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diff --git a/old/64255-0.txt b/old/64255-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c6bf521..0000000 --- a/old/64255-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,13755 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The City of Comrades, by Basil King - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The City of Comrades - -Author: Basil King - -Release Date: January 11, 2021 [eBook #64255] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Image source(s): https://archive.org/download/cityofcomrades00kingiala - -Produced by: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive/American - Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CITY OF COMRADES *** - - - - - -BOOKS BY BASIL KING - - - GOING WEST - THE CITY OF COMRADES - ABRAHAM’S BOSOM - THE LIFTED VEIL - THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS - THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT - THE WAY HOME - THE WILD OLIVE - THE INNER SHRINE - THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT - LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER - IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY - THE STEPS OF HONOR - THE HIGH HEART - -HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK - -ESTABLISHED 1817 - - - - -[Illustration: “’Sh!” was the first sound that came from her. “Don’t make -a noise or you’ll frighten my friend. She’s nervous already.” - -(See p. 32)] - - - - - _The_ - CITY OF COMRADES - - BY - BASIL KING - - _Author of_ - “THE INNER SHRINE” “THE WILD OLIVE” - “THE WAY HOME” “THE HIGH HEART” ETC. - - _I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks - of the whole of the rest of the earth;_ - _I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;_ - _Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it - led the rest;_ - _It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,_ - _And in all their looks and words._ - - —WALT WHITMAN. - - [Illustration] - - HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS - NEW YORK AND LONDON - - Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers - Printed in the United States of America - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS - - - _“’Sh!” was the first sound that came from her. - “Don’t make a noise or you’ll frighten my - friend. She’s nervous already.”_ _Frontispiece_ - - _“Didn’t you ever see any one put these pearls - into his pocket before?”_ _Facing p. 204_ - - _“You’re going home to marry me.”_ - _“How can I be going home to marry you, when—when - I never knew till within half an hour that - you—that you cared anything about me?”_ ” _290_ - - _“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me - believin’ the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you - up, like. Not but what you was the best man - ever lived before the war—”_ ” _344_ - - - - -THE CITY OF COMRADES - - - - -_CHAPTER I_ - - -“No.” - -“No?” - -“No.” - -In the slow swirl of Columbus Circle, at the southwest corner of -Central Park, two seedy, sinister individuals could hold an exceedingly -private conversation without drawing attention to themselves. There -were others like us on the scene, in that month of June, 1913, cast -up from the obscurest depths of New York. We could revolve there for -five or ten minutes, in company with other elements of the city’s life, -to be eliminated by degrees, sucked into other currents, forming new -combinations or reacting to the old ones. - -In silence we shuffled along a few paces, though not exactly side -by side. Lovey was just sufficiently behind me to be able to talk -confidentially into my ear. My own manner was probably that of a man -anxious to throw off a dogging inferior. Even among us there are social -degrees. - -“Yer’ll be sorry,” Lovey warned me, reproachfully. - -“Very well, then,” I jerked back at him over my shoulder; “I shall be -sorry.” - -“If I didn’t know it was a good thing I wouldn’t ’a’ wanted to take ye -in on it—not you, I wouldn’t; and dead easy.” - -“I don’t care for it.” - -“Ye’re only a beginner—” - -“I’m not even that.” - -“No, ye’re not even that; and this’d larn ye. Just two old ladies—lots of -money always in the ’ouse—no resistance—no weepons nor nothink o’ that -kind; and me knowin’ every hinch of the ground through workin’ for ’em -two years ago—” - -“And suppose they recognized you?” - -“That’s it. That’s why I must have a pal. If they’d git a look at any one -it’d have to be at you. But you don’t need to be afraid, never pinched -before nor nothink. Once yer picter’s in the rogues’ they’ll run ye in if -ye so much as blow yer nose. You’d just get by as an unknown man.” - -“And if I didn’t get by?” - -“Oh, but you would, sonny. Ye’re the kind. Just look at ye! Slim and -easy-movin’ as a snake, y’are. Ye’d go through a man’s clothes while he’s -got ’em on, and he wouldn’t notice ye no more’n a puff of wind. Look at -yer ’and.” - -I held it up and looked at it. A year ago, a month ago, I should have -studied it with remorse. Now I did it stupidly, without emotions or -regrets. - -It was a long, slim hand, resembling the rest of my person. It was -strong, however, with big, loosely articulated knuckles and muscular -thumbs—again resembling the rest of my person. At the Beaux Arts, and in -an occasional architect’s office, it had been spoken of as a “drawing” -hand; and Lovey was now pointing out its advantages for other purposes. I -laughed to myself. - -“Ye’re too tall,” Lovey went on, in his appraisement. “That’s ag’in’ ye. -Ye must be a good six foot. But lots o’ men are too tall. They gits over -it by stoopin’ a bit; and when ye stoops it frightens people, especially -women. They ain’t near as scared of a man that stands straight up as -they’ll be of one that crouches and wiggles away. Kind o’ suggests evil -to ’em, like, it does. And these two old ladies—” - -As we reached the corner of the Park I rounded slowly on my tempter. Not -that he thought of his offer as temptation, any more than I did; it was -rather on his part a touch of solicitude. He was doing his best for me, -in return for what he was pleased to take as my kindness to him during -the past ten days. - -He was a small, wizened man, pathetically neat in spite of cruel -shabbiness. It was the kind of neatness that in our world so often -differentiates the man who has dropped from him who has always been -down. The gray suit, which was little more than a warp with no woof on -it at all, was brushed and smoothed and mended. The flannel shirt, with -turned-down collar, must have been chosen for its resistance to the show -of dirt. The sky-blue tie might have been a more useful selection, but -even that had had freshness steamed and pressed into it whenever Lovey -had got the opportunity. Over what didn’t so directly meet the eye the -coat was tightly buttoned up. - -The boots were the weakest point, as they are with all of us. They were -not noticeably broken, but they were wrinkled and squashed and down at -the heel. They looked as if they had been worn by other men before having -come to the present possessor; and mine looked the same. When I went into -offices to apply for work it was always my boots that I tried to keep out -of sight; but it was precisely what the eye of the fellow in command -seemed determined to search out and judge me by. - -You must not think of Lovey as a criminal. He had committed petty crimes -and he had gone to jail for them; but it had only been from the instinct -of self-preservation. He worked when he got a job; but he never kept a -job, because his habits always fired him. Then he lived as he could, -lifting whatever small object came his way—an apple from a fruit-stall, a -purse a lady had inadvertently laid down, a bag in a station, an umbrella -forgotten in a corner—anything! The pawnshops knew him so well that he -was afraid to go into them any more—except when he was so tired that -he wanted to be sent to the Island for a month’s rest. In general, he -disposed of his booty for a few pennies to children, to poverty-stricken -mothers of families, to pals in the saloons. As long as a few dollars -lasted he lived, as he himself would have said, honestly. When he was -driven to it he filched again; but only when he was driven to it. - -It was ten days now since he had begun following me about, somewhat as a -stray dog will follow you when you have given him a bone and a drink of -water. For a year and more I had seen him in one or another of the dives -I hung about. The same faces always turn up there, and we get to have -the kind of acquaintance, silent, haunted, tolerant, that binds together -souls in the Inferno. In general, it is a great fraternity; but now and -then—often for reasons no one could fathom—some one is excluded. He comes -and goes, and the others follow him with resentful looks and curses. -Occasionally he is kicked out, which was what happened to Lovey whenever -his weakness afforded the excuse. - -It was when he was kicked out of Stinson’s that I had picked him up. It -was after midnight. It was cold. The sight of the abject face was too -much for me. - -“Come along home with me, Lovey,” I had said, casually; and he came. - -Home was no more than a stifling garret, and Lovey slept on the floor -like a dog. But in the morning I found my shoes cleaned as well as he -could clean them without brush or blacking, my clothes folded, and the -whole beastly place in such order as a friendly hand could bring to it. -Lovey himself was gone. - -Twice during the interval he had stolen in in the same way and stolen -out. He asked no more than a refuge and the privilege of sidling timidly -up to me with a beseeching look in his sodden eyes when we met in bars. -Once, when by hook or by crook he had got possession of a dollar, he -insisted on the honor of “buying me a drink.” - -On this particular afternoon I had met him by chance in the region of -Broadway between Forty-second Street and Columbus Circle. I can still -recall the shy, half-frightened pleasure in his face as he saw me -advancing toward him. He might have been a young girl. - -“Got somethin’ awful good, sonny, to let ye in on,” were the words with -which he stopped me. - -I turned round and walked back with him to the Circle, and round it. - -“No, Lovey,” I said decidedly, when we had got to the corner of the Park, -“it’s not good enough. I’ve other fish to fry.” - -A hectic flush stole into the cheeks, which kept a marvelous youth and -freshness. The thin, delicate features, ascetic rather than degraded, -sharpened with a frosty look of disappointment. - -“Well, just as you think best, sonny,” he said, resignedly. He asked, -abruptly, however, “When did ye have yer last meal?” - -“The day before yesterday.” - -“And when d’ye expect to have yer next?” - -“Oh, I don’t know. Sometime; possibly to-night.” - -“Possibly to-night— ’Ow?” - -“I tell you I don’t know. Something will happen. If it doesn’t—well, I’ll -manage.” - -He had found an opening. - -“Don’t ye see ye carn’t go on like that? Ye’ve got to live.” - -“Oh no, I haven’t.” - -“Don’t say that, sonny,” he burst out, tenderly. “Ye’ve got to live! Ye -must do it—for my sake—now. I suppose it’s because we’re—we’re Britishers -together.” He looked round on the circling crowd of Slavs, Mongolians, -Greeks, Italians, aliens of all sorts. “We’re different from these -Yankees, ain’t we?” - -Admitting our Anglo-Saxon superiority, I was about to say, “Well, so -long, Lovey,” and shake him off, when he put in, piteously, “I suppose I -can come up and lay down on yer floor again to-night?” - -“I wish you could, Lovey,” I responded. “But—but the fact is I—I haven’t -got that place any more.” - -“Fired?” - -I nodded. - -“Where’ve ye gone?” - -“Nowhere.” - -“Where did ye sleep last night?” - -I described the exact spot in the lumber-yard near Greeley’s Slip. He -knew it. He had made use of its hospitality himself on warm summer nights -such as we were having. - -“Goin’ there again to-night?” - -I said I didn’t know. - -He gazed at me with a kind of timid daring. “You wouldn’t be—you wouldn’t -be goin’ to the Down and Out Club?” - -I smiled. - -“Why should you ask me that?” - -“Oh, I don’t know. See you talkin’ to one of those fellas oncet. Chap -named Pyncheon. Worse than missions and ’vangelists, they are.” - -“Did you ever think of going there yourself?” - -“Oh, Lord love ye! I’ve thought of it, yes. But I’ve fought it off. Once -ye do that ye’re done for.” - -“Well, I don’t believe I’m done for—” I began; but he interrupted me -coaxingly. - -“I say, sonny. I’ll go to Greeley’s Slip. Then if you’ve nothin’ -else on ’and, you come there, too—and we’ll be fellas together. But -don’t—don’t—go to the Down and Out!” - -As I walked away from him I had his “fellas together” amusingly, and -also pathetically, in my heart. Lovey was little better than an outcast. -I knew him by no name but that which some pothouse wag had fixed on -him derisively. From hints he had dropped I gathered that he had had a -wife and daughters somewhere in the world, and intuitively I got the -impression that without being a criminal he had been connected with a -crime. As to his personal history he had never confided to me any of the -details beyond the fact that in his palmy days he had been in a ’at-shop -in the Edgware Road. I fancied that at some time or another in his career -his relatives in London—like my own in Canada—had made up a lump sum and -bidden him begone to the land of reconstruction. There he had become -what he was—an outcast. There I was becoming an outcast likewise. We were -“fellas together.” I was thirty-one and he was fifty-two. My comparative -youth helped me, in that I didn’t look older than my age; but he might -easily have been seventy. - -Having got rid of him, I drifted diagonally across the Park, but with -a certain method in the seeming lack of method in taking my direction. -Though I had an objective point, I didn’t dare to approach it otherwise -than by a roundabout route. It is probable that no gaze but that of the -angels was upon me; but to me it seemed as if every glance that roved up -and down the Park must spot my aim. - -For this reason I assumed a manner meant to throw observation off the -scent. I loitered to look at young people on horseback or to stare at -some specially dashing motor-car. I strolled into by-paths and out of -them. I passed under the noses of policemen in gray-blue uniforms and -tried to infuse my carriage with the fact which Lovey had emphasized, -that I had never yet been pinched. I had never yet, so far as I knew, -done anything to warrant pinching; and that I had no intentions beyond -those of the ordinary law-abiding citizen was what I hoped my swagger -would convey. - -Though I was shabby, I was not sufficiently so to be unworthy to take -the air. The worst that could be said of me was that I was not shabby as -the working-man is at liberty to be. Mine was the suspicious, telltale -shabbiness of the gentleman—far more damning than the grime and sweat of -a chimney-sweep. - -Now that I was alone again, I had a return of the sensation that had been -on me since waking in the morning—that I was walking in the air. I felt -that I bounced like a bubble every time I stepped. The day before I had -been giddy; now I was only light. It was as if at any minute I might go -up. Unconsciously I ground my footsteps into the gravel or the grass to -keep myself on the solid earth. - -It was not the first time I had gone without food for twenty-four hours, -but it was the first time I had done it for forty-eight. Moreover, it was -the first time I had ever been without some prospect of food ahead of me. -With a meal surely in sight on the following day I could have waited for -it. More easily I could have waited for a drink or two. Drink kept me -going longer than food, for in spite of the reaction after it the need of -it had grown more insistent. Had I been offered my choice between food -and life, on the one hand, and drink and death, on the other, I think I -should have chosen drink and death. - -But now there was no likelihood of either. I had husbanded my last -pennies after my last meal, to make them spin out to as many drinks as -possible. I had begged a few more drinks, and cadged a few more. But I -had come to my limit in all these directions. Before I sought the shelter -of Greeley’s Slip a hint had been given me at Stinson’s that I might come -in for the compliments showered on Lovey ten days previously. Now as I -walked in the Park the craving inside me was not because I hadn’t eaten, -but because I hadn’t drunk that day. - -Two or three bitter temptations assailed me before I reached Fifth -Avenue. One was in the form of a pretty girl of eight or ten, who came -mincing down a flowery path, holding a quarter between the thumb and -forefinger of her left hand. Satan must have sent her. I could have -snatched the quarter and made my escape, only that I lacked the nerve. -Then there was a newsboy counting his gains on a bench. They were laid -out in rows before him—pennies, nickels, and dimes. I stood for a minute -and looked down at him, estimating the ease with which I could have -stooped and swept them all into my palm. He looked up and smiled. The -smile didn’t disarm me; I was beyond the reach of any such appeal. It was -again that I didn’t have the nerve. Lastly an old woman, a nurse, was -dealing out coins to three small children that they might make purchases -of a blind man selling bootlaces and pencils. I could have swiped them -all as neatly as a croupier pulls in louis d’or with his rake—but I was -afraid. - -These were real temptations, as fierce as any I ever faced. By the time I -had reached the Avenue I was in a cold perspiration, as much from a sense -of failure as from the effort at resistance. I wondered how I should ever -carry out the plans I had in mind if I was to balk at such little things -as this. - -The plans I had in mind still kept me from making headway as the crow -flies. I went far up the Avenue; I crossed into Madison Avenue; I went -up that again; I crossed into Park Avenue. I crossed and recrossed and -crisscrossed and descended, and at last found myself strolling by a house -toward which I scarcely dared to turn my eyes, feeling that even for -looking at it I might be arrested. - -I slackened my pace so as to verify all the points which experts had -underscored in my hearing. There was the vacant lot which the surrounding -buildings rendered so dark at night. There was the low, red-brown fence -inclosing the back premises, over which a limber, long-legged fellow -like me could leap in a second. There were the usual numerous windows—to -kitchen, scullery, pantry, laundry—of any good-sized American house, -some one of which was pretty sure to be left unguarded on a summer -night. There were the neighboring yards, with more low fences, offering -excellent cover in a get-away, with another vacant lot leading out on -another street a little farther down. - -I had so many times strolled by the house as I was doing now, and had so -many times rehearsed its characteristics, that I made the final review -with some exactitude before passing on my way. - -My way was not far. There was nothing to do but to go back into the Park. -As it was nearly six o’clock, it was too late to search for a job that -day, and I should have had no heart for doing so in any case. I had found -a job that morning—that of handling big packing-cases in a warehouse—but -I was too exhausted for the work. When in the effort to lift one onto a -truck I collapsed and nearly fainted, I was told in a choice selection of -oaths to beat it as no good. - -I sat on a bench, therefore, waiting for the dark and thinking of the -house of which I had just inspected the outside. It was not a house -picked at random. It was one that had possessed an interest for me during -all the three years I had been in New York. I had, in fact, brought a -letter of introduction to its owner from the man under whom I had worked -in Montreal. Chiefly through my own carelessness, nothing came of that, -but I never failed, when I passed this way, to stare at the dwelling as -one in which I might have had a footing. - -The occupant was also a well-known architect in New York. In the -architects’ offices in which I found employment I heard him praised, -criticized, condemned. His work was good or bad according to the -speaker’s point of view. I thought it tolerably good, with an -over-emphasis on ornament. - -It was an odd fact that, in starting out on what was clear in my mind -as a new phase in my career, no other house suggested itself as a field -of operations. As to this one I felt documented, and that was all. I -had no sense of horror at what I was about to do; no remorse from the -position from which I had fallen. I suppose my mind was too sick for -that, and my body too imperatively clamorous. I had said to Lovey that I -didn’t have to live—but I did. I had seen that very morning that I did. -I had stood at the edge of Greeley’s Slip and watched the swirling of -the brown-green water with a view to making an end of it. One step and I -should be out of all this misery and disgrace! The world would be rid of -me; my family would be rid of me; I should be rid of myself, which would -be best of all. Had I been quite sure as to the last point, I think I -could have done it. But I wasn’t quite sure. I was far from quite sure. -I could imagine the step over the edge of Greeley’s Slip as a step into -conditions worse than those I was enduring now; and so I had drawn back. -I had drawn back and wandered up-town, in the hope of securing a job that -would give me a breakfast. - -I wonder if you have ever done that? I wonder if you have ever gone from -dock to station and from station to shop and from shop to warehouse, -wherever heavy, unskilled labor may be in demand, and extra hands are -treated with a brutality that slaves would kick against, in the hope of -earning fifty cents? I wonder if in your grown-up life you have ever -known a minute when fifty cents stood for your salvation? I wonder if -with fifty cents standing for your salvation you ever saw the day when -you couldn’t get it? No? Then you will hardly understand how natural, how -much a matter of course, the thing had become which I was resolved to do. - -It was no sudden idea. I had been living in the company of men who took -such feats for granted. Their talk had amazed me at first, but I had -grown used to it. I had grown used to the thing. I had come to find a -piquancy in the thought of it. - -Then Lovey’s suggestions had not been thrown away on me. True, he was out -for small game, while I, if I went in for it, would want something bigger -and more exciting; but the basic idea was the same. Lovey could make a -haul and live for weeks on the fruit of it; I might do the same and live -for months. And if I didn’t pull it off successfully, if I was nabbed -and sent away—why, then there would be some let-up in the struggle which -had become so infernal. Even if I got a shot through the heart—and the -tales I heard were full of such accidents—the tragedy would not lack its -element of relief. It might be out of one hell into another—but it would -at least be out of one. - -Not that I hadn’t found a bitter pleasure in the life! I had. I found -it still. In one of Dostoyevsky’s novels an old rake talks of the joys -of being in the gutter. Well, there are such joys. They are not joys -that civilization knows or that aspiration would find legitimate; but -one reaches a point at which it is a satisfaction to be oneself at one’s -worst. Where all the pretenses with which poor human nature covers itself -up are cast aside the soul can stalk forth nakedly, hideously, and be -unashamed. In the presence of each other we were always unashamed. We -could kick over all standards, we could drop all poses, we could flout -all duties, we could own to all crimes, and be “fellas together.” As I -went lower and lower down it became to me a kind of acrid delight, of -positively intellectual delight, to know that I was herding with the most -degraded, and that there was no baseness or bestiality to which I was not -at liberty to submit myself. - -If there had never been any reactions from this state of mind!—but God! - -It was a disadvantage to me that I was not like my cronies. I couldn’t -open my lips without betraying the fact that I belonged to another -sphere. Though the broken-down man of education is not unknown in the -underworld, he is comparatively rare. He is comparatively rare and -under suspicion, like a white swan in a flock of black ones. I might be -open-handed, ingratiating, and absurdly fellow-well-met, but I was always -an outsider. They would take my drinks, they would return me drinks, we -would swap stories and experiences with all outward show of equality; but -no one knew better than myself that I was not on a footing with the rest -of them. Women took to me readily enough, but men were always on their -guard. Try as I would I never found a mate among them, I never made a -friend. Therefore, now that I was down and out, I had no one of whom to -ask a good turn, no one who would have done me a good turn, but poor, -useless old Lovey sneaking in the shade. - -I was in a measure between two worlds. I had been ejected from one -without having forced a way into the other. When I say ejected I mean the -word. The bitterest moment in my life was on that night when my eldest -brother came to his door in Montreal and gave me fifty dollars, with the -words: - -“And now get out! Don’t let any of us ever see your face or hear your -name again.” - -As I stumbled down the steps he gave me a kick that didn’t reach me -and which I had lost the right to resent. He himself went back to the -dinner-party his wife was entertaining inside, and of which the talk and -laughter reached me as I stood humbly on the door-step. From the other -side of the street I looked back at the lighted windows. It was the last -touch of connection with my family. - -But it had been a kindly, patient family. My father was one of the best -known and most highly honored among Canadian public men. As he had -married an American, I had a good many cousins in New York, though I had -not made myself known to any of them since coming there to live. I didn’t -want them. Had I met one of them in the street, I should have passed -without speaking; but, as it happened, I never met one. I saw their names -in the papers, and that was all. - -My father and mother had had five children, of whom I was the fourth. -My two brothers were married, prosperous and respected—one a lawyer in -Montreal, the other a banker in Toronto. My elder sister was married to -a colonel in the British army; the younger one—the only member of the -family younger than myself—still lived at home. - -We three sons were all graduates of McGill, in addition to which I had -been sent to the Beaux Arts in Paris. Out of that I had come with some -degree of credit; and there had been a year in which I was in sight—oh, -very distant sight!—of the beginning of the fulfilment of my childhood’s -ambition to revolutionize the art of architecture in Canada. But in the -second year that vision went out; and in the third came the night on my -brother Jerry’s door-step. - -I had nothing to complain of. The family had borne with me—and borne with -me. When we reached the time when I was supposed to be earning my own -living and my father’s allowance came to an end, my mother, who had some -money of her own, kept it up. She would be keeping it up still if she -knew where I was—but she didn’t know. From the moment of leaving Montreal -I decided to carry out Jerry’s injunction. They should neither see my -face nor hear my name again. I didn’t stop to consider how cruel this -would be to the best mother a man ever had—to say nothing of the best -father—or rather, when I did stop to consider it it seemed to me that I -was taking the kindest course. I had no confidence in myself or in the -future. New surroundings and associations would not give me a new heart, -whatever hopes those who wished me well might be building on the change. -For a new heart I needed something which I hadn’t got and saw no means of -getting. - - - - -_CHAPTER II_ - - -Somewhere about dusk I fell asleep. It was dark when I woke up. It was -dark and still and sultry, as it often is in New York in the middle of -June. - -The lamps were lit in the Park, and in their glow shadowy forms moved -stealthily. When they went in twos I took them to be lovers; when they -went alone I put them down as prowlers of the night. I didn’t know what -they were after, but whatever it might be I was sure it was no good. - -Not that that mattered to me! I had long been in a situation where I -couldn’t be particular. When I had risen and stretched myself I, too, -moved stealthily, dogged by a crime I hadn’t yet committed, but of which -the guilt was already in the air. - -As I had nothing by which to tell the time, I was obliged to wait till -a clock struck. I hoped it was eleven at least, but when the sound came -over the trees it was only nine. Only nine, and I could do nothing before -one! Nothing before one, and nowhere to go! Nowhere to go, and no food -to eat, and not a drop to drink! Doubtless I could have found water; but -water made me sick. With four hours to wait, I thought again of the dark -river with its velvety current, running below Greeley’s Slip. - -Aimlessly I drifted toward it—that is, I drifted toward Columbus Circle, -whence I could drift farther still through squalid, fetid, dimly lighted -streets down to the water’s edge. The night was so hot that the thought -of the plunge began to appeal to me. After all, it would be an easy, -pleasant way of stepping out. - -But I didn’t do it. The unknown beyond the river once more drove me back. -Besides, the adventure I had planned was not without its fascination. -I wanted to see what it held in store. If it held nothing—well, then, -Greeley’s Slip would still be accessible in the morning. - -So I skulked back into the depths of the Park again. Those who went as -twos began to disappear, and the lonely shadows to steal along more -furtively. Now and then one of them approached me or hung in the distance -suggestively. It was not like any of the encounters that take place in -daylight. It was more as if these dark ghosts had floated up from some -evil spirit land, into which before morning they would float down again. - -But twelve o’clock struck at last, and I took midnight as a call. It was -a call to leave the great human division in which I had hitherto been -classed, and become a criminal. Once I had done this thing, I should -never be able to go back. The angel with the flaming sword would guard -that way, and I could never regain even such status as that which I was -abandoning. - -If my head had not been swimming I might at the last minute have felt a -qualm at that, but my mind had lost the faculty of deconcentration. It -was fixed on the thing before me in such a way that I couldn’t get it -off. For this reason I went, on leaving the Park, directly to the street -and number where my thoughts were. - -I was surprised by the emptiness and silence of the thoroughfares. Not -till then had I remembered that at this season of the year most of the -houses would be closed. Closed they were, looking dark and blank and -forbidding. I happened to know that the house to which I was bound was -not closed; and though the fact that there were so few to pass in the -streets rendered me more conspicuous, it also made me the less subject to -observation. - -Indeed, there were no observers at all when I approached the black spot -made by the vacant lot. There was nothing but myself and the blackness. -Not a light in the house! Hardly a light in any of the houses roundabout! -Not a footfall on the pavements! If ever there was a good opportunity to -do what I had come for, it was mine. - -But I passed. The black spot frightened me. It was like a black gulf into -which I might sink down. I re-passed. - -I went farther up the street and took myself to task. It was a repetition -of my recoil from the children in the afternoon. I must have the nerve—or -I must own to myself that I hadn’t. If I hadn’t it, then I had no -alternative but Greeley’s Slip. - -I turned in my steps and passed the house again. If from the blank -windows any one had been looking out my actions would have been -suspicious. I went far down the street, and came back again far up it. -Then when I had no more power of arguing with myself I suddenly found -my footsteps crushing the dusty, sun-dried shoots of nettle and blue -succory. I was in the vacant lot. - -All at once fear left me. As well as any old hand in the business -I seemed to know what lay before me. At every second some low-down -prompting, sprung from nameless depths in my nature, told me what to do. - -I noted in the first place how accurate the experts had been as to light -and shade. The house stood so far up on one of the long avenues that the -buildings were thinning out. So, too, the street lamps. They were no -more than in the proportion of two to three as compared to their numbers -half a mile lower down. Just here they were so placed that not a ray fell -into the three or four thousand square feet which had probably never been -built upon since Manhattan was inhabited. Even the wall of the house was -windowless on this side, for the reason that within a few months some new -building would probably block the outlook. - -Once I had crept close to the wall, I knew I presented neither silhouette -nor shade to any chance passer-by. I could feel my way at leisure, -cautiously treading burdock and fireweed underfoot. I came to the low -wooden fence, in which there was a gate for tradesmen, which was possibly -unlocked; but I didn’t run the risk of a click. With my long legs a -stride took me over into a small brick-paved court. - -I paused to reconnoiter. The obscurity here was so dense that only my -architect’s instincts told me where the doors and windows would probably -be. I located them by degrees. The doors I let alone. The windows I -tried, first one and then another, but with no success. There was -probably some simple fastening that I could have dealt with had I had a -pocket-knife, but the one I had carried for years had long since been -lying in a pawnshop. To reflect I sat down on the cover of a bin that was -doubtless used for refuse. - -A footstep alarmed me. It was heavy, measured, slow. With the ease of -a snake I was down on my belly, crawling toward cover. Cover offered -itself in the form of the single shrub that the court contained—lilac -or syringa—growing close against the kitchen wall. Lovey would have -commended the silence and swiftness with which I slipped behind it. - -The footstep receded, slow, measured, heavy. Coming to the conclusion -that it was a policeman in the Avenue, I raised my head. I had no sense -of queerness in my situation. It seemed as much a matter of course as if -I had been doing the same sort of thing ever since I was born. - -There was apparently a providence in all this, for, looking up, I spied a -window I had not seen before, because it was hidden by the shrub. This, -if any, would have been neglected by the servants when they went to bed. - -With scarcely the stirring of a leaf I got on my feet again—and, lo! the -miracle. The window was actually open. I had nothing to do but push it -a few inches higher, drag myself up and wriggle in. I accomplished this -without a sound that could be detected twenty feet away. - -Coming down on my hands and knees, I found myself amid the odor of -eatables, chiefly that of fruit. I rested a minute to get my bearings, -which I did by the sense of smell. I knew I must be in a sort of pantry. -By putting out my hands carefully, so as to knock nothing over, I -perceived that it was little more than a closet with shelves. A thrill of -excitement passed through me from head to foot when my hand rested on an -apple. - -I ate the apple there and then, kneeling upright, my toes bent under me. -I ate another and another. Feeling cautiously, I discovered a tin box -in which there were bread and cake. I ate of both. Getting softly on -my feet, I groped for other things, which proved in the main to be no -more than tea, coffee, spices, and starch. Then my fingers ran over a -strawlike surface, and I knew I had hold of a demijohn. - -Smell told me that it contained sherry, and such knowledge of -housekeeping as I possessed suggested that it was cooking-sherry. I took -a long swig of it. Two long swigs were enough. It burnt me, and yet -it braced me. With the food I had eaten I felt literally like a giant -refreshed with wine. - -It occurred to me that this was a point at which I might draw back. But -the spell of the unknown was upon me, and I determined to go at least a -little farther. Very, very stealthily I opened the door. - -I was not in a kitchen, as I expected to find myself, but in a servants’ -dining-room. I got the dim outlines of chairs and what I took to be a -dresser or a bookcase. Another open door led into a hall. - -My knowledge of the planning of houses aided me at each step I took. -From the hallway I could place the kitchen, the laundry, and the back -staircase. I knew the front hall lay beyond a door which was closed. At -the foot of the back staircase I stood for some minutes and listened. -Not a sound came from anywhere in the house. The kitchen clock ticked -loudly, and presently startled me with a gurgle and a chuckle before it -struck one. After this manifestation I had to wait till my heart stopped -thumping and my nerves were quieted before venturing on the stairs. As -the first step creaked, I kept close to the wall to get a firmer support -for my tread. On reaching a landing I could see up into another hall. -Here I perceived the glimmer or reflection of a light. It was a very dim -or distant light—but it was a light. - -I stood on the landing and waited. If there were people moving about I -should hear them soon. But all I did hear was the heavy breathing of the -servants, who were sleeping on the topmost floor. - -Creeping a little farther up, I discovered that the light was in a -bedroom—the first to open from the front hall up-stairs. Between the -front hall and the back hall the door was ajar. That would make things -easier for me, and I dragged myself noiselessly to the top. I was now -at the head of the first flight of back stairs, and looking into the -master’s section of the house. Except for that one dim light the house -was dark. It was not, however, so dark that my architect’s eye couldn’t -make a mental map quite sufficient for my guidance. - -It was clearly a dwelling that had been added to, with some rambling -characteristics. The first few feet of the front hall were on a level -with the back hall, after which came a flight of three or four steps to -a higher plane, which ran the rest of the depth of the building to the -window over the front door. In the faint radiance through this window I -could discern a high-boy, a bureau, and some chairs against the wall. I -could see, too, that from this higher level one staircase ran down to the -front door and another up to a third story. What was chiefly of moment to -me was the fact that the bedroom with the light was lower than the rest -of this part of the house, and somewhat cut off from it. - -With movements as quiet as a cat’s I got myself where I could peep into -the bedroom where the lamp burned. It proved to be a small electric lamp -with a rose-colored shade, standing beside a bed. It was a rose-colored -room, evidently that of a young lady. But there was no young lady there. -There was no one. - -The fact that surprises me as I record all this is that I was so -extraordinarily cool. I was cooler in the act than I am in the memory of -it. I walked into that bedroom as calmly as if it had been my own. - -It was a pretty room, with the usual notes of photographs, bibelots, and -flowered cretonne which young women like. The walls were in a light, cool -green set off by a few colored reproductions of old Italian masters. Over -the small white virginal bed was a copy of Fra Angelico’s “Annunciation.” -Two windows, one of which was a bay, were shaded by loosely hanging -rose-colored silk, and before the bay window the curtains were drawn. -Diagonally across the corner of this window, but within the actual room, -stood a simple white writing-desk, with a white dressing-table near -it, but against the wall. On the table lay a gold-mesh purse, in which -there was money. I slipped it into my pocket, with some satisfaction in -securing the first fruits of my adventure. - -With such booty as this it again occurred to me to be on the safe side -and to go back by the way I came. I was, in fact, looking round me to -see if there was any other small valuable object I could lift before -departing when I heard a door open in some distant part of the house—and -voices. - -They were women’s voices, or, rather, as I speedily inferred, girls’ -voices. By listening intently I drew the conclusion that two girls had -come out of a room on the third floor and were coming down the stairs. - -It was the minute to make off, and I tried to do so. I might have -effected my escape had I not been checked by the figure of a man looming -up suddenly before me. He sprang out of nowhere—a tall, slender man, in -a dark-blue suit, with trousers baggy at the knees, and wearing an old -golfing-cap. I jumped back from him in terror, only to find that it was -my own reflection in the pier-glass. But the few seconds’ delay lost me -my chance to get away. - -By the time I had tiptoed to the door the voices were on the same floor -as myself. Two girls were advancing along the hall, evidently making -their way to this chamber. My retreat being cut off, I looked wildly -about for a place in which to hide myself. In the instants at my disposal -I could discover nothing more remote than the bay window, screened by its -loose rose-colored hangings. By the time the young ladies were on the -threshold I was established there, with the silk sections pulled together -and held tightly in my hand. - -The first words I heard were: “But it will seem so like a habit. Men will -be afraid of you.” - -This voice was light, silvery, and staccato. That which replied had a -deep mezzo quality, without being quite contralto. - -“They won’t be nearly so much afraid of me,” it said, fretfully, “as I am -of them. I wish—I wish they’d let me alone!” - -“Oh, well, they won’t do that—not yet awhile; unless, as I say, they see -you’re hopeless. Really, dear, when a girl breaks a third engagement—” - -“They must see that she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t have to. Here—this -is the hook that always bothers me.” - -There were tears in the mezzo voice now, with a hint of exasperation that -might have been due to the lover or the hook, I couldn’t be sure which. - -“But that’s what I don’t see—” - -“You don’t see it because you don’t know Stephen—that is, you don’t know -him well.” - -“But from what I do know of him—” - -“He seems very nice. Yes, of course! But, good Heavens! Elsie, I want a -husband who’s something more than very nice!” - -“And yet that’s pretty good, as husbands go.” - -“If I can’t reach a higher standard than as husbands go I sha’n’t marry -any one.” - -“Which seems to me what’s very likely to happen.” - -“So it seems to me.” - -The silence that followed was full of soft, swishing sounds, which I -judged to come from the taking off of a dress and the putting on of -some sort of negligée. From my experience of the habits of girls, as -illustrated by my sisters and their friends, I supposed that they were -lending each other services in the processes of undoing. The girl with -the mezzo voice had gone up to Elsie’s room to undo her; Elsie had come -down to render similar assistance. There is probably a psychological -connection between this intimate act and confidence, since girls most -truly bare their hearts to each other when they ought to be going to bed. - -The mezzo young lady was moving about the room when the conversation was -taken up again. - -“I don’t understand,” Elsie complained, “why you should have got engaged -to Stephen in the first place.” - -“I don’t, either”—she was quite near me now, and threw something that -might have been a brooch or a chain on the little white desk—“except on -the ground that I wanted to try him.” - -“Try him? What do you mean?” - -“Well, what’s an engagement? Isn’t it a kind of experiment? You get as -near to marriage as you can, while still keeping free to draw back. To -me it’s been like going down to the edge of the water in which you can -commit suicide, and finding it so cold that you go home again.” - -“Don’t you ever mean to be married at all?” Elsie demanded, impatiently. - -“I don’t mean to be married till I’m sure.” - -Elsie burst out indignantly: “Regina Barry, that’s the most pusillanimous -thing I ever heard. You might as well say you’d never cross the Atlantic -unless you were sure the ship would reach the other side.” - -“My trouble about crossing the Atlantic is in making up my mind whether -or not I want to go on board. One might be willing to risk the second -step, but one can’t risk the first. Even the hymn that says ‘One step -enough for me’ implies that at least you know what that’s to be.” - -“You mean that you balk at marriage in any case.” - -“I mean that I balk at marriage with any of the men I’ve been engaged to. -I must say that; and I can’t say more.” - -During another brief silence I surmised that Regina Barry had seated -herself before the dressing-table and was probably doing something to her -hair. I wish I could say here that in my eavesdropping I experienced a -sense of shame; but I can’t. Whatever creates a sense of shame had been -warped in me. The moral transitions that had turned me into a burglar -had been gradual but sure. With the gold-mesh purse in my pocket a -burglar I had become, and I felt no more repugnance to the business than -I did to that of the architect. Notwithstanding the natural masculine -interest these young ladies stirred in me, I meant to wait till they had -separated—gone to bed—and fallen asleep. Then I would slip out from my -hiding-place, swipe the brooch or the chain that had been thrown on the -desk, and go. - -“What was the matter with the first man?” Elsie began again. - -“I don’t know whether it was the matter with him or with me. I didn’t -trust him.” - -“I should say that was the matter with him. And the next man?” - -“Nothing. I simply couldn’t have lived with him.” - -“And what’s wrong with Stephen is that he’s no more than very nice. I -see.” - -“Oh no, you don’t see, dear! There’s a lot more to it than all that, only -I can’t explain it.” I fancied that she wheeled round in her chair and -faced her companion. “The long and short of it is that I’ve never met -the man with whom I could keep house. I can fall in love with them for a -while—I can have them going and coming—I can welcome them and say good-by -to them—but when it’s a question of all welcome and no good-by—well, the -man’s got to be different from any I’ve seen yet.” - -“You’ll end by not getting any one at all.” - -“Which, from my point of view, don’t you see, won’t be an unmixed evil. -Having lived happily for twenty-three years without a husband, I don’t -see why I should throw away a perfectly good bone for the most enticing -shadow that ever was.” - -“I don’t believe you’re human.” Before there could be a retort to this -Elsie went on to ask, “How did poor Stephen take it?” - -“Well, he didn’t go into fits of laughter. He took it more or less lying -down. If he hadn’t—” - -“If he hadn’t—what?” - -“Oh, I don’t know. The least little bit of fight on his part—or even -contempt—” - -As this sentence remained unfinished I could hear Elsie rise. - -“Well, I’m off to bed,” she yawned. “What time do you have breakfast?” - -There was some little discussion of household arrangements, after which -they said their good nights. - -With Elsie’s departure I began for the first time to be uncomfortable. -I can’t express myself otherwise than to say that as long as she was -there I felt I had a chaperon. In spite of the fact that I had become a -professional burglar the idea of being left alone with an innocent young -lady in her bedroom filled me with dismay. - -I was almost on the point of making a bolt for it when I heard Elsie call -out from the hallway: “Ugh! How dark and poky! For mercy’s sake, come up -with me!” - -Miss Barry lingered at the dressing-table long enough to ask: “Wouldn’t -you rather sleep in mother’s room? That communicates with this, with only -a little passage in between. The bed is made up.” - -“Oh no,” Elsie’s staccato came back. “I don’t mind being up there, and my -things are spread out; only it seems so creepy to climb all those stairs.” - -“Wait a minute.” - -She sprang up. I breathed freely. My sense of propriety was saved. The -voices were receding along the front hall. Once the young ladies had -begun to mount the stairs I would slip out by the back hall and get off. -Relaxing my hold on the silk hangings I stepped out cautiously. - -My first thought was for the objects I had heard thrown down with a -rattle on the writing-desk. They proved to be a string of small pearls, a -diamond pin, and some rings of which I made no inspection before sweeping -them all into my pocket. - -I was ready now to steal away, but, to my vexation, the incorrigible -maidens had begun to talk love-affairs again at the foot of the staircase -leading up to the third floor. They had also turned on the hall light, -so that my chances were diminished for getting away unseen. - -Knowing, however, that sooner or later they would have to go up the -next flight, I stood by the writing-desk and waited. I was not nervous; -I was not alarmed. As a matter of fact the success of my undertaking -up to the present point, together with the action of food and wine, -combined to make me excited and hilarious. I chuckled in advance over the -mystification of Miss Regina Barry, who would find on returning to her -room that her rings, her necklet, and her gold-mesh purse had melted into -the atmosphere. - -In sheer recklessness I was now guilty of a bit of deviltry before which -I would have hesitated had I had time to give it a second thought. On -the desk there was a scrap of blank paper and a pen. Stooping, I printed -in the neat block letters I had once been accustomed to inscribe below a -plan: - - There are men different from those you have seen hitherto. Wait. - -This I pinned to the pincushion on the dressing-table, beginning at -once to creep toward the door, so as to seize the first opportunity of -slipping down the back stairs. - -But again I was frustrated. - -“I’m all right now,” I heard Elsie say, reassuringly. “Don’t come up. Go -back and go to bed.” - -Miss Barry spoke as she returned along the hall toward her room: “The -cook sleeps in the next room to you, so that if you’re afraid in the -night you’ve only to hammer on the wall. But you needn’t be. This house -is as safe as a prison.” - -I had barely time to get into the bay window again and pull the curtains -to. - -Some five minutes followed, during which I heard the opening and shutting -of drawers and closets and the swish and frou-frou of skirts. I began to -curse my idiocy in fastening that silly bit of writing to the pincushion. -My only hope lay in the possibility that she would go to bed and to sleep -without seeing it. - -With hearing grown extraordinarily acute I could trace every movement -she made about the room. Presently I knew she had come back to the -dressing-table again. Pulling up a chair, she sat down before it, to -finish, I suppose, the arranging of her hair. - -For a few seconds there was a silence, during which I could hear the -thumping of my heart. Then came the faint rattling of paper. I knew when -she read the thing by the slight catch in her breath. I expected more -than that. I thought she would call out to her friend or otherwise give -an alarm. If she went to a telephone to summon the police I decided to -make a dash for it. Indeed, I meant to make a dash for it as it was, as -soon as I knew her next move. - -But of all the next moves, the one she made was the one I had least -counted on. With a sudden tug at the hangings she pulled them apart—and I -was before her. - -I was before her and she was before me. It is this latter detail of which -I have the most vivid recollection. In the matter of time all other -recollections of the moment seem to come after that and to be subsidiary -to it. - -My immediate impression was of two enormous, wonderful, burning eyes, -full of amazement. Apart from the eyes I hardly saw anything. It was as -if the light of a dark lantern had been suddenly turned on me and I was -blinded by the blaze. I was blinded by the blaze and shriveled up in -it. No words can do justice to my sudden sense of being a contemptible, -loathsome reptile. - -“’Sh!” was the first sound that came from her. She raised her hand. -“Don’t make a noise or you’ll frighten my friend. She’s nervous already.” - -Instinctively I pulled off my cap, stepping out of my hiding-place into -the middle of the room. As I did so she recoiled, supporting herself by -a hand on the writing-desk. Now that the discovery was made, I could see -her grow pale, while the hand on the desk trembled. - -“You mustn’t be afraid,” I began to whisper. - -“I’m not afraid,” she whispered back; “but—but what are you doing here?” - -“I’ll show you,” I returned, with shamefaced quietness. “I shall also -show you that if you’ll let me go without giving an alarm you won’t be -sorry.” - -Pulling all the things I had stolen out of my pocket, I showered them on -the dressing-table. - -“Oh!” - -The smothered exclamation made it plain to me that she hadn’t missed the -articles. - -“May I ask you to verify them?” I went on. “If you should find later -that something had disappeared, I shouldn’t like you to think that I had -carried it away.” - -She made a feint at examining the jewelry, but I could see that she was -incapable of making anything like a count. It was I who insisted on going -over the objects one by one. - -“There’s this,” I said, touching the gold-mesh purse, but not picking it -up. “I see there’s money in it; but it has not been opened. Then there’s -this,” I added, indicating the pearl necklet; “and this,” which was the -brooch. “The rings,” I continued, “I don’t know anything about. There -are three here. That’s all I remember seeing; but I didn’t notice in -particular.” - -She said, in a breathless whisper, “That’s all there were.” - -“Then may I ask if you mean to let me go?” - -“How can I stop you?” - -“Oh, in two or three ways. You could call your servants, or you could -ring up the police—” - -Her big, burning eyes were fixed on me hypnotically. The color began to -come back to her cheeks, but she trembled still. - -“How—how did you get in?” - -I explained to her. - -“And the only thing I’ve taken,” I went on, “is the food I ate and the -wine I drank; but if you knew how much I needed them—” - -“Were you hungry?” - -“I hadn’t eaten anything for two days, and very little for two days -before that.” - -“Then you’re not—you’re not one of those gentleman burglars who do this -sort of thing out of bravado?” - -“As we see in novels or plays. I don’t think you’ll find many of them -about. I’m a burglar,” I pursued, “or I—I meant to be one—but I’m not a -gentleman.” - -“You speak like a gentleman.” - -“Unfortunately, a gentleman is not made by speech. A gentleman could -never be in the predicament in which you’ve caught me.” - -“Well, then, you were a gentleman once.” - -“My father was a gentleman—and is.” - -“English?” - -“I’d rather not tell you. Now that I’ve restored the things, if you’ll -give me your word that I sha’n’t be molested I shall—” - -“You sha’n’t be molested, only—” - -As she hesitated I insisted, “Only what, may I ask?” - -Her manner was a mixture of embarrassment and pity. She had not hitherto -taken her eyes from me since we had begun to speak. Now she let them -wander away; or, rather, she let them shift away, to return to me -swiftly, as if she couldn’t trust me without watching me. By this time -she was trembling so violently, too, that she was obliged to grasp the -back of a chair to steady herself. She was too little to be tall, and -yet too tall to be considered little. The filmy thing she wore, with its -long, loose sleeves, gave her some of the appearance of an angel, only -that no angel ever had this bright, almost hectic color in the cheeks, -and these scarlet lips. - -“Was it,” she asked, speaking, as we both did, in low tones, and -rapidly—“was it because you—you had no money that you did this?” - -I smiled faintly. “That was it exactly; but now—” - -“Then won’t you let me give you some?” - -I still had enough of the man about me to straighten myself up and say: -“Thanks, no. It’s very kind of you; but—but the reasons which make it -impossible for me to—to steal it make it equally impossible for me to -take it as a gift.” - -“But why—why was it impossible for you to steal it, when you had come -here to do it?” - -“I suppose it was seeing the owner of it face to face. I’d sunk low -enough to steal from some one I couldn’t visualize—but what’s the use? -It’s mere hair-splitting. Just let me say that this is my first attempt, -and it hasn’t succeeded. I may do better next time if I can get up the -nerve.” - -“Oh, but there won’t be a next time.” - -“That we shall have to see.” - -“Suppose”—the mixture of embarrassment and pity made it hard for her to -speak—“suppose I said I was sorry for you.” - -“You don’t have to say it. I see it. It’s something I shall never forget -as long as I live.” - -“Well, since I’m sorry for you, won’t you let me—?” - -“No,” I interrupted, firmly. “I’m grateful for your pity; I’ll accept -that; but I won’t take anything else.” I began moving toward the door. -“Since you’re good enough to let me go, I had better be off; but I can’t -do it without thanking you.” - -For the first time she smiled a little. Even in that dim light I could -see it was what in normal conditions would be commonly called a generous -smile, full, frank, and kindly. Just now it was little more than a -quivering of the long scarlet lips. She glanced toward the little heap of -things on the desk. - -“If it comes to that, I have to thank you.” - -I raised my hand deprecatingly. - -“Don’t.” - -I had almost reached the threshold when her words made me turn. - -“Do you know who I am?” - -“I think I do,” was all I could reply. - -“Well, then, why shouldn’t you come back later—in some more usual -manner—and let me see if there isn’t something I could do for you?” - -“Do for me in what way?” - -“In the way of getting you work—or something.” - -My heart had leaped up for a minute, but now it fell. Why it should have -done either I cannot say, since I could be nothing to her but a fool who -had tried to be a thief, and couldn’t, as we say in our common idiom, get -away with it. - -I thanked her again. - -“But you’ve done a great deal for me as it is,” I added. “I couldn’t -ask for more.” Somewhat disconnectedly I continued, “I think you’re the -pluckiest girl I ever saw not to have been afraid of me.” - -“Oh, it wasn’t pluck. I saw at once that you wouldn’t do me any harm.” - -“How?” - -“In general. I was surprised. I was excited. In a way I was overcome. -But I wasn’t afraid of you. If you’d been a tramp or a colored man or -anything like that it would have been different. But one isn’t afraid of -a—of a gentleman.” - -“But I’m not a—” - -“Well then, a man who has a gentleman’s traditions. You’d better go now,” -she whispered, suddenly. “If you want to come back as I’ve suggested—any -time to-morrow forenoon—I’d speak to my father—” - -“Not about this?” I whispered, hurriedly. - -“No, not about this. This had better be just between ourselves. I shall -never say anything to any one about it, and I advise you to do the same.” -I had made a low bow, preparatory to getting out, when she held up the -scrap of paper she had crumpled in her hand. “Why did you write this?” - -But I got out of the room without giving a reply. - -I was descending the back stairs when I heard a door open on the third -floor and Elsie’s voice call out, “Regina, are you talking to anybody -down there?” - -There was a tremor in the mezzo as it replied: “N-no. I’m just—I’m just -moving about.” - -“Well, for Heaven’s sake go to bed! It’s after two o’clock. I never was -in a house like this in all my life before. It seems to be full of people -crawling round everywhere. I think I’ll come down to your mother’s bed, -after all.” - -“Do,” was the only word I heard as I stole into the servants’ -dining-room, then into the closet with shelves, where I shut the door -softly. A few seconds later I was out on the cool ground, in the dark, -behind the shrub. - -I lay there almost breathlessly, not because I was unable to get up, but -because I couldn’t drag myself away. I wanted to go over the happenings -of the last hour and seal them in my memory. They were both terrible to -me and beautiful. - -I had been there some fifteen minutes when I heard the open window above -me closed gently and the fastening snapped. I knew that again she was -near me, though, as before, she didn’t suspect my presence. I wondered if -the chances of life would ever bring us so close to each other again. - -Above me, where the shrub detached itself a little from the wall of the -house, I could see the stars. Lying on my back, with my head pillowed -on the crook of my arm, I watched them till it seemed to me they began -to pale. At the same time I caught a thinning in the texture of the -darkness. I got up with the silence in which I had lain down. Crossing -the brick-paved yard and striding over the low wall, I was again in the -vacant lot. - -It was not yet dawn, but it was the dark-gray hour which tells that dawn -is coming. I was obliged to take more accurate precautions than before, -as, crushing the tangle of nettle, burdock, fireweed, and blue succory, I -crept along in the shadow of the house wall to regain the empty street. - - - - -_CHAPTER III_ - - -The city was beginning to wake. Mysterious carts and wagons rumbled along -the neighboring avenues. From a parallel street came the buzz and clang -of a lonely early-morning electric car. Running footsteps would have -startled one if they had not been followed by the clinking of peaceful -milk-bottles in back yards. Clanking off into the distance one heard the -tread of solitary pedestrians bent on errands that stirred the curiosity. -Here and there the lurid flames of torches lit up companies of gnomelike -men digging in the roadways. - -Going toward Greeley’s Slip, I skirted the Park, though it made the walk -longer. Under the dark trees men were lying on benches and on the grass, -but for reasons I couldn’t yet analyze I refused to thrust myself among -them. A few hours earlier I would have done this without thinking, as -without fear; but something had happened to me that now made any such -course impossible. - -My immediate need was to get back to poor old Lovey and lie down by -his side. That again was beyond my power to analyze. I suppose it was -something like a homing instinct, and Lovey was all there was to welcome -me. - -“Is that you, sonny?” he asked, sleepily, as I stooped to creep into the -cubby-hole which a chance arrangement of planks made in a pile of lumber. - -“Yes, Lovey.” - -“Glad ye’ve come.” - -When I had stretched myself out I felt him snuggle a little nearer me. - -“You don’t mind, sonny, do you?” - -“No, Lovey. It’s all right. Go to sleep again.” - -For myself, I could do nothing but lie and watch the coming of the -dawn. I could see it beating itself into the darkness long before there -was anything to which one could give the name of light. It was like a -succession of great cosmic throbs, after each of which the veil was a -little more translucent. - -In my nostrils was the sweet, penetrating smell of lumber, subtly laden -with the memories of the days when I was a boy. The Canadian differs from -the American largely, I think, in the closeness of his forest-and-farm -associations. Not that the American hasn’t the farm and the forest, too, -but he has moved farther away from them. The mill, the factory, and the -office have supplanted them—in imagination when not in fact, and in fact -when not in imagination. If the woods call him he has to go to them—for a -week, or two, or three at a time; but he comes back inevitably to a life -in which the woods play little part. The Canadian never leaves that life. -The primeval still enters into his cities and his thoughts. Some day it -may be different; but as yet he is the son of rivers, lakes, and forests. -There is always in him a strain of the _voyageur_. The true Canadian -never ceases to smell balsam or to hear the lapping of water on wild -shores. - -It was balsam that I smelled now. The lapping of water soothed me as the -river, too, began to wake. It woke with a faint noise of paddle-wheels, -followed by a bellow like the call of some sea monster to its mate. -Right below me and close to the slip I heard the measured dip of oars. -Hoarse calls of men, from deck to deck or from deck to dock, had a weird, -watchful sound, as though the darkness were peopled with Flying Dutchmen. -Lights glided up and down the river—which itself remained unseen—mostly -gold lights, but now and then a colored one. Chains of lights fringed the -New Jersey shore, where, far away, sleepless factories threw up dim red -flares. A rising southeast wind not only hid the stars under banks of -clouds, but went whistling eerily round the corners of the lumber-piles. -The scent of pine, and all the pungent, nameless odors of the riverside, -began to be infused with the smell—if it is a smell—of coming rain. - -I can best describe myself as in a kind of trance in which past and -present were merged into one, and in which there seemed to be no period -when two wonderful, burning eyes had not been watching me in pity and -amazement. As long as I lived I knew they would watch me still. In their -light I got my life’s significance. In their light I saw myself as a boy -again, with a boy’s vision of the future. The smell of lumber carried me -back to our old summer home on the banks of the Ottawa, where I had had -my dreams of what I should do when I was big. All boys being patriotic, -they were dreams not merely of myself, but of my country. It worried me -that it was not sufficiently on the great world map, that apart from its -lakes and prairies and cataracts it had no wonders to show mankind. As we -were a traveling family, I was accustomed to wonders in other countries, -and easily annoyed when one set of cousins in New York and another in -England took it for granted that we lived in an Ultima Thule of snow. I -meant to show them the contrary. - -From the beginning my ardors and indignations translated themselves into -stone. I had seen St. Peter’s in one country, St. Paul’s in another, and -Chartres and châteaux in a third. I had seen New York transforming itself -under my very eyes—the change began when I was in my teens—into a town of -prodigious towers which in themselves were symbolical. Then I would go -home to a red-gray city, marvelously placed between river and mountain, -where any departure from its original French austerity was likely to be -in the direction of the exuberant, the unchastened, the fantastic. All -new buildings in Canada, as in most of the States, lacked “school.” - -“School” was, more or less in secret, the preoccupation of my -youth—“school” with some such variation from traditional classic lines as -would create or stimulate the indigenous. I had not yet learned what New -York was to teach me later—that necessity was the mother of art, and that -pure new styles were formed not by any one’s ingenuity or by the caprice -of changing taste, but because human needs demanded them. Rejecting the -art nouveau, which later made its permanent home in Germany, I combined -all the lines in which great buildings had ever been designed, from the -Doric to the Georgian, in the hope of evolving a type which the world -would recognize as distinctively Canadian, and to which I should give my -name. In imagination I built castles, cathedrals and theaters, homes, -hotels and offices. They were in the style to be known as Melburyesque, -and would draw students from all parts of the architectural earth to -Montreal. - -It was not an unworthy dream, and even if I could never have worked it -out I might have made of it something of which not wholly to be ashamed. -But as early as before I went to the Beaux Arts the curse of Canada—the -curse, more or less, of all northern peoples—began to be laid upon me. In -Paris I had some respite from it, but almost as soon as I had hung out my -shingle at home I was suffering again from its cravings. I will not say -that I put up no fight, but I put up no fight commensurate with the evil -I had to face. The result was what I have told you, and for which I now -had to suffer in my soul the most scorching form of recompense. - -The point I found it difficult to decide was as to whether or not I ever -wanted to see Regina Barry again—or whether I had it in me to go back and -show myself to her in the state from which I had fallen more than three -years before. In the end it was that possibility alone which enabled me -to endure the real coming of the dawn. - -For it came—this new day which out of darkness might be bringing me a new -life. - -As I lay with my face turned toward the west I got none of its first -glories. Even on a cloudy morning, with a spattering of rain, I knew -there must be splendors in the east, if no more than gray and lusterless -splendors. Light to a gray world is as magical as hope to a gray heart; -and as I watched the lamps on the New Jersey heights grow wan, while the -river unbared its bosom to the day, that thing came to me which makes -disgrace and shame and humiliation and every other ingredient of remorse -a remedy rather than a poison. - -I myself was hardly aware of the fact till Lovey and I had crept out of -our cubby-hole, because all round us men were going to work. Sleepers in -the open generally rise with daylight, but we had kept longer than usual -to our refuge because we didn’t want to fare forth into the rain. As -sooner or later it would come to a choice between going out and being -kicked out, we decided to move of our own accord. - -I must leave to your imagination the curious sensation of the down and -out in having nothing to do but to get up, shake themselves, and walk -away. On waking after each of these homeless nights it had seemed to me -that the necessity for undressing to go to bed and dressing when one got -up in the morning was the primary distinction between being a man and -being a mere animal. Not to have to undress just to dress again reduced -one to the level of the horse. Stray dogs got up and went off to their -vague leisure just as Lovey and I were doing. Not to wash, not to go -to breakfast, not to have a duty when washing and breakfasting were -done—knocked out from under one all the props that civilization had built -up and deprived one of the right to call oneself a man. - -I think it was this last consideration that had most weight with me as -Lovey and I stood gazing at the multifarious activities of the scene. -There were men in sight, busy with all kinds of occupations. They were -like ants; they were like bees. They came and went and pulled and hauled -and hammered and climbed and dug, and every man’s eyes seemed bent on his -task as if it were the only one in the world. - -“It means two or three dollars a day to ’em if they ain’t,” Lovey -grunted, when I had pointed this fact out to him. “Don’t suppose they’d -work if they didn’t ’ave to, do ye?” - -“I dare say they wouldn’t. But my point is that they do work. It’s -Emerson who says that every man is as lazy as he dares to be, isn’t it?” - -“Oh, anybody could say that.” - -“And in spite of the fact that they’d rather be lazy, they’re all doing -something. Look at them. Look at them in every direction to which your -eyes can turn—droves of them, swarms of them, armies of them—every one -bent on something into which he is putting a piece of himself!” - -“Well, they’ve got ’omes or boardin’-’ouses. It’s easy enough to git a -job when ye can give an address. But when ye carn’t—” - -We were to test that within a minute or two. Fifteen or twenty brownies -were digging in a ditch. Of all the forms of work in sight it seemed that -which demanded the least in the way of special training. - -Approaching a fiercely mustachioed man of clearly defined nationality, I -said, “Say, boss, could you give my buddy and me a job?” - -Rolling toward me a pair of eyes that would have done credit to a bandit -in an opera, he emitted sounds which I can best transcribe as, “Where -d’live?” - -“That’s the trouble,” I answered, truthfully. “We don’t live anywhere and -we should like to.” - -He looked us over. “Beat it,” he commanded, nodding toward the central -quarters of the city. - -“But, boss,” I pleaded, “my buddy and I haven’t got a quarter between us.” - -He pointed with his thumb over his left shoulder. “Getta out.” - -“We haven’t got a nickel,” I insisted; “we haven’t got a cent.” - -“Cristoforo, ca’ da cop.” - -As Cristoforo sprang from the ditch to look for a policeman, Lovey and I -shuffled off again into the rain. - -We stood for a minute at the edge of one of the long, sordid avenues -where a sordid life was surging up and down. Men, women, and children -of all races and nearly all ranks were hurrying to and fro, each bent on -an errand. It was the fact that life provided an errand for each of them -that suddenly struck me as the most wonderful thing in creation. There -was no one so young or so old, no one so ignorant or so alien, that he -was not going from point to point with a special purpose in view. Among -the thousands and the tens of thousands who would in the course of the -morning pass the spot on which we stood, there would probably not be one -who hadn’t dressed, washed, and breakfasted as a return for his daily -contribution to the common good. Never before and hardly ever since did -I have such a sense of life’s infinite and useful complexity. There was -no height to which it didn’t go up; there was no depth to which it didn’t -go down. No one was left out but the absolute wastrel like myself, who -couldn’t be taken in. - -Though it was not a cold day, the steadiness of the drizzle chilled me. -The dampness of the pavements got through the worn soles of my boots, -and I suppose it did the same with Lovey’s. The lack of food made the -old man white, and that of drink set him to trembling. The fact that he -hadn’t shaved for the past day or two gave his sodden face a grisly look -that was truly appalling. Though the pale-blue eyes were extinct, as if -the spirit in them had been quenched, they were turned toward me with the -piteous appeal I had sometimes seen in those of a blind dog. - -It was for me to take the lead, and yet I couldn’t wholly see in what -direction to take it. While I was pondering, Lovey made a variety of -suggestions. - -“There doesn’t seem to be nothink for it, sonny, but to go and repent -for a day or two. I ’ate to do it; kind o’ deceivin’ like, it is; but -they’ll let us dry ourselves and give us a feed if we ’ave a sense of -sin.” - -I wondered if he had in mind anything better than what I had myself. - -“Where?” - -He took the negative side first. - -“We couldn’t go to the Saviour, because I’ve put it over on ’em twice -this year already. And the ’Omeless Men won’t do nothink for ye onless -you make it up in menial work.” - -“I won’t try either of them,” I said, briefly. - -“Don’t blame you, sonny, not a bit. Kind o’ makes a hypercrite of a man, -it does. I ’ate to be a hypercrite, only when I carn’t ’elp it.” - -He went on to enumerate other agencies for the raising of the fallen, of -most of which he had tested the hospitality during the past few years. -I rejected them as he named them, one by one. To this rejection Lovey -subscribed with the unreasoning dislike all outcast men feel for the hand -stretched down to them from higher up. Nothing but starvation would have -forced him to any of these thresholds; and for me even starvation would -not work the miracle. - -“What’s the matter with the Down and Out?” I sprang on him, suddenly. - -He groaned. “Oh, sonny! It’s just—just what I was afeared of.” - -I turned and looked down into his poor, bleared, suffering old face. - -“Why?” - -“Because—because—oncet ye try that they’ll—they’ll never let ye go.” - -“But suppose you don’t want them to let you go?” - -He backed away from me. If the dead eyes could waken to expression, they -did it then. - -“Oh, sonny!” He shook as if palsied. “Ye don’t know ’em, my boy. I’ve -summered and wintered ’em—by lookin’ on. I’ve had pals of my own—” - -“And what are they doing now, those pals of your own?” - -“God knows; I don’t. Yes, I do; some of ’em. I see ’em round, goin’ to -work as reg’lar as reg’lar, and no more spunk in ’em than in a goldfish -when ye shakes yer finger at their bowl.” - -Afraid of exciting suspicion by standing still, we began drifting with -the crowd. - -“Is there much that you can call spunk in you and me?” - -Again he lifted those piteous, drunken eyes. “We’re fellas together, -ain’t we? We’re buddies. I ’ear ye say so yerself when you was speakin’ -to that Eyetalian.” - -I