Whereas you could," Kate interjected, raising her head from the +ironing-board where, Sphinx-like, magnificent, she swung a splendid arm +above her brother's shirts. + +"Oh, well, perhaps I shan't please her; perhaps I shall elevate her +taste." + +Caspar directed a groan to his sister. "That's what they all think at +first--Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. But inside the Dark Tower +there's the Venusberg. Oh, I don't mean that you'll be taken with +truffles and plush footmen, like Mungold. But praise, my poor +Ned--praise is a deadly drug! It's the absinthe of the artist--and +they'll stupefy you with it. You'll wallow in the mire of success." + +Stanwell raised a protesting hand. "Really, for one order, you're a +little lurid!" + +"One? Haven't you already had a dozen others?" + +"Only one other, so far--and I'm not sure I shall do that." + +"Not sure--wavering already! That's the way the mischief begins. If the +women get a fad for you they'll work you like a galley-slave. You'll +have to do your round of 'copy' every morning. What becomes of +inspiration then? How are you going to loaf and invite the soul? Don't +barter your birthright for a mess of pottage! Oh, I understand the +temptation--I know the taste of money and success. But look at me, +Stanwell. You know how long I had to wait for recognition. Well, now +it's come to me I don't mean to let it knock me off my feet. I don't +mean to let myself be overworked; I have already made it known that I +will not be bullied into taking more orders than I can do full justice +to. And my sister is with me, God bless her; Kate would rather go on +ironing my shirts in a garret than see me prostitute my art!" + +Kate's glance radiantly confirmed this declaration of independence, and +Stanwell, with his evasive laugh, asked her if, meanwhile, she should +object to his investing a part of his ill-gotten gains in theatre +tickets for the party that evening. + +It appeared that Stanwell had also been paid in advance, and well paid; +for he began to permit himself various mild distractions, in which he +generally contrived to have the Arrans share. It seemed perfectly +natural to Kate that Caspar's friends should spend their money for his +recreation, and by one of the most touching sophistries of her sex she +thus reconciled herself to the anomaly of taking a little pleasure on +her own account. Mungold was less often in the way, for she had never +been able to forgive him for proposing that Caspar should do Mrs. +Millington's Cupids; and for a few radiant weeks Stanwell had the +undisputed enjoyment of her pride in her brother's achievement. + +Stanwell had "rushed through" Mrs. Millington's portrait in time for +the opening of her new ball-room; and it was perhaps in return for this +favour that she consented to let the picture be exhibited at a big +Portrait Show which was held in April for the benefit of a fashionable +charity. + +In Mrs. Millington's ball-room the picture had been seen and approved +only by the distinguished few who had access to that social sanctuary; +but on the walls of the exhibition it became a centre of comment and +discussion. One of the immediate results of this publicity was a visit +from Shepson, with two or three orders in his pocket, as he put it. He +surveyed the studio with fresh disgust, asked Stanwell why he did not +move, and was impressed rather than downcast on learning that the +painter had not decided whether he would take any more orders that +spring. + +"You might haf a studio at Newport," he suggested. "It would be rather +new to do your sitters out of doors, with the sea behind them--showing +they had a blace on the gliffs!" + +The picture produced a different and less flattering effect on the +critics. They gave it, indeed, more space than they had ever before +accorded to the artist's efforts, but their estimate seemed to confirm +Caspar Arran's forebodings, and Stanwell had perhaps never despised +them so little as when he read their comments on his work. On the +whole, however, neither praise nor blame disquieted him greatly. He was +engrossed in the contemplation of Kate Arran's happiness, and basking +in the refracted warmth it shed about her. The doctor's +prognostications had come true. Caspar was putting on a pound a week, +and had plunged into a fresh "creation" more symbolic and encumbering +than the monument of which he had been so opportunely relieved. If +there was any cloud on Stanwell's enjoyment of life, it was caused by +the discovery that success had quadrupled Caspar's artistic energies. +Meanwhile it was delightful to see Kate's joy in her brother's +recovered capacity for work, and to listen to the axioms which, for +Stanwell's guidance, she deduced from the example of Caspar's heroic +pursuit of the ideal. There was nothing repellent in Kate's borrowed +didacticism, and if it sometimes bored Stanwell to hear her quote her +brother, he was sure it would never bore him to be quoted by her +himself; and there were moments when he felt he had nearly achieved +that distinction. + +Caspar was not addicted to the visiting of art exhibitions. He took +little interest in any productions save his own, and was moreover +disposed to believe that good pictures, like clever criminals, are apt +to go unhung. Stanwell therefore thought it unlikely that his portrait +of Mrs. Millington would be seen by Kate, who was not given to +independent explorations in the field of art; but one day, on entering +the exhibition--which he had hitherto rather nervously shunned--he saw +the Arrans at the end of the gallery in which the portrait hung. They +were not looking at it, they were moving away from it, and to +Stanwell's quickened perceptions their attitude seemed almost that of +flight. For a moment he thought of flying too; then a desperate resolve +nerved him to meet them, and stemming the crowd, he made a circuit +which brought him face to face with their retreat. + +The room in which they met was momentarily empty, and there was nothing +to intervene between the shock of their inter-changed glances. Caspar +was flushed and bristling: his little body quivered like a machine from +which the steam has just been turned off. Kate lifted a stricken +glance. Stanwell read in it the reflexion of her brother's tirade, but +she held out her hand in silence. + +For a moment Caspar was silent too; then, with a terrible smile: "My +dear fellow, I congratulate you; Mungold will have to look to his +laurels," he said. + +The shot delivered, he stalked away with his seven-league stride, and +Kate moved tragically through the room in his wake. + + +V + +SHEPSON took up his hat with a despairing gesture. + +"Vell, I gif you up--I gif you up!" he said. + +"Don't--yet," protested Stanwell from the divan. + +It was winter again, and though the janitor had not forgotten the fire, +the studio gave no other evidence of its master's increasing +prosperity. If Stanwell spent his money it was not upon himself. + +He leaned back against the wall, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette +between his lips, while Shepson paced the dirty floor or halted +impatiently before an untouched canvas on the easel. + +"I tell you vat it is, Mr. Sdanwell, I can't make you out!" he +lamented. "Last vinter you got a sdart that vould have kept most men +going for years. After making dat hit vith Mrs. Millington's picture +you could have bainted half the town. And here you are sitting on your +divan and saying you can't make up your mind to take another order. +Vell, I can only say that if you take much longer to make it up, you'll +find some other chap has cut in and got your job. Mrs. Van Orley has +been waiting since last August, and she dells me you haven't even +answered her letter." + +"How could I? I didn't know if I wanted to paint her." + +"My goodness! Don't you know if you vant three thousand tollars?" + +Stanwell surveyed his cigarette. "No, I'm not sure I do," he said. + +Shepson flung out his hands. "Ask more den--but do it quick!" he +exclaimed. + +Left to himself, Stanwell stood in silent contemplation of the canvas +on which the dealer had riveted his reproachful gaze. It had been +destined to reflect the opulent image of Mrs. Alpheus Van Orley, but +some secret reluctance of Stanwell's had stayed the execution of the +task. He had painted two of Mrs. Millington's friends in the spring, +had been much praised and liberally paid for his work, and then, +declining several recent orders to be executed at Newport, had +surprised his friends by remaining quietly in town. It was not till +August that he hired a little cottage on the New Jersey coast and +invited the Arrans to visit him. They accepted the invitation, and the +three had spent together six weeks of seashore idleness, during which +Stanwell's modest rafters shook with Caspar's denunciations of his +host's venality, and the brightness of Kate's gratitude was tempered