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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes index 6833f05..d7b82bc 100644 --- a/.gitattributes +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -1,3 +1,4 @@ -* text=auto -*.txt text -*.md text +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf @@ -1,39 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crucial Instances, by Edith Wharton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Crucial Instances - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Posting Date: October 20, 2017 [EBook #7516] -Release Date: February, 2005 -First Posted: May 13, 2003 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William -Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - - - - - - - - - - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 7516 *** @@ -5775,372 +5740,4 @@ As for my friend, he is at peace, I doubt not; and his just life and holy death intercede for me, who sinned for his sake alone. - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crucial Instances, by Edith Wharton - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -***** This file should be named 7516-0.txt or 7516-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/7/5/1/7516/ - - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Crucial Instances - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Posting Date: January 28, 2011 [EBook #7516] -Release Date: February, 2005 -First Posted: May 13, 2003 -[Last updated: October 20, 2017] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - - - - -Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William -Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - - - - - - - - - - - CRUCIAL INSTANCES - - BY - - EDITH WHARTON - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS - - -I _The Duchess at Prayer_ - -II _The Angel at the Grave_ - -III _The Recovery_ - -IV _"Copy": A Dialogue_ - -V _The Rembrandt_ - -VI _The Moving Finger_ - -VII _The Confessional_ - - - - -THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER - - -Have you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, -that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest -behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the -activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life -flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the -villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall -windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there -may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the -arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the -disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors.... - - -II - -From the loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue -barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated -vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes -and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted -the balustrade as with fine _laminae_ of gold, vineyards stooped to -the rich valley clasped in hills. The lower slopes were strewn with white -villages like stars spangling a summer dusk; and beyond these, fold on -fold of blue mountain, clear as gauze against the sky. The August air was -lifeless, but it seemed light and vivifying after the atmosphere of the -shrouded rooms through which I had been led. Their chill was on me and I -hugged the sunshine. - -"The Duchess's apartments are beyond," said the old man. - -He was the oldest man I had ever seen; so sucked back into the past that he -seemed more like a memory than a living being. The one trait linking him -with the actual was the fixity with which his small saurian eye held the -pocket that, as I entered, had yielded a _lira_ to the gate-keeper's -child. He went on, without removing his eye: - -"For two hundred years nothing has been changed in the apartments of the -Duchess." - -"And no one lives here now?" - -"No one, sir. The Duke, goes to Como for the summer season." - -I had moved to the other end of the loggia. Below me, through hanging -groves, white roofs and domes flashed like a smile. - -"And that's Vicenza?" - -"_Proprio_!" The old man extended fingers as lean as the hands fading -from the walls behind us. "You see the palace roof over there, just to the -left of the Basilica? The one with the row of statues like birds taking -flight? That's the Duke's town palace, built by Palladio." - -"And does the Duke come there?" - -"Never. In winter he goes to Rome." - -"And the palace and the villa are always closed?" - -"As you see--always." - -"How long has this been?" - -"Since I can remember." - -I looked into his eyes: they were like tarnished metal mirrors reflecting -nothing. "That must be a long time," I said involuntarily. - -"A long time," he assented. - -I looked down on the gardens. An opulence of dahlias overran the -box-borders, between cypresses that cut the sunshine like basalt shafts. -Bees hung above the lavender; lizards sunned themselves on the benches and -slipped through the cracks of the dry basins. Everywhere were vanishing -traces of that fantastic horticulture of which our dull age has lost the -art. Down the alleys maimed statues stretched their arms like rows of -whining beggars; faun-eared terms grinned in the thickets, and above the -laurustinus walls rose the mock ruin of a temple, falling into real ruin -in the bright disintegrating air. The glare was blinding. - -"Let us go in," I said. - -The old man pushed open a heavy door, behind which the cold lurked like a -knife. - -"The Duchess's apartments," he said. - -Overhead and around us the same evanescent frescoes, under foot the same -scagliola volutes, unrolled themselves interminably. Ebony cabinets, with -inlay of precious marbles in cunning perspective, alternated down the -room with the tarnished efflorescence of gilt consoles supporting Chinese -monsters; and from the chimney-panel a gentleman in the Spanish habit -haughtily ignored us. - -"Duke Ercole II.," the old man explained, "by the Genoese Priest." - -It was a narrow-browed face, sallow as a wax effigy, high-nosed and -cautious-lidded, as though modelled by priestly hands; the lips weak and -vain rather than cruel; a quibbling mouth that would have snapped at verbal -errors like a lizard catching flies, but had never learned the shape of a -round yes or no. One of the Duke's hands rested on the head of a dwarf, a -simian creature with pearl ear-rings and fantastic dress; the other turned -the pages of a folio propped on a skull. - -"Beyond is the Duchess's bedroom," the old man reminded me. - -Here the shutters admitted but two narrow shafts of light, gold bars -deepening the subaqueous gloom. On a dais the bedstead, grim, nuptial, -official, lifted its baldachin; a yellow Christ agonized between the -curtains, and across the room a lady smiled at us from the chimney-breast. - -The old man unbarred a shutter and the light touched her face. Such a face -it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, -and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo's lenient -goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath of a seventeenth century -dress! - -"No one has slept here," said the old man, "since the Duchess Violante." - -"And she was--?" - -"The lady there--first Duchess of Duke Ercole II." - -He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked a door at the farther end of the -room. "The chapel," he said. "This is the Duchess's balcony." As I turned -to follow him the Duchess tossed me a sidelong smile. - -I stepped into a grated tribune above a chapel festooned with stucco. -Pictures of bituminous saints mouldered between the pilasters; the -artificial roses in the altar-vases were gray with dust and age, and under -the cobwebby rosettes of the vaulting a bird's nest clung. Before the altar -stood a row of tattered arm-chairs, and I drew back at sight of a figure -kneeling near them. - -"The Duchess," the old man whispered. "By the Cavaliere Bernini." - -It was the image of a woman in furred robes and spreading fraise, her hand -lifted, her face addressed to the tabernacle. There was a strangeness in -the sight of that immovable presence locked in prayer before an abandoned -shrine. Her face was hidden, and I wondered whether it were grief or -gratitude that raised her hands and drew her eyes to the altar, where no -living prayer joined her marble invocation. I followed my guide down the -tribune steps, impatient to see what mystic version of such terrestrial -graces the ingenious artist had found--the Cavaliere was master of such -arts. The Duchess's attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs -fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how -admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope -of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face--it was a -frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so possessed a human -countenance.... - -The old man crossed himself and shuffled his feet on the marble. - -"The Duchess Violante," he repeated. - -"The same as in the picture?" - -"Eh--the same." - -"But the face--what does it mean?" - -He shrugged his shoulders and turned deaf eyes on me. Then he shot a glance -round the sepulchral place, clutched my sleeve and said, close to my ear: -"It was not always so." - -"What was not?" - -"The face--so terrible." - -"The Duchess's face?" - -"The statue's. It changed after--" - -"After?" - -"It was put here." - -"The statue's face _changed_--?" - -He mistook my bewilderment for incredulity and his confidential finger -dropped from my sleeve. "Eh, that's the story. I tell what I've heard. What -do I know?" He resumed his senile shuffle across the marble. "This is a bad -place to stay in--no one comes here. It's too cold. But the gentleman said, -_I must see everything_!" - -I let the _lire_ sound. "So I must--and hear everything. This story, -now--from whom did you have it?" - -His hand stole back. "One that saw it, by God!" - -"That saw it?" - -"My grandmother, then. I'm a very old man." - -"Your grandmother? Your grandmother was--?" - -"The Duchess's serving girl, with respect to you." - -"Your grandmother? Two hundred years ago?" - -"Is it too long ago? That's as God pleases. I am a very old man and she -was a very old woman when I was born. When she died she was as black as a -miraculous Virgin and her breath whistled like the wind in a keyhole. She -told me the story when I was a little boy. She told it to me out there in -the garden, on a bench by the fish-pond, one summer night of the year she -died. It must be true, for I can show you the very bench we sat on...." - - -III - -Noon lay heavier on the gardens; not our live humming warmth but the stale -exhalation of dead summers. The very statues seemed to drowse like watchers -by a death-bed. Lizards shot out of the cracked soil like flames and the -bench in the laurustinus-niche was strewn with the blue varnished bodies of -dead flies. Before us lay the fish-pond, a yellow marble slab above rotting -secrets. The villa looked across it, composed as a dead face, with the -cypresses flanking it for candles.... - - -IV - -"Impossible, you say, that my mother's mother should have been the -Duchess's maid? What do I know? It is so long since anything has happened -here that the old things seem nearer, perhaps, than to those who live in -cities.... But how else did she know about the statue then? Answer me that, -sir! That she saw with her eyes, I can swear to, and never smiled again, -so she told me, till they put her first child in her arms ... for she was -taken to wife by the steward's son, Antonio, the same who had carried -the letters.... But where am I? Ah, well ... she was a mere slip, you -understand, my grandmother, when the Duchess died, a niece of the upper -maid, Nencia, and suffered about the Duchess because of her pranks and the -funny songs she knew. It's possible, you think, she may have heard from -others what she afterward fancied she had seen herself? How that is, it's -not for an unlettered man to say; though indeed I myself seem to have seen -many of the things she told me. This is a strange place. No one comes here, -nothing changes, and the old memories stand up as distinct as the statues -in the garden.... - -"It began the summer after they came back from the Brenta. Duke Ercole had -married the lady from Venice, you must know; it was a gay city, then, I'm -told, with laughter and music on the water, and the days slipped by like -boats running with the tide. Well, to humor her he took her back the first -autumn to the Brenta. Her father, it appears, had a grand palace there, -with such gardens, bowling-alleys, grottoes and casinos as never were; -gondolas bobbing at the water-gates, a stable full of gilt coaches, a -theatre full of players, and kitchens and offices full of cooks and -lackeys to serve up chocolate all day long to the fine ladies in masks -and furbelows, with their pet dogs and their blackamoors and their -_abates_. Eh! I know it all as if I'd been there, for Nencia, you see, -my grandmother's aunt, travelled with the Duchess, and came back with her -eyes round as platters, and not a word to say for the rest of the year to -any of the lads who'd courted her here in Vicenza. - -"What happened there I don't know--my grandmother could never get at -the rights of it, for Nencia was mute as a fish where her lady was -concerned--but when they came back to Vicenza the Duke ordered the villa -set in order; and in the spring he brought the Duchess here and left her. -She looked happy enough, my grandmother said, and seemed no object for -pity. Perhaps, after all, it was better than being shut up in Vicenza, -in the tall painted rooms where priests came and went as softly as cats -prowling for birds, and the Duke was forever closeted in his library, -talking with learned men. The Duke was a scholar; you noticed he was -painted with a book? Well, those that can read 'em make out that they're -full of wonderful things; as a man that's been to a fair across the -mountains will always tell his people at home it was beyond anything -_they'll_ ever see. As for the Duchess, she was all for music, -play-acting and young company. The Duke was a silent man, stepping quietly, -with his eyes down, as though he'd just come from confession; when the -Duchess's lap-dog yapped at his heels he danced like a man in a swarm of -hornets; when the Duchess laughed he winced as if you'd drawn a diamond -across a window-pane. And the Duchess was always laughing. - -"When she first came to the villa she was very busy laying out the gardens, -designing grottoes, planting groves and planning all manner of agreeable -surprises in the way of water-jets that drenched you unexpectedly, and -hermits in caves, and wild men that jumped at you out of thickets. She had -a very pretty taste in such matters, but after a while she tired of it, and -there being no one for her to talk to but her maids and the chaplain--a -clumsy man deep in his books--why, she would have strolling players out -from Vicenza, mountebanks and fortune-tellers from the market-place, -travelling doctors and astrologers, and all manner of trained animals. -Still it could be seen that the poor lady pined for company, and her -waiting women, who loved her, were glad when the Cavaliere Ascanio, the -Duke's cousin, came to live at the vineyard across the valley--you see -the pinkish house over there in the mulberries, with a red roof and a -pigeon-cote? - -"The Cavaliere Ascanio was a cadet of one of the great Venetian houses, -_pezzi grossi_ of the Golden Book. He had been meant for the Church, -I believe, but what! he set fighting above praying and cast in his lot with -the captain of the Duke of Mantua's _bravi_, himself a Venetian of -good standing, but a little at odds with the law. Well, the next I know, -the Cavaliere was in Venice again, perhaps not in good odor on account of -his connection with the gentleman I speak of. Some say he tried to carry -off a nun from the convent of Santa Croce; how that may be I can't say; but -my grandmother declared he had enemies there, and the end of it was that on -some pretext or other the Ten banished him to Vicenza. There, of course, -the Duke, being his kinsman, had to show him a civil face; and that was how -he first came to the villa. - -"He was a fine young man, beautiful as a Saint Sebastian, a rare musician, -who sang his own songs to the lute in a way that used to make my -grandmother's heart melt and run through her body like mulled wine. He -had a good word for everybody, too, and was always dressed in the French -fashion, and smelt as sweet as a bean-field; and every soul about the place -welcomed the sight of him. - -"Well, the Duchess, it seemed, welcomed it too; youth will have youth, -and laughter turns to laughter; and the two matched each other like the -candlesticks on an altar. The Duchess--you've seen her portrait--but to -hear my grandmother, sir, it no more approached her than a weed comes up to -a rose. The Cavaliere, indeed, as became a poet, paragoned her in his song -to all the pagan goddesses of antiquity; and doubtless these were finer -to look at than mere women; but so, it seemed, was she; for, to believe -my grandmother, she made other women look no more than the big French -fashion-doll that used to be shown on Ascension days in the Piazza. She -was one, at any rate, that needed no outlandish finery to beautify her; -whatever dress she wore became her as feathers fit the bird; and her hair -didn't get its color by bleaching on the housetop. It glittered of itself -like the threads in an Easter chasuble, and her skin was whiter than fine -wheaten bread and her mouth as sweet as a ripe fig.... - -"Well, sir, you could no more keep them apart than the bees and the -lavender. They were always together, singing, bowling, playing cup and -ball, walking in the gardens, visiting the aviaries and petting her grace's -trick-dogs and monkeys. The Duchess was as gay as a foal, always playing -pranks and laughing, tricking out her animals like comedians, disguising -herself as a peasant or a nun (you should have seen her one day pass -herself off to the chaplain as a mendicant sister), or teaching the lads -and girls of the vineyards to dance and sing madrigals together. The -Cavaliere had a singular ingenuity in planning such entertainments and the -days were hardly long enough for their diversions. But toward the end of -the summer the Duchess fell quiet and would hear only sad music, and the -two sat much together in the gazebo at the end of the garden. It was there -the Duke found them one day when he drove out from Vicenza in his gilt -coach. He came but once or twice a year to the villa, and it was, as my -grandmother said, just a part of her poor lady's ill-luck to be wearing -that day the Venetian habit, which uncovered the shoulders in a way the -Duke always scowled at, and her curls loose and powdered with gold. Well, -the three drank chocolate in the gazebo, and what happened no one knew, -except that the Duke, on taking leave, gave his cousin a seat in his -carriage; but the Cavaliere never returned. - -"Winter approaching, and the poor lady thus finding herself once more -alone, it was surmised among her women that she must fall into a deeper -depression of spirits. But far from this being the case, she displayed such -cheerfulness and equanimity of humor that my grandmother, for one, was -half-vexed with her for giving no more thought to the poor young man who, -all this time, was eating his heart out in the house across the valley. It -is true she quitted her gold-laced gowns and wore a veil over her head; but -Nencia would have it she looked the lovelier for the change and so gave the -Duke greater displeasure. Certain it is that the Duke drove out oftener to -the villa, and though he found his lady always engaged in some innocent -pursuit, such as embroidery or music, or playing games with her young -women, yet he always went away with a sour look and a whispered word to -the chaplain. Now as to the chaplain, my grandmother owned there had been -a time when her grace had not handled him over-wisely. For, according to -Nencia, it seems that his reverence, who seldom approached the Duchess, -being buried in his library like a mouse in a cheese--well, one day he made -bold to appeal to her for a sum of money, a large sum, Nencia said, to buy -certain tall books, a chest full of them, that a foreign pedlar had brought -him; whereupon the Duchess, who could never abide a book, breaks out at -him with a laugh and a flash of her old spirit--'Holy Mother of God, must -I have more books about me? I was nearly smothered with them in the first -year of my marriage;' and the chaplain turning red at the affront, she -added: 'You may buy them and welcome, my good chaplain, if you can find -the money; but as for me, I am yet seeking a way to pay for my turquoise -necklace, and the statue of Daphne at the end of the bowling-green, and -the Indian parrot that my black boy brought me last Michaelmas from the -Bohemians--so you see I've no money to waste on trifles;' and as he backs -out awkwardly she tosses at him over her shoulder: 'You should pray to -Saint Blandina to open the Duke's pocket!' to which he returned, very -quietly, 'Your excellency's suggestion is an admirable one, and I have -already entreated that blessed martyr to open the Duke's understanding.' - -"Thereat, Nencia said (who was standing by), the Duchess flushed -wonderfully red and waved him out of the room; and then 'Quick!' she cried -to my grandmother (who was too glad to run on such errands), 'Call me -Antonio, the gardener's boy, to the box-garden; I've a word to say to him -about the new clove-carnations....' - -"Now I may not have told you, sir, that in the crypt under the chapel there -has stood, for more generations than a man can count, a stone coffin -containing a thighbone of the blessed Saint Blandina of Lyons, a relic -offered, I've been told, by some great Duke of France to one of our own -dukes when they fought the Turk together; and the object, ever since, of -particular veneration in this illustrious family. Now, since the Duchess -had been left to herself, it was observed she affected a fervent devotion -to this relic, praying often in the chapel and even causing the stone slab -that covered the entrance to the crypt to be replaced by a wooden one, -that she might at will descend and kneel by the coffin. This was matter of -edification to all the household and should have been peculiarly pleasing -to the chaplain; but, with respect to you, he was the kind of man who -brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple. - -"However that may be, the Duchess, when she dismissed him, was seen running -to the garden, where she talked earnestly with the boy Antonio about the -new clove-carnations; and the rest of the day she sat indoors and played -sweetly on the virginal. Now Nencia always had it in mind that her grace -had made a mistake in refusing that request of the chaplain's; but she said -nothing, for to talk reason to the Duchess was of no more use than praying -for rain in a drought. - -"Winter came early that year, there was snow on the hills by All Souls, -the wind stripped the gardens, and the lemon-trees were nipped in the -lemon-house. The Duchess kept her room in this black season, sitting over -the fire, embroidering, reading books of devotion (which was a thing she -had never done) and praying frequently in the chapel. As for the chaplain, -it was a place he never set foot in but to say mass in the morning, -with the Duchess overhead in the tribune, and the servants aching with -rheumatism on the marble floor. The chaplain himself hated the cold, and -galloped through the mass like a man with witches after him. The rest of -the day he spent in his library, over a brazier, with his eternal books.... - -"You'll wonder, sir, if I'm ever to get to the gist of the story; and I've -gone slowly, I own, for fear of what's coming. Well, the winter was long -and hard. When it fell cold the Duke ceased to come out from Vicenza, -and not a soul had the Duchess to speak to but her maid-servants and the -gardeners about the place. Yet it was wonderful, my grandmother said, how -she kept her brave colors and her spirits; only it was remarked that she -prayed longer in the chapel, where a brazier was kept burning for her all -day. When the young are denied their natural pleasures they turn often -enough to religion; and it was a mercy, as my grandmother said, that she, -who had scarce a live sinner to speak to, should take such comfort in a -dead saint. - -"My grandmother seldom saw her that winter, for though she showed a brave -front to all she kept more and more to herself, choosing to have only -Nencia about her and dismissing even her when she went to pray. For -her devotion had that mark of true piety, that she wished it not to be -observed; so that Nencia had strict orders, on the chaplain's approach, to -warn her mistress if she happened to be in prayer. - -"Well, the winter passed, and spring was well forward, when my grandmother -one evening had a bad fright. That it was her own fault I won't deny, for -she'd been down the lime-walk with Antonio when her aunt fancied her to be -stitching in her chamber; and seeing a sudden light in Nencia's window, she -took fright lest her disobedience be found out, and ran up quickly through -the laurel-grove to the house. Her way lay by the chapel, and as she crept -past it, meaning to slip in through the scullery, and groping her way, for -the dark had fallen and the moon was scarce up, she heard a crash close -behind her, as though someone had dropped from a window of the chapel. The -young fool's heart turned over, but she looked round as she ran, and there, -sure enough, was a man scuttling across the terrace; and as he doubled -the corner of the house my grandmother swore she caught the whisk of the -chaplain's skirts. Now that was a strange thing, certainly; for why should -the chaplain be getting out of the chapel window when he might have passed -through the door? For you may have noticed, sir, there's a door leads from -the chapel into the saloon on the ground floor; the only other way out -being through the Duchess's tribune. - -"Well, my grandmother turned the matter over, and next time she met Antonio -in the lime-walk (which, by reason of her fright, was not for some days) -she laid before him what had happened; but to her surprise he only laughed -and said, 'You little simpleton, he wasn't getting out of the window, he -was trying to look in'; and not another word could she get from him. - -"So the season moved on to Easter, and news came the Duke had gone to Rome -for that holy festivity. His comings and goings made no change at the -villa, and yet there was no one there but felt easier to think his yellow -face was on the far side of the Apennines, unless perhaps it was the -chaplain. - -"Well, it was one day in May that the Duchess, who had walked long with -Nencia on the terrace, rejoicing at the sweetness of the prospect and the -pleasant scent of the gilly-flowers in the stone vases, the Duchess toward -midday withdrew to her rooms, giving orders that her dinner should be -served in her bed-chamber. My grandmother helped to carry in the dishes, -and observed, she said, the singular beauty of the Duchess, who in honor -of the fine weather had put on a gown of shot-silver and hung her bare -shoulders with pearls, so that she looked fit to dance at court with an -emperor. She had ordered, too, a rare repast for a lady that heeded so -little what she ate--jellies, game-pasties, fruits in syrup, spiced cakes -and a flagon of Greek wine; and she nodded and clapped her hands as the -women set it before her, saying again and again, 'I shall eat well to-day.' - -"But presently another mood seized her; she turned from the table, called -for her rosary, and said to Nencia: 'The fine weather has made me neglect -my devotions. I must say a litany before I dine.' - -"She ordered the women out and barred the door, as her custom was; and -Nencia and my grandmother went down-stairs to work in the linen-room. - -"Now the linen-room gives on the court-yard, and suddenly my grandmother -saw a strange sight approaching. First up the avenue came the Duke's -carriage (whom all thought to be in Rome), and after it, drawn by a long -string of mules and oxen, a cart carrying what looked like a kneeling -figure wrapped in death-clothes. The strangeness of it struck the girl dumb -and the Duke's coach was at the door before she had the wit to cry out that -it was coming. Nencia, when she saw it, went white and ran out of the room. -My grandmother followed, scared by her face, and the two fled along the -corridor to the chapel. On the way they met the chaplain, deep in a book, -who asked in surprise where they were running, and when they said, to -announce the Duke's arrival, he fell into such astonishment and asked them -so many questions and uttered such ohs and ahs, that by the time he let -them by the Duke was at their heels. Nencia reached the chapel-door first -and cried out that the Duke was coming; and before she had a reply he was -at her side, with the chaplain following. - -"A moment later the door opened and there stood the Duchess. She held her -rosary in one hand and had drawn a scarf over her shoulders; but they shone -through it like the moon in a mist, and her countenance sparkled with -beauty. - -"The Duke took her hand with a bow. 'Madam,' he said, 'I could have had no -greater happiness than thus to surprise you at your devotions.' - -"'My own happiness,' she replied, 'would have been greater had your -excellency prolonged it by giving me notice of your arrival.' - -"'Had you expected me, Madam,' said he, 'your appearance could scarcely -have been more fitted to the occasion. Few ladies of your youth and beauty -array themselves to venerate a saint as they would to welcome a lover.' - -"'Sir,' she answered, 'having never enjoyed the latter opportunity, I am -constrained to make the most of the former.--What's that?' she cried, -falling back, and the rosary dropped from her hand. - -"There was a loud noise at the other end of the saloon, as of a heavy -object being dragged down the passage; and presently a dozen men were seen -haling across the threshold the shrouded thing from the oxcart. The Duke -waved his hand toward it. 'That,' said he, 'Madam, is a tribute to your -extraordinary piety. I have heard with peculiar satisfaction of your -devotion to the blessed relics in this chapel, and to commemorate a zeal -which neither the rigors of winter nor the sultriness of summer could abate -I have ordered a sculptured image of you, marvellously executed by the -Cavaliere Bernini, to be placed before the altar over the entrance to the -crypt.' - -"The Duchess, who had grown pale, nevertheless smiled playfully at this. -'As to commemorating my piety," she said, 'I recognize there one of your -excellency's pleasantries--' - -"'A pleasantry?' the Duke interrupted; and he made a sign to the men, who -had now reached the threshold of the chapel. In an instant the wrappings -fell from the figure, and there knelt the Duchess to the life. A cry of -wonder rose from all, but the Duchess herself stood whiter than the marble. - -"'You will see,' says the Duke, 'this is no pleasantry, but a triumph -of the incomparable Bernini's chisel. The likeness was done from your -miniature portrait by the divine Elisabetta Sirani, which I sent to the -master some six months ago, with what results all must admire.' - -"'Six months!' cried the Duchess, and seemed about to fall; but his -excellency caught her by the hand. - -"'Nothing,' he said, 'could better please me than the excessive emotion you -display, for true piety is ever modest, and your thanks could not take a -form that better became you. And now,' says he to the men, 'let the image -be put in place.' - -"By this, life seemed to have returned to the Duchess, and she answered him -with a deep reverence. 'That I should be overcome by so unexpected a grace, -your excellency admits to be natural; but what honors you accord it is my -privilege to accept, and I entreat only that in mercy to my modesty the -image be placed in the remotest part of the chapel.' - -"At that the Duke darkened. 'What! You would have this masterpiece of a -renowned chisel, which, I disguise not, cost me the price of a good -vineyard in gold pieces, you would have it thrust out of sight like the -work of a village stonecutter?' - -"'It is my semblance, not the sculptor's work, I desire to conceal.' - -"'It you are fit for my house, Madam, you are fit for God's, and entitled -to the place of honor in both. Bring the statue forward, you dawdlers!' he -called out to the men. - -"The Duchess fell back submissively. 'You are right, sir, as always; but I -would at least have the image stand on the left of the altar, that, looking -up, it may behold your excellency's seat in the tribune.' - -"'A pretty thought, Madam, for which I thank you; but I design before long -to put my companion image on the other side of the altar; and the wife's -place, as you know, is at her husband's right hand.' - -"'True, my lord--but, again, if my poor presentment is to have the -unmerited honor of kneeling beside yours, why not place both before the -altar, where it is our habit to pray in life?' - -"'And where, Madam, should we kneel if they took our places? Besides,' says -the Duke, still speaking very blandly, 'I have a more particular purpose -in placing your image over the entrance to the crypt; for not only would I -thereby mark your special devotion to the blessed saint who rests there, -but, by sealing up the opening in the pavement, would assure the perpetual -preservation of that holy martyr's bones, which hitherto have been too -thoughtlessly exposed to sacrilegious attempts.' - -"'What attempts, my lord?' cries the Duchess. 'No one enters this chapel -without my leave.' - -"'So I have understood, and can well believe from what I have learned of -your piety; yet at night a malefactor might break in through a window, -Madam, and your excellency not know it.' - -"'I'm a light sleeper,' said the Duchess. - -"The Duke looked at her gravely. 'Indeed?' said he. 'A bad sign at your -age. I must see that you are provided with a sleeping-draught.' - -"The Duchess's eyes filled. 'You would deprive me, then, of the consolation -of visiting those venerable relics?' - -"'I would have you keep eternal guard over them, knowing no one to whose -care they may more fittingly be entrusted.' - -"By this the image was brought close to the wooden slab that covered the -entrance to the crypt, when the Duchess, springing forward, placed herself -in the way. - -"'Sir, let the statue be put in place to-morrow, and suffer me, to-night, -to say a last prayer beside those holy bones.' - -"The Duke stepped instantly to her side. 'Well thought, Madam; I will go -down with you now, and we will pray together.' - -"'Sir, your long absences have, alas! given me the habit of solitary -devotion, and I confess that any presence is distracting.' - -"'Madam, I accept your rebuke. Hitherto, it is true, the duties of my -station have constrained me to long absences; but henceforward I remain -with you while you live. Shall we go down into the crypt together?" - -"'No; for I fear for your excellency's ague. The air there is excessively -damp.' - -"'The more reason you should no longer be exposed to it; and to prevent the -intemperance of your zeal I will at once make the place inaccessible.' - -"The Duchess at this fell on her knees on the slab, weeping excessively and -lifting her hands to heaven. - -"'Oh,' she cried, 'you are cruel, sir, to deprive me of access to the -sacred relics that have enabled me to support with resignation the solitude -to which your excellency's duties have condemned me; and if prayer and -meditation give me any authority to pronounce on such matters, suffer me to -warn you, sir, that I fear the blessed Saint Blandina will punish us for -thus abandoning her venerable remains!' - -"The Duke at this seemed to pause, for he was a pious man, and my -grandmother thought she saw him exchange a glance with the chaplain; who, -stepping timidly forward, with his eyes on the ground, said, 'There is -indeed much wisdom in her excellency's words, but I would suggest, sir, -that her pious wish might be met, and the saint more conspicuously honored, -by transferring the relics from the crypt to a place beneath the altar.' - -"'True!' cried the Duke, 'and it shall be done at once.' - -"But thereat the Duchess rose to her feet with a terrible look. - -"'No,' she cried, 'by the body of God! For it shall not be said that, after -your excellency has chosen to deny every request I addressed to him, I owe -his consent to the solicitation of another!' - -"The chaplain turned red and the Duke yellow, and for a moment neither -spoke. - -"Then the Duke said, 'Here are words enough, Madam. Do you wish the relics -brought up from the crypt?' - -"'I wish nothing that I owe to another's intervention!' - -"'Put the image in place then,' says the Duke furiously; and handed her -grace to a chair. - -"She sat there, my grandmother said, straight as an arrow, her hands -locked, her head high, her eyes on the Duke, while the statue was dragged -to its place; then she stood up and turned away. As she passed by Nencia, -'Call me Antonio,' she whispered; but before the words were out of her -mouth the Duke stepped between them. - -"'Madam,' says he, all smiles now, 'I have travelled straight from Rome to -bring you the sooner this proof of my esteem. I lay last night at Monselice -and have been on the road since daybreak. Will you not invite me to -supper?' - -"'Surely, my lord,' said the Duchess. 'It shall be laid in the -dining-parlor within the hour.' - -"'Why not in your chamber and at once, Madam? Since I believe it is your -custom to sup there.' - -"'In my chamber?' says the Duchess, in disorder. - -"'Have you anything against it?' he asked. - -"'Assuredly not, sir, if you will give me time to prepare myself.' - -"'I will wait in your cabinet,' said the Duke. - -"At that, said my grandmother, the Duchess gave one look, as the souls in -hell may have looked when the gates closed on our Lord; then she called -Nencia and passed to her chamber. - -"What happened there my grandmother could never learn, but that the -Duchess, in great haste, dressed herself with extraordinary splendor, -powdering her hair with gold, painting her face and bosom, and covering -herself with jewels till she shone like our Lady of Loreto; and hardly -were these preparations complete when the Duke entered from the cabinet, -followed by the servants carrying supper. Thereupon the Duchess dismissed -Nencia, and what follows my grandmother learned from a pantry-lad who -brought up the dishes and waited in the cabinet; for only the Duke's -body-servant entered the bed-chamber. - -"Well, according to this boy, sir, who was looking and listening with his -whole body, as it were, because he had never before been suffered so near -the Duchess, it appears that the noble couple sat down in great good humor, -the Duchess playfully reproving her husband for his long absence, while the -Duke swore that to look so beautiful was the best way of punishing him. -In this tone the talk continued, with such gay sallies on the part of the -Duchess, such tender advances on the Duke's, that the lad declared they -were for all the world like a pair of lovers courting on a summer's night -in the vineyard; and so it went till the servant brought in the mulled -wine. - -"'Ah,' the Duke was saying at that moment, 'this agreeable evening repays -me for the many dull ones I have spent away from you; nor do I remember -to have enjoyed such laughter since the afternoon last year when we drank -chocolate in the gazebo with my cousin Ascanio. And that reminds me,' he -said, 'is my cousin in good health?' - -"'I have no reports of it,' says the Duchess. 'But your excellency should -taste these figs stewed in malmsey--' - -"'I am in the mood to taste whatever you offer,' said he; and as she helped -him to the figs he added, 'If my enjoyment were not complete as it is, -I could almost wish my cousin Ascanio were with us. The fellow is rare -good company at supper. What do you say, Madam? I hear he's still in the -country; shall we send for him to join us?' - -"'Ah,' said the Duchess, with a sigh and a languishing look, 'I see your -excellency wearies of me already.' - -"'I, Madam? Ascanio is a capital good fellow, but to my mind his chief -merit at this moment is his absence. It inclines me so tenderly to him -that, by God, I could empty a glass to his good health.' - -"With that the Duke caught up his goblet and signed to the servant to fill -the Duchess's. - -"'Here's to the cousin,' he cried, standing, 'who has the good taste to -stay away when he's not wanted. I drink to his very long life--and you, -Madam?' - -"At this the Duchess, who had sat staring at him with a changed face, rose -also and lifted her glass to her lips. - -"'And I to his happy death,' says she in a wild voice; and as she spoke the -empty goblet dropped from her hand and she fell face down on the floor. - -"The Duke shouted to her women that she had swooned, and they came and -lifted her to the bed.... She suffered horribly all night, Nencia said, -twisting herself like a heretic at the stake, but without a word escaping -her. The Duke watched by her, and toward daylight sent for the chaplain; -but by this she was unconscious and, her teeth being locked, our Lord's -body could not be passed through them. - - * * * * * - -"The Duke announced to his relations that his lady had died after partaking -too freely of spiced wine and an omelet of carp's roe, at a supper she had -prepared in honor of his return; and the next year he brought home a new -Duchess, who gave him a son and five daughters...." - - -V - -The sky had turned to a steel gray, against which the villa stood out -sallow and inscrutable. A wind strayed through the gardens, loosening here -and there a yellow leaf from the sycamores; and the hills across the valley -were purple as thunder-clouds. - - * * * * * - -"And the statue--?" I asked. - -"Ah, the statue. Well, sir, this is what my grandmother told me, here on -this very bench where we're sitting. The poor child, who worshipped the -Duchess as a girl of her years will worship a beautiful kind mistress, -spent a night of horror, you may fancy, shut out from her lady's room, -hearing the cries that came from it, and seeing, as she crouched in her -corner, the women rush to and fro with wild looks, the Duke's lean face in -the door, and the chaplain skulking in the antechamber with his eyes on -his breviary. No one minded her that night or the next morning; and toward -dusk, when it became known the Duchess was no more, the poor girl felt the -pious wish to say a prayer for her dead mistress. She crept to the chapel -and stole in unobserved. The place was empty and dim, but as she advanced -she heard a low moaning, and coming in front of the statue she saw that -its face, the day before so sweet and smiling, had the look on it that you -know--and the moaning seemed to come from its lips. My grandmother turned -cold, but something, she said afterward, kept her from calling or shrieking -out, and she turned and ran from the place. In the passage she fell in a -swoon; and when she came to her senses, in her own chamber, she heard that -the Duke had locked the chapel door and forbidden any to set foot there.... -The place was never opened again till the Duke died, some ten years later; -and then it was that the other servants, going in with the new heir, -saw for the first time the horror that my grandmother had kept in her -bosom...." - -"And the crypt?" I asked. "Has it never been opened?" - -"Heaven forbid, sir!" cried the old man, crossing himself. "Was it not the -Duchess's express wish that the relics should not be disturbed?" - - - - -THE ANGEL AT THE GRAVE - - -The House stood a few yards back from the elm-shaded village street, -in that semi-publicity sometimes cited as a democratic protest against -old-world standards of domestic exclusiveness. This candid exposure to -the public eye is more probably a result of the gregariousness which, in -the New England bosom, oddly coexists with a shrinking from direct social -contact; most of the inmates of such houses preferring that furtive -intercourse which is the result of observations through shuttered windows -and a categorical acquaintance with the neighboring clothes-lines. The -House, however, faced its public with a difference. For sixty years it had -written itself with a capital letter, had self-consciously squared itself -in the eye of an admiring nation. The most searching inroads of village -intimacy hardly counted in a household that opened on the universe; and a -lady whose door-bell was at any moment liable to be rung by visitors from -London or Vienna was not likely to flutter up-stairs when she observed a -neighbor "stepping over." - -The solitary inmate of the Anson House owed this induration of the social -texture to the most conspicuous accident in her annals: the fact that she -was the only granddaughter of the great Orestes Anson. She had been born, -as it were, into a museum, and cradled in a glass case with a label; -the first foundations of her consciousness being built on the rock of -her grandfather's celebrity. To a little girl who acquires her earliest -knowledge of literature through a _Reader_ embellished with fragments -of her ancestor's prose, that personage necessarily fills an heroic space -in the foreground of life. To communicate with one's past through the -impressive medium of print, to have, as it were, a footing in every library -in the country, and an acknowledged kinship with that world-diffused clan, -the descendants of the great, was to be pledged to a standard of manners -that amazingly simplified the lesser relations of life. The village street -on which Paulina Anson's youth looked out led to all the capitals of -Europe; and over the roads of intercommunication unseen caravans bore back -to the elm-shaded House the tribute of an admiring world. - -Fate seemed to have taken a direct share in fitting Paulina for her part as -the custodian of this historic dwelling. It had long been secretly regarded -as a "visitation" by the great man's family that he had left no son and -that his daughters were not "intellectual." The ladies themselves were the -first to lament their deficiency, to own that nature had denied them the -gift of making the most of their opportunities. A profound veneration for -their parent and an unswerving faith in his doctrines had not amended their -congenital incapacity to understand what he had written. Laura, who had her -moments of mute rebellion against destiny, had sometimes thought how much -easier it would have been if their progenitor had been a poet; for she -could recite, with feeling, portions of _The Culprit Fay_ and of the -poems of Mrs. Hemans; and Phoebe, who was more conspicuous for memory than -imagination, kept an album filled with "selections." But the great man -was a philosopher; and to both daughters respiration was difficult on the -cloudy heights of metaphysic. The situation would have been intolerable -but for the fact that, while Phoebe and Laura were still at school, -their father's fame had passed from the open ground of conjecture to the -chill privacy of certitude. Dr. Anson had in fact achieved one of those -anticipated immortalities not uncommon at a time when people were apt to -base their literary judgments on their emotions, and when to affect plain -food and despise England went a long way toward establishing a man's -intellectual pre-eminence. Thus, when the daughters were called on to -strike a filial attitude about their parent's pedestal, there was little -to do but to pose gracefully and point upward; and there are spines to -which the immobility of worship is not a strain. A legend had by this time -crystallized about the great Orestes, and it was of more immediate interest -to the public to hear what brand of tea he drank, and whether he took off -his boots in the hall, than to rouse the drowsy echo of his dialectic. A -great man never draws so near his public as when it has become unnecessary -to read his books and is still interesting to know what he eats for -breakfast. - -As recorders of their parent's domestic habits, as pious scavengers of his -waste-paper basket, the Misses Anson were unexcelled. They always had an -interesting anecdote to impart to the literary pilgrim, and the tact with -which, in later years, they intervened between the public and the growing -inaccessibility of its idol, sent away many an enthusiast satisfied to have -touched the veil before the sanctuary. Still it was felt, especially by old -Mrs. Anson, who survived her husband for some years, that Phoebe and Laura -were not worthy of their privileges. There had been a third daughter so -unworthy of hers that she had married a distant cousin, who had taken her -to live in a new Western community where the _Works of Orestes Anson_ -had not yet become a part of the civic consciousness; but of this daughter -little was said, and she was tacitly understood to be excluded from the -family heritage of fame. In time, however, it appeared that the traditional -penny with which she had been cut off had been invested to unexpected -advantage; and the interest on it, when she died, returned to the Anson -House in the shape of a granddaughter who was at once felt to be what Mrs. -Anson called a "compensation." It was Mrs. Anson's firm belief that the -remotest operations of nature were governed by the centripetal force of her -husband's greatness and that Paulina's exceptional intelligence could be -explained only on the ground that she was designed to act as the guardian -of the family temple. - -The House, by the time Paulina came to live in it, had already acquired -the publicity of a place of worship; not the perfumed chapel of a romantic -idolatry but the cold clean empty meeting-house of ethical enthusiasms. The -ladies lived on its outskirts, as it were, in cells that left the central -fane undisturbed. The very position of the furniture had come to have a -ritual significance: the sparse ornaments were the offerings of kindred -intellects, the steel engravings by Raphael Morghen marked the Via Sacra -of a European tour, and the black-walnut desk with its bronze inkstand -modelled on the Pantheon was the altar of this bleak temple of thought. - -To a child compact of enthusiasms, and accustomed to pasture them on the -scanty herbage of a new social soil, the atmosphere of the old house was -full of floating nourishment. In the compressed perspective of Paulina's -outlook it stood for a monument of ruined civilizations, and its white -portico opened on legendary distances. Its very aspect was impressive -to eyes that had first surveyed life from the jig-saw "residence" of a -raw-edged Western town. The high-ceilinged rooms, with their panelled -walls, their polished mahogany, their portraits of triple-stocked ancestors -and of ringleted "females" in crayon, furnished the child with the historic -scenery against which a young imagination constructs its vision of the -past. To other eyes the cold spotless thinly-furnished interior might have -suggested the shuttered mind of a maiden-lady who associates fresh air and -sunlight with dust and discoloration; but it is the eye which supplies the -coloring-matter, and Paulina's brimmed with the richest hues. - -Nevertheless, the House did not immediately dominate her. She had her -confused out-reachings toward other centres of sensation, her vague -intuition of a heliocentric system; but the attraction of habit, the steady -pressure of example, gradually fixed her roving allegiance and she bent her -neck to the yoke. Vanity had a share in her subjugation; for it had early -been discovered that she was the only person in the family who could read -her grandfather's works. The fact that she had perused them with delight at -an age when (even presupposing a metaphysical bias) it was impossible for -her to understand them, seemed to her aunts and grandmother sure evidence -of predestination. Paulina was to be the interpreter of the oracle, and the -philosophic fumes so vertiginous to meaner minds would throw her into the -needed condition of clairvoyance. Nothing could have been more genuine than -the emotion on which this theory was based. Paulina, in fact, delighted in -her grandfather's writings. His sonorous periods, his mystic vocabulary, -his bold flights into the rarefied air of the abstract, were thrilling to -a fancy unhampered by the need of definitions. This purely verbal pleasure -was supplemented later by the excitement of gathering up crumbs of meaning -from the rhetorical board. What could have been more stimulating than -to construct the theory of a girlish world out of the fragments of this -Titanic cosmogony? Before Paulina's opinions had reached the stage when -ossification sets in their form was fatally predetermined. - -The fact that Dr. Anson had died and that his apotheosis had taken -place before his young priestess's induction to the temple, made her -ministrations easier and more inspiring. There were no little personal -traits--such as the great man's manner of helping himself to salt, or the -guttural cluck that started the wheels of speech--to distract the eye -of young veneration from the central fact of his divinity. A man whom -one knows only through a crayon portrait and a dozen yellowing, tomes on -free-will and intuition is at least secure from the belittling effects of -intimacy. - -Paulina thus grew up in a world readjusted to the fact of her grandfather's -greatness; and as each organism draws from its surroundings the kind of -nourishment most needful to its growth, so from this somewhat colorless -conception she absorbed warmth, brightness and variety. Paulina was the -type of woman who transmutes thought into sensation and nurses a theory in -her bosom like a child. - -In due course Mrs. Anson "passed away"--no one died in the Anson -vocabulary--and Paulina became more than ever the foremost figure of the -commemorative group. Laura and Phoebe, content to leave their father's -glory in more competent hands, placidly lapsed into needlework and fiction, -and their niece stepped into immediate prominence as the chief "authority" -on the great man. Historians who were "getting up" the period wrote to -consult her and to borrow documents; ladies with inexplicable yearnings -begged for an interpretation of phrases which had "influenced" them, but -which they had not quite understood; critics applied to her to verify some -doubtful citation or to decide some disputed point in chronology; and the -great tide of thought and investigation kept up a continuous murmur on the -quiet shores of her life. - -An explorer of another kind disembarked there one day in the shape -of a young man to whom Paulina was primarily a kissable girl, with an -after-thought in the shape of a grandfather. From the outset it had been -impossible to fix Hewlett Winsloe's attention on Dr. Anson. The young man -behaved with the innocent profanity of infants sporting on a tomb. His -excuse was that he came from New York, a Cimmerian outskirt which survived -in Paulina's geography only because Dr. Anson had gone there once or twice -to lecture. The curious thing was that she should have thought it worth -while to find excuses for young Winsloe. The fact that she did so had not -escaped the attention of the village; but people, after a gasp of awe, said -it was the most natural thing in the world that a girl like Paulina Anson -should think of marrying. It would certainly seem a little odd to see a -man in the House, but young Winsloe would of course understand that the -Doctor's books were not to be disturbed, and that he must go down to the -orchard to smoke--. The village had barely framed this _modus vivendi_ -when it was convulsed by the announcement that young Winsloe declined to -live in the House on any terms. Hang going down to the orchard to smoke! -He meant to take his wife to New York. The village drew its breath and -watched. - -Did Persephone, snatched from the warm fields of Enna, peer -half-consentingly down the abyss that opened at her feet? Paulina, it must -be owned, hung a moment over the black gulf of temptation. She would have -found it easy to cope with a deliberate disregard of her grandfather's -rights; but young Winsloe's unconsciousness of that shadowy claim was as -much a natural function as the falling of leaves on a grave. His love was -an embodiment of the perpetual renewal which to some tender spirits seems a -crueller process than decay. - -On women of Paulina's mould this piety toward implicit demands, toward -the ghosts of dead duties walking unappeased among usurping passions, -has a stronger hold than any tangible bond. People said that she gave up -young Winsloe because her aunts disapproved of her leaving them; but such -disapproval as reached her was an emanation from the walls of the House, -from the bare desk, the faded portraits, the dozen yellowing tomes that no -hand but hers ever lifted from the shelf. - - -II - -After that the House possessed her. As if conscious of its victory, it -imposed a conqueror's claims. It had once been suggested that she should -write a life of her grandfather, and the task from which she had shrunk as -from a too-oppressive privilege now shaped itself into a justification of -her course. In a burst of filial pantheism she tried to lose herself in the -vast ancestral consciousness. Her one refuge from scepticism was a blind -faith in the magnitude and the endurance of the idea to which she had -sacrificed her life, and with a passionate instinct of self-preservation -she labored to fortify her position. - -The preparations for the _Life_ led her through by-ways that the most -scrupulous of the previous biographers had left unexplored. She accumulated -her material with a blind animal patience unconscious of fortuitous risks. -The years stretched before her like some vast blank page spread out to -receive the record of her toil; and she had a mystic conviction that she -would not die till her work was accomplished. - -The aunts, sustained by no such high purpose, withdrew in turn to their -respective divisions of the Anson "plot," and Paulina remained alone with -her task. She was forty when the book was completed. She had travelled -little in her life, and it had become more and more difficult to her to -leave the House even for a day; but the dread of entrusting her document to -a strange hand made her decide to carry it herself to the publisher. On the -way to Boston she had a sudden vision of the loneliness to which this last -parting condemned her. All her youth, all her dreams, all her renunciations -lay in that neat bundle on her knee. It was not so much her grandfather's -life as her own that she had written; and the knowledge that it would come -back to her in all the glorification of print was of no more help than, to -a mother's grief, the assurance that the lad she must part with will return -with epaulets. - -She had naturally addressed herself to the firm which had published her -grandfather's works. Its founder, a personal friend of the philosopher's, -had survived the Olympian group of which he had been a subordinate member, -long enough to bestow his octogenarian approval on Paulina's pious -undertaking. But he had died soon afterward; and Miss Anson found herself -confronted by his grandson, a person with a brisk commercial view of his -trade, who was said to have put "new blood" into the firm. - -This gentleman listened attentively, fingering her manuscript as though -literature were a tactile substance; then, with a confidential twist of his -revolving chair, he emitted the verdict: "We ought to have had this ten -years sooner." - -Miss Anson took the words as an allusion to the repressed avidity of her -readers. "It has been a long time for the public to wait," she solemnly -assented. - -The publisher smiled. "They haven't waited," he said. - -She looked at him strangely. "Haven't waited?" - -"No--they've gone off; taken another train. Literature's like a big -railway-station now, you know: there's a train starting every minute. -People are not going to hang round the waiting-room. If they can't get -to a place when they want to they go somewhere else." - -The application of this parable cost Miss Anson several minutes of -throbbing silence. At length she said: "Then I am to understand that the -public is no longer interested in--in my grandfather?" She felt as though -heaven must blast the lips that risked such a conjecture. - -"Well, it's this way. He's a name still, of course. People don't exactly -want to be caught not knowing who he is; but they don't want to spend -two dollars finding out, when they can look him up for nothing in any -biographical dictionary." - -Miss Anson's world reeled. She felt herself adrift among mysterious forces, -and no more thought of prolonging the discussion than of opposing an -earthquake with argument. She went home carrying the manuscript like a -wounded thing. On the return journey she found herself travelling straight -toward a fact that had lurked for months in the background of her life, -and that now seemed to await her on the very threshold: the fact that -fewer visitors came to the House. She owned to herself that for the last -four or five years the number had steadily diminished. Engrossed in her -work, she had noted the change only to feel thankful that she had fewer -interruptions. There had been a time when, at the travelling season, the -bell rang continuously, and the ladies of the House lived in a chronic -state of "best silks" and expectancy. It would have been impossible then to -carry on any consecutive work; and she now saw that the silence which had -gathered round her task had been the hush of death. - -Not of _his_ death! The very walls cried out against the implication. -It was the world's enthusiasm, the world's faith, the world's loyalty that -had died. A corrupt generation that had turned aside to worship the brazen -serpent. Her heart yearned with a prophetic passion over the lost sheep -straying in the wilderness. But all great glories had their interlunar -period; and in due time her grandfather would once more flash full-orbed -upon a darkling world. - -The few friends to whom she confided her adventure reminded her with -tender indignation that there were other publishers less subject to the -fluctuations of the market; but much as she had braved for her grandfather -she could not again brave that particular probation. She found herself, -in fact, incapable of any immediate effort. She had lost her way in a -labyrinth of conjecture where her worst dread was that she might put her -hand upon the clue. - -She locked up the manuscript and sat down to wait. If a pilgrim had come -just then the priestess would have fallen on his neck; but she continued -to celebrate her rites alone. It was a double solitude; for she had always -thought a great deal more of the people who came to see the House than of -the people who came to see her. She fancied that the neighbors kept a keen -eye on the path to the House; and there were days when the figure of a -stranger strolling past the gate seemed to focus upon her the scorching -sympathies of the village. For a time she thought of travelling; of going -to Europe, or even to Boston; but to leave the House now would have -seemed like deserting her post. Gradually her scattered energies centred -themselves in the fierce resolve to understand what had happened. She was -not the woman to live long in an unmapped country or to accept as final -her private interpretation of phenomena. Like a traveller in unfamiliar -regions she began to store for future guidance the minutest natural signs. -Unflinchingly she noted the accumulating symptoms of indifference that -marked her grandfather's descent toward posterity. She passed from the -heights on which he had been grouped with the sages of his day to the lower -level where he had come to be "the friend of Emerson," "the correspondent -of Hawthorne," or (later still) "the Dr. Anson" mentioned in their letters. -The change had taken place as slowly and imperceptibly as a natural -process. She could not say that any ruthless hand had stripped the leaves -from the tree: it was simply that, among the evergreen glories of his -group, her grandfather's had proved deciduous. - -She had still to ask herself why. If the decay had been a natural process, -was it not the very pledge of renewal? It was easier to find such arguments -than to be convinced by them. Again and again she tried to drug her -solicitude with analogies; but at last she saw that such expedients were -but the expression of a growing incredulity. The best way of proving her -faith in her grandfather was not to be afraid of his critics. She had no -notion where these shadowy antagonists lurked; for she had never heard of -the great man's doctrine being directly combated. Oblique assaults there -must have been, however, Parthian shots at the giant that none dared face; -and she thirsted to close with such assailants. The difficulty was to -find them. She began by re-reading the _Works_; thence she passed to -the writers of the same school, those whose rhetoric bloomed perennial -in _First Readers_ from which her grandfather's prose had long -since faded. Amid that clamor of far-off enthusiasms she detected no -controversial note. The little knot of Olympians held their views in common -with an early-Christian promiscuity. They were continually proclaiming -their admiration for each other, the public joining as chorus in this -guileless antiphon of praise; and she discovered no traitor in their midst. - -What then had happened? Was it simply that the main current of thought -had set another way? Then why did the others survive? Why were they still -marked down as tributaries to the philosophic stream? This question carried -her still farther afield, and she pressed on with the passion of a champion -whose reluctance to know the worst might be construed into a doubt of his -cause. At length--slowly but inevitably--an explanation shaped itself. -Death had overtaken the doctrines about which her grandfather had draped -his cloudy rhetoric. They had disintegrated and been re-absorbed, adding -their little pile to the dust drifted about the mute lips of the Sphinx. -The great man's contemporaries had survived not by reason of what they -taught, but of what they were; and he, who had been the mere mask through -which they mouthed their lesson, the instrument on which their tune was -played, lay buried deep among the obsolete tools of thought. - -The discovery came to Paulina suddenly. She looked up one evening from her -reading and it stood before her like a ghost. It had entered her life with -stealthy steps, creeping close before she was aware of it. She sat in the -library, among the carefully-tended books and portraits; and it seemed to -her that she had been walled alive into a tomb hung with the effigies of -dead ideas. She felt a desperate longing to escape into the outer air, -where people toiled and loved, and living sympathies went hand in hand. It -was the sense of wasted labor that oppressed her; of two lives consumed in -that ruthless process that uses generations of effort to build a single -cell. There was a dreary parallel between her grandfather's fruitless -toil and her own unprofitable sacrifice. Each in turn had kept vigil by a -corpse. - - -III - -The bell rang--she remembered it afterward--with a loud thrilling note. It -was what they used to call the "visitor's ring"; not the tentative tinkle -of a neighbor dropping in to borrow a sauce-pan or discuss parochial -incidents, but a decisive summons from the outer world. - -Miss Anson put down her knitting and listened. She sat up-stairs now, -making her rheumatism an excuse for avoiding the rooms below. Her interests -had insensibly adjusted themselves to the perspective of her neighbors' -lives, and she wondered--as the bell re-echoed--if it could mean that Mrs. -Heminway's baby had come. Conjecture had time to ripen into certainty, and -she was limping toward the closet where her cloak and bonnet hung, when her -little maid fluttered in with the announcement: "A gentleman to see the -house." - -"The _House_?" - -"Yes, m'm. I don't know what he means," faltered the messenger, whose -memory did not embrace the period when such announcements were a daily part -of the domestic routine. - -Miss Anson glanced at the proffered card. The name it bore--_Mr. George -Corby_--was unknown to her, but the blood rose to her languid cheek. -"Hand me my Mechlin cap, Katy," she said, trembling a little, as she laid -aside her walking stick. She put her cap on before the mirror, with rapid -unsteady touches. "Did you draw up the library blinds?" she breathlessly -asked. - -She had gradually built up a wall of commonplace between herself and her -illusions, but at the first summons of the past filial passion swept away -the frail barriers of expediency. - -She walked down-stairs so hurriedly that her stick clicked like a girlish -heel; but in the hall she paused, wondering nervously if Katy had put a -match to the fire. The autumn air was cold and she had the reproachful -vision of a visitor with elderly ailments shivering by her inhospitable -hearth. She thought instinctively of the stranger as a survivor of the days -when such a visit was a part of the young enthusiast's itinerary. - -The fire was unlit and the room forbiddingly cold; but the figure which, as -Miss Anson entered, turned from a lingering scrutiny of the book-shelves, -was that of a fresh-eyed sanguine youth clearly independent of any -artificial caloric. She stood still a moment, feeling herself the victim of -some anterior impression that made this robust presence an insubstantial -thing; but the young man advanced with an air of genial assurance which -rendered him at once more real and more reminiscent. - -"Why this, you know," he exclaimed, "is simply immense!" - -The words, which did not immediately present themselves as slang to Miss -Anson's unaccustomed ear, echoed with an odd familiarity through the -academic silence. - -"The room, you know, I mean," he explained with a comprehensive gesture. -"These jolly portraits, and the books--that's the old gentleman himself -over the mantelpiece, I suppose?--and the elms outside, and--and the whole -business. I do like a congruous background--don't you?" - -His hostess was silent. No one but Hewlett Winsloe had ever spoken of her -grandfather as "the old gentleman." - -"It's a hundred times better than I could have hoped," her visitor -continued, with a cheerful disregard of her silence. "The seclusion, the -remoteness, the philosophic atmosphere--there's so little of that kind -of flavor left! I should have simply hated to find that he lived over -a grocery, you know.--I had the deuce of a time finding out where he -_did_ live," he began again, after another glance of parenthetical -enjoyment. "But finally I got on the trail through some old book on Brook -Farm. I was bound I'd get the environment right before I did my article." - -Miss Anson, by this time, had recovered sufficient self-possession to seat -herself and assign a chair to her visitor. - -"Do I understand," she asked slowly, following his rapid eye about the -room, "that you intend to write an article about my grandfather?" - -"That's what I'm here for," Mr. Corby genially responded; "that is, if -you're willing to help me; for I can't get on without your help," he added -with a confident smile. - -There was another pause, during which Miss Anson noticed a fleck of dust on -the faded leather of the writing-table and a fresh spot of discoloration in -the right-hand upper corner of Raphael Morghen's "Parnassus." - -"Then you believe in him?" she said, looking up. She could not tell what -had prompted her; the words rushed out irresistibly. - -"Believe in him?" Corby cried, springing to his feet. "Believe in Orestes -Anson? Why, I believe he's simply the greatest--the most stupendous--the -most phenomenal figure we've got!" - -The color rose to Miss Anson's brow. Her heart was beating passionately. -She kept her eyes fixed on the young man's face, as though it might vanish -if she looked away. - -"You--you mean to say this in your article?" she asked. - -"Say it? Why, the facts will say it," he exulted. "The baldest kind of a -statement would make it clear. When a man is as big as that he doesn't need -a pedestal!" - -Miss Anson sighed. "People used to say that when I was young," she -murmured. "But now--" - -Her visitor stared. "When you were young? But how did they know--when the -thing hung fire as it did? When the whole edition was thrown back on his -hands?" - -"The whole edition--what edition?" It was Miss Anson's turn to stare. - -"Why, of his pamphlet--_the_ pamphlet--the one thing that counts, that -survives, that makes him what he is! For heaven's sake," he tragically -adjured her, "don't tell me there isn't a copy of it left!" - -Miss Anson was trembling slightly. "I don't think I understand what you -mean," she faltered, less bewildered by his vehemence than by the strange -sense of coming on an unexplored region in the very heart of her dominion. - -"Why, his account of the _amphioxus_, of course! You can't mean that -his family didn't know about it--that _you_ don't know about it? I came -across it by the merest accident myself, in a letter of vindication that -he wrote in 1830 to an old scientific paper; but I understood there were -journals--early journals; there must be references to it somewhere in the -'twenties. He must have been at least ten or twelve years ahead of Yarrell; -and he saw the whole significance of it, too--he saw where it led to. As -I understand it, he actually anticipated in his pamphlet Saint Hilaire's -theory of the universal type, and supported the hypothesis by describing -the notochord of the _amphioxus_ as a cartilaginous vertebral column. -The specialists of the day jeered at him, of course, as the specialists in -Goethe's time jeered at the plant-metamorphosis. As far as I can make out, -the anatomists and zoologists were down on Dr. Anson to a man; that was why -his cowardly publishers went back on their bargain. But the pamphlet must -be here somewhere--he writes as though, in his first disappointment, he had -destroyed the whole edition; but surely there must be at least one copy -left?" - -His scientific jargon was as bewildering as his slang; and there were even -moments in his discourse when Miss Anson ceased to distinguish between -them; but the suspense with which he continued to gaze on her acted as a -challenge to her scattered thoughts. - -"The _amphioxus_," she murmured, half-rising. "It's an animal, isn't -it--a fish? Yes, I think I remember." She sank back with the inward look of -one who retraces some lost line of association. - -Gradually the distance cleared, the details started into life. In her -researches for the biography she had patiently followed every ramification -of her subject, and one of these overgrown paths now led her back to -the episode in question. The great Orestes's title of "Doctor" had in -fact not been merely the spontaneous tribute of a national admiration; -he had actually studied medicine in his youth, and his diaries, as his -granddaughter now recalled, showed that he had passed through a brief phase -of anatomical ardor before his attention was diverted to super-sensual -problems. It had indeed seemed to Paulina, as she scanned those early -pages, that they revealed a spontaneity, a freshness of feeling somehow -absent from his later lucubrations--as though this one emotion had reached -him directly, the others through some intervening medium. In the excess of -her commemorative zeal she had even struggled through the unintelligible -pamphlet to which a few lines in the journal had bitterly directed her. But -the subject and the phraseology were alien to her and unconnected with her -conception of the great man's genius; and after a hurried perusal she had -averted her thoughts from the episode as from a revelation of failure. -At length she rose a little unsteadily, supporting herself against the -writing-table. She looked hesitatingly about the room; then she drew a key -from her old-fashioned reticule and unlocked a drawer beneath one of the -book-cases. Young Corby watched her breathlessly. With a tremulous hand she -turned over the dusty documents that seemed to fill the drawer. "Is this -it?" she said, holding out a thin discolored volume. - -He seized it with a gasp. "Oh, by George," he said, dropping into the -nearest chair. - -She stood observing him strangely as his eye devoured the mouldy pages. - -"Is this the only copy left?" he asked at length, looking up for a moment -as a thirsty man lifts his head from his glass. - -"I think it must be. I found it long ago, among some old papers that my -aunts were burning up after my grandmother's death. They said it was of no -use--that he'd always meant to destroy the whole edition and that I ought -to respect his wishes. But it was something he had written; to burn it was -like shutting the door against his voice--against something he had once -wished to say, and that nobody had listened to. I wanted him to feel that I -was always here, ready to listen, even when others hadn't thought it worth -while; and so I kept the pamphlet, meaning to carry out his wish and -destroy it before my death." - -Her visitor gave a groan of retrospective anguish. "And but for me--but for -to-day--you would have?" - -"I should have thought it my duty." - -"Oh, by George--by George," he repeated, subdued afresh by the inadequacy -of speech. - -She continued to watch him in silence. At length he jumped up and -impulsively caught her by both hands. - -"He's bigger and bigger!" he almost shouted. "He simply leads the field! -You'll help me go to the bottom of this, won't you? We must turn out all -the papers--letters, journals, memoranda. He must have made notes. He -must have left some record of what led up to this. We must leave nothing -unexplored. By Jove," he cried, looking up at her with his bright -convincing smile, "do you know you're the granddaughter of a Great Man?" - -Her color flickered like a girl's. "Are you--sure of him?" she whispered, -as though putting him on his guard against a possible betrayal of trust. - -"Sure! Sure! My dear lady--" he measured her again with his quick confident -glance. "Don't _you_ believe in him?" - -She drew back with a confused murmur. "I--used to." She had left her -hands in his: their pressure seemed to send a warm current to her heart. -"It ruined my life!" she cried with sudden passion. He looked at her -perplexedly. - -"I gave up everything," she went on wildly, "to keep him alive. I -sacrificed myself--others--I nursed his glory in my bosom and it died--and -left me--left me here alone." She paused and gathered her courage with a -gasp. "Don't make the same mistake!" she warned him. - -He shook his head, still smiling. "No danger of that! You're not alone, my -dear lady. He's here with you--he's come back to you to-day. Don't you see -what's happened? Don't you see that it's your love that has kept him alive? -If you'd abandoned your post for an instant--let things pass into other -hands--if your wonderful tenderness hadn't perpetually kept guard--this -might have been--must have been--irretrievably lost." He laid his hand on -the pamphlet. "And then--then he _would_ have been dead!" - -"Oh," she said, "don't tell me too suddenly!" And she turned away and sank -into a chair. - -The young man stood watching her in an awed silence. For a long time she -sat motionless, with her face hidden, and he thought she must be weeping. - -At length he said, almost shyly: "You'll let me come back, then? You'll -help me work this thing out?" - -She rose calmly and held out her hand. "I'll help you," she declared. - -"I'll come to-morrow, then. Can we get to work early?" - -"As early as you please." - -"At eight o'clock, then," he said briskly. "You'll have the papers ready?" - -"I'll have everything ready." She added with a half-playful hesitancy: "And -the fire shall be lit for you." - -He went out with his bright nod. She walked to the window and watched his -buoyant figure hastening down the elm-shaded street. When she turned back -into the empty room she looked as though youth had touched her on the lips. - - - - -THE RECOVERY - - -To the visiting stranger Hillbridge's first question was, "Have you seen -Keniston's things?" Keniston took precedence of the colonial State House, -the Gilbert Stuart Washington and the Ethnological Museum; nay, he ran neck -and neck with the President of the University, a prehistoric relic who had -known Emerson, and who was still sent about the country in cotton-wool to -open educational institutions with a toothless oration on Brook Farm. - -Keniston was sent about the country too: he opened art exhibitions, laid -the foundation of academies, and acted in a general sense as the spokesman -and apologist of art. Hillbridge was proud of him in his peripatetic -character, but his fellow-townsmen let it be understood that to "know" -Keniston one must come to Hillbridge. Never was work more dependent for its -effect on "atmosphere," on _milieu_. Hillbridge was Keniston's milieu, -and there was one lady, a devotee of his art, who went so far as to assert -that once, at an exhibition in New York, she had passed a Keniston without -recognizing it. "It simply didn't want to be seen in such surroundings; it -was hiding itself under an incognito," she declared. - -It was a source of special pride to Hillbridge that it contained all the -artist's best works. Strangers were told that Hillbridge had discovered -him. The discovery had come about in the simplest manner. Professor -Driffert, who had a reputation for "collecting," had one day hung a sketch -on his drawing-room wall, and thereafter Mrs. Driffert's visitors (always -a little flurried by the sense that it was the kind of house in which one -might be suddenly called upon to distinguish between a dry-point and an -etching, or between Raphael Mengs and Raphael Sanzio) were not infrequently -subjected to the Professor's off-hand inquiry, "By-the-way, have you seen -my Keniston?" The visitors, perceptibly awed, would retreat to a critical -distance and murmur the usual guarded generalities, while they tried to -keep the name in mind long enough to look it up in the Encyclopdia. The -name was not in the Encyclopdia; but, as a compensating fact, it became -known that the man himself was in Hillbridge. Hillbridge, then, owned an -artist whose celebrity it was the proper thing to take for granted! Some -one else, emboldened by the thought, bought a Keniston; and the next -year, on the occasion of the President's golden jubilee, the Faculty, by -unanimous consent, presented him with a Keniston. Two years later there -was a Keniston exhibition, to which the art-critics came from New York -and Boston; and not long afterward a well-known Chicago collector vainly -attempted to buy Professor Driffert's sketch, which the art journals cited -as a rare example of the painter's first or silvery manner. Thus there -gradually grew up a small circle of connoisseurs known in artistic, circles -as men who collected Kenistons. - -Professor Wildmarsh, of the chair of Fine Arts and Archaeology, was the -first critic to publish a detailed analysis of the master's methods and -purpose. The article was illustrated by engravings which (though they had -cost the magazine a fortune) were declared by Professor Wildmarsh to give -but an imperfect suggestion of the esoteric significance of the originals. -The Professor, with a tact that contrived to make each reader feel himself -included among the exceptions, went on to say that Keniston's work would -never appeal to any but exceptional natures; and he closed with the usual -assertion that to apprehend the full meaning of the master's "message" it -was necessary to see him in the surroundings of his own home at Hillbridge. - -Professor Wildmarsh's article was read one spring afternoon by a young -lady just speeding eastward on her first visit to Hillbridge, and already -flushed with anticipation of the intellectual opportunities awaiting her. -In East Onondaigua, where she lived, Hillbridge was looked on as an Oxford. -Magazine writers, with the easy American use of the superlative, designated -it as "the venerable Alma Mater," the "antique seat of learning," and -Claudia Day had been brought up to regard it as the fountain-head of -knowledge, and of that mental distinction which is so much rarer than -knowledge. An innate passion for all that was thus distinguished and -exceptional made her revere Hillbridge as the native soil of those -intellectual amenities that were of such difficult growth in the -thin air of East Onondaigua. At the first suggestion of a visit to -Hillbridge--whither she went at the invitation of a girl friend -who (incredible apotheosis!) had married one of the University -professors--Claudia's spirit dilated with the sense of new possibilities. -The vision of herself walking under the "historic elms" toward the Memorial -Library, standing rapt before the Stuart Washington, or drinking in, -from some obscure corner of an academic drawing-room, the President's -reminiscences of the Concord group--this vividness of self-projection into -the emotions awaiting her made her glad of any delay that prolonged so -exquisite a moment. - -It was in this mood that she opened the article on Keniston. She knew about -him, of course; she was wonderfully "well up," even for East Onondaigua. -She had read of him in the magazines; she had met, on a visit to New York, -a man who collected Kenistons, and a photogravure of a Keniston in an -"artistic" frame hung above her writing-table at home. But Professor -Wildmarsh's article made her feel how little she really knew of the master; -and she trembled to think of the state of relative ignorance in which, but -for the timely purchase of the magazine, she might have entered Hillbridge. -She had, for instance, been densely unaware that Keniston had already had -three "manners," and was showing symptoms of a fourth. She was equally -ignorant of the fact that he had founded a school and "created a formula"; -and she learned with a thrill that no one could hope to understand him who -had not seen him in his studio at Hillbridge, surrounded by his own works. -"The man and the art interpret each other," their exponent declared; and -Claudia Day, bending a brilliant eye on the future, wondered if she were -ever to be admitted to the privilege of that double initiation. - -Keniston, to his other claims to distinction, added that of being hard to -know. His friends always hastened to announce the fact to strangers--adding -after a pause of suspense that they "would see what they could do." -Visitors in whose favor he was induced to make an exception were further -warned that he never spoke unless he was interested--so that they mustn't -mind if he remained silent. It was under these reassuring conditions that, -some ten days after her arrival at Hillbridge, Miss Day was introduced -to the master's studio. She found him a tall listless-looking man, who -appeared middle-aged to her youth, and who stood before his own pictures -with a vaguely interrogative gaze, leaving the task of their interpretation -to the lady who had courageously contrived the visit. The studio, to -Claudia's surprise, was bare and shabby. It formed a rambling addition to -the small cheerless house in which the artist lived with his mother and -a widowed sister. For Claudia it added the last touch to his distinction -to learn that he was poor, and that what he earned was devoted to the -maintenance of the two limp women who formed a neutral-tinted background to -his impressive outline. His pictures of course fetched high prices; but he -worked slowly--"painfully," as his devotees preferred to phrase it--with -frequent intervals of ill health and inactivity, and the circle of Keniston -connoisseurs was still as small as it was distinguished. The girl's fancy -instantly hailed in him that favorite figure of imaginative youth, the -artist who would rather starve than paint a pot-boiler. It is known to -comparatively few that the production of successful pot-boilers is an art -in itself, and that such heroic abstentions as Keniston's are not always -purely voluntary. On the occasion of her first visit the artist said so -little that Claudia was able to indulge to the full the harrowing sense of -her inadequacy. No wonder she had not been one of the few that he cared -to talk to; every word she uttered must so obviously have diminished the -inducement! She had been cheap, trivial, conventional; at once gushing -and inexpressive, eager and constrained. She could feel him counting the -minutes till the visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the -scene of her discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she -confidently credited him--that they might never meet again. - - -II - -Mrs. Davant glanced reverentially about the studio. "I have always said," -she murmured, "that they ought to be seen in Europe." - -Mrs. Davant was young, credulous and emotionally extravagant: she reminded -Claudia of her earlier self--the self that, ten years before, had first set -an awestruck foot on that very threshold. - -"Not for _his_ sake," Mrs. Davant continued, "but for Europe's." - -Claudia smiled. She was glad that her husband's pictures were to be -exhibited in Paris. She concurred in Mrs. Davant's view of the importance -of the event; but she thought her visitor's way of putting the case a -little overcharged. Ten years spent in an atmosphere of Keniston-worship -had insensibly developed in Claudia a preference for moderation of speech. -She believed in her husband, of course; to believe in him, with an -increasing abandonment and tenacity, had become one of the necessary laws -of being; but she did not believe in his admirers. Their faith in him was -perhaps as genuine as her own; but it seemed to her less able to give an -account of itself. Some few of his appreciators doubtless measured him -by their own standards; but it was difficult not to feel that in the -Hillbridge circle, where rapture ran the highest, he was accepted on -what was at best but an indirect valuation; and now and then she had a -frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions. That -innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to -check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic -absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained -so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him. Her husband's -uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of -the surprises of her marriage. That an artist should believe in his -potential powers seemed to her at once the incentive and the pledge of -excellence: she knew there was no future for a hesitating talent. What -perplexed her was Keniston's satisfaction in his achievement. She had -always imagined that the true artist must regard himself as the imperfect -vehicle of the cosmic emotion--that beneath every difficulty overcome a new -one lurked, the vision widening as the scope enlarged. To be initiated into -these creative struggles, to shed on the toiler's path the consolatory ray -of faith and encouragement, had seemed the chief privilege of her marriage. -But there is something supererogatory in believing in a man obviously -disposed to perform that service for himself; and Claudia's ardor gradually -spent itself against the dense surface of her husband's complacency. She -could smile now at her vision of an intellectual communion which should -admit her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration. She had learned -that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston's -inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile -her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air -of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to -posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed -herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he -mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so little to -express. - -"It's for Europe," Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia noticed that -she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of her elaborate sunshade -the pattern of the shabby carpet. - -"It will be a revelation to them," she went on provisionally, as though -Claudia had missed her cue and left an awkward interval to fill. - -Claudia had in fact a sudden sense of deficient intuition. She felt that -her visitor had something to communicate which required, on her own part, -an intelligent co-operation; but what it was her insight failed to suggest. -She was, in truth, a little tired of Mrs. Davant, who was Keniston's latest -worshipper, who ordered pictures recklessly, who paid for them regally -in advance, and whose gallery was, figuratively speaking, crowded with -the artist's unpainted masterpieces. Claudia's impatience was perhaps -complicated by the uneasy sense that Mrs. Davant was too young, too rich, -too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be warned.--Warned of what? -That some of the pictures might never be painted? Scarcely that, since -Keniston, who was scrupulous in business transactions, might be trusted not -to take any material advantage of such evidence of faith. Claudia's impulse -remained undefined. She merely felt that she would have liked to help Mrs. -Davant, and that she did not know how. - -"You'll be there to see them?" she asked, as her visitor lingered. - -"In Paris?" Mrs. Davant's blush deepened. "We must all be there together." - -Claudia smiled. "My husband and I mean to go abroad some day--but I don't -see any chance of it at present." - -"But he _ought_ to go--you ought both to go this summer!" Mrs. Davant -persisted. "I know Professor Wildmarsh and Professor Driffert and all the -other critics think that Mr. Keniston's never having been to Europe has -given his work much of its wonderful individuality, its peculiar flavor -and meaning--but now that his talent is formed, that he has full command -of his means of expression," (Claudia recognized one of Professor -Driffert's favorite formulas) "they all think he ought to see the work of -the _other_ great masters--that he ought to visit the home of his -ancestors, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" She stretched an impulsive hand to -Claudia. "You ought to let him go, Mrs. Keniston!" - -Claudia accepted the admonition with the philosophy of the wife who is used -to being advised on the management of her husband. "I sha'n't interfere -with him," she declared; and Mrs. Davant instantly caught her up with a cry -of, "Oh, it's too lovely of you to say that!" With this exclamation she -left Claudia to a silent renewal of wonder. - -A moment later Keniston entered: to a mind curious in combinations it -might have occurred that he had met Mrs. Davant on the door-step. In one -sense he might, for all his wife cared, have met fifty Mrs. Davants on the -door-step: it was long since Claudia had enjoyed the solace of resenting -such coincidences. Her only thought now was that her husband's first words -might not improbably explain Mrs. Davant's last; and she waited for him to -speak. - -He paused with his hands in his pockets before an unfinished picture on the -easel; then, as his habit was, he began to stroll touristlike from canvas -to canvas, standing before each in a musing ecstasy of contemplation that -no readjustment of view ever seemed to disturb. Her eye instinctively -joined his in its inspection; it was the one point where their natures -merged. Thank God, there, was no doubt about the pictures! She was what she -had always dreamed of being--the wife of a great artist. Keniston dropped -into an armchair and filled his pipe. "How should you like to go to -Europe?" he asked. - -His wife looked up quickly. "When?" - -"Now--this spring, I mean." He paused to light the pipe. "I should like to -be over there while these things are being exhibited." - -Claudia was silent. - -"Well?" he repeated after a moment. - -"How can we afford it?" she asked. - -Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the mother and -sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia, who had the atoning -temperament which seeks to pay for every happiness by making it a source -of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an -exaggerated devotion. Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized -her most delicate pleasures; and her husband's sensitiveness to it in great -measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a -failure of the moral sense. His loyalty to the dull women who depended on -him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere sensibility -to ideal demands. - -"Oh, I don't see why we shouldn't," he rejoined. "I think we might manage -it." - -"At Mrs. Davant's expense?" leaped from Claudia. She could not tell why she -had said it; some inner barrier seemed to have given way under a confused -pressure of emotions. - -He looked up at her with frank surprise. "Well, she has been very jolly -about it--why not? She has a tremendous feeling for art--the keenest I -ever knew in a woman." Claudia imperceptibly smiled. "She wants me to let -her pay in advance for the four panels she has ordered for the Memorial -Library. That would give us plenty of money for the trip, and my having the -panels to do is another reason for my wanting to go abroad just now." - -"Another reason?" - -"Yes; I've never worked on such a big scale. I want to see how those old -chaps did the trick; I want to measure myself with the big fellows over -there. An artist ought to, once in his life." - -She gave him a wondering look. For the first time his words implied a sense -of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract what they -conceded. What he really wanted was fresh food for his self-satisfaction: -he was like an army that moves on after exhausting the resources of the -country. - -Womanlike, she abandoned the general survey of the case for the -consideration of a minor point. - -"Are you sure you can do that kind of thing?" she asked. - -"What kind of thing?" - -"The panels." - -He glanced at her indulgently: his self-confidence was too impenetrable to -feel the pin-prick of such a doubt. - -"Immensely sure," he said with a smile. - -"And you don't mind taking so much money from her in advance?" - -He stared. "Why should I? She'll get it back--with interest!" He laughed -and drew at his pipe. "It will be an uncommonly interesting experience. I -shouldn't wonder if it freshened me up a bit." - -She looked at him again. This second hint of self-distrust struck her as -the sign of a quickened sensibility. What if, after all, he was beginning -to be dissatisfied with his work? The thought filled her with a renovating -sense of his sufficiency. - - -III - -They stopped in London to see the National Gallery. - -It was thus that, in their inexperience, they had narrowly put it; but in -reality every stone of the streets, every trick of the atmosphere, had -its message of surprise for their virgin sensibilities. The pictures were -simply the summing up, the final interpretation, of the cumulative pressure -of an unimagined world; and it seemed to Claudia that long before they -reached the doors of the gallery she had some intuitive revelation of what -awaited them within. - -They moved about from room to room without exchanging a word. The vast -noiseless spaces seemed full of sound, like the roar of a distant multitude -heard only by the inner ear. Had their speech been articulate their -language would have been incomprehensible; and even that far-off murmur -of meaning pressed intolerably on Claudia's nerves. Keniston took the -onset without outward sign of disturbance. Now and then he paused before a -canvas, or prolonged from one of the benches his silent communion with some -miracle of line or color; but he neither looked at his wife nor spoke to -her. He seemed to have forgotten her presence. - -Claudia was conscious of keeping a furtive watch on him; but the sum total -of her impressions was negative. She remembered thinking when she first -met him that his face was rather expressionless; and he had the habit of -self-engrossed silences. - -All that evening, at the hotel, they talked about London, and he surprised -her by an acuteness of observation that she had sometimes inwardly accused -him of lacking. He seemed to have seen everything, to have examined, felt, -compared, with nerves as finely adjusted as her own; but he said nothing -of the pictures. The next day they returned to the National Gallery, and -he began to study the paintings in detail, pointing out differences of -technique, analyzing and criticising, but still without summing up his -conclusions. He seemed to have a sort of provincial dread of showing -himself too much impressed. Claudia's own sensations were too complex, too -overwhelming, to be readily classified. Lacking the craftsman's instinct to -steady her, she felt herself carried off her feet by the rush of incoherent -impressions. One point she consciously avoided, and that was the comparison -of her husband's work with what they were daily seeing. Art, she inwardly -argued, was too various, too complex, dependent on too many inter-relations -of feeling and environment, to allow of its being judged by any provisional -standard. Even the subtleties of technique must be modified by the artist's -changing purpose, as this in turn is acted on by influences of which -he is himself unconscious. How, then, was an unprepared imagination to -distinguish between such varied reflections of the elusive vision? She took -refuge in a passionate exaggeration of her own ignorance and insufficiency. - -After a week in London they went to Paris. The exhibition of Keniston's -pictures had been opened a few days earlier; and as they drove through the -streets on the way to the station an "impressionist" poster here and there -invited them to the display of the American artist's work. Mrs. Davant, who -had been in Paris for the opening, had already written rapturously of the -impression produced, enclosing commendatory notices from one or two papers. -She reported that there had been a great crowd on the first day, and that -the critics had been "immensely struck." - -The Kenistons arrived in the evening, and the next morning Claudia, as a -matter of course, asked her husband at what time he meant to go and see the -pictures. - -He looked up absently from his guide-book. - -"What pictures?" - -"Why--yours," she said, surprised. - -"Oh, they'll keep," he answered; adding with a slightly embarrassed laugh, -"We'll give the other chaps a show first." Presently he laid down his book -and proposed that they should go to the Louvre. - -They spent the morning there, lunched at a restaurant near by, and returned -to the gallery in the afternoon. Keniston had passed from inarticulateness -to an eager volubility. It was clear that he was beginning to co-ordinate -his impressions, to find his way about in a corner of the great imaginative -universe. He seemed extraordinarily ready to impart his discoveries; and -Claudia felt that her ignorance served him as a convenient buffer against -the terrific impact of new sensations. - -On the way home she asked when he meant to see Mrs. Davant. - -His answer surprised her. "Does she know we're here?" - -"Not unless you've sent her word," said Claudia, with a touch of harmless -irony. - -"That's all right, then," he returned simply. "I want to wait and look -about a day or two longer. She'd want us to go sight-seeing with her; and -I'd rather get my impressions alone." - -The next two days were hampered by the necessity of eluding Mrs. Davant. -Claudia, under different circumstances, would have scrupled to share in -this somewhat shabby conspiracy; but she found herself in a state of -suspended judgment, wherein her husband's treatment of Mrs. Davant became -for the moment merely a clue to larger meanings. - -They had been four days in Paris when Claudia, returning one afternoon from -a parenthetical excursion to the Rue de la Paix, was confronted on her -threshold by the reproachful figure of their benefactress. It was not to -her, however, that Mrs. Davant's reproaches were addressed. Keniston, it -appeared, had borne the brunt of them; for he stood leaning against the -mantelpiece of their modest _salon_ in that attitude of convicted -negligence when, if ever, a man is glad to take refuge behind his wife. - -Claudia had however no immediate intention of affording him such shelter. -She wanted to observe and wait. - -"He's too impossible!" cried Mrs. Davant, sweeping her at once into the -central current of her grievance. - -Claudia looked from one to the other. - -"For not going to see you?" - -"For not going to see his pictures!" cried the other nobly. - -Claudia colored and Keniston shifted his position uneasily. - -"I can't make her understand," he said, turning to his wife. - -"I don't care about myself!" Mrs. Davant interjected. - -"_I_ do, then; it's the only thing I do care about," he hurriedly -protested. "I meant to go at once--to write--Claudia wanted to go, but I -wouldn't let her." He looked helplessly about the pleasant red-curtained -room, which was rapidly burning itself into Claudia's consciousness as a -visible extension of Mrs. Davant's claims. - -"I can't explain," he broke off. - -Mrs. Davant in turn addressed herself to Claudia. - -"People think it's so odd," she complained. "So many of the artists -here are anxious to meet him; they've all been so charming about the -pictures; and several of our American friends have come over from London -expressly for the exhibition. I told every one that he would be here -for the opening--there was a private view, you know--and they were so -disappointed--they wanted to give him an ovation; and I didn't know what -to say. What _am_ I to say?" she abruptly ended. - -"There's nothing to say," said Keniston slowly. - -"But the exhibition closes the day after to-morrow." - -"Well, _I_ sha'n't close--I shall be here," he declared with an effort -at playfulness. "If they want to see me--all these people you're kind -enough to mention--won't there be other chances?" - -"But I wanted them to see you _among_ your pictures--to hear you talk -about them, explain them in that wonderful way. I wanted you to interpret -each other, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" - -"Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!" said Keniston, softening the commination -with a smile. "If my pictures are good for anything they oughtn't to need -explaining." - -Mrs. Davant stared. "But I thought that was what made them so interesting!" -she exclaimed. - -Keniston looked down. "Perhaps it was," he murmured. - -There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying, with a glance -at her husband: "But if the exhibition is to remain open to-morrow, could -we not meet you there? And perhaps you could send word to some of our -friends." - -Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is glued together. -"Oh, _do_ make him!" she implored. "I'll ask them to come in the -afternoon--we'll make it into a little tea--a _five o'clock_. I'll -send word at once to everybody!" She gathered up her beruffled boa and -sunshade, settling her plumage like a reassured bird. "It will be too -lovely!" she ended in a self-consoling murmur. - -But in the doorway a new doubt assailed her. "You won't fail me?" she said, -turning plaintively to Keniston. "You'll make him come, Mrs. Keniston?" - -"I'll bring him!" Claudia promised. - - -IV - -When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble, -her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home. - -"The fact is I'm rather surfeited," he said, smiling. "I suppose my -appetite isn't equal to such a plethora. I think I'll write some letters -and join you somewhere later." - -She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual -readiness. - -"I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then," she said. "I -haven't had time to take the edge off that appetite." - -They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone -with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct -reference to Mrs. Davant's visit; but its effect was implicit in their -eagerness to avoid each other. - -Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that -robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she -turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never -had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social -quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were -evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the -nervous structure of the huge frame--a sensibility so delicate, alert and -universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such -a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously -as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be "artistic" must cease to be -an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of -the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny -spot of consciousness--the value of her husband's work. There are moments -when to the groping soul the world's accumulated experiences are but -stepping-stones across a private difficulty. - -She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had -an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting -her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion -emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in -obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she -called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband's pictures were -exhibited. - -A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way -up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing, -held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer; -and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room -full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the -public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier -in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something -about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in -other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed -to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the -carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor's solitary advance with -the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the -thing "go off," and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of -co-operation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her -instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they -had not co-operated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant: -they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one -familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there--and the -frames--but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished -like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had -it happened to _her_ or to the pictures? She tried to rally her -frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance; -but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single -conviction--the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no -standing up against that: she felt herself submerged. - -The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the -throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving -as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes. -She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical -vitality.... She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall -before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the -dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a -spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life. What proof had she -that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other? The -confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a -valid theory of art. How, after all, did she know that the pictures were -bad? On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided -the case against them? It seemed as though it were a standard outside of -herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her -aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that -was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid -that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the -middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a _massif_ -of palms and azaleas. As Claudia's muffled wanderings carried her around -the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the -figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head -bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her. - -Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware -that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered. It was what _he_ -thought of them that counted: her life hung on that. - -They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt -to flash into immediate speech. At length he said simply, "I didn't know -you were coming here." - -She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand. - -"I didn't mean to," she stammered; "but I was too early for our -appointment--" - -Her word's cast a revealing glare on the situation. Neither of them looked -at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly -to press upon them and force them apart. - -Keniston glanced at his watch. "It's twelve o'clock," he said. "Shall we go -on?" - - -V - -At the door he called a cab and put her in it; then, drawing out his watch -again, he said abruptly: "I believe I'll let you go alone. I'll join you at -the hotel in time for luncheon." She wondered for a moment if he meant to -return to the gallery; but, looking back as she drove off, she saw him walk -rapidly away in the opposite direction. - -The cabman had carried her half-way to the Hotel Cluny before she realized -where she was going, and cried out to him to turn home. There was an acute -irony in this mechanical prolongation of the quest of beauty. She had -had enough of it, too much of it; her one longing was to escape, to hide -herself away from its all-suffusing implacable light. - -At the hotel, alone in her room, a few tears came to soften her seared -vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by weeping. Her whole being -was centred in the longing to know what her husband thought. Their short -exchange of words had, after all, told her nothing. She had guessed a faint -resentment at her unexpected appearance; but that might merely imply a -dawning sense, on his part, of being furtively watched and criticised. She -had sometimes wondered if he was never conscious of her observation; there -were moments when it seemed to radiate from her in visible waves. Perhaps, -after all, he was aware of it, on his guard against it, as a lurking knife -behind the thick curtain of his complacency; and to-day he must have caught -the gleam of the blade. - -Claudia had not reached the age when pity is the first chord to vibrate in -contact with any revelation of failure. Her one hope had been that Keniston -should be clear-eyed enough to face the truth. Whatever it turned out to -be, she wanted him to measure himself with it. But as his image rose before -her she felt a sudden half-maternal longing to thrust herself between him -and disaster. Her eagerness to see him tested by circumstances seemed now -like a cruel scientific curiosity. She saw in a flash of sympathy that he -would need her most if he fell beneath his fate. - -He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she came up-stairs -from her solitary meal their _salon_ was still untenanted. She -permitted herself no sensational fears; for she could not, at the height of -apprehension, figure Keniston as yielding to any tragic impulse; but the -lengthening hours brought an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity. Suddenly -she heard the clock strike five. It was the hour at which they had promised -to meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery--the hour of the "ovation." Claudia -rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of her husband in the -crowded street. Could it be that he had forgotten her, had gone to the -gallery without her? Or had something happened--that veiled "something" -which, for the last hour, had grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind? - -She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered. As she turned to meet -him her whole being was swept forward on a great wave of pity: she was so -sure, now, that he must know. - -But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied brightness; her first -impression was that she had never seen him so vividly, so expressively -pleased. If he needed her, it was not to bind up his wounds. - -He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some -inner light. "I didn't mean to be so late," he said, tossing aside his hat -and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. "I -turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the -place fairly swallowed me up--I couldn't get away from it. I've been there -ever since." He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe. - -"It takes time," he continued musingly, "to get at them, to make out what -they're saying--the big fellows, I mean. They're not a communicative lot. -At first I couldn't make much out of their lingo--it was too different from -mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them -together, I've begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two -of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out--made them -deliver up their last drop." He lifted a brilliant eye to her. "Lord, it -was tremendous!" he declared. - -He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in -silence. - -"At first," he began again, "I was afraid their language was too hard for -me--that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed -to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I -wouldn't be beaten, and now, to-day"--he paused a moment to strike a -match--"when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me -in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I'd made them all into a big bonfire to -light me on my road!" - -His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid -to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past -upon the pyre! - -"Is there nothing left?" she faltered. - -"Nothing left? There's everything!" he exulted. "Why, here I am, not much -over forty, and I've found out already--already!" He stood up and began to -move excitedly about the room. "My God! Suppose I'd never known! Suppose -I'd gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those -chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they're saved! Won't -somebody please start a hymn?" - -Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong -current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth, -and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot. - -"Mrs. Davant--" she exclaimed. - -He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. "Mrs. Davant?" - -"We were to have met her--this afternoon--now--" - -"At the gallery? Oh, that's all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see -her after I left you; I explained it all to her." - -"All?" - -"I told her I was going to begin all over again." - -Claudia's heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly. - -"But the panels--?" - -"That's all right too. I told her about the panels," he reassured her. - -"You told her--?" - -"That I can't paint them now. She doesn't understand, of course; but she's -the best little woman and she trusts me." - -She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. "But that isn't -all," she wailed. "It doesn't matter how much you've explained to her. It -doesn't do away with the fact that we're living on those panels!" - -"Living on them?" - -"On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn't that what brought us -here? And--if you mean to do as you say--to begin all over again--how in -the world are we ever to pay her back?" - -Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. "There's only one way that I -know of," he imperturbably declared, "and that's to stay out here till I -learn how to paint them." - - - - -"COPY" - -A DIALOGUE - - -_Mrs. Ambrose Dale--forty, slender, still young--sits in her drawing-room -at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit, -there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and -flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere--mostly with autograph -inscriptions "From the Author"--and a large portrait of_ Mrs. Dale, -_at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the -wall-panels. Before_ Mrs. Dale _stands_ Hilda, _fair and twenty, -her hands full of letters_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn't it strange -that people who'd blush to borrow twenty dollars don't scruple to beg for -an autograph? - -_Hilda (reproachfully)_. Oh-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. What's the difference, pray? - -_Hilda_. Only that your last autograph sold for fifty-- - -_Mrs. Dale (not displeased)_. Ah?--I sent for you, Hilda, because I'm -dining out to-night, and if there's nothing important to attend to among -these letters you needn't sit up for me. - -_Hilda_. You don't mean to work? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Perhaps; but I sha'n't need you. You'll see that my -cigarettes and coffee-machine are in place, and that I don't have to crawl -about the floor in search of my pen-wiper? That's all. Now about these -letters-- - -_Hilda (impulsively)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Well? - -_Hilda_. I'd rather sit up for you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Child, I've nothing for you to do. I shall be blocking -out the tenth chapter of _Winged Purposes_ and it won't be ready for -you till next week. - -_Hilda_. It isn't that--but it's so beautiful to sit here, watching -and listening, all alone in the night, and to feel that you're in there -_(she points to the study-door)_ _creating_--._(Impulsively.)_ -What do I care for sleep? - -_Mrs. Dale (indulgently)_. Child--silly child!--Yes, I should have -felt so at your age--it would have been an inspiration-- - -_Hilda (rapt)_. It is! - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you must go to bed; I must have you fresh in the -morning; for you're still at the age when one is fresh in the morning! -_(She sighs.)_ The letters? _(Abruptly.)_ Do you take notes of -what you feel, Hilda--here, all alone in the night, as you say? - -_Hilda (shyly)_. I have-- - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. For the diary? - -_Hilda (nods and blushes)_. - -_Mrs. Dale (caressingly)_. Goose!--Well, to business. What is there? - -_Hilda_. Nothing important, except a letter from Stroud & Fayerweather -to say that the question of the royalty on _Pomegranate Seed_ has been -settled in your favor. The English publishers of _Immolation_ write -to consult you about a six-shilling edition; Olafson, the Copenhagen -publisher, applies for permission to bring out a Danish translation of -_The Idol's Feet_; and the editor of the _Semaphore_ wants a new -serial--I think that's all; except that _Woman's Sphere_ and _The -Droplight_ ask for interviews--with photographs-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. The same old story! I'm so tired of it all. _(To -herself, in an undertone.)_ But how should I feel if it all stopped? -_(The servant brings in a card.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (reading it)_. Is it possible? Paul Ventnor? _(To the -servant.)_ Show Mr. Ventnor up. _(To herself.)_ Paul Ventnor! - -_Hilda (breathless)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale--_the_ Mr. Ventnor? - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. I fancy there's only one. - -_Hilda_. The great, great poet? _(Irresolute.)_ No, I don't -dare-- - -_Mrs. Dale (with a tinge of impatience)_. What? - -_Hilda (fervently)_. Ask you--if I might--oh, here in this corner, -where he can't possibly notice me--stay just a moment? Just to see him come -in? To see the meeting between you--the greatest novelist and the greatest -poet of the age? Oh, it's too much to ask! It's an historic moment. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, I suppose it is. I hadn't thought of it in that -light. Well _(smiling)_, for the diary-- - -_Hilda_. Oh, thank you, _thank you_! I'll be off the very instant -I've heard him speak. - -_Mrs. Dale_. The very instant, mind. _(She rises, looks at herself -in the glass, smooths her hair, sits down again, and rattles the -tea-caddy.)_ Isn't the room very warm?--_(She looks over at her -portrait.)_ I've grown stouter since that was painted--. You'll make a -fortune out of that diary, Hilda-- - -_Hilda (modestly)_. Four publishers have applied to me already-- - -_The Servant (announces)_. Mr. Paul Ventnor. - -_(Tall, nearing fifty, with an incipient stoutness buttoned into a -masterly frock-coat, Ventnor drops his glass and advances vaguely, with a -short-sighted stare.)_ - -_Ventnor_. Mrs. Dale? - -_Mrs. Dale_. My dear friend! This is kind. _(She looks over her -shoulder at Hilda, who vanishes through the door to the left.)_ The -papers announced your arrival, but I hardly hoped-- - -_Ventnor (whose short-sighted stare is seen to conceal a deeper -embarrassment)_. You hadn't forgotten me, then? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Delicious! Do _you_ forget that you're public -property? - -_Ventnor_. Forgotten, I mean, that we were old friends? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Such old friends! May I remind you that it's nearly -twenty years since we've met? Or do you find cold reminiscences -indigestible? - -_Ventnor_. On the contrary, I've come to ask you for a dish of -them--we'll warm them up together. You're my first visit. - -_Mrs. Dale_. How perfect of you! So few men visit their women friends -in chronological order; or at least they generally do it the other way -round, beginning with the present day and working back--if there's time--to -prehistoric woman. - -_Ventnor_. But when prehistoric woman has become historic woman--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, it's the reflection of my glory that has guided you -here, then? - -_Ventnor_. It's a spirit in my feet that has led me, at the first -opportunity, to the most delightful spot I know. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, the first opportunity--! - -_Ventnor_. I might have seen you very often before; but never just in -the right way. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is this the right way? - -_Ventnor_. It depends on you to make it so. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What a responsibility! What shall I do? - -_Ventnor_. Talk to me--make me think you're a little glad to see me; -give me some tea and a cigarette; and say you're out to everyone else. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is that all? _(She hands him a cup of tea.)_ The -cigarettes are at your elbow--. And do you think I shouldn't have been glad -to see you before? - -_Ventnor_. No; I think I should have been too glad to see you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Dear me, what precautions! I hope you always wear -goloshes when it looks like rain and never by any chance expose yourself -to a draught. But I had an idea that poets courted the emotions-- - -_Ventnor_. Do novelists? - -_Mrs. Dale_. If you ask _me_--on paper! - -_Ventnor_. Just so; that's safest. My best things about the sea have -been written on shore. _(He looks at her thoughtfully.)_ But it -wouldn't have suited us in the old days, would it? - -_Mrs. Dale (sighing)_. When we were real people! - -_Ventnor_. Real people? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Are _you_, now? I died years ago. What you see -before you is a figment of the reporter's brain--a monster manufactured out -of newspaper paragraphs, with ink in its veins. A keen sense of copyright -is _my_ nearest approach to an emotion. - -_Ventnor (sighing)_. Ah, well, yes--as you say, we're public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. If one shared equally with the public! But the last shred -of my identity is gone. - -_Ventnor_. Most people would be glad to part with theirs on such -terms. I have followed your work with immense interest. _Immolation_ -is a masterpiece. I read it last summer when it first came out. - -_Mrs. Dale (with a shade less warmth)_. _Immolation_ has been out -three years. - -_Ventnor_. Oh, by Jove--no? Surely not--But one is so overwhelmed--one -loses count. (_Reproachfully_.) Why have you never sent me your books? - -_Mrs. Dale_. For that very reason. - -_Ventnor (deprecatingly)_. You know I didn't mean it for you! And -_my_ first book--do you remember--was dedicated to you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. _Silver Trumpets_-- - -_Ventnor (much interested)_. Have you a copy still, by any chance? The -first edition, I mean? Mine was stolen years ago. Do you think you could -put your hand on it? - -_Mrs. Dale (taking a small shabby book from the table at her side)_. -It's here. - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. May I have it? Ah, thanks. This is _very_ -interesting. The last copy sold in London for 40, and they tell me the -next will fetch twice as much. It's quite _introuvable_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I know that. _(A pause. She takes the book from him, -opens it, and reads, half to herself--)_ - - _How much we two have seen together, - Of other eyes unwist, - Dear as in days of leafless weather - The willow's saffron mist, - - Strange as the hour when Hesper swings - A-sea in beryl green, - While overhead on dalliant wings - The daylight hangs serene, - - And thrilling as a meteor's fall - Through depths of lonely sky, - When each to each two watchers call: - I saw it!--So did I._ - -_Ventnor_. Thin, thin--the troubadour tinkle. Odd how little promise -there is in first volumes! - -_Mrs. Dale (with irresistible emphasis)_. I thought there was a -distinct promise in this! - -_Ventnor (seeing his mistake)_. Ah--the one you would never let me -fulfil? _(Sentimentally.)_ How inexorable you were! You never -dedicated a book to _me_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I hadn't begun to write when we were--dedicating things -to each other. - -_Ventnor_. Not for the public--but you wrote for me; and, wonderful as -you are, you've never written anything since that I care for half as much -as-- - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Well? - -_Ventnor_. Your letters. - -_Mrs. Dale (in a changed voice)_. My letters--do you remember them? - -_Ventnor_. When I don't, I reread them. - -_Mrs. Dale (incredulous)_. You have them still? - -_Ventnor (unguardedly)_. You haven't mine, then? - -_Mrs. Dale (playfully)_. Oh, you were a celebrity already. Of course I -kept them! _(Smiling.)_ Think what they are worth now! I always keep -them locked up in my safe over there. _(She indicates a cabinet.)_ - -_Ventnor (after a pause)_. I always carry yours with me. - -_Mrs. Dale (laughing)_. You-- - -_Ventnor_. Wherever I go. _(A longer pause. She looks at him -fixedly.)_ I have them with me now. - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. You--have them with you--now? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. Why not? One never knows-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Never knows--? - -_Ventnor (humorously)_. Gad--when the bank-examiner may come round. -You forget I'm a married man. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah--yes. - -_Ventnor (sits down beside her)_. I speak to you as I couldn't to -anyone else--without deserving a kicking. You know how it all came about. -_(A pause.)_ You'll bear witness that it wasn't till you denied me all -hope-- - -_Mrs. Dale (a little breathless)_. Yes, yes-- - -_Ventnor_. Till you sent me from you-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's so easy to be heroic when one is young! One doesn't -realize how long life is going to last afterward. _(Musing.)_ Nor what -weary work it is gathering up the fragments. - -_Ventnor_. But the time comes when one sends for the china-mender, and -has the bits riveted together, and turns the cracked side to the wall-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. And denies that the article was ever damaged? - -_Ventnor_. Eh? Well, the great thing, you see, is to keep one's self -out of reach of the housemaid's brush. _(A pause.)_ If you're married -you can't--always. _(Smiling.)_ Don't you hate to be taken down and -dusted? - -_Mrs. Dale (with intention)_. You forget how long ago my husband died. -It's fifteen years since I've been an object of interest to anybody but the -public. - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The only one of your admirers to whom you've ever -given the least encouragement! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Say rather the most easily pleased! - -_Ventnor_. Or the only one you cared to please? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, you _haven't_ kept my letters! - -_Ventnor (gravely)_. Is that a challenge? Look here, then! _(He -drams a packet from his pocket and holds it out to her.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (taking the packet and looking at him earnestly)_. Why have -you brought me these? - -_Ventnor_. I didn't bring them; they came because I came--that's all. -_(Tentatively.)_ Are we unwelcome? - -_Mrs. Dale (who has undone the packet and does not appear to hear -him)_. The very first I ever wrote you--the day after we met at the -concert. How on earth did you happen to keep it? _(She glances over -it.)_ How perfectly absurd! Well, it's not a compromising document. - -_Ventnor_. I'm afraid none of them are. - -_Mrs. Dale (quickly)_. Is it to that they owe their immunity? Because -one could leave them about like safety matches?--Ah, here's another I -remember--I wrote that the day after we went skating together for the first -time. _(She reads it slowly.)_ How odd! How very odd! - -_Ventnor_. What? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, it's the most curious thing--I had a letter of this -kind to do the other day, in the novel I'm at work on now--the letter of a -woman who is just--just beginning-- - -_Ventnor_. Yes--just beginning--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. And, do you know, I find the best phrase in it, the -phrase I somehow regarded as the fruit of--well, of all my subsequent -discoveries--is simply plagiarized, word for word, from this! - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. I told you so! You were all there! - -_Mrs. Dale (critically)_. But the rest of it's poorly done--very -poorly. _(Reads the letter over.)_ H'm--I didn't know how to leave -off. It takes me forever to get out of the door. - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Perhaps I was there to prevent you! _(After a -pause.)_ I wonder what I said in return? - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Shall we look? _(She rises.)_ Shall -we--really? I have them all here, you know. _(She goes toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Ventnor (following her with repressed eagerness)_. Oh--all! - -_Mrs. Dale (throws open the door of the cabinet, revealing a number of -packets)_. Don't you believe me now? - -_Ventnor_. Good heavens! How I must have repeated myself! But then you -were so very deaf. - -_Mrs. Dale (takes out a packet and returns to her seat. Ventnor extends -an impatient hand for the letters)_. No--no; wait! I want to find your -answer to the one I was just reading. _(After a pause.)_ Here it -is--yes, I thought so! - -_Ventnor_. What did you think? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. I thought it was the one in which you -quoted _Epipsychidion_-- - -_Ventnor_. Mercy! Did I _quote_ things? I don't wonder you were -cruel. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, and here's the other--the one I--the one I didn't -answer--for a long time. Do you remember? - -_Ventnor (with emotion)_. Do I remember? I wrote it the morning after -we heard _Isolde_-- - -_Mrs. Dale (disappointed)_. No--no. _That_ wasn't the one I -didn't answer! Here--this is the one I mean. - -_Ventnor (takes it curiously)_. Ah--h'm--this is very like unrolling a -mummy--_(he glances at her)_--with a live grain of wheat in it, -perhaps?--Oh, by Jove! - -_Mrs. Dale_. What? - -_Ventnor_. Why, this is the one I made a sonnet out of afterward! By -Jove, I'd forgotten where that idea came from. You may know the lines -perhaps? They're in the fourth volume of my Complete Edition--It's the -thing beginning - - _Love came to me with unrelenting eyes--_ - -one of my best, I rather fancy. Of course, here it's very crudely put--the -values aren't brought out--ah! this touch is good though--very good. H'm, I -daresay there might be other material. _(He glances toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (drily)_. The live grain of wheat, as you said! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, well--my first harvest was sown on rocky -ground--_now_ I plant for the fowls of the air. _(Rising and walking -toward the cabinet.)_ When can I come and carry off all this rubbish? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Carry it off? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. My dear lady, surely between you and me -explicitness is a burden. You must see that these letters of ours can't be -left to take their chance like an ordinary correspondence--you said -yourself we were public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. To take their chance? Do you suppose that, in my keeping, -your letters take any chances? _(Suddenly.)_ Do mine--in yours? - -_Ventnor (still more embarrassed)_. Helen--! _(He takes a turn -through the room.)_ You force me to remind you that you and I are -differently situated--that in a moment of madness I sacrificed the only -right you ever gave me--the right to love you better than any other -woman in the world. _(A pause. She says nothing and he continues, with -increasing difficulty--)_ You asked me just now why I carried your -letters about with me--kept them, literally, in my own hands. Well, suppose -it's to be sure of their not falling into some one else's? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh! - -_Ventnor (throws himself into a chair)_. For God's sake don't pity me! - -_Mrs. Dale (after a long pause)_. Am I dull--or are you trying to say -that you want to give me back my letters? - -_Ventnor (starting up)_. I? Give you back--? God forbid! Your letters? -Not for the world! The only thing I have left! But you can't dream that in -_my_ hands-- - -_Mrs. Dale (suddenly)_. You want yours, then? - -_Ventnor (repressing his eagerness)_. My dear friend, if I'd ever -dreamed that you'd kept them--? - -_Mrs. Dale (accusingly)_. You _do_ want them. _(A pause. He -makes a deprecatory gesture.)_ Why should they be less safe with me than -mine with you? _I_ never forfeited the right to keep them. - -_Ventnor (after another pause)_. It's compensation enough, almost, -to have you reproach me! _(He moves nearer to her, but she makes no -response.)_ You forget that I've forfeited _all_ my rights--even -that of letting you keep my letters. - -_Mrs. Dale_. You _do_ want them! _(She rises, throws all the -letters into the cabinet, locks the door and puts the key in her -pocket.)_ There's my answer. - -_Ventnor_. Helen--! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, I paid dearly enough for the right to keep them, and -I mean to! _(She turns to him passionately.)_ Have you ever asked -yourself how I paid for it? With what months and years of solitude, what -indifference to flattery, what resistance to affection?--Oh, don't smile -because I said affection, and not love. Affection's a warm cloak in cold -weather; and I _have_ been cold; and I shall keep on growing colder! -Don't talk to me about living in the hearts of my readers! We both know -what kind of a domicile that is. Why, before long I shall become a classic! -Bound in sets and kept on the top book-shelf--brr, doesn't that sound -freezing? I foresee the day when I shall be as lonely as an Etruscan -museum! _(She breaks into a laugh.)_ That's what I've paid for the -right to keep your letters. _(She holds out her hand.)_ And now give -me mine. - -_Ventnor_. Yours? - -_Mrs. Dale (haughtily)_. Yes; I claim them. - -_Ventnor (in the same tone)_. On what ground? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Hear the man!--Because I wrote them, of course. - -_Ventnor_. But it seems to me that--under your inspiration, I admit--I -also wrote mine. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I don't dispute their authenticity--it's yours I -deny! - -_Ventnor_. Mine? - -_Mrs. Dale_. You voluntarily ceased to be the man who wrote me those -letters--you've admitted as much. You traded paper for flesh and blood. I -don't dispute your wisdom--only you must hold to your bargain! The letters -are all mine. - -_Ventnor (groping between two tones)_. Your arguments are as -convincing as ever. _(He hazards a faint laugh.)_ You're a marvellous -dialectician--but, if we're going to settle the matter in the spirit of an -arbitration treaty, why, there are accepted conventions in such cases. It's -an odious way to put it, but since you won't help me, one of them is-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. One of them is--? - -_Ventnor_. That it is usual--that technically, I mean, the -letter--belongs to its writer-- - -_Mrs. Dale (after a pause)_. Such letters as _these_? - -_Ventnor_. Such letters especially-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you couldn't have written them if I hadn't--been -willing to read them. Surely there's more of myself in them than of you. - -_Ventnor_. Surely there's nothing in which a man puts more of himself -than in his love-letters! - -_Mrs. Dale (with emotion)_. But a woman's love-letters are like her child. -They belong to her more than to anybody else-- - -_Ventnor_. And a man's? - -_Mrs. Dale (with sudden violence)_. Are all he risks!--There, take -them. _(She flings the key of the cabinet at his feet and sinks into a -chair.)_ - -_Ventnor (starts as though to pick up the key; then approaches and bends -over her)_. Helen--oh, Helen! - -_Mrs. Dale (she yields her hands to him, murmuring:)_ Paul! -_(Suddenly she straightens herself and draws back illuminated.)_ What -a fool I am! I see it all now. You want them for your memoirs! - -_Ventnor (disconcerted)_. Helen-- - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. Come, come--the rule is to unmask when the -signal's given! You want them for your memoirs. - -_Ventnor (with a forced laugh)_. What makes you think so? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. Because _I_ want them for mine! - -_Ventnor (in a changed tone)_. Ah--. _(He moves away from her and -leans against the mantelpiece. She remains seated, with her eyes fixed on -him.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale_. I wonder I didn't see it sooner. Your reasons were lame -enough. - -_Ventnor (ironically)_. Yours were masterly. You're the more -accomplished actor of the two. I was completely deceived. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I'm a novelist. I can keep up that sort of thing for -five hundred pages! - -_Ventnor_. I congratulate you. _(A pause.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (moving to her seat behind the tea-table)_. I've never -offered you any tea. _(She bends over the kettle.)_ Why don't you take -your letters? - -_Ventnor_. Because you've been clever enough to make it impossible for -me. _(He picks up the key and hands it to her. Then abruptly)_--Was it -all acting--just now? - -_Mrs. Dale_. By what right do you ask? - -_Ventnor_. By right of renouncing my claim to my letters. Keep -them--and tell me. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I give you back your claim--and I refuse to tell you. - -_Ventnor (sadly)_. Ah, Helen, if you deceived me, you deceived -yourself also. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What does it matter, now that we're both undeceived? I -played a losing game, that's all. - -_Ventnor_. Why losing--since all the letters are yours? - -_Mrs. Dale_. The letters? _(Slowly.)_ I'd forgotten the letters-- - -_Ventnor (exultant)_. Ah, I knew you'd end by telling me the truth! - -_Mrs. Dale_. The truth? Where _is_ the truth? _(Half to -herself.)_ I thought I was lying when I began--but the lies turned into -truth as I uttered them! _(She looks at Ventnor.)_ I _did_ want -your letters for my memoirs--I _did_ think I'd kept them for that -purpose--and I wanted to get mine back for the same reason--but now _(she -puts out her hand and picks up some of her letters, which are lying -scattered on the table near her)_--how fresh they seem, and how they -take me back to the time when we lived instead of writing about life! - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The time when we didn't prepare our impromptu -effects beforehand and copyright our remarks about the weather! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Or keep our epigrams in cold storage and our adjectives -under lock and key! - -_Ventnor_. When our emotions weren't worth ten cents a word, and a -signature wasn't an autograph. Ah, Helen, after all, there's nothing like -the exhilaration of spending one's capital! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Of wasting it, you mean. _(She points to the -letters.)_ Do you suppose we could have written a word of these if we'd -known we were putting our dreams out at interest? _(She sits musing, with -her eyes on the fire, and he watches her in silence.)_ Paul, do you -remember the deserted garden we sometimes used to walk in? - -_Ventnor_. The old garden with the high wall at the end of the village -street? The garden with the ruined box-borders and the broken-down arbor? -Why, I remember every weed in the paths and every patch of moss on the -walls! - -_Mrs. Dale._ Well--I went back there the other day. The village is -immensely improved. There's a new hotel with gas-fires, and a trolley in -the main street; and the garden has been turned into a public park, where -excursionists sit on cast-iron benches admiring the statue of an -Abolitionist. - -_Ventnor_. An Abolitionist--how appropriate! - -_Mrs. Dale_. And the man who sold the garden has made a fortune that -he doesn't know how to spend-- - -_Ventnor (rising impulsively)_. Helen, _(he approaches and lays his -hand on her letters)_, let's sacrifice our fortune and keep the -excursionists out! - -_Mrs. Dale (with a responsive movement)_. Paul, do you really mean it? - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Mean it? Why, I feel like a landed proprietor -already! It's more than a garden--it's a park. - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's more than a park, it's a world--as long as we keep -it to ourselves! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, yes--even the pyramids look small when one sees a -Cook's tourist on top of them! _(He takes the key from the table, unlocks -the cabinet and brings out his letters, which he lays beside hers.)_ -Shall we burn the key to our garden? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, then it will indeed be boundless! _(Watching him -while he throws the letters into the fire.)_ - -_Ventnor (turning back to her with a half-sad smile)_. But not too big -for us to find each other in? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Since we shall be the only people there! _(He takes -both her hands and they look at each other a moment in silence. Then he -goes out by the door to the right. As he reaches the door she takes a step -toward him, impulsively; then turning back she leans against the -chimney-piece, quietly watching the letters burn.)