have to confess that with his inflection something warm crept into my -cold heart. You have to be as I was to know what the merest crumbs of -trust and affection mean. A dog as stray and homeless as myself might -have been more to me; but since I had no dog.... - -“Yes, Lovey,” I answered, “we’re buddies, all right. But for that very -reason don’t you think we ought to try to help each other up?” - -He stopped, to turn to me with hands crossed on his breast in a spirit of -petition. - -“But, sonny, you don’t mean—you carn’t mean—on—on the wagon?” - -“I mean on anything that’ll get us out of this hell of a hole.” - -“Oh, well, if it’s only that, I’ve—I’ve been in tighter places than this -before—and—and look at me now. There’s ways. Ye don’t have to jump at -nothink onnat’rel. If ye’d only ’ave listened to me yesterday—but it -ain’t too late even now. What about to-night? Just two old ladies—no -violence—nothink that’d let you in for nothink dishonorable.” - -“No, Lovey.” - -We drifted on again. He spoke in a tone of bitter reproach. - -“Ye’d rather go to the Down and Out! It’ll be the down, all right, sonny; -but there’ll be no out to it. Ye’ll be a prisoner. They’ll keep at ye -and at ye till yer soul won’t be yer own. Now all these other places ye -can put it over on ’em. They’re mostly ladies and parsons and greenhorns -that never ’ad no experience. A little repentance and they’ll fall for it -every time. Besides”—he turned to me with another form of appeal—“ye’re a -Christian, ain’t ye? A little repentance now and then’ll do ye good. It’s -like something laid by for a rainy day. I’ve tried it, so I know. Ye’re -young, sonny. Ye don’t understand. And when it’ll tide ye over a time -like this—they’ll git ye a job, very likely—and ye can backslide by and -by when it’s safe. Why, it’s all as easy as easy.” - -“It isn’t as easy as easy, Lovey, because you say you don’t like it -yourself.” - -“I like it better than the Down and Out, where they won’t let ye -backslide no more. Why, I was in at Stinson’s one day and there was a -chap there—Rollins was his name, a plumber—just enj’yin’ of himself -like—nothink wrong—and come to find out he’d been one of their men. Well, -what do ye think, sonny? A fellow named Pyncheon blew in—awful ’ard -drinker for a young ’and, he used to be—and he sat down beside Rollins -and pled with ’im and plod with ’im, and—well, ye don’t see Rollins -round Stinson’s no more. I tell ye, sonny, ye carn’t put nothing over on -’em. They knows all the tricks and all the trade. Give me kind-’earted -ladies; give me ministers of the gospel; give me the stool o’ repentance -two or three times a month; but don’t give me fellas that because they’ve -knocked off the booze theirselves wants every one else to knock it off, -too, and don’t let it be a free country.” - -We came to the corner to which I had been directing our seemingly aimless -steps. It was a corner where the big red and green jars that had once -been the symbols for medicines within now stood as a sign for soda-water -and ice-cream. - -“Let’s go in here.” - -Lovey hung back. “What’s the use of that? That ain’t no saloon.” - -“Come on and let us try.” - -Pushing open the screen door, I made him pass in before me. We found -ourselves in front of a white counter fitted up like a kind of bar. As a -bar of any sort was better than none, Lovey’s face took on a leaden shade -of brightness. - -In the way of a guardian all we could see at first was a white-coated -back bent behind the counter. When it straightened up it was topped by a -friendly, boyish face. - -Lovey leaped back, pulling me by the arm. - -“That’s that very young Pyncheon I was a-tellin’ you of,” he whispered, -tragically; “him what got Rollins, the plumber, out of Stinson’s. Let’s -’ook it, sonny! He won’t do us no good.” - -But the boyish face had already begun to beam. - -“Hel-lo, old sport! Haven’t seen you in a pair of blue moons. Put it -there!” - -The welcome was the more disconcerting because in the mirror behind -Pyncheon I could see myself in contrast to his clean, young, manly -figure. I have said I was shabby without being hideously so, but that was -before I had slept a fourth night on the bare boards of a lumber-yard, -to be drenched with rain in the morning. It was also before I had gone -a fourth morning without shaving, and with nothing more thorough in the -way of a wash than I could steal in a station lavatory. The want of food, -the want of drink, to say nothing of the unspeakable anguish within, had -stamped me, moreover, with something woebegone and spectral which, now -that I saw it reflected in the daylight, shook me to the soul. - -I never was so timid, apologetic, or shamefaced in my life as when I -grasped the friendly hand stretched out to me across the counter. I -had no smile to return to Pyncheon’s. I had no courtesies to exchange. -Not till that minute had I realized that I was outside the system of -fellowship and manhood, and that even a handshake was a condescension. - -“Pyn,” I faltered, hoarsely, “I want you to take me to the Down and Out. -Will you?” - -“Sure I will!” He glanced at Lovey. “And I’ll take old Lovikins, too.” - -“Don’t you be so fresh with your names, young man!” Lovey spoke up, -tartly. “’Tain’t the first time I’ve seen you—” - -“And I hope it won’t be the last,” Pyn laughed. - -“That’ll depend on how polite ye’re able to make yerself.” - -“Oh, you can count me in on politeness, old sport, so long as you come to -the Down and Out.” - -“I’ll go to the Down and Out when I see fit. I ain’t goin’ to be dragged -there by the ’air of the ’ead, as I see you drag poor Rollins, the -plumber, a month or two ago.” - -“Quit your kiddin’, Lovey. How am I going to drag you by the ’air of the -’ead when you’re as bald as a door-knob? Say, you fellows,” he went on, -pulling one of the levers before him, “I’m going to start you off right -now with a glass of this hot chocolate. The treat’s on me. By the time -you’ve swallowed it Milligan will be here, and I can get off long enough -to take you over to Vandiver Street.” He dashed in a blob of whipped -cream. “Here, old son, this is for you; and there’s more where it came -from.” - -“I didn’t come in ’ere for nothink of the kind,” Lovey protested. “I -didn’t know we was comin’ in ’ere at all. You take it, sonny.” - -“Go ahead, Lovikins,” Mr. Pyncheon insisted. “’E’s to ’ave a bigger one,” -he mimicked. “Awful good for the ’air of the ’ead. ’Ll make it sprout -like an apple-tree—I beg your pardon, happle-tree—in May.” - -Before Pyncheon had finished, the primitive in poor Lovey had overcome -both pride and reluctance, and the glass of chocolate was pretty well -drained. The sight of his sheer animal avidity warned me not to betray -myself. While Pyncheon explained to Milligan and made his preparations -for conducting us, I carried my chocolate to the less important part of -the shop, given up to the sale of tooth-brushes and patent medicines, to -consume it at ease and with dignity. - -Pyncheon having changed to a coat, in the buttonhole of which I noticed -a little silver star, and a straw hat with a faint silver line in the -hatband, we were ready to depart. - -“I’ll go with ye, sonny,” Lovey explained; “but I ain’t a-goin’ to stay. -No Down and Out for mine.” - -“You wouldn’t leave me, Lovey?” I begged, as I replaced the empty glass -on the counter. “I’m looking to you to help me to keep straight.” - -He edged up to me, laying a shaking hand on my arm. - -“Oh, if it’s that— But,” he added more cheerfully, “we don’t have to stay -no longer than we don’t want to. There’s no law by which they can keep us -ag’in’ our will, there ain’t.” - -“No, Lovey. If we want to go we’ll go—but we’re buddies, aren’t we? And -we’ll stick by each other.” - -“Say, you fellows! Quick march! I’ve only got half an hour to get there -and back.” - -Out in the street, Lovey and I hung behind our guide. He was too brisk -and smart and clean for us to keep step with. Alone we could, as we -phrased it, get by. With him the contrast called attention to the fact -that we were broken and homeless men. - -“You go ahead, Pyn—” I began. - -“Aw, cut that out!” he returned, scornfully. “Wasn’t I a worse looker -than you, two and a half years ago? Old Colonel Straight picked me up -from a bench in Madison Square—the very bench from which he’d been picked -up himself—and dragged me down to Vandiver Street like a nurse’ll drag a -boy that kicks like blazes every step of the way.” - -As we were now walking three abreast, with Pyn in the middle, I asked the -question that was most on my mind: - -“Was it hard, Pyn—cutting the booze out?” - -“Sure it was hard! What do you think? You’re not on the way to a picnic. -For the first two weeks I fought like hell. If the other guys hadn’t sat -on my head—well, you and old Lovey wouldn’t have had no glass of hot -chocolate this morning.” - -“I suppose the first two weeks are the worst.” - -“And the best. If you’re really out to put the job through you find -yourself toughening to it every day.” - -“And you mean by being out to put the job through?” - -“Wanting to get the durned thing under you so as you can stand on it and -stamp it down. Booze’ll make two kinds of repenters, and I guess you guys -stand for both. Old Lovey here”—he pinched my companion’s arm—“he’ll -forsake his bad habits just long enough to get well fed up, a clean shirt -on his back, and his nerves a bit quieted down. But he’ll always be -looking forward to the day when he’ll be tempted again, and thinking of -the good time he’ll have when he falls.” - -“If you’ll mind yer own business, young Pyn—” Lovey began, irritably. - -“Then there’s another kind,” this experienced reformer went on, -imperturbably, “what’ll have a reason for cutting the blasted thing out, -like he’d cut out a cancer or anything else that’ll kill him. I’ve always -known you was that kind, Slim, and I told you so nearly a year ago.” - -“I seen ye,” Lovey put in. “Was speakin’ about it only yesterday. Knew -you was after no good. I warned ye, didn’t I, Slim?” - -Curiosity prompted me to say, “What made you think I had a motive for -getting over it?” - -“Looks. You can always tell what a man’s made for by the kind of looker -he is. As a looker you’re some swell. Lovikins here, now—” - -“If I can’t do as well as the likes o’ you, ye poor little snipe of a -bartender for babies—” - -“What’ll you bet you can’t?” Pyn asked, good-naturedly. - -“I ain’t a bettin’ man, but I can show!” - -“Well, you show, and I’ll lay fifty cents against you. You’ll be umpire, -Slim, and hold the stakes. Is that a go?” - -“I don’t ’ave no truck o’ that kind,” Lovey declared, loftily. “I’m a -doer, I am—when I get a-goin’. I don’t brag beforehand—not like some.” - -I was still curious, however, about myself. - -“And what did you make out of my looks, Pyn?” - -He stopped, stood off, and eyed me. - -“Do you know what you’re like now?” - -“I know I’m not like anything human.” - -“You’re like a twenty-dollar bill that’s been in every pawnshop, and -every bar, and every old woman’s stocking, and every old bum’s pocket, -and is covered with dirt and grease and microbes till you wouldn’t hardly -hold it in your hand; but it’s still a twenty-dollar bill—that’ll buy -twenty dollars’ worth every time—and whenever you like you can get gold -for it.” - -“Thank you, Pyn,” I returned, humbly, as we went on our way again. -“That’s the whitest thing that has ever been said to me.” - -Before we reached Vandiver Street, Pyn had given us two bits of -information, both of which I was glad to receive. - -One was entirely personal, being a brief survey of his fall and rise. -The son of a barber in one of the small towns near New York, he had gone -to work with a druggist on leaving the high school. His type, as he -described it, had been from the beginning that of the cheap sport. Cheap -sports had been his companions, and before he was twenty-one he had -married a pretty manicure girl from his father’s establishment. He had -married her while on a spree, and after the spree had repented. Repenting -chiefly because he wasn’t earning enough to keep a wife, he threw the -blame for his mistake on her. When a baby came he was annoyed; when a -second baby came he was desperate; when a third baby promised to appear -he was overwhelmed. Since the expenses of being a cheap sport couldn’t be -reduced, he saw no resource but flight to New York, leaving his wife to -fend for herself and her children. - -Folly having made of him a hard drinker, remorse made of him a harder -one. And since no young fellow of twenty-four is callous enough to take -wife-desertion with an easy conscience, my own first talks with him had -been filled with maudlin references to a kind of guilt I hadn’t at the -time understood. All I knew was that from bad he had gone to worse, -and from worse he was on the way to the worst of all, when old Colonel -Straight rescued him. - -The tale of that rescue unfolded some of the history of the Down and -Out. As to that, Pyn laid the emphasis on the fact that the club was -not a mission—that is, it was not the effort of the safe to help those -who are in danger; it was the effort of those who are in danger to help -themselves. Built up on unassisted effort, it was self-respecting. No -bribes had ever been offered it, and no persuasions but such as a man who -has got out of hell can bring to bear on another who is still frying in -the fire. Its action being not from the top downward, but from the bottom -upward, it had a native impulse to expansion. - -Its inception had been an accident. Two men who had first met as Pyncheon -and I had first met had lost sight of each other for several years. At -a time when each had worked his salvation out they had come together -by accident on Broadway, and later had by another accident become -responsible for a third. Finding him one night lying on the pavement of -a lonely street, they had seemingly had no choice but to pick him up and -carry him to a cheap but friendly hostelry which they knew would not -refuse him. Here they had kept him till he had sobered up and taken the -job they found for him. Watching over him for months, they finally had -the pleasure of restoring him to his wife and seeing a broken home put on -its feet again. This third man, in gratitude for what had been done for -him, went after a fourth, and the fourth after a fifth, and so the chain -was flung out. By the time their number had increased to some twenty-five -or thirty Providence offered them a dwelling-place. - -The dwelling-place, with the few apparently worthless articles it -contained, was all the club had ever accepted as a gift. Even that -might have been declined had it not been for the fact that it was going -begging. When old Miss Smedley died it was found that she had left her -residence in Vandiver Place as a legacy to St. David’s Church, across -the way. She had left it, however, as an empty residence. As an empty -residence it was in a measure a white elephant on the hands of a legatee -that had no immediate use for it. - -St. David’s Church, you will remember, was not now the fashionable house -of prayer it had been in its early days. Time was when Vandiver Place was -the heart of exclusive New York. In the ’forties and ’fifties no section -of the city had been more select. In the ’sixties and ’seventies, when -Doctor Grace was rector of St. David’s, it had become time-honored. In -the ’eighties and ’nineties the old families began to move up-town and -the boarding-houses to creep in; and in the early years of the twentieth -century the residents ceded the ground entirely to the manufacturer of -artificial flowers and the tailor of the ready-to-wear. In 1911 the -line of houses that made it a cul-de-sac was torn down and a broad -thoroughfare cut through a congeries of slums, the whole being named -Vandiver Street. Vandiver Place was gone; and with it went Miss Smedley. - -Rufus Legrand, who succeeded Doctor Grace as rector of St. David’s, -offered Miss Smedley’s house as a home for the Down and Out; but it was -Beady Lamont, a husky furniture-mover and ardent member of the club, who -suggested this philanthropic opportunity to Rufus Legrand. - -“Say, reverent, my buddy’s give in at last, on’y I haven’t got no place -to put him. But, say, reverent, there’s that old house I helped to move -the sticks out of two or three months ago. There’s three beds left in it, -and a couple of chairs. Me and him could bunk there for a few nights, -while he got straightened out, and—” - -“But you’d have no bedclothes.” - -“Say, reverent, we don’t want no bedclothes. Sleepin’ in the Park’ll -learn you how to do without sheets.” - -“My daughter, Mrs. Ralph Coningsby, could undoubtedly supply you with -some.” - -“Say, reverent, that ain’t our way. We don’t pass the buck on no one. -What we haven’t got we do without till we can pay for it ourselves. But -that old house ain’t doin’ nothing but sit on its haunches; and if I -could just get Tiger into the next bed to mine at night—we don’t want no -bedclothes nor nothing but what we lay down in—and take him along with me -when I go to work by day, so as to keep my search-lights on him, like—” - -Rufus Legrand had already sufficiently weighed the proposal. - -“I’m sure I don’t see why you shouldn’t sleep in the old place as long as -you like, Beady, if you can only make yourselves comfortable.” - -“Say, reverent, now you’re shouting.” - -So another accident settled the fate of Miss Smedley’s lifelong home; and -before many weeks the Down and Out was in full possession. - -It was in full possession of the house with the refuse the heirs had -not considered good enough to take away—three iron bedsteads that the -servants had used; an equal number of humble worn-out mattresses; two -tolerably solid wooden chairs, three that needed repairs, which were -speedily given them; some crockery more or less chipped and cracked; and -a stained steel-engraving of Franklin in the _salon_ of Marie Antoinette. - -True to its principles, the club accepted neither gifts of money nor -contributions in kind. Its members were all graduates of the school of -doing without. To those who came there a roof over the head was a luxury, -while to have a friend to stand by them and care whether they went to the -devil or not was little short of a miracle. - -But by the time Billy Pyncheon had been brought in by old Colonel -Straight, gratitude, sacrifice, and enthusiasm on the part of one or -another of the members had adequately fitted up this house to which Lovey -and I were on the way. It had become, too, the one institution of which -the saloon-keepers of my acquaintance were afraid. We were all afraid of -it. It had worked so many wonders among our pals that we had come to look -on it as a home of the necromantic. Missions of any kind we knew how to -cope with; but in the Down and Out there was a sort of wizardry that -tamed the wildest hearts among us, cast out devils, and raised the nearly -dead. I myself for a year or more—ever since I had seen the spell it had -wrought on Pyn, for whom from the first I had felt a sympathy—had been -haunted by the dread of it; and here I was at the door. - -The door when we got to it was something of a disappointment. It was at -the head of a flight of old-time brownstone steps, and was just like any -other door. About it was nothing of the magical or cabalistic Lovey and I -had been half expecting. - -More impressive was the neat little man who opened to our ring. He was a -wan, wistful, smiling little figure of sixty-odd, on whom all the ends of -the world seemed to have come. He was like a man who has been dead and -buried and has come to life again—but who shows he has been dead. If I -had to look like that.... - -But I took comfort in the thought of Pyn. Pyn showed nothing. He was like -one of the three holy men who went through Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace—the -smell of fire had not passed on him. A heartier, healthier, merrier -fellow it would have been difficult to find. - -He entered now with the air of authority which belongs to the member of a -club. - -“Fellows had their breakfast, Spender?” - -Spender was all welcome, of the wistful, yearning kind. - -“The men at work is gone; but the guys under restraint is still at table.” - -“Mr. Christian not here yet?” - -“Never gets here before nine; and it’s not half past seven yet.” - -Pyn turned to me. “Say, do you want to go in and feed, or will you wash -up first, or go to bed, or what?” - -With this large liberty of choice I asked if we could do whatever we -liked. It was Spender who explained. - -“That’s the rule for new arrivals, unless they’ve got to be put under -restraint at once.” - -“I don’t want to be put under no restraint,” Lovey declared, indignantly. - -“That’ll be all right,” Spender replied, kindly, “unless there’s vermin—” - -Lovey jumped. - -“See here, now! Don’t you begin no such immodest talk to me.” - -“There, there, Lovikins,” Pyn broke in. “Spender don’t mean no harm. All -sorts have to come to a place like this. But when we see a gentleman we -treat him like a gentleman. All Spender wants to know is this, Is it eats -for you first, or a bath?” - -“And I don’t want no bath,” Lovey declared, proudly. - -“Then it’ll be eats. Quick march! I’ve got to beat it back to my job.” - -Pyn’s introduction of us to those already in the dining-room was simple. - -“This is Lovey. This is Slim. You guys’ll make ’em feel at home.” - -Making us feel at home consisted in moving along the table so as to give -us room. In words there was no response to Pyn, who withdrew at once, nor -was there more than a cursory inspection of us with the eyes. Whatever -was kindly was in the atmosphere, and that was perceptible. - -As we sat before two empty places, one of our new companions rose, went -to the dresser behind us, and brought us each a plate, a spoon, a knife, -and a cup and saucer. A big man went to the kitchen door and in a voice -like thunder called out, “Mouse!” - -By the time he had returned to his place a stumpy individual with a big -red mustache and a limp appeared on the threshold. An explanation of the -summons was given him when a third of our friends pointed at us with a -spoonful of oatmeal porridge before he put it in his mouth. - -Mouse withdrew into the kitchen, coming back with two basins of porridge, -which he placed, steaming hot, before us. Presently, too, he filled our -cups with coffee. Bread and butter, sugar and milk, were all on the -table. The meal went on in silence, except for the smacking of lips and -the clinking of spoons on the crockeryware. - -Of our fellow-guests I can only say that they presented different -phases of the forlorn. The man next to me was sallow, hatchet-faced, -narrow-breasted, weak of physique, and looked as if he might have been a -tailor. His hair was a shock of unkempt black curls, and his dark eyes -the largest and longest and most luminous I ever saw in a man. In their -nervous glance they made me think of a horse’s eyes, especially when he -rolled them toward me timidly. - -Opposite was a sandy, freckled-face type, whom I easily diagnosed as a -Scotchman. Light hair, light eyebrows, and a heavy reddish mustache set -off a face scored with a few deep wrinkles, and savage like that of a -beast fretted with a sense of helplessness. The shaking hand that passed -the bread to me was muscular, freckled, and covered with coarse, reddish -hairs. I put him down as a gardener. - -At the head of the table was a huge, unwieldy fellow who looked as if -he had all run to fat, but who, as I afterward learned, was a mass of -muscle and sinew, like a Japanese wrestler. He had bloated cheeks and -bloated hands, and a voice so big and bass that when he spoke, as he -did on going to the door to summon Mouse, he almost shook the dishes on -the dresser. He proved to be, too, a pal of Beady Lamont’s, and as a -piano-mover by profession he frequented Beady’s spheres. - -At the big man’s right was a poor little whippersnapper, not more than -five foot two, who looked as if a puff would blow him away; and opposite -him a tall, spare, fine-looking Irishman, a hospital attendant, whose -face would have been full of humor had it not been convulsed for the time -being with a sense of mortal anguish. It was he who had brought us our -dishes and took pains to see that our needs were supplied. - -No more than any of the others were we eager for conversation. The fact -that we were having good warm food served in a more or less regular -way was enough to occupy all that was uppermost in our thoughts. Poor -Lovey ate as he had drunk the chocolate half an hour before, with a -greed that was almost terrible. Once more I might have done the same -had I not taken his example as a warning. Not that anything I did would -have attracted attention in that particular gathering. Each man’s gaze -was turned inward. His soul’s tragedy absorbed him to the exclusion of -everything else. Reaction from the stupor of excess brought nothing but -a sense of woe. There was woe on all faces. There would have been woe in -all thoughts if conscious thought had not been outside the range of these -drugged and stultified faculties. - -What was more active than anything else was a blind fellow-feeling. They -did little things for one another. They did little watchful things for -Lovey and me. They even quarreled over their kindnesses like children -eager to make themselves useful. - -“You’ll want to know where the barth-room is,” the timid tailor said to -me as we rose from the table. “I’ll show you.” - -There was a snarl from the whippersnapper across the way. - -“Aw, put your lid on, Headlights. How long have you been showin’ -barth-rooms in this here shebang?” He beckoned to me. “You come along o’ -me, Slim—” - -It was the Irishman who intervened to keep the peace. - -“Listen to Daisy now, will you? He’s like a fox-terrier that owns the -house and grounds and barks at every wan who goes by. Look now, Daisy! -You take this ould gent up to the bath-room on the top floor; and you, -Headlights, show Slim to the one on the second floor, and every wan o’ -you’ll have a bite at the cake.” - -With this peaceable division of the honors we started off. - -I must describe the club as very humble. The rooms themselves, as was -natural with an old New York residence, did not lack dignity. Though too -narrow for their height, they had admirable cornices and some exquisite -ceiling medallions. It is probable, too, that in days when there were no -skyscrapers in the neighborhood the house was light enough, but now it -wore a general air of dimness. The furnishings were just what you might -have expected from the efforts of very poor men in giving of their small -superfluity. There were plenty of plain wooden chairs, and a sufficiency -of tables to match them. In the two down-stairs sitting-rooms, which -must once have been Miss Smedley’s front and back drawing-rooms, there -were benches against the wall. A roll-top desk, which I learned was the -official seat of Mr. Christian, was so placed as to catch the light from -Vandiver Street. A plain, black, wooden cross between the two front -windows, and Franklin in the _salon_ of Marie Antoinette in the place -of honor over a fine old white marble mantelpiece, completed the two -reception-rooms. - -The floor above was given over to the dormitories for outsiders, and -contained little more than beds. They were small iron beds, made up -without counterpanes. As every man made his own, the result would -not have passed the inspection of a high-class chambermaid, but they -satisfied those who lay down in them. Since outsiders came in, like -Lovey and me, with little or nothing in the way of belongings, it was -unnecessary to make further provision for their wardrobes than could be -found in the existing closets and shelves. In the front bedroom, which -I suppose must have been Miss Smedley’s, there were nine small beds; in -the room back of that there were seven; and in a small room over the -kitchen, given up to the men positively under restraint, there were five. -Twenty-one outsiders could thus be cared for at a time. - -On the third floor were the dormitories for club members—men who had kept -sober for three months and more, and who wore a star of a color denoting -the variety of their achievements. On this floor, too, was a billiard, -card, and smoking room, accessible to any one, even to outsiders, who had -kept sober for three weeks. On the top floor of all were a few bedrooms, -formerly those of Miss Smedley’s servants, reserved for the occasional -occupancy of such grandees as had preserved their integrity for three -years and more; and here, too, was the sacred place known as “the -lounge,” to which none were admitted who didn’t wear the gold or silver -star representing sobriety for at least a year. - -The whole was, therefore, a carefully arranged hierarchy in which one -mounted according to one’s merit. Little Spender wore the gold star, -indicating a five years’ fight with the devil; and Mouse, the cook, a -blue one, which meant that he had been victorious for three months. -All others in the club when Lovey and I arrived were outsiders like -ourselves. Outsiders gave their word to stay a week, generally for the -purpose of sobering up, but beyond that nothing was asked of them. At the -beginning of the second week they could either continue their novitiate -or go. - -This information was given me by Spender as we stood on the threshold of -the bath-room before I passed in. When the tale was ended, however, the -Scotchman, who had taken little or no part in our reception, pushed by me -and entered. - -“You’ll be wanting a shave,” he said, in explanation of his rudeness. -“There are my things”—he got down on all-fours to show me a safety razor -and a broken cup containing a brush and shaving-soap, hidden behind -one of the legs of the bath-tub—“and you’ll oblige me by putting them -back. Daisy, the wee bye you saw at the table, is doing the same by -your chum. I make no doubt your own things have been held in your last -rooming-house.” - -When I had admitted that this was exactly the case and had thanked my -friends for their courtesies, they withdrew, leaving me to my toilet. - -After the good meal the bath was a genuine luxury. It was a decent -bath-room, kept by the men, as all the house was kept, in a kind of dingy -cleanliness. Cleanliness, I found, was not only a principle of the club; -it was one of the first indications that those who came in for shelter -gave of a survival of self-respect. Some of their efforts in that way -were amusing or pathetic, as the case might be, but they were always -human and touching. - -While shaving I had an inspiration that was to have some effect on what -happened to me afterward. I decided to let my mustache grow. As it grew -strongly in any case, a four days’ absence of the razor had given my -upper lip a deep walnut tinge, and, should I leave the club after the -week to which I had tacitly pledged myself by coming there at all, I -should look different from when I entered. To look different was the -first of the obscure and violent longings of which my heart was full. It -would be the nearest possible thing to getting away from my old self. Not -to be the same man at all as the one who had exchanged those few strange -sentences with Regina Barry seemed to be the goal toward which I was -willing to struggle at any cost of sacrifice. - -Having bathed and shaved, I was not an ill-looking fellow till it -came to putting on my shirt again. Any man who has worn a shirt for -forty-eight hours in a city or on a train knows what a horror it becomes -in the exposed spots on the chest and about the wrists. I had had but -one shirt for a week and more—and but the one soft collar. You can see -already, then, that in spite of some success in smartening up my damp and -threadbare suit I left the bath-room looking abject. - -I was not, however, so abject as Lovey when I found him again in the -front sitting-room down-stairs. - -In the back sitting-room our table companions were all arranged in a row -against the wall. In spite of the fact that there were plenty of chairs, -they sat huddled together on one bench; and though there was tobacco, -as there were books, papers, and magazines, they sought no occupation. -When I say that they could have smoked and didn’t, the wrench that had -been given to their normal state of mind will be apparent. Close up to -one another they pressed, the Scotchman against the piano-mover, and the -piano-mover against the wee bye Daisy, like lovebirds on the perch of a -cage or newly captured animals too terrified even to snap. - -Without comment on any one’s part, Lovey roamed the front sitting-room -alone. - -“I say, sonny,” he began, fretfully, as I entered, “this ain’t no place -for you and me.” - -I tried to buck him up. - -“Oh, well, it’s only for a week. We can stand it for that long. They’re -very civil to us.” - -“But they’re watchin’ of us already like so many cats.” - -“Oh no, they’re not. They’re only kind.” - -“I don’t want none o’ that sort of kindness. What do ye think that -two-foot-four of a Daisy says to me when ’e offered me the loan of ’is -razor? ‘Lovey,’ says ’e, ‘I’m goin’ to ’elp ye to knock off the booze. -It’ll be terr’ble hard work for an old man like you.’ ‘To ’ell with you!’ -says I. ‘Ye ain’t goin’ to ’elp me to do no such thing, because knock it -off is somethink I don’t mean.’ ‘Well, what did you come in ’ere for?’ -says ’e. ‘I come in ’ere,’ I says to ’im, ‘because my buddy come in ’ere; -and wherever ’e goes I’ll foller ’im.’” - -“Then that’s understood, Lovey,” I said, cheerfully. “If I go at the end -of the week, you go; and if I stay, you stay. We’ll be fellas together.” - -He shook his head mournfully. - -“If you go at the end of the week, sonny, I go, too; but if you -stay—well, I don’t know. I’ve been in jails, but I ’ain’t never been -in no such place as this—nobody with no spunk. Look at ’em in there -now—nothink but a bunch of simps.” - -“You won’t leave me, Lovey?” - -The extinct-blue eyes were raised to mine. - -“No, sonny; I won’t leave ye—not for ’ardly nothink.” - - - - -_CHAPTER IV_ - - -I don’t know how we got the idea that before we went any farther we -should be interviewed by Andy Christian, but I suppose somebody must -have told us. We had heard of him, of course. He was, in fact, the -master wizard whose incantations were wrecking our institutions. It was -a surprise to us, therefore, to see, about nine o’clock, a brisk little -elderly man blow in and blow past us—the metaphor is the most expressive -I can use—with hardly more recognition than a nod. - -“Hello, fellows!” he called out, as he passed through the hall and -glanced in at Lovey and me in the sitting-room. “Hello, boys!” he said, -casually, through the second door, to the other group, after which he -went on his way to talk domestic matters with Mouse in the kitchen. - -He seemed a mild-mannered man to have done all the diabolical work we -had laid at his door. Neatly dressed in a summery black-and-white check, -with a panama hat, he was like any other of the million business men who -were on their way to New York offices that morning. It was only when he -came back from the kitchen and was in conference with some of the men in -the back parlor that I caught in him that look of dead and buried tragedy -with which I was to grow so familiar in other members of the club. -Superficially he was clean-shaven, round-featured, rubicund, and kindly, -with a quirk about the lips and a smile in his twinkling gray eyes that -seemed always about to tell you the newest joke. His manner toward Lovey -and me, when he came into the front sitting-room, was that of having -known us all our lives and of resuming a conversation that only a few -minutes before had been broken off. - -“Let me see! Your name is—?” - -He looked at Lovey as though he knew his name perfectly well, only that -for the second it had slipped his memory. - -Lovey went forward to the roll-top desk at which Mr. Christian had seated -himself, and whispered, confidentially, “My name is Lovey, Your Honor.” - -The quirk about the lips seemed to execute a little caper. - -“Is that your first name or your second?” - -“It’s my only name.” - -“You mean that you have another name, but you don’t want to tell it?” - -“I mean that if I ’ave another name it ain’t nobody’s business but mine.” - -The head of the club was now writing in a ledger, his eye following the -movement of his pen. - -“I see that you’re a man of decided opinions.” - -“I am—begging Your Honor’s parding,” Lovey declared, with dignity. - -“That’ll help you in the fight you’re going to put up.” Before Lovey -could protest that he wasn’t going to put up no fight the gentle voice -went on, “And you seem like a respectable man, too.” - -“I’m as respectable as anybody else—at ’eart. I don’t use bad langwidge, -nor keep bad company, nor chew, nor spit tobacco juice over nothink, and -I keeps myself to myself.” - -“All that’ll be a great help to you. What’s been your occupation?” - -“’atter.” - -As our host was less used to the silent “h” than I, it became necessary -for me to say, “Hatter, sir.” - -I suppose it was my voice. Christian looked up quickly, studying me with -a long, kind, deep regard. Had I been walking two thousand years ago on -the hills of Palestine and met Some One on the road, he might have looked -at me like that. - -The glance fell. Lovey’s interrogation continued. - -“And would you like that kind of job again—if we could get it for -you—ultimately?” - -“I don’t want no job, Your Honor. I can look after myself. I didn’t come -in ’ere of my own free will—nor to pass the buck—nor nothink.” - -There was an inflection of surprise, perhaps of disapproval in the tone. - -“You didn’t come in here of your own free will? I think it’s the first -time that’s been said in the history of the club. May I ask how it -happened?” - -I couldn’t help thinking that I ought to intervene. - -“He came in on my account, sir,” I said, getting up and going forward to -the desk. “He’s trying to keep me straight.” - -“That is, he’ll keep straight if you do?” - -“That’s it, sir, exactly.” - -He continued to write, speaking without looking up at us. - -“Then I can’t think of anything more to your credit, Mr.—Mr. Lovey—is -that it?” - -“I don’t want no mister, Your Honor—not now I don’t.” - -“When a man takes so fine a stand as you’re taking toward this young -fellow he’s a mister to me. I respect him and treat him with respect. I -see that we’re meant to understand each other and get on together.” - -Poor Lovey had nothing to say. The prospect of temptation and fall being -removed by his own heroism rendered him both proud and miserable at once. - -When the writing was finished the kind eyes were again lifted toward me. -Though the inspection was so mild, it pierced me through and through. It -still seemed to cover me as he said: “You needn’t tell me your real name -if you don’t want to—but in general we prefer it.” - -“I’ll tell anything you ask me, sir. My name is Frank Melbury.” In order -to conceal nothing, I added, “As a matter of fact, it’s Francis Worsley -Melbury Melbury; but I use it in the shortened form I’ve given you.” - -“Thanks. You’re English?” - -“I’m a Canadian. My father is Sir Edward Melbury, of Montreal.” - -“Married?” - -“No, sir. Single.” - -“And you have a profession?” - -“Architect.” - -“Have you worked at that profession here in New York?” - -I gave him the names of the offices in which from time to time I had -found employment. - -“And would you like to work at it again?” - -“I should, sir.” - -“As a matter of fact, we have a number of architects, not exactly in -the club, but friendly toward it, and on intimate terms with us. I’ll -introduce you to some of them when—when you get on your feet. How old -are you? Thirty?” - -“Thirty-one.” - -For some two minutes he went on writing. - -“How long since you’ve been drinking?” - -“My last drink was three days ago.” - -“And how long since you’ve been actually drunk?” - -“About a week.” - -“And before that?” - -“It was pretty nearly all the time.” - -“It’s a great advantage to you to come to us sober. It means that you -know what you’re doing and are to some extent counting the cost. Men will -take any kind of vow when they’re”—his glance traveled involuntarily to -the back room—“when they’re coming off a spree. The difficulty is to make -them keep their promises when they’ve got over the worst of it. In your -case—” - -“I’ve got a motive, sir.” - -“Then so much the better.” - -I turned to Lovey. - -“Lovey, would you mind stepping into the next room? There’s something I -want to speak about privately.” - -“If it’s to let me in for worse, sonny—” - -“No, it won’t let you in for anything. It’s only got to do with me.” - -“Then I don’t pry into no secrets,” he said, as he moved away -reluctantly; “only, when fellas is buddies together—” - -“I’ve a confession to make,” I continued, when Lovey was out of earshot. -“Last night I—” - -“Hold on! Is it necessary for you to tell me this or not?” - -I had to reflect. - -“It’s only necessary in that I want you to know the worst of me.” - -“But I’m not sure that we need to know that. It often happens that a man -does better in keeping his secrets in his own soul and shouldering the -full weight of their responsibility. Isn’t it enough for us to know of -you what we see?” - -“I don’t know that I can judge of that.” - -“Then tell me this: What you were going to say—is it anything for which -you could be arrested?” - -“It’s nothing for which I shall be arrested.” - -“But it’s an offense against the law?” - -I nodded. - -“And what renders you immune?” - -“The fact that—that the person most concerned has—has forgiven it.” - -“Man or woman?” - -“Woman.” - -His eyes wandered along the cornice as he thought the matter out. I saw -then that they were wonderfully clear gray eyes, not so much beautiful as -perfect—perfect in their finish as to edge and eyelash, but perfect most -of all because of their expression of benignity. - -“I don’t believe I should give that away,” he said, at last; “not now, at -any rate. If you want to tell me later—” He changed the subject abruptly -by saying, “Is that the only shirt you’ve got?” - -I told him I had two or three clean ones in my trunk, but that that was -held by my last landlord. - -“How much did you owe him?” - -I produced a soiled and crumpled bill. He looked it over. - -“We’ll send and pay the bill, and get your trunk.” - -The generosity almost took my breath away. - -“Oh, but—” - -“We should be only advancing the money,” he explained; “and we should -look to you to pay us back when you can. It’s quite a usual procedure -with us, because it happens in perhaps six of our cases out of ten. I -don’t have to point out to you,” he continued, with a smile, “what I’m -always obliged to underscore with chaps like those in there, that if -you don’t make good what we spend on your account the loss comes not on -well-disposed charitable people who give of their abundance, but on poor -men who steal from their own penury. The very breakfast you ate this -morning was paid for in the main by fellows who are earning from twelve -to twenty-five dollars a week, and have families to support besides.” - -I hung my head, trying to stammer out a promise of making good. - -“You see those boys in there? There are five of them, and two will -probably stick to us. That’s about the proportion we keep permanently of -all who come in. I don’t know which two they will be—you never can tell. -Perhaps it will be the piano-mover and the Scotchman; perhaps the man -they call Headlights and the Irishman; perhaps the little chap and some -other one of them. But whichever they are they’ll chip in for the sake of -the new ones we shall reclaim, and take on themselves the burden of the -work.” - -The thought that for the comforts I had enjoyed that morning I was -dependent on the sacrifice of men who had hardly enough for their own -children made me redden with a shame I think he understood. - -“Their generosity is wonderful,” he went on, quietly; “and I tell it to -a man like you only because you can appreciate how wonderful it is. It’s -the fact that so much heart’s blood goes into this work that makes it so -living. These fellows love to give. They love to have you take the little -they can offer. You never had a meal at your own father’s table that was -laid before you more ungrudgingly than the one you ate this morning. The -men who provide it are doing humble work all over the city, all over the -country—because we’re scattered pretty far and wide. And every stroke of -a hammer, and every stitch of a needle, and every tap on a typewriter, -and every thrust of a shovel, and every dig of a pick, and every minute -of the time by which they scrape together the pennies and the quarters -and the dollars they send in to us is a prayer for you. I suppose you -know what prayer really is?” - -His glance was now that of inquiry. - -“I’d like to have you tell me, sir,” I answered, humbly. - -He smiled again. - -“Well, it isn’t giving information to a wise and loving Father as to what -He had better do for us. It’s in trying to carry out the law of His being -in doing things for others. That isn’t all of it, by any means; but it’s -a starting-point. Spender tells me that that nice fellow Pyncheon brought -you in. Well, then, every glass of soda-water Pyncheon draws is in its -way a prayer for you, because the boy’s heart is full of you. Prayer is -action—only it’s kind action.” - -“Thank you, sir,” I said, with an effort to control the tremor of my -voice; “I think I understand you.” - -“You yourself will be praying all through this week, in your very effort -to buck up. You’ll be praying in helping that poor man Lovey to do the -same. In his own purblind way—of course I understand his type and what -you’re trying to do for him—he’ll be praying, too. Prayer is living—only, -living in the right way.” He said, suddenly, “I suppose you rather dread -the week.” - -“Well, I do—rather—sir.” - -“Then I’ll tell you what will make it easier—what will make it pass -quickly and turn it into a splendid memory.” He nodded again toward the -back room. “Chum up with these fellows. You wouldn’t, of course, be -condescending to them—” - -“It’s for them to be condescending to me.” - -He surprised me by saying: “Perhaps it is. You know best. But here we -try to get on a broad, simple, human footing in which we don’t make -comparisons. But you get what I mean. The simplest, kindliest approach -is the best approach. Just make it a point to be white with them, as I’m -sure they’ve been white with you.” - -I said I had never been more touched in my life than by the small -kindnesses of the past two hours. - -“That’s the idea. If you keep on the watch to show the same sort of thing -it will not only make the time pass, but it will brace you up mentally -and spiritually. You see, they’re only children. Fundamentally you’re -only a child yourself. We’re all only children, Frank. Some one says that -women grow up, but that men never do. Well, I don’t know about women, but -I’ve had a good deal to do with men—and I’ve never found anything but -boys. Now you can spoil boys by too much indulgence, but you can’t spoil -them by too much love.” - -He stopped abruptly, because he saw what was happening to me. - -The next thing I knew was his arm across my shoulders, which were shaking -as if I was in convulsions. - -“That’s all right, old boy,” I heard him whisper in my ear. “Just go up -to the bath-room and lock the door and have it out. It’ll do you good. -The fellows in there won’t notice you, because lots of them go through -the same thing themselves.” Still with his arm across my shoulders he -steered me toward the hall. “There you are! You’ll be better when you -come down. We’re just boys together, and there’s nothing to be ashamed -of. Only, when you see other fellows come in through the week—we have two -or three new ones every day—you’ll bear with them, won’t you? And help -them to take a brace.” - -He was still patting me tenderly on the back as with head bowed and -shoulders heaving I began to stumble up-stairs. - - - - -_CHAPTER V_ - - -My acquaintance with Ralph Coningsby was the hinge on which my destiny -turned. A hinge is a small thing as compared with a door, and so was my -friendship with Coningsby in proportion to the rest of my life; but it -became its cardinal point. - -I met him first at the meeting of the club at which the Scotchman and -the piano-mover presented themselves for membership. As to the five -outsiders whom Lovey and I had found on arriving, Christian’s prediction -was verified. Three went out when their week was over and they had got -sobered up. Two stayed behind to go on with the work of reform. At the -end of another week each stood up with his next friend, as a bridegroom -with his best man, and asked to be taken into fellowship. - -That was at the great weekly gathering, which took place every Saturday -night. Among the hundred and fifty-odd men who had assembled in the two -down-stairs sitting-rooms it was not difficult to single out Coningsby, -since he was the only man I could see in whom there was nothing blasted -or scorched or tragic. There was another there of whom this was true, but -I didn’t meet him till toward the end of the evening. - -I had now been some ten days within the four walls of the club, not -sobering up, as you know, but trying to find myself. The figure of speech -is a good one, for the real Frank Melbury seemed to have been lost. This -other self, this self I was anxious to get rid of, had left him in some -bright and relatively innocent world, while it went roaming through a -land of sand and thorns. I had distinctly the feeling of being in search -of my genuine identity. - -For this I sat through long hours of every day doing absolutely -nothing—that is, it was absolutely nothing so far as the eye could see; -but inwardly the spirit was busy. I came, too, to understand that that -was the secret of the long, stupefied forenoons and afternoons on the -part of my companions. They were stupefied only because sight couldn’t -follow the activity of their occupation. Beyond the senses so easily -staggered by strong drink there was a man endeavoring to come forth and -claim his own. In far, subliminal, unexplored regions of the personality -that man was forever at work. I could see him at work. He was at work -when the flesh had reached the end of its short tether, and reeled back -from its brief and helpless efforts to enjoy. He was at work when the -sore and sodden body could do nothing but sit in lumbering idleness. He -was at work when the glazed eye could hardly lift its stare from a spot -on the floor. - -That was why tobacco no longer afforded solace, nor reading distraction, -nor an exchange of anecdotes mental relaxation. I don’t mean to say that -we indulged in none of these pastimes, but we indulged in them slightly. -On the one hand, they were pale in comparison with the raw excitement our -appetites craved; and on the other, they offered nothing to the spirit -which was, so to speak, aching and clamorous. Apart from the satisfaction -we got from sure and regular food and sleep, our nearest approach to -comfort was in a kind of silent, tactual clinging together. None of us -wanted to be really alone. We could sit for hours without exchanging -more than a casual word or two, when it frightened us to have no one else -in the room. The sheer promiscuity of bed against bed enabled us to sleep -without nightmares. - -The task of chumming up had, therefore, been an easy one. So little was -demanded. When a new-comer had been shown the ropes of the house there -was not much more to do for him. One could only silently help him to find -his lost identity as one was finding one’s own. - -“That’s about all there is to it,” Andrew Christian observed when I had -said something of the sort to him. “You can’t push a man into the kingdom -of heaven; he’s got to climb up to it of his own accord. There’s no -salvation except what one works out through one’s own sweat and blood.” -He gave me one of his quick, semi-humorous glances. “I suppose you know -what salvation is?” - -I replied that I had heard a great deal about it all my life, but I was -far from sure of what it entailed in either effort or accomplishment. - -“Salvation is being normal. The intuitive old guys who coined language -saw that plainly enough when they connected the idea with health. -Fundamentally health is salvation and salvation is health—only perfect -health, health not only of the body, but of the mind. Did it ever strike -you that health and holiness and wholeness are all one word?” - -I said it never had. - -“Well, it’s worth thinking about. There’s a lot in it. You’ll get a lot -out of it. The holy man is not the hermit on his knees in the desert, -or the saint in colored glass, or anything that we make to correspond -to them. He’s the fellow who’s whole—who’s sound in wind and limb and -intelligence and sympathy and everything that makes power. When we -say, ‘O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,’ we mean, O worship -the Lord in the beauty of the all-round man, who’s developed in every -direction, and whose degree of holiness is just in proportion to that -development.” - -“That’s a big thought, sir,” I said. “I don’t believe many people who -speak the English language ever get hold of it. But how does it happen -that one of the two words is spelt with a ‘w,’ while the other—” - -He laughed, showing two rows of small, regular white teeth, as pretty as -a girl’s. - -“That was another lot of intuitive guys; and a very neat trick they -played on us. They saw that once the Anglo-Saxon, with his fine, big -sporting instinct, got hold of the idea that holiness meant spreading out -and living out in all manly directions—and by that I don’t mean giving -free rein to one’s appetites, of course—but they saw that once the idea -became plain to us the triumph of lust would be lost. So they inserted -that little bluffing, blinding ‘w,’ which doesn’t belong there at all, -to put us off the scent; and off the scent we went. Church and state -and human society have all combined to make holiness one of the most -anemic, flat-chested words in the language, when it’s really a synonym of -normality.” - -We exchanged these thoughts in the narrow hall of the club, as he -happened to be passing, and stopped for a few words. It was always his -way. He never treated us to long and formal interviews. From a handclasp -and a few chance sentences we got the secret of a personality which gave -out its light and heat like radium, without effort and without exhaustion. - -“What do yer think ’e says to me?” Lovey demanded of me one day. -“‘Lovey,’ says ’e, ‘yer’ve got a terr’ble responsibility on ye with -that young fella, Slim. If you go under ’e goes under, and if you keep -straight ’e keeps straight.’ What do yer think of that?” - -“I think you’re doing an awful lot for me, Lovey.” - -He slapped his leg. - -“Ye got that number right, old son. There’s nobody else in the world -I’d ’a’ done it for. If you ’adn’t taken a fancy to me, like, that -night, and arsked me to go ’ome with you—But, say, Slim,” he went on, -confidentially, “wouldn’t you like to ’ave a drink?” - -Wouldn’t I like to have a drink? There was thirst in the very rustle of -Lovey’s throat. There was the same thirst in my own. It was more than -a thirst of the appetite—it was a thirst of the being, of whatever had -become myself. It was one of the moments at which the lost identity -seemed farther away than ever, and the Frank Melbury of the last three -years the man in possession. - -I couldn’t, however, let Lovey see that. - -“Oh, one gets used to going without drinks.” - -“Do ye? I don’t. I’d take a drink of ’air-oil if anybody’d give me one. -I’d take a drink of ink. Anything that comes out of a bottle’d be better’n -nothink, after all this water from a jug.” - -During the first few days at the club this was my usual state, not -of mind, but of sensation. During the next few days I passed into a -condition that I can best express as one of physical resignation. The -craving for drink was not less insistent, but it was more easily denied. -Since I couldn’t get it I could do without it, and not want to dash my -head against a stone. But after the words with Andrew Christian I have -just recorded I began to feel—oh, ever so slightly!—that Nature had a -realm of freedom and vigor in which there was no need of extraordinary -stimulants, and of which sunshine, air, and water might be taken as the -symbols. With the resting of my overexcited nerves and the response of a -body radically healthy to regular sleep and simple food, I began to feel, -at least at intervals, that water, air, and sunshine were the natural -elements to thrive on. - -My first glance at Ralph Coningsby showed me a man who had thriven on -them. He was the type to whom most of us take at sight—the clean, fresh, -Anglo-Saxon type, blue-eyed and fair, whom you couldn’t do anything but -trust. - -“God! how I should like to look like that!” I said to myself the minute I -saw him come in. - -I knew by this time that at the big weekly meetings there were sometimes -friendly visitors whose touch with the club was more or less accidental. -I had no difficulty in putting this man down as one. He entered as if he -were at any ordinary gathering of friends, with a nod here, a handshake -there, and a few words with some one else. Then for a minute he stood, -letting his eyes search the room till they rested on me, where I stood in -a corner of the front sitting-room. - -There was at once that livening of the glance that showed he had found -what he was looking for. Making his way through the groups that were -standing about, he came up and offered his hand. - -“Your name’s Melbury, isn’t it? Mine’s Coningsby. I think you must be the -same Melbury who went to the Beaux Arts in the fall of the year in which -I left in the spring.” - -“Oh, you’re that Coningsby? You used to know Bully Harris?” - -“Rather! He and I lived together for a year in the Rue de Seine.” - -“And he and I spent a year in the same house in the Rue Bonaparte.” - -“And now he’s out in Red Wing, Minnesota, doing very well, I hear.” - -“The last time I saw him was in London. We dined together at the -Piccadilly and did a theater.” - -“And Tommy Runt? Do you ever hear of him?” - -“Not since he went back to Melbourne; but that chap he was always about -with—Saunderson, wasn’t it?—he was killed in a motor accident near -Glasgow.” - -“So I heard. Some one told me—Pickman, I think it was—an Englishman—but -you didn’t know Pickman, did you? He left the year I came, which must -have been three or four years before your time. By the way, why don’t we -sit down?” - -In the process of sitting down I remembered my manners. - -“Mr. Coningsby, won’t you let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Lovey?” - -Lovey was seated, nursing a knee and looking as wretched as a dog to -whom no one is paying the customary attention. He resented Coningsby’s -appearance; he resented a kind of talk which put me beyond his reach. - -When Coningsby, who seated himself between us, had shaken hands and made -some kindly observation, Lovey replied, peevishly: - -“I ain’t in ’ere for nothink but to save Slim.” - -“That’s what the boys call me,” I laughed, in explanation. - -Coningsby having duly commended this piece of self-sacrifice, we went on -with the reminiscences with which we had begun. It was the most ordinary -kind of breaking the ice between one man and another; but for me the -wonder of it was precisely in that fact. You have to be down and out to -know what it means when some one treats you as if you had never been -anything but up and in. There was not a shade in Coningsby’s manner, nor -an inflection in his tone, to hint at the fact that we hadn’t met at the -New Netherlands or any other first-class club. It was nothing, you will -say, but what any gentleman would be impelled to. Quite true! But again -let me say it, you would have to be in my place to know what it means to -be face to face with the man who is impelled to it. - -We stopped talking, of course, when business began, Coningsby giving me -any necessary explanations in an undertone, and pointing out the notables -whom I didn’t already know by sight. - -One of these was Colonel Straight, who with Andrew Christian had founded -the club. I don’t believe that he had ever been a colonel, but he looked -like one; neither can I swear that his real name was Straight, though it -suited him. In our world the sobriquet often clings closer to us, and -fits us more exactly, than anything given by inheritance or baptism. -Here was a man with a figure as straight as an arrow and a glance as -straight as a sunbeam. What else could his name have been? With one leg -slightly shorter than the other, as if he had been wounded in battle, a -magnificent white mustache, a magnificent fleece of white hair—he had all -the air not only of an old soldier, but of an old soldier in high command. - -“You wouldn’t think, to look at him,” Coningsby whispered, “that he’s -only an old salesman for ready-made clothes.” - -“No; he ought to be at the head of a regiment.” - -“But the odd thing I notice about this club is that a man’s status and -occupation in the world outside seem to fall away from him as soon as he -passes the door. They become irrelevant. The only thing that counts is -what he is as a man; and even that doesn’t count for everything.” - -“What does count for everything?” I asked, in some curiosity. - -“That he’s a man at all.” - -“That’s it exactly,” I agreed, heartily. “I hadn’t put it to myself in -that way; but I see that it’s what I’ve been conscious of.” - -“As an instance of that you can take the friendship between Straight and -Christian. From the point of view of the outside world they’re of types -so diverse that you’d say that the difference precluded friendship of any -kind. You know what Christian is; but the colonel is hardly what you’d -call a man of education. Without being illiterate, he makes elementary -grammatical mistakes, and unusual ideas floor him. But to say that he and -Christian are like brothers hardly expresses it.” - -I pondered on this as the meeting, with Christian in the chair, came to -order and the routine of business began. - -When it grew uninteresting to people with no share in the management of -the club I got an opportunity to whisper, “You settled in New York?” - -“I’m with Sterling Barry; the junior of the four partners.” - -The reply seemed to strip from me the few rags of respectability with -which I had been trying to cover myself up. Had he gone on to say, “And I -saw you break into his house and steal his daughter’s trinkets,” I should -scarcely have felt myself more pitilessly exposed. - -It was perhaps a proof of what the club had done for me that I no longer -regarded this crime with the same sang-froid as when I entered. Even on -the morning of my first talk with Andrew Christian I could have confessed -it more or less as I should have owned to a solecism in etiquette. During -the intervening ten days, however, I had so far reverted to my former -better self that the knowledge that I was the man who had crept into a -house and begun to rob it filled me with dismay. - -I had to pretend that I didn’t want to interrupt the conducting of -business to conceal the fact that I was unable to reply. - -“You’ve worked in New York, too?” he began again, when there was a chance -of speaking. - -I had by this time so far recovered myself as to be able to tell him the -names of my various employers. I didn’t add that they had fired me one -after another because of my drinking-spells, since I supposed he would -take that for granted. - -“Ever thought of Barry’s?” - -“I brought a letter of introduction to him from McArdle, of Montreal; but -I never presented it.” - -“Pity.” - -“Yes, perhaps it was. But you see I didn’t like McArdle’s work, though I -studied under him. As I was afraid of getting into the same old rut, I -went to Pritchard.” - -“What do you think of Barry’s things now?” - -“Oh, I like them—though they’re not so severe as I should go in for -myself. The modern French is a little too florid, and he goes them one -better.” - -“Just my feeling. I should like you to see a bit of work I’ve been doing -on my own; rather a big order—for me, that is—in which I’ve had to be as -American as the deuce, and yet keep to the best lines.” - -“Like to,” I managed to whisper back as we heard Christian announce that -two new men were now to be admitted to the club. - -I was interested in the ceremony, having by this time got on friendly -terms with both the piano-mover and the Scotchman, and learned something -of their history. With necessary divergences the general trend of these -tales was the same. Both were married men, both had children, in both -cases “the home was broken up”—the phrase had become classic in the club; -though in the one instance the wife had taken the children to her own -people, and in the other she was doing her best to support them herself. - -Their names being called, there was a scraping of chairs, after which the -two men lumbered forward, each accompanied by his next friend. The office -of next friend, as I came to learn, was one of such responsibility as -to put a strain on anything like next friendship. The Scotchman’s next -friend was a barber, who, as part of his return for the club’s benefits -to himself, had that afternoon cut the hair of all of us inmates—nineteen -in number; while the piano-mover had as his sponsor the famous Beady -Lamont. The latter pair moved forward like two elephants, their tread -shaking the floor. - -I shall not describe this initiation further than to say that everything -about it was simple, direct, and impressive. The four men being lined in -front of Mr. Christian’s desk, the spokesman for the authorities was old -Colonel Straight. - -“The difference between this club and every other club,” he said, in -substance, “is that men goes to other clubs to amuse theirselves, and -here they come to fight. This club is an army. Any one who joins it joins -a corps. You two men who wants to come in with us ’ave got to remember -that up to now you’ve been on your own and independent; and now you’ll -be entering a company. Up to now, if you worked you worked for yourself; -if you loafed you loafed for yourself; if you was lounge lizards you -was lounge lizards on your own account and no one else’s; and if you -got drunk no one but you—leaving out your wife and children; though why -I leave them out God alone knows!—but if you got drunk no one but you -had to suffer. Now it’s going to be all different. You can’t get drunk -without hurting us, and we can’t get drunk without hurting you. T’other -way round—every bit of fight we put up helps you, and every bit of fight -you put up helps us. - -“Now there’s lots of things I could say to you this evening; but the only -one I want to jam right home is this: You and us look at this thing from -different points of view. You come here hoping that we’re going to help -you to keep straight. That’s all right. So we are; and we’ll all be on -the job from this night forward. You won’t find us taking no vacation, -and your next friends here’ll worry you like your own consciences. -They’ll never leave you alone the minute you ain’t safe. You’ll hear ’em -promise to hunt for you if you go astray, and go down into the ditch with -you and pull you out. There’ll be no dive so deep that they won’t go -after you, and no kicks and curses that you can give ’em that they won’t -stand in order to haul you back. That’s all gospel true, as you’re going -to find out if you go back on your promises. But that ain’t the way the -rest of us—the hundred and fifty of us that you see here to-night—looks -at it at all. What we see ain’t two men we’re tumbling over each other -to help; we see two men that’s coming to help us. And, oh, men, you’d -better believe that we need your help! You look round and you see this -elegant house—and the beds—and the grub—and everything decent and -reg’lar—and you think how swell we’ve got ourselves fixed. But I tell -you, men, we’re fighting for our life—the whole hundred and fifty of us! -And another hundred and fifty that ain’t here! And another hundred and -fifty that’s scattered to the four winds of the earth; we’re fighting for -our life; we’re fighting with our back against the wall. We ain’t out of -danger because we’ve been a year or two years or five years in the club. -We’re never out of danger. We need every ounce of support that any one -can bring to us; and here you fellows come bringing it! You’re bringing -it, Colin MacPherson, and you’re bringing it, Tapley Toms; and there -ain’t a guy among us that isn’t glad and grateful. If you go back on your -own better selves you go back on us first of all; and if either of you -falls, you leave each one of us so much the weaker.” - -That, with a funny story or two, was the gist of it; but delivered in -a low, richly vibrating voice, audible in every corner of the room and -addressed directly and earnestly to the two candidates, its effect was -not unlike that of Whitfield’s dying man preaching to dying men. All -the scarred, haunted faces, behind each of which there lurked memories -blacker than those of the madhouse, were turned toward the speaker -raptly. Knowledge of their own hearts and knowledge of his gave the words -a power and a value beyond anything they carried on the surface. The -red-hot experience of a hundred and fifty men was poured molten into the -minute, to give to the promises the two postulants were presently called -on to make a kind of iron vigor. - -Those promises were simple. Colin MacPherson and Tapley Toms took the -total-abstinence pledge for a week, after which they would be asked to -renew it for similar periods till they felt strong enough to take it -for a month. They would remain as residents of the club till morally -re-established, but they would look for work, in which the club would -assist them, and send at least three-quarters of their earnings to their -wives. As soon as they were strong enough they would set up homes for -their families again, and try to atone for their failure in the mean -time. They would do their best to strengthen other members of the club, -and to live in peace with them. The religious question was shelved by -asking each man to give his word to reconnect himself with the church in -which he had been brought up. - -The promises exacted of the next friends were, as became veterans, more -severe. They were to be guardians of the most zealous activity, and -shrink from no insult or injury in the exercise of their functions. If -their charges fell irretrievably away, their brothers in the club would -be sorry for them, even though the guilt would not be laid at their door. - -When some twenty or thirty members had renewed their vows for a third or -fourth or fifth week, as the case happened to be, the meeting broke up -for refreshments. - -It was during this finale to the evening that Coningsby brought up a -man somewhat of his own type, and yet different. He was different in -that, though of the same rank and age, he was tall and dark, and carried -himself with a slight stoop of the shoulders. An olive complexion touched -off with well-rounded black eyebrows and a neat black mustache made one -take him at first for a foreigner, while the dreaminess of the dark eyes -was melancholy and introspective, if not quite despondent. - -“Melbury, I want you to know Doctor Cantyre, who holds the honorable -office of physician in ordinary to the club.” - -Once more I was in conversation with a man of antecedents similar to -my own, and once more the breaking of the ice was that between men -accustomed to the same order of associations. In this case we found -them in Cantyre’s tourist recollections of Montreal and Quebec, and his -enjoyment of winter sports. - - - - -_CHAPTER VI_ - - -There was nothing more than this to the meeting that night, but early the -next afternoon I was called to the telephone. As such a summons was rare -in the club, I went to the instrument in some trepidation. - -“Hello! This is Frank Melbury.” - -“This is Doctor Cantyre. You remember that we met last evening?” - -“Oh, rather!” - -“I’m motoring out in my runabout to see a patient who lives a few miles -up the river, and I want you to come along.” - -The invitation, which would mean nothing to you but a yes or a no, struck -me almost speechless. There was first the pleasure of it. I have not -laid stress on the fact that the weather was sickeningly hot, because it -didn’t enter into our considerations. We were too deeply concerned with -other things to care much that the house was stifling; and yet stifling -it was. But more important than that was the fact that any one in the -world should want to show me this courtesy. Remember that I had been -beyond the reach of courtesies. A drink from some one who would expect -me to give him a drink in return was the utmost I had known in this -direction for months, and I might say for years. - -Is it any wonder that in my reply I stammered and stuttered and nearly -sobbed? - -“Oh, but, I say, I—I look too beastly for an expedition of—of that sort. -I’m awfully sorry, but—but I—well, you know how it is.” - -“Oh, get out! You’ve got to have the air. I’m your doctor. I’m not going -to see you cooped up there day after day in weather like this. Besides, -I’m bringing along a couple of dust-coats—the roads will be dusty part of -the way—and we shall both be covered up. Expect me by half past two.” - -As he put up the receiver without waiting for further protests, there was -nothing for me but submission. - -“I’ve been ’ere as long as you ’ave,” Lovey complained when I told him of -my invitation, “and nobody don’t ask me to go hout in no automobiles.” - -“Oh, but they will.” - -He shook his head. - -“Them swells’ll take you away, sonny. See if they don’t.” - -“Not from you, Lovey.” - -He grabbed me by the arm. - -“Will you promise me that, Slim?” - -“Yes, Lovey; I promise you.” - -“And we’ll go on being buddies, even when the rich guys talks to you -about all them swell things?” - -“Yes, Lovey. We’re buddies for life.” - -With this Mizpah between us he released my arm and I was able to go and -make my preparations. - -In spite of the heat and the fact that on a windless day there was no -dust to speak of, Cantyre was buttoned up in a dust-coat. It would have -seemed the last word in tact if he hadn’t gone further by pretending to -be occupied in doing something to the steering-wheel while I hid my seedy -blue serge in the long linen garment he handed me out. As even an old -golf-cap can look pretty decent, I was really like anybody else by the -time I had snuggled myself in by his side. - -During the first mile or two of the way I could hardly listen to Cantyre, -to say nothing of making conversation. In spasmodic sentences between his -spells of attention to the traffic he told me of his patient and where -she lived; but as it was nothing I was obliged to register in my mind, I -could give myself to the wonder of the occasion, in awe at the miracle -which had restored me to something like my old place in the world at the -very moment when I seemed farthest away from it. Here I was, with not -a penny to my name and not two coats to my back, tooling along like a -gentleman with a gentleman, and as a man with his friend. Moreover, here -I was with a new revelation, a convincing revelation, of something I had -long since ceased to believe—that in this world there was such a thing as -active brotherly kindness. - -I came out of these thoughts to find that we were following the avenue -with part of which I had made myself so familiar ten days before. I began -to ask myself if Cantyre had a motive in bringing me this way. The houses -were thinning out. Vacant lots became frequent. I noted the southern -limit of my pacings up and down on that strange midnight. Cantyre slowed -the pace perceptibly. My heart thumped. If he accused me of anything, I -was resolved to confess all. - -As we passed one particular vacant lot, a tangle of nettle, fireweed, and -blue succory, I noticed that Cantyre’s gaze roamed round about it, to the -neglect of the machine. We had slowed down to perhaps ten miles an hour. - -“Do you know whose house that is?” he asked, suddenly. - -But I refused to betray myself before it was necessary. - -“Whose?” I riposted. - -“Sterling Barry, the architect’s.” - -The machine almost stopped. He looked the façade up and down, saying, as -he did so: “It’s closed for the season. They left town a few days ago. -Barry’s bought the old Hornblower place at Rosyth, Long Island.” - -To my relief, we sped on again; but I was not long in learning the motive -behind his interest. - -Chiefly for the sake of not seeming dumb, I said, as we got into the -country, “You and Ralph Coningsby are by way of being great friends, -aren’t you?” - -“No,” he replied, promptly. “I see him when I go to the club; not very -often elsewhere. I know his sister, Elsie Coningsby, better. Not that I -know her very well. She happens to be a great friend of—of a—of a great -friend—or, rather, some one who was a great friend—of mine. That’s all.” - -So that was it! - -I said, after we had spun along some few miles more, “Your name is -Stephen, isn’t it?” - -“Yes. How did you know?” - -I hedged. “Oh, I must have heard some one call you that.” - -“That’s funny. Hardly any one does. They mostly say Cantyre—or just -doctor.” He added, after a minute or two, “You call me Stephen, and I’ll -call you Frank.” - -Once more the swift march of happenings gave me a slight shock. - -“Oh, but we hardly know each other.” - -“That would be true if there weren’t friendships that outdistance -acquaintanceships.” - -“Oh, if you look at it that way—” - -“That’s the way it strikes me.” - -“But, good Heavens! man, think of what—of what I am!” - -His gaze was fixed on the stretch of road ahead of him. - -“What’s that got to do with it? It wouldn’t make any difference to me if -you were a murderer or a thief.” - -“How do you know I’m not?” I couldn’t help asking. - -“I don’t know that you’re not; but I say it wouldn’t make any difference -to me if you were.” - -The word I am tempted to use of myself at this unexpected offer of -good-will is flabbergasted. I am not emotional; still less am I -sentimental; both in sentiment and emotion my tendency is to go slow. - -After a brief silence I said: “Look here! Do you go round making friends -among the riffraff of mankind?” - -“I don’t go round making friends among people of any sort. I’m not the -friendly type. I know lots of people, of course; but—but I don’t get -beyond just knowing them.” - -“Is that because you don’t want to?” - -“Not altogether. I’m a—I’m a lonesome sort of bloke. I never was a good -mixer; and when you’re not that, other fellows instinctively close up -their ranks against you and shut you out. Not that that matters to me. I -hardly ever see a lot with whom I should want to get in. You’re—you’re an -exception.” - -“And for Heaven’s sake, why?” - -“Oh, for two or three reasons—which I’m not going to tell you. One of -these days you may find out.” - -We left the subject there and sped along in silence. - -This, then, was the man Regina Barry had turned down; and, -notwithstanding his kindness to myself, I could understand her doing it. -For a high-spirited girl such as she evidently was he would have been -too melancholy. “Very nice” was what she had called him, and very nice -he was; but he lacked the something thoroughly masculine that means more -to women than to men. Men are used to the eternal-feminine streak in -themselves and one another; but women put up with it only when it is like -a flaw in an emerald, noticeable to the expert, but to no one else. - -I asked him how he came to be what Coningsby called physician in ordinary -to the club. - -“By accident. Rufus Legrand asked me to go over and see what I could do -for a bad case of D. T.” - -“He’s the rector of the church opposite, isn’t he?” - -“Yes, and an awfully good sort. Only parson I know who thinks more of God -than he does of a church. I shouldn’t be surprised if one of these days -he got the true spirit of religion.” - -“What’s that?” - -“What they’re doing at the Down and Out.” - -“Oh, but they skip religion there altogether.” - -“They don’t skip religion; they only skip the word—and for a reason.” - -“What reason?” - -“The reason that it’s been so misapplied as to have become nearly -unintelligible. If you told the men at the club that such and such a -thing was religion they’d most of ’em kick like the deuce; but when they -get the thing without explanation they take to it every time. But you -were asking me about my connection with the club. It began four years -ago, when they first got into Miss Smedley’s house. Fellow had the -old-fashioned horrors—bad. As I’d been making dipsomania a specialty -Legrand railroaded me in, and there I’ve stayed.” - -When we drew up at the gate of an old yellow mansion standing in large -grounds Cantyre left me in the machine while he went in to visit his -patient. The blue-green hills were just beginning to veil themselves in -the diaphanous mauve of afternoon, and between them the river with its -varied life flowed silently and rapidly. It was strange to me to remember -that a short time ago I had been wishing myself under it, and that this -very water would be washing the oozy, moss-grown piles of Greeley’s Slip. - - - - -_CHAPTER VII_ - - -No later than that evening my life took still another step. - -A little before nine, just as I was about to go to bed—our hours at the -club were early—Ralph Coningsby dropped in for a word with me. I happened -to be at the foot of the stairs in the hall when Spender admitted him, -and he refused to come farther inside. - -“Been dining with my wife’s father and mother over the way,” he said, in -explanation of his dinner jacket and black tie, “and just ran across to -say something while I was in the neighborhood. You said last night you’d -come and see the Grace Memorial with me.” - -“If you say so,” I smiled, “I suppose I must have; but it’s the first -time to my knowledge that I ever heard of it.” - -“Oh, that’s the bit of work I told you about—the thing I’m doing on my -own. It’s over here at St. David’s. You see, when Charlie Grace died he -left a sum of money to build and endow this institution in memory of his -father.” - -I smiled again. - -“I know I must have heard the name of Charlie Grace, but it seems to have -slipped my memory. All the same—” - -“I’ll tell you about him to-morrow. I merely want to say now that I’ll -look in about ten in the morning, and take you across the street—” - -The difficulty I had had to confront in the afternoon was before me again. - -“I don’t know about that, Coningsby. The fact is I’m not—Well, hang it -all! Can’t you see? I haven’t a rag in the world but what I stand up in, -and I can’t go where I’m likely to run into decent people.” - -“You won’t run into any one but carpenters and painters. I’m not going to -take no for an answer, old chap. Besides, there’s method in this madness, -for—now don’t buck!