by +a tinge of reproach. But her grief over Stanwell's apostasy could not +efface the fact that he had offered her brother the means of escape +from town, and Stanwell himself was consoled by the reflection that but +for Mrs. Millington's portrait he could not have performed even this +trifling service for his friends. + +When the Arrans left him in September he went to pay a few visits in +the country, and on his return, a month later, to the studio building +he found that things had not gone well with Caspar. The little sculptor +had caught cold, and the labour and expense of converting his gigantic +offspring into marble seemed to hang heavily upon him. He and Kate were +living in a damp company of amorphous clay monsters, unfinished +witnesses to the creative frenzy which had seized him after the sale of +his group; and the doctor had urged that his patient should be removed +to warmer and drier lodgings. But to uproot Caspar was impossible, and +his sister could only feed the stove, and swaddle him in mufflers and +felt slippers. + +Stanwell found that during his absence Mungold had reappeared, fresh +and rosy from a summer in Europe, and as prodigal as ever of the only +form of attention which Kate could be counted on not to resent. The +game and champagne reappeared with him, and he seemed as ready as +Stanwell to lend a patient ear to Caspar's homilies. But Stanwell could +see that, even now, Kate had not forgiven him for the Cupids. Stanwell +himself had spent the early winter months in idleness. The sight of his +tools filled him with a strange repugnance, and he absented himself as +much as possible from the studio. But Shepson's visit roused him to the +fact that he must decide on some definite course of action. If he +wished to follow up his success of the previous spring he must refuse +no more orders: he must not let Mrs. Van Orley slip away from him. He +knew there were competitors enough ready to profit by his hesitations, +and since his success was the result of a whim, a whim might undo it. +With a sudden gesture of decision he caught up his hat and left the +studio. + +On the landing he met Kate Arran. She too was going out, drawn forth by +the sudden radiance of the January afternoon. She met him with a smile +which seemed the answer to his uncertainties, and he asked abruptly if +she had time to take a walk with him. + +Yes; for once she had time, for Mr. Mungold was sitting with Caspar, +and had promised to remain till she came in. It mattered little to +Stanwell that Mungold was with Caspar as long as he himself was with +Kate; and he instantly soared to the suggestion that they should +prolong the painter's vigil by taking the "elevated" to the Park. In +this too his companion acquiesced after a moment of surprise: she +seemed in a consenting mood, and Stanwell augured well from the fact. + +The Park was clothed in the double glitter of snow and sunshine. They +roamed the hard white alleys to a continuous tinkle of sleigh-bells, +and Kate brightened with the exhilaration of the scene. It was not +often that she permitted herself such an escape from routine, and in +this new environment, which seemed to detach her from her daily +setting, Stanwell had his first complete vision of her. To the girl +also their unwonted isolation seemed to create a sense of fuller +communion, for she began presently, as they reached the leafless +solitude of the Ramble, to speak with sudden freedom of her brother. It +appeared that the orders against which Caspar had so heroically steeled +himself were slow in coming: he had received no commission since the +sale of his group, and he was beginning to suffer from a reaction of +discouragement. Oh, it was not the craving for popularity--Stanwell +knew how far above that he stood. But it had been exquisite, yes, +exquisite to him to find himself believed in, understood. He had +fancied that the purchase of the group was the dawn of a tardy +recognition--and now the darkness of indifference had set in again, no +one spoke of him, no one wrote of him, no one cared. + +"If he were in good health it would not matter--he would throw off such +weakness, he would live only for the joy of his work; but he is losing +ground, his strength is failing, and he is so afraid there will not be +time enough left--time enough for full recognition," she explained. + +The quiver in her voice silenced Stanwell: he was afraid of echoing it +with his own. At length he said: "Oh, more orders will come. Success is +a gradual growth." + +"Yes, _real_ success," she said, with a solemn note in which he +caught--and forgave--a reflection on his own facile triumphs. + +"But when the orders do come," she continued, "will he have strength to +carry them out? Last winter the doctor thought he only needed work to +set him up; now he talks of rest instead! He says we ought to go to a +warm climate--but how can Caspar leave the group?" + +"Oh, hang the group--let him chuck the order!" cried Stanwell. + +She looked at him tragically. "The money is spent," she said. + +He coloured to the roots of his hair. "But ill-health--ill-health +excuses everything. If he goes away now he will come back good for +twice the amount of work in the spring. A sculptor is not expected to +deliver a statue on a given day, like a package of groceries! You must +do as the doctor says--you must make him chuck everything and go." + +They had reached a windless nook above the lake, and, pausing in the +stress of their talk, she let herself sink on a bench beside the path. +The movement encouraged him, and he seated himself at her side. + +"You must take him away at once," he repeated urgently. "He must be +made comfortable--you must both be free from worry. And I want you to +let me manage it for you--" + +He broke off, silenced by her rising blush, her protesting murmur. + +"Oh, stop, please; let me explain. I'm not talking of lending you +money; I'm talking of giving you--myself. The offer may be just as +unacceptable, but it's of a kind to which it's customary to accord it a +hearing. I should have made it a year ago--the first day I saw you, I +believe!--but that, then, it wasn't in my power to make things easier +for you. But now, you know, I've had a little luck. Since I painted +Mrs. Millington things have changed. I believe I can get as many orders +as I choose--there are two or three people waiting now. What's the use +of it all, if it doesn't bring me a little happiness? And the only +happiness I know is the kind that you can give me." + +He paused, suddenly losing the courage to look at her, so that her +pained murmur was framed for him in a glittering vision of the frozen +lake. He turned with a start and met the refusal in her eyes. + +"No--really no?" he repeated. + +She shook her head silently. + +"I could have helped you--I could have helped you!" he sighed. + +She flushed distressfully, but kept her eyes on his. + +"It's just that--don't you see?" she reproached him. + +"Just that--the fact that I could be of use to you?" + +"The fact that, as you say, things have changed since you painted Mrs. +Millington. I haven't seen the later portraits, but they tell me--" + +"Oh, they're just as bad!" Stanwell jeered. + +"You've sold your talent, and you know it: that's the dreadful part. +You did it deliberately," she cried with passion. + +"Oh, deliberately," he interjected. + +"And you're not ashamed--you talk of going on." + +"I'm not ashamed; I talk of going on." + +She received this with a long shuddering sigh, and turned her eyes away +from him. + +"Oh, why--why--why?" she lamented. + +It was on the tip of Stanwell's tongue to answer, "That I might say to +you what I am just saying now--" but he replied instead: "A man may +paint bad pictures and be a decent fellow. Look at Mungold, after all!" + +The adjuration had an unexpected effect. Kate's colour faded suddenly, +and she sat motionless, with a stricken face. + +"There's a difference--" she began at length abruptly; "the difference +you've always insisted on. Mr. Mungold paints as well as he can. He has +no idea that his pictures are--less good than they might be." + +"Well--?" + +"So he can't be accused of doing what he does for money--of sacrificing +anything better." She turned on him with troubled eyes. "It was you who +made me understand that, when Caspar used to make fun of him." + +Stanwell smiled. "I'm glad you still think me a better painter than +Mungold. But isn't it hard that for that very reason I should starve in +a hole? If I painted badly enough you'd see no objection to my living +at the Waldorf!" + +"Ah, don't joke about it," she murmured. "Don't triumph in it." + +"I see no reason to at present," said Stanwell drily. "But I won't +pretend to be ashamed when I'm not. I think there are occasions when a +man is justified in doing what I've done." + +She looked at him solemnly. "What occasions?" + +"Why, when he wants money, hang it!" + +She drew a deep