_ - - - - -THE REMBRANDT - - -"You're _so_ artistic," my cousin Eleanor Copt began. - -Of all Eleanor's exordiums it is the one I most dread. When she tells me -I'm so clever I know this is merely the preamble to inviting me to meet the -last literary obscurity of the moment: a trial to be evaded or endured, as -circumstances dictate; whereas her calling me artistic fatally connotes -the request to visit, in her company, some distressed gentlewoman whose -future hangs on my valuation of her old Saxe or of her grandfather's -Marc Antonios. Time was when I attempted to resist these compulsions of -Eleanor's; but I soon learned that, short of actual flight, there was -no refuge from her beneficent despotism. It is not always easy for the -curator of a museum to abandon his post on the plea of escaping a pretty -cousin's importunities; and Eleanor, aware of my predicament, is none -too magnanimous to take advantage of it. Magnanimity is, in fact, not in -Eleanor's line. The virtues, she once explained to me, are like bonnets: -the very ones that look best on other people may not happen to suit one's -own particular style; and she added, with a slight deflection of metaphor, -that none of the ready-made virtues ever _had_ fitted her: they all -pinched somewhere, and she'd given up trying to wear them. - -Therefore when she said to me, "You're _so_ artistic." emphasizing the -conjunction with a tap of her dripping umbrella (Eleanor is out in all -weathers: the elements are as powerless against her as man), I merely -stipulated, "It's not old Saxe again?" - -She shook her head reassuringly. "A picture--a Rembrandt!" - -"Good Lord! Why not a Leonardo?" - -"Well"--she smiled--"that, of course, depends on _you_." - -"On me?" - -"On your attribution. I dare say Mrs. Fontage would consent to the -change--though she's very conservative." - -A gleam of hope came to me and I pronounced: "One can't judge of a picture -in this weather." - -"Of course not. I'm coming for you to-morrow." - -"I've an engagement to-morrow." - -"I'll come before or after your engagement." - -The afternoon paper lay at my elbow and I contrived a furtive consultation -of the weather-report. It said "Rain to-morrow," and I answered briskly: -"All right, then; come at ten"--rapidly calculating that the clouds on -which I counted might lift by noon. - -My ingenuity failed of its due reward; for the heavens, as if in league -with my cousin, emptied themselves before morning, and punctually at ten -Eleanor and the sun appeared together in my office. - -I hardly listened, as we descended the Museum steps and got into Eleanor's -hansom, to her vivid summing-up of the case. I guessed beforehand that the -lady we were about to visit had lapsed by the most distressful degrees from -opulence to a "hall-bedroom"; that her grandfather, if he had not been -Minister to France, had signed the Declaration of Independence; that the -Rembrandt was an heirloom, sole remnant of disbanded treasures; that for -years its possessor had been unwilling to part with it, and that even now -the question of its disposal must be approached with the most diplomatic -obliquity. - -Previous experience had taught me that all Eleanor's "cases" presented a -harrowing similarity of detail. No circumstance tending to excite the -spectator's sympathy and involve his action was omitted from the history of -her beneficiaries; the lights and shades were indeed so skilfully adjusted -that any impartial expression of opinion took on the hue of cruelty. I -could have produced closetfuls of "heirlooms" in attestation of this fact; -for it is one more mark of Eleanor's competence that her friends usually -pay the interest on her philanthropy. My one hope was that in this case the -object, being a picture, might reasonably be rated beyond my means; and -as our cab drew up before a blistered brown-stone door-step I formed the -self-defensive resolve to place an extreme valuation on Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt. It is Eleanor's fault if she is sometimes fought with her own -weapons. - -The house stood in one of those shabby provisional-looking New York streets -that seem resignedly awaiting demolition. It was the kind of house that, -in its high days, must have had a bow-window with a bronze in it. The -bow-window had been replaced by a plumber's _devanture_, and one might -conceive the bronze to have gravitated to the limbo where Mexican onyx -tables and bric-a-brac in buffalo-horn await the first signs of our next -aesthetic reaction. - -Eleanor swept me through a hall that smelled of poverty, up unlit stairs to -a bare slit of a room. "And she must leave this in a month!" she whispered -across her knock. - -I had prepared myself for the limp widow's weed of a woman that one figures -in such a setting; and confronted abruptly with Mrs. Fontage's white-haired -erectness I had the disconcerting sense that I was somehow in her presence -at my own solicitation. I instinctively charged Eleanor with this reversal -of the situation; but a moment later I saw it must be ascribed to a -something about Mrs. Fontage that precluded the possibility of her asking -any one a favor. It was not that she was of forbidding, or even majestic, -demeanor; but that one guessed, under her aquiline prettiness, a dignity -nervously on guard against the petty betrayal of her surroundings. The -room was unconcealably poor: the little faded "relics," the high-stocked -ancestral silhouettes, the steel-engravings after Raphael and Correggio, -grouped in a vain attempt to hide the most obvious stains on the -wall-paper, served only to accentuate the contrast of a past evidently -diversified by foreign travel and the enjoyment of the arts. Even Mrs. -Fontage's dress had the air of being a last expedient, the ultimate outcome -of a much-taxed ingenuity in darning and turning. One felt that all the -poor lady's barriers were falling save that of her impregnable manner. - -To this manner I found myself conveying my appreciation of being admitted -to a view of the Rembrandt. - -Mrs. Fontage's smile took my homage for granted. "It is always," she -conceded, "a privilege to be in the presence of the great masters." Her -slim wrinkled hand waved me to a dusky canvas near the window. - -"It's _so_ interesting, dear Mrs. Fontage," I heard Eleanor -exclaiming, "and my cousin will be able to tell you exactly--" Eleanor, in -my presence, always admits that she knows nothing about art; but she gives -the impression that this is merely because she hasn't had time to look into -the matter--and has had me to do it for her. - -Mrs. Fontage seated herself without speaking, as though fearful that a -breath might disturb my communion with the masterpiece. I felt that she -thought Eleanor's reassuring ejaculations ill-timed; and in this I was of -one mind with her; for the impossibility of telling her exactly what I -thought of her Rembrandt had become clear to me at a glance. - -My cousin's vivacities began to languish and the silence seemed to shape -itself into a receptacle for my verdict. I stepped back, affecting a more -distant scrutiny; and as I did so my eye caught Mrs. Fontage's profile. Her -lids trembled slightly. I took refuge in the familiar expedient of asking -the history of the picture, and she waved me brightly to a seat. - -This was indeed a topic on which she could dilate. The Rembrandt, it -appeared, had come into Mr. Fontage's possession many years ago, while -the young couple were on their wedding-tour, and under circumstances so -romantic that she made no excuse for relating them in all their parenthetic -fulness. The picture belonged to an old Belgian Countess of redundant -quarterings, whom the extravagances of an ungovernable nephew had compelled -to part with her possessions (in the most private manner) about the time of -the Fontages' arrival. By a really remarkable coincidence, it happened that -their courier (an exceptionally intelligent and superior man) was an old -servant of the Countess's, and had thus been able to put them in the way of -securing the Rembrandt under the very nose of an English Duke, whose agent -had been sent to Brussels to negotiate for its purchase. Mrs. Fontage could -not recall the Duke's name, but he was a great collector and had a famous -Highland castle, where somebody had been murdered, and which she herself -had visited (by moonlight) when she had travelled in Scotland as a girl. -The episode had in short been one of the most interesting "experiences" of -a tour almost chromo-lithographic in vivacity of impression; and they had -always meant to go back to Brussels for the sake of reliving so picturesque -a moment. Circumstances (of which the narrator's surroundings declared the -nature) had persistently interfered with the projected return to Europe, -and the picture had grown doubly valuable as representing the high-water -mark of their artistic emotions. Mrs. Fontage's moist eye caressed the -canvas. "There is only," she added with a perceptible effort, "one slight -drawback: the picture is not signed. But for that the Countess, of course, -would have sold it to a museum. All the connoisseurs who have seen it -pronounce it an undoubted Rembrandt, in the artist's best manner; but the -museums"--she arched her brows in smiling recognition of a well-known -weakness--"give the preference to signed examples--" - -Mrs. Fontage's words evoked so touching a vision of the young tourists of -fifty years ago, entrusting to an accomplished and versatile courier the -direction of their helpless zeal for art, that I lost sight for a moment -of the point at issue. The old Belgian Countess, the wealthy Duke with a -feudal castle in Scotland, Mrs. Fontage's own maiden pilgrimage to Arthur's -Seat and Holyrood, all the accessories of the naf transaction, seemed -a part of that vanished Europe to which our young race carried its -indiscriminate ardors, its tender romantic credulity: the legendary -castellated Europe of keepsakes, brigands and old masters, that -compensated, by one such "experience" as Mrs. Fontage's, for an after-life -of aesthetic privation. - -I was restored to the present by Eleanor's looking at her watch. The action -mutely conveyed that something was expected of me. I risked the temporizing -statement that the picture was very interesting; but Mrs. Fontage's polite -assent revealed the poverty of the expedient. Eleanor's impatience -overflowed. - -"You would like my cousin to give you an idea of its value?" she suggested. - -Mrs. Fontage grew more erect. "No one," she corrected with great -gentleness, "can know its value quite as well as I, who live with it--" - -We murmured our hasty concurrence. - -"But it might be interesting to hear"--she addressed herself to me--"as a -mere matter of curiosity--what estimate would be put on it from the purely -commercial point of view--if such a term may be used in speaking of a work -of art." - -I sounded a note of deprecation. - -"Oh, I understand, of course," she delicately anticipated me, "that that -could never be _your_ view, your personal view; but since occasions -_may_ arise--do arise--when it becomes necessary to--to put a price on -the priceless, as it were--I have thought--Miss Copt has suggested--" - -"Some day," Eleanor encouraged her, "you might feel that the picture ought -to belong to some one who has more--more opportunity of showing it--letting -it be seen by the public--for educational reasons--" - -"I have tried," Mrs. Fontage admitted, "to see it in that light." - -The crucial moment was upon me. To escape the challenge of Mrs. Fontage's -brilliant composure I turned once more to the picture. If my courage needed -reinforcement, the picture amply furnished it. Looking at that lamentable -canvas seemed the surest way of gathering strength to denounce it; but -behind me, all the while, I felt Mrs. Fontage's shuddering pride drawn -up in a final effort of self-defense. I hated myself for my sentimental -perversion of the situation. Reason argued that it was more cruel to -deceive Mrs. Fontage than to tell her the truth; but that merely proved the -inferiority of reason to instinct in situations involving any concession to -the emotions. Along with her faith in the Rembrandt I must destroy not only -the whole fabric of Mrs. Fontage's past, but even that lifelong habit of -acquiescence in untested formulas that makes the best part of the average -feminine strength. I guessed the episode of the picture to be inextricably -interwoven with the traditions and convictions which served to veil Mrs. -Fontage's destitution not only from others but from herself. Viewed in -that light the Rembrandt had perhaps been worth its purchase-money; and I -regretted that works of art do not commonly sell on the merit of the moral -support they may have rendered. - -From this unavailing flight I was recalled by the sense that something -must be done. To place a fictitious value on the picture was at best a -provisional measure; while the brutal alternative of advising Mrs. Fontage -to sell it for a hundred dollars at least afforded an opening to the -charitably disposed purchaser. I intended, if other resources failed, -to put myself forward in that light; but delicacy of course forbade my -coupling my unflattering estimate of the Rembrandt with an immediate offer -to buy it. All I could do was to inflict the wound: the healing unguent -must be withheld for later application. - -I turned to Mrs. Fontage, who sat motionless, her finely-lined cheeks -touched with an expectant color, her eyes averted from the picture which -was so evidently the one object they beheld. - -"My dear madam--" I began. Her vivid smile was like a light held up to -dazzle me. It shrouded every alternative in darkness and I had the flurried -sense of having lost my way among the intricacies of my contention. Of -a sudden I felt the hopelessness of finding a crack in her impenetrable -conviction. My words slipped from me like broken weapons. "The picture," -I faltered, "would of course be worth more if it were signed. As it is, -I--I hardly think--on a conservative estimate--it can be valued at--at -more--than--a thousand dollars, say--" - -My deflected argument ran on somewhat aimlessly till it found itself -plunging full tilt against the barrier of Mrs. Fontage's silence. She sat -as impassive as though I had not spoken. Eleanor loosed a few fluttering -words of congratulation and encouragement, but their flight was suddenly -cut short. Mrs. Fontage had risen with a certain solemnity. - -"I could never," she said gently--her gentleness was adamantine--"under any -circumstances whatever, consider, for a moment even, the possibility of -parting with the picture at such a price." - - -II - -Within three weeks a tremulous note from Mrs. Fontage requested the favor -of another visit. If the writing was tremulous, however, the writer's tone -was firm. She named her own day and hour, without the conventional -reference to her visitor's convenience. - -My first impulse was to turn the note over to Eleanor. I had acquitted -myself of my share in the ungrateful business of coming to Mrs. Fontage's -aid, and if, as her letter denoted, she had now yielded to the closer -pressure of need, the business of finding a purchaser for the Rembrandt -might well be left to my cousin's ingenuity. But here conscience put in -the uncomfortable reminder that it was I who, in putting a price on the -picture, had raised the real obstacle in the way of Mrs. Fontage's rescue. -No one would give a thousand dollars for the Rembrandt; but to tell -Mrs. Fontage so had become as unthinkable as murder. I had, in fact, on -returning from my first inspection of the picture, refrained from imparting -to Eleanor my opinion of its value. Eleanor is porous, and I knew that -sooner or later the unnecessary truth would exude through the loose texture -of her dissimulation. Not infrequently she thus creates the misery she -alleviates; and I have sometimes suspected her of paining people in order -that she might be sorry for them. I had, at all events, cut off retreat in -Eleanor's direction; and the remaining alternative carried me straight to -Mrs. Fontage. - -She received me with the same commanding sweetness. The room was even barer -than before--I believe the carpet was gone--but her manner built up about -her a palace to which I was welcomed with high state; and it was as a mere -incident of the ceremony that I was presently made aware of her decision to -sell the Rembrandt. My previous unsuccess in planning how to deal with Mrs. -Fontage had warned me to leave my farther course to chance; and I listened -to her explanation with complete detachment. She had resolved to travel for -her health; her doctor advised it, and as her absence might be indefinitely -prolonged she had reluctantly decided to part with the picture in order -to avoid the expense of storage and insurance. Her voice drooped at the -admission, and she hurried on, detailing the vague itinerary of a journey -that was to combine long-promised visits to impatient friends with various -"interesting opportunities" less definitely specified. The poor lady's -skill in rearing a screen of verbiage about her enforced avowal had -distracted me from my own share in the situation, and it was with dismay -that I suddenly caught the drift of her assumptions. She expected me to -buy the Rembrandt for the Museum; she had taken my previous valuation as a -tentative bid, and when I came to my senses she was in the act of accepting -my offer. - -Had I had a thousand dollars of my own to dispose of, the bargain would -have been concluded on the spot; but I was in the impossible position of -being materially unable to buy the picture and morally unable to tell her -that it was not worth acquiring for the Museum. - -I dashed into the first evasion in sight. I had no authority, I explained, -to purchase pictures for the Museum without the consent of the committee. - -Mrs. Fontage coped for a moment in silence with the incredible fact -that I had rejected her offer; then she ventured, with a kind of pale -precipitation: "But I understood--Miss Copt tells me that you practically -decide such matters for the committee." I could guess what the effort had -cost her. - -"My cousin is given to generalizations. My opinion may have some weight -with the committee--" - -"Well, then--" she timidly prompted. - -"For that very reason I can't buy the picture." - -She said, with a drooping note, "I don't understand." - -"Yet you told me," I reminded her, "that you knew museums didn't buy -unsigned pictures." - -"Not for what they are worth! Every one knows that. But I--I -understood--the price you named--" Her pride shuddered back from the -abasement. "It's a misunderstanding then," she faltered. - -To avoid looking at her, I glanced desperately at the Rembrandt. Could -I--? But reason rejected the possibility. Even if the committee had been -blind--and they all _were_ but Crozier--I simply shouldn't have dared -to do it. I stood up, feeling that to cut the matter short was the only -alleviation within reach. - -Mrs. Fontage had summoned her indomitable smile; but its brilliancy -dropped, as I opened the door, like a candle blown out by a draught. - -"If there's any one else--if you knew any one who would care to see the -picture, I should be most happy--" She kept her eyes on me, and I saw that, -in her case, it hurt less than to look at the Rembrandt. "I shall have to -leave here, you know," she panted, "if nobody cares to have it--" - - -III - -That evening at my club I had just succeeded in losing sight of Mrs. -Fontage in the fumes of an excellent cigar, when a voice at my elbow evoked -her harassing image. - -"I want to talk to you," the speaker said, "about Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt." - -"There isn't any," I was about to growl; but looking up I recognized the -confiding countenance of Mr. Jefferson Rose. - -Mr. Rose was known to me chiefly as a young man suffused with a vague -enthusiasm for Virtue and my cousin Eleanor. - -One glance at his glossy exterior conveyed the assurance that his morals -were as immaculate as his complexion and his linen. Goodness exuded from -his moist eye, his liquid voice, the warm damp pressure of his trustful -hand. He had always struck me as one of the most uncomplicated organisms -I had ever met. His ideas were as simple and inconsecutive as the -propositions in a primer, and he spoke slowly, with a kind of uniformity -of emphasis that made his words stand out like the raised type for the -blind. An obvious incapacity for abstract conceptions made him peculiarly -susceptible to the magic of generalization, and one felt he would have been -at the mercy of any Cause that spelled itself with a capital letter. It was -hard to explain how, with such a superabundance of merit, he managed to be -a good fellow: I can only say that he performed the astonishing feat as -naturally as he supported an invalid mother and two sisters on the slender -salary of a banker's clerk. He sat down beside me with an air of bright -expectancy. - -"It's a remarkable picture, isn't it?" he said. - -"You've seen it?" - -"I've been so fortunate. Miss Copt was kind enough to get Mrs. Fontage's -permission; we went this afternoon." I inwardly wished that Eleanor -had selected another victim; unless indeed the visit were part of a -plan whereby some third person, better equipped for the cultivation of -delusions, was to be made to think the Rembrandt remarkable. Knowing the -limitations of Mr. Rose's resources I began to wonder if he had any rich -aunts. - -"And her buying it in that way, too," he went on with his limpid smile, -"from that old Countess in Brussels, makes it all the more interesting, -doesn't it? Miss Copt tells me it's very seldom old pictures can be traced -back for more than a generation. I suppose the fact of Mrs. Fontage's -knowing its history must add a good deal to its value?" - -Uncertain as to his drift, I said: "In her eyes it certainly appears to." - -Implications are lost on Mr. Rose, who glowingly continued: "That's the -reason why I wanted to talk to you about it--to consult you. Miss Copt -tells me you value it at a thousand dollars." - -There was no denying this, and I grunted a reluctant assent. - -"Of course," he went on earnestly, "your valuation is based on the fact -that the picture isn't signed--Mrs. Fontage explained that; and it does -make a difference, certainly. But the thing is--if the picture's really -good--ought one to take advantage--? I mean--one can see that Mrs. Fontage -is in a tight place, and I wouldn't for the world--" - -My astonished stare arrested him. - -"_You_ wouldn't--?" - -"I mean--you see, it's just this way"; he coughed and blushed: "I can't -give more than a thousand dollars myself--it's as big a sum as I can manage -to scrape together--but before I make the offer I want to be sure I'm not -standing in the way of her getting more money." - -My astonishment lapsed to dismay. "You're going to buy the picture for a -thousand dollars?" - -His blush deepened. "Why, yes. It sounds rather absurd, I suppose. It isn't -much in my line, of course. I can see the picture's very beautiful, but I'm -no judge--it isn't the kind of thing, naturally, that I could afford to go -in for; but in this case I'm very glad to do what I can; the circumstances -are so distressing; and knowing what you think of the picture I feel it's a -pretty safe investment--" - -"I don't think!" I blurted out. - -"You--?" - -"I don't think the picture's worth a thousand dollars; I don't think it's -worth ten cents; I simply lied about it, that's all." - -Mr. Rose looked as frightened as though I had charged him with the offense. - -"Hang it, man, can't you see how it happened? I saw the poor woman's pride -and happiness hung on her faith in that picture. I tried to make her -understand that it was worthless--but she wouldn't; I tried to tell her -so--but I couldn't. I behaved like a maudlin ass, but you shan't pay for my -infernal bungling--you mustn't buy the picture!" - -Mr. Rose sat silent, tapping one glossy boot-tip with another. Suddenly he -turned on me a glance of stored intelligence. "But you know," he said -good-humoredly, "I rather think I must." - -"You haven't--already?" - -"Oh, no; the offer's not made." - -"Well, then--" - -His look gathered a brighter significance. - -"But if the picture's worth nothing, nobody will buy it--" - -I groaned. - -"Except," he continued, "some fellow like me, who doesn't know anything. -_I_ think it's lovely, you know; I mean to hang it in my mother's -sitting-room." He rose and clasped my hand in his adhesive pressure. "I'm -awfully obliged to you for telling me this; but perhaps you won't mind my -asking you not to mention our talk to Miss Copt? It might bother her, you -know, to think the picture isn't exactly up to the mark; and it won't make -a rap of difference to me." - - -IV - -Mr. Rose left me to a sleepless night. The next morning my resolve was -formed, and it carried me straight to Mrs. Fontage's. She answered my knock -by stepping out on the landing, and as she shut the door behind her I -caught a glimpse of her devastated interior. She mentioned, with a careful -avoidance of the note of pathos on which our last conversation had closed, -that she was preparing to leave that afternoon; and the trunks obstructing -the threshold showed that her preparations were nearly complete. They were, -I felt certain, the same trunks that, strapped behind a rattling vettura, -had accompanied the bride and groom on that memorable voyage of discovery -of which the booty had till recently adorned her walls; and there was a -dim consolation in the thought that those early "finds" in coral and Swiss -wood-carving, in lava and alabaster, still lay behind the worn locks, in -the security of worthlessness. - -Mrs. Fontage, on the landing, among her strapped and corded treasures, -maintained the same air of stability that made it impossible, even under -such conditions, to regard her flight as anything less dignified than -a departure. It was the moral support of what she tacitly assumed that -enabled me to set forth with proper deliberation the object of my visit; -and she received my announcement with an absence of surprise that struck -me as the very flower of tact. Under cover of these mutual assumptions the -transaction was rapidly concluded; and it was not till the canvas passed -into my hands that, as though the physical contact had unnerved her, -Mrs. Fontage suddenly faltered. "It's the giving it up--" she stammered, -disguising herself to the last; and I hastened away from the collapse of -her splendid effrontery. - -I need hardly point out that I had acted impulsively, and that reaction -from the most honorable impulses is sometimes attended by moral -perturbation. My motives had indeed been mixed enough to justify some -uneasiness, but this was allayed by the instinctive feeling that it is more -venial to defraud an institution than a man. Since Mrs. Fontage had to be -kept from starving by means not wholly defensible, it was better that the -obligation should be borne by a rich institution than an impecunious youth. -I doubt, in fact, if my scruples would have survived a night's sleep, had -they not been complicated by some uncertainty as to my own future. It was -true that, subject to the purely formal assent of the committee, I had -full power to buy for the Museum, and that the one member of the committee -likely to dispute my decision was opportunely travelling in Europe; but the -picture once in place I must face the risk of any expert criticism to which -chance might expose it. I dismissed this contingency for future study, -stored the Rembrandt in the cellar of the Museum, and thanked heaven that -Crozier was abroad. - -Six months later he strolled into my office. I had just concluded, under -conditions of exceptional difficulty, and on terms unexpectedly benign, -the purchase of the great Bartley Reynolds; and this circumstance, by -relegating the matter of the Rembrandt to a lower stratum of consciousness, -enabled me to welcome Crozier with unmixed pleasure. My security -was enhanced by his appearance. His smile was charged with amiable -reminiscences, and I inferred that his trip had put him in the humor -to approve of everything, or at least to ignore what fell short of his -approval. I had therefore no uneasiness in accepting his invitation to dine -that evening. It is always pleasant to dine with Crozier and never more so -than when he is just back from Europe. His conversation gives even the food -a flavor of the Caf Anglais. - -The repast was delightful, and it was not till we had finished a Camembert -which he must have brought over with him, that my host said, in a tone of -after-dinner perfunctoriness: "I see you've picked up a picture or two -since I left." - -I assented. "The Bartley Reynolds seemed too good an opportunity to miss, -especially as the French government was after it. I think we got it -cheap--" - -"_Connu, connu_" said Crozier pleasantly. "I know all about the -Reynolds. It was the biggest kind of a haul and I congratulate you. Best -stroke of business we've done yet. But tell me about the other picture--the -Rembrandt." - -"I never said it was a Rembrandt." I could hardly have said why, but I felt -distinctly annoyed with Crozier. - -"Of course not. There's 'Rembrandt' on the frame, but I saw you'd -modified it to 'Dutch School'; I apologize." He paused, but I offered no -explanation. "What about it?" he went on. "Where did you pick it up?" As -he leaned to the flame of the cigar-lighter his face seemed ruddy with -enjoyment. - -"I got it for a song," I said. - -"A thousand, I think?" - -"Have you seen it?" I asked abruptly. - -"Went over the place this afternoon and found it in the cellar. Why hasn't -it been hung, by the way?" - -I paused a moment. "I'm waiting--" - -"To--?" - -"To have it varnished." - -"Ah!" He leaned back and poured himself a second glass of Chartreuse. The -smile he confided to its golden depths provoked me to challenge him with-- - -"What do you think of it?" - -"The Rembrandt?" He lifted his eyes from the glass. "Just what you do." - -"It isn't a Rembrandt." - -"I apologize again. You call it, I believe, a picture of the same period?" - -"I'm uncertain of the period." - -"H'm." He glanced appreciatively along his cigar. "What are you certain -of?" - -"That it's a damned bad picture," I said savagely. - -He nodded. "Just so. That's all we wanted to know." - -"_We_?" - -"We--I--the committee, in short. You see, my dear fellow, if you hadn't -been certain it was a damned bad picture our position would have been a -little awkward. As it is, my remaining duty--I ought to explain that in -this matter I'm acting for the committee--is as simple as it's agreeable." - -"I'll be hanged," I burst out, "if I understand one word you're saying!" - -He fixed me with a kind of cruel joyousness. "You will--you will," he -assured me; "at least you'll begin to, when you hear that I've seen Miss -Copt." - -"Miss Copt?" - -"And that she has told me under what conditions the picture was bought." - -"She doesn't know anything about the conditions! That is," I added, -hastening to restrict the assertion, "she doesn't know my opinion of the -picture." I thirsted for five minutes with Eleanor. - -"Are you quite sure?" Crozier took me up. "Mr. Jefferson Rose does." - -"Ah--I see." - -"I thought you would," he reminded me. "As soon as I'd laid eyes on -the Rembrandt--I beg your pardon!--I saw that it--well, required some -explanation." - -"You might have come to me." - -"I meant to; but I happened to meet Miss Copt, whose encyclopdic -information has often before been of service to me. I always go to Miss -Copt when I want to look up anything; and I found she knew all about the -Rembrandt." - -"_All_?" - -"Precisely. The knowledge was in fact causing her sleepless nights. Mr. -Rose, who was suffering from the same form of insomnia, had taken her into -his confidence, and she--ultimately--took me into hers." - -"Of course!" - -"I must ask you to do your cousin justice. She didn't speak till it became -evident to her uncommonly quick perceptions that your buying the picture on -its merits would have been infinitely worse for--for everybody--than your -diverting a small portion of the Museum's funds to philanthropic uses. Then -she told me the moving incident of Mr. Rose. Good fellow, Rose. And the -old lady's case was desperate. Somebody had to buy that picture." I moved -uneasily in my seat "Wait a moment, will you? I haven't finished my cigar. -There's a little head of Il Fiammingo's that you haven't seen, by the way; -I picked it up the other day in Parma. We'll go in and have a look at it -presently. But meanwhile what I want to say is that I've been charged--in -the most informal way--to express to you the committee's appreciation of -your admirable promptness and energy in capturing the Bartley Reynolds. We -shouldn't have got it at all if you hadn't been uncommonly wide-awake, and -to get it at such a price is a double triumph. We'd have thought nothing of -a few more thousands--" - -"I don't see," I impatiently interposed, "that, as far as I'm concerned, -that alters the case." - -"The case--?" - -"Of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. I bought the picture because, as you say, the -situation was desperate, and I couldn't raise a thousand myself. What I did -was of course indefensible; but the money shall be refunded tomorrow--" - -Crozier raised a protesting hand. "Don't interrupt me when I'm talking ex -cathedra. The money's been refunded already. The fact is, the Museum has -sold the Rembrandt." - -I stared at him wildly. "Sold it? To whom?" - -"Why--to the committee.--Hold on a bit, please.--Won't you take another -cigar? Then perhaps I can finish what I've got to say.--Why, my dear -fellow, the committee's under an obligation to you--that's the way we look -at it. I've investigated Mrs. Fontage's case, and--well, the picture had to -be bought. She's eating meat now, I believe, for the first time in a year. -And they'd have turned her out into the street that very day, your cousin -tells me. Something had to be done at once, and you've simply given a -number of well-to-do and self-indulgent gentlemen the opportunity of -performing, at very small individual expense, a meritorious action in -the nick of time. That's the first thing I've got to thank you for. And -then--you'll remember, please, that I have the floor--that I'm still -speaking for the committee--and secondly, as a slight recognition of your -services in securing the Bartley Reynolds at a very much lower figure than -we were prepared to pay, we beg you--the committee begs you--to accept the -gift of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. Now we'll go in and look at that little -head...." - - - - -THE MOVING FINGER - - -The news of Mrs. Grancy's death came to me with the shock of an immense -blunder--one of fate's most irretrievable acts of vandalism. It was as -though all sorts of renovating forces had been checked by the clogging of -that one wheel. Not that Mrs. Grancy contributed any perceptible momentum -to the social machine: her unique distinction was that of filling to -perfection her special place in the world. So many people are like -badly-composed statues, over-lapping their niches at one point and leaving -them vacant at another. Mrs. Grancy's niche was her husband's life; and if -it be argued that the space was not large enough for its vacancy to leave a -very big gap, I can only say that, at the last resort, such dimensions must -be determined by finer instruments than any ready-made standard of utility. -Ralph Grancy's was in short a kind of disembodied usefulness: one of those -constructive influences that, instead of crystallizing into definite forms, -remain as it were a medium for the development of clear thinking and fine -feeling. He faithfully irrigated his own dusty patch of life, and the -fruitful moisture stole far beyond his boundaries. If, to carry on the -metaphor, Grancy's life was a sedulously-cultivated enclosure, his wife was -the flower he had planted in its midst--the embowering tree, rather, which -gave him rest and shade at its foot and the wind of dreams in its upper -branches. - -We had all--his small but devoted band of followers--known a moment when it -seemed likely that Grancy would fail us. We had watched him pitted against -one stupid obstacle after another--ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding -and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious -egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection -like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always -come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for -the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to -how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb -withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But -gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who -was to become his second wife--his one _real_ wife, as his friends -reckoned--the whole man burst into flower. - -The second Mrs. Grancy was past thirty when he married her, and it was -clear that she had harvested that crop of middle joy which is rooted in -young despair. But if she had lost the surface of eighteen she had kept -its inner light; if her cheek lacked the gloss of immaturity her eyes were -young with the stored youth of half a life-time. Grancy had first known her -somewhere in the East--I believe she was the sister of one of our consuls -out there--and when he brought her home to New York she came among us as -a stranger. The idea of Grancy's remarriage had been a shock to us all. -After one such calcining most men would have kept out of the fire; but we -agreed that he was predestined to sentimental blunders, and we awaited -with resignation the embodiment of his latest mistake. Then Mrs. Grancy -came--and we understood. She was the most beautiful and the most complete -of explanations. We shuffled our defeated omniscience out of sight and gave -it hasty burial under a prodigality of welcome. For the first time in years -we had Grancy off our minds. "He'll do something great now!" the least -sanguine of us prophesied; and our sentimentalist emended: "He _has_ -done it--in marrying her!" - -It was Claydon, the portrait-painter, who risked this hyperbole; and who -soon afterward, at the happy husband's request, prepared to defend it in a -portrait of Mrs. Grancy. We were all--even Claydon--ready to concede that -Mrs. Grancy's unwontedness was in some degree a matter of environment. Her -graces were complementary and it needed the mate's call to reveal the flash -of color beneath her neutral-tinted wings. But if she needed Grancy to -interpret her, how much greater was the service she rendered him! Claydon -professionally described her as the right frame for him; but if she defined -she also enlarged, if she threw the whole into perspective she also cleared -new ground, opened fresh vistas, reclaimed whole areas of activity that had -run to waste under the harsh husbandry of privation. This interaction of -sympathies was not without its visible expression. Claydon was not alone -in maintaining that Grancy's presence--or indeed the mere mention of his -name--had a perceptible effect on his wife's appearance. It was as though a -light were shifted, a curtain drawn back, as though, to borrow another of -Claydon's metaphors, Love the indefatigable artist were perpetually seeking -a happier "pose" for his model. In this interpretative light Mrs. Grancy -acquired the charm which makes some women's faces like a book of which -the last page is never turned. There was always something new to read in -her eyes. What Claydon read there--or at least such scattered hints of -the ritual as reached him through the sanctuary doors--his portrait in -due course declared to us. When the picture was exhibited it was at once -acclaimed as his masterpiece; but the people who knew Mrs. Grancy smiled -and said it was flattered. Claydon, however, had not set out to paint -_their_ Mrs. Grancy--or ours even--but Ralph's; and Ralph knew his own -at a glance. At the first confrontation he saw that Claydon had understood. -As for Mrs. Grancy, when the finished picture was shown to her she turned -to the painter and said simply: "Ah, you've done me facing the east!" - -The picture, then, for all its value, seemed a mere incident in the -unfolding of their double destiny, a foot-note to the illuminated text of -their lives. It was not till afterward that it acquired the significance -of last words spoken on a threshold never to be recrossed. Grancy, a year -after his marriage, had given up his town house and carried his bliss an -hour's journey away, to a little place among the hills. His various duties -and interests brought him frequently to New York but we necessarily saw him -less often than when his house had served as the rallying-point of kindred -enthusiasms. It seemed a pity that such an influence should be withdrawn, -but we all felt that his long arrears of happiness should be paid in -whatever coin he chose. The distance from which the fortunate couple -radiated warmth on us was not too great for friendship to traverse; and our -conception of a glorified leisure took the form of Sundays spent in the -Grancys' library, with its sedative rural outlook, and the portrait of Mrs. -Grancy illuminating its studious walls. The picture was at its best in that -setting; and we used to accuse Claydon of visiting Mrs. Grancy in order to -see her portrait. He met this by declaring that the portrait _was_ -Mrs. Grancy; and there were moments when the statement seemed unanswerable. -One of us, indeed--I think it must have been the novelist--said that -Clayton had been saved from falling in love with Mrs. Grancy only by -falling in love with his picture of her; and it was noticeable that he, to -whom his finished work was no more than the shed husk of future effort, -showed a perennial tenderness for this one achievement. We smiled afterward -to think how often, when Mrs. Grancy was in the room, her presence -reflecting itself in our talk like a gleam of sky in a hurrying current, -Claydon, averted from the real woman, would sit as it were listening to the -picture. His attitude, at the time, seemed only a part of the unusualness -of those picturesque afternoons, when the most familiar combinations of -life underwent a magical change. Some human happiness is a landlocked lake; -but the Grancys' was an open sea, stretching a buoyant and illimitable -surface to the voyaging interests of life. There was room and to spare on -those waters for all our separate ventures; and always beyond the sunset, -a mirage of the fortunate isles toward which our prows bent. - - -II - -It was in Rome that, three years later, I heard of her death. The notice -said "suddenly"; I was glad of that. I was glad too--basely perhaps--to be -away from Grancy at a time when silence must have seemed obtuse and speech -derisive. - -I was still in Rome when, a few months afterward, he suddenly arrived -there. He had been appointed secretary of legation at Constantinople and -was on the way to his post. He had taken the place, he said frankly, "to -get away." Our relations with the Porte held out a prospect of hard work, -and that, he explained, was what he needed. He could never be satisfied to -sit down among the ruins. I saw that, like most of us in moments of extreme -moral tension, he was playing a part, behaving as he thought it became a -man to behave in the eye of disaster. The instinctive posture of grief is -a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels -the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe. Grancy, by -nature musing and retrospective, had chosen the rle of the man of action, -who answers blow for blow and opposes a mailed front to the thrusts of -destiny; and the completeness of the equipment testified to his inner -weakness. We talked only of what we were not thinking of, and parted, after -a few days, with a sense of relief that proved the inadequacy of friendship -to perform, in such cases, the office assigned to it by tradition. - -Soon afterward my own work called me home, but Grancy remained several -years in Europe. International diplomacy kept its promise of giving -him work to do, and during the year in which he acted as _charg -d'affaires_ he acquitted himself, under trying conditions, with -conspicuous zeal and discretion. A political redistribution of matter -removed him from office just as he had proved his usefulness to the -government; and the following summer I heard that he had come home and -was down at his place in the country. - -On my return to town I wrote him and his reply came by the next post. He -answered as it were in his natural voice, urging me to spend the following -Sunday with him, and suggesting that I should bring down any of the old -set who could be persuaded to join me. I thought this a good sign, and -yet--shall I own it?--I was vaguely disappointed. Perhaps we are apt to -feel that our friends' sorrows should be kept like those historic monuments -from which the encroaching ivy is periodically removed. - -That very evening at the club I ran across Claydon. I told him of Grancy's -invitation and proposed that we should go down together; but he pleaded an -engagement. I was sorry, for I had always felt that he and I stood nearer -Ralph than the others, and if the old Sundays were to be renewed I should -have preferred that we two should spend the first alone with him. I said as -much to Claydon and offered to fit my time to his; but he met this by a -general refusal. - -"I don't want to go to Grancy's," he said bluntly. I waited a moment, but -he appended no qualifying clause. - -"You've seen him since he came back?" I finally ventured. - -Claydon nodded. - -"And is he so awfully bad?" - -"Bad? No: he's all right." - -"All right? How can he be, unless he's changed beyond all recognition?" - -"Oh, you'll recognize _him_," said Claydon, with a puzzling deflection -of emphasis. - -His ambiguity was beginning to exasperate me, and I felt myself shut out -from some knowledge to which I had as good a right as he. - -"You've been down there already, I suppose?" - -"Yes; I've been down there." - -"And you've done with each other--the partnership is dissolved?" - -"Done with each other? I wish to God we had!" He rose nervously and tossed -aside the review from which my approach had diverted him. "Look here," -he said, standing before me, "Ralph's the best fellow going and there's -nothing under heaven I wouldn't do for him--short of going down there -again." And with that he walked out of the room. - -Claydon was incalculable enough for me to read a dozen different meanings -into his words; but none of my interpretations satisfied me. I determined, -at any rate, to seek no farther for a companion; and the next Sunday I -travelled down to Grancy's alone. He met me at the station and I saw at -once that he had changed since our last meeting. Then he had been in -fighting array, but now if he and grief still housed together it was -no longer as enemies. Physically the transformation was as marked but -less reassuring. If the spirit triumphed the body showed its scars. At -five-and-forty he was gray and stooping, with the tired gait of an old man. -His serenity, however, was not the resignation of age. I saw that he did -not mean to drop out of the game. Almost immediately he began to speak of -our old interests; not with an effort, as at our former meeting, but simply -and naturally, in the tone of a man whose life has flowed back into its -normal channels. I remembered, with a touch of self-reproach, how I had -distrusted his reconstructive powers; but my admiration for his reserved -force was now tinged by the sense that, after all, such happiness as his -ought to have been paid with his last coin. The feeling grew as we neared -the house and I found how inextricably his wife was interwoven with my -remembrance of the place: how the whole scene was but an extension of that -vivid presence. - -Within doors nothing was changed, and my hand would have dropped without -surprise into her welcoming clasp. It was luncheon-time, and Grancy led me -at once to the dining-room, where the walls, the furniture, the very plate -and porcelain, seemed a mirror in which a moment since her face had been -reflected. I wondered whether Grancy, under the recovered tranquillity -of his smile, concealed the same sense of her nearness, saw perpetually -between himself and the actual her bright unappeasable ghost. He spoke of -her once or twice, in an easy incidental way, and her name seemed to hang -in the air after he had uttered it, like a chord that continues to vibrate. -If he felt her presence it was evidently as an enveloping medium, the moral -atmosphere in which he breathed. I had never before known how completely -the dead may survive. - -After luncheon we went for a long walk through the autumnal fields and -woods, and dusk was falling when we re-entered the house. Grancy led the -way to the library, where, at this hour, his wife had always welcomed -us back to a bright fire and a cup of tea. The room faced the west, and -held a clear light of its own after the rest of the house had grown dark. -I remembered how young she had looked in this pale gold light, which -irradiated her eyes and hair, or silhouetted her girlish outline as she -passed before the windows. Of all the rooms the library was most peculiarly -hers; and here I felt that her nearness might take visible shape. Then, all -in a moment, as Grancy opened the door, the feeling vanished and a kind -of resistance met me on the threshold. I looked about me. Was the room -changed? Had some desecrating hand effaced the traces of her presence? No; -here too the setting was undisturbed. My feet sank into the same deep-piled -Daghestan; the bookshelves took the firelight on the same rows of rich -subdued bindings; her armchair stood in its old place near the tea-table; -and from the opposite wall her face confronted me. - -Her face--but _was_ it hers? I moved nearer and stood looking up at -the portrait. Grancy's glance had followed mine and I heard him move to my -side. - -"You see a change in it?" he said. - -"What does it mean?" I asked. - -"It means--that five years have passed." - -"Over _her_?" - -"Why not?--Look at me!" He pointed to his gray hair and furrowed temples. -"What do you think kept _her_ so young? It was happiness! But now--" -he looked up at her with infinite tenderness. "I like her better so," he -said. "It's what she would have wished." - -"Have wished?" - -"That we should grow old together. Do you think she would have wanted to be -left behind?" - -I stood speechless, my gaze travelling from his worn grief-beaten features -to the painted face above. It was not furrowed like his; but a veil -of years seemed to have descended on it. The bright hair had lost its -elasticity, the cheek its clearness, the brow its light: the whole woman -had waned. - -Grancy laid his hand on my arm. "You don't like it?" he said sadly. - -"Like it? I--I've lost her!" I burst out. - -"And I've found her," he answered. - -"In _that_?" I cried with a reproachful gesture. - -"Yes; in that." He swung round on me almost defiantly. "The other had -become a sham, a lie! This is the way she would have looked--does look, I -mean. Claydon ought to know, oughtn't he?" - -I turned suddenly. "Did Claydon do this for you?" - -Grancy nodded. - -"Since your return?" - -"Yes. I sent for him after I'd been back a week--." He turned away and gave -a thrust to the smouldering fire. I followed, glad to leave the picture -behind me. Grancy threw himself into a chair near the hearth, so that the -light fell on his sensitive variable face. He leaned his head back, shading -his eyes with his hand, and began to speak. - - -III - -"You fellows knew enough of my early history to A guess what my second -marriage meant to me. I say guess, because no one could understand--really. -I've always had a feminine streak in me, I suppose: the need of a pair of -eyes that should see with me, of a pulse that should keep time with mine. -Life is a big thing, of course; a magnificent spectacle; but I got so tired -of looking at it alone! Still, it's always good to live, and I had plenty -of happiness--of the evolved kind. What I'd never had a taste of was the -simple inconscient sort that one breathes in like the air.... - -"Well--I met her. It was like finding the climate in which I was meant to -live. You know what she was--how indefinitely she multiplied one's points -of contact with life, how she lit up the caverns and bridged the abysses! -Well, I swear to you (though I suppose the sense of all that was latent in -me) that what I used to think of on my way home at the end of the day, was -simply that when I opened this door she'd be sitting over there, with the -lamp-light falling in a particular way on one little curl in her neck.... -When Claydon painted her he caught just the look she used to lift to mine -when I came in--I've wondered, sometimes, at his knowing how she looked -when she and I were alone.--How I rejoiced in that picture! I used to say -to her, 'You're my prisoner now--I shall never lose you. If you grew tired -of me and left me you'd leave your real self there on the wall!' It was -always one of our jokes that she was going to grow tired of me-- - -"Three years of it--and then she died. It was so sudden that there was -no change, no diminution. It was as if she had suddenly become fixed, -immovable, like her own portrait: as if Time had ceased at its happiest -hour, just as Claydon had thrown down his brush one day and said, 'I can't -do better than that.' - -"I went away, as you know, and stayed over there five years. I worked as -hard as I knew how, and after the first black months a little light stole -in on me. From thinking that she would have been interested in what I was -doing I came to feel that she _was_ interested--that she was there and -that she knew. I'm not talking any psychical jargon--I'm simply trying to -express the sense I had that an influence so full, so abounding as hers -couldn't pass like a spring shower. We had so lived into each other's -hearts and minds that the consciousness of what she would have thought -and felt illuminated all I did. At first she used to come back shyly, -tentatively, as though not sure of finding me; then she stayed longer and -longer, till at last she became again the very air I breathed.... There -were bad moments, of course, when her nearness mocked me with the loss of -the real woman; but gradually the distinction between the two was effaced -and the mere thought of her grew warm as flesh and blood. - -"Then I came home. I landed in the morning and came straight down here. The -thought of seeing her portrait possessed me and my heart beat like a -lover's as I opened the library door. It was in the afternoon and the room -was full of light. It fell on her picture--the picture of a young and -radiant woman. She smiled at me coldly across the distance that divided us. -I had the feeling that she didn't even recognize me. And then I caught -sight of myself in the mirror over there--a gray-haired broken man whom she -had never known! - -"For a week we two lived together--the strange woman and the strange man. -I used to sit night after night and question her smiling face; but no -answer ever came. What did she know of me, after all? We were irrevocably -separated by the five years of life that lay between us. At times, as I -sat here, I almost grew to hate her; for her presence had driven away my -gentle ghost, the real wife who had wept, aged, struggled with me during -those awful years.... It was the worst loneliness I've ever known. Then, -gradually, I began to notice a look of sadness in the picture's eyes; a -look that seemed to say: 'Don't you see that _I_ am lonely too?' And -all at once it came over me how she would have hated to be left behind! I -remembered her comparing life to a heavy book that could not be read with -ease unless two people held it together; and I thought how impatiently her -hand would have turned the pages that divided us!--So the idea came to me: -'It's the picture that stands between us; the picture that is dead, and not -my wife. To sit in this room is to keep watch beside a corpse.' As this -feeling grew on me the portrait became like a beautiful mausoleum in which -she had been buried alive: I could hear her beating against the painted -walls and crying to me faintly for help.... - -"One day I found I couldn't stand it any longer and I sent for Claydon. He -came down and I told him what I'd been through and what I wanted him to do. -At first he refused point-blank to touch the picture. The next morning I -went off for a long tramp, and when I came home I found him sitting here -alone. He looked at me sharply for a moment and then he said: 'I've changed -my mind; I'll do it.' I arranged one of the north rooms as a studio and he -shut himself up there for a day; then he sent for me. The picture stood -there as you see it now--it was as though she'd met me on the threshold and -taken me in her arms! I tried to thank him, to tell him what it meant to -me, but he cut me short. - -"'There's an up train at five, isn't there?' he asked. 'I'm booked for a -dinner to-night. I shall just have time to make a bolt for the station and -you can send my traps after me.' I haven't seen him since. - -"I can guess what it cost him to lay hands on his masterpiece; but, after -all, to him it was only a picture lost, to me it was my wife regained!" - - -IV - -After that, for ten years or more, I watched the strange spectacle of a -life of hopeful and productive effort based on the structure of a dream. -There could be no doubt to those who saw Grancy during this period that -he drew his strength and courage from the sense of his wife's mystic -participation in his task. When I went back to see him a few months later I -found the portrait had been removed from the library and placed in a small -study up-stairs, to which he had transferred his desk and a few books. He -told me he always sat there when he was alone, keeping the library for his -Sunday visitors. Those who missed the portrait of course made no comment on -its absence, and the few who were in his secret respected it. Gradually all -his old friends had gathered about him and our Sunday afternoons regained -something of their former character; but Claydon never reappeared among us. - -As I look back now I see that Grancy must have been failing from the time -of his return home. His invincible spirit belied and disguised the signs of -weakness that afterward asserted themselves in my remembrance of him. He -seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of life to draw on, and more than one -of us was a pensioner on his superfluity. - -Nevertheless, when I came back one summer from my European holiday and -heard that he had been at the point of death, I understood at once that we -had believed him well only because he wished us to. - -I hastened down to the country and found him midway in a slow -convalescence. I felt then that he was lost to us and he read my thought at -a glance. - -"Ah," he said, "I'm an old man now and no mistake. I suppose we shall have -to go half-speed after this; but we shan't need towing just yet!" - -The plural pronoun struck me, and involuntarily I looked up at Mrs. -Grancy's portrait. Line by line I saw my fear reflected in it. It was the -face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying. My heart stood still -at the thought of what Claydon had done. - -Grancy had followed my glance. "Yes, it's changed her," he said quietly. -"For months, you know, it was touch and go with me--we had a long fight of -it, and it was worse for her than for me." After a pause he added: "Claydon -has been very kind; he's so busy nowadays that I seldom see him, but when I -sent for him the other day he came down at once." - -I was silent and we spoke no more of Grancy's illness; but when I took -leave it seemed like shutting him in alone with his death-warrant. - -The next time I went down to see him he looked much better. It was a Sunday -and he received me in the library, so that I did not see the portrait -again. He continued to improve and toward spring we began to feel that, as -he had said, he might yet travel a long way without being towed. - -One evening, on returning to town after a visit which had confirmed my -sense of reassurance, I found Claydon dining alone at the club. He asked me -to join him and over the coffee our talk turned to his work. - -"If you're not too busy," I said at length, "you ought to make time to go -down to Grancy's again." - -He looked up quickly. "Why?" he asked. - -"Because he's quite well again," I returned with a touch of cruelty. "His -wife's prognostications were mistaken." - -Claydon stared at me a moment. "Oh, _she_ knows," he affirmed with a -smile that chilled me. - -"You mean to leave the portrait as it is then?" I persisted. - -He shrugged his shoulders. "He hasn't sent for me yet!" - -A waiter came up with the cigars and Claydon rose and joined another group. - -It was just a fortnight later that Grancy's housekeeper telegraphed for me. -She met me at the station with the news that he had been "taken bad" and -that the doctors were with him. I had to wait for some time in the deserted -library before the medical men appeared. They had the baffled manner of -empirics who have been superseded by the great Healer; and I lingered only -long enough to hear that Grancy was not suffering and that my presence -could do him no harm. - -I found him seated in his arm-chair in the little study. He held out his -hand with a smile. - -"You see she was right after all," he said. - -"She?" I repeated, perplexed for the moment. - -"My wife." He indicated the picture. "Of course I knew she had no hope from -the first. I saw that"--he lowered his voice--"after Claydon had been here. -But I wouldn't believe it at first!" - -I caught his hands in mine. "For God's sake don't believe it now!" I -adjured him. - -He shook his head gently. "It's too late," he said. "I might have known -that she knew." - -"But, Grancy, listen to me," I began; and then I stopped. What could I say -that would convince him? There was no common ground of argument on which we -could meet; and after all it would be easier for him to die feeling that -she _had_ known. Strangely enough, I saw that Claydon had missed his -mark.... - - -V - -Grancy's will named me as one of his executors; and my associate, having -other duties on his hands, begged me to assume the task of carrying out our -friend's wishes. This placed me under the necessity of informing Claydon -that the portrait of Mrs. Grancy had been bequeathed to him; and he replied -by the next post that he would send for the picture at once. I was staying -in the deserted house when the portrait was taken away; and as the door -closed on it I felt that Grancy's presence had vanished too. Was it his -turn to follow her now, and could one ghost haunt another? - -After that, for a year or two, I heard nothing more of the picture, and -though I met Claydon from time to time we had little to say to each other. -I had no definable grievance against the man and I tried to remember that -he had done a fine thing in sacrificing his best picture to a friend; but -my resentment had all the tenacity of unreason. - -One day, however, a lady whose portrait he had just finished begged me -to go with her to see it. To refuse was impossible, and I went with the -less reluctance that I knew I was not the only friend she had invited. -The others were all grouped around the easel when I entered, and after -contributing my share to the chorus of approval I turned away and began -to stroll about the studio. Claydon was something of a collector and his -things were generally worth looking at. The studio was a long tapestried -room with a curtained archway at one end. The curtains were looped back, -showing a smaller apartment, with books and flowers and a few fine bits of -bronze and porcelain. The tea-table standing in this inner room proclaimed -that it was open to inspection, and I wandered in. A _bleu poudr_ -vase first attracted me; then I turned to examine a slender bronze -Ganymede, and in so doing found myself face to face with Mrs. Grancy's -portrait. I stared up at her blankly and she smiled back at me in all -the recovered radiance of youth. The artist had effaced every trace of -his later touches and the original picture had reappeared. It throned -alone on the panelled wall, asserting a brilliant supremacy over its -carefully-chosen surroundings. I felt in an instant that the whole room was -tributary to it: that Claydon had heaped his treasures at the feet of the -woman he loved. Yes--it was the woman he had loved and not the picture; and -my instinctive resentment was explained. - -Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. - -"Ah, how could you?" I cried, turning on him. - -"How could I?" he retorted. "How could I _not_? Doesn't she belong to -me now?" - -I moved away impatiently. - -"Wait a moment," he said with a detaining gesture. "The others have gone -and I want to say a word to you.--Oh, I know what you've thought of me--I -can guess! You think I killed Grancy, I suppose?" - -I was startled by his sudden vehemence. "I think you tried to do a cruel -thing," I said. - -"Ah--what a little way you others see into life!" he murmured. "Sit down a -moment--here, where we can look at her--and I'll tell you." - -He threw himself on the ottoman beside me and sat gazing up at the picture, -with his hands clasped about his knee. - -"Pygmalion," he began slowly, "turned his statue into a real woman; -_I_ turned my real woman into a picture. Small compensation, you -think--but you don't know how much of a woman belongs to you after you've -painted her!--Well, I made the best of it, at any rate--I gave her the best -I had in me; and she gave me in return what such a woman gives by merely -being. And after all she rewarded me enough by making me paint as I shall -never paint again! There was one side of her, though, that was mine alone, -and that was her beauty; for no one else understood it. To Grancy even -it was the mere expression of herself--what language is to thought. Even -when he saw the picture he didn't guess my secret--he was so sure she was -all his! As though a man should think he owned the moon because it was -reflected in the pool at his door-- - -"Well--when he came home and sent for me to change the picture it was like -asking me to commit murder. He wanted me to make an old woman of her--of -her who had been so divinely, unchangeably young! As if any man who really -loved a woman would ask her to sacrifice her youth and beauty for his sake! -At first I told him I couldn't do it--but afterward, when he left me alone -with the picture, something queer happened. I suppose it was because I was -always so confoundedly fond of Grancy that it went against me to refuse -what he asked. Anyhow, as I sat looking up at her, she seemed to say, 'I'm -not yours but his, and I want you to make me what he wishes." And so I did -it. I could have cut my hand off when the work was done--I daresay he told -you I never would go back and look at it. He thought I was too busy--he -never understood.... - -"Well--and then last year he sent for me again--you remember. It was after -his illness, and he told me he'd grown twenty years older and that he -wanted her to grow older too--he didn't want her to be left behind. The -doctors all thought he was going to get well at that time, and he thought -so too; and so did I when I first looked at him. But when I turned to -the picture--ah, now I don't ask you to believe me; but I swear it was -_her_ face that told me he was dying, and that she wanted him to know -it! She had a message for him and she made me deliver it." - -He rose abruptly and walked toward the portrait; then he sat down beside me -again. - -"Cruel? Yes, it seemed so to me at first; and this time, if I resisted, -it was for _his_ sake and not for mine. But all the while I felt her -eyes drawing me, and gradually she made me understand. If she'd been there -in the flesh (she seemed to say) wouldn't she have seen before any of us -that he was dying? Wouldn't he have read the news first in her face? And -wouldn't it be horrible if now he should discover it instead in strange -eyes?--Well--that was what she wanted of me and I did it--I kept them -together to the last!" He looked up at the picture again. "But now she -belongs to me," he repeated.... - - - - -THE CONFESSIONAL - - -When I was a young man I thought a great deal of local color. At that -time it was still a pigment of recent discovery, and supposed to have -a peculiarly stimulating effect on the mental eye. As an aid to the -imagination its value was perhaps overrated; but as an object of pursuit -to that vagrant faculty, it had all the merits claimed for it. I certainly -never hunted any game better worth my powder; and to a young man with rare -holidays and long working hours, its value was enhanced by the fact that -one might bring it down at any turn, if only one kept one's eye alert and -one's hand on the trigger. - -Even the large manufacturing city where, for some years, my young -enthusiasms were chained to an accountant's desk, was not without its -romantic opportunities. Many of the mill-hands at Dunstable were Italians, -and a foreign settlement had formed itself in that unsavory and unsanitary -portion of the town known as the Point. The Point, like more aristocratic -communities, had its residential and commercial districts, its church, its -theatre and its restaurant. When the craving for local color was on me it -was my habit to resort to the restaurant, a low-browed wooden building with -the appetizing announcement: - -"_Aristi di montone_" - -pasted in one of its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough -macaroni or of an ambiguous _frittura_ sufficed to transport me to the -Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar -with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of -one of the little round tables under the arcade of the Caff Pedrotti at -Padua. This feat of the imagination was materially aided by Agostino, the -hollow-eyed and low-collared waiter, whose slimy napkin never lost its -Latin flourish and whose zeal for my comfort was not infrequently displayed -by his testing the warmth of my soup with his finger. Through Agostino I -became acquainted with the inner history of the colony, heard the details -of its feuds and vendettas, and learned to know by sight the leading -characters in these domestic dramas. - -The restaurant was frequented by the chief personages of the community: -the overseer of the Italian hands at the Meriton Mills, the doctor, his -wife the _levatrice_ (a plump Neapolitan with greasy ringlets, a plush -picture-hat, and a charm against the evil-eye hanging in a crease of her -neck) and lastly by Don Egidio, the _parocco_ of the little church -across the street. The doctor and his wife came only on feast days, but -the overseer and Don Egidio were regular patrons. The former was a quiet -saturnine-looking man, of accomplished manners but reluctant speech, and I -depended for my diversion chiefly on Don Egidio, whose large loosely-hung -lips were always ajar for conversation. The remarks issuing from them -were richly tinged by the gutturals of the Bergamasque dialect, and it -needed but a slight acquaintance with Italian types to detect the Lombard -peasant under the priest's rusty cassock. This inference was confirmed -by Don Egidio's telling me that he came from a village of Val Camonica, -the radiant valley which extends northward from the lake of Iseo to -the Adamello glaciers. His step-father had been a laborer on one of -the fruit-farms of a Milanese count who owned large estates in the Val -Camonica; and that gentleman, taking a fancy to the lad, whom he had seen -at work in his orchards, had removed him to his villa on the lake of Iseo -and had subsequently educated him for the Church. - -It was doubtless to this picturesque accident that Don Egidio owed the -mingling of ease and simplicity that gave an inimitable charm to his -stout shabby presence. It was as though some wild mountain-fruit had been -transplanted to the Count's orchards and had mellowed under cultivation -without losing its sylvan flavor. I have never seen the social art carried -farther without suggestion of artifice. The fact that Don Egidio's -amenities were mainly exercised on the mill-hands composing his parish -proved the genuineness of his gift. It is easier to simulate gentility -among gentlemen than among navvies; and the plain man is a touchstone who -draws out all the alloy in the gold. - -Among his parishioners Don Egidio ruled with the cheerful despotism of the -good priest. On cardinal points he was inflexible, but in minor matters he -had that elasticity of judgment which enables the Catholic discipline to -fit itself to every inequality of the human conscience. There was no appeal -from his verdict; but his judgment-seat was a revolving chair from which he -could view the same act at various angles. His influence was acknowledged -not only by his flock, but by the policeman at the corner, the "bar-keep'" -in the dive, the ward politician in the corner grocery. The general verdict -of Dunstable was that the Point would have been hell without the priest. -It was perhaps not precisely heaven with him; but such light of the upper -sky as pierced its murky atmosphere was reflected from Don Egidio's -countenance. It is hardly possible for any one to exercise such influence -without taking pleasure in it; and on the whole the priest was probably -a contented man; though it does not follow that he was a happy one. On -this point the first stages of our acquaintance yielded much food for -conjecture. At first sight Don Egidio was the image of cheerfulness. He had -all the physical indications of a mind at ease: the leisurely rolling gait, -the ready laugh, the hospitable eye of the man whose sympathies are always -on the latch. It took me some time to discover under his surface garrulity -the impenetrable reticence of his profession, and under his enjoyment of -trifles a levelling melancholy which made all enjoyment trifling. Don -Egidio's aspect and conversation were so unsuggestive of psychological -complexities that I set down this trait to poverty or home-sickness. There -are few classes of men more frugal in tastes and habit than the village -priest in Italy; but Don Egidio, by his own account, had been introduced, -at an impressionable age, to a way of living that must have surpassed his -wildest dreams of self-indulgence. To whatever privations his parochial -work had since accustomed him, the influences of that earlier life were -too perceptible in his talk not to have made a profound impression on his -tastes; and he remained, for all his apostolic simplicity, the image of the -family priest who has his seat at the rich man's table. - -It chanced that I had used one of my short European holidays to explore -afoot the romantic passes connecting the Valtelline with the lake of Iseo; -and my remembrance of that enchanting region made it seem impossible -that Don Egidio should ever look without a reminiscent pang on the grimy -perspective of his parochial streets. The transition was too complete, too -ironical, from those rich glades and Titianesque acclivities to the brick -hovels and fissured sidewalks of the Point. - -This impression was confirmed when Don Egidio, in response to my urgent -invitation, paid his first visit to my modest lodgings. He called one -winter evening, when a wood-fire in its happiest humor was giving a -factitious lustre to my book-shelves and bringing out the values of the one -or two old prints and Chinese porcelains that accounted for the perennial -shabbiness of my wardrobe. - -"Ah," said he with a murmur of satisfaction, as he laid aside his shiny hat -and bulging umbrella, "it is a long time since I have been in a _casa -signorile_." - -My remembrance of his own room (he lodged with the doctor and the -_levatrice_) saved this epithet from the suggestion of irony and kept -me silent while he sank into my arm-chair with the deliberation of a tired -traveller lowering himself gently into a warm bath. - -"Good! good!" he repeated, looking about him. "Books, porcelains, objects -of _virt_--I am glad to see that there are still such things in the -world!" And he turned a genial eye on the glass of Marsala that I had -poured out for him. - -Don Egidio was the most temperate of men and never exceeded his one glass; -but he liked to sit by the hour puffing at my Cabaas, which I suspected -him of preferring to the black weed of his native country. Under the -influence of my tobacco he became even more blandly garrulous, and I -sometimes fancied that of all the obligations of his calling none could -have placed such a strain on him as that of preserving the secrets of the -confessional. He often talked of his early life at the Count's villa, where -he had been educated with his patron's two sons till he was of age to be -sent to the seminary; and I could see that the years spent in simple and -familiar intercourse with his benefactors had been the most vivid chapter -in his experience. The Italian peasant's inarticulate tenderness for the -beauty of his birthplace had been specialized in him by contact with -cultivated tastes, and he could tell me not only that the Count had a -"stupendous" collection of pictures, but that the chapel of the villa -contained a sepulchral monument by Bambaja, and that the art-critics were -divided as to the authenticity of the Leonardo in the family palace at -Milan. - -On all these subjects he was inexhaustibly voluble; but there was one point -which he always avoided, and that was his reason for coming to America. I -remember the round turn with which he brought me up when I questioned him. - -"A priest," said he, "is a soldier and must obey orders like a soldier." -He set down his glass of Marsala and strolled across the room. "I had not -observed," he went on, "that you have here a photograph of the Sposalizio -of the Brera. What a picture! _ stupendo_!" and he turned back to his -seat and smilingly lit a fresh cigar. - -I saw at once that I had hit on a point where his native garrulity was -protected by the chain-mail of religious discipline that every Catholic -priest wears beneath his cassock. I had too much respect for my friend -to wish to penetrate his armor, and now and then I almost fancied he was -grateful to me for not putting his reticence to the test. - -Don Egidio must have been past sixty when I made his acquaintance; but it -was not till the close of an exceptionally harsh winter, some five or six -years after our first meeting, that I began to think of him as an old man. -It was as though the long-continued cold had cracked and shrivelled him. He -had grown bent and hollow-chested and his lower lip shook like an unhinged -door. The summer heat did little to revive him, and in September, when I -came home from my vacation, I found him just recovering from an attack of -pneumonia. That autumn he did not care to venture often into the night air, -and now and then I used to go and sit with him in his little room, to which -I had contributed the unheard-of luxuries of an easy-chair and a gas-stove. - -My engagements, however, made these visits infrequent, and several weeks -had elapsed without my seeing the _parocco_ when, one snowy November -morning, I ran across him in the railway-station. I was on my way to New -York for the day and had just time to wave a greeting to him as I jumped -into the railway-carriage; but a moment later, to my surprise, I saw him -stiffly clambering into the same train. I found him seated in the common -car, with his umbrella between his knees and a bundle done up in a red -cotton handkerchief on the seat at his side. The caution with which, at my -approach, he transferred this bundle to his arms caused me to glance at it -in surprise; and he answered my look by saying with a smile: - -"They are flowers for the dead--the most exquisite flowers--from the -greenhouses of Mr. Meriton--_si figuri_!" And he waved a descriptive -hand. "One of my lads, Gianpietro, is employed by the gardener there, and -every year on this day he brings me a beautiful bunch of flowers--for such -a purpose it is no sin," he added, with the charming Italian pliancy of -judgment. - -"And why are you travelling in this snowy weather, _signor parocco_?" -I asked, as he ended with a cough. - -He fixed me gravely with his simple shallow eye. "Because it is the day of -the dead, my son," he said, "and I go to place these on the grave of the -noblest man that ever lived." - -"You are going to New York?" - -"To Brooklyn--" - -I hesitated a moment, wishing to question him, yet uncertain whether his -replies were curtailed by the persistency of his cough or by the desire to -avoid interrogation. - -"This is no weather to be travelling with such a cough," I said at length. - -He made a deprecating gesture. - -"I have never missed the day--not once in eighteen years. But for me he -would have no one!" He folded his hands on his umbrella and looked away -from me to hide the trembling of his lip. - -I resolved on a last attempt to storm his confidence. "Your friend is -buried in Calvary cemetery?" - -He signed an assent. - -"That is a long way for you to go alone, _signor parocco_. The streets -are sure to be slippery and there is an icy wind blowing. Give me your -flowers and let me send them to the cemetery by a messenger. I give you my -word they shall reach their destination safely." - -He turned a quiet look on me. "My son, you are young," he said, "and you -don't know how the dead need us." He drew his breviary from his pocket and -opened it with a smile. "_Mi scusi?_" he murmured. - -The business which had called me to town obliged me to part from him as -soon as the train entered the station, and in my dash for the street I -left his unwieldy figure laboring far behind me through the crowd on the -platform. Before we separated, however, I had learned that he was returning -to Dunstable by the four o'clock train, and had resolved to despatch my -business in time to travel home with him. When I reached Wall Street I was -received with the news that the man I had appointed to meet was ill and -detained in the country. My business was "off" and I found myself with -the rest of the day at my disposal. I had no difficulty in deciding how -to employ my time. I was at an age when, in such contingencies, there is -always a feminine alternative; and even now I don't know how it was that, -on my way to a certain hospitable luncheon-table, I suddenly found myself -in a cab which was carrying me at full-speed to the Twenty-third Street -ferry. It was not till I had bought my ticket and seated myself in the -varnished tunnel of the ferry-boat that I was aware of having been diverted -from my purpose by an overmastering anxiety for Don Egidio. I rapidly -calculated that he had not more than an hour's advance on me, and that, -allowing for my greater agility and for the fact that I had a cab at my -call, I was likely to reach the cemetery in time to see him under shelter -before the gusts of sleet that were already sweeping across the river had -thickened to a snow-storm. - -At the gates of the cemetery I began to take a less sanguine view of my -attempt. The commemorative anniversary had filled the silent avenues -with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the -gatekeeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a -bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The -gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send -its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go -exactly contrary to his indication, and thanks to this precaution I came, -after half an hour's search, on the figure of my poor _parocco_, -kneeling on the wet ground in one of the humblest by-ways of the great -necropolis. The mound before which he knelt was strewn with the spoils of -Mr. Meriton's conservatories, and on the weather-worn tablet at its head I -read the inscription: - -IL CONTE SIVIANO -DA MILANO. - -_Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus._ - -So engrossed was Don Egidio that for some moments I stood behind him -unobserved; and when he rose and faced me, grief had left so little room -for any minor emotion that he looked at me almost without surprise. - -"Don Egidio," I said, "I have a carriage waiting for you at the gate. You -must come home with me." - -He nodded quietly and I drew his hand through my arm. - -He turned back to the grave. "One moment, my son," he said. "It may be for -the last time." He stood motionless, his eyes on the heaped-up flowers -which were already bruised and blackened by the cold. "To leave him -alone--after sixty years! But God is everywhere--" he murmured as I led him -away. - -On the journey home he did not care to talk, and my chief concern was to -keep him wrapped in my greatcoat and to see that his bed was made ready as -soon as I had restored him to his lodgings. The _levatrice_ brought a -quilted coverlet from her own room and hovered over him as gently as though -he had been of the sex to require her services; while Agostino, at my -summons, appeared with a bowl of hot soup that was heralded down the -street by a reviving waft of garlic. To these ministrations I left the -_parocco_, intending to call for news of him the next evening; but an -unexpected pressure of work kept me late at my desk, and the following day -some fresh obstacle delayed me. - -On the third afternoon, as I was leaving the office, an agate-eyed infant -from the Point hailed me with a message from the doctor. The _parocco_ -was worse and had asked for me. I jumped into the nearest car and ten -minutes later was running up the doctor's greasy stairs. - -To my dismay I found Don Egidio's room cold and untenanted; but I was -reassured a moment later by the appearance of the _levatrice_, who -announced that she had transferred the blessed man to her own apartment, -where he could have the sunlight and a good bed to lie in. There in fact -he lay, weak but smiling, in a setting which contrasted oddly enough with -his own monastic surroundings: a cheerful grimy room, hung with anecdotic -chromos, photographs of lady-patients proudly presenting their offspring -to the camera, and innumerable Neapolitan _santolini_ decked out with -shrivelled palm-leaves. - -The _levatrice_ whispered that the good man had the pleurisy, and -that, as she phrased it, he was nearing his last mile-stone. I saw that he -was in fact in a bad way, but his condition did not indicate any pressing -danger, and I had the presentiment that he would still, as the saying is, -put up a good fight. It was clear, however, that he knew what turn the -conflict must take, and the solemnity with which he welcomed me showed that -my summons was a part of that spiritual strategy with which the Catholic -opposes the surprise of death. - -"My son," he said, when the _levatrice_ had left us, "I have a favor -to ask you. You found me yesterday bidding good-bye to my best friend." -His cough interrupted him. "I have never told you," he went on, "the name -of the family in which I was brought up. It was Siviano, and that was -the grave of the Count's eldest son, with whom I grew up as a brother. -For eighteen years he has lain in that strange ground--_in terra -aliena_--and when I die, there will be no one to care for his grave." - -I saw what he waited for. "I will care for it, _signor parocco_." - -"I knew I should have your promise, my child; and what you promise you -keep. But my friend is a stranger to you--you are young and at your age -life is a mistress who kisses away sad memories. Why should you remember -the grave of a stranger? I cannot lay such a claim on you. But I will tell -you his story--and then I think that neither joy nor grief will let you -forget him; for when you rejoice you will remember how he sorrowed; and -when you sorrow the thought of him will be like a friend's hand in yours." - - -II - -You tell me (Don Egidio began) that you know our little lake; and if you -have seen it you will understand why it always used to remind me of the -"garden enclosed" of the Canticles. - -_Hortus inclusus; columba mea in foraminibus petr_: the words used -to come back to me whenever I returned from a day's journey across the -mountains, and looking down saw the blue lake far below, hidden in its -hills like a happy secret in a stern heart. We were never envious of -the glory of the great lakes. They are like the show pictures that some -nobleman hangs in his public gallery; but our Iseo is the treasure that -he hides in his inner chamber. - -You tell me you saw it in summer, when it looks up like a saint's eye, -reflecting the whole of heaven. It was then too that I first saw it. -My future friend, the old Count, had found me at work on one of his -fruit-farms up the valley, and hearing that I was ill-treated by my -step-father--a drunken pedlar from the Val Mastellone, whom my poor mother -a year or two earlier had come across at the fair of Lovere--he had taken -me home with him to Iseo. I used to serve mass in our hill-village of -Cerveno, and the village children called me "the little priest" because -when my work was done I often crept back to the church to get away from -my step-father's blows and curses. "I will make a real priest of him," -the Count declared; and that afternoon, perched on the box of his -travelling-carriage, I was whirled away from the dark scenes of my -childhood into a world, where, as it seemed to me, every one was as happy -as an angel on a _presepio_. - -I wonder if you remember the Count's villa? It lies on the shore of the -lake, facing the green knoll of Monte Isola, and overlooked by the village -of Siviano and by the old parish-church where I said mass for fifteen happy -years. The village hangs on a ledge of the mountain; but the villa dips its -foot in the lake, smiling at its reflection like a bather lingering on the -brink. What Paradise it seemed to me that day! In our church up the valley -there hung an old brown picture, with a Saint Sabastian in the foreground; -and behind him the most wonderful palace, with terraced gardens adorned -with statues and fountains, where fine folk in resplendent dresses walked -up and down without heeding the blessed martyr's pangs. The Count's villa, -with its terraces, its roses, its marble steps descending to the lake, -reminded me of that palace; only instead of being inhabited by wicked -people engrossed in their selfish pleasures it was the home of the kindest -friends that ever took a poor lad by the hand. - -The old Count was a widower when I first knew him. He had been twice -married, and his first wife had left him two children, a son and a -daughter. The eldest, Donna Marianna, was then a girl of twenty, who -kept her father's house and was a mother to the two lads. She was not -handsome or learned, and had no taste for the world; but she was like the -lavender-plant in a poor man's window--just a little gray flower, but a -sweetness that fills the whole house. Her brother, Count Roberto, had been -ailing from his birth, and was a studious lad with a melancholy musing face -such as you may see in some of Titian's portraits of young men. He looked -like an exiled prince dressed in mourning. There was one child by the -second marriage, Count Andrea, a boy of my own age, handsome as a Saint -George, but not as kind as the others. No doubt, being younger, he was less -able to understand why an uncouth peasant lad should have been brought to -his father's table; and the others were so fearful of hurting my feelings -that, but for his teasing, I might never have mended my clumsy manners or -learned how to behave in the presence of my betters. Count Andrea was not -sparing in such lessons, and Count Roberto, in spite of his weak arms, -chastised his brother roundly when he thought the discipline had been too -severe; but for my part it seemed to me natural enough that such a godlike -being should lord it over a poor clodhopper like myself. - -Well--I will not linger over the beginning of my new life for my story has -to do with its close. Only I should like to make you understand what the -change meant to me--an ignorant peasant lad, coming from hard words and -blows and a smoke-blackened hut in the hills to that great house full of -rare and beautiful things, and of beings who seemed to me even more rare -and beautiful. Do you wonder I was ready to kiss the ground they trod, and -would have given the last drop of my blood to serve them? - -In due course I was sent to the seminary at Lodi; and on holidays I used -to visit the family in Milan. Count Andrea was growing up to be one of -the handsomest young men imaginable, but a trifle wild; and the old Count -married him in haste to the daughter of a Venetian noble, who brought as -her dower a great estate in Istria. The Countess Gemma, as this lady was -called, was as light as thistledown and had an eye like a baby's; but while -she was cooing for the moon her pretty white hands were always stealing -toward something within reach that she had not been meant to have. The old -Count was not alert enough to follow these manoeuvres; and the Countess hid -her designs under a torrent of guileless chatter, as pick-pockets wear long -sleeves to conceal their movements. Her only fault, he used to say, was -that one of her aunts had married an Austrian; and this event having taken -place before she was born he laughingly acquitted her of any direct share -in it. She confirmed his good opinion of her by giving her husband two -sons; and Roberto showing no inclination to marry, these boys naturally -came to be looked on as the heirs of the house. - -Meanwhile I had finished my course of studies, and the old Count, on my -twenty-first birthday, had appointed me priest of the parish of Siviano. It -was the year of Count Andrea's marriage and there were great festivities at -the villa. Three years later the old Count died, to the sorrow of his two -eldest children. Donna Marianna and Count Roberto closed their apartments -in the palace at Milan and withdrew for a year to Siviano. It was then -that I first began to know my friend. Before that I had loved him without -understanding him; now I learned of what metal he was made. His bookish -tastes inclined him to a secluded way of living; and his younger brother -perhaps fancied that he would not care to assume the charge of the estate. -But if Andrea thought this he was disappointed. Roberto resolutely took up -the tradition of his father's rule, and, as if conscious of lacking the -old Count's easy way with the peasants, made up for it by a redoubled zeal -for their welfare. I have seen him toil for days to adjust some trifling -difficulty that his father would have set right with a ready word; like the -sainted bishop who, when a beggar asked him for a penny, cried out: "Alas, -my brother, I have not a penny in my purse; but here are two gold pieces, -if they can be made to serve you instead!" We had many conferences over -the condition of his people, and he often sent me up the valley to look -into the needs of the peasantry on the fruit-farms. No grievance was too -trifling for him to consider it, no abuse too deep-seated for him to root -it out; and many an hour that other men of his rank would have given to -books or pleasure was devoted to adjusting a quarrel about boundary-lines -or to weighing the merits of a complaint against the tax-collector. I -often said that he was as much his people's priest as I; and he smiled and -answered that every landowner was a king and that in old days the king was -always a priest. - -Donna Marianna was urgent with him to marry, but he always declared that -he had a family in his tenantry, and that, as for a wife, she had never -let him feel the want of one. He had that musing temper which gives a man -a name for coldness; though in fact he may all the while be storing fuel -for a great conflagration. But to me he whispered another reason for not -marrying. A man, he said, does not take wife and rejoice while his mother -is on her death-bed; and Italy, his mother, lay dying, with the foreign -vultures waiting to tear her apart. - -You are too young to know anything of those days, my son; and how can any -one understand them who did not live through them? Italy lay dying indeed; -but Lombardy was her heart, and the heart still beat, and sent the faint -blood creeping to her cold extremities. Her torturers, weary of their -work, had allowed her to fall into a painless stupor; but just as she was -sinking from sleep to death, heaven sent Radetsky to scourge her back to -consciousness; and at the first sting of his lash she sprang maimed and -bleeding to her feet. - -Ah, those days, those days, my son! Italy--Italy--was the word on our -lips; but the thought in our hearts was just _Austria_. We clamored -for liberty, unity, the franchise; but under our breath we prayed only to -smite the white-coats. Remove the beam from our eye, we cried, and we shall -see our salvation clearly enough! We priests in the north were all liberals -and worked with the nobles and the men of letters. Gioberti was our -breviary and his Holiness the new Pope was soon to be the Tancred of our -crusade. But meanwhile, mind you, all this went on in silence, underground -as it were, while on the surface Lombardy still danced, feasted, married, -and took office under the Austrian. In the iron-mines up our valley there -used to be certain miners who stayed below ground for months at a time; -and, like one of these, Roberto remained buried in his purpose, while life -went its way overhead. Though I was not in his confidence I knew well -enough where his thoughts were, for he went among us with the eye of a -lover, the visionary look of one who hears a Voice. We all heard that -Voice, to be sure, mingling faintly with the other noises of life; but to -Roberto it was already as the roar of mighty waters, drowning every other -sound with its thunder. - -On the surface, as I have said, things looked smooth enough. An Austrian -cardinal throned in Milan and an Austrian-hearted Pope ruled in Rome. In -Lombardy, Austria couched like a beast of prey, ready to spring at our -throats if we stirred or struggled. The Moderates, to whose party Count -Roberto belonged, talked of prudence, compromise, the education of the -masses; but if their words were a velvet sheath their thought was a dagger. -For many years, as you know, the Milanese had maintained an outward show of -friendliness with their rulers. The nobles had accepted office under the -vice-roy, and in the past there had been frequent intermarriage between -the two aristocracies. But now, one by one, the great houses had closed -their doors against official society. Though some of the younger and more -careless, those who must dance and dine at any cost, still went to the -palace and sat beside the enemy at the opera, fashion was gradually taking -sides against them, and those who had once been laughed at as old fogeys -were now applauded as patriots. Among these, of course, was Count Roberto, -who for several years had refused to associate with the Austrians, and -had silently resented his easy-going brother's disregard of political -distinctions. Andrea and Gemma belonged to the moth tribe, who flock to -the brightest light; and Gemma's Istrian possessions, and her family's -connection with the Austrian nobility, gave them a pretext for fluttering -about the vice-regal candle. Roberto let them go their way, but his own -course was a tacit protest against their conduct. They were always welcome -at the palazzo Siviano; but he and Donna Marianna withdrew from society in -order to have an excuse for not showing themselves at the Countess Gemma's -entertainments. If Andrea and Gemma were aware of his disapproval they were -clever enough to ignore it; for the rich elder brother who paid their debts -and never meant to marry was too important a person to be quarrelled with -on political grounds. They seemed to think that if he married it would be -only to spite them; and they were persuaded that their future depended on -their giving him no cause to take such reprisals. I shall never be more -than a plain peasant at heart and I have little natural skill in discerning -hidden motives; but the experience of the confessional gives every priest -a certain insight into the secret springs of action, and I often wondered -that the worldly wisdom of Andrea and Gemma did not help them to a clearer -reading of their brother's character. For my part I knew that, in Roberto's -heart, no great passion could spring from a mean motive; and I had always -thought that if he ever loved any woman as he loved Italy, it must be from -his country's hand that he received his bride. And so it came about. - -Have you ever noticed, on one of those still autumn days before a storm, -how here and there a yellow leaf will suddenly detach itself from the bough -and whirl through the air as though some warning of the gale had reached -it? So it was then in Lombardy. All round was the silence of decay; but now -and then a word, a look, a trivial incident, fluttered ominously through -the stillness. It was in '45. Only a year earlier the glorious death of the -Bandiera brothers had sent a long shudder through Italy. In the Romagna, -Renzi and his comrades had tried to uphold by action the protest set forth -in the "Manifesto of Rimini"; and their failure had sowed the seed which -d'Azeglio and Cavour were to harvest. Everywhere the forces were silently -gathering; and nowhere was the hush more profound, the least reverberation -more audible, than in the streets of Milan. - -It was Count Roberto's habit to attend early mass in the Cathedral; and one -morning, as he was standing in the aisle, a young girl passed him with her -father. Roberto knew the father, a beggarly Milanese of the noble family of -Intelvi, who had cut himself off from his class by accepting an appointment -in one of the government offices. As the two went by he saw a group of -Austrian officers looking after the girl, and heard one of them say: "Such -a choice morsel as that is too good for slaves;" and another answer with a -laugh: "Yes, it's a dish for the master's table!" - -The girl heard too. She was as white as a wind-flower and he saw the words -come out on her cheek like the red mark from a blow. She whispered to -her father, but he shook his head and drew her away without so much as -a glance at the Austrians. Roberto heard mass and then hastened out and -placed himself in the porch of the Cathedral. A moment later the officers -appeared, and they too stationed themselves near the doorway. Presently the -girl came out on her father's arm. Her admirers stepped forward to greet -Intelvi; and the cringing wretch stood there exchanging compliments with -them, while their insolent stare devoured his daughter's beauty. She, -poor thing, shook like a leaf, and her eyes, in avoiding theirs, suddenly -encountered Roberto's. Her look was a wounded bird that flew to him for -shelter. He carried it away in his breast and its live warmth beat against -his heart. He thought that Italy had looked at him through those eyes; for -love is the wiliest of masqueraders and has a thousand disguises at his -command. - -Within a month Faustina Intelvi was his wife. Donna Marianna and I -rejoiced; for we knew he had chosen her because he loved her, and she -seemed to us almost worthy of such a choice. As for Count Andrea and his -wife, I leave you to guess what ingredients were mingled in the kiss with -which they welcomed the bride. They were all smiles at Roberto's marriage, -and had only words of praise for his wife. Donna Marianna, who had -sometimes taxed me with suspecting their motives, rejoiced in this fresh -proof of their magnanimity; but for my part I could have wished to see them -a little less kind. All such twilight fears, however, vanished in the flush -of my friend's happiness. Over some natures love steals gradually, as the -morning light widens across a valley; but it had flashed on Roberto like -the leap of dawn to a snow-peak. He walked the world with the wondering -step of a blind man suddenly restored to sight; and once he said to me with -a laugh: "Love makes a Columbus of every one of us!" - -And the Countess--? The Countess, my son, was eighteen, and her husband was -forty. Count Roberto had the heart of a poet, but he walked with a limp and -his skin was sallow. Youth plucks the fruit for its color rather than its -flavor; and first love does not serenade its mistress on a church-organ. In -Italy girls are married as land is sold; if two estates adjoin two lives -are united. As for the portionless girl, she is a knick-knack that goes to -the highest bidder. Faustina was handed over to her purchaser as if she -had been a picture for his gallery; and the transaction doubtless seemed -as natural to her as to her parents. She walked to the altar like an -Iphigenia; but pallor becomes a bride, and it looks well for a daughter to -weep on leaving her mother. Perhaps it would have been different if she had -guessed that the threshold of her new home was carpeted with love and its -four corners hung with tender thoughts of her; but her husband was a silent -man, who never called attention to his treasures. - -The great palace in Milan was a gloomy house for a girl to enter. Roberto -and his sister lived in it as if it had been a monastery, going nowhere and -receiving only those who labored for the Cause. To Faustina, accustomed to -the easy Austrian society, the Sunday evening receptions at the palazzo -Siviano must have seemed as dreary as a scientific congress. It pleased -Roberto to regard her as a victim of barbarian insolence, an embodiment of -his country desecrated by the desire of the enemy; but though, like any -handsome penniless girl, Faustina had now and then been exposed to a free -look or a familiar word, I doubt if she connected such incidents with the -political condition of Italy. She knew, of course, that in marrying Siviano -she was entering a house closed against the Austrian. One of Siviano's -first cares had been to pension his father-in-law, with the stipulation -that Intelvi should resign his appointment and give up all relations with -the government; and the old hypocrite, only too glad to purchase idleness -on such terms, embraced the liberal cause with a zeal which left his -daughter no excuse for half-heartedness. But he found it less easy than he -had expected to recover a footing among his own people. In spite of his -patriotic bluster the Milanese held aloof from him; and being the kind of -man who must always take his glass in company he gradually drifted back -to his old associates. It was impossible to forbid Faustina to visit her -parents; and in their house she breathed an air that was at least tolerant -of Austria. - -But I must not let you think that the young Countess appeared ungrateful or -unhappy. She was silent and shy, and it needed a more enterprising temper -than Roberto's to break down the barrier between them. They seemed to talk -to one another through a convent-grating, rather than across a hearth; but -if Roberto had asked more of her than she could give, outwardly she was -a model wife. She chose me at once as her confessor and I watched over -the first steps of her new life. Never was younger sister tenderer to her -elder than she to Donna Marianna; never was young wife more mindful of her -religious duties, kinder to her dependents, more charitable to the poor; -yet to be with her was like living in a room with shuttered windows. She -was always the caged bird, the transplanted flower: for all Roberto's care -she never bloomed or sang. - -Donna Marianna was the first to speak of it. "The child needs more light -and air," she said. - -"Light? Air?" Roberto repeated. "Does she not go to mass every morning? -Does she not drive on the Corso every evening?" - -Donna Marianna was not called clever, but her heart was wiser than most -women's heads. - -"At our age, brother," said she, "the windows of the mind face north and -look out on a landscape full of lengthening shadows. Faustina needs another -outlook. She is as pale as a hyacinth grown in a cellar." - -Roberto himself turned pale and I saw that she had uttered his own thought. - -"You want me to let her go to Gemma's!" he exclaimed. - -"Let her go wherever there is a little careless laughter." - -"Laughter--now!" he cried, with a gesture toward the sombre line of -portraits above his head. - -"Let her laugh while she can, my brother." - -That evening after dinner he called Faustina to him. - -"My child," he said, "go and put on your jewels. Your sister Gemma gives a -ball to-night and the carriage waits to take you there. I am too much of a -recluse to be at ease in such scenes, but I have sent word to your father -to go with you." - -Andrea and Gemma welcomed their young sister-in-law with effusion, and from -that time she was often in their company. Gemma forbade any mention of -politics in her drawing-room, and it was natural that Faustina should be -glad to escape from the solemn conclaves of the palazzo Siviano to a house -where life went as gaily as in that villa above Florence where Boccaccio's -careless story-tellers took refuge from the plague. But meanwhile the -political distemper was rapidly spreading, and in spite of Gemma's Austrian -affiliations it was no longer possible for her to receive the enemy openly. -It was whispered that her door was still ajar to her old friends; but -the rumor may have risen from the fact that one of the Austrian cavalry -officers stationed at Milan was her own cousin, the son of the aunt on -whose misalliance the old Count had so often bantered her. No one could -blame the Countess Gemma for not turning her own flesh and blood out of -doors; and the social famine to which the officers of the garrison were -reduced made it natural that young Welkenstern should press the claims of -consanguinity. - -All this must have reached Roberto's ears; but he made no sign and his wife -came and went as she pleased. When they returned the following year to the -old dusky villa at Siviano she was like the voice of a brook in a twilight -wood: one could not look at her without ransacking the spring for new -similes to paint her freshness. With Roberto it was different. I found him -older, more preoccupied and silent; but I guessed that his preoccupations -were political, for when his eye rested on his wife it cleared like the -lake when a cloud-shadow lifts from it. - -Count Andrea and his wife occupied an adjoining villa; and during the -_villeggiatura_ the two households lived almost as one family. -Roberto, however, was often absent in Milan, called thither on business of -which the nature was not hard to guess. Sometimes he brought back guests to -the villa; and on these occasions Faustina and Donna Marianna went to Count -Andrea's for the day. I have said that I was not in his confidence; but -he knew my sympathies were with the liberals and now and then he let fall -a word of the work going on underground. Meanwhile the new Pope had been -elected, and from Piedmont to Calabria we hailed in him the Banner that was -to lead our hosts to war. - -So time passed and we reached the last months of '47. The villa on Iseo had -been closed since the end of August. Roberto had no great liking for his -gloomy palace in Milan, and it had been his habit to spend nine months -of the year at Siviano; but he was now too much engrossed in his work to -remain away from Milan, and his wife and sister had joined him there as -soon as the midsummer heat was over. During the autumn he had called me -once or twice to the city to consult me on business connected with his -fruit-farms; and in the course of our talks he had sometimes let fall a -hint of graver matters. It was in July of that year that a troop of Croats -had marched into Ferrara, with muskets and cannon loaded. The lighted -matches of their cannon had fired the sleeping hate of Austria, and the -whole country now echoed the Lombard cry: "Out with the barbarian!" All -talk of adjustment, compromise, reorganization, shrivelled on lips that -the live coal of patriotism had touched. Italy for the Italians, and -then--monarchy, federation, republic, it mattered not what! - -The oppressor's grip had tightened on our throats and the clear-sighted -saw well enough that Metternich's policy was to provoke a rebellion and -then crush it under the Croat heel. But it was too late to cry prudence in -Lombardy. With the first days of the new year the tobacco riots had drawn -blood in Milan. Soon afterward the Lions' Club was closed, and edicts were -issued forbidding the singing of Pio Nono's hymn, the wearing of white and -blue, the collecting of subscriptions for the victims of the riots. To each -prohibition Milan returned a fresh defiance. The ladies of the nobility put -on mourning for the rioters who had been shot down by the soldiery. Half -the members of the Guardia Nobile resigned and Count Borromeo sent back -his Golden Fleece to the Emperor. Fresh regiments were continually pouring -into Milan and it was no secret that Radetsky was strengthening the -fortifications. Late in January several leading liberals were arrested and -sent into exile, and two weeks later martial law was proclaimed in Milan. -At the first arrests several members of the liberal party had hastily left -Milan, and I was not surprised to hear, a few days later, that orders had -been given to reopen the villa at Siviano. The Count and Countess arrived -there early in February. - -It was seven months since I had seen the Countess, and I was struck with -the change in her appearance. - -She was paler than ever, and her step had lost its lightness. Yet she -did not seem to share her husband's political anxieties; one would have -said that she was hardly aware of them. She seemed wrapped in a veil of -lassitude, like Iseo on a still gray morning, when dawn is blood-red on the -mountains but a mist blurs its reflection in the lake. I felt as though her -soul were slipping away from me, and longed to win her back to my care; but -she made her ill-health a pretext for not coming to confession, and for the -present I could only wait and carry the thought of her to the altar. She -had not been long at Siviano before I discovered that this drooping mood -was only one phase of her humor. Now and then she flung back the cowl of -melancholy and laughed life in the eye; but next moment she was in shadow -again, and her muffled thoughts had given us the slip. She was like the -lake on one of those days when the wind blows twenty ways and every -promontory holds a gust in ambush. - -Meanwhile there was a continual coming and going of messengers between -Siviano and the city. They came mostly at night, when the household slept, -and were away again with the last shadows; but the news they brought stayed -and widened, shining through every cranny of the old house. The whole of -Lombardy was up. From Pavia to Mantua, from Como to Brescia, the streets -ran blood like the arteries of one great body. At Pavia and Padua the -universities were closed. The frightened vice-roy was preparing to withdraw -from Milan to Verona, and Radetsky continued to pour his men across the -Alps, till a hundred thousand were massed between the Piave and the Ticino. -And now every eye was turned to Turin. Ah, how we watched for the blue -banner of Piedmont on the mountains! Charles Albert was pledged to our -cause; his whole people had armed to rescue us, the streets echoed with -_avanti, Savoia!_ and yet Savoy was silent and hung back. Each day was -a life-time strained to the cracking-point with hopes and disappointments. -We reckoned the hours by rumors, the very minutes by hearsay. Then -suddenly--ah, it was worth living through!--word came to us that Vienna -was in revolt. The points of the compass had shifted and our sun had risen -in the north. I shall never forget that day at the villa. Roberto sent for -me early, and I found him smiling and resolute, as becomes a soldier on -the eve of action. He had made all his preparations to leave for Milan and -was awaiting a summons from his party. The whole household felt that great -events impended, and Donna Marianna, awed and tearful, had pleaded with -her brother that they should all receive the sacrament together the next -morning. Roberto and his sister had been to confession the previous day, -but the Countess Faustina had again excused herself. I did not see her -while I was with the Count, but as I left the house she met me in the -laurel-walk. The morning was damp and cold, and she had drawn a black scarf -over her hair, and walked with a listless dragging step; but at my approach -she lifted her head quickly and signed to me to follow her into one of the -recesses of clipped laurel that bordered the path. - -"Don Egidio," she said, "you have heard the news?" - -I assented. - -"The Count goes to Milan to-morrow?" - -"It seems probable, your excellency." - -"There will be fighting--we are on the eve of war, I mean?" - -"We are in God's hands, your excellency." - -"In God's hands!" she murmured. Her eyes wandered and for a moment we stood -silent; then she drew a purse from her pocket. "I was forgetting," she -exclaimed. "This is for that poor girl you spoke to me about the other -day--what was her name? The girl who met the Austrian soldier at the fair -at Peschiera--" - -"Ah, Vannina," I said; "but she is dead, your excellency." - -"Dead!" She turned white and the purse dropped from her hand. I picked it -up and held it out to her, but she put back my hand. "That is for masses, -then," she said; and with that she moved away toward the house. - -I walked on to the gate; but before I had reached it I heard her step -behind me. - -"Don Egidio!" she called; and I turned back. - -"You are coming to say mass in the chapel to-morrow morning?" - -"That is the Count's wish." - -She wavered a moment. "I am not well enough to walk up to the village this -afternoon," she said at length. "Will you come back later and hear my -confession here?" - -"Willingly, your excellency." - -"Come at sunset then." She looked at me gravely. "It is a long time since I -have been to confession," she added. - -"My child, the door of heaven is always unlatched." - -She made no answer and I went my way. - -I returned to the villa a little before sunset, hoping for a few words -with Roberto. I felt with Faustina that we were on the eve of war, and the -uncertainty of the outlook made me treasure every moment of my friend's -company. I knew he had been busy all day, but hoped to find that his -preparations were ended and that he could spare me a half hour. I was not -disappointed; for the servant who met me asked me to follow him to the -Count's apartment. Roberto was sitting alone, with his back to the door, at -a table spread with maps and papers. He stood up and turned an ashen face -on me. - -"Roberto!" I cried, as if we had been boys together. - -He signed to me to be seated. - -"Egidio," he said suddenly, "my wife has sent for you to confess her?" - -"The Countess met me on my way home this morning and expressed a wish to -receive the sacrament to-morrow morning with you and Donna Marianna, and I -promised to return this afternoon to hear her confession." - -Roberto sat silent, staring before him as though he hardly heard. At length -he raised his head and began to speak. - -"You have noticed lately that my wife has been ailing?" he asked. - -"Every one must have seen that the Countess is not in her usual health. She -has seemed nervous, out of spirits--I have fancied that she might be -anxious about your excellency." - -He leaned across the table and laid his wasted hand on mine. "Call me -Roberto," he said. - -There was another pause before he went on. "Since I saw you this morning," -he said slowly, "something horrible has happened. After you left I sent for -Andrea and Gemma to tell them the news from Vienna and the probability of -my being summoned to Milan before night. You know as well as I that we have -reached a crisis. There will be fighting within twenty-four hours, if I -know my people; and war may follow sooner than we think. I felt it my duty -to leave my affairs in Andrea's hands, and to entrust my wife to his care. -Don't look startled," he added with a faint smile. "No reasonable man goes -on a journey without setting his house in order; and if things take the -turn I expect it may be some months before you see me back at Siviano.--But -it was not to hear this that I sent for you." He pushed his chair aside and -walked up and down the room with his short limping step. "My God!" he broke -out wildly, "how can I say it?--When Andrea had heard me, I saw him -exchange a glance with his wife, and she said with that infernal sweet -voice of hers, 'Yes, Andrea, it is our duty.' - -"'Your duty?' I asked. 'What is your duty?' - -"Andrea wetted his lips with his tongue and looked at her again; and her -look was like a blade in his hand. - -"'Your wife has a lover,' he said. - -"She caught my arm as I flung myself on him. He is ten times stronger than -I, but you remember how I made him howl for mercy in the old days when he -used to bully you. - -"'Let me go,' I said to his wife. 'He must live to unsay it.' - -"Andrea began to whimper. 'Oh, my poor brother, I would give my heart's -blood to unsay it!' - -"'The secret has been killing us,' she chimed in. - -"'The secret? Whose secret? How dare you--?' - -"Gemma fell on her knees like a tragedy actress. 'Strike me--kill me--it is -I who am the offender! It was at my house that she met him--' - -"'Him?' - -"'Franz Welkenstern--my cousin,' she wailed. - -"I suppose I stood before them like a stunned ox, for they repeated the -name again and again, as if they were not sure of my having heard it.--Not -hear it!" he cried suddenly, dropping into a chair and hiding his face in -his hands. "Shall I ever on earth hear anything else again?" - -He sat a long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a -great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. - -After a while he went on in a low deliberate voice, as though his words -were balancing themselves on the brink of madness. With strange composure -he repeated each detail of his brother's charges: the meetings in the -Countess Gemma's drawing-room, the innocent friendliness of the two -young people, the talk of mysterious visits to a villa outside the Porta -Ticinese, the ever-widening circle of scandal that had spread about their -names. At first, Andrea said, he and his wife had refused to listen to the -reports which reached them. Then, when the talk became too loud, they had -sent for Welkenstern, remonstrated with him, implored him to exchange into -another regiment; but in vain. The young officer indignantly denied the -reports and declared that to leave his post at such a moment would be -desertion. - -With a laborious accuracy Roberto went on, detailing one by one each -incident of the hateful story, till suddenly he cried out, springing from -his chair--"And now to leave her with this lie unburied!" - -His cry was like the lifting of a grave-stone from my breast. "You must not -leave her!" I exclaimed. - -He shook his head. "I am pledged." - -"This is your first duty." - -"It would be any other man's; not an Italian's." - -I was silent: in those days the argument seemed unanswerable. - -At length I said: "No harm can come to her while you are away. Donna -Marianna and I are here to watch over her. And when you come back--" - -He looked at me gravely. "_If_ I come back--" - -"Roberto!" - -"We are men, Egidio; we both know what is coming. Milan is up already; and -there is a rumor that Charles Albert is moving. This year the spring rains -will be red in Italy." - -"In your absence not a breath shall touch her!" - -"And if I never come back to defend her? They hate her as hell hates, -Egidio!--They kept repeating, 'He is of her own age and youth draws -youth--.' She is in their way, Egidio!" - -"Consider, my son. They do not love her, perhaps; but why should they hate -her at such cost? She has given you no child." - -"No child!" He paused. "But what if--? She has ailed lately!" he cried, and -broke off to grapple with the stabbing thought. - -"Roberto! Roberto!" I adjured him. - -He jumped up and gripped my arm. - -"Egidio! You believe in her?" - -"She's as pure as a lily on the altar!" - -"Those eyes are wells of truth--and she has been like a daughter to -Marianna.--Egidio! do I look like an old man?" - -"Quiet yourself, Roberto," I entreated. - -"Quiet myself? With this sting in my blood? A lover--and an Austrian lover! -Oh, Italy, Italy, my bride!" - -"I stake my life on her truth," I cried, "and who knows better than I? Has -her soul not lain before me like the bed of a clear stream?" - -"And if what you saw there was only the reflection of your faith in her?" - -"My son, I am a priest, and the priest penetrates to the soul as the angel -passed through the walls of Peter's prison. I see the truth in her heart as -I see Christ in the host!" - -"No, no, she is false!" he cried. - -I sprang up terrified. "Roberto, be silent!" - -He looked at me with a wild incredulous smile. "Poor simple man of God!" he -said. - -"I would not exchange my simplicity for yours--the dupe of envy's first -malicious whisper!" - -"Envy--you think that?" - -"Is it questionable?" - -"You would stake your life on it?" - -"My life!" - -"Your faith?" - -"My faith!" - -"Your vows as a priest?" - -"My vows--" I stopped and stared at him. He had risen and laid his hand on -my shoulder. - -"You see now what I would be at," he said quietly. "I must take your place -presently--" - -"My place--?" - -"When my wife comes down. You understand me." - -"Ah, now you are quite mad!" I cried breaking away from him. - -"Am I?" he returned, maintaining his strange composure. "Consider a moment. -She has not confessed to you before since our return from Milan--" - -"Her ill-health--" - -He cut me short with a gesture. "Yet to-day she sends for you--" - -"In order that she may receive the sacrament with you on the eve of your -first separation." - -"If that is her only reason her first words will clear her. I must hear -those words, Egidio!" - -"You are quite mad," I repeated. - -"Strange," he said slowly. "You stake your life on my wife's innocence, yet -you refuse me the only means of vindicating it!" - -"I would give my life for any one of you--but what you ask is not mine to -give." - -"The priest first--the man afterward?" he sneered. - -"Long afterward!" - -He measured me with a contemptuous eye. "We laymen are ready to give the -last shred of flesh from our bones, but you priests intend to keep your -cassocks whole." - -"I tell you my cassock is not mine," I repeated. - -"And, by God," he cried, "you are right; for it's mine! Who put it on your -back but my father? What kept it there but my charity? Peasant! beggar! -Hear his holiness pontificate!" "Yes," I said, "I was a peasant and a -beggar when your father found me; and if he had left me one I might have -been excused for putting my hand to any ugly job that my betters required -of me; but he made me a priest, and so set me above all of you, and laid on -me the charge of your souls as well as mine." - -He sat down shaken with dreadful tears. "Ah," he broke out, "would you have -answered me thus when we were boys together, and I stood between you and -Andrea?" - -"If God had given me the strength." - -"You call it strength to make a woman's soul your stepping-stone to -heaven?" - -"Her soul is in my care, not yours, my son. She is safe with me." - -"She? But I? I go out to meet death, and leave a worse death behind me!" -He leaned over and clutched my arm. "It is not for myself I plead but for -her--for her, Egidio! Don't you see to what a hell you condemn her if I -don't come back? What chance has she against that slow unsleeping hate? -Their lies will fasten themselves to her and suck out her life. You and -Marianna are powerless against such enemies." - -"You leave her in God's hands, my son." - -"Easily said--but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison -works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be -sent by her lover's hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free -my wife as well?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder. "My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith -in her in my hands and I will keep it whole." - -He stared at me strangely. "And what if your own fail you?" - -"In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!" - -"And yet--and yet--ah, this is a blind," he shouted; "you know all and -perjure yourself to spare me!" - -At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish -and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a -clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice. - -"You know all," he repeated, "and you dare not let me hear her!" - -"I dare not betray my trust." - -He waved the answer aside. - -"Is this a time to quibble over church discipline? If you believed in her -you would save her at any cost!" - -I said to myself, "Eternity can hold nothing worse than this for me--" and -clutched my resolve again like a cross to my bosom. - -Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna. - -"Faustina has sent to know if the _signar parocco_ is here." - -"He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel." Roberto spoke quietly, and -closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her -patter away across the brick floor of the _salone_. - -Roberto turned to me. "Egidio!" he said; and all at once I was no more than -a straw on the torrent of his will. - -The chapel adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in -the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin's shrine and the -old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But -I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but -the iron grip on my shoulder. - -"Quick!" he said and drove me forward. I heard him shoot back the bolt of -the outer door and a moment later I stood alone in the garden. The sun had -set and the cold spring dusk was falling. Lights shone here and there in -the long front of the villa; the statues glimmered gray among the thickets. -Through the window-pane of the chapel I caught the faint red gleam of the -Virgin's lamp; but I turned my back on it and walked away. - - * * * * * - -All night I lay like a heretic on the fire. Before dawn there came a call -from the villa. The Count had received a second summons from Milan and was -to set out in an hour. I hurried down the cold dewy path to the lake. All -was new and hushed and strange as on the day of resurrection; and in the -dark twilight of the garden alleys the statues stared at me like the -shrouded dead. - -In the _salone_, where the old Count's portrait hung, I found the -family assembled. Andrea and Gemma sat together, a little pinched, I -thought, but decent and self-contained, like mourners who expect to -inherit. Donna Marianna drooped near them, with something black over her -head and her face dim with weeping. Roberto received me calmly and then -turned to his sister. - -"Go fetch my wife," he said. - -While she was gone there was silence. We could hear the cold drip of the -garden-fountain and the patter of rats in the wall. Andrea and his wife -stared out of window and Roberto sat in his father's carved seat at the -head of the long table. Then the door opened and Faustina entered. - -When I saw her I stopped breathing. She seemed no more than the shell of -herself, a hollow thing that grief has voided. Her eyes returned our images -like polished agate, but conveyed to her no sense of our presence. Marianna -led her to a seat, and she crossed her hands and nailed her dull gaze on -Roberto. I looked from one to another, and in that spectral light it seemed -to me that we were all souls come to judgment and naked to each other as to -God. As to my own wrongdoing, it weighed on me no more than dust. The only -feeling I had room for was fear--a fear that seemed to fill my throat and -lungs and bubble coldly over my drowning head. - -Suddenly Roberto began to speak. His voice was clear and steady, and I -clutched at his words to drag myself above the surface of my terror. He -touched on the charge that had been made against his wife--he did not say -by whom--the foul rumor that had made itself heard on the eve of their -first parting. Duty, he said, had sent him a double summons; to fight for -his country and for his wife. He must clear his wife's name before he was -worthy to draw sword for Italy. There was no time to tame the slander -before throttling it; he had to take the shortest way to its throat. At -this point he looked at me and my soul shook. Then he turned to Andrea and -Gemma. - -"When you came to me with this rumor," he said quietly, "you agreed to -consider the family honor satisfied if I could induce Don Egidio to let me -take his place and overhear my wife's confession, and if that confession -convinced me of her innocence. Was this the understanding?" - -Andrea muttered something and Gemma tapped a sullen foot. - -"After you had left," Roberto continued, "I laid the case before Don Egidio -and threw myself on his mercy." He looked at me fixedly. "So strong was his -faith in my wife's innocence that for her sake he agreed to violate the -sanctity of the confessional. I took his place." - -Marianna sobbed and crossed herself and a strange look flitted over -Faustina's face. - -There was a moment's pause; then Roberto, rising, walked across the room to -his wife and took her by the hand. - -"Your seat is beside me, Countess Siviano," he said, and led her to the -empty chair by his own. - -Gemma started to her feet, but her husband pulled her down again. - -"Jesus! Mary!" We heard Donna Marianna moan. - -Roberto raised his wife's hand to his lips. "You forgive me," he said, "the -means I took to defend you?" And turning to Andrea he added slowly: "I -declare my wife innocent and my honor satisfied. You swear to stand by my -decision?" - -What Andrea stammered out, what hissing serpents of speech Gemma's clinched -teeth bit back, I never knew--for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face -was a wonder to behold. - -She had let herself be led across the room like a blind woman, and had -listened without change of feature to her husband's first words; but as -he ceased her frozen gaze broke and her whole body seemed to melt against -his breast. He put his arm out, but she slipped to his feet and Marianna -hastened forward to raise her up. At that moment we heard the stroke -of oars across the quiet water and saw the Count's boat touch the -landing-steps. Four strong oarsmen from Monte Isola were to row him down -to Iseo, to take horse for Milan, and his servant, knapsack on shoulder, -knocked warningly at the terrace window. - -"No time to lose, excellency!" he cried. - -Roberto turned and gripped my hand. "Pray for me," he said low; and with a -brief gesture to the others ran down the terrace to the boat. - -Marianna was bathing Faustina with happy tears. - -"Look up, dear! Think how soon he will come back! And there is the -sunrise--see!" - -Andrea and Gemma had slunk away like ghosts at cock-crow, and a red dawn -stood over Milan. - - * * * * * - -If that sun rose red it set scarlet. It was the first of the Five Days in -Milan--the Five Glorious Days, as they are called. Roberto reached the city -just before the gates closed. So much we knew--little more. We heard of him -in the Broletto (whence he must have escaped when the Austrians blew in -the door) and in the Casa Vidiserti, with Casati, Cattaneo and the rest; -but after the barricading began we could trace him only as having been -seen here and there in the thick of the fighting, or tending the wounded -under Bertani's orders. His place, one would have said, was in the -council-chamber, with the soberer heads; but that was an hour when every -man gave his blood where it was most needed, and Cernuschi, Dandolo, -Anfossi, della Porta fought shoulder to shoulder with students, artisans -and peasants. Certain it is that he was seen on the fifth day; for among -the volunteers who swarmed after Manara in his assault on the Porta Tosa -was a servant of palazzo Siviano; and this fellow swore he had seen his -master charge with Manara in the last assault--had watched him, sword -in hand, press close to the gates, and then, as they swung open before -the victorious dash of our men, had seen him drop and disappear in the -inrushing tide of peasants that almost swept the little company off its -feet. After that we heard nothing. There was savage work in Milan in those -days, and more than one well-known figure lay lost among the heaps of dead -hacked and disfeatured by Croat blades. - -At the villa, we waited breathless. News came to us hour by hour: the very -wind seemed to carry it, and it was swept to us on the incessant rush of -the rain. On the twenty-third Radetsky had fled from Milan, to face Venice -rising in his path. On the twenty-fourth the first Piedmontese had crossed -the Ticino, and Charles Albert himself was in Pavia on the twenty-ninth. -The bells of Milan had carried the word from Turin to Naples, from Genoa to -Ancona, and the whole country was pouring like a flood-tide into Lombardy. -Heroes sprang up from the bloody soil as thick as wheat after rain, and -every day carried some new name to us; but never the one for which we -prayed and waited. Weeks passed. We heard of Pastrengo, Goito, Rivoli; of -Radetsky hemmed into the Quadrilateral, and our troops closing in on him -from Rome, Tuscany and Venetia. Months passed--and we heard of Custozza. We -saw Charles Albert's broken forces flung back from the Mincio to the Oglio, -from the Oglio to the Adda. We followed the dreadful retreat from Milan, -and saw our rescuers dispersed like dust before the wind. But all the while -no word came to us of Roberto. - -These were dark days in Lombardy; and nowhere darker than in the old villa -on Iseo. In September Donna Marianna and the young Countess put on black, -and Count Andrea and his wife followed their example. In October the -Countess gave birth to a daughter. Count Andrea then took possession of the -palazzo Siviano, and the two women remained at the villa. I have no heart -to tell you of the days that followed. Donna Marianna wept and prayed -incessantly, and it was long before the baby could snatch a smile from her. -As for the Countess Faustina, she went among us like one of the statues in -the garden. The child had a wet-nurse from the village, and it was small -wonder there was no milk for it in that marble breast. I spent much of -my time at the villa, comforting Donna Marianna as best I could; but -sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when we three sat in the dimly-lit -_salone_, with the old Count's portrait overhead, and I looked up and -saw the Countess Faustina in the tall carved seat beside her husband's -empty chair, my spine grew chill and I felt a cold wind in my hair. - -The end of it was that in the spring I went to see my bishop and laid my -sin before him. He was a saintly and merciful old man, and gave me a -patient hearing. - -"You believed the lady innocent?" he asked when I had ended. - -"Monsignore, on my soul!" - -"You thought to avert a great calamity from the house to which you owed -more than your life?" - -"It was my only thought." - -He laid his hand on my shoulder. - -"Go home, my son. You shall learn my decision." - -Three months later I was ordered to resign my living and go to America, -where a priest was needed for the Italian mission church in New York. I -packed my possessions and set sail from Genoa. I knew no more of America -than any peasant up in the hills. I fully expected to be speared by naked -savages on landing; and for the first few months after my arrival I wished -at least once a day that such a blessed fate had befallen me. But it is -no part of my story to tell you what I suffered in those early days. The -Church had dealt with me mercifully, as is her wont, and her punishment -fell far below my deserts.... - -I had been some four years in New York, and no longer thought of looking -back from the plough, when one day word was brought me that an Italian -professor lay ill and had asked for a priest. There were many Italian -refugees in New York at that time, and the greater number, being -well-educated men, earned a living by teaching their language, which was -then included among the accomplishments of fashionable New York. The -messenger led me to a poor boarding-house and up to a small bare room on -the top floor. On the visiting-card nailed to the door I read the name "De -Roberti, Professor of Italian." Inside, a gray-haired haggard man tossed on -the narrow bed. He turned a glazed eye on me as I entered, and I recognized -Roberto Siviano. - -I steadied myself against the door-post and stood staring at him without a -word. - -"What's the matter?" asked the doctor who was bending over the bed. I -stammered that the sick man was an old friend. - -"He wouldn't know his oldest friend just now," said the doctor. "The -fever's on him; but it will go down toward sunset." - -I sat down at the head of the bed and took Roberto's hand in mine. - -"Is he going to die?" I asked. - -"I don't believe so; but he wants nursing." - -"I will nurse him." - -The doctor nodded and went out. I sat in the little room, with Roberto's -burning hand in mine. Gradually his skin cooled, the fingers grew quiet, -and the flush faded from his sallow cheek-bones. Toward dusk he looked up -at me and smiled. - -"Egidio," he said quietly. - -I administered the sacrament, which he received with the most fervent -devotion; then he fell into a deep sleep. - -During the weeks that followed I had no time to ask myself the meaning of -it all. My one business was to keep him alive if I could. I fought the -fever day and night, and at length it yielded. For the most part he raved -or lay unconscious; but now and then he knew me for a moment, and whispered -"Egidio" with a look of peace. - -I had stolen many hours from my duties to nurse him; and as soon as the -danger was past I had to go back to my parish work. Then it was that I -began to ask myself what had brought him to America; but I dared not face -the answer. - -On the fourth day I snatched a moment from my work and climbed to his -room. I found him sitting propped against his pillows, weak as a child but -clear-eyed and quiet. I ran forward, but his look stopped me. - -"_Signor parocco_," he said, "the doctor tells me that I owe my life -to your nursing, and I have to thank you for the kindness you have shown to -a friendless stranger." - -"A stranger?" I gasped. - -He looked at me steadily. "I am not aware that we have met before," he -said. - -For a moment I thought the fever was on him; but a second glance convinced -me that he was master of himself. - -"Roberto!" I cried, trembling. - -"You have the advantage of me," he said civilly. "But my name is Roberti, -not Roberto." - -The floor swam under me and I had to lean against the wall. - -"You are not Count Roberto Siviano of Milan?" - -"I am Tommaso de Roberti, professor of Italian, from Modena." - -"And you have never seen me before?" - -"Never that I know of." - -"Were you never at Siviano, on the lake of Iseo?" I faltered. - -He said calmly: "I am unacquainted with that part of Italy." - -My heart grew cold and I was silent. - -"You mistook me for a friend, I suppose?" he added. - -"Yes," I cried, "I mistook you for a friend;" and with that I fell on my -knees by his bed and cried like a child. - -Suddenly I felt a touch on my shoulder. "Egidio," said he in a broken -voice, "look up." - -I raised my eyes, and there was his old smile above me, and we clung to -each other without a word. Presently, however, he drew back, and put me -quietly aside. - -"Sit over there, Egidio. My bones are like water and I am not good for much -talking yet." - -"Let us wait, Roberto. Sleep now--we can talk tomorrow." - -"No. What I have to say must be said at once." He examined me thoughtfully. -"You have a parish here in New York?" - -I assented. - -"And my work keeps me here. I have pupils. It is too late to make a -change." - -"A change?" - -He continued to look at me calmly. "It would be difficult for me," he -explained, "to find employment in a new place." - -"But why should you leave here?" - -"I shall have to," he returned deliberately, "if you persist in recognizing -in me your former friend Count Siviano." - -"Roberto!" - -He lifted his hand. "Egidio," he said, "I am alone here, and without -friends. The companionship, the sympathy of my parish priest would be a -consolation in this strange city; but it must not be the companionship of -the _parocco_ of Siviano. You understand?" - -"Roberto," I cried, "it is too dreadful to understand!" - -"Be a man, Egidio," said he with a touch of impatience. "The choice lies -with you, and you must make it now. If you are willing to ask no questions, -to name no names, to make no allusions to the past, let us live as friends -together, in God's name! If not, as soon as my legs can carry me I must be -off again. The world is wide, luckily--but why should we be parted?" - -I was on my knees at his side in an instant. "We must never be parted!" I -cried. "Do as you will with me. Give me your orders and I obey--have I not -always obeyed you?" - -I felt his hand close sharply on mine. "Egidio!" he admonished me. - -"No--no--I shall remember. I shall say nothing--" - -"Think nothing?" - -"Think nothing," I said with a last effort. - -"God bless you!" he answered. - -My son, for eight years I kept my word to him. We met daily almost, we ate -and walked and talked together, we lived like David and Jonathan--but -without so much as a glance at the past. How he had escaped from Milan--how -he had reached New York--I never knew. We talked often of Italy's -liberation--as what Italians would not?--but never touched on his share in -the work. Once only a word slipped from him; and that was when one day he -asked me how it was that I had been sent to America. The blood rushed to my -face, and before I could answer he had raised a silencing hand. - -"I see," he said; "it was _your_ penance too." - -During the first years he had plenty of work to do, but he lived so -frugally that I guessed he had some secret use for his earnings. It was -easy to conjecture what it was. All over the world Italian exiles were -toiling and saving to further the great cause. He had political friends in -New York, and sometimes he went to other cities to attend meetings and make -addresses. His zeal never slackened; and but for me he would often have -gone hungry that some shivering patriot might dine. I was with him heart -and soul, but I had the parish on my shoulders, and perhaps my long -experience of men had made me a little less credulous than Christian -charity requires; for I could have sworn that some of the heroes who hung -on him had never had a whiff of Austrian blood, and would have fed out of -the same trough with the white-coats if there had been polenta enough to go -round. Happily my friend had no such doubts. He believed in the patriots as -devoutly as in the cause; and if some of his hard-earned dollars travelled -no farther than the nearest wine-cellar or cigar-shop, he never suspected -the course they took. - -His health was never the same after the fever; and by and by he began to -lose his pupils, and the patriots cooled off as his pockets fell in. Toward -the end I took him to live in my shabby attic. He had grown weak and had a -troublesome cough, and he spent the greater part of his days indoors. Cruel -days they must have been to him, but he made no sign, and always welcomed -me with a cheerful word. When his pupils dropped off, and his health made -it difficult for him to pick up work outside, he set up a letter-writer's -sign, and used to earn a few pennies by serving as amanuensis to my poor -parishioners; but it went against him to take their money, and half the -time he did the work for nothing. I knew it was hard for him to live on -charity, as he called it, and I used to find what jobs I could for him -among my friends the _negozianti_, who would send him letters to copy, -accounts to make up and what not; but we were all poor together, and the -master had licked the platter before the dog got it. - -So lived that just man, my son; and so, after eight years of exile, he died -one day in my arms. God had let him live long enough to see Solferino and -Villa-franca; and was perhaps never more merciful than in sparing him Monte -Rotondo and Mentana. But these are things of which it does not become me to -speak. The new Italy does not wear the face of our visions; but it is -written that God shall know His own, and it cannot be that He shall misread -the hearts of those who dreamed of fashioning her in His image. - -As for my friend, he is at peace, I doubt not; and his just life and holy -death intercede for me, who sinned for his sake alone. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crucial Instances, by Edith Wharton - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -***** This file should be named 7516-8.txt or 7516-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/7/5/1/7516/ - -Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William -Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - https://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/7516-8.zip b/7516-8.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index d5553f5..0000000 --- a/7516-8.