—for I’m going to put you on a job.” - -I could only stare vacantly. - -“On a job?” - -“Mrs. Grace wants some measurements and specifications which she thinks -I haven’t given her exactly enough; and the first thing to be done is to -go over the whole blooming place with a foot-rule and a tape-measure; but -I’ll tell you about that to-morrow, too. For a chap with your training -it will be office-boy’s work; but as you’re doing nothing else for the -moment—” - -It is needless to say that I hardly slept that night. It was not the -prospect of work alone that excited me; it was that of being gradually -drawn into the sphere in which I might meet Regina Barry. I was still -uncertain as to whether I wanted to do that or not. There was no hour of -the day when I didn’t think of her, and yet it was always with a sense -of thankfulness that she couldn’t know where I was or guess at what had -become of me. If I could have been granted the privilege of seeing her -without having her see me I should have jumped at it; but the ordeal of -her recognition was beyond my strength to face. Rather than have her say -with her eyes, “You were the man who came into my room and tried to rob -me,” I would have shot myself. - -And yet I had to admit the fact that this danger was in the air. Ralph -Coningsby’s sister was the Elsie of that tragic night; Cantyre was the -Stephen. I was being offered work by Sterling Barry’s partner, and might -soon be doing it for Sterling Barry himself. The fatality that brought -about these unfoldings might go farther still, and before I knew it I -might find myself in the precise situation that filled me with terror—and -yet made me shiver with a kind of harsh delight. Before I could sleep I -had to make a compromise with my courage. I would not shoot myself rather -than meet her. I would meet her first, if it had to be. I would take that -one draft of the joy I had put forever out of reach—and shoot myself -afterward. - -But in the morning I was more self-confident. Having examined myself -carefully in the cracked mirror in the bath-room, I found that my -mustache, which had grown tolerably long and thick, changed my appearance -not a little. Moreover, food, rest, and sobriety had smoothed away the -unspeakable haggardness that had creased my forehead, hardened my mouth, -and burnt into my eyes that woebegone desolation which I had noticed -among my companions when I arrived at the club. It is no exaggeration to -say that I was not only younger by ten years, but that I was changed in -looks, as a landscape is changed when, after being swept by rains, it is -bathed in sunshine. The one hope I built on all this was that, were I to -meet Regina Barry face to face, she would not recognize me at a first -glance, while I could keep her from getting a second. - -On the way across the street Coningsby told me something of Charlie -Grace and his memorial. He had been the son of a former rector of St. -David’s—an important man in the New York of his day, who had outlived -his usefulness and been asked to resign his parish. The son had never -forgiven this slight, and the William Grace Memorial was intended to -avenge it. It had been the express desire of the widow, Mrs. Charlie -Grace, that he, Ralph Coningsby, should have sole charge of the building, -and the work had been going on since the previous autumn. In the coming -autumn the house would be ready for furnishing. It was for this purpose -that Mrs. Grace required the exact measurements of each room, with the -disposition of the wall spaces. During the summer she could thus consider -what she would have to do when the time came in October. - -Only a corner of the new building was visible from Vandiver Street, the -main entrance being on Blankney Place, which was a parallel thoroughfare. -Standing in the middle of the grass-plot in front of the dumpy, spurious -1840 Gothic rectory, we had the length of the dumpy, spurious 1840 -Gothic church in front of us. The memorial had to be fitted in behind -the chancel, on the space formerly occupied by a Sunday-school room. -This space had been enlarged by the purchase of the lot in Blankney -Place, giving an entry from a more populous neighborhood. The purpose -of the memorial had been more or less dictated by Mrs. Ralph Coningsby, -who, as Esther Legrand, the rector’s daughter, had from her childhood -upward worked among the people round about and knew their needs. As -far as I could gather, it was to be a sort of neighborhood club, with -parlors, reading-rooms, playing-rooms, a dancing-room, a smoking-room, a -billiard-room, a lecture-room, a gymnasium, baths, and so on, and open -to those who were properly enrolled, of both sexes and all ages. Of the -committee in charge Mrs. Coningsby was apparently the moving spirit, -though Mrs. Grace was reserving to herself the pleasure of fitting the -house up. - -Before going inside we discussed the difficulties of harmonizing a -modern building with the efforts of the early nineteenth century, and I -had an opportunity to commend Coningsby’s judgment. He had kept to the -brownstone of the church and rectory, and had suggested their spirit -while working on sober, well-proportioned lines. - -In the middle of this I broke off to say: “Look here, old chap! I hope -you’re not inventing this job of yours just for the sake of giving me -something to do.” - -His frank gaze convinced me. - -“Honest, I’m not. Mrs. Grace is particularly anxious to have the -measurements sent down to her at Rosyth, and we’re so short-handed—” - -“Then that’s all right. Let’s go in, and you can show me what I’m to do.” - -As Coningsby had said, it was office-boy’s work, but it suited me. It was -a matter of getting broken in again, and—whether it came by accident or -my friend’s good-heartedness—an easy job in which there was no thinking -or responsibility was the most effective means that could have been found -of nursing me along. At the end of a week I was treated to the well-nigh -incredible wonder of a check. - -Early on a Sunday morning I took it to Christian, asking that it should -be turned in toward my expenses at the club. - -Having read its amount, he held it in his fingers, twisting it and -turning it. - -“You see, Frank,” he said, after thinking for a minute, “the primary -object of the club is not to be paid for what it spends—though that is an -object—it’s to help fellows to get on their feet. Of you nineteen chaps -who are in the house at present twelve are regularly paying for their -board and lodging, and that pretty well carries us along. If there’s a -deficit it’s covered by the back payments of men who’ve gone out and who -are making up. So that this isn’t pressing for the minute—” - -“But I should like to pay it, sir.” - -“Yes, of course; but it’s a question of what is most urgent. Now this -isn’t urgent; we can extend your credit; whereas, the first bit of bluff -we’ve all got to put up when we’re pulling ourselves together is in -clothes.” - -He asked me how long my present job would go on. I said for about three -weeks. - -“Then keep this check,” he pursued, handing it back to me, “till you get -as much again. That will be enough to turn you out quite smart. Go to -Straight, at Bruch Brothers—all our fellows go to him—and he’ll advise -you to the best advantage.” - -The words were accompanied by such a smile that I, who am not emotional, -felt my eyes smart. - - - - -_CHAPTER VIII_ - - -The summer passed with no more than two or three other incidents worth -the jotting down. - -In the first place, the day arrived when I had to make up my mind -either to leave the club or to join it. Expecting some opposition from -Lovey as to joining it, I was surprised to find him take the suggestion -complacently. - -“I’ve found out,” he whispered to me, “that yer can jine this club—and -fall. Yer can fall three times before they’ll turn ye out.” - -“Oh, but you wouldn’t want to fall in cold blood.” - -“Well,” he muttered, doubtfully, “I ain’t partic’lar about the blood. -Now my hadvice’d be this: ’Ere we are in July. That’s all right; we -can jine. Then in Haugust we can ’ave a wee little bit of a fall—just -two or three days like. We can do the same in September; and the same -in Hoctober. That’ll use up our three times, and we can come back under -cover for the worst months of the winter. We can’t fall no more after -that; but in the spring we can try somethink else. There’s always things.” - -“And suppose I don’t mean to fall?” - -He looked hurt. - -“Oh, if you can keep straight without me—” - -“But if I can’t, Lovey? If I must keep straight and need you to help me?” - -He clasped his hands against his stomach and drew a dismal face. - -“That’d be a tight place for me.” - -“And isn’t there,” I continued, “another point of view? Suppose we did -what you suggest, do you think it would be treating all these nice -fellows decently?” - -“Oh, if you’re going to start out treatin’ people decent—” - -“Well, why shouldn’t we? We can do it—you and I together.” - -He drew a deep sigh. - -“I must say, Slim, yer do beat everythink for puttin’ things on me.” - -But in the end we were both admitted at one of the Saturday-evening -meetings with, as usual, a large gathering of friends, and some bracing -words from Straight. Pyn stood up with me as next friend, and little -Spender did the same by Lovey. I have not said that during the ten days -before I went to work Pyn blew in at the club during some minutes of -every lunch hour to watch my progress. It was he, too, who found Lovey -the job of washing windows, by which that worthy also had a chance of -returning to honest ways. Indeed, though I cannot repeat it frequently -enough, of the many hands stretched out to help me upward none was -stronger in its grasp than that of the kindly keeper of the soda-water -fountain to whom the club had given a veritable new birth. - -Our admission as members had taken place while I was still doing the -measurements at the memorial. By the time they were finished Coningsby -had a new proposal. As it was the middle of July, he was anxious to take -his wife and two little children to the country for a month. Carpenters, -plasterers, painters, and plumbers were still at work on the building, -and they couldn’t be left without oversight. Would I undertake to give -that—at a reasonable salary? - -I had grown familiar with the work by this time, and had been able to -throw into the furtherance of Coningsby’s plans an enthusiasm largely -sprung of gratitude. In addition I was getting back my self-confidence in -proportion as I got back my self-respect. The fact, too, that in the new -summer suit and straw hat to which the colonel’s advice had helped me I -could go about the streets without being ashamed of myself did something -to restore my natural poise. - -I could see that by taking this work I should really be helping -Coningsby. He needed the rest; his wife and babies undoubtedly needed -the change. It was not easy for a man with so important a piece of work -as this on hand to get any one satisfactorily to take his place. I -could accept the offer, then, without the suspicion—which any man would -hate—that it was being made to me from motives of philanthropy. I was -really being useful—more useful than in taking the measurements for Mrs. -Grace, which any novice could have done—and making a creditable living -for the first time in years. - -Then, too, I had a great deal of Cantyre’s company. He spent most of the -summer in town; chiefly because of his patients, but partly from a lack -of incentive in going away. He explained that lack of incentive to me -during one of the spins in his runabout to which he treated me on three -or four evenings a week. Now and then I worked Lovey off on him for -an outing, but he, Cantyre, was generally a little peevish after such -occasions. It was not that he objected to giving Lovey or any one else -the air; it was that he suspected me of not really caring to go out with -him. There are always men—very good fellows, too—in whom there is this -strain of the jealousy of school-girls. - -On this particular evening I had been kidding him about his depression, -doing my best to rouse him out of it. - -“Oh, I’ll pull round in time,” he said, in his resigned, lifeless tone. -“If you knew the reason—” - -I did know the reason, of course. My conscience never ceased to plague -me with the fact that, though I could return Regina Barry’s trinkets, -Cantyre’s secret was a theft I couldn’t get rid of. It was, indeed, -partly to lead him on to confiding it to me of his own accord, so that I -might know it legitimately, so to speak, that I brought the subject up. - -“I suppose it’s about a girl.” - -So long a time passed that I thought he was not going to respond to this -challenge, when he said, “Yes.” - -“Wouldn’t she have you?” I asked, bluntly. - -“She said she would—and changed her mind.” - -“So that you were actually engaged?” - -“For about a month.” - -“Did she— You don’t mind my asking questions, do you?” - -“Not if you won’t mind if I don’t answer.” - -“Then with that proviso I’ll go on. Did she tell why she—why she broke it -off?” - -“Not—not exactly.” - -“And haven’t you found out?” - -“Elsie Coningsby, she’s her great friend, told me something of it. She -said there were two kinds of women. Some liked to be wooed, and others -weren’t satisfied unless they were conquered.” - -“And you took the wrong method?” - -“So it seems.” - -“Well, why don’t you turn round now and take the right one?” - -His dreamy, melancholy eyes slid toward me. - -“Do you see me doing that? I’m the kind of bloke that would like a woman -to conquer him. If it comes to that, there are two kinds of men.” - -He had told me so much that I felt it right to give him a warning. - -“Since you say she’s a friend of Elsie Coningsby’s, I mayn’t be able to -help finding out who she is.” - -“Oh, I shouldn’t mind that—not with you. As a matter of fact, I should -like to introduce you to her one of these days.” - -I broke in more hastily than I intended, “No, no; don’t do that—for God’s -sake!” - -He swung round in amazement. “Why—why, what’s the matter?” - -I tried to recover myself. “Oh, nothing! Only, you must see for yourself -that—that after what I’ve been through I’m not—not a lady’s man.” - -“Oh, get out!” was his only observation. - -We lapsed into one of our long silences, which was broken when we turned -back toward town. - -“Look here, Frank,” he said, suddenly, “you can’t go on living down there -in Vandiver Street. Besides, the club will be needing your bed for some -one else.” - -“I know,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it. I simply don’t want to -move.” - -“You’ll have to, though.” - -“Yes, I suppose so.” - -He went on to suggest a small apartment in the bachelor house he was -living in himself. Now was the time to rent, before men began coming -back to town. He knew of a little suite of three rooms and a bath which -ought to be within my means. As we passed the house we stopped and looked -at it. I liked it and promised to turn the matter over in my mind. - -Next day I broached it to Lovey. The effect was what I expected. He -grasped me by the arm, looking up at me with eyes the more eloquent from -the fact that they were dead. - -“Y’ain’t goin’ to leave me, Slim?” - -“It wouldn’t be leaving you, Lovey.” - -“Y’ain’t goin’ to live in another ’ouse, where I sha’n’t be seein’ ye -every day?” - -“You could get a room near.” - -“’Twouldn’t be the same thing—not noway, it wouldn’t be. Oh, Slim!” - -With a gesture really dramatic he smote his chest with his two clenched -fists, and drew a long, grating sigh. - -We were sitting on our beds, which were side by side in one of the -dormitories. It was the nearest thing to privacy the club-house ever -allowed us. - -“This’ll be the hend of me; and it’ll be the hend of you, Slim, if I -ain’t there to watch over you. You’ll never keep straight without me, -sonny.” He was struck with a new idea, and, indeed, I had thought of it -myself. “Didn’t ye say,” he went on, as he leaned forward and tapped my -knee, “that in them rooms there was one little dark room?” - -“Very little and very dark.” - -“But it wouldn’t be too little or too dark for me, Slim, not if I -could be your valet, like. I could do everythink for you, just like a -gentleman. My father was a valet, and he larned me before he couldn’t -larn me nothink else. I could keep your clothes so as you’d never need -new ones, and I could mend and darn and cook your breakfasts—I’m a swell -cook—I can bile tea and coffee and heggs—many’s the time I’ve done it—” - -“All right, Lovey,” I interrupted. “It’s a bargain. We’re buddies.” - -“No, Slim; we won’t be buddies no more. We’ll call that off. We’ll just -be master and man. I’ll know my place and I’ll keep it. I sha’n’t call -you Slim, nor sonny—” - -“Oh yes, you must.” - -He shook his head. - -“No; not after we’ve moved from the club. I’ll call you Mr. Melbury and -say sir to you; and you must call me Lovey, just as if it was my real -name.” He added, unexpectedly to me: “I suppose ye know it ain’t my real -name?” - -“Oh, what does it matter?” - -“It only matters like this: I ain’t—I ain’t—” He got up in some agitation -and went to one of the windows. After looking out for a second or two he -turned half round toward me. “Ye ain’t thinking me any better than I am, -Slim, are you?” - -“I’m not thinking whether you’re better or worse, Lovey. I just like you.” - -“And I’ve took an awful fancy to you, Slim. Seems as if you was my whole -family. But—but you’re not, sonny. I’ve—I’ve got a family. They’re dead -to me and I’m dead to them; but they’re my family. Did ye know that, -Slim?” - -“I didn’t know it, and you needn’t tell me.” - -“But if I was awful bad, sonny? If I was wuss than anythink that’d ever -come into your ’ead?” - -“We won’t talk about that. Perhaps there are things that I could tell -you which would show that there’s not much difference between us.” - -“I ’ope there is, Slim. And she was terr’ble aggravatin’; a drinkin’ -woman, besides. I didn’t drink then—’ardly not at all. It was after I was -acquitted I begun that. And my two gells—well, bein’ acquitted didn’t -make no difference to them; they’d seen. Only, they didn’t swear that way -in their hevidence. They swore she fell down the stairs she was found at -the bottom of, her neck broken; and, bein’ a drinkin’ woman, the jury -thought—But the two gells knew. And when I was let off they didn’t ’ave -no more to do with me—so I come over ’ere—” - -I rose and went to him, laying my hand on his shoulder. - -“Don’t, Lovey. That’s enough. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve -done, we’ll stick it out together. The only thing is that we’ll have to -give up the booze.” - -“For good and all, Slim?” - -“Yes; for good and all.” - -“It’ll be awful ’ard.” - -“Yes, it will be; but the worst of that is over.” - -He seized one of my hands in both of his. - -“Slim, if it’s got to be a ch’ice between you and liquor—well, I’m danged -if—if I won’t”—he made a great resolution—“give up the liquor—and so ’elp -me!” - -So when I moved Lovey moved with me. Washing windows having become -a lucrative profession, he insisted on taking no wages from me and -on paying for his own food. In the matter of names we agreed on a -compromise. “Before company,” as he expressed it, I was Mr. Melbury and -sir; when we were alone together we reverted to the habits of Greeley’s -Slip and the Down and Out, and I became Slim and sonny. - -I was truly sorry to leave the club, for its simple, brotherly ways, -wholesome and masculine, if never the most refined, had become curiously -a part of me. I had liked the fellowship with rough men who were perhaps -all the more human for being rough. For the first time in my life I had -known something of genuine fraternity. I do not affirm that we lived -together without disagreements or misunderstandings or that there were no -minutes electric with the tension that makes for an all-round fight. But -there was always some “wise guy,” as we called him, to make peace among -us; and on the whole we lived together with a mutual courtesy that proved -to me once for all that it is nothing external which makes a gentleman. -Finer gentlemen in the essentials of the word I never met than some of -those who were just struggling up from the seemingly bottomless pit. - -Thus the summer of 1913 became for me a very happy one. There were -reserves to that happiness, and there were fears; but the optimism most -of us bring to the day’s work enabled me to face them. Of Regina Barry I -heard much from my friend Cantyre, and I made what I heard suffice me. He -was always willing to talk of this girl, whom he never named; and little -by little I formed an image in my heart, which would never be anywhere -but in my heart as long as I could help it. As long as I could help it -I should not see her, nor should she see me. As to that I was now quite -positive. Nothing could be gained by my seeing her, while by her seeing -me everything might be lost. - -If everything was lost in one way I was sure it would be lost in another. -Because I have said little or nothing of the fight I was making you -must not suppose that I was free from the necessity of making it. I was -making it every day and hour. There were times when, if I hadn’t had -Lovey to think of, I should have yielded to that suggestion which had -come to me as neatly as it had come to him of having a little fall. Falls -were far from unknown among us. They were accepted as an unhappy matter -of course. Some of our steadiest members had made full use of the three -times the law of the club allowed them before finally settling down. I -believed that I could exercise this privilege—and come back. But not so -with Lovey! Once he failed in this attempt, I knew he would be gone. As -a matter of fact, he would have failed at any time after the first week -if it hadn’t been on my account; so I couldn’t fail on his. When I would -have done it eagerly, wildly, I was withheld by the old-fashioned motto -of _noblesse oblige_. - -And yet in proportion as I grew stronger I realized more clearly that -my future was, as it were, balanced on the point of a pin. Once I had -met Regina Barry, and her eyes had said, “You are the man who stole my -gold-mesh purse,” I knew it would be all up with me. She wouldn’t have to -say a word. Her look would bring the accusation. Then, if I was weak I -should go off and get drunk; I should drink till I drank myself to death. -If I was strong I should shoot myself. There was just one thing of which -I was sure—I should never face that silent charge a second time. - -But as the weeks went by and nothing happened I began to be confident -that nothing would. We reached the end of September and I never heard -Regina Barry’s name. Even Cantyre hadn’t told me that, and didn’t suppose -that I knew it. I calculated the chances against our ever meeting. -I built something, too, on the possibility that were we to meet she -wouldn’t know me again. - -In this I got encouragement from the fact that one day in Fifth Avenue I -met my uncle Van Elstine. He didn’t know me. He wouldn’t have cut me for -anything in the world; he was too good-natured and kind; but he let his -wandering gaze rest on me as on any passing stranger, and went on his -way. I argued then that time, vicissitude, a hard life, and a mustache -had worked an effective disguise. If my own uncle, who had known me -all my life, could go by like that, how much more one to whom I could -be nothing but a sinister shadow seen for three or four minutes in a -rose-colored gloom. - -So I reasoned and became a little comforted. And then one day my -arguments were put to the test. - -It was quite at the end of September. The memorial was now so nearly -completed that Coningsby, who had returned to town, left it almost -entirely to my charge. A new bit of work at Atlantic City having come -his way, he was closely absorbed in it. Mrs. Grace had motored up once -or twice to consult me as to papers, rugs, and other details of interior -decoration. I found her a grave, beautiful woman who gave the impression -of nourishing something that lasts longer than grief—a deep regret. Our -intercourse was friendly but impersonal. - -Once she was accompanied by a young lady whose voice I recognized as they -approached the room in which I was at work. It was a clear, bell-like, -staccato voice, whose tones would have made my heart stop still had I -heard it in heaven. Mrs. Grace entered the room, followed by a girl as -Anglo-Saxon in type as her brother, only with a decision and precision in -the manner which he had not. - -In my confusion I was uncertain as to whether or not there was an -introduction, but I remember her saying: “Oh, Mr. Melbury, Ralph is so -indebted to you for all the help you’ve given him. He says if it hadn’t -been for you he wouldn’t have been able to get away from New York this -summer.” - -She, too, regarded me impersonally, as her brother’s assistant, and no -more. I mean by that that she showed none of the interest good people -generally display in a brand that has been plucked from the burning. - -“Is it possible she doesn’t know it?” I asked Cantyre the next time I saw -him. - -“Of course she doesn’t. That would be the last thing Coningsby would tell -her. We never speak of these things outside the club. If a fellow likes -to do it himself—well, that’s his own affair.” - -But early in October I came face to face with it all. - -I was standing at one of the upper windows, looking down into Blankney -Place, when I saw a motor drive up to the door. I knew it was Mrs. -Grace’s motor, having seen it a number of times already. When the footman -held open the door Mrs. Grace herself stepped out, to be followed by Miss -Coningsby, who in turn was followed by.... - -I strolled away from the window into the interior of the house. I was not -so much calm as numb. There were details about which I had to speak to -Mrs. Grace, but they all went out of my mind. They went out of my mind -as matters with which I had no more concern. A dying man might feel that -way about the earthly things he is leaving behind. I was, in fact, not -so much like a dying man as like a man who in the full flush of vigor is -told that he must in a few minutes face the firing-squad. - -So I stood doing nothing, thinking nothing, while I listened to the three -voices as they floated up, first from the lower floor, then from the -stairway, then from the floor on which I was waiting in this seeming -nervelessness. - -They drifted nearer—Mrs. Grace’s gentle tones, Elsie Coningsby’s silvery -tinkle, and then the rich mezzo, which by association of ideas seemed to -shed round me a rose-colored light. - -Mrs. Grace and Miss Coningsby came in together, the one in black, the -other in white. Both bade me a friendly, impersonal good morning, while -Mrs. Grace proceeded at once to the question of rugs. Didn’t I think that -good serviceable American rugs, with some of those nice Oriental druggets -people used in summer cottages, would be better than anything more -fragile and expensive? - -I made such answers as I could, keeping my eyes on the door. Presently -she appeared on the threshold, looking about with interest and curiosity -in her great, dark eyes. Of the minute I retain no more than a vision in -rough green English tweed, with a goldish-greenish motoring-veil round -the head like a nimbus. She impressed me as at once more delicate and -more strong than I remembered her—eager, alert, independent. - -“This is to be the men’s smoking-room,” Miss Coningsby explained. - -“Wouldn’t you know it?” Miss Barry said, lightly. “One of the nicest -rooms in the house—I think the very nicest. It’s wonderful how well men -do themselves, isn’t it?” - -“Oh, but in this case it’s Hilda.” - -“It’s your brother first of all. You’ll see. It will be the snuggest -corner of the whole place, and they won’t let a woman look into it.” - -She glanced at me—but casually. She glanced again—but casually again. As -no one introduced me, a greeting between us was not called for. But when -Mrs. Grace finished her questions about the rugs and they were passing -into the next room, Regina Barry turned and looked at me a third time. It -was now an inquiring look, and significant. - -“Elsie, who’s that man?” I heard her say, after she had joined her -companions. - -The reply gave my name. - -“Oh!” - -“He’s been helping Ralph all summer. That’s how he and Esther were able -to get away.” - -“Oh!” - -“Now we’re going on to the day nursery—” - -But Regina Barry said: “Wait a minute! No; go on. I’ll overtake you. -I’m—I’m perfectly sure that that’s the very man who—” She added, as if -forcing herself to a determination: “I’m going back to speak to him. Tell -Hilda I’ll be with her in an instant.” - -So I waited, repeating to myself the formula agreed on two or three -months before, that I would see her first—and shoot myself afterward. - - - - -_CHAPTER IX_ - - -“Haven’t we met before?” - -Regina Barry said this as she came into the room with her rapid, easy -movement and took two or three paces toward me, stopping as abruptly as -she entered. - -I hung my head, crimsoning slowly. - -“Yes.” - -“I thought so, though I didn’t recognize you at first. I knew I had some -association with you, but it was so vague—” - -“Of course.” - -“Then I had no idea you were an architect.” - -“How could you?” - -“You see, meeting you for so short a time—” - -“And practically in the dark—” - -“I don’t remember that. But I had no chance to ask anything about you. I -only hoped you’d come back.” - -“Oh, I couldn’t have done that.” - -“Why not?” - -“I should think you’d understand.” - -“I don’t—considering that I asked you particularly.” - -“I know you asked me particularly, but anything in life—or death—would -have been easier than to obey you.” - -“What did I do to frighten you so?” - -“Nothing but show me too much mercy.” - -“Oh, I didn’t think anything of that.” - -“Of what? Of the crime—or of the forgiveness?” - -“Of the crime, of course.” - -I stepped back from her in amazement. - -“You didn’t think anything of—” - -“Why, no! I’ve often done the same myself.” - -“You? You’ve often done—” - -“Of course! Everybody has—at one time or another in their lives. -Naturally it doesn’t happen every day—and one wouldn’t want it to. -One wouldn’t have anything left in the house if it did; but once in a -way—it’s nothing. What astonishes me is that you should have thought of -it.” - -“But—but you’ve thought of it.” - -“Oh, well—that’s different. But please don’t suppose that I’ve thought -of it seriously. It simply happened that that evening—” The only sign of -embarrassment she gave was in grasping the greenish-goldish veil with her -left hand and pulling it round over her bosom. The great eyes, of which -the light made one doubtful as to the color, glowed feverishly, and the -long scarlet lips threw at me one of their daring, challenging smiles. -“Do you want me to be absolutely frank?” - -“We began with frankness, didn’t we? Why shouldn’t we keep it up?” - -“Well, it happened that that evening I’d broken off my engagement.” - -Not to betray all I had learned by my eavesdropping behind the -rose-colored hangings, I merely said, “Indeed?” - -“Yes; and so I was a little—well, perhaps a little excited. And anything -that happened impressed me more than it would have done ordinarily. -If I’ve thought of the way you appeared—and what happened when you -did—it’s only been because it was part of the hours right after—” There -was another of those smiles that were amusingly apologetic as well as -amusingly provocative. “You’re—you’re not married, are you?” - -“No.” - -“Nor engaged?” - -“No.” - -“Ever been?” - -“No.” - -“Then you can’t imagine what it is to have been engaged and nearly -married—and then to find yourself free again. Everything associated with -the minute comes to be imprinted on your memory. That’s why I’ve thought -of it, though I didn’t for the minute recognize you as the man.” - -“And now that you have recognized me—” - -“I hope you’ll do as I asked you before, and come and see us again.” She -added, as she was about to turn away, “How’s Annette?” - -I had been puzzled hitherto; I was now bewildered. - -“You mean Annette Van Elstine? Did you know she was my cousin?” - -“Of course! Didn’t she bring you?” - -“Bring me?” I stammered. “Bring me—where?” - -“Why, to our house!” - -“When?” - -“The time we’re talking about—when you upset Mrs. Sillinger’s coffee and -broke the cup.” - -It is difficult to say whether I was relieved or not. I could only -falter, “I—I don’t believe I’m the man.” - -She came back two or three steps toward me. - -“Why, of course you’re the man! Isn’t your name Melbury?” - -“Yes—but—but I’m not the only Melbury. Could it have been my—my brother, -Jack?” - -“What’s your name?” - -“Frank.” - -She gazed at me a minute before saying: “Then—then I think it must have -been—your brother. I remember now that Annette did call him Jack.” She -continued, “But what did you mean when—when you said it was you?” - -“Don’t you know?” - -“I haven’t the remotest idea.” - -“Look at me again.” - -“I can’t look at you again, because I’m looking at you all the time. -You’re most wonderfully like your brother.” - -“I don’t think I am. I met my uncle Van Elstine in the street the other -day and he didn’t know me.” - -“Oh, well, strangers often see resemblances that escape members of a -family. All I get by looking at you is that I see your brother. He was -awfully nice. We so—we so wished he’d come back. He—he wasn’t like -everybody else.” - -“He’s married now.” - -I wonder if I am right in thinking that a slight shadow crossed her face. -There may have been, too, a forced jauntiness in her tone as she said, -“Oh, is he?” - -I nodded. - -She turned away again, but again wheeled half round to face me. - -“Well, now we know what I meant; but what on earth did you mean?” - -I drew myself up for real inspection. - -“Can’t you think?” - -She shook her head. - -“I must say you seemed inordinately penitent over a broken cup, even if -Mrs. Sillinger was so cross. She said you spilled the coffee all over her -dress; but you didn’t.” - -“You mean Jack.” - -“Oh yes! What a bother! I shall always get you mixed up in the future.” - -“I hope not—for his sake.” - -“Now don’t tease me. Tell me where we met.” - -“If I do—” - -She brightened, the smile of the scarlet lips growing vividly brilliant. - -“I know. It was at the Millings’, at Tarrytown.” - -“I’m afraid not.” - -“Then it was at the Wynfords’, at Old Westbury? They always have so many -people there—” - -“Think again.” - -“What’s the good of thinking when, if I could remember you, I should do -it right away?” - -“It seems extraordinary to me that you can have forgotten.” - -“You seem very sure of the impression you made on me.” - -“I am.” - -“And I’ve forgotten all about it!” - -“You haven’t forgotten the impression; you’ve only forgotten me.” - -“Oh, Mr. Melbury, tell me! Please! I’ve got to run off and overtake Mrs. -Grace; and I can’t do it unless I know.” - -You will admit that my duty at this juncture required some considering. -In the end I said: “I sha’n’t tell you to-day. I may do it later. In -any case, I’ve given you so many tips that you can’t fail to see for -yourself what they lead to. You’ll probably have recalled by to-night.” - -“Then I shall ring you up to-morrow and tell you.” - -“No, please don’t do that; and yet, on second thoughts, I know that when -you’ve remembered you won’t want to.” - -She said, while withdrawing again toward the adjoining room, “You -certainly know how to make a thing mysterious.” - -“I’m not making anything mysterious. You’ll see that, after it’s all come -back to you.” - -But, having passed into the next room, she returned to the threshold to -say: “I know you’re only making fun of me. I never met you, because I -couldn’t have forgotten you. And I couldn’t have forgotten you, because -you’re so like your brother. But we’ll talk about it all some other time.” - -The first thing I did was to go to a room where there was a full-length -mirror fixed to the wall and examine myself in the glass. Was it possible -that I had changed so much in the brief space of four months? The -reflection told me nothing. In the tall, slim figure in the neat gray -check I could still see the sinister fellow who had slept at Greeley’s -Slip and skulked about the Park and crept into a house at midnight. -The transformation had come so imperceptibly that the one image was -no more vital to me than the other. Inwardly, too, I felt no great -assurance against a relapse. I was like an insect toiling up a slippery -perpendicular. Not only was each step difficult, but it might in the -end land me at the bottom where I began. In other words, I had still -within me the potentialities of the drunkard; and to the drunkard all -aberrations are possible. - -That night I put the question up to Lovey. - -“Lovey, do I look the same as I did four or five months ago?” - -“You looks just as good to me, sonny.” - -“Yes, but suppose you hadn’t seen me in the mean while, and had come on -me all of a sudden, would you know right off that it was me?” - -“Slim, if I was blind and deaf and dumb, and couldn’t see nothink nor -’ear nothink nor feel nothink, I’d know it was you if you come ’arf a -mile from where I was.” - -Since this intuitiveness was of no help to me, I worked round to the -subject when, later in the evening, I had gone in to smoke a good-night -pipe with Cantyre. - -He had a neat little corner suite which gave one a cheery view of the -traffic in Madison Avenue north and south by a mere shifting of the eyes. -I sat in the projecting semicircle that commanded this because, after -my own outlook into an airshaft, I enjoyed the twinkling of the lights. -To me the real Ville Lumière is New York. It scatters lights with the -prodigal richness with which the heaven scatters stars. It strings them -in long lines; it banks them in towering façades; it flings them in -handfuls up into the darkness; it writes them on the sky. Twilight offers -you a special beauty because, wherever you are in the city, it brings -out for you in one window or another that first wan, primrose-colored -beacon—in some ways more beautiful than the evening star. Behind the -star you don’t know what there is, while behind the light there is a -palpitating history. Then as you look down from some high perch other -histories light their lamps, till within half an hour the whole town is -ablaze with them—a light for every life-tale—as in pious places there is -one for every shrine. - -Those who were looking at ours saw nothing but a green-shaded lamp, and -yet it lit up such bits of drama as Cantyre’s and mine. So behind every -other shining star, in tower or tenement, dwelling-house or hotel, there -was tragedy, comedy, adventure, farce, or romance, all in multifold -complexity, while before each human story there glowed this tranquil fire. - -If I had not been an architect, with a knowledge of interior decoration -as part of my profession, I might not have been worried by the sybaritic -note in Cantyre’s rooms. Being fond of flowers, he had sheaves of -gladioluses and chrysanthemums wherever he could stack them. Over the -tables he threw bits of beautiful old brocades, ineffable in color. -Framed and glazed, a seventeenth-century chasuble embroidered in -carnations did duty as a fire-screen. Japanese pottery grotesques and -Barye bronzes jostled one another on the mantelpiece and low bookcases, -while the latter housed rows of handsome volumes bound to suit Cantyre’s -special taste and stamped with his initials. He himself, stretched in a -long chair, wore a dressing-gown of an indescribable shade of plum faced -with an equally indescribable shade of blue. The plum socks and blue -leather slippers couldn’t have been an accident; and as I had dropped in -on him unexpectedly I knew that all this _recherche_ was not to dazzle -any one—I could have forgiven that—but for his own enjoyment. - -No one could have been kinder to me than he was—and I liked him. I -reminded myself that it was none of my business if his tastes were -fastidious, and that to spend his money this way was better than in -lounging about bar-rooms, as I had done; and yet I could understand -that a girl like Regina Barry should be impatient of these traits in a -husband. - -I sat, however, with my back to it all, astride of a small chair, my pipe -in my mouth, looking down on the lights and traffic. - -Breaking a long silence, I said, as casually as I could do it: “I met -Sterling Barry’s daughter the other day—Miss Regina Barry, her name is, -isn’t it?” - -Vague, restless movements preceded the laconic response, “Where?” - -“She came to the memorial with Mrs. Grace.” - -Hearing him strike a match, I knew he was making an effort at sang-froid -by lighting a cigarette. - -“Did you—did you—think her—pretty?” - -“Pretty wouldn’t be the word.” - -“Beautiful?” - -“Nor beautiful.” - -“What then?” - -“No word that I know would be adequate. You might say fascinating if it -hadn’t been vulgarized; and chic would be worse.” - -“She’s tremendously animated—and vivid.” - -“She has the most living eyes and mouth I’ve ever seen in a human being. -I’ve never seen a face so aglow with mind, emotion, and color. She’s all -flame, but a flame like that of the burning bush, afire from a force -within.” - -He spoke bitterly. “And people talk about that being conquered!” - -To lead him further I said, “Has any one talked of it?” - -“Didn’t you know?” - -“How should I know? You—you’ve never told me.” - -“Well, I’m—I’m telling you now.” - -My sympathy was quite genuine. - -“Thanks, old boy. I can see—I can see how hard it must have gone with -you.” - -“How hard it’s going, Frank. There’s a difference in tense. If you knew -her better—” - -“I’m not sure that I care to know her better; and that, old man, isn’t -said out of rudeness. I don’t belong to her world any more; and I’d -rather not try to get back into it.” - -“Oh, get out! As a matter of fact I’m going to take you to see her.” - -“You needn’t do that, because she asked me to come.” - -“Right off the bat like that? The first time she’d ever seen you?” - -“It wasn’t exactly that. She knew my brother Jack; and my cousin, Annette -van Elstine, is a friend of hers.” - -“Annette van Elstine is your cousin? Why didn’t you tell me that before?” - -“Oh, for reasons. I should think you’d see. Why should I claim Annette as -a cousin? One of the smartest women in New York, I’m told she is.” - -“One of the very smartest. She could do anything for you.” - -“So there you are! When you think of what I was when you first met -me—what I am still, really—” It seemed to me, however, that I had found -my opening, so I went on in another vein. “I met Annette’s father in the -street one day, not long ago, and he went by without recognizing me. Have -I changed very much—since the spring?” - -“I should know you anywhere, Frank; but Coningsby and Christian were -saying last week that they wouldn’t take you to be the same man any more.” - -“Did they mean morally—or physically?” - -“Oh, they meant in looks. They said they’d never seen any one in whom -good clothes and a straight life had so thoroughly created a new man.” - -“So that you think my uncle might reasonably—” - -“Pass you without recognition? Oh, Lord, yes! Besides, your mustache -changes you a lot. I’d shave that off again if I were you; and you want -to get back to your old self.” - -To end the subject I said merely: “I’m glad to hear that I don’t look as -I did; because—because I shouldn’t like to think that the good old fellow -had cut me.” - - - - -_CHAPTER X_ - - -My problem was now as to how to tell Regina Barry who I was; and it would -have been more urgent had I not felt sure that sooner or later she must -guess. Indeed, she might have guessed already. I had no means of knowing. -During the four or five days since her visit to the memorial no echo of -our meeting had come back to me. - -But I was not left long in doubt. - -The William Grace Memorial was now practically ready for furnishing. -Mrs. Grace was about to move back to town in order to undertake the -task. Coningsby and I were going through the rooms one day with an eye -to details that might have been overlooked when he said, “Well, there -doesn’t seem much more for you to do here, does there?” - -I replied that as far as any further need of my services was concerned I -might knock off work there and then—thanking him for all his help through -the summer. - -“And now,” he went on, “I should like you to come in on this job at -Atlantic City if you’d care to. You see, you and I understand each other; -we speak the same language both professionally and socially; and it’s not -so easy as you might think to pick up a chap of whom you can say that. -Why not come up to our little place—say to-morrow night—and dine with us, -and we could talk it over? My wife told me to ask you.” - -Knowing that Coningsby had been aware of the state of my wardrobe a few -months earlier, I blushed to the roots of my hair as I put the question: -“What shall I wear? Tails—or a dinner jacket and black tie?” - -“Oh, a dinner jacket. There’ll be just ourselves.” - -But when I went I found not only my host and hostess, but Regina Barry to -make the party square. - -The Coningsbys lived on the top floor of an apartment-house on the summit -of the ridge between the west side of the Park and the Hudson. Below -them lay a picturesque tumble of roofs running down to the river, beyond -which the abrupt New Jersey heights drew a long straight line against the -horizon. Sunset and moonset were the special beauties of the site, with -the swift and ceaseless current to add life and mystery to the outlook. - -The apartment differed from Cantyre’s in that its simplicity would have -been bare had it not produced an impression of containing just enough. -The walls of the drawing-room were of a pale-gold ocher against which -every spot of color told for its full value. On this background the green -of chairs, the rose of lamp-shades, the mahogany of tables, and the -satinwood of cabinets pleased and rested the eye. There were no pictures -in the room but a portrait of Mrs. Coningsby, which one of the great -artists of the day had painted for her as a gift. In its richness of -copper-colored hair and diaphanous jade-green draperies the room got all -the decoration it required. - -I had heard Regina Barry’s voice on entering, and knew that I was up -against my fate. That is to say, the revolver lay ready in my desk. -Knowing that such a meeting as this must occur some time, I was in -earnest as to using the weapon on the day when her eyes accused me. As I -took off my overcoat and hat and laid them on a settle in the hall, I -said I should probably do it when I went home that night. It would depend -on how she looked at me. - -Meeting me at the door of the drawing-room, Mrs. Coningsby was sweet and -kindly in her welcome without being over-demonstrative. I had heard of -her beauty, but was not prepared for anything so magnificent. Her height, -her complexion, her hair, her free movements—were those of a goddess. I -liked and admired Coningsby; but I wondered how even he had caught this -Atalanta and imprisoned her in a flat on the west side of New York. - -“You know Miss Barry, don’t you?” were the words with which she directed -me toward the end of the room, where the other guest was seated in a low -arm-chair by a corner of the fireplace. - -So the supreme moment came. I went the length of the room knowing that I -was facing it. - -I suppose it is instinct that tells women how to avoid comparisons with -each other by creating contrasts. Knowing that in competition with her -hostess she would have everything to lose, Miss Barry used Mrs. Coningsby -as a foil. In other words, she had divined the fact that her friend would -be in black with a spangling of blue-green sequins, and so had enhanced -her own vividness by dressing in a bright rose-red. What she lacked in -beauty, therefore, she made up in a brilliancy that stood out against the -pale-gold ocher background with the force of a flaming flower. - -As I stooped to take the hand she held up languidly I tried to search -her eyes. They told me nothing. The fire in them seemed not exactly to -have gone out, but to have been hidden behind some veil of film through -which one could get nothing but a glow. Had she meant to baffle me she -couldn’t have done it more effectively; but, as I learned later, she -meant nothing of the kind. Her greeting, as far as I could judge of it, -was precisely that which she would have accorded to any other diner-out. - -During the exchange of commonplaces that ensued there were two things I -noticed with curiosity and uneasiness. She wore the string of pearls I -had seen once before—had had in my pocket, as a matter of fact—and the -long diamond bar-pin. As to her rings I could not be sure, having on the -night when I meant to steal them noticed nothing but their number. But -the pearls and the diamonds arrested my attention—and my questionings. -Was she wearing them on purpose? Was she holding them up as silent -reminders between her and me? Was I to understand from merely looking at -them the charge her eyes refused to convey? - -I had no means of seeking an answer to these questions, because Coningsby -came in and the process of being welcomed had to be gone through again. -Moreover, the commonplaces which, when carried on _à deux_, might have -led to something more personal remained as commonplaces and no more when -tossed about _à quatre_. - -On our going in to dinner the same tone was maintained, and I learned -nothing from any interchange of looks. There was, in fact, no interchange -of looks. Miss Barry talked to her right and to her left, but rarely -across the table. When it became necessary to speak a word directly to -me she did it with so hasty a glance that it might easily not have been -a glance at all. The burning eyes that had watched me so intently on our -first meeting, and studied me with so much laughing curiosity on our -second, kept themselves hidden. Since it was on them that I had reckoned -to tell me what I was so eager to be sure of, I was like a man who hopes -to look through a window and finds it darkened by curtains. - -After dinner, however, I got an opportunity. Coningsby and his wife were -summoned to the nursery to discuss the manifestations of some childish -ailment. Miss Barry and I being left alone before the fire, I was able to -say, “Well, have you thought of it?” - -Some of the customary vivacity returned to her lips and eyes. She had at -no time seemed unkindly—only absent and rather dreamy. She was rather -dreamy still, but more on the spot mentally. - -“Thought of what?” - -“Of—of where we first met.” - -“Oh, that! I’m sorry to say I’ve been too busy to do any searching in my -memory. But one of these days I must.” - -There was no mistaking the sincerity of her tone. She had not searched in -her memory; she had not considered it worth while. Her interest in our -meeting at the memorial had probably passed before she had driven away. - -I must plead guilty to feeling piqued. That she should be so much in -my mind and that I should occupy so small a place in hers not only -disappointed but annoyed me. I said to myself, “Oh, well, if she cares -so little there is no reason why I should care more.” Aloud I made it: -“Please don’t bother about it. One of these days the recollection will -come back to you of its own accord.” - -“Yes; I dare say.” She went on without transition, “Whom did your brother -marry?” - -I told her. - -“He wasn’t like everybody else,” she pursued. “I wonder—I wonder if you -are?” - -“Wouldn’t that depend on what you mean by being like everybody else? I -don’t know that I get your standard.” - -“Oh, men are so much alike. There’s no more difference between them than -between so many beans in a bottle.” - -“I don’t see that. To my mind they’re all distinct from one another.” - -“In little ways, yes. But when it comes to the big ways—” - -“What are the big ways?” - -She weighed this, a forefinger against a cheek. - -“The big ways are those which indicate character, aren’t they? While the -little ones only make for habits. Men differ as to their habits, but in -character they’re all cut on the same pattern—two or three patterns at -most.” - -“But can’t you say the same of women?” - -“Very likely; only I don’t have to marry a woman.” - -Since she had become personal, I ventured to do the same. - -“Oh, so it’s a question of marriage!” - -“What other question is there when a girl like me is twenty-three? -One has to decide that tiresome bit of business before one can tackle -anything else.” - -I grew bolder. - -“Decide as to whom to marry—or whether or not to marry at all?” - -“Suppose I said as to whether or not to marry at all?” - -“You mean that you’d like advice?” - -“I’d listen to advice—if you’ve any to give.” - -I gathered all my strength together for the most tremendous effort of my -life. - -“Then, I should say this: That there are men in the world different from -any you’ve ever seen yet. Wait!” - -She laughed—an intelligent laugh, full of music, mirth, and comprehension. - -“Do you know, that reminds me of something awfully strange that happened -to me a few months ago? Some one else said just those words to me—or, -rather, wrote them down.” - -I pulled my chair so that her eyes rested on me more directly. - -“How?” - -“Oh, I can’t tell you. I said I never would—so I mustn’t. I should love -to—though I never shall.” - -“Was it—interesting?” - -“Thrilling! But there! I’m not going to tell you. I shouldn’t have -mentioned it if what you say hadn’t been so oddly like—” - -But Coningsby came back into the room to ask if Miss Barry wouldn’t join -his wife in the nursery to see little Rufus while he was awake. In the -mean time he and I would retire to his own snuggery and talk business. - -While I followed his account of the hotel he was building sufficiently to -get his ideas and to know what he expected of me, I was saying to myself: -“She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know me at all. It never occurs to her -as a possibility that the man who wrote those words is the one she is now -asked to meet at dinner. How am I ever to get the nerve to let her know?” - -When I found the opportunity I put the question, “Have your wife and Miss -Barry any idea about me?” - -“About you? You mean about—” - -“The Down and Out.” - -“Lord, no! What would be the good of that?” - -“The only good would be that—that I shouldn’t be sailing under false -colors.” - -“False colors be hanged! We’ve all got a right to the privacy of our -private lives. You don’t go nosing into any one else’s soul; why should -any one else go nosing into yours? Why, if I were to tell my wife all I -could tell her about myself I should be ashamed to come home.” - -I knew this argument, and yet when I came to apply it to my attitude -toward Regina Barry I was not satisfied. - - - - -_CHAPTER XI_ - - -A few days later I was surprised to receive a note from Annette van -Elstine. It ran: - - DEAR FRANK,—I have just heard that you are in New York—that you - have been here some time. Why did you never come to see me? It - was not kind. And didn’t you know that your mother has been - heartbroken over your disappearance? Jerry and Jack knew you - were somewhere in this country, but they’ve kept your mother in - the dark. What does it all mean? Come to tea with me—just me—on - Friday afternoon at five, and tell me all about it. - - Your affectionate - - ANNETTE. - -As this was the first bit of connection with my own family since Jerry -had practically kicked me down his steps, I was deeply perturbed by it. -I am not without natural affection, and yet I seemed to have died to the -old life as completely as Lovey to that with his daughters. I had never -forgotten Jerry’s words: “And now get out. Don’t let any of us ever see -your face or hear your name again.” - -The very fact that he was justified had roused the foolish remnant of my -pride. - -I had loved my mother; I had reverenced my father; though my brothers -were indifferent to me, I had felt a genuine tenderness for my sisters. -But since that night on Jerry’s steps it had been to me as if I had put -myself on one side of a flood and left them on the other, and that there -was no magic skiff that would carry me back whence I came. I cannot say -that I grieved for them; and it was the last of my thoughts that they -would grieve for me. I accepted the condition that we were dead to each -other, and tried to bury memory. - -And now came this first stirring of resurrection. It hurt me. I didn’t -want it. It was like the return of life to a frozen limb. Numbness was -preferable to anguish. - -“Lovey,” I said, as the old man hung about me when I was undressing that -night, “how would you feel if one of your daughters—” - -He raised himself from the task of pulling off my boots, which to humor -him I allowed him to perform, and looked at me in terror. - -“They ain’t—they ain’t after me?” - -“No, no! But suppose they were—wouldn’t you like to see them?” - -He dropped the boot he held in his hand. - -“Y’ain’t goin’ to ’ave them ’unted up for me, Slim?” - -“I don’t know anything about them, Lovey. That isn’t my point at all. But -suppose—just suppose—you could see them again; would you do it?” - -He shook his bald head. - -“They’re dead to me. I’m dead to them. If we was to see each other now -’twouldn’t be nothink but diggin’ up a corpse.” - -“Nothink but diggin’ up a corpse,” I repeated to myself as I turned east -from Fifth Avenue, leaving the brown trees of the Park behind me, and -took the few steps necessary to reach my uncle Van Elstine’s door. He -had married my mother’s sister, and during the lifetime of my aunt the -families had been fairly intimate. Of late years they had drifted apart, -as families will, though touch-and-go relations were still maintained. - -I have to admit that while waiting for Annette in the library up-stairs I -was nervous. I was coming back to that family life in which I should have -interests, affections, cares, responsibilities. For the past three years -I had had no one to think of but myself; and if in that freedom there -were heartaches, there were no complexities. - -Though it was not yet dark, the curtains were drawn and the room was -lighted not only by a shaded lamp, but by the flicker of a fire. When -Annette, wearing a tea-gown, appeared at last in the doorway she stood -for a second to examine me. - -“Why, Jack!” she exclaimed, then. “I didn’t know you were in New York. -Have you brought Frank with you?” - -“I am Frank,” I laughed, going forward to offer my hand. “I didn’t know -Jack and I were so much alike. But you’re the second person who has said -it within a few days.” - -“It’s your mustache, I think,” she explained as we shook hands. “I never -saw you wear one before.” - -“I never did.” - -“Do sit down. They’ll bring tea in a minute. I’m so glad to see you. But -if it’s not a rude question, tell me why you’ve been here all this time -and never let me know.” - -It would be difficult to define the conditions which made Annette at the -age of thirty-three what Cantyre styled one of the smartest women in New -York, but the minute you saw her you felt that it was so. My uncle Van -Elstine was only comfortably off; their house was not large; though they -entertained a good deal, their manner of living was not showy. But my -aunt Van Elstine had established the tradition—some women have the art -of doing it—that whatever she had and did and said was “the thing,” and -Annette, as her only child and heiress, had kept it up. - -As far as I could understand the matter, which had been explained to -me once or twice, my aunt was exclusive. In the rush of the newly come -and the rise of the newly rich, which marked the last quarter of the -nineteenth century in New York, she and a few like-minded friends had -made it their business to pick and choose and form what might literally -be called an _élite_. By 1913, however, the _élite_ was not only formed -but founded on a rock as firm as the granite of Manhattan, and Annette’s -picking and choosing could be on another principle. Hers was that more -civilized American tendency to know every one worth knowing, which is -still largely confined, so they tell me, to Washington and New York. -Where her mother had withdrawn Annette went forward. Her _flair_ for the -important or the soon to be important was unerring. Hers was one of the -few drawing-rooms through which every one interesting, both domestic and -foreign, was bound at some time to pass. Being frankly and unrestrainedly -curious, she kept in touch with the small as well as with the great, -with the young as well as with the old, maintaining an enormous -correspondence, and getting out of her correspondents every ounce of -entertainment they could yield her. On her side she repaid them by often -lending them a helping hand. - -The warmth of her greeting now was due not to the fact that I was her -cousin, but to her belief that I had been up to something. It was always -those who had been up to something with whom she was most eager to come -heart to heart. Without temptations of her own, as far as I could ever -see, she got from the indiscretions of others the same sort of pleasure -that a scientist finds in studying the wrigglings of microbes under a -microscope. - -Having some inkling of this, I answered her questions not untruthfully, -but with reservations, saying that I had not come to see her because I -had been down on my luck. - -“And how did you come to be down on your luck?” - -“Can’t you guess?” - -“You don’t look it now.” - -“I’ve been doing better lately. I’ve made two or three friends who’ve -given me a hand.” Carrying the attack in her direction, I asked, “How did -you hear that I was in New York?” - -“Hilda Grace told me. She said you’d been working on that memorial of -hers. She thought it awfully strange—you won’t think me rude in repeating -it?—that a man like you should be only in a secondary position.” - -“If she knew how glad I was to get that—” - -She changed the subject abruptly. - -“When did you last hear from home?” - -I thought it sufficient to say: “Not for a long time. I may as well admit -that nowadays I never hear from home at all.” - -“And, if it’s not a rude question, why don’t you?” - -“Partly, I suppose, because I don’t write.” - -“So I understood from Jack. But, Frank dear, do you think it kind?” - -I broke in with the question, the answer to which I had really come to -get, “When did you last see Jack?” - -“About eighteen months ago; just before he was married. He knew you were -somewhere about, but he wasn’t confidential on the subject.” - -“No; he wouldn’t be. Did he seem all right?” - -“Quite; and awfully in love with Mary Sweet. What’s she like, really?” - -I described my new sister-in-law as I remembered her, going on to say: -“I suppose you gave Jack a good time. Did you—did you take him about -anywhere?” - -“Let me see. I took him to—where was it? I took him to the -Wynfords’—and—and—oh, yes!—to the Barrys’. And it’s too funny! I really -think Regina fell in love with him at first sight. For a month or two -she questioned me about him every time we met. Then all of a sudden she -stopped. If she was struck by the thunderbolt, as the French put it—well, -all I can say is that it serves her right.” - -“Serves her right—what for?” - -“Oh, the way she’s carried on. It’s disgraceful. Do you know her? Her -father is an architect, like you.” - -Annette’s round, dusky face, which had no beauty but a quick, dimpling -play of expression, was one that easily betrayed her ruling passion of -curiosity. It was now so alight with anticipation that I tried to be more -than ever casual. - -“I’ve—I’ve just met her.” - -“Where?” - -“Once at the memorial, when she came with Mrs. Grace; and a few nights -ago I dined with her at the Coningsbys’.” - -“I wonder she didn’t take you for Jack.” - -To this I was not obliged to make a response for the reason that, the man -having arrived with the tea, Annette had to give her attention to the -placing of the tray. - -When I had taken a cup of tea from her hand I created a diversion with -the question, “What did you mean by saying the way she carried on was -disgraceful?” - -“Why, the way she gets engaged and disengaged. It’s been three times in -as many years, and goodness knows how many more experiments—” - -“I suppose she’s trying to find the right man.” - -“It’s pretty hard on those she takes up and puts down in the process. -She’ll get left in the end, you’ll see if she doesn’t.” - -“Isn’t it better to get left than to marry the wrong man?” - -“The very day I took Jack to see her she’d broken off her engagement to -Jim Hunter. I didn’t know it at the time. It was two or three days later -before it came out. If I had known it and told Jack—” - -“Well, what then?” - -“Oh, I don’t say anything. They were awfully taken with each other. But -I’m glad he was saved. If he hadn’t gone straight back to Montreal he -might now be in the place of poor Stephen Cantyre.” - -“I see a good deal of Cantyre.” - -“So I understand.” - -“Who told you?” - -“Elsie Coningsby.” - -“You seem to have got a good deal of information about me all of a -sudden.” - -“Because you’ve dropped right into the little circle in which we all know -one another with a kind of village-like intimacy. New York is really a -congeries of villages.” - -“But any one could see that Cantyre would never make a husband for a -high-spirited girl like Miss Barry.” - -“How do you know she’s high-spirited, if it’s not a rude question?” - -“Oh, one can tell.” - -“You’ve seen her only twice. You must have noticed her very particularly.” - -“I’ve noticed Cantyre very particularly; and just as he wouldn’t make her -the right kind of husband she wouldn’t make him the right kind of wife.” - -When Annette said anything in which there was a special motive a series -of concentric shadows fled over her face like ripples from the spot where -a stone is thrown into a pool. - -“Well, I’m glad you don’t like her, if it isn’t a rude thing to say.” - -“What has my liking her or not liking her got to do with it?” - -“Nothing but the question of your own safety. If she notices how much -you’re like Jack—” - -“If she was going to notice that,” I said, boldly, “she would have done -it already.” - -“And so much the worse for you if she has—unless you’re put on your -guard.” - -“If you mean put on my guard against the danger of being Cantyre’s -successor in a similar experience—” - -“That was my idea.” - -“Well, I can give you all the reassurance you need, Annette. In the first -place, I’ve got no money—” - -The relevance of her interruption did not come to me till nearly a year -later. - -“Frank dear, I must ask you, while I think of it, didn’t you know that -your mother was very, very ill?” - -All the blood in my body seemed to rush back to my heart and to stay -there. We talked no more of Regina Barry, nor of anything but stark -fundamental realities. In an instant they became as much the essentials -of my life as if Regina Barry had never existed. Annette showed herself -much better informed as to my career than she pretended to be, giving me -to understand that the day on which I disappeared my mother had received -a kind of death-blow. She was of the type to leave the ninety and nine in -the wilderness to go after that which was lost; and in her inability to -do so she had been seized, so Annette told me, with a mortal pining away. -With her decline my father was declining also, and all because of me. - -“I’ve been the most awful rotter, Annette,” I groaned, as I staggered to -my feet. “You know that, don’t you?” - -“Yes, Frank, I do know it. That’s why I’ve been so glad to get hold of -you at last, and ask you to—to redeem yourself.” - -“Redeem myself by going back?” - -She looked up at me and nodded. - -“Oh, but how can I?” - - - - -_CHAPTER XII_ - - -My question was answered next evening by Beady Lamont. - -Greatly to Lovey’s disgust, I made it a point to attend every Saturday -meeting at the club. - -“Them low fellas ain’t fit company for you, Slim,” he would protest. -“What’s the use of cuttin’ out the booze and bein’ rich if you don’t ’old -yer ’ead above the likes o’ that?” - -“They’ve been awfully white with us, Lovey.” - -“They wasn’t no whiter with us than they’d be with anybody else; and -don’t three out o’ every five give ’em the blue Peter?” - -But though we had this discussion once a week, he always accompanied me -to Vandiver Street, showing his disapproval when he got there in sitting -by himself and refusing to respond to advances. - -I have to confess that I needed the fellowship of men who had been -through the same mill as myself, in order to keep up the fight. Again let -me repeat it, I am giving you but a faint idea of the struggle I had to -make. No evil habit relinquishes its hold easily, and the one to which -I had given myself over is perhaps the most tenacious of all. It would -be wearisome if I were to keep telling you how near I came at times to -courting the old disaster, and how close the shave by which I sheered -away; but I never felt safer than a blind man walking along the edge of -a cliff. More than once I tore the blue star from my buttonhole, though -on each occasion I juggled myself into putting it back again. I juggled -myself as I did on the morning when I gazed at the brown-green water -flowing beneath Greeley’s Slip. I said that what I didn’t do to-day I -would still be free to do to-morrow, thus tiding myself over the worst -minutes, if only by a process of postponement. - -But among my brothers at the club I heard so many tales of heroic -resistance that I grew ashamed of my periods of weakness. What Pyn and -Mouse and the Scotchman and the piano-mover and Beady Lamont could do, I -told myself, I also could do. Moreover, new men came in, and more than -one of the educated type turned to me for help. To a journalist named -Edmonds, and to an actor named Prince, I stood as next friend, and only -declined to officiate in the same capacity for Headlights, the big-eyed -tailor, and the wee bye Daisy, when they returned, penitent, on the -ground that I couldn’t watch over more than two men efficiently. With the -actor I had no trouble, but twice I had to go down to Stinson’s and pull -Edmonds out of a drunken spell. To keep him out was putting me on all -my mettle; and in order to maintain my mettle I had to stay out myself. -My courage was no whit nobler than that of the man who would turn tail -in the battle if it weren’t for shame before his comrades; but there is -something to be got out of even such valor as that. - -And in the club I got it. Perhaps we were all putting up a bluff. Perhaps -those whom I looked upon as heroes were inwardly no more glorious than I. -But when the fellows whom I patted on the back patted me in their turn, I -was obliged to live up to their commendation. There came, indeed, a time -when I couldn’t help seeing that in the eyes of new-comers especially I -was taken as a pillar of the club, and knew that I couldn’t fall without -bringing down some of the living walls along with me. To be strong enough -to hold up my portion of the weight became once more with me then a -question of _noblesse oblige_. - -The Saturday evening after my talk with Annette was a special one. After -the actor, the journalist, Headlights, and Daisy had renewed their pledge -for a week, Lovey and I stood up with the Scotchman, the piano-mover, -and three or four others, and repeated ours for a month. It probably -seems a simple thing to you; but for us who knew what had been our perils -during the preceding month and the months preceding that, it was a -solemn undertaking. The first vow of all had been relatively easy, since -new resolutions have an attraction in themselves. The weekly vows that -came afterward were not so fiercely hard, because they were but weekly. -When it came to promising for a month—well, I can only say that to us a -month had the length which it has to a child. It seemed to stretch on -indefinitely ahead of one. The foe, retreating as we pressed forward, was -always keeping up a rear-guard fight, and we never woke in the morning -without being aware that we might strike an ambush before nightfall. We -got so tired of the struggle that we often thought of the relief it would -be to be captured; and many a time the resolution was made that when this -month was up.... - -And just at these minutes the chaps who seemed stronger would close in -about us, or those who seemed weaker would make some appeal, and when the -critical Saturday evening came round we would walk up again, impelled by -forces beyond our control, and repledge ourselves. - -On such occasions there was always some word spoken to us by men who had -fought longer than we had and seen the enemy routed more effectively. -That night the speaker to the blue-star men was that club benefactor and -favorite, Beady Lamont. He was a huge mass of muscle, turning the scale -at three hundred and more. Strength was in every movement when he walked -and every pose when he stood still. To my architect’s eye he planted his -legs as though they were ancient Egyptian monoliths. Comparatively small -round the abdomen, his chest was like a great drum. His arms—but why give -a description? Hercules must have been like him, and Goliath of Gath, -and Charlemagne, and the Giants that were in Those Days. They said that -in drink he used to be terrible; but now his big, jolly face was all a -quiver of good-will. - -His voice was one of those husky chuckles of which the very gurgles -make you laugh. To make you laugh was his principle function in the -club. On this evening he began his talk with a string of those amusing, -disconnected anecdotes which used to be a feature of after-dinner -speeches, somewhat as a boy will splash about in the water before he -begins to swim. But when he swam it was with vigor. - -“And now some of you blue-star guys is probably hittin’ a question that -sooner or later knocks at the nuts of most of us chaps that’s trying to -make good all over again. That’s families. Say, ain’t families the deuce? -You may run like a hare, or climb like a squirrel, or light away like a -skeeter—and your family’ll be at your heels. It’s somethin’ fierce. You -can never get away from them; they’ll never let you get away from them. -Because”—his voice fell to a tone of solemnity—“because no matter how -fast you sprint, or how high you climb, or how graceful you can dodge—you -carries your family with you. You can no more turn your back on it than -you can on your own stummick. You may refuse to pervide for it, you may -treat it cruel, you may leave it to look out for itself; but you can -never git away from knowin’ in your heart that if you’re a bum husband -or father or son you’re considerable more bum as a man. That’s why the -family is after us. Can’t shake ’em off! Got ’em where they won’t be -shook off. God A’mighty Hisself put ’em there, and, oh, boys, listen to -me and I’ll tell you why.” - -He made dabs at his wrists as though to turn up his sleeves, like a man -warming to his work. Taking a step or two forward he braced his left -hand on his barrel-shaped hip, while his gigantic forefinger was pointed -dramatically toward his audience. - -“Say, did any of you married guys ever wish to God you was single again? -Sure you did! Was any of you chaps with two or three little kids to feed -ever sorry for the day when he heard the first of his young ones cry? -Surest thing you know! Did any of us with a father and a mother, with -brothers and sisters, too, very likely, ever kick because we hadn’t been -born an orphan and an only child? You bet your sweet life we did! The -drinkin’ man don’t want no hangers-on. He wants to be free. Life ain’t -worth a burnt match to him when he’s got other people to think of, and a -home to keep up, and can’t spend every penny on hisself. Some of us here -to-night has cursed our wives; some of us has beat our children; some of -us has cut out father and mother as if they’d never done nothin’ for us, -and we could cast off from ’em with no more conscience than a tug’ll cast -off from a liner. - -“But, boys, when God A’mighty put us into this world He put us into -a family first of all. He gives us kindness there, and care, and -eddication, and the great big thing that fills the whole universe and -that we ain’t got no other name for only love. As soon as we’d got pretty -well grown He give us another feeling—one that druv us by and by to go -and start a family for ourselves. Most of us went and started one, and -them that haven’t done it yet’ll do it before the next few years is out. -But, boys, what’s it all for? Everything’s got to be for somethin’ or -else it’s just lumberin’ up the ground; and this here matter of families -is either the worst or the best thing you’ll find anywhere on earth. If -it’s not the best it’s the worst, and it has to be one or t’other. - -“Now I stand before you as one who used to think it was the worst. I -won’t say nothin’ of my father and mother. Them things is too sacred to -be trotted out. But I’ll speak of my wife, because she’s that grateful -for what’s been done for me—and everything done for me has been done -twice as much, ten times as much, for her—that she’d like me to bring -her into whatever I’ve got to say. I’ve known the time when I was as -crazy to be quit of my family as a dog to be rid of the tin can tied to -his tail. I had a wife, then, and three children; and, O my God! but I -thought they was a drag! I couldn’t go nowhere without thinkin’ I ought -to be with ’em, and I couldn’t take a drink without knowin’ I had to -steal it from my little boy and my two little girls. They was the p’ison -of my life. There was nights when I was reelin’ home and I used to hope -that the house had been burnt down durin’ the day and they buried in -the ashes. That’d leave me free again. Not to have no home—not to have -to ante up for no one but myself—was the only thing I ever prayed for. -And by gum, but my prayer was answered! One night I come home and found -the house empty. My wife had decamped, and left a note that run somethin’ -like this: ‘Dear Beady,’ says she, ‘I can’t stand this life no more,’ -says she. ‘If it was only me I wouldn’t mind; but I can’t see my children -kicked and beat and starved and hated, not by no one.’ And then she -signed her name. - -“Well, say, boys, most of you has heard what happened to me after that. -I sure had one grand time while it lasted—and it lasted just about six -months. I saw a man oncet—we was movin’ a party from Harlem to the -Bronx—fall down a flight of stairs with a sofa on his back, and he sure -did get some pace on. Well, my pace was just about as quick—and as dead -easy as he struck the landin’ at the bottom I struck the gutter. Now you -know the rest of my story, because some of you guys has had a hand in it. - -“But what I want to tell you is this: That when I begun to come to again, -as you might say, the first thing I wondered about was the wife and the -kids. I couldn’t get ’em out of my mind, nohow. What did I ever have ’em -for? I asked myself. Why in hell did I ever get married? Nobody never -druv me into it. I did it of my own accord. I went hangin’ after the -girl, who had a good place in the kitchen department of a big store, -and I never let her have no peace till she said she’d marry me, and did -it. Why had I been such a crazy fool? There was days and days, sittin’ -right in there in that back room, when I asked myself that; and at last -I got the answer. I’m goin’ to tell it to you now, because there’s a -lot of you shysters that’s only been a few weeks in the club that’s -askin’ yourselves that very same thing. You’ve got wives and kids, the -Lord knows where—scattered to the four winds of heaven, for anything you -know—and you wish you hadn’t. But, say, don’t you go on wishin’ no such -thing; for I’m goin’ to tell you what God A’mighty said to me right there -in that back settin’-room.” - -He squared himself now, planting his Egyptian monoliths with a force -which in itself was a kind of eloquence. His hands were thrust deep into -his trousers pockets and his big chest expanded. - -“‘Beady,’ God A’mighty says to me, and it was just as if I’d heard -His voice, ‘if a man don’t have no one to think about but hisself he -becomes the selfishest of all things under the sun. I’m God,’ says He, -‘with nothin’ to do but enj’y myself; and yet if I didn’t have you and -the other things I make to care for and think about I wouldn’t have -nothin’. I’ve just got to have ’em, for if I didn’t I’d go crazy. So I -make beautiful worlds, and grand men, and noble women, and pretty kids, -and strong animals, and sweet birds to sing, and nice flowers to bloom, -and everything like that. I don’t make nothin’ ugly nor nothin’ bad, -nor no sickness nor sufferin’ nor poverty. You guys does all that for -yourselves, and I don’t take no rest day nor night tryin’ to show you how -not to. Listen to me, Beady,’ says He. ‘Stop thinkin’ about yourself and -that awful hulk of a body, and what it wants to eat and especially to -drink. Don’t pay no more attention to it than you can help. Say, you’re -my son, and you’re just like me. What you want is not the booze; it’s -somethin’ outside yourself to think about. I’ve given you a wife and -three fine youngsters. Now get out and get after them. Cut out livin’ -for yourself and live for them. You must lose your life to find it; and -the quickest way to lose your life is not to think about your beastly -cravings at all.’ - -“Well, by gum! boys, if I didn’t take God A’mighty at His word. I says -to myself, I’ll prove this thing or bust—and if I was to bust there’d be -some explosion. When you fellows had kept me here long enough to let me -be pretty nigh sure of myself I went and looked up the wife, and—well, -there! I needn’t say no more. Some of you dubs has been up to my little -place and you know that Whatever spoke to me that day in that back room -is in my little tenement in the Bronx if He ever was anywhere—and that -brings me at last to my p’int. - -“I’m speakin’ to you blue-star men because you’ve showed pretty well -by this time the stuff you’re made of. As long as you was in danger -of slippin’ back I wouldn’t say this to you at all. But, say, you’ve -weathered the worst of it, so it’s time for me to speak. - -“Has any of you a wife? Then go back to her. Have you kids? Then go back -to ’em. Have you a father or a mother? Then for God’s sake let them -know that you’re doin’ well. Go to ’em—write to ’em—call ’em up on the -’phone—send ’em a telegraph—but don’t let ’em be without the peace o’ -mind that’ll come from knowin’ that you’re on your two feet. One of the -most mysterious things in this awful mysterious life is the way somebody -is always lovin’ somebody. Here in these two rooms is a hundred and -sixty-three by actual count of the seediest and most gol-darned boobs -that the country can turn out. As we look at each other we can’t help -askin’ if any one in their tarnation senses could care for the likes of -us. And yet for every bloomin’ one of us you can foot up to eight or ten -that’ll have us in their hearts as if we was gold-headed cherubs. - -“Say, boys, I’ll tell you somethin’ confidential like, and don’t think -I’m braggin’. The furniture-movin’ business is the grandest one there is. -For a man that’s mastered it there don’t seem anything in the world left -for him to learn. He’s ready to command a army or to run a ocean liner. -But there’s one thing I’ll be hanged if even a furniture-mover knows -anything about—and that’s love. I’ve thought about it and thought about -it—and it gets me every time. I don’t know what it is, or where it comes -from, or how they brew the durned thing in hearts like yours and mine. -All I know is that it’s there—and that this old world goes round in it. -I’m buttin’ into it all the time, and it kind o’ turns me shy like. My -own little home is so full of it that sometimes it makes me choke. If I -try to get away from it and come down here—well, I’m blest if some bloke -don’t begin ladlin’ it out to me when he don’t hardly know what he’s -doin’. The furniture-movin’ business is that shiny with it when you know -how to see it— But I’ll not say no more. You’d laff. You’re laffin’ at -me now, and I don’t blame you. All I’ve wanted to do is to put some of -you boys wise. If there’s a blue-star man who knows any one in the world -that’s fond of him—then for Christ’s sake get after ’em! And do it not -later than to-night.” - -And so I did it. Before going to bed I wrote a long letter to my father, -giving him such details of my history during the past three years as I -thought he would like to know. I hinted that if he or my mother would -care for a visit from me I could go home for a few days. - -Then I waited. - -In a week I got my reply. It read: - - MY DEAR FRANK,—I am glad to receive your letter, but sorry that - it should ever have been necessary for you to write it. That - you should be doing well no one could be more thankful for than - I. I have given your messages to your mother, and she wishes me - to send you her love. I consider it my duty to add, however, - that no messages can withdraw the sword you have thrust into - her heart—and mine. - - Your affectionate father, - - EDWARD MELBURY. - - - - -_CHAPTER XIII_ - - -After that my work took me to Atlantic City, though not before I had -had a number of meetings with Regina Barry, each of which, with one -exception, took me by surprise. - -The exception was the first. Cantyre urged me so strongly to come with -him to call on Mrs. Barry and her daughter that in the end I yielded. - -I found Mrs. Barry a charming invalid lady, keeping to the background and -allowing her daughter to take all the initiative. From her as well as -from Regina I got the reflex action of their liking for Jack. Mrs. Barry -had seen him only once, but had preserved the memory of the pleasure -which the meeting had given her. She repeated the statement, which had -already grown familiar, that she thought Jack different from other men. -Perhaps he was, though I could never see it. Perhaps she thought I was, -myself, though she didn’t say so in words. - -In any case, the call was followed by an invitation to dinner, and not -long after that Annette placed me next to Miss Barry at lunch. Mrs. Grace -did the same, and so did Cantyre when he insisted on my joining a party -he gave at a theater. Two or three other meetings were accidental, and if -I say that in all of them Miss Barry herself made the advances it is only -to emphasize my nervousness. I had no right to be meeting her; I had no -business to be allowing her to talk to me and show that—well, that she -didn’t dislike me. The revolver was still in my desk and I began to ask -myself if it wasn’t my duty to make use of it. True, she had not accused -me with her eyes, but she was in some ways doing worse. What was to be -the end of it? - -I welcomed the work at Atlantic City, then, for more reasons than one. -It took me away from New York; it kept me out of danger. Cantyre having -confided to me the fact that his hopes were not dead, it left the field -free to him. Never for a moment did he suspect that in my heart there was -anything that could interfere with him; nor did he so much as dream that -in hers.... - -It is curious that in proportion as the craving for drink diminished -its place was taken by another craving for what I knew I couldn’t have. -There was every reason why I couldn’t have it, why I could never have it. -Atlantic City offered me, therefore, the readiest means of flight. - -When that should be over I was planning a still further retirement. -Sterling Barry was in California, directing the first stages of the -erection of a block of university buildings in which he took great pride. -Coningsby himself had suggested that when the Atlantic City job was -finished there would be an opening for me there if I cared to make a bid -for it. I did so care, and he promised to speak for me. Once I reached -the Pacific, I was resolved not to come back for years, and perhaps never -to come back at all. - -It is lucky for me that I am temperamentally inclined to look forward. -The retrospective view in my case would very soon have led me back to -Greeley’s Slip, but I was rarely inclined to dwell on it. Once when I was -crossing the Atlantic as a small boy our steamer had run on the rocks at -Cape Clear. To enable us to get off her before she slipped back into the -water and went down, long rope ladders were lowered to us from the top -of the cliff, and up them we had to climb. This we did in a foggy Irish -dawn, seeing just the rope rung ahead of us. Had we been able to look -farther up the face of the cliff my mother and sisters would hardly have -had the nerve for the ascent. As it was, they could see that single rung -and no more, and so could keep their gaze upward without fear. - -In the same way I kept my own gaze forward. I tried not to look ahead -of the day, and at Atlantic City the days, even in November, were -bearable enough. The booming of the long miles of breakers acted on me -as a sedative. They dulled memory; they dulled pain; at the same time -they incited me to work as the piercing wail of the bagpipes incites -the Highlander to fight. I got companionship from them and a sense -of timelessness. In their roll and tumble and crash I could hear the -_poluphoisboio thalasses_ in which Homer put the sound of breakers -forever into speech. - -So November went by, and a great part of December. Christmas was -approaching, and I was eager to have it over. Not that it mattered to me; -but the sense that there was a gay companionship in the world from which -I was excluded got slightly on my nerves. Cantyre, who came down to spend -a week-end with me whenever he could, having to go for that season to his -relatives in Ohio, I looked for nothing more festal than a merry meal -with Lovey. - -The late afternoon on the day before Christmas Eve was both windy and -foggy, with a dash of drizzle in the air. The men had knocked off -working, and as I left the half-finished building I stood for a minute -to get the puffs of wet wind in my face. The lights along the Board -Walk were reflected on the wet planks as in a blurred mirror. Here and -there a pedestrian beat his way against the wind, and an occasional -rolling-chair—the jinrikisha of Atlantic City—disappeared into the -aureole of the sea-front. - -As I came down our rickety temporary steps I became aware that a woman’s -figure darted out of the shelter of a pavilion on the shore edge and -walked rapidly across toward me. She wore an ulster and a tam-o’-shanter -cap, and made a gallant little figure in the wind. More than that I -did not take time to notice, as I had no suspicion that she could have -anything to do with me. - -I was, in fact, turning southward toward the house where I was staying -when she managed to beat her way in front of me. - -“Don’t you know me?” - -I stopped in astonishment. - -“Why—why, what are you doing here?” - -“I was waiting for you.” - -I could think of nothing better to say than, “On an evening like this?” - -“Oh, I don’t mind that. We arrived only this afternoon. You see, my -father can’t get back from California, and mother wouldn’t spend -Christmas in town. We’re not going to have any Christmas, and so—” - -We struggled across the walk to the pavilion, which, though open on all -sides, afforded at least an overhead protection. - -“How did you know where to find me?” I asked, stupidly. - -“Ralph Coningsby told me—and the time you would be coming out. I—I’ve -something—something rather special to—to say to you.” - -I stood looking down at her. In the wooden ceiling above our heads there -was an electric light that shed its beams through the whirl of mist right -into her upturned face. There was a piteous quiver in the scarlet lips, -and to the eyes had returned that mingling of compassion and amazement -with which she had watched me when I pulled out her trinkets and threw -them on the desk. It was the first time I had seen it since that night. - -As I look back we seem to have gazed at each other in this way for an -immeasurably long while, but I suppose it was only for some seconds. I -knew why she was there. The truth had dawned on her at last, and she had -come to tell me it wouldn’t make any difference. - -But it would. - -I had left the revolver in my desk in town; but I reminded myself that -there was a train between eight and nine and that I should have plenty of -time to catch it. - - - - -_CHAPTER XIV_ - - -For my own sake, rather than for Regina Barry’s, I made an effort to -escape from the pitiless pavilion light overhead. - -“You’ll need to go back to your hotel. Sha’n’t we walk along? Then you -can tell me as we go.” - -The tramp through the gale and spray would have been exhilarating were -it not that confidential things had to be thrown out into the tempest. -As we left the pavilion, however, a voice floated toward me from the -semi-darkness. - -“Chair, boss?” - -Another minute and we were seated side by side in the odd little -vehicle—something between a baby’s perambulator and a touring-car—with -the leather curtains buttoned to protect us, and a view through the -wind-shield of a long line of lights shining into fog. There was a -minute of surprise in the fact that, involuntarily expecting to go at a -heightened speed, we found ourselves literally creeping at the snail’s -pace which was the customary gait of our pusher. - -But that was only subconscious. I took note of it without taking note of -it, to remember it when I pieced the circumstances together on returning -home. The one thing of which I was really aware was that in this curious -conveyance I was seated at her side, and able, as she sat half turned -toward me, to look her in the eyes. - -Now that we were there, she lost some of her self-possession. After the -months in which I had been afraid of her she seemed suddenly to have -become afraid of me. Crouching back into her corner of the chair, she -grew small and apologetic. - -“Mother made me come. She said some one ought to tell you.” - -It was like a little cry—the cry of a child confessing before it is -accused. I could follow her mental action. She wanted me to understand -that nothing but _force majeure_ would have induced her to waylay a man -as he was coming home from work and take him in a kind of ambush. - -Having once already talked with her at cross-purposes, I was careful to -let her state her message before betraying my conviction of what it was -to be. - -“It’s very kind of Mrs. Barry,” I began, vaguely. - -“You see, she likes you,” she broke in, impulsively. “If you had any -one belonging to you in this country I dare say she—But she’s awfully -maternal, mother is; and when Annette told her—” - -“What did Annette tell her?” - -“That’s it. Oh, Mr. Melbury, I’m so sorry that I should be the one to -bring the news.” - -“If it’s bad news,” I said, encouragingly, “I’d rather have you to share -it with me than any one else in the world.” - -She asked, abruptly, “Have you heard anything from home—lately?” - -I had once more the sensation of the blood rushing back to my heart and -staying there. All I could do was to shake my head. - -“That’s what Annette thought. We told her she ought to write to you.” - -In my excitement I clutched her by the hand, but I think she was hardly -aware of the act any more than I. - -“But what is it?” - -“It’s—it’s about your father.” - -“He’s not—he’s not—dead?” - -She fell back again into her corner of the chair, withdrawing her hand. -I, too, fell back into my corner, staring out through the wind-shield. -Knowing that by not saying no she was really saying yes, I was obliged -not only to get possession of the fact, but to control my sense of it. - -I may say at once that it was the first sudden shock of my life. Every -other trial had come to me by degrees—I had more or less seen it on the -way and had been ready to meet it. This was something I had hardly ever -thought of. That it might happen some time had been vaguely in the back -of my mind, of course; but I had never considered it as an event of the -day and hour. Now that it had occurred, my mental heavens seemed to fall. - -I have told you so little of my family life that you hardly realize the -degree to which my father was its center and support. My memory cannot -go back to the time when he was not an important man, not only in the -estimation of his children, but in that of the entire country. One of the -youngest of that group of men who in the ’sixties and ’seventies took -the scattered colonies of Great Britain lying north of the border of the -United States and welded them into a gigantic, prosperous whole, he had -outlived all but the sturdiest of his contemporaries. With Macdonald, -Mount Stephen, Strathcona and a few others he had had the vision of a -new white man’s empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and -from the Great Lakes to the Arctic, and through good times and evil he -had never let it go. That there were evil times as well as good ones is -a matter of history; but however dark the moment, my father was one of -those who never lost for a fraction of an instant his belief in ultimate -success. In helping to build up the vast financial system of the Canadian -Pacific Railway there was no door, in Europe or America, where money -could be borrowed at which he did not knock. There were days when the -prospect was so hopeless and the treasury so empty that he was obliged -to pledge everything he possessed, and after that to use nothing but his -honor and his name. The winning out is one of the fairy-tales of the -modern world. He had begun to reap his reward just as my memory of him -opens. Of his days of struggle I knew only by hearsay. By the time I was -five he was already a man of considerable wealth, honored throughout the -Dominion, honored in Great Britain, and one of the eight or ten Canadian -baronets created by the Queen. - -I see him as tall, spare, and vigorous, with thin, clear-cut, -clean-shaven features, a piercing eye, and a mouth that sagged at the -corners not from dejection, but from determination. Spartan in his own -life, he required his children to be Spartan in theirs. Though with our -added means our manner of living increased in dignity, it gained little -in the way of luxury; and many were the shifts to which my brothers and I -were pushed to indulge the follies of young men. - -My brothers did this no more than experimentally, covering their tracks -and returning to right ways before their digressions could be noticed. -I was invariably caught, coming in for some dramatic moments with my -father, which increased in tension with the years. I have often wondered -what his own youth could have been that he had so little mercy on what -was at first not much worse than high spirits and boisterousness. Though -I am far from blaming any one but myself for my ultimately going wrong, I -have sometimes thought that a gentler handling might have led me aright -when sheer repression only made me obstinate. That gentler handling my -mother would have given me had not my father felt that it was weak. -This knowledge only added to my perversity, the result being a state of -continuous rebellion on my part and permanent displeasure on his. - -“You’re getting in worse and worse with the old man,” my brother Jack -warned me a few months before I left Montreal for good. “I heard him -telling mother that if you didn’t turn over a new leaf he’d cut you out -of his will.” - -The information that he had so cut me out was the last form of appeal -he ever made to me. I didn’t believe he meant it otherwise than as -a bluff—a stroke of the pen could have reinstated me; but merely as -a bluff it angered me. It implied that I might be induced to do for -money what I hadn’t done for love or duty, and I was foolish enough to -consider it part of my manhood to prove that any one who so judged me was -mistaken. In that phase of my misguided life there was a kind of crazy, -Cordelia-like attempt to show my father that it was not because of his -money that I cared for him—or didn’t care for him; but all I succeeded -in doing was to rouse the resentment of a man who had hardly ever been -defied. - -But I had repented of that kind of bravado long before I had repented of -anything else. My letter to him in October had been quite sincere. To be -cut out of his will had never meant anything to me but the loss of his -affection. I was sorry for that loss, sorrier than any words I have could -tell you. But when he wrote to me, in answer to my October letter, I knew -from his tone that I had definitely killed whatever had once existed -between him and me, and that all that was left for me was to bury it. I -had been trying to bury it for the past eight weeks, and I do not deny -that the effort was a bitter one. - -You must understand that I had now come in for a set of emotions that -had not belonged to me before I went to the Down and Out. I can explain -it only on the ground that months of abstinence from anything that -could inflame the senses or disturb the poise of the mind had induced a -sanity of judgment to which I had been a stranger. In this new light I -was really a prodigal son—not from any hope of a ring on my hand or the -fatted calf, but genuinely from affection for the parents I had wronged. - -To have this impulse to arise and go to my father thrown back on itself -was the hardest thing in my experience. Somehow I had kept the conviction -that if ever I repented that door would be open to my return. It had -not really occurred to me that they wouldn’t say at home, “It is meet -that we should make merry and be glad.” That my brothers might refuse -to join in the chorus was a possibility. That my sister might not be -over-enthusiastic in doing so I should be able to understand. But that -my father and mother.... Throughout my stay in Atlantic City I had been -saying to myself, “Well, if I’ve thrust a sword into your hearts, old -dears, you’ve jolly well thrust one into mine; and so we’re quits.” - -“When did it happen?” was the first question I was sufficiently master of -myself to ask. - -“Annette heard yesterday. I think it was the day before.” - -“Do you know if—if he’d been ill?” - -“He hasn’t been well for a long time, Annette says—not for two or -three years; but the end was—well, it was heart failure. He was in his -motor—going home. When the car drove up to the door they found him—” - -It was the picture thus presented that made me put my hand to my forehead -and bow my head. I was thinking of him seated in his corner of the car, -stately, unbending, unpardoning, dead. I was thinking of the plight of -my poor little mother when the man she had for so many years worshiped -and obeyed was no longer there to give her his commands. I was thinking -of the commotion in the family, of the stir of interest throughout the -community. A prince and a great man would have fallen in Israel, and all -our Canadian centers would be aquiver with the news. Jerry and Jack would -cable to my sister in England, as well as to our uncles and aunts in that -country and in the United States. There were cousins and friends who -wouldn’t be forgotten. I alone was left out. - -That was, however, more than I could believe. It was more, too, than I -was willing to allow Regina Barry to suppose. - -“There must be a telegram for me at my rooms in New York,” I managed to -stammer, though I fear my tone lacked conviction. - -To this she said nothing. She had, in fact, as Cantyre informed me later, -already ascertained that up to the hour of her departure from New York -there was none. - -I talked to Cantyre on the telephone immediately on returning to my -hotel. He said that, though in my rooms there were some odds and ends -of mail matter which he hadn’t yet forwarded, there was no telegram or -Canadian letter. Having called up Annette, I got a repetition of the -meager information Miss Barry had given me, though I learned in addition -that the funeral was to take place on the following day, which would be -Christmas Eve. Her father had already gone to Montreal to take part in -the ceremony. The embarrassment of her tone in saying she was surprised -that I had received no announcement told me that she was not surprised. -It was the last touch to the certainty that I had been omitted with -intention. - -After that, for a time, my grief gave place to rage. The punishment -was so much greater than the crime that my heart cried out against its -injustice. Had I stayed down in the depths where I was I should have -accepted it phlegmatically; but having made the effort to rise, and made -it with some success.... - -I acquitted my mother and my sister of any share in the injury done to -me. My mother was the tenderest little creature God ever made, but she -had always been under the domination of my father, and had now come under -that of her sons. Never having asserted herself, she would hardly begin -to do it at this date, though she might weep her heart out in secret. I -knew my sister would put in a good word for me, but as the youngest of -the family and a girl she would easily be overruled. - -Jack might be mercifully inclined, but he would do as Jerry insisted. -Jerry—who as Sir Gerald Melbury would now cut a great swath as head of -the family—Jerry would be my father over again. He would be my father -over again, only on a smaller scale. My father was tyrannical by -instinct; Jerry would be so by imitation. My father believed his word -to be law because he didn’t know how to do anything else; Jerry would -believe his word to be law in order to be like my father. My father -wouldn’t forgive me because I had outraged his affections; Jerry wouldn’t -forgive me because my father hadn’t done it first. As far as he could -bring it about, my future would be locked and sealed with my father’s -death, not because he, Jerry, would be so shocked at my way of life, but -because the laws of the Medes and Persians alter not. - -Nothing remained for me, then, but to grin and bear it, and bide my -time. That I had friends of my own was to me a source of that kind of -consolation which is largely pride. Cantyre and the Coningsbys, Regina -Barry and her mother—came closer to me now than any one with whom I had -ties of blood. “Our relatives,” George Sand writes somewhere, “are the -friends given us by Nature; our friends are the relatives given us by -God.” - -As relatives given me by God I regarded Lovey and Christian and Colonel -Straight and Pyn and Beady Lamont and all that band of humble, helpful -pals to whom I was knit in the bonds of the “robust love” which was the -atmosphere of brave old Walt Whitman’s City of Friends. There was no pose -among them, nor condemnation, nor severity. Forgiveness was exercised -there till seventy times seven. They forbore one another in love, and -endeavored to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace to a -degree of which Some One would have said that He had not found the like, -no, not in Israel. - -My family were all of Israel, and of the strictest sect. They fasted -twice in the week, so to speak; in theory, if not in practice, they -gave tithes of all that they possessed; they could sincerely thank God -that they were not as such men as composed the Down and Out; and yet it -was precisely among those who smote their breasts and didn’t dare so -much as to lift up their eyes unto heaven that I found the sympathy that -raised me to my feet and bade me be a man. No wonder, then, that that -evening I kept poor old Lovey near me, that I took him down to the café, -where there were only men, and made him dine with me, and told him of my -bereavement. - -“Is he, now?” he said, drawing a melancholy face. “No one can’t live -forever, can they? He’d have been an old, aged man, I expect.” - -I told him my father’s age. - -“Ah, well, at that time of life they gits carried off. Too bad you didn’t -know in time for the funeral. Ye’d ’ave liked to see him laid away safe -underground, wouldn’t ye, Slim? I ’ope he was in some good benefit club, -like, that’ll take care of the expenses of burial. Awful dear, coffins -is; but I suppose your family has a plot in some churchyard.” - -When I had assured him that this was the case he continued: “And as for -goin’ off sudden—well, it’s awful ’ard on relations when a old, ancient -man’ll lay round sick and don’t know when ’is time’s come. I’ve knowed -’em when you’d swear they hung on a-purpose, just to spite them as ’ad to -take care of ’em. I ’ad a grandfather o’ me own—well, you’d think that -old man just couldn’t die. Ninety, I believe he was, and a wicked old -thing when he got silly, like. Take the pepper, he would, and pour it -into the molasses-jug, and everything like that. Terr’ble fun he was for -us young ones, especially one day when he dressed all up in ’is Sunday -clothes and went out in the street without ’is pants. I don’t suppose yer -guv’nor ever did the like o’ that, Slim. Don’t seem as if old people on -this side ’ad them playful ways.” - -In this sort of reminiscence the evening went by, and in the morning I -received a note that did much to comfort me. It was no more than the -conventional letter of condolence from Mrs. Barry, but it was tactfully -couched. - -“A loss like yours,” she wrote, “painful as it is at all times, becomes -tragically so when the support one finds in family ties is too far away -to sustain one. I have often found in my own experience that loneliness -added a more poignant element to grief. I wish you would remember, dear -Mr. Melbury, that you have friends at this Christmas-time quite near you. -Run in and see us whenever you feel the need of a friendly word. We are -leading a life here absolutely without engagements, and you will cheer us -up more than we can cheer you. If on Christmas Eve you would care to look -in between four and five you would find us here, and we could give you a -cup of tea.” - -Needless to say all through the day of Christmas Eve my thoughts were -with the gathering in our house on the slopes of Mount Royal. I saw -in fancy every detail of the lugubrious pomp through which Christians -contradict their Saviour in his affirmation that there is no death. -Solemnity, blackness, muffled drums, and long lines of men throwing awe -into their faces—would smite the heart with a sense of the final, the -irreparable, the gone and lost. Flowers would lend a timid touch of -brightness, but they would bloom in little more than irony. The roll of -many wheels, the tramp of many feet, and a funeral service in which the -triumphant note itself would be turned into a dirge, these would be the -massive accompaniment to the few sobs welling up from hearts in which -they would be irrepressible. Though shut out in person, in spirit I was -there, standing in the shrouded room, witnessing my mother’s farewell -kiss, watching the lid placed on the coffin, marching with my brothers, -kneeling in the church, hearing the clods fall in the grave. At the very -moment when Mrs. Barry handed me a cup of tea I was saying to myself, -“Now it is all over, and they are coming back to the darkened, empty -house.” - -I was not cheerful as a companion, and apparently no one expected me to -be so. We can scarcely be said to have talked; we merely kept each other -company. It was Miss Barry herself who suggested, when we had finished -tea, that she and I should take a walk. - -The weather had grown clear, bright, and windless. All along the -promenade there was Christmas in the shops and in the air. It was not -like any Christmas I had ever known before, with the blare, the lights, -the gay, homeless people, and the thundering of breakers under starlight; -but some essential of the ancient festival was present there, and it -reached me. It reached me with a yearning to have something belonging to -me that I could claim as my own—something to which I should belong and -that wouldn’t cast me off—something that would love me, something that I -should love, with a love different from that with which even the City of -Friends could supply me. - -But out on the crowded, starry sea-front we neither walked nor talked. We -sauntered and kept silent. On my side, I had the feeling that there was -so much to say that I could say nothing; on hers, I divined that there -was the same. I will not affirm that in view of all the circumstances -I could be anything but uneasy; and yet I was ecstatic. This wonderful -creature was beside me, comforting me, liking to be with me! But if she -knew exactly who I was.... - -I was swept by an intense longing that she should be told. It was a -longing I was never free from, though it didn’t often seize me so -imperiously as to-night. It seized me the more imperiously owing to -the fact that I could see her moving farther and farther away from any -recollection and realization coming through herself. I had hoped that -both would occur to her without my being obliged to say in so many words, -“I am the man who tried a few months ago to steal your jewelry.” - -But if ever the shadow of this suggestion crossed her mind, it didn’t -cross it now. From the beginning the face and figure of that man had been -blurred behind the memory of my brother Jack. Recent events had fixed me, -just as she saw me, definitely in conditions in which sneak-thieving is -unimaginable. I was the son of Sir Edward Melbury, Baronet, of Montreal -and Ottawa, a man who would rank among the notables of the continent. -Though a son in disfavor, I was still a son, and moreover I was -exercising an honorable craft with some credit. I might propose to her, -I might marry her, I might live my whole life with her, and the chances -were that she would never connect me with the man she had seen for a few -hurried minutes on pulling the rose-colored hangings aside. - -For this very reason it seemed to me I must tell her before our -friendship went any further. It was an additional reason that I began -to think that the information would be a shock to her. How I got that -impression I can scarcely tell you; the ways in which it was conveyed to -me were so trifling, so infinitesimal. - -For example, I asked her one day what she meant by her oft-repeated -statement that I was different from other men. - -“Our men,” she explained, promptly, “have no life apart from their -businesses and professions. Business and profession are stamped all -over them. They are in their clothes, their faces, the tones of their -voices. You’d know Ralph Coningsby was an architect, and Stephen Cantyre -a doctor, and Rufus Legrand a clergyman, the minute you heard them speak. -Now you wouldn’t know what you were. You might be anything—anything a -gentleman can be, that is. I’ve heard some one say that Oxford is a -town in a university, and Cambridge a university in a town. In just the -same way my father, for instance, is a man in an architect. You’re an -architect in a man. With you the man is the bigger. With us he’s the -smaller. It isn’t merely business before pleasure; it’s business before -human nature; and somehow I’ve a preference for seeing human nature put -first.” - -There was little in this to say what I have just hinted at. There was -barely sufficient to let me see that she was putting me above most of her -men acquaintances, in a place in which I had no right to be. Though it -was as far as she ever went, it was far enough to create my suspicion and -to make me feel that the earliest confession would not come too soon. - -When we got down to the less frequented end of the Board Walk the moment -seemed to have arrived. The crowd had thinned out to occasional groups -of stragglers or lovers going two and two. Only here and there one came -on a shop; only here and there on a hotel. One got an opportunity to see -the stars, and to hear the ocean as something more than a drumbeat to the -blare. - -By a simultaneous movement we paused by the rail, to look down on the -dim, white, moving line of breakers. It was one of those instants when -between two people drawn closely to each other something leaps. Had there -been nothing imperative to keep us apart I should have seized her in my -arms; she would have nestled there. I had distinctly the knowledge that -she would have responded to anything—and that the initiative was mine. - -As a rocket that bursts into cascades of fire suddenly goes out, so -suddenly the moment passed, leaving us with a sense of coldness, -primarily due to me. - -Somewhat desperately I began: “Do you know what has made the difficulties -between me and my family?” - -She was gazing off toward the dark horizon. - -“Vaguely.” - -“Do you know that for years I gave them a great deal of trouble?” - -“Vaguely.” - -“Do you know that—” - -“Do you know,” she interrupted, quietly, “that I used to have a brother?” - -The question so took me by surprise that I answered, blankly, “No.” - -“Yes, I had. He was nearly ten years older than I, which would make him -about your age. He was—he was wild.” - -“And is he—is he dead?” - -“He shot himself—about five years ago. It was a terrible story, and I -don’t want to tell it to you. I only want to say that my mother feels -that if—if father hadn’t been so hard on him—if he’d played him along -gently—he might easily have been saved. It’s what Mr. Christian—he’s had -great experience in that sort of thing—he does a wonderful work among men -that have gone under—but it’s what he used to tell father; only father -hadn’t nearly so much patience with his own son as he would have had with -some one else’s, and so— I wonder if you can understand that when mother -heard that you had been—had been—well, a little like my brother—” - -“Who told her?” - -“Oh, I don’t know. These things get about. It might have been Annette.” - -“And assuming that I was what you call wild, have you any idea how wild I -was?” - -Her response to this was to say: “I like a man to have spirit. The men -who always keep on the safe side—” She left this sentiment there, to add, -less irrelevantly than it sounded: “Mother wants you to come and dine -with us to-morrow evening. It will be Christmas Day, but we sha’n’t keep -it as Christmas. We don’t have any Christmases since—since Tony died. We -simply—we simply sha’n’t be alone.” - -In the turn our talk had taken there was so much human need that I found -my efforts at confession paralyzed. That a family whom I had regarded as -enviably care-free should be living in the shadow of a great tragedy, -and nursing a sorrow in which there was this element of remorse, was -curiously illuminating as a discovery. It seemed to cast into other -people’s lives the sort of sharp revealing ray that a flash of lightning -throws on a dark road. Here was a girl whom I had thought of hitherto as -immune from the more sordid varieties of trial; and yet she had at least -tasted of their cup. It gave me a new conception of her. I began to see -her not as a flat surface or as static like a portrait, but as a living, -palpitating human being with duties round her and a vista of experiences -as background. - -The immediate inference was that I must assist them over Christmas, as -they would assist me; and to do that I must put off telling Regina Barry -where she had seen me first. - -To be quite free, however, I had to get a kind of permission from Lovey. -My relations with him had grown to be peculiar. He seemed to develop two -personalities, from the one to the other of which he glided more or less -unconsciously. Though even in our privacy he refused any longer to speak -of us as buddies and fellas together, he called me Slim and sonny, and -referred without hesitation to our fraternal past. On my part I found it -almost consoling, in view of the bluff I was putting up, to have some one -near me who knew me at my worst. Where I had to pretend before others -there was no pretense at all with him; and so I got the relief that comes -at any time when one can drop one’s mask. - -Here in Atlantic City I was paying all his expenses, but no wages. In New -York I offered him nothing but his room. How he lived I didn’t always -know, beyond the fact that it was honestly. As to this he was so frank -that I could have little doubt about it. - -“There’s many a good thing I lets go by, Slim, all on account o’ you. -Washin’ windows ain’t nothink but old woman’s work when a man’s been a -’atter. If it wasn’t to save you, sonny—” - -“Yes, I know, Lovey. One of these days I may get a chance to make it up -to you.” - -“Oh, well, as for makin’ it up, so long as you goes on with the fancy -you took to me that night at Stinson’s, like—” - -“Oh, I do. You see that, don’t you?” - -“Yes; I see it right enough, Slim. It kind o’ passes the buck on me, as -you might say. But there! Lord love ye, I don’t complain! Ye’re a fine -young fella, and what I does for you—self-denial ye might call it—I don’t -grudge. When I sees ye goin’ round like a swell with other swells I just -says to myself, ‘Lovey, that’s your work, old top’; and I feels kind o’ -satisfied.” - -It was kind o’ satisfied that he showed himself when I told him I had -been asked to eat my Christmas dinner with Mrs. and Miss Barry. - -“Ain’t that grand!” he commented, exultingly. “Ye’ll put on them swell -togs—” - -“But it will leave you alone, Lovey,” I reminded him. - -“Lord love ye, Slim, I don’t mind that! What’s Christmas to me? I don’t -pay no attention to all that foolishness—except the plum puddin’.” - -I felt it right to throw out a warning. - -“In your dining-room, Lovey, with all the chauffeurs, there’ll be things -to drink, very likely.” - -He put on his melancholy face. - -“It won’t make no difference to me, Slim. The Down and Out has got me -bound by so many promises, like, that I can’t take a sip o’ nothink, not -no more than a dead man that’s got a bottle in ’is coffin. I’m one that -can take it or leave it, as I feel inclined.” - -“If you’re going to try taking it or leaving it to-morrow I sha’n’t -accept Mrs. Barry’s invitation to dinner.” - -The effect was what I had expected. - -“You go to the dinner, Slim, my boy, and I’ll let you see me ’ittin’ the -’ay before you starts.” - -“But you could hit the hay and get out of bed again.” - -“No; because I’ll make you lock the door. I ain’t a-goin’ to ’ave ye ’ave -no hanxiety on my account.” - -So we settled it—not that I was to lock him in, but that he was to -guarantee me against being anxious; and I suppose Christian would say -that another bit of victory was scored. - - - - -_CHAPTER XV_ - - -A few days later I learned that my father had established a small trust -fund for my benefit, and that the income was to be paid to me quarterly. -He had thus, after all, recognized me as his son, though not on the -footing of his other sons. Each of his other sons would have— But I won’t -go into that. It is enough to say that for every dollar I should receive -Jerry and Jack would have twenty or thirty, and so would my sisters. Even -in my mother’s life interest I was not to have a share when she no longer -needed it. - -Among the many sins I have to confess, that of being specially mercenary -is not one. I make this affirmation in order that you may not condemn me -too severely when I say that for days I labored under a sense of outrage. -Mine was the state of mind common among evil-doers who object to paying -the penalty of which they have had fair warning. My father had told me -with his own mouth that on account of certain indulgences which I had -refused to give up he had cut me off altogether. I had chosen to take my -own way and to brave the consequences; and now when the latter proved to -be not so bad as I had been bidden to expect I was indignant. - -When I informed Andrew Christian of the bequest I added that I had -practically made up my mind to refuse it. He gave me that look which -always seemed about to tell you a good joke. - -“Why do you think he left you anything?” - -“I suppose he wanted to feel that if the worse came to the worst I -shouldn’t be quite penniless.” - -“But why should he want to feel that?” - -“Well, hang it all, sir, when everything is said and done I was his son!” - -“You were his son, and he—he cared for you.” - -“He cared for me to—to that extent.” - -“And considering your attitude toward him, could you expect him to care -for you more?” - -I said, unwillingly, “No, I suppose not.” - -“Could you expect him to care for you as much?” - -“I—I’d given up thinking he cared for me at all.” - -“And this shows he did. In spite of all you made him suffer—and, what was -probably worse in his eyes, made your mother suffer—he loved you still. I -know you’re not thinking of the money, Frank.” - -“No, I’m not; and that’s perfectly sincere.” - -“You’re thinking of his affection for you; and now you’re assured of it. -The amount of money he left you is secondary. That, and the way in which -he left it to you, were determined by something else.” - -I looked at him hard as I said, “And what was that?” - -His look as he answered me was frank, straight, and fearless. - -“The fact that he didn’t trust you.” I suppose he must have seen how I -winced, for he went on at once: “That’s about the bitterest pill fellows -like us have to swallow. In addition to everything else that we bring on -ourselves we forfeit other people’s confidence. There’s the nigger in -the woodpile, even when we buck up. Your father was fond of you, Frank; -but he was afraid that if he did for you all he would have done if you’d -gone straight it would only send you to the devil. Don’t you see that?” - -With some relief as well as some reluctance I admitted that I did. - -“It takes years, Frank, old boy, for men who’ve been where you and I have -been to build up a life which gives a reasonable promise of making good. -In seven or eight months you’ve done splendidly. I don’t know that we’ve -ever had a fellow in the club whose been more game—” - -“It’s the club that’s been game.” - -“True; but you’ve got out of it the best that it can give. I’ll say that -for you. Only don’t imagine for a moment that your fight is over.” - -“Oh no, sir; I don’t.” - -“It’s perfectly true that if you resist the devil he will flee from you; -but he can show a marvelous power of coming back. Some of your toughest -tussles lie ahead. Now I’m only reminding you of that to show you that -your father has perhaps done the very wisest thing for you. A large part -of your safety lies in the necessity for your working. If you weren’t -absolutely obliged to do it in order to live like a respectable man -there’s no telling what tide of suppressed temptations might rush in and -engulf you.” - -I nodded slowly. - -“I see that. Thank you for pointing it out to me.” - -“But, Frank, old fellow, that’s not the chief thing I want you to see. -What will give you more satisfaction than anything else is the knowledge -that what has been done for you has been done in love. Your father has -shown his love for you; you show your love for him. Accept this gift -graciously. Enjoy it and make the best of it. Your life with him isn’t -over.” - -My expression must have been one of inquiry, because he went on: - -“One of the sublimest and truest things that ever fell from a pen is -this, ‘Love is of God; and every one that love is born of God, and -knoweth God.’ It’s almost a startling thing to realize that by the sheer -act of love we’re sons of God and know Him.” - -“Ah, but what kind of love?” I asked, with some incredulity. - -“Are there more kinds than one? The kingdom of love is like that of -minerals or that of vegetation—one in essence, though multiform in -manifestation. Just as one will give us coal and diamonds with much -the same ingredients, and another the strawberry, the rose, and the -apple-tree, all closely akin, so love shows itself in a million ways, and -yet remains always love.” - -“And would you say that the love of parents and children, the love of -husbands and wives, the love of sweethearts, and the love of God—” - -“—are all fundamentally related? Yes, I would. I can’t understand love -in any other sense, if it’s to be real love. Do you remember how often -we’ve talked of the spirit there is in the world that throws dust into -our eyes by creating distinctions and confusions where neither confusion -nor distinction exists? Well, the same evil imp is forever at work to -stultify love by trying to take the meaning from the word. And when it -has stultified love it has stultified God, since the one is identical -with the other.” - -I became argumentative. - -“But if all love is identical with God, how do you account for what would -commonly be called a wrong love?” - -“There’s no such thing as a wrong love. Men are wrong and women are -wrong, and they treat love wrongly; but love itself is always right. -There a distinction must be made between love and passion; but it’s easy -enough to make it. One of these days we’ll take the time to talk that -over. At present my point is simply this—that there’s only one love as -there’s only one God, and it’s only by understanding the unity of both -that we get the significance of either. Moreover, the same pen that -wrote, ‘Every one that loveth is born of God,’ wrote, ‘He that dwelleth -in love dwelleth in God.’ You see then how magical a thing love is, and -why any kind of love—remember I’m speaking of love, not of physical -passion, which is another thing—but you can see how any kind of love -should work wonders.” He asked, suddenly, “Have you written to your -mother since your father died?” - -I said I had not, that I hadn’t supposed a letter from me would be -welcome. - -“Don’t ask whether it would be welcome or not. Do your duty—and let other -people take care of theirs. Let your mother see that, so far from feeling -sore over the provision in your father’s will, you take it in the way -I’ve tried to indicate. It will be an amazing comfort to her; and if you -want to give your brothers and sisters the surprise of their young lives -you’ll be doing it.” He took my hand and pressed it. “Good-by now, old -chap. I’ve got to go and see Momma about the meals for to-morrow.” - -He passed on to the kitchen, where a Greek named Pappa—nicknamed Momma by -the boys—had taken the place of Mouse; but he left me with a new outlook. - -Following his instructions, I began almost immediately to get some of -the reward he promised me. My mother wrote to me within a week, timidly -but tenderly, and with joy at being in touch with me again. A few weeks -later my sister wrote, affectionately, if with reserve. When my birthday -came in March, and I was thirty-two, I had small presents from them both, -and from my two sisters-in-law as well. I noticed that all letters, even -from my mother, were hesitatingly expressed, and in something like an -undertone of awe. My family, too, felt apparently that I had put an abyss -between myself and them, and that in the effort to recross it there was -a suggestion of the supernatural. It was as if my father were saying to -them, “This, thy brother, was dead, and is alive again”—and they were -experiencing some of the strangeness that Mary and Martha must have known -when Lazarus came back to the house at Bethany. - -But that was not my only reward, though of what I received in addition I -find it difficult to tell you. Indeed, I should make no attempt to tell -you at all were it not so essential to this small record of a human life. -All I want to say is that that thing came to me as a new revelation which -is probably an every-day fact to you—that by the simple process of loving -I could dwell in God, I could be aware that God was all round me. - -I mean that once I understood that love was God the great mystery that -had tantalized me all my life was solved. All my life I had been tortured -by the questions: Who is God? What is God? What is my relation to Him—or -have I any? And now I seemed to have found the answer. When I got back to -love—the common, natural love for my father and mother and sisters—when -I got back to feeling more gently toward my brothers—I began to see—you -must forgive me if I seem blatant, but that is not my intention—I began -to see faintly and very inadequately that I was actually in touch with -God. - -I am far from saying that all my difficulties were overcome. Of course -they were not. I mean only that that divine force of which I had been -told the universe was full, but which had always seemed apart from me, -remote from my needs, actually came, in some measure at least, within -my possession. Just as Beady Lamont found the furniture-moving business -shiny with it, once he knew where to look for it, so I began to see my -work as an architect. It was as if a golden key had been put into my hand -which unlocked the richest of life’s secrets. - -All at once people whom I had known to be well disposed toward me, -and whom I had dismissed at that, began to translate God to me. Ralph -Coningsby, Cantyre, Lovey, Christian, Pyn, not to speak of others, were -like reflectors that threw the rays of the great Central Sun straight -into my soul. I am not declaring that there was no tarnish on the -surfaces that caught those beams and transmitted them to me—probably -there was—but light and warmth were poured into me for all that. Not that -there was a change in their attitude toward me; the change was in my -point of view, in my capacity for seeing. What I had thought of only as -human aid I now perceived to be the celestial bread and wine; and where I -had supposed I was living only with men, I knew I was walking with God. - -And yet there was a love with regard to which I could not have this -peace of mind. Christian would perhaps have ascribed that defect to the -fact that there was passion in it. My own fear was that, having had its -inception in a moment of crime, it could never free itself from the -conditions that gave it birth. - -After the Christmas dinner there was a change toward me in the bearing -of Regina Barry and her mother. Without growing colder, they became -slightly more formal; and that I understood. As they had come so far in -my direction, it was for me to go some of the distance in theirs, and I -didn’t. - -I didn’t because I couldn’t. I was like a man who would have been glad -to walk if paralysis hadn’t nailed him to his seat. As, however, it was -emotional paralysis and not physical, there was no means by which they -could become aware of it; nor could I make up my mind to tell them. - -For quite apart from my damnable secret was the common, every-day fact -that I had no income sufficient to maintain a wife in anything like the -comfort to which Regina Barry had been accustomed. Though she might have -accepted what I had to offer, I felt the usual masculine scruples as to -offering it. This, too, was something that couldn’t be explained unless -there was some urgent need of the explanation; and so when I was mad to -go forward I had, to my shame and confusion, to hang back. - -Their retreat was managed with tact and dignity. During the week after -Christmas I saw them on a number of occasions, always by invitation, -though I had no further talk with Regina Barry alone. Two or three times -I guessed she would have been willing to go out to walk with me, but I -didn’t suggest it. As she had proposed it once, she could hardly do so -a second time, and so we sat tamely in a sitting-room. Like that minute -on Christmas Eve when she would have flown into my arms had I opened -them, other minutes came and went; and I saw my coldness reacting on her -visibly. - -At the end of ten days a note told me that they had returned to New York, -apologizing for the fact that they had not had time to bid me good-by. -Though seeing plainly enough the folly of a correspondence, I wrote in -response to that note, hoping that a correspondence might ensue. But I -got no answer. I got nothing. Not so much as a message was sent to me on -the days when Ralph Coningsby came down. - -I did not resent this; I only suffered. I suffered the more because of -supposing that she suffered too. And yet when I next saw her I found -nothing to support that theory. - -When I went to New York for a few days in February I called, but they -were not at home. Having left my card, I waited for a message that would -name an hour when I should find them; but I waited in vain. During the -four days my visit lasted I heard nothing kindlier than what Cantyre -repeated, that they were sorry to have been out when I came. - -As I sent them flowers before leaving the city, a note from Mrs. Barry -thanked me for them cordially; but there was not a syllable in it that -gave me an excuse for writing in response. Reason told me that it was -better that it should be so, but reason had ceased to be sufficient as a -guide. - -In March I made an errand that took me to town for a week-end, and on -the Sunday afternoon I called again at the house which had so curiously -become the focusing-point of my destiny. Miss Barry was at home and -receiving. I found her with two or three other people, and she welcomed -me as doubtless she had welcomed them. Even when I had outstayed them she -betrayed none of that matter-of-course intimacy which had marked her -attitude toward me in December. She seemed to have retired behind all -sorts of mental fortifications over which I couldn’t at first make my way. - -When we were seated in the style of Darby and Joan at the opposite -corners of a slumbering fire she told me her father had made one hurried -visit from California, and that, now that he had returned to the Pacific -coast, she and her mother were thinking of joining him there. Should they -do so, they would probably remain till it was time to go to Long Island -in June. Two or three protestations against this absence came to my lips, -but of course I couldn’t utter them. - -I could have sworn that she was saying to herself, “You don’t seem to -care!” though aloud it became, “We’ve never been in California, and we -want to see what it’s like.” - -I seized the opportunity to rejoin, “You’ve a fancy for seeing what -things are like, haven’t you?” - -She took up the challenge instantly. “Why do you say that?” - -“Only because of what you’ve said at different times yourself.” - -“Such as?” - -“I don’t want to quote. I was thinking of the taste you’ve frequently -acknowledged for making experiments.” - -“Experiments in things—or people?” - -“I was thinking of people.” - -She marched right into my camp by saying, boldly, “Oh, you mean the -number of times I’ve—I’ve broken engagements?” - -“Perhaps I mean rather the number of times you’ve formed them.” - -“Did you ever buy a house?” - -I replied with some wonder that I had not. - -“Well, we’ve bought two—this one and the one at Rosyth. But before buying -either we rented each for a season to see whether or not we liked it.” - -“And you did.” - -“But we’ve rented others which we didn’t. So you see.” - -“I see that experiments are justified. Is that what you mean?” - -“If one is satisfied with anything that comes along, by all means take -it. But if one only wants what one wants—” - -“And you know what you want?” - -Her eyes were all fire; her lips had the daring scarlet of a poppy. - -“I’ve never got beyond knowing what I don’t want.” - -“That is, you’ve never taken anything up except in the long run to throw -it down?” - -“Your expressions are too harsh. One doesn’t throw down everything one -doesn’t want. One sets it aside.” - -“And would it be discreet to ask why you—why you set certain things—and -people—aside?” - -She looked at the fire as if considering. - -“Do you mean—men?” - -“To narrow the inquiry down, suppose I say I do.” - -“And”—she threw me a swift, daring glance—“and marriage?” - -“That defines the question still further.” - -Her words came as the utterance of long, long thoughts. - -“One couldn’t marry a man one didn’t trust.” - -“No; of course not.” - -“Nor a milksop.” - -“You couldn’t.” - -“Nor a man who wasn’t a thoroughbred.” - -“Just what do you mean by that?” - -“Oh, don’t you know? If not I can’t explain. All I can say is that there -are things a thoroughbred couldn’t do.” - -“What sort of things?” - -“Why should you want me to tell you? You know as well as I do. The things -that make a man impossible—mean things—ignoble things.” - -“Criminal things?” - -“Criminal things, too, I suppose. I don’t know so much about them; but I -do see a lot of meanness and pettiness and— Oh, well, the sort of lack of -the fastidious in honor that—that puts a man out of the question.” - -“Aren’t you very hard to please?” - -“Possibly.” - -“And if you don’t find what—what you’re looking for?” - -“I shall do without it, I suppose.” - -“And if you think you find it—and then discover that, after all—” - -She shrugged her shoulders. - -“I don’t know. I’ve never been absolutely disillusioned so far. When -disillusion has come to me—as it has—I could see it on the way. But if -I—I cared for some one and found I was deceived in him— But what’s the -use in talking of it?” she laughed. “Please don’t think I’m putting forth -a claim to be treated better than the average. It’s only when I see the -average—” - -“The average of men?” - -“No, the average of women. When I see what they’re willing to take—and -marry—and live with—I can only say that I find myself very well off as I -am.” - -This conversation did not make it easier for me to go back to the -starting-point of our acquaintance; but the moment came when I did it. - - - - -_CHAPTER XVI_ - - -I did not, however, do it that spring, since the event that compelled me -at last to the step took up all my attention. - -It was toward the end of April that I received a telegram signed by my -sister’s name: - -“Mother seriously ill. Wants to see you. Come at once.” - -In spite of my alarm at this summons I saw the opportunity of putting -up a good front before my relatives. Taking Lovey with me as valet, and -stopping at the best hotel, I presented the appearance of a successful -man. - -Though anxiety on my mother’s account made my return a matter of -secondary interest, I could see the surprise and relief my apparent -prosperity created. My brothers had been expecting one of whom they would -have to be ashamed. Furthermore, they had not been too confident as to -my attitude with regard to my father’s will. Looking for me to contest -it, they had suspected that behind my acquiescence lay a ruse. When they -saw that there was none, that I made no complaint, that I seemed to have -plenty of money, that I traveled with a servant, that I had the air of a -man of means—a curious note of wonder and respect stole into their manner -toward me. I know that in private they were saying to each other that -they couldn’t make me out; and I gave them no help in doing so. - -I gave them no help during all the month I remained in Montreal. I -arranged with Coningsby to take that time, and my little stock of savings -was sufficient to finance me. Though I was once more putting up a bluff, -it was a bluff that I felt to be justified; and in the end it found its -justification. - -I have no intention of giving you the details of those four weeks of -watching beside a bed where the end was apparent from the first. Now that -I look back upon them, I can see that they were not without their element -of happiness, since to my mother at least it was happiness to know that -I was beside her. The joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth was -on her face from the day I appeared, and never left it up to that moment -when we took our last look at her dear smiling features. - -When the lawyer came to read us her will I found, to my amazement, that -she had left me everything she possessed. - -It was then that I reaped that which I had sown at Andy Christian’s -suggestion. Since with a good grace I had accepted my father’s will, the -rest of the family could hardly do otherwise with regard to my mother’s. -She left a note saying that, had my father lived a few months longer, -he would have seen that I had re-established myself sufficiently to be -allowed to share equally with the rest of the family in what he had to -leave; but, as it was too late for that, she was endeavoring to right the -seeming injustice—which he had not meant as an injustice—as far as lay in -her power. These words from her pen being much more emphatic than any I -could remember from her lips, my brothers and sisters, whatever they felt -inwardly, could only give their assent to them. - -What my mother possessed included not only the personal estate she -had inherited from her father, considerably augmented by her husband’s -careful management, but books, furniture, and jewelry. The books and -furniture I made over to my sister to remain in the two houses, the one -in Montreal, the other on the Ottawa. Some of the jewelry I gave to her, -to my sister in England, and to my two sisters-in-law, though keeping the -bulk for my wife—when I got one. - -For I was now in a position to marry. Though my mother had had no great -wealth, what she left me, together with the trust fund established by my -father and what I earned, would assure me enough to live in at least as -much comfort as Ralph Coningsby. I could, therefore, propose to Regina -Barry and feel I could make a home for her. - -I had again come to the conclusion that if I asked her she would accept -me. I make no attempt to analyze this feeling on her part, because I saw -plainly enough that it was founded on mistake. That is to say, having -developed an ideal of the man whom she could marry, she had nursed -herself into the belief that I came up to it, when, as a matter of fact, -I did not. - -Now I had seen enough of husbands and wives to know that in most -marriages there is some such illusion as this, and that it can be -successfully maintained for years. When the illusion itself has faded -it can live on as the illusion of an illusion. By the time there is no -illusion or shadow of illusion left at all it has ceased in the majority -of cases to matter. Time has welded what mutual distaste might have put -asunder, and the married state remains undisturbed. - -I was, therefore, obliged to face the consideration that if I married -the woman I loved she would probably never discover what I felt it my -duty to confess. Was it really, then, my duty to confess it? Since no -one knew it but myself, was it not rather my duty to keep it concealed? -Other men had secrets from their wives—especially those that concerned -the days when they were unmarried—and all were probably the happier for -the secrecy. Even Ralph Coningsby, who was the most model husband I could -think of, had said that if he were to tell his wife all he could tell her -about himself he would be ashamed to go home. There were weeks when I -debated these questions every day and night, arriving at one conclusion -by what I may call my rough horse sense, and at another by my instinct. -Horse sense said, “Marry her and keep mum.” Instinct warned, “You can -never marry her and be safe and happy with such a secret as this to come -between you.” - -Throughout this wavering of opinion I knew that when the time came I -should act from instinct. It wasn’t merely that I wanted to be safe; it -was also that, all pros and cons apart, there was such a thing as honor. -Not even to be happy—not even to make the woman I cared for happy—could I -ignore that. - -I am not sure how much Andrew Christian understood of the circumstances -when, without giving him the facts or mentioning a name, I asked his -advice. He only said: - -“You’ve had some experience, Frank, of the potency of love, haven’t you? -Well, love has a twin sister—truth. In love and truth together there’s a -power which, if we have the patience to wait for its working out, will -solve all difficulties and meet all needs.” - -My experiences during the past few months having given me some reason to -believe this, I decided, so far as I came actively to a decision, to let -it rule my course; but in the end the critical moment came by what you -would probably call an accident. - -It was the last Sunday in June. My work in Atlantic City being over, Mrs. -Grace had asked me to come down for the week-end to her little place in -Long Island. It was not exactly a party, though there were two or three -other people staying in the house. My chief reason for accepting the -invitation—as I think it was the chief reason for its being given—was -that the Barry family were in residence on the old Hornblower estate, -which was the adjoining property. - -As a matter of fact, Mrs. Grace and her guests were all asked to -Idlewild, as the late Mrs. Hornblower had named her house, to Sunday -lunch. - -The path from the one dwelling to the other was down the gentle slope -of Mrs. Grace’s gardens, across a meadow, at the other side of which it -joined the Idlewild avenue, and then up a steep hill to the rambling -red-and-yellow house. Here one dominated the Sound for a great part of -the hundred and twenty miles between Montauk Point and Brooklyn. - -Sauntering idly through the hot summer noon, I found myself beside Mrs. -Grace, while the rest of the party straggled on ahead. As my hostess was -not more free than other women from the match-making instinct, it was -natural that she should give to the conversation a turn that she knew -would not be distasteful to me. - -“She’s a wonderful girl,” she observed, “with just that danger to -threaten her that comes from being over-fastidious.” - -“I know what you mean by her being over-fastidious; but why is it a -danger?” - -“In the first place, because people misunderstand her. They’ve ascribed -to light-mindedness what has only been the thing that