breath. "Money--money? Has Caspar's example been +nothing to you, then?" + +"It hasn't proved to me that I must starve while Mungold lives on +truffles!" + +Again her face changed and she stirred uneasily, and then rose to her +feet. + +"There is no occasion which can justify an artist's sacrificing his +convictions!" she exclaimed. + +Stanwell rose too, facing her with a mounting urgency which sent a +flush to his cheek. + +"Can't you conceive such an occasion in my case? The wish, I mean, to +make things easier for Caspar--to help you in any way you might let me?" + +Her face reflected his blush, and she stood gazing at him with a +wounded wonder. + +"Caspar and I--you imagine we could live on money earned in _that_ way?" + +Stanwell made an impatient gesture. "You've got to live on +something--or he has, even if you don't include yourself!" + +Her blush deepened miserably, but she held her head high. + +"That's just it--that's what I came here to say to you." She stood a +moment gazing away from him at the lake. + +He looked at her in surprise. "You came here to say something to me?" + +"Yes. That we've got to live on something, Caspar and I, as you say; +and since an artist cannot sacrifice his convictions, the sacrifice +must--I mean--I wanted you to know that I have promised to marry Mr. +Mungold." + +"Mungold!" Stanwell cried with a sharp note of irony; but her white +look checked it on his lips. + +"I know all you are going to say," she murmured, with a kind of +nobleness which moved him even through his sense of its grotesqueness. +"But you must see the distinction, because you first made it clear to +me. I can take money earned in good faith--I can let Caspar live on it. +I can marry Mr. Mungold; because, though his pictures are bad, he does +not prostitute his art." + +She began to move away from him slowly, and he followed her in silence +along the frozen path. + +When Stanwell re-entered his studio the dusk had fallen. He lit his +lamp and rummaged out some writing-materials. Having found them, he +wrote to Shepson to say that he could not paint Mrs. Van Orley, and did +not care to accept any more orders for the present. He sealed and +stamped the letter and flung it over the banisters for the janitor to +post; then he dragged out his unfinished head of Kate Arran, replaced +it on the easel, and sat down before it with a grim smile. + + + + +THE BEST MAN + + +I + +DUSK had fallen, and the circle of light shed by the lamp of Governor +Mornway's writing-table just rescued from the surrounding dimness his +own imposing bulk, thrown back in a deep chair in the lounging attitude +habitual to him at that hour. + +When the Governor of Midsylvania rested he rested completely. Five +minutes earlier he had been bowed over his office desk, an Atlas with +the State on his shoulders; now, his working hours over, he had the air +of a man who has spent his day in desultory pleasure, and means to end +it in the enjoyment of a good dinner. This freedom from care threw into +relief the hovering fidgetiness of his sister, Mrs. Nimick, who, just +outside the circle of lamplight, haunted the warm gloom of the hearth, +from which the wood fire now and then sent up an exploring flash into +her face. + +Mrs. Nimick's presence did not usually minister to repose; but the +Governor's serenity was too deep to be easily disturbed, and he felt +the calmness of a man who knows there is a mosquito in the room, but +has drawn the netting close about his head. This calmness reflected +itself in the accent with which he said, throwing himself back to smile +up at his sister: "You know I am not going to make any appointments for +a week." + +It was the day after the great reform victory which had put John +Mornway for the second time at the head of his State, a triumph +compared with which even the mighty battle of his first election sank +into insignificance, and he leaned back with the sense of unassailable +placidity which follows upon successful effort. + +Mrs. Nimick murmured an apology. "I didn't understand--I saw in this +morning's papers that the Attorney-General was reappointed." + +"Oh, Fleetwood--his reappointment was involved in the campaign. He's +one of the principles I represent!" + +Mrs. Nimick smiled a little tartly. "It seems odd to some people to +think of Mr. Fleetwood in connection with principles." + +The Governor's smile had no answering acerbity; the mention of his +Attorney-General's name had set his blood humming with the thrill of +the fight, and he wondered how it was that Fleetwood had not already +been in to clasp hands with him over their triumph. + +"No," he said, good-humoredly, "two years ago Fleetwood's name didn't +stand for principles of any sort; but I believed in him, and look what +he's done for me! I thought he was too big a man not to see in time +that statesmanship is a finer thing than practical politics, and now +that I've given him a chance to make the discovery, he's on the way to +becoming just such a statesman as the country needs." + +"Oh, it's a great deal easier and pleasanter to believe in people," +replied Mrs. Nimick, in a tone full of occult allusion, "and, of +course, we all knew that Mr. Fleetwood would have a hearing before any +one else." + +The Governor took this imperturbably. "Well, at any rate, he isn't +going to fill all the offices in the State; there will probably be one +or two to spare after he has helped himself, and when the time comes +I'll think over your man. I'll consider him." + +Mrs. Nimick brightened. "It would make _such_ a difference to Jack--it +might mean anything to the poor boy to have Mr. Ashford appointed!" + +The Governor held up a warning hand. + +"Oh, I know, one mustn't say that, or at least you mustn't listen. +You're so dreadfully afraid of nepotism. But I'm not asking for +anything for Jack--I have never asked for a crust for any of us, thank +Heaven! No one can point to _me_--" Mrs. Nimick checked herself +suddenly and continued in a more impersonal tone: "But there's no harm, +surely, in my saying a word for Mr. Ashford, when I know that he's +actually under consideration, and I don't see why the fact that Jack is +in his office should prevent my speaking." + +"On the contrary," said the Governor, "it implies, on your part, a +personal knowledge of Mr. Ashford's qualifications which may be of +great help to me in reaching a decision." + +Mrs. Nimick never quite knew how to meet him when he took that tone, +and the flickering fire made her face for a moment the picture of +uncertainty; then at all hazards she launched out: "Well, I have Ella's +promise, at any rate." + +The Governor sat upright. "Ella's promise?" + +"To back me up. She thoroughly approves of him!" + +The Governor smiled. "You talk as if Ella had a political _salon_ and +distributed _lettres de cachet_! I'm glad she approves of Ashford; but +if you think my wife makes my appointments for me--" He broke off with +a laugh at the superfluity of such a protest. + +Mrs. Nimick reddened. "One never knows how you will take the simplest +thing. What harm is there in my saying that Ella approves of Mr. +Ashford? I thought you liked her to take an interest in your work." + +"I like it immensely. But I shouldn't care to have it take that form." + +"What form?" + +"That of promising to use her influence to get people appointed. But +you always talk of politics in the vocabulary of European courts. Thank +Heaven, Ella has less imagination. She has her sympathies, of course, +but she doesn't think they can affect the distribution of offices." + +Mrs. Nimick gathered up her furs with an air at once crestfallen and +resentful. "I'm sorry--I always seem to say the wrong thing. I'm sure I +came with the best intentions--it's natural that your sister should +want to be with you at such a happy moment." + +"Of course it is, my dear," exclaimed the Governor genially, as he rose +to grasp the hands with which she was nervously adjusting her wraps. + +Mrs. Nimick, who lived a little way out of town, and whose visits to +her brother were apparently achieved at the cost of immense effort and +mysterious complications, had come to congratulate him on his victory, +and to sound him regarding the nomination to a coveted post of the +lawyer in whose firm her eldest son was a clerk. In the urgency of the +latter errand she had rather lost sight of the former, but her face +softened as the Governor, keeping both her hands in his, said in the +voice which always seemed to put the most generous interpretation on +her motives: "I was sure you would be one of the first to give me your +blessing." + +"Oh, your success--no one feels it more than I do!" sighed Mrs. Nimick, +always at home in the emotional key. "I keep in the background. I make +no noise, I claim no credit, but whatever happens, no one shall ever +prevent my rejoicing in my brother's success!" + +Mrs. Nimick's felicitations were always couched in the conditional, +with