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/7516-h.zip b/7516-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 87eb0fb..0000000 --- a/7516-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/7516-h/7516-h.htm b/7516-h/7516-h.htm index 16aba85..71f92c8 100644 --- a/7516-h/7516-h.htm +++ b/7516-h/7516-h.htm @@ -1,13 +1,11 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" -"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> - <head> <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> -<title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Crucial Instances, by Edith Wharton. -</title> -<style type="text/css"> +<!DOCTYPE html> + +<html lang="en"> + <head> <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" > +<meta charset="utf-8"> + +<title>Crucial Instances | Project Gutenberg</title> +<style> p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;} .c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} @@ -54,51 +52,12 @@ display: inline-block; text-align: left;font-style:italic;} </style> </head> <body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 7516 ***</div> - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crucial Instances, by Edith Wharton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Crucial Instances - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Posting Date: October 20, 2017 [EBook #7516] -Release Date: February, 2005 -First Posted: May 13, 2003 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William -Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team -HTM version by Chuck Greif - - - - - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> +<hr class="full" > <p class="c"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="" title="" /> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" title="" style="width: 318px; height: 500px"> </p> <h1>CRUCIAL INSTANCES</h1> @@ -107,20 +66,20 @@ HTM version by Chuck Greif <p class="c">EDITH WHARTON</p> -<h2><a name="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> +<h2><a id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<table style="border: none; padding: 0px; border-spacing: 0px;"> <tr><td> -<a href="#THE_DUCHESS_AT_PRAYER"><b>The Duchess At Prayer</b></a><br /> -<a href="#THE_ANGEL_AT_THE_GRAVE"><b>The Angel At The Grave</b></a><br /> -<a href="#THE_RECOVERY"><b>The Recovery</b></a><br /> -<a href="#COPY"><b>“Copy”</b></a><br /> -<a href="#THE_REMBRANDT"><b>The Rembrandt</b></a><br /> -<a href="#THE_MOVING_FINGER"><b>The Moving Finger</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DUCHESS_AT_PRAYER"><b>The Duchess At Prayer</b></a><br > +<a href="#THE_ANGEL_AT_THE_GRAVE"><b>The Angel At The Grave</b></a><br > +<a href="#THE_RECOVERY"><b>The Recovery</b></a><br > +<a href="#COPY"><b>“Copy”</b></a><br > +<a href="#THE_REMBRANDT"><b>The Rembrandt</b></a><br > +<a href="#THE_MOVING_FINGER"><b>The Moving Finger</b></a><br > <a href="#THE_CONFESSIONAL"><b>The Confessional</b></a></td></tr> </table> -<h2><a name="THE_DUCHESS_AT_PRAYER" id="THE_DUCHESS_AT_PRAYER"></a>THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER</h2> +<h2><a id="THE_DUCHESS_AT_PRAYER"></a>THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER</h2> <p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Have</span> you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest @@ -920,7 +879,7 @@ bosom....”</p> <p>“Heaven forbid, sir!” cried the old man, crossing himself. “Was it not the Duchess’s express wish that the relics should not be disturbed?”</p> -<h2><a name="THE_ANGEL_AT_THE_GRAVE" id="THE_ANGEL_AT_THE_GRAVE"></a>THE ANGEL AT THE GRAVE</h2> +<h2><a id="THE_ANGEL_AT_THE_GRAVE"></a>THE ANGEL AT THE GRAVE</h2> <p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> House stood a few yards back from the elm-shaded village street, in that semi-publicity sometimes cited as a democratic protest against @@ -1547,7 +1506,7 @@ the fire shall be lit for you.”</p> buoyant figure hastening down the elm-shaded street. When she turned back into the empty room she looked as though youth had touched her on the lips.</p> -<h2><a name="THE_RECOVERY" id="THE_RECOVERY"></a>THE RECOVERY</h2> +<h2><a id="THE_RECOVERY"></a>THE RECOVERY</h2> <p class="nind"><span class="smcap">To</span> the visiting stranger Hillbridge’s first question was, “Have you seen Keniston’s things?” Keniston took precedence of the colonial State House, @@ -2294,7 +2253,7 @@ the world are we ever to pay her back?”</p> know of,” he imperturbably declared, “and that’s to stay out here till I learn how to paint them.”</p> -<h2><a name="COPY" id="COPY"></a>“COPY”<br /><br /> +<h2><a id="COPY"></a>“COPY”<br ><br > <small>A DIALOGUE</small></h2> <p><i>Mrs. Ambrose Dale—forty, slender, still young—sits in her drawing-room @@ -2523,20 +2482,20 @@ opens it, and reads, half to herself—)</i></p> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">How much we two have seen together,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Of other eyes unwist,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dear as in days of leafless weather<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The willow’s saffron mist,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How much we two have seen together,<br ></span> +<span class="i2">Of other eyes unwist,<br ></span> +<span class="i0">Dear as in days of leafless weather<br ></span> +<span class="i2">The willow’s saffron mist,<br ></span> </div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Strange as the hour when Hesper swings<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A-sea in beryl green,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While overhead on dalliant wings<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The daylight hangs serene,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strange as the hour when Hesper swings<br ></span> +<span class="i2">A-sea in beryl green,<br ></span> +<span class="i0">While overhead on dalliant wings<br ></span> +<span class="i2">The daylight hangs serene,<br ></span> </div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And thrilling as a meteor’s fall<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Through depths of lonely sky,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When each to each two watchers call:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">I saw it!—So did I.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thrilling as a meteor’s fall<br ></span> +<span class="i2">Through depths of lonely sky,<br ></span> +<span class="i0">When each to each two watchers call:<br ></span> +<span class="i2">I saw it!—So did I.<br ></span> </div></div> </div> @@ -2972,7 +2931,7 @@ goes out by the door to the right. As he reaches the door she takes a step toward him, impulsively; then turning back she leans against the chimney-piece, quietly watching the letters burn.)</i></p> -<h2><a name="THE_REMBRANDT" id="THE_REMBRANDT"></a>THE REMBRANDT</h2> +<h2><a id="THE_REMBRANDT"></a>THE REMBRANDT</h2> <p class="nind">“<span class="smcap">You’re</span> <i>so</i> artistic,” my cousin Eleanor Copt began.</p> @@ -3650,7 +3609,7 @@ we were prepared to pay, we beg you—the committee begs you—to accept gift of Mrs. Fontage’s Rembrandt. Now we’ll go in and look at that little head....”</p> -<h2><a name="THE_MOVING_FINGER" id="THE_MOVING_FINGER"></a>THE MOVING FINGER</h2> +<h2><a id="THE_MOVING_FINGER"></a>THE MOVING FINGER</h2> <p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> news of Mrs. Grancy’s death came to me with the shock of an immense blunder—one of fate’s most irretrievable acts of vandalism. It was as @@ -4255,7 +4214,7 @@ eyes?—Well—that was what she wanted of me and I did it—I kept together to the last!” He looked up at the picture again. “But now she belongs to me,” he repeated....</p> -<h2><a name="THE_CONFESSIONAL" id="THE_CONFESSIONAL"></a>THE CONFESSIONAL</h2> +<h2><a id="THE_CONFESSIONAL"></a>THE CONFESSIONAL</h2> <p class="nind"><span class="smcap">When</span> I was a young man I thought a great deal of local color. At that time it was still a pigment of recent discovery, and supposed to have @@ -5789,385 +5748,8 @@ the hearts of those who dreamed of fashioning her in His image.</p> <p>As for my friend, he is at peace, I doubt not; and his just life and holy death intercede for me, who sinned for his sake alone.</p> -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crucial Instances, by Edith Wharton - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -***** This file should be named 7516-h.htm or 7516-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/7/5/1/7516/ - - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Crucial Instances - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Posting Date: January 28, 2011 [EBook #7516] -Release Date: February, 2005 -First Posted: May 13, 2003 -[Last updated: October 20, 2017] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - - - - -Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William -Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - - - - - - - - - - - CRUCIAL INSTANCES - - BY - - EDITH WHARTON - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS - - -I _The Duchess at Prayer_ - -II _The Angel at the Grave_ - -III _The Recovery_ - -IV _"Copy": A Dialogue_ - -V _The Rembrandt_ - -VI _The Moving Finger_ - -VII _The Confessional_ - - - - -THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER - - -Have you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, -that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest -behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the -activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life -flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the -villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall -windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there -may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the -arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the -disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors.... - - -II - -From the loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue -barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated -vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes -and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted -the balustrade as with fine _laminae_ of gold, vineyards stooped to -the rich valley clasped in hills. The lower slopes were strewn with white -villages like stars spangling a summer dusk; and beyond these, fold on -fold of blue mountain, clear as gauze against the sky. The August air was -lifeless, but it seemed light and vivifying after the atmosphere of the -shrouded rooms through which I had been led. Their chill was on me and I -hugged the sunshine. - -"The Duchess's apartments are beyond," said the old man. - -He was the oldest man I had ever seen; so sucked back into the past that he -seemed more like a memory than a living being. The one trait linking him -with the actual was the fixity with which his small saurian eye held the -pocket that, as I entered, had yielded a _lira_ to the gate-keeper's -child. He went on, without removing his eye: - -"For two hundred years nothing has been changed in the apartments of the -Duchess." - -"And no one lives here now?" - -"No one, sir. The Duke, goes to Como for the summer season." - -I had moved to the other end of the loggia. Below me, through hanging -groves, white roofs and domes flashed like a smile. - -"And that's Vicenza?" - -"_Proprio_!" The old man extended fingers as lean as the hands fading -from the walls behind us. "You see the palace roof over there, just to the -left of the Basilica? The one with the row of statues like birds taking -flight? That's the Duke's town palace, built by Palladio." - -"And does the Duke come there?" - -"Never. In winter he goes to Rome." - -"And the palace and the villa are always closed?" - -"As you see--always." - -"How long has this been?" - -"Since I can remember." - -I looked into his eyes: they were like tarnished metal mirrors reflecting -nothing. "That must be a long time," I said involuntarily. - -"A long time," he assented. - -I looked down on the gardens. An opulence of dahlias overran the -box-borders, between cypresses that cut the sunshine like basalt shafts. -Bees hung above the lavender; lizards sunned themselves on the benches and -slipped through the cracks of the dry basins. Everywhere were vanishing -traces of that fantastic horticulture of which our dull age has lost the -art. Down the alleys maimed statues stretched their arms like rows of -whining beggars; faun-eared terms grinned in the thickets, and above the -laurustinus walls rose the mock ruin of a temple, falling into real ruin -in the bright disintegrating air. The glare was blinding. - -"Let us go in," I said. - -The old man pushed open a heavy door, behind which the cold lurked like a -knife. - -"The Duchess's apartments," he said. - -Overhead and around us the same evanescent frescoes, under foot the same -scagliola volutes, unrolled themselves interminably. Ebony cabinets, with -inlay of precious marbles in cunning perspective, alternated down the -room with the tarnished efflorescence of gilt consoles supporting Chinese -monsters; and from the chimney-panel a gentleman in the Spanish habit -haughtily ignored us. - -"Duke Ercole II.," the old man explained, "by the Genoese Priest." - -It was a narrow-browed face, sallow as a wax effigy, high-nosed and -cautious-lidded, as though modelled by priestly hands; the lips weak and -vain rather than cruel; a quibbling mouth that would have snapped at verbal -errors like a lizard catching flies, but had never learned the shape of a -round yes or no. One of the Duke's hands rested on the head of a dwarf, a -simian creature with pearl ear-rings and fantastic dress; the other turned -the pages of a folio propped on a skull. - -"Beyond is the Duchess's bedroom," the old man reminded me. - -Here the shutters admitted but two narrow shafts of light, gold bars -deepening the subaqueous gloom. On a dais the bedstead, grim, nuptial, -official, lifted its baldachin; a yellow Christ agonized between the -curtains, and across the room a lady smiled at us from the chimney-breast. - -The old man unbarred a shutter and the light touched her face. Such a face -it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, -and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo's lenient -goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath of a seventeenth century -dress! - -"No one has slept here," said the old man, "since the Duchess Violante." - -"And she was--?" - -"The lady there--first Duchess of Duke Ercole II." - -He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked a door at the farther end of the -room. "The chapel," he said. "This is the Duchess's balcony." As I turned -to follow him the Duchess tossed me a sidelong smile. - -I stepped into a grated tribune above a chapel festooned with stucco. -Pictures of bituminous saints mouldered between the pilasters; the -artificial roses in the altar-vases were gray with dust and age, and under -the cobwebby rosettes of the vaulting a bird's nest clung. Before the altar -stood a row of tattered arm-chairs, and I drew back at sight of a figure -kneeling near them. - -"The Duchess," the old man whispered. "By the Cavaliere Bernini." - -It was the image of a woman in furred robes and spreading fraise, her hand -lifted, her face addressed to the tabernacle. There was a strangeness in -the sight of that immovable presence locked in prayer before an abandoned -shrine. Her face was hidden, and I wondered whether it were grief or -gratitude that raised her hands and drew her eyes to the altar, where no -living prayer joined her marble invocation. I followed my guide down the -tribune steps, impatient to see what mystic version of such terrestrial -graces the ingenious artist had found--the Cavaliere was master of such -arts. The Duchess's attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs -fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how -admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope -of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face--it was a -frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so possessed a human -countenance.... - -The old man crossed himself and shuffled his feet on the marble. - -"The Duchess Violante," he repeated. - -"The same as in the picture?" - -"Eh--the same." - -"But the face--what does it mean?" - -He shrugged his shoulders and turned deaf eyes on me. Then he shot a glance -round the sepulchral place, clutched my sleeve and said, close to my ear: -"It was not always so." - -"What was not?" - -"The face--so terrible." - -"The Duchess's face?" - -"The statue's. It changed after--" - -"After?" - -"It was put here." - -"The statue's face _changed_--?" - -He mistook my bewilderment for incredulity and his confidential finger -dropped from my sleeve. "Eh, that's the story. I tell what I've heard. What -do I know?" He resumed his senile shuffle across the marble. "This is a bad -place to stay in--no one comes here. It's too cold. But the gentleman said, -_I must see everything_!" - -I let the _lire_ sound. "So I must--and hear everything. This story, -now--from whom did you have it?" - -His hand stole back. "One that saw it, by God!" - -"That saw it?" - -"My grandmother, then. I'm a very old man." - -"Your grandmother? Your grandmother was--?" - -"The Duchess's serving girl, with respect to you." - -"Your grandmother? Two hundred years ago?" - -"Is it too long ago? That's as God pleases. I am a very old man and she -was a very old woman when I was born. When she died she was as black as a -miraculous Virgin and her breath whistled like the wind in a keyhole. She -told me the story when I was a little boy. She told it to me out there in -the garden, on a bench by the fish-pond, one summer night of the year she -died. It must be true, for I can show you the very bench we sat on...." - - -III - -Noon lay heavier on the gardens; not our live humming warmth but the stale -exhalation of dead summers. The very statues seemed to drowse like watchers -by a death-bed. Lizards shot out of the cracked soil like flames and the -bench in the laurustinus-niche was strewn with the blue varnished bodies of -dead flies. Before us lay the fish-pond, a yellow marble slab above rotting -secrets. The villa looked across it, composed as a dead face, with the -cypresses flanking it for candles.... - - -IV - -"Impossible, you say, that my mother's mother should have been the -Duchess's maid? What do I know? It is so long since anything has happened -here that the old things seem nearer, perhaps, than to those who live in -cities.... But how else did she know about the statue then? Answer me that, -sir! That she saw with her eyes, I can swear to, and never smiled again, -so she told me, till they put her first child in her arms ... for she was -taken to wife by the steward's son, Antonio, the same who had carried -the letters.... But where am I? Ah, well ... she was a mere slip, you -understand, my grandmother, when the Duchess died, a niece of the upper -maid, Nencia, and suffered about the Duchess because of her pranks and the -funny songs she knew. It's possible, you think, she may have heard from -others what she afterward fancied she had seen herself? How that is, it's -not for an unlettered man to say; though indeed I myself seem to have seen -many of the things she told me. This is a strange place. No one comes here, -nothing changes, and the old memories stand up as distinct as the statues -in the garden.... - -"It began the summer after they came back from the Brenta. Duke Ercole had -married the lady from Venice, you must know; it was a gay city, then, I'm -told, with laughter and music on the water, and the days slipped by like -boats running with the tide. Well, to humor her he took her back the first -autumn to the Brenta. Her father, it appears, had a grand palace there, -with such gardens, bowling-alleys, grottoes and casinos as never were; -gondolas bobbing at the water-gates, a stable full of gilt coaches, a -theatre full of players, and kitchens and offices full of cooks and -lackeys to serve up chocolate all day long to the fine ladies in masks -and furbelows, with their pet dogs and their blackamoors and their -_abates_. Eh! I know it all as if I'd been there, for Nencia, you see, -my grandmother's aunt, travelled with the Duchess, and came back with her -eyes round as platters, and not a word to say for the rest of the year to -any of the lads who'd courted her here in Vicenza. - -"What happened there I don't know--my grandmother could never get at -the rights of it, for Nencia was mute as a fish where her lady was -concerned--but when they came back to Vicenza the Duke ordered the villa -set in order; and in the spring he brought the Duchess here and left her. -She looked happy enough, my grandmother said, and seemed no object for -pity. Perhaps, after all, it was better than being shut up in Vicenza, -in the tall painted rooms where priests came and went as softly as cats -prowling for birds, and the Duke was forever closeted in his library, -talking with learned men. The Duke was a scholar; you noticed he was -painted with a book? Well, those that can read 'em make out that they're -full of wonderful things; as a man that's been to a fair across the -mountains will always tell his people at home it was beyond anything -_they'll_ ever see. As for the Duchess, she was all for music, -play-acting and young company. The Duke was a silent man, stepping quietly, -with his eyes down, as though he'd just come from confession; when the -Duchess's lap-dog yapped at his heels he danced like a man in a swarm of -hornets; when the Duchess laughed he winced as if you'd drawn a diamond -across a window-pane. And the Duchess was always laughing. - -"When she first came to the villa she was very busy laying out the gardens, -designing grottoes, planting groves and planning all manner of agreeable -surprises in the way of water-jets that drenched you unexpectedly, and -hermits in caves, and wild men that jumped at you out of thickets. She had -a very pretty taste in such matters, but after a while she tired of it, and -there being no one for her to talk to but her maids and the chaplain--a -clumsy man deep in his books--why, she would have strolling players out -from Vicenza, mountebanks and fortune-tellers from the market-place, -travelling doctors and astrologers, and all manner of trained animals. -Still it could be seen that the poor lady pined for company, and her -waiting women, who loved her, were glad when the Cavaliere Ascanio, the -Duke's cousin, came to live at the vineyard across the valley--you see -the pinkish house over there in the mulberries, with a red roof and a -pigeon-cote? - -"The Cavaliere Ascanio was a cadet of one of the great Venetian houses, -_pezzi grossi_ of the Golden Book. He had been meant for the Church, -I believe, but what! he set fighting above praying and cast in his lot with -the captain of the Duke of Mantua's _bravi_, himself a Venetian of -good standing, but a little at odds with the law. Well, the next I know, -the Cavaliere was in Venice again, perhaps not in good odor on account of -his connection with the gentleman I speak of. Some say he tried to carry -off a nun from the convent of Santa Croce; how that may be I can't say; but -my grandmother declared he had enemies there, and the end of it was that on -some pretext or other the Ten banished him to Vicenza. There, of course, -the Duke, being his kinsman, had to show him a civil face; and that was how -he first came to the villa. - -"He was a fine young man, beautiful as a Saint Sebastian, a rare musician, -who sang his own songs to the lute in a way that used to make my -grandmother's heart melt and run through her body like mulled wine. He -had a good word for everybody, too, and was always dressed in the French -fashion, and smelt as sweet as a bean-field; and every soul about the place -welcomed the sight of him. - -"Well, the Duchess, it seemed, welcomed it too; youth will have youth, -and laughter turns to laughter; and the two matched each other like the -candlesticks on an altar. The Duchess--you've seen her portrait--but to -hear my grandmother, sir, it no more approached her than a weed comes up to -a rose. The Cavaliere, indeed, as became a poet, paragoned her in his song -to all the pagan goddesses of antiquity; and doubtless these were finer -to look at than mere women; but so, it seemed, was she; for, to believe -my grandmother, she made other women look no more than the big French -fashion-doll that used to be shown on Ascension days in the Piazza. She -was one, at any rate, that needed no outlandish finery to beautify her; -whatever dress she wore became her as feathers fit the bird; and her hair -didn't get its color by bleaching on the housetop. It glittered of itself -like the threads in an Easter chasuble, and her skin was whiter than fine -wheaten bread and her mouth as sweet as a ripe fig.... - -"Well, sir, you could no more keep them apart than the bees and the -lavender. They were always together, singing, bowling, playing cup and -ball, walking in the gardens, visiting the aviaries and petting her grace's -trick-dogs and monkeys. The Duchess was as gay as a foal, always playing -pranks and laughing, tricking out her animals like comedians, disguising -herself as a peasant or a nun (you should have seen her one day pass -herself off to the chaplain as a mendicant sister), or teaching the lads -and girls of the vineyards to dance and sing madrigals together. The -Cavaliere had a singular ingenuity in planning such entertainments and the -days were hardly long enough for their diversions. But toward the end of -the summer the Duchess fell quiet and would hear only sad music, and the -two sat much together in the gazebo at the end of the garden. It was there -the Duke found them one day when he drove out from Vicenza in his gilt -coach. He came but once or twice a year to the villa, and it was, as my -grandmother said, just a part of her poor lady's ill-luck to be wearing -that day the Venetian habit, which uncovered the shoulders in a way the -Duke always scowled at, and her curls loose and powdered with gold. Well, -the three drank chocolate in the gazebo, and what happened no one knew, -except that the Duke, on taking leave, gave his cousin a seat in his -carriage; but the Cavaliere never returned. - -"Winter approaching, and the poor lady thus finding herself once more -alone, it was surmised among her women that she must fall into a deeper -depression of spirits. But far from this being the case, she displayed such -cheerfulness and equanimity of humor that my grandmother, for one, was -half-vexed with her for giving no more thought to the poor young man who, -all this time, was eating his heart out in the house across the valley. It -is true she quitted her gold-laced gowns and wore a veil over her head; but -Nencia would have it she looked the lovelier for the change and so gave the -Duke greater displeasure. Certain it is that the Duke drove out oftener to -the villa, and though he found his lady always engaged in some innocent -pursuit, such as embroidery or music, or playing games with her young -women, yet he always went away with a sour look and a whispered word to -the chaplain. Now as to the chaplain, my grandmother owned there had been -a time when her grace had not handled him over-wisely. For, according to -Nencia, it seems that his reverence, who seldom approached the Duchess, -being buried in his library like a mouse in a cheese--well, one day he made -bold to appeal to her for a sum of money, a large sum, Nencia said, to buy -certain tall books, a chest full of them, that a foreign pedlar had brought -him; whereupon the Duchess, who could never abide a book, breaks out at -him with a laugh and a flash of her old spirit--'Holy Mother of God, must -I have more books about me? I was nearly smothered with them in the first -year of my marriage;' and the chaplain turning red at the affront, she -added: 'You may buy them and welcome, my good chaplain, if you can find -the money; but as for me, I am yet seeking a way to pay for my turquoise -necklace, and the statue of Daphne at the end of the bowling-green, and -the Indian parrot that my black boy brought me last Michaelmas from the -Bohemians--so you see I've no money to waste on trifles;' and as he backs -out awkwardly she tosses at him over her shoulder: 'You should pray to -Saint Blandina to open the Duke's pocket!' to which he returned, very -quietly, 'Your excellency's suggestion is an admirable one, and I have -already entreated that blessed martyr to open the Duke's understanding.' - -"Thereat, Nencia said (who was standing by), the Duchess flushed -wonderfully red and waved him out of the room; and then 'Quick!' she cried -to my grandmother (who was too glad to run on such errands), 'Call me -Antonio, the gardener's boy, to the box-garden; I've a word to say to him -about the new clove-carnations....' - -"Now I may not have told you, sir, that in the crypt under the chapel there -has stood, for more generations than a man can count, a stone coffin -containing a thighbone of the blessed Saint Blandina of Lyons, a relic -offered, I've been told, by some great Duke of France to one of our own -dukes when they fought the Turk together; and the object, ever since, of -particular veneration in this illustrious family. Now, since the Duchess -had been left to herself, it was observed she affected a fervent devotion -to this relic, praying often in the chapel and even causing the stone slab -that covered the entrance to the crypt to be replaced by a wooden one, -that she might at will descend and kneel by the coffin. This was matter of -edification to all the household and should have been peculiarly pleasing -to the chaplain; but, with respect to you, he was the kind of man who -brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple. - -"However that may be, the Duchess, when she dismissed him, was seen running -to the garden, where she talked earnestly with the boy Antonio about the -new clove-carnations; and the rest of the day she sat indoors and played -sweetly on the virginal. Now Nencia always had it in mind that her grace -had made a mistake in refusing that request of the chaplain's; but she said -nothing, for to talk reason to the Duchess was of no more use than praying -for rain in a drought. - -"Winter came early that year, there was snow on the hills by All Souls, -the wind stripped the gardens, and the lemon-trees were nipped in the -lemon-house. The Duchess kept her room in this black season, sitting over -the fire, embroidering, reading books of devotion (which was a thing she -had never done) and praying frequently in the chapel. As for the chaplain, -it was a place he never set foot in but to say mass in the morning, -with the Duchess overhead in the tribune, and the servants aching with -rheumatism on the marble floor. The chaplain himself hated the cold, and -galloped through the mass like a man with witches after him. The rest of -the day he spent in his library, over a brazier, with his eternal books.... - -"You'll wonder, sir, if I'm ever to get to the gist of the story; and I've -gone slowly, I own, for fear of what's coming. Well, the winter was long -and hard. When it fell cold the Duke ceased to come out from Vicenza, -and not a soul had the Duchess to speak to but her maid-servants and the -gardeners about the place. Yet it was wonderful, my grandmother said, how -she kept her brave colors and her spirits; only it was remarked that she -prayed longer in the chapel, where a brazier was kept burning for her all -day. When the young are denied their natural pleasures they turn often -enough to religion; and it was a mercy, as my grandmother said, that she, -who had scarce a live sinner to speak to, should take such comfort in a -dead saint. - -"My grandmother seldom saw her that winter, for though she showed a brave -front to all she kept more and more to herself, choosing to have only -Nencia about her and dismissing even her when she went to pray. For -her devotion had that mark of true piety, that she wished it not to be -observed; so that Nencia had strict orders, on the chaplain's approach, to -warn her mistress if she happened to be in prayer. - -"Well, the winter passed, and spring was well forward, when my grandmother -one evening had a bad fright. That it was her own fault I won't deny, for -she'd been down the lime-walk with Antonio when her aunt fancied her to be -stitching in her chamber; and seeing a sudden light in Nencia's window, she -took fright lest her disobedience be found out, and ran up quickly through -the laurel-grove to the house. Her way lay by the chapel, and as she crept -past it, meaning to slip in through the scullery, and groping her way, for -the dark had fallen and the moon was scarce up, she heard a crash close -behind her, as though someone had dropped from a window of the chapel. The -young fool's heart turned over, but she looked round as she ran, and there, -sure enough, was a man scuttling across the terrace; and as he doubled -the corner of the house my grandmother swore she caught the whisk of the -chaplain's skirts. Now that was a strange thing, certainly; for why should -the chaplain be getting out of the chapel window when he might have passed -through the door? For you may have noticed, sir, there's a door leads from -the chapel into the saloon on the ground floor; the only other way out -being through the Duchess's tribune. - -"Well, my grandmother turned the matter over, and next time she met Antonio -in the lime-walk (which, by reason of her fright, was not for some days) -she laid before him what had happened; but to her surprise he only laughed -and said, 'You little simpleton, he wasn't getting out of the window, he -was trying to look in'; and not another word could she get from him. - -"So the season moved on to Easter, and news came the Duke had gone to Rome -for that holy festivity. His comings and goings made no change at the -villa, and yet there was no one there but felt easier to think his yellow -face was on the far side of the Apennines, unless perhaps it was the -chaplain. - -"Well, it was one day in May that the Duchess, who had walked long with -Nencia on the terrace, rejoicing at the sweetness of the prospect and the -pleasant scent of the gilly-flowers in the stone vases, the Duchess toward -midday withdrew to her rooms, giving orders that her dinner should be -served in her bed-chamber. My grandmother helped to carry in the dishes, -and observed, she said, the singular beauty of the Duchess, who in honor -of the fine weather had put on a gown of shot-silver and hung her bare -shoulders with pearls, so that she looked fit to dance at court with an -emperor. She had ordered, too, a rare repast for a lady that heeded so -little what she ate--jellies, game-pasties, fruits in syrup, spiced cakes -and a flagon of Greek wine; and she nodded and clapped her hands as the -women set it before her, saying again and again, 'I shall eat well to-day.' - -"But presently another mood seized her; she turned from the table, called -for her rosary, and said to Nencia: 'The fine weather has made me neglect -my devotions. I must say a litany before I dine.' - -"She ordered the women out and barred the door, as her custom was; and -Nencia and my grandmother went down-stairs to work in the linen-room. - -"Now the linen-room gives on the court-yard, and suddenly my grandmother -saw a strange sight approaching. First up the avenue came the Duke's -carriage (whom all thought to be in Rome), and after it, drawn by a long -string of mules and oxen, a cart carrying what looked like a kneeling -figure wrapped in death-clothes. The strangeness of it struck the girl dumb -and the Duke's coach was at the door before she had the wit to cry out that -it was coming. Nencia, when she saw it, went white and ran out of the room. -My grandmother followed, scared by her face, and the two fled along the -corridor to the chapel. On the way they met the chaplain, deep in a book, -who asked in surprise where they were running, and when they said, to -announce the Duke's arrival, he fell into such astonishment and asked them -so many questions and uttered such ohs and ahs, that by the time he let -them by the Duke was at their heels. Nencia reached the chapel-door first -and cried out that the Duke was coming; and before she had a reply he was -at her side, with the chaplain following. - -"A moment later the door opened and there stood the Duchess. She held her -rosary in one hand and had drawn a scarf over her shoulders; but they shone -through it like the moon in a mist, and her countenance sparkled with -beauty. - -"The Duke took her hand with a bow. 'Madam,' he said, 'I could have had no -greater happiness than thus to surprise you at your devotions.' - -"'My own happiness,' she replied, 'would have been greater had your -excellency prolonged it by giving me notice of your arrival.' - -"'Had you expected me, Madam,' said he, 'your appearance could scarcely -have been more fitted to the occasion. Few ladies of your youth and beauty -array themselves to venerate a saint as they would to welcome a lover.' - -"'Sir,' she answered, 'having never enjoyed the latter opportunity, I am -constrained to make the most of the former.--What's that?' she cried, -falling back, and the rosary dropped from her hand. - -"There was a loud noise at the other end of the saloon, as of a heavy -object being dragged down the passage; and presently a dozen men were seen -haling across the threshold the shrouded thing from the oxcart. The Duke -waved his hand toward it. 'That,' said he, 'Madam, is a tribute to your -extraordinary piety. I have heard with peculiar satisfaction of your -devotion to the blessed relics in this chapel, and to commemorate a zeal -which neither the rigors of winter nor the sultriness of summer could abate -I have ordered a sculptured image of you, marvellously executed by the -Cavaliere Bernini, to be placed before the altar over the entrance to the -crypt.' - -"The Duchess, who had grown pale, nevertheless smiled playfully at this. -'As to commemorating my piety," she said, 'I recognize there one of your -excellency's pleasantries--' - -"'A pleasantry?' the Duke interrupted; and he made a sign to the men, who -had now reached the threshold of the chapel. In an instant the wrappings -fell from the figure, and there knelt the Duchess to the life. A cry of -wonder rose from all, but the Duchess herself stood whiter than the marble. - -"'You will see,' says the Duke, 'this is no pleasantry, but a triumph -of the incomparable Bernini's chisel. The likeness was done from your -miniature portrait by the divine Elisabetta Sirani, which I sent to the -master some six months ago, with what results all must admire.' - -"'Six months!' cried the Duchess, and seemed about to fall; but his -excellency caught her by the hand. - -"'Nothing,' he said, 'could better please me than the excessive emotion you -display, for true piety is ever modest, and your thanks could not take a -form that better became you. And now,' says he to the men, 'let the image -be put in place.' - -"By this, life seemed to have returned to the Duchess, and she answered him -with a deep reverence. 'That I should be overcome by so unexpected a grace, -your excellency admits to be natural; but what honors you accord it is my -privilege to accept, and I entreat only that in mercy to my modesty the -image be placed in the remotest part of the chapel.' - -"At that the Duke darkened. 'What! You would have this masterpiece of a -renowned chisel, which, I disguise not, cost me the price of a good -vineyard in gold pieces, you would have it thrust out of sight like the -work of a village stonecutter?' - -"'It is my semblance, not the sculptor's work, I desire to conceal.' - -"'It you are fit for my house, Madam, you are fit for God's, and entitled -to the place of honor in both. Bring the statue forward, you dawdlers!' he -called out to the men. - -"The Duchess fell back submissively. 'You are right, sir, as always; but I -would at least have the image stand on the left of the altar, that, looking -up, it may behold your excellency's seat in the tribune.' - -"'A pretty thought, Madam, for which I thank you; but I design before long -to put my companion image on the other side of the altar; and the wife's -place, as you know, is at her husband's right hand.' - -"'True, my lord--but, again, if my poor presentment is to have the -unmerited honor of kneeling beside yours, why not place both before the -altar, where it is our habit to pray in life?' - -"'And where, Madam, should we kneel if they took our places? Besides,' says -the Duke, still speaking very blandly, 'I have a more particular purpose -in placing your image over the entrance to the crypt; for not only would I -thereby mark your special devotion to the blessed saint who rests there, -but, by sealing up the opening in the pavement, would assure the perpetual -preservation of that holy martyr's bones, which hitherto have been too -thoughtlessly exposed to sacrilegious attempts.' - -"'What attempts, my lord?' cries the Duchess. 'No one enters this chapel -without my leave.' - -"'So I have understood, and can well believe from what I have learned of -your piety; yet at night a malefactor might break in through a window, -Madam, and your excellency not know it.' - -"'I'm a light sleeper,' said the Duchess. - -"The Duke looked at her gravely. 'Indeed?' said he. 'A bad sign at your -age. I must see that you are provided with a sleeping-draught.' - -"The Duchess's eyes filled. 'You would deprive me, then, of the consolation -of visiting those venerable relics?' - -"'I would have you keep eternal guard over them, knowing no one to whose -care they may more fittingly be entrusted.' - -"By this the image was brought close to the wooden slab that covered the -entrance to the crypt, when the Duchess, springing forward, placed herself -in the way. - -"'Sir, let the statue be put in place to-morrow, and suffer me, to-night, -to say a last prayer beside those holy bones.' - -"The Duke stepped instantly to her side. 'Well thought, Madam; I will go -down with you now, and we will pray together.' - -"'Sir, your long absences have, alas! given me the habit of solitary -devotion, and I confess that any presence is distracting.' - -"'Madam, I accept your rebuke. Hitherto, it is true, the duties of my -station have constrained me to long absences; but henceforward I remain -with you while you live. Shall we go down into the crypt together?" - -"'No; for I fear for your excellency's ague. The air there is excessively -damp.' - -"'The more reason you should no longer be exposed to it; and to prevent the -intemperance of your zeal I will at once make the place inaccessible.' - -"The Duchess at this fell on her knees on the slab, weeping excessively and -lifting her hands to heaven. - -"'Oh,' she cried, 'you are cruel, sir, to deprive me of access to the -sacred relics that have enabled me to support with resignation the solitude -to which your excellency's duties have condemned me; and if prayer and -meditation give me any authority to pronounce on such matters, suffer me to -warn you, sir, that I fear the blessed Saint Blandina will punish us for -thus abandoning her venerable remains!' - -"The Duke at this seemed to pause, for he was a pious man, and my -grandmother thought she saw him exchange a glance with the chaplain; who, -stepping timidly forward, with his eyes on the ground, said, 'There is -indeed much wisdom in her excellency's words, but I would suggest, sir, -that her pious wish might be met, and the saint more conspicuously honored, -by transferring the relics from the crypt to a place beneath the altar.' - -"'True!' cried the Duke, 'and it shall be done at once.' - -"But thereat the Duchess rose to her feet with a terrible look. - -"'No,' she cried, 'by the body of God! For it shall not be said that, after -your excellency has chosen to deny every request I addressed to him, I owe -his consent to the solicitation of another!' - -"The chaplain turned red and the Duke yellow, and for a moment neither -spoke. - -"Then the Duke said, 'Here are words enough, Madam. Do you wish the relics -brought up from the crypt?' - -"'I wish nothing that I owe to another's intervention!' - -"'Put the image in place then,' says the Duke furiously; and handed her -grace to a chair. - -"She sat there, my grandmother said, straight as an arrow, her hands -locked, her head high, her eyes on the Duke, while the statue was dragged -to its place; then she stood up and turned away. As she passed by Nencia, -'Call me Antonio,' she whispered; but before the words were out of her -mouth the Duke stepped between them. - -"'Madam,' says he, all smiles now, 'I have travelled straight from Rome to -bring you the sooner this proof of my esteem. I lay last night at Monselice -and have been on the road since daybreak. Will you not invite me to -supper?' - -"'Surely, my lord,' said the Duchess. 'It shall be laid in the -dining-parlor within the hour.' - -"'Why not in your chamber and at once, Madam? Since I believe it is your -custom to sup there.' - -"'In my chamber?' says the Duchess, in disorder. - -"'Have you anything against it?' he asked. - -"'Assuredly not, sir, if you will give me time to prepare myself.' - -"'I will wait in your cabinet,' said the Duke. - -"At that, said my grandmother, the Duchess gave one look, as the souls in -hell may have looked when the gates closed on our Lord; then she called -Nencia and passed to her chamber. - -"What happened there my grandmother could never learn, but that the -Duchess, in great haste, dressed herself with extraordinary splendor, -powdering her hair with gold, painting her face and bosom, and covering -herself with jewels till she shone like our Lady of Loreto; and hardly -were these preparations complete when the Duke entered from the cabinet, -followed by the servants carrying supper. Thereupon the Duchess dismissed -Nencia, and what follows my grandmother learned from a pantry-lad who -brought up the dishes and waited in the cabinet; for only the Duke's -body-servant entered the bed-chamber. - -"Well, according to this boy, sir, who was looking and listening with his -whole body, as it were, because he had never before been suffered so near -the Duchess, it appears that the noble couple sat down in great good humor, -the Duchess playfully reproving her husband for his long absence, while the -Duke swore that to look so beautiful was the best way of punishing him. -In this tone the talk continued, with such gay sallies on the part of the -Duchess, such tender advances on the Duke's, that the lad declared they -were for all the world like a pair of lovers courting on a summer's night -in the vineyard; and so it went till the servant brought in the mulled -wine. - -"'Ah,' the Duke was saying at that moment, 'this agreeable evening repays -me for the many dull ones I have spent away from you; nor do I remember -to have enjoyed such laughter since the afternoon last year when we drank -chocolate in the gazebo with my cousin Ascanio. And that reminds me,' he -said, 'is my cousin in good health?' - -"'I have no reports of it,' says the Duchess. 'But your excellency should -taste these figs stewed in malmsey--' - -"'I am in the mood to taste whatever you offer,' said he; and as she helped -him to the figs he added, 'If my enjoyment were not complete as it is, -I could almost wish my cousin Ascanio were with us. The fellow is rare -good company at supper. What do you say, Madam? I hear he's still in the -country; shall we send for him to join us?' - -"'Ah,' said the Duchess, with a sigh and a languishing look, 'I see your -excellency wearies of me already.' - -"'I, Madam? Ascanio is a capital good fellow, but to my mind his chief -merit at this moment is his absence. It inclines me so tenderly to him -that, by God, I could empty a glass to his good health.' - -"With that the Duke caught up his goblet and signed to the servant to fill -the Duchess's. - -"'Here's to the cousin,' he cried, standing, 'who has the good taste to -stay away when he's not wanted. I drink to his very long life--and you, -Madam?' - -"At this the Duchess, who had sat staring at him with a changed face, rose -also and lifted her glass to her lips. - -"'And I to his happy death,' says she in a wild voice; and as she spoke the -empty goblet dropped from her hand and she fell face down on the floor. - -"The Duke shouted to her women that she had swooned, and they came and -lifted her to the bed.... She suffered horribly all night, Nencia said, -twisting herself like a heretic at the stake, but without a word escaping -her. The Duke watched by her, and toward daylight sent for the chaplain; -but by this she was unconscious and, her teeth being locked, our Lord's -body could not be passed through them. - - * * * * * - -"The Duke announced to his relations that his lady had died after partaking -too freely of spiced wine and an omelet of carp's roe, at a supper she had -prepared in honor of his return; and the next year he brought home a new -Duchess, who gave him a son and five daughters...." - - -V - -The sky had turned to a steel gray, against which the villa stood out -sallow and inscrutable. A wind strayed through the gardens, loosening here -and there a yellow leaf from the sycamores; and the hills across the valley -were purple as thunder-clouds. - - * * * * * - -"And the statue--?" I asked. - -"Ah, the statue. Well, sir, this is what my grandmother told me, here on -this very bench where we're sitting. The poor child, who worshipped the -Duchess as a girl of her years will worship a beautiful kind mistress, -spent a night of horror, you may fancy, shut out from her lady's room, -hearing the cries that came from it, and seeing, as she crouched in her -corner, the women rush to and fro with wild looks, the Duke's lean face in -the door, and the chaplain skulking in the antechamber with his eyes on -his breviary. No one minded her that night or the next morning; and toward -dusk, when it became known the Duchess was no more, the poor girl felt the -pious wish to say a prayer for her dead mistress. She crept to the chapel -and stole in unobserved. The place was empty and dim, but as she advanced -she heard a low moaning, and coming in front of the statue she saw that -its face, the day before so sweet and smiling, had the look on it that you -know--and the moaning seemed to come from its lips. My grandmother turned -cold, but something, she said afterward, kept her from calling or shrieking -out, and she turned and ran from the place. In the passage she fell in a -swoon; and when she came to her senses, in her own chamber, she heard that -the Duke had locked the chapel door and forbidden any to set foot there.... -The place was never opened again till the Duke died, some ten years later; -and then it was that the other servants, going in with the new heir, -saw for the first time the horror that my grandmother had kept in her -bosom...." - -"And the crypt?" I asked. "Has it never been opened?" - -"Heaven forbid, sir!" cried the old man, crossing himself. "Was it not the -Duchess's express wish that the relics should not be disturbed?" - - - - -THE ANGEL AT THE GRAVE - - -The House stood a few yards back from the elm-shaded village street, -in that semi-publicity sometimes cited as a democratic protest against -old-world standards of domestic exclusiveness. This candid exposure to -the public eye is more probably a result of the gregariousness which, in -the New England bosom, oddly coexists with a shrinking from direct social -contact; most of the inmates of such houses preferring that furtive -intercourse which is the result of observations through shuttered windows -and a categorical acquaintance with the neighboring clothes-lines. The -House, however, faced its public with a difference. For sixty years it had -written itself with a capital letter, had self-consciously squared itself -in the eye of an admiring nation. The most searching inroads of village -intimacy hardly counted in a household that opened on the universe; and a -lady whose door-bell was at any moment liable to be rung by visitors from -London or Vienna was not likely to flutter up-stairs when she observed a -neighbor "stepping over." - -The solitary inmate of the Anson House owed this induration of the social -texture to the most conspicuous accident in her annals: the fact that she -was the only granddaughter of the great Orestes Anson. She had been born, -as it were, into a museum, and cradled in a glass case with a label; -the first foundations of her consciousness being built on the rock of -her grandfather's celebrity. To a little girl who acquires her earliest -knowledge of literature through a _Reader_ embellished with fragments -of her ancestor's prose, that personage necessarily fills an heroic space -in the foreground of life. To communicate with one's past through the -impressive medium of print, to have, as it were, a footing in every library -in the country, and an acknowledged kinship with that world-diffused clan, -the descendants of the great, was to be pledged to a standard of manners -that amazingly simplified the lesser relations of life. The village street -on which Paulina Anson's youth looked out led to all the capitals of -Europe; and over the roads of intercommunication unseen caravans bore back -to the elm-shaded House the tribute of an admiring world. - -Fate seemed to have taken a direct share in fitting Paulina for her part as -the custodian of this historic dwelling. It had long been secretly regarded -as a "visitation" by the great man's family that he had left no son and -that his daughters were not "intellectual." The ladies themselves were the -first to lament their deficiency, to own that nature had denied them the -gift of making the most of their opportunities. A profound veneration for -their parent and an unswerving faith in his doctrines had not amended their -congenital incapacity to understand what he had written. Laura, who had her -moments of mute rebellion against destiny, had sometimes thought how much -easier it would have been if their progenitor had been a poet; for she -could recite, with feeling, portions of _The Culprit Fay_ and of the -poems of Mrs. Hemans; and Phoebe, who was more conspicuous for memory than -imagination, kept an album filled with "selections." But the great man -was a philosopher; and to both daughters respiration was difficult on the -cloudy heights of metaphysic. The situation would have been intolerable -but for the fact that, while Phoebe and Laura were still at school, -their father's fame had passed from the open ground of conjecture to the -chill privacy of certitude. Dr. Anson had in fact achieved one of those -anticipated immortalities not uncommon at a time when people were apt to -base their literary judgments on their emotions, and when to affect plain -food and despise England went a long way toward establishing a man's -intellectual pre-eminence. Thus, when the daughters were called on to -strike a filial attitude about their parent's pedestal, there was little -to do but to pose gracefully and point upward; and there are spines to -which the immobility of worship is not a strain. A legend had by this time -crystallized about the great Orestes, and it was of more immediate interest -to the public to hear what brand of tea he drank, and whether he took off -his boots in the hall, than to rouse the drowsy echo of his dialectic. A -great man never draws so near his public as when it has become unnecessary -to read his books and is still interesting to know what he eats for -breakfast. - -As recorders of their parent's domestic habits, as pious scavengers of his -waste-paper basket, the Misses Anson were unexcelled. They always had an -interesting anecdote to impart to the literary pilgrim, and the tact with -which, in later years, they intervened between the public and the growing -inaccessibility of its idol, sent away many an enthusiast satisfied to have -touched the veil before the sanctuary. Still it was felt, especially by old -Mrs. Anson, who survived her husband for some years, that Phoebe and Laura -were not worthy of their privileges. There had been a third daughter so -unworthy of hers that she had married a distant cousin, who had taken her -to live in a new Western community where the _Works of Orestes Anson_ -had not yet become a part of the civic consciousness; but of this daughter -little was said, and she was tacitly understood to be excluded from the -family heritage of fame. In time, however, it appeared that the traditional -penny with which she had been cut off had been invested to unexpected -advantage; and the interest on it, when she died, returned to the Anson -House in the shape of a granddaughter who was at once felt to be what Mrs. -Anson called a "compensation." It was Mrs. Anson's firm belief that the -remotest operations of nature were governed by the centripetal force of her -husband's greatness and that Paulina's exceptional intelligence could be -explained only on the ground that she was designed to act as the guardian -of the family temple. - -The House, by the time Paulina came to live in it, had already acquired -the publicity of a place of worship; not the perfumed chapel of a romantic -idolatry but the cold clean empty meeting-house of ethical enthusiasms. The -ladies lived on its outskirts, as it were, in cells that left the central -fane undisturbed. The very position of the furniture had come to have a -ritual significance: the sparse ornaments were the offerings of kindred -intellects, the steel engravings by Raphael Morghen marked the Via Sacra -of a European tour, and the black-walnut desk with its bronze inkstand -modelled on the Pantheon was the altar of this bleak temple of thought. - -To a child compact of enthusiasms, and accustomed to pasture them on the -scanty herbage of a new social soil, the atmosphere of the old house was -full of floating nourishment. In the compressed perspective of Paulina's -outlook it stood for a monument of ruined civilizations, and its white -portico opened on legendary distances. Its very aspect was impressive -to eyes that had first surveyed life from the jig-saw "residence" of a -raw-edged Western town. The high-ceilinged rooms, with their panelled -walls, their polished mahogany, their portraits of triple-stocked ancestors -and of ringleted "females" in crayon, furnished the child with the historic -scenery against which a young imagination constructs its vision of the -past. To other eyes the cold spotless thinly-furnished interior might have -suggested the shuttered mind of a maiden-lady who associates fresh air and -sunlight with dust and discoloration; but it is the eye which supplies the -coloring-matter, and Paulina's brimmed with the richest hues. - -Nevertheless, the House did not immediately dominate her. She had her -confused out-reachings toward other centres of sensation, her vague -intuition of a heliocentric system; but the attraction of habit, the steady -pressure of example, gradually fixed her roving allegiance and she bent her -neck to the yoke. Vanity had a share in her subjugation; for it had early -been discovered that she was the only person in the family who could read -her grandfather's works. The fact that she had perused them with delight at -an age when (even presupposing a metaphysical bias) it was impossible for -her to understand them, seemed to her aunts and grandmother sure evidence -of predestination. Paulina was to be the interpreter of the oracle, and the -philosophic fumes so vertiginous to meaner minds would throw her into the -needed condition of clairvoyance. Nothing could have been more genuine than -the emotion on which this theory was based. Paulina, in fact, delighted in -her grandfather's writings. His sonorous periods, his mystic vocabulary, -his bold flights into the rarefied air of the abstract, were thrilling to -a fancy unhampered by the need of definitions. This purely verbal pleasure -was supplemented later by the excitement of gathering up crumbs of meaning -from the rhetorical board. What could have been more stimulating than -to construct the theory of a girlish world out of the fragments of this -Titanic cosmogony? Before Paulina's opinions had reached the stage when -ossification sets in their form was fatally predetermined. - -The fact that Dr. Anson had died and that his apotheosis had taken -place before his young priestess's induction to the temple, made her -ministrations easier and more inspiring. There were no little personal -traits--such as the great man's manner of helping himself to salt, or the -guttural cluck that started the wheels of speech--to distract the eye -of young veneration from the central fact of his divinity. A man whom -one knows only through a crayon portrait and a dozen yellowing, tomes on -free-will and intuition is at least secure from the belittling effects of -intimacy. - -Paulina thus grew up in a world readjusted to the fact of her grandfather's -greatness; and as each organism draws from its surroundings the kind of -nourishment most needful to its growth, so from this somewhat colorless -conception she absorbed warmth, brightness and variety. Paulina was the -type of woman who transmutes thought into sensation and nurses a theory in -her bosom like a child. - -In due course Mrs. Anson "passed away"--no one died in the Anson -vocabulary--and Paulina became more than ever the foremost figure of the -commemorative group. Laura and Phoebe, content to leave their father's -glory in more competent hands, placidly lapsed into needlework and fiction, -and their niece stepped into immediate prominence as the chief "authority" -on the great man. Historians who were "getting up" the period wrote to -consult her and to borrow documents; ladies with inexplicable yearnings -begged for an interpretation of phrases which had "influenced" them, but -which they had not quite understood; critics applied to her to verify some -doubtful citation or to decide some disputed point in chronology; and the -great tide of thought and investigation kept up a continuous murmur on the -quiet shores of her life. - -An explorer of another kind disembarked there one day in the shape -of a young man to whom Paulina was primarily a kissable girl, with an -after-thought in the shape of a grandfather. From the outset it had been -impossible to fix Hewlett Winsloe's attention on Dr. Anson. The young man -behaved with the innocent profanity of infants sporting on a tomb. His -excuse was that he came from New York, a Cimmerian outskirt which survived -in Paulina's geography only because Dr. Anson had gone there once or twice -to lecture. The curious thing was that she should have thought it worth -while to find excuses for young Winsloe. The fact that she did so had not -escaped the attention of the village; but people, after a gasp of awe, said -it was the most natural thing in the world that a girl like Paulina Anson -should think of marrying. It would certainly seem a little odd to see a -man in the House, but young Winsloe would of course understand that the -Doctor's books were not to be disturbed, and that he must go down to the -orchard to smoke--. The village had barely framed this _modus vivendi_ -when it was convulsed by the announcement that young Winsloe declined to -live in the House on any terms. Hang going down to the orchard to smoke! -He meant to take his wife to New York. The village drew its breath and -watched. - -Did Persephone, snatched from the warm fields of Enna, peer -half-consentingly down the abyss that opened at her feet? Paulina, it must -be owned, hung a moment over the black gulf of temptation. She would have -found it easy to cope with a deliberate disregard of her grandfather's -rights; but young Winsloe's unconsciousness of that shadowy claim was as -much a natural function as the falling of leaves on a grave. His love was -an embodiment of the perpetual renewal which to some tender spirits seems a -crueller process than decay. - -On women of Paulina's mould this piety toward implicit demands, toward -the ghosts of dead duties walking unappeased among usurping passions, -has a stronger hold than any tangible bond. People said that she gave up -young Winsloe because her aunts disapproved of her leaving them; but such -disapproval as reached her was an emanation from the walls of the House, -from the bare desk, the faded portraits, the dozen yellowing tomes that no -hand but hers ever lifted from the shelf. - - -II - -After that the House possessed her. As if conscious of its victory, it -imposed a conqueror's claims. It had once been suggested that she should -write a life of her grandfather, and the task from which she had shrunk as -from a too-oppressive privilege now shaped itself into a justification of -her course. In a burst of filial pantheism she tried to lose herself in the -vast ancestral consciousness. Her one refuge from scepticism was a blind -faith in the magnitude and the endurance of the idea to which she had -sacrificed her life, and with a passionate instinct of self-preservation -she labored to fortify her position. - -The preparations for the _Life_ led her through by-ways that the most -scrupulous of the previous biographers had left unexplored. She accumulated -her material with a blind animal patience unconscious of fortuitous risks. -The years stretched before her like some vast blank page spread out to -receive the record of her toil; and she had a mystic conviction that she -would not die till her work was accomplished. - -The aunts, sustained by no such high purpose, withdrew in turn to their -respective divisions of the Anson "plot," and Paulina remained alone with -her task. She was forty when the book was completed. She had travelled -little in her life, and it had become more and more difficult to her to -leave the House even for a day; but the dread of entrusting her document to -a strange hand made her decide to carry it herself to the publisher. On the -way to Boston she had a sudden vision of the loneliness to which this last -parting condemned her. All her youth, all her dreams, all her renunciations -lay in that neat bundle on her knee. It was not so much her grandfather's -life as her own that she had written; and the knowledge that it would come -back to her in all the glorification of print was of no more help than, to -a mother's grief, the assurance that the lad she must part with will return -with epaulets. - -She had naturally addressed herself to the firm which had published her -grandfather's works. Its founder, a personal friend of the philosopher's, -had survived the Olympian group of which he had been a subordinate member, -long enough to bestow his octogenarian approval on Paulina's pious -undertaking. But he had died soon afterward; and Miss Anson found herself -confronted by his grandson, a person with a brisk commercial view of his -trade, who was said to have put "new blood" into the firm. - -This gentleman listened attentively, fingering her manuscript as though -literature were a tactile substance; then, with a confidential twist of his -revolving chair, he emitted the verdict: "We ought to have had this ten -years sooner." - -Miss Anson took the words as an allusion to the repressed avidity of her -readers. "It has been a long time for the public to wait," she solemnly -assented. - -The publisher smiled. "They haven't waited," he said. - -She looked at him strangely. "Haven't waited?" - -"No--they've gone off; taken another train. Literature's like a big -railway-station now, you know: there's a train starting every minute. -People are not going to hang round the waiting-room. If they can't get -to a place when they want to they go somewhere else." - -The application of this parable cost Miss Anson several minutes of -throbbing silence. At length she said: "Then I am to understand that the -public is no longer interested in--in my grandfather?" She felt as though -heaven must blast the lips that risked such a conjecture. - -"Well, it's this way. He's a name still, of course. People don't exactly -want to be caught not knowing who he is; but they don't want to spend -two dollars finding out, when they can look him up for nothing in any -biographical dictionary." - -Miss Anson's world reeled. She felt herself adrift among mysterious forces, -and no more thought of prolonging the discussion than of opposing an -earthquake with argument. She went home carrying the manuscript like a -wounded thing. On the return journey she found herself travelling straight -toward a fact that had lurked for months in the background of her life, -and that now seemed to await her on the very threshold: the fact that -fewer visitors came to the House. She owned to herself that for the last -four or five years the number had steadily diminished. Engrossed in her -work, she had noted the change only to feel thankful that she had fewer -interruptions. There had been a time when, at the travelling season, the -bell rang continuously, and the ladies of the House lived in a chronic -state of "best silks" and expectancy. It would have been impossible then to -carry on any consecutive work; and she now saw that the silence which had -gathered round her task had been the hush of death. - -Not of _his_ death! The very walls cried out against the implication. -It was the world's enthusiasm, the world's faith, the world's loyalty that -had died. A corrupt generation that had turned aside to worship the brazen -serpent. Her heart yearned with a prophetic passion over the lost sheep -straying in the wilderness. But all great glories had their interlunar -period; and in due time her grandfather would once more flash full-orbed -upon a darkling world. - -The few friends to whom she confided her adventure reminded her with -tender indignation that there were other publishers less subject to the -fluctuations of the market; but much as she had braved for her grandfather -she could not again brave that particular probation. She found herself, -in fact, incapable of any immediate effort. She had lost her way in a -labyrinth of conjecture where her worst dread was that she might put her -hand upon the clue. - -She locked up the manuscript and sat down to wait. If a pilgrim had come -just then the priestess would have fallen on his neck; but she continued -to celebrate her rites alone. It was a double solitude; for she had always -thought a great deal more of the people who came to see the House than of -the people who came to see her. She fancied that the neighbors kept a keen -eye on the path to the House; and there were days when the figure of a -stranger strolling past the gate seemed to focus upon her the scorching -sympathies of the village. For a time she thought of travelling; of going -to Europe, or even to Boston; but to leave the House now would have -seemed like deserting her post. Gradually her scattered energies centred -themselves in the fierce resolve to understand what had happened. She was -not the woman to live long in an unmapped country or to accept as final -her private interpretation of phenomena. Like a traveller in unfamiliar -regions she began to store for future guidance the minutest natural signs. -Unflinchingly she noted the accumulating symptoms of indifference that -marked her grandfather's descent toward posterity. She passed from the -heights on which he had been grouped with the sages of his day to the lower -level where he had come to be "the friend of Emerson," "the correspondent -of Hawthorne," or (later still) "the Dr. Anson" mentioned in their letters. -The change had taken place as slowly and imperceptibly as a natural -process. She could not say that any ruthless hand had stripped the leaves -from the tree: it was simply that, among the evergreen glories of his -group, her grandfather's had proved deciduous. - -She had still to ask herself why. If the decay had been a natural process, -was it not the very pledge of renewal? It was easier to find such arguments -than to be convinced by them. Again and again she tried to drug her -solicitude with analogies; but at last she saw that such expedients were -but the expression of a growing incredulity. The best way of proving her -faith in her grandfather was not to be afraid of his critics. She had no -notion where these shadowy antagonists lurked; for she had never heard of -the great man's doctrine being directly combated. Oblique assaults there -must have been, however, Parthian shots at the giant that none dared face; -and she thirsted to close with such assailants. The difficulty was to -find them. She began by re-reading the _Works_; thence she passed to -the writers of the same school, those whose rhetoric bloomed perennial -in _First Readers_ from which her grandfather's prose had long -since faded. Amid that clamor of far-off enthusiasms she detected no -controversial note. The little knot of Olympians held their views in common -with an early-Christian promiscuity. They were continually proclaiming -their admiration for each other, the public joining as chorus in this -guileless antiphon of praise; and she discovered no traitor in their midst. - -What then had happened? Was it simply that the main current of thought -had set another way? Then why did the others survive? Why were they still -marked down as tributaries to the philosophic stream? This question carried -her still farther afield, and she pressed on with the passion of a champion -whose reluctance to know the worst might be construed into a doubt of his -cause. At length--slowly but inevitably--an explanation shaped itself. -Death had overtaken the doctrines about which her grandfather had draped -his cloudy rhetoric. They had disintegrated and been re-absorbed, adding -their little pile to the dust drifted about the mute lips of the Sphinx. -The great man's contemporaries had survived not by reason of what they -taught, but of what they were; and he, who had been the mere mask through -which they mouthed their lesson, the instrument on which their tune was -played, lay buried deep among the obsolete tools of thought. - -The discovery came to Paulina suddenly. She looked up one evening from her -reading and it stood before her like a ghost. It had entered her life with -stealthy steps, creeping close before she was aware of it. She sat in the -library, among the carefully-tended books and portraits; and it seemed to -her that she had been walled alive into a tomb hung with the effigies of -dead ideas. She felt a desperate longing to escape into the outer air, -where people toiled and loved, and living sympathies went hand in hand. It -was the sense of wasted labor that oppressed her; of two lives consumed in -that ruthless process that uses generations of effort to build a single -cell. There was a dreary parallel between her grandfather's fruitless -toil and her own unprofitable sacrifice. Each in turn had kept vigil by a -corpse. - - -III - -The bell rang--she remembered it afterward--with a loud thrilling note. It -was what they used to call the "visitor's ring"; not the tentative tinkle -of a neighbor dropping in to borrow a sauce-pan or discuss parochial -incidents, but a decisive summons from the outer world. - -Miss Anson put down her knitting and listened. She sat up-stairs now, -making her rheumatism an excuse for avoiding the rooms below. Her interests -had insensibly adjusted themselves to the perspective of her neighbors' -lives, and she wondered--as the bell re-echoed--if it could mean that Mrs. -Heminway's baby had come. Conjecture had time to ripen into certainty, and -she was limping toward the closet where her cloak and bonnet hung, when her -little maid fluttered in with the announcement: "A gentleman to see the -house." - -"The _House_?" - -"Yes, m'm. I don't know what he means," faltered the messenger, whose -memory did not embrace the period when such announcements were a daily part -of the domestic routine. - -Miss Anson glanced at the proffered card. The name it bore--_Mr. George -Corby_--was unknown to her, but the blood rose to her languid cheek. -"Hand me my Mechlin cap, Katy," she said, trembling a little, as she laid -aside her walking stick. She put her cap on before the mirror, with rapid -unsteady touches. "Did you draw up the library blinds?" she breathlessly -asked. - -She had gradually built up a wall of commonplace between herself and her -illusions, but at the first summons of the past filial passion swept away -the frail barriers of expediency. - -She walked down-stairs so hurriedly that her stick clicked like a girlish -heel; but in the hall she paused, wondering nervously if Katy had put a -match to the fire. The autumn air was cold and she had the reproachful -vision of a visitor with elderly ailments shivering by her inhospitable -hearth. She thought instinctively of the stranger as a survivor of the days -when such a visit was a part of the young enthusiast's itinerary. - -The fire was unlit and the room forbiddingly cold; but the figure which, as -Miss Anson entered, turned from a lingering scrutiny of the book-shelves, -was that of a fresh-eyed sanguine youth clearly independent of any -artificial caloric. She stood still a moment, feeling herself the victim of -some anterior impression that made this robust presence an insubstantial -thing; but the young man advanced with an air of genial assurance which -rendered him at once more real and more reminiscent. - -"Why this, you know," he exclaimed, "is simply immense!" - -The words, which did not immediately present themselves as slang to Miss -Anson's unaccustomed ear, echoed with an odd familiarity through the -academic silence. - -"The room, you know, I mean," he explained with a comprehensive gesture. -"These jolly portraits, and the books--that's the old gentleman himself -over the mantelpiece, I suppose?--and the elms outside, and--and the whole -business. I do like a congruous background--don't you?" - -His hostess was silent. No one but Hewlett Winsloe had ever spoken of her -grandfather as "the old gentleman." - -"It's a hundred times better than I could have hoped," her visitor -continued, with a cheerful disregard of her silence. "The seclusion, the -remoteness, the philosophic atmosphere--there's so little of that kind -of flavor left! I should have simply hated to find that he lived over -a grocery, you know.--I had the deuce of a time finding out where he -_did_ live," he began again, after another glance of parenthetical -enjoyment. "But finally I got on the trail through some old book on Brook -Farm. I was bound I'd get the environment right before I did my article." - -Miss Anson, by this time, had recovered sufficient self-possession to seat -herself and assign a chair to her visitor. - -"Do I understand," she asked slowly, following his rapid eye about the -room, "that you intend to write an article about my grandfather?" - -"That's what I'm here for," Mr. Corby genially responded; "that is, if -you're willing to help me; for I can't get on without your help," he added -with a confident smile. - -There was another pause, during which Miss Anson noticed a fleck of dust on -the faded leather of the writing-table and a fresh spot of discoloration in -the right-hand upper corner of Raphael Morghen's "Parnassus." - -"Then you believe in him?" she said, looking up. She could not tell what -had prompted her; the words rushed out irresistibly. - -"Believe in him?" Corby cried, springing to his feet. "Believe in Orestes -Anson? Why, I believe he's simply the greatest--the most stupendous--the -most phenomenal figure we've got!" - -The color rose to Miss Anson's brow. Her heart was beating passionately. -She kept her eyes fixed on the young man's face, as though it might vanish -if she looked away. - -"You--you mean to say this in your article?" she asked. - -"Say it? Why, the facts will say it," he exulted. "The baldest kind of a -statement would make it clear. When a man is as big as that he doesn't need -a pedestal!" - -Miss Anson sighed. "People used to say that when I was young," she -murmured. "But now--" - -Her visitor stared. "When you were young? But how did they know--when the -thing hung fire as it did? When the whole edition was thrown back on his -hands?" - -"The whole edition--what edition?" It was Miss Anson's turn to stare. - -"Why, of his pamphlet--_the_ pamphlet--the one thing that counts, that -survives, that makes him what he is! For heaven's sake," he tragically -adjured her, "don't tell me there isn't a copy of it left!" - -Miss Anson was trembling slightly. "I don't think I understand what you -mean," she faltered, less bewildered by his vehemence than by the strange -sense of coming on an unexplored region in the very heart of her dominion. - -"Why, his account of the _amphioxus_, of course! You can't mean that -his family didn't know about it--that _you_ don't know about it? I came -across it by the merest accident myself, in a letter of vindication that -he wrote in 1830 to an old scientific paper; but I understood there were -journals--early journals; there must be references to it somewhere in the -'twenties. He must have been at least ten or twelve years ahead of Yarrell; -and he saw the whole significance of it, too--he saw where it led to. As -I understand it, he actually anticipated in his pamphlet Saint Hilaire's -theory of the universal type, and supported the hypothesis by describing -the notochord of the _amphioxus_ as a cartilaginous vertebral column. -The specialists of the day jeered at him, of course, as the specialists in -Goethe's time jeered at the plant-metamorphosis. As far as I can make out, -the anatomists and zoologists were down on Dr. Anson to a man; that was why -his cowardly publishers went back on their bargain. But the pamphlet must -be here somewhere--he writes as though, in his first disappointment, he had -destroyed the whole edition; but surely there must be at least one copy -left?" - -His scientific jargon was as bewildering as his slang; and there were even -moments in his discourse when Miss Anson ceased to distinguish between -them; but the suspense with which he continued to gaze on her acted as a -challenge to her scattered thoughts. - -"The _amphioxus_," she murmured, half-rising. "It's an animal, isn't -it--a fish? Yes, I think I remember." She sank back with the inward look of -one who retraces some lost line of association. - -Gradually the distance cleared, the details started into life. In her -researches for the biography she had patiently followed every ramification -of her subject, and one of these overgrown paths now led her back to -the episode in question. The great Orestes's title of "Doctor" had in -fact not been merely the spontaneous tribute of a national admiration; -he had actually studied medicine in his youth, and his diaries, as his -granddaughter now recalled, showed that he had passed through a brief phase -of anatomical ardor before his attention was diverted to super-sensual -problems. It had indeed seemed to Paulina, as she scanned those early -pages, that they revealed a spontaneity, a freshness of feeling somehow -absent from his later lucubrations--as though this one emotion had reached -him directly, the others through some intervening medium. In the excess of -her commemorative zeal she had even struggled through the unintelligible -pamphlet to which a few lines in the journal had bitterly directed her. But -the subject and the phraseology were alien to her and unconnected with her -conception of the great man's genius; and after a hurried perusal she had -averted her thoughts from the episode as from a revelation of failure. -At length she rose a little unsteadily, supporting herself against the -writing-table. She looked hesitatingly about the room; then she drew a key -from her old-fashioned reticule and unlocked a drawer beneath one of the -book-cases. Young Corby watched her breathlessly. With a tremulous hand she -turned over the dusty documents that seemed to fill the drawer. "Is this -it?" she said, holding out a thin discolored volume. - -He seized it with a gasp. "Oh, by George," he said, dropping into the -nearest chair. - -She stood observing him strangely as his eye devoured the mouldy pages. - -"Is this the only copy left?" he asked at length, looking up for a moment -as a thirsty man lifts his head from his glass. - -"I think it must be. I found it long ago, among some old papers that my -aunts were burning up after my grandmother's death. They said it was of no -use--that he'd always meant to destroy the whole edition and that I ought -to respect his wishes. But it was something he had written; to burn it was -like shutting the door against his voice--against something he had once -wished to say, and that nobody had listened to. I wanted him to feel that I -was always here, ready to listen, even when others hadn't thought it worth -while; and so I kept the pamphlet, meaning to carry out his wish and -destroy it before my death." - -Her visitor gave a groan of retrospective anguish. "And but for me--but for -to-day--you would have?" - -"I should have thought it my duty." - -"Oh, by George--by George," he repeated, subdued afresh by the inadequacy -of speech. - -She continued to watch him in silence. At length he jumped up and -impulsively caught her by both hands. - -"He's bigger and bigger!" he almost shouted. "He simply leads the field! -You'll help me go to the bottom of this, won't you? We must turn out all -the papers--letters, journals, memoranda. He must have made notes. He -must have left some record of what led up to this. We must leave nothing -unexplored. By Jove," he cried, looking up at her with his bright -convincing smile, "do you know you're the granddaughter of a Great Man?" - -Her color flickered like a girl's. "Are you--sure of him?" she whispered, -as though putting him on his guard against a possible betrayal of trust. - -"Sure! Sure! My dear lady--" he measured her again with his quick confident -glance. "Don't _you_ believe in him?" - -She drew back with a confused murmur. "I--used to." She had left her -hands in his: their pressure seemed to send a warm current to her heart. -"It ruined my life!" she cried with sudden passion. He looked at her -perplexedly. - -"I gave up everything," she went on wildly, "to keep him alive. I -sacrificed myself--others--I nursed his glory in my bosom and it died--and -left me--left me here alone." She paused and gathered her courage with a -gasp. "Don't make the same mistake!" she warned him. - -He shook his head, still smiling. "No danger of that! You're not alone, my -dear lady. He's here with you--he's come back to you to-day. Don't you see -what's happened? Don't you see that it's your love that has kept him alive? -If you'd abandoned your post for an instant--let things pass into other -hands--if your wonderful tenderness hadn't perpetually kept guard--this -might have been--must have been--irretrievably lost." He laid his hand on -the pamphlet. "And then--then he _would_ have been dead!" - -"Oh," she said, "don't tell me too suddenly!" And she turned away and sank -into a chair. - -The young man stood watching her in an awed silence. For a long time she -sat motionless, with her face hidden, and he thought she must be weeping. - -At length he said, almost shyly: "You'll let me come back, then? You'll -help me work this thing out?" - -She rose calmly and held out her hand. "I'll help you," she declared. - -"I'll come to-morrow, then. Can we get to work early?" - -"As early as you please." - -"At eight o'clock, then," he said briskly. "You'll have the papers ready?" - -"I'll have everything ready." She added with a half-playful hesitancy: "And -the fire shall be lit for you." - -He went out with his bright nod. She walked to the window and watched his -buoyant figure hastening down the elm-shaded street. When she turned back -into the empty room she looked as though youth had touched her on the lips. - - - - -THE RECOVERY - - -To the visiting stranger Hillbridge's first question was, "Have you seen -Keniston's things?" Keniston took precedence of the colonial State House, -the Gilbert Stuart Washington and the Ethnological Museum; nay, he ran neck -and neck with the President of the University, a prehistoric relic who had -known Emerson, and who was still sent about the country in cotton-wool to -open educational institutions with a toothless oration on Brook Farm. - -Keniston was sent about the country too: he opened art exhibitions, laid -the foundation of academies, and acted in a general sense as the spokesman -and apologist of art. Hillbridge was proud of him in his peripatetic -character, but his fellow-townsmen let it be understood that to "know" -Keniston one must come to Hillbridge. Never was work more dependent for its -effect on "atmosphere," on _milieu_. Hillbridge was Keniston's milieu, -and there was one lady, a devotee of his art, who went so far as to assert -that once, at an exhibition in New York, she had passed a Keniston without -recognizing it. "It simply didn't want to be seen in such surroundings; it -was hiding itself under an incognito," she declared. - -It was a source of special pride to Hillbridge that it contained all the -artist's best works. Strangers were told that Hillbridge had discovered -him. The discovery had come about in the simplest manner. Professor -Driffert, who had a reputation for "collecting," had one day hung a sketch -on his drawing-room wall, and thereafter Mrs. Driffert's visitors (always -a little flurried by the sense that it was the kind of house in which one -might be suddenly called upon to distinguish between a dry-point and an -etching, or between Raphael Mengs and Raphael Sanzio) were not infrequently -subjected to the Professor's off-hand inquiry, "By-the-way, have you seen -my Keniston?" The visitors, perceptibly awed, would retreat to a critical -distance and murmur the usual guarded generalities, while they tried to -keep the name in mind long enough to look it up in the Encyclopaedia. The -name was not in the Encyclopaedia; but, as a compensating fact, it became -known that the man himself was in Hillbridge. Hillbridge, then, owned an -artist whose celebrity it was the proper thing to take for granted! Some -one else, emboldened by the thought, bought a Keniston; and the next -year, on the occasion of the President's golden jubilee, the Faculty, by -unanimous consent, presented him with a Keniston. Two years later there -was a Keniston exhibition, to which the art-critics came from New York -and Boston; and not long afterward a well-known Chicago collector vainly -attempted to buy Professor Driffert's sketch, which the art journals cited -as a rare example of the painter's first or silvery manner. Thus there -gradually grew up a small circle of connoisseurs known in artistic, circles -as men who collected Kenistons. - -Professor Wildmarsh, of the chair of Fine Arts and Archaeology, was the -first critic to publish a detailed analysis of the master's methods and -purpose. The article was illustrated by engravings which (though they had -cost the magazine a fortune) were declared by Professor Wildmarsh to give -but an imperfect suggestion of the esoteric significance of the originals. -The Professor, with a tact that contrived to make each reader feel himself -included among the exceptions, went on to say that Keniston's work would -never appeal to any but exceptional natures; and he closed with the usual -assertion that to apprehend the full meaning of the master's "message" it -was necessary to see him in the surroundings of his own home at Hillbridge. - -Professor Wildmarsh's article was read one spring afternoon by a young -lady just speeding eastward on her first visit to Hillbridge, and already -flushed with anticipation of the intellectual opportunities awaiting her. -In East Onondaigua, where she lived, Hillbridge was looked on as an Oxford. -Magazine writers, with the easy American use of the superlative, designated -it as "the venerable Alma Mater," the "antique seat of learning," and -Claudia Day had been brought up to regard it as the fountain-head of -knowledge, and of that mental distinction which is so much rarer than -knowledge. An innate passion for all that was thus distinguished and -exceptional made her revere Hillbridge as the native soil of those -intellectual amenities that were of such difficult growth in the -thin air of East Onondaigua. At the first suggestion of a visit to -Hillbridge--whither she went at the invitation of a girl friend -who (incredible apotheosis!) had married one of the University -professors--Claudia's spirit dilated with the sense of new possibilities. -The vision of herself walking under the "historic elms" toward the Memorial -Library, standing rapt before the Stuart Washington, or drinking in, -from some obscure corner of an academic drawing-room, the President's -reminiscences of the Concord group--this vividness of self-projection into -the emotions awaiting her made her glad of any delay that prolonged so -exquisite a moment. - -It was in this mood that she opened the article on Keniston. She knew about -him, of course; she was wonderfully "well up," even for East Onondaigua. -She had read of him in the magazines; she had met, on a visit to New York, -a man who collected Kenistons, and a photogravure of a Keniston in an -"artistic" frame hung above her writing-table at home. But Professor -Wildmarsh's article made her feel how little she really knew of the master; -and she trembled to think of the state of relative ignorance in which, but -for the timely purchase of the magazine, she might have entered Hillbridge. -She had, for instance, been densely unaware that Keniston had already had -three "manners," and was showing symptoms of a fourth. She was equally -ignorant of the fact that he had founded a school and "created a formula"; -and she learned with a thrill that no one could hope to understand him who -had not seen him in his studio at Hillbridge, surrounded by his own works. -"The man and the art interpret each other," their exponent declared; and -Claudia Day, bending a brilliant eye on the future, wondered if she were -ever to be admitted to the privilege of that double initiation. - -Keniston, to his other claims to distinction, added that of being hard to -know. His friends always hastened to announce the fact to strangers--adding -after a pause of suspense that they "would see what they could do." -Visitors in whose favor he was induced to make an exception were further -warned that he never spoke unless he was interested--so that they mustn't -mind if he remained silent. It was under these reassuring conditions that, -some ten days after her arrival at Hillbridge, Miss Day was introduced -to the master's studio. She found him a tall listless-looking man, who -appeared middle-aged to her youth, and who stood before his own pictures -with a vaguely interrogative gaze, leaving the task of their interpretation -to the lady who had courageously contrived the visit. The studio, to -Claudia's surprise, was bare and shabby. It formed a rambling addition to -the small cheerless house in which the artist lived with his mother and -a widowed sister. For Claudia it added the last touch to his distinction -to learn that he was poor, and that what he earned was devoted to the -maintenance of the two limp women who formed a neutral-tinted background to -his impressive outline. His pictures of course fetched high prices; but he -worked slowly--"painfully," as his devotees preferred to phrase it--with -frequent intervals of ill health and inactivity, and the circle of Keniston -connoisseurs was still as small as it was distinguished. The girl's fancy -instantly hailed in him that favorite figure of imaginative youth, the -artist who would rather starve than paint a pot-boiler. It is known to -comparatively few that the production of successful pot-boilers is an art -in itself, and that such heroic abstentions as Keniston's are not always -purely voluntary. On the occasion of her first visit the artist said so -little that Claudia was able to indulge to the full the harrowing sense of -her inadequacy. No wonder she had not been one of the few that he cared -to talk to; every word she uttered must so obviously have diminished the -inducement! She had been cheap, trivial, conventional; at once gushing -and inexpressive, eager and constrained. She could feel him counting the -minutes till the visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the -scene of her discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she -confidently credited him--that they might never meet again. - - -II - -Mrs. Davant glanced reverentially about the studio. "I have always said," -she murmured, "that they ought to be seen in Europe." - -Mrs. Davant was young, credulous and emotionally extravagant: she reminded -Claudia of her earlier self--the self that, ten years before, had first set -an awestruck foot on that very threshold. - -"Not for _his_ sake," Mrs. Davant continued, "but for Europe's." - -Claudia smiled. She was glad that her husband's pictures were to be -exhibited in Paris. She concurred in Mrs. Davant's view of the importance -of the event; but she thought her visitor's way of putting the case a -little overcharged. Ten years spent in an atmosphere of Keniston-worship -had insensibly developed in Claudia a preference for moderation of speech. -She believed in her husband, of course; to believe in him, with an -increasing abandonment and tenacity, had become one of the necessary laws -of being; but she did not believe in his admirers. Their faith in him was -perhaps as genuine as her own; but it seemed to her less able to give an -account of itself. Some few of his appreciators doubtless measured him -by their own standards; but it was difficult not to feel that in the -Hillbridge circle, where rapture ran the highest, he was accepted on -what was at best but an indirect valuation; and now and then she had a -frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions. That -innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to -check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic -absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained -so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him. Her husband's -uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of -the surprises of her marriage. That an artist should believe in his -potential powers seemed to her at once the incentive and the pledge of -excellence: she knew there was no future for a hesitating talent. What -perplexed her was Keniston's satisfaction in his achievement. She had -always imagined that the true artist must regard himself as the imperfect -vehicle of the cosmic emotion--that beneath every difficulty overcome a new -one lurked, the vision widening as the scope enlarged. To be initiated into -these creative struggles, to shed on the toiler's path the consolatory ray -of faith and encouragement, had seemed the chief privilege of her marriage. -But there is something supererogatory in believing in a man obviously -disposed to perform that service for himself; and Claudia's ardor gradually -spent itself against the dense surface of her husband's complacency. She -could smile now at her vision of an intellectual communion which should -admit her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration. She had learned -that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston's -inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile -her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air -of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to -posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed -herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he -mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so little to -express. - -"It's for Europe," Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia noticed that -she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of her elaborate sunshade -the pattern of the shabby carpet. - -"It will be a revelation to them," she went on provisionally, as though -Claudia had missed her cue and left an awkward interval to fill. - -Claudia had in fact a sudden sense of deficient intuition. She felt that -her visitor had something to communicate which required, on her own part, -an intelligent co-operation; but what it was her insight failed to suggest. -She was, in truth, a little tired of Mrs. Davant, who was Keniston's latest -worshipper, who ordered pictures recklessly, who paid for them regally -in advance, and whose gallery was, figuratively speaking, crowded with -the artist's unpainted masterpieces. Claudia's impatience was perhaps -complicated by the uneasy sense that Mrs. Davant was too young, too rich, -too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be warned.--Warned of what? -That some of the pictures might never be painted? Scarcely that, since -Keniston, who was scrupulous in business transactions, might be trusted not -to take any material advantage of such evidence of faith. Claudia's impulse -remained undefined. She merely felt that she would have liked to help Mrs. -Davant, and that she did not know how. - -"You'll be there to see them?" she asked, as her visitor lingered. - -"In Paris?" Mrs. Davant's blush deepened. "We must all be there together." - -Claudia smiled. "My husband and I mean to go abroad some day--but I don't -see any chance of it at present." - -"But he _ought_ to go--you ought both to go this summer!" Mrs. Davant -persisted. "I know Professor Wildmarsh and Professor Driffert and all the -other critics think that Mr. Keniston's never having been to Europe has -given his work much of its wonderful individuality, its peculiar flavor -and meaning--but now that his talent is formed, that he has full command -of his means of expression," (Claudia recognized one of Professor -Driffert's favorite formulas) "they all think he ought to see the work of -the _other_ great masters--that he ought to visit the home of his -ancestors, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" She stretched an impulsive hand to -Claudia. "You ought to let him go, Mrs. Keniston!" - -Claudia accepted the admonition with the philosophy of the wife who is used -to being advised on the management of her husband. "I sha'n't interfere -with him," she declared; and Mrs. Davant instantly caught her up with a cry -of, "Oh, it's too lovely of you to say that!" With this exclamation she -left Claudia to a silent renewal of wonder. - -A moment later Keniston entered: to a mind curious in combinations it -might have occurred that he had met Mrs. Davant on the door-step. In one -sense he might, for all his wife cared, have met fifty Mrs. Davants on the -door-step: it was long since Claudia had enjoyed the solace of resenting -such coincidences. Her only thought now was that her husband's first words -might not improbably explain Mrs. Davant's last; and she waited for him to -speak. - -He paused with his hands in his pockets before an unfinished picture on the -easel; then, as his habit was, he began to stroll touristlike from canvas -to canvas, standing before each in a musing ecstasy of contemplation that -no readjustment of view ever seemed to disturb. Her eye instinctively -joined his in its inspection; it was the one point where their natures -merged. Thank God, there, was no doubt about the pictures! She was what she -had always dreamed of being--the wife of a great artist. Keniston dropped -into an armchair and filled his pipe. "How should you like to go to -Europe?" he asked. - -His wife looked up quickly. "When?" - -"Now--this spring, I mean." He paused to light the pipe. "I should like to -be over there while these things are being exhibited." - -Claudia was silent. - -"Well?" he repeated after a moment. - -"How can we afford it?" she asked. - -Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the mother and -sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia, who had the atoning -temperament which seeks to pay for every happiness by making it a source -of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an -exaggerated devotion. Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized -her most delicate pleasures; and her husband's sensitiveness to it in great -measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a -failure of the moral sense. His loyalty to the dull women who depended on -him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere sensibility -to ideal demands. - -"Oh, I don't see why we shouldn't," he rejoined. "I think we might manage -it." - -"At Mrs. Davant's expense?" leaped from Claudia. She could not tell why she -had said it; some inner barrier seemed to have given way under a confused -pressure of emotions. - -He looked up at her with frank surprise. "Well, she has been very jolly -about it--why not? She has a tremendous feeling for art--the keenest I -ever knew in a woman." Claudia imperceptibly smiled. "She wants me to let -her pay in advance for the four panels she has ordered for the Memorial -Library. That would give us plenty of money for the trip, and my having the -panels to do is another reason for my wanting to go abroad just now." - -"Another reason?" - -"Yes; I've never worked on such a big scale. I want to see how those old -chaps did the trick; I want to measure myself with the big fellows over -there. An artist ought to, once in his life." - -She gave him a wondering look. For the first time his words implied a sense -of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract what they -conceded. What he really wanted was fresh food for his self-satisfaction: -he was like an army that moves on after exhausting the resources of the -country. - -Womanlike, she abandoned the general survey of the case for the -consideration of a minor point. - -"Are you sure you can do that kind of thing?" she asked. - -"What kind of thing?" - -"The panels." - -He glanced at her indulgently: his self-confidence was too impenetrable to -feel the pin-prick of such a doubt. - -"Immensely sure," he said with a smile. - -"And you don't mind taking so much money from her in advance?" - -He stared. "Why should I? She'll get it back--with interest!" He laughed -and drew at his pipe. "It will be an uncommonly interesting experience. I -shouldn't wonder if it freshened me up a bit." - -She looked at him again. This second hint of self-distrust struck her as -the sign of a quickened sensibility. What if, after all, he was beginning -to be dissatisfied with his work? The thought filled her with a renovating -sense of his sufficiency. - - -III - -They stopped in London to see the National Gallery. - -It was thus that, in their inexperience, they had narrowly put it; but in -reality every stone of the streets, every trick of the atmosphere, had -its message of surprise for their virgin sensibilities. The pictures were -simply the summing up, the final interpretation, of the cumulative pressure -of an unimagined world; and it seemed to Claudia that long before they -reached the doors of the gallery she had some intuitive revelation of what -awaited them within. - -They moved about from room to room without exchanging a word. The vast -noiseless spaces seemed full of sound, like the roar of a distant multitude -heard only by the inner ear. Had their speech been articulate their -language would have been incomprehensible; and even that far-off murmur -of meaning pressed intolerably on Claudia's nerves. Keniston took the -onset without outward sign of disturbance. Now and then he paused before a -canvas, or prolonged from one of the benches his silent communion with some -miracle of line or color; but he neither looked at his wife nor spoke to -her. He seemed to have forgotten her presence. - -Claudia was conscious of keeping a furtive watch on him; but the sum total -of her impressions was negative. She remembered thinking when she first -met him that his face was rather expressionless; and he had the habit of -self-engrossed silences. - -All that evening, at the hotel, they talked about London, and he surprised -her by an acuteness of observation that she had sometimes inwardly accused -him of lacking. He seemed to have seen everything, to have examined, felt, -compared, with nerves as finely adjusted as her own; but he said nothing -of the pictures. The next day they returned to the National Gallery, and -he began to study the paintings in detail, pointing out differences of -technique, analyzing and criticising, but still without summing up his -conclusions. He seemed to have a sort of provincial dread of showing -himself too much impressed. Claudia's own sensations were too complex, too -overwhelming, to be readily classified. Lacking the craftsman's instinct to -steady her, she felt herself carried off her feet by the rush of incoherent -impressions. One point she consciously avoided, and that was the comparison -of her husband's work with what they were daily seeing. Art, she inwardly -argued, was too various, too complex, dependent on too many inter-relations -of feeling and environment, to allow of its being judged by any provisional -standard. Even the subtleties of technique must be modified by the artist's -changing purpose, as this in turn is acted on by influences of which -he is himself unconscious. How, then, was an unprepared imagination to -distinguish between such varied reflections of the elusive vision? She took -refuge in a passionate exaggeration of her own ignorance and insufficiency. - -After a week in London they went to Paris. The exhibition of Keniston's -pictures had been opened a few days earlier; and as they drove through the -streets on the way to the station an "impressionist" poster here and there -invited them to the display of the American artist's work. Mrs. Davant, who -had been in Paris for the opening, had already written rapturously of the -impression produced, enclosing commendatory notices from one or two papers. -She reported that there had been a great crowd on the first day, and that -the critics had been "immensely struck." - -The Kenistons arrived in the evening, and the next morning Claudia, as a -matter of course, asked her husband at what time he meant to go and see the -pictures. - -He looked up absently from his guide-book. - -"What pictures?" - -"Why--yours," she said, surprised. - -"Oh, they'll keep," he answered; adding with a slightly embarrassed laugh, -"We'll give the other chaps a show first." Presently he laid down his book -and proposed that they should go to the Louvre. - -They spent the morning there, lunched at a restaurant near by, and returned -to the gallery in the afternoon. Keniston had passed from inarticulateness -to an eager volubility. It was clear that he was beginning to co-ordinate -his impressions, to find his way about in a corner of the great imaginative -universe. He seemed extraordinarily ready to impart his discoveries; and -Claudia felt that her ignorance served him as a convenient buffer against -the terrific impact of new sensations. - -On the way home she asked when he meant to see Mrs. Davant. - -His answer surprised her. "Does she know we're here?" - -"Not unless you've sent her word," said Claudia, with a touch of harmless -irony. - -"That's all right, then," he returned simply. "I want to wait and look -about a day or two longer. She'd want us to go sight-seeing with her; and -I'd rather get my impressions alone." - -The next two days were hampered by the necessity of eluding Mrs. Davant. -Claudia, under different circumstances, would have scrupled to share in -this somewhat shabby conspiracy; but she found herself in a state of -suspended judgment, wherein her husband's treatment of Mrs. Davant became -for the moment merely a clue to larger meanings. - -They had been four days in Paris when Claudia, returning one afternoon from -a parenthetical excursion to the Rue de la Paix, was confronted on her -threshold by the reproachful figure of their benefactress. It was not to -her, however, that Mrs. Davant's reproaches were addressed. Keniston, it -appeared, had borne the brunt of them; for he stood leaning against the -mantelpiece of their modest _salon_ in that attitude of convicted -negligence when, if ever, a man is glad to take refuge behind his wife. - -Claudia had however no immediate intention of affording him such shelter. -She wanted to observe and wait. - -"He's too impossible!" cried Mrs. Davant, sweeping her at once into the -central current of her grievance. - -Claudia looked from one to the other. - -"For not going to see you?" - -"For not going to see his pictures!" cried the other nobly. - -Claudia colored and Keniston shifted his position uneasily. - -"I can't make her understand," he said, turning to his wife. - -"I don't care about myself!" Mrs. Davant interjected. - -"_I_ do, then; it's the only thing I do care about," he hurriedly -protested. "I meant to go at once--to write--Claudia wanted to go, but I -wouldn't let her." He looked helplessly about the pleasant red-curtained -room, which was rapidly burning itself into Claudia's consciousness as a -visible extension of Mrs. Davant's claims. - -"I can't explain," he broke off. - -Mrs. Davant in turn addressed herself to Claudia. - -"People think it's so odd," she complained. "So many of the artists -here are anxious to meet him; they've all been so charming about the -pictures; and several of our American friends have come over from London -expressly for the exhibition. I told every one that he would be here -for the opening--there was a private view, you know--and they were so -disappointed--they wanted to give him an ovation; and I didn't know what -to say. What _am_ I to say?" she abruptly ended. - -"There's nothing to say," said Keniston slowly. - -"But the exhibition closes the day after to-morrow." - -"Well, _I_ sha'n't close--I shall be here," he declared with an effort -at playfulness. "If they want to see me--all these people you're kind -enough to mention--won't there be other chances?" - -"But I wanted them to see you _among_ your pictures--to hear you talk -about them, explain them in that wonderful way. I wanted you to interpret -each other, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" - -"Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!" said Keniston, softening the commination -with a smile. "If my pictures are good for anything they oughtn't to need -explaining." - -Mrs. Davant stared. "But I thought that was what made them so interesting!" -she exclaimed. - -Keniston looked down. "Perhaps it was," he murmured. - -There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying, with a glance -at her husband: "But if the exhibition is to remain open to-morrow, could -we not meet you there? And perhaps you could send word to some of our -friends." - -Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is glued together. -"Oh, _do_ make him!" she implored. "I'll ask them to come in the -afternoon--we'll make it into a little tea--a _five o'clock_. I'll -send word at once to everybody!" She gathered up her beruffled boa and -sunshade, settling her plumage like a reassured bird. "It will be too -lovely!" she ended in a self-consoling murmur. - -But in the doorway a new doubt assailed her. "You won't fail me?" she said, -turning plaintively to Keniston. "You'll make him come, Mrs. Keniston?" - -"I'll bring him!" Claudia promised. - - -IV - -When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble, -her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home. - -"The fact is I'm rather surfeited," he said, smiling. "I suppose my -appetite isn't equal to such a plethora. I think I'll write some letters -and join you somewhere later." - -She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual -readiness. - -"I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then," she said. "I -haven't had time to take the edge off that appetite." - -They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone -with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct -reference to Mrs. Davant's visit; but its effect was implicit in their -eagerness to avoid each other. - -Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that -robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she -turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never -had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social -quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were -evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the -nervous structure of the huge frame--a sensibility so delicate, alert and -universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such -a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously -as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be "artistic" must cease to be -an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of -the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny -spot of consciousness--the value of her husband's work. There are moments -when to the groping soul the world's accumulated experiences are but -stepping-stones across a private difficulty. - -She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had -an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting -her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion -emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in -obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she -called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband's pictures were -exhibited. - -A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way -up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing, -held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer; -and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room -full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the -public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier -in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something -about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in -other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed -to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the -carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor's solitary advance with -the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the -thing "go off," and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of -co-operation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her -instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they -had not co-operated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant: -they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one -familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there--and the -frames--but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished -like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had -it happened to _her_ or to the pictures? She tried to rally her -frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance; -but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single -conviction--the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no -standing up against that: she felt herself submerged. - -The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the -throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving -as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes. -She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical -vitality.... She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall -before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the -dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a -spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life. What proof had she -that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other? The -confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a -valid theory of art. How, after all, did she know that the pictures were -bad? On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided -the case against them? It seemed as though it were a standard outside of -herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her -aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that -was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid -that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the -middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a _massif_ -of palms and azaleas. As Claudia's muffled wanderings carried her around -the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the -figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head -bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her. - -Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware -that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered. It was what _he_ -thought of them that counted: her life hung on that. - -They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt -to flash into immediate speech. At length he said simply, "I didn't know -you were coming here." - -She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand. - -"I didn't mean to," she stammered; "but I was too early for our -appointment--" - -Her word's cast a revealing glare on the situation. Neither of them looked -at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly -to press upon them and force them apart. - -Keniston glanced at his watch. "It's twelve o'clock," he said. "Shall we go -on?" - - -V - -At the door he called a cab and put her in it; then, drawing out his watch -again, he said abruptly: "I believe I'll let you go alone. I'll join you at -the hotel in time for luncheon." She wondered for a moment if he meant to -return to the gallery; but, looking back as she drove off, she saw him walk -rapidly away in the opposite direction. - -The cabman had carried her half-way to the Hotel Cluny before she realized -where she was going, and cried out to him to turn home. There was an acute -irony in this mechanical prolongation of the quest of beauty. She had -had enough of it, too much of it; her one longing was to escape, to hide -herself away from its all-suffusing implacable light. - -At the hotel, alone in her room, a few tears came to soften her seared -vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by weeping. Her whole being -was centred in the longing to know what her husband thought. Their short -exchange of words had, after all, told her nothing. She had guessed a faint -resentment at her unexpected appearance; but that might merely imply a -dawning sense, on his part, of being furtively watched and criticised. She -had sometimes wondered if he was never conscious of her observation; there -were moments when it seemed to radiate from her in visible waves. Perhaps, -after all, he was aware of it, on his guard against it, as a lurking knife -behind the thick curtain of his complacency; and to-day he must have caught -the gleam of the blade. - -Claudia had not reached the age when pity is the first chord to vibrate in -contact with any revelation of failure. Her one hope had been that Keniston -should be clear-eyed enough to face the truth. Whatever it turned out to -be, she wanted him to measure himself with it. But as his image rose before -her she felt a sudden half-maternal longing to thrust herself between him -and disaster. Her eagerness to see him tested by circumstances seemed now -like a cruel scientific curiosity. She saw in a flash of sympathy that he -would need her most if he fell beneath his fate. - -He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she came up-stairs -from her solitary meal their _salon_ was still untenanted. She -permitted herself no sensational fears; for she could not, at the height of -apprehension, figure Keniston as yielding to any tragic impulse; but the -lengthening hours brought an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity. Suddenly -she heard the clock strike five. It was the hour at which they had promised -to meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery--the hour of the "ovation." Claudia -rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of her husband in the -crowded street. Could it be that he had forgotten her, had gone to the -gallery without her? Or had something happened--that veiled "something" -which, for the last hour, had grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind? - -She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered. As she turned to meet -him her whole being was swept forward on a great wave of pity: she was so -sure, now, that he must know. - -But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied brightness; her first -impression was that she had never seen him so vividly, so expressively -pleased. If he needed her, it was not to bind up his wounds. - -He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some -inner light. "I didn't mean to be so late," he said, tossing aside his hat -and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. "I -turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the -place fairly swallowed me up--I couldn't get away from it. I've been there -ever since." He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe. - -"It takes time," he continued musingly, "to get at them, to make out what -they're saying--the big fellows, I mean. They're not a communicative lot. -At first I couldn't make much out of their lingo--it was too different from -mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them -together, I've begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two -of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out--made them -deliver up their last drop." He lifted a brilliant eye to her. "Lord, it -was tremendous!" he declared. - -He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in -silence. - -"At first," he began again, "I was afraid their language was too hard for -me--that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed -to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I -wouldn't be beaten, and now, to-day"--he paused a moment to strike a -match--"when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me -in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I'd made them all into a big bonfire to -light me on my road!" - -His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid -to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past -upon the pyre! - -"Is there nothing left?" she faltered. - -"Nothing left? There's everything!" he exulted. "Why, here I am, not much -over forty, and I've found out already--already!" He stood up and began to -move excitedly about the room. "My God! Suppose I'd never known! Suppose -I'd gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those -chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they're saved! Won't -somebody please start a hymn?" - -Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong -current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth, -and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot. - -"Mrs. Davant--" she exclaimed. - -He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. "Mrs. Davant?" - -"We were to have met her--this afternoon--now--" - -"At the gallery? Oh, that's all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see -her after I left you; I explained it all to her." - -"All?" - -"I told her I was going to begin all over again." - -Claudia's heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly. - -"But the panels--?" - -"That's all right too. I told her about the panels," he reassured her. - -"You told her--?" - -"That I can't paint them now. She doesn't understand, of course; but she's -the best little woman and she trusts me." - -She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. "But that isn't -all," she wailed. "It doesn't matter how much you've explained to her. It -doesn't do away with the fact that we're living on those panels!" - -"Living on them?" - -"On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn't that what brought us -here? And--if you mean to do as you say--to begin all over again--how in -the world are we ever to pay her back?" - -Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. "There's only one way that I -know of," he imperturbably declared, "and that's to stay out here till I -learn how to paint them." - - - - -"COPY" - -A DIALOGUE - - -_Mrs. Ambrose Dale--forty, slender, still young--sits in her drawing-room -at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit, -there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and -flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere--mostly with autograph -inscriptions "From the Author"--and a large portrait of_ Mrs. Dale, -_at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the -wall-panels. Before_ Mrs. Dale _stands_ Hilda, _fair and twenty, -her hands full of letters_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn't it strange -that people who'd blush to borrow twenty dollars don't scruple to beg for -an autograph? - -_Hilda (reproachfully)_. Oh-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. What's the difference, pray? - -_Hilda_. Only that your last autograph sold for fifty-- - -_Mrs. Dale (not displeased)_. Ah?--I sent for you, Hilda, because I'm -dining out to-night, and if there's nothing important to attend to among -these letters you needn't sit up for me. - -_Hilda_. You don't mean to work? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Perhaps; but I sha'n't need you. You'll see that my -cigarettes and coffee-machine are in place, and that I don't have to crawl -about the floor in search of my pen-wiper? That's all. Now about these -letters-- - -_Hilda (impulsively)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Well? - -_Hilda_. I'd rather sit up for you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Child, I've nothing for you to do. I shall be blocking -out the tenth chapter of _Winged Purposes_ and it won't be ready for -you till next week. - -_Hilda_. It isn't that--but it's so beautiful to sit here, watching -and listening, all alone in the night, and to feel that you're in there -_(she points to the study-door)_ _creating_--._(Impulsively.)_ -What do I care for sleep? - -_Mrs. Dale (indulgently)_. Child--silly child!--Yes, I should have -felt so at your age--it would have been an inspiration-- - -_Hilda (rapt)_. It is! - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you must go to bed; I must have you fresh in the -morning; for you're still at the age when one is fresh in the morning! -_(She sighs.)_ The letters? _(Abruptly.)_ Do you take notes of -what you feel, Hilda--here, all alone in the night, as you say? - -_Hilda (shyly)_. I have-- - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. For the diary? - -_Hilda (nods and blushes)_. - -_Mrs. Dale (caressingly)_. Goose!--Well, to business. What is there? - -_Hilda_. Nothing important, except a letter from Stroud & Fayerweather -to say that the question of the royalty on _Pomegranate Seed_ has been -settled in your favor. The English publishers of _Immolation_ write -to consult you about a six-shilling edition; Olafson, the Copenhagen -publisher, applies for permission to bring out a Danish translation of -_The Idol's Feet_; and the editor of the _Semaphore_ wants a new -serial--I think that's all; except that _Woman's Sphere_ and _The -Droplight_ ask for interviews--with photographs-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. The same old story! I'm so tired of it all. _(To -herself, in an undertone.)_ But how should I feel if it all stopped? -_(The servant brings in a card.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (reading it)_. Is it possible? Paul Ventnor? _(To the -servant.)_ Show Mr. Ventnor up. _(To herself.)_ Paul Ventnor! - -_Hilda (breathless)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale--_the_ Mr. Ventnor? - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. I fancy there's only one. - -_Hilda_. The great, great poet? _(Irresolute.)_ No, I don't -dare-- - -_Mrs. Dale (with a tinge of impatience)_. What? - -_Hilda (fervently)_. Ask you--if I might--oh, here in this corner, -where he can't possibly notice me--stay just a moment? Just to see him come -in? To see the meeting between you--the greatest novelist and the greatest -poet of the age? Oh, it's too much to ask! It's an historic moment. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, I suppose it is. I hadn't thought of it in that -light. Well _(smiling)_, for the diary-- - -_Hilda_. Oh, thank you, _thank you_! I'll be off the very instant -I've heard him speak. - -_Mrs. Dale_. The very instant, mind. _(She rises, looks at herself -in the glass, smooths her hair, sits down again, and rattles the -tea-caddy.)_ Isn't the room very warm?--_(She looks over at her -portrait.)_ I've grown stouter since that was painted--. You'll make a -fortune out of that diary, Hilda-- - -_Hilda (modestly)_. Four publishers have applied to me already-- - -_The Servant (announces)_. Mr. Paul Ventnor. - -_(Tall, nearing fifty, with an incipient stoutness buttoned into a -masterly frock-coat, Ventnor drops his glass and advances vaguely, with a -short-sighted stare.)_ - -_Ventnor_. Mrs. Dale? - -_Mrs. Dale_. My dear friend! This is kind. _(She looks over her -shoulder at Hilda, who vanishes through the door to the left.)_ The -papers announced your arrival, but I hardly hoped-- - -_Ventnor (whose short-sighted stare is seen to conceal a deeper -embarrassment)_. You hadn't forgotten me, then? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Delicious! Do _you_ forget that you're public -property? - -_Ventnor_. Forgotten, I mean, that we were old friends? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Such old friends! May I remind you that it's nearly -twenty years since we've met? Or do you find cold reminiscences -indigestible? - -_Ventnor_. On the contrary, I've come to ask you for a dish of -them--we'll warm them up together. You're my first visit. - -_Mrs. Dale_. How perfect of you! So few men visit their women friends -in chronological order; or at least they generally do it the other way -round, beginning with the present day and working back--if there's time--to -prehistoric woman. - -_Ventnor_. But when prehistoric woman has become historic woman--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, it's the reflection of my glory that has guided you -here, then? - -_Ventnor_. It's a spirit in my feet that has led me, at the first -opportunity, to the most delightful spot I know. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, the first opportunity--! - -_Ventnor_. I might have seen you very often before; but never just in -the right way. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is this the right way? - -_Ventnor_. It depends on you to make it so. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What a responsibility! What shall I do? - -_Ventnor_. Talk to me--make me think you're a little glad to see me; -give me some tea and a cigarette; and say you're out to everyone else. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is that all? _(She hands him a cup of tea.)_ The -cigarettes are at your elbow--. And do you think I shouldn't have been glad -to see you before? - -_Ventnor_. No; I think I should have been too glad to see you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Dear me, what precautions! I hope you always wear -goloshes when it looks like rain and never by any chance expose yourself -to a draught. But I had an idea that poets courted the emotions-- - -_Ventnor_. Do novelists? - -_Mrs. Dale_. If you ask _me_--on paper! - -_Ventnor_. Just so; that's safest. My best things about the sea have -been written on shore. _(He looks at her thoughtfully.)_ But it -wouldn't have suited us in the old days, would it? - -_Mrs. Dale (sighing)_. When we were real people! - -_Ventnor_. Real people? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Are _you_, now? I died years ago. What you see -before you is a figment of the reporter's brain--a monster manufactured out -of newspaper paragraphs, with ink in its veins. A keen sense of copyright -is _my_ nearest approach to an emotion. - -_Ventnor (sighing)_. Ah, well, yes--as you say, we're public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. If one shared equally with the public! But the last shred -of my identity is gone. - -_Ventnor_. Most people would be glad to part with theirs on such -terms. I have followed your work with immense interest. _Immolation_ -is a masterpiece. I read it last summer when it first came out. - -_Mrs. Dale (with a shade less warmth)_. _Immolation_ has been out -three years. - -_Ventnor_. Oh, by Jove--no? Surely not--But one is so overwhelmed--one -loses count. (_Reproachfully_.) Why have you never sent me your books? - -_Mrs. Dale_. For that very reason. - -_Ventnor (deprecatingly)_. You know I didn't mean it for you! And -_my_ first book--do you remember--was dedicated to you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. _Silver Trumpets_-- - -_Ventnor (much interested)_. Have you a copy still, by any chance? The -first edition, I mean? Mine was stolen years ago. Do you think you could -put your hand on it? - -_Mrs. Dale (taking a small shabby book from the table at her side)_. -It's here. - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. May I have it? Ah, thanks. This is _very_ -interesting. The last copy sold in London for L40, and they tell me the -next will fetch twice as much. It's quite _introuvable_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I know that. _(A pause. She takes the book from him, -opens it, and reads, half to herself--)_ - - _How much we two have seen together, - Of other eyes unwist, - Dear as in days of leafless weather - The willow's saffron mist, - - Strange as the hour when Hesper swings - A-sea in beryl green, - While overhead on dalliant wings - The daylight hangs serene, - - And thrilling as a meteor's fall - Through depths of lonely sky, - When each to each two watchers call: - I saw it!--So did I._ - -_Ventnor_. Thin, thin--the troubadour tinkle. Odd how little promise -there is in first volumes! - -_Mrs. Dale (with irresistible emphasis)_. I thought there was a -distinct promise in this! - -_Ventnor (seeing his mistake)_. Ah--the one you would never let me -fulfil? _(Sentimentally.)_ How inexorable you were! You never -dedicated a book to _me_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I hadn't begun to write when we were--dedicating things -to each other. - -_Ventnor_. Not for the public--but you wrote for me; and, wonderful as -you are, you've never written anything since that I care for half as much -as-- - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Well? - -_Ventnor_. Your letters. - -_Mrs. Dale (in a changed voice)_. My letters--do you remember them? - -_Ventnor_. When I don't, I reread them. - -_Mrs. Dale (incredulous)_. You have them still? - -_Ventnor (unguardedly)_. You haven't mine, then? - -_Mrs. Dale (playfully)_. Oh, you were a celebrity already. Of course I -kept them! _(Smiling.)_ Think what they are worth now! I always keep -them locked up in my safe over there. _(She indicates a cabinet.)_ - -_Ventnor (after a pause)_. I always carry yours with me. - -_Mrs. Dale (laughing)_. You-- - -_Ventnor_. Wherever I go. _(A longer pause. She looks at him -fixedly.)_ I have them with me now. - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. You--have them with you--now? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. Why not? One never knows-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Never knows--? - -_Ventnor (humorously)_. Gad--when the bank-examiner may come round. -You forget I'm a married man. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah--yes. - -_Ventnor (sits down beside her)_. I speak to you as I couldn't to -anyone else--without deserving a kicking. You know how it all came about. -_(A pause.)_ You'll bear witness that it wasn't till you denied me all -hope-- - -_Mrs. Dale (a little breathless)_. Yes, yes-- - -_Ventnor_. Till you sent me from you-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's so easy to be heroic when one is young! One doesn't -realize how long life is going to last afterward. _(Musing.)_ Nor what -weary work it is gathering up the fragments. - -_Ventnor_. But the time comes when one sends for the china-mender, and -has the bits riveted together, and turns the cracked side to the wall-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. And denies that the article was ever damaged? - -_Ventnor_. Eh? Well, the great thing, you see, is to keep one's self -out of reach of the housemaid's brush. _(A pause.)_ If you're married -you can't--always. _(Smiling.)_ Don't you hate to be taken down and -dusted? - -_Mrs. Dale (with intention)_. You forget how long ago my husband died. -It's fifteen years since I've been an object of interest to anybody but the -public. - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The only one of your admirers to whom you've ever -given the least encouragement! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Say rather the most easily pleased! - -_Ventnor_. Or the only one you cared to please? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, you _haven't_ kept my letters! - -_Ventnor (gravely)_. Is that a challenge? Look here, then! _(He -drams a packet from his pocket and holds it out to her.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (taking the packet and looking at him earnestly)_. Why have -you brought me these? - -_Ventnor_. I didn't bring them; they came because I came--that's all. -_(Tentatively.)_ Are we unwelcome? - -_Mrs. Dale (who has undone the packet and does not appear to hear -him)_. The very first I ever wrote you--the day after we met at the -concert. How on earth did you happen to keep it? _(She glances over -it.)_ How perfectly absurd! Well, it's not a compromising document. - -_Ventnor_. I'm afraid none of them are. - -_Mrs. Dale (quickly)_. Is it to that they owe their immunity? Because -one could leave them about like safety matches?--Ah, here's another I -remember--I wrote that the day after we went skating together for the first -time. _(She reads it slowly.)_ How odd! How very odd! - -_Ventnor_. What? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, it's the most curious thing--I had a letter of this -kind to do the other day, in the novel I'm at work on now--the letter of a -woman who is just--just beginning-- - -_Ventnor_. Yes--just beginning--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. And, do you know, I find the best phrase in it, the -phrase I somehow regarded as the fruit of--well, of all my subsequent -discoveries--is simply plagiarized, word for word, from this! - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. I told you so! You were all there! - -_Mrs. Dale (critically)_. But the rest of it's poorly done--very -poorly. _(Reads the letter over.)_ H'm--I didn't know how to leave -off. It takes me forever to get out of the door. - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Perhaps I was there to prevent you! _(After a -pause.)_ I wonder what I said in return? - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Shall we look? _(She rises.)_ Shall -we--really? I have them all here, you know. _(She goes toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Ventnor (following her with repressed eagerness)_. Oh--all! - -_Mrs. Dale (throws open the door of the cabinet, revealing a number of -packets)_. Don't you believe me now? - -_Ventnor_. Good heavens! How I must have repeated myself! But then you -were so very deaf. - -_Mrs. Dale (takes out a packet and returns to her seat. Ventnor extends -an impatient hand for the letters)_. No--no; wait! I want to find your -answer to the one I was just reading. _(After a pause.)_ Here it -is--yes, I thought so! - -_Ventnor_. What did you think? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. I thought it was the one in which you -quoted _Epipsychidion_-- - -_Ventnor_. Mercy! Did I _quote_ things? I don't wonder you were -cruel. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, and here's the other--the one I--the one I didn't -answer--for a long time. Do you remember? - -_Ventnor (with emotion)_. Do I remember? I wrote it the morning after -we heard _Isolde_-- - -_Mrs. Dale (disappointed)_. No--no. _That_ wasn't the one I -didn't answer! Here--this is the one I mean. - -_Ventnor (takes it curiously)_. Ah--h'm--this is very like unrolling a -mummy--_(he glances at her)_--with a live grain of wheat in it, -perhaps?--Oh, by Jove! - -_Mrs. Dale_. What? - -_Ventnor_. Why, this is the one I made a sonnet out of afterward! By -Jove, I'd forgotten where that idea came from. You may know the lines -perhaps? They're in the fourth volume of my Complete Edition--It's the -thing beginning - - _Love came to me with unrelenting eyes--_ - -one of my best, I rather fancy. Of course, here it's very crudely put--the -values aren't brought out--ah! this touch is good though--very good. H'm, I -daresay there might be other material. _(He glances toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (drily)_. The live grain of wheat, as you said! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, well--my first harvest was sown on rocky -ground--_now_ I plant for the fowls of the air. _(Rising and walking -toward the cabinet.)_ When can I come and carry off all this rubbish? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Carry it off? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. My dear lady, surely between you and me -explicitness is a burden. You must see that these letters of ours can't be -left to take their chance like an ordinary correspondence--you said -yourself we were public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. To take their chance? Do you suppose that, in my keeping, -your letters take any chances? _(Suddenly.)_ Do mine--in yours? - -_Ventnor (still more embarrassed)_. Helen--! _(He takes a turn -through the room.)_ You force me to remind you that you and I are -differently situated--that in a moment of madness I sacrificed the only -right you ever gave me--the right to love you better than any other -woman in the world. _(A pause. She says nothing and he continues, with -increasing difficulty--)_ You asked me just now why I carried your -letters about with me--kept them, literally, in my own hands. Well, suppose -it's to be sure of their not falling into some one else's? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh! - -_Ventnor (throws himself into a chair)_. For God's sake don't pity me! - -_Mrs. Dale (after a long pause)_. Am I dull--or are you trying to say -that you want to give me back my letters? - -_Ventnor (starting up)_. I? Give you back--? God forbid! Your letters? -Not for the world! The only thing I have left! But you can't dream that in -_my_ hands-- - -_Mrs. Dale (suddenly)_. You want yours, then? - -_Ventnor (repressing his eagerness)_. My dear friend, if I'd ever -dreamed that you'd kept them--? - -_Mrs. Dale (accusingly)_. You _do_ want them. _(A pause. He -makes a deprecatory gesture.)_ Why should they be less safe with me than -mine with you? _I_ never forfeited the right to keep them. - -_Ventnor (after another pause)_. It's compensation enough, almost, -to have you reproach me! _(He moves nearer to her, but she makes no -response.)_ You forget that I've forfeited _all_ my rights--even -that of letting you keep my letters. - -_Mrs. Dale_. You _do_ want them! _(She rises, throws all the -letters into the cabinet, locks the door and puts the key in her -pocket.)_ There's my answer. - -_Ventnor_. Helen--! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, I paid dearly enough for the right to keep them, and -I mean to! _(She turns to him passionately.)_ Have you ever asked -yourself how I paid for it? With what months and years of solitude, what -indifference to flattery, what resistance to affection?--Oh, don't smile -because I said affection, and not love. Affection's a warm cloak in cold -weather; and I _have_ been cold; and I shall keep on growing colder! -Don't talk to me about living in the hearts of my readers! We both know -what kind of a domicile that is. Why, before long I shall become a classic! -Bound in sets and kept on the top book-shelf--brr, doesn't that sound -freezing? I foresee the day when I shall be as lonely as an Etruscan -museum! _(She breaks into a laugh.)_ That's what I've paid for the -right to keep your letters. _(She holds out her hand.)_ And now give -me mine. - -_Ventnor_. Yours? - -_Mrs. Dale (haughtily)_. Yes; I claim them. - -_Ventnor (in the same tone)_. On what ground? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Hear the man!--Because I wrote them, of course. - -_Ventnor_. But it seems to me that--under your inspiration, I admit--I -also wrote mine. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I don't dispute their authenticity--it's yours I -deny! - -_Ventnor_. Mine? - -_Mrs. Dale_. You voluntarily ceased to be the man who wrote me those -letters--you've admitted as much. You traded paper for flesh and blood. I -don't dispute your wisdom--only you must hold to your bargain! The letters -are all mine. - -_Ventnor (groping between two tones)_. Your arguments are as -convincing as ever. _(He hazards a faint laugh.)_ You're a marvellous -dialectician--but, if we're going to settle the matter in the spirit of an -arbitration treaty, why, there are accepted conventions in such cases. It's -an odious way to put it, but since you won't help me, one of them is-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. One of them is--? - -_Ventnor_. That it is usual--that technically, I mean, the -letter--belongs to its writer-- - -_Mrs. Dale (after a pause)_. Such letters as _these_? - -_Ventnor_. Such letters especially-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you couldn't have written them if I hadn't--been -willing to read them. Surely there's more of myself in them than of you. - -_Ventnor_. Surely there's nothing in which a man puts more of himself -than in his love-letters! - -_Mrs. Dale (with emotion)_. But a woman's love-letters are like her child. -They belong to her more than to anybody else-- - -_Ventnor_. And a man's? - -_Mrs. Dale (with sudden violence)_. Are all he risks!--There, take -them. _(She flings the key of the cabinet at his feet and sinks into a -chair.)_ - -_Ventnor (starts as though to pick up the key; then approaches and bends -over her)_. Helen--oh, Helen! - -_Mrs. Dale (she yields her hands to him, murmuring:)_ Paul! -_(Suddenly she straightens herself and draws back illuminated.)_ What -a fool I am! I see it all now. You want them for your memoirs! - -_Ventnor (disconcerted)_. Helen-- - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. Come, come--the rule is to unmask when the -signal's given! You want them for your memoirs. - -_Ventnor (with a forced laugh)_. What makes you think so? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. Because _I_ want them for mine! - -_Ventnor (in a changed tone)_. Ah--. _(He moves away from her and -leans against the mantelpiece. She remains seated, with her eyes fixed on -him.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale_. I wonder I didn't see it sooner. Your reasons were lame -enough. - -_Ventnor (ironically)_. Yours were masterly. You're the more -accomplished actor of the two. I was completely deceived. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I'm a novelist. I can keep up that sort of thing for -five hundred pages! - -_Ventnor_. I congratulate you. _(A pause.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (moving to her seat behind the tea-table)_. I've never -offered you any tea. _(She bends over the kettle.)_ Why don't you take -your letters? - -_Ventnor_. Because you've been clever enough to make it impossible for -me. _(He picks up the key and hands it to her. Then abruptly)_--Was it -all acting--just now? - -_Mrs. Dale_. By what right do you ask? - -_Ventnor_. By right of renouncing my claim to my letters. Keep -them--and tell me. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I give you back your claim--and I refuse to tell you. - -_Ventnor (sadly)_. Ah, Helen, if you deceived me, you deceived -yourself also. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What does it matter, now that we're both undeceived? I -played a losing game, that's all. - -_Ventnor_. Why losing--since all the letters are yours? - -_Mrs. Dale_. The letters? _(Slowly.)_ I'd forgotten the letters-- - -_Ventnor (exultant)_. Ah, I knew you'd end by telling me the truth! - -_Mrs. Dale_. The truth? Where _is_ the truth? _(Half to -herself.)_ I thought I was lying when I began--but the lies turned into -truth as I uttered them! _(She looks at Ventnor.)_ I _did_ want -your letters for my memoirs--I _did_ think I'd kept them for that -purpose--and I wanted to get mine back for the same reason--but now _(she -puts out her hand and picks up some of her letters, which are lying -scattered on the table near her)_--how fresh they seem, and how they -take me back to the time when we lived instead of writing about life! - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The time when we didn't prepare our impromptu -effects beforehand and copyright our remarks about the weather! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Or keep our epigrams in cold storage and our adjectives -under lock and key! - -_Ventnor_. When our emotions weren't worth ten cents a word, and a -signature wasn't an autograph. Ah, Helen, after all, there's nothing like -the exhilaration of spending one's capital! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Of wasting it, you mean. _(She points to the -letters.)_ Do you suppose we could have written a word of these if we'd -known we were putting our dreams out at interest? _(She sits musing, with -her eyes on the fire, and he watches her in silence.)_ Paul, do you -remember the deserted garden we sometimes used to walk in? - -_Ventnor_. The old garden with the high wall at the end of the village -street? The garden with the ruined box-borders and the broken-down arbor? -Why, I remember every weed in the paths and every patch of moss on the -walls! - -_Mrs. Dale._ Well--I went back there the other day. The village is -immensely improved. There's a new hotel with gas-fires, and a trolley in -the main street; and the garden has been turned into a public park, where -excursionists sit on cast-iron benches admiring the statue of an -Abolitionist. - -_Ventnor_. An Abolitionist--how appropriate! - -_Mrs. Dale_. And the man who sold the garden has made a fortune that -he doesn't know how to spend-- - -_Ventnor (rising impulsively)_. Helen, _(he approaches and lays his -hand on her letters)_, let's sacrifice our fortune and keep the -excursionists out! - -_Mrs. Dale (with a responsive movement)_. Paul, do you really mean it? - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Mean it? Why, I feel like a landed proprietor -already! It's more than a garden--it's a park. - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's more than a park, it's a world--as long as we keep -it to ourselves! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, yes--even the pyramids look small when one sees a -Cook's tourist on top of them! _(He takes the key from the table, unlocks -the cabinet and brings out his letters, which he lays beside hers.)_ -Shall we burn the key to our garden? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, then it will indeed be boundless! _(Watching him -while he throws the letters into the fire.)_ - -_Ventnor (turning back to her with a half-sad smile)_. But not too big -for us to find each other in? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Since we shall be the only people there! _(He takes -both her hands and they look at each other a moment in silence. Then he -goes out by the door to the right. As he reaches the door she takes a step -toward him, impulsively; then turning back she leans against the -chimney-piece, quietly watching the letters burn.)_ - - - - -THE REMBRANDT - - -"You're _so_ artistic," my cousin Eleanor Copt began. - -Of all Eleanor's exordiums it is the one I most dread. When she tells me -I'm so clever I know this is merely the preamble to inviting me to meet the -last literary obscurity of the moment: a trial to be evaded or endured, as -circumstances dictate; whereas her calling me artistic fatally connotes -the request to visit, in her company, some distressed gentlewoman whose -future hangs on my valuation of her old Saxe or of her grandfather's -Marc Antonios. Time was when I attempted to resist these compulsions of -Eleanor's; but I soon learned that, short of actual flight, there was -no refuge from her beneficent despotism. It is not always easy for the -curator of a museum to abandon his post on the plea of escaping a pretty -cousin's importunities; and Eleanor, aware of my predicament, is none -too magnanimous to take advantage of it. Magnanimity is, in fact, not in -Eleanor's line. The virtues, she once explained to me, are like bonnets: -the very ones that look best on other people may not happen to suit one's -own particular style; and she added, with a slight deflection of metaphor, -that none of the ready-made virtues ever _had_ fitted her: they all -pinched somewhere, and she'd given up trying to wear them. - -Therefore when she said to me, "You're _so_ artistic." emphasizing the -conjunction with a tap of her dripping umbrella (Eleanor is out in all -weathers: the elements are as powerless against her as man), I merely -stipulated, "It's not old Saxe again?" - -She shook her head reassuringly. "A picture--a Rembrandt!" - -"Good Lord! Why not a Leonardo?" - -"Well"--she smiled--"that, of course, depends on _you_." - -"On me?" - -"On your attribution. I dare say Mrs. Fontage would consent to the -change--though she's very conservative." - -A gleam of hope came to me and I pronounced: "One can't judge of a picture -in this weather." - -"Of course not. I'm coming for you to-morrow." - -"I've an engagement to-morrow." - -"I'll come before or after your engagement." - -The afternoon paper lay at my elbow and I contrived a furtive consultation -of the weather-report. It said "Rain to-morrow," and I answered briskly: -"All right, then; come at ten"--rapidly calculating that the clouds on -which I counted might lift by noon. - -My ingenuity failed of its due reward; for the heavens, as if in league -with my cousin, emptied themselves before morning, and punctually at ten -Eleanor and the sun appeared together in my office. - -I hardly listened, as we descended the Museum steps and got into Eleanor's -hansom, to her vivid summing-up of the case. I guessed beforehand that the -lady we were about to visit had lapsed by the most distressful degrees from -opulence to a "hall-bedroom"; that her grandfather, if he had not been -Minister to France, had signed the Declaration of Independence; that the -Rembrandt was an heirloom, sole remnant of disbanded treasures; that for -years its possessor had been unwilling to part with it, and that even now -the question of its disposal must be approached with the most diplomatic -obliquity. - -Previous experience had taught me that all Eleanor's "cases" presented a -harrowing similarity of detail. No circumstance tending to excite the -spectator's sympathy and involve his action was omitted from the history of -her beneficiaries; the lights and shades were indeed so skilfully adjusted -that any impartial expression of opinion took on the hue of cruelty. I -could have produced closetfuls of "heirlooms" in attestation of this fact; -for it is one more mark of Eleanor's competence that her friends usually -pay the interest on her philanthropy. My one hope was that in this case the -object, being a picture, might reasonably be rated beyond my means; and -as our cab drew up before a blistered brown-stone door-step I formed the -self-defensive resolve to place an extreme valuation on Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt. It is Eleanor's fault if she is sometimes fought with her own -weapons. - -The house stood in one of those shabby provisional-looking New York streets -that seem resignedly awaiting demolition. It was the kind of house that, -in its high days, must have had a bow-window with a bronze in it. The -bow-window had been replaced by a plumber's _devanture_, and one might -conceive the bronze to have gravitated to the limbo where Mexican onyx -tables and bric-a-brac in buffalo-horn await the first signs of our next -aesthetic reaction. - -Eleanor swept me through a hall that smelled of poverty, up unlit stairs to -a bare slit of a room. "And she must leave this in a month!" she whispered -across her knock. - -I had prepared myself for the limp widow's weed of a woman that one figures -in such a setting; and confronted abruptly with Mrs. Fontage's white-haired -erectness I had the disconcerting sense that I was somehow in her presence -at my own solicitation. I instinctively charged Eleanor with this reversal -of the situation; but a moment later I saw it must be ascribed to a -something about Mrs. Fontage that precluded the possibility of her asking -any one a favor. It was not that she was of forbidding, or even majestic, -demeanor; but that one guessed, under her aquiline prettiness, a dignity -nervously on guard against the petty betrayal of her surroundings. The -room was unconcealably poor: the little faded "relics," the high-stocked -ancestral silhouettes, the steel-engravings after Raphael and Correggio, -grouped in a vain attempt to hide the most obvious stains on the -wall-paper, served only to accentuate the contrast of a past evidently -diversified by foreign travel and the enjoyment of the arts. Even Mrs. -Fontage's dress had the air of being a last expedient, the ultimate outcome -of a much-taxed ingenuity in darning and turning. One felt that all the -poor lady's barriers were falling save that of her impregnable manner. - -To this manner I found myself conveying my appreciation of being admitted -to a view of the Rembrandt. - -Mrs. Fontage's smile took my homage for granted. "It is always," she -conceded, "a privilege to be in the presence of the great masters." Her -slim wrinkled hand waved me to a dusky canvas near the window. - -"It's _so_ interesting, dear Mrs. Fontage," I heard Eleanor -exclaiming, "and my cousin will be able to tell you exactly--" Eleanor, in -my presence, always admits that she knows nothing about art; but she gives -the impression that this is merely because she hasn't had time to look into -the matter--and has had me to do it for her. - -Mrs. Fontage seated herself without speaking, as though fearful that a -breath might disturb my communion with the masterpiece. I felt that she -thought Eleanor's reassuring ejaculations ill-timed; and in this I was of -one mind with her; for the impossibility of telling her exactly what I -thought of her Rembrandt had become clear to me at a glance. - -My cousin's vivacities began to languish and the silence seemed to shape -itself into a receptacle for my verdict. I stepped back, affecting a more -distant scrutiny; and as I did so my eye caught Mrs. Fontage's profile. Her -lids trembled slightly. I took refuge in the familiar expedient of asking -the history of the picture, and she waved me brightly to a seat. - -This was indeed a topic on which she could dilate. The Rembrandt, it -appeared, had come into Mr. Fontage's possession many years ago, while -the young couple were on their wedding-tour, and under circumstances so -romantic that she made no excuse for relating them in all their parenthetic -fulness. The picture belonged to an old Belgian Countess of redundant -quarterings, whom the extravagances of an ungovernable nephew had compelled -to part with her possessions (in the most private manner) about the time of -the Fontages' arrival. By a really remarkable coincidence, it happened that -their courier (an exceptionally intelligent and superior man) was an old -servant of the Countess's, and had thus been able to put them in the way of -securing the Rembrandt under the very nose of an English Duke, whose agent -had been sent to Brussels to negotiate for its purchase. Mrs. Fontage could -not recall the Duke's name, but he was a great collector and had a famous -Highland castle, where somebody had been murdered, and which she herself -had visited (by moonlight) when she had travelled in Scotland as a girl. -The episode had in short been one of the most interesting "experiences" of -a tour almost chromo-lithographic in vivacity of impression; and they had -always meant to go back to Brussels for the sake of reliving so picturesque -a moment. Circumstances (of which the narrator's surroundings declared the -nature) had persistently interfered with the projected return to Europe, -and the picture had grown doubly valuable as representing the high-water -mark of their artistic emotions. Mrs. Fontage's moist eye caressed the -canvas. "There is only," she added with a perceptible effort, "one slight -drawback: the picture is not signed. But for that the Countess, of course, -would have sold it to a museum. All the connoisseurs who have seen it -pronounce it an undoubted Rembrandt, in the artist's best manner; but the -museums"--she arched her brows in smiling recognition of a well-known -weakness--"give the preference to signed examples--" - -Mrs. Fontage's words evoked so touching a vision of the young tourists of -fifty years ago, entrusting to an accomplished and versatile courier the -direction of their helpless zeal for art, that I lost sight for a moment -of the point at issue. The old Belgian Countess, the wealthy Duke with a -feudal castle in Scotland, Mrs. Fontage's own maiden pilgrimage to Arthur's -Seat and Holyrood, all the accessories of the naif transaction, seemed -a part of that vanished Europe to which our young race carried its -indiscriminate ardors, its tender romantic credulity: the legendary -castellated Europe of keepsakes, brigands and old masters, that -compensated, by one such "experience" as Mrs. Fontage's, for an after-life -of aesthetic privation. - -I was restored to the present by Eleanor's looking at her watch. The action -mutely conveyed that something was expected of me. I risked the temporizing -statement that the picture was very interesting; but Mrs. Fontage's polite -assent revealed the poverty of the expedient. Eleanor's impatience -overflowed. - -"You would like my cousin to give you an idea of its value?" she suggested. - -Mrs. Fontage grew more erect. "No one," she corrected with great -gentleness, "can know its value quite as well as I, who live with it--" - -We murmured our hasty concurrence. - -"But it might be interesting to hear"--she addressed herself to me--"as a -mere matter of curiosity--what estimate would be put on it from the purely -commercial point of view--if such a term may be used in speaking of a work -of art." - -I sounded a note of deprecation. - -"Oh, I understand, of course," she delicately anticipated me, "that that -could never be _your_ view, your personal view; but since occasions -_may_ arise--do arise--when it becomes necessary to--to put a price on -the priceless, as it were--I have thought--Miss Copt has suggested--" - -"Some day," Eleanor encouraged her, "you might feel that the picture ought -to belong to some one who has more--more opportunity of showing it--letting -it be seen by the public--for educational reasons--" - -"I have tried," Mrs. Fontage admitted, "to see it in that light." - -The crucial moment was upon me. To escape the challenge of Mrs. Fontage's -brilliant composure I turned once more to the picture. If my courage needed -reinforcement, the picture amply furnished it. Looking at that lamentable -canvas seemed the surest way of gathering strength to denounce it; but -behind me, all the while, I felt Mrs. Fontage's shuddering pride drawn -up in a final effort of self-defense. I hated myself for my sentimental -perversion of the situation. Reason argued that it was more cruel to -deceive Mrs. Fontage than to tell her the truth; but that merely proved the -inferiority of reason to instinct in situations involving any concession to -the emotions. Along with her faith in the Rembrandt I must destroy not only -the whole fabric of Mrs. Fontage's past, but even that lifelong habit of -acquiescence in untested formulas that makes the best part of the average -feminine strength. I guessed the episode of the picture to be inextricably -interwoven with the traditions and convictions which served to veil Mrs. -Fontage's destitution not only from others but from herself. Viewed in -that light the Rembrandt had perhaps been worth its purchase-money; and I -regretted that works of art do not commonly sell on the merit of the moral -support they may have rendered. - -From this unavailing flight I was recalled by the sense that something -must be done. To place a fictitious value on the picture was at best a -provisional measure; while the brutal alternative of advising Mrs. Fontage -to sell it for a hundred dollars at least afforded an opening to the -charitably disposed purchaser. I intended, if other resources failed, -to put myself forward in that light; but delicacy of course forbade my -coupling my unflattering estimate of the Rembrandt with an immediate offer -to buy it. All I could do was to inflict the wound: the healing unguent -must be withheld for later application. - -I turned to Mrs. Fontage, who sat motionless, her finely-lined cheeks -touched with an expectant color, her eyes averted from the picture which -was so evidently the one object they beheld. - -"My dear madam--" I began. Her vivid smile was like a light held up to -dazzle me. It shrouded every alternative in darkness and I had the flurried -sense of having lost my way among the intricacies of my contention. Of -a sudden I felt the hopelessness of finding a crack in her impenetrable -conviction. My words slipped from me like broken weapons. "The picture," -I faltered, "would of course be worth more if it were signed. As it is, -I--I hardly think--on a conservative estimate--it can be valued at--at -more--than--a thousand dollars, say--" - -My deflected argument ran on somewhat aimlessly till it found itself -plunging full tilt against the barrier of Mrs. Fontage's silence. She sat -as impassive as though I had not spoken. Eleanor loosed a few fluttering -words of congratulation and encouragement, but their flight was suddenly -cut short. Mrs. Fontage had risen with a certain solemnity. - -"I could never," she said gently--her gentleness was adamantine--"under any -circumstances whatever, consider, for a moment even, the possibility of -parting with the picture at such a price." - - -II - -Within three weeks a tremulous note from Mrs. Fontage requested the favor -of another visit. If the writing was tremulous, however, the writer's tone -was firm. She named her own day and hour, without the conventional -reference to her visitor's convenience. - -My first impulse was to turn the note over to Eleanor. I had acquitted -myself of my share in the ungrateful business of coming to Mrs. Fontage's -aid, and if, as her letter denoted, she had now yielded to the closer -pressure of need, the business of finding a purchaser for the Rembrandt -might well be left to my cousin's ingenuity. But here conscience put in -the uncomfortable reminder that it was I who, in putting a price on the -picture, had raised the real obstacle in the way of Mrs. Fontage's rescue. -No one would give a thousand dollars for the Rembrandt; but to tell -Mrs. Fontage so had become as unthinkable as murder. I had, in fact, on -returning from my first inspection of the picture, refrained from imparting -to Eleanor my opinion of its value. Eleanor is porous, and I knew that -sooner or later the unnecessary truth would exude through the loose texture -of her dissimulation. Not infrequently she thus creates the misery she -alleviates; and I have sometimes suspected her of paining people in order -that she might be sorry for them. I had, at all events, cut off retreat in -Eleanor's direction; and the remaining alternative carried me straight to -Mrs. Fontage. - -She received me with the same commanding sweetness. The room was even barer -than before--I believe the carpet was gone--but her manner built up about -her a palace to which I was welcomed with high state; and it was as a mere -incident of the ceremony that I was presently made aware of her decision to -sell the Rembrandt. My previous unsuccess in planning how to deal with Mrs. -Fontage had warned me to leave my farther course to chance; and I listened -to her explanation with complete detachment. She had resolved to travel for -her health; her doctor advised it, and as her absence might be indefinitely -prolonged she had reluctantly decided to part with the picture in order -to avoid the expense of storage and insurance. Her voice drooped at the -admission, and she hurried on, detailing the vague itinerary of a journey -that was to combine long-promised visits to impatient friends with various -"interesting opportunities" less definitely specified. The poor lady's -skill in rearing a screen of verbiage about her enforced avowal had -distracted me from my own share in the situation, and it was with dismay -that I suddenly caught the drift of her assumptions. She expected me to -buy the Rembrandt for the Museum; she had taken my previous valuation as a -tentative bid, and when I came to my senses she was in the act of accepting -my offer. - -Had I had a thousand dollars of my own to dispose of, the bargain would -have been concluded on the spot; but I was in the impossible position of -being materially unable to buy the picture and morally unable to tell her -that it was not worth acquiring for the Museum. - -I dashed into the first evasion in sight. I had no authority, I explained, -to purchase pictures for the Museum without the consent of the committee. - -Mrs. Fontage coped for a moment in silence with the incredible fact -that I had rejected her offer; then she ventured, with a kind of pale -precipitation: "But I understood--Miss Copt tells me that you practically -decide such matters for the committee." I could guess what the effort had -cost her. - -"My cousin is given to generalizations. My opinion may have some weight -with the committee--" - -"Well, then--" she timidly prompted. - -"For that very reason I can't buy the picture." - -She said, with a drooping note, "I don't understand." - -"Yet you told me," I reminded her, "that you knew museums didn't buy -unsigned pictures." - -"Not for what they are worth! Every one knows that. But I--I -understood--the price you named--" Her pride shuddered back from the -abasement. "It's a misunderstanding then," she faltered. - -To avoid looking at her, I glanced desperately at the Rembrandt. Could -I--? But reason rejected the possibility. Even if the committee had been -blind--and they all _were_ but Crozier--I simply shouldn't have dared -to do it. I stood up, feeling that to cut the matter short was the only -alleviation within reach. - -Mrs. Fontage had summoned her indomitable smile; but its brilliancy -dropped, as I opened the door, like a candle blown out by a draught. - -"If there's any one else--if you knew any one who would care to see the -picture, I should be most happy--" She kept her eyes on me, and I saw that, -in her case, it hurt less than to look at the Rembrandt. "I shall have to -leave here, you know," she panted, "if nobody cares to have it--" - - -III - -That evening at my club I had just succeeded in losing sight of Mrs. -Fontage in the fumes of an excellent cigar, when a voice at my elbow evoked -her harassing image. - -"I want to talk to you," the speaker said, "about Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt." - -"There isn't any," I was about to growl; but looking up I recognized the -confiding countenance of Mr. Jefferson Rose. - -Mr. Rose was known to me chiefly as a young man suffused with a vague -enthusiasm for Virtue and my cousin Eleanor. - -One glance at his glossy exterior conveyed the assurance that his morals -were as immaculate as his complexion and his linen. Goodness exuded from -his moist eye, his liquid voice, the warm damp pressure of his trustful -hand. He had always struck me as one of the most uncomplicated organisms -I had ever met. His ideas were as simple and inconsecutive as the -propositions in a primer, and he spoke slowly, with a kind of uniformity -of emphasis that made his words stand out like the raised type for the -blind. An obvious incapacity for abstract conceptions made him peculiarly -susceptible to the magic of generalization, and one felt he would have been -at the mercy of any Cause that spelled itself with a capital letter. It was -hard to explain how, with such a superabundance of merit, he managed to be -a good fellow: I can only say that he performed the astonishing feat as -naturally as he supported an invalid mother and two sisters on the slender -salary of a banker's clerk. He sat down beside me with an air of bright -expectancy. - -"It's a remarkable picture, isn't it?" he said. - -"You've seen it?" - -"I've been so fortunate. Miss Copt was kind enough to get Mrs. Fontage's -permission; we went this afternoon." I inwardly wished that Eleanor -had selected another victim; unless indeed the visit were part of a -plan whereby some third person, better equipped for the cultivation of -delusions, was to be made to think the Rembrandt remarkable. Knowing the -limitations of Mr. Rose's resources I began to wonder if he had any rich -aunts. - -"And her buying it in that way, too," he went on with his limpid smile, -"from that old Countess in Brussels, makes it all the more interesting, -doesn't it? Miss Copt tells me it's very seldom old pictures can be traced -back for more than a generation. I suppose the fact of Mrs. Fontage's -knowing its history must add a good deal to its value?" - -Uncertain as to his drift, I said: "In her eyes it certainly appears to." - -Implications are lost on Mr. Rose, who glowingly continued: "That's the -reason why I wanted to talk to you about it--to consult you. Miss Copt -tells me you value it at a thousand dollars." - -There was no denying this, and I grunted a reluctant assent. - -"Of course," he went on earnestly, "your valuation is based on the fact -that the picture isn't signed--Mrs. Fontage explained that; and it does -make a difference, certainly. But the thing is--if the picture's really -good--ought one to take advantage--? I mean--one can see that Mrs. Fontage -is in a tight place, and I wouldn't for the world--" - -My astonished stare arrested him. - -"_You_ wouldn't--?" - -"I mean--you see, it's just this way"; he coughed and blushed: "I can't -give more than a thousand dollars myself--it's as big a sum as I can manage -to scrape together--but before I make the offer I want to be sure I'm not -standing in the way of her getting more money." - -My astonishment lapsed to dismay. "You're going to buy the picture for a -thousand dollars?" - -His blush deepened. "Why, yes. It sounds rather absurd, I suppose. It isn't -much in my line, of course. I can see the picture's very beautiful, but I'm -no judge--it isn't the kind of thing, naturally, that I could afford to go -in for; but in this case I'm very glad to do what I can; the circumstances -are so distressing; and knowing what you think of the picture I feel it's a -pretty safe investment--" - -"I don't think!" I blurted out. - -"You--?" - -"I don't think the picture's worth a thousand dollars; I don't think it's -worth ten cents; I simply lied about it, that's all." - -Mr. Rose looked as frightened as though I had charged him with the offense. - -"Hang it, man, can't you see how it happened? I saw the poor woman's pride -and happiness hung on her faith in that picture. I tried to make her -understand that it was worthless--but she wouldn't; I tried to tell her -so--but I couldn't. I behaved like a maudlin ass, but you shan't pay for my -infernal bungling--you mustn't buy the picture!" - -Mr. Rose sat silent, tapping one glossy boot-tip with another. Suddenly he -turned on me a glance of stored intelligence. "But you know," he said -good-humoredly, "I rather think I must." - -"You haven't--already?" - -"Oh, no; the offer's not made." - -"Well, then--" - -His look gathered a brighter significance. - -"But if the picture's worth nothing, nobody will buy it--" - -I groaned. - -"Except," he continued, "some fellow like me, who doesn't know anything. -_I_ think it's lovely, you know; I mean to hang it in my mother's -sitting-room." He rose and clasped my hand in his adhesive pressure. "I'm -awfully obliged to you for telling me this; but perhaps you won't mind my -asking you not to mention our talk to Miss Copt? It might bother her, you -know, to think the picture isn't exactly up to the mark; and it won't make -a rap of difference to me." - - -IV - -Mr. Rose left me to a sleepless night. The next morning my resolve was -formed, and it carried me straight to Mrs. Fontage's. She answered my knock -by stepping out on the landing, and as she shut the door behind her I -caught a glimpse of her devastated interior. She mentioned, with a careful -avoidance of the note of pathos on which our last conversation had closed, -that she was preparing to leave that afternoon; and the trunks obstructing -the threshold showed that her preparations were nearly complete. They were, -I felt certain, the same trunks that, strapped behind a rattling vettura, -had accompanied the bride and groom on that memorable voyage of discovery -of which the booty had till recently adorned her walls; and there was a -dim consolation in the thought that those early "finds" in coral and Swiss -wood-carving, in lava and alabaster, still lay behind the worn locks, in -the security of worthlessness. - -Mrs. Fontage, on the landing, among her strapped and corded treasures, -maintained the same air of stability that made it impossible, even under -such conditions, to regard her flight as anything less dignified than -a departure. It was the moral support of what she tacitly assumed that -enabled me to set forth with proper deliberation the object of my visit; -and she received my announcement with an absence of surprise that struck -me as the very flower of tact. Under cover of these mutual assumptions the -transaction was rapidly concluded; and it was not till the canvas passed -into my hands that, as though the physical contact had unnerved her, -Mrs. Fontage suddenly faltered. "It's the giving it up--" she stammered, -disguising herself to the last; and I hastened away from the collapse of -her splendid effrontery. - -I need hardly point out that I had acted impulsively, and that reaction -from the most honorable impulses is sometimes attended by moral -perturbation. My motives had indeed been mixed enough to justify some -uneasiness, but this was allayed by the instinctive feeling that it is more -venial to defraud an institution than a man. Since Mrs. Fontage had to be -kept from starving by means not wholly defensible, it was better that the -obligation should be borne by a rich institution than an impecunious youth. -I doubt, in fact, if my scruples would have survived a night's sleep, had -they not been complicated by some uncertainty as to my own future. It was -true that, subject to the purely formal assent of the committee, I had -full power to buy for the Museum, and that the one member of the committee -likely to dispute my decision was opportunely travelling in Europe; but the -picture once in place I must face the risk of any expert criticism to which -chance might expose it. I dismissed this contingency for future study, -stored the Rembrandt in the cellar of the Museum, and thanked heaven that -Crozier was abroad. - -Six months later he strolled into my office. I had just concluded, under -conditions of exceptional difficulty, and on terms unexpectedly benign, -the purchase of the great Bartley Reynolds; and this circumstance, by -relegating the matter of the Rembrandt to a lower stratum of consciousness, -enabled me to welcome Crozier with unmixed pleasure. My security -was enhanced by his appearance. His smile was charged with amiable -reminiscences, and I inferred that his trip had put him in the humor -to approve of everything, or at least to ignore what fell short of his -approval. I had therefore no uneasiness in accepting his invitation to dine -that evening. It is always pleasant to dine with Crozier and never more so -than when he is just back from Europe. His conversation gives even the food -a flavor of the Cafe Anglais. - -The repast was delightful, and it was not till we had finished a Camembert -which he must have brought over with him, that my host said, in a tone of -after-dinner perfunctoriness: "I see you've picked up a picture or two -since I left." - -I assented. "The Bartley Reynolds seemed too good an opportunity to miss, -especially as the French government was after it. I think we got it -cheap--" - -"_Connu, connu_" said Crozier pleasantly. "I know all about the -Reynolds. It was the biggest kind of a haul and I congratulate you. Best -stroke of business we've done yet. But tell me about the other picture--the -Rembrandt." - -"I never said it was a Rembrandt." I could hardly have said why, but I felt -distinctly annoyed with Crozier. - -"Of course not. There's 'Rembrandt' on the frame, but I saw you'd -modified it to 'Dutch School'; I apologize." He paused, but I offered no -explanation. "What about it?" he went on. "Where did you pick it up?" As -he leaned to the flame of the cigar-lighter his face seemed ruddy with -enjoyment. - -"I got it for a song," I said. - -"A thousand, I think?" - -"Have you seen it?" I asked abruptly. - -"Went over the place this afternoon and found it in the cellar. Why hasn't -it been hung, by the way?" - -I paused a moment. "I'm waiting--" - -"To--?" - -"To have it varnished." - -"Ah!" He leaned back and poured himself a second glass of Chartreuse. The -smile he confided to its golden depths provoked me to challenge him with-- - -"What do you think of it?" - -"The Rembrandt?" He lifted his eyes from the glass. "Just what you do." - -"It isn't a Rembrandt." - -"I apologize again. You call it, I believe, a picture of the same period?" - -"I'm uncertain of the period." - -"H'm." He glanced appreciatively along his cigar. "What are you certain -of?" - -"That it's a damned bad picture," I said savagely. - -He nodded. "Just so. That's all we wanted to know." - -"_We_?" - -"We--I--the committee, in short. You see, my dear fellow, if you hadn't -been certain it was a damned bad picture our position would have been a -little awkward. As it is, my remaining duty--I ought to explain that in -this matter I'm acting for the committee--is as simple as it's agreeable." - -"I'll be hanged," I burst out, "if I understand one word you're saying!" - -He fixed me with a kind of cruel joyousness. "You will--you will," he -assured me; "at least you'll begin to, when you hear that I've seen Miss -Copt." - -"Miss Copt?" - -"And that she has told me under what conditions the picture was bought." - -"She doesn't know anything about the conditions! That is," I added, -hastening to restrict the assertion, "she doesn't know my opinion of the -picture." I thirsted for five minutes with Eleanor. - -"Are you quite sure?" Crozier took me up. "Mr. Jefferson Rose does." - -"Ah--I see." - -"I thought you would," he reminded me. "As soon as I'd laid eyes on -the Rembrandt--I beg your pardon!--I saw that it--well, required some -explanation." - -"You might have come to me." - -"I meant to; but I happened to meet Miss Copt, whose encyclopaedic -information has often before been of service to me. I always go to Miss -Copt when I want to look up anything; and I found she knew all about the -Rembrandt." - -"_All_?" - -"Precisely. The knowledge was in fact causing her sleepless nights. Mr. -Rose, who was suffering from the same form of insomnia, had taken her into -his confidence, and she--ultimately--took me into hers." - -"Of course!" - -"I must ask you to do your cousin justice. She didn't speak till it became -evident to her uncommonly quick perceptions that your buying the picture on -its merits would have been infinitely worse for--for everybody--than your -diverting a small portion of the Museum's funds to philanthropic uses. Then -she told me the moving incident of Mr. Rose. Good fellow, Rose. And the -old lady's case was desperate. Somebody had to buy that picture." I moved -uneasily in my seat "Wait a moment, will you? I haven't finished my cigar. -There's a little head of Il Fiammingo's that you haven't seen, by the way; -I picked it up the other day in Parma. We'll go in and have a look at it -presently. But meanwhile what I want to say is that I've been charged--in -the most informal way--to express to you the committee's appreciation of -your admirable promptness and energy in capturing the Bartley Reynolds. We -shouldn't have got it at all if you hadn't been uncommonly wide-awake, and -to get it at such a price is a double triumph. We'd have thought nothing of -a few more thousands--" - -"I don't see," I impatiently interposed, "that, as far as I'm concerned, -that alters the case." - -"The case--?" - -"Of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. I bought the picture because, as you say, the -situation was desperate, and I couldn't raise a thousand myself. What I did -was of course indefensible; but the money shall be refunded tomorrow--" - -Crozier raised a protesting hand. "Don't interrupt me when I'm talking ex -cathedra. The money's been refunded already. The fact is, the Museum has -sold the Rembrandt." - -I stared at him wildly. "Sold it? To whom?" - -"Why--to the committee.--Hold on a bit, please.--Won't you take another -cigar? Then perhaps I can finish what I've got to say.--Why, my dear -fellow, the committee's under an obligation to you--that's the way we look -at it. I've investigated Mrs. Fontage's case, and--well, the picture had to -be bought. She's eating meat now, I believe, for the first time in a year. -And they'd have turned her out into the street that very day, your cousin -tells me. Something had to be done at once, and you've simply given a -number of well-to-do and self-indulgent gentlemen the opportunity of -performing, at very small individual expense, a meritorious action in -the nick of time. That's the first thing I've got to thank you for. And -then--you'll remember, please, that I have the floor--that I'm still -speaking for the committee--and secondly, as a slight recognition of your -services in securing the Bartley Reynolds at a very much lower figure than -we were prepared to pay, we beg you--the committee begs you--to accept the -gift of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. Now we'll go in and look at that little -head...." - - - - -THE MOVING FINGER - - -The news of Mrs. Grancy's death came to me with the shock of an immense -blunder--one of fate's most irretrievable acts of vandalism. It was as -though all sorts of renovating forces had been checked by the clogging of -that one wheel. Not that Mrs. Grancy contributed any perceptible momentum -to the social machine: her unique distinction was that of filling to -perfection her special place in the world. So many people are like -badly-composed statues, over-lapping their niches at one point and leaving -them vacant at another. Mrs. Grancy's niche was her husband's life; and if -it be argued that the space was not large enough for its vacancy to leave a -very big gap, I can only say that, at the last resort, such dimensions must -be determined by finer instruments than any ready-made standard of utility. -Ralph Grancy's was in short a kind of disembodied usefulness: one of those -constructive influences that, instead of crystallizing into definite forms, -remain as it were a medium for the development of clear thinking and fine -feeling. He faithfully irrigated his own dusty patch of life, and the -fruitful moisture stole far beyond his boundaries. If, to carry on the -metaphor, Grancy's life was a sedulously-cultivated enclosure, his wife was -the flower he had planted in its midst--the embowering tree, rather, which -gave him rest and shade at its foot and the wind of dreams in its upper -branches. - -We had all--his small but devoted band of followers--known a moment when it -seemed likely that Grancy would fail us. We had watched him pitted against -one stupid obstacle after another--ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding -and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious -egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection -like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always -come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for -the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to -how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb -withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But -gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who -was to become his second wife--his one _real_ wife, as his friends -reckoned--the whole man burst into flower. - -The second Mrs. Grancy was past thirty when he married her, and it was -clear that she had harvested that crop of middle joy which is rooted in -young despair. But if she had lost the surface of eighteen she had kept -its inner light; if her cheek lacked the gloss of immaturity her eyes were -young with the stored youth of half a life-time. Grancy had first known her -somewhere in the East--I believe she was the sister of one of our consuls -out there--and when he brought her home to New York she came among us as -a stranger. The idea of Grancy's remarriage had been a shock to us all. -After one such calcining most men would have kept out of the fire; but we -agreed that he was predestined to sentimental blunders, and we awaited -with resignation the embodiment of his latest mistake. Then Mrs. Grancy -came--and we understood. She was the most beautiful and the most complete -of explanations. We shuffled our defeated omniscience out of sight and gave -it hasty burial under a prodigality of welcome. For the first time in years -we had Grancy off our minds. "He'll do something great now!" the least -sanguine of us prophesied; and our sentimentalist emended: "He _has_ -done it--in marrying her!" - -It was Claydon, the portrait-painter, who risked this hyperbole; and who -soon afterward, at the happy husband's request, prepared to defend it in a -portrait of Mrs. Grancy. We were all--even Claydon--ready to concede that -Mrs. Grancy's unwontedness was in some degree a matter of environment. Her -graces were complementary and it needed the mate's call to reveal the flash -of color beneath her neutral-tinted wings. But if she needed Grancy to -interpret her, how much greater was the service she rendered him! Claydon -professionally described her as the right frame for him; but if she defined -she also enlarged, if she threw the whole into perspective she also cleared -new ground, opened fresh vistas, reclaimed whole areas of activity that had -run to waste under the harsh husbandry of privation. This interaction of -sympathies was not without its visible expression. Claydon was not alone -in maintaining that Grancy's presence--or indeed the mere mention of his -name--had a perceptible effect on his wife's appearance. It was as though a -light were shifted, a curtain drawn back, as though, to borrow another of -Claydon's metaphors, Love the indefatigable artist were perpetually seeking -a happier "pose" for his model. In this interpretative light Mrs. Grancy -acquired the charm which makes some women's faces like a book of which -the last page is never turned. There was always something new to read in -her eyes. What Claydon read there--or at least such scattered hints of -the ritual as reached him through the sanctuary doors--his portrait in -due course declared to us. When the picture was exhibited it was at once -acclaimed as his masterpiece; but the people who knew Mrs. Grancy smiled -and said it was flattered. Claydon, however, had not set out to paint -_their_ Mrs. Grancy--or ours even--but Ralph's; and Ralph knew his own -at a glance. At the first confrontation he saw that Claydon had understood. -As for Mrs. Grancy, when the finished picture was shown to her she turned -to the painter and said simply: "Ah, you've done me facing the east!" - -The picture, then, for all its value, seemed a mere incident in the -unfolding of their double destiny, a foot-note to the illuminated text of -their lives. It was not till afterward that it acquired the significance -of last words spoken on a threshold never to be recrossed. Grancy, a year -after his marriage, had given up his town house and carried his bliss an -hour's journey away, to a little place among the hills. His various duties -and interests brought him frequently to New York but we necessarily saw him -less often than when his house had served as the rallying-point of kindred -enthusiasms. It seemed a pity that such an influence should be withdrawn, -but we all felt that his long arrears of happiness should be paid in -whatever coin he chose. The distance from which the fortunate couple -radiated warmth on us was not too great for friendship to traverse; and our -conception of a glorified leisure took the form of Sundays spent in the -Grancys' library, with its sedative rural outlook, and the portrait of Mrs. -Grancy illuminating its studious walls. The picture was at its best in that -setting; and we used to accuse Claydon of visiting Mrs. Grancy in order to -see her portrait. He met this by declaring that the portrait _was_ -Mrs. Grancy; and there were moments when the statement seemed unanswerable. -One of us, indeed--I think it must have been the novelist--said that -Clayton had been saved from falling in love with Mrs. Grancy only by -falling in love with his picture of her; and it was noticeable that he, to -whom his finished work was no more than the shed husk of future effort, -showed a perennial tenderness for this one achievement. We smiled afterward -to think how often, when Mrs. Grancy was in the room, her presence -reflecting itself in our talk like a gleam of sky in a hurrying current, -Claydon, averted from the real woman, would sit as it were listening to the -picture. His attitude, at the time, seemed only a part of the unusualness -of those picturesque afternoons, when the most familiar combinations of -life underwent a magical change. Some human happiness is a landlocked lake; -but the Grancys' was an open sea, stretching a buoyant and illimitable -surface to the voyaging interests of life. There was room and to spare on -those waters for all our separate ventures; and always beyond the sunset, -a mirage of the fortunate isles toward which our prows bent. - - -II - -It was in Rome that, three years later, I heard of her death. The notice -said "suddenly"; I was glad of that. I was glad too--basely perhaps--to be -away from Grancy at a time when silence must have seemed obtuse and speech -derisive. - -I was still in Rome when, a few months afterward, he suddenly arrived -there. He had been appointed secretary of legation at Constantinople and -was on the way to his post. He had taken the place, he said frankly, "to -get away." Our relations with the Porte held out a prospect of hard work, -and that, he explained, was what he needed. He could never be satisfied to -sit down among the ruins. I saw that, like most of us in moments of extreme -moral tension, he was playing a part, behaving as he thought it became a -man to behave in the eye of disaster. The instinctive posture of grief is -a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels -the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe. Grancy, by -nature musing and retrospective, had chosen the role of the man of action, -who answers blow for blow and opposes a mailed front to the thrusts of -destiny; and the completeness of the equipment testified to his inner -weakness. We talked only of what we were not thinking of, and parted, after -a few days, with a sense of relief that proved the inadequacy of friendship -to perform, in such cases, the office assigned to it by tradition. - -Soon afterward my own work called me home, but Grancy remained several -years in Europe. International diplomacy kept its promise of giving -him work to do, and during the year in which he acted as _charge -d'affaires_ he acquitted himself, under trying conditions, with -conspicuous zeal and discretion. A political redistribution of matter -removed him from office just as he had proved his usefulness to the -government; and the following summer I heard that he had come home and -was down at his place in the country. - -On my return to town I wrote him and his reply came by the next post. He -answered as it were in his natural voice, urging me to spend the following -Sunday with him, and suggesting that I should bring down any of the old -set who could be persuaded to join me. I thought this a good sign, and -yet--shall I own it?--I was vaguely disappointed. Perhaps we are apt to -feel that our friends' sorrows should be kept like those historic monuments -from which the encroaching ivy is periodically removed. - -That very evening at the club I ran across Claydon. I told him of Grancy's -invitation and proposed that we should go down together; but he pleaded an -engagement. I was sorry, for I had always felt that he and I stood nearer -Ralph than the others, and if the old Sundays were to be renewed I should -have preferred that we two should spend the first alone with him. I said as -much to Claydon and offered to fit my time to his; but he met this by a -general refusal. - -"I don't want to go to Grancy's," he said bluntly. I waited a moment, but -he appended no qualifying clause. - -"You've seen him since he came back?" I finally ventured. - -Claydon nodded. - -"And is he so awfully bad?" - -"Bad? No: he's all right." - -"All right? How can he be, unless he's changed beyond all recognition?" - -"Oh, you'll recognize _him_," said Claydon, with a puzzling deflection -of emphasis. - -His ambiguity was beginning to exasperate me, and I felt myself shut out -from some knowledge to which I had as good a right as he. - -"You've been down there already, I suppose?" - -"Yes; I've been down there." - -"And you've done with each other--the partnership is dissolved?" - -"Done with each other? I wish to God we had!" He rose nervously and tossed -aside the review from which my approach had diverted him. "Look here," -he said, standing before me, "Ralph's the best fellow going and there's -nothing under heaven I wouldn't do for him--short of going down there -again." And with that he walked out of the room. - -Claydon was incalculable enough for me to read a dozen different meanings -into his words; but none of my interpretations satisfied me. I determined, -at any rate, to seek no farther for a companion; and the next Sunday I -travelled down to Grancy's alone. He met me at the station and I saw at -once that he had changed since our last meeting. Then he had been in -fighting array, but now if he and grief still housed together it was -no longer as enemies. Physically the transformation was as marked but -less reassuring. If the spirit triumphed the body showed its scars. At -five-and-forty he was gray and stooping, with the tired gait of an old man. -His serenity, however, was not the resignation of age. I saw that he did -not mean to drop out of the game. Almost immediately he began to speak of -our old interests; not with an effort, as at our former meeting, but simply -and naturally, in the tone of a man whose life has flowed back into its -normal channels. I remembered, with a touch of self-reproach, how I had -distrusted his reconstructive powers; but my admiration for his reserved -force was now tinged by the sense that, after all, such happiness as his -ought to have been paid with his last coin. The feeling grew as we neared -the house and I found how inextricably his wife was interwoven with my -remembrance of the place: how the whole scene was but an extension of that -vivid presence. - -Within doors nothing was changed, and my hand would have dropped without -surprise into her welcoming clasp. It was luncheon-time, and Grancy led me -at once to the dining-room, where the walls, the furniture, the very plate -and porcelain, seemed a mirror in which a moment since her face had been -reflected. I wondered whether Grancy, under the recovered tranquillity -of his smile, concealed the same sense of her nearness, saw perpetually -between himself and the actual her bright unappeasable ghost. He spoke of -her once or twice, in an easy incidental way, and her name seemed to hang -in the air after he had uttered it, like a chord that continues to vibrate. -If he felt her presence it was evidently as an enveloping medium, the moral -atmosphere in which he breathed. I had never before known how completely -the dead may survive. - -After luncheon we went for a long walk through the autumnal fields and -woods, and dusk was falling when we re-entered the house. Grancy led the -way to the library, where, at this hour, his wife had always welcomed -us back to a bright fire and a cup of tea. The room faced the west, and -held a clear light of its own after the rest of the house had grown dark. -I remembered how young she had looked in this pale gold light, which -irradiated her eyes and hair, or silhouetted her girlish outline as she -passed before the windows. Of all the rooms the library was most peculiarly -hers; and here I felt that her nearness might take visible shape. Then, all -in a moment, as Grancy opened the door, the feeling vanished and a kind -of resistance met me on the threshold. I looked about me. Was the room -changed? Had some desecrating hand effaced the traces of her presence? No; -here too the setting was undisturbed. My feet sank into the same deep-piled -Daghestan; the bookshelves took the firelight on the same rows of rich -subdued bindings; her armchair stood in its old place near the tea-table; -and from the opposite wall her face confronted me. - -Her face--but _was_ it hers? I moved nearer and stood looking up at -the portrait. Grancy's glance had followed mine and I heard him move to my -side. - -"You see a change in it?" he said. - -"What does it mean?" I asked. - -"It means--that five years have passed." - -"Over _her_?" - -"Why not?--Look at me!" He pointed to his gray hair and furrowed temples. -"What do you think kept _her_ so young? It was happiness! But now--" -he looked up at her with infinite tenderness. "I like her better so," he -said. "It's what she would have wished." - -"Have wished?" - -"That we should grow old together. Do you think she would have wanted to be -left behind?" - -I stood speechless, my gaze travelling from his worn grief-beaten features -to the painted face above. It was not furrowed like his; but a veil -of years seemed to have descended on it. The bright hair had lost its -elasticity, the cheek its clearness, the brow its light: the whole woman -had waned. - -Grancy laid his hand on my arm. "You don't like it?" he said sadly. - -"Like it? I--I've lost her!" I burst out. - -"And I've found her," he answered. - -"In _that_?" I cried with a reproachful gesture. - -"Yes; in that." He swung round on me almost defiantly. "The other had -become a sham, a lie! This is the way she would have looked--does look, I -mean. Claydon ought to know, oughtn't he?" - -I turned suddenly. "Did Claydon do this for you?" - -Grancy nodded. - -"Since your return?" - -"Yes. I sent for him after I'd been back a week--." He turned away and gave -a thrust to the smouldering fire. I followed, glad to leave the picture -behind me. Grancy threw himself into a chair near the hearth, so that the -light fell on his sensitive variable face. He leaned his head back, shading -his eyes with his hand, and began to speak. - - -III - -"You fellows knew enough of my early history to A guess what my second -marriage meant to me. I say guess, because no one could understand--really. -I've always had a feminine streak in me, I suppose: the need of a pair of -eyes that should see with me, of a pulse that should keep time with mine. -Life is a big thing, of course; a magnificent spectacle; but I got so tired -of looking at it alone! Still, it's always good to live, and I had plenty -of happiness--of the evolved kind. What I'd never had a taste of was the -simple inconscient sort that one breathes in like the air.... - -"Well--I met her. It was like finding the climate in which I was meant to -live. You know what she was--how indefinitely she multiplied one's points -of contact with life, how she lit up the caverns and bridged the abysses! -Well, I swear to you (though I suppose the sense of all that was latent in -me) that what I used to think of on my way home at the end of the day, was -simply that when I opened this door she'd be sitting over there, with the -lamp-light falling in a particular way on one little curl in her neck.... -When Claydon painted her he caught just the look she used to lift to mine -when I came in--I've wondered, sometimes, at his knowing how she looked -when she and I were alone.--How I rejoiced in that picture! I used to say -to her, 'You're my prisoner now--I shall never lose you. If you grew tired -of me and left me you'd leave your real self there on the wall!' It was -always one of our jokes that she was going to grow tired of me-- - -"Three years of it--and then she died. It was so sudden that there was -no change, no diminution. It was as if she had suddenly become fixed, -immovable, like her own portrait: as if Time had ceased at its happiest -hour, just as Claydon had thrown down his brush one day and said, 'I can't -do better than that.' - -"I went away, as you know, and stayed over there five years. I worked as -hard as I knew how, and after the first black months a little light stole -in on me. From thinking that she would have been interested in what I was -doing I came to feel that she _was_ interested--that she was there and -that she knew. I'm not talking any psychical jargon--I'm simply trying to -express the sense I had that an influence so full, so abounding as hers -couldn't pass like a spring shower. We had so lived into each other's -hearts and minds that the consciousness of what she would have thought -and felt illuminated all I did. At first she used to come back shyly, -tentatively, as though not sure of finding me; then she stayed longer and -longer, till at last she became again the very air I breathed.... There -were bad moments, of course, when her nearness mocked me with the loss of -the real woman; but gradually the distinction between the two was effaced -and the mere thought of her grew warm as flesh and blood. - -"Then I came home. I landed in the morning and came straight down here. The -thought of seeing her portrait possessed me and my heart beat like a -lover's as I opened the library door. It was in the afternoon and the room -was full of light. It fell on her picture--the picture of a young and -radiant woman. She smiled at me coldly across the distance that divided us. -I had the feeling that she didn't even recognize me. And then I caught -sight of myself in the mirror over there--a gray-haired broken man whom she -had never known! - -"For a week we two lived together--the strange woman and the strange man. -I used to sit night after night and question her smiling face; but no -answer ever came. What did she know of me, after all? We were irrevocably -separated by the five years of life that lay between us. At times, as I -sat here, I almost grew to hate her; for her presence had driven away my -gentle ghost, the real wife who had wept, aged, struggled with me during -those awful years.... It was the worst loneliness I've ever known. Then, -gradually, I began to notice a look of sadness in the picture's eyes; a -look that seemed to say: 'Don't you see that _I_ am lonely too?' And -all at once it came over me how she would have hated to be left behind! I -remembered her comparing life to a heavy book that could not be read with -ease unless two people held it together; and I thought how impatiently her -hand would have turned the pages that divided us!--So the idea came to me: -'It's the picture that stands between us; the picture that is dead, and not -my wife. To sit in this room is to keep watch beside a corpse.' As this -feeling grew on me the portrait became like a beautiful mausoleum in which -she had been buried alive: I could hear her beating against the painted -walls and crying to me faintly for help.... - -"One day I found I couldn't stand it any longer and I sent for Claydon. He -came down and I told him what I'd been through and what I wanted him to do. -At first he refused point-blank to touch the picture. The next morning I -went off for a long tramp, and when I came home I found him sitting here -alone. He looked at me sharply for a moment and then he said: 'I've changed -my mind; I'll do it.' I arranged one of the north rooms as a studio and he -shut himself up there for a day; then he sent for me. The picture stood -there as you see it now--it was as though she'd met me on the threshold and -taken me in her arms! I tried to thank him, to tell him what it meant to -me, but he cut me short. - -"'There's an up train at five, isn't there?' he asked. 'I'm booked for a -dinner to-night. I shall just have time to make a bolt for the station and -you can send my traps after me.' I haven't seen him since. - -"I can guess what it cost him to lay hands on his masterpiece; but, after -all, to him it was only a picture lost, to me it was my wife regained!" - - -IV - -After that, for ten years or more, I watched the strange spectacle of a -life of hopeful and productive effort based on the structure of a dream. -There could be no doubt to those who saw Grancy during this period that -he drew his strength and courage from the sense of his wife's mystic -participation in his task. When I went back to see him a few months later I -found the portrait had been removed from the library and placed in a small -study up-stairs, to which he had transferred his desk and a few books. He -told me he always sat there when he was alone, keeping the library for his -Sunday visitors. Those who missed the portrait of course made no comment on -its absence, and the few who were in his secret respected it. Gradually all -his old friends had gathered about him and our Sunday afternoons regained -something of their former character; but Claydon never reappeared among us. - -As I look back now I see that Grancy must have been failing from the time -of his return home. His invincible spirit belied and disguised the signs of -weakness that afterward asserted themselves in my remembrance of him. He -seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of life to draw on, and more than one -of us was a pensioner on his superfluity. - -Nevertheless, when I came back one summer from my European holiday and -heard that he had been at the point of death, I understood at once that we -had believed him well only because he wished us to. - -I hastened down to the country and found him midway in a slow -convalescence. I felt then that he was lost to us and he read my thought at -a glance. - -"Ah," he said, "I'm an old man now and no mistake. I suppose we shall have -to go half-speed after this; but we shan't need towing just yet!" - -The plural pronoun struck me, and involuntarily I looked up at Mrs. -Grancy's portrait. Line by line I saw my fear reflected in it. It was the -face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying. My heart stood still -at the thought of what Claydon had done. - -Grancy had followed my glance. "Yes, it's changed her," he said quietly. -"For months, you know, it was touch and go with me--we had a long fight of -it, and it was worse for her than for me." After a pause he added: "Claydon -has been very kind; he's so busy nowadays that I seldom see him, but when I -sent for him the other day he came down at once." - -I was silent and we spoke no more of Grancy's illness; but when I took -leave it seemed like shutting him in alone with his death-warrant. - -The next time I went down to see him he looked much better. It was a Sunday -and he received me in the library, so that I did not see the portrait -again. He continued to improve and toward spring we began to feel that, as -he had said, he might yet travel a long way without being towed. - -One evening, on returning to town after a visit which had confirmed my -sense of reassurance, I found Claydon dining alone at the club. He asked me -to join him and over the coffee our talk turned to his work. - -"If you're not too busy," I said at length, "you ought to make time to go -down to Grancy's again." - -He looked up quickly. "Why?" he asked. - -"Because he's quite well again," I returned with a touch of cruelty. "His -wife's prognostications were mistaken." - -Claydon stared at me a moment. "Oh, _she_ knows," he affirmed with a -smile that chilled me. - -"You mean to leave the portrait as it is then?" I persisted. - -He shrugged his shoulders. "He hasn't sent for me yet!" - -A waiter came up with the cigars and Claydon rose and joined another group. - -It was just a fortnight later that Grancy's housekeeper telegraphed for me. -She met me at the station with the news that he had been "taken bad" and -that the doctors were with him. I had to wait for some time in the deserted -library before the medical men appeared. They had the baffled manner of -empirics who have been superseded by the great Healer; and I lingered only -long enough to hear that Grancy was not suffering and that my presence -could do him no harm. - -I found him seated in his arm-chair in the little study. He held out his -hand with a smile. - -"You see she was right after all," he said. - -"She?" I repeated, perplexed for the moment. - -"My wife." He indicated the picture. "Of course I knew she had no hope from -the first. I saw that"--he lowered his voice--"after Claydon had been here. -But I wouldn't believe it at first!" - -I caught his hands in mine. "For God's sake don't believe it now!" I -adjured him. - -He shook his head gently. "It's too late," he said. "I might have known -that she knew." - -"But, Grancy, listen to me," I began; and then I stopped. What could I say -that would convince him? There was no common ground of argument on which we -could meet; and after all it would be easier for him to die feeling that -she _had_ known. Strangely enough, I saw that Claydon had missed his -mark.... - - -V - -Grancy's will named me as one of his executors; and my associate, having -other duties on his hands, begged me to assume the task of carrying out our -friend's wishes. This placed me under the necessity of informing Claydon -that the portrait of Mrs. Grancy had been bequeathed to him; and he replied -by the next post that he would send for the picture at once. I was staying -in the deserted house when the portrait was taken away; and as the door -closed on it I felt that Grancy's presence had vanished too. Was it his -turn to follow her now, and could one ghost haunt another? - -After that, for a year or two, I heard nothing more of the picture, and -though I met Claydon from time to time we had little to say to each other. -I had no definable grievance against the man and I tried to remember that -he had done a fine thing in sacrificing his best picture to a friend; but -my resentment had all the tenacity of unreason. - -One day, however, a lady whose portrait he had just finished begged me -to go with her to see it. To refuse was impossible, and I went with the -less reluctance that I knew I was not the only friend she had invited. -The others were all grouped around the easel when I entered, and after -contributing my share to the chorus of approval I turned away and began -to stroll about the studio. Claydon was something of a collector and his -things were generally worth looking at. The studio was a long tapestried -room with a curtained archway at one end. The curtains were looped back, -showing a smaller apartment, with books and flowers and a few fine bits of -bronze and porcelain. The tea-table standing in this inner room proclaimed -that it was open to inspection, and I wandered in. A _bleu poudre_ -vase first attracted me; then I turned to examine a slender bronze -Ganymede, and in so doing found myself face to face with Mrs. Grancy's -portrait. I stared up at her blankly and she smiled back at me in all -the recovered radiance of youth. The artist had effaced every trace of -his later touches and the original picture had reappeared. It throned -alone on the panelled wall, asserting a brilliant supremacy over its -carefully-chosen surroundings. I felt in an instant that the whole room was -tributary to it: that Claydon had heaped his treasures at the feet of the -woman he loved. Yes--it was the woman he had loved and not the picture; and -my instinctive resentment was explained. - -Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. - -"Ah, how could you?" I cried, turning on him. - -"How could I?" he retorted. "How could I _not_? Doesn't she belong to -me now?" - -I moved away impatiently. - -"Wait a moment," he said with a detaining gesture. "The others have gone -and I want to say a word to you.--Oh, I know what you've thought of me--I -can guess! You think I killed Grancy, I suppose?" - -I was startled by his sudden vehemence. "I think you tried to do a cruel -thing," I said. - -"Ah--what a little way you others see into life!" he murmured. "Sit down a -moment--here, where we can look at her--and I'll tell you." - -He threw himself on the ottoman beside me and sat gazing up at the picture, -with his hands clasped about his knee. - -"Pygmalion," he began slowly, "turned his statue into a real woman; -_I_ turned my real woman into a picture. Small compensation, you -think--but you don't know how much of a woman belongs to you after you've -painted her!--Well, I made the best of it, at any rate--I gave her the best -I had in me; and she gave me in return what such a woman gives by merely -being. And after all she rewarded me enough by making me paint as I shall -never paint again! There was one side of her, though, that was mine alone, -and that was her beauty; for no one else understood it. To Grancy even -it was the mere expression of herself--what language is to thought. Even -when he saw the picture he didn't guess my secret--he was so sure she was -all his! As though a man should think he owned the moon because it was -reflected in the pool at his door-- - -"Well--when he came home and sent for me to change the picture it was like -asking me to commit murder. He wanted me to make an old woman of her--of -her who had been so divinely, unchangeably young! As if any man who really -loved a woman would ask her to sacrifice her youth and beauty for his sake! -At first I told him I couldn't do it--but afterward, when he left me alone -with the picture, something queer happened. I suppose it was because I was -always so confoundedly fond of Grancy that it went against me to refuse -what he asked. Anyhow, as I sat looking up at her, she seemed to say, 'I'm -not yours but his, and I want you to make me what he wishes." And so I did -it. I could have cut my hand off when the work was done--I daresay he told -you I never would go back and look at it. He thought I was too busy--he -never understood.... - -"Well--and then last year he sent for me again--you remember. It was after -his illness, and he told me he'd grown twenty years older and that he -wanted her to grow older too--he didn't want her to be left behind. The -doctors all thought he was going to get well at that time, and he thought -so too; and so did I when I first looked at him. But when I turned to -the picture--ah, now I don't ask you to believe me; but I swear it was -_her_ face that told me he was dying, and that she wanted him to know -it! She had a message for him and she made me deliver it." - -He rose abruptly and walked toward the portrait; then he sat down beside me -again. - -"Cruel? Yes, it seemed so to me at first; and this time, if I resisted, -it was for _his_ sake and not for mine. But all the while I felt her -eyes drawing me, and gradually she made me understand. If she'd been there -in the flesh (she seemed to say) wouldn't she have seen before any of us -that he was dying? Wouldn't he have read the news first in her face? And -wouldn't it be horrible if now he should discover it instead in strange -eyes?--Well--that was what she wanted of me and I did it--I kept them -together to the last!" He looked up at the picture again. "But now she -belongs to me," he repeated.... - - - - -THE CONFESSIONAL - - -When I was a young man I thought a great deal of local color. At that -time it was still a pigment of recent discovery, and supposed to have -a peculiarly stimulating effect on the mental eye. As an aid to the -imagination its value was perhaps overrated; but as an object of pursuit -to that vagrant faculty, it had all the merits claimed for it. I certainly -never hunted any game better worth my powder; and to a young man with rare -holidays and long working hours, its value was enhanced by the fact that -one might bring it down at any turn, if only one kept one's eye alert and -one's hand on the trigger. - -Even the large manufacturing city where, for some years, my young -enthusiasms were chained to an accountant's desk, was not without its -romantic opportunities. Many of the mill-hands at Dunstable were Italians, -and a foreign settlement had formed itself in that unsavory and unsanitary -portion of the town known as the Point. The Point, like more aristocratic -communities, had its residential and commercial districts, its church, its -theatre and its restaurant. When the craving for local color was on me it -was my habit to resort to the restaurant, a low-browed wooden building with -the appetizing announcement: - -"_Aristiu di montone_" - -pasted in one of its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough -macaroni or of an ambiguous _frittura_ sufficed to transport me to the -Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar -with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of -one of the little round tables under the arcade of the Caffe Pedrotti at -Padua. This feat of the imagination was materially aided by Agostino, the -hollow-eyed and low-collared waiter, whose slimy napkin never lost its -Latin flourish and whose zeal for my comfort was not infrequently displayed -by his testing the warmth of my soup with his finger. Through Agostino I -became acquainted with the inner history of the colony, heard the details -of its feuds and vendettas, and learned to know by sight the leading -characters in these domestic dramas. - -The restaurant was frequented by the chief personages of the community: -the overseer of the Italian hands at the Meriton Mills, the doctor, his -wife the _levatrice_ (a plump Neapolitan with greasy ringlets, a plush -picture-hat, and a charm against the evil-eye hanging in a crease of her -neck) and lastly by Don Egidio, the _parocco_ of the little church -across the street. The doctor and his wife came only on feast days, but -the overseer and Don Egidio were regular patrons. The former was a quiet -saturnine-looking man, of accomplished manners but reluctant speech, and I -depended for my diversion chiefly on Don Egidio, whose large loosely-hung -lips were always ajar for conversation. The remarks issuing from them -were richly tinged by the gutturals of the Bergamasque dialect, and it -needed but a slight acquaintance with Italian types to detect the Lombard -peasant under the priest's rusty cassock. This inference was confirmed -by Don Egidio's telling me that he came from a village of Val Camonica, -the radiant valley which extends northward from the lake of Iseo to -the Adamello glaciers. His step-father had been a laborer on one of -the fruit-farms of a Milanese count who owned large estates in the Val -Camonica; and that gentleman, taking a fancy to the lad, whom he had seen -at work in his orchards, had removed him to his villa on the lake of Iseo -and had subsequently educated him for the Church. - -It was doubtless to this picturesque accident that Don Egidio owed the -mingling of ease and simplicity that gave an inimitable charm to his -stout shabby presence. It was as though some wild mountain-fruit had been -transplanted to the Count's orchards and had mellowed under cultivation -without losing its sylvan flavor. I have never seen the social art carried -farther without suggestion of artifice. The fact that Don Egidio's -amenities were mainly exercised on the mill-hands composing his parish -proved the genuineness of his gift. It is easier to simulate gentility -among gentlemen than among navvies; and the plain man is a touchstone who -draws out all the alloy in the gold. - -Among his parishioners Don Egidio ruled with the cheerful despotism of the -good priest. On cardinal points he was inflexible, but in minor matters he -had that elasticity of judgment which enables the Catholic discipline to -fit itself to every inequality of the human conscience. There was no appeal -from his verdict; but his judgment-seat was a revolving chair from which he -could view the same act at various angles. His influence was acknowledged -not only by his flock, but by the policeman at the corner, the "bar-keep'" -in the dive, the ward politician in the corner grocery. The general verdict -of Dunstable was that the Point would have been hell without the priest. -It was perhaps not precisely heaven with him; but such light of the upper -sky as pierced its murky atmosphere was reflected from Don Egidio's -countenance. It is hardly possible for any one to exercise such influence -without taking pleasure in it; and on the whole the priest was probably -a contented man; though it does not follow that he was a happy one. On -this point the first stages of our acquaintance yielded much food for -conjecture. At first sight Don Egidio was the image of cheerfulness. He had -all the physical indications of a mind at ease: the leisurely rolling gait, -the ready laugh, the hospitable eye of the man whose sympathies are always -on the latch. It took me some time to discover under his surface garrulity -the impenetrable reticence of his profession, and under his enjoyment of -trifles a levelling melancholy which made all enjoyment trifling. Don -Egidio's aspect and conversation were so unsuggestive of psychological -complexities that I set down this trait to poverty or home-sickness. There -are few classes of men more frugal in tastes and habit than the village -priest in Italy; but Don Egidio, by his own account, had been introduced, -at an impressionable age, to a way of living that must have surpassed his -wildest dreams of self-indulgence. To whatever privations his parochial -work had since accustomed him, the influences of that earlier life were -too perceptible in his talk not to have made a profound impression on his -tastes; and he remained, for all his apostolic simplicity, the image of the -family priest who has his seat at the rich man's table. - -It chanced that I had used one of my short European holidays to explore -afoot the romantic passes connecting the Valtelline with the lake of Iseo; -and my remembrance of that enchanting region made it seem impossible -that Don Egidio should ever look without a reminiscent pang on the grimy -perspective of his parochial streets. The transition was too complete, too -ironical, from those rich glades and Titianesque acclivities to the brick -hovels and fissured sidewalks of the Point. - -This impression was confirmed when Don Egidio, in response to my urgent -invitation, paid his first visit to my modest lodgings. He called one -winter evening, when a wood-fire in its happiest humor was giving a -factitious lustre to my book-shelves and bringing out the values of the one -or two old prints and Chinese porcelains that accounted for the perennial -shabbiness of my wardrobe. - -"Ah," said he with a murmur of satisfaction, as he laid aside his shiny hat -and bulging umbrella, "it is a long time since I have been in a _casa -signorile_." - -My remembrance of his own room (he lodged with the doctor and the -_levatrice_) saved this epithet from the suggestion of irony and kept -me silent while he sank into my arm-chair with the deliberation of a tired -traveller lowering himself gently into a warm bath. - -"Good! good!" he repeated, looking about him. "Books, porcelains, objects -of _virtu_--I am glad to see that there are still such things in the -world!" And he turned a genial eye on the glass of Marsala that I had -poured out for him. - -Don Egidio was the most temperate of men and never exceeded his one glass; -but he liked to sit by the hour puffing at my Cabanas, which I suspected -him of preferring to the black weed of his native country. Under the -influence of my tobacco he became even more blandly garrulous, and I -sometimes fancied that of all the obligations of his calling none could -have placed such a strain on him as that of preserving the secrets of the -confessional. He often talked of his early life at the Count's villa, where -he had been educated with his patron's two sons till he was of age to be -sent to the seminary; and I could see that the years spent in simple and -familiar intercourse with his benefactors had been the most vivid chapter -in his experience. The Italian peasant's inarticulate tenderness for the -beauty of his birthplace had been specialized in him by contact with -cultivated tastes, and he could tell me not only that the Count had a -"stupendous" collection of pictures, but that the chapel of the villa -contained a sepulchral monument by Bambaja, and that the art-critics were -divided as to the authenticity of the Leonardo in the family palace at -Milan. - -On all these subjects he was inexhaustibly voluble; but there was one point -which he always avoided, and that was his reason for coming to America. I -remember the round turn with which he brought me up when I questioned him. - -"A priest," said he, "is a soldier and must obey orders like a soldier." -He set down his glass of Marsala and strolled across the room. "I had not -observed," he went on, "that you have here a photograph of the Sposalizio -of the Brera. What a picture! _E stupendo_!" and he turned back to his -seat and smilingly lit a fresh cigar. - -I saw at once that I had hit on a point where his native garrulity was -protected by the chain-mail of religious discipline that every Catholic -priest wears beneath his cassock. I had too much respect for my friend -to wish to penetrate his armor, and now and then I almost fancied he was -grateful to me for not putting his reticence to the test. - -Don Egidio must have been past sixty when I made his acquaintance; but it -was not till the close of an exceptionally harsh winter, some five or six -years after our first meeting, that I began to think of him as an old man. -It was as though the long-continued cold had cracked and shrivelled him. He -had grown bent and hollow-chested and his lower lip shook like an unhinged -door. The summer heat did little to revive him, and in September, when I -came home from my vacation, I found him just recovering from an attack of -pneumonia. That autumn he did not care to venture often into the night air, -and now and then I used to go and sit with him in his little room, to which -I had contributed the unheard-of luxuries of an easy-chair and a gas-stove. - -My engagements, however, made these visits infrequent, and several weeks -had elapsed without my seeing the _parocco_ when, one snowy November -morning, I ran across him in the railway-station. I was on my way to New -York for the day and had just time to wave a greeting to him as I jumped -into the railway-carriage; but a moment later, to my surprise, I saw him -stiffly clambering into the same train. I found him seated in the common -car, with his umbrella between his knees and a bundle done up in a red -cotton handkerchief on the seat at his side. The caution with which, at my -approach, he transferred this bundle to his arms caused me to glance at it -in surprise; and he answered my look by saying with a smile: - -"They are flowers for the dead--the most exquisite flowers--from the -greenhouses of Mr. Meriton--_si figuri_!" And he waved a descriptive -hand. "One of my lads, Gianpietro, is employed by the gardener there, and -every year on this day he brings me a beautiful bunch of flowers--for such -a purpose it is no sin," he added, with the charming Italian pliancy of -judgment. - -"And why are you travelling in this snowy weather, _signor parocco_?" -I asked, as he ended with a cough. - -He fixed me gravely with his simple shallow eye. "Because it is the day of -the dead, my son," he said, "and I go to place these on the grave of the -noblest man that ever lived." - -"You are going to New York?" - -"To Brooklyn--" - -I hesitated a moment, wishing to question him, yet uncertain whether his -replies were curtailed by the persistency of his cough or by the desire to -avoid interrogation. - -"This is no weather to be travelling with such a cough," I said at length. - -He made a deprecating gesture. - -"I have never missed the day--not once in eighteen years. But for me he -would have no one!" He folded his hands on his umbrella and looked away -from me to hide the trembling of his lip. - -I resolved on a last attempt to storm his confidence. "Your friend is -buried in Calvary cemetery?" - -He signed an assent. - -"That is a long way for you to go alone, _signor parocco_. The streets -are sure to be slippery and there is an icy wind blowing. Give me your -flowers and let me send them to the cemetery by a messenger. I give you my -word they shall reach their destination safely." - -He turned a quiet look on me. "My son, you are young," he said, "and you -don't know how the dead need us." He drew his breviary from his pocket and -opened it with a smile. "_Mi scusi?_" he murmured. - -The business which had called me to town obliged me to part from him as -soon as the train entered the station, and in my dash for the street I -left his unwieldy figure laboring far behind me through the crowd on the -platform. Before we separated, however, I had learned that he was returning -to Dunstable by the four o'clock train, and had resolved to despatch my -business in time to travel home with him. When I reached Wall Street I was -received with the news that the man I had appointed to meet was ill and -detained in the country. My business was "off" and I found myself with -the rest of the day at my disposal. I had no difficulty in deciding how -to employ my time. I was at an age when, in such contingencies, there is -always a feminine alternative; and even now I don't know how it was that, -on my way to a certain hospitable luncheon-table, I suddenly found myself -in a cab which was carrying me at full-speed to the Twenty-third Street -ferry. It was not till I had bought my ticket and seated myself in the -varnished tunnel of the ferry-boat that I was aware of having been diverted -from my purpose by an overmastering anxiety for Don Egidio. I rapidly -calculated that he had not more than an hour's advance on me, and that, -allowing for my greater agility and for the fact that I had a cab at my -call, I was likely to reach the cemetery in time to see him under shelter -before the gusts of sleet that were already sweeping across the river had -thickened to a snow-storm. - -At the gates of the cemetery I began to take a less sanguine view of my -attempt. The commemorative anniversary had filled the silent avenues -with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the -gatekeeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a -bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The -gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send -its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go -exactly contrary to his indication, and thanks to this precaution I came, -after half an hour's search, on the figure of my poor _parocco_, -kneeling on the wet ground in one of the humblest by-ways of the great -necropolis. The mound before which he knelt was strewn with the spoils of -Mr. Meriton's conservatories, and on the weather-worn tablet at its head I -read the inscription: - -IL CONTE SIVIANO -DA MILANO. - -_Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus._ - -So engrossed was Don Egidio that for some moments I stood behind him -unobserved; and when he rose and faced me, grief had left so little room -for any minor emotion that he looked at me almost without surprise. - -"Don Egidio," I said, "I have a carriage waiting for you at the gate. You -must come home with me." - -He nodded quietly and I drew his hand through my arm. - -He turned back to the grave. "One moment, my son," he said. "It may be for -the last time." He stood motionless, his eyes on the heaped-up flowers -which were already bruised and blackened by the cold. "To leave him -alone--after sixty years! But God is everywhere--" he murmured as I led him -away. - -On the journey home he did not care to talk, and my chief concern was to -keep him wrapped in my greatcoat and to see that his bed was made ready as -soon as I had restored him to his lodgings. The _levatrice_ brought a -quilted coverlet from her own room and hovered over him as gently as though -he had been of the sex to require her services; while Agostino, at my -summons, appeared with a bowl of hot soup that was heralded down the -street by a reviving waft of garlic. To these ministrations I left the -_parocco_, intending to call for news of him the next evening; but an -unexpected pressure of work kept me late at my desk, and the following day -some fresh obstacle delayed me. - -On the third afternoon, as I was leaving the office, an agate-eyed infant -from the Point hailed me with a message from the doctor. The _parocco_ -was worse and had asked for me. I jumped into the nearest car and ten -minutes later was running up the doctor's greasy stairs. - -To my dismay I found Don Egidio's room cold and untenanted; but I was -reassured a moment later by the appearance of the _levatrice_, who -announced that she had transferred the blessed man to her own apartment, -where he could have the sunlight and a good bed to lie in. There in fact -he lay, weak but smiling, in a setting which contrasted oddly enough with -his own monastic surroundings: a cheerful grimy room, hung with anecdotic -chromos, photographs of lady-patients proudly presenting their offspring -to the camera, and innumerable Neapolitan _santolini_ decked out with -shrivelled palm-leaves. - -The _levatrice_ whispered that the good man had the pleurisy, and -that, as she phrased it, he was nearing his last mile-stone. I saw that he -was in fact in a bad way, but his condition did not indicate any pressing -danger, and I had the presentiment that he would still, as the saying is, -put up a good fight. It was clear, however, that he knew what turn the -conflict must take, and the solemnity with which he welcomed me showed that -my summons was a part of that spiritual strategy with which the Catholic -opposes the surprise of death. - -"My son," he said, when the _levatrice_ had left us, "I have a favor -to ask you. You found me yesterday bidding good-bye to my best friend." -His cough interrupted him. "I have never told you," he went on, "the name -of the family in which I was brought up. It was Siviano, and that was -the grave of the Count's eldest son, with whom I grew up as a brother. -For eighteen years he has lain in that strange ground--_in terra -aliena_--and when I die, there will be no one to care for his grave." - -I saw what he waited for. "I will care for it, _signor parocco_." - -"I knew I should have your promise, my child; and what you promise you -keep. But my friend is a stranger to you--you are young and at your age -life is a mistress who kisses away sad memories. Why should you remember -the grave of a stranger? I cannot lay such a claim on you. But I will tell -you his story--and then I think that neither joy nor grief will let you -forget him; for when you rejoice you will remember how he sorrowed; and -when you sorrow the thought of him will be like a friend's hand in yours." - - -II - -You tell me (Don Egidio began) that you know our little lake; and if you -have seen it you will understand why it always used to remind me of the -"garden enclosed" of the Canticles. - -_Hortus inclusus; columba mea in foraminibus petrae_: the words used -to come back to me whenever I returned from a day's journey across the -mountains, and looking down saw the blue lake far below, hidden in its -hills like a happy secret in a stern heart. We were never envious of -the glory of the great lakes. They are like the show pictures that some -nobleman hangs in his public gallery; but our Iseo is the treasure that -he hides in his inner chamber. - -You tell me you saw it in summer, when it looks up like a saint's eye, -reflecting the whole of heaven. It was then too that I first saw it. -My future friend, the old Count, had found me at work on one of his -fruit-farms up the valley, and hearing that I was ill-treated by my -step-father--a drunken pedlar from the Val Mastellone, whom my poor mother -a year or two earlier had come across at the fair of Lovere--he had taken -me home with him to Iseo. I used to serve mass in our hill-village of -Cerveno, and the village children called me "the little priest" because -when my work was done I often crept back to the church to get away from -my step-father's blows and curses. "I will make a real priest of him," -the Count declared; and that afternoon, perched on the box of his -travelling-carriage, I was whirled away from the dark scenes of my -childhood into a world, where, as it seemed to me, every one was as happy -as an angel on a _presepio_. - -I wonder if you remember the Count's villa? It lies on the shore of the -lake, facing the green knoll of Monte Isola, and overlooked by the village -of Siviano and by the old parish-church where I said mass for fifteen happy -years. The village hangs on a ledge of the mountain; but the villa dips its -foot in the lake, smiling at its reflection like a bather lingering on the -brink. What Paradise it seemed to me that day! In our church up the valley -there hung an old brown picture, with a Saint Sabastian in the foreground; -and behind him the most wonderful palace, with terraced gardens adorned -with statues and fountains, where fine folk in resplendent dresses walked -up and down without heeding the blessed martyr's pangs. The Count's villa, -with its terraces, its roses, its marble steps descending to the lake, -reminded me of that palace; only instead of being inhabited by wicked -people engrossed in their selfish pleasures it was the home of the kindest -friends that ever took a poor lad by the hand. - -The old Count was a widower when I first knew him. He had been twice -married, and his first wife had left him two children, a son and a -daughter. The eldest, Donna Marianna, was then a girl of twenty, who -kept her father's house and was a mother to the two lads. She was not -handsome or learned, and had no taste for the world; but she was like the -lavender-plant in a poor man's window--just a little gray flower, but a -sweetness that fills the whole house. Her brother, Count Roberto, had been -ailing from his birth, and was a studious lad with a melancholy musing face -such as you may see in some of Titian's portraits of young men. He looked -like an exiled prince dressed in mourning. There was one child by the -second marriage, Count Andrea, a boy of my own age, handsome as a Saint -George, but not as kind as the others. No doubt, being younger, he was less -able to understand why an uncouth peasant lad should have been brought to -his father's table; and the others were so fearful of hurting my feelings -that, but for his teasing, I might never have mended my clumsy manners or -learned how to behave in the presence of my betters. Count Andrea was not -sparing in such lessons, and Count Roberto, in spite of his weak arms, -chastised his brother roundly when he thought the discipline had been too -severe; but for my part it seemed to me natural enough that such a godlike -being should lord it over a poor clodhopper like myself. - -Well--I will not linger over the beginning of my new life for my story has -to do with its close. Only I should like to make you understand what the -change meant to me--an ignorant peasant lad, coming from hard words and -blows and a smoke-blackened hut in the hills to that great house full of -rare and beautiful things, and of beings who seemed to me even more rare -and beautiful. Do you wonder I was ready to kiss the ground they trod, and -would have given the last drop of my blood to serve them? - -In due course I was sent to the seminary at Lodi; and on holidays I used -to visit the family in Milan. Count Andrea was growing up to be one of -the handsomest young men imaginable, but a trifle wild; and the old Count -married him in haste to the daughter of a Venetian noble, who brought as -her dower a great estate in Istria. The Countess Gemma, as this lady was -called, was as light as thistledown and had an eye like a baby's; but while -she was cooing for the moon her pretty white hands were always stealing -toward something within reach that she had not been meant to have. The old -Count was not alert enough to follow these manoeuvres; and the Countess hid -her designs under a torrent of guileless chatter, as pick-pockets wear long -sleeves to conceal their movements. Her only fault, he used to say, was -that one of her aunts had married an Austrian; and this event having taken -place before she was born he laughingly acquitted her of any direct share -in it. She confirmed his good opinion of her by giving her husband two -sons; and Roberto showing no inclination to marry, these boys naturally -came to be looked on as the heirs of the house. - -Meanwhile I had finished my course of studies, and the old Count, on my -twenty-first birthday, had appointed me priest of the parish of Siviano. It -was the year of Count Andrea's marriage and there were great festivities at -the villa. Three years later the old Count died, to the sorrow of his two -eldest children. Donna Marianna and Count Roberto closed their apartments -in the palace at Milan and withdrew for a year to Siviano. It was then -that I first began to know my friend. Before that I had loved him without -understanding him; now I learned of what metal he was made. His bookish -tastes inclined him to a secluded way of living; and his younger brother -perhaps fancied that he would not care to assume the charge of the estate. -But if Andrea thought this he was disappointed. Roberto resolutely took up -the tradition of his father's rule, and, as if conscious of lacking the -old Count's easy way with the peasants, made up for it by a redoubled zeal -for their welfare. I have seen him toil for days to adjust some trifling -difficulty that his father would have set right with a ready word; like the -sainted bishop who, when a beggar asked him for a penny, cried out: "Alas, -my brother, I have not a penny in my purse; but here are two gold pieces, -if they can be made to serve you instead!" We had many conferences over -the condition of his people, and he often sent me up the valley to look -into the needs of the peasantry on the fruit-farms. No grievance was too -trifling for him to consider it, no abuse too deep-seated for him to root -it out; and many an hour that other men of his rank would have given to -books or pleasure was devoted to adjusting a quarrel about boundary-lines -or to weighing the merits of a complaint against the tax-collector. I -often said that he was as much his people's priest as I; and he smiled and -answered that every landowner was a king and that in old days the king was -always a priest. - -Donna Marianna was urgent with him to marry, but he always declared that -he had a family in his tenantry, and that, as for a wife, she had never -let him feel the want of one. He had that musing temper which gives a man -a name for coldness; though in fact he may all the while be storing fuel -for a great conflagration. But to me he whispered another reason for not -marrying. A man, he said, does not take wife and rejoice while his mother -is on her death-bed; and Italy, his mother, lay dying, with the foreign -vultures waiting to tear her apart. - -You are too young to know anything of those days, my son; and how can any -one understand them who did not live through them? Italy lay dying indeed; -but Lombardy was her heart, and the heart still beat, and sent the faint -blood creeping to her cold extremities. Her torturers, weary of their -work, had allowed her to fall into a painless stupor; but just as she was -sinking from sleep to death, heaven sent Radetsky to scourge her back to -consciousness; and at the first sting of his lash she sprang maimed and -bleeding to her feet. - -Ah, those days, those days, my son! Italy--Italy--was the word on our -lips; but the thought in our hearts was just _Austria_. We clamored -for liberty, unity, the franchise; but under our breath we prayed only to -smite the white-coats. Remove the beam from our eye, we cried, and we shall -see our salvation clearly enough! We priests in the north were all liberals -and worked with the nobles and the men of letters. Gioberti was our -breviary and his Holiness the new Pope was soon to be the Tancred of our -crusade. But meanwhile, mind you, all this went on in silence, underground -as it were, while on the surface Lombardy still danced, feasted, married, -and took office under the Austrian. In the iron-mines up our valley there -used to be certain miners who stayed below ground for months at a time; -and, like one of these, Roberto remained buried in his purpose, while life -went its way overhead. Though I was not in his confidence I knew well -enough where his thoughts were, for he went among us with the eye of a -lover, the visionary look of one who hears a Voice. We all heard that -Voice, to be sure, mingling faintly with the other noises of life; but to -Roberto it was already as the roar of mighty waters, drowning every other -sound with its thunder. - -On the surface, as I have said, things looked smooth enough. An Austrian -cardinal throned in Milan and an Austrian-hearted Pope ruled in Rome. In -Lombardy, Austria couched like a beast of prey, ready to spring at our -throats if we stirred or struggled. The Moderates, to whose party Count -Roberto belonged, talked of prudence, compromise, the education of the -masses; but if their words were a velvet sheath their thought was a dagger. -For many years, as you know, the Milanese had maintained an outward show of -friendliness with their rulers. The nobles had accepted office under the -vice-roy, and in the past there had been frequent intermarriage between -the two aristocracies. But now, one by one, the great houses had closed -their doors against official society. Though some of the younger and more -careless, those who must dance and dine at any cost, still went to the -palace and sat beside the enemy at the opera, fashion was gradually taking -sides against them, and those who had once been laughed at as old fogeys -were now applauded as patriots. Among these, of course, was Count Roberto, -who for several years had refused to associate with the Austrians, and -had silently resented his easy-going brother's disregard of political -distinctions. Andrea and Gemma belonged to the moth tribe, who flock to -the brightest light; and Gemma's Istrian possessions, and her family's -connection with the Austrian nobility, gave them a pretext for fluttering -about the vice-regal candle. Roberto let them go their way, but his own -course was a tacit protest against their conduct. They were always welcome -at the palazzo Siviano; but he and Donna Marianna withdrew from society in -order to have an excuse for not showing themselves at the Countess Gemma's -entertainments. If Andrea and Gemma were aware of his disapproval they were -clever enough to ignore it; for the rich elder brother who paid their debts -and never meant to marry was too important a person to be quarrelled with -on political grounds. They seemed to think that if he married it would be -only to spite them; and they were persuaded that their future depended on -their giving him no cause to take such reprisals. I shall never be more -than a plain peasant at heart and I have little natural skill in discerning -hidden motives; but the experience of the confessional gives every priest -a certain insight into the secret springs of action, and I often wondered -that the worldly wisdom of Andrea and Gemma did not help them to a clearer -reading of their brother's character. For my part I knew that, in Roberto's -heart, no great passion could spring from a mean motive; and I had always -thought that if he ever loved any woman as he loved Italy, it must be from -his country's hand that he received his bride. And so it came about. - -Have you ever noticed, on one of those still autumn days before a storm, -how here and there a yellow leaf will suddenly detach itself from the bough -and whirl through the air as though some warning of the gale had reached -it? So it was then in Lombardy. All round was the silence of decay; but now -and then a word, a look, a trivial incident, fluttered ominously through -the stillness. It was in '45. Only a year earlier the glorious death of the -Bandiera brothers had sent a long shudder through Italy. In the Romagna, -Renzi and his comrades had tried to uphold by action the protest set forth -in the "Manifesto of Rimini"; and their failure had sowed the seed which -d'Azeglio and Cavour were to harvest. Everywhere the forces were silently -gathering; and nowhere was the hush more profound, the least reverberation -more audible, than in the streets of Milan. - -It was Count Roberto's habit to attend early mass in the Cathedral; and one -morning, as he was standing in the aisle, a young girl passed him with her -father. Roberto knew the father, a beggarly Milanese of the noble family of -Intelvi, who had cut himself off from his class by accepting an appointment -in one of the government offices. As the two went by he saw a group of -Austrian officers looking after the girl, and heard one of them say: "Such -a choice morsel as that is too good for slaves;" and another answer with a -laugh: "Yes, it's a dish for the master's table!" - -The girl heard too. She was as white as a wind-flower and he saw the words -come out on her cheek like the red mark from a blow. She whispered to -her father, but he shook his head and drew her away without so much as -a glance at the Austrians. Roberto heard mass and then hastened out and -placed himself in the porch of the Cathedral. A moment later the officers -appeared, and they too stationed themselves near the doorway. Presently the -girl came out on her father's arm. Her admirers stepped forward to greet -Intelvi; and the cringing wretch stood there exchanging compliments with -them, while their insolent stare devoured his daughter's beauty. She, -poor thing, shook like a leaf, and her eyes, in avoiding theirs, suddenly -encountered Roberto's. Her look was a wounded bird that flew to him for -shelter. He carried it away in his breast and its live warmth beat against -his heart. He thought that Italy had looked at him through those eyes; for -love is the wiliest of masqueraders and has a thousand disguises at his -command. - -Within a month Faustina Intelvi was his wife. Donna Marianna and I -rejoiced; for we knew he had chosen her because he loved her, and she -seemed to us almost worthy of such a choice. As for Count Andrea and his -wife, I leave you to guess what ingredients were mingled in the kiss with -which they welcomed the bride. They were all smiles at Roberto's marriage, -and had only words of praise for his wife. Donna Marianna, who had -sometimes taxed me with suspecting their motives, rejoiced in this fresh -proof of their magnanimity; but for my part I could have wished to see them -a little less kind. All such twilight fears, however, vanished in the flush -of my friend's happiness. Over some natures love steals gradually, as the -morning light widens across a valley; but it had flashed on Roberto like -the leap of dawn to a snow-peak. He walked the world with the wondering -step of a blind man suddenly restored to sight; and once he said to me with -a laugh: "Love makes a Columbus of every one of us!" - -And the Countess--? The Countess, my son, was eighteen, and her husband was -forty. Count Roberto had the heart of a poet, but he walked with a limp and -his skin was sallow. Youth plucks the fruit for its color rather than its -flavor; and first love does not serenade its mistress on a church-organ. In -Italy girls are married as land is sold; if two estates adjoin two lives -are united. As for the portionless girl, she is a knick-knack that goes to -the highest bidder. Faustina was handed over to her purchaser as if she -had been a picture for his gallery; and the transaction doubtless seemed -as natural to her as to her parents. She walked to the altar like an -Iphigenia; but pallor becomes a bride, and it looks well for a daughter to -weep on leaving her mother. Perhaps it would have been different if she had -guessed that the threshold of her new home was carpeted with love and its -four corners hung with tender thoughts of her; but her husband was a silent -man, who never called attention to his treasures. - -The great palace in Milan was a gloomy house for a girl to enter. Roberto -and his sister lived in it as if it had been a monastery, going nowhere and -receiving only those who labored for the Cause. To Faustina, accustomed to -the easy Austrian society, the Sunday evening receptions at the palazzo -Siviano must have seemed as dreary as a scientific congress. It pleased -Roberto to regard her as a victim of barbarian insolence, an embodiment of -his country desecrated by the desire of the enemy; but though, like any -handsome penniless girl, Faustina had now and then been exposed to a free -look or a familiar word, I doubt if she connected such incidents with the -political condition of Italy. She knew, of course, that in marrying Siviano -she was entering a house closed against the Austrian. One of Siviano's -first cares had been to pension his father-in-law, with the stipulation -that Intelvi should resign his appointment and give up all relations with -the government; and the old hypocrite, only too glad to purchase idleness -on such terms, embraced the liberal cause with a zeal which left his -daughter no excuse for half-heartedness. But he found it less easy than he -had expected to recover a footing among his own people. In spite of his -patriotic bluster the Milanese held aloof from him; and being the kind of -man who must always take his glass in company he gradually drifted back -to his old associates. It was impossible to forbid Faustina to visit her -parents; and in their house she breathed an air that was at least tolerant -of Austria. - -But I must not let you think that the young Countess appeared ungrateful or -unhappy. She was silent and shy, and it needed a more enterprising temper -than Roberto's to break down the barrier between them. They seemed to talk -to one another through a convent-grating, rather than across a hearth; but -if Roberto had asked more of her than she could give, outwardly she was -a model wife. She chose me at once as her confessor and I watched over -the first steps of her new life. Never was younger sister tenderer to her -elder than she to Donna Marianna; never was young wife more mindful of her -religious duties, kinder to her dependents, more charitable to the poor; -yet to be with her was like living in a room with shuttered windows. She -was always the caged bird, the transplanted flower: for all Roberto's care -she never bloomed or sang. - -Donna Marianna was the first to speak of it. "The child needs more light -and air," she said. - -"Light? Air?" Roberto repeated. "Does she not go to mass every morning? -Does she not drive on the Corso every evening?" - -Donna Marianna was not called clever, but her heart was wiser than most -women's heads. - -"At our age, brother," said she, "the windows of the mind face north and -look out on a landscape full of lengthening shadows. Faustina needs another -outlook. She is as pale as a hyacinth grown in a cellar." - -Roberto himself turned pale and I saw that she had uttered his own thought. - -"You want me to let her go to Gemma's!" he exclaimed. - -"Let her go wherever there is a little careless laughter." - -"Laughter--now!" he cried, with a gesture toward the sombre line of -portraits above his head. - -"Let her laugh while she can, my brother." - -That evening after dinner he called Faustina to him. - -"My child," he said, "go and put on your jewels. Your sister Gemma gives a -ball to-night and the carriage waits to take you there. I am too much of a -recluse to be at ease in such scenes, but I have sent word to your father -to go with you." - -Andrea and Gemma welcomed their young sister-in-law with effusion, and from -that time she was often in their company. Gemma forbade any mention of -politics in her drawing-room, and it was natural that Faustina should be -glad to escape from the solemn conclaves of the palazzo Siviano to a house -where life went as gaily as in that villa above Florence where Boccaccio's -careless story-tellers took refuge from the plague. But meanwhile the -political distemper was rapidly spreading, and in spite of Gemma's Austrian -affiliations it was no longer possible for her to receive the enemy openly. -It was whispered that her door was still ajar to her old friends; but -the rumor may have risen from the fact that one of the Austrian cavalry -officers stationed at Milan was her own cousin, the son of the aunt on -whose misalliance the old Count had so often bantered her. No one could -blame the Countess Gemma for not turning her own flesh and blood out of -doors; and the social famine to which the officers of the garrison were -reduced made it natural that young Welkenstern should press the claims of -consanguinity. - -All this must have reached Roberto's ears; but he made no sign and his wife -came and went as she pleased. When they returned the following year to the -old dusky villa at Siviano she was like the voice of a brook in a twilight -wood: one could not look at her without ransacking the spring for new -similes to paint her freshness. With Roberto it was different. I found him -older, more preoccupied and silent; but I guessed that his preoccupations -were political, for when his eye rested on his wife it cleared like the -lake when a cloud-shadow lifts from it. - -Count Andrea and his wife occupied an adjoining villa; and during the -_villeggiatura_ the two households lived almost as one family. -Roberto, however, was often absent in Milan, called thither on business of -which the nature was not hard to guess. Sometimes he brought back guests to -the villa; and on these occasions Faustina and Donna Marianna went to Count -Andrea's for the day. I have said that I was not in his confidence; but -he knew my sympathies were with the liberals and now and then he let fall -a word of the work going on underground. Meanwhile the new Pope had been -elected, and from Piedmont to Calabria we hailed in him the Banner that was -to lead our hosts to war. - -So time passed and we reached the last months of '47. The villa on Iseo had -been closed since the end of August. Roberto had no great liking for his -gloomy palace in Milan, and it had been his habit to spend nine months -of the year at Siviano; but he was now too much engrossed in his work to -remain away from Milan, and his wife and sister had joined him there as -soon as the midsummer heat was over. During the autumn he had called me -once or twice to the city to consult me on business connected with his -fruit-farms; and in the course of our talks he had sometimes let fall a -hint of graver matters. It was in July of that year that a troop of Croats -had marched into Ferrara, with muskets and cannon loaded. The lighted -matches of their cannon had fired the sleeping hate of Austria, and the -whole country now echoed the Lombard cry: "Out with the barbarian!" All -talk of adjustment, compromise, reorganization, shrivelled on lips that -the live coal of patriotism had touched. Italy for the Italians, and -then--monarchy, federation, republic, it mattered not what! - -The oppressor's grip had tightened on our throats and the clear-sighted -saw well enough that Metternich's policy was to provoke a rebellion and -then crush it under the Croat heel. But it was too late to cry prudence in -Lombardy. With the first days of the new year the tobacco riots had drawn -blood in Milan. Soon afterward the Lions' Club was closed, and edicts were -issued forbidding the singing of Pio Nono's hymn, the wearing of white and -blue, the collecting of subscriptions for the victims of the riots. To each -prohibition Milan returned a fresh defiance. The ladies of the nobility put -on mourning for the rioters who had been shot down by the soldiery. Half -the members of the Guardia Nobile resigned and Count Borromeo sent back -his Golden Fleece to the Emperor. Fresh regiments were continually pouring -into Milan and it was no secret that Radetsky was strengthening the -fortifications. Late in January several leading liberals were arrested and -sent into exile, and two weeks later martial law was proclaimed in Milan. -At the first arrests several members of the liberal party had hastily left -Milan, and I was not surprised to hear, a few days later, that orders had -been given to reopen the villa at Siviano. The Count and Countess arrived -there early in February. - -It was seven months since I had seen the Countess, and I was struck with -the change in her appearance. - -She was paler than ever, and her step had lost its lightness. Yet she -did not seem to share her husband's political anxieties; one would have -said that she was hardly aware of them. She seemed wrapped in a veil of -lassitude, like Iseo on a still gray morning, when dawn is blood-red on the -mountains but a mist blurs its reflection in the lake. I felt as though her -soul were slipping away from me, and longed to win her back to my care; but -she made her ill-health a pretext for not coming to confession, and for the -present I could only wait and carry the thought of her to the altar. She -had not been long at Siviano before I discovered that this drooping mood -was only one phase of her humor. Now and then she flung back the cowl of -melancholy and laughed life in the eye; but next moment she was in shadow -again, and her muffled thoughts had given us the slip. She was like the -lake on one of those days when the wind blows twenty ways and every -promontory holds a gust in ambush. - -Meanwhile there was a continual coming and going of messengers between -Siviano and the city. They came mostly at night, when the household slept, -and were away again with the last shadows; but the news they brought stayed -and widened, shining through every cranny of the old house. The whole of -Lombardy was up. From Pavia to Mantua, from Como to Brescia, the streets -ran blood like the arteries of one great body. At Pavia and Padua the -universities were closed. The frightened vice-roy was preparing to withdraw -from Milan to Verona, and Radetsky continued to pour his men across the -Alps, till a hundred thousand were massed between the Piave and the Ticino. -And now every eye was turned to Turin. Ah, how we watched for the blue -banner of Piedmont on the mountains! Charles Albert was pledged to our -cause; his whole people had armed to rescue us, the streets echoed with -_avanti, Savoia!_ and yet Savoy was silent and hung back. Each day was -a life-time strained to the cracking-point with hopes and disappointments. -We reckoned the hours by rumors, the very minutes by hearsay. Then -suddenly--ah, it was worth living through!--word came to us that Vienna -was in revolt. The points of the compass had shifted and our sun had risen -in the north. I shall never forget that day at the villa. Roberto sent for -me early, and I found him smiling and resolute, as becomes a soldier on -the eve of action. He had made all his preparations to leave for Milan and -was awaiting a summons from his party. The whole household felt that great -events impended, and Donna Marianna, awed and tearful, had pleaded with -her brother that they should all receive the sacrament together the next -morning. Roberto and his sister had been to confession the previous day, -but the Countess Faustina had again excused herself. I did not see her -while I was with the Count, but as I left the house she met me in the -laurel-walk. The morning was damp and cold, and she had drawn a black scarf -over her hair, and walked with a listless dragging step; but at my approach -she lifted her head quickly and signed to me to follow her into one of the -recesses of clipped laurel that bordered the path. - -"Don Egidio," she said, "you have heard the news?" - -I assented. - -"The Count goes to Milan to-morrow?" - -"It seems probable, your excellency." - -"There will be fighting--we are on the eve of war, I mean?" - -"We are in God's hands, your excellency." - -"In God's hands!" she murmured. Her eyes wandered and for a moment we stood -silent; then she drew a purse from her pocket. "I was forgetting," she -exclaimed. "This is for that poor girl you spoke to me about the other -day--what was her name? The girl who met the Austrian soldier at the fair -at Peschiera--" - -"Ah, Vannina," I said; "but she is dead, your excellency." - -"Dead!" She turned white and the purse dropped from her hand. I picked it -up and held it out to her, but she put back my hand. "That is for masses, -then," she said; and with that she moved away toward the house. - -I walked on to the gate; but before I had reached it I heard her step -behind me. - -"Don Egidio!" she called; and I turned back. - -"You are coming to say mass in the chapel to-morrow morning?" - -"That is the Count's wish." - -She wavered a moment. "I am not well enough to walk up to the village this -afternoon," she said at length. "Will you come back later and hear my -confession here?" - -"Willingly, your excellency." - -"Come at sunset then." She looked at me gravely. "It is a long time since I -have been to confession," she added. - -"My child, the door of heaven is always unlatched." - -She made no answer and I went my way. - -I returned to the villa a little before sunset, hoping for a few words -with Roberto. I felt with Faustina that we were on the eve of war, and the -uncertainty of the outlook made me treasure every moment of my friend's -company. I knew he had been busy all day, but hoped to find that his -preparations were ended and that he could spare me a half hour. I was not -disappointed; for the servant who met me asked me to follow him to the -Count's apartment. Roberto was sitting alone, with his back to the door, at -a table spread with maps and papers. He stood up and turned an ashen face -on me. - -"Roberto!" I cried, as if we had been boys together. - -He signed to me to be seated. - -"Egidio," he said suddenly, "my wife has sent for you to confess her?" - -"The Countess met me on my way home this morning and expressed a wish to -receive the sacrament to-morrow morning with you and Donna Marianna, and I -promised to return this afternoon to hear her confession." - -Roberto sat silent, staring before him as though he hardly heard. At length -he raised his head and began to speak. - -"You have noticed lately that my wife has been ailing?" he asked. - -"Every one must have seen that the Countess is not in her usual health. She -has seemed nervous, out of spirits--I have fancied that she might be -anxious about your excellency." - -He leaned across the table and laid his wasted hand on mine. "Call me -Roberto," he said. - -There was another pause before he went on. "Since I saw you this morning," -he said slowly, "something horrible has happened. After you left I sent for -Andrea and Gemma to tell them the news from Vienna and the probability of -my being summoned to Milan before night. You know as well as I that we have -reached a crisis. There will be fighting within twenty-four hours, if I -know my people; and war may follow sooner than we think. I felt it my duty -to leave my affairs in Andrea's hands, and to entrust my wife to his care. -Don't look startled," he added with a faint smile. "No reasonable man goes -on a journey without setting his house in order; and if things take the -turn I expect it may be some months before you see me back at Siviano.--But -it was not to hear this that I sent for you." He pushed his chair aside and -walked up and down the room with his short limping step. "My God!" he broke -out wildly, "how can I say it?--When Andrea had heard me, I saw him -exchange a glance with his wife, and she said with that infernal sweet -voice of hers, 'Yes, Andrea, it is our duty.' - -"'Your duty?' I asked. 'What is your duty?' - -"Andrea wetted his lips with his tongue and looked at her again; and her -look was like a blade in his hand. - -"'Your wife has a lover,' he said. - -"She caught my arm as I flung myself on him. He is ten times stronger than -I, but you remember how I made him howl for mercy in the old days when he -used to bully you. - -"'Let me go,' I said to his wife. 'He must live to unsay it.' - -"Andrea began to whimper. 'Oh, my poor brother, I would give my heart's -blood to unsay it!' - -"'The secret has been killing us,' she chimed in. - -"'The secret? Whose secret? How dare you--?' - -"Gemma fell on her knees like a tragedy actress. 'Strike me--kill me--it is -I who am the offender! It was at my house that she met him--' - -"'Him?' - -"'Franz Welkenstern--my cousin,' she wailed. - -"I suppose I stood before them like a stunned ox, for they repeated the -name again and again, as if they were not sure of my having heard it.--Not -hear it!" he cried suddenly, dropping into a chair and hiding his face in -his hands. "Shall I ever on earth hear anything else again?" - -He sat a long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a -great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. - -After a while he went on in a low deliberate voice, as though his words -were balancing themselves on the brink of madness. With strange composure -he repeated each detail of his brother's charges: the meetings in the -Countess Gemma's drawing-room, the innocent friendliness of the two -young people, the talk of mysterious visits to a villa outside the Porta -Ticinese, the ever-widening circle of scandal that had spread about their -names. At first, Andrea said, he and his wife had refused to listen to the -reports which reached them. Then, when the talk became too loud, they had -sent for Welkenstern, remonstrated with him, implored him to exchange into -another regiment; but in vain. The young officer indignantly denied the -reports and declared that to leave his post at such a moment would be -desertion. - -With a laborious accuracy Roberto went on, detailing one by one each -incident of the hateful story, till suddenly he cried out, springing from -his chair--"And now to leave her with this lie unburied!" - -His cry was like the lifting of a grave-stone from my breast. "You must not -leave her!" I exclaimed. - -He shook his head. "I am pledged." - -"This is your first duty." - -"It would be any other man's; not an Italian's." - -I was silent: in those days the argument seemed unanswerable. - -At length I said: "No harm can come to her while you are away. Donna -Marianna and I are here to watch over her. And when you come back--" - -He looked at me gravely. "_If_ I come back--" - -"Roberto!" - -"We are men, Egidio; we both know what is coming. Milan is up already; and -there is a rumor that Charles Albert is moving. This year the spring rains -will be red in Italy." - -"In your absence not a breath shall touch her!" - -"And if I never come back to defend her? They hate her as hell hates, -Egidio!--They kept repeating, 'He is of her own age and youth draws -youth--.' She is in their way, Egidio!" - -"Consider, my son. They do not love her, perhaps; but why should they hate -her at such cost? She has given you no child." - -"No child!" He paused. "But what if--? She has ailed lately!" he cried, and -broke off to grapple with the stabbing thought. - -"Roberto! Roberto!" I adjured him. - -He jumped up and gripped my arm. - -"Egidio! You believe in her?" - -"She's as pure as a lily on the altar!" - -"Those eyes are wells of truth--and she has been like a daughter to -Marianna.--Egidio! do I look like an old man?" - -"Quiet yourself, Roberto," I entreated. - -"Quiet myself? With this sting in my blood? A lover--and an Austrian lover! -Oh, Italy, Italy, my bride!" - -"I stake my life on her truth," I cried, "and who knows better than I? Has -her soul not lain before me like the bed of a clear stream?" - -"And if what you saw there was only the reflection of your faith in her?" - -"My son, I am a priest, and the priest penetrates to the soul as the angel -passed through the walls of Peter's prison. I see the truth in her heart as -I see Christ in the host!" - -"No, no, she is false!" he cried. - -I sprang up terrified. "Roberto, be silent!" - -He looked at me with a wild incredulous smile. "Poor simple man of God!" he -said. - -"I would not exchange my simplicity for yours--the dupe of envy's first -malicious whisper!" - -"Envy--you think that?" - -"Is it questionable?" - -"You would stake your life on it?" - -"My life!" - -"Your faith?" - -"My faith!" - -"Your vows as a priest?" - -"My vows--" I stopped and stared at him. He had risen and laid his hand on -my shoulder. - -"You see now what I would be at," he said quietly. "I must take your place -presently--" - -"My place--?" - -"When my wife comes down. You understand me." - -"Ah, now you are quite mad!" I cried breaking away from him. - -"Am I?" he returned, maintaining his strange composure. "Consider a moment. -She has not confessed to you before since our return from Milan--" - -"Her ill-health--" - -He cut me short with a gesture. "Yet to-day she sends for you--" - -"In order that she may receive the sacrament with you on the eve of your -first separation." - -"If that is her only reason her first words will clear her. I must hear -those words, Egidio!" - -"You are quite mad," I repeated. - -"Strange," he said slowly. "You stake your life on my wife's innocence, yet -you refuse me the only means of vindicating it!" - -"I would give my life for any one of you--but what you ask is not mine to -give." - -"The priest first--the man afterward?" he sneered. - -"Long afterward!" - -He measured me with a contemptuous eye. "We laymen are ready to give the -last shred of flesh from our bones, but you priests intend to keep your -cassocks whole." - -"I tell you my cassock is not mine," I repeated. - -"And, by God," he cried, "you are right; for it's mine! Who put it on your -back but my father? What kept it there but my charity? Peasant! beggar! -Hear his holiness pontificate!" "Yes," I said, "I was a peasant and a -beggar when your father found me; and if he had left me one I might have -been excused for putting my hand to any ugly job that my betters required -of me; but he made me a priest, and so set me above all of you, and laid on -me the charge of your souls as well as mine." - -He sat down shaken with dreadful tears. "Ah," he broke out, "would you have -answered me thus when we were boys together, and I stood between you and -Andrea?" - -"If God had given me the strength." - -"You call it strength to make a woman's soul your stepping-stone to -heaven?" - -"Her soul is in my care, not yours, my son. She is safe with me." - -"She? But I? I go out to meet death, and leave a worse death behind me!" -He leaned over and clutched my arm. "It is not for myself I plead but for -her--for her, Egidio! Don't you see to what a hell you condemn her if I -don't come back? What chance has she against that slow unsleeping hate? -Their lies will fasten themselves to her and suck out her life. You and -Marianna are powerless against such enemies." - -"You leave her in God's hands, my son." - -"Easily said--but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison -works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be -sent by her lover's hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free -my wife as well?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder. "My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith -in her in my hands and I will keep it whole." - -He stared at me strangely. "And what if your own fail you?" - -"In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!" - -"And yet--and yet--ah, this is a blind," he shouted; "you know all and -perjure yourself to spare me!" - -At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish -and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a -clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice. - -"You know all," he repeated, "and you dare not let me hear her!" - -"I dare not betray my trust." - -He waved the answer aside. - -"Is this a time to quibble over church discipline? If you believed in her -you would save her at any cost!" - -I said to myself, "Eternity can hold nothing worse than this for me--" and -clutched my resolve again like a cross to my bosom. - -Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna. - -"Faustina has sent to know if the _signar parocco_ is here." - -"He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel." Roberto spoke quietly, and -closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her -patter away across the brick floor of the _salone_. - -Roberto turned to me. "Egidio!" he said; and all at once I was no more than -a straw on the torrent of his will. - -The chapel adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in -the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin's shrine and the -old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But -I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but -the iron grip on my shoulder. - -"Quick!" he said and drove me forward. I heard him shoot back the bolt of -the outer door and a moment later I stood alone in the garden. The sun had -set and the cold spring dusk was falling. Lights shone here and there in -the long front of the villa; the statues glimmered gray among the thickets. -Through the window-pane of the chapel I caught the faint red gleam of the -Virgin's lamp; but I turned my back on it and walked away. - - * * * * * - -All night I lay like a heretic on the fire. Before dawn there came a call -from the villa. The Count had received a second summons from Milan and was -to set out in an hour. I hurried down the cold dewy path to the lake. All -was new and hushed and strange as on the day of resurrection; and in the -dark twilight of the garden alleys the statues stared at me like the -shrouded dead. - -In the _salone_, where the old Count's portrait hung, I found the -family assembled. Andrea and Gemma sat together, a little pinched, I -thought, but decent and self-contained, like mourners who expect to -inherit. Donna Marianna drooped near them, with something black over her -head and her face dim with weeping. Roberto received me calmly and then -turned to his sister. - -"Go fetch my wife," he said. - -While she was gone there was silence. We could hear the cold drip of the -garden-fountain and the patter of rats in the wall. Andrea and his wife -stared out of window and Roberto sat in his father's carved seat at the -head of the long table. Then the door opened and Faustina entered. - -When I saw her I stopped breathing. She seemed no more than the shell of -herself, a hollow thing that grief has voided. Her eyes returned our images -like polished agate, but conveyed to her no sense of our presence. Marianna -led her to a seat, and she crossed her hands and nailed her dull gaze on -Roberto. I looked from one to another, and in that spectral light it seemed -to me that we were all souls come to judgment and naked to each other as to -God. As to my own wrongdoing, it weighed on me no more than dust. The only -feeling I had room for was fear--a fear that seemed to fill my throat and -lungs and bubble coldly over my drowning head. - -Suddenly Roberto began to speak. His voice was clear and steady, and I -clutched at his words to drag myself above the surface of my terror. He -touched on the charge that had been made against his wife--he did not say -by whom--the foul rumor that had made itself heard on the eve of their -first parting. Duty, he said, had sent him a double summons; to fight for -his country and for his wife. He must clear his wife's name before he was -worthy to draw sword for Italy. There was no time to tame the slander -before throttling it; he had to take the shortest way to its throat. At -this point he looked at me and my soul shook. Then he turned to Andrea and -Gemma. - -"When you came to me with this rumor," he said quietly, "you agreed to -consider the family honor satisfied if I could induce Don Egidio to let me -take his place and overhear my wife's confession, and if that confession -convinced me of her innocence. Was this the understanding?" - -Andrea muttered something and Gemma tapped a sullen foot. - -"After you had left," Roberto continued, "I laid the case before Don Egidio -and threw myself on his mercy." He looked at me fixedly. "So strong was his -faith in my wife's innocence that for her sake he agreed to violate the -sanctity of the confessional. I took his place." - -Marianna sobbed and crossed herself and a strange look flitted over -Faustina's face. - -There was a moment's pause; then Roberto, rising, walked across the room to -his wife and took her by the hand. - -"Your seat is beside me, Countess Siviano," he said, and led her to the -empty chair by his own. - -Gemma started to her feet, but her husband pulled her down again. - -"Jesus! Mary!" We heard Donna Marianna moan. - -Roberto raised his wife's hand to his lips. "You forgive me," he said, "the -means I took to defend you?" And turning to Andrea he added slowly: "I -declare my wife innocent and my honor satisfied. You swear to stand by my -decision?" - -What Andrea stammered out, what hissing serpents of speech Gemma's clinched -teeth bit back, I never knew--for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face -was a wonder to behold. - -She had let herself be led across the room like a blind woman, and had -listened without change of feature to her husband's first words; but as -he ceased her frozen gaze broke and her whole body seemed to melt against -his breast. He put his arm out, but she slipped to his feet and Marianna -hastened forward to raise her up. At that moment we heard the stroke -of oars across the quiet water and saw the Count's boat touch the -landing-steps. Four strong oarsmen from Monte Isola were to row him down -to Iseo, to take horse for Milan, and his servant, knapsack on shoulder, -knocked warningly at the terrace window. - -"No time to lose, excellency!" he cried. - -Roberto turned and gripped my hand. "Pray for me," he said low; and with a -brief gesture to the others ran down the terrace to the boat. - -Marianna was bathing Faustina with happy tears. - -"Look up, dear! Think how soon he will come back! And there is the -sunrise--see!" - -Andrea and Gemma had slunk away like ghosts at cock-crow, and a red dawn -stood over Milan. - - * * * * * - -If that sun rose red it set scarlet. It was the first of the Five Days in -Milan--the Five Glorious Days, as they are called. Roberto reached the city -just before the gates closed. So much we knew--little more. We heard of him -in the Broletto (whence he must have escaped when the Austrians blew in -the door) and in the Casa Vidiserti, with Casati, Cattaneo and the rest; -but after the barricading began we could trace him only as having been -seen here and there in the thick of the fighting, or tending the wounded -under Bertani's orders. His place, one would have said, was in the -council-chamber, with the soberer heads; but that was an hour when every -man gave his blood where it was most needed, and Cernuschi, Dandolo, -Anfossi, della Porta fought shoulder to shoulder with students, artisans -and peasants. Certain it is that he was seen on the fifth day; for among -the volunteers who swarmed after Manara in his assault on the Porta Tosa -was a servant of palazzo Siviano; and this fellow swore he had seen his -master charge with Manara in the last assault--had watched him, sword -in hand, press close to the gates, and then, as they swung open before -the victorious dash of our men, had seen him drop and disappear in the -inrushing tide of peasants that almost swept the little company off its -feet. After that we heard nothing. There was savage work in Milan in those -days, and more than one well-known figure lay lost among the heaps of dead -hacked and disfeatured by Croat blades. - -At the villa, we waited breathless. News came to us hour by hour: the very -wind seemed to carry it, and it was swept to us on the incessant rush of -the rain. On the twenty-third Radetsky had fled from Milan, to face Venice -rising in his path. On the twenty-fourth the first Piedmontese had crossed -the Ticino, and Charles Albert himself was in Pavia on the twenty-ninth. -The bells of Milan had carried the word from Turin to Naples, from Genoa to -Ancona, and the whole country was pouring like a flood-tide into Lombardy. -Heroes sprang up from the bloody soil as thick as wheat after rain, and -every day carried some new name to us; but never the one for which we -prayed and waited. Weeks passed. We heard of Pastrengo, Goito, Rivoli; of -Radetsky hemmed into the Quadrilateral, and our troops closing in on him -from Rome, Tuscany and Venetia. Months passed--and we heard of Custozza. We -saw Charles Albert's broken forces flung back from the Mincio to the Oglio, -from the Oglio to the Adda. We followed the dreadful retreat from Milan, -and saw our rescuers dispersed like dust before the wind. But all the while -no word came to us of Roberto. - -These were dark days in Lombardy; and nowhere darker than in the old villa -on Iseo. In September Donna Marianna and the young Countess put on black, -and Count Andrea and his wife followed their example. In October the -Countess gave birth to a daughter. Count Andrea then took possession of the -palazzo Siviano, and the two women remained at the villa. I have no heart -to tell you of the days that followed. Donna Marianna wept and prayed -incessantly, and it was long before the baby could snatch a smile from her. -As for the Countess Faustina, she went among us like one of the statues in -the garden. The child had a wet-nurse from the village, and it was small -wonder there was no milk for it in that marble breast. I spent much of -my time at the villa, comforting Donna Marianna as best I could; but -sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when we three sat in the dimly-lit -_salone_, with the old Count's portrait overhead, and I looked up and -saw the Countess Faustina in the tall carved seat beside her husband's -empty chair, my spine grew chill and I felt a cold wind in my hair. - -The end of it was that in the spring I went to see my bishop and laid my -sin before him. He was a saintly and merciful old man, and gave me a -patient hearing. - -"You believed the lady innocent?" he asked when I had ended. - -"Monsignore, on my soul!" - -"You thought to avert a great calamity from the house to which you owed -more than your life?" - -"It was my only thought." - -He laid his hand on my shoulder. - -"Go home, my son. You shall learn my decision." - -Three months later I was ordered to resign my living and go to America, -where a priest was needed for the Italian mission church in New York. I -packed my possessions and set sail from Genoa. I knew no more of America -than any peasant up in the hills. I fully expected to be speared by naked -savages on landing; and for the first few months after my arrival I wished -at least once a day that such a blessed fate had befallen me. But it is -no part of my story to tell you what I suffered in those early days. The -Church had dealt with me mercifully, as is her wont, and her punishment -fell far below my deserts.... - -I had been some four years in New York, and no longer thought of looking -back from the plough, when one day word was brought me that an Italian -professor lay ill and had asked for a priest. There were many Italian -refugees in New York at that time, and the greater number, being -well-educated men, earned a living by teaching their language, which was -then included among the accomplishments of fashionable New York. The -messenger led me to a poor boarding-house and up to a small bare room on -the top floor. On the visiting-card nailed to the door I read the name "De -Roberti, Professor of Italian." Inside, a gray-haired haggard man tossed on -the narrow bed. He turned a glazed eye on me as I entered, and I recognized -Roberto Siviano. - -I steadied myself against the door-post and stood staring at him without a -word. - -"What's the matter?" asked the doctor who was bending over the bed. I -stammered that the sick man was an old friend. - -"He wouldn't know his oldest friend just now," said the doctor. "The -fever's on him; but it will go down toward sunset." - -I sat down at the head of the bed and took Roberto's hand in mine. - -"Is he going to die?" I asked. - -"I don't believe so; but he wants nursing." - -"I will nurse him." - -The doctor nodded and went out. I sat in the little room, with Roberto's -burning hand in mine. Gradually his skin cooled, the fingers grew quiet, -and the flush faded from his sallow cheek-bones. Toward dusk he looked up -at me and smiled. - -"Egidio," he said quietly. - -I administered the sacrament, which he received with the most fervent -devotion; then he fell into a deep sleep. - -During the weeks that followed I had no time to ask myself the meaning of -it all. My one business was to keep him alive if I could. I fought the -fever day and night, and at length it yielded. For the most part he raved -or lay unconscious; but now and then he knew me for a moment, and whispered -"Egidio" with a look of peace. - -I had stolen many hours from my duties to nurse him; and as soon as the -danger was past I had to go back to my parish work. Then it was that I -began to ask myself what had brought him to America; but I dared not face -the answer. - -On the fourth day I snatched a moment from my work and climbed to his -room. I found him sitting propped against his pillows, weak as a child but -clear-eyed and quiet. I ran forward, but his look stopped me. - -"_Signor parocco_," he said, "the doctor tells me that I owe my life -to your nursing, and I have to thank you for the kindness you have shown to -a friendless stranger." - -"A stranger?" I gasped. - -He looked at me steadily. "I am not aware that we have met before," he -said. - -For a moment I thought the fever was on him; but a second glance convinced -me that he was master of himself. - -"Roberto!" I cried, trembling. - -"You have the advantage of me," he said civilly. "But my name is Roberti, -not Roberto." - -The floor swam under me and I had to lean against the wall. - -"You are not Count Roberto Siviano of Milan?" - -"I am Tommaso de Roberti, professor of Italian, from Modena." - -"And you have never seen me before?" - -"Never that I know of." - -"Were you never at Siviano, on the lake of Iseo?" I faltered. - -He said calmly: "I am unacquainted with that part of Italy." - -My heart grew cold and I was silent. - -"You mistook me for a friend, I suppose?" he added. - -"Yes," I cried, "I mistook you for a friend;" and with that I fell on my -knees by his bed and cried like a child. - -Suddenly I felt a touch on my shoulder. "Egidio," said he in a broken -voice, "look up." - -I raised my eyes, and there was his old smile above me, and we clung to -each other without a word. Presently, however, he drew back, and put me -quietly aside. - -"Sit over there, Egidio. My bones are like water and I am not good for much -talking yet." - -"Let us wait, Roberto. Sleep now--we can talk tomorrow." - -"No. What I have to say must be said at once." He examined me thoughtfully. -"You have a parish here in New York?" - -I assented. - -"And my work keeps me here. I have pupils. It is too late to make a -change." - -"A change?" - -He continued to look at me calmly. "It would be difficult for me," he -explained, "to find employment in a new place." - -"But why should you leave here?" - -"I shall have to," he returned deliberately, "if you persist in recognizing -in me your former friend Count Siviano." - -"Roberto!" - -He lifted his hand. "Egidio," he said, "I am alone here, and without -friends. The companionship, the sympathy of my parish priest would be a -consolation in this strange city; but it must not be the companionship of -the _parocco_ of Siviano. You understand?" - -"Roberto," I cried, "it is too dreadful to understand!" - -"Be a man, Egidio," said he with a touch of impatience. "The choice lies -with you, and you must make it now. If you are willing to ask no questions, -to name no names, to make no allusions to the past, let us live as friends -together, in God's name! If not, as soon as my legs can carry me I must be -off again. The world is wide, luckily--but why should we be parted?" - -I was on my knees at his side in an instant. "We must never be parted!" I -cried. "Do as you will with me. Give me your orders and I obey--have I not -always obeyed you?" - -I felt his hand close sharply on mine. "Egidio!" he admonished me. - -"No--no--I shall remember. I shall say nothing--" - -"Think nothing?" - -"Think nothing," I said with a last effort. - -"God bless you!" he answered. - -My son, for eight years I kept my word to him. We met daily almost, we ate -and walked and talked together, we lived like David and Jonathan--but -without so much as a glance at the past. How he had escaped from Milan--how -he had reached New York--I never knew. We talked often of Italy's -liberation--as what Italians would not?