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diff --git a/old/hrmww10.txt b/old/hrmww10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a15455 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/hrmww10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7876 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Hermit And The Wild Woman, by Edith Wharton +#14 in our series by Edith Wharton + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before distributing this or any other +Project Gutenberg file. + +We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your +own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future +readers. Please do not remove this. + +This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to +view the etext. 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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?" be 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 [87] 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, bad 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 schmes +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, any +how. 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 pro- claimed. 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 lis- tens 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 off- spring 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 Project Gutenberg's The Hermit And The Wild Woman, by Edith Wharton + |