a side-glance at dark contingencies, and the Governor, smiling at +the familiar construction, returned cheerfully: "I don't see why any +one should want to deprive you of that privilege." + +"They couldn't--they couldn't--" Mrs. Nimick heroically affirmed. + +"Well, I'm in the saddle for another two years at any rate, so you had +better put in all the rejoicing you can." + +"Whatever happens--whatever happens!" cried Mrs. Nimick, melting on his +bosom. + +"The only thing likely to happen at present is that you will miss your +train if I let you go on saying nice things to me much longer." + +Mrs. Nimick at this dried her eyes, renewed her clutch on her +draperies, and stood glancing sentimentally about the room while her +brother rang for the carriage. + +"I take away a lovely picture of you," she murmured. "It's wonderful +what you've made of this hideous house." + +"Ah, not I, but Ella--there she _does_ reign undisputed," he +acknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an air +of permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its inmates, in +marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the usual executive +apartment. + +"Oh, she's wonderful, quite wonderful. I see she has got those imported +damask curtains she was looking at the other day at Fielding's. When I +am asked how she does it all, I always say it's beyond me!" Mrs. Nimick +murmured. + +"It's an art like another," smiled the Governor. "Ella has been used to +living in tents and she has the knack of giving them a wonderful look +of permanence." + +"She certainly makes the most extraordinary bargains--all the knack in +the world won't take the place of such curtains and carpets." + +"Are they good? I'm glad to hear it. But all the good curtains and +carpets won't make a house comfortable to live in. There's where the +knack comes in, you see." + +He recalled with a shudder the lean Congressional years--the years +before his marriage--when Mrs. Nimick had lived with him in Washington, +and the daily struggle in the House had been combined with domestic +conflicts almost equally recurrent. The offer of a foreign mission, +though disconnecting him from active politics, had the advantage of +freeing him from his sister's tutelage, and in Europe, where he +remained for two years, he had met the lady who was to become his wife. +Mrs. Renfield was the widow of one of the diplomatists who languish in +perpetual first secretary-ship at our various embassies. Her life had +given her ease without triviality, and a sense of the importance of +politics seldom found in ladies of her nationality. She regarded a +public life as the noblest and most engrossing of careers, and combined +with great social versatility an equal gift for reading blue-books and +studying debates. So sincere was the latter taste that she passed +without regret from the amenities of a European life well stocked with +picturesque intimacies to the rawness of the Midsylvanian capital. She +helped Mornway in his fight for the Governorship as a man likes to be +helped by a woman--by her tact, her good looks, her memory for faces, +her knack of saying the right thing to the right person, and her +capacity for obscure hard work in the background of his public +activity. But, above all, she helped him by making his private life +smooth and harmonious. For a man careless of personal ease, Mornway was +singularly alive to the domestic amenities. Attentive service, +well-ordered dinners, brightly burning fires, and a scent of flowers in +the house--these material details, which had come to seem the extension +of his wife's personality, the inevitable result of her nearness, were +as agreeable to him after five years of marriage as in the first +surprise of his introduction to them. Mrs. Nimick had kept house +jerkily and vociferously; Ella performed the same task silently and +imperceptibly, and the results were all in favor of the latter method. +Though neither the Governor nor his wife had large means, the +household, under Mrs. Mornway's guidance, took on an air of sober +luxury as agreeable to her husband as it was exasperating to her +sister-in-law. The domestic machinery ran without a jar. There were no +upheavals, no debts, no squalid cookless hiatuses between intervals of +showy hospitality; the household moved along on lines of quiet elegance +and comfort, behind which only the eye of the housekeeping sex could +have detected a gradually increasing scale of expense. + +Such an eye was now projected on the Governor's surroundings, and its +explorations were summed up in the tone in which Mrs. Nimick repeated +from the threshold: "I always say I don't see how she does it!" + +The tone did not escape the Governor, but it disturbed him no more than +the buzz of a baffled insect. Poor Grace! It was not his fault if her +husband was given to chimerical investments, if her sons were +"unsatisfactory," and her cooks would not stay with her; but it was +natural that these facts should throw into irritating contrast the ease +and harmony of his own domestic life. It made him all the sorrier for +his sister to know that her envy did not penetrate to the essence of +his happiness, but lingered on those external signs of well-being which +counted for so little in the sum total of his advantages. Poor Mrs. +Nimick's life seemed doubly thin and mean when one remembered that, +beneath its shabby surface, there were no compensating riches of the +spirit. + + +II + +IT was the custodian of his own hidden treasure who at this moment +broke in upon his musings. Mrs. Mornway, fresh from her afternoon walk, +entered the room with that air of ease and lightness which seemed to +diffuse a social warmth about her; fine, slender, pliant, so polished +and modeled by an intelligent experience of life that youth seemed +clumsy in her presence. She looked down at her husband and shook her +head. + +"You promised to keep the afternoon to yourself, and I hear Grace has +been here." + +"Poor Grace--she didn't stay long, and I should have been a brute not +to see her." + +He leaned back, filling his gaze to the brim with her charming image, +which obliterated at a stroke the fretful ghost of Mrs. Nimick. + +"She came to congratulate you, I suppose?" + +"Yes, and to ask me to do something for Ashford." + +"Ah--on account of Jack. What does she want for him?" + +The Governor laughed. "She said you were in her confidence--that you +were backing her up. She seemed to think your support would ensure her +success." + +Mrs. Mornway smiled; her smile, always full of delicate implications, +seemed to caress her husband while it gently mocked his sister. + +"Poor Grace! I suppose you undeceived her." + +"As to your influence? I told her it was paramount where it ought to +be." + +"And where is that?" + +"In the choice of carpets and curtains. It seems ours are almost too +good." + +"Thanks for the compliment! Too good for what?" + +"Our station in life, I suppose. At least they seemed to bother Grace." + +"Poor Grace! I've always bothered her." She paused, removing her gloves +reflectively and laying her long fine hands on his shoulders as she +stood behind him. "Then you don't believe in Ashford?" Feeling his +slight start, she drew away her hands and raised them to detach her +veil. + +"What makes you think I don't believe in Ashford?" he asked. + +"I asked out of curiosity. I wondered whether you had decided anything." + +"No, and I don't mean to for a week. I'm dead beat, and I want to bring +a fresh mind to the question. There is hardly one appointment I'm sure +of except, of course, Fleetwood's." + +She turned away from him, smoothing her hair in the mirror above the +mantelpiece. "You're sure of that?" she asked after a moment. + +"Of George Fleetwood? And poor Grace thinks you are deep in my +counsels! I am as sure of re-appointing Fleetwood as I am that I have +just been re-elected myself. I've never made any secret of the fact +that if they wanted me back they must have him, too." + +"You are tremendously generous!" she murmured. + +"Generous? What a strange word to use! Fleetwood is my trump card--the +one man I can count on to carry out my ideas through thick and thin." + +She mused on this, smiling a little. "That's why I call you +generous--when I remember how you disliked him two years ago!" + +"What of that? I was prejudiced against him, I own; or rather, I had a +just distrust of a man with such a past. But how splendidly he's wiped +it out! What a record he has written on the new leaf he promised to +turn over if I gave him the chance! Do you know," the Governor +interrupted himself with a pleasantly reminiscent laugh, "I was rather +annoyed with Grace when she hinted that you had promised to back up +Ashford--I told her you didn't aspire to distribute patronage. But she +might have reminded me--if she'd known--that it _was_ you who persuaded +me to give Fleetwood that chance." + +Mrs. Mornway