literary people -call the divine searching for perfection.” - -“And do you know the kind of thing she’d consider perfect?” - -It was so stupid a question that I couldn’t be surprised to see a gleam -of quiet mischief in her glance as she replied, “From little hints she’s -dropped to me, quite confidentially, I rather think I do.” - -Fair men blush easily, but I tried to ignore the fact that I was doing it -as I said, “That’s quite a common delusion at one stage of the game; but -suppose she were to find that she was mistaken?” - -The answer shelved the question, though she did it disconcertingly: “Oh, -well, in the case she’s thinking of I don’t believe she will.” - -I was so eager for data that I pushed the inquiry indiscreetly. - -“What makes you so sure?” - -“One can tell. It isn’t a thing one can put into words. You know by a -kind of intuition.” - -“Know what?” - -“That a certain kind of person can never have had any but a certain kind -of standard.” She gave me another of those quietly mischievous glances. -“I’ll tell you what she said to me one day not long ago. She said she’d -only known one man in her life—known him well, that is—of whom she was -sure that he was a thoroughbred to the core.” - -“But you admitted at the beginning that that kind of conviction is a -danger.” - -“It would be a danger if her friends couldn’t bear her out in believing -it to be justified.” - -Unable to face any more of this subtle flattery, I was obliged to let the -subject drop. - -The lunch was like any other lunch. As an unimportant person at a -gathering where every one knew every one else more or less intimately, I -was to some extent at liberty to follow my own thoughts, which were not -altogether happy ones. For telling what I had to tell, the necessity had -grown urgent. What was lacking, what had always seemed to be lacking, was -the positive opportunity. This I resolved to seek; but suddenly I found -it before me. - -This was toward the middle of the afternoon, when the party had broken -up. It had broken up imperceptibly by dissolving into groups that -strolled about the lawns and descended the long flights of steps leading -to the beach below. As I had not been seated near Miss Barry at table, -it was no more than civil for me to approach her when the party was on -the veranda and the lawn. Our right to privacy was recognized at once by -a withdrawal of the rest of the company. It was probably assumed that I -was to be the fourth in the series of experiments of which Jim Hunter -and Stephen Cantyre had been the second and the third; and, though my -fellow-guests might be sorry for me, they would not intervene to protect -me. - -Considering it sufficient to make their adieux to Mrs. Barry, they left -us undisturbed in a nook of one of the verandas. Here we were out of -sight of any of the avenues and pathways to the house, and Mrs. Barry was -sufficiently in sympathy with our desire to be alone not to send any one -in search of us. On the lawn robins were hopping, and along the edge of -shorn grass the last foxgloves made upright lines of color against the -olive-green scrub-oak. Far down through the trees one caught the silvery -glinting of water. - -The sounds of voices and motor wheels having died away, Miss Barry said, -languidly: “I think they must be all gone. They’ll say I’m terribly rude -to keep myself out of sight. But it’s lovely here, isn’t it? And this is -such a cozy spot in which to smoke and have coffee. I read here, too, -and— Oh, dear, what’s happening?” - -It was then that the little accident which was to play so large a part -in my life occurred. She had leaned forward from her wicker chair to -set her empty coffee-cup on the table. As she did so the string of -pearls which she wore at the opening of her simple white dress loosened -itself and slipped like a tiny snake to the floor of the veranda. From -a corresponding chair on the other side of the table I sprang up and -stooped. When I raised myself with the pearls in my right hand I slipped -them into my pocket. - -Between the fingers of my left hand I held a lighted cigar. Bareheaded, -I was wearing white flannels and tennis shoes. Now that the moment had -come, I felt extraordinarily cool—as cool as on the night when I had -slipped this string of pearls into my pocket before. I looked down and -smiled at her. Leaning back in her chair, she looked up and smiled at me. - -I shall always see her like that—in white with a slash of silk of the red -of her lips somewhere about her waist, and a ribbon of the same round her -dashing Panama hat. Her feet in little brown shoes were crossed. With -an elbow on the arm of her chair, she held a small red fan out from her -person, though she wasn’t actively using it. - -“What does that mean?” she asked, idly, at last. - -[Illustration: “Didn’t you ever see any one put these pearls into his -pocket before?”] - -“Doesn’t it remind you of anything?” - -“No—of nothing.” - -“Didn’t you ever see any one put these pearls into his pocket before?” - -“Why, no!” She added, as if an idea had begun to dawn in the back of her -memory, “Not in that way.” - -“Oh, I remember. You didn’t see him put them in at all. You only saw him -take them out.” - -The smile remained on her features, but something puzzled gave it faint -new curves. - -“Why—” - -“It was like this, wasn’t it?” - -I drew out the pearls and threw them on the table. - -She bent forward slightly, still smiling, like a person watching with -bewildered intensity a conjurer’s trick. - -“Why—” - -“Only your gold-mesh purse was with them—and your diamond bar-pin—and -your rings.” - -“Why—who, who on earth could have told you?” - -I, too, continued to smile, consciously wondering if I should be as calm -as this in the hour of death. - -“Who do you think?” - -“It wasn’t Elsie Coningsby?” - -“No. She was in the house, but—” - -“How did you know that?” She uttered a mystified laugh. “She _was_ there! -It was one of the nights she stayed with me when papa and mamma were down -here superintending some changes before we could move in. But I never -told her anything about it.” - -“Why didn’t you—when she was right on the spot?” - -“Oh, because.” - -The smile disappeared. She stopped looking up at me to turn her eyes -toward the foxgloves and scrub-oak. - -“Yes? Because—what?” - -“Because I promised—that man—I wouldn’t.” - -“Why should you have made him such a promise?” - -“Oh, I don’t know. Just at the time I was—I was sorry for him.” - -“And aren’t you sorry for him still?” - -She looked up at me again with one of her bright challenges. - -“Look here! Do you know him?” - -“Tell me first what I asked you. Aren’t you sorry for him still?” - -“I dare say I am. I don’t know.” - -“What did you—what did you—think of him at the time?” - -“I thought he was—terrible.” - -“Terrible—in what way?” - -“I don’t know that I can tell you in what way. It was so awful to think -that a man who had had some advantages should have sunk to that. If he’d -been a real burglar—I mean a professional criminal—I should have been -afraid of him; but I shouldn’t have had that sensation of something meant -for better things that had been debased.” - -“Didn’t he tell you he was hungry?” - -The smile came back—faintly. - -“You seem to know all about it, don’t you? It’s the strangest thing I -ever knew. No one in this world could have told you but himself. Yes, he -did say he was hungry; but then, a man who’d been what he must have been -shouldn’t have got into that condition. He’d stolen into our pantry, poor -creature, and drunk the cooking-wine. He told me that—” Without rising, -her figure became alert with a new impulse. “Oh, I see! You do know him. -He was an Englishman. I remember that.” - -I placed myself fully before her. “No, he wasn’t an Englishman.” - -“He spoke like one.” - -“So do I, for the matter of that.” - -“Then he was a Canadian. Was he?” - -“He was a Canadian.” - -“Oh, then that accounts for it. But you did puzzle me at first. But how -did you come to meet him? Was it at that Down and Out Club that papa and -Mr. Christian are so interested in? You go to it, too, don’t you? I think -Stephen Cantyre said you did.” - -“Yes, I go to it, too.” - -She grew pensive, resting her chin on a hand, with her elbow on the arm -of the chair. - -“I suppose it’s all right; but I never can understand how men can be so -merciful to one other’s vices. It looks as if they recognized the seed of -them within themselves.” - -“Probably that’s the reason.” - -“Women don’t feel like that about one another.” - -“They haven’t the same cause.” - -“I hope he’s doing better—that man—and picking up again.” - -“He is.” - -She asked, in quite another tone, “You’re not going back to New York -to-morrow, are you?” - -“I’m not sure—yet.” - -“Hilda said she was going to try to persuade you and the Grahams to stay -till Tuesday. If you can stay, mamma and I were planning—” - -I put myself directly in front of her, no more than a few feet away, my -hands in the pockets of my jacket. - -“Look at me again. Look at me well. Try to recall—” - -Slowly, very slowly, she struggled to her feet. The color went out of her -lips and the light from her eyes as she backed away from me in a kind of -terror. - -“What—what—are you trying to make me—to make me understand?” - -“Think! How should I know all that I’ve been saying if—” - -“If the man himself didn’t tell you. But he did.” - -“No, he didn’t. No one had to tell me.” - -She reached the veranda rail, which she clutched with one hand, while the -other, clenched, was pressed against her breast. - -“You don’t mean—” - -“Yes, I do mean—” - -“Oh, you can’t?” - -“Why can’t I.” - -“Because—because it isn’t—it isn’t possible! You”—she seemed to be -shivering—“you could never have—” - -“But I did.” - -She gasped brokenly. “You? You?” - -I nodded. “Yes—I.” - -I tried to tell her, but I suppose I did it badly. Put into a few bald -words the tale was not merely sordid, it was low. I could give it no -softening touch, no saving grace. It was more beastly than I had ever -imagined it. - -Fortunately she didn’t listen with attention. The means were indifferent -to her when she knew the end. For the minute, at any rate, she saw me not -as I stood there, clean and in white, but as I had been a year before, -dirty and in rags. But she saw more than that. With every word I uttered -she saw the ideal she had formed broken into shivers, like a shattered -looking-glass. - -She interrupted my preposterous story to gasp, “I can’t believe it!” - -“But it’s true.” - -“Then you mustn’t mind if—if I put you to a test. Did you—did you write -anything while you were there?” - -“I printed something—in the same kind of letters you’ve seen at the -bottom of architects’ plans.” - -“And how did you come to do it?” - -I recounted the circumstance, at which she nodded her head in -verification. - -“So that was how you knew the words you repeated to me a few months ago?” - -“That was how. I said there were men in the world different from any -you’d seen yet; and I told you to wait.” - -She made a tremendous effort to become again the daring mistress of -herself which she generally was. She smiled, too, nervously, and with a -kind of sickening, ghastly whiteness. - -“Funny, isn’t it? There are men in the world different from any I’d seen -before that time. I’ve—I’ve waited—and found out.” - -Before I could utter a rejoinder to this she said, quite courteously, -“Will you excuse me?” - -I bowed. - -With no further explanation she marched down the length of the -veranda—carrying herself proudly, placing her dainty feet daintily, -walking with that care which people show when they are not certain of -their ability to walk straight—and entered the house. - -I didn’t know why she had gone; but I knew the worst was over. Though I -felt humiliation to the core of the heart’s core, I also felt relief. - -With a foot dangling, I sat sidewise on the veranda rail and waited. -Glancing at my watch, I saw it was not yet four, and I had lived through -years since I had climbed the hill at one. My sensations were comparable -only to those of the man who has been on trial for his life and is -waiting for the verdict. - -I waited nervously, and yet humbly. Now that it was all over, it seemed -to me that the bitterness of death was past. Whatever else I should have -to go through in life, nothing could equal the past quarter of an hour. - -The sensations I hadn’t had while making my confession began to come to -me by degrees. Looking back over the chasm I had crossed, I was amazed -to think I had had the nerve for it. I trembled reminiscently; the cold -sweat broke out on my forehead. It was terrible to think that at that -very minute she was in there weighing the evidence, against me and in my -favor. - -Mechanically I relighted the cigar that had gone out. Against me and -in my favor! I was not blind to the fact that in my favor there was -something. I had gone down, but I had also struggled up again; and you -can make an appeal for the man who has done that. - -She was long in coming back. I glanced at my watch, and it was nearly -half past four. Her weighing of the evidence had taken her half an hour, -and it was evidently not over yet. Well, juries were often slow in -coming to a verdict; and doubtless she was balancing the extenuating -circumstance that I had struggled up against the main fact that I had -gone down. - -What she considered her ideal had during the past few weeks been -gradually transferring itself from her mind to my own. She wouldn’t marry -a man she couldn’t trust; she wouldn’t marry a man who hadn’t what she -called spirit; she wouldn’t marry a milksop. But she had well-defined—and -yet indefinable—conceptions as to how far in spirit a man should go, and -of the difference between being a milksop and a man of honor. She might -find it hard to admit that the pendulum of human impulse that swung far -in one direction might swing equally far in the other; and therein would -lie my danger. - -But I must soon know. It was ten minutes of five. The jury had been out -more than three-quarters of an hour. - -A new quality was being transmuted into the atmosphere. It was as if the -lightest, flimsiest veil had been flung across the sun. In the distant -glinting of the sea, which had been silver, there came a tremulous shade -of gold. The foxgloves bowed themselves like men at prayer. The robins -betook themselves to the branches. From unseen depths of the scrub-oak -there was an occasional luscious trill, as the time for the singing of -birds wasn’t over yet. - -Round me there was silence. I might have been sitting at the door of an -empty house. I listened intently for the sound of returning footsteps, -but none came. - -At a quarter past five a chill about the heart began to strike me. I had -been waiting more than an hour. Could it be possible that...? - -It would be the last degree of insult. Whatever she did, she wouldn’t -subject me to that. It would be worse than her glove across the face. -It was out of the question. I couldn’t bear to think of it. Rather than -think of it, I went over the probabilities that she would come back with -the smile of forgiveness. It would doubtless be a tearful smile, for -tears were surely the cause of her delay. When she had controlled them, -when she was able to speak and bid me be of good comfort, I should hear -the tap of her high heels coming down the uncarpeted stairway. No red -Indian ever listened for the tread of a maid’s moccasins on forest moss -so intently as I for that staccato click. - -But only the birds rewarded me, and the cries of boys who had come to -bathe on the beach below. There was more gold in the light; more trilling -in the branches; a more pungent scent from the trees, the flowers, and -the grass; and that was all. - -It was half past five; it was a quarter to six; it was six. - -At six o’clock I knew. - -My hat was lying on a chair near by. I picked it up—and went. - -I went, not by the avenue and the path, but down the queer, rickety -flights of steps that led from one jutting rock to another over the face -of the cliff, till I reached the beach. It was a broad, whitish, sandy -beach, with a quietly lapping tide almost at the full. Full tide was -marked a few feet farther up by a long, wavy line of seaweed and other -jetsam. - -It was the delicious hour for bathing. As far as one could see in either -direction there were heads bobbing in the water and people scrambling -in and out. Shrill cries of women and children, hoarse shouts of men, -mingled with the piping of birds overhead. Farther out than the bathers -there were rowboats, and beyond the rowboats sails. In the middle of -the Sound a steamer or two trailed a lazy flag of smoke. Far, far to the -south and the west a haze like that round a volcano hung over New York. I -should return there next day to face new conditions. I only wished to God -that it could be that night. - -The new conditions were, briefly, three: I could use the revolver still -lying in my desk; or I could begin to drink again; or, like the bull -wounded in the ring, I could seek shelter in the dumb sympathy of the -Down and Out. - -The last seemed to me the least attractive. I had climbed that hill, and -found it led only to a precipice that I had fallen over. - -Neither did the first possibility charm me especially. Apart from the -horror of it, it was too brief, too sudden, too conclusive. I wanted the -gradual, the prolonged. - -It was the second course to which my mind turned with the nearest -approach to satisfaction. Christian had told me that some of my severest -tussles lay ahead; and now I had come to the one in which I should go -under. In that the flesh at least would get its hour of compensation, -when all was said and done. - -At the foot of Mrs. Grace’s steps I paused to recall Christian’s words of -a few days previously: - -“In love and truth together there’s a power which, if we have the -patience to wait for its working out, will solve all difficulties and -meet all needs.” - -I had tried that—love and truth together!—and at the result I could only -laugh. - -My immediate fear was lest Mrs. Grace and the Grahams would be on the -veranda, vaguely expecting to offer me their congratulations. When -half-way up the steps I heard voices and knew that they were there. So be -it! I had faced worse things in my life; and now I could face that. - -But as I advanced up the lawn I saw them moving about and talking with -animation. As soon as Mrs. Grace caught sight of me she hurried down -the steps, meeting me as I passed among the flower-beds. She held a -newspaper marked Extra in her hand, and seemed to have forgotten that I -had love-affairs. - -“Have you seen this? Colt, the chauffeur, was at the station and brought -it back. It’s just come down from New York.” - -Glad of anything that would distract attention from myself, I took the -paper in my hand and pretended to be reading it. All I got was the -vague information that some one had been assassinated—some man and his -morganatic wife. What did it matter to me? What did it matter to any one? -Of all that was printed there, only five syllables took possession of my -memory—and that because they were meaningless, “Gavrilo Prinzip!” - -I was repeating them to myself as I handed the paper back, and we -exchanged comments of which I have no recollection. More comments were -passed with the Grahams, and then, blindly, drunkenly, I made my way to -my room. - -There I found nothing to do less classic than to sit at the open window, -to look over at the red-and-yellow house on the opposite hill. It was -my intention to think the matter out, but my brain seemed to have -stopped working. Nothing came to me but those barbaric sounds, that kept -repeating themselves with a kind of hiss: “Gavrilo Prinzip! Gavrilo -Prinzip!” - -From my stupefied scanning of the paper I hadn’t grasped the fact that -a name utterly unknown that morning was being flashed round the world -at a speed more rapid than that of the earth round the sun. Still less -did I suspect that it was to become in its way the most sinister name in -history. I kept repeating it only as you repeat senseless things in the -minutes before you go to sleep. - -“Gavrilo Prinzip! Gavrilo Prinzip! Gavrilo Prinzip!” - - - - -_CHAPTER XVII_ - - -I came back as Major Melbury, of one of the Canadian regiments. - -It was in November, 1916, that I was invalided home to Canada, lamed and -wearing a disfiguring black patch over what had been my left eye. - -There were other differences of which I can hardly tell you in so -many words, but which must transpire as I go on. Briefly, they summed -themselves up in the fact that I had gone away one man and I was coming -back another. My old self had not only been melted down in the crucible, -but it had been stamped with a new image and superscription. It was of a -new value and a new currency, and, I think I may venture to add, of that -new coinage minted in the civil strife of mankind. - -The day of my sailing from Liverpool was exactly two years four months -and three weeks from that on which I had last seen Regina Barry; and -because it was so I must tell you at once of an incident that occurred at -the minute when I stepped on board. - -Having come up the long gangway easily enough, I found that at the top, -where passengers and their friends congregate, my difficulties began. - -When my left eye had been shot out the right had suffered in sympathy, -and also from shock to the retina. For a while I had been blind. Rest and -care in the hospital my sister, Mabel Rideover, maintained at Taplow -had, however, restored the sight of my right eye; and now my trouble was -only with perspective. People and things crowded on one another as they -do in the vision of a baby. I would dodge that which was far away, and -allow myself to bump into objects quite near me. - -As I stepped on deck I had a minute or two of bewilderment. There were so -many men more helpless than I that whatever care there was to give was -naturally bestowed on them. Moreover, most of those who thronged the top -of the gangway had too many anxieties of their own to notice that a man -who at worst was only half blind didn’t know which way to turn. - -But I did turn—at a venture. The venture took me straight into a woman -holding a baby in her arms, whom I crushed against the nearest cabin -wall. The woman protested; the baby screamed. I was about, in the -rebound, to crash into some other victim when I felt from behind me a -hand take me by the arm. An almost invisible guide began to pilot me -through the crowd. All I caught sight of was a Canadian nurse’s uniform. - -It is one of the results of the war that men, who are often reduced to -the mere shreds of human nature, grow accustomed to being taken care of -by women, who remain the able-bodied ones. - -“Thanks,” I laughed, as the light touch pushed me along, slightly in -advance. “You caught me right in the nick of time. I can see pretty well -with my good eye, only I can’t measure distances. They tell me that will -come by degrees.” - -Even though occupied with other thoughts, I was surprised that my rescuer -didn’t respond to my civility, for another result of the war is the ease -with which the men and women who have been engaged in it get on terms -of natural acquaintanceship. When artificial barriers are removed, it -is extraordinary how quickly we go back to primitive human simplicity. -Social and sex considerations have thus been minimized to a degree which, -it seems to me, will make it difficult ever to re-establish them in their -old first place. They say it was an advance in civilization when we -ceased to see each other as primarily males and females and knew we were -men and women. Possibly the war will lead us a step farther still and -reveal us as children of one family. - -That a nurse shouldn’t have a friendly word for a partly incapacitated -man struck me, therefore, as odd, though my mind would not have dwelt on -the circumstance if she hadn’t released my arm as abruptly as she had -taken it. Having helped me to reach a comparatively empty quarter of the -deck, she had counted, apparently, on the slowness and awkwardness of my -movements to slip away before I could turn round. - -When I managed this feat she was already some yards down the length of -the deck, hurrying back toward the crowd from which we had emerged. I saw -then that she was too little to be tall and too tall to be considered -little. Moreover, she carried herself proudly, placing her dainty feet -daintily, and walking with that care which people display when they -are not certain of their ability to walk straight. Reaching one of the -entrances, she went in, exactly as I had seen a woman pass through a -doorway two years four months and three weeks before. - -I was sure it was she—and yet I told myself it couldn’t be. I told myself -it couldn’t be, for the reason that I had been deceived so frequently -before that I had grown distrustful of my senses. All through the -intervening time I had been getting glimpses of a slight figure here, -of an alert movement there, of the poise of a head, of the wave of a -hand—that for an instant would make my heart stop beating; but in the -end it had meant nothing but the stirring of old memories. In this case -I could have been convinced if the coincidence had not put too great a -strain on all the probabilities. - -I was to learn later that there was no coincidence; but I must tell my -story in its right order. - -The right order takes me back to my return to New York, after my week-end -at Mrs. Grace’s, on the morning of June 29, 1914. - -During the two or three hours of jogging down the length of Long Island -in the train I tried to keep out of my mind all thoughts but one; having -deposited my bags at my rooms, I should go to Stinson’s. - -With regard to this intention I was clearly aware of a threefold blend of -reaction. - -First, there was the pity of it. I could take a detached view of this -downfall, just as if I had heard of it in connection with Beady Lamont or -old Colonel Straight. Though I should be only a man dropped in the ranks, -while they would have been leaders, the grief of my comrades over my -collapse would be no less sincere. - -But by tearing my mind away from that aspect of the case I reverted to -the satisfaction at being in the gutter, of which the memories had never -ceased to haunt me. I cannot expect to make you, who have always lived on -the upper levels, understand this temptation; I can only tell you that -for men who have once been outside the moral law there is a recurrent -tugging at the senses to get there again. I once knew an Englishman who -had lived in the interior of Australia and had “gone black.” On his -return to make his home in England he was seized with so consuming a -nostalgia for his black wives and black children that in the end he went -back to them. Something like this was the call I was always hearing—the -call of Circe to go down. - -But I knew, too, that there was method in this madness. I was -deliberately starting out to earn the wages of sin; and the wages of -sin would be death. I must repeat that going to Stinson’s would be no -more than a slow, convenient process of committing suicide. It would be -committing suicide in a way for which Regina Barry would not have to feel -herself responsible, as she would were I to use the revolver. Having -brought so much on her, I was unwilling to bring more, even though my -heart was hot against her. - -My heart was hot against her—and yet I had to admit that she had been -within her rights. When all was said that could be said in my favor, -I had deceived her. I had let her go on for the best part of a year -believing me to be what I was not, when during much of the time I could -see that such a belief was growing perilous to her happiness. I had been -a coward. I should have said from the first moment—the moment when she -took me for my brother Jack—“I am a crook.” Then all would have been open -and aboveboard between us; but as it was there was only one way out. Any -other way—any way that would have allowed me to go on living longer than -the time it would take drink to kill me—would have been unbearable. - -The checkmate to these musings came when my eyes fell upon Lovey. He was -at the door of the apartment, not only to welcome me, but to give me -ocular demonstration that he had kept the faith while I had been away. -It was the first time since the beginning of our association that I had -left him for forty-eight hours; and that he was on his honor during those -two days was no secret between us. The radiant triumph of his greeting -struck into me like a stab. - -For Lovey now was almost as completely reconstructed as I. I use the -qualifying “almost” only because the longer standing of his habits and -the harder conditions of his life had burnt the past more indelibly into -him. Of either of us one could say, as the Florentines are reported to -have said of Dante, “There goes a man who has been in hell”; but the -marks of the experience had been laid more brutally on my companion than -on me. - -Otherwise he showed cheering signs of resuscitation. Neat, even at the -worst of times, he was now habitually scrubbed and shaved, and as elegant -as Colonel Straight’s establishment could turn him out. He had, in fact, -for the hours he had free from washing windows, metamorphosed himself -into the typical, self-respecting English valet, with a pride in his work -sprung chiefly of devotion. - -And for me he made a home. I mean by that that he was always -there—something living to greet me, to move about in the dingy little -apartment. As I am too gregarious, I may say too affectionate, to live -contentedly alone, it meant much to me to have some one else within the -walls I called mine, even if actual companionship was limited. - -But whatever it was, I was about to destroy it. I could scarcely look him -in the eyes; I could hardly say a word to him. - -While unpacking my suit-case he said, timorously, “Y’ain’t sick, Slim?” - -I began to change the suit I had been wearing for one that would attract -less attention at Stinson’s. - -“No, Lovey; I’m all right. I’m just—I’m just going out.” - -And I went out. I went out without bidding the poor old fellow good-by, -though I knew it was the last the anxious pale-blue eyes would see of -me in that phase of comradeship. When next we met I should probably be -drunk, and he would have come to get drunk in my company. It would then -be a question as to which of us would hold out the longer. - -And that was the thought that after an hour or two turned me back. I -could throw my own life away, but I couldn’t throw away his. However -reckless I might be on my own account, I couldn’t be so when I held -another man’s fate in my hand. - -Even so, I didn’t go back at once. Half-way to Stinson’s—I was on foot—I -came to a sudden halt. It was as if the sense of responsibility toward -Lovey wouldn’t allow me to go any farther. I said to myself that I -must think the matter out—that I must find and would find additional -justification for my course before going on. - -To do that I turned into a chance hotel. - -I like the wide hospitality of American hotels, where any tired or -lonesome wayfarer can enter and sit down. I have never been a clubman. -Clubs are too elective and selective for my affinities; they are too -threshed and winnowed and refined. I have never in spirit had any desire -to belong to a chosen few, since not only in heart, but in tastes and -temperament, I belong to the unchosen many. I enjoy, therefore, the -freedom and promiscuity of the lobby, where every Tom, Dick, and Harry -has the same right as I. - -Annoyed by the fact that a halt had been called in my errand of -self-destruction, I began to ask myself why. The only answer that came to -me was that this old man, this old reprobate, if one chose to call him -so, cared for me. He had been giving me an affection that prompted him to -the most vital sacrifice, to the most difficult kind of self-control. - -Then suddenly that truth came back to me which Andrew Christian had -pointed out a few months earlier, and which in the mean time had grown -dim, that any true love is of God. - -I was startled. I was awed. In saying these things I am trying only to -tell you what happened in my inner self; and possibly when a man’s inner -self has plumbed the depths like mine it means more to him to get a bit -of insight than it does to you who have always been on the level. In any -case this question rose within me: Was it possible that out of this old -man, this drunkard, this murderer, cast off by his children, cast out -by men, some feeble stream was welling up toward me from that pure and -holy fountain that is God? Was it possible that this strayed creature -had, through what he was giving me—me!—been finding his way back to the -universal heart? If ever a human being had been dwelling in love he -had been dwelling in it for a year and more; and there were the words, -distilled out of the consciousness of the ages, and written for all time, -“He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.” Was it God that this poor, -purblind old fellow had all unconsciously been bringing me, shedding -round us, keeping us straight, making us strong, making us prosperous, -helping us to fight our way upward? - -I went back. - -But on the way I had another prompting—one that took me into the office -of a tourist company to consult time-tables and buy tickets. - -“Lovey,” I said, when I got home, “we must both begin packing for all -we’re worth. We’re leaving for Montreal to-night.” - -“Goin’ to see your people, Slim, and stay in that swell hotel?” - -“Not just now, Lovey. Later, perhaps. First of all we’re going for a -month into the woods north of the Ottawa.” - -His jaw dropped. “Into the woods?” - -“Yes, old sport. You’ll like it.” - -“Oh no, I won’t, Slim. I never was in no woods in my life—except London -and New York. There’s one thing I never could abide, and that’s trees.” - -“You won’t say that when you’ve seen real trees. We’ll shoot and fish and -camp out—” - -“Camp out? In a tent, like? Oh, I couldn’t, sonny! I’d ketch me death!” - -“Then if you do we’ll come back; only, we’ve got to go now.” - -“Why have we? It’s awful nice here in New York; and I don’t pay no -attention to people that says it’s too hot.” - -I made the appeal which I knew he would not resist. Laying my hand on his -shoulder, I said: “Because, old man, I’m—I’m in trouble. I want to get -away where—where I sha’n’t see—some one—again—and I need you.” - -“It ain’t that girl, Slim? She—she haven’t turned you down?” - -The words took me so much by surprise that I hadn’t time to get angry. -All I could feel was a foolish, nervous kind of coolness. - -“Lovey, what I want you to know I’ll tell you; and at present I’m telling -you this: I’ve got to get out; I’ve got to get out quick; and I need you -to buck me up. No one can buck me up like you.” - -“Oh, if it’s that!” He would have followed me then to places more -dreadful than the Canadian woods. “Will you take all your suits—or only -just them new summer things?” - - - - -_CHAPTER XVIII_ - - -Thus it happened that when war broke out I was deep in the wilderness. -For more than a month I had had no contact with the outside world, not a -letter, not a newspaper. I had escaped from New York without leaving an -address, since Cantyre was absent. I had meant to write to him to have my -letters forwarded, but I never had. Could I have guessed that war was to -begin and to last so long I might have acted differently; but the name of -Gavrilo Prinzip was still meaningless. - -All sportsmen in my part of Canada know Jack Hiller’s, just as -frequenters of the Adirondacks know Paul Smith’s. From Jack Hiller’s -we struck farther in, to the rude camp where I had spent many a happy -holiday when I was a lad. Two guides, an Indian and a half-breed, did the -heavy work; and some long-forgotten, atavistic sporting strain in Lovey -allowed him, groaningly and discontentedly, to enjoy himself. - -But if I expected to find peace I saw I was mistaken. The distance I had -put between myself and the house dominating Long Island Sound was only -geographical. In spirit I was always back on that veranda, living through -again the minutes of the long waiting. So the solitude was no solitude -for me. And then one day the half-breed’s canoe shot over the waters of -the lake, bringing supplies from Jack Hiller’s, with the news that the -world had gone to war. - -I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of men and women there are to -whom the war came as a blessed opportunity to get away from uselessness -or heartache. Stranded, purposeless, spiritless, futile, tired, empty, -with something broken in the life or seemingly at an end, they suddenly -found themselves called on to put forth energies they never knew they -had, to meet needs they had never heard of. - -“Son of man, can these dry bones live?” one might have been asking -oneself a few years previously; and all at once there were multitudes, -multitudes in the valley of decision, energized into newness of being. -Among them I was only one humble, stupid individual; but the summons was -like that which came to the dust when it was bidden to be Adam and a man. - -I have no intention of telling you in detail what happened to me between -that August morning in 1914 and the day I stepped on board the boat at -Liverpool more than two years later. There is no need. You know the -outlines of that tale already. My case hardly differed externally from -any other of the millions of cases you have heard about. The machine of -war does not vary in its working much more than any other machine, except -for the drama played in each man’s soul. - -And of that I can say nothing. I don’t know why—but I cannot. Day and -night I think of what I saw and heard and did in those two years, but -some other language must be coined before I can begin to speak of it. - -In this I am not singular; it is a rule to which I know few, if any, -exceptions. I have heard returned soldiers on the lecture platform, -telling part of the truth, and nothing but the truth, but never the whole -truth nor the most vital truth. I have talked with some of them when the -lectures were over, and a flare in the eye has said, “This is for public -consumption; but you and I know that the realities are not to be put into -words.” - -One little incident I must give you, however, before I revert to what -happened on the boat. - -Having in that early August made my way to Ottawa with Lovey, and decided -that I must respond at once to the country’s call, I expected a struggle -with him, or something bitter in the way of protest. But in this I was -mistaken. He, too, had been thinking the matter over, and, hard as it -would be for him to see me do it, that quiet valor which practically no -Englishman is without raised him at once to the level of his part. - -“All right, Slim. It’s yer dooty to go, and mine to give ye up. We won’t -say no more about that.” - -“Thanks, Lovey, for making it so easy for me. I’ll never forget it as -long as I live. Now there’s only one thing—” - -“If it’s about me goin’ straight, sonny, while ye’re away, I’ll swear to -God not to look so much as on the same side o’ the street as a drop o’ -liquor till He brings ye back to me.” - -“Then I believe He will bring me back, old fellow.” - -“Sure He’ll bring ye back. Ye’ll be ’ome before Christmas; and, Slim, if -it isn’t goin’ to cost ye too much money, won’t ye ’old on to them rooms -so as I can keep our little place together, like, and ’ave it all clean -and nice for you—?” - -Having consented to this, I was able to make further provision for the -old man when Cantyre joined me for a day or two in Montreal to bid me -good-by. Lovey’s heroism was the sort of thing to draw out Cantyre’s -sentimental vein of approval. - -“I’ll take him and look after him, Frank. He’ll valet me till you come -back. I’ve always wanted a man to do that sort of thing, and only haven’t -had one because I thought it would look like putting on side. But now -that he drops down to me out of heaven, as you might say, I’ll take him -as a souvenir of you.” - - - - -_CHAPTER XIX_ - - -All these interests had seemed far away from me during the two and a half -years over there; but in proportion as I drew near Liverpool that morning -they reformed themselves in the mists of the near future, as old memories -come back with certain scents and scenes. Not till the damp, smoky haze -of the great port was closing in round me did I realize that my more -active part in the vast cosmic episode was at an end, and that I had come -to the hour I had so often longed for—and was going home. - -I was going home; and yet, for the minute, at any rate, I was not glad. -There is always something painful in the taking up again of forsaken -ties, however much we once loved them. It was like a repetition of the -effort with which I had renewed my relations with my people. The actual -has a way of seizing us in its tentacles and making us feel that it is -the only life we ever truly led. There was a time when I seemed to forget -that I had ever been anywhere but in the trenches. During the month or -two that I was blind I got so used to the condition as to find it strange -that I had ever seen. And always, in face of the fierce intensity of the -present, the life in New York was remote, shadowy, and dim, as they say -the life in prison becomes from its very monotony to those who look back -on it after their release. - -What it really amounted to was that during those two years I seemed to -have grown in the size of my mental conceptions. Having been hurled into -an existence gigantic, monstrous, in which there were no limits to either -the devotion or the cruelty of human beings toward one another, all other -ways of living had grown pale and small. If you can imagine yourself -swirling through space, riding both zephyrs and tempests equally as a -matter of course, you can understand how tame it would seem to be tied -down to earth again, to go at nothing more stimulating than a walking -pace. Otherwise typified, a lion that has been in a cage, and after two -and a half years of free roving in the jungle finds itself returned to -the cage again, would probably have the same sinking of the heart as I -when I saw the hulk of the _Assiniboia_ loom up before me in the dock. - -And then came that odd little incident of the nurse to connect me with -the past by a new form of excitement. I have to confess that it was -excitement largely compounded of wonder and distress. A dull ache told me -that sensation was returning to a deadened nerve, and that where I had -supposed there was paralysis at least there was going to be reaction and -perhaps a pang. - -For by this time I had passed through that process which is commonly -known as “getting over it.” That is, a new self was living a new life on -a new plane of existence. All that belonged to the period before I went -to enlist at Ottawa was on the other side of a flood. I had not precisely -forgotten; I had only died and become a transmigrated soul. Whatever was -past was past. I might suffer from it; I might feel its consequences; -but I couldn’t live it again. On the other hand, I was living vividly in -the present. Not so much consciously or by word as because I couldn’t -help it, I had merged everything I was into one dominating purpose with -which, as far as I was aware, Regina Barry had nothing to do. The aims -for which the war was being fought were my aims; I had no others. When -these objectives were won my life, it seemed to me, would be over. It -would melt away in that victory as dawn into sunrise. It would not be -lost; it would only be absorbed—a spark in the blaze of noonday. - -So mentally I was pressing forward. Though I could do no more fighting, -I had been told that there was still work by which I could contribute -to the object beside which no other object could be taken into -consideration. I was being sent back for that reason. Not much had been -told me as yet about what I was to do, but I understood that it was to be -in connection with American public opinion. It will be remembered that -at the end of 1916 the United States was not only not in the war, but it -was still doubtful as to whether or not she ever would be. The hand of a -cautious listener being on the pulse of a patient people, it was on the -beat of that pulse that the issue turned. - -I understood that, with my acquaintance ranging among high and low, I -was to do what I could to make the pulse a little quicker. I might not -be able to do much, but we had all learned the value of small individual -contributions. It was argued that in proportion as the American people -began to see on which side the balance of righteousness dipped, my -game leg and my black patch, and the haggardness and gauntness and -batteredness of my whole appearance, would have some appeal. The appeal -would be the stronger for the fact that I was not an Englishman, but a -Canadian—blood-brother to the man of his own continent, blood-brother -to the Briton, blood-brother to the Frenchman, blood-son of the great -ideals fathered by the Anglo-Saxon race, and in which all free peoples in -the course of two hundred years had been made participants—and quick to -spring to their defense. I was to be, therefore, a kind of unobtrusive, -unaccredited ambassador to the man in the office and the street, with -instructions to be inoffensive but persuasive. - -And on this mission all my conscious thought was set. No hermit in the -desert was ever more entirely self-dedicated to the saving of his soul -than I to the quiet preaching of this new crusade among men like Ralph -Coningsby and Stephen Cantyre and Beady Lamont and Headlights and Daisy -and Momma and Mouse, and any others with whom I should come in contact. -In fulfilling this task I wanted no one to disturb or distract me; and -here at the very outset was some one who might do both. - - - - -_CHAPTER XX_ - - -After having found my cabin and seen to my belongings I hobbled up on -deck once more, to verify my vision of the Canadian nurse’s uniform. -I discovered the uniform in two or three instances, but in none that -corresponded to the figure too little to be tall and too tall to be -considered little I had watched receding down the deck. - -As for the costume itself, it was not difficult to find myself beside -one of the ladies who wore it—a beautiful, grave woman, of the type of -Bouguereau’s Consolatrice, who, with hands resting on the deck rail, was -looking down at the movement on the dock. - -“There seem to be a number of nurses going back,” I observed, after an -introductory word or two. - -“There are three in our party—myself and the two over there.” - -The two over there were two I had already seen, neither of them being my -pilot of a half-hour previously. - -“I thought I saw another,” I threw off, casually. - -“I believe there is one—an American girl from Lady Rideover’s hospital at -Taplow.” - -As I had just come from Lady Rideover’s hospital at Taplow, and Lady -Rideover herself was my sister, I suggested, without mentioning the -relationship, that in this speculation there was some mistake. - -“She may not have come directly from there,” the Consolatrice admitted; -“but I know she was with Lady Rideover six months ago.” - -“But six months ago I was with Lady Rideover myself.” - -“Well, she was there then.” - -“But I should have seen her if she had been.” - -She turned slowly round on me, with deep, kind eyes. “Would you? You -could see all the time?” - -I had forgotten that. There had been two months when I hadn’t seen at -all. Any one might have come and gone during that time. - -Remarking on the inconvenience of having no list of passengers, I asked -my companion if she knew the young lady’s name. - -“No; but I can inquire of my friends. They may know.” - -Having crossed to speak to the nurses on the other side of the deck, she -came back without the information. - -“But Miss Prynne,” she added, “that’s the short one, says that the young -lady came over about two years ago with Lady Rideover’s sister, Miss -Melbury, of Montreal.” - -I withdrew to ponder. I had been in continuous if desultory communication -with my sisters during all my time abroad, and no mention of Regina Barry -had ever escaped either. I had not supposed that they knew one another. I -couldn’t bring myself to believe that I had been under the same roof with -her at Taplow and had not been aware of it. And here she was on board -the ship on which I was returning home, and able to come to my aid at a -minute when I wanted help. - -I had often wished that some of my New York correspondents would speak of -her, but no one ever had. Except in the case of Cantyre this was hardly -strange, for—apart from Hilda Grace, who never wrote to me—no one knew -that Regina Barry and I had meant anything to each other. If Cantyre had -spoken of her, it would have been on his own account; but confidential -as he was in private talk, his letters were never more than a few terse -lines. So I had rather bitterly imagined her as going on with the testing -of other men, as she had tested Jim Hunter, Cantyre, and me—trying them -and finding them wanting. In ungenerous moments I went so far as to hope -that Nemesis might overtake her in some tremendous passion in which she -herself would be tried and tossed aside. - -It was, however, the second day out before I actually came face to face -with her. Her absence from the deck had been part of the mystery. Having -swung into the Mersey, we remained there all Sunday night—it was a Sunday -we had gone on board—and much of Monday. Accepting as necessary the -secrecy which in war-time enshrouds an Atlantic voyage, the passengers -had made themselves as comfortable as the conditions permitted, and taken -air and exercise by promenading the decks. There could have been no -better opportunity for finding familiar faces, but, apart from one or two -distant acquaintances, I saw none. The three nurses’ uniforms I had noted -already were continually about; but I never found the fourth. - -And then on Tuesday, after we had lost sight of the Irish coast, there -was another queer little incident. As I could walk but little, I had been -reading in the music-room. Tired of doing that and eager to continue my -search for the missing uniform, I had limped to the doorway, screened by -a heavy portière, leading out toward the companionway. But while I stood -turning up the collar of my overcoat the portière was suddenly pulled -aside, and we were before each other, with a suggestion of a similar -occurrence three and a half years before. - -The very differences in my appearance—the mustache, the patch over my -left eye, the military coat—must have helped to recall the earlier -occasion by the indirect means of contrast. As for her, she was what she -had seemed to me then—two great flaming eyes. They were tired eyes now, -haunted, tragic perhaps, and I saw later that when you caught them off -their guard they were pensive, if not mournful. They were, indeed, all I -could see of her, for the rest of her features were hidden by the veil -over the lower part of the face which women occasionally copy from the -Turkish lady’s yashmak. A small black cap, held by a jade-green pin, and -a long, shapeless black ulster or coat completed a costume quite unlike -the uniform for which I had been looking. - -I can only describe that encounter as the meeting of two transmigrated -souls. She had gone as far in her direction as I in mine; but I couldn’t -tell at a glance in what direction she had gone. It was what struck me -dumb. When Paolo and Francesca met in space they had nothing to say to -each other except with the eyes. In some such case as that we found -ourselves. The pressure of topics was too great to allow of immediate -selection. She seemed to wait for me to utter the first word, and as I -was at a loss she dropped the portière behind her, inclined her head, and -passed on into the saloon. - -Though it was my place to follow her, I couldn’t, for the minute, take -so obvious a course. I was not only too mystified by what I had heard of -her, but too confused as to our standing toward each other. I couldn’t -begin with a “How do you do?” as if we had parted on the ordinary social -terms, while anything more dramatic would have been absurd. Hobbling -along the deck, I took refuge in the smoking-room in order to reflect. - -Reflection was not easy. Over its calm fields emotion spread like water -through a broken dike. For two and a half years the emotional had been so -stemmed and banked and dammed in me that I had thought it under control -forever. I had had enough to do in giving orders or carrying them out. -But, now that the repressed had broken its bounds again, the tide swept -everything away with it. - -Not that I knew just what I was experiencing; on the contrary, I couldn’t -have disentangled the element of anger from that of curiosity, nor that -of curiosity from that of joy. All I could say for certain was that never -in my life had I been so anxious to keep free; never had I so much needed -concentration and single-mindedness. The task to which I had vowed my -undivided energy and heart demanded a genuine celibacy of the will; and -now of all the women in the world.... - -I was working on this train of thought when I became aware that people -were running along the deck. Glancing about me at the same moment, I saw -I was alone in the smoking-room. A whistle blew, piercingly, alarmingly. -By the time I had struggled to my feet the ship changed her course so -sharply as to throw me against a chair. - -I knew what it was, of course. We had been talking of the possibility -ever since we left the Mersey. However much we tried to keep the mind -away from the subject, it came back to it, as a mischievous boy makes -straight for the thing forbidden him. - -My first thought was for the girl in the yashmak. I must find her, see -she had a life-belt, and take her to her boat. Before I had scrambled to -the door, however, it flew open, apparently of its own accord, while a -wild nor’wester positively blew the young lady in. - -It also blew away anything like Paolo-and-Francesca sentiment. - -“Oh, here you are!” she exclaimed, breathlessly. “I’ve been hunting for -you everywhere. They say we’ve sighted a periscope. Take this and put it -on.” - -Of the two life-belts she carried she flung one to me, beginning to -fasten the other about herself. - -“But the one you’ve brought me must belong to some one else,” I objected, -as I aided her. “I’ve got one of my own in my cabin. I’ll just run down—” - -She brushed this aside. “No; this is yours. I went and got it.” - -“You—” I began in astonishment. - -“I’m a nurse—or a kind of one,” she said, hastily. “That’s what I’m here -for.” - -“But you knew where my cabin was?” - -“I found out. Oh, hurry—please!” - -She helped me as a medieval lady might have helped her lord to buckle on -his sword; and presently we were out on deck. - -As we had twice already drilled in the unsightly things, we had lost -the sense of the grotesque appearance presented by ourselves and our -fellow-travelers. Besides, we were too eager to descry the periscope to -have any more thought of ourselves than a wild duck of how it looks when -skimming away from a sniper. Indeed, it was chiefly of a hunted wild duck -that our zigzagging boat reminded me. - -It was a sullen day, with that scudding of low, gray clouds which looks -as if the heavens were hastening to some Armageddon of their own. The -sea had hardly got over the swell left by one gale when it was being -lashed into fury by another. The _Assiniboia_ pitched and rolled and -tore through the waters like a monster goaded by innumerable stings. I -should have found it next to impossible to struggle along the deck had my -protectress not stood by and steadied me. - -There was a kind of foolish pretense at the chivalrous in my tone as I -said, “I’ll just see you to your boat before going over to mine.” - -“We’re in the same boat,” she answered, briefly. “Do come along.” - -I thought of my forty-eight hours of unfruitful search for her. - -“But I didn’t see you at Number Seven when we drilled yesterday.” - -“I’m there now,” she said, with the same brevity. Feeling, apparently, -that some explanation was needed, she went on: “I’ve—I mean they—they’ve -changed me. Miss Prynne has let me have—or rather she’s taken— That is,” -she finished, in confusion, “we’re all nurses together—and we’ve—we’ve -exchanged.” - -In spite of some inward observations, I spared her any other comment -than to say, “How jolly!” as if the exchange had been the most -matter-of-course thing in the world. - -I spoke just now of riding tempests and zephyrs, and something like that -it was to plow along at every ounce of steam, with cross seas, head -seas, seas abeam, and seas abaft, as each new zigzag caught them. On the -roaring of the wind and the plunge and thunder of the waves one rose -into regions of tumultuous play where life and death were the stakes. I -saw no signs of fear, and still less of panic; nor, so far as the eye -could read, anything more than a sporting excitement. One would have -said that our peril was accepted as being all in the game, part of the -day’s work. By the end of 1916 Atlantic travelers had come to take the -submarine for granted, just as the statesmen of Plantagenet and Tudor -times took the headsman’s block as one of the natural risks of going into -politics. - -But we looked instinctively for a periscope. It is not an easy thing for -any one to see, and for me it was more difficult than for most. I saw -none; or I saw a hundred. With the imperfect vision of my one eye the -crests of the billows bristled with moving four-inch pipes; and then -suddenly all would disappear and I saw nothing but the waves curling -upward into coronets of foam with veils of trailing lace. - -Not that I was worse off in this respect than my fellow-travelers. As -they ran for their boats they would pause, take a hurried look at the -seas, exclaiming, “There it is!” and then, more doubtfully, “No, no!” -all in one breath. The “No, no!” was generally uttered in a tone of -disappointment, since to cross the ocean and sight no submarine would -have been like journeying through Egypt and missing the pyramids. - -And yet our danger was apparent. Only a fortnight before the -_Kamouraska_, sister ship to the _Assiniboia_, had been sent to the -bottom in these very waters, with great loss of life. Of the tragedy -the papers had given us realistic pictures that were fresh in all our -minds. There was a preliminary scene on board not unlike the one we -were enacting. We saw later a shell bursting on the deck, somewhere -amidships. We saw the passengers and crew taking to the boats with shells -kicking up geysers among them as they tried to get away. We saw the great -ship sticking as straight up out of the water as a Cleopatra’s Needle, -before going slowly down. We saw the U-boat herself lying on the water -like a crocodile, some four thousand yards away; we saw Queenstown as a -morgue. All this was as vividly in our minds as a rehearsal to the actors -of a play; and yet we were probably no more nervous than the company on a -first night when the curtain is going up. - -The word went round that it was the fate of the _Kamouraska_, with the -futility of her surrender as a means of saving the passengers’ lives, -that prompted our captain to flight and fight. Our wireless calls were -undoubtedly going up and down the Irish coast and out into the ocean. -Within an hour or two, if we could hold out so long, destroyers would be -rushing to our rescue. We had nothing to be terribly afraid of with more -than an imaginative fear. - -That imaginative fear was quickened by the seemingly maddened action -of our ship. I can best describe her as a leviathan gone insane. If -insanity were to overtake a whale it would probably splash the deep in -some such frenzy as this—so many angles out of the course one way—then a -violent heeling over—so many angles out of the course another way—anyway, -anywhere, anything—to get out of that straight, staid line from port to -port which makes an ocean-going ship a liner. I admit that in this wild, -erratic dashing there was something that alarmed us, and something, too, -that made us laugh. It was the comic side of madness, in which you can -hardly see the terrible because of the grotesque. - -By the time we reached life-boat No. 7 there were many signs that neither -officers nor passengers were going to take more chances than they were -obliged to. At No. 5 on one side of us a young officer was on top, -peeling off the tarpaulin covering. At No. 9 on the other side some of -the crew were already mounted, examining supplies and oars. At our own -boat, cranks were being fitted to the davits to swing the boat outward. -All along the line similar preparations were in progress, while men -and women—luckily we had no children on board—carrying such wraps and -hand-bags as they might reasonably take, stood in groups, waiting for -what was to happen next. - -Our view of the sea was largely cut off here by the bulk of the -life-boats, though wherever there was a chink there was also a cluster of -heads. So many saw periscopes—and so many didn’t see them—that it became -a mild joke. In general we surmised that if a U-boat was cruising round -us at all she had only been porpoising—sticking up her periscope for a -second or two to get a look round, and withdrawing it before it could be -seen by any eye not on that very spot. - -The girl in the yashmak and I arrived so late on the scene that there -were no places left by the rail, and we were obliged to content ourselves -with second-hand information as to what was taking place. Our excitement -had, therefore, a lack of point, like that of the small boy behind the -line of grown-up people watching a procession. We fell back in the end -into a kind of alcove, where, being partially protected from wind and -tumult, we could speak to each other without shouting. - -I took the opportunity to thank her for her kindness to me when I came on -board on Sunday; but with my opening words the air of Francesca meeting -Paolo in space came over her again. I understood her to say that her help -on Sunday was a little thing, that she would have given it to any one. - -“Of course,” I agreed, “you would have given it to any one; but in this -case you gave it to me. You must allow me to thank you before anything -happens that might—that might make gratitude too late.” - -As I think of her now I can see that she was mistress of herself in the -way that a letter-perfect actress is mistress of herself, repeating words -that have been learned to fit a certain situation. She had foreseen that -I would say something of the kind; she had foreseen that when I did she -might be a prey to troublesome emotions; and so had fortified herself in -advance by a studied set of phrases. - -“I’m so little of a nurse that I should be ashamed not to do for a -soldier the few small things in my power.” - -If she had never made me suffer anything, and if the moment had not been -one that might conceivably end our relations forever, I should probably -not have uttered the words that came to me next. - -“Was it only because I’m a soldier—?” - -She interrupted skilfully. “Only because you’re a soldier? Isn’t a -soldier the most splendid man in the world—especially at a time like -this?” - -Bang! - -It was one of our two guns. As a merchantman, not built to withstand the -concussion of cannon, the _Assiniboia_ shuddered. - -With an involuntary start my companion caught me by the sleeve. -The impulse to seize her hand and draw it gently within my arm was -irresistible. Had I reflected, I might not have done this, since my -dominant desire was to keep stripped and unencumbered for the race. - -She allowed me to retain her hand just long enough to show that she was -not mortally offended, after which she gently disengaged herself. To -cover the constraint that both of us felt I went on to wonder if our shot -had taken effect. A young man who had gone to find out came back with the -news that the lookout, having spied the pin furrow of the periscope, the -shot had been fired at a venture. As far as could be observed it had done -nothing but send up a waterspout. - -On receiving this information I went on with our interrupted -personalities. - -“Ever since Sunday I’ve wondered what had become of you; but then I’ve -been looking for the uniform.” - -“I always intended taking that off when I got on board. You see, I never -was a nurse in any but an amateur sense, and so—” - -It was my opportunity to spring the surprise I had been holding in -reserve ever since my talk with the Consolatrice in the dock at Liverpool. - -“When did you last see Mabel?” - -She spoke with a sharp, sudden mezzo cry that might have been caused by -pain. - -“Who told you that?” - -“Who told me what?” - -Bang! - -It was our second gun, and though the girl in the yashmak started again, -she did not seize my arm. To hold the drama at its instant of suspense, -I pretended to be more interested in the effect of the shot than in -anything else in the world, as in other circumstances I should have been. -I turned to this one and that one, inviting their guesses, noting all -the while that over Regina Barry’s eyes there spread the surface fire -that a flaming sunset casts on troubled water. - -She harked back to the subject as soon as it was clear that we had missed -our aim again. - -“Lady Rideover promised me she’d never tell you.” - -Her tone having become accusatory, I broke in on it with studied -nonchalance. - -“And she never did. To the best of my recollection she never mentioned -your name to me. But is there anything wrong in my knowing that you and -she are friends?” - -Color mounted to her brows where the yashmak couldn’t conceal it, though -she ignored the question. - -“And I’m sure it wasn’t your sister Evelyn.” - -“Why shouldn’t it have been?” - -“Because she promised me, too. I should be frightfully hurt if I thought -she—” - -“Then I’ll relieve your mind by assuring you that she didn’t. But to me -the curious thing is that you shouldn’t have wanted me to know.” - -She ignored this, too, a furrow of perplexity deepening between her brows. - -“It isn’t possible that Lady Rideover or Evelyn, without telling you in -words, should have allowed you to suspect—” - -“Not any more than they allowed me to suspect that I was being nursed by -a houri out of paradise.” - -She hastened to make a correction. “Oh, I never acted as nurse to you! It -was that Miss Farley.” - -“But you were at Taplow when I was there, and in and out of my room.” - -The peculiar light in her eyes, partly of amazement, partly of -incredulity, reminded me of a poor trapped lady I had once seen in the -prisoner’s dock while a witness recounted the secrets of her life with -remarkable exactness of detail. - -“But you couldn’t see me!” she began, helplessly. - -“No, but I could hear.” - -“And you didn’t hear me. If I went into your room, which I didn’t often -do—” - -I launched a theory that was purely inspiration. - -“Oh, I know. If you came into my room you didn’t make a sound. You -arranged that with Mabel. But haven’t you heard that the blind develop an -extra sense?” - -“Not as quickly as that—or with that precision.” She brightened with a -new thought. “If your extra sense told you I was there, why didn’t you -speak to me?” - -“Suppose I said that I respected your incognita? If you didn’t want to -speak to me it must have been for a reason. I couldn’t ignore that.” - -Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! P-ff! - -A shell from the submarine struck the water somewhere near us, though all -we saw was a column of white spume on the port side of the ship, while we -were on the starboard. - -She ignored even this. Standing erect, with her hands in the pockets of -her ulster, with no feature to betray her but her eyes, she surmised, -calmly, “Some of the other nurses or one of the patients must have given -you a hint.” - -“None of them ever pronounced your name in my hearing.” - -“Then I give up guessing!” she said, with a touch of impatience. - -“Which is what I can’t do.” - -“But what have you to guess at?” - -“At what you’ve done it—at what you’re doing it—for.” - -She may have smiled behind the yashmak as she said, “What difference does -it make to you?” - -“I dare say it doesn’t make any—except that I seem to be the person -benefited.” - -“In time of war the soldier—the man who does the thing—is the person -benefited.” - -“Oh no; there’s the cause.” - -“But surely, if we’ve learned anything during the past two years, it’s -that what the soldier does for the cause can’t compare with what the -cause does for the soldier.” - -I saw my opportunity and was quick to use it. “So that out of what you’ve -been doing for me even you have got something.” - -She turned this neatly. “I’ve got a great deal—out of what I’ve been -doing for every one. Not that it’s been much. I merely mean that, -whatever it’s been, it’s brought me in far more than I’ve ever given out.” - -The swing of the boat was so abrupt as almost to make her heel over. Up -and down the deck such passengers as were clinging to nothing were flung -this way and that, with some laughing and a few involuntary cries. Miss -Barry having braced me in a corner of the alcove because of my game leg, -I kept my footing steadily, but the girl herself was thrown square into -my arms. - -Not more than a second later another Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! warned us that -another shell was on the way; but before we had time to be afraid a soft -P-ff! told us that this, too, had struck the water. The waterspout, this -time on the starboard side, not only spattered us with spray, but made -it clear that only the sharp shifting of the course had saved us from a -hole in our bow. That within the next few minutes our enemy would get us -somewhere was a little more than probable. - -Then from every cluster of heads came the cry, “Oh, look!” - -There she was—a blue-gray streak, only a little darker than the blue-gray -waters. The change in our course revealed her as she lay on the surface -to shell us, since she was too far away to send us a torpedo. We forgot -everything—Regina Barry and I forgot each other—to gaze. My arms relaxed -their hold on the girl because there was no longer a mind to direct them; -the girl took command of herself because it was only thus that she could -observe the most baleful and fascinating monster in the world. - -For it was as a monster, baleful and fascinating, that we regarded her. -She was not a thing planned by men’s brains and built in a shipyard. -She was an abnormal, unscrupulous, venomous water beast, with a special -enmity toward man. She had about her the horror of the trackless, the -deep, the solitary, the lonesome, the devilish. Few of us had ever got -a glimpse of her before. It was like Saint George’s first sight of the -dragon that wasted men and cities, and called forth his hatred and his -sword. - -I think that sheer hatred was the cause of our banging away at her with -our two guns. We could hardly expect to hit her. She must have been out -of our range, and our only hope was in getting out of hers. - -As far as we could judge she was lying still and shelling us at her ease. -Splash! Splash! Splash! The screeching things went all round us; but by -some miracle they were only spectacular. - -Viewed as a spectacle, there was a terrific beauty in it all. Nature and -man were raging together, ferociously, magnificently, without conscience, -without quarter, without remorse. Hell had unsealed its springs even in -us who stood watchful and inactive. There was a sense of abhorrent glory -in the knowledge that there were no limits to which we would not go. -That there were no limits to which our enemy would not go with us was -stimulating, quickening, like the flicker of the whip to the racer. About -and above us were all the elements of which man is most accustomed to be -afraid, but which, now that we were among them, inspired an appalling -glee. - -It was amazing how quickly we got used to it, just as, I am told, a man -after a night or two gets used to being in the death-house. To be shelled -on a stormy, lonely ocean came within a few minutes to being a matter -of course. Had we had time to reflect and look backward, it would have -seemed strange to think that we had made voyages across the Atlantic in -which we had not been shelled. - -Then all of a sudden there was a noise like that in a house when it is -struck by lightning. It was as if all creation had burst into sound, -as if there were nothing anywhere that was not a concomitant of an -ear-splitting, soul-splitting crash. It was over us; it was round us; -it was everywhere; it might have been within us. In our own persons we -seemed to be rent by it. - -From the port side a blast of smoke rose and poisoned the dark air. A few -shrieks, half suppressed by the shriekers, ran the length of the deck, -and a few male exclamations of astonishment and awe. For the most part, -however, we stood still and soundless, as I believe we should have held -ourselves had it proved to be the Judgment Day. - -Our immediate impression was that all the aft of the ship had been -carried away. Had she begun to settle stern foremost on the instant we -should not have been surprised. We could hardly believe that the long, -narrow perspective of the deck, with its groups dotting the length of it, -could remain unshattered and afloat. We were sure the decks below must -have been blown into air and water. - -For the hundredth part of a second the _Assiniboia_ appeared to stop -still in her course, like a creature with its death-wound. She seemed -stricken, stunned. But she gave another lurch, another swing to her huge -person; and when the second shell came on, taking the range of that which -had struck her, it plowed the waves astern. All seemed to be over in the -space of between two breaths. By the time we could get our wits together -sufficiently to ask what had happened she was once more driving onward. - -It was splendid. It was sublime. It thrilled one with pride in pluck and -seamanship. One could have hugged the brave old leviathan by the neck. - -A British seaman, running down the deck on some errand, cried, as he -passed us: “Got the old bucket aft, just above the water-line. But, Lor’! -she don’t mind it! Didn’t do no ’arm. On’y killed Sammy Smelt, a steerage -cabin-boy.” - -But it was a beginning. Nothing could save us now but speed and the -captain’s skill. The young officer who had helped to strip the covering -off No. 5 strolled by us, smoking a cigarette. - -“We’re showing her a pretty clean pair of heels,” he said, coolly, by way -of dealing out encouragement. “Ship’s carpenter’s begun plugging up the -hole. That won’t hurt us so long as we don’t get another.” - -“What about the cabin-boy?” some one called out. - -He shrugged his shoulders, saying, merely, “Doctor attending to the -wounded.” - -It was strange to be tearing through the seas, with that erratic course -of the crazed leviathan, when at any second death might strike us from -the air. I had often been under shell-fire, of course; but on land there -was generally some dugout, some _abri_, in which one could seek shelter. -What impressed me here was the vast exposure of it all. We could only -stand with the heaven over us, ready to take to the boats, if need be, or -equally ready to be blown into bits like little Sammy Smelt. - -Among the people on the deck the quiet waiting which the traditions of -the race have made second nature continued. We might have been passengers -gathered at the entrance to a railway track. If a scared look haunted -some faces, it was not more than might have been occasioned by the -extreme lateness of a train. - -The shells were still splashing, the ship was still driving onward under -every pound of steam, when I looked again at the girl in the yashmak. -It must not be understood that I had looked away from her for long. The -period of our extreme peril did not in reality cover more than a few -minutes. Like the crisis of a fever, it was slow in coming, but it passed -quickly, though we needed some time to realize the fact. - -But when I looked again at Regina Barry I found her as little disturbed -as a woman could possibly have been in that special situation. Not to be -hurled again into my arms, she held now to the hand-rail that runs along -cabin walls; but she watched me rather than the ocean. I was her charge -and the ocean was not. The blue-gray streak that had held her attention -for a while was visible only when the turnings of the ship threw it into -view; otherwise we had nothing to see on the starboard side except an -infinitude of billows with curling white crests. - -To resume something like the customary attitude of human beings toward -each other I said, as casually as I could manage, “You came over here -just after I did, didn’t you?” - -Having purposely framed my sentence in just those words, it was some -satisfaction to get the result I was playing for. It took all the -aplomb—a rather shy aplomb—of which she was mistress to answer in a way -that wouldn’t underscore my meaning. - -“Possibly; but I don’t remember when you came over.” - -Having given the date of my sailing, I added, “And you left with Evelyn a -little more than three weeks later?” - -“Since you know everything, you naturally know that.” She took on the old -air of being at once smiling and defiant as she asked, “And has the fact -any special significance?” - -“That’s what I want to find out.” Before she could protest that there was -no such significance I put the question, “How did you come to know her?” - -“Is she so terribly difficult to know?” - -“Not in the least; only, you’d never seen her in your life at the time -when”—I gathered all my innermost strength together to bring the words -out—“at the time when I talked to you last.” - -She, too, gathered her innermost strength together, rising to the -reference gallantly. - -“Oh, well, a good many things have happened since then.” - -Before going further I was obliged to pause and reckon how much I dared. -Of the many sensitive points in my history, we were touching on the most -sensitive. I was fully aware that since the sleeping dog was sleeping -it might be better to let him lie. Once he was roused, there might be a -new set of perils to deal with, perils we could avoid by softly stepping -round them. That Paolo should go one way in space and Francesca another -seemed to be decreed by inevitable fate; so why interfere with the -process? - -I should probably not have interfered with it had the circumstances not -raised us above the sphere of our ordinary interests. The roar of the -wind, the tumult of the sea, the plunging of the ship, the indescribable -whining of shells, the knowledge of danger—were as the orchestra which -lifts the duet to emotional planes that dialogue alone could never attain -to. Though our words might be commonplace, every syllable was charged -with tones and overtones and undertones of meaning to be seized by -something more subtle than intelligence. Prudence might have said, “Let -everything alone,” but that urging of the being which escapes the leash -of prudence drove me on to speak. - -“Do you remember when I talked to you last?” - -She answered with the detachment of a witness under compulsion to tell -the truth. The personal was as far as possible eliminated from her voice. - -“Perfectly.” - -“We—we seemed to—to break off in the middle of a conversation.” - -“Which you never gave me any further opportunity of going on with.” - -The statement took my breath away. For some seconds I could only stare -at her as a truthful man stares when he hears himself given the lie -direct. - -“Did you—did you—want to go on with it?” I managed to stammer at last. - -“What do you think?” - -“I—I didn’t think that. I waited nearly two hours.” - -“And if you’d only waited a few minutes more—” - -I leaned down toward her, breaking in on her words with a sense of what I -might have lost: “Everything would have been different? You were going to -say that?” - -She took time to raise her hands and adjust the yashmak, giving me the -clue to her reason for wearing it. It was putting on a vizor before -going into battle. Knowing that she would be thrown into some difficult -situations, she had taken this method of being as far as possible -screened against embarrassment. - -She was successful in that. Apart from the shifting surface fire of her -eyes and the slightest possible tremor in her voice I saw no rift in the -barricade of her composure. - -“No; that isn’t what I was going to say. I don’t know how things would -have been. I suppose they would have been as—as they are now.” - -“But we could have talked them over.” - -“If you’d waited.” - -“I should have waited forever if I’d known.” - -“Or if,” she went on, with the same serenity, “you hadn’t disappeared -next day without leaving an address. I tried to find you—as well as I -could, that is—without seeming to hunt you down.” - -I explained that when I left New York on that last Monday in June, 1914, -I had not expected to be gone for more than a few weeks—just the time to -recover from the first effects of the blow I thought her scorn had dealt -to me. - -“It was curious, though,” I went on, “that that name, Gavrilo Prinzip, -should have hammered itself in on my brain. I recall it now as about the -only thing I could think of. I didn’t know what it meant, and I was far -from supposing it the touchstone of human destinies that it afterward -proved to be; but in some unreasoning way it held me. It was like the -meaningless catch of a tune with which you can’t go on, till all at once -you see it finishes in—” - -“In a trumpet-call. Yes, I know. You had to follow it. So had I. I don’t -think there’s much more than that to be said.” - -The blue-gray streak was again on the starboard side, but comfortingly -far astern. Though we were still within her range, we were getting the -benefit of distance. At the same time some one called our attention to a -blotch of black smoke, far down on the eastern horizon. A destroyer was -coming to our aid. - -I went back to the point we had partially forsaken. - -“How long did you expect me to wait that afternoon?” - -She looked down at the deck, answering with a perceptible infusion of the -bitter in her tone. - -“I didn’t fix a time. I wasn’t sitting with my watch in my hand.” - -“But I was.” - -“Evidently.” - -“Why didn’t you come down?” - -“I came down as soon as I could.” - -“What kept you?” - -She raised her eyes for a fleeting glance—lowering them again. At the -same time her voice sank, too, so that in the fury of sound about us she -was no more than audible. - -“The thing you told me.” - -“And that kept you—in what way?” - -“In the way of making everything—different.” - -“How much does that mean—different?” - -“It means a good deal.” - -“Can’t you tell me exactly?” - -“I can’t tell you exactly; but it was something like this.” She fixed -her eyes on me steadily. “When they first opened the Subway in New York -I came up out of a station one winter afternoon just as the lights were -lit, and instead of going to the right, as I should have done, I turned -to the left. When I had walked about fifteen minutes I was dazed. Though -I was in a part of New York I knew perfectly well, I couldn’t recognize -anything. It was all a confusion of lights. I couldn’t tell which of the -streets ran north and south, or which were east and west, or what the -buildings were that I’d been used to seeing all my life. In the end some -one took me into a drug-store and made me sit down till I had time to -reorientate myself.” - -“But you did it in the end?” - -“That time—yes.” - -“And this time? The time we’re talking about?” - -Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! P-ff! - -Bang! - -Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! P-ff! - -Bang! - -From the port side there came something like a feeble cheer—a chorus of -rough male voices and high female screams, timid and yet glad. - -A new swing of our crazed leviathan disclosed the reason for this -wavering, victorious cry. There were two more blobs of smoke on the -horizon, and from different points on the Irish coast three huge birds -were flying like messengers from some god. Moreover, the blob of smoke we -had first seen now had a considerable stretch of the ocean behind her, -and in front a parting of the spray like two white plumes as she tore in -our direction. - -“She sure is some little ripper!” came a dry Yankee voice in the group -about life-boat No. 5. - -“Thirty-five knots if it’s one.” - -“Them ’planes’ll overtake her, though, and be on the spot as soon as she -is.” - -“Gosh! I’d like to see Fritzie then!” - -“J’ever see a kingfisher sweep down on a gudgeon?” - -“Gee-whiz! Look at Fritzie! Goin’ to submerge!” - -And sure enough, as we stared, the blue-gray streak began to sink behind -the waves, becoming to the imagination even more a giant deep-sea reptile -after it had gone. - -Almost simultaneously our leviathan calmed down, resuming her straight -course. It was done apparently with the wordless, unexplained -inconsequence with which a runaway horse will suddenly fall into a -peaceful trot. There was no stopping to salute the destroyers and ’planes -that were hastening to our help or to exchange confidences with them as -to our common enemy. There was neither hail nor farewell as we forged -again toward the open sea. - -Danger being considered past, the groups broke up, intermingling with -sighs of relief. The Consolatrice and her friend came to exchange a few -words with us, and Miss Prynne returned from the boat to which she had -good-naturedly exchanged. While I thanked her for this kindness, as if -it had been done for myself, I saw Miss Barry trying to slip off. - -By stepping out of my corner and assuming a limp lamer than my actual -disability warranted I was able to intercept her. - -“I wonder,” I made bold to ask, “if you could give me a hand back to the -music-room?” - -The yashmak was not so impervious but that I could detect behind it the -scarlet glimmer of her smile. - -“Oh, I think you could get there by yourself. Try.” - -“I can manage the deck,” I said, in the tones of a boy feigning an -indisposition to stay away from school, “but I’m afraid of the steps of -the companionway.” - -“How would you have managed if I hadn’t been here?” she asked, as she -allowed me to lean ever so lightly on her arm. - -The steps of the companionway presenting a more real difficulty than I -had expected, I could say nothing till with her aid I had lowered myself -safely down. - -Postponing the pleasure of thanking her, I reverted to the topic the last -attack had interrupted. - -“I want to hear about your reorientation. You were able to put the -streets in their proper place again, and to see New York as it was; but -in my case—” - -She put out her hand with that air which there is no gainsaying. - -“I’m rather tired. I think I must go to my cabin and have a rest.” She -added, however, not very coherently: “The way things happen is in general -the best way—if we know how to use it.” - -Somewhat desperately, because of her determination to go, I burst out, -“And do you think all this has been the best way?” - -“You must see for yourself that it’s been a very good way. We’ve been -able to do—to do the things we’ve both done.” But the admission in the -use of the first personal plural pronoun seemed suddenly to alarm her. -She took refuge again in her need of rest. “I really must be off. If we -don’t meet again before we leave the boat—” - -“Oh, but we shall!” - -“I’m very often confined to my cabin.” - -“Not when you want to be out of it.” - -“Very well, then; I very often don’t leave my cabin.” - -I was holding the hand she had extended to say good-by, but she slipped -it away and was going. - -“Then tell me this—just this,” I begged. “How is it that we’re both on -the same ship? That didn’t happen by accident?” - -Whether she refused to answer my question or whether it didn’t reach her -I couldn’t tell. All I got in response was a long, oblique regard—the -fleeing farewell look of Beatrice Cenci—as she carried her secrets and -mysteries away with her. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXI_ - - -So my celibacy of the will was threatened. I mean by that that I found -myself with two main objects of thought instead of one. Having vowed -myself to a cause, a woman had supervened with that pervasiveness of -presence with which a perfume fills a room. I might still vow myself to -the cause, but I shouldn’t serve it as I had meant to, with heart and -senses free. - -Or should I? - -The question fundamentally was that. Could I at a time like this divide -my allegiance as I should be obliged to divide it by falling in love and -being married? Or ought I, in deference to the work I was to do, suppress -this old passion and smother the problems and curiosities it had begun to -rouse in me? - -If, in view of the many men who have been good soldiers and equally good -husbands, this hesitation seems far-fetched to you, I must beg you to -remember what I have told you already, that my mission, such as it was, -had become my life. For this the inspiration sprang from what I had seen -for myself. What I had seen for myself compelled me to believe that the -world was divided into just two camps—those who fought the Germans and -those who did not. “He that is not with me is against me,” I was prepared -to say; except that for the small bordering nations, whom the arch-enemy -could have crushed as he had crushed Belgium and Serbia before any one -else could save them, I was ready to make long allowances. I couldn’t -make these allowances for the United States; and to win the friends -I valued so highly to joining in the task that seemed to me the most -pressing before mankind was the work to which I longed to give myself -every minute of the day. - -No consecrated soldier of a holy war had ever been moved by a purer -singleness of purpose than I when I came on board the _Assiniboia_; and -now I was already thinking most of something else. As violently—I choose -the adverb—as if I had never seen this woman’s image grow fainter and -fainter in my memory I craved to know certain things about her. - -I might state those things in this way: Why, in the summer in which I -joined the army and went across with the first Canadian contingent, did -she seek the acquaintance of my sister Evelyn and undertake nursing in -her company? Why did she join my sister Mabel and steal in and out of my -room when I was blind? Why, since I was blind, did she keep her presence -unknown to me and swear my sisters to secrecy? Why was she coming back -on board this boat? Did she really care for me? And if she really cared -for me, why this air of ever so courteous, ever so gentle constraint the -minute we were alone and I broached any subject that was personal? - -Was she angry? Was she contrite? Was she wounded? Was she scornful? Was -she proud? Or was she simply subjecting me to one more test, which might -end again in her being disappointed? - -I have to confess that these inquiries already absorbed my soul in such -a way that I forgot that on which I had been accustomed to meditate -every hour of my time—the approach I was to make to American citizens -like Beady Lamont and Ralph Coningsby. Against this weaning away of my -heart some essential loyalty cried, “Treason!” I was the man who had put -his hand to the plow and was looking back. If I continued to look back I -might easily prove unfit for the kingdom of heaven as I conceived of it. - -Throughout the next day I was eager to test the effect of these -counter-inclinations on myself. That I could only do by meeting her. If -I met her, would she be to me simply what the Consolatrice was to a more -intimate degree? Or should I find her the brave, aspiring, provocative -spirit that had led me up the path that had begun to mount from the -moment when I first saw her—only in the end to let me fall over the edge -of a precipice? I wanted to see; I wanted to be sure. - -But she kept me waiting. She didn’t appear that day. It was a fine day -for the ocean in November, with a tolerably smooth sea. It was not -weather, therefore, that confined her to her cabin; it was something -else. She knew I would be on the watch for her, and she let me have my -labor for my pains. - -It was the kind of advance and recession with which I had least patience. -On Thursday morning I kept no watch for her. Swearing that she meant no -more to me than Miss Prynne and that my work in life was too serious to -allow any woman to interfere with it, I gave myself to the reading of -books on the war situation as it affected America. If she was playing a -game, she would learn that it was not one of solitaire. Two could take -a hand at it, and with equal skill. I prided myself on that skill when -sometime in the latter part of Thursday afternoon she passed my chair in -the music-room—the sixth sense told me it was she—and I did not look up -from Sheering’s Oxford lectures on “The War and World Repentance.” - -Though my eye followed the passage, I got little or no sense from it. - -“Human effort after human welfare is never drastic enough,” I read. “It -is never sufficiently radical to accomplish the purpose it tries to carry -out. Instead of laying its ax at the root of the tree of its ills it is -content to hack off a few branches. It never gets beyond pruning-work; -and the most one can say of the results it achieves is that they are -better than nothing. - -“So much, then, one can affirm of the dreams that are now being dreamed, -in all probability to vanish with waking. They are better than nothing. -Better than nothing are the aims held up before the Allied nations as -the citadels they are to capture. The crushing of military despotism -is better than nothing; the elimination of war is better than nothing; -the establishment of universal democracy, the founding of a league of -nations, the formation of a league to enforce peace, the dissemination -of a world-wide entente, these are all of them better than nothing, even -though they end in being no more productive of permanent blessing than -the Hague Conference, which was better than nothing in itself. They are -probably as effective as anything that man, with his reason, his wisdom, -his science, his degree of self-control, and his pathetic persistence in -believing in himself when that belief has so unfailingly been blasted, -can ever attain to. But, oh, gentlemen, as the prophet said thirty -centuries ago, ‘This is not the way, neither is this the city.’ You are -pouring out blood; you are pouring out money; you are giving your sons -and your daughters to pass through the fire to Moloch; through the fire -to Moloch unflinchingly they pass; you are tearing the hearts out of your -own bodies, and you are doing it with a heroism that cannot fail of some -reward. But this is not the way, neither is this the city. It is better -than nothing, but it is not the best. You could do it all so much more -thoroughly, so much more easily. You will accomplish something; there is -no question about that; but till you take the right way, and attack the -city of which you must become masters, that great good thing for which -you are fighting will still be a vision of the future.” - -But with the knowledge that this woman had simply passed and let her -shadow fall upon me I had no heart for Sheering’s impassioned words. I -got up and followed her. - -I found her on deck, far forward, leaning on the rail and watching a -fiery, angry sunset that inflamed all the western horizon. As she looked -round and saw me advancing along the deck I detected in her telltale eyes -the first scared impulse to run away. - -But what was she afraid of? - -It was the question I asked as soon as I was near enough to speak. - -“What makes you think I’m afraid of anything?” - -“The way you looked. You see, this queer sort of veil doesn’t protect -you; it gives you away by throwing all your expression into your eyes. -There’s an essence that eludes one till it’s concentrated and distilled.” - -“I’m sure I didn’t mean—” - -“To look like an animal trying to escape? Well, you did.” - -“Oh, as to that, I could easily have walked round the deck-house to the -other side of the ship.” - -“If the discourtesy wouldn’t have been too obvious—of course!” But I -didn’t press the point. There were other admissions to which I had -an unchivalrous craving to bring her if I could; and so I went on, -artfully, “It was clever of you to find my state-room on Tuesday—all on -the spur of the moment like that.” - -She contented herself with murmuring, “Yes, wasn’t it?” - -“And your own cabin is on another deck.” - -“I’m on this deck.” - -“So that you hadn’t even seen me going in and out.” - -“I’m a nurse—in a way. Nurses have to know more than other passengers or -they’d be no good on board ship.” - -“And do you know every one’s cabin?” - -“I know every one’s cabin to whom I can be useful.” - -“Is that many?” - -“No; not many, unfortunately.” She diverted the attack by saying, “What -are you asking for?” - -“Oh, for nothing,” I answered, carelessly. I added, however, with some -slight show of intention, “I’ve called it your cleverness, but I really -mean it as your kindness.” - -She decided to take the bull by the horns, shifting her position and -standing with her back to the rail. - -“If you call it kindness that I should have learned the number and -location of your cabin before we left Liverpool—” - -“Oh, you did it then?” - -“Yes, I did it then. But if you call it kindness, of course I can’t -prevent you. I can only assure you it isn’t. I knew you couldn’t get -about easily—” - -“How did you know that?” - -“I saw you come on board. Wasn’t that enough?” - -“Then let me go farther back and ask how you happened to see me come on -board. Wasn’t it an extraordinary coincidence that you should have been -there, right at the head of the gangway?” - -“Well, life is full of extraordinary coincidences, isn’t it? And when a -woman who can do so little sees a wounded man—” - -There were other wounded men scattered about the deck. I glanced at them -as I said, “And have you done that for all the wounded men on board?” - -“I’ve done it for all I know.” - -“And how many do you know?” - -She averted her profile, with an air of having had enough of the subject. - -“I wanted you to tell me a minute ago why you were asking me these -questions, and you said for nothing.” I could see her smile behind the -chiffon of the yashmak as she went on, “Since that’s your only reason, -perhaps you won’t mind if I don’t answer you.” - -“But if I had a reason for asking, would you tell me then?” - -“Wouldn’t it have to depend on the reason?” - -“You’re very careful.” - -She shot a daring, smiling glance at me as she riposted, “Well, aren’t -you?” Before I had time to recover from the slight shock that these words -dealt me she pointed to the horizon. “See, there’s smoke over there. I do -hope it’s not another U-boat.” - -I accepted the diversion—for more reasons than one. Of these the first -was the shock to which I have alluded. She saw through me. That is, -she saw I didn’t place her first. How she saw it I could no more tell -than she could tell how I knew her history of the past two years. But -the tables were turned and turned in such a way as to make me feel -ridiculous. A man who is careful with regard to a woman is always -slightly grotesque. - -As my most skilful defense lay in feigning a lack of perception I talked -about U-boats and the experience of two days before; but I came away from -her with a feeling of discomfort. - -I analyzed the feeling of discomfort as due to the repetition of our -mutual attitude more than two years previously. Where she came forward I -drew back. I had always drawn back. I used to suppose that nothing but -one motive could have driven me to this humiliating course, and now I was -taking it from another. I was taking it from another, and she knew it. -The essence of the humiliation lay in that. - -Each time I met her on deck she betrayed a hesitation that I found harder -to bear than contempt. Her very effort to preserve a tone of friendliness -was a reproach to me. It seemed to say: “You see all I’ve done for you. -You accept it and give me nothing in return.” - -And yet I was obliged to consider that which, were I to let myself be -nothing but myself, might lie before me in the next few weeks and months. -I should arrive in New York as a man engaged to be married. As a man -engaged to be married I should be at once enveloped in that silken net -of formalities with which women with their consecration to the future -of the race have invested all that pertains to the preliminaries of -mating. I had seen for myself that in America that silken net is more -elaborate than it is elsewhere. In any British community it is spun of -tissue, fragile, light, easily swept aside should the need arise. In -America it is solidly constructed of gold cord, and is as often as not -adorned with gems. In America an engagement leads to something of an -anti-climax in that, from the human point of view, it is more important -than a marriage. It is sung by a chorus of matrons and maidens and social -correspondents of the press in a volume far more resounding than that -of the nuptial hymn. That a man should marry after he has become engaged -is considered as much a matter of course as that he should fight after -he has enlisted; but that he should become engaged is like taking that -first oath which denotes his willingness to give himself up, to make the -great renunciation for the sake of something else. More than any single -or signal act of bravery that comes later, it is the thing that counts. -I am not quarreling with American social custom; I am only saying that I -had reasons for being afraid of it. - -I should arrive in New York as a man engaged to be married, and as a man -engaged to be married I should be put through paces as strict and as -stately as those of the minuet. There would be no escape from it. I might -be promised in advance an escape from it, but the promise would not be -kept. I might be promised simplicity, privacy, secrecy, a mere process -of handfasting before the least noticeable of legal authorities; but all -would go by the board. - -Whatever my future wife and I might say—and my future wife would say it -only half-heartedly, if as earnestly as that—I should be seized in the -soft, tender, irresistible embrace of the feminine in American life, the -element that is far more powerful than any other, and I should have no -more fight to put up than a new-born infant against a nurse. There would -be a whole array of mothers and potential mothers to see that I had not. -There would be Mrs. Barry and Annette van Elstine and Hilda Grace and -Esther Coningsby and Elsie Coningsby and Mrs. Legrand, not to speak of a -vast social army behind them, all supported and urged on by the unanimous -power of the press. - -No one of them would allow me to slip from their kindly, overwhelming -attentions any more than bees would allow a queen. Like a queen bee is -any man who is engaged to an American girl—or at least he was in the -days, now so extraordinarily long ago, before America went into the war. -Since then marriage has become casual, incidental, one of those hasty -touches given to human life, which, like the possession of money or the -pursuit of happiness or the leisure to earn a living, are pleasant but -not vital. But in the America of the end of 1916, the mentally far-away -America to which I was going back, matrimony was the most momentous -happening in a life history. From the minute a man became engaged to that -when he turned away from the altar, he had to give himself up to his -condition. He was no longer his own. Dinners, lunches, parties, theaters, -publicity, and the approval of women claimed him; and shrinking was of no -avail. - -To the life after marriage, from this point of view, my mind hardly -worked forward. I have spoken of men who were good soldiers and equally -good husbands. Undoubtedly there are hundreds of thousands in the class. -But I had seen not a little of men who, because they were husbands, -would gladly not have been soldiers at all. Theirs was not a divided -allegiance, for they had only one. The body was in the fight, and it did -wondrously; but the heart and soul and mind and craving were with the -wife and little ones; and who could blame them? - -But all my personal desire was not to be of their number. Had I been -married before the war I should have been as they; but since I was free -to espouse the cause which had become mistress of everything I was I -wanted to espouse it. - -I thought I had espoused it. I had considered myself bone of its bone -and flesh of its flesh. During my months of fighting it had been a -satisfaction to think of myself as at liberty to make any sacrifice of -limb or life, and leave no heart to bewail me, no eye to shed a tear, and -no care to spring up behind me. My family would be content to say, “Poor -old Frank, he did his duty!” Further than that, I should bring no regret -to any heart but Lovey’s; and of him I was persuaded that if I went he -wouldn’t wait long after me. Moreover, I had guarded against any too -great misfortune overtaking him by providing for him in my will. - -I must own, furthermore, to another misgiving: I was not too sure of -myself from the point of view of the old failing. - -Things had happened in the trenches—they had dosed me with brandy, -whisky, rum, any restorative that came handy, on a number of -occasions—and there had been something within me as ready to be waked as -a tiger to the taste of blood. I can say truthfully enough that I had -never yielded to the desire of my own deliberate act; but I must also say -truthfully that I was by no means sure that one day I might not do so. -We had talked often enough, as men with men, of what we called a moral -moratorium—and the talk haunted me with all manner of suggestions. The -ban on what is commonly called sin was to be lifted for the period of the -war; and we who had to deny ourselves so much were not to deny ourselves -anything that came easily within our grasp. It seemed an alluring -condition, and one which, without waiting for the license of supreme -war councils or the permission of the Church, each of us was tempted to -inaugurate for himself. In a situation in which that which is born of the -flesh is flauntingly before one’s eyes, and millions of men are thrown -together as flesh and little more, appetite has its mouth wide open. That -man was strong indeed who could ignore this yearning of the body; and -that man was not I. - -So again the consciousness of freedom was like a reserve fund to a -corporation. It was something on which to fall back if everything else -was swept away. I didn’t want to go to the devil; but if I went no one -would suffer but myself, as no one would suffer but myself if a German -sniper were to blow the top off my head. Mind you, I am not saying that -I came back morally weakened from the war; I only came back with a sense -that one man’s life or death—one man’s ruin or salvation—was of no more -account than the fate of a roadside bit of jewel-weed amid the infinite -seed-time and harvest of the year. I was inured to loss of all kinds -on a stupendous scale. I had seen thousands blown to pieces beside me, -and my mind had not turned aside to regret them; thousands would see me -blown to pieces with the same indifference as to whether I lived or died. -Callousness as to the life and death of others induces callousness as to -one’s own; and compared to life and death, what is the control of a mere -appetite? No; I was not morally weakened; but I was morally benumbed. -There was a kind of moral moratorium in my consciousness. I repeat that I -wasn’t practically making use of it; but I was in a period of suspense in -which I admitted to myself that it might depend on circumstances whether -I made use of it or not. - -And if I did, and if I was married.... - -From the sheer possibility my mind turned in dismay. To the celibacy -made urgent by a purpose I added the celibacy necessitated by a curse. -As the one counseled me not to involve myself with anybody else, so the -other warned me not to involve anybody else with me. Through warning and -counsel I had kept myself in something like a state of serenity till now. - -It was a state of serenity with just one dominating impulse—to get back -among the comrades with whom I had already found shelter. Whatever I -had that could be called a homing instinct was bound for the house in -Vandiver Street. There had been times when I thought I had outlived that -phase, times when what seemed like a new and higher companionship, with a -new and higher place in the world and in men’s esteem, half persuaded me -that I was so little the waster in fact and the criminal in possibility -that the Down and Out was no more to me than a sloughed skin to the -creature that has thrown it off. But I always waked from this pleasant -fancy to see myself as in essentials the same gaunt, tattered, hungry -fellow who had come with his buddy to beg a meal and a bed of the Poor -Brothers of the Order of Pity, who never refused any homeless, besotted -man. No matter what battles I fought, what medals I won, what banquets I -was asked to sit down at, my place was among them; and among them I hoped -to do my work. They were all American citizens, with as much weight, -when it came to the franchise, as the moneyed potentates of Wall Street. -As being not only my brethren, but a nucleus of public opinion as well, -I had had no other vision before me for my return than that of sharing -their humble refreshments and talk, together with that blind, desperate, -devoted fraternity which made a city of refuge of the home that had once -been Miss Smedley’s. - -And since coming on board that vision was threatened by another—one -in which I saw myself moving amid compliments and flowers and polite -conventions, in all the entangling convolutions of the silken net. -Whether it would be with or without love was, in my state of mind, beside -the mark. Love had ceased to be, for the time being, at any rate, the -ruling factor in a man’s decisions about himself. There was a moratorium -of love, let there be one of morals or not. “I’ve got to,” had been the -reply to love made by twenty millions of men all over the world, either -under compulsion or of their own free will; and women had accepted the -answer valiantly. - -The difficulty in my case sprang of choice. “I’ve got to” wasn’t -imperative enough. Or if imperative, it was imperative on both sides -equally. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXII_ - - -And then a word was said which, though solving no problems, opened up a -new line of suggestion. - -I have spoken of Regina Barry as another transmigrated soul. I have -said that I could not tell at a glance in what direction her spirit had -traveled; nor could I after some days of intercourse. As much as she had -been frank and open in the other period of our acquaintance, she had now -become mystery to me—elusive, tantalizing, sealed. By the end of a few -days I began to perceive that she came near me only, as I might say, -officially. If there was danger or storm or darkness—we sailed without -lights—she was within reach of me. She was within reach of me many a time -if I wanted no more than a book that had fallen or a rug that had been -left elsewhere on the deck. It was strange how hovering and protective -her presence could be for the moment of need, and how far withdrawn the -minute I could get along alone. - -And far withdrawn the transmigrated spirit seemed to me at all times. Do -what I would to traverse the distance, I found her as remote as ever. Do -what I would to break down her defenses or transcend them, they still -rose between us, impalpable, impregnable, and all but indiscernible. She -had traveled away from me as I had traveled away from her; and yet now -that we met in space there was some indefinable bond between us. - -It was in right of that bond that I asked her one day why she was going -home. - -“Oh, for all sorts of reasons.” She added, “One of them is on account of -father.” - -“Isn’t he well?” - -“Yes, he’s well enough. That isn’t it.” - -As she did not explain, I refrained from asking further, not because I -didn’t want to know, but because I knew she would tell me. - -It was our usual trysting-place, the deck rail, though not now that -which ran along the side of the ship, but the one across the portion of -the upper deck toward the bow, allowing us to look down on the pit in -which the few steerage passengers took the air. They were standing about -in helpless, idle groups, some ten or twelve oddly clad, oddly hatted -men, with three or four of their women, and a white staring baby, whose -fingers, as it hung over its mother’s shoulder, dangled like bits of -string. - -We were in the Gulf Stream, so that the day was comparatively mild. A -north wind not too violent blew away the possibility of fog and sent an -occasional shaft of sunshine through the rifts in the great gray clouds. -The swell left over from the gale of the past few days tossed the ship’s -nose into the air with a long, slow, rhythmic heave, slightly to port, -and gave to good sailors like ourselves that pleasant sensation of -swinging which a bird must get on a tree. - -Wind and water were fraught with the nameless peaceful intimations of -the New World after the turmoil of the Old one. It is difficult to say -how one seizes them, but they come with the Gulf Stream. I have always -noticed that half-way over there is a change in the aura, the atmosphere. -It throws a breath of balsam on the wind, and flashes on the waves that -gleam which Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and the Pilgrims saw when they -sighted land. - -It is that wonderful sense of going westward which, I suppose, is primal -to the instinct. Going eastward, one is going back to beginnings, to -things lived, to things over and done with. Going westward, all is hope. -It is the onward reach, the upward grasp, the endless striving. It is -the lifting of the hands, the straining of the power to achieve, the -yearning of the inner man. The thing that is finished is left behind, and -the thing to be wrestled with and done is in front of one. The very sun -goes before one with a splendid gesture of beckoning—on to work, on to -self-denial, on to triumph and success—and when it sets it sets with a -promise of a morrow. - -We had already begun to feel that; and on my part in a spirit of -compunction. I was going, as far as lay within my small powers, to turn -the west back upon the east again, to reverse nature by making the stream -flow toward its source. I was far from insensible to the pity of it, for -I had seen the effect on my own country. - -I had seen my own country—that baby giant, whose very existence -as a country antedated but little the year when I was born—I -had seen it pause in its work, in its play, in its task of -self-development—listen—shiver—thrill—throw down the ax, the spade, the -hammer, the pick—go up from the field, the factory, and the mine—and -offer itself willingly. It was to me as if that was fulfilled which was -spoken by the prophet: - -“I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will -go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” - -I had seen that first flotilla of thirty-one ships sail down the St. -Lawrence, out into the ocean, and over to the shores of England, as the -first great gift of men which the New World had ever made to the Old, -as some return for all the Old had poured out upon the New. I had seen -it, for I was on it. We went gaily, as hop-pickers go to a bean-feast. -We knew it was war, but the word had no meaning for us. What it meant -we found out at Ypres, at Vimy, at Lens. But when I think of my country -now I think of her no longer as a baby giant. She has become a girl -widow—valiant, dry-eyed, high-souled, ready to go on with the interrupted -work and do bigger work—but a widow all the same. - -And the sword that had pierced one heart I was bringing to pierce -another. I was sorry; but sorrow didn’t keep me, couldn’t keep me from -being terribly in earnest. - -And in on these thoughts Regina Barry broke as if she had been following -them. - -“Look at the waves where the sun catches them. Aren’t they like flashing -steel? It’s just as if all the drowned hands at the bottom of the sea -were holding up swords to the people of America, begging them to go and -fight.” - -I looked at her, startled. “You feel that way?” - -She looked at me, indignant. “Certainly. How else could I feel?” - -“Oh, I didn’t know. Americans feel so many different ways.” - -“Because they don’t know. I’m going back”—she gave a light, deprecating -laugh—“I’m going back to tell them.” - -I was still more startled. “Tell whom?” - -“Any one I know. Every one knows some one. I don’t mean to say that I’m a -Joan of Arc; but I shall do what I can.” - -“And how shall you begin?” - -“I’ll begin with father and with—” - -She stopped at the second name, though to me the fact did not become -significant till afterward. - -“That’s what I meant,” she resumed, “when I said I was going back on his -account.” - -“You mean?” - -“He doesn’t see why we should be in it. He’s like so many Americans; he -hasn’t emerged from the eighteen-hundreds. He still thinks of the New -World as if it was a new creation that had nothing to do with the Old. -He doesn’t see that there’s only one world and one race of men, wherever -they are and whatever they do. To him Americans are like souls that get -over to paradise. They’re safe and can afford to dwell safely. They’re -no longer concerned with the sorrows and struggles of the people left on -earth.” - -It was to get light on my own way that I asked, “And what are you going -to say to convince him?” - -“I don’t know yet. I shall say what the moment suggests.” - -“And you’re sure it will suggest something?” - -Her great eyes burned like coals as she turned them on me in protest at -the question. - -“Suggest something? You might as well ask if the air suggests something. -It suggests that I breathe it; but I don’t have to think of it -beforehand, when the whole world is full of it.” - -“Full of what?” - -She considered the question, finding in it all I meant to put there. - -“I don’t know,” she answered at last. “That is, I don’t know in any sense -that would go into a few words. There’s so much of it. The minute you try -to express it from any one point of view you find you’re inadequate.” - -I was still seeking light. - -“But when you try to do it from several points of view—correlating them?” - -“Even then—” She paused, reflecting, shaking her head as she went on -again, as if to shake away a consciousness of the impossible. “I don’t -try. There’s no use in trying. It’s so immense—so far beyond me. It’s -grown so, too. When it first began I could more or less compass it—or, -I thought I could. Now it’s become like nature—or God—or any of the -colossal infinite conceptions—it means different things to different -minds.” - -“That is, we can only take of it what we take of the ocean—each a few -drops—no one able to take all?” - -“Something like that. And we can only give a few drops—just what we’ve -got the measure to take up—some a little more, some a little less—but no -one more than a little as compared to the whole. That’s why I’m not going -to try to explain.” - -“Then how are you going to make them understand?” - -“I’ll tell them—I’ll do what I can to show them—that the greatest -movement of all time is going on—and America is taking no national part -in it. I’ll try to make them see that it isn’t just to avenge the few -American lives lost through the U-boats, or to free Belgium, or to put -down autocracy, or to do any one or two or three of the things that have -been set before us. It isn’t even the whole of them, just taken as so -many human motives.” - -“But you’ll have to tell them what it is, won’t you? It won’t do just to -put before them what it isn’t.” - -“But how can I? How can any one? It would be like trying to tell them -what nature is. It’s a universal composite, made up of everything; but -you couldn’t go about the country explaining it in lectures. The nearest -I could come to it would be in saying that it’s the great dramatic -conflict between good and evil to which human nature has been working up -ever since it committed its first sin; but the words in which to do that -have been so hard worked and are so terribly worn that they’ve become a -kind of ditty. It seems to me best just to talk to them simply—and let -them construct the monster out of the bones I lay before them. They’ll -do it. The public is not very quick, but when it gets going it’s pretty -instinctive.” - -“Oh, then you’re going to tackle the public?” - -“I’m going to tackle any one to whom I can get access.” - -“You spoke just now of lectures.” - -“I’ll speak of anything that will help me to get the message across. -That’s why I mention father and—” Again she hesitated at a name, going on -with an elision:—“first of all. They are simply the first I shall be able -to talk to. As a matter of fact, not many as yet have been over there -and come back to America—so that there’s a good deal of curiosity still -unsatisfied—and so one will get a chance. You must have noticed already -how dearly Americans, especially the women, like to be talked to. We’re -talked to so much by experts on all subjects that we should burst with -knowledge if our minds weren’t like those swimming-tanks with fresh water -running in and out of them all the time.” - -“So you’re really going to make it a kind of business?” - -She spread her hands apart, palms outward. - -“What else can I do? I assure you it isn’t any desire for publicity or -that sort of thing. I’m just—I’m just driven on. It’s like what some -one says in the Bible—I’ve taken to reading the Bible lately—it seems -the only thing big enough in spirit to go with the big times—but some -one says there: ‘Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel!’ Well, it’s -the same way with me. Woe unto me if I don’t do this thing! It’s taken -possession of me; I can’t do anything else; and so I’m going back—” - -I was expressing but one of the host of thoughts that crowded on me as I -said: “You’ve got the tremendous advantage of being an American. You can -say what you like. If I were—” - -She stood off and surveyed me. “You don’t need to say anything. You speak -for yourself. One has only to look at you.” - -I smiled ruefully. “I know I’m pretty well battered up.” - -“Oh, it isn’t that.” - -“What is it, then?” - -“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just—it’s just everything. You’re a type. I’m -not speaking of you personally, but of a lot—hundreds—thousands—I’ve -seen—young fellows who make me think of some other words in the Bible.” - -“What are they?” - -“They’re in Isaiah, I think. Everybody knows them.” She recited in a -smooth, rich voice that gave new beauty to the familiar passage: “‘Surely -he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: ... He was wounded for -our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement -of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we -like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and -the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.’” Her voice rose—and -fell again. “‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not -his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep -before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’” She resumed -in a colloquial tone: “I’ve seen so much of that, haven’t you? The lamb -led dumb to the slaughter, and the quiet, wounded man hardly opening his -mouth for a moan. It’s heartbreaking.” - -“And yet you’d bring your own people into it.” - -“Because it’s sublime. Because I’ve seen for myself that the people who -take part in it are raised to levels they never knew it was possible to -reach. Haven’t you found the same thing for yourself?” - -“Oh, I? I’m only—” - -“You’re a man—and a young man. You’re a young man who’s been—I can’t -express it. It’s all in that fact. The people at home will only have to -look at you to see what language could never put before them. Language -isn’t equal to it. Imagination isn’t equal to it when the thing is over. -Don’t you find that? Doesn’t it often seem to you, now that you’re out -of it, as if it was a dream that had half escaped you? You try to tell -it—and you can’t. That’s why the people who’ve been there and come back -so often have nothing to say. That’s why so many of the books—except -those that contain diaries jotted down on the minute—that are written -afterward are so often disappointing. It’s like a great secret in every -man’s soul that he knows and thinks about, and can never get out of him. -So I shall make no attempt to do more than to tell the little things, the -small human details—” - -You will see that I was following my own train of thought as I broke in, -“But New York life will get hold of you again.” - -“It can’t get hold of me again, because there will be nothing for it to -catch on by. That’s all over for me. It could no more seize anything I -am now than you or I”—she pointed to a flock of little birds riding up -and down on a long, smooth billow—“from the deck of this ship could catch -one of those Mother Carey’s chickens.” - -My sensations were those of a man who has received an extraordinary bit -of good news, like that of a great artistic triumph or the inheritance of -a fortune. It was something that went to the foundations of life, bathing -them in security and peace. As we continued to talk the swing of the boat -became the lulling of strong arms. - -The conflict of which for the past few days my mind had been the -battle-ground was suddenly appeased. Woman, love, marriage, the more -comforting elements in life—were no longer in opposition to what had -become a man’s pressing and sacred duties. There could be a love which -asked for no moratorium; or rather, there could be a woman with the -courage of a soldier. - -I began to see her as comparable to that crusader’s wife who, disguised -as a page, followed her lord on his journeys, to share his perils and -minister to his needs. In a modern girl it was not only romantic; it was -adorable. That it should have been done for me was beyond my power to -believe. None but the bravest and most daring spirit would have attempted -it—none but the heart capable of climbing higher and more adventurously -still. I had known her for a gallant soul from that midnight minute when -she pulled aside her hangings and found me lurking in her chamber; but I -had never made a forecast of the heroisms and fidelities expanding here -like the beauty from the heart of a rose. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXIII_ - - -So we came to that last evening on board, of which I must now tell you. -It had taken me the intervening time to get used to the new outlook. The -habit of seeing myself surrounded by a whole stockade of prohibitions -was too strong to overcome in a flash. I had to let my mind emerge into -freedom gently, telling myself each day that with a wife like this I -could serve the cause more devotedly than ever, since she would be -serving it too. - -Of that dedication to a cause I was possibly too much aware. My uniform -made me aware of it. My game leg and my sightless eye made me aware of -it. The need of whole peoples, like the French and British and Italian, -of every man who could fire a gun or ram home a bayonet or speak a -rousing word—that more than anything else seemed to put a consecration -upon me of which I was as foolishly and yet as loftily conscious as -a modern king, accustomed to a bowler hat, when he rides through the -streets with his crown on. - -And on the last evening there was enough of the ecstatic in the air to -justify this sense of a mission. - -The voyage, which had not been without the exciting stimulus of danger, -was successfully over. The west was actually reached, and the things -done left behind us. The things to be done were making our pulses beat -faster and our energies yearn forward. To-morrow with its summons to -activity was more keenly in our consciousness than to-day. Doctors, -nurses, returning soldiers, the sparse handful of business men—we were -already in heart ashore, walking in streets, riding in tram-cars, eating -in dining-rooms, sleeping in beds, taking part in hard work, and deeming -these things a privilege. Voices and laughter in the clear, still night, -and the clicking of heels on the deck, were part of the relief and -joyousness. - -Late in the afternoon we had picked up the Nantucket light-ship, which -rested like a star on the water. Now the horizon was being strung with -beads of light, one, two, three, or little clusters at a time, behind -which we knew that advancing night was lighting myriads of lamps all -the way to the Pacific. On the Atlantic coast it was already dark, with -cities and towns ablaze, and villages and farm-houses lit by kindly, -shimmering windows. In the Middle West it was twilight, with electrics -spangling the office-buildings here and there, and pale-gold flowers -strewn over the prairie floors. Beyond the Mississippi it would still be -day, but day dissolving gorgeously, softly, into sunset and moonrise and -the everlasting magic of the stars. - -As she and I hung over the deck rail side by side we felt ourselves on -the edge of wonders. The Old World was in need of us, and we were in need -of the New. To us who were New World born, and who were coming back to -generous, easy-going welcome after the unspeakable things we had seen, -the craving for New World brotherhood and vigor was like that of hunger -or thirst. This much we admitted in so many words—even she. - -She was still elusive; she was still mysterious. Though during the past -few days she had not resisted a certain habit as to the place and hour -at which we should find ourselves together and had been willing to talk -freely on any theme connected with the cause, she took flight from a hint -of the personal, like a bird at an approaching footstep. - -Nevertheless, she was so far responsive as to say in answer to some -question of mine, “My immediate plans—” - -I broke in abruptly, “Let me tell you about your immediate plans.” - -As the deck was faintly illuminated, since we were again sailing with -lights, I saw that change in her eyes which comes when a fire on a hearth -bursts into a conflagration. - -Probably my tone and the change in my manner had startled her. - -“You? What?” she began, confusedly. - -“I’ll tell you what your plans are; but before that let me tell you -something else.” - -She put up her hand. “Wait! Don’t—” - -But it was too late to stop me. I couldn’t have stopped myself. I was -carried on by the impetus that came from my having been so many years -held back. I was no longer the consecrated servant of a cause. As for -having been a drunkard and a thief, no shadow of remembrance stayed with -me. I was simply a man head over heels in love with a woman, and in all -sorts of stupid, stumbling phrases saying so. - -She listened because she couldn’t do anything else without walking -away; but she listened with a kind of aloofness. With her clasped hands -resting on the rail and her little, black silhouette held quietly erect, -she gazed off toward a great white star, which I suppose must have been -Capella, and heard my tale because she couldn’t stop it. - -“Listen,” I went on, leaning on an arm extended along the rail. “I’ll -tell you your story. I’ve pieced it together and I know what it is. I -didn’t know it when I came on board. It puzzled me.” - -Her lips moved, but there was no turn of her head or stir of her person. - -“Please don’t. I’m—I’m not sure that I could bear it.” - -“Why shouldn’t I? You’ve done certain things. Let me give you their -interpretation.” - -“If I do—” she began, weakly. - -I couldn’t allow her to continue. - -“I see now the explanation of so many things that bewildered me at -first—that made me suffer. That day at Rosyth, for instance, when you -went in and left me, you didn’t despise or hate me. You may have been -disillusioned—” - -“It isn’t the word,” she murmured, still motionless, and looking off at -the big white star. “I’d been thinking of you as the kind of man I’d—I’d -been looking for so long.” - -“And you saw I was less so than any of the others.” - -“I’m not saying that. But if you think it was easy to tear up all one’s -conceptions by the roots and plant in new ones—however kindly—all at -once—” - -“Oh no, I don’t! not now. But at that time I didn’t know you. It’s only -been since coming on board and finding out what you’ve done—” - -Curiosity prompted her to glance round at me. - -“Then it was only since coming on board?” - -“Oh, it was simple enough. It’s silly to keep up the secret. I was -talking, while we were still in the dock at Liverpool, with that handsome -Canadian nurse.” - -“Miss Ogden. She was matron of the hospital at—” - -“She knew who you were. She couldn’t tell me your name, but she said—or -Miss Prynne said—that you’d come over with Evelyn—that you’d been at -Taplow with Mabel—” - -“I know; the sort of thing that goes round among nurses.” - -“And so I put two and two together and formed a theory.” - -“You needn’t tell me what it is. Please don’t.” - -“But I want to.” I hurried on before she could protest further. “When -you saw that you’d—you’d hurt me—that day at Rosyth—and that I had -disappeared—and gone into the army—and away to England—you got into touch -with Evelyn—” - -“I wanted to do something,” she declared, in a tone of self-defense. “I -couldn’t help it when I knew the need was going to be so great. We didn’t -see that all at once, because we thought the war was going to be over in -a very little while. But when we began to realize it wasn’t—” - -“Oh, I don’t say you did it all on my account.” - -Though this was meant to provoke either admission or denial, she glided -over it. - -“It wasn’t easy to do anything in New York, because we hadn’t got that -far as yet; and so I naturally went to Canada. When I did so Annette gave -me a line of introduction to Evelyn.” - -“And you told her about me.” - -She fell into my trap so far as to say: “I didn’t tell her. I simply let -her guess.” - -“Guess what?” - -“All I ever said to her in words was to ask her never to mention my name -to you.” - -“But why?” - -“I did the same with Lady Rideover when she took me on at Taplow.” - -“Why—again?” - -“For the reason that—that if you ever came to find out what I was doing -you’d misunderstand it; just as I see you—you do.” - -“But I don’t. I don’t misunderstand it when I say that in going to my -sisters you wanted to be—you mustn’t be offended!—you wanted to be near -me—to watch over me as much as possible.” - -“You were the only man I knew at that time who’d taken the actual step of -going to the war. If there’d been any others—” - -“It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a hundred. I don’t -misunderstand it when I say that as soon as you knew I was going home by -this boat you arranged—” - -“To go home by it too,” she forestalled, quickly, “so that you should -have somebody near you who could get about in the normal way in case -there was danger. I admit that. It’s perfectly true.” She turned round on -me with fire in her manner as well as in her eyes. “But what do you think -I’m going home for?” - -I repeated what she had said a few days before: - -“You’re going home on account of your father—and to interest him and -other Americans in American duty as to the war.” - -“That’s a reason; it’s the reason I find it easiest to give. But I -mustn’t hide it from you now that—that I’ve—I’ve another.” - -[Illustration: “You’re going home to marry me.” “How can I be going -home to marry you, when—when I never knew till within half an hour that -you—that you cared anything about me?”] - -I made one of my long mental leaps. I made it as a man might take the one -chance of life in leaping a crevasse, knowing that there are more chances -that he will be dashed to pieces in the chasm. - -“You’re going home to be married.” - -There was a kind of awe in the way she drew off from me. - -“You’re extraordinary,” she breathed, faintly. “Miss Ogden didn’t tell -you that.” - -I had not cleared the crevasse. I was struggling desperately on the edge -of it, while beneath me was the abyss. - -“You’re going home to marry me.” - -I think she gave a little bitter laugh. At any rate, there was the echo -of it in her tone, as she said, with sardonic promptness: “How can I be -going home to marry you, when—when I never knew till within half an hour -that you—that you cared anything about me?” - -I, too, must have laughed, the statement struck me as so absurd. - -“What? You never knew—?” - -She shook her head with an emphasis almost violent. - -“You may have known,” she said, in that voice which, after all, could -not be called bitter, for the reason that it was reproachful, “but I’d -come to the conclusion that”—she tried to carry the situation off with -a second laugh, a laugh that ended as something like a sob—“that you -didn’t.” - -I leaned down toward her, speaking the words right into her face. - -“Didn’t care?” - -She nodded silently. - -“For God’s sake, what made you think that?” - -“Oh—everything!” - -“Everything? When? How?” - -She was doing her best to convey the impression that it didn’t matter. - -“Everything—always—in New York—at Atlantic City—there especially! And -lately—” - -“Yes? Lately?” - -“Lately—at Taplow.” - -“But at Taplow—how? In Heaven’s name—how?” - -“Oh, I was in and out of your room.” - -“So I understand; but what of that?” - -“Nothing; nothing; only—only what I saw.” - -“Well, what did you see?” - -Instead of answering this question at once she shifted her ground. - -“If you cared—as you say—why didn’t you tell some one?” - -“Tell some one? Who could I tell?” - -“Oh, any one. Lady Rideover, for one. She’d made a promise not to mention -me; but you hadn’t.” - -“But why should I have mentioned you when I never supposed she had any -notion—” - -“But you see that’s it. If you’d cared—so much—you’d have done it—to one -of your sisters or the other. But you didn’t—not to either; and so they -got the idea—” - -“Yes? What idea did they get? Go on. Tell me.” - -I noticed that she was twisting and untwisting her fingers, and that she -had begun throwing me quick, nervous glances through the half-light. - -“It’s no use telling you, because it doesn’t matter. That is, it doesn’t -matter now. Everything’s—arranged.” - -“We’ll talk about that later. I want to know what idea Mabel and Evelyn -got.” - -“They didn’t get it exactly. They were only beginning to get it when I -made them understand that I was going back to be—Oh, why do you make me -talk about it? Why do you bring it all up now, when it can’t do any good?” - -To get at the facts I was obliged to speak with the severity one uses -toward a difficult child. - -“I want you to tell me what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.” - -“Isn’t it perfectly evident what idea they’d get? Any one would get it -when you—when you never said a word—not the least, little, confidential -word—and you so ill!—and blind!—and to your own sisters!—and that Miss -Farley there!” - -I passed over the reference to Miss Farley because I couldn’t see what it -meant. I had enough to do in seizing the new suggestion that had come to -me. - -“They didn’t think—they couldn’t have thought—that there was nothing on -my side.” - -“And everything on mine. That’s precisely the inference they drew. Girls -do go about, you know, giving people to understand that men—” - -“But not girls like you.” - -“Yes, girls like me; or sufficiently like me. And so I had—in sheer -self-respect—to let Lady Rideover see that there was nothing in it of the -kind of thing she thought, and that I was actually going home to be—” - -“But didn’t she see? Didn’t she know? Didn’t everybody see? Didn’t -everybody know?” - -In the two brief sentences that came out with something like a groan she -threw tremendous emphasis on the first word. - -“Nobody knew! Nobody saw!” - -There was a similar emphasis on the penultimate word in my response. - -“Did you ask them?” - -She flashed back at me: “I did—almost. At times like that—if it’s so—some -one generally knows it from—from the person who’s expecting to be -brimming over with his secret.” She laughed again, lightly, nervously. -“But in this instance nobody did.” - -“You asked them?” - -“Practically. I forgot everything I used to consider pride and—and I -sounded them.” - -“You sounded whom?” - -“Oh, the people who knew you best—and who knew me—Annette, Esther -Coningsby, Ralph—any one to whom I thought you might have betrayed -yourself by a word. But it was just as with Evelyn and Lady Rideover. You -had practically not mentioned my name. Hilda Grace told me she tried to -sound you—that Sunday at Rosyth.” - -“Well?” - -“I’m only quoting her, mind you. She said she didn’t get”—there was -a repetition of that nervous laugh—“she said she didn’t get—any -satisfaction. And so—” - -I tried to take a reasonable tone. “But how could I tell you or anybody -else before I’d confessed to you who I was and where you’d first seen me?” - -“Exactly. I quite understand that—now that you’ve said what you’ve said -to-night. It’s where the past makes us pay—” - -“For what I used to be.” - -“Oh, you’re not the only one,” she declared, in a curious, offhand tone. -“It’s for what I used to be, too.” - -I found it difficult to follow her. “What you used to be? I don’t -understand you.” - -“You know about me—how I’ve been engaged to one man after another—and -broken the engagements.” - -“Because you were trying to find the right one.” - -“It wasn’t only that. I thought of myself; I didn’t think of them. I let -them offer me everything they had to give—and pretended to accept it—just -to experiment—to play with—and now—now I’m—I’m caught!” - -“Caught—in what way?” - -She tossed her hands outward in a little, exasperated gesture. - -“I can’t do the same thing again. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be -sane.” - -“The same thing? Do tell me what you mean.” - -“It’s—it’s one of the same men. I’m—I’m caught. It’s what mother—and -Elsie Coningsby—and other people who could talk to me plainly—told me -would happen some day. I’m—I’m punished. And I can’t do the same thing -the second time.” - -It was still to escape from the yawning hell into which I felt myself -going down that I said, stupidly, “Why can’t you?” - -“Because I can’t. It’s what I said just now. It wouldn’t be sane. I’ve -made a kind of history for myself. If I were to do the same thing again -it wouldn’t merely seem cruel, it would seem crazy.” - -“But if you don’t care for him?” - -“I do—in a way. He’s been so good and kind and patient and everything! -And even if I didn’t care for him at all it would be just the same—after -what I’ve let him think—the second time.” - -I could see her reasoning, if reasoning it was, though it was not the -uppermost thought in my mind. As a matter of fact, I was repeating her -statement as to “one of the same men.” Which one of them was it? There -had been three—the one she didn’t trust—the one she couldn’t have lived -with—and the one who was only very nice. It would make such a difference -which one it proved to be that I was afraid to ask her. - -I burst out, desperately: “Oh, but why did you—let him think it—the -second time?” - -“I don’t know. It happened by degrees—by writing—in letters—and I didn’t -see how far I was going. It was a kind of reaction.” - -“Reaction from what?” - -She looked at me wildly. “From you, I think. As far as I remember it -became definite at Taplow.” - -“When you were actually seeing me every day?” - -“That was the reason. It was seeing you so cheerful and full of jokes—and -not missing—not missing any one—nor ever mentioning them—not to a soul. -It just convinced me of what I’d been sure of before—ever since the time -at Atlantic City—that you didn’t—that you never had.... And so when he -suggested it in one of his letters—I don’t know what made me!—but I -didn’t say it was impossible.” - -“What did you say?” - -“I said, who knows?—or something like that. And then he cabled—but -I didn’t cable back—I only wrote—trying to say no—but not saying it -decidedly enough.... And so it’s gone on—he writing and cabling both—and -I only writing, but letting him think—just little by little—and not -seeing how far I was being swept along.” - -I wanted to be clear as to the facts. - -“Then do I understand that you’re engaged to him?” - -“I told him I wouldn’t be engaged again—that engagements for me had come -to be grotesque. I said that if we did it we’d—we’d just go somewhere -and be married.” - -“If you did it? Then it’s possible—” - -“No; because he’s expecting it. I’ve allowed him to expect it—just little -by little, you understand—and not seeing how far I was letting myself -in.... And now he’s told some people who used to know about it when I -was engaged to him before—and that binds me because it will get about—so -that if I were to break it off with him the second time I should be a -laughing-stock—and quite rightly.” - -“Oh, Regina, how could you?” - -Taking no note of the fact that for the first time in my life I had -called her Regina, she answered, simply: “I tell you I don’t know. If I -do know it was because I was so lonely—and I’m over twenty-six—and feel -older still—and nobody seemed to care about me but him—and I couldn’t -bear the idea of going on and never marrying any one at all—which is what -Elsie Coningsby said would happen to me—and what I’d been half wishing -for myself—and yet half afraid of.... And you—” - -“Yes? What about me?” - -“There was a nurse at Taplow, that Miss Farley—” - -“Miss Farley! Oh, good God!” - -“Well, how did I know? She was very pretty.” - -“Could I see whether she was pretty or not?” - -“And you were always joking with her and thanking her.” - -“Of course I thanked her. What else could I do?” - -“You needn’t have kissed her hand. I caught you doing that one day when I -was tidying up in your room.” - -“Did you? Very likely. When a man is as helpless as I was his gratitude -often becomes maudlin.” - -“I don’t know that you need call it that. He simply falls in love with -the pretty nurse who takes care of him. It was happening all the time -in the hospitals. But for me—right there in your room—and shut out from -everything—” - -“But that wasn’t my fault. If I’d known you were there—” - -“It was your fault at Atlantic City—and afterward—when I’d let you -see—far more than a girl should ever let any man see.” - -“But you know how impossible it was for me then—till I’d told you who I -was.” - -“I know it now. I didn’t know it before half an hour ago. And the time -when you told me that—that thing—at Rosyth—I had no idea whether or not -you meant.... And when you blame me for not coming down-stairs quicker -than I did—” - -“I haven’t blamed you, Regina.” - -“You can’t imagine what it was to be all at sea not merely as to what you -felt, but actually as to what you were—and had been. When you pulled the -pearls out of your pocket—and said you were that man—” - -There were two or three minutes during which she stood with face averted, -and I had to give her time to regain her self-control. - -“You see,” she went on, her rich mezzo just noticeably tremulous—“you -see, I’d always thought about him—a girl naturally would, finding him in -her room like that—but I’d thought of him as.... And I’d been thinking -of you, too. I’d been thinking of you as the very opposite of him. He -was so terrible—so gaunt—so stricken—I see just a little of him in you -now, after all you’ve suffered.... But you—I don’t know what it was you -had about you—your brother had it, too—I saw it again when I met him -at Evelyn’s in Montreal, something a little more than distinguished, -something faithful and good.” - -“Those things are often hang-overs of inheritance that have no -counterpart in the nature.” - -“Well, whatever it was I saw it—and all that year those two types had -been before my mind. Then when I was told that there were not two—that -there was only one—it was like asking me to understand that the earth had -only one pole, and that the North and the South Poles were identical.” -She surprised me with the question, “Did you ever read _La Dame aux -Camélias_?” - -I said I had, wondering at the connection. - -“Don’t you remember how it begins with the exhumation of the body of that -poor woman six months after she was buried?” - -I recalled the fact. - -“So that all through the rest of the book, when Marguerite Gautier is at -the height of her triumphs, if you call them triumphs, you see her as she -was first shown to you. Well— Oh, don’t you understand? That’s the way I -had to see—I had to see you!” - -I hung my head. “I understand perfectly, Regina—now.” - -“There’s so much we’re only beginning to understand now, both on your -side and on mine.” - -“When it’s almost too late—if it isn’t quite.” - -Her manner, her voice, both of which had been a little piteous, took on a -sudden energy. - -“Oh, as to that, I’ve been thinking it over—I’ve had to think over so -much—and I don’t believe the word applies.” - -“Doesn’t apply?” I asked, in astonishment. “Why not—when it’s as late as -it is? It’s just as if Fate had been making us a plaything.” - -“I don’t believe that. Life can’t be the sport of disorganized chance. If -Romeo takes poison ten minutes before Juliet wakes it’s because the years -behind them led up to the mistake.” - -“You mean that we reap only what we sow?” - -“And that life is as much a matter of development in a logical sequence -as the growth of certain plants from certain seeds. It isn’t—it can’t -be—a mere frenzy of haphazards. Things happen to us in a certain way -because what we’ve done leaves them no other way.” - -“And was there no other way in which this could happen to you and me?” - -“Think! Isn’t it the very outcome that might have been expected from what -we’ve been in the past?” - -I stared at her without comprehension. - -“Because of your past life,” she went on, “there was something you -couldn’t tell me; and because I didn’t know it I’ve taken a step which my -past life doesn’t allow me to retrace. Could anything be neater?” - -“And yet you’re fond of saying that the way things happen is the best -way.” - -“It’s the best way if it’s the only way, isn’t it? I should go mad if I -thought that my life hung on nothing but caprice—whether of luck or fate -or anything you call God. I can stand my deserts, however hard, if I know -they’re my deserts.” - -“You can stand this?” - -“This is not a question of standing; it’s one of working out. Life isn’t -static; it’s dynamic—those are the right words, aren’t they? It’s always -unfolding. One thing leads to the next thing; and then there must be -times when a lot of things that seemed separate are gathered up in one -immense result. Don’t you think it must be that way?” - -I said, stupidly, that I didn’t know. - -“Of course you don’t know if you don’t think; but try to think!” - -“What good will thinking do when we see how things are?” - -“It’ll show us how to make the best of them, won’t it?” - -“Is there any best to be made of your marrying anybody else than me? The -way things happen isn’t necessarily the best way.” - -After her hesitating syncopated sentences in dealing with what was more -directly personal to her life and mine she talked now not so much calmly -as surely, as of subjects she had long thought out. - -“I don’t say the best way absolutely; but the best in view of what we’ve -made for ourselves. For ourselves you and I have made things hard. -There’s no question about that. But isn’t it for both of us now to live -this minute so that the next won’t be any harder?” - -There was no argument in this; there was only appeal. - -“What,” I asked, “do you mean by that?” - -“I suppose I mean that the best way to live this minute is to accept what -it contains—till it develops into something else—as it will. This isn’t -final. It’s only a step on the way to—” - -“It’s a step on the way to your marrying a man you’re not in love with, -and my not marrying at all.” - -“And as the world is at present, aren’t there worse tragedies than that?” - -Irony of which she must have been unaware pricked my dreams of celibate -consecration to a cause as a pin pricks a bubble. - -“So that if I stand still and let you go on—” - -She threw me a quick glance. “And aren’t you going to?” - -The answer to that question was what in the back of my mind I had been -trying to work out. - -“Wouldn’t it depend,” I said, picking the right words, “on which of -the three it is? There’s one I couldn’t interfere with—not without -disregarding gratitude and honor.” - -“Do you want me to tell you which?” - -But I didn’t—not then. Too much hung on what the knowledge would bring -me. There were decisions to which I couldn’t force myself at once. In -saying this I added, “But though I can’t interfere with him without -disregarding gratitude and honor, I don’t say that I sha’n’t disregard -them.” - -In the clear starlight her eyes had a veiled metallic brightness. - -“No?” - -“And if I don’t,” I persisted, “what shall you do?” - -“What would you expect me to do?” - -“I should expect you to back me up.” - -“So that we should both be disregarding gratitude and honor?” - -“We’ve a right to our happiness.” - -“That’s a very old argument, isn’t it?” - -“It’s not the less true for being old.” - -“Oh no; if it’s true it’s true—anyhow.” - -“And it is true. Don’t you know it is?” - -She surprised me by saying, as if quite casually, “I don’t suppose that -in the end it’s the truth or the untruth of the argument that would weigh -with me.” - -My heart gave a thump. - -“Then what would weigh with you?” - -She was standing with her back to the rail, the great white star behind -her. As if to emphasize the minute of suspense the engines gradually -stopped, while the ship rocked gently on the tide. The lights on shore -were more complex now, lights above lights, lights back of lights, with -the profusion of seaboard towns even in November. The murmur of voices -and the click of heels grew expectant as well as joyous. - -When she spoke at last it was with breast heaving and eyes downcast. Her -words came out staccatowise, as if each made its separate effort to keep -itself back. - -“What would weigh with me? I—I don’t know.” - -“Does that mean,” I demanded, sharply, “that you might back me up?” - -I could barely catch her words. - -“It means first of all that—that I’m awfully weak.” - -“It isn’t weak, Regina, to—to love.” - -“It’s weak for a soldier to make love an excuse for not fighting.” - -“But you’re not a soldier.” - -“Oh yes, I am; and so are you. We’re all soldiers now—every one in the -world. We keep telling ourselves—we keep telling one another—that we’re -fighting for right. It’s our great justification. But what’s the use of -fighting for public right if we go and do wrong privately?” - -“But it isn’t right for you to throw yourself away on a man you don’t -care for.” - -“It’s right for me to stand by my word—what is practically my word—till -something relieves me from the necessity.” - -“And do you think anything ever will?” - -“That’s not what I have to consider. If I do what I know I ought to do -I’ve only to wait—and let the next thing come.” - -“And what you know you ought to do—are you going to do it?” - -She looked up at me pleadingly, quiveringly, with clasped hands. - -“I don’t want to do—to do anything else. Oh, Frank, I hope you won’t make -me!” - -It was not this unexpected collapse that made me tremble; it was not -this confession; it was the knowledge that I had her in my power. She -had seemed so far above me—ever since I knew her; she had seemed so -far beyond me, so strong, so aloof, so ice pure, so inflexibly and -inaccessibly right! And now she was ready to come to me if I insisted on -taking her. - -But the hungry beast in me was not yet satisfied with her avowals. - -“Could I, Regina—could I—make you?” - -I once saw in the eyes of a spaniel that knew it was going to be shot the -beseeching, submissive, helpless look I saw here. - -“You know what I’ve been doing, Frank—the last two years—just to be where -I—where I could—hear about you—occasionally—and see you perhaps—when you -couldn’t see me.” - -I bent down toward her, close, closer, till I almost enveloped her. - -“Yes, I know that—now—and—and I’m—I’m going to make you.” - -She didn’t answer, but she didn’t withdraw. Perhaps she crept nearer me. -Certainly she shivered. - -The look in her eyes was still helpless, submissive, beseeching; but -because it grew mortally frightened as well I repeated what I had said as -softly but as firmly as I could make the words: - -“I’m—I’m going to make you.” - -There was nothing but the strip of black veiling between her lips and -mine when a sudden flash that might have come out of heaven threw me back -with a start. - -It was there above us—the great beacon—landlike—homelike—the New -World—the new work—the new problems to be solved—the new duties toward -mankind to be hammered home—while thankful voices were murmuring round us: - -“Sandy Hook!” - - - - -_CHAPTER XXIV_ - - -I never knew the compulsion exercised by organized life till I found it -settling round me, with an even distribution like that of the weight of -the atmosphere on the body, paralyzing my will and making it impotent. -No more than I could throw off the atmosphere could I be free from this -force for a second. - -It began with my arrival on the dock, where Sterling Barry had come to -meet his daughter. I had seen him often enough before, though I had never -known him otherwise than in the way called touch-and-go. A ruddy, portly, -handsome fellow of sixty-odd, with eyes that had passed on their torch to -his daughter’s, he must in early life have been retiring and diffident, -for his general approach now had that forced jovial note that verges on -the boisterous. - -“Hello! Hello!” he cried, as he lilted up to where I stood with Lovey -in the Custom House Section M. “Alive and kicking, what? Couldn’t kill -you. Tried, didn’t they?” he went on, looking me over. “Not but what it -might have been worse, of course. Billy Townsend’s son’ll never come back -at all, poor chap. Fine young fellow, with a bee in his bonnet about -aviation. Would go—and now you see! Well, we’ve got you back and we’re -going to keep you. What do you know about that?” - -I replied that as things were I was afraid I had no choice but to stay. - -“And if you want a job come to me. Some big things doing. Country never -so prosperous. Lots of business for every one—even for poor old nuts like -us. Well, so long! Come and see us. Mrs. Barry will want to hear you -talk. Awfully keen on the war, she is, and that sort of thing. Bit down -in the mouth now over this Rumania business. Sad slump that, very.” - -I said that it only left the more for us to do. - -“Got your hands full, what? They do seem to put it over on you, don’t -they? Ah, well, we won’t see you licked. We’ll keep out of the war as -war; but you’ve got our sympathy. Watchful waiting—that’s the new ticket, -you know. Can do a lot with that.” - -With his light, dancing step he was waltzing away again when he suddenly -returned. - -“Mrs. Barry’ll have something to tell you,” he said, with a gleam in his -eye curiously like that in Regina’s. “Perhaps you know it already. Regina -may have given you the tip, what? People get confidential on board ship. -Nothing else to do. No fuss and feathers about it. They don’t want that. -War-time spirit, you know. Just telling a few of our friends. Don’t mind -saying that Mrs. Barry and I are mighty delighted. Been like our own son -for years. Sorry when it came to nothing last time; but look at ’em now!” -He pointed to Section B, where Cantyre was bending over Regina as I had -bent over her last night. “Can see from here what it means. Get your -congratulations by and by.” - -Of all this the point is that I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t tell him -there on the dock that I didn’t mean to let it go any farther, nor did he -suspect for a second that I had more than an outsider’s interest in the -romance. I felt awkward and cowardly at remaining dumb, but neither time -nor place admitted of a protest. - -So, too, when a few minutes later Cantyre came over to give me his -welcome. It was the welcome of old, with a shocked pity in it. - -“Didn’t expect to see you so badly mauled,” was his sorrowful comment -after the first demonstrations. “I knew you were wounded, of course, and -that you had been blind. Regina wrote me that from Taplow. But I didn’t -look for your being so—” - -“Oh, it’s nothing,” I interposed, in the effort to shut off his sympathy. - -Having asked me a few professional questions in reference to the ways in -which I had been wounded, he said: “Well, now that we’ve got hold of you -again we mean to feed you up and take care of you. You’re going to be my -patient, Frank. For the present, at any rate, we’ll be living in the same -old house, and I shall be able to keep a daily eye on you. Lovey here -has your apartment as clean as an operating-room. See you there later. -Just now I’ve got to go back to—to Regina. And by the way”—his habitually -mournful expression brightened as a lowering day lights up when the sun -bursts through the masses of drifting cloud—“by the way, I shall have -something to tell you by and by. The most wonderful thing has happened, -Frank—something you and I used to talk about before you went abroad.” - -He wrung my hand with that way he had of pulling it downward and pulling -it hard, which betrayed all sorts of raptures breaking in on a spirit -that had never known common, every-day happiness. His whole face asked -me to rejoice with him, and, though I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t do -the other thing. - -It was on my lips to say, “You can’t have her because I’m going to take -her away from you.” But the words died before they were formed. The very -thought died in my mind. Whatever I did, I shouldn’t be able to do it -that way; and so I let him go. - -“Do you know what he meant, Slim—when he said them things—the doctor?” - -This was Lovey’s question as he sat beside me in the taxicab and we drove -up-town. - -As I made no answer, he mumbled, mysteriously: “I do. I ’aven’t valeted -’im for nothink.” - -I still made no answer, and the mumble ceased. - -As yet I had noticed him only as the returned traveler notices the -faithful old dog that greets him by lifting his eyes adoringly and -wagging his tail. I saw now that the intervening two and a half years had -aged him. He had grown white and waxy; his thin gray hair was thinner. -A trembling, like that of a delicately poised leaf on a day when there -is little wind, shook his hands, and the left corner of his lower lip -had the pathetic quiver of a child’s when it is about to sag in a great -weeping. - -As I had paid him so little attention on the dock, I picked up the hand -resting on his knee and pressed it. - -He responded with a long, harsh breath which, starting as a sigh of -comfort, became something inarticulately emotional. - -“Oh, Slim! I’ve got ye back, ’aven’t I?” - -“Seems like it, Lovey.” I laughed without feeling mirthful. - -“Ye look awful, don’t ye?” - -“I suppose I do.” - -“But it don’t make no difference to me, it don’t. I’d rather ’ave ye all -chawed up like this than not ’ave ye at all.” - -“Thank you, Lovey.” - -“Them wars is awful things. Why don’t they stop ’em?” He continued, -without waiting for an explanation: “It’s all along o’ them blamed -Germans. The cheek o’ them—to go and fight Englishmen! There was a German -in the ’at-shop in the Edgware Road used to ’ang round me somethin’ -fierce; and now I believe he wasn’t nothink but a-spyin’ on me. Don’t you -think he was, Slim?” - -“I think very likely.” - -“Makes my blood run cold, it does, the times I’ve took ’im into a little -tea-shop in Great Hatfield Street—and me a-treatin’ on ’im, like. If I -’adn’t ’ad luck I might be lookin’ like you by this time. Ain’t it awful -to be one-eyed, sonny?” - -“Oh, I’m getting used to it.” - -“Used to it till you looks in the glass, I expect. Get a fright when ye -do that, don’t you? But it’s all right, Slim. It wouldn’t matter to me -if you was a worse looker than y’are. I wouldn’t turn ye down, neither, -not if it was for all the doctors in the world. Not but what he’s been -very attentive to me while you was away. I don’t make no complaint about -that. Bit finicky about socks and ’andkerchiefs always the same color—and -ye couldn’t see ’is socks most o’ the time—only when he pulled up his -trouser leg a-purpose—but a good spender and not pokin’ ’is nose into -my affairs. I’ll say all that for ’im; but if he was to ask my ’and in -marriage, like, and I could get you, Slim—all bunged up as y’are now and -everything!