--but never touched on his share in -the work. Once only a word slipped from him; and that was when one day he -asked me how it was that I had been sent to America. The blood rushed to my -face, and before I could answer he had raised a silencing hand. - -"I see," he said; "it was _your_ penance too." - -During the first years he had plenty of work to do, but he lived so -frugally that I guessed he had some secret use for his earnings. It was -easy to conjecture what it was. All over the world Italian exiles were -toiling and saving to further the great cause. He had political friends in -New York, and sometimes he went to other cities to attend meetings and make -addresses. His zeal never slackened; and but for me he would often have -gone hungry that some shivering patriot might dine. I was with him heart -and soul, but I had the parish on my shoulders, and perhaps my long -experience of men had made me a little less credulous than Christian -charity requires; for I could have sworn that some of the heroes who hung -on him had never had a whiff of Austrian blood, and would have fed out of -the same trough with the white-coats if there had been polenta enough to go -round. Happily my friend had no such doubts. He believed in the patriots as -devoutly as in the cause; and if some of his hard-earned dollars travelled -no farther than the nearest wine-cellar or cigar-shop, he never suspected -the course they took. - -His health was never the same after the fever; and by and by he began to -lose his pupils, and the patriots cooled off as his pockets fell in. Toward -the end I took him to live in my shabby attic. He had grown weak and had a -troublesome cough, and he spent the greater part of his days indoors. Cruel -days they must have been to him, but he made no sign, and always welcomed -me with a cheerful word. When his pupils dropped off, and his health made -it difficult for him to pick up work outside, he set up a letter-writer's -sign, and used to earn a few pennies by serving as amanuensis to my poor -parishioners; but it went against him to take their money, and half the -time he did the work for nothing. I knew it was hard for him to live on -charity, as he called it, and I used to find what jobs I could for him -among my friends the _negozianti_, who would send him letters to copy, -accounts to make up and what not; but we were all poor together, and the -master had licked the platter before the dog got it. - -So lived that just man, my son; and so, after eight years of exile, he died -one day in my arms. God had let him live long enough to see Solferino and -Villa-franca; and was perhaps never more merciful than in sparing him Monte -Rotondo and Mentana. But these are things of which it does not become me to -speak. The new Italy does not wear the face of our visions; but it is -written that God shall know His own, and it cannot be that He shall misread -the hearts of those who dreamed of fashioning her in His image. - -As for my friend, he is at peace, I doubt not; and his just life and holy -death intercede for me, who sinned for his sake alone. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crucial Instances, by Edith Wharton - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -***** This file should be named 7516.txt or 7516.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/7/5/1/7516/ - -Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William -Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Be sure to check the -copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing -this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. - -This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project -Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the -header without written permission. - -Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the -eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is -important information about your specific rights and restrictions in -how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a -donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. - - -**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** - -**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** - -*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** - - -Title: Crucial Instances - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7516] -[This file was first posted on May 13, 2003] - -Edition: 10 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: US-ASCII - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - - - - -Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William Flis, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team - - - - CRUCIAL INSTANCES - - BY - - EDITH WHARTON - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS - - -I _The Duchess at Prayer_ - -II _The Angel at the Grave_ - -III _The Recovery_ - -IV _"Copy": A Dialogue_ - -V _The Rembrandt_ - -VI _The Moving Finger_ - -VII _The Confessional_ - - - - -THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER - - -Have you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, -that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest -behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the -activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life -flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the -villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall -windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there -may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the -arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the -disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors.... - - -II - -From the loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue -barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated -vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes -and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted -the balustrade as with fine _laminae_ of gold, vineyards stooped to -the rich valley clasped in hills. The lower slopes were strewn with white -villages like stars spangling a summer dusk; and beyond these, fold on -fold of blue mountain, clear as gauze against the sky. The August air was -lifeless, but it seemed light and vivifying after the atmosphere of the -shrouded rooms through which I had been led. Their chill was on me and I -hugged the sunshine. - -"The Duchess's apartments are beyond," said the old man. - -He was the oldest man I had ever seen; so sucked back into the past that he -seemed more like a memory than a living being. The one trait linking him -with the actual was the fixity with which his small saurian eye held the -pocket that, as I entered, had yielded a _lira_ to the gate-keeper's -child. He went on, without removing his eye: - -"For two hundred years nothing has been changed in the apartments of the -Duchess." - -"And no one lives here now?" - -"No one, sir. The Duke, goes to Como for the summer season." - -I had moved to the other end of the loggia. Below me, through hanging -groves, white roofs and domes flashed like a smile. - -"And that's Vicenza?" - -"_Proprio_!" The old man extended fingers as lean as the hands fading -from the walls behind us. "You see the palace roof over there, just to the -left of the Basilica? The one with the row of statues like birds taking -flight? That's the Duke's town palace, built by Palladio." - -"And does the Duke come there?" - -"Never. In winter he goes to Rome." - -"And the palace and the villa are always closed?" - -"As you see--always." - -"How long has this been?" - -"Since I can remember." - -I looked into his eyes: they were like tarnished metal mirrors reflecting -nothing. "That must be a long time," I said involuntarily. - -"A long time," he assented. - -I looked down on the gardens. An opulence of dahlias overran the -box-borders, between cypresses that cut the sunshine like basalt shafts. -Bees hung above the lavender; lizards sunned themselves on the benches and -slipped through the cracks of the dry basins. Everywhere were vanishing -traces of that fantastic horticulture of which our dull age has lost the -art. Down the alleys maimed statues stretched their arms like rows of -whining beggars; faun-eared terms grinned in the thickets, and above the -laurustinus walls rose the mock ruin of a temple, falling into real ruin -in the bright disintegrating air. The glare was blinding. - -"Let us go in," I said. - -The old man pushed open a heavy door, behind which the cold lurked like a -knife. - -"The Duchess's apartments," he said. - -Overhead and around us the same evanescent frescoes, under foot the same -scagliola volutes, unrolled themselves interminably. Ebony cabinets, with -inlay of precious marbles in cunning perspective, alternated down the -room with the tarnished efflorescence of gilt consoles supporting Chinese -monsters; and from the chimney-panel a gentleman in the Spanish habit -haughtily ignored us. - -"Duke Ercole II.," the old man explained, "by the Genoese Priest." - -It was a narrow-browed face, sallow as a wax effigy, high-nosed and -cautious-lidded, as though modelled by priestly hands; the lips weak and -vain rather than cruel; a quibbling mouth that would have snapped at verbal -errors like a lizard catching flies, but had never learned the shape of a -round yes or no. One of the Duke's hands rested on the head of a dwarf, a -simian creature with pearl ear-rings and fantastic dress; the other turned -the pages of a folio propped on a skull. - -"Beyond is the Duchess's bedroom," the old man reminded me. - -Here the shutters admitted but two narrow shafts of light, gold bars -deepening the subaqueous gloom. On a dais the bedstead, grim, nuptial, -official, lifted its baldachin; a yellow Christ agonized between the -curtains, and across the room a lady smiled at us from the chimney-breast. - -The old man unbarred a shutter and the light touched her face. Such a face -it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, -and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo's lenient -goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath of a seventeenth century -dress! - -"No one has slept here," said the old man, "since the Duchess Violante." - -"And she was--?" - -"The lady there--first Duchess of Duke Ercole II." - -He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked a door at the farther end of the -room. "The chapel," he said. "This is the Duchess's balcony." As I turned -to follow him the Duchess tossed me a sidelong smile. - -I stepped into a grated tribune above a chapel festooned with stucco. -Pictures of bituminous saints mouldered between the pilasters; the -artificial roses in the altar-vases were gray with dust and age, and under -the cobwebby rosettes of the vaulting a bird's nest clung. Before the altar -stood a row of tattered arm-chairs, and I drew back at sight of a figure -kneeling near them. - -"The Duchess," the old man whispered. "By the Cavaliere Bernini." - -It was the image of a woman in furred robes and spreading fraise, her hand -lifted, her face addressed to the tabernacle. There was a strangeness in -the sight of that immovable presence locked in prayer before an abandoned -shrine. Her face was hidden, and I wondered whether it were grief or -gratitude that raised her hands and drew her eyes to the altar, where no -living prayer joined her marble invocation. I followed my guide down the -tribune steps, impatient to see what mystic version of such terrestrial -graces the ingenious artist had found--the Cavaliere was master of such -arts. The Duchess's attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs -fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how -admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope -of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face--it was a -frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so possessed a human -countenance.... - -The old man crossed himself and shuffled his feet on the marble. - -"The Duchess Violante," he repeated. - -"The same as in the picture?" - -"Eh--the same." - -"But the face--what does it mean?" - -He shrugged his shoulders and turned deaf eyes on me. Then he shot a glance -round the sepulchral place, clutched my sleeve and said, close to my ear: -"It was not always so." - -"What was not?" - -"The face--so terrible." - -"The Duchess's face?" - -"The statue's. It changed after--" - -"After?" - -"It was put here." - -"The statue's face _changed_--?" - -He mistook my bewilderment for incredulity and his confidential finger -dropped from my sleeve. "Eh, that's the story. I tell what I've heard. What -do I know?" He resumed his senile shuffle across the marble. "This is a bad -place to stay in--no one comes here. It's too cold. But the gentleman said, -_I must see everything_!" - -I let the _lire_ sound. "So I must--and hear everything. This story, -now--from whom did you have it?" - -His hand stole back. "One that saw it, by God!" - -"That saw it?" - -"My grandmother, then. I'm a very old man." - -"Your grandmother? Your grandmother was--?" - -"The Duchess's serving girl, with respect to you." - -"Your grandmother? Two hundred years ago?" - -"Is it too long ago? That's as God pleases. I am a very old man and she -was a very old woman when I was born. When she died she was as black as a -miraculous Virgin and her breath whistled like the wind in a keyhole. She -told me the story when I was a little boy. She told it to me out there in -the garden, on a bench by the fish-pond, one summer night of the year she -died. It must be true, for I can show you the very bench we sat on...." - - -III - -Noon lay heavier on the gardens; not our live humming warmth but the stale -exhalation of dead summers. The very statues seemed to drowse like watchers -by a death-bed. Lizards shot out of the cracked soil like flames and the -bench in the laurustinus-niche was strewn with the blue varnished bodies of -dead flies. Before us lay the fish-pond, a yellow marble slab above rotting -secrets. The villa looked across it, composed as a dead face, with the -cypresses flanking it for candles.... - - -IV - -"Impossible, you say, that my mother's mother should have been the -Duchess's maid? What do I know? It is so long since anything has happened -here that the old things seem nearer, perhaps, than to those who live in -cities.... But how else did she know about the statue then? Answer me that, -sir! That she saw with her eyes, I can swear to, and never smiled again, -so she told me, till they put her first child in her arms ... for she was -taken to wife by the steward's son, Antonio, the same who had carried -the letters.... But where am I? Ah, well ... she was a mere slip, you -understand, my grandmother, when the Duchess died, a niece of the upper -maid, Nencia, and suffered about the Duchess because of her pranks and the -funny songs she knew. It's possible, you think, she may have heard from -others what she afterward fancied she had seen herself? How that is, it's -not for an unlettered man to say; though indeed I myself seem to have seen -many of the things she told me. This is a strange place. No one comes here, -nothing changes, and the old memories stand up as distinct as the statues -in the garden.... - -"It began the summer after they came back from the Brenta. Duke Ercole had -married the lady from Venice, you must know; it was a gay city, then, I'm -told, with laughter and music on the water, and the days slipped by like -boats running with the tide. Well, to humor her he took her back the first -autumn to the Brenta. Her father, it appears, had a grand palace there, -with such gardens, bowling-alleys, grottoes and casinos as never were; -gondolas bobbing at the water-gates, a stable full of gilt coaches, a -theatre full of players, and kitchens and offices full of cooks and -lackeys to serve up chocolate all day long to the fine ladies in masks -and furbelows, with their pet dogs and their blackamoors and their -_abates_. Eh! I know it all as if I'd been there, for Nencia, you see, -my grandmother's aunt, travelled with the Duchess, and came back with her -eyes round as platters, and not a word to say for the rest of the year to -any of the lads who'd courted her here in Vicenza. - -"What happened there I don't know--my grandmother could never get at -the rights of it, for Nencia was mute as a fish where her lady was -concerned--but when they came back to Vicenza the Duke ordered the villa -set in order; and in the spring he brought the Duchess here and left her. -She looked happy enough, my grandmother said, and seemed no object for -pity. Perhaps, after all, it was better than being shut up in Vicenza, -in the tall painted rooms where priests came and went as softly as cats -prowling for birds, and the Duke was forever closeted in his library, -talking with learned men. The Duke was a scholar; you noticed he was -painted with a book? Well, those that can read 'em make out that they're -full of wonderful things; as a man that's been to a fair across the -mountains will always tell his people at home it was beyond anything -_they'll_ ever see. As for the Duchess, she was all for music, -play-acting and young company. The Duke was a silent man, stepping quietly, -with his eyes down, as though he'd just come from confession; when the -Duchess's lap-dog yapped at his heels he danced like a man in a swarm of -hornets; when the Duchess laughed he winced as if you'd drawn a diamond -across a window-pane. And the Duchess was always laughing. - -"When she first came to the villa she was very busy laying out the gardens, -designing grottoes, planting groves and planning all manner of agreeable -surprises in the way of water-jets that drenched you unexpectedly, and -hermits in caves, and wild men that jumped at you out of thickets. She had -a very pretty taste in such matters, but after a while she tired of it, and -there being no one for her to talk to but her maids and the chaplain--a -clumsy man deep in his books--why, she would have strolling players out -from Vicenza, mountebanks and fortune-tellers from the market-place, -travelling doctors and astrologers, and all manner of trained animals. -Still it could be seen that the poor lady pined for company, and her -waiting women, who loved her, were glad when the Cavaliere Ascanio, the -Duke's cousin, came to live at the vineyard across the valley--you see -the pinkish house over there in the mulberries, with a red roof and a -pigeon-cote? - -"The Cavaliere Ascanio was a cadet of one of the great Venetian houses, -_pezzi grossi_ of the Golden Book. He had been' meant for the Church, -I believe, but what! he set fighting above praying and cast in his lot with -the captain of the Duke of Mantua's _bravi_, himself a Venetian of -good standing, but a little at odds with the law. Well, the next I know, -the Cavaliere was in Venice again, perhaps not in good odor on account of -his connection with the gentleman I speak of. Some say he tried to carry -off a nun from the convent of Santa Croce; how that may be I can't say; but -my grandmother declared he had enemies there, and the end of it was that on -some pretext or other the Ten banished him to Vicenza. There, of course, -the Duke, being his kinsman, had to show him a civil face; and that was how -he first came to the villa. - -"He was a fine young man, beautiful as a Saint Sebastian, a rare musician, -who sang his own songs to the lute in a way that used to make my -grandmother's heart melt and run through her body like mulled wine. He -had a good word for everybody, too, and was always dressed in the French -fashion, and smelt as sweet as a bean-field; and every soul about the place -welcomed the sight of him. - -"Well, the Duchess, it seemed, welcomed it too; youth will have youth, -and laughter turns to laughter; and the two matched each other like the -candlesticks on an altar. The Duchess--you've seen her portrait--but to -hear my grandmother, sir, it no more approached her than a weed comes up to -a rose. The Cavaliere, indeed, as became a poet, paragoned her in his song -to all the pagan goddesses of antiquity; and doubtless these were finer -to look at than mere women; but so, it seemed, was she; for, to believe -my grandmother, she made other women look no more than the big French -fashion-doll that used to be shown on Ascension days in the Piazza. She -was one, at any rate, that needed no outlandish finery to beautify her; -whatever dress she wore became her as feathers fit the bird; and her hair -didn't get its color by bleaching on the housetop. It glittered of itself -like the threads in an Easter chasuble, and her skin was whiter than fine -wheaten bread and her mouth as sweet as a ripe fig.... - -"Well, sir, you could no more keep them apart than the bees and the -lavender. They were always together, singing, bowling, playing cup and -ball, walking in the gardens, visiting the aviaries and petting her grace's -trick-dogs and monkeys. The Duchess was as gay as a foal, always playing -pranks and laughing, tricking out her animals like comedians, disguising -herself as a peasant or a nun (you should have seen her one day pass -herself off to the chaplain as a mendicant sister), or teaching the lads -and girls of the vineyards to dance and sing madrigals together. The -Cavaliere had a singular ingenuity in planning such entertainments and the -days were hardly long enough for their diversions. But toward the end of -the summer the Duchess fell quiet and would hear only sad music, and the -two sat much together in the gazebo at the end of the garden. It was there -the Duke found them one day when he drove out from Vicenza in his gilt -coach. He came but once or twice a year to the villa, and it was, as my -grandmother said, just a part of her poor lady's ill-luck to be wearing -that day the Venetian habit, which uncovered the shoulders in a way the -Duke always scowled at, and her curls loose and powdered with gold. Well, -the three drank chocolate in the gazebo, and what happened no one knew, -except that the Duke, on taking leave, gave his cousin a seat in his -carriage; but the Cavaliere never returned. - -"Winter approaching, and the poor lady thus finding herself once more -alone, it was surmised among her women that she must fall into a deeper -depression of spirits. But far from this being the case, she displayed such -cheerfulness and equanimity of humor that my grandmother, for one, was -half-vexed with her for giving no more thought to the poor young man who, -all this time, was eating his heart out in the house across the valley. It -is true she quitted her gold-laced gowns and wore a veil over her head; but -Nencia would have it she looked the lovelier for the change and so gave the -Duke greater displeasure. Certain it is that the Duke drove out oftener to -the villa, and though he found his lady always engaged in some innocent -pursuit, such as embroidery or music, or playing games with her young -women, yet he always went away with a sour look and a whispered word to -the chaplain. Now as to the chaplain, my grandmother owned there had been -a time when her grace had not handled him over-wisely. For, according to -Nencia, it seems that his reverence, who seldom approached the Duchess, -being buried in his library like a mouse in a cheese--well, one day he made -bold to appeal to her for a sum of money, a large sum, Nencia said, to buy -certain tall books, a chest full of them, that a foreign pedlar had brought -him; whereupon the Duchess, who could never abide a book, breaks out at -him with a laugh and a flash of her old spirit--'Holy Mother of God, must -I have more books about me? I was nearly smothered with them in the first -year of my marriage;' and the chaplain turning red at the affront, she -added: 'You may buy them and welcome, my good chaplain, if you can find -the money; but as for me, I am yet seeking a way to pay for my turquoise -necklace, and the statue of Daphne at the end of the bowling-green, and -the Indian parrot that my black boy brought me last Michaelmas from the -Bohemians--so you see I've no money to waste on trifles;' and as he backs -out awkwardly she tosses at him over her shoulder: 'You should pray to -Saint Blandina to open the Duke's pocket!' to which he returned, very -quietly, 'Your excellency's suggestion is an admirable one, and I have -already entreated that blessed martyr to open the Duke's understanding.' - -"Thereat, Nencia said (who was standing by), the Duchess flushed -wonderfully red and waved him out of the room; and then 'Quick!' she cried -to my grandmother (who was too glad to run on such errands), 'Call me -Antonio, the gardener's boy, to the box-garden; I've a word to say to him -about the new clove-carnations....' - -"Now I may not have told you, sir, that in the crypt under the chapel there -has stood, for more generations than a man can count, a stone coffin -containing a thighbone of the blessed Saint Blandina of Lyons, a relic -offered, I've been told, by some great Duke of France to one of our own -dukes when they fought the Turk together; and the object, ever since, of -particular veneration in this illustrious family. Now, since the Duchess -had been left to herself, it was observed she affected a fervent devotion -to this relic, praying often in the chapel and even causing the stone slab -that covered the entrance to the crypt to be replaced by a wooden one, -that she might at will descend and kneel by the coffin. This was matter of -edification to all the household and should have been peculiarly pleasing -to the chaplain; but, with respect to you, he was the kind of man who -brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple. - -"However that may be, the Duchess, when she dismissed him, was seen running -to the garden, where she talked earnestly with the boy Antonio about the -new clove-carnations; and the rest of the day she sat indoors and played -sweetly on the virginal. Now Nencia always had it in mind that her grace -had made a mistake in refusing that request of the chaplain's; but she said -nothing, for to talk reason to the Duchess was of no more use than praying -for rain in a drought. - -"Winter came early that year, there was snow on the hills by All Souls, -the wind stripped the gardens, and the lemon-trees were nipped in the -lemon-house. The Duchess kept her room in this black season, sitting over -the fire, embroidering, reading books of devotion (which was a thing she -had never done) and praying frequently in the chapel. As for the chaplain, -it was a place he never set foot in but to say mass in the morning, -with the Duchess overhead in the tribune, and the servants aching with -rheumatism on the marble floor. The chaplain himself hated the cold, and -galloped through the mass like a man with witches after him. The rest of -the day he spent in his library, over a brazier, with his eternal books.... - -"You'll wonder, sir, if I'm ever to get to the gist of the story; and I've -gone slowly, I own, for fear of what's coming. Well, the winter was long -and hard. When it fell cold the Duke ceased to come out from Vicenza, -and not a soul had the Duchess to speak to but her maid-servants and the -gardeners about the place. Yet it was wonderful, my grandmother said, how -she kept her brave colors and her spirits; only it was remarked that she -prayed longer in the chapel, where a brazier was kept burning for her all -day. When the young are denied their natural pleasures they turn often -enough to religion; and it was a mercy, as my grandmother said, that she, -who had scarce a live sinner to speak to, should take such comfort in a -dead saint. - -"My grandmother seldom saw her that winter, for though she showed a brave -front to all she kept more and more to herself, choosing to have only -Nencia about her and dismissing even her when she went to pray. For -her devotion had that mark of true piety, that she wished it not to be -observed; so that Nencia had strict orders, on the chaplain's approach, to -warn her mistress if she happened to be in prayer. - -"Well, the winter passed, and spring was well forward, when my grandmother -one evening had a bad fright. That it was her own fault I won't deny, for -she'd been down the lime-walk with Antonio when her aunt fancied her to be -stitching in her chamber; and seeing a sudden light in Nencia's window, she -took fright lest her disobedience be found out, and ran up quickly through -the laurel-grove to the house. Her way lay by the chapel, and as she crept -past it, meaning to slip in through the scullery, and groping her way, for -the dark had fallen and the moon was scarce up, she heard a crash close -behind her, as though someone had dropped from a window of the chapel. The -young fool's heart turned over, but she looked round as she ran, and there, -sure enough, was a man scuttling across the terrace; and as he doubled -the corner of the house my grandmother swore she caught the whisk of the -chaplain's skirts. Now that was a strange thing, certainly; for why should -the chaplain be getting out of the chapel window when he might have passed -through the door? For you may have noticed, sir, there's a door leads from -the chapel into the saloon on the ground floor; the only other way out -being through the Duchess's tribune. - -"Well, my grandmother turned the matter over, and next time she met Antonio -in the lime-walk (which, by reason of her fright, was not for some days) -she laid before him what had happened; but to her surprise he only laughed -and said, 'You little simpleton, he wasn't getting out of the window, he -was trying to look in'; and not another word could she get from him. - -"So the season moved on to Easter, and news came the Duke had gone to Rome -for that holy festivity. His comings and goings made no change at the -villa, and yet there was no one there but felt easier to think his yellow -face was on the far side of the Apennines, unless perhaps it was the -chaplain. - -"Well, it was one day in May that the Duchess, who had walked long with -Nencia on the terrace, rejoicing at the sweetness of the prospect and the -pleasant scent of the gilly-flowers in the stone vases, the Duchess toward -midday withdrew to her rooms, giving orders that her dinner should be -served in her bed-chamber. My grandmother helped to carry in the dishes, -and observed, she said, the singular beauty of the Duchess, who in honor -of the fine weather had put on a gown of shot-silver and hung her bare -shoulders with pearls, so that she looked fit to dance at court with an -emperor. She had ordered, too, a rare repast for a lady that heeded so -little what she ate--jellies, game-pasties, fruits in syrup, spiced cakes -and a flagon of Greek wine; and she nodded and clapped her hands as the -women set it before her, saying again and again, 'I shall eat well to-day.' - -"But presently another mood seized her; she turned from the table, called -for her rosary, and said to Nencia: 'The fine weather has made me neglect -my devotions. I must say a litany before I dine.' - -"She ordered the women out and barred the door, as her custom was; and -Nencia and my grandmother went down-stairs to work in the linen-room. - -"Now the linen-room gives on the court-yard, and suddenly my grandmother -saw a strange sight approaching. First up the avenue came the Duke's -carriage (whom all thought to be in Rome), and after it, drawn by a long -string of mules and oxen, a cart carrying what looked like a kneeling -figure wrapped in death-clothes. The strangeness of it struck the girl dumb -and the Duke's coach was at the door before she had the wit to cry out that -it was coming. Nencia, when she saw it, went white and ran out of the room. -My grandmother followed, scared by her face, and the two fled along the -corridor to the chapel. On the way they met the chaplain, deep in a book, -who asked in surprise where they were running, and when they said, to -announce the Duke's arrival, he fell into such astonishment and asked them -so many questions and uttered such ohs and ahs, that by the time he let -them by the Duke was at their heels. Nencia reached the chapel-door first -and cried out that the Duke was coming; and before she had a reply he was -at her side, with the chaplain following. - -"A moment later the door opened and there stood the Duchess. She held her -rosary in one hand and had drawn a scarf over her shoulders; but they shone -through it like the moon in a mist, and her countenance sparkled with -beauty. - -"The Duke took her hand with a bow. 'Madam,' he said, 'I could have had no -greater happiness than thus to surprise you at your devotions.' - -"'My own happiness,' she replied, 'would have been greater had your -excellency prolonged it by giving me notice of your arrival.' - -"'Had you expected me, Madam,' said he, 'your appearance could scarcely -have been more fitted to the occasion. Few ladies of your youth and beauty -array themselves to venerate a saint as they would to welcome a lover.' - -"'Sir,' she answered, 'having never enjoyed the latter opportunity, I am -constrained to make the most of the former.--What's that?' she cried, -falling back, and the rosary dropped from her hand. - -"There was a loud noise at the other end of the saloon, as of a heavy -object being dragged down the passage; and presently a dozen men were seen -haling across the threshold the shrouded thing from the oxcart. The Duke -waved his hand toward it. 'That,' said he, 'Madam, is a tribute to your -extraordinary piety. I have heard with peculiar satisfaction of your -devotion to the blessed relics in this chapel, and to commemorate a zeal -which neither the rigors of winter nor the sultriness of summer could abate -I have ordered a sculptured image of you, marvellously executed by the -Cavaliere Bernini, to be placed before the altar over the entrance to the -crypt.' - -"The Duchess, who had grown pale, nevertheless smiled playfully at this. -'As to commemorating my piety," she said, 'I recognize there one of your -excellency's pleasantries--' - -"'A pleasantry?' the Duke interrupted; and he made a sign to the men, who -had now reached the threshold of the chapel. In an instant the wrappings -fell from the figure, and there knelt the Duchess to the life. A cry of -wonder rose from all, but the Duchess herself stood whiter than the marble. - -"'You will see,' says the Duke, 'this is no pleasantry, but a triumph -of the incomparable Bernini's chisel. The likeness was done from your -miniature portrait by the divine Elisabetta Sirani, which I sent to the -master some six months ago, with what results all must admire.' - -"'Six months!' cried the Duchess, and seemed about to fall; but his -excellency caught her by the hand. - -"'Nothing,' he said, 'could better please me than the excessive emotion you -display, for true piety is ever modest, and your thanks could not take a -form that better became you. And now,' says he to the men, 'let the image -be put in place.' - -"By this, life seemed to have returned to the Duchess, and she answered him -with a deep reverence. 'That I should be overcome by so unexpected a grace, -your excellency admits to be natural; but what honors you accord it is my -privilege to accept, and I entreat only that in mercy to my modesty the -image be placed in the remotest part of the chapel.' - -"At that the Duke darkened. 'What! You would have this masterpiece of a -renowned chisel, which, I disguise not, cost me the price of a good -vineyard in gold pieces, you would have it thrust out of sight like the -work of a village stonecutter?' - -"'It is my semblance, not the sculptor's work, I desire to conceal.' - -"'It you are fit for my house, Madam, you are fit for God's, and entitled -to the place of honor in both. Bring the statue forward, you dawdlers!' he -called out to the men. - -"The Duchess fell back submissively. 'You are right, sir, as always; but I -would at least have the image stand on the left of the altar, that, looking -up, it may behold your excellency's seat in the tribune.' - -"'A pretty thought, Madam, for which I thank you; but I design before long -to put my companion image on the other side of the altar; and the wife's -place, as you know, is at her husband's right hand.' - -"'True, my lord--but, again, if my poor presentment is to have the -unmerited honor of kneeling beside yours, why not place both before the -altar, where it is our habit to pray in life?' - -"'And where, Madam, should we kneel if they took our places? Besides,' says -the Duke, still speaking very blandly, 'I have a more particular purpose -in placing your image over the entrance to the crypt; for not only would I -thereby mark your special devotion to the blessed saint who rests there, -but, by sealing up the opening in the pavement, would assure the perpetual -preservation of that holy martyr's bones, which hitherto have been too -thoughtlessly exposed to sacrilegious attempts.' - -"'What attempts, my lord?' cries the Duchess. 'No one enters this chapel -without my leave.' - -"'So I have understood, and can well believe from what I have learned of -your piety; yet at night a malefactor might break in through a window, -Madam, and your excellency not know it.' - -"'I'm a light sleeper,' said the Duchess. - -"The Duke looked at her gravely. 'Indeed?' said he. 'A bad sign at your -age. I must see that you are provided with a sleeping-draught.' - -"The Duchess's eyes filled. 'You would deprive me, then, of the consolation -of visiting those venerable relics?' - -"'I would have you keep eternal guard over them, knowing no one to whose -care they may more fittingly be entrusted.' - -"By this the image was brought close to the wooden slab that covered the -entrance to the crypt, when the Duchess, springing forward, placed herself -in the way. - -"'Sir, let the statue be put in place to-morrow, and suffer me, to-night, -to say a last prayer beside those holy bones.' - -"The Duke stepped instantly to her side. 'Well thought, Madam; I will go -down with you now, and we will pray together.' - -"'Sir, your long absences have, alas! given me the habit of solitary -devotion, and I confess that any presence is distracting.' - -"'Madam, I accept your rebuke. Hitherto, it is true, the duties of my -station have constrained me to long absences; but henceforward I remain -with you while you live. Shall we go down into the crypt together?" - -"'No; for I fear for your excellency's ague. The air there is excessively -damp.' - -"'The more reason you should no longer be exposed to it; and to prevent the -intemperance of your zeal I will at once make the place inaccessible.' - -"The Duchess at this fell on her knees on the slab, weeping excessively and -lifting her hands to heaven. - -"'Oh,' she cried, 'you are cruel, sir, to deprive me of access to the -sacred relics that have enabled me to support with resignation the solitude -to which your excellency's duties have condemned me; and if prayer and -meditation give me any authority to pronounce on such matters, suffer me to -warn you, sir, that I fear the blessed Saint Blandina will punish us for -thus abandoning her venerable remains!' - -"The Duke at this seemed to pause, for he was a pious man, and my -grandmother thought she saw him exchange a glance with the chaplain; who, -stepping timidly forward, with his eyes on the ground, said, 'There is -indeed much wisdom in her excellency's words, but I would suggest, sir, -that her pious wish might be met, and the saint more conspicuously honored, -by transferring the relics from the crypt to a place beneath the altar.' - -"'True!' cried the Duke, 'and it shall be done at once.' - -"But thereat the Duchess rose to her feet with a terrible look. - -"'No,' she cried, 'by the body of God! For it shall not be said that, after -your excellency has chosen to deny every request I addressed to him, I owe -his consent to the solicitation of another!' - -"The chaplain turned red and the Duke yellow, and for a moment neither -spoke. - -"Then the Duke said, 'Here are words enough, Madam. Do you wish the relics -brought up from the crypt?' - -"'I wish nothing that I owe to another's intervention!' - -"'Put the image in place then,' says the Duke furiously; and handed her -grace to a chair. - -"She sat there, my grandmother said, straight as an arrow, her hands -locked, her head high, her eyes on the Duke, while the statue was dragged -to its place; then she stood up and turned away. As she passed by Nencia, -'Call me Antonio,' she whispered; but before the words were out of her -mouth the Duke stepped between them. - -"'Madam,' says he, all smiles now, 'I have travelled straight from Rome to -bring you the sooner this proof of my esteem. I lay last night at Monselice -and have been on the road since daybreak. Will you not invite me to -supper?' - -"'Surely, my lord,' said the Duchess. 'It shall be laid in the -dining-parlor within the hour.' - -"'Why not in your chamber and at once, Madam? Since I believe it is your -custom to sup there.' - -"'In my chamber?' says the Duchess, in disorder. - -"'Have you anything against it?' he asked. - -"'Assuredly not, sir, if you will give me time to prepare myself.' - -"'I will wait in your cabinet,' said the Duke. - -"At that, said my grandmother, the Duchess gave one look, as the souls in -hell may have looked when the gates closed on our Lord; then she called -Nencia and passed to her chamber. - -"What happened there my grandmother could never learn, but that the -Duchess, in great haste, dressed herself with extraordinary splendor, -powdering her hair with gold, painting her face and bosom, and covering -herself with jewels till she shone like our Lady of Loreto; and hardly -were these preparations complete when the Duke entered from the cabinet, -followed by the servants carrying supper. Thereupon the Duchess dismissed -Nencia, and what follows my grandmother learned from a pantry-lad who -brought up the dishes and waited in the cabinet; for only the Duke's -body-servant entered the bed-chamber. - -"Well, according to this boy, sir, who was looking and listening with his -whole body, as it were, because he had never before been suffered so near -the Duchess, it appears that the noble couple sat down in great good humor, -the Duchess playfully reproving her husband for his long absence, while the -Duke swore that to look so beautiful was the best way of punishing him. -In this tone the talk continued, with such gay sallies on the part of the -Duchess, such tender advances on the Duke's, that the lad declared they -were for all the world like a pair of lovers courting on a summer's night -in the vineyard; and so it went till the servant brought in the mulled -wine. - -"'Ah,' the Duke was saying at that moment, 'this agreeable evening repays -me for the many dull ones I have spent away from you; nor do I remember -to have enjoyed such laughter since the afternoon last year when we drank -chocolate in the gazebo with my cousin Ascanio. And that reminds me,' he -said, 'is my cousin in good health?' - -"'I have no reports of it,' says the Duchess. 'But your excellency should -taste these figs stewed in malmsey--' - -"'I am in the mood to taste whatever you offer,' said he; and as she helped -him to the figs he added, 'If my enjoyment were not complete as it is, -I could almost wish my cousin Ascanio were with us. The fellow is rare -good company at supper. What do you say, Madam? I hear he's still in the -country; shall we send for him to join us?' - -"'Ah,' said the Duchess, with a sigh and a languishing look, 'I see your -excellency wearies of me already.' - -"'I, Madam? Ascanio is a capital good fellow, but to my mind his chief -merit at this moment is his absence. It inclines me so tenderly to him -that, by God, I could empty a glass to his good health.' - -"With that the Duke caught up his goblet and signed to the servant to fill -the Duchess's. - -"'Here's to the cousin,' he cried, standing, 'who has the good taste to -stay away when he's not wanted. I drink to his very long life--and you, -Madam?' - -"At this the Duchess, who had sat staring at him with a changed face, rose -also and lifted her glass to her lips. - -"'And I to his happy death,' says she in a wild voice; and as she spoke the -empty goblet dropped from her hand and she fell face down on the floor. - -"The Duke shouted to her women that she had swooned, and they came and -lifted her to the bed.... She suffered horribly all night, Nencia said, -twisting herself like a heretic at the stake, but without a word escaping -her. The Duke watched by her, and toward daylight sent for the chaplain; -but by this she was unconscious and, her teeth being locked, our Lord's -body could not be passed through them. - - * * * * * - -"The Duke announced to his relations that his lady had died after partaking -too freely of spiced wine and an omelet of carp's roe, at a supper she had -prepared in honor of his return; and the next year he brought home a new -Duchess, who gave him a son and five daughters...." - - -V - -The sky had turned to a steel gray, against which the villa stood out -sallow and inscrutable. A wind strayed through the gardens, loosening here -and there a yellow leaf from the sycamores; and the hills across the valley -were purple as thunder-clouds. - - * * * * * - -"And the statue--?" I asked. - -"Ah, the statue. Well, sir, this is what my grandmother told me, here on -this very bench where we're sitting. The poor child, who worshipped the -Duchess as a girl of her years will worship a beautiful kind mistress, -spent a night of horror, you may fancy, shut out from her lady's room, -hearing the cries that came from it, and seeing, as she crouched in her -corner, the women rush to and fro with wild looks, the Duke's lean face in -the door, and the chaplain skulking in the antechamber with his eyes on -his breviary. No one minded her that night or the next morning; and toward -dusk, when it became known the Duchess was no more, the poor girl felt the -pious wish to say a prayer for her dead mistress. She crept to the chapel -and stole in unobserved. The place was empty and dim, but as she advanced -she heard a low moaning, and coming in front of the statue she saw that -its face, the day before so sweet and smiling, had the look on it that you -know--and the moaning seemed to come from its lips. My grandmother turned -cold, but something, she said afterward, kept her from calling or shrieking -out, and she turned and ran from the place. In the passage she fell in a -swoon; and when she came to her senses, in her own chamber, she heard that -the Duke had locked the chapel door and forbidden any to set foot there.... -The place was never opened again till the Duke died, some ten years later; -and then it was that the other servants, going in with the new heir, -saw for the first time the horror that my grandmother had kept in her -bosom...." - -"And the crypt?" I asked. "Has it never been opened?" - -"Heaven forbid, sir!" cried the old man, crossing himself. "Was it not the -Duchess's express wish that the relics should not be disturbed?" - - - - -THE ANGEL AT THE GRAVE - - -The House stood a few yards back from the elm-shaded village street, -in that semi-publicity sometimes cited as a democratic protest against -old-world standards of domestic exclusiveness. This candid exposure to -the public eye is more probably a result of the gregariousness which, in -the New England bosom, oddly coexists with a shrinking from direct social -contact; most of the inmates of such houses preferring that furtive -intercourse which is the result of observations through shuttered windows -and a categorical acquaintance with the neighboring clothes-lines. The -House, however, faced its public with a difference. For sixty years it had -written itself with a capital letter, had self-consciously squared itself -in the eye of an admiring nation. The most searching inroads of village -intimacy hardly counted in a household that opened on the universe; and a -lady whose door-bell was at any moment liable to be rung by visitors from -London or Vienna was not likely to flutter up-stairs when she observed a -neighbor "stepping over." - -The solitary inmate of the Anson House owed this induration of the social -texture to the most conspicuous accident in her annals: the fact that she -was the only granddaughter of the great Orestes Anson. She had been born, -as it were, into a museum, and cradled in a glass case with a label; -the first foundations of her consciousness being built on the rock of -her grandfather's celebrity. To a little girl who acquires her earliest -knowledge of literature through a _Reader_ embellished with fragments -of her ancestor's prose, that personage necessarily fills an heroic space -in the foreground of life. To communicate with one's past through the -impressive medium of print, to have, as it were, a footing in every library -in the country, and an acknowledged kinship with that world-diffused clan, -the descendants of the great, was to be pledged to a standard of manners -that amazingly simplified the lesser relations of life. The village street -on which Paulina Anson's youth looked out led to all the capitals of -Europe; and over the roads of intercommunication unseen caravans bore back -to the elm-shaded House the tribute of an admiring world. - -Fate seemed to have taken a direct share in fitting Paulina for her part as -the custodian of this historic dwelling. It had long been secretly regarded -as a "visitation" by the great man's family that he had left no son and -that his daughters were not "intellectual." The ladies themselves were the -first to lament their deficiency, to own that nature had denied them the -gift of making the most of their opportunities. A profound veneration for -their parent and an unswerving faith in his doctrines had not amended their -congenital incapacity to understand what he had written. Laura, who had her -moments of mute rebellion against destiny, had sometimes thought how much -easier it would have been if their progenitor had been a poet; for she -could recite, with feeling, portions of _The Culprit Fay_ and of the -poems of Mrs. Hemans; and Phoebe, who was more conspicuous for memory than -imagination, kept an album filled with "selections." But the great man -was a philosopher; and to both daughters respiration was difficult on the -cloudy heights of metaphysic. The situation would have been intolerable -but for the fact that, while Phoebe and Laura were still at school, -their father's fame had passed from the open ground of conjecture to the -chill privacy of certitude. Dr. Anson had in fact achieved one of those -anticipated immortalities not uncommon at a time when people were apt to -base their literary judgments on their emotions, and when to affect plain -food and despise England went a long way toward establishing a man's -intellectual pre-eminence. Thus, when the daughters were called on to -strike a filial attitude about their parent's pedestal, there was little -to do but to pose gracefully and point upward; and there are spines to -which the immobility of worship is not a strain. A legend had by this time -crystallized about the great Orestes, and it was of more immediate interest -to the public to hear what brand of tea he drank, and whether he took off -his boots in the hall, than to rouse the drowsy echo of his dialectic. A -great man never draws so near his public as when it has become unnecessary -to read his books and is still interesting to know what he eats for -breakfast. - -As recorders of their parent's domestic habits, as pious scavengers of his -waste-paper basket, the Misses Anson were unexcelled. They always had an -interesting anecdote to impart to the literary pilgrim, and the tact with -which, in later years, they intervened between the public and the growing -inaccessibility of its idol, sent away many an enthusiast satisfied to have -touched the veil before the sanctuary. Still it was felt, especially by old -Mrs. Anson, who survived her husband for some years, that Phoebe and Laura -were not worthy of their privileges. There had been a third daughter so -unworthy of hers that she had married a distant cousin, who had taken her -to live in a new Western community where the _Works of Orestes Anson_ -had not yet become a part of the civic consciousness; but of this daughter -little was said, and she was tacitly understood to be excluded from the -family heritage of fame. In time, however, it appeared that the traditional -penny with which she had been cut off had been invested to unexpected -advantage; and the interest on it, when she died, returned to the Anson -House in the shape of a granddaughter who was at once felt to be what Mrs. -Anson called a "compensation." It was Mrs. Anson's firm belief that the -remotest operations of nature were governed by the centripetal force of her -husband's greatness and that Paulina's exceptional intelligence could be -explained only on the ground that she was designed to act as the guardian -of the family temple. - -The House, by the time Paulina came to live in it, had already acquired -the publicity of a place of worship; not the perfumed chapel of a romantic -idolatry but the cold clean empty meeting-house of ethical enthusiasms. The -ladies lived on its outskirts, as it were, in cells that left the central -fane undisturbed. The very position of the furniture had come to have a -ritual significance: the sparse ornaments were the offerings of kindred -intellects, the steel engravings by Raphael Morghen marked the Via Sacra -of a European tour, and the black-walnut desk with its bronze inkstand -modelled on the Pantheon was the altar of this bleak temple of thought. - -To a child compact of enthusiasms, and accustomed to pasture them on the -scanty herbage of a new social soil, the atmosphere of the old house was -full of floating nourishment. In the compressed perspective of Paulina's -outlook it stood for a monument of ruined civilizations, and its white -portico opened on legendary distances. Its very aspect was impressive -to eyes that had first surveyed life from the jig-saw "residence" of a -raw-edged Western town. The high-ceilinged rooms, with their panelled -walls, their polished mahogany, their portraits of triple-stocked ancestors -and of ringleted "females" in crayon, furnished the child with the historic -scenery against which a young imagination constructs its vision of the -past. To other eyes the cold spotless thinly-furnished interior might have -suggested the shuttered mind of a maiden-lady who associates fresh air and -sunlight with dust and discoloration; but it is the eye which supplies the -coloring-matter, and Paulina's brimmed with the richest hues. - -Nevertheless, the House did not immediately dominate her. She had her -confused out-reachings toward other centres of sensation, her vague -intuition of a heliocentric system; but the attraction of habit, the steady -pressure of example, gradually fixed her roving allegiance and she bent her -neck to the yoke. Vanity had a share in her subjugation; for it had early -been discovered that she was the only person in the family who could read -her grandfather's works. The fact that she had perused them with delight at -an age when (even presupposing a metaphysical bias) it was impossible for -her to understand them, seemed to her aunts and grandmother sure evidence -of predestination. Paulina was to be the interpreter of the oracle, and the -philosophic fumes so vertiginous to meaner minds would throw her into the -needed condition of clairvoyance. Nothing could have been more genuine than -the emotion on which this theory was based. Paulina, in fact, delighted in -her grandfather's writings. His sonorous periods, his mystic vocabulary, -his bold flights into the rarefied air of the abstract, were thrilling to -a fancy unhampered by the need of definitions. This purely verbal pleasure -was supplemented later by the excitement of gathering up crumbs of meaning -from the rhetorical board. What could have been more stimulating than -to construct the theory of a girlish world out of the fragments of this -Titanic cosmogony? Before Paulina's opinions had reached the stage when -ossification sets in their form was fatally predetermined. - -The fact that Dr. Anson had died and that his apotheosis had taken -place before his young priestess's induction to the temple, made her -ministrations easier and more inspiring. There were no little personal -traits--such as the great man's manner of helping himself to salt, or the -guttural cluck that started the wheels of speech--to distract the eye -of young veneration from the central fact of his divinity. A man whom -one knows only through a crayon portrait and a dozen yellowing, tomes on -free-will and intuition is at least secure from the belittling effects of -intimacy. - -Paulina thus grew up in a world readjusted to the fact of her grandfather's -greatness; and as each organism draws from its surroundings the kind of -nourishment most needful to its growth, so from this somewhat colorless -conception she absorbed warmth, brightness and variety. Paulina was the -type of woman who transmutes thought into sensation and nurses a theory in -her bosom like a child. - -In due course Mrs. Anson "passed away"--no one died in the Anson -vocabulary--and Paulina became more than ever the foremost figure of the -commemorative group. Laura and Phoebe, content to leave their father's -glory in more competent hands, placidly lapsed into needlework and fiction, -and their niece stepped into immediate prominence as the chief "authority" -on the great man. Historians who were "getting up" the period wrote to -consult her and to borrow documents; ladies with inexplicable yearnings -begged for an interpretation of phrases which had "influenced" them, but -which they had not quite understood; critics applied to her to verify some -doubtful citation or to decide some disputed point in chronology; and the -great tide of thought and investigation kept up a continuous murmur on the -quiet shores of her life. - -An explorer of another kind disembarked there one day in the shape -of a young man to whom Paulina was primarily a kissable girl, with an -after-thought in the shape of a grandfather. From the outset it had been -impossible to fix Hewlett Winsloe's attention on Dr. Anson. The young man -behaved with the innocent profanity of infants sporting on a tomb. His -excuse was that he came from New York, a Cimmerian outskirt which survived -in Paulina's geography only because Dr. Anson had gone there once or twice -to lecture. The curious thing was that she should have thought it worth -while to find excuses for young Winsloe. The fact that she did so had not -escaped the attention of the village; but people, after a gasp of awe, said -it was the most natural thing in the world that a girl like Paulina Anson -should think of marrying. It would certainly seem a little odd to see a -man in the House, but young Winsloe would of course understand that the -Doctor's books were not to be disturbed, and that he must go down to the -orchard to smoke--. The village had barely framed this _modus vivendi_ -when it was convulsed by the announcement that young Winsloe declined to -live in the House on any terms. Hang going down to the orchard to smoke! -He meant to take his wife to New York. The village drew its breath and -watched. - -Did Persephone, snatched from the warm fields of Enna, peer -half-consentingly down the abyss that opened at her feet? Paulina, it must -be owned, hung a moment over the black gulf of temptation. She would have -found it easy to cope with a deliberate disregard of her grandfather's -rights; but young Winsloe's unconsciousness of that shadowy claim was as -much a natural function as the falling of leaves on a grave. His love was -an embodiment of the perpetual renewal which to some tender spirits seems a -crueller process than decay. - -On women of Paulina's mould this piety toward implicit demands, toward -the ghosts of dead duties walking unappeased among usurping passions, -has a stronger hold than any tangible bond. People said that she gave up -young Winsloe because her aunts disapproved of her leaving them; but such -disapproval as reached her was an emanation from the walls of the House, -from the bare desk, the faded portraits, the dozen yellowing tomes that no -hand but hers ever lifted from the shelf. - - -II - -After that the House possessed her. As if conscious of its victory, it -imposed a conqueror's claims. It had once been suggested that she should -write a life of her grandfather, and the task from which she had shrunk as -from a too-oppressive privilege now shaped itself into a justification of -her course. In a burst of filial pantheism she tried to lose herself in the -vast ancestral consciousness. Her one refuge from scepticism was a blind -faith in the magnitude and the endurance of the idea to which she had -sacrificed her life, and with a passionate instinct of self-preservation -she labored to fortify her position. - -The preparations for the _Life_ led her through by-ways that the most -scrupulous of the previous biographers had left unexplored. She accumulated -her material with a blind animal patience unconscious of fortuitous risks. -The years stretched before her like some vast blank page spread out to -receive the record of her toil; and she had a mystic conviction that she -would not die till her work was accomplished. - -The aunts, sustained by no such high purpose, withdrew in turn to their -respective divisions of the Anson "plot," and Paulina remained alone with -her task. She was forty when the book was completed. She had travelled -little in her life, and it had become more and more difficult to her to -leave the House even for a day; but the dread of entrusting her document to -a strange hand made her decide to carry it herself to the publisher. On the -way to Boston she had a sudden vision of the loneliness to which this last -parting condemned her. All her youth, all her dreams, all her renunciations -lay in that neat bundle on her knee. It was not so much her grandfather's -life as her own that she had written; and the knowledge that it would come -back to her in all the glorification of print was of no more help than, to -a mother's grief, the assurance that the lad she must part with will return -with epaulets. - -She had naturally addressed herself to the firm which had published her -grandfather's works. Its founder, a personal friend of the philosopher's, -had survived the Olympian group of which he had been a subordinate member, -long enough to bestow his octogenarian approval on Paulina's pious -undertaking. But he had died soon afterward; and Miss Anson found herself -confronted by his grandson, a person with a brisk commercial view of his -trade, who was said to have put "new blood" into the firm. - -This gentleman listened attentively, fingering her manuscript as though -literature were a tactile substance; then, with a confidential twist of his -revolving chair, he emitted the verdict: "We ought to have had this ten -years sooner." - -Miss Anson took the words as an allusion to the repressed avidity of her -readers. "It has been a long time for the public to wait," she solemnly -assented. - -The publisher smiled. "They haven't waited," he said. - -She looked at him strangely. "Haven't waited?" - -"No--they've gone off; taken another train. Literature's like a big -railway-station now, you know: there's a train starting every minute. -People are not going to hang round the waiting-room. If they can't get -to a place when they want to they go somewhere else." - -The application of this parable cost Miss Anson several minutes of -throbbing silence. At length she said: "Then I am to understand that the -public is no longer interested in--in my grandfather?" She felt as though -heaven must blast the lips that risked such a conjecture. - -"Well, it's this way. He's a name still, of course. People don't exactly -want to be caught not knowing who he is; but they don't want to spend -two dollars finding out, when they can look him up for nothing in any -biographical dictionary." - -Miss Anson's world reeled. She felt herself adrift among mysterious forces, -and no more thought of prolonging the discussion than of opposing an -earthquake with argument. She went home carrying the manuscript like a -wounded thing. On the return journey she found herself travelling straight -toward a fact that had lurked for months in the background of her life, -and that now seemed to await her on the very threshold: the fact that -fewer visitors came to the House. She owned to herself that for the last -four or five years the number had steadily diminished. Engrossed in her -work, she had noted the change only to feel thankful that she had fewer -interruptions. There had been a time when, at the travelling season, the -bell rang continuously, and the ladies of the House lived in a chronic -state of "best silks" and expectancy. It would have been impossible then to -carry on any consecutive work; and she now saw that the silence which had -gathered round her task had been the hush of death. - -Not of _his_ death! The very walls cried out against the implication. -It was the world's enthusiasm, the world's faith, the world's loyalty that -had died. A corrupt generation that had turned aside to worship the brazen -serpent. Her heart yearned with a prophetic passion over the lost sheep -straying in the wilderness. But all great glories had their interlunar -period; and in due time her grandfather would once more flash full-orbed -upon a darkling world. - -The few friends to whom she confided her adventure reminded her with -tender indignation that there were other publishers less subject to the -fluctuations of the market; but much as she had braved for her grandfather -she could not again brave that particular probation. She found herself, -in fact, incapable of any immediate effort. She had lost her way in a -labyrinth of conjecture where her worst dread was that she might put her -hand upon the clue. - -She locked up the manuscript and sat down to wait. If a pilgrim had come -just then the priestess would have fallen on his neck; but she continued -to celebrate her rites alone. It was a double solitude; for she had always -thought a great deal more of the people who came to see the House than of -the people who came to see her. She fancied that the neighbors kept a keen -eye on the path to the House; and there were days when the figure of a -stranger strolling past the gate seemed to focus upon her the scorching -sympathies of the village. For a time she thought of travelling; of going -to Europe, or even to Boston; but to leave the House now would have -seemed like deserting her post. Gradually her scattered energies centred -themselves in the fierce resolve to understand what had happened. She was -not the woman to live long in an unmapped country or to accept as final -her private interpretation of phenomena. Like a traveller in unfamiliar -regions she began to store for future guidance the minutest natural signs. -Unflinchingly she noted the accumulating symptoms of indifference that -marked her grandfather's descent toward posterity. She passed from the -heights on which he had been grouped with the sages of his day to the lower -level where he had come to be "the friend of Emerson," "the correspondent -of Hawthorne," or (later still) "the Dr. Anson" mentioned in their letters. -The change had taken place as slowly and imperceptibly as a natural -process. She could not say that any ruthless hand had stripped the leaves -from the tree: it was simply that, among the evergreen glories of his -group, her grandfather's had proved deciduous. - -She had still to ask herself why. If the decay had been a natural process, -was it not the very pledge of renewal? It was easier to find such arguments -than to be convinced by them. Again and again she tried to drug her -solicitude with analogies; but at last she saw that such expedients were -but the expression of a growing incredulity. The best way of proving her -faith in her grandfather was not to be afraid of his critics. She had no -notion where these shadowy antagonists lurked; for she had never heard of -the great man's doctrine being directly combated. Oblique assaults there -must have been, however, Parthian shots at the giant that none dared face; -and she thirsted to close with such assailants. The difficulty was to -find them. She began by re-reading the _Works_; thence she passed to -the writers of the same school, those whose rhetoric bloomed perennial -in _First Readers_ from which her grandfather's prose had long -since faded. Amid that clamor of far-off enthusiasms she detected no -controversial note. The little knot of Olympians held their views in common -with an early-Christian promiscuity. They were continually proclaiming -their admiration for each other, the public joining as chorus in this -guileless antiphon of praise; and she discovered no traitor in their midst. - -What then had happened? Was it simply that the main current of thought -had set another way? Then why did the others survive? Why were they still -marked down as tributaries to the philosophic stream? This question carried -her still farther afield, and she pressed on with the passion of a champion -whose reluctance to know the worst might be construed into a doubt of his -cause. At length--slowly but inevitably--an explanation shaped itself. -Death had overtaken the doctrines about which her grandfather had draped -his cloudy rhetoric. They had disintegrated and been re-absorbed, adding -their little pile to the dust drifted about the mute lips of the Sphinx. -The great man's contemporaries had survived not by reason of what they -taught, but of what they were; and he, who had been the mere mask through -which they mouthed their lesson, the instrument on which their tune was -played, lay buried deep among the obsolete tools of thought. - -The discovery came to Paulina suddenly. She looked up one evening from her -reading and it stood before her like a ghost. It had entered her life with -stealthy steps, creeping close before she was aware of it. She sat in the -library, among the carefully-tended books and portraits; and it seemed to -her that she had been walled alive into a tomb hung with the effigies of -dead ideas. She felt a desperate longing to escape into the outer air, -where people toiled and loved, and living sympathies went hand in hand. It -was the sense of wasted labor that oppressed her; of two lives consumed in -that ruthless process that uses generations of effort to build a single -cell. There was a dreary parallel between her grandfather's fruitless -toil and her own unprofitable sacrifice. Each in turn had kept vigil by a -corpse. - - -III - -The bell rang--she remembered it afterward--with a loud thrilling note. It -was what they used to call the "visitor's ring"; not the tentative tinkle -of a neighbor dropping in to borrow a sauce-pan or discuss parochial -incidents, but a decisive summons from the outer world. - -Miss Anson put down her knitting and listened. She sat up-stairs now, -making her rheumatism an excuse for avoiding the rooms below. Her interests -had insensibly adjusted themselves to the perspective of her neighbors' -lives, and she wondered--as the bell re-echoed--if it could mean that Mrs. -Heminway's baby had come. Conjecture had time to ripen into certainty, and -she was limping toward the closet where her cloak and bonnet hung, when her -little maid fluttered in with the announcement: "A gentleman to see the -house." - -"The _House_?" - -"Yes, m'm. I don't know what he means," faltered the messenger, whose -memory did not embrace the period when such announcements were a daily part -of the domestic routine. - -Miss Anson glanced at the proffered card. The name it bore--_Mr. George -Corby_--was unknown to her, but the blood rose to her languid cheek. -"Hand me my Mechlin cap, Katy," she said, trembling a little, as she laid -aside her walking stick. She put her cap on before the mirror, with rapid -unsteady touches. "Did you draw up the library blinds?" she breathlessly -asked. - -She had gradually built up a wall of commonplace between herself and her -illusions, but at the first summons of the past filial passion swept away -the frail barriers of expediency. - -She walked down-stairs so hurriedly that her stick clicked like a girlish -heel; but in the hall she paused, wondering nervously if Katy had put a -match to the fire. The autumn air was cold and she had the reproachful -vision of a visitor with elderly ailments shivering by her inhospitable -hearth. She thought instinctively of the stranger as a survivor of the days -when such a visit was a part of the young enthusiast's itinerary. - -The fire was unlit and the room forbiddingly cold; but the figure which, as -Miss Anson entered, turned from a lingering scrutiny of the book-shelves, -was that of a fresh-eyed sanguine youth clearly independent of any -artificial caloric. She stood still a moment, feeling herself the victim of -some anterior impression that made this robust presence an insubstantial -thing; but the young man advanced with an air of genial assurance which -rendered him at once more real and more reminiscent. - -"Why this, you know," he exclaimed, "is simply immense!" - -The words, which did not immediately present themselves as slang to Miss -Anson's unaccustomed ear, echoed with an odd familiarity through the -academic silence. - -"The room, you know, I mean," he explained with a comprehensive gesture. -"These jolly portraits, and the books--that's the old gentleman himself -over the mantelpiece, I suppose?--and the elms outside, and--and the whole -business. I do like a congruous background--don't you?" - -His hostess was silent. No one but Hewlett Winsloe had ever spoken of her -grandfather as "the old gentleman." - -"It's a hundred times better than I could have hoped," her visitor -continued, with a cheerful disregard of her silence. "The seclusion, the -remoteness, the philosophic atmosphere--there's so little of that kind -of flavor left! I should have simply hated to find that he lived over -a grocery, you know.--I had the deuce of a time finding out where he -_did_ live," he began again, after another glance of parenthetical -enjoyment. "But finally I got on the trail through some old book on Brook -Farm. I was bound I'd get the environment right before I did my article." - -Miss Anson, by this time, had recovered sufficient self-possession to seat -herself and assign a chair to her visitor. - -"Do I understand," she asked slowly, following his rapid eye about the -room, "that you intend to write an article about my grandfather?" - -"That's what I'm here for," Mr. Corby genially responded; "that is, if -you're willing to help me; for I can't get on without your help," he added -with a confident smile. - -There was another pause, during which Miss Anson noticed a fleck of dust on -the faded leather of the writing-table and a fresh spot of discoloration in -the right-hand upper corner of Raphael Morghen's "Parnassus." - -"Then you believe in him?" she said, looking up. She could not tell what -had prompted her; the words rushed out irresistibly. - -"Believe in him?" Corby cried, springing to his feet. "Believe in Orestes -Anson? Why, I believe he's simply the greatest--the most stupendous--the -most phenomenal figure we've got!" - -The color rose to Miss Anson's brow. Her heart was beating passionately. -She kept her eyes fixed on the young man's face, as though it might vanish -if she looked away. - -"You--you mean to say this in your article?" she asked. - -"Say it? Why, the facts will say it," he exulted. "The baldest kind of a -statement would make it clear. When a man is as big as that he doesn't need -a pedestal!" - -Miss Anson sighed. "People used to say that when I was young," she -murmured. "But now--" - -Her visitor stared. "When you were young? But how did they know--when the -thing hung fire as it did? When the whole edition was thrown back on his -hands?" - -"The whole edition--what edition?" It was Miss Anson's turn to stare. - -"Why, of his pamphlet--_the_ pamphlet--the one thing that counts, that -survives, that makes him what he is! For heaven's sake," he tragically -adjured her, "don't tell me there isn't a copy of it left!" - -Miss Anson was trembling slightly. "I don't think I understand what you -mean," she faltered, less bewildered by his vehemence than by the strange -sense of coming on an unexplored region in the very heart of her dominion. - -"Why, his account of the _amphioxus_, of course! You can't mean that -his family didn't know about it--that _you_ don't know about it? I came -across it by the merest accident myself, in a letter of vindication that -he wrote in 1830 to an old scientific paper; but I understood there were -journals--early journals; there must be references to it somewhere in the -'twenties. He must have been at least ten or twelve years ahead of Yarrell; -and he saw the whole significance of it, too--he saw where it led to. As -I understand it, he actually anticipated in his pamphlet Saint Hilaire's -theory of the universal type, and supported the hypothesis by describing -the notochord of the _amphioxus_ as a cartilaginous vertebral column. -The specialists of the day jeered at him, of course, as the specialists in -Goethe's time jeered at the plant-metamorphosis. As far as I can make out, -the anatomists and zoologists were down on Dr. Anson to a man; that was why -his cowardly publishers went back on their bargain. But the pamphlet must -be here somewhere--he writes as though, in his first disappointment, he had -destroyed the whole edition; but surely there must be at least one copy -left?" - -His scientific jargon was as bewildering as his slang; and there were even -moments in his discourse when Miss Anson ceased to distinguish between -them; but the suspense with which he continued to gaze on her acted as a -challenge to her scattered thoughts. - -"The _amphioxus_," she murmured, half-rising. "It's an animal, isn't -it--a fish? Yes, I think I remember." She sank back with the inward look of -one who retraces some lost line of association. - -Gradually the distance cleared, the details started into life. In her -researches for the biography she had patiently followed every ramification -of her subject, and one of these overgrown paths now led her back to -the episode in question. The great Orestes's title of "Doctor" had in -fact not been merely the spontaneous tribute of a national admiration; -he had actually studied medicine in his youth, and his diaries, as his -granddaughter now recalled, showed that he had passed through a brief phase -of anatomical ardor before his attention was diverted to super-sensual -problems. It had indeed seemed to Paulina, as she scanned those early -pages, that they revealed a spontaneity, a freshness of feeling somehow -absent from his later lucubrations--as though this one emotion had reached -him directly, the others through some intervening medium. In the excess of -her commemorative zeal she had even struggled through the unintelligible -pamphlet to which a few lines in the journal had bitterly directed her. But -the subject and the phraseology were alien to her and unconnected with her -conception of the great man's genius; and after a hurried perusal she had -averted her thoughts from the episode as from a revelation of failure. -At length she rose a little unsteadily, supporting herself against the -writing-table. She looked hesitatingly about the room; then she drew a key -from her old-fashioned reticule and unlocked a drawer beneath one of the -book-cases. Young Corby watched her breathlessly. With a tremulous hand she -turned over the dusty documents that seemed to fill the drawer. "Is this -it?" she said, holding out a thin discolored volume. - -He seized it with a gasp. "Oh, by George," he said, dropping into the -nearest chair. - -She stood observing him strangely as his eye devoured the mouldy pages. - -"Is this the only copy left?" he asked at length, looking up for a moment -as a thirsty man lifts his head from his glass. - -"I think it must be. I found it long ago, among some old papers that my -aunts were burning up after my grandmother's death. They said it was of no -use--that he'd always meant to destroy the whole edition and that I ought -to respect his wishes. But it was something he had written; to burn it was -like shutting the door against his voice--against something he had once -wished to say, and that nobody had listened to. I wanted him to feel that I -was always here, ready to listen, even when others hadn't thought it worth -while; and so I kept the pamphlet, meaning to carry out his wish and -destroy it before my death." - -Her visitor gave a groan of retrospective anguish. "And but for me--but for -to-day--you would have?" - -"I should have thought it my duty." - -"Oh, by George--by George," he repeated, subdued afresh by the inadequacy -of speech. - -She continued to watch him in silence. At length he jumped up and -impulsively caught her by both hands. - -"He's bigger and bigger!" he almost shouted. "He simply leads the field! -You'll help me go to the bottom of this, won't you? We must turn out all -the papers--letters, journals, memoranda. He must have made notes. He -must have left some record of what led up to this. We must leave nothing -unexplored. By Jove," he cried, looking up at her with his bright -convincing smile, "do you know you're the granddaughter of a Great Man?" - -Her color flickered like a girl's. "Are you--sure of him?" she whispered, -as though putting him on his guard against a possible betrayal of trust. - -"Sure! Sure! My dear lady--" he measured her again with his quick confident -glance. "Don't _you_ believe in him?" - -She drew back with a confused murmur. "I--used to." She had left her -hands in his: their pressure seemed to send a warm current to her heart. -"It ruined my life!" she cried with sudden passion. He looked at her -perplexedly. - -"I gave up everything," she went on wildly, "to keep him alive. I -sacrificed myself--others--I nursed his glory in my bosom and it died--and -left me--left me here alone." She paused and gathered her courage with a -gasp. "Don't make the same mistake!" she warned him. - -He shook his head, still smiling. "No danger of that! You're not alone, my -dear lady. He's here with you--he's come back to you to-day. Don't you see -what's happened? Don't you see that it's your love that has kept him alive? -If you'd abandoned your post for an instant--let things pass into other -hands--if your wonderful tenderness hadn't perpetually kept guard--this -might have been--must have been--irretrievably lost." He laid his hand on -the pamphlet. "And then--then he _would_ have been dead!" - -"Oh," she said, "don't tell me too suddenly!" And she turned away and sank -into a chair. - -The young man stood watching her in an awed silence. For a long time she -sat motionless, with her face hidden, and he thought she must be weeping. - -At length he said, almost shyly: "You'll let me come back, then? You'll -help me work this thing out?" - -She rose calmly and held out her hand. "I'll help you," she declared. - -"I'll come to-morrow, then. Can we get to work early?" - -"As early as you please." - -"At eight o'clock, then," he said briskly. "You'll have the papers ready?" - -"I'll have everything ready." She added with a half-playful hesitancy: "And -the fire shall be lit for you." - -He went out with his bright nod. She walked to the window and watched his -buoyant figure hastening down the elm-shaded street. When she turned back -into the empty room she looked as though youth had touched her on the lips. - - - - -THE RECOVERY - - -To the visiting stranger Hillbridge's first question was, "Have you seen -Keniston's things?" Keniston took precedence of the colonial State House, -the Gilbert Stuart Washington and the Ethnological Museum; nay, he ran neck -and neck with the President of the University, a prehistoric relic who had -known Emerson, and who was still sent about the country in cotton-wool to -open educational institutions with a toothless oration on Brook Farm. - -Keniston was sent about the country too: he opened art exhibitions, laid -the foundation of academies, and acted in a general sense as the spokesman -and apologist of art. Hillbridge was proud of him in his peripatetic -character, but his fellow-townsmen let it be understood that to "know" -Keniston one must come to Hillbridge. Never was work more dependent for its -effect on "atmosphere," on _milieu_. Hillbridge was Keniston's milieu, -and there was one lady, a devotee of his art, who went so far as to assert -that once, at an exhibition in New York, she had passed a Keniston without -recognizing it. "It simply didn't want to be seen in such surroundings; it -was hiding itself under an incognito," she declared. - -It was a source of special pride to Hillbridge that it contained all the -artist's best works. Strangers were told that Hillbridge had discovered -him. The discovery had come about in the simplest manner. Professor -Driffert, who had a reputation for "collecting," had one day hung a sketch -on his drawing-room wall, and thereafter Mrs. Driffert's visitors (always -a little flurried by the sense that it was the kind of house in which one -might be suddenly called upon to distinguish between a dry-point and an -etching, or between Raphael Mengs and Raphael Sanzio) were not infrequently -subjected to the Professor's off-hand inquiry, "By-the-way, have you seen -my Keniston?" The visitors, perceptibly awed, would retreat to a critical -distance and murmur the usual guarded generalities, while they tried to -keep the name in mind long enough to look it up in the Encyclopaedia. The -name was not in the Encyclopaedia; but, as a compensating fact, it became -known that the man himself was in Hillbridge. Hillbridge, then, owned an -artist whose celebrity it was the proper thing to take for granted! Some -one else, emboldened by the thought, bought a Keniston; and the next -year, on the occasion of the President's golden jubilee, the Faculty, by -unanimous consent, presented him with a Keniston. Two years later there -was a Keniston exhibition, to which the art-critics came from New York -and Boston; and not long afterward a well-known Chicago collector vainly -attempted to buy Professor Driffert's sketch, which the art journals cited -as a rare example of the painter's first or silvery manner. Thus there -gradually grew up a small circle of connoisseurs known in artistic, circles -as men who collected Kenistons. - -Professor Wildmarsh, of the chair of Fine Arts and Archaeology, was the -first critic to publish a detailed analysis of the master's methods and -purpose. The article was illustrated by engravings which (though they had -cost the magazine a fortune) were declared by Professor Wildmarsh to give -but an imperfect suggestion of the esoteric significance of the originals. -The Professor, with a tact that contrived to make each reader feel himself -included among the exceptions, went on to say that Keniston's work would -never appeal to any but exceptional natures; and he closed with the usual -assertion that to apprehend the full meaning of the master's "message" it -was necessary to see him in the surroundings of his own home at Hillbridge. - -Professor Wildmarsh's article was read one spring afternoon by a young -lady just speeding eastward on her first visit to Hillbridge, and already -flushed with anticipation of the intellectual opportunities awaiting her. -In East Onondaigua, where she lived, Hillbridge was looked on as an Oxford. -Magazine writers, with the easy American use of the superlative, designated -it as "the venerable Alma Mater," the "antique seat of learning," and -Claudia Day had been brought up to regard it as the fountain-head of -knowledge, and of that mental distinction which is so much rarer than -knowledge. An innate passion for all that was thus distinguished and -exceptional made her revere Hillbridge as the native soil of those -intellectual amenities that were of such difficult growth in the -thin air of East Onondaigua. At the first suggestion of a visit to -Hillbridge--whither she went at the invitation of a girl friend -who (incredible apotheosis!) had married one of the University -professors--Claudia's spirit dilated with the sense of new possibilities. -The vision of herself walking under the "historic elms" toward the Memorial -Library, standing rapt before the Stuart Washington, or drinking in, -from some obscure corner of an academic drawing-room, the President's -reminiscences of the Concord group--this vividness of self-projection into -the emotions awaiting her made her glad of any delay that prolonged so -exquisite a moment. - -It was in this mood that she opened the article on Keniston. She knew about -him, of course; she was wonderfully "well up," even for East Onondaigua. -She had read of him in the magazines; she had met, on a visit to New York, -a man who collected Kenistons, and a photogravure of a Keniston in an -"artistic" frame hung above her writing-table at home. But Professor -Wildmarsh's article made her feel how little she really knew of the master; -and she trembled to think of the state of relative ignorance in which, but -for the timely purchase of the magazine, she might have entered Hillbridge. -She had, for instance, been densely unaware that Keniston had already had -three "manners," and was showing symptoms of a fourth. She was equally -ignorant of the fact that he had founded a school and "created a formula"; -and she learned with a thrill that no one could hope to understand him who -had not seen him in his studio at Hillbridge, surrounded by his own works. -"The man and the art interpret each other," their exponent declared; and -Claudia Day, bending a brilliant eye on the future, wondered if she were -ever to be admitted to the privilege of that double initiation. - -Keniston, to his other claims to distinction, added that of being hard to -know. His friends always hastened to announce the fact to strangers--adding -after a pause of suspense that they "would see what they could do." -Visitors in whose favor he was induced to make an exception were further -warned that he never spoke unless he was interested--so that they mustn't -mind if he remained silent. It was under these reassuring conditions that, -some ten days after her arrival at Hillbridge, Miss Day was introduced -to the master's studio. She found him a tall listless-looking man, who -appeared middle-aged to her youth, and who stood before his own pictures -with a vaguely interrogative gaze, leaving the task of their interpretation -to the lady who had courageously contrived the visit. The studio, to -Claudia's surprise, was bare and shabby. It formed a rambling addition to -the small cheerless house in which the artist lived with his mother and -a widowed sister. For Claudia it added the last touch to his distinction -to learn that he was poor, and that what he earned was devoted to the -maintenance of the two limp women who formed a neutral-tinted background to -his impressive outline. His pictures of course fetched high prices; but he -worked slowly--"painfully," as his devotees preferred to phrase it--with -frequent intervals of ill health and inactivity, and the circle of Keniston -connoisseurs was still as small as it was distinguished. The girl's fancy -instantly hailed in him that favorite figure of imaginative youth, the -artist who would rather starve than paint a pot-boiler. It is known to -comparatively few that the production of successful pot-boilers is an art -in itself, and that such heroic abstentions as Keniston's are not always -purely voluntary. On the occasion of her first visit the artist said so -little that Claudia was able to indulge to the full the harrowing sense of -her inadequacy. No wonder she had not been one of the few that he cared -to talk to; every word she uttered must so obviously have diminished the -inducement! She had been cheap, trivial, conventional; at once gushing -and inexpressive, eager and constrained. She could feel him counting the -minutes till the visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the -scene of her discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she -confidently credited him--that they might never meet again. - - -II - -Mrs. Davant glanced reverentially about the studio. "I have always said," -she murmured, "that they ought to be seen in Europe." - -Mrs. Davant was young, credulous and emotionally extravagant: she reminded -Claudia of her earlier self--the self that, ten years before, had first set -an awestruck foot on that very threshold. - -"Not for _his_ sake," Mrs. Davant continued, "but for Europe's." - -Claudia smiled. She was glad that her husband's pictures were to be -exhibited in Paris. She concurred in Mrs. Davant's view of the importance -of the event; but she thought her visitor's way of putting the case a -little overcharged. Ten years spent in an atmosphere of Keniston-worship -had insensibly developed in Claudia a preference for moderation of speech. -She believed in her husband, of course; to believe in him, with an -increasing abandonment and tenacity, had become one of the necessary laws -of being; but she did not believe in his admirers. Their faith in him was -perhaps as genuine as her own; but it seemed to her less able to give an -account of itself. Some few of his appreciators doubtless measured him -by their own standards; but it was difficult not to feel that in the -Hillbridge circle, where rapture ran the highest, he was accepted on -what was at best but an indirect valuation; and now and then she had a -frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions. That -innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to -check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic -absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained -so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him. Her husband's -uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of -the surprises of her marriage. That an artist should believe in his -potential powers seemed to her at once the incentive and the pledge of -excellence: she knew there was no future for a hesitating talent. What -perplexed her was Keniston's satisfaction in his achievement. She had -always imagined that the true artist must regard himself as the imperfect -vehicle of the cosmic emotion--that beneath every difficulty overcome a new -one lurked, the vision widening as the scope enlarged. To be initiated into -these creative struggles, to shed on the toiler's path the consolatory ray -of faith and encouragement, had seemed the chief privilege of her marriage. -But there is something supererogatory in believing in a man obviously -disposed to perform that service for himself; and Claudia's ardor gradually -spent itself against the dense surface of her husband's complacency. She -could smile now at her vision of an intellectual communion which should -admit her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration. She had learned -that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston's -inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile -her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air -of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to -posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed -herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he -mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so little to -express. - -"It's for Europe," Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia noticed that -she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of her elaborate sunshade -the pattern of the shabby carpet. - -"It will be a revelation to them," she went on provisionally, as though -Claudia had missed her cue and left an awkward interval to fill. - -Claudia had in fact a sudden sense of deficient intuition. She felt that -her visitor had something to communicate which required, on her own part, -an intelligent co-operation; but what it was her insight failed to suggest. -She was, in truth, a little tired of Mrs. Davant, who was Keniston's latest -worshipper, who ordered pictures recklessly, who paid for them regally -in advance, and whose gallery was, figuratively speaking, crowded with -the artist's unpainted masterpieces. Claudia's impatience was perhaps -complicated by the uneasy sense that Mrs. Davant was too young, too rich, -too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be warned.--Warned of what? -That some of the pictures might never be painted? Scarcely that, since -Keniston, who was scrupulous in business transactions, might be trusted not -to take any material advantage of such evidence of faith. Claudia's impulse -remained undefined. She merely felt that she would have liked to help Mrs. -Davant, and that she did not know how. - -"You'll be there to see them?" she asked, as her visitor lingered. - -"In Paris?" Mrs. Davant's blush deepened. "We must all be there together." - -Claudia smiled. "My husband and I mean to go abroad some day--but I don't -see any chance of it at present." - -"But he _ought_ to go--you ought both to go this summer!" Mrs. Davant -persisted. "I know Professor Wildmarsh and Professor Driffert and all the -other critics think that Mr. Keniston's never having been to Europe has -given his work much of its wonderful individuality, its peculiar flavor -and meaning--but now that his talent is formed, that he has full command -of his means of expression," (Claudia recognized one of Professor -Driffert's favorite formulas) "they all think he ought to see the work of -the _other_ great masters--that he ought to visit the home of his -ancestors, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" She stretched an impulsive hand to -Claudia. "You ought to let him go, Mrs. Keniston!" - -Claudia accepted the admonition with the philosophy of the wife who is used -to being advised on the management of her husband. "I sha'n't interfere -with him," she declared; and Mrs. Davant instantly caught her up with a cry -of, "Oh, it's too lovely of you to say that!" With this exclamation she -left Claudia to a silent renewal of wonder. - -A moment later Keniston entered: to a mind curious in combinations it -might have occurred that he had met Mrs. Davant on the door-step. In one -sense he might, for all his wife cared, have met fifty Mrs. Davants on the -door-step: it was long since Claudia had enjoyed the solace of resenting -such coincidences. Her only thought now was that her husband's first words -might not improbably explain Mrs. Davant's last; and she waited for him to -speak. - -He paused with his hands in his pockets before an unfinished picture on the -easel; then, as his habit was, he began to stroll touristlike from canvas -to canvas, standing before each in a musing ecstasy of contemplation that -no readjustment of view ever seemed to disturb. Her eye instinctively -joined his in its inspection; it was the one point where their natures -merged. Thank God, there, was no doubt about the pictures! She was what she -had always dreamed of being--the wife of a great artist. Keniston dropped -into an armchair and filled his pipe. "How should you like to go to -Europe?" he asked. - -His wife looked up quickly. "When?" - -"Now--this spring, I mean." He paused to light the pipe. "I should like to -be over there while these things are being exhibited." - -Claudia was silent. - -"Well?" he repeated after a moment. - -"How can we afford it?" she asked. - -Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the mother and -sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia, who had the atoning -temperament which seeks to pay for every happiness by making it a source -of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an -exaggerated devotion. Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized -her most delicate pleasures; and her husband's sensitiveness to it in great -measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a -failure of the moral sense. His loyalty to the dull women who depended on -him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere sensibility -to ideal demands. - -"Oh, I don't see why we shouldn't," he rejoined. "I think we might manage -it." - -"At Mrs. Davant's expense?" leaped from Claudia. She could not tell why she -had said it; some inner barrier seemed to have given way under a confused -pressure of emotions. - -He looked up at her with frank surprise. "Well, she has been very jolly -about it--why not? She has a tremendous feeling for art--the keenest I -ever knew in a woman." Claudia imperceptibly smiled. "She wants me to let -her pay in advance for the four panels she has ordered for the Memorial -Library. That would give us plenty of money for the trip, and my having the -panels to do is another reason for my wanting to go abroad just now." - -"Another reason?" - -"Yes; I've never worked on such a big scale. I want to see how those old -chaps did the trick; I want to measure myself with the big fellows over -there. An artist ought to, once in his life." - -She gave him a wondering look. For the first time his words implied a sense -of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract what they -conceded. What he really wanted was fresh food for his self-satisfaction: -he was like an army that moves on after exhausting the resources of the -country. - -Womanlike, she abandoned the general survey of the case for the -consideration of a minor point. - -"Are you sure you can do that kind of thing?" she asked. - -"What kind of thing?" - -"The panels." - -He glanced at her indulgently: his self-confidence was too impenetrable to -feel the pin-prick of such a doubt. - -"Immensely sure," he said with a smile. - -"And you don't mind taking so much money from her in advance?" - -He stared. "Why should I? She'll get it back--with interest!" He laughed -and drew at his pipe. "It will be an uncommonly interesting experience. I -shouldn't wonder if it freshened me up a bit." - -She looked at him again. This second hint of self-distrust struck her as -the sign of a quickened sensibility. What if, after all, he was beginning -to be dissatisfied with his work? The thought filled her with a renovating -sense of his sufficiency. - - -III - -They stopped in London to see the National Gallery. - -It was thus that, in their inexperience, they had narrowly put it; but in -reality every stone of the streets, every trick of the atmosphere, had -its message of surprise for their virgin sensibilities. The pictures were -simply the summing up, the final interpretation, of the cumulative pressure -of an unimagined world; and it seemed to Claudia that long before they -reached the doors of the gallery she had some intuitive revelation of what -awaited them within. - -They moved about from room to room without exchanging a word. The vast -noiseless spaces seemed full of sound, like the roar of a distant multitude -heard only by the inner ear. Had their speech been articulate their -language would have been incomprehensible; and even that far-off murmur -of meaning pressed intolerably on Claudia's nerves. Keniston took the -onset without outward sign of disturbance. Now and then he paused before a -canvas, or prolonged from one of the benches his silent communion with some -miracle of line or color; but he neither looked at his wife nor spoke to -her. He seemed to have forgotten her presence. - -Claudia was conscious of keeping a furtive watch on him; but the sum total -of her impressions was negative. She remembered thinking when she first -met him that his face was rather expressionless; and he had the habit of -self-engrossed silences. - -All that evening, at the hotel, they talked about London, and he surprised -her by an acuteness of observation that she had sometimes inwardly accused -him of lacking. He seemed to have seen everything, to have examined, felt, -compared, with nerves as finely adjusted as her own; but he said nothing -of the pictures. The next day they returned to the National Gallery, and -he began to study the paintings in detail, pointing out differences of -technique, analyzing and criticising, but still without summing up his -conclusions. He seemed to have a sort of provincial dread of showing -himself too much impressed. Claudia's own sensations were too complex, too -overwhelming, to be readily classified. Lacking the craftsman's instinct to -steady her, she felt herself carried off her feet by the rush of incoherent -impressions. One point she consciously avoided, and that was the comparison -of her husband's work with what they were daily seeing. Art, she inwardly -argued, was too various, too complex, dependent on too many inter-relations -of feeling and environment, to allow of its being judged by any provisional -standard. Even the subtleties of technique must be modified by the artist's -changing purpose, as this in turn is acted on by influences of which -he is himself unconscious. How, then, was an unprepared imagination to -distinguish between such varied reflections of the elusive vision? She took -refuge in a passionate exaggeration of her own ignorance and insufficiency. - -After a week in London they went to Paris. The exhibition of Keniston's -pictures had been opened a few days earlier; and as they drove through the -streets on the way to the station an "impressionist" poster here and there -invited them to the display of the American artist's work. Mrs. Davant, who -had been in Paris for the opening, had already written rapturously of the -impression produced, enclosing commendatory notices from one or two papers. -She reported that there had been a great crowd on the first day, and that -the critics had been "immensely struck." - -The Kenistons arrived in the evening, and the next morning Claudia, as a -matter of course, asked her husband at what time he meant to go and see the -pictures. - -He looked up absently from his guide-book. - -"What pictures?" - -"Why--yours," she said, surprised. - -"Oh, they'll keep," he answered; adding with a slightly embarrassed laugh, -"We'll give the other chaps a show first." Presently he laid down his book -and proposed that they should go to the Louvre. - -They spent the morning there, lunched at a restaurant near by, and returned -to the gallery in the afternoon. Keniston had passed from inarticulateness -to an eager volubility. It was clear that he was beginning to co-ordinate -his impressions, to find his way about in a corner of the great imaginative -universe. He seemed extraordinarily ready to impart his discoveries; and -Claudia felt that her ignorance served him as a convenient buffer against -the terrific impact of new sensations. - -On the way home she asked when he meant to see Mrs. Davant. - -His answer surprised her. "Does she know we're here?" - -"Not unless you've sent her word," said Claudia, with a touch of harmless -irony. - -"That's all right, then," he returned simply. "I want to wait and look -about a day or two longer. She'd want us to go sight-seeing with her; and -I'd rather get my impressions alone." - -The next two days were hampered by the necessity of eluding Mrs. Davant. -Claudia, under different circumstances, would have scrupled to share in -this somewhat shabby conspiracy; but she found herself in a state of -suspended judgment, wherein her husband's treatment of Mrs. Davant became -for the moment merely a clue to larger meanings. - -They had been four days in Paris when Claudia, returning one afternoon from -a parenthetical excursion to the Rue de la Paix, was confronted on her -threshold by the reproachful figure of their benefactress. It was not to -her, however, that Mrs. Davant's reproaches were addressed. Keniston, it -appeared, had borne the brunt of them; for he stood leaning against the -mantelpiece of their modest _salon_ in that attitude of convicted -negligence when, if ever, a man is glad to take refuge behind his wife. - -Claudia had however no immediate intention of affording him such shelter. -She wanted to observe and wait. - -"He's too impossible!" cried Mrs. Davant, sweeping her at once into the -central current of her grievance. - -Claudia looked from one to the other. - -"For not going to see you?" - -"For not going to see his pictures!" cried the other nobly. - -Claudia colored and Keniston shifted his position uneasily. - -"I can't make her understand," he said, turning to his wife. - -"I don't care about myself!" Mrs. Davant interjected. - -"_I_ do, then; it's the only thing I do care about," he hurriedly -protested. "I meant to go at once--to write--Claudia wanted to go, but I -wouldn't let her." He looked helplessly about the pleasant red-curtained -room, which was rapidly burning itself into Claudia's consciousness as a -visible extension of Mrs. Davant's claims. - -"I can't explain," he broke off. - -Mrs. Davant in turn addressed herself to Claudia. - -"People think it's so odd," she complained. "So many of the artists -here are anxious to meet him; they've all been so charming about the -pictures; and several of our American friends have come over from London -expressly for the exhibition. I told every one that he would be here -for the opening--there was a private view, you know--and they were so -disappointed--they wanted to give him an ovation; and I didn't know what -to say. What _am_ I to say?" she abruptly ended. - -"There's nothing to say," said Keniston slowly. - -"But the exhibition closes the day after to-morrow." - -"Well, _I_ sha'n't close--I shall be here," he declared with an effort -at playfulness. "If they want to see me--all these people you're kind -enough to mention--won't there be other chances?" - -"But I wanted them to see you _among_ your pictures--to hear you talk -about them, explain them in that wonderful way. I wanted you to interpret -each other, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" - -"Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!" said Keniston, softening the commination -with a smile. "If my pictures are good for anything they oughtn't to need -explaining." - -Mrs. Davant stared. "But I thought that was what made them so interesting!" -she exclaimed. - -Keniston looked down. "Perhaps it was," he murmured. - -There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying, with a glance -at her husband: "But if the exhibition is to remain open to-morrow, could -we not meet you there? And perhaps you could send word to some of our -friends." - -Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is glued together. -"Oh, _do_ make him!" she implored. "I'll ask them to come in the -afternoon--we'll make it into a little tea--a _five o'clock_. I'll -send word at once to everybody!" She gathered up her beruffled boa and -sunshade, settling her plumage like a reassured bird. "It will be too -lovely!" she ended in a self-consoling murmur. - -But in the doorway a new doubt assailed her. "You won't fail me?" she said, -turning plaintively to Keniston. "You'll make him come, Mrs. Keniston?" - -"I'll bring him!" Claudia promised. - - -IV - -When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble, -her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home. - -"The fact is I'm rather surfeited," he said, smiling. "I suppose my -appetite isn't equal to such a plethora. I think I'll write some letters -and join you somewhere later." - -She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual -readiness. - -"I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then," she said. "I -haven't had time to take the edge off that appetite." - -They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone -with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct -reference to Mrs. Davant's visit; but its effect was implicit in their -eagerness to avoid each other. - -Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that -robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she -turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never -had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social -quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were -evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the -nervous structure of the huge frame--a sensibility so delicate, alert and -universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such -a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously -as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be "artistic" must cease to be -an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of -the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny -spot of consciousness--the value of her husband's work. There are moments -when to the groping soul the world's accumulated experiences are but -stepping-stones across a private difficulty. - -She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had -an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting -her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion -emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in -obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she -called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband's pictures were -exhibited. - -A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way -up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing, -held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer; -and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room -full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the -public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier -in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something -about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in -other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed -to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the -carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor's solitary advance with -the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the -thing "go off," and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of -co-operation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her -instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they -had not co-operated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant: -they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one -familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there--and the -frames--but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished -like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had -it happened to _her_ or to the pictures? She tried to rally her -frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance; -but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single -conviction--the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no -standing up against that: she felt herself submerged. - -The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the -throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving -as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes. -She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical -vitality.... She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall -before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the -dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a -spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life. What proof had she -that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other? The -confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a -valid theory of art. How, after all, did she know that the pictures were -bad? On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided -the case against them? It seemed as though it were a standard outside of -herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her -aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that -was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid -that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the -middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a _massif_ -of palms and azaleas. As Claudia's muffled wanderings carried her around -the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the -figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head -bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her. - -Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware -that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered. It was what _he_ -thought of them that counted: her life hung on that. - -They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt -to flash into immediate speech. At length he said simply, "I didn't know -you were coming here." - -She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand. - -"I didn't mean to," she stammered; "but I was too early for our -appointment--" - -Her word's cast a revealing glare on the situation. Neither of them looked -at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly -to press upon them and force them apart. - -Keniston glanced at his watch. "It's twelve o'clock," he said. "Shall we go -on?" - - -V - -At the door he called a cab and put her in it; then, drawing out his watch -again, he said abruptly: "I believe I'll let you go alone. I'll join you at -the hotel in time for luncheon." She wondered for a moment if he meant to -return to the gallery; but, looking back as she drove off, she saw him walk -rapidly away in the opposite direction. - -The cabman had carried her half-way to the Hotel Cluny before she realized -where she was going, and cried out to him to turn home. There was an acute -irony in this mechanical prolongation of the quest of beauty. She had -had enough of it, too much of it; her one longing was to escape, to hide -herself away from its all-suffusing implacable light. - -At the hotel, alone in her room, a few tears came to soften her seared -vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by weeping. Her whole being -was centred in the longing to know what her husband thought. Their short -exchange of words had, after all, told her nothing. She had guessed a faint -resentment at her unexpected appearance; but that might merely imply a -dawning sense, on his part, of being furtively watched and criticised. She -had sometimes wondered if he was never conscious of her observation; there -were moments when it seemed to radiate from her in visible waves. Perhaps, -after all, he was aware of it, on his guard against it, as a lurking knife -behind the thick curtain of his complacency; and to-day he must have caught -the gleam of the blade. - -Claudia had not reached the age when pity is the first chord to vibrate in -contact with any revelation of failure. Her one hope had been that Keniston -should be clear-eyed enough to face the truth. Whatever it turned out to -be, she wanted him to measure himself with it. But as his image rose before -her she felt a sudden half-maternal longing to thrust herself between him -and disaster. Her eagerness to see him tested by circumstances seemed now -like a cruel scientific curiosity. She saw in a flash of sympathy that he -would need her most if he fell beneath his fate. - -He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she came up-stairs -from her solitary meal their _salon_ was still untenanted. She -permitted herself no sensational fears; for she could not, at the height of -apprehension, figure Keniston as yielding to any tragic impulse; but the -lengthening hours brought an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity. Suddenly -she heard the clock strike five. It was the hour at which they had promised -to meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery--the hour of the "ovation." Claudia -rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of her husband in the -crowded street. Could it be that he had forgotten her, had gone to the -gallery without her? Or had something happened--that veiled "something" -which, for the last hour, had grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind? - -She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered. As she turned to meet -him her whole being was swept forward on a great wave of pity: she was so -sure, now, that he must know. - -But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied brightness; her first -impression was that she had never seen him so vividly, so expressively -pleased. If he needed her, it was not to bind up his wounds. - -He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some -inner light. "I didn't mean to be so late," he said, tossing aside his hat -and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. "I -turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the -place fairly swallowed me up--I couldn't get away from it. I've been there -ever since." He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe. - -"It takes time," he continued musingly, "to get at them, to make out what -they're saying--the big fellows, I mean. They're not a communicative lot. -At first I couldn't make much out of their lingo--it was too different from -mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them -together, I've begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two -of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out--made them -deliver up their last drop." He lifted a brilliant eye to her. "Lord, it -was tremendous!" he declared. - -He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in -silence. - -"At first," he began again, "I was afraid their language was too hard for -me--that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed -to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I -wouldn't be beaten, and now, to-day"--he paused a moment to strike a -match--"when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me -in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I'd made them all into a big bonfire to -light me on my road!" - -His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid -to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past -upon the pyre! - -"Is there nothing left?" she faltered. - -"Nothing left? There's everything!" he exulted. "Why, here I am, not much -over forty, and I've found out already--already!" He stood up and began to -move excitedly about the room. "My God! Suppose I'd never known! Suppose -I'd gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those -chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they're saved! Won't -somebody please start a hymn?" - -Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong -current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth, -and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot. - -"Mrs. Davant--" she exclaimed. - -He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. "Mrs. Davant?" - -"We were to have met her--this afternoon--now--" - -"At the gallery? Oh, that's all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see -her after I left you; I explained it all to her." - -"All?" - -"I told her I was going to begin all over again." - -Claudia's heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly. - -"But the panels--?" - -"That's all right too. I told her about the panels," he reassured her. - -"You told her--?" - -"That I can't paint them now. She doesn't understand, of course; but she's -the best little woman and she trusts me." - -She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. "But that isn't -all," she wailed. "It doesn't matter how much you've explained to her. It -doesn't do away with the fact that we're living on those panels!" - -"Living on them?" - -"On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn't that what brought us -here? And--if you mean to do as you say--to begin all over again--how in -the world are we ever to pay her back?" - -Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. "There's only one way that I -know of," he imperturbably declared, "and that's to stay out here till I -learn how to paint them." - - - - -"COPY" - -A DIALOGUE - - -_Mrs. Ambrose Dale--forty, slender, still young--sits in her drawing-room -at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit, -there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and -flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere--mostly with autograph -inscriptions "From the Author"--and a large portrait of_ Mrs. Dale, -_at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the -wall-panels. Before_ Mrs. Dale _stands_ Hilda, _fair and twenty, -her hands full of letters_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn't it strange -that people who'd blush to borrow twenty dollars don't scruple to beg for -an autograph? - -_Hilda (reproachfully)_. Oh-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. What's the difference, pray? - -_Hilda_. Only that your last autograph sold for fifty-- - -_Mrs. Dale (not displeased)_. Ah?--I sent for you, Hilda, because I'm -dining out to-night, and if there's nothing important to attend to among -these letters you needn't sit up for me. - -_Hilda_. You don't mean to work? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Perhaps; but I sha'n't need you. You'll see that my -cigarettes and coffee-machine are in place, and: that I don't have to crawl -about the floor in search of my pen-wiper? That's all. Now about these -letters-- - -_Hilda (impulsively)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Well? - -_Hilda_. I'd rather sit up for you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Child, I've nothing for you to do. I shall be blocking -out the tenth chapter of _Winged Purposes_ and it won't be ready for -you till next week. - -_Hilda_. It isn't that--but it's so beautiful to sit here, watching -and listening, all alone in the night, and to feel that you're in there -_(she points to the study-door)_ _creating_--._(Impulsively.)_ -What do I care for sleep? - -_Mrs. Dale (indulgently)_. Child--silly child!--Yes, I should have -felt so at your age--it would have been an inspiration-- - -_Hilda (rapt)_. It is! - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you must go to bed; I must have you fresh in the -morning; for you're still at the age when one is fresh in the morning! -_(She sighs.)_ The letters? _(Abruptly.)_ Do you take notes of -what you feel, Hilda--here, all alone in the night, as you say? - -_Hilda (shyly)_. I have-- - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. For the diary? - -_Hilda (nods and blushes)_. - -_Mrs. Dale (caressingly)_. Goose!--Well, to business. What is there? - -_Hilda_. Nothing important, except a letter from Stroud & Fayerweather -to say that the question of the royalty on _Pomegranate Seed_ has been -settled in your favor. The English publishers of _Immolation_ write -to consult you about a six-shilling edition; Olafson, the Copenhagen -publisher, applies for permission to bring out a Danish translation of -_The Idol's Feet_; and the editor of the _Semaphore_ wants a new -serial--I think that's all; except that _Woman's Sphere_ and _The -Droplight_ ask for interviews--with photographs-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. The same old story! I'm so toed of it all. _(To -herself, in an undertone.)_ But how should I feel if it all stopped? -_(The servant brings in a card.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (reading it)_. Is it possible? Paul Ventnor? _(To the -servant.)_ Show Mr. Ventnor up. _(To herself.)_ Paul Ventnor! - -_Hilda (breathless)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale--_the_ Mr. Ventnor? - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. I fancy there's only one. - -_Hilda_. The great, great poet? _(Irresolute.)_ No, I don't -dare-- - -_Mrs. Dale (with a tinge of impatience)_. What? - -_Hilda (fervently)_. Ask you--if I might--oh, here in this corner, -where he can't possibly notice me--stay just a moment? Just to see him come -in? To see the meeting between you--the greatest novelist and the greatest -poet of the age? Oh, it's too much to ask! It's an historic moment. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, I suppose it is. I hadn't thought of it in that -light. Well _(smiling)_, for the diary-- - -_Hilda_. Oh, thank you, _thank you_! I'll be off the very instant -I've heard him speak. - -_Mrs. Dale_. The very instant, mind. _(She rises, looks at herself -in the glass, smooths her hair, sits down again, and rattles the -tea-caddy.)_ Isn't the room very warm?--_(She looks over at her -portrait.)_ I've grown stouter since that was painted--. You'll make a -fortune out of that diary, Hilda-- - -_Hilda (modestly)_. Four publishers have applied to me already-- - -_The Servant (announces)_. Mr. Paul Ventnor. - -_(Tall, nearing fifty, with an incipient stoutness buttoned into a -masterly frock-coat, Ventnor drops his glass and advances vaguely, with a -short-sighted stare.)_ - -_Ventnor_. Mrs. Dale? - -_Mrs. Dale_. My dear friend! This is kind. _(She looks over her -shoulder at Hilda, mho vanishes through the door to the left.)_ The -papers announced your arrival, but I hardly hoped-- - -_Ventnor (whose short-sighted stare is seen to conceal a deeper -embarrassment)_. You hadn't forgotten me, then? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Delicious! Do _you_ forget that you're public -property? - -_Ventnor_. Forgotten, I mean, that we were old friends? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Such old friends! May I remind you that it's nearly -twenty years since we've met? Or do you find cold reminiscences -indigestible? - -_Ventnor_. On the contrary, I've come to ask you for a dish of -them--we'll warm them up together. You're my first visit. - -_Mrs. Dale_. How perfect of you! So few men visit their women friends -in chronological order; or at least they generally do it the other way -round, beginning with the present day and working back--if there's time--to -prehistoric woman. - -_Ventnor_. But when prehistoric woman has become historic woman--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, it's the reflection of my glory that has guided you -here, then? - -_Ventnor_. It's a spirit in my feet that has led me, at the first -opportunity, to the most delightful spot I know. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, the first opportunity--! - -_Ventnor_. I might have seen you very often before; but never just in -the right way. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is this the right way? - -_Ventnor_. It depends on you to make it so. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What a responsibility! What shall I do? - -_Ventnor_. Talk to me--make me think you're a little glad to see me; -give me some tea and a cigarette; and say you're out to everyone else. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is that all? _(She hands him a cup of tea.)_ The -cigarettes are at your elbow--. And do you think I shouldn't have been glad -to see you before? - -_Ventnor_. No; I think I should have been too glad to see you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Dear me, what precautions! I hope you always wear -goloshes when it looks like rain and never by any chance expose yourself -to a draught. But I had an idea that poets courted the emotions-- - -_Ventnor_. Do novelists? - -_Mrs. Dale_. If you ask _me_--on paper! - -_Ventnor_. Just so; that's safest. My best things about the sea have -been written on shore. _(He looks at her thoughtfully.)_ But it -wouldn't have suited us in the old days, would it? - -_Mrs. Dale (sighing)_. When we were real people! - -_Ventnor_. Real people? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Are _you_, now? I died years ago. What you see -before you is a figment of the reporter's brain--a monster manufactured out -of newspaper paragraphs, with ink in its veins. A keen sense of copyright -is _my_ nearest approach to an emotion. - -_Ventnor (sighing)_. Ah, well, yes--as you say, we're public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. If one shared equally with the public! But the last shred -of my identity is gone. - -_Ventnor_. Most people would be glad to part with theirs on such -terms. I have followed your work with immense interest. _Immolation_ -is a masterpiece. I read it last summer when it first came out. - -_Mrs. Dale (with a shade less warmth)_. _Immolation_ has been out -three years. - -_Ventnor_. Oh, by Jove--no? Surely not--But one is so overwhelmed--one -loses count. (_Reproachfully_.) Why have you never sent me your books? - -_Mrs. Dale_. For that very reason. - -_Ventnor (deprecatingly)_. You know I didn't mean it for you! And -_my_ first book--do you remember--was dedicated to you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. _Silver Trumpets_-- - -_Ventnor (much interested)_. Have you a copy still, by any chance? The -first edition, I mean? Mine was stolen years ago. Do you think you could -put your hand on it? - -_Mrs. Dale (taking a small shabby book from the table at her side)_. -It's here. - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. May I have it? Ah, thanks. This is _very_ -interesting. The last copy sold in London for L40, and they tell me the -next will fetch twice as much. It's quite _introuvable_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I know that. _(A pause. She takes the book from him, -opens it, and reads, half to herself--)_ - - _How much we two have seen together, - Of other eyes unwist, - Dear as in days of leafless weather - The willow's saffron mist, - - Strange as the hour when Hesper swings - A-sea in beryl green, - While overhead on dalliant wings - The daylight hangs serene, - - And thrilling as a meteor's fall - Through depths of lonely sky, - When each to each two watchers call: - I saw it!--So did I._ - -_Ventnor_. Thin, thin--the troubadour tinkle. Odd how little promise -there is in first volumes! - -_Mrs. Dale (with irresistible emphasis)_. I thought there was a -distinct promise in this! - -_Ventnor (seeing his mistake)_. Ah--the one you would never let me -fulfil? _(Sentimentally.)_ How inexorable you were! You never -dedicated a book to _me_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I hadn't begun to write when we were--dedicating things -to each other. - -_Ventnor_. Not for the public--but you wrote for me; and, wonderful as -you are, you've never written anything since that I care for half as much -as-- - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Well? - -_Ventnor_. Your letters. - -_Mrs. Dale (in a changed voice)_. My letters--do you remember them? - -_Ventnor_. When I don't, I reread them. - -_Mrs. Dale (incredulous)_. You have them still? - -_Ventnor (unguardedly)_. You haven't mine, then? - -_Mrs. Dale (playfully)_. Oh, you were a celebrity already. Of course I -kept them! _(Smiling.)_ Think what they are worth now! I always keep -them locked up in my safe over there. _(She indicates a cabinet.) - -Ventnor (after a pause)_. I always carry yours with me. - -_Mrs. Dale (laughing)_. You-- - -_Ventnor_. Wherever I go. _(A longer pause. She looks at him -fixedly.)_ I have them with me now. - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. You--have them with you--now? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. Why not? One never knows-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Never knows--? - -_Ventnor (humorously)_. Gad--when the bank-examiner may come round. -You forget I'm a married man. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah--yes. - -_Ventnor (sits down beside her)_. I speak to you as I couldn't to -anyone else--without deserving a kicking. You know how it all came about. -_(A pause.)_ You'll bear witness that it wasn't till you denied me all -hope-- - -_Mrs. Dale (a little breathless)_. Yes, yes-- - -_Ventnor_. Till you sent me from you-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's so easy to be heroic when one is young! One doesn't -realize how long life is going to last afterward. _(Musing.)_ Nor what -weary work it is gathering up the fragments. - -_Ventnor_. But the time comes when one sends for the china-mender, and -has the bits riveted together, and turns the cracked side to the wall-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. And denies that the article was ever damaged? - -_Ventnor_. Eh? Well, the great thing, you see, is to keep one's self -out of reach of the housemaid's brush. _(A pause.)_ If you're married -you can't--always. _(Smiling.)_ Don't you hate to be taken down and -dusted? - -_Mrs. Dale (with intention)_. You forget how long ago my husband died. -It's fifteen years since I've been an object of interest to anybody but the -public. - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The only one of your admirers to whom you've ever -given the least encouragement! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Say rather the most easily pleased! - -_Ventnor_. Or the only one you cared to please? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, you _haven't_ kept my letters! - -_Ventnor (gravely)_. Is that a challenge? Look here, then! _(He -drams a packet from his pocket and holds it out to her.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (taking the packet and looking at him earnestly)_. Why have -you brought me these? - -_Ventnor_. I didn't bring them; they came because I came--that's all. -_(Tentatively.)_ Are we unwelcome? - -_Mrs. Dale (who has undone the packet and does not appear to hear -him)_. The very first I ever wrote you--the day after we met at the -concert. How on earth did you happen to keep it? _(She glances over -it.)_ How perfectly absurd! Well, it's not a compromising document. - -_Ventnor_. I'm afraid none of them are. - -_Mrs. Dale (quickly)_. Is it to that they owe their immunity? Because -one could leave them about like safety matches?--Ah, here's another I -remember--I wrote that the day after we went skating together for the first -time. _(She reads it slowly.)_ How odd! How very odd! - -_Ventnor_. What? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, it's the most curious thing--I had a letter of this -kind to do the other day, in the novel I'm at work on now--the letter of a -woman who is just--just beginning-- - -_Ventnor_. Yes--just beginning--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. And, do you know, I find the best phrase in it, the -phrase I somehow regarded as the fruit of--well, of all my subsequent -discoveries--is simply plagiarized, word for word, from this! - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. I told you so! You were all there! - -_Mrs. Dale (critically)_. But the rest of it's poorly done--very -poorly. _(Reads the letter over.)_ H'm--I didn't know how to leave -off. It takes me forever to get out of the door. - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Perhaps I was there to prevent you! _(After a -pause.)_ I wonder what I said in return? - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Shall we look? _(She rises.)_ Shall -we--really? I have them all here, you know. _(She goes toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Ventnor (following her with repressed eagerness)_. Oh--all! - -_Mrs. Dale (throws open the door of the cabinet, revealing a number of -packets)_. Don't you believe me now? - -_Ventnor_. Good heavens! How I must have repeated myself! But then you -were so very deaf. - -_Mrs. Dale (takes out a packet and returns to her seat. Ventnor extends -an impatient hand for the letters)_. No--no; wait! I want to find your -answer to the one I was just reading. _(After a pause.)_ Here it -is--yes, I thought so! - -_Ventnor_. What did you think? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. I thought it was the one in which you -quoted _Epipsychidion_-- - -_Ventnor_. Mercy! Did I _quote_ things? I don't wonder you were -cruel. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, and here's the other--the one I--the one I didn't -answer--for a long time. Do you remember? - -_Ventnor (with emotion)_. Do I remember? I wrote it the morning after -we heard _Isolde_-- - -_Mrs. Dale (disappointed)_. No--no. _That_ wasn't the one I -didn't answer! Here--this is the one I mean. - -_Ventnor (takes it curiously)_. Ah--h'm--this is very like unrolling a -mummy--_(he glances at her)_--with a live grain of wheat in it, -perhaps?--Oh, by Jove! - -_Mrs. Dale_. What? - -_Ventnor_. Why, this is the one I made a sonnet out of afterward! By -Jove, I'd forgotten where that idea came from. You may know the lines -perhaps? They're in the fourth volume of my Complete Edition--It's the -thing beginning - - _Love came to me with unrelenting eyes--_ - -one of my best, I rather fancy. Of course, here it's very crudely put--the -values aren't brought out--ah! this touch is good though--very good. H'm, I -daresay there might be other material. _(He glances toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (drily)_. The live grain of wheat, as you said! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, well--my first harvest was sown on rocky -ground--_now_ I plant for the fowls of the air. _(Rising and walking -toward the cabinet.)_ When can I come and carry off all this rubbish? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Carry it off? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. My dear lady, surely between you and me -explicitness is a burden. You must see that these letters of ours can't be -left to take their chance like an ordinary correspondence--you said -yourself we were public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. To take their chance? Do you suppose that, in my keeping, -your letters take any chances? _(Suddenly.)_ Do mine--in yours? - -_Ventnor (still more embarrassed)_. Helen--! _(He takes a turn -through the room.)_ You force me to remind you that you and I are -differently situated--that in a moment of madness I sacrificed the only -right you ever gave me--the right to love you better than any other -woman in the world. _(A pause. She says nothing and he continues, with -increasing difficulty--)_ You asked me just now why I carried your -letters about with me--kept them, literally, in my own hands. Well, suppose -it's to be sure of their not falling into some one else's? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh! - -_Ventnor (throws himself into a chair)_. For God's sake don't pity me! - -_Mrs. Dale (after a long pause)_. Am I dull--or are you trying to say -that you want to give me back my letters? - -_Ventnor (starting up)_. I? Give you back--? God forbid! Your letters? -Not for the world! The only thing I have left! But you can't dream that in -_my_ hands-- - -_Mrs. Dale (suddenly)_. You want yours, then? - -_Ventnor (repressing his eagerness)_. My dear friend, if I'd ever -dreamed that you'd kept them--? - -_Mrs. Dale (accusingly)_. You _do_ want them. _(A pause. He -makes a deprecatory gesture.)_ Why should they be less safe with me than -mine with you? _I_ never forfeited the right to keep them. - -_Ventnor (after another pause)_. It's compensation enough, almost, -to have you reproach me! _(He moves nearer to her, but she makes no -response.)_ You forget that I've forfeited _all_ my rights--even -that of letting you keep my letters. - -_Mrs. Dale_. You _do_ want them! _(She rises, throws all the -letters into the cabinet, locks the door and puts the key in her -pocket.)_ There's my answer. - -_Ventnor_. Helen--! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, I paid dearly enough for the right to keep them, and -I mean to! _(She turns to him passionately.)_ Have you ever asked -yourself how I paid for it? With what months and years of solitude, what -indifference to flattery, what resistance to affection?--Oh, don't smile -because I said affection, and not love. Affection's a warm cloak in cold -weather; and I _have_ been cold; and I shall keep on growing colder! -Don't talk to me about living in the hearts of my readers! We both know -what kind of a domicile that is. Why, before long I shall become a classic! -Bound in sets and kept on the top book-shelf--brr, doesn't that sound -freezing? I foresee the day when I shall be as lonely as an Etruscan -museum! _(She breaks into a laugh.)_ That's what I've paid for the -right to keep your letters. _(She holds out her hand.)_ And now give -me mine. - -_Ventnor_. Yours? - -_Mrs. Dale (haughtily)_. Yes; I claim them. - -_Ventnor (in the same tone)_. On what ground? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Hear the man!--Because I wrote them, of course. - -_Ventnor_. But it seems to me that--under your inspiration, I admit--I -also wrote mine. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I don't dispute their authenticity--it's yours I -deny! - -_Ventnor_. Mine? - -_Mrs. Dale_. You voluntarily ceased to be the man who wrote me those -letters--you've admitted as much. You traded paper for flesh and blood. I -don't dispute your wisdom--only you must hold to your bargain! The letters -are all mine. - -_Ventnor (groping between two tones)_. Your arguments are as -convincing as ever. _(He hazards a faint laugh.)_ You're a marvellous -dialectician--but, if we're going to settle the matter in the spirit of an -arbitration treaty, why, there are accepted conventions in such cases. It's -an odious way to put it, but since you won't help me, one of them is-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. One of them is--? - -_Ventnor_. That it is usual--that technically, I mean, the -letter--belongs to its writer-- - -_Mrs. Dale (after a pause)_. Such letters as _these_? - -_Ventnor_. Such letters especially-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you couldn't have written them if I hadn't--been -willing to read them. Surely there's more of myself in them than of you. - -_Ventnor_. Surely there's nothing in which a man puts more of himself -than in his love-letters! - -_Mrs. Dale (with emotion)_. But a woman's love-letters are like her child. -They belong to her more than to anybody else-- - -_Ventnor_. And a man's? - -_Mrs. Dale (with sudden violence)_. Are all he risks!--There, take -them. _(She flings the key of the cabinet at his feet and sinks into a -chair.) - -Ventnor (starts as though to pick up the key; then approaches and bends -over her)_. Helen--oh, Helen! - -_Mrs. Dale (she yields her hands to him, murmuring:)_ Paul! -_(Suddenly she straightens herself and draws back illuminated.)_ What -a fool I am! I see it all now. You want them for your memoirs! - -_Ventnor (disconcerted)_. Helen-- - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. Come, come--the rule is to unmask when the -signal's given! You want them for your memoirs. - -_Ventnor (with a forced laugh)_. What makes you think so? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. Because _I_ want them for mine! - -_Ventnor (in a changed tone)_. Ah--. _(He moves away from her and -leans against the mantelpiece. She remains seated, with her eyes fixed on -him.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale_. I wonder I didn't see it sooner. Your reasons were lame -enough. - -_Ventnor (ironically)_. Yours were masterly. You're the more -accomplished actor of the two. I was completely deceived. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I'm a novelist. I can keep up that sort of thing for -five hundred pages! - -_Ventnor_. I congratulate you. _(A pause.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (moving to her seat behind the tea-table)_. I've never -offered you any tea. _(She bends over the kettle.)_ Why don't you take -your letters? - -_Ventnor_. Because you've been clever enough to make it impossible for -me. _(He picks up the key and hands it to her. Then abruptly)_--Was it -all acting--just now? - -_Mrs. Dale_. By what right do you ask? - -_Ventnor_. By right of renouncing my claim to my letters. Keep -them--and tell me. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I give you back your claim--and I refuse to tell you. - -_Ventnor (sadly)_. Ah, Helen, if you deceived me, you deceived -yourself also. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What does it matter, now that we're both undeceived? I -played a losing game, that's all. - -_Ventnor_. Why losing--since all the letters are yours? - -_Mrs. Dale_. The letters? _(Slowly.)_ I'd forgotten the letters-- - -_Ventnor (exultant)_. Ah, I knew you'd end by telling me the truth! - -_Mrs. Dale_. The truth? Where _is_ the truth? _(Half to -herself.)_ I thought I was lying when I began--but the lies turned into -truth as I uttered them! _(She looks at Ventnor.)_ I _did_ want -your letters for my memoirs--I _did_ think I'd kept them for that -purpose--and I wanted to get mine back for the same reason--but now _(she -puts out her hand and picks up some of her letters, which are lying -scattered on the table near her)_--how fresh they seem, and how they -take me back to the time when we lived instead of writing about life! - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The time when we didn't prepare our impromptu -effects beforehand and copyright our remarks about the weather! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Or keep our epigrams in cold storage and our adjectives -under lock and key! - -_Ventnor_. When our emotions weren't worth ten cents a word, and a -signature wasn't an autograph. Ah, Helen, after all, there's nothing like -the exhilaration of spending one's capital! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Of wasting it, you mean. _(She points to the -letters.)_ Do you suppose we could have written a word of these if we'd -known we were putting our dreams out at interest? _(She sits musing, with -her eyes on the fire, and he watches her in silence.)_ Paul, do you -remember the deserted garden we sometimes used to walk in? - -_Ventnor_. The old garden with the high wall at the end of the village -street? The garden with the ruined box-borders and the broken-down arbor? -Why, I remember every weed in the paths and every patch of moss on the -walls! - -_Mrs. Dale._ Well--I went back there the other day. The village is -immensely improved. There's a new hotel with gas-fires, and a trolley in -the main street; and the garden has been turned into a public park, where -excursionists sit on cast-iron benches admiring the statue of an -Abolitionist. - -_Ventnor_. An Abolitionist--how appropriate! - -_Mrs. Dale_. And the man who sold the garden has made a fortune that -he doesn't know how to spend-- - -_Ventnor (rising impulsively)_. Helen, _(he approaches and lays his -hand on her letters)_, let's sacrifice our fortune and keep the -excursionists out! - -_Mrs. Dale (with a responsive movement)_. Paul, do you really mean it? - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Mean it? Why, I feel like a landed proprietor -already! It's more than a garden--it's a park. - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's more than a park, it's a world--as long as we keep -it to ourselves! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, yes--even the pyramids look small when one sees a -Cook's tourist on top of them! _(He takes the key from the table, unlocks -the cabinet and brings out his letters, which he lays beside hers.)_ -Shall we burn the key to our garden? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, then it will indeed be boundless! _(Watching him -while he throws the letters into the fire.)_ - -_Ventnor (turning back to her with a half-sad smile)_. But not too big -for us to find each other in? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Since we shall be the only people there! _(He takes -both her hands and they look at each other a moment in silence. Then he -goes out by the door to the right. As he reaches the door she takes a step -toward him, impulsively; then turning back she leans against the -chimney-piece, quietly watching the letters burn.)_ - - - - -THE REMBRANDT - - -"You're _so_ artistic," my cousin Eleanor Copt began. - -Of all Eleanor's exordiums it is the one I most dread. When she tells me -I'm so clever I know this is merely the preamble to inviting me to meet the -last literary obscurity of the moment: a trial to be evaded or endured, as -circumstances dictate; whereas her calling me artistic fatally connotes -the request to visit, in her company, some distressed gentlewoman whose -future hangs on my valuation of her old Saxe or of her grandfather's -Marc Antonios. Time was when I attempted to resist these compulsions of -Eleanor's; but I soon learned that, short of actual flight, there was -no refuge from her beneficent despotism. It is not always easy for the -curator of a museum to abandon his post on the plea of escaping a pretty -cousin's importunities; and Eleanor, aware of my predicament, is none -too magnanimous to take advantage of it. Magnanimity is, in fact, not in -Eleanor's line. The virtues, she once explained to me, are like bonnets: -the very ones that look best on other people may not happen to suit one's -own particular style; and she added, with a slight deflection of metaphor, -that none of the ready-made virtues ever _had_ fitted her: they all -pinched somewhere, and she'd given up trying to wear them. - -Therefore when she said to me, "You're _so_ artistic." emphasizing the -conjunction with a tap of her dripping umbrella (Eleanor is out in all -weathers: the elements are as powerless against her as man), I merely -stipulated, "It's not old Saxe again?" - -She shook her head reassuringly. "A picture--a Rembrandt!" - -"Good Lord! Why not a Leonardo?" - -"Well"--she smiled--"that, of course, depends on _you_." - -"On me?" - -"On your attribution. I dare say Mrs. Fontage would consent to the -change--though she's very conservative." - -A gleam of hope came to me and I pronounced: "One can't judge of a picture -in this weather." - -"Of course not. I'm coming for you to-morrow." - -"I've an engagement to-morrow." - -"I'll come before or after your engagement." - -The afternoon paper lay at my elbow and I contrived a furtive consultation -of the weather-report. It said "Rain to-morrow," and I answered briskly: -"All right, then; come at ten"--rapidly calculating that the clouds on -which I counted might lift by noon. - -My ingenuity failed of its due reward; for the heavens, as if in league -with my cousin, emptied themselves before morning, and punctually at ten -Eleanor and the sun appeared together in my office. - -I hardly listened, as we descended the Museum steps and got into Eleanor's -hansom, to her vivid summing-up of the case. I guessed beforehand that the -lady we were about to visit had lapsed by the most distressful degrees from -opulence to a "hall-bedroom"; that her grandfather, if he had not been -Minister to France, had signed the Declaration of Independence; that the -Rembrandt was an heirloom, sole remnant of disbanded treasures; that for -years its possessor had been unwilling to part with it, and that even now -the question of its disposal must be approached with the most diplomatic -obliquity. - -Previous experience had taught me that all Eleanor's "cases" presented a -harrowing similarity of detail. No circumstance tending to excite the -spectator's sympathy and involve his action was omitted from the history of -her beneficiaries; the lights and shades were indeed so skilfully adjusted -that any impartial expression of opinion took on the hue of cruelty. I -could have produced closetfuls of "heirlooms" in attestation of this fact; -for it is one more mark of Eleanor's competence that her friends usually -pay the interest on her philanthropy. My one hope was that in this case the -object, being a picture, might reasonably be rated beyond my means; and -as our cab drew up before a blistered brown-stone door-step I formed the -self-defensive resolve to place an extreme valuation on Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt. It is Eleanor's fault if she is sometimes fought with her own -weapons. - -The house stood in one of those shabby provisional-looking New York streets -that seem resignedly awaiting demolition. It was the kind of house that, -in its high days, must have had a bow-window with a bronze in it. The -bow-window had been replaced by a plumber's _devanture_, and one might -conceive the bronze to have gravitated to the limbo where Mexican onyx -tables and bric-a-brac in buffalo-horn await the first signs of our next -aesthetic reaction. - -Eleanor swept me through a hall that smelled of poverty, up unlit stairs to -a bare slit of a room. "And she must leave this in a month!" she whispered -across her knock. - -I had prepared myself for the limp widow's weed of a woman that one figures -in such a setting; and confronted abruptly with Mrs. Fontage's white-haired -erectness I had the disconcerting sense that I was somehow in her presence -at my own solicitation. I instinctively charged Eleanor with this reversal -of the situation; but a moment later I saw it must be ascribed to a -something about Mrs. Fontage that precluded the possibility of her asking -any one a favor. It was not that she was of forbidding, or even majestic, -demeanor; but that one guessed, under her aquiline prettiness, a dignity -nervously on guard against the petty betrayal of her surroundings. The -room was unconcealably poor: the little faded "relics," the high-stocked -ancestral silhouettes, the steel-engravings after Raphael and Correggio, -grouped in a vain attempt to hide the most obvious stains on the -wall-paper, served only to accentuate the contrast of a past evidently -diversified by foreign travel and the enjoyment of the arts. Even Mrs. -Fontage's dress had the air of being a last expedient, the ultimate outcome -of a much-taxed ingenuity in darning and turning. One felt that all the -poor lady's barriers were falling save that of her impregnable manner. - -To this manner I found myself conveying my appreciation of being admitted -to a view of the Rembrandt. - -Mrs. Fontage's smile took my homage for granted. "It is always," she -conceded, "a privilege to be in the presence of the great masters." Her -slim wrinkled hand waved me to a dusky canvas near the window. - -"It's _so_ interesting, dear Mrs. Fontage," I heard Eleanor -exclaiming, "and my cousin will be able to tell you exactly--" Eleanor, in -my presence, always admits that she knows nothing about art; but she gives -the impression that this is merely because she hasn't had time to look into -the matter--and has had me to do it for her. - -Mrs. Fontage seated herself without speaking, as though fearful that a -breath might disturb my communion with the masterpiece. I felt that she -thought Eleanor's reassuring ejaculations ill-timed; and in this I was of -one mind with her; for the impossibility of telling her exactly what I -thought of her Rembrandt had become clear to me at a glance. - -My cousin's vivacities began to languish and the silence seemed to shape -itself into a receptacle for my verdict. I stepped back, affecting a more -distant scrutiny; and as I did so my eye caught Mrs. Fontage's profile. Her -lids trembled slightly. I took refuge in the familiar expedient of asking -the history of the picture, and she waved me brightly to a seat. - -This was indeed a topic on which she could dilate. The Rembrandt, it -appeared, had come into Mr. Fontage's possession many years ago, while -the young couple were on their wedding-tour, and under circumstances so -romantic that she made no excuse for relating them in all their parenthetic -fulness. The picture belonged to an old Belgian Countess of redundant -quarterings, whom the extravagances of an ungovernable nephew had compelled -to part with her possessions (in the most private manner) about the time of -the Fontages' arrival. By a really remarkable coincidence, it happened that -their courier (an exceptionally intelligent and superior man) was an old -servant of the Countess's, and had thus been able to put them in the way of -securing the Rembrandt under the very nose of an English Duke, whose agent -had been sent to Brussels to negotiate for its purchase. Mrs. Fontage could -not recall the Duke's name, but he was a great collector and had a famous -Highland castle, where somebody had been murdered, and which she herself -had visited (by moonlight) when she had travelled in Scotland as a girl. -The episode had in short been one of the most interesting "experiences" of -a tour almost chromo-lithographic in vivacity of impression; and they had -always meant to go back to Brussels for the sake of reliving so picturesque -a moment. Circumstances (of which the narrator's surroundings declared the -nature) had persistently interfered with the projected return to Europe, -and the picture had grown doubly valuable as representing the high-water -mark of their artistic emotions. Mrs. Fontage's moist eye caressed the -canvas. "There is only," she added with a perceptible effort, "one slight -drawback: the picture is not signed. But for that the Countess, of course, -would have sold it to a museum. All the connoisseurs who have seen it -pronounce it an undoubted Rembrandt, in the artist's best manner; but the -museums"--she arched her brows in smiling recognition of a well-known -weakness--"give the preference to signed examples--" - -Mrs. Fontage's words evoked so touching a vision of the young tourists of -fifty years ago, entrusting to an accomplished and versatile courier the -direction of their helpless zeal for art, that I lost sight for a moment -of the point at issue. The old Belgian Countess, the wealthy Duke with a -feudal castle in Scotland, Mrs. Fontage's own maiden pilgrimage to Arthur's -Seat and Holyrood, all the accessories of the naif transaction, seemed -a part of that vanished Europe to which our young race carried its -indiscriminate ardors, its tender romantic credulity: the legendary -castellated Europe of keepsakes, brigands and old masters, that -compensated, by one such "experience" as Mrs. Fontage's, for an after-life -of aesthetic privation. - -I was restored to the present by Eleanor's looking at her watch. The action -mutely conveyed that something was expected of me. I risked the temporizing -statement that the picture was very interesting; but Mrs. Fontage's polite -assent revealed the poverty of the expedient. Eleanor's impatience -overflowed. - -"You would like my cousin to give you an idea of its value?" she suggested. - -Mrs. Fontage grew more erect. "No one," she corrected with great -gentleness, "can know its value quite as well as I, who live with it--" - -We murmured our hasty concurrence. - -"But it might be interesting to hear"--she addressed herself to me--"as a -mere matter of curiosity--what estimate would be put on it from the purely -commercial point of view--if such a term may be used in speaking of a work -of art." - -I sounded a note of deprecation. - -"Oh, I understand, of course," she delicately anticipated me, "that that -could never be _your_ view, your personal view; but since occasions -_may_ arise--do arise--when it becomes necessary to--to put a price on -the priceless, as it were--I have thought--Miss Copt has suggested--" - -"Some day," Eleanor encouraged her, "you might feel that the picture ought -to belong to some one who has more--more opportunity of showing it--letting -it be seen by the public--for educational reasons--" - -"I have tried," Mrs. Fontage admitted, "to see it in that light." - -The crucial moment was upon me. To escape the challenge of Mrs. Fontage's -brilliant composure I turned once more to the picture. If my courage needed -reinforcement, the picture amply furnished it. Looking at that lamentable -canvas seemed the surest way of gathering strength to denounce it; but -behind me, all the while, I felt Mrs. Fontage's shuddering pride drawn -up in a final effort of self-defense. I hated myself for my sentimental -perversion of the situation. Reason argued that it was more cruel to -deceive Mrs. Fontage than to tell her the truth; but that merely proved the -inferiority of reason to instinct in situations involving any concession to -the emotions. Along with her faith in the Rembrandt I must destroy not only -the whole fabric of Mrs. Fontage's past, but even that lifelong habit of -acquiescence in untested formulas that makes the best part of the average -feminine strength. I guessed the episode of the picture to be inextricably -interwoven with the traditions and convictions which served to veil Mrs. -Fontage's destitution not only from others but from herself. Viewed in -that light the Rembrandt had perhaps been worth its purchase-money; and I -regretted that works of art do not commonly sell on the merit of the moral -support they may have rendered. - -From this unavailing flight I was recalled by the sense that something -must be done. To place a fictitious value on the picture was at best a -provisional measure; while the brutal alternative of advising Mrs. Fontage -to sell it for a hundred dollars at least afforded an opening to the -charitably disposed purchaser. I intended, if other resources failed, -to put myself forward in that light; but delicacy of course forbade my -coupling my unflattering estimate of the Rembrandt with an immediate offer -to buy it. All I could do was to inflict the wound: the healing unguent -must be withheld for later application. - -I turned to Mrs. Fontage, who sat motionless, her finely-lined cheeks -touched with an expectant color, her eyes averted from the picture which -was so evidently the one object they beheld. - -"My dear madam--" I began. Her vivid smile was like a light held up to -dazzle me. It shrouded every alternative in darkness and I had the flurried -sense of having lost my way among the intricacies of my contention. Of -a sudden I felt the hopelessness of finding a crack in her impenetrable -conviction. My words slipped from me like broken weapons. "The picture," -I faltered, "would of course be worth more if it were signed. As it is, -I--I hardly think--on a conservative estimate--it can be valued at--at -more--than--a thousand dollars, say--" - -My deflected argument ran on somewhat aimlessly till it found itself -plunging full tilt against the barrier of Mrs. Fontage's silence. She sat -as impassive as though I had not spoken. Eleanor loosed a few fluttering -words of congratulation and encouragement, but their flight was suddenly -cut short. Mrs. Fontage had risen with a certain solemnity. - -"I could never," she said gently--her gentleness was adamantine--"under any -circumstances whatever, consider, for a moment even, the possibility of -parting with the picture at such a price." - - -II - -Within three weeks a tremulous note from Mrs. Fontage requested the favor -of another visit. If the writing was tremulous, however, the writer's tone -was firm. She named her own day and hour, without the conventional -reference to her visitor's convenience. - -My first impulse was to turn the note over to Eleanor. I had acquitted -myself of my share in the ungrateful business of coming to Mrs. Fontage's -aid, and if, as her letter denoted, she had now yielded to the closer -pressure of need, the business of finding a purchaser for the Rembrandt -might well be left to my cousin's ingenuity. But here conscience put in -the uncomfortable reminder that it was I who, in putting a price on the -picture, had raised the real obstacle in the way of Mrs. Fontage's rescue. -No one would give a thousand dollars for the Rembrandt; but to tell -Mrs. Fontage so had become as unthinkable as murder. I had, in fact, on -returning from my first inspection of the picture, refrained from imparting -to Eleanor my opinion of its value. Eleanor is porous, and I knew that -sooner or later the unnecessary truth would exude through the loose texture -of her dissimulation. Not infrequently she thus creates the misery she -alleviates; and I have sometimes suspected her of paining people in order -that she might be sorry for them. I had, at all events, cut off retreat in -Eleanor's direction; and the remaining alternative carried me straight to -Mrs. Fontage. - -She received me with the same commanding sweetness. The room was even barer -than before--I believe the carpet was gone--but her manner built up about -her a palace to which I was welcomed with high state; and it was as a mere -incident of the ceremony that I was presently made aware of her decision to -sell the Rembrandt. My previous unsuccess in planning how to deal with Mrs. -Fontage had warned me to leave my farther course to chance; and I listened -to her explanation with complete detachment. She had resolved to travel for -her health; her doctor advised it, and as her absence might be indefinitely -prolonged she had reluctantly decided to part with the picture in order -to avoid the expense of storage and insurance. Her voice drooped at the -admission, and she hurried on, detailing the vague itinerary of a journey -that was to combine long-promised visits to impatient friends with various -"interesting opportunities" less definitely specified. The poor lady's -skill in rearing a screen of verbiage about her enforced avowal had -distracted me from my own share in the situation, and it was with dismay -that I suddenly caught the drift of her assumptions. She expected me to -buy the Rembrandt for the Museum; she had taken my previous valuation as a -tentative bid, and when I came to my senses she was in the act of accepting -my offer. - -Had I had a thousand dollars of my own to dispose of, the bargain would -have been concluded on the spot; but I was in the impossible position of -being materially unable to buy the picture and morally unable to tell her -that it was not worth acquiring for the Museum. - -I dashed into the first evasion in sight. I had no authority, I explained, -to purchase pictures for the Museum without the consent of the committee. - -Mrs. Fontage coped for a moment in silence with the incredible fact -that I had rejected her offer; then she ventured, with a kind of pale -precipitation: "But I understood--Miss Copt tells me that you practically -decide such matters for the committee." I could guess what the effort had -cost her. - -"My cousin is given to generalizations. My opinion may have some weight -with the committee--" - -"Well, then--" she timidly prompted. - -"For that very reason I can't buy the picture." - -She said, with a drooping note, "I don't understand." - -"Yet you told me," I reminded her, "that you knew museums didn't buy -unsigned pictures." - -"Not for what they are worth! Every one knows that. But I--I -understood--the price you named--" Her pride shuddered back from the -abasement. "It's a misunderstanding then," she faltered. - -To avoid looking at her, I glanced desperately at the Rembrandt. Could -I--? But reason rejected the possibility. Even if the committee had been -blind--and they all _were_ but Crozier--I simply shouldn't have dared -to do it. I stood up, feeling that to cut the matter short was the only -alleviation within reach. - -Mrs. Fontage had summoned her indomitable smile; but its brilliancy -dropped, as I opened the door, like a candle blown out by a draught. - -"If there's any one else--if you knew any one who would care to see the -picture, I should be most happy--" She kept her eyes on me, and I saw that, -in her case, it hurt less than to look at the Rembrandt. "I shall have to -leave here, you know," she panted, "if nobody cares to have it--" - - -III - -That evening at my club I had just succeeded in losing sight of Mrs. -Fontage in the fumes of an excellent cigar, when a voice at my elbow evoked -her harassing image. - -"I want to talk to you," the speaker said, "about Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt." - -"There isn't any," I was about to growl; but looking up I recognized the -confiding countenance of Mr. Jefferson Rose. - -Mr. Rose was known to me chiefly as a young man suffused with a vague -enthusiasm for Virtue and my cousin Eleanor. - -One glance at his glossy exterior conveyed the assurance that his morals -were as immaculate as his complexion and his linen. Goodness exuded from -his moist eye, his liquid voice, the warm damp pressure of his trustful -hand. He had always struck me as one of the most uncomplicated organisms -I had ever met. His ideas were as simple and inconsecutive as the -propositions in a primer, and he spoke slowly, with a kind of uniformity -of emphasis that made his words stand out like the raised type for the -blind. An obvious incapacity for abstract conceptions made him peculiarly -susceptible to the magic of generalization, and one felt he would have been -at the mercy of any Cause that spelled itself with a capital letter. It was -hard to explain how, with such a superabundance of merit, he managed to be -a good fellow: I can only say that he performed the astonishing feat as -naturally as he supported an invalid mother and two sisters on the slender -salary of a banker's clerk. He sat down beside me with an air of bright -expectancy. - -"It's a remarkable picture, isn't it?" he said. - -"You've seen it?" - -"I've been so fortunate. Miss Copt was kind enough to get Mrs. Fontage's -permission; we went this afternoon." I inwardly wished that Eleanor -had selected another victim; unless indeed the visit were part of a -plan whereby some third person, better equipped for the cultivation of -delusions, was to be made to think the Rembrandt remarkable. Knowing the -limitations of Mr. Rose's resources I began to wonder if he had any rich -aunts. - -"And her buying it in that way, too," he went on with his limpid smile, -"from that old Countess in Brussels, makes it all the more interesting, -doesn't it? Miss Copt tells me it's very seldom old pictures can be traced -back for more than a generation. I suppose the fact of Mrs. Fontage's -knowing its history must add a good deal to its value?" - -Uncertain as to his drift, I said: "In her eyes it certainly appears to." - -Implications are lost on Mr. Rose, who glowingly continued: "That's the -reason why I wanted to talk to you about it--to consult you. Miss Copt -tells me you value it at a thousand dollars." - -There was no denying this, and I grunted a reluctant assent. - -"Of course," he went on earnestly, "your valuation is based on the fact -that the picture isn't signed--Mrs. Fontage explained that; and it does -make a difference, certainly. But the thing is--if the picture's really -good--ought one to take advantage--? I mean--one can see that Mrs. Fontage -is in a tight place, and I wouldn't for the world--" - -My astonished stare arrested him. - -"_You_ wouldn't--?" - -"I mean--you see, it's just this way"; he coughed and blushed: "I can't -give more than a thousand dollars myself--it's as big a sum as I can manage -to scrape together--but before I make the offer I want to be sure I'm not -standing in the way of her getting more money." - -My astonishment lapsed to dismay. "You're going to buy the picture for a -thousand dollars?" - -His blush deepened. "Why, yes. It sounds rather absurd, I suppose. It isn't -much in my line, of course. I can see the picture's very beautiful, but I'm -no judge--it isn't the kind of thing, naturally, that I could afford to go -in for; but in this case I'm very glad to do what I can; the circumstances -are so distressing; and knowing what you think of the picture I feel it's a -pretty safe investment--" - -"I don't think!" I blurted out. - -"You--?" - -"I don't think the picture's worth a thousand dollars; I don't think it's -worth ten cents; I simply lied about it, that's all." - -Mr. Rose looked as frightened as though I had charged him with the offense. - -"Hang it, man, can't you see how it happened? I saw the poor woman's pride -and happiness hung on her faith in that picture. I tried to make her -understand that it was worthless--but she wouldn't; I tried to tell her -so--but I couldn't. I behaved like a maudlin ass, but you shan't pay for my -infernal bungling--you mustn't buy the picture!" - -Mr. Rose sat silent, tapping one glossy boot-tip with another. Suddenly he -turned on me a glance of stored intelligence. "But you know," he said -good-humoredly, "I rather think I must." - -"You haven't--already?" - -"Oh, no; the offer's not made." - -"Well, then--" - -His look gathered a brighter significance. - -"But if the picture's worth nothing, nobody will buy it--" - -I groaned. - -"Except," he continued, "some fellow like me, who doesn't know anything. -_I_ think it's lovely, you know; I mean to hang it in my mother's -sitting-room." He rose and clasped my hand in his adhesive pressure. "I'm -awfully obliged to you for telling me this; but perhaps you won't mind my -asking you not to mention our talk to Miss Copt? It might bother her, you -know, to think the picture isn't exactly up to the mark; and it won't make -a rap of difference to me." - - -IV - -Mr. Rose left me to a sleepless night. The next morning my resolve was -formed, and it carried me straight to Mrs. Fontage's. She answered my knock -by stepping out on the landing, and as she shut the door behind her I -caught a glimpse of her devastated interior. She mentioned, with a careful -avoidance of the note of pathos on which our last conversation had closed, -that she was preparing to leave that afternoon; and the trunks obstructing -the threshold showed that her preparations were nearly complete. They were, -I felt certain, the same trunks that, strapped behind a rattling vettura, -had accompanied the bride and groom on that memorable voyage of discovery -of which the booty had till recently adorned her walls; and there was a -dim consolation in the thought that those early "finds" in coral and Swiss -wood-carving, in lava and alabaster, still lay behind the worn locks, in -the security of worthlessness. - -Mrs. Fontage, on the landing, among her strapped and corded treasures, -maintained the same air of stability that made it impossible, even under -such conditions, to regard her flight as anything less dignified than -a departure. It was the moral support of what she tacitly assumed that -enabled me to set forth with proper deliberation the object of my visit; -and she received my announcement with an absence of surprise that struck -me as the very flower of tact. Under cover of these mutual assumptions the -transaction was rapidly concluded; and it was not till the canvas passed -into my hands that, as though the physical contact had unnerved her, -Mrs. Fontage suddenly faltered. "It's the giving it up--" she stammered, -disguising herself to the last; and I hastened away from the collapse of -her splendid effrontery. - -I need hardly point out that I had acted impulsively, and that reaction -from the most honorable impulses is sometimes attended by moral -perturbation. My motives had indeed been mixed enough to justify some -uneasiness, but this was allayed by the instinctive feeling that it is more -venial to defraud an institution than a man. Since Mrs. Fontage had to be -kept from starving by means not wholly defensible, it was better that the -obligation should be borne by a rich institution than an impecunious youth. -I doubt, in fact, if my scruples would have survived a night's sleep, had -they not been complicated by some uncertainty as to my own future. It was -true that, subject to the purely formal assent of the committee, I had -full power to buy for the Museum, and that the one member of the committee -likely to dispute my decision was opportunely travelling in Europe; but the -picture once in place I must face the risk of any expert criticism to which -chance might expose it. I dismissed this contingency for future study, -stored the Rembrandt in the cellar of the Museum, and thanked heaven that -Crozier was abroad. - -Six months later he strolled into my office. I had just concluded, under -conditions of exceptional difficulty, and on terms unexpectedly benign, -the purchase of the great Bartley Reynolds; and this circumstance, by -relegating the matter of the Rembrandt to a lower stratum of consciousness, -enabled me to welcome Crozier with unmixed pleasure. My security -was enhanced by his appearance. His smile was charged with amiable -reminiscences, and I inferred that his trip had put him in the humor -to approve of everything, or at least to ignore what fell short of his -approval. I had therefore no uneasiness in accepting his invitation to dine -that evening. It is always pleasant to dine with Crozier and never more so -than when he is just back from Europe. His conversation gives even the food -a flavor of the Cafe Anglais. - -The repast was delightful, and it was not till we had finished a Camembert -which he must have brought over with him, that my host said, in a tone of -after-dinner perfunctoriness: "I see you've picked up a picture or two -since I left." - -I assented. "The Bartley Reynolds seemed too good an opportunity to miss, -especially as the French government was after it. I think we got it -cheap--" - -"_Connu, connu_" said Crozier pleasantly. "I know all about the -Reynolds. It was the biggest kind of a haul and I congratulate you. Best -stroke of business we've done yet. But tell me about the other picture--the -Rembrandt." - -"I never said it was a Rembrandt." I could hardly have said why, but I felt -distinctly annoyed with Crozier. - -"Of course not. There's 'Rembrandt' on the frame, but I saw you'd -modified it to 'Dutch School'; I apologize." He paused, but I offered no -explanation. "What about it?" he went on. "Where did you pick it up?" As -he leaned to the flame of the cigar-lighter his face seemed ruddy with -enjoyment. - -"I got it for a song," I said. - -"A thousand, I think?" - -"Have you seen it?" I asked abruptly. - -"Went over the place this afternoon and found it in the cellar. Why hasn't -it been hung, by the way?" - -I paused a moment. "I'm waiting--" - -"To--?" - -"To have it varnished." - -"Ah!" He leaned back and poured himself a second glass of Chartreuse. The -smile he confided to its golden depths provoked me to challenge him with-- - -"What do you think of it?" - -"The Rembrandt?" He lifted his eyes from the glass. "Just what you do." - -"It isn't a Rembrandt." - -"I apologize again. You call it, I believe, a picture of the same period?" - -"I'm uncertain of the period." - -"H'm." He glanced appreciatively along his cigar. "What are you certain -of?" - -"That it's a damned bad picture," I said savagely. - -He nodded. "Just so. That's all we wanted to know." - -"_We_?" - -"We--I--the committee, in short. You see, my dear fellow, if you hadn't -been certain it was a damned bad picture our position would have been a -little awkward. As it is, my remaining duty--I ought to explain that in -this matter I'm acting for the committee--is as simple as it's agreeable." - -"I'll be hanged," I burst out, "if I understand one word you're saying!" - -He fixed me with a kind of cruel joyousness. "You will--you will," he -assured me; "at least you'll begin to, when you hear that I've seen Miss -Copt." - -"Miss Copt?" - -"And that she has told me under what conditions the picture was bought." - -"She doesn't know anything about the conditions! That is," I added, -hastening to restrict the assertion, "she doesn't know my opinion of the -picture." I thirsted for five minutes with Eleanor. - -"Are you quite sure?" Crozier took me up. "Mr. Jefferson Rose does." - -"Ah--I see." - -"I thought you would," he reminded me. "As soon as I'd laid eyes on -the Rembrandt--I beg your pardon!--I saw that it--well, required some -explanation." - -"You might have come to me." - -"I meant to; but I happened to meet Miss Copt, whose encyclopaedic -information has often before been of service to me. I always go to Miss -Copt when I want to look up anything; and I found she knew all about the -Rembrandt." - -"_All_?" - -"Precisely. The knowledge was in fact causing her sleepless nights. Mr. -Rose, who was suffering from the same form of insomnia, had taken her into -his confidence, and she--ultimately--took me into hers." - -"Of course!" - -"I must ask you to do your cousin justice. She didn't speak till it became -evident to her uncommonly quick perceptions that your buying the picture on -its merits would have been infinitely worse for--for everybody--than your -diverting a small portion of the Museum's funds to philanthropic uses. Then -she told me the moving incident of Mr. Rose. Good fellow, Rose. And the -old lady's case was desperate. Somebody had to buy that picture." I moved -uneasily in my seat "Wait a moment, will you? I haven't finished my cigar. -There's a little head of Il Fiammingo's that you haven't seen, by the way; -I picked it up the other day in Parma. We'll go in and have a look at it -presently. But meanwhile what I want to say is that I've been charged--in -the most informal way--to express to you the committee's appreciation of -your admirable promptness and energy in capturing the Bartley Reynolds. We -shouldn't have got it at all if you hadn't been uncommonly wide-awake, and -to get it at such a price is a double triumph. We'd have thought nothing of -a few more thousands--" - -"I don't see," I impatiently interposed, "that, as far as I'm concerned, -that alters the case." - -"The case--?" - -"Of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. I bought the picture because, as you say, the -situation was desperate, and I couldn't raise a thousand myself. What I did -was of course indefensible; but the money shall be refunded tomorrow--" - -Crozier raised a protesting hand. "Don't interrupt me when I'm talking ex -cathedra. The money's been refunded already. The fact is, the Museum has -sold the Rembrandt." - -I stared at him wildly. "Sold it? To whom?" - -"Why--to the committee.--Hold on a bit, please.--Won't you take another -cigar? Then perhaps I can finish what I've got to say.--Why, my dear -fellow, the committee's under an obligation to you--that's the way we look -at it. I've investigated Mrs. Fontage's case, and--well, the picture had to -be bought. She's eating meat now, I believe, for the first time in a year. -And they'd have turned her out into the street that very day, your cousin -tells me. Something had to be done at once, and you've simply given a -number of well-to-do and self-indulgent gentlemen the opportunity of -performing, at very small individual expense, a meritorious action in -the nick of time. That's the first thing I've got to thank you for. And -then--you'll remember, please, that I have the floor--that I'm still -speaking for the committee--and secondly, as a slight recognition of your -services in securing the Bartley Reynolds at a very much lower figure than -we were prepared to pay, we beg you--the committee begs you--to accept the -gift of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. Now we'll go in and look at that little -head...." - - - - -THE MOVING FINGER - - -The news of Mrs. Grancy's death came to me with the shock of an immense -blunder--one of fate's most irretrievable acts of vandalism. It was as -though all sorts of renovating forces had been checked by the clogging of -that one wheel. Not that Mrs. Grancy contributed any perceptible momentum -to the social machine: her unique distinction was that of filling to -perfection her special place in the world. So many people are like -badly-composed statues, over-lapping their niches at one point and leaving -them vacant at another. Mrs. Grancy's niche was her husband's life; and if -it be argued that the space was not large enough for its vacancy to leave a -very big gap, I can only say that, at the last resort, such dimensions must -be determined by finer instruments than any ready-made standard of utility. -Ralph Grancy's was in short a kind of disembodied usefulness: one of those -constructive influences that, instead of crystallizing into definite forms, -remain as it were a medium for the development of clear thinking and fine -feeling. He faithfully irrigated his own dusty patch of life, and the -fruitful moisture stole far beyond his boundaries. If, to carry on the -metaphor, Grancy's life was a sedulously-cultivated enclosure, his wife was -the flower he had planted in its midst--the embowering tree, rather, which -gave him rest and shade at its foot and the wind of dreams in its upper -branches. - -We had all--his small but devoted band of followers--known a moment when it -seemed likely that Grancy would fail us. We had watched him pitted against -one stupid obstacle after another--ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding -and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious -egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection -like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always -come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for -the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to -how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb -withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But -gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who -was to become his second wife--his one _real_ wife, as his friends -reckoned--the whole man burst into flower. - -The second Mrs. Grancy was past thirty when he married her, and it was -clear that she had harvested that crop of middle joy which is rooted in -young despair. But if she had lost the surface of eighteen she had kept -its inner light; if her cheek lacked the gloss of immaturity her eyes were -young with the stored youth of half a life-time. Grancy had first known her -somewhere in the East--I believe she was the sister of one of our consuls -out there--and when he brought her home to New York she came among us as -a stranger. The idea of Grancy's remarriage had been a shock to us all. -After one such calcining most men would have kept out of the fire; but we -agreed that he was predestined to sentimental blunders, and we awaited -with resignation the embodiment of his latest mistake. Then Mrs. Grancy -came--and we understood. She was the most beautiful and the most complete -of explanations. We shuffled our defeated omniscience out of sight and gave -it hasty burial under a prodigality of welcome. For the first time in years -we had Grancy off our minds. "He'll do something great now!" the least -sanguine of us prophesied; and our sentimentalist emended: "He _has_ -done it--in marrying her!" - -It was Claydon, the portrait-painter, who risked this hyperbole; and who -soon afterward, at the happy husband's request, prepared to defend it in a -portrait of Mrs. Grancy. We were all--even Claydon--ready to concede that -Mrs. Grancy's unwontedness was in some degree a matter of environment. Her -graces were complementary and it needed the mate's call to reveal the flash -of color beneath her neutral-tinted wings. But if she needed Grancy to -interpret her, how much greater was the service she rendered him! Claydon -professionally described her as the right frame for him; but if she defined -she also enlarged, if she threw the whole into perspective she also cleared -new ground, opened fresh vistas, reclaimed whole areas of activity that had -run to waste under the harsh husbandry of privation. This interaction of -sympathies was not without its visible expression. Claydon was not alone -in maintaining that Grancy's presence--or indeed the mere mention of his -name--had a perceptible effect on his wife's appearance. It was as though a -light were shifted, a curtain drawn back, as though, to borrow another of -Claydon's metaphors, Love the indefatigable artist were perpetually seeking -a happier "pose" for his model. In this interpretative light Mrs. Grancy -acquired the charm which makes some women's faces like a book of which -the last page is never turned. There was always something new to read in -her eyes. What Claydon read there--or at least such scattered hints of -the ritual as reached him through the sanctuary doors--his portrait in -due course declared to us. When the picture was exhibited it was at once -acclaimed as his masterpiece; but the people who knew Mrs. Grancy smiled -and said it was flattered. Claydon, however, had not set out to paint -_their_ Mrs. Grancy--or ours even--but Ralph's; and Ralph knew his own -at a glance. At the first confrontation he saw that Claydon had understood. -As for Mrs. Grancy, when the finished picture was shown to her she turned -to the painter and said simply: "Ah, you've done me facing the east!" - -The picture, then, for all its value, seemed a mere incident in the -unfolding of their double destiny, a foot-note to the illuminated text of -their lives. It was not till afterward that it acquired the significance -of last words spoken on a threshold never to be recrossed. Grancy, a year -after his marriage, had given up his town house and carried his bliss an -hour's journey away, to a little place among the hills. His various duties -and interests brought him frequently to New York but we necessarily saw him -less often than when his house had served as the rallying-point of kindred -enthusiasms. It seemed a pity that such an influence should be withdrawn, -but we all felt that his long arrears of happiness should be paid in -whatever coin he chose. The distance from which the fortunate couple -radiated warmth on us was not too great for friendship to traverse; and our -conception of a glorified leisure took the form of Sundays spent in the -Grancys' library, with its sedative rural outlook, and the portrait of Mrs. -Grancy illuminating its studious walls. The picture was at its best in that -setting; and we used to accuse Claydon of visiting Mrs. Grancy in order to -see her portrait. He met this by declaring that the portrait _was_ -Mrs. Grancy; and there were moments when the statement seemed unanswerable. -One of us, indeed--I think it must have been the novelist--said that -Clayton had been saved from falling in love with Mrs. Grancy only by -falling in love with his picture of her; and it was noticeable that he, to -whom his finished work was no more than the shed husk of future effort, -showed a perennial tenderness for this one achievement. We smiled afterward -to think how often, when Mrs. Grancy was in the room, her presence -reflecting itself in our talk like a gleam of sky in a hurrying current, -Claydon, averted from the real woman, would sit as it were listening to the -picture. His attitude, at the time, seemed only a part of the unusualness -of those picturesque afternoons, when the most familiar combinations of -life underwent a magical change. Some human happiness is a landlocked lake; -but the Grancys' was an open sea, stretching a buoyant and illimitable -surface to the voyaging interests of life. There was room and to spare on -those waters for all our separate ventures; and always beyond the sunset, -a mirage of the fortunate isles toward which our prows bent. - - -II - -It was in Rome that, three years later, I heard of her death. The notice -said "suddenly"; I was glad of that. I was glad too--basely perhaps--to be -away from Grancy at a time when silence must have seemed obtuse and speech -derisive. - -I was still in Rome when, a few months afterward, he suddenly arrived -there. He had been appointed secretary of legation at Constantinople and -was on the way to his post. He had taken the place, he said frankly, "to -get away." Our relations with the Porte held out a prospect of hard work, -and that, he explained, was what he needed. He could never be satisfied to -sit down among the ruins. I saw that, like most of us in moments of extreme -moral tension, he was playing a part, behaving as he thought it became a -man to behave in the eye of disaster. The instinctive posture of grief is -a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels -the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe. Grancy, by -nature musing and retrospective, had chosen the role of the man of action, -who answers blow for blow and opposes a mailed front to the thrusts of -destiny; and the completeness of the equipment testified to his inner -weakness. We talked only of what we were not thinking of, and parted, after -a few days, with a sense of relief that proved the inadequacy of friendship -to perform, in such cases, the office assigned to it by tradition. - -Soon afterward my own work called me home, but Grancy remained several -years in Europe. International diplomacy kept its promise of giving -him work to do, and during the year in which he acted as _charge -d'affaires_ he acquitted himself, under trying conditions, with -conspicuous zeal and discretion. A political redistribution of matter -removed him from office just as he had proved his usefulness to the -government; and the following summer I heard that he had come home and -was down at his place in the country. - -On my return to town I wrote him and his reply came by the next post. He -answered as it were in his natural voice, urging me to spend the following -Sunday with him, and suggesting that I should bring down any of the old -set who could be persuaded to join me. I thought this a good sign, and -yet--shall I own it?--I was vaguely disappointed. Perhaps we are apt to -feel that our friends' sorrows should be kept like those historic monuments -from which the encroaching ivy is periodically removed. - -That very evening at the club I ran across Claydon. I told him of Grancy's -invitation and proposed that we should go down together; but he pleaded an -engagement. I was sorry, for I had always felt that he and I stood nearer -Ralph than the others, and if the old Sundays were to be renewed I should -have preferred that we two should spend the first alone with him. I said as -much to Claydon and offered to fit my time to his; but he met this by a -general refusal. - -"I don't want to go to Grancy's," he said bluntly. I waited a moment, but -he appended no qualifying clause. - -"You've seen him since he came back?" I finally ventured. - -Claydon nodded. - -"And is he so awfully bad?" - -"Bad? No: he's all right." - -"All right? How can he be, unless he's changed beyond all recognition?" - -"Oh, you'll recognize _him_," said Claydon, with a puzzling deflection -of emphasis. - -His ambiguity was beginning to exasperate me, and I felt myself shut out -from some knowledge to which I had as good a right as he. - -"You've been down there already, I suppose?" - -"Yes; I've been down there." - -"And you've done with each other--the partnership is dissolved?" - -"Done with each other? I wish to God we had!" He rose nervously and tossed -aside the review from which my approach had diverted him. "Look here," -he said, standing before me, "Ralph's the best fellow going and there's -nothing under heaven I wouldn't do for him--short of going down there -again." And with that he walked out of the room. - -Claydon was incalculable enough for me to read a dozen different meanings -into his words; but none of my interpretations satisfied me. I determined, -at any rate, to seek no farther for a companion; and the next Sunday I -travelled down to Grancy's alone. He met me at the station and I saw at -once that he had changed since our last meeting. Then he had been in -fighting array, but now if he and grief still housed together it was -no longer as enemies. Physically the transformation was as marked but -less reassuring. If the spirit triumphed the body showed its scars. At -five-and-forty he was gray and stooping, with the tired gait of an old man. -His serenity, however, was not the resignation of age. I saw that he did -not mean to drop out of the game. Almost immediately he began to speak of -our old interests; not with an effort, as at our former meeting, but simply -and naturally, in the tone of a man whose life has flowed back into its -normal channels. I remembered, with a touch of self-reproach, how I had -distrusted his reconstructive powers; but my admiration for his reserved -force was now tinged by the sense that, after all, such happiness as his -ought to have been paid with his last coin. The feeling grew as we neared -the house and I found how inextricably his wife was interwoven with my -remembrance of the place: how the whole scene was but an extension of that -vivid presence. - -Within doors nothing was changed, and my hand would have dropped without -surprise into her welcoming clasp. It was luncheon-time, and Grancy led me -at once to the dining-room, where the walls, the furniture, the very plate -and porcelain, seemed a mirror in which a moment since her face had been -reflected. I wondered whether Grancy, under the recovered tranquillity -of his smile, concealed the same sense of her nearness, saw perpetually -between himself and the actual her bright unappeasable ghost. He spoke of -her once or twice, in an easy incidental way, and her name seemed to hang -in the air after he had uttered it, like a chord that continues to vibrate. -If he felt her presence it was evidently as an enveloping medium, the moral -atmosphere in which he breathed. I had never before known how completely -the dead may survive. - -After luncheon we went for a long walk through the autumnal fields and -woods, and dusk was falling when we re-entered the house. Grancy led the -way to the library, where, at this hour, his wife had always welcomed -us back to a bright fire and a cup of tea. The room faced the west, and -held a clear light of its own after the rest of the house had grown dark. -I remembered how young she had looked in this pale gold light, which -irradiated her eyes and hair, or silhouetted her girlish outline as she -passed before the windows. Of all the rooms the library was most peculiarly -hers; and here I felt that her nearness might take visible shape. Then, all -in a moment, as Grancy opened the door, the feeling vanished and a kind -of resistance met me on the threshold. I looked about me. Was the room -changed? Had some desecrating hand effaced the traces of her presence? No; -here too the setting was undisturbed. My feet sank into the same deep-piled -Daghestan; the bookshelves took the firelight on the same rows of rich -subdued bindings; her armchair stood in its old place near the tea-table; -and from the opposite wall her face confronted me. - -Her face--but _was_ it hers? I moved nearer and stood looking up at -the portrait. Grancy's glance had followed mine and I heard him move to my -side. - -"You see a change in it?" he said. - -"What does it mean?" I asked. - -"It means--that five years have passed." - -"Over _her_?" - -"Why not?--Look at me!" He pointed to his gray hair and furrowed temples. -"What do you think kept _her_ so young? It was happiness! But now--" -he looked up at her with infinite tenderness. "I like her better so," he -said. "It's what she would have wished." - -"Have wished?" - -"That we should grow old together. Do you think she would have wanted to be -left behind?" - -I stood speechless, my gaze travelling from his worn grief-beaten features -to the painted face above. It was not furrowed like his; but a veil -of years seemed to have descended on it. The bright hair had lost its -elasticity, the cheek its clearness, the brow its light: the whole woman -had waned. - -Grancy laid his hand on my arm. "You don't like it?" he said sadly. - -"Like it? I--I've lost her!" I burst out. - -"And I've found her," he answered. - -"In _that_?" I cried with a reproachful gesture. - -"Yes; in that." He swung round on me almost defiantly. "The other had -become a sham, a lie! This is the way she would have looked--does look, I -mean. Claydon ought to know, oughtn't he?" - -I turned suddenly. "Did Claydon do this for you?" - -Grancy nodded. - -"Since your return?" - -"Yes. I sent for him after I'd been back a week--." He turned away and gave -a thrust to the smouldering fire. I followed, glad to leave the picture -behind me. Grancy threw himself into a chair near the hearth, so that the -light fell on his sensitive variable face. He leaned his head back, shading -his eyes with his hand, and began to speak. - - -III - -"You fellows knew enough of my early history to A guess what my second -marriage meant to me. I say guess, because no one could understand--really. -I've always had a feminine streak in me, I suppose: the need of a pair of -eyes that should see with me, of a pulse that should keep time with mine. -Life is a big thing, of course; a magnificent spectacle; but I got so tired -of looking at it alone! Still, it's always good to live, and I had plenty -of happiness--of the evolved kind. What I'd never had a taste of was the -simple inconscient sort that one breathes in like the air.... - -"Well--I met her. It was like finding the climate in which I was meant to -live. You know what she was--how indefinitely she multiplied one's points -of contact with life, how she lit up the caverns and bridged the abysses! -Well, I swear to you (though I suppose the sense of all that was latent in -me) that what I used to think of on my way home at the end of the day, was -simply that when I opened this door she'd be sitting over there, with the -lamp-light falling in a particular way on one little curl in her neck.... -When Claydon painted her he caught just the look she used to lift to mine -when I came in--I've wondered, sometimes, at his knowing how she looked -when she and I were alone.--How I rejoiced in that picture! I used to say -to her, 'You're my prisoner now--I shall never lose you. If you grew tired -of me and left me you'd leave your real self there on the wall!' It was -always one of our jokes that she was going to grow tired of me-- - -"Three years of it--and then she died. It was so sudden that there was -no change, no diminution. It was as if she had suddenly become fixed, -immovable, like her own portrait: as if Time had ceased at its happiest -hour, just as Claydon had thrown down his brush one day and said, 'I can't -do better than that.' - -"I went away, as you know, and stayed over there five years. I worked as -hard as I knew how, and after the first black months a little light stole -in on me. From thinking that she would have been interested in what I was -doing I came to feel that she _was_ interested--that she was there and -that she knew. I'm not talking any psychical jargon--I'm simply trying to -express the sense I had that an influence so full, so abounding as hers -couldn't pass like a spring shower. We had so lived into each other's -hearts and minds that the consciousness of what she would have thought -and felt illuminated all I did. At first she used to come back shyly, -tentatively, as though not sure of finding me; then she stayed longer and -longer, till at last she became again the very air I breathed.... There -were bad moments, of course, when her nearness mocked me with the loss of -the real woman; but gradually the distinction between the two was effaced -and the mere thought of her grew warm as flesh and blood. - -"Then I came home. I landed in the morning and came straight down here. The -thought of seeing her portrait possessed me and my heart beat like a -lover's as I opened the library door. It was in the afternoon and the room -was full of light. It fell on her picture--the picture of a young and -radiant woman. She smiled at me coldly across the distance that divided us. -I had the feeling that she didn't even recognize me. And then I caught -sight of myself in the mirror over there--a gray-haired broken man whom she -had never known! - -"For a week we two lived together--the strange woman and the strange man. -I used to sit night after night and question her smiling face; but no -answer ever came. What did she know of me, after all? We were irrevocably -separated by the five years of life that lay between us. At times, as I -sat here, I almost grew to hate her; for her presence had driven away my -gentle ghost, the real wife who had wept, aged, struggled with me during -those awful years.... It was the worst loneliness I've ever known. Then, -gradually, I began to notice a look of sadness in the picture's eyes; a -look that seemed to say: 'Don't you see that _I_ am lonely too?' And -all at once it came over me how she would have hated to be left behind! I -remembered her comparing life to a heavy book that could not be read with -ease unless two people held it together; and I thought how impatiently her -hand would have turned the pages that divided us!--So the idea came to me: -'It's the picture that stands between us; the picture that is dead, and not -my wife. To sit in this room is to keep watch beside a corpse.' As this -feeling grew on me the portrait became like a beautiful mausoleum in which -she had been buried alive: I could hear her beating against the painted -walls and crying to me faintly for help.... - -"One day I found I couldn't stand it any longer and I sent for Claydon. He -came down and I told him what I'd been through and what I wanted him to do. -At first he refused point-blank to touch the picture. The next morning I -went off for a long tramp, and when I came home I found him sitting here -alone. He looked at me sharply for a moment and then he said: 'I've changed -my mind; I'll do it.' I arranged one of the north rooms as a studio and he -shut himself up there for a day; then he sent for me. The picture stood -there as you see it now--it was as though she'd met me on the threshold and -taken me in her arms! I tried to thank him, to tell him what it meant to -me, but he cut me short. - -"'There's an up train at five, isn't there?' he asked. 'I'm booked for a -dinner to-night. I shall just have time to make a bolt for the station and -you can send my traps after me.' I haven't seen him since. - -"I can guess what it cost him to lay hands on his masterpiece; but, after -all, to him it was only a picture lost, to me it was my wife regained!" - - -IV - -After that, for ten years or more, I watched the strange spectacle of a -life of hopeful and productive effort based on the structure of a dream. -There could be no doubt to those who saw Grancy during this period that -he drew his strength and courage from the sense of his wife's mystic -participation in his task. When I went back to see him a few months later I -found the portrait had been removed from the library and placed in a small -study up-stairs, to which he had transferred his desk and a few books. He -told me he always sat there when he was alone, keeping the library for his -Sunday visitors. Those who missed the portrait of course made no comment on -its absence, and the few who were in his secret respected it. Gradually all -his old friends had gathered about him and our Sunday afternoons regained -something of their former character; but Claydon never reappeared among us. - -As I look back now I see that Grancy must have been failing from the time -of his return home. His invincible spirit belied and disguised the signs of -weakness that afterward asserted themselves in my remembrance of him. He -seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of life to draw on, and more than one -of us was a pensioner on his superfluity. - -Nevertheless, when I came back one summer from my European holiday and -heard that he had been at the point of death, I understood at once that we -had believed him well only because he wished us to. - -I hastened down to the country and found him midway in a slow -convalescence. I felt then that he was lost to us and he read my thought at -a glance. - -"Ah," he said, "I'm an old man now and no mistake. I suppose we shall have -to go half-speed after this; but we shan't need towing just yet!" - -The plural pronoun struck me, and involuntarily I looked up at Mrs. -Grancy's portrait. Line by line I saw my fear reflected in it. It was the -face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying. My heart stood still -at the thought of what Claydon had done. - -Grancy had followed my glance. "Yes, it's changed her," he said quietly. -"For months, you know, it was touch and go with me--we had a long fight of -it, and it was worse for her than for me." After a pause he added: "Claydon -has been very kind; he's so busy nowadays that I seldom see him, but when I -sent for him the other day he came down at once." - -I was silent and we spoke no more of Grancy's illness; but when I took -leave it seemed like shutting him in alone with his death-warrant. - -The next time I went down to see him he looked much better. It was a Sunday -and he received me in the library, so that I did not see the portrait -again. He continued to improve and toward spring we began to feel that, as -he had said, he might yet travel a long way without being towed. - -One evening, on returning to town after a visit which had confirmed my -sense of reassurance, I found Claydon dining alone at the club. He asked me -to join him and over the coffee our talk turned to his work. - -"If you're not too busy," I said at length, "you ought to make time to go -down to Grancy's again." - -He looked up quickly. "Why?" he asked. - -"Because he's quite well again," I returned with a touch of cruelty. "His -wife's prognostications were mistaken." - -Claydon stared at me a moment. "Oh, _she_ knows," he affirmed with a -smile that chilled me. - -"You mean to leave the portrait as it is then?" I persisted. - -He shrugged his shoulders. "He hasn't sent for me yet!" - -A waiter came up with the cigars and Claydon rose and joined another group. - -It was just a fortnight later that Grancy's housekeeper telegraphed for me. -She met me at the station with the news that he had been "taken bad" and -that the doctors were with him. I had to wait for some time in the deserted -library before the medical men appeared. They had the baffled manner of -empirics who have been superseded by the great Healer; and I lingered only -long enough to hear that Grancy was not suffering and that my presence -could do him no harm. - -I found him seated in his arm-chair in the little study. He held out his -hand with a smile. - -"You see she was right after all," he said. - -"She?" I repeated, perplexed for the moment. - -"My wife." He indicated the picture. "Of course I knew she had no hope from -the first. I saw that"--he lowered his voice--"after Claydon had been here. -But I wouldn't believe it at first!" - -I caught his hands in mine. "For God's sake don't believe it now!" I -adjured him. - -He shook his head gently. "It's too late," he said. "I might have known -that she knew." - -"But, Grancy, listen to me," I began; and then I stopped. What could I say -that would convince him? There was no common ground of argument on which we -could meet; and after all it would be easier for him to die feeling that -she _had_ known. Strangely enough, I saw that Claydon had missed his -mark.... - - -V - -Grancy's will named me as one of his executors; and my associate, having -other duties on his hands, begged me to assume the task of carrying out our -friend's wishes. This placed me under the necessity of informing Claydon -that the portrait of Mrs. Grancy had been bequeathed to him; and he replied -by the next post that he would send for the picture at once. I was staying -in the deserted house when the portrait was taken away; and as the door -closed on it I felt that Grancy's presence had vanished too. Was it his -turn to follow her now, and could one ghost haunt another? - -After that, for a year or two, I heard nothing more of the picture, and -though I met Claydon from time to time we had little to say to each other. -I had no definable grievance against the man and I tried to remember that -he had done a fine thing in sacrificing his best picture to a friend; but -my resentment had all the tenacity of unreason. - -One day, however, a lady whose portrait he had just finished begged me -to go with her to see it. To refuse was impossible, and I went with the -less reluctance that I knew I was not the only friend she had invited. -The others were all grouped around the easel when I entered, and after -contributing my share to the chorus of approval I turned away and began -to stroll about the studio. Claydon was something of a collector and his -things were generally worth looking at. The studio was a long tapestried -room with a curtained archway at one end. The curtains were looped back, -showing a smaller apartment, with books and flowers and a few fine bits of -bronze and porcelain. The tea-table standing in this inner room proclaimed -that it was open to inspection, and I wandered in. A _bleu poudre_ -vase first attracted me; then I turned to examine a slender bronze -Ganymede, and in so doing found myself face to face with Mrs. Grancy's -portrait. I stared up at her blankly and she smiled back at me in all -the recovered radiance of youth. The artist had effaced every trace of -his later touches and the original picture had reappeared. It throned -alone on the panelled wall, asserting a brilliant supremacy over its -carefully-chosen surroundings. I felt in an instant that the whole room was -tributary to it: that Claydon had heaped his treasures at the feet of the -woman he loved. Yes--it was the woman he had loved and not the picture; and -my instinctive resentment was explained. - -Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. - -"Ah, how could you?" I cried, turning on him. - -"How could I?" he retorted. "How could I _not_? Doesn't she belong to -me now?" - -I moved away impatiently. - -"Wait a moment," he said with a detaining gesture. "The others have gone -and I want to say a word to you.--Oh, I know what you've thought of me--I -can guess! You think I killed Grancy, I suppose?" - -I was startled by his sudden vehemence. "I think you tried to do a cruel -thing," I said. - -"Ah--what a little way you others see into life!" he murmured. "Sit down a -moment--here, where we can look at her--and I'll tell you." - -He threw himself on the ottoman beside me and sat gazing up at the picture, -with his hands clasped about his knee. - -"Pygmalion," he began slowly, "turned his statue into a real woman; -_I_ turned my real woman into a picture. Small compensation, you -think--but you don't know how much of a woman belongs to you after you've -painted her!--Well, I made the best of it, at any rate--I gave her the best -I had in me; and she gave me in return what such a woman gives by merely -being. And after all she rewarded me enough by making me paint as I shall -never paint again! There was one side of her, though, that was mine alone, -and that was her beauty; for no one else understood it. To Grancy even -it was the mere expression of herself--what language is to thought. Even -when he saw the picture he didn't guess my secret--he was so sure she was -all his! As though a man should think he owned the moon because it was -reflected in the pool at his door-- - -"Well--when he came home and sent for me to change the picture it was like -asking me to commit murder. He wanted me to make an old woman of her--of -her who had been so divinely, unchangeably young! As if any man who really -loved a woman would ask her to sacrifice her youth and beauty for his sake! -At first I told him I couldn't do it--but afterward, when he left me alone -with the picture, something queer happened. I suppose it was because I was -always so confoundedly fond of Grancy that it went against me to refuse -what he asked. Anyhow, as I sat looking up at her, she seemed to say, 'I'm -not yours but his, and I want you to make me what he wishes." And so I did -it. I could have cut my hand off when the work was done--I daresay he told -you I never would go back and look at it. He thought I was too busy--he -never understood.... - -"Well--and then last year he sent for me again--you remember. It was after -his illness, and he told me he'd grown twenty years older and that he -wanted her to grow older too--he didn't want her to be left behind. The -doctors all thought he was going to get well at that time, and he thought -so too; and so did I when I first looked at him. But when I turned to -the picture--ah, now I don't ask you to believe me; but I swear it was -_her_ face that told me he was dying, and that she wanted him to know -it! She had a message for him and she made me deliver it." - -He rose abruptly and walked toward the portrait; then he sat down beside me -again. - -"Cruel? Yes, it seemed so to me at first; and this time, if I resisted, -it was for _his_ sake and not for mine. But all the while I felt her -eyes drawing me, and gradually she made me understand. If she'd been there -in the flesh (she seemed to say) wouldn't she have seen before any of us -that he was dying? Wouldn't he have read the news first in her face? And -wouldn't it be horrible if now he should discover it instead in strange -eyes?--Well--that was what she wanted of me and I did it--I kept them -together to the last!" He looked up at the picture again. "But now she -belongs to me," he repeated.... - - - - -THE CONFESSIONAL - - -When I was a young man I thought a great deal of local color. At that -time it was still a pigment of recent discovery, and supposed to have -a peculiarly stimulating effect on the mental eye. As an aid to the -imagination its value was perhaps overrated; but as an object of pursuit -to that vagrant faculty, it had all the merits claimed for it. I certainly -never hunted any game better worth my powder; and to a young man with rare -holidays and long working hours, its value was enhanced by the fact that -one might bring it down at any turn, if only one kept one's eye alert and -one's hand on the trigger. - -Even the large manufacturing city where, for some years, my young -enthusiasms were chained to an accountant's desk, was not without its -romantic opportunities. Many of the mill-hands at Dunstable were Italians, -and a foreign settlement had formed itself in that unsavory and unsanitary -portion of the town known as the Point. The Point, like more aristocratic -communities, had its residential and commercial districts, its church, its -theatre and its restaurant. When the craving for local color was on me it -was my habit to resort to the restaurant, a low-browed wooden building with -the appetizing announcement: - -"_Aristiu di montone_" - -pasted in one of its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough -macaroni or of an ambiguous _frittura_ sufficed to transport me to the -Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar -with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of -one of the little round tables under the arcade of the Caffe Pedrotti at -Padua. This feat of the imagination was materially aided by Agostino, the -hollow-eyed and low-collared waiter, whose slimy napkin never lost its -Latin flourish and whose zeal for my comfort was not infrequently displayed -by his testing the warmth of my soup with his finger. Through Agostino I -became acquainted with the inner history of the colony, heard the details -of its feuds and vendettas, and learned to know by sight the leading -characters in these domestic dramas. - -The restaurant was frequented by the chief personages of the community: -the overseer of the Italian hands at the Meriton Mills, the doctor, his -wife the _levatrice_ (a plump Neapolitan with greasy ringlets, a plush -picture-hat, and a charm against the evil-eye hanging in a crease of her -neck) and lastly by Don Egidio, the _parocco_ of the little church -across the street. The doctor and his wife came only on feast days, but -the overseer and Don Egidio were regular patrons. The former was a quiet -saturnine-looking man, of accomplished manners but reluctant speech, and I -depended for my diversion chiefly on Don Egidio, whose large loosely-hung -lips were always ajar for conversation. The remarks issuing from them -were richly tinged by the gutturals of the Bergamasque dialect, and it -needed but a slight acquaintance with Italian types to detect the Lombard -peasant under the priest's rusty cassock. This inference was confirmed -by Don Egidio's telling me that he came from a village of Val Camonica, -the radiant valley which extends northward from the lake of Iseo to -the Adamello glaciers. His step-father had been a laborer on one of -the fruit-farms of a Milanese count who owned large estates in the Val -Camonica; and that gentleman, taking a fancy to the lad, whom he had seen -at work in his orchards, had removed him to his villa on the lake of Iseo -and had subsequently educated him for the Church. - -It was doubtless to this picturesque accident that Don Egidio owed the -mingling of ease and simplicity that gave an inimitable charm to his -stout shabby presence. It was as though some wild mountain-fruit had been -transplanted to the Count's orchards and had mellowed under cultivation -without losing its sylvan flavor. I have never seen the social art carried -farther without suggestion of artifice. The fact that Don Egidio's -amenities were mainly exercised on the mill-hands composing his parish -proved the genuineness of his gift. It is easier to simulate gentility -among gentlemen than among navvies; and the plain man is a touchstone who -draws out all the alloy in the gold. - -Among his parishioners Don Egidio ruled with the cheerful despotism of the -good priest. On cardinal points he was inflexible, but in minor matters he -had that elasticity of judgment which enables the Catholic discipline to -fit itself to every inequality of the human conscience. There was no appeal -from his verdict; but his judgment-seat was a revolving chair from which he -could view the same act at various angles. His influence was acknowledged -not only by his flock, but by the policeman at the corner, the "bar-keep'" -in the dive, the ward politician in the corner grocery. The general verdict -of Dunstable was that the Point would have been hell without the priest. -It was perhaps not precisely heaven with him; but such light of the upper -sky as pierced its murky atmosphere was reflected from Don Egidio's -countenance. It is hardly possible for any one to exercise such influence -without taking pleasure in it; and on the whole the priest was probably -a contented man; though it does not follow that he was a happy one. On -this point the first stages of our acquaintance yielded much food for -conjecture. At first sight Don Egidio was the image of cheerfulness. He had -all the physical indications of a mind at ease: the leisurely rolling gait, -the ready laugh, the hospitable eye of the man whose sympathies are always -on the latch. It took me some time to discover under his surface garrulity -the impenetrable reticence of his profession, and under his enjoyment of -trifles a levelling melancholy which made all enjoyment trifling. Don -Egidio's aspect and conversation were so unsuggestive of psychological -complexities that I set down this trait to poverty or home-sickness. There -are few classes of men more frugal in tastes and habit than the village -priest in Italy; but Don Egidio, by his own account, had been introduced, -at an impressionable age, to a way of living that must have surpassed his -wildest dreams of self-indulgence. To whatever privations his parochial -work had since accustomed him, the influences of that earlier life were -too perceptible in his talk not to have made a profound impression on his -tastes; and he remained, for all his apostolic simplicity, the image of the -family priest who has his seat at the rich man's table. - -It chanced that I had used one of my short European holidays to explore -afoot the romantic passes connecting the Valtelline with the lake of Iseo; -and my remembrance of that enchanting region made it seem impossible -that Don Egidio should ever look without a reminiscent pang on the grimy -perspective of his parochial streets. The transition was too complete, too -ironical, from those rich glades and Titianesque acclivities to the brick -hovels and fissured sidewalks of the Point. - -This impression was confirmed when Don Egidio, in response to my urgent -invitation, paid his first visit to my modest lodgings. He called one -winter evening, when a wood-fire in its happiest humor was giving a -factitious lustre to my book-shelves and bringing out the values of the one -or two old prints and Chinese porcelains that accounted for the perennial -shabbiness of my wardrobe. - -"Ah," said he with a murmur of satisfaction, as he laid aside his shiny hat -and bulging umbrella, "it is a long time since I have been in a _casa -signorile_." - -My remembrance of his own room (he lodged with the doctor and the -_levatrice_) saved this epithet from the suggestion of irony and kept -me silent while he sank into my arm-chair with the deliberation of a tired -traveller lowering himself gently into a warm bath. - -"Good! good!" he repeated, looking about him. "Books, porcelains, objects -of _virtu_--I am glad to see that there are still such things in the -world!" And he turned a genial eye on the glass of Marsala that I had -poured out for him. - -Don Egidio was the most temperate of men and never exceeded his one glass; -but he liked to sit by the hour puffing at my Cabanas, which I suspected -him of preferring to the black weed of his native country. Under the -influence of my tobacco he became even more blandly garrulous, and I -sometimes fancied that of all the obligations of his calling none could -have placed such a strain on him as that of preserving the secrets of the -confessional. He often talked of his early life at the Count's villa, where -he had been educated with his patron's two sons till he was of age to be -sent to the seminary; and I could see that the years spent in simple and -familiar intercourse with his benefactors had been the most vivid chapter -in his experience. The Italian peasant's inarticulate tenderness for the -beauty of his birthplace had been specialized in him by contact with -cultivated tastes, and he could tell me not only that the Count had a -"stupendous" collection of pictures, but that the chapel of the villa -contained a sepulchral monument by Bambaja, and that the art-critics were -divided as to the authenticity of the Leonardo in the family palace at -Milan. - -On all these subjects he was inexhaustibly voluble; but there was one point -which he always avoided, and that was his reason for coming to America. I -remember the round turn with which he brought me up when I questioned him. - -"A priest," said he, "is a soldier and must obey orders like a soldier." -He set down his glass of Marsala and strolled across the room. "I had not -observed," he went on, "that you have here a photograph of the Sposalizio -of the Brera. What a picture! _E stupendo_!" and he turned back to his -seat and smilingly lit a fresh cigar. - -I saw at once that I had hit on a point where his native garrulity was -protected by the chain-mail of religious discipline that every Catholic -priest wears beneath his cassock. I had too much respect for my friend -to wish to penetrate his armor, and now and then I almost fancied he was -grateful to me for not putting his reticence to the test. - -Don Egidio must have been past sixty when I made his acquaintance; but it -was not till the close of an exceptionally harsh winter, some five or six -years after our first meeting, that I began to think of him as an old man. -It was as though the long-continued cold had cracked and shrivelled him. He -had grown bent and hollow-chested and his lower lip shook like an unhinged -door. The summer heat did little to revive him, and in September, when I -came home from my vacation, I found him just recovering from an attack of -pneumonia. That autumn he did not care to venture often into the night air, -and now and then I used to go and sit with him in his little room, to which -I had contributed the unheard-of luxuries of an easy-chair and a gas-stove. - -My engagements, however, made these visits infrequent, and several weeks -had elapsed without my seeing the _parocco_ when, one snowy November -morning, I ran across him in the railway-station. I was on my way to New -York for the day and had just time to wave a greeting to him as I jumped -into the railway-carriage; but a moment later, to my surprise, I saw him -stiffly clambering into the same train. I found him seated in the common -car, with his umbrella between his knees and a bundle done up in a red -cotton handkerchief on the seat at his side. The caution with which, at my -approach, he transferred this bundle to his arms caused me to glance at it -in surprise; and he answered my look by saying with a smile: - -"They are flowers for the dead--the most exquisite flowers--from the -greenhouses of Mr. Meriton--_si figuri_!" And he waved a descriptive -hand. "One of my lads, Gianpietro, is employed by the gardener there, and -every year on this day he brings me a beautiful bunch of flowers--for such -a purpose it is no sin," he added, with the charming Italian pliancy of -judgment. - -"And why are you travelling in this snowy weather, _signor parocco_?" -I asked, as he ended with a cough. - -He fixed me gravely with his simple shallow eye. "Because it is the day of -the dead, my son," he said, "and I go to place these on the grave of the -noblest man that ever lived." - -"You are going to New York?" - -"To Brooklyn--" - -I hesitated a moment, wishing to question him, yet uncertain whether his -replies were curtailed by the persistency of his cough or by the desire to -avoid interrogation. - -"This is no weather to be travelling with such a cough," I said at length. - -He made a deprecating gesture. - -"I have never missed the day--not once in eighteen years. But for me he -would have no one!" He folded his hands on his umbrella and looked away -from me to hide the trembling of his lip. - -I resolved on a last attempt to storm his confidence. "Your friend is -buried in Calvary cemetery?" - -He signed an assent. - -"That is a long way for you to go alone, _signor parocco_. The streets -are sure to be slippery and there is an icy wind blowing. Give me your -flowers and let me send them to the cemetery by a messenger. I give you my -word they shall reach their destination safely." - -He turned a quiet look on me. "My son, you are young," he said, "and you -don't know how the dead need us." He drew his breviary from his pocket and -opened it with a smile. "_Mi scusi?_" he murmured. - -The business which had called me to town obliged me to part from him as -soon as the train entered the station, and in my dash for the street I -left his unwieldy figure laboring far behind me through the crowd on the -platform. Before we separated, however, I had learned that he was returning -to Dunstable by the four o'clock train, and had resolved to despatch my -business in time to travel home with him. When I reached Wall Street I was -received with the news that the man I had appointed to meet was ill and -detained in the country. My business was "off" and I found myself with -the rest of the day at my disposal. I had no difficulty in deciding how -to employ my time. I was at an age when, in such contingencies, there is -always a feminine alternative; and even now I don't know how it was that, -on my way to a certain hospitable luncheon-table, I suddenly found myself -in a cab which was carrying me at full-speed to the Twenty-third Street -ferry. It was not till I had bought my ticket and seated myself in the -varnished tunnel of the ferry-boat that I was aware of having been diverted -from my purpose by an overmastering anxiety for Don Egidio. I rapidly -calculated that he had not more than an hour's advance on me, and that, -allowing for my greater agility and for the fact that I had a cab at my -call, I was likely to reach the cemetery in time to see him under shelter -before the gusts of sleet that were already sweeping across the river had -thickened to a snow-storm. - -At the gates of the cemetery I began to take a less sanguine view of my -attempt. The commemorative anniversary had filled the silent avenues -with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the -gatekeeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a -bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The -gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send -its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go -exactly contrary to his indication, and thanks to this precaution I came, -after half an hour's search, on the figure of my poor _parocco_, -kneeling on the wet ground in one of the humblest by-ways of the great -necropolis. The mound before which he knelt was strewn with the spoils of -Mr. Meriton's conservatories, and on the weather-worn tablet at its head I -read the inscription: - -IL CONTE SIVIANO -DA MILANO. - -_Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus._ - -So engrossed was Don Egidio that for some moments I stood behind him -unobserved; and when he rose and faced me, grief had left so little room -for any minor emotion that he looked at me almost without surprise. - -"Don Egidio," I said, "I have a carriage waiting for you at the gate. You -must come home with me." - -He nodded quietly and I drew his hand through my arm. - -He turned back to the grave. "One moment, my son," he said. "It may be for -the last time." He stood motionless, his eyes on the heaped-up flowers -which were already bruised and blackened by the cold. "To leave him -alone--after sixty years! But God is everywhere--" he murmured as I led him -away. - -On the journey home he did not care to talk, and my chief concern was to -keep him wrapped in my greatcoat and to see that his bed was made ready as -soon as I had restored him to his lodgings. The _levatrice_ brought a -quilted coverlet from her own room and hovered over him as gently as though -he had been of the sex to require her services; while Agostino, at my -summons, appeared with a bowl of hot soup that was heralded down the -street by a reviving waft of garlic. To these ministrations I left the -_parocco_, intending to call for news of him the next evening; but an -unexpected pressure of work kept me late at my desk, and the following day -some fresh obstacle delayed me. - -On the third afternoon, as I was leaving the office, an agate-eyed infant -from the Point hailed me with a message from the doctor. The _parocco_ -was worse and had asked for me. I jumped into the nearest car and ten -minutes later was running up the doctor's greasy stairs. - -To my dismay I found Don Egidio's room cold and untenanted; but I was -reassured a moment later by the appearance of the _levatrice_, who -announced that she had transferred the blessed man to her own apartment, -where he could have the sunlight and a good bed to lie in. There in fact -he lay, weak but smiling, in a setting which contrasted oddly enough with -his own monastic surroundings: a cheerful grimy room, hung with anecdotic -chromos, photographs of lady-patients proudly presenting their offspring -to the camera, and innumerable Neapolitan _santolini_ decked out with -shrivelled palm-leaves. - -The _levatrice_ whispered that the good man had the pleurisy, and -that, as she phrased it, he was nearing his last mile-stone. I saw that he -was in fact in a bad way, but his condition did not indicate any pressing -danger, and I had the presentiment that he would still, as the saying is, -put up a good fight. It was clear, however, that he knew what turn the -conflict must take, and the solemnity with which he welcomed me showed that -my summons was a part of that spiritual strategy with which the Catholic -opposes the surprise of death. - -"My son," he said, when the _levatrice_ had left us, "I have a favor -to ask you. You found me yesterday bidding good-bye to my best friend." -His cough interrupted him. "I have never told you," he went on, "the name -of the family in which I was brought up. It was Siviano, and that was -the grave of the Count's eldest son, with whom I grew up as a brother. -For eighteen years he has lain in that strange ground--_in terra -aliena_--and when I die, there will be no one to care for his grave." - -I saw what he waited for. "I will care for it, _signor parocco_." - -"I knew I should have your promise, my child; and what you promise you -keep. But my friend is a stranger to you--you are young and at your age -life is a mistress who kisses away sad memories. Why should you remember -the grave of a stranger? I cannot lay such a claim on you. But I will tell -you his story--and then I think that neither joy nor grief will let you -forget him; for when you rejoice you will remember how he sorrowed; and -when you sorrow the thought of him will be like a friend's hand in yours." - - -II - -You tell me (Don Egidio began) that you know our little lake; and if you -have seen it you will understand why it always used to remind me of the -"garden enclosed" of the Canticles. - -_Hortus inclusus; columba mea in foraminibus petrae_: the words used -to come back to me whenever I returned from a day's journey across the -mountains, and looking down saw the blue lake far below, hidden in its -hills like a happy secret in a stern heart. We were never envious of -the glory of the great lakes. They are like the show pictures that some -nobleman hangs in his public gallery; but our Iseo is the treasure that -he hides in his inner chamber. - -You tell me you saw it in summer, when it looks up like a saint's eye, -reflecting the whole of heaven. It was then too that I first saw it. -My future friend, the old Count, had found me at work on one of his -fruit-farms up the valley, and hearing that I was ill-treated by my -step-father--a drunken pedlar from the Val Mastellone, whom my poor mother -a year or two earlier had come across at the fair of Lovere--he had taken -me home with him to Iseo. I used to serve mass in our hill-village of -Cerveno, and the village children called me "the little priest" because -when my work was done I often crept back to the church to get away from -my step-father's blows and curses. "I will make a real priest of him," -the Count declared; and that afternoon, perched on the box of his -travelling-carriage, I was whirled away from the dark scenes of my -childhood into a world, where, as it seemed to me, every one was as happy -as an angel on a _presepio_. - -I wonder if you remember the Count's villa? It lies on the shore of the -lake, facing the green knoll of Monte Isola, and overlooked by the village -of Siviano and by the old parish-church where I said mass for fifteen happy -years. The village hangs on a ledge of the mountain; but the villa dips its -foot in the lake, smiling at its reflection like a bather lingering on the -brink. What Paradise it seemed to me that day! In our church up the valley -there hung an old brown picture, with a Saint Sabastian in the foreground; -and behind him the most wonderful palace, with terraced gardens adorned -with statues and fountains, where fine folk in resplendent dresses walked -up and down without heeding the blessed martyr's pangs. The Count's villa, -with its terraces, its roses, its marble steps descending to the lake, -reminded me of that palace; only instead of being inhabited by wicked -people engrossed in their selfish pleasures it was the home of the kindest -friends that ever took a poor lad by the hand. - -The old Count was a widower when I first knew him. He had been twice -married, and his first wife had left him two children, a son and a -daughter. The eldest, Donna Marianna, was then a girl of twenty, who -kept her father's house and was a mother to the two lads. She was not -handsome or learned, and had no taste for the world; but she was like the -lavender-plant in a poor man's window--just a little gray flower, but a -sweetness that fills the whole house. Her brother, Count Roberto, had been -ailing from his birth, and was a studious lad with a melancholy musing face -such as you may see in some of Titian's portraits of young men. He looked -like an exiled prince dressed in mourning. There was one child by the -second marriage, Count Andrea, a boy of my own age, handsome as a Saint -George, but not as kind as the others. No doubt, being younger, he was less -able to understand why an uncouth peasant lad should have been brought to -his father's table; and the others were so fearful of hurting my feelings -that, but for his teasing, I might never have mended my clumsy manners or -learned how to behave in the presence of my betters. Count Andrea was not -sparing in such lessons, and Count Roberto, in spite of his weak arms, -chastised his brother roundly when he thought the discipline had been too -severe; but for my part it seemed to me natural enough that such a godlike -being should lord it over a poor clodhopper like myself. - -Well--I will not linger over the beginning of my new life for my story has -to do with its close. Only I should like to make you understand what the -change meant to me--an ignorant peasant lad, coming from hard words and -blows and a smoke-blackened hut in the hills to that great house full of -rare and beautiful things, and of beings who seemed to me even more rare -and beautiful. Do you wonder I was ready to kiss the ground they trod, and -would have given the last drop of my blood to serve them? - -In due course I was sent to the seminary at Lodi; and on holidays I used -to visit the family in Milan. Count Andrea was growing up to be one of -the handsomest young men imaginable, but a trifle wild; and the old Count -married him in haste to the daughter of a Venetian noble, who brought as -her dower a great estate in Istria. The Countess Gemma, as this lady was -called, was as light as thistledown and had an eye like a baby's; but while -she was cooing for the moon her pretty white hands were always stealing -toward something within reach that she had not been meant to have. The old -Count was not alert enough to follow these manoeuvres; and the Countess hid -her designs under a torrent of guileless chatter, as pick-pockets wear long -sleeves to conceal their movements. Her only fault, he used to say, was -that one of her aunts had married an Austrian; and this event having taken -place before she was born he laughingly acquitted her of any direct share -in it. She confirmed his good opinion of her by giving her husband two -sons; and Roberto showing no inclination to marry, these boys naturally -came to be looked on as the heirs of the house. - -Meanwhile I had finished my course of studies, and the old Count, on my -twenty-first birthday, had appointed me priest of the parish of Siviano. It -was the year of Count Andrea's marriage and there were great festivities at -the villa. Three years later the old Count died, to the sorrow of his two -eldest children. Donna Marianna and Count Roberto closed their apartments -in the palace at Milan and withdrew for a year to Siviano. It was then -that I first began to know my friend. Before that I had loved him without -understanding him; now I learned of what metal he was made. His bookish -tastes inclined him to a secluded way of living; and his younger brother -perhaps fancied that he would not care to assume the charge of the estate. -But if Andrea thought this he was disappointed. Roberto resolutely took up -the tradition of his father's rule, and, as if conscious of lacking the -old Count's easy way with the peasants, made up for it by a redoubled zeal -for their welfare. I have seen him toil for days to adjust some trifling -difficulty that his father would have set right with a ready word; like the -sainted bishop who, when a beggar asked him for a penny, cried out: "Alas, -my brother, I have not a penny in my purse; but here are two gold pieces, -if they can be made to serve you instead!" We had many conferences over -the condition of his people, and he often sent me up the valley to look -into the needs of the peasantry on the fruit-farms. No grievance was too -trifling for him to consider it, no abuse too deep-seated for him to root -it out; and many an hour that other men of his rank would have given to -books or pleasure was devoted to adjusting a quarrel about boundary-lines -or to weighing the merits of a complaint against the tax-collector. I -often said that he was as much his people's priest as I; and he smiled and -answered that every landowner was a king and that in old days the king was -always a priest. - -Donna Marianna was urgent with him to marry, but he always declared that -he had a family in his tenantry, and that, as for a wife, she had never -let him feel the want of one. He had that musing temper which gives a man -a name for coldness; though in fact he may all the while be storing fuel -for a great conflagration. But to me he whispered another reason for not -marrying. A man, he said, does not take wife and rejoice while his mother -is on her death-bed; and Italy, his mother, lay dying, with the foreign -vultures waiting to tear her apart. - -You are too young to know anything of those days, my son; and how can any -one understand them who did not live through them? Italy lay dying indeed; -but Lombardy was her heart, and the heart still beat, and sent the faint -blood creeping to her cold extremities. Her torturers, weary of their -work, had allowed her to fall into a painless stupor; but just as she was -sinking from sleep to death, heaven sent Radetsky to scourge her back to -consciousness; and at the first sting of his lash she sprang maimed and -bleeding to her feet. - -Ah, those days, those days, my son! Italy--Italy--was the word on our -lips; but the thought in our hearts was just _Austria_. We clamored -for liberty, unity, the franchise; but under our breath we prayed only to -smite the white-coats. Remove the beam from our eye, we cried, and we shall -see our salvation clearly enough! We priests in the north were all liberals -and worked with the nobles and the men of letters. Gioberti was our -breviary and his Holiness the new Pope was soon to be the Tancred of our -crusade. But meanwhile, mind you, all this went on in silence, underground -as it were, while on the surface Lombardy still danced, feasted, married, -and took office under the Austrian. In the iron-mines up our valley there -used to be certain miners who stayed below ground for months at a time; -and, like one of these, Roberto remained buried in his purpose, while life -went its way overhead. Though I was not in his confidence I knew well -enough where his thoughts were, for he went among us with the eye of a -lover, the visionary look of one who hears a Voice. We all heard that -Voice, to be sure, mingling faintly with the other noises of life; but to -Roberto it was already as the roar of mighty waters, drowning every other -sound with its thunder. - -On the surface, as I have said, things looked smooth enough. An Austrian -cardinal throned in Milan and an Austrian-hearted Pope ruled in Rome. In -Lombardy, Austria couched like a beast of prey, ready to spring at our -throats if we stirred or struggled. The Moderates, to whose party Count -Roberto belonged, talked of prudence, compromise, the education of the -masses; but if their words were a velvet sheath their thought was a dagger. -For many years, as you know, the Milanese had maintained an outward show of -friendliness with their rulers. The nobles had accepted office under the -vice-roy, and in the past there had been frequent intermarriage between -the two aristocracies. But now, one by one, the great houses had closed -their doors against official society. Though some of the younger and more -careless, those who must dance and dine at any cost, still went to the -palace and sat beside the enemy at the opera, fashion was gradually taking -sides against them, and those who had once been laughed at as old fogeys -were now applauded as patriots. Among these, of course, was Count Roberto, -who for several years had refused to associate with the Austrians, and -had silently resented his easy-going brother's disregard of political -distinctions. Andrea and Gemma belonged to the moth tribe, who flock to -the brightest light; and Gemma's Istrian possessions, and her family's -connection with the Austrian nobility, gave them a pretext for fluttering -about the vice-regal candle. Roberto let them go their way, but his own -course was a tacit protest against their conduct. They were always welcome -at the palazzo Siviano; but he and Donna Marianna withdrew from society in -order to have an excuse for not showing themselves at the Countess Gemma's -entertainments. If Andrea and Gemma were aware of his disapproval they were -clever enough to ignore it; for the rich elder brother who paid their debts -and never meant to marry was too important a person to be quarrelled with -on political grounds. They seemed to think that if he married it would be -only to spite them; and they were persuaded that their future depended on -their giving him no cause to take such reprisals. I shall never be more -than a plain peasant at heart and I have little natural skill in discerning -hidden motives; but the experience of the confessional gives every priest -a certain insight into the secret springs of action, and I often wondered -that the worldly wisdom of Andrea and Gemma did not help them to a clearer -reading of their brother's character. For my part I knew that, in Roberto's -heart, no great passion could spring from a mean motive; and I had always -thought that if he ever loved any woman as he loved Italy, it must be from -his country's hand that he received his bride. And so it came about. - -Have you ever noticed, on one of those still autumn days before a storm, -how here and there a yellow leaf will suddenly detach itself from the bough -and whirl through the air as though some warning of the gale had reached -it? So it was then in Lombardy. All round was the silence of decay; but now -and then a word, a look, a trivial incident, fluttered ominously through -the stillness. It was in '45. Only a year earlier the glorious death of the -Bandiera brothers had sent a long shudder through Italy. In the Romagna, -Renzi and his comrades had tried to uphold by action the protest set forth -in the "Manifesto of Rimini"; and their failure had sowed the seed which -d'Azeglio and Cavour were to harvest. Everywhere the forces were silently -gathering; and nowhere was the hush more profound, the least reverberation -more audible, than in the streets of Milan. - -It was Count Roberto's habit to attend early mass in the Cathedral; and one -morning, as he was standing in the aisle, a young girl passed him with her -father. Roberto knew the father, a beggarly Milanese of the noble family of -Intelvi, who had cut himself off from his class by accepting an appointment -in one of the government offices. As the two went by he saw a group of -Austrian officers looking after the girl, and heard one of them say: "Such -a choice morsel as that is too good for slaves;" and another answer with a -laugh: "Yes, it's a dish for the master's table!" - -The girl heard too. She was as white as a wind-flower and he saw the words -come out on her cheek like the red mark from a blow. She whispered to -her father, but he shook his head and drew her away without so much as -a glance at the Austrians. Roberto heard mass and then hastened out and -placed himself in the porch of the Cathedral. A moment later the officers -appeared, and they too stationed themselves near the doorway. Presently the -girl came out on her father's arm. Her admirers stepped forward to greet -Intelvi; and the cringing wretch stood there exchanging compliments with -them, while their insolent stare devoured his daughter's beauty. She, -poor thing, shook like a leaf, and her eyes, in avoiding theirs, suddenly -encountered Roberto's. Her look was a wounded bird that flew to him for -shelter. He carried it away in his breast and its live warmth beat against -his heart. He thought that Italy had looked at him through those eyes; for -love is the wiliest of masqueraders and has a thousand disguises at his -command. - -Within a month Faustina Intelvi was his wife. Donna Marianna and I -rejoiced; for we knew he had chosen her because he loved her, and she -seemed to us almost worthy of such a choice. As for Count Andrea and his -wife, I leave you to guess what ingredients were mingled in the kiss with -which they welcomed the bride. They were all smiles at Roberto's marriage, -and had only words of praise for his wife. Donna Marianna, who had -sometimes taxed me with suspecting their motives, rejoiced in this fresh -proof of their magnanimity; but for my part I could have wished to see them -a little less kind. All such twilight fears, however, vanished in the flush -of my friend's happiness. Over some natures love steals gradually, as the -morning light widens across a valley; but it had flashed on Roberto like -the leap of dawn to a snow-peak. He walked the world with the wondering -step of a blind man suddenly restored to sight; and once he said to me with -a laugh: "Love makes a Columbus of every one of us!" - -And the Countess--? The Countess, my son, was eighteen, and her husband was -forty. Count Roberto had the heart of a poet, but he walked with a limp and -his skin was sallow. Youth plucks the fruit for its color rather than its -flavor; and first love does not serenade its mistress on a church-organ. In -Italy girls are married as land is sold; if two estates adjoin two lives -are united. As for the portionless girl, she is a knick-knack that goes to -the highest bidder. Faustina was handed over to her purchaser as if she -had been a picture for his gallery; and the transaction doubtless seemed -as natural to her as to her parents. She walked to the altar like an -Iphigenia; but pallor becomes a bride, and it looks well for a daughter to -weep on leaving her mother. Perhaps it would have been different if she had -guessed that the threshold of her new home was carpeted with love and its -four corners hung with tender thoughts of her; but her husband was a silent -man, who never called attention to his treasures. - -The great palace in Milan was a gloomy house for a girl to enter. Roberto -and his sister lived in it as if it had been a monastery, going nowhere and -receiving only those who labored for the Cause. To Faustina, accustomed to -the easy Austrian society, the Sunday evening receptions at the palazzo -Siviano must have seemed as dreary as a scientific congress. It pleased -Roberto to regard her as a victim of barbarian insolence, an embodiment of -his country desecrated by the desire of the enemy; but though, like any -handsome penniless girl, Faustina had now and then been exposed to a free -look or a familiar word, I doubt if she connected such incidents with the -political condition of Italy. She knew, of course, that in marrying Siviano -she was entering a house closed against the Austrian. One of Siviano's -first cares had been to pension his father-in-law, with the stipulation -that Intelvi should resign his appointment and give up all relations with -the government; and the old hypocrite, only too glad to purchase idleness -on such terms, embraced the liberal cause with a zeal which left his -daughter no excuse for half-heartedness. But he found it less easy than he -had expected to recover a footing among his own people. In spite of his -patriotic bluster the Milanese held aloof from him; and being the kind of -man who must always take his glass in company he gradually drifted back -to his old associates. It was impossible to forbid Faustina to visit her -parents; and in their house she breathed an air that was at least tolerant -of Austria. - -But I must not let you think that the young Countess appeared ungrateful or -unhappy. She was silent and shy, and it needed a more enterprising temper -than Roberto's to break down the barrier between them. They seemed to talk -to one another through a convent-grating, rather than across a hearth; but -if Roberto had asked more of her than she could give, outwardly she was -a model wife. She chose me at once as her confessor and I watched over -the first steps of her new life. Never was younger sister tenderer to her -elder than she to Donna Marianna; never was young wife more mindful of her -religious duties, kinder to her dependents, more charitable to the poor; -yet to be with her was like living in a room with shuttered windows. She -was always the caged bird, the transplanted flower: for all Roberto's care -she never bloomed or sang. - -Donna Marianna was the first to speak of it. "The child needs more light -and air," she said. - -"Light? Air?" Roberto repeated. "Does she not go to mass every morning? -Does she not drive on the Corso every evening?" - -Donna Marianna was not called clever, but her heart was wiser than most -women's heads. - -"At our age, brother," said she, "the windows of the mind face north and -look out on a landscape full of lengthening shadows. Faustina needs another -outlook. She is as pale as a hyacinth grown in a cellar." - -Roberto himself turned pale and I saw that she had uttered his own thought. - -"You want me to let her go to Gemma's!" he exclaimed. - -"Let her go wherever there is a little careless laughter." - -"Laughter--now!" he cried, with a gesture toward the sombre line of -portraits above his head. - -"Let her laugh while she can, my brother." - -That evening after dinner he called Faustina to him. - -"My child," he said, "go and put on your jewels. Your sister Gemma gives a -ball to-night and the carriage waits to take you there. I am too much of a -recluse to be at ease in such scenes, but I have sent word to your father -to go with you." - -Andrea and Gemma welcomed their young sister-in-law with effusion, and from -that time she was often in their company. Gemma forbade any mention of -politics in her drawing-room, and it was natural that Faustina should be -glad to escape from the solemn conclaves of the palazzo Siviano to a house -where life went as gaily as in that villa above Florence where Boccaccio's -careless story-tellers took refuge from the plague. But meanwhile the -political distemper was rapidly spreading, and in spite of Gemma's Austrian -affiliations it was no longer possible for her to receive the enemy openly. -It was whispered that her door was still ajar to her old friends; but -the rumor may have risen from the fact that one of the Austrian cavalry -officers stationed at Milan was her own cousin, the son of the aunt on -whose misalliance the old Count had so often bantered her. No one could -blame the Countess Gemma for not turning her own flesh and blood out of -doors; and the social famine to which the officers of the garrison were -reduced made it natural that young Welkenstern should press the claims of -consanguinity. - -All this must have reached Roberto's ears; but he made no sign and his wife -came and went as she pleased. When they returned the following year to the -old dusky villa at Siviano she was like the voice of a brook in a twilight -wood: one could not look at her without ransacking the spring for new -similes to paint her freshness. With Roberto it was different. I found him -older, more preoccupied and silent; but I guessed that his preoccupations -were political, for when his eye rested on his wife it cleared like the -lake when a cloud-shadow lifts from it. - -Count Andrea and his wife occupied an adjoining villa; and during the -_villeggiatura_ the two households lived almost as one family. -Roberto, however, was often absent in Milan, called thither on business of -which the nature was not hard to guess. Sometimes he brought back guests to -the villa; and on these occasions Faustina and Donna Marianna went to Count -Andrea's for the day. I have said that I was not in his confidence; but -he knew my sympathies were with the liberals and now and then he let fall -a word of the work going on underground. Meanwhile the new Pope had been -elected, and from Piedmont to Calabria we hailed in him the Banner that was -to lead our hosts to war. - -So time passed and we reached the last months of '47. The villa on Iseo had -been closed since the end of August. Roberto had no great liking for his -gloomy palace in Milan, and it had been his habit to spend nine months -of the year at Siviano; but he was now too much engrossed in his work to -remain away from Milan, and his wife and sister had joined him there as -soon as the midsummer heat was over. During the autumn he had called me -once or twice to the city to consult me on business connected with his -fruit-farms; and in the course of our talks he had sometimes let fall a -hint of graver matters. It was in July of that year that a troop of Croats -had marched into Ferrara, with muskets and cannon loaded. The lighted -matches of their cannon had fired the sleeping hate of Austria, and the -whole country now echoed the Lombard cry: "Out with the barbarian!" All -talk of adjustment, compromise, reorganization, shrivelled on lips that -the live coal of patriotism had touched. Italy for the Italians, and -then--monarchy, federation, republic, it mattered not what! - -The oppressor's grip had tightened on our throats and the clear-sighted -saw well enough that Metternich's policy was to provoke a rebellion and -then crush it under the Croat heel. But it was too late to cry prudence in -Lombardy. With the first days of the new year the tobacco riots had drawn -blood in Milan. Soon afterward the Lions' Club was closed, and edicts were -issued forbidding the singing of Pio Nono's hymn, the wearing of white and -blue, the collecting of subscriptions for the victims of the riots. To each -prohibition Milan returned a fresh defiance. The ladies of the nobility put -on mourning for the rioters who had been shot down by the soldiery. Half -the members of the Guardia Nobile resigned and Count Borromeo sent back -his Golden Fleece to the Emperor. Fresh regiments were continually pouring -into Milan and it was no secret that Radetsky was strengthening the -fortifications. Late in January several leading liberals were arrested and -sent into exile, and two weeks later martial law was proclaimed in Milan. -At the first arrests several members of the liberal party had hastily left -Milan, and I was not surprised to hear, a few days later, that orders had -been given to reopen the villa at Siviano. The Count and Countess arrived -there early in February. - -It was seven months since I had seen the Countess, and I was struck with -the change in her appearance. - -She was paler than ever, and her step had lost its lightness. Yet she -did not seem to share her husband's political anxieties; one would have -said that she was hardly aware of them. She seemed wrapped in a veil of -lassitude, like Iseo on a still gray morning, when dawn is blood-red on the -mountains but a mist blurs its reflection in the lake. I felt as though her -soul were slipping away from me, and longed to win her back to my care; but -she made her ill-health a pretext for not coming to confession, and for the -present I could only wait and carry the thought of her to the altar. She -had not been long at Siviano before I discovered that this drooping mood -was only one phase of her humor. Now and then she flung back the cowl of -melancholy and laughed life in the eye; but next moment she was in shadow -again, and her muffled thoughts had given us the slip. She was like the -lake on one of those days when the wind blows twenty ways and every -promontory holds a gust in ambush. - -Meanwhile there was a continual coming and going of messengers between -Siviano and the city. They came mostly at night, when the household slept, -and were away again with the last shadows; but the news they brought stayed -and widened, shining through every cranny of the old house. The whole of -Lombardy was up. From Pavia to Mantua, from Como to Brescia, the streets -ran blood like the arteries of one great body. At Pavia and Padua the -universities were closed. The frightened vice-roy was preparing to withdraw -from Milan to Verona, and Radetsky continued to pour his men across the -Alps, till a hundred thousand were massed between the Piave and the Ticino. -And now every eye was turned to Turin. Ah, how we watched for the blue -banner of Piedmont on the mountains! Charles Albert was pledged to our -cause; his whole people had armed to rescue us, the streets echoed with -_avanti, Savoia!_ and yet Savoy was silent and hung back. Each day was -a life-time strained to the cracking-point with hopes and disappointments. -We reckoned the hours by rumors, the very minutes by hearsay. Then -suddenly--ah, it was worth living through!--word came to us that Vienna -was in revolt. The points of the compass had shifted and our sun had risen -in the north. I shall never forget that day at the villa. Roberto sent for -me early, and I found him smiling and resolute, as becomes a soldier on -the eve of action. He had made all his preparations to leave for Milan and -was awaiting a summons from his party. The whole household felt that great -events impended, and Donna Marianna, awed and tearful, had pleaded with -her brother that they should all receive the sacrament together the next -morning. Roberto and his sister had been to confession the previous day, -but the Countess Faustina had again excused herself. I did not see her -while I was with the Count, but as I left the house she met me in the -laurel-walk. The morning was damp and cold, and she had drawn a black scarf -over her hair, and walked with a listless dragging step; but at my approach -she lifted her head quickly and signed to me to follow her into one of the -recesses of clipped laurel that bordered the path. - -"Don Egidio," she said, "you have heard the news?" - -I assented. - -"The Count goes to Milan to-morrow?" - -"It seems probable, your excellency." - -"There will be fighting--we are on the eve of war, I mean?" - -"We are in God's hands, your excellency." - -"In God's hands!" she murmured. Her eyes wandered and for a moment we stood -silent; then she drew a purse from her pocket. "I was forgetting," she -exclaimed. "This is for that poor girl you spoke to me about the other -day--what was her name? The girl who met the Austrian soldier at the fair -at Peschiera--" - -"Ah, Vannina," I said; "but she is dead, your excellency." - -"Dead!" She turned white and the purse dropped from her hand. I picked it -up and held it out to her, but she put back my hand. "That is for masses, -then," she said; and with that she moved away toward the house. - -I walked on to the gate; but before I had reached it I heard her step -behind me. - -"Don Egidio!" she called; and I turned back. - -"You are coming to say mass in the chapel to-morrow morning?" - -"That is the Count's wish." - -She wavered a moment. "I am not well enough to walk up to the village this -afternoon," she said at length. "Will you come back later and hear my -confession here?" - -"Willingly, your excellency." - -"Come at sunset then." She looked at me gravely. "It is a long time since I -have been to confession," she added. - -"My child, the door of heaven is always unlatched." - -She made no answer and I went my way. - -I returned to the villa a little before sunset, hoping for a few words -with Roberto. I felt with Faustina that we were on the eve of war, and the -uncertainty of the outlook made me treasure every moment of my friend's -company. I knew he had been busy all day, but hoped to find that his -preparations were ended and that he could spare me a half hour. I was not -disappointed; for the servant who met me asked me to follow him to the -Count's apartment. Roberto was sitting alone, with his back to the door, at -a table spread with maps and papers. He stood up and turned an ashen face -on me. - -"Roberto!" I cried, as if we had been boys together. - -He signed to me to be seated. - -"Egidio," he said suddenly, "my wife has sent for you to confess her?" - -"The Countess met me on my way home this morning and expressed a wish to -receive the sacrament to-morrow morning with you and Donna Marianna, and I -promised to return this afternoon to hear her confession." - -Roberto sat silent, staring before him as though he hardly heard. At length -he raised his head and began to speak. - -"You have noticed lately that my wife has been ailing?" he asked. - -"Every one must have seen that the Countess is not in her usual health. She -has seemed nervous, out of spirits--I have fancied that she might be -anxious about your excellency." - -He leaned across the table and laid his wasted hand on mine. "Call me -Roberto," he said. - -There was another pause before he went on. "Since I saw you this morning," -he said slowly, "something horrible has happened. After you left I sent for -Andrea and Gemma to tell them the news from Vienna and the probability of -my being summoned to Milan before night. You know as well as I that we have -reached a crisis. There will be fighting within twenty-four hours, if I -know my people; and war may follow sooner than we think. I felt it my duty -to leave my affairs in Andrea's hands, and to entrust my wife to his care. -Don't look startled," he added with a faint smile. "No reasonable man goes -on a journey without setting his house in order; and if things take the -turn I expect it may be some months before you see me back at Siviano.--But -it was not to hear this that I sent for you." He pushed his chair aside and -walked up and down the room with his short limping step. "My God!" he broke -out wildly, "how can I say it?--When Andrea had heard me, I saw him -exchange a glance with his wife, and she said with that infernal sweet -voice of hers, 'Yes, Andrea, it is our duty.' - -"'Your duty?' I asked. 'What is your duty?' - -"Andrea wetted his lips with his tongue and looked at her again; and her -look was like a blade in his hand. - -"'Your wife has a lover,' he said. - -"She caught my arm as I flung myself on him. He is ten times stronger than -I, but you remember how I made him howl for mercy in the old days when he -used to bully you. - -"'Let me go,' I said to his wife. 'He must live to unsay it.' - -"Andrea began to whimper. 'Oh, my poor brother, I would give my heart's -blood to unsay it!' - -"'The secret has been killing us,' she chimed in. - -"'The secret? Whose secret? How dare you--?' - -"Gemma fell on her knees like a tragedy actress. 'Strike me--kill me--it is -I who am the offender! It was at my house that she met him--' - -"'Him?' - -"'Franz Welkenstern--my cousin,' she wailed. - -"I suppose I stood before them like a stunned ox, for they repeated the -name again and again, as if they were not sure of my having heard it.--Not -hear it!" he cried suddenly, dropping into a chair and hiding his face in -his hands. "Shall I ever on earth hear anything else again?" - -He sat a long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a -great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. - -After a while he went on in a low deliberate voice, as though his words -were balancing themselves on the brink of madness. With strange composure -he repeated each detail of his brother's charges: the meetings in the -Countess Gemma's drawing-room, the innocent friendliness of the two -young people, the talk of mysterious visits to a villa outside the Porta -Ticinese, the ever-widening circle of scandal that had spread about their -names. At first, Andrea said, he and his wife had refused to listen to the -reports which reached them. Then, when the talk became too loud, they had -sent for Welkenstern, remonstrated with him, implored him to exchange into -another regiment; but in vain. The young officer indignantly denied the -reports and declared that to leave his post at such a moment would be -desertion. - -With a laborious accuracy Roberto went on, detailing one by one each -incident of the hateful story, till suddenly he cried out, springing from -his chair--"And now to leave her with this lie unburied!" - -His cry was like the lifting of a grave-stone from my breast. "You must not -leave her!" I exclaimed. - -He shook his head. "I am pledged." - -"This is your first duty." - -"It would be any other man's; not an Italian's." - -I was silent: in those days the argument seemed unanswerable. - -At length I said: "No harm can come to her while you are away. Donna -Marianna and I are here to watch over her. And when you come back--" - -He looked at me gravely. "_If_ I come back--" - -"Roberto!" - -"We are men, Egidio; we both know what is coming. Milan is up already; and -there is a rumor that Charles Albert is moving. This year the spring rains -will be red in Italy." - -"In your absence not a breath shall touch her!" - -"And if I never come back to defend her? They hate her as hell hates, -Egidio!--They kept repeating, 'He is of her own age and youth draws -youth--.' She is in their way, Egidio!" - -"Consider, my son. They do not love her, perhaps; but why should they hate -her at such cost? She has given you no child." - -"No child!" He paused. "But what if--? She has ailed lately!" he cried, and -broke off to grapple with the stabbing thought. - -"Roberto! Roberto!" I adjured him. - -He jumped up and gripped my arm. - -"Egidio! You believe in her?" - -"She's as pure as a lily on the altar!" - -"Those eyes are wells of truth--and she has been like a daughter to -Marianna.--Egidio! do I look like an old man?" - -"Quiet yourself, Roberto," I entreated. - -"Quiet myself? With this sting in my blood? A lover--and an Austrian lover! -Oh, Italy, Italy, my bride!" - -"I stake my life on her truth," I cried, "and who knows better than I? Has -her soul not lain before me like the bed of a clear stream?" - -"And if what you saw there was only the reflection of your faith in her?" - -"My son, I am a priest, and the priest penetrates to the soul as the angel -passed through the walls of Peter's prison. I see the truth in her heart as -I see Christ in the host!" - -"No, no, she is false!" he cried. - -I sprang up terrified. "Roberto, be silent!" - -He looked at me with a wild incredulous smile. "Poor simple man of God!" he -said. - -"I would not exchange my simplicity for yours--the dupe of envy's first -malicious whisper!" - -"Envy--you think that?" - -"Is it questionable?" - -"You would stake your life on it?" - -"My life!" - -"Your faith?" - -"My faith!" - -"Your vows as a priest?" - -"My vows--" I stopped and stared at him. He had risen and laid his hand on -my shoulder. - -"You see now what I would be at," he said quietly. "I must take your place -presently--" - -"My place--?" - -"When my wife comes down. You understand me." - -"Ah, now you are quite mad!" I cried breaking away from him. - -"Am I?" he returned, maintaining his strange composure. "Consider a moment. -She has not confessed to you before since our return from Milan--" - -"Her ill-health--" - -He cut me short with a gesture. "Yet to-day she sends for you--" - -"In order that she may receive the sacrament with you on the eve of your -first separation." - -"If that is her only reason her first words will clear her. I must hear -those words, Egidio!" - -"You are quite mad," I repeated. - -"Strange," he said slowly. "You stake your life on my wife's innocence, yet -you refuse me the only means of vindicating it!" - -"I would give my life for any one of you--but what you ask is not mine to -give." - -"The priest first--the man afterward?" he sneered. - -"Long afterward!" - -He measured me with a contemptuous eye. "We laymen are ready to give the -last shred of flesh from our bones, but you priests intend to keep your -cassocks whole." - -"I tell you my cassock is not mine," I repeated. - -"And, by God," he cried, "you are right; for it's mine! Who put it on your -back but my father? What kept it there but my charity? Peasant! beggar! -Hear his holiness pontificate!" "Yes," I said, "I was a peasant and a -beggar when your father found me; and if he had left me one I might have -been excused for putting my hand to any ugly job that my betters required -of me; but he made me a priest, and so set me above all of you, and laid on -me the charge of your souls as well as mine." - -He sat down shaken with dreadful tears. "Ah," he broke out, "would you have -answered me thus when we were boys together, and I stood between you and -Andrea?" - -"If God had given me the strength." - -"You call it strength to make a woman's soul your stepping-stone to -heaven?" - -"Her soul is in my care, not yours, my son. She is safe with me." - -"She? But I? I go out to meet death, and leave a worse death behind me!" -He leaned over and clutched my arm. "It is not for myself I plead but for -her--for her, Egidio! Don't you see to what a hell you condemn her if I -don't come back? What chance has she against that slow unsleeping hate? -Their lies will fasten themselves to her and suck out her life. You and -Marianna are powerless against such enemies." - -"You leave her in God's hands, my son." - -"Easily said--but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison -works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be -sent by her lover's hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free -my wife as well?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder. "My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith -in her in my hands and I will keep it whole." - -He stared at me strangely. "And what if your own fail you?" - -"In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!" - -"And yet--and yet--ah, this is a blind," he shouted; "you know all and -perjure yourself to spare me!" - -At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish -and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a -clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice. - -"You know all," he repeated, "and you dare not let me hear her!" - -"I dare not betray my trust." - -He waved the answer aside. - -"Is this a time to quibble over church discipline? If you believed in her -you would save her at any cost!" - -I said to myself, "Eternity can hold nothing worse than this for me--" and -clutched my resolve again like a cross to my bosom. - -Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna. - -"Faustina has sent to know if the _signar parocco_ is here." - -"He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel." Roberta spoke quietly, and -closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her -patter away across the brick floor of the _salone_. - -Roberto turned to me. "Egidio!" he said; and all at once I was no more than -a straw on the torrent of his will. - -The chapel adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in -the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin's shrine and the -old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But -I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but -the iron grip on my shoulder. - -"Quick!" he said and drove me forward. I heard him shoot back the bolt of -the outer door and a moment later I stood alone in the garden. The sun had -set and the cold spring dusk was falling. Lights shone here and there in -the long front of the villa; the statues glimmered gray among the thickets. -Through the window-pane of the chapel I caught the faint red gleam of the -Virgin's lamp; but I turned my back on it and walked away. - - * * * * * - -All night I lay like a heretic on the fire. Before dawn there came a call -from the villa. The Count had received a second summons from Milan and was -to set out in an hour. I hurried down the cold dewy path to the lake. All -was new and hushed and strange as on the day of resurrection; and in the -dark twilight of the garden alleys the statues stared at me like the -shrouded dead. - -In the _salone_, where the old Count's portrait hung, I found the -family assembled. Andrea and Gemma sat together, a little pinched, I -thought, but decent and self-contained, like mourners who expect to -inherit. Donna Marianna drooped near them, with something black over her -head and her face dim with weeping. Roberto received me calmly and then -turned to his sister. - -"Go fetch my wife," he said. - -While she was gone there was silence. We could hear the cold drip of the -garden-fountain and the patter of rats in the wall. Andrea and his wife -stared out of window and Roberto sat in his father's carved seat at the -head of the long table. Then the door opened and Faustina entered. - -When I saw her I stopped breathing. She seemed no more than the shell of -herself, a hollow thing that grief has voided. Her eyes returned our images -like polished agate, but conveyed to her no sense of our presence. Marianna -led her to a seat, and she crossed her hands and nailed her dull gaze on -Roberto. I looked from one to another, and in that spectral light it seemed -to me that we were all souls come to judgment and naked to each other as to -God. As to my own wrongdoing, it weighed on me no more than dust. The only -feeling I had room for was fear--a fear that seemed to fill my throat and -lungs and bubble coldly over my drowning head. - -Suddenly Roberto began to speak. His voice was clear and steady, and I -clutched at his words to drag myself above the surface of my terror. He -touched on the charge that had been made against his wife--he did not say -by whom--the foul rumor that had made itself heard on the eve of their -first parting. Duty, he said, had sent him a double summons; to fight for -his country and for his wife. He must clear his wife's name before he was -worthy to draw sword for Italy. There was no time to tame the slander -before throttling it; he had to take the shortest way to its throat. At -this point he looked at me and my soul shook. Then he turned to Andrea and -Gemma. - -"When you came to me with this rumor," he said quietly, "you agreed to -consider the family honor satisfied if I could induce Don Egidio to let me -take his place and overhear my wife's confession, and if that confession -convinced me of her innocence. Was this the understanding?" - -Andrea muttered something and Gemma tapped a sullen foot. - -"After you had left," Roberto continued, "I laid the case before Don Egidio -and threw myself on his mercy." He looked at me fixedly. "So strong was his -faith in my wife's innocence that for her sake he agreed to violate the -sanctity of the confessional. I took his place." - -Marianna sobbed and crossed herself and a strange look flitted over -Faustina's face. - -There was a moment's pause; then Roberto, rising, walked across the room to -his wife and took her by the hand. - -"Your seat is beside me, Countess Siviano," he said, and led her to the -empty chair by his own. - -Gemma started to her feet, but her husband pulled her down again. - -"Jesus! Mary!" We heard Donna Marianna moan. - -Roberto raised his wife's hand to his lips. "You forgive me," he said, "the -means I took to defend you?" And turning to Andrea he added slowly: "I -declare my wife innocent and my honor satisfied. You swear to stand by my -decision?" - -What Andrea stammered out, what hissing serpents of speech Gemma's clinched -teeth bit back, I never knew--for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face -was a wonder to behold. - -She had let herself be led across the room like a blind woman, and had -listened without change of feature to her husband's first words; but as -he ceased her frozen gaze broke and her whole body seemed to melt against -his breast. He put his arm out, but she slipped to his feet and Marianna -hastened forward to raise her up. At that moment we heard the stroke -of oars across the quiet water and saw the Count's boat touch the -landing-steps. Four strong oarsmen from Monte Isola were to row him down -to Iseo, to take horse for Milan, and his servant, knapsack on shoulder, -knocked warningly at the terrace window. - -"No time to lose, excellency!" he cried. - -Roberto turned and gripped my hand. "Pray for me," he said low; and with a -brief gesture to the others ran down the terrace to the boat. - -Marianna was bathing Faustina with happy tears. - -"Look up, dear! Think how soon he will come back! And there is the -sunrise--see!" - -Andrea and Gemma had slunk away like ghosts at cock-crow, and a red dawn -stood over Milan. - - * * * * * - -If that sun rose red it set scarlet. It was the first of the Five Days in -Milan--the Five Glorious Days, as they are called. Roberto reached the city -just before the gates closed. So much we knew--little more. We heard of him -in the Broletto (whence he must have escaped when the Austrians blew in -the door) and in the Casa Vidiserti, with Casati, Cattaneo and the rest; -but after the barricading began we could trace him only as having been -seen here and there in the thick of the fighting, or tending the wounded -under Bertani's orders. His place, one would have said, was in the -council-chamber, with the soberer heads; but that was an hour when every -man gave his blood where it was most needed, and Cernuschi, Dandolo, -Anfossi, della Porta fought shoulder to shoulder with students, artisans -and peasants. Certain it is that he was seen on the fifth day; for among -the volunteers who swarmed after Manara in his assault on the Porta Tosa -was a servant of palazzo Siviano; and this fellow swore he had seen his -master charge with Manara in the last assault--had watched him, sword -in hand, press close to the gates, and then, as they swung open before -the victorious dash of our men, had seen him drop and disappear in the -inrushing tide of peasants that almost swept the little company off its -feet. After that we heard nothing. There was savage work in Milan in those -days, and more than one well-known figure lay lost among the heaps of dead -hacked and disfeatured by Croat blades. - -At the villa, we waited breathless. News came to us hour by hour: the very -wind seemed to carry it, and it was swept to us on the incessant rush of -the rain. On the twenty-third Radetsky had fled from Milan, to face Venice -rising in his path. On the twenty-fourth the first Piedmontese had crossed -the Ticino, and Charles Albert himself was in Pavia on the twenty-ninth. -The bells of Milan had carried the word from Turin to Naples, from Genoa to -Ancona, and the whole country was pouring like a flood-tide into Lombardy. -Heroes sprang up from the bloody soil as thick as wheat after rain, and -every day carried some new name to us; but never the one for which we -prayed and waited. Weeks passed. We heard of Pastrengo, Goito, Rivoli; of -Radetsky hemmed into the Quadrilateral, and our troops closing in on him -from Rome, Tuscany and Venetia. Months passed--and we heard of Custozza. We -saw Charles Albert's broken forces flung back from the Mincio to the Oglio, -from the Oglio to the Adda. We followed the dreadful retreat from Milan, -and saw our rescuers dispersed like dust before the wind. But all the while -no word came to us of Roberto. - -These were dark days in Lombardy; and nowhere darker than in the old villa -on Iseo. In September Donna Marianna and the young Countess put on black, -and Count Andrea and his wife followed their example. In October the -Countess gave birth to a daughter. Count Andrea then took possession of the -palazzo Siviano, and the two women remained at the villa. I have no heart -to tell you of the days that followed. Donna Marianna wept and prayed -incessantly, and it was long before the baby could snatch a smile from her. -As for the Countess Faustina, she went among us like one of the statues in -the garden. The child had a wet-nurse from the village, and it was small -wonder there was no milk for it in that marble breast. I spent much of -my time at the villa, comforting Donna Marianna as best I could; but -sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when we three sat in the dimly-lit -_salone_, with the old Count's portrait overhead, and I looked up and -saw the Countess Faustina in the tall carved seat beside her husband's -empty chair, my spine grew chill and I felt a cold wind in my hair. - -The end of it was that in the spring I went to see my bishop and laid my -sin before him. He was a saintly and merciful old man, and gave me a -patient hearing. - -"You believed the lady innocent?" he asked when I had ended. - -"Monsignore, on my soul!" - -"You thought to avert a great calamity from the house to which you owed -more than your life?" - -"It was my only thought." - -He laid his hand on my shoulder. - -"Go home, my son. You shall learn my decision." - -Three months later I was ordered to resign my living and go to America, -where a priest was needed for the Italian mission church in New York. I -packed my possessions and set sail from Genoa. I knew no more of America -than any peasant up in the hills. I fully expected to be speared by naked -savages on landing; and for the first few months after my arrival I wished -at least once a day that such a blessed fate had befallen me. But it is -no part of my story to tell you what I suffered in those early days. The -Church had dealt with me mercifully, as is her wont, and her punishment -fell far below my deserts.... - -I had been some four years in New York, and no longer thought of looking -back from the plough, when one day word was brought me that an Italian -professor lay ill and had asked for a priest. There were many Italian -refugees in New York at that time, and the greater number, being -well-educated men, earned a living by teaching their language, which was -then included among the accomplishments of fashionable New York. The -messenger led me to a poor boarding-house and up to a small bare room on -the top floor. On the visiting-card nailed to the door I read the name "De -Roberti, Professor of Italian." Inside, a gray-haired haggard man tossed on -the narrow bed. He turned a glazed eye on me as I entered, and I recognized -Roberto Siviano. - -I steadied myself against the door-post and stood staring at him without a -word. - -"What's the matter?" asked the doctor who was bending over the bed. I -stammered that the sick man was an old friend. - -"He wouldn't know his oldest friend just now," said the doctor. "The -fever's on him; but it will go down toward sunset." - -I sat down at the head of the bed and took Roberto's hand in mine. - -"Is he going to die?" I asked. - -"I don't believe so; but he wants nursing." - -"I will nurse him." - -The doctor nodded and went out. I sat in the little room, with Roberto's -burning hand in mine. Gradually his skin cooled, the fingers grew quiet, -and the flush faded from his sallow cheek-bones. Toward dusk he looked up -at me and smiled. - -"Egidio," he said quietly. - -I administered the sacrament, which he received with the most fervent -devotion; then he fell into a deep sleep. - -During the weeks that followed I had no time to ask myself the meaning of -it all. My one business was to keep him alive if I could. I fought the -fever day and night, and at length it yielded. For the most part he raved -or lay unconscious; but now and then he knew me for a moment, and whispered -"Egidio" with a look of peace. - -I had stolen many hours from my duties to nurse him; and as soon as the -danger was past I had to go back to my parish work. Then it was that I -began to ask myself what had brought him to America; but I dared not face -the answer. - -On the fourth day I snatched a moment from my work and climbed to his -room. I found him sitting propped against his pillows, weak as a child but -clear-eyed and quiet. I ran forward, but his look stopped me. - -"_Signor parocco_," he said, "the doctor tells me that I owe my life -to your nursing, and I have to thank you for the kindness you have shown to -a friendless stranger." - -"A stranger?" I gasped. - -He looked at me steadily. "I am not aware that we have met before," he -said. - -For a moment I thought the fever was on him; but a second glance convinced -me that he was master of himself. - -"Roberto!" I cried, trembling. - -"You have the advantage of me," he said civilly. "But my name is Roberti, -not Roberto." - -The floor swam under me and I had to lean against the wall. - -"You are not Count Roberto Siviano of Milan?" - -"I am Tommaso de Roberti, professor of Italian, from Modena." - -"And you have never seen me before?" - -"Never that I know of." - -"Were you never at Siviano, on the lake of Iseo?" I faltered. - -He said calmly: "I am unacquainted with that part of Italy." - -My heart grew cold and I was silent. - -"You mistook me for a friend, I suppose?" he added. - -"Yes," I cried, "I mistook you for a friend;" and with that I fell on my -knees by his bed and cried like a child. - -Suddenly I felt a touch on my shoulder. "Egidio," said he in a broken -voice, "look up." - -I raised my eyes, and there was his old smile above me, and we clung to -each other without a word. Presently, however, he drew back, and put me -quietly aside. - -"Sit over there, Egidio. My bones are like water and I am not good for much -talking yet." - -"Let us wait, Roberto. Sleep now--we can talk tomorrow." - -"No. What I have to say must be said at once." He examined me thoughtfully. -"You have a parish here in New York?" - -I assented. - -"And my work keeps me here. I have pupils. It is too late to make a -change." - -"A change?" - -He continued to look at me calmly. "It would be difficult for me," he -explained, "to find employment in a new place." - -"But why should you leave here?" - -"I shall have to," he returned deliberately, "if you persist in recognizing -in me your former friend Count Siviano." - -"Roberto!" - -He lifted his hand. "Egidio," he said, "I am alone here, and without -friends. The companionship, the sympathy of my parish priest would be a -consolation in this strange city; but it must not be the companionship of -the _parocco_ of Siviano. You understand?" - -"Roberto," I cried, "it is too dreadful to understand!" - -"Be a man, Egidio," said he with a touch of impatience. "The choice lies -with you, and you must make it now. If you are willing to ask no questions, -to name no names, to make no allusions to the past, let us live as friends -together, in God's name! If not, as soon as my legs can carry me I must be -off again. The world is wide, luckily--but why should we be parted?" - -I was on my knees at his side in an instant. "We must never be parted!" I -cried. "Do as you will with me. Give me your orders and I obey--have I not -always obeyed you?" - -I felt his hand close sharply on mine. "Egidio!" he admonished me. - -"No--no--I shall remember. I shall say nothing--" - -"Think nothing?" - -"Think nothing," I said with a last effort. - -"God bless you!" he answered. - -My son, for eight years I kept my word to him. We met daily almost, we ate -and walked and talked together, we lived like David and Jonathan--but -without so much as a glance at the past. How he had escaped from Milan--how -he had reached New York--I never knew. We talked often of Italy's -liberation--as what Italians would not?