turned with a slight heightening of color. "Grace--how +could she possibly have known?" + +"She couldn't, of course, unless she'd read my weakness in my face. But +why do you look so startled at my little joke?" + +"It's only that I so dislike Grace's ineradicable idea that I am a +wire-puller. Why should she imagine I would help her about Ashford?" + +"Oh, Grace has always been a mild and ineffectual conspirator, and she +thinks every other woman is built on the same plan. But you _did_ get +Fleetwood's job for him, you know," he repeated with laughing +insistence. + +"I had more faith than you in human nature, that's all." She paused a +moment, and then added: "Personally, you know, I have always rather +disliked him." + +"Oh, I never doubted your disinterestedness. But you are not going to +turn against your candidate, are you?" + +She hesitated. "I am not sure; circumstances alter cases. When you made +Fleetwood Attorney-General two years ago he was the inevitable man for +the place." + +"Well--is there a better one now?" + +"I don't say there is--it's not my business to look for him, at any +rate. What I mean is that at that time Fleetwood was worth risking +anything for--now I don't know that he is." + +"But, even if he were not, what do I risk for him now? I don't see your +point. Since he didn't cost me my re-election, what can he possibly +cost me now I'm in?" + +"He's immensely unpopular. He will cost you a great deal of popularity, +and you have never pretended to despise that." + +"No, nor ever sacrificed anything essential to it. Are you really +asking me to offer up Fleetwood to it now?" + +"I don't ask you to do anything--except to consider if he _is_ +essential. You said you were over-tired and wanted to bring a fresh +mind to bear on the other appointments. Why not delay this one too?" + +Mornway turned in his chair and looked at her searchingly. "This means +something, Ella. What have you heard?" + +"Just what you have, probably, but with more attentive ears. The very +record you are so proud of has made George Fleetwood innumerable +enemies in the last two years. The Lead Trust people are determined to +ruin him, and if his reappointment is attacked you will not be spared." + +"Attacked? In the papers, you mean?" + +She paused. "You know the 'Spy' has always threatened a campaign. And +he has a past, as you say." + +"Which was public property long before I first appointed him. Nothing +could be gained by raking up his old political history. Everybody knows +he didn't come to me with clean hands, but to hurt him now the 'Spy' +would have to fasten a new scandal on him, and that would not be easy." + +"It would be easy to invent one!" + +"Unproved accusations don't count much against a man of such proved +capacity. The best answer is his record of the last two years. That is +what the public looks at." + +"The public looks wherever the press points. And besides, you have your +own future to consider. It would be a pity to sacrifice such a career +as yours for the sake of backing up even as useful a man as George +Fleetwood." She paused, as if checked by his gathering frown, but went +on with fresh decision: "Oh, I'm not speaking of personal ambition; I'm +thinking of the good you can do. Will Fleetwood's reappointment secure +the greatest good of the greatest number, if his unpopularity reacts on +you to the extent of hindering your career?" + +The Governor's brow cleared and he rose with a smile. "My dear, your +reasoning is admirable, but we must leave my career to take care of +itself. Whatever I may be to-morrow, I am Governor of Midsylvania +to-day, and my business as Governor is to appoint as Attorney-General +the best man I can find for the place--and that man is George +Fleetwood, unless you have a better one to propose." She met this with +perfect good-humor. "No, I have told you already that that is not my +business. But I _have_ a candidate of my own for another office, so +Grace was not quite wrong, after all." + +"Well, who is your candidate, and for what office? I only hope you +don't want to change cooks!" + +"Oh, I do that without your authority, and you never even know it has +been done." She hesitated, and then said with a bright directness: "I +want you to do something for poor Gregg." + +"Gregg? Rufus Gregg?" He stared. "What an extraordinary request! What +can I do for a man I've had to kick out for dishonesty?" + +"Not much, perhaps; I know it's difficult. But, after all, it was your +kicking him out that ruined him." + +"It was his dishonesty that ruined him. He was getting a good salary as +my stenographer, and if he hadn't sold those letters to the 'Spy' he +would have been getting it still." + +She wavered. "After all, nothing was proved--he always denied it." + +"Good heavens, Ella! Have you ever doubted his guilt?" + +"No--no; I don't mean that. But, of course, his wife and children +believe in him, and think you were cruel, and he has been out of work +so long that they are starving." + +"Send them some money, then; I wonder you thought it necessary to ask." + +"I shouldn't have thought it so, but money is not what I want. Mrs. +Gregg is proud, and it is hard to help her in that way. Couldn't you +give him work of some kind--just a little post in a corner?" + +"My dear child, the little posts in the corner are just the ones where +honesty is essential. A footpad doesn't wait under a street-lamp! +Besides, how can I recommend a man whom I have dismissed for theft? I +won't say a word to hinder his getting a place, but on my conscience I +can't give him one." + +She paused and turned toward the door silently, though without any show +of resentment; but on the threshold she lingered long enough to say: +"Yet you gave Fleetwood his chance!" + +"Fleetwood? You class Fleetwood with Gregg? The best man in the State +with a little beggarly thieving nonentity? It's evident enough you're +new at wire-pulling, or you would show more skill at it!" + +She met this with a laugh. "I'm not likely to have much practice if my +first attempt is such a failure. Well, I will see if Mrs. Gregg will +let me help her a little--I suppose there is nothing else to be done." + +"Nothing that we can do. If Gregg wants a place he had better get one +on the staff of the 'Spy.' He served them better than he did me." + + +III + +THE Governor stared at the card with a frown. Half an hour had elapsed +since his wife had gone upstairs to dress for the big dinner from which +official duties excused him, and he was still lingering over the fire +before preparing for his own solitary meal. He expected no one that +evening but his old friend Hadley Shackwell, with whom it was his +long-established habit to talk over his defeats and victories in the +first lull after the conflict; and Shackwell was not likely to turn up +till nine o'clock. The unwonted stillness of the room, and the +knowledge that he had a quiet evening before him, filled the Governor +with a luxurious sense of repose. The world seemed to him a good place +to be in, and his complacency was shadowed only by the fear that he had +perhaps been a trifle over-harsh in refusing his wife's plea for the +stenographer. There seemed, therefore, a certain fitness in the +appearance of the man's card, and the Governor with a sigh gave orders +that Gregg should be shown in. + +Gregg was still the soft-stepping scoundrel who invited the toe of +honesty, and Mornway, as he entered, was conscious of a sharp revulsion +of feeling. But it was impossible to evade the interview, and he sat +silent while the man stated his case. + +Mrs. Mornway had represented the stenographer as being in desperate +straits, and ready to accept any job that could be found, but though +his appearance might have seemed to corroborate her account, he +evidently took a less hopeless view of his case, and the Governor found +with surprise that he had fixed his eye on a clerkship in one of the +Government offices, a post which had been half promised him before the +incident of the letters. His plea was that the Governor's charge, +though unproved, had so injured his reputation that he could only hope +to clear himself by getting some sort of small job under the +Administration. After that, it would be easy for him to obtain any +employment he wanted. + +He met Mornway's refusal with civility, but remarked after a moment: "I +hadn't expected this, Governor. Mrs. Mornway led me to think that +something might be arranged." + +The Governor's tone was brief. "Mrs. Mornway is sorry for your wife and +children, and for their sake would be glad to find work for you, but +she could not have led you to think that there was any chance of your +getting a clerkship." + +"Well, that's just it; she said she thought she could manage it." + +"You have misinterpreted my wife's interest in your family. Mrs. +Mornway has nothing to do with the distribution of Government offices." +The Governor broke off, annoyed