—well, I know what I’d say.” - -Too miserable to reject this bit of sympathy, I said, merely, -“Unfortunately, Lovey, every one may not be of your opinion.” - -“I d’n’ know about that,” he protested. “Seems to me everybody would be -if you could make ’em understand, like.” - -There was nothing offensive in this, coming as it did from a deep -affection, but, as it had gone far enough, I turned my attention to the -streets. - -There was a quality in them not to be apprehended by the sense of sight. -It defied at first my limited powers of analysis. Something to which I -was accustomed was not there; and something was there to which I was not -accustomed. - -That to which I was not accustomed struck me soon as shimmering, shining, -radiant. That it was not an outward radiance goes without saying. New -York on that November day was as dreary and bleak a port as one could -easily land at. A leaden sky cloaked the streets in a leaden, lifeless -atmosphere. The tops of steeples and the roofs of the tall buildings -were wreathed in a leaden mist. Patches of befouled snow on the ground, -with the drifts of paper, rags, and refuse to which the New York eye is -so inured that it doesn’t see them, lent to the side-streets through -which we clattered an air of being so hopelessly sunk in dirt that it is -no use trying to be any other way. Drays rumbled, motor-trucks honked, -ferry-boats shrieked, tram-cars clanked, trains overhead crashed with a -noise like that of the shell that had struck the _Assiniboia_, while our -taxicab creaked and squeaked and spluttered like an old man putting on a -speed he has long outlived. On the pavements a strange, strange motley -of men and women—Hebrew, Slavic, Mongolian, negro, negroid—carried -on trades as outlandish as themselves. Here and there an outlandish -child shivered its way to an outlandish school. Only now and then one -saw a Caucasian face, either clean, alert, superior, or brutalized and -repulsive beyond anything to be seen among the yearning, industrious -aliens. - -And yet to me all was lit by an inner light of which I couldn’t at -first see the lamp. I caught the rays without detecting the source that -emitted them. In and through and above this squalid New York, with its -tumult, its filth, its seeming indifference to the individual, there was -a celestial property born of the kingdom of heaven. It shone in the sky; -it quivered in the air; it lay restfully on the hoary graveyards nestling -at the feet of prodigious cubes, like eld at the base of Time. All faces -glowed with it; all tasks translated it; all the clamor of feet and -wheels and whistles sang it like a song. - -The name of it came to me with a cry of joy and a pang of grief -simultaneously. It was peace. I was in a country that was not at war. - -I had forgotten the experience. I had forgotten the sensation it -produces. I had forgotten that there was a world in which men and women -were free to go and come without let or hindrance. And here were people -doing it. The day’s work claimed them, and nothing beyond the day’s work. -To earn a living was an end in itself. The living earned, a man could -enjoy it. The money he made he could spend; the house he built he could -occupy; the motor he bought he could ride in; the wife he married he -could abide with; the children he begot he could bring up. He could go -on in this routine till he sickened and died and was buried in it. There -was no terrific overruling motive to which all other motives had become -subsidiary, and into which they merged. - -In the countries I had been living in war was the sky overhead and the -ground beneath the feet. One dreamed it at night, and one woke to it in -the morning. It made everything its adjunct, every one its slave. Duty, -wealth, love, devotion, had no other object on which to pour themselves -out. It commanded, absorbed, monopolized. There was no home it didn’t -visit, no pocket it didn’t rifle, no face it didn’t haunt, no heart it -didn’t search and sift and strengthen and wrench upward—the process was -always a hard, dragging, compulsive one—till the most wilful had become -submissive and the most selfish had given all. Prayer was war; worship -was war; art, science, philosophy, sport were war. Nothing else walked in -the streets or labored in the fields or bought and sold in the shops. It -was the next Universal after God. - -And here, after God, a man was his own Universal. With no standard to -which everything had to be referred he seemed unutterably care-free. -Care-free was not a term I should have used of New York, of America, in -the old days; but it was now the only one that applied. The people I saw -going by on the sidewalks had nothing but themselves and their families -to think of. Their only struggle was the struggle for food and shelter. -Safe people, happy people, dwelling in an Eden out of the reach of cannon -and gas and bomb! - -“I came not to bring peace, but a sword!” - -Sacrilegiously, perhaps, I was applying those words to myself as we -jolted homeward. But I was applying them with a query. I was asking if -it could possibly be worth while. All at once my mission became unreal, -fantastic. - -To begin with, it was beyond my powers. Among these hundreds of thousands -of strangers I knew but a handful. Even on that handful I should make no -impression. I could see at a glance, from the few words I had exchanged -with people on the dock, that each man’s cup was full. You couldn’t pour -another drop into it. I had subconsciously taken it for granted that my -friends would be, as it were, waiting for me; and already it was evident -that in their minds there would not be a vacant spot. I had not the -will-power to force myself in on so much hurry and preoccupation. - -Then I wasn’t interested in it any more. I had pretentiously thought of -myself as dedicated to a cause, and now the cause had dissolved into -nothing on this leaden, overcharged air. It would be ridiculous to wean -these people away from their work, even if I could play like the Pied -Piper and have them follow me. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to marry -the woman I loved, and settle down quietly, industriously, to spend -my days in an office and my nights at home, like the countless human -ants that were running to and fro. My celibacy of the will was gone. My -consecration was gone. Where these austerities had been there was now -only that yearning of whatever it is that draws a man toward a woman, and -I asked nothing but the freedom to enjoy. I was determined to enjoy. The -resolve came over me with this first glimpse of New York. It came over me -in a tide of desire which was all the fiercer for its long repression. It -may have been the demand of the flesh for compensation. That which had -not merely been denied, but brutalized and broken, rose with the appetite -of a starving beast. - -So, thirdly, I was not fit for any high undertaking. It was not my real -self that had made these vows; it was a phantasm self evoked by the vast -emotions of a strife in which the passions raged on a scale that lifted -the human temporarily out of itself. But now that the strife had been -left behind, the human fell back into the same old rut. - -In the same old rut I found myself. I had reverted to what I had been -before there was a war at all. My carnal instincts were as strong as -ever; as strong as ever was my longing for Regina Barry as my wife. It -was stronger than ever, since I meant to get her by hook or by crook, if -I couldn’t do it by the methods which colloquially we call straight. - -It was, however, the difficulties of hook and crook that oppressed me. -The straight line was in this case that of least resistance. I grew more -convinced of it as the day advanced. - -There was everything to make my return to the old quarters a moment of -depression. The quarters themselves, which had seemed palatial after the -Down and Out, were modest to the point of being squalid. As Cantyre had -said, Lovey had kept them as clean as an operating-room, but cleanliness -couldn’t relieve their dingy shabbiness or make up for the absence of -daylight. - -Moreover, Cantyre’s own proximity was trying to me. There was only the -elbow of a corridor between his rooms and mine. He would resume the old -chumming habits of running in and out, while I was sharpening a knife to -stab him in the back. - -And in the processes of unpacking Lovey got on my nerves. He got on my -nerves as a sweet, old, fussy mother gets on those of a wayward son -during the hours he is compelled to stay at home. Dogging me about from -one room to another, his affection was like a draught of milk held out -to a man whose lips are parched for brandy. - -It was a relief, therefore, when the telephone rang and Annette van -Elstine asked me to come and have tea with her. I knew that Annette was -not craving to see me merely as her cousin; and as my cousin I could have -waited patiently for the pleasure of seeing her; but with her scent for -drama and her insatiable curiosity she would raise the issues of which I -wanted to talk even if I got no good from it. - -I found her as little changed as if Time had not passed nor War dropped -his bomb on the world. - -Annette’s smartness, as I have already told you, was difficult to define. -It was not in looks or dress or manner of living or gifts of intellect. -If I could ascribe it to a cause I should put it down as authority of -position combined with the possession of a great many personal secrets. -She knew your intimate history for the reason that she asked you intimate -questions. Authority of position enabled her to do this—or at least she -acted as if it did—with the right of a cross-examiner to probe the truth -in court. She could convey the impression that her interest in your -affairs was an honor—as if a queen were to put her royal finger in your -family pie—so that quite artlessly you unlocked your heart to her. Other -people’s unlocked hearts were her kingdom, since, as far as I could see, -she had nothing in her own. - -Also, as far as I could see, she wore the same tea-gown I had always seen -her in; she sat in the same chair in front of the same fire; she had -before her the same tea equipage; she might have been pouring the same -tea. - -The transition from the necessary questions as to my personal experiences -and wounds to that of the exact relations between Mrs. Hartlepool and -Gen. Lord Birkenhead was an easy one. Disappointed that I had spent -two years at the front and had heard nothing of the delicate situation -between these distinguished persons, of which an amazing mass of -contradictory detail had reached certain circles in New York, she turned -the conversation on what was really the matter in hand. - -“So you came over on the same boat as Regina?” - -Unable to deny this statement, I admitted its truth. The dusky ripples -played over Annette’s round features, giving them a somber vivacity. - -“Did she tell you anything?” - -“Yes; a good many things.” - -“Anything special, I mean?” - -“Everything she said was special, as far as I can remember.” - -She tried another avenue. - -“You’ve gone back to your old quarters, haven’t you?” - -“Yes; I kept them all the time I was away. Stupid, I suppose; but when I -left New York I didn’t expect to be gone for more than a few weeks.” - -“Stephen Cantyre is in that house, isn’t he?” - -“On the same floor with me.” - -“You’ll see a great deal of him, won’t you?” - -“I did when I was there before.” - -“Was he on the dock to meet Regina?” - -“He was on the dock, either to meet her or to meet me. As a matter of -fact, he met us both.” - -“Did he say anything about her?” - -“Yes; he said he had to go and speak to her.” - -“Only to speak to her?” - -“What more could he do—right there on the dock?” - -“Oh, then you do know?” - -“Know what?” - -“What do you suppose? Can’t you guess?” - -“I didn’t know you wanted me to guess. I thought you meant to tell me.” - -“I can’t tell you what I don’t know myself—officially.” - -“Do you know it in any other way?” - -“I know it by signs and tokens.” - -“One can infer a lot from them.” - -“That’s just what I’ve done. It wasn’t till I heard that you’d come over -in the same boat with her—” - -The rest of the sentence was conveyed by a look which invited me to go on. - -“You thought I might be able to corroborate the signs and tokens?” - -“Or contradict them—if it’s not a rude thing to say.” - -I wriggled away from the frontal attack. “Why should it be rude?” - -“Oh, well, I’m the last person in the world to go poking into other -people’s business.” - -“Exactly.” - -“Only people do like to tell me things.” - -“I can quite understand that—when they’ve anything to tell.” - -“Which is what I thought you might have.” - -“How could I have anything to tell when I’ve just spent two years in -trenches and hospitals?” - -“You haven’t been in trenches and hospitals during the last ten days. Oh, -don’t say anything if you don’t want to. I’m not in the least curious.” - -“Of course you’re not. No one would ever think so.” - -“I’ve only been—well, just a little afraid.” - -“What were you afraid of?” - -“Of the situation. I suppose it wasn’t an accident that you took the boat -that she was on?” - -“No, it wasn’t an accident. But what has that to do with it?” - -“Just that much—that you did it on purpose.” - -“So that you were afraid on my account?” - -“No; on hers. You see, she’s been so terribly talked about that now that -it’s beginning again—” - -“Oh, it’s beginning again, is it?” - -She said, mysteriously, “Stephen Cantyre is rather a goose, you know.” - -“In what way?” - -“In the way of dropping hints when he’d much better keep still. He’s so -crazy about her—” - -“It’s a pity for him to be dropping hints if he isn’t sure.” - -“Oh, he must be sure enough! After the way she treated him before, he’d -never expose himself to the same thing the second time. It isn’t that -he’s not sure. It’s just the way he does it—confiding in every one, but -only saying that he hopes.” - -“If he only hopes, it doesn’t bind any one but himself.” - -“It isn’t a question of binding; it’s one of the situation. If she’s let -him hope—the second time—she’s bound. If it was only the first time—or if -she hadn’t made such an insane reputation for herself—don’t you see?—the -whole thing is in that.” - -“I should think the whole thing was in whether or not she was in love -with him.” - -“Well, it isn’t. If she was as much in love with somebody else as Juliet -she couldn’t throw over Stephen Cantyre now. She’d have to be put under -restraint if she did—shut up in some sort of ward. The community wouldn’t -stand for it.” - -“It might be a nine days’ wonder, of course.” - -“It would be one of those nine days’ wonders that last all your life. -She’d be done for.” She went on in another key. “But, of course, her -father and mother wouldn’t let her. They’re delighted. He’s very well -off—and a good fellow, who’ll give her everything she wants.” - -“But what good will that do if she doesn’t care for him?” - -Her animation went into the eclipse that always came over her when she -touched the heart of things. - -“What makes you think she doesn’t—if it’s not a rude question?” - -“The fact that she turned him down before.” - -She broke in with that directness which she never hesitated to make use -of when the time came. - -“You don’t think she cares anything about you?” - -I considered two or three ways of meeting this, the one I adopted being -to put on a rather inane smile. - -“What if she did?” - -“She’d just have to get over it, that’s all. You, too!” - -“Why?” - -“I needn’t tell you why. You must see for yourself. Or, rather, I’ve told -you already. There are ways in which an engagement is more important than -a marriage—any engagement; and when it’s a second engagement to the same -man—If she’d been married to him, and couldn’t get along, why, no one -would think the worse of her if she got a divorce and married some one -else. She would have given him a try; she would have done her best. But -just to take him up and put him down, and take him up and put him down -again, without trying him at all—my dear Frank, it isn’t done!” - -“But suppose we did it?” - -“In that case it might be the world well lost for love—but the world -would be lost; and you needn’t be under any misconception about it. -Personally I’d stand by any one through almost anything; I have stood -by Regina in the past when lots of other women have given her the cold -shoulder because of her—” - -“Call it anything you like. Most of us have other names for it. All I -want to say now is that I wouldn’t stand by her in this; nor by you, -either. If you had come to me when you were in your other troubles—three -or four years ago—you’d have found me just the same as if you’d been -keeping straight. Any one can go to the bad. There isn’t a family that -hasn’t some one who’s done it. But this would be the kind of thing— -Frank, old boy, I’m telling you right now, so that you’ll know where you -stand with me. I’d have to be the first to cut you both.” - -To this there were several retorts I could have made, any of them quite -crushing to Annette; but I was thinking of the practical difficulties -before us. The rôle of unscrupulous coquette was the last in which Regina -would care to appear; that of cad was equally distasteful to me. Had it -been possible to make one plunge and be over with it, it would have been -different; as it was, the preliminaries—the facing of all the people who -would have to be faced—the explaining all the things that would have to -be explained—couldn’t but be devilish. - -I was just beginning, “Why should you assume that we are thinking of any -such thing—?” - -But before I could finish the sentence the door opened gently and a -maid’s voice announced, “Mrs. Barry.” - -Of all the people in the world, this lady was the last I wanted to meet -at that moment. Knowing how I must have figured in her eyes in the past, -I was planning for the future to figure in a worse light still. I had -thrown her kindness back in her face and never given her an explanation. -She must have known that my seeming flight from Long Island after that -last Sunday in June, 1914, had left her daughter unhappy; and the reason -had remained a mystery. - -She gave me the first glance as she entered, and only the second to our -hostess. The awful severity of those who are temperamentally gentle and -unjudging was in the very coldness of her eye. - -She was a charming, delicate, semi-invalid woman who seemed to have been -spun, like the clothes she wore, out of the least durable materials in -life. Regina had the same traits, but harder, stronger, and more lasting. -It was difficult to think of the latter as an invalid; while you couldn’t -see the mother as anything else. - -Prettily old-fashioned, she seemed not to have changed her style of -dressing since the eighteen-seventies. The small bonnet might have dated -from the epoch of professional beauties when Mrs. Langtry was a girl. -The long fur pelisse with loose hanging sleeves was of no period at all. -I think she wore a train. In her own house she habitually did, and she -seemed to have just flung on the pelisse and driven down the Avenue in -her motor. - -She greeted me politely, without enthusiasm, but with due regard to -the fact that I was a wounded hero home from the wars. Talking of the -invasion of Rumania, she showed herself much more alive to America’s -international duty than any of the few men I had met since my landing. - -“I wish we could get my husband and Stephen to see things that way,” -she continued, sweetly, over her tea-cup. “They’re so pacifist, both -of them. My husband feels that we’ve nothing to do with it, and Stephen -is opposed to war on any ground. You must talk to him, Mr.—or captain, -isn’t it? Oh, major? You must talk to him, Major Melbury. He’ll listen to -you.” She turned to Annette. “You know, Annette, I just ran in to share -our good news with you. Regina and Stephen—they’ve made it up again—and -they’re so happy!” An oblique glance included me. She was getting the -satisfaction that women receive from a certain kind of revenge. “Poor -darling! You don’t know how hard she’s tried, Annette. People haven’t -understood her. All she’s wanted was to be sure of herself—and now she -is. She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she -didn’t know it. That is, she knew it; and yet—But I’m sure you see it. -You’re one of the few who’ve never been unkind to her. She wanted me to -tell you. She’ll be so glad to have you know it, too, Major Melbury. -Perhaps she told you on the boat. I think she said she did. I don’t quite -remember. There’s been so much to say in the last few hours. There always -is at such a time, don’t you think?... No; they’re not going to announce -an engagement. It would only make more talk, after all the talk there’s -been. One of these days they’ll be married—without saying anything about -it. And, oh!—I know you’ll be interested, Annette, though it may bore -Major Melbury—Stephen has bought that very nice house—the Endsleigh -Jarrotts lived in it for a little while—on Park Avenue near Sixty-sixth -Street. Ralph Coningsby is going to remodel it for them, and I’m sure it -will be awfully attractive. That’s where they’ll live.” - -It was my opportunity. I could have shouted out there and then and made a -scene. - -Do you think me a coward for not doing it? Do you think me a fool? - -All kinds of speeches were hot within me—and I kept them back. More -correctly, I didn’t keep them back; I simply couldn’t utter them. I -couldn’t give pain to this sweet lady sipping her tea so contentedly; -I couldn’t give pain to Annette. Annette was enjoying the situation in -which we found ourselves; the sweet lady had got compensation for months, -for years, of wondering and unhappiness in those seemingly artless -words, “She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she -didn’t know it.” I knew they were spoken for my benefit. Between the -lines, between the syllables, they said, “And if you think she was ever -in love with you you’re wrong.” Whether the sweet lady believed her own -statements or not made little difference. It would gratify her all her -life to remember that she had had the chance of making them. - -So I came away, following the line of least resistance, because I didn’t -see what else I could do. - -I didn’t see what else I could do when Cantyre came into my bedroom late -that night. - -I knew he would be dining at the Barrys’, and that he would come looking -me up after his return. To avoid him I had the choice between staying -out and going to bed. My physical condition kept me from staying out -very late, and so I took the other alternative. It made no difference, -however, since he waked Lovey by pounding on the door, and insisted on -coming in. - -Dropping into the arm-chair beside my bed, with no light but that which -streamed in behind him from the sitting-room, he took me on my weak side -by beginning to talk about the war. - -I have said that my mission had become unreal and fantastic, but that was -only in relation to my personal fitness for the task. That the war was -a holy war, to be fought to a holy end, remained the alpha and omega of -my convictions. And to Cantyre war of any kind was plainly unholy war, -productive of unholy reactions. What I felt as he talked may best be -expressed by Lovey’s words next morning when he betrayed the fact that he -had been listening. - -“Didn’t it get yer goat, Slim, the way the doctor went on last night?” - -It did get my goat, and I restrained myself only because I had been -warned in London to be patient with Americans. “You must treat them as -wise parents treat their sons,” I had been told. “Help them to see for -themselves—and when they do that you can trust them.” So the best I could -do was to help Cantyre to see for himself; and to make any headway in -that I had to pretend to be tolerant. - -“No one contends that war is the ideal method for settling human -difficulties,” I admitted; “but as long as human society stands on -certain planks in its platform there’ll be no other way.” - -“Then isn’t this the time to take another way?” - -“No; because you’ve got to change your bases of existence first. You -can’t change your effects without first changing your causes, any more -than you can graft an apple on an oak.” - -“But even without removing the cause you can still sometimes nip the -effect.” - -“Which is what in the present instance we tried to do, and didn’t succeed -in. All the trend of education during thirty years has been in the -direction of eliminating war, while still keeping the principle that -makes for war as part of the foundation of our life. We created a system -of international law; we set up a Hague Tribunal; many of us had come to -the conclusion that no great war could ever again take place; but the law -by which human beings prefer as yet to live outwitted us and brought war -upon us whether we would or not. So long as you keep the causes you must -have the effects.” - -“Then let us do away with the causes.” - -“Yes! Let us. Only, to do that in time for the present situation we -should have begun five hundred years ago. You can’t put out the fire the -ages have kindled as you’d blow out a candle. When you’ve spent centuries -in preparing your mine, and fixed a time fuse to make it explode, you’ve -nothing to do but to let it go off. This war wasn’t made overnight. The -world has been getting ready for it as long as there have been human -beings to look askance at one another. Now we’ve got it—with all its -horrors, but also with all its compensations.” - -“Compensations for the lives it has ruined?” - -“In the lives it has saved—yes. You’ll never get its meaning unless you -see it as a great regenerative process.” - -“Do you mean to tell me that we can only be regenerated by fire and sword -and rapine?” - -“Not at all! We’re regenerated by courage and honor and sacrifice and the -sense that every man gets—every Tommy, every poilu, every bluejacket—that -he personally is essential to man’s big fight in his struggle upward. -It’s one of the queer things of the whole business that out of the -greatest wrong human beings can inflict on one another—to go to war with -them—there can come the highest benefits to every individual who gets -himself ready to receive them. It makes one believe in an intelligence -compelling the race toward good, however much we may be determined to go -the other way.” - -He tuned his voice to a new key. - -“Oh, I’ve never doubted that; and now, old chap, now I—I see it.” - -I knew what was coming. It was the great subject that could eclipse even -that of the war. I had just force to pull the bedclothes up about my -mouth and mutter a suffocated, “How?” - -“What I hinted this morning. It’s all—it’s all come right. I used to -think it never would, sometimes. And then—don’t laugh, old boy!—but then -I’d say to myself that God would never have made me feel as I did unless -He meant something to come of it. Religion keeps telling you to trust; -and I did trust—on and off.” - -Again I had an opportunity; but again such words as rose in me choked -themselves back in my throat. I could have told him that she was ready -to come to me if I lifted a finger. I knew I should have to tell him -sometime, and it occurred to me that it might as well be now. It was the -words that failed me, not the intention; or if it was the intention, it -was the intention in any degree that made it compulsory. - -I don’t think he noticed that I said nothing, for he went falteringly on: - -“It’s a wonderful thing to be happy, Frank. I’ve never been happy before -in my life. I’m a pusillanimous sort of bloke, and there’s the truth. -I wasn’t happy at home, or at school, or at college, or in any of the -hospitals where I worked; and I never made any friends. You must know -I’ve been queer when I say that women have always looked at me as if I -was outside of their range. They’ve never made up to me in the way they -do to most fellows with a bit of money and not deformed. Regina—there! -I’ve said her name—she was the very first who ever took the trouble to be -more than just decently civil.” - -I managed to stammer the words, “What did she do?” - -“Oh, nothing very much—not at first. She seemed to think—she used to -say it—that I was different from most men. That’s what she appeared to -be on the lookout for. All the other chaps she knew were so much alike, -and I—Well, that’s how it began. She wanted the unusual—and I turned up. -After a while she thought I wasn’t unusual enough—said it in so many -words—But you know that story. I’ve told you too many times already.” - -“And now?” - -“She thinks she’ll marry me.” - -He brought out the statement in a voice all awe and amazement. - -“She only thinks?” - -“Oh, she will. She wouldn’t say anything about it if she didn’t mean—” - -“And—and you’re going to—to let her?” - -“Let her? Why, man, you might as well ask me if I’d let God forgive my -sins if He said He’d do it.” - -“God could forgive your sins and not be any the worse off Himself.” - -He sprang forward in his chair, grabbing at the bedclothes. - -“Frank, I swear to you it will be the same with her. She’ll never be -sorry. I’ll never let her. She’ll be like God to me. I’ll make my whole -life worship and service.” - -“If that’s what she wants.” - -“It’s what every woman wants, so they say. They just ask to be loved; -and when you love them enough—” He uttered a little shrill laugh, in -which there was a touch of the hysterical that was always somewhere about -him. “God! Frank, it’s wonderful! Even you who know her can’t imagine -what it means to a lonely bloke like me.” - -I pumped myself up to a great effort. - -“Suppose”—I had to moisten my lips before going on—“suppose she was to -play you the same trick she played you before?” - -“She wouldn’t.” - -In spite of his evident conviction, I pressed the question. - -“But if she did?” - -He threw off in a tone that seemed careless: “In that case there’d be -just one thing for me to do. I’d leave her everything I possess—I’m doing -that as it is—and, well, you can guess the rest. I—I couldn’t go through -all that again. The first time—well, I just pulled it off; but the -second—” - -It was the old story. They all seemed to have the second time on the -brain. I, too, was getting it on the brain. It was like a trip-hammer -pounding in my head. - -I forced myself, however, to make some foolish, semi-jovial speech in -which there was no congratulation, begging him, then, for the love of -Heaven, to clear out, as I wanted to go to sleep. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXV_ - - -No record of the next few weeks exists for me. I suppose I must have -done things—little things. I must have gone in and out, and eaten my -meals, and fulfilled Lovey’s orders—for, lacking volition of my own, I -was entirely at his command. But the recollection of it all has passed -from me. I remember reading in some one’s reminiscences of prison life -that the weeks of solitary confinement went by; but the released prisoner -could not say how. Nothing remained with him, apparently, but a big, -black blur; and of these first weeks in New York it was all that stayed -with me. - -I know that Christmas came and went, and that I spent the festival at -Atlantic City. I did this in a wild hope, which I knew was idiotic when I -formed it. I told Lovey what I was about to do; I knew he, in the course -of his valeting, which he still kept up, would tell Cantyre; I guessed -that Cantyre would tell Regina; and I hoped—it never really amounted to -hoping, I only dreamed—that Regina might find the moment a favorable one -for slipping away and joining me. Then we should actually do the thing so -impossible to plan. - -But, of course, nothing came of it; and I returned to New York more -unsatisfied than I had gone away. The sense of being unsatisfied sent me -at last to Sterling Barry’s door. - -You will observe that I had not talked with Regina since our last night -on board ship. On the morning of landing her quick movements, as -compared with my slow, lumbering ones, enabled her to elude me. Since -our landing my will had been positively paralyzed. Those words of hers, -“Oh, Frank, I hope you won’t make me!” were always in my memory; but the -very sense that I could use the power held me back from doing it. I meant -to use it; but as each minute came round when I might have taken a step -toward that end I seemed to fall backward, like the men who went out with -swords and staves to take the Christ. - -But two days after my return from Atlantic City I came to the conclusion -that I could wait no longer. I could go and call on her at least. For -the family it would mean no more than that I had come to offer my -congratulations. For her—but I could tell that only by being face to face -with her. - -The old manservant recognized me on coming to the door. He was sorry -that Miss Barry had gone to tea with Miss van Elstine, and was sure his -mistress would be sorry, too. Moreover, they had all heard of my prowess -in battle, and were proud of me. - -So I drove round in my taxi to Annette’s. - -The maid would have ushered me straight up to the library, but I -preferred to send in my card. As I was being conducted up-stairs a minute -later I had the privilege of hearing a few words which I am sure Annette -intended for my ear. - -“Well, I don’t mind this once, Regina; but I can’t have it going on.... -Yes, I know it’s an accident; but it’s an accident that mustn’t continue -to happen. The very fact that he’s my cousin obliges me to be the more -careful. It wouldn’t be fair to your father and mother if I were to let -you come here—” - -“But, Annette, this once is all I’m asking for.” - -“And all I mean to grant.” - -I could tell by Annette’s voice that she was retreating to another room, -so that by the time I entered Regina stood there alone. Before I knew -what I was doing I held both her hands in mine and was kissing them. - -It is an odd fact that on raising my eyes I saw her features for the -first time since that summer afternoon at Rosyth. On board ship she had -always worn the yashmak; and on the dock she had been too far away to -allow of my seeing more than that she was there. - -The face I saw now was not like Annette’s, untouched by the passage of -time and suffering and world agony. You might have said that in its -shadows and lines and intensities the whole history of the epoch was -expressed. It was one of those twentieth-century faces—they are women’s -faces, as a rule—on which the heroic in our time has stamped itself in -lineaments which neither paint nor marble could reproduce. It flashed on -me that the transmigrated soul had traveled farther than I had suspected. - -I don’t know what we said to each other at first. They were no more -than broken things, not to be set down by the pen. When I came to the -consciousness of my actual words I was saying, “I’m going to make you, -Regina; I’m going to make you.” - -She responded like a child who recognizes power, but has no questionings -as to right and wrong. - -“Are you, Frank? How?” - -“In any way that suggests itself.” I added, helplessly, “I don’t know -how.” - -“I’ll do whatever you tell me,” she said, simply and submissively. - -“Then will you just walk away with me some afternoon—and be -married—without saying anything to any one?” - -“If you say so.” - -“When shall we do it?” - -“Whenever you like.” - -“Next week?” - -“If that suits you.” - -“Would it suit you?” - -She bent her head and was silent. I repeated the question with more -insistence. - -“Would it suit you, Regina?” - -“There’s no question of suiting me. I’ve got myself where I can’t be”—she -smiled, a twitching, nervous smile—“where I can’t be suited.” - -“Do you mean that you’d come with me—when you wouldn’t want to?” - -“Something like that.” - -“Why should you?” - -“I’ve told you that. I’ve—I’ve let you see it—in what I’ve been doing for -the past two years.” - -“So that I’m absolutely master?” - -“That’s it.” - -I turned away from her, walking to the other end of the long room. When I -came back she was standing as I had left her, humbly, with eyes downcast, -like a slave-girl put up for sale. - -I paused in front of her. - -“Do you know that your abandonment of will puts us both in an -extraordinary position?” - -“Yes.” She went on presently, “But I know, too, that where you’re -concerned my will-power has left me.” - -“But that isn’t like you.” - -She shook her head. - -“No, it isn’t. Generally my will is rather strong. But in this case— You -see—I’d—I’d waited so long—and I’d never believed that you—that you cared -anything—and now that I know you do—well, it’s simply made me helpless. -I’ve—I’ve no will at all.” - -“So that I must have enough for two?” - -“I suppose so.” - -“And if I—if I carry you off—and make every one unhappy—and put you in a -position where you’d be—where you’d be done for—that’s what Annette calls -it—the responsibility would be all mine?” - -“I should never reproach you.” - -“In words.” - -“Nor in thought—if I could help it.” - -“But you mightn’t be able to help it.” - -To this there was no reply. I took another turn to the end of the room. -My freedom of action was terrifying. Since I could do with her what I -liked, I was afraid to do anything. I came back and said so. - -The old Regina woke as she murmured, “If you’re afraid to do anything—do -nothing.” - -“And what would you do?” - -“I should let things take their course.” - -“Let things take their course—and marry him?” - -“If things took their course that way.” - -“Do you mean that they mightn’t take their course that way?” - -“I’m not married to him yet. There are—there are difficulties.” - -I caught her by the arm. “Of what kind?” - -“Of opinion chiefly—but of very vital opinion.” - -“Do you mean about the war?” - -She said with a force like that of a suppressed cry: “He wants me not to -have anything more to do with it! And I—I can’t stop—not while it’s going -on. I—I must be doing something. It’s one of the reasons why I could -marry him—that he’s a doctor—and I could take him over there—where they -need him so much.” - -“And he won’t go?” - -“He doesn’t say that exactly; but he doesn’t want to. He thinks it’s all -wrong—that when it comes to brutality, one side is as bad as the other.” - -“Oh, he’ll get over that—if you insist; and then you’ll marry him.” - -“Perhaps so—if I haven’t already married you.” - -“What makes you think you may have married me?” - -“You said you’d make me.” - -And in the end, when Annette came back, we left it at that, with -everything up in the air. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXVI_ - - -More weeks followed, of which my record is chiefly in the drama of public -events. - -Vast as these were at the time, they seem even vaster in the retrospect. -As my memory goes back to them they are like prodigious portents in the -sky, awful to look at and still more awful to think about. A time will -come when we shall find it amazing merely to have lived through such -happenings. - -Before the invaders the Rumanian towns were going down like houses built -of blocks. In her attitude to Rumania, Russia was a mystery—a husband -who sees his wife fighting for her life and doing hardly anything to -help her. The rumors, true or false, that reached us might have been -torn from some stupendous, improbable romance—a feeble Czar, a beautiful -and traitorous Czarina, a corrupt nobility, an army betrayed, a people -seething in dreams and furies and ignorance. Washington, having gone so -far as to ask the Allied nations their peace conditions, had received -them—restitution, reparation, and future security. Then late in that -month of January, 1917, there came to people like me an unexpected shock. -Before the Senate President Wilson delivered the speech of which the tag -that ran electrically round the world was peace without victory. - -I mention these things because they are the only waymarks of a time -during which my private life seemed to be drearily and hopelessly at a -standstill. The deadlock of the nations reacted on myself. Mentally I was -at grips with destiny, but nothing made any progress. I was exactly where -I had started, as regards Regina, as regards Cantyre, as regards Annette, -as regards the father and mother Barry. Outwardly I was on friendly terms -with them all, and on no more than friendly terms with any one. - -The Barrys invited me to dinner, and I went. Cantyre made up a theater -party—he was fond of this form of recreation—and I went to that. Annette -asked me to a Sunday lunch at which Cantyre and Regina were guests. -The force of organized life held us together as a cohesive group; the -operation of conventional good manners kept us to courtesies. That -any one was happy I do not believe; but life threw its mask even on -unhappiness. - -I got in, of course, an occasional word with Regina, which, nevertheless, -didn’t help me. As far as I could observe, she lived and moved in a kind -of hypnotic state, from which nothing I knew how to say could wake her. -She was always waiting for me to give the word, and I was afraid to give -it. If there was hypnotism, it affected us both, since I was as deeply in -the trance as she. - -Now and then, however, she came out of it with some brief remark which -gave me a lead and perhaps made me hope. One such occasion was at the -theater. Cantyre had not put me next to her, but there was an entr’acte -when I found his place empty and slipped into it. - -“And how are events taking their course?” I asked, with a semblance of -speaking cheerily. - -“I’m waiting to see.” - -“Still?” - -“Still.” - -“And how long is that to go on?” - -“Till events have shaped their course in a way that will tell me what to -do.” - -“How shall you know that?” - -“How does the twig know when the current takes it from the spot where it -has been caught and carries it down-stream?” - -“Oh, but you’ve got intelligence.” - -“Any intelligence I’ve got implores me to keep on waiting.” - -“So that you’re not going to be married right away?” - -“I shall not be married till I see it’s the obvious thing to do.” - -“Not even to me?” - -“That’s different. I’ve already told you—” - -“That if I give the word— But don’t you see I can’t give it?” - -“Exactly. You’re waiting for the sign as much as I am.” - -“What sign?” - -“We shall recognize it when the time comes.” - -“Where will it come from?” - -“Right up out of life; I don’t know where, nor how.” - -“Who’ll give it to us?” - -She had only time, as Cantyre returned to his seat, to send me a long, -slantwise look, with the underscored words, “You know!” - -Another time was in the regrouping of guests, after Annette’s luncheon. -Finding myself beside her at a window, I asked the plain question, “Are -you engaged to Cantyre?” - -“I’m just where I was when I told you about it on board ship. He hasn’t -asked me to be more definite.” - -“Is he just where he was?” - -“I think he is, in that—in that he expects me to marry him.” - -“And you leave him under that impression?” - -“I don’t know what else to do—till I get the sign.” - -“You’re still looking for that?” - -“Yes. Aren’t you?” - -“Not that I’m aware of.” - -“Oh, but you are, whether you’re aware of it or not.” - -“And suppose he urges you before the sign comes?” - -“I shall still wait.” - -“And suppose I urged you?” - -“I’d take that as the sign.” - -And after the guests went I stayed behind and told the whole story to -Annette. So long as there were no clandestine meetings under her roof, -she was as detached and sympathetic and non-committal as a chorus in a -Greek play. - -“Why don’t you give her the sign, if it’s not a rude question?” she -asked, while a marvelous succession of ripples circled over her duskiness. - -“Because I’m afraid to. Think what it would mean to Cantyre, who’s been -so white with me all these years.” - -“As well as to every one concerned, including herself and you. I’m glad -you’ve enough common sense to feel that. See here, Frank,” she went on, -kindly, “you’ve got to pull yourself out of this state of mind. It’s -doing you no good. When you ought to be at work for your country, which -needs you desperately, you’re sulking over a love-affair. Buck up! Be a -sport! Be a man! There are lots of nice girls in New York. I’ll find you -some one.” - -But at that I ran away. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXVII_ - - -Within a few days I saw the correctness of Annette’s summing up. - -A medieval legend tells of an angel being sent to Satan with the message -that God meant to take from the devil all the temptations with which he -had seduced mankind. To this Satan resigned himself because he couldn’t -help it, begging of the angel that he should be left with just one—and -that the least important. “Which?” asked the angel. “Depression,” said -Satan. The angel considered the request, found that depression cut but -slight figure as a sin, and went back to heaven, leaving it behind him. -“Good!” laughed Satan, as the celestial vision faded out. “In this one -gift I’ve secured the whole bag of tricks.” - -And that is what I was to find. - -I was depressed on leaving Europe. I grew more depressed because of the -experience on board ship. In New York I was still more depressed. There -was a month in which all things worked together for evil; and then I came -to the place at which Satan had desired to have me. - -I have not said that during all this time I made no attempt to look up -my old friends at the Down and Out or, beyond an occasional argument -with Cantyre, to fulfil the mission with which I had been intrusted. -Ralph Coningsby had come and offered me work, and I had refused it. Even -the march of public events, with the introduction of lawless submarine -warfare and the breaking off of diplomatic relations between Germany -and the United States, hadn’t roused me. I marked the slow rise of the -impulse toward war in the breasts of the American people, as passionless -and as irresistible as an incoming tide, but it seemed to have nothing to -do with me. I was out of it, flung aside by a fate that had made sport of -me. - -I was so far from the current of whatever could be called life that I -grew apathetic. Though I hadn’t seen Regina for weeks, I sat down under -the impalpable obstacles between us, making no effort to overcome them. -I ate and drank and slept and brooded on the futility of living, and let -the doing so fill my time. Lovey was worried, and dogged me round till -there were minutes when I could have sprung on him and choked him. - -Then came the afternoon when I decided that Satan must have his way. - -There is a hotel in New York of which I had many recollections because -I had frequented its barroom in the days before I went altogether down. -It is a somewhat expensive-looking barroom, with heavy mahogany, gilded -cornices, and frescoes of hunting-scenes on the wall. Hanging over the -bar at any time during the day or night can be seen all the types that -are commonly known as sporting, from the dashing to the cheap. - -They might have been the same as on that day when I turned my back upon -the place five years previously. They hung in the same attitudes; they -called for the same drinks; they used the same profanities, though with -some novelty in the slang. With my limp, my black patch, and my general -haggardness, I felt like a ghost returning among them. - -Timidly I approached a barman at leisure and asked for a cocktail of a -brand for which I used to have a liking. I carried it off to a table -placed inconspicuously behind the door leading to and from the hotel. -Putting it on the table, I stared at its amber reflections. - -I had come back to the same old place at last. It was curious; but there -I was. All my struggling, all my wandering, all my up-hill work, all my -days and nights in the trenches, all my suffering, all my love—everything -had combined together to land me just here, where, so to speak, I had -begun. It was the old story of dragging up the cliff, only to fall over -the precipice. It seemed to be my fate. There was no escaping it. - -I might not take more than that one drink during that afternoon; but I -knew it would be a beginning. I should come back again; and I should come -back again after that. Another type of man would do nothing of the kind; -but I was my own type. - -Very deliberately I said good-by to the world I had known for the past -three years and more. I said good-by to work, to ambition, to salvation, -to country, to love. Back, far back in my mind I was saying the same -deliberate good-by to God. I shouldn’t rest now till everything was gone. - -The glass was still untasted on the table. I was taking my time. The -farewells on which I was engaged couldn’t be hurried. The fate in store -for me would wait. - -Then the door behind which I sat began to open. It opened slowly, -timidly, stealthily, as if the person entering was afraid to come in. The -action stirred the curiosity, and I watched. - -Before I saw a face I saw a hand. Rather, I saw four fingers from the -knuckles to the nails, as if some one was steadying himself by the sheer -force of holding on. They were old, thin, twisted fingers, and I knew at -a glance I had seen them before. - -The door continued to open, stealthily, timidly, slowly; and then, -looking like a spirit rather than a man—a neat, respectable spirit -wearing a silver star in his buttonhole, with trembling hands and a -woeful quiver to the corner of his lower lip—Lovey stood in the barroom. - -He stood as if he had never been in any such place before. He was like a -visitant from some other sphere—dazed, diaphanous, unearthly. - -He didn’t look at the table behind the door. His gaze was far off. I -could see it scanning the backs of the hangers across the bar. Then it -went over the tables one by one, traveling nearer and nearer. - -Just before the dim eyes reached me I said: “Hello, Lovey! Come and sit -down. What’ll you have to drink?” - -There seemed to be an interval between hearing my voice and actually -seeing me—an interval during which a frosty, unnatural color, as if snow -were suddenly to take fire, flared in his waxlike cheek. But he came to -the table and dropped into a round-backed chair. - -“Oh, Slim!” - -Leaning on the table, he covered his face with his hand. - -I tried putting up a bluff. “What’s the matter, Lovey? Haven’t got a -headache, have you?” - -He raised those pitiful, dead blue eyes. “No, but I’ve got a ’eartache, -Slim—a ’eartache I won’t never get over.” - -“Why, why—” I began to rally him. - -“It’s just what I was afeared of—for days and days I’ve been afeared of -it. Been a-watchin’ of you, I ’ave.” - -Here was another transmigrated soul that had traveled farther than I -knew. It was in pure curiosity as to the changes wrought in him that I -said: “I should think you would have been glad, Lovey. When I was here -before you used to want to have us both go back.” - -The extinct eyes were raised on me. - -“These times ain’t them times. Everything different. I ’aven’t stayed -where I was in them days, not any more nor you. Oh, to think, to think!” - -“To think what?” - -“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done -ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived -before the war—” - -“Oh no, Lovey. No one knows what I was better than yourself.” - -“You was good even then, sonny—even in them awful old days. Goodness -ain’t just in doin’ certain things; it’s in being certain things. I don’t -’ardly know what it is; but I can tell it when I see it. And I seen it -in you, Slim—right from the first. Me and God A’mighty seen it together. -That’s why He pulled you up out o’ what you was—and made you rich—and -dressed you in swell clo’es—and sent you to the war—and made you a -’ero—and stuck you all over with medals—and brought you ’ome again to me. -And if you’d only waited—” - -“Well, if I’d only waited—what?” - -“You’d ’a’ got somethink better still. You’d ’a’ got it pretty soon.” - -“What should I have got?” - -[Illustration: “That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ -the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the -best man ever lived before the war—”] - -“I ain’t a-goin’ to tell ye. If you’d come ’ome with me you’d see.” -Before I could follow up this dark hint he continued: “God A’mighty don’t -play no tricks on His children. Look at me! All He’s give me. Kep’ me -well while you was away—and ’elped me to knock off the booze when it was -mortal ’ard to do it—and pervided me with a good ’ome, thanks to you, -Slim!—and work—and wages—and a very nice man to work for, all except -bein’ a bit stuck on ’isself—and let me off washin’ windows, which was -never a trade for an eddicated man like me—and brought you back to me, -which was the best thing of all—and just because I waited.” - -“What do you mean by waiting?” - -“I mean waitin’ for Him. That’s somethink I’ve found out since you went -away, sonny. It’s a tip as Beady Lamont give me. You’ve got to wait -patient-like for Him; and if you do He’ll come to you.” - -“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” - -“Of course you don’t. That’s why I’m a-tellin’ of you. It was like this: -When you went away it was somethink fierce for me—nothink but that empty -flat—and everythin’ speakin’ to me o’ you, like—yer clo’es and yer boots -and yer books and yer pipes, and the chairs you used to sit on, and the -bed you used to sleep in—and everythink like that—till I thought I was -goin’ crazy. Many’s the time I wanted to come and do just what you’re -a-doin’ of now—but I’d think o’ the promise I give you before ye went—and -I’d ’ang on a bit more. And then God A’mighty Hisself come and spoke to -me, just as He did to Beady Lamont that time he told us about when we was -in the blue stars.” - -“And what did God Almighty say?” - -“He come in the middle o’ the night, and woke me up out of a sound sleep—” - -“How did you know it was He?” - -“Oh, I knowed. Ye couldn’t ’elp knowin’.” - -“Did you hear His voice?” - -“Ye didn’t ’ave to ’ear. It just went all over ye, like. I sits up in -bed, and everything was dark and light at the same time, and something -awful comfortin’ like sweepin’ through and through me. Ye couldn’t -’ardly say it was ’earin’ or seein’ or feelin’ or nothink. It was just -understandin’, like—but you knowed it was there.” - -“But you haven’t told me what He said.” - -“That’s what I’m a-comin’ to. He says: ‘Lovey,’ says He, ‘you’ve put up a -good fight, and now ye’re over the worst of it. But I’m with ye all the -time,’ says He; ‘only I can’t give ye everythin’ to oncet. All ye can -take is what ye’ve made yerself fit to receive,’ says He; ‘because there -was a good many years in yer life when ye wasn’t fit to receive nothink. -But just you wait, and you’ll see ’ow good I’ll be to you by degrees,’ -says He. ‘You go on fightin’ in your way, just as that young fella, Slim, -is fightin’ in his way, and I’ll do you both good, and bring you back to -each other,’ says He. And, oh, sonny, He’s kep’ His word—all but right up -till now, when you’ve been goin’ about that sad-like—and not wantin’ to -be ’ome. And now this!” - -“But that’s not God, Lovey; that’s me.” - -“I don’t see much difference. The most ways I gets a’old o’ God, as -you might say, is through the nice things people does for me—and the -nice people theirselves—especially men—I don’t ’old with women—and more -particular you, Slim—you that was more to me than my own children ever -was—than my own life—yes, sonny, than my own life. I ain’t a-goin’ to -live very long now—” - -“What makes you think so?” - -“I ’appen to know,” he replied, briefly. “There’s ways you can tell.” - -“What ways?” - -“Smellin’, for one thing. Ye can smell death just as easy as ye can -smell flowers, or the fryin’ o’ fish, or any other smell; and it’s a -sign ye’ll never be mistook in.” His ascetic profile was thrown up, with -a long sniff through his delicate, quivering nostrils. “I can smell it -now—just like the smell o’ liquor.” The profile came down, and he went -on, eagerly: “But what I’m tellin’ you is that if I could die to save -you from what ye’re beginnin’ to do this day, Slim, I’d do it cheerful. -I knowed you was bent on it before ye knowed it yerself. I’ve been -a-watchin’ on ye, and follerin’ you about when ye didn’t see me.” - -“How did you know?” - -“I can’t tell ye ’ow—not no more than I could tell you I knowed it was -God. It don’t matter ’ow you know things as long as you know them, does -it?” - -“Perhaps not.” - -“I’ve just been a-livin’ in yer skin ever since ye come ’ome, sonny. It -was as if all yer thoughts passed through my mind, and all yer feelin’s -through my ’eart. I ain’t much of a ’and at love—that kind of female -love, I mean—not now, I ain’t; but I know that when ye’re young it kind -o’ ketches you—” - -“Stop, Lovey,” I said, warningly. - -“All right, Slim, I’ll stop. I don’t need to go on. All I want to say is -that you don’t know—you couldn’t know—the fancy I’ve took to you—and I -used to think that you kind o’ ’ad a fancy for me, like.” - -“So I have.” - -The mild eyes searched me. There was a violent trembling of the lower lip. - -“Do you mean that, Slim?” Before I could answer he added, proudly: “I -don’t need to ’ave no one sayin’ they’ve got a fancy for me when they -’aven’t.” - -“Oh, but it’s true!” - -Two shivering hands were stretched out toward me in dramatic appeal. - -“Oh, then leave that there drink alone and come ’ome along o’ me.” His -eyes fell on the glass. “’Ow many o’ them things ’ave ye ’ad?” - -“None yet; this is the first; and I haven’t tasted it.” - -He straightened himself up, speaking with what I can only call a kind of -exaltation. - -“Then God A’mighty has sent me to you in time. It’s Him—and except Him -’tain’t no one nor nothink. Slim, if you puts yer lips to that glass now -ye’ll be sinnin’ in His face just as much as if it was Him and not me as -was a-pleadin’ with ye.” - -“It isn’t a sin to take a cocktail.” - -“Not for every one, I don’t suppose. It wouldn’t be for the doctor; -and it wouldn’t be for Mr. Coningsby; but ’tis for me, and ’tis for -you. There’s take-it-and-leave-it people in the world, and there’s -take-it-and-be-damned; and you and me belongs to the last. Oh, Slim, -don’t be mad wi’ me! Ain’t ye a silver-star man in the Down and Out? -Ain’t I yer next friend—yer real next friend, that is—a great deal more -than that young Pyn, with ’is impotent tongue, what stood up with you? -Come ’ome along o’ me, and I’ll show you somethin’ good.” - -It was the dark hint again. - -“What are you driving at, Lovey? What is there at home?” - -His reply might have been paraphrased from a writing he had never heard -of. - -“There’s things ahead of you, Slim, different from what you’re expectin’ -of. Wait.” - -I confess to being startled. You must see me as in an overwrought -condition, reacting from the tremendous strain, first of fighting, then -of blindness, and thirdly of emotional stress. I do not pretend that more -than any other man who comes back from the jaws of the infernal brazier -in Flanders I was my normal self. I was easily up and easily down, -easily excited and easily impressed. The mere cast of Lovey’s two brief -sentences impressed me. - -“What things?” I asked, with that mixture of credulity and rejection with -which one puts questions to a trance medium. - -“I’ll not tell ye; I’ll show ye; only ye must come ’ome.” As if in -illustration of his words, he added, “Ye must begin to wait right now.” - -“But why wait?” - -“Because God A’mighty can’t give us everything to oncet. Didn’t I say He -told me that Hisself? We ain’t fit to receive more’n a little at a time, -just like babies. That’s another tip as Beady give me. And Mr. Christian -he p’inted out to me oncet that wait is one of the frequentest words -in the Bible. See here! Beady writ this for me.” Fumbling in an inside -pocket, he drew forth a carefully folded bit of paper, saying, as he did -so: “It was one of the times when I was awful low in my mind because -you was away. I don’t ’old with them low fellas at the Down and Out—not -as a reg’lar thing, I don’t—but now and then when I just couldn’t seem -to get along without you I’d go down to one of the meetin’s. Then oncet -Beady sits beside me and begins a-kiddin’ o’ me, callin’ me old son and -everything like that. But by ’n’ by he sees I wasn’t in no such humor, -and we starts in to talk serious-like. And then—well, I don’t ’ardly know -’ow I come to let it out—but Beady he sees just ’ow it was with me, and -he bucks me up and writes me this. He ain’t as bad as you’d think he’d -be, that Beady. It’s good words out of the Bible, and there’s a reg’lar -tip in ’em.” - -The shaky hands unfolded the bit of foolscap on which was scrawled in a -laborious script: - -“Wait on the Lord; wait, I say, on the Lord.” - -Beneath this counsel from one psalm were the verses from another: - -“I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my -cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, -and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.” - -I suppose you will call my impulse by some modern psychological name, and -for aught I know you may be right. But the words were not without their -effect on me. They came to me with the mystery of a message emanating -from the days before Time, and from spheres which have no need of the sun -to rise or of the moon to give brightness or of the light of any candle. -That it was carried to me by this tottering old man whom I had known in -such different conditions only added to the awe. - -I struggled to feet that were as shaky as Lovey’s hands, carried my -little white ticket to the bookkeeper, paid for my drink, which I had -left untouched, and flinging an “All right, Lovey; I’m your man!” to him, -hobbled out into the lobby of the hotel. - -My immediate sensation was that which you have known when the black cloud -of troubles that enveloped you on waking has been instantly dispelled on -your getting out of bed. The troubles may still be there; but you know -your competence to live and work and deal with them. - -What I felt chiefly, I think, was that the old temptation would never -master me again. I had been face to face with it, and hadn’t submitted to -its spell. Something had been healed in me; something had been outgrown. -A simple old man with no eloquence but that of his affection had led me -as another might be led by a child. - -With this sense of release came a sense of energy. I was given back to my -mission; my mission was given back to me. That which for lack of a more -humble term I can only call the spirit of consecration took hold of me -again and made me its own. The aims for which the war was being fought -were my aims; I had no others. When these objectives were won my life, it -seemed to me, would be over. It would melt away in that victory as dawn -into sunrise. It would not be lost; it would only be absorbed—a spark in -the blaze of noonday. - -And as for love—well, after all, there was the moratorium of love. My lot -in this respect—if it was to be my lot—would be no harder than that of -millions of other men the wide world over. Love was no longer the first -of a man’s considerations, not any more than the earning of a living -could be the first. It might be a higher thing for her—a higher thing for -me—to give it up. - -Turning these things over in my mind and wondering vaguely what might -be awaiting me at the apartment, I said nothing to Lovey as we trundled -homeward in a taxicab; nor did Lovey say anything to me. - -It was only when we got out of the lift and he had turned the key in our -own door that he said, with sudden energy: “Slim, I’ll be yer servant -right down to the very ground.” - -“Oh no, you won’t be, Lovey,” I returned, deprecatingly. “We’re fellas -together. We’re buddies. We’ll be buddies as long as we live.” - -He slapped his leg with a cackle that was, as nearly as his old lungs -could make it, a heartfelt, mirthful laugh. - -“There! Didn’t I tell you? That’s what I’ve been a-waitin’ for; and the -Lord has give it to me at last. He can’t do much more for me now—not till -He takes me ’ome, like.” He raised his sharp profile and sniffed. “I -smell it, Slim—a kind o’ stuffy smell it is now—but I ain’t mistook in -it. And now, Slim,” he went on, triumphantly, as he threw the door open -and entered before me to turn on the lights—“and now, Slim, what you’re -a-waitin’ for is—is waitin’ ’ere for you.” - -I knew it couldn’t be Regina that Lovey was caging in these overheated -rooms, since she wouldn’t be sitting in the dark. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXVIII_ - - -It was not Regina Barry who was waiting for me, but it was the next best -thing. - -Lovey stood off and pointed to it as it lay, white and oblong, on the -sitting-room table. - -“Give it to me with ’er own ’and,” he said, mysteriously. “Druv up to the -door and asked the janitor to call me down. Told me to tell you that it -wouldn’t be at ’alf past four, as she says in the note, but at five, and -’oped you wouldn’t keep ’er waitin’.” - -I held it in my hand, turning it over. I felt sure of what was in it, -but I didn’t know whether I was sorry or glad. Of course I should be -glad from one point of view; but the points of view were so many. It -would be all over now with the mission, for which my enthusiasm had so -suddenly revived. When we had done this thing we should be discredited -and ostracized by the people we knew best, and for some time to come. - -I stood fingering the thing, feeling as I had felt now and then when we -had given up a trench or a vantage-point we had been holding against -odds. Wise as it might be to yield, it was, nevertheless, a pity, -and only left ground that would have to be regained. There was moral -strength, too, in the mere fact of holding. Not to hold any longer was a -sign of weakness, however good the reason. - -I broke the seal slowly, saying, as I did so, “Did she say where?” - -“No, Slim; she didn’t say nowhere.” - -“Only that I was not to keep her waiting.” - -He thought again. “Punctual was ’er word.” - -She needn’t, however, have said that. Of course I should be punctual. All -might depend on my being on the spot at the moment when the clock struck. -I still hesitated at drawing out the sheet. As a matter of fact I was -wondering if she had received the sign she had talked about, and if so, -what it was. - -After all, it was an unimportant note. - - DEAR FRANK,—Mother has allowed me to ask Doctor Feltring—a - lady—who retreated with the Serbian Army into Albania, to speak - at our house at half-past four to-morrow afternoon. Will you - come? We shall all be glad to see you. - - Yours, - - REGINA. - -That was all. I should have felt a certain relief that nothing was -irrevocably settled had there not been in the envelope another page. On -it were written the words: “Are you trying the indirect method? If so, I -think you will find it unwise.” - -If I read this once I must have read it twenty times, trying to fathom -its meaning. - -I could only think that she was gently charging me with my apathy. The -indirect method was the inactive method. I had let weeks go by not only -without saying the word which she had told me she would obey, but without -making any attempt to get speech with her. - -And yet it seemed to me that any other woman in the world might have -resented this but Regina. It was a kind of resentment unlike her. She -was too proud, too intense. Even in the hypnotic state induced by the -knowledge, after years of doubt, that we cared for each other, she had -kept her power of resistance. She would come with me if I made her, but -she hoped I wouldn’t make her. That hope made it difficult for me to -impose myself on any one at once so willing and so reluctant. Of what, -from different angles, each of us owed to Cantyre—not to mention any one -else—she was as sensitively aware as I was. - -I could hardly believe, therefore, that she was reproaching me; and yet -what else did she mean? - -I tried to learn that on the following day, but found access to her -difficult. Since she was hostess to the speaker of the afternoon as well -as to some sixty or eighty guests, mostly ladies, this was scarcely -strange. I was limited, therefore, to the two or three seconds during -which I was placing in her hands a cup of tea. Even then there was a -subject as to which I more pressingly desired information. - -“I see Stephen isn’t here.” - -She couldn’t keep out of her eyes what I read as a kind of crossfire, -expressive of contradictory emotions. - -“He wouldn’t come.” - -“Why not?” - -“He didn’t like the subject.” - -“Because it was medicine?” - -“Because it was war.” - -“But if this country goes in?” - -“He doesn’t believe it will. He thinks the breaking off of our relations -with Germany will do all for which we can be called on. We’ll never -fight, he says. Even if we declare war he’s sure it will only be in name.” - -I was not so much interested in Cantyre’s opinions as in the way in which -she would take them. - -“And you?” - -“Oh, I think he’s only kicking against the pricks. He can’t think like -that.” - -I gave her a look which I tried to make significant. “You mean that he’s -taking the indirect method?” - -She gazed off to the other side of the room. “Oh, that isn’t the indirect -method.” - -“What does the indirect method involve?” - -But here Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott butted in—I have no other term for -it—with a question, which she asked as if her life depended on the -answer, “Regina, didn’t you think the action of that English nurse in -going over the mountains with the band of little Serbian boys the most -heroic thing you ever heard of?” - -So I came away without having learned what it was I was doing, but not -less determined to find out. - -I resolved to try Cantyre. My meetings with him had become not exactly -rare, but certainly infrequent. I had hardly noticed the decline of our -intimacy while it was going on; I only came to a sudden realization of it -when I said to myself I would look in on him that night. - -It occurred to me in the first place that I had not looked in on him -of my own accord since I had come home. I had gone round the elbow of -the corridor once or twice when he had invited me, but never of my own -initiative. Then it struck me that it was some time since he himself had -come knocking at my door. - -“Lovey, when was the doctor last in here?” - -He was in the “kitchingette” and came to the threshold slowly. When he -did so there was that scared look on his face I had seen on the previous -afternoon. - -“I don’t rightly know, Slim.” - -“Isn’t it more than a week ago?” - -He considered. “It might be.” - -“Do you know any reason why he doesn’t come?” - -He seemed to be defending himself against an accusation. - -“Why, Slim! ’Ow sh’d I know?” - -“Well, you see him every day—in and out of his room with his boots and -things.” - -“He don’t ’ardly ever speak to me.” - -“And don’t you ever speak to him?” - -He fidgeted nervously. “Oh, I passes the time o’ day, like, and tells him -if his pants need pressin’ and little things like that.” - -“Does he ever say anything about me?” - -“Not lately he don’t.” - -“Have you any idea why not?” - -“I might ’ave a hidea, Slim; but what’s servants’ gossip, after all?” - -As he had me there I dropped the subject, stealing round to Cantyre’s -quarters about eleven that night. - -To my knock, which was timid and self-conscious, he responded with a low -“Come in” that lacked the heartiness to which he had accustomed me. As -usual at this hour, he was in an elaborate dressing-gown, and also as -usual the room was heavy with the scent of flowers. He was not lounging -in an arm-chair, but sitting at his desk with his back to me, writing -checks. - -“Oh, it’s you!” he said, without turning his head. - -“Thought I’d drop in on you.” - -He went on writing. “Do you want to sit down?” - -“Not if you’re busy.” - -“Got some bills to pay.” - -“Oh, then I’ll come another time.” - -Having gone in for one bit of information, I went out with another. -Cantyre knew. - -I was not only sorry for his knowing, I was surprised at it. During the -two months we had been in New York both Regina and I had been notably -discreet. We had been discreet for the reasons that all the strings -were in our own hands, and it depended solely on ourselves as to which -we pulled. We alone were the responsible parties. That poor Cantyre -shouldn’t have to suffer before we knew whether we meant to make him -suffer or not had been a matter of concern to us both. - -If he knew, it was, therefore, not from me; and neither was it from -Regina. There remained Annette, but she was as safe as ourselves. Further -than Annette I couldn’t think of any one. - -I should have been more absorbed by this question had I not waked to -new elements in the world drama, as one wakes to a sudden change in -the weather. My surprise came not from any knowledge of new facts, but -from the revival of my own faculty for putting two and two together. -There had been a month in which depression had produced a kind of mental -hibernation. When at the end of February I emerged from it the New World -in particular had moved immeasurably far forward. - -Now that I came to notice it, I saw a change as perceptible as that in -the wind in the whole American national position. As silently as the wind -shifts to a new point of the compass a hundred millions of people had -shifted their point of view. They were moving it onward day by day, with -a rapidity of which they themselves were unconscious. - -The titanic facts were to the undercurrent of events but as the volcano -to the fire at the heart of the earth. The heart of all human life being -now ablaze, there was here and there a stupendous outburst which was but -a symptom of the raging flame beneath. There was the U-boat blockade of -Great Britain, endangering all the maritime nations of the world. There -was the American diplomatic break with Germany. There was the guarding -of the German ships interned in American ports. There was the torpedoing -of an American steamer off the Scilly Isles. There was Mr. Wilson’s -invitation to the neutral nations to join him in the breach with the -German Emperor. And then on the 26th the President went in person before -Congress to ask authority to use armed force to protect American rights. - -These, I say, were but volcanic incidents. The impressive thing to me was -the transformation of a people by a process as subtle as enchantment. - -Two months earlier they had been neutral, and sitting tight on their -neutrality. The war was three thousand miles away. It had been brewed in -the cursed vendettas of nations of some of which the every-day American -hardly knew the names. It was tragic for those peoples; but they whose -lives were poisoned by no hereditary venom were not called on to take -part. Zebulun and Naphtali from sheer geographical position might be -obliged to hazard their lives to the death; but Asher could abide in his -ports, and Gilead beyond Jordan. That had been the kind of reasoning I -heard as late as the time of my arrival. - -On my return to New York in November, I found a nation holding its -judgments and energies in suspense. What by the end of February -interested me most was the spectacle of this same people urging forward, -surging upward, striving, straining toward a goal which every one knew it -would take strength and sacrifice to reach. - -Between this approach to war and that of any of the other great powers -there was this difference: They had taken the inevitable step while in -the grip of a great stress. They sprang to their arms overnight. They had -no more choice than a man whose house is on fire as to whether or not he -will extinguish it. Out of the bed of their luxurious existence they were -called as if by conflagration. Whether they would lose their lives or -escape with them was a question they had no time to consider. They went -up to the top notch of the heroic in an instant, not knowing the danger -they were facing or the courage they displayed. - -Here, on the other hand, was a people who saw everything from a long -way off. For nearly three years their souls had been sickened with the -tale of blood. Gilead might abide beyond Jordan and Asher in his ports, -but no atrocious detail had been spared them. They knew, therefore, -just what they were doing, exactly what was before them. I can hardly -say that they made their choice; they grew toward it. They grew toward -it calmly, deliberately, clear-sightedly; and for this very reason with -an incomparable bravery. If I were an American citizen instead of the -American citizen’s blood-brother, I might not say this; I might not have -been aware of it. In any family the outsider can see that which escapes -the observation of the daughter or the son. I heard no born American -comment on this splendid, tranquil, leisurely readjustment of the spirit -to a new, herculean task; perhaps no born American noticed it; but to -me as an onlooker, interested and yet detached, it was one of the most -grandiose movements of an epoch in which the repetition of the grandiose -bewilders the sense of proportion, as on the first days in the Selkirks -or the Alps. - -It was at this time I heard that Regina was addressing meetings. They -were women’s club meetings, and I learned from Annette that she was -speaking with success. - -“She seems to have come out of a sort of trance,” Annette observed of -her, using the word I had used myself. “Ever since she came home she’s -been like a girl walking in her sleep. Now she’s waked and is like her -old self.” - -Since Annette knew my story, or part of it, I thought it no harm to ask, -“To what do you attribute it?” - -But Annette refused to lend herself to my game. - -“I attribute it to her getting over the long strain. It’s natural that -you people who’ve been over there should be dazed or jumpy or something. -She’s been dazed.” - -“And what do you think I’ve been?” - -“Oh, you’ve been the same,” she laughed; “but then, you’re always queer.” - - - - -_CHAPTER XXIX_ - - -The news with regard to Regina acted on me as a twofold stimulus. - -In the first place, it sent me back at last to the Down and Out. If -she had waked, I, too, would wake; and since she was actively pleading -the great cause, I would do the same. I didn’t go to a meeting, but -dropped in during a forenoon. The house was even humbler and dingier -than I remembered it, but as scrupulously neat and clean. In the back -sitting-room were half a dozen men, all of the type to which I had once -belonged and with whom I felt a sympathy so overwhelming as to surprise -myself. Perhaps because I had seen so much of what could be made of human -material even when it was destined to be no more than cannon fodder in -the end, I was sorry to see this waste. - -With one exception I placed them as all under thirty. They were -good-looking fellows in the main, who would respond amazingly to drill. -After that impetus to the inner self, of which the Down and Out had the -secret, plenty of work, a regular life, food, water, and sleep would -renew them as the earth is renewed by spring. No missionary ever longed -to bring a half-dozen promising pagans into the Christian fold more -ardently than I to see these five or six poor wastrels transformed into -fighting-men. - -For the minute there was no official there but little Spender, whose -bliss in life was in opening the Down and Out door. Having led me across -the empty front sitting-room, he said, as I stood in the gap of the -folding-doors: - -“Say, brothers! This is Slim. Come in here four or five years ago, just -as low down as any of you, and look at him now!” - -I did feel enormously tall, in spite of the high studding of the room, -as well as enormously big in my ample military overcoat. To the six who -sat in that woeful outward idleness, of which I knew the inner secret -preoccupation, I must have been an astonishing apparition. Only a very -commanding presence could summon these men from the desolate land into -which their spirits were wandering; but for once in my life I did it. All -eyes were fixed on me; every jaw dropped in a kind of awe. - -Knowing the habits and needs of such a stupor, I merely threw off my -overcoat, entered, and sat down. Any greeting I made was general and -offhand. Apart from that I sat and said nothing. - -I sat and said nothing because I knew it was what they liked. They liked -the companionship, as babies and dogs like companionship, though their -aching minds could not have responded to talk. There was no embarrassment -in this silence, no expectation. It was a stupefied pleasure to them to -stare at the uniform, to speculate inchoately as to the patch on my eye; -and that little was enough. - -Nobody read; nobody smoked. I neither smoked nor read; I only sat as in a -Quaker meeting, waiting for the first movement of the spirit. - -It came when a husky voice, that seemed to travel from across a gulf, -said, without any particular reason, “I’m Spud.” - -I turned to my right, to see a good-looking, brown-eyed fellow, of -perhaps twenty-eight, trying to reach me, as it were, with his pathetic, -despairing gaze. - -I knew what was behind this self-introduction. The lost identity was -trying to find itself; the man who was worthy of something was doing his -utmost to get out of the abyss by reaching up his hands to the man who -had got out. - -“All right, Spud,” I said, heartily. “Put it there! We’re going to be -friends.” - -Silence for another five minutes was broken when a high voice recited -in a sort of litany, “I’m Jimmy McKeever, traveler for Grubbe & Oates, -gents’ furnishers.” - -Sharp-faced, wiry, catlike, agile, tough as wire, I could see this fellow -creeping out into the darkness of No Man’s Land, and creeping back with -information of the enemy. - -I broke in on the litany to say: “Good for you, Jimmy, old boy! Glad to -know you. Let’s shake hands.” - -He sprang from his seat on the outskirts of the group, but before he -could reach me a great, brawny paw was stretched forward by a blue-eyed -young Hercules sitting nearer me, which grasped my fingers as if in -a vise. There was then a scramble of handshaking, each of the bunch -asserting his claim for recognition, like very small children. The -older man alone held aloof, sitting by himself, scowling, hard-faced, -cross-legged, kicking out a big foot with a rapid, nervous rhythm. - -It was he who, when the handshaking was over, snarled out the question, -“What’s the matter with your eye?” - -I told them the story of how I lost it. - -I told it as simply as I could, while working in a fair share of the -strong color which I hoped would arrest their attention. - -It did. In all my experience of men coming back into life from the state -which is so expressively known as dead drunk it was the first time I ever -saw them listen with avidity to any voice but that of the inner man. - -What is there about war which speaks with this authority? Where did it -get its power to go to the hidden man of the heart, that subliminal -self with which modern speculation has been so busy, and shift him from -off his age-long base? It is commonly said that, whatever our personal -vicissitudes, human nature remains the same; but though that may be -true of the past, I doubt if it will be true of the future. War on the -scale on which we are waging it has already changed human nature. It has -changed it as the years change a baby to a boy and a boy to a man. It -has lifted human nature up, drawn out of it what we never supposed to -be there, freed it from its slavery to time. It has to a large degree -reversed the processes of time as it has reversed the usages of sex. We -have seen youth doing the work of maturity, maturity that of youth, women -that of men, men that of women. We have seen cowards transformed into -heroes, rotters into saints, stupid, idiotic ne’er-do-wells into saviors -of mankind. - -We shall never go back again to the helpless conviction that youth must -grow slowly into age, only to have age decay into ugliness and senility. -This kind of foolish, useless progress may still go on for an indefinite -time to come, but we shall work against it as against something contrary -to the highest possibilities of nature. Since we have thrown off our -mental shackles in great moments, we shall see that we can do the same -in small, and, having emerged on a higher plane, we shall stay there. -Staying there, we shall doubtless go on in time to a higher plane -still—a plane on which the mighty works that are now wrought in war -will become feasible in peace. We are not on that plane yet; but if the -advance of the human race means anything we shall get there. It may take -a thousand years; it may take more; it may take less; but in the mean -time we must seize our blessings as we may. - -So these fellows listened to my tale as raptly as if a trumpet were -sounding in their ears. It was like a summons to them to come out of -stupefaction. They asked questions not only as to my own experiences, but -as to the causes and purposes of the war in general. I do not affirm that -they were the most intelligent questions that could be asked; but for men -in their condition they were astonishing. - -That they were not of necessity to be easy converts I could see when the -old chap sitting apart asked again, in his bitter voice, “Did you ever -kill a fellow-creetur that had the same right to live as yourself?” - -As we discussed that aspect of the subject, too, I found it difficult to -restrain my audience from the free fight for which at the Down and Out -there was always an inclination. - -I accomplished this, however, and as I rose to go the brawny Hercules -sidled shyly up to me with the words: “Say! I’m a Canuck. Peterfield, -Ontario, is where I hail from. Why ain’t I in this here war?” - -He was my first recruit. A few weeks later he was in uniform in Montreal. -My object in telling you about him is to point out the fact that I made -a beginning, and that from the beginning the sympathy of the City of -Comrades upheld me. Little by little that movement by which the whole of -America was being shaken out of its materialism, its provincialism, and -its mental isolation reached us in Vandiver Street, and we began to see -that there were subjects of conversation more commanding than that of -drink. What I may call a war party rose among us, and the sentiment that -we ought to be in it was expressed. - -“We shall be in it when the time comes,” Andrew Christian said to me when -we were alone for a few minutes after I had been talking with the men -one day. “One of the great mistakes human impatience makes is in trying -to hurry the methods by which the divine mind counteracts human errors. -We forget that it is not for us to know the times or the seasons that -the Father hath put into His own power. Things that take place in their -own way generally take place in His. And the overruling force of His -way, when we let it alone, working simply, naturally, and as a matter of -course, is one of the extraordinary features of history.” - -I was the more impressed by these quiet words for the reason that I saw -that he, too, was one of the Americans chafing under the long holding -back of his country. No one I had seen since my return was more changed -in this respect than he. I had left a man who had but one object in his -life, the salvation of other men from drink. I found a man marvelously -broadened, heightened, illumined, almost transfigured by a larger set of -purposes. - -But he spoke so calmly! - -“We shall go into this thing the more thoroughly when our people as a -whole are convinced of its necessity. And for a hundred millions of -people to be convinced is a matter that takes time. But even there you -can see how a great purpose is changing them almost against their own -will. It isn’t many months ago that they elected a President on the -slogan, ‘He kept us out of war.’ Had it not been for that slogan it’s -doubtful whether or not he would have been elected. All politics apart, -we can say that, had he not been elected, it’s doubtful whether any other -candidate could carry with him a united Congress when we come to the -moment of decision. Were the President not to have a united Congress, -behind him, there would be no united people. As it is we’re all forging -forward together, President, Congress, and people, as surely as winter -forges forward into spring; and when the minute arrives—” - -He broke off with a smile I can only call exalted. With a hasty pressure -of my hand he was off to some other fellow with some other needful word. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXX_ - - -My purpose in telling you all this is to show you why I reacted so -slightly to Regina’s charge of the indirect method. Though my curiosity -as to what she meant was keen enough, the pressure of other interests -allowed it no time to work. This is to say, as soon as I got back -into the current of great events personal concerns became relatively -unimportant. They had to wait. One developed the capacity to keep them -waiting. - -But toward the middle of March I met her one day in Fifth Avenue. -Even from a distance I could see that her step was vigor and her look -animation. The haunting sadness had fled from her eyes, while the -generous smile, spontaneous and flashing, had returned to her scarlet -lips. It was a new Regina because it was the old one. - -To me her first exclamation was: “How well you look! You’re almost as you -were before the war.” - -Though I was conscious of a pang at seeing her so far from pining away, I -endeavored to play up. - -“Mayn’t I say the same of you? What’s done it?” - -She laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. Work, I suppose—and the knowledge that -things are marching.” - -“I hear you’re very busy.” - -“I hear you’re busy, too.” - -“People do seem to want to be told things at first hand.” - -“I find the same.” - -“And so one has to be on the job.” - -“There’s nothing like it, is there? It”—she flung me one of her old, -quick, daring glances—“it fills all the needs. Nothing else becomes -urgent.” - -“You mean that one’s personal affairs—” - -“Oh, one has no personal affairs. I remember a man who was in the San -Francisco earthquake telling me that for forty-eight hours he hardly -needed to eat or sleep.” - -“I’ve seen that doubled and trebled.” - -“Of course you have. It simply means that when we get out of ourselves we -can make supermen of the commonest material.” - -I ventured to say: “You look happy, Regina. Are you?” - -“Are you?” - -I weighed this in order to answer her truthfully. - -“If I’m not happy I’m—I’m content—content to be doing something—the least -little bit—to urge things forward.” - -“And I can say the same. If I look well, as you put it, that’s the -reason. And so long as that’s the reason other things can—wait.” She -added, quickly: “I must go now or I shall be late. I’m speaking to the -women at the Mary Chilton Club, and I’m overdue.” - -She had actually passed on when I stopped her to say, “What do you mean -by the indirect method?” - -She called back over her shoulder, “Ask Stephen.” - -And I asked him that night. Having heard him come into his room between -eight and nine o’clock, I marched in boldly, bearding him without beating -about the bush. - -“I say, old Stephen, what have you been saying to Regina about me?” - -His hat had been thrown on the table; his arms were outstretched in the -act of taking off his overcoat. - -He repeated my question as if he didn’t understand it. - -“What have I been saying to Regina about you? Why, nothing—much.” - -“Nothing much; that means something. What the deuce do you mean by the -indirect method?” - -“I haven’t spoken of an indirect method.” - -“No; but she has!” - -“Oh, I see.” - -“Then if you see, tell me what it is.” - -He finished the arrested act of taking off his coat, after which he -hung it up in a closet, doing the same with his hat. The minute’s delay -allowed time for the storm-clouds to gather on his face, and all the -passions of a gloomy-hearted nature to concentrate in a hot, thundery -silence. - -“Is this a bit of bluff, Frank?” - -“Bluff be hanged! I’m ready to speak out frankly.” - -The storm-clouds were torn with a flash like a streak of lightning. - -“Then why didn’t you come to me like a man instead of sending that -sneaking old beast—” - -“Hold on, Stephen. What sneaking old beast have I sent?” - -“He wouldn’t have come unless you had set him on me. You needn’t tell me -that.” - -“What the deuce are you talking about?” - -“You know what I’m talking about. There hasn’t been a day since you -came back that I haven’t had a hint.” He was not a man to whom anger -came easily; he began to choke, to strangle with the effort to get -his indignation out. “I’d have given him the toe of my boot long ago -if—if—if—if”—the words positively shivered on his lips—“if—if—if I hadn’t -wanted to see how far you’d go; and, by God! I’ve—I’ve had enough of it!” - -“Enough of what, Stephen?” I endeavored to ask, quietly. - -He knocked his knuckles on the table with a force that almost made them -bleed. - -“My name is Cantyre—do you understand?” - -“Yes, I understand. But tell me, what is it you’ve had enough of?” - -“I’ve had enough of your damned diplomatic slyness in setting that old -reptile on me!” - -I am not quick tempered. The tolerance born of a too painful knowledge of -my own shortcomings obliges me to be slow to wrath. But when anger does -get hold of me it works a change like that of a powerful chemical agent -suddenly infused into the blood. - -I turned and strode out. A few times in the trenches I had been the -victim of this rage to kill—and I had killed. How many I killed at one -time or another I now couldn’t tell you. I saw too red to keep the count. -All I know is that I have stuck my bayonet into heart after heart, and -have dashed out brains with the butt end of my rifle. It is all red -before me still—a great splash of blood on the memory. - -But I had got the habit. In a rage like this to kill some one had become -an instinct. I could not have believed that the impulse would have -pursued me into civil life; but there it was. - -Having flung open the door of my apartment, I marched straight for the -“kitchingette.” Lovey was seated on a stool beside the tiny gas-range, -polishing one of my boots. The boot was like a boxing-glove on his left -hand, while he held the brush suspended in his right, looking up at me -with the piteous appeal of a rabbit pleading for its life. - -His weakness held me back from striking him, but it didn’t stem my words. - -“Who the devil, you old snake, gave you the right to interfere in my -affairs?” - -He simply looked up at me, the boot on one hand, the brush suspended in -the other. His lower lip trembled—his arms began to tremble—but he made -no attempt to defend himself. - -“What have you been saying?” I demanded. “Speak, can’t you?” - -But he couldn’t. I caught him by the collar and dragged him to his feet. - -He had just the strength to stand on them, though his limp hands -continued to hold the boot and the brush. - -“Now are you going to speak? Or shall I kick you out?” - -“You’d kick me out, Slim?” - -The mildness of his voice maddened me. - -“By God, I would!” - -The brush and the boot fell with a dull clatter to the floor. - -“Then I’d better go.” - -He looked about him helplessly till his eyes fell on the old felt hat -hanging on a peg. I watched him as he took it down and crammed it on his -head. There was another helpless searching as if he didn’t know what he -was looking for before he spied an old gnarled stick in a corner. Taking -that in his hand, he fumbled his way into the living-room. - -By the time I had followed him I was beginning to relent. I had not -really meant to have him go, but I was not ready as yet to call him back. -What Cantyre must have thought of me, what Regina must have thought of -me, in egging so poor a creature on to say what I wouldn’t say myself, -roused me as to a more intense degree I used to be roused on hearing of -Belgian women treated with the last indignities, and Canadian soldiers -crucified. Had I stopped to consider I would have seen that Regina didn’t -believe it, and that Cantyre believed it only as far as it gave an outlet -to his complicated inward sufferings; but I didn’t stop to consider. -Perhaps I, too, was seeking an outlet for something repressed. At any -rate, I let the poor old fellow go. - -“What about your things?” I asked, before he had reached the door. - -He turned with a certain dignity. “I sha’n’t want no things.” He added, -however, “Ye do mean me to get out, Slim?” - -I didn’t—but I didn’t want to tell him so. Fury had cooled down without -leaving me ready to retract what I had said. I meant to go after him—when -he had got as far as the lift—but I meant, too, that he should take those -few bleeding steps of anguish. - -He took them—not to the lift, but out into the vestibule. Then I heard a -faint moan; then a sound as if something broke; and then a soft tumbling -to the floor. - -When I got out he was lying all in a little huddled, senseless heap, with -a cut on his forehead where he had struck the key or the door-knob as he -fell. - -It was more than an hour before Cantyre got him back to consciousness; -but it was early morning before he spoke. We had stayed with him through -the night, as he had shown all the signs of passing out. His recovery of -speech somewhere about dawn came as a surprise to us. - -To Cantyre I had given but the slightest explanation of the accident, -being sure, however, that he guessed at what I didn’t say. - -“Told him to get to the dickens out of this, and he was taking me at my -word. Never meant to let him get farther than the lift. Just wanted to -scare him. Sorry now.” - -But Lovey’s account was different. - -About seven in the morning there came a streak of wan light down the -shaft into which the window of his room looked out. Cantyre murmured -something about going back to his own place for a bath. - -“All right,” I agreed, “and you’d better get your breakfast. When you -come back I can do the same. You will come back, won’t you?” - -“Oh, of course! I sha’n’t be gone more than an hour. When he wakes again -give him another teaspoonful of this; but don’t worry him unless he -wakes.” - -And just then Lovey woke. He woke with a dim smile, as a young child -wakes. He smiled at Cantyre first, and then, rolling his soft blue eyes -to the other side of the bed, he smiled at me. - -“What’s up, Slim?” he asked, feebly. “I ain’t sick, am I?” - -“No, Lovey, old son, you’re not sick; you’ve only had a bit of a fall.” - -And then it came back to him. - -“Oh yes. I know. Served me right, didn’t it?” Rolling his eyes now toward -Cantyre, he continued: “I was just a-frightenin’ of Slim, like. Kind o’ -foolish, I was. Said I was goin’ to leave him. Didn’t mean to go no -farther nor the lift.” - -“I didn’t mean to let you go, Lovey,” I groaned, humbly. - -“Of course you didn’t! ’Ow ’uld ye get along without me, I’d like to -know? Didn’t I keep ye straight all them weeks at the Down and Out?” - -“You did, Lovey.” - -“And ’aven’t I saved ye lots o’ times since?” - -“You have, old man.” - -“I wouldn’t leave ye, not for nothink, Slim. We’re buddies as long as we -live, ain’t we? Didn’t ye say that to me yerself?” - -“I did, and I’ll say it again.” - -“Well then, what’s the use o’ talkin’? You mustn’t mind me, sonny. I may -get into a bad temper and speak ’arsh to you; but I don’t mean nothink by -it. I wouldn’t leave ye, not for—” - -The voice trailed away, and presently he was asleep or unconscious again, -I couldn’t be sure which. - -Neither could I be sure whether he believed this version of the tale or -whether he concocted it to comfort me. At any rate, it served its purpose -in that it eased the situation outwardly, enabling Cantyre and me to face -each other without too much self-consciousness. - -As a matter of fact, self-consciousness had hardly embarrassed us -through the night. There had been too much to think about and to do. -The minute I had got Lovey into the living-room and on the couch I had -run for Cantyre, and he had run back with me. In the stress of watching -the old man’s struggle between life and death we felt toward our -personal relations what one feels of an exciting play after returning to -realities. We were back on the old terms; we called each other Stephen -and Frank. Only now and then, when for a half-hour there was nothing to -do but to sit by the bed and watch, did our minds revert to the actual -between us. - -That is, mine reverted to it, and I suppose his did the same. How he -thought of it I cannot tell you; but to me it seemed infinitely trifling. -Here was a dying man whose half-lighted spirit was standing on the -threshold of a fully lighted world. One might have said that the radiance -of the life on which he was entering already shone in the tenderness that -began to dawn in the delicate old face. It was a face growing younger, as -for two or three years it had grown more spiritual. I saw that now and -did justice to it as something big. It was on the level of big things; -and love-affairs between men and women were only on the level of the -small. - -And all over the world big things of the same sort were taking place, -some in the sharp flash of an instant, and some as the slow result of -years. I had seen so much of it with my own eyes that I could call up -vision after vision as I sat alone in the gray morning, watching the -soft, sweet pall settle on the old man’s countenance, while Cantyre took -his bath. - -Queerly, out of the unrecorded, or out of what I didn’t suppose I had -recorded, there flashed a succession of pictures, all of them of the -big, the splendid, the worth while. They came inconsequently, without -connection with each other, without connection that I could see with the -moment I was living through, beyond the fact that they were all on the -scale of the big. - -There was the recollection of a khaki-clad figure lying face downward -on a hillside. I approached him from below, catching sight first of the -soles of the huge boots on which he would never walk again. Coming -nearer, I saw his arms outstretched above his head and his nails dug into -the earth. He was bleeding from the ears. But when I bent over him to see -if he was still alive he said, almost roughly: - -“Leave me alone! I can get along all right. Jephson’s over there.” - -I left him alone because there was nothing I could do for him, but when -I went to Jephson he was lying on his back, his knees drawn up, and -his face twisted into the strangest, most agonized, most heavenly and -ecstatic smile you can imagine on a human face. - -Then there was a young fellow running at the head of his platoon, a slim -young fellow with flaxen hair and a face like a bright angel’s, who had -been a crack sprinter at McGill. He was long after my time, of course; -but I had known his family, and since being in the neighborhood of Ypres -I had seen him from time to time. He was not made for a soldier, but a -brave young soldier he had become, surmounting fear, repulsion, and all -that was hideous to a sensitive soul like his, and establishing those -relations with his men that are dearer in many ways than ties of blood. -The picture I retain, and which came back to me now, is of his running -while his men followed him. It was so common a sight that I would hardly -have watched it if it had been any one but him. And then, for no reason -evident to me, just as if it was part of the order of the day, he threw -up his arms, tottered on a few steps, and went tumbling in the mud, face -downward. - -With the rapidity of a cinema the scene changed to something else I had -witnessed. It was the day I got my dose of shrapnel in the foot. Lying -near me was a colonel named Blenkins. Farther off there lay a sergeant -in his regiment named Day. Day had for Blenkins the kind of admiration -that often exists between man and officer for which there is no other -name than worship. Slowly, painfully, dying, the non-com. dragged himself -over the scarred ground and laid his head on the dying colonel’s heart. -Painfully, slowly, the dying colonel’s hand stole across the dying -non-com.’s breast; and in this embrace they slept. - -Other memories of the same sort came back to me, disconnected, having no -reference to Lovey, or Cantyre, or Regina, or the present, beyond the -fact that they came out of the great life of which comradeship was a -token and the watchwords rang with generosity. - -It was the world of the moment. Such things as I had been recalling had -happened that very night; they had happened that very morning; they would -happen through that day, and through the next day and the next—till their -purpose was accomplished. What that purpose was to be—But that I was to -learn a little later. - -That is to say, a little later I got a light on the outlook which has -been sufficient for me to walk by; but of it I will tell you when the -time comes. - -For in the mean time the tide was rising. As Lovey lay smiling himself -into heaven the national spirit was mounting and mounting, quietly, -tensely, with excitement held in leash till the day of the Lord was very -near at hand. - -All through March events had developed rapidly. On the first day of that -month the government had revealed Germany’s attempt to stir up Mexico -and Japan against the United States. A few days later Germany herself -had admitted the instigation. A few days later still Austria had given -her approval to unlimited submarine warfare. A few days later still -Nicholas was deposed in Petrograd. The country was marching; the world -was marching; the heart was marching. It was difficult for the mind to -keep up with the immensity of such happenings or to appraise them at -their value. I do not assert that I so appraised them; I only beg you to -understand that what I wanted and Cantyre wanted and Regina wanted, each -of us for himself and herself, became curiously insignificant. - -Not that we were working with the same ends in view. By no means! -Cantyre was still opposed to war as war, and bitterly opposed to war if -it involved the United States. That he was kicking against the pricks, -as Regina asserted, I couldn’t see; but that he was feeling the whole -situation intensely was quite evident. - -The result, however, was the same when it came to balancing personal -interests against the public weal. The public weal might mean one thing -to him and another thing to me, but to us both it overrode private -resentment. There was a moratorium of resentment. We might revive it -again; but for the moment it vanished out of sight. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXXI_ - - -So we came to that determining moment when we held our famous patriotic -meeting at the Down and Out. - -I call it famous because it was a new point of departure. In all the -club’s history there had never been a meeting for any other purpose -than to screw the courage up to the cutting out of drink. Other -subjects had been suggested from time to time; but we had stuck to our -last as specialists. We had not been turned aside for philanthropy, -for education, for financial benefit, or even for religion in the -commonly accepted meaning of that word; and the results had been our -justification. But now the flame at the heart of the earth had caught us, -and we were all afire. - -I mean that we were afire with interest, though the interest was against -war as well as for it. But for it or against it, it was the one theme of -our discussion; and with cause. - -The tide was rising higher, and the spirit of the nation floating on the -top. On one of the first days of April the President had asked Congress -to declare a state of war with the German Empire. Two days later the -Senate voted that declaration. A few nights after that we got together to -talk things over at the Down and Out. - -It was a crowded meeting, but as you looked round you in advance you -would have prophesised a dull one. Our fellows came from all over New -York and the suburbs, washed up, brushed up, and in their Sunday clothes. -A few were men of education, but mostly we were of the type generally -classed as hard-working. In age we ran from the seventies down to the -twenties, with a preponderance of chaps between twenty-five and forty. - -What I gathered from remarks before the meeting came to order was a -dogged submission to leadership. - -“If you was to put it up to us guys to decide the whole thing by -ourselves,” Beady Lamont said to me as we stood together, “we’d vote -ag’in’ it. Why? Because we’re over here—mindin’ our own business—with -our kids to take care of—and our business to keep up—and we ain’t got -no call to interfere in what’s no concern of ours. Them fellows over in -Europe never could keep still, and they dunno how. But”—he made one of -his oratorical gestures with his big left hand—“but if the President says -the word—well, we’re behind him. He’s the country, and when the country -speaks there’s no Amur’can who ain’t ready to give all.” - -Perhaps he had said something similar to Andrew Christian, because it was -that point of being ready to give all which, when he spoke, Christian -took as his text. - -I am not giving you an account of the whole meeting; I mean only to -report a little of what Christian said, and its effect upon Cantyre. -Cantyre had come because Regina had insisted; but he sat with the -atmosphere of hot, thundery silence wrapping him round. - -“To be ready to give all is what the world is summoned to,” Christian -declared, when he had been asked to say a few words, “and, oh, boys, I -beg you to believe that it’s time! The call hasn’t come a minute too -soon, and we sha’n’t be a minute too soon in getting ready to obey it.” - -“Some of us ’ain’t got much to give,” a voice came from the back -sitting-room. - -“We’ve all got everything there is, if we only understood it,” Christian -answered, promptly; “but whatever we have, it’s something we hold dear.” - -“If we hold it dear,” another voice objected, “why should we be asked to -give it up?” - -“Because we haven’t known how to use it. Think of all you’ve had in your -own life, Tom, and what you’ve done with it.” - -I didn’t know what Tom had had in his life, but the retort evidently gave -him something to turn over in his mind. - -“There never was a time in the history of the world,” Christian went -on, “when the abundance of blessing was more lavishly poured out upon -mankind. In every country in both hemispheres we’ve had the treasures -of the earth, the sea, and the air positively heaped upon us. Food, -clothing, comfort, security, speed—have become the commonplaces of -existence. The children of to-day grow up to a use of trains and motors -and telephones and airplanes that would have seemed miraculous as short a -time ago as when I was a lad. The standard of living has been so quickly -raised that the poor have been living in a luxury unknown to the rich -of two or three generations ago. The Atlantic has got to be so narrow -that we count the time of our crossing it by hours. The globe has become -so small that young people go round it for a honeymoon. People whose -parents found it difficult to keep one house have two or three, and -even more. There is money everywhere—private fortunes that would have -staggered the imagination of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and Augustus -and Charlemagne all combined. Amusements are so numerous that they pall -on us. In lots of the restaurants of New York you can order a meal for -yourself alone, and feel that neither Napoleon nor Queen Victoria nor the -Czar could possibly have sat down to a better one.” - -“Some could,” one of our objectors declared, with all sorts of -implications in his tone. - -“Oh, I’m not saying there are no inequalities or that there is just -distribution of all this blessing. In fact, my point is that there is -not. All I’m asserting is that the blessing is there, and that the very -windows of heaven have been opened on the world in order to pour it out.” - -“I never saw none of it,” a thin, sour fellow put in, laconically. - -“But, Juleps, that’s what I’m coming to. The blessing was there, and some -of us wouldn’t try to get what belonged to us, and others of us collared -too much, and we treated it very much as children treat pennies in a -scramble. We did far worse than that. We rifled, we stole, we gobbled, -we guzzled, we strutted, we bragged; the fellow that was up kicked the -fellow that was down to keep him down; the fellow that had plenty sneaked -and twisted and cringed and cadged in order to get more; and we’ve all -worked together to create the world that’s been hardly fit to live in, -that every one of us has known. Now, boys, isn’t that so? Speak out -frankly.” - -Since in that crowd there could not be two opinions as to the world being -hardly fit to live in, there was a general murmur of assent. - -“Now wealth is a great good thing; and what I mean by wealth is the -general storehouse, free to us all, which we call the earth and the -atmosphere round it. I don’t have to tell you that it’s a storehouse -crammed in every crack and cranny with the things you and I need for -our enjoyment. And it isn’t a storehouse such as you and I would fill, -which has got only what we could put into it; it’s always producing more. -Production is its law. It’s never idle. It’s incessantly working. The -more we take out of it the more it yields. I don’t say that we can’t -exhaust it in spots by taxing it too much; of course we can. Greed will -exhaust anything, just as it’s exhausting, under our very eyes, our -forests, our fisheries, and our farms. But in general there’s nothing -that will respond to good treatment more surely than the earth, nor give -us back a bigger interest on the labor we put into it.” - -“That’s so,” came from some one who had perhaps been a farmer. - -“And so,” Christian went on, “we’ve had a world that’s given us -everything in even greater abundance than we could use. We’ve had food -to waste; we’ve had clothes for every shade of temperature; we’ve had -coal for our furnaces, and iron for our buildings, and steel for our -ships, and gasolene for our automobiles. We’ve had every invention that -could help us to save time, to save worry, to save labor, to save life. -Childhood has been made more healthy; old age more vigorous. That a race -of young men and young women has been growing up among us of whom we can -say without much exaggeration that humanity is becoming godlike, any one -can see who goes round our schools and colleges.” - -He took a step forward, throwing open his palms in a gesture of demand. - -“But, fellows, what good has all this prodigious plenty been doing us? -Has it made us any better? Have we become any more thankful that we all -had enough and to spare? Have we been any more eager to see that when -we had too much the next man had a sufficiency? Have we rejoiced in -this plenitude as the common delight of every one? Have we seen it as -the manifestation of the God who expresses Himself in all good things, -and Who has given us, as one of the apostles says, all things richly to -enjoy? Has it brought us any nearer Him? Has it given us any increased -sympathy with Him? Or have we made it minister to our very lowest -qualities, to our appetites, to our insolence, to our extravagance, to -our sheer pride that all this was ours, to wallow in, to waste, and to -despise? - -“You know we have done the last. There isn’t a man among us who hasn’t -done it to a greater or less degree. There is hardly a man in New York -who hasn’t lived in the lust of the purely material. You may go through -the world and only find a rarefied creature here and there who hasn’t -reveled and rioted and been silly and vain and arrogant to the fullest -extent that he dared.” - -The wee bye Daisy was sitting in the front row, looking up at the speaker -raptly. - -“I haven’t, Mr. Christian,” he declared, virtuously. - -“Then, Daisy, you’re the rarefied creature I said was an exception. -Most of us have,” he went on when the roar of laughter subsided. “If we -haven’t in one way we have in another. And what has been the result? -Covetousness, hatred, class rivalry, capital and labor bitternesses, war. -And now we’ve come to a place where by a queer and ironical judgment -upon us the struggle for possession is going to take from us all that we -possess.” - -He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and spoke casually, -confidentially. - -“For, boys, that’s what I’m coming to. All the good things we have are -going to be taken away from us. Since we don’t know how to use them, and -won’t learn, we’ve got to give them back.” - -“Oh, I don’t believe that, Mr. Christian,” a common-sense voice cried out -in a tone of expostulation. - -“Peter, you’ll see. You’ll only have to live a few months longer to find -yourself like every one else in America, lacking the simple essentials -you’ve always taken as a matter of course. It isn’t luxuries alone -that you’ll be called on to give up; it will be the common necessaries -of every-day life. The great summons is coming to us, not merely from -our government, not merely from the terrified and stricken nations of -mankind, but from God above—to give everything back to Him. I don’t -say that we shall starve or that we shall freeze; but we may easily be -cold and hungry and driven to a cheese-paring economy we never expected -to practise. The light will be taken from our lamps, the work from our -fingers, the money from our pockets. We shall be searched to the very -soul. There’s nothing we sha’n’t have to surrender. At the very least we -must give tithes of all that we possess, signifying our willingness to -give more.” - -“Some of us ’ain’t got nothing.” - -It was the bitter cry of the dispossessed. - -“Yes, Billy; we’ve all got life; and life, too, we shall have to -offer up. There are some of you chaps sitting here that in all human -probability will be called on to do it.” - -“You won’t, Mr. Christian. You’re too old.” - -“I’m too old, Spud, but my two boys are not; and they’re getting ready -now. Whether it’s harder or easier to let them go rather than for me to -go myself I leave to any of you guys that have kids.” - -“Perhaps it won’t be as bad as what you think.” - -“Jimmy, I’m only reasoning from what I see in the world already. When the -human race is being trodden in the wine-press we in America can’t expect -to be spared. If any of you want to know what’s happening to the kind of -world we’ve made for ourselves let him read the eighteenth chapter of the -book of the Revelation. That chapter might be written of Europe as it is -at this minute. Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. The kings of the -earth stand off from her, crying, Alas! alas! that great city Babylon, -for in one hour is her judgment come! The merchants of the earth weep and -mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more, saying, -Alas! alas! that great city, which was clothed in fine linen and purple -and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, for in -one hour so great riches is come to naught. And every shipmaster, and all -the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, cast dust -on their heads and cry over her, Alas! alas! that great city wherein were -made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for -in one hour she is made desolate.” - -“But that ain’t us.” - -“No, Headlights, that’s not us. I agree with you that there’s a -difference. America is not in the same boat with Europe—not quite—but -very nearly. Perhaps because our crimes are not so black we’ve been given -the chance to do what we have to do more of our own free act. From Europe -what she had has been taken away violently, whether she would or no. We -have the chance to come before the throne of God and offer it back of -our own free will. You see the difference! And, oh, boys, I want you to -do it—” - -“It ain’t for us, Mr. Christian, to decide that.” - -“Oh yes, it is, Beady! It’s for each of us to offer willingly in his own -heart. Not just to the government—not just to the country—not just to -France or Belgium or any other nation that’s in a tight place—but to that -blessed and heavenly Father Who’s giving us this wonderful chance to put -everything into His hands again, and get it all back for redistribution. -Don’t you see? That’s it—the redistribution! A better world has to come -out of this—a juster world—a happier world—a cleaner world. And in that -reconstruction we Americans have the chance to take the lead because -we’re doing it of our own accord. Every other country has some ax to -grind; but we have none. We’ve none except just to be in the big movement -of all mankind upward and forward. But the difference between us and -every other country—unless it’s the British Empire—is that we do it man -by man, each stepping out of the ranks in his turn as if he was the only -one and everything depended on his act. It’s up to you, Beady; it’s up to -me; it’s up to each American singly.” - -“Why ain’t it up to every European singly?” - -“It is. They’re just beginning to understand that it is. The Englishman, -the Frenchman, the Italian, they’re beginning to see that the democracy -we talk so much about isn’t merely a question of the vote—that it isn’t -primarily a question of the vote at all—it’s one of self-government in -the widest and yet the most personal sense. The great summons is not to -mankind in nations; it’s to mankind as individuals. It’s to Tom and Jimmy -and Peter and Headlights and Daisy and every one who has a name. It’s -the individual who makes the country, who forms the army, who becomes the -redemptive element. In proportion as the individual cleanses himself from -the national sin the national sin is wiped out. So it’s by Englishmen and -Englishwomen that England will renew itself—” - -I think it was my old friend, the Irish hospital attendant, who called -out, “What’s England’s national sin?” - -The question brought the speaker to a halt. He seemed to reflect. - -“What’s England’s national sin?” he repeated. “I should say—mind you, I’m -not sitting in judgment on any one or any people—but we’ve all got to -clean our stables, even if it takes the labors of Hercules to accomplish -it—I should say England’s national vice—the vice that’s been eating the -heart out of her body, and the spirit out of her heart—is sensuality.” - -“What’s the matter with France?” - -“I’m not an international physician with a specialty for diagnosis,” -Christian laughed; “but in my opinion France has been corroded through -and through with sordidness. She’s been too petty, too narrow, too mean, -too selfish—” - -“Say, boss, tell us about my country.” - -“You mean, Italy, Tony? Haven’t you got to get rid of your superstition, -and all the degrading things superstition brings with it? I want you -to understand that we’re talking of national errors, not of national -virtues.” - -“Have we got a national error in the United States?” - -“What do you think, Tapley? Isn’t it as plain as the nose on your face? -Isn’t it written all over the country, on every page of every newspaper -you pick up?” - -“What? What is it?” came from several voices at once. - -“Dishonesty!” he cried, loudly. “We Americans have got our good points, -but of them honesty is the very smallest. If any one called us a nation -of sharpers he wouldn’t be very far wrong. Our notion of competition -is to get the better of the other fellow, by foul means if it can’t be -done by fair. That’s the case in private life, and when it comes to -public—well, did you ever hear of anything that we ever undertook as a -people that didn’t have to be investigated before very long? You can -hardly read a daily paper in which the investigation of some public -trust isn’t going on. Dishonesty is stamped deep, deep into the American -character as it is to-day; and for that very reason, if for no other, -we’ve got to give everything back. If we don’t it will be taken from us -by main force; and we’re not of the type to wait for that.” - -He seemed to gather himself together. His face, always benignant, began -to glow with an inward light. - -“But, boys, what I want you to understand is that we can make this act of -offering as a great act of faith. Every good gift and every perfect gift -cometh down! We can take our good gifts and our perfect gifts and hand -them up! We can anticipate their being taken from us by giving them. We -can give them as men who know whence they have been received, and where -they will be held in trust for us—not grudgingly nor of necessity, as the -Bible tells us, for God loveth a cheerful giver. Now is the time for us -to test that love—every man for himself. The appeal is to the individual. -Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken -together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom, according -to the measure that ye mete. For this giving isn’t to men, it’s to -God; it isn’t a portion, it’s all; it isn’t limited to material things, -it includes our love and our life. It’s the great summons; it’s the -great surrender. And—boys—my dear old boys who’ve been saved from other -things—we’ve all been saved for this—for something we never expected, -but which isn’t hard to do when you look at it in the right way—to hand -ourselves back, in body, mind, and possessions, to Him from whom we came, -that He may make a new use of us and begin all over again.” - -And the first thing I saw when he stopped was Cantyre springing forward -to grasp him by the hand. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXXII_ - - -When I got out the streets were already buzzing with a rumor that no -extra had as yet proclaimed. The House of Representatives had followed -the Senate in voting for war, and the President was about to sign the -declaration. - -But I forgot this on arriving at the flat, for Lovey was propped up in -bed, with his thin nose in the air, making little sniffs. - -“I smell it, Slim,” he smiled, as I entered. “Kind of a coffee smell it -is now, with a dash o’ bacon and heggs.” - -“That smell is always round this flat, Lovey,” I said, trying to be -casual. “It’s all the breakfasts you and I have eaten—” - -“Oh no, Slim. You can’t be mistook in this; and besides—” He made a sign -to the man nurse who for the past week or two Cantyre had sent in from -one of his hospitals. “You clear out, d’ye ’ear? I want to talk to my -buddy, private-like.” - -The man strolled out to the living-room, whispering to me as he passed: -“There’s a change in him. I don’t think he’ll last through the night.” - -“Come and sit ’ere, sonny,” Lovey commanded as soon as we were alone. -“I’ve got somethin’ special-like to tell ye. Did ye know,” he went on, -when I was seated beside the bed, “as I’d seen Lizzy—and she ’adn’t her -neck broke at all. She was lovely.” - -“Where?” I asked, to humor him. - -“Right ’ere—right beside that there chair that you’re a-sittin’ in.” - -“When?” - -“Oh, on and off—pretty near all the time now.” - -“You mean that she comes and goes?” - -“No; not just comin’ and goin’. She’s—she’s kind o’ ’ere all the time, -only sometimes I ain’t lookin’.” His face became alight. “There she -is now—and a great long street be’ind ’er. No, it ain’t a street; -it’s just all lovely-like, and Lizzy with ’er neck as straight as a -walkin’-stick—and not a drinkin’-woman no more she don’t look—it’s kind -o’ beautiful like, Slim, only—only I can’t make ye understand.” - -Sighing fretfully over his inability to explain, he lapsed into that -state of which I never was sure whether it was sleep or unconsciousness. - -The coma lasted for a great part of the night. Sending the nurse to lie -down, I sat and watched, chiefly because I had too much on my mind and -in my heart to want to go to bed. Every two or three hours Cantyre stole -in, in his dressing-gown, finding nothing he could do. Once or twice I -was tempted to ask him what he thought of Christian’s talk, but, fearing -to break the spell it might have wrought in him, I refrained. He himself -didn’t mention it, nor did he seem to know that I had observed his -impulsive, shaking hands. - -On one of the occasions when he was with me Lovey opened his eyes -suddenly, beginning to murmur something we couldn’t understand. - -“What is it, old chap?” Cantyre questioned, bending over him and -listening. - -But Lovey was already articulating brokenly. It took two or three -repetitions, or attempts at repetition, for Cantyre to be in a position -to interpret. - -“What’s he trying to say?” I inquired. - -Cantyre pretended to arrange the bottles on the table beside the bed so -as not to have to look at me. - -“He says, or he’s doing his best to say, ‘I didn’t say nothink but what -was for everybody’s good.’” - -It was on my lips to retort, “Perhaps he didn’t.” - -I left that, however, for Cantyre, who went back to his rooms without -comment. - -He returned in the small hours of the morning, and once more we sat, -one on one side of the bed and the other on the other, in what was -practically silence. All I could say of it was that it had become a -sympathetic silence. Why it was sympathetic I didn’t know: but the -unclassified perceptions told me that it was. - -When Lovey opened his eyes again it was with the air of not having been -asleep or otherwise away from us. - -“I saved ye, Slim, didn’t I?” - -“Yes, Lovey, old man, you did.” - -“Kep’ straight so as you would keep straight too?” - -“Yes, Lovey.” - -“Ye’d never ’a’ done it if it ’adn’t been for me?” - -“No, Lovey.” - -“And I’d never ’a’ gone away from ye, Slim. I was just a—a-frightenin’ of -you. I didn’t mean no ’arm at all, I didn’t.” - -“I know, Lovey.” - -He fixed his glazing eyes upon me as he said, “I told ye my name wasn’t -Lovey, didn’t I?” - -“No, but that doesn’t matter.” - -“No, that doesn’t matter now. We’re fellas together, so what’s the -diff?... I don’t care where we sleeps to-night, so long as you’re there, -sonny.... Greeley’s Slip is good enough for mine, if I can snuggle up to -you, like.... Ye don’t mind, do ye?” - -I put my arm round his shoulder, raising him. - -“No, Lovey, I don’t mind. Just snuggle up.” - -“’Old me ’and, sonny.” - -I took his hand in mine as his head rested on my shoulder. - -He gave a long, restful sigh. - -“Lizzy says it’s an awful nice place where she is, and—” - -I felt him slipping down in bed; but Cantyre, who knew more of such cases -than I did, caught him gently round the loins and lowered him. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXXIII_ - - -On coming back the next afternoon from selecting the spot for Lovey’s -grave there was a man in khaki on the train. When I got out at the Grand -Central I saw another. In Fifth Avenue I saw another and another. They -seemed to spring out of the ground, giving a new aspect to the streets. -In the streets that shining thing I had noticed on landing was no longer -to be seen. Silver peace had faded out, while in its place there was -coming—coming by degrees—but coming—that spirit of strong resolve which -is iron and gold. - -Or perhaps I had better say that peace had taken refuge in my dingy -little flat, where Lovey was lying on his bed in his Sunday clothes, -with hands folded on his breast. Peace was in every line of the fragile -figure; in the face there was peace satisfied—peace content—gentle, -abiding, eternal. - -Two days later a little company of us stood by his grave while Rufus -Legrand read the ever-stirring words of the earth to earth. It was the -old comradeship which Lovey himself would have liked—the fellowship of -men who had fought the same fight as he, and were hoping to be faithful -unto death like him—Christian, Straight, little Spender, Beady, Pyn, the -wee bye Daisy, and one or two others. Cantyre alone had none of the dark -memories—and yet the bright and blessed memories—that held the rest of us -together; but Cantyre had his place. - -We had driven out side by side in the same motor, as what the undertaker -called chief mourners. I don’t remember that we uttered a word to each -other till we got out at the grave. - -It was Cantyre who said, then: “I want you to drive back with me, Frank. -There’s somewhere I should like to take you.” - -Reassured by his use of my name, I merely nodded, wondering what he meant. - -I didn’t ask, however; nor did I ask when we were back in the motor again -and on our way to town. I got my first hint as we began to descend the -long avenue in which Sterling Barry had his house. - -As I expected, we stopped at the door. The vacant lot was still vacant, -and among its dead stalks of burdock and succory April was bringing the -first shades of soft green. I thought of Lovey, of course; of our tramp -round Columbus Circle; of my midnight adventure right on this spot. It -was like going back to another life; it was as this life must have seemed -to Lovey and his Lizzy reunited in that world where her neck was as -straight as a walking-stick, and everything was lovely-like. - -Cantyre spoke low, as if he could hardly speak at all. - -“I asked Regina to be in. She’ll be expecting us.” - -And she was. She was expecting us in that kind of agitation which hides -itself under a pretense of being more than usually cool. In sympathy with -Lovey’s memory, I suppose, she was dressed in black, which made a foil -for her vivid lips and eyes. Out of the latter she was unable to keep a -shade of feverish brightness that belied the nonchalance of her greeting. - -She talked about Lovey, about the funeral, about the weather, about the -declaration of war, about the men in khaki who with such surprising -promptness had begun to appear in the streets. She talked rapidly, -anxiously, against time, as it were, and busied herself pouring tea. -Suspecting, doubtless, that Cantyre had something special to say, she was -trying to fight him off from it as long as possible. - -I had taken a seat; he remained standing, his back to the fire. His look -was abstracted, thundery, morose. - -Right in the middle of what Regina was saying about the seizure of the -German ships he dropped with the remark, “You two know what Lovey told -me—what he’s been telling me ever since you both came home.” - -Neither of us had a word to say. We could only stare. You could hear the -mantelpiece clock ticking before he went on again. - -“Well, I’m not going to give you up, Regina,” he declared, aggressively, -then. - -One of her hands was on the handle of the teapot; one was in the act of -taking up a cup. If coloring was ever transmuted into flame, her coloring -was at that moment. There was a dramatic intensity in her quietness. - -“Have I asked you to, Stephen?” - -“No; but—” - -“Have I?” I demanded. - -“No; but—” - -“If Lovey did it it was without any knowledge of mine,” I continued. “I -practically killed him, God forgive me, for doing it!” - -“You’re both off the track,” Cantyre broke in. “You don’t know what -I—what I want to say.” - -“Very well, then, Stephen. Tell us,” Regina said, tranquilly. - -He spoke stammeringly. “It’s—it’s—just this: This is no -time—for—for—love.” - -We stared again, waiting for him to go on. - -“It’s what—what Christian told us two or three nights ago. We’re in a -world where—where love and marriage are no longer the burning questions. -They’re too small. Don’t you see?” - -We continued to stare, but we agreed with him. - -“So—so,” he faltered, “I want you—I want you both—to—to put it all off.” - -“The moratorium of love?” I suggested. - -“The moratorium of everything,” he took up, “but what—what Christian -put before us. I see that now more plainly than I ever saw anything in -my life. We’ve got to give everything up—and get it back—different. We -shall be different, too—and things that we’re struggling over now will be -settled for us, I suppose, without our taking them into our own hands at -all. That’s how I look at it, if you two will agree.” - -“I agree, Stephen,” Regina said, with the same tranquillity. - -“And I, too, old chap.” - -“I’m—I’m going over,” he stumbled on, “with the first medical unit from -Columbia—” - -“Oh, Stephen! How splendid!” - -He contradicted her. “No, it isn’t. I’m not doing it from any splendid -motives whatever. I’m going just to—to try and get out of myself. Don’t -you see—you two? You must see. I’m—I’m sunk in myself; I’ve never been -anything else. That’s what’s been the matter with me. That’s why I never -made any friends. That’s why you, Frank, have never really cared a straw -about me—in spite of all the ways I’ve made up to you; and why you, -Regina, can hardly stand me. But, by God! you’re both going to!” - -With this flash of excitement I sprang up, laying my hand on his arm. - -“We care for you already, old man.” - -“That’s not the point. I’ve—I’ve got to care for myself. I’ve got to find -some sort of self-respect.” - -But Regina, too, sprang up, joining us where we stood on the hearth-rug. -She didn’t touch him; she only stood before him with hands clasped in -front of her. - -“Stephen dear, you’re not doing any more heart-searching than Frank and I -are doing; or than every true American is doing all through the country. -What you say Mr. Christian told you the other night is more or less -consciously in everybody’s soul. We know we’re called to the judgment -seat; and at the judgment seat we stand. That’s all there is to it. -Marriage and giving in marriage for people like us must wait. It’s become -unimportant. There are people—younger than we are for the most part—to -whom it comes first. But for us, with our experience—each of us—you with -yours, Frank with his, I with mine—well, we have other work to do. We -must see this great thing through before we can give our attention to -ourselves. And we shall see it through, sha’n’t we, by doing as you say? -We must give everything up—and wait. Then we shall probably find our -difficulties solved for us. I often think that patience—the power to wait -and be confident—is the most stupendous force in the world.” - -And with few more words than this we left her. I went first, giving them -a little time alone together. But I hadn’t gone very far before, on -accidentally turning round, I saw Cantyre coming down the steps. - - - - -_CHAPTER XXXIV_ - - -It was just a year later that a secret but profound misgiving in my heart -began to be dispelled. - -I call it secret because it was unacknowledged by myself. It would never, -I believe, have come to me of its own accord; it was suggested from -without, and even so I didn’t harbor it consciously. It was only with the -news of Seicheprey, of which the details began to come in toward the end -of April, 1918, that I knew that in the wheat of my hopes and confidences -there had been tares of anxiety and fear. - -I had seen too many of those strapping, splendid fellows not to be -confident and hopeful. But I had also read too much of the folly -of pitting green boys, however magnificently built, against the -seasoned troops of long campaigns, not to have a lurking dread as to -the test. I never voiced the question, not even to my own heart; yet -Satan, the manufacturer of fear, had not failed to formulate it to my -subconsciousness. What if this noble America, so strong, so generous, -so ready to respond to that call which Christian had uttered, so eager -to pour out its all, with both hands, gladly, gaily—what if now, -before the guns of a ruthless and unconquerable foe, she should meet -the disaster that would bring her to the dust? What if those beloved -boys, all sinew and muscle as they were, should go down as I had seen -my fellow-countrymen go down, in heaps that showed the impotence of -valor? I had witnessed so much sacrifice—sacrifice by mistake, sacrifice -by lack of skill, sacrifice by lack of knowledge that could have been -obtained—that when I looked at these lads my heart sank at moments when -it should have been most buoyant. - -Then came Seicheprey, and I knew. - -Then came the Marne, the Ourcq, the Vesle; and I was satisfied. - -For the cause had absorbed me again, heart and soul and mind. I was being -sent all over the country, and sometimes into Canada, to speak for it. In -this way I came to be in a small town in the Middle West—Mendoza happened -to be its name—when, picking up a paper, I saw that a hospital had been -bombed. The next edition reported that two doctors and three or four -nurses had been killed. The next told us their names. Among the names -was.... - -And so he did give his all. - -I didn’t write to Regina; Regina didn’t write to me. She was busy, as I -was busy; but somewhere in the distance and the silence between us there -was a place where our spirits met. - -And when we met in person we still didn’t speak of it. It was too deep, -too sacred, too complicated and strange to go readily into words. It was -easier and more natural to talk of something else. - -That was at Rosyth, on Long Island, at the end of June. Hearing that I -had returned to New York for a rest, Hilda Grace asked me down for the -week-end, just as she had asked me exactly four years before. - -On this occasion she made no attempt to sound me; she mentioned Regina -only to say that she was at the red-and-yellow house on the opposite hill -for a little rest on her part. By disappearing after lunch on Sunday she -gave me to understand that I was free. - -I went to the old Hornblower house by the way I had taken when I had -last come away from it—down Mrs. Grace’s steps to the beach—along the -shore—and up the steps to the lawn where the foxgloves bordered the -scrub-oak. - -I went back to the veranda where I had waited and sat down in one of the -same chairs. Taking out a cigarette, I lighted it and began to smoke. - -Perhaps some one had seen me from a window, for in a little while there -was the click of high heels on the bare steps of the stairway. Then out -on the veranda came a figure too little to be tall and too tall to be -considered little, carrying herself proudly, placing her dainty feet -daintily, but advancing toward me instead of going away. She was dressed -in white, with a scarlet band about her waist and another about her -dashing Panama, of the same shade as her lips. In the opening at the neck -she wore a string of pearls. Lower down, the opening was fastened by a -diamond bar-pin. In her hand she carried a gold-mesh purse, which she -threw carelessly on a table as she passed. - -She met me as any hostess meets a man who comes to make a call. We talked -of the topics of the day, beginning with the weather. From the weather we -passed to the war, and to all our anxieties and humiliations through the -spring. We could do this, however, with a ray of cheerfulness, because -the Château-Thierry salient was beginning to be wiped out. - -“But why do things have to happen the way they do?” I asked her. “If -we’re going to win, why couldn’t we have won from the first? What’s -the use of all this backing and filling, this losing and taking, and -relosing and retaking, the same old ground? Oh, I know there are the -usual explanations as to our not being up to the mark in munitions and -man power; but I mean what is the explanation from the point of view of -an All-Powerful and All-Intelligent—?” - -“Isn’t it the same explanation that applies to every human life?” - -“Well, what’s that?” - -“I don’t know that I can tell you,” she smiled, thoughtfully; “but I do -feel sure that we need our experiences. With minds and natures like ours -we’re not fitted to go straight and simply from point to point. The long -way round has to be our short way home, and—and—the way things happen is -the best way.... Oh, dear, what’s happening?” - -It was admirably staged. The slipping of the string of pearls to the -floor could hardly have been another accident. For me there was but one -thing to do. - -Springing to my feet I stooped and picked the necklet up. Having picked -it up, I put it in my pocket. - -I stood smiling down at her. She sat smiling up at me. There was more in -that smile than a lifetime of words could have uttered. - -But when I was about to pull the pearls out of my pocket again she leaned -forward and said, huskily: “Don’t, Frank. Keep them.” - -I looked at her, puzzled. “Why, Regina?” - -“Because some day you—you’ll give them back to me. Till then they’ll be -yours. They’ll be a symbol—a pledge.” - -“Will it be—some day—some day—soon?” - -“Not so very soon, Frank. I must still have time to—to think of Stephen. -I cared for him—in my way.” - -“I think of him, too,” I said, shakily. “It seems hard that he should -have had to give everything, when I’m—I’m getting everything.” - -“Oh, death isn’t so terrible—or so significant. There wouldn’t be so much -of it if it was. I only mean—but I can’t explain to you. We must get a -little farther on—not only you and I—but our country—our countries—we -must give still more—we must at least offer all even if it isn’t all -taken away from us—before it’s given back to us—renewed—purified.” - -“And then?” - -“Oh, then!” - -But the glow in her face said the rest. - - -THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CITY OF COMRADES *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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