--but never touched on his share in -the work. Once only a word slipped from him; and that was when one day he -asked me how it was that I had been sent to America. The blood rushed to my -face, and before I could answer he had raised a silencing hand. - -"I see," he said; "it was _your_ penance too." - -During the first years he had plenty of work to do, but he lived so -frugally that I guessed he had some secret use for his earnings. It was -easy to conjecture what it was. All over the world Italian exiles were -toiling and saving to further the great cause. He had political friends in -New York, and sometimes he went to other cities to attend meetings and make -addresses. His zeal never slackened; and but for me he would often have -gone hungry that some shivering patriot might dine. I was with him heart -and soul, but I had the parish on my shoulders, and perhaps my long -experience of men had made me a little less credulous than Christian -charity requires; for I could have sworn that some of the heroes who hung -on him had never had a whiff of Austrian blood, and would have fed out of -the same trough with the white-coats if there had been polenta enough to go -round. Happily my friend had no such doubts. He believed in the patriots as -devoutly as in the cause; and if some of his hard-earned dollars travelled -no farther than the nearest wine-cellar or cigar-shop, he never suspected -the course they took. - -His health was never the same after the fever; and by and by he began to -lose his pupils, and the patriots cooled off as his pockets fell in. Toward -the end I took him to live in my shabby attic. He had grown weak and had a -troublesome cough, and he spent the greater part of his days indoors. Cruel -days they must have been to him, but he made no sign, and always welcomed -me with a cheerful word. When his pupils dropped off, and his health made -it difficult for him to pick up work outside, he set up a letter-writer's -sign, and used to earn a few pennies by serving as amanuensis to my poor -parishioners; but it went against him to take their money, and half the -time he did the work for nothing. I knew it was hard for him to live on -charity, as he called it, and I used to find what jobs I could for him -among my friends the _negozianti_, who would send him letters to copy, -accounts to make up and what not; but we were all poor together, and the -master had licked the platter before the dog got it. - -So lived that just man, my son; and so, after eight years of exile, he died -one day in my arms. God had let him live long enough to see Solferino and -Villa-franca; and was perhaps never more merciful than in sparing him Monte -Rotondo and Mentana. But these are things of which it does not become me to -speak. The new Italy does not wear the face of our visions; but it is -written that God shall know His own, and it cannot be that He shall misread -the hearts of those who dreamed of fashioning her in His image. - -As for my friend, he is at peace, I doubt not; and his just life and holy -death intercede for me, who sinned for his sake alone. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -This file should be named 7crci10.txt or 7crci10.zip -Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7crci11.txt -VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7crci10a.txt - -Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US -unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the -header without written permission. - -Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the -eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is -important information about your specific rights and restrictions in -how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a -donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. - - -**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** - -**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** - -*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** - - -Title: Crucial Instances - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7516] -[This file was first posted on May 13, 2003] - -Edition: 10 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1 - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - - - - -Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William Flis, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team - - - - CRUCIAL INSTANCES - - BY - - EDITH WHARTON - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS - - -I _The Duchess at Prayer_ - -II _The Angel at the Grave_ - -III _The Recovery_ - -IV _"Copy": A Dialogue_ - -V _The Rembrandt_ - -VI _The Moving Finger_ - -VII _The Confessional_ - - - - -THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER - - -Have you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, -that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest -behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the -activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life -flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the -villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall -windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there -may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the -arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the -disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors.... - - -II - -From the loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue -barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated -vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes -and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted -the balustrade as with fine _laminae_ of gold, vineyards stooped to -the rich valley clasped in hills. The lower slopes were strewn with white -villages like stars spangling a summer dusk; and beyond these, fold on -fold of blue mountain, clear as gauze against the sky. The August air was -lifeless, but it seemed light and vivifying after the atmosphere of the -shrouded rooms through which I had been led. Their chill was on me and I -hugged the sunshine. - -"The Duchess's apartments are beyond," said the old man. - -He was the oldest man I had ever seen; so sucked back into the past that he -seemed more like a memory than a living being. The one trait linking him -with the actual was the fixity with which his small saurian eye held the -pocket that, as I entered, had yielded a _lira_ to the gate-keeper's -child. He went on, without removing his eye: - -"For two hundred years nothing has been changed in the apartments of the -Duchess." - -"And no one lives here now?" - -"No one, sir. The Duke, goes to Como for the summer season." - -I had moved to the other end of the loggia. Below me, through hanging -groves, white roofs and domes flashed like a smile. - -"And that's Vicenza?" - -"_Proprio_!" The old man extended fingers as lean as the hands fading -from the walls behind us. "You see the palace roof over there, just to the -left of the Basilica? The one with the row of statues like birds taking -flight? That's the Duke's town palace, built by Palladio." - -"And does the Duke come there?" - -"Never. In winter he goes to Rome." - -"And the palace and the villa are always closed?" - -"As you see--always." - -"How long has this been?" - -"Since I can remember." - -I looked into his eyes: they were like tarnished metal mirrors reflecting -nothing. "That must be a long time," I said involuntarily. - -"A long time," he assented. - -I looked down on the gardens. An opulence of dahlias overran the -box-borders, between cypresses that cut the sunshine like basalt shafts. -Bees hung above the lavender; lizards sunned themselves on the benches and -slipped through the cracks of the dry basins. Everywhere were vanishing -traces of that fantastic horticulture of which our dull age has lost the -art. Down the alleys maimed statues stretched their arms like rows of -whining beggars; faun-eared terms grinned in the thickets, and above the -laurustinus walls rose the mock ruin of a temple, falling into real ruin -in the bright disintegrating air. The glare was blinding. - -"Let us go in," I said. - -The old man pushed open a heavy door, behind which the cold lurked like a -knife. - -"The Duchess's apartments," he said. - -Overhead and around us the same evanescent frescoes, under foot the same -scagliola volutes, unrolled themselves interminably. Ebony cabinets, with -inlay of precious marbles in cunning perspective, alternated down the -room with the tarnished efflorescence of gilt consoles supporting Chinese -monsters; and from the chimney-panel a gentleman in the Spanish habit -haughtily ignored us. - -"Duke Ercole II.," the old man explained, "by the Genoese Priest." - -It was a narrow-browed face, sallow as a wax effigy, high-nosed and -cautious-lidded, as though modelled by priestly hands; the lips weak and -vain rather than cruel; a quibbling mouth that would have snapped at verbal -errors like a lizard catching flies, but had never learned the shape of a -round yes or no. One of the Duke's hands rested on the head of a dwarf, a -simian creature with pearl ear-rings and fantastic dress; the other turned -the pages of a folio propped on a skull. - -"Beyond is the Duchess's bedroom," the old man reminded me. - -Here the shutters admitted but two narrow shafts of light, gold bars -deepening the subaqueous gloom. On a dais the bedstead, grim, nuptial, -official, lifted its baldachin; a yellow Christ agonized between the -curtains, and across the room a lady smiled at us from the chimney-breast. - -The old man unbarred a shutter and the light touched her face. Such a face -it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, -and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo's lenient -goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath of a seventeenth century -dress! - -"No one has slept here," said the old man, "since the Duchess Violante." - -"And she was--?" - -"The lady there--first Duchess of Duke Ercole II." - -He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked a door at the farther end of the -room. "The chapel," he said. "This is the Duchess's balcony." As I turned -to follow him the Duchess tossed me a sidelong smile. - -I stepped into a grated tribune above a chapel festooned with stucco. -Pictures of bituminous saints mouldered between the pilasters; the -artificial roses in the altar-vases were gray with dust and age, and under -the cobwebby rosettes of the vaulting a bird's nest clung. Before the altar -stood a row of tattered arm-chairs, and I drew back at sight of a figure -kneeling near them. - -"The Duchess," the old man whispered. "By the Cavaliere Bernini." - -It was the image of a woman in furred robes and spreading fraise, her hand -lifted, her face addressed to the tabernacle. There was a strangeness in -the sight of that immovable presence locked in prayer before an abandoned -shrine. Her face was hidden, and I wondered whether it were grief or -gratitude that raised her hands and drew her eyes to the altar, where no -living prayer joined her marble invocation. I followed my guide down the -tribune steps, impatient to see what mystic version of such terrestrial -graces the ingenious artist had found--the Cavaliere was master of such -arts. The Duchess's attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs -fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how -admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope -of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face--it was a -frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so possessed a human -countenance.... - -The old man crossed himself and shuffled his feet on the marble. - -"The Duchess Violante," he repeated. - -"The same as in the picture?" - -"Eh--the same." - -"But the face--what does it mean?" - -He shrugged his shoulders and turned deaf eyes on me. Then he shot a glance -round the sepulchral place, clutched my sleeve and said, close to my ear: -"It was not always so." - -"What was not?" - -"The face--so terrible." - -"The Duchess's face?" - -"The statue's. It changed after--" - -"After?" - -"It was put here." - -"The statue's face _changed_--?" - -He mistook my bewilderment for incredulity and his confidential finger -dropped from my sleeve. "Eh, that's the story. I tell what I've heard. What -do I know?" He resumed his senile shuffle across the marble. "This is a bad -place to stay in--no one comes here. It's too cold. But the gentleman said, -_I must see everything_!" - -I let the _lire_ sound. "So I must--and hear everything. This story, -now--from whom did you have it?" - -His hand stole back. "One that saw it, by God!" - -"That saw it?" - -"My grandmother, then. I'm a very old man." - -"Your grandmother? Your grandmother was--?" - -"The Duchess's serving girl, with respect to you." - -"Your grandmother? Two hundred years ago?" - -"Is it too long ago? That's as God pleases. I am a very old man and she -was a very old woman when I was born. When she died she was as black as a -miraculous Virgin and her breath whistled like the wind in a keyhole. She -told me the story when I was a little boy. She told it to me out there in -the garden, on a bench by the fish-pond, one summer night of the year she -died. It must be true, for I can show you the very bench we sat on...." - - -III - -Noon lay heavier on the gardens; not our live humming warmth but the stale -exhalation of dead summers. The very statues seemed to drowse like watchers -by a death-bed. Lizards shot out of the cracked soil like flames and the -bench in the laurustinus-niche was strewn with the blue varnished bodies of -dead flies. Before us lay the fish-pond, a yellow marble slab above rotting -secrets. The villa looked across it, composed as a dead face, with the -cypresses flanking it for candles.... - - -IV - -"Impossible, you say, that my mother's mother should have been the -Duchess's maid? What do I know? It is so long since anything has happened -here that the old things seem nearer, perhaps, than to those who live in -cities.... But how else did she know about the statue then? Answer me that, -sir! That she saw with her eyes, I can swear to, and never smiled again, -so she told me, till they put her first child in her arms ... for she was -taken to wife by the steward's son, Antonio, the same who had carried -the letters.... But where am I? Ah, well ... she was a mere slip, you -understand, my grandmother, when the Duchess died, a niece of the upper -maid, Nencia, and suffered about the Duchess because of her pranks and the -funny songs she knew. It's possible, you think, she may have heard from -others what she afterward fancied she had seen herself? How that is, it's -not for an unlettered man to say; though indeed I myself seem to have seen -many of the things she told me. This is a strange place. No one comes here, -nothing changes, and the old memories stand up as distinct as the statues -in the garden.... - -"It began the summer after they came back from the Brenta. Duke Ercole had -married the lady from Venice, you must know; it was a gay city, then, I'm -told, with laughter and music on the water, and the days slipped by like -boats running with the tide. Well, to humor her he took her back the first -autumn to the Brenta. Her father, it appears, had a grand palace there, -with such gardens, bowling-alleys, grottoes and casinos as never were; -gondolas bobbing at the water-gates, a stable full of gilt coaches, a -theatre full of players, and kitchens and offices full of cooks and -lackeys to serve up chocolate all day long to the fine ladies in masks -and furbelows, with their pet dogs and their blackamoors and their -_abates_. Eh! I know it all as if I'd been there, for Nencia, you see, -my grandmother's aunt, travelled with the Duchess, and came back with her -eyes round as platters, and not a word to say for the rest of the year to -any of the lads who'd courted her here in Vicenza. - -"What happened there I don't know--my grandmother could never get at -the rights of it, for Nencia was mute as a fish where her lady was -concerned--but when they came back to Vicenza the Duke ordered the villa -set in order; and in the spring he brought the Duchess here and left her. -She looked happy enough, my grandmother said, and seemed no object for -pity. Perhaps, after all, it was better than being shut up in Vicenza, -in the tall painted rooms where priests came and went as softly as cats -prowling for birds, and the Duke was forever closeted in his library, -talking with learned men. The Duke was a scholar; you noticed he was -painted with a book? Well, those that can read 'em make out that they're -full of wonderful things; as a man that's been to a fair across the -mountains will always tell his people at home it was beyond anything -_they'll_ ever see. As for the Duchess, she was all for music, -play-acting and young company. The Duke was a silent man, stepping quietly, -with his eyes down, as though he'd just come from confession; when the -Duchess's lap-dog yapped at his heels he danced like a man in a swarm of -hornets; when the Duchess laughed he winced as if you'd drawn a diamond -across a window-pane. And the Duchess was always laughing. - -"When she first came to the villa she was very busy laying out the gardens, -designing grottoes, planting groves and planning all manner of agreeable -surprises in the way of water-jets that drenched you unexpectedly, and -hermits in caves, and wild men that jumped at you out of thickets. She had -a very pretty taste in such matters, but after a while she tired of it, and -there being no one for her to talk to but her maids and the chaplain--a -clumsy man deep in his books--why, she would have strolling players out -from Vicenza, mountebanks and fortune-tellers from the market-place, -travelling doctors and astrologers, and all manner of trained animals. -Still it could be seen that the poor lady pined for company, and her -waiting women, who loved her, were glad when the Cavaliere Ascanio, the -Duke's cousin, came to live at the vineyard across the valley--you see -the pinkish house over there in the mulberries, with a red roof and a -pigeon-cote? - -"The Cavaliere Ascanio was a cadet of one of the great Venetian houses, -_pezzi grossi_ of the Golden Book. He had been' meant for the Church, -I believe, but what! he set fighting above praying and cast in his lot with -the captain of the Duke of Mantua's _bravi_, himself a Venetian of -good standing, but a little at odds with the law. Well, the next I know, -the Cavaliere was in Venice again, perhaps not in good odor on account of -his connection with the gentleman I speak of. Some say he tried to carry -off a nun from the convent of Santa Croce; how that may be I can't say; but -my grandmother declared he had enemies there, and the end of it was that on -some pretext or other the Ten banished him to Vicenza. There, of course, -the Duke, being his kinsman, had to show him a civil face; and that was how -he first came to the villa. - -"He was a fine young man, beautiful as a Saint Sebastian, a rare musician, -who sang his own songs to the lute in a way that used to make my -grandmother's heart melt and run through her body like mulled wine. He -had a good word for everybody, too, and was always dressed in the French -fashion, and smelt as sweet as a bean-field; and every soul about the place -welcomed the sight of him. - -"Well, the Duchess, it seemed, welcomed it too; youth will have youth, -and laughter turns to laughter; and the two matched each other like the -candlesticks on an altar. The Duchess--you've seen her portrait--but to -hear my grandmother, sir, it no more approached her than a weed comes up to -a rose. The Cavaliere, indeed, as became a poet, paragoned her in his song -to all the pagan goddesses of antiquity; and doubtless these were finer -to look at than mere women; but so, it seemed, was she; for, to believe -my grandmother, she made other women look no more than the big French -fashion-doll that used to be shown on Ascension days in the Piazza. She -was one, at any rate, that needed no outlandish finery to beautify her; -whatever dress she wore became her as feathers fit the bird; and her hair -didn't get its color by bleaching on the housetop. It glittered of itself -like the threads in an Easter chasuble, and her skin was whiter than fine -wheaten bread and her mouth as sweet as a ripe fig.... - -"Well, sir, you could no more keep them apart than the bees and the -lavender. They were always together, singing, bowling, playing cup and -ball, walking in the gardens, visiting the aviaries and petting her grace's -trick-dogs and monkeys. The Duchess was as gay as a foal, always playing -pranks and laughing, tricking out her animals like comedians, disguising -herself as a peasant or a nun (you should have seen her one day pass -herself off to the chaplain as a mendicant sister), or teaching the lads -and girls of the vineyards to dance and sing madrigals together. The -Cavaliere had a singular ingenuity in planning such entertainments and the -days were hardly long enough for their diversions. But toward the end of -the summer the Duchess fell quiet and would hear only sad music, and the -two sat much together in the gazebo at the end of the garden. It was there -the Duke found them one day when he drove out from Vicenza in his gilt -coach. He came but once or twice a year to the villa, and it was, as my -grandmother said, just a part of her poor lady's ill-luck to be wearing -that day the Venetian habit, which uncovered the shoulders in a way the -Duke always scowled at, and her curls loose and powdered with gold. Well, -the three drank chocolate in the gazebo, and what happened no one knew, -except that the Duke, on taking leave, gave his cousin a seat in his -carriage; but the Cavaliere never returned. - -"Winter approaching, and the poor lady thus finding herself once more -alone, it was surmised among her women that she must fall into a deeper -depression of spirits. But far from this being the case, she displayed such -cheerfulness and equanimity of humor that my grandmother, for one, was -half-vexed with her for giving no more thought to the poor young man who, -all this time, was eating his heart out in the house across the valley. It -is true she quitted her gold-laced gowns and wore a veil over her head; but -Nencia would have it she looked the lovelier for the change and so gave the -Duke greater displeasure. Certain it is that the Duke drove out oftener to -the villa, and though he found his lady always engaged in some innocent -pursuit, such as embroidery or music, or playing games with her young -women, yet he always went away with a sour look and a whispered word to -the chaplain. Now as to the chaplain, my grandmother owned there had been -a time when her grace had not handled him over-wisely. For, according to -Nencia, it seems that his reverence, who seldom approached the Duchess, -being buried in his library like a mouse in a cheese--well, one day he made -bold to appeal to her for a sum of money, a large sum, Nencia said, to buy -certain tall books, a chest full of them, that a foreign pedlar had brought -him; whereupon the Duchess, who could never abide a book, breaks out at -him with a laugh and a flash of her old spirit--'Holy Mother of God, must -I have more books about me? I was nearly smothered with them in the first -year of my marriage;' and the chaplain turning red at the affront, she -added: 'You may buy them and welcome, my good chaplain, if you can find -the money; but as for me, I am yet seeking a way to pay for my turquoise -necklace, and the statue of Daphne at the end of the bowling-green, and -the Indian parrot that my black boy brought me last Michaelmas from the -Bohemians--so you see I've no money to waste on trifles;' and as he backs -out awkwardly she tosses at him over her shoulder: 'You should pray to -Saint Blandina to open the Duke's pocket!' to which he returned, very -quietly, 'Your excellency's suggestion is an admirable one, and I have -already entreated that blessed martyr to open the Duke's understanding.' - -"Thereat, Nencia said (who was standing by), the Duchess flushed -wonderfully red and waved him out of the room; and then 'Quick!' she cried -to my grandmother (who was too glad to run on such errands), 'Call me -Antonio, the gardener's boy, to the box-garden; I've a word to say to him -about the new clove-carnations....' - -"Now I may not have told you, sir, that in the crypt under the chapel there -has stood, for more generations than a man can count, a stone coffin -containing a thighbone of the blessed Saint Blandina of Lyons, a relic -offered, I've been told, by some great Duke of France to one of our own -dukes when they fought the Turk together; and the object, ever since, of -particular veneration in this illustrious family. Now, since the Duchess -had been left to herself, it was observed she affected a fervent devotion -to this relic, praying often in the chapel and even causing the stone slab -that covered the entrance to the crypt to be replaced by a wooden one, -that she might at will descend and kneel by the coffin. This was matter of -edification to all the household and should have been peculiarly pleasing -to the chaplain; but, with respect to you, he was the kind of man who -brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple. - -"However that may be, the Duchess, when she dismissed him, was seen running -to the garden, where she talked earnestly with the boy Antonio about the -new clove-carnations; and the rest of the day she sat indoors and played -sweetly on the virginal. Now Nencia always had it in mind that her grace -had made a mistake in refusing that request of the chaplain's; but she said -nothing, for to talk reason to the Duchess was of no more use than praying -for rain in a drought. - -"Winter came early that year, there was snow on the hills by All Souls, -the wind stripped the gardens, and the lemon-trees were nipped in the -lemon-house. The Duchess kept her room in this black season, sitting over -the fire, embroidering, reading books of devotion (which was a thing she -had never done) and praying frequently in the chapel. As for the chaplain, -it was a place he never set foot in but to say mass in the morning, -with the Duchess overhead in the tribune, and the servants aching with -rheumatism on the marble floor. The chaplain himself hated the cold, and -galloped through the mass like a man with witches after him. The rest of -the day he spent in his library, over a brazier, with his eternal books.... - -"You'll wonder, sir, if I'm ever to get to the gist of the story; and I've -gone slowly, I own, for fear of what's coming. Well, the winter was long -and hard. When it fell cold the Duke ceased to come out from Vicenza, -and not a soul had the Duchess to speak to but her maid-servants and the -gardeners about the place. Yet it was wonderful, my grandmother said, how -she kept her brave colors and her spirits; only it was remarked that she -prayed longer in the chapel, where a brazier was kept burning for her all -day. When the young are denied their natural pleasures they turn often -enough to religion; and it was a mercy, as my grandmother said, that she, -who had scarce a live sinner to speak to, should take such comfort in a -dead saint. - -"My grandmother seldom saw her that winter, for though she showed a brave -front to all she kept more and more to herself, choosing to have only -Nencia about her and dismissing even her when she went to pray. For -her devotion had that mark of true piety, that she wished it not to be -observed; so that Nencia had strict orders, on the chaplain's approach, to -warn her mistress if she happened to be in prayer. - -"Well, the winter passed, and spring was well forward, when my grandmother -one evening had a bad fright. That it was her own fault I won't deny, for -she'd been down the lime-walk with Antonio when her aunt fancied her to be -stitching in her chamber; and seeing a sudden light in Nencia's window, she -took fright lest her disobedience be found out, and ran up quickly through -the laurel-grove to the house. Her way lay by the chapel, and as she crept -past it, meaning to slip in through the scullery, and groping her way, for -the dark had fallen and the moon was scarce up, she heard a crash close -behind her, as though someone had dropped from a window of the chapel. The -young fool's heart turned over, but she looked round as she ran, and there, -sure enough, was a man scuttling across the terrace; and as he doubled -the corner of the house my grandmother swore she caught the whisk of the -chaplain's skirts. Now that was a strange thing, certainly; for why should -the chaplain be getting out of the chapel window when he might have passed -through the door? For you may have noticed, sir, there's a door leads from -the chapel into the saloon on the ground floor; the only other way out -being through the Duchess's tribune. - -"Well, my grandmother turned the matter over, and next time she met Antonio -in the lime-walk (which, by reason of her fright, was not for some days) -she laid before him what had happened; but to her surprise he only laughed -and said, 'You little simpleton, he wasn't getting out of the window, he -was trying to look in'; and not another word could she get from him. - -"So the season moved on to Easter, and news came the Duke had gone to Rome -for that holy festivity. His comings and goings made no change at the -villa, and yet there was no one there but felt easier to think his yellow -face was on the far side of the Apennines, unless perhaps it was the -chaplain. - -"Well, it was one day in May that the Duchess, who had walked long with -Nencia on the terrace, rejoicing at the sweetness of the prospect and the -pleasant scent of the gilly-flowers in the stone vases, the Duchess toward -midday withdrew to her rooms, giving orders that her dinner should be -served in her bed-chamber. My grandmother helped to carry in the dishes, -and observed, she said, the singular beauty of the Duchess, who in honor -of the fine weather had put on a gown of shot-silver and hung her bare -shoulders with pearls, so that she looked fit to dance at court with an -emperor. She had ordered, too, a rare repast for a lady that heeded so -little what she ate--jellies, game-pasties, fruits in syrup, spiced cakes -and a flagon of Greek wine; and she nodded and clapped her hands as the -women set it before her, saying again and again, 'I shall eat well to-day.' - -"But presently another mood seized her; she turned from the table, called -for her rosary, and said to Nencia: 'The fine weather has made me neglect -my devotions. I must say a litany before I dine.' - -"She ordered the women out and barred the door, as her custom was; and -Nencia and my grandmother went down-stairs to work in the linen-room. - -"Now the linen-room gives on the court-yard, and suddenly my grandmother -saw a strange sight approaching. First up the avenue came the Duke's -carriage (whom all thought to be in Rome), and after it, drawn by a long -string of mules and oxen, a cart carrying what looked like a kneeling -figure wrapped in death-clothes. The strangeness of it struck the girl dumb -and the Duke's coach was at the door before she had the wit to cry out that -it was coming. Nencia, when she saw it, went white and ran out of the room. -My grandmother followed, scared by her face, and the two fled along the -corridor to the chapel. On the way they met the chaplain, deep in a book, -who asked in surprise where they were running, and when they said, to -announce the Duke's arrival, he fell into such astonishment and asked them -so many questions and uttered such ohs and ahs, that by the time he let -them by the Duke was at their heels. Nencia reached the chapel-door first -and cried out that the Duke was coming; and before she had a reply he was -at her side, with the chaplain following. - -"A moment later the door opened and there stood the Duchess. She held her -rosary in one hand and had drawn a scarf over her shoulders; but they shone -through it like the moon in a mist, and her countenance sparkled with -beauty. - -"The Duke took her hand with a bow. 'Madam,' he said, 'I could have had no -greater happiness than thus to surprise you at your devotions.' - -"'My own happiness,' she replied, 'would have been greater had your -excellency prolonged it by giving me notice of your arrival.' - -"'Had you expected me, Madam,' said he, 'your appearance could scarcely -have been more fitted to the occasion. Few ladies of your youth and beauty -array themselves to venerate a saint as they would to welcome a lover.' - -"'Sir,' she answered, 'having never enjoyed the latter opportunity, I am -constrained to make the most of the former.--What's that?' she cried, -falling back, and the rosary dropped from her hand. - -"There was a loud noise at the other end of the saloon, as of a heavy -object being dragged down the passage; and presently a dozen men were seen -haling across the threshold the shrouded thing from the oxcart. The Duke -waved his hand toward it. 'That,' said he, 'Madam, is a tribute to your -extraordinary piety. I have heard with peculiar satisfaction of your -devotion to the blessed relics in this chapel, and to commemorate a zeal -which neither the rigors of winter nor the sultriness of summer could abate -I have ordered a sculptured image of you, marvellously executed by the -Cavaliere Bernini, to be placed before the altar over the entrance to the -crypt.' - -"The Duchess, who had grown pale, nevertheless smiled playfully at this. -'As to commemorating my piety," she said, 'I recognize there one of your -excellency's pleasantries--' - -"'A pleasantry?' the Duke interrupted; and he made a sign to the men, who -had now reached the threshold of the chapel. In an instant the wrappings -fell from the figure, and there knelt the Duchess to the life. A cry of -wonder rose from all, but the Duchess herself stood whiter than the marble. - -"'You will see,' says the Duke, 'this is no pleasantry, but a triumph -of the incomparable Bernini's chisel. The likeness was done from your -miniature portrait by the divine Elisabetta Sirani, which I sent to the -master some six months ago, with what results all must admire.' - -"'Six months!' cried the Duchess, and seemed about to fall; but his -excellency caught her by the hand. - -"'Nothing,' he said, 'could better please me than the excessive emotion you -display, for true piety is ever modest, and your thanks could not take a -form that better became you. And now,' says he to the men, 'let the image -be put in place.' - -"By this, life seemed to have returned to the Duchess, and she answered him -with a deep reverence. 'That I should be overcome by so unexpected a grace, -your excellency admits to be natural; but what honors you accord it is my -privilege to accept, and I entreat only that in mercy to my modesty the -image be placed in the remotest part of the chapel.' - -"At that the Duke darkened. 'What! You would have this masterpiece of a -renowned chisel, which, I disguise not, cost me the price of a good -vineyard in gold pieces, you would have it thrust out of sight like the -work of a village stonecutter?' - -"'It is my semblance, not the sculptor's work, I desire to conceal.' - -"'It you are fit for my house, Madam, you are fit for God's, and entitled -to the place of honor in both. Bring the statue forward, you dawdlers!' he -called out to the men. - -"The Duchess fell back submissively. 'You are right, sir, as always; but I -would at least have the image stand on the left of the altar, that, looking -up, it may behold your excellency's seat in the tribune.' - -"'A pretty thought, Madam, for which I thank you; but I design before long -to put my companion image on the other side of the altar; and the wife's -place, as you know, is at her husband's right hand.' - -"'True, my lord--but, again, if my poor presentment is to have the -unmerited honor of kneeling beside yours, why not place both before the -altar, where it is our habit to pray in life?' - -"'And where, Madam, should we kneel if they took our places? Besides,' says -the Duke, still speaking very blandly, 'I have a more particular purpose -in placing your image over the entrance to the crypt; for not only would I -thereby mark your special devotion to the blessed saint who rests there, -but, by sealing up the opening in the pavement, would assure the perpetual -preservation of that holy martyr's bones, which hitherto have been too -thoughtlessly exposed to sacrilegious attempts.' - -"'What attempts, my lord?' cries the Duchess. 'No one enters this chapel -without my leave.' - -"'So I have understood, and can well believe from what I have learned of -your piety; yet at night a malefactor might break in through a window, -Madam, and your excellency not know it.' - -"'I'm a light sleeper,' said the Duchess. - -"The Duke looked at her gravely. 'Indeed?' said he. 'A bad sign at your -age. I must see that you are provided with a sleeping-draught.' - -"The Duchess's eyes filled. 'You would deprive me, then, of the consolation -of visiting those venerable relics?' - -"'I would have you keep eternal guard over them, knowing no one to whose -care they may more fittingly be entrusted.' - -"By this the image was brought close to the wooden slab that covered the -entrance to the crypt, when the Duchess, springing forward, placed herself -in the way. - -"'Sir, let the statue be put in place to-morrow, and suffer me, to-night, -to say a last prayer beside those holy bones.' - -"The Duke stepped instantly to her side. 'Well thought, Madam; I will go -down with you now, and we will pray together.' - -"'Sir, your long absences have, alas! given me the habit of solitary -devotion, and I confess that any presence is distracting.' - -"'Madam, I accept your rebuke. Hitherto, it is true, the duties of my -station have constrained me to long absences; but henceforward I remain -with you while you live. Shall we go down into the crypt together?" - -"'No; for I fear for your excellency's ague. The air there is excessively -damp.' - -"'The more reason you should no longer be exposed to it; and to prevent the -intemperance of your zeal I will at once make the place inaccessible.' - -"The Duchess at this fell on her knees on the slab, weeping excessively and -lifting her hands to heaven. - -"'Oh,' she cried, 'you are cruel, sir, to deprive me of access to the -sacred relics that have enabled me to support with resignation the solitude -to which your excellency's duties have condemned me; and if prayer and -meditation give me any authority to pronounce on such matters, suffer me to -warn you, sir, that I fear the blessed Saint Blandina will punish us for -thus abandoning her venerable remains!' - -"The Duke at this seemed to pause, for he was a pious man, and my -grandmother thought she saw him exchange a glance with the chaplain; who, -stepping timidly forward, with his eyes on the ground, said, 'There is -indeed much wisdom in her excellency's words, but I would suggest, sir, -that her pious wish might be met, and the saint more conspicuously honored, -by transferring the relics from the crypt to a place beneath the altar.' - -"'True!' cried the Duke, 'and it shall be done at once.' - -"But thereat the Duchess rose to her feet with a terrible look. - -"'No,' she cried, 'by the body of God! For it shall not be said that, after -your excellency has chosen to deny every request I addressed to him, I owe -his consent to the solicitation of another!' - -"The chaplain turned red and the Duke yellow, and for a moment neither -spoke. - -"Then the Duke said, 'Here are words enough, Madam. Do you wish the relics -brought up from the crypt?' - -"'I wish nothing that I owe to another's intervention!' - -"'Put the image in place then,' says the Duke furiously; and handed her -grace to a chair. - -"She sat there, my grandmother said, straight as an arrow, her hands -locked, her head high, her eyes on the Duke, while the statue was dragged -to its place; then she stood up and turned away. As she passed by Nencia, -'Call me Antonio,' she whispered; but before the words were out of her -mouth the Duke stepped between them. - -"'Madam,' says he, all smiles now, 'I have travelled straight from Rome to -bring you the sooner this proof of my esteem. I lay last night at Monselice -and have been on the road since daybreak. Will you not invite me to -supper?' - -"'Surely, my lord,' said the Duchess. 'It shall be laid in the -dining-parlor within the hour.' - -"'Why not in your chamber and at once, Madam? Since I believe it is your -custom to sup there.' - -"'In my chamber?' says the Duchess, in disorder. - -"'Have you anything against it?' he asked. - -"'Assuredly not, sir, if you will give me time to prepare myself.' - -"'I will wait in your cabinet,' said the Duke. - -"At that, said my grandmother, the Duchess gave one look, as the souls in -hell may have looked when the gates closed on our Lord; then she called -Nencia and passed to her chamber. - -"What happened there my grandmother could never learn, but that the -Duchess, in great haste, dressed herself with extraordinary splendor, -powdering her hair with gold, painting her face and bosom, and covering -herself with jewels till she shone like our Lady of Loreto; and hardly -were these preparations complete when the Duke entered from the cabinet, -followed by the servants carrying supper. Thereupon the Duchess dismissed -Nencia, and what follows my grandmother learned from a pantry-lad who -brought up the dishes and waited in the cabinet; for only the Duke's -body-servant entered the bed-chamber. - -"Well, according to this boy, sir, who was looking and listening with his -whole body, as it were, because he had never before been suffered so near -the Duchess, it appears that the noble couple sat down in great good humor, -the Duchess playfully reproving her husband for his long absence, while the -Duke swore that to look so beautiful was the best way of punishing him. -In this tone the talk continued, with such gay sallies on the part of the -Duchess, such tender advances on the Duke's, that the lad declared they -were for all the world like a pair of lovers courting on a summer's night -in the vineyard; and so it went till the servant brought in the mulled -wine. - -"'Ah,' the Duke was saying at that moment, 'this agreeable evening repays -me for the many dull ones I have spent away from you; nor do I remember -to have enjoyed such laughter since the afternoon last year when we drank -chocolate in the gazebo with my cousin Ascanio. And that reminds me,' he -said, 'is my cousin in good health?' - -"'I have no reports of it,' says the Duchess. 'But your excellency should -taste these figs stewed in malmsey--' - -"'I am in the mood to taste whatever you offer,' said he; and as she helped -him to the figs he added, 'If my enjoyment were not complete as it is, -I could almost wish my cousin Ascanio were with us. The fellow is rare -good company at supper. What do you say, Madam? I hear he's still in the -country; shall we send for him to join us?' - -"'Ah,' said the Duchess, with a sigh and a languishing look, 'I see your -excellency wearies of me already.' - -"'I, Madam? Ascanio is a capital good fellow, but to my mind his chief -merit at this moment is his absence. It inclines me so tenderly to him -that, by God, I could empty a glass to his good health.' - -"With that the Duke caught up his goblet and signed to the servant to fill -the Duchess's. - -"'Here's to the cousin,' he cried, standing, 'who has the good taste to -stay away when he's not wanted. I drink to his very long life--and you, -Madam?' - -"At this the Duchess, who had sat staring at him with a changed face, rose -also and lifted her glass to her lips. - -"'And I to his happy death,' says she in a wild voice; and as she spoke the -empty goblet dropped from her hand and she fell face down on the floor. - -"The Duke shouted to her women that she had swooned, and they came and -lifted her to the bed.... She suffered horribly all night, Nencia said, -twisting herself like a heretic at the stake, but without a word escaping -her. The Duke watched by her, and toward daylight sent for the chaplain; -but by this she was unconscious and, her teeth being locked, our Lord's -body could not be passed through them. - - * * * * * - -"The Duke announced to his relations that his lady had died after partaking -too freely of spiced wine and an omelet of carp's roe, at a supper she had -prepared in honor of his return; and the next year he brought home a new -Duchess, who gave him a son and five daughters...." - - -V - -The sky had turned to a steel gray, against which the villa stood out -sallow and inscrutable. A wind strayed through the gardens, loosening here -and there a yellow leaf from the sycamores; and the hills across the valley -were purple as thunder-clouds. - - * * * * * - -"And the statue--?" I asked. - -"Ah, the statue. Well, sir, this is what my grandmother told me, here on -this very bench where we're sitting. The poor child, who worshipped the -Duchess as a girl of her years will worship a beautiful kind mistress, -spent a night of horror, you may fancy, shut out from her lady's room, -hearing the cries that came from it, and seeing, as she crouched in her -corner, the women rush to and fro with wild looks, the Duke's lean face in -the door, and the chaplain skulking in the antechamber with his eyes on -his breviary. No one minded her that night or the next morning; and toward -dusk, when it became known the Duchess was no more, the poor girl felt the -pious wish to say a prayer for her dead mistress. She crept to the chapel -and stole in unobserved. The place was empty and dim, but as she advanced -she heard a low moaning, and coming in front of the statue she saw that -its face, the day before so sweet and smiling, had the look on it that you -know--and the moaning seemed to come from its lips. My grandmother turned -cold, but something, she said afterward, kept her from calling or shrieking -out, and she turned and ran from the place. In the passage she fell in a -swoon; and when she came to her senses, in her own chamber, she heard that -the Duke had locked the chapel door and forbidden any to set foot there.... -The place was never opened again till the Duke died, some ten years later; -and then it was that the other servants, going in with the new heir, -saw for the first time the horror that my grandmother had kept in her -bosom...." - -"And the crypt?" I asked. "Has it never been opened?" - -"Heaven forbid, sir!" cried the old man, crossing himself. "Was it not the -Duchess's express wish that the relics should not be disturbed?" - - - - -THE ANGEL AT THE GRAVE - - -The House stood a few yards back from the elm-shaded village street, -in that semi-publicity sometimes cited as a democratic protest against -old-world standards of domestic exclusiveness. This candid exposure to -the public eye is more probably a result of the gregariousness which, in -the New England bosom, oddly coexists with a shrinking from direct social -contact; most of the inmates of such houses preferring that furtive -intercourse which is the result of observations through shuttered windows -and a categorical acquaintance with the neighboring clothes-lines. The -House, however, faced its public with a difference. For sixty years it had -written itself with a capital letter, had self-consciously squared itself -in the eye of an admiring nation. The most searching inroads of village -intimacy hardly counted in a household that opened on the universe; and a -lady whose door-bell was at any moment liable to be rung by visitors from -London or Vienna was not likely to flutter up-stairs when she observed a -neighbor "stepping over." - -The solitary inmate of the Anson House owed this induration of the social -texture to the most conspicuous accident in her annals: the fact that she -was the only granddaughter of the great Orestes Anson. She had been born, -as it were, into a museum, and cradled in a glass case with a label; -the first foundations of her consciousness being built on the rock of -her grandfather's celebrity. To a little girl who acquires her earliest -knowledge of literature through a _Reader_ embellished with fragments -of her ancestor's prose, that personage necessarily fills an heroic space -in the foreground of life. To communicate with one's past through the -impressive medium of print, to have, as it were, a footing in every library -in the country, and an acknowledged kinship with that world-diffused clan, -the descendants of the great, was to be pledged to a standard of manners -that amazingly simplified the lesser relations of life. The village street -on which Paulina Anson's youth looked out led to all the capitals of -Europe; and over the roads of intercommunication unseen caravans bore back -to the elm-shaded House the tribute of an admiring world. - -Fate seemed to have taken a direct share in fitting Paulina for her part as -the custodian of this historic dwelling. It had long been secretly regarded -as a "visitation" by the great man's family that he had left no son and -that his daughters were not "intellectual." The ladies themselves were the -first to lament their deficiency, to own that nature had denied them the -gift of making the most of their opportunities. A profound veneration for -their parent and an unswerving faith in his doctrines had not amended their -congenital incapacity to understand what he had written. Laura, who had her -moments of mute rebellion against destiny, had sometimes thought how much -easier it would have been if their progenitor had been a poet; for she -could recite, with feeling, portions of _The Culprit Fay_ and of the -poems of Mrs. Hemans; and Phoebe, who was more conspicuous for memory than -imagination, kept an album filled with "selections." But the great man -was a philosopher; and to both daughters respiration was difficult on the -cloudy heights of metaphysic. The situation would have been intolerable -but for the fact that, while Phoebe and Laura were still at school, -their father's fame had passed from the open ground of conjecture to the -chill privacy of certitude. Dr. Anson had in fact achieved one of those -anticipated immortalities not uncommon at a time when people were apt to -base their literary judgments on their emotions, and when to affect plain -food and despise England went a long way toward establishing a man's -intellectual pre-eminence. Thus, when the daughters were called on to -strike a filial attitude about their parent's pedestal, there was little -to do but to pose gracefully and point upward; and there are spines to -which the immobility of worship is not a strain. A legend had by this time -crystallized about the great Orestes, and it was of more immediate interest -to the public to hear what brand of tea he drank, and whether he took off -his boots in the hall, than to rouse the drowsy echo of his dialectic. A -great man never draws so near his public as when it has become unnecessary -to read his books and is still interesting to know what he eats for -breakfast. - -As recorders of their parent's domestic habits, as pious scavengers of his -waste-paper basket, the Misses Anson were unexcelled. They always had an -interesting anecdote to impart to the literary pilgrim, and the tact with -which, in later years, they intervened between the public and the growing -inaccessibility of its idol, sent away many an enthusiast satisfied to have -touched the veil before the sanctuary. Still it was felt, especially by old -Mrs. Anson, who survived her husband for some years, that Phoebe and Laura -were not worthy of their privileges. There had been a third daughter so -unworthy of hers that she had married a distant cousin, who had taken her -to live in a new Western community where the _Works of Orestes Anson_ -had not yet become a part of the civic consciousness; but of this daughter -little was said, and she was tacitly understood to be excluded from the -family heritage of fame. In time, however, it appeared that the traditional -penny with which she had been cut off had been invested to unexpected -advantage; and the interest on it, when she died, returned to the Anson -House in the shape of a granddaughter who was at once felt to be what Mrs. -Anson called a "compensation." It was Mrs. Anson's firm belief that the -remotest operations of nature were governed by the centripetal force of her -husband's greatness and that Paulina's exceptional intelligence could be -explained only on the ground that she was designed to act as the guardian -of the family temple. - -The House, by the time Paulina came to live in it, had already acquired -the publicity of a place of worship; not the perfumed chapel of a romantic -idolatry but the cold clean empty meeting-house of ethical enthusiasms. The -ladies lived on its outskirts, as it were, in cells that left the central -fane undisturbed. The very position of the furniture had come to have a -ritual significance: the sparse ornaments were the offerings of kindred -intellects, the steel engravings by Raphael Morghen marked the Via Sacra -of a European tour, and the black-walnut desk with its bronze inkstand -modelled on the Pantheon was the altar of this bleak temple of thought. - -To a child compact of enthusiasms, and accustomed to pasture them on the -scanty herbage of a new social soil, the atmosphere of the old house was -full of floating nourishment. In the compressed perspective of Paulina's -outlook it stood for a monument of ruined civilizations, and its white -portico opened on legendary distances. Its very aspect was impressive -to eyes that had first surveyed life from the jig-saw "residence" of a -raw-edged Western town. The high-ceilinged rooms, with their panelled -walls, their polished mahogany, their portraits of triple-stocked ancestors -and of ringleted "females" in crayon, furnished the child with the historic -scenery against which a young imagination constructs its vision of the -past. To other eyes the cold spotless thinly-furnished interior might have -suggested the shuttered mind of a maiden-lady who associates fresh air and -sunlight with dust and discoloration; but it is the eye which supplies the -coloring-matter, and Paulina's brimmed with the richest hues. - -Nevertheless, the House did not immediately dominate her. She had her -confused out-reachings toward other centres of sensation, her vague -intuition of a heliocentric system; but the attraction of habit, the steady -pressure of example, gradually fixed her roving allegiance and she bent her -neck to the yoke. Vanity had a share in her subjugation; for it had early -been discovered that she was the only person in the family who could read -her grandfather's works. The fact that she had perused them with delight at -an age when (even presupposing a metaphysical bias) it was impossible for -her to understand them, seemed to her aunts and grandmother sure evidence -of predestination. Paulina was to be the interpreter of the oracle, and the -philosophic fumes so vertiginous to meaner minds would throw her into the -needed condition of clairvoyance. Nothing could have been more genuine than -the emotion on which this theory was based. Paulina, in fact, delighted in -her grandfather's writings. His sonorous periods, his mystic vocabulary, -his bold flights into the rarefied air of the abstract, were thrilling to -a fancy unhampered by the need of definitions. This purely verbal pleasure -was supplemented later by the excitement of gathering up crumbs of meaning -from the rhetorical board. What could have been more stimulating than -to construct the theory of a girlish world out of the fragments of this -Titanic cosmogony? Before Paulina's opinions had reached the stage when -ossification sets in their form was fatally predetermined. - -The fact that Dr. Anson had died and that his apotheosis had taken -place before his young priestess's induction to the temple, made her -ministrations easier and more inspiring. There were no little personal -traits--such as the great man's manner of helping himself to salt, or the -guttural cluck that started the wheels of speech--to distract the eye -of young veneration from the central fact of his divinity. A man whom -one knows only through a crayon portrait and a dozen yellowing, tomes on -free-will and intuition is at least secure from the belittling effects of -intimacy. - -Paulina thus grew up in a world readjusted to the fact of her grandfather's -greatness; and as each organism draws from its surroundings the kind of -nourishment most needful to its growth, so from this somewhat colorless -conception she absorbed warmth, brightness and variety. Paulina was the -type of woman who transmutes thought into sensation and nurses a theory in -her bosom like a child. - -In due course Mrs. Anson "passed away"--no one died in the Anson -vocabulary--and Paulina became more than ever the foremost figure of the -commemorative group. Laura and Phoebe, content to leave their father's -glory in more competent hands, placidly lapsed into needlework and fiction, -and their niece stepped into immediate prominence as the chief "authority" -on the great man. Historians who were "getting up" the period wrote to -consult her and to borrow documents; ladies with inexplicable yearnings -begged for an interpretation of phrases which had "influenced" them, but -which they had not quite understood; critics applied to her to verify some -doubtful citation or to decide some disputed point in chronology; and the -great tide of thought and investigation kept up a continuous murmur on the -quiet shores of her life. - -An explorer of another kind disembarked there one day in the shape -of a young man to whom Paulina was primarily a kissable girl, with an -after-thought in the shape of a grandfather. From the outset it had been -impossible to fix Hewlett Winsloe's attention on Dr. Anson. The young man -behaved with the innocent profanity of infants sporting on a tomb. His -excuse was that he came from New York, a Cimmerian outskirt which survived -in Paulina's geography only because Dr. Anson had gone there once or twice -to lecture. The curious thing was that she should have thought it worth -while to find excuses for young Winsloe. The fact that she did so had not -escaped the attention of the village; but people, after a gasp of awe, said -it was the most natural thing in the world that a girl like Paulina Anson -should think of marrying. It would certainly seem a little odd to see a -man in the House, but young Winsloe would of course understand that the -Doctor's books were not to be disturbed, and that he must go down to the -orchard to smoke--. The village had barely framed this _modus vivendi_ -when it was convulsed by the announcement that young Winsloe declined to -live in the House on any terms. Hang going down to the orchard to smoke! -He meant to take his wife to New York. The village drew its breath and -watched. - -Did Persephone, snatched from the warm fields of Enna, peer -half-consentingly down the abyss that opened at her feet? Paulina, it must -be owned, hung a moment over the black gulf of temptation. She would have -found it easy to cope with a deliberate disregard of her grandfather's -rights; but young Winsloe's unconsciousness of that shadowy claim was as -much a natural function as the falling of leaves on a grave. His love was -an embodiment of the perpetual renewal which to some tender spirits seems a -crueller process than decay. - -On women of Paulina's mould this piety toward implicit demands, toward -the ghosts of dead duties walking unappeased among usurping passions, -has a stronger hold than any tangible bond. People said that she gave up -young Winsloe because her aunts disapproved of her leaving them; but such -disapproval as reached her was an emanation from the walls of the House, -from the bare desk, the faded portraits, the dozen yellowing tomes that no -hand but hers ever lifted from the shelf. - - -II - -After that the House possessed her. As if conscious of its victory, it -imposed a conqueror's claims. It had once been suggested that she should -write a life of her grandfather, and the task from which she had shrunk as -from a too-oppressive privilege now shaped itself into a justification of -her course. In a burst of filial pantheism she tried to lose herself in the -vast ancestral consciousness. Her one refuge from scepticism was a blind -faith in the magnitude and the endurance of the idea to which she had -sacrificed her life, and with a passionate instinct of self-preservation -she labored to fortify her position. - -The preparations for the _Life_ led her through by-ways that the most -scrupulous of the previous biographers had left unexplored. She accumulated -her material with a blind animal patience unconscious of fortuitous risks. -The years stretched before her like some vast blank page spread out to -receive the record of her toil; and she had a mystic conviction that she -would not die till her work was accomplished. - -The aunts, sustained by no such high purpose, withdrew in turn to their -respective divisions of the Anson "plot," and Paulina remained alone with -her task. She was forty when the book was completed. She had travelled -little in her life, and it had become more and more difficult to her to -leave the House even for a day; but the dread of entrusting her document to -a strange hand made her decide to carry it herself to the publisher. On the -way to Boston she had a sudden vision of the loneliness to which this last -parting condemned her. All her youth, all her dreams, all her renunciations -lay in that neat bundle on her knee. It was not so much her grandfather's -life as her own that she had written; and the knowledge that it would come -back to her in all the glorification of print was of no more help than, to -a mother's grief, the assurance that the lad she must part with will return -with epaulets. - -She had naturally addressed herself to the firm which had published her -grandfather's works. Its founder, a personal friend of the philosopher's, -had survived the Olympian group of which he had been a subordinate member, -long enough to bestow his octogenarian approval on Paulina's pious -undertaking. But he had died soon afterward; and Miss Anson found herself -confronted by his grandson, a person with a brisk commercial view of his -trade, who was said to have put "new blood" into the firm. - -This gentleman listened attentively, fingering her manuscript as though -literature were a tactile substance; then, with a confidential twist of his -revolving chair, he emitted the verdict: "We ought to have had this ten -years sooner." - -Miss Anson took the words as an allusion to the repressed avidity of her -readers. "It has been a long time for the public to wait," she solemnly -assented. - -The publisher smiled. "They haven't waited," he said. - -She looked at him strangely. "Haven't waited?" - -"No--they've gone off; taken another train. Literature's like a big -railway-station now, you know: there's a train starting every minute. -People are not going to hang round the waiting-room. If they can't get -to a place when they want to they go somewhere else." - -The application of this parable cost Miss Anson several minutes of -throbbing silence. At length she said: "Then I am to understand that the -public is no longer interested in--in my grandfather?" She felt as though -heaven must blast the lips that risked such a conjecture. - -"Well, it's this way. He's a name still, of course. People don't exactly -want to be caught not knowing who he is; but they don't want to spend -two dollars finding out, when they can look him up for nothing in any -biographical dictionary." - -Miss Anson's world reeled. She felt herself adrift among mysterious forces, -and no more thought of prolonging the discussion than of opposing an -earthquake with argument. She went home carrying the manuscript like a -wounded thing. On the return journey she found herself travelling straight -toward a fact that had lurked for months in the background of her life, -and that now seemed to await her on the very threshold: the fact that -fewer visitors came to the House. She owned to herself that for the last -four or five years the number had steadily diminished. Engrossed in her -work, she had noted the change only to feel thankful that she had fewer -interruptions. There had been a time when, at the travelling season, the -bell rang continuously, and the ladies of the House lived in a chronic -state of "best silks" and expectancy. It would have been impossible then to -carry on any consecutive work; and she now saw that the silence which had -gathered round her task had been the hush of death. - -Not of _his_ death! The very walls cried out against the implication. -It was the world's enthusiasm, the world's faith, the world's loyalty that -had died. A corrupt generation that had turned aside to worship the brazen -serpent. Her heart yearned with a prophetic passion over the lost sheep -straying in the wilderness. But all great glories had their interlunar -period; and in due time her grandfather would once more flash full-orbed -upon a darkling world. - -The few friends to whom she confided her adventure reminded her with -tender indignation that there were other publishers less subject to the -fluctuations of the market; but much as she had braved for her grandfather -she could not again brave that particular probation. She found herself, -in fact, incapable of any immediate effort. She had lost her way in a -labyrinth of conjecture where her worst dread was that she might put her -hand upon the clue. - -She locked up the manuscript and sat down to wait. If a pilgrim had come -just then the priestess would have fallen on his neck; but she continued -to celebrate her rites alone. It was a double solitude; for she had always -thought a great deal more of the people who came to see the House than of -the people who came to see her. She fancied that the neighbors kept a keen -eye on the path to the House; and there were days when the figure of a -stranger strolling past the gate seemed to focus upon her the scorching -sympathies of the village. For a time she thought of travelling; of going -to Europe, or even to Boston; but to leave the House now would have -seemed like deserting her post. Gradually her scattered energies centred -themselves in the fierce resolve to understand what had happened. She was -not the woman to live long in an unmapped country or to accept as final -her private interpretation of phenomena. Like a traveller in unfamiliar -regions she began to store for future guidance the minutest natural signs. -Unflinchingly she noted the accumulating symptoms of indifference that -marked her grandfather's descent toward posterity. She passed from the -heights on which he had been grouped with the sages of his day to the lower -level where he had come to be "the friend of Emerson," "the correspondent -of Hawthorne," or (later still) "the Dr. Anson" mentioned in their letters. -The change had taken place as slowly and imperceptibly as a natural -process. She could not say that any ruthless hand had stripped the leaves -from the tree: it was simply that, among the evergreen glories of his -group, her grandfather's had proved deciduous. - -She had still to ask herself why. If the decay had been a natural process, -was it not the very pledge of renewal? It was easier to find such arguments -than to be convinced by them. Again and again she tried to drug her -solicitude with analogies; but at last she saw that such expedients were -but the expression of a growing incredulity. The best way of proving her -faith in her grandfather was not to be afraid of his critics. She had no -notion where these shadowy antagonists lurked; for she had never heard of -the great man's doctrine being directly combated. Oblique assaults there -must have been, however, Parthian shots at the giant that none dared face; -and she thirsted to close with such assailants. The difficulty was to -find them. She began by re-reading the _Works_; thence she passed to -the writers of the same school, those whose rhetoric bloomed perennial -in _First Readers_ from which her grandfather's prose had long -since faded. Amid that clamor of far-off enthusiasms she detected no -controversial note. The little knot of Olympians held their views in common -with an early-Christian promiscuity. They were continually proclaiming -their admiration for each other, the public joining as chorus in this -guileless antiphon of praise; and she discovered no traitor in their midst. - -What then had happened? Was it simply that the main current of thought -had set another way? Then why did the others survive? Why were they still -marked down as tributaries to the philosophic stream? This question carried -her still farther afield, and she pressed on with the passion of a champion -whose reluctance to know the worst might be construed into a doubt of his -cause. At length--slowly but inevitably--an explanation shaped itself. -Death had overtaken the doctrines about which her grandfather had draped -his cloudy rhetoric. They had disintegrated and been re-absorbed, adding -their little pile to the dust drifted about the mute lips of the Sphinx. -The great man's contemporaries had survived not by reason of what they -taught, but of what they were; and he, who had been the mere mask through -which they mouthed their lesson, the instrument on which their tune was -played, lay buried deep among the obsolete tools of thought. - -The discovery came to Paulina suddenly. She looked up one evening from her -reading and it stood before her like a ghost. It had entered her life with -stealthy steps, creeping close before she was aware of it. She sat in the -library, among the carefully-tended books and portraits; and it seemed to -her that she had been walled alive into a tomb hung with the effigies of -dead ideas. She felt a desperate longing to escape into the outer air, -where people toiled and loved, and living sympathies went hand in hand. It -was the sense of wasted labor that oppressed her; of two lives consumed in -that ruthless process that uses generations of effort to build a single -cell. There was a dreary parallel between her grandfather's fruitless -toil and her own unprofitable sacrifice. Each in turn had kept vigil by a -corpse. - - -III - -The bell rang--she remembered it afterward--with a loud thrilling note. It -was what they used to call the "visitor's ring"; not the tentative tinkle -of a neighbor dropping in to borrow a sauce-pan or discuss parochial -incidents, but a decisive summons from the outer world. - -Miss Anson put down her knitting and listened. She sat up-stairs now, -making her rheumatism an excuse for avoiding the rooms below. Her interests -had insensibly adjusted themselves to the perspective of her neighbors' -lives, and she wondered--as the bell re-echoed--if it could mean that Mrs. -Heminway's baby had come. Conjecture had time to ripen into certainty, and -she was limping toward the closet where her cloak and bonnet hung, when her -little maid fluttered in with the announcement: "A gentleman to see the -house." - -"The _House_?" - -"Yes, m'm. I don't know what he means," faltered the messenger, whose -memory did not embrace the period when such announcements were a daily part -of the domestic routine. - -Miss Anson glanced at the proffered card. The name it bore--_Mr. George -Corby_--was unknown to her, but the blood rose to her languid cheek. -"Hand me my Mechlin cap, Katy," she said, trembling a little, as she laid -aside her walking stick. She put her cap on before the mirror, with rapid -unsteady touches. "Did you draw up the library blinds?" she breathlessly -asked. - -She had gradually built up a wall of commonplace between herself and her -illusions, but at the first summons of the past filial passion swept away -the frail barriers of expediency. - -She walked down-stairs so hurriedly that her stick clicked like a girlish -heel; but in the hall she paused, wondering nervously if Katy had put a -match to the fire. The autumn air was cold and she had the reproachful -vision of a visitor with elderly ailments shivering by her inhospitable -hearth. She thought instinctively of the stranger as a survivor of the days -when such a visit was a part of the young enthusiast's itinerary. - -The fire was unlit and the room forbiddingly cold; but the figure which, as -Miss Anson entered, turned from a lingering scrutiny of the book-shelves, -was that of a fresh-eyed sanguine youth clearly independent of any -artificial caloric. She stood still a moment, feeling herself the victim of -some anterior impression that made this robust presence an insubstantial -thing; but the young man advanced with an air of genial assurance which -rendered him at once more real and more reminiscent. - -"Why this, you know," he exclaimed, "is simply immense!" - -The words, which did not immediately present themselves as slang to Miss -Anson's unaccustomed ear, echoed with an odd familiarity through the -academic silence. - -"The room, you know, I mean," he explained with a comprehensive gesture. -"These jolly portraits, and the books--that's the old gentleman himself -over the mantelpiece, I suppose?--and the elms outside, and--and the whole -business. I do like a congruous background--don't you?" - -His hostess was silent. No one but Hewlett Winsloe had ever spoken of her -grandfather as "the old gentleman." - -"It's a hundred times better than I could have hoped," her visitor -continued, with a cheerful disregard of her silence. "The seclusion, the -remoteness, the philosophic atmosphere--there's so little of that kind -of flavor left! I should have simply hated to find that he lived over -a grocery, you know.--I had the deuce of a time finding out where he -_did_ live," he began again, after another glance of parenthetical -enjoyment. "But finally I got on the trail through some old book on Brook -Farm. I was bound I'd get the environment right before I did my article." - -Miss Anson, by this time, had recovered sufficient self-possession to seat -herself and assign a chair to her visitor. - -"Do I understand," she asked slowly, following his rapid eye about the -room, "that you intend to write an article about my grandfather?" - -"That's what I'm here for," Mr. Corby genially responded; "that is, if -you're willing to help me; for I can't get on without your help," he added -with a confident smile. - -There was another pause, during which Miss Anson noticed a fleck of dust on -the faded leather of the writing-table and a fresh spot of discoloration in -the right-hand upper corner of Raphael Morghen's "Parnassus." - -"Then you believe in him?" she said, looking up. She could not tell what -had prompted her; the words rushed out irresistibly. - -"Believe in him?" Corby cried, springing to his feet. "Believe in Orestes -Anson? Why, I believe he's simply the greatest--the most stupendous--the -most phenomenal figure we've got!" - -The color rose to Miss Anson's brow. Her heart was beating passionately. -She kept her eyes fixed on the young man's face, as though it might vanish -if she looked away. - -"You--you mean to say this in your article?" she asked. - -"Say it? Why, the facts will say it," he exulted. "The baldest kind of a -statement would make it clear. When a man is as big as that he doesn't need -a pedestal!" - -Miss Anson sighed. "People used to say that when I was young," she -murmured. "But now--" - -Her visitor stared. "When you were young? But how did they know--when the -thing hung fire as it did? When the whole edition was thrown back on his -hands?" - -"The whole edition--what edition?" It was Miss Anson's turn to stare. - -"Why, of his pamphlet--_the_ pamphlet--the one thing that counts, that -survives, that makes him what he is! For heaven's sake," he tragically -adjured her, "don't tell me there isn't a copy of it left!" - -Miss Anson was trembling slightly. "I don't think I understand what you -mean," she faltered, less bewildered by his vehemence than by the strange -sense of coming on an unexplored region in the very heart of her dominion. - -"Why, his account of the _amphioxus_, of course! You can't mean that -his family didn't know about it--that _you_ don't know about it? I came -across it by the merest accident myself, in a letter of vindication that -he wrote in 1830 to an old scientific paper; but I understood there were -journals--early journals; there must be references to it somewhere in the -'twenties. He must have been at least ten or twelve years ahead of Yarrell; -and he saw the whole significance of it, too--he saw where it led to. As -I understand it, he actually anticipated in his pamphlet Saint Hilaire's -theory of the universal type, and supported the hypothesis by describing -the notochord of the _amphioxus_ as a cartilaginous vertebral column. -The specialists of the day jeered at him, of course, as the specialists in -Goethe's time jeered at the plant-metamorphosis. As far as I can make out, -the anatomists and zoologists were down on Dr. Anson to a man; that was why -his cowardly publishers went back on their bargain. But the pamphlet must -be here somewhere--he writes as though, in his first disappointment, he had -destroyed the whole edition; but surely there must be at least one copy -left?" - -His scientific jargon was as bewildering as his slang; and there were even -moments in his discourse when Miss Anson ceased to distinguish between -them; but the suspense with which he continued to gaze on her acted as a -challenge to her scattered thoughts. - -"The _amphioxus_," she murmured, half-rising. "It's an animal, isn't -it--a fish? Yes, I think I remember." She sank back with the inward look of -one who retraces some lost line of association. - -Gradually the distance cleared, the details started into life. In her -researches for the biography she had patiently followed every ramification -of her subject, and one of these overgrown paths now led her back to -the episode in question. The great Orestes's title of "Doctor" had in -fact not been merely the spontaneous tribute of a national admiration; -he had actually studied medicine in his youth, and his diaries, as his -granddaughter now recalled, showed that he had passed through a brief phase -of anatomical ardor before his attention was diverted to super-sensual -problems. It had indeed seemed to Paulina, as she scanned those early -pages, that they revealed a spontaneity, a freshness of feeling somehow -absent from his later lucubrations--as though this one emotion had reached -him directly, the others through some intervening medium. In the excess of -her commemorative zeal she had even struggled through the unintelligible -pamphlet to which a few lines in the journal had bitterly directed her. But -the subject and the phraseology were alien to her and unconnected with her -conception of the great man's genius; and after a hurried perusal she had -averted her thoughts from the episode as from a revelation of failure. -At length she rose a little unsteadily, supporting herself against the -writing-table. She looked hesitatingly about the room; then she drew a key -from her old-fashioned reticule and unlocked a drawer beneath one of the -book-cases. Young Corby watched her breathlessly. With a tremulous hand she -turned over the dusty documents that seemed to fill the drawer. "Is this -it?" she said, holding out a thin discolored volume. - -He seized it with a gasp. "Oh, by George," he said, dropping into the -nearest chair. - -She stood observing him strangely as his eye devoured the mouldy pages. - -"Is this the only copy left?" he asked at length, looking up for a moment -as a thirsty man lifts his head from his glass. - -"I think it must be. I found it long ago, among some old papers that my -aunts were burning up after my grandmother's death. They said it was of no -use--that he'd always meant to destroy the whole edition and that I ought -to respect his wishes. But it was something he had written; to burn it was -like shutting the door against his voice--against something he had once -wished to say, and that nobody had listened to. I wanted him to feel that I -was always here, ready to listen, even when others hadn't thought it worth -while; and so I kept the pamphlet, meaning to carry out his wish and -destroy it before my death." - -Her visitor gave a groan of retrospective anguish. "And but for me--but for -to-day--you would have?" - -"I should have thought it my duty." - -"Oh, by George--by George," he repeated, subdued afresh by the inadequacy -of speech. - -She continued to watch him in silence. At length he jumped up and -impulsively caught her by both hands. - -"He's bigger and bigger!" he almost shouted. "He simply leads the field! -You'll help me go to the bottom of this, won't you? We must turn out all -the papers--letters, journals, memoranda. He must have made notes. He -must have left some record of what led up to this. We must leave nothing -unexplored. By Jove," he cried, looking up at her with his bright -convincing smile, "do you know you're the granddaughter of a Great Man?" - -Her color flickered like a girl's. "Are you--sure of him?" she whispered, -as though putting him on his guard against a possible betrayal of trust. - -"Sure! Sure! My dear lady--" he measured her again with his quick confident -glance. "Don't _you_ believe in him?" - -She drew back with a confused murmur. "I--used to." She had left her -hands in his: their pressure seemed to send a warm current to her heart. -"It ruined my life!" she cried with sudden passion. He looked at her -perplexedly. - -"I gave up everything," she went on wildly, "to keep him alive. I -sacrificed myself--others--I nursed his glory in my bosom and it died--and -left me--left me here alone." She paused and gathered her courage with a -gasp. "Don't make the same mistake!" she warned him. - -He shook his head, still smiling. "No danger of that! You're not alone, my -dear lady. He's here with you--he's come back to you to-day. Don't you see -what's happened? Don't you see that it's your love that has kept him alive? -If you'd abandoned your post for an instant--let things pass into other -hands--if your wonderful tenderness hadn't perpetually kept guard--this -might have been--must have been--irretrievably lost." He laid his hand on -the pamphlet. "And then--then he _would_ have been dead!" - -"Oh," she said, "don't tell me too suddenly!" And she turned away and sank -into a chair. - -The young man stood watching her in an awed silence. For a long time she -sat motionless, with her face hidden, and he thought she must be weeping. - -At length he said, almost shyly: "You'll let me come back, then? You'll -help me work this thing out?" - -She rose calmly and held out her hand. "I'll help you," she declared. - -"I'll come to-morrow, then. Can we get to work early?" - -"As early as you please." - -"At eight o'clock, then," he said briskly. "You'll have the papers ready?" - -"I'll have everything ready." She added with a half-playful hesitancy: "And -the fire shall be lit for you." - -He went out with his bright nod. She walked to the window and watched his -buoyant figure hastening down the elm-shaded street. When she turned back -into the empty room she looked as though youth had touched her on the lips. - - - - -THE RECOVERY - - -To the visiting stranger Hillbridge's first question was, "Have you seen -Keniston's things?" Keniston took precedence of the colonial State House, -the Gilbert Stuart Washington and the Ethnological Museum; nay, he ran neck -and neck with the President of the University, a prehistoric relic who had -known Emerson, and who was still sent about the country in cotton-wool to -open educational institutions with a toothless oration on Brook Farm. - -Keniston was sent about the country too: he opened art exhibitions, laid -the foundation of academies, and acted in a general sense as the spokesman -and apologist of art. Hillbridge was proud of him in his peripatetic -character, but his fellow-townsmen let it be understood that to "know" -Keniston one must come to Hillbridge. Never was work more dependent for its -effect on "atmosphere," on _milieu_. Hillbridge was Keniston's milieu, -and there was one lady, a devotee of his art, who went so far as to assert -that once, at an exhibition in New York, she had passed a Keniston without -recognizing it. "It simply didn't want to be seen in such surroundings; it -was hiding itself under an incognito," she declared. - -It was a source of special pride to Hillbridge that it contained all the -artist's best works. Strangers were told that Hillbridge had discovered -him. The discovery had come about in the simplest manner. Professor -Driffert, who had a reputation for "collecting," had one day hung a sketch -on his drawing-room wall, and thereafter Mrs. Driffert's visitors (always -a little flurried by the sense that it was the kind of house in which one -might be suddenly called upon to distinguish between a dry-point and an -etching, or between Raphael Mengs and Raphael Sanzio) were not infrequently -subjected to the Professor's off-hand inquiry, "By-the-way, have you seen -my Keniston?" The visitors, perceptibly awed, would retreat to a critical -distance and murmur the usual guarded generalities, while they tried to -keep the name in mind long enough to look it up in the Encyclopdia. The -name was not in the Encyclopdia; but, as a compensating fact, it became -known that the man himself was in Hillbridge. Hillbridge, then, owned an -artist whose celebrity it was the proper thing to take for granted! Some -one else, emboldened by the thought, bought a Keniston; and the next -year, on the occasion of the President's golden jubilee, the Faculty, by -unanimous consent, presented him with a Keniston. Two years later there -was a Keniston exhibition, to which the art-critics came from New York -and Boston; and not long afterward a well-known Chicago collector vainly -attempted to buy Professor Driffert's sketch, which the art journals cited -as a rare example of the painter's first or silvery manner. Thus there -gradually grew up a small circle of connoisseurs known in artistic, circles -as men who collected Kenistons. - -Professor Wildmarsh, of the chair of Fine Arts and Archaeology, was the -first critic to publish a detailed analysis of the master's methods and -purpose. The article was illustrated by engravings which (though they had -cost the magazine a fortune) were declared by Professor Wildmarsh to give -but an imperfect suggestion of the esoteric significance of the originals. -The Professor, with a tact that contrived to make each reader feel himself -included among the exceptions, went on to say that Keniston's work would -never appeal to any but exceptional natures; and he closed with the usual -assertion that to apprehend the full meaning of the master's "message" it -was necessary to see him in the surroundings of his own home at Hillbridge. - -Professor Wildmarsh's article was read one spring afternoon by a young -lady just speeding eastward on her first visit to Hillbridge, and already -flushed with anticipation of the intellectual opportunities awaiting her. -In East Onondaigua, where she lived, Hillbridge was looked on as an Oxford. -Magazine writers, with the easy American use of the superlative, designated -it as "the venerable Alma Mater," the "antique seat of learning," and -Claudia Day had been brought up to regard it as the fountain-head of -knowledge, and of that mental distinction which is so much rarer than -knowledge. An innate passion for all that was thus distinguished and -exceptional made her revere Hillbridge as the native soil of those -intellectual amenities that were of such difficult growth in the -thin air of East Onondaigua. At the first suggestion of a visit to -Hillbridge--whither she went at the invitation of a girl friend -who (incredible apotheosis!) had married one of the University -professors--Claudia's spirit dilated with the sense of new possibilities. -The vision of herself walking under the "historic elms" toward the Memorial -Library, standing rapt before the Stuart Washington, or drinking in, -from some obscure corner of an academic drawing-room, the President's -reminiscences of the Concord group--this vividness of self-projection into -the emotions awaiting her made her glad of any delay that prolonged so -exquisite a moment. - -It was in this mood that she opened the article on Keniston. She knew about -him, of course; she was wonderfully "well up," even for East Onondaigua. -She had read of him in the magazines; she had met, on a visit to New York, -a man who collected Kenistons, and a photogravure of a Keniston in an -"artistic" frame hung above her writing-table at home. But Professor -Wildmarsh's article made her feel how little she really knew of the master; -and she trembled to think of the state of relative ignorance in which, but -for the timely purchase of the magazine, she might have entered Hillbridge. -She had, for instance, been densely unaware that Keniston had already had -three "manners," and was showing symptoms of a fourth. She was equally -ignorant of the fact that he had founded a school and "created a formula"; -and she learned with a thrill that no one could hope to understand him who -had not seen him in his studio at Hillbridge, surrounded by his own works. -"The man and the art interpret each other," their exponent declared; and -Claudia Day, bending a brilliant eye on the future, wondered if she were -ever to be admitted to the privilege of that double initiation. - -Keniston, to his other claims to distinction, added that of being hard to -know. His friends always hastened to announce the fact to strangers--adding -after a pause of suspense that they "would see what they could do." -Visitors in whose favor he was induced to make an exception were further -warned that he never spoke unless he was interested--so that they mustn't -mind if he remained silent. It was under these reassuring conditions that, -some ten days after her arrival at Hillbridge, Miss Day was introduced -to the master's studio. She found him a tall listless-looking man, who -appeared middle-aged to her youth, and who stood before his own pictures -with a vaguely interrogative gaze, leaving the task of their interpretation -to the lady who had courageously contrived the visit. The studio, to -Claudia's surprise, was bare and shabby. It formed a rambling addition to -the small cheerless house in which the artist lived with his mother and -a widowed sister. For Claudia it added the last touch to his distinction -to learn that he was poor, and that what he earned was devoted to the -maintenance of the two limp women who formed a neutral-tinted background to -his impressive outline. His pictures of course fetched high prices; but he -worked slowly--"painfully," as his devotees preferred to phrase it--with -frequent intervals of ill health and inactivity, and the circle of Keniston -connoisseurs was still as small as it was distinguished. The girl's fancy -instantly hailed in him that favorite figure of imaginative youth, the -artist who would rather starve than paint a pot-boiler. It is known to -comparatively few that the production of successful pot-boilers is an art -in itself, and that such heroic abstentions as Keniston's are not always -purely voluntary. On the occasion of her first visit the artist said so -little that Claudia was able to indulge to the full the harrowing sense of -her inadequacy. No wonder she had not been one of the few that he cared -to talk to; every word she uttered must so obviously have diminished the -inducement! She had been cheap, trivial, conventional; at once gushing -and inexpressive, eager and constrained. She could feel him counting the -minutes till the visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the -scene of her discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she -confidently credited him--that they might never meet again. - - -II - -Mrs. Davant glanced reverentially about the studio. "I have always said," -she murmured, "that they ought to be seen in Europe." - -Mrs. Davant was young, credulous and emotionally extravagant: she reminded -Claudia of her earlier self--the self that, ten years before, had first set -an awestruck foot on that very threshold. - -"Not for _his_ sake," Mrs. Davant continued, "but for Europe's." - -Claudia smiled. She was glad that her husband's pictures were to be -exhibited in Paris. She concurred in Mrs. Davant's view of the importance -of the event; but she thought her visitor's way of putting the case a -little overcharged. Ten years spent in an atmosphere of Keniston-worship -had insensibly developed in Claudia a preference for moderation of speech. -She believed in her husband, of course; to believe in him, with an -increasing abandonment and tenacity, had become one of the necessary laws -of being; but she did not believe in his admirers. Their faith in him was -perhaps as genuine as her own; but it seemed to her less able to give an -account of itself. Some few of his appreciators doubtless measured him -by their own standards; but it was difficult not to feel that in the -Hillbridge circle, where rapture ran the highest, he was accepted on -what was at best but an indirect valuation; and now and then she had a -frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions. That -innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to -check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic -absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained -so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him. Her husband's -uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of -the surprises of her marriage. That an artist should believe in his -potential powers seemed to her at once the incentive and the pledge of -excellence: she knew there was no future for a hesitating talent. What -perplexed her was Keniston's satisfaction in his achievement. She had -always imagined that the true artist must regard himself as the imperfect -vehicle of the cosmic emotion--that beneath every difficulty overcome a new -one lurked, the vision widening as the scope enlarged. To be initiated into -these creative struggles, to shed on the toiler's path the consolatory ray -of faith and encouragement, had seemed the chief privilege of her marriage. -But there is something supererogatory in believing in a man obviously -disposed to perform that service for himself; and Claudia's ardor gradually -spent itself against the dense surface of her husband's complacency. She -could smile now at her vision of an intellectual communion which should -admit her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration. She had learned -that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston's -inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile -her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air -of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to -posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed -herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he -mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so little to -express. - -"It's for Europe," Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia noticed that -she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of her elaborate sunshade -the pattern of the shabby carpet. - -"It will be a revelation to them," she went on provisionally, as though -Claudia had missed her cue and left an awkward interval to fill. - -Claudia had in fact a sudden sense of deficient intuition. She felt that -her visitor had something to communicate which required, on her own part, -an intelligent co-operation; but what it was her insight failed to suggest. -She was, in truth, a little tired of Mrs. Davant, who was Keniston's latest -worshipper, who ordered pictures recklessly, who paid for them regally -in advance, and whose gallery was, figuratively speaking, crowded with -the artist's unpainted masterpieces. Claudia's impatience was perhaps -complicated by the uneasy sense that Mrs. Davant was too young, too rich, -too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be warned.--Warned of what? -That some of the pictures might never be painted? Scarcely that, since -Keniston, who was scrupulous in business transactions, might be trusted not -to take any material advantage of such evidence of faith. Claudia's impulse -remained undefined. She merely felt that she would have liked to help Mrs. -Davant, and that she did not know how. - -"You'll be there to see them?" she asked, as her visitor lingered. - -"In Paris?" Mrs. Davant's blush deepened. "We must all be there together." - -Claudia smiled. "My husband and I mean to go abroad some day--but I don't -see any chance of it at present." - -"But he _ought_ to go--you ought both to go this summer!" Mrs. Davant -persisted. "I know Professor Wildmarsh and Professor Driffert and all the -other critics think that Mr. Keniston's never having been to Europe has -given his work much of its wonderful individuality, its peculiar flavor -and meaning--but now that his talent is formed, that he has full command -of his means of expression," (Claudia recognized one of Professor -Driffert's favorite formulas) "they all think he ought to see the work of -the _other_ great masters--that he ought to visit the home of his -ancestors, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" She stretched an impulsive hand to -Claudia. "You ought to let him go, Mrs. Keniston!" - -Claudia accepted the admonition with the philosophy of the wife who is used -to being advised on the management of her husband. "I sha'n't interfere -with him," she declared; and Mrs. Davant instantly caught her up with a cry -of, "Oh, it's too lovely of you to say that!" With this exclamation she -left Claudia to a silent renewal of wonder. - -A moment later Keniston entered: to a mind curious in combinations it -might have occurred that he had met Mrs. Davant on the door-step. In one -sense he might, for all his wife cared, have met fifty Mrs. Davants on the -door-step: it was long since Claudia had enjoyed the solace of resenting -such coincidences. Her only thought now was that her husband's first words -might not improbably explain Mrs. Davant's last; and she waited for him to -speak. - -He paused with his hands in his pockets before an unfinished picture on the -easel; then, as his habit was, he began to stroll touristlike from canvas -to canvas, standing before each in a musing ecstasy of contemplation that -no readjustment of view ever seemed to disturb. Her eye instinctively -joined his in its inspection; it was the one point where their natures -merged. Thank God, there, was no doubt about the pictures! She was what she -had always dreamed of being--the wife of a great artist. Keniston dropped -into an armchair and filled his pipe. "How should you like to go to -Europe?" he asked. - -His wife looked up quickly. "When?" - -"Now--this spring, I mean." He paused to light the pipe. "I should like to -be over there while these things are being exhibited." - -Claudia was silent. - -"Well?" he repeated after a moment. - -"How can we afford it?" she asked. - -Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the mother and -sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia, who had the atoning -temperament which seeks to pay for every happiness by making it a source -of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an -exaggerated devotion. Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized -her most delicate pleasures; and her husband's sensitiveness to it in great -measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a -failure of the moral sense. His loyalty to the dull women who depended on -him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere sensibility -to ideal demands. - -"Oh, I don't see why we shouldn't," he rejoined. "I think we might manage -it." - -"At Mrs. Davant's expense?" leaped from Claudia. She could not tell why she -had said it; some inner barrier seemed to have given way under a confused -pressure of emotions. - -He looked up at her with frank surprise. "Well, she has been very jolly -about it--why not? She has a tremendous feeling for art--the keenest I -ever knew in a woman." Claudia imperceptibly smiled. "She wants me to let -her pay in advance for the four panels she has ordered for the Memorial -Library. That would give us plenty of money for the trip, and my having the -panels to do is another reason for my wanting to go abroad just now." - -"Another reason?" - -"Yes; I've never worked on such a big scale. I want to see how those old -chaps did the trick; I want to measure myself with the big fellows over -there. An artist ought to, once in his life." - -She gave him a wondering look. For the first time his words implied a sense -of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract what they -conceded. What he really wanted was fresh food for his self-satisfaction: -he was like an army that moves on after exhausting the resources of the -country. - -Womanlike, she abandoned the general survey of the case for the -consideration of a minor point. - -"Are you sure you can do that kind of thing?" she asked. - -"What kind of thing?" - -"The panels." - -He glanced at her indulgently: his self-confidence was too impenetrable to -feel the pin-prick of such a doubt. - -"Immensely sure," he said with a smile. - -"And you don't mind taking so much money from her in advance?" - -He stared. "Why should I? She'll get it back--with interest!" He laughed -and drew at his pipe. "It will be an uncommonly interesting experience. I -shouldn't wonder if it freshened me up a bit." - -She looked at him again. This second hint of self-distrust struck her as -the sign of a quickened sensibility. What if, after all, he was beginning -to be dissatisfied with his work? The thought filled her with a renovating -sense of his sufficiency. - - -III - -They stopped in London to see the National Gallery. - -It was thus that, in their inexperience, they had narrowly put it; but in -reality every stone of the streets, every trick of the atmosphere, had -its message of surprise for their virgin sensibilities. The pictures were -simply the summing up, the final interpretation, of the cumulative pressure -of an unimagined world; and it seemed to Claudia that long before they -reached the doors of the gallery she had some intuitive revelation of what -awaited them within. - -They moved about from room to room without exchanging a word. The vast -noiseless spaces seemed full of sound, like the roar of a distant multitude -heard only by the inner ear. Had their speech been articulate their -language would have been incomprehensible; and even that far-off murmur -of meaning pressed intolerably on Claudia's nerves. Keniston took the -onset without outward sign of disturbance. Now and then he paused before a -canvas, or prolonged from one of the benches his silent communion with some -miracle of line or color; but he neither looked at his wife nor spoke to -her. He seemed to have forgotten her presence. - -Claudia was conscious of keeping a furtive watch on him; but the sum total -of her impressions was negative. She remembered thinking when she first -met him that his face was rather expressionless; and he had the habit of -self-engrossed silences. - -All that evening, at the hotel, they talked about London, and he surprised -her by an acuteness of observation that she had sometimes inwardly accused -him of lacking. He seemed to have seen everything, to have examined, felt, -compared, with nerves as finely adjusted as her own; but he said nothing -of the pictures. The next day they returned to the National Gallery, and -he began to study the paintings in detail, pointing out differences of -technique, analyzing and criticising, but still without summing up his -conclusions. He seemed to have a sort of provincial dread of showing -himself too much impressed. Claudia's own sensations were too complex, too -overwhelming, to be readily classified. Lacking the craftsman's instinct to -steady her, she felt herself carried off her feet by the rush of incoherent -impressions. One point she consciously avoided, and that was the comparison -of her husband's work with what they were daily seeing. Art, she inwardly -argued, was too various, too complex, dependent on too many inter-relations -of feeling and environment, to allow of its being judged by any provisional -standard. Even the subtleties of technique must be modified by the artist's -changing purpose, as this in turn is acted on by influences of which -he is himself unconscious. How, then, was an unprepared imagination to -distinguish between such varied reflections of the elusive vision? She took -refuge in a passionate exaggeration of her own ignorance and insufficiency. - -After a week in London they went to Paris. The exhibition of Keniston's -pictures had been opened a few days earlier; and as they drove through the -streets on the way to the station an "impressionist" poster here and there -invited them to the display of the American artist's work. Mrs. Davant, who -had been in Paris for the opening, had already written rapturously of the -impression produced, enclosing commendatory notices from one or two papers. -She reported that there had been a great crowd on the first day, and that -the critics had been "immensely struck." - -The Kenistons arrived in the evening, and the next morning Claudia, as a -matter of course, asked her husband at what time he meant to go and see the -pictures. - -He looked up absently from his guide-book. - -"What pictures?" - -"Why--yours," she said, surprised. - -"Oh, they'll keep," he answered; adding with a slightly embarrassed laugh, -"We'll give the other chaps a show first." Presently he laid down his book -and proposed that they should go to the Louvre. - -They spent the morning there, lunched at a restaurant near by, and returned -to the gallery in the afternoon. Keniston had passed from inarticulateness -to an eager volubility. It was clear that he was beginning to co-ordinate -his impressions, to find his way about in a corner of the great imaginative -universe. He seemed extraordinarily ready to impart his discoveries; and -Claudia felt that her ignorance served him as a convenient buffer against -the terrific impact of new sensations. - -On the way home she asked when he meant to see Mrs. Davant. - -His answer surprised her. "Does she know we're here?" - -"Not unless you've sent her word," said Claudia, with a touch of harmless -irony. - -"That's all right, then," he returned simply. "I want to wait and look -about a day or two longer. She'd want us to go sight-seeing with her; and -I'd rather get my impressions alone." - -The next two days were hampered by the necessity of eluding Mrs. Davant. -Claudia, under different circumstances, would have scrupled to share in -this somewhat shabby conspiracy; but she found herself in a state of -suspended judgment, wherein her husband's treatment of Mrs. Davant became -for the moment merely a clue to larger meanings. - -They had been four days in Paris when Claudia, returning one afternoon from -a parenthetical excursion to the Rue de la Paix, was confronted on her -threshold by the reproachful figure of their benefactress. It was not to -her, however, that Mrs. Davant's reproaches were addressed. Keniston, it -appeared, had borne the brunt of them; for he stood leaning against the -mantelpiece of their modest _salon_ in that attitude of convicted -negligence when, if ever, a man is glad to take refuge behind his wife. - -Claudia had however no immediate intention of affording him such shelter. -She wanted to observe and wait. - -"He's too impossible!" cried Mrs. Davant, sweeping her at once into the -central current of her grievance. - -Claudia looked from one to the other. - -"For not going to see you?" - -"For not going to see his pictures!" cried the other nobly. - -Claudia colored and Keniston shifted his position uneasily. - -"I can't make her understand," he said, turning to his wife. - -"I don't care about myself!" Mrs. Davant interjected. - -"_I_ do, then; it's the only thing I do care about," he hurriedly -protested. "I meant to go at once--to write--Claudia wanted to go, but I -wouldn't let her." He looked helplessly about the pleasant red-curtained -room, which was rapidly burning itself into Claudia's consciousness as a -visible extension of Mrs. Davant's claims. - -"I can't explain," he broke off. - -Mrs. Davant in turn addressed herself to Claudia. - -"People think it's so odd," she complained. "So many of the artists -here are anxious to meet him; they've all been so charming about the -pictures; and several of our American friends have come over from London -expressly for the exhibition. I told every one that he would be here -for the opening--there was a private view, you know--and they were so -disappointed--they wanted to give him an ovation; and I didn't know what -to say. What _am_ I to say?" she abruptly ended. - -"There's nothing to say," said Keniston slowly. - -"But the exhibition closes the day after to-morrow." - -"Well, _I_ sha'n't close--I shall be here," he declared with an effort -at playfulness. "If they want to see me--all these people you're kind -enough to mention--won't there be other chances?" - -"But I wanted them to see you _among_ your pictures--to hear you talk -about them, explain them in that wonderful way. I wanted you to interpret -each other, as Professor Wildmarsh says!" - -"Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!" said Keniston, softening the commination -with a smile. "If my pictures are good for anything they oughtn't to need -explaining." - -Mrs. Davant stared. "But I thought that was what made them so interesting!" -she exclaimed. - -Keniston looked down. "Perhaps it was," he murmured. - -There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying, with a glance -at her husband: "But if the exhibition is to remain open to-morrow, could -we not meet you there? And perhaps you could send word to some of our -friends." - -Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is glued together. -"Oh, _do_ make him!" she implored. "I'll ask them to come in the -afternoon--we'll make it into a little tea--a _five o'clock_. I'll -send word at once to everybody!" She gathered up her beruffled boa and -sunshade, settling her plumage like a reassured bird. "It will be too -lovely!" she ended in a self-consoling murmur. - -But in the doorway a new doubt assailed her. "You won't fail me?" she said, -turning plaintively to Keniston. "You'll make him come, Mrs. Keniston?" - -"I'll bring him!" Claudia promised. - - -IV - -When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble, -her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home. - -"The fact is I'm rather surfeited," he said, smiling. "I suppose my -appetite isn't equal to such a plethora. I think I'll write some letters -and join you somewhere later." - -She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual -readiness. - -"I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then," she said. "I -haven't had time to take the edge off that appetite." - -They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone -with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct -reference to Mrs. Davant's visit; but its effect was implicit in their -eagerness to avoid each other. - -Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that -robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she -turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never -had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social -quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were -evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the -nervous structure of the huge frame--a sensibility so delicate, alert and -universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such -a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously -as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be "artistic" must cease to be -an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of -the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny -spot of consciousness--the value of her husband's work. There are moments -when to the groping soul the world's accumulated experiences are but -stepping-stones across a private difficulty. - -She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had -an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting -her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion -emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in -obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she -called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband's pictures were -exhibited. - -A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way -up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing, -held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer; -and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room -full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the -public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier -in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something -about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in -other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed -to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the -carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor's solitary advance with -the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the -thing "go off," and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of -co-operation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her -instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they -had not co-operated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant: -they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one -familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there--and the -frames--but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished -like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had -it happened to _her_ or to the pictures? She tried to rally her -frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance; -but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single -conviction--the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no -standing up against that: she felt herself submerged. - -The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the -throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving -as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes. -She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical -vitality.... She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall -before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the -dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a -spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life. What proof had she -that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other? The -confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a -valid theory of art. How, after all, did she know that the pictures were -bad? On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided -the case against them? It seemed as though it were a standard outside of -herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her -aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that -was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid -that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the -middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a _massif_ -of palms and azaleas. As Claudia's muffled wanderings carried her around -the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the -figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head -bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her. - -Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware -that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered. It was what _he_ -thought of them that counted: her life hung on that. - -They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt -to flash into immediate speech. At length he said simply, "I didn't know -you were coming here." - -She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand. - -"I didn't mean to," she stammered; "but I was too early for our -appointment--" - -Her word's cast a revealing glare on the situation. Neither of them looked -at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly -to press upon them and force them apart. - -Keniston glanced at his watch. "It's twelve o'clock," he said. "Shall we go -on?" - - -V - -At the door he called a cab and put her in it; then, drawing out his watch -again, he said abruptly: "I believe I'll let you go alone. I'll join you at -the hotel in time for luncheon." She wondered for a moment if he meant to -return to the gallery; but, looking back as she drove off, she saw him walk -rapidly away in the opposite direction. - -The cabman had carried her half-way to the Hotel Cluny before she realized -where she was going, and cried out to him to turn home. There was an acute -irony in this mechanical prolongation of the quest of beauty. She had -had enough of it, too much of it; her one longing was to escape, to hide -herself away from its all-suffusing implacable light. - -At the hotel, alone in her room, a few tears came to soften her seared -vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by weeping. Her whole being -was centred in the longing to know what her husband thought. Their short -exchange of words had, after all, told her nothing. She had guessed a faint -resentment at her unexpected appearance; but that might merely imply a -dawning sense, on his part, of being furtively watched and criticised. She -had sometimes wondered if he was never conscious of her observation; there -were moments when it seemed to radiate from her in visible waves. Perhaps, -after all, he was aware of it, on his guard against it, as a lurking knife -behind the thick curtain of his complacency; and to-day he must have caught -the gleam of the blade. - -Claudia had not reached the age when pity is the first chord to vibrate in -contact with any revelation of failure. Her one hope had been that Keniston -should be clear-eyed enough to face the truth. Whatever it turned out to -be, she wanted him to measure himself with it. But as his image rose before -her she felt a sudden half-maternal longing to thrust herself between him -and disaster. Her eagerness to see him tested by circumstances seemed now -like a cruel scientific curiosity. She saw in a flash of sympathy that he -would need her most if he fell beneath his fate. - -He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she came up-stairs -from her solitary meal their _salon_ was still untenanted. She -permitted herself no sensational fears; for she could not, at the height of -apprehension, figure Keniston as yielding to any tragic impulse; but the -lengthening hours brought an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity. Suddenly -she heard the clock strike five. It was the hour at which they had promised -to meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery--the hour of the "ovation." Claudia -rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of her husband in the -crowded street. Could it be that he had forgotten her, had gone to the -gallery without her? Or had something happened--that veiled "something" -which, for the last hour, had grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind? - -She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered. As she turned to meet -him her whole being was swept forward on a great wave of pity: she was so -sure, now, that he must know. - -But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied brightness; her first -impression was that she had never seen him so vividly, so expressively -pleased. If he needed her, it was not to bind up his wounds. - -He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some -inner light. "I didn't mean to be so late," he said, tossing aside his hat -and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. "I -turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the -place fairly swallowed me up--I couldn't get away from it. I've been there -ever since." He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe. - -"It takes time," he continued musingly, "to get at them, to make out what -they're saying--the big fellows, I mean. They're not a communicative lot. -At first I couldn't make much out of their lingo--it was too different from -mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them -together, I've begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two -of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out--made them -deliver up their last drop." He lifted a brilliant eye to her. "Lord, it -was tremendous!" he declared. - -He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in -silence. - -"At first," he began again, "I was afraid their language was too hard for -me--that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed -to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I -wouldn't be beaten, and now, to-day"--he paused a moment to strike a -match--"when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me -in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I'd made them all into a big bonfire to -light me on my road!" - -His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid -to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past -upon the pyre! - -"Is there nothing left?" she faltered. - -"Nothing left? There's everything!" he exulted. "Why, here I am, not much -over forty, and I've found out already--already!" He stood up and began to -move excitedly about the room. "My God! Suppose I'd never known! Suppose -I'd gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those -chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they're saved! Won't -somebody please start a hymn?" - -Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong -current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth, -and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot. - -"Mrs. Davant--" she exclaimed. - -He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. "Mrs. Davant?" - -"We were to have met her--this afternoon--now--" - -"At the gallery? Oh, that's all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see -her after I left you; I explained it all to her." - -"All?" - -"I told her I was going to begin all over again." - -Claudia's heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly. - -"But the panels--?" - -"That's all right too. I told her about the panels," he reassured her. - -"You told her--?" - -"That I can't paint them now. She doesn't understand, of course; but she's -the best little woman and she trusts me." - -She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. "But that isn't -all," she wailed. "It doesn't matter how much you've explained to her. It -doesn't do away with the fact that we're living on those panels!" - -"Living on them?" - -"On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn't that what brought us -here? And--if you mean to do as you say--to begin all over again--how in -the world are we ever to pay her back?" - -Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. "There's only one way that I -know of," he imperturbably declared, "and that's to stay out here till I -learn how to paint them." - - - - -"COPY" - -A DIALOGUE - - -_Mrs. Ambrose Dale--forty, slender, still young--sits in her drawing-room -at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit, -there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and -flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere--mostly with autograph -inscriptions "From the Author"--and a large portrait of_ Mrs. Dale, -_at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the -wall-panels. Before_ Mrs. Dale _stands_ Hilda, _fair and twenty, -her hands full of letters_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn't it strange -that people who'd blush to borrow twenty dollars don't scruple to beg for -an autograph? - -_Hilda (reproachfully)_. Oh-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. What's the difference, pray? - -_Hilda_. Only that your last autograph sold for fifty-- - -_Mrs. Dale (not displeased)_. Ah?--I sent for you, Hilda, because I'm -dining out to-night, and if there's nothing important to attend to among -these letters you needn't sit up for me. - -_Hilda_. You don't mean to work? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Perhaps; but I sha'n't need you. You'll see that my -cigarettes and coffee-machine are in place, and: that I don't have to crawl -about the floor in search of my pen-wiper? That's all. Now about these -letters-- - -_Hilda (impulsively)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Well? - -_Hilda_. I'd rather sit up for you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Child, I've nothing for you to do. I shall be blocking -out the tenth chapter of _Winged Purposes_ and it won't be ready for -you till next week. - -_Hilda_. It isn't that--but it's so beautiful to sit here, watching -and listening, all alone in the night, and to feel that you're in there -_(she points to the study-door)_ _creating_--._(Impulsively.)_ -What do I care for sleep? - -_Mrs. Dale (indulgently)_. Child--silly child!--Yes, I should have -felt so at your age--it would have been an inspiration-- - -_Hilda (rapt)_. It is! - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you must go to bed; I must have you fresh in the -morning; for you're still at the age when one is fresh in the morning! -_(She sighs.)_ The letters? _(Abruptly.)_ Do you take notes of -what you feel, Hilda--here, all alone in the night, as you say? - -_Hilda (shyly)_. I have-- - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. For the diary? - -_Hilda (nods and blushes)_. - -_Mrs. Dale (caressingly)_. Goose!--Well, to business. What is there? - -_Hilda_. Nothing important, except a letter from Stroud & Fayerweather -to say that the question of the royalty on _Pomegranate Seed_ has been -settled in your favor. The English publishers of _Immolation_ write -to consult you about a six-shilling edition; Olafson, the Copenhagen -publisher, applies for permission to bring out a Danish translation of -_The Idol's Feet_; and the editor of the _Semaphore_ wants a new -serial--I think that's all; except that _Woman's Sphere_ and _The -Droplight_ ask for interviews--with photographs-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. The same old story! I'm so toed of it all. _(To -herself, in an undertone.)_ But how should I feel if it all stopped? -_(The servant brings in a card.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (reading it)_. Is it possible? Paul Ventnor? _(To the -servant.)_ Show Mr. Ventnor up. _(To herself.)_ Paul Ventnor! - -_Hilda (breathless)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale--_the_ Mr. Ventnor? - -_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. I fancy there's only one. - -_Hilda_. The great, great poet? _(Irresolute.)_ No, I don't -dare-- - -_Mrs. Dale (with a tinge of impatience)_. What? - -_Hilda (fervently)_. Ask you--if I might--oh, here in this corner, -where he can't possibly notice me--stay just a moment? Just to see him come -in? To see the meeting between you--the greatest novelist and the greatest -poet of the age? Oh, it's too much to ask! It's an historic moment. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, I suppose it is. I hadn't thought of it in that -light. Well _(smiling)_, for the diary-- - -_Hilda_. Oh, thank you, _thank you_! I'll be off the very instant -I've heard him speak. - -_Mrs. Dale_. The very instant, mind. _(She rises, looks at herself -in the glass, smooths her hair, sits down again, and rattles the -tea-caddy.)_ Isn't the room very warm?--_(She looks over at her -portrait.)_ I've grown stouter since that was painted--. You'll make a -fortune out of that diary, Hilda-- - -_Hilda (modestly)_. Four publishers have applied to me already-- - -_The Servant (announces)_. Mr. Paul Ventnor. - -_(Tall, nearing fifty, with an incipient stoutness buttoned into a -masterly frock-coat, Ventnor drops his glass and advances vaguely, with a -short-sighted stare.)_ - -_Ventnor_. Mrs. Dale? - -_Mrs. Dale_. My dear friend! This is kind. _(She looks over her -shoulder at Hilda, mho vanishes through the door to the left.)_ The -papers announced your arrival, but I hardly hoped-- - -_Ventnor (whose short-sighted stare is seen to conceal a deeper -embarrassment)_. You hadn't forgotten me, then? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Delicious! Do _you_ forget that you're public -property? - -_Ventnor_. Forgotten, I mean, that we were old friends? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Such old friends! May I remind you that it's nearly -twenty years since we've met? Or do you find cold reminiscences -indigestible? - -_Ventnor_. On the contrary, I've come to ask you for a dish of -them--we'll warm them up together. You're my first visit. - -_Mrs. Dale_. How perfect of you! So few men visit their women friends -in chronological order; or at least they generally do it the other way -round, beginning with the present day and working back--if there's time--to -prehistoric woman. - -_Ventnor_. But when prehistoric woman has become historic woman--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, it's the reflection of my glory that has guided you -here, then? - -_Ventnor_. It's a spirit in my feet that has led me, at the first -opportunity, to the most delightful spot I know. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, the first opportunity--! - -_Ventnor_. I might have seen you very often before; but never just in -the right way. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is this the right way? - -_Ventnor_. It depends on you to make it so. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What a responsibility! What shall I do? - -_Ventnor_. Talk to me--make me think you're a little glad to see me; -give me some tea and a cigarette; and say you're out to everyone else. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Is that all? _(She hands him a cup of tea.)_ The -cigarettes are at your elbow--. And do you think I shouldn't have been glad -to see you before? - -_Ventnor_. No; I think I should have been too glad to see you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Dear me, what precautions! I hope you always wear -goloshes when it looks like rain and never by any chance expose yourself -to a draught. But I had an idea that poets courted the emotions-- - -_Ventnor_. Do novelists? - -_Mrs. Dale_. If you ask _me_--on paper! - -_Ventnor_. Just so; that's safest. My best things about the sea have -been written on shore. _(He looks at her thoughtfully.)_ But it -wouldn't have suited us in the old days, would it? - -_Mrs. Dale (sighing)_. When we were real people! - -_Ventnor_. Real people? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Are _you_, now? I died years ago. What you see -before you is a figment of the reporter's brain--a monster manufactured out -of newspaper paragraphs, with ink in its veins. A keen sense of copyright -is _my_ nearest approach to an emotion. - -_Ventnor (sighing)_. Ah, well, yes--as you say, we're public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. If one shared equally with the public! But the last shred -of my identity is gone. - -_Ventnor_. Most people would be glad to part with theirs on such -terms. I have followed your work with immense interest. _Immolation_ -is a masterpiece. I read it last summer when it first came out. - -_Mrs. Dale (with a shade less warmth)_. _Immolation_ has been out -three years. - -_Ventnor_. Oh, by Jove--no? Surely not--But one is so overwhelmed--one -loses count. (_Reproachfully_.) Why have you never sent me your books? - -_Mrs. Dale_. For that very reason. - -_Ventnor (deprecatingly)_. You know I didn't mean it for you! And -_my_ first book--do you remember--was dedicated to you. - -_Mrs. Dale_. _Silver Trumpets_-- - -_Ventnor (much interested)_. Have you a copy still, by any chance? The -first edition, I mean? Mine was stolen years ago. Do you think you could -put your hand on it? - -_Mrs. Dale (taking a small shabby book from the table at her side)_. -It's here. - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. May I have it? Ah, thanks. This is _very_ -interesting. The last copy sold in London for 40, and they tell me the -next will fetch twice as much. It's quite _introuvable_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I know that. _(A pause. She takes the book from him, -opens it, and reads, half to herself--)_ - - _How much we two have seen together, - Of other eyes unwist, - Dear as in days of leafless weather - The willow's saffron mist, - - Strange as the hour when Hesper swings - A-sea in beryl green, - While overhead on dalliant wings - The daylight hangs serene, - - And thrilling as a meteor's fall - Through depths of lonely sky, - When each to each two watchers call: - I saw it!--So did I._ - -_Ventnor_. Thin, thin--the troubadour tinkle. Odd how little promise -there is in first volumes! - -_Mrs. Dale (with irresistible emphasis)_. I thought there was a -distinct promise in this! - -_Ventnor (seeing his mistake)_. Ah--the one you would never let me -fulfil? _(Sentimentally.)_ How inexorable you were! You never -dedicated a book to _me_. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I hadn't begun to write when we were--dedicating things -to each other. - -_Ventnor_. Not for the public--but you wrote for me; and, wonderful as -you are, you've never written anything since that I care for half as much -as-- - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Well? - -_Ventnor_. Your letters. - -_Mrs. Dale (in a changed voice)_. My letters--do you remember them? - -_Ventnor_. When I don't, I reread them. - -_Mrs. Dale (incredulous)_. You have them still? - -_Ventnor (unguardedly)_. You haven't mine, then? - -_Mrs. Dale (playfully)_. Oh, you were a celebrity already. Of course I -kept them! _(Smiling.)_ Think what they are worth now! I always keep -them locked up in my safe over there. _(She indicates a cabinet.) - -Ventnor (after a pause)_. I always carry yours with me. - -_Mrs. Dale (laughing)_. You-- - -_Ventnor_. Wherever I go. _(A longer pause. She looks at him -fixedly.)_ I have them with me now. - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. You--have them with you--now? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. Why not? One never knows-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. Never knows--? - -_Ventnor (humorously)_. Gad--when the bank-examiner may come round. -You forget I'm a married man. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah--yes. - -_Ventnor (sits down beside her)_. I speak to you as I couldn't to -anyone else--without deserving a kicking. You know how it all came about. -_(A pause.)_ You'll bear witness that it wasn't till you denied me all -hope-- - -_Mrs. Dale (a little breathless)_. Yes, yes-- - -_Ventnor_. Till you sent me from you-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's so easy to be heroic when one is young! One doesn't -realize how long life is going to last afterward. _(Musing.)_ Nor what -weary work it is gathering up the fragments. - -_Ventnor_. But the time comes when one sends for the china-mender, and -has the bits riveted together, and turns the cracked side to the wall-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. And denies that the article was ever damaged? - -_Ventnor_. Eh? Well, the great thing, you see, is to keep one's self -out of reach of the housemaid's brush. _(A pause.)_ If you're married -you can't--always. _(Smiling.)_ Don't you hate to be taken down and -dusted? - -_Mrs. Dale (with intention)_. You forget how long ago my husband died. -It's fifteen years since I've been an object of interest to anybody but the -public. - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The only one of your admirers to whom you've ever -given the least encouragement! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Say rather the most easily pleased! - -_Ventnor_. Or the only one you cared to please? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, you _haven't_ kept my letters! - -_Ventnor (gravely)_. Is that a challenge? Look here, then! _(He -drams a packet from his pocket and holds it out to her.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (taking the packet and looking at him earnestly)_. Why have -you brought me these? - -_Ventnor_. I didn't bring them; they came because I came--that's all. -_(Tentatively.)_ Are we unwelcome? - -_Mrs. Dale (who has undone the packet and does not appear to hear -him)_. The very first I ever wrote you--the day after we met at the -concert. How on earth did you happen to keep it? _(She glances over -it.)_ How perfectly absurd! Well, it's not a compromising document. - -_Ventnor_. I'm afraid none of them are. - -_Mrs. Dale (quickly)_. Is it to that they owe their immunity? Because -one could leave them about like safety matches?--Ah, here's another I -remember--I wrote that the day after we went skating together for the first -time. _(She reads it slowly.)_ How odd! How very odd! - -_Ventnor_. What? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Why, it's the most curious thing--I had a letter of this -kind to do the other day, in the novel I'm at work on now--the letter of a -woman who is just--just beginning-- - -_Ventnor_. Yes--just beginning--? - -_Mrs. Dale_. And, do you know, I find the best phrase in it, the -phrase I somehow regarded as the fruit of--well, of all my subsequent -discoveries--is simply plagiarized, word for word, from this! - -_Ventnor (eagerly)_. I told you so! You were all there! - -_Mrs. Dale (critically)_. But the rest of it's poorly done--very -poorly. _(Reads the letter over.)_ H'm--I didn't know how to leave -off. It takes me forever to get out of the door. - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Perhaps I was there to prevent you! _(After a -pause.)_ I wonder what I said in return? - -_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Shall we look? _(She rises.)_ Shall -we--really? I have them all here, you know. _(She goes toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Ventnor (following her with repressed eagerness)_. Oh--all! - -_Mrs. Dale (throws open the door of the cabinet, revealing a number of -packets)_. Don't you believe me now? - -_Ventnor_. Good heavens! How I must have repeated myself! But then you -were so very deaf. - -_Mrs. Dale (takes out a packet and returns to her seat. Ventnor extends -an impatient hand for the letters)_. No--no; wait! I want to find your -answer to the one I was just reading. _(After a pause.)_ Here it -is--yes, I thought so! - -_Ventnor_. What did you think? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. I thought it was the one in which you -quoted _Epipsychidion_-- - -_Ventnor_. Mercy! Did I _quote_ things? I don't wonder you were -cruel. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, and here's the other--the one I--the one I didn't -answer--for a long time. Do you remember? - -_Ventnor (with emotion)_. Do I remember? I wrote it the morning after -we heard _Isolde_-- - -_Mrs. Dale (disappointed)_. No--no. _That_ wasn't the one I -didn't answer! Here--this is the one I mean. - -_Ventnor (takes it curiously)_. Ah--h'm--this is very like unrolling a -mummy--_(he glances at her)_--with a live grain of wheat in it, -perhaps?--Oh, by Jove! - -_Mrs. Dale_. What? - -_Ventnor_. Why, this is the one I made a sonnet out of afterward! By -Jove, I'd forgotten where that idea came from. You may know the lines -perhaps? They're in the fourth volume of my Complete Edition--It's the -thing beginning - - _Love came to me with unrelenting eyes--_ - -one of my best, I rather fancy. Of course, here it's very crudely put--the -values aren't brought out--ah! this touch is good though--very good. H'm, I -daresay there might be other material. _(He glances toward the -cabinet.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (drily)_. The live grain of wheat, as you said! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, well--my first harvest was sown on rocky -ground--_now_ I plant for the fowls of the air. _(Rising and walking -toward the cabinet.)_ When can I come and carry off all this rubbish? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Carry it off? - -_Ventnor (embarrassed)_. My dear lady, surely between you and me -explicitness is a burden. You must see that these letters of ours can't be -left to take their chance like an ordinary correspondence--you said -yourself we were public property. - -_Mrs. Dale_. To take their chance? Do you suppose that, in my keeping, -your letters take any chances? _(Suddenly.)_ Do mine--in yours? - -_Ventnor (still more embarrassed)_. Helen--! _(He takes a turn -through the room.)_ You force me to remind you that you and I are -differently situated--that in a moment of madness I sacrificed the only -right you ever gave me--the right to love you better than any other -woman in the world. _(A pause. She says nothing and he continues, with -increasing difficulty--)_ You asked me just now why I carried your -letters about with me--kept them, literally, in my own hands. Well, suppose -it's to be sure of their not falling into some one else's? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh! - -_Ventnor (throws himself into a chair)_. For God's sake don't pity me! - -_Mrs. Dale (after a long pause)_. Am I dull--or are you trying to say -that you want to give me back my letters? - -_Ventnor (starting up)_. I? Give you back--? God forbid! Your letters? -Not for the world! The only thing I have left! But you can't dream that in -_my_ hands-- - -_Mrs. Dale (suddenly)_. You want yours, then? - -_Ventnor (repressing his eagerness)_. My dear friend, if I'd ever -dreamed that you'd kept them--? - -_Mrs. Dale (accusingly)_. You _do_ want them. _(A pause. He -makes a deprecatory gesture.)_ Why should they be less safe with me than -mine with you? _I_ never forfeited the right to keep them. - -_Ventnor (after another pause)_. It's compensation enough, almost, -to have you reproach me! _(He moves nearer to her, but she makes no -response.)_ You forget that I've forfeited _all_ my rights--even -that of letting you keep my letters. - -_Mrs. Dale_. You _do_ want them! _(She rises, throws all the -letters into the cabinet, locks the door and puts the key in her -pocket.)_ There's my answer. - -_Ventnor_. Helen--! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, I paid dearly enough for the right to keep them, and -I mean to! _(She turns to him passionately.)_ Have you ever asked -yourself how I paid for it? With what months and years of solitude, what -indifference to flattery, what resistance to affection?--Oh, don't smile -because I said affection, and not love. Affection's a warm cloak in cold -weather; and I _have_ been cold; and I shall keep on growing colder! -Don't talk to me about living in the hearts of my readers! We both know -what kind of a domicile that is. Why, before long I shall become a classic! -Bound in sets and kept on the top book-shelf--brr, doesn't that sound -freezing? I foresee the day when I shall be as lonely as an Etruscan -museum! _(She breaks into a laugh.)_ That's what I've paid for the -right to keep your letters. _(She holds out her hand.)_ And now give -me mine. - -_Ventnor_. Yours? - -_Mrs. Dale (haughtily)_. Yes; I claim them. - -_Ventnor (in the same tone)_. On what ground? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Hear the man!--Because I wrote them, of course. - -_Ventnor_. But it seems to me that--under your inspiration, I admit--I -also wrote mine. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I don't dispute their authenticity--it's yours I -deny! - -_Ventnor_. Mine? - -_Mrs. Dale_. You voluntarily ceased to be the man who wrote me those -letters--you've admitted as much. You traded paper for flesh and blood. I -don't dispute your wisdom--only you must hold to your bargain! The letters -are all mine. - -_Ventnor (groping between two tones)_. Your arguments are as -convincing as ever. _(He hazards a faint laugh.)_ You're a marvellous -dialectician--but, if we're going to settle the matter in the spirit of an -arbitration treaty, why, there are accepted conventions in such cases. It's -an odious way to put it, but since you won't help me, one of them is-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. One of them is--? - -_Ventnor_. That it is usual--that technically, I mean, the -letter--belongs to its writer-- - -_Mrs. Dale (after a pause)_. Such letters as _these_? - -_Ventnor_. Such letters especially-- - -_Mrs. Dale_. But you couldn't have written them if I hadn't--been -willing to read them. Surely there's more of myself in them than of you. - -_Ventnor_. Surely there's nothing in which a man puts more of himself -than in his love-letters! - -_Mrs. Dale (with emotion)_. But a woman's love-letters are like her child. -They belong to her more than to anybody else-- - -_Ventnor_. And a man's? - -_Mrs. Dale (with sudden violence)_. Are all he risks!--There, take -them. _(She flings the key of the cabinet at his feet and sinks into a -chair.) - -Ventnor (starts as though to pick up the key; then approaches and bends -over her)_. Helen--oh, Helen! - -_Mrs. Dale (she yields her hands to him, murmuring:)_ Paul! -_(Suddenly she straightens herself and draws back illuminated.)_ What -a fool I am! I see it all now. You want them for your memoirs! - -_Ventnor (disconcerted)_. Helen-- - -_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. Come, come--the rule is to unmask when the -signal's given! You want them for your memoirs. - -_Ventnor (with a forced laugh)_. What makes you think so? - -_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. Because _I_ want them for mine! - -_Ventnor (in a changed tone)_. Ah--. _(He moves away from her and -leans against the mantelpiece. She remains seated, with her eyes fixed on -him.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale_. I wonder I didn't see it sooner. Your reasons were lame -enough. - -_Ventnor (ironically)_. Yours were masterly. You're the more -accomplished actor of the two. I was completely deceived. - -_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, I'm a novelist. I can keep up that sort of thing for -five hundred pages! - -_Ventnor_. I congratulate you. _(A pause.)_ - -_Mrs. Dale (moving to her seat behind the tea-table)_. I've never -offered you any tea. _(She bends over the kettle.)_ Why don't you take -your letters? - -_Ventnor_. Because you've been clever enough to make it impossible for -me. _(He picks up the key and hands it to her. Then abruptly)_--Was it -all acting--just now? - -_Mrs. Dale_. By what right do you ask? - -_Ventnor_. By right of renouncing my claim to my letters. Keep -them--and tell me. - -_Mrs. Dale_. I give you back your claim--and I refuse to tell you. - -_Ventnor (sadly)_. Ah, Helen, if you deceived me, you deceived -yourself also. - -_Mrs. Dale_. What does it matter, now that we're both undeceived? I -played a losing game, that's all. - -_Ventnor_. Why losing--since all the letters are yours? - -_Mrs. Dale_. The letters? _(Slowly.)_ I'd forgotten the letters-- - -_Ventnor (exultant)_. Ah, I knew you'd end by telling me the truth! - -_Mrs. Dale_. The truth? Where _is_ the truth? _(Half to -herself.)_ I thought I was lying when I began--but the lies turned into -truth as I uttered them! _(She looks at Ventnor.)_ I _did_ want -your letters for my memoirs--I _did_ think I'd kept them for that -purpose--and I wanted to get mine back for the same reason--but now _(she -puts out her hand and picks up some of her letters, which are lying -scattered on the table near her)_--how fresh they seem, and how they -take me back to the time when we lived instead of writing about life! - -_Ventnor (smiling)_. The time when we didn't prepare our impromptu -effects beforehand and copyright our remarks about the weather! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Or keep our epigrams in cold storage and our adjectives -under lock and key! - -_Ventnor_. When our emotions weren't worth ten cents a word, and a -signature wasn't an autograph. Ah, Helen, after all, there's nothing like -the exhilaration of spending one's capital! - -_Mrs. Dale_. Of wasting it, you mean. _(She points to the -letters.)_ Do you suppose we could have written a word of these if we'd -known we were putting our dreams out at interest? _(She sits musing, with -her eyes on the fire, and he watches her in silence.)_ Paul, do you -remember the deserted garden we sometimes used to walk in? - -_Ventnor_. The old garden with the high wall at the end of the village -street? The garden with the ruined box-borders and the broken-down arbor? -Why, I remember every weed in the paths and every patch of moss on the -walls! - -_Mrs. Dale._ Well--I went back there the other day. The village is -immensely improved. There's a new hotel with gas-fires, and a trolley in -the main street; and the garden has been turned into a public park, where -excursionists sit on cast-iron benches admiring the statue of an -Abolitionist. - -_Ventnor_. An Abolitionist--how appropriate! - -_Mrs. Dale_. And the man who sold the garden has made a fortune that -he doesn't know how to spend-- - -_Ventnor (rising impulsively)_. Helen, _(he approaches and lays his -hand on her letters)_, let's sacrifice our fortune and keep the -excursionists out! - -_Mrs. Dale (with a responsive movement)_. Paul, do you really mean it? - -_Ventnor (gayly)_. Mean it? Why, I feel like a landed proprietor -already! It's more than a garden--it's a park. - -_Mrs. Dale_. It's more than a park, it's a world--as long as we keep -it to ourselves! - -_Ventnor_. Ah, yes--even the pyramids look small when one sees a -Cook's tourist on top of them! _(He takes the key from the table, unlocks -the cabinet and brings out his letters, which he lays beside hers.)_ -Shall we burn the key to our garden? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, then it will indeed be boundless! _(Watching him -while he throws the letters into the fire.)_ - -_Ventnor (turning back to her with a half-sad smile)_. But not too big -for us to find each other in? - -_Mrs. Dale_. Since we shall be the only people there! _(He takes -both her hands and they look at each other a moment in silence. Then he -goes out by the door to the right. As he reaches the door she takes a step -toward him, impulsively; then turning back she leans against the -chimney-piece, quietly watching the letters burn.)