to find himself asseverating for the +second time so obvious a fact. + +There was a moment's silence; then Gregg said, still in a perfectly +equable tone: "You've always been hard on me, Governor, but I don't +bear malice. You accused me of selling those letters to the 'Spy'--" + +The Governor made an impatient gesture. + +"You couldn't prove your case," Gregg went on imperturbably, "but you +were right in one respect. I _was_ on confidential terms with the +'Spy.'" He paused and glanced at Mornway, whose face remained +immovable. "I'm on the same terms with them still, and I'm ready to let +you have the benefit of it if you'll give _me_ the chance to retrieve +my good name." + +In spite of his irritation the Governor could not repress a smile. + +"In other words, you will do a dirty trick for me if I undertake to +convince people that you are the soul of honor." + +Gregg smiled also. + +"There are always two ways of putting a thing. Why not call it a plain +case of give and take? I want something and can pay for it." + +"Not in any coin I have a use for," said Mornway, pushing back his +chair. + +Gregg hesitated; then he said: "Perhaps you don't mean to reappoint +Fleetwood." The Governor was silent, and he continued: "If you do, +don't kick me out a second time. I'm not threatening you--I'm speaking +as a friend. Mrs. Mornway has been kind to my wife, and I'd like to +help her." + +The Governor rose, gripping his chair-back sternly. "You will be kind +enough to leave my wife's name out of the discussion. I supposed you +knew me well enough to know that I don't buy newspaper secrets at any +price, least of all at that of the public money!" + +Gregg, who had risen also, stood a few feet off, looking at him +inscrutably. + +"Is that final, Governor?" + +"Quite final." + +"Well, good evening, then." + + +IV + +SHACKWELL and the Governor sat over the evening embers. It was after +ten o'clock, and the servant had carried away the coffee and liqueurs, +leaving the two men to their cigars. Mornway had once more lapsed into +his arm-chair, and sat with out-stretched feet, gazing comfortably at +his friend. + +Shackwell was a small dry man of fifty, with a face as sallow and +freckled as a winter pear, a limp mustache, and shrewd, melancholy eyes. + +"I am glad you have given yourself a day's rest," he said, looking at +the Governor. + +"Well, I don't know that I needed it. There's such exhilaration in +victory that I never felt fresher." + +"Ah, but the fight's just beginning." + +"I know--but I'm ready for it. You mean the campaign against Fleetwood. +I understand there is to be a big row. Well, he and I are used to rows." + +Shackwell paused, surveying his cigar. "You knew the 'Spy' meant to +lead the attack?" + +"Yes. I was offered a glimpse of the documents this afternoon." + +Shackwell started up. "You didn't refuse?" + +Mornway related the incident of Gregg's visit. "I could hardly buy my +information at that price," he said, "and, besides, it is really +Fleetwood's business this time. I suppose he has heard the report, but +it doesn't seem to bother him. I rather thought he would have looked in +to-day to talk things over, but I haven't seen him." + +Shackwell continued to twist his cigar through his sallow fingers +without remembering to light it. "You're determined to reappoint +Fleetwood?" he asked at length. + +The Governor caught him up. "You're the fourth person who has asked me +that to-day! You haven't lost faith in him, have you, Hadley?" + +"Not an atom!" said the other with emphasis. + +"Well, then, what are you all thinking of, to suppose I can be +frightened by a little newspaper talk? Besides, if Fleetwood is not +afraid, why should I be?" + +"Because you'll be involved in it with him." + +The Governor laughed. "What have they got against me now?" + +Shackwell, standing up, confronted his friend solemnly. "This--that +Fleetwood bought his appointment two years ago." + +"Ah--bought it of me? Why didn't it come out at the time?" + +"Because it wasn't known then. It has only been found out lately." + +"Known--found out? This is magnificent! What was my price, and what did +I do with the money?" + +Shackwell glanced about the room, and his eyes returned to Mornway's +face. + +"Look here, John, Fleetwood is not the only man in the world." + +"The only man?" + +"The only Attorney-General. The 'Spy' has the Lead Trust behind it and +means to put up a savage fight. Mud sticks, and--" + +"Hadley, is this a conspiracy? You're saying to me just what Ella said +this afternoon." + +At the mention of Mrs. Mornway's name a silence fell between the two +men and the Governor moved uneasily in his chair. + +"You are not advising me to chuck Fleetwood because the 'Spy' is going +to accuse me of having sold him his first appointment?" he said at +length. + +Shackwell drew a deep breath. "You say yourself that Mrs. Mornway gave +you the same advice this afternoon." + +"Well, what of that? Do you imagine that my wife distrib--" The +Governor broke off with an exasperated laugh. + +Shackwell, leaning against the mantelpiece, looked down into the +embers. "I didn't say the 'Spy' meant to accuse _you_ of having sold +the office." + +Mornway stood up slowly, his eyes on his friend's averted face. The +ashes dropped from his cigar, scattering a white trail across the +carpet which had excited Mrs. Nimick's envy. + +"The office is in my gift. If I didn't sell it, who did?" he demanded. + +Shackwell laid a hand on his arm. "For heaven's sake, John--" + +"Who did, who did?" the Governor violently repeated. + +The two men faced each other in the closely curtained silence of the +dim luxurious room. Shackwell's eyes again wandered, as if summoning +the walls to reply. Then he said, "I have positive information that the +'Spy' will say nothing if you don't appoint Fleetwood." + +"And what will it say if I do appoint him?" + +"That he bought his first appointment from your wife." + +The Governor stood silent, immovable, while the blood crept slowly from +his strong neck to his lowering brows. Once he laughed, then he set his +lips and continued to gaze into the fire. After a while he looked at +his cigar and shook the freshly formed cone of ashes carefully upon the +hearth. He had just turned again to Shackwell when the door opened and +the butler announced: "Mr. Fleetwood." + +The room swam about Shackwell, and when he recovered himself, Mornway, +with outstretched hand, was advancing quietly to meet his guest. + +Fleetwood was a smaller man than the Governor. He was erect and +compact, with a face full of dry energy, which seemed to press forward +with the spring of his prominent features, as though it were the weapon +with which he cleared his way through the world. He was in evening +dress, scrupulously appointed, but pale and nervous. Of the two men, it +was Mornway who was the more composed. + +"I thought I should have seen you before this," he said. + +Fleetwood returned his grasp and shook hands with Shackwell. + +"I knew you needed to be let alone. I didn't mean to come to-night, but +I wanted to say a word to you." + +At this, Shackwell, who had fallen into the background, made a motion +of leave-taking, but the Governor arrested it. + +"We haven't any secrets from Hadley, have we, Fleetwood?" + +"Certainly not. I am glad to have him stay. I have simply come to say +that I have been thinking over my future arrangements, and that I find +it will not be possible for me to continue in office." + +There was a long pause, during which Shackwell kept his eyes on +Mornway. The Governor had turned pale, but when he spoke his voice was +full and firm. + +"This is sudden," he said. + +Fleetwood stood leaning against a high chair-back, fretting its carved +ornaments with restless fingers. "It is sudden--yes. I--there are a +variety of reasons." + +"Is one of them the fact that you are afraid of what the 'Spy' is going +to say?" + +The Attorney-General flushed deeply and moved away a few steps. "I'm +sick of mud-throwing," he muttered. + +"George Fleetwood!" Mornway exclaimed. He had advanced toward his +friend, and the two stood confronting each other, already oblivious of +Shackwell's presence. + +"It's not only that, of course. I've been frightfully hard-worked. My +health has given way--" + +"Since yesterday?" + +Fleetwood forced a smile. "My dear fellow, what a slave-driver you are! +Hasn't a man the right to take a rest?" + +"Not a soldier on the eve of battle. You have never failed me before." + +"I don't want to fail you now. But it isn't the eve of battle--you're +in, and that's the main thing." + +"The main thing at present is that you promised to stay in with me, and +that I must have your real reason for breaking your word." + +Fleetwood made a deprecatory movement. "My dear Governor, if you only +knew it, I'm doing you a service in backing out." + +"A service--why?" + +"Because I'm hated--because the Lead Trust wants my blood, and will +have yours too if you appoint me." + +"Ah, that's the real reason, then--you're afraid of the 'Spy'?" + +"Afraid--?" + +The Governor continued to speak with dry deliberation. "Evidently, +then, you know what they mean to say." + +Fleetwood laughed. "One needn't do that to be sure it will be +abominable!" + +"Who cares how abominable it is if it isn't true?" + +Fleetwood shrugged his shoulders and was silent. Shackwell, from a +distant seat, uttered a faint protesting sound, but no one heeded him. +The Governor stood squarely before Fleetwood, his hands in his pockets. +"It _is_ true, then?" he demanded. + +"What is true?" + +"What the 'Spy' means to say--that you bought my wife's influence to +get your first appointment." + +In the silence Shackwell started suddenly to his feet. A sound of +carriage-wheels had disturbed the quiet street. They paused and then +rolled up the semicircle to the door of the Executive Mansion. + +"John!" Shackwell warned him. + +The Governor turned impatiently; there was the sound of a servant's +steps in the hall, followed by the opening and closing of the outer +door. + +"Your wife--Mrs. Mornway!" Shackwell cried. + +Another step, accompanied by a soft rustle of skirts, was advancing +toward the library. + +"My wife? Let her come!" said the Governor. + + +V + +She stood before them in her bright evening dress, with an arrested +brilliancy of aspect like the sparkle of a fountain suddenly caught in +ice. Her look moved rapidly from one to the other; then she came +forward, while Shackwell slipped behind her to close the door. + +"What has happened?" she said. + +Shackwell began to speak, but the Governor interposed calmly: + +"Fleetwood has come to tell me that he does not wish to remain in +office." + +"Ah!" she murmured. + +There was another silence. Fleetwood broke it by saying: "It is getting +late. If you want to see me to-morrow--" + +The Governor looked from his face to Ella's. "Yes; go now," he said. + +Shackwell moved in Fleetwood's wake to the door. Mrs. Mornway stood +with her head high, smiling slightly. She shook hands with each of the +men in turn; then she moved toward the sofa and laid aside her shining +cloak. All her gestures were calm and noble, but as she raised her hand +to unclasp the cloak her husband uttered a sudden exclamation. + +"Where did you get that bracelet? I don't remember it." + +"This?" She looked at him with astonishment. "It belonged to my mother. +I don't often wear it." + +"Ah--I shall suspect everything now," he groaned. + +He turned away and flung himself with bowed head in the chair behind +his writing-table. He wanted to collect himself, to question her, to +get to the bottom of the hideous abyss over which his imagination hung. +But what was the use? What did the facts matter? He had only to put his +memories together--they led him straight to the truth. Every incident +of the day seemed to point a leering finger in the same direction, from +Mrs. Nimick's allusion to the imported damask curtains to Gregg's +confident appeal for rehabilitation. + +"If you imagine that my wife distributes patronage--" he heard himself +repeating inanely, and the walls seemed to reverberate with the +laughter which his sister and Gregg had suppressed. He heard Ella rise +from the sofa and lifted his head sharply. + +"Sit still!" he commanded. She sank back without speaking, and he hid +his face again. The past months, the past years, were dancing a +witches' dance about him. He remembered a hundred significant +things.... _Oh, God_, he cried to himself, _if only she does not lie +about it!_ Suddenly he recalled having pitied Mrs. Nimick because she +could not penetrate to the essence of his happiness. Those were the +very words he had used! He heard himself laugh aloud. The clock +struck--it went on striking interminably. At length he heard his wife +rise again and say with sudden authority: "John, you must speak." + +Authority--she spoke to him with authority! He laughed again, and +through his laugh he heard the senseless rattle of the words, "If you +imagine that my wife distributes patronage ..." + +He looked up haggardly and saw her standing before him. If only she +would not lie about it! He said: "You see what has happened." + +"I suppose some one has told you about the 'Spy.'" + +"Who told you? Gregg?" he interposed. + +"Yes," she said quietly. + +"That was why you wanted--?" + +"Why I wanted you to help him? Yes." + +"Oh, God! ... He wouldn't take money?" + +"No, he wouldn't take money." + +He sat silent, looking at her, noting with a morbid minuteness the +exquisite finish of her dress, that finish which seemed so much a part +of herself that it had never before struck him as a merely purchasable +accessory. He knew so little what a woman's dresses cost! For a moment +he lost himself in vague calculations; finally, he said: "What did you +do it for?" + +"Do what?" + +"Take money from Fleetwood." + +She paused a moment and then said: "If you will let me explain--" + +And then he saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able to +disprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had a +physical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet and +said: "He was your lover?" + +"Oh, no, no, _no!_" she cried with conviction. He hardly knew whether +the shadow lifted or deepened; the fact that he instantly believed her +seemed only to increase his bewilderment. Presently he found that she +was still speaking, and he began to listen to her, catching a phrase +now and then through the deafening clamor of his thoughts. + +It amounted to this--that just after her husband's first election, when +Fleetwood's claims for the Attorney-Generalship were being vainly +pressed by a group of his political backers, Mrs. Mornway had chanced +to sit next to him once or twice at dinner. One day, on the strength of +these meetings, he had called and asked her frankly if she would not +help him with her husband. He had made a clean breast of his past, but +had said that, under a man like Mornway, he felt he could wipe out his +political sins and purify himself while he served the party. She knew +the party needed his brains, and she believed in him--she was sure he +would keep his word. She would have spoken in his favor in any +case--she would have used all her influence to overcome her husband's +prejudice--and it was by a mere accident that, in the course of one of +their talks, he happened to give her a "tip" (his past connections were +still useful for such purposes), a "tip" which, in the first invading +pressure of debt after Mornway's election, she had not had the courage +to refuse. Fleetwood had made some money for her--yes, about thirty +thousand dollars. She had repaid what he had lent her, and there had +been no further transactions of the kind between them. But it appeared +that Gregg, before his dismissal, had got hold of an old check-book +which gave a hint of the story, and had pieced the rest together with +the help of a clerk in Fleetwood's office. The "Spy" was in possession +of the facts, but did not mean to use them if Fleetwood was not +reappointed, the Lead Trust having no personal grudge against Mornway. + +Her story ended there, and she sat silent while he continued to look at +her. So much had perished in the wreck of his faith that he did not +attach much value to what remained. It scarcely mattered that he +believed her when the truth was so sordid. There had been, after all, +nothing to envy him for but what Mrs. Nimick had seen; the core of his +life was as mean and miserable as his sister's.... + +His wife rose at length, pale but still calm. She had a kind of +external dignity which she wore like one of her rich dresses. It seemed +as little a part of her now as the finery of which his gaze +contemptuously reckoned the cost. + +"John--" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. + +He looked up wearily. "You had better go to bed," he interjected. + +"Don't look at me in that way. I am prepared for your being angry with +me--I made a dreadful mistake and must bear my punishment: any +punishment you choose to inflict. But you must think of yourself +first--you must spare yourself. Why should you be so horribly unhappy? +Don't you see that since Mr. Fleetwood has behaved so well we are quite +safe? And I swear to you I have paid back every penny of the money." + + +VI + +THREE days later Shackwell was summoned by telephone to the Governor's +office in the Capitol. There had been, in the interval, no +communication between the two men, and the papers had been silent or +non-committal. + +In the lobby Shackwell met Fleetwood leaving the building. For a moment +the Attorney-General seemed about to speak; then he nodded and passed +on, leaving to Shackwell the impression of a face more than ever thrust +forward like a weapon. + +The Governor sat behind his desk in the clear autumn sunlight. In +contrast to Fleetwood he seemed relaxed and unwieldy, and the face he +turned to his friend had a gray look of convalescence. Shackwell +wondered, with a start of apprehension, if he and Fleetwood had been +together. + +He relieved himself of his overcoat without speaking, and when he +turned again toward Mornway he was surprised to find the latter +watching him with a smile. + +"It's good to see you, Hadley," the Governor said. + +"I waited to be sent for; I knew you'd let me know when you wanted me," +Shackwell replied. + +"I didn't send for you on purpose. If I had, I might have asked your +advice, and I didn't want to ask anybody's advice but my own." The +Governor spoke steadily, but in a voice a trifle too well disciplined +to be natural. "I've had a three days' conference with myself," he +continued, "and now that everything is settled I want you to do me a +favor." + +"Yes?" Shackwell assented. The private issues of the affair were still +wrapped in mystery to him, but he had never had a moment's doubt as to +its public solution, and he had no difficulty in conjecturing the +nature of the service he was to render. His heart ached for Mornway, +but he was glad the inevitable step was to be taken without further +delay. + +"Everything is settled," the Governor repeated, "and I want you to +notify the press that I have decided to reappoint Fleetwood." + +Shackwell bounded from his seat. "Good heavens!" he ejaculated. + +"To reappoint Fleetwood," the Governor repeated, "because at the +present juncture of affairs he is the only man for the place. The work +we began together is not finished, and I can't finish it without him. +Remember the vistas opened by the Lead Trust investigation--he knows +where they lead and no one else does. We must put that inquiry through, +no matter what it costs us, and that is why I have sent for you to take +this letter to the 'Spy.'" + +Shackwell's hand drew back from the proffered envelope. + +"You say you don't want my advice, but you can't expect me to go on +such an errand with my eyes shut. What on earth are you driving at? Of +course Fleetwood will persist in refusing." + +Mornway smiled. "He did persist--for three hours. But when he left here +just now he had given me his word to accept." + +Shackwell groaned. "Then I am dealing with two madmen instead of one." + +The Governor laughed. "My poor Hadley, you're worse than I expected. I +thought you would understand me." + +"Understand you? How can I, in heaven's name, when I don't understand +the situation? + +"The situation--the situation?" Mornway repeated slowly. "Whose? His or +mine? I don't either--I haven't had time to think of them." + +"What on earth have you been thinking of then?" + +The Governor rose, with a gesture toward the window, through which, +below the slope of the Capitol grounds, the roofs and steeples of the +city spread their smoky mass to the mild air. + +"Of all that is left," he said. "Of everything except Fleetwood and +myself." + +"Ah--" Shackwell murmured. + +Mornway turned back and sank into his seat. "Don't you see that was all +I had to turn to? The State--the country--it's big enough, in all +conscience, to fill a good deal of a void! My own walls had grown too +cramped for me, so I just stepped outside. You have no idea how it +simplified matters at once. All I had to do was to say to myself: 'Go +ahead, and do the best you can for the country.' The personal issue +simply didn't exist." + +"Yes--and then?" + +"Then I turned over for three days this question of the +Attorney-Generalship. I couldn't see that it was changed--how should +_my_ feelings have affected it? Fleetwood hasn't betrayed the State. +There isn't a scar on his public record--he is still the best man for +the place. My business is to appoint the best man I can find, and I +can't find any one as good as Fleetwood." + +"But--but--your wife?" Shackwell stammered. + +The Governor looked up with surprise. Shackwell could almost have sworn +that he had indeed forgotten the private issue. + +"My wife is ready to face the consequences," he said. + +Shackwell returned to his former attitude of incredulity. + +"But Fleetwood? Fleetwood has no right to sacrifice--" + +"To sacrifice my wife to the State? Oh, let us beware of big words. +Fleetwood was inclined to use them at first, but I managed to restore +his sense of proportion. I showed him that our private lives are only a +few feet square anyhow, and that really, to breathe freely, one must +get out of them into the open." He paused and broke out with sudden +violence, "My God, Hadley, didn't you see that Fleetwood had to obey +me?" + +"Yes--I see that," said Shackwell, with reviving obstinacy. "But if +you've reached such a height and pulled him up to your side it seems to +me that from that standpoint you ought to get an even clearer view of +the madness of your position. You say you have decided to sacrifice +your own feelings and your wife's--though I'm not so sure of your right +to dispose of _her_ voice in the matter; but what if you sacrifice the +party and the State as well, in this transcendental attempt to +distinguish between private and public honor? You'll have to answer +that before you can get me to carry this letter." + +The Governor did not blanch under the attack. + +"I think the letter will answer you," he said calmly. + +"The letter?" + +"Yes. It's something more than a notification of Fleetwood's +reappointment." Mornway paused and looked steadily at his friend. +"You're afraid of an investigation--an impeachment? Well, the letter +anticipates that." + +"How, in heaven's name?" + +"By a plain statement of the facts. My wife has told me that she did +borrow of Fleetwood. He speculated for her and made a considerable sum, +out of which she repaid his loan. The 'Spy's' accusation is true. If it +can be proved that my wife induced me to appoint Fleetwood, it may be +argued that she sold him the appointment. But it can't be proved, and +the 'Spy' won't waste its breath in trying to, because my statement +will take the sting out of its innuendoes. I propose to anticipate its +attack by setting forth the facts in its columns, and asking the public +to decide between us. On one side is the private fact that my wife, +without my knowledge, borrowed money from Fleetwood just before I +appointed him to an important post; on the other side is his public +record and mine. I want people to see both sides and judge between +them, not in the red glare of a newspaper denunciation, but in the +plain daylight of common-sense. Charges against the private morality of +a public man are usually made in such a blare of headlines and cloud of +mud-throwing that the voice he lifts up in his defence can not make +itself heard. In this case I want the public to hear what I have to say +before the yelping begins. My letter will take the wind out of the +'Spy's' sails, and if the verdict goes against me, the case will have +been decided on its own merits, and not at the dictation of the writers +of scare heads. Even if I don't gain my end, it will be a good thing, +for once, for the public to consider dispassionately how far a private +calamity should be allowed to affect a career of public usefulness, and +the next man who goes through what I am undergoing may have cause to +thank me if no one else does." + +Shackwell sat silent for a moment, with the ring of the last words in +his ears. + +Suddenly he rose and held out his hand. "Give me the letter," he said. + +The Governor caught him up with a kindling eye. "It's all right, then? +You see, and you'll take it?" + +Shackwell met his glance with one of melancholy interrogation. "I think +I see a magnificent suicide, but it's the kind of way I shouldn't mind +dying myself." + +He pulled himself silently into his coat and put the letter into one of +its pockets, but as he was turning to the door the Governor called +after him cheerfully: "By the way, Hadley, aren't you and Mrs. +Shackwell giving a big dinner to-morrow?" + +Shackwell paused with a start. "I believe we are--why?" + +"Because, if there is room for two more, my wife and I would like to be +invited." + +Shackwell nodded his assent and turned away without answering. As he +came out of the lobby into the clear sunset radiance he saw a victoria +drive up the long sweep to the Capitol and pause before the central +portion. He descended the steps, and Mrs. Mornway leaned from her furs +to greet him. + +"I have called for my husband," she said, smiling. "He promised to get +away in time for a little turn in the Park before dinner." + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hermit and the Wild Woman and +Other Stories, by Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HERMIT AND WILD WOMAN *** + +***** This file should be named 4533.txt or 4533.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/3/4533/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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