_ - - - - -THE REMBRANDT - - -"You're _so_ artistic," my cousin Eleanor Copt began. - -Of all Eleanor's exordiums it is the one I most dread. When she tells me -I'm so clever I know this is merely the preamble to inviting me to meet the -last literary obscurity of the moment: a trial to be evaded or endured, as -circumstances dictate; whereas her calling me artistic fatally connotes -the request to visit, in her company, some distressed gentlewoman whose -future hangs on my valuation of her old Saxe or of her grandfather's -Marc Antonios. Time was when I attempted to resist these compulsions of -Eleanor's; but I soon learned that, short of actual flight, there was -no refuge from her beneficent despotism. It is not always easy for the -curator of a museum to abandon his post on the plea of escaping a pretty -cousin's importunities; and Eleanor, aware of my predicament, is none -too magnanimous to take advantage of it. Magnanimity is, in fact, not in -Eleanor's line. The virtues, she once explained to me, are like bonnets: -the very ones that look best on other people may not happen to suit one's -own particular style; and she added, with a slight deflection of metaphor, -that none of the ready-made virtues ever _had_ fitted her: they all -pinched somewhere, and she'd given up trying to wear them. - -Therefore when she said to me, "You're _so_ artistic." emphasizing the -conjunction with a tap of her dripping umbrella (Eleanor is out in all -weathers: the elements are as powerless against her as man), I merely -stipulated, "It's not old Saxe again?" - -She shook her head reassuringly. "A picture--a Rembrandt!" - -"Good Lord! Why not a Leonardo?" - -"Well"--she smiled--"that, of course, depends on _you_." - -"On me?" - -"On your attribution. I dare say Mrs. Fontage would consent to the -change--though she's very conservative." - -A gleam of hope came to me and I pronounced: "One can't judge of a picture -in this weather." - -"Of course not. I'm coming for you to-morrow." - -"I've an engagement to-morrow." - -"I'll come before or after your engagement." - -The afternoon paper lay at my elbow and I contrived a furtive consultation -of the weather-report. It said "Rain to-morrow," and I answered briskly: -"All right, then; come at ten"--rapidly calculating that the clouds on -which I counted might lift by noon. - -My ingenuity failed of its due reward; for the heavens, as if in league -with my cousin, emptied themselves before morning, and punctually at ten -Eleanor and the sun appeared together in my office. - -I hardly listened, as we descended the Museum steps and got into Eleanor's -hansom, to her vivid summing-up of the case. I guessed beforehand that the -lady we were about to visit had lapsed by the most distressful degrees from -opulence to a "hall-bedroom"; that her grandfather, if he had not been -Minister to France, had signed the Declaration of Independence; that the -Rembrandt was an heirloom, sole remnant of disbanded treasures; that for -years its possessor had been unwilling to part with it, and that even now -the question of its disposal must be approached with the most diplomatic -obliquity. - -Previous experience had taught me that all Eleanor's "cases" presented a -harrowing similarity of detail. No circumstance tending to excite the -spectator's sympathy and involve his action was omitted from the history of -her beneficiaries; the lights and shades were indeed so skilfully adjusted -that any impartial expression of opinion took on the hue of cruelty. I -could have produced closetfuls of "heirlooms" in attestation of this fact; -for it is one more mark of Eleanor's competence that her friends usually -pay the interest on her philanthropy. My one hope was that in this case the -object, being a picture, might reasonably be rated beyond my means; and -as our cab drew up before a blistered brown-stone door-step I formed the -self-defensive resolve to place an extreme valuation on Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt. It is Eleanor's fault if she is sometimes fought with her own -weapons. - -The house stood in one of those shabby provisional-looking New York streets -that seem resignedly awaiting demolition. It was the kind of house that, -in its high days, must have had a bow-window with a bronze in it. The -bow-window had been replaced by a plumber's _devanture_, and one might -conceive the bronze to have gravitated to the limbo where Mexican onyx -tables and bric-a-brac in buffalo-horn await the first signs of our next -aesthetic reaction. - -Eleanor swept me through a hall that smelled of poverty, up unlit stairs to -a bare slit of a room. "And she must leave this in a month!" she whispered -across her knock. - -I had prepared myself for the limp widow's weed of a woman that one figures -in such a setting; and confronted abruptly with Mrs. Fontage's white-haired -erectness I had the disconcerting sense that I was somehow in her presence -at my own solicitation. I instinctively charged Eleanor with this reversal -of the situation; but a moment later I saw it must be ascribed to a -something about Mrs. Fontage that precluded the possibility of her asking -any one a favor. It was not that she was of forbidding, or even majestic, -demeanor; but that one guessed, under her aquiline prettiness, a dignity -nervously on guard against the petty betrayal of her surroundings. The -room was unconcealably poor: the little faded "relics," the high-stocked -ancestral silhouettes, the steel-engravings after Raphael and Correggio, -grouped in a vain attempt to hide the most obvious stains on the -wall-paper, served only to accentuate the contrast of a past evidently -diversified by foreign travel and the enjoyment of the arts. Even Mrs. -Fontage's dress had the air of being a last expedient, the ultimate outcome -of a much-taxed ingenuity in darning and turning. One felt that all the -poor lady's barriers were falling save that of her impregnable manner. - -To this manner I found myself conveying my appreciation of being admitted -to a view of the Rembrandt. - -Mrs. Fontage's smile took my homage for granted. "It is always," she -conceded, "a privilege to be in the presence of the great masters." Her -slim wrinkled hand waved me to a dusky canvas near the window. - -"It's _so_ interesting, dear Mrs. Fontage," I heard Eleanor -exclaiming, "and my cousin will be able to tell you exactly--" Eleanor, in -my presence, always admits that she knows nothing about art; but she gives -the impression that this is merely because she hasn't had time to look into -the matter--and has had me to do it for her. - -Mrs. Fontage seated herself without speaking, as though fearful that a -breath might disturb my communion with the masterpiece. I felt that she -thought Eleanor's reassuring ejaculations ill-timed; and in this I was of -one mind with her; for the impossibility of telling her exactly what I -thought of her Rembrandt had become clear to me at a glance. - -My cousin's vivacities began to languish and the silence seemed to shape -itself into a receptacle for my verdict. I stepped back, affecting a more -distant scrutiny; and as I did so my eye caught Mrs. Fontage's profile. Her -lids trembled slightly. I took refuge in the familiar expedient of asking -the history of the picture, and she waved me brightly to a seat. - -This was indeed a topic on which she could dilate. The Rembrandt, it -appeared, had come into Mr. Fontage's possession many years ago, while -the young couple were on their wedding-tour, and under circumstances so -romantic that she made no excuse for relating them in all their parenthetic -fulness. The picture belonged to an old Belgian Countess of redundant -quarterings, whom the extravagances of an ungovernable nephew had compelled -to part with her possessions (in the most private manner) about the time of -the Fontages' arrival. By a really remarkable coincidence, it happened that -their courier (an exceptionally intelligent and superior man) was an old -servant of the Countess's, and had thus been able to put them in the way of -securing the Rembrandt under the very nose of an English Duke, whose agent -had been sent to Brussels to negotiate for its purchase. Mrs. Fontage could -not recall the Duke's name, but he was a great collector and had a famous -Highland castle, where somebody had been murdered, and which she herself -had visited (by moonlight) when she had travelled in Scotland as a girl. -The episode had in short been one of the most interesting "experiences" of -a tour almost chromo-lithographic in vivacity of impression; and they had -always meant to go back to Brussels for the sake of reliving so picturesque -a moment. Circumstances (of which the narrator's surroundings declared the -nature) had persistently interfered with the projected return to Europe, -and the picture had grown doubly valuable as representing the high-water -mark of their artistic emotions. Mrs. Fontage's moist eye caressed the -canvas. "There is only," she added with a perceptible effort, "one slight -drawback: the picture is not signed. But for that the Countess, of course, -would have sold it to a museum. All the connoisseurs who have seen it -pronounce it an undoubted Rembrandt, in the artist's best manner; but the -museums"--she arched her brows in smiling recognition of a well-known -weakness--"give the preference to signed examples--" - -Mrs. Fontage's words evoked so touching a vision of the young tourists of -fifty years ago, entrusting to an accomplished and versatile courier the -direction of their helpless zeal for art, that I lost sight for a moment -of the point at issue. The old Belgian Countess, the wealthy Duke with a -feudal castle in Scotland, Mrs. Fontage's own maiden pilgrimage to Arthur's -Seat and Holyrood, all the accessories of the naf transaction, seemed -a part of that vanished Europe to which our young race carried its -indiscriminate ardors, its tender romantic credulity: the legendary -castellated Europe of keepsakes, brigands and old masters, that -compensated, by one such "experience" as Mrs. Fontage's, for an after-life -of aesthetic privation. - -I was restored to the present by Eleanor's looking at her watch. The action -mutely conveyed that something was expected of me. I risked the temporizing -statement that the picture was very interesting; but Mrs. Fontage's polite -assent revealed the poverty of the expedient. Eleanor's impatience -overflowed. - -"You would like my cousin to give you an idea of its value?" she suggested. - -Mrs. Fontage grew more erect. "No one," she corrected with great -gentleness, "can know its value quite as well as I, who live with it--" - -We murmured our hasty concurrence. - -"But it might be interesting to hear"--she addressed herself to me--"as a -mere matter of curiosity--what estimate would be put on it from the purely -commercial point of view--if such a term may be used in speaking of a work -of art." - -I sounded a note of deprecation. - -"Oh, I understand, of course," she delicately anticipated me, "that that -could never be _your_ view, your personal view; but since occasions -_may_ arise--do arise--when it becomes necessary to--to put a price on -the priceless, as it were--I have thought--Miss Copt has suggested--" - -"Some day," Eleanor encouraged her, "you might feel that the picture ought -to belong to some one who has more--more opportunity of showing it--letting -it be seen by the public--for educational reasons--" - -"I have tried," Mrs. Fontage admitted, "to see it in that light." - -The crucial moment was upon me. To escape the challenge of Mrs. Fontage's -brilliant composure I turned once more to the picture. If my courage needed -reinforcement, the picture amply furnished it. Looking at that lamentable -canvas seemed the surest way of gathering strength to denounce it; but -behind me, all the while, I felt Mrs. Fontage's shuddering pride drawn -up in a final effort of self-defense. I hated myself for my sentimental -perversion of the situation. Reason argued that it was more cruel to -deceive Mrs. Fontage than to tell her the truth; but that merely proved the -inferiority of reason to instinct in situations involving any concession to -the emotions. Along with her faith in the Rembrandt I must destroy not only -the whole fabric of Mrs. Fontage's past, but even that lifelong habit of -acquiescence in untested formulas that makes the best part of the average -feminine strength. I guessed the episode of the picture to be inextricably -interwoven with the traditions and convictions which served to veil Mrs. -Fontage's destitution not only from others but from herself. Viewed in -that light the Rembrandt had perhaps been worth its purchase-money; and I -regretted that works of art do not commonly sell on the merit of the moral -support they may have rendered. - -From this unavailing flight I was recalled by the sense that something -must be done. To place a fictitious value on the picture was at best a -provisional measure; while the brutal alternative of advising Mrs. Fontage -to sell it for a hundred dollars at least afforded an opening to the -charitably disposed purchaser. I intended, if other resources failed, -to put myself forward in that light; but delicacy of course forbade my -coupling my unflattering estimate of the Rembrandt with an immediate offer -to buy it. All I could do was to inflict the wound: the healing unguent -must be withheld for later application. - -I turned to Mrs. Fontage, who sat motionless, her finely-lined cheeks -touched with an expectant color, her eyes averted from the picture which -was so evidently the one object they beheld. - -"My dear madam--" I began. Her vivid smile was like a light held up to -dazzle me. It shrouded every alternative in darkness and I had the flurried -sense of having lost my way among the intricacies of my contention. Of -a sudden I felt the hopelessness of finding a crack in her impenetrable -conviction. My words slipped from me like broken weapons. "The picture," -I faltered, "would of course be worth more if it were signed. As it is, -I--I hardly think--on a conservative estimate--it can be valued at--at -more--than--a thousand dollars, say--" - -My deflected argument ran on somewhat aimlessly till it found itself -plunging full tilt against the barrier of Mrs. Fontage's silence. She sat -as impassive as though I had not spoken. Eleanor loosed a few fluttering -words of congratulation and encouragement, but their flight was suddenly -cut short. Mrs. Fontage had risen with a certain solemnity. - -"I could never," she said gently--her gentleness was adamantine--"under any -circumstances whatever, consider, for a moment even, the possibility of -parting with the picture at such a price." - - -II - -Within three weeks a tremulous note from Mrs. Fontage requested the favor -of another visit. If the writing was tremulous, however, the writer's tone -was firm. She named her own day and hour, without the conventional -reference to her visitor's convenience. - -My first impulse was to turn the note over to Eleanor. I had acquitted -myself of my share in the ungrateful business of coming to Mrs. Fontage's -aid, and if, as her letter denoted, she had now yielded to the closer -pressure of need, the business of finding a purchaser for the Rembrandt -might well be left to my cousin's ingenuity. But here conscience put in -the uncomfortable reminder that it was I who, in putting a price on the -picture, had raised the real obstacle in the way of Mrs. Fontage's rescue. -No one would give a thousand dollars for the Rembrandt; but to tell -Mrs. Fontage so had become as unthinkable as murder. I had, in fact, on -returning from my first inspection of the picture, refrained from imparting -to Eleanor my opinion of its value. Eleanor is porous, and I knew that -sooner or later the unnecessary truth would exude through the loose texture -of her dissimulation. Not infrequently she thus creates the misery she -alleviates; and I have sometimes suspected her of paining people in order -that she might be sorry for them. I had, at all events, cut off retreat in -Eleanor's direction; and the remaining alternative carried me straight to -Mrs. Fontage. - -She received me with the same commanding sweetness. The room was even barer -than before--I believe the carpet was gone--but her manner built up about -her a palace to which I was welcomed with high state; and it was as a mere -incident of the ceremony that I was presently made aware of her decision to -sell the Rembrandt. My previous unsuccess in planning how to deal with Mrs. -Fontage had warned me to leave my farther course to chance; and I listened -to her explanation with complete detachment. She had resolved to travel for -her health; her doctor advised it, and as her absence might be indefinitely -prolonged she had reluctantly decided to part with the picture in order -to avoid the expense of storage and insurance. Her voice drooped at the -admission, and she hurried on, detailing the vague itinerary of a journey -that was to combine long-promised visits to impatient friends with various -"interesting opportunities" less definitely specified. The poor lady's -skill in rearing a screen of verbiage about her enforced avowal had -distracted me from my own share in the situation, and it was with dismay -that I suddenly caught the drift of her assumptions. She expected me to -buy the Rembrandt for the Museum; she had taken my previous valuation as a -tentative bid, and when I came to my senses she was in the act of accepting -my offer. - -Had I had a thousand dollars of my own to dispose of, the bargain would -have been concluded on the spot; but I was in the impossible position of -being materially unable to buy the picture and morally unable to tell her -that it was not worth acquiring for the Museum. - -I dashed into the first evasion in sight. I had no authority, I explained, -to purchase pictures for the Museum without the consent of the committee. - -Mrs. Fontage coped for a moment in silence with the incredible fact -that I had rejected her offer; then she ventured, with a kind of pale -precipitation: "But I understood--Miss Copt tells me that you practically -decide such matters for the committee." I could guess what the effort had -cost her. - -"My cousin is given to generalizations. My opinion may have some weight -with the committee--" - -"Well, then--" she timidly prompted. - -"For that very reason I can't buy the picture." - -She said, with a drooping note, "I don't understand." - -"Yet you told me," I reminded her, "that you knew museums didn't buy -unsigned pictures." - -"Not for what they are worth! Every one knows that. But I--I -understood--the price you named--" Her pride shuddered back from the -abasement. "It's a misunderstanding then," she faltered. - -To avoid looking at her, I glanced desperately at the Rembrandt. Could -I--? But reason rejected the possibility. Even if the committee had been -blind--and they all _were_ but Crozier--I simply shouldn't have dared -to do it. I stood up, feeling that to cut the matter short was the only -alleviation within reach. - -Mrs. Fontage had summoned her indomitable smile; but its brilliancy -dropped, as I opened the door, like a candle blown out by a draught. - -"If there's any one else--if you knew any one who would care to see the -picture, I should be most happy--" She kept her eyes on me, and I saw that, -in her case, it hurt less than to look at the Rembrandt. "I shall have to -leave here, you know," she panted, "if nobody cares to have it--" - - -III - -That evening at my club I had just succeeded in losing sight of Mrs. -Fontage in the fumes of an excellent cigar, when a voice at my elbow evoked -her harassing image. - -"I want to talk to you," the speaker said, "about Mrs. Fontage's -Rembrandt." - -"There isn't any," I was about to growl; but looking up I recognized the -confiding countenance of Mr. Jefferson Rose. - -Mr. Rose was known to me chiefly as a young man suffused with a vague -enthusiasm for Virtue and my cousin Eleanor. - -One glance at his glossy exterior conveyed the assurance that his morals -were as immaculate as his complexion and his linen. Goodness exuded from -his moist eye, his liquid voice, the warm damp pressure of his trustful -hand. He had always struck me as one of the most uncomplicated organisms -I had ever met. His ideas were as simple and inconsecutive as the -propositions in a primer, and he spoke slowly, with a kind of uniformity -of emphasis that made his words stand out like the raised type for the -blind. An obvious incapacity for abstract conceptions made him peculiarly -susceptible to the magic of generalization, and one felt he would have been -at the mercy of any Cause that spelled itself with a capital letter. It was -hard to explain how, with such a superabundance of merit, he managed to be -a good fellow: I can only say that he performed the astonishing feat as -naturally as he supported an invalid mother and two sisters on the slender -salary of a banker's clerk. He sat down beside me with an air of bright -expectancy. - -"It's a remarkable picture, isn't it?" he said. - -"You've seen it?" - -"I've been so fortunate. Miss Copt was kind enough to get Mrs. Fontage's -permission; we went this afternoon." I inwardly wished that Eleanor -had selected another victim; unless indeed the visit were part of a -plan whereby some third person, better equipped for the cultivation of -delusions, was to be made to think the Rembrandt remarkable. Knowing the -limitations of Mr. Rose's resources I began to wonder if he had any rich -aunts. - -"And her buying it in that way, too," he went on with his limpid smile, -"from that old Countess in Brussels, makes it all the more interesting, -doesn't it? Miss Copt tells me it's very seldom old pictures can be traced -back for more than a generation. I suppose the fact of Mrs. Fontage's -knowing its history must add a good deal to its value?" - -Uncertain as to his drift, I said: "In her eyes it certainly appears to." - -Implications are lost on Mr. Rose, who glowingly continued: "That's the -reason why I wanted to talk to you about it--to consult you. Miss Copt -tells me you value it at a thousand dollars." - -There was no denying this, and I grunted a reluctant assent. - -"Of course," he went on earnestly, "your valuation is based on the fact -that the picture isn't signed--Mrs. Fontage explained that; and it does -make a difference, certainly. But the thing is--if the picture's really -good--ought one to take advantage--? I mean--one can see that Mrs. Fontage -is in a tight place, and I wouldn't for the world--" - -My astonished stare arrested him. - -"_You_ wouldn't--?" - -"I mean--you see, it's just this way"; he coughed and blushed: "I can't -give more than a thousand dollars myself--it's as big a sum as I can manage -to scrape together--but before I make the offer I want to be sure I'm not -standing in the way of her getting more money." - -My astonishment lapsed to dismay. "You're going to buy the picture for a -thousand dollars?" - -His blush deepened. "Why, yes. It sounds rather absurd, I suppose. It isn't -much in my line, of course. I can see the picture's very beautiful, but I'm -no judge--it isn't the kind of thing, naturally, that I could afford to go -in for; but in this case I'm very glad to do what I can; the circumstances -are so distressing; and knowing what you think of the picture I feel it's a -pretty safe investment--" - -"I don't think!" I blurted out. - -"You--?" - -"I don't think the picture's worth a thousand dollars; I don't think it's -worth ten cents; I simply lied about it, that's all." - -Mr. Rose looked as frightened as though I had charged him with the offense. - -"Hang it, man, can't you see how it happened? I saw the poor woman's pride -and happiness hung on her faith in that picture. I tried to make her -understand that it was worthless--but she wouldn't; I tried to tell her -so--but I couldn't. I behaved like a maudlin ass, but you shan't pay for my -infernal bungling--you mustn't buy the picture!" - -Mr. Rose sat silent, tapping one glossy boot-tip with another. Suddenly he -turned on me a glance of stored intelligence. "But you know," he said -good-humoredly, "I rather think I must." - -"You haven't--already?" - -"Oh, no; the offer's not made." - -"Well, then--" - -His look gathered a brighter significance. - -"But if the picture's worth nothing, nobody will buy it--" - -I groaned. - -"Except," he continued, "some fellow like me, who doesn't know anything. -_I_ think it's lovely, you know; I mean to hang it in my mother's -sitting-room." He rose and clasped my hand in his adhesive pressure. "I'm -awfully obliged to you for telling me this; but perhaps you won't mind my -asking you not to mention our talk to Miss Copt? It might bother her, you -know, to think the picture isn't exactly up to the mark; and it won't make -a rap of difference to me." - - -IV - -Mr. Rose left me to a sleepless night. The next morning my resolve was -formed, and it carried me straight to Mrs. Fontage's. She answered my knock -by stepping out on the landing, and as she shut the door behind her I -caught a glimpse of her devastated interior. She mentioned, with a careful -avoidance of the note of pathos on which our last conversation had closed, -that she was preparing to leave that afternoon; and the trunks obstructing -the threshold showed that her preparations were nearly complete. They were, -I felt certain, the same trunks that, strapped behind a rattling vettura, -had accompanied the bride and groom on that memorable voyage of discovery -of which the booty had till recently adorned her walls; and there was a -dim consolation in the thought that those early "finds" in coral and Swiss -wood-carving, in lava and alabaster, still lay behind the worn locks, in -the security of worthlessness. - -Mrs. Fontage, on the landing, among her strapped and corded treasures, -maintained the same air of stability that made it impossible, even under -such conditions, to regard her flight as anything less dignified than -a departure. It was the moral support of what she tacitly assumed that -enabled me to set forth with proper deliberation the object of my visit; -and she received my announcement with an absence of surprise that struck -me as the very flower of tact. Under cover of these mutual assumptions the -transaction was rapidly concluded; and it was not till the canvas passed -into my hands that, as though the physical contact had unnerved her, -Mrs. Fontage suddenly faltered. "It's the giving it up--" she stammered, -disguising herself to the last; and I hastened away from the collapse of -her splendid effrontery. - -I need hardly point out that I had acted impulsively, and that reaction -from the most honorable impulses is sometimes attended by moral -perturbation. My motives had indeed been mixed enough to justify some -uneasiness, but this was allayed by the instinctive feeling that it is more -venial to defraud an institution than a man. Since Mrs. Fontage had to be -kept from starving by means not wholly defensible, it was better that the -obligation should be borne by a rich institution than an impecunious youth. -I doubt, in fact, if my scruples would have survived a night's sleep, had -they not been complicated by some uncertainty as to my own future. It was -true that, subject to the purely formal assent of the committee, I had -full power to buy for the Museum, and that the one member of the committee -likely to dispute my decision was opportunely travelling in Europe; but the -picture once in place I must face the risk of any expert criticism to which -chance might expose it. I dismissed this contingency for future study, -stored the Rembrandt in the cellar of the Museum, and thanked heaven that -Crozier was abroad. - -Six months later he strolled into my office. I had just concluded, under -conditions of exceptional difficulty, and on terms unexpectedly benign, -the purchase of the great Bartley Reynolds; and this circumstance, by -relegating the matter of the Rembrandt to a lower stratum of consciousness, -enabled me to welcome Crozier with unmixed pleasure. My security -was enhanced by his appearance. His smile was charged with amiable -reminiscences, and I inferred that his trip had put him in the humor -to approve of everything, or at least to ignore what fell short of his -approval. I had therefore no uneasiness in accepting his invitation to dine -that evening. It is always pleasant to dine with Crozier and never more so -than when he is just back from Europe. His conversation gives even the food -a flavor of the Caf Anglais. - -The repast was delightful, and it was not till we had finished a Camembert -which he must have brought over with him, that my host said, in a tone of -after-dinner perfunctoriness: "I see you've picked up a picture or two -since I left." - -I assented. "The Bartley Reynolds seemed too good an opportunity to miss, -especially as the French government was after it. I think we got it -cheap--" - -"_Connu, connu_" said Crozier pleasantly. "I know all about the -Reynolds. It was the biggest kind of a haul and I congratulate you. Best -stroke of business we've done yet. But tell me about the other picture--the -Rembrandt." - -"I never said it was a Rembrandt." I could hardly have said why, but I felt -distinctly annoyed with Crozier. - -"Of course not. There's 'Rembrandt' on the frame, but I saw you'd -modified it to 'Dutch School'; I apologize." He paused, but I offered no -explanation. "What about it?" he went on. "Where did you pick it up?" As -he leaned to the flame of the cigar-lighter his face seemed ruddy with -enjoyment. - -"I got it for a song," I said. - -"A thousand, I think?" - -"Have you seen it?" I asked abruptly. - -"Went over the place this afternoon and found it in the cellar. Why hasn't -it been hung, by the way?" - -I paused a moment. "I'm waiting--" - -"To--?" - -"To have it varnished." - -"Ah!" He leaned back and poured himself a second glass of Chartreuse. The -smile he confided to its golden depths provoked me to challenge him with-- - -"What do you think of it?" - -"The Rembrandt?" He lifted his eyes from the glass. "Just what you do." - -"It isn't a Rembrandt." - -"I apologize again. You call it, I believe, a picture of the same period?" - -"I'm uncertain of the period." - -"H'm." He glanced appreciatively along his cigar. "What are you certain -of?" - -"That it's a damned bad picture," I said savagely. - -He nodded. "Just so. That's all we wanted to know." - -"_We_?" - -"We--I--the committee, in short. You see, my dear fellow, if you hadn't -been certain it was a damned bad picture our position would have been a -little awkward. As it is, my remaining duty--I ought to explain that in -this matter I'm acting for the committee--is as simple as it's agreeable." - -"I'll be hanged," I burst out, "if I understand one word you're saying!" - -He fixed me with a kind of cruel joyousness. "You will--you will," he -assured me; "at least you'll begin to, when you hear that I've seen Miss -Copt." - -"Miss Copt?" - -"And that she has told me under what conditions the picture was bought." - -"She doesn't know anything about the conditions! That is," I added, -hastening to restrict the assertion, "she doesn't know my opinion of the -picture." I thirsted for five minutes with Eleanor. - -"Are you quite sure?" Crozier took me up. "Mr. Jefferson Rose does." - -"Ah--I see." - -"I thought you would," he reminded me. "As soon as I'd laid eyes on -the Rembrandt--I beg your pardon!--I saw that it--well, required some -explanation." - -"You might have come to me." - -"I meant to; but I happened to meet Miss Copt, whose encyclopdic -information has often before been of service to me. I always go to Miss -Copt when I want to look up anything; and I found she knew all about the -Rembrandt." - -"_All_?" - -"Precisely. The knowledge was in fact causing her sleepless nights. Mr. -Rose, who was suffering from the same form of insomnia, had taken her into -his confidence, and she--ultimately--took me into hers." - -"Of course!" - -"I must ask you to do your cousin justice. She didn't speak till it became -evident to her uncommonly quick perceptions that your buying the picture on -its merits would have been infinitely worse for--for everybody--than your -diverting a small portion of the Museum's funds to philanthropic uses. Then -she told me the moving incident of Mr. Rose. Good fellow, Rose. And the -old lady's case was desperate. Somebody had to buy that picture." I moved -uneasily in my seat "Wait a moment, will you? I haven't finished my cigar. -There's a little head of Il Fiammingo's that you haven't seen, by the way; -I picked it up the other day in Parma. We'll go in and have a look at it -presently. But meanwhile what I want to say is that I've been charged--in -the most informal way--to express to you the committee's appreciation of -your admirable promptness and energy in capturing the Bartley Reynolds. We -shouldn't have got it at all if you hadn't been uncommonly wide-awake, and -to get it at such a price is a double triumph. We'd have thought nothing of -a few more thousands--" - -"I don't see," I impatiently interposed, "that, as far as I'm concerned, -that alters the case." - -"The case--?" - -"Of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. I bought the picture because, as you say, the -situation was desperate, and I couldn't raise a thousand myself. What I did -was of course indefensible; but the money shall be refunded tomorrow--" - -Crozier raised a protesting hand. "Don't interrupt me when I'm talking ex -cathedra. The money's been refunded already. The fact is, the Museum has -sold the Rembrandt." - -I stared at him wildly. "Sold it? To whom?" - -"Why--to the committee.--Hold on a bit, please.--Won't you take another -cigar? Then perhaps I can finish what I've got to say.--Why, my dear -fellow, the committee's under an obligation to you--that's the way we look -at it. I've investigated Mrs. Fontage's case, and--well, the picture had to -be bought. She's eating meat now, I believe, for the first time in a year. -And they'd have turned her out into the street that very day, your cousin -tells me. Something had to be done at once, and you've simply given a -number of well-to-do and self-indulgent gentlemen the opportunity of -performing, at very small individual expense, a meritorious action in -the nick of time. That's the first thing I've got to thank you for. And -then--you'll remember, please, that I have the floor--that I'm still -speaking for the committee--and secondly, as a slight recognition of your -services in securing the Bartley Reynolds at a very much lower figure than -we were prepared to pay, we beg you--the committee begs you--to accept the -gift of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. Now we'll go in and look at that little -head...." - - - - -THE MOVING FINGER - - -The news of Mrs. Grancy's death came to me with the shock of an immense -blunder--one of fate's most irretrievable acts of vandalism. It was as -though all sorts of renovating forces had been checked by the clogging of -that one wheel. Not that Mrs. Grancy contributed any perceptible momentum -to the social machine: her unique distinction was that of filling to -perfection her special place in the world. So many people are like -badly-composed statues, over-lapping their niches at one point and leaving -them vacant at another. Mrs. Grancy's niche was her husband's life; and if -it be argued that the space was not large enough for its vacancy to leave a -very big gap, I can only say that, at the last resort, such dimensions must -be determined by finer instruments than any ready-made standard of utility. -Ralph Grancy's was in short a kind of disembodied usefulness: one of those -constructive influences that, instead of crystallizing into definite forms, -remain as it were a medium for the development of clear thinking and fine -feeling. He faithfully irrigated his own dusty patch of life, and the -fruitful moisture stole far beyond his boundaries. If, to carry on the -metaphor, Grancy's life was a sedulously-cultivated enclosure, his wife was -the flower he had planted in its midst--the embowering tree, rather, which -gave him rest and shade at its foot and the wind of dreams in its upper -branches. - -We had all--his small but devoted band of followers--known a moment when it -seemed likely that Grancy would fail us. We had watched him pitted against -one stupid obstacle after another--ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding -and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious -egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection -like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always -come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for -the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to -how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb -withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But -gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who -was to become his second wife--his one _real_ wife, as his friends -reckoned--the whole man burst into flower. - -The second Mrs. Grancy was past thirty when he married her, and it was -clear that she had harvested that crop of middle joy which is rooted in -young despair. But if she had lost the surface of eighteen she had kept -its inner light; if her cheek lacked the gloss of immaturity her eyes were -young with the stored youth of half a life-time. Grancy had first known her -somewhere in the East--I believe she was the sister of one of our consuls -out there--and when he brought her home to New York she came among us as -a stranger. The idea of Grancy's remarriage had been a shock to us all. -After one such calcining most men would have kept out of the fire; but we -agreed that he was predestined to sentimental blunders, and we awaited -with resignation the embodiment of his latest mistake. Then Mrs. Grancy -came--and we understood. She was the most beautiful and the most complete -of explanations. We shuffled our defeated omniscience out of sight and gave -it hasty burial under a prodigality of welcome. For the first time in years -we had Grancy off our minds. "He'll do something great now!" the least -sanguine of us prophesied; and our sentimentalist emended: "He _has_ -done it--in marrying her!" - -It was Claydon, the portrait-painter, who risked this hyperbole; and who -soon afterward, at the happy husband's request, prepared to defend it in a -portrait of Mrs. Grancy. We were all--even Claydon--ready to concede that -Mrs. Grancy's unwontedness was in some degree a matter of environment. Her -graces were complementary and it needed the mate's call to reveal the flash -of color beneath her neutral-tinted wings. But if she needed Grancy to -interpret her, how much greater was the service she rendered him! Claydon -professionally described her as the right frame for him; but if she defined -she also enlarged, if she threw the whole into perspective she also cleared -new ground, opened fresh vistas, reclaimed whole areas of activity that had -run to waste under the harsh husbandry of privation. This interaction of -sympathies was not without its visible expression. Claydon was not alone -in maintaining that Grancy's presence--or indeed the mere mention of his -name--had a perceptible effect on his wife's appearance. It was as though a -light were shifted, a curtain drawn back, as though, to borrow another of -Claydon's metaphors, Love the indefatigable artist were perpetually seeking -a happier "pose" for his model. In this interpretative light Mrs. Grancy -acquired the charm which makes some women's faces like a book of which -the last page is never turned. There was always something new to read in -her eyes. What Claydon read there--or at least such scattered hints of -the ritual as reached him through the sanctuary doors--his portrait in -due course declared to us. When the picture was exhibited it was at once -acclaimed as his masterpiece; but the people who knew Mrs. Grancy smiled -and said it was flattered. Claydon, however, had not set out to paint -_their_ Mrs. Grancy--or ours even--but Ralph's; and Ralph knew his own -at a glance. At the first confrontation he saw that Claydon had understood. -As for Mrs. Grancy, when the finished picture was shown to her she turned -to the painter and said simply: "Ah, you've done me facing the east!" - -The picture, then, for all its value, seemed a mere incident in the -unfolding of their double destiny, a foot-note to the illuminated text of -their lives. It was not till afterward that it acquired the significance -of last words spoken on a threshold never to be recrossed. Grancy, a year -after his marriage, had given up his town house and carried his bliss an -hour's journey away, to a little place among the hills. His various duties -and interests brought him frequently to New York but we necessarily saw him -less often than when his house had served as the rallying-point of kindred -enthusiasms. It seemed a pity that such an influence should be withdrawn, -but we all felt that his long arrears of happiness should be paid in -whatever coin he chose. The distance from which the fortunate couple -radiated warmth on us was not too great for friendship to traverse; and our -conception of a glorified leisure took the form of Sundays spent in the -Grancys' library, with its sedative rural outlook, and the portrait of Mrs. -Grancy illuminating its studious walls. The picture was at its best in that -setting; and we used to accuse Claydon of visiting Mrs. Grancy in order to -see her portrait. He met this by declaring that the portrait _was_ -Mrs. Grancy; and there were moments when the statement seemed unanswerable. -One of us, indeed--I think it must have been the novelist--said that -Clayton had been saved from falling in love with Mrs. Grancy only by -falling in love with his picture of her; and it was noticeable that he, to -whom his finished work was no more than the shed husk of future effort, -showed a perennial tenderness for this one achievement. We smiled afterward -to think how often, when Mrs. Grancy was in the room, her presence -reflecting itself in our talk like a gleam of sky in a hurrying current, -Claydon, averted from the real woman, would sit as it were listening to the -picture. His attitude, at the time, seemed only a part of the unusualness -of those picturesque afternoons, when the most familiar combinations of -life underwent a magical change. Some human happiness is a landlocked lake; -but the Grancys' was an open sea, stretching a buoyant and illimitable -surface to the voyaging interests of life. There was room and to spare on -those waters for all our separate ventures; and always beyond the sunset, -a mirage of the fortunate isles toward which our prows bent. - - -II - -It was in Rome that, three years later, I heard of her death. The notice -said "suddenly"; I was glad of that. I was glad too--basely perhaps--to be -away from Grancy at a time when silence must have seemed obtuse and speech -derisive. - -I was still in Rome when, a few months afterward, he suddenly arrived -there. He had been appointed secretary of legation at Constantinople and -was on the way to his post. He had taken the place, he said frankly, "to -get away." Our relations with the Porte held out a prospect of hard work, -and that, he explained, was what he needed. He could never be satisfied to -sit down among the ruins. I saw that, like most of us in moments of extreme -moral tension, he was playing a part, behaving as he thought it became a -man to behave in the eye of disaster. The instinctive posture of grief is -a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels -the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe. Grancy, by -nature musing and retrospective, had chosen the rle of the man of action, -who answers blow for blow and opposes a mailed front to the thrusts of -destiny; and the completeness of the equipment testified to his inner -weakness. We talked only of what we were not thinking of, and parted, after -a few days, with a sense of relief that proved the inadequacy of friendship -to perform, in such cases, the office assigned to it by tradition. - -Soon afterward my own work called me home, but Grancy remained several -years in Europe. International diplomacy kept its promise of giving -him work to do, and during the year in which he acted as _charg -d'affaires_ he acquitted himself, under trying conditions, with -conspicuous zeal and discretion. A political redistribution of matter -removed him from office just as he had proved his usefulness to the -government; and the following summer I heard that he had come home and -was down at his place in the country. - -On my return to town I wrote him and his reply came by the next post. He -answered as it were in his natural voice, urging me to spend the following -Sunday with him, and suggesting that I should bring down any of the old -set who could be persuaded to join me. I thought this a good sign, and -yet--shall I own it?--I was vaguely disappointed. Perhaps we are apt to -feel that our friends' sorrows should be kept like those historic monuments -from which the encroaching ivy is periodically removed. - -That very evening at the club I ran across Claydon. I told him of Grancy's -invitation and proposed that we should go down together; but he pleaded an -engagement. I was sorry, for I had always felt that he and I stood nearer -Ralph than the others, and if the old Sundays were to be renewed I should -have preferred that we two should spend the first alone with him. I said as -much to Claydon and offered to fit my time to his; but he met this by a -general refusal. - -"I don't want to go to Grancy's," he said bluntly. I waited a moment, but -he appended no qualifying clause. - -"You've seen him since he came back?" I finally ventured. - -Claydon nodded. - -"And is he so awfully bad?" - -"Bad? No: he's all right." - -"All right? How can he be, unless he's changed beyond all recognition?" - -"Oh, you'll recognize _him_," said Claydon, with a puzzling deflection -of emphasis. - -His ambiguity was beginning to exasperate me, and I felt myself shut out -from some knowledge to which I had as good a right as he. - -"You've been down there already, I suppose?" - -"Yes; I've been down there." - -"And you've done with each other--the partnership is dissolved?" - -"Done with each other? I wish to God we had!" He rose nervously and tossed -aside the review from which my approach had diverted him. "Look here," -he said, standing before me, "Ralph's the best fellow going and there's -nothing under heaven I wouldn't do for him--short of going down there -again." And with that he walked out of the room. - -Claydon was incalculable enough for me to read a dozen different meanings -into his words; but none of my interpretations satisfied me. I determined, -at any rate, to seek no farther for a companion; and the next Sunday I -travelled down to Grancy's alone. He met me at the station and I saw at -once that he had changed since our last meeting. Then he had been in -fighting array, but now if he and grief still housed together it was -no longer as enemies. Physically the transformation was as marked but -less reassuring. If the spirit triumphed the body showed its scars. At -five-and-forty he was gray and stooping, with the tired gait of an old man. -His serenity, however, was not the resignation of age. I saw that he did -not mean to drop out of the game. Almost immediately he began to speak of -our old interests; not with an effort, as at our former meeting, but simply -and naturally, in the tone of a man whose life has flowed back into its -normal channels. I remembered, with a touch of self-reproach, how I had -distrusted his reconstructive powers; but my admiration for his reserved -force was now tinged by the sense that, after all, such happiness as his -ought to have been paid with his last coin. The feeling grew as we neared -the house and I found how inextricably his wife was interwoven with my -remembrance of the place: how the whole scene was but an extension of that -vivid presence. - -Within doors nothing was changed, and my hand would have dropped without -surprise into her welcoming clasp. It was luncheon-time, and Grancy led me -at once to the dining-room, where the walls, the furniture, the very plate -and porcelain, seemed a mirror in which a moment since her face had been -reflected. I wondered whether Grancy, under the recovered tranquillity -of his smile, concealed the same sense of her nearness, saw perpetually -between himself and the actual her bright unappeasable ghost. He spoke of -her once or twice, in an easy incidental way, and her name seemed to hang -in the air after he had uttered it, like a chord that continues to vibrate. -If he felt her presence it was evidently as an enveloping medium, the moral -atmosphere in which he breathed. I had never before known how completely -the dead may survive. - -After luncheon we went for a long walk through the autumnal fields and -woods, and dusk was falling when we re-entered the house. Grancy led the -way to the library, where, at this hour, his wife had always welcomed -us back to a bright fire and a cup of tea. The room faced the west, and -held a clear light of its own after the rest of the house had grown dark. -I remembered how young she had looked in this pale gold light, which -irradiated her eyes and hair, or silhouetted her girlish outline as she -passed before the windows. Of all the rooms the library was most peculiarly -hers; and here I felt that her nearness might take visible shape. Then, all -in a moment, as Grancy opened the door, the feeling vanished and a kind -of resistance met me on the threshold. I looked about me. Was the room -changed? Had some desecrating hand effaced the traces of her presence? No; -here too the setting was undisturbed. My feet sank into the same deep-piled -Daghestan; the bookshelves took the firelight on the same rows of rich -subdued bindings; her armchair stood in its old place near the tea-table; -and from the opposite wall her face confronted me. - -Her face--but _was_ it hers? I moved nearer and stood looking up at -the portrait. Grancy's glance had followed mine and I heard him move to my -side. - -"You see a change in it?" he said. - -"What does it mean?" I asked. - -"It means--that five years have passed." - -"Over _her_?" - -"Why not?--Look at me!" He pointed to his gray hair and furrowed temples. -"What do you think kept _her_ so young? It was happiness! But now--" -he looked up at her with infinite tenderness. "I like her better so," he -said. "It's what she would have wished." - -"Have wished?" - -"That we should grow old together. Do you think she would have wanted to be -left behind?" - -I stood speechless, my gaze travelling from his worn grief-beaten features -to the painted face above. It was not furrowed like his; but a veil -of years seemed to have descended on it. The bright hair had lost its -elasticity, the cheek its clearness, the brow its light: the whole woman -had waned. - -Grancy laid his hand on my arm. "You don't like it?" he said sadly. - -"Like it? I--I've lost her!" I burst out. - -"And I've found her," he answered. - -"In _that_?" I cried with a reproachful gesture. - -"Yes; in that." He swung round on me almost defiantly. "The other had -become a sham, a lie! This is the way she would have looked--does look, I -mean. Claydon ought to know, oughtn't he?" - -I turned suddenly. "Did Claydon do this for you?" - -Grancy nodded. - -"Since your return?" - -"Yes. I sent for him after I'd been back a week--." He turned away and gave -a thrust to the smouldering fire. I followed, glad to leave the picture -behind me. Grancy threw himself into a chair near the hearth, so that the -light fell on his sensitive variable face. He leaned his head back, shading -his eyes with his hand, and began to speak. - - -III - -"You fellows knew enough of my early history to A guess what my second -marriage meant to me. I say guess, because no one could understand--really. -I've always had a feminine streak in me, I suppose: the need of a pair of -eyes that should see with me, of a pulse that should keep time with mine. -Life is a big thing, of course; a magnificent spectacle; but I got so tired -of looking at it alone! Still, it's always good to live, and I had plenty -of happiness--of the evolved kind. What I'd never had a taste of was the -simple inconscient sort that one breathes in like the air.... - -"Well--I met her. It was like finding the climate in which I was meant to -live. You know what she was--how indefinitely she multiplied one's points -of contact with life, how she lit up the caverns and bridged the abysses! -Well, I swear to you (though I suppose the sense of all that was latent in -me) that what I used to think of on my way home at the end of the day, was -simply that when I opened this door she'd be sitting over there, with the -lamp-light falling in a particular way on one little curl in her neck.... -When Claydon painted her he caught just the look she used to lift to mine -when I came in--I've wondered, sometimes, at his knowing how she looked -when she and I were alone.--How I rejoiced in that picture! I used to say -to her, 'You're my prisoner now--I shall never lose you. If you grew tired -of me and left me you'd leave your real self there on the wall!' It was -always one of our jokes that she was going to grow tired of me-- - -"Three years of it--and then she died. It was so sudden that there was -no change, no diminution. It was as if she had suddenly become fixed, -immovable, like her own portrait: as if Time had ceased at its happiest -hour, just as Claydon had thrown down his brush one day and said, 'I can't -do better than that.' - -"I went away, as you know, and stayed over there five years. I worked as -hard as I knew how, and after the first black months a little light stole -in on me. From thinking that she would have been interested in what I was -doing I came to feel that she _was_ interested--that she was there and -that she knew. I'm not talking any psychical jargon--I'm simply trying to -express the sense I had that an influence so full, so abounding as hers -couldn't pass like a spring shower. We had so lived into each other's -hearts and minds that the consciousness of what she would have thought -and felt illuminated all I did. At first she used to come back shyly, -tentatively, as though not sure of finding me; then she stayed longer and -longer, till at last she became again the very air I breathed.... There -were bad moments, of course, when her nearness mocked me with the loss of -the real woman; but gradually the distinction between the two was effaced -and the mere thought of her grew warm as flesh and blood. - -"Then I came home. I landed in the morning and came straight down here. The -thought of seeing her portrait possessed me and my heart beat like a -lover's as I opened the library door. It was in the afternoon and the room -was full of light. It fell on her picture--the picture of a young and -radiant woman. She smiled at me coldly across the distance that divided us. -I had the feeling that she didn't even recognize me. And then I caught -sight of myself in the mirror over there--a gray-haired broken man whom she -had never known! - -"For a week we two lived together--the strange woman and the strange man. -I used to sit night after night and question her smiling face; but no -answer ever came. What did she know of me, after all? We were irrevocably -separated by the five years of life that lay between us. At times, as I -sat here, I almost grew to hate her; for her presence had driven away my -gentle ghost, the real wife who had wept, aged, struggled with me during -those awful years.... It was the worst loneliness I've ever known. Then, -gradually, I began to notice a look of sadness in the picture's eyes; a -look that seemed to say: 'Don't you see that _I_ am lonely too?' And -all at once it came over me how she would have hated to be left behind! I -remembered her comparing life to a heavy book that could not be read with -ease unless two people held it together; and I thought how impatiently her -hand would have turned the pages that divided us!--So the idea came to me: -'It's the picture that stands between us; the picture that is dead, and not -my wife. To sit in this room is to keep watch beside a corpse.' As this -feeling grew on me the portrait became like a beautiful mausoleum in which -she had been buried alive: I could hear her beating against the painted -walls and crying to me faintly for help.... - -"One day I found I couldn't stand it any longer and I sent for Claydon. He -came down and I told him what I'd been through and what I wanted him to do. -At first he refused point-blank to touch the picture. The next morning I -went off for a long tramp, and when I came home I found him sitting here -alone. He looked at me sharply for a moment and then he said: 'I've changed -my mind; I'll do it.' I arranged one of the north rooms as a studio and he -shut himself up there for a day; then he sent for me. The picture stood -there as you see it now--it was as though she'd met me on the threshold and -taken me in her arms! I tried to thank him, to tell him what it meant to -me, but he cut me short. - -"'There's an up train at five, isn't there?' he asked. 'I'm booked for a -dinner to-night. I shall just have time to make a bolt for the station and -you can send my traps after me.' I haven't seen him since. - -"I can guess what it cost him to lay hands on his masterpiece; but, after -all, to him it was only a picture lost, to me it was my wife regained!" - - -IV - -After that, for ten years or more, I watched the strange spectacle of a -life of hopeful and productive effort based on the structure of a dream. -There could be no doubt to those who saw Grancy during this period that -he drew his strength and courage from the sense of his wife's mystic -participation in his task. When I went back to see him a few months later I -found the portrait had been removed from the library and placed in a small -study up-stairs, to which he had transferred his desk and a few books. He -told me he always sat there when he was alone, keeping the library for his -Sunday visitors. Those who missed the portrait of course made no comment on -its absence, and the few who were in his secret respected it. Gradually all -his old friends had gathered about him and our Sunday afternoons regained -something of their former character; but Claydon never reappeared among us. - -As I look back now I see that Grancy must have been failing from the time -of his return home. His invincible spirit belied and disguised the signs of -weakness that afterward asserted themselves in my remembrance of him. He -seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of life to draw on, and more than one -of us was a pensioner on his superfluity. - -Nevertheless, when I came back one summer from my European holiday and -heard that he had been at the point of death, I understood at once that we -had believed him well only because he wished us to. - -I hastened down to the country and found him midway in a slow -convalescence. I felt then that he was lost to us and he read my thought at -a glance. - -"Ah," he said, "I'm an old man now and no mistake. I suppose we shall have -to go half-speed after this; but we shan't need towing just yet!" - -The plural pronoun struck me, and involuntarily I looked up at Mrs. -Grancy's portrait. Line by line I saw my fear reflected in it. It was the -face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying. My heart stood still -at the thought of what Claydon had done. - -Grancy had followed my glance. "Yes, it's changed her," he said quietly. -"For months, you know, it was touch and go with me--we had a long fight of -it, and it was worse for her than for me." After a pause he added: "Claydon -has been very kind; he's so busy nowadays that I seldom see him, but when I -sent for him the other day he came down at once." - -I was silent and we spoke no more of Grancy's illness; but when I took -leave it seemed like shutting him in alone with his death-warrant. - -The next time I went down to see him he looked much better. It was a Sunday -and he received me in the library, so that I did not see the portrait -again. He continued to improve and toward spring we began to feel that, as -he had said, he might yet travel a long way without being towed. - -One evening, on returning to town after a visit which had confirmed my -sense of reassurance, I found Claydon dining alone at the club. He asked me -to join him and over the coffee our talk turned to his work. - -"If you're not too busy," I said at length, "you ought to make time to go -down to Grancy's again." - -He looked up quickly. "Why?" he asked. - -"Because he's quite well again," I returned with a touch of cruelty. "His -wife's prognostications were mistaken." - -Claydon stared at me a moment. "Oh, _she_ knows," he affirmed with a -smile that chilled me. - -"You mean to leave the portrait as it is then?" I persisted. - -He shrugged his shoulders. "He hasn't sent for me yet!" - -A waiter came up with the cigars and Claydon rose and joined another group. - -It was just a fortnight later that Grancy's housekeeper telegraphed for me. -She met me at the station with the news that he had been "taken bad" and -that the doctors were with him. I had to wait for some time in the deserted -library before the medical men appeared. They had the baffled manner of -empirics who have been superseded by the great Healer; and I lingered only -long enough to hear that Grancy was not suffering and that my presence -could do him no harm. - -I found him seated in his arm-chair in the little study. He held out his -hand with a smile. - -"You see she was right after all," he said. - -"She?" I repeated, perplexed for the moment. - -"My wife." He indicated the picture. "Of course I knew she had no hope from -the first. I saw that"--he lowered his voice--"after Claydon had been here. -But I wouldn't believe it at first!" - -I caught his hands in mine. "For God's sake don't believe it now!" I -adjured him. - -He shook his head gently. "It's too late," he said. "I might have known -that she knew." - -"But, Grancy, listen to me," I began; and then I stopped. What could I say -that would convince him? There was no common ground of argument on which we -could meet; and after all it would be easier for him to die feeling that -she _had_ known. Strangely enough, I saw that Claydon had missed his -mark.... - - -V - -Grancy's will named me as one of his executors; and my associate, having -other duties on his hands, begged me to assume the task of carrying out our -friend's wishes. This placed me under the necessity of informing Claydon -that the portrait of Mrs. Grancy had been bequeathed to him; and he replied -by the next post that he would send for the picture at once. I was staying -in the deserted house when the portrait was taken away; and as the door -closed on it I felt that Grancy's presence had vanished too. Was it his -turn to follow her now, and could one ghost haunt another? - -After that, for a year or two, I heard nothing more of the picture, and -though I met Claydon from time to time we had little to say to each other. -I had no definable grievance against the man and I tried to remember that -he had done a fine thing in sacrificing his best picture to a friend; but -my resentment had all the tenacity of unreason. - -One day, however, a lady whose portrait he had just finished begged me -to go with her to see it. To refuse was impossible, and I went with the -less reluctance that I knew I was not the only friend she had invited. -The others were all grouped around the easel when I entered, and after -contributing my share to the chorus of approval I turned away and began -to stroll about the studio. Claydon was something of a collector and his -things were generally worth looking at. The studio was a long tapestried -room with a curtained archway at one end. The curtains were looped back, -showing a smaller apartment, with books and flowers and a few fine bits of -bronze and porcelain. The tea-table standing in this inner room proclaimed -that it was open to inspection, and I wandered in. A _bleu poudr_ -vase first attracted me; then I turned to examine a slender bronze -Ganymede, and in so doing found myself face to face with Mrs. Grancy's -portrait. I stared up at her blankly and she smiled back at me in all -the recovered radiance of youth. The artist had effaced every trace of -his later touches and the original picture had reappeared. It throned -alone on the panelled wall, asserting a brilliant supremacy over its -carefully-chosen surroundings. I felt in an instant that the whole room was -tributary to it: that Claydon had heaped his treasures at the feet of the -woman he loved. Yes--it was the woman he had loved and not the picture; and -my instinctive resentment was explained. - -Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. - -"Ah, how could you?" I cried, turning on him. - -"How could I?" he retorted. "How could I _not_? Doesn't she belong to -me now?" - -I moved away impatiently. - -"Wait a moment," he said with a detaining gesture. "The others have gone -and I want to say a word to you.--Oh, I know what you've thought of me--I -can guess! You think I killed Grancy, I suppose?" - -I was startled by his sudden vehemence. "I think you tried to do a cruel -thing," I said. - -"Ah--what a little way you others see into life!" he murmured. "Sit down a -moment--here, where we can look at her--and I'll tell you." - -He threw himself on the ottoman beside me and sat gazing up at the picture, -with his hands clasped about his knee. - -"Pygmalion," he began slowly, "turned his statue into a real woman; -_I_ turned my real woman into a picture. Small compensation, you -think--but you don't know how much of a woman belongs to you after you've -painted her!--Well, I made the best of it, at any rate--I gave her the best -I had in me; and she gave me in return what such a woman gives by merely -being. And after all she rewarded me enough by making me paint as I shall -never paint again! There was one side of her, though, that was mine alone, -and that was her beauty; for no one else understood it. To Grancy even -it was the mere expression of herself--what language is to thought. Even -when he saw the picture he didn't guess my secret--he was so sure she was -all his! As though a man should think he owned the moon because it was -reflected in the pool at his door-- - -"Well--when he came home and sent for me to change the picture it was like -asking me to commit murder. He wanted me to make an old woman of her--of -her who had been so divinely, unchangeably young! As if any man who really -loved a woman would ask her to sacrifice her youth and beauty for his sake! -At first I told him I couldn't do it--but afterward, when he left me alone -with the picture, something queer happened. I suppose it was because I was -always so confoundedly fond of Grancy that it went against me to refuse -what he asked. Anyhow, as I sat looking up at her, she seemed to say, 'I'm -not yours but his, and I want you to make me what he wishes." And so I did -it. I could have cut my hand off when the work was done--I daresay he told -you I never would go back and look at it. He thought I was too busy--he -never understood.... - -"Well--and then last year he sent for me again--you remember. It was after -his illness, and he told me he'd grown twenty years older and that he -wanted her to grow older too--he didn't want her to be left behind. The -doctors all thought he was going to get well at that time, and he thought -so too; and so did I when I first looked at him. But when I turned to -the picture--ah, now I don't ask you to believe me; but I swear it was -_her_ face that told me he was dying, and that she wanted him to know -it! She had a message for him and she made me deliver it." - -He rose abruptly and walked toward the portrait; then he sat down beside me -again. - -"Cruel? Yes, it seemed so to me at first; and this time, if I resisted, -it was for _his_ sake and not for mine. But all the while I felt her -eyes drawing me, and gradually she made me understand. If she'd been there -in the flesh (she seemed to say) wouldn't she have seen before any of us -that he was dying? Wouldn't he have read the news first in her face? And -wouldn't it be horrible if now he should discover it instead in strange -eyes?--Well--that was what she wanted of me and I did it--I kept them -together to the last!" He looked up at the picture again. "But now she -belongs to me," he repeated.... - - - - -THE CONFESSIONAL - - -When I was a young man I thought a great deal of local color. At that -time it was still a pigment of recent discovery, and supposed to have -a peculiarly stimulating effect on the mental eye. As an aid to the -imagination its value was perhaps overrated; but as an object of pursuit -to that vagrant faculty, it had all the merits claimed for it. I certainly -never hunted any game better worth my powder; and to a young man with rare -holidays and long working hours, its value was enhanced by the fact that -one might bring it down at any turn, if only one kept one's eye alert and -one's hand on the trigger. - -Even the large manufacturing city where, for some years, my young -enthusiasms were chained to an accountant's desk, was not without its -romantic opportunities. Many of the mill-hands at Dunstable were Italians, -and a foreign settlement had formed itself in that unsavory and unsanitary -portion of the town known as the Point. The Point, like more aristocratic -communities, had its residential and commercial districts, its church, its -theatre and its restaurant. When the craving for local color was on me it -was my habit to resort to the restaurant, a low-browed wooden building with -the appetizing announcement: - -"_Aristi di montone_" - -pasted in one of its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough -macaroni or of an ambiguous _frittura_ sufficed to transport me to the -Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar -with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of -one of the little round tables under the arcade of the Caff Pedrotti at -Padua. This feat of the imagination was materially aided by Agostino, the -hollow-eyed and low-collared waiter, whose slimy napkin never lost its -Latin flourish and whose zeal for my comfort was not infrequently displayed -by his testing the warmth of my soup with his finger. Through Agostino I -became acquainted with the inner history of the colony, heard the details -of its feuds and vendettas, and learned to know by sight the leading -characters in these domestic dramas. - -The restaurant was frequented by the chief personages of the community: -the overseer of the Italian hands at the Meriton Mills, the doctor, his -wife the _levatrice_ (a plump Neapolitan with greasy ringlets, a plush -picture-hat, and a charm against the evil-eye hanging in a crease of her -neck) and lastly by Don Egidio, the _parocco_ of the little church -across the street. The doctor and his wife came only on feast days, but -the overseer and Don Egidio were regular patrons. The former was a quiet -saturnine-looking man, of accomplished manners but reluctant speech, and I -depended for my diversion chiefly on Don Egidio, whose large loosely-hung -lips were always ajar for conversation. The remarks issuing from them -were richly tinged by the gutturals of the Bergamasque dialect, and it -needed but a slight acquaintance with Italian types to detect the Lombard -peasant under the priest's rusty cassock. This inference was confirmed -by Don Egidio's telling me that he came from a village of Val Camonica, -the radiant valley which extends northward from the lake of Iseo to -the Adamello glaciers. His step-father had been a laborer on one of -the fruit-farms of a Milanese count who owned large estates in the Val -Camonica; and that gentleman, taking a fancy to the lad, whom he had seen -at work in his orchards, had removed him to his villa on the lake of Iseo -and had subsequently educated him for the Church. - -It was doubtless to this picturesque accident that Don Egidio owed the -mingling of ease and simplicity that gave an inimitable charm to his -stout shabby presence. It was as though some wild mountain-fruit had been -transplanted to the Count's orchards and had mellowed under cultivation -without losing its sylvan flavor. I have never seen the social art carried -farther without suggestion of artifice. The fact that Don Egidio's -amenities were mainly exercised on the mill-hands composing his parish -proved the genuineness of his gift. It is easier to simulate gentility -among gentlemen than among navvies; and the plain man is a touchstone who -draws out all the alloy in the gold. - -Among his parishioners Don Egidio ruled with the cheerful despotism of the -good priest. On cardinal points he was inflexible, but in minor matters he -had that elasticity of judgment which enables the Catholic discipline to -fit itself to every inequality of the human conscience. There was no appeal -from his verdict; but his judgment-seat was a revolving chair from which he -could view the same act at various angles. His influence was acknowledged -not only by his flock, but by the policeman at the corner, the "bar-keep'" -in the dive, the ward politician in the corner grocery. The general verdict -of Dunstable was that the Point would have been hell without the priest. -It was perhaps not precisely heaven with him; but such light of the upper -sky as pierced its murky atmosphere was reflected from Don Egidio's -countenance. It is hardly possible for any one to exercise such influence -without taking pleasure in it; and on the whole the priest was probably -a contented man; though it does not follow that he was a happy one. On -this point the first stages of our acquaintance yielded much food for -conjecture. At first sight Don Egidio was the image of cheerfulness. He had -all the physical indications of a mind at ease: the leisurely rolling gait, -the ready laugh, the hospitable eye of the man whose sympathies are always -on the latch. It took me some time to discover under his surface garrulity -the impenetrable reticence of his profession, and under his enjoyment of -trifles a levelling melancholy which made all enjoyment trifling. Don -Egidio's aspect and conversation were so unsuggestive of psychological -complexities that I set down this trait to poverty or home-sickness. There -are few classes of men more frugal in tastes and habit than the village -priest in Italy; but Don Egidio, by his own account, had been introduced, -at an impressionable age, to a way of living that must have surpassed his -wildest dreams of self-indulgence. To whatever privations his parochial -work had since accustomed him, the influences of that earlier life were -too perceptible in his talk not to have made a profound impression on his -tastes; and he remained, for all his apostolic simplicity, the image of the -family priest who has his seat at the rich man's table. - -It chanced that I had used one of my short European holidays to explore -afoot the romantic passes connecting the Valtelline with the lake of Iseo; -and my remembrance of that enchanting region made it seem impossible -that Don Egidio should ever look without a reminiscent pang on the grimy -perspective of his parochial streets. The transition was too complete, too -ironical, from those rich glades and Titianesque acclivities to the brick -hovels and fissured sidewalks of the Point. - -This impression was confirmed when Don Egidio, in response to my urgent -invitation, paid his first visit to my modest lodgings. He called one -winter evening, when a wood-fire in its happiest humor was giving a -factitious lustre to my book-shelves and bringing out the values of the one -or two old prints and Chinese porcelains that accounted for the perennial -shabbiness of my wardrobe. - -"Ah," said he with a murmur of satisfaction, as he laid aside his shiny hat -and bulging umbrella, "it is a long time since I have been in a _casa -signorile_." - -My remembrance of his own room (he lodged with the doctor and the -_levatrice_) saved this epithet from the suggestion of irony and kept -me silent while he sank into my arm-chair with the deliberation of a tired -traveller lowering himself gently into a warm bath. - -"Good! good!" he repeated, looking about him. "Books, porcelains, objects -of _virt_--I am glad to see that there are still such things in the -world!" And he turned a genial eye on the glass of Marsala that I had -poured out for him. - -Don Egidio was the most temperate of men and never exceeded his one glass; -but he liked to sit by the hour puffing at my Cabanas, which I suspected -him of preferring to the black weed of his native country. Under the -influence of my tobacco he became even more blandly garrulous, and I -sometimes fancied that of all the obligations of his calling none could -have placed such a strain on him as that of preserving the secrets of the -confessional. He often talked of his early life at the Count's villa, where -he had been educated with his patron's two sons till he was of age to be -sent to the seminary; and I could see that the years spent in simple and -familiar intercourse with his benefactors had been the most vivid chapter -in his experience. The Italian peasant's inarticulate tenderness for the -beauty of his birthplace had been specialized in him by contact with -cultivated tastes, and he could tell me not only that the Count had a -"stupendous" collection of pictures, but that the chapel of the villa -contained a sepulchral monument by Bambaja, and that the art-critics were -divided as to the authenticity of the Leonardo in the family palace at -Milan. - -On all these subjects he was inexhaustibly voluble; but there was one point -which he always avoided, and that was his reason for coming to America. I -remember the round turn with which he brought me up when I questioned him. - -"A priest," said he, "is a soldier and must obey orders like a soldier." -He set down his glass of Marsala and strolled across the room. "I had not -observed," he went on, "that you have here a photograph of the Sposalizio -of the Brera. What a picture! _ stupendo_!" and he turned back to his -seat and smilingly lit a fresh cigar. - -I saw at once that I had hit on a point where his native garrulity was -protected by the chain-mail of religious discipline that every Catholic -priest wears beneath his cassock. I had too much respect for my friend -to wish to penetrate his armor, and now and then I almost fancied he was -grateful to me for not putting his reticence to the test. - -Don Egidio must have been past sixty when I made his acquaintance; but it -was not till the close of an exceptionally harsh winter, some five or six -years after our first meeting, that I began to think of him as an old man. -It was as though the long-continued cold had cracked and shrivelled him. He -had grown bent and hollow-chested and his lower lip shook like an unhinged -door. The summer heat did little to revive him, and in September, when I -came home from my vacation, I found him just recovering from an attack of -pneumonia. That autumn he did not care to venture often into the night air, -and now and then I used to go and sit with him in his little room, to which -I had contributed the unheard-of luxuries of an easy-chair and a gas-stove. - -My engagements, however, made these visits infrequent, and several weeks -had elapsed without my seeing the _parocco_ when, one snowy November -morning, I ran across him in the railway-station. I was on my way to New -York for the day and had just time to wave a greeting to him as I jumped -into the railway-carriage; but a moment later, to my surprise, I saw him -stiffly clambering into the same train. I found him seated in the common -car, with his umbrella between his knees and a bundle done up in a red -cotton handkerchief on the seat at his side. The caution with which, at my -approach, he transferred this bundle to his arms caused me to glance at it -in surprise; and he answered my look by saying with a smile: - -"They are flowers for the dead--the most exquisite flowers--from the -greenhouses of Mr. Meriton--_si figuri_!" And he waved a descriptive -hand. "One of my lads, Gianpietro, is employed by the gardener there, and -every year on this day he brings me a beautiful bunch of flowers--for such -a purpose it is no sin," he added, with the charming Italian pliancy of -judgment. - -"And why are you travelling in this snowy weather, _signor parocco_?" -I asked, as he ended with a cough. - -He fixed me gravely with his simple shallow eye. "Because it is the day of -the dead, my son," he said, "and I go to place these on the grave of the -noblest man that ever lived." - -"You are going to New York?" - -"To Brooklyn--" - -I hesitated a moment, wishing to question him, yet uncertain whether his -replies were curtailed by the persistency of his cough or by the desire to -avoid interrogation. - -"This is no weather to be travelling with such a cough," I said at length. - -He made a deprecating gesture. - -"I have never missed the day--not once in eighteen years. But for me he -would have no one!" He folded his hands on his umbrella and looked away -from me to hide the trembling of his lip. - -I resolved on a last attempt to storm his confidence. "Your friend is -buried in Calvary cemetery?" - -He signed an assent. - -"That is a long way for you to go alone, _signor parocco_. The streets -are sure to be slippery and there is an icy wind blowing. Give me your -flowers and let me send them to the cemetery by a messenger. I give you my -word they shall reach their destination safely." - -He turned a quiet look on me. "My son, you are young," he said, "and you -don't know how the dead need us." He drew his breviary from his pocket and -opened it with a smile. "_Mi scusi?_" he murmured. - -The business which had called me to town obliged me to part from him as -soon as the train entered the station, and in my dash for the street I -left his unwieldy figure laboring far behind me through the crowd on the -platform. Before we separated, however, I had learned that he was returning -to Dunstable by the four o'clock train, and had resolved to despatch my -business in time to travel home with him. When I reached Wall Street I was -received with the news that the man I had appointed to meet was ill and -detained in the country. My business was "off" and I found myself with -the rest of the day at my disposal. I had no difficulty in deciding how -to employ my time. I was at an age when, in such contingencies, there is -always a feminine alternative; and even now I don't know how it was that, -on my way to a certain hospitable luncheon-table, I suddenly found myself -in a cab which was carrying me at full-speed to the Twenty-third Street -ferry. It was not till I had bought my ticket and seated myself in the -varnished tunnel of the ferry-boat that I was aware of having been diverted -from my purpose by an overmastering anxiety for Don Egidio. I rapidly -calculated that he had not more than an hour's advance on me, and that, -allowing for my greater agility and for the fact that I had a cab at my -call, I was likely to reach the cemetery in time to see him under shelter -before the gusts of sleet that were already sweeping across the river had -thickened to a snow-storm. - -At the gates of the cemetery I began to take a less sanguine view of my -attempt. The commemorative anniversary had filled the silent avenues -with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the -gatekeeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a -bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The -gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send -its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go -exactly contrary to his indication, and thanks to this precaution I came, -after half an hour's search, on the figure of my poor _parocco_, -kneeling on the wet ground in one of the humblest by-ways of the great -necropolis. The mound before which he knelt was strewn with the spoils of -Mr. Meriton's conservatories, and on the weather-worn tablet at its head I -read the inscription: - -IL CONTE SIVIANO -DA MILANO. - -_Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus._ - -So engrossed was Don Egidio that for some moments I stood behind him -unobserved; and when he rose and faced me, grief had left so little room -for any minor emotion that he looked at me almost without surprise. - -"Don Egidio," I said, "I have a carriage waiting for you at the gate. You -must come home with me." - -He nodded quietly and I drew his hand through my arm. - -He turned back to the grave. "One moment, my son," he said. "It may be for -the last time." He stood motionless, his eyes on the heaped-up flowers -which were already bruised and blackened by the cold. "To leave him -alone--after sixty years! But God is everywhere--" he murmured as I led him -away. - -On the journey home he did not care to talk, and my chief concern was to -keep him wrapped in my greatcoat and to see that his bed was made ready as -soon as I had restored him to his lodgings. The _levatrice_ brought a -quilted coverlet from her own room and hovered over him as gently as though -he had been of the sex to require her services; while Agostino, at my -summons, appeared with a bowl of hot soup that was heralded down the -street by a reviving waft of garlic. To these ministrations I left the -_parocco_, intending to call for news of him the next evening; but an -unexpected pressure of work kept me late at my desk, and the following day -some fresh obstacle delayed me. - -On the third afternoon, as I was leaving the office, an agate-eyed infant -from the Point hailed me with a message from the doctor. The _parocco_ -was worse and had asked for me. I jumped into the nearest car and ten -minutes later was running up the doctor's greasy stairs. - -To my dismay I found Don Egidio's room cold and untenanted; but I was -reassured a moment later by the appearance of the _levatrice_, who -announced that she had transferred the blessed man to her own apartment, -where he could have the sunlight and a good bed to lie in. There in fact -he lay, weak but smiling, in a setting which contrasted oddly enough with -his own monastic surroundings: a cheerful grimy room, hung with anecdotic -chromos, photographs of lady-patients proudly presenting their offspring -to the camera, and innumerable Neapolitan _santolini_ decked out with -shrivelled palm-leaves. - -The _levatrice_ whispered that the good man had the pleurisy, and -that, as she phrased it, he was nearing his last mile-stone. I saw that he -was in fact in a bad way, but his condition did not indicate any pressing -danger, and I had the presentiment that he would still, as the saying is, -put up a good fight. It was clear, however, that he knew what turn the -conflict must take, and the solemnity with which he welcomed me showed that -my summons was a part of that spiritual strategy with which the Catholic -opposes the surprise of death. - -"My son," he said, when the _levatrice_ had left us, "I have a favor -to ask you. You found me yesterday bidding good-bye to my best friend." -His cough interrupted him. "I have never told you," he went on, "the name -of the family in which I was brought up. It was Siviano, and that was -the grave of the Count's eldest son, with whom I grew up as a brother. -For eighteen years he has lain in that strange ground--_in terra -aliena_--and when I die, there will be no one to care for his grave." - -I saw what he waited for. "I will care for it, _signor parocco_." - -"I knew I should have your promise, my child; and what you promise you -keep. But my friend is a stranger to you--you are young and at your age -life is a mistress who kisses away sad memories. Why should you remember -the grave of a stranger? I cannot lay such a claim on you. But I will tell -you his story--and then I think that neither joy nor grief will let you -forget him; for when you rejoice you will remember how he sorrowed; and -when you sorrow the thought of him will be like a friend's hand in yours." - - -II - -You tell me (Don Egidio began) that you know our little lake; and if you -have seen it you will understand why it always used to remind me of the -"garden enclosed" of the Canticles. - -_Hortus inclusus; columba mea in foraminibus petr_: the words used -to come back to me whenever I returned from a day's journey across the -mountains, and looking down saw the blue lake far below, hidden in its -hills like a happy secret in a stern heart. We were never envious of -the glory of the great lakes. They are like the show pictures that some -nobleman hangs in his public gallery; but our Iseo is the treasure that -he hides in his inner chamber. - -You tell me you saw it in summer, when it looks up like a saint's eye, -reflecting the whole of heaven. It was then too that I first saw it. -My future friend, the old Count, had found me at work on one of his -fruit-farms up the valley, and hearing that I was ill-treated by my -step-father--a drunken pedlar from the Val Mastellone, whom my poor mother -a year or two earlier had come across at the fair of Lovere--he had taken -me home with him to Iseo. I used to serve mass in our hill-village of -Cerveno, and the village children called me "the little priest" because -when my work was done I often crept back to the church to get away from -my step-father's blows and curses. "I will make a real priest of him," -the Count declared; and that afternoon, perched on the box of his -travelling-carriage, I was whirled away from the dark scenes of my -childhood into a world, where, as it seemed to me, every one was as happy -as an angel on a _presepio_. - -I wonder if you remember the Count's villa? It lies on the shore of the -lake, facing the green knoll of Monte Isola, and overlooked by the village -of Siviano and by the old parish-church where I said mass for fifteen happy -years. The village hangs on a ledge of the mountain; but the villa dips its -foot in the lake, smiling at its reflection like a bather lingering on the -brink. What Paradise it seemed to me that day! In our church up the valley -there hung an old brown picture, with a Saint Sabastian in the foreground; -and behind him the most wonderful palace, with terraced gardens adorned -with statues and fountains, where fine folk in resplendent dresses walked -up and down without heeding the blessed martyr's pangs. The Count's villa, -with its terraces, its roses, its marble steps descending to the lake, -reminded me of that palace; only instead of being inhabited by wicked -people engrossed in their selfish pleasures it was the home of the kindest -friends that ever took a poor lad by the hand. - -The old Count was a widower when I first knew him. He had been twice -married, and his first wife had left him two children, a son and a -daughter. The eldest, Donna Marianna, was then a girl of twenty, who -kept her father's house and was a mother to the two lads. She was not -handsome or learned, and had no taste for the world; but she was like the -lavender-plant in a poor man's window--just a little gray flower, but a -sweetness that fills the whole house. Her brother, Count Roberto, had been -ailing from his birth, and was a studious lad with a melancholy musing face -such as you may see in some of Titian's portraits of young men. He looked -like an exiled prince dressed in mourning. There was one child by the -second marriage, Count Andrea, a boy of my own age, handsome as a Saint -George, but not as kind as the others. No doubt, being younger, he was less -able to understand why an uncouth peasant lad should have been brought to -his father's table; and the others were so fearful of hurting my feelings -that, but for his teasing, I might never have mended my clumsy manners or -learned how to behave in the presence of my betters. Count Andrea was not -sparing in such lessons, and Count Roberto, in spite of his weak arms, -chastised his brother roundly when he thought the discipline had been too -severe; but for my part it seemed to me natural enough that such a godlike -being should lord it over a poor clodhopper like myself. - -Well--I will not linger over the beginning of my new life for my story has -to do with its close. Only I should like to make you understand what the -change meant to me--an ignorant peasant lad, coming from hard words and -blows and a smoke-blackened hut in the hills to that great house full of -rare and beautiful things, and of beings who seemed to me even more rare -and beautiful. Do you wonder I was ready to kiss the ground they trod, and -would have given the last drop of my blood to serve them? - -In due course I was sent to the seminary at Lodi; and on holidays I used -to visit the family in Milan. Count Andrea was growing up to be one of -the handsomest young men imaginable, but a trifle wild; and the old Count -married him in haste to the daughter of a Venetian noble, who brought as -her dower a great estate in Istria. The Countess Gemma, as this lady was -called, was as light as thistledown and had an eye like a baby's; but while -she was cooing for the moon her pretty white hands were always stealing -toward something within reach that she had not been meant to have. The old -Count was not alert enough to follow these manoeuvres; and the Countess hid -her designs under a torrent of guileless chatter, as pick-pockets wear long -sleeves to conceal their movements. Her only fault, he used to say, was -that one of her aunts had married an Austrian; and this event having taken -place before she was born he laughingly acquitted her of any direct share -in it. She confirmed his good opinion of her by giving her husband two -sons; and Roberto showing no inclination to marry, these boys naturally -came to be looked on as the heirs of the house. - -Meanwhile I had finished my course of studies, and the old Count, on my -twenty-first birthday, had appointed me priest of the parish of Siviano. It -was the year of Count Andrea's marriage and there were great festivities at -the villa. Three years later the old Count died, to the sorrow of his two -eldest children. Donna Marianna and Count Roberto closed their apartments -in the palace at Milan and withdrew for a year to Siviano. It was then -that I first began to know my friend. Before that I had loved him without -understanding him; now I learned of what metal he was made. His bookish -tastes inclined him to a secluded way of living; and his younger brother -perhaps fancied that he would not care to assume the charge of the estate. -But if Andrea thought this he was disappointed. Roberto resolutely took up -the tradition of his father's rule, and, as if conscious of lacking the -old Count's easy way with the peasants, made up for it by a redoubled zeal -for their welfare. I have seen him toil for days to adjust some trifling -difficulty that his father would have set right with a ready word; like the -sainted bishop who, when a beggar asked him for a penny, cried out: "Alas, -my brother, I have not a penny in my purse; but here are two gold pieces, -if they can be made to serve you instead!" We had many conferences over -the condition of his people, and he often sent me up the valley to look -into the needs of the peasantry on the fruit-farms. No grievance was too -trifling for him to consider it, no abuse too deep-seated for him to root -it out; and many an hour that other men of his rank would have given to -books or pleasure was devoted to adjusting a quarrel about boundary-lines -or to weighing the merits of a complaint against the tax-collector. I -often said that he was as much his people's priest as I; and he smiled and -answered that every landowner was a king and that in old days the king was -always a priest. - -Donna Marianna was urgent with him to marry, but he always declared that -he had a family in his tenantry, and that, as for a wife, she had never -let him feel the want of one. He had that musing temper which gives a man -a name for coldness; though in fact he may all the while be storing fuel -for a great conflagration. But to me he whispered another reason for not -marrying. A man, he said, does not take wife and rejoice while his mother -is on her death-bed; and Italy, his mother, lay dying, with the foreign -vultures waiting to tear her apart. - -You are too young to know anything of those days, my son; and how can any -one understand them who did not live through them? Italy lay dying indeed; -but Lombardy was her heart, and the heart still beat, and sent the faint -blood creeping to her cold extremities. Her torturers, weary of their -work, had allowed her to fall into a painless stupor; but just as she was -sinking from sleep to death, heaven sent Radetsky to scourge her back to -consciousness; and at the first sting of his lash she sprang maimed and -bleeding to her feet. - -Ah, those days, those days, my son! Italy--Italy--was the word on our -lips; but the thought in our hearts was just _Austria_. We clamored -for liberty, unity, the franchise; but under our breath we prayed only to -smite the white-coats. Remove the beam from our eye, we cried, and we shall -see our salvation clearly enough! We priests in the north were all liberals -and worked with the nobles and the men of letters. Gioberti was our -breviary and his Holiness the new Pope was soon to be the Tancred of our -crusade. But meanwhile, mind you, all this went on in silence, underground -as it were, while on the surface Lombardy still danced, feasted, married, -and took office under the Austrian. In the iron-mines up our valley there -used to be certain miners who stayed below ground for months at a time; -and, like one of these, Roberto remained buried in his purpose, while life -went its way overhead. Though I was not in his confidence I knew well -enough where his thoughts were, for he went among us with the eye of a -lover, the visionary look of one who hears a Voice. We all heard that -Voice, to be sure, mingling faintly with the other noises of life; but to -Roberto it was already as the roar of mighty waters, drowning every other -sound with its thunder. - -On the surface, as I have said, things looked smooth enough. An Austrian -cardinal throned in Milan and an Austrian-hearted Pope ruled in Rome. In -Lombardy, Austria couched like a beast of prey, ready to spring at our -throats if we stirred or struggled. The Moderates, to whose party Count -Roberto belonged, talked of prudence, compromise, the education of the -masses; but if their words were a velvet sheath their thought was a dagger. -For many years, as you know, the Milanese had maintained an outward show of -friendliness with their rulers. The nobles had accepted office under the -vice-roy, and in the past there had been frequent intermarriage between -the two aristocracies. But now, one by one, the great houses had closed -their doors against official society. Though some of the younger and more -careless, those who must dance and dine at any cost, still went to the -palace and sat beside the enemy at the opera, fashion was gradually taking -sides against them, and those who had once been laughed at as old fogeys -were now applauded as patriots. Among these, of course, was Count Roberto, -who for several years had refused to associate with the Austrians, and -had silently resented his easy-going brother's disregard of political -distinctions. Andrea and Gemma belonged to the moth tribe, who flock to -the brightest light; and Gemma's Istrian possessions, and her family's -connection with the Austrian nobility, gave them a pretext for fluttering -about the vice-regal candle. Roberto let them go their way, but his own -course was a tacit protest against their conduct. They were always welcome -at the palazzo Siviano; but he and Donna Marianna withdrew from society in -order to have an excuse for not showing themselves at the Countess Gemma's -entertainments. If Andrea and Gemma were aware of his disapproval they were -clever enough to ignore it; for the rich elder brother who paid their debts -and never meant to marry was too important a person to be quarrelled with -on political grounds. They seemed to think that if he married it would be -only to spite them; and they were persuaded that their future depended on -their giving him no cause to take such reprisals. I shall never be more -than a plain peasant at heart and I have little natural skill in discerning -hidden motives; but the experience of the confessional gives every priest -a certain insight into the secret springs of action, and I often wondered -that the worldly wisdom of Andrea and Gemma did not help them to a clearer -reading of their brother's character. For my part I knew that, in Roberto's -heart, no great passion could spring from a mean motive; and I had always -thought that if he ever loved any woman as he loved Italy, it must be from -his country's hand that he received his bride. And so it came about. - -Have you ever noticed, on one of those still autumn days before a storm, -how here and there a yellow leaf will suddenly detach itself from the bough -and whirl through the air as though some warning of the gale had reached -it? So it was then in Lombardy. All round was the silence of decay; but now -and then a word, a look, a trivial incident, fluttered ominously through -the stillness. It was in '45. Only a year earlier the glorious death of the -Bandiera brothers had sent a long shudder through Italy. In the Romagna, -Renzi and his comrades had tried to uphold by action the protest set forth -in the "Manifesto of Rimini"; and their failure had sowed the seed which -d'Azeglio and Cavour were to harvest. Everywhere the forces were silently -gathering; and nowhere was the hush more profound, the least reverberation -more audible, than in the streets of Milan. - -It was Count Roberto's habit to attend early mass in the Cathedral; and one -morning, as he was standing in the aisle, a young girl passed him with her -father. Roberto knew the father, a beggarly Milanese of the noble family of -Intelvi, who had cut himself off from his class by accepting an appointment -in one of the government offices. As the two went by he saw a group of -Austrian officers looking after the girl, and heard one of them say: "Such -a choice morsel as that is too good for slaves;" and another answer with a -laugh: "Yes, it's a dish for the master's table!" - -The girl heard too. She was as white as a wind-flower and he saw the words -come out on her cheek like the red mark from a blow. She whispered to -her father, but he shook his head and drew her away without so much as -a glance at the Austrians. Roberto heard mass and then hastened out and -placed himself in the porch of the Cathedral. A moment later the officers -appeared, and they too stationed themselves near the doorway. Presently the -girl came out on her father's arm. Her admirers stepped forward to greet -Intelvi; and the cringing wretch stood there exchanging compliments with -them, while their insolent stare devoured his daughter's beauty. She, -poor thing, shook like a leaf, and her eyes, in avoiding theirs, suddenly -encountered Roberto's. Her look was a wounded bird that flew to him for -shelter. He carried it away in his breast and its live warmth beat against -his heart. He thought that Italy had looked at him through those eyes; for -love is the wiliest of masqueraders and has a thousand disguises at his -command. - -Within a month Faustina Intelvi was his wife. Donna Marianna and I -rejoiced; for we knew he had chosen her because he loved her, and she -seemed to us almost worthy of such a choice. As for Count Andrea and his -wife, I leave you to guess what ingredients were mingled in the kiss with -which they welcomed the bride. They were all smiles at Roberto's marriage, -and had only words of praise for his wife. Donna Marianna, who had -sometimes taxed me with suspecting their motives, rejoiced in this fresh -proof of their magnanimity; but for my part I could have wished to see them -a little less kind. All such twilight fears, however, vanished in the flush -of my friend's happiness. Over some natures love steals gradually, as the -morning light widens across a valley; but it had flashed on Roberto like -the leap of dawn to a snow-peak. He walked the world with the wondering -step of a blind man suddenly restored to sight; and once he said to me with -a laugh: "Love makes a Columbus of every one of us!" - -And the Countess--? The Countess, my son, was eighteen, and her husband was -forty. Count Roberto had the heart of a poet, but he walked with a limp and -his skin was sallow. Youth plucks the fruit for its color rather than its -flavor; and first love does not serenade its mistress on a church-organ. In -Italy girls are married as land is sold; if two estates adjoin two lives -are united. As for the portionless girl, she is a knick-knack that goes to -the highest bidder. Faustina was handed over to her purchaser as if she -had been a picture for his gallery; and the transaction doubtless seemed -as natural to her as to her parents. She walked to the altar like an -Iphigenia; but pallor becomes a bride, and it looks well for a daughter to -weep on leaving her mother. Perhaps it would have been different if she had -guessed that the threshold of her new home was carpeted with love and its -four corners hung with tender thoughts of her; but her husband was a silent -man, who never called attention to his treasures. - -The great palace in Milan was a gloomy house for a girl to enter. Roberto -and his sister lived in it as if it had been a monastery, going nowhere and -receiving only those who labored for the Cause. To Faustina, accustomed to -the easy Austrian society, the Sunday evening receptions at the palazzo -Siviano must have seemed as dreary as a scientific congress. It pleased -Roberto to regard her as a victim of barbarian insolence, an embodiment of -his country desecrated by the desire of the enemy; but though, like any -handsome penniless girl, Faustina had now and then been exposed to a free -look or a familiar word, I doubt if she connected such incidents with the -political condition of Italy. She knew, of course, that in marrying Siviano -she was entering a house closed against the Austrian. One of Siviano's -first cares had been to pension his father-in-law, with the stipulation -that Intelvi should resign his appointment and give up all relations with -the government; and the old hypocrite, only too glad to purchase idleness -on such terms, embraced the liberal cause with a zeal which left his -daughter no excuse for half-heartedness. But he found it less easy than he -had expected to recover a footing among his own people. In spite of his -patriotic bluster the Milanese held aloof from him; and being the kind of -man who must always take his glass in company he gradually drifted back -to his old associates. It was impossible to forbid Faustina to visit her -parents; and in their house she breathed an air that was at least tolerant -of Austria. - -But I must not let you think that the young Countess appeared ungrateful or -unhappy. She was silent and shy, and it needed a more enterprising temper -than Roberto's to break down the barrier between them. They seemed to talk -to one another through a convent-grating, rather than across a hearth; but -if Roberto had asked more of her than she could give, outwardly she was -a model wife. She chose me at once as her confessor and I watched over -the first steps of her new life. Never was younger sister tenderer to her -elder than she to Donna Marianna; never was young wife more mindful of her -religious duties, kinder to her dependents, more charitable to the poor; -yet to be with her was like living in a room with shuttered windows. She -was always the caged bird, the transplanted flower: for all Roberto's care -she never bloomed or sang. - -Donna Marianna was the first to speak of it. "The child needs more light -and air," she said. - -"Light? Air?" Roberto repeated. "Does she not go to mass every morning? -Does she not drive on the Corso every evening?" - -Donna Marianna was not called clever, but her heart was wiser than most -women's heads. - -"At our age, brother," said she, "the windows of the mind face north and -look out on a landscape full of lengthening shadows. Faustina needs another -outlook. She is as pale as a hyacinth grown in a cellar." - -Roberto himself turned pale and I saw that she had uttered his own thought. - -"You want me to let her go to Gemma's!" he exclaimed. - -"Let her go wherever there is a little careless laughter." - -"Laughter--now!" he cried, with a gesture toward the sombre line of -portraits above his head. - -"Let her laugh while she can, my brother." - -That evening after dinner he called Faustina to him. - -"My child," he said, "go and put on your jewels. Your sister Gemma gives a -ball to-night and the carriage waits to take you there. I am too much of a -recluse to be at ease in such scenes, but I have sent word to your father -to go with you." - -Andrea and Gemma welcomed their young sister-in-law with effusion, and from -that time she was often in their company. Gemma forbade any mention of -politics in her drawing-room, and it was natural that Faustina should be -glad to escape from the solemn conclaves of the palazzo Siviano to a house -where life went as gaily as in that villa above Florence where Boccaccio's -careless story-tellers took refuge from the plague. But meanwhile the -political distemper was rapidly spreading, and in spite of Gemma's Austrian -affiliations it was no longer possible for her to receive the enemy openly. -It was whispered that her door was still ajar to her old friends; but -the rumor may have risen from the fact that one of the Austrian cavalry -officers stationed at Milan was her own cousin, the son of the aunt on -whose misalliance the old Count had so often bantered her. No one could -blame the Countess Gemma for not turning her own flesh and blood out of -doors; and the social famine to which the officers of the garrison were -reduced made it natural that young Welkenstern should press the claims of -consanguinity. - -All this must have reached Roberto's ears; but he made no sign and his wife -came and went as she pleased. When they returned the following year to the -old dusky villa at Siviano she was like the voice of a brook in a twilight -wood: one could not look at her without ransacking the spring for new -similes to paint her freshness. With Roberto it was different. I found him -older, more preoccupied and silent; but I guessed that his preoccupations -were political, for when his eye rested on his wife it cleared like the -lake when a cloud-shadow lifts from it. - -Count Andrea and his wife occupied an adjoining villa; and during the -_villeggiatura_ the two households lived almost as one family. -Roberto, however, was often absent in Milan, called thither on business of -which the nature was not hard to guess. Sometimes he brought back guests to -the villa; and on these occasions Faustina and Donna Marianna went to Count -Andrea's for the day. I have said that I was not in his confidence; but -he knew my sympathies were with the liberals and now and then he let fall -a word of the work going on underground. Meanwhile the new Pope had been -elected, and from Piedmont to Calabria we hailed in him the Banner that was -to lead our hosts to war. - -So time passed and we reached the last months of '47. The villa on Iseo had -been closed since the end of August. Roberto had no great liking for his -gloomy palace in Milan, and it had been his habit to spend nine months -of the year at Siviano; but he was now too much engrossed in his work to -remain away from Milan, and his wife and sister had joined him there as -soon as the midsummer heat was over. During the autumn he had called me -once or twice to the city to consult me on business connected with his -fruit-farms; and in the course of our talks he had sometimes let fall a -hint of graver matters. It was in July of that year that a troop of Croats -had marched into Ferrara, with muskets and cannon loaded. The lighted -matches of their cannon had fired the sleeping hate of Austria, and the -whole country now echoed the Lombard cry: "Out with the barbarian!" All -talk of adjustment, compromise, reorganization, shrivelled on lips that -the live coal of patriotism had touched. Italy for the Italians, and -then--monarchy, federation, republic, it mattered not what! - -The oppressor's grip had tightened on our throats and the clear-sighted -saw well enough that Metternich's policy was to provoke a rebellion and -then crush it under the Croat heel. But it was too late to cry prudence in -Lombardy. With the first days of the new year the tobacco riots had drawn -blood in Milan. Soon afterward the Lions' Club was closed, and edicts were -issued forbidding the singing of Pio Nono's hymn, the wearing of white and -blue, the collecting of subscriptions for the victims of the riots. To each -prohibition Milan returned a fresh defiance. The ladies of the nobility put -on mourning for the rioters who had been shot down by the soldiery. Half -the members of the Guardia Nobile resigned and Count Borromeo sent back -his Golden Fleece to the Emperor. Fresh regiments were continually pouring -into Milan and it was no secret that Radetsky was strengthening the -fortifications. Late in January several leading liberals were arrested and -sent into exile, and two weeks later martial law was proclaimed in Milan. -At the first arrests several members of the liberal party had hastily left -Milan, and I was not surprised to hear, a few days later, that orders had -been given to reopen the villa at Siviano. The Count and Countess arrived -there early in February. - -It was seven months since I had seen the Countess, and I was struck with -the change in her appearance. - -She was paler than ever, and her step had lost its lightness. Yet she -did not seem to share her husband's political anxieties; one would have -said that she was hardly aware of them. She seemed wrapped in a veil of -lassitude, like Iseo on a still gray morning, when dawn is blood-red on the -mountains but a mist blurs its reflection in the lake. I felt as though her -soul were slipping away from me, and longed to win her back to my care; but -she made her ill-health a pretext for not coming to confession, and for the -present I could only wait and carry the thought of her to the altar. She -had not been long at Siviano before I discovered that this drooping mood -was only one phase of her humor. Now and then she flung back the cowl of -melancholy and laughed life in the eye; but next moment she was in shadow -again, and her muffled thoughts had given us the slip. She was like the -lake on one of those days when the wind blows twenty ways and every -promontory holds a gust in ambush. - -Meanwhile there was a continual coming and going of messengers between -Siviano and the city. They came mostly at night, when the household slept, -and were away again with the last shadows; but the news they brought stayed -and widened, shining through every cranny of the old house. The whole of -Lombardy was up. From Pavia to Mantua, from Como to Brescia, the streets -ran blood like the arteries of one great body. At Pavia and Padua the -universities were closed. The frightened vice-roy was preparing to withdraw -from Milan to Verona, and Radetsky continued to pour his men across the -Alps, till a hundred thousand were massed between the Piave and the Ticino. -And now every eye was turned to Turin. Ah, how we watched for the blue -banner of Piedmont on the mountains! Charles Albert was pledged to our -cause; his whole people had armed to rescue us, the streets echoed with -_avanti, Savoia!_ and yet Savoy was silent and hung back. Each day was -a life-time strained to the cracking-point with hopes and disappointments. -We reckoned the hours by rumors, the very minutes by hearsay. Then -suddenly--ah, it was worth living through!--word came to us that Vienna -was in revolt. The points of the compass had shifted and our sun had risen -in the north. I shall never forget that day at the villa. Roberto sent for -me early, and I found him smiling and resolute, as becomes a soldier on -the eve of action. He had made all his preparations to leave for Milan and -was awaiting a summons from his party. The whole household felt that great -events impended, and Donna Marianna, awed and tearful, had pleaded with -her brother that they should all receive the sacrament together the next -morning. Roberto and his sister had been to confession the previous day, -but the Countess Faustina had again excused herself. I did not see her -while I was with the Count, but as I left the house she met me in the -laurel-walk. The morning was damp and cold, and she had drawn a black scarf -over her hair, and walked with a listless dragging step; but at my approach -she lifted her head quickly and signed to me to follow her into one of the -recesses of clipped laurel that bordered the path. - -"Don Egidio," she said, "you have heard the news?" - -I assented. - -"The Count goes to Milan to-morrow?" - -"It seems probable, your excellency." - -"There will be fighting--we are on the eve of war, I mean?" - -"We are in God's hands, your excellency." - -"In God's hands!" she murmured. Her eyes wandered and for a moment we stood -silent; then she drew a purse from her pocket. "I was forgetting," she -exclaimed. "This is for that poor girl you spoke to me about the other -day--what was her name? The girl who met the Austrian soldier at the fair -at Peschiera--" - -"Ah, Vannina," I said; "but she is dead, your excellency." - -"Dead!" She turned white and the purse dropped from her hand. I picked it -up and held it out to her, but she put back my hand. "That is for masses, -then," she said; and with that she moved away toward the house. - -I walked on to the gate; but before I had reached it I heard her step -behind me. - -"Don Egidio!" she called; and I turned back. - -"You are coming to say mass in the chapel to-morrow morning?" - -"That is the Count's wish." - -She wavered a moment. "I am not well enough to walk up to the village this -afternoon," she said at length. "Will you come back later and hear my -confession here?" - -"Willingly, your excellency." - -"Come at sunset then." She looked at me gravely. "It is a long time since I -have been to confession," she added. - -"My child, the door of heaven is always unlatched." - -She made no answer and I went my way. - -I returned to the villa a little before sunset, hoping for a few words -with Roberto. I felt with Faustina that we were on the eve of war, and the -uncertainty of the outlook made me treasure every moment of my friend's -company. I knew he had been busy all day, but hoped to find that his -preparations were ended and that he could spare me a half hour. I was not -disappointed; for the servant who met me asked me to follow him to the -Count's apartment. Roberto was sitting alone, with his back to the door, at -a table spread with maps and papers. He stood up and turned an ashen face -on me. - -"Roberto!" I cried, as if we had been boys together. - -He signed to me to be seated. - -"Egidio," he said suddenly, "my wife has sent for you to confess her?" - -"The Countess met me on my way home this morning and expressed a wish to -receive the sacrament to-morrow morning with you and Donna Marianna, and I -promised to return this afternoon to hear her confession." - -Roberto sat silent, staring before him as though he hardly heard. At length -he raised his head and began to speak. - -"You have noticed lately that my wife has been ailing?" he asked. - -"Every one must have seen that the Countess is not in her usual health. She -has seemed nervous, out of spirits--I have fancied that she might be -anxious about your excellency." - -He leaned across the table and laid his wasted hand on mine. "Call me -Roberto," he said. - -There was another pause before he went on. "Since I saw you this morning," -he said slowly, "something horrible has happened. After you left I sent for -Andrea and Gemma to tell them the news from Vienna and the probability of -my being summoned to Milan before night. You know as well as I that we have -reached a crisis. There will be fighting within twenty-four hours, if I -know my people; and war may follow sooner than we think. I felt it my duty -to leave my affairs in Andrea's hands, and to entrust my wife to his care. -Don't look startled," he added with a faint smile. "No reasonable man goes -on a journey without setting his house in order; and if things take the -turn I expect it may be some months before you see me back at Siviano.--But -it was not to hear this that I sent for you." He pushed his chair aside and -walked up and down the room with his short limping step. "My God!" he broke -out wildly, "how can I say it?--When Andrea had heard me, I saw him -exchange a glance with his wife, and she said with that infernal sweet -voice of hers, 'Yes, Andrea, it is our duty.' - -"'Your duty?' I asked. 'What is your duty?' - -"Andrea wetted his lips with his tongue and looked at her again; and her -look was like a blade in his hand. - -"'Your wife has a lover,' he said. - -"She caught my arm as I flung myself on him. He is ten times stronger than -I, but you remember how I made him howl for mercy in the old days when he -used to bully you. - -"'Let me go,' I said to his wife. 'He must live to unsay it.' - -"Andrea began to whimper. 'Oh, my poor brother, I would give my heart's -blood to unsay it!' - -"'The secret has been killing us,' she chimed in. - -"'The secret? Whose secret? How dare you--?' - -"Gemma fell on her knees like a tragedy actress. 'Strike me--kill me--it is -I who am the offender! It was at my house that she met him--' - -"'Him?' - -"'Franz Welkenstern--my cousin,' she wailed. - -"I suppose I stood before them like a stunned ox, for they repeated the -name again and again, as if they were not sure of my having heard it.--Not -hear it!" he cried suddenly, dropping into a chair and hiding his face in -his hands. "Shall I ever on earth hear anything else again?" - -He sat a long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a -great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. - -After a while he went on in a low deliberate voice, as though his words -were balancing themselves on the brink of madness. With strange composure -he repeated each detail of his brother's charges: the meetings in the -Countess Gemma's drawing-room, the innocent friendliness of the two -young people, the talk of mysterious visits to a villa outside the Porta -Ticinese, the ever-widening circle of scandal that had spread about their -names. At first, Andrea said, he and his wife had refused to listen to the -reports which reached them. Then, when the talk became too loud, they had -sent for Welkenstern, remonstrated with him, implored him to exchange into -another regiment; but in vain. The young officer indignantly denied the -reports and declared that to leave his post at such a moment would be -desertion. - -With a laborious accuracy Roberto went on, detailing one by one each -incident of the hateful story, till suddenly he cried out, springing from -his chair--"And now to leave her with this lie unburied!" - -His cry was like the lifting of a grave-stone from my breast. "You must not -leave her!" I exclaimed. - -He shook his head. "I am pledged." - -"This is your first duty." - -"It would be any other man's; not an Italian's." - -I was silent: in those days the argument seemed unanswerable. - -At length I said: "No harm can come to her while you are away. Donna -Marianna and I are here to watch over her. And when you come back--" - -He looked at me gravely. "_If_ I come back--" - -"Roberto!" - -"We are men, Egidio; we both know what is coming. Milan is up already; and -there is a rumor that Charles Albert is moving. This year the spring rains -will be red in Italy." - -"In your absence not a breath shall touch her!" - -"And if I never come back to defend her? They hate her as hell hates, -Egidio!--They kept repeating, 'He is of her own age and youth draws -youth--.' She is in their way, Egidio!" - -"Consider, my son. They do not love her, perhaps; but why should they hate -her at such cost? She has given you no child." - -"No child!" He paused. "But what if--? She has ailed lately!" he cried, and -broke off to grapple with the stabbing thought. - -"Roberto! Roberto!" I adjured him. - -He jumped up and gripped my arm. - -"Egidio! You believe in her?" - -"She's as pure as a lily on the altar!" - -"Those eyes are wells of truth--and she has been like a daughter to -Marianna.--Egidio! do I look like an old man?" - -"Quiet yourself, Roberto," I entreated. - -"Quiet myself? With this sting in my blood? A lover--and an Austrian lover! -Oh, Italy, Italy, my bride!" - -"I stake my life on her truth," I cried, "and who knows better than I? Has -her soul not lain before me like the bed of a clear stream?" - -"And if what you saw there was only the reflection of your faith in her?" - -"My son, I am a priest, and the priest penetrates to the soul as the angel -passed through the walls of Peter's prison. I see the truth in her heart as -I see Christ in the host!" - -"No, no, she is false!" he cried. - -I sprang up terrified. "Roberto, be silent!" - -He looked at me with a wild incredulous smile. "Poor simple man of God!" he -said. - -"I would not exchange my simplicity for yours--the dupe of envy's first -malicious whisper!" - -"Envy--you think that?" - -"Is it questionable?" - -"You would stake your life on it?" - -"My life!" - -"Your faith?" - -"My faith!" - -"Your vows as a priest?" - -"My vows--" I stopped and stared at him. He had risen and laid his hand on -my shoulder. - -"You see now what I would be at," he said quietly. "I must take your place -presently--" - -"My place--?" - -"When my wife comes down. You understand me." - -"Ah, now you are quite mad!" I cried breaking away from him. - -"Am I?" he returned, maintaining his strange composure. "Consider a moment. -She has not confessed to you before since our return from Milan--" - -"Her ill-health--" - -He cut me short with a gesture. "Yet to-day she sends for you--" - -"In order that she may receive the sacrament with you on the eve of your -first separation." - -"If that is her only reason her first words will clear her. I must hear -those words, Egidio!" - -"You are quite mad," I repeated. - -"Strange," he said slowly. "You stake your life on my wife's innocence, yet -you refuse me the only means of vindicating it!" - -"I would give my life for any one of you--but what you ask is not mine to -give." - -"The priest first--the man afterward?" he sneered. - -"Long afterward!" - -He measured me with a contemptuous eye. "We laymen are ready to give the -last shred of flesh from our bones, but you priests intend to keep your -cassocks whole." - -"I tell you my cassock is not mine," I repeated. - -"And, by God," he cried, "you are right; for it's mine! Who put it on your -back but my father? What kept it there but my charity? Peasant! beggar! -Hear his holiness pontificate!" "Yes," I said, "I was a peasant and a -beggar when your father found me; and if he had left me one I might have -been excused for putting my hand to any ugly job that my betters required -of me; but he made me a priest, and so set me above all of you, and laid on -me the charge of your souls as well as mine." - -He sat down shaken with dreadful tears. "Ah," he broke out, "would you have -answered me thus when we were boys together, and I stood between you and -Andrea?" - -"If God had given me the strength." - -"You call it strength to make a woman's soul your stepping-stone to -heaven?" - -"Her soul is in my care, not yours, my son. She is safe with me." - -"She? But I? I go out to meet death, and leave a worse death behind me!" -He leaned over and clutched my arm. "It is not for myself I plead but for -her--for her, Egidio! Don't you see to what a hell you condemn her if I -don't come back? What chance has she against that slow unsleeping hate? -Their lies will fasten themselves to her and suck out her life. You and -Marianna are powerless against such enemies." - -"You leave her in God's hands, my son." - -"Easily said--but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison -works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be -sent by her lover's hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free -my wife as well?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder. "My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith -in her in my hands and I will keep it whole." - -He stared at me strangely. "And what if your own fail you?" - -"In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!" - -"And yet--and yet--ah, this is a blind," he shouted; "you know all and -perjure yourself to spare me!" - -At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish -and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a -clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice. - -"You know all," he repeated, "and you dare not let me hear her!" - -"I dare not betray my trust." - -He waved the answer aside. - -"Is this a time to quibble over church discipline? If you believed in her -you would save her at any cost!" - -I said to myself, "Eternity can hold nothing worse than this for me--" and -clutched my resolve again like a cross to my bosom. - -Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna. - -"Faustina has sent to know if the _signar parocco_ is here." - -"He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel." Roberta spoke quietly, and -closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her -patter away across the brick floor of the _salone_. - -Roberto turned to me. "Egidio!" he said; and all at once I was no more than -a straw on the torrent of his will. - -The chapel adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in -the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin's shrine and the -old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But -I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but -the iron grip on my shoulder. - -"Quick!" he said and drove me forward. I heard him shoot back the bolt of -the outer door and a moment later I stood alone in the garden. The sun had -set and the cold spring dusk was falling. Lights shone here and there in -the long front of the villa; the statues glimmered gray among the thickets. -Through the window-pane of the chapel I caught the faint red gleam of the -Virgin's lamp; but I turned my back on it and walked away. - - * * * * * - -All night I lay like a heretic on the fire. Before dawn there came a call -from the villa. The Count had received a second summons from Milan and was -to set out in an hour. I hurried down the cold dewy path to the lake. All -was new and hushed and strange as on the day of resurrection; and in the -dark twilight of the garden alleys the statues stared at me like the -shrouded dead. - -In the _salone_, where the old Count's portrait hung, I found the -family assembled. Andrea and Gemma sat together, a little pinched, I -thought, but decent and self-contained, like mourners who expect to -inherit. Donna Marianna drooped near them, with something black over her -head and her face dim with weeping. Roberto received me calmly and then -turned to his sister. - -"Go fetch my wife," he said. - -While she was gone there was silence. We could hear the cold drip of the -garden-fountain and the patter of rats in the wall. Andrea and his wife -stared out of window and Roberto sat in his father's carved seat at the -head of the long table. Then the door opened and Faustina entered. - -When I saw her I stopped breathing. She seemed no more than the shell of -herself, a hollow thing that grief has voided. Her eyes returned our images -like polished agate, but conveyed to her no sense of our presence. Marianna -led her to a seat, and she crossed her hands and nailed her dull gaze on -Roberto. I looked from one to another, and in that spectral light it seemed -to me that we were all souls come to judgment and naked to each other as to -God. As to my own wrongdoing, it weighed on me no more than dust. The only -feeling I had room for was fear--a fear that seemed to fill my throat and -lungs and bubble coldly over my drowning head. - -Suddenly Roberto began to speak. His voice was clear and steady, and I -clutched at his words to drag myself above the surface of my terror. He -touched on the charge that had been made against his wife--he did not say -by whom--the foul rumor that had made itself heard on the eve of their -first parting. Duty, he said, had sent him a double summons; to fight for -his country and for his wife. He must clear his wife's name before he was -worthy to draw sword for Italy. There was no time to tame the slander -before throttling it; he had to take the shortest way to its throat. At -this point he looked at me and my soul shook. Then he turned to Andrea and -Gemma. - -"When you came to me with this rumor," he said quietly, "you agreed to -consider the family honor satisfied if I could induce Don Egidio to let me -take his place and overhear my wife's confession, and if that confession -convinced me of her innocence. Was this the understanding?" - -Andrea muttered something and Gemma tapped a sullen foot. - -"After you had left," Roberto continued, "I laid the case before Don Egidio -and threw myself on his mercy." He looked at me fixedly. "So strong was his -faith in my wife's innocence that for her sake he agreed to violate the -sanctity of the confessional. I took his place." - -Marianna sobbed and crossed herself and a strange look flitted over -Faustina's face. - -There was a moment's pause; then Roberto, rising, walked across the room to -his wife and took her by the hand. - -"Your seat is beside me, Countess Siviano," he said, and led her to the -empty chair by his own. - -Gemma started to her feet, but her husband pulled her down again. - -"Jesus! Mary!" We heard Donna Marianna moan. - -Roberto raised his wife's hand to his lips. "You forgive me," he said, "the -means I took to defend you?" And turning to Andrea he added slowly: "I -declare my wife innocent and my honor satisfied. You swear to stand by my -decision?" - -What Andrea stammered out, what hissing serpents of speech Gemma's clinched -teeth bit back, I never knew--for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face -was a wonder to behold. - -She had let herself be led across the room like a blind woman, and had -listened without change of feature to her husband's first words; but as -he ceased her frozen gaze broke and her whole body seemed to melt against -his breast. He put his arm out, but she slipped to his feet and Marianna -hastened forward to raise her up. At that moment we heard the stroke -of oars across the quiet water and saw the Count's boat touch the -landing-steps. Four strong oarsmen from Monte Isola were to row him down -to Iseo, to take horse for Milan, and his servant, knapsack on shoulder, -knocked warningly at the terrace window. - -"No time to lose, excellency!" he cried. - -Roberto turned and gripped my hand. "Pray for me," he said low; and with a -brief gesture to the others ran down the terrace to the boat. - -Marianna was bathing Faustina with happy tears. - -"Look up, dear! Think how soon he will come back! And there is the -sunrise--see!" - -Andrea and Gemma had slunk away like ghosts at cock-crow, and a red dawn -stood over Milan. - - * * * * * - -If that sun rose red it set scarlet. It was the first of the Five Days in -Milan--the Five Glorious Days, as they are called. Roberto reached the city -just before the gates closed. So much we knew--little more. We heard of him -in the Broletto (whence he must have escaped when the Austrians blew in -the door) and in the Casa Vidiserti, with Casati, Cattaneo and the rest; -but after the barricading began we could trace him only as having been -seen here and there in the thick of the fighting, or tending the wounded -under Bertani's orders. His place, one would have said, was in the -council-chamber, with the soberer heads; but that was an hour when every -man gave his blood where it was most needed, and Cernuschi, Dandolo, -Anfossi, della Porta fought shoulder to shoulder with students, artisans -and peasants. Certain it is that he was seen on the fifth day; for among -the volunteers who swarmed after Manara in his assault on the Porta Tosa -was a servant of palazzo Siviano; and this fellow swore he had seen his -master charge with Manara in the last assault--had watched him, sword -in hand, press close to the gates, and then, as they swung open before -the victorious dash of our men, had seen him drop and disappear in the -inrushing tide of peasants that almost swept the little company off its -feet. After that we heard nothing. There was savage work in Milan in those -days, and more than one well-known figure lay lost among the heaps of dead -hacked and disfeatured by Croat blades. - -At the villa, we waited breathless. News came to us hour by hour: the very -wind seemed to carry it, and it was swept to us on the incessant rush of -the rain. On the twenty-third Radetsky had fled from Milan, to face Venice -rising in his path. On the twenty-fourth the first Piedmontese had crossed -the Ticino, and Charles Albert himself was in Pavia on the twenty-ninth. -The bells of Milan had carried the word from Turin to Naples, from Genoa to -Ancona, and the whole country was pouring like a flood-tide into Lombardy. -Heroes sprang up from the bloody soil as thick as wheat after rain, and -every day carried some new name to us; but never the one for which we -prayed and waited. Weeks passed. We heard of Pastrengo, Goito, Rivoli; of -Radetsky hemmed into the Quadrilateral, and our troops closing in on him -from Rome, Tuscany and Venetia. Months passed--and we heard of Custozza. We -saw Charles Albert's broken forces flung back from the Mincio to the Oglio, -from the Oglio to the Adda. We followed the dreadful retreat from Milan, -and saw our rescuers dispersed like dust before the wind. But all the while -no word came to us of Roberto. - -These were dark days in Lombardy; and nowhere darker than in the old villa -on Iseo. In September Donna Marianna and the young Countess put on black, -and Count Andrea and his wife followed their example. In October the -Countess gave birth to a daughter. Count Andrea then took possession of the -palazzo Siviano, and the two women remained at the villa. I have no heart -to tell you of the days that followed. Donna Marianna wept and prayed -incessantly, and it was long before the baby could snatch a smile from her. -As for the Countess Faustina, she went among us like one of the statues in -the garden. The child had a wet-nurse from the village, and it was small -wonder there was no milk for it in that marble breast. I spent much of -my time at the villa, comforting Donna Marianna as best I could; but -sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when we three sat in the dimly-lit -_salone_, with the old Count's portrait overhead, and I looked up and -saw the Countess Faustina in the tall carved seat beside her husband's -empty chair, my spine grew chill and I felt a cold wind in my hair. - -The end of it was that in the spring I went to see my bishop and laid my -sin before him. He was a saintly and merciful old man, and gave me a -patient hearing. - -"You believed the lady innocent?" he asked when I had ended. - -"Monsignore, on my soul!" - -"You thought to avert a great calamity from the house to which you owed -more than your life?" - -"It was my only thought." - -He laid his hand on my shoulder. - -"Go home, my son. You shall learn my decision." - -Three months later I was ordered to resign my living and go to America, -where a priest was needed for the Italian mission church in New York. I -packed my possessions and set sail from Genoa. I knew no more of America -than any peasant up in the hills. I fully expected to be speared by naked -savages on landing; and for the first few months after my arrival I wished -at least once a day that such a blessed fate had befallen me. But it is -no part of my story to tell you what I suffered in those early days. The -Church had dealt with me mercifully, as is her wont, and her punishment -fell far below my deserts.... - -I had been some four years in New York, and no longer thought of looking -back from the plough, when one day word was brought me that an Italian -professor lay ill and had asked for a priest. There were many Italian -refugees in New York at that time, and the greater number, being -well-educated men, earned a living by teaching their language, which was -then included among the accomplishments of fashionable New York. The -messenger led me to a poor boarding-house and up to a small bare room on -the top floor. On the visiting-card nailed to the door I read the name "De -Roberti, Professor of Italian." Inside, a gray-haired haggard man tossed on -the narrow bed. He turned a glazed eye on me as I entered, and I recognized -Roberto Siviano. - -I steadied myself against the door-post and stood staring at him without a -word. - -"What's the matter?" asked the doctor who was bending over the bed. I -stammered that the sick man was an old friend. - -"He wouldn't know his oldest friend just now," said the doctor. "The -fever's on him; but it will go down toward sunset." - -I sat down at the head of the bed and took Roberto's hand in mine. - -"Is he going to die?" I asked. - -"I don't believe so; but he wants nursing." - -"I will nurse him." - -The doctor nodded and went out. I sat in the little room, with Roberto's -burning hand in mine. Gradually his skin cooled, the fingers grew quiet, -and the flush faded from his sallow cheek-bones. Toward dusk he looked up -at me and smiled. - -"Egidio," he said quietly. - -I administered the sacrament, which he received with the most fervent -devotion; then he fell into a deep sleep. - -During the weeks that followed I had no time to ask myself the meaning of -it all. My one business was to keep him alive if I could. I fought the -fever day and night, and at length it yielded. For the most part he raved -or lay unconscious; but now and then he knew me for a moment, and whispered -"Egidio" with a look of peace. - -I had stolen many hours from my duties to nurse him; and as soon as the -danger was past I had to go back to my parish work. Then it was that I -began to ask myself what had brought him to America; but I dared not face -the answer. - -On the fourth day I snatched a moment from my work and climbed to his -room. I found him sitting propped against his pillows, weak as a child but -clear-eyed and quiet. I ran forward, but his look stopped me. - -"_Signor parocco_," he said, "the doctor tells me that I owe my life -to your nursing, and I have to thank you for the kindness you have shown to -a friendless stranger." - -"A stranger?" I gasped. - -He looked at me steadily. "I am not aware that we have met before," he -said. - -For a moment I thought the fever was on him; but a second glance convinced -me that he was master of himself. - -"Roberto!" I cried, trembling. - -"You have the advantage of me," he said civilly. "But my name is Roberti, -not Roberto." - -The floor swam under me and I had to lean against the wall. - -"You are not Count Roberto Siviano of Milan?" - -"I am Tommaso de Roberti, professor of Italian, from Modena." - -"And you have never seen me before?" - -"Never that I know of." - -"Were you never at Siviano, on the lake of Iseo?" I faltered. - -He said calmly: "I am unacquainted with that part of Italy." - -My heart grew cold and I was silent. - -"You mistook me for a friend, I suppose?" he added. - -"Yes," I cried, "I mistook you for a friend;" and with that I fell on my -knees by his bed and cried like a child. - -Suddenly I felt a touch on my shoulder. "Egidio," said he in a broken -voice, "look up." - -I raised my eyes, and there was his old smile above me, and we clung to -each other without a word. Presently, however, he drew back, and put me -quietly aside. - -"Sit over there, Egidio. My bones are like water and I am not good for much -talking yet." - -"Let us wait, Roberto. Sleep now--we can talk tomorrow." - -"No. What I have to say must be said at once." He examined me thoughtfully. -"You have a parish here in New York?" - -I assented. - -"And my work keeps me here. I have pupils. It is too late to make a -change." - -"A change?" - -He continued to look at me calmly. "It would be difficult for me," he -explained, "to find employment in a new place." - -"But why should you leave here?" - -"I shall have to," he returned deliberately, "if you persist in recognizing -in me your former friend Count Siviano." - -"Roberto!" - -He lifted his hand. "Egidio," he said, "I am alone here, and without -friends. The companionship, the sympathy of my parish priest would be a -consolation in this strange city; but it must not be the companionship of -the _parocco_ of Siviano. You understand?" - -"Roberto," I cried, "it is too dreadful to understand!" - -"Be a man, Egidio," said he with a touch of impatience. "The choice lies -with you, and you must make it now. If you are willing to ask no questions, -to name no names, to make no allusions to the past, let us live as friends -together, in God's name! If not, as soon as my legs can carry me I must be -off again. The world is wide, luckily--but why should we be parted?" - -I was on my knees at his side in an instant. "We must never be parted!" I -cried. "Do as you will with me. Give me your orders and I obey--have I not -always obeyed you?" - -I felt his hand close sharply on mine. "Egidio!" he admonished me. - -"No--no--I shall remember. I shall say nothing--" - -"Think nothing?" - -"Think nothing," I said with a last effort. - -"God bless you!" he answered. - -My son, for eight years I kept my word to him. We met daily almost, we ate -and walked and talked together, we lived like David and Jonathan--but -without so much as a glance at the past. How he had escaped from Milan--how -he had reached New York--I never knew. We talked often of Italy's -liberation--as what Italians would not?--but never touched on his share in -the work. Once only a word slipped from him; and that was when one day he -asked me how it was that I had been sent to America. The blood rushed to my -face, and before I could answer he had raised a silencing hand. - -"I see," he said; "it was _your_ penance too." - -During the first years he had plenty of work to do, but he lived so -frugally that I guessed he had some secret use for his earnings. It was -easy to conjecture what it was. All over the world Italian exiles were -toiling and saving to further the great cause. He had political friends in -New York, and sometimes he went to other cities to attend meetings and make -addresses. His zeal never slackened; and but for me he would often have -gone hungry that some shivering patriot might dine. I was with him heart -and soul, but I had the parish on my shoulders, and perhaps my long -experience of men had made me a little less credulous than Christian -charity requires; for I could have sworn that some of the heroes who hung -on him had never had a whiff of Austrian blood, and would have fed out of -the same trough with the white-coats if there had been polenta enough to go -round. Happily my friend had no such doubts. He believed in the patriots as -devoutly as in the cause; and if some of his hard-earned dollars travelled -no farther than the nearest wine-cellar or cigar-shop, he never suspected -the course they took. - -His health was never the same after the fever; and by and by he began to -lose his pupils, and the patriots cooled off as his pockets fell in. Toward -the end I took him to live in my shabby attic. He had grown weak and had a -troublesome cough, and he spent the greater part of his days indoors. Cruel -days they must have been to him, but he made no sign, and always welcomed -me with a cheerful word. When his pupils dropped off, and his health made -it difficult for him to pick up work outside, he set up a letter-writer's -sign, and used to earn a few pennies by serving as amanuensis to my poor -parishioners; but it went against him to take their money, and half the -time he did the work for nothing. I knew it was hard for him to live on -charity, as he called it, and I used to find what jobs I could for him -among my friends the _negozianti_, who would send him letters to copy, -accounts to make up and what not; but we were all poor together, and the -master had licked the platter before the dog got it. - -So lived that just man, my son; and so, after eight years of exile, he died -one day in my arms. God had let him live long enough to see Solferino and -Villa-franca; and was perhaps never more merciful than in sparing him Monte -Rotondo and Mentana. But these are things of which it does not become me to -speak. The new Italy does not wear the face of our visions; but it is -written that God shall know His own, and it cannot be that He shall misread -the hearts of those who dreamed of fashioning her in His image. - -As for my friend, he is at peace, I doubt not; and his just life and holy -death intercede for me, who sinned for his sake alone. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CRUCIAL INSTANCES *** - -This file should be named 8crci10.txt or 8crci10.zip -Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8crci11.txt -VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8crci10a.txt - -Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US